Evolving Business Minds

Strategic Essentials for Business Success with Robert Indries | #127

• Andy Silvius • Episode 127

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The secrets to building a thriving business empire with insights from our guest expert, Robert Indries. In this episode, Robert, a celebrated business consultant, shares his dynamic approach that goes far beyond the traditional advisory role. Learn how his unique blend of hands-on implementation and strategic execution has fostered the growth of eight companies, each generating seven-figure revenues across 19 diverse industries. Robert’s methods for overcoming common growth bottlenecks and executing strategic plans are invaluable for both new entrepreneurs and seasoned business owners.

The rare but potent combination of vision, management, and execution that drives monumental success, inspired by icons like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos. We delve into the critical roles of the visionary, manager, and specialist within a thriving business ecosystem. Through personal anecdotes and experiences, we illustrate the importance of frugality and personal sacrifice in the early stages of a business. By prioritizing long-term growth and reinvesting in your team, you'll understand why the early years' hardships pay off in the long run.

Finally, we tackle the essentials of financial resilience and organizational growth. Learn why living within your means is crucial and why businesses are in a constant state of growth or decline. Our discussion on effective organizational structures reveals how mapping out a long-term vision can lead to smarter hiring and better role alignment. We also delve into constructive feedback, the importance of hiring the right talent, and the necessity of regular financial reviews. This episode is packed with actionable strategies to ensure your business not only survives but thrives. Listen in, implement these insights, and watch your business flourish. 

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Andy Silvius:

All right, welcome to another episode of the Evolving Business Minds podcast. Today's guest is a business consultant that helps businesses go from stagnation to innovation. He owns eight companies across different industries that generate seven figures per year. I want to welcome Robert Andries to the show.

Robert Indries:

Hello Andy, Thank you so much for having me.

Andy Silvius:

Absolutely, man, I'm excited to have you on. So before we get going, if you don't mind, if you could just take a few minutes to let everyone know, kind of what you do with your consulting business and then where they can reach you if they want to connect sure, so consulting has evolved for us for a little while now.

Robert Indries:

Um, we've been doing consulting for around seven years. We've helped over a thousand professionals until now in 19 different sectors, so so we're very happy with that, and some of my companies also help with implementation and execution, and the number we're most proud of is that so far, we've generated over $500 million for a client, and so it's what really gets me excited every month to keep generating more and more and more yeah.

Robert Indries:

And so consulting has evolved from people just picking my brain on the weekly, monthly, you know, depends on the engagement to let's talk strategy in terms of leadership and so on and so forth, but then let's also help you with execution. Yeah, of leadership and so on and so forth, but then let's also help you with execution. So I set up a team of basically business administrators that instead of this used to happen in the past, like I would have a consulting call with someone that, let's say, has weekly consulting, and then we would agree on five action items and then next week would show up they would do maybe one of those five and say, well, you know, my son was sick, or this happened, or we had day off, whatever, and then they wouldn't do what we would agree on, and so time would be wasted and money would be wasted because we, strategically, were vested in those efforts and if they don't happen, and if they take three, four times more time to happen, then growth stagnates. There are bottlenecks that's why it's called a bottleneck right, the bottleneck somewhere? Many times it's in the owner or in, you know, the people at the top things bottleneck. So we said, look, let's talk strategy, but then let's also discuss implementation, execution, and so this is what we basically sell.

Robert Indries:

Now, if you know, we're talking about selling, but this is what we recommend because, at the end of the day, you won't have more time after you start talking with me, right? You have the same 24 hours a day. You will be smarter, yes, you'll use that time better. Yes, however, you can, let's say, get the. It depends on the business, how big it is. Small businesses enjoy two to three x, but there's a difference between enjoying 2x and enjoying 5 to 10x, right, when there's an implementation team there. And so now consulting has metamorphed, let's say, into more implementation. I sell much less of my own time, which makes me happy, you know, because I don't need to keep being there. Keep you know, basically being, don't need to keep being there. Keep you know, basically being the father that tells their children. You said you're going to do this. Could you please?

Robert Indries:

Yeah, Instead of that we just agree on strategy, Everyone agrees, and then the implementation team just gets it done and it's so much better, Everyone's so much happier. Right, If anyone wants to get in touch with me to ask questions on, I do have four full-time assistants and you know I don't really check emails or Slack or anything. You know. Just I have people doing that for me. I just do other things in the time.

Robert Indries:

However, if anyone wants to reach out, they can just email mail at my full name, robertindezcom. If anyone Googles my full name, they'll just find my website right, robertindezcom. So they need to email mail at robertindezcom and they just need to mention your podcast, andy, or your name and so on and say hey, I heard about you on this podcast and I'd like to speak, or I have these questions and I promise to reply personally. And not only that, that if they reach out and we end up working together, I promise to give them 10 off anything they buy awesome, man cool, and we'll make sure that we link everything up in the show notes too, for everyone listening, so it'll be in there.

Andy Silvius:

Um, so I actually want to dive into this model you're talking about a little bit more because I'm interested, and I'm interested because I have been on the receiving end of being coached. Business coach, you know, help with my businesses in the past and typically, yeah, it's usually a person that's just kind of they're helping you navigate and helping hold you accountable, and so you have you're saying you built your own implementation team that you deploy for other people's businesses. Yes, so do you work with one industry? How does that work, just from a logistics standpoint?

