From a Startup to $3 Million + In Sales Within 5 Years (with Kade Wilcox)

Audio Transcription

Today’s show we interviewing a man by the name of Katie Wilcox. Cade Wilcox is w I l c o x Kate k a, d e And k cade started a business coaching company that started with typically when a company starts, they’ll start with $0 of revenue. That’s common because there were a startup and he’s grown the company to where they’re now doing. They are now doing today $3 million dollars of revenue and this entire growth pattern from $3,000,000 to start up that entire path took them five years. Yeah. If you’re out there listening right now and you’re saying, man, I would love to go from a startup to a $3,000,000,000 company. Then you’re gonna. Want to listen to today’s show? Mr Kade Wilcox. Welcome onto the show. How are you?

I’m doing good. Thanks for having me on.

Well, your company, can you share with the listeners about your company primitive social and what you do?

Yeah, sure. Um, where digital solutions company, we work with all kinds of different companies on basically helping their companies grow by creating digital solutions. So that may be anything from website design and development, content management, inbound marketing, sales enablement, social media management, custom software, I mean, any, anything as it relates to digital, we do ’em all built around and tailored towards accomplishing the goals and objectives of the customer.

So for our listeners out there who are maybe not as familiar with your career that, that led up to the founding of primitive social, could you share with us your, your background and where you first had the idea or when you first had the idea to start primitive social?

Yeah, sure. Um, so I took a position at a church, so when I’m sat there with my wife and I moved to Lubbock in 2011, which is where we live now and wanted to take that job one or to do that work, but didn’t want to live on that salary. So we had the idea to manage businesses, facebook pages. It’s been 2011. My wife, uh, her entire life has been a really good writer, a content developer, and so a friend of ours had this idea of pitching small local businesses on us managing their facebook pages. So, uh, you know, we, we gave it a shot on one client in 2011 and thought to ourselves that if we could do it for one, we can do it faithfully and bring them value, we could do it for others. And so, you know, that all started in 2011 and now we’re slightly under $4 million in revenue this year and uh, over 50 employees. So, so, uh, it’s turned out to work and we’ve got a lot of great business coaching customers and really, really grateful for that.

Now your wife, your wife’s name is lacy? My correct?

Yeah. Yes sir.

You and I share, I think a lot of things in common, but one of which is, I actually work with my wife are very closely, my wife handles the accounting and hr compliance aspects of all of our companies. And it sounds like your wife works very closely with you. Um, could you share about her role on now and her role that she played when you started the business?

Yeah, sure. So, uh, early on particularly, she was indispensable. I mean, I had a full time job and so, you know, more or less pick up a new client and hand him off to her and she would do, you know, the entire work from a to z. and so she, she really, what was the company, uh, in the first two or three years that we were in business. Um, so she, she was extremely important, um, you know, for, for a long time we thought the most value that she brought was managing our customers content. So she was certainly really good. Um, and it’s still really good at the social media side of things, but the thing that was most indispensable now looking back on it is just her ability to care for the customer. Um, you know, about three years ago she kind of slowly started phasing out of, you know, these, these full time work weeks and she’s still very much works in the company, but it’s on our own marketing, not, not the customer facing side.

And we literally had customers, you know, not, not big, but you know, strongly request that lacey not be removed from their account. And so the impact she made early on was that she gave people a reason to trust us. Uh, you know, extremely likable, extremely diligent at work. I’m very dependable. And so it really set the stage for our company early on, um, in terms of, you know, this kind of relational credibility so that in the early days, you know, that was the big impact she made. Now we have what we call a growth team that focuses on all the digital marketing, uh, for, for our companies. And she’s a part of that team which allows her a lot of flexibility with our kiddos and all that good stuff while, while still being able to contribute to our company.

How many Kiddos do you have these days?

How we have Q, we have a little girl is eight and she’s a creative mess. She’s dramatic and smart and funny and, and, uh, just full of energy. And uh, my son is six and he’s a both good and bad. Pretty much liked me in every way.

So when you started the company, you know, five years ago, your kids were very young, so you, when you’re starting a company with, with small kids on a teacher on a, on a pastor’s salary, did you start a business out of a van down by the river? Did you start out of your house? I mean, where did you, where? We’ve had some, we’ve had some interesting interviews. We had one guy who literally started his business out of a urinal manufacturing place. He started his business out of a warehouse where they manufacture urinals and then during his break he would cold call. Um, did you also start your business in a urinal factory or where, where did you start your company?

