The Trusted Advisor With Brad Tornberg – Thomas Green Podcast

Thomas: Thomas Green here with ethical marketing service on the podcast. Today, we have Brad Tornerg. Brad. Welcome.
Brad: Thank you, Thomas. Nice to be here.
Thomas: Nice to have you, would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do?
Brad: Sure. My name is Brad Tornberg. My background is in technology. I’ve got over 35 years of consulting experience and that has led me into other types of consulting because once a client sees that I understand what I’m doing and they say, Hey, you seem to understand sales or you seem to understand employees, or you seem to understand wellness. Can you maybe help us in some of those areas?
So, 30 years of technology with Microsoft and consulting on my own. But what happened was as I was doing consulting for a client, I would actually making some observations. I was blogging and I noticed that the business owner was completely out of shape. He was sweating and he was eating fried food, sitting on his desk and he was yelling and screaming and all the people in his company and the people were miserable. You could see it in their faces. You could see it in the way that they would respond to me. When I asked certain questions and I realized the business owner is really if you compare the human body to the business body, and this is how the whole thing started the business owners, like the brain and how he communicates or doesn’t communicate with these people.
The central nervous system. And if he’s not communicating effectively, there’s a blockage in the central nervous system, similar to the case where you might have a limp because you have a disease or you have some problem with your spine. So from that point, I wrote the article on it and then to the next six or seven weeks, I started to compare the human body, like the circulatory system to the business’s circulatory system, how quickly cash moves through the business.
The infrastructure, which is the muscles and the strength of the system and all of those things that the eyes, how you see the world and how you see the future, the mouth, how you communicate to people, what your message is? And is it in alignment with your product is or your services is?
So, from that we created a book. I created a book called the Business Fitness Revolution and what it was each chapter compares essentially, like I said, each of the parts of the business body to the human body. And then over this past summer, had a good year financially decided to sink a few dollars into creating an online course for this.
And this is the direction that I’m going into. It’s this this all-knowing consulting includes technology, but it can also include other things like financial wellness, employee wellness business development, growth management, things like that. And then you know how to make an internal organization, As Bernay brown would say, more empathetic and getting people to lean in and not be afraid to say the things that they really need to say, because that’s what accelerates the growth of the company.
So that’s how this kind of all came about. And we’re having a lot of success with it right now.
Thomas: Have you gotten any feedback regarding the metaphor? I think that’s the right word regarding the business and then comparing it to the body. And I guess what I’m going for is how, what switches of people made as a result of using that analogy.
Brad: There’s a couple of things. One of the things that the whole purpose of business fitness is so that business owners or C-level executives can achieve peak performance for both themselves and their business. So the biggest change that I see initially is. When I work with the business owner, the C executive is I get him into this mindset of, so I get up at four 30 in the morning.
I get up at three thirty in the morning. I go to the gym at four o’clock and I work out for an hour every day. My day starts because I can rip the face off the world when most people are just getting out of bed. So I get more done by 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock in the morning, US time, obviously. And then most people get done in a day.
In order to achieve peak performance, your body has to be at a hundred percent efficient that you have to be healthy. You have to be awake. You have to feel good, the whole mood, everything about that. And what I’ve noticed is the business. The feedback that I get from them is wow. The first couple of weeks I was dragging my ass around and now I have all of this extra energy and all of this extra focus.
So now they take them and they say, let’s apply it to the business. No. Now I want you to talk to the people in my organization. And what I find is a lot of people, they themselves. Aren’t personally optimized. So we try to get that going in order to optimize the whole organization. So the feedback has actually been very positive because it’s a different approach.
Everybody has business consulting or business coaching, or all of these other things, which is about the business, but what they fail to realize is the business owner isn’t around and there’s no business. So he has to maintain his health and his wellbeing. And that’s what we focus on. And that’s the underlying.
So a lot of times the wellbeing is, comes from the fact that the people are afraid to talk. They’re afraid to say things. So we try to open up the communication and what the business owner comes back to me and saying, gee, I didn’t really realize that a lot of the things that people are thinking now, they’re saying that I never even realized were issues because as the business owner, I just let it roll over my head.
