If You’re Not Growing, You’re Dying

[00:00:00] Cole Abbott: Grow or die. Something you talk a lot about, or you talk about regularly. 

[00:00:06] Mark Abbott: Yeah. 

[00:00:06] Cole Abbott: Uh, both I guess externally and internally. 

[00:00:09] Mark Abbott: Mm hmm. 

[00:00:09] Cole Abbott: So, why do you think that that is such a, such an idea that needs reinforcement? Um, uh,

[00:00:23] Mark Abbott: I think partially going really big picture, but thinking about talking about companies, my experience has been, You know, for decades and decades now that people don't, leaders, CEOs, don't appreciate as much as I think they should how important it is for them to really own making sure that they're growing their company at a sufficient enough rate to, you [00:01:00] know, to continue to, to, to, to, to persevere.

Um, you know, the, the, Lots of different ways to talk about it. Um, you know, if inflation is 2 or 3 percent and your company's growing at 2 or 3 percent, it's not growing. Um, and if your company's not growing, then you're never going to be able to attract and retain, you know, sort of high level of talent.

And so there's an inherent growth rate in all businesses, in my opinion, that you need just to sort of attract and retain people. Um, and, uh, What is that growth rate? It depends on the business, obviously. It depends on the stage of development. There's a lot of dependencies, right, in terms of the appropriate growth rate.

I mean, obviously, when you're starting off, you know, you're stage two. Two, right, you've come out of stage one, because you don't have to necessarily have, as we talked about before, you don't have to have revenues to prove product market fit. Um, but, [00:02:00] uh, but let's say you, you now have product market fit and you're starting to grow.

I mean, in the beginning, your first dollar's infinite growth, right, because it's, you know. you know, one over zero kind of a thing. Um, and then over time, right, you're going to start to get into an attainable and predictable growth rate. And for some businesses, you know, in stage, state, earlier stages, you're 100%, you're 200%, and then it starts to, you start to get to that place where, um, you're, the rate of growth starts to come down to a, a more consistent and predictable level.

Now. Um, that rate of growth, you know, for us, for a long time, you know, we were shooting for 80 to 100%. And this is the first year we're not going to hit 80 to 100 percent in terms of our ARR growth. Revenue growth will be, you know, 50 percent plus or minus. Um, not what we were hoping to do, right? Um, but, uh, but, you know, at that level of growth as an example, and given where we are [00:03:00] stage wise, revenue wise, um, you know, we can attract some amazing talent now.

And, um, and we, and we're doing a pretty good job of retaining really, really good talent. So, um, so, you know, and then ultimately another question is around this whole notion of what level of growth do you need. Um, the level of growth you need for an organization that's comprised entirely of A players.

You know, as an example, if we, and we'll do that definition here in a second, is higher than if you have an organization filled with B players or, you know, your typical organization which has, you know, a smattering of A, a heck of a lot of Bs, and probably more Cs than is healthy, 

[00:03:42] Cole Abbott: right? A normal distribution centered around C players, probably.

I feel like that would probably be average if C is, If we define C as average, C is not average. Right. So let's, let's, let's do that. 

[00:03:50] Mark Abbott: Right. So eight players for me are people who are exceptional at their job and bring energy into the organization. So they're not, not only doing their [00:04:00] work really, really well, but they're helping you beyond the scope of their,

You know, they're, they're contributing to the marketplace of ideas as Greg Vesper would call it, right? Our CTPO, our wonderful CTPO, right? So they're, they're, they're, they're just making you better. Whereas B players are just good at doing their job, right? They're kind of like soldiers who are marching and they're, you know, they're all doing the right thing, but that's it, right?

They're not taking energy away from you. They're not contributing beyond the scope of their position. And then C players are draining energy from you. They could be draining energy from you because they're, um, Uh, they're not particularly well suited for their, for their seat. So they don't have all the skills and experiences.

And so, you know, they, and you know, and you got to differentiate, have they been in the seat for a while versus are they new in the seat, right? So if they're new in the seat, they're just getting their act together, but let's presume for a while that they've been in their seats for at least 90 days, right?

Because [00:05:00] that's our goal is to hire people that we think within 90 days can get up and running and can be either at a B level or an A level. right? We have higher standards as you go up in the organization. So, um, so they, so within 90 days, right, they're contributing, they're doing, they're doing really good work and you don't have to do some of their job, right?

Um, one of the ways I like to look at A versus B versus C, as an example, is, you know, what percentage of the time are you either coaching or helping, literally helping someone with their job, right? Shouldn't be very often, if, right? Um, and now, once you, once you, if you are finding yourself literally doing some of their work, then that's a C player, because they're literally pulling energy from you.

that you could have been applying somewhere else. If they're people who have, are not good core value fits, are not cultural fits, strong cultural fits. and how you're going up and cleaning up some of their mess, they, right, because they, you know, they're hard to work with, they're not a good [00:06:00] cultural fit, their behaviors are antithetical to who you are, and everybody, if you've, built a decent culture, knows what your core values are, right, this, this isn't who we are and so now you gotta, you gotta, you gotta clean up some of their mess.

You have to clean up not only do you have to talk to them about their behaviors, right, but the reality is, is their behaviors have impacted other people and if you hire them, if you're their team leader, you're kind of You're, you're, you're, you're responsible for what's happened to those other people.

And so, you know, so you're not just working that person who's not a good core value fit, but you're cleaning up their mess a little bit. Does this make some sense? Yeah. Right. And then D players are people where, you know, shame on us, right? We never should have hired him in the first place for that particular seat.

Um, and I, D players for me is, you know, you can look at it through the lens of culture or you can look at it through the lens of, uh, You know, competency and commitment and capacity, um, right, right people versus right seat. And you can have them end [00:07:00] up being both, right? I would say a D player is higher on the cultural side as if you just did your references.

You would have found out that, you know, everywhere they've went, they've left this plume of dark gross smoke, right? Um, and they've just been toxic. Um, and so shame on us. Right? If we hired that human being, that we could have, if we would have done the right work, we would have known they weren't a great cultural fit.

Or obviously, if we had done the references, we say, hey, here's the roles, accountabilities, and responsibilities. These are your objectives associated with the seat. This is the, this is the type of, uh, of complexity that they're going to be dealing with, their complications that they're going to be dealing with.

