On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. I always say I didn't go past my bachelor's degree, but I got some PhDs in and really learning some of these lessons the hard way. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be.
We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the real of the real on what it takes to build a successful business today. We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way Chaz give a true and accurate picture of the journey of success and how you too can get the Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and kings like today's guest.
Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the king's podcast. I've got Tony Olsen on the King stage today, my brother. How you doing? I'm doing fantastic. Thank you, man. Yeah. Of course. We we were just chatting before we went online and I'm over here having some technical difficulties, and you were talking about winning, but scrambling. Isn't that just the game that we're playing? Chaz is. It's a balance.
And if you can scramble less, that's you're winning more. That's good. That's usually the case, but, the scramble never goes away, aka, even, like, today, I'm I had to switch over real quick to a different operating system here. But, Tony, what kind of businesses are you in and tell us what brings you to the King stage? What do you operate? Absolutely. Well, I've I've been an entrepreneur for a long time. My first business was in college.
I started a landscaping business with a friend back home, and I and it was a it was an awesome first step of getting out and working with my hands, but then being able to apply what I was learning at school to a business. And that was fun. So I ran that for 6 years, and then I decided that I would love interacting with people. I love never staying still. And so a restaurant business appealed to me. So that's actually what kind of nominated my next probably 18 years in my life.
I've been learning. I I first went to learn about the restaurants working them in all aspects and then got into ownership down the road. And Yeah. Over the years, we've owned had an ownership stake or partner in a 9 different locations, different types, all styles, restaurants. And to this day, we have 2 local restaurants, neighborhood cafe, that we do a little breakfast lunch. And I've had those for 11 years and one one location had been 11 years running. Wolfe.
And so we've scaled down, and we're very happy about that part of the business. And then ventured out into some other cool things, which is a networking group. We have referral madness. We've developed a software that is networking that supports the people like that. So for me and my wife's in the business. She's running the restaurants right now. Primarily, and I'm I get to do cool things like this and connect with people and try to find fun opportunities. Yeah. I love it.
There's a lot of synergy between your story and mine as far as being in the restaurant space and then even slimming down. And then the value of that, I think that when you do when you realize how the game is played, especially in that Wolfe. The restaurant volume, low ticket, there's certain plays that make you more money. And sometimes it's not always expanding locations, which I think for a long time, my ego really liked expanding the locations. Again, we're very similar.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I wanna know, before we get into your story, the nitty gritty, at least, Why are you pushing today? Like, why create the new thing? Why are you still after it? Why are what's the bigger picture for you? Absolutely. I've gone through a lot of introspection and been surrounded by some really cool people, some coaches that have helped me take that step of realizing what you're passionate about.
And finding where your zone of genius is and buying something you love and you're good at and then shifting it so you do that more often. And so that whole process of surrounding yourself with people that are on that same path has led me to the next challenge. And I've always known that I needed a project and a guy, and we're inherently sometimes built with that a little bit heavier than other people. And as an entrepreneur, it's even worse.
And I need to be working on something I need to be excited, and that's what gives me energy. It fills me up when I do it. So Right. You know, today, it's about finding what the next thing And so if you don't if you don't find something positive, you don't find something that you're passionate about, you'll create drama and live there Chaz the project. And so I love the idea of what's out there. I love hearing people's ideas.
And so a lot of what I exist in now is bringing people together and connecting them or helping them And I realized I didn't even know Chaz was, like, my ultimate passion, and we'll probably talk about that a little bit and how I got there too, but, yeah, That's where I that's where I'm at now in Holy cow. I'm having a blast family. It's helped my family life. It's helped my business life. And guess what?
Once you stop focusing on the money and the scale and everything, you focus on the passion, it's like, hey, the money starts happening better and you're you start scaling in a better way. Yeah. So there's all of that. Yeah. There's a lot to be said with what you just gave us. And honestly, I feel like there was we could probably talk the whole show on just that answer, but the couple things that I I pulled from that was the zone of genius, as you say. There's a lot of different gurus out there.
Some that say, you don't have to love what you do. You just gotta go do more and make more money, and that'll solve problems. Then there's the other far end of it where just you have to love, you know, what you're doing in order to find happiness. And so I think that the zone of genius, the way I heard you say it was, like, that good balance in between there for me, which was wanna do I wanna do my superpower. What is my superpower? Let me lean into my superpower.
