0:00 Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours. I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose. No, I don't. I didn't. And I am not happy with it. Amigo. Yo. Are you having some deja vu by chance? Yeah, man. We've got internet issues at this building. They've got a kind of a little bit of an atypical internet setup here, non-Comcast.

0:43 And boy. Oy vey. Oy vey. But we're back. We're back in black. Where were we going, my friend? Yeah. So I want to talk about the book Science of Scaling by Ben Hardy and some other guy. It's the follow-up book to 10X is easier than 2X. Some of you listening may have read one or both of those. In truthfulness, I skimmed 10X is easier than 2X a handful of years ago. I don't know when it came out, maybe four or five years ago. And then Science of Scaling, I think, came out in the last 24 months or so. I hadn't read Science of Scaling. I missed a book club opportunity with some business buddy as mine. But then recently we had a client reach out that had heard about it at a conference, wanted to talk like business planning.

1:27 Yeah. And so I was like, okay, in preparation for this meeting, I'm going to read it. I plowed through the book on a Saturday, the whole thing. And it was literally, I read every page and I loved it. And it was very good. And it really just messed me up forever because it just, it really did. It truly like rewired my brain and I also connected with how I think probably a lot of people who read it come away with the wrong impression. If you're not careful to sort of read the whole thing, which I don't normally do with books, I tend to skim for the stuff I'm looking for and move on. But if you do that with this book, I think you might come away with this sense of, kind of dream bigger, right?

2:07 You're probably not aiming high enough in your business. And that's a good takeaway. But I think the bigger takeaway is, you know, what we were talking about earlier, which is using time as a tool. Yeah. Using time as a tool. So what that means is, let's say, you know, you're a one or $2 million restoration company right now or a roofing company or an HVAC company. And, you're a few years in, you've got big ambitions, and let's say your goal is to go to 15 million in 10 years. If you got this plan to be really profitable and get a big multiple and sell and retire before you're 50, whatever. Well, what the science of scaling would suggest is, why wait 10 years? What if you were to scale to 15 million in two years?

2:52 What would have to change in your business Who on your team would have to be different? Who do you need that you don't currently have? Who maybe on your team is on the team, but shouldn't be if that's the goal, right? Or they're going to become a roadblock or a bottleneck, right? Do you have to expand into other markets? Are you even offering the right service to your current client base? Are you going after the right client base? Are you going to need to expand and service other clients? It opens up this door to, to, I think what they refer to as transformational thinking. I don't think that's my term. Whereas most of the time when we look at business planning and goal setting, we are thinking in terms of incremental thinking, incremental gains, you know, 10 to 15% growth, 15 to 25% annual growth year over year.

3:41 And of course, this is looking at that 10x, 100x, you know, kind of growth. And again, it's not for the sake, like what I loved about it is it wasn't like the whole, the guru chatter that I think some of us get sucked into the Ferraris and Lambos and like, you know, scaling up, you know, to a hundred million in three years so that we can become a billionaire in this kind of, that really isn't the tone at all of the book. No, it's not. And in fact, Ben Hardy, I was watching a YouTube interview with him and kind of my preparation for this meeting and... And he said it's a huge misconception amongst his fans, followers, is that this is really a prescription for going huge, doing that game.

4:24 He's like, it's not about that. It's about clarifying and refining your thinking as a business leader and as an owner. Yeah. That whether or not you even have an ambition to go to 10, 15, 20, 100x your business in a matter of years or months... It's about deploying the right strategic critical thinking in your business no matter how big you want to get. Yeah, I think part of what he points to at that time as a tool is using it as a catalyst to support some more aggressive, quantifying, asking yourself hard questions. Because as much as it applies to getting big as a business, it also applies to getting your attention or focus on the thing you're more excited about.

