Top Tips From Richard Walsh.
1. Exit Strategy:
“They need an exit strategy. The best time to do an exit strategy is before you start your business. The next best time is right now. Because here’s why. Very quickly you go to the end. Remember I was talking about earlier, hey, I want to get out of this in 10 years. I want X amount of dollars, blah, blah, but also at that same time, well, I’m making seven figures a year from my salary as the CEO running my company, all right. Well, if I sell my company, I don’t have a million dollars a year anymore. Well, that’s not really good, is it? That’s kind of that seems to defeat the purpose. So what you want to do is you, as part of that exit strategy is, how are you going to create that passive income? How are you going to accumulate assets?”
2. Automate, Delegate, and Eliminate:
“Number two is very simple. It’s three words. It’s automate, delegate and eliminate. Okay, so we want to automate whatever we can in in today’s society, a lot of a lot of great things, automation is a big term. Actually. It covers a lot of different things and different ways to do it. But you get it’s you. It’s, it’s systems, it’s software systems, it’s, it’s call services, if you will. It’s about virtual assistants, right? All these you can automate and build to help your business run more efficiently. Delegate, we spent some time on that. In this we still want to delegate properly. Let go, let go, let go. Give it to people, set them up for success, then put them into it, they’ll love you for it.”
3. The Five F’s:
“Number three is what I call the five F’s F as in Frank. It’s faith, family, finances, fitness and friendships. So when we talk work, life balance, again, the term I hate, these are the things you have to balance, faith, family, finances, fitness and friendships, okay, you got to hit because if you can’t do those, obviously, you don’t have enough time, right? Your business is still owning you. You have to be diversified. You have to build relationships, businesses relationships.”
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, business, debra, years, talk, marine corps, day, money, great, work, gross revenue, love, build, systemization, running, job, good, put, position, big
Richard Walsh 00:00
It’s important that we understand that entrepreneurship, in general, regardless of the industry, is the roller coaster. But roller coasters are supposed to be fun. The economy’s collapsing, and I lost my first half million dollars, and then it just went off the cliff from there, because no one was spending money. So that was like, wow, I think this is over. Then I look back and I had to connect a lot of dots of the things I didn’t do that I ignored or I put off to the side because I was just making money. Do you want to eliminate inefficiencies, redundancies? But you know what? You really want to eliminate you? You want to eliminate you from the business.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:42
So morning and welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry Taylor, Taylor and I’m passionate about helping entrepreneurs lead their ideal lives by creating better businesses.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:01
I’m a certified EOS implementer, an FBA accredited family business advisor and a business owner myself with several business interests, I work with established business owners and their leadership teams to help them live their ideal entrepreneurial life using EOS. But my guests come onto the show to authentically share the highs and lows of creating a successful business and how they turn things around in their business to create a better business and a better life.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:30
Now today’s guest, we have a lot in common. We’ve discovered already, because he has lost everything, including his house in the oh 809, collapse. But he did this whilst having six children under the age of four. Fortunately, he has rebuilt, and he is now running a successful business that helps other business owners and is also the best selling author of escape the owner prison. So today, he’s going to share with you how using a marine corpse mindset can create success in business. Richard Walsh is the CEO of sharpen the spear coaching as well, successful author. Welcome to the show, Richard.
Richard Walsh 02:00
Thank you, Debra, appreciate it’s great being here.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:04
Yeah, so I really enjoyed reading about what you went through. Not because I enjoy seeing people suffer, but I think that it’s all I love people who’ve actually had the highs and lows or prepared to share that. Because often, I think when we listen to podcasts where we see social media, we can get kind of this wonderful opinion that the world is all roses and everything’s fine and, and I’ve very rarely met business owners who’ve had that beautiful, you know, non no issues with growth throughout their period.
Richard Walsh 02:33
Yeah, I don’t think that’s actually possible. You know, there’s a reason. Debra, I don’t really work with startups. I have a startup program they can do online. It’s like a 16 week program, and you do that, that’s what I tell them. They don’t have enough scars. They haven’t hit the bumps. They don’t they don’t have value in needing help because they haven’t done enough. They haven’t. They got to fall down a bunch of times. You know? You got to lose a little money. You got to make some mistakes. We all did, okay, some little, some, a lot. I did a combination of both at different times. So I think it’s important that we understand that entrepreneurship in general, regardless of the industry, is it’s a roller coaster. But roller coasters are supposed to be fun.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 03:17
I guess I actually like roller coasters. And I think that’s, that’s the joy of it, right? Because if you can when you experience the lows, you actually get to experience the highs in a completely different way, in my opinion.
Richard Walsh 03:26
Yeah, and I’m really built for, I don’t know if this is right. I’m built for suffering. It’s just I ran cross country. I’m like, this big dude who ran cross country in high school, you know, they running 1015, miles a day, and five ks and 10 ks and stuff. They went in the Marine Corps, did all that. I just trained, trained and became a boxer, and I’m doing all that right. So I’m getting in the ring, you know, and and just getting punched in the face every day. And now it became a black belt and doing all that. So I think I just enjoy suffering. I think I’ve come to that conclusion, like well, not suffering. I must be doing something wrong. I don’t know.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:04
I said, Does that also tie in with having lots of kids as well? I don’t know.
Richard Walsh 04:07
Yes that. Well, that first four years, Debra, I’m telling you, my wife, when they my sons, he goes his fifth, she’s turning five, maybe just turning four or five, and I’m sitting on the couch, and people are over, and we’re having, you know, all the friends over at a party, and I’ve got the 1000 yard stare, you know? She comes over to me, what is wrong with you? And I go, I haven’t slept in 10 months. I think I’m going to die. She goes, just suck it up, you know. And she’s doing like, 10 times the things I was with the kids, you know. I’m running the business and trying to do the night shift so she can rest and stuff. And it was that was brutal, but actually, I think that better.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:42
Hey, I’d love to hear a little bit about your story. So, you know, I’ve read Dubai, and it said that you were at the peak of your career, and of course, the collapse happened and you lost everything. Tell us a little bit about Richard in general, like, go back as far as you want to, but tell us how you got through that, where you are today.
Richard Walsh 04:58
Yeah. So I. I got out of the Marine Corps in 1987 and instead of working, because you got to make some money, so I got a job. It was an incredibly amazing job. It was swinging a pickaxe digging trench for $5 an hour, and I swung a pick all day, eight hours a day. Billy stepped up from the Marine Corps there, so I’m doing that, and I’m thinking, wow, this is like my future, you know, but there’s always more. I’m pretty optimistic, and someone asked me to help him with a side job. He said, Hey, can you do this for me? In Arizona, you like granite, so crush granite or three quarter inch, and instead of grass, so you put that, what we get. They had 35 tons worth. They needed to be wheelbarrowed into the backyard and spread. I said, I can do that. It’s working. That’s what I do. And but here’s the beauty, Debra. You know what I did. I made $1,000 in a day. I did that job. I shoveled it from the street in the wheelbarrow, all around the back, spread it to the holy you know, about 10 hours, you know, 100 degree weather, but I made $1,000 and I went. I just made $1,000 doing what I’m doing all day for $5 an hour. I made 50. I made 1000 I think I’m going to go into business. I’m like, I think I need to work for myself, because it’s obvious, right? So that started it little landscaping that turned it into a water feature business.
