Be Fearless
Devron Larson
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/8/2021
Be Fearless
The Inventive Journey
Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.
Get New Episodes
Get 2 brand-new podcast episodes sent to you every week!
ai generated transcription
i would say be fearless um it really does take that um i have talked to so many people i was a i was coaching football for my son just you know the little league football type stuff seventh eighth grade kind of thing um one of my assistant coaches great guy still good friends to this day um he came up to me and says we got talking about busy like he goes i have got the idea that i know will make me a millionaire i just know it will and i'm like awesome what is it he's like i'm not going to tell you you'll go do it and i said well one i won't but two and i i said i said fine don't tell i don't care what it is i said why don't you go do it he's like he literally said because i'm i'm afraid i'll fail and and i think that has stopped more people from ever becoming successful than any other thing [Music] everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder of miller iplock where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast our podcast if i don't get to a tongue tied devron larson and introduced devron a bit he grew up on on a farm so manat for my own heart i don't know if i grew up on a farm technically i grew up doing a lot of things on a farm but didn't actually grow up on a farm dad always told him to get an education ended up getting here majoring in chemistry at least or went into chemistry um and then i think in the fourth year of college doing a lab couldn't picture himself do being in a lab for the next 40 years so decided to not or didn't want to finish up the career degree instead when bought a franchise in carpet cleaning sold that invested that or invested with a company and a friend that one will and then i think lost everything you correct he can grant me where when we get if i get anything wrong started up another cardboard cleaning business at the same time was working for i think it was a marketing company and then the marketing company or around the kind of the housing crash that took a turn and one day saw another carpet cleaning van on ksl put down a deposit after he put down the deposit told his wife that that's what they're going to end up doing um and uh or got back into that started up the company took a huge pay cut invested everything they had and then been building that and then growing it ever since and making it to a success so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast everyone thanks a lot david appreciate it absolutely now and now i'm gonna get i'm gonna i'm worried i'm gonna call you devon because devron and devon are so similar that i'm gonna end up messing up your day because because it's too similar but uh welcome on so i dived through a little bit of your journey and kind of give that quick uh run through kind of where what your journey was but now let's go back a little bit tell us a little bit about growing up on the forum getting an education and then how how your journey went from there yeah just you know um great parents uh good work ethic of course you know tell me that um every summer i grew up on a farm most of my friends were out you know goofing off and playing and stuff and going on scout trips and things like that and and i was always working and i didn't even know it and i just that's just how life was i didn't really understand any different and when even when i i got older one of my friends said yeah we we always felt really bad for you and i'm like why it goes because you just always had to work every summer all summer the whole entire time while we were all like goofing around and i'm like well i did i just didn't i didn't know the difference i didn't even know that was an option so you know just worked really hard but the whole time my my mom and dad were really big on education because they didn't have degrees or anything like that and you know but they were kind of entrepreneurs as well they owned the farm they owned like a bowling alley they owned some apartments and real estate and things like that and they did okay um they ended up actually starting some restaurant franchises and did pretty well with that and anyway but um so i just kind of had the entrepreneur mindset but they always just wanted me to go to college and and i didn't really know what i wanted to do so i i was gonna do this and this and this and i thought well i really like chemistry for some reason and i like science and math and and so i thought well major in chemistry that sounds like a cool thing to do maybe it's not a lot made me sound a lot smarter than i really was but um and you know so anyway i got going into school and uh i was in about three and a half years and i just remember specifically being in a lab one day and you know mixing a couple of things together and and then watching it for a few minutes and mixing some more stuff and watching it for a half an hour and i'm like this this is awful i hate this and then it dawned on me like well i love the learning of chemistry i like i like the classroom part of like which was crazy but um the lab part i just dreaded and hated it dawned on me that that point i'm like well you're not what this is what you're going to be doing every day this kind of stuff and i'm like oh my goodness and it was it just it shocked me literally it's like like an aha moment like holy smokes you know i'm not just going to be a student forever i'm actually going to be doing this and so um it didn't take me very long just a few weeks to realize that that is not what i want to do so um while i was going to school just to work my way through school and pay for it i was i was managing a chem dry carpet cleaning franchise and um i decided i'm not going to do the school thing