Episode Transcriptions Unedited, Auto-Generated.

Tyson (00:00:15):

Welcome to the social chameleon show where it's our go w learn, grow and transforming the person going to come today. I'm talking with Evan Knox. Evan is the founder of caffeine marketing, any small business investor, caffeine marketing makes profitable marketing easy for small companies. As an investor. Evan helps small companies double and sometimes even triple their bottom line. We, we, we, we do talk a lot about marketing the things that are happening, things that we're he's seeing maybe even say we we're seeing right now in this post COVID-19 type of environment we get into a lot of, of, of things kind of around that people and investing. We cover quite a, quite a wide range of things. I hope there's something to here. That's really going to help a lot of people, especially in this post COVID-19 type of times where things are uncertain, things are different and the way he's thinking about things and working through things and making things happen without further ado and more rambling, please enjoy this conversation with Evan.

Tyson (00:01:21):

I mean, welcome to the social community show as a long time coming. I feel like I'm excited to talk with you your areas of expertise and the things you're into. I'm interested in that. Not only usually I am, but more so with the current climate environment and things I'm interested in to see what's going on in your world and hopefully help listeners gain some insight from your experience and the things that's going on in the front lines, in your businesses. Yeah, absolutely. Man. I'm excited to chat today as well, and I really appreciate you having me. Yeah, no problem. No problem at all. So of all the things I was reading about, about you and about your company. So with that, the thing I kept seeing was this, this phrase or this, the sentiment of help owners, like my dad and my grandpa, where what's the story there, what's that about?

Tyson (00:02:07):

Can we kind of get into that a little bit?

Evan (00:02:10):

Absolutely. And it's funny today, I was actually talking to my grandfather phone maybe an hour and a half, two hours ago. He's 88 years old. So he's real, he's made it this far. So, but I grew up going to his store. So my dad was a business owner. My, my granddad obviously was a business editor as well. And my great grandfather was an entrepreneur. So I just kind of grew up around that as normal to me, I would always go to the store, my grandfather and that jewelry store. And I would go to work with him on the weekends and he would pull me aside, he'd teach me stuff. And my dad actually had an office out of my grandfather's office as well. And so I get to spend a lot of time with my family, which is really cool. And then fast forward to about four years ago I had been working at a nonprofit and I was doing marketing there and my dad had passed away during that season, which was super unfortunate.

Evan (00:03:00):

And my grandfather was looking at retiring and I thought, you know what? I can't help my dad anymore. He's no longer with us, but I can help other small business centers I can. And like my grandfather to help them grow their company with this marketing skillset that I have. So that's why I decided to start at caffeine marketing.

Tyson (00:03:18):

Well, what was it you're seeing that was that people needed help? What was your grandfather needing or missing or your dad and what was that need you were looking to fill?

Evan (00:03:27):

So most entrepreneur

Evan (00:03:29):

And business owners, they just throw money on the wall, hoping something will stick. I mean, it is crazy. I'd say 95% of small businesses that are, are guilty of that at least. And so what ends up happening is that you end up getting some success. You're really playing a lottery. You hear tick talk ads are on the upcoming or Instagram ads, or that you should have this specific type of website or a chat bot on your website. Know there's always some things, some tool and they throw stuff from the wall. They throw money at it, a project, whichever, and some work, some don't, but you can't really scale your company that way, because if you don't know how, if you don't have a partner or you don't have an agency, or you don't have the skill set yourself to design a marketing funnel and actually do it to where it's scalable, you're going to have a hard time growing and scaling your business. So I just saw my dad and my granddad really stay at that small business level because, and honestly, really successful small business, but stayed there. Mainly because they didn't know how to scale a company because they didn't know how to leverage a marketing funnel.

Tyson (00:04:38):

So what I'm hearing, how do you say something I also see is that everybody wants to tactics. Nobody wants to start a development strategy or they're not developing a strategy. Is that accurate?

Evan (00:04:49):

Yeah. And it's almost like they want a push button solution, which honestly I can't blame you on, I mean, I want all kinds of, I want to pay somebody a certain amount of like, for example, we're we're closing on a home, like in a few days and the I'm going to have a contractor come out and build an additional room. I don't want to think about anything. I don't want to have to think about plans and city permits. Awesome. I just want to pay this guy money and I want it to happen. Right. Business owners want the same thing to grow their company, but yet there are so many options out there for them to waste their money on or okay. Options that are not going to deliver the return on investment that they need, that they end up not being able to scale their company, wasting a lot of money. And then often what happens is that they actually try something and it's not the right thing. And then they're scarred and they were afraid to invest more back in their business. And so then they stay there cause they have the scarcity mentality.

Tyson (00:05:44):

Yeah, no, I heard a lot of that too. That's what is like the fly by night kind of guys, the guys looking to kind of get rich and they're there they're like praying. I don't like that word, but I can't think of anything else right now, small owners and these things

Evan (00:05:58):

Like, you know, I took a course on something that used to work a few months ago and I'm on a course on now I'm going to go sell all the people in my neighborhood. Hopefully I can get a few hundred bucks, you know, this, I'm sure you've seen these sales pitches and these stuffing. Yeah. And I don't know how many people I've talked to. And that's the thing, I don't know if you experienced this, but I have experienced the weight. You sorta gotta, you gotta convince these people like, listen, I'm not that guy. I'm not like that. Like, let me kind of talk with you about it. And that, that kind of is a hurdle. I found this hard to get through. How about you? Yeah. So there, I have a great example of this. There's another, so often my agencies were really good at paid advertising.

Evan (00:06:40):

So other agencies will actually white label our services. So we'll do it for the client as part of their team, which is totally great. And what the guy who we were in conversations with was in the agency. He said, well, my current ad guy I'm not sure my clients can afford it. You know, I'm, we're spending a couple of thousand, you know, we're spending a couple of hundred dollars per month or a thousand dollars, whatever the amount was. And I, in that moment, I thought to myself, well, if your ads are working, why are you not scaling? Because if you're able to get a four X return on investment or a three and a half return on investment, then you should be spending more and more money every single month because it's basically a machine that you've built because once you've built the marketing funnel and you've got the advertising right now, you're just putting, it's like push button solution.

Evan (00:07:26):

Like we were talking about every dollar I put in, I'm getting $4 back and, you know, say you've got 50% margin on that. So you ended up making $2 net, which is really great. So as we look at all that, I see a lot of people who are in this situation where they're paying that monthly retainer or they're in a longterm contract and they're stuck and they're, they're burnt. And that's partially why we don't actually have any longterm contracts. We only do a 60 day you know, notice basically so that we can pivot our resources and our own team. But I agree. I mean, I've seen so many businesses that have been stuck with something like, again, I'm sorry, I don't want to hate on SEO here because SEO is, people are aware or, or, or whatever these things are happening. And I like you and I we've seen this and we can, we can bring awareness.

Evan (00:08:13):

We can let people know like what's happening. It's okay. And how to get past it. Yes. And there's totally kind of like what you're saying. There are people who are really good at what they do. And sometimes, you know, I, an example of this right now would be a brand agency, an agency that focuses mostly on aesthetics and less on strategy. I really I've got friends that run those agencies. They're amazing people. And you know, there's, they're gonna, you know, we're gonna make a product that's really beautiful and pretty, and it's designed well, but they are next level. Like they're going to win awards. They are just, you know, above and beyond really good, but you may not get the same return on investment with them as you would with us. So you have to kind of trade it off. It's like, where are you at in the stage of your company?

Evan (00:08:57):

Do you need a, you know, a quicker direct return on investment right now? Or do you want to invest 30 to $50,000 in redoing your brand? And that's not a bad thing that actually does need to happen. It's just at what stage is that the right thing for you? And that could be honestly really intimidating for people to navigate. But the example that I was going to say a second ago is SEO. So search engine optimization, it is really hard to tell the people who are legit in that space from the ones that are selling snake oil. And I, you know, I I'm, SEO is very technical and I for a while was like, alright, I'm just gonna hire somebody to do that, et cetera, and dementia. I thought, you know, what if I have clients, if whoever wants the service, which we don't offer that service I needed a master list. And even if a client just said, Hey, can you, do you have somebody you recommend, I want to, I want to know this. So I spent several months getting really, really good at search engine optimization so that I can have an intelligent conversation about it and then realized, you know, 75% of them ourselves.

Speaker 3 (00:09:57):

Yeah,

Evan (00:09:59):

No, that they even intend that, you know, I think that they, they want to get a good results. Most of them. So it's tough. It's tough to be a business owner and navigate that. So I really if people can find a partner or an agency trust and it can deliver a return on investment,

Evan (00:10:13):

That's a really good thing.

