dictionary disruptive type of training program that he's doing.
So we're doing some cool boot camps with that.
So real excited about what's going on this summer.
Boot camps and workshops.
When is the workshop?
Do you have that by now or are you all in the process of building the infrastructure
for it?
No, we got dates on the calendar and all sorts of goodness.
So yeah, if you're going to ask me off the top of my head, I'm going to open my calendar
because I'm not as smart as I seem.
I don't believe that.
As memorizing everything, maybe not.
I can get that.
Neither did Henry Ford though.
So Jason, do you have a link for the workshop?
Not yet.
The page is going up like presently.
It'll all be accessible.
Our workshops for our program are going to be accessible off of our website at CX formula
and probably tomorrow if I have to guess.
It's coming fast.
All right.
That'll be fun.
And then the workshop that I'm doing with my buddy Will is going to start.
We're going to start telling people about it next week.
So yeah, so super excited.
The first workshop for our program is August 25th to the 28th.
Okay.
So that's our workshop.
I got some time to prepare for that one.
I got to say I love y'all's branding.
So branding is on points.
Really nice.
I'm excited to just see where you guys are taking everything.
And when I say branding, the way it looks and feels the copy and the way I'll talk about
marketing and stuff.
And every single marketer out there to me is like a potential friend who could help
move my mountains.
Right.
These are people who were all kind of trying to work on the same type of things.
As far as growth goes, marketers, operators, tech specialists, right.
The business world is so caught up in fighting, you know, and like tearing things down or
like making others feel awkward.
And you know, you've seen it.
Yeah.
But it's not the way to do it.
Right.
Agreed.
Exactly.
So yeah, I'm super stoked to see that.
And those of you listening in, get in and see that.
Go see what's being done.
Especially if you can find people who are so abundant, don't come at other people.
It's so rare to find somebody who doesn't go at somebody else in the market.
It's like, hang on for dear life when you find somebody like that.
Yeah.
I couldn't agree more, man.
Like I love that philosophy.
And I've just learned of the like I didn't start out there.
Right.
You kind of get trained by the ecosystem out there.
Like you get pulled in a direction.
You're going to swing as carefully as possible.
Even in politics, right?
Like everything that we're taught from a child, right?
Like you see it, you experience it.
And then when you get a taste, accidental or otherwise, of what it's like when you're
working together, it's really powerful.
I remember we did this amazing thing.
So in my big company, we did like a team building exercise.
And so we had at the time, I don't know, I'm guessing like a hundred or so employees.
And so we rented buses and offices in New Jersey right outside New York City.
So we rented buses and we went out to New York City and we did the scavenger hunt.
And so we broke the entire company to all these teams and they had to go and they were
competing to find all the clues and win.
And the win was when they realized that if they worked together, they would solve it
faster and stop working as individual teams.
But we didn't tell them that.
But almost every one of them figured it out as they were going through it.
And it was this like really powerful lesson in like not, you know, this co-op petition,
right?
Like, and, you know, as an entrepreneur, like as you kind of scale the mountain and you
see the next mountain, once you think you're at the top and you're like, oh my gosh, there's
all these other mountains to go.
Like I haven't even started yet.
Yeah.
You start to realize that the footprints that you want to leave, you can leave more footprints
and you can help more people when you find awesome people to kind of collaborate with.
And so that's what I love about our conversation so far have just been so awesome because we're
just aligned in so many ways.
We got to 36,000 recurring monthly revenues at Restaurant Connect, right?
That was the moment, right?
Everything is finally scaling.
And it was just like that old school movie Homeward Bound, where the animals get to the
top of the mountain and we looked and there was the Colorado Rockies instead of home.
And I was like, this sucks.
I was like, no, I don't want to do that.
I took several years off a break and realized, nope, I just set up shop right there.
I was like, I'm not doing that and left that company.
I left my partners and said, no, I'm done for now because it is, there's so many layers
of business ownership and it's so easy to allow ego, arrogance, et cetera, to kind of
guide you and make you think, you know, I can happy go lucky this, but it takes a lot
of resilience.
It takes a lot of patience to really move the mountains right way.
And I love that you use the experience aspect.
We had Adele Wong on the show on Friday and she's also about creating experiences for
people to really feel and internalize so much more that if we do those experiences, we just
learn so much more than if we're just trying to read a lot of a book.
So that's brilliant.
Yeah.
Well, and that's when we started like talking about these workshops and boot camps and that's
why we do those.
The emerging technology.
So that's resource number one.
I'm going to lead you into the other resource questions.
That's resource number one.
Two other resources, what two resources should visionaries and leaders dive into right now?
So I have a PDF, I think that I had shared with your group that I think is pretty awesome
if I do say so.
We put a lot of time and energy into it.
It's one of our kind of go to best strategies that it's a thinking tool that's also an execution
tool.
So I don't want to spoil it.
I want you to kind of go without knowing what it is.
What's the name of it?
Yeah.
So the website, I'm actually just looking it up to see where I put it.
Actually I don't know what the website you find that to be fair, everybody.
I didn't tell Jason about this being a books process or like videos that he recommends
out there.
So we're kind of going to fly today.
And I've been very impressed with what I've learned about Jason in both occasions that
I'm a big fan of people who are willing to self promote confidently.
Right.
If you know that your resource is doing something, then why in the world would you hide it and
not tell people about it?
So while you're finding that one, you have another book or resource that you recommend
to lead us out.
Absolutely.
So I found the first one.
So I apologize for taking a second.
I'm not on my normal computer.
I'm in the studio today, but it's gift.cxformula.com slash vision pros.
