Navigating Challenges and Innovation in Special Education and Business with Adam Kredow

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[00:00:22] They get shit done. So welcome to the Get Shit Done Experience.

[00:00:29] ladies and gentlemen, we are back at it again. You are in studio with us. This is the get shit done experience, the GSDX podcast, and you can find us at www. gsdxpodcast. com. I know that you’ve been enjoying this so far. The numbers are reflecting it. Thank you so much. I just want to show some gratitude for all of you that are continuing to listen and respond.

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[00:01:18] And, we are here today with Mr. Adam Credo. Hey, great to be here. Great to be here. We appreciate you very much. He is, one of the owners, one of the owners, of the Center for Special Education Services, along with Lumen Academy. And this is all about, now, of course, have Adam get into it because he’s the expert, but this is all about providing for Unbelievable services for families that have children that are in need of special attention, right?

[00:01:50] For education and just for behavior and all those different things. And we know that this is a huge topic right now in our society. And you are here with somebody who’s at the forefront of providing solutions. So Adam, thank you for not only being here, but for what you’re doing for society. We appreciate it very much.

[00:02:08] Yes, you’re, you’re welcome. and I think I really need to thank all the people that work for me because they’re really the ones that are doing the work out there. I’m just making the, making the clock turn and we know that because I see all of your posts, you’re just always out golfing and on vacations all the time.

[00:02:26] I’m just kidding. I can’t, he’s working hard. He’s working hard. Yeah. We had a chance to meet at the, level up networking events. Yeah. Why is it so important for you to get out there and network? I know you’re pretty active in doing that. Sure. And I think it really came down to following the pandemic.

[00:02:45] I became so reliant being behind my computer. I just sit there and send out emails all day. barely even give you phone calls because we were so distant from each other at that time. I work with a mentor of mine and he tells me, you really got to get back in front of the customer. I want you to, I’m going to challenge you in 2024 to really get out there.

[00:03:04] So it came at a perfect timing when I was able to hook up with this networking group. From a guy that I’d met years ago, working for our, helping us supply us our insurance. and it, it’s just been so successful in, helping me continue with my passion. And really developing what I’m doing, meet key contacts in different areas.

[00:03:23] You never know who knows somebody that knows somebody. Or, a lot of them necessarily haven’t even come just from the people that are in the group, but they’re friends of friends. And I, it’s awesome to really just get out there again. and, really just. Put my face out in front of people and, present who you are.

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[00:04:22] Powerful innovation. TTSG. com This is a cool thing, too, because it’s a family project, right? Yeah. These are family businesses. I believe your mother and father started the business. Yeah, so it goes back to the 90s. we were a center for psychological services back then. More of a typical staffing model, and training center for school psychologists and clinical psychologists.

[00:04:45] fast forward to 2017. I’d been working with my dad since 2011 at that point. out of college, I came out and I came out in 2009 and we all know how bad the, environment was there. Came out of college, everybody slamming the door without five years experience and you’re like, okay, but I just got out of college.

[00:05:03] Those of you that don’t remember there was a little thing in 2008. Yeah, it was not so good and that carried on through probably 2012, right? it was pretty aggressive. So I started working with my father because it was just hard to find anything that was outside of working in fast food or driving Uber, being, yeah, being a Uber.

[00:05:22] It didn’t exist. You’re right. Absolutely. Bartending. Yeah. So I did, all those odd jobs and my path wasn’t a linear one here. I wouldn’t say, but I started working with my father and his company. I really just got, I’ve got involved in what he was doing. I saw opportunities. And, at that point we were working more in a clinical, psychology practice that he actually sold off, in 2021, but he invited me into this in 2015.

[00:05:46] and I’d been, I took over in 2017 along with my sister, who we brought in 2018, who was running her own shop in more of the speech, pathology realm. So both my parents are psychologists, then we have speech pathologists, so it’s in our blood. This is in the blood. Yeah, it’s in the blood. and so it’s, I’ve been close to it my whole life.

[00:06:03] I, I, personally deal with, ADD and, the runoff of that and I do as well. I’m going to drift off topic here. 17, 000 times because you’re about to see, you’re about to see like an experiment of two people with ADHD trying to have a podcast and stay on topic. It’s going to be quite interesting.

[00:06:22] This is a project in itself. so yeah, so my sister and I really have taken over things and my father’s still consulting in different ways. and, my grandparents, the grandparents are taking care of the grandkids and, we just really have a good family company going. but we’ve taken that my sister and I’ve really taken that company and made it from a family company.

[00:06:42] So like a well oiled machine corporation. Yeah, I don’t want to, I don’t like the corporate feel. I despise the corporate feel. You can be corporate in systems, controls and procedures, but you can be family driven and personable in culture. our whole culture is to treat others like you would want to be treated yourself.

[00:07:01] And I think that’s been lost in today’s society. I’ve heard that rule somewhere before. I think that’s really been lost in today’s society, especially with so little loyalty that people show for their own businesses. I like to build loyalty. I think loyalty is more important than nearly anything that there is out there.

[00:07:18] You have somebody that will stay with you for 10 years, that’s way more important than running through each person and maybe we give them a little bit more money and having people that will just go chase after the next loyalty is the ultimate outcome of trust. Yeah, you gotta build it. It takes time.

[00:07:32] You have to earn. That’s something you have to earn. It doesn’t just come to you right away. So what’s it like growing up with two parents that are psychologists? Are you constantly under the microscope? Do they are? Are they is there a parenting style completely different than let’s say the normal, husband and wife type of environment where, you’ve got a father who’s in manufacturing and a mom who’s a teacher kind of a thing.

[00:07:59] What’s the difference? I think they had some really great insights that many parents don’t have. But at the same time, everybody keeps a blind eye to their own children. Their children are always perfect, or things aren’t as big of a problem as they don’t think it is. I had my own struggles back then, and they helped me through them just any other parents would.

[00:08:18] it was, they had access to resources for me that some others didn’t. And, I think those resources that they were able to get me made me the person I am today and helping me become successful. That’s pretty awesome. So do you think that, that type of upbringing, even though in 2009, you’re trying to find your way?

[00:08:37] Yeah. do you think that type of upbringing has really, Given you principle that has caused you to really want to be in this type of industry I think to answer that I need to go to even to a previous generation, I come from Holocaust survivor family they came 1945 now I think 1946 maybe they ended up in and oh no 1952.

[00:09:04] I was just looking into it. We’re not going to fact check you on this. We’ll go with 46 to 52, 52, something around there. I should know this. but, they were an immigrant family. They worked, they owned a restaurant in Chicago and actually the Belmont hotel, historic hotel. And they had that for a long time.

[00:09:22] So they were, very much the blue collar people and wanted their children to become white collar. but it, It’s not easy to get there, obviously, and especially when you don’t have big financing. my parents worked very, hard to get to the point that they did. And I think that it was instilled also into us, me and my sister.

[00:09:42] to continue working hard and, but also follow passions of, and being good. There’s a saying that we have is tikkun olam, and it’s, bringing, making the world a better place than you left it. And that’s really important to us, both in our business philosophy and our personal lives. So let’s get a little bit into what it is that you actually do.