Robert Indries:

So we work with up to 19 industries, anything from professional services to healthcare, to automotive, almost anything you can think of. We do work in Tourism, just randomly education to automotive and so on, like almost anything you could think of. We do work in tourism, you know, like just some, I guess, just randomly education, you know think of my, the clients we have, and there are so many, uh, in so many different industries.

Robert Indries:

So, for example, a little over a year ago, um, someone I was coaching um was churning chiefs of operation. So they're paying, you know, six figures for these. You know experienced chiefs of operation to run their clinics. They have two clinics in the us, in illinois, and um, these chiefs of op were just struggling to run everything right and so I I told them what the problem is.

Robert Indries:

I said your problem is that you want someone to figure out what needs to happen, as in like how and when and how often and whatever like a strategist and then you need someone to actually do it. That is almost never the same person, right? The strategist and the one doing the nitty gritty day to day, sending the invoice, talking to this person and so on, is almost never the same person. There's two people. So it doesn't matter if you pay them 120 grand a year, which he was, or a quarter million a year. They're not going to want to do the work because they're like I'm being paid a quarter million to run this, I'm not going to send those emails, I'm not going to do this, I'm not going to send those emails.

Andy Silvius:

Right, I'm not going to do this.

Robert Indries:

It's not worth my time. That's how they're going to think right. Anyone at that level, and so I said you need both. You can't just get one. Like you can hire two people, One, that's a very good strategist. Hire them part-time, whatever you know, two hours a week even, because you don't need more than that per strategy.

Robert Indries:

Right, and then you have an executioner for 20, 40 hours a week, right, and then they can do that, and as a team they can achieve more. Well, yes, robert, but I kid you not. I've tried. I've tried hiring implementers, I've tried hiring strategists. They, you know, yell at one another. They didn't agree, you know, and so like whatever, like he has literally tried, and this guy has been in business for like over a decade, you know it's not like yeah, he's, you know not brand new on the block exactly.

Robert Indries:

So he's been doing it, doing it, and at one point I said look, let's do this. Let me try to run your clinics for you remotely health care, very regulated, very different than our normal day-to-day. Let me try and do this for you. And he was like Robert, is that possible? I'm like I don't know if it's possible. It worked in every other industry. We've tried. Let's try it in healthcare. At the very least you'll get more value than these guys that are failing, because number one thing we do is we optimize the business itself.

Robert Indries:

So, even if we aren't the best chief of ops and we still need to hire someone, you will still save a ton of money because we're there, and you'll make more revenue as a result of it, right, and so on, and so, et cetera, et cetera. So we started, I kid you not, and we caused the same as a chief of ops, but we're an entire team of people, right?

Robert Indries:

So it's like literally hands down, like still so different because we have, like you know, three people at any point in time involved in their business managing the two clinics, Whereas before there was one person that you could barely talk to everyone every day, right?

Andy Silvius:

Right.

Robert Indries:

And so now it's so much better for them. Let me tell you that in the first month, in the first 30 days of us taking over operation in their clinics, they made more money in that one month than our entire cost for the entire year.

Robert Indries:

That's how much extra money they made. It was crazy. We couldn't believe how much nonsense was going on, so much money lost, so much revenue left on the table. The moment we started going in our team into everything and I was like, why is this going that way? Well, the standard answer well, we've always done it this way. Okay, well, we're never going to do it this way ever again.

Robert Indries:

And this is the new way of doing it. And then let's go immediately boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, cutting 20 grand a month here, 10 grand a month here, five grand a month here, and then making you know so much more money off of the clients we already had. It's just crazy good. And so he sent me like a few love letters. Since then, like robert, this has changed my life. I can get so much more time with my children. I can do do this. We have an even better relationship now that he is basically renting out my admin team.

Andy Silvius:

Hey everyone, I have a quick interruption from the show, but I'll make it brief. I've got something that I think is vital for every entrepreneur out there and it can be a game changer for your business. Navigating the business world demands more than just passion. It requires crystal clear financial insight. That's where our company, olive branch bookkeeping inc, comes in, offering not just book cleanups for those behind on taxes, but also comprehensive monthly bookkeeping, payroll management, corporate structuring and the key to informed decisions detailed profit and loss reports. Imagine this. Your financial records spotless and strategic, paving the way for growth. Thank you. They're more than just bookkeepers. They're your financial clarity partners. If you'd like to see how our team can help you and your business, I'll include a booking link and contact information in the show notes so you can schedule a free discovery call. Yeah, that's super interesting. So there's a couple of things I'm thinking about.

Andy Silvius:

As you talked about that story, have you ever read the book Rocket Fuel? So it's kind of the same framework he talks about in the book. I mentioned it on this podcast many times because I read it years ago and it was a game changer for me with my wife, because we weren't working together at the time. We had worked together in the past and I needed her, and so the rocket fuel talks about the visionary and the integrator, and so it's the two-person role, because there's going to be someone who can think strategically, think about the vision of where the business needs to go, but then there needs to be the integrator to implement the things. And it's very difficult to find one person that has those two skill sets, because that's usually not to say that the integrator can't be creative. They're more task oriented, more metrics driven. Uh, so, just a, it's a different role and a lot of people.