anymore and so i talked to my wife and we made some decisions and we had the opportunity to buy that franchise and so at 23 i went and got a 40 000 loan and well 39 000 and to me which back then you know 30 years ago was a fortune i thought that was uh that was just a crazy amount of money um let me and before we get too far i just had one quick question i'm guessing that when you tell your journey other people ask i mean you've been three and a half years you're almost done with the degree you know if it would have been me and i'd not tell you how to live your life or do your journey i would have just finished it out even if i never intended to use the degree so what was the thought process and saying hey yeah i could finish it out on the other and i get on the other hand saying if i'm never going to use this degree if i never want to go down that route why would i spend another dime on type of thing but how did you build that because i i would assume that parents or you or other people thought i'm close why don't i finish so kind of how did you make that decision never really cared what anyone else thought and so i just um i'm i'm a very um i make decisions quick um and and sometimes that's good you know um in business there's times where you don't have a lot of time to think about stuff um but this wasn't specifically that case i had plenty of time but it was that definitive of an aha moment for me like oh my goodness like i do not want to do this so i finished the semester i was in and i actually would have had another full year to go um i didn't just have one more semester ago it would have been with the way i did things and whatever whatever it would have been about another year and so um but it was pretty definitive moment for me like no i am not doing this i will not do it so there were just no point for me to go any further into that specific degree and you know um could it have opened some doors could it have been a better thing sure i'm sure it would have but i really don't have too many regrets because i literally never would have stepped foot into chemistry lab had i done it well i don't think i would have um but i just love the entrepreneur um aspect of things i i'm i feel very comfortable i don't know if i'm very good at it i'm very comfortable with um taking risks and and um i just you know that never would that never was a concern for me so just like hey make up move you know make a decision move on go with it um take some risk it's just it's just never bothered me now luckily i have a phenomenal wife and she's always supported these crazy ideas and stuff and um sometimes it worked out really good sometimes it worked out not as good but um that's just that's just my personality definitely makes sense so and i get it i said it in the one sense you know i did it a bit different i i got the end of engineering school and said oh i like engineering but i don't want to be an engineer so then that's the end so i went did law school in the intellectual property which was you know i like being engineering it was kind of a good mix for me to i definitely get to getting towards the end of the degree and say okay you know this really isn't what i want to do it's not what i'm passionate about and i can't see myself doing this for the the remainder of my career so now you did go you wouldn't bought that you know lever seems to you know kind of went out bought the the franchise bought the the cleaning stuff started on that and how did that go or as you dive into it as you took the 39 000 loan as you mentioned how did how did that go for you uh you know as a 23 year old kid and you know it was a scary step but um i had done it i've been managing that for about a year a year and a half so i kind of knew that i knew the ropes of the industry a little bit but but um then when it came to be mine then it was obviously you know you treat a little bit different like everybody when it's actually your business you know you treat things a little bit different but um you know that's the one thing i did learn about when you invest is you're you are committed and i will i will if we're talking about you know what what are some things that i've learned in my journey and i'll just i'll just sidetrack here for a second and say that's one thing um if you don't invest something and you you can just walk away at any time typically when the times get tough lots and lots of people walk not everybody but lots of people walk and so if you know if you're not going to invest something whether it's your whether it's money would be the most important but but especially just your heart and soul and your time but you've got to invest something or when times get tough which they will in any entrepreneurship type thing you'll just walk and so that's just a little side note but you know we didn't really have the option to walk so we spent about the first four years building that up um got to a point where he's doing pretty well we actually hired a a person to manage that forceful time i still kind of help oversee it and stuff but then i had a chance to start another company with a cousin of mine and where we did like sales and marketing stuff anyway uh and it went really really well um for the first couple years and then um the fulfillment come we had fulfilling the product portion and the service portion that we were actually marking and selling we didn't find out that they weren't fulfilling for quite a while and then by the time we found out it kind of collapsed it on itself and we had a lot of refunds and we had to reimburse a lot of people and anyway one thing led to another and um i sold that chem dry uh about a year after that and a year before that i sold it to help fund that marketing company and stuff and then uh everything when everything went bad we end up literally losing everything again one of those things where you know you take the risk you