So we set up a special page just for your audience and it's a, it's a bad ass PDF.
Like go check it out, download it.
It will take you less than 10 minutes to go through.
And I promise you, it will change the way you think you may want to do it.
You may not want to do it.
That's cool either way, but it will change your thought.
I love it.
Transform your customers into marketing superheroes for your business.
Yeah.
So my whole universe is around customer obsession and obsessing over customer results, obsessing
over customer experience, obsessing over customer, uh, productivity.
How do you help them be the superheroes, right?
We're the guides on their journey.
And so how do you help them?
And when you do see up there in that corner, you see up there first-class business, we
got that superhero icon.
People think it's me.
It's the business owner that we work with.
Exactly.
And this is again, where you and I are so in alignment.
I love that our companies are so aligned.
It's it's that.
And so what this PDF does is it gives you this path.
Like I think questions are the most unbelievable gift someone can give you.
If someone gives you like a really powerful question, whether you answer it or not, it
changes your life.
And so I love that.
I love when coaches over my, my journey have asked a question that stops me dead in my
tracks.
I love when friends like my kids, they'll ask me a question.
Oh man, dude.
It's like the best teachers in the world.
Right.
And so I just love questions.
I love that.
It's a book I want to write at some point about that.
And as I talk to entrepreneurs all the time, I always ask them that question.
Like what's the most powerful question anyone ever asked you?
And I have this wealth of knowledge of these powerful questions.
This is one such question.
That's a podcast in and of itself.
Yeah.
Well, anytime you want to chat more about it, dude, but like that's what this is.
This is one of those questions that when I ask it to you and you read it in this, you're
going to be like, Oh my, Holy cow.
A whole like universe is going to open up to you.
I love that.
The gates are going to open.
I believe it.
I mean, that's the power question.
You're absolutely right.
I agree with that.
And so those of you listening in, somebody, somebody steal this and run with it.
The podcast can be named the question and launch yourself a podcast built around asking
people just that you could do so well in life.
By staying consistent with that.
So we'll be right back.
Those of you who are listening in right now, go to the, if you go to the comments right
now, you'll see the link.
You can dive in and start downloading that.
Jason, I'll bring you back on just a minute after we talk about sponsors a little bit
and we'll get rolling with your vision.
All right.
Welcome in to vision pros live with Jackson Calame.
I'm your show host.
We will be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building fantastic
visions out there.
Woo.
What's up vision pros.
Good to see everybody.
They good to good to talk to you all.
We'll look forward to your comments as well.
My name is Jackson Calame show host founder and CEO of first class business.
Welcome to vision pros live.
We've got Jason Friedman on the show today of CX formula.
And I'll say and beyond because people aren't limited by their titles or their businesses.
There's so much we can accomplish in this world.
I'm really excited to have them on because the, I'm just going to be honest.
The bromance is awesome.
We have similar philosophies for how we're building things.
We are abundant in nature.
He's got an awesome vision, some awesome materials he's put out there.
Start vetting those.
Start looking at that.
When you come across people who, you know, you can tell like, man, they got my similar
vibe.
Don't be bashful.
You know, go for it.
See what that looks like.
Explore fast.
If there's a divide down the road, worry about the divide.
Once you get down the road.
For now, just enjoy the time.
So without that, without moving in too much towards Jason's vision and his, the ink 5,000
magazines that he has behind him, we're going to talk a little bit about some sponsors that
we recommend.
So we've got Melissa Gray with the law spot up here.
Melissa Gray came on our show and you know, I didn't get to meet her.
We had somebody else in the pre show at the time and I almost canceled the show because
I didn't want an attorney on vision pros live.
Why?
Well, most attorneys are a little bit pretentious.
Most of them condescend.
Most of them don't.
They're in such high demand that they supply really terrible customer service to their
the individuals they work with.
That's what led restaurant connect my company to a $20,000 trademark lawsuit over a brand
name we already owned.
Why?
Because we weren't well prepared when it came to our, our legal counsel.
So I highly recommend checking out the law spot, get to know Melissa Gray.
She has been so awesome to work with and get to know, uh, we do have bias on this.
I work directly with her now.
She's got a great podcast that's coming out called beyond the goal as well, where she'll
be interviewing athletes, rising athletes about what is their purpose in life beyond
the goal.
That's going to be an awesome show as it releases its first few episodes in the coming days.
Then there's the healing Institute with Permalia Parham.
So the healing Institute, um, Permalia, it has one of my favorite characteristics of
entrepreneurs.
She is well seasoned.
What does that mean?
She's older in nature.
She's been around the block and had decades of wisdom.
She's been gathering holistic healers, therapists, coaches, et cetera, to pull into and network
so that if somebody needs different types of help in their life, people who prioritize
progress can go to this website and they can see who they might want to work with and have
a selection of professionals to filter through.
Now if you're a practitioner, you can also register on the website and get your own practice
listed.
Go through that, take a look at it, see what's there.
She's got a super great heart as a leader.
She's tenacious in terms of building out her vision and I've really enjoyed getting to
know her.
It's when I talked to her, it's like having a friend who's my exact same age.
And my mindset by the way is, is very much childlike.
I love to explore things, love to build things, love to ask questions, love to continue to
make progress.
She's that way and she's got a few more years on me.
I want to be like her when I grow up.
Um, so I don't have my water bottle by me and we're going to this water project here
uh, I like to have my water bottle by me, but guess what?
It's only like 10 yards.
I just got to go downstairs and get it.
When it came to my attention, there's millions of people in the world who don't even have
access to clean drinking water.