Evan (00:10:14):

Yeah. That SEO thing, it's, it's tough. Cause you know, today things that are working and things are happening tomorrow penalties and, and, and you can just ruin your company, ruined your website. I know a guy, I mean, he, I think his minimum is $25,000 to fix your site. Wow. And I mean, he's one of the best in the nation, as far as what I hear and what I, what I know about him. And he goes, just goes up from there and I personally stay away from that. I you know, and stuff, but to me, when people come to me, they're not talking about SEO and it's not, it's like all these buzz words and things like that and whatnot. And you know, what I let them know is like, what I want to talk about, or what I want to do is let's talk about strategy. Let's talk about these different kinds of things. Let's, let's get your foundation. Right. How are you talking about those types of conversations? People come to you with these things, are you walking through like this brand, like you're talking with this brand thing, like, you know, someone's like, Oh, everybody's talking about personal branding rules about branding. How are you walking through say, listen, you're not there. Or you are there. Like what, what are your criteria? How are you walking people through that?

Evan (00:11:21):

I think you just have to start off by understanding what is the person's needs and where they're at in their, in their company. So in our initial intake session, and this is not an all a pitch, I'll get to know the details of the company, you know? So I'm like, okay, what's your annual revenue? What is each customer worth to you? How much are you spending on paid advertising? What is your existing marketing funnel look like? And we had to have all of those factors in to go, okay, it's the best decision right now to brand rebrand your entire company? Is that the thing that's going to deliver you the best return on investment

Speaker 3 (00:11:49):

Or is it building out the rest of your sales phone? 95 of the time it's building

Evan (00:11:54):

Up the rest of their sales funnel. I have one company right now that we're actually, this is less of a we call it a client and more of a partnership. So there's going to be like an equity share involved here and there, like above a million dollars in revenue. You know, I think they're at two plus or something like that. They have marketing systems in place where they struggle is their overall brand aesthetic. It does not match the quality of their product. The quality of their product is top, you know, amazing. I don't want to really reveal too much because it might be who they are. But but they're really good. Like what they offer is really, really solid. It's beautiful. It's a solid product, but their marketing does not look the part at all. You know, all their social media poster out, like they look outdated. They look old school, their logo needs a refresh on the brand, colors are outdated. So for them, you know, that actually might be the most profitable return on investment from the get go. So it really depends. But for most small companies it's, Hey, maintain a minimum modern, clean look in your company and your social media. Don't overthink that part and focus on building a marketing funnel. That's actually working. Yeah. Sales, cures, everything.

Evan (00:13:08):

Yeah. You got the right. You have the right process in place. If you can just have enough people to put into the funnel, you know, some, a lot of problems there, like I'm personally I'm not great at closing. Or even I'm just very aware of this. Like, you know, it gets on the phone. I we've got a pretty fair amount of leads coming in. My close rate is not great. You know what I mean? Cause I'm pretty, I'm like, Hey, if you're not a good fit and I get fit and what I had, people ends up not being against that. So, but just the sheer amount of leads makes up for that for us. You know what I mean? So you're you're right. So if you've got so many leads, you know, do it, then you can kind of suffer in sales.

Speaker 3 (00:13:45):

So I'm very, I'm very picky. I'll tell people that, listen, this is not going to work. I'm not, I'm not your guy. Yeah, it's, it's, it's the good and the bad of that. W along those lines, think things are changing rapidly right now. As the time we're recording this, what is this June 18? We're possibly at the tail end of the COVID-19 type of stuff, which really the way I'm looking at it is it exposed a ton of weakness if you were the type of business that either was outdated. Like you were just kind of on the brink of, of staying open anyway. You're, you're, you know, you've gotta rethink that. Or if your profit margins are slim, like restaurants and types of things that just inherently, that's just the way it is kind of thing. You gotta rethink that or, or if you're just a regular other type of business and your margins were thin, or your sales, whatever were weren't all that great. You gotta rethink these things. What are you seeing that either wasn't working and is working now, or, or vice versa, things that weren't working or weren't working before working out, you know, in those lines, what are you seeing in that realm?

Evan (00:14:53):

Yeah, so I guess a couple of, well, it's kind of mine first. I would recommend two books, but it's guy named Mike [inaudible] for this whole conversation that you know, I've got some of my peers and teams reading one is profit first, super critical. Second one is clockwork by Michael Collins, Collins as well. Shout out to Mike, if you ever listen to this one. Yeah. So he's got those two awesome books. They're amazing. They're gonna be really helpful, I think, to navigate this season and as we, and I recommend those really, because it's going to help you build more margin in your products and services and help you scale your company, remove yourself from the system and the process. So a lot of there's a different, there's many different types of companies right now. And hopefully this can answer this question, but there's the companies that are just suffering right now.

Evan (00:15:41):

And I have, I have a ton of credit. I haven't earned debt are month to month. This is really, really hard time for them. And they had already needed to be thrifty now as especially that time. And so a lot of what that person needs to do is cut as many expenses as possible, rethink their business model and take some pretty dramatic moves because it's kind of, you know, move now or it ends. So there's that and most of our clients, luckily are not in that scenario, but I've got friends and family actually, who are in that scenario, which is unfortunate. And if we go over to there's two other types of companies that in this season, I think are really interesting. One is the one that has cash resources. So another jewelry, jewelry store example was just not really into my family at all.

Evan (00:16:29):

They have plenty of cash on hand right now. They've done very well in the past couple of years. It's time for them to use this season to reinvest back into their company, to do all that branding stuff like we talked about, even though people are not coming in the doors, they will eventually. And so let's build them a brand new Shopify site in a Shopify site. You know what I mean? Let's redo their brand and that project, you know, from that specific thing. But if you include everything else they should be doing, I can be 30 to 50 grand over the course of a couple of months to get everything refreshed, to be done. That company has been in every way stronger. Whenever that gets back to quote normal, the other one is a company that's still getting by right now and has low cash resources, but has high human capital.

Evan (00:17:12):

And I think they have a great potential to pivot their existing resources with people and have them do things that they may not have been their initial skill set. So one is a fly fishing guide. This is for example if you have a bunch of fly fishing guides in the season, and I'm saying this mainly because I kind of play in that space a little bit. They couldn't guide, right? Cause there's a shelter in place order for Georgia good and guide. Didn't bring people out. However guides could still write blogs. They could still write articles. It could still record videos. They themselves could go out on a trip, you know, and record a video. All of those things, you would redeploying the existing human resources. You have to set yourself up better for success later. And we mentioned SEO earlier, they're going to, you know, hopefully you could pivot them to write blogs or, you know, crazy YouTube videos, something like that, or guest write blog to get back links.

Speaker 3 (00:18:05):

What

Evan (00:18:06):

Of the three different types of businesses that I'm thinking of right now?

Speaker 3 (00:18:09):

No, no, absolutely. I what, for the person out there that's in one of these buckets, how would you suggest they kind of start thinking and maybe formulate, like, what are, what are the areas maybe that I'm not doing or I could be doing, or I never thought of like, how, how can we think through this? What's what's maybe the, the checklist or the try trying to try to formulate my thought here. You know, you kind of get on my saying like, what, what can we go through to, to, to start to think so to generate ideas that they get into that mode of my businesses, this, you haven't talked about it. I haven't talked about it, whatever, but there's a few things we can start thinking about to start making out areas that I could be capitalizing on a memory I never thought of, or I'm lacking in and so on and so forth.

Evan (00:18:59):

Yeah. So I'm going to share one that you could go get on our web site again, download it and unsubscribe totally fine with me. Don't really care. I'll link all this

Speaker 3 (00:19:08):

Showing us for you guys. So it's real easy to get to.

Evan (00:19:10):

So wait so it's called how to build a winning sales funnel and it'll teach you exactly step by step, how to build a sales funnel. And it's on both of my websites. Just download that again. Like I said, you would unsubscribe immediately afterwards if you want, but that literally is going to give you tons of ideas on how to look at your existing sales funnel and your marketing and build it from there. It's like Legos super easy. The other thing that I would do is I would list out all of your expenses for the past year, every single expense. And I would go through and I would Mark does that expense directly generate revenue to your bottom line, like does that, whatever that is you know, that software that you have that office space that you own, our, you know, our leasing, what, any, whatever that is, right?

