Today on the Heath Barnes show, we’re speaking with Brendan O’Driscoll, Co-Founder & Loan Officer at Treadstone Mortgage, the leading premier local mortgage company in West Michigan.

 Brendan started as an engineer from college and moved into the mortgage business 24 years ago, co-founding Treadstone in 2003.

 He’s gone on to build a fantastic team, and I can’t wait for you to hear how empowering and developing the group has led to their incredible growth.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Growing And Empowering Your Team With Brendan O’Driscoll

I’m super excited to have my good friend OD in the house. Brendan O’Driscoll, straight from Ireland. How are you doing, my good friend?

I’m doing great. It’s good to see you again.

Brendan has been in the mortgage business for many years. He’s out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He works for Treadstone Mortgage. He joined forces with Neighborhood Loans. He’s one of the top originators in Michigan, right?

Yeah.

It’s him and his partner, KP. I was reading your bio and what I noticed is you were an engineer before getting into the mortgage business, which is odd. You had somebody introduce you to the mortgage business and you’re like, “I’m hooked.” I was hooked when I found out how much money you can make in the mortgage business. What hooked you?

That was one of the things. I didn’t get married until later. I was single and out in the bars all the time and playing in basketball leagues. In this one bar I hung out at, there were all these knucklehead subprime mortgage guys straight out of The Big Short. This guy’s making X. This guy’s making Y. It was 5 or 10 times what anybody expected to make or more. That guy is dumb as a box of rocks and I don’t trust him. “Who is paying this guy his money?”

A couple of guys that I know that know what they’re doing got into the business and said, “This is interesting. I think it’s legit. Maybe you should jump in.” I jumped into a subprime shop. I didn’t even know how to do conventional or FHA or anything like that. In my first year, I was in a good training ground, but it was a bad place. I’m an engineer by trade, so the numbers stuff works for me and the fun of talking to people all the time. Everything was different and I got promoted after a year.

What year?

This was in ’97 and about fourteen months in, I came back from an appointment because we went to all of our appointments because we were scraping to get anything we could. There were two news trucks in the parking lot and everybody was hauling out boxes and chairs and stuff. They weren’t supposed to be taken. I’m like, “What just happened?” The next thing you know, the company is bankrupt. They didn’t tell anybody they were in trouble, out of business, subprime, chop shop, but it also pushed me into the normal world where you learned how to do regular loans.

The people that you knew said, “I can go work with him on my refinance or buying a house.” In the beginning, I didn’t even know the difference because we got a conventional loan. We had to send it over to some guy named Steve. We never know if Steve ever even closed it or if I ever got paid on it. I don’t even know what this conventional thing is. What is this product that they’re talking about? How come I’m selling 228s and 327s with prepayment penalties and all this other stuff?

It's not a big deal unless you make it a big deal. Click To Tweet

How old were you and what was going on in your life at the time?

I was 31 when I made the switch. I was single. I think right out of school, you start looking for being married because that is what your parents told you to do, so that wasn’t happening. I was having fun. I have a Civil Engineering degree. I did that in Chicago for a while. I had transitioned to sales selling engineering-type products to move back to Michigan because you have to have ten years of experience in the engineering world to get back there and I didn’t have that.

I did that for a while and then this was around my periphery. The more I dove into it, somebody said, “Do you do it part-time?” I said, “No. I quit my job and dove into it.” It was straight out but the guy I knew that told me about it made sense to me. I’m certainly glad I did it. I would never have gotten back to it if you asked me that.

Did your dad have any influence? For those of you that don’t know, Brendan’s dad is a fairly famous doctor at Grand Rapids. He emigrated here from Ireland. What did your dad think about you, like getting out of an Engineering degree in like, “I’m going to be a loan officer?” He’s like, “What?”

I don’t think he was too excited about it after four years of college at Marquette University in Milwaukee and getting a degree and doing it for years. He didn’t tell me not to do it or roll his eyes or anything, but I could tell that he was concerned about it. There was no pay. It’s not like I had a bunch of money in the bank. I am a typical loan officer and had a good pile of debt because that credit card you took out in college just keeps growing if you are paying the minimum payment.

You got nothing in the bank. You’re out partying all the time and you got a little bit of debt hanging over your head, but that’s what gets you out of bed. I think he trusted me enough and he enjoyed the path. My friend and I ended up getting our own broker’s license probably two and a half years after I got into the business. It’s been steady growth. We rode through the crash from ’08 to 2010. Everybody went out of business and we flourished. We ended up moving on to signing up with a lender, but everybody that went out of business, people were throwing correspondent lines, “Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you do that?”

