What is the story behind your why?
We'd love to hear that.
The story behind what's so important to me,
which is, by the way, it's finding the uniqueness,
the magic in people or in brands.
The story for me is that I felt growing up
that I was not going to amount to much.
I wasn't gonna be good enough.
I never could perform, in my opinion, as well as others.
And I looked at myself very critically.
As I went through a young life into my teens
and into my early 20s, I had a few successes.
And one success was I was named Entrepreneur of the Year
for my state, the state of Indiana.
And I honestly, going to the award ceremony
to learn whether I won it or not.
So I didn't know.
I took my friends and my family, my employees there,
and I honestly felt there was no way I was gonna win this.
I just didn't think I was of that quality.
But to learn that, my gosh, out of many, many other
really good companies out there and good leaders
that I was chosen as Entrepreneur of the Year
gave me confidence and it fueled my passion
to look at uniqueness or differentiation and to honor it,
to not look at it as, okay, it's inferior,
or it's not as good as someone else.
It's the opposite.
It's like, no, wait a minute.
I do it a certain way, others do it differently.
But the way I do what I do, the way that I go after
looking at the magic in people and trying to really
amplify that has value.
So that's the story behind it.
It's not a one moment story.
It was a build of confidence inside me
for a number of years.
Yeah, I would love to hear more about that.
But in the sense of, if any of an example where
the magic that you saw and what you did with that magic,
I think that would be amazing because there's so many times
I as an owner struggle with seeing the way businesses
do their stuff and I am like, I can show you this,
but then you really want me to go there,
but that's not the path to go there.
And there's a lot that happens
dealing with entrepreneurs and leaders.
So if you have an example, I think it would be amazing.
A great example is I was speaking with one of the family
owners of a wonderful business and they create
what's known as a manhole cover or a man lid
for tank trailers that go down the highway.
Now you may say, oh, that sounds really boring,
but it's a very important product because that lid
through the tank trailer is actually a safety device
because a lot of times there are flammable liquids
or powders inside that tank.
And if somebody opens up that lid,
there could be an explosion.
So this company had created a man lid
that had a safety latch.
So I was talking to the family owner who was an engineer
and he was really downplaying it.
He said, it's a latch and we devised it
and if there's too much pressure,
it won't let you open the man lid
and it's not that big of a deal.
And I said, okay.
I said, do you charge more money for this?
And he goes, no, we don't.
And I said, okay, do you have competitors
that have this device, this special latch?
And he goes, no, no, no, we're the only people.
I said, did it cost you money?
And he said, oh, it cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars
to produce this, to create it, to engineer it.
I said, my gosh, well, what do you call this?
And he was silent and he looked at me and he said,
we just call it latch.
And I said, here's something that saves lives.
You don't even charge more money for it.
You don't tell people about it
and you don't even have a name for it.
And I said, have you celebrated this with your employees?
And he said, what do you mean?
I said, here you are, you're spending all this money
using the brilliance of your company
and you should be celebrating it with your people
and saying, hey, by the way,
this is the kind of company you work for.
And many of you played a big role in this.
Let's look at this as a triumph.
Let's look at this as something that's a badge of honor,
something we're proud of.
That's an example, Harry, of the things we do
on a daily basis that sometimes we even denigrate.
And my why is I want to find those things
and I want people to understand
that they're part of something bigger than themselves.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Thank you for sharing with us.
That was amazing.
My next question for you, Barry, is twofold.
The first part is why do you think in experience
that leaders hide from funding their vision?
And the second part to it is how can those leaders
then lean into funding that vision?
When you're talking about funding their vision,
are you talking about them looking at their vision
and then looking at their vision
and kind ofίναι ahorl you get support?
I'm talking about Harry.
Yeah.
Oh sorry.
You cut off for a second.
I couldn't hear you.
Yeah.
You shut off too.
I was asking, I'm asking a question regarding funding.
Are you talking about financial funding?
It could be both.
A lot of people have answered it
as literally financial funding.
And a lot of people have answered this using
the lighter version of funding, like your resources, your energy, your time, everything
you put into it and funding that vision.
You can answer as which are way you will prefer.
Well if a leader is truly in any way, shape or form hiding or downplaying what their vision
is about, whether they're trying to look for increased money, let's say, or resources,
or some sort of funding or belief, I think that it also implies to me that they don't
have confidence in what they're all about.
