On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. My goal is to try and eliminate blind corners for CEOs or or just them solve things when it's just out of their wheelhouse. When everything went on Zoom, I've attended a number of yeah. Learn about how to build funnels or about lots of different topics that are essential to be successful. But in looking at the individuals that are attending, those meetings. Lots of them probably shouldn't be entrepreneurs. What's up, everybody?
I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the king's podcast, coming back to you again today with another king on the stage George Kreza. My man. How we doing? We're great. Chaz. Great to be here today. I appreciate you being here. And I'm dig in your setup over there. You got you got all kinds of awards and all kinds of stuff I'm sure we're gonna get to, but I love a good a good history of winning. Just champions win over and over, and they have trophies to show for it. So I'm excited for this conversation.
Tell us what kind of business that you have, George. I operate challenging decisions, which is a consultancy based on my 25 years as a CEO and the remainder of my business leg, designed to assist other CEOs in, solving really difficult and thorny business problem. And that could be an entire litany of different types of problems. Yeah. Love that. We're always trying to solve problems. In fact, There might be people listening today that have a few problems. Maybe if they're in business, possibly.
Right? And, you know, and one one of the things I've noticed with CEOs CEOs are, you know, shot from guns. They're inspired. They they're founders, they're entrepreneurs. They're exciting. All excited about the things that they're doing. But one thing almost all of us don't understand is our blind spots. And so, you know, sometimes we run straight into concrete walls, and we don't even recognize it until it's right in front of us.
So, you know, my my goal is to try and eliminate blind corners for CEOs or or just help them solve things when it's just out of their wheelhouse. Yeah. I I agree with you. I've also got a I gotta maybe correct you on something. Now maybe you didn't have this experience, but some of us entrepreneurs, we don't, learn just by, being presented to them right in front of us. Sometimes we have to, like, charge right into them.
And even if it's a brick wall, we kinda back up, you know, we're a little bit dizzy, and then we do it again. Yeah. You're right. Never seen Chaz, though, before. Right? No. It happens over and over again. That's right. That's right. Well, hopefully, we can maybe identify some of those blind spots today. Before we do that though, I wanna know, like, why are you why are you here? Why are you doing this thing? Why are you coaching? Why are you helping other entrepreneurs?
Like, you've had a successful run, You've been, you know, the the the eye candy from a entrepreneurial world. Like, you've done the thing, but yet you're still granny. You're still pushing. Tell us why. Well, it's important to me that, I mean, I'm not just in this for myself. I, you know, yes, I ran a successful company. I had my liquidity event. You know, I don't need to work at this point in time, but I feel like Having been through what I've been through, having senior help can be invaluable.
And, I'd like to assist people. And, again, what are the domain of the expertise is? Some things are not in my wheelhouse and other things are in my wheelhouse. But if I have lived it and experienced it and successfully overcome it, that expertise can really save some some individuals time, money, and resources Chaz a matter of fact. Yeah. Yeah. There's, I varying, resources to your point that we, lose by hitting that brick wall.
We lose them again when we decide to hit Rickwall again and again and again. And so what do you think, you know, if you had to kinda maybe give us a short list some of those blind spots or maybe maybe it's just the the brick walls that we're running into. I'm sure you've got them categorized. What what are 3 or 4 or 5 ones that you see most often in CEOs? Well, number 1, an effective culture. A lot of times, a management team is just not percolating at the same wavelength.
And invariably, that's the CEO's responsibility to make that come together and to create the clarity and the effectiveness that has to happen in a management team. If the management team in a company is not effective, the entire company you can predict will be struggling. So, management team culture, very important, finance, having adequate, an adequate financial plan, and understanding where those different resources can come from. I also have experiences software development.
You wanna talk about an area which can be a black hole of money and time. Software development is one of them. And and those are 3 that just come to mind quickly. Yeah, if I wanted to, I could probably come up with, 3 or 4 or 5 more. Yeah. Love it. The in inside of those, I wanna kinda press on them and and see kinda what you've learned. For you, though, culture is a really big subject. So let's hit that one first.
