#243: How To Periodically Open Your Ears To Advice When Finding Your Brand Like Will Ferrell in Old School w/ Joshua Kennedy
Law Smith
0:00
sweat equity podcast in streaming show coming to you from sky strategic marketing's office in EPR help in the Tampa Bay area hit up sky strategic I'm your hosts last Miss and here with me is Eric Reggie adjure I'm here I'm here we are the girthy is number one. Number one business comedy podcasts out there. I don't know anybody who does it better with pragmatic entrepreneurial advice with Dick Jokes Vayner girthier
0:33
love the qualifier
Law Smith
0:34
getting in deeper hitting those a thing. I don't want to say IUD, but it's what is it? What is the thing? Well,
Eric Readinger
0:43
I don't know. Well, depends.
Law Smith
0:45
Not an improv.
Eric Readinger
0:47
Theater and device. Yes. It's not what it is.
Law Smith
0:50
What is it an IUD? an IUD goes in a woman? Yes. And I eat Yeah, but you're so girthy Anna Stan, girthy and long you're hitting it? That's what I'm saying. Ah, that's how deep We go Hey look, sometimes that's why we do a podcast because it takes a long time to get there. We're on iTunes Apple podcast, Spotify, laughable, YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo. This episode is brought to you as always by grasshopper. Try grasshopper comm forward slash sweat like ki sweat. Um, get it real groove and get it real r&b with you. Try grasshopper.com Ford slash sweat for your business phone line, for your hustle for that side job for that the startup you're doing, you get $50 off and we get the hookup holla if you hear me, we'll try grasshopper.com forward slash sweat is the only way to get it. And if you click the link, it might tell you hey, this isn't a secure site. It is it's just the referral code. It's just joking around I'm just gonna plow through that. freshbooks go freshbooks comm forward slash let your taxes may have been delayed having to do them the business taxes your personal taxes. A lot of you did the stimulus Let's check for yourself but a lot of you haven't. You need to get your accounting going, go freshbooks comm forward slash sweat lychee sweat Ah, go freshbooks.com slash sweat gets you the hookup $150 off your annual subscription to that whoo baby but you also get a discount if you do a monthly go freshbooks.com forward slash sweat f QuickBooks F Zero. Yeah, they don't put that in the copy. I just did that. Warby Parker Warby Parker trial, comm forward slash sweat to get five free pairs to try on at your home. Mm hmm. You can even
Eric Readinger
2:38
you can or your car,
Law Smith
2:40
your car. If you live in your car, that's fine too. You can type in your prescription for your sunglasses for your eyeglass wear, but you can also do it by the shape of your head. You can pick out five, you try them on your home, your home car, your RV. You live in a van down by the river, whatever it is, you can try on five pairs and then go Hey, do I look like an asshole. And then if you're over five on all of them, you're an asshole. You're not so but you can get five more. So, Warby Parker trial.com, forward slash sweat. That's Warby Parker trial.com. forward slash sweat. I can't believe how many people have told me they've bought eyeglass wear that have listened to this podcast that I know listen to this podcast. They still get to lenscrafters gets ripped off from the big corporate stuff. Warby Parker. trial.com Ford slash sweat. Let's get this show started. Ah, got it.
Law Smith
3:53
Feel good. feel
Eric Readinger
3:53
great. You
3:54
feel feel so good?
Eric Readinger
3:56
Yeah, like you sweat. I was like three Keith Sweat reference. I forgot
Law Smith
4:00
to use that I need to get in frame. I think I forgot to use that frame.
Eric Readinger
4:05
Don't worry about the little one. Oh, no.
Law Smith
4:07
Oh, okay. 96 feet away from you at all times. Anyway, that was a rule before COVID too late. But uh, yeah, and I was late getting here because there's a Hillsborough County. One thing people can do before we bring our guests in. One thing people can look up is there's a lot of private funds going out there like l see that. I know that like Verizon, a couple other companies or they get together. They're doing that Goldman Sachs has a grant out there for small businesses. And then, and we've said this previously look out for your county or your city that's here. They're giving out grant money as well, for those who need it. And a lot of it is business related, you know? Yeah, I hope so. The deal is what you should really do is do a Google Alert for your county in your city because it's My understanding the people who are getting these are like they're on top of it. They're the first people and yeah,
Eric Readinger
5:06
sucks. So that's it. You gotta be the paperwork nerd get it in.