Evan (00:19:54):

Every single one of those out and then decide does that, you know, directly return back to your bottom line, if it does, you can leave it. If it doesn't either need to trash it or trim that expense and go, okay, do I really need that right now? No, I don't X that out. Or, and then this is kind of an easy example. You're here, but like, let's say you're paying Verizon $120 per month for two phone lines. You could switch to T-Mobile or sprint, and really you're using wifi most of the day, and you're going to save 60 bucks. I know that's kind of small, but that honestly is going to help you run a healthier business. And if you want to sell your business one day, it's all about your profit per month and every little bit counts. And you're basically multiplying it by four to six, depending on what kind of company you have. So if you want to say your company that 40 to $50, let's say $50 per month, and then do that over

Tyson (00:20:48):

The course of a year. That's $600 and the new 600 times four to sit, or I'm gonna do five. So you've got 600 times five. It would be three. Forgive me here. What is,

Evan (00:21:03):

I'm going to grab my calculator, right? 600 times a day.

Tyson (00:21:10):

So 3000. Okay. So you might think, Oh, there's just a difference between, you know, Verizon, whatever. It's just 60 bucks a month, but you gotta sell your company that good, maybe an additional $3,000 in your pocket one day when you're trying to sell your company based off of evaluation. So all of those expenses are not going to help you run a better company and let it be healthier and prepare for uncertainty, but also wonder if you want to sell your company and it's going to help you out there as well. Yeah. And all those things that you're saying, it can help you with your run rate and your burn rate and stuff that you might be able to push out. You know, maybe you only had 18 months or cutting expenses and you got 20 months now, you know, like you're saying 60 bucks here, 80 bucks there, you know, I know people that like, ah, three subscriptions to the service. I didn't even know it. You know, it's like the silly things that we do and you can really increase your burn rate real, real fast. Yeah.

Evan (00:22:00):

This is kind of a silly example, but

Tyson (00:22:03):

Let's say you've got a subscription for 30 bucks that you just realized that you had, you cancel, that you can invest 30 bucks back in your employees. I mean, take your employees out to lunch and just like love on them and care for them. Like that's going to pay in huge dividends for, you know, absolutely. Even like we were talking about earlier, increasing your ad, spend, you know, $30 more a month on ad spend, you know, you could be getting two, three, four, five clients coming in at like, you're talking about 50% margins. That's an extra $500. You just make a note a month, whatever, whatever, you know, scenario works with your life, maybe there's one more person to get $10,000. You just, you just made on that one client, you, you got like, yeah, these, these little things, they really do add up a lot. And and like, I like that employee appreciation type of thing. That's the stuff. I think we're gonna, we're starting to find out if we haven't already that human interaction, that human piece, maybe we took for granted, maybe we didn't think too much about, but yeah. You know, these little gifts, these little thank you and appreciation if they go a long, long way with employees, even contractors, is it okay?

Evan (00:23:09):

Yeah, you're so right. And I there's kind of a thought process that I was walking a friend through who also,

Tyson (00:23:16):

And runs a company, I would say, Hey bro, you need to outsource your bookkeeping. Like tomorrow. Like you he's like, well, I've got a contractor that I bring in and Joel, our books, all that stuff. I'm like, no, okay. You not only are. He's like, well, it's just contractor. And I'm like, no, they're human. I said, so you actually need to manage them. And I was like, buddy, you can find a solution like bench bnch, it's an outsource bookkeeping solution that is run by humans. But that company takes care of its employees. It's not your job to care for that. They're doing

Evan (00:23:46):

That. Their job is to do your books for you. And that's all.

Speaker 3 (00:23:50):

And that's all the time that you spend doing is reviewing the books that they just did.

Evan (00:23:54):

So there's a time waste or revenue leak when you've got a contractor doing your books, but you really have to manage them because they're coming to the office, you got gotta murder their birthday. They got to take time off all kinds of expenses. When you outsource to another company like Kathy marketing, for example, for your marketing, you don't have to think about that. You don't have to manage like those people it's immediately, it's push button done, taken care of for you.

Speaker 3 (00:24:18):

That's a good idea, thought process. What I found when you do stuff like that is you free up yourself to think about the thing that you need to be thinking about. You're not, I gotta spend an hour today doing social media. I spend an hour today, writing emails. I spend an hour today looking for clients instead of my job should just be X and all I think about all day and all night is X. And I'm going to be the best at X and capitalize on X. And you really think it's a good thought space. You can get rolling. It does free up a lot of, of mental capital and so many other things.

Evan (00:24:53):

Yeah. And I, I forget what the study it was. I'm aware of Reddit. I think it was like a Mike Hyatt, Michael Hyatt book, but he said, it takes about 30. I could be wrong on the quote, but he said, it takes about 30 minutes to switch between tasks. So if you decide, okay, I'm going to do emails and I'm going to get in and design this PowerPoint. And I'm going to go over here and manage this meeting. You've got 30 minutes of ramp up time for each one of those things. So really you have to think about the cost of doing all these different tasks. And I guess back to the thing I was saying a minute ago was like, find a solution where you are outsourcing to a person or a company and not necessarily a person so that the people on your team, you can actually spend more time caring for it and you can, you know, treat them to stuff and you can care about their birthdays and how has their, how's their mom doing who's in, in the hospital? You know what I mean? Like all that stuff matters because at the end of the day, people matter a hundred years from now is what I feel like.

Speaker 3 (00:25:50):

Oh, absolutely. People are the most important thing. And along that note of that task switching also is the worst for interruptions that people are bothering you and interrupting you if you're constantly checking things in the notifications. I think the study was 23 minutes if I, if I remember correctly. But yeah, that, that is huge and extend. So think about every time somebody says, Hey, Evan, can you, can you look at this real quick? And you're in the middle of something. It's like, you stop that and you go over there, you take five minutes. You, you do that 23, the 30 minutes to get back to the thought that you were at huge all day long, that you're talking about hours and hours a week, a year, that you're really going to save and be able to call back and ask how you going to differentiate and separate yourself from these other businesses that are still kind of letting that kind of go by.

Evan (00:26:40):

Yeah, you this is hopefully super Nicole, but there's a difference between I learned this at a nonprofit that I worked at I'm in Charlotte. So the credit to them. So there's a difference between delegating and empowering and you can delegate tasks all day, but when you delegate a decision, you're empowering somebody else to run with that. So when you delegate tasks, you are the central node, or you're the thing through which all decisions have to be made. They always keep coming back to you. However, if you can empower other people to make decisions and run with those, you know, the ownership of a task, like the outcome of it, you can then free them up or free yourself up from having to spend time making those decisions for them. They can make those decisions. And then you're kind of outsourcing your decision making, which is how you grow a company past 10 people.

Speaker 3 (00:27:29):

Yeah. That reminds me of Jocko Willink. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him and that you know, letting people own the task and giving them empowering that there's so much that goes into that. Yeah, absolutely. That's a really great thing. Especially if you're the micromanager type, you can just bring it a free up yourself. I know people that are like that, it's hard to switch, but once you start making that switch and making that stuff, it knowledge drastically improves the plan you're trying to get after because these people take ownership of the plan and the execution. They understand what the mission is, how what's going on. There's so much that does absolutely goes into that.

Evan (00:28:05):

Yeah, I agree. And kind of my rule of thumb, which again, I'm probably not perfect of this. So take this with a grain of salt is I really try to give as clear instructions as possible from the get go of like desired outcomes. And then not only that, I try to teach people the way that I'm thinking, not just, Hey, do this. I'm like, okay, here's what I'm thinking about right now. This is what I value. So if you need to do this, here's what I would be thinking about. I try to teach them that. And then generally I give them not to sound bad here, but they act like three strikes, really, you know, like, Hey, mess it up the first time I'm going to assume that I didn't communicate properly. That was my bad. I should have, you know, that's my whatever. And then the second time going to come through and say, Hey, all right, you know, you didn't do this. I really need you to do this. And if you can't work it out, then this is not going to be a good fit. And then the third time, obviously it's not a good fit anymore. So, but I try to assume the first time it's me, that I didn't say something right.

Speaker 3 (00:28:57):

It the way I like to think about it, similarly is it's always my fault. I, I didn't teach correctly. I didn't, I didn't communicate correctly. There's something that I did that, that was wrong there. But there is a point where it's like, all right, I, this is just not working, whatever it is. And you got to let people go, that's the thing is it's okay to let people go and it's okay to, to fire people. If you've put in some time you've trained and you, you, you've tried to hone your message of teaching and coaching. And I know people so many times that I, well, I don't want to fire it out. I was like, you gotta let these people go. They've got to get to go somewhere so they can flourish and they can sell. And they can become the type of person I employee, whatever, whatever they want to reach in their life.