What was so important or maybe a a catalyst for you in the company that you grew before you had your exit around culture, something super tangible that, that you were able to kinda turn the turn the page with. Well, that's easy enough, actually, because, you see that we were an ink 500 company. And, you know, you You see a poster like Chaz, and you say, wow, you know, that's impressive that you did that.
And in case, some of the listeners at familiar, you have to have a 3 year growth pattern that exceeds the market by a lot. And At that time, when I got that award for our organization, we had a 473% growth rate over a 3 year period. Which is really good. Although today, if you look at the inc 500, the bottom end is more like a 1000%. 3 year annual growth rate. So life has changed since that happened, but what hasn't changed is Ultimately, it throws you into crisis after crisis after crisis.
You have market centric crises, crises, In other words, you know, crisis number 1 is getting your product accepted by market leaders, which leads to the growth, Then you recognize that you're enjoying this stratosphere growth, and you say to yourself, how can I more from my management team? Into a much more capable management team. In my case, I thought the answer to that was to bring in really experienced and really well educated senior executives.
So I actually hired 3 Northwestern MBAs and the University of Chicago MBA to run different areas of the organization, and also senior engineers from places like Motorola. And I could tell you this Chaz this was the most dray filled ineffective period in my company's history. Wow. And so over time, I began to understand and study 1 of my landmark learnings comes from Patrick Lencioni, and Patrick Lencioni has 2 super successful books that I I highly recommend.
1 is, how to be an outstanding executive, and the other is temptations of the CEO. And so I I learned how to cultivate clarity how to build an effective management team, how to hold the management team accountable, and build a culture where people are able to be both vulnerable, open, and, collaborative But during that period, it's like a pressure cook beer, and everyone was buck on the one hand, even the experienced executives were butting heads?
Continuously, yeah, our management meetings were like like a war. And filled with tension. And and and then I thought that these MBAs with their, you know, tremendous pedigree would automatically plug in and make a huge difference. The fact is that did not happen you know, and this is an extremely big learning for people running an organization. Is pedigree or And I hate this.
I this is gonna sound like I'm talking in the fifties, but, you know, book learning or technical skills does not equal effective management. Yeah. Sure. And so, yeah, so so as I began to understand and appreciate that, and began to apply those principles, we completely changed the dynamic.
And, as a matter of fact, as opposed to everyone running a million directions at one time, we settled, those primary issues the 1, 2, and 3 most important things, and those were the things the entire organization was going to focus on. And then we align the management team. We align the compensation structure, and we align the top level communication So every single person in the organization knew where we were going and how we were gonna get there. I love it.
Okay. So there's there's immense power in harmony and focus, and that's in essence what you just described. Harmony being with your management team and then and then focus being on those those 3 major things that move the needle. Now I could I hold on. I'd like to clarify that. His harmony is not one of the it it may have sounded like harmony is what I've done. It's not harmony. It's effective collaboration. An effective collaboration does not mean harmony.
Effective collaboration means that you're willing to challenge one another, respectfully, that you're able to give voice to all the different opinions and try try and make decisions based on merit as opposed to based on who put their hand up and came up with the idea. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. There's, yeah, collaboration's probably a good word there. You know, harmony on my side, meaning that there's a, there's unity. Harmony and unity almost on or almost intersecting. It's like, okay.
If we have three things that we're after and this decision between us, Our focus is to figure that out. And you and I both maybe are gonna have some differences of a of an opinion, and we're gonna wrestle that down. That's all good. That's more than welcome. With the understanding that that's the target, not you or me being right, which is exactly what you just said. So I love I love Chaz. Yes. The the the the the the basis of people working together is how really any organization is successful.
So I appreciate you sharing that. The the The person listening right now, maybe they have an executive team, maybe they just have a couple of 2 or 3 employees. Other than Patrick's books, which I'm a huge Patrick fan as well. In fact, I'm, certified in one of his programs. Love his work.