I finally figured out a way to slow down and say, you know what, we need to make time for
this guys.
Those of us who have the time to listen to podcasts, right?
We need to do something about this for the people in the world who don't have it.
I love that the water project shows us exactly what they do with the funds that we give them.
So if you donate to one of these communities, you get to see the outcome of them putting
that project together.
That transparency is something that I find amazing.
This picture that's on the screen right now reminds me of my children on Christmas day.
When these kids are celebrating water that way, I know how essential this is.
I also love meditating on the generational impact it has when we give to an initiative
like this.
So if you, if something else is on your heart and mind today, you got a friend or family
member with a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, or there's another, you know, a charity out
there that's going about doing good.
We've got 8 billion people to help in this world.
Please don't hesitate to drop the link.
You never know what ripple effect will happen.
You don't know if we'll talk about that cause on the show next.
That's really what the show is all about is giving as much as we can to those who are
in need.
And that's also why we bring people like Jason on.
So without further ado, we're going to bring Jason on.
We're going to talk about his vision of marketing, one of the subjects that I am just every time
I look at a business guys, my, my hand wants to get in my face because they're so trapped.
They're so lost and so many random initiatives.
And it is the most painful department to get people to let go of because people hang on
to it so tightly, even though they don't really know what they're doing or, and they're not
really qualified to do it.
Even the marketing professionals out there drives me crazy.
So getting to know Jason has been an absolute pleasure.
And we're going to talk about scaling past the random acts of marketing for good.
Let's put it behind us.
So Jason, thanks for being on vision pros live today.
Yeah, man.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
All right.
We got to talk about these ink magazines you printed out right before coming on this show.
I'm just kidding.
What are these ink magazines you got behind you?
Oh man.
What's the name?
Wait, what?
No, you know, early in my career, I, uh, I used to be enamored by awards.
I was like, what are all these awards that people are winning?
And not to say that they're not cool and I don't care about them, but like, I just didn't
even understand it.
Right.
But people were leading with all these things.
And I found out at some point, Oh, well, you got to apply for these things.
Like they don't just come to you.
You have to like actually be in the game.
So going back to like 2016 or so, when I figured this out, um, there was this ink magazine,
you know, it's an awesome magazine for entrepreneurs and such.
And so we applied and we want like, I don't know, a ink 5,000.
Right.
Like we were one of 5,000 people who won.
So which was awesome.
Right.
Um, but we started to get more recognition then for being a more serious business, um,
by doing that.
And I thought, Oh wow, like that's kind of neat.
And so I started to like really dive into like what they were doing and it was based
on growth and we were on a growth mission to begin with.
And so at the time my company was, I think we were like a thousand something.
I have the, I actually have the posters in the other room from that.
This is my current business, but from one of my previous ones.
And so then we, every year we kept applying and all of a sudden, like we were winning
every single year because we were still growing very, uh, very quickly.
Right.
And so our goal back in the day, our vision was to transform at that time was like fortune
100, fortune 1000s that we were working with and help them really transform their client
experience becoming more customer focused, more customer obsessed at the time.
And our business grew from when we started, it was like me in my living room.
And then I moved to an office then to a bigger office and a bigger office.
We ended up with over 2000, you know, FTEs.
We ended up with city offices and cities across the globe.
And I ended up exiting that business in the high eight figures.
And so that worked.
So those things for me, it was like, it was like one of those like light bulbs that like,
wow, like people don't take you as seriously unless you have authority of some sort.
And those things add to the authority.
And so I don't pout them and what have you, but it is.
And so I sold that company in 2008.
I stayed on for a few more years as CEO and chairman.
And then I left and then I had a non-compete.
I call it my prison sentence.
I couldn't do marketing anywhere in the world for five years.
It was like, take the handcuffs off.
Right.
And so when that, when those handcuffs came off at the end of 2016, right in the beginning
of 2017, that's when I started CX formula, my current business.
And if I'm being totally transparent and honest, I was like, huh, I wonder if I just got lucky.
Like maybe I don't know anything like that.
I call it the itty bitty shitty committee, like enters your head and whether you've got
millions in the bank or not is irrelevant.
You start to question and your confidence, confidence comes as a result of success.
It doesn't show up for you.
It shows up after.
Right.
So I had done that, but now I was starting over.
For those of you listening into, I'll add confidence.
When we're talking about success comes from completing what you say you're going to do.
So if you tell yourself, I'm going to do three pushups right now and you get down and do
that, that's going to actually add to your confidence as small of an activity as that
seems.
So it's, it's about being authentically aligned with doing what you say you're going to do,
which and I think in Jason's perspective, I know in mine that is success.
That's what success is all about is getting up and doing what you say you're going to
do and being your best self.
Go ahead.
Totally.
No, no, absolutely couldn't agree more.
And so, so like we decided we're going to see if we can prove it to ourselves and like,
we're going to do this again.
So we built a new business and our, our vision at this point, right, change, right.
Our, our, our why change, like who we wanted to serve, who we wanted to guide was now entrepreneurs.
Like that's who we want to work with.
That's who we want to help because we believe that all of us, the small businesses, the
entrepreneurs out there, we have such an ability to change the world.
We have an ability to create a better place for all of us.
And so that's why I love working together and, and partnering with people like you,
because when we come together, we have a bigger legacy, a bigger impact, bigger opportunity.
So all that to say, we tried it again.
And so you have to, you have to be three years in.
So in 2020, we won number 64 out of 5,000 of the fastest growing companies.
That's awesome.
It was awesome.
4,979% growth, right?
