Why and When to Hire a Consultant (Brian Kerlin)

Brian, welcome to our podcast. so excited to have you on today and I get the pleasure of also talking to your wife as well. Hey, thank you, Gail. I appreciate it. Yeah, honored to be here as a guest. And if you are going to listen or watch this, please make sure you watch my wife Anika’s first. She’s the most important person in this whole, this whole relationship. So good.

All right, so let’s talk about your business because you have been in the consulting space for how long? We started our company in 2018. So simple math about six years and then prior to that I was doing some, I guess, pro bono consulting before I actually launched the company. So I guess six to nine years at this point. Okay, great. And what got you into consulting? Well, you know, there was an individual in my mentoring network

that had said, knowing my 20 plus years of sales and business development and sales leadership experience, there’s a lot of companies that are small to mid -size that could probably benefit from your expertise. Have you ever thought about spending some time with those types of organizations? And I hadn’t at the time. And here in Colorado, we’re both located. There’s a great ecosystem of early stage businesses

In that time in my life, I had some extra time to be able to offer that to early stage companies and venture -backed companies and startups. So I really just provided some free time to help founders and CEOs at that time. And it was such an exhilarating experience and being around people that are business builders was just energizing. And while I was trying to provide my expertise, I was learning as much from

So that kind of got me interested and then I went down a crazy journey of meeting a lot of people in the startup and business building world here in Colorado. Well, that’s a really great niche that you’re in because every single business has to have sales. If you don’t have sales, you don’t have anything. So you are in a great niche and something useful. So what drives you to do what you

I guess some of this is you just talked about. I’ve been in this sort of part of business building for my entire career, give or take a few little off ramps, but for the most part, this space. And revenue generation, as you stated, is the life plan. We kind of call it the heartbeat, right? The blood that rolls through a business has to happen when, in fact, new client is brought onto an organization.

And then that usually cascades everything else that’s important to deliver the value to that individual client. And that’s essentially a sale or somebody that was a prospect becomes a client. And I guess I’ve just been energized by that type of work. And I know when it does happen, it injects tremendous amount of positive energy to a culture, to

to a business and then obviously those relationships that you end up building with those clients hopefully last a lifetime. Well, hopefully so. When working with your clients, what do you think is the biggest roadblock to scaling their businesses? Yeah, you and your team are so good. some pre -questions, some planning questions, and that was one of the ones that you asked in preparation for today’s discussion. And I think the way that I answered it then, and I’ll answer it similar now,

is, I think it depends. I probably wouldn’t be a great consultant if I didn’t use that answer at least once on this podcast. It depends. It really does. think in the companies that we try to serve, which is professional services founders in that second stage of growth between a million and 10 million in revenue, we think that the problems that really show up on a regular basis are that

haven’t got to a place where they’ve removed themselves from generating new clients and new business. And because of that, we think that there’s opportunity to offer our expertise and help. That is a very specific niche and certainly an area that I think the professional services firms, probably don’t come with sales training into starting their business. So I would think that there are some mindset blocks that go along

not having that training. So what do you think the biggest blocks are that the entrepreneurs face? You know, I think sometimes, you know, even while an entrepreneur is somebody that’s a quote unquote risk taker, they’re someone that likes to take, take a chance on their own, on themselves, betting on themselves. There’s this always self -limiting belief, right? You could probably read all of what you need to, especially in today’s world, access to information is simple.

