Sean Castrina: The Entrepreneur Mindset

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And this was a fun conversation with Sean Castrina. Sean was actually recommended to me. He's the founder of The Weekend MBA, the host of the 10-Minute Entrepreneur Podcast, and author of four best selling books. And he does tons of coaching on entrepreneurship and from founders as well. And we talked about a lot of stuff. I mean, he had his dream job and then he went bankrupt and then he became a millionaire. So we talked about that journey.

We also talked about how, you know, going through the motions and stop doing what you're supposed to do and being woken up and that entrepreneurial itch that a lot of us have to scratch. He also talked about why should every person think like an entrepreneur and what the Bermuda Triangle of startups is and why most startups fail. We even got into recruitment and 10 of his rules to live by. So this was a super interesting conversation. A lot of good takeaways about entrepreneurship and business and hiring and everything else. So hopefully you enjoy the conversation and let's make it happen. What's happening, make it happen family. Big shout out to our partners today. Gong, Proposify, Vidyard, and Chili Piper.

Gong's data is more than valuable. It's cornerstone in any organization looking to collect the data that's going to tell them where they can improve and where they need to spend their time making changes. Proposify is one of my favorite teams of all time. What they do is they make the proposal and contract processes easy for the sender and the recipient. And who can't benefit from that being a great experience, right? Vidyard makes it easy for people to use videos anywhere. No matter whether you're sending videos in email or on social media, posting them somewhere or sending them in a DM, Vidyard has got you covered. Our friends at Chili Piper are so much fun to be around. They make it easy for people to get on your calendar.

And every sales rep has got to have this function locked in. It's one of the most important things we can do as a seller. How can I get you on my calendar easily? Chili Piper can make that happen for you. Be sure that you're checking out all these great tools. And now let's pass it over to John to find out who's joining him today. See you soon, everybody. All right, Sean, what's going on, my friend? How are you? Doing good. Excited to be on the podcast. Yeah, we were talking a little bit earlier getting onto this about, you know, the Fourth of July weekend and everything else and how wonderfully exciting baseball is. So hopefully this podcast will be a little bit more exciting than sitting droning through it.

My 50-year-old prostate exam. Love it. Well, Sean, for the audience here, I mean, you've written a bunch of books. You've got your own podcast here. And the one thing that I want to dive into is this kind of having your dream job going bankrupt and then, you know, getting back on track here. So why don't you give the audience a little bit of background? Not necessarily on that specific, but if you just kind of give us your overview here and then we'll dive into it. It'd be awesome. Yeah, no, I was a Division I scholarship athlete in college and so fairly competitive, a personality. And, you know, kind of had everything blueprinted in my life and got out of college, had my dream job, took it for free because I knew I could earn a position on staff and I wanted to skip all the rungs on the ladder.

So I said I'd come work for 90 days for free. And at the end of it, you can give me whatever I'm worth. And if I'm worth what I think I am, you'll hire me. And they did. But then about four years later, there was a change in leadership. And I had never heard this phrase before, but so I get asked to go into a meeting and then they say to you, we're going to go in a different direction. You never want to hear that. Just so you know, you never want to hear we're going in a different direction. That means they're going in a direction that you're not involved in. So yeah, there was a change in leadership because the head person there was in this late sixties. And, and, and so when they made that change, they brought in their, their whole new team.

And I knew then that, cause I just figured I'd be one of those people that would get a job, do really well at it, to be frank with you, make six figures, be smart with my money and, and I'd be okay. And I'm, I'm, I'm fine with that. You know, that, that was kind of what I figured, you know, how it would play out. But then once that happened, I said, I'm never, ever going to depend on anybody again, you know, because you could be let go for darn near anything that you really can. It's, you know, and, and I knew then that I was like, okay, let's put my energy into something that I can own. Not quite knowing, had no idea what it would be to be frank with you. It's not like I had some clear vision prior to that.

I never even seen myself as an entrepreneur, like literally never crossed my mind that I'd own a business. You know, I always knew I'd have something multiple incomes, things of that nature, you know, good utilization of my time, but like owning a business never crossed my mind. Similar track for me, that whole doing what you were supposed to do, right? Get a job, do really well, get promoted, make your money. Two things happened to me. One is my, my, my ex fiance, thankfully. Uh, I thought I was, you know, I was with her for seven years. I was, what do you do after seven years? You're supposed to get married. Then you're supposed to buy a house. Then you're supposed to have some kids. Right.

And I knew it was wrong. And she's the one who broke it up with me. Thank God. And it was the best thing that could ever happen to me, even though I thought I was devastated. And then professionally, business wise, got a job doing my thing, got fired. And it was like, even though I knew it wasn't right, I knew my situation wasn't right. I felt it in my core, but I kept fighting because I was going to make it work. Right. But I was doing what I was supposed to do. And it woke me up. Was that kind of a pivotal moment for you? Like a wake up call for you to stop basically going through them. I don't know. I want to say you were going through the motions, but stop doing what kind of the bigger picture people tell you to do.

I mean, I, I liked what I was doing and I was great at it to be frank with you. So I, I probably would have been, been fine. I, I mean, I was 24 in two houses at the time I was getting paid really good money. I like no complaints. I was treated really well because I was tied in with that leadership and he had loved me to death. You know, I was just that personality type to just click with him, you know, younger, high energy, you know, but when he clicked out, then, then I went with it. So I think I had have been fine with that, but knowing what I now know, you know, now 30 years later, um, you know, you're either going to build somebody else's dream or you're going to build yours in most cases.

