Doing Whatever You Want, Is Keeping Your Business Small (Here's Why) | Mark C Winters

0:00Unfortunately, sometimes our characteristics and our personality are tied to business. And you wake up one day and you say, okay, I mean, for a guy like me, okay, you get to go golfing every day and fishing. That's good for about two weeks. But I talked to a guy that said, I'd rather give back to $3 million to have my business back. I was in Colorado with my wife when we were hiking. And we were having the conversation of would you rather be rich or would you rather be king? On that day for whatever reason when she asked me the question, my answer was it depends. It depends on which one of those is going to give me more of the freedom that I want. Today I got Mark Winters with me. When I read his book, it changed my life. Rocket Fuel. And most recently, the visionary, that's what we're going to be talking about. He's the co-founder of Rocket Fuel Ventures. He's a seasoned entrepreneur advisor, best selling author of the books, Rocket Fuel, visionary with over 25 years of experience working at global enterprises like Proctor and Gamble and BP. Mark specialized in identifying patterns that drive business success.

1:02Mark, it's a pleasure to have you on today, brother. Nice to see you, Tommy. So this will be our second podcast. Let's just talk a little bit about your origin story where you're at today. What you're really looking forward to in the future. Yes, so my origin story starts in big corporate, right? So back with Proctor and Gamble and kind of doing the traditional corporate thing, I thought that was the company I was going to be with for the rest of my life. And then, end up catching the entrepreneurial bug while I was away in business school. And that sort of changed everything. You know, I thought, man, this sounds a lot more interesting than what I'm doing every day. And so I've made the leap, earned my votes, if you will. And that led to a series of ventures. I'm up to 15 different companies now that I've either started myself, bought from somebody else, shut down, put out a business or sold off for some kind of a win. And all different kinds of industries and along the way just sort of fell in love with with what it means to be an entrepreneur and the science that makes it work.

2:05And the challenges that show up for all of us along the way. And started moving into more of an advisory mode. Gosh, that's been almost 15 years ago now when I sort of made that shift. And did a lot of peer group work with CEO, peer group, started a bunch over here in Dallas. I'm in Dallas for work. And that's how I met fellow named Geno Wickman, who wrote the book, Traction, and created the entrepreneurial operating system. And Geno and I became fast friends, had some history and common, knew some of the same people. And that led to E&I writing the book, Rocket Fuel Together, where we really unpacked the visionary integrator structure and a set of five rules and five tools really to make that thing work and make it powerful. And then most recently now, I've really turned my focus to the visionary in particular. And diving deep on what it looks like, what it takes for a visionary to be truly great, if they really want to excel in that role. So that's where we are now.

3:06I had, this is so funny. This was like this past week. So today's Tuesday. So it was probably last Wednesday or Thursday. I had a fellow reach out and I get it probably 20 or 30 messages a day. And this guy had said, do you still believe in the visionary integrator? And I'm like 110%. Like that is my life. I am like the epitome of what you wrote in the book. Like I'm Walt Roy keeps track of everything else. He knows what's going on with the construction of Walt Disney. He understands what's happening in the background, making sure all the contractors are paid. But Walt, see, he saw Disney world way before it was he was flying over our land, a looking down at a bunch of wet lands. And he saw it. And it's really hard to explain until you live it. Because it almost feels like I was telling you earlier. It almost feels like sometimes I should be running the project. And I should be in the weeds.

4:07But then I realize every time I do that, it doesn't help the business. Yeah, it's not that you can't do it. So you've had to learn how to do all that stuff as you've come along. A lot of times just out of a sheer place of how to survive. So it's not that you can't do it. It's just that if you spend all your time at energy doing stuff like that, you don't get to spend it flying over the wet lands and seeing the vision of what Walt Disney world could be. And so that's what it's all about. It's finding out where that sweet spot is for you. And then building a structure that lets you focus there and do the things that frankly only you can do. We're going to dive into a lot of the stuff on the visionary side. You said that most entrepreneurial struggles are predictable. That can be easily mitigated with the right skills. Can you dive into that? Yeah, so visionary patterns are very predictable. I mean, you're living it. It resonates strongly with you because you are one. But even if someone is not one, they have all seen one, worked with one, worked for one,

5:11been a partner with one, you name it. And so the same patterns pop up over and over again where it's this, it's not necessary in an ability, but it's a resistance to focus on the details and to focus on the follow through. And to be able to stay locked in on something for an extended period of time, that's just not how visionaries are wired. Right? Visionaries are wired to be thinking about the future. I call it see in the future, looking out down the road and going, all right, this is where things are headed. We can kind of see that. So if that's where things are headed, what's the best place for us to position this thing along that track to take full advantage of the opportunities that are going to come with it? And then along with that comes all the ideation, all the possibilities, the different things that we could try to do or we could tap into, that are going to make this thing go, make this thing pop. So it's that stuff. It's solving the big interesting problems.