Law Smith
5:12
It's both. It's not even that it's like you could be the Leslie Knope, you know, detailed or pick flick from election, you can be super organized, detailed paperwork ready to go. But if you don't know about it, first, you're probably not getting it. Yeah. And so easily. Yes. We're in Hillsborough County, which has the city of Tampa in it. So it's a I set up a Google Alert. So that come up, hit it up yesterday, and then I just submitted it. And then you're allowed to go back in Edit what you said. But I wanted to make sure it got it in there. And then I came back dog good strategy. Yeah. Because you don't want to be perfectionist with this stuff. Because you're probably gonna get something wrong anyway. Yes, every time. And so if you have the ability to come back and a shout out to Are Hillsborough County website that in city of Tampa website that they actually have pretty they use the jot form? They did what we would have done. Yeah. Everybody's frustrated by unemployment submissions and like because it loops around. Yeah. Like if you do your resume, you're going for a job online. You know, the biggest frustrating thing is, you submit you upload, upload your resume, and then type it out and type the whole thing out. And if you do it, right, so what the deal is, is they did a really good job where every state federal thing I've heard has been horrible. Yeah, the state is you've done some of that the
Eric Readinger
6:38
unemployment. It's like they just it loops back around on just the first thing. You checked
6:43
the checkbox.
Eric Readinger
6:44
I agree. Blah, blah, blah. And then you put all the information and it pops back around. It's like 1.3 million people in Florida fired filed for unemployment and like 80,000 No, got it or something pretty good. Yeah, things are going good.
Law Smith
7:00
Let's bring in our guest who is here via zoom. Because we play by the rules Oh, we're essential over here. But you know, we don't know about our guests. They could have Cudi so Joshua Kennedy of imagine marketing, how you doing?
7:17
Good morning guys How you doing? Good buddy.
7:19
Yeah.
Law Smith
7:22
So we let's give a little I'll give a little context of how we got you on as a guest it a little bit of a different way but a month ago is helping you you know just giving you a pair of eyes and what you're doing over imagine marketing and then we're going to do a follow up and I was like why don't we just have you come on the podcast as a guest it'll help promote your, your firm that you know started in January and plus, I like a few like anytime I'm doing some of those like, help a friend out kind of compare II stuff. It's like I'm like, I wish I had this recorded on the podcast. Yeah, sure, because there's always good stuff but I'll never go. I'll never double back and try to like we've hit we've had it was fucked up sale that again. Yeah, we fucked up recordings and had to do it again and we try to do the same joke. That was funny
Eric Readinger
8:17
I don't I do all fresh here baby
Law Smith
8:20
yeah. And it never comes off as as authentic or genuine you know. So So and I'm trying to bring up your bio but I saw it but tell us about yourself Why don't you do your own plug in little bio?
3
Speaker 3
8:37
Yeah, yeah quickly so local was a USF grad kind of within didn't didn't do marketing or anything for an undergrad but within a year I found myself working in digital marketing in St. Petersburg. Then quickly after working for another company in the Tampa Bay area. An e commerce started an affiliate program with him that was really successful from the machine He just kind of learned as I went with that. And then after a couple years of doing that, I decided to just go off and do my own thing. So the past year has been, you know, trying to, you know, build the website, you know, get the biggest business established or doing the networking, sort of, you know, figuring out all the other things as I go. So that's kind of the period I'm in thankfully, I've got some some momentum and some clients and everything. So that initial cushion and things are looking good.
Law Smith
9:29
So last we talked about imagine and what you're doing, it's a little bit avant garde of the agency model. But I said it's something we say on the podcast, a good amount about getting your branding, getting the vision, the mission, all that stuff down. Did you did you go to the woods and for a couple of days and eat mushrooms and figure out what what you are who you are why you're better.
