Practical Empowerment
Practical Empowerment
Andy Jacob — On Taking Massive Action in Your Business
In this episode of Practical Empowerment, host Preslie Hirsch (@heypreslie) chats with founder of the Jacob Consulting Group, Sale Sumo and business expert, Andy Jacob. With a wealth of experience consulting for businesses of all sizes, Andy shares experiences and tactics that can help business owners take fast, massive action.
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Andy: 0:09
If you don't have customers, you don't have a business and then make those customers extremely happy with your offering. If you just focus on that very simple idea of getting customers and making them happy, everything else falls in line.
Preslie: 0:26
Hey there! And welcome back to practical empowerment. Inspiring conversations with Valley leaders brought to you. But after five dot io, I'm your host, Presley Hirsch. On today's show, I sat down with Andy Jacob as a sales expert, a sought after business consultant and the CEO of DOT com magazine, the Jacob Group Consulting Sale Sumo and Scottsdale Angels. He is no stranger to growing and scaling his own companies and those that he gets to work with. In this conversation, we talk about tackling difficult questions, taking action fast and the important components of successful entrepreneurship.
Andy: 1:03
So Presley. In this day and age, the most important thing about entrepreneurship is, to be honest, the sale cycle or what's occurring in the in the business world today necessitates that entrepreneurs are honest with not only with themselves but more importantly, with their customers. And what I mean by that is the entire business environment has changed from where It was 20 to 30 years ago to today, and this is because of technology. So the buyers in a sails transaction, whether it's a b two b or B to C transaction, they are much smarter than they used to be. And that requires the entrepreneurs to be perfectly honest with their offerings, toe what they're offering both the businesses and consumers. So what's happened is entrepreneurship has become a really interesting thing because it necessitates those entrepreneurs to be perfectly honest with their offerings. Many, many years ago, people that were selling things weren't as honest as they are today, and that's because the Internet has changed everything. Buyers can look up things on the Internet. They can read reviews. They can see what's going on with businesses and companies. S O that makes the entrepreneur who runs the business is it requires them to be that much more honest with what they're selling in themselves. So being around those types of people is really refreshing compared to the way it was maybe 2030 years ago in the business environment.
Preslie: 2:43
Yeah, are a lot of the people that you've worked with struggled to become? I would imagine if you've been an entrepreneur for many years, you know last several decades and you've been a part of that transition, I would imagine it's kind of difficult for them. Thio step into this new place of being really direct and honest and vulnerable. Have you found about something that some of your clients struggle with his stepping into this kind of new transition?
Andy: 3:03
Well, that's a great question. You know, it's been a process. So so entrepreneurs that have stayed abreast of what's happening and have companies. This new environment has required them to move along with the times. So people that are stuck in the old ways of thinking they're basically out of business because nobody would do business with them anymore. So the people that you speak with today, no matter how long they've been in business, they understand that this type of approach is necessary for them to continue to build their businesses. So you don't come across many of the old dinosaurs anymore that just don't get it. And that's really
Preslie: 3:43
great. Who's your favorite kind of client to work with? Like your favorite people? They get so excited. Thio consult for what are the problems that they're having or things that they're struggling with.
Andy: 3:54
The thing that every client struggles with is the fact that they don't see the things that are so a parent to someone from the outside looking and here's what I mean. I call it the medicine cabinet principle. So if I wake up with a headache and I go to the medicine cabinet, I opened up the medicine cabinet. I look in the Madison Cabinet. I need some aspirin. Okay, I said to my wife, Honey, there's no aspirin in the medicine cabinet. Where's the aspirin? And she says, Oh, it's in the medicine cabinet. I open up that medicine cabinet. Second time I still don't see the aspirin.
Preslie: 4:31
Honey, where's the
Andy: 4:31
aspirin? It's in the medicine cabinet helping it up 1/3 time. I look again, no aspirin, I say, Honey, where's the aspirin? I have a terrible headache, and she walks over. She opens up the same medicine cabinet and in the medicine cabinet, right in the middle of that medicine cabinet. Is the aspirin, right? Okay. Why didn't I see it? Yeah, the answer is because it was right in front of me is because it was so right in front of me and so apparent to me that I didn't see it. It was invisible, the same thing for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs air so close to their business. And they're so ingrained in their business that they don't see the apparent things that somebody from the outside, like my wife, in this case, looking at the medicine cabinet looking in, would see. So I get hired to come in and really just point out things that I see that air apparent to me that the entrepreneur has missed completely because they're too close to the situation.