That doesn't necessarily mean that it's always gonna be what I love or that it's the easiest. It just means that I'm, like, in the lane I'm meant to be in or that I'm designed to be in. Wolfe you agree with that? Am I picking up what you're laying down? Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's a ton of trainings. There's a ton of books out there, and people will call it different things. I know one of the trainings that I've worked on with some teams is that Zona Genius training.
So you can look that up. It's awesome. And I do that with my staff, with our family, even, like, it's personal and it's business, but it pulls it all back together. And helps you find what you're passionate about. And the best barometer of that whole thing is you can evaluate everything you do all day long down to the tiny little bit. And if you get done doing that and you have more energy than when you started. That's how you know you're you're doing it right.
And so that's a fun way to look at things because there's a lot of things that you're good at that you do, and you're like, oh, man, that, you know, warm me out. Yeah. And then there's other things you do that you're like, you use all this energy. And then at the end, you're just amped up even more. And that's where I so I just try to pay attention to those things and then exist there as much as I can. Yeah. I'm just even, like, likening to my own scenario here in what you have to say.
Just have a conversation yesterday with my Wolfe. And she knows that, like, on the scale, I'm, like, just a tick into being an introvert, But here I am. I do podcasts, and I've been in sales for 20 years. I own multiple businesses. Like, my whole life is people. And so she was specifically asking about the podcast yesterday. She was, I mean, we've been doing a lot of them, man. Like, we're really trying to, like, really help a lot of people.
And she was like, I'm just so surprised that it doesn't drain you. I'm like, I didn't say Zona Genius, but I'm like, no. I'm meant to do this. So, like, I love people from an angle of, I'm curious. I'm a good listener. I like to pull things out. You're right. A 100%. Any in this case necessarily, like, I'm not like, I don't have sponsors. We don't get we don't get paid for doing the podcast, but it allows me to connect and like what you're saying to to like minded people and to be able to help.
So it serves a lot of purposes. I love your greater picture. Let's dive into your story. Because that's really what we wanna hear Chaz, like, from from the listener perspective, I wanna know how you got into business. Let's start there and was the restaurant. You said landscaping was kinda maybe that. So maybe if you wanna start there, but maybe the transition between those 2, how you got into the restaurant world.
Yeah. So it did start with the landscaping and it goes back to when I was in college. I got into business school in Kansas City here at KC Walk School Business. I actually played golf there. And so huge reason they brought me down here, and I love the city, and I've been here ever since. But I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
I Chaz some people through high school, but I had really no clarity, no vision, I can do a few things I didn't wanna do, but other than that, yeah, and so I said, let's go to business school because that kind of is a broad range. That's right. Something out there. I got in, and it happened in a way where certain things started piquing my interest.
And then the ability to, we had an opportunity to do a landscaping business with a friend, And what that did was it took every class, and this kinda shaped my thought on education in general now is that I was going through my whole, pretty much my Wolfe, college career with a business that I was taking when I was learning and applying it right to business. And a lot of times we're not doing that as as kids get out of high school and then they go to school not knowing and they're doesn't absorb.
And we all know now and enroll there when you do trainings, continue education, and then go back to school, it means more when you can apply it. Yeah. I was just a sponge and everything I took, I could get I could ace the classes because I didn't have to process this. I didn't have to force it. And it was Right. Hey. Take this. Apply it here. Oh, it didn't work. Try this. Try it applied here.
And so that got me really exposed to what parts of business they like, which is manipulating the numbers. We started getting employees, and I was like, man, I really love love having employees. I love being able to provide for them and have some of something of value. Yeah. And so that transition and that kind of that passion for entrepreneurialism and where that took me shaped an in school through that landscaping business. So it's got I really cherish that business because of that relation.
So when I transferred it over to the restaurant business and I started getting in there and learning I really still have that same passion, but I re it was all about scale. I wanna get big. I wanna grow. I wanna do these big grand things. I wanna hire a lot of people. And part of what we did, we took over restaurants that were existing, and tried to turn them around. That was majority of what we did.
I had a great strong support for my parents and some different and obviously being partners with me and helping me out supporting Chaz well as bringing different partners in throughout the whole journey at different levels. So that they really helped me get that start and help me push, but it was about scale. Sometimes it was about, like, I really wanted employees.
And it was probably the biggest lesson throughout that whole thing of I ended up with, at one point, I had I think we had 259 employees in different restaurants. I think that year we sent out, like, 589 w twos at the end of the year. And I was like, that's a win. And then I looked at our bottom line, and it and I realized that, yes, while I was supporting, we supported throughout, well, that's a lot of turnover. And then the restaurant business, there was a Chaz.