But as an employee, they tend to take things a lot more personal and they tend to internalize things a lot more. So it opens up the communication, which is a big part of this, of what I’m trying to do, because once you get people talking to one another, you can pretty much work through anything.
Thomas: I would think a good if it’s the case that you get a lot more done as a result of getting up early would it go to working hours would in, in a business, if you were to have increased working hours, do you think that would have the same result or not?
Brad: I don’t believe that working more and makes you more productive. I believe that focus is what makes you productive. It’s different for different people. Some people work better in the morning. Some people work better in the evening. Some people work better in short spurts of focus. Some people work better where they just take a project or where they’re multitasking a whole bunch of things. They just plop it on their desk and they just work until it’s done. But what you find is that when you’re doing things that way, as you get people could only maintain focus for a certain period of time. So you need to take breaks, you need to do the types of things that contribute to your personal wellness to improve your business wellness.
Thomas: Okay. And as a result of focusing on that I guess the question would be around how does that relate to the communication that you were referring to earlier?
Brad: I think that. Brene brown has a term called rumbling. Basically, I might disagree with you, Tom. Let’s go into the conference room and we’re going to have a rumble.
Now, what does that mean? That means that doesn’t mean a first flight. It just means that anything and everything is on the table. No matter what I say to you, no matter what you say to me, when we walk out of that room, that’s it, we’ve either resolved an issue or come to some kind of impasse or come to some kind of mutual decision in terms of how we’re going to proceed, but it’s not personal it’s business.
And the problem is a lot of times, if you’ve seen. Conference, if you’ve seen in a conference room and you get two different departments in there, it almost becomes like a pissing contest and people are there. They won’t open up and tell the truth, but they need to defend their turf. And what we’re trying to do is to remove that wall, that people put around themselves and open up the communication and rumbling really gets a lot of things accomplished very quickly. Oh, I didn’t know that you felt that way. I do. And here’s my reasons why, and I know that you might feel differently, but I just need you to understand my point of view.
And that’s one of the best ways that people can come to. Mutual agreement with one another and solve problems and issues and become more productive and move the business forward and move themselves in their career paths forward.
Thomas: After being doing what you do for you got a significant amount of experience, have you noticed any major trends or problems that people come to you with?
Brad: With COVID. And I’m sure a lot of people are talking about it. There’s two things, there’s burnout. And there’s this sense of isolation because people are not with other people, the socially, this is the problem. Even in the schools with the kids are missing out on the socialization aspect.
So a kid who’s in second grade, if he’s in it for two years, he’s going to be socially immune. Sure. Because he’s not interacting with people in a positive light, and even in a negative way. Remember when you were in school, Somebody got you angry. You guys would go out in the school yard and you’d have a fist fight.
But the point is you interacted with one another that is missing now. And I find that a lot of people that the reason that people are starting to leave their jobs in droves is because they want the freedom to have a balanced lifestyle. So the biggest change that I’ve seen is that the workaholics of the world.
We’re starting to get it. And most business owners and entrepreneurs are workaholics and they realize that not only do they need to have balance for their employees, but they need to have balance for themselves. So the biggest transformational shift that I’m seeing going on. Get in at eight work at four work.
And I don’t want to hear any of your problems to the, and it’s a little hard for even me to adjust, being someone who’s been in business for 45 years. I used to work for bosses. If you didn’t do what you want, they’d kick your ass out of the company. Now it’s let’s explore. Let’s see how we can make things better.
Kinder, gentler. This is the way the world is going, and this is the way the world is moving. And the people that aren’t like that, like me either need to adjust which I’m doing now. And I’m finding, I found the adjustment actually hard, you’re talking about an older generation and a new generation and the coming of age.
And I’m finding now that as. Get into this kinder, gentler. It’s making me kinder, gentler, not only within business, but within the whole world and stuff. And it’s made my perspective different while money is important. Money. Isn’t the thing. And what’s important is that, the balance between my family life, my personal life and my money life, because a lot of entrepreneurs that bury down into something and they don’t pick their head up.