6:14It's big relationships, usually big external relationships, whether that's in the community, the industry trade group, some key vendor, some key customer, but the big external relationships visionaries are great at that. They're energized for that. And then they're also sometimes, I call it the big gun that you bring in at the end to maybe close the big deal. That's the stuff that they're naturally wired for. And that's easy for them. That's fun for them. They're going to stay focused and locked in on that. But all this other stuff, it's just the day-to-day minutia, the detailed things that have to happen. If we're going to make this thing a machine, they're just not wired for that. So the same patterns show up. People don't get developed. We hop from one thing to another. The organization feels this thing we call whiplash, where the visionary looks over here, everybody starts looking that direction. And about the time all eyes are looking that direction, the visionaries looking back over here. And then half of them are turned this way, half of them are turned that way.

7:15And then the visionary turns their head back again. We just kind of get this back and forth thing that goes on. It causes a lot of unnecessary friction and really leakage of energy throughout the rest of the organization. And you're talking, this isn't just a lot of the listeners might be mom and pops, 20, 30, 40 people, under 10 million. There's also bigger companies. This year we're pacing to do north of 400 million. But you're talking these big companies, same deal. Like the massive, massive companies. Yeah, so the way that we see it, Tommy, is it's all of those big companies started as small companies. Yep. And so when we go deep in the history and we talk about Walt Disney, we talk about McDonald's, we talk about standard oil or Honda, we look at the history and the roots of the patterns that happened there. And they had this visionary integrated combo. They had this visionary that was kind of the wild and crazy idea person. And then they had the integrator that was the execution and follow through and get it done

8:19focus person. So visionary makes it up. The integrator makes it real. And so we see that as they climb the entrepreneurial arc. And so if you look around in some big companies today, you know, you look at like Elon Musk and WinShotwell for example, right? So that looks like a visionary integrator combination. And so you can see it in big companies if they're truly entrepreneurial, if they truly have that kind of that kind of leader combination at the helm, the pattern even exists there. You know, that's a really funny word entrepreneurial. And so many people when we went to our first deal, they said, you're very entrepreneurial. You're a founder. And I said, is that a bad thing? And they said, it just really depends because we don't know if we could tame the beast. Can you work well with private equity? Do you like to call the shots or do you like to listen in and make cumulative decisions? And I'm three and a half years through and they're like, wow, you do work well because I like

9:22to bounce ideas off and really sitting up for them. And I feel if I feel strongly, I'll throw out my card and I'll say, no, no, no, this is what we need to do. I know this business. But that that sometimes I think people are like, they almost look down upon entrepreneurial businesses. But I think private equity has some larger companies now are starting to realize that you need that. You need that entrepreneurial spirit to run freely within the business or some of the magic dies. Yeah, so I see it. Some people see it that way. I think it depends on who you're working with, right? So some people don't. Some people see it as a risk. And that's kind of, I think what you certainly heard in the past is the founder is a risk factor to be mitigated. Yeah, right? Because they think one, you know, you're crazy. They're not sure how to manage you. They're not sure how to deal with you. Two, there's a pretty good history of founders that have done some kind of a deal for an acquisition or something that had a contract to stay.

10:22And you talk to most of these folks and it's like, well, how long did you make it? And on a three-year deal, I think the average is probably less than a year, right? Because one of the sides gets sideways with the other. So in one sense, the visionary integrator structure is a great way to mitigate that risk, because neither party wants to be trapped. The investor, the buyer, the acquire, whatever you want to call it, they don't want to be stuck with somebody that they're not sure how to deal with. If it doesn't end up being a healthy relationship. And two, the founder, the entrepreneur, they don't want to be stuck in a deal that sucks. Right? That's no fun. They can't do this stuff that they have been doing the whole time. And now they're in a job where they're not calling the shots. They're not able to run the show. And so I've had private equity people in the room that say, the integrator, when it's strong, it solves that problem for us.

