[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Welcome to a very special back from vacation episode. I was just talking to Robert. we're going to make our way through this, Robert. thanks for joining me today, buddy. How are you?
[00:00:39] Robert: Thank you so much, Jay. Very, very well, excited to be here.
[00:00:42] Jay: So Robert Indries, I think I got it. Hopefully close,of Robert Indries Holdings. a man of many talents. He started a bunch of different businesses. I think he's got a bunch of different veins of things that we can talk about today. So let's jump right into it. where did you grow up and did that have any influence on you being an entrepreneur?
[00:01:01] Robert: So when I grew up, I was born into a very modest family. The only reason I don't want to say poor is out of respect for people that were actually poor, when they,or whatever, right? So we had the roof, we had food and so on and so forth. So let's say modest. However, I didn't have any, new clothes until I was 14.
All of my clothes were like secondhand, until then. So I got my first pair of new clothes when I went to high school, right? My mom was like, oh, we should buy you some new clothes, you're going to high school, So, that's how we grew up. and I grew up in a very small town in Transylvania.
that's, I had my upbringing in a town of 2, 000 people. I was on a farm, I was, feeding chicken, walking cows, I don't know, eating bread with onions, randomly, it's just whatever. Like it didn't really matter, right? So, I can tell you from an entrepreneurship perspective, it helped me not want to be an entrepreneur.
I didn't, I never wanted to be an entrepreneur until I was like, whatever, 20 something, where I finally said, okay, like I, I want to do something else. however, in terms of how it helped me work, it helped me never say. no, I'm not going to do that, right? My, my parents were like, Hey, go do this.
Okay. No problem, right? Like in a farm, you never say, Oh, I don't feel like doing that. If you don't do it, you don't eat, it's Oh, you want to eat apples, go pick apples, like you want to have milk, go get the milk, from the cows, cows make milk, so, it was very good for me.
Very good for my upbringing. Very good for my work ethic, good for waking up early in the morning, going to bed late at night, and so on. It's just Always being busy, always doing, cool things. So, what I can say from a, perspective of growing up in that is that we never used to think from an ego perspective.
We always used to think from a community perspective. what does the family need? Like, how can we grow? How can we help one another? Right? if a neighbor would come, even if a neighbor, 10,houses that way and say, Hey, could you please help me? We need to go into the woods, pick some wood and so on.
You say, yeah, sure. Of course, let's go. Right? and so it would just happen all the time and we loved it. I love that community vibe and it really helps me build, remote teams and, work with everyone notice when someone's a slacker, add value to them when they're not, and so on.
[00:03:23] Jay: Beautiful. So what was the first business you tried to start?
[00:03:29] Robert: Well, I did have businesses I started on intentionally,when I was very young, for example, I needed to make money for myself. Because we didn't really have much, so, what I did is, I figured out that an empty CD would cost, whatever, five dollars, I'm making that up, I didn't know how much it was, but then a CD that had stuff on it would be ten dollars, like people would buy the stuff plus the raw material.
And so when we were younger, you could find stuff online, it would take forever to download, like you would wait an entire day for a movie to download or whatever. But I would basically, this was illegal, 100 percent illegal, but I was like, 7, it didn't matter. So, I would find stuff online, I would put it on CDs, and then sell that, right?
So, I would do things like that just to make money. And then, the first real business I started, that I really wanted to start a business, and I really wanted to, take it somewhere, was Wesrom Corporation. and it was in the engineering space because I am a civil engineer by background, so I wanted to build stuff, for other companies.