Robert Indries:

Let me tell you something yeah, this is such such a good point you're making. Let me tell you something there. Those people do exist. However, they are so rare because it's so unique that whenever they do exist, guess what happened? They become Bill Gates, they become Elon Musk, they become Jeff Bezos, they become all of these people that have both vision, like hey, this is where we're taking the company and I myself can take it there. Right, like if you looked at the documentary of Bill Gates, he had the vision for the company and he was building the software for the clients, he was working on Windows, he was working on everything himself, and so on. So he was both the implementer and the strategist. Elon was the same both the engineer and the visionary and the CEO and the guy getting the funding, and so on and so forth. So whenever all of these collide in one person, typically they become a multi-multi-billionaire.

Robert Indries:

It's so rare, like imagine like it's just, it's like maybe one in a million people have that. Now I I do want to have a caveat there. These people have so much money and so much you know, fame or whatever you want to mention that they have no way of using it realistically, like they can never enjoy everything they've made for themselves, right? So anyone look like, maybe feeling bad, like oh well, I'm not like that, boohoo, I can never be that they never spend their money like I need. I want to be very clear with everyone, those people that are at that level. They wear a 50 shirt, just like you can get. You know, it doesn't matter, even if they're wearing a $5,000 suit. You can have a six-figure salary and have 10 $5,000 suits. I mean, come on, like that's the point, right? Oh, you don't have a private jet, so what? Like literally, they barely use it. That's my point, right? So the idea there is that even if you hone in on whatever you're good at, whether you're the visionary I believe in three, by the way, personalities- Okay.

Robert Indries:

There's the visionary, there's the manager and then there's the specialist, and all of these are three roles, so not two. The visionary is the idea guy we should do this, this, this, this, this, okay. The specialist is the one implementing everything, and then the manager doesn't have the ideas or doesn't want to have ideas but doesn't want to do the work either. But they love talking to people Like, they love coordinating, they love having plans.

Robert Indries:

These are like, if you know the personality types disc, dominant, influence, stable, conscious, right. So the managers many times are the conscious people that aren't specialists, but they come up with the best plans, they organize everything, like the event, the meeting, the notes. They do all of that. They're not the specialist, they're not the SEO specialist or the developer or the engineer or whatever, right, but they manage everything. So you need all three in a business to succeed and I do believe that, and when I add all of these three people or these three roles in my businesses, they just work right and so that's what I've noticed so something I think about a lot because I've been there um many times.

Andy Silvius:

But it's like when you're starting a business and you don't have enough capital to deploy on multiple people. You know, let's just say you start a brand new business and you're in the service industry and you're the person doing the job and but yet you need to have another person, whether it's an inner, whether it's a visionary or integrator, like one of the roles. How do you help people overcome that in the beginning? Because there is a point when there I always believe there's there's a certain threshold, depending on price points and service where you get. You have to become a certain level of busy before you can even invest in somebody else. How do you help people manage or work their way through that?

Robert Indries:

so my answer is, uh, quite simple to that. Um, it's one word. It's called uh, frugality, like being frugal. So in the first I don't want to exaggerate, let me in first three years of business, I gave myself zero, zero, I made nothing. So I had money I deployed to my businesses, um, like saved up for my job, and then I put that into my businesses.

Robert Indries:

First three years I made nothing, paid myself nothing. I just paid that the, not the most expensive people I could find because expensive and good are different the best people like most competent, kindest, and so on, and so for hardest working people I could find and afford, I invested in them, right, so I got that. I made nothing. After year three, for around another three to four years more or less, I gave myself $750 a month. That's it. That was my salary. So I had people in my business being paid $5,000 a month and I was paid, you know, 750, because that for me was enough. I could live off of you know what basically was almost $10,000 a year. I could live off of that, right, I didn't have children and so on and so forth, so it was doable at the time. Then, after that, I got married, I had more costs and so on. Various things changed. I got a wife that basically taught me how to spend money.

Robert Indries:

Until then I wasn't. We have a very good yin and yang in our family. She says that this is how the world should work, right. Like you make all the money, I spend all of the money, and then we're very happy together. Obviously, I'm exaggerating to a large extent.

Robert Indries:

She makes a lot of money as well. We are a double income household, but you know it's just. We laugh about that because I wake up sometimes in the morning and like my bank account is I don't know how much lower, and like my wife was making purchases at two and four AM in the morning when she would randomly wake up and remember that you know she wanted to buy stuff pull out the phone and just buy something and go back to sleep. So that would never happen to me when I was alone, right.

Robert Indries:

And then when I got the wife, you know, I started giving myself um, two thousand five hundred dollars a month, so like 30 grand a year, and that that was enough for me and that's enough for almost everywhere on the planet, like literally 99 of places on the planet. You give yourself 30 grand, you're fine, obviously, uh, expensive places in the us or whatever those are different then you need to gouge what that is. But this long story is to make a point. The point is that so you don't go in business typically because you want to make more money. You go into business typically because you want wealth.

Robert Indries:

Wealth is different than money, right? So, for example, if you're 40-something and you have $2 million but you have type 2 diabetes and you're just diagnosed with cancer, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of the money is useless again, you can't spend it, you're going to be miserable for the rest of your life in pain, etc. Useless, right? So what people actually want and I talk about this a lot in many places is wealth. Wealth is holistic, right? You have enough money to sustain yourself and the desires you have, and so on and so forth. You have health that you know. You have energy, can do anything you want all day. You have flexibility in your agenda, right, like if you want to work these hours or these hours, whatever you can, and being an entrepreneur, or even working somewhere, like for someone, but you being so good that you can negotiate your hours and you know when you go to work, and so on, and so that matters. And then doing what you like, because if you're not doing what you like, again you're going to be miserable, right, right and so on, and so these are the things that jointly make wealth. So what you want, or what almost everyone wants, is wealth.