And I, and I want to preface it with that. Some people's personality personalities and giftedness is that, that you're going to help somebody else build theirs. A lot of extraordinary assistant coaches throughout sports. Okay. And, and we've seen them go up to head coaching jobs and fail miserably. You know, they've been assistants for so long and then they take it, you know, you look at the Patriots entire coach, you know, tree coaching tree is a great example. Every one of them are assistant coaches. Yeah. None, none have succeeded as a head coach. None. Um, and so, you know, sometimes you just got to know your giftedness. Yeah. So do you think it takes trying that to figure it out? Because I know, and I'm sure you deal with it similar to me is from an entrepreneurship standpoint, people who think they have that entrepreneurship itch, right?

For me, as an example, I didn't think, I didn't know it was the entrepreneurial itch. I just know something didn't feel right about corporate, right? But I had it in me because both my parents were entrepreneurs, even though you didn't call it back then. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Business owner. Yeah. Do you think you need to kind of try and fail a few times at that head coach position before you figure it out? Or do you, or do you think people just kind of settle in and, and don't, and don't have to scratch that itch, if you will? I mean, I think everybody's different. I think it's one of those where, what are you happy? I mean, not that, I mean, happiness is a constant pursuit and I don't want to get into a whole subject on happiness, but example, when I was helping someone else build what they were doing, I was fine with that because I felt like I was in my area of giftedness.

I was appreciated for what I was doing and I believed in the overall direction, the mission we were, we were, you know, going after. So in that case, it could be fine. And I talk about like, look at Steve Ballmer, Tim Cook and Sharon Sandberg. I mean, these are all employees, all very, very wealthy who joined the mission and help get at each of those companies to where they're at. So, so that's fine. But I think if you have that core, I, you know, what is, I think entrepreneurship is kind of like a sexy word right now, but I think it's like a mistress. You know, it's like everything about it's going to be like great until it's not, you know, you know, every, it's hard, you know, succeeding as an employee can be hard.

Succeeding as a business owner can be hard, but I do agree as a business owner, you have far more to lose. And I think you better have some innate traits that you can necessarily, you can get away with as a, you know, as an employee. I mean, you got to make things happen. You got to solve problems, you know, that nobody, you know, you, as an employee, you can walk, you can go home, you don't have, you know, five o'clock, I'm out of here. Or that's the marketing departments, you know, and all those different things as a business owner, small business owner, getting something off the ground. Every one of those things fall on you and you're responsible for that payroll. And once you're responsible for, for a payroll, like to say this, Mr.

Joe, President Joe Biden, whatever side of the fence you're on until you, you should not be able to be a politician to you had a payroll. I'm being serious. I'm being totally serious until you have made a decision and you've managed money. And Rose, if I make a bad decision, why then I can't make payroll and people that I really care about are going to quit or tell me I'm a worthless son of a gun. It's just, I'm always, and I say this, I don't care what side you're on. It doesn't matter when you are responsible for a payroll. Like you got parenting, the number one responsibility, but this is, this is second. Yep. Yeah. Cause you're responsible for other people's lives. I mean, genuine. That's what, that's what freaked me out about COVID so much was we, you know, we had our goals, you know, we have 12 people here on staff and we got our revenue goals and everything else.

And when COVID hit, you know, thankfully we've, we're pretty strong on our core values and everything. And family first is, is number one core value for us. And I don't mean just blood family, I mean family, right? And, and so we immediately went from a revenue target to our priority was retaining all of our employees and making sure that they all got, were able to pay their bills and support their families. Cause I, as an entrepreneur, I inherently knew I'm like, I could probably survive through this, no problem, but these people are counting on this paycheck. These people are counting on this healthcare and who knows what the hell is going to happen. So we get to, we got to focus on this. And that's a whole different level of, uh, pressure and stress that, that if you haven't faced it before, it's, it's tough to come by.

Well, if you noticed that during the whole COVID thing, there was only two groups of people really that really loved it. You know, they didn't say they loved it, but they really loved it. Politicians loved it and media loved it. Well, why are they both getting paid? None of them took a pay cut. None of them stopped what they were doing. But if you really look at, I mean, sincerely, if you really look at the two and some degree, the medical profession, cause they were, you know, whatever, but everybody outside of that, us normal people in a business, what do we think? There's got to be a way that we can do this. There's got to be another way. Okay. Are you sure we have to go that far? And I just think it, it, it, we entrepreneurs think differently.

Yeah. I agree. Yeah. So with that, you know, you talk about this entrepreneur, why every person should think like an entrepreneur. Could you unpack that a little bit for me as far as why and how? I mean, I think entrepreneurs, the one thing that way our brains typically work if you're successful. Number one is you, you, you, you see problems and you naturally want to solve them. And I've joked, if you took Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, somebody from the food profession, just trying to mix things out and throw an oil person in there. You put those five people in a conference room in the white house, give them any problem, give them a week on every one of them. And I'm not exaggerating that they would have the best solution to every one of them.

