Also Available On

mysuccessex-S. A. Grant
mysuccessex-S. A. Grant
mysuccessex-S. A. Grant

Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

“I’d say that if we could spend time in a stage where whatever stage is developing, being a craftsman in something, no matter what that something is, and we can embrace learning how to be a professional as a craftsman, I think you’ll enjoy what you’re doing. Take an interest, take something that lines up with your traits and your interests and your desires, and go put work into it.”
In Season 2, Episode 30 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with CEO & Co-Founder of Fully AccountableVinnie Fisher.
Fully Accountable is an outsourced accounting and finance firm for small and medium-sized eCommerce and digitally based businesses. Their mission is to provide eCommerce and digital business owners with better data, so they are able to make better decisions.
Want more details on how to contact Vinnie? Check out the links below!

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!

Just speak to your Alexa-enabled device and say, ”Alexa Open Boss Uncaged.”

Also available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon, Google podcast, and many other popular podcasts apps.

#SAGrant #Quote #BossUncaged #Business #podcasting #podcasts #accounting #accountingservices #accountingsoftware #accountingfirm #entrepreneurship #podcasting #podcasthost #podcastlife #fintech #fintechstartup #financial #financialadvisor #financialservices #accountants #accountant
Remember to hit subscribe so you will get instant updates. Leave us a review, we would love to get your input on the show.
Because we want to hear from you and would love your feedback, leave us a message 762.233.BOSS

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S2E29 – Vinnie Fischer – powered by Happy Scribe

All right, three, two, one, welcome. Welcome back to Boss Uncage podcast. On today’s show, we have someone that, you know, kind of through the grapevine. We have a lot of commonalities and come to find out, we have some similar friends. And today is the first time we mean. But I could already tell you that he’s going to have some great insight, some great information for you today. So without further ado, Vinnie, tell our audience a little bit more about yourself.

Well, first of all, thanks for having me on the show. I love I just love how we get out there and help this community, this community of, like, people who are trying to figure out how to do business and entrepreneurship and life. And so the stuff you guys are doing, I’m extremely honored and be blessed to be part of it. And so hopefully we can offer our part and give out some value, share our story. So I’m very fisher, right?

I mean, first and foremost, accomplishment and for me is that I’m a dedicated follower of Christ. I am working on that every day. I screw up a whole bunch, which is a part of like who I am as a person. Thankfully, I I’ve been working a healing in my heart and things. I’ve been able to stay together with my wife of now. Twenty five plus years of marriage and twenty nine years together. And we’ve produced four beautiful children who are all teenagers and in their versions of early adulthood.

So that’s make my life life. And then I also have this privilege to be the CEO and founder of Fully Accountable. And Dabb and I also have had some good successes where we have a family back office. Where were the investor, an active investor in two other operating companies. And so I live the life as a business leader. So in this stage of my career, I, I lead and develop leaders of our organizations.

So let’s just take it back a little bit in history. I mean, obviously, you just don’t wake up on a random Tuesday and say, I’m going to be a leader, I’m going to be an executive, I’m going to create all this different things to put back out the community. So what did your journey really begin? When when was your Eureka moment waking up to saying, hey, this is something that I want to do?

Yeah, I think, you know, there’s a song I love, it’s got a little bit of a negative context to it, but there’s a song by this band casting around Slow Fade. You kind of slowly fade into things, right? Well, I think you can slowly fade and good and bad directions. Well, I think over time, I, I, you know, I’ve always been a problem solution marketer and the companies I even have around me are problem based solution issues, even in my own life.

And so that’s just some type of business person I’ve been. So I’m a lawyer. I worked at a big fancy law firm, got trained. I’m very thankful for that. All along the way. I kind of it was a good business developer and I didn’t really want to wait that whole length of a partnership track. So I noticed my propensity to be closer to risk taking, like I’m willing to take risk because I want reward and so early on, which is unusual for a lawyer, but I kind of then jumped into a law firm with some other guys, kind of have my own thing.

Same thing in business I have. I’ve always had a propensity to the front of the room because I have a higher tolerance to taking risk, meaning I’m willing to lose in return for the opportunity for reward. And that’s kind of what early on I discovered about myself. So I’m always innovating or trying ideas. I’m an idiot, but I don’t just think about them. I try them. I so I’m always kind of doing and I strike out a bunch and every once in a while I’ve got a hold of one and hit it over the wall and and along the way I realized I don’t really, like, keep doing the same thing.

I’m not really a process driven person, so I’ve had to surround myself with people who enjoy that part of the function of our organization as well.