What's one of his what's one of the go to steps that you would suggest that the listener Chaz, whether they have a management team, and maybe it's different for the person who has just 2 or 3 employees to to be able to start cultivating this culture of collaboration and and focus around the targets. Well, the number one step is to have organizational clarity. And so even if you had three people, It's possible that not all three people three people understand what your goal ultimately is.
And and the interesting thing is nobody really knows whether that goal is gonna stick. Right? So over time, like like in in the using my prior organization Chaz an example, we did sales incentives. Channel sales incentives. So I am a channel sales incentive expert as well. Sure. But with with, sales incentives, you know, we started out doing travel programs. We migrated into doing merchandise programs. And then later, we were approved by Chase to offer prepaid card programs.
And this was a giant check, but my point is very simple. The drivers and the requirements of each of those steps are radically different. The suppliers are different. The lingo is different. The, you know, the the cycle time is different and how you deal with it all. Different kinds of expertise all that they're not.
If everyone didn't understand that you're migrating away from travel out to payments, then they're gonna be left in the dust, and they're gonna be thinking the old way when it's time to shift. And mental shifts are a huge problem for people. People get stuck in the sand, and, you know, it's like a tank that, just can't get any traction and even move. So Yeah. Yeah. That's why clarity becomes so important.
You have to you have to overcommunicate organizational clarity and the goals of the company. Yeah. I I love the vein that we're on. What do you have in in your toolbox over there for the actual entrepreneur themselves to be clear? Because, obviously, in order to be able to communicate clearly to the team, they first have to create clear vision of what that we're making this change or whatever the, adjustment is.
What what tools would you suggest, or what maybe is there a methodology or a couple steps? Well, It's just, a blocking and tackling kind of work. You have to put it on paper. And I would as a, you know, I I think a lot of people think that when you write a business plan that you need to write that business plan, long for with pros.
I I am a huge fan of a concise planning, and that cons concise planning could be done one of two ways be done in an outline, which is the way I approach everything, work with an outline, and decide exactly where we're going to go in simple statements, and then you can shuffle those statements around. I mean, if you wanna think of it like a a PowerPoint deck with a 1 or 2 bullets in each slide. The simpler, the better. So you you it's like creating a straw man, what this thing looks like.
Yeah. And then another thing you can do that I took advantage of is I use mind maps, and mind maps I tend to use mind maps, you might say more tactically than strategically, And so I would have a mind map for every major arena of the business. I would have a finance mind map. I would have a operations mind map.
I would have a, a type of actual methodology where you take every category of interest and map out all of the spinning wheels in each category so that you could at a glance, wore with each departmental VP or manager and demonstrate, this is what's in play. What are we going to work on now? What are we going to work on next year? What if we are already finished? So everyone, you know, when we have these, departmental meetings, would be in a position to know exactly what's in play for them.
Yeah. I love that. Okay. Let's let's switch over here to, some tactical, but on on the, failure side. You've given us some really, really great things that you've done inside, the organization that you used to have and some things that you're helping with your current clients. What about an hour that, just wasn't your greatest? Something that you did that he wouldn't wanna repeat.
Yeah. So I talked about software development and the actual underlying key to making the eng 500, which I invented along with my team, a completely new software technology to manage, channel sales incentives for multibillion dollar organizations. And as a matter of fact, People like CDW or Ingram Micro as Ingram Micro continues to use my platform to this very day. And so, it was revolutionary. Well, that's great.
So, you know, you have version 1, version 2, and then we found out but two and a half years in Chaz we had made architectural errors. In the software or didn't fully comprehend the way that structure ought to be. Sure. Well, that's you know, that's the equivalent of saying we need to do heart surgery on software while it's working and running. Yeah. Well, we tried to do that 2 or 3 different ways. We tried to do it internally, and it was just nothing was going right.