5:10 So like several of the examples that he cites in that wasn't necessarily there was this explosive growth to $100 million. It was more like somebody got independent by starting their business focused on X service delivery. Yeah. Because it was kind of like the low hanging fruit. It got things going. Yeah. Well, then you almost get to this stage where it's like you're afraid to let that go. It's the devil you know. You don't want to let it go. But then in her case, she had already found some minor success, some early signs of success, doing this thing that really drove her. That was more, she was more mission oriented, more passionate about it. And that time as a tool was, yeah, you can poke at this for 10 years.

5:53 Or if the intent is to get it to X dollars so that it's self-sustaining by this time frame, what would you have to consider? What chances are you willing to take? What does that change in terms of priorities? And I think that's what hooks in us. Yeah. is that all of a sudden we're like, man, if you just stop and slow down and begin simplifying, one of the things that you and I chatted about is that these topics tend to come in sequences, it feels like. And we have a mutual friend, you're obviously much closer to him, but just an absolute monster entrepreneur, has succeeded at scale everywhere, currently runs about a $35, $40 million roofing entity, the 17th largest Corning's, Owens Corning.

6:38 Owens Corning. Producer in the country. In the country, based in Oregon. Anyways, he's got it figured out in many ways. Yeah. And one of the things that he just deploys consistently is a conviction to simplify his attention. Yeah. And it's like, he's very practical and non-emotional and he steps back and he looks at his business and he tries to identify the levers that... that if he puts his attention on those two, three things, they have the most clearly outweighed return on investment of time, resource, and energy. And he honestly just allows some of the other things to work themselves out. And just like this combination of going through this book again, time as a tool, making it ask hard questions, and then having partnered with it, this exchange with just a very successful entrepreneur and how part of his winning formula is getting really clear on what are the two, three things that I'm going to keep my attention on and everything else, honestly, I'm going to allow it just to happen.

7:40 Sheesh, what a massive combo. I think one of the things that's just... really motivating and inspiring about that book and about my friend Paul is, and hopefully we'll get him on the podcast here before too long. You and I've been spending a fair bit of conversation in the background, just thinking about what kind of life are we trying to build? You and me. That's fair. And I think one of the patterns we've seen over and over and over again is there is a path. to big achievement that takes a massive toll on somebody. We've seen that over and over again. For sure. Like the trade-offs. Yep. For sure. Right? I think the classic entrepreneur story that we see is just grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, candle at both ends, right?

8:24 In a lot of cases, sadly, right? Right. substance abuse to cope with the stress and the anxiety, oftentimes broken home relationships and personal relationships, all of these things. Not always. Not always. We're not saying always. No, no, no, no, no, of course not. Of course not. There's exceptions to every rule, but I think everybody listening to this recognizes that pattern. For sure. And it can pay off in certain ways, but of course the last thing any of us want is to build an empire and have nobody we love around us. At the end of that, you may have all the toys, but... Hustle and grind does work. Hustle and grind can work. But then you and I've also, periodically we've seen these points of light of entrepreneurs that have disciplined themselves around a process and approach that has given them outsized results without sacrificing their personal lives and their health and their fitness and the relationships close to them and the hobbies and interests and everything else.

9:22 And Paul is one of those guys, and I don't think I'm oversharing here, you know, I've known Paul for a while And he's pretty open and honest about this, just how he prefers to work. And he's really, really guarded with his time spent in the business. And yet... Not on the business per se. No. Like his mind... Oh, his mind is always working. And he's one of these guys that is just so fun because he oftentimes has his iPad with the keyboard around. And he'll be just thinking about ideas. And it's so fun because he's so open and willing to share basically anything about his business and ideas he's having. And on many occasions, he's like, hey, let me show you this spreadsheet I worked up.

10:02 Like, I got this idea. Like, dude, you could totally do this and see if you... And he'll like... So he genuinely loves it. But he spends his time on, like you said, like, what are the two levers, two, three levers in the business that are so powerful... that I can kind of not worry about the rest. Yeah. And that's what he devotes his time to. Which is insane. It is insane. It's insane. But if you think about both of these examples, it's just forcing you out of autopilot. Yes. It's forcing you to pull your head above the waves. Yeah. out of the chaos for long enough to go, wait a minute.

