Meet the MAN Behind the $45M Company

 Summary

In this engaging conversation, Jon Stoddard interviews Vinnie Fisher, who shares insights from his extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, particularly in the e-commerce and health sectors. Vinnie discusses his journey from being an M&A lawyer to acquiring and scaling businesses, emphasizing the importance of operational strategies, partnership dynamics, and the role of mastermind groups in fostering growth. He also highlights the significance of compensation structures, wealth-building strategies, and the lessons learned from past business failures. The conversation concludes with Vinnie's vision for the future and his commitment to helping others succeed in their entrepreneurial endeavors.

Takeaways

The cover of a book can significantly influence sales.
Many people absorb information through soundbites rather than reading.
M&A lawyers have a unique perspective on business operations.
Transitioning to e-commerce requires understanding digital strategies.
Partnership dynamics can be challenging but essential for success.
Operational efficiency is crucial for scaling businesses.
Amazon can be a useful tool but shouldn't be the primary strategy.
Compensation structures should allow for multiple income streams.
Networking in mastermind groups can lead to valuable insights.
Legacy building involves mentoring the next generation of leaders.

Watch the interview here:

Transcript 

Jon Stoddard (00:03.404)
Welcome to the podcast, Vinnie Fisher. How you doing? Great, John. Thanks for having me. looking forward to the show today. Yeah, I got to tell you. So the first we started out, I, attended one of your workshops that Roland Frazier put up and that's the, Epic course. And then you gave away these books, which was false profits and the CEO mindset, man. They're great, great rates and they look so professional too, man. Awesome job. Thanks buddy. Yeah.

That's very kind of you. I hope that people read them and they look pretty. And so actually, you what's funny is you certainly don't make a career being a writer and I'm thankful to be a bestselling author in a couple of categories. But what I, I'm a marketer too. So what I did is I went and looked at the categories that I would be in and found rep, like what were some of the themes of the bestselling books in those categories? And I modeled coverings around that, which is why then people like, I really liked the way this looks.

It works. It worked. They look really professional. I've seen a lot of books out there that just like, hey, man, I didn't spend any time on the cover and the cover can make or break somebody buying it and putting their card for Amazon. Yeah, I'll tell you, read a when I started our first book, which is not one of those two. I am I remember reading an article that talked about a stat that nine out of 10 people absorbing the front and back cover of your book believe they've read the book.

That's a big stat. I'm like, Whoa, okay. And then one out of 10 get into the book and out of those one out of 10, only one out of 10 of them finished the book. Well, I'm not going to pay them 10 cents per page. Like I pay my kids to read. So, or maybe I will. I just my daughter $37 for, what I learned from that is that you can't really bank the value of your book on whether or not people go through it all. Cause that's really on the actual reader.

A lot of people just don't read anymore. We're a soundbite society. So you got to find some external outlier value of what it is you're trying to help people do. And the ones who do it do it. The ones that the road is still very few traveled, right? So let's talk a little bit about your &A journey and how that started and where you're at. mean, how many, I mean, you talked about this on a previous phone call. said, or a text, said, know, how many businesses did you acquire over the last 20 years? You know,

Jon Stoddard (02:26.573)
So I'm thankful to have acquired businesses. But one of the things people don't realize about me is I'm an and a lawyer, right? So I've actually started my career as a business attorney. And, I learned the operations of businesses because I was brought in as a kind of like that general counsel to companies and probably have the privilege of helping sell somewhere between 50 and a hundred of them before I even started being in my business career of doing it for myself. So

I don't know, north of a hundred. A hundred? Okay. You've been in the process. I got a question for you. got a buddy that's does bankruptcy. He's a bankruptcy attorney and 99 % of the business he does works for our restaurants. Wow. That what you saw when you're selling a business. Well, what were the top trends you saw when you were involved in 50 to a hundred? So I live in a little community just south of Cleveland called Akron, Ohio. And so

Northeast Ohio as a category would be, you know, it makes up 40 % of the GDP of Ohio. reason I'm telling you this is of that, the majority of the GDP that it produces is in manufacturing. So in my early days, the clients I represented would have been large manufacturing firms. And so that would have been my first run, would have been nothing in hospitality or retail, would have been all in. But I live in a world

of consumer packaged goods, e-commerce and tech enabled companies. So I play in a different space for the businesses that I do. And so the portfolio we have, we buy, we sell, we curate is in that e-commerce, tech enabled, the digital space. Yeah. When did you make that transition to this? mean, &A tax, a tax lawyer for many years. When did you start making this journey? I mean, part of that story is in Falls Providence and CO Mastermind.