Richard Walsh 06:12
So the custom waterfalls and ponds, backyard ponds, higher end stuff really grew that scale. That was kind of in the very beginning of that industry, if you will, scale that become nationally recognized, won tons of awards, publications, all that stuff. I really was an artist, pretty spectacular work that I did, and that was going like crazy. I was doing wonderful right now. Oh 809, comes. So I’m in about 18 years, 19 years now, and the economy is collapsing. In November, 5 of 2008 I lost my first half million dollars, and then it just went off the cliff from there, because no one was spending money, especially not on a water feature in their backyard. They could wait, okay, I’m a luxury item. 100% so, so that was like, wow, I think this is over. Like, but at the same time, I’m, like, I did a lot of things that we can talk about, but a lot of things because I actually told people, oh, I don’t, I don’t blame the financial collapse. I blames, well, why didn’t I survive a financial collapse? Then I looked back and I had to connect a lot of dots, a lot of dots, of the things I didn’t do that, I ignored or I put off to the side, because I was just making money. I was building things. I was being an artist and getting paid well for it. I became an internationally recognized steel sculptor. So I was coming doing this world class exhibits and commissions, and I’m just like, well, who can stop me? I’ll just make more money. It’s no big but that house of cards came down when the collapse hit, it forced my hand, and I didn’t have the things in place to weather that.
Richard Walsh 07:45
So it was bad. Lost everything, anything I had at a cell. I got 2530 cents on the dollar for and it was pretty new stuff. So it was bad. So if you know and I was not in the position to save it, lost the house, everything else. Had to relocate, figure out what I was going to do. But the big epiphany I had was I woke up one morning during all this as things were crumbling around me, and I was thinking about my kids. So I’ve got these six little kids, and when I come home at night, if I get home at seven o’clock or nine o’clock, whatever it is I’m working all these hours, they they drop everything and run and attack me, and they’re all six of them, just whatever crawling me, whatever they’re doing at that time, it was so cool. I’m like, well, that’s great. And then in the morning, where, if I stopped, like, in the middle of the day, grab some lunch, start heading out, one of my sons is like, Ray chasing after my truck down the driveway as I’m leaving, crying, you know, because I’m leaving, I’m like, looking in the rear view mirror at this going to be kidding me. I’m like, like that. Like, I tell people now that doesn’t move you a little bit, then you got some bigger issues that I can help, you know?
Richard Walsh 08:44
But I was like, Okay, here’s the issue. I’m so focused on business that all I’m going to do for my kids is they’re going to that’s all they’re going to learn. Business first, business first, not your faith, not your family. They’re going to have terrible relationships. They’re going to have destroyed marriages, right? As they grow older, they’re not gonna be able to do this stuff. To do this stuff. So I’m like, that was it? I’m like, I’m done. I’m gonna shut this down right now. I’m not gonna do this anymore, because, because it has become me. My business had become me, my identity had become me. And that’s really bad for a business for a lot of reasons. We’ll get it. Maybe we can get into but, but that was a big epiphany for me that really kind of changed the direction of what I was doing at that moment and what I wanted to do in the future, even though I had to figure out how to do that with nothing. So that kind of brought us up to speed. And now it’s time to rebuild, relocate, rebuild, and I started that process. And of course, crew a couple new businesses, and I did them right this time where the business didn’t know me. They said, Well, how do you do this? I really had to study look back. How do I not how do I make a business that doesn’t need me for the most part, right? The big goal of everyone, that’s why everyone gets in business, right? They don’t get in business to be a slave to it. They don’t want to serve the business. The business supposed to serve them. Them never happens.
Richard Walsh 10:01
What happens Debra is they get in. And here’s the thing, I haven’t figured out how not to do work really hard the first two years. Okay, you’re going to put in a ton of hours, get those scars, get those bumps, get those bumps. But then next thing you know, it’s 10 years in. You’ve repeated the first two years five times, and that’s why you can’t scale, because you’re stuck doing everything, not delegating, doing all the sexual to do. So I’m like, Okay, I’m not going to do that, because I did that for like, 20 years, pretty much, right? So, so I’m, I’m the dumb one, just tell about it the Marine Corps way. It’s kind of, you’re a little thick, okay, it’s a little it’s a little abrasive. But so I’m like, I’m not gonna do that. So how do you do you do that? So that’s the plan I developed and started over again. Then, like, Let’s build this differently. So there’s a whole approach to that, but that kind of brought us up to speed. Then I people sort of asked me, how’d you do that? Like, you lost everything. How did you come back from that? And last so I said, Well, I did this, like, I got into the mentor role, right? So we got a mentor. Then I’m like, I’m an entrepreneur, though. So what does a mentor need to become a coach? Okay? He needs to get paid. Mentorship is free. Okay, you’re helping and being nice and giving some advice. Sit on a board or something. Coaching is a paid position, you know, so let’s really help you. I don’t like part time, I don’t like here’s a little bit of advice. And whatever I’m saying, let’s get into it. Let’s build programs. Let’s do this for your business and make things happen. So that pretty much brings us to where today.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 11:30
That’s fantastic. I think again, we have similar kind of backgrounds because I was the same. I actually went and did some mentoring and really loved it. But it’s like, yeah, this is not, this is not a business, and I am an entrepreneur. It’s what I do. It’s I love, I love business. That’s the thing I love most business and people, okay, so that’s cool. So we’ve got through this, I’ve got one question I need to ask, and this is just a personal thing. I just thinking you talked beginning about, you know, being a kickboxer and sporty, and then all of a sudden you’re winning awards for creative artwork. It almost feels like there are opposite ends of the spectrum. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that.
Richard Walsh 12:05
Yeah, it’s funny. Debra, I am, uh, I am just, uh, what’s the word a walking paradox? I don’t know. I’m just, I am. Just never been. I’ve always, I don’t want to, I can use the word odd, right? But I’ve never, I’ve always been a contrarian. So I think I was born a contrarian. You know, I remember my mother telling me, she because, you know, we had to take it to the doctor when you because, like, you never cried. You just sit there and entertain yourself. And you didn’t. I’m like, Well, I didn’t need you, even at birth, duck, I was born old. I think, you know, something like that, but, but I think it was really that pursuit of what’s going to challenge me, what is next. You know, how do I push myself? And the art thing is really, really interesting, because growing up and in school, the public school system, yeah, I was told I’m not anything. I mean, it was a terrible experience, but you’re no good. You’re not, you know, you’re not an already, not that you better just, you know, go get a trade job or whatever, you know, back in the day, like that. And what’s funny, Debra, is, you look back and I’m doing all this artwork, right? And really, I had a huge project I did for this car for parking conservator in Chicago, and I was thinking one day, and I’m thinking about those teachers and the things they said about me to me, and I said, You know what? I’m making more in this one commission than you’ll make in 10 years teaching. I said, so, yeah, you were wrong. Okay, and that’s why I don’t listen to people, which it can be good and bad.