But but, yeah, we're supporting a lot of people, and they were all depending on us, but it wasn't sustainable in the fact that you've gotta have some different priorities and you've gotta make sure you're set up and you're successful before you can offer that, and it really means something. Now those people may have long relationships with a lot of them throughout the years. But after we started scaling back and realizing that we needed to be able to be efficient.
That was one huge lesson that, like, That was my I always say I didn't go past my bachelor's degree, but I got some PhDs in in really learning Chaz some of these lessons the hard So understanding how to grow with the employee side was one big part. The next big part was that I I always thought, and this is what got me into trouble in some of these businesses. I would we would take over a business or have an it looked great, and I could go in and say, I could fix that.
And when I go in and try to turn something around, a little bit of credit. I was able to do that while I was there. Yeah. But my understanding of a team and of systems and how to build those out to have them last was so lacking Chaz I look back on it now. And I've gotten that from working with masterminds and other businesses, and it finally listening to people around me way better. Those things I realized what I was missing back then. And it was I thought I was a Superman.
I thought I could go in and, yeah, if I just do this, I got all this knowledge. I I cannot work them and I could for a while, but you start getting the 56 restaurants. Oh, guess what? You can't be there. And You can't. I quickly realized that it wasn't sustainable, and there's things you can't change. And that's ultimately the big goal I learned out of it, which is what it's fun to to talk about now in my story. Is that team is so valuable.
It doesn't need to be partners in your business, but you have to find the team to surround yourself with and and being married and going through that with my Wolfe, Chaz is a tough thing to take home and talk about those hard things. And it almost, like, Chaz has to be a boundary. And so we've been in the business together, and we've had times where we were only Chaz each other And it put a lot of stress on our marriage. I'm having to deal with that.
And so coming out of it, building that team around you with professionals, with advisors, with accountants and people that are gonna that are honest with you and then people that have been through it before, that is the ultimate thing that I realize now growing anything. It takes more than just you hustling and trying to scale it that way. Yeah. 100%. The story is full of ups and downs, wins and losses, keeping right on the scramble, but winning theme.
I wanna know along the way there, maybe specifically with the restaurants, because that's obviously where you were scaling quite fast, but 4, maybe it was, like, the 1st restaurant, maybe the second restaurant, really, before you were too far into the hundreds of employees or even 1,000,000 of dollars, what was something that you decided to do Chaz was a good decision that looking back, you would share with the audience of, okay.
Yeah. If you could do this one thing, if you could repeat this in your business, this was key. Yeah. I I would say probably looking looking to the systems. And once you start thinking about things in a different way, you there's a whole thought of when someone does something wrong or they're not following exactly what you need to do, there's it's you can get frustrated with them and it's their fault.
And part of that is you have to go back to take responsibility for it was my messaging clear or was the system bill? Because when I assume some somebody knows how to do something, I get into trouble. Or when I assumed that I said that the right way, I just was like, oh, you didn't know that. Why not? I know that. And so there was a kind of a switch flipped in that where it was of working in the business, I got to work on it.
You know, we always try to do that in business, and that's a huge change too. And it's a very hard one to make because you want control and you do think especially in your business, there's nobody else that can really replace you. Even if you hired somebody out that was better than you, they're not doing it your way. So there's still a level of it's hard to give up that control. 100%. And so when I was able to look past the person and say, okay.
I need to take responsibility for the systems, and I also need to get out of the way. Of me getting in that employee's way, let them work through Chaz. And then I just go to the system to fix it, and that changed that opened the door. That opened the door to being able to be more of an effective leader and open the door for me to not have to be hands on with everything. And Wolfe I didn't wouldn't have considered myself a micromanager.
It was very hard for me to sit back and let somebody else fail when I could go fix it. So it is that's a tough thing. And so I had to literally root myself from some of those manager meetings, from some of those interactions with our employees. Yep. And sometimes it wasn't always my choice. Sometimes it was like my wife or HR guys, yeah, you gotta leave. You're not helping this conversation because they're stuck on this.
You wanna be over here, and so you've gotta be able to step back And so I think that was Yeah. That was one of the big things that I would suggest that you've gotta you've gotta be able to let people fail a little bit. We also have to go to the system instead of the person. Yeah. No. You're a 100%. I think you're spot on. I call it the look away. We talked about it actually this morning in our 6 figure round table, gathering the king's round table.
It you have this actionism, you have this, I want it done with mine. Like, you care the most about it. I get it. But there's no scale in Chaz. Unfortunately. And so there was an example given that, there was a guy that in the group that used to work for Amazon a handful years ago, and he said, oh, you would have thought Amazon top company in the Wolfe, huge, you know, all these logistics. He was like, it was a mess. He's like, give him a 6 on organization at best. The whole deal.