And the next thing they know, their five-year-old kid is going to college. And, I had three daughters and went through that a little bit. With my oldest and decided with my other two girls that I wasn’t going to do, that I was going to be present. And that’s what I think the biggest thing is now people are learning how to be present in the present as opposed to looking forward to what’s going to happen in the future and lamenting on what happened in the past.
So you’re seeing this attitude shift going on with people and it’s interesting. I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore. Like the old movie. And I think that is the biggest change that I’m seeing and it affects their work life and their personal lives.
Thomas: Any opportunities as a result of that change?
Brad: That’s a good question. Yeah, I think people are a lot more open now to. Collaboration, not criticism collaboration, where instead of saying, Tom, you did this wrong. It’s more like Tom let’s put our heads together and figure out how we can do it. I find that it’s not just cut and dry as it used to be with things that it’s more.
People willing to help people to solve a problem or to get to a solution. And I think that’s really good because what that’s going to do in the longterm. And that’s the change that I’m seeing now, the people that are happy in that kind of company, or they move to that kind of company, you’re going to have much, much less turnover.
Because people leave, not because they don’t like the companies because they don’t like the people who they’re working for and they’re working with. And if you can change that dynamic, you’re going to reduce turnover greatly and let’s face it. It takes six, six months to ramp someone up. So you take whatever some one’s yearly salary is cut in half.
That’s your investment as the business owner. I want to optimize that as a business owner. Don’t you?
Thomas: Have you got any favorite stories in terms of how your consulting has impacted the business?
Brad: I have over 350 consulting clients, but I like the clients when I walk into point the gun at my head and say, we’ve had three systems and they failed.
We’ve had two consultants and they’re just no good and prove it to me, and there was one client I had who the president of the company was, we’re not going to do this. I don’t really like what I’m hearing. Meanwhile, they did everything I asked them to do. And this gentleman and I have become friends.
I look for every engagement that I’m involved in to develop a new friend. It’s not about business. It’s about developing a long-term relationship with someone and then seeding that relationship and becoming their trusted advisor. So when I can successfully point to someone and say, I’m their trusted advisor.
I have one client that I’ve had for 35 years that had nothing. When I started has everything now. And doesn’t even make a move in any part of their business, unless they reach out to me first and say, does this sound right? If I could have five of those, I could retire. That to me is something that’s important to me.
And one of them actually nominated me for entrepreneur of the year award with the Delaware valley in 2015. And I won the award. So to me, Not that I’m looking for awards or kudos, but that’s the highest compliment that someone could pay to me.
Thomas: but kudos, congratulations. In terms of that the one thing that I picked up on was about the trusted advisor.
The first time I heard that phrase was actually from Jay Abraham. Have you got any inspiration there?
Brad: Yeah, at least I listened. I read and I listened to a lot of the guys who are, the grant Cardone’s and the J Abraham’s and the Michael port’s of the world. And, I, at one point I owned the duct tape marketing business.
So I, I. Into that circle with John Jantsch and all those people, speakers are great. I take tidbits away from everything. I read HBR, Harvard business review. I’m very newsworthy in the sense that I’m always trying to pick up things that I can share with my clients. The trusted advisor concept is something that I’ve always lived by.
I’m an old fashioned guy, I believe in belly to belly selling. Okay. And one of the best stories I can tell is a client of mine. One of the largest fabric manufacturers in the United States had asked us to come in. And this was at the point when I was with Microsoft and we came in and I walked into his office and all I saw in his office was memorabilia about the New York game.
And then we started having a conversation about the anchors and we kept talking about sports and everything else. And he was like, he should be president of company and what the owner. And he said, I really like you. I want to do business with you. $14 million later, we put in an Oracle based system and I never had to sell him anything.
To me, the relationship is really what it’s about. And that’s how you begin the trusted advisor relationship. You establish the person you prove to them. You can do something you establish that personal relationship. And then you do what you say you’re going to do, deliver what you promise, delivery expectation gap.