11:24Because it's the connection. It's the solid, predictable piece of the puzzle that gives us some certainty to where we don't have to be concerned about the risk of the founder. If they're bringing them into a bigger organization. But now you're starting to see some people that's kind of like what you describe, where they want that energy. They want that future, that visionary creative energy in the mix, because of what they're trying to do in a certain space. You know, if that's something that they're trying to grow and expand in a different way. If you take that voice out of the mix, you've lost something. You said you've lost the magic. I think that's absolutely true. So it really depends on which way they're coming from it. Are they trying to minimize risk? Are they going to plug it into something that's sort of stable? Or are they really trying to do something unique? And let's get a bunch of crazy people in a room and come up with something that no one has ever thought about before. I think you need a little bit of both. You need to minimize your downside. But you also need to think like if you talk to most founders, slash entrepreneurs, and you say we're looking for a two and a half X over the next five years.

12:28That's pretty boring. That we just keep doing what we're doing. No innovation, no testing, no thinking outside of the box. But at the same time, let's not stop what we're doing, right? Let's allow us to test, put some guard rails around it. But we've built it this far, because when the founder leaves a lot of these businesses, especially private equity backed, you watch some kind of deteriorate. A lot of the other people leave. They're the glue. And the integrator is super important. I think the integrator, usually the COO, probably the CFO, depending on how the business is run and what type of business you're in. If you're in a SaaS product or potentially, something to do more with processing fees and other things like Fintech might be the CFO. But I think there's a, the COO is really the guy doing a lot of the work to make the operational side happen. Is that usually who the number two? I guess it depends on the business. Who do you normally see as the integrator? Yeah, so I see it come through all of those paths. It depends a little bit on the industry and kind of what the selection set looks like at the

13:33leadership team level. But the finance path is an obvious one, because they've got detailed orientation. The ops path is another one, because they're graded execution. And so they sort of bring all that. It's less often that we see somebody that comes up through kind of the sales and marketing function. But I've seen it, right? It happens. So I think it totally is dependent on the space and the particular business and the team that's already in place. You know, one of the interesting things about the integrator role, a question I'll get a lot, Tommy, is, well, do they need to have deep experience in my space, in my vertical? What do you think? Do you know the answer to that question? I would say no. Why would you say no? Because they're good at tasks, they're good at seeing things through. I would say that a great integrator could go almost anywhere because they know how to manage a team to get to the finish line. But that's my point of view.

14:35Yeah, I think that's right. That's what I see in my experience is it's a, you know, in some sense, it's just another function, like a financial function would be where you're kind of managing widgets in some form or fashion. But the caveat is you've got to have deep vertical experience somewhere on that leadership team, right? So whether the visionary has it or the sales and marketing person has, whoever, it's got to be there somewhere. But if you've got it, right, if the rest of the leadership team is super strong and they've been in this business for a long, long time, then they've got that. The integrator doesn't need that. And you can find somebody who is a rock star at the function of integrating and bring them in and plug them right in. You're going to do fine. Hey, guys, I got some big news. Donald Trump Jr. is coming back to Freedom 2026. He spent his career and said one of the biggest family businesses in this country. And just like Eric Trump, he's sitting down with me for a fireside chat so we can really get into where he sees things heading for owners like us. Right now, we're taking questions for Freedom 2026 ticket holders for a chance to have them read to Eric and Don Jr. live on stage during the event.

15:40It's the opportunity of a lifetime to hear practical answers of how operators like us need to be approaching our businesses in 2027. One more thing before I let you go. Since it's Labor Day week, we just launched group packages for Freedom 2026 so you could bring your GM, your lead tech, your whole crew and save a buck while doing it. This one's live today, September 3rd through Wednesday, the 9th only. Freedom 2026 is October 26th through the 28th at Manila Bay. I'm telling you guys, I put so much time and effort into my presentation. I'm going to blow your socks off. Go to freedomevent.com, grab your seat today, check out the group packages and get your question in or you could call us or text us at 602-581-7563. Can't wait to see you guys there. How do you feel about who is it, sir? What's his name? Virgin. Oh, Richard Branson. Richard Branson. He says, I go out and I find the Coal companies to make

16:43them the CEO of my new companies. And that's how he starts businesses. Basically going on, getting an integrator and saying, now you're the entrepreneur. Does that valid or is that something? What is your take on that? Well, so I haven't taken a deep dive into his stuff lately to see what he's going on and how he's approaching that. But conceptually, if I think about what I see other visionaries doing that are involved in a lot of different businesses, sort of the new model that's starting to show up more and more is you've got a visionary that has a lot of disconnected businesses. So they're not, necessarily intertwined or necessarily even synergistic. And they have effectively an integrator that runs each business. And so they're the visionary sitting up here and they've got integrators of all these different full business units, which are fully operating companies in a lot of cases.

