Ep40: The Ultimate Cheat Code to Entrepreneurial Success with Crispin Sandford

[00:00:00] Crispin Sandford
By embracing the thing you don't like and that you're kind of frustrated with, but it's bringing revenue by fully embracing it and making it more powerful, more effective, more efficient, and ultimately turning it over. You make it possible for you to achieve your dream. 

[00:00:12] Podcast Intro
You are working professional but struggling to balance the workload of your career, family obligations, and preparing for your financial future. If so, this podcast is for you. You've spent years learning your craft, and now it's time to focus on your financial future. This podcast will teach you what you need to retire wealthy and happy. Let's dive in. 

[00:00:35] Roger Jacobsen
Hello and welcome to the Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast. Today we have with us Anthony Esparza as our guest interviewer and Crispin Sandford as our interviewee. First of all, we want to thank. Monument Real Estate, Monument Real Estate and Finance sponsors this podcast. Monument Real Estate and Finance helping you retire five years early through passive income. Today we're going to talk about business scaling and stuff like that. Hello and welcome guys. Hey, nice to be with you Roger, Anthony. 

[00:01:07] Anthony Esparza
Yeah, good to be with you guys, Crispin. Kind of our first time chatting here and looking forward to get to know your story, I guess, give us a brief rundown of kind of your steps that led you to where you are today, or even if you want to do a little story of how you got to where you are now, that would be awesome just to kind of kick it off. 

[00:01:25] Crispin Sandford
Sure, I think the big thing that happened to me to get me on this path, I was at Queen Elizabeth College in England. And I took business studies because I knew that I would need to understand business, but it was a little bit of reluctance there. A little bit of an attitude that I had about business. But during the course of taking that class, the teacher had discussed, we were in a recession in England, and he had discussed why those happen, why recessions happen, why bubbles burst economies and basically simply explain that businesses provide value to the market. They have real value. And then you get into the. Inflated value, right? You have a factory. It's expanded. It's providing products and services. The factory provides jobs for workers. People move to the area. More people move in the area. You have more shops. You have more business going on and just the real economy grows and rises.

[00:02:12]
But then people start to talk about all the value of the brand name or the factory is really worth this much. And you start to inflate value. Eventually that just gets too much. And the sensible businessman dealt their companies. Overpriced you're taking all the real money out of the economy and then there's only the inflated part left and pop it burst it just said something off in my mind in my mind exploded I was like wow that makes so much sense as long as you provide real value as long as you don't get into the synthetic or inflated value game. And as long as you're working at producing better products, higher value, opening up new markets, then you're into the business of value. And it just completely transformed me. Next year, I went to business school, Darlington College. I went from Queen Elizabeth to Darlington College. And in the end, by 2000, I was working in a consulting firm.

[00:03:02]
I thought I would learn more about business if I was at a consulting firm teaching people how to build their business. And eventually, I had my own company. And started giving clients advice i focused on organization business organization processes procedures systems and the first client i had went from a hundred and twenty thousand a month to three hundred thousand a month from getting them operating their business is putting in place structure making sure they put bottlenecks. I went to selling, I worked at the marketing firm to improve my marketing knowledge. And then again, I relaunched as a consultant once I'd gotten more knowledge, more than I have more experience. And here we are. That's awesome. Thank you. That's really interesting. When you scale up a business like that, you actually add a lot higher percentage profit.Don't you? 

[00:03:51]
Yeah. And what's so funny is that it is simply mechanics. It is simply mechanics. People have what they're doing, right? They have how they're operating in business and objective. I has come in with an understanding of the administrative infrastructure of business, the concepts of business that I realized weren't just fake, right? Weren't just terms and theory, but actually, you know, you need an executive section, administration, client marketing. Finance production delivery quality control business development and you have all of the important functions of those areas that apply to any business and when you bring that structure to an organization you get a work with business owners so that they start to document what they're already doing that falls into those different categories but in doing that in seeing it as a structure.

[00:04:40]
In helping them document their business, simple language, they start to see what's missing. They double down on what worked because it's documented. They can share that with staff. You start executing according to process. One of the funniest things to do is to work with the owner about the sales process that they have, how they sell, what they're selling, the frequently asked questions, the answers to those and document those all down with the sales team right there. And all of a sudden all these light bulbs go off and they start to realize the things that the owner has been telling them they've been selling this for years or a decade or whatever it is and suddenly it all fits together and they immediately go out that week start selling more closing bigger deals and it's just mechanical because now they understand the actual process the steps that ensure that that value is brought to the market and they're able to communicate much more efficiently. Simply much more clearly, and this happens throughout the organization. So just by establishing mechanics, the business will grow. It will double eventually, too. But it's very funny. It's almost like I'm cheating. It's always too easy. But still, there's processes. There's, you know, training. There's establishing practices. There's a lot of material I've created on how to do this and to focus on the specific functions. But really, it is that simple. Getting people organized results in smoother lines, clean lines. They're able to fill the gaps, find and fill the gaps, build a complete organization that gets much better results. 

[00:06:03] Roger Jacobsen
A lot of time I have arguments with contractors because I used to be a contractor and the argument I have with them is I'm already busy. So I don't need to market and I'm like, when I became a realtor, I 10 X my business because I did start marketing and you're just giving away your stuff at a discount to stay busy. You must see a lot of different points that are blind spots for everybody. Can you give us some examples of blind spots that business owners have? 