And then I said, well, look, I'm gonna make a decision. We're going to outsource this. I got $2,300,000 into that. I originally thought it was going to cost under a 1,000,000 at 2,300,000, and there was no end in sight and I ended up firing the outsource. Who then sued me? Oh, fantastic. Yeah. Because I I was taking them to task about how much I really owed them. Well, you know, that was very, very difficult.
And Ultimately, we brought the project back in house to solve the problem, and we did solve the problem. It took a long time. And it costs a tremendous amount of money much more than I would have ever anticipated. Yeah. It always does. More money, more time, more effort, more sleepless nights.
Yeah. But then, of course, the end result though was that we ended up building an enterprise class, almost bulletproof, business process management application, that any size organization and any amount of data could leverage. So it was exciting, ultimately, to get to that point where we we really rebaked it beautifully. Right. I mean, tell me about that moment, right, because you could have been 2,300,000 in, you know, trying to get out of the contract.
You know, guys telling you he's gonna sue you. And and and more or less throw up the hands and quit. But what I'm hearing you say is that somewhere along the lines there, there was so much agitation of thought that something new was born Let's try a brand new way. Let's try to solve it this way. And, actually, what they ended up doing was creating this this brand new so so much better thing that you would have ever had anyway. And so what was that moment like?
Were it teetered towards creating this brand new thing that ultimately ended up not just solving the problem, but being a 100 x better? Well, it's very rewarding and exciting. You know, as you learn and learn and learn and make changes in the management team. So the people changed, the methods changed, and my management style changed. And all three of those things coming together, finally, and the home stretch was was in 2016.
In the home stretch, you know, we set a goal that we would hit this, what we call, 4.0 level of the software, after 5 90 day sprints. Everything was tightly defined as I mentioned, the compensation to the software team was aligned with success. In fact, it was interesting. They made 4 out of 5 of the goals, on time. And, the one time that they were 2 weeks late, the manager says, we still want the bone I said you must not understand what a deadline is.
Yeah. And so no bonus for that one quarter, but 4 out of the five quarters, we hit it. Everything, everyone. I mean, everyone understood exactly what we needed to do. And we did it. And so, yes, it could not possibly be more rewarding. And the clients, you know, at one point, right in that time frame, the the biggest client was ready to renew, and they were also looking at other options.
And after they looked at all the other options from competitors, they brought us back in and they said we'd like to use you. And then they start negotiating, so I'd like to tell you what I did. Okay. Because I I know a little bit about negotiating. What they did was they started to, you know, push down, down, down, down, down, on what the pricing ought to be. And I started the whole conversation.
I go, Let me ask you a question, and I I don't have a rain front of me, but I I wrote down 5 salient points about how great our software was, our organization, how great our organization was, how great our client collaboration was, And I go, do you agree with this or not agree with this? Bing, Bing, Bing, big. They go, George, you have the Cadillac product of the industry. We want to work with you. Well, I'm glad we established that. Now let's finalize the pricing. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
Bring him into an agreement on what it is that we're talking about. I love that. Yep. Well, you you can you can never you can never win a negotiation. First of all, if you don't mind, you know, negotiation ought to be win win. You you don't really want the other people to lose. You want them to feel like they've maintained their self respect and that they that they're they're coming out beneficially in a situation.
Having said that, you, you know, you also have to have tremendous clarity on your position and your pricing and your Your val when I say position, your value proposition Yeah. Has got to be super clear because if you're not selling value, then suddenly you just commoditize yourself. And that's a problem. Yeah. It's interesting, on this topic of value. I just one little sentence here. I or one little story.
I don't share often, like this, but Just the other day, my seven year old, the my seven and ten year old daughters, have a we have a a weekly meeting and then a monthly family meeting. And they have responsibility to grow their accounts. And so they're always looking for ways to to make money and and get creative and and add value and serve. And this is how I describe it. It's by doing this, you're adding value or that you're serving.
Anyway, so, there's a couple, I don't know, maybe a week or so ago in my was pretty tight. I Chaz slip on it wrong or something weird. And and so I asked my seven year old, hey. You wanna make some money? She was like, yeah. I was like, okay. I need I need my neck rubbed. She was like, okay. Great. So she jumped right on it.