Robert Indries:

So many people believe that entrepreneurship is the way to do that, and I tell them that's false. There are always more paths to um a place on the map, right, you have point a, point b. Even google will give you three routes, right, so you can always do multiple routes. You can be an employee your entire life and, when you die, be worth 100 million dollars no exaggeration, there's so many people that do that. If you look at self-made millionaires, just look at statistics anyone listening to us you'll see the number one category of people that are self-made millionaires are engineers. The number two are, I think, like something like accountants.

Robert Indries:

And number three. Number three, I kid you not, are school teachers. Entrepreneur isn't even in the top three. Right ways to become a millionaire? Yes, no, self-made, yes, exactly. You can take a look and there are stats on this stuff, right. So if you have, if you live frugally right, like you live a frugal life, whether you work for someone else, you spend less than you make and then you invest the rest, you'll become a millionaire.

Robert Indries:

It's just, it's math, it's easy right, I'm an engineer, right Like, I do this stuff, like I could just calculate how quickly someone can become a millionaire. And if they don't like it, guess what? Take another course. You know, do more, earn more and so on and so forth. Right, so, on your current job or somewhere else, whatever, you don't need to start a business. So now, let's assume you want to start a business because, uh, of reasons other than money. Right like, let's assume money is not the reason. Let's say you want something else, right.

Robert Indries:

And then, because of that, you want to, to do a business, like, let's say, you want to own your own coffee shop or whatever, and you like the idea of having a french coffee shop, whatever. I'm making this up, right, yeah? And so, um, based on that, the way you do it is when you go into that, you go into it like with any skill. If you want to learn piano, the first time when you play, you're going to sound horrible. If I ask you to please, you know, pay play for a lease you're it'll again sound horrible.

Robert Indries:

If you do business, it'll be the exact same thing right, it'll just be you, or maybe you and your wife, or you and your husband, whatever you're in your child because they're, you know, mom and pop shops and with their children, whatever yeah, and no one really knows what they're doing.

Robert Indries:

And so you're going to screw up your role, they're going to screw up their role, and so on. And so you learn and you learn, you learn, you learn. Whilst you're doing that, you're making some money. That money you spend to the best of your ability and then, sooner or later, you get better. Once your competence is way out of the league of where you should be right, let's say you're the. Uh, let's. Let's take the little shop, a little coffee shop, as an example you're the person making the coffee.

Robert Indries:

You're the person posting on facebook. You're the person serving the coffee. You're the person you know sending. You're the person serving the coffee. You're the person you know sending emails to you know. Happy new year, come you know. Or sorry, happy birthday, you know, come you know. You get the free coffee If you like all of that. Like you do everything, you do sourcing the product, yeah.

Andy Silvius:

You're wearing, wearing all the hats everything. Yeah.

Robert Indries:

At one point you'll be so competent, right At doing this stuff, that you'll have so much business that, let's say, you need $3,000 a month, but you're making five Because you're so competent. Your online thing is generating enough footfall. Everyone's praising your sandwiches, so their word of mouth is bringing in more people to eat at your coffee, et cetera, et cetera. At that point in time, you're now overworked, right, like you have more to do and so you get paid more. Obviously, your prices should be based on that, right.

Robert Indries:

If you're working all day, every day, and you're making less than you know you, you should be making to survive you have a problem in your business model, so you should take a look at that, right? But let's assume your business model is fine and you're working 60 hour weeks. You're making 150% of the revenue you need. So at that point in time you can say, okay, let me hire someone part-time to do the social media stuff and let me hire someone else to do the email stuff, and then you don't need to hire people full time. You can hire people one hour a day or whatever, right? So, for example, our clients some of them need us for, like, they spend with us maybe 100 grand a year, right, and then we help them for that 100 grand a year. Other people have a $1.5 million budget right Of what we do for them.

Robert Indries:

You can imagine the level of input and the level of strategy and the level of everything we do is very different, because here you know, this company is making $5 million a year and then this other company is making $50 million a year, and I'm not exaggerating, these are like real clients, right and so.

Andy Silvius:

The massive difference, though, in the business between five and 20.

Robert Indries:

Exactly exactly Massive difference. So this person that has a $5 million business couldn't even afford that level of engagement. However, they can afford six figures. So they're paying that six figures again, the best they can with the resources they have. And that takes them from five to six, seven, eight and so on and so forth. Right, keeps growing their business and then they keep engaging more and more and more people. Okay, so the simple answer is frugality. To be frugal, don't spend money you don't have. Right, just spend money when you do have it.