roll the dice in this case um you know we got uh we got we got kind of burnt on that one and you know we lost everything we walked out of our house we gave our cars back we um we had three kids small kids at the time um we had i bought this little truck toyota truck to get us around i think i paid 1500 for it you know and that was all we had to our name um anyway and so we started over and i started another carpet cleaning company did that for about six eight months sold it got enough money from that to kind of get us back one question i i just had a kind of curiosity because i get you know they're i completely agree you have to strap in if you want to be an entrepreneur you want to run your own business to your own thing it is far from certain and you're going to have those times where you feel like you're a success and times where you feel like an utter failure you're going to have both of them and you better be prepared for both of them because they both have their pros and cons but now as you do hit you kind of lose the house you lose the life savings so to speak you lose the cars you know you're kind of going through what would be a very you know low point in in entrepreneur journey you know how did you pick yourself back up and say okay i just got out of a carpet cleaning business it didn't go well i'm gonna start another one right out or you know start out and it was like hey i gotta earn an income it's out of necessity was it hey i still think i can do this right and i've learned the lessons i need to do differently or kind of how did you move on from that and start to rebuild you know i don't know it's weird because i never really i mean yes it was a low point i certainly didn't pick that outcome and that's not what i wanted to do but it never really i don't know it just i never felt like depressed or like oh i'm a failure i mean it was hard don't get me wrong um we actually had to move in with like my in-laws for like six months just to get back on our feet um but you know my sister after this all happened my my sister come up and she goes well um did you file for like unemployment or for welfare or this or this thing this i'm like i didn't know i could never even it literally never even crossed my mind and so i'm like no and she's like well why and i'm like well i i had a job i was i started coming she's like well i know but you can still get all these benefits this and this and this i'm like it never crossed my mind so i just i just never thought well i just got i just gotta go and so this ended and now it's time to go and you gotta move on you just i i don't know i just never even really had time to think about i just okay we're moving on we gotta go and and that's just my personal i was like hey you just gotta go and so it was like hey what can i do what do i know i said well i can start this up i still had some equipment so i just started back up i started marking i literally went door-to-door i i gave away my service for free just so people get talking about me to begin with um i just did i i i did anything i could do to just pick myself back up and within about six months we were able to kind of get back on our feet we moved out of there and got just a little apartment to begin with and then um about a year later and and while doing that i then sold that company that kind of gave us enough money to to move on and then i went to work for this marketing company just as a little bit more stable job but then i started another carpet cleaning business on the site as well so i've always had a carpet cleaning business because it's something i know and i do and and i'm you know pretty good at and and just a way for me to make a lot of you know extra income whether i had a job or not um and then i just really i just thought hey i'll be at this marketing company just for a year to just get my feet on the ground such a great company great people great guys loved working there they treated me super good um i moved up the ranks quite fast um still having the carpet clean business on the side um that was kind of my golf and travel money you know that's what i used it for really um it's a lot of fun trips a lot of you know i like to golf but um and i thought gosh i'll just but end up being there for 12 years um this marketing company was great just uh again great people and great experience well in 2012 well 2008 through 2012 they took a beating in their in their business and their profits and stuff and in about uh january 2012 i could kind of see the handwriting on the wall where things were headed it was it wasn't looking good and so i um i thought well i better make a plan b i had some savings i had a 401k had some money um not a ton but you know i had some and um we had a house and everything and thought well okay what what what what's plan b i better start i better start looking for it because i knew what's coming well i found this carpet cleaning van um online and it was kind of the setup they want it was kind of the full package it was real it was a beast it was it was a really good one and i i really wanted and so um it was about a two hour two and a half hour drive away from where i lived and i went and looked at it one one day and drove down like yep that's what i want i put a ten thousand dollar deposit down on it said hey i want it and this was in january about about a week and a half later it was a saturday it was a friday night and i said hey do you want to drive to fillmore with me that's where the van was at she's like fill more what more and feel more like you know the only thing about filmmakers there's a little dinky town that she actually had a couple cousins that live there and or something like that and she doesn't want to go over and visit her cousins i'm like no no um i wanna do that i'm gonna i said i i bought a carpet cleaning van and she's like you did what i said i bought a carpet cleaning van