Richard Walsh 13:39
There was a time where I should have listened, and I didn’t, but, but it really caused me to, like, just like the Marine Corps, I went in at 17 years old. I wanted to go in. I’m, like, actually, I tried at 13 years old, but then they said, I’m in the recruiter’s office, like, I’m ready to go. How old are you? Like, and I was big kid, like, six foot. Then, you know when they go, Well, I’m 13, but I’m ready to go. Oh, son, you just come back to hand me a little folder with some stickers. You come back when you graduate high school, and we’ll get you right in. I’m like, Oh, man. So sure enough, I got a 17, and when the Marine Corps did that great challenge, my son, now just joined six months ago. He’s in the Marine Corps now, so that’s pretty cool. He’s a tough kid, but, but then it was that that I got out and I said, Oh, I want a box. I had a friend who boxed to go. I want a box. So I went down to the gym and got his name was Dave, and he was from England, actually, and he was self hunting, kickboxing champion and all this kind of stuff, right? So we’re talking just straight boxing. That’s what I want to do. So he got in. I got in. He’s a monster, okay, just a monster of him. Big Guy really knew his stuff, and he’s just playing. I can’t lay in a glove on him, chasing him around the ring. I can’t lay a glove on him. And he looks at pop hits me first shot left, and he breaks my nose. Okay. I’m keeping I’m okay.
Richard Walsh 14:50
And the next goes a little longer, you don’t bleed all over the place. And pop hits me the left hook and and Debra, I kid you not, my mouthpiece out of my mouth, out of the ring. Across the gym. Okay? It’s just, oh my, I have two black eyes, you know, broken nose, all this stuff. And so I went to work at the time, because I was working at a bar as an assistant manager. This was right out of the Marine Corps. Also the general manager was, what happened to you? I go, I was sparring with Dave. You can’t do that. I said, Oh, I’m doing I’m going back tomorrow. I’m going back tomorrow. I’m doing it again. I said I won’t work here, then I’m going to do this. So I’m a little I guess the word might be obsessive, but I’m an all or nothing kind of person, so I want mastery. I want to if I get in something, especially if I can’t do it, which are most things, I do want to master it. So I’m kind of driven that way. So whether it’s water features, it’s steel sculpture. I taught myself how to weld. I did this next thing, I’m doing world class stuff. So that’s kind of, I just think it’s part of my makeup.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 15:50
I think it’s actually part of entrepreneurial makeup. I mean, I think the really good entrepreneurs, I mean, I’m similar in terms of, I’m a musician, I speak languages, I love the art of business, and I’m also a scientist by trade, but it was, yeah, it was anything that was put in front of me. It’s like, I want to learn more about this, and then I want to be the best I possibly can. And it’s just, I think for most entrepreneurs, that’s part of our spirit and our drive, isn’t it?
Richard Walsh 16:13
It is. And you know what else there’s. There’s a downside to that, and that’s the SOS the shiny object syndrome thing, yes, because we get pulled towards opportunity and this, and we have to reinter, if you’re a coach, and you got to rein these guys in, you know. And I have techniques for that too, I can share with you, but it’s that that’s a problem, right? This a gift and it’s a curse, yes, at the same time, you know? So you have to learn to master it, yeah, you know. And and people who do, and people take add ADHD, and they master it. I had a multi billionaire client who he definitely was, add he was, like 70 mastered it. I mean, obviously, right. He’s a self made guy, but you had three minutes to close the deal with him, and it might be in his driveway waiting for his driver to come pick him up, you know, but you had three minutes and whatever it was that was a conversation, and you do it, and you close a deal, and he would just show up and say, jump in the car, and he picked me up and driving, take me some of your jobs and just drive me around. I mean, it’s just that guy, but he mastered it, right? He was doing so many things, yeah, very impressive.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:17
Beautiful. Okay, so the Marine Corps. I know nothing about the Marine Corps. I’d love to hear so they wouldn’t let you in at 13. Fair enough, you went back when you were 17. Yes, was it? Was it easy the second time route to get in?
Richard Walsh 17:32
No, because my mother didn’t want me going in the Marine Corps. She said, any branch, because my brother was a year older, meals in the army, and then she’s like any branch, not the marine crisis. But I have to be the best. And Marines are the best. They’re the few and the proud. They’re the elite wife fighting for it says I have to be that I was 17, and he had her permission. She had to sign the paper, so I get what I want. So I brought two recruiters over, and they sat on a left and right side of her on the couch and brow beat her for three hours until she signed the paper. They’re the best salesman in the world. Marine Corps recruiters. They don’t get any better than them, you know. But, but it was funny. And then she, you know, she wasn’t happy, kind of crying, signed it okay. And three days later, you know, I’m shipping off to the Marine Corps, you know. So, and it was good, and that was a great experience. I mean, it was tough and not tough. It was tough. And it’s a, it’s a lifestyle change. It dealing in structure, but very, you know, alpha directed, right? So, just a great thing to do. I could never have been a lifer, you know, do it for 20 years, 30 years, retire. That was never going to be me. Because I don’t, I don’t think I could do anything for that long.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 18:42
You know, you’ve been married for 25 years, though, haven’t you?
Richard Walsh 18:45
I have so, yes. So we, we still can change, right? We can still change. So it’s good, yeah, so the marriage thing has worked out well. So I got that, if I got to pick one, that’s the one I want, if, if nothing else, goes away, I want to keep that one we get. We got a lot of years left, so it’s gonna be good. But, yeah, so that that was that challenge was great because it what it did was what the Marine Corps really does Debra is it really just pulls out who you are. It doesn’t change you into something like people, like you go and you become this, you’re over, this gentle, nice person, and now you’re a savage killer. They don’t do that, right? What it does is take what’s already inside you, and brings it out. It shows you what you have. You know, my son is another example of that we he got the nickname from our pastor. He was doing a he got an Eagle Scout from Boy Scout thing a ceremony, and he said, he said, the answer is, I call him silent power, because he never talked much if he said, he never said three sentences in a row. He’s a big reader and stuff, just quite a great athlete. People would talk smack, you know about the real I’m gonna beat you this. Then he says, oh, and he just go, and he’d beat them and just leave. He wouldn’t talk to him. He just goes. So he and the name is perfect, silent power. But he win the core. He graduates boot camp. Okay, we’re seeing him. He’s in the School of infantry. Now he talks and he talks and he’s got, he’s got even more purpose and challenge.
