EPISODE 144 INTERVIEW WITH JASON SKEESICK: HAVING THE PATIENCE TO PLAY THE LONG GAME IN YOUR BUSINESS

CYB

EPISODE 144 INTERVIEW WITH JASON SKEESICK: HAVING THE PATIENCE TO PLAY THE LONG GAME IN YOUR BUSINESS

having the patience to play the long game in your business

If you have participated in athletics like my guest Jason Skeesick and I both have, you are used to experiencing failure day after day. Because sports take effort and constant practice to master, athletes become well-versed in being graded by the reality of their abilities, which is a useful skill when playing the long game that is building a business as an entrepreneur. Join us on this episode as we discuss how our athletic backgrounds have served us as entrepreneurs, and how we both use these experiences to coach other business owners to create six and seven-figure businesses. Jason Skeesick of Spear and Clover is a US Army veteran, business coach, podcaster, entrepreneur, and Dynasty Builder. 

Resources

Transcript

Erin Marcus  

Hi! I’m Erin Marcus, former corporate executive turned entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Conquer Your Business. Welcome to the Ready Yet?! Podcast. We’re excited to bring you more than a hundred episodes of interviews and insights designed to help entrepreneurs get the financial and emotional freedom they need in order to build a business and a life they’re proud of.  

All right. Welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet?! Podcast. I’m excited for today’s guest, because we can’t figure out what we want to talk about because we want to talk about everything. So, Jason Skeesick and I, we met just a couple weeks ago through an online program, which is amazing. I’m loving that because I’m meeting the best people, and surprising like just how much we have in common, and what the threads are. 

So, before we dive into the random thought generator of a conversation that we’ll probably end up with, why don’t you tell people a little bit more formally first to who you are and what you do.

 

Jason Skeesick  

So, thank you so much, first of all, for sharing your time, and as well as your audience with me today. I’m so excited to have this conversation. Not surprisingly, because I’m so excited about how much we have in common. I’ll talk about that in a little bit. 

So, my name is Jason Skeesick. I’m a US Army veteran. I spent four years in the army. When I got out of the army, I did two things. I went to school for finance and became like a financial analyst. And then I also started a CrossFit gym on the fourth floor of a dusty old warehouse in Chicago. And then through the course of time realized that my true calling was to take those technical skills that I had learned for capital B business, and apply them to this tribe, in this community of like-minded individuals that I loved so dearly. 

As soon as I did, we had terrific results. Very quickly after that, I was asked by one of my mentors to start helping mentor other entrepreneurs in the space, started a business for mentoring other gym owners, ended up selling both the gym and that business when I moved to where I live now, which is in Indiana Dunes National Park. 

Now, I spend my days podcasting with great folks like you. I have a mastermind for other entrepreneurs that also have a ton in common with both of us. I do a course called Dynasty to find that helps people to build the foundations and the frameworks in their business they need to make big changes in the world. So that’s my long-winded way of saying hello. But I am excited to be here, Erin.

 

Erin Marcus  

Awesome. I forgot about the financial services because it’s not nearly as exciting as being in the gym. So, my background as well, financial services. So, awesome. So, let’s dive into it. 

My first question is always like origin story. Because there’s a really big difference, especially in the military. I’ve experienced not being in the military by any stretch, but working with former military in my corporate job, and then when I owned a franchise, and it’s interesting to me what skills they learned that turn into great entrepreneurs, and what skills they learned that don’t make them great entrepreneurs. I mean, that’s a big jump.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah, I agree. What I would say is, for starters, the military is really excellent at one main thing, and that is getting a very broad selection of talent capable to achieve what is close to perfection and execution in a broad number of jobs. If you don’t know this, the Army is not just full of infantry guys shooting guns. It’s not just full of tankers or people shooting missiles. There’s cooks, there’s lawyers, there’s a whole economy, exactly. You could start a city. 

