[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast today. I'm lucky enough to be joined by Jerry Macnamara. he is the CEO and founder of Proven Chaos. He is a. stealth eagles fan, I guess you'd say down there in Jacksonville. as you can see everyone today, big eagles game today. I don't normally wear my gear, but, it's a rematch from Super Bowl last year.
So, decked out Jerry. Welcome to the show, buddy. How are you?
[00:00:50] Jerry: Jay, I am as pumped as you are for us to, redeem our loss in the Super Bowl. Against Andy Reed and all the rest of those chuckleheads in Kansas City. So I was pumped when you showed up and I was like, this is my guy. This is from, I mean, listen, Philly has its own flavor. You come to Jacksonville, people look at you a little strange when you say you're from Philly.
and so, yes, I'm super excited and I'm excited to be here with you. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:17] Jay: Thanks for being on man. And yes, we certainly do have a flavor here. I'm a transplant, but, they welcomed me with open arms about 20 years ago. And as, a lot of people know, Virginia does not have any professional sports teams. so I didn't want to just kind of pick one and I found a home here and we have lots of great sports.
So, let's get into your story. Where did you grow up? and do you think that had any impact on you being an entrepreneur?
[00:01:40] Jerry: so I grew up just outside of Philadelphia, and so hence, I'm an Eagles and Phillies and, and Flyers fan, not so much a Sixers fan, but, do I think it had an impact on me? You know, It is interesting. Both my mom and my dad were employees. In fact, my mom had a seventh grade education and dropped out of school to help support her 12 brothers and sisters and, you know, had a successful career.
She went into business training school, but had a successful career as a paralegal in Philadelphia. My mom was always scared to death about me being an entrepreneur. And, I remember there's one spot on the highway. Jay had called my mom on the way home from work and I was calling to let her know that we had made the Inc 500 for the second year in a row. And she was like, son, that's wonderful. However, make sure you work hard. There's a lot of people counting on you now. And,I just had a bit of a chuckle. And so. from a young age, I didn't have inspiration from my parents as far as like an entrepreneur. but my high school soccer coach, he was, an entrepreneur and I enjoyed, working with him and learning from him.
And I would say, you know, the reason I became an entrepreneur was I had been a senior leader inside of companies and I got tired of, being comfortable making decisions. Generally, the decisions being pretty good ones that made people money. And I thought, why am I making other people money when I can do this for myself? So I just quit, letting people make margin on me and started doing it for myself.
[00:03:11] Jay: yeah, I think, well, so that's an interesting point. I think a lot of people come to that realization. You know, they don't have to be a senior, executive in a company to realize that somebody else is making money off the sweat on their back. why do you think, or what kind of gave you that, extra push to go do it?
[00:03:34] Jerry: well, I felt like I was taking on the stress as I owned it anyway. You know, one of, one of the things I've always said growing up was act like you own it. There's a level of pride that, that you bring to everything that you do.and I just thought, man, if someone's paying me. you know, 100, 000, they're making a million because, you know, it's 10x, as a portion of your salary.
And so, I just thought, there's no reason for me not to be in a place where I'm not reaping my own rewards. And, you know, part of that is having a level of confidence to do that. but also, I mean, entrepreneurship isn't for everyone, Jay. There is a level of risk and, you know, I had a COO inside, one of my early companies and he said to me, I love being your number two.
[00:04:20] Jay: I never aspire to be the person who has the risk and has the ultimate say on all of these things. And he was terrific. He was a terrific COO, but that's not, entrepreneurship was not for him. And so I think it's just recognizing that there's an opportunity that I feel like I have a gift to bring to the world. you know, that I can help people solve problems. I love tackling the biggest problems inside businesses. And that to me is fun. feel the stress and feel the, you know, but then there's some that don't, I like to think that I don't at least wear it on my sleeve as much, but do you think it's a risk tolerance thing?
Like what is it? And as you probably have guessed, I'm trying to get to like, what is it that somebody can tap into that does to decide if like, this is the leap I'm supposed to make or not.
[00:05:08] Jerry: So I say this all the time. Entrepreneurs are the biggest gamblers in the world. Every day we push chips back into the middle. And so if you're not someone who. At least every once in a while buys a scratch off ticket, buys a lottery when it's over a hundred million dollars, goes to the casino, not that you have to, you know, bring a 10 grand with you. If you don't enjoy that level of not everything is in my control, then I would tell you entrepreneurship is probably not for you.