Richard Walsh 20:07
Now it’s just brought him out of him. So he’s like a different person. He’s really who he was, but he’s verbalizing it now, you know, he’s more he’s more assertive and things like that, right? So it really wasn’t. They didn’t change him. They brought it out. They woke it up inside of them, which is fantastic, you know. So I told him how to box. He wanted the box. So I had to teach him that before we went into about two years of boxing again. He wanted to do things. I tried to get him to do other things, but he really wanted the box. So he did that, and he did very well. So it’s just, I think, a lot of times that again, it brings it out of you. So it did that for me, and really taught me persistence on, like, a new level. It’s like a different kind of persistence, you know. I mean, I want to go to Marine Corps. I got a Marine Corps, right? Whatever it takes, you know, 17 to my mom. So I always kind of had that, that grit to push forward. But what they did, they put an element of, I don’t really have a better way to say than life or death. It’s like you’re going to do it or you’re going to die. Okay? Because that was kind of the options. If you don’t achieve this, you’ll probably be dead. So let’s achieve this so we don’t die, right? So, and that I love that, like I’m one of those weird guys that negative reinforcement really challenges me, and those kind of challenges make a big difference for me, and they push me, so I carry that into the business world.
Richard Walsh 21:29
So and again, my first 20 years, the downside of that Debra was, I’m going to do it all by myself. I just dipped my shoulder. I’m pushing through out. It took me twice as long, it was twice as hard, but I succeeded because I was unwilling to get help. Take help again. Great people all around me offering me simple little bits of advice that I wouldn’t take. I got this. I mean, what does a multi billionaire know that I don’t know. I’m just a jarhead, you know, got out of the core and I started the water feature business. But what does he know? All the stuff he told me to do, he was right. I just didn’t do it. Okay? So it’s just an unusual mindset, and that mindset is just forged me all these years. You know what’s really strange about it? Debra, people will see me and they don’t say, Were you in the military? They’ll say, Were you Marine? It’s a very different thing. That’s the difference, right? Because you’re not an army, but you are a Marine, and it’s different. But people like said, I don’t know why that is. I’ve been out for like, 35 years, 40 years, you know? But people are they, they still see that because I guess the way I hold myself, the way I walk and present myself, but it’s, it’s, it’s very interesting. So it does affect you for a lifetime. Which is, which is interesting.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:47
And so thinking about, you know, the things that you did learn in there, I mean, I have to say, the whole do it or you’re gonna die, is a pretty strong motivation to get things done, pretty strong. Why isn’t it? But what else did it teach you that you were able to take into business and that you now use to help with the business owners that you help.
Richard Walsh 23:02
You know, really, a really good thing, and it’s as simple as this may sound. I don’t know if people think of it, but chain of command. Chain of command, it’s like structure, because what I teach now in my coaching business, like, so let’s use job functions, okay? So, like, you have to do something, right? Because they talk about delegating, right? Oh, you need to delegate. And, you know, they do. People just tell people to do something they walk away.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 23:26
Called abdication, isn’t it?
Richard Walsh 23:27
Yeah, it’s like, it’s like, you know, okay, that’s gonna fail, okay? They’re gonna quit, they’re gonna leave, and you’re gonna be worse off tomorrow than you were today. But, but it taught me, like, well, what does that actually mean? Because that’s the thing the military is great at. You have rank, and you have duties in that rank, and you have things you can do and have and when, if, if a if a platoon is down to a corporal, and the corporal gets taken out, you have a lance corporal. The lance corporal steps up from that position every position then fills in the position above it, that’s the training we get. We’re not afraid to step up. In Vietnam, a lot of times you had an e3 that’s a lance corporal been in a year. You’re not running whole platoons, right, in charge of 50 guys. You know something, life and death. You know, because you’re that. That’s what they instill in you. Next guy steps up. You step up, you step up. One goes down, the next one steps up. So I really like to apply that. I don’t want people dying on business, but I want, I want that ability that we understand to rank in the position we it gives them a path where to go, right?
Richard Walsh 24:34
So if you’re just gonna, you know, you know, we all know the dead end jobs and all that stuff, but if you’re able to build a business now, and I help really design businesses where the people on the team are actually growing, both in competency for their business. And I do it. I want them to grow and improve as people, right? Because if they can become better people, not just competent workers, that changes them for the good, right? They take that home and that affects their. Families, and from there, their families go into the community. Now you’re starting to affect a lot of people with your business. If you have 20, 3050, people, you really do that. And my goal is to help 10,000 business owners, right, create more freedom, profit and impact. Okay, well, that could be millions of people it affects just because I want to make them better people. So that’s part of my job functions, my levels, inside positions, and that that’s what I learned from the Marine Corps as well. Because they encourage that people don’t think they do what they do. There’s so much you can do in the Marine Corps to make yourself a better person, from education, training, all kinds of stuff. So the military really has that. The Marine Corps, especially, really has that dialed in. So that’s an easy takeaway, because you are in it, and you’re just trained that way.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:48
Yeah, so let’s delve a little bit more into delegation. Because I think the idea, the thing you described before, and I’m I think we’ve all been guilty of it at some time, where we kind of go, Great, I get to delegate, but what you really just abdicate all responsibility and kind of get to somebody else and then get really shitty with them when they don’t deliver. What? Deliver what you thought they were going to deliver, and they get upset with you, and before you know, it become a massive issue. That’s abdication. Tell me a little bit more about what delegation should look like, and how that worked, both in the marine but also in business as well.
Richard Walsh 26:16
So what you want to do, here’s what, here’s what people don’t do. They want to delegate a position, a job, a task, you know, a whole line of things, right? So the problem is, again, they just tell someone to do it. And I think the biggest, the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs make is they think other people are like them. They think they think like them. They’re just going to take it on. They’re going to create a system. For you, because that’s what you do, right? You come in, you make it better, you become more efficient. Well, they don’t ever do that, okay? Because the ones that would are working for themselves, doing it, making the same mistakes you’re now making, thinking someone else should be like them, right? So they’re not going to be like you. So here’s what you must do. You have this is the hard work. This will a lot of guys forget in those first two years. If you do this in the beginning, it’ll change everything you do.
Richard Walsh 27:09
For the most part, you’re gonna so you have a position. I don’t care if it’s site foreman or it’s your your office manager and administrative position, you’re gonna build out what we call the job functions. Here’s what you do specifically in the job. It could be seven things, it could be 50 things, you know, not every day, but here in your entire job, you can do this right? Wednesdays you do this, and Thursdays, you do this every day. You do this research so you had the functions. Here’s what you do. Next column is how you do it. This is my way of doing it. You may come with competency from doing a different business, but you’re going to do it our way. That’s the problem. They think because they’re competent, they’ve done it before. They’re going to do it your way. They’re not going to do it your way. They’re going to know how to you may have different software you use. That alone is going to throw them off, because they’re used to working in this platform, and you have a completely different platform now, so now, so now you have the how to do it, and then the third column is gonna be the training of the how.