3
Speaker 3
9:57
Yeah, I was one of the only ones in The Hillsborough parks thankfully. And yeah, actually, absolutely, trying to get down to the stripping away all the extraneous extra information, and also using input from, you know, people that I trust as far as like, you know, hearing you out. Those are the gentleman that owns an agency is connected, just went through my, you know, with my dad through business that gave me kind of a lot of insight. And then suggestions as far as the branding goes, and I think for me, it was that I was sort of like you said on the initial interface or or, you know, communication with my with my websites, I wanted to clearly articulate what we did, and then how we're a service or benefit to potentially in the customers that are that are on our website, visitors, I think now, compared to when we last spoke on the you know, so is that probably definitely better. Amazing improvements. So for sure. I think you got down to the fundamentals.
Law Smith
10:54
Yeah, websites are still I see a lot of people still making big falls. As far as their messaging their identity, and trying to get that through because they don't have the empathy of the audience they're trying to target.
Eric Readinger
11:09
Yeah. Or it's very convoluted. It's not clear. It's like very
Law Smith
11:15
affirmation government sighs Yeah.
Eric Readinger
11:16
I mean, it's just like, What are you trying to say to me? You do. You're visionary. And you, you can, you know, create a feeling. And what else? Yeah, and it's just, you gotta be you gotta be more poignant.
Law Smith
11:31
Yeah. And it also it not as crazy sometimes, but just the UX UI, you know, it you especially were, you're promoting the service that they're sitting on. Right? If you're an agency, yeah, you have to kind of be better than the best if you if you think about it that way. But like, one thing I saw that made it simple for me and this, this can be your website or this can be your retail business or coffee shop or whatever it is. Whatever comes Small business you have this free brand messaging you have. They just put a Venn diagram on on a chalkboard it says, you know, what you want, and then what they want meaning your audience, and then in the middle was the website. And I was gonna try to make that into a penis Venn diagram.
12:18
Yeah. Well, I guess Guyana in the middle.
Law Smith
12:21
No, you have a Venn diagram, like two boobs that are squished together, right? And then you have, you know how we do the homepage layout of websites and you put that right in the middle. It's a big tick symbol. Okay. Ron brand. That's our brand for this show.
Eric Readinger
12:34
Well, we've got a theory that all logos are either dicks or vaginas. Yeah, I haven't seen your logo. But I don't think we've found one. That's not Yeah, you're happily
Law Smith
12:45
it or it's a it's a very Rorschach test of how we look at stuff either way. But so you the other thing that you mentioned is you listen to advice and actually took it in which I can't get over enough that like, we're all well, none of us are 100% good at that right like it's definitely our and especially I think like Americans in that kind of spirit of entrepreneur ism is like, you have to think you know, better write in a way, but you have to know what you don't know is kind of a big way to kind of fashion that, that prot that philosophy out, like, I know about SEO. But I don't, I'm not the expert in that, right. So if anybody's telling me some tips, and that's gonna save me time, especially on something. I'm not gonna be like, Hey, I got it. Look my
Eric Readinger
13:45
consider yourself an expert.
Law Smith
13:46
My focus in advertising and I'll let people tell me stuff and I'll just let them go. And then some more than not, it'll be I'll find out something that I didn't know you'll nugget. Yeah, yeah, little nugget. So that I think that's Good that you're you're, you're sourcing people around you. I did the same thing when I started my agency and it was, I called my old professor, I talked to my boss that I the job I just left. And I left on good terms and tried to keep those relationships going. And I try to call him every now and again going, Hey, I was going through this what do you think? Yeah, more than they're happy to? They're happy to answer the question, which is surprising. Right? They're never like five man you call me all the time. So people
Eric Readinger
14:29
like to be, you know, patronized? Well, I want to know some of the advice you got Josh, did you get any good stuff that terrorists?