Robert Indries:

If someone says, well, robert, my business isn't making enough, you know, I have to spend money I don't have, you're in the wrong business, right? You shouldn't be in business. You should have gotten a job, gotten the 50 or 20 000 you needed to open the coffee shop and then open the coffee shop profitably, right, yeah, get the job first. Like, don't. Don't. Imagine there's a thing, especially in the us, called personal bankruptcy, and there are millions of people going personally bankrupt. How bad can you be if you can't even manage yourself? Imagine you're one person and your ambition is to manage a company. You can't even manage yourself. So if you yourself aren't making money, you shouldn't be in business. It's simple right, you should be working for someone else, putting money aside and having a side business, right In the night, in the morning, in midday, whatever you can negotiate with your employer, right, and then do them like that until it's making enough money so that you can quit your job and do this profitably. Otherwise, why the financial stress? What, what, what was the point?

Andy Silvius:

like, I don't believe in any of that right.

Robert Indries:

There's a term online, you know, called burning your bridges.

Andy Silvius:

I don't believe in that right, like it's 2024.

Robert Indries:

You know just, there's no bridges to burn. You know we don't need to result. Result like you can just get the well-paid job. You know, make money, put it aside. You know just, there's no bridges to burn. You know we don't need to result. Result like you can just get the well-paid job. You know, make money. Put it aside. You know, uh, put it even in stocks, you'll grow eight percent a year. Right, you know stably. And so even if there's a bad year, it'll make up for it. You know when. You know you have a bull market after that, etc.

Robert Indries:

Etc. Right, so I can go into a lot of detail, but the point is, you don't need to take life threatening when it like, like financially life threatening risks anymore, like this. The time for that has passed. That was, you know, the Rockefeller days, and even back then you could still, you know, find a job that pays you $50 a week, you know, and then put $5 aside and then start your business. You know, with $500, you know whatever.

Andy Silvius:

So so let's just say you have a business owner that is making money for themselves, but they don't have because I think you answered the question but in a way of like, either not making enough, but there's always that transition period too. It depends I guess it depends on your price points, right? Because if you are generating enough revenue that you're paying yourself, but you don't necessarily have enough revenue yet to hire the next person that needs to be in the business, would you help, like if you were, if you were faced with that challenge and you had somebody who is making money they can't necessarily take home less just yet, but they need to increase revenue to hire the next person Do you help them increase lifetime value of the client? What would you do in that situation when the volume of work is now becoming too much and the quality starts dropping?

Robert Indries:

So if they put themselves in that position, right, because they did it to themselves, typically what you can do is you can hire the next person and you yourself take a pay cut. You can do that. I've seen people doing that all the time, right Like you can like, for example, when COVID hit and people were losing their mind of what's going to happen, right.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah.

Robert Indries:

They literally so many people that I knew that our business owners were taking pay cut like they're paying themselves whatever 10 grand a month. Until then they bumped it down to five just so they can keep staff right or hire staff that they needed, etc yeah typically in those cases you take a pay cut.

Robert Indries:

If you really need someone and you can't do it like you realize you're overextended, you take a pick up Again. Frugality is the name of the game here. It's in the realm of sacrifice. Many times I use this very carefully because sacrifice can feel like a burden, like I have to do this. Let me be very clear. You don't need to do anything in life, nothing. You don't need to start the pizza place. You don't need to start the digital agency. You don't need to start the clinic. You don't need to do anything. You can literally just vegetate. You can just be a hippie for the rest of your life. You know, go from uh, whatever, whatever trash bin to trash bin and survive.

Robert Indries:

I kid you not you can do that if you really want to be the next, what's it called? Like Buddha or whatever you know. Like, you don't need money, and I am very honest, very sincere when I say that People listening to that might get offended, you know, but that's a reality. I take things as zero and one. I'm an engineer, right.

Robert Indries:

My entire world is zero and one. It's either true or false. It can't be midway. God does not operate in the gray area. God is either creation or destruction. Creation or destruction. Your business is either growing or going down. If someone says, oh no, we're stagnating, that means you're going down because the demand of whatever it is you have is higher, so market share is higher. So if you have the exact same $1 million a year now as like three years ago, that means you're actually smaller in relative to the bigger piece of the pie, which is your industry. So every year your industry grows. So if you're making the same money this year as industry.

Robert Indries:

Every year, your industry grows. So if you're making the same money this year as you had last year, you are slowly going out of business. It's slow, but it's still going in that direction, right, okay? So, those things being said, this is not a real sacrifice. When I say sacrifice, I mean not spending on going out to beers or to, you know, alcohol or whatever. Doing that, like saving that $50 so I can pay someone else an extra five hours to do something, right, and so that's what I did, like sacrificing those things that you really don't need for the things that you want. Okay, we had, for example, a very bad situation happen to us where we had a psychopath in one of our companies, which I never had, but I went through that experience as well.

Andy Silvius:

Like a real crazy person, like a real psychopath.

Robert Indries:

I never met one, but then I had the experience of actually having one in my field, and they're a director in one of my companies field, and you know they're a director in one of my companies. And so, long story short, total losses were around two million dollars, over two million dollars, right. So that was a bad year, right. And so, number one, very grateful I had two million dollars to lose, right again, you know, I was like 30 or 30 something at the time, right, so very good, and I, poor, right, like we would take just one bath a week because we would imagine we would need to make a fire to have hot water. That's that's my upbringing. And so we didn't have enough money to make fire often, so we would just make one fire a week and, um, eat up like a this big jar of metal jar of water, and then my entire family would take a bath in the same water, because saving water, saving wood, et cetera, so that's my upbringing. And so I managed from that to I passed $1 million when I was 25, and I passed $10 million when I was 31. And then I lost $2 million to a psycho, and so that happened.