Preslie: 5:30
Yeah, I can totally see that. And that's a great example. Are there things that small business owners could? D'oh! You know, maybe they're not in a position where they're ready to hire a consultant or ready to work with somebody like you, but they know that they're probably missing things because they're so close to their business. What's that middle ground? How do howto entrepreneurs gain more awareness of what's going on in their business before they reach a point of bringing somebody else in?
Andy: 5:51
We expect entrepreneurs to miss a lot. Yeah, okay. Entrepreneurs, even though they think that they've got everything covered. They never d'oh. Okay, it's just impossible as an entrepreneur to have every single thing covered. So what makes the most sense is for that entrepreneur just a grind just to keep going, try and get customers. If you don't have customers, you don't have a business and then make those customers extremely happy with your offering. If you just focus on that very simple idea of getting customers and making them happy, everything else falls in line. A sense of simple, not as simple as it sounds. But that's the That's the objective of being an entrepreneur, sure to have a business where you have customers paying customers that not only will pay you but will love what you deliver.
Preslie: 6:44
Sure, sure. How do you, when you're going into companies to consultant? Point out some of these flaws or things that could be different? I would imagine that's a very vulnerable place for the entrepreneur you noticed. Step into this thing and I'm so close to you and tell me what we're doing wrong. How do you build that trust really fast with somebody that you're consulting with?
Andy: 7:02
You're exactly right. Entrepreneurs, by definition, almost believed they don't need a consultant. They believe that they've got everything covered. So the best way to establish rapport is by asking the right questions. And also as a consultant, it's my job to make sure that I give incredible value. So So once they get an ah ha moment from perhaps what I'm able to provide to them, then they start gaining some trust. So if you don't provide value, you're never going to gain the trust of an entrepreneur. So you have to kind of take some baby steps steps with an entrepreneur to show them what you can D'oh! And oftentimes that just is an hour conversation. You don't charge them for the conversation. What you do is you basically asked the right who, what, where, when and why, and how questions you as a consultant. Bring that in internally and you offer them some immediate ideas and how they can improve their business. And in that case, if you can get an ah ha moment from the entrepreneur, then they start saying than themselves. You know, if Microsoft and Apple and Amazon and General Motors all use consultants, maybe it's okay for me to use a consultant.
Preslie: 8:22
Yeah, but what the ego aside and say, if all the big guys are doing it, there must be something here, right? That makes a lot of sense providing free value. So they build respect and trust for you and know that you probably have their best interest in mind. That's right. When you are doing these discovery calls, I'm sure that there's a lot of things that come up in terms of their processes and their team and their leadership and all the different things that could use improvement in a business. What kind of things do you see? What teams? Because a lot of our listeners are business owners and entrepreneurs, but a lot of them also involved, you know, freelancers are involved in teams. So what kind of flaws do you see in terms of autonomy in the workplace or with team members?
Andy: 8:58
Okay, so one major flaw that entrepreneurs have with teams and working with teams is they're not listening. They hired these people to be on their team. They valued them enough to hire them and put them on the payroll. But yet, after their hired often times, they don't have the sensibility toe. Listen to the people that they hired. And this is something that I see quite often you hire someone because you respect them, you value them, you're gonna pay them. And there's something about them as to why you want them on your team. So since all of those things happened, why
Preslie: 9:38
don't you listen
Andy: 9:39
to them? And they should. So that's one thing that I see is that they just need to have a little bit better collaborative effort with regard to asking the right questions to the team members to get the answers that are gonna help them all collectively improve their business.
Preslie: 9:54
Sure, that makes a lot of sense. And do you go in when you're consulting with companies? Do you go in and give them a lot of ideas? And then that's it? Or do you do a lot of hands on activities or do you like run teams through interactive things?