3
Speaker 3
14:39
Yeah, one of the things that I'm doing so I'm looking a lot into the negotiation because as an entrepreneur right now sole proprietor I don't have a lot of funding or like I've had a couple people on my team that helped me out thankfully, but I'm looking into one of the things is just from a sales point of view, is figuring out people's objections and then being able to tailor my sales Picture or kind of figure out where their objection objections are. Because from, from my perspective, like we really are offering a software and a service at no cost and to the client, unless, you know we are unless they get paid essentially require customers. So it's one of those things is like, I see that as no risk. But not everybody still bites on that. So how do I communicate that to them to them where they don't? They're not almost in disbelief that we're offering value for free essentially.
Eric Readinger
15:25
Yeah, I mean, back in the day, I worked for snap on tools. And they, their sales training was great. Like they had a flowchart where they had every objection. And if they said yes, or no, boop, and then you go this way, can I tell you why you might need this or why you should want this or why, you know, like, every objection was mapped out and it was like, Dude, this is like, if you learn this, it was tools, but it could be anything. Really,
Law Smith
15:51
it's contingency planning, really, if you think about it an ops perspective, right, you're going alright, let's create a sample decision. entry, right? I'm going to show them this. They're going to read this. So here's where I go from there. Right? Right. It's a little bit tougher, because there's a lot of variables with the way you're talking to people, because I've been there, Eric has to. And so it's like, you know, it's not it might not be, because part of this is educating the client. Right? It's what's tough about anything in the digital services is that if it's like, people tell me they have a good sense of humor, or good, or their tastes and music is dry humor, I really, I really have a good sense of humor. I just thought What you said was offensive. I go Yeah. So like, I'm not gonna educate them on Comedy right there. Because to me, it doesn't matter. I don't really care if they think I'm funny or not after that point. It's but for this, it's like, you know, I tried to qualify how much they actually know. About this world, right? You know, yeah, cuz tools a little bit more implicitly understood. Understood, right? Sure.
Eric Readinger
17:08
So the people that work with them.
Law Smith
17:10
And the hard thing with this is people, it's like kind of like they're what they think the economy should do, like, everybody's in it. So they feel like they know it, but they don't really know it that well. At the end of the day, though, I always focused on ROI. Right. So what I would do is always ask what are your objectives? But knowing that overall, if we're not providing ROI at the end of the day, that it nothing we're doing matters. And so my, my default kind of improv go to kind of foundation was like, well, this is a small thing. part of a bigger tactic that is helping integrated leveraging the other tactics we're doing to get you ROI. This is one little piece to get you to hear. The only thing you can really do is case studies. And those are tough too. Because what business owner or gm of a football or baseball team doesn't want someone who's already done it. Yeah, like I love the NFL Draft because it is a measure of overvalue undervalue. Yeah. And what's our needs versus impulsive decision making? The Raiders have a 400 wide receivers now, you can have two three receivers, and they have Nelson Aguilar, they got he was like 10 tight ends or something like that,
Eric Readinger
18:40
like literally 10 tight ends
Law Smith
18:42
and so and so that to me is like, alternate kind of impulsive. We'll figure it out later. Or as you know, you want to prove one commodity if you can. So for for any business owner, you're talking to her, maybe an agency that subbing for me, you want to have these are seven you out, you want stuff ready to go and every kind of sector. So here's how I did ROI with this industry. And here's how I did arrive this, the hard part is on your website, you can't give up everything. Oh yeah. And so you need what I call the law firm. The law firm website branding issue, you need to be simple and detailed at the same time. And so I would say find a case study break it down to its very basic points. And if they want the details of it, they want to know more. Make it like a, like a paywall of sorts or not a paywall, but like a access wall.