If we had the ability to lend our own money, we might’ve made the wrong decisions and we might’ve been out of business. We kept doing our broker thing until compliance pushed us out. It was a great story. I think my parents enjoyed that part of it. They trusted me enough to do it, but it was a big leap. My dad is a conservative guy off the boat from Ireland.

I would imagine some of that influenced your ability to say, “I can do this.” Some people have it where they can let go of certainty in their life and they thrive in the uncertainty.

I like the pressure and I probably didn’t want to let him down. He would never tell me, but I could tell if I did. He’d tell you, “I told you so,” but I’m like, “I’m not going to fail.” He was a mild guy, but he was also very firm, but I also didn’t want to disappoint him.

After being in the business, I called Brendan to chat with him a little bit and he said, “How’s it going?” I’m like, “It’s not one of those days.” We got into a conversation that we all have these good days and bad days. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I leave here and I’m like, “What have I created?” On other days, it’s like, “I’m a champ.” I’m sure having a team of 7 or 9 people, you sometimes leave and you’re like, “What is going on?” I think it’s important for people that are reading to know, I don’t care who you are. If you’re in the mortgage business, you got good days and you got bad days. For you, running a team this large, most people are like, “I want to keep it small and simple.” You weren’t a large team. How do you handle those good days and bad days?

 

The nice thing with the growth is there are fewer bad days than good days because you have people doing what you’re not good at, one thing. You’ve delegated it so you can go do what you’re good at. You still have to run the team and you have to make the tough calls and the tough decisions have the tough conversations. This is good for people that are new to the business or struggling or can’t get over the hump to the next level.

If it’s only you and a processor, you have to take on a lot of this stuff and you might not be good at data entry or running BU or whatever. It takes away from your sales stuff. As you put a team in place and you empower systems and stuff. I have a great frontend team and captain. I don’t have as many problems as I used to. They still have it. There’s the saying that you’re either coming in, going out or in a storm.

Everything was humming along pretty good and you’ll always have these little blurbs. You probably had one, but I do notice that I would have big ruts 3 or 4 times a year or twice a year. We’re like, “What am I doing?” I’d sit back and say, “People would crawl through broken glass for what I’ve been able to build up.” The silly income that we get in the mortgage business and then I kick myself. The other thing is that if you can get some people and empower them to root out these problems with systems or being good on the phone or overcoming objections, if you can stop these things, it’s not a big deal unless you make it a big deal.

You can stop this stuff before it happens and you’re still going to have things that come up. If the appraisal comes in low or something happens, it’s not a big deal unless you make it a big deal. As you learn that and become less emotional because, in the beginning, it’s me and me. You hammer your team. Your team did nineteen great deals. You barely patted them on the back and something’s wrong with number twenty and you focus on that. You put a spotlight on him like, “What a jerk you are for doing that.”

I’ll stop in one sentence, but when I came home one time and I told my wife, “I closed eleven deals.” I went back to my team the next day. I said, “I am so sorry. I am such an ass.” We closed eleven deals. I went home and told my wife, Christine, that I did this. I couldn’t close eleven deals in a month before or in a quarter.

I acknowledge you for seeing that, going back to your team and saying, “I apologize. My ego got the best of me,” which it does in this business. I’ve hired a kind of an employee coach to help me with that softening of the conversations. One of the things that she shared with me that I think our readers will appreciate is when you’re talking to an employee and something has happened, if you cannot use the word you and use I, we and it’s like, “What I saw is this happening. Can you give me some information on it? What can I do to help keep this from happening in the future?”

Whereas in the past, I’d be like, “Why did you do this?” Instantly, they’re going to start defending it. You’ve been extremely successful. Tell me, how have you grown from one person? When did you start growing your team to now you have nine people, which is incredible? Some people are thinking, “That’s super difficult to have that many people.” Can you share your journey from 1 to 9?

I will tell people that no matter where they’re at in their space. You run an office. You run a team and a company. I do the same thing and it’s a balancing act because when you’re new to the business, you are trying to get going. It’s the me and me thing. You’ve got to embrace the we because I tell you, we get loan officers and the bigger they get, they start doing $50 million, $60 million, $70 million or $80 million. You and I are prima donnas. All prima donnas got to learn how to behave not like prima donnas but teaching them.