17:45And they're providing the visionary energy, if you will, at an even higher level than the person who's sitting in that operating seat. Does that make sense? That's how I like what he's doing. I never said I see exactly what you're talking about. It makes a lot of sense. You talk about the concept of getting stuck as an entrepreneur and I can't tell you how many calls I get on where people are like, I don't know where to start. What does getting stuck look like for most people? Yeah, so let me start talking about it from the place of somebody who has the entrepreneurial seizure and makes the leap. Right? So we've all been there. We all can relate to that at some point. So you're like, all right, I'm going to do something. I see this need that needs to be filled, that something I resonate with for some reason. If I get in there and I do this well, I'm going to make more money. I'm going to have great flexibility of time. I'm going to really love the people I work with. Be able to make a big impact. Just all the good stuff. I'm really going to enjoy what I'm doing.

18:48Right? So they make the leap. They start the business, they buy the business, they whatever they jump into this thing. Then you fast forward about 12 to 18 months and we fly in, we take our cameras and go take a look at what's going on in their world and what do we find? Well, they're probably working harder and longer than they ever have in their life. They're probably not making much money. If you were to convert it back to an hourly wage is probably the lowest pay rate they've ever experienced in their whole life. They're stuck with some people that they can't get rid of, that they hate, that drive them absolutely crazy. They're having to take customers that they don't like because they're just trying to survive and trying to hang on and this thing is doing none of those things that they wanted to do when they started it. Right? Seeing that, lived it maybe. Right? And so that's the original form of entrepreneurial stuckness is that. And so for those people, hopefully we can get them out of that. Right? We can, you know, through systems and structure, we can get them to climb out the other side and they can actually go on to experience those things that we talk about.

19:51But along that path, along that journey, it's going to happen again. You're going to have some version of the people thing isn't working. I can't figure out what to do next. There's so much spinning around. I just can't stay focused on one thing. And so we have all these half-built bridges that are laying around. And that's what stuck looks like is when you're in a place like that, that's not the place that you want to be and you can't figure out how to make the next move to get you out of there and onto this next place closer to where you ultimately want to go. And have you ever been stuck? I've been stuck many times. I was that guy in one of my first entrepreneurial ventures where, you know, I went out and raised the money and made all the commitments that you make and got into it deep and got off and running and was working my tail off. And we're basically around the clock for days and nights

20:52on end. And what was it all adding up to not much? And you just feel all of that pressure and you feel the pressure from the family side of things where, you know, the wives like, you know, are you kidding me? We're going to put more into this thing and we're going to ride it out farther and longer. And, you know, the people, some of them are great, some of them are an absolute nightmare and having to navigate through all of that stuff and pull it out the other side. I mean, it's you go through long, dark nights of the soul. And then I get to see that experience that again and again through the clients that I work with where yeah, it just keeps coming back. You know, it's never as bad as that first one though, hopefully, right? If you've got something that makes it and you don't have something catastrophic, those long, dark nights of the soul are a little less, it's a little less of a deep hole. And the period that you're in it is as in as long. And so you learn how to break through those, you break through those ceilings. You know, in EOS,

21:58we teach, you know, five leadership abilities. And there's, you know, talking about hitting the ceiling of complexity where if you have something that works at a certain level, if you grow, as you grow the complexity increases and the stuff that used to work for you at a certain level doesn't work for you at the next level. And so you're going to hit those ceilings and you can encounter a ceiling like that at a company level. You can hit a ceiling like that at a department level, one of the functions within your company or you can hit it as an individual, right? You know, you may be used to be able to handle that, but now you're stuck as an individual, right? And so those ceilings are there and you break through one and keep going down the road and there's going to be another one in the future. And so it's leadership abilities like being able to simplify things. All right, the organization creates tons of complexity all on its own. So we have to obsess about simplification. You know, whether that means we do fewer things, we have fewer pages in the document, we have a simpler model, we use fewer syllables in the word, you know, whatever it is,