Eric Readinger
19:46
Yeah. Give me your email. Yeah,
Law Smith
19:48
right. I'll give you like, request. And then you'll know if they actually went to the page too. Yeah, it's true. I've been thinking about this for a while. So that's, that would be my advice on that itself. It's not easy to get all that stuff prepared for future, you know, future stuff in the future or mean future proposals. But you know, and then you brought negotiating, I didn't know if you're talking about with just cash wise but there's a book called never split the difference that a lot of my friends have suggested I check out because it's not my strong suit at the beginning of running an agency, but at the end of it, I had enough stats to know like, here's our dollar per hour. I know our competitors, what they charge, if we go one to one on services, and then I know what my cost rate versus my bill rate is. And so that's a good that's a good book. It tells people like instead of going, they want they go well, I need to get this quote down from 25 grand, you know, 20 grand and Or they know they'll just like a lot of people just say, we don't have the budget for that. Until you go, Well, what is your budget there go? 20 grand go. Alright, how are we going to get? How are we going to get you from 20 to 25? grand? That's how I would say to them back up, and you ask it with a how, how am I going to get you? How am I gonna? How can we work on this to get you to hear instead of gone, okay, we'll cut this and we'll cut that. Because then you've already just discounted yourself. Yeah. And that comes back to you at the end of the contract. Because they're gonna end up doing all the shit anyways. Right? But you're cutting your own value out. You're cutting your own legs, essentially, right? Yeah, yeah. Cuz what you're presenting is you're going we need to do all these things. And then they're coming back. And I had to tell people after a while, it's not an itemized list that you can just kill right? I'm just showing you all the work going into it.
Eric Readinger
21:52
Josh, I want to hear about what what you're doing that's that you consider unique and the software and all that
3
Speaker 3
22:01
Yeah, absolutely. So we use a pretty modern recent recent software, it's not weak notes in our software, but we have the license to it. Company for the I came out in 2018. This is probably the most recent and it's written right now they're basically trying to get market share. So there's some other competitors that have been around for a long time. But these guys are kind of the new guys on the block. And sort of what I think that we're unique in is sort of a lot of people I see we're kind of a hybrid between like the network and software side, which is like a shareasale, or some these big affiliate networks, which we'll get into basically, you know, integrate really quickly with your website, and you do all the work for them. And then these people that are the outsourced program managers, which are just account managers, and you run campaigns and recruit affiliates and all that kind of stuff. So it's it's kind of a hybrid between those two things, where we have the software, but we're also feel like we excel in offering the services during the recruiting and campaigns and all that kind of stuff. And then on top of that, we would be the I guess, of the We're only performance based. And we do complete revenue share. So we don't charge clients flat fees for services. We don't try to charge a monthly retainers, there's no six month or 12 month contracts or anything like that.
Law Smith
23:13
Yeah. And why that's a big deal is it reminds me of when I worked at dimensional fund advisors, they were a mutual fund company that did flat rate for buying their funds, whereas everybody else's commission rate, and the big difference in that world was that all those Wall Street guys even if you lost, they made money. You know, yeah. And so they've wanted you to trade more, because they got it. That's the incentive. Hi. So we're again, whereas dimensional set themselves apart by having the best funds because they really, they really worked at it like have we had like rocket scientists and stuff that we pulled in as employees and whatnot. Oh, yeah.
23:55
Is that helpful?
Law Smith
23:57
I mean, let's launch satellites, we deal with that. Let's just say the owner of that company, the name
Eric Readinger
24:03
out of this world, the
Law Smith
24:04
namesake for for maybe the best business school. The Chicago School of Business is the David Booth School of Business. He also basically owns Kansas basketball. So yeah, he did. All right.
Eric Readinger
24:17
The nonprofit university
Law Smith
24:19
like you couldn't, you couldn't? Yeah, but you know what, it's there's always one booster that like T. Boone Pickens basically owns Oklahoma State, whatever it is. Yeah. So it's one of those things where he owns the, the James Naismith rules of basketball, like,
Eric Readinger
24:36
what like the original book,
Law Smith
24:38
like the original parchment or whatever it is. Yeah, so I'm just saying, you couldn't buy it. The only way you could buy these funds directly. We had 20 million in them. Like Brendan Fraser walked through our office like what is like he's got that money. Money is money and I guess Swartz Nagar rolled through office. I missed him that day. Yeah, the only time you could like those are the only people that would buy directly you had to get through to people a lot. But the biggest shift they did was, hey, we're going to be honest, we should be paid, paid flat, instead of trying to make money off commissions and trades and everything. And, you know, it worked out for them. And I kind of see you in the same respect where there's a lot of people that are do ad advertising, and they charge a 30 to 50% markup on the ad spin. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah. If you've really done online advertising, because you need a minimum, and then it doesn't really matter. Unless you're kind of toggling the budgets all the time, but it doesn't really matter that much. What the client spends and ad spin once you're over that minimum, yeah.