If you’ve got a gap in there, it’s no good. If you can, delivery can meet expectation, then you then you’re fine. Then you’re good to go. So I find that at that point now once I get a project under my belt, and I begin to have that relationship with the owner. Guess what? That ends up being the trusted advisor relationship, because they feel because when we’re talking and we were personal to one another, we talk about a lot of other things.
And the reason they brought me in you brought me in to look at a system, Hey, have you looked at your people? You gotta have. Tech, I call the technologies that triangle people, processes, and technology. And a lot of times when clients come to me and they say, we have a technology problem, and I told the owner, no, you don’t, you have a people problem.
And sometimes the owner says, I need you to look at my business and find out what my problem is. And. I’m the ugly guy who comes to the business owner and say, Hey, I found out what your problem is, it’s you, it’s the way you talk to your people. It’s the way you deal with your people. It’s the way they ask you. They give you something they want to do. You give them no feedback. So a lot of times my trusted advisor relationship is like me being your friend, being able to tell you, Hey Tom, you’re an idiot. And you would look at me and laugh and smile at me because we’re friends and you would know that. So to me, that’s the core of the trusted advisor relationship is establishing that personal connection because if I walk into a client and I can’t establish a personal connection with them, I am not going to be successful.
And in those situations, sometimes fact, as I’m getting older, a lot of times I’ll walk away because I can’t stop. So one of the best leading questions to find out then this is what I always say. This is how I start all my conversations with business owners and C-level executives, Tom. Its five years from today. You brought me in to fix your business. You brought me in because you have some problems and things like that. I want you to tell me five years from today, we’re having coffee and you’re really happy with me. What did I do? I make him work from the future state back to the present state to see if we’re in alignment with one another.
That’s an important thing, and if the business owner says to me in five years, I want to be on the golf course, playing golf that tells me this guys wants to retire. So now I need to, everything I need to do is with the mind of maximizing what he wants to do so that he can retire.
Sometimes it’s I want to be acquired. Okay. How do we do the things that get you acquisition? People don’t ask that they ask what your pain is now. And so I say to them, what’s your pain now. Okay. Now, when I fix that pain, it’s like when you have a pain in your hand, you can’t worry about how long your hair is, right?
Because your hand hurts so bad. So I need you to get past the pain point, because guess what? Mr. Business owner, we can fix that. We can bring the right people in. We can bring the right solutions and I can lay out a strategy. I can lay out a roadmap. I’ll stick around and project manage for you.
That’s another big thing. Trusted advisor relationship is I’m not a sales guy is flipping it over my head and walking out the door and I’m not a guy who’s going to be there through that first part of the sale. Sign the contract. I’m going to be with you the whole journey. So when you’re happy, I’m happy when you’re angry, I’ll be angry too.
And you can take it out on me and you could yell at me and I’m your consultant. That’s that, pick up the phone and let me know. And if you’re not happy, let me know. I find that if you develop a good personal relationship, it’s really easy to develop the trusted advisor relationship with the key, to the trusted advisor is expectation delivery.
Thomas: Great information. Have you got any thoughts on how to apply the trusted advisor? If you’re not customer facing as a business owner and you have to let’s say roll that out to a team.
Brad: If there’s a team that I’m rolling out to, I have one rule and I couldn’t equate it to this statement and then you’ll understand it.
If the generals make a battle plan in a conference room and fail to communicate it to their privates. At the end of the day, you’re going to have a lot of dead soldiers and that’s really what the situation is. So if I’m rolling it out to a team, we’re going to have a kick off. We’re going to have everybody at the same level of understanding and knowledge through the process, because the only way a team can decide on things as if they’re A. empowered to and B. given the facts of what it is, a lot of business owners compartmentalize.
He doesn’t really need to know that we are, he doesn’t need to know that because there’s an impact to his role. And he may be able to point out something because this. This is information that flows to him. He may be able to point out to you a better way for him to see it for them to lay it out to them.
People don’t realize that it’s not, we’re not all in isolation. So when a team, when you’re building a team environment, and the good thing is, you gotta have collaboration tools in place, right? You have to have a place where everybody can go and read the same messages and see the same documents and things like that.