Richard Walsh 28:08
So you create the job functions. Here’s what they are, and that’s I introduce job functions to the potential candidates on the first in person interview. So we have a whole series we develop and stuff, but you don’t put that in your in on your indeed, or your job wanted. You don’t put all those job functions and let people read all that and tell them you’re gonna only pay them this. They’re gonna think they should be getting, you know, you know, $10,000 a day for all the stuff you got labeled out because they don’t, they can’t put it in perspective, right? They don’t understand you do this one thing once a month for it 20 minutes, and that’s a job function. So, so they think they’re going to be worked to death, right? So you don’t do that and you say that for the interview, but once you have the what, then you have the how, then you have the training for the how, right? And the training for the how is part of the systemization process, right? So, and that’s in video form. Maybe it’s manual form. Maybe you are working with someone, but they have a bank to go to a train so they know how. So everyone’s trained consistently, right? So you may have five people in same position, you may have 50. Well, they all need to be trained the same way. They all need to be trained to do the how, to perform the what, right? So we want to make that all duplicatable for every position in the company.
Richard Walsh 29:20
Right now, when you have that, now you can bring the guy who’s competent, really good at what he does. You’re like, Man, this guy’s an A player, and a player is not going to come to a hot mess. They’re going to come where they go, Oh, this is all lined out. Now you have total accountability all these jobs. We can’t say you didn’t know. Oh, no one told me. Oh, that’s right here. It’s number seven. Okay, so, and you’ve been trained, and you signed off and all this stuff so, so they can come and they can they want to work in their lane. I don’t care if it’s sales. They want to their closers. They don’t want to create your sales system. They don’t want to make a presentation. They don’t want to build that stuff up. You do that and say, use this presentation I’ve created. You. Here’s how you learn it. You’ll be up to, I did it for my roofing company. I want to take someone to do nothing about a roof, okay, except that it’s on top of a house. That’s the extent of knowledge I wanted on purpose. I’m like, and in seven days, when you go give an estimate, they’re going to think you’ve been doing this for years, and it’s all is video presentations. It’s the actual script. It’s all scripted out. They can learn that. Review it, review it. Seven days are closing deals for 10,000, 15,000. 20,000 like they’ve been doing it forever, as duplicatable, right? Follow it, role play it. So we built that out as part of the system. Now they know what to do. Now they’re armed to go out and do what they do best, and that’s close deals. No one wants to mess around and build your business for you. Sorry, that’s on you.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:46
And that, as you just said, I mean, that makes it scalable too, right? Because now it’s not reliant on one person who’s got all this knowledge. But actually, there’s a system they can follow, there’s a training process they can follow, and they will be able to do that within seven days.
Richard Walsh 30:58
Absolutely, Imagine every position or company like that, that’s the company I want to buy. I want to buy a company like that. I don’t want to buy a company to reinvent everything and show how to do it right? There’s a time for that. If I want to grab some market share at a very low price. I can find good, good email lists and customer lists in a disorganized business, because I know how to flip it. I can get it up to speed very, very quickly. That could be good. But my ultimate goal is, if I’m going to sell, if I have an exit strategy that says I want, you know, $5 million at this time, at 10 years, blah, blah, and I want to get that. I want someone to come in negotiate the price. I get my 5 million. They hand me a check. We shake hands. I go out the door, they come in and nobody knows it was sold, that it runs so well by like, no one knows now they can tweak and do whatever they want. It’s their business now, but they don’t want to. What’s attractive is a business that’s profitable, that they can own, right? It’s like, wow, I don’t have to come in and fix everything. I can just encourage everyone to keep going. So it’s just kind of part of the plan.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:05
And it’s kind of what you talked about right in the beginning, right? There’s sort of three things you’re trying to help people get, and one of them is freedom. And you cannot get freedom when everything in the business relies upon you.
Richard Walsh 32:15
Yeah, it’s, it just doesn’t, I mean, you are, it is. And I said escape the owner prison, because that is what it is. And and let me tell you how you’ve written books, right? Don’t you author? Okay, well, then good, good for you. Well, what’s the hardest thing? If it’s an email, it’s the subject line, right? Hardest thing to do is get a good subject to open the email a book. The title incredibly difficult. So I had 27 working titles. Debra, when I read my book. Now, I wrote my book very fast, three weeks. Okay, had an editor, and she’s like, You’re fast. She didn’t even know what to do. I got done so quickly. You know, I got a best seller. I hit best seller in 10 categories on Amazon, all this stuff, but, but I’m like, with the title. So I went with, I had 27 working titles. I went with the 28th I had to come work. It was this kid, and I was at a track meet my kids, running with another buddy mine, who owns a manufacturing company.
Richard Walsh 33:11
He said, I was like, Troy, what do you think about this title? Escape the owner prison. And he just looked at me. Goes, that resonates. That’s good. You could see he’s like, yeah, yeah, I’ve been there and and I was like, done. That was the contractor, new way to scale, regain control and fast track growth while loving life. That was harder than the title, that subtitle. So if you’re writing, stand by, like, don’t think about your title. Just write the book and then have someone help you. So my editor, like, moved one word in the subtitle and fixed it. She was the best editor ever. A good editor can move one word, add a comma, and it’s beautiful. You know, you don’t see these changes, but, yeah, so that really was, you just get trapped. And that is small to mid sized business. That is, like the commonality the Mudge, I mean, they’re home, they’re thinking about waiting the middle night. They’re thinking about, they’re with the kids and the wife, and the phone rings, and they’re stepping out of the room because it’s a customer call. It’s an employee issue, you know? And that is just that life just destroys everything around it. It really does. That’s the bad part of it. And the trouble is we love business. You’re like me, right? We love business. I love it. I’ve talked about it all day. I’m talking too much now about business, right? So it’s just what, but we don’t realize what it does to everyone around.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 34:33
That’s right. That’s gonna say it. I mean, it’s a, it’s great that we love what we do, but we have to be very careful. I mean, I’ve got a, I’ve got a husband who’s actually the polar opposite of everything about me. And so he is a, he’s an actuary, he’s an introvert, he’s a, you know, risk averse. He doesn’t talk very much. And he doesn’t, you know, he works nine to, let’s say nine to three, nine to four, whatever the the magic thing is for that day. And he says, I get paid for my brain, so as long as I’ve done my work, I’ll just leave whenever I’m ready. And he switches off completely like he doesn’t. Even think about it. When he comes home, he plays his music and does other things. Yeah, I know. But and often he will, you know, he’ll end up ringing me up and saying, Hey, are you coming home anytime soon? Tonight? It’s like, why? What time is it?
Richard Walsh 35:10
Well, let me give you, let me give you a word of encouragement on that. I’ve always loved this. I heard a guy says once he goes, if you two were identical, one of you would not be necessary. So just let that soak in. Okay, just let that soak in and go.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 35:30
Okay, it’s all right. Now it is good. But anyway, yeah, so, but I was thinking about sort of some of the clients I’ve worked with in the past as well, though it’s like that they they may well be loving their business and doing what we do and loving it, but the reality is that you see them, they try to take a holiday and, you know, and they want to take three or four or five weeks off, and they just can’t, because there isn’t the systems in place for them to actually be able to leave it and be. And they’re always worried about what’s going on, whereas if you’ve got this set up correctly, it’s going to be able to run without you.