Eric Readinger
25:52
And it's not going to incentivize them to spend more say that would help them.
25:58
Right, and I take it Knock off of it.
Eric Readinger
26:00
I think buying your performance
Law Smith
26:02
get Yeah, I feel like because they don't read that ROI. They read it as the total number going out from their building. Right. I paid this much, but the way it's recorded is never reported that way. Yeah. So I thought I always thought that was kind of not disingenuous or dishonest. It's just, I think it's just a bad way of doing business that it's such a young service industry that you know, you have to find out what works and always kind of work on it. Oh, yeah. Sucks. So I told you that I told JK, here. Yeah, JK. I told him to hit us with any questions to help him out. Okay, with his stuff. So, I've been
Eric Readinger
26:49
taking diligent notes I've seen.
26:52
Yeah, now I'm gonna I'm coming through all my questions here.
3
Speaker 3
26:57
Maybe so maybe like 12 months ago. forecasting for the 12 months, I know that everyone's gonna have come from a different place, but sort of maybe where your emphasis is in the first six to 12 months your business and kind of how you should see a mature
27:13
growth is what I would
Law Smith
27:17
sighs what I guess go with your goals, right? So if you're looking at 12 months, what do you want? What do you want to accomplish in 12 months and then reverse engineer from there. So I like to get on a whiteboard, and I would put 12, you know, 12 months on the right side. And here we are in the left side all the way on the left. And I would just go
27:37
with a drawing a deck.
Law Smith
27:39
Well, the whole thing is, it's a, it's a motif at the end of it, but I would draw basically, timeline how we're here. You want us to get these goals by the end of 12 months, and then you start breaking them down. All right. So you want to make let's say $250,000 in revenue. This year and 12 months. All right, let's let's go backwards from that revenue goal at nine months. What does that look like? Six months? And then you can chop it into three months. Kind of breakouts. Yeah. Or even monthly. Eventually, yeah, eventually you're going to do that. And, and so how, what is that? What is that like management wise, so you have to act as your own like manager, essentially, and go in Alright, once a week, I should write out the goals of the week. And then once a month and look at every morning, look at the monthly goals and go, am I hitting this? Am I getting close? Because the thing about like, your first year, your goal may be to get in the black. And that might be the best thing. Yeah. Right. And that might mean what does that mean? That means maybe pay yourself what makes sense? know how much taxes are gonna be cut out because a lot of people fuck that up their first year. Yeah. Keep a little to the side, right? For sure. How much do you need in cash flow when something like this happens? And you lose? I know 20 agencies that are basically like, we're done, man, we no one can pass. And we're so tired cash flows. We're just gonna get absorbed by someone else. Wow, whoa. Yeah. Because you're, you're relying you're depending on the health of the other business. So another part when you're looking at your clients is mitigating risk. how risky is this client? Yeah. And if you get the vibe there, if they're under five years old as a business, honestly, you should charge more because just a general rule of thumb is they're probably gonna be riskier. Yeah.