And the collaboration has to be very tight. I have status meetings with my client. Every couple of weeks or every week, depending on how intense the project is. But the whole idea of that is, is everybody should be knowing where they’re going and they should all be at that place at the same time.
And once you have that kind of alignment with them, then it makes it very easy because you’re communicating the same message. It’s a consistent message across that whole team and team, the other thing that you need to figure out very quickly, if you’re working with the teams, the team dynamic.
There’s always the one guy who’s going to analyze every single thing that’s out there and there’s going to be, the other guy is a salesman. This is that’s great. Let’s just do it you know, and then there’s going to be someone who’s going to look at it from a money point of view. So it’s really important within a team dynamic for you to identify who’s the coach.
Who’s the economic buyer? Who’s the sales guy, right? The dreamer, and any, the others, those are things like the Cathy Colby profile and those things of what type of person are you and ABC day. So I always try to, in a team dynamic learn the team players, and then one of the things that I’ve always been good at, and it’s, it’s my gift of gab, is being able to adjust my style to each team member.
Because if you’re really aggressive with someone who’s quiet and shy, they’re going to pull away from you and you’re not going to get valuable and important feedback from them, and you get the guy who’s really excited because you’re the guy who you want to give him the message so he can tell everybody else in the organization, we gotta do this.
So once you identify each of the players and what their roles are in a team, then you can be successful. I always find that you get past the owner and he says, this is great. I want to introduce you to my team. And then I always, the first step is who’s the team. And he goes, what do you mean? I said, I want to know who the people that are going to be involved in what their roles are and what their responsibilities are.
So I know how, what things are key and important to them and what are the things could potentially impact them that they should be involved in. And this way everybody’s sharing that same knowledge and things tend to move forward. That way, when things don’t move forward, as you get buy-in over here from two people, but then you get resistance over here from another three people.
And what we really needed to do is. The two groups in a room and figure out what the compromise is or figure out what the best solution is. Because a lot of times it’s a negotiation when you’re in a team environment. Hey Tom, does that sound good to you? It does. Okay, great. How about this? Does that? No, that doesn’t, Hey Joe, he doesn’t like that.
How can we get around that? What else can we do? What Joe suggests something, Hey Tom, would that work for you? It’s not exactly what you want, but it gets you closer to your goal. Brad, I can live with that. So what you’re trying to do is check off boxes with people, because what I do is I have the marital, I call it the marital state.
Speak now or forever hold your peace and so here it is, we’re in a team. You can say what you want. And sometimes in a team that one of the team players, isn’t comfortable talking in front of others and they’ll put, if you’ve built a nice relationship with them, they’ll police. I said, Brett, can I talk to you a second?
I really don’t want to bring this up in a team environment, but I thought she should maybe know about it again, it’s not only the trusted advisor with the business. It’s being trusted by the people below that business owner to know that you’re going to listen to them and you’re going to bring that back to the team or back to the owner, and you’re not going to judge them and you’re not gonna you’re not gonna take them down that you’re going to be positive and what your approach is, so that they’re even more open to you.
I don’t have really any issues with team. Except when I’m working individually with different departments. And there’s never a point where they come back together because it’s the point that they come back together. They usually start screaming at each other. This is a problem. We have no, we have this well, yeah, you do and it’s impacting me downstream, it all floats downstream to me.
So I try to build consensus. And in a team I try to build, I don’t move forward unless I have agreement on things and, or we say, look at, beating this horse to death. Let’s put this to a side. This is an issue. And I call it out in my status report is a risk.
We have a risk here. We have two teams that are not a group, two groups of people that don’t not agree. You need. You’re the business owner you need. It’s an escalation. You need to make this decision. So when I get a status report, I always tell people, even from a team point of view, this is what we did.
This is what we’re going to do. These are risks that we might have that we’re hearing. And these are things that are escalations for you or the people that are writing the check, because we may need to spend more money to fix this problem. Are you okay with that? That four-quadrant status is something I’ve had for 40 years.