10:43 Just slow down for a heartbeat. Let's not worry about running in to put out that particular fire and just think about what you're about to start doing. Think about what you're currently committed to. Think about what you're currently saying yes and no to. evaluate your opportunity costs associated with your decision-making. Like you and I have committed to some transparency, right? This morning, this is a couple of weeks now, right? Building momentum where you're like sharing the book. So then I get back in, it's like, okay, well, if you're running through it, I'm going to go through it again. We have these meetings with Paul. This just starts to add up. And then next thing you know, I wake up this morning. And I'm like, let's not go any further, any direction.

11:23 Let's stop. Let's circle the wagons together. And we've spent nearly six hours today just doing this exercise of saying, okay, wait a minute. What's important? What's the mission at hand? What kind of business do we want to be responsible for? What kind of value do we need to provide? And what does that mean? And we honestly, we have these moments. You and I are doers. We get excited and we start going just like every entrepreneur does. They start down this trajectory. They start communicating quick. They start maneuvering. They start kind of putting minimum viable options in place. And the next thing you know, they're halfway down a quarter mile sprint. And I'm not sure that we've honestly asked ourselves the question yet.

12:07 Yeah. Does this make sense? It does in these little conversations where you're in the tunnel and you're hyper-focused, but if you stop and pull back and kind of time is a tool. Yeah. Key levers. Yeah. What are we trying to accomplish? All of a sudden it forced you and I both to go, wait a minute. Yeah. We're trudging down this road. Yeah. that some of it applies. Yeah, yeah. Like there's application here. We did spend our time thinking about something that creates a ton of value and momentum, but we were about to deploy it wrong because we were swept up in the moment to moment, put out the fire, try this, practice, go into action. And honestly, this was just a good reminder to stop for a moment and slow down and start applying these questions.

12:51 And it is absolutely changing what we want to prioritize. It's so powerful. Yeah. Very valuable. And I think another, again, going back to this incremental thinking, I think one mistake that sometimes people make when they read these books is putting a multiplier on what they're doing now. Oh, just more of the same. Yeah, like the typical approach to pro forma planning, you know, at the end of the year, you're building out, you know, you're looking at past year's results. You're building out your budget effectively for the following year. And you're messing with the different cost and income categories to figure out, okay, first of all, based on sort of trends you noticed in the...

13:32 in the business across the year, and you're trying to account for that. And then you're trying to think, well, gosh, if we hire two more PMs in March, their average production over the course of the next 12 months will be at least a million five each. What does that change? What does that do for us? And we've hired three BDs by the middle of the year, and you're doing all these calculations. But all of that is incremental shifts in the business. And it really doesn't require much ingenuity or transformation on the business. It's just like, okay, I'm going to hire three more units of this I'm going to deploy two more units of this. And I think ultimately, that's why so many businesses just kind of table out.

14:12 Because then you go into that next year and like you struggle to find PMs. Yeah. And then you're like, oh, shit, now we're behind goal. And you struggle to find the right BDs. You get a BD and in three, six months, you maybe even snipe them from another really big restore. And they're like, oh, they're going to bring in $3 million. And you planned on it. Yeah. And I think part of the problem with that kind of conventional thinking, and we've done it many, you know, many, many, I think this is what most people are taught to do is do this incremental planning. The problem with it is it doesn't force you to look at the bigger picture of your business. Mm-hmm. And make changes that I think at some point you realize in hindsight, oh man, we should have totally changed the way we were doing that back then.

14:56 But because it was just this incremental thing of let's grow by 15 to 25%, it never forces you to get creative and also to get critical of your business. Yeah. Critical is great. Right? Yeah. Because- How does this break? That's it. I was just going to say that. The reality of it is that certain things, lots of things actually, at scale begin to malfunction and or not be repeatable. And you mentioned some good examples. When the system that we are trying to build, let's say, requires a very specific avatar in order for that service to be delivered, That's going to create constraint on your business and it is going to definitely have an impact on your ability to scale.