You know, have they done this before? Right? Um, and, um, and if the references would have come back, uh, no. Right? Then, you know, then you hire a D player. So, you got A, B, C, D. Now the question is, if, if you're, [00:08:00] if you really want to build an A player organization, we've talked about this before, you know, um, there's math behind how much growth does the organization need to consistently be, um, generating.

In order for people to be able to take on, you know, additional challenges, it doesn't always mean that they have to take that next step up in an organization like ours because there's only five, you know, layers within or stratums within our organization. So in theory, right? If someone was like, well, I, you know, within three years, I want to make the next step in three years.

I want to make the next step in three years. I want to make the next step. Right? If, if, if that were the case, then you can do the math, right? So within 15 years, they want to quote unquote be the CEO now, right? I was one of those people. Right? So, so we do exist, right? Um, and so, you know, you need to think about, um, how much growth and, and needs to be there.

And so in today's day and age, perhaps what can happen is you can go from being [00:09:00] overseeing, you know, a team in one core function and then say, Hey, I want to take on a very different responsibility in another core function. And so you're, you're, you're taking on new challenges, you're growing. Right. Um, but you're not necessarily, you know, just stratum jumping every three years.

Does this make some sense? 

[00:09:20] Cole Abbott: Yes. Yeah. So, so, so then what's the growth rate? Yeah, so what's, what's the math? Is it relative? Do you think it's, I mean, obviously it's industry dependent, but rule of thumb, do you think it's a growth rate relative or a, right, you probably do standard deviations above the average growth rate.

Yeah. Uh, if it's a relative to market or industry. Right. Or if it's relative to inflation. Obviously there's some things where it's going to be closer to. Inflation than others, I always think of it's always 

[00:09:45] Mark Abbott: so just because the way my brain was, you know, is in the way it's worked to me being in finance and investing in all that kind of stuff.

Everything's relative to inflation, right? I mean, period into discussion, right? Because if you're in a country where inflation is rampant, Right? You [00:10:00] got to be growing more than 50, you know, inflation is 50 percent a year. I mean, some places it's 50 percent a month. It's crazy, right? But, but yeah, it's relative to inflation, number one.

So I feel very, there's always an exception to a rule. We've, we've talked about this before, right? But generally speaking, it's, it needs to be against inflation. And then I would say that, um, double digit growth rate, right, is, is, is, is necessary if you really want to go out and attract and retain, you know, a large, you know, level of A players, percentage wise.

Does that make some sense? Yeah. Now, you know, it, it gets easier to go and attract those, those humans with, you know, higher levels of growth. We could not have attracted the people we have today, three years ago. No way. Right? So, you know, it's a combination of growth, it's a combination of the complexity of the organization we have today, obviously, you know, the level of challenge that was, that exists within the [00:11:00] organization.

Um, the story hasn't changed, but we're just more credible and people have meatier, um, opportunities to dig into. 

[00:11:17] Cole Abbott: Yeah. So relative, I guess, two questions, let's say relative to your, your market of applicants or whatever people available to you at your organization at any given stage. What percentage of those people, potential hires, are A players?

That's the first question. And then how relative to. that standard growth rate, or just base growth rate, right? That flux point between growing and dying. Right. How much higher, how much above that do you have to be to attract and retain those A [00:12:00] players? Well, 

[00:12:02] Mark Abbott: so first of all, it's a lot more than just growth rate.

Yeah. Well, 

[00:12:08] Cole Abbott: generally speaking, given that's the topic of today's discussion. Right. I was just a ton of things, but a lot of those things Will influence your growth rate on average. Yeah. It's going to be years where it's just like, not your year, market's weird, something's happening. You're really focusing on investment.

Yeah. Long term investment. And it's going to pay off in two years. Yeah. And obviously with AI and stuff, that's, that's how it's working. Yes. Doing a lot of upfront work to hopefully have something pay off in the future. Yeah. 

[00:12:34] Mark Abbott: So part of the, what the conversation that you're having right now or we're having right now is actually growth rate doesn't just mean revenues.

Yes. Right. Right. So growth rate could mean. You know, how, how, how, how big is your organization growing? Right? Our organization has grown at, um, over 50 percent a year, right? Um, every year. Since the beginning, pretty much, right? So, you got that level of growth, right? You got, obviously, the revenue growth rate.

[00:13:00] But, you know, I think you had two questions there. One of them was, you know, what percentage of the candidates out there are A players, right? And then what are the implications for that? Well, uh, the, the, the percentage is small. Um, and, um, I, you know, I don't, I don't have a heuristic for it, or a rule of thumb for it, but, um, but I would say that, you know, just like in investing, you know, a, you know, a lot of people will tell you that, you know, once they get their investment model.

fine tuned, um, you know, they're looking at, you know, at least a hundred, if not multiple hundreds of investment opportunities before they, to get one. And I think it's similar on, on humans, right? You've got, you know, you've got a, and especially obviously if you're using something like LinkedIn or something, you know, [00:14:00] some broad based system to bring in applicants.

Um, you know, when we, uh, When we went out and looked for our head of, of, of, of human resources, I think we, I know we had hundreds and hundreds of applicants, um, and you know, and eventually, you know, we found Kathleen, who's awesome, um, reports to Meg, who's head of people, but, um, you know, sometimes it, it's, you know, you're, you're going to look at hundreds of candidates.

Um, and the reality is, is that, you know, it, and once again, And then going back to stratums, you know, the, the, the higher up in the organization you get, the harder, you know, that the small, you know, it's interesting, right? The, how many CMOs are out there as an example versus just general population? We know that's a much smaller group, but you know, I'm sure when, you know, when we went through our CMO search, you know, um, we were [00:15:00] looking at people who had very credible, you Right, resumes, substantial experience and um, you know, and so we had a really, really tight lens and um, you know, I, I know, you know, I wasn't involved in every single review but you know, I'm sure we were close to 100 plus people and we, we literally had conversations or our search firm had conversations, I know for a fact, with you know, 50 to 100.

And then I reviewed probably 30 to. you know, plus or minus. Um, and then I met with over 10 people. So, you know, it's, uh, they're, you know, finding, you know, a, finding people who have that combination of, of experience, passion, um, drive, um, interests that are aligned with you and with your organization and great cultural [00:16:00] fits.

I mean, You know, it's, it's not easy, but obviously if you, if you can become really, really good at this, um, then, you know, A players do love to be surrounded by A players. And so that's part of what's happened with us over the years, right, is, is we've got an amazing talent who's helped us get amazing talent.