Eric Readinger
29:44
Well and harder to just create a whole marketing platform and all that I mean, you know, they're gonna have system lace, right, you know, they're gonna have exactly systems that they got, if they're five years old, or older, you know,
Law Smith
29:57
but man, a fine line, I would say We're taking risk on you like you take a risk on us. And so you can use that. Nope. I took it from someone our Evie. I like the stand up lines. You gotta be truly as original as you think you are. With business you can fucking do this God businesses is basically being a hack comic and just going, Oh, that person said this or doing this. I'm gonna do that too. Yeah. So that's why I'm glad to write notes, Evernote, writing down shit all the time. Helps, but I would say that's going to be your biggest thing. Go What are your goals for 12 months, and then really break down how you're going to get there. Don't sit there and do it in one session. I think we talked about this off off air but you know, creative, creative problem solving. You know, I told you I was like, I like to write. Alright, I need to think of a brand name for this or I need to think of campaign for this, I'll write it down and then I'll go for a run or something or I'll go, you know, I'll write it in the morning. And then throughout the day, it'll kind of, that's my creative process. I found that through a lot of trial and error. But I find that when people get really stressed out about planning and strategy, just start with what do you want to do 12 month goals, and then just have it on the wall somewhere and just come back to it periodically.
Eric Readinger
31:24
Yeah, just do that one sentence. Yeah, started it. The starting is the hardest part, right? He's put it off, put it off and never do it. But if you just get one sentence down, or why, whatever, you know, just get it going. And let your body take over.
Law Smith
31:38
I'm happy to dispense any of this advice, because I'm the ghost of Christmas future. So I think one of the things I told you was, you know, you have to take care of yourself first, because that's where I really fucked up. And so, if you're not, as as the owner, you, you basically, you're going to bring people in eventually you know, you You have to be like, kind of like you can't call me out on anything. Right? Like,
32:06
yeah, I don't
Law Smith
32:06
like you'd have to. Well, we've always talked about this. You have to take care of yourself before you can do anything for anybody else. Right?
Eric Readinger
32:12
Yeah. Who's calling you out?
Law Smith
32:14
Like you are hiring people. Oh, clients will too. Oh, because if they're talking, you know, y'all. Well, yeah, but I'm saying like, one thing I didn't, I always thought it was selfish to do, like, do you first and then help everybody else out? And you really can't help anybody else out or do the services you want to do at a high level? Unless you're really doing a lot of self care? Yeah. Yeah. And Eric was Eric's better at this and has a bigger breadth of knowledge in that department. I'd say, you know, taking care of myself. Well, no, like challenge like you. you challenge yourself to do you know, like the ice batshit Yeah. Wim Hof breathing. Yeah, I still I still forget, I still like remember every now and again that you you got rid of your allergies because you figured that you shot your body enough with the Wim Hof stuff that it got. That's like fucking crazy. I know
Eric Readinger
33:17
it I feel crazy telling people that I'm like, I don't you know, like, just this past spring people are snotting and sneezing all over the place. My aim was to teach you that I can teach you but you know, you got to do it over but it's exercise. It's like you know, getting up and lifting weights is the same thing. You got to do it. Yep, takes 1015 minutes but changed my life.
Law Smith
33:39
So your, your hardest part is gonna be that self discipline. Because you know, the service side, like at this point, you know that part? Right? That part's not hard. It's really like stick sticking to what you need to do and be super regimented discipline. And so like I've spent this time like reorganizing. You know what I can do on a daily basis. And when it's like, I got to get back to getting up early. You spin. Eric, I've talked about a lot on the show, but he gets up at 430. I got to figure out what that time is for me. But you're up early today, huh? Yeah. Well, I'm trying to get the 434. I get up at four, saying I get up at 434 out of respect to Bo Jackson and Charles Barkley and Frank Thomas, or you go But wait, what? But yeah, I was thinking about this. I think our dream guests no offense JK, but a dream guest has to be Charles Barkley. Oh, yeah. I think I have anybody out there horrible. Yeah, and see if we can get him when he's like gambling and drunk. Yeah, that'd be great. And oh, his money. Yeah. But I would say the hardest part of what you're doing in this first year is really getting to know you in and out. And I know it sounds really overwhelming right now, the way we're kind of positioned. This, but I tell ya, you're in a good. You have this opportunity right now with this COVID thing. Yeah, where you can sit there and work on yourself. I've been looking at like force rehab instead of house arrest, you're going, okay? I've been wanting to work on getting on a better schedule for myself for a while. I'll go three weeks, and then we'll blow it up and then I can't get back on it. And I'll go up and down like that. And that's kind of how it's been for the last year. So I'm like, Okay, this is a really good opportunity right now, to work on those things that look super boring. This is not sexy at all. But just working on it. The last like three weeks diligently, has already like opened up a lot more time and opportunity.