[00:10:01] Let’s start with the Center for Special Education Services. Yeah, it’s a mouthful. We can call it C. S. E. S. if you want to. What was the slogan again? Let’s get the slogan out here. Say yes to C. S. E. S. We kind of joke about it. There you go. we would love to have called ourselves the Avengers. But, yeah, Disney kind of has that one.

[00:10:19] Plus I saw you try to fly that did not work out while you were in a neck brace for a month and a half. So essentially with this company, we took a really, we took a really risky approach in 2018, 2019. and changing our entire philosophy as a company, and that was from a staffing company, and we shifted more into an assessment based company, and then, how is that different?

[00:10:39] We’re not coming into a school, we contract with schools, and we’re not going to the schools anymore and saying, we have a position for you for the full year, here is John Morris, and he’s gonna go, Sit in this classroom every day and work with students. That’s not the, there’s plenty of companies that do that.

[00:10:52] The competition was too big and too much, private equity. Trying to find a niche. So we wanted to find, yeah, our niche into the industry. And we really did fall into this after we got one of our clients asked us to cover a maternity leave. And they said they had 10 students to be tested and said, sure, let’s go out and do that.

[00:11:11] And then we did that. And the next year they call us again. And we’re like, oh, is the maternity coverage, there’s something wrong if she didn’t come back. They’re like, no, your services helped our people succeed so well that we want to bring this back again so that they are well covered. And we’re almost like a parachute, or a safety net for this.

[00:11:27] So this is K through eight? We actually through 12. We can actually test, Three years to 22 years old. Okay, so we work with school districts. They contract let’s say for 50 to 100 students to be tested Because either there’s a lack of what are we testing? Are we testing if they’re on the spectrum? Are we testing learning disabilities?

[00:11:45] What it will all the above so We have psychologists, we have speech pathologists, occupational therapists, social workers. We run early childhood testing teams with the full teams. We have bilingual services. So we’re really trying to be a one stop resource for school districts when they can’t meet the need themselves.

[00:12:04] So we’re being hired by 50 plus districts just in Illinois themselves, for, a variety, let’s say, I said like 50 school site testings. We’re essentially playing air traffic control to make sure that we get people out there on the dates that they are due. and in the meetings that need coverage, all in person.

[00:12:24] So they’re almost like, we’re almost like a tech company in a sense, but we are an education based company. So are you there more to support the school to be able to provide the value that it promises to families and students, or are you more there to provide services to the school? For the families and the students to be able to thrive and not struggle through.

[00:12:48] it’s a little bit of both, but we really are contracted by the district to serve the students to make sure that their needs are met by the school district because in, in, in special education, there’s something called an IEP. so a lot of times we’ll come in for the initial and that would revolve around.

[00:13:07] I’m not gonna get too much in a lot of paperwork that happens and they assigned us to go do testing. But every three years after there, Okay. That student needs to be tested and reassessed to see where they’re at cognitive, academically, all the areas, maybe speech, maybe OT, there could be a bunch of different areas.

[00:13:22] these people are coming in there to do that testing. We’re bringing in a more efficient program that helps them do that service faster. Got it. And save money versus going out to like these giant private equity run companies that are going to just drop a person who might suck. Or these companies are predatory where they might even hold back their people’s visas or licenses unless they do what they do.

[00:13:43] So I’m sick of all the predatory companies out there, and I’m trying to change, I’m trying to be that wrecking ball to the industry. Okay, so you’re playing a flag right now, you just made a stance, I like this. And you said it with a little bit of aggression in your voice, so this is a point of contention for you.

[00:13:56] I think there’s real predatory companies out there that are just in it to make, just make money and not help. companies that will go out and, Threaten, threaten people with lawsuits just to, to not work in their, in the education industry because they had a contract with you. Things like that.

[00:14:15] this is not how this is a, should be a free market more than anything in the world. So what is your brand promise then? Because is the, point here to, to sustain and stay with the child all the way through? Or is the point to get them the services they need to get out of that type of system so they can get back into the traditional methodology of education?

[00:14:41] I think we’re really more of the stopgap to help them get to where they need to go. We give them, we’re more of just delivering a report for them to then take and interpret. And we’re really an independent resource that can do that for them. Whereas, you’ll see, where a lot of teachers might disagree with this, but them having worked with all these students constantly, they’re, More biased than anyone towards them.

[00:15:01] They might aren’t they we get well They start off objective and then they become subjective and then they get stuck there And we were bringing in somebody who has never met the student before so we can really say this is where they’re at right now in these areas because we’re a lot of times they’re given marching orders things thing like we don’t Wanna be testing for this student.

[00:15:21] So in your mind, you’re already going into it like, we don’t wanna be doing X, Y, and Z. So let’s try and figure out the ways to make those scores match that, okay. What we’re looking for. Whereas we’re completely independent. And by the way, that’s completely un unethical and we’ve seen it, but, and we don’t, deal with any of that stuff.

[00:15:37] But, so we like to be completely independent and a resource to schools that, can help families get the needs that they are looking for. So who’s going to give you the positive feedback? Is it gonna be the school coming to you and saying, Hey, look, the work that you’ve done has put us in a position of strength.

[00:15:53] This is absolutely brilliant. Or are you getting the grace and the joy of the family reaching out to you and saying, Hey, thank you for getting involved in this. This was amazing and you were able to speed up the process of getting our child. the services they need. one of the worst jobs you could probably have in the education industry is being the special education director because you’re just going to get yelled at.

[00:16:17] Thankless. There’s me. No, thanks. It’s a very no thanks industry getting yelled at and you’re responsible for the problem. It’s a noble role. And I do commend all those people. But just like that, we don’t get a lot of thanks until we get a little more of the. We get a more of a, this is your fault, even though we caused this problem.

[00:16:36] but we, no, we’re always people that want to help, fix, we’re problem fixers. we, do get thanks from the districts. We get passed on. Sometimes I hear from, some of my therapists saying Oh my God, this family was so happy that we could do this and we could bring in Spanish or something like that.

[00:16:52] We’ve, we brought in different things like Korean speakers and, areas that districts couldn’t find themselves. They weren’t going to be able to get the service that they needed. And the, if they can’t find a, let’s say a Korean speaking therapist within 60 days of that timeline, they’re just going to go ahead with an English speaker.

[00:17:08] And that person might just not be qualified classified in the area that they need to be. Is this something that is a bigger problem now than it was in history or we become smarter and it actually existed in history and we just weren’t aware of it. is this something that. Is there something in the food we’re eating?

[00:17:26] Is there something in the water? Is there something like what is causing, because it seems to be far more prominent, the children have special needs then in years past, we just smarter recognizing it now. Yeah. Think of it like Mount Kilimanjaro. It was always there, but they didn’t find it till the 18 hundreds.

[00:17:43] Okay. So for you that are listening here, you thought you were going to turn on a podcast and there’s no way you thought you were going to get a Mount Kilimanjaro. did I pronounce that right? Malcolm Re Yeah. You were not going to get that reference. And here at the Get Shit Done Experience, we bring big words to you like that

[00:17:59] So I just want to let you know, thank you. yeah, big words is definitely not something people would associate me with. I don’t know what it means. I’m gonna look it up after you leave to not be embarrassed, but fair enough. It’s, the biggest mountain in the world and, I’m just teasing.