[00:04:33] Jay: What is a civil engineer, by the way,
[00:04:36] Robert: So a civil engineer is the person that builds, the microwave, the refrigerator, the drone, non military, anything that you actually use on a day to day, the phone, the remote control, the TV. Anything you actually use. a computer, civil engineers make that.
you have, military, engineers or however, that's called, and they make, the guns, the tanks and so on and so forth, like anything for that scope. It's still an engineer, it's still a civil engineer, but doing, military things. And you have, So you specialize from civil, typically you start in civil and you go in a different direction.
so I can basically build anything that has, any electricity running through it. Right. So, and then you have mechanical engineer who build things that don't have electricity running through it. like for example, a car, you need civil engineers and mechanical engineers because a civil engineer will not know.
how the chassis works. It's not in our wheelhouse to know. It's in our wheelhouse to say, I can build, or I can build, sensors to see if the chassis is going to break
in certain instances, or, if the,wheels are, at the correct pressure and so on. So I can do that, but you, so you need a mechanical engineer to actually make the wheel work, right?
[00:05:56] Jay: Got it. Okay. That makes sense. so talk to me a little bit more about restaurant West room. who was your first customer there? Like, how did you get that started? I mean, first of all, what is it? I know you mentioned you still do that. it's still one of your portfolio companies. what is it?
And, how did you get your first customer there?
[00:06:13] Robert: Very good question. So, initially I was not running Wesrom correctly because I started Wesrom thinking I can do business differently. having that very bad impression that, business is unique and, my business is unique and so on, which is a big lie. All businesses operate the same way.
You either accept that or, you fail eventually. So, I thought that. I can do business in a way in which I give complete freedom to all employees to do whatever they want, whenever they want. And then also, clients pay me based on the value of the service that they got. Right, so, I would do the work, and then they would, I would tell them that this is what I think it's worth, but I'm not going to charge you until I'm done.
And then when I'm done, you can pay me if you agree that it's worth that much. Guess what? They never, there's never an agreement. Of what, the employee says that, hey, I want to make 4k a month, and then there are four of you, so that's 12k, across three months, that's,36, 000. And then the client says, oh, I think this is worth 15k.
Right, whatever, like I'm just making this up, 100 percent made up numbers, but I'm just saying that, There's never a one to one relationship, and it's typically in favor of the client, right? The client will never pay you what it's actually worth, right? Typically. Again, I don't want to generalize. I'm sure there are differences or different people out there, but that's the common thing.
And so, what you end up having is... It's a business where you can barely find people to resonate with that. Very hard. very difficult to find. Because our goal was to make the world a better place. So people just flocked. every project we take, will take humanity in a better direction and so on and so forth, right?
Everyone loved it. Everyone was, very woo about it. It's oh gosh, yes, it's very fluffy. But then, when they actually need to pay rent, when they have a financial goal, when they want to do something, it becomes a problem. So, on the client side. when there's a little bit of, of what's it called,not grudge, but a tension, a little bit of tension built there, right?
Because you don't have, from day one, say, hey, this is going to be 40 grand, take it or leave it, right? You don't have that clarity in your understanding of, hey, you pay me 10 grand right now, then 10 grand in a month, and so on, and after we deliver another thing, right? you don't have that. And when you don't have that clarity.
You have a lot of issues because things are assumed, right? You assume things
and assumptions are very dangerous from every perspective in every walk of life. So I did not run Wesrom correctly at the beginning. I will be very honest for the first three years. I did not make money. it was not easy.
However, it was very easy to get clients for me because they would pay based on what they believe, right? So maybe not the best example of getting clients, it worked the way it worked for three years, and then after three years, something happened in my life, which was very shocking, and then I said, no, that's enough.
Enough was enough, right? And then I started, making money, and then in a year and a half, we made over a million, right?
Once I just,
[00:09:18] Jay: What was that pivotal moment? What was the one that made you go? Okay. Now I have to change like, because at some point something happened, and you realize wait a minute, not making enough money, is not good. How do I switch that into being a profitable business? what was that moment?
Cause I feel like that's a very teachable moment. And as somebody who was a coach and, a bunch of other things that you've done, I'm assuming that you've used that to draw, inspiration on teaching some of your people, what was that moment?
[00:09:46] Robert: I never use it to inspire others because, it's a place where I hope that through my coaching people never get to, right. And so I used to coach people and, we, we used to help them, make many tens of millions. So that was fine. at the same time, this was at the beginning of 2015, right.