So, I mean, I think you bring up a very solid point. I mean, some of what you’re saying is like you’re hella fearless. Right? But a lot of people that are on this particular journey of entrepreneurism or just small business that you hit fear on a regular basis. So how did you like like be able to face that fear and overcome it? I mean, is that something that’s in your DNA, which is something that you learned over a period of time?

You know, I don’t know that we naturally have fear handling in our DNA. I think I’m afraid I’m afraid of things. I’ve learned to hand over the anxieties of fear in multiple directions. First off, I had to get right with wounds in my life, in my heart, like things that I would have made some really bad agreements and paid attention to some awful language I was using about myself. And I did kind of get right with some of that because, you know, depending on the category, we all have fears.

And so if shame or doubt or or how my an unusual measurement of how others feel about me, those are other things going on that bleed into performance. And so I did deal with some of those things, quite honestly, for me, my faith I’m so thankful for it was a gift to me. But I’ve been able to learn how to handle anxiety over that. Is it true and deal with some of those things. So it’s an everyday journey, like I was thinking this morning, like about fear and how, like under the right category, you’re going to get nailed with it.

So it’s not whether it goes away to me, it’s how I addressed it over time. And what am I doing to see the truth of it? What anxiety? Because fear can come in both in multiple directions. And I’ve learned responding to it can look like anxiety and work, look like boredom. And depending on how I respond to both of those, it’s it’s this feeling about not being valuable. And I’ve literally I try to fight that because I think our minds will drift in all of those things.

And I just learn to take those thoughts captive and find truth.

And I think at this point that we could just end the podcast. I mean, he delivered enough nuggets in like the last thirty seconds. You can walk away and take that and take that to the bank. Right. But it’s just pulling it back a little bit more. And I want to kind of talk about your platform a little bit. So fully accountable, like what is that software designed to to do and who is the target audience for it?

Yes, we’re a fintech, but we’re a fully managed service. Right. So we provide a fully outsourced, managed service of outsourced CFO and accounting for ecommerce and digital companies. But what we did along the way is we discovered for me, I built this for me, we discover that tech was missing. That was really outdated, this whole industry of accounting and finance. So we built our own tool that allows us to have a massive ability to deliver the results we needed for first one of my companies.

And then we realized this was actually working. We started offering it to friends. Next thing you know, we backed into having a fully managed service for a fintech, for accounting and finance and run by a guy who doesn’t know accounting events.

Oh, well, I mean, isn’t that concept I mean, obviously the supply and demand based upon that, you had a requirement. You fulfill the need and then taking that need and then you grew it into a platform to deliver to help other people. Right. But on that that particular topic. Right. You were able to have. Equity raises and OK, I got a million dollar equity raise so I could run this company for another 12 months and get the software off the ground to sell it, like how did you do your equity raise with a self-funded angel investment?

Like, how did you get the capital to even start that platform?

Yeah. So everything that I’ve ever built from sticks up that would people would call like a startup, everything I ever built. Thankfully, I have gone into it with a bootstrapped mentality. I build it as I go. I very much believe in the concept of a minimally viable product. And if you’ve never really understood that concept, I would read the Lean Startup and in there you’ll get a concept of MVP minimum viable product. I’ve always believed that in things I grow now.

I also love the idea of raising dollars or borrowing in the right context, but I usually look at those as going faster, not starting something early on. I think it’s for me. I’ve been more successful not using other people’s dollars because I’m just going to burn them faster, figuring out the offer conversion. And so, like, if I can limp a little and go a little slower, figuring out conversion and audience, then add, you know, gasoline on the fire when I’m ready to go faster with the use of money and I’ll decide whether it’s my capital or someone else’s.

So if I could take that and paraphrase it and correct me if I’m wrong, just to give a clear depiction. Right. If I want to get from point A to point B, I know that I have to either jump the gap or I need to cross over or build a bridge. Right now, I may not have the capital to build a concrete bridge or maybe I’ll bring ropes ropes. But you’re starting from from the from the basic necessities of getting from point A to point B and then the roots and expand out.

You make wood and then wood expands out to metal and in concrete. So you’re saying that’s pretty much what you did. You started off with the capital that you had. You started off with ropes and you scaled it to the platform that currently is right now.

Yeah, and maybe I didn’t, so to speak, have capital, but I kept it lean and mean. I learned from one of my mentors in marketing that you got to be really careful that you know exactly what the customer wants. You’re guessing. And so if you overbuild before you get into the customers hands, you were going to find yourself spending a lot of money, iterating something that otherwise you were guessing on. So get him the most minimal version.