Just give them, this is the biggest problem we've got right now. Put those five extremely entrepreneurial thinking people. Why? Because it's a problem. How do we solve it? It's an entrepreneur. It's like, there's, there's an answer to this problem. I don't know what it is this second, but I know if I find it, I can make a lot of money off of it, or I can make my life a lot easier. I can, you know, the wheel in our organization will go faster. It's kind of the way we think the rest of the world. It's like, okay, it's a problem. Can I ignore it? Will somebody else take care of it for me? Or we'll just live with it. I mean, we think completely different about, about things like that. I mean, you know, I hear a problem.

I'm like, okay, well, we got three choices, none of which you may like. There's no perfect, you know, so I always tell people sometimes that maybe there's no perfect answer to this problem. There will be discomfort in any, any one of these three we choose. And so I, I think it's a different way of thinking. You know, my wife, it's funny. She'll come to me and I immediately go into problem solving mode. And I've never worked in a marriage for what it's worth. Anybody in marriage, don't ever solve a problem. You're supposed to just nod your head and say, honey, just, well, so what I've done, Sean, just to, to, to preempt that, that challenge that I have of that entrepreneurial mindset fix a problem is before she comes to me, I say a question for you.

Do you want me to just listen? Are you looking for my opinion on something or are you looking to solve a problem? Like just tell me which one that is. And I will act accordingly. It's great that you're, because I'm supposed to know the answer to those three before. Can't you see it in my face? You know, I'm always, I've learned my, I've learned now that when they ask, when they have a problem, they're asking you your opinion on a problem. They really don't want it. Just so you know, it's like the men is from Mars and the women is from Venus book. They really don't. That's an absolute loaded question. But, but you know, it's funny, but we look at that. We like the problem solving side of it and the entrepreneurial side, we look for opportunities to monetize problems and or opportunities.

So we have a problem. It's like, okay, it stinks. We're not good with it, but look how we solved it. Wow. Maybe there's an opportunity there to monetize it. So we look at, you know, the, everything that we bump into, you know, we kind of look at as an opportunity. So problems are opportunities. Opportunities are opportunities. We just kind of like, wow, I mean, maybe there's a business there or something like that. So I think if you go about that, if you're just an everyday person, if you just think about it for a second, if you go to work every day and you did these couple of things, tell me if you wouldn't succeed. Cause I'll guarantee I'll, I'll give you a way to make a, get a paycheck. I'll give you a way to get a raise right now.

This will work in 99% of every situation. Come to work on Monday. You're a new employee. You're sub 25 years old. Go to your supervisor and say to them, is there anything that I can do this week to make your life easier? Anything that I can take off your desk? They may not give you anything that week. Come back next Monday and do the exact same thing. About four Mondays in, they're going to give you something. Do it. Come back every week and do the same thing. Can I take something off your desk? Be the person that he knows or she knows you're reliable. You will do it. You will solve the problem. You will, you can, you know, give me more bandwidth. You can give me more hours and whatever it is.

That's entrepreneurial thinking. It's just like, you just do something a little bit differently. You know, you're always solving problems. You're always looking to make, make something easier. Um, where some people just go to work and they just go through the motions and we see those type of people. They, they look like robots. They look like, they're almost like hostages, but they just don't know it yet. Oh, a hundred percent. I forget. I think Kevin O'Leary is the one who said like a paycheck is just a, you know, a way for somebody to crush your dreams, right? It, it's, it's, it, it turns you into, you know, in most, in a lot of cases, just somebody who does a job and is, is, is a slave effectively to the paycheck because that's what they're, they're supposed to do all day.

It's a communistic financial system to some, I mean, you have a, you, you do realize that like once you take the job and you get like a 2% pay raise every year that you've locked in your lifestyle. I mean, does anybody really, I mean, the house you live in is pretty much going to be the house you live in, give or take. Okay. The car you drive is pretty much going to be the car you drive. I mean, I never understood that. Like I looked at my, I'm getting this and I could get a 3% raise. I'm like, it's going to take me like 52 years to drive the Benz. I have in mind as a side car. No, no, I like did the math. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna be 87. And I get that hard time. Well, and it also, it doesn't, it's not based on the, I, this is why I've always had a problem with tenure and those types of things, because getting that 3% raise, like, okay, if you're 3% better this year, maybe you get that 3% raise, but even on the flip side of the earnings potential of it, the, the employer's side of, or the expectation of, let me just wait this out because the longer I do this, the more I'll get paid, doesn't ever make any sense.

That's why I kind of gravitated towards sales early in my career. Cause I was like, oh, okay, wait a minute. The harder I work, the more I get paid that, that makes sense to me. And by the way, I can control that. I can't control anything else. I can control my work ethic though. Yeah. Sales is the only way you can be an employee. If you're an entrepreneurial mindset type of person, there's just, it's the only way that's like our way of going, okay, at least I can dictate how much money I make for the time I'm giving you. Yeah, exactly. Let's go back to these problems that you talk about. I mean, as an entrepreneur and as just anybody in business problems come up every day, all day, multiple at a time.

Do you have a framework that, cause I, I've always, I've tried to stay focused on stuff and, you know, but I'm a shiny object guy. Sometimes I'm a squirrel. It's like, there's a problem over there. Let's go fix it. Right. So do you use a framework for yourself to figure out what problems are actually worth you tack, you personally tackling versus offloading, delegating, whatever? Well, typically one that you, that you don't have to be involved in, you could delegate it within 15 seconds. You see it and you already know the person to give it to within the organization. So normally those, you just kind of know it's this one here. So-and-so handled that. So-and-so, one of my partners handled that, whatever the case may be.