[00:06:33] Crispin Sandford
Sure. Well, the way I love to explain this is I will tell somebody, a business owner, I'll say, I know that your business Right now is undervalued and they go like, okay, right now it's telling them that you're undervalued. And the principle, the theory I use to resolve that is what I understand is what Warren Buffett does because Warren Buffett will look for now. He's looking at the huge scale, right? Billion dollar companies, 500 million dollar companies, but he's looking for an undervalued business in the marketplace. And they provide a great product or service that's without which nothing they provide a great product or service but management has degraded it's not quite as efficient or as effective as it once perhaps was they've got bad supply chain they have slow or outdated it systems and infrastructure they are low on innovation and they stopped innovating. Which can very often happen with older companies, they get so focused on sales and selling and all the various different ways in which they can attract people that they stop promoting people involved in the actual technology, the product, the service and slow down or stop entirely on innovating.

[00:07:41]
Perhaps there's divisions that are underinvested in trainings dropped so for various modest marketing campaigns, just the tried and true marketing campaign. So basically, what Warren Buffett will do is he will identify that company. Get a majority stake, right? Get a controlling interest and then replace poor management, invest in and put in place a new IT system that's efficient, cleaner, much more straightforward, much more integrated. We'll hire people, promote people that look at innovations, just like Steve Jobs, when he came back to Apple, found the candy computer model, the iMac, and just, that was an innovation just sitting right there. I'm just introduce it to market the company exploded and also new marketing strategies, additional marketing strategies, just start to do the things that should be being done. Exactly what I'm talking about, the things that one should do in business. And all of a sudden their value of the company goes up, they're selling more, they're growing more, they're innovating. And so they bought it at the undervalued price. They do the work necessary to ensure that the full value of that company is represented.

[00:08:45]
And all of a sudden the value goes up in the company do exactly the same thing, right? It's improving the ability for the owner to manage the business, improving the systems, investing in the different divisions, the ones that are low on the totem pole that haven't not aren't quite up to parity with the rest of the organization, or at least the area that's the most advanced in the organization. If you bring everything up to parity. With the best that the company is doing, the division that's operating peak, then you raise the value of that company. You raise the value of what it brings to the marketplace. And all of a sudden you have the real value of that business in the marketplace. 

[00:09:21] Anthony Esparza
These guys like Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett that you mentioned, even somebody like yourself. Is this something you'd say, you know, these types of people, and I mentioned yourself because you're in this industry, but do these types of people just have that good understanding of how systems and processes work in business? And that's why they can, for example, Warren Buffett can go buy an undervalued company and get a majority stake in it, start making some changes for positive growth. And earlier you were joking about how it's almost like a cheat code. Cause once you understand it, it's like, you can't lose it. So are there. Some basic principles to systems and processes that every business owner should know. Are there some basic fundamentals that you can talk about that, you know, somebody was sure I'll give you the ultimate cheat code?

[00:10:08] Crispin Sandford
Here we go. The ultimate cheat code is. Results. How do you get results? How are we currently getting the results we get in each area of the business? What's the process? The other thing that someone like Steve Jobs is really good at is he kind of doesn't care about what's already going on, right? He doesn't care how people are doing it. He just cares about getting the result. And how do we get the result? Well, we've always done it this way. It's like, I don't care. How we've always done it. This is stupid. This is ridiculous. In fact, being a business consultant could be boiled down to that very skill at going, well, why are you doing it this way? Like, so what do you do here? Oh, we, we do this, we get this result. Like, well, how are you getting that result? Well, we do this and we do that and you go, well, wait a minute. Why do you go through this whole long process? Like, why isn't this division next to this division? Why is the factory all the way out there?

[00:10:59]
Like, you're just asking very obvious questions about what doesn't make sense. About how they're doing, how they're getting results and you resolve those and boom, you're a genius. You're, you know, wow, thank you so much. The trouble very often people have is that they're already bought into the way things are going, the way things are done, the way they're doing things and they listen to the reasons politely or excuses less politely, the people give for why they're doing it that way, as opposed to in a much more straightforward manner. So if you focus on results, I'm getting the result and how you're getting the result and simplifying that, improving that supporting it, then you're able to get far more out of the organization by doing that. And so 1 of the things is what I talk with people about, especially, you know, business owners, but also anyone who's a major producer in the organization. I say that we built this organization or you built this organization or this organization exists and it's all designed to provide products and services to the market and to support doing that in the market support the market customer service. One of the things you should be doing is looking at that high producing individual, identifying exactly what it is they do.

[00:12:07]
Are you guys familiar with the Pareto rule or Pareto law? 80 20. Yeah, 80 20, exactly. So, this chap in his 20s or something like that, the 16, 1916 or something, but around this period, done a survey of all of these. Producers business owners professionals and found that it's 20 percent of what they do 20 percent of their causes produce 80 percent of the results. Wow 20 percent of causes produce 80 percent of results this is applied in multiple different ways by the way the way I play is I do this I go let's identify 100 percent of what you do. Let's separate out that 20 percent that you have to do that really is, that's where you distinguish in your competency and capability, then the rest is divided up into administrative functions, servicing functions, it's reception and routing emails, calls, packages, people come in to chat with them, move them to the conference room and it's lead development.