So we went from zero to 9 million bucks in less than three years with a whole new business,
whole new model, whole new audience, whole new everything.
And then just after that we were number three in New Jersey in 2021 for massive growth again.
And part of me doing it, like I said, was to satisfy my own inner demons, right?
And just kind of prove that.
But also I wanted to show people like we have a formula that works and whether you're starting
from zero or you're starting from a million, 5 million, 10 million, I don't care what your
number is.
I give you an operating system that you can install in your business that allows you to
get those kinds of growth numbers.
Now granted, I'm extreme.
You're talking about that.
Do you do that for free?
Well, I got to ask.
So we wish, right?
So like I want to help as many people as I can, right?
So we share lots of great free content.
But if you want those kinds of results, you got to work with us, right?
And so what I've also noticed, and you probably noticed this too, is that people who pay, pay
attention and people need to have some skin in the game.
I love how you formed that because a lot of people say people who, you know, people don't
value free offers.
And I'm, I stand against that.
I'm like, that's baloney.
If I take free water, yeah, I'm not on that camp.
I'm glad that you said it the way you did, right?
People do pay attention though more when they pay.
Here's where, here's where I'm throwing that.
Jason, we went a little bit farther down the offer standpoint than we normally do.
We got a vision.
We want, we got a vision to talk about, but here's the beauty of it.
Our, our operational growth program is freemium.
Yeah.
And so there's a possible integration there that exists on that to help people because
we're trying to do this.
We're trying to turn on the light switch of entrepreneurship.
That's what we're all working towards building.
I think we're a couple of years out at least, but with the right people coming together,
we might only be a few years away of turning that type of success on for people.
So I got it.
I'm going to ask real quick and you can, I think this thread is going to continue, but
what's your vision for those that you serve?
What do you see them accomplishing doing feeling, you know, as they, as they interact with this
operational system and with you?
Yeah.
I mean, so it depends on where they are in their journey as far as how it hits them directly,
right?
Cause we're all at different stages, but if I was just to generalize my vision, right?
It's like, I want to help entrepreneurs create the freedom that they're most looking for.
Right.
And that's, that's vague and broad.
I get that.
It's beautiful and it's important.
You know, it's important.
I think so too.
But, but then as you start to look at where people are, that shows up differently for
where they are.
And then if they hit that stage and they, and they do it, then I want to help them at
the next stage too.
Right.
And so I call it freedom of choice.
Yeah.
Love that.
You know, it really is with, with mine too, the people it's like, we got to train people
to be leaders at the best possible levels, but if they're really struggling to lead themselves
right now, they're not probably going to be too great with the leadership of other people.
And so there are nuances to growth that you can't account for without diving in with that
person specifically.
So I thought you, I thought you said that really well.
What's your, what's your vision for you?
If we were to back up back away from the company as well and take a look at Jason Friedman,
what do you see for yourself?
Man, I want to be the world's best dad first and foremost, and I'm far from it, but I'm
working towards it.
So my kids are my biggest why.
And I want to show them by example, I want to be a great role model and I want to be
a great inspirer and motivator and friend and confidant and also a parent.
You know, there's some things like, you know, I want to be their friend all the time, but
sometimes we're going to make some tougher choices.
And so, so I'm that's, that's, that's my number one, but, but, you know, a close second really
is I want to leave a legacy of impact.
I want to help people.
I'm at a contribution phase of my journey.
I don't need to make the dollars every day to pay the bills.
I need to have the light bulbs going on in people's eyes when I'm talking to them and
helping them that I know is going to result in them taking an important action and moving
themselves or business or family, their company forward in a way.
What you said, I'm going to put a pin in, I get to color commentate.
That's easy.
Do it and pick apart the nuances.
First off, super beautiful.
And earlier when you were talking about your kids and them asking you questions, right?
That's also just a super sign of like, yes, thank you.
We need more business centers talking about the importance of spending time with their
kiddos, making sure that they are priorities.
Now you talked about, you're at that contribution phase and I hear a lot of near baby boomers
starting to talk that way.
It's like, they're not trained on it, but you hear enough stage speakers talk about
it to, and I don't want to tear it down.
I, it's sensitive.
It's like, man, he's making me look bad.
No, no, no, no, I'm not.
What I'm trying to do is create a, create a new door and opportunity for those who are
not at the contribution phase and say, please don't hear that.
Please realize that if you start your life off working with your passions, right?
If you start your life off by doing things the right way, you don't need to get to a
contribution phase.
You can start your life off that way.
That's exactly what this book is all about.
Right?
The four-hour work week by Tim Ferriss is, you know, and it's a controversial book for
those of the past generation, but for those of the newer generations, they do have the
opportunity to dive right into that and say, you know, I'm going to start my contribution
phase now.
I have a feeling that's what you want for your kids.
Am I wrong about that?
If it's okay, if I'm wrong.
No, you're not wrong about that.
I think here's what I think it means though.
Like it either, it, it's probably a personal meaning for each person, like what that really
looks like.
Right?
And so for me, it's like, it's a little different.
Like, so, so I've done a few of these, I'll call them crazy exercises.
Cause when I'd say it, people are like, wow, that's crazy.
But it's like you write your eulogy, right?
And so you write this eulogy of like, what do you want people to say when you pass away?
Or I've been in the strategic co I was in the strategic coach for 14 years.
Dan Sullivan does an exercise.
He calls the lifetime extender.
It's like, you think you're going to die at a certain point.
Let's say you don't, how many more years you have.
And then like, what do you want to do in those extra found years?
When you do exercises like this, you start to think about things in a different way.