And I, and that'll be about 70% of that. And then you get the ones that you know, that typically if it's not handled correctly, you're going to lose a client. It's going to cost you money. And you're not confident that the, any of those people that you're talking about could solve it. They're typically the three that I find, you know, there's, there's a consequence for, for a bad decision. Okay. Somebody's going to pay financially or client, maybe litigation, whatever the case may be. So you, you kind of always have that. Number two is you have nobody on your team that you feel really comfortable that, that, that can make that. And then, then they come to you. So this is the ones that come to you.

This is what I have learned. When you started that day, you did not know you were going to have that problem. Okay. Really being an entrepreneur, it's kind of like you get a phone call, you get an email, you get a text and it's a turd. Never, you never expected it, but you get it. I used to think that I had to solve it the minute I got it. Yeah. Like that was leadership. You know, I look at it and I got to give an answer and I got to give it the, probably the biggest thing I've learned is to be able to say, even to a client, I'm aware of this. I'd like to look into it so that I can better respond with a better strategy or whatever the case may be. I have, you know, assuming it's not a fire or a flood that works.

And it gives me enough time to kind of do a little bit of research and to, you know, talk to a few people to get the best decision I can. I don't need to make every decision myself and I don't need to make it that second. I think new entrepreneurs think they do. They honestly think it's like a, like a, like what you call one of those game shows, you know, you got five seconds to answer. You had no idea it was coming, right? You had no idea. And you're supposed to answer it. And the biggest thing I've learned is, is taking a little bit of time, you know, to, to answer it and, and to, you know, not react to a little, you know, waiting a little bit. If I can give you a little bit of advice for a person who has zero patience, I mean, my podcast called the 10 minute entrepreneur podcast, there, you know, so I like to do everything fairly fast, but I've learned that when I do that, it's very reactive and it's rarely the, you know, worst case scenario, if I wait a little bit, I'll just confirm what I was already thinking, but I'll have better peace of mind about it.

Yeah. And won't worry about what you could have, should have, would have said. Right. And I think that translates all the way down to, you know, even sales on a day-to-day basis. It's, you know, I used to think that, you know, when a client asked for a proposal, I had to get it to him, right. When the client had an objection, I had to answer it. You know, and it's, and the weird thing about that is by falling into that trap, not only sometimes do you make the wrong decisions or get, you know, get the wrong feedback, but you condition other people. I was going to say, you've created a bad dynamic right from the beginning. Yeah. You, you know, people are expecting you to respond to clients. I mean, even I use this analogy where even if I could respond to a client immediately, I usually wait 15, 20 hour, whatever it might be, because what I want to make sure that they don't, I don't condition them to realize that every time they email me, I'm Johnny on the spot, because let's say I do that.

I'm, I'm immediately responding to them. And then, uh, you know, a few weeks go by and I'm in a conference or something and I can't check my emails or whatever, and they fire off an email and it's not really that important, but I don't get back to them immediately. Like I usually do. Well, what's going on in their head? They're sitting there like, well, why isn't John responding to me? What's wrong with this? And it's because I've actually conditioned them to do that without them even knowing it. Yeah, no. And I, I, you know, I have very high end clients and I've spent probably over the last two years, really, I, I had trained them to be completely unrealistic because my personality is the type that we were going to get anything done.

You know, we're going to be the best of the best of the best. And then I created nuts, literally whack-a-doos. Um, and I, and I, I, I, I have a paragraph in my contract now, one of the companies I own that says there is no perfect. No. And it goes into explain it. It basically says, these are all the things that can go wrong. And guess what? Your job might bring a new one. This is what I can tell you. There's none that I don't think we can solve, but if you're the client and I'm pretty much right on with the words here, if you're the client that needs perfect and you know who you are, you is in bold, we would ask you to return your deposit and hire another company because I, I had trained people that just got complete.

I literally had a lady that sent us this email saying, you guys did an incredible job. I want to thank blow, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all these people. Right. But in our mission statement, it says our goal is to exceed our customers' expectations in a timely and professional manner. Her complaint was you did not exceed my expectations. No, I'm being, I'm, I'm, no, I'm not joking. She's like, you, you, you met them. She goes, when I signed the contract, this is what I expected with your company and your company did great. I'd like you all to do more work, but I want you to, I want to be clear. You did not exceed my expectations. And there's a problem there because you said you would, I reached her out.

I said, dear, do you understand that's an aspiration? It's not a contractual point. And I said, and by the way, we'll be no longer doing any work for you. Yeah. No fire clients. I created, I created complete nut chops. Yeah. That, and this is that whole four hour work week, Tim Ferriss, right? Like I check my emails once a day. Like we got to recondition people on the other side to gain any type of sanity in this world that we're living in right now. What's up everybody. I know you're enjoying this conversation. John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes and our guests consistently bring the heat. We want to take a moment here and let you know that you've got an opportunity, an opportunity to become better than you were yesterday.