Any loan officer who wants to run a team, you have to take the me out of it and put the we into it. It sounds cheesy, but the more you give in anything that you do, whether it’s your time, charity, giving to people, helping them out and bringing them up with you because if you’re closing more loans, you’re making more money. You’ve got to bring them up, but the more you do for people, the more stuff’s going to come pouring back. You have to do it with a good heart because you can’t be selfish because then that’s transparent. He’s just trying to shine me on. I’ll give him some business. You’ve got to believe that it would be genuine.

How do you take the emotion out of it for yourself? When does that happen for you and what’s going through your mind? What do you do or say to remember not to respond emotionally to your team or people around you?

The important thing is to help people in the business. Click To Tweet

It’s hard, and you have to remember that I don’t do it very often, but I might come to the office once or twice a year when I’m pissed about something. It might be work-related or might not, but they know immediately. My captain would say, “Is something wrong?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I got too much stuff going on.” That’s an okay excuse, but if I’m mad about some deal, I need to go leave for a little while or go walk around the block or go call somebody or talk to somebody to say, “This is going on. I don’t want to overreact.”

Usually, you just bounce it off. Sometimes, you need to get out for a little while. Take a deep breath and say, “Nobody’s going to die.” The moving truck is on the way there, but we’ll have it fixed or stuff like that because if you overreact, it becomes a cloud over the team. At the same time when you come running into the office, screwing around and having fun, it lifts the whole office up.

My employee coach told me. She gave me advice. She’s like, “You’re great. You got these super highs,” and I’m sure, Brendan, you’re the same way. These super highs and these low lows. When you’re on these highs, you want to give, but it’s important to understand the rules and guidelines that you’re running your team by and stay within those guidelines so everyone knows what their lane is.

You have to lead by example. When I was down in your office many years ago, something happened and you said, “Do you guys want to hear me make a tough call?” You called some realtor. It wasn’t going right. It wasn’t going to close on time and she lit you up. That was one of the most impressive things I’d ever seen because you did it in front of me and I’ll do that. I’ll make a tough call. I’ll make sure my door is open and my voice is loud enough to hear it because I want them to see that I’m not blaming the team. I’m defending them or I’m falling on the sword or I say, “This is my fault. It’s one of the system things we need to fix up,” even if I know I didn’t screw it up and they know they didn’t screw it up.

I want them to know that I got their back. About once or every year or two, somebody will be extremely rude to one of my team members. Usually, one of the girls on my team and I will call that person back and open my door. Very rarely because it doesn’t do you any good, but I kindly light them up and make sure that we never do business with them again or they never ever talk to my team like that again. They can talk to me like that. If they’re real jerks, I say, “Come on down and let’s talk about it face to face.” Not that I’m some tough guy, but you’re on the phone, come down and let’s hash this out like adults.

One of the rules here in my office, and I don’t know if you have it in yours, but I say, “I don’t want you ever making a call that makes you nervous and that you feel like the client’s going to be upset or if they are upset, put them on hold and come get me. I want to make all of those calls and for those of you reading, you can’t give those calls to your team unless they want to take them because what’s going to happen is they’re going to have one bad experience. In a few of those, they’re going to want to leave out of the mortgage business. That practice of showing someone how to make that difficult call’s important and then understanding the client’s situation. They’re always upset because something’s going on that’s not to their expectation.

You got to teach them how to read different personalities by the questions that you asked. Do you want to go back to the journey of 1 to 9 or 10?

Please. I’m sorry. Thank you.

I’m the tangent guy. I’ll drift off. You and I drift all over on the Grand Canyon at no time, but about a few years ago, I think I still had one processor working for me and it was fun and not fun. He closed six deals and then he closed two. He closed 8 and then he closed 1. He got twelve and then you get none. He was screwing around and not generating business. You get into this coaching and Heath was one of my very first mentors after being in the business for16 to 17 years. I was running a pretty good business compared to most people, but it was that volatile up and down that we all know. I’m hoping that whoever is reading this is not in their head because you have to have somebody talk about all the dumb stuff that they were doing and you’re probably doing right now.

I still do dumb stuff every day, every week and every month, but after a while, you build up that team. You empower them. They’re smart. They know what they’re doing. Let them do their jobs. As your volume gets up, with one person, you can do 10 or 11 deals a month, but you probably take a little heat off of him. Over time, we added more frontend people like loan officer assistants, LP1s or whatever you want to call them. I just added my fourth. I have four frontend loan processors that are all licensed and their job duties are to take leads, get pre-approvals, create communication, update their referral source, the realtor or whoever it was and within 30 minutes, call them back right away if we’re on the phone and handle 95% of the problems without escalating it to me.

