Become a Super-Powered CEO with Sherif Sakr (#201)
Happiness is an inside job, right? And so, achievers get into this, sometimes get into this habit of thinking, I'm not gonna be happy until I scale that mountain, till I build this company, till I sell this company. And then you get to the top of that mountain, then you see the next
Speaker 2:mountain. I'm Jim Huffman, and this is If I Was Starting Today, a collection of conversations about half baked startup ideas, growth tactics, and stories from founders,
Speaker 3:Today Today on the podcast, I speak with Sharif Shakur. He is the CEO and founder of CEO S. That is the chief executive operating system. If you like EOS, the entrepreneur operating system, you're going to love this. It's basically for people that run businesses with over a hundred people.
Speaker 3:He works with some high performing founders, CEOs, and executives and helps them get the most out of their business and their team. So, if you aspire to, not sure in a small company, but a big company, Shariff knows how to give you the tools to pull that off. He gets really tactical in how to manage people, how to manage your time, where to focus. For me, it was a fun experience here. Also talks about how to go from running a smaller business to a bigger business that has hundreds of peoples and talks about some of the things that are blocking you where you get in your own way.
Speaker 3:So, if you at all have goals of building something bigger than what you have and potentially lead it, this is a really fun podcast to learn from someone who's done it himself, but also help some of the best people do it on their own. Hope you enjoy today's episode. Alright. Shariff, we're just gonna start with a hard hitting question. We we were talking beforehand about how I'm busy, I have too many things, I'm a chicken with their head cut off, and in preparation for this podcast, I was watching some of your content, and you basically were talking about my exact persona.
Speaker 3:And you're like, If someone's in this phase not doing mindfulness, they probably need it more than anybody. So can we start at a 30,000 foot view? Like business owners, founders, what is mindfulness and why should they care?
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that question. So mindfulness can be defined different in different ways by different people. For me, mindfulness is about being less reactive and not on autopilot. And so if you're not reactive and if you're not on autopilot, you are more intentional, you're more deliberate. In order to do that, what that means is you need to create more distance between stimulus and response.
Speaker 1:Right? Because that's what makes us reactive. Everybody has triggers, whether it's your kids or your employees or your spouse, the people closest to us usually trigger us the most. Ironically, those are the people that we want to feel loved the most at the same time. So the reason mindfulness is important is because it helps create that space between stimulus and response so that you can have that effect, you know, on the people that are close to you, whether they're family or work colleagues.
Speaker 1:And we just had a training last week with CEOs, and I always start the mindfulness session with a eulogy exercise. And it might seem a little bit heavy, but it will only take three minutes, you know, and have everybody, hey. What do you want people to say when when you die? And my question to everyone afterwards, because some of it obviously could be personal. My question is, what surprised you of anything about what you wrote?
Speaker 1:And every single time, and we've been doing this for four years, every single time, if anything surprised them is there was nothing about how many titles, how many companies, how much money. It it was none of that. It was always about, here's what I want my loved ones and my friends to feel about having, you know, been around me. And so the reason I do that first is for exactly what you brought up is, like, why why should mindfulness be a priority? I'm busy.
Speaker 1:I have a million things to do that I can't even get through. Well, if what's really most important to you is how the people that are closest to you feel, then that is your motivation to create habits and to create space in your calendar to work on yourself so that you can clear up the things that get in the way of that.
Speaker 3:I love that. We in our little EO group, we did something similar where you hit on your eulogy, and we had that same revelation. It's not like, Oh, look how amazing my MRR growth was over a six month timeframe. It's about the relationships, and you hit on something I didn't think about. It's like how people feel being around you, and that's like, Are you present?
Speaker 3:Are you aware? So I'm sold at a 30,000 foot view. However, I wake up tomorrow. I'm already looking at my calendar tomorrow dreading how crazy it's going to be, and I know what's going to happen. I'm going to roll over.
Speaker 3:I'm going to start slacking because I'm on the West Coast. Here's my excuses I'm just going to pepper you with right now. Okay? I where I roll over, I'm slacking because they're already waiting for me because they're on the East Coast. I'm on the West Coast.