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That URL one more time is joinjbsales.com. Let's get back to the show with JB and our guests for this week. Let's talk about the, um, cause so as an entrepreneur startups, you had mentioned something, or I read something about this Bermuda triangle of startups and why most of them fail. So, so as an entrepreneur, you got that itch, you're like, all right, I got to go scratch it. You got a startup idea. Fine. What, what's this Bermuda triangle and why do most of them fail? Yeah. And for those who, you know, don't read history, um, Bermuda triangle is this body of water that if a boat gets in and a plane flies over it, they don't tend to ever be found again. So for a little history lesson, and I think there's like this triangle.

So if you picture these three points, okay, making up a triangle and these three critical things, I think when you get anything inside this, it's, you have a really high chance of this business failing. The first point is, is that you have an idea that you love, but it's untested. You just didn't do any due diligence on it. There's no beta testing at all, all you've done is bounce it off your Facebook friends. And they're like, Oh, Johnny, you're going to do great. Mary, I think that's the greatest idea in the world. You know, I mean, I think stitching, you know, you know, patches on jeans is a great business. I once did it. I mean, really crazy stuff like that. So I think the first thing is, is that you have to test your idea and you can do it so easy today.

Golly, you can put up a website and you own a day and you can pre-sale something and, you know, do the beautiful email back is we had a greater demand than we thought. So your shipment will be a month out. Okay. I mean, there's so many ways to do that. You can do a postcard with it. You can buy phone numbers now and completely set up a call center just to see. And then if you get the great response you want, boom, you do a quick, you know, 36 hour location set up. And I'd rather do that on the back end and put all this money on the front end for an idea that I think is good, but I never did any of the things I just mentioned. So the first thing is, is that you have an idea and it's great in your head, but you haven't exposed it to criticism or the marketplace.

And, and I've done that before and it really worked out well for me. The second thing is, is that you staff with family and friends because you're comfortable and they won't, they won't press you and they're an inexpensive hire. And yet it doesn't make any sense because as a startup, your first couple of hires are the most important. You're typically hiring one person in one of the three areas you're hiring somebody who's going to be speaking with your customers. Okay. Either on the floor of a store and or over the phone or however you do it. So they're going to, they're going to have direct contact with your customers in customer service. Number two is somebody who's going to be in sales in most businesses.

Okay. And then there's fulfillment, you know, manufacturing and, or however it is that you've got to give them what they paid for. So typically that's a critical hire. I mean, if you really think about the hires that you need to make early on that, I don't know. I listen, I love my family. There's none of them that would fit the three criterias I just gave you in the industries or the businesses I'm in. It's impossible. I don't want to say impossible. It is really hard to be objective when you hire your friends and family. It's almost impossible. And so therefore it's kind of like doing business with friends and family. Like when it comes to contractual work, it's awful. I want to be able to find, if I'm renovating my house, I don't like, yes, it's cool.

If my buddy does it, even if he's got a really good business. But the problem is when they have a mistake, when they, when they screw something up, I want a throat to choke. Right? Yeah. No, I know. I agree. And that's the thing with family and friends. You can't hold them to a measurable mom. You know, I took less money, Johnny, to quit my job and help you. You know, you're always going to hear that. Or we hired, you know, so-and-so, but they're just really good folks, but they don't know how to close a sale. Okay. You know, they don't know the dynamic in closing a sale and things of that nature. So I think you're, they staff really bad. And there's just a lack of talent under the building to get this business off, you know, off the ground, what it required.

And then the third thing is, is that the person who started, it's just a schmuck. You can't, you can't, I've tried, you can't fix a schmuck. I don't know what it is. No. I mean, here you go. If you want to know if you are one here, we're going to do a simple little test. Okay. You're probably not the first one that gets to work in the first two years of a business. Okay. You kind of get there when you feel like, cause you own it. Cause you got the business card. Okay. When a problem happens, you think your staff is going to solve it. You don't have to worry about it. Cause again, you got that business card that says I can like, you always have like your desk in the very back with the computer and everybody thinks you're probably surfing porn all day.

Cause you're on the computer all day. They don't really know what the heck you're doing. You lack leadership. You lack when somebody interviews with you, they don't want to work for you. You know, you're never going to get that great hire. You simply lack the personal qualities that high, that good entrepreneurs have. I mean, great entrepreneurs typically have good communication skills. Okay. Whether that's selling, persuading, getting investors, they have that. They generally have high energy. Okay. You know, they get this thing off the ground. They go crazy. You know, Bill Gates famously said, I didn't take a day off in my twenties, not one day. Okay. And if you look at Elon Musk's schedule, it's, you know, you have that.

There's no, you just have that. I will outwork you to get this off the ground. Doesn't mean I will do it forever, but I will outwork you. I will do whatever it takes. And then they have enough brains to know where they lack and they staff it or partner with it. I always say, look at this. Warren Buffett has Charlie Munger. You know, Bill Gates had Paul Allen. Elon Musk had partners in Tesla and in PayPal. You can go all the way down, all these extraordinary businesses. Why the greatest entrepreneurs have partners in nine out of 10 situations. They compliment them too. Exactly. Oh, no, that's key. Yeah. You don't need two of the same people. It doesn't, you know, I always say here, this is, I'll give you a quick partnering lesson in under one minute.

You partner for only one of three reasons. Number one is foremost, this equation, they bring something to the table that without them, the business could not get off the ground or succeed at the level you want it. Okay. That's it. They have to bring something that important. And then the three things that it always is, is they either have money. You don't have capital. Number two is they have time. You don't have, or number three is they have an expertise in something absolutely critical for this business. So partnerships should only be based on those three things. And it should be without them. This, the business would never have got off the ground. It would never succeed at the level it is.