and has all the equipment and i was telling about she's like why did you do that and i said well just you know i wanted it it's cool and you know who knows we'll ever need something she's like well do you think we'll ever need it and that was the first time i actually broke the news to her that it was like there's a possibility we're gonna need a backup plan she's like really i said yeah and she goes well how much did you pay for this van i said i um between i put down and we took over his his lease on it and some things like that i said i was about 45 50 000. so i think i told her i said like 50 000 and she's like oh my gosh and again amazing wife she's like hey whatever another crazy idea this guy has and well you have a better wife than i do if i came in and i said i put down ten thousand it's gonna be about forty or fifty thousand my wife would have been like go see if you can get your money back and that will talk yeah she's amazing like lilly i couldn't do this without her and so i can't i can't say enough good things about her anyway she's like client whatever so we get in the car we drive over there and we get the van and on the way back it is an absolute white out blizzard like it took about two hours to drive there to get there took us four and a half hours to get home in the in the dark in the blizzard and so anyway we got this van and lo and behold about six eight months later july of 2012 about six months later the prediction came true and and um and that that career ended at that marketing company and and so um i said all right and i had a couple i had kind of some things going before then as far as the carpet business because again i just i started folks on a little bit more just like i could see again what was coming um but in july of 2012 we uh my brother-in-law who bought one of the other businesses that i had we partnered up his name's cody and so we actually partnered up created a company called power plus and we did carpet cleaning and restoration and and um little we and we bought another van we literally i invested i took out i cleared out my 401k cleared out my i had some investments cleared that account out cleared out our savings we maxed out two credit cards were 15 15 20 000 each so we put about 150 000 or so into this company just rolled the dice did everything but again and and what's weird is if if now that i'm sitting here saying i'm like what an idiot you know who would do that um but back then i i literally didn't even think about i'm like oh just okay we're gonna go for it that's what we do and we did and and we just we rolled the dice and that first year was tough we um i i think i think i think figured out from what i was making the marketing i was making you know a pretty high six figure income to what we were making we took about 80 pay cut for the first year um it was tough um a couple funny little things about that and i'm gonna make a point about this later but um we came home from we came home from thanksgiving um with my sister's house and the power was out and so we thought oh we'll just wait till the power comes back on well it didn't come on didn't come on the next day so we called our neighbors like do you guys have power like yeah or like oh must just be us well the power wasn't out they turned our power off you know and so that's what happens when you don't pay the power bill for like three months i don't know where they they actually just like everybody else somehow they want to get paid weird i don't i didn't understand that i guess but anyway we're like oh okay so for a couple days we just didn't have power and it was it was you know weird and it was i had we had six kids um from i think our oldest was 15 or 16 on down and so we're just like all right we just made do and um just to highlight i think one other thing that you'd skipped over that we talked a little bit before is you start so you went and bought this van you got this going and this was really i think he said in the bottom of the recession right it's 2012 yeah and you know financial markets aren't doing well foreclosures are at a high more you know all those things are at a high and which are not a good you know at least you know in conventional wisdom not a good time to go spend a whole bunch of money mortgage everything leverage yourself up and try and start a business you know worked out looking back but you know that so you know did that ever cross your mind you're just saying hey this is a good opportunity i think you can make a look of it it's the band i want and i you have self-confidence and just get going did it ever cross your mind that the timing was less than ideal well i'm sure it crossed my mind but it was more like what option do i have like you know what i'm saying it's it wasn't like oh this is a horrible time i shouldn't do this it was more like well i've got to do something what's my game plan and so that was it so it didn't really i may have thought about it but i don't ever remember constantly being like oh this is a horrible time no it's interesting you say that though because um before we actually you know started full time in july i was actually you know talking to a few people and i i had probably four or five people flat out tell me that and again where i live is in fairview and if you don't know where that is the town's about 1200 people um the county we live in sanpete's one of the poorest counties in the in the state we're all just a bunch of you know old redneck farmers down here you know and that's what we are i'm right there with you so i live in a small town i i like i like small towns so i i can just imagine because that's that's where i grew up as well everybody a lot of people want to come down here but um it's hard to make a living right and so you know it's the bottom of recession nobody has money it seems like and when i had i had no more than three or four people tell me