Gloria story? Unfortunately, I think mine’s best case. It’s, uh, the, the beauty of our work both today and when we started is that it’s virtual. All the work that we do is online and so we’re one of those typical kind of online companies where you get the beauty of, of freedom and flexibility and I certainly work hard and long hours, but you can do to your work from anywhere. So we’re really fortunate. I mean, my, my wife grew up working, she’s been a worker her entire life, so although we’ve made the business coaching transition to, to her really, I’m seeing a lot more time with our kids and she is working her, her mom and dad modeled for her work and a work ethic and she picked it up on it. And so when we are, we had to basically a two kids under two and you know, at the time, I mean it was certainly no, no large business but for two kids under two and me working full time, uh, she was, she was, she was carrying the load. And so she, uh, yeah, she put in the effort and know for the first couple of years we just had about a dozen clients. Uh, but that, that was a full load back thing for sure.

Forgive me if I’m asking if I ask a question that you feel like this question is just out of control. You can just hang up on me and that’ll be my subtle cue that you no longer want to answer the question. Um, but a lot of our listeners are curious because there are so many companies out there that can help people with digital marketing, you know, but you guys are doing well. I mean you guys have case studies and we’ll get into a few of those case studies about the success you’ve generated for your clients. What kind of fee structure do your, do your clients pay? I mean, or do you have clients that are thousands and thousands of dollars a month? Or is it like a hundreds of dollars a month? Or for any listeners out there that are curious about your model and how you built it, what kind of, what does it cost to get in the game with your company?

It’s a good question. I mean pricing always changed back when we first started, how we price people and we had no, no bloody idea what we were doing and we still might not, but we know a little bit more now than we did coming up on seven years ago. Um, we have, we have multiple sides to our business, so we have custom software and it’s priced entirely different than it website and website are priced entirely different from kind of your social media accounts and social media accounts are priced entirely different from your inbound marketing. So I gave you some kind of general ranges on the kind of digital marketing because those are monthly retainers for clients that we call a social media management accounts for what we call hybrid accounts their customers and have a lower end of the budget. You’re just doing social media for what you’re doing. Social media plus local seo or social media plus email. So they’re the smaller tier and those range from anywhere from $1,500 or $4,000 a month and they, they may also have some marketing technology costs and some digital ad cost, but that’s a pretty good range.

I just want to be my shameless promoter of Mr k dot Wilcox. Okay. Just as an example, I work with one company called Seo Inc. Uh, they’re based there in California. Okay. And one of the companies that I am, I’ve worked with over the years, it’s called oxi fresh o x, I fresh. It’s a carpet cleaning franchise cade with 400 locations. The seo companies that we’ve hired in the past, like seo anchor, different brands that have worked. These, a lot of seo firms are 10 grand a month. I mean there’s a lot of companies that have no problem with $7,000 a month. I mean, it sounds like you guys, I mean, that’s very affordable for somebody for $3,000 a month or $2,000 a month to work with you. I mean that seems like a very fair pricing model, especially when you’re helping generate leads for people. I mean, that’s a, do you do here that’s on the lower end of what firms charge? It seems like a very reasonable fee,

full Content marketing, customer’s entire gamut of digital marketing. I mean, it’s certainly a lot more than that 1500 and $40,000 range. And so, I mean, every, every company is different in terms of the way they package their deliverables, you know, the way they do their service fees. I mean we have really, really transparent pricing. We itemize everything sO you know exactly what we’re keeping for quote management, fever, sweats, going back into your brand. So him And I think we’re certainly competitive from a pricing standpoint. I mean, one of the reasons, one of the many reasons we consciously made a decision to grow a company in west Texas is that the cost of lIving and the cost of doing business is as radically lower than someone who knows in carlsbad, calIfornia. Um, as I, as I see on seo website, so you know, it, it, it’s a radically different. And so that’s really a business advantage to be honest with you because we can, we can charge, you know, competitive pricing because we don’t know, we’re not paying for a full floor and a high rise in dallas, Texas or austin or boston or denver or salt lake city. And so, um, we love those places and visiting, but we think that the cost of doing business where we’re at, it’s really honestly a strategic decision that we’ve, we’ve made for our company. so I think that really helps us on that, that side of things.