[00:16:22] Cole Abbott: So there's a general way that applies to anything, the idea of momentum with growth. I take it back to the Matthew principle. To those who have everything, more will be given. From those who have nothing, everything will be taken. And just, right, things that are bigger tend to get bigger. Things that are shrinking tend to continue shrinking.

Yes. And that's, the tends to is important there. Yes. Obviously, things can happen and make things go the other way. But that's where you get the wild distributions of, you know, 5%. accounting for 90 percent of the results or the mass or whatever you want to call it. Right. Right. So within those things you have, when you [00:17:00] have more A players, your growth rate is going to increase because you're performing better and you're more able to bring in other A players.

Yeah. So two questions. Yes. What are some heuristics to, give you confidence that you're on the right path and you're building that positive momentum. Right. And two, if you feel like you're stalling out, what are the core things that you need to address in order to course correct? Yeah. So, um,

[00:17:33] Mark Abbott: one of the concepts that's pretty universal in most of the, um, well known sort of business operating system communities, You know, the, the senior leadership team coaching industry, um, is the concept of hitting the ceiling. And, um, and [00:18:00] I believe hitting the ceiling is predominantly a stage based phenomena.

Um, but it's also, you know, there's, there's other reasons you hit the ceiling. And, you know, it's at that moment, so let's talk about hitting the ceiling first. So when you hit the ceiling, you're in that moment where, you know, you've now started to decelerate or worse, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're reversing in terms of your revenues, right?

Things are getting really super hard and, um, your growth rate, you oftentimes actually turns negative, right? So you've hit a ceiling, something's messed up and, um, and you either address it now or you're in trouble because things either grow or die as we, that's the title of this episode, right? So, you know, when you hit a ceiling, you know, the question is, is can you figure out why and the answer is you should be able to figure out why and if you can't figure out why there's lots of people out there that can be objective and stand back and help you see what's [00:19:00] going on.

Right? Um, a lot of times it's stage of development, right? So you're hitting a ceiling because You've gone, let's say you've gone from stages two to stage three, and your stage, at stage two, you had all these people who worked directly for you, and they were just out there producing, right? They were doing, you know, they were producing quality, they were producing quantity, they were following some, you know, very basic process, um, but, you know, you can't oversee any more people.

It's just too much. Right? And so now what's happening is they're not getting the leadership and, and coaching that they need to develop. Everybody's like messed up. They're not working well together. It's kind of a, a collective mess. And, uh, and, and, and you cannot fix that by yourself. You have to hire someone, right?

You need to go and hire now someone to start overseeing the Stratum One. work that's being done, right? So now you need to move up to stage, you need to move up to Stratum 3, and you need to start [00:20:00] hiring Stratum 2 leaders, right? To help you produce, to help you serve, right? So to produce the product and or service, to service the customer, etc.,

right? To look over the books and records, to make sure cash is coming in, you know, all this stuff, right? And so at each of these stages of development, you know, you are going to, Run into a ceiling. And if you don't do the things that are obvious to do when you hit that ceiling, like put that next level of leadership in the organization, right, you're in trouble.

Because once, once you start, stop growing, right, once you stop adding new customers, customers will leave. Right? No company retains all of their customers because customers, you know, their needs change, they may go out of business, right? So you cannot sit here and, and stay flat and not get new customers, right?

That's just a, just an impossible, um, exercise. So, so the [00:21:00] reality is, is you're going to hit a ceiling every single stage of development, every, every single time you go to the next stage of development. That's a, that's a, that's a given. Now, let's say that you've got a stage five company, and you've got all the layers, and you hit a, you hit a, right?

Now the question is why? Is it that, um, somehow or another parts of your organization are no longer performing particularly well for various and sundry reasons? Maybe you have a bad leader in a seat. Is it the market, right? That fundamentally, you know, The, the market's declining, or is it fundamentally that someone else is coming into the market with a much better mousetrap at a, at a better mousetrap, better price, right?

So you have to look at each situation and figure out why the heck the company has hit a ceiling. But fundamentally, back to the real topic here, fundamentally, you as the leader need to understand that things either grow or die. It's your responsibility to now get this organization back on track. I'm [00:22:00] on track.

Now, if you've, if you've built a player, an organization that's predominantly comprised of A players, right now, all of a sudden you've got all these A players, you're not growing. They're all going to sit around and look at one another and going, you know, I'm not learning, I'm not developing, I'm not advancing my, Own set of skills and experiences, and so all of a sudden they start to leave, right?

And now all of a sudden you're going to attract people and you're like, but all your, all these people have been leaving, right? Or they go on Glassdoor and it's, they're right. And they see that there's all this mess, right? And they're like, you know why I don't, you know? And so all of a sudden, you, you, you, you know, you no longer, you have this real issue.

It's a real issue, right? You're not growing. You're not growing. Your people are leaving you, right? It's harder to attract, it's harder to attract new people because they're looking at, let's say, Glassdoor and it's talking about all the crap that's going on. I'm just, you know, making these stories up, right?

But, um, but yeah, you know, you, you need to go in and figure out what the heck's going on. And then, [00:23:00] um, You know, stop the hemorrhaging, right, um, and, you know, see, you know, average players want to be left alone, good players want to coach, great players want to know the truth. Figure out what the truth is.

It's probably going to be a multiple of issue, number of issues, and now you need to go in there and you need to prioritize, all right? Yeah, we got 20 problems. Are they all the same? Are some more important than others? Can we handle, can we attack all 20 this quarter? Are we going to say, Hey, you know, we're going to triage, right?

These three things are the big things we're going to work on. And then, you know, these five things we're going to start to work on. And then these other, you know, 12 things we're going to push off until the next 

[00:23:42] Cole Abbott: quarter. And there's definitely situations where. It is a more foundational issue where it's like a huge market shift or something comes up.

Disruptor comes out. Yeah. That's the external side. On the internal side, you have. Leadership issues. You have a serious cultural issue. We've seen both of those really take a toll on [00:24:00] companies or both the external side and the internal side. Yeah. But then if we're looking at those as foundational insufficiencies or pathologies, you could solve those core things and five of the other issues would get resolved as well.

Yes. And so what do you think the significance is? Taking appropriate time to figure out if it is a core foundational issue versus just a surface level thing and addressing that and having, I guess, the discipline to address that prior to trying to solve the easy, or solve for the 

[00:24:36] Mark Abbott: easy. Well, I feel like I'm a broken record on certain topics almost every single, you know, time we talk about stuff like this, right?