[00:18:12] Okay. but it, A DH, D, all these things, they’ve always been there. They just were either misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all, or just told them that. your, person, his child needs discipline or something like that, not, back into the fifties as far as we go. so yeah, these things are more prevalent because, yes, there’s better systems to test for it.

[00:18:31] but there are, there’s also less ethical people in the industry, I think, who overdiagnosed things. And that was what I was going to ask you. So let’s strip down, let’s strip down the veil, right? Yeah. has there been a change in social norms and the way that we parent? And technology that perhaps is causing some of this.

[00:18:51] I think that, I’m, myself, I’m not a therapist, so I don’t want to step into their shoes and try to explain this, from my own perspective as a father, you’re taking information from everywhere and everybody’s yelling at you from different angles, saying you’re a bad parent.

[00:19:06] If you do this, you’re a bad parent. If you do that. It’s really, it’s trial and error and nobody’s, nobody’s perfect. Nobody’s going to be the best parent in the world. No matter how to now too, because you’ve got two parent working households, as a parent, it’s very difficult to raise your children in this world.

[00:19:24] You’ve got a ton of technology. You’ve got so many things moving super fast. You’ve got dual working. family. So you got a mom and dad both working and in many cases, we see a lot of guys that are looking at an iPad from age two and that’s how they’re, it’s almost like there will be there.

[00:19:42] There is that causing some of it’s like you told me everybody’s got it at their fingertips. That’s what it was. Okay. So everybody’s got information at their fingertips. They can look of everything. They can go on WebMD and say, no, my child is actually this. And you’re like, okay, then why are you even asking me?

[00:19:56] but, we, you gotta trust the, with my own kid even. I go, in school, you trust the experts. You listen to the people who are dealing with them on the day to day. And, we hope that our districts are putting them in a position to succeed. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the most we can do. So the second business is Lumen Academy.

[00:20:15] Yeah. This is something that, you’ve partnered with not only your sister, but Eric Fine. Yeah. One of our, one of our business associates from, CSES. and yeah, we, started this in two thousand and twenty two. we actually, acquired this from a former, former principal slash business owner who ran a school for fourteen, fifteen years.

[00:20:36] and we actually signed the papers on the day I had the birth of my first child. Okay. So I had two You didn’t have anything going on, go start a business. I had two children that day. So I went on to paternity leave the first day we acquired the business. Yeah, that went over well with the other two.

[00:20:52] You’re a great partner. but Going on a golf trip too. I remember I was like on two hours of sleep and they were like, Can you give us, can you get us the password that you set up three months ago for, or Comcast, so we can pay your, I don’t even know what my name is. Screaming, baby. Yeah.

[00:21:07] but, yeah, it’s just, it’s been awesome. Lumen is, Yeah, it’s a passion project. Is consistent with Yeah, it’s a different side of the industry. Yes. We’ve seen other schools do it and we’re like, why can’t we necessarily start up our own therapeutic day school? So while they are linear company, there are separate companies, they different ownership structures, everything like that.

[00:21:32] But what Lumen, Lumen, does essentially is, house, therapeutic students who, I’ve left their own setting, whether it be from, anxiety disorder, depression, we have, the internalizers rather than your externalizers. These are not necessarily the kids that are acting out, getting in the fight.

[00:21:55] They might, be. Because when you put a kid with major anxiety issues and you back them into a corner, what do you think they’re going to do? Yeah, they’re going to. So a lot of these kids are also misdiagnosed as behaviorally challenged kids where they’re really, Just put into an environment that they’re not able to succeed in.

[00:22:11] what we do is that, that, that safe place, let’s call it. Safe space for those students. I mentioned anxiety disorders, depression. We have students that have school avoidance entirely. so they’re just not showing up because they’re either scared to be there, they have, they feel unsafe, whatever it might be.

[00:22:29] we have students with, that have had traumatic brain injuries. and other different areas. So This is a, therapeutic school that’s Illinois State Board of Education approved, which is, very important. That’s huge, yeah. That means that you actually get funding, the schools will get funding from the state for sending students there.

[00:22:48] So it’s not actually costing the local taxpayers any more than they would already be getting for getting sent to, to Illinois. they’re, homeschool. Now the school district is going to decide to send the student to you, but the parent could find you. Yes. The parent, they recognize it early on and they see it even before the school does.

[00:23:08] And they’re like, this is a ticking time bomb. The parent could find you online, find you through a podcast like this, find you through your marketing and lean on the school to say, Hey, we want the, our child to go to Lumen. Yeah. And, we’ve been working on that approach, for sure, and trying to bring more people from the internet, but, yeah, it’s ideally the, this is coming from the IEP meetings that are saying this student needs, we’re having, we’re having trouble with this student in, their current placement, here are your options, and then they give them a list of places to go, tour, and then it’s up to them to actually come to us, but parents can actually bring, they have more power than they, a lot of them do know, they can bring up the school and say, this is a better fit for my son, And, the school has every ethically, reason to up, to look at that.

[00:23:55] So parents, if, you do recognize this in a child, whether it’s your own or a family member that you see or somebody that you’re intimate with enough to, offer that type of recommendation. Check out Lumen Academy, that’s Lumen with an E, so it’s L U M E N Academy. And, out in West Dundee.

[00:24:16] Potential of expanding into additional markets, yep. and you have a voice in this. That’s important to know, even though, the district and the school is going to have a strong say in it as well because of certain factors, you have a say in it. So if you are feeling that, don’t feel like you’re alone.

[00:24:36] Don’t feel like there isn’t an answer. There is an answer, right? So you just gotta look up Lumen, reach out to Adam and say, Hey, look, what advice would you have? And I’m sure he can help to walk you through. Yeah, we even set up like a corny tagline for it and everything. It’s shine your light, Lumen Academy.

[00:24:49] That’s not corny. That’s beautiful. Yeah. We have that at some t shirts and whatnot, but we need to get better at advertising that a little bit of branding. Yeah, a little bit of branding. we’ve been restructuring a lot of things in the last year and now we’re starting to get ready for that, community outreach, parent outreach, all of that.

[00:25:05] I’m any listeners out there that are having trouble with their children and placement and whatever it might be happy to talk to you, get, your, get my information from John. I’m happy to either connect you with the people that would be perfect for you or. or even maybe we can help you out with something.

[00:25:20] And this might be the first time that you’re hearing from Adam, but I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with him several times and the energy level doesn’t change. Okay. So this is somebody who’s extremely passionate about what he’s doing and the energy level is, high for a reason because he’s extremely driven.

[00:25:35] and a serial entrepreneur. So we’re good. We’ll get into another one at some point, but I want the name of the podcast obviously is the get shit done experience. So let’s talk about some of the principles that you have personally, whether it was instilled in you, through your upbringing or was learned, or it was an, something that’s innate.

[00:25:52] It just is within you. What are some of your principles as to how you attack? we always like to talk about problem solution outcomes. When you recognize a problem, what’s the way that you attack the problem that might be beneficial to our listeners who are trying to find a better way or more impactful way to solve problems and to rise to the level of somebody who gets more shit done?