that we will never make it down here they i mean literally like i had one specific guy that um i know really well he said he says yeah he goes you're gonna do that he goes my son came down here a few years ago and started a carpet cleaning business and he couldn't make it work because i don't think you can do it well and my partner cody um it was funny phenomenal guy and now he's he's the backbone of our company um he just he's he's at work and he's a workhorse but um i told him and this is this is just how my mind thinks um and again yeah if you looked at that you know in the recession we have you know no luck not we've invested every penny we've got we don't have a ton more we're not making very much to begin with this and that the other and he's like well do you really think we can make enough to make a living i said i said cody i i believe within four years we could we could be doing well over a million dollars and he laughed at me literally he goes okay you know no if i were to defend him it's good i think every entrepreneur i've ever met or any startup guy always seems they're going to be like we're going to be rich you know and so if i were to sell for because i've been there too and i told my wife and my and we've done well and i've done some businesses but every time i have a new idea or start a new business or do anything else she's like yeah this here's another crazy idea you say you're going to make a lot of money let's wait until they actually do it and then we'll then we'll talk so i get that i've been i've been on both sides of that conversation yeah well it's funny because he bought my he bought one of my other businesses before one of those ones i bought and sold he bought it and he'd been running it for you know eight ten years and he'd never even i don't think you know he he's phenomenal he's he's one of those guys that can do everything and so we had he had a lot of irons and different fires he wasn't just a carpet cleaner right but you know he'd never been able to make a big huge living on it just carpet clean he did good with all the other things he got going so down this little podunk town little port county at the bottom of recession you know it was it was i'm sure hard for him to believe it but i thought i said in five years we should i believe we could be do over a million dollars well it didn't take us five years took us four and so you know now that doesn't mean we're making a million that's just we did that in volume you know wait wait wait wait wait let me get this straight revenue doesn't equal how much money you take home in your pocket i know and i'm joking because i that's that's the conception is like oh you've done seven and eight figure businesses you must be just ready to reach i'm like no you you don't understand just because the business makes that much doesn't mean that's much how much i make yeah weird content i know i know it's crazy but yeah so so and you guys are still doing that right the business is still around you're still going gangbusters and still going forward yeah we're we're expanding um last year was obviously a little a little speed bump but um coming into this year we're we we're looking back at like the last two years previous to this even even the year before covid um we we're we're almost double what we were just couple years ago and our biggest problem honestly is finding you know employees we're just growing we're growing pretty fast and so um you know fourth fast forward now to today um we've got six or seven you know we we've got six cleaning bands out there we've got a full flood restoration business um we're doing you know well over you know almost double what we've what we ever hoped we would do and anyway um got other things happening stuff now we're looking at actually doing some franchising ourselves and we we've i've taken that chemistry background believe it or not and we actually worked with uh some really good chemists and developed a specific cleaning product just specifically for us that well you know that because we're working with you on the trademarks yeah i was gonna say full disclosure devron's an awesome client of ours so it's for everybody that wondered don't go take his trademarks because otherwise he'll have to come after you and and just so you know um the way i found out about miller law firm and devon is he contacted me to do this podcast he wasn't soliciting me for he didn't even know if i had anything to trademark he just he's some i don't even know how you heard about you you read her story on online or something yeah i think it was yeah i read the story online connected on linkedin reached out to you thought it'd be fun to have you on the podcast so i just love i just love sharing the startups and small business stories so it was a fun way to connect well it was funny because it was perfect timing because we were looking to get our our new product and our business and everything trademarked and it mattered it didn't even dominate took us like two or three interactions we're like oh wait call our ip lock oh wait you do you do ip oh wait we need a trick we're looking for some oh that's great so it worked out really good and now here we are but um fast forward to today and you know it's great because now as a you know i don't i don't actually do hardly any of the cleaning anymore i get on the van every once in a while when need to we're training a guy or things like that but really now i my my role as the my title ceo but we don't usually use a lot of titles here but it helps people understand that you take a managerial role you're kind of now looking for the vision and how to grow it and and improve it and franchise it and i certainly get that and it's always interesting because that's kind of where i've been with a lot of businesses you start out you're the guy that does everything you're everything from taking out in the garbage to