Hey. So that just gave me full permission to just go, you know what? It's okay that if I give this away or what I've always called, I look the other way. Not so that a bad product leaves or goes to the table at your restaurant or is that's not what I mean by lowering the standard. It's looking the other way because that other person, like you just described, is gonna do it their way, and their 100% doesn't look like you're 100%. And you need to let them do their 100%.
And sometimes that just means that you just gotta look over here. I like it. That's a great way to think So I love that perspective. Let's flip the coin, and let's talk about a bad decision, something that you would change a hundred times over. Okay. Bad decisions. Alright. There's Which one? Which one?
Part of some of the biggest failures I've had is taking on projects that I wasn't passionate about, that I thought I could turn around Chaz it was more money based restaurants that in the end, looking back, it was there were some red flags, and I pushed my way through it because of these things that I thought were important. And just the stress, and I'll take it back to my family.
And, like, the stress that that puts on a family, especially if you don't have buy in and you don't haven't Chaz created a good agreement with your, your spouse, your family, your even your partners, those were the ones that I would say I'd probably regret the most of just trying to do things that I thought one were gonna be easy. And then when they became difficult, or it didn't work the way I thought. I forced them through.
So there's a bunch of, though, to go into specific examples that probably takes you long, but Yeah. That is that's some of the stuff that got me entrenched in some businesses that then we either had to just sell to get out of and to scale back. We had to go in that route because it just all said it became too much. And I felt like I didn't listen to people, and I guess maybe that's even the bigger levels. I didn't listen to people around me soon enough.
Yeah. So you when we're young and we're just starting out and the first person I ever this is a good little story. The first person I ever reached out to was he had restaurants in my hometown And when I said I wanted to open a restaurant, he said, don't do it. It was the first thing out of his mouth. I said, okay. That's not literally what I'm here to talk about. I was looking for the raw stuff. And he's, yeah, you can't handle it.
And he contacted it, and I looked at it at the time, and it was a little weird. Yeah, but he kept pushing it. He came back with if you're really wanting to do this and you Chaz push through that kind of, not discouragement, but that kind of challenge Yeah. And then for him to explain how hard it actually is, got me too that I, hey, I am ready. And and man, in the end, I wasn't ready the level that he was talking about, which now I get a lot of years later, and and I understand.
Yeah. And so that was that whole thing of listening to people around you and really, like, just absorbing that and taking your ego out of it because you get in the way, you're like, I wanna do it. I wanna do it. I can do it. You can't tell me what do. Chaz hurts. And that cost me a lot of money. It cost me a lot of trouble with relationships and those kind of things. Yeah. That'd be a big one. Yeah. It's funny. You you took it there.
I was gonna ask you if it it was that worth those dealings or those decisions that you made due to ego? Was it due to not list? I mean, think we can all boil it down to ego. You spout it off earlier. When I said that word, that was probably the indicator. And look, like, I'm not a ego hater. You gotta have a little bit of ego to be getting business to have the gumption, the nerve, to say I don't wanna work for anybody else. I'm gonna work for myself. I'm gonna figure it out.
You gotta have a little bit you're gonna have a little bit of confidence. But man, has it gotten it sounds like both of us in trouble. Yeah. Because you're right. Getting past that. Yeah. I think that we're I also I too had a guy our stories are crazy alike. I had a guy that told me don't buy the franchises. Don't do it. Don't do retail. Don't do restaurants. Don't do it.
And and looking back, I don't necessarily know if I would agree with telling me to not do it, but I know that if I was gonna stay where I was, that individual, then that's where I would be, which is totally fine. Doesn't mean that the restaurants are less than. It just means that circles us all the way back to the beginning of this conversation, which you and I both have come to this realization that our superpower, it just happens to be a little different than running a restaurant.
Yes. We can do that. But I've also learned a lot about myself, and it gives me just other areas that have opened up. And so I think for that reason, I'm glad I did it. Sounds like you are too. I don't know if that's where I'm, like, meant to be forever and ever. Sure. Okay. So the bad decision there cost you some money cautious some time. Tell me about those bad decisions and because specifically you've talked about your wife being involved.
Talk about those same bad decisions, getting involved with some of those businesses, how what was that like with wifey and the relationship, all that fun stuff? Yeah. So before I learned that valuable lesson of that, I needed a team outside of my Wolfe, we would bring stuff home. It created stress, and either I would have to shield her from it. And so then I'm bottling it up. That's Wolfe. Or I'd let it go. And I and then she's carrying it too.