Even with AI, I mean, you can get training, but sometimes you got to cross that barrier. you ready and able mentally to be able to accept what you do know, what you don’t know? And sometimes that’s just realizing that self -limiting beliefs or reach out to someone like yourself in the business you guys have at Pro Collective for expertise and the interior design business. Or when we do it at Optitude is reach out a

looking for experts that are trying to help founders gain more experience in sales and business development. I think that’s what’s great about consulting is you have a chance to be able to help those that raise their hand, quote unquote, asking for maybe some help and expertise. When’s the right time to hire a consultant and how do you figure out which one is the right one for you if you’re needing help with warning sales? Yeah, I think the way we’ve learned

and the patterns of recognition of the clients we’ve worked with is the first is just recognizing you have a problem. And I mean that the founder, CEO, the principal, the business owner has a sense that this particular scenario of their business is being repetitively challenged with how to grow revenue, more specifically, how to grow profit with acquiring new customers. So when you can come to the root cause of what is the problem,

we’re dealing with that I think that should raise the first flag. There’s a problem we know, there’s a problem myself and the leadership team, whoever that is, that the business owner can reach out and acknowledge that alignment. Then if you’re not, or if that founder or CEO is not the expert in that particular area, or there’s no one in the organization that has that expertise, then we believe it’s probably the right time to search your network or go out into the web and find someone that might be able to.

to help you. So really recognition number one, and then two, if you’re not the expert, really try to seek someone that has that expertise. And I think that’s, for our belief, that’s also gonna save you time, resources, and focus around what it is you’re also trying to do in other areas of your business. Because normally when we have a chance to talk to clients, even though we know they’ve developed great businesses, there’s usually just not

particular challenge that’s happening to hinder their growth. 100 % true. There are so many things. I think that if I were to just pick a few things that I think are important to think about is the founder is usually bringing their skillset that they’ve had, which may not be sufficient to take it where they want to go. So to me, that’s a really good time to start looking for expertise externally, because you need to get help because

You don’t come automatically with a skill set to take you all the way to the moon. I don’t think. I think you’re right. I mean, the way I’m hearing you describe it, makes me think of an image of in business building. People say there’s always a journey, right? And while the view or the vision of the founder often starts with really great clarity, it never is straight line, right? So we believe there’s also stages of growth.

There’s a startup stage and post startup where you’ve really got product market fit, or in this case, service market fit, and you’ve acquired a handful of new clients, and they’re fulfilling the ability for you to take the business to the next level. However, that next level is sometimes where there isn’t anything built behind that first stage of growth and the systems and processes and pattern recognition is needed to your point. Maybe take that next stage of growth and make that next leap.

when the founder starts to recognize, maybe I don’t have some of that built yet, which is totally reasonable because that’s what happens in business building. But it is probably the first indicator to take a look and maybe there’s someone that can give you some other insights. I think we all need to be consistent learners. And if we’re not consistently learning, we’re not going to be able to grow our business. I just don’t think it happens unless you keep working at it. Just my opinion, but.

I second that opinion. I don’t know how you feel. I don’t know if this is appropriate venue, but we tend to find the clients that we love working with the most have a little bit of that as part of their characteristic and DNA. They’re constant learners. They’re always fueling themselves with trying to be knowledgeable enough to make the right decisions or to make decisions that they think will help the business progress forward. However, when they don’t, they still are constant learners and they seek

insight from trusted mentors or individuals in their network or people that they’ve crossed paths with in business. I think one of the fun conversations I can have with a client, and I don’t do sales anymore, but it’s so fun to find out if they are big readers. And if they read business books, they’re my kind of people because I am a rabid reader. so for me, if I can keep reading and keep learning.

that’s going to push me and that’s usually where I find my consultants. I’ll read a book and I’ll say, I’m going to reach out to that person. And I’ve hired many people that way. Yeah, there’s so true. You can get around people like you and I and others that have built and grown and started businesses. And at some point invariably, you’re going to talk about what have you read or what resources that you’re using that gives you that sort of insight

over the course of your time, quote unquote, what has really inspired you. And on the same way, I think I was sharing with you in some of our prep work that while I might’ve read hundreds of books at this point, I have probably turned to what today’s society is podcasts, just because it’s sometimes easier on the go from A to B when some of the travels or whatever it is that we’re doing here, an opportunity that I can pop on a podcast in 15 to 20 minutes, just like we are here.

gain a ton of insight and I also tend to learn even better through stories and through conversation. Such is such a truth. And that’s another area when I think for us, when we started doing podcasts, people were starting to hear the stories about the successes our clients had. And to me, that tells more than you talking about yourself and what you do. So I think podcasts are great. Yeah, me too. And I know it’s a shout out if you’re an entrepreneur.

