Ted Jenkin joins Craig Andrews on Leaders & Legacies to talk about brand building, media presence, differentiation, and the operating discipline leaders need when they want their business to stand out for more than one quarter.

Most leaders say they want a stronger brand, but many still judge every decision by this quarter’s direct ROI. That tension runs through Craig’s conversation with Ted Jenkin, President of ESL Advisors: the businesses that become memorable rarely do it by copying the industry playbook or measuring only the fastest return.

Ted shares how Oxygen Financial grew by going after the market most financial firms were ignoring. While the industry chased baby boomers, Ted built for Gen X and Gen Y clients with a different experience, a different environment, and a different message. The lesson is bigger than financial services: if your business looks and sounds like everyone else, you are mathematically limiting yourself to average.

Craig and Ted also dig into communication as a leadership advantage. Ted explains why media success is not just about getting booked once, but learning how to write, produce, and deliver clear segments that make producers want to bring you back. The same discipline applies inside a company: leaders who can simplify the message, package the idea, and keep moving after feedback get better faster.

The conversation closes with Ted’s true North framework. Goals define North, setbacks pull you South, and distractions drag you East and West. Ted’s challenge to leaders is to recover quickly, manage expectations clearly, and keep asking whether today’s actions are moving the business closer to what actually matters.

Learn more about Ted Jenkin and ESL Advisors at https://esladvisors.com/.

Connect with Ted Jenkin on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/theceoadvisor.

Learn more about Craig Andrews and allies4me at https://allies4me.com/.

Apply to be a guest on Leaders & Legacies at https://podcast.allies4me.com/podcast-guest/.

Key Points with Timestamps

• [00:00:29] Craig introduces Ted Jenkin, his work with Exit Stage Left Advisors, and the founder-to-advisor experience behind the conversation.
• [00:07:44] Ted explains how choosing a younger, underserved market helped Oxygen Financial stand apart while competitors chased the same clients.
• [00:19:26] Ted breaks down why brand is a long-tail investment and why leaders who only chase direct ROI underbuild trust and recognition.
• [00:25:40] The conversation turns to revenue creation, compensation, and why business value follows work that creates measurable growth.
• [00:30:45] Ted closes with the true North framework: define the goal, recover quickly from setbacks, and avoid drifting away from what matters.

Transcript

[00:00:29 - 00:00:34] Today I want to welcome Ted Jenkin. He is the president of exit stage left

[00:00:34 - 00:00:38] advisors and host of the Red White and Green show.

[00:00:39 - 00:00:43] Ted has lived the founder journey from the inside out.

[00:00:44 - 00:00:50] He built Oxygen Financial into a $2.5 billion wealth management company

[00:00:50 - 00:00:55] sold it in 2019 and has gone on to buy sell and own or advise

[00:00:55 - 00:00:57] across multiple businesses since then.

[00:00:58 - 00:01:03] If that's not interesting enough, he's a columnist on Fox News.

[00:01:03 - 00:01:07] He also is a nationally recognized financial expert and media

[00:01:07 - 00:01:12] personality with appearances on CNN, CNBC, news nation, and

[00:01:12 - 00:01:14] Dr. Phil's merit street media.

[00:01:16 - 00:01:22] I've chatted with Ted before and it's, I think this is going to be an amazing

[00:01:22 - 00:01:25] conversation. This is not it. This is just why I defend the intro.

[00:01:26 - 00:01:29] I think it's from here. Ted, welcome.

[00:01:30 - 00:01:33] Craig, thanks for having me on. I'm actually doing the today show

[00:01:34 - 00:01:35] next Thursday too.

[00:01:36 - 00:01:40] Wow. You know, I'm curious. I mean, nobody's calling me to come on

[00:01:40 - 00:01:44] to these shows. What's the key to cracking that nut?

[00:01:44 - 00:01:46] How did you break into that world?

[00:01:48 - 00:01:49] Well, there are a lot of ways to break into it.

[00:01:49 - 00:01:53] It's just, it's very difficult if you're doing elite media

[00:01:53 - 00:01:57] because you could hire PR firm and they might be able to get you

[00:01:57 - 00:02:02] one hit, but to be a consistent, regular contributor on these

[00:02:02 - 00:02:06] channels, you really need to learn how to write segments.

[00:02:06 - 00:02:10] Like, how do you actually write and produce a TV segment because

[00:02:10 - 00:02:14] the newsrooms have very little help behind the scenes today.

[00:02:14 - 00:02:17] And if you can write, produce, and star sort of in your own show,

[00:02:18 - 00:02:22] they'll often have you back more, provided that you're, you know, a good guest.

[00:02:23 - 00:02:28] Huh. Well, and, you know, the thing now that keys in to my ears is

[00:02:28 - 00:02:31] when you say you have to be able, I heard you say you have to be able to write.

[00:02:32 - 00:02:32] Oh, yeah.

[00:02:32 - 00:02:34] And so talk about that a little bit.

[00:02:35 - 00:02:39] Well, it's a little bit different than writing a book or, or writing

[00:02:39 - 00:02:44] even a blog or writing an article because when you write a TV segment,

[00:02:44 - 00:02:49] most of the TV hits are three minutes, which may sound like that.

[00:02:49 - 00:02:52] It's not that much time because it's not, you know, there's an intro.

[00:02:52 - 00:02:54] The anchor talks a bit.

[00:02:54 - 00:02:56] So you need to write in sound bites.