So 10 years from now, when they're getting half the money or a third, or however the partnership is, you never regret, this is how, you know, you've made a good partnership. You never, ever regret the check they get because you know exactly why they're getting it. Exactly. I think that couldn't be it for me. You know, I, a couple of businesses I started with other, it wasn't because I consciously did as we just kind of ended up this way, but it was like another sales guy. And at first I was like, Oh, this is great. We share a similar mindset. We can do similar things. But then very quickly you look at, and it's, I think it's inevitable and just inherent in us as humans that we look at each other and say, wait a minute, I could do your job better than you can.

And I have better ideas than you. But if you, if like I'm in sales, that's why when I went off on my own directly, my first hire was finance and operations, because even though I- I was going to say, as soon as you said that, I go, sales guy needs an operations guy. A hundred percent. Because otherwise, like without Megan, who was my first hire, there's no chance, no chance. I mean, I could have done the invoicing. I could have done all that other stuff, but it would have sucked so much time away from what I was great at that we would have been mediocre at best. Yeah. It's funny you say that. Cause my first major salesperson, the third, literally when I got it, I ran an ad that day in training to hire an office assistant right away to handle all the paperwork.

Cause I was like, when I make a sale, there's so much paperwork on the back end of this job. I'm like, I will hate, I will hate the fact that I made a sale and I love that I can make the sale and just lay it on her desk and she could just take care of everything because it was a great deal of paperwork. Well, and you want somebody that loves that, doesn't do it because they have to, but does it because that's what they're passionate about. That's what they're great at. Because I think I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs hire people because, oh yeah, well they can do that. Like, you know, IT support basically, you know, I used to, my first startup was IT support and inevitably like the office manager would be the IT support person for the companies we'd walk into.

And it wasn't because he or she loved IT support. It was because the one day they fixed the CEO's computer and they were deemed the IT person. It was like, oh, good Lord. This is terrible. Yeah. So let's transition into a couple more points, which is one of the things you say you're you're, and you've talked about it a little bit here is your superpower is hiring. So in today's world right now with how, you know, great recession, whether we want to debate that or not, I don't care. But with people looking for jobs and the market, the way it is, what are some of the things from your perspective that you look for in hires and how would you recommend entrepreneurs look to hire, whether it's the first position or any position?

What are some of those key takeaways for you? First thing is, is that you do kind of have a salary cap. I always base it that you do in somewhat have a salary cap. Okay. So you can't just get crazy about it. Number two is if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. It's just a rule. So if you're going to go into every interview and your goal is I'm trying to get this person for the least amount possible. And, and, you know, you small business owners do this. I will never forget this. I was doing an interview with my partner and I was like 30 and he was in his mid forties. And I, there was a critical position we were trying to hire so that we can scale a whole different division of our company. And we're interviewing this person that he told me was the best.

I mean, everybody referred this person, sub 30 years old, absolute superstar. And they were arguing over $2 an hour. I'm listening to this interview. Oh my God. And I take my guy outside, my partner. And I say, we're arguing over $80 a week, 4,000 a year. And you told me he's the best guy. I said, if he is not what we think he is, we'll let him go or drop them at a dollar. I said, but if we let him walk out of here today, we're never getting him back in here and we're doing it over $80, we're going to lose this guy. I said, are you, please? No, I overruled. I had to step in with my 51% and we hired him. And that made us, we're making millions of dollars to this day because of that hire 20 years ago.

And, and, and we do that. I mean, you got to, you know, as the owner of the company, you've got to be able to know what talent looks like. I'm just telling you, when I interview people, I know the critical questions. I very quickly, I can get a feel for their energy. I do. I look at how fast somebody walks into my conference room. I joke it. If they have the walrus walk, I know I'm not going to hire them. Anybody who needs tremendous explanation on anything I'm talking about, I don't hire. You know, they just kind of, tell me a little bit more about what you're talking about with your HR package. Okay. You're getting paid this and you're getting that. Other than that, I really don't want to talk about it because I'm deciding whether I want to hire you, but you get those certain people.

They just want you to, it doesn't fit my personality type. It's typically somebody who's going to analyze everything. They're not going to. So you got to come up with a system that works for you. But as the owner, you've got to be able to identify high level talent. You've got to be able to attract it. You got to know how to run ads. I'm always moving our ads around and being more creative with how we do it because I want to do an interview every week. Every week, I want to have some level of an interview. It could literally, it could be a phone call. It could be a text. They could have made it all the way to my conference room, but I'm always talking to talent and I'm always looking around.

I mean, one of my business partners was, you know, his son played on my son's indoor soccer team. My other one was getting ready to retire, ran an entire kitchen division at this massive building and supply place. Now I own a kitchen division that's extraordinary lucrative. I have a digital marketing company that's incredible. I got a guy who worked with Fortune 100 companies. I met him through the radio station. I mean, none of them came through a traditional interview process. And then my highest paid person came through a traditional interview process, was going to do sales for me and wanted $850 a week base salary. I'll never forget this, $850. And if I'd have given him $850, he'd have been the happiest guy in the world.