Now remember, if you can kind of think back because it’s been, you know, you’ve been doing this now for a long time. When did you realize this was going to actually be a thing that would wOrk? You know, a lot of times you have an idea and you get a few early clients and it’s like maybe this could be a thing, but it ends up not being a thing. Ends up just being a hobby. When did you realize this is going to be a viable, sustainable business model? We might be able to buy new shoes. We might be able to take our kids out for frozen yogurt. I can put gas in my car. Lacy, this is a real thing. When did you have that epiphany?

No, that’s a really great question. I’m probably somewhere between year three and year four. First several years were just real organic, kind of unintentional to be honest. I mean we, we picked up our first client and we very intentionally said we are going to serve this one client. We’re going to make sure to maximize their investment and we’re going to make sure we know what we’re doing. We’re going to make sure we’re bringing them business coaching value. And so we’re very, very intentionally. Just went really, really slow because we don’t want to sell snake oil, you know, we didn’t want to sign this deal. We were convincing people to spend money, but it wasn’t bringing them value. So for the first several years between me having a full time job and I was really wanting to commit to doing good work, we, we, we really just kind of unintentional about growth.

What happened about three years in is one of my best friends, you know, call where you’re doing a hobby and I’m really competitive and it kinda pissed me off, but as I reflected about what he was saying was true and we had no sales goals, we had no employees, uh, we had no kind of operational development, we had no systems and processes. And so it was that point where we started really thinking about our, uh, our hobby as a real business. So we started establishing sales goals and a lot of other things. So between year three and four, uh, you know, one of the, one of the goals I had was a sales goal and I want to do 100,000 in revenue in 14, 250,015 and a half, a million dollars in 2016 while we hit our goal in 2014, rIght? At 100,015 we did and $60,000. So we far exceeded it. And then the next year we did one point 3 million intelligent that ended that first year of that kind of self goals where I realized, oh my gosh, we can, you know, we can really do this, we can establish some goals, we can establish some key benchmarks and objectives as a, as an organization, so to speak and, and deliver on that. And so that’s when It started getting really, really fun to be honest.

You know, I remember I had an awesome, awesome goal back in the day. My business coaching wife and I, we were living without air conditioning at 71st and lewis and tulsa, Oklahoma. Not quite west Texas, but the same low cost of living, but it’s 100 degrees where I spent all my money or yellow page ads the years, 1999. The company was dj connection.com. And my first goal there was kate. I had three jobs, applebee’s, target and direct tv. And my job was my goal, my biggest, highest goal was to quit one of those jobs. So I remember walking into my wife comes home from work one day I’m sprawled out on the futon, sweaty as can be, just gross, just gross, sweaty, hot as heck on the second level of an apartment complex and I’m supposed to be at work. And she says, hey, where are you? I said to jevs today.

You know what I mean? I’m kind of a big deal. I landed some deals, guy this goal that if I would book a certain number of clients per week, I committed if I’m going to book for weddings a weekend for four weeks in a row, I would quit my couple of my jobs. Then the next goal was to turn on the air conditioning. That was, I remember being a baller. Turn it on air conditioning for the first time. Katie was awesome and we turned on and everything. I was no longer hot. It was unbelievable. So I want to ask you this, what are some small goals you made along the way? Because I want to make this relates to the guy listening out there who says, gosh, you know, I’m stuck in the toilet of $70,000 a year of total gross revenue and I do every job and I work all the time. What would you. Do you have any kind of small goals along the way? Like, hey, I’m going to take lacey to olive garden if we sell anything. I mean, do you have a little small goal along the way?

I think honestly, I like that strategy game plan for us and for my personality particularly, I have to have really unbelievable goals. So when I senT those goalS of 100,000, 14, 15, 16, I thought they were entirely unachievable, but they, they, they. That’s why I liked that it felt like something that was too big for us to accomplish. and so I, I’m trying to reflect and I’m certain I have the small goals, but what’s really what’s really, I think one of the many catalysts to our success over the last four years has been then we set the big huge, audacious goals that we’re okay with being uncomfortable with, you know, and so that, that’s kinda the approach we’ve taken. And so yeah, we have small goals. Certainly, you know, little benchmarks that to help us identify our progress. But I think for us it’s really been, you know, establishing these huge things that almost feel like, you know, not believable almost. Um, and we’ve done now and it’s been crazy to see know those things become, become reality.