[00:02:56 - 00:03:00] So if you think about the salacious sound bites that you see in articles

[00:03:00 - 00:03:04] that you read, you have to think about how to produce a segment that is

[00:03:04 - 00:03:05] a entertainment, right?

[00:03:05 - 00:03:09] It's educational for a viewer, but it's also informational.

[00:03:10 - 00:03:12] And it can, you can cover it in a very short period of time.

[00:03:12 - 00:03:17] And if you can't talk fast and talk succinctly, even if you write something good,

[00:03:17 - 00:03:20] you'll never be back invited on TV.

[00:03:21 - 00:03:25] You know, I had a guest on Leaders & Legacies a couple years ago.

[00:03:25 - 00:03:28] And it was John Hewitt from Jackson Hewitt Tax Services.

[00:03:30 - 00:03:36] And I've never had a guest who so precisely, concisely and clearly communicate.

[00:03:37 - 00:03:40] I'd ask him a question 30 seconds later.

[00:03:40 - 00:03:40] Right.

[00:03:41 - 00:03:43] Complete answer fully packaged.

[00:03:43 - 00:03:46] And my biggest problem was I was running out of questions.

[00:03:46 - 00:03:48] I was like, crap, we have more time for the episode.

[00:03:48 - 00:03:49] I don't know what to ask him.

[00:03:49 - 00:03:51] He's answered everything so well.

[00:03:51 - 00:03:54] You learn how to talk rapid fire, right?

[00:03:54 - 00:03:59] You know, the professional TV people can talk in 20 seconds sound bites.

[00:04:00 - 00:04:00] Wow.

[00:04:01 - 00:04:02] How do you practice that?

[00:04:02 - 00:04:06] Because I mean, obviously, you know, when you get in front of a camera,

[00:04:06 - 00:04:08] that's the time to be on mark.

[00:04:08 - 00:04:09] If you want to be invited back.

[00:04:10 - 00:04:11] How do you prep for that?

[00:04:12 - 00:04:16] Well, some of the shows don't give you any advanced notice about what

[00:04:16 - 00:04:17] they're going to talk about.

[00:04:17 - 00:04:19] And some shows want to be very scripted.

[00:04:20 - 00:04:25] So it's obviously a lot easier when somebody is giving you the script or the general outline.

[00:04:26 - 00:04:30] And it's incumbent upon you to study at that point and make sure that your talking points are

[00:04:30 - 00:04:32] to the length that the producers want them.

[00:04:33 - 00:04:38] If you're going on as a guest and you basically are at no questions at all,

[00:04:38 - 00:04:44] you want to be thinking about your key five or six general talking points.

[00:04:44 - 00:04:44] Right.

[00:04:44 - 00:04:50] So if I'm talking about groceries, I don't want to get into a big discussion about supply chain

[00:04:50 - 00:04:52] and what's happening in Russia.

[00:04:53 - 00:04:55] It's not going to make sense, you know, to an owner.

[00:04:55 - 00:05:01] I may want to get to the highlights of, you know, what majorly is causing grocery prices to rise.

[00:05:01 - 00:05:01] Right.

[00:05:02 - 00:05:03] And the more that you keep it simple.

[00:05:04 - 00:05:08] And like I said, it's sort of edutainment, the better off you're going to do.

[00:05:09 - 00:05:16] Now what's the expectation in terms of agreement with the host or, you know, some type of direction there?

[00:05:17 - 00:05:17] None.

[00:05:18 - 00:05:20] I mean, the host you generally won't meet the host.

[00:05:21 - 00:05:23] It'll be like some associate producer.

[00:05:24 - 00:05:26] And after the show, they don't want to hang around and know your name.

[00:05:27 - 00:05:28] I mean, it's not a bad thing.

[00:05:28 - 00:05:34] They just, you know, if I do the today show, Al Roker doesn't want to hang out with me for five minutes after the segment.

[00:05:34 - 00:05:35] He's one of the nicest guys in the world.

[00:05:36 - 00:05:39] You know, they want you to do your, do your job, do it well.

[00:05:39 - 00:05:43] And if you do, the real nod is, hey, you're invited back to do it again.

[00:05:44 - 00:05:47] You know, and by the way, we just put you in front of three million people.

[00:05:47 - 00:05:48] So you should be happy.

[00:05:50 - 00:05:57] Well, you know, one of the things I've heard about Dave Letterman is during the breaks, he would never talk to the guests.

[00:05:57 - 00:05:58] Oh, I believe that.

[00:05:58 - 00:06:01] With one exception, he would talk to Norm MacDonald.

[00:06:01 - 00:06:02] They would chat during the break.

[00:06:02 - 00:06:04] And that makes sense.

[00:06:05 - 00:06:13] Yeah, but, you know, listen, when I used to do CNN and headline news for a lot of years, you know, you could drive from your house for 45 minutes.

[00:06:13 - 00:06:16] You know, it takes you a few minutes to do makeup.

[00:06:16 - 00:06:18] You're sitting around for a half an hour.

[00:06:18 - 00:06:23] You're on set lights, camera action for two minutes and 45 seconds.

[00:06:23 - 00:06:29] And then nobody's, no fanfare, no red carpet, you know, nobody's going to be like, hey, you did a great job.

[00:06:29 - 00:06:33] You know, you just, you move on and, and you go home and that's, that's what it is.

[00:06:33 - 00:06:34] Wow.

[00:06:35 - 00:06:37] You know who Chris losses.