doing payroll to marketing and sales to doing the actual work and all everything in between and then as the company matures and evolves then you say okay i only have so much time where is my time most valuable and then you start to focus that out and you become less of a generalist and more specific in areas you can add the most value so it definitely makes sense and you find the right people and that is key that is the absolute key to growing a business you cannot grow a business without having the right key people in place and and more importantly you just got to trust them um you got to find people you can completely trust like our our office um we have a man an office manager her name's sherry and we call her the general because she literally runs the company um and she is flat out amazing and and it just just allows all the rest of us to focus on what we have to you know and then we have you know managers that run this and the you know managers around that and and i trust them implicitly and what's great about is is when you give them that trust you give them that confidence they have a chance to shine and and even though you're still guiding and helping and you help portray the vision what what it allows them to do when you just give them the confidence and the power to run it it's it's incredible and they've all stepped up and it's cody and other people i have a son now that you know he does a role in and and if you hire the right people you can fully trust out there to keep your name and your reputation your brand and that's that's huge then you can grow a company and and we have an incredible team and that's and i i i assess a lot of our success to the team not just you know it might have been my vision but the team is what helps create it no no and i definitely get that because i get you know and it's i just have to smile because a lot of what you everybody's journey is different but it's always fun to see the commonalities and i always get the questions i run i do my own ip firm and i have a couple other businesses that i'm that i'm running or i'm technically ceo of and then people say how do you juggle all those and i said i got a really good team to where i give a lot of that oversight that vision i give direction i make sure things are done right but i also have a lot of people that are assisting me to make it if i didn't have the team there there's no way i could do it all on my own so i definitely get where you're coming from so well as we start to wrap up the pond and there's always so many more things i'd love to touch on that never have time to but as we start to wrap up the podcast i always have two questions i ask at the end of the podcast so we'll go ahead and jump to those now so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it the worst the worst decision i've ever made um hiring the wrong people for sure um and we luckily we've we've hired for the most part really good guys um we hired we actually thought we decided to expand we're new to obviously we decided to we had a really good guy that um that wanted to kind of partner with us or work with us and he was in temecula california we thought hey we know this guy we trust me he's actually a family guy a brother-in-law great guy though um and the two things i learned from that was one we didn't make him invest anything and this is coming back to what i said earlier if you're going to especially if you're ever going to expand or partner or bring people on they have absolutely have to invest money not just time time is too easy to walk away from money's not um so we're like hey you know we started this we invested about you know we bought a new van we bought all the stuff we we spent about a hundred grand um got it all set up we did all the marking got it going doing really well and then you know um it kind of got to where the honeymoon phase of it were off and it was actually some work involved and you were like hey you got to be the guy on the ground you got we need to go and do this and this and this we'll do all the mark and anyway kind of got to the point where it's like uh i don't want to do this anymore and so he walked away um and there were a couple other things on our end that we need to take responsible it wasn't all his father want to blame it on on him but because there was no financial commitment to it um he you know he kind of walked away now we brought that van back we expanded we used it so all worked out okay we made it work but one of the worst decisions i made was hiring the wrong people for the wrong position and then we one other instant just to quickly help you understand this but we had one guy specifically he was a good technician matter of fact he had had the most experience he had the most um years in the industry he could do all kinds of different things that even i can't do in the company like he had skills that i did not even i can do so he was our most profitable employee literally he brought in more revenue than any other employee and and not even by by a large margin but what he did to our culture and what he did to our company as far as like attitude and things like that um you know we're constantly getting calls from people on the highway for we had a couple anyway i won't get into that but anyway it really damaged our brand as well um and it made it really hard and so we he's the only person that we've ever actually fired in the company because of that and it really did affect our culture and so i would say probably the worst decision was hiring the wrong people um really take a look at what is your culture does that person fit your culture can you trust them fully and if you can't do not hire them i don't care how much money they can make you it's not worth it no and i agree 100 you know and it's interesting i think everybody goes in there's always a couple misconceptions there a lot of people go into one and you