I was, 24 at the time. And, I used to not live in my country, right? I always used to travel. And I would leave for months at a time, for six months at a time or something, and then come back and so on. So I had, whenever, before I would leave, I would have these rounds. I would go to all of my relatives, because I wouldn't see them for six months.
And so my grandma was on the list, and then I went to her. She was already sixty something, right? So, She told me that she's very happy, that I'm following my dreams and blah blah, and so on and so forth, I'm doing everything I want. She said, at the same time, I pray to God that I won't be here by the time you're back.
Right? and, she used to say things like that because she had enough of life. she was already sick, she, her husband died, a few years prior. And so she's I don't want to do this anymore. I don't know how you get, I hope I never get into that state of mind, but, she was there and it's, sometimes people get there.
And, basically, this is the person that raised me until I was like 10. Right, so, she was like my first mother, if I could say. so I really cared about her. We have a lot of great memories. And, I just said, hey, come on grandma, don't talk like that, what are you doing, and so on.
So then I leave, and then, long story short, a couple months later I just got a phone call from my aunt, because my mother couldn't talk on the phone, she was devastated. My aunt was also devastated, my mom's sister, but she called me and said, hey look, mom passed away, your grandmother, and so on, and that just made me so sad.
It made me so, so sad, because at that point in time, I was already 24 and I was on the edge of bankruptcy. Right. Like I didn't have almost any money. It was incredibly difficult. I was struggling like crazy. Every single month was a struggle, and in my brain, I kid you not what clicked in my brain is I said, here's the person that invested, over a decade of their life of the final years of their life to raising me to basically getting me To become self sustainable, right?
To making me into a person that I can then take care of myself, right? And then they pass away, and then this is what they have to show for their work, right? Someone that, has a hundred dollars to their name, barely surviving on, what was it? A Subway, at the time, because they couldn't afford real food, right?
And so on. I mean, nothing against Subway, they make amazing... sandwiches.
[00:12:34] Jay: not sponsored by Subway.
[00:12:36] Robert: Exactly.
[00:12:37] Jay: can say whatever you want about them. I used to survive off them too. It's fine.
[00:12:41] Robert: So, basically, it was perfect for the time being. And I was just thinking, this is it? This is what, they passed away and this is the grandson that they helped raise? I just couldn't take it. I swear, something broke in me that day. I'm like, not again. From now on... Whenever I close a deal, money up front, pay me now, and then I'll do the work.
I kid you, it was as simple as that. I swear, I just made the decision, starting tomorrow, I'm going to make money. I don't care, starting tomorrow, even if I have to negotiate down, even if I know it's worth 50k, if I need to negotiate down to 10k but get the money now, right, or get parts now, installments now, whatever, I'm getting paid in advance.
And I have the same thing. Since, ever since, this was, almost 10 years ago now. and, I've never looked back, and I've made, I became a millionaire by 25, so in a little over a year, I made a million, and then I passed 10 million not long ago. Right, so, and I would never go back to that, and that's, it's a never again moment.
I, this is what people teach, right, this is the thing where you say, What am I doing with my life, right? Why would I keep doing this? It's obviously not working, obviously, right? So let me just stop. Let me just pick up a different strategy. The next strategy is I do the same biz dev, marketing, sales, and so on and so forth.
Next time I negotiate with someone, I say, this is the price. And if they say, okay, then we work. If they say no, then we negotiate. And if they, if we can make it work, I'm not going to do anything for them. And that's it. Simple. Yeah. Sounds simple, but you know,
[00:14:25] Jay: Made it sound very simple. But it's, I mean, I love that story. how did you go from one to ten? Right? I mean, that's a, a lot of, a lot of people that'll go, they'll make a million, they'll make two million, and then they Make that switch to teaching other people how to make their first million because it's not it's easier to make You know It's easier to tell somebody how to make a million than it is to
go from 1 to 10, right?