I’m the fan of Guy Ross and how I built this. He’s a professional in a lot of ways, but his stories and how he tells them of some of the greatest entrepreneurs in the world, he’s had guests on his podcast. So that’s one that I try to dive into frequently. Great suggestion. What are some of the typical fears that you see of entrepreneurs that when they seek out help, what are they looking for? How do

feel like they need to attack that and overcome those? Yeah, it’s a question that I think we have our point of view on, but there’s probably a lot more data to determine what exactly is some of those fears. I think the number one is, again, based on the kind of clients we work with in that second stage of growth, the founders tend to be time -starved. And what I mean by that is we see them already having too much on their plate.

a lot of responsibility. They’re always high achievers, mostly. They’re people that are driven. So they’re not looking to fill more time in their schedule, but they know that there’s going to be a need to go inquire with expertise outside of their firm. And so that takes time. So there’s that fear of like, is this going to be the right investment of my time, which really leads us to what we see as some of the other challenges.

Is if time is a limiting factor or fear, also their experience or their past experience in that particular outreach and looking for expertise or consultances, they likely have some past experience. Well, it might not be in our particular field. That past experience is a bias that’s coming with potentially some concerns on if it didn’t work out well, if the results weren’t achieved, then they bring that with them.

It’s not like going on vacation where they’re looking forward to it. think it tends to be, there’s a few barriers that they bring into the conversation. And once, like you and your business and ours, once people get a chance to meet our team and go through our process, they hopefully decrease their concerns and understand that time is valuable. And it’s hard to get them sometimes over that hump where they have that fear of what if it doesn’t

What if I can’t do it? What if my spouse doesn’t want me to spend that money? All of those things that are in the back of their mind that are keeping them from making that decision. And maybe they don’t feel they’re worthy of making that investment because it is an investment to work with a consultant, right? Yeah, it is. I like that term investment because you think about anyone that’s running or owns a business and starting to build a business or has built one. They made the investment right in the beginning to do

And so it’s no different, the investment that they would make having an outside expert or outside experts work with them. I think it’s, you know, this gets probably into a little bit more of how you position yourself as a consulting company or an expert thought leader. And we think, you know, the investment of time and that resource is indicative of the value of the problem we’re trying to solve. And so there’s no, as you started off our conversation of the problem,

relative to generating new clients and revenue is a significant problem. And so the right investment isn’t normally just about the money. It’s about how fast can we get there and can we do it so it can be repeatable over time? Sure. It’s so true. What do you think are the best things that you would share with somebody that is wanting to work with a consultant? What should they be planning for? What’s a way to get the best results from that

Yeah, we believe that Optitude starts with understanding and we call it a diagnosis, a collaborative diagnosis. It’s essentially a way to understand what the organization is doing or struggling with. And then in this case with Optitude or other consultants may have a similar approach where you’re getting a look under the hood or a look behind the curtain of what exactly is happening.

because I don’t really think anything can be prescribed or anything can be offered as a potential solution or a scope of work until you have a better and more clear understanding of exactly the situation that that particular company or founder is in. So number one, think that’s the most important part, or at least that’s the point of view we have. And then second, that set of alignment should help to enable the appropriate kickoff, right?

We have alignment around what it is that’s happening. Now here’s the path or the scope of work that we believe that would help us get you past this particular set of challenges. And then as we go through that particular process and scope of work, we will have plenty of check -ins to make sure we’re milestones, for example, that will have those opportunities to see progress and improvement along the way. So it’s not like you just start and then wait for the end. You got to have checkpoints along the way.