So, um, Yeah. First of all, wouldn't it be amazing, right, if really early on you got your act together on your forever agreements, right? So that you don't have these cultural issues, right? Wouldn't it be amazing, right, if you, if you [00:25:00] really got clear on what are the foundational internal things, right? And you really worked on having high trust relationships, right?

So the probability of the, the internal issues, right, is relatively, relatively small, right? Right? So that's why slow is smooth, right? Smooth is fast. I, I can't, you know, just getting the basics, mastering the basics is so bloody important. It's not just the basics around the forever agreements and sort of the, the, the vision stuff that should be, you know, almost infinite, right?

It's also structure, right? Getting structure right and right. And then it, then it's around the discipline of putting the right people in the right seats, right? Right. So. You know, the marketplace is hard enough.

Don't handicap yourself by not just getting the fundamentals right, right? And, um, I heard, uh, an [00:26:00] advertisement today and it really resonated with me. And, um, someone said it's like trying to cut a butcher's board with a butter knife, right? That's hard. Right? Why would anybody do that? Right? And to me, if you don't have a decent operating system, and if you don't have the fundamentals figured out, you're trying to cut a butcher's board with a butter knife.

Right? So don't do that to yourself, don't do that to your colleagues, don't do that to your customers, right? Get your, get the fundamentals solid and then you can deal with the marketplace because the marketplace is always going to be changing. It's always going to be evolving, right? And um, some, some, some industries are much more evolving.

They have a higher rate of change than others. But you know, I go back to, you [00:27:00] know, I remember when I passed the reins on. Um, to the, you know, from, from me to the, to, to Dan Marslak at, at, at Heller and you know, there was a good 20 year vision in place and, um, and, you know, you could operate, you know, in that market because it wasn't evolving significantly fast, right?

You could, you just, if you just got the fundamentals done well. You, you could do really, really well, right? And they did that for decades. And, you know, my old business is still 50 billion or so, and they're still, you know, whatever it is now, 30 plus years later, still performing really, really well. So some industries have less.

change than others. But, you know, especially now in this moment in time with the technology, technological advancements that are taking place, not just in AI, but across a host of different, different, um, sort of, um, areas. Uh, you know, I, I think most industries [00:28:00] are going to be impacted by technology, not maybe in the direct way, but maybe in the way that they recruit, maybe in the way they understand how the business is working, maybe in the way they service their customer.

Right. Um, and so, you know, I think when you look at, um, the nature of business today, the nature of, you know, of the marketplace, um, that's tough enough. Don't, you know, get your act together on the inside so that you can. Fight well in the arena on the outside, 

[00:28:37] Cole Abbott: and I think that you said that if it's a relatively static industry Yeah, right getting the fundamentals automatically we're getting the fundamentals right just puts you ahead But I feel like even in a very dynamic industry Having that solid foundation on which you can move and shift things right without completely losing your way Yeah, is is really important Equally or if not more important.

[00:29:00] Yeah, so with I mean if you In your coaching experience. Yeah, and things you've seen on the investment side the companies that Just nail the fundamentals and like really nail them and are disciplined around them. What percentage of those are above the mark in terms of growth. 

[00:29:24] Mark Abbott: My experience has been, you know, 90 plus percent of them, right?

I mean, I don't have, uh, you know, I don't mean to be, we were talking, we were talking about arrogance before we started the podcast, right? I don't mean to be arrogant on this, but, um, you know, all, all of the clients that I have any, you know, connection with or, you know, know about, including obviously the ones I currently have, but prior clients, the ones who have, you've nailed the fundamentals and kept, stay disciplined around the fundamentals.

They've all done extraordinarily well.[00:30:00] 

Yep. You know, and, and, and, yeah, you know, the, the, once again, stuff happens, right? Um, but. When you do everything right and still 

[00:30:10] Cole Abbott: fail. 

[00:30:10] Mark Abbott: The markets, right? But, but, but then again. Right? This is where, once again, I don't, you know, maybe people won't like me for saying this, right? But if you get the, if you do, if you've mastered my definition of mastering the, the, the fundamentals of vision, right?

You are,

you're playing a game that's likely to be infinite. Serving small and midsize companies, helping them become better and better versions of the best versions of themselves, helping them understand sort of the mechanics, um, of how to build a great company, the fundamentals, right? Giving them the tools and disciplines to understand where they are and how they're doing and where they could improve and what are the implications based upon their stages of development for what they should be [00:31:00] prioritizing, right?

Um,

If you, you know, if you get really, if you've done the vision stuff well, you're, you're, you're playing in a market that's, yeah, it's going to go up and down, but small and mid sized businesses are going to be here, I believe, for decades and decades and decades, right? So the game we're playing. is, you know, is, is an infinite game.

Now, if you have a product, we've talked about this before, right? And your whole business is around a product that's going to go within three to five years. It's a fad. You know, I 

[00:31:40] Cole Abbott: can't fix that. I'm not a magician. But there's a lot of people that that's their goal is like, what can I get out of this thing?

And you know, people that, uh, I was just at SAS Academy and talking to a lot of people and there are people there that are like, I just want to get this done in six months. And then after [00:32:00] that we'll see where we are, but I'm done. And that's their window. Obviously been doing things longer than they didn't just just start this, but that's their window.

Some people are like three years, some people are five years and that's, you're getting towards the upper end of the population at those things. When you're saying like five years, few people have the infinite, infinite. Yeah. But when it comes, right, the shorter the time span, the more you can just exploit the given situation.

Yeah. But this gets back to our five archetypes 

[00:32:26] Mark Abbott: of entrepreneurs, right? So you know, it, you know, I don't know what percentage of the folks at SAS Academy, um, would be, fall into the opportunistic, right? You know, but they're not really founders. They're entrepreneurs. You're just trying to figure out how to make a buck, right?

And then figure out another situation, go make a buck, and then figure out another situation and go make a buck. 

[00:32:45] Cole Abbott: We're reviewing each of these things is right. There's a bunch of these different things, but talking to a few people, right. I want to do this for right now. Yeah. And then that will allow me and my co founder, whoever to go to the next step and do the [00:33:00] next thing that we'd like to do.