23:00anywhere and everywhere is like, all right, how can we make that more simple, more simple, more simple and drive that into the organization? We got to become good delegators. If we don't delegate, we're stuck. You know, we only have this amount of capacity and, you know, we're kind of, everybody's hanging on to what they've got. And if we're all stuck in there, hanging on to what we've got, looking at each other, where we go in as a business. No, we're staying, we're staying right there. So we've got to break through that and be able to delegate intelligently and effectively. And that's going to create more capacity and that's going to allow us to grow and break through the ceiling and move forward. We have to become good predictors, you know, time and time again, I see people that, you know, they think a wish is a prediction. They think that what they want is a prediction and it's not. And so they keep throwing this stuff out and they miss it every single time, every single year, every single quarter. And so nobody has any faith in the numbers, nobody has any faith in what's being said and delivered. So we got to get good at calling our shot within the near term window and hitting it, right? That creates

24:04confidence and that confidence is what allows us to reach for a lot more on the long term horizon. I talk about, you know, stretching the vision side of the equation, everything more than a year out there, but predicting the traction, right? Everything that's 12 months and in, you know, stretch on that. We need to be able to hit the numbers that we put out there. So those are three abilities and then we, we systemize on top of that. So we leverage processes and then finally the fifth ability is to add structure. So we intentionally create structure about how the work is organized and how we create accountability, you know, between the people that are doing the work. And so that leads to structures such as the visionary integrator piece of the equation. Limit, automate, delegate most people also the way that I say it is they overestimate way they could do in one year and under estimate way they could do in five. And this is exactly a Mars law. I live and breathe this stuff and I'll tell you, you know, I wish things went faster, but the ship gets bigger, it's harder to turn. And I always want to be able to test and try,

25:06and you know, a lot of the stuff doesn't work. It's having the abilities of visionary to walk away and say, but look, in business, you know, as well as I do, you hit one home run, it could be 10,000 RBI's. So you could strike out a bunch, but that one home run and that additional thing that you added, as long as you got a good team of leadership that understands we're going to test. And the vision is got to understand, look, it didn't work out. It's too complicated. You know, but you got to keep going. You know, just because one bad idea fall forward, correct, and keep going. You know, I got a question for you. You were talking about your wife as you come, continued to dump more money into this idea. I'm curious. I'm like, zero integrator in the book. You guys wrote about how you could be both. I mean, look, I could do the work. I can. I could do the emails. I could be the one. I'll still run the meetings. I'm still on the stages. I'm still the one doing orientation and everything else, but in a relationship, like having kids and having a

26:06family, I personally, I'm engaged, never been married before. We're going to have kids. I don't know where I'm at. I don't know what to counter. Like, Bree will tell me, this is where you need to be. This is next. And I got a great EA. I need help to stay organized. And I can tell you, I can go on and on with all the faults of mine. But do you notice with a visionary that sometimes your significant other becomes more of that integrator? And I don't know if that works in a family or what your thoughts are on that. So I think a family's about a lot more than that. So some of these structures are informative, but I wouldn't say they're prescriptive for a family relationship. If that makes any sense, and let me try to unpack what I mean by that. I see sometimes a husband and wife that they look to me like, it's very clear, one's the visionary, one's here. Heck, I've had leadership teams where I've had those two on the team and their spouses.

27:10And those are the roles that they play in the company. So I've had that. I've seen that. And I've seen that work absolutely magically. I've also see it be a complete dumpster fire. So I think there's a lot more to the personal side of the equation than just the principles we're talking about on a leadership team. I think on the personal side and congrats on your relationship. My wife and I just celebrate 34 years of marriage. The grads, man. So impressive. Thanks. I appreciate that. I'm proud of that. And the stuff I would tell you about that is, it's not easy, but man, is it worth it? And if I was thinking about our relationship, we don't fit any kind of a visionary integrator structure. It looks nothing like that. We're very much the same on certain things. And we're absolutely 100% polar opposites on other