Had a great tude was rubbing my back, didn't ask me the time frame, didn't ask me how much it was, just came forward in, as, you know, valuable situation where I needed it to be rubbed. She didn't do it half hearted. And, it was, like, 5 minutes. It wasn't that long at all, and I told her, hey. Go put $5 on your on your tracker. And my wife was, like, $5. What in the world? You know, like, I could have rubbed her back for $5, and I I it took it took me to an opportunity in that moment.
Not only just explain it to my wife, but to my seven year old daughter of, like, look. No. I the reason why maybe you got paid you know, a lot more than normally for something small like this is because in that moment, you added immense value to me. And I I really wanted it, and I was willing to pay for it because it's what I wanted. It was right now. It's exactly what I needed. You did it with a great attitude, and you added so much value to me. And so I think you're you're spot on here.
It doesn't The price has nothing to do with it. It has everything to do with what does my thing do for you? And if it's really, really valuable, then guess what? Chaz means it's gonna cost a bunch because it's valuable. Exactly. Okay. Well, so, you've given us some highs and some lows. Give me just one more nugget that you've got tucked away in there.
Maybe an example of one of your clients, you know, that they've been struggling with, and you were able to kinda, you know, unlock a few things for them that maybe most entrepreneurs deal with and you can help the help the listener with it. Well, one of my challenging decisions, Clients, is trying to raise capital. And, that's always, it can be difficult. And, One of the interesting things. And by the way, you know, we were at the point of getting an offer for a term sheet.
And it turned out that the biggest obstacle that this individual had was again I won't mention any names, but it was himself. And, the people that were looking at investing in his organization wanted someone that could be a collaborative CEO. And this was the kind of person that said, this is my invention This is my business plan. This is my way or the highway. We're gonna do it exactly this way. And so on and so forth.
So I act after, like, 6 months, we actually had the term sheet getting ready to come We Chaz people were super excited. By the way, I'm not looking for a job, but they they They said the only way we're going to give you the money is if George Carissa is the CEO. And I said, whoops. Oh, well, no. I mean, okay. I I could do that. And I came to him with the with the offer, and he goes, yeah, you can be the president. But I'm gonna be the chairman, and it's still my way or the highway.
And the minute that the investors heard Chaz, The whole thing evaporated. So Could've been some better negotiation there. Well yeah. I guess I guess it goes back to what I said at the very beginning of our conversation. CEOs don't often understand their own weaknesses, and they're all blind spots. And sometimes they're just so profound that, you know, you you have got to be I mean, this is another Lindsey point. You have to learn to be vulnerable.
And if you're able to be vulnerable, Then you can hear things that you need to change. You can actually execute the change. And sometimes it means you have got to step back and let someone else, whoever that is, who is perceived whether they're better than you or not isn't even a question. They're perceived as having the right skill set and the right level of collaboration.
And that's the ultimate trigger because what I have found, I've tried to raise money many times, they're investing in not just the business model. They're investing in people. And if they don't think Chaz that person that CEO that founder is someone they they respect and can work with Your chance of getting a check is near 0. Yeah. Yeah. There's there's a lot to that. Seen that time and time again on, Shark Tank. Right? They it's give me the numbers. Okay. Great. I like you.
Let me give you an offer. You know? Hey, Kings and Queens. Chaz Wolf. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort. We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too. So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things.
On social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify. We would love to be able to get our content into more hands, more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible. Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this. Let's help each other. Let's help each other grow. Damn. Alright.
The the journey of a CEO, you've given us several, blind spots. One of those blind spots, in my opinion, is the other things that we say that are important to us, but that we we don't know how to include them. Kinda prepped you a little bit before the show that family's a big deal. And I think that, you know, marriage and kids, and I think every entrepreneur has good intentions. It's difficult sometimes to be able to kinda do it all.