always and when you first get into your own business or startup you always think everybody's going to work as hard as you are and it's i think it's one that you think that then you hire people and you're like wait they just are working a few hours they want to get paid for every little thing they're not invested they don't and it's one of those where you always you always think and then you always think that they're going to work as hard as us and they don't and i'm not faulting them it's much different when you're you know when you're the person that's founded it and you're putting in the blood sweat and tears and you're saying yeah i've got to make it work but it's always an interesting dynamic and the second thing i always think is is people always think they're a lot better at hiring than they are at least out of the shoot there's a lot of things that you think oh i can read people i know people they'll do this and they'll do that and i'm not going to make the same mistakes that i used to see my bosses make i'm going to do it great and it's it's hard it's hard to find the right person and you know you do interviews you try and meet them you try and get to know them but if you if you can get the right person they can make a huge difference and if you get the wrong person just as you said they can affect the culture and they can change things and directions they start to pull in it's usually that death by a thousand cuts to where they start to pull you in directions they say okay well i wouldn't do it that way i don't like it but you know and you make exceptions and you make more exceptions and it keeps pulling you into different directions so i absolutely agree that you know hiring the right people and taking that time and a lot of time and i'll and definitely let you chime in but one of the things i found is taking it and slowing the process down so that you know too often when you're especially start a small business mode you you're running you know running around oh we need somebody we need them now we've got to get this person in the place because we're we have too much work to get done so you go and hire someone you do it too quickly and then because you do too quickly you don't take the time to slow down and vet them and while yes you've got somebody quickly it's not the right person you end up spending more time than if you just slowed it down in the first place that's that's really true and and here's the deal don't don't beat yourself up if you do hire someone that doesn't isn't a perfect fit and they quit or they walk away because that'll happen no matter what um it just will that's just the nature of people when they see an opportunity come up they they go for something different whatever but um if you can if you like to say if you can vet if you can screen a little bit if you can somehow uh get a little bit of taste of who they are um and and what they what they're like on a on a integrity level um it'll go a long long way but again don't be afraid to hire you know when you need to hire you got to hire and and you can't always wait for the perfect guy sometimes you have to take what what what you get and then try to mold that by being the kind of person or the kind of boss the ceo the manager to help shape them into that kind of a person one thing we do is we a book and i've got it right here but um we have every one of our employees read a book called good to great if you haven't read it it's one of the most amazing books um really teaches people about that and the culture and also how to create the culture to help people want to be here um for your company and that can be a big part of it too but you know just try like you said slow it down if you can um don't be afraid to make some mistakes and hiring you're going to make some but i will say this if you realize that this person is wrong for your company wrong for your culture it hurts your other employees i don't care how much revenue it is if it's if it's a negative to that cut it you've got to cut it and it sounds it sounds vicious and it sounds mean and it sounds you know uh capitalistic or whatever you want to call it but it will it it can damage your company and your brand and your reputation so fast um it's it's almost scary absolutely so so now we're going to jump to my second question which is if you're just you're talking something that's just getting into a startup or small business would be the one piece of advice you'd give them um i would say be fearless um it really does take that um i have talked to so many people i was a i was coaching football for my son just you know the little league football type stuff seventh eighth grade kind of a thing um one of my assistant coaches great guy still good friends to this day um he came up to me and says we got talking about busy like he goes i have got the idea that i know will make me a millionaire i just know it will and i'm like awesome what is it he's like i'm not gonna tell you you'll go do it and i said well one i won't but two and he i said i said fine don't tell i don't care what it is i said why don't you go do it he's like he literally said because i'm i'm afraid i'll fail and and i think that has stopped more people from ever becoming successful than any other thing and so if you're going to be an entrepreneur i actually taught entrepreneurship class at our high school um here for uh for for a while just saying i like doing i volunteered for and and uh they let me do it and stuff and i always told them i said look if in in business yes make smart edge make educated decisions get as much information you can and and try to make them educated decisions but at some point in time you've got to pull the trigger and it will never be a perfect time it'll it's going to be a a recession it's going to be 2012 it's going to be you don't have money you don't have this i had six kids you know um my my power