Richard Walsh 35:59
Yeah, and it has to. It just has to, because they won’t get two days into the that vacation, that holiday, and they’re calling the office, where the phone’s ringing, you know, it’s, I had a client, literally, and he speaks all over, right? He’s the best of what he does, one of the top three guys in the whole country that does what he does. And he literally would tell me, like, I’m speaking on stage, and my phone just buzzes, buzzes, but it’s the office. It’s his people calling. They need this, need this, need this. When I started with them, I’m like, so I took this, I’m like, this is insane, you know. And he’s doing like, 10 million a year, but it’s like, if you watched an ant farm that wasn’t ants, but it was just absolute chaos. So they’re bumping to each other instead of being that’s what it looked like in the like, everybody was doing everything. So I’m like, What’s going no, no, no, no, that’s not how this works.
Richard Walsh 36:54
Let’s, let’s give them certain things to do, like, let’s start breaking this down so we really piece up. And like, it was five months, and it’s like six months later, he goes. I went for three days. I’m like, they never called me the office. Never called me. Like, I got to bring my family now. We got to spend four days after my lecture. I did my whole speaking thing. We four days. We’re at the dunes, you know, we’re doing all this stuff. It was just with my kids, because he was ready to give the whole business up two in the morning, sitting outside the building in this truck, crying. He’s like, I can’t do this. I can’t this is we’re growing so fast and doing everything just when there was no there was no order whatsoever. It was just more and more and more and more. And to see that turn around and watch someone’s lifeship, because he’s brilliant at what he does. And he needed to not quit. You know he needed not to quit, like he needed someone to come here’s you can’t just tell him not to quit. This is why you’re not going to let me help you. Let’s get this dialed in. And it’s that’s, that’s part of the joy of what we do when we’re able to help people like.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 37:54
So we’ve talked a little about freedom, and freedom, obviously, is important, because we do have lives outside of work and we have people that are meaningful to us? Talk a little bit, let’s talk a little bit about profit now, though. So I know that people often think, oh, yeah, but if you’re going to bring in all these systems, if we’re going to train all these people, it’s going to end up costing more money. And how do I make more profit? What would you say to that?
Richard Walsh 38:15
So what i What’s interesting in my program, too, and I’m working with people, we don’t usually talk about money much, you know, because I’m like, Well, watch what happens if you do this, and isn’t, like, it’s all this money to be systemized. Like, that’s not systemization, you know, you’re not bringing in a bunch of robots and stuff, you know, that’s what you’re doing, right? It’s, it’s structure and order is what you create. Like, we talked about the job functions. Everything else is building things like that, so people can operate in these spaces, right? And operate completely. So I said, when you do this, you’ll see what happens. It’s increased efficiency, right? It’s reduced waste, okay? You got higher performance.
Richard Walsh 38:57
Your team, the people on your team, your employees, will become assets instead of liabilities, because usually, when it’s all chaotic, their liabilities, right? The people are left because they’re not going to show up. They’re not going to the job. Well, they’re costing you money, but they’re not producing because you haven’t built anything they can produce in you. Just keep telling them to figure it out, and that’s not their job. So that’s costing you a fortune. As soon as you straighten that out, all of a sudden, not just your gross revenue, your real net profit, begins to increase. And that’s what we really care about. Don’t get don’t get, I It’s the worst scorecard you’d have. Is gross revenue. That’s a horrible scorecard. I mean, I’ve had clients who they’re doing 10 million in gross revenue, and they’re not even taking home 100,000.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 39:43
I always I find it really challenging, because I do a lot of it with the Entrepreneurs Organization, both here in New Zealand and in Australia as well. And one of their criteria is all about gross revenue. If you’ve if you’re creating more than a million US dollars in revenue, you can join EO, and it’s just because you make a million dollars. Grocery view does not mean that you’re actually making money, right?
Richard Walsh 40:04
It’s true, this guy said, My I’m gonna throw my little brother on the bus here, and he’s okay with it. Come on through. He started a landscape business. Part time, great salesman. He’s just the greatest salesman ever, the kids just he works for a fertilizer company like the whole western United States. He’s the top guy, but he started a landscape company. His first year, he did a million and a half dollars part time. Like, so I’m like, when he called people, I’m not making any money. I go, how are you not making money? It’s landscaping. I go, you should be had at least 300 in the bank. You know? No, I don’t know what it is. So I start walking through it. He’s got 37 employees. I’m like, 37 What are you doing? And one of them was my older brother. I go, Well, definitely gotta get rid of him. Okay, so. But it was, it was kind of funny. I said, Okay, here’s what you’re gonna do, because he’s his wife saying you got to get out of this. You know, you’re just and I said, Okay, tomorrow, go fire half of them. And you know which half? You know who they are. Get rid of them. I’ll be out this weekend. We’ll go through the books. We’ll flip this. I’ll flip this thing in a heartbeat. We’ll get you. We’re gonna, we’ll get going. You know, I’m like, like, you see, but you can make money, but you don’t know what you’re doing. It took me 20 years to figure out I didn’t know what I was doing. Okay, he did in the first year. I go, you’re blessed, man.
Richard Walsh 41:20
Look at this. You screwed up like this right in the beginning. You are so lucky. You know, we can turn this around. His wife wasn’t for the turnaround. Didn’t want to do it, so he kind of just put the kibosh on it and went back and selling more stuff. And he’s happy. It’s all good. You know, not everyone’s an entrepreneur, but that was a great example of not paying attention. You’re focused on gross revenue, you know. So there’s a great saying that I learned years ago from a mentor of mine. It’s gross profit feeds the ego, real prop, or gross revenue feeds the ego. Profit feeds the family. That’s how you got to think about it, you know, the more you keep, because you got you got to keep and that’s everything from tax strategy, right? You need tax strategy. You need, you need, again, turning your people into assets instead of liabilities, right? You need production. You need efficiencies. You know, you need the systemization. You need to have that stuff. So very important.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 42:17
I want to get back to your guy who had a lot of people who were growing really quickly, and they were running around all doing a little bit of everything. Little bit of everything. For some people, when I start working with them, we talk about having accountabilities and keeping people very narrow in terms of what they’re doing and having their systems and processes. They worry that it’s going to be add sort of silos and not create the environment that’s required. But simplifying it down actually has quite the opposite effect. And people are then doing what they love, and they’re in an area that they can really excel at. So tell us how that went from having all these people running around doing bits of everything to suddenly having some real structure around what they were doing.
Richard Walsh 42:56
Because the good thing was, he had good people, okay? And that was, I’ll just call it coincidence, okay, because people are hard to find. But he just had the right people, but they all were willing to do everything. Now think about that. Can you actually Guess who’s willing to do everything? So you’re starting with something good. I said you just as the conductor of the orchestra, you’re not performing. You’re not pointing to the right instrument to perform at this time, right? Because that’s what you are. You’re the conductor of the symphony. They’re making all the music, and you’re just telling me a little louder, a little softer, a little faster, a little slower, right? You’re you have the interpretation of what they’re doing. So think of it that way, right? So once we did that, because I started, well, what do they do? Okay, well, he’s really a an operations manager, like you have that position. He goes, Well, I kind of have that position, but then he’s doing this and this ago. He shouldn’t be doing that, and that, that’s this guy’s job.