I think psychologically, well, I’m no psychologist or haven’t been trained as one. I think the general mindset of us as human beings, particularly of business owners and founders, is that when you can start to see small incremental steps of progress, it builds confidence and clarity to help you continue to move forward. And there’s nothing more important, at least in our opinion, of those two factors, having a founder to have more clarity, more confidence in progressing.

their business to another level. could not agree more. I think that’s so important. sometimes the thing that’s hard for people to me is that you have to put work in. This is not something that you can just go and listen to something or just attend something or go through process and expect that it’s just magically going to fix all of your problems unless you’re willing to put the effort into it. Yeah.

I think that’s wonderful insight. And I know you and your team at ProcFlex have been in the business of helping your clients for years. I don’t know, you know, sometimes I think it’s a mindset or a particular type of founder that understands that. I don’t know how you felt, but over the years when we’ve worked with clients, that’s probably in a weird way why we use the term collaborative diagnosis when we kick off sessions, because it has to

this arm and arm type of approach. Otherwise, we can set out in front of a client the solutions and show them some of the paths forward. But if they don’t think they can or maybe not capable or maybe not feel like they have the time to do the work, then I don’t really think, I know we won’t see the change that’s necessary. And so in a deeper conversation,

we’ve had with plenty of in the beginning before they become clients is, are they ready to do this work? And will they set the time aside to do it? if sometimes it’s not the right time, but if it is, and you get this sense that it’s a one direction effort, then it’s not worked out much on our end when that happens. Amen to that.

I guess the other question is, how do you know if someone’s coachable and how does the person that’s coming into the conversation know if they’re coachable? Yeah. I mean, there’s some impangible sometimes that we use to identify that. We often look for people that are in kind of mentoring groups. There’s enough of them around like EO and others where they’ve surrounded themselves with other like -minded business owners.

And usually those individuals have done that because they’re, they’re in a position mentally, they’re, they’re accepting of outside, outside input people, obviously who they trust and respect. so, so that kind of, that’s one indicator where there’s that type of behavior that, we can ask about and groups that they’re associated with. another you already touched on is they’re just. Pervacious learners and curious, right? They’re always asking questions and they’re interested to learn more. And if they come with that learning mentality,

It’s going be a lot easier to deliver our solution and work together with that particular client. you know, I don’t think it’s everything is is foolproof as just those few characteristics. I think it also comes down to realizing, you know, somebody that shows up and has a certain expectation if you ask them to share a bit about what that future self, that future business scenario looks

that tends to paint a picture that this individual realizes it’s going to take work to get there. That usually demonstrates to us that they have the right idea of what it’s like to have somebody from the outside come in and help them out. Great. When does it make sense for people to go to law and maybe just read, listen to podcasts or go to sessions and maybe get some education or ask friends for

and figure it out for themselves maybe. When does it make sense to do that versus work with a consultant? Yeah, think it here to go, I’m saying again, it depends, right? It depends on the significance of the problem or scenario they’re trying to solve for. If it’s something small and isn’t overly, isn’t a barrier that’s overly challenging for the forward progress of the organization,

probably themselves or maybe someone else in their close network of associates would be able to provide them insights to help progress the business forward. So I think the complexity of the problem, number one, is probably a major factor and if they choose to kind of learn on their own. The second, which may even be more critical, is the availability of time. We talked about this a little bit ago. I believe individuals in this stage of business

are high achievers and their calendar is always full. And so they don’t usually have the extra time. And I feel like that’s a major barrier, at least when I started thinking about it, this is gonna sound a little businessy, but I feel like time is how the value, and I mean that from a dollar figure and I also mean that intrinsically for individuals, specifically founders and CEOs. And so if that founder CEO understands what they believe is the value of their time,

relative to the priorities in their life from a business and from their personal life, I tend to think that the ones that do it the best is they know where that line is, where their time figure for what they’re going to use it for is below maybe what they think they should use it for. And then they looked outside help to do it that would provide them the time to do something of more value. There’s a lot of ways that that’s been said. I’m sure calculations.