Well, if you ever want to flirt with a depressing yourself by setting a ridiculously small goals, one of my small goals I have is to buy silky chickens from atwood’s. Whenever we hit certain sales goals and there are about $6 a piece and I’ll come home with a silky chicken and my wife will look at me and she’ll say, did you just hit a goal? And absolutely, I have a $6 silky chicken. They’re like the diva of chickens. Uh, again, if you want to revert, because obviously the big goals are working. So kate, if you want to reverse what’s working,

I would prefer me to smaller goals there. Maybe I do need to implement your strategy.

Atwood’s, silky chickens. $6 a piece. Three incredible delay. About three x a week. Unbelievable. Now, now you teamed up at some point with jared hearst. Can you share with listeners who’s jared hurst and how did he give your company that burst and that boost it needed to go to the next level,

right? At the same time, we were starting to establish goals and try to identify ways we can think about a hobby more like a business and take it to the next level. I’m really into crossfit. And uh, so I met this guy at the crossfit gym for the first year or three years later now is when we got customers, tried website news. We would, we would outsource it to a freelancer of the really great freelancers out there. I don’t mean this to sound overly negative, but our experience was miserable because we would say the website project, but we’d have no control over the project. We sold it. It’s out of our hands and so, you know, delivering a good customer experience and a good product was basically impossible. Fresh. Well jared had been building websites for like 15 years and so I just literally overheard him and another member of the gym talking about a website that he had just built to that guy and I told them our story.

I said, here’s whaT we did, and I said, we have a project, you want to give it a shot together? And he said, yeah, sure. And so the rest is history. So he, he was at the time working for his family’s business. So they’ve been selling john deere equipment for 30 yearS, have seven locations and he just kinda built websites on the side because he’s always been a computer programmer and passionate about it. And so we did that for a year or so where we went to pick up a project. He would, he would build it and we’re just kind of share the revenue and then we had a business coach and we invited him down to lubbock and he did like the small retreat with us and he asks is phenomenally good question because we’re really wrestling with whether we should become an official partners and not because we’d always heard of the real horror stories of, of, you know, having a business partner and jason plummer, uh, is, is just brilliant valley.

So, hey, are you guys better together or apart because are now are really wrestling, you know, do, do we, do we become partners and really try to build this business together? And we just kind of leave it as it is where he’s doing his thing. We’re doIng our thing. We just know we crossed paths when it makes sense. and uh, we just thought on that and decided we were much better together than apart, uh, you know, early on we thought the value that he was going to bring to both of us was his technical knowledge. And he certainly does mean we have, you know, nearly a dozen developers now. We build multimillion dollar piece of software so he’s still exercising his guests there, but the real beauty of our partnership is that we’re, we’re just enough alike that we can kind of dream big dreams together, but we’re, we’re different enough that we provide each other, uh, significant balance and that’s been really good. So lots of hard conversations and hash some things out and uh, you know, making better decisions because we’re each bringing something different to the table. So it’s definitely been a game changer, our company and can’t imagine having a better, you know, a better partner than him.

This question’s going to feel awkward for you to answer because it’s awkward for me to ask. And I’m like, paul, ask a question for you here to ask you a question. If you google your name, okayed wilcox, k a d dot wilcox w I l k o x. I mean this in a completely heterosexual appropriate way. You are a beautiful business coaching man. Beautiful man.

Yeah.

Okay.

That’d be ilco x. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So when people are searching for your name though, you’re, you’re a handsome guys, your partner, handsome guy. Too, or is he what’s kind? What’s he about? The same age as you. What’s his background?

Yeah, he’s older.

Nice. Okay. That was paul. What is your question for k.here? Hey.

Hey, appreciate you taking the time to visit with us and to share your business coaching story with us and I don’t know if you read much, but I liked to read and I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book winning by Jack Welch, but he, because you’ve gone from a company in a relative short period of time with no employees now you, I think you said you have 50 employees and a jack says before leadership, your job is to grow yourself after leadership. Your job is to grow others. Have you found your role has changed as your company has grown? Are you. You’re still not doing the same work you were doing when it first got started or are you. How’s that experience been for you having growing, going from zero employees to 50 employees?