Richard Walsh 43:58
So you have an operations manager now you have a production manager. See an operation manager and a production manager. He’s dealing with the guys mixing all the the that their biologicals, mixing all the biologicals, and doing kind of the real hardcore dirty work, you know, if you will. But he orchestrates all that. And then you have a GM. She was doing a lot of things that she just she’s going to take your place. She’s going to make sure that the operations managers got his stuff. She’s getting bills paid, right? She’s making sure that that system is functioning. You understand what’s going you’re collecting the money you’re owed. Again, you get you get excited about your gross revenue. You forget about collecting the receivables, okay? Because you think you’re riding high, and next thing you know, you don’t have any money in the account.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 44:43
Cash flow. Cash flow does massive issue.
Richard Walsh 44:45
You got a million they have out there. People have neglected to pay, and you’ve ignored them and let them do that. So that’s a problem, right? So by by taking that and dividing this first thing, you go directly to the people. So what I do? And I. Directly to those people. I don’t make the owner, yeah, I don’t make the owner systemize the business, because no owner’s going to do that. They want their business systemized. They don’t have the bandwidth. They’re not going to come and systemize all these positions and all that stuff. Never going to happen. But I tell you what they will do. They will pay someone else any amount they want to do it. Right? You come in and do it. I would just name your price.
Richard Walsh 45:28
Okay, so I’ve learned a system. What I do is I help each position build out the systemization. I work with them so they get additional buy in on that. But here’s the caveat, I go, it’s not part of their job. So if they’re making 100,000 a year, they’re not going to systemize their position and get the same money. We’re going to put a bonus. We’re going to put a time frame. We’re going to do what we call strategic goal setting. We’re going to have, it’s going to be a 60 day goal. We’re going to have this resource, this sort of this resource. If you get hung up, you’re going to talk to this person. We’re going to this reason. We’re going to get the complete. And when you do that, you’re going to get x, big bonus, couple $1,000 this vacation, whatever you’re going to get right. So they have skin in the game. Now. They also get buying because they get to help create a system to make the company run better, make their job better, that they can now focus on that lane. So it’s real easy, actually, to get them to love doing that. So now it’s a little extra work, but they understand the outcome. The big thing is, like, what this is going to do? I explain the outcome. Not just you weren’t systemized. You are systemized. It’s like the outcome is what this does for your job and your life, like how you’re going to be able to operate every day.
Richard Walsh 46:39
Because when every day is a mystery, which is how most positions are. Did I do the right thing? Am I supposed to do that? Should I help John? Because he looks like he’s struggling, but am I allowed to do that? They don’t know what’s going on from day to day. You know that is high anxiety. That’s like flinching every time someone’s moves right because you think it’s like you don’t know what’s coming from which direction. So once you build that, and you help those people build it out, it’s amazing. It’s just this, this calm comes over the business, and you go to everyone’s just like, Richard, you know, you just walk through like, it’s just so good to be here, you know, they just, they just love you. And I tell you, get a question, just call me, you know. So it’s kind of a unique way of coaching. A lot of people don’t do it that way, but I’m very tactical and strategic, combining and that’s really how it works. That’s how you really help the owner. Because, again, they aren’t going to do it. They’re not going to take this on their plate when they’re running a multi million dollar company out promoting and selling and being on sale. What are they going to systemize our business, you know. So it’s just, you know, it works for me, it works for my clients. And I, like I said there, but that that outcome is amazing in a short period of time.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 47:53
Yeah, okay, so we’ve got freedom, we’ve got profit. We also, you also talk about making a difference in terms of impact as well, and amplifying your impact you can have. And we’ve already talked a little bit about that, because obviously, you obviously, as you build better people in the organization, obviously they’re affecting the wider community, therefore you’re having a much bigger impact. Is there something else in there for you? What does when you talk about amplifying the impact?
Richard Walsh 48:15
Yeah, I think so that making better people, affecting community, affecting families as part of it, but what I’m really doing is train them how to do business differently, because there’s, like, this one way, and everyone does the one way, and the focus becomes very, very different, because you aren’t focused on gross revenue, right? That’s not it. You’re not You’re focused on, like, again, improving your people. What is it? Rewarding your people? You’re not about how much can I keep of everybody’s money, right? There’s a very different mindset. You start to go, who can I give to? So outside of my business, how do I make an impact? You know, we did the people part. That’s good. But like you’ll see these companies, oh, we give $50 million a year to charity, blah, blah, blah targets and whatever. These are. Okay, that’s great. What charities like? What are you really doing? You know, there’s some things, and I can be a little bit of a curmudgeon on this stuff, but they, someone comes up their little pink bucket and they want to, want me to donate their breast cancer awareness. And they go, well, where’s the money going? And the kids like, eight right? And I’m beating this poor little eight year old down.
Richard Walsh 49:26
My mother had cancer, and I’m like, is the money going to your mother? No, no, I don’t know where. Oh, okay, well, I don’t put money in buckets. I don’t know where it’s going. Okay? So I’d rather go to the hospital, to the oncology department, to a man in the bed who’s getting chemotherapy or whatever he’s getting, and give him money, because he’s going to get the whole $100 instead of 10 from the hunter, they give to this foundation, because you know what I mean. So from a business. That was my little rant. I’m done now. But. From, from a business standpoint, I can choose who I help. Maybe it’s a foster care agency who places children and they need more right? They need more funds to do this. Maybe it’s a pregnancy Crisis Center. I can do something with that. Any I can pick the tree. My people on the team can pick them, pick a charity. What are you guys interested? What can we do? Because I want to take 5% of my profits and donate it, that’s what. So that’s impact. But you do it locally, you don’t give us some giant organization that’s, you know, with they call the March of Dimes. They call it the March of Dimes because they only, you only get 10 cents out of the dollar. You know, they get the use for helping people. So, like, I just big on, like, you know, and I’m also, I don’t like to brag about it. It’s the whole right hand now with the left hand’s doing and that kind of stuff. And I just want to make an impact that that matters.
Richard Walsh 50:51
So you have that ability. So there’s the impacts you make as a business. You’re in a community, you have a building, you know, even if you’re 100% remote business, you live somewhere. So do that? You know, when a big corporation, like when Boeing moved to Chicago from Washington or wherever they were, everyone’s like, well, it’s just their corporate headquarters. You know? Yeah, they’re not building planes here. But do you know what that means? When the corporate headquarters comes to your town, they have all the money. They’re given to charities. They’re given to local charities. They’re doing that’s all part of their image, right? So there’s a huge benefit, you know? Yeah, they could build some planes down the road, okay? And that’s good. People get jobs. I’m talking about the good that they can do. So people don’t really think that way. So you have so much power as a business owner to make change right, to really direct. And it’s your money that you get to say where it goes. It’s not taxable income that the government decides where it’s going to go. You get to learn how to keep as much as you can then take that user for good. So for me, that’s the big impact.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 51:58
Okay, gosh, I could really talk to you all day long, but I know that it is late in the evening for you, and I know that, you know, we try and keep these things reasonably short and succinct before we kind of shoot off. Just, can you give me three top tips? What would be the three top tips that you would give to any business owner who may feel like, yep, they’ve either hit the ceiling or they’re feeling overwhelmed. They just, you know, they don’t feel like things are going well.