It's like beyond making money, beyond paying your bills, beyond whatever the normal stuff
is, what if you could do more?
Like what would be intrinsically you that you'd want to do?
And so these are those powerful questions that I was talking about, right?
So I'm going to ask you a question like that.
It changes your thinking.
And then all of a sudden the set that the follow up question is, well, why don't you
start doing that now?
Or like, what would it look like if you started doing something towards that now and you don't
wait till the end of your life for that.
And so I was graced with that question when I was 23 years old.
Like, wow.
Right.
And so for me, contributions started then and it was a part of it.
Now I'm trying to do more of it.
So it's like the 80 20s flipped, then it was 20% maybe contribution, 80% whatever.
Now it's 80% contribution, 20% whatever else, because that's just my journey.
That flip, it doesn't have to occur for those of you who are younger.
It doesn't.
You just need the right mentors.
You need the right guidance.
100%.
You need the right bravery as well, the valiance to dive into it.
And it's hard when you have people around you who tear that away from you.
I'm sensitive to that.
I was lucky at five years old, I was poised to do the same questions that you were at
three.
I think a lot and anybody listening right now, you're being poised with it right here
and now.
So we can choose to have the attitude of like, well, you know, Jackson's always talking about
I'm just going to throw that out.
Well, you know, in one ear out the other, that's totally fine.
But I hope that some of you take a look at that and say, well, wait a second.
What if I stepped into that now?
What could happen?
What would be my worst case scenario?
And what would be my best case scenario?
And what actions can I start to take?
And only you can give yourself the sense of security to know how fast you should run on
that.
But that that door there's I can't set the contextual reality for you nor can Jason nor
can anybody else and say what you can do.
That's what that's yours to own and move on.
Let's move into a dark subject, Jason.
Yeah.
What's the worst leadership experience that you've ever had?
Me as a leader or me being led?
You can go either direction with this.
Oh, what's most valuable to the audience?
And feel free to just kind of think on that.
Yeah, I mean, I think right now, a very dear friend of mine is going through a situation.
And it's been a PhD course in like failed leadership in my experience.
And I've been living it vicariously through this person.
And the short version of the story is, it's a large company that is having a lot of struggles.
And so they're about to lay off or they're in the process of laying off a very large
majority of their workforce.
And you know, taking responsibility for what went wrong, not happening, showing up for
any of the people that are about to lose their job is the way they're handling it, in my
humble opinion is unconscionable.
The way they're handling the people that they want to stay behind and be part of the company
is the most demotivating.
Like there's nobody that's going to want to stay.
And so there's no vision to kind of tie it back to something that you talk about a lot
and I talk about a lot.
There's no real leadership at all.
And so it's like every single step of this, I'm just like looking at it saying, take some
ownership.
Obviously, there's some leadership issues there.
And now, what do you want this business to become?
Like you're trying to save the company for what?
To what is it going to be?
Like, what do you want people to get excited about jumping on board for?
You got to get people to re-enroll at this point.
You can't just expect that they're going to stay on the sinking ship.
It's the Titanic.
It's going down.
You're not going to get a vote and you're not giving them one.
And that's, to me, it's just horrifying to be in that situation.
And as recently as this morning, I was talking to them and it was just like another bad decision
comes down.
And so I just think like when you're given an opportunity to be in a leadership role
and you're leading people, there's people.
I get that there's a business.
I get that there's financial challenges, but there's human beings that you enrolled at
some point into your vision, you brought them into your world.
I don't see how you can just completely turn your back and treat them like garbage at that
point.
And it's just, I've taken so many leadership lessons by applying the opposite of what they're
doing right now.
So yeah, it's just, it's shocking to me.
It's sad.
All of that's so important to learn from.
And I have to kind of, I don't know, I'll say repent.
I have to kind of change on something here because I talk about how hard entrepreneurship
is and how unlikely, you are to win with it.
96% people fail within 10 years, 4% survive the process and very few actually thrive.
But on the flip side too, the corporate reality, there's almost just as much volatility if
not more.
It's hard to compare the two and know what actually exists there.
I mean, I'm looking right now at layoffs.
John Deere is doing layoffs right now.
Google Cloud announces job cuts three days ago.
Amazon layoffs in Stockton impact 390 workers.
Microsoft confirms layoffs right now, 22 minutes ago.
So the reality is there's, I mean, one life's not meant for us to have stability at all
times.
We constantly are going to have adversities, but if you have a great job, save, save, save,
save.
Like build up what you need so that if that happens, you've got the ability to exit with
that foundation of the security that you've just enjoyed for however long you were there.
And if you're on the entrepreneurship side, realize, like get some pride in realizing,
you know what?
The grass isn't greener.
I need to buckle down and build.
But that corporate, there's a myth about how structurally sound corporatism is.
And the scary reality about that is you never really know where your company's at and what's
coming towards you when you give your financial and your job security freedom to another entity.
What are your thoughts on that?
Listen, I agree.
Look, you and I both fundamentally unemployable, right?
Our employers are our customers, right?
That's who we answer to.
But at the end of the day, I think you're right.
And I think this, as an entrepreneur, think about it though.
You have employees too.
You're not necessarily a large corporation, but it's just like, how do I show up for the
people that have, people have mortgages, lives, families, expenses, whatever, and they're
trusting you as their leader, right?
As you were talking about leadership.
So I'm just thinking like at the base minimum, we have a duty, right?
A fiduciary duty to the people that say yes to come be part of our teams and to share
our vision and to work with us that we should really, like we can't guarantee success and
we might have failures.