[00:06:37 - 00:06:38] Yeah.

[00:06:38 - 00:06:39] Yeah, he's a great guy.

[00:06:40 - 00:06:43] One of his talks was his first appearance on Anderson Cooper.

[00:06:43 - 00:06:47] And he goes through every way that he messed up, including trying to fix his hair.

[00:06:47 - 00:06:50] But he was then realized there was an inverted image in the monitor.

[00:06:50 - 00:06:54] And obviously now he does very well.

[00:06:54 - 00:06:57] But, yeah, that, it looked pretty, I think even showed that segment.

[00:06:58 - 00:06:58] It was really awkward.

[00:06:59 - 00:07:03] Yeah, I mean, I certainly, I had some of the early ones that I did were awkward.

[00:07:03 - 00:07:07] Or I didn't think about how I was going to dress or the cadence.

[00:07:07 - 00:07:11] I mean, you learn the TV talk is different.

[00:07:12 - 00:07:14] You know, you've got to be very crisp and clear with your words.

[00:07:15 - 00:07:19] And you have to enunciate. You can't talk too fast. So your words kind of slower together.

[00:07:19 - 00:07:21] You don't want to talk too slow. So you run out of time.

[00:07:21 - 00:07:24] So, you know, it's always a challenge.

[00:07:24 - 00:07:31] And then I think about sort of, you know, enunciating the real key things I want people to learn, right?

[00:07:32 - 00:07:34] So I recently did a segment on AI.

[00:07:34 - 00:07:40] And I may say something like, AI should be your study buddy, but not your financial advisor.

[00:07:40 - 00:07:44] Let it get you information, but not make the decisions for you, right?

[00:07:45 - 00:07:49] And that kind of sound by works because it gives people, oh, okay, I get information from here.

[00:07:49 - 00:07:52] But I can't let AI make all my decisions.

[00:07:53 - 00:07:56] Yeah. I like that study buddy, but not your fight.

[00:07:56 - 00:07:58] That's easy. That's memorable. Something.

[00:07:58 - 00:08:04] And when I write them, I try to think about things like that that, you know, I think will make sense.

[00:08:06 - 00:08:10] And I know this is not where we originally plan to go. But I'm really curious.

[00:08:10 - 00:08:10] Where did you learn how to write?

[00:08:12 - 00:08:18] So this is a crazy story, actually. You know, because I would say on a scale to one to ten,

[00:08:18 - 00:08:21] I was probably a one as a writer, one being the worst.

[00:08:21 - 00:08:26] And my mother told me, you have terrible writing. You do not know how to write.

[00:08:27 - 00:08:29] And you need to join the school newspaper.

[00:08:30 - 00:08:31] And I was in high school.

[00:08:32 - 00:08:36] And I'm like, that's like the last thing I wanted to do is join the school newspaper.

[00:08:36 - 00:08:41] My mother beat me in a submission. I joined the school newspaper where the editor,

[00:08:41 - 00:08:45] I was a freshman at the time. She was a senior said, your article suck.

[00:08:48 - 00:08:52] And, you know, and she was right. You know, and I got a little bit better.

[00:08:53 - 00:08:59] And then I started to realize one of my strengths is I'm really good at studying things once I get involved in it

[00:08:59 - 00:09:05] and getting better at it. The more I study, the more I learn the better I get at it.

[00:09:05 - 00:09:08] And so I learned from the better writers. I take the better writers out to lunch.

[00:09:09 - 00:09:11] Your articles are great. What do you do? How do you think about this?

[00:09:11 - 00:09:15] And I started to learn from all the good people. I got a little bit better.

[00:09:16 - 00:09:20] And, you know, that's kind of what got me on my writing journey.

[00:09:22 - 00:09:30] My feeling is school, all my firmware education completely failed me in terms of writing the writer.

[00:09:32 - 00:09:38] The best people that taught me writing, one dropped out of college is his second day of college.

[00:09:39 - 00:09:41] But as a phenomenal writer, it makes a lot of money writing.

[00:09:43 - 00:09:51] And I just feel like our educational systems, tears folks in the wrong direction in order to, you know, to be good writers.

[00:09:52 - 00:09:58] I'd love it if they just had a semester on blogging, and it's all you had to do because when I started oxygen financial,

[00:10:00 - 00:10:05] this boom, when blogs weren't that popular, I started writing three blogs a week.

[00:10:06 - 00:10:11] And you just get this instantaneous feedback where people like, wow, online people would say, that sucked.

[00:10:11 - 00:10:18] I liked it or it was great or, you know, and, you know, the real, the real truism all the time is the market, right?

[00:10:18 - 00:10:21] Like, what does the market say? Like, your mom could tell you your article is great.

[00:10:22 - 00:10:27] But what does the market say? And when you're out there like this, and you write for major publications,

[00:10:27 - 00:10:33] or are you when I was writing the blog, that was just my blog, you get real comments from people that say real stuff.

[00:10:33 - 00:10:38] And kind of tell you what, what they think of your stuff. And that's, to me, it's the best.

[00:10:38 - 00:10:45] I never get upset about it. Even when people say horrible, nasty things to me, I never get upset about it. It's kind of funny sometimes.

[00:10:47 - 00:10:54] You know, I noticed from me, I started making the podcast, casting circuit, and I was trying to get a message out,

[00:10:55 - 00:11:01] and it took me about 30 episodes to feel like I was finally getting my message nailed down.