[00:05:38] Jay: All right. Fair enough. All right. So what was the first business you started?
[00:05:43] Jerry: Well, so the first one that I started was an internet company. And so, we sold soccer uniforms, customized soccer uniforms to,youth clubs and, clubs all around, not only in the United States, but, the Caribbean as well. It was easy to ship, product down there. They didn't have much, many resources. And really, it was integrating, the company that I worked with in Toronto as a senior leader. They did all of the manufacturing and the customization, and then I could handle the sales and marketing. So, I never sold the product. It got drip, drop shipped directly to the, to the clubs that we worked with. And that was really fun because we solved a real problem in the marketplace for, buyers, which was, you know, you need your uniforms by game time at the end of the day. It doesn't matter how much it costs, but you had to have them there by game time. And we were really good at that because we controlled the sales and marketing, the manufacturing, and we could make commitments that unless a UPS really messed up, you were going to get your uniforms by game time.
If we told you that you were going to get them.
[00:06:43] Jay: I think you said you had an interesting story around your first customer, for that, but is that the same business?
[00:06:49] Jerry: Yeah. So, you know, I've never been the technical leader. I've led five businesses and I've never been the technical leader. So I decided to start an internet business without knowing how to code. And this is You know 2007 before things like css and you know being able to change your website globally was Easy to do but I remember I was working on the website You know five minutes five months to actually get the website to a place where I was happy with it And I had just started advertising on overture.
So overture was a precursor to google that was the predominant advertiser if you wanted to do it online and it was about seven o'clock at night You And I was showering and I heard a phone ringing and I thought, is that, hold on, is that the phone? I poked my head out and I literally was like, Oh my God, that's my first phone call and I grabbed a towel, I'm dripping wet, ran to my office and I answered the phone, hello, totally soccer.
How may I help you? And proceeded to sell my first, set of uniforms. Now this was in a day and age where, you know, buying things online was still kind of a novelty. And,the woman who was placing the order, she said to me, now, wait a second. You're not one of those fly by night companies. That's going to steal my credit card.
Are you? And I said, no, ma'am i'm here working every single day. This is what we do. I was not lying But, you know, I took my first order ran my first credit card dripping wet, coming out of the shower.
[00:08:15] Jay: Beautiful. I love that story. And I love that lady's trust in you. that's all you had to say was no, ma'am. we're not a scam artist. And she's like, okay, that sounds like a good idea. Good enough answer. Yeah. Well, here's my financial livelihood. Go, go run this card number. so where did you go after that?
what was the next business you went on? to start or found? or run?
[00:08:37] Jerry: Yep. So, the next one was I was brought in as ceo of a construction business You And, the owner was about to sell that business just cause the amount of stress and the growth, that had happened. So I came in at 7 million. We went from 7 million to 13 million to 28 million to 30 million. and made, you know, I think 500 fastest growing companies.
and I think more proudly best places to work that you can run a high growth company and still be a place where people enjoy showing up. And have fun doing it. And so, I went and did that one. I mean, the humor in that Jay is I told the owner who was bringing me in. I said, I am the least handy person you will meet. I said, the only thing I hammer is my keyboard, but you don't want anyone else to hammer their keyboard and run their business, for you than me. And so that was a really fun opportunity.
[00:09:27] Jay: do you have a, is it a show, is it a podcast? Do you have a show called Best Place to Lead.
[00:09:31] Jerry: I
[00:09:32] Jay: And what's the,what's the premise for that?
[00:09:35] Jerry: yeah, the whole premise is that we interview senior leaders, CEOs. Inside high growth companies about how they create compelling companies where people want to show up because my experience is when you have a compelling company that people are really interested in showing up and having fun at work, you're going to outperform the marketplace. And I don't know about you if you've ever had this situation, but I've never met anyone who said when they showed up to work, you know what I'd really like to suck at work today. And yet there's plenty of people who are ineffective in their role and what I say is it's not their fault It's our fault as the senior leaders We haven't created the clarity for you on how you win every day and I call it the four c's clarity on how you win Challenge by the work that you do comfortable that you have the tools time and training to be successful And the fourth one that most people get wrong is cared about, you know, by your leader.