really smart people use, but in general, that’s what I think. Those are a few things that I think about when it comes to that particular challenge. Well, I think you touched on something that I think about, which is the speed to the solution and the speed to solution and reading and doing the work on your own, listening to podcasts isn’t always the fastest way to get to where I want to go. So for me, if I’m looking for advice and help, I look for specific people.

that I can go to that I know are experts and it will shortcut my whole time to getting to the end result. So that is something personally that I believe in. I believe in investing and I believe in not wasting my time. I do read a lot and I do care about that. And that, like I said, that leads me to find consultants, but it also is a tedious process. Yeah, I think tedious is probably

a nice way of saying, it definitely takes time, but there’s moments where I’m sure you’ve experienced this too, where even on the other end, where we might be in consulting and supporting as a service and thought, leadership and expertise. We also are looking for people to help us grow our businesses. And you’re right, it’s nice to have somebody or someone you can go to very quickly and

that sort of information or insight or answered your question and here you go, continue down the road and you’re off to the next project or the next opportunity. I’m sure like you, I’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by some great other business builders and founders, CEOs, and that in itself has probably made it that much easier for me to build my business.

For sure. And I remember something one of my mentors told me, and I love this statement. He said, if you’re stuck for more than three days, you need to get help. Did he or she have any reason why he said three days? It was three days or something? think that it is because he has a high sense of urgency. And his idea is the longer you’re stuck, the longer you’re not getting closer to your results. So that’s compacting that time so that you can get the decision made.

and move on because I think decisiveness is also to me a characteristic of a good entrepreneur. Yeah, boy, you got some gold right there. And a few of those comments, just time to make decisions, how critical that is, know, ability to make the decision once you feel like you have enough information and then, you know, surrounding yourself with with mentors that could give that sort of advice is is great. So, yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. I think I think hopefully

listeners will appreciate that. Well, I hope they do because I certainly have learned the hard way that you can’t make it perfect before you get started. You have to do develop excellence as you go. And to me, you just get in gear, try it and make corrections because if you can’t get an action, you will never see a change in your business. And I see people just stopping. They just can’t make that decision.

because they’re afraid. They’re afraid of losing money. They’re afraid of looking stupid, of not doing it right, not having it done perfectly. There’s so many things that I see, but I’m sure you’ve got a few that you’d like to share. What are some of those skills or maybe those things that block them? wow. This could be a whole separate podcast in itself. was just, you’re certain to share some of your thoughts and thinking decision -making is itself.

a challenge when you’re running a business because the effect cascades in so many different ways. even the way you started out talking about this topic, I think it’s been said, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good or good enough. And gosh, how hard is that when you’re the founder and CEO of a business when the vision you have is, as you’ve also alluded to, excellence, and everybody knows that good is not excellent.

But there is a journey to be and become excellent or have excellence. And sometimes you have to feel really comfortable with good is good enough. And I’ll say this from the tech entrepreneurs out there. I think there’s a term, you know, build it and ship it, which is get it out and get it available to those that you’re that are trying to consume it, at least from the product standpoint. And it’s no different from a service standpoint. And because what’s going to happen is you’re going to get it out

It’ll be you’ll be able to learn faster, which I think you’re alluding to. So learning as fast as you can is a very important part of what we believe to at Optitude. And as you’re learning, make iterations and changes you can and then update and reship it or update and provide an elevated service. And that’s sort of what we call launch, execute, learn, which is you’re launching the idea, you’re executing on it and you’re learning as fast as you can. I believe and we probably see eye to eye on that.

It’s probably something I had to learn quickly when I started my company. And I don’t think I’m great at, I think I’m really good at it and above average, but I think we’re getting better. I think we have to be good to get great. So we just have to be okay with not being the perfect person doing this activity perfectly. It just isn’t going to happen. So I just, I am a big believer in taking action and just figuring it out on the way. And sometimes it’s not pretty.