Evan (00:29:38):

Yeah. A buddy of mine, he manages an operations team. And so like a team that takes care of like a commercial space and he's got, well, yeah, I'll just say he's got like one or two people on his team that are not the most positive, possibly toxic in some scenarios. And he's really struggled with it. And because that culture is really like a no fire culture, you know what I mean? They just kind of like, let everybody work through that. And we were talking through it and I was like, man, you you're doing a disservice to the other people on your team because they had to put up with that and they have negative people at work and nobody wants anyone negative at work. You know, like, let's do a job together. Let's be a team. It must be a part of something bigger than ourselves. Not just mopey over here, you know, complaining about whatever's going on in his life and not upset. Mophie doesn't matter. Cause probably doesn't matter. Nobody needs a choice. You know, he needs some coaching, but if he's not willing to be coached, you can't, you can't fix people. You know what I mean? You can help them, but it's ultimately up to them for sure.

Speaker 3 (00:30:39):

Yeah. That's a big thing. We all know that feeling when you walk into someplace or wherever and you're, you're happy having a good day and Sally is just shitting on everything and shit and you're at a site and you just go and you go into that mode and it's not, you might not be that kind of person. But when you get that vibe, you get that stuff and you go in there and then if you start jumping in and saying, well, you know, I hear what you're saying, Bob is just fucked. He's just that kind of guy. And, and you start piling on and then you get into that. And then the whole office is like that. Yeah. That's, that's tough. And you're better off having that hard conversation and firing people. And that goes on, I think. And it goes along the lines of saying no to things as well. That's a skill we all need to work on and continuously build that. No skill. Yeah, those are, those are great things.

Evan (00:31:23):

My my buddy, he's a, what's called an EOS implementer. His name's binge. So shout out to Ben. She's also in the podcasting space and he uses a term called short term versus long term pain. So I can decide right now I'm going to have a lot of short term pain, having an uncomfortable conversation or I'm defaulting to the longterm pain of this person dragging down our company, dragging down morale, dragging, taken out other employees. You don't want to deal with it anymore. And this also goes for other relationships in your life or situations, short term pain, long term pain. I can either work out right now and take care of my body and eat healthy, or I can suffer the longterm consequences of that. So I love that short term versus long term pain. And I think it replies really well for hiring and stuff like that. And firing

Speaker 3 (00:32:12):

That's a good, a good analogy. We have a hard time as humans that longterm thinking that longterm planning retirement I'm, I'm going to have heart disease. If I keep doing this, that's tough. So keeping that in mind, I like that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to use that. That's a good, a good, a good analogy to keep, keep it in front of your mind. Yeah, totally. For sure. Do you have anything that is, has happened? I want to say in this, in this year, March, whatever, we just have kinda constantly on it that really just surprise you, that either started working or stop working for these companies, you've been working with the marketing and or whatever else things you have going on.

Evan (00:32:51):

Yeah. I figured I was going for my own company. It was very interesting. So we had a half a dozen proposals out, you know, waiting to get the yes or no on, and when all this stuff happened, we had two clients cancel. And then we had all of those proposals that were out, not out. I mean, immediately everybody was like, not sure what's going to happen. Yeah. And I, you know, I feel you, you know, it was weird time, you know, we were like, the world is the sky falling. I'm not sure. And so I definitely had empathy for them. I get it to understand. So that happens. Okay. And then, I mean, maybe two weeks after that, or we had more business than we know what to do. And I really feel like it's the type of business. There is always somebody like money flows.

Evan (00:33:43):

So there's always somebody who's who's growing in this season are the ones that's not Amazon. You know what I mean? So there's always somebody. Yeah. I mean, they're definitely winning right now with their, certainly not our client in any capacity way too big for us. And I think you just have to pay attention to that. And then also just be pro opportunity. But for us, that was interesting that it surprised me because it came out of nowhere, obviously had a bunch of cancel and thought to myself, this will be interesting. This will be an interesting year. And then everyone ended up being fine. You know what I mean? So we're just super thankful for that, I guess.

Speaker 3 (00:34:20):

Did you notice any, any other surprises with clients you worked with where you guys were like, let's try a few different things and I, maybe these typically don't work or maybe these typically do work and you were surprised with the outcome.

Evan (00:34:34):

Oh yeah. I have one that's kind of suspicious specific and it has to do with Facebook advertising. Facebook is my favorite platform personally, to advertise on generally it's the ease, the best tracking, the best analytics is my opinion on that. And Austin is the back, the best backend for targeting all that stuff. Sure. But I digress. So I did, what's called a lookalike audience, which means that you replicate an existing audience and you tell Facebook, Hey, Facebook, I want an audience that matches the top 1% of people on Facebook or in this United States or whatever that are just like these people, the top closest 1% of my target customers. And so I did that and it was going well. And I decided to replicate that top two and an then top three audiences. So I'm each percentage I'm getting farther and farther away from our current customer base. Okay. I had three different audiences I'm running ads to, and all of a sudden I, I implement some other tracking stuff. And I noticed that the 1% lookalike is doing just as well as it was, the 2% is not doing render at all, like super low, like 0.6, nine, actually that it was higher. Now there was like one

Speaker 3 (00:35:52):

X return on ad spend, which means we're basically

Evan (00:35:54):

Breaking even. And then you're like, you hit your car. So you're kind of losing money on that one. But the three X had like a six to eight return on ad spend, which I thought was super interesting. I have never seen that. And so I like was going to the settings. I'm like, what did I do wrong? But for whatever reason you know, I just try to vary a broader audience. And I typically would is basically what I did and ended up working really well. So I, I don't know that that's necessarily COVID related or not, but that was probably the most surprising thing that's happened

Speaker 3 (00:36:28):

The last couple of months in the advertising space for me. Do you think it was two people at typically that would be interested that are looking for new opportunities, new information or something along those lines?

Evan (00:36:40):

So it was a B to C product. And I wonder, it's hard to say some of our products are lower ticket items. There's something like a super high ticket. There's something with like a thousand dollars or more. They're all less than that. So it's possible that the top 1% was similar middle ticket, you know, customers, you know, middle of the road or whatever. And the high it's, the 2% lookalike was either a higher income earners or lower income earners. I don't know. And then the 3% was one of the other and I don't have the exact data on it because Facebook has privacy laws or privacy rules. But I imagine that it's,

Speaker 3 (00:37:20):

It could be the difference between somebody who makes

Evan (00:37:23):

$40,000 a year or a hundred thousand dollars a year. And I don't know that necessarily the person who makes a hundred thousand dollars a year is spending more or less. I it's actually possible with that particular product that the person who is making $40,000 is spending, you know, three or four times on the website that what the other person is. So that's just my conjecture it's my only thought is that we targeted a lower or higher incomer printer.

Speaker 3 (00:37:48):

Mm, interesting. Yeah. I noticed that the way people were spending money was a little interesting. There, especially in that beginning time I noticed a lot of people that were on the higher income side really pull back their spending quite a bit. I typically notice that in my circles from people that may be around a little bit lower income side. So I wonder if maybe those people are a little bit more maybe ambitious or, or something like that along the lines of maybe it's an opportunity for me to maybe spend in a better way. I don't know.

Evan (00:38:21):

Interesting. Yeah. I don't, I don't know what the right verbiage for that is either. You know what I mean? I would imagine if you're a lower income earner, you know, you'd be trying to save more, but I don't know you sometimes I, again, there's, it's honestly super complex issue that I don't flip. You know, I don't pretend to understand, but maybe it's characteristics that have a higher spending habit maybe correlate to lower income. But at the same time, I feel like your lifestyle is like lifestyle creep. So there's people, there's plenty of people who make millions of dollars a year and blow it all away. I don't know. Yeah. That's probably relevant either way.

Speaker 3 (00:39:01):

I was having a conversation yesterday with with somebody and they were just like, Oh, this, you know, the person that, that, that works for them, you know, they make their clothes a hundred grand a year. They're in their mid twenties. And then that, you know, they were saying like, I wish I, I, you know, I was at that age making that kind of money. And I was like, I was saying, I was saying, he knows I was, you know, there, and we're talking about kind of maybe like how their future is going to be when they're at my age now. And, and you know, 15 years later. And I was, and I'll say, you know, I bet you, that person being so young, making a kind of money I bet you that when I was talking about lifestyle creep, I bet you so high.

Speaker 3 (00:39:36):

They'll never be able to do a lot of these things that you think they're gonna be able to do that you did when you were younger, sacrificing making that kind of money. So this person, they traveled a lot and they did a lot of things. And they, they kind of gave up on that career in the early times to do right. So that's, I was thinking is I bet that person will probably be on their deathbed saying, I wish I didn't make all this money when I was young. And I was able to travel and, and do these other types of things. Yeah. I saw creep as it can be devastating. Very real.