[00:26:17] Sure. in terms of that specific question you just asked, Listen to your people. Your people are your biggest equity that you have in your company. I get a lot of my best ideas because of the ideas that help generate out of them. I, I’ve gotten a lot of props from my people saying thank you so much, Adam, for always listening.

[00:26:35] Whether you have accepted these ideas for me, you always listen to them. So being open to ideas, listening to ideas, it’s not just, you’re not always there. We’re not all Elon Musk. We’re not always all the smartest guy in the room, okay? definitely not me. What I’m very good at is connecting people and making sure that the train keeps moving.

[00:26:51] the cool thing about that, too, is when you open that up, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s their idea. Fully what it does is it opens up the conversation, which turns into a collaborative idea, and then everyone has ownership of the success because they played a part. They might only be one ingredient out of the 10 ingredients.

[00:27:08] to make the cake, but they got to put an ingredient in there. What’s been really successful for my team is we cross train and so many different things. And so when you’re out of the office, somebody else knows how to step in and take care of what you’re doing. it has caused also problems on like people not knowing who’s the right person to answer this.

[00:27:25] Cause we all tackle this. Yeah. It’s got, there’s pluses and minuses. I want to go into a couple of different things that I actually wrote down. And this is, ladies and gentlemen, if you’re going to be a guest on here, you get, preparing is the ultimate flattery. I’m flattered that you were prepared.

[00:27:42] Thanks. I jotted this down about an hour before I came here. Okay, good. Before the drive. Good. yeah, no, in the job, I just talked to myself into my Siri. and then, so I already mentioned the treating people, how you’d like to be treated yourself. We’re a real company that’s about people over profits. We win.

[00:28:00] We all win. That’s been my philosophy. I’ve been instilling into my contracts with my leadership team. It’s not just me winning when we all, when we win, we all win. so I have a lot of different bonus structures that are available to my people based off of just company performance. It’s not just Hey.

[00:28:20] We pay our, we pay the leadership extraordinary bonuses and there’s a little bit of profit out over it. We’re going to give you a little chunk of that. No, it’s if we hit these numbers that we’re looking to make, you’re sharing, you’re going to share in the profit. Yeah. You’re going to share in the conversations to your big believer in career path.

[00:28:35] Career path. Yeah. And letting people. Ascend and I’ve had people build their own positions for them. I Love people coming to me ideas like hey this your company really needs this How can I help you build it and I want to know how you were gonna help me build it Okay, so bring that idea to me I think, caring, but carrying a narrow vision has been one of the most important things to our company’s success.

[00:28:59] Interesting. Elaborate on that. block out the noise, keep a narrow vision. That’s been a long term mantra of mine. there’s always going to be people trying to throw you off your game. There’s always going to be people trying to Tell you this is the way it needs to be, or that you need to go into all these different things to succeed.

[00:29:16] Keep your vision, keep it narrow. we can’t all be amazon. com. If you want to be amazon. com and do everything, sure. Okay. But they didn’t start that way. No, they started with a narrow vision. We are a bookstore online, get books online. And I actually, and then they went, oh, we could sell everything online.

[00:29:33] Yeah. I, actually invested in Amazon in, what was it, 1998. Wow. and I You Nostradamus? No, but I sold it in, 2000 and, seven during the crisis. Okay. 28. During the crisis, we put everything, moved, everything in mo mutual funds, and then in, now it’s, you know where it is now, Whatever, shit happens.

[00:29:54] shit, shit does happen. Sometimes you get shit done, sometimes shit happens. Sometimes shit happens, but, yes, I, am a soothsayer in that type of, way. what else can I go, dive into? I’ve been rewatching, Ted Lasso again. I think there’s a lot of really great, messages in there and I think Jason, Jason Sudeikis is just incredible in general.

[00:30:16] It’s so cheesy, brilliant. So yeah, and I love to break him down as a psychologist also and his character, other characters, I’m not a psychologist but like pretending I was a psychologist. and I think the Ted Lasso ism of the day is, be a goldfish. That’s one of the ones he mentioned in the show that I saw yesterday, I think it was.

[00:30:35] And it’s so true in business as well as sports. focus on tomorrow. Don’t dwell on the past. Yeah. a lot of that short memory. Short memory, yeah. So what if you screwed up that? can I say, fucked up? You can say whatever you want because I already said fucked up. Yeah. I’m not gonna edit it either.

[00:30:52] Okay. So what if you fucked up that sales call? Let’s go and, let’s get the next one. Get next up. Next up. Next one. Next one up. Yeah. I think that it’s really important to not focus on and dwell on your negatives. ’cause we do. So often just get stuck in this vibe of I didn’t hit my target.

[00:31:08] I didn’t do this, right? I didn’t get there I think that we especially as leaders Forget to sit with the positives and like this year I got I was so hard on myself on so many things and we had so many different Milestones and I’m still like this is not enough. It is not enough. Yeah, so I actually recently Sat in, my successes for the first time in a while and we hit, actually, I’ll promote this.

[00:31:32] We, were named to Inc. 5000’s fastest growing businesses in America for our first time. and I expect to be on there again next year with even better numbers in the last two year, two years. so this is really exciting for me. I’m going to be out in the conference in, in Palm Desert in about a week, nine days I think it’s coming up in.

[00:31:51] pretty excited to meet some people, do some networking out there. and just get, some overall good experiences and also get to Palm, Desert. Yeah, it’s not too shabby either. IT Decision Makers, this might sting. Frustrated with IT issues, security threats, and the stress of your technology infrastructure?

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[00:32:35] Your technology should outpace your business operations to allow for growth. And proactive strategies should prevent issues before they arise. Get back your time and your money with GSD. Drive business forward. Lead the technology to GSD. gsdnow. com As you mentioned, and I would imagine this exists in every industry.

[00:32:57] There’s companies that maybe are doing it the right way. And there’s some other companies, as you call them, predatory, if you will. Is it a pretty close knit industry? Like it. Yeah. It’s a, it’s an industry trying to help each other. It’s trying, to help each other in general, in just the industry as a, in general, you’re gonna get noticed if you’re rubbing the wrong feathers and it’s gonna go, it’s gonna reverberate through the industry.

[00:33:19] Yeah. People are gonna remember and think about your name when you wrong them. So it’s a small group. You, so that, that’s where the treating people well comes in even more importantly in that industry ’cause. if we’re not, if, I feel like in, especially in our case, when we’re contracting into places, we have to be 100 percent every time.

[00:33:39] we cannot, half ass anything. If we half ass something, we get fired. If we’re not, we get bad word of mouth, nobody’s ever gonna hire us again. too, the school system, is a machine, right? they’re tracking everything. They’re watching everything. Everything’s done.

[00:33:53] and there’s a lot of legalities that they’re protecting and insurance that they’re protecting and so on. And of course, they’re protecting children and families. So I would imagine that you’ve got a lot of certifications. You have to adhere to a lot of legalities outside of just like outside of, privacy.

[00:34:12] we’re really just trying to, we’re dealing with a beast. every district is different. every client is so different in their own ways. So we’re just trying to keep up with them and all of their needs. And they’re always high needs. working in schools is always high needs, but I’m sure just about any industry, the customer is just always a little bit difficult to work.