And sometimes you get kind of tired of the difficulties that appear as a result of that. But I think you have to be willing to make mistakes and not be scared of them. sure. totally. Especially, I mean, I know if we can stay on this topic for a second. I just think this is such a conversation or at least a topic of conversation relative to business building, because in the journey that we’ve referenced between

grow and scale and exit or whatever position your business is and what direction it’s going. We all know that you have to act on some level to move the business forward. But when I think about it from the perspective you’re sharing, something as complex as a business has so many areas. I use the whole elephant metaphor. It’s so big and audacious.

that it can just stop you in your tracks and you can’t figure out which direction I should go while there’s multiple options or in this case, in the elephant metaphor, you just have to just take one bite at a time. what we talk a lot about in the work we do is we say, once you have an understanding of what it is you’re trying to solve for, what is the next action, next step you can take that you feel clear enough to make that decision and take that step?

The three and four or five steps after might not even be clear right now, but just take the next one and start in that sort of direction. And then usually what happens, and I love your experience to hear your opinions too, is then the clarity of those future steps become more available and more simple to see. I think we’re all pretty creative people. And if we allow our creativity to assist us and we trust our gut.

I think we can move faster and cause ourselves a lot less grief. So as you said, I think the analogy could be just take the cap off the toothpaste. That’s the first step to brushing your teeth. So same thing in your business. If you can just do that one simple step and it may be as simple as making a phone call, then you can move your business forward. And that’s the real key to me is don’t let yourself stagnate.

Be sure that you’re always in action. Yeah, no doubt. mean, I’m part of a men’s leadership group and the tagline for that is bias towards action, right? Is take the step and make the action sadly enough directly as we talk to stop, stop talking about it. Sure. Yeah. And it, you’re right, because some people spend so much energy talking about it, but they never do anything about it. And I had those as coaching clients

Unfortunately, I don’t see them moving as fast as I’d like them, but everyone has their own pace. And I think for, I don’t know about you as a consultant, but I, as a consultant, love it when I’ve got somebody who’s an action taker. It just makes me so happy to see them just go do it. Just try it. And my answer may not be perfect, but it’s probably better than where they are right now. Yeah. There’s some truth to that. I feel like we’ve experienced maybe similar.

similar things with clients like that. I don’t know if you would say that they seem to energize the group that they’re involved, like their business obviously gets energized, but those like myself and yourself and our team get energized because that individual is kind of consuming information, consuming the path of progress, but testing and trying things quickly. And so what’s happening is also getting like immediate feedback. And those are the people you find yourself not only pouring more into,

They get results faster more often. It’s so much fun. I did a podcast with someone today and she probably came to me about 10 years ago and I remember saying to her one time, okay, we had a VIP day and I told her, said, okay, you’ve got six months. I’d like to see all of these things done in six months. And the next time I talked to her, she gave me this laundry list of what she’d accomplished. said, wait a

Did you get all the things done on the list that I said six months? She said, yeah, didn’t you tell me that? And I said, no, I said six months. And she’s such a high achiever that she just thought it all needed to be done at once. And that’s not common, but it’s pretty fun to watch. Gosh, I agree with you. I don’t know, I’m sure you have, I would say this for some of members of our team. I have a few people on the team

I’m always inspired, like, here’s the task and here’s what we’re doing. And before I can get through like, you know, a 24 hour period, it’s either done, completed or enhanced. And I’m thinking how blessed are we to have those type of people to be around? And I think you’re right. It’s, it’s inspiring to be around people like that. It’s probably even more inspiring when I think about some of the work you do and probably what we do, we get the chance to interact with those that are leading companies like that. Oh, it’s so fun.