Yeah, like, let's it out in a little bit. Yeah, so I was, as a young lawyer, I met a whiz bang internet kid who was doing an internet business and needed help. And I was, our firm was helping him with stuff. In the middle of all that, him and his partner broke up with really bad breakup money stolen, all kinds of junk. Well, when the dust settled, he asked me to be his business partner. And so I started to learn the internet as early as 2006.

Jon Stoddard (04:51.061)
And I've been off to the run ever since and fell in love with the industry in the category and have been by selling and building ever since in that space since about 07. Yeah. What do you make it? mean, the by selling that process of, know, there's two kind of rules and I've worked this out. Either you are going to bring as much profits out of the business as possible, like all the carve outs, or number two is you just give the seller their price.

and not worried about it because they, you the difference between a 3.0 multiple and a 3.2 multiple on a $5 million business is just a couple of months. Yeah, I think each deal has its own little rounding the edges to it. And so I think it depends. Like if you're putting all the cash up and taking it all out, then what promises have they made to you that, you know, you've made sure are correct? Sometimes

you don't really have a crystal ball. So how do you look backwards? So the difference between three and three two might not be a big deal, but the difference between three and 2.0 might be a big deal. You might have paid a whole time multiple greater than what the enterprise value really was worth. And so each deal is tricky. There's a reason why only so many businesses have since successful sales transactions. One of my most successful deals that we acquired into

We acquired half of a health nutrition company with no money into it, but took over growing it. And we have since quadrupled the size of this business. And we invested all of our operations experience and expertise in taking the whole thing over. We put a lot of risk into the capital resources of that thing. Now we look like rock stars, but in the process, I mean, that was a risky proposition. Sometimes just writing the check might be less riskier.

and then putting in all the operational resource. Yeah. Was that the, is that the Phytex? Phytax. Phytax laboratories. Yeah. What kind of product is that? So the reason I ask that, cause I got to talk to Joe Valley over at Quietlyut and he's funny. He talks about he had a colon cleansing product. Yeah. So supplementation. So we live in the elderly care crowd above 40, right? So our two big players there are

Jon Stoddard (07:14.989)
ear ringing, right, tinnitus, which is a ringing in the ear. So a supplementation around taking around the outward effects of what how that impacts your ringing in your ear, irritation, lack of sleep. And then we have a couple of things like nerve pain, toe, we don't live in super mass market categories, we live in the next niche down and probably the market leader in three or four of those products, that company is probably going to do 45 million in revenue when we took it over was doing about 15 million in revenue.

Wow, that's amazing. that because of what? What did you look at and say, hey, it can be 45 when you saw it or just it was a great opportunity, the guy wanted out or they needed help. that is what I'm trying to get at with a lot of people I talk to is like, why are you buying this business? mean, what do you bring to the table to get it to 45? Like that's what you see it.

Yeah, so I've had the privilege to scale before this three, three businesses into the mid eight figure category. So I knew what it took to get there. Okay. But we know the health and nutrition space. We had already had one of our own in the mid eight figures that we ended up selling. And so we knew the space. And so he sought us out as an opportunity. We didn't seek him out. So this deal was knowing that we could help get it there. And then when we got kind of like the expectations, right, you know, we took the risk.

The beginning was hard. That first 14 months kind of fixing the mess was, everyone wants to be excited about where it is now, but no one ever wants to talk about that first 18 months. Yeah. Was it profitable when you took it, started in on it? Razor thin. Razor thin? Did you come in as a non-controlling interest under 50 % or higher? So we have 50 % of the company. no matter what the equity looks like,

If we're coming in and taking control, we have full control. Yeah. So that was kind of a Marcus Lamona side. You know, I even though if I own 5%, I'm in 100 % control, right? There's a reason the business has got issues. We need to fix those. You have multiple chiefs. So our team, we put one chief in place. I'm the chairman of the board. I don't actually have an operating role, but we quickly put our own COO in and the other business partner would have been in charge of all the