[00:34:34] Cause they want a certain way. They have an expectation and you’re trying to live up to a brand promise too. And that is our brand promise that it’s going to be bespoke to them. And we like to build, we’re going to. We’re going to have what we call the CSEOS way. I really got inspired by the Cubs did a while ago.

[00:34:48] It’s the Cubs way. Now we’ve started branding. We do things the CSEOS way, but we still have to do things and develop it to each client a little bit different. So we take that bespoke approach, that tailored approach to each client because you can’t just put everybody in one box. Yeah, I learned that about management early on.

[00:35:06] I had a great mentor who said you have to have a system And you have to manage the system exactly the same, but you have to manage each person within the system differently because they have unique attributes. They have different personalities and even more so they have different wants and they have a different why.

[00:35:24] So in order for them to fit into the system in their way to get the best outcome out of them, you have to treat them as an individual, but you have to manage that system consistently. Sure. Yeah. And to do that, sometimes you have to eat a lot of crow and you have to, come back and smile and say, we’re going to do better.

[00:35:44] And we always do. And my goal is for the team. If you’re gonna make mistakes, make small mistakes. Yeah. Don’t make the big ones and don’t make another one. Yeah. Don’t repeat. Don’t turn one into two. Oh my God. Yeah. Repeated mistakes are just It’s the bane of existence right there. That’s an old baseball term too, right?

[00:36:01] So if don’t, make, don’t turn one ear into two, right? So if, you bobble the ball, don’t make an errant throw. Yeah. I think they say that. Yeah. If you bobble the ball and the guy’s going to be safe, just hold onto the ball. Yeah. Okay. We can deal with these on first. We’ll, pick them off or we’ll throw them out when he tries to steal.

[00:36:18] don’t throw it into the stands and then next thing you know, he’s on second base and you’ve made two errors. We can go into baseball isms all day. I love it. Three strikes, you’re out. Let’s go. That’s it. we, as we, were mentioning a little bit about purpose and principles, everybody’s got a kind of a different way.

[00:36:35] Wake up in the morning. Some people are, take the cold plunge. Some people have to work out first thing in the morning. Some people have to pound a pot of coffee and look in the mirror and give themselves positive affirmation. I do. I do brain dumps, right? So I have to get into my journal.

[00:36:51] First thing I do when I walk in here, I sit down, I flip on my computer. I’ve been habit stacking, so I flip on my computer and flipping on the computer indicates to me that I have to now do something for me to get my mind So for me, that’s a brain dump. I open up my journal, I brain dump.

[00:37:09] I just get out whatever negative thoughts that I might have. I then pound that with positive thoughts and in intentions. And then I’m on with my day. I start getting productive. What is that for you? What’s your thing? You wake up, feet hit the ground. Where does the mind go? What’s the routine? What’s the process?

[00:37:27] What is something that you duplicate every day that you think our listeners might be able to utilize? Yeah. outside of, feeding my three gigantic dogs, I don’t know, which I don’t think that they, each need to do. All right. So first step, go get three big dogs. Dogs are amazing. I think everyone should have one.

[00:37:44] It’s going to help your, anxiety, help your depression, help anything. It’s, my dogs have moved me to the couch. they’re like 70 pound dogs and they’ve decided that they’re going to sleep on the bed. And, they’ve decided that it will be between my wife and I with their feet pushing me off.

[00:38:00] Yeah. We like go Dog. Human dog. Human dog. Exactly. It’s like a cartoon. it’s, great though. Yeah. This, it’s all, the love. It’s so awesome. And I, love the love from, human to animal. Love the love. in the, mornings. I’m not a great morning person, I’m gonna be honest. Okay.

[00:38:16] I’ve never been, it doesn’t have to be the morning. Is there something that you do on a daily basis? I’ve never been a great morning person. My GPA from like 8:00 AM classes to like noon classes is probably like a point different. Okay. . I just, I’ve, never been that person, I, wake up in the morning.

[00:38:29] I immediately, I get shit done. I look at my calendar, I see what’s coming up in my day, what are the things I need haven’t addressed. When am I going to fit them in? I more just plan out my day in the morning, make sure that I don’t have to move things around. So I’m just a big, Planner. and that I didn’t used to be a DD people do not do well with calendars.

[00:38:50] And it took me a really long t time to get so for, to get such a habit and oh my God, 80 d people do well with lists, though I do really well with lists. Like you gotta, you write the list out, you, my reminder is you scratch it out as you go. So it’s almost va immediate validation. So you can go, okay, that’s done.

[00:39:11] Yeah. It’s like you, I think sometimes. As somebody who has ADHD, I do need the closure of something because I normally have 20 things going at one time. So I need the closure so I can tell myself, now it’s 19. Yeah. And, be able to focus on 19. I, worked, with a guy, a while back and, and he was just like, write everything down.

[00:39:34] That’s the most important thing I can tell you as somebody who’s been successful. Write everything, down. in your phone, on a piece of paper, make notes on me, about meetings, what happens in meetings, make sure it’s all on paper. that, that really started to encourage me to just get the calendar down, write everything down, keep, because I was trying to keep it all in my head.

[00:39:53] it could, it was easy when there was one or two meetings a day, three meetings, once you get to six, seven, eight, nine, you’re like, alright, I don’t even know where my brain’s at. yeah, I think, keeping a good calendar, making sure that you’re keeping that updated, checking it every day.

[00:40:08] Okay. Looking a week and a half week ahead seeing what’s going on. Do I have to what I have to prepare for the next week? So then I have to slot those in hours into my schedule. How do you avoid the shiny, exciting thing? Because when you’re doing that, you’re looking at the thing that is next week.

[00:40:25] Yeah. How do you avoid trying to start the thing next week when you know that’s not the thing you need to focus on? So then. What’s the discipline to that? Because that’s the hardest part is discipline. Oh man, I list also the most important thing lists for me. making sure I, I write down what are the things I need to get done before this happens.

[00:40:44] and then whether that’s in my phone or on a piece of paper that I, sticky onto my bathroom, which, oh, you’re the sticky old guy. I, used to do that and it just, it ended up just a ton of sticky notes. Is that why 3M stock drop ? No. . but, yeah, God bless 3M and all of that. But, we.

[00:41:05] we need to make sure that we have something in front of us that reminds us all the time. some people are good at just doing that, but not me. I, have something visual. so making sure that I can, have that list in front of me. When, I have a vacation coming up on Wednesday. What happens, what do I need to get done?

[00:41:24] Everything’s got to get done. And if you don’t, how do you best delineate those duties to people who are available in your company? and if nobody is available, what do you do? it’s, a lot of times you’re missing events. A lot of time you’re staying at work late. And, I don’t, ever since I had my, my kid, I tried to respect family time and boundaries.

[00:41:45] It’s hard. I do a lot of time I’m bringing that home and I’m doing that. And as much as my wife wants to kill me at eight o’clock, I’m like, this is important. Yeah. yeah, That’s, that is a very hard thing is to, especially when you’re running multiple businesses is when do you flip it off?

[00:42:01] Because it really never flips off. It’s 24 seven. So it’s really about allocating your time. Yeah, and I think I got to be better at those boundaries too, but it’s difficult when people are always asking you questions. Biggest boundaries I’ve set as an owner, that others in leadership and C suite should definitely try and follow.