It’s so fun because we’ve looked at it over the years and we benchmark and we look at where they started and where they are today. And when we see it go from anywhere from doubling to 16xing their business, that is so exciting. And for us, we’re so proud of them and for what they get to do as a result of doing that. So to me, it’s not about the journey of the doing, but it’s hitting the results so that you have the benefit of that hard

which means more time, more money, more profit in your business, more wealth, so many good things if you’re willing to do the work. Yeah, it’s so true. gosh, I think it also shows up when, I mean, you even talk about benchmarking, right? And another way that we think about that here, when we think about benchmarking is you only will know how good you are, how limited you may be in your business relative to other peers, if that’s what you’re referring to in benchmark. And

in that you can start to evaluate how can I take that next level of growth? Or how can I have 10X or 2, 4X my business? You start to know where you are comparing yourselves in like -minded companies. So if that’s the case, it seems like there’s always this thinking about, well, I don’t understand why they’re having better results than we are. We have a better mousetrap or whatever it is solution.

Oftentimes, I don’t know if your benchmark data suggests this, what we see, not benchmark, but just empirical, is you get to a point where those individuals are just willing to take the steps of action and go quickly while making mistakes, but keep moving forward. And it seems like that is one of the X factors when people say, well, what makes really great companies have better results? I don’t know, is that what you see as well? It seems like that’s to be a major.

I really do think is that, like you said, that bias reaction, if you are good at taking action, then you’re going to have better opportunities to succeed more often than people who sit there and try to get it perfect before they get launched. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s some of the silver bullet stuff that sometimes all of us look for. And it’s not really often in strategy or it’s not often in systems and processes or knowledge.

It’s really that it can’t be that simple. Sometimes it’s just, just understanding to take action and learn as fast as you can. Absolutely. Well, this has been really interesting and I love having another person that does what I do on the podcast because I think we understand that we experiencing, we experience the same types of things with our clients. doesn’t matter what industry you’re dealing with. It’s really about just, I would say for the people listening and I want you to share your takeaways,

I think for the people listening, really want them to understand that you can do anything you want to do. You just have to make that decision you’re willing to try and you’re willing to fail first. Yeah. I there’s, think if we’re talking about the audience of entrepreneurs, I would, I would definitely second your comments, right? it really is a mindset and part of the, I guess, even belief of the point of view we have at Optitude kind of aligns with that as

really centered our whole business around what we call the inside out principle. And we can sit all day and talk about the inside out principle with performance being a major metric, which is essentially you have to have a business be able to perform at a certain level consistently over time. But the X factor, there’s two major components, performance and capacity. And that capacity piece, if the leader isn’t willing,

to kind of take the steps to build their particular mindset and skills to start taking action. You can have the greatest elements of business potential, but not actually see that potential become reality. I think you’ve, you’re all your experiences have, you know, at least what I’m hearing proven out that fact. And I think we second that thought. No, for

So what about your last three takeaways that you would like to share with our audience? Yeah, I guess, you know, the ways the way we think about this at Optitude is if you’re a founder and CEO of a business that you’re trying to grow, think the first thing is surround yourself with, you know, like -minded peers, whether that’s a group that Gale has in interior design business or we have here at Optitude. Most importantly is just finding

like -minded individuals that are leaving business that you can align your thoughts around and help each other kind of progress through this journey. So that’s number one. I think always look for those sort of peer groups. The second is, you know, realize that sometimes it’s great to get an outside influence or outside perspective to help those doing the work every day, heads down, give them some insight. And it does have to be a major consulting relationship. It should just

trusted peers that you’re close to. And then third, I think I even said this in a different conversation, give yourself a break because hopefully this is a PG, you know, it’s a rated R PG -13. This shit is hard, right? This stuff is really hard and give yourself a break. You deserve it as a founder. And what I mean by that is this, you know, realize that what you’ve done so far is already amazing. And a lot of people you might not know it look up to you

consider you a major positive influence in their life. So give yourself a break and enjoy the journey. Love that. Thank you so much, Brian. It’s been a pleasure having you on. And I look forward to letting you know when this is up and posted so you can share it with your audience too. we’d love to, Gail. Thanks again. I appreciate being a guest and it’s always good to connect with you. So thanks for the time. My pleasure.