Evan (00:40:08):

Yeah. So when we got married my wife and I, she by the way, she's awesome. But she had a, almost a hundred thousand dollars in debt, which means student loan debt and like a garden. So a lot. Yeah. And we ended up paying the whole thing off in like three years. But at the same time, I was an intern at a church and she was working like, you know, like a retail job or whatever. And so, and I'm not laughing every time John, I would say we were just, we were not making a lot of them.

Speaker 3 (00:40:34):

I can see that a very lower middle class with a lot of debt. And that's just probably like, Oh my God, we gotta be real good with money.

Evan (00:40:43):

Yeah. And we were so frugal, like I would eat food from like the church fridge, which was like leftovers or whatever, you know what I mean? And now we, we live super modestly. I feel like but thinking to myself, how do we spend three X, what we use to spend on groceries? What in the world, I don't understand how to get our grocery budget larger, lower, but there is some for sure, lifestyle grief. There's no question about it. And my goal is to have some sort of passive income like this, just, I don't care to really have a certain number in a bank. I just want to be able to live completely on passive income and the next couple of years with investments and stuff like that. So I think that'd be a ton of fun to go, like, hang out with friends that live in like Texas or Colorado and just go hang out for a couple months.

Evan (00:41:31):

You know, I feel like that would be fun. I want to circle back to that. But one thing I want to ask, what did you notice by having that training, let's call it of, of being frugal and being able to eat Sally's leftover sandwich and that type of type of beans. I know I'm going to be beans and rice. I'm going to be good to go. Maybe skipping a meal. I'll be fine. Did you notice having that experience helped you out in the beginning of this Colbert situation when there's a lot of fear kind of going out and people were worried about food and all these different types of things? Yeah. I will say I want to put like a disclaimer on there. I went to like two disclaimers, the first disclaimer being we hit, we had savings, you know what I mean?

Evan (00:42:13):

In past couple of years we'd done better, better. And you know, my wife has a salary job. So like what I'm going to say, I'm saying it with that in mind, that there are people in harder situations that this is not even, yeah. I'm not trying to oversimplify everything. So if you're in that, it's not what I'm saying. However, for us, I think the second, this is my second part of the disclaimer, and this could totally not be for anybody else, but for some people, this might be applicable, but for me it was my faith. So like my my relationship with Jesus, I'm a Christian or me a follow Jesus, whatever you wanna call me. And in those seasons and the hard seasons I grew, I felt like I grew closer to God and learn to trust him more and lean on him.

Evan (00:42:55):

And so going through COVID, I mentioned all those clients dropped my wife and I can remember where we were on the walk and I just thought, you know what, like God's taken care of us and it's been okay. And I also want to put one last disclaimer when I lived and I lived in Thailand for a few months when I was like 18 and I like did like this mission work stuff. And when I was over there, I saw like extreme, extreme poverty. Like I'm talking to people just like dying on the street from like rotting, limbs and all kinds of crazy, super graphic stuff. I'm not saying that if you follow God, everything is fine. You know what I mean? Like in that you're just gonna you know, all your problems. I'm sorry, I'm not at all saying that, but I just think, you know, what, a hundred years now and the whole big picture it's going to be okay.

Evan (00:43:40):

Like, that's the piece that I was feeling. I was like, you know what, God got us through that season. And that really wasn't that bad. And it's not going to matter when one day with him. And I mean, so I'm just like, ain't that big of a deal? Like, let's cool. Let's go whatever, you know what I mean? That's my 2 cents on that. When a couple of disclaimers, that's fine. So if I can, if I can kind of bring this back, you lean on your faith and to say, no matter what happens, as long as we keep our faith, like everything's going to be okay, I'm going to be able to, we're going to eat. We're going to be to live. We're going to be able to figure this out. Is that accurate? Yeah. I mean, I really, so again, sustainability, he was like, really?

Evan (00:44:23):

Anti-Religion maybe you to skip forward, but if you're open to it, here's my, here's my thoughts. Yeah. for me, that didn't go okay. If Jesus was to come to this earth and die on a cross so that my sins could be forgiven and that could be reconnecting back to God in relationship with him, if he was going to do that for me, I imagine he's still willing and caring to take care of us. That does not mean that I could just sit on my butt and everything will be taken care of. You know what I mean? I've got a hustle. I gotta provide. I'm the, you know what I mean? Like I didn't make stuff happen, but I do think if I, if I'm just doing the best that I can for the most part, it doesn't work out. Okay. And I also, you know, part of this whole Christianity and faith journey is that we see that, Hey, this moment in time, it's just a breath.

Evan (00:45:11):

It's a vapor. And so if I really truly, truly believe that if a client signs a big deal, if I have my biggest client ever, I really don't care. I mean, I do, but I really don't because a hundred years from now, it really the things that are going to matter for me are this relationship I have with God, how I treated my family, that I love the people around me. Well, and did I possibly introduce other people into this relationship? God, you know what I mean? Because money does not. Like I said, I, I, I like making money and I think it's cool. But I consider it a hobby and I don't want ever, I don't want it to be the top three of my life. I would rather it be a fun hobby that I'm good at not an idol, but as we would call it in my life. So,

Speaker 3 (00:45:55):

No thank you for sharing that. I I'm not religious, but I'm open to hear. I like hearing the things I like to hear how people think about things. One thing that I I noticed so I mean, we're old enough to have gone through the 2018 thing, the September 11 thing the.com crash and all those kinds of things that happened. So one thing I, I noticed really September 11th and then in 2008, I remember that wasn't, I wasn't prepared for anything. I was in my early twenties. I really wasn't prepared for, for something like that to happen. And a lot of things are out of my control really affect my life. I wasn't prepared for that. So realizing that going forward, I said, I need to make sure however it is, I, I can do it. I'm ready for something else to ever happen.

Speaker 3 (00:46:42):

Again, it's out of my control, but I'm set to go, you know, I've got, maybe not necessarily, it's not solely a money thing, but it's a, it's a training. It's a level of experience and thought and maybe preparation, whatever it is. I'm not a, I'm not a planning kind of guy, but I realized I need to take this a little seriously. And then when 2008 came along, I was ready for something like that. You know? I wasn't worried. And I noticed when I not being worried about these things and not being in this, this fear place and this place of shit, I don't know how I'm gonna pay bills. Like when you're not in that mindset, you know, I'm in a mind frame, you're prepared, it's this concept called like default to training. So when you've trained for shit down and shit to go down, you're ready.

Speaker 3 (00:47:28):

So what happens when, when, when whatever happens, when someone wants to fight you, when, when a war breaks out, whatever it is, you don't rise to your expectations. You don't rise up. I'm going to be like this person, you default to your trains, whatever you train for that's, what's going to come out. That's, what's in your back of your mind, that's, what's in your subconscious that's, what's going to happen. So when, when you're not, when, when you, when you're, you know, you're gonna be okay, and, and you've default, your training level is such where you, you know, you're gonna be fine. I noticed that personally, and I'm trying to talk to other people about this too, and get a sense of it. You're, you're able to have they're able to think a lot more, you're able to look at things and kind of back away and detach a little bit.

Speaker 3 (00:48:09):

Cause you're not emotional. You're not in it. And you're able to say it, where's the opportunities at where is the scarcity mindset? Where's this fear what is this, what, what part of this is media? A fear-mongering tactic for views and viewership and, and all that type of stuff versus what's real. What am I worried about? What are these things that made maybe something that I'm not ready or prepared for? So I w I did well during that time and all in all aspects of that. So then when this came around I was double Downing on these types of things. I was reading a lot and getting into stoic philosophy and they talk a lot about this fasting going out and looking homeless, being homeless, sleeping on the ground and, and telling yourself and wanting to yourself, what are you scared of?

Speaker 3 (00:48:58):

Are you scared of the people that are going to say something you don't know or care about, worried about the way you're dressed? Are you worried about what people are gonna think when you're now, when you're homeless or you look homeless, what are you scared of? What are you doing, preparing for these things and raising that default to training type of thing. So when this came around like I said, I practiced fasting. I've done, I've done five day water, only fast, and I know what that feels like, and I know how to get through that. We practice as a family eating only beans and rice for one, one day of the month. So we know what that's like. We know I teach my kids and everybody and teach myself and we were going to just find it. We just have beans and rice for dinner.