[00:11:01 - 00:11:07] And I remember there was one time I said something, and I said just a little bit differently, and the host laughed.

[00:11:08 - 00:11:13] I was like, oh, I'm going to try that next episode, and the host laughed on that episode.

[00:11:14 - 00:11:23] And I realized I was on to something, but I didn't dream it up. I just accidentally came out and I had to sense the feedback from the host to realize,

[00:11:23 - 00:11:24] hey, this is the direction I should go.

[00:11:25 - 00:11:34] Well, what what it tells you, and this is kind of the way I do almost everything, is that a lot of people spend a lot of time planning stuff,

[00:11:34 - 00:11:47] and I spend a lot of time doing stuff. And as long as you realize if you do, and you fail, that fail is good, and you fail and fix, and then you do,

[00:11:47 - 00:11:49] and you fail and fix, you can get much faster.

[00:11:50 - 00:11:59] So I'm a bigger believer of just do, and you know, it helps me even today when I still write, like when you start writing for the today show,

[00:12:00 - 00:12:04] it's a way different game than when you're writing for local news, and when you're writing your blog.

[00:12:04 - 00:12:13] You know, I mean, there's more legal and strategy, there's more producers, you know, there's more refinement to the way that they want every word of that segment to look like,

[00:12:13 - 00:12:16] and you just, you can't get good at it till you do it.

[00:12:16 - 00:12:20] So you want to get on TV, write 100 pitches and pitch TV 100 times.

[00:12:21 - 00:12:27] You're probably going to 99 times, they're probably going to, they're not even going to read it, but you got to do to move forward.

[00:12:27 - 00:12:34] Wow. I like that. That's very general pet nesk. That was kind of the way he lived.

[00:12:35 - 00:12:35] Yeah.

[00:12:36 - 00:12:40] Let's talk about oxygen. You mentioned oxygen. What was oxygen?

[00:12:41 - 00:12:42] Is it?

[00:12:42 - 00:12:57] So in 2007, the entire industry and financial services was focused under kind of Nick Murray's guidance on the golden age of planning that somebody in the country was going to turn 60 every 10 seconds.

[00:12:57 - 00:13:06] So Maryland, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, all these companies are like, we had to figure out how to get all these baby boomers as they retire and have all their money.

[00:13:07 - 00:13:10] And I remember reading a book called Blue Ocean Strategies.

[00:13:11 - 00:13:21] And I remember reading that book and thinking, if everybody's going into the red ocean of the baby boomers, why don't I build a financial services firm that's focused on the X and Y generation?

[00:13:22 - 00:13:32] And so I was at Chick-fil-A one day. I had X, Y, Jen on an napkin and I was sort of doodling and magically like that, oh, appeared to me.

[00:13:33 - 00:13:43] And I said, wait a minute, if I do this right, somebody was going to be like, oh, see, Jen, but it ended up being oxygen financial, oh, X, Y, Jen financial.

[00:13:43 - 00:13:51] And I wanted a creative company that was unlike, it was the antithesis of Morgan Stanley, UBS and Maryland.

[00:13:51 - 00:14:00] So I had a real oxygen machine in my office. I served drinks that Gen Xers will remember, like you who, sun kissed, mellow yellow, cheer wine.

[00:14:01 - 00:14:09] I had a bar. I changed financial planning from a retainer to a subscription agreement like Netflix because it was getting popular.

[00:14:09 - 00:14:18] And we sort of created a Netflixy, you know, financial services company, you know, the young people, they loved it. They loved it.

[00:14:18 - 00:14:25] We got them in droves. None of them had lots of money, but by the time I sold it, guess what? They had lots of money.

[00:14:25 - 00:14:30] And so it was a whole model of a kind of subscription financial planning.

[00:14:32 - 00:14:37] Well, I love the fact that you said you were kind of the antithesis of the Morgan Stanley's.

[00:14:37 - 00:14:40] What, what, what made you decide to be not them?

[00:14:42 - 00:14:54] Well, this goes back to the blue ocean. I was like, what, what is it that all these boomers want? You know, they want to go into the office and see the Andy Warhol on the marble floor and people in suits.

[00:14:54 - 00:15:02] And, you know, this is back in 07, right? And, you know, all the pomp and circumstance of what a financial advisor should have.

[00:15:02 - 00:15:09] And I thought, let's go in. I'm going to wear jeans every day. I'm not going to wear a suit. I'm going to make the, I'm going to make the experience fun.

[00:15:10 - 00:15:13] It's not going to be like your parents financial firm. This feels like a lecture from somebody.

[00:15:15 - 00:15:21] And, you know, I wanted to build it like that because I thought younger people like me at the time, not so young anymore.

[00:15:22 - 00:15:29] We, we, you know, we wanted something different and, and marketing wise, we really, we really hit the nail in the head.

[00:15:30 - 00:15:37] Well, I, that makes so much sense because I think when people are meeting with their financial advisor, many times they feel like they've been stripped naked.

[00:15:37 - 00:15:41] They're coming in with all their mistakes and everything.

[00:15:41 - 00:15:48] It's an intimidating environment. And it seems like you took the, did everything you could to take the intimidation out of the environment.

[00:15:50 - 00:15:53] Yeah, I, well, that's why we didn't have CNBC on TV.

[00:15:54 - 00:15:59] I had no financial magazines, no fortune, no Forbes, no Wall Street Journal.