Andy: 10:08
I take a little bit different approach. I'm in and out. I'm almost like a SWAT team that comes in and gets out. My moniker is we help companies improve fast. OK, that's what we do. So we don't believe in long drawn out consulting engagements. Typically, an entrepreneur needs a targeted, pinpoint answer on how they can improve their business, and we go in very quickly and do that. We believe that in today's age, that company should not be looking looking at incremental improvement. I'm not a believer in that at all. I think that incremental improvement is it is a thing of the past. I think the company should look for massive growth, massive impact. And I don't even think COS. Today should look at a to x of growth. They should look. Att 10 x. I call it the 10 x paradigm. You need to start thinking of ways to multiply your business by 10 times from what it is today.
Preslie: 11:09
Not an
Andy: 11:10
incremental change, not two times what it's doing today, but 10 times. And the reason why is you want to think big because even if you only miss by 50% you've just increased your business by five X
Preslie: 11:22
right, which is not too bad, Right?
Andy: 11:24
Right, right. Everybody would like that, right? Yeah, and it's possible.
Preslie: 11:27
And that's actually just what I was gonna ask you next is do you think that every entrepreneur every small business. Every startup is capable of scaling their business 10 X or their businesses that are better left as small, manageable businesses.
Andy: 11:41
It depends on the entrepreneur. Yeah, so if the entrepreneur smart enough to know that that they've taken the company toe where they can take it and then they need maybe some outside help to help grow it, then that's a really smart entrepreneur. Some entrepreneurs have the ability to actually do the five or 10 X that I'm talking about. Some don't those entrepreneurs that don't if they're smart enough to bring in people not just a consultant, but maybe an employee or higher or a, uh, or a partner or somebody sea level as a sea level executive to help them get to the next level. Those entrepreneurs are very, very smart because they've realized, intrinsically that they don't have the capability to do it themselves. And there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there that actually bring outside help in that helped them get to where they are to doubling. And then hopefully, hopefully multiplying the 10 x on their business.
Preslie: 12:34
Yeah, yeah, and your thought around, you know, not incremental small progress. Let's do this fast. Let's massive action, Gen x, where does that come from? Have you been a part of companies that have moved slower? And you thought that this isn't what I want to be a part of? Or have you kind of always had this thought of, like take massive action like, where does that personal belief complex?
Andy: 12:53
So that comes from the fact that it used to be that if you keep on doing what you've always done, you're going to keep on getting what you've always got it. That's the way it used to be. So in a business, if you keep on doing what you're doing, you're gonna keep on getting what you've always got. Everything's cool, everything's smooth, no problems. You can take it out into the future, and everything's fine in today's world. If you keep on doing what you've always done, you're gonna lose everything you have. And the reason why is because someone's gonna come up right behind you, and they're gonna take you over. So you have to take massive action instead of just incremental action in most cases to stay ahead of the curve. There's an old saying that someone uh, once came up with that. At some point in time in the future, somebody's gonna come along and put me out of business. However, that person I want to be me. What that means is that you haven't existing business model, and you need to think about ways in which to put that existing business model out of business. Interesting so that that helps you improve into the future. Because if you don't do it, somebody else is going to do
Preslie: 14:09
it. That's interesting. I like the idea of trying to beat yourself before somebody else gets
Andy: 14:14
100% and that's right.
Preslie: 14:16
Where is that line of? I'm always interested in this this kind of gray area, This balance, because I think it's much easier to achieve the extremes. And finding that healthy relationship between the two is something that I think is hard for a lot of people to achieve. So where is that blurred line of wanting to know what your competitors were doing? Being interested in what they're doing so you can stay ahead of them and not losing sight of your own business and paying too much attention to what's going on with the other companies.
Andy: 14:40
This this
Preslie: 14:41
find that
Andy: 14:41
this is a classic, fantastic entrepreneur question and not enough entrepreneur entrepreneurs asked that question. Of course, we all want to be informed with what our competition is doing, and it makes sense to know what they're doing. But a great entrepreneur will not. I spent a lot of time on that. Ah, great entrepreneur most like will have somebody else do the evaluation of the competitors they're able to and bring that information back in very concise bullet points. The reason why is because you have to focus on your business. If you're so interested in what your competitors doing, you're not focusing on what you're doing, which is getting customers having them pay you for your offering and then making them absolutely screaming fans. So entrepreneurship requires those people to focus on what they're currently doing in their own business, but perhaps have somebody else find out what's going on over here and just report back. But I don't like seeing entrepreneurs take the deep dive into what the competition is doing so much because it takes there, focus off of what they're doing. And remember, there's always something to learn from another company, and that's great. You can learn from another company. You can have somebody report back to you with what the competition's doing. Listen, replication is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Presley? So So you sometimes can take what a competitors doing it incorporated into what you're doing. But if you're not hyper focused on what you're doing, that's a recipe for disaster.