We might have to lay some people off and you have to do what you have to do.
There's just perhaps a right way and a less than right way or a lot of right ways and
a lot of wrong ways.
And I just urge you to find a compassionate, empathetic leadership approach to handling
both positive and negative situations with people.
Because I think it says a lot about your culture, your core values, your mission, your vision,
who do you want to be when you grow up?
Who do you want people to think about your company and your business, your customers?
It's important.
And so in all of my businesses, even the larger ones, which have been still small businesses
by definition, really, we are a family and we think of our customers as part of our extended
family.
And so, you know, you got to treat people a certain way if you really want to have it
feel that way.
And I think there's a leadership lesson in that.
Massive.
And I've heard of the book, Profit First, I've skimmed it.
In fact, Dr. Todd Snyder was the one who said for me to read it.
And there's a big difference in profiting first and paying yourself first.
Right.
And I think sometimes people mix that.
And maybe in the book, that's what he's advising, you know, is to just cover your own self before
everybody else.
But I don't I don't necessarily agree with that philosophy.
I mean, my team needs to know where we're at.
They need to know that we're a startup, too.
We're not VC backed.
You know, they understand the risks associated with that.
They understand that, you know, in fact, our company where we're at, at this stage, if
I die tomorrow, I think there's probably a 40 percent chance, you know, that the company
would survive and the executives would continue to pull it together.
So having those realities known and established amongst your team, being willing to answer
those types of questions gives people solidarity to show up for the right reasons.
You know, and it gives them the also the ability to have their own strategies in place should
the worst case experience happens.
And I'm sure we've both been there with with different team members at times.
So we are going to move to the lighter side of this, the lighter side of this conversation,
what's the best leadership experience that you've ever had?
Yeah, that's a good question.
You know, I think.
Seeing one thing, this is another one.
I'm going to give you something similar, but on the on the on the white versus the dark
side, right.
But you know, we had a we had a situation with a client.
It was our largest client.
They were growing very rapidly.
And so at the end of one year, they were like 35 percent of our total business.
And in the end of the second quarter of the next year, they were 65 percent of our whole
business.
So that's a scary place to be with a client, as awesome as it is that they're growing so
much.
You just you're exposed, right?
As a business, right?
So just keep that as the background for the story.
But then we were building a they were they were rebranding.
They bought another company and they were rebranding all their their locations in New
York City, Times Square.
And we were doing some cool technology experiential stuff for them with their marketing.
And so we were building this like interactive store sign that was LED Jumbotron and Times
Square so people could like interact with their phones and like play a video game on
it, do all sorts of cool stuff.
But this screen was massive and it was the front of the store.
Like it's what separated like the winter snow from coming inside.
So it became the wall outside.
And the short version of the story is our vendor was telling us all along that they
were going to have everything done with the screen.
It was all good.
And we found out like two weeks before, like customer day one for the big flagship unveiling
that they lied to us and it wasn't actually going to be there.
And so talk about like egg on your face, possibly losing your biggest client, massive expense,
like like anything that could have been bad about this was.
And we were at fault no matter what.
I mean, we were being told one thing, but we're it's it's you are a contractor.
It's my contract.
Right.
And so, you know, when I found out what was going on, it got escalated to me very quickly.
I was a CEO.
Right.
And so like I said, OK, great.
Failure is not an option.
What are our options?
Like what can we do?
Right.
And I understand that get the right sign is not an option.
So now what's plan B, C, D, E, all the way through Z. And maybe we start over at AA.
Like I don't care.
I want to hear every possible alternative scenario that makes this awesome.
Like I just I need options.
We brought everybody together.
We brainstormed.
We came up with a ton of different options, whatever, in like a four to six hour window.
And then I flew to the clients the next day to share the news and the options.
And so when I went down there and this is a major financial institution that you definitely
know.
And so I went down there.
I flew down to North Carolina and I went into their headquarters office and I met with my
rabbi, my contact there, Michelle, and I sat down, I said, listen, I have good news and
I have bad news.
I want to start with the bad news.
And she's like, OK, I said, we fucked up.
Our vendor had a big issue and the screen that we brought that we bought that you bought
is not going to be able to be installed on time.
And I will take 100 percent responsibility.
You can shoot me now.
I understand.
Like we let you down.
I said, and I have a list of 30 options with the three that I think are the best options
to share with you for how we're going to get through this.
If you choose not to throw me out the building right now.
And she said to me, she's like, Jason, she's like, this is why I love working with you
guys.
You don't bring me problems.
You bring me solutions.
She's like, I know we'll figure it out.
Let's get down to work.
And like literally, it brought us closer together and we solved it.
And we rented a different kind of thing.
We build it as like the grand opening experience that was then going to transform form.
It cost us a fortune.
Like we had to put something in and like whatever.
There was expense to this nowhere near what it would have been to lose a client like that.
And so it was a survivable expense.
And then they gave us a ton more business.
So at the end of the day, like having the honesty, having the ability to go there in
person, share the news, but bringing solutions to the table, not just going and say, we have
a problem.
We screwed up.
I don't know what we're going to do.
Like, I'm like, I found out yesterday.
I flew down this morning and we had the team working around the clock to come up with these
options.
This is what it is.
And we can do and we'll do any one of these or any hybrid of any of these or any alternative
that we want to try and come up with together.
But we have options.
Like that just takes the edge off.
And so I think like when you're in that kind of a situation, I think it's how you show
up like bad stuff is going to happen.
Murphy's law exists.
And it's like, it's how you show up is a lesson in leadership.