Robert Indries:

And at that point in time. Guess what? We cut everything, everything that wasn't necessary in my life and in our businesses. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. We cut so many things that we're literally leaving living like we were poor again, almost. We had a good house and so on. Obviously you're not going to sell your house and so on, but we were drinking only water and we would eat less and whatever things like that. Why? We didn't need to. We could not if we wanted to. However, we set extreme circumstance, extreme measures. Let's go through this so that we come out on the other side quicker. Let's go through this so that we come out on the other side quicker. Right, instead of us taking whatever X number of years to make up for $2 million in losses.

Robert Indries:

It'll just take us two years and then we're back to normal and even higher than we were, right, yeah, so the good part of that is that it teaches you humbleness, for example, because on my journey I'm not used to losing, right, because I work so much and I do so much that I just win, win, win, win. Every year I would make more money, more money, more money. And then at one point, you know, I got hit by a train. I'm like, okay, wait, wait, wait. I don't have all of the answers. I don't know how to deal with psychopaths, so let me learn. And then I started learning and I learned so much about them.

Robert Indries:

Now I see them on the street. I kid you, not the moment someone I see in the movies, I see them. I mean, oh, that's the psycho in the movie. Before I was like, oh, they're just special, you traumatized or troubled or whatever. Now I see them directly. Narcissist, you know, psychopath, machiavellian, right? I see them immediately. So, and that helped me notice them. And maybe I needed that. Instead of losing $20 million right today, maybe I lost $2 million two years ago, right? So you can see it in that way as well. So this is again a very long-winded way of saying whenever you need something to achieve a goal, you need to understand there's always something for something else. Right, if I want to work more, I'm going to spend less time with my child. What do you want to do?

Robert Indries:

Yeah, there's trade-offs and this is a very honest question. It's a trade. It's a trade and people call it sacrifice, and I can agree with the word. However, not sacrifice as in a burden put upon yourself no, that's not the definition of the sacrifice. The way I define sacrifice is I chose to not do this. Instead, I will do this. That's it. It's a choice, right yeah, I like that.

Andy Silvius:

I uh know when you're talking about cutting expenses. My wife and I run a bookkeeping firm, but prior to that I came from you know construction and then real estate, and one of the biggest things that's helped us is knowing what our finances are like, knowing what we're spending and reviewing our finances monthly, because then you know what to cut. And I think a lot of people go through life, whether it's personal usually it starts with personal and then bleeds into your business and where we just overspend. You know we all get into these micro payments, these subscriptions, and if you never look or understand where your money's going, it's just going to keep flowing to these things that you don't need anymore. I mean, even today, like we still have to go through our finances regularly because there might be programs or subscriptions or things we spend money on where it's like you know what. We don't need to do that anymore.

Robert Indries:

It's not serving its purpose. You don't need to. You haven't used it in three months, so why are we? Why do you keep paying for it?

Andy Silvius:

right, right like it's, we're paying for something that we used prior, but now we don't use it at all, and so it's just we're just wasting money, and so I think that was uh, that's just a big takeaway I took from what you your story.

Andy Silvius:

Right now, it's like understanding that you know if you don't have enough money, you either need to go cut expenses or work more. And I will say, I've had a lot of conversations with friends and friends that own businesses that want to scale now, but they're not necessarily putting in all the effort now either so they could put in a lot more work and not have to go hire someone and make less money. They just need to do more work or they hire someone.

Robert Indries:

Well like whatever, always multiple path right yeah, the same thing, so one of the things that people were shocked of when I would tell them because I would be very honest like they would ask me how much do you make? You know, hey, you have, you're making millions in business and so on. How much do you give yourself? I'm like 10 grand a year, like no impossible. Yeah, 10 grand a year, that's all I pay myself. I don't need anything else, right? And so what I did is, instead of paying myself two thousand dollars extra a month, I would hire someone for two thousand dollars and so my business can scale, because business doesn't scale with you. Business scales with other people or other systems, or other clients, and so on and so forth.

Andy Silvius:

Let me ask this one question before we go too far how did you determine who was the right person to hire? Because I'm sure that when you hire someone, you want to make sure that they're going to increase the value of the company and revenue.

Robert Indries:

Great question. So I actually wrote a book, know how to uh, we call it unshackled. The book is called unshackled, so how to unshackle yourself, whether you're an employee or a um, an entrepreneur. This is how business should be done right in order for everyone to live an unshackled life right, and so within that we explain this as well. Um, there's an org chart and we built a tool. It's called alvanda. Anyone can check it out. It's alvandacom. Basically, one of the main um modules of that tool and they're like over 20 is the org chart. So people use the org chart poorly. How do they use it? They say, okay, we, okay, we have these five roles, five positions right in the org and we have three people. This person is on three roles and then these other two roles are taken by two other people, and then they even put the name, you know, like Andy, andy, andy, you know, eric Kleinmoth. You know this is the org chart. That's wrong. I believe that's wrong.

Robert Indries:

The way I believe an org chart should be is number one. You define your vision, when do I want to be in three to five years? And we teach that in Elvanda and in the book and so on and so forth. So where do you want to be in three to five years? And then you define that, and then the org chart should be a representation of how your business will operate at that level.

Andy Silvius:

three to five years from now, right?