You can get out of your hands and let the customer help you, and then you can refine audience and customer together. And that way I’ve learned to spend less money developing our version one, two and three of something.

So pretty much staying away from, like the feature creature. You know, that way you don’t put all the bells and whistles in there. You want to start off with the bare necessities and then build from there based upon your audience feedback.

Yeah. You know, in some cases, since I’m a problem solution marketer, I try to build things for me. So I always remember I’m probably one of our customers, but that only gets us so far. Right. I want to hear feedback from other ones. I’m just one of some. And so, you know, thankfully, hundreds of clients later they help validate an offer and improve it. But early on, I think I think there are too many people looking to raise money first before offer or an audience, you know.

Forty two cents of every dollar spent. The market is spending too much money acquiring a customer, either because the offers wrong or the audience is wrong.

So from start to I mean, obviously, a project is never finished. It’s always growing. How how quickly per say and obviously I know the scope of work and there’s systems in place that you have to establish. But how quickly could someone from an idea create a prototype to, say, go to market for a particular product? And we’re talking about software?

Yeah. I mean, I think if you come at it from more of a managed service or solve a problem standpoint, I think pretty quick. Right? I think the feature development is what gets in the way they all the extra things you add on. But a very lean version is a matter of fact. If you really wanted to get it from a customer standpoint, I would. I’m I believe in renting before buying. And so I like to try other people’s stuff and use it and see if a customer sets there.

So, you know, in everything like outsourcing, I just believe in the theory of rent before buying. So I think you’ll be real lean using other modalities to to to prove out your concept.

That’s really interesting. And I definitely appreciate you giving us some insight into that. So like on your experience, obviously you’ve been on the road for a period of time. You’ve had this journey, you’ve had your successes. But whatever your success, it’s always like some negative side effect. Right. So what’s the worst experience that you’ve encountered on this journey?

You know, I think some of my blind spots by the biggest blind spot was that I, I would have worked myself into the system unnecessarily because I would have I am battling always this hero complex because I’m a Quixtar and I have good ideas. I would then would conclude that I’m the best one to solve all the problems. And so I baked myself into the system. Well, I did that in such one of our large Webelos. The company with lots of people on the team making lots of revenue, when I stepped away and became the chairman of the board, no longer the CEO, it exposed how many levers I was pulling.

So I didn’t really backfill correctly in that business because my arrogance and my blind spots got in the way because I literally was solving problems instead of really investing in helping other people who really are on our team help them find their lane. I kind of put too many things in my lane.

I think that that’s a gift and a curse. I mean, not 80 personalities, but you have a vision, you have a goal, you have a product. And you know how you want all these components to work, to to happen and to come to fruition. And then you have to obviously get somebody else to help you on that journey because you can’t do it all yourself. And on that journey with somebody else is not doing exactly what you would do it.

We we kind of step in at times.

So I think I wrote a book about this at all. And so I want to give away a gift here to our people here, and they can find that gift fully accountable. Dotcom, Ford’s boss, uncaged, and they can get it in the show, notes the link. But I wrote a book called The CEO’s Mindset, and I highly encourage you to take advantage of this. Everyone watching and listening, because I spoke about this specific subject about where I can be the lightning bolt in my own company, where I come in and really disruptive.

But at the same time, I’m you know, I believe in being able to build something beyond your shadow, takes people in process and hopefully you’re making profit along the way. But without those two things, people are an organization that’s bigger than just you. And so I spoke directly about this subject, about how you got to develop about people and then ultimately give them good process and help them make process so that the organization has some consistency and excellence to it.

Well, gosh darn it. When you look at a couple of my ventures that I broke and I wrote a whole book about the breaking of that, that I would expose the lack of process and really developing out people.

Oh, so, I mean, you’re talking about processes and obviously you’re you have a legal background. So in a business structure, we always hear about LLC s corp C Korps, like, what is your business? Which one of these three or is it a combination of multiples.

Yeah. So I mean, if you look at the whole structure, Deb and I, my wife, we own a family back office, so we own a family limited partnership in there. It’s got limited partners. One of its limited partners would be. However, things are owning our assets, my all of my assets, the marshal under me, I have a holdings company that’s one of the partners. It’s an asset of the partnership. But that holding company then owns interest in the things that I actively participate.