And, and not to say that I have it all the time or on the best leader by any stretch,
but it was one of those where I think my background in theater, the show must go on.
I'll give you the trophy for the best leadership experience shared yet on this show though.
So, and let's, let's highlight that those of you listening, if you're, you know, less
than 20 years in business, go back and listen to this segment again, rewind, take notes.
What are all the little things that Jason just outlined doing and his boss and her reaction
to, you have the ability to put yourself in both shoes, sets of shoes.
They're going to be in both sets of shoes at some point in your career.
All the details matter that you broke down.
They're all the details that when I was a young entrepreneur had to learn one at a time,
getting my butt kicked in business, not knowing how to be a great service provider, not knowing
how to sway spheres, not knowing how to, you just, you have to get kicked in the teeth
and in the groin and everywhere else many times in business before you figure out how
all of those little lessons that you just shared matter.
It's like, let's give you a Grammy.
Let's give you an Emmy.
Let's give you an Oscar.
Let's give you every JD powers, everything.
Let's just go down the list.
Dude, that was awesome.
I appreciate that.
I want to say one other thing.
Like the, the thing that, that is true for me in any one of these situations is, is also
what's true for me.
Like one of my mentors, her name is Victoria LaBam.
She teaches people how to rock it on stage.
She's a performance genius artist, what have you, but what she says applies in so many
ways.
She always says, like, if you feel like you're nervous, like you have stage fright when you're
getting up on stage, she's like, it's because you're focusing on you, not on them.
And so her, her thing is like, like focus on delivering the value.
And what I teach is very similar to that.
It's like, I use my theater background.
It's like, we have an audience, our customer.
I'm like, if you focus and become obsessed over that customer, what are they thinking?
What are they feeling?
What are they expecting?
What do they need?
What do they want?
And you can deliver on that.
You will succeed.
And that situation that we were just talking about, I was thinking about Michelle the entire
time, like her ass is on the shopping block with her boss.
She's got bigger bosses than I got.
Right.
And she's got a bigger problem than I have because she brought me in.
Right.
Like, you know, so like, how do we, how do I guarantee that she gets what she needs and
she looks good and they get what they need as the client and they look good to their
customer and everything that we came up with.
And that's how I like, we came up with things that were crazy all over the map.
We came up with 30 random options in six hours.
Not all of them were good.
Obviously some of them were ridiculously stupid and maybe some of them were so expensive.
Like you couldn't have ever gotten there.
But when we filtered it down, the winners were ones that were really focused on them.
Right.
And their customers.
And I think that's what really is so important.
So like when you're in these situations, I know it's scary for the business.
I can lose my biggest customer.
None of that was part of this.
All of it was, how do we help Michelle?
How do we help Michelle?
We'll worry about if we can afford it later.
We'll worry about if we can even do it later.
But what are the ideas that help Michelle?
Yes.
So I think if you can focus so much on your customers and their success, lots of amazing
things become possible.
I'm smiling because I'm about to double down on you.
You ready for this?
Double down.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
If this is the last chance that you had to share a powerful lesson with visionaries and
experts out there, leaders, what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn from your
experience, Jason?
Dude, you've probably heard this before.
I hope I don't disappoint on this one.
But the number one thing I would say is-
If it's your best answer and your best lesson, I don't know.
Listen, I'm setting it up just in case.
Just in case.
Don't pull away from it.
It's the most basic thing I can tell you.
And I think fundamentals are really important.
Think bigger than you think is possible.
Most of us don't understand what we're capable of and we don't go and swing for the fences.
And so what I see entrepreneurs all the time, whether you're starting out or you're at a
million dollars a year in revenue or you're at $30, $50 million a year revenue, your vision
is not big enough.
We overestimate what we can do in a week and we underestimate what we can do in a year
or five years or 20 years or a lifetime.
And so I want people, don't put the pressure of, I have to do this, but put the game, the
fun, the excitement over what could I, what if I, what if, and think bigger, bigger in
terms of impact, bigger in terms of helping other people, bigger in terms of whatever
is important to you, team, time off, revenue, profits, I don't care.
Think bigger in a 10 X or a hundred X way than you are now and just do the exercise
of the thinking.
You don't have to go through with it if it's too scary later, but the thinking exercise,
it forces you to think about doing things differently than you're doing them today.
You can't just get incrementally better.
If you just do like what you're doing today, you can only get incrementally better.
But if you think this way, you can't do what you're doing now a little bit better to get
there.
You have to bust paradigms.
You have to shift things.
Some things that you're doing now have to go away.
So it's just a massively awesome thing.
I started doing it years ago and it's why we grew the way we grew and it's why we had
the impact that we have.
The fundamentals are the essentials in my opinion, they're the things that I gravitate
towards as well.
I would never take away from that quote, think bigger than you think is possible by Jason
Friedman.
Combine that.
If I was asked the same thing, what's my powerful lesson?
It's super simple.
Love, love, love, love, love.
That's why I want to stick to it.
And the cool thing is now I can take Jason's, how do I think bigger about love?
How do I insert love into thinking bigger?
You can take these principles like puzzle pieces and magnets.
I mean, they go right hand in hand together.
So that's a beautiful thought.
It's something that we forget our principles within hours.
You get hungry, we get tired, we get thirsty.
Next thing you know, we forgot all principles.
My runner up, I'm going to give you a bonus one if you don't shut me up, is gratitude.
Right?
Like practice gratitude because all the fear as an entrepreneur that shows up for you and
all the things that get you to stop doing, the second you can start to just focus on
gratitude of your accomplishments of the people you're serving, amazing things are possible.
Absolutely.