That’s really interesting. You asked that question probably the last six to 12 months. It’s probably been the hardest. The hardest part of your role dramatically changes from 15 employees to 30 employees to 45 employees to pick you seven employees and so long as you’re growing and evolving. I imagine it’s always doing that, but it’s been really dramatic. The last six to 12 months, 12 months ago, about 15 months ago, it was owning the company, meeting the company, and then kind of the huge gap between us at a business level and the rest of our team. And so over the last year we’ve really trIed to build out our senior leadership team and it’s been a dramatic, dramatic change and I think you highlighted one of the biggest ones, which is that whole leading other people. In fact, I think again, this, this not a ride, but you get into this practice, this rhythm.

I really working in the business when you’re smaller and you know, you really kind of hands on and granular and all of a sudden you look up and you have to really kind of rise to a higher level to kind of bring a different kind of value to the organization, to your team, to the leaders within your team and to your customers. And so, um, it, it’s, it’s probably been the biggest change I think I’ve probably experienced on a personal level over the last seven years as we’ve, as we’ve done something really important for, for your listeners who, who are going to scale. I don’t think I’ve been proactive in thinking about that. I mean there’s no way to really dial in perfectly any kind of formula that says, hell, when we hIt this number of business coaching employees or our business gives you the size of revenue, I’m going to have to do this.

It’s not that formulaic, but it is absolutely going to change. I think anything you can do to think about that and almost to prepare yourself to be more of like a like, you know, for our company, and I’m sure it’s different for everyone, but for our company what has been needed at any more so now than in the past, his vision and inspiration and morale and being the good guy leader and not the, not the one in the weeds all the time engaging in things. We’ve messed up. Things can you do better or whatever the case is. So I’m glad you asked that question and I certainly don’t have it dialed in quite yet, but it’s been a huge transition.

I would just want to pile on there, uh, in, in green and affirming what you’re saying. I know that as I’ve grown many companies past the point where you have more than 50 employees, you have kind of your, your big three that you got to be very, very careful with that. Call it the three p’s, but you’ve got to make sure that your people, that the emotional state of your people was really good when they leave the office every day. And really good to start. Let that morale. You talked about powerful. The third is you’ve just got to make sure you’re profitable. You got to watch those numbers. You just, you can’t because otherwise if you scale a fail, it gets weird. I mean, so you’ve got to and then the product, you’ve got to be maniacally focused on making great products and it just, it’s, it’s very different than being in the hands on doing everything. And one thing that you said, showing though that you made that as you’re growing, you’re still doing things right as you helped a congressman from Texas get a victory there. A guy by the name of jodey arrington. Am I correct? Jodey arrington?

I was trolling around on your website. I say trolling around. I guess it’s. I think it’s not creepy if I’m doing an interview with you and I’m doing obsessive research, but I was trolling around on your internet, on the web, on your website there, and I saw just a glowing positive review and testimonial case study from a jodey arrington. Can you share with us what all you did for congressman arrington?

I worked really closely with them individually for over the last four years. We actually went in for a position here in the state of Texas and, and lost a lot of details on that. But uh, so that was our first go. We, we, we weren’t successful. And then, uh, the opportunity, our former congressman retired and so the opportunity came for us to run again. And so he threw his hat in the ring. First of all, he was a great candidate. I mean, he, he in many ways was kind of born, born for this position and a lot of really great experienced, articulate, a very genuine, extremely hard working. Very, very few people want work, kim. And so, so the first thing is he was a great candidate. Uh, you know, what I did was kind of all over the map. I mean, we manage all of his digital, so digital ads, facebook website, a email, you know, kind of what you would consider the traditional digital approach to, to running a political campaign. Um, but for, for, for most of that race, we kind of served as the entire campaign team. So we helped build the campaign organization help fundraise. So we, we kind of did every, you know, in some regards every everything there was to do as it related to a political campaign. So there’s a lot of fun. I mean, it’s extremely stressful. I’m not sure if you’ve ever been a part of a campaign.