Robert Indries:

So if your chart has not five roles but 10 or 15, that's what you draw out. So say, hey, here's my hierarchy of 15 positions that I will need in this business if I want to make X money and have Y clients and Z profits, et cetera. Right and so, based on that, now that you have your org chart, you have it defined. Now you ask yourself a very simple question. You look at the org chart and you say what one role or one position, if filled, will have the highest positive impact on my business today, whether that's the marketing guy or the salesperson or a virtual assistant or whatever that is that's going to have the highest positive return on the business. That's the person you hire.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah.

Robert Indries:

Yeah.

Robert Indries:

So if that ends up being that you have a sales team of five people and a delivery person of one person because that's just how it works right now no problem, five salespeople, one person can handle all the work, and then if balls start being dropped, this quality goes down, then I hire a new person because then that's the most highest ROI I can get as a decision in this org chart. Right, so it can be very skewed to one or another. I ask people that are listening here to not choose. What they think would help is what would actually help most, what would make me more money or more profit next week, next month, what right? And then choose that person or that role to fill right with someone and then keep doing that until eventually all of your three to five year vision is filled.

Robert Indries:

You have the business you want, right? You've literally mapped it out in advance, right with the org chart and the vision you reached it. Now you set another vision right for another three to five years in advance. And you see, does this org chart stay the same just more people in those roles or does it need to, you know, evolve a little bit?

Andy Silvius:

I really like that because I've got, like I said earlier in the show I've gone through and I had, uh, quite a few different business consultants help me and you know, in real estate it's a big thing having a real estate coach and people that are kind of helping you. And goal setting, and in goal setting around a lot of these trainings, never do we talk about the org chart, or did we right? And it's always this financial goal like hey, we're, hey, we want to go to X number of revenue per year, per month, whatever it might be. But that doesn't help you achieve the goal because unless you're building the entire business around yourself and then that just eventually stagnates or goes down, you just cannot operate at that level forever. And so I just love that, I love that you can take that and then you build out the org chart years down the road and then and work towards it.

Andy Silvius:

The other thing too, and you may have already mentioned this, I've seen a lot of people write names the org chart has names and instead I've seen a lot of people recommend putting the position, the title of the job position instead, because you're building if you do it with, you're building positions around people. That may not be best suited for that role, correct? And so when you come up with the org chart for the actual job position, now you understand. Hey, maybe Susan over here is the right person.

Robert Indries:

Exactly A hundred percent. You nailed it on the head, you defined the role and then you say what do I need in this role? What should they be doing? I have Susan already hired Fine, let me ignore that for a year now. And I can Susan do these 15 things? Maybe she can, maybe she cannot. It's an important question to ask yourself, right, is Susan the best person in that role or do you need to hire someone else? Or does Susan need to do 70% of this role and 30% of another role? Right, with her time? And then I hire someone for these five things? Right, because again, again, people expect simple answers in business. But answers would only be simple if you would be the only coffee shop in your uh state, you know, or in your town. Otherwise, as long as there are two, you immediately need to be somehow different than the other one, because otherwise, if you're worse service, uh, worse coffee, worse whatever, and then the other guys just do better, then everyone will just naturally go there. Right?

Robert Indries:

yeah it's a democracy, you can go to one or the other, so business will only be simple if you're the one person or the one company that does it, because people have to come to you, otherwise in and this is, uh, you know fantasy. There is no industry or no niche where it's just you right like coaches. Okay, people can say I'm niched down to only working at golfer. I'm 100 sure there are so many people that work with golfers as coaches. Right like you can't get more right. Just because you niche down in golfers doesn't mean you're still the best coach. You still need to be very good as a coach right.

Robert Indries:

And so I don't work with any golfers. It was just an example, right.

Andy Silvius:

I work with business people or high achieving professionals.

Robert Indries:

I like to call them because you would be surprised but the vast majority of people I work with are not entrepreneurs, right. They're the director, c-level or people that want to be there and you know they're on their career and I work with them because you know they're making 50, a hundred grand right now, but they want to make a quarter moon, right. And then we work together on how they can get there, right, and how they can add value to their businesses or whatever, and then through them, they become my ambassador and then, through them, the entire business grows and their what's it called Wealth and everything else grows with that.

Andy Silvius:

I've heard the term before for positions like that. It's like an intrapreneur. Intrapreneur yeah, Somebody who wants to be within the company but build their own piece and help everything grow within it, instead of going out on their own. So we're getting kind of close to wrapping up, but I want to ask, um, knowing what you know now, if you could go back in time, what is the one piece of advice you'd give yourself?

Robert Indries:

I don't know how I would implement this because robert, from a few years ago, um had 100 full faith in humanity, right, believe that everyone can be better, do better, that when put on the spot they will choose the right thing, and so on yes, like you know, things like that robert from today doesn't.

Robert Indries:

But that belief was a very deeply ingrained belief in Robert three, five, 10 years ago, and so on. So I would literally give people a hundred chances before I let them go or we part ways. I would literally give them like okay, you failed on this. What did we learn? Literally, these were the types of conversations. What did we learn? Okay, how can we avoid this, this, this, this, this, this, this way? Okay, let's try to do that.