Speaker 3:I'm prepping for meetings. And and, again, that's one day, but I can roll that into a full week to make an excuse of, Shree, that's too hard for me to make space. I'm too busy. I'm too important. Right?
Speaker 3:I'm doing all these things. Like, well, what's your year of pushback? Or, like, how can people make this a priority? And maybe the answer is simple.
Speaker 1:Again, you're the one who needs to overcome you making excuses, But what you write down is important to you. Right? And if you want your kids and your wife and your colleagues and your friends and your family to say certain things about you after you're gone, well, would they say those things now? And if not, it's it's not because of what you're doing. It's because of how you're being.
Speaker 1:Right? And so so you're at your own best motivation. But, yes, there are all kinds of tools. Most of it has to do with boundaries. It's like the athlete.
Speaker 1:You know? It's it's the competitor that you see the final product when you see them on TV. You don't see all the hours behind the scenes of all the hard practice and the and the workouts and the training. Well, the hard practice workouts and the training is what I would call the mindfulness practice. The things that you do every day so that when things do go in a direction that you're not expecting, you're the eye of the storm.
Speaker 1:Right? No matter what's going on, and and and you're calm, you're centered, you're collected. Simple way to start is AM, PM bookends.
Speaker 3:You know?
Speaker 1:So the idea that you can when you wake up in the morning, you have the most control over what you do. During the day, a lot of things can happen and your well laid plans can go sideways because of other people's urgencies and things that come up. But you do control that first fifteen, thirty, sixty minutes when you wake up. And so what are you gonna do with that AM bookend and the PM bookend? And I would say that the AM begins with the PM because if you stay up too late, if you don't get a good night's rest, if you eat too much before you go to then your AM is not you don't you don't feel well.
Speaker 1:Right? So basic things about how to get good rest at night, you know, at at least thirty to sixty minutes before you go to bed, turn off electronics. That's really hard for for business people to do because they're always on their email. Well, email puts you in fight or flight. You know, you don't want that before you go to bed.
Speaker 1:You know, you don't wanna watch the news before you go to bed. You wanna actually signal to your body that you're starting to wind down. You know, stretching, taking a bath, reading a physical book, journaling, all these things that actually calm you down and give you a good night's rest. There's a lot of studies now about, you know, getting good sleeps, you know, have it be very dark. You know, a cooler temperature is better.
Speaker 1:Regular bedtime is better. And then when you wake up in the morning, you control what you do, whether you check your email and and immediately get distracted or maybe, you know, five minutes of breathing, five minutes meditation, ten minutes of exercise, planning, you know, all the important, not urgent things that I tell my clients, turn off the notifications on your phone, on your computer
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Whenever you have shut down complete the night before, and do not turn those back on until you're actually ready to be bombarded by the world. And so, yeah, you control when you wake up. So if you wanna make it a priority to get certain things in, then you can do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. I love that. And I love the AMPM booking kind of because that was kind of my next question. It's like, how do we dip our toes in the waters of this?
Speaker 3:And it's kind of like inspired by, like, James Clear and Atomic Habits, like habit stacking. Like, you wake up, brush your teeth, like, do your gratitude morning journal, which, yeah, I feel like for me, morning journal gratitude has been the best way to have the right mindset going into the day. If not, I'll just not be a happy person. So once you start making space, doing the book, and to have time for mindfulness and gratitude, whether it's meditation or doing the journaling, where have you seen your clients or these high performing CEOs get the most benefit? And in that time where they create space, what they're focusing on, is it meditation to have a clear mind?
Speaker 3:Is it gratitude? Is it, like, vision casting? Any color on how to maximize that time when you become disciplined enough to create that space. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, anything that you do that works for you. Yeah. You know, there's a saying, success is a science. You can follow the clues of success. Fulfillment is an art.
Speaker 1:It's different for each person. I I will say that meditation, if it's completely new to you, it will scare people because, hey. My mind is busy. When I sit down, I try to meditate. It doesn't work because my mind's busy.