[00:42:20] getting rid of texting your, staff. We move things to one, one platform. We’ve moved it all into the Google suite of platform. But, I try my best to, is that to give them boundaries? It’s hard to set, but yeah, give them boundaries, especially not necessarily your management staff, but I used to let people call me, text me at all times.

[00:42:38] And it became a problem with boundaries and people inappropriately contacting me at different times for questions. No, absolutely not. here’s, here are the times to reach me and I will try my best to get to you. So it’s about the communication of it. Yeah. Communicating the boundaries. There’s, boundaries are hard to set.

[00:42:55] I’m not great at it either. I, it’s something that I need to keep growing at as, as an em, employee for the company and owner of the company. Okay, folks. There you go. There’s vulnerability, right? Vulnerability is important. You had mentioned the term visualize. I’m big on visualization, like I feel like if I can see it in my mind, then I can start to break it down and figure out how to build the roadmap to go get it.

[00:43:23] The hardest part, I think sometimes is we try and go after something that we actually can’t see. Like we can’t see it in our mind. I think that becomes very difficult. You’re almost, You’re almost a drift out in the ocean, right? Just without a rudder. And I think the visualization is really important and to be able to see it.

[00:43:43] how do you visualize? Is that something that is key for you? Do you, are you a vision board person? Are you a wishboard person? No, I got one of those strange brains where I can like, I’m like compartmentalize everything in my brain, and I’m working while I’m working on this right now. I’m doing this podcast, but I’m also thinking about 10 other things.

[00:44:02] You got some beautiful mind stuff going. What’s going on? Not completely. just, I’m just, I’m very good at compartmentalizing that. Yeah, that’s like a file cabinet up there. Okay. I’ve been working on different projects at the same time. You’re not going to, you’re not going to be able to lead a company if you can’t work on 50 projects at once.

[00:44:21] If you think you If you think you can, go ahead. I want to see you try. It’s tough. So I have to be able to, I know, every single thing that’s going on in my company. There’s not one thing that’s happening there. Maybe I don’t know exactly how to do it. I don’t know how to go into the database and fill out certain things.

[00:44:38] But I know every single thing and every single process that’s happening in my company. Because I have to focus and put the attention into it. And I have to talk to each one of the people, make sure that I understand those processes. Because the more I lose touch with that, the more I lose touch with my employees.

[00:44:50] www. microsoft. com www. microsoft. com so maybe I’m off the track a little bit, but building, we’re going, we’re talking about vision. Vision, like I said, needs to be narrow. If you start doing everything, you do nothing. That’s always been my philosophy. You do everything, you do nothing. what do we do? We do testing.

[00:45:05] We do these testing services. We’re not trying to do every, we’re not trying to do related services and start doing therapy and start bringing in a bunch of therapy clients and start bringing in insurance payments. And no, we’re a, one stop shop for. This is what we do. Maybe once we hit that hundred million dollar mark, then we can start talking about expanding it.

[00:45:25] So maybe we’re going to be like a, tech company for sure. Maybe we’re going to build our own platform that other places can use. So vision for vision, having the narrow vision really helps you to stay consistent with the way that you’re managing the employee experience, but at the same time making sure that you live up to the brand promise.

[00:45:43] When you start to get outside of your lane, you’re You, will inevitably let something down. One of those categories down. Absolutely. You have to live up to your brand promises. You can’t just go out there and just say, yeah, we’re going to do X, Y, and Z. This isn’t, and then just shifting that all isn’t that we’re not politicians.

[00:45:59] We’re not, this is not, a general election. We can’t just, or whether people, I want to be wrong. Oh my gosh. What a beautiful thing. Oh yes. I, don’t, know if I could stand, I’m so bad with that kind of like standing behind things and telling people what to do. I wouldn’t be able to.

[00:46:15] Sorry, Tom Skilling. Tom Skilling, I’m not coming for you. I’m not coming for you. No, you’re, safe. I’m going to ask you a really blunt question because I’ve been thinking about this and may or may not be tossing this around in my head and trying to figure it out So why not throw it out here in the podcast?

[00:46:33] especially in small to mid sized businesses, but I think in corporations as well as Culture becomes so important. It’s such a topic of conversation. I hear businesses telling their employees That we’re family It’s like a, it’s a family. Now your business actually is a portion family. You have family that is there.

[00:46:55] But is it bullshit for corporations to say we’re a family knowing full well that at some point, if one of those so called family members makes a mistake or makes a choice to do something else, that they’re no longer family. I’m gonna give you a bold answer. Most of the time it’s bullshit. Most of the time it’s bullshit.

[00:47:21] I wouldn’t trust it from any private equity, venture capitalist backed company that’s just in it for the profits. I wouldn’t trust any of them saying that. We, on the other hand, we are actually a family company. but we’re trying to become, big bosses. We’re trying to become big guys. But even then, let’s just say for instance that your sister Let me give you some examples of how we differentiate from other places.

[00:47:47] I’ve brought in now, I think we have 12 administrative team members. I’ve thrown PTO out the window. PTO is an archaic, archaic thought process. We have, we’ve talked about this all night. Yes, on text we talked about this. And how we’ve been built into these archaic concepts that we think, this is the way it needs to be.

[00:48:07] And every day you wake up and you put on your clown makeup and you tell yourself, Oh, This company cares about me, and this company’s got my back, and then 25 years later they fire you and you’re out the door. Yeah, two weeks before your pension. Two weeks before your pension. But you were family. You were family, yes.

[00:48:25] We, okay, let’s start with this, the PTO. We give all our people actual flexible plans. We had somebody that was hospitalized. We didn’t take any, we didn’t take any pay away from them. they went over their sick time. That’s, sick time is a construct. You shouldn’t be able to take as much sick time. How can they, how can you control sick time?

[00:48:43] If you’re sick, you’re sick. you can call them all personal days. We, we don’t have sick, we don’t have vacations. Every day is just personal time, days off. people take it, it’s a trust system like you talked about. It has to be trust back and forth. You don’t abuse it, we don’t come after you and have to have a conversation and bring you into the principal’s office.

[00:49:05] essentially, our people are taking probably four to six weeks. We’re not saying go, out and take three, four, five months. But does that mean that they’re also working from six to midnight and not clocking in or calling you up and telling you, Hey boss, I’m working. They’re just getting shit done.

[00:49:21] Some of them might need to do some work from six to 10 o’clock on some days because it’s project driven. They’re getting it done. Never told anybody you got to be in from nine to five into my office. Okay. So that’s the other question I was going to ask you is the whole concept of eight to five, a ridiculous concept.

[00:49:36] Ridiculous. Okay. Why? Archaic again, people’s lives are so different. What? You need to go to a doctor’s appointment and, Take off an hour two hours your kid has something important in their life You need to take off time, but that’s the family stuff that we’re talking about those your family company They say all right Just get the work done what you know It’s to get the work done when you can at the appropriate times if you’re not make if you’re not making the deadlines if you’re Not getting the job done, then we’re gonna have a conversation about What these boundaries are and how you’re not respecting the boundaries, but if I’m also giving you unrealistic expectations to meet and then also telling you, you also have, you can’t take this time off.