And so Yeah. Having, like, healthy conversations and learning what that was and learning through coach and learning through mentors and those kind of people of how to have those conversations has changed a lot to to get a good head around that what we've learned to do is that we have to set space to tie aside to have work conversations. And I'll just keep it on the family side, but Yeah. This is applicable to any of your partners and those kind of people in the business outside.
There's conversations you just can't have or Chaz just are more healthy in a certain setting. And so we can't do it at our house. So, like, it was happening around the kitchen table. It was you were making dinner, and it was this and this. And then you're talking about problem at the restaurant or something. Now it turns into they weren't ready to have this conversation. They were they're cooking or I'm cooking, which is mostly, she's she's a good cook.
I'm like, so I'm just drinking wine and and and drinking the problem to the table. So, again, responsibility there on the boat, we realized that that was not a healthy place to have that conversation. So we started carving out time, and we tried to do it at home still, and that didn't work. And we realized that with kids, coming into the mix and and doing it that way, we needed to separate it. So we brought it to a meeting time. And now we have, an hour, media a week.
And we treat that like the business meeting so that when we go home, the business is done. And it has gotten us a very personal personal growth or or marriage has gotten stronger because of that. And then when there is problems, they can be handled in a it's a much different conversation when you're sitting in an office or sitting at work and you've trained on how to have that conversation. So we're gonna we're celebrating wins.
We're then talking about the challenges, and we were doing that in a productive way. We just we're prepared for it. And when we're prepared, we can have those better conversations. So that applied then straight over to manager meetings and employee meetings And then even the coaching side of it, it's it just makes a lot more sense when you're able to think about that on a better way.
Yeah. And so I think the higher level thing that I wanna point out to listener that you're giving them right now is whether it's wife, manager, inside the business, outside the business, whatever. If you are being proactive about conversations, about setting time, even the meeting place, which I love, I haven't thought about that necessarily, then what it allows for is to be able to have specified conversations focused even conversations, and they don't have to always be super long.
But when those big things can be brought to a singular place, you discuss them, you solve problems, and then we can go back. Being a family, being a restaurant, whatever it is that we were doing on the daily, we can funnel, for lack of better terms, all the big points to the conversation designated, and that's being proactive as opposed to reactive.
To me, I feel like if we're just constantly talking about the problem at the dinner table or at the manager at the restaurant or over text, like, that's just being reactive. Would you agree with that? Yes. Yes. And a little trick that we worked with some people on, and I it's helped me out, is to put an agenda. And it could be a little 4, 12, 34, on a list that you both understand how this meeting will go.
Yeah. That really helps everybody get on the same page so that when you get to number 4, which is let's discuss problems, issues, and things that need to be fixed, you're not bringing it out of a place of, hey, this is wrong, and you're just throwing negative negatives at They know it's coming. They've already you've celebrated some wins. You've got them there, and their guard comes down a lot more. You get better answers.
You're able to listen better too because the the defensive side goes away a lot more. So a a little trick is just put a little agenda. Whatever that looks like, it can be longer shorter and make sure everybody knows what that means gonna be like. And then cap it and stop it. On honor the on the meeting. Yes. And be like, hard stop. We're gonna stop and know this isn't gonna go on forever in a 2 hour mud fest. Yeah. Yeah. So much valuable nuggets there.
Appreciate you just being open about what you've shared there and what you've done. I was just thinking just real quick here before we move on. I've done this for one of my multifamily unit properties is managed by my mom. Been in property management for close to 30 years, which is a very unique dynamic, as you can imagine, very similar to probably your wife, but it's it's my mom.
And she has involvement in my kid's life and in our life and all these other things outside the property when a couple of years ago at this point, when I brought everything into a weekly meeting, it was almost like saying, hey. Don't contact me about the business unless it's right here in this meeting. And the reason was actually so that the rest of the time we can be, son and mom. Because if it's all diluted altogether, then I feel like the every time you call me, it's always about business.
So I think it's actually good for both hands. The employee, employer, husband, wife, it sets great expectations on both sides. Love the perspective. Okay. So tell me about any sort discipline, a process that you have, anything like that around making good decisions with all of this experience that you have now. I talked about a lot about building a team building a team has been some of the biggest successes and the things that I've learned throughout the years.