[00:13:02]
Now, once you've identified all of those functions that are related to those, document them, create a pack for administrative assistant, boom, turn that over to somebody, service assistant, turn that over, each of these represent about 20 percent of that 100%, and you create Another space to turn over the administrative functions to an administrative assistant who can do those things and probably doing the more than the current person in the role is doing them 20, 30, 40 minutes can be spent putting the person in the right email campaign, writing up the notes, doing the purchasing slip and everything like that, all of that can be turned over and all of a sudden they've got another space for 20 percent of what they're doing that brings 80 percent results.

[00:13:43]
You create that space. Suddenly, the business has grown 80 percent instead of producing 80 percent of producing at 160 and you turn over the servicing function. Customer calls up had more questions. I'll get an email. Did you send that thing over to me? All those servicing stuff. Can we turn over to a service assistant another 20 percent that can be spent innovating that can be spent coming up with a new marketing campaign a new way of providing value to your customers and clients and upper level value this is the easiest thing to sell somebody who's already given you money you've identified a massive way they can advance much more advanced operating process in one division or another and if you just create the service. And market it to current clients. You already have, it's high value, high ticket. And again, it's all, you know, very from related to service and instruction and training. That course, that service can be created and massively boost your bottom line, but because you've got the time to do it, you turn over reception routing.

[00:14:37]
This is a no brainer for most offices, but lead development, you get a card, you hand it to your lead developer. They do the calls, they work out the logistics. They're the ones make getting all the questions answered those profile questions. Getting personal data and professional information that will be used in building rapport when the meeting finally occurs, the sales meeting occurs, the presentation, and in tailoring. Now, I understand that this was really important to you. Yes. Oh, yeah. Now, you didn't want to clean on this aspect. No, no, we don't need any of that. You're just tailoring and building specific agreement about what they want, how you can serve them, and the agreement at the end of that meeting to close comes there or very soon after.  It's much easier to do that meeting and to close that meeting because all the prep work's been done. But this is extra time to be golfing with potential clients. This is potential time to spend with your family. Or leisure, or as I say, innovating and marketing and selling and doing those major things that bring in a major return and each role pays for themselves with the 80 percent gain that the organization gets make sense.

[00:15:41]
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's one of the easiest things to do. I mean, that's an underlying factor is that I help business owners build a support team for them. They got a team for the organization, but this is a support team for them. One of the critical principles I work with clients on to ensure that they're getting the most out of their time in their day. As Anthony and I are both realtors, have you ever worked with a realtor or a realtor brokerage? Yeah, definitely. This applies to any organization. Now, I typically focus on professionals like yourself and people with an expertise. Because when you have limited expert knowledge, like as a real estate agent, you do have limited knowledge. You know who to go to for this, for that. You have all of the paperwork and forms that need to be done. You have the expert know how. People selling their house on some of these apps don't have actually everything that they need to really get the deal done. They don't have the relationships to get the deal done right at certain rates and with certain concessions even.

[00:16:39]
So that's your knowledge. But the funny thing is, is that one of the biggest advantages I have when I work with somebody. Whether it's in real estate or anywhere else is that I have all of this experience in marketing that comes from other industries, other businesses, all of these principles are effective tactics or strategies with regards business organization that they don't necessarily have isn't a part of their. Industry knowledge, tribal knowledge from real estate industry and bringing that in is like a revelation. It's a new thing that people aren't doing and it's just been proven to be effective and it may require, it does require tailoring in terms of the wording used and the verbiage used and to the specific industry, but it is strikingly effective. One of the things that validated this for me, there's a guy named Jay Abram and it's been around forever, used to work at Deming and he would work with. Deming is, you know, business management administration system has been around forever. One of the greatest ever, but that's what he had learned there. And that's what he shared. And I'm like, that's what I do is that you bring new strategies from other industries and suddenly it's innovation in your industry and enables you to dramatically advance. 

[00:17:49] Anthony Esparza
Interesting. I had a couple points I wanted to bounce back to you mentioned as a business owner and maybe this is for your small business owner trying to grow and this is kind of why it kind of sat in my head still but you mentioned getting a maybe a marketing guy here and maybe get a salesperson here and receptionist and doing all these things to almost sub out your time Say you're a one person small business owner. Is this to not only grow the business, but to, like you said, to free up your time? Maybe there's something else on the business you need to go focus on. Maybe it's just to buy your time back, right? To go live your life. 

[00:18:28] Crispin Sandford
Yeah, I mean, ultimately, like my goal when I work with somebody is a definition I came up with for what I call a true entrepreneur. We all hear entrepreneur. It's a word that's been, you know, jay abraham was the one that made it popular. He took over a magazine called entrepreneur magazine, but he kind of popularize that term. But the thing is, is what I define a true entrepreneur ads. And this is my goal when I'm working with a business owner. Is to help them achieve that status of true entrepreneur, which is a business owner with all day to day work and management viably done by others business owner with all day to day work and management viably done by others and that first support team takes over a lot of that work. The time that this created they start to work on how to manage the business out there managing it.