Speaker 1:But if you decide that you want to pick one thing to try for maybe twenty one days, five minutes in the morning minimum
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And simple meditation is following your breath. Observe the inhale and exhale. You will not believe how easily you're gonna be distracted from that and your mind will wander off. Yeah. When when that happens, don't judge it.
Speaker 1:Just invite it gently back to the next inhale, the next exhale. And what I have found with clients who are super successful, super busy, once they get into the habit of meditation, when they don't do it, they miss it.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:That's how you know that you're getting the effect even when you're not getting the effect. Right? Because it in the subconscious, and it helps ground you. It helps settle you in a way that very few other things can.
Speaker 3:Yeah. The other thing for me as I learn from other really high performers and people that I kind of admire and look up to, I feel like the common thread that I see is exactly what you're saying. Like you said, everyone's kind of doing it in their own way, but at a big picture level, this is what kind of sets the foundation to go off and do that big thing or do that next thing.
Speaker 1:Happiness is an inside job, right? And so achievers get into this sometimes get into this habit of thinking, I'm not gonna be happy until I scale that mountain, till I build this company, till I sell this company, whatever. And then you get to the top of that mountain, then you see the next mountain. Now I'm not gonna be happy until I do that, and then I'm not gonna be happy till I do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But all of life happens in the valley between the peaks. Right? And if you cannot be happy in the valley, most of your life, you're not gonna be happy. And so, you know, the Bhagavad Gita is a book from ancient you know, it's a yoga book from ancient India, and it talks about the archer. The archer controls pulling the string back and aiming the arrow.
Speaker 1:The archer does not control whether or not the arrow hits the target. A bird could come, a wind could come, things can happen. Right? But all you can do is the best effort about what you can control, and then what happens happens. And so which, you know, relates to the serenity prayer.
Speaker 1:Right? Grant me the wisdom to know the difference between what I can control and what I can't control. So just remembering that being happy is is happens between your ears. That's where happiness happens. It does not happen from your environment or what you achieve.
Speaker 1:And and if so, then it would be very not very long lived.
Speaker 3:I love that quote on the the peaks to peaks as well because I even equate it to parenting sometimes. Sometimes the best memories, it's not like the roller coaster at Disney World or the event. It's the the trash time in between of, like, the car ride or, like, the the little things. And so I think it it equates a lot of ways.
Speaker 1:I I gotta tell you this, Jim. When it comes to parenting, what we want is quality time with our kids. You mentioned you have a five and a seven year old. Yeah. Girls.
Speaker 1:The way to have quality time is to have quantity because we don't know when the quality will happen. Yeah. Well, but the quantity from a mindfulness perspective has to be, we gotta be off of our phones when we're with our kids.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Right? There there's something called the iPhone effect. Even if you and I are in a meeting and my phone is face down on the table in front of us, both of our attention is a little bit divided because there's what could be going on there. So Cal Newport talks about deep work blocks, which are blocks of time during your week where you do your creative work without any interruptions. Same thing, you know, deep love blocks with your daughters, with your family, with your wife, with whoever is important to you, where it's uninterrupted.
Speaker 1:You're not distracted. So, again, boundaries. It's it's a mindfulness about creating boundaries and not giving in to the mind's compulsive need for distraction.
Speaker 3:Man, that one hits a little too close to home. I totally hear you on that one. We finally we were doing, like, dinner time where, like, there's no devices, you know, at the dinner table. And I think I've been the hardest one to wean off of that, which is a little sad, but it's been the best thing, like an hour of uninterrupted time.
Speaker 1:Good for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's really cool. As we talk about mindfulness and you're not just talking about it, yes, it's absolutely great for everybody, but what's interesting, this has really come out of what you guys are doing with your company, with COS, as far as high performers, people running companies of over a hundred people, doing 8 figures and beyond, where these are really high achievers in trying to, one, help them get the most out of what they're doing, but also find fulfillment in that. Tell people what COS is that I want to get into some of the things for just so they have that perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So COS stands for chief executive operating system. It's a little bit of a play on, EOS, entrepreneur operating system, which, you know, EOS is for was designed initially for entrepreneurs and and start ups. There's really nothing out in the market about how to run a company at scale, you know, where you have a full executive team as a CEO, which, you know, we think is around a hundred employees or more. Even MBA programs do not teach, well, what do you do Monday morning as a CEO to run a company?