Yeah. And, and they're viewing it, and then that's the thing that they really care about. Right. But it's interesting to see all of the different dynamics, all different types of people. Yeah. And what they, what their plans are, what their visions are for their, these things. Yeah. 

[00:33:13] Mark Abbott: But, you know, I mean, this is part of my mission.

Right. You know this, right. So it's, look, I, I, I believe we're gonna test this, we've talked about this before. We'll do the research and validation here, right? But the five entrepreneurial types, and I believe that the two, the visionaries and the legacy on legacy entrepreneurial types are the true founders, right?

They, they really have the founders mindset going back to our, our founders mode, uh, discussions. Right? And they're, and, and they're, they're, they're, they're, they're out building. An infinite company, right? They're about playing the infinite game. They're going into industries where, where they can, um, you know, where you, where, where, where you can build and compound and, and, and, and develop, you know, a strong [00:34:00] brand and continue to grow and where the market's growing.

And, um, and that's the game they're playing, right? And, um, Then you have the lifestyle entrepreneurs and the accidental entrepreneurs and the opportunistic ones. Um, they don't necessarily start off by definition as You know, with a founder's mindset. They're more about themselves, right? Um, not, I'm not saying it's wrong.

I'm just saying that's, that's how they've approached that game. And, um, and my wish is that I, we could help more and more people understand awesome. Now, wouldn't it be better if You started playing the longer game, wouldn't it be better if, if you were really focused on, uh, on building, you know, uh, a level, stage five organization that was great at attracting and, you know, and retaining talent and attracting and retaining customers, um, because they, they, they believed that you were the type of an organization [00:35:00] that they wanted to develop a long term relationship with, right?

Um, I believe that a lot of people just don't. Don't think? this way and it's not wrong. It's just like anything, right? You don't understand stuff. There's lots of stuff you just don't know. And so whether it's the educational system or their family background or, or, you know, or what, um, you know, I would love to see them evolve their, their, their, their, their, their worldview, their vision for the, for the business to a, to creating a company, because in the long run, I believe it's better for them, I believe it's better for their family, I believe it's better for their customers, I believe it's better for their employees, I believe it's better for all their ISDL stakeholders, because they may be the only shareholders, but eventually, right, other people might want to be investors as well, and so, I just think it's a win win win, but, you know, we, we haven't done, um, as good enough, as good a job as we should with regard to helping people [00:36:00] see that, you know, As, as, as a really viable, if not wise, path to 

[00:36:06] Cole Abbott: pursue.

I think it starts with us doing it well, and then showing how it's done. Right. And, and then really mastering and understanding it to the point where we can Teach it. Teach it. Yeah, or communicate those things. Yeah, and I think there's a lot of times where There's a big ego development side of this, right?

With regard to the perspective on things, especially if you're playing you play an infinite game But I think there's a step beyond an infinite game where you're serving infinite need And you are just a piece of that and during your time here you are shining a light on that need and you are doing what you can for that.

And then there's the social ripple effect of what you do and how you do it and that helps bring up others and you're identifying and addressing the core issues. And that's a [00:37:00] huge commitment to things and a lot of people are afraid of that. level of, I mean, it's basically a life commitment at that point, which is scary and it's hard.

Yes. Staying disciplined, staying consistent year over year, decade over decade is extremely difficult. Right. And as you say, it may not be. Complex, but it's not easy, 

[00:37:19] Mark Abbott: right? 

[00:37:20] Cole Abbott: And it's not easy to keep that up and it's not easy to remove yourself from that equation. No, but I think there's a proximal side of on the growth side of things, just little tweaks, just keep advancing, advancing, advancing, just growing.

And the more you grow, the more you realize that the more you move towards that, the better your business is going to do. And then the better your business does or more you realize the value in those things. And so it's just. Keep exploring, keep having that one foot in the unknown, but moving towards that direction.

And I think that even if you are on that level, right, I would say loving [00:38:00] is level nine. People get it. I think most people get it. You're like, Oh yeah, that sounds like a good thing. They don't understand why it sounds like a good thing. Right. And so it's up to people who are in that thing to help others who are earlier on in their journey.

Yeah. Yep. You 

[00:38:22] Mark Abbott: can go 

[00:38:22] Cole Abbott: down that 

[00:38:22] Mark Abbott: rabbit hole. We can go down that rabbit hole. But, but, but it's also back to growth. Yeah. Right? So we're talking, now we're talking about individual growth versus, obviously, organizational growth. 

[00:38:31] Cole Abbott: Right? And the individual growth has implications on the organizational growth.

Yeah. Right? Yourself and your team. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because 

[00:38:41] Mark Abbott: it's, it's, it's, it's, it's difficult. Like, let's look at, you know, you and I've talked about this before, right? Not, not necessarily here, but it's, you know, it's difficult for, you know, um, uh,[00:39:00] 

To be a follower means you have, you are attracted to a leader. A leader brings something to the table that you don't have, whether it's the vision or whether it's the ability to deal with something that's in front of you right now. Um, sometimes there's short term leadership and sometimes there's long term leadership.

We've talked about this before, right? If you're sitting in the, at the bottom of the World Trade Center during, you know, that horrible, moment in time, and there was a fireman, a politician, a business person, and a philosopher, right? Who would you want to lean into to help lead you out of that moment? And obviously it's the fire person, right?

So, um, so, so there's context is always matters as we like to say. Um, but fundamentally within the, with talking about organizations, right? You know, when you want to go work for someone and be coached by someone and be mentored by someone who's at a higher level than you are, right? And so, to your point, you know, [00:40:00] you know, if you're a, you know, if you're There's, there's, there's, there's some really probably unresolvable tension if you're, you know, loving or stage seven, you know, um, slash eight ego and you're working for someone who's stage four or worse, stage three, right, where they're just yelling at everybody and it's all about them and has nothing to do with, you know, with anything other than them.

And that little moment they're in, um, then it's hard, right? And so, so yeah, there's, there's the organizational growth and then there's the growth of the humans inside the organization and, um, and for it to really work, they, uh, they, uh, you know, they all need to be growing.

[00:40:52] Cole Abbott: Yeah. I have a, a chart about. Like the relationship matrix between all the levels. [00:41:00] Yeah. Which I don't think I need to answer right now, but it's interesting, right? Yeah. Like, what's the relationship look like between a Level 3 and a Level 3, or a Level 3 and a Level 9, or 8, and whatever. Right. Um, I don't know if you just out whatever.