So how we do that is we're creating systems. We're putting them together. But one of the things that I need to do and this is where the tool comes into play is that I still have trouble. Like I said, I have trouble stepping away and letting somebody run with had to look the other way. I like that. Get to look away, and I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna use that one, but I do need to do that. And but I couldn't get past the fact that I still had to know what was going on.
And so Yeah. We started looking, and I got turned on to Trello. I got turned on to a couple other software pieces that really helped us kind of workflow and navigate, and there's tons out there, and there are a lot of great ones. So we've implemented Trello and a lot of our stuff that that they could use to kinda walk the process through it. And from a distance, then I can see that action has happened. And that's all I really needed in the end.
I didn't know what that looked like at the time, but I needed to have a pulse on it least be able to check-in. Doesn't mean I wanna watch everything that's going on. And I get to change the alerts when they pop in when something's going on to whatever I deal with. But it allowed me to stay away. And so I was getting in the way, and I recognized that after I was able to step back.
And so creating that system tracking, being able to track performance KPIs and performance index and all those kind of things that being able to put numbers to it. So it's not a vague expectation. It's something that's very specific and then being able to track those and see that progress. That helps me out a lot. So when we're building, that's one of the biggest things that we that we still try to do.
Every time we see an issue or trying to grow or trying to add something to one of our business, it's putting the system in place and then having everybody be able to track it. So now I love seeing other people follow those numbers. So as I step back and then not involved, to see them latch onto those. And then when I get involved, it's a it's like I said, we're sitting at the office for now and we're talking about, okay, we've tried tracking this.
We tried doing this, and now it's a more of what's gonna work better. Is that bonus that we tied to that manager's performance actually motivating them? Is that number we're tracking of guest count or if it's sales or labor percentage. Is that too complex? For them to see on a daily basis and stay motivated to fall. Those kind of things are the conversations we're having now. Let's tweak.
And so if you can implement tracking numbers that helps and then finding systems that can help get everybody onto the same platforms. They're all on the same page. And people will be at different levels of it. And I understand, and I I see it all. I wanna see it all, but certain managers will only be they only are gonna see this part. The day to day, and that's what they can affect. That's what they're gonna be motivated for.
And so bringing that all together is fun where you then you get on an actual team with it, and you can push together. Yeah. No. So many good things there. I the softwares, other tools that can bring, really, it's autonomy for them for them to be able to own their space. But for you to be able to check-in but not have to be in the way or feel like a micromanager or be a micromanager.
I think a lot of entrepreneurs underestimate how how well people will actually perform with a little bit of space, but it's scary to not be able to watch, check, make sure, a trust, but verify. And so I think that everything you just gave enables a lot of entrepreneurs to be able to check, but verify. Think that there's a lot of a value. Okay. Let's switch over to the speed round here.
I've got some I got a couple of unique questions here for you because you've got a couple different types of businesses. So I'm interested to see if maybe the answer is the same across industry for you. But the first one is if you could dwindle the business all the way down, to one trackable metric, what would that be? I would say that would be people interactions. And so valuable interactions. That's a little broad. Yeah. But explain that because right now we have the restaurants.
And so I have I'm working with my wife and I'm working with the managers there and systems trying to build it. And so the touch points making them count. And then on our referral network side, trying to get them to collaborate or together to build them up, as well as as grow and be able to pass business together. I wanna be the most effective when I go. So if I'm able to attend a meeting, And we've got enough chapters.
We've got 9 chapters now around here that I can't beat every meeting all the time. So it's really important for me to have those valuable interactions So I would almost track it down to a meeting or a even if it's a just an interaction, a phone call, like making those valuable, for me, I have an idea what that is. It'd be hard to put it on paper and say somebody else could do it.
Yeah. But I don't just wanna have meaningless conversations and meaningless coffees and meaningless meetings where we're just, like, doing the artificial handshake and let's get to know each other. I wanna be intentional. And so Does that make sense? Yeah. 100%. And I actually think it's applicable in all businesses. It doesn't have to be just for the, like you said, for the referral out even on another layer deeper in your restaurants.
It's the same intentionality with the touch points with the actual guest, not just you to your people, but your people to the guest, obviously, is a major value. So you could categorize all that into the same, the people management, people touch point, the value, intentionality, I love it. What book, Tony, would you recommend to a 6 figure business owner trying to scale up to 7?
One couple that I've used over the years e Myth is obviously a great one to help build out structure hierarchies when I first made my hierarchy of I put 30 different positions in all my companies. I was the one that was in every one of those positions, and so we built them out. So that was a really fun way to think about the bigger picture first, and a lot of times helps you get to where you're going. So that one obviously is great.