So I
mean it sounds like maybe even did a little bit of that along the way as far as coaching and stuff like that So, how did you make that transition
from just 1 million to 10?
[00:14:57] Robert: So let me tell you three things. Number one is statistically speaking, 94%, I believe, or 96, something like that. Let's say 95 percent of businesses never break a million. So if anyone's listening to this and they're already at over a million, you're in the top 5 percent of businesses, just so you know, globally, this is a global statistic.
You're in the top 5 percent of businesses if you're making over a million, right, per year. So well done, congratulations for you, you're in the big league. So, now, second thing is, yes, I did some coaching and so on and so forth. I did it because everyone was doing it. It's such a weird thing. Right.
Everyone that was a millionaire, and had was successful and had anything they wanted, so on and so forth would do this. And it was weird if you weren't doing it somehow. I don't know how to explain this, but it was like, you should, this is what you should do. This is naturally what you should be doing.
And so I did it for a few years. I've coached hundreds of businesses. I made them tens of millions of dollars, in measured, results, from coaching at the same time. I'm like, this is not what they want to do. Literally, this is not what I wanna do. I dunno why I got into this. I got sucked into it, right?
Because people wanted to, they were like, Robert, help me, Robert, help me. what do you like, help me scale my business. And I just got into that and,I saw the flaws of that business model. And I basically then built businesses that are against that flaw, against those flaws. For example, the biggest flaw I had is hopping on conversations with people in one week, telling them exactly.
What they need to do to change their current context so that problem isn't a problem anymore next week I would have another call with them and ask okay. How did that go? Oh Robert? I'm sorry. I didn't have time to do that because I was doing XYZ Like you just paid me uselessly for an hour then, And I was being 2, 000 an hour by the way, and I was getting Pissed because like why did you just spend two thousand dollars and not do anything about it?
Come on,you can do better than that. Whatever, so I a real coach pushes you right like a real coach It doesn't just let you slack. So I would push people to become the best version of themselves and so on and so What I realized is they don't need my advice, right? They need someone to actually do what needs to be done So then I built businesses that actually implement, right?
So we work with coaches, a lot of coaches and advisors and executives and so on and so forth. In the coach dynamic, the coach has a business that they, help because it's a nice outside of the business, which is incredibly helpful. It's always easy for a coach to say what's wrong because like they're not there, right?
And so maybe not easy. A good coach does very adds a lot of value. But at the same time. They have an advantage. They're not there, right? So they could just see what's reality and your blind spots. You can't see, but the coach can see them. So the coach can give the advice and, help with strategy and so on.
And then we're the coach brings us in or the business brings us into actually implement what is needed, right? All of the procedures, all of the tech, all of the marketing strategies, anything like we implement everything that's needed to scale the business. So that's that dynamic. And there's the other dynamic where The business just says, hey, we're at 2 million.
We've been at 2 million for three years. We really want to be at five, or whatever, something like that. And then they come to us and then we put together a plan and then we implement on that plan, right? It's less about talking of what you should do and more about let's get going and start tomorrow, right?
We know what we need to do. We've done it before hundreds of times. Let's just do it for you as well, right? So, That's how that transitioned right into what we're doing right now and then, the over 10 million is, so our clients, the clients that we help, just so you get an idea why the 10 million isn't actually that much is because in the last decade or so, we've helped our clients generate over 500 million dollars, right?
And so. Half a billion dollars our clients made from our efforts. So I charge peanuts compared to how much my clients make, right? So the 10 million sounds like a big number. If you put that in comparison to how much money we've helped make other people or save and so on and so forth, then it's, what is it?
It's I believe 2%, right? So we charge 2 percent of how much money these people made or have made. Even so, when some people come to me and say, how much will this cost? It's a hundred grand a year, whatever. I'm just making this up, right? let's say they need admin, like we need, we manage their business for them.