Robert Indries:

And then they would screw up in another way or do something else, or do something else, and they would keep giving them feedback like forever, right, and this person again, the, uh, the psychopath. I, I noticed the issues in month one. I gave them nine points of feedback which almost never happened. Right in after just one month, nine points of feedback. And they literally asked happened right After just one month, nine points of feedback.

Robert Indries:

And they literally asked me Robert, aren't you worried that you're giving me, that you need to give me so much feedback? I'm like well, let me ask you, is every point of the feedback reasonable to you? Like, does it make sense why it's a problem, why it needs to change? Yes, okay, do you agree that all of these points of feedback are easily changeable, because they're just like things that you need to start doing differently from now on? Yes, okay, then I'm not worried, because if you agree that this is sensible and you agree that you can do it and you are willing to make the changes, then that's not the problem. I said okay.

Robert Indries:

The issue now is that that same person, instead of actually becoming a better professional, what they did is they start becoming a better liar. Every time I would give them feedback, they would know what I look for and they would know how to mask their incompetence or their failures, and so on and so forth. They would keep getting so good at lying and skewing the facts that it was incredible for me like literally, that's the best word incredible. I couldn't believe how good they were at making excuses and failing in their role, right, like I would never have that experience.

Robert Indries:

So if I could somehow teach myself to, yes, give people chances but also be much more firm or firmer, right, whatever the word is correctly in those engagements, right, that's what I would try to relay to my earlier stuff, because if I would do that, I would have I don't want to exaggerate and say that I would already be at 100 million, but I would be much closer to it, because I lost so much time and money with people that literally did not deserve my input, like not even my feedback, because they have no intention of actually being better. They just, you know, I didn't know what they wanted. But now, even though I have full faith in humanity, like talking to people and so on and so forth, I also know that everyone's on different paths in their journey and right now someone may be a complete a-hole.

Robert Indries:

And so right now I can't work with them. I can show them that because you're the way you are, I won't hire you and hopefully 10 other businesses will not hire them. And then they will eventually ask themselves maybe it's me? Or ask like what could I do differently? You know, to actually make this work and so that process for people that are lazy or mean or you know bad or whatever, is necessary.

Robert Indries:

Yeah because otherwise they're not going to change. If I keep giving them chances and then the next entrepreneur gives them chances and everyone keeps giving them them chances, they're always gonna remain a bad person they're not gonna change because they don't need to. But if we don't tolerate, you know, lying or incompetence or things like that, then they need to become honest and become competent, and that's so much better for everyone on the planet.

Andy Silvius:

So that's what I would teach my earlier self so I have something that I've really come to realize, probably within the last six months. We've been, we're really shifting gears on acquiring new talent, so we're hiring people and we just we just went through a new hiring process for our team, um to hire a new team member, and so it's not necessarily exactly what you just explained, but just a different piece. But the hiring process. A lot of people have a pain and then they just they have a pain to fill and they just go hire the first person that they see and they're not necessarily the most qualified. And so there's the term hire slow, fire fast. And people are doing it the opposite, where they they hire fast because they want to fill the problem or fill the the pain, and then they try to work through all these things for someone who's not necessarily qualified for the job to begin with.

Andy Silvius:

And so I talk to so many people whether it's podcasts or I have a lot of friends and family that are business owners and I see this over and over and over again where people are just oh, I need a new, I need, I need someone in this position, so they just go hire like the first or second person they talk to and then they come back to me and say, well, I'm never hiring anyone again.

Andy Silvius:

This was I'm never hiring anyone. Nobody can do the job. It's like, no, you just didn't know, you didn't look far enough exactly. And we just went through a process for a team member and it was like I had 29 applications. From those 29, only 10 people made it to the first interview and out of those 10 there was only one that was qualified for a second interview and they ultimately got hired. But I don't think people look at the volume either and they don't try to understand that. So, again, slightly different than what you're talking about, but just the piece of like you know holding your ground and making sure you're holding those standards perfect, love it yeah.

Andy Silvius:

So one last question before we wrap up. If you could leave listeners with one actionable item that they would have that would have a positive impact on them today, what would it be and why?

Robert Indries:

maybe something that can help people is what you said earlier is to take their finances more seriously. We do financial reviews every week. Every week we see, okay, what did we spend on what money did we make cash flow like normal, you know, balance sheet, pnls and stuff. Like we do it every week and I tell people all the time if you're not, if you don't have updated pnls and balance sheets, you're not doing business. You're playing business, you're it's just a game. At this way, you're not serious.

Robert Indries:

Yeah, the moment you're serious is when you actually look at every single dollar that leaves, everything that that comes in, and you optimize based on that. That's what a business owner does like a successful one, right? You don't look at Microsoft and say why are we losing $2 billion a year on the console? Well, because everyone that buys a console then buys games and subscriptions on which we make $15 billion. So obviously we're just going to give the console away at the loss. No business would do that if they wouldn't have crystal clarity on client acquisition costs, client lifetime value and so on and so forth All of these things that you don't get unless you do your due diligence and check all of the numbers, right.

Andy Silvius:

Yes, awesome, I love it. Robert, thank you again for being on the show. I really appreciate it and, like I said earlier, we'll link everything up, so if people want to get in touch with you, they'll have your contact info.

Robert Indries:

Thank you so much, I love it.

Andy Silvius:

Absolutely, and thank you for listening today. If you enjoyed the show and felt like it provided you value, I'd love to hear in the comments what stuck out the most to you. We'll see you on the next one.