Speaker 1:My partner has is a five time CEO who's been there and done that, and he's created a curriculum around, you know, here are the five responsibilities the CEO must not delegate. Here's a mental model of how to look at your business. Here's how to actually deliver predictable performance, the the meeting rhythm, all of these things. And so what we're excited about is teaching people in a role where there's really no support. Right?
Speaker 1:All the other functions, finance, you can go to school for, you know, marketing, sales, HR. All these things you can get trainings for, you can get certified for. There's a professionalization. There's software for all these positions. You get to the CEO role, it's like, hey, here's calendar and and email, and then figure it out.
Speaker 3:You know? Go get them. It's like this
Speaker 1:how to run a company, you got you had 10 different answers. You know, you asked 10 VP of sales how to do sales, they're gonna give you a process that's pretty normalized. So we're trying to professionalize the CEO role by teaching a way to approach it that we think is great for the culture. It's great for delivering value to customers and employees and shareholders, and that will help the economy.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And one thing with your framework that I found super interesting was there there there are a couple threads that I I really think about. One is leverage. Not like leverage, get debt, but, like, what are the leverage points in a business that a CEO should be aware of. Right?
Speaker 3:From capital allocation, resources, people, technology, money, and how to really look at those leverage points. And one big thing that I kind of took away from you all is when you're at that level, it's really about finding the right who's, right, to go after something. And also, like, what's your hiring engine? And I think sometimes you'll even bring a chief HR officer into the executive team because at the end of the day, people can have the biggest impact on the business, and what's the strategic approach around getting the top people? But for me, that was one big unlock for someone that does EOS, and then seeing what you guys do at that hundred person and plus levels, like, oh, wow.
Speaker 3:This is really around finding the right people and and managing them. But would you speak to that on really building it?
Speaker 1:Because I
Speaker 3:think a lot of CEOs that, like, grow up within a company, your default is, like, Get out of my way. Let me do everything, where you have to start to fire yourself from that skill to kind of get your company to that next level, which I think has been really hard to delegate and especially to an executive team. But but is is that something that you see as the hardest or the the biggest thing for these people to unlock?
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's certainly one of the big things. So we look at in terms of employee size, because when it comes to management system, it's about managing people, and that's affected by how many people are there to be managed. And so we we kinda break it up like, you know, from zero to 20 or 25, we we call it project manager CEO. You know?
Speaker 1:You're still CEO, but you're wearing all the hats. You're communicating with everybody. Everybody brings decisions to you. You make the decisions. That that is impossible to scale up to a hundred.
Speaker 1:Right? It just doesn't work.
Speaker 3:It breaks. Yes.
Speaker 1:It breaks many, many times. You can't work five times harder, and and it just it doesn't work. So between twenty, twenty five to a hundred, what happens is you start to hand off hats, and we we have a minimum of six functional hats that we talk about, You know? So you have a a an executive for, shareholders, which is the CFO, for customers, you know, customer success, for HR, CHRO, for sales, for marketing, and for product or services. So minimum six could be could be more.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But these are six hats that you're wearing all of them when you have 20, whether you want to or not.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And
Speaker 1:then by the time you get to a hundred, hopefully, you've you've given those. So you actually have a full time CEO position where you are working through your executives to achieve results. You're not an individual contributor anymore. And so where most companies break is 20 and a hundred employees. Right?
Speaker 1:And so knowing what to do with that is important. And you're right. It's about having the right people on the bus in the right seats. And so what most companies do is they have a hiring process, which means, I have an opening, so now I'm gonna put out a post, you know, as opposed to having a recruiting process where you're constantly looking for, you know, top talent that you can bring in when needed or even before needed because top talent is available when it is available, not when you have a position, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Really important to understand that people talk about, you know, or CEOs talk about that people are our biggest asset, but they don't act that way. Right? So a hundred two hundred years ago, capital equipment was was the way that companies were run. And for the were, you know, the people did not knowledge workers weren't as prominent. It was more about who had the most money to have the capital equipment.