Lately, I've been reading traction and really implementing that in our restaurant and also with other businesses and we encourage people to go through that. And while I've there's certain parts of it that we've really done heavily, there's a lot of that that we haven't gone into as far as getting into people's personality and and really Sure. Really bringing the most out of them. There's so much good stuff in that book. And it's very practical. A lot of check, a lot of list that you can do.
You take those worksheets. So that's a great one. And that's all about setting rocks and setting milestones where you're hitting them on a daily basis. It. So it's not a big goal. It can't be reached. It's something that you're gonna get everybody on the same page with. They all get buy in, and then you move forward together. Yeah. I wondered earlier when you mentioned in your meetings, we it can just be a agenda of 4 things. And the last one's the fixing problems.
I'm like, that sounds familiar. Yeah. But why fix or what's not broken? Use it work. And traction or the sequel to that rocket fuel have a lot of those tools in them. So those are great books. Appreciate the recommendation. You know, you've already answered this, but it plays right into your business. So I wanna kinda give you a chance to maybe shine with this question. But the question that I ask every guest is, do you intentionally network or mastermind with other entrepreneurs. Absolutely.
Thank you for that softball. That was good one. Yeah. It was a nice little slug. Just crank it over to us. Why do you network? Why are you building a business literally associated around networking. Yeah. So how I got into networking and started our referral madness networking group here in Kansas City was I went I was in the restaurants, and I was looking for that next thing. I don't know what that is. I just wanna but I wanna be around people, and I realized I wasn't I didn't have that built.
Now so this was my effort of getting outside of that and building a team and surrounding myself Yeah. With people that have been through this. So I went and joined a couple networking And I went in there and I didn't I went as the restaurant, but I, like, that's not really like a I'm not gonna get a bunch of referrals. It's not the normal seat in there. But my goal was always I just wanna see what connections I Chaz make.
And what happened was I found that you latched onto a couple of small groups and it had nothing to do with industry or their skills or their knowledge. It turned out it had to do with the dynamic of they were all really excited about their and they were hungry to grow. And it was only little pockets in those groups. Yep. And so why we started our group is because we wanted a group that was that.
And I was part of a mastermind that that kinda had that, but it was really small, that I realized that was valuable. And so we fun off with some people that were starting up the business. I had a brother-in-law that changed careers. He was excited about it. Another brother-in-law Chaz was gonna start a business, and they were just we wanted to be around them. Because my passion is coaching networking. I realized this after I went through this process Sure.
That I love seeing people connect, even if it's not me that's connecting with them. And I love seeing people grow. So it takes me to the next career, which is getting involved in the coaching and the the networking side. So we started this group, and that's the whole focus is all Helly ass people. Our home motto is if it's not a Helly ass, it's a no. That's how we set people into the group.
And so we wanna make sure that those people are pumped and excited because when you're around them, oh, things happen. And it I get excited for people who are successful. When in the past, maybe I was more jaded, and I my success, I I got jealous when I saw people that successful. Sure. Yeah. Versus being happy for them.
Yeah. And then now I'm able to encourage people to surround yourself with those people because when you get in that setting in that room, and that's what we created with our networking group. They can grow together and it is selfless. It's like they can help each other out knowing that they're gonna get a ton out of that interaction. Yeah. I love it so much that you can get when relationships are the focal point. That's what I took away from that. And you're right.
Whether it's the value of a small group or just intentionality and time or people that are after it hardcore, I think that's lots of different things Chaz you can pull from, from a group like that for sure. Okay. I got a question for you around operations. It wasn't on my list. I'm gonna surprise you with it. If you only had 1 hour to operate your business, every week. So you're limited to only 1 hour. What would you do in that 1 hour to operate your business successfully like you do now?
Okay. That is it's actually pretty easy because that's what I'm I've been working towards and trying to get into it, and that is is get the highest level people, get the highest level managers together, and get them pumped up, get them excited.
And so Chaz translates to all the businesses that we're part of and doing right now is that those meetings when one for my zone of geniuses, and and my passion is to be able to grow and get filled up by them getting in and getting excited in that energy build. And then I I'm on a high throughout the day.
So when I bring them together, if I can bring them together in kind of that raw raw meaty, we can still talk about guts and substance and traction and, you know, all those things going, but that I think is the most valuable thing that I can bring as a leader of the company now. And so I would have absolutely exist in that 1 hour meeting. And then I can send them off throughout the week and knowing that it's about substance, and it's about energy.