[00:50:13] Sorry. No, then I’m that I’m the problem, but I’ve never denied once time off to anyone. My people for any reason whatsoever. I have some, I have constraints about when they can take extended vacation at certain times of our slowest times of the year. Busy season. You can still, busy season. You say, my sister’s getting married in Greece.

[00:50:33] I’m not going to say, yeah, too bad. We’ll back up. No, I’m going to tell you go over time. So that’s again that people over profits. Let’s go back again. 2021 pandemic was happening. Our business was falling apart. We were in a business at that point was 90 percent staffing positions into schools and schools were shut down.

[00:50:53] We had zero line of revenue. Yet, my father and I, we sat down and we had a conversation that when we told every single one of people, you are not going to lose a dime because of this. You And from, we took money out of our pockets, we paid our people, we make sure we got through it. That’s what a family company does.

[00:51:11] You don’t say, sorry, our clients aren’t paying us, so you’re not going to get paid. Eventually, the government did step in somewhat and give us some paycheck protection plan, blah blah, bullshit. But, it helped us get through, but the amount of money we lost, oh my god. Yeah, stop calling it a family company just because you party with your employees after hours family environment, but you, party with your employees after hours, you maybe you play golf on the weekend or whatever, but if, there’s a event, in the family, it’s like you need to put in for that time off a thing is, I agree with you.

[00:51:47] I think it is archaic. The other thing that I think stands out is, in many cases, CEOs, owners of companies, whether it be a solo owner or multiple partners, the ideal thing for them is to have their employees want to take ownership of the business. When I say that, I don’t mean equity. take ownership, like love the business as close to as much as possible as if it was their own.

[00:52:11] you want them to be constantly talking about how beautiful the experience of the business is. Now here’s the problem that I see in many cases business owners that are working 24 seven seven days a week 365 they’re constantly going therefore they’re not going to be in at eight o’clock sometimes they’re going to have to they might have been up till 10 doing work.

[00:52:33] They have to sleep, they have to recharge their batteries, so they might not come in until 10, but, you see the staff members be held to, you have to be here at this time, and you, have to take this at this point, and you can only leave at this point, but get the thing done at the deadline, but also you got to go to John, you also have to be a father or mother.

[00:52:57] and you’re out till midnight because you have to do that portion of your life, but you have to be back here, but don’t burn out because we need you to be ultra productive. It’s there’s a lot of conflict going on there. And now with both parents working, it becomes even more of a struggle because you have to do it and then you have to keep up with the Joneses as well.

[00:53:18] To make sure that you provide for your family and get them to different places and so on. It’s a struggle. So when does the system break? When does the system break? Does it need to break? The system’s broken. Is it? It’s broken, but it needs to break. All right. Let’s just talk about all the different ways the system has already broken.

[00:53:38] All right. Let’s go start with insurance because we know I was, I was gonna bring that up. Our health insurance last year went up 18%. How much did cost of living go up? Maybe 3%. I don’t know. Did it pull up the number? But I mean it’s, it feels like maybe, it feels like more than that.

[00:53:55] 4%. It feels It feels yeah. How much? How much more is people, are people getting paid? Meanwhile? They’re not. They’re getting paid less. Yeah. Meanwhile, you have these insurance companies claiming, woe is me claiming we have no more money left, so you need to pay more. Our formulas that we created Our formulas that are not making us as much That we invented don’t work Are not making us as much money And I think I wrote something down earlier which was, where I’ll find it, Yeah, it’s just, ok In general, I’ll find it in a second, but In general, it’s like, if they’re given They’re claiming poor Again, they’re giving their executive team billions of dollars in bonuses, who also advertises more than any other industry, probably except for the beer industry, pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceuticals, we saw that recently, insurance, insurances everywhere, but a lot of it’s your car insurance out there, but they, want to write these plans and they want to tell you, They wanna rewrite history right after and tell you, okay, actually we didn’t get this right.

[00:54:59] You owe us 50% more . Okay, I’m not making 50% more. No, that’s not our problem. Talk to your bosses about it. Your bosses come to you and say, no, we can’t pay you. Pay you. Yeah. Anything more. It doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist. Yeah. You have to have the revenue. So that’s just one part of the broken society housing.

[00:55:17] Have you seen it lately? People can’t afford houses. People who are buying them, it’s like 1%, 2% of people are able to do it right now. Yeah, you have to have 120, 000 income to buy a house that used to be 75, 000. Barely get, 120, 000 is just struggling these days to get through. That used to be a badass income.

[00:55:39] Yeah, I remember I came out of college and I was like, if only I could make 100, 000. If only I could make 100, 000, I’ll be set. Yeah, once you made 100, 000, you’re like, man, I wonder what it tastes like to make 120, 000. And then you make 120, 000, you’re like, oh my god, what does 150, 000 feel like? Yeah. Now it’s that’s just More, more, yeah, they say more money, more problems.

[00:56:00] everybody comes after you, more things to pay for. But, no, I’m not here sitting with a private jet or a, yacht somewhere and just talking about money problems. the economy is hitting me as much as any other person here. I don’t know how some people are surviving. I don’t either.

[00:56:16] let’s put a positive light on it. What do you think the future holds? Not only for your brands and for your business, but what do you think the future holds? Do you think things are going to improve here? Are we looking at an improvement over the next? Five, six years, or do you think there’s more breaking that needs to happen and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better?

[00:56:35] I don’t think the breaking of the system is going to happen for quite some time. we’re talking boomer generation out of the picture at that time. I think you’re still stuck with a lot of people with constructs, But if we’re loud enough as a people, if we have enough voices as a people that say, this is not the way things need to be, insurance shouldn’t be employment, banded, because just, because, back in the 1960s it was so that your wife could get The husband worked in the wife got insurance through the father.

[00:57:11] That’s not what the world is today. So Gen X I think is, the Gen X is stuck because they’re, still close enough to the boomers where I’m Gen X. So am I, and where there’s still that toughness in that construct, but I feel like more and more Gen Xers that I talked to are starting to think The way that you’re thinking, you’re starting to see that it needs to break.

[00:57:37] And of course we know that, we know millennials, we know Gen Z is, hell bent on like work from home and they’re already out there. And I think everyone’s maybe trying to catch up, but also reel them in a little bit like, hey, look, it can’t happen that fast. Like it has to be paid for somehow.

[00:57:53] Sure. So I just wonder when it’s going to be. We were sold on this American dream that’s, you work your ass off. You do the right things. Yeah, you’re supposed to benefit rewards are gonna come to you and you’re gonna live a nice cushy life It’s like it’s getting harder. It’s getting harder and harder to do.

[00:58:10] Yeah. Yeah, that’s like maybe 5 percent of the people. Yeah Maybe I’m not talking to one. I friend c suite for at level friends Making good salaries. They’re paying, they cry about their salaries, right? But it’s all money’s relative though. They can barely survive You They don’t live in mansions, they don’t live in, they’re not, they don’t have private cars and jets and everything.