Yeah,

it is extremely intense. As you, as you know,

I would like to ask you this, and again, you could, you could, you could just hang you hang up. That’s the subtle tip that I need to know that you don’t like the question, but I haven’t worked on political campaigns. This is how I’ve seen it. It’s like you’re with your client. You figure out his ideals, his values and who his ideal and likely voters are. You know, you figured out who they are, who’s going to resonate with this message, what is the message? How are we different from the other guy? And you want to keep it clean. You want to keep it above board. You don’t want to sling any mud, right? You don’t have any mud because you want to take the high road least. That’s been my experience. When you got into the political weeds, did you see any mudslinging? Did that ever happen to your candidate? we’re all of a sudden you’re seeing attack ads and social media ads that are negative, or was it pretty much a, a clean fight?

No, definitely not clean a journey from day one when we last made a very intentional and conscientious decision that that was not the game that we were going to play, win or lose. And I, I was involved in every single decision know working nights and weekends with him and can attest to that, that he, uh, he maintained that, that stance and that belief as did the rest of the team for, for both of the race we lost and the race we won and we won. It. Got it. Definitely got pretty ugly. Particularly for another candidate. There’s several candidates in this election. And, and, uh, it got really ugly from a bit more last year, one of the other candidates, but it was directed towards jody and then a colonel, a former colonel in the military. Uh, this, this other candidate was, it was brutal. So yeah, I’ve definitely seen that pretty much gets the worst part of politics. Do you follow politics right now and what’s going on with this current supreme court nominee? You know, it just, it, it’s getting borderline. Yeah. Almost uncontrollable. It’s, it’s crazy. Fathers, it stopped there.

How many developers work for you now? We have close to a dozen political campaigns. How many russian developers do you have? I’m just kidding with you. We interviewed an mit professor by the name of joseph romm who did a lot of research and the trump campaign and, and uh, many people are saying, you know, that the russians were involved and I’m going to keep it fair and balanced and say, I don’t know, I just help grow companies. But I have a final question for you. I know Paul Hood has a final question for you. my final question for you is 90 percent of small businesses fail. According to forbes, 90 percent of startups fail 90 percent according to forbes, 80 percent of existing businesses failed. How have you been able to build a team and absorb that growth when most businesses simply implode or collapse as they grow?

Two things come to my mind as imperfect as we have our, our employees or our team members are really, really committed and that that has a major impact on the way that we’re able to absorb growth and continue to take care of the business that we have. Right? And so that, that sounds like the obvious answer. And, and, uh, you know, I think a lot of people would probably say that in our case it really has, has been true. If you took away the team that we’ve had over the last seven years, there’s no, no way we’re able to, you know, grow much less, sustain that growth year over year over year. And so that’s the first thing. The second thing is in this, and I truly mean this, we’ve had really patient customers, so we have really good customers, but we have really patient customers. Um, uh, even in the sales journey, you know, when I’m pursuing a new customer, I tell them straight up, we’re going to make mistakes, we’re going to drop the ball, we’re not going to, at times there were many times where we do not serve you well, but we’re going to own it and we’re going to do everything that we can get, you know, do to be better.

And, and first of all, we really mean that. That’s not just bs second though, they, our costumers are very patient. There are long suffering and uh, that’s, that’s been a game changer for us as we’ve kind of built the plane while we’re flying it. And without those two things really committed loyal team, um, and really patient customers. There’s no way we’ve been able to do well done. A lot of other things. We’ve obviously done. I mean, we’ve been pretty decent at cells in Alaska for years. Um, you know, our team delivers exactly what they say they’re gonna deliver. We really learned the hard way about having a bad culture and bad hiring processes and worked really aggressively, really hard at getting better at those things. I think some of those things obviously contribute to our success and sustainability of our growth, but the biggest is our team and really patient committed customers to be honest.

Okay. Paul, how you could ask him about the russian coders that he is not hired. We can talk to him about political mudslinging or we could ask them a business question. What, what is your final question for mr kade wilcox? Well, we’ve covered all of them. How about spIritual clay? Oh wow. so your background in religion, you know, I grew up, my grandfather was a pentecostal preacher and all that came along with that with respect to success, but a clay clark here is my business coach and he told me one time that a ralph waldo emerson said, and god will not have his work made manifest by cowards. Um, I love the fact that you’re successful. Did you ever struggle with that or have people give you a hard time coming from the ministry to now a, a successful business?