And then on the, and then on the bottom of it, I have a red, yellow, green to say where our status of our project is. I do a lot of project management and that there could be technology projects, they could be build-out projects, they could be expansion projects. And it’s the one thing that I do really well, I think is managed projects because I stay focused on the present. Let’s not look at what six weeks from now. And I develop project plans. What were we supposed to do this week? Did we do it? No. Okay. I’m going to change the dates, but that’s going to impact the live date of something, right? Wouldn’t you rather know that we’re going to be late on a project four months from now today? Would you rather wait to the day before? When I say, Hey, Tom, we’re not going to make it because that’s what happens most of the time with people were afraid to. And what I try to do is by opening up that communication is, Hey, Brad, there’s no way we’re going to get the stone in a way. I put it down as a week, I was wrong.
Tell me what it should be. See, I’m not building your project plan. You’re building your project plan and we’re making changes to it as we go away. When you involve people in your process, you have a much greater chance of success. So I want everyone to feel empowered and to feel like they’re an owner.
And that, that at the end of the day, when this thing was good, they’re going to get the kudos. They have to have the passion about it. The problem is a lot of people say, we’re going to have a project out here, guys. I’d like it all be involved. Come sit in the room and you sit in those rooms and no one says a word.
And I talk and people sit there and they’re looking at me and this, and I’m not getting any feedback. And I said, tell the business owner, I don’t think this is going to work this way. We’re going to need to break down these barriers. And communication is a prerequisite for working with me.
If you don’t have it, we’re going to have a problem. You know it, I guess my short answer is over 40 years, 35, 40 years. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, just like everyone’s made a lot of mistakes, but I learned from my mistakes and I improve my process and I improve my demeanor. I look, when I first started in business, nobody wanted to work for me because I assumed everyone worked like me and I’m an entrepreneur.
Not everyone’s like me and I was failing. And the people that I was hiring, cause guess what? I was trying to hire people just I don’t want someone like me. I want someone who does the things that I don’t do or sees things from the point of view that I don’t do. So I have learned that there are different people’s personas, different types, and different styles.
When you look at my course, I talk about communication styles, communication types. The way people communicate. I have a whole chapter, a couple of chapters and a couple of lessons dedicated to that, because that seems to be where a lot of people have difficulty is moving the team forward and moving the group forward.
I think I, I have solved that and the best way to solve it is you gotta be honest and you gotta be open. You can’t candy coat things. You can’t, when a business says, I don’t want you telling people that, unless it’s financial, there’s no reason not to tell people everything. If you don’t want him to know how much you’re making, you don’t want him to tell him how much they’re costing him.
That I agree with that there’s certain things they shouldn’t say, but in terms of your business operations, why can’t an accounting person be part of a manufacturing demonstration so that they understand the way data is collected. Even though there are two different areas. This is just an example. And then when the business owner says, all right I’ll have him in there. The counting guy is the guy who’s telling the manufacturing people that if you do something this way, it’s going to impact as much easier down here, downstream. And then as a group, you begin to solve that problem. That’s what I’m looking for.
A group dynamic where there’s more than one person to solving that problem.
Thomas: It sounds like you’re very passionate. That’s a major through say advantage to what you do. You did reference earlier about if you had five clients like this one, meaning the really good client, then you’d be able to retire.
And I wanted to ask you, would you want to retire?
Brad: No kidding me on a dime. If I retired, I went, my dad had dementia and he retired early and I believe that your brain needs to stay active, but I am passionate. And because the course was written this year, I’m not retiring. I’m preparing myself for a pure role as, not a consultant, not a coach, but as a trusted advisor and offering them a whole series of services around that trusted advisor, whether they were thinking about buying a company or we’re thinking about putting new systems in, or I’m not, I have a high turnover helped me solve that problem, how I can reduce that, just.
Specific tasks that, that once I do one of them open up the kimono for other things. I like the business owners that call me up and say, let me bounce something off of you. That means that they believe in the things that I have to say to them. And, I, as I tell the C executive or the entrepreneur and me being one it’s lonely here, I don’t have another entrepreneur, they always tell you, you should have a mentor, and you should, if you’re starting out in business, you should have someone that knows more than you who’s been there, who’s done that, who’s actually failed. I failed a few times before I succeeded. Failures are stepping stones to success, right? I’m successful. Because people say to me, you look at people who make money and then you realize that a lot of those people, man, as I say to a lot of my clients or to a lot of people say to me, being an entrepreneur is easy.