Speaker 1:And that that equipment had a maintenance team that worked twenty four seven, was always available because when the equipment goes down, the the company stops. Yeah. And during holidays, that maintenance team would do preventative maintenance. They're they're always taking care of of the most important asset of the business, which was the the the capital, the the equipment. Nowadays, people are the most valuable asset of the company
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:While the business team becomes the CEO and the exec team, you know. And what what are what what is the ELT, executive leadership team, doing to take care of the people? And, and and there's just many things that tie into that, but you wanna make sure that everybody who works for you knows what is their responsibility. You know, what is it that they own that nobody else owns? What what is their authority?
Speaker 1:What what are the decisions they can make without asking permission? What are their goals? So that they know how to be successful. And what is one measurement for each goal so that, you know, when they've they've achieved it. And we find at a, you know, hundred million dollar companies, they're they have fuzzy goals, they have fuzzy responsibilities, they have fuzzy this, fuzzy that.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. What happens is the culture suffers, people aren't clear, there's there's no accountability, and and things are not nearly as as smooth as they could be.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Man, and I hope so if you're all of a sudden a leader of leaders, you're a leader of six people in your executive team, to get the most out of that team, to push them to, like, hit their potential while managing culture and managing burnout, right, trying to play the long game because that's a tough balance, right? You read the blog post and book by Frank Slootman, like, Amp it up. You know what I mean? But then you've got that whole VC backed culture, but also gotta play the long game.
Speaker 3:You can't just, like, burn people out. But any any advice when being a leader of leaders and how you kind of balance that?
Speaker 1:So when you're when you're small, when you're, you know, up to twenty, twenty five people, you are the culture. Right? It it's like being a parent that if there's it doesn't you don't need to say anything to your kids because anything you say, if if you don't they they're watching you. And so then as you get bigger, you know, one of the things that happens is that there are people who don't talk to you every day or people don't see you every day. And so it becomes important to pay attention to things like mission, vision, values.
Speaker 1:And when we talk about values, we're not talking about virtues. You know, a lot of companies, you know, passion and integrity and honesty, and it's like the the boy scout creed that doesn't tell me anything. You know? Everybody expects you to be honest. Everybody expects you to be virtuous.
Speaker 1:But having values that actually help me make these decisions, you know? Fast is better than slow, Google. Or Southwest, you know, flying is fun. Those types of values actually help people make decisions in their day to day Mhmm. And they color the the the the culture.
Speaker 1:You know? Are you trans do you value transparency where you're always upfront, or do you value stability, you know, where you if you protect people from certain information. And that that that works into the culture. So the way that you avoid burnout is make sure that your employees know how to win because what burns people out is uncertainty. It puts them into fight or flight.
Speaker 1:It puts them into stress.
Speaker 3:Love that.
Speaker 1:And and all all of that heavy lifting happens by the by the supervisor to their direct reports so that they have clarity on how to be successful. And then, you know, we talk about the three tools that every manager has to help their employees, which are management, leadership, and coaching. So if somebody's the management is what to do, leadership is why to do it, and coaching is how to do it. So if somebody is not being successful, do they not know what to do? Do they not know why it's important?
Speaker 1:Or do they not know how to do it and we need to train them?
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Gotcha. And people that kind of go through the program, the ones that take what you have, implement, and see success versus maybe ones that it doesn't go as well, what do you think separates them? What's some of the big unlocks they have that that really works works worse versus others where maybe it's harder for them to take on something or to give up something that they normally do?
Speaker 1:That's a really good question. There is a danger when you come to a program and when you go to an event that, you know, you get kind of excited while you're there, and then you go back and you go back to old habits. And so I would say that the ones that have been successful with us have been the ones that the CEO will come and they buy into, okay, this makes sense. So then they come back with their executive team. So now their executive team and the CEO are all on the same page.