 

That also goes back to if there are more problems. I don’t want them making the tough phone calls or anything like that. If there’s some weird lock thing that I have to decide on, that’s great. At the processing end of it, I have two backend processors that work on my team. If we have an overflow, somebody else will pick it up because I’m the boss, but then I’m adding a third one. That will be good for us probably for the next year or two, but the problem with me and the frontend loan processors is I can be a good leader, but I’m not a good system tracking accountability person.

A couple of things happened. I have an executive assistant. She took over my email. If you can get somebody to take over your email, it’s the most liberating day of your life. You think it’s scary. I thought I would hang on to its grim death for six months. I was out-decked. I monitored a little bit for about 30 days, but you waste 1.5 hours to 2 hours every day. If you figure out what you’re worth and you’re wasting 10 to 12 hours a week. Email is crazy. What I was going at, the other one is my team captain is responsible for the structure of the accountability. She’s got a good personality to deal with people, but she’s also a technical person. We use Jungo and Salesforce and she had mastered that thing. She’s probably the best in our whole company at it and she evolves it all the time.

We have these fantastic dashboards. I know exactly where I’m at just by looking at my dashboard in Salesforce every day. Everybody on my team has their own dashboards and it’s cool because we have a little speedometer. If you have four tasks to do before you go home, you’re in the green. If it’s more than four, you get into the yellow and then you get into the red. I was out of town in July and I had like 36 things I was supposed to do. It took me about seven weeks to dig it out. Most of it’s like, “Call this guy and thank him for accepting our offer. Do a pre-approval video for this person.” If it was urgent, I would do it.

The fact that she runs the team and also runs the team in my absence, so I don’t have to be here. We have daily team meetings every day and we have a big pipeline meeting every Tuesday, but she runs half of them. I’m usually out on Wednesdays and I’m out part of Thursday and Friday morning. If she runs it, she has the power to do it. She’s a unicorn. It’s hard to find. It’s not like you can pluck somebody out of somewhere, but she is magnificent. One day, I was meddling. We all meddle. You’re probably a meddler too. I was meddling with a file. I’ve been doing it for years. I still do it and she’s like, “What are you worried about that for? That’s what you got me for.” I grabbed my backpack and I was out the door.

You’re like, “I want to feel relevant.”

Yeah, and the more you meddle, you’re insulting them. You’re saying you don’t trust them. The more you meddle in the files or “I see that the appraisal came in low.” They’re like, “We got it. You’re messing with my stuff,” and they get pissed at you, too, because you don’t trust them. It’s pretty rude to do it that way.

That speaks volumes of how they feel about you. That they care enough. They’re like, “We got this. We’re going to take care of you.” That speaks volumes about you. One of the things that’s important is if you’re going to run a team that is that big, you got to have some type of system that’s going to help your team be successful. You mentioned Jungo and running a CRM. That CRM knows what everyone’s doing and it gives you your to-do list. I don’t want to do it now, but I’d like to invite you back to talk about Jungo in the future and how you use it if you’re open to it.

I have to probably bring my captain on.

That’d be great.

The other question that people got to ask, the obvious thing, is, why do you want to do it? What happens? I would go to these things where people were doing the right things that people like Heath were telling me what to do. They said, “I went from A to B to C to D and so on. I’m like, “You are lying. There is no way that’s happening that fast.” If you want to know some recent numbers because I wasn’t even that good at tracking. My partner is the biggest loan officer in Michigan and one of the biggest loan officers in the country. He is a well-known speaker and coach, Kevin Polakovich. They call him KP. We were joking in 2010. We’re like, “We closed 38 deals,” but it wasn’t this month. It was this year.

Stop thinking about yourself. If you think you're all that, you are in for a big problem in your life or business. Click To Tweet

“I closed four last month. We got 48,” but what you see from the growth and I go back to a tangible number that I know. In 2014, when I started turning the corner mentally about, “I need some accountability. I need to quit acting like I know everything. I need to surrender a little bit.” In 2014, I went from 86 units and then I met Heath in 2015. I got coaching and mentoring. I went to 119 and then the big jump. I went to 211 and then I went to 271. The following year I went to 269, but my volume stayed the same or it was a little bit higher because the loan amounts were bigger.