And to me as a leader, we either are all in or we ought to get out.
We can't toe the line.
And if we avoid rallying our troops or rallying our supporters behind what we're doing, then
my question back to the leaders is, why are you doing this?
If you don't believe, why do you think anyone else will?
That's true.
And how do you think the leaders lean into funding that vision?
The smartest things I can see leaders do and have seen them do, whether it's looking for
money, whether it's looking for resources, whether it's looking for some sort of partnership,
is to share the vision, share the importance and the uniqueness of the vision, not just
the end result of return on investment from a financial standpoint.
I personally believe that return on investment and projections can be manipulated.
They are highly overrated because you can have wonderful projections and in reality
have almost nothing of value.
And I have yet to see somebody who wants me to support their vision and see as I look
at their pro forma, which is basically going to predict what their future is.
The extraordinary success is amazing on paper or on a spreadsheet, but the truth is we're
all human beings.
And what we need to do is lean into the human aspect of, as a leader, your belief, because
you have to be the face of what people are going to fund, of what people will march behind.
And if you show conviction and belief, and by the way, a pretty smart plan, you're going
to get support.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Thank you for sharing that.
I think a lot of people miss out on the fact, things that you just mentioned.
It's very valuable what you shared today.
For audience, I would say, re-listen to that if you didn't hear it so you can understand
what exactly he meant.
That was awesome.
And the next question for you, Barry, is I think you don't get it enough.
Just kidding.
What tips would you have for entrepreneurs or leaders?
I've been asked that many times because I am an entrepreneur.
I did start up with nothing.
I am definitely a bootstrapper.
I've never had a loan.
I never got funding financially.
I believe the most important thing an entrepreneur can do is to make sure he or she is producing
a product or service, whatever their company or business is about, that they are proud
of.
And I have a real strong message to those who say, let's scale up, let's do 10x, 100x,
let's grow.
I am opposed to blind growth at the expense of integrity or quality.
There are too many entrepreneurs out there that are deluding themselves with the idea
that we can go grow and we can make so much money and just sit back every day and wait
for the checks to come in.
I offer one serious bit of advice for all entrepreneurs, and that is if you're going
to do anything, grow slower than you would like and be at a higher quality of product
and performance.
Thank you for sharing that.
I cannot emphasize enough what you just said.
So I am in a digital marketing space and business growth space as well.
And a lot of times you see these bro marketers out there and they're trying to sell you some
product and they do it in a bigger scale.
They mass produce, they mass text, they mass email campaigns, and this throws so much money
in marketing.
And they get people.
There's a lot of people who fall for that and then they realize, oh my gosh, the marketing
will work if my things have this, this, this, and that.
And then the marketers won't care about that because they just want their first client
and then next client, the next client, the next client, the next client.
And that happens a lot.
And I bet there's a lot of other industries out there the same way where people have grown
much faster, much very easy, but realizing that it's to the detriment where their company
did not grow with it.
Just the revenue grew and then it just blew back in their face because then they went
to an imminent failure.
I agree.
I think you can become intoxicated with growth, with riches, and you don't think straight.
So my learning has been if you're going to do anything, make sure the one or two or three
clients you have are really taken care of great as opposed to having 15 or 15,000 that
you don't know and you think that they are satisfied.
Don't assume it.
Make sure that each one is listened to and that you care about them.
Yeah.
Thank you for sharing that.
What would you say in your advice is how do we avoid that?
How do we avoid falling into that pit or even see that pit coming?
I think one thing that I try to avoid is I don't want to be a wishful thinker.
I don't want to say we're going to do this, this, and that, and we're going to grow to
this and we're going to have this, this, this, and that profit and everybody here is going
to get such and such.
I don't want to create an unrealistic dream that will fuel bad behavior.
I don't want to do it.
I want to present a positive dream that is realistic, meaning here's our goal.
We want to achieve these things.
If we do, there are a lot of great things that happen, but you know what?
It's not about us.
It's not about how much money is put in our bank account.
It's about the performance we give our clients and the way we work with each other.
So we're part of this team.
We're not going to look for a get rich quick exit on this.
So everybody buckle in, let's do the right things.
And you have my 100% commitment as your leader that I will be here for you.
I'm not looking for perfection.
I will be here to make sure you have the support needed to do the best work of your life.
And if we can all do that to some level, we will all experience success.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned into 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 and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.