[00:16:00 - 00:16:06] I had drinks that's like, it's not like coffee tea, coke, diet coke. No, what do you want, man?

[00:16:06 - 00:16:10] What would you have when you're a kid? Sun kiss, mellow yellow, cheer wine.

[00:16:10 - 00:16:20] You, I had, I gave away more you who, then you can buy, I closed deals Craig with you who, because I have some guy that would come in that's 40 years

[00:16:20 - 00:16:26] already goes, you, oh, I have one of those since I was a kid. You're my guy. I'm giving you my money.

[00:16:26 - 00:16:30] I'd even have to sell them to do it because they were like, this is home.

[00:16:31 - 00:16:39] And we forget, especially in like professional services, that, you know, your environment should sort of reflect out

[00:16:39 - 00:16:47] what kind of clientele you want to take on. That's why Louis Vuitton doesn't look like TJ Maxx, you know, the stores don't look the same.

[00:16:47 - 00:16:56] And so many, many professional services firm, so bland, so boring, I'll look the same and that really helped us.

[00:16:58 - 00:17:05] You know, comment I'll get every now and then, you know, when I'm helping somebody with their marketing, they'll say, well, that's not how it's done in our industry.

[00:17:05 - 00:17:13] Right, right, exactly. And my response is, I'll ask them, it's like, is your goal to be average?

[00:17:14 - 00:17:20] And they'll push back, they'll look indignant and they say, no, no, I'm not average, we're exceptional.

[00:17:21 - 00:17:26] I said, well, if you're doing what everybody else is doing, you're mathematically limited to being average.

[00:17:26 - 00:17:34] So it would be okay if we not have, that's not how it's done in our industry, not be part of the discussion.

[00:17:35 - 00:17:45] I think the part that those folks forget, and you're totally right, is that if you sat in front of your clients today and your professional services firm,

[00:17:45 - 00:17:50] you say, hey, Craig, what do you think of when you hear our name, ABC company, or blah, blah, blah.

[00:17:51 - 00:17:55] And they give you a puzzled look or they can't respond you quickly.

[00:17:55 - 00:18:01] You don't really have a brand. And there's a big difference between having a good company that makes profits and having a brand.

[00:18:01 - 00:18:05] And what we built in Atlanta with oxygen is we built a brand.

[00:18:05 - 00:18:13] People knew the name. We were everywhere. And when people started to hear the story, just like selling, you know, Yeti Mugs, I mean, look,

[00:18:13 - 00:18:20] there's tons of Mugs. What makes Yeti a better mug? I don't know. I'm sure they say it's a better mug. It's better. It's better marketing, better branding.

[00:18:20 - 00:18:30] And this is what this is what beats other people to the punch, especially when you're in the crowded sea of sameness in a lot of those professional services industries.

[00:18:30 - 00:18:42] Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's being different. And it's fine. You know, when you mention Yeti, I used to drive by the Yeti headquarters several times a week.

[00:18:43 - 00:18:48] It's here in Austin right next to AMD's headquarters, the, you know, the chip company. Oh, yeah.

[00:18:50 - 00:18:56] And they built that big headquarters when they were on the rise up when, you know, when nobody could get enough Yetis for Christmas.

[00:18:56 - 00:19:06] And then I wonder frequently how they were able to carry that on because people started copying them, but every, they'll always be the Yetis.

[00:19:07 - 00:19:15] When, when somebody's thinking about getting a ride shared, they say, hey, I'll just do wherever they don't say, even if they're taking lift, right,

[00:19:15 - 00:19:26] Uber gained the name for being first. Right. And boy, you wouldn't talk about an industry that ignored the, that's not how it's done in our industry. They reinvented taxes.

[00:19:27 - 00:19:36] This is the fundamental problem with marketing for most small and medium-sized businesses is that most of them are focused on direct ROI. And how do we track ROI?

[00:19:36 - 00:19:48] And the truth is that some element of every dollar is spent on direct ROI stuff. Some element of every dollar needs to be spent on branding and branding is a long tail.

[00:19:48 - 00:19:55] It's not a short tail, right, because you have to invest enough in it that people have awareness of the name and it might cause them to take action. And that takes time.

[00:19:55 - 00:20:04] And most business owners are pennilizing pound foolish. They don't think about building brand. They only focus on like, what ROI did I get this quarter?

[00:20:04 - 00:20:11] And so every business that I build, even the ones that build today, I always think about investing dollars in brand.

[00:20:11 - 00:20:21] So five years from now, people are like, oh, I heard of you guys, right? I know that name, right? I've seen you before, you know, those all tip the scales in our favor for somebody to do business.

[00:20:23 - 00:20:29] Have you ever heard of Roy Williams? Yeah. Yeah, he calls those folks twitchy little bastards.

[00:20:32 - 00:20:40] Yeah, the people, it's the business owners, they want to run ad and they want immediate response, they don't understand the value of branding.

[00:20:42 - 00:20:53] And, but that's, and you're right, I run into this frequently, people will want to shut down a campaign because they can't directly measure an ROI.

[00:20:54 - 00:21:06] I'm like, let's look at the bigger picture here. You know, yeah, this particular ad, yeah, you can't tie us, you know, it's hard to trace back the, the ROI to this particular ad.

[00:21:06 - 00:21:11] But that doesn't mean that ad wasn't important. It played a function in the bigger system.

[00:21:12 - 00:21:20] I, one of my favorite marketing things I've used for years, a company called Skinnet, at S.K.I.N. IT, Skinnet.