Speaker 1:And then oftentimes, they'll bring other layers of management as well. So it becomes a language and a process that's that everybody is is talking about and is aligned with as opposed to the SCO is just kind of on their own, trying to, you know, do the things that make sense to them and maybe not doing the things that they don't like to do or that are uncomfortable. Because once everybody knows what how the system is supposed to work, there's no place to hide because, you know, why why aren't we doing it?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And a question I have, which is a little bit related to what you guys do, but it's a little smaller. For companies of of my size that aren't at a hundred people yet, any color on why do some people stay at that place where maybe they can't get to a bigger size, versus the ones that are able to break through.
Speaker 3:I think I forget which book it was. I always butcher the name, but it I think it talked about, like, the black hole of death for business is between, like, you probably know the numbers, like, 20 to a hundred people between 1 to 5,000,000 in revenue where most businesses go to kind of just die. Not to say that they go out of business, but they just kind of flatline, and that's where they live, versus others that break through. But any thoughts or color on, like, why companies can break through to get to, like, a CEO s level versus others that just stagnate?
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't know that there is one clear cut answer to that, Jim. Some of it is luck. Some of it is timing. Some of it is, product market fit. But I I would say that the one thing that holds business owners from growing is thinking that they can do things better, and therefore, they should do things instead of having other people do them.
Speaker 1:And see, you'll you'll almost always be able to do a lot of things better in your business than other people, but then you lose your leverage in terms of, you know, time. And so Yeah. You at some point, you just have to turn the keys over to now it's not abdication. Right? It's delegation.
Speaker 1:So abdication is I throw you the keys and I and I forget about it. Delegation is I I I tell you, here's what I want you to do. Here's the goal, and let's check back next week and and see where it's at and check back and check. So so that there's a constant line of communication, but the ones that are able to let go of control at the right time in the right way are able to leverage their time and then do you know, you should only do the things that only you can do.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And if it
Speaker 1:if somebody else can do something that you're doing, maybe not as well as you, but they can do them, then then let them do
Speaker 3:it. Yeah. No. That's totally well said, and I definitely feel that. Like, the things I've been able to delegate, it's, like, been amazing to see that take off where other things are it can be a little bit harder.
Speaker 3:I'm also curious, Sharif, in in your background, how did where did you start and how did you get wrapped up in all of this? What what's kind of your background?
Speaker 1:I've had a very diverse kind of, background, but I started out as a chemical engineer
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Merely because of the father influence. My mom was a psychologist, and Oh, cool. I should have done that, but I went into engineering. I didn't like that. Then I got into corporate sales, which allowed me to use problem solving technical skills.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Then I went entrepreneurial after that, you know, mortgage banking, real estates, commercial real estate investing, and then I had my own business. And then, you know, for the past, maybe eight years now is partner, you know, it was kind of a nice complimentary skill where he wants to teach, and and I can build a business and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That well.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's very cool. What what would you say is, like, your superpower?
Speaker 1:I think so. I I I mean, I I I think there are again, you you do enough personality assessments and and which is something I'm interested in is trying to understand what makes me tick, what makes other people tick. You know, there are different pathways for different people to be successful. For me, my superpower, I believe, is just the bridging between the business and and the mindfulness. You know?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I'm I'm able to talk to a CEO about real business issues, but really get into the personal filters that are maybe getting in their way of being successful and, more importantly, just being happy and and fulfilled in the process. And so what you wanna do is begin to design your life in such a way that the things that drain you of energy, even though you can do them well, you do less of that. And the things that fill you with energy, you do more of that.
Speaker 3:Man, it's so good. It's funny. My wife and I would joke, like, at the end of the day, I'd be more exhausted than others. And it's like, what tasks did I do that drained me versus fills you up? And then we literally would score it.
Speaker 3:But, I never heard it that way. It's not just like what is your superpower, but what's your superpower that gives you energy? Because that other thing you might be good at, but that's not where you should be focusing your time and impact because that could drain you over the long haul. The other thing that I think is interesting is I like it when a superpower is not one thing, but, like, the combination of things, like this Venn diagram of mindfulness, strategic leadership, where it becomes this one thing. Because I look at some of the special people at our company, it's because they've combined these things to be this little mini unicorn in a certain aspect of the business.