[00:19:13]
There's a lot of usually gaps a lot missing, but they create that and then they can promote those individuals who train their own services and start to operate as management with a full deep knowledge of how the organization runs and you can step off. You can go do whatever you want. You can start a new business. I always talk with business owners about managing their life like a business. Managing their business and establishing a complete business model, documenting all of the areas, roles, and functions, and then documenting all the work that needs to be done. But then moving on to the management part of it, and also having social betterment goals, also having a dream business, something you've always wanted to do. But now with this knowledge that I'm passing on to them and helping them establish and making a part of their operating basis, they can now make sure that business succeeds their dream business. Because they're applying the principles of business, they're establishing the administrative infrastructure that any business needs to succeed, and so far it's possible for it to succeed.

[00:20:10]
They may just need marketing, better marketing than they've been doing, to really sell the idea and the value to the market in the thing that they've always wanted to do, and when they do that, now it can flourish. But just to bring it back down to the solopreneur, because I have a whole series of materials to help the solopreneur. Is that the key thing that comes down to them establishing their operating basis documenting it all the things that work right but then there are the things that the forms that can be filled out and checked off i want this this this kind of this and the. Boom, and then come back to that and then go, oh, okay, input. This is what they want. This is the course pack that they need, or this is the service they want to need. It just makes it more efficient. So even if I'm just working with a solopreneur on their own, I'm helping them establish the same thing, the processes, the technical processes that get technical results to better establish those, simplify them, the administrative procedures, they're going to support the delivery of that service. And then the marketing that's going to be more effective. Like I just said, like. Going through helping a client identify what they do, what they bring, what the thing that they saw was so valuable about being in this industry and what they could get from it, what they could, the value they could bring to other people.

[00:21:24]
Suddenly, when you isolate that and start to make it a part of your presentation, all of a sudden, your clients see the value too. They get excited too. They see your passion too. And it just makes it much more efficient. I've got one client that every time I bring up building a team, he just cringes. We were having lunch. A few days ago, it was last week and I brought up building a team and he just cringed because like he didn't play nicely with others or he gets easily, easily bothered by that. It's funny. I have a whole service to help address that, but I created it after he became a client. So retroactively getting him on board that. 

[00:22:00] Roger Jacobsen
So Crispin, how often do you help business owners on their second and further businesses? 

[00:22:05]
Every single time I work with somebody. Every single time, because one of the things that I do, again, I had these realization about value and what value I can bring to the market. And this is something I always focus on with clients too, like what was the epiphany you had about the value you could bring to the market about what you would get by doing this. So it's that value again, that value thing that I learned at 16, when I was at Queen Elizabeth college in England, we have a different structure in England of school and college. You have this college when you're 16, 17. And what i realized was i was like i'm doing executive assistant work was a lot of what i did because i wanted to learn about business and learn about all different kinds of businesses i worked at a temp firm and i quickly was being an executive temp and i worked for a lot of people and different people in a lot of different roles but senior executives i don't want to name drop but the thing is is that all of a sudden i realized. Hey, I'm learning all of these functions, all of these effective principles of these very competent, capable people, and I'm always rejecting it. Well, now I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. This is what's really valuable to me and very often kind of rejecting what I was doing. And all of a sudden I realized like, wow, if I embrace what I'm doing, like working in business administration and fully embrace that document it, then I can take that to any business owner and help them administrate their business and get streamlined smoothness occurring.

[00:23:30]
So the epiphany I had was this is like, Oh, if I can help a business owner do what they're doing to make money now. Better more efficiently and in fact turn it over now we've created the space for them to do the thing that they dream of doing that they would love to do right and so it was like by embracing the thing you don't like and that you're kind of frustrated with but it's bringing revenue by fully embracing it and making it more powerful more effective more efficient and ultimately turning it over you make it possible for you to achieve your dream. And so like early on, I'm telling people to organize, so let's apply this structure, this business structure to, and I started for the basic structure and we talk about filing. I mean, guys, it's not sexy, but it's files is part of the secret. It's very unsexy. The results are very sexy, though, but it's like, I'm going like, okay, let's use this, you know, the executive section administration, client marketing, finance, production and delivery, quality control and business development.

[00:24:25]
Let's organize your real estate business. Hey, let's, let's organize your personal life to according to the structure. Let's start filing bills, go into the finance section, your goals and aspirations, your longterm targets, your personal goals and dreams. Let's start organizing that to the family events and activities. That's all business development, fun, engaging activities, also where you build relationships and meet new people. The value from that is friendship, not necessarily a deal closed, right? But let's also, what other areas of knowledge do you have? Or what other activities do you want to engage in? Well, I've always wanted to do this. Okay, let's build the structure physical in a file cabinet and digital on your computer. Let's start organizing the material related to that. Let's start identifying the value there and the steps to provide that value to the market to ensure the market gets those results. Right? So every single person I deal with, we start to get them organized and they always have a dream business.

[00:25:18]
The funniest thing I had one client, we went over this question, I have this service. It's like six, seven week program. Or every two weeks or one week or whatever, but the sessions, I think it's in the second session. First, the second session, we got to the point where it's like, let's start looking at your dream, the thing you dream of accomplishing. Oh, no, I don't. Nothing, nothing at all. Really? I think that no, no secret desire you've had to. No, no, no. The guy was sort of in his early 60s. I said, okay, you know, well, let's look at making your current business So it actually can be, you know, the American dream, like, and he's like, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, I want to do that. I go great. By the 4th session, all of a sudden he explains to me, I've always wanted to do this completely different business. This is what I dream of doing. But because it finally became real to him that it was possible. He suddenly saw that the mechanics could produce the result and he wasn't gonna be broken hearted.