I say, until you’ve eaten dinner four nights in a row, out of a can of SpaghettiOs and made that risk and that sacrifice. You really don’t know what my shoes are. Like, you can’t walk in my shoes, but when I talked to an entrepreneur who bootstrapped his own thing and he understands that, or a business owner, that’s one view, then I have the family dynamic, family owned businesses where..Have you watched the godfather?
Thomas: It’s been a while. But yeah. Okay.
Brad: What I find in a lot of family businesses is the entrepreneurs, the dad and the sons it’s like Fredo Corleone, so it tends to skip a generation. Grandpa started the business, the grand, the father read it and managed it.
The grandson is the entrepreneur. So I have that situation where I work with the grandson. He wants to do everything. Cause he knows how to grow a business or thinks he knows how to grow a business and needs me to guide him. And then I have the father who is just, he’s not an entrepreneur. A lot of entrepreneurs are not good managers.
A lot of managers are not good entrepreneurs. So he’s the manager where the grandson is the entrepreneur two different people, but yet they’re going to both be present. The father’s the president now the son’s going to be a president. So now how do you shift the business model? How you, how do you work on the grandson on the things he’s going to be weak at that the manager father is really good at manage your father’s, the touchy feely guy.
Thomas: why that’s the case about it? About skipping in generation?
Brad: It’s even the same in my family. My grandfather was started, my father’s business manufacturing business, my father, I love him to death. As a businessman, he just didn’t make the right decisions with a lot of things. He just wasn’t very, entrepreneurial in that sense to be able to see, for example, it was a zipper manufacturer and he sold, he merged his business with guys who were manufacturing handbags, which actually took them away from manufacturing, zippers for everything else.
And he was like I’m getting killed by Japanese imports because I make zippers in brass and they make zippers, in plastic and stuff. He goes, so I want to go to another company, sell the company at some point, because I think it’s a dying industry. Little did he realize if you ever look at Kate spade and everything, zippers are fashion statements now they’re in colors and things like that. And he didn’t have the foresight to see that there’s going to be a shift in an industry. If he was looking at the now just the now. And, you’ve got people who are like that. They have no horizon to horizon is tomorrow. They’re busy bottom.
There are people who they just have to be task oriented and take care of the tasks they’re all done. Okay. And go home now it’s tomorrow. Whereas entrepreneurs tend to look at things different. I think it’s a DNA thing. And I also think part of it is how you were raised. If you’re a kid who’s going out and says, I want to make some money.
And your parents are the type of parents who say to you, I’m not giving you anything. Your kid goes out and starts to eliminate sand or shovels driveways like I did, or rakes leaves in the fall and learns how to earn money and learns the importance of money and the importance of holding onto money versus somebody who’s handed everything.
I’ve seen that even with children that get everything handed to them, have no impetus to go out and have to hustle and bustle their ass. And that motivation comes from, Hey, man, if I don’t work, I don’t need, I, and I think that the generation before my dads was that way there, they all came over from Europe.
They didn’t have pardon the expression, a pot to piss in. What did they do? They pick themselves up, they went out and they found a way to make a living. Some of them found a living that they could turn into a business, or they had an idea that can turn into the business and they do somewhat. And that’s how things expand.
And that’s how things grow. The problem is this generation today. Yeah, their heads stuck in everything’s instant gratification. It used to be, if you called someone three days later and you return their call, he had pretty good customer service, and then when you got to the point where you could call them back, the next day, your exceptional customer service, my kids, if I don’t call them back within 10 minutes, where were you?
What were you doing? It was like, it’s that instant gratification, which is the reason why people say, if you’re going to do any kind of marketing, your message shouldn’t be more than seven seconds. Cause that’s the attention span of a neck or a child. So everything’s getting shrunk down. Everything’s quicker.