15:41 So if time is being used as a tool, that may force you to say, well, if we tried to continue to doing it the way we do it now with this particular type of person or avatar, they're one in a million people. It's very difficult to find more of them. well then I'm going to have to probably readjust the whole offering. Yeah. Because to get to X, Y, Z scale by that timeframe is not possible if I continue to just to try to do more of what I'm already doing. Yeah. And that's the piece. It's like under load, what breaks? Yeah. And this is a way for you to experiment with that mentally before you're too committed or go too far down a path potentially. Yeah. Yeah. But it changes the fundamentals.

16:24 I think that's the important thing. I believe that people say, well, I'll just do more of this until it kind of taps out, and then we'll reevaluate and have to make some changes. Yeah, but the problem is that if you build an entire structure on a foundation that's not square, you're screwed. Eventually that scale, that whatever, is going to break under the load. Are you a business that's under 5 million in sales and you're just now getting ready to try and scale your company up and hit some of those targets you've always wanted to hit, but now you've got to build a sales team? Or maybe you just hired your first sales rep, but you don't really know how to manage them. Like how do you manage, lead, train, develop a sales rep? Floodlight has a solution for you now.

17:05 So we can actually assign your sales rep a turnkey VP of sales that will help them create a sales blueprint, their own personal sales plan for your market. They'll have weekly one-on-ones with that sales rep to coach, mentor them, hold them accountable to the plan. And they'll also have a monthly owner's meeting where they'll meet with you or your general manager and review the progress of that sales rep. Their plan to actual results, what kind of performance improvement they're working on with them. Also let them know, hey, you might, they're doing really well. Maybe we should think of hiring a second sales rep. They're going to have that one-to-one advice for you as an owner or senior leader on the team as well. How great would that be to have a bolt-on sales manager for your one sales rep and it's only $2,500 a month?

17:48 If you're interested in talking more about that, reach out. Let's grab some time and let's talk shop. Our floodlight clients this last year in 2024 generated over $250 million in revenue. Supported by, advised by, an industry expert who's owned and operated a business just like you. So take action. Don't kick the can down the road. Start with our business health and value assessment. And let's unlock the next chapter of your success story. Well, here's another interesting example that I think is like super relevant in the trades. And that is, so this particular company, right, we're talking about this 10x plan, you know, of growing from X to Y in the next three years. that I zeroed in on with them in this discovery conversation was, I said, well, talk to me about your job margins.

18:30 And they said, well, it's interesting. We do a lot of small jobs at pretty crummy margins to just keep our guys busy and employed. It's a really tight labor market, right? Because we don't want the guys to go off to another company. And so, but then we're hanging in the pocket long enough to get these big angel jobs, these big angel losses and projects that make up for, you know, where we're getting 70, 80% gross margin on those jobs. And it makes up for all the low margin junk that we have to do. And we keep a core team, right? And this is a common approach that many teams in various industries will do. It's like you feed your guys by taking on stuff that when the getting's good, you might not take, right?

19:11 A lot of times service work will look like this for a lot of businesses. But so I asked them. I said, well, okay. So that signals to me when you're, because not every market's that way. Some people, they don't have a ton of competition. They have access to a lot of labor. There isn't a ton of other service companies eating that labor. And they don't have that problem in the same way. I said, but that's a signal to me. I was like, ooh, okay, tight labor market. How in the world... are we going to 10X our production when right now we barely have enough people to do the work in front of us? I said, so have you guys given some thought as to, we have a couple options here when it comes to labor, technicians, general labor, whatever the labor need is.

19:52 There's a couple directions you could go, right? One, I asked them, what's your revenue per technician right now? And they said, let's just say 300,000, okay? I said, so have you guys considered, is there potentially a way by making some changes, getting it to $600 or a million dollars of revenue per technician. Have you given that any thought? Because that's one way to get around this, potentially. What's that change? I said, too, have you identified where to go to get labor that isn't currently in your market? Like maybe you retrain low-voltage internet installers.