Speaker 3 (00:49:39):

We know we're going to be okay. And on all these different types of things that practice. And I noticed when this was looking around, I wasn't worried about grocery stores being out of food and on all these sorts of things. I know I can go without eating no column for days and days. Please, if you have medical problems, talk with a doctor about that, but I know we could be okay on scarce and scant food. I don't have to have the best in organic. I don't have to eat steaks all the time. I know we're going to be a fine. And so things kind of go around and those are the things that I, and then I was able to look, look for opportunities like, so everybody's scared and running out buying toilet paper. And I'm like, where's the money at? Where's the opportunities where can I do these things? So I'm not scared of these things. And I was just wondering if, if, if you've, if you can kind of understand or maybe even add something to it, or you kind of understand why I'm glad it was a real long kind of thing, build

Tyson (00:50:28):

Through that concept of how I was kind of acting and thinking about things.

Evan (00:50:32):

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. A couple of things come to mind. First off, let's go through a couple of years. So one is that the default, the training, I think even that C's, that we started with with the debt and that I was mentioning earlier, I think the real training came when my dad was struggling with drugs and when I was in high school. And so that was the time I really got to lean in my faith. Cause I literally just like decided to start following Jesus and that season. And that built a foundation. And let me just tell you that sucked. That was so hard with my dad during that season. I was just awful. And that really did build a foundation though, of resilience and just stupid resilience. You know what I mean? I was just like, wait, what? I just got like, cause like this is the worst thing,

Tyson (00:51:16):

Bring it.

Evan (00:51:18):

So there's that. And then the other thing is I do think kind of also super interesting. I really love hearing about all of stuff that you didn't repair. The, there is a level of preparation required. I feel like I've got a friend I was talking to this morning, he's in the banking space or whatever. And we're actually, hopefully, hopefully going, gonna close on home here in a few days. Like I mentioned, I'm not have not working with him. Maybe I shouldn't be. But he's telling me that people, a lot of people actually get mortgage mortgages where their monthly payment is 50% of their gross income or whatever the max is which is wild. And then he goes, and then they immediately pull out a heat lock, like, or a second mortgage on a credit.

Tyson (00:52:06):

Hi, my mom is black.

Evan (00:52:07):

I was like, what? Wow. Those people through either ignorance, just not knowing any better or choosing to make horrible decisions. Either one I'm not sure probably makes it both more, probably scared as all get out right now. You know what I mean? And there's a level of Asheville preparation, you know, you mentioned like, you know, money, where's the money going right now. If you've got cash on hand, golly, wouldn't you have loved it, invest in the stock market, you know, just like a couple of months or weeks.

Tyson (00:52:41):

Yes.

Evan (00:52:44):

Again, like we're really going there. Like what's the deal? So I, that's not mainly my space. I do. I invest in businesses and that's where my sweet spot is there. But that's been really good process, but that all involves margin. You know what I mean? So like you have to have margin in order to do these things and you have to prepare. And I guess the last thought on this really is you know, we're gonna hopefully own a home outright within a few years. And that's gonna be great, but even then it's not my home. I still pay property taxes. It's the government's, you know what I mean?

Tyson (00:53:23):

They can come by and go to the freeway, right. Your home.

Evan (00:53:26):

Yeah. They didn't start really mine. You know what I mean? So I think that this false things that we hold on to as security, when really we have to decide to circle this all back together is an internal versus an external locus of control. And we have to decide I'm either going to be a victim to the stuff around me and I'm going to complain about it. And I'm going to just go, woe is me or the flip side, I can say, you know, I can't control everything, but I can control how I respond, how I react to stuff and how to prepare for it. And that's what it comes out to understanding what's in your control and audio control. Absolutely. The thing I would like to understand is, is the thing that you're seeing to be controlling now is investments. I noticed you, your LinkedIn profile, some other things and stuff like that.

Evan (00:54:13):

You're, you're into investing, not sure what we can talk about that. My question to you in that space is what investments are you making now and what are you pulling back on? Good question. I'm very nervous about this stock market. We all, yeah. I mean, it is completely detached from reality. It feels like. Yeah. And it already was, I mean, it mainly is based off people's emotions, which that's already proven a lot of science around that and start market and other random things like your ticker symbol. So we won't even get into that. So I will say I I've got some investments in the stock market. I'm not talking about an index fund. I'm talking about individual stocks that I invest in. I'm probably gonna relocate those funds elsewhere. Cause there I've made a great return. I'm just going to relocate his funds just to be honest, not telling you that's not advice in our professional domain that absolutely.

Evan (00:55:10):

However, and that's because that's not my strength. Stock is like a fun hobby. You know what I mean? Like I only, I use very disposable income for that thing that I am investing in is, is companies. There is a lot of companies that either have a great product or a service, whichever in my, my investment group, we mainly do online businesses, but sometimes we'll do like actual brick and mortar stuff. And we're looking for companies that have struggled to go to the next level and they, don't kind of like what we've mentioned earlier, you know, they're stuck under a million or under three or 4 million or whatever and they can't bring it to the next level. Those are the companies I'm very interested in right now. So that's mainly where I'm investing my time and my money for sure.

Evan (00:55:56):

That's interesting. I'm trying to figure out how to ask you this question. Could you expand on that a little bit more about these companies that you're looking at without? I don't want to, I don't want you to divulge anything you're comfortable with, but I mean, I guess the point of the question is other people that are listening out there, maybe they have a little bit income. Maybe they're looking at things we've never thought about it in these types of things, they wanted to play their skills. How can we think about this? How are you thinking about picking a company, looking at companies, what type of maybe sector you're looking at, all those types of things, whatever you're comfortable sharing. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay. So I'll just talk to some of the qualities and like I'll just the process and what we do.

Evan (00:56:40):

Some of the qualities I love in a company is that, you know, really easy to scale. So if there is, if I let's say there's 500 sales, just for the sake of simplicity in a month, if all of a sudden I get involved and I'm able to crank up sales from 500 to 5,000, can the business handle that without much changing? You know what I mean? Where are we going to have to fulfill a lot more orders? Yeah. Easy, you know what I mean? We have to outsource the warehouse, maybe add another customer service person. Sure. But when it's like a service business or a B to B, sometimes that's not the case. And so that's stuff makes me nervous. Not because I don't think that we can help them, but mainly because I'm just nervous that there's not an economies of scale, you know?

Evan (00:57:25):

So that's me that's as I'm like, that's a personal, I guess, qualification. And then the investment group that I'm part of a couple of things. When we get into a company that will look at the expenses and we'll take off everything. Like I mentioned earlier, everything that is not directly contributed to bottom line got to go later. She didn't really, people are not on that list. We don't want to just get rid of people, but any other expenses besides people are very much on the chopping block, get rid of those as possible. And some examples like there's an existing CEO or COO or founder of the company. And oftentimes we're actually, sometimes we buy the company outright. Most of the time we come in as a partner and then earn equity as the business grows. The, sometimes we'll ask the owners or the pre the previous owner, Hey, wait, we got to cut your, your, you know, what do they call it?

Evan (00:58:18):

Retainer, not retainer, but your draw, like your, your monthly draw from the company. Cause you're sucking the company dry, you should be investing back in the company and just simply cutting all those expenses. And then reducing the owners, you know, withdrawal from it, sets the company up to be a lot healthier. And then at that point, once we've done that, then we can look into building systems and processes to scale the company with marketing. So that's the general process. A lot of companies that we're looking for are those partnerships where we can come in and then, you know, double, triple the company and then sometimes we'll sell it afterwards. Sometimes we won't. So yeah, but e-commerce, and online businesses, I would say are the easiest SAS companies or have the highest multiple, which is why they have some, I don't think most of us, but like if you had a brick and mortar store that was doing a million dollars and margin, and then you had a SAS company that was doing a million dollars in margin, the SAS company would, would sell for two to three times more. I'm just, that's not an exact rule, but the idea is that a SAS company already has the infrastructure built and is

Speaker 3 (00:59:29):

Scale and then a local shop. Yeah. That multiple, you can get on the value of the company. Yeah. It's interesting how they're different from industry to industry. You can get a three X multiple on this and this other initiative get a 10 X multiple on the same thing. It's quite interesting.

Evan (00:59:44):

Yeah. It's super interesting. Like any, even if they do it based off the year or the month, like there's all kinds of different ways.

Speaker 3 (00:59:52):

Yeah. So many different ways. It's like, you can talk about this, you can talk to the same person about two different companies and they're like, well, we're gonna, we're gonna do it. We're going to five X multiple on your annual after tax revenue. And so the company already do a 10 X multiple on your grocery. And they're like, you just told me two different things about the same thing you're using the value of this company. It's very interesting. I don't know enough about why or how, but it's very, it is very interesting.