[00:21:20 - 00:21:29] And it's kind of like, they're like magnetic, you know, covers that go on the outside of your computer or your phone.

[00:21:29 - 00:21:34] And I'll be around a bunch of entrepreneurs and I'll be like, oh, Craig, you work for Apple or what?

[00:21:34 - 00:21:39] And, you know, I got their computer. I'm like, I don't see, I see the, you got your Mac and the Apple.

[00:21:39 - 00:21:46] And then I show them the skin of them like, why would you, why wouldn't you be out promoting your brand everywhere that you could be?

[00:21:46 - 00:21:49] You're, you're, you're a marketing machine for Apple, you realize that.

[00:21:50 - 00:21:55] And, and it's just, it's just, you know, owners don't always brand their clothes.

[00:21:55 - 00:22:01] There's so many owners I know that don't have branded clothes. It's like, if you're running a company, you got to be all out.

[00:22:01 - 00:22:08] Like, hey, I'm, I'm branding my company and here I am, you know, but if you're not, somebody else is going to take the business.

[00:22:09 - 00:22:19] Yeah, no, absolutely. And that's the, I think one of the most dangerous places to be is number one in your, in your industry, whether it's local.

[00:22:21 - 00:22:26] And because if you're number one, that guarantees there's a whole bunch of people that are trying to take your spot.

[00:22:28 - 00:22:36] Not that you should, you know, obviously, one be number one, but I, I mean, I have, there's a little bit of my history where I warned a general manager I worked for.

[00:22:36 - 00:22:38] I said, I think our competitors are hungrier than we are.

[00:22:38 - 00:22:40] And we were number one at that point.

[00:22:41 - 00:22:43] He got angry yet. Many threw me out of his office.

[00:22:45 - 00:22:55] Sadly, I was right. Our competitors were hungrier than us and they caught up quickly and put us in a bind because we got complacent.

[00:22:56 - 00:23:08] It's, but it's that kind of tying in what you're saying, you have to be constantly vigilant on moving yourself forward, moving your brand forward, never taking anything for granted.

[00:23:08 - 00:23:14] And if, if you're doing well in your industry, you got to count on the fact that there are people that are going to try to take away your business.

[00:23:16 - 00:23:22] Always, always, I'm, I'm, every day, I'm, I'm always paranoid about it.

[00:23:24 - 00:23:29] Well, let's, let's talk about the red, white and green show. What, what an interesting name.

[00:23:30 - 00:23:34] What's the show? What's the, I'm having a blast. I'm having a blast at that right now.

[00:23:34 - 00:23:41] I'm only about 20 episodes in so you can, you can appreciate it. But I basically took the American flag.

[00:23:42 - 00:23:49] And I, I basically got rid of the Betsy Ross blue in the corner. I made it green.

[00:23:50 - 00:23:55] And I took the 13 stars for the 13 colonies and I put in 13 dollar signs.

[00:23:55 - 00:23:58] And so I have a red, white and green flag.

[00:23:58 - 00:24:07] And to me, I launched this show to try to teach people about capitalism.

[00:24:08 - 00:24:16] I think we're at a, we're at a weird juncture in America where there are a lot of people that, that vilify capitalism.

[00:24:16 - 00:24:22] And red, white and greens is show about teaching people about money and business and stuff.

[00:24:22 - 00:24:30] But mostly about, you know, how you think about every day becoming a smarter capitalist and understanding the system that we're in.

[00:24:32 - 00:24:38] And it's a lot of fun. Excuse me, I do it for about 30 minutes and, you know, we have a blast.

[00:24:38 - 00:24:41] And that, there's a whole emphasis of red, white and green.

[00:24:42 - 00:24:48] I love that. And what would be, what would be some things that I would learn?

[00:24:48 - 00:24:51] What would be some takeaways if I were to listen to that?

[00:24:52 - 00:24:57] You know, the number one thing I tell people and I try to tell them every show is that, you know, the one universal,

[00:24:57 - 00:25:01] one of the universal laws out there people have heard of is supply and demand.

[00:25:02 - 00:25:08] And they think about supply and demand in terms of pricing on airline tickets or tailor swift tickets.

[00:25:08 - 00:25:18] But the truth is that the way we're compensated in this country is directly proportional to supply and demand.

[00:25:18 - 00:25:26] Meaning that skills that are trainable, like if somebody's a receptionist, you could be the best receptionist in the entire world.

[00:25:26 - 00:25:30] But the truth is the easy job to replace and get trained.

[00:25:30 - 00:25:32] Doesn't mean there aren't better ones than others.

[00:25:32 - 00:25:38] The way income is paid, the highest paying jobs in America are marketing.

[00:25:38 - 00:25:40] I call it biz dev and entrepreneurship.

[00:25:40 - 00:25:53] So if people think about the line in a company of revenue and expenses, any jobs that suck expenses from a company are never going to pay huge dollars relative to the jobs that bring in revenue for a company.

[00:25:54 - 00:25:56] And that's the way money is paid in America.

[00:25:57 - 00:26:00] So when people say, hey, I really want to make more money.

[00:26:00 - 00:26:02] It's like, well, let's think about how you can create more revenue.

[00:26:03 - 00:26:09] Because if you don't do anything to create more revenue, whether it's for you or for your company, you're never going to get paid more income.

[00:26:09 - 00:26:11] That's just the fact. It's math. It's capitalism.