20:32 Like you just like that business. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know what it is. Or you go to the local trade school or the community college and you create a pipeline where you're like, hey, I'm going to need 30 bodies a year, go into the high schools, give presentations at assemblies. How in the world are you going to produce 10x the work? Right. when you're already having to feed your guys to keep them on the roster. No, this is great. Can I, are you okay if I kind of... Of course, yeah. I won't give name specifics, but somebody in our sphere negotiating massive scale to some of the things in front of them, okay? Yeah. has identified that making more of what they currently have, just rinsing and repeating what's in place, is not feasible.

21:14 So he did some of this work, I would say, and identified there's a different strategy that has to be deployed that's much simpler. Sounds crazy, but it absolutely changes everything about where the levers are, then that he would spend his time and attention on. So example, if... Business A decides, I want to get to a billion dollars in revenue, just random number. You do that either with a handful of locations, M&A, and you just grow the crap out of each market until you just, right? It's saturated. You do everything you can. You pull every inch out of it. Or you do 300 of a significantly smaller shop.

21:54 Simpler. Simpler. Simpler. Maybe you reduce the overall service offering in terms of the extent of services each location will provide. You downgrade the overall location's revenue base because by doing that, you create so much simplicity in what's required to get that location launched and ultimately to run it consistently. Way less friction. Way less friction. So then now there's a whole new lever because the problem now is not getting the growth in each individual market. It's who are you going to go get, lead the 300 locations? Yeah. So then your new lever is, I have to create a way to build leaders. Like it's a non-negotiable.

22:35 You can't wait for outside sources to give you that. Like that's now part of your conveyor belt of creating what you need for inventory. Again, it made this billion dollar opportunity achievable. Yeah. There's a path. Yeah. But it changes the entire approach. Like nothing he's done essentially other than let's say marketing and PPC ad is what he'll mirror to expand, right? Because it's a completely different monster. And now it's really about recruiting and training very quickly this avatar leader that can go in and own a market. Well, dude, that's a radically different strategy that had this individual not sat down and said, okay, what?

23:16 I want to get to this. It could take me 10 years, but what if I wanted to go in three or four? What would I have to do? And it gave him this clarity of a completely different strategy. And now he's identifying the levers. And then for not at that scale, like that's what we're doing. Even internally here at Floodlight, we're saying, yeah, there's all these different things that we do and that we can solve and problems that we can contribute and add value to. But... Not all of them are going to get where we want to go in a time frame or in a way. Yeah. And again, this question is just so powerful that really Paul originally turned us on to. It's just asking this question, what are the one or two things in my business that make everything else more or less irrelevant?

24:02 Yeah. Yeah. Like, what are those things? It's just such a clarifying thing. And I think that applies. I think the people listening to this that are at $500,000 in revenue or $5 million or $50 million, like, that is a really powerful mind frame to adopt. Yeah. And it's one of those things that once you read that book, you can't unthink it. Yeah. It just really starts to change the way you look at the problems in your business. You know what I think it does too? What does it do? What does it do? I feel like it forces an ego check. Example, I think many of us have heard how you do one thing is how you do everything. I get the principle of that.

24:44 Really what that means is it's what you do when no one's looking essentially is what you're going to do when you're in public, blah, blah, blah. But I think that is an example of a saying that we can try to embody. And it forces us in this position where we feel like we have to be rad at all the things. Or our company has to be rad at all the things. And so when I'm thinking about some of these businesses, when I'm thinking about the businesses we've been responsible for, we are, that we own, we operate, we lead, I've had this pull of, well, I want every ounce of this company to be amazing. I want it all to be top tier. Good aspirational goal.

25:24 You want to be failing forward towards that progress every day, probably, if you want to build a good company. But the reality of it is, there's no way that you're going to be amazing at all things. And so like the same guy, we're kind of just picking on Paul. Paul, I can't wait to get you on the show so you can speak for yourself because you're a stud. And correct everything we're saying. Yeah. Fix everything that we said wrong. But I asked him when we saw him this last week, I was like, dude, great guy. People trust you. They'll follow you. Your leadership team is top tier. They're super loyal. Obviously, you care about culture. Yeah. But in my lived experience with you, I never hear you ever talking about it or really ever noting that any of the levers that you're focused on have anything to really do with it.