Evan (01:00:16):

Yeah. It's you know, I'm thankful I've got, so I'm involved in those decisions obviously, but I don't do most of the homework. So I'm very thankful for my partners who were very smart. And they, they make sure it's a good fit for both because the companies that we parts partner with, it's really going to be a good fit for both of us. You know, we're, we're locking arms with these people and saying, Hey, we're gonna help you double or triple your company. This is not a you know, sell cash at sale, you know, they're, they might get something, but it's fine. It could be as much as they will, two, three years from now.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):

Right. No, I just kind kinda noticed through this whole conversation we have, it seems you're very self aware of the things you're good at and the things you aren't good at. How did you develop that?

Evan (01:01:02):

I I've worked for some really awful

Speaker 3 (01:01:06):

Congratulations. Yeah.

Evan (01:01:09):

And I honestly think that there is two sides of that coin under pulling out that awful. You know, I, I've got a very strong personality and so maybe I just got way more feedback than most people, which is totally possible. And so forgive me if for they're not awful people, however, we did not jive, you know, I did not, I've worked for them vice versa. And so I there's a lot of times where I got a lot of feedback and it did not come from a good place. It was very much I'm going to tear you down. And so eventually I just decided, you know what, like, I've, I've got to figure out how the crap I'm coming across to people. You know, I've got to understand I've got to be self aware. I've got to be able to self manage mainly.

Evan (01:01:50):

So they don't have any ammunition against me which is unfortunate, but it was very hard, very hard season. And I'm so thankful for it. I I'm so thankful for the people I've enjoyed working for the least because I've grown so much in that season just by, you know, there's, there's another place I worked at where everybody, you had to have a face on and it was exhausting. Yeah. That, that being said, I learned how to self manage. I learned how to like be in the workplace and not just dump all my feelings or whatever I was going through and not pout in the corner about something, you know, like there's a level of professionalism that I learned from that. So I would say probably thanks to the people that I did not love working for would mainly be it. Is there any other tools or courses or books or coaching or something you did to help cultivate that other than obviously that firsthand experience?

Tyson (01:02:47):

Yeah. I'll, I'll give a couple one,

Evan (01:02:51):

Even if you're not a Christian and you're not religious the book of Proverbs and the Bible, I used to read that all the time when I was in high school probably should pick it up more, to be honest, but it's very practical super, super practical. It's written by this guy named Solomon. And it was supposedly written by a guy I'm Solomon. And I say, supposedly, because some people will think that, you know, did he write all of it? They pretty sure he wrote at least 28 out of the 31 different you know, passages, but whatever. So Solomon basically wrote all of them and there's enough for every single day of the month. So for a long time, I would just read a proverb. So probably every day took me like three or four minutes. And a lot of times I would take the wisdom from that proverb and bring it into my day.

Evan (01:03:37):

And that was super helpful. And after you read through it a couple of times, like a year, you kind of internalize that stuff. Yeah. And I guess here's a, I'm going to make a disclaimer on Solomon might be the wisest guy who ever lived, but maybe, you know, couldn't follow through on his own advice in a lot of ways. So he did not have that part going for him, but he definitely, he knew the right thing. So Solomon is great. There's a book by a guy who's kind of been exiled from the Christian community. Not cause he's not a Christian. Some people still like him, but he was like a very influential like writer and speaker. And he wrote a book called the most excellent way to lead his name's Perry, noble. I don't wanna say the guy's perfect or whatever, but I really enjoyed his book and he basically breaks down this passage.

Evan (01:04:25):

Golly, I'm tired a lot about faith right now. In first Corinthians, which is a book and the new Testament. So like what the Christians consider part of the Bible. And he breaks down first Corinthians, which is often read at weddings. It's like, love is patient love is kind. And he goes through and basically details out how that is like a call to leadership and how if you lead people, that's how you should leave people with love and kindness. And it's not super mushy like that. Like it's practical. And you know, you also heard a few minutes ago, I'm not afraid to fire somebody, you know, but of that could be super loving and supportive. And then through that process and hopefully before that, you know what I mean? So I'd say those are probably probably the best and ask my mom also when I was a high school. She, I don't know that she said it quite like this, but how I, it interpreted, it was like, Hey, you're not really humble.

Tyson (01:05:24):

And she was bright and I don't know how to be humble. And so I just, honestly,

Evan (01:05:30):

I prayed for that and not saying it solves your issue there, but I feel like God has changed mine

Tyson (01:05:34):

A little bit in that. And then maybe he gave me opportunities to be humbled. So there you go. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for being brave. Talk about your faith and talk about your religion. I think it's a skill and I think people nowadays, it seems aren't, aren't willing to, to talk about things that maybe are controversial or aren't popular and thank you for being that person and sharing that. I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Man, for sure. And I will link those books if you guys are interested to, to get those, don't worry about it. If you're, if you're interested at least maybe read this summary or something like that or whatever, I'll link those. It's easy for you guys to get in the show notes for the show. We talked about so, so much things and we really cut out. I like, I like to talk about the future. We're I know as humans, we just suck at that, but I want to see, I want to, I want to see what you're seeing, how many interested in what you're seeing, what the new future is going to be. How, how are you looking at that? What may be predictions or bets you're making, not necessarily monetarily, but in the future, what, what are you looking at? How are you looking at the future as we go forward here? Mid June at 2020.

Evan (01:06:52):

So I'm a millennial. So we inherently can't think past five months.

Tyson (01:06:59):

I 

Evan (01:07:00):

Already interviewed other millennial and like, you know, for whatever.

Tyson (01:07:05):

I'm always like

Evan (01:07:06):

See that on their face. You know, like when you're like, what are your three year plans? They're like, no idea. God doesn't mean that they're not smart, but I just, we just, I don't know. We just always had stuff in front of us. I've already said stuff in front of us. So I don't know for me, it really, I don't necessarily have any predictions. I guess I have goals, you know, I was kinda like that financial quote.

Tyson (01:07:30):

I, I just feel increasingly that life is short. We don't know what is going to change. You know, like obviously 2020 has been a heck of a year. There is a, whatever the generation is below millennial. One of those people on my team, she was like, this is like the worst year I've been alive. She was not talking about like

Evan (01:07:49):

Personal experience, but this is like the most traumatic year of my existence. You know what I mean? Like just the,

Tyson (01:07:56):

As a, as humanity. Right. 

Evan (01:08:00):

So I don't know, I don't have any bold predictions. I just have a general level of like, Hey, let's just, let's just focus on stuff that matters. Let's not overreact to stuff. I definitely think that the market

Tyson (01:08:14):

Is volatile

Evan (01:08:16):

And unpredictable and uncertain. So Isaac is going to be continued on uncertainty. I don't, I don't see in the next couple of months that there being a lot of clarity. I feel for my this is also another controversial issue. I've got friends that are black. One of my best friends is actually Korean. And so I, I just feel a lot for them right now. That's something that they've struggled with for a long time, you know, and it, it's just, now there's a lot of awareness to it. So obviously that is just not gonna be solved right now. So there's just a lot of uncertainty, a lot of stuff going on. And I think that's just going to continue to be the case. So if I have any prediction, it's just that there's going to be continued uncertainty into the future, at least for another year. Let's go with that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:01):

I would say there'll be uncertainty for the rest of civilization period. End of conversation. Well, I don't want to diminish your faith, but other than, or as part of your faith, how are you how are we dealing with that? How are you thinking about the, how are you getting through that, that thought of so much uncertainty, so much animosity, so much chaos. What are, what are you doing to push through that? How are you thinking about that in, in that? I hope I explained that correctly.

Evan (01:09:35):

Yeah, yeah, totally. I know you kinda mentioned faith thing, so let's just say that's a thing, but what else is going on there? The, I think that just trying to actually articulate it maybe even like writing down lists sometimes if I do feel really overwhelmed, like what's in my control, what's outside my control. I just thought, you know, as of the past couple of months, I thought, you know, how can I grow as a husband and as a friend right now? So I've really tried to be slow to speak in a lot of scenarios and I am not so to speak at all. So, or patient, those are not at all my skill sets. So I don't know if anyone else feels like I've been patient or so to speak, but I've been trying. And I don't know. I think I, the biggest thing for me is always what matters a hundred years from now that is this just the most sintering direct question.