[00:26:12 - 00:26:16] And people don't think that way. They're not trained that way. They're like, I'm an engineer.

[00:26:16 - 00:26:21] I'm an accountant. I'm a sales rep. But it's not really that way. It's about the X's and O's.

[00:26:22 - 00:26:27] And the reality is the hardest job in America, Craig, by far is marketing.

[00:26:27 - 00:26:36] The hardest job in America is to figure out how to bring in lots and lots of new business, which is why we have so few of those people and they get paid so much money.

[00:26:36 - 00:26:40] Tony Robbins is a marketer, right?

[00:26:40 - 00:26:46] Even golfers like Scotty Sheffler and Rory today, yeah, they make 20 million on the golf course.

[00:26:46 - 00:26:52] They make three times as much an endorsements because you get paid more money to market. That's just a fact.

[00:26:53 - 00:26:58] And when people can lean into it, you get smarter at understanding how the system works.

[00:26:59 - 00:27:03] Michael Jordan famously said even Republicans buy tennis shoes.

[00:27:03 - 00:27:04] Totally.

[00:27:05 - 00:27:10] And I think that's the nature of what we talk about on this show.

[00:27:11 - 00:27:17] May range anywhere from, how do you get your kids to be capitalist when thinking about their allowance?

[00:27:17 - 00:27:21] I would never give a kid an allowance. Give is a bad word. You want them to earn an allowance.

[00:27:22 - 00:27:30] Why would you want to train somebody to think about the way you make money as somebody give it to you versus the way that you make money as you earn it by doing something?

[00:27:30 - 00:27:32] Because that's the way it's going to be in the future.

[00:27:33 - 00:27:35] People just don't think that way.

[00:27:35 - 00:27:42] And then when you end up being successful as an entrepreneur, I almost feel like in today's society, you get you're like a villain.

[00:27:43 - 00:27:44] Like you did something wrong.

[00:27:45 - 00:27:46] Yeah, yeah.

[00:27:46 - 00:27:52] Yeah, I've been here in that recently with with Elon. He turned cafeteria workers into millionaires.

[00:27:52 - 00:27:54] And he's a bad guy.

[00:27:54 - 00:27:55] He's a bad guy.

[00:27:55 - 00:28:03] You know what? Listen, if you can create, if you can create two of the top 10 most valuable companies in the world.

[00:28:04 - 00:28:06] You probably should be a trillionaire, right?

[00:28:06 - 00:28:13] So anyone has mad at him and go, why don't you create, why don't you create two of the top 10 companies in the world in the next 20 years?

[00:28:13 - 00:28:16] Go ahead and do it. It's so easy. It should be easy. I mean, whatever you see.

[00:28:16 - 00:28:21] And that's what people think. Everyone sees the glory. Nobody sees the pain.

[00:28:22 - 00:28:26] You know, a few years ago, this was before I got sick.

[00:28:26 - 00:28:35] I know because I was, we had this big snow. I'm when I moved to Texas, you know, over 20 years ago, the movers moved my snow shovel.

[00:28:36 - 00:28:40] And it was sitting in the garage and I was like, what am I going to do with this thing? Nobody's going to buy it.

[00:28:40 - 00:28:42] Then we had this nasty snow storm.

[00:28:43 - 00:28:48] And I'm out shoveling my driveway and watching the kids walk around the neighborhood.

[00:28:49 - 00:28:53] And I realized in the right hands, I'm holding a thousand dollar snow shovel.

[00:28:54 - 00:28:58] But none of the kids in my neighborhood know how to turn that into a thousand dollar snow shovel.

[00:29:00 - 00:29:06] And it's, you know, the thing that triggered that was your comment about, you know, don't just give them an allowance.

[00:29:07 - 00:29:15] Teach them, teach them a work ethic. And it made me sad because there was part of me that secretly wanted a kid to come up to me and say,

[00:29:15 - 00:29:26] Mister, can I buy your snow shovel? I'll give you a 50 bucks for your snow shovel because he had the vision of going around the neighborhood and turning that into a thousand dollar snow shovel.

[00:29:27 - 00:29:28] That's funny.

[00:29:29 - 00:29:35] Well, it's true. I mean, I wish I wish I wish we do more of it in today's society.

[00:29:35 - 00:29:40] Just teach people how to get out and hustle and bring in revenue and make money.

[00:29:40 - 00:29:43] It just makes you better in life.

[00:29:43 - 00:29:44] Yeah.

[00:29:45 - 00:29:48] There was a concept that you mentioned in the green room.

[00:29:48 - 00:29:52] And I want to make sure we cover this because it sounded really interesting.

[00:29:52 - 00:29:55] And you said that life is a game of North South.

[00:29:57 - 00:29:59] What did you mean and what's that about?

[00:30:00 - 00:30:04] So, you know, provided first of all, I define North as your goals.

[00:30:04 - 00:30:09] Every year, I do something called a witty witty, which is what do you want for yourself?

[00:30:10 - 00:30:15] And, you know, once you know what your goals are, whatever they may be, doesn't have to be financial even.

[00:30:16 - 00:30:20] That should start to set like your true North, right? Your goals.

[00:30:20 - 00:30:25] And the problem is that, you know, life is full of distractions and distractions, right?

[00:30:25 - 00:30:34] You get parking tickets, somebody gets bit by a dog, your kid gets sick, you know, your boss doesn't give you a promotion, whatever it may be.