I'll show it after. I don't want to derail this whole thing. Right. But coming back to growth. But 

[00:41:18] Mark Abbott: that's it. But this is actually back to growth. Um, I want to connect two dots here, right? Um, you know, You, well, when you're, when you're growing the organization, there's going to be, there, there will be moments where you're, um, the majority of the time really, right?

Whether there's, there is gaps, um, within, within, let's say, the, the organization. levels of competency and levels of, and I'm going to even throw ego as a competency, right? There's going to be competency gaps within the organization. So [00:42:00] you may have like a, a stratum four leader who just has stratum two direct reports.

And that gap there is not good for either humans, right? And so if you've got really sophisticated and looked at your organization, right? What, what's the gaps? Right? In terms of competency across it. And obviously the, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and at each of those gaps, what's the value that is, um, exposed to that gap, right?

Um, and, you know, and so as the organization's growing and evolving, one of the things you want to be sort of conscientious of is that these gaps can, can, you know, they'll always be there, but they can't. always be the same. You've got to be working the gaps and reducing them and eliminating them. And perfection would be that you have, you know, [00:43:00] all of the functions make sense, right?

They're all the core functions you need to be masters of. All the stratums are filled. There's no gaps in there. Everybody's, you know, basically performing at 90 percent or better. And, you know, and that machine, right, is capable of withstanding, especially if the market and the vision and all the other things are, are in, in great shape, you know, that, that machines, um, uh, you know, if things happen at machines really, you know, they're prepared to deal with adversity cause it will happen.

But even better than that, get back to one of our other favorite conversations, right? That machine is anti fragile. 

[00:43:43] Cole Abbott: Yes. As you stress that, as you stress the machine, it becomes, Become strong, resilient, stronger, become stronger because within the machine there is, or within all that order, obviously there is always an element of chaos, right?

So you have to be very, you have to continue to be mindful of it. It's like we sort of, and, [00:44:00] and if this, if this system is built in such a way, yes, it's very unlikely that you're like, okay, we're really good with this. We don't need to worry about this at all. Let's go focus on other things, right? You always have to have your eye on the system, the way it's functioning, because insufficiencies are going to pop up.

Issues are going to happen, there's going to be gaps that are going to get created and you have to be able to address them and not bury your head in the sand. Yes. Which is why, if 

[00:44:28] Mark Abbott: you think about it, and I've never actually said this out loud, I don't think, if the entire organization was B players,

they're just doing their job. They're not open to the issues. They're not trying to figure out how to deal with that next time. They are not proactive. They're not proactive, right? As long as everything's good, it works. As soon as it gets punched in the face or slapped in the face, we're going to use a most [00:45:00] recent meme, um, Tyson Paul.

Um, yeah. I'm so disconnected with things. Yeah, Tyson slapped Paul last night. And, and, um, I saw it on the news today. So but, but right when, when you get hit in the face right now, all of a sudden, um, you know, you're not as, you're not well positioned for it. And so getting back to growth, right, ultimately you do need to decide what percentage of your organization, where do you need the A players, where, where is it fine for the B players?

Some organizations, right, this is one of the things that we dealt with at. a long time ago, right? Was we decided that we were gonna create an up and out organization meaning that you had to be continually progressing in your career. A lot of law firms do that, right? If you're not, if you've been named a partner by the time you're, you know, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, generally speaking.

But there's some period of time, [00:46:00] three years, four years, five years, six years, seven years, I don't know what it is, nine years, um, where you, you know, you either become a partner or, you know, you move on to something else. You go, you go find another law firm that makes, that more likely to be a partner. Same thing for the, you know, for the big accounting firms for a long period of time, right?

You either got to be partner level or, or, or, or you moved on. So there's, there's, there's, there's ways to go about. Making sure that you've systemically thought through how to create. A machine, right, a human machine, right, that works really, really well and that scales well. Because once again, you either grow or 

[00:46:41] Cole Abbott: die.

It's like the Tyson, they made me think about the Mike Tyson quote of everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so you're just like, everything's great. And then it's like, whack, something comes in. Yeah. Where that's internally like, yeah, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, Really bad.

I think a D player hire in there somehow. It happens. [00:47:00] Yeah, and that just completely wreaks havoc on the system. Yeah, and everyone's like, well, I don't want to do anything because if I go against that person that could be mean. Yeah, and that's not good. Right. Then that could create an issue or something comes out from the market and it just overwhelms the system.

Yeah, it'll rise the occasion. Yeah, right. It's just that one little bit of That little stimulus that can cause a huge 

[00:47:26] Mark Abbott: Yeah, it was, you know, um, we, we've talked about SAS Academy a couple times because you and I were, um, I was at boardroom two or three weeks ago and you were at intensive, which is a broader group of people.

Um, how many people were there for that one? A lot, I don't know. Like 150, 200 ish? 250? 250, yeah. I was under the name 

[00:47:44] Cole Abbott: Colby Connors 150. Colby Connors 150. 

[00:47:47] Mark Abbott: He's at least twice as big. Okay. All right. So, um, and then the boardroom, there's like 40 of us, right? Um, and, uh, one of the members in my boardroom was talking about [00:48:00] people issues, right?

And, um, and he was talking about, you know, this person really isn't, You know, particularly well suited for this or that. I don't remember the whole story, but, you know, we pass around one of those boxes where you talk in. Talk box? Yeah. Cube, right? And so, you know, he's, he's struggling a little bit with it and they pass it to me and I just go structure first, people second.

And I passed it back and everybody's just like, and that was the answer, right? It's like, look, you got to get structure right. Now the question is, do you have the right person, right? Do they really have the skills and experiences, right? Are they competent? Are they committed to growing in the seat at the level that that seat's likely going to grow at, right?

And do they have the capacity? Right? Which for us includes the ego, right? Do they have the mental, the physical, and the emotional, which I think is the ego, right? Do they, do they have what it takes to be a really good member of the organization? And then you got the behavioral stuff, and yes, there's a little overlap when it comes to behaviors and ego, without question.[00:49:00] 

Um, but it's like, first things first, right? The deal, issue he was dealing with was he was trying to put a square peg into a round hole. And it's like, no, just, and, and, and, and I'm going to talk to founders now for a second, just to founders, right? You are the captain of the ship. It's your responsibility to make sure that it's, it's well peopled for the nature of the journey you're on.