Now, all of you listening in, this title, Scaling Past the Random Acts of Marketing
for Good.
Right?
If you're listening right now and you're like, well, you guys kind of click baited us.
You didn't really talk about that.
I'm going to say right here and now too that you've oversimplified marketing for yourself
to your own detriment if you feel that way.
What do I mean by that?
Working with marketing experts, it's like working with a doctor.
It's sad in fact if you're working with great ones, it's more like working with specialists.
They can't possibly distill for you everything that goes in the department with even a 45
minute show.
The last thing you can find out is what is the character of the individual with whom
you're getting the advice from or who's going to teach you the strategies or who's going
to help you process.
Most of us need to get out of our own way when it comes to growth.
Even the chief marketing officer, that's the point of being chief, is to get out of your
own way and work with the team members who are going to help you create that success.
What would you add to that, Jason?
Let's take a few minutes to dissect this.
Scaling past the random acts of marketing.
What does that look like to you?
I love what you just said, first of all.
Kudos man.
Thank you for sharing that because I agree.
I think people matter most.
I think the thing that's crazy is I see people do what we consider those random acts of marketing
all day, every day.
You're talking about landing pages, Facebook ads, virtual assistants, cold messaging.
Are you talking about that?
I'm talking about anything that's about getting strangers to start to know, like, and trust
you.
We spend all of our energy, our budget, our resources, our time, our emotion on strangers
and getting strangers to say yes.
The detriment of the customers who have already said yes.
And the detriment of the stranger who's going to regret it tomorrow when they realize, holy
crap.
What did I just do with this person that just, they didn't swindle me, but man, they coerced
and what was I thinking?
And even if you justify it, guess what?
Your spouse isn't going to.
Your team's not going to.
Go ahead, Jason.
No, totally, man.
And so our whole world, the simplest way to say it is we try and flip the funnel.
I want you to spend your focus, a larger percentage, like that 80-20.
I want you to flip the 80-20.
I want you to put more emphasis on the right syllable, if you will.
I want you to focus on the people that did say yes to you.
I want the people that are in your programs, that are in your courses, that are in your
stores, that are at your yoga studio.
I want to get them results in a positive way.
I want to remove the friction, the obstacles that are stopping them.
I want to add some momentum boosters in places where they need that to get over the hump,
to get to that finish line.
I want to celebrate every little win that they're getting along the way to build and
instill confidence in them.
And I want to reverse engineer what we call the ideal customer script.
What is the thing that you'd love, the perfect testimonial, where they share their journey
and their results?
And that becomes the absolute 100% best marketing that you can put at the front end and then
pour money and resource at it that will generate a compounding effect so that every dollar
you spend in the front end is bringing you more right fit customers who are excited about
the results, who are going to be more engaged, who are going to commit to the work and are
going to get those results again.
You used absolute best in the way that I love.
And I'm okay with that absolute term.
And I'm going to argue with it a tiny bit and that what your formula you just talked
about, I freaking love it.
And I know how valuable and important it is.
I feel we've taken things to the next level at first class business on that because the
funnel for us, the starting point flipping and moving the tipping point begins when you
start promoting the funnel of joining the team, the candidates, the leadership.
I know right away when I go to somebody's website, if they have no careers page, if
they have no join our team page, they have no vision for scale.
Oh, I agree with that.
It's the one hidden concept that I don't hear anybody else out there really talking about.
I'm sure there's somebody out there, hopefully a few HR geniuses have gotten on stage and
started talking about that more.
And what I'm saying with that for all you listening in is if you can get the chocolate
ice cream and the vanilla ice cream, do it.
And who cares which one's best?
Just don't miss out on the opportunities to stop doing what 96% of people are already
doing to fail.
You're doing the things that are being done by people who are driving success.
And we just got to hear and see how Jason Friedman is doing that at so many different
levels.
So Jason, this was awesome.
We do need to wrap up for the sake of time.
I would love to have you back on the show.
I think there's room to dive in sooner than later, even on some of the concepts beyond
this, maybe even an event on LinkedIn, but getting one of the challenges of the entrepreneurs
in the world they face is there's just so many voices speaking against what you and
I are talking about.
Just go the easy route, make it simple, cut a few more corners.
You don't have to do this.
You don't have to do that.
There's so many people making that noise of just make it easy.
They're just constantly getting stuck in that.
But if we can bring voices together of people who understand the value of building the right
way, then more entrepreneurs will likely hear those voices, see it and say, you know what?
I'm done with all this noise.
I'm done with all the noise.
I want to do what's right.
Let's make it happen.
So thanks for being a phenomenal guest.
Guys, everybody listening in, vision pros, we're going to have action steps below the
actual recording and those action steps will get you connected with Jason.
We'll have the landing pages in there too.
If you have a vision you want to share, top right corner of the screen, you will see a
button that says, be our guest.
We'd love to host you.
If you're a leader, if you're somebody who wants to help this world move to better places,
you know ways that you can make that happen.
Even if you're not Bill Gates, even if you're not, who else should we call out?
Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres, Whoopi Goldberg, you name it.
If you're not main stage and you're somebody whose name's not well known out there, we
still want you on the show.
You don't have to have that type of backing.
We're looking for leaders who are getting started because it's fun to see you grow in
the process as the years go by.
That said, the rest of you who I just called out, we'd love to have you on the show as
well.
So without further ado, we're going to back out today.
Jason, anything you want to share before we wrap up?
Oh man, just think bigger, have a bigger vision.
Think bigger everybody and we'll see you on the next episode.
Take care guys.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to vision pros live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time
and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision.