Katrina Stephenson 38:45
Well also just to add on to that you are naturally inquisitive person and I think that you know, you are as well, Ben to just kind of be curious. We’re curious people so it works. It flows. Well for our listeners setting you’re curious to perhaps
Ben Landers 39:03
one It seems like I guess one thing that I really shared with you know, I I guess an ideology that I share with you know, a John and it was sort of the the tipping point for me was that Yeah, I have no aspiration of being like, I listened to the show the rewatchable, right, which is like about rewatchable movies. And these guys that are clearly like really good friends and movie, kind of, they know a lot more about the movies than me. It’s just them breaking down, you know, classic movies like jaws and you know, Goonies and stuff like that modern world. Why? Yeah, well, yeah, he’s just through. So, you know, on the one hand, it’s like, high production, very well thought through, I mean, it’s a show, you know, and I don’t have any aspiration of, of doing that, but I started to realize Yeah, whenever I would be on a podcast. I remember thinking that um, yeah, I always come out of it with a different relationship with the, with the person interviewing me or, I mean, again, I’ve never had a show, but you know, the person interviewing me then if we had done a call, or, you know, or, or that kind of thing and so yeah I looked at it is, you know, it’s just a platform, you know, to engage with people in a in a different way. And if by recording it and editing it, you can turn it into content. Yeah, I mean, I used to joke around that if I were starting up a company, you know, like, yeah, whether it’s a Blue Corona, or a drink or water or, you know, car business like yours is sort of the Gary Vee approach. I’m not a Gary Vee fan, but I’m hiring like a crew to just basically, you know, almost like as if CNBC were like doing a show about your business. Because the content that comes out of that, you know, can be used from a recruitment standpoint, like the culture of the company, it’s sort of like you’re giving people a look inside. And I know, not everyone makes their decision on who’s going to come and do their, you know, commercial painting project based on, on that kind of thing. But, you know, if you’re looking at a couple different proposals, and you know, and this one company, you just have this, almost like a virtual relationship with because, you know, the owner or the employees are more, you know, sort of, they’re out there kind of showing you how the business works. And, you know, it’s like, you know, you’re seeing the customer serves up the people that are actually answering the phone, and the person and accounts receivable who, you know, I don’t know, for me, I just I like doing business with, with companies like that, where I think these are good people like this is one of the good guys are, are good gals, you get to a certain point in your life, where it’s like, you know, you get to a point where you sort of have some semblance of choice, you know, it’s like, I don’t have to go with the absolute cheapest at this point. And so, you know, who would I who would I enjoy doing business with where, you know, I’m going to get more out of it than whatever the services that I’m, you know, the guy that redid the company that redid our office in Maryland, was a residential contractor customer bars, who was looking to expand into commercial was looking at our office at your office is like a total piece of ass. Like, it really is bad. I mean, you guys are great, but the office and you don’t have people here, do you? And I’m like, not usually try not to. And, and so he said, we’re trying to expand into the commercial space. And you know, we’d love to, you know, love to give you a proposal and do something in and we were, you know, we got to put our fingerprints all over it. And, you know, it’s a lot of fun. And I became really good friends with him, he ended up selling the business, and we’ve kept in touch and I just, you know, learn so much about business, contracting business, his business business in general, people, managing people, you know, through the whole process. So I look at whatever we paid for that build out renovation, and it was like, I got way more value than, you know, whatever.
Greg Owens 43:04
It’s so true with us, too. And John, John with Rise25, you know, he, they, he was so dead on. I’m an entrepreneur and owner of the company. And I was thinking to myself, Oh, we could just do this in house, right? Like and save the money, right? But there’s no way we would have ever done it. Right? Because he makes it all look more professional puts it on on all the sites, all of that, right. And as you know, and you just mentioned it earlier in the stuff that you do, it’s like, yeah, you can do it in house, but you need a person wearing these different hats, right? And so they’re able to, like just put this whole package together for me, and I don’t have to worry about it. All I have to do is
Ben Landers 43:44
I remember my, my original, my original business partner. You know, he has an engineering degree from Duke, he went to Harvard Business School’s one of the smartest guys I know, good at everything. I mean, we went bowling once for a holiday party and I and I said to him, like, have you ever bowled before he’s like, never. And of course, he rolls like a 250. You know, I couldn’t break 100 and I’m like, Dude, are you kidding? Everything you do, and he’s like, kind of. But But I remember when we were starting the business, you know, we were trying to figure out payroll and benefits. And, you know, I was like googling how to do how to do your own payroll. And he is probably on a weekend and he came down we were we share the building, we had the lower level, his business was in the upper level in the warehouse. And he came down and said, What are you doing? I saw I’m looking at, you know, basically how to do payroll, and I don’t know how I’m going to be able to handle like, figuring out the taxes and any of those, let me explain something to you. I know we’re kind of bootstrapping this thing. And I know you’re real worried about going out of business run out of cash. But the way to build a business is to focus on doing what only you can do. Right? So there’s a company that for 30 bucks, an employee per month will do the payroll and you got like a handful of employees. They can’t go out and pitch customers. They can’t go out and speak it That’s like that’s your superpower. So do that. And the more time you can spend doing that the better. And so, like, again, could we paint our office? No, we probably could but but we’d like to think we could but if he in a million years said, like, you know, you’re looking at a proposal for making 10 grand as something and you’re going to do it yourself to save 10 grand, you’re an idiot, like, because you should be out pitching or doing the things that they they cannot do. And the value of those things in the core business is often exponentially greater than the person who’s, you know, like the idea for you to like, edit the podcast, and then upload it to all those different platforms and put it on a website that Katrina would be like, seriously, I got a lot of other things I could be doing. Right? You do all that down? She does the payroll and payroll,
Greg Owens 45:53
payroll, right.
Ben Landers 45:55
Yeah, I don’t know how much we pay for it. But I just remember, I remember him saying there’s certain things that you know, are high consequence. Like it like if you get the payroll taxes wrong, you know, Maryland, I mean, I’m sure it’s seven in every state, but there’s certain things that are, you know, yeah, like, you just can’t you don’t want to get them wrong. So
Greg Owens 46:15
yeah, no, it’s so it’s so it’s so true, right? And you were talking about, like paint people, we rescue clients all the time. I think we did one not too long ago, here in Mill Valley, California, which is Marin County, which is a suburb of San Francisco, over the bridge from Ghana, where they were watching HGTV and started painting, they’re like, tore their house apart a bit, you know, and started painting in themselves, right? And then they’re like, Oh, my God, this is
Ben Landers 46:15
the painting, you know, we painted some rooms in our house. And, you know, I hold the flashlight up to some of these. And it’s like, it just like everything right there is there is a, my, what my dad thinks is good or acceptable is like a two out of 10. It’s like, That’s terrible. It’s literally terrible.
Greg Owens 46:15
People ask me all the time, like, Oh, hey, like, like, can you kind of walk through my house and tell me what, or like commercial company here in San Francisco or something like walk through and tell me what needs to be painting? And I’m like, no, really want me to do that? Because, like, all I do is focus on painting. And I can build a case and I will, I will highlight areas that you never knew existed. And then now they will bug you Forever, ever. Yeah. With our hardy plant, they had the guy with a client, a pharmaceutical client, like we walked through, and the facilities manager said he was like, he was talking about like the ceiling. And he only he can see. See that it’s bad, right? Because nobody looks up and pays attention to the ceiling that long. And then there was another lady with us. And then she’s like, oh, my god that’s bugging me now. Right? That’s really,
we need to think and it’s just like, it’s like bringing it to their attention. And then they can never let it go.
Ben Landers 48:05
Yeah, yeah. awareness. Awareness was I didn’t make this up. I can’t remember who said it. But it’s like awareness is the greatest agent for change. Yeah, it’s like you make someone aware of these things. It’s like cannot unsee it can put that egg back in the shell once you probably like the Dalai Lama or Buddha. Yeah. But I think it is one of those guru guru types.
Greg Owens 48:26
For sure, for sure, yeah. So it’s been, and then John’s got John Corcoran of Rise25. You know, he, we had a conversation the other day, and he reminded me again, and I’m not taking advantage of that. But that’s why this conversation also is like, Oh, yeah, absolutely. where I can find out about you, your company, right? learn some things that I don’t know about that, and also generate more content for our company, and have another podcast interview, right. And he was saying, you he’s, he’s been really, really encouraging, because we have like a call every few weeks to, you know, to see how things are going. And he’s, he’s taking like you, he’s taking what he sees the best podcasters doing, because he’s interviewing. So he’s got so many podcasters underneath his umbrella, and then he’s up. He’s saying, hey, you need to get this person on, or you need to get this person on to learn about their business. So maybe it’s like how to hire better employees and talk to the person that’s written a book on that. Yeah, right. And that’s, that’s great content for us. We can talk out we’ll probably talk about painting a little bit or something in there, because it always comes up.
Ben Landers 49:34
So that’s part of the feedback that I gave him. And then I’m not I told him, I said, I don’t know how to say this, I worry that you’re going to take this the wrong way. Which was, I sort of told him when at the outset, he kind of gave me a range of what they have what they charge, and I’m sure just like when I used to say to people like well, people typically pass between X and Y for digital marketing. You know, in the early days, inevitably, someone would say what like I’m not going to put, you know, pay that. And then I would again be, you know, doubting what I’m doing. But I told john, when he put out that sort of in the outset, it was like, I’m just telling you right now that you don’t you can stop with selling me on why I need to do it because I’m I know, I’m with you 100% you also don’t need to sell the value, necessarily have you doing it? I’m not doing it. Like are even though we’re a marketing company, we are not doing it. Because I need our team focused on our clients. Yeah, I send them all I need to understand is the mechanics, like the the cadence of how it works? Like I record it, where do I upload? Is it real, like janky interface, it’s hard for me to use, we have another company that helps them lose some content related stuff, and they use Google Drive, and we’re a box, Salesforce, you know, all of us kind of integrate that. And I sort of telling them that, you know, it’s been hard for me, like going into the Google Drive and using the Edit feature and giving feedback. It’s just, it’s clunky for me. And I’m not saying you don’t want to change, I’m not asking you to change your business, I’m just telling you, it’s like, and so I told john, like, I don’t need anything other than just walk me through, sort of how it how it works. Like if your folks are sending emails to kind of help me with with the setup, you know, how do I ensure that they don’t sound like again, I’m going to reach out to CEOs and business owners. I don’t want you know, sort of the you know, if it’s not going to sound like me, I’ll do I’ll, I’m going to send them you know what I mean that that kind of thing. Yeah. So yeah, I think he Yeah, he does a great job. To your point, I recognised immediately when he was sort of talking through the playbook. Like, at this point in my business career, it’s like, I’m always looking for like, what, who, who knows what they’re doing? And then I try to do competitive analysis of like, you know, so what’s that there’s a book called steal like an artist. And I love it because it’s sort of like you’re not plagiarising. You’re trying to kind of get behind the thinking of like, like what how did they decide to set it up that way and why did they do it that way? What what and then you know if you can take two or three different sort of people and mash it into one it’s like I remember watching a band that came out of this area and when they were in high school you know we’d go watch in the local barns all cover songs is all covers and then years later you know, it’s all their original stuff, but you can hear you know, and then I realized like no one buys CDs anymore but I realized that in the CDs when they’re thanking all the people that inspire them it’s like those are all people that they basically ripped off in the early you know, the early days of like, you know, playing the covers and you know, like this person style so yeah, John has like all the best practices what works what doesn’t like I don’t want to test through and try to figure that stuff out on my own
Greg Owens 52:57
anything anything improving all the time because it was before I did have to upload I mean, I don’t know I still I think I save to Google Drive and then I just have to put that link I’ve got it down pretty light there like portal basically, it’s Yeah, it’s going through his portal now. And so there’s like maybe five questions I need to answer and take it from there. And then they come back to me if they have a question, and I can write in there like, if there was something that happened like all of a sudden and this has happened like ups comes to the door and I can’t ignore it like they’re banging on Yeah, edited out. Yeah, it’s like oh, shoot at 5819 can you go through and just get rid of this little piece right and clean that up a little bit or something like that? They’ll do all of that right? And so I’ll I’ll like write a quick note down. And it’s a lot of the things it’s crazy. I mean, I’m trying to think back to when I started because there was a whole bunch of things I was worried about that turned out to not to be true. One is an AI and I went this direction I went on audio only so we’re not doing we hadn’t been doing video, although we’re gonna probably start doing video where we are. And actually no, I just told him we are going to do video because I’m missing out. Because I realized more and more that I don’t listen to podcasts on any of the podcasts like Apple podcast, things like that. I listen to podcasts on YouTube, because at times I want to see who the characters are. Yeah, I want to look at when Wait, there’s a girl Katrina on this, what is she looked like and how does she fit into this thing? Right? And it’s interesting because I might just look for a little bit but then I’m just listening as I’m working right and tonight, and I find I do that all the time for almost every podcast, I’ll find it on it. I’m hoping it’s on YouTube, so we’re gonna put it on YouTube. But content creation is full as you know, from an SEO standpoint, normally right? And I’m always
Ben Landers 54:53
and if you can get you know, if you’re getting the like, you know, I listened to a podcast on Audio when I’m driving or when I’m hiking. But but like you, I mean, I’m visual. So if I can, I’ve all I’ve watched really, at this point in terms of short form stuff is YouTube, and a lot of the YouTube stuff are our, you know, people, you know, expert, a interviewing expert B and yeah, it’s like six to 12 minutes, sometimes I watch a lot of those, or if it’s a long form thing, you know, sometimes I’ll let it play in the background, like you’re just describing, but I think, you know, if you’re, if by recording the resume, you get the the audio so you can upload to all those platforms, and then you get video that you can upload to YouTube, which is the second largest search engine, and who knows where they’ll take that, you know, in the future in terms of how they’ll integrate it with all their other properties, Google My Business and all that stuff. Yeah,
Greg Owens 55:55
you can you could take you could take that mountain and cut it up. Oh, yeah. into many like, you could take a piece of this, we’re we’re talking about, you know, employees and hiring and something like that, and just take that cut, right?
Ben Landers 56:10
Well, here’s something for you. And you’ve already probably thought of it and you’re kind of hitting on it right now we had you know, it’s one thing to create content for the plumbing, ah, fact electrical, you know, contractor who is residential, right? The amount that they know about their trade is so far beyond the person who’s going to be making the buying decision, husband, wife, people living there. You don’t need to be writing real technical, like, let me show you what an expert I am. It’s like, Look, I’ve seen someone come up with place by toilet, how long is it gonna take? What are my options, you know, that kind of thing.
And so, but the same is not true, necessarily first parts of your business, we have a ultra high end residential remodeler in the DC area. And his big thing was, look, I can’t I’m an architect, I can’t, I’m not writing blog posts. I’m not doing that. But you’re not either. Because I am like, in my area of my feel, it’s me, and you’re not going to be able to be me. And, and so what we did with him was he had created this coffee table book with this, ask the architect all these different questions from all over the years that people have sent him asking like, well, how would I have a fill in the black cape cod? And I’m trying to do X? And how would I address this? So he answered him, and then he put in, you know, in situations where he got the project, kind of the before and after with all these descriptions? And I said, do you have that as like a digital file, like a PDF, or whatever you sent the book publisher. And we turn that into, we’ve turned that into, I mean, literally, probably 1000 blogs project before and after pages. There have been videos created where we just take the digital imagery and sort of, you know, kind of sometimes with some B roll stuff. And then you can share that all over the place. And and so that’s just the way around, you know, having the 25 year old SEO guy or gal, trying to pretend they’re a commercial residential painting expert, which can can be done. But you know, if you’re producing content organically like this, it’s so much easier to have someone be editor promoter, snip it up into pieces, and then share it than it is for them to try to pretend you know that they work for the company or that there you Yeah, so now I would, I would go all in with that concept.
Greg Owens 58:41
Yeah, and we’re just doing we’re just touching the surface of this right. We started the podcast when we get busy. And then great ideas of mine started and ran with and I taught myself with when it came to rise 25 then I would do, I would do one year and evaluate right? And at this moment in time, I’m like, I’m going to do another year and evaluate right?
Because it’s been definitely been worth it on on a whole whole bunch of levels, as you just pointed out. Well, I
Ben Landers 59:12
have one other quick question, which is how long have you been involved with EO?
Greg Owens 59:16
oh man EO, Entrepreneurs organization? Yeah. And I was part of it when it was why YEO young entrepreneur. organization right. And, and it’s a phenomenal organization I we’ve been involved for over 18 years now. I think it is in, you know it, it’s a member driven organization. You’re also part of YPO. Was that correct?
Ben Landers 59:38
Yeah, yeah, I originally looked at originally looked at EO. And EO in in my area. skews. As you know, I don’t know what it’s like now, but it’s time it’s skewed young in tech. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m exposed to that. To sort of that, and I think at that time I ended up joining Vistage and is like as Vistage skewed old and not tech. And that’s sort of what I wanted, you know, just bigger companies run by, you know, people that didn’t know what I knew. And then YPO when I qualified for YPO I joined that and I think YPO is probably is probably a blend, there’s, I mean, it’s obviously bigger companies, but it is I think, affiliated. We
Greg Owens 1:00:28
Yeah, well, YPO none, I don’t want they’re not affiliated, they, they’re very similar in the same players created both I think, you know, when beginning the YPO Young Presidents’ Organization, and you, you know, the big differences, the two big differences YPO skews towards bigger companies 10 million and above and 50,000,050 employees and above, I think is what it is any, they’re also still young. See, you have to join before you’re 40. Right?
Ben Landers 1:00:57
When that Yeah, they upped it and shocker all up, you know, not to I love YPO but you know, it’s amazing how, you know, it’s kind of like USA, right? Like, my dad was USA because government military and then and I was like, Man, I wish I could get USA because it’s great. He’s like, you can, you know, and I’m like, how I’m not in any of this. He’s like, because you’re related to me. And I’m like, really? And then it’s like, you know, it can get very far removed. But um, same thing. Yeah. YPO now, I think is 15 15 million. And I think that there’s some classifications for the type of business and then it’s your payroll, payroll exclusive of you has to be 2 million or more, a year, and then 45 they upped it, so I only joined. They called me during COVID. I was looking at it before COVID. And then COVID, obviously put the kibosh on everything. And they called and said, hey, you’re going to age out, you know, if you don’t join now, and I’m like, Well, you know, things are good virtual and they made it, you know, virtual but um, yeah, so, I mean, now they kick you out when you’re 50, you get moved to why YPO goal, though? You’re a gold.
Greg Owens 1:02:07
Yeah, but you can’t join YPO gold unless you were YPO. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, he was young entrepreneurs for a long time. And they realized that it was funny because the whole entire the organization’s like, 15,000 members, and it was something like 80% of them, were going to age out at the same time, right? This is not this is not a good business model anymore. We need to make it right. Let’s drop that why
Ben Landers 1:02:36
we’re always thinking about the we were driving to the neighbour the other day, and it had like the college hunks hauling junk, and I was, you know, I’m thinking about the labour challenges right now. And it’s like that. I mean, I just say it’s comical. It’s like, Hey, we’re gonna have like good looking guys moving stuff or throwing away junk. And it’s like, by we’re at a good looking guys. So guys call it like,
Greg Owens 1:03:02
That’s funny. Yeah, my thing is I’m the one 800 got junk using YPO. And, and Manning, I’m blown away at how well they’re killing it, that that business, you know, just, they’re in every market and they’re doing well.
Ben Landers 1:03:16
Yeah, yeah, a lot of impressive people in both of those in both those communities.
Greg Owens 1:03:21
And the other difference between EO and YPO EO is you have to be an owner and founder. Whereas whereas yy, here, you can be a professional hire, you can be hired CEO, that kind of thing. You don’t need to be the owner, founder. So and then I’m going to be going I’m up here in Lake Tahoe, and next week, we have what’s called EO alchemy, which is a conference right, and we’re we’re meeting in person for the first time in a very long way, as a bigger all the western states. And when you’re in the room, you just know that everybody in here is the owner, owner and founder, right? Like, it’s just a different, it’s a different mix is from my understanding,
Ben Landers 1:03:59
you know, and there’s, there’s, that’s not insignificant because, you know, and I’ve sort of learned that, you know, one of the benefits of the professional
CEOs is you get these people with sort of the classic, you know, business but you know, Wharton graduate, you know, these kind of, sort of highly accomplished that were then brought in and so there are certain challenges that they had have or had dealt with, that are sort of interesting, you know, to hear as a founder to learn from but but yeah, someone wants told me that with YPO everyone falls into one of three categories. The lucky sperm Club, which are the kit the kids that have taken over mommy or daddy’s business, the professional hire gun and the founder and you know, and you know, so they were kind of saying that that’s sort of a known phenomena cuz I remember one of the social events for YPO. At one point I met someone where you they’re running this humongous company you know like three or $400 million like the guy locally was probably 28 and I was like a Namor you know how did you do this and he’s like well my great grandfather and I’m like man like you hear
Katrina Stephenson 1:05:13
that you’re like okay
Ben Landers 1:05:15
yeah i mean i mean again it’s not I don’t remember what happened there I might have that might have been one of the ones where I didn’t do what I should have done which is to be curious and keep you know what can I learn from this But yeah, I immediately was thinking like you know, that’s not you know, that’s not what I want to you know hear about but you know, I’ve learned over the years there are plenty of people that take over their the family business that you know, are amazing steward of it and take it to the next level and then they’re then they’re all the stereotypical you know, take the business over and flamboyant, you know, guy or gal running the business and running it into the ground and
Greg Owens 1:05:52
I mean, businesses can be completely unforgiving to anybody right? And so it’s even even those kinds of companies definitely you know, there’s a story there there’s a lot of hardship within even within that even though everybody’s like, oh man, you had it easy. It’s it’s, you know, from my ex I would imagine that’s probably that’s got to be one of the challenges if you’re in that situation. It’s just overcoming the fan stereotype. Yeah, there’s definitely I do know this about one of the biggest differences between eo and YPO is there’s there’s a tremendous amount more private jets in YPO
Ben Landers 1:06:28
Yeah, I’ve never been I’ve I’ve been on one private jet which is ironically by ah that guy in Chicago, but I will say he trades I will say I went to I went to a went to an event. And you know, and I roll up in like, you know, my my Acura MDX. My used Acura MDX and psych at a farm kind of like one of these you know, wine brewery farm kind of deals. And I like look around the parking lot. And just thinking it was a you could bring your spouse and I didn’t. And I remember thinking like, I’m so glad I didn’t bring my my wife because she’s from like, a small town, Ohio. I want and she’s not impressed by, you know, the material stuff. But I think she would have been very uncomfortable with parking lot. You know, it’s like the Lamborghinis all these nice cars, and then someone flew in on a helicopter. And I was like, Yeah, I can, you know, just like you want to hang around a place where, you know, you’re not. I mean, again, I don’t really care about it. But you as you start feeling like I’m finally like, kind of making it then all sudden, it’s like, No. Well, then I
Katrina Stephenson 1:07:33
just want to say that the Acura MDX is a very highly rated vehicle. So it was a good choice because that was my second choice.
Greg Owens 1:07:41
Yeah, I sell a car gal gal, for sure.
Ben Landers 1:07:46
Yeah, yeah. I was when I was like the first nicer car that I bought. And I remember thinking like, and that was coming from like, my, my wife’s mom’s Toyota Camry that had like a hubcap missing. And it was like, you know, I gotta get a car that, you know, when I show up, I don’t want I don’t want them this. I don’t want to show up and have them say, well, that’s why they’re so expensive. But I also don’t want to show up and have them say if he was any good. If you say he’s good, like, wouldn’t he have four wheels on the car? What do you what do you even have hubcaps, like, you probably have alloy wheels. He doesn’t have alloy wheel.
Greg Owens 1:08:22
That’s pretty funny because it within yo I get I’ve gotten opportunities to speak and speak about mentorship and that kind of thing around the world to other EO chapters and different things. Right. And so I was in a conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, right and you’re I am a painting contractor. With a small business we’re not we’re not massive by any scale, right? And we have 26 employees or something. And, and I’m speaking to this group and and I’m also a dropped out of high school and I’m like him in the cars rolled up and it’s all Ferrari’s Lamborghinis and all this stuff and then you come to find out that they have like a massive tax to each car cost over a million dollars because of how this country is structured. If you’re importing one of those kinds of cars, you got to pay this like luxury tax that’s just phenomenal. I’m just sitting there going like they dropped a million dollars on this car that I can get for $100,000 right? That’s mind boggling that they had that kind of throwaway money yeah, yeah.
Ben Landers 1:09:28
There’s only one other aspect that I can’t decide how I feel about it, which is I remember when we’re starting the company, and you know, and again, my my business partner who’s 18 years my senior had had other guys other businesses. And we were we were talking to a guy who you know, sort of later we contemplated having this person as like our coo and I remember Bob saying, you know, when we’re doing a million dollars a month, you know that this works. Now we’re doing a million dollars a month that’s this isn’t going to work and and you know, we probably had probably done like 400,000 in revenue, you know, for the year at that time, and I’m, and the guy who were interviewing kind of laughed and I said to Bob, like, Hey, you said, you know, when we’re doing a billion dollars a month? And like, I just say that, like, I mean, do you think it could ever get that big and he’s like, if it doesn’t get at least that big, you know, you will have completely fail, and you’d be a tremendous disappointment, or something like that. And I was like, but but I remember thinking there is a good mentor, there, there is something that comes from, you know, a being too naive to know, you know, like, I mean, I mean, I, that’s not a good example of it. But, you know, it would have been great if I thought we’re gonna do 10 million a month, you know, like, just too naive to know like, that’s 100 plus million dollar business, you know, that not many people get there. So there’s that. But then there’s also the act like you’ve, like Bob expected to be there. And I whereas I was like, that’s how would we ever get that that big. And when you’re surrounded by the Ferrari’s and the private jets? And that and the helicopters? I will say there, there is a moment where it goes from become, it can go from becoming this, you know, ridiculous, because that’s sort of how I think that’s like, That’s ridiculous. Even if I could afford it. I would hope I wouldn’t. Right to to sort of like, normal. And sometimes I wonder if, if, if, kind of breaking down that barrier is part of the you know, if you can’t envision yourself getting there, you’re, it’s going to be very hard to get there.
Greg Owens 1:11:41
Now. It’s so true. Yeah, I mean, that might I mean, that’s a great example of a good mentor to you, right? Because he painted a picture of what the future could look like, but also gave you like, some negative feedback, yeah, if you’ve done this, you looked up to this guy, right? And you’re like, Oh, I need to prove to him that he’s correct in his assumption of me. And I don’t want to be like, if you don’t get there, I will be super disappointed. And it’s like, holy crap, I better, better up there. Go look at whatever I wrote down for goals downstairs, because they’re probably, you know, they’re probably too small. But my early
in my early days, my mentor, told me, he said, I got on the phone with him one day, and I didn’t know my numbers. And he said, he was like, Gregory, if you ever get on this call again, and you don’t know your numbers were done. Right? And I was so scared that the next you know, for the next few years with him, like guy was always always prepared when I went to see him. And then I told him, when we became really close friends and everything, and I told him afterwards about that story, and he’s like, oh, man, I did that. I could be so mean sometimes.
Ben Landers 1:12:49
Yeah, well, I was gonna say, half of, I sort of, I think of that movie called Big Fish. with Liam with Ewan McGregor, where, you know, his dad is dying. And he’s told all these kind of tall tales, and then at the end kind of comes full circle where it’s like, you know, he’s kind of embellishing sort of embellishing the truth and we always joke around about how, you know, I never let the the the accurate truth get in the way of a good story in a sort of these memorable moments. Bob’s always joke around like I say that right? And say that with that tone, right? And I’m like, that’s what I heard. I heard. You know, and it’s better
Katrina Stephenson 1:13:32
is that reality is perception. Yeah,
Greg Owens 1:13:35
yeah. Hey, thanks for the time Yeah, we went over time I hope that’s okay with you but I mean I really enjoyed the conversation and I love where it was going and it felt good so you know apologies for going over time I said 45 minutes and
Ben Landers 1:13:49
no no I enjoyed it. I love learning more about your experience with the whole thing getting know you guys and yeah don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s something that something that I can do to return the favor.
Greg Owens 1:14:00
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. We will I’ll talk to Katrina but we’ll we’ll need to talk to one of your your people for sure about your offerings.
Ben Landers 1:14:07
And I’m always happy to help even if it’s just to give you our two cents.
Greg Owens 1:14:10
Cool that would be Yeah. And how what’s the best way for people on this podcast to find you?
Ben Landers 1:14:16
Yeah, www.bluecorona.com, Blue, like the color Corona like the beer .com. That’s been an interesting thing. When, when this whole thing happened. I was in the CEO groups and people kept going around the room on the checking when COVID first hit, I would say this Coronavirus is and I got to like a fifth person. At least within the bounds of this. It’s always called COVID-19 I got enough nothing issues I don’t need, you know, right, right. No effect, right.
Katrina Stephenson 1:14:47
Just want to add that. We use Corona brushes here and I had this Corona Pat and I felt the exact same way. So shout out to Corona brushes and
Greg Owens 1:14:59
Corona beer.
Katrina Stephenson 1:15:01
The beer course I forget.
Ben Landers 1:15:02
All right. Well, thank you all for your time. It’s nice meeting
Katrina Stephenson 1:15:07
you as well.
Greg Owens 1:15:07
Thank you, Ben. This has been great. Yeah, take care. Yeah.
Outro 1:15:21
Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.