And it's not that hard to run compelling businesses. And so that's really the goal is we're better together, but share those insights of like, Oh, that's what works for you. That's really interesting. I had never considered that before because It's lonely being a business owner and an entrepreneur. I mean, you look left, you look right.
And it's like, Oh shit, actually the last call is mine. And so,I think if we can put people together into places to share, those ideas, to share the journey and the experience, I just think you end up in a better place,
[00:10:59] Jay: Yeah. It is. I mean, it is strikingly. It's not funny. it's just surprising how often people get that wrong. Right.
[00:11:11] Jerry: totally. and yet on the other side, like on the other side of this, Jay, have you ever imagined that someone would start a business and say, I really want to start a sucky business where people show up and hate the work that they're doing, but it's, we don't bring enough planning and conscious intention to the business and the work that we're going to go do, and then we get stressed and stress doesn't make good decisions. so there are easy things that you can do in the process. It's, you know, it's the business acceleration model, which is what I use to evaluate companies and how we get them to grow really fast. But, you know, the foundation of every company is the vision, the values, and the resources. It's like, okay, what's the dent in the universe?
What's the North star that we're going to go, you know, make an impact on. What are the values? That's the operating system that we agree to, to treat each other in this way every day. And you know, what are the resources? What,how many mistakes can we make inside of business before we go out of business?
That's really your pile of resources could be intellectual capital. It could be financial capital, human capital. It's not just financial capital. Most people just think about it as cash, but you know, it's not that hard. Like. To your point, what is the important painful problem that you're solving for your clients? And I think, you know, when people start thinking about marketing And, you know, finding my customers in the marketplace, you have to first identify what is the important painful problem that someone is willing to take a dollar out of their pocket and pay me to solve. And if you're not clear on that, then it's hard to have a marketing message that's going to resonate in the market. It's like, Oh, well, Yeah, I'm not exactly sure, but Jay does. I think he's kind of in this marketing space. Well, no one sets up like, Oh, I need marketing. It's like, no, I need more leads or my social media isn't working. So therefore I need someone that's going to be a strategist and help me get. You know, more followers that will can convert into leads. And so I think if you can be clear on the important painful problem, and I choose those words really carefully because I call them Monday morning problems. There's a lot of people that solve problems, but if the executive team. Isn't thinking about the problem that you solve until Thursday or Friday. You are ripe for displacement because your impact on the business is not that great. You want to serve Monday morning problem where they come into work and they say, man, I want to see how Jay's marketing is doing for us. How many new leads did we get? How many new appointments have been set? Now you're in a good place. Because the people that you're serving are caring about the product or service that you're bringing to marketplace. So that's why I choose that. And then the second piece of that is who specifically do you solve that for? Right. And it's not a company. It's not, you don't identify companies. It's people buy from
people. So you have to be really specific about who you solve it for. And then the third piece in order to be successful is where do those people hang out? Where is their water cooler so that I can find places to market and have conversations with them To get into places of community so that we can bridge no like and trust and if that's the case Jeez,I try and share this all the time. It's not really about selling It's about serving because jay if you have an important painful problem that you need solved and I have conviction That I can solve that problem for you It's not really sales, it's service. Why would I not try and get another human being out of pain? Like, Jay, I know you have this problem and it's really important to you. Like, let me show you the way. come this way, let me show you how to do it. And, you know, sometimes people get concerned about, Oh, I don't want to be, I don't want to sell, I don't like to sell. It's like, no, it's service. You have an obligation to go help people because you have the best service that they need to get them out of pain.and so that's how I think about that area of the business.
[00:15:21] Jay: Yeah, no, I think, you hit on a bunch of important stuff there, to rewind a little bit, I think internally, ownership of everything, like you pointed to, like, it's not the employee's fault that they're ineffective at their job. Right. It's not fault. It's not anybody's fault that anything wrong happened because at the day.
Either you brought them in directly or you brought somebody in that brought them in that brought them in and it's like There's some somewhere along the way it always goes back to you And if it doesn't and maybe that's like a defensive defense mechanism Maybe it's whatever that people kind of, you know Try to shield themselves and they don't they're the inability to kind of admit when things went wrong that's the biggest piece i've tried to Continue to grow myself over the years.