One of those would be fully accountable itself is an LLC, but it’s a multimember LLC because I have two partners in it. Right. So it’s not a single member. It’s got multiple members in it. And it’s tactlessly it’s taxed like a partnership. Not like you can make an election to tax it another way, but it’s taxed like a partnership. And ultimately there are three separate partners in that business.

Oh, so talking about partnership right now, we’ve had solo partners, entrepreneurs. So I’m asking you the question more so about partnerships, because obviously that’s the other half of the coin. Right. Or multiple other coins and personalities and different ideas. So working on that table mindset of working at the Knights of the Round Table, how does that work? I mean, how do you kind of get to the same common accord when you’re sitting in a room with somebody that may not agree with you?

Um. That’s a great question. So for the three of us, if you kind of let me, Chris and Rachel, you know, E-, even though I am the majority owner, we actually have a one vote, one person situation where there’s three of us. And so two of the three of us are going to lead us in a direction. And so my job as the leader of our team and the leader of the three of us is to help us come to a good decision, because one of the mistakes I made on early in partnership is I wanted workers in the system and I’d give them interesting things, but not treat them like a partner so they might look like one on equity paper, but didn’t act like one because they’re never invited to act like one.

It wasn’t their fault. It was my fault. So now we try to practice active partnership. I probably have a really strong voice and I have a really strong opinion in our job as executives are to fight about that, to criticize, to come up with through that process. Of course, hopefully there’s some compassion in there, but come up with a good result together. And, you know, we don’t always 100 percent agree a lot. Most of the time we do.

But sometimes it’s two out of three. And, hey, you know, I’m sometimes the three and with great maturity, I don’t want to be completely doing everything. So I have to accept sometimes we had and directions that maybe it’s not where I want us to go, but if I really care enough, I’ll keep fighting.

So, I mean, just to talk about you a little bit more, I mean, obviously I’m looking at as a backdrop and for those that are just listeners on one half of you, you have five thousand and the other half you have kallick funnel. Plank’s right. So what you kind of tell us the story behind both these sides behind you, because obviously one is 100 percent business and the other one is hundreds and marketing.

I’m a marketer, let’s be really clear, I actually have been trained in business as a I was a corporate M&A attorney. I did tax as a specialty inside there. So I helped small and medium sized businesses run and operate and ultimately sell or liquidate. And I was a I’m a deal lawyer at my core, which means I brought a deal into everything I do. But my one of my mentors in the law was a partner of mine. I took to customer behavior very quickly.

I have creative, I think, more about the customer. I don’t like the nuts and bolts of marketing, like develop the funnel, put the big someplace. But I like coffee. I like things that involve consumer engagement and conversions. I just love that stuff. I can’t get away from it. So we win awards for doing good marketing of driving customers to our product. And so we do the right thing. We eat our own dog food.

When it comes to marketing, as it relates to the 5000. Well, you know, we’re we’re at the top of categories growing as quickly as there are. And that speaks to our irresistible offer. Right. We have a good offer in the market. And in spite of whether or not we’re good at marketing, in spite of whether or not we’re doing great things in our sales department, the market is rewarding us with excellent success and growth.

Actually, I definitely commend you and I look forward to seeing what else you have up your sleeves as this conversation continues to move forward. My next question is so we always hear about the twenty years that it takes someone to become successful, but it’s usually perceived to be an overnight success. How long have you been on your journey?

It’s been like 20 years, to be honest with you, when I look back to the start of my law practice, which would have been in the year of 1999 when I would have been a lawyer. So here I am on the other side of that 20 years. But I would tell you, if you go back two years ago, I firmly believe the things that you developed, the wisdom that comes along with experience and knowledge. I never surprised when I see the staff that the most successful entrepreneurs are between forty five and fifty five.

That doesn’t mean young people can’t be successful because I just talk about the average of a people group and I think wisdom experience kick in and I think you’re along. I think so. I would say, you know, I’m I’m probably acting in some of my best capacity as a leader right now that I’ve ever in all of my career.

Oh, well, so I think it comes with the experience of knowing when to fold, when to stand up, when to listen versus talking to your point. I think it definitely comes with experience.

Yeah, I think there’s some at bats. I think you learn to see a curveball, right? You don’t just actually hit it. And I like baseball, so I’m always going to use but I like all sports. But I’m a sports junkie, but I like baseball. And, you know, I was awful at hitting a curveball. I was a great fielder and a good arm could hit a curveball. Never learned the art of hitting a curveball.