Preslie: 16:23
Yeah, I really like that. It's not ignoring that the competition's doing, but maybe outsourcing some of that research so that you can still keep your eyes on the road
Andy: 16:31
100%.
Preslie: 16:31
That's really cool. Um, as I mentioned, a lot of our listeners are freelancers and people that were trying to help them build autonomy in their lives where they own a business or not. So if somebody's flirting with the idea of entrepreneurship, what kind of traits with that kind of person have to know that it's right for them? Or what kind of things should they consider if they're thinking about stepping into this place of owning a business?
Andy: 16:51
OK, so for those people, just the fact that they're thinking about it means they have what it takes.
Preslie: 16:57
Just the fact
Andy: 16:59
that they're even toying with. The idea means that they have what it takes because not a lot of people, believe it or not, actually even believe in their mind that they have a little seat of an entrepreneur idea that they can fulfill. So just the fact that they're thinking about it is a good thing. So people listening to the podcast or watching this podcast, if they have a seed of an idea that they're thinking about, I'm telling them right now, right here that they have what it takes and they should go for it.
Preslie: 17:32
That's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, And do you think when you're first starting, that's also the time to try and 10 X? Do you think that there is room for building something incrementally at the beginning, or do you believe in taking massive action from the start?
Andy: 17:44
Well, for an entrepreneur who's just thinking about it, that's never started A business like some of the people listening to this, the massive action is just taking the first step to start something
Preslie: 17:56
that's a great point.
Andy: 17:56
So that already is a massive action step. Ah, lot of people, for example, will keep their what they call their day job, and they'll have what they call their side hustle. And their side hustle is something that they work after hours, and that's a phenomenal thing for people to do. Is is work after hours for to make their dreams a reality. And in that case, working after hours is the massive action step for most people that they need just to get it going. Now, once they get that going and they can see sort of that, it's starting to happen. A lot of people then will sort of lose the day job and make the side hustle the main hustle and focus in. So that's the massive approach that entrepreneurs listening to this podcast need to think about is just the fact that you're thinking about you can do it. I promise you. I promise you that you can. And then the massive action is just taking that first step toward your dream, whatever that may be.
Preslie: 18:57
Yeah, that's a great point, cause if you think about you know, somebody sitting on the couch to somebody getting up, that's a massive action that's required. So going from having no side hustle to creating one is a big step, even if it doesn't seem like it's a huge step.
Andy: 19:08
It's a huge step. And for those people that do it in those entrepreneurs that take that massive step might my my hats are off to you all the power to because just that belief that little, little one or 2% belief in yourself often times turns into something remarkable that they couldn't have even imagined when they had the little seed of the idea during the beginning stages of their thought process.
Preslie: 19:34
And I know that you personally were involved in a handful of companies before you started a handful of companies. And so did you always have that seat of entrepreneurship? Or is that something that you developed later on in your professional career?
Andy: 19:45
I've always had to see even going back to fifth grade When I had my first paper route, it was just something that was in me, and I always sort of looked at it like this. I always knew that if I failed, it wasn't really a failure. It was just a step towards something that was better in greater. And people forget that when you hear these giant success stories of people that have made it in the big time. I promise you they had many, many failures before they got to that success. So if you have an idea and the people listening to this podcast that they have an idea and they go for it and let's say it doesn't work out or they have to do a pivot and changes into something else, they just need to remember that
Preslie: 20:27
if it's a failure,
Andy: 20:29
it's just one failure along the continuum. So what's going to make them successful and they're gonna learn from that failure, and they're going to do better the next time. And what I see oftentimes, when I talked to people who become successful is every failure leads up to the success that they've been able to attain as long as they learned from every single failure along the way.