[00:26:08]
Right? He was going to be able to apply these principles to that dream and actually make it work out, make it viable. That's really cool. As a business coach, it sounds like you just make every business better. Are there a percentage of business owners that you coach that you actually help them to sell? Or is it just you make them automated and they just don't need to? Yeah. I mean, part of my goal is because some people I'm working with do want to sell their business, but I'm always encouraging, like planting the seeds and I fertilize and water them, water the ground. Because they say, like, look, if you can effectively document and turn over successfully all of the roles and functions of your organization, if you can then create the management patterns and systems practices. To successfully manage people doing that, if you can optimize your business, and it's all the area it's in, because usually you hit a plateau, you can only give so much money to Google to get sales in a territory usually hit a ceiling. You obviously continue working on growing it and opening up new markets or new ways of messaging different markets to open up and make your business more successful.

[00:27:17]
But there's sort of reaches a peak. So you had this. Peak optimum operating basis now we want to build another branch and another branch can either be your branch. It can be a franchise. You can license the know how, right? But that's somewhere where you can go. So then that's the next level, senior management, like home office type stuff, new marketing strategies, campaigns, building the organization up to get to a certain point, then introducing the new strategies. So at this point, I'm saying, like, why would you sell if you've documented the work? Thank you. You've documented the management of the workers and the work. You've established the head office and how it should operate. Go buy a yacht in Santa Fe or Cannes or Monaco, like, what do you want to do, like, even if you want to be at your local beach, Salt Lake, you know, go to Antelope Island, whatever you want to do, man, what's the problem?

[00:28:09]
Just keep looking at the numbers, because again, that's ultimately what it is. Things are rising or things are declining. If they're level, they might as well be declining, especially with inflation, right? So, like, you can still monitor. You can spend you reduce it down to half an hour a day or a couple of hours a week here and there it's spawning to make sure things are on track because things decline it's always a person right something's going on they've got trouble in their life or some deal went bad you know something happened right again it could be bad supply chain. Bad it set up whatever it is that we need to resolve you can get on that you can call the person is in charge of operations hey man what's going on in this area what's why is the client suddenly something going on the sickness family on us like what's happening and then you can see to it and oversee that resolving but why would you sell. Just keep putting the money in your investment account and give it to Roger to invest in a property. I love it. 

[00:29:06] Anthony Esparza
So not only systems and processes are the name of the game, but as you just talked about documentation and tracking these things. So when needed, you can kind of fine tune the business in a different direction. If you're getting all this data back, once you have your systems and processes in place, Now you can see the small errors or where you're going wrong and you can kind of come back and fix that because now it's all pretty much it's very simple the way you break it down I can see why you call it a cheat code it's I feel that most people don't put in the time or maybe there's even a little bit of fear involved from people going to being maybe a single business owner to growing to that next step there might be some I'm sure you probably see a lot of fear and whatnot but yeah it's very fairly simple as long as you're willing to you You got to have almost an eagle eye perspective on your business, right? Where you can see everything. 

[00:29:58] Crispin Sandford
Well, part of the successful operating basis. So I help business owners basically actually have a strategy for growth steps. They are going to take over the next three to six months to better establish a business, make it more productive, expand it, right? Actually have a strategy to go finish their business model setup. So they have a complete business. I'm helping them build a support team for them and obviously any other major player. I'm helping them optimize their new leadership role, right? Instead of being owner operator, now they're just being owner and overseeing management. Then we're turning that over. Then they're being senior owner, right? Head office owner and leader. In the process of doing all that work, I'm helping them establish step by step instructions and documentation of the processes, procedures, and culture for each area and role and all the functions. Um, we're finding and filling the gaps in all of that as well. And then I'm helping them use files, you know, files to help them with target attainment, have a specific type of file structure and all tools and administrative tools.

[00:30:56]
And as it is an online proactive management file concept that I teach and share with people, right? So in doing this, all of this work, we were able to create the real organization, produces the real value, and we're able to take it off of that person's shoulders and put it in the hands of the organization. Now, part of the key success here is that because you have the process to produce results procedures to produce results, the culture that produces results and people are being held to those functions, what's going on in this area? Oh, you know, it's fine. Everything's fine. You know, it's normal. Just things declined. Well, okay, let's just check. Did you do this, this, this, this couldn't do that because of this problem. Oh, Oh, well, let's find out about that. But you should definitely do this. But yeah, we'll put that back in place. Going the other way. What's the problem in this? Oh, no, everything's fine. It just is, you know, a little decline, a little bump.

[00:31:48]
Well, I understand that you're having problem producing this for the other division. Oh, well, yeah, that's because of so, but the thing is, ultimately, you say to that person, okay, we'll come up with a solution. Go into the area and find out what I've tried. Well, I'll come in with you. What's going on here? What's the problem? But you find out what the problem is. You get the organization to make sure they've got the complete operating basis. Then they start to innovate. You give them an assistant. They start to innovate. You start to give them a service assistant. They've got more time. And they're doing more of the 20 percent themselves. But the goal here isn't to micromanage. There's a little dip, and I'm going to go in there and find out. It's to build your management that is designed to build a gradual increase, a gradual rise. And if that's not happening, for them to go in to find out where that decline is, what's the reason for that dip?