No, I don’t think so. In that sense. I’m fortunate to have the bible belt in west Texas and so very, very few people are antagonistic towards someone space. So that’s something that’s really unique compared to just a really general statement, but that’s really different than living on one or the other posts. Right. um, and so, so that makes it a little unique for me. I think the other thing is, is that I don’t really wear my faith on my sleeve, you know, it’s not that, that’s not really what I lead with. I’m, I’m really, really passionate about working hard and doing good work and, you know, caring for our people and caring for our customer. And so, uh, you know, for me individually, that’s driven by, by my face, but I don’t lead with my face. And so I, you know, it’s not like we’re putting, I’m not really putting myself in a position, um, you know, to be, you know, um, um, what’s the word, um, know, ridiculed or you know, positioned in that way. So it hasn’t been an issue for me. Um, again, we live, we live in west Texas and you know, deal deal with, with people who, who, you know, have been around, you know, shirts and things like that for a long time. So it’s a great question, but never, never been an issue that I’ve dealt with or experienced. Did you say you’re from lubbock?

Yes. Well, I’m from a really small town called nazareth, about 350 people. It’s right in the heart of west Texas, 70 miles from where we live. We live outside of lubbock football team from lubbock. Yeah, Texas tech university. Kind of riding the hot streak right now. I’m pretty good cowboys. I just want you to know I don’t hold that against you, but, uh, like Oklahoma state, I think it’s one of my favorite place you’ve ever been to a college football game. And uh, my, my nephew is really, really good football player and I, I, uh, I even have like a little secretive, you know, a desire that he would go to Oklahoma state. So we could, we could be a good business coaching friend.

Hey, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule, growing your company from the startup to almost $4,000,000 in sales within five years. I know you’re super busy, but I know that are hundreds of thousands of listeners have benefited from today’s show. My final question, and I’ll let you get back to being awesome. Is there a final book recommendation? Is there one book that you’d recommend that all of our listeners would read?

Book called every good endeavor by guy named tim keller.

Every good endeavor. And that book is by who?

Keller.

Ken keller. Alright, I’ll put that on there. Tim keller. I’ll put that on the show notes there. That, uh, what’s that book about? Welcoming basically

a theology of work.

the theology of work. Okay. I’ve never heard that recommendation. This is fascinating. Awesome. The located, thank you for being here on the show today. Thank you for letting us take a time away from you and your incredible wife and you and lacey. Have a wonderful evening, my friend.

Hey, take care of marshall. It really is possible for all the listeners out there to start a company and to grow it to the size where it’s doing between four and $5 million dollars, uh, within about five or six years. That’s very possible, but it feels almost impossible. Marshall, when you’ve made $0 in the first year or very few dollars in that first year, what encouragement or inspiration could you give the listeners today? Because you are a business coach, you’ve helped a lot of clients get into what I call orbit. It takes a lot of rocket fuel to initially get that, that, that, that spaceship, that at a figurative business spaceship into orbit. But once it’s in orbit, things aren’t good. What, what encouragement would you have for anybody out there who’s in that rocket fuel phase where they’ve been spending a ton of money, a ton of time.

They’re making very little money and they’re thinking they’re thinking to themselves, you know, I could probably just go drive an uber and pull in a thousand dollars a week and I’m working 90 hours a week and I’m making like $500 a week if that at all, or I’m or I’m losing money every week. WhAt encouragement would you have for the listeners out there? So you definitely have to set the big goal. What does success mean to you? What is your why? Focus on that, but then you have to dIal it back. What are the specific action steps in focus? Then on the daily habits of firm believer on the habits are what will create the success in your action is what is going to create that momentum. You actually have to begin by doing something in all of my clients that have committed themselves to creating good habits are the ones that have had the most massive success, so the encouragement would be is you’re going to be inspired.

You’re going to get motivated after you have begun those daily habits. You got to do that. If you want to change your results, you have to change your habits. Once again, if you want to change your results, this justin, you must first change your habits. You heard it here. That’s marshall morris. He’s the amazon bestselling coauthor upstart here. If you’d like to download a free copy of the book that he and I have written that has gone on to become an amazon best selling book, you can download it today for the low price of free simply by going to thrive time show dot [email protected]. Look for a image of the bookstore here and download the ebook for free. I’m marsha, would like to end this show with the boom so that any further I do three, two, one, boom.