28:16things. And so it may be about what you want for your family structure, whether that's something that fits or applies or works for you. But then that sort of begs the question, can you be intentional about family design or do you meet your person? And it's all over. And the two of you're just going to go figure it out, right? It's not quite the same as hiring somebody to be on your team. Now you can't pick your wife. And I like that most mentors I've ever experienced in books that I've read have said that's the most important decision you'll ever make. I mean, literally, it's like, and I think everybody goes into a planning I'm only doing at once. But you know, we're of known her nine years now. And she's absolutely everything you could ever want and some and everything I'm not in a good way. Yeah, no, it's just interesting. I just wanted to

29:21hear your concept on that. And I know you can't just put it in. Hey, you're going to be the integrator in this relationship. It's not the same as business. And there's a lot more at stake. I want to go through a lot of questions, just really dive into the visionary type stuff. I've got a lot of questions and then I've got I've got some more visionary integrator than specifically visionary. Why do so many founders fail to realize when they're missing an integrator? So I think one of the reasons is that the the function isn't visible to them. Okay, so so realize that the majority of the world still even despite our best efforts of sort of spreading the word, they have never heard of this. They've never heard of the concept that there's an integrator function. I think that's the right way to think about it. So so if you think about the the basic functions of any business, there's some sort of a sales and marketing function that helps the world find out about us and then are the value we can offer. So they come in as

30:21lead and then the sales converts them to a customer or client. Then there's an operations or service delivery function that sort of keeps the promise that first group made. And then there's a finance and administrative function that takes care of all the bookkeeping and the infrastructure and everything to hopefully keep those first two functions. Laser focused on on what their main job is, right? The integrator function works harmoniously through and between those functions to kind of bring it all together to execute the business plan, you know, deliver the bottom line P&L results. And the visionary function is all about seeing the future ideation, big external relationships, the things we've talked about, right? So if you think about those as five distinct functions and however the structure gets worked out, those things all are happening in your business in some level. What what a a business that isn't aware of that integrator function is going to do is they're going to have those traditional functions and they're going to have one person sitting on top of that doing everything else. And so they're effectively blending those visionary integrator functions together unknowingly, right? And so they think that's all one job. And as you sort of alluded to in

31:24Rocketfield, we talked about yeah, there are people that can do both, but they're a very rare breed. So it's less than 5% of the population that is a visionary or an integrator and keep in mind that that's only a small portion of the population that's wired to be a visionary or integrator in the first place. So of that group, it's about, you know, maybe 5% that that truly can do both and be great and want to. And most of those people who think they're like that, when I, you know, pin them down and I go, okay, you can only do one of those for the rest of your life, which do you pick? It takes them about that long to tell me, which tells me they don't really think they're both. They're doing both for some reason, but it's not really because they they want to or necessarily great at it, right? So if it's invisible, you know, somebody is playing CEO and they're sitting there in that top seat and they're kind of doing all the stuff and some things are doing really well and but things just aren't working, but it's not obvious why. So when we split those things apart and make it visible,

32:24even if the same person is sitting in both of those seats, now all of a sudden it starts to become clear to them and to the rest of the organization. Okay, wait, here's the stuff that's working well. You're doing great with this visionary stuff. You're spending all your time up there, but all this execution, follow through stuff, you're not spending any time on that and that's where we're falling down, that's where we're getting stuck. That's the thing that, you know, that needs help. And then they all they go, oh, okay, I get it now. I can see it and that's typically when they they decide to make a move. Do you think that integrators, I mean, I think about this from just the people I know that are graded into grading. Sometimes they're lonely, they don't necessarily get to get the awards, they don't get to kiss the babies, the big relationships. Sometimes they wonder, maybe I'll go out and do this. What are your thoughts on just the integrator role overall

33:25as far as? Yes, so it can be a thankless job at times, right? Like you said, because for one, you're saying no, sometimes a lot. Sometimes you're saying it to the visionary and they hate to be told no, right? And so that's, you know, nobody's patting on the back necessarily for doing that. Firing people, having the hard conversations, you know, being anal about following up on all the details and all the follow through stuff, you know, all that stuff is hard stuff. And again, people have appreciated it, but they don't necessarily fully understand all that goes into that. Now here's the funny thing. You think about how you're wired or how I'm wired or how, you know, any other visionary is wired. And we like that other stuff. We like that external stuff, right? We like that acknowledgement, you know, we want to win, we want to be first, we want to stand on the highest pedestal and top of the podium or whatever, right? And so that means something to us at some level.