Preslie: 20:51
Sure, how much of the consulting that you do is tactical. This is what we need to change and how much of it is mindset coaching, because I would imagine that there's a handful of businesses where people struggle with how they feel about their failures. You know, it's so easy to say it's a learning experience, but obviously when you're in it, it can feel a lot more detrimental than that. So how much of what you're doing is coaching people personally about the way that they're leading versus, like tactical? We need to change these things
Andy: 21:18
most of its tactical. We get in, we get out, We look at business problems and we sell them fast. And when we sell the business problem, what we try and do is put somebody on the road to doing this. 10 x When I'm talking about the 10 x paradigm, put them in the position to start thinking about how they can multiply their business by 10 times the mindset that you're talking about, where somebody sort of skins their knees and they need a coach to kind of get them back up. I don't see a lot of those types of people who contact me. Most of the people that contact me or sort of already passed that point, and they kind of get it. So, um, what I could tell the people listening to this podcast if you have an idea or a dream in your mind and if you want to make it happen and you start it up and you go down the path to making that massive action to start it. If you skin your knee on it, you know that it's just a stepping stone toe where you need to be. And I think in today's culture, that's starting to get ingrained in people more and more that they don't believe that there's really an overnight success anymore. Even the great artists that are out there in the great musicians where they sail there, an overnight success where they really know they probably been singing since the age of three years old and going in front of audiences and skinning their knees and and fails and forgetting the lyrics. So everybody has failure before they get to the point of success, and I think that's becoming more ingrained in the culture. Uh, as we move on and move forward in this, you know, 2000 twenties people know that it just takes ah lot of effort, and if they fail, they move forward and they skin their knee, they brush it off and they keep going.
Preslie: 23:01
Sure, you talk about going in and quickly solving business problems. Do you have any favorite stories of problems where you've gone in and help somebody get through it? Or maybe it turned out way differently than you thought it would like to have any favorite stories of clients that you've worked with.
Andy: 23:15
Well, I have a recent story. I talked to somebody in Michigan about two weeks ago, and he's in the ER, the debt consolidation space, and he's got a very, very successful company. Ah ah, moderately successful company and he wanted to build his company to great strides. So we had a one hour conversation. I started asking him some very pin pointed questions, and what occurred to me was he didn't really understand that in most businesses, what happens when you get to the point where he was, which is multi $1,000,000 worth of revenue that, um, the margins as you grow typically decrease and his mindset? What he was thinking was I could keep these great margins and not only double my business, but after speaking to me, multiply my business 10 times. But what I had to have him understand was, as you grow to this 10 x of what you currently are doing your margins, air going to decrease and as your margins decrease. What happens is you make more on the whole, but you make less per transaction. And when I was able to get that across time, you started thinking an entirely different way. And just in the last couple days, I received a new business plan for him, where he's actually looking at a 10 ex model, making smaller margins and every single transaction. But the whole makes him multi multi millions of dollars. I was very excited about that just recently.
Preslie: 24:38
That's the sounds like a good win.
Andy: 24:40
Yeah, it's going to be great for him. Yeah,
Preslie: 24:42
that's interesting. It's so fascinating to me how you could have a conversation with somebody and really quickly see where there may be looking at things and not the best way or it's. It seems like seemingly small things that make a massive shift in their business.
Andy: 24:54
It really doesn't. And don't forget, I've got mentors for me that helped me look at things that I can't see in the medicine cabinet that I've missed. Like the aspirin on the after mentioned yeah, you know, description. So everybody needs a mentor Everybody needs a consult, and everybody needs someone that they can talk to because nobody can cover all the basis. It's impossible,
Preslie: 25:14
right? And if you if you try, you'll probably fail and miss things right. Like you can only try to cover all of your basis for so long.
Andy: 25:21
That's right. You're gonna miss a lot. And the good news about that that if you have a successful business, you'll be able to catch up eventually and make those Mrs great gains as you go forward.
Preslie: 25:32
Sure, we've talked. You've touched a couple times on successful business, moderately successful business. How do you define successful business? What is what is business success mean to you?
Andy: 25:41
Well, for the entrepreneurs that are thinking about putting a business together and uber successful business is the person that takes the first step and takes a massive accident just to start the business. That's a very successful business story because very few people have what it takes to start their own business. So that's a That's an incredible story, right? Someone that just has an idea and starts for someone that's doing, let's say, five million or $10 million of gross revenue it a year. That's a successful story because you never know where they started. Now, uber successful story would be that person taking that five or $10 million revenue business and turning into $100 million business, or Maur. And of course, knowing that the margins most likely will decrease as they get there. But they're going to make more money overall. So that really is a personal definition, depending on where the person is in their in their business face.