In fact, before there were contractors and outside government employees, that’s what a base was in America, right? You go to Fort Hood, and it’s army people running the economy, the store, everything. And so, the beauty of that is, if you think of two slippery slopes, and standing along the roof, this is where some people go on one side, and some people go on the other. There are some folks who come into the military, they’re exposed to the standard operating procedures and the training. These are terms in corporate world now because of the military, right? They’re exposed to that. And because of that, they shut off. And so, they just execute, and they sort of slide down the one side of that slippery slope towards just execution. And they become subject matter experts in some cases, but they maybe allow themselves to be pushed through the system, and just take action in that way. By the way, no disparaging to them. 

 

Erin Marcus  

No absolutely not. We need all sides to make everything work.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Absolutely. And so, the other side of that is folks who notice, ‘Wow, this is really amazing what we’re capable of here. This is so cool.’ This is why people are so excited to work together on these types of teams. In fact, my entire career since the military has been trying to recreate some semblance of the execution that we had in the teams that I was on was in the military. And so, yeah, because of my willingness to pay attention, at some points to the SOPs and the training and the structure and the camaraderie and the feedback loops that were in place, maybe not immediately but when I was ready as an entrepreneur, it dramatically improved our ability to field a consistent team of experts.

 

Erin Marcus  

Absolutely. It’s similar out of corporate, right? The jump from corporate to entrepreneur has the same types of pitfalls and benefits. If you pull out, I know, don’t do it all yourself, you need experts to do their thing. There’s a lot of delegation. There’s a lot of work ethic that comes out of corporate that serves you well as an entrepreneur. And then there’s other sides where you think there’s only one way to do it that can kind of stifle your creativity and your growth.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah, I think there’s two types of people that succeed very well in corporate that I can tell having a limited experience in corporate but knowing a lot of successful folks. There’s the one type, who learns that system. They learn how to be a great, I don’t know, Sony employee and work their way through the ranks and pull the little levers and check the boxes and, and ascend. The other person is the person who essentially is an entrepreneur working for somebody else. They’re coming up with great ideas. They’re going by the rules, but they’re also breaking those rules when the time is right. And they can make a big impact. And they’re usually patted on the back for it and applauded, right? 

Of those two people, obviously, the second one has a shot at being a great entrepreneur, because they’ve been learning with training wheels on, but it hasn’t stopped them from moving the ball forward. It hasn’t stopped them from expanding the bubble in their role in front of them. And so, you’re right, if you have that type of mentality in your corporate gig, it only stands to reason that unfettered by the albatross of the corporation that you will eventually be able to rise above.

 

Erin Marcus  

I’ll give you a third option because that second version was me. Looking back, I was truly allowed to be an entrepreneur within my corporate job, which is why I stayed there, which is why I loved it. But what I found the third version I’ll give you is I took a lot of great things from there, a lot of great knowledge, I got amazing, amazing experiences. However, once the bumpers were out of the gutters, it’s gotten a little loose. What I had to learn about myself, and I set my entire business up this way, if not my life, I need a destination at all times. I need a destination at all times. So, my entire marketing plan is a series of destinations. Because if I don’t have a destination, I’m like a balloon without a string. I just kind of start floating all over the place. And corporate gave me the string. And it was a little bit of a hard lesson learned to go out and create that string for myself, once I was out on my own.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah, I think that’s a testament to you, though. Because usually, entrepreneurship happens from one or two sides. Side one is I want to be an entrepreneur so I have this super focused structure. And then I find a mission. And then the other is my mission is so important. I have to figure out how to be an entrepreneur. And typically, what you’re describing sort of is the second one. And typically, those are more my favorite entrepreneurs, because they’re in it for the love of the game. They just had to learn the game because they loved it so much. Right? And definitely you give off that vibe, that’s for sure. 

I think it’s funny, because I’m not sure which one of those ones I am. But I definitely have a lot of love for the game. But I also feel like if you asked me when I was in high school or in the army, I probably would have said that I’d be an entrepreneur at some point. 