Jon Stoddard (09:41.165)
kind of back office finances of it. And we went and did what we do, which is once an offer, once offers are converting, your problem isn't it. The problem is the business itself and its operations. And we and addressed all of those things. Yeah. When I'm just curious about the relationship of this guy, obviously he was looking for your help. Was he also

did he take a back roll and just start saying, Hey, yes, whatever you suggest we do, was there a lot of head knocking while you did that process? You know, the funny thing with like coming into a business deal, that that feels no different than any other deal you you create habits as a leader how you run things. So George is his name, who's the other owner would have had habits of being the guy who solved and created all of the problems in the business. So he was used to doing everything himself.

So we had to work through a position and transition time where he would just run fast and make decisions versus like putting structure and systems in place. And so that's why I said that first 12, 18 months was tough. Like he'd go out and make a bunch of decisions that weren't necessarily good or bad, but just decisions and some of them good, some of them not so good. And so we had to work through that and learn how to be each other's partners and trust each other. And so then there was a guy like me who stood on the wall for the three partners and said,

hey, this is the way we're gonna get there and keep reminding them of how we get there and trust each other. went into this knowing we could trust each other. And so I'm thankful to have been down the road with large teams. And so I was able to guide both of them through it. And here we sit later with very profitable company that I think is gonna hit nine figures.

Wow, I $45 million. How many employees do you have? 27. 27. Do you outsource a lot of that or just where's that? They're all full time on our team. And is that through Amazon also or just strictly through your website or a mixture of both? We have very little Amazon. We use Amazon as more of a pickup strategy than we do as a primary strategy. One, because of our talents.

Jon Stoddard (11:59.309)
Two, quite honestly, we probably are ones who buy into the theory that if they change their algorithm, do you have a business? And so we like the marketplace, but it's not a primary tool for us. Yeah. know, the reason I asked that, I was buying some supplements, just on whey protein. And the number one protein seller on Amazon comes up to the Amazon provider. Amazon makes it, right? It's private label Amazon.

What I encourage people, if you actually have your own channels and you have your own shopping cart and you have your own way to attract customers, Amazon's a great pickup strategy. you know, if you follow direct response statistics, you know, to get an offer to convert, you're less than 2%, right? So 1.84 % of all offers convert. Let's assume you're competitive and you have one of those, then of all of your conversions, two out of every 2 % actually make it through the order. So,

two out of every hundred get through all the way through your shopping cart. That means 98 people fall off along the way somewhere. And so Amazon's a great pickup strategy for some of those 98. And you can add 10 % lift to your drop-off, which means you're picking up another four customers through your drop-off experience. And so that's a big deal when you're looking at those numbers. So we use things like Amazon and other marketplaces as a pickup strategy. Yeah, interesting.

What kind of business would you, are you looking to acquire more businesses in that nutraceutical supplement space? Yeah, we're actively in, I guess, pre-LOI, what we call tuck-ins. There's a company that's got a product that I think we like. It's more of a lipisomal. And if it works out, I think it makes sense for them to come in underneath us.

we're looking at that, know, we're, think if you're in the buy sell category, you're always looking to buy and looking to sell. somewhere along the way, even fight age will be acquired by somebody and whether or not we're along for the ride with them or they completely take us out, it's a function of math and opportunity. So when you're in both sides of it, you've got to be growing a business.

Jon Stoddard (14:19.671)
to the point where you'd be willing to buy it from yourself or why would you think anyone else would be willing to buy it? Yeah, yeah. Well, it seems like that would be an attractive target for what you have right now, $45 million for a private equity firm. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I probably don't want to get into too many details about kind of like some of our bedside folks, but know, FightAge has got some wonderful opportunities in front of it. And so I think before long we...

might have some other capital partners and some big things ahead. So, yeah, I'm excited for that team for its future. And I'm really honored to be its chairman of the board and what I offer to that. So I love what they're doing over there. Are you an employee of that company as chairman paid or do you take a distribution of profits or how does that? Are you just waiting for your equity to grow in whatever five years when it's sold?

I think there's a massive mistake in the marketplace that people don't get paid twice. I think this idea that you forgo profit for some future equitable payout is an unfortunate thing in business. So I believe in the philosophy of getting paid twice. So I believe we should run a business to be profitable. And because of that, it should have a net asset value or a market share value that someone else would want.