26:12 And he was like, that's because my leaders own that. So it's not, he was clear. I value it. He just knows again, like, and this is going to sound a little counterintuitive, I think, for people and maybe contradictive to even things we've said in our show in the past in the sense of, so I do want to be careful here is what I'm clearly identifying is that Paul knows the value of it. He's just very intentionally delegated the responsibility of that to people that he hired with the natural wiring and competence to own it. Yeah. So it was still a priority. It's still top down. He still mirrors everything.

26:54 the culture that he wants his leaders to build. But actually in his business and his setting and his skillset, he's chose to delegate that to competent people so he can focus on the levers he's best at. I agree with you. And the other observation I have of him is because he is so comfortable doing what he does best, uh, When you walk into his business, there's a sense of calm. Big time. Nobody's running around. Nobody's raising their voices. Dude. Nobody's scurrying. He's huge. He's approaching $40 million a year out of a single Oregon-based location.

27:35 Oregon is as rural as it freaking gets outside of Portland, gang. And this isn't Portland. And this ain't Portland. Yep. 17th largest buyer in the nation of asphalt shingle products. He's winning. Yeah. Like, and there is no chaos in his business. Yeah. It was borderline a little weird how quiet and calm it was, to be honest. It was pretty remarkable. And again, I just, there's a good point. Yeah. There's so much, there's so much. And, and, there's so many things I want to say, but I want to save them for Paul. Yeah. But okay, so let's talk about some of these other concepts here real quick before we land the plane because I think some of them are really good.

28:17 Around the same. Around the science of scaling, right? So we've talked about, you know, time as a tool, right? Applying constraint really helps you think through, okay, but what if? What would need to change if we chase that target and that timeframe? There's a couple other concepts. One was this idea of raising the floor. Oh yeah, that one's... Right, and I think there's so many different ways to unpack that, but it basically says from this point forward, if we were going to do that, well, we absolutely would have to stop. And I'll insert, you know, perhaps some restoration companies, part of a scaling plan would be, you know what? We cannot do TPA program work anymore.

28:57 Could be, yeah. You know, it requires too much from our team and the margin is compressed too much. It doesn't, it no longer fits with the plan. And it's polar opposite. It could be totally, it absolutely could, right? Somebody could design a 10X plan that's completely built around programs and residential work, right? And so that plan also could be, we have to go from 60, 40 residential to we need to make the leap to 90, 10 commercial, perhaps. Well, then of course that unlocks more information or more insight where, okay, well, holy cow, what would need to change in our business for us to be at 90% commercial next year? Well, we'd need to have the experience and intel on the team to deliver commercial service.

29:42 And we look across the team, we say, do we have any, what they refer to as super who's in the book? Do we have somebody on the team right now that has that background experience or has the capability to operate at that level? Much, much higher average job size, right? Just completely different environment in some respects, right? Servicing commercial. Or who would we need to go find and hunt? So it just, it unlocks, by raising the floor and deciding what we're no longer going to allow, tolerate, or do, it forces you into this place of, okay, well, if that were true... What are all the things that we need to change? Here's an example I think that probably a number of our listeners are maybe familiar with.

30:27 So Tommy Mello, A1 Garage Doors. An example of this is his prices are premium substantially. I think at least 40 plus percent more minimum, maybe even higher. It's massive. And he's very unapologetic about that because it allows him, again, to have a phenomenal internal training, highest wages, highest peace work breakouts, like all the things. Best trucks, like guys don't drive shitty old rigs. Like he's very intentional about the whole shit and shebang, right? Yeah. Well, what that then required is how do you get the average technician then that's going out to install a garage door be able to successfully close on when your prices are close to 2x your next competitor?