And I say, okay, this specifically for your business, this is going to cost a hundred grand. Robert, but that's not cheap. And we're expecting it to be cheap? I mean, I'm going to manage your business for you. as far as you're concerned, you could pay me a quarter million as long as you pocket.
the same amount every year without moving a finger in ops, why are you complaining, And so, interestingly enough, I haven't had a conversation like that in over a year. I used to have a lot of those before, but now this just doesn't happen. Like, whenever I talk to someone, we just crunch the numbers, we say, this is the business model, this is what you start to make, we just do everything, and they say, this is the price, and then they just pay it.
and that might sound weird to anyone listening, but I haven't had a price negotiation and I don't even know how much time, because we just do what the work that needs to get done. And also, I think it's one of the reasons is no one does what we do. No, like there are many coaches out there not to discredit or belittle or whatever, diminish their value, but to be a coach requires maybe two hours of time a week.
to help someone, right? One hour of the call and then one hour of prep and thinking and meditating and, helping and so on. So maybe it's two hours a week. Us, we work, 80 hours a week, 100 hours a week, 200 hours a week, right? To do what needs to be done, then to actually, for them to get the result, right?
And so people just don't even think twice about this. oh, I've been meaning to do this for years. I've never gotten around to it. You're saying that for this much a month, you're going to do this and everything else that comes after that. Sign me up. Right. So it just works better. and so, yeah, we, it's easy for us to make tens of millions.
what's not easiest to deliver on our promise, which is that you will have a better business. That's very difficult to do, especially when you deal with people's blind spots and their own limiting beliefs about stuff and so on. Cause we need to manage that. It's like talent. when you see in online,these managers that manages superstar, Entrepreneurs are very similar to large extent, because, ah, we should do this, and we should do that, and show me the data.
Show me the data telling me that is what we should do. no, I feel that's what we should do. Explain your feeling in numbers, and then we can make it happen. Right, if you can't explain your feeling, then you cannot lead. You cannot lead on what's in your brain. You can only lead with clarity. This is exactly where we're going.
Because you're, let's say you're the visionary. You know where the puck is going to go, using that metaphor, right? The best hockey players know where the puck will go, right? Where it will be. So that's, we need your skill set as the visionary. You tell me where the puck is going to be, but you need to explain why.
If you can't tell me why, and if you can't give me that clarity, I cannot get all of these 50 people behind you to back you, right? To go in that same direction with you, because they don't believe. Everything's going in that direction. If you help us believe, we can manage everything. Right? But help us believe it.
That's it.
[00:22:39] Jay: You make it sound so simple, scaling your business made simple.
[00:22:44] Robert:
[00:22:44] Jay: all right. Well, how do you keep your sales pipeline full today? I mean, do you partner with these coaches? Do you have a team that does lead
gen and you're just knocking out discovery calls? I mean, what is your kind of role in the sales pipeline today?
[00:23:01] Robert: So, what I can tell you is that many people are looking for the way, The lead gen method. The sales method. The whatever. And, I know they know in their hearts and their brains That, that is not the right way of looking at things, right? The simple answer is, we do everything. We do lead gen over email.
We do LinkedIn. We do, PR. We do,SEO. We do in person meetings. We do everything. Everything. Why would you not do everything? It doesn't make any sense to do just one thing. How would you, you were a one trick pony, right? You're in such grave danger of losing your entire business if you have one lead funnel.
You need more. I mean, let's say not need, because you don't need anything in life. You could just, do whatever you want in life. But if you want to build a stable business has multiple, lead sources, multiple, sales cycle pathways. Right? That people can be on, can go on. Right?
Every single contract we sign is custom. Right? We don't do anything off the shelf because we don't sell anything off the shelf. You don't come to us buying Salesforce. Salesforce is off the shelf. Right? You come to us to say, I have Salesforce. People have no idea how to use it and it doesn't integrate with my payment system and it doesn't integrate with our, accounts and it doesn't integrate with our orders and so on and so forth.