[00:32:35]
Really, it is like, if there's a sudden major drop, if there's a significant issue, Being brought to your attention, usually, you know, if you're the president, actually, especially if you're the president of the country, right? But if you're president organization, you're really only hearing about. Catastrophe or major problems or things are falling apart now, if you design your organization well and it's got quality controls and it's got all the administrative procedures in place and everything you design it well, then you're going to catch these things before they really become a problem. Ray Dalio has one of the best principles when it comes to this is he, he's a hedge fund guy. He's got about 1500 people working on the market. The best in the world. He's got his 200 plus billion dollar hedge fund. But one of the principles he has is this. He says, if you see a problem, you may of course, right.

[00:33:24]
If there is a problem or a potential catastrophe, a major situation brewing. If you come tell us. Immediately. Okay. You know, it's slap on the wrist. Let's retrain. Let's, let's not have that happen ever again. But if you identify it and you don't tell us about it, you're fired, you're out because we need to know these things as soon as possible. So creating a culture where it's not blame, but solve the problem. Oh man, thank God you got to us on this because we were able to fix it. Right. And then you have somebody who has more experience, more knowledge and more willing to participate in what it takes to win. Thank you. But you create that environment of leadership that's willing to share problems or expose situations and in a self regulated way address the problem or resolve it then you got a growing booming organization and you don't have to be there to be there less and less and less but when stuff does come to you again you take the same attitude objective what's the result we're aiming at what's the problem getting the result let's resolve those problems.

[00:34:23]
It's smoothed out, you know, that's the difference. One of the things I talk about with people is they go, you want to be a power player in your industry. Eventually you want to be considered a power player and a power player. I define as the whole book is something about the rainforest. I have to send it to you, Roger, and you can put it down below. I've talked about the book principles and I've talked about this rainforest gig. Somebody that talks about investors, Silicon Valley, people that are involved in investment. And one of the things that's key is that they're operating as a power player. If things aren't going well with the company they've invested in, they talk, they go up, you need to talk to this person. Oh, you need that marketing strategy. Oh, this operations level person will come in and provide that. If you can do all of that, if you can solve problems, get the right people involved, ensure that the result of the organization aspiration, the organization is achieved, you're essentially a power player.

[00:35:14]
And it talks about that in that book, but yeah, this is the key. You become your own power player. Right. And again, you'll probably go to the monthly or biweekly or whatever it is twice a month or once a month board meeting of which you preside. And if according to Robert's rules of order, according to parliamentary procedure, the chairman, isn't the one discussing the matters or bringing up the issues, they're just. Maintaining order, making sure people get a chance to speak and that the meeting is held and it's tightly run. So then you're hearing everything, you know exactly what's going on. You're being informed about the programs, campaigns, the new ideas, what's getting voted on, what's getting voted down. You have your finger on the pulse and that's just... Hour and a half to our meeting a lot of other things are going down the committee and all the works being done in committees when you see it it's the high end but again that's not something a small business owner even thinks about they're not establishing this is the time where I have this meeting regarding marketing this is where I have the finance meeting.

[00:36:09]
Production and delivery meeting quality control meeting business development meeting executive meeting. Right. If they just start passing out that time to focus on those areas, I'm working on how they're going to get their business better established, or that area better established, more productive and expanding. Then they start to work towards going, okay, guys, now you're in this committee. Hey, you know what? You who've solved problems, you're efficient, you're dedicated, you're committed, you're innovative, you've got your level headed. You're now going to be the chairman of the finance committee. You're not going to be the chairman of the business development committee. And you're just moving yourself out of the organization, but you still go to that monthly or bi monthly board meeting where you're seeing everything that's going on. And again, you have that superpower and it's like, well, perhaps you could talk with such and such. He could help you with that. Oh, genius. Then you're being the rockstar leader, but it's all being well managed. You don't want to micromanage. You want to help people, you want to resolve problems and help other people resolve problems and get into that mindset. Then you can be there for when there's a disaster and the call comes up and you can handle it in a short term, even from your boat in Cannes or Monaco.

[00:37:14] Anthony Esparza
While you're on the yacht. 

[00:37:15] Crispin Sandford
Or a row a ton as, as the case for me will soon be. Right. Exactly. Exactly. 

[00:37:21] Anthony Esparza
So, I actually had another one. Sorry to keep, uh. jumping around.

[00:37:23] Crispin Sandford
Hey, man, it's the whole point of the podcast. 

[00:37:26] Anthony Esparza
And so, yeah, I'm going to try to tie two things together. One from the beginning, one from just now that I thought of. And, you mentioned at the start of the podcast, you were going to school in England during a recession. And then you talked about, you know, how things get inflated and stuff like that. If you build the business the right way, is it almost in a way if you do it right, and can it become recession proof, essentially, can it be a recession proof business?