So if you're, if you're going, you know, across the Atlantic from, let's just say Miami to London, right? You got to make damn sure that. That ship is in great shape. Before you take off, you need to make damn sure that all the people that you need in order for that ship to be able to make that passage safely, right, are on there.

And you're responsible for the ship, right? And so, you know, ultimately some of these issues that you're dealing with is head trash. That the question [00:50:00] is, is this right for the ship, right? And um, And, and, and, and the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of the people that are on your ship, right, wants you to do what's right for the ship.

[00:50:13] Cole Abbott: Yeah. Yeah. This is a little more than that, because the ship's an isolated system. Right. But, because I, I think that it is, the, the, It's not so isolated when it comes to weather. I mean, isolated system in terms of you could, you could go full, not a great culture, like Davy Jones or the Flying Dutchman and Pirates of the Caribbean, where it sounds like part of the ship, part of the crew and everyone hates life, but it's a really well run ship.

So it was like, when I said isolated system, if you run a company like that, it's not going to be a very good company because. You're going to be miserable to deal with. Well, let's just say, I'm really nitpicking. I know you are. So let's just 

[00:50:49] Mark Abbott: say we get to the others. We get to London though. Right. As an example.

Right. And, and, uh, and all the, and you've got a passage back and all the, all the shipmates, right. Everybody on the ship, like they [00:51:00] get the heck off of it because it's, you know, it's a free world for them. Right. And it's like, no, I'm not, I'm not dealing with that again. Then, then, you know, you as a captain are sitting there with a big old expensive piece of metal.

Right. Pissing off all the passengers who want to go, you know, who are supposed to go back in the other direction. So, you know, I think it's, I don't think it's so isolated. I think it's a decent metaphor personally. 

[00:51:25] Cole Abbott: There's the, as we went, as we touched on earlier, there's the idea of if you want to actually have positive influence over things, you have to set that example, even when it's not the fun or enjoyable thing to do.

Or sometimes it could be, you know, 

[00:51:41] Mark Abbott: Yeah. 

[00:51:42] Cole Abbott: Cause a lot of things were like, Oh, we go chase this opportunity, but, and that'd be really good for our numbers or it theoretically could be anybody doing this, right? That could be really good for our numbers over the next six months. But then it puts us in a weird position two years from now.

[00:51:54] Mark Abbott: Yeah. And so, 

[00:51:55] Cole Abbott: so you had to stick to that even. Look, if you, if you 

[00:51:58] Mark Abbott: want to be a founder, I'm talking to founders right now, [00:52:00] right? Look, if you're, if you want to be a founder and it's hard, right, it's not complicated. It's hard, right? There, you know, there's going to be lots of moments where this sucks, right?

You're, you're Saturday and Sunday. It's almost all dedicated to work. Something's happened. You got to address it, right? It's hard. 10 o'clock at night. There's an issue that you got to deal with, especially in the early stages, especially in the early stages. Right. It's just hard. Right. And, and so, you know, not everybody, you know, the vast, vast, vast majority of people we've talked about this before.

And, you know, I'm sure there'll be haters, you know, when I say this, right. But, you know, the vast, vast majority of the people

don't have the combination of things that are necessary to be a successful founder, right? They may not have the idea. Yeah. They may not have the tenacity, they may not have the, you know, the, the, the disagreeableness, they may not have a bunch of the different characteristics that, that are [00:53:00] required. And it just, it seems like it's a great idea.

Wouldn't it be cool to start a company, right? Wouldn't it be cool to blah, blah, blah. 

[00:53:06] Cole Abbott: Yeah, but you know. It depends on why you want it. To do why you want to start the company. Yeah. Right. Cause I think if you're very conscientious, disagreeable, what you write of all the right traits, which the percentage of the population that has all those traits is small.

And if you put people in those positions that don't have those traits, they might think about it in a romantic sense. Like, that'd be really cool to be in that position. And some people would be in it for the right reasons. Like, I just want to help people and I want to take on that burden. And that's cool.

Somebody was like, I want to have a really big house. And it's like, okay, that's not when it sucks. That's not going to get you through. Yeah. Those weekends, those all nighters, right, because that's not a significant enough why to bear any how, as Nietzsche would put it. 

[00:53:47] Mark Abbott: Yeah. But it's, but it's, but it's even simpler than that.

I've said this a bunch of different times, right? You do not make money because you want to make money. You make money because people value what it is you do. If you focus on output, you're not focusing on the, on the work that needs to be [00:54:00] done in order to create the thing that needs to be created in order for you to get this thing that you think you want.

So, um, you know, you know, so it's, it's just, uh, you know, back to growth, right? Ultimately, you know, what I would, what I want for all founders, cause we're talking about, I'm talking to founders right now, right? I want 90 percent of the time, 90 percent of your time for you to be genuinely, Enjoying the job, right?

Genuinely enjoy leading, genuinely enjoy being with your people, genuinely enjoy being with all of your ideal stakeholders, right? Genuinely enjoying the game, right? Um, you know, I think about, uh, the Jordan, I think they call it the Jordan rule, right? So Jordan was the first, Michael Jordan, was the first one who had a, in his contract he was allowed to play pick up ball, right?

Because he loved the game. [00:55:00] And if you study him or you study, you know, Colby or Colby, or others who are, you know, exceptional, right? They love the game. Right. Kobe would be there at four in the morning, you know, working, you know, his, his shots. Right. Because he loved the game. And if you don't love the game, right.

It's really hard to get through those hard moments and those hard moments will come. Right. So part, part of it, you know, being a founder is you, you, you know, you got to nail your forever agreements. You got to nail growth, right. Because. Because every company is a complex adaptive system, and all complex adaptive systems are dealing with entropy.

We haven't talked about entropy at all today, right? But they're dealing with entropy. Entropy's everywhere, right? It's in your processes, it's in your KPIs, it's in your relationships with your customers. It's in, it's, it's, it's in, literally in the metaphysical being of your, of the humans who work with you.

Because at some point, Right. They look, you know, they're [00:56:00] going to either sort of be less interested in the job or they're going to want to retire or something's going to happen to them. That's completely unplanned for, but entropy is everywhere. Right. And so, you know, 

[00:56:11] Cole Abbott: you need to within yourself, including people don't realize, right.

It's a stable deteriorate of its own accord. Yeah. And the. King always has a tyrannical brother. There's always a tyrannical or entropic element within. Yeah. And so you have to be mindful of that too. It's not always outside. Sometimes it's within as we speak to founders. 