And then you come to us and say, okay, we will make it integrate. Right? So it's custom, it's like you every single time. And so we make a custom offer and we explain why our quotas are quote, and then we just start working, right? And that's it. So where I am in the pipeline, I am in way less places than I used to be.
I don't need to do sales anymore. I do sales because, people want to talk to me. It's, they want to, many times they want to work with my businesses because I'm there. Right? It's like wanting to work with, I don't know, Grant Cardone or, Tony Robbins or, I don't know. It's just I want to work with this company because of this person.
That's not good. Not at all a good place to be as a business. At the same time, if you can use that to leverage it, right, to make tens of millions of dollars, I would not be a good business person if I wouldn't leverage that, right? So, anyone that says, and this has happened even for my team.
My team members have come to me and said,I'm going to say a name so we don't use names. Let's say Frank. it says, Frank, X27 because you're there. Literally, they tell my employees that, I'm working with your company because you're there. And my team comes to me with pride to say, look at what they said, and I'm like, I'm so happy about that.
I swear, I'm so happy. I have no ego in this. If everyone is here not because of me, I would love that, right? Because that means you guys are doing fantastic, and by the way, they're here because of me only before they start working with me. After they start working with me, they're like, Oh my gosh, Robert, Michelle's amazing.
Alina's amazing. Jenny's amazing. Hagop's amazing. They're like, Oh my God, these people are so amazing. Felix is amazing. This person is amazing. they just go on and on. I'm like, Yeah, exactly. That's why we could do what we do, right?
And so, you can bring someone in with your name, you can't keep them with your name, right?
[00:26:24] Jay: The next names, the names that truly matter, the names that actually move the needle in their business will be the ones that keep them, I love that you can bring them in with your name, but you got to, you can't keep them with your name.
[00:26:35] Robert: Yes.
[00:26:37] Jay: All right. Let's end with that. Actually, I have one more, my mystery question that I ask every guest. And I've heard a couple answers from people that knew they've heard it, but I don't think you've heard it. If you could do anything on earth, non business related, bucket list item, whatever it is, and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?
[00:27:05] Robert: I would find a way to teach everyone to love themselves, to love one another, to just love, because that will solve all of humanity's problem in one day. If people would learn to respect themselves and not eat crappy food and make themselves unhealthy. Right. Or drink things that, consume things that aren't bad.
They would always be healthy. If you would learn to love others, there would never be a war. There wouldn't be conflict. There wouldn't be scammers. There wouldn't be anything like that, right? And if you learn to love your work and to love in general, then we would progress faster as a species and so on.
So I would just, if there's one thing I could do that I knew I couldn't fail, I would teach everyone to love.
[00:27:53] Jay: First time I've ever heard that one. Probably the most altruistic one, I've heard so far. I love it. All right, Robert, if people are looking to find you... or any of your multiple businesses, where do they go?
[00:28:07] Robert: So right now we just, launched a business that will, that we believe is the ultimate in business process management, which allows you to build your procedures in one place and then have your team actually follow them. step by step in the same place, so no more fancy little boxes and arrows and so on and so forth, right?
and you're just wishing people actually follow it? no. People will follow it because you build it in the same platform where you dedicate a task, you follow up on everything and so on. So, we build that at alvanda. com. so I'm sure you can put it in the
show notes.
[00:28:39] Jay: link it up
[00:28:40] Robert: So if anyone wants to manage their business better, they can go there.
And, my email is robert @ alvanda. com. and so we've been working on that for two and a half years, so we're excited about that. And if anyone wants to speak with me directly, they can just Google my name, Robert Indries, and then the first three pages will probably be me. And then, my, like my domain is robertindries.
com. one
second,
[00:29:04] Jay: they can ask you how to save money on their taxes by moving to certain locations we didn't even talk
about that. But Robert, it was very nice meeting you. I think you got a great Vibe man, I can see
why people want to work with you and I hope people reach out to you And I hope you have a good rest of your week and we'll catch up again soon.
All right. Thanks Robert. See you, man