His paycheck last week was like over, touch under $5,000 and it wasn't even a good week. Okay. He makes well over a quarter of a million a year. When $850, I was like, listen, we got to structure something that really benefits you. I want, I knew this guy was a superstar. I knew that he was better than he even realized himself. And sometimes that's the case. You're going to see potential in people that they don't see. And your tendency is going to be to take advantage of them. You're like, well, you know, what are you getting paid this an hour? Oh, I'll give you a dollar. And you know, they're a superstar. That's a bad approach. Man, share the vision that you have with them. This is one thing I do with great hires is I share with, I talk to them and say, where do you see yourself five years from now?

If everything was perfect, if you were here and you could just draw up how this could play out the next five years and they lay it out. And a lot of times I'll come back with, I can make that happen for you. I'll show you how to make that happen. Or they'll lay it out and it's not near as big a vision as I had for them. Like the guy who's making over a quarter million a year. And I'll go, well, let me share with you what I have for you. And I'll kind of lay it out. My point is, is that you've got to give them a picture of their life being what they aspire to be. If they're extremely ambitious or if they're not quite, they don't quite believe in themselves. You got to paint a picture. They can go home and tell their spouse, you're not going to believe the interview I had today.

They don't even talk about the money. You're not going to believe the interview I had today. I interviewed this guy and he told me that he could see me doing this two years from now and maybe maybe five years and I'd be running this. The money is a moot point because people normally take positions because they want to be happy. They want to be challenged and then they know the money will take care of itself. Yeah. See, I take a similar approach. I actually ask them about their, what does happiness look like for them in five years, right? So regardless of here, what does your lifestyle look like in five years? And, and, and cause my job is to help you get there. Okay. And hopefully that aligns with what you could do here, but I want to see where their head's at and how, uh, visionary they are for their own lives, uh, regardless of this position.

Um, because once you come on and we have similar values and all that other stuff, then my job as the CEO of the company is help you achieve whatever level of happiness, whatever that means to you while getting the productivity out of you. You're going to hear a great, you and I can have a great little debate over this. I have a con, I have a phrase. I don't promise happiness. Yep. Yeah. That's one of your 10 rules. It is. It is. I don't promise it as employees because example, let's just beat this happiness thing to death. Yeah. You hire the guy who loves his job. His wife is a wackadoo. Yeah. She yanks his chain every single day. He's miserable. Every time he comes to work is I'm so glad to be here because I got rid of that for the next eight hours.

You know what I or I got a teenage son who's just got suspended, driving me crazy. So I always tell him, listen to me, I will make you as happy as I can within the confines that I control. But some of the decisions you've made prior to getting here, good luck with that, buddy. You can't control those. No, that's why I don't ever promise happiness. That's my big thing. Exactly. So I don't, I go within the employment space and business space. I'm here to help you, but there are sometimes I'll pull a guy aside and I go, Hey, you, I just, I don't even have to say anything. He goes, no, I know. I go, good, good. Don't blame me for that. You made that decision a while ago. All right. So let's, let's finish on this.

You have 10 rules to live by. We've already covered a bunch of them. Yeah. Cause I don't even know what they are. My, my, my publicist must've put some things in there that I don't even know. Actually, I think I was, uh, I was watching one of your videos. You did videos and, and one was can't promise happiness. That's the first one start over on Mondays. Um, and then we already talked about, uh, never got a customer I couldn't pass on. What, what's one, what's kind of the biggest over the years of talking and building businesses and stuff that we haven't hit on yet. What's one of the biggest pieces of advice you can give to entrepreneurs or anybody who's looking to be in a kind of startup world here?

I mean, some of my, like, I call them Sean-isms and I'll just throw like a couple out and you should play with these however way you want to. Like number one is better the devil, you know, than the devil you don't know. That's one of them. Yeah. So talk to me about that one. It's massive in hiring. It's massive in staffing. You know, I'll have somebody and, and it's like, I know their downside. I know their upside and I can live with it, but I know they're, I love reliability. I know they're extremely reliable. They can take a little bit of a tail kick in if I get a little pissed off over something they've done where some people you got to talk and powder them and, you know, so that's kind of important for me.

So I'm like, be careful who you get rid of, because sometimes the one you have, they can play within the rules that you have. They're not perfect, but, but when you hire 10 people, you're going to have two, two are going to be superstars. Realistically two are going to be super, not everybody can be a superstar. So be careful who you let go of. If they're reliable, come to work, you know, and you can have a face-to-face conversation with them and you trust them a little bit, you're winning. Okay. In the employment game, you're winning. So I always say that's number, that's number one. One of the other hiring things is never hire a seven on an interview. You may hire somebody and then later you kind of find out they are seven, but here, I'll explain that.

A seven is you go into them and you're very optimistic. When we interview somebody, we're highly optimistic. I mean, that's like the most optimistic we are, right? Cause they're trying to impress us and they're in front of us. And if you've concluded there are seven, realistically, it was probably a five or a six and you're hoping there are seven. And I'm just telling you, that's an average hire. You did all that time to say, I want average. And I'm just telling you, if you're meeting with them as the owner, it's got to be an eight, a nine, you know, from the beginning. And there's people that you hire that open the doors. And I want to preface that. There's certain people you hire and I say, they open the doors and they wash the dishes, but I'm talking for, for, you know, hires that move the needle.