So we do pay, the company pays a stipend for me to be the chairman of the board. So I get paid to serve in that role. In addition, I'm also a partner of the business along with other partners. get paid on the bottom line, right? There's an expectation to get paid. And then later on, when someone buys it from us, hopefully we get paid again. Yeah. So that's actually three times. Well, know, someone's If you're distributing the profits- Someone's going to be- I'm serving in a role there. Someone's going to serve in that

whether it's me or someone else. So I don't know that to do your job is part of your equitable event as being an owner. So I think that's just serving in a role. And so I take my job seriously as the chairman of the board, but I'm not an employee of the company. That's a board's position. someday if they decide they want someone else in that role, I think the ownership team could make that decision as well. Yeah, fantastic. I got to ask you about site trust. why does it?

Jon Stoddard (16:41.125)
site trust. How did you get involved in this? This sounds like a hundred percent software where it just checks the credentials of the software, the IP address. How did you get involved with that? I created it. You created it? okay. How many users does it have now? you know, so we've parked some of that. It's great. I love what it does. I actually, when I originally started that, I own a web hosting company and we had all the

and big data analytics flowing through. so where we built the bones of that thing. But I always envisioned that one of my kiddos in our legal world would take that and run with it. So it's kind of sitting there incubating being used as a free tool. And if one of my two oldest want to jump on that kind of letting it there be like open source. And if we ever decide to go build some bones around it, I kind of have the tech enabled piece for one of them to run with it. Yeah. So let's talk about

fully accountable because this is the service that you do for and you're strictly working with e-commerce firms, right? So we say consumer packaged goods, e-commerce and tech enabled companies, right? So we live in that digital world. Yeah. And it's the size of the company should be, doesn't have to be, you like your ideal customer is what? 2 million, 3 million, higher. So can you at least a million in revenue as a

product company than your two, then you're not, you're pre-ready for us. You need, have other issues you need to worry about. But I'd say our sweet spot starts north. mean, every company has its things, but I'd say the fastest growing sector for us is between three and 20 million. If you looked at our client base, but we serve anywhere from 1 million to 50 million. We have a couple of unicorns that are doing north of 50 million, two in the nine figure range, but they kind of grew up with us.

and we serve certain components in their business. And so they just don't want to get rid of us. Yeah. How does that work that you're providing this service, which is definitely in one lane, but you've got expertise to grow a $45 million company. And plus it's like, well, if you need us for anything else, you know, does that always do you guys have that conversation with the lots of your customers or at some point? No, we don't.

Jon Stoddard (19:03.949)
So we own a portfolio of businesses, right? They stand on their own. So like FightAge and even Inbox experts and site trust and the like, they would buy services from Fully Accountable fairly, no different than anybody else. So that's true, right? We don't just kind of double dip and provide our stuff. It's a fair arms like transaction so that they get treated like a client, but we don't really dangle Fully Accountable out there for other stuff. just wanna...

Each business needs to stand on its own feet. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of where I was getting these because it sounds like you're in your lane and like, you stay in the lane and do your best about that. So what does inbox experts do? I obviously it's a very descriptive name. If you, can manage inbox type information and then your response is because if you're in marketing, you know, the faster you respond, more likelihood of getting a sale. Yeah. So it's all third-party monetization.

So, well, that company does list management for companies that have large email subscriptions, but primarily that's more of a lead gen so that the relationship that's really built is third party, which is non-branded mailings of your asset list to other promotions. So help you make up revenue that you otherwise aren't making as a company. Gotcha. I mean, that's a...

Jay Abraham's three immutable laws. So if they're not doing that, they're missing out on profits. Yeah. So lots of businesses in our world aren't doing that. So we're just thankful to be in a position where that team who does that, you know, kind of built its own little proprietary process of how they get that done really well. And that's like one of their value adds as to how to offer that service to other people. Yeah. And how did Roland

Was Roland working with you before or knew you before before he started asking you to coach and on the calls, the Epic calls? Yeah. So Roland and I, were one of the original classmates of this thing called War Room that Perry and Ryan created, gosh, was early as 2009, 2010. And so Roland and I is the only lawyers in that group, kind of became fast friends. And I really love intellect and Roland,

Jon Stoddard (21:23.455)
in every room is the smartest guy, right? I took to Roland quickly and realized I just loved being around his intellect. And we both dream up business ideas all the time. And so he, I think became friendly with me because of my depth and acumen of dealing with lots of businesses, both as a lawyer and growing my own. So we just became buddies. And then along the way, started looking at deal flow and kind of send people each other's way.