 

Erin Marcus  

I would not have said that, because I didn’t know what it was. My dad was a Chicago police and my mom was a hairdresser and then became a leasing agent where she was leasing apartments and buildings.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Doesn’t that sound like every Chicago family you’ve ever met? 

 

Erin Marcus  

Just try to know this, because you want to talk about times changing. I was 13 years old, with my 12-year-old best friend and my 11-year-old brother in tow, and we would take the TUI bus to the Howard Owl and take the red line down by ourselves all the time and go downtown. You’d get arrested for letting your kids do that. 

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah. In Des Plaines, we used to hang out in the trailer park behind our elementary school. Just untold crimes everywhere. I have no idea what’s going on in there. Thankfully, I remained innocent at that time but holy crap. I drove by there because I was going to O’Hare and I was like a couple hours early. And the place I was parking was near where I used to live. And it was just so funny to drive through that and go what? It’s still there. What in the world? If anything, it’s cleaned up. Right?

 

Erin Marcus  

My brother and I talk all the time about how did we survive our childhood? Like my mother would come home from work and we would play cops and robbers and jail was our front porch. And so, she would come home and kids some she knew, some she didn’t know would be tied to the railing with jump ropes because they were in jail. How did we do this? Right? 

Okay. So, one of the things we were talking about before that I rely on for myself, and I’d love to hear your impression of the parallels, is this background in athletics and how it helps and/or hurts you as an entrepreneur. One of the things that I say has helped me is the backgrounds in powerlifting, which is just weird. And I think that’s number one helped me do things that people don’t expect because I’m a five-feet tall. I weighed 98 pounds when I started powerlifting in the late 80s. So, there were no girls in the gym. It was very odd. So, I was very used to being odd man out, and not letting it, you know, who’s this crazy girl over here? What the hell does she think she’s trying to do? But also, working a plan. And this idea that we were talking about that, when you’re talking about any kind of exercise, whether it’s to support a sport, or in and of itself, the sport, the concept of going to failure and that failure is a goal and not a problem and how I rely on that now. I don’t even want to say that I’m aware of it. I actually rely on that default.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah. So, for starters, I agree with that. We talked about that briefly. I agree that if you are trying to be excellent at something, you’re going to bump up against the limits of your ability. And the more often you’re comfortable doing that, the more comfortable you can get doing that regularly, the more successful you have an opportunity to be. But I think there’s more than that there. I think for starters, yes, it’s being comfortable pursuing something. But it’s also like, being accustomed to be graded by reality. Right? I think that so many people go through life. You hear this in so many forms colloquially, right? Like you hear people say like, “When’s the last time you got punched in the face?” Like everybody should be punched in the face once in their life. And what they really mean by that isn’t necessarily that everybody should be punched in the face. I don’t necessarily even disagree with that. But what I think they’re really saying is like, “Hey, you need to understand that the things you put out into the world have consequences that are grounded in reality.” And so, sport and powerlifting and violin, these things are truth, right? This is why I love Jujitsu. This is why I love powerlifting and CrossFit, this is why I love podcasting, because it’s rooted not in just if this was just a solo podcast that I was doing, or you were doing and recorded separately, it would be nonsense. It’d be gobbledygook. Not to say that those things don’t have merit.

 

Erin Marcus  

Right. I use those more for training.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Sure. They’re also sort of a slightly different medium. But I guess what I’m referring to is like, if I know that you were a competitive softball player or baseball player or Taekwondo practitioner, or violinist or linguist, I know that you have had so many failures in order to get to that point that I don’t have to worry about coddling you or some prolonged ramp up period, or the fact that you may not understand how to tie many hours of preparation leading to one positive outcome. Right? So, there’s this delayed gratification thing there as well. And this is why even my program, Dynasty Defined, is based on a metaphor from sports, because dynasties in business are boring, Erin, but dynasties in sport are super exciting.

 

Erin Marcus  

Exciting, yes. It’s an issue for me. Boring is an issue for me, which is why I cannot be in charge of things that have to happen routinely.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah, and that’s not uncommon for visionaries. I mean, that’s in creatives, right? But that’s why I named it the way that I did because I actually go into float. Once a month, I go into a float tank, and I went into a float tank the month before I was getting ready to launch this program, which I feel like I’m plugging but I’m not intentionally plugging. 

I was like, I know what I want to sell. I want to sell the things I really care about. And the reason why you and I get along today, by the way, part of that is core values. I guarantee you we have core value match, which is why there’s so many areas that we found in these conversations that we align on, right? But either way, I want to sell these things, these core values, these missions, things like roles and responsibilities and frameworks to scale your business. And I’m already asleep. By the way, if you’re in your car, I’m so sorry. What is that reflection in something a little sexier is well, it’s the New Zealand All Blacks or the New England Patriots or the LA Lakers and these dynasties that are built not on the backs of one or two players or a certain coach or a playbook, but they’re built off of like the strong foundation and ethics that then scale upward for many, many years. So, I think that’s where, I don’t know how we got here exactly, but it’s so important that we–I don’t know.

 

Erin Marcus  

Coming out of athletics leads to understanding that. Is the other thing coming out of violent or learning something that takes effort into mastery? 

 

Jason Skeesick

Yes. 

 

Erin Marcus

Because I think one of the hardest things right now, especially with the way that our society works in general, is the ability to have patience and play a long game in a world of instant gratification and failure being just completely one, poo pooed but two, not taught as okay. Like, avoided at all costs, because they don’t have coping mechanisms. One of the things you said that really stuck out for me was the ability to be direct, instantaneous feedback, no holds barred feedback, and not have it mean anything more than, ‘Hey, just tweak that. Hey, just tweak that.’

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah, that’s hard for people. I had a really great employee for years. One of the things that she struggled with was candor. She was good at candor, but it was hard for people to hear. I have not struggled with that. And I do think there is a gender component, probably, that we were struggling with. The thing that I could maybe identify and put my finger on was I think people are willing to tolerate candor. Not in text, by the way. If you know this about yourself, do not text. Emails are off bounds, like send voice messages, send videos. 

 

Erin Marcus  

A smiley emoji is not enough to make up for a real practice. 

 

Jason Skeesick  

The one key difference between that person in me was I’m a walking exclamation point. I’m a walking smiley face. And so, because of that, there’s less often a misunderstanding that, ‘Hey, man, I just want to see you succeed.’ And it is interesting. 

 

Erin Marcus  

It goes back to intention. I think one of the things that I love about this conversation, is you have a program, you have a business. It’s about growing businesses. It’s about personal development. And there’s nothing that we’ve been talking about that is just do this one thing, this one tactic. Like this, what we’re talking about is how you grow a business. These character traits, these values, these abilities is what has to be at the foundation of the success, or all the tactics in the world don’t matter.

 

Jason Skeesick  

I agree. I would even take that ball a little further and say that anyone who’s selling you answers is typically limited in what they can do for you. I don’t sell answers. You don’t seem to sell answers either. It’s all questions. 

 

Erin Marcus  

It’s all questions. I’ve been screaming from the rooftops. I do different things in my business, and there’s calls to action at them. And what I don’t do during those calls to action in my marketing is ‘Come listen to this one pitch to buy this one thing,’ because I don’t know anything about you. I can’t tell you that that’s the right thing for you. Because I don’t know enough about you from me talking at you for 45 minutes. It’s questions. It is all, all questions, and then a suggestion based on my interpretation of your answers to get your feedback on it. 

Love what you’re learning here and interested in more? Check out conqueryourbusiness.com to get immediate access to all sorts of additional resources and stay updated on our upcoming training events. 

 

Jason Skeesick  

For those listening at home, we’re talking about the Socratic method. We’re talking about Socrates. We’re talking about this method of teaching people that requires asking questions. And I had a really interesting question asked to me yesterday, which was basically, how do you know how to ask the right questions? And the answer is 10 years from now, that Jason is going to laugh at this Jason. So, take it with a grain of salt. But what I will say is you have to know so much about the type of person and the experience that they’re going through before you can ever ask them the right questions. 

But ultimately, even if you know, if you’re given the choice, if you’re looking at a person, let’s say you were sitting across from me and you knew you could solve my problem, you have two choices, you can tell me how to solve my problem or you can ask me the series of questions that will lead me to coming up with the solution on my own. And we’ve just seen this borne out time and time again, that the person who feels as if they’ve had at least a hand in the solution, but more importantly, actually guided the recipe as it went together, those folks are far more likely to not only take action, but incorporate those habits or those skills or those things that they’ve learned. And so, I can tell you as someone who has been coaching people in one form or another for many years, telling you is way less valuable than asking you to show yourself.

 

Erin Marcus  

Well, here’s the thing, if all I needed was someone to tell me, I could buy a book. Books are 7.99. We’d all be millionaires if that’s all it really took.

 

Jason Skeesick  

I think they’re paying you to take a library card at this point.

 

Erin Marcus  

I mean, to me, when you say, how do you know what to ask? The truth is it comes down to, am I honestly curious or do I care about the person? That’s how you know.

 

Jason Skeesick  

This is your expertise, not mine. But isn’t this sort of very connected to what marketing is and its foundations, right? So, I assume the person listening to this now is here to hear about marketing, which is not my area of expertise. But what I will say, and I think you’re very good at this, it is about removing those things that don’t matter and revealing some truth that we all know and maybe have not yet articulated as well as maybe you can help people to do.

 

Erin Marcus  

I’ve been talking about this lately, because people ask why do you love marketing so much? Why do you love marketing so much? And to me, marketing creates aha moments. Marketing done right offers somebody a different way of thinking than what they had before. It opens their mind just a little bit to consider something might be possible. And that’s marketing. And that, to me is why marketing of service, being of service in your approach to your marketing, education-based marketing, give it all away for free knowing that it’s the interaction that really makes a difference. And the right people will step forward to go further with you. It just makes life so much easier, because I’m not chasing anybody.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah, it feels like not just me, but every really successful person that I know, they understand that thing you just said at a higher and higher and higher level. Anytime you’re in development of yourself, you’re always looking for and eradicating limiting beliefs. And one of the ones that I work really hard against is like this scarcity mindset of I have to keep it behind some wall or behind something. And what I’ve found personally, but also I could name people that are household names that give it away, you know what I mean? It’s like, yeah, I think for the most part, because marketing, in some sense, is giving the viewer or the person or the user of this thing, the feeling as if they are the thing, right? 

So, I’ll give you an example of that. One day, my friend, Taylor, who’s also a marketer, was staying at my house and we were walking through the dunes here. And so, we have it documented. We have pictures, it was great. Walking with the dogs. We’re walking through the sand dunes. We’re walking along the beach. We got a log on our shoulder. We got packs on our back. We did like 10, 12 miles. At the end of the day, we’re like watching the sunset over the skyline of Chicago. It’s the most beautiful day, and we’re just soaking wet and dirty, and the dogs are just exhausted and panting. And I’m like this photo is what marketing as its best is trying to give you that experience for North Face or go rock or no bowl or something without having to like walk through the woods for eight hours or whatever we did that day.

 

Erin Marcus  

So, my dad lives in Michigan. And I remember when he first moved there, we’ll see if you also had this experience when you first moved there. And the sunset in Michigan is different than the sunset in Chicago, right? It’s up against the Chicago skyline. It’s over the lake. It’s absolutely exquisite. So, he walked from his house through the little strip of trees to the shore to watch the sunset, which was absolutely amazing. But you know what happens when the sun sets? 

 

Jason Skeesick

What?

 

Erin Marcus

It’s really dark. 

 

Jason Skeesick 

And he couldn’t get home? 

 

Erin Marcus

Now, he has to plan that route back. It’s a little unexpected how dark that gets real fast. When you’re used to living in Chicago where it never actually gets dark.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah, we definitely have some darkness here. And I do. The National Park is right here. That’s the trail that goes down to the lake. So, yeah, I have that experience as well, for sure. 

 

Erin Marcus  

Awesome. So, let’s shorten people’s learning curves. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I call it just don’t do what I did and you’ll be better off, right? Let’s just do it that way. What is something that you’ve done, tried, failed miserably? Usually, when I ask successful people this question, they start laughing because they’re like, “Oh, where do you want me to start?” But how can we shorten someone’s learning curve like, ‘Just don’t do it the way I did it, you’ll be better off.’

 

Jason Skeesick  

More is not more. You’re probably doing everything you need to do or you probably know the thing that will change your business and you’re just purposely avoiding it. So, many people start new lines of business or start new businesses, because the ones that they left are like partially complete and they get bored or they move on. Basically, one thing is how you do everything. And so, now, my business is very good and efficient. So, now, I look at other areas like, “Why does my lawn look like that? What am I doing? What is it about my system that’s like ignoring this part?” And so, if you’re one of those people who’s like able to make it happen in one area of your life or business, but for some reason, it requires you to take blood from the other chambers of the heart, like I would highly recommend that you reconsider that before you try and go bigger, because there are very, very, very successful people that do only one thing. And there are some very, very successful people that do more than one thing. 

 

Erin Marcus

But they didn’t start them all at once. 

 

Jason Skeesick

They didn’t start them all at once, and I would argue too. I just had this conversation yesterday with somebody, unbelievable kid. This guy’s 24 years old. He’s got a $15 million business. They’re going to do $30 million this year. And the thing I was explaining to him was, he can do anything. But right now, he’s an expert at the task. If he can become an expert at scaling a team, well, yeah, well, then the thing you’re good at is, I think I would argue Elon Musk’s ability is largely at delegation and scaling different teams and big ideas. It’s not specifically solar, or specifically electric cars. I’m certain, again, anybody talking about Elon Musk knows that they’re wrong, by definition, but you know what I’m saying? If you think you’re ready to move on, ask yourself, ‘Is there somebody bigger than me doing this thing that I already do?’ And if there is, then you haven’t probably gotten all the juice out of the fruit yet.

 

Erin Marcus  

Absolutely. The less is more concept. And I think it’s because we’re all very good at starting, and very few people are good at maintaining and/or finishing.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah, I agree. And I think you have two choices on how to do that well. The first would be to have a partner or a CFO, or some counter to you. They call this an implementer or an integrator, rather. Implementor is something else. An integrator is the EOS term for it. So, you can do that. You can have that backstop. I’ve been fortunate to have that in the past. I don’t currently. And so, in my setting now, this is like my seventh business. What I do is I just have structures in place where it’s like the bumpers you talked about earlier. It’s the bumpers where I just go like, “Well, as long as my numbers are here. And as long as my behavior is there. And as long as the meetings are happening, and the progress is moving forward at the rate we expect,’ once Jason’s bored, and like things are good, well, now you can shift attention to something else. But everything has to happen in such a way that I could get hit by a truck tomorrow and the business would carry forward. 

Now, whether or not in businesses like ours that’s easily executable, where like your or your business at the moment, I’m my business at the moment, but there will come a time, hopefully, where either of us could step away or certainly could count on the people on the team to execute the roles in the way that they need to be done in such a way that the business can continue to grow without you.

 

Erin Marcus  

I think there is an importance in understanding you being bored, me being bored, because that’s a thing. In my StrengthsFinder, my second thing is learner.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Bored people make money.

 

Erin Marcus  

But bored people also blow things up to learn something new. I just like learning the new thing. Once I figured it out, I don’t like to play with it anymore. So, I need the people who can keep it all going. And I’ve also had to learn, like in the beginning, when it’s just hustle, hustle, hustle and make it all happen, your energy is really sucked up, right? And then when you get in your processes, and you get in your flow, all of a sudden you have this energy to spare, don’t screw up your business with it. Go learn something else. Don’t let that become the thing. Because you just happened to have a habit of running yourself into the ground. Go use that newfound extra energy to go learn something entirely new if you have to. 

 

Jason Skeesick  

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off there. But you’re putting out something that’s very, very important to note. And that is at some point, I don’t care who you are, at some point you will become the choke point in your business unless you take steps to remove yourself from it. Now, you have choices on how to do that certainly. You can do it from the very beginning. There’s a case study for Apple Wood Farms where that particular person, I can’t think of his name off top my head, like set the business up where he was the traffic cop, not the tollbooth, right? This is from 4-Hour Workweek, where like if something goes wrong, he comes out and he fixes it. But in general, he’s not the thing that every process goes through, right? Or the other thing, which I did was when I realized that I would be the choke point in the growth of the gym because my focus had gone elsewhere. I sold my equity in the gym down to a percentage where I felt comfortable, letting someone energize it and take ownership of that. I think that those are two of many options that you can pursue. 

But just know, at some point, especially for those of you listening to this, that are wearing all the hats and breaking through all the walls and have the magic between your ears, all that stuff, those folks will at some point become the choke point in their business, and how they got there will keep them there until they put it down and pick something else up.

 

Erin Marcus  

100%. And it’s sooner than you think. It’s sooner than you think. And I say that is usually for a solopreneur, it’s that six-figure mark.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah, it depends on the vehicle. Right? It depends on the scale of that vehicle, and what the contracts are and stuff like that. I’ve met roofers that do just crazy numbers, because it’s a $50,000 purchase that takes one conversation. So, it’s like, it just depends, but in what we typically are doing, yeah, you get into those six figures and you start talking about like media. If you’re leveraging media, like you’re a podcaster or an author, there are some opportunities, and this is good.

 

Erin Marcus  

If you want to move beyond personal brand. And even that, I mean, I started this business in April of 2019 and by November, I had a team member. Like there was no way. I am the problem. Like we know, this. We know.

 

Jason Skeesick  

So, as a marketing company, what did you bring that person on to do? Because usually, when people are like, “Oh, I’m going to bring somebody on.” It’s like, “They’re going to do marketing,” but you’re marketing person.

 

Erin Marcus  

No. They did everything that I can’t do. Every ball I dropped is what they did. They did follow up, they did my calendar, they did email maintenance, all the stuff that is routine where routine doesn’t mean boring. What I used to think was routine meant boring. Now, I learned is routine means making it keep going and I just can’t do it. It’s just me, I can’t do it. So, I know that if you and I wanted to chat and perfect example, if you and I want to chat, and I emailed you and you emailed me back here sometimes at work, there’s a good chance I don’t email you back, because by the time I get to my email, it’s already buried. And now, weeks and weeks and weeks go by, and we eventually connect. But with me out of the way, that’s a 24-hour turnaround to the calendar, boom, gone on the calendar, as long as I’m not the one in charge of it.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah, that’s smart. I agree with that.

 

Erin Marcus  

The regular posting, it’ll happen as long as I’m not the one doing it.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah, I find too, that there are people out there, and I talk about this a lot. Because one of my first mentors told me this. There’s three types of work. There’s work that you can’t do and don’t do that if you can’t. If you can’t do it, don’t do it. There’s work that you can do– 

 

Erin Marcus  

Including my website, I can’t do it, not a thing. 

 

Jason Skeesick  

Well, that’s a good point, though. Or I could spend six months learning how to make a website that will end up being the worst website or I can spend $500 now or whatever. 

 

Erin Marcus  

Then I’m still going to have to pay for someone to clean up my mess.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Right. And then the second type of work is work you can do but it drains you. At the end of the day, you’re just, ‘Ugh, I don’t want to do it anymore.’ The third type of work is work you can do and it seems like no matter how much of it you do, you get energy from it. Well, I’m going to go out on a limb for you. But I can tell you for certain that I get energy from conversations like this, from creativity. 

 

Erin Marcus

Talking to other people. 

 

Jason Skeesick

Yeah, of course. I’m spirit of the puppy, baby. But I can tell you from experience, and I’m sure you can, too, that there are people, I learned this with underwriters, there are people in the world who get energy from order. 

 

Erin Marcus  

My assistant. She’s not scared of people. But she will say to me, “This is too people-y, I’m not going to do it.” You want your ducks in a row, make sure boxes are checked, and nothing gets missed and it’s done right and it’s done on time, that’s her world. Absolutely. All right. You and I could go on forever, so maybe we’ll just have a part two.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah. I’d love to have you on my show as well. 

 

Erin Marcus  

Awesome. And in the meanwhile, what is the best way for people to continue this conversation? Hopefully they got a really good feel for you, how passionate you are, but also how knowledgeable you are. I love how you break things down to make it all easily understandable. One of the things you touched on before and not quite in this way is there’s a lot of people kind of like going back to this idea of a book, there’s a lot of people can tell you what to do, because that’s just a list. But the differentiators, can you break it down to show somebody with their unique skills or unique personality traits, how they can actually do it? And to me that’s a big differentiator.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Yeah, I think just to address that real quick, and thank you that’s an incredible thing for you to say to me. I respect your opinions. That means a lot to me. But what I would say is, there are people who care about saying it the way they want to say it, and doing it the way they want to do it. And then there are people that care about the outcome. And I’ve been both. And the more I get into my career, the more I’m much less worried about me being right how I do it or say it and much more concerned about getting the result that I want. And so, if it were hugs and daisies that got things results, then I give you hugs and daisies. So, if for now, it’s like storytelling and tough love. But listen, if you’re still listening to this, it’s because this has been a fantastic conversation. So, I would ask you to please first, like, subscribe and share Erin’s podcast. This is an awesome vehicle for her. And this is a huge value add for you. If these are anything as good and insightful as the conversation that I’ve experienced today, then I would be here all the time. And then second, if you have any time left and energy left and you’d like to hear more of the stuff that I’m doing, you can check us out at spearandclover.com. There’s tons of free resources for entrepreneurs there, including an entrepreneurs resilience quiz, which you can take for free and it gives you kind of ideas of what the holes in your boat might be, as well as you can have an opportunity to test drive, the Spear and Clover Mastermind which meets every Friday. Other than that, I do have a Spear and Clover Podcast. I’m not hard to find, Erin. So, if folks want to find me, I’m @jasonskeesick or Spear and Clover on kind of everything.

 

Erin Marcus  

Awesome. Thank you so much for your stories, your insights, your energy. This has been awesome.

 

Jason Skeesick  

Thank you for being awesome.

 

Erin Marcus

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Ready Yet?! Podcast. I truly enjoy bringing these stories of success and inspiration to you. Please join us in our mission to empower entrepreneurs to be in charge of their businesses and in charge of their lives by sharing this with anyone you know who would benefit from our tactical and motivating advice, leaving us a review and letting us know if there are any particular topics you would really appreciate hearing about. See you next time.

Spread the word

Erin Marcus

Permission to be you with erin marcus

Erin Marcus is an author, speaker and communications specialist helping organizations to “Conquer the Conversation,” and creating improvement in sales, customer service and team dynamics. To bring Erin to your event or business:

Get In Touch