Speaker 3:You know, I heard this quote, and I'd be interested to see if you agree with it or not, where it's like the strength of the founder CEO is the weakness of the business because there's depending on them just doing it, that they didn't build systems or people or some redundancy for it. And I look at our company, and I think it's a little bit true because it's been the last thing for me to delegate, which is essentially sales, which is funny because when I launched a marketing agency, it wasn't because I thought I wanted to do sales. It's because I thought I could help people with marketing, but then my job really became sales. It's always interesting. The business you start isn't the business you're in, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:It does. And and, you know, when we when we see CEOs that are, at scale, they'll have a background maybe of financial. They were a CFO before, or they have a background product or they have a background in sales. And when they're stressed, guess what? That's what they want us to spend their time on because that's what they're
Speaker 3:doing. Yeah. You know?
Speaker 1:And so what we tell them is, look, if you have a background in sales, you should be able to hire somebody that you recognize as being great at sales.
Speaker 3:Right? That's a great point.
Speaker 1:And be able to monitor them with minimal effort and then focus your time in the areas where, you know, you have maybe less knowledge.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Yeah. It's also like your bar is higher, so it makes it that much harder to to delegate. So, anyone that controls the revenue. So, no, very cool.
Speaker 3:One question I always like to close with is, what is the nicest thing anyone's done for you in your professional career, that you can think of, whether it was early on or it was some tough love or even something recent?
Speaker 1:What is the nicest thing somebody has done for me in my professional career? I have had a lot of just a lot of luck with just some great mentors in in almost everything that I have done. And so, what is the nicest thing anyone has done for me? And so he I mean, you know, my partner my current partner, Joel, you know, didn't know me from Adam. That that marketing email for me for something I was trying to do in Denver.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You know? And here we are, with his, you know, collateral, his his IP, building a business, and just, you know, trusting me to be his partner, I guess I would have to say that that's among the top things.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Kinda taking a flyer on on on this guy. Yeah. Yeah. It's all about those doors that get cracked open.
Speaker 3:Right? They can lead to something really exciting. Yes. Yeah. Well, that's very cool.
Speaker 3:Well, Shreve, this has been fun, man, from getting to know you and I. And for people that don't know, they have a pretty fun, office in Austin. It's like this, I don't know, four story house that feels more it doesn't feel like an office. It feels like a a hangout vacation house that you get to collaborate in, which I think makes you work better when you're in a space like that, which was pretty fun to check out.
Speaker 1:It's the best view I've ever had in an office. That's for sure.
Speaker 3:No. It it's pretty cool, and I got to see behind the scenes on what on what they're doing, which which is super impressive. And, hopefully, once we graduate to EOS, we get that stage. But you guys should check out their content they're putting out and their website, COS. It's awesome.
Speaker 3:And Sharif's on LinkedIn. I'll put it all in the show notes, but lots of fun stuff. But, anything else that you'd want us to shout out that you guys are working on or just send them to the website?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that that's, that's good enough for me. And I, I just appreciate all the good work you're doing. And, I'm proud of you. You're, you're building a great life.
Speaker 3:Oh man, trying to, but no, I appreciate it. You dropped really good nuggets today. Awesome
Speaker 2:stuff. Alright, Jim. Take care. Thanks. I'll give a few plugs.
Speaker 2:First, I send a weekly newsletter each Thursday featuring five articles or tools that have helped me. You can sign up for these weekly updates at jimwhuffmanman.com. Second, for anyone running a startup, if you need help growing your business, check out Growth Hit. Growth Hit serves as your external growth team. After working with over a hundred startups and generating a quarter billion in sales for clients, GrowthIT has perfected a growth process that's hell bent on driving ROI through rapid experiments.
Speaker 2:Plus, you'll get to work with yours truly. So if you wanna work with a team that's worked with startups that have been funded by Andreessen Horowitz or featured on Shark Tank, then check out growthhit.com. And finally, I wrote a book called the Growth Marketer's Playbook that takes everything I've learned as a growth mentor for venture backed startups, and I've distilled it down to a 40 pages. So instead of hiring a growth team, save yourself some money, get the book, and you can just do it yourself. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'd love to hear feedback.
Speaker 2:I'm on Twitter at Jim w Huffman.
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