You know, it's just been a relationship, you know, that we've cultivated and real quite thankful to have that with them. Yeah. Are you still in the war room mastermind? yeah. Yep. Yeah. How much value do you place on, just synergizing, talking to other people that are successful and working businesses? You know, asked that is like, you know, every time I talk to Adam, goes, man, he, Adam will tell you, yeah, I didn't have the money.

I paid for it, but it's made me 10 times back.

So I think that one of the benefits to being in a group or to be accessible to people who are doing big things is they help you think bigger. And sometimes you gotta pay to be in that room. And I think it's worth the investment. I don't think enough leaders spend money investing in themselves and helping to be and think bigger than they currently are. And so I'm thankful for groups like that that allow me

to look under the hood and be around women and men who are doing big things. And then I'm able to have the permission to dream bigger for the things I do. Yeah. I love it. I'm in a mastermind with, of course, the Epic Group, then also a mastermind with Alan Weiss on the consulting. They do get you to think bigger because you could spend all your time focusing on one little things and they just give you this different perspective. like, my God, that was just a complete waste of time.

Jon Stoddard (23:26.005)
Yeah, I I know that everyone doesn't have access to Roland maybe the way I do, but I mean, I'll be in one dinner conversation over a glass of wine sharing kind of some abstract ideas and he'll throw out an idea or two that are different than I'm thinking. And the next thing I know, I'm like, why wasn't I thinking like that? You know, it's amazing how one conversation compressed with some of the right people can unlock things you're thinking about and help you clear up maybe a wrong strategy.

with a right strategy. So I think of that book, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, well, being around people who are thinking, even if they're thinking of other businesses can help you clear up strategy. And so I love that part of it. Definitely a different perspective. Are you in any other masterminds, kind of war room stuff? Yeah, so I used to operate and curate my own. And then I kind of stopped that because of our portfolio of companies and our teams that I needed to invest in. I'm in Founders Mastermind with Max Finn. I'm in war room, obviously.

And I like kind of a facilitator or guest in some masterminds where I'm kind of the old guy now like Roland. And so I get invited into these groups to kind of be somebody that like helps to offer value to the group. So I got a handful of those that I go to that I wouldn't say I'm a card carrying member, but I'm a regular in the group. Yeah. Now your kids are following you in the entrepreneurial world.

My oldest is. Yeah. How old are they? Sophie is 20. She is actually launched a successful not-for-profit called Stop the Demand where she's doing kind of influencer work in human trafficking. And that thing is just doing quite well. Just opened up a store to kind of self liquidate and fund costs for that.

And in the process decided that she wanted to open up an agency where she's doing social and traffic management for other people to kind of help provide liquidity for her as she goes into law school. Wow. How much time does she spend with you to hear whatever the conversation is at the dinner table? She's that girl's she's a beast, man. She knows how to just constantly be around dad and ask her questions. She's like, Dad, people.

Jon Stoddard (25:46.507)
like pay a lot of money to be around you. And I get you all the time. I'm not, I'm going to not forget that. She's always constantly asking questions. Now we have certain parts of our personality that are similar. So we're always kind of knocking heads a little as I'm kind of pushing her to critically think, but that little kiddo is, is on it, man. I, wish I had some of the tenacity that she has at her age. I wish I 20, I had a better view of myself and not some of the wounds of shame because she's a beast and she's, she's doing great.

That's a blank slate. I've had those thoughts myself, like, man, if I started out entrepreneurially, just starting a business or buying a business when I was at 20 versus much, later, mean, think about where you would be. I mean, just in a different category of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So I spent a lot of my time as a result of that and where I am in my career. know, Deb and I, we've probably as poor kids have outkicked all kinds of coverages.