If we could throw health in there, we could throw faith in there, we could throw, you know, lifestyle or joy, like, any of the other things that we wanna do in life other than our business. But coming from a guy that's, like, super obsessed and was very obsessed with my businesses for a very, very long time. I still am, but I just know now how to be obsessed with all those other things too. What would you say is the blind spot for them?
Why why is it so difficult for CEOs to to bridge that that obsession level over to those other things that they say are important to them? Well, let's talk first about family. Every family is different. Uh-uh. I I'm gonna sound again kind of caveman here, but, like, if you're the if you're the a male you know, that is operating your business, and you are going full tilt.
Your wife has to be of a and a supportive mindset of recognizing that she is making a big you have to know she's making a big sacrifice and she knows she's making a big sacrifice. And so she's willing to allow that dynamic and give you the freedom. And I guess it would work the other way as well. It wouldn't wouldn't matter if the the female is the lead and the the husband is in the background.
But, ultimately, ultimately, you have to have the right personality, not only yourself, but on the other side. Because if the if the other May is unable to get to the point of recognizing Chaz they're supporting Wolfe, then, ultimately, there's gonna be a clash. And they're going to start saying, well, my needs are not being met. And you're, you know, you're traveling here. You're traveling there. You're always on the road. You're you're at the office until 6 or 8 o'clock at night.
And, you know, what about us and the kids? Well, so first of all, you should not let it get that out of balance. You need to spend the time with your family, and you need to it's it's not just like a a a trip here or a trip there. It's gotta be every week. And on a regular basis, giving them what they need emotionally. So you, you know, you have to get to that point, but it's very it just is very difficult, as you know.
Because especially when you're starting a business, you if you don't go pedal to the metal, the chances of success are not good. So you're going to be putting in the extra time, and you're going to be Unbalanced if it's nature, and then you just have got to, get to the point where You balance that back out. Yep. That you hit some really good, important pieces there. The supporting role doesn't mean submissive or less than or second 2.
It but it does take a collaboration going back to that word that you used earlier so so wisely. Just like your team members working together in that scenario, we can have 2 different opinions here. We can We can wrestle something to the ground, but at the at the ultimate end, what are we doing this for? Well, we're doing it for our family or whatever the family mission is, you know, and so I I love that way.
And then the other thing the other thing, Chaz, to your point about faith, You know, there are plenty of people today that are atheists that don't believe in a god. I wouldn't be one of them. God is at the center of my life. And my family's life. And it has always been that way. We're very active in our congregations. And here's the thing. There are lots of dark moments. Where you don't you can't see the way out of the tunnel. Yeah. It may be debt. It may be software.
It may be you know, the machine's not working. Whatever it is, you just you just can't see and and then you know, that debt might be stratospheric where you're thinking, I will never get out of this. I need to declare. And, And there's only one thing in my opinion that sustains you at that moment like that is your belief that, you know, your god is able to help you and never forget you. Yeah. Yeah. I I second that. That that, belief is is one that, like you said, kinda transcends situations.
And and and that same belief, can be in in I say yourself, but really your family, your team, your business, your like, you can you can have that same level of of, courage, you know, to continue to take action, and not and not, peel over. Although sometimes it feels like we should. Just peel over and throw the the hands and and give it, give it a whirl. So, I I wanna ask you a question, kinda going back into your past, and then we'll kinda wrap things up here.
But if you had the opportunity, I'm gonna let you pick the age, but to speak to the younger, George, roll back the clock. I want you to tell me how old George is, and I want you to tap him on the shoulder, and I want you to whisper in his ear. I want you to tell me what you said to him. Well, I started my business the first time when I was about 40. And I thought Chaz was an appropriate time to start my business.
I I was very concerned that I had enough experience in life in business and in seeing the whole equation. I guess, ultimately, you never see the whole equation. You, you know, for all of your hope that you're ready, you're never quite ready. And and even when you're very accomplished, you're you have so much left to learn. So I guess I would have said Yeah. Probably didn't need to be 40.