Richard Walsh 52:20
Here’s what I want them to do. And, man, we didn’t even get to this with this will be a whole another show. I’m going to keep it really short. They need an exit strategy. Okay, best time to do an exit strategy is before you start your business. Okay, low. Counterintuitive for most people, the next best time is right now. Okay, because here’s why. Very quickly you go to the end. Remember I was talking about earlier, hey, I want to get out of this in 10 years. I want X amount of dollars, blah, blah, but also at that same time, well, I’m making seven figures a year from my salary as the CEO running my company, all right. Well, if I sell my company, I don’t have a million dollars a year anymore. Well, that’s not really good, is it? That’s kind of that seems to defeat the purpose. So what you want to do is you, as part of that exit strategy is, how are you going to create that passive income? How are you going to accumulate assets? So you’re going to generate income to match that seven figures? So okay, you need $83,000 a month.
Richard Walsh 53:18
Well, what are you going to do is, you can go into real estate. You’re going to buy that commercial, residential, whatever your investment strategy, my vehicles might be now as your reverse interior from the end, because you go to the end where you want to be. How many houses do I have to buy? A month rental houses, and how much you have to generate, how much stock, how much Bitcoin. I don’t care what you do, whatever it is like, you can quantify it, right? And now you can take that active business income, because you don’t need a million to live, pretty sure, a million a year, you can do. You don’t use it all for living, just saying, just and if you do, you got to reevaluate a few things. But take a lot of that active business income, build assets. Build assets. So if you have a 10 year exit strategy, you have 10 years to build assets. Now you get to 10 years. Oh, look, I have $83,000 a month of passive incoming in. This guy wants to give me 5 million for my business. We’re going to shake hands. I’m out. He’s in. No one knows it’s sold. Wow, that’s a pretty good deal for me. Now I can take that 5 million and put it into assets and make even more right, and that can continue all that, or it can stay in the business. Move the goalpost, because I’m having so much fun and making great money. I reach my passion goal.
Richard Walsh 54:25
Let’s make more. Let’s keep going, and now I can, now I can stop taking the salary from the business, reinvest in the business, and grow the business as well with that, because I’m probably the biggest drain from a money standpoint, on the business because of my salary, right? So that’s the first thing, okay? And I’ll stop there, like so we can go on forever.
Richard Walsh 54:45
Number two is very simple. It’s three words. It’s automate, delegate and eliminate. Okay, so we want to automate whatever we can in in today’s society, a lot of a lot of great things, automation is a big term. Actually. It covers a lot of different things and different ways to do it. But you get it’s you. It’s, it’s systems, it’s software systems, it’s, it’s call services, if you will. It’s about virtual assistants, right? All these you can automate and build to help your business run more efficiently. Delegate, we spent some time on that. In this we still want to delegate properly. Let go, let go, let go. Give it to people, set them up for success, then put them into it, they’ll love you for it, because they probably don’t want to be around you all the time anyways, because you’re who you are, and it’s just they rather see you go golf or something, you know, just get away from us. Let’s do our jobs. Okay? And then the eliminate part. So obviously you want to eliminate inefficiencies, redundancies, but you know what you really want to eliminate? You. Okay?
Richard Walsh 55:43
You want to eliminate you from the business. All right, work yourself out of here. So you’re spending your four to 10 hours a week on high level stuff, what I call your 5% the 5% of the business only you can do that’s your goal, to get to that level. It’s all vision work and new markets and things like that. Work on that stuff. So that’s number two, okay, number three is what I call the five F’s F as in Frank. It’s faith, family, finances, fitness and friendships, okay, so when we talk work, life balance, again, the term I hate, okay, these are the things you have to balance, faith, family, finances, fitness and friendships, okay, you got to hit because if you can’t do those, obviously, you don’t have enough time, right? Your business is still owning you. You have to be diversified. You have to build relationships, businesses relationships, if you’re really good at business, because you built relationships in all different levels, whether it’s sales relationships, partner relationships, vendor relationships, whatever it is, you’re building relationships so faith, of course, people have all different, you know, views on that, the finances you got to pay attention to your money in your business and your personal life.
Richard Walsh 57:05
You get Parkinson’s Law. If there isn’t a place that’s not doesn’t need to go somewhere, it’s going to evaporate. I’ve seen a lot of money evaporation in my life, personally. Okay, so you got to pay attention to that stuff. Fitness. You got to be healthy. You know, you have to do something. You can’t it it just, it makes you better. It makes you a better leader. It makes you a better performer. It keeps you sharper. It’s a great distraction. I like to train. I like to go very hard. I’m a little nutty. I go very, very hard my workouts. So no one talks me in the gym, which is a plus, right? Because he looks kind of scary, doing what he does, hitting that bag and doing strange things. So that’s good, but it’s a part of it. And then your friendships, you got to have some friends. I don’t have a lot of friends, you know, by design, I have a very small circle, because that’s how that’s a high bar. I said very high bar for, you know, there’s, there’s different levels of acquaintances and friends and colleagues like that. But the close friends, they’re going to be a small number, but you need them. They’re confidants, right? That kind of thing. So you want to think about it. Plus you might also have your board of advisors, your informal board of advisors you put together when you have a big question and you need real advice, because there’s wisdom and multitude of counselors. You can have those people too. That’s in the friendship ring as well. So that’s so so those are my top three.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 58:19
That is fantastic. So Exit Planning, automate, delegate and eliminate and the five F’s, gosh, there’s some gold in there. Hey, look, thank you so much for your time. It’s been an absolute pleasure to have a chat with you. If people want to get in contact with you and also get hold of that book. Would you just like to tell us how they’ll do that?
Richard Walsh 58:36
Sharpenthespearcoaching.com. You can send me an email, you can book a call. You can get tons of information. That’s good. If you want to escape the owner prison, just hit Amazon. You can find it on there and order it. But what I’d like to do, because I’m on with you, Debra, anyone who’s watching and mentions your show, they go on my website. Sharpenthespearcoaching.com sends me an email say, Hey, I heard you on Debra’s show. It was awesome, because, you know it is I will send you my I will give you the audio version of my book, escape to another prison for free.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 59:07
That’s fantastic. Hey. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of your evening. I look forward to following you with interest. I’m going to read that book myself, and hopefully we’ll remain in contact. And when you actually physically come to New Zealand, you might want to come papers.
Richard Walsh 59:22
I know, but I love being on here. This was so much fun. Really, really great conversation. I appreciate it.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 59:28
Same here. Thank you very much.
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Debra Chantry-Taylor
Certified EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
Certified EOS Implementer New Zealand
Certified EOS Implementer Australia
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Certified EOS Implementer NZ