[00:56:28] Mark Abbott: Yeah. And so, you know, so the game is right.

It's not complicated. It is hard, but ultimately the better you are at creating a business that has the sufficient enough level of growth to meet the ambitions that you have, uh, Right? Then you can start and, and doing the work that's necessary in order to be able to play to, to, to, [00:57:00] to, to, to be able to meet those ambitions.

Right? The sooner it is that you're going to start going from 60 percent of the time 80 to 90 percent of the time, you genuinely enjoy the game. And you're like, I want to go back. Right? You go home at night and 

[00:57:16] Cole Abbott: you're like, I love what I do. And you have to have that 10 plus whatever, plus minus percent, because you have to have that.

And I think that's a part of the pickup thing is you have to have that room for exploration. Like, I hate this. Or it's like, I didn't realize that in doing something that you hate, you're like, okay, why don't I like that? Figure that out. Or sometimes you find something like, Oh, That actually worked. Yeah.

And whether I, like, sometimes you like it, right? Sometimes you don't like it. Yeah. But it's like, we need to do this. Yeah. And so Right. Delegate or whatever in that situation. Yeah. Um, but you'll never, you shouldn't be in a position where you're loving everything a hundred percent of the time. 

[00:57:51] Mark Abbott: No. Well, we, it goes back to, you know.

So, if we were really, really like, I,

I, I [00:58:00] have mixed perspectives on this, you know, there's a reason why we're called 90 and, and right, and, and so we, and, and so obviously 90 days and 90 percent of the time, blah, blah, blah, um, and, and hitting 90 percent of the things that matter, living up to our agreements at least 90 percent of the time, right, and if we don't live up to the agreements, there being a real, you know, a, a legitimately good reason for it.

But, you know, as we've talked about on numerous occasions, you know, optimizing. For growth, research suggests a 15 percent failure rate, not just a 10 percent failure rate. Right. So in some respects you could say, Hey, you really want to get up to about 85 percent of the time. 

[00:58:41] Cole Abbott: I'm big on 85. I don't want to, it was just so many times where you're like 90 and I'm like, you know, in my mind I'm like, okay, I know the natural law is 85, but it's not worth arguing about, especially in this situation.

But I also think that within a business sense, you know, I'd be interesting to see the data on this, but being a little [00:59:00] bit more conservative. It's probably smart rather than just like really trying to strive for opt, like true optimization right around growth, because that means, you know, on the downside, there's a little bit of a stronger downside because if you shoot for 85 and you go 90 and then you go 80, it's like, eh, whereas if you go 85, it's like you're 85 to 90 most of the time.

Yeah. That's probably a better range. Yeah. Cause you're not really going to hit 95, like that's probably not going to happen. Well, if you hit 95%, you're probably not pushing yourself enough. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But you'd rather hit 95 percent and be like, okay, we need to push a little bit further. Versus like you hit 80 percent you're like, okay, we need to, or 70 percent or 60%, right?

Yeah. Cause the, the, the variance right between 90 and 95 is about as, I mean, I'm not just mental math right here is as significant as like 85 to 77 probably. So. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I guess one last [01:00:00] question. Yeah. We didn't talk about this at all, but I think it's worth mentioning. So you have somebody who's in a situation where they're just, it's rapid, crazy growth.

And they're like, this is it. This is what we should be doing. Right. You know, 150 percent growth, right. Something crazy. 

[01:00:15] Mark Abbott: Yeah. 

[01:00:16] Cole Abbott: Uh, how do you, what would your words of advice be to people in that situation? Yeah. And in trying to make sure that what they're doing is sustainable and they're not just, Manic and chasing, yeah, something that isn't going to last.

Well, 

[01:00:30] Mark Abbott: um, so we talked about this a lot, obviously, um, I shouldn't say obviously, we, we've talked about this a lot, right? So our, our, so I ran the company up until this year, including this year, right? With the, with the goal of, you know, You know, if we could, if we, if we can do it, let's keep between 80 percent and 100 percent growth.

I don't want to go above 100 percent growth because my, uh, it's a long, long game. And if you grow at 80 percent a year, then after a while the numbers are extraordinary, right? Um, and so [01:01:00] why? Right? Why put all that stress, play the long game, and, um, and so, you know, obviously when you're early stages those percentages don't make much sense because, right, the numbers are so small, but once you get to a certain level, you know, I personally, right, it's my philosophy, I'm not saying everybody's got to do it, right, I have a range.

And, and, and if we go above that range, then, you know, just cool things down a little bit, right? You have levers, you definitely have levers that you can, that you can pull on, whether it's your sales organization, whether it's your marketing spend, right? There's a whole bunch of different ways you can, you can, you can, you 

[01:01:36] Cole Abbott: can do that.

Dial things down a little bit, right? I think you'd use that time to focus on recovering things and addressing the court issues or something. Going back to those gaps that I was talking about. Yeah, really use that time like, okay, we're ahead right now. Yeah. Let's really use all resources to focus on those things and build that strong foundation.

So that when we get into the next quarter. Exactly. Or whatever, it's like we have everything ready to go. put all our energy into this and not worry about the fragility of the [01:02:00] system. Right. So 

[01:02:01] Mark Abbott: like the nine core competence assessment, right? So, you know, are you at least 90 percent strong or 95 percent strong?

I've got clients who've done really, really well over the last three or four years, right? They're 95 percent strong across the nine core competencies. So, you know, but. You know, maybe, maybe like processes, always a big thing, right? Or maybe if you're the founder, maybe, you know, now is the time for you to stand back and start thinking about the exit stuff.

Right? I'm not saying, you know, get ready to sell the company. I'm not saying get ready to pass the reins on to someone else, but have you done the work you need to do in order to be confidently prepared for a rainy day, for an exit, for you, you know, something happening to you, um, and so, right? So what are the things that, you know, what's a little bit of the cleanup work or the, right, the, the, the ratcheting up work that, that, you know, you know you've, you, you should be doing?

Right? I [01:03:00] guarantee you, if you run into one of those moments and you don't know what it is, um, that you should be working on, within, you know, give me 15 minutes and I'll bet you I can find something that you're like, yeah, we should do that. You're really cool if there was a tool that could help you do that.

Let's work on that. All 

[01:03:18] Cole Abbott: right? All right. Grow or die. Grow or die. Thank you. You're welcome.