You you could have done it a little bit earlier, but be ready for So many blind corners, be ready, you know, to to be sealed and ready for anything. But go ahead and do it because it's worth it if you can be successful. It's such a good message. Don't don't delay, but know that there's challenge. But, hey, we're gonna make it through. Right?
There's some strength in that persistence, you know, and I I think that you're you're one of probably many that would go back and say I could start it earlier. Know, I've asked that question to several 100 entrepreneurs at this point, and I would say it's probably one of the top, you know, 5 answers. So maybe in top 3 of, I just start it sooner. I mean, what did I have to lose? You know, and and you gave some, some honesty to that that they're still difficult.
It doesn't mean that starting earlier would have been necessarily be easier, it just, you know, you were equipped. I appreciate that that perspective. And the last since COVID, when everything went on Zoom, I've attended a number of support. I don't know if support groups is the right way, but, you know, learn about LinkedIn, learn about How to connect, learn about how to build funnels, learn about lots of different topics that are essential to be successful in one way or another.
But in looking at the individuals that are attending those meetings, lots of them probably shouldn't be entrepreneurs. They're trying to be entrepreneurs, but they're really struggling to find even a a good starting point. So if you can find a good starting point, if you can, you know, if you can literally put into practice, all of the modern ideas about internet marketing, more power to it. The people that are able to do that have become Much more successful, much more rapidly.
But it is one of those highly intense, highly directed kinds of paths, and it's just not for everybody. So, yeah, some people probably would be better sooner to remain in a traditional corporate environment and being a role player and a very good role player, and not even go through the exercise of flailing around for 5, 10 years and getting nowhere. So Yeah. I don't know if that helps. No. I I think it's I think it's smart. I think that, people have to be honest with themselves.
And there's no there's no, you know, for the person that that heard that and is like, oh, man. I don't know. Like, I've been thinking about going back and getting a job. Maybe that message is for you. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's a message of you just really dialing back. That's all I'm hearing you say, George's. Look in the mirror and decide what you want. And if you and if you're okay with the challenge, if you're okay with being in the room and being intense, like you just described, then good.
Then you're in the right spot. It might suck right now, but you're in the right spot. Push through. But if you're not, that's okay. You don't have to be an entrepreneur. So I I love the I love the freedom there that you gave. How can the listener, George find you?
Number 1, if they just wanna connect with you on LinkedIn or any of the other platforms, Or if if they are looking for, you know, a coach to be able to help them with these big decisions or blind, corners Chaz you call them, how can they find you? Thank you for asking, Jess. I I am, in LinkedIn, both as George Krisa, k r I z a, and challenging decisions. I got 2 different presences there. I have a web environment, challenging decisions. One word, dotcom. You can find a lot of information there.
I have a, a video podcast up on YouTube with nuggets of wisdom, and I, hopefully, I'll be able to put a conversation up there, but, I've also had the opportunity to talk with some really noteworthy people like Jeffrey Moore, as an example, and people from the table group. And that's all posted up there. Again, just search for George Kreeza, you'll find my YouTube channel. But, give you a phone number as well. 312320776 one more time. 312-320-7760.
I'd welcome a phone call and, be glad to to have a an initial consult with you and then see whether or not we can be helpful, long term in your business situation. Love it. George, you got an incredible history. I know you only gave us just little drips of the wisdom that, exists inside of that brain, but You know, I didn't tell you it. I didn't tell you it. I didn't tell you anything about all the time I spent with Steve Jobs, and it will leave that for another time. I'll I'll cliffhanger.
He said there's gotta be a part 2. Well, that, that leaves pretty good reason to to have you back. So we'll make sure that that happens. Steve Jobs, you know, there's there's some interesting things. I'm sure that you picked up from that experience, as we all have, just watching him from afar. But, again, thank you, George for being here. Blessings to you, your family, all the clients that you're helping, many, many blessings. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Charles.
Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple business and multiple different industries and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that It's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done.
We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you, and you know that you need people around you sharp qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go gatheringthekings.com.
I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.