Eric Readinger
35:48
Yeah, and in that vein, just the number of random like, governmental admin things that you have to do. Get those down, learn everything you need to do and figure out your processes for that, because it's like that stuff will get away from you so fast, like, you know, just, if you get a good accountant don't get all you know, get all these professionals lined up. Just because you don't want to be three years in and realize, Oh, I wasn't paying my business license, you know, whatever. And then you're, they're gonna find you 75 grand or something crazy, you know, especially right now while everybody's on lockdown, like, just get all that stuff checked off. I mean, another thing I have, like, list apps where it's like, yep, habits, it's like, make sure I pay you the sales tax. Once a month pops up. It's like, boom, there's
Law Smith
36:45
your personal budget every Tuesday night.
Eric Readinger
36:47
Sure, you know, all that stuff, you know, but I mean, it's the self care idea where it's like, you know, administrative self care.
Law Smith
36:56
And if you really want to, like I have to trick myself into getting fired about it. So if you really want to try to do that, the way I kind of do it is I'm figuring out this puzzle. And when I figure it out, it'll be fun to be able to show people in a way like you may not do that even if you do figure out like a good system that works for you or your, your, you know, my one of my biggest things I can't fall asleep, you know, like when I need to, but then you go Alright, so you really need to self analyze at the end of the day to that was another thing that I did wasn't doing the What is it? The analyze life isn't worth living. I forget if that's Socrates or a Catholic platitude, but a Kanye Takashi 691 of those, you know, brilliant people out there. But it's one of those things where I wasn't assessing at the end of the day. what I was doing, I used to do that a lot. And then that kind of went away when I got released. stressed out. And it's almost like you have to put that in the schedule. Okay, when I walk the dog for 15 minutes, I got to really, when I go walk it, I'm not going to bring my phone and I'm literally going to go, what did I do today? Did I get what I wanted to get done? Why didn't I? If I didn't
Eric Readinger
38:16
know, you know, my goal is to get to the Bill Gates thing where he's got like, five minute increments planned out for the next 14 years or whatever it is, yeah, he just breaks it down five minute increments, boom.
Law Smith
38:29
So this there's a schedule everything kind of philosophy like that, which I'm a fan of, you can make it convoluted, which was where I was with mine where I have seven calendars. Yeah. Because I've I want a color coded system because I look at everything. Like, could I look at this, the drunkest I've ever been Could I read my calendar and understand what I need to do? Because that's kind of I want my contingencies. Well, I want I'm just making a joke as in like, I was drunk. I want it to be at my door. dumbest level and my sleep deprived. You know, can I look at this and go you know, like, that's why we have color coded like subway system, right? sure when you're in New York the easiest possible for lowest common denominator stuff. So think of yourself as you're not going to be one to always be so detailed but think of your own systems even design wise like that. How do you tick what makes you work and you know, we can have you back on in a month and let's see how that goes.
Eric Readinger
39:32
Follow up. Yeah.
Law Smith
39:35
That's the other thing after every every you want a second? You want a second date? So after every meeting, you have your phone. No, your leave your sweater behind. At the frat house, in a scrunchie Yeah, don't forget that. You don't want to get in your hair But yeah, I just I forgot I forgot something over here.
Eric Readinger
39:55
Are you still here? You guys are gonna get
Law Smith
39:57
along. Oh, I left my shoes. in the parking lot, uh, what's it called? You know, was the good thing is we have this capture. You can really look at this video too. If you could
Eric Readinger
40:12
watch it again like 10,000 times. That'd be great.
Law Smith
40:14
Yeah, yeah. Pants on though. You know, I don't care. That's fine. You're a little bit more open about that. All right, man. Thanks for coming on. We'll have you on our month and Yeah, well, we'll put your link in the show description man.
40:28
Absolutely appreciate you guys.
Law Smith
40:29
I brother. What about my sweater lady?