Preslie: 26:39
Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned mentors and how everybody needs a coach and a consultant. What kind of resource is have been really helpful for you? Because it's no secret. There's no short of shortage of information. There's plenty of business books and sales books and courses and coaches. So are there particular books or podcasts or like specific resource is that you found to be really helpful or stand the test of time even as things have changed over the last 20 or 30 years?
Andy: 27:03
Yeah, I I love to read, but I don't like to read entire books. Interesting. Most people don't re pass the 1st 2 chapters of a book anyway, according to research, so I found a very interesting app called Blink List, and it's a summary of all the books that are out right now. You could read the summaries and maybe 3 to 4 minutes, and for my mind that works for me, brother. People reading an entire book works for them. But for me, I need real fast, real quick. Be able to take information in and digest it very, very quickly because I like to digest a lot of information So I can read five books over a weekend versus one book over two weeks and get the basic concepts which for me, works. I'm actually writing a book right now. Thank you. The working title is the little black book of business, and it's going to be 100 stories from my experience that I think people can learn from in business. Every chapter is only 1 to 2 pages long. It's gonna be really simple to read amount Chapter 28 right now. So I still have 72 mortar right
Preslie: 28:12
over 25 Yeah,
Andy: 28:13
but it's going to be just based on my experience is very small snippets of information that people can learn from, and that for me, that's the best way to learn. So I hope that for other entrepreneurs who like just very fast, rapid fire sort of information that this will be good for them as well.
Preslie: 28:29
Sure, I've never written a book, but I've heard that it's quite a process. Has that been interesting for you as somebody that likes to take massive action and do things really fast? Have you found the book writing process too slow you down a little bit and be a little bit more methodical and progressive?
Andy: 28:43
Well, I found for me that I don't write. I dictate through Siri.
Preslie: 28:48
Very cool.
Andy: 28:49
Now what I'm going to do is take the book and send it to somebody else who's an editor that can actually added it up. Siri, for me is phenomenal because I can talk into my phone and basically write a book so I don't have to sit down at the computer and actually write the old fashioned way
Preslie: 29:02
you're staying. Yeah, of those 28 stories that you've written so far, can you share one of them with
Andy: 29:06
sure, Sure, I just wrote one called Always Listen to a name. A guy named John always listened to a guy named John. So recently my wife and I went to a wonderful resort in Phoenix. Okay, it's called the Castle Hills Hot Springs, and we took an uber up there. It's about an hour away from Phoenix, and we took an uber because there's a seven mile dirt road to get to the hot springs. And on the way back we had our uber driver pick us up in the uber drivers. Name was John okay, and
Preslie: 29:44
we
Andy: 29:44
get into the uber and we're driving back. And I said to John, just politely, John, have you ever driven this road before? And he said, Yes, I grew up in this area. I know everything about the area and I said, John, that's really interesting. What's the most fascinating thing about the area? And John told me on the hour trip home Everything about the area, including where the Indians were worthy people, would come in in the early 19 hundreds to the hot springs. The famous rich and famous movie stars Tau get some respite care. He told me about John F. Kennedy coming into the hot springs that I just visited during World War two. He told me about the gold mines around the hot springs. He told me about ghost towns up little dirt roads that nobody knew about. And I got home and I received an entire E an entire history lesson about the castle. Spring Hot springs, right? Just Waas. And I would have
Preslie: 30:43
never known
Andy: 30:44
all this information if I didn't talk to John. Yeah, so what that means in terms of business is ask questions, talk to the people that work for you or with you? Like I said before, you've hired them, use their knowledge, asked them questions so that you can get information that you don't know. So always listen to a name a guy named John. Always listen to a guy named John basically means in business. Opened up your heart and soul to asking questions and listening to the answers because you never know where it's gonna lead.
Preslie: 31:18
Absolutely. And what a great lesson to speaking to people that you don't even necessarily know where it's gonna go. You know, it makes ah lot of sense to build that into your business with the people that you've hired. But I would imagine that there's plenty of people that get in ubers and put their headphones in. Or don't talk to the person in the elevator and or at the grocery store, and it could lead to really cool interactions like that. That's a really cool story.