got off and i was gonna tell you um that christmas um we lived out in kind of the booty so we're on a propane system not not natural gas when we got home for my sisters again on the 23rd and we didn't have any propane so we had no way to heat our house couldn't run our stove couldn't run our our um dryer we literally had enough we should we ran out of propane we didn't have any to buy anymore so come come christmas uh christmas eve we were just cuddled up in blankets and we made the best of it no we weren't crying about it and anyway we got some we ended up getting some that day believe it or not um someone heard about us and and helped us a little bit which was super nice but you know again you just got to be kind of fearless um and if you're not willing to invest money and most of all i mean money and time then just stop stop thinking about being an entrepreneur because it's not for you um if you're not willing to invest those things and have uh take some risk and be a little bit fearless it may not be for you and entrepreneurism isn't isn't for everybody it's true it's not it's it can be a hard road it can be scary it can be um you know again like i said i had an amazing wife that supported me but if if you're not willing to take some risk invest money and the time then just stop thinking about it just stay your job do what you do learn to love it be your best at it and forget it because if you if you go into it without being willing to do those things i i don't know if you'll ever make it no and i agree with you because i mean and i always laugh because to your point you get a whole bunch of people saying i got the world's best ideas it's going to change the world and then he's and then it's like you know what i've come to you know because i do a lot on the ip side and i hear a lot of great and there are a lot of great ideas but then it always comes down to it's the execution of the idea not the idea itself meaning you have the world's best idea if you never do anything with it guess what either one day somebody else will do it you'll say i had that idea ten years ago and i could have been that i could have been them and say well but you didn't like you have to actually follow through and execute so there's always the execution of the idea that it's a difference between someone that's always a streaming or the idea guy versus someone actually builds something so i think that there's a lot of wisdom to learn there well that that thing we're doing with you on the trademark we actually did a different version of it about two years ago we lost about 30 grand on that one um but i'll tell you what we learned what we learned was everything that we needed to do different what not to get to the point where we're now working with you again we're gonna we're gonna relaunch and repackage it and kind of reformulate it um you know so it was a thirty thousand dollar learning experience but um you know we had the money to invest at that point it wasn't wasn't very devastating at that point but you know again we still had to invest the time i had to invest the money we did at risk that quote-unquote didn't work but it prepared us for what's coming and we think it's gonna be a lot better and of course you know you have a little bit of a clue what that is but anyway sure no and i definitely agree with you i think that sometimes even if you even if it fails you learn a lot and you say okay now when we do it again next time we know all the things that we're going to do differently but if you never get into it you never try you're definitely never going to have those successes or you're going to have that opportunity well as we wrap up if people want to they want you to they want to hire you they want to have you clean their carpets they want to be an investor they want to be an employee they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out or find out more you know obviously for for any cleaning services um things like that our website's the easiest thing to go to you can get all the information we have some amazing before and after videos they're just fun to watch no matter if you meet us in our service or not there's really cool but it's just powerpluscleaning.com our website's on there i mean our phone number's on their emails on there um you know if you're looking for a good employment opportunity we you know we're always looking for uh the right people um we're not looking for good people looking for the right people and literally it's one of those things where we find the right person we'll find a job for you um if if you're the right person um we we do have opportunities for expansion if you want to you know talk about possibly getting into partner being a partner with power plus in an area or france it's not a franchise we call it partnership and there's details that we can explain but um our website's always the best place to go to find out the most information for us all right well i definitely encourage everybody to check it out whether it's looking for employment looking for a franchise or for a partnership looking for a carpet cleaner for any other reason because there's certainly plenty of reasons to reach out well thank you again to everyone for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell you'd like to be a guest on the podcast feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the show we'd love to share your journey two more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so you know when all of our up awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so other people can find out about the awesome episodes last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat thanks again devron and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last okay thanks again devin will be talking to you soon absolutely [Music]
Download This Episode & More on the Following Platforms
JOIN US ON SOCIAL MEDIA