It's just like, there's literally nothing in this business that is anybody else's fault. Like there's no, it doesn't matter who made what decision, like, doesn't matter what it is or who it was or who, like, it does not matter. Like I put that person there at the end of the day and like, You can do one for one work and you can be responsible for that, or you can hire other people to do that work, but then you're delegating that responsibility that still comes back to you.
So it was like, there's this loop that goes back to the leadership and the team. So I think it's a great point.
[00:16:35] Jerry: think it's, you know, I have tongue in cheek with some of my CEOs and they'll, you know, be frustrated with an employee. And I'll say, you do realize that it's your job to disinvite them on the mission that you invited them on.
Right. I mean, there's no reason to be frustrated. It's like, I mean, we solve important, painful problems for external customers, but internal customers do the same thing.
We hired someone to solve an important, painful problem that I was willing to pay them for. And if they're not doing a good job, then. You know, I have to look at the five T's of execution, tools, time and training. They're on me. Have I given you the tools that you need enough time to do it and the training to be successful at it? Then I look at talent. Is this person talented enough to actually solve the problem that I hired them to solve? And then the last is tenacity and self talk. Like, are they the type? Jay's the type of person that takes ownership for his business. No matter what and so therefore that's why he's more successful and when people start to outsource or deflect or victim mentality boy the opportunity to To make an impact inside that business is super important.
[00:17:49] Jay: five T's, the four C's,I need
[00:17:52] Jerry: I got a lot of them
[00:17:53] Jay: more,I need a couple more lists. All right. Let's fast forward to Proven Chaos. I love your logo, by the way. very cool.
[00:17:59] Jerry: Thank you very
[00:17:59] Jay: I like that a lot. who was your first customer and, well, first of all, who do you guys serve and, who was your first customer?
[00:18:08] Jerry: Yeah, so I've served ceos of high growth companies So, the reason Proven Chaos you've proven there's a marketplace, but your people your systems or your product Processes are in chaos because they haven't kept up My first customer I never aspired to be in this business. So I didn't know anything about it I had just run a number of businesses and I got introduced to a new regional ceo here And I started going to breakfast with him and I had a great time.
And so I blame all of this on Matt Foxall. and he was like, how do I hire you? And, this is when I had exited the, the construction business. I said, I'm not for hire. This is not what I do. I drop my kids off. I go on the boat every morning, put 4203 in the water and go out and fish. Go pick my kids up. He's like, no. You have a gift for this. I need your help. Come on. This is going to be amazing. And I was like, all right, let me think about it. And so, Matt drug me kicking and screaming because his, he has a sales background and, he's good at what he does. And, Matt continues to be a client today.
And that was, I don't know, maybe six or seven years ago. I have never over the course of my entire, you know, time serving people, and I shouldn't probably say this on this podcast, but I've never marketed my business. It's all been done by word of mouth. Hey, I know this guy, Jerry, he probably can help you. And, that's been an amazing part of, you know, the journey as I've continued to think about how I run the businesses. And now, as I get to, I tell all of my clients, like they're the Petri dish where I get to test all of these things out because I am on a mission to positively impact, 5 million people through better business. And it's just equipping CEOs with. More tools and skills to go make the impact that they're made to go make while having a really great fun time doing it.
[00:19:58] Jay: How are you measuring that by the way?
[00:20:01] Jerry: So everyone always asks me that I want to get like the burger,
the, the
[00:20:05] Jay: I can imagine. Yeah.
[00:20:07] Jerry: Yeah. So, so here's what I tell people. and the reason that I, this was over five years. so it'll, it's about to click down to three years. I will know in year four, it will become incredibly obvious, because the two books that I'm writing, which are the nine principles of personal performance, because every business needs great people inside of it, so let's give people a blueprint on how to show up, not only for themselves, but for the business. In really authentic ways where they can perform and the business acceleration model, which I referred to earlier It's that's how I think about businesses. It's the model that I use to say ah jay in your business This is broken this something's going on here. Let's go fix thatthose two will be on books and i'll be on stages talking about that to people and how they can You know live a more aligned conscious Life because I think The ultimate purpose of life is your life on your terms vision values actions and alignment Chest puffs out and then you know, the last piece of it isThe gap that happens in leadership, right?