31:15 Well, they had to solve that problem. So instead of discounting their pricing or saying we can't solve the pricing premium problem. they decided to go to work raising the floor of the minimum viable candidate that could come in and do the job because they're going to have to sell against competitors that are all cheaper. Then they develop tools and resources. They invest in training. There's a shit ton of role-playing certifications that they get before they even go out into the field and can sell that premium product. But I think if I'm understanding this correctly, is that that's an example of raising the floor. Like you've got to elevate the lowest common denominator at times in the business or in a function or in a role so that you can achieve this thing.

32:04 But if you didn't slow down and say, well, if it didn't take me 10 years and I wanted to do it in three, what would have to change? Well, that's a perfect example. I think he assessed he needed to make more money to put more money into the business. Well, how do you make more money? You increase your prices and reduce your cost. And he's gone. Anyways, that's a whole nother. It's a really great example. Yeah. It's that, you know, it's this whole shift. I think for us, like, it's kind of exhilarating too. I think one of the things that like, if you can just understand, or maybe it's just a mental shift personally, where you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, if I can grow convicted as an entrepreneur that simplicity is the way, that reducing is the way, that me evaluating and saying, is there less levers I should be, like this just kind of reduction of focus and being, dude, Elon Musk, This is like his, it's his marching orders, de facto marching order.

33:01 He went in and slayed Twitter. I mean, he just dismantled 80 plus percent of it. And he's kind of tongue in cheek about it when people ask him. But the whole idea is they were doing a bunch of stuff that wasn't relevant to creating value for the end user. So 80 percent of their staff was being used to do nothing to create value for the end user. So he decided what those things were. He stopped it and he fired all the staff that was responsible for that. I know that doesn't give the employee side hearts and warm feelings, but there's just a reality. How many of our companies are bloated with people doing stuff that actually doesn't add any material value to the end user or the client And if there's opportunity to make, you know, reduction there, I mean, if you've ever read his books about what they've done in evaluating what they build in terms of rockets and costs associated with building their rockets, it's insane what he does with his engineers to make it simpler.

33:59 Less parts, less material, less time, less, like he is the master of, of reducing. Anyways. Yeah, what is it? I think the principle is, somebody correct us, message us, but I think it's called the Parkinson's principle. Oh, what's that? I've never heard. That a task will expand to fill the time it's given. Oh, yeah. And Elon, I think that's right. And Elon understands this and he acts based on it, right? If something would normally take an engineering team six months, he'll say, I want it done by the end of the month. Or yeah, I want it done in the next 14 days. And what's so remarkable about his growth and the empire that he's created is it works.

34:46 Yeah. It works every time. It takes an immense amount of discipline. It might take somebody who's borderline autistic to, you know, that. Which weird. Because I mean, it's, it does require an incredible amount of discipline to take that to the furthest reaches of it. But, but I think most of us don't even kind of exercise discipline when it comes to time constraints. Yeah. Yeah, he's the $2 trillion version of that. But I guarantee you can build quite a few eight and nine figure businesses with it. Realistically, too. Yeah, it's really amazing. Seven's just fine, too. But anyways. Well, I don't know. I think... Inevitably, this is one of those topics where we're going to come back to it, right? Where these, I love books like this.

35:28 You know, another book that I really love is Leadership and Self-Deception. You know, we've talked about Patrick Lencioni's The Ideal Team Player, Hungry, Humble, Smart. You know, it's books... like this that really change the way you think. They don't have some magic bullet where it's like, go do X, Y, and Z and you'll make a billion dollars. It's really shifting how you approach problems and opportunities and goal setting in your business. that create transformation. Big time. And I just, I love it. And it's not often that you find a book that does that, but Science of Scaling to me, and perhaps 10X is easier than 2X.

36:08 I mean, both are probably worth a great read. Yeah, very similar vein, obviously the same writer. But I would say the Science of Scaling just does a better job of forcing you into asking these hard questions. And it's already paying off. I mean, we're talking... three, four days in. There's just so much immediate. Anyways, it's very disruptive. It's super provocative. Disruptive. You ask these big questions, it starts to create big change. That's right. All right, gang. Thanks for hanging out with us. We'll see you. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend.

36:53 Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.