[00:30:34 - 00:30:39] And it's very easy to start moving east and west in the way that you live your life.

[00:30:40 - 00:30:43] And we all have setbacks. That's the South, right?

[00:30:43 - 00:30:45] We all have bad days. That's the South.

[00:30:45 - 00:30:54] The quicker you can recover and not go east west and the quicker you can get back to true North on your goals, the faster you're going to become more successful in life.

[00:30:55 - 00:30:58] The happier you're going to be in life. Now, I don't have very many bad days.

[00:30:58 - 00:31:09] Like everybody, I have some, but I'm guarantee you it's a lot fewer than other people because I'm not focused on the bad news of the South of yesterday.

[00:31:09 - 00:31:13] I'm focused on my back to my goals and my true North of today.

[00:31:13 - 00:31:23] And the more that you think about living life north south and you're not spending all day long distracted by what somebody else is doing at work or your neighbor.

[00:31:23 - 00:31:36] Your neighbor did this thing in the HOA and now somebody left the garbage cans out at the end of the street, like there's all these distractions that legitimately don't move you one inch closer to your goals in life.

[00:31:37 - 00:31:46] And so once you set that true North of goals, what you want to be focused on every day you get up is am I moving closer to my goals and everything outside I'm doing.

[00:31:46 - 00:31:57] If it's pulling me away from those goals, it's an East West move. And so I'm very disciplined to not get distracted from what it is that I'm trying to accomplish.

[00:31:57 - 00:32:02] And that's what I mean by that whole analogy of North South.

[00:32:03 - 00:32:26] That makes a lot of sense. And I'm thinking I'm thinking through the East West things, you know, sometimes if I if I fail and one my North, you know, North bound activities and Internet or whatever dangles something in front of me, it's easy to get distracted.

[00:32:26 - 00:32:34] Because it's a little meditating, right? It's a little bit meditating. Yeah, it's therapeutic, right? You know, there's a saying about the garbage cans.

[00:32:35 - 00:32:43] You're not only mad. They're out there. Then you with your neighbor. It's like, can you believe surely left out our garbage cans? Then you type of know it out to the HOA about the garbage cans where you know it.

[00:32:44 - 00:32:55] You spend an hour of your 10 hours of the work day dealing on something that had zero to anything that would really improve your life or anybody else's for that matter.

[00:32:56 - 00:33:04] You know, and so, you know, there be sometimes I'll be at places and I'll say something and I'll be like, man, never notice that and they're like, are you kidding?

[00:33:04 - 00:33:17] You drive by that thing every day and it's like, well, I really didn't because I'm focused on what I need to do to get to my goals and I'm not weighted down by having bad days.

[00:33:18 - 00:33:25] And the way I look at this, happiness and life is about expectations met or unmet.

[00:33:25 - 00:33:33] So anybody that's watching this right now, if you're unhappy, you've got some set of expectations and life or people around you just aren't meeting them.

[00:33:33 - 00:33:42] So you got to get those in line because unhappy people are largely always dissatisfied with the way things they expected to be.

[00:33:42 - 00:33:49] I expect nothing from anybody, Craig. Whatever I get, it's a gift. I'll do this all myself. Whatever else I get, it's a gift.

[00:33:50 - 00:33:53] And life's just much happier every day.

[00:33:55 - 00:34:00] There's a lady named Joelle and Demetrius. Her claim to fame is she picked the OJ Simpson jury.

[00:34:03 - 00:34:14] And she said her biggest predictor in when she's picking jurors or just trying to get an idea of anybody is she tries to figure out where they are in life relative to where they expected to be in life.

[00:34:14 - 00:34:17] And people that have fallen short. I mean, it's what you just said.

[00:34:19 - 00:34:28] Well, you think about it. You find somebody is unhappy and say, tell me why you're happy. It's like, oh, well, I expected that my brother was going to give me $5,000 for this.

[00:34:28 - 00:34:39] And you know, you always hear that I expected this. And it's it's like, this is why in any stage, whether you're an entrepreneur or corporate, wherever it is, just get clear in your expectations.

[00:34:41 - 00:34:48] And you know, what happens usually is when you're dissatisfied is that you expected X and everything that was delivered was a lot less.

[00:34:49 - 00:34:49] Wow.

[00:34:50 - 00:35:05] You know, we were going to talk 25 minutes. We've gone 35. We could go a lot more. We barely talked about the fact that you help people sell their businesses and get a lot of money for their life's times hard work.

[00:35:05 - 00:35:13] But I feel like you added a ton of value. And I do think if anybody's out there has any plans ever to sell their business, I think they need to talk to you.

[00:35:15 - 00:35:20] Not because you're good at it, but because of the philosophies that you've laid out here, just makes so much sense.

[00:35:21 - 00:35:23] Now, you know, I'll get it done. Now, you know, I'll get it done.

[00:35:23 - 00:35:32] I mean, we've covered communication. The importance of communication being able to communicate. We've talked about the importance of saying North South goals.

[00:35:33 - 00:35:37] How will people reach you? What's the best way for folks to reach out to you?

[00:35:37 - 00:35:50] You know, easiest thing is just to go to www.esladvisors.com. And just my profile is on there, or just, you know, you can email me from there. It's the easiest thing to do.

[00:35:51 - 00:35:55] Well, thanks for coming on, Leaders & Legacies. This has been an amazing discussion.

[00:35:56 - 00:35:57] Well, thanks. Thanks for having me on, Craig.