And then that hopefully Wolfe help them get their days to kick started. Yep. Love the answer. K. Last question, Tony, if you lost it all, what would you do? Money became a secondary thing and that scale through this process of what actually makes us happy. And I've got my wife, Kelly, 3 kids, 6, 4, and 2, all boys. So there's a lot of priority changes that happen throughout that time. So Sure. We've really been working towards building what's important for us. And that's time with family.
That's no debt. That's, like, taking those things away because that's stress. That's things that are on your shoulders that that aren't as valuable. And so those kind of things are what we've tried to strip away. So losing at all Chaz we don't lose those so maintaining those relationships, that's important. So the money, the business, those can all go away. And now that we know what our priorities are and how to prioritize, I'm fully confident that we could find any find the next thing.
And as long as the next thing is built with that same foundation that we've put in place now, it'll be with. Yeah. Yeah. And this this doesn't happen very often, but the last question, you answered in a very similar way to how you answered the first one, which is I'm hungry for the next thing.
And so the fact that you would just go looking for the next thing, lines up with who you said that you are and why you're doing this thing to begin with, do you see a building and networking Kingdom as the thing, or is there a next after this for you? For us right now, we've we've grown referral madness in Kansas City area. Have over 165 businesses as part of it right now. We have 9 nine chapters and some different spin offs starting to happen as well.
And we have other cities outside around the country that to do a model and replicate it. There's a scalability of Chaz, whether we're exploring that right now. Sure. But one of the things we're doing, which is really why I really appreciate what you're doing on the podcast. We're doing we're trying to launch a networking podcast for to help support our members and to get their stories out as well. So that's a new venture. This is new for me as far as even being on podcast.
So this is a cool next step. So I appreciate you you bringing me on to this one, and we can chat and get exposed to that. A 100%. And then our next one is we created our software. So I've gotten into a SAS business software as a service, and that's been a really cool venture because did it out of a need for to support our networking group. Sure. You created a software that really helps accountability. It helps run your group. It helps bring people together. So it's like, a relationship software.
It helps you get connect with people. Yeah. And and that's really exciting because that's Chaz. We want to get Chaz get out the the word on that to networking groups that are just starting up to local groups, to even some coaching, some mastermind groups, and some chambers. So we've got a broad market for that that we we would love to to spread the word. And so right now, that's a big focus for us is we're just we just got done developing it where we're at launch phase now.
So what that holds here soon keeping me really excited. That's great. We'll have to have a conversation, and maybe it's a good fit for gathering the king's roundtable mastermind. We are all about not only just connecting. I love you've said because networking and master mining is different. Yes. There's connection.
There's real there's relationship there, but there's a whole another level that you can go to in your mind, which then translate business, family, timing, management, the way you leverage things, like, all of those things can be determined by just a couple of relationship that you have. I appreciate what you're doing in that regard. Dude, Tony, it's just being fantastic. How can the listeners connect with you? Maybe they wanna They wanna start a chapter of your business in their city.
I don't know. How can they find you? Absolutely. Well, to send you that one, that's the easiest. Go to referral, dotcom, and you can send us a contact form that comes to me. I help spread those out to all the chapters, and you can find out more, or you can just connect with me directly there. Our software is referral runway dot com. So a little similar there.
And so if you have a group in your area that you wanna give a free trial and get get a a trial run on that, to see if it can help strengthen your group and strengthen those relationships. That's what we're all about there. And then, yeah, just LinkedIn and Facebook reach out to me, Tony Olson, and love to chat more. I always love connecting with businesses. So these conversations are really what fills me up. I appreciate you having me on.
Yeah. I'm gonna have to come by the neighborhood cafe and grab some breakfast with you. Absolutely. Absolutely. Invite is on the table. That's good, man. I'll I'll take you up on that. I love breakfast. And so, Tony, thank you for coming, giving up your time, super valuable. We wish you absolutely nothing but success in all that you're building. And, even at the place that's cooking good breakfast, I'm sure I'll see you there. Sounds good. Thanks again, Chaz. Appreciate you.
Thanks for listening to Gathering the Kings. We hope you got a ton of value today and learned a thing or 2 about taking your business to 7 figures and beyond If you desire more and want a community around you to help you get there, I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com. That's gathering the king's dot com, and I want you to apply for our next becoming a king 90 day intensive. We are extremely exclusive by nature as a group.
What that means that we're really wanting only the entrepreneurs who take their business and targets super serious to apply. So if that's you, you think you got what it takes. Level up your business, I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com and apply. And we will see you on the other side.