Evan (01:10:27):

It gets to my heart and I go, all right, does this matter? How two years out? No, it, doesn't not really. And even like, well, yeah, I can keep this ambiguous. There are people in my life who are older and are not racist necessarily in like a straight sense of the word. However, they just were raised in a completely different generation. And they just can't see some stuff sometimes. And so I've just thought, you know what, I'm just going to choose to have some difficult conversations. Even if it if I could do it in a loving way, I think it's worth it. So I dunno, I just try to focus on stuff that matters more than business, more than stuff, more than you know,

Tyson (01:11:14):

House or whatever. You know, like my, when my dad started doing drugs again, when I was in high school, he didn't do it. I don't think before I was like born, he did do it for, I was born and then eventually relapsed. But when we lost everything, I mean, we lost our house. We had like another Lake house that we lost. We lost the cars. Everything got foreclosed on. I had like a pink slip on their house. I was there for all that. I remember going to the dentist office and crying cause I had a cavity cause I was worried my mom couldn't pay for the bill and been through all that. So I'm really not too worried just trying to make wise decisions. And if I can't control it, why, why would I worry about something I can't control anyway, doesn't do anything.

Tyson (01:12:02):

You gotta wonder why we do this so fascinating, right? Yeah. Yeah. Not religious or not. Jesus. That Jesus makes an interesting point. When he goes, why worry about your life? What is worrying about your life? It's going to add anything on your life. It's going to add a single hour into your life about worry. No, no. Alright. Why worry about tomorrow then? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Marcus Aurelius, if you're not familiar with him, he was one of the, one of the great five Roman empire embers. He talks about something like that alone. He's like, nobody's gonna remember you in a hundred years. What I believe is marketplace talks about you. What are you worried about? Somebody putting up a statue of you? Like, what are you trying to do here? Nobody's nobody's going to give a shit. It's like the people before me, all the Kings and all the emperors, nobody remembers who they were.

Tyson (01:12:52):

What am I worried about? You know, just let me just handle my shit. Let me just handle my stuff. And it goes back to that, that you keep coming back to this hundred year thing and then year, like your friend was at that other point as well of, you know, that longterm thoughts. And, and I like how, you know, we, we look at these things and how you, I love how you've got that self awareness thing. And then that Hunter, you're thinking what's happening here and can get, can this add to the world is going to add value to people's lives far after I'm gone. And I love how you're able to take that and apply it to your life and set that out when it's so hard for us to think what we're having for lunch on Saturday, you know, thing here is that I always think that

Speaker 4 (01:13:42):

I don't remember half the crap I was frustrated

Tyson (01:13:44):

About two weeks ago, right? Yeah. Yeah. So when I get an email from somebody at 10 30 at night, which actually I'm probably not awake at that point, so let's go with nine frustrating. I'm just like, whatever. I don't even remember the last time somebody sent me an email like this, so whatever shall pass this too, shall pass a hundred percent. Absolutely. I, that I,

Speaker 3 (01:14:12):

I think about often and I notice a lot of people starting to think about more often during this Colby type of thing is a habits. Have you added or removed anything recently that comes to mind?

Evan (01:14:24):

Okay. So it's funny as another car, another car petitions today, which it was like a faith conversation. And we were talking about like habits of faith and disciplines and stuff like that. And I think I personally have gotten very lax on my disciplines. And habits I've changed some stuff up mainly cause we've been working from home and therefore my 10 month old is excuse me, making all kinds of noises. And so it's very hard to get work done. So I've kind of pivoted and started working at 5:00 AM or a little bit four or 5:00 AM. And I've just like cranked out emails and work until he wakes up. And that has actually been pretty darn cool. Because I can pretty much get everything done and like three or four hours because no one else is emailing me and it was distracting me. So I think that's probably gonna continue. I gotta figure out how I pit it. Like my workout schedule. I also was doing like a martial art called Brazilian jujitsu. So I gotta figure out how that works back on my schedule. But yes, definitely. I've pivoted my schedule that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:15:31):

Yeah. I know a lot of people are having problems with a digit Sioux and all this type of stuff. I mean, zero feet distance is where you want to be. So that's yeah. That's going to be tough to have people navigate that.

Evan (01:15:44):

Yeah, we yeah, so the gym, I just ended my membership at my current gym. No, that is fine. And so I go into like a gym shout out to anybody who does BJJ, Atlanta, it's called tiger Academy. Apparently it's pretty darn good. And so I'm excited to start with them, but they only have like four classes a week versus their normal, like 23. And so all the disinfecting, all that stuff. So it's going to be a slow ramp back up

Speaker 3 (01:16:20):

That's for sure. Yeah. Jocko was talking about, I'm not sure if you're familiar with him, but he was talking about that on Joe Rogan. He has a jujitsu gym as well, and he was talking about, it's very hard. They want in California, they want them cleaning all this successively and he's talking about, they gotta bring in these cleaning crews and they've got to have this big gaps between classes. I know here in Phoenix, I go to, I do acro yoga and that is really just, I mean, that's something that's very close contact. Everybody's touching everybody's in your face. And that's pretty much come to a screeching halt. Teachers don't want to teach. They just don't want to come back. People, you know, are worried about being into these faces. I finally went back to the first class on Saturday and I don't know, since February, I think was the last time I went and it was weird ghost town and it was very strange. Yeah. It's a, it's

Evan (01:17:10):

A very interesting vibe and it's, it's going to be interesting, I guess, going forward and I feel bad for these types of places where I don't know what you can throw at that to make you any money. It's tough. Yeah. it's hard to you try to choke somebody out or not be broke down. And I mean, in that type of stuff, I mean, you're breathing in people's faces or sweats dropping in your mouth and in your eyes and yeah. Blaze everywhere sometimes. Yeah. That's yeah. That's got a lot of positions in the DJ where, so it's a weird sport if you like, think about it. Cause you're rolling sometimes with people you've never met and you're at all sorts of positions with each other that I would never want. My and most of these guys are other guys, sometimes there's other women there, but mainly I don't, I don't really the women.

Evan (01:18:04):

Not that I couldn't be great. Most of them would beat me honestly. So it's not a, it's not about that. But yeah, I would be super, I'd be real concerned if I like walked in on my now I would walk into my wife. Maybe you get a point like this is not, you're not positions that are appropriate. Any other setting in the world, besides when you're on a mat, you know what I mean? You don't generally want a, some of these butter nuts in your face. Yes, no, that's exactly what I'm trying to say. Yeah. But that's normal, I guess that's it? Yeah. It's a normal day and BJJ. Absolutely. Definitely. So has been a great conversation if people want to continue learning more about you, what you're up to, what, what are the best ways people to get out? You social, whatever.

Evan (01:18:45):

What do you want to, where do you want people to go? Yeah, probably my website. So if you are a business owner, entrepreneur, or you're in charge of marketing at your company, you can go to caffeine.marketing. There's no.com, just caffeine, not marketing, or if you want to connect with me in any other way, my email is also on Evan knox.com and get that free sales guide. Absolutely. And like I said, everything will be linked in the show notes. So it's easy to get to it. One last thing here on a social community show, I enjoy challenges. And what like to do is I to issue the listeners and the viewers out there, a challenge either it can be anything, there's something we talked about, an idea or a concept or something completely different. And I'd like to give you the opportunity to issue this week's challenge to our viewers and listeners.

Evan (01:19:34):

All right. I literally, until this like less millisecond was going to say something else, but we're going to go with it. I would challenge somebody to just have a listening attitude and ask somebody who doesn't look like them. Either doesn't matter what color, race, gender, whatever, what is it like to be you? What is it like to be right now and this season of life? How are you interpreting it? How do you feel? How does your family feel? I feel like that sort of thing would be really enlightening and I I'm fortunate enough to ask in front of that. You know, this last week and it

Tyson (01:20:08):

Was really helpful for me. That's special share. That's an amazing challenge. I love it. Thank you for, for doing that. It has been an absolute joy and absolute pleasure. Thank you for being on here. Is there anything, any, anything we haven't covered, any final thing you want to make sure people know about or anything else you want to say? I feel like we've covered a lot which is really great. I think if you can just figure out what matters a hundred years from now for each person out there and focus on that. I hopefully that will bring them a lot of contentment and peace in their life. Perfect. Absolutely. Thank you. Hey, thanks guys for sticking around here today in here, I'll be really enjoyed the interview. I really had a great time talking with Evan. If you'd like to show everything, this is something that's gonna help people please share this as the best way to help the show.

Tyson (01:20:55):

The best way to pass on the information sharing is caring. Knowledge is empowering. So please do share with people. If you like what we've got going on, leave a review on your favorite podcast platform in between shows. You can catch us all week long on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I'll still forget to subscribe on YouTube. If you're enjoying the video version or in your favorite podcast app, if you knew the show and she hit that subscribe, if you like what we have going on here for past episodes and links to everything we talk about on the social media million show, you can visit social chameleon.show. And so next time, keep learning, keep growing, keep transforming the person you want to become.

Speaker 5 (01:22:12):

[Inaudible].