You think about people who go into business for themselves like nathan adams One of my clients out in Denver, he looked at me one day, he said, you know, Jerry, there's no training to be CEO. And I was like, you're right, Nathan. Right. And you think about the same thing inside companies, the person who gets promoted is great at doing the doing. It doesn't mean that they're great at leading people. And so they're ill equipped to actually cultivate that predictable environment where people can perform. And so, you know, the third piece, in the model is to use the leadership gap to train people. To be predictable in their approach to learn the skills and then be strategic in, you know, how we think about business and how we're going to make a dent, you know, in the market that we serve. So, if by year four, Jay, I'm not on stages and these books aren't in process, then you'll know that I will have not made it. But, if they are, you'll know that I'm well on my way to doing what I set out to
[00:22:03] Jay: I love it. All right. Last question, non business related. And I wonder if it has to do with the issue. No one has to do with fishing or not. if you could do anything on earth and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?
[00:22:20] Jerry: I'm actually going to push back on this failure. Doesn't scare me.I think, It's not doing things that scares me. And so I'm like, I've, I would tell you, I've failed a ton in my life, but I've also learned from those things because I've been trying to do epic shit my whole life.and so if I truly want to go do things, I go do things.
The thing that's most important to me today is to be a great husband and a great dad, the business side, all of those things, put them aside. and I learned this, you know, in my first business, when I exited, I would, my identity was my business. And what I had to learn out over about six months was, it's my family, my friends, and my values, that's my identity. And so when I, Think about that. If I want to go do something, I'm going to go, damn, let's go for it. And so, failure is not part of like something that holds me back.
And so,
[00:23:24] Jay: You're not the first person to skirt the question with that answer. So that's fine. That's fine.you know, if going to space or something and not blowing up on a rocket is not on your list, that's fine. but I mean, I think it's fair, right? I mean, I think there's certain people who are wired that way.
And I think it's a completely fair answer. So, if you want to find you a Jerry, they want to find more about Proven Chaos. How do they do that?
[00:23:46] Jerry: yeah, two best places to go are to go to Proven Chaos. com. Easy to find me there. And then I'm typically pretty LinkedIn. So you can just search my name, Jerry Macnamara, and you'll find me. but those are the places where I hang out the most.
[00:23:59] Jay: How long do you think LinkedIn is going to be? That place just out of here. I never asked that question before, but I'm just curious because right now it's hot, you know, it comes in dips and waves, but it's back up, everybody's pushing towards it.
[00:24:13] Jerry: I think you're right. I've been on there. I was one of the early adopters on LinkedIn. I think I just I think they sent me a notice. I'm like 16 years on
it or something insane.and I didn't use it for a long time. It was just kind of like a placeholder for resumes. And I think it's evolved a lot, particularly in the last four years post COVID. I think the challenge that they're going to have is with all of the automations that are happening, the spam messages, the connection requests with nothing behind it. it's just kind of a shrug of your shoulders. And so, I don't know, I think, platforms run their useful life and then they rotate out.
So,Facebook to Instagram, to LinkedIn, to TikTok, I don't know, what's going to be
[00:25:02] Jay: Yeah, I don't
[00:25:02] Jerry: It'll be something
[00:25:03] Jay: don't know. I just, it always makes me think, I used to think it was the Facebook for business when I didn't really know what it was or how to use that. I just, like I said, it was a placeholder. You just, you were supposed to have one. So you had one. but it seems hot again.
People are on it and popping off. So, all right. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:25:18] Jerry: I would say you're right, but you know, one of the things that I think about is. I don't know if you've ever been to a bar, but you go to a bar and you wear it out like you've been there so many times and you're finally like, ah, let's just try something else. Let's just do something different. And so I think that will eventually happen because other platforms have seen that same rotation. But that's really how I think about that. Like when I was younger, we used to go to the same bar and then we'd look at each other and say like, Hey, Jay, let's go. Let's go somewhere else. Just check it
[00:25:43] Jay: yeah, it's interesting. Well, for now, we'll people will find you on LinkedIn. We'll link all your stuff in the bio. Jerry, great episode, man. Thank you for being on, brother. Enjoy the rest of your week. Have a happy Thanksgiving and go birds. All
[00:25:53] Jerry: You too. Go birds. Let's do
[00:25:56] Jay: Thanks, buddy.