[00:37:49] Crispin Sandford
I mean, that's the goal, right? I mean, obviously, it's so funny. I have this 90 day challenge that I created when, you know, because 90 day challenges became the buzz. I'm sure you're well aware of, but in the material in the beginning, right? I created during COVID. And in the beginning of it, I'm like, well, there's a recession on in the economy and I have to tell clients this, I've told there's one particular and I sometimes I'm telling you practically recall, I go, look, the recession is a decline over two quarters, that decline, maybe one and a half percent is one and a half percent going to really affect your business. And your ability to survive the mindset that we're in a recession. Oh, no. Well, I got to do this. I got to stop doing that. Like, you can tank your business. Yeah. Yourself. But what I say is this ago in the beginning of the presentation. And again, it was early days of it. And it was like recession for Netflix.

[00:38:43]
Netflix is not a recession, Amazon, Amazon's not in a recession, like zoom, zoom had astronomical growth, Peloton had growth, but they squandered it. I think don't sue me. So there's, I've heard people say, but the thing is, is like, and what the solution to it is this. And this is something I really got driven in while I was at the marketing firm, where we worked for full service financial advisors and I was in business development there and I rose to VP of business development from the results I got, um, for them and with them. But the thing is, is this, is we would say you can't only have one marketing strategy. And the question I'd always ask a financial advisor, and this is probably if you've met with financial advisors or know some, ask them this question and they've been around for a while. Other than referrals. What do you do for marketing?

[00:39:31]
You kept them at the knees and then they will say, well, I get a lot of referrals and I just say, okay, yeah, other than referrals, what do you do for marketing? They're not doing dinner seminars. They're not doing drip campaigns. They're not building relationships with the family members and friends and acquaintances of their current clients. They're not drawing them with a passion, passion activities, game of golf with two clients and two of their friends. Wow. You've got potentially two new clients right there down the pipeline. If you add them to an educational drip campaign about the economy and how financial world works, you know, she works, they're going to be, every letter comes in each month, they're going to want to read it. Oh, bond volatility. This is why. Oh, this is why the American economy is still so strong despite all these differences, why they're recovering faster. They've got cocktail conversation, but the thing is you need multiple strategies and when one is in decline, you double down on the others. Right. Or like a classic strategy.

[00:40:27]
Is people when they're hit by referrals, not getting referrals in the finance world anyway, is going conservative, being conservative. You just promote being cautious and careful and you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I lost all that money and there was some risky investments. Like, I'm going to go conservative. I want to have a conservative strategy and then all of a sudden during a recession, during a decline, you're suddenly peaking real estate, all of the real estate people recession. I'm going to go on vacation. I'm going to go to my yacht in Monaco, right? They're out. But as long as if you double down on your promotion during that time. And you look at high end homes in that time. I had one mentor that was telling me she was in the real estate industry. This is like 20 years ago, at least maybe 23 years ago. And she said that her business went massive because she continued to be there marketing and people that had money that would just read and abide their real estate agent was gone. And so they were looking and the person promoting was her and her business took off during that time. So the point is recession for who. If you're marketing, if you're adding new strategies, if you, if you've done the relationship marketing strategies, then no one's leaving you. And in fact, when their friend can't find somebody and ask them, Hey, I'm trying to find a real estate agent that seemed to have vanished.

[00:41:41]
Oh, yeah, yeah. You got to talk to my friend, Anthony. Go talk to Roger. They'll help you. Then you don't have a recession. To come full circle, that would be the Prado's rule where 20 percent of the people get 80 percent of the results and those people that double down get that 80 percent of the results. Correct. It's 100 percent the case. And what's funny is, again, something I learned when I worked at that marketing firm about how to make sure people get results is you've got to find the people that are the real players. You got to be or find people that are real players that are experts that know the industry inside and out. So even become that person and I help my clients become that person more and more and more. And I help them make sure that they feel it because they start documenting what they know, documenting what they learn. Applying it to get results, supporting it. All of a sudden, they're the expert. They have the knowledge. But the thing is, is that those 20 percent of people in the industry, realtor industry, you want to be a real player, a power player, that has the knowledge, has the expertise, has the strategies. Because again, when that 80 percent that's not getting results and sudden recession, and it looks like there's no results going to be possible, they're out.

[00:42:49]
So the thing is, is if you're being the 20 percent of the industry that's expert professional and on top of your game, when the 80 percent flee because things don't look good, they're no longer closing their uncle or their friend or their buddy. You get that the professionals get that, you know, again, that's how you secure your position in a recession. You become that person that is the 20 percent of the organization or the industry that protects you. 

[00:43:14] Roger Jacobsen
Crispin, we've really enjoyed you on the show today. We've learned a lot. We have four questions that we ask everybody called the final four. Anthony, you want to run the final four today?

[00:43:25] Anthony Esparza
Yeah, I would love to run the final four. All right. So Crispin, what is your favorite business book? 

[00:43:31] Crispin Sandford
I will tell you probably The most important book was Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson and then Ray Dalio's would be right there Principles and the Changing World order that really expert secrets. Because what it did for me was it got me off of the fence. It was like, you have so much knowledge. I'm like, I'm listening to his podcast. I'm reading that book expert secrets and go like, man, I have so much expertise. It's time to get on with this. It's time to launch my own business and get away from being VP at a marketing firm that's been around for 40 years and get on with my own business.

[00:44:09] Anthony Esparza
Yep. Nice. I love that. Next question. What brings you happiness? 