If you are content making average hires, those sevens are going to end up being fives and you're going to wake up about two or three years from now. And you don't have enough talent in the building to scale your company. So help me unpack that with this factor here of something I had to realize as, as a startup, you know, founder, first company. I remember vividly, I was asking Jack Welsh, he came to it, he jacked it is, you know, Q and a session, a thousand people stood up. And I said, Jack, you know, I'm 20, 10 people were super passionate. 20 people. I'm like, we're 50 people now. And just that, that, that 51st person just doesn't have the drive. He doesn't have the passion. And he said, look, you'd be looking at it all wrong.

You can't, you can't teach that. You have to hire that. Right. And, but one of the things was I had to come to the realization that, you know, you talk about A, B and C players. I always wanted A players. I want to always the nines and the tens and the people. But then I realized like company, the company needs B players. The company needs those reliable people that just show up and do their job. So let me ask you, are those eights and nines in that regard or are you talking eights and nines as far as like their ability to drive and go? This is why I view, I shouldn't be interviewing people that just open the doors as the owner of the company. Yep. So the base level jobs that you're talking about where an average person is fine, that's fine.

Okay. They're, you know, they allow the place to operate. The interview, when I'm in a conference room, I'm interviewing somebody who's moving the needle. They're going to be over sales. They're going to be running a division. We're scaling something. We're doing a movie. If I'm in the interview, the level of interviews that I'm doing as the CEO better be people that move the needle, or I'm really, I mean, I'm, I'm doing interviews. I probably shouldn't be involved in my staff, who they hire that they think can do it based on, they look at the applications. We kind of have a system that they do it. I'm fine with that. But when I'm hiring somebody, Sean Castorino is hiring nines and, you know, eights, nines, and tens.

I just, I'm not sitting in front of a guy in my conference room to do something, to scale my company, to make sevens are not going to move the needle. They'll, they'll, they'll provide fulfillment. Okay. Let me, you know what I mean? They provide fulfillment in your organization. They put package the boxes. They do that. That's all fine and dandy. But the interviews that I need to do as the CEO, as the founder, I need to hire people that move the needle that can run a division, be partners with me, can help me scale a company, can run a complete level of operations. And sevens don't do that because they end up being fives and six. Is there a point where as a founder, um, because look, your first few hires you're involved in there, they're the key hires that might be, but is there a point where is it, is it based on you hire really good people and then you walk away?

Or is there kind of almost a threshold? Like once you get after 10 people, like you should have a structure in places. What's that look like? Well, you hire people that know how to hire people and that takes time. It took me three years to train. It typically takes me two to three years to train my staff, to be able to do a hire of their own. Okay. So typically I will, this is what I do. There's a hire available and I'll tell them run the ad, set up the interview and get me the three best people that you want. And I will sit in on the interview with you and then we'll go through the entire interview. And at the end, I I'll say to them, which one do you think was the best? And they'll tell me who it is.

I'll go, what makes you think they're the best? And we'll bounce that around. I'll, I'll poke a hole in something I may, you know, see there, whatever the case may be. And they'll come back and I'll go, do you feel that strong about it? If you do, I'll let you make that hire. But I'm just letting you know, my experience tells me this might be it. So I'm fine with that. But, but you got to get to the point two years in where they can run their own interviews, do their own staffing, let go, know how to terminate somebody as well. Because what happens is, is that you can't scale. You've changed your, we all want to do this. We, you know, we want to be involved in everything. It's a family, it's culture.

It's great. Guess what? Everybody in a family has responsibilities and they're, they may be dramatically different. You know, I mean, everybody can't be like overlapping on the same thing. So. Yeah. There's a breaking point eventually that you hit. And unfortunately I've hit it multiple times here. So Sean, it's been awesome talking to you. Where, where should we send people? I know you got the podcast, you get the books. What do you want people to know about you? Where do you want people to go? If you go to my website, you'll get a free book. That's the most value. If you go to seancastrina.com, you get a free book and we do really very good. Like once every four weeks, we do a coaching call for free and it's very fast to the point and really valuable.

But that, that's the best place you can obviously follow me on Instagram. And if you do that, I think you'll, you'll get everything you need in the 10 minute out to more podcasts, the fastest podcast on the planet for getting actual information that'll help you grow your business. Love it, man. Hopefully the 30, 40 minutes that we spent here, I know 10 minutes. I got my tips and stuff for Instagram and TikTok. But I like to kind of explore a little bit on the, on these podcasts. So hopefully I kept your attention there and everybody else as well. We're good, man. I like it. Awesome, man. Well, look, thanks for coming on and everybody, thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.

And as I say all the time at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day went, if you make somebody smile today, you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that. So thank you all very much. And I'll see you on the other side. Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads. And I can't thank you enough to keep the momentum going. If you could go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a five star review, I would greatly appreciate it in return.

I will answer any question that you have on Instagram, hit me up there at John M as in Michael Barrows with a video question or a DM. And I will get right back to you. I promise. And last but not least, if you're looking for training, I'm adjusting my training approach this year, and I'm actually going to be delivering training to the masses. I'll be delivering live training the first and second week of every single month with our two marquee courses, filling the funnel and driving a close to anybody who wants to join. And it includes membership in our on demand platform with weekly AMAs. So you can go to jbarrows.com slash open to check out the details. Thanks again and have a great day.