So we're in this like legacy phase of our lives, John, where I'm building up other leadership. And so I'm in this like subversive phase of my life. Like what's happened is like, I'm stopped trying to win stages and put an influential light on me and I'm building the teams around me as well as legacy of leadership. Yeah. So you're being a mentor to others.

Is that, mean, it's official or is that just being in groups like Epic or were more? yeah, you can't hire me to be your mentor. You can't like hire me as a coach. I do that for our organizational stuff, right? So all my time goes to my executive teams as well as to the young people in our organizations. Yeah, that's a beautiful statement. That's a given back. Well, I'll tell you something. We've only got so many numbered days as our buddy Kent Clotherer says. So, you know,

If one of the metrics is money, I feel like that's one of them. There's other ways to measure wealth and I'm discovering and investing in some of those as well. Yeah. Where are you at in this stage? Do feel like cashing out or you just want to keep going as the way you're going right now? I'm too youthful in my mind to think I'm in this situation.

Jon Stoddard (28:04.331)
that cash out feels a little bit like a retirement phase of life. So I'm probably a little youthful for that. Plus I have children that are cycling into adulthood. So I don't have as many downward constraints of little people. So I've got a lot of energy for business. I'm excited about the next 15, 20 years to be honest with you.

I have my health, my energy, my creativity. So I'm not any, I want to recognize value as to when a business is appropriate for cycling, but I'm as much in as I am not in some of those things. So I'm having a blast actually. Yeah. Hey, I got a question for you that you may be able to answer because of your expertise. Are you familiar with Peter Thiel and that recent news about him having a Roth?

IRA with $5 billion in it because he it's directed and he was able to put some PayPal and some of their plan here and some other is Facebook stuff in it. And it just taken off. You know, anything about that? No, but I know the strategy when I was a young lawyer, I was the one advising on that strategy. So I'm not one bit surprised. And you know,

Deb and I would have assets that are structured like that, just not as substantial as he was able to pull off, but totally out of the strategy. So not familiar with the specific story, but I understand the strategy. What's the question? Yeah, I know. I was just curious if you were familiar with how to do that, could you do, you know, acquire a business and put that into your IRA? Absolutely. So really, I like a structure a little better than that.

When I look at our overall master structure, you hear things like family back office, right? So Deb and I have our own family limited partnership, right? And inside our limited partnership, we would have a structure where our children have a legacy trust as one of the partners of that. And so we would be investing in assets that we're trying to grow and trying to build generational legacy with our family. In addition, Deb and I would use things like

Jon Stoddard (30:13.513)
self-directed and retirement benefits as a way to defer taxation. All of these are deferral mechanisms and how do you grow wealth without paying tax, right? And so I would look at that as one of the categories and it'd be pretty shameful for a tax lawyer not to be thinking about those things, right? So I do a lot of that. So real like generational wealth building requires you to head on tax deferral strategies.

Warbuffet likes to call it compounding interest, the magic of. I totally agree. And I'm thankful to have been not only educated with the opportunity to practice it for myself. That's beautiful. So what's next for you? More books, just, you know, we love the coaching stuff on Epic for sure, but acquiring other companies, just, I know you got an LOI or you're working on it. What's next? I'm staring at it right here actually, it was before I fell.

Let me go back to this. How much energy do you direct to making sure that LOI is a conceptual agreement that is in place? I put all my energy right here, John. This is the business deal. Everything else past this is a framework of executing on that business deal. So I live on top of this. A lot of people sign these things and blow them off and then put their energy into the asset or stock.

purchase agreement. put a lot of my energy right here. And so, because this is the playbook for what the deal is going to look like. I'm an agreement man. If you talk to a friend of mine, Joe Valley at quiet light, I'll just talk like if, you don't have it in your eye, LOI and you're not talking about it, it's going to be up for renegotiation at Leonard point. The LOI has got to. Yeah. The only thing that should be up for renegotiation is when you get back your quality of earnings report, whether or not

your targets are right and where your seller discretionary earnings are right and your target and multiple are right. That's all valuation stuff, but that's gotta get figured out as you go. And if you spelled out how to do that in your LOI, then everything else is a function of an understanding. And if it's not in here, then I would argue that probably represents the immaturity of deal flow. that's, you we've all made mistakes on it. It's not like you gotta be perfect on it, but I,

Jon Stoddard (32:35.693)
I care about those words, because those words, we're going to have to fight about them later if we don't discuss them now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you spend a lot of time. How much time do you spend with as the chairman of the board of that $45 million company? an hour a month. That's amazing. God, I remember like three years ago when I was trying to sell my e-commerce company, which was a hearing aid company. So I know a lot about tinnitus. My brother has it.