34:32So we sort of project that on them and think they probably feel the same way. And what I see, Tommy, with the great integrators is they don't care. They're perfectly happy to let somebody else get all that, you know, that acknowledgement and recognition and whatever. And they get their satisfaction out of doing great work and delivering things that we needed to get done. And making it happen again, back to, you know, visionary making it up, making it real. I've had integrators tell me, look, I don't have all kinds of ideas. I don't want to spend my cycles trying to come up with that stuff. If you will just feed me the next thing, I'll go do it. And that's where I get my joy. That's where I get my fulfillment. So I love that. Maybe project by visionaries. My bracelet says aspire to be number one right here. That's funny.

35:33I know that you've talked in the book about outgrowing certain integrators got to raise their lid. What are your thoughts? I mean, I have one of the best integrators. I mean, both Adrian and Luke. So I'm not worried personally, but do you feel like there's ever a time where the visionary outgrows the integrator? Yeah. So the way to think about that is something we call the three-piece puzzle. So if you think about the visionary and the integrator, you know, kind of visionary over the integrator, and then alongside them a third piece, which is the business. And think about those three pieces interlocking and fitting together. So what has to work is, you know, the visionary and the integrator have to fit together. So, you know, you hopefully, when you hire them in the beginning, you check all that and you start out with a good fit there, right? And then each of them, the visionary and the integrator have to fit together with the business. So the question for the visionary is, okay, great. How much how much visionary is this business need? And, you know,

36:36a company like a space X is going to require a lot more visionary than a company that cleans carpets, right? Okay. And if it's just one company that has one little area and one part of the market, right? The complexity that's going on there, the number of people that are going on there, the rate of change or regulation in their market for the carpet cleaning company is completely different from space X, right? You feel that? So we talk about a visionary spectrum, you know, we're on one end, you've got to Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and then on the other end, you just don't need as much. So how much visionary does the business need? And then likewise, there's another question for the integrator that says, okay, great. How much integrator does this business need? Same thing. There's a spectrum there. If there's more complexity, if it's more scale, it's going to need more integrator. So all three of those pieces, once we get them all fit together, let's say we start with a good fit between all of them where, you know, they really click and fit together well, all three of those pieces are moving and changing through time, right? The business is growing and

37:40changing, whatever's happening, we're buying new companies, we're selling parts off, we're entering new markets, you know, whatever's going on, the needs are changing and that visionary is growing and expanding, they're thinking they're getting different experiences and the same things happening with the integrator, they're growing and expanding. And so there's going to be stress intention that may tend to want to kind of pull these things apart at different points along the way. And so sometimes it may be true that the visionary has outgrown the integrator. It could be true that the business has outgrown the integrator or the visionary or sometimes the integrators, the rock star, and they pass everybody and they grow out of this business and they need to go find another visionary and company to hook on to that's going to be able to take them to the next level that they're capable of going to. So all three pieces are moving and we got to watch all those connection points all the time. What's the biggest strengths and weaknesses of a visionary and then we're going to do it with integrator? Yeah, so we've kind of covered those, I feel like so, you know, the visionary strengths is seeing the future, ideation, big external relationships,

38:48you know, closing big deals, solving interesting complex problems, their weaknesses are they get distracted easily, they're not great at developing people, you know, so there was a time when I've had, you know, a dozen direct reports and all kinds of people that I was managing and I thought I was pretty good at it, right? But over time I've learned that, you know, what I'm good at managing about one person really, really well, right? Because I watch somebody who's great at it and they can handle, you know, people and do a great job with all of them at a scale and a and a depth that I just couldn't do. So I had to see what great looked like. So typically visionaries aren't, that's not their forte, right? You know, they're not great with following the details or not great with follow through, they're distracted easily, all those kinds of things would fall on the weaknesses side, I think, for the for the visionary, for the integrator. So their strengths are follow through execution, attention to detail, they're a role model for, you know, what we call leadership, management and accountability. So they set that bar at the top of the organization for, hey,

39:53here's what it should look like. So that every manager that then reports into them seeing that standard applied to their relationship can then apply it to their team and then it gets applied to their team at cascades through the whole organization. They've got to be great at that. They're great at communication and keeping everybody on the same page, keeping everybody aligned. They're great at being able to fly at a, at a, not the same altitude, but a close altitude to that visionary. So, you know, the visionary is flying up here, you know, we can't have the integrator flying way down here by the ