Empire State of Mind
Empire State of Mind
The Power of Competition in Business with Christopher Enright and Erin K Guyton.
In this episode of the Empire State of Mind podcast, host Matt Williams engages in a lively conversation with guests Christopher Enright and Erin K. Guyton. They dive into the dynamics of competition in business, sharing personal experiences with competitiveness and the importance of it as a driving force for growth. Additionally, they reflect on family retreats, leadership accountability, and how media representations shape our perceptions. With humor and candidness, Matt, Chris, and Erin explore how to balance chaos and structure in both personal and professional lives, while emphasizing the importance of self-accountability and effective communication.
Tune in for personal anecdotes, lessons learned from failures, and strategies to navigate life’s complexities with a focus on growth, family, and leadership.
Contact IEB -
- web: www.iebcoaching.com
- email: support@iebcoaching
- social: @iebcoaching
Contact Matt -
- email: matt@dciabq.com
- IG: @the.matthew.williams
We believe the purpose of owning a business is funding your perfect life. Welcome to the next generation of growth and opportunity in the inspection industry. This is the Empire State of Mind. Empire State of Mind Helping build companies with faster growth, higher profits and more time freedom. Finally, a podcast for the home inspection industry and beyond. This is the Empire State of Mind and this is your host, matt Williams.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Empire State of Mind. On today's episode I have Chris and Aaron. We're here in Tampa at an IEB event. Hey guys, welcome so much. Thank you for being on the show today.
Speaker 3:We were, just as soon as we sat down, I was playing Letterboxd on the New York Times app. Okay, and so we were discussing, like, what's your favorite game on the New York Times app? And like, literally, mine is Letterboxd, because, if I, if I, because I earned the right to play Letterboxd by playing the other, because I do Wargall, and Connections is my favorite. Connections is always, so, it's so damn easy. Now, though, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2:So it's little games, so you know how I got turned on to this, my brother.
Speaker 3:So I got that double concussion a couple years ago. Right, I got that double concussion a couple years ago. The concussion doctor told me certain games to play, like to fix your brain. Yeah, just to help you keep it moving.
Speaker 2:Is there a game that can fix it all?
Speaker 3:It's not going to fix it all. There's no fix in this, but there's definitely improvements that can be made, especially after that. But yeah letterboxes and letterboxes like we were just talking about. It was the craziest thing, because if you don't get the letterboxed, in two words, what are you doing?
Speaker 4:yeah, right, they'll say like you try to get it in four words okay but chris and I said that's not a win immediately.
Speaker 3:We, like we're on the same page about that, which is crazy because I love it my brother will play letterbox. He's the one he. He really got me turned on because he sends me. We text back and forth every day our scores, we share our scores and he does the mini crossword in under a minute every day. And there was a day they did it in like I don't know 23 seconds or something stupid.
Speaker 2:It's just ridiculous, okay so it's the New York Times app. It's the New York Times app and it's all the games.
Speaker 4:It's all word games.
Speaker 3:So you have to use every letter in this box, right? And it says in four words right.
Speaker 2:But when?
Speaker 3:you use the one on this side. You can't use this side again until you bounce back right, so you can't use the same side of the square twice in a row. You can use it as many times as you want, but not in a row. Twice in a row.
Speaker 4:You can do it as many times as you want, but not in a row. You're using your knowledge of words and spatial reasoning at the same time. Yeah, it's fantastic, so all these games are different, but they also can help with Alzheimer's when you're older. Like doing a word is good for your brain.
Speaker 3:This is a neuropathway thing right, okay, right. So when you're trying to change thought patterns in any kind of way, the way you do that is through engaging those neural pathways through stuff like this, and they have abstract things that you can do in all these. So, for instance, my wife, she plays one I don't know what it's called, but it's a color hue match thing.
Speaker 4:It's this big thing. I've seen that one.
Speaker 3:Okay, you know what I'm talking about and it's like all these subtle differences in the colors and you have to move them around and match them so it just flows from one color to the next. Okay, it's super gradual, but it's all mixed up when you start it. Same kind of thing.
Speaker 4:Your wife would know some stuff about this stuff.
Speaker 3:Oh, but it's all mixed up when you start it.
Speaker 2:Same kind of thing your wife would know some stuff about this stuff. Oh right, yeah she's, yeah she's, she's.
Speaker 3:you know Past high school question I have is do they still have comics and the New York Times? I don't know. I yeah, they don't die, they yeah. But the apps for the games, I don't care about.
Speaker 4:The comics, oh yeah, it's as if you're playing the mini crossword with your partner and you finish first. Then you can talk some crap, some smack talking, I mean most of my motivation with this is smack talking.
Speaker 3:The concussion protocol is secondary.
Speaker 4:Secondary to talking shit with my brother Like, oh, you got purple ass, isn't that cute.
Speaker 2:Oh, that is hilarious, so you can share each other's stats, you like?
Speaker 3:yeah, each other's stuff.
Speaker 2:yeah, all right all right, yeah yeah, that sounds like something I'd get into.
Speaker 3:It's, it's I don't know. It makes it like for me and and when I first started it, like I said, it was like it was. I don't know about a year after I hit my head and like holy hell, I was stupid, like I was, I was so and it's. Oh yeah, I was like, so Cheryl was playing it long before I was and I would watch her play it and I was like lost, like that's how slow I was. It messed me up. But yeah, as I've been playing, I was like now I do it just as good as she does. And it's, yeah, I don't know playing. I was like now I do it just as good, as she does, and it's yeah, I don't know, it's fun.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, it's fun, it's fun and it's.
Speaker 3:You know there's worse ways to spend your time.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean it's a little competitive, but it's fun, it's funny and it's good for your brain.
Speaker 3:Right, there you go more things that I can waste time with, and they're good for me, right.
Speaker 2:Stop it. I just waste time on stuff.
Speaker 3:Right yeah absolutely. I mean, I still do a fair amount of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:You got to do a little bit right.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, sometimes I think I do too much. Though what are you competitive with? Oh man, competitive with? Yeah, I get competitive in business, okay.
Speaker 3:I get competitive in business, but with who, though? Other companies? Are there other companies of people you know? Are there home inspection companies in your market, outside, in my own market?
Speaker 2:In my own market I get competitive. There's a couple of other companies in town. I started my business five years ago. I was just you know a nobody like a one man thing starting, but it took off so fast, and so then I was like bigger than all of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, right. So now I'm bigger than all of them, right. And so, um, which was, which was kind of funny because and I don't know if some of my competition might be listening, so I'll be politically correct, I guess, I mean. But but some of them, I know, they were like where'd this guy come from? Like what is going on? Like he's taking my business, and then, and then he started talking crap about me and cause, you know, yeah, it's mostly. And I was like, yeah, you go right ahead, you know. And I realized like when you start getting closer to the top, you get a target on your back.
Speaker 3:You know's the saying. People who are taking shots are always doing it from below you. Yeah, they always are. I love that. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely they are. So it's like I knew that you have a target on your back. It's not right in front, it's on your back and so I kind of took the energy of like them not liking me. There's one guy in town who, um, you know, we're, we're friends, I guess frenemies, um, and so, uh, so anyhow, like he has, he makes it a point.
Speaker 2:Every time I I'll see him, we'll hang out and like, have a beer or something, and and, um, every once in a while, but every time we hang out, he makes a point to tell me like who doesn't like me and why they don't like me and what, I'm not sure why he tells me that stuff. You know, I just laugh and I'm just like you know, I don't really I don't even know who that is. That's exactly what happens. But I do like you know this guy and I was like I couldn't even pick him out of a lineup man. I have no idea who that guy is, you know, and it's like I don't know. So I get competitive on that and now that I'm at the top, it's like all right, I keep my eye in my rearview mirror just a little bit, just to be like I don't know who else is out there.
Speaker 4:How about you? Well, it's interesting. I can tell you're competitive yeah it's so funny I didn't even know this about myself until within the last 10 years. Yeah, so I went back to school after a few decades of working and I went back to a full-time MBA program.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow.
Speaker 4:So most everybody in the class was about like 27, and me, and we were about maybe two, three months into the program and we were all out to dinner and I said, well, you know, I mean I'm not very competitive, but I think somebody cut me off and we all refer to each other by last names, like so I was like what do you mean Sprague? He's like Guyton, you're the most competitive person I've ever met in my life.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 4:Really.
Speaker 2:In which way?
Speaker 4:And then. So when he said it, then I started thinking about it and it was. It was like the first day of business school and we were given a challenge and a partner. And this young guy and I don't even know how to tell you his first name, renz, it was his last name he and I had a project to do. We had to sell a random country to a group of people to invest in A country, a whole country. Yeah, a country, and we got… I mean the British we got Turkmenistan, wow.
Speaker 2:That's a tough sell.
Speaker 4:And we had less than five minutes to sell it and we had one or two days to prepare for it, and I remember thinking, no, we're going to win.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I remember thinking we're going to win and we did a presentation and we did something kind of creative, nice and um, it was a, it was uh in.
Speaker 4:in turkmenistan, uh, the government controls all the social media yeah, that's a very restricted, but they also are sitting on like the third largest natural gas reserve or something, and um, and they're, they have good work ethic because they're bored. Right, they're bored, they want something to do. And so, um, we got a PowerPoint of like just the desert and and I walked up and I stood in front of it and I didn't say anything for like 30 seconds and I think people thought it was choking.
Speaker 1:And I went like this I went.
Speaker 4:I'm an ethnic Turkmen, 25, got nothing to do. Government controls everything. Got no social media bored. I'm also sitting on the world's third largest. Whatever the gas, I'm ready to work. And so that was our whole sales pitch is like we've got. We've got a giant workforce and this huge natural resource. Why don't you invest in us? That's cool.
Speaker 4:And so you know being like in my late forties and like walking into the program and we won the challenge. Out of all the countries that people tried to sell, we won and I just remember how good that felt because I was so different. I was so different and I felt really like a fish out of water and it felt really, really good. I bet it did and then yeah, so I think business school was a good place for me, chris what are you competitive?
Speaker 2:in.
Speaker 3:So I guess I'm more competitive, like it's all internally Okay, so like I have competitions with people who I don't even realize they're in competition with me.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Like it's all in my head Right Play little games to keep myself motivated. I do it all day with different shit, like I'll drive, okay, you ever see the TikTok videos where the guy thinks everybody wants to race him One, two, three go yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So this is me.
Speaker 3:I'm not racing people, but I don't know. But you're going to be slightly in front of them or like oh, we're going the same way, so we're like I don't know whatever, I just play stupid games like that.
Speaker 1:And then in business.
Speaker 3:I always get competitive in my second year in a place because then I'm beating my numbers right Right. So I'm always like kind of looking at my own stuff because I don't know other people's competition in my history has been kind of toxic. Right now it's not. The people I know now are like it's a whole different way. My wife when we did her ABA she said she said that she was competitive, she argued with me about it, says it like real promise without her.
Speaker 3:ABA and she was straight up she's like I'm not competitive. But it turns out that she saw competition as negativity, like as you have to be stepping on somebody else to be competitive. That's how, in her head, she just defaulted to that. Oh, that's interesting, right.
Speaker 3:Because if there's a winner, then there's a loser Right, but you know what she has to do. She has a. I think it's actually one of the games in the New York Times app where and I'm not sure what On the stats it tells you what percentile you you are, the percent of the population that's doing it. I think it's world. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, okay she has to be in the 90th percentile or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she gets ticked off when she's not.
Speaker 3:So yes, and I'm like so yeah, you're not at all competitive right, Mm-hmm, I see All right like anyway.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of funny stepping on anybody right, yeah, yeah and it anyway.
Speaker 3:So it's kind of funny how people right yeah, exactly yeah, and so it's so funny how different people view that. Like you just take that one little word, yeah, and how, like, how broad that is. That context could be overly positive, overly negative, whatever.
Speaker 2:Well, in pickleball, I'm competitive. Pickleball, in pickleball I'm competitive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have to go play some pickleball for the first time in Utah, when we were not not not Moab. We went to. We went to Hurricane. A couple months prior to that, in like July, we went to Hurricane, utah, and rented a house with some friends and just screwed around the desert for a while, right, and, and yeah, that's that's. That was the first time I played pickleball and that's just. I mean, it's just ping pong standing on the table Right, like yeah, yeah, it's like adult ping pong standing on a tennis court, and there's some interesting rules.
Speaker 2:So I live in a country club and so the country club has some pickleball courts and so I thought, oh, I'm going to play some pickleball and I'm 46. And I was like the youngest person on the court, which is kind of funny. So now I get competitive and I feel kind of bad because it's like yeah, eat that grandma you know People breaking their hips.
Speaker 3:You're like you're stepping over them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right yeah.
Speaker 3:See, that's when I'm stepping on them right.
Speaker 4:That's like that's a competition. I'm like, yeah, take that, karen, you know Right, you throw your racket down. Be serious, is that?
Speaker 3:rheumatoid yeah.
Speaker 2:So, I do enjoy pickleball. That's actually fun for me.
Speaker 3:Smack talking is different in the AARP. That's right. No, I like, I like, uh, I I like taking like like little words like that and seeing like people, how they're nuanced with and how like people, how they're nuanced with and how they're, how they're overly negative, like, and it's mostly like the overly negative connotations that stick out for that kind of stuff. Yeah, people, yeah, people will take certain words and take it. They hang on that shit Right, they really like and they'll die by it. Not really going off the objective definition, but their subjective experience with it, it's just interesting to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is fascinating Our vocabulary. We say the same words, but it means something different. Totally yeah, totally, exactly, yeah, yeah, like some people will say like, hey, what do you want to eat? What do you want to eat for dinner, you know? And I'm like, well, I don't, I don't care, and but they're like they take it like like insulting, you know, and you're like, well, wait a minute, that's not, I don't mean it, that I just don't have a preference. You know they'll take I don't care, as like I just I don't care, but it's like, no, I'm not saying that you know you don't care about me right, yeah, exactly, yeah so
Speaker 4:it's funny how like different people can take the same word or phrase and interpret it totally different oh, especially like in text oh right right right because you can say something in person and you know you can look at somebody like this and they know you're sincere yeah, I overuse emojis I probably overuse emojis in my text messages when I'm saying something that could be taken different ways, just so like they kind of understand that's the only time I use emojis is when I think the inflection would be taken the wrong way.
Speaker 3:So yeah, like, like a smiley thing in there or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause I like to tease people and so you know I kind of rag on people a little bit and you know, give them a little hard time just a little banter, you know but, like if they don't know me well enough like I can really come across like a total asshole, you know.
Speaker 3:For sure, yeah, and me and my brother are brutal like that. If you read our text messages back and forth, we'd just be like God, I hate each other.
Speaker 2:Right, right now we're just brutal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but you love each other. Yeah, oh, no, yeah, and we're laughing the whole time.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah. Do you have a brother or sister? I have a brother and a sister, and my brother's youngest Are they both in the Albuquerque area. No, actually, my brother lives in Springfield, missouri now Okay, and my sister still lives in Albuquerque, all right, and my folks live out in Missouri as well now too, so my whole family's kind of moved out there. What brought them to Missouri? My brother got a job, and so he was a high level guy at T-Mobile, the cell phone company.
Speaker 2:So he got a job position out there, senior site director or something I don't really know. Do you go out there much? I do. So like in the summer we'll go out and do like a big vacation thing. So I already kind of all the siblings and my parents, and then we go rent a huge house on the lake and my brother has a boat, he brings his boat out there and then we'll spend a week out there.
Speaker 3:Oh, that sounds nice, it's so much fun and they have these resorts there, these massive houses.
Speaker 2:They're designed for this, so like 11 bedrooms, 12 bathrooms, every bedroom has its own en suite and there's like a half bath on the main floor. Massive homes and there's a whole complex of just massive homes with these big pools. It's like a resort area, but it's designed like family reunion style.
Speaker 3:Oh, dude, that would be great for like a leadership retreat. You've got to hook me up with that. Oh yeah, I'll give you the information.
Speaker 2:It would be phenomenal for a leadership retreat because you can take your entire staff. They can each have their own bedroom and bathroom. That's the way to do it. Yeah, absolutely, that's what we did when we did Hurricane.
Speaker 3:That house had like eight bedrooms, all of them had en suite baths. Wow, this place is crazy.
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, and they're all pretty new, yeah, and so we go out and do that and we boat on the tube in and stuff on the lake and we hang around and it's like fire pits and there's, you know, there's mini golf and there's like, it's like I've got all the amenities at the place yeah, it's like fun you would now.
Speaker 3:You would used to go to lake tahoe right.
Speaker 4:I used to. I used to go to lake tahoe um in maryland. Uh, there's a place called deep Creek Lake that we like to go to. And it's interesting that you mentioned that about the house, because I just literally heard yesterday that friends of ours have one of those large houses that you talked about. Like you know, eight, nine bedrooms, everybody has their own bathroom, on the lake in Maryland and it is fully rented out 90% of the year. Wow, even in the off season, because it's things like family reunions and business retreats.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:People want a big place where they can all go be together.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it's interesting business model. Yeah, like I really want to dig into it. No, I think I think it's a. So this guy has a whole business on it, um, in Missouri, and this guy owns multiple places now and he's building them and they're always booked out. It's amazing, it's beautiful what he does, I mean it's like a solid business model man, I think it is, yeah, like weddings, business retreats, family reunions.
Speaker 2:And the only challenge is that to get into the place, you know you got to fly. So there's not many airlines that fly in. They don't fly the big jets, it's only the smaller, like the two rows on each side.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Direct flights, yeah. So there's no direct flights.
Speaker 2:And then transportation from the airport to this place is. You know, it's like 45 minutes an hour away from the airport. So it's not bad If you get everybody flying in at the same time and you get like a 15-passenger van or something you can load it all all up and make it happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Like the ieb has retreats women's retreat, the men's retreat well, the coaches are coaches retreat, like tomorrow, I think right tomorrow and the next day. Oh nice, yeah. So it's just. Yeah, we're chilling out here for you. I mean, we're just staying here, but we've we've gone to different places been. Do you remember were you at that place? We went to all those different houses, yeah, all spread out yeah, with alligators yeah, oh yeah, there was alligators there?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, there was alligators?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so they had a swimming hole like a legit swimming hole, like a dug right, and the second day we got there there was an alligator in there.
Speaker 4:There was an alligator in the water Just chilling and I looked up I was on my balcony and Dirk's out there in a canoe in the water. Of course he is yeah, and he's like you want to come in for a ride, a canoe ride? I'm like maybe yeah there's a pass man Pass and that's the place.
Speaker 3:There was a turtle there like that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, a giant turtle, just a shell.
Speaker 3:Just a shell. It was like huge.
Speaker 4:Where is this? This is north of Houston.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, this is north of Austin. Wow, wow, it was northwest of Austin.
Speaker 2:I don't think of Texas and alligators and turtles.
Speaker 3:Oh, so I live in Houston and Brazoria. Like there's just the county south of us. There's this big nature preserve. There's alligators everywhere. Like I used to have Shih Tzus, I couldn't bring them there because they looked like a snack to an alligator.
Speaker 4:That was like a.
Speaker 3:White Castle.
Speaker 4:A Shih Tzu on a retractable.
Speaker 2:It's like fly fishing.
Speaker 3:Yeah no, there's a lot of alligators there so when I, when I first moved to um, when I first moved to Houston, I worked for true green and um a woman who worked for me her, her, her friend or her husband's or whatever they he would relocate alligators. So they caught an alligator and it was in her car, like in the back of her car, like I'm like what? Like she had like an SUV but the seat was folded down and they had it, but it they taped them out. Yeah, they taped them out and stuff and they put but it was, the rest of it was down and they had it.
Speaker 2:They taped the mouth, yeah, they taped the mouth and stuff, but the rest of it was loose and they had to get it out of the car and into the bed of the truck. That's some Florida stuff, bro. We're in Florida now and that's some Florida man stuff.
Speaker 3:Oh, this is three, four weeks after I moved to Houston and she's like we have to go and move this alligator in my truck. It was in the middle of work day. I'm like can I help? And she's like yeah.
Speaker 3:So I went. I've never touched an alligator before. It was the craziest thing. So we went and put this alligator out of the back of the car and put it in this truck so this guy could rehome it or relocate it or whatever the hell they do. It was the craziest thing ever. It was swinging its tail. It was like six, seven foot long. It was a big ass alligator too. Man, it was the craziest thing. Wow, it was so random. It was like in the middle of the work day. We're just like, oh yeah, it was crazy. It was so crazy. Yeah, and that was in Houston, because they'll go on the buy-ins the bands are all over the place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not moving to Texas now. Like I'm good with that.
Speaker 3:I mean, like you know, the math might get you where you're at the math and the meth heads.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I mean, you've seen Breaking Bad Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's all takes place there, right, that's documentary.
Speaker 4:I've never actually seen it.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's dark.
Speaker 2:It's so dark. It is not a documentary. In my city it is very dark.
Speaker 3:It's a rough show it's great TV but like man I can't watch stuff like that continuously especially binge watching, because it just puts me in a crappy head space. It just gradually takes you there.
Speaker 2:There's like some opening scenes that are pretty brutal in the show, but like you watch Walter White like slowly go. Yeah, like you say, I'm like he's a, he's a high school science teacher and and by the end he's like a drug lord and in the slow progression of him turning in.
Speaker 2:Yes, just like in a little decisions, that you see him like this happy-go-lucky guy. He's like, well, I just do this, then I can do this. He gets cancer and he wants to basically make some extra cash pay for his cancer treatments, and so it's like, motivated by that, and then it's like little decision, little decision, little decision. And then here you are a little while later and like the guy is doing the darkest stuff possible, you know, because he got this huge web of it's crazy.
Speaker 3:The whole thing is his massive ongoing insecurity complex.
Speaker 2:That's the whole show, and it just dives into the deepest corner of that.
Speaker 3:That's possible. It was pretty wild. It's a wild show, that's a fun show I like Bryan Cranston. His new show is phenomenal. What does he do? I don't even know yet I don't know.
Speaker 4:His Honor.
Speaker 3:I haven't even heard of it. Is he a?
Speaker 4:judge. The premise is he's a judge. And the premise of the show is he's a judge and his teenage son does something, and he does something not ethical. To kind of help his son because he cares about his boy, I don't want to tell you really anything about it. It takes place in New Orleans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no spoiler alerts no, it takes place in New Orleans. Yeah, no spoiler alert no, it takes place in.
Speaker 4:New Orleans and the acting is phenomenal. The writing is phenomenal, but he is just. It's a very similar, like it's a storyline about who he is.
Speaker 2:I like that.
Speaker 4:Who he is in the first episode versus who he is in the last episode I saw was really quite remarkable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, he's really a great actor. He really is. He really is. Remember him and Malcolm in the middle.
Speaker 3:Dude that show that like is such a different look for him, so different. The goofy dad, yeah, right, yeah, then you see him like I am the one who knocks you know and it's like what the heck, that's crazy, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, erin, do you have any siblings?
Speaker 4:Well, it's a complicated question because both my parents remarried when I was 13. So I went from just having one little brother to having well, now we're three sisters and three brothers.
Speaker 2:Like modern Brady Bunch. Yeah, just like that.
Speaker 4:But interestingly, my father married my best friend from fifth grade's mother.
Speaker 3:Oh, I thought that was going a different way. When you said best friend, I thought you were talking about my best friend from fifth grade's mother. Oh, I thought that was going a different way when you said best friend.
Speaker 2:I thought you were going to say best friend from fifth grade. Yeah right, I was like whoa.
Speaker 4:Yeah no there was this girl, kristen, and she and I were best friends in fifth grade and our parents were married to each other and we introduced our parents and you know we shared babysitters and stuff. And then we moved away and my folks got divorced and my dad just rolled through town to see how they were doing and her mother had gotten divorced. So my dad, my dad married my best friend's mother, that's kind of so we do.
Speaker 2:Your best friend is a sister. Yeah, somebody's like, wow you guys are close in age.
Speaker 4:How far apart are you like?
Speaker 3:six months apart. That's kind of cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, it's so cool. Yeah, it's so cool. Yeah, that's incredible. And, chris, how about you? You have siblings.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, two brothers.
Speaker 2:Two in the middle. Yeah, you're the middle.
Speaker 3:Two years. He actually works for Brian Bryant.
Speaker 2:Oh and which one do you talk crap with on the games? Oh?
Speaker 3:the younger one. Younger one, yeah, because we live by each other. My older brother lives in Madison, wisconsin, so like we talk, but we're not as close as we are as I am to my younger brother, just because he's geographically close, yeah, proximity-wise, yeah, for sure, and work right. We work in a very similar environment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's working in one of the companies, right? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, so luckily I don't go anywhere for work anymore, although that's its own tax. Right, right, like no accountability to anybody. Y'all just talking about that, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:As when you're at the top, sometimes you don't have accountability and so it's uh, right, you know like I have responsibility. You know to employees and staff and people in my teams, right like I have to be responsible for them and so I have to make sure I gotta do my part. They can do their part, but you know, if I'm slacking off, there's nobody. That's like hey, matt, you didn't work eight hours today. You know, matt, you didn't work on the things that you said you're going to work on. You know, it's like I have my to-do list and my stuff is normally like big, bigger vision, moving the ball forward type stuff, not maintaining what we have, and so there's like the progress of how fast that moves. There's nobody. There's nobody saying, oh, you didn't move as fast as you maybe could have got leaded work as hard as maybe you could.
Speaker 3:There's nobody to say that there's no one.
Speaker 2:There's no one coming to like hold me accountable Right. And sometimes that happens when you get into upper management and the very top is like you can get that place.
Speaker 4:Yeah, every solopreneur like me, right, right, yeah, do you have any?
Speaker 2:staff no, so that's glorious, yeah, so yeah there's nobody. There's nobody holding you accountable. There's nobody you're responsible for other than yourself. Yeah, and you obviously have responsibilities, but yeah. But like you're not going to let anybody down, if you're like I'm just going to blow off today and not do anything, yeah, now, the way I keep myself accountable is I set deadlines on purpose.
Speaker 4:In other words, like if I've got a client and I've got a meeting and they've asked me to do something for them, I say, okay, before we hang up, let's schedule an appointment. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:And I never miss a deadline. That's good, right? Yeah, yeah, I think that's really good. You've got to be able to. How do you hold yourself accountable? Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4:Well, it's kind of like diet and exercise, like I hold myself accountable by Instacarting. I never go to a grocery store, so I only order the groceries that are healthy, that I want to eat, and so if there's no bad food in the house, I don't eat bad food.
Speaker 2:That's brilliant yeah.
Speaker 4:Because I go to the grocery store hungry, I make the worst decisions.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a bad time to go.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and then I end up with like Skittles and Sour Patch Kids and yeah, yeah, and don't go to the grocery store like on football day or anything. Oh yeah, absolutely yeah. And then I got chips and dip and queso and beer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And then, like Monday, I regret it.
Speaker 3:It's funny, you get that newfound freedom in whatever it looks like, right, whether it's food, home work, whatever that is for you, like that's. I was just talked to PB onboarding the other day, last week sometime, and that was he had just come out of the field and he's like, and you could tell like it was like 2 pm, right, and in you I was, why I was on the video call and like he was just like a mess, right, his hair was everywhere. He was like I don't have to go out and be a tech anymore. So I just I'm not sure what to do. Like where do I start? What do I go? Like I'm, you know, yeah, and so he's like literally coming up with what his day-to-day looked like. And in that vacuum when Especially if you have an executive function disorder, which most entrepreneurs are, adhd years right so so that you know that that lends itself to really poor accountability practices.
Speaker 3:For for the first time when you get that freedom, you just start oh, I'll just do something right. And then it's like okay, what is that?
Speaker 3:is it purposeful? Who are you accountable to? What do you actually have to accomplish? Right going right. So it's funny. It's, that's that's. I just had that conversation with some, the other purposeful. Who are you accountable to? What do you actually have to accomplish? It's funny. I just had that conversation with someone the other day and I'm going through a little bit of that myself. I'm just trying to come up with some better routines.
Speaker 2:I'm looking at my lead tech. We've grown to a place where he needs to slow down his field work or maybe even get out of the field all the way or just recalibrate some stuff, and I know that when that day comes which we're working towards getting there, but when we get there I know it's going to be like all right, let's start talking about now. I'm gonna have to help him build his structure out I'm not worried about him.
Speaker 2:He's a hard worker guy but I think having him having to shift from like getting up and I know I have these inspections to do, I have these appointments that I have to get done to, oh, I don't have these hard appointments now. I have lots of free time in the day that I have to do stuff, but there's stuff that has to get done to move the ball forward. But yeah, but yeah. Like did that shift from like doer to leader in that's that space is sometimes hard for people.
Speaker 3:Oh, dude super hard, especially because it's the wider the job, the harder. I think it gets right, because you just it's like uh, uh, this is how I used to have to clean my room as a child is I had to just like throw everything in the middle. It's the only way I could function and clean it. I don't know why it was that, but it was the most chaotic way of doing it, but I couldn't just go one piece at a time and I had to have it all in one big area and then I'd break it apart, which is, I know, like not a lot of people work like that, but that's like I work best in the chaos, which is terrifying for, like most employees, it's awful.
Speaker 2:It's an awful way to run a business. It definitely is, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Especially when you're not good at preventing it. I'm trying to get better at preventing it. Is this how you work?
Speaker 2:in the business now.
Speaker 3:You're just like chaotic, throw everything in the middle. So I know I've been filling the spaces with people who will make it less chaotic, right, because I just know I have limitations in that way and I'm working on it. It's not something that I'm just leaving alone, but, um, but before that, I'm not like, my stuff still needs to go where it needs to go, so I can't just let it go right. So I have people around me who are, uh, who are like fiona and the guy got a guy, jake, who runs our service for the pest control just phenomenal, organized, structured people. And I am this hand grenade throwing right Whatever right, I just make it chaos.
Speaker 2:You seem like you just make chaos everywhere you go.
Speaker 3:God, that sounds rough when you say it like that. I enjoy it, though. I enjoy your chaos, I don't live with you.
Speaker 2:I'm not married to you, I'm not working with you. Every day we go hang out. You came through Albuquerque. It was chaos. It was fun. We come here. We have chaos. It's fun. I love it. I love the chaos. I love the chaos you bring, but it's like and I get to leave.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm not like that all the time, but like I definitely bring an element of it, but it's. You know, it's one of the things that served me really well. It's also like everything right, it's got. It's a double-edged sword, Right Right, also cost me dearly many times.
Speaker 2:So yeah, trying to balance that crazy out with some systems.
Speaker 4:You know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, you gotta get systemized or crazy. Yeah, chaos is really hard for me are you? Very structured uh, sometimes with my own work. I'm not because I'm, but I'm in charge of all of it, so that's okay. It's when it's when it's chaos and I'm on a group project. So, like in ieb, we used to do these exercises with sticky notes whereas like free form can be all the sticky notes go on the wall and then, as a team, you're supposed to put them in categories I put things in categories for a living, like I write business plans and I work with numbers and, like you know, you give me 27 pieces of unrelated information and I will.
Speaker 4:I will find three themes and I will put it in order and I will do it fast. And so for me to be on a group exercise, I almost have to sit on my hands right. Because, I can see okay, that goes there, that goes there, that goes there. And it's really hard for me to just kind of talk that through with people. It feels chaotic to me, even though it probably was designed for a different purpose. I get so overwhelmed. It felt like chaos. Well, no, I think it's. I think it.
Speaker 3:I think the purpose is the chaos, because in that chaos, I think, is where where some of that real creativity happens, where where it can't, sometimes can't happen in a different way. Right, um, at least for me anyway, but um, but I'm I actually? So? Similarly, as you're saying that, right, I don't go to college, but in high school you write essays and then I say is very, the structure is very simplistic, Right, you tell them what you're gonna tell them. You tell them and then you tell them what you told them. Right, that's the format of an essay and and, and, and. Then we would have to write a Outline, a rough draft and then a final draft. Right, I would write the final draft, you would. That's it Right, like it was right the first time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those other drafts are, so I would just turn in the same thing three times.
Speaker 3:That is hilarious. They just would get so pissed off Like where's your?
Speaker 2:outline Where's your rough?
Speaker 3:draft. I don't have one, I just did it, I just did it. But so, similarly right, I would take that information and instantly organize it. I would skip the other steps because it was wasting my time.
Speaker 4:That's interesting, and I was the kid in high school that had like a package of three-by-five cards where I wrote all my ideas on all the three by five cards and then I would sit in my in my room and I would put them in piles and then I would organize the piles and then I'll put each pile in order and then I would sit next to my typewriter and I would type my paper. And I still work like that today.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's.
Speaker 4:I still work exactly like that today.
Speaker 3:You're very structured. Yeah, I need that kind of structure in my life. I do too. I just don't know if I can follow all the time. Yeah, I'm chaos all the time.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but that's where so much creativity exists, though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we don't get it done, we just come up with it. Well, right, but I need executors around me, right.
Speaker 3:That's what I've really figured out, and especially in this time where I have all this chaos and freedom that I'm trying to rein in, all that crazy right like I have to have really structured people around me, yeah, and I'm pulling them up towards creativity and they're pulling me down to earth, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, that is a good. I love that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I know I figured out how to find those people now, too. What is that person, what's the behaviors of that person, and where do I go to look for certain people like that, it gets pretty predictable. Actually, is your wife very structured? My wife is. She's a very structured person, yeah, but she's one of those brilliant crazies. Okay, right, she's an MD MD.
Speaker 2:Like Elon Musk level.
Speaker 3:Probably like she is. She has a PhD in genetics. Oh, wow, she has her MD. She has a specialty in neurology and a subspecialty in stroke. Oh geez, she runs the national, the program for the national program for the neurology, for the VA, for the entire VA, right? So it's like she's wow, yeah, so she's brilliant.
Speaker 3:Wow, I barely got out of high school. Yeah, me too. I mean, like the skin of my teeth, you know they, they walk so. So with the high school I went to they. We graduated in May, but the school went until the end of May, so the seniors would actually walk the stage before school was actually done for everybody else. So when I walk the stage, but they give you the thing, but it's nothing in it, it's a couple weeks before the grades come out. I procrastinated until mid-July, until I went back my senior year to see if I actually passed, because I didn't know. Wow, I did not know. Because chemistry. I'll tell you this, I did not pass chemistry. There's no way. All we did in that class was harass our teacher and ask him how to make LSD.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was a whole year of us just like begging him. It was so dumb, right? Did he tell you any tips?
Speaker 2:Hell, no, hell, no, I'm still alive today. That's dumb right, didn't tell you any tips. Hell, no, hell, no, I'm still alive today. That's how you know that. That's hilarious. Yeah, I should not pass that, but I did. I somehow paid. Yeah, english was my weak spot. Yeah, I, I had to beg on my knees to my english teacher please pass me. And back then they, they put the grades on the door and so you see everybody's grades and stuff and, um, yeah, that's rough, it was rough and so so you can see, you have an A and a B, whatever.
Speaker 2:It was all like a printout thing. So on mine, I went down on Williams, I'm down at Williams, I'm looking over, and it had D. And then she took a pencil and written minus, minus, minus, minus after it, just to like like I did not pass that class.
Speaker 3:She passed me because she didn't want you another year, bro. Yeah, exactly, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2:That's what my parents did not have. I did not have a passing grade, but she, she made a passing grade. She let me get out of high school. Um, yeah, thank you so much mrs total, I'm just saying thank you, I'm not a total loser in life. I mean, yeah, you got time. I do. I have time, not yet right, I can still end up homeless under a bridge somewhere. I mean, you know, like we all could. We all could, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 4:Try and guess which two classes I failed in my life In college. Which two college classes did I fail? You also know my first degree was in art.
Speaker 2:I did not know that. Yeah, okay, so your first degree is in art.
Speaker 3:And then my second degree is in MBA. Yeah, MBA.
Speaker 2:And you do numbers for a living.
Speaker 4:So I'm going to say math. I failed drawing.
Speaker 3:Okay, oh, my gosh no.
Speaker 4:And as a senior in college, I failed freshman math. Nice, wow, yeah, that is hilarious. Your art degree? How do you fail drawing?
Speaker 2:Like, did you just not turn to work yet?
Speaker 4:Actually, this is a really good lesson because I did finish my final portfolio, but I just didn't feel like going to class the last day and so I went and I just left my portfolio on the drawing board table of the art studio with a note for the professor, and he never got it. Wow, it's a really good lesson about and he never got it, wow, it's a really good lesson about follow-up. Like it's just like oh yeah, I sent that email. That doesn't mean you confirmed that the thing happened or they saw it right.
Speaker 4:Wow, so you mean you turned it in, but he never saw it, he never got it wow so what happened to it? I don't know. I don't know what happened to it.
Speaker 3:So you just failed it. Well, I mean because, like because you know, it was summer and you know it was summer and I was going back home.
Speaker 2:So I didn't like I wasn't hanging out on campus.
Speaker 4:So I just never knew until the grades came and I got an F.
Speaker 2:Did you reach out to the professor and be like?
Speaker 4:that was a second lesson I learned because I was very conflict averse and I was not very good about advocating for myself so you didn't even follow up with the professor to see.
Speaker 2:No, I never did.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I should call him, he's still around wow still making beautiful art okay, that would be so I want
Speaker 3:to follow up on that you should totally call that dude and say, look bro, I left it right there. Could you go?
Speaker 2:look real quick right, right, like three years ago I could yeah, I don't remember professors' names. You should send him a random email. I left something here FYI.
Speaker 4:X amount of years ago.
Speaker 3:Could you just check for me and see what's there, because you totally gave me an F.
Speaker 4:Right and PS. It was really good. It was really good. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3:That is so funny. I felt the entire sixth grade I had to repeat it. Wow, really, yeah, it was brutal, brutal.
Speaker 2:So what's crazy to me is like you're crazy smart. Yeah, Like you are crazy smart, so to hear that you like struggle in school.
Speaker 3:I don't know about that, but I'm definitely lazy, like definitely, definitely lazy.
Speaker 2:So it isn't for lack of intelligence, it's just lack of follow through or just disinterested. Probably some ADHD Like I just don't care. I'm busy with something else, I'm distracted.
Speaker 3:It was a mixed bag of all that right Right School's not built for people like me.
Speaker 2:No, me either. I struggled so much in school.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was really difficult for me to maintain any sort of attention, let alone difficult for me to maintain any sort of attention, let alone, like you know, my home life is kind of chaotic, so when I'm like in school, like it was not a priority to me at all, yeah, but the thing I learned was the only thing worse to do is doing it twice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go, lesson learned yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was rough. That was rough, but it's what taught me a lot. Taught me a lot.
Speaker 2:It taught me a lot. You know, our failures teach us way more than our successes, don't they?
Speaker 3:I think that's the only thing that teaches me, yeah, if I go through enough pain, that's right.
Speaker 2:Once it hurts, bad enough. I might consider making changes.
Speaker 3:Pain will stop once it's done. Teaching you oh wow, that's just been my. Just yeah, the way of life, right, pain will stop when it's done teaching.
Speaker 2:I think it's. John Maxwell has this, this whole thing. He does like the four things that people will change for and he summarizes it up on like tech talk videos and stuff, but he has like a whole, like course and books about this, and he talks about um, like inspiration. So we get inspired to you know, with, with the hope of this. Some people are, um, golly, I can't remember all of them now, but at the end of it all he's like it's like, unfortunately for most of us.
Speaker 2:The thing that really motivates us for change is pain yeah, because we won't change until it hurts bad enough for us to change.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah sometimes you just don't know that burns until you feel it right, right it's got to find that out for myself. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Some people learn, like they're smart, Like they'll learn from other people's mistakes. My brother and sister did that Like I was the oldest. My brother and sister, they're super smart. They're like they would look at me and they're like I see what Matt's doing there and, um, I am not going to do that, I'm going to do it a different way. So. So they've had a little bit easier life in some cases, because I was a pioneer of sorts.
Speaker 3:Yeah, both my brothers have this whole learning thing and I just have this pain thing. They just seem to be able to prevent it and everything that I teach well anyway, is because I fucked it up really bad. It's because I did it really wrong and then I had an epiphany about doing it the right way. It had to be through an experience. I can't just know a thing.
Speaker 2:It's just dumb. I don't know why Some people have to learn the hard way. That's me.
Speaker 3:As I get older, I'm starting to figure out.
Speaker 2:Maybe I should learn from other people.
Speaker 3:I'm trying man. I'm trying the past couple of years have been better, maybe.
Speaker 2:I should like learn from other people.
Speaker 3:I'm trying, man, I'm trying, I've been. The past couple of years have been have been better with that, but, like you know, 48 ain't typically a time Right. We should have done this a while ago All right, 46. Now I'm ready yeah.
Speaker 4:It should have been a minute ago. That's definitely something.
Speaker 2:I've noticed about getting older is like I'm learning things just faster, like just way faster.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, because I just time is so precious it is, and the shittier experiences that you have, the more precious you see that time coming up is yeah. Yeah, because you've wasted time already.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah absolutely yeah, I was out with my sister um. We met in New Orleans um because we shared a birthday year, because you know we're only six months apart in age and I hadn't seen her in a long, long time.
Speaker 4:And so we're at this bar having a drink and this guy comes up and he goes hey, ladies, and kind of stuck his face between us and we were a lot younger then and I said, hi, you know, we're fine. I said this is my sister. And I said, hi, we're fine. I said this is my sister, I haven't seen her in a really long time and we kind of want to catch up. And he's like, really Well, where are you both from?
Speaker 2:And I'm like, oh, she's from Texas.
Speaker 4:I'm from Maryland, whatever I was like, but we want to get back to this, so he came back a second time. And he's like oh, so you guys are all bonded and connected again, and so I was like, listen, I really don't want to be rude, it's my sister, I really want some time with her. And he went away and he came back like a third or fourth time, wow. And my sister looks at him, she goes, buzz off and he walked away. And she looks at me, she goes works much faster, very effective.
Speaker 4:Very effective. She goes, works and so that was like a good lesson, because I am polite and I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but when you tell somebody politely how you feel about something and then they still don't hear you like, the older I get, the more I'm just like listen, this is over. Well, this is communicating boundaries.
Speaker 3:Right, this is what you're really talking about. Yeah yeah, and that's something that if you don't like that, that if when you don't learn that early on, it's slow, you're slow on the uptick. Everybody. I know like I was terrible about that until very recently and now I am like brutal with my boundaries. Yeah, you have to be.
Speaker 2:You have to be. You have to Because people will try to push them and try to. And if you're nice about your boundaries, they don't seem. People don't really understand that as a boundary sometimes, and if you're nice about your boundaries.
Speaker 4:People don't really understand that it's a boundary sometimes yeah, if you're too nice about it. And that's a shame. It's a shame. Why can't you pick up on the social clues, right? Why can't you just pick up on somebody's words even?
Speaker 3:Thanks very much, but no, I'm being super clear with you, like, what do you not get right? And that kind of conversation doesn't happen enough, and it should, because it embarrasses people into good behavior right or actually not even forget good behavior, decent behavior, just being decent right, Stop pushing every single thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3:All right Matt.
Speaker 2:We've covered some wide topics here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm glad we didn't have any.
Speaker 2:We had no agenda. We're like you want to do something, let's hit record and see what happens. Right, yeah, and I just, I like.
Speaker 3:I walked in the room and I'm like, who do I, who do I want, who do I want to drag into this podcast?
Speaker 2:with me. Guyton, you're a great sport. Okay, hit record Right.
Speaker 4:Was that anxiety for you? Can we talk about some numbers? You know what she did. You know what she did.
Speaker 3:She said yes. Right away. I was like, yeah, sure, that's awesome. I love that. Was that trust in me what I'm going to trust in you? Yeah, there you go, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you guys for coming on the adventure. This is a great episode. Chris Enright, you're at Brian and Brian no.
Speaker 3:Green Team Pest, ieb and PEB. I don't even work with Brian. No home inspections anymore.
Speaker 2:Wow, it's just the Pest.
Speaker 3:So we have Pest in Sarasota, in San Diego, in Dallas soon and in Houston. That's incredible. And then I'm doing the PEB. We're ramping PE up. Peb up is going to be much bigger.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, man. If somebody wants to get a hold of you, what's a way for someone to get a hold of you?
Speaker 3:Christopher, at greenteampestcom, you can get a hold of me that way, that's awesome, that sounds great and then Aaron, numbus, numbus.
Speaker 2:That's my nickname Numbus.
Speaker 4:My business is we Speak Numbers, the language of business, simplified.
Speaker 2:Okay, your website.
Speaker 4:It's actually Aaron at AaronKGuytoncom, which is my email.
Speaker 2:Aaron K Guyton.
Speaker 3:Yeah I haven't done the rebranding, yet Okay, yeah All right IEB Financial Coach.
Speaker 4:Got it yeah, so the best way to reach me there is Aaron at IEBCoachingcom.
Speaker 2:That's probably the preferred email address. Okay, Aaron at IEBcoachingcom.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I've been IEB volunteer financial coach since 2020.
Speaker 2:Wow that sounds awesome.
Speaker 4:Well, guys, thanks for being on the show. I've really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:Thanks, All right thanks. All right see you later.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Empire State of Mind. For the home inspection industry and beyond, our passion is to elevate the home inspection industry with mindset, strategy and tools. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and review. For more, follow on Instagram at IEB Coaching and don't forget to hit the website at wwwiebcoachingcom. Learn about IEB at no cost and have all your questions answered on our open call once a month on the third week of the month. We hope to see you there and we'll see you next time on the Empire State of Mind.