That was frustrating because I spawned a little bit. I went down the next year to 255 and that was because I got off to a bad start. I know why I did it and I don’t do it again. That was a bad first quarter. I didn’t do things right in the third quarter, but I still did more volume. I did $3 more million than the previous year. The big jump was when I got my captain on. We had way more refis than we used to because we’re at an 85% to 90% purchase shop, but then we went from 255 to 435, which I couldn’t even get to 300 and all of a sudden, it went up to almost 150 loans. The goal this year is to do a 436. One more than last year.

We’re tracking on that right now and my team is excited about it. There’s a trip involved, but they’re going to get a great big, giant experience if we hit that 436. There are some incentives involved. It’s fun. What do they care? You got to make it worth their while. They’re going to get a nice big trip to The Bahamas. They’re all going to get a mafia envelope with a big pile of cash that they’ve never held onto that much before in their life. It’s a fun way to do it. The basic reason to do it is still you don’t need to do it as much, but it’s competition, but I also want to help bring them up in so many different ways.

It’s amazing because you’re probably 3 or 4 years older than me and one of the things I want to acknowledge is your growth and success and you still have that desire to continue to grow and get better. That’s cool, especially as much success as you’ve had. I’m curious, where does that come from?

I think it came from my parents. The moral compass part of it is because the funniest thing I have right now is I don’t have any bills. The volume is they just take whatever their average loan size is and their commission and they multiply it by 435 loans. If they’re a huge producer, they might say, “That’d be a step backward,” but you don’t need all this money. You have your goals. I want to save at least 20% a month. I try to do more than that, but I want to give away a huge chunk. Usually, about 10% of my take-home pay every month. My wife and I sit down every month. We have regular charities to give it to, but we hear something like, “Somebody died. Can we go pay their tuition for the next three years?”

That’s where it’s important and it also happens on your team. We do budget meetings. My team is required to do budget meetings. I help them with their TD Ameritrade accounts, but they’re required to do monthly budget meetings with me. If I find a problem there, I want to fix it. I don’t want them to think I’m going to come in and fix it right away.

One of my guys was stressing about a credit card bill, and I remembered to bring my checkbook. I’m going to go ask him to pay it off. It’s not a ton of money. It’s a little bit, but it’s a lot more to him than it is to me. It’ll be a good gesture because I want him to move on to something more fun and not stress out about that. That’s the big thing because the whole joke is, “When you’re dead, who cares how many loans you closed you? Did you leave a trail of something good?” Not that we don’t make mistakes and piss people off and do dumb stuff, but did you do some good while you were there?

Were you memorable? When I say memorable, the connections you make with your team, your family, and the people around you are what people look for. One of the things I love about Brendan is he’s made it a habit of his to be memorable. If you’re not known for something out there, find something and be known for it. When we first met years ago, I’ll let him explain it, but he’s got this thing with the fox hat. For those of you that are a little older reading, is that a Miller Lite commercial? Is that what it was?

It was the Miller Lite commercial from the late ’90s. If you go to YouTube and type in fox hat Miller beer commercial, it’s a funny thing. The guy has this fox hat. I’m very particular in what I do. I searched for years to find the fox hat that looked as much like the one in the commercial that I could find. It took me about a year until I found one that I wanted. It’s a real fox. It cost $250 back then and that was a lot of money for a joke.

This guy’s walking home. It looks like he’d been out drinking all night. He’s got a beer in his hand. It’s in Scotland with the fog in the background. He walks by the camera and he’s whistling. He comes back and he, “When I told the folks out back home I was going to Auchtermuchty, they said, “Wear the fox hat.” He laughs and walks away. You got to see the commercial. Now, I take this thing everywhere I go like vacations and work things. If I go to Denver, nobody knows where Denver is. What county is Denver? I put some shtick together about it. I’m trying to find a way to put these all on a landing page. I got a little Yeti that has the picture of the fox hat.

 

How long have you been doing it?

I think I did my first one when I went to the Ryder Cup in Scotland. That was a few years ago and I did it because the original beer commercial was in Scotland. I’ve done a few dozen of them. If I have a site or something I don’t like, I’ve taken them to events that Heath was at. We get a few cocktails in the middle of the night and get some guys wearing the hat and some of them can’t say it. They’re saying, “What does the fox say?”

This other kid shows stuff. I’m like, “No. You guys don’t get it.” My sister thought that thing was funny for two years and then she finally called me and goes, “I get it now. I didn’t get it before.” She thought it was funny because it was stupid before, but once they get it, it is fun because, during COVID, I didn’t post one for about a year and people like, “Where’s the fox hat?” I hadn’t posted things in a while. Sometimes I’ll go on vacation, and I’m like, “I forgot to pack it.”