[00:58:34] They’re just average guys like me and you. Just trying to get by. They live, they’re trying to raise their kids. Spending 300, 000 a year just trying to pay for private school and all these different things. Yeah, I know you don’t have to go first. We’ll say they’ll say Let’s face it I mean once you establish a lifestyle To have the cost of business continue to go up the cost of life continue to go up so drastically and not have your income Consistent with that You’re seeing a lot of people that have worked very hard to get to the level of the threat that essentially are taking a pay cut without taking a pay cut.

[00:59:07] Yeah. we got up to that 100, 000. We got up to that point. Now everything is exponentially more expensive. So you, worked your tail off to get to a point and you’re being penalized for it. And that’s, ruining the American dream in that regard. Yeah, the sins of the past generation, let’s call it.

[00:59:24] So I think what we’re saying is we need to get a lot of shit done here as a world. And I don’t know how we segwayed over to this, but why not? We don’t script this bad boy. We just, go where we go. So we went here. so let’s talk about, the BHAG. So you got this, third business coming.

[00:59:42] Oh yeah. All right. So what’s the BHAG, right? The big, hairy, audacious goal. we were talking about multiple streams of income. What’s the big goal for you and the business and the family in the next five to 10 years? ideally we hold this family business for the next 30 years of my life.

[00:59:59] And it’s not something that I ever thought I was going to get into. So I always want, I want to go into things more and, have side hustles, just like everybody else. About things they’re trying to do. obviously I want to get into real estate like every other fricking person. but, a friend of mine who, there’s going to be plenty available.

[01:00:18] Yeah. real estate people come talk to me. Like I got some ideas. but, Let’s talk about my third ambition. A friend of mine, since from growing up, we’ve known each other since three years old. We call ourselves, oh, they’re Adam and Adam, we call ourselves Adam Squared. And we are essentially trying to do financial modeling for small businesses.

[01:00:41] With the large business appeal. Got it. He’s been doing corporate finance for 15 years about. he’s, him and I, like most people, are sick of making other people money. It’s time, to work for ourselves. we’re, I’m trying to help him, and I are building this out. It’s called Template Finance.

[01:01:02] We’re your template to success. It’s what we’re working on right now. You’re working on all those brand templates. But Template Finance, and I can send you some information about that later, we’re essentially doing financial modeling at a high level for these companies. And what does that mean?

[01:01:17] Whether it’s, at the minimum, signing up for a reasonable price for monthly reporting, an actual financial modeling, to give you a snapshot of where your business is at and what you need to be fluctuating in terms of. You know i’m spending way too much in a b and c a lot of people say they can do this But i’m telling you what this guy can do is magic.

[01:01:39] he is let me I wanted to buy him the sweatshirt. I saw it recently It says freak in the sheets and he’s talking we’re talking about excel. Yeah excel sheets. He’s a freak in the sheets the excel sheets and he gets it going there and he really knows what he’s doing. I, he’s helped me with my business so much.

[01:01:55] I’m like, Dude, we have to get this. We have to get this to other people just keep duplicating it If you own a small business and you want reporting you want fractional ceo cfo work. That’s what we’re looking to do We’re up in a bit. We’re going to build our brand We’re also having we’re going to be having happy hours for c level people similar to what we’ve been doing C suite level lunches.

[01:02:15] I actually love to have you at one of our future events, but we’re having monthly events just to get people together, talk about problems that we’re sharing and problems that we’re having as leaders in our industries. that’s just one of the things. Then also have drinks and have good time. Yeah. really the best conversation.

[01:02:32] I’ve been trying to get into my mad men era. you gave me a little bit of Johnny Walker. Thank you for that. You’re welcome. get, in, loosen me up for this conversation. get into my mad men era, but that, that, that doesn’t exist. I was reading, they used to call it the power lunch.

[01:02:46] Now, we’re, going into the power hour, which is four to five. I was just reading. Oh gosh. Don’t say power hour. Every salesperson from the early two thousands just threw up in their mouth. We’re not having a shot. Four to five o’clock. The power hour manager said, this is where you’re going to make a hundred phone calls before you can go home.

[01:03:04] All right. I’m not talking about that at all, man. Not even talking about having a shot every 10 minutes or a shot of beer every minute. No, we’re talking about. That four to five time is really becoming more free for more people and then meeting them right after work out in the, so that lunch has that power lunches being replaced by that power hour.

[01:03:22] So happy to invite you to one of our events in the future and, If you’re listening and you run a company, whether it’s one million to a hundred million, I’d be happy to talk to you, consult with you, help you grow your business and grow your network. Adam, final thought. Give us some inspiration.

[01:03:41] What’s the final thought? What would you like people to remember about this conversation or remember about you? How can you lift somebody up a little bit? How can you warm some hearts? Wow. What’s something on your mind? I didn’t, come from money, and it’s really been important to me to drive, in my drive to find success, and continue on that success.

[01:04:05] I think it’s really important for people out there to realize that those golden handcuffs are nothing but a fallacy. Your company doesn’t believe in you like you believe in you. Nobody believes in you like you believe in you. So you should show the world why you should have that belief in yourself. You show the world.

[01:04:23] So if you’re really interested in starting a small business, you’re interested in, branching out on your own. It’s scary. I didn’t have a golden parachute to help me if we didn’t succeed. I put my family’s house on the line. I put my own house on the line. I’d be happy to talk to you about how you can exit there.

[01:04:41] You can do it. There’s nothing stopping you from being the next, whoever it be, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Or the next best you I’ll be the best you can be that’s it I think somebody’s got that tagline. You’re the best you can be. I don’t think anybody’s ever said that before I think there’s another term no risk it no biscuit.

[01:05:02] Yeah, you have to risk it. Yeah the biscuit That’s it limp biscuit is what we’re talking, right? Yeah, they’re back on tour. I think so I don’t want to end with that. Let me keep talking

[01:05:16] I You Yeah, connect with me, Adam Credo, find me in LinkedIn, find me, you’ll find a bit, a ton of networking events throughout Chicago, too. I’m really trying to get into that. If you have any networking events that you run or anything like that, that you think would be great for somebody education, or you want to build events in education, that’s one of the next steps I’m going to with, our good friend spike I’m talking about.

[01:05:40] bringing out some events for that are sponsored by our company for related to education. So that’s really an area I want to keep going to. and, happy to start a conversation with anybody, network, take you to lunch, take you to coffee. Okay, let’s grab a drink. And listeners, if you’re in the Chicagoland area and you have a child or you have a family member who has a child, or you know of a family that has a child that is struggling with anxiety, depression, And, you want to create a safe place for them to advance their education and feel comfortable.

[01:06:15] And when I say comfortable, I mean in their own skin amongst other human beings that are dealing with the same thing that are getting the proper therapy. And the proper love and the proper education so that they can plug into this crazy system in their own way in a better way. Then you definitely need to reach out to Adam and Lumen Academy.

[01:06:36] And of course, we have CSES that is doing fantastic things as well. So I just want to remind you, Adam, you got shit done. we’ve really been feeling like we’ve made it lately. We’ve taken a leap. It’s been so impressive to even myself that I didn’t even think we could manage. We keep growing, we keep finding success in collaboration and helping each other.

[01:07:04] I’m happy to pass on my words of wisdom to whoever wants to listen. contact me, and let’s talk. Let’s have a conversation. Congratulations. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. Have a great evening. Cheers.

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