Andy: 31:40
That's right, thank you. It's it's remarkable what people? No. And what you can learn if you just open up your heart and soul and ask questions to those people?
Preslie: 31:50
Absolutely. So, like I said, I know that you're involved in a lot of things. What are you most excited about right now that you're working on?
Andy: 31:56
So what I'm most excited about is the book I I've tried to write books prior, and this kind of goes back to trying things and failing,
Preslie: 32:05
getting your Neela vets
Andy: 32:06
giving your hand than getting back up. And I've never been able to finish one. And the reason why is because I've tried to write these long, 253 100 page books where I was trying to cover everything and I would get halfway through writing the book and I would just scrap it all. My old computers are just filled with books that I never finished before, but this one since I'm writing it very, very succinctly with basically one and 1/2 to 2 page, um, chapters. I actually feel like I'm gonna finish this one. And I'm actually taking stories from the other books that I had written prior and consolidating the them down in a way that I think this book will be very meaningful for startup entrepreneurs and actually season business veterans so that they can read something very quickly and learned something very, very quickly that I hope will help them.
Preslie: 32:59
Yeah, and that speaks to all the other books that you've tried to write in the past are now helping you write this one faster.
Andy: 33:04
That's right. That's right. So I skin my needs a bunch of times. I had the greatest ideas for books. I started writing them, and then something just clogged the machine. I didn't get to finish them, but this one I'm definitely gonna finish.
Preslie: 33:17
That's so exciting. Well, this podcasts obviously called practical empowerment. So we're big into empowering to start up leaders, entrepreneurs, people that are involved in teams, freelancers and everybody in between. So if somebody was listening to this and want to take a step into feeling more empowered in their life. What is your thoughts as what they could do on a very tactical level to feel more empowered today.
Andy: 33:38
So the best thing to do is if they're listening to this podcast right now. Once it's over, turn it off and do one action that they've never done before, one that they've never done before. It can be a personal action if they've never done a push up, do a push up if they've never looked at starting up in LLC, go online and look up how to start an LLC. If they've never spoken to a mentor, call an uncle or a father or an aunt or friend that's in business. And ask some questions about how they got into that business, what ever it takes right now. They'll find that if they just take one step right now after this podcast, that that will lead to a lot of other great things in their lives. And what I can tell them is if they don't know how to do it. Just write these words down. Who, what, Why, where, when and how. Write those words down when, what, where why and how and start asking people questions that start with those five words. When did you get started? How did you start? Why is it that okay, you become a success.
Preslie: 34:59
How did you
Andy: 35:00
get started and listen to people and receive information back and then take one big step. And that step could be his various. Very, very as simple as just looking up, how to start an LLC for a business. Yeah, that's all it is. And if they do that, they'll find that that massive action that they're going to take right after this podcast, they're gonna get addicted to it. And once they do that, they're going to say to themselves, Wow, I just did that. Now I'm addicted. I've got those all those positive vibes going on in my brain right now. And all the chemicals are kicking off, making me feel good, and they're going to be addicted, and they're gonna want to do another step. And once they get two or three or 45 steps in a row, they'll get addicted to it. And they're just not going to stop.
Preslie: 35:46
That's great advice. Thank you so much for being here before I let you go. My last question is if somebody is listening to this and thinks I need Andy to come help my business or they want to connect with your fall along so they know when they can get your book. Where can people find
Andy: 35:58
you? Of course. The proverbial website it Andy Jacob dot com. Or I don't even mind them calling me on my personal cell phone. I'll give it out. It's 6029099890
Preslie: 36:09
I hope you don't regret that. Hopefully, it's all really good question will be. Thank you so much for being here in your time. I really appreciate it.
Andy: 36:16
Possibly. Thank you.
Preslie: 36:21
Hey, they're just a couple quick things before you go first. Thank you so much for listening to this entire episode. And we really hope that you enjoyed it. If you are listening and iTunes please take just a moment and leave a review. Let us know what your takeaways were and what you would like to see more of. And if you haven't already hit, subscribe in your podcast app. So you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes. And until next time thank you for listening. And may you feel empowered today and every day to step into leadership and the life that you have been dreaming of. This has been practical empowerment, inspiring conversations with Valley leaders brought to you by after five dot io.