You got to go buy a new one.

The fun thing about it is it makes you memorable. People don’t want to hear about mortgage programs and rates on social media and all that other stuff. I have a beautiful Silver Lab. His name is Truman. I started out, “Here’s The Truman Show. Good afternoon, good evening and good night,” but he’s a very entertaining dog. I run into people a bunch of times like, “What’s Truman up to? You haven’t posted anything in a while.”

I’d tell them something. I had to get a video of him chasing sticks in the lake or something that he does funny, but for business purposes, that’s important because that’s what makes you real. Your kids play soccer. You are a coach. You like to ski. They will gravitate to people that have interests and they like. Some people will see that thing and say, “That guy’s a moron. He has that stupid fox hat. I’m not trusting him with my mortgage.” Hopefully, they’ll dig a little deeper.

When you become memorable and have these things that people know about you, you’re making it easy for them to ask you questions and entertain a conversation. The last thing you want to know for them to ask you is, “What’s going on with interest rates?”

You can coach your realtors because realtors love, “Look at this brand new listing I had. It’s a great new listing, 52 times a year.” None of them are great. One of them might be great, but less of that and more of you. You got to throw in some business too. Some people don’t even know what you do for a living.

Brendan, if the audience wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do that?

Call my office. It’s (616) 228-6200. If you want to see some fox hat stuff, my email is BrendanO@TreadstoneMortgage.com. It’s fun. I’d be happy to share it with you and I’ll share anything. Anybody out there, Heath has helped me and the important thing is to help people in the business. If you’re not good with your realtor relationships or you don’t have a good concierge program to drip on, we have a twelve-step seventeen-week concierge program to drip on our pre-approvals.

What you enjoy the most creates balance in your life. Click To Tweet

You know all those people that you work with that are out looking because it takes forever to get an offer accepted. If they lost your card and you have forgotten who they were, if you don’t have any of these campaigns, you can set them up to fire and forget. I make two calls in 17 weeks and the other 10 weeks are automated. Anybody that wants that kind of information, what our brochures looked like, or anything like that, I would be happy to share it.

If you’re reading, take him up on that offer. The nice thing when you have been in the business as long as both myself and Brendan, you just want to continue to help and give. It’s great to see young people thriving in the business. I honor you for that and want to acknowledge you for your passion, not only for the business but your family, with Christine and your four kids. You are always willing to help other people. I always think it’s cool when you’ve coached someone and they grow way past you. I honor you for that. I thank you for your time and I would love to do that CRM episode if you’re up for it.

Everybody who’s reading this should learn from Heath. He was one of the more fun coaches that I ever had, but he was tough. He digs into what’s wrong and he can help you with it. The sharing part takes us out of the mundane routine of our days and it’s fun to watch somebody grow. The biggest thing I would press on people is to stop thinking about yourself. If you think you’ve arrived or you think you’re all that, you are in for a big, giant ass problem in your life or your business because you never do it.

You got to keep finding something else to chase it. It might not be units or anything, but you have to keep growing and getting better and you should have mentors in your life and you should have people to bounce things off because otherwise, you can be standing up there all by yourself making dumb mistakes because you’re not all that and a bag of chips.

It sounds like you and I had the same problem. You had it for the first ten years in your business, as did I. I remember telling my assistant a couple of days ago. For the first ten years of my career, I didn’t want anyone telling me what to do because I was going to figure it out on my own. That’s the worst miserable life.

We’re control freaks and we’re high Bs and Is. We don’t want people to take advantage of us. We have trust issues. Heath and I still do dumb stuff every single day and every single week. We then remind ourselves or somebody else reminds us that we shouldn’t be doing that. We moved back on to the other stuff, which is what you enjoy the most in your life that creates balance in your life. I don’t want you to work 50, 60 to 70 hours a week. If you’re new, you might have to grind a little bit, but you got to grind your way out of that.

Brendan, I appreciate you being on. I love you like a brother. I can tell you have a great heart and that’s why I appreciate our relationship.

I love you too. Thanks for having me on. I’ve only done a few of these, but I love them. You meant a lot to me and have done a lot of great things for me. You are a big part of this growth and anybody can do it. That’s the thing you should take from this too. You just have got to decide. It’s not complicated, but it’s also not easy. It’s a grind, but do the same thing every day, every week or every month and it will work. If you want a plan, Heath and I will tell you what it is.

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There you have it. It was another great episode. That’s it for this episode. We will talk next time.

 

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