It’s accelerating things are happening at a much quicker pace right now. And I think what you’re finding is the younger generation now has caught onto that. My daughter told me something very anxious when I said, probably. People talk about the problem with the millennials is that they’re lazy and they all go back to their house and things like that.
It’s easier to live at home. And my daughter’s telling me that her generation, she’s now 26 and she’s going to medical school has been looking at that generation saying, where could these people they’re living at home and they have no money. I don’t want to be like that. So what you have is you have generations that keeps cycling based upon what they saw in the last generation that they didn’t like.
And I think that’s what breeds entrepreneurs. A lot of times, Hey it’s a new, it’s a new horizon out there. Look at Bitcoin. All of a sudden Bitcoin came out, and you’ve got all of these young entrepreneurs out there that are building Bitcoin business or trading businesses and stuff like that.
And they’re, or they’re writing courses and social media buy my course to learn how to do Bitcoin. That’s what you’re saying. You’re seeing a lot of, I think what you’re seeing is you’re seeing a migration of the working population to the freelance population, freelancing. You go to fiver or you go to those sites. People want to have that balanced lifestyle. So that means I want to work when I want to work. I don’t want to work when I don’t want to work. And I only want to work for the people who I like. And that’s the state to me is what it is. It’s the way I’ve always operated.
And then I finally said, something I’m tired of working for people who know less than me that are making more money than I am. I think I’m going to try this. And I did. And it’s not easy. And people say, oh, how’d you do that? Someone funded it? it’s not easy. Like you have a job and you start working a little bit on your own. You do some freelancing. And then when that builds up, you transition into it. So it’s a as Atlas hustle, we say it’s a new one.
Thomas: Is there anything that I should have asked you about today, Brad?
Brad: No, I think we really covered questions. Is there anything I didn’t answer for you Thomas?
Thomas: No, you were very thorough and I reiterate the passion. I think it’s great. I’d like to know what your goals are if that’s okay.
Brad: My goals are actually simple.I have three daughters. One is going to be graduating medical school. I want to be the most important thing to me in my life at this point in my life is my health and wellbeing. Because without that I have nothing. So my goal is to stay healthy. And keep a good well-being and continue to save for my retirement that I’ll never take.
But to know that I’ve got enough comfort in my finances, that it’s one less thing I have to worry about. And more importantly to see my grandchildren. I have two of them now, graduate high school and college. There are 10 and two. So that means my wellbeing and health have to be good. So my goals now are much smaller than they were.
If you would’ve asked me this question, 15 years ago, I would have pulled out a sheet of paper and shown you 500 things that I’m going to do before I’m 50. It’s as you get older, You tend to slow down a little and I don’t mean slow down in the sense of how you perform and what you do, but you tend to slow down in your thinking process and say, what is it that I really want?
And what are my goals for the future? They’re not monetary, they’re not those types of things. They’re more like. I want to know that when I want to call it quits and go play golf or something or travel the world that I can do that because that’s, I have the ability to do that.
And that means I have to be healthy. I have enough money put away and I have to be happy with my family. Cause those are the, my family is what it’s all about. Family is what it’s all about at the end of the day. When you leave your career and stuff that people are gonna miss you for a couple of weeks, but that’s it, they’re on there.
They’re moving on. So that’s what my goal is. My goal is to live to a hundred in wealthy and wise.
Thomas: Very good goal to have. If someone wants to hire you as a business consultant, where do they go?
Brad: My website is E3businessconsultants.com
My cell phone, which I give out to everybody. And I’ve had my cell phone for 35 years. So I don’t want it. One client said. You’re going to pick up your phone. How am I going to find you? And I tell them, ask my first client, he still has the same phone number I’ve had. I’ve never had to change my phone numbers to run from anybody.
My phone number is 732 area code US 7356429 and my email is. B torn Berg, T O R N as in Nancy, B as in boy, E R G at business consultants.com. And I’d be anyone who’s on your podcast. I’d be willing to give them a free consultation. We can talk about what their issues are because they listened to Thomas Green, who is a great podcaster and I’d be happy to help any of your clients