That's kind of sucks because he's really loud and then he came and visit me and he was really loud in morning. He just can't hear what he's doing. Right. in his ear. so, yeah, the rigging just like, yeah.

But when I tried to sell it, you know, I, it looked okay in some of the processes, but when I put it up to, think it was Empire Flippers and through Quiet Light, they said, well, how much time do you spend on that per week? And they said, I told them like 40, 50. It's like, that's too much. Do you got a lot of businesses out here where people have systems in place where they're spending an hour a week. So you need to fix that, which is all about putting right people in the right places, putting systems in place.

Yeah, you you can't, you can't, have to accept some of the consequences that go along with having more than one job. And I, I don't, I've learned through some businesses that I've built and broke that you can't run everything. And in my overconfidence, some might call arrogance. I thought I could do and run more things and be the lever puller. Well, the more level lever puller you are, the more likelihood that there's greater single points of failure in that business. And so

I work real hard. Maybe it's because I'm inherently lazy, maybe for other reasons, but I want to build up teams that are running it who care and wake up as much or more than I do to the going concern and it running. so I'm thankful we've been able to do that. How did you discover that breaking point where you can't do all of that or make all those decisions? I actually, I openly discuss in the CEO's mindset. I broke that company that I wrote about, but I realized that I was the lever puller. So I broke.

Jon Stoddard (34:47.849)
a 40 plus million dollar company learning. I got a PhD in learning that you need to grow a business beyond your shadow. And I was the lever puller in that business. And when I stepped away, that's what broke it. And so it was an expensive lesson. And that's why I wrote a book to see if hopefully I can help people make a less expensive versions of that same mistake. Yeah. You ever heard about that story about Michael Dell? like when he was a $50 million company.

And somebody came into him asking for, a refund on the Coke machine. And he goes, why are you asking me? He goes, well, you're the only one with the keys to the Coke machine. And he tells that story and is Michael Dell direct from Dell. Yeah. I get it. And so I stepped away and handed the CEO's role off to somebody else and he just wasn't prepared for it. Right. And that's on me. That's why I broke that business. And,

I'm thankful. Without doing that though, I wouldn't be nearly the leader I am today. Yeah. Well, look, I appreciate you writing the books, the CEO mindset, the false prophets. I enjoyed them. And I know you could have a lot of other things to do. So I appreciate you being on this podcast today. Vinny, thank you so much. John, thanks for having me, buddy. And if there's anything I can do for you, and if any of your listeners want, they can just

right in a request, we can create a way for them to get all of our resources. We want to help more people. So, you know, if you want to create a fully accountable.com forward slash you name it John or name of the show, we could create a place where people can sign up and get our resources that, you know, we don't want them to pay for it, but we want to help more people. So if that's valuable to them, we'd love to do that. Yeah. So I remember having a conversation with somebody on your staff and I don't remember who that was, but I will talk to them and put an offer in.

you know, whatever post I do about. Yeah, that'd be great. We would love to do that and help more people. And, you know, if that does great, you know, I, whether or not I'm building up crowns in heaven or whether or not it leads to more workflow, all of it is at the end of the day, we just, we don't really believe, you know, hiding information that can help people win. If our mission is to double the profit margin of 10,000 companies, we're not going to do that just by our service. We're going to do it by giving you all the tools to do it yourself as well.

Jon Stoddard (37:11.765)
Yeah. So where are you at with that goal? 10,000 businesses. You know, we're somewhere short of 500. And so when we get the thousand paying clients, we're going to be this huge thing and we're still only one-tenth of the way there. So the other part of that is helping businesses do it themselves. And so they read our books, take our stuff and do it. I don't have a real way to track that part of the metric, but I got to believe it's hundreds, if not thousands, we've helped at this point. Beautiful.

Well, I love it. I'll put that offer in any post I do on this. really, Vinny, I appreciate the time you spend with us. Yeah, buddy. Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks. Take care. Bye.