And so that’s stopped my career in its tracks in high school. But I, I have learned to see what a curveball and a changeup and and what really bad things happen in business. And I’m thankful for a lot of that. And I’m thankful that my identity isn’t placed in the success of it. It was for a long time and I’m thankful to have realized that I was pegging my hope into the identity of success in business. And that’s another thing I’ve learned along the way.

And so I’ve learned how to enjoy the ride more and being present instead of wishing I was in the future.

Oh, definitely. So I mean, just by the first time, I mean, I kind of just, you know, you correct me if I’m wrong. I just have a gut feeling that you’re a big systems guy. Like, I think to balance out all the things that you have moving in, all the components, you have to have systems in place to get to the level of achievement that that where you are currently. So if this does stand true, what systems do you have in place to kind of help you in your day to day?

I have people in place, these people have developed wonderful systems, I am I’m about as all over the place as you can possibly get. I am aloof. I think of things. I will put people in front of process all the time. So even if I’ve got to get to something, I have to write copy for the marketing department. And there’s a relationship element that needs me to be involved in people. I have a very high emotional level that I will always dump a process for a person.

What I’m thankful for is realizing that I need to be surrounded with people who care about process and they have put great systems in place. But as it relates to me, I’ve learned to put things like routine as a system in place. So I’ve got routines that protect parts of my time so I can be a great husband, a good leader at home, be dedicated in working on my faith with fear and trembling to be dedicated and leading our leaders in our organization, as well as be there for my kids as their dad.

So I’ve come to appreciate routine, and it’s a system that allows me to perform in multiple capacities.

There’s definitely an interesting definition or an approach. I definitely appreciate that. So you seem like you’ve always had the balls, right? The hustle and at least the ingenuity to know that you wanted to kind of be in this space to a certain extent. Do you come from an entrepreneurial background or any of your parents or anybody from your history that you grew up with? Are any of them hustlers or business people?

No, I feel in that state of someone who came from the other side of the tracks want to work his way out for me, the early star was a big chip on my shoulder. And it came from like a lot of family destruction, a lot of shame, a lot of doubt, a lot of poverty mindset. We poverty and physical illness and as well as mental mindset, both of them. And so I, I wanted something different. And so I just set out to want something different.

First person in my family to graduate from college, obviously first person feel me to go to post-secondary school and and work at getting a doctorate in the law and move on from there. And so I wanted something different for my life and what the generational output was pushing. So I didn’t come from a lot of that grounding in business. It was it was it was first hustle for wanting something way different. That’s where it came from.

So on this journey. Right. Is there anything that you would want to go back and change if you could change it?

Yeah, you know, there were a lot of hits to character and integrity because I would have put success in front of certain guardrails and I wasn’t walking with the Lord at that time. And and so I would have looked back at parts of my past and see the brokenness of things I did for success. Not all of that was awful, but some of it was what brought some of those issues into my marriage. What brought those issues into my now?

I think the consequences of your decisions follow. You’ve got to deal with them. And so I’m thankful to have continually work on those and reconcile or deal with them. But the reality is early on I because I put success is the thing I wanted the most. I was willing to cave on things that maybe were other people’s non-negotiable, that weren’t mine.

Oh, so I mean, part of what you just said and what you said a few minutes ago as far as routines. Right. And you talking about family life, how do you currently juggle your family life with your work life?

I’ll steal from the office every second I can for my family. I don’t actually believe in the concept of balance. I believe in priority and perspective. I think you’ve got to put priority to the things that require perspective. And there are times where I’m hammered inside our work environment and there’s necessary things. And I would look with and use my words with my family and say, I need to be here doing this. And there are times where, like, I just won’t miss my kiddos volleyball game because I feel like I have to work.

I’ll just go to work later. And so I will work the fabric of work into my life. And my core life is my wife and kids. Now, that wasn’t always true. I have plenty of times I can look back where Dad will show me a picture or stuff’s going on. We just had one the other day where I was seeing a picture of a little Jacob, our third born, and I was like, Hey, was I there?

Now you can’t make this stuff up. So we’re watching family movies and the picture that’s the picture is now being played out in a video that we’re watching. And there I am in the background while they’re all singing birthday song to Jacob and I’m on the phone working on a business deal. And so I’ve learned through a really hard story and some other stuff where I’ve had to face that. And like I was putting my love of work and love of accomplishment ahead of my beloved and I to get right with that.

And I have and I continue to deal with it. I love businessman. He’s just built me with some traits that I love it. I love the hustle of it. I don’t love the hustle for my work as hard as you can. But I love the hustle of like accomplishing making an offer work and watching revenue come in and helping people out of a job. And I love it. I don’t ever come to work like work sucks. I’m I come to work like me and I’d rather lie in bed because I don’t feel good about myself, but I don’t really ever feel like that about work itself as a component.

But I’ve had to learn how to get in, see seasons of life through career lenses and perspective has helped me with that. And prioritizing that has been such a blessing in my life. Oh.

Oh so. What are your morning routines, your morning habits?

I block out the morning for myself, I even block it against my wife and kiddos. So morning is for me. And, you know, it’s filled with meditation, like meant for me meditating on the word. Others might meditate on something else. Exercise when I’m doing that. That’s great. Quiet time, which is like maybe go for a walk or spend some time in nature, like thinking, you know, one of my favorite mentors from past is Henry Ford, who said critical thinking is hard to do, which is why few people do it.

And so I’ve learned for me that getting rid of some noise so I can think and write and think about things. And that’s one of the things I do for my family, for myself, for my organizations. And so I do that. Those are my mornings. And I block by mornings real hard for at least three hours of that morning before I let myself get connected into the Matrix.

So what? I usually wake up pre seven o’clock and now if I had pushed, I believe, in eight hours of sleep, I would have loved to have known this sooner. My career I’ve learned eight hours earlier I was like, lucky if I got like six and whatever and going all over the place awful. Treated my body and mind like crap. Well, I believe it ain’t so bad. Is that later that evening before, because I’m watching the Cleveland Browns get mercifully killed by whatever, that I’ll just have to accept the pain and then you’ll find a way to maybe start my mourning later.

But since it’s my morning that I be I’m not crunched against the Matrix. I’m usually rarely dealing with someone else. But I’ll fight for a and so that looks like go to bed before eleven and wake up before seven.

Nice. So on this journey of this podcast, I mean I always ask that question in my morning routines and I’ve always find out that either people are reading books or they’re meditating or they’re working out. And because I realized that a lot of people that are successful like you are, they write books or they read books. So because of that, I created a book club and I wanted you to make a recommendation. I mean, obviously, you got your books.

What books helped you on your journey and what books are you currently reading right now?

Yeah, I love that. Good job. I used to have a book club and I think they’re great. Good for you for doing that. So I’m a voracious reader. I love to read now for me how to be real. You want to read the best books business book on the planet? Read The Book of Proverbs is the best business book I know now. I read the Bible every day and it helps me in business better than any book I’ve ever read.

But for me, I follow Christ. And so for me, I see and hear some of the struggles and mysteries that go along with that. They may not be someone else’s journey, but I also think of books in seasons like some of my recommended book, but it’s not a season of it. So if you’re in a season where, like, you’re developing a leadership that we should talk to you about leadership books, if you’re like early on trying to figure out marketing or trying to figure out yourself.

So I have core books and categories. So when you’re working on yourself, I think Victor Frankel’s man’s search for meaning is like one of those books that I’ve not only read once, I think I’ve read like five or six times for me. I’ve read C.S. Lewis Screwtape Letters because it helps me deal with the concept of mediocrity. I absolutely love books in those categories. Right. So, you know, breakthrough advertising. Eugene Schwartz, I think Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog speaks to later leadership, but there’s like big enterprise level.

So to me, I would encourage people to look at your book club and understand what season they’re in and try not to absorb everything, try to absorb within the season you’re in.

Yeah, I think that that’s that’s great insight. Great advice. It’s going to mean to your point, somebody could be an executive CEO that’s retiring and when to start to become an entrepreneur, which is essentially two different things, if you think about it. So on that journey, you have to present them with that material that they need, that kind of help them get to the next level. So I definitely that’s what I did.

I read this book Half Time, right, by Bob Mueller, which talked about we spend the first half of our life trying to gain success. We spend a second half our life trying to be significant. And I really woke me up to this. I’m in that stage. I’m the older guy. Right? So I’m not like I’m like the king really turning sage in most of the rooms I’m in, including the environment where I help people. So I’m really working on legacy.

So stuff I’m reading now is about like leadership development, like always be learning for me, but always be like equipping the people around me. So mine’s going to look like slow to speak, quick to listen to stuff and not necessarily tactical. I love tactical stuff, but I’ve learned to reread the books as opposed to continually finding new ones.

Oh yeah, I definitely appreciate that. So what do you see yourself in 20 years from now?

Hopefully alive now. Yeah, you know, each day I’m passing time, I’ve I’ve learned that I get paid for my mind, not my physical hands, not my looks. So I get paid for my mind. And I’m thankful I said I’d have a career. I get paid for my mind. I see us. I think Deb and I will continually actively invest in businesses. They’ll sell, some will sell sell. Some will stay within our portfolio.

I see us doing more of that. I see it to the point where I’ve built businesses that I don’t actually have to show up to work every day I want to. So I’m thankful for the young age. I have that now, so I see more of that, actually.

Oh, definitely. I’m saying it’s is a hell of inspiring as well, too, because, I mean, there’s a lot of people out there that may hear your story and you just spark that light that they needed to continue in and 20 years from now to be knocking on your door saying thank you. So, I mean, yeah, definitely. So going into, like, your final words of wisdom, right. If I am 30 years old and I’m listening to you and I’m hearing all this stuff and I see your energy level and I’m like, dude, like, I love this guy.

I want to follow his footsteps. What words of insight would you give to me, you know?

I so early on caught on to a word professional being a professional. I loved that word. I embraced it going through law school and then passing the bar. In my law practice, the concept of being a craftsman is because everything is so immediate, it’s kind of lost on people now. And I’d say that if we could spend time in a stage where whatever stage developing, being a craftsman in something, no matter what that something is, and we can embrace learning how to be a professional as a craftsman, I think you’ll enjoy what you’re doing, take an interest, take something in lines up with your traits and your interests and your desires and go put work into it.

Don’t go chase something. I think it’s a deception on the world right now about passion. You bring passion into things over time. You develop a passion to something. It doesn’t exist by itself. So we, like people, are chasing an elusive thing that doesn’t exist. That’s kind of something internal. And people like venerability, passionate guy like, yeah, I bring it into something I might over time feel more passionate about what it is we’re doing, but didn’t start out that way.

I developed the craftsmanship and I keep working at it. And over time, gosh darn it, it looks like expertize now.

Oh definitely. Definitely, definitely. Appreciate that. So, you know, another insightful thing that you can drop it off. I mean, what, what software do you currently use that you would not be able to do what you do without?

Well, for sure, our company uses, you know, general ledger software, we also built a thing called your back office. The company uses our fintech for me, I’ll be honest with you, because I I’m mobile and where I can do my work. I don’t know what I would do without the mobile device. But honestly, you’re also on one eye. You zoom our company has been using it. We we believe in a hybrid model. We have a corporate office, but we also have our homies.

Two thirds of our team live in other parts of the country. And so anything that requires video, I couldn’t imagine now wanting to do business without Google Drive or video. And those two things have are huge for the flexibility for me to be able to do work from anywhere.

Right. So how could people find you? I mean, like Facebook, Instagram, your website.

Yeah, I’m very sure anything beneficial? I come at Vinnie Fisher, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Vinnie Fisher, the Anthony Fisher, you can also find us a fully accountable dot com connect where we have the best way to do that is through the gift page we’re giving you of all the stuff. Take advantage of those resources even if you’re not wanting to outsource the function of your back office. We have a lot of resources there for you. They’re going to help you massively win at maturing your business.

And so go get that in the show notes. And that’s a great way to find us and find out more about us. Right.

Right. So going into the bonus room right here, if you could be a superhero, who would it be and why?

Spider-Man and Spidey, right. I got kind of I’m not aloof kind of character who gets caught in situations and has to kind of scramble his way out of it. I resonate with the ideas is I like the youthfulness and the kindness of his heart and how he just cares. And at the same time, he wants to fight for good, but gets himself caught a whole bunch of his own issues and has a bunch of his own character traits that lead him into situations that aren’t so good all the time and just wants to be loved.

Right. I’m Spidey and all the scenarios. And so that’s that’s my that’s my character.

Oh, nice. So if you could spend 24 hours with anyone dead or alive, uninterrupted for those 24 hours, who would it be and why?

You know, I I’ve been asked this question some times, hands down. No one, if I could spend time with Jesus like that would be an I do now and I believe that. But I actually the physical aspect of him sitting there where I could maybe have that, but quite honestly, I believe I do that now. So if I add a layer on top of that, quite honestly, because of innovation and changing, I would absolutely love to spend a day with Henry Ford.

I would love to see the pressure that he had because he believed in a lean organization. He believed in some of the things I inherently believe in and how to run something. So I would have loved to have seen him face the social pressures of changing stuff where people were resistant to change and how he ultimately built into the organization of people who were running stuff while still struggling with all the flaws of a husband and man that he was.

It’s definitely something to think about. I mean, it’s Henry Ford is one of those people that, you know, I think people know who he is, but they really don’t know what he really achieved when you really stop and think about his legacy. I don’t think we would be where we are with Elon Musk, for example, would probably be as far along as he is right now if it wasn’t for Ford to begin with. And if you think of those titans that he ran around with, whether in competition or at the time, the Industrial Revolution titans some of those wonderful, unique characters in the history of our American footprint, there’s a bunch there in business enterprise, you know, and then also, like I just recently started to kind of fall a little bit in love with Abraham Lincoln.

The guy was ridiculously principled, his his level for justice and his character traits. I’m just now investigating more about him, to be honest with you.

So this is coming down to like the end of the podcast when obviously we had a lot of conversation and then we talked about a lot of different topics on that journey. Maybe you had some questions that you want to ask me. So the microphone is yours.

You know, we have a unique time going on in our culture right now. Right. We’re being asked as leaders to have all the right answers. And one of the things that’s been robbed of us is routine. So how are you dealing with, like, being able to lead the people that are around you? But like, every day there’s work because we’re getting dictated to routine. We have to kind of make it up as we go. And that’s been quite hard for me.

How are you dealing with that?

I keep kind of like in a sense, I keep creating new principles, so prime example, the book club was an additional thing for me to read. I was reading already, but now with a system of me reading and I’m reading what other people. And now I’m holding myself accountable and holding other people accountable through reading 52 books in one book per week for a year. So creating things like that as podcasts is another way for me to kind of stay on a regimen.

I know every single week I have an audience that’s going to be dedicated to see an episode. So I have to make sure every week there’s a schedule to hit that deadline. So I’m taking like little pieces of the puzzle and I’m making a breadcrumb trail.

I love that. You know, I tell a story about a character in Scripture, Nehemiah, and he was he had to build the entire wall around Jerusalem and he encouraged his men just to worry about the wall that was in each of them and they built in 54 days. And so I when I love what you just said, is just worry about the bricks right in front of you. The other ones are figure themselves out. And I love that.

How do you stay focused on all that?

For me, it is the end result, it’s kind of like if I say I’m going to do something one, I’m going to commit to doing it. I want to see it get completed, much like what you said earlier, like you like to try things right. But I like to try things, but I want to you know, I just want to try and then half assed, I want to try it at least completed enough short ugly with it to kind of see what it’s going to do.

So whatever I start, I’m going to finish it and put it out into the world, see what happens. If it fails, then great. I’ve learned something from it that I would want in the next.

Awesome. So how do you how do you figure out how to break away from from the development of stuff things and investing time back in your crew?

So with me, with that one is like my crew is kind of diversified, like I got people in the US and I got people overseas as well. So a lot of times everybody is remote. Yeah. So have an opportunity to speak to everybody at the same time, but not really. What my system is about is more so giving people ownership of their task. So if I say, hey, if your task is this and this is a time frame to do it, if you need my help, contact me.

If you don’t need anything from me, do you know what you need to work on? And then at the end of the week or the end of the day, whatever the time frame was, then we’ll touch bases. But I’m not really a to back kind of leader. Yeah, I’m kind of like, you know what your task is and I expect it to get done. You expect to get done because you have ownership of it and then collectively we will grow something together if everybody does what they need to do.

My last question is, how do you have fun in it?

I love it. I mean, it’s it’s funny because like my son, he was raised in this environment, so now he’s about to be 15. And since he was like three years old, he was at meetings and conferences and seminars, always there with me. And so now he’s at the teenage age was kind of like dad, but not dad. And then recently was kind of like it made my day because he reached out to me. And I’ve been telling him for the past six years, do you like your brain in the way you’re structured like you should be in investment, you should be in stocks, just play with them.

It’s like a video game. It’s online. And finally came to me and he was like, OK, I’m ready to convert my bank account into a regular bank on I want to fund account. And I’m sitting there like I’m looking for the cameras. I thought it was a joke and it come to fruition. Now he wants to he started his little Robinhood account and he wants to fund the account and he’s going to start making investments. And I was like, holy shit, it actually happened.

I love to see that. That is thanks for sharing. I love watching the young adults around me. I start to find some identity and thrive in it.

Yeah, definitely. Well, really, I definitely appreciate your time. I think this was like a fast paced, hard hitting episode. I think you dropped a lot of nuggets, a lot of diamonds. And I definitely think our audience would definitely want to shake your hand if they ever get opportunity to meet you along with myself as well. And we look forward to to getting our hands on your books. And again, thank you very much.

You know, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Pleasure. That’s. Over and out.