[00:44:13] Crispin Sandford
When people see that their aspirations are happening. The thing I love, this will happen, especially when I do the, what I call the business organization machine set up is that at a certain point, the person will, their eyes will bug open and they'll go, Oh, I understand business. Oh man. And they get all excited. They believe it. I understand business, I understand for the first time, I understand business. That gives me such a thrill, I get goosebumps. But it's when someone's like, I can do it, I'm doing it, it's working. Like you train me in building the presentation. Know your presentation basics. It's a course that I have. Take someone through that and they're finally truly presenting. As not just a value proposition, but as a unique value proposition in the market, and they go out and they close a big deal. They're closing more deals. It's working. I'm doing it. That gives me great, great, great happiness. It's working. I'm doing it. I'm changing people's businesses. I'm helping them realize their dreams. I'm doubling their business and you're getting those results. Those true results that people dream of achieving. That brings me a great happiness. Awesome. 

[00:45:22] Anthony Esparza
Much like riding a bike without the training wheels for the first time. And it's not correct. 

[00:45:26] Crispin Sandford
It's exactly that. It's exactly that feeling.

[00:45:29] Anthony Esparza
Awesome. Okay. And future retirement, what does that look like for you? 

[00:45:34] Crispin Sandford
Well, so I've got a Facebook group. I haven't been really active in, but I've been preparing to launch the next one. I'm going to get back and get active. I should say this month being active in it, but it's called empire management, hashtag empire management, mastermind group. And the idea of an emperor, if you're not English, like me, you might not know this is that an emperor is essentially a king of kinks. If you rule over multiple countries that each themselves has their own ruler, then you are now technically an emperor. You're a king of kinks. So I would like to have multiple businesses in various industries. Which I'm emperor and going to that board meeting of the, you know, the board leaders, my grandfather in England was president of all the presidents of all the working men's clubs in the northeast of England. He was in construction and he rose up, came a foreman and everything, but he became the president of the working men's club. Then all of the presidents. Of the working men's clubs in the North of East of England. So that's the dream. And then clearly it's to have a yacht in Monaco. That's yeah. But yeah, like to just really still be over these various organizations, speaking engagements, traveling, doing all the things we enjoy, but still leading.

[00:46:50] Anthony Esparza
Awesome. Make sure you, uh, give me a call when you're heading out to your yacht, because I'd love to, uh, come hang out with you. 

[00:46:56] Crispin Sandford
100%. I actually have a friend who has a yacht. I just reminded him, I was like, we're going on a new yacht, right? He's like, yeah, anytime. It might be sooner than you think. 

[00:47:03] Anthony Esparza
Okay, okay. I'll be expecting it. So, final question for you today is, what is the best way to give back?

[00:47:10] Crispin Sandford
This is in my opinion the best way to get back and I'm building an organization that does exactly this is when you're an expert and you document it all right you've created total competency in your industry in your area that you then help individuals. That don't have access to that knowledge by either because they're underprivileged the disadvantaged or because this goes through all classes in my opinion, their father wants them to become a dentist. Just like they did. They don't have the support that person to requires coaching and advice. If you create a course, but you have the discount version. Or you have the opportunity to apprentice them in the industry they want to be in. I'll set them up with a client of mine who's they're working in that office. They're getting paid entry level salary, but they're apprenticing in the industry they want to be in. Right? This is my whole interest is in creating this whole activity that supports this and even the wealthiest among us.

[00:48:09]
I don't know if you know this, but in the deck of cards, there's the king and the queen and there's a jack. The jack is a nickname. You know, we all know jack of all trades, master of none. A jack very often is a derogatory term. It's very often the people that are a part of the aristocracy that are useless. They're just running around gallivanting, drinking and partying and causing trouble. And they're called jacks. They're the lowest. On the run in court, they're the lowest court and they're just causing trouble, even those individuals require some trade or profession. They need to be reined in how to operate as executive function. Self regulation is a good leader and to learn a trade or profession. So the various ways that you can give back. Through your expertise. To me, this is Bruce Wayne, right? Using his position, his powers authority as wealth to help those that need that help. If you are doing that regarding your profession, where you give these workshops underprivileged to people transitioning from difficult lives, from people who don't have access to that knowledge, or they're, they're coming into it at 30, all of a sudden they wanna be in real estate or 40, and they can come to you and you can provide that wisdom, expert knowledge in a course, in a workshop, in a weekend, in tapes. I think that's the best way to give back. Awesome. 

[00:49:23] Anthony Esparza
So there you guys have it for a final four questions for spin. Thank you very much. I'll pass this over to Roger now. 

[00:49:31] Roger Jacobsen
Crispin, we really want to thank you for being on the show today. Today we learned about business consulting, looking for your blind spots and making sure that you're setting all the systems and processes in place to scale your business. Thanks again, Crispin and Anthony for joining us on today's show. We'll see you next time on the Retire Wealthy and Happy Podcast. Hope you got value from this episode and if you have a minute, then take the time to leave an honest written review for the podcast because we take those reviews seriously and it'll help us serve you better on the next episodes and most importantly, be sure to start taking action so you can control your financial future today.

[00:49:54] Podcast Outro
Hope you got value from this episode, and if you have a minute, then take the time to leave an honest written review for the podcast because we take those reviews seriously. And it'll help us serve you better on the next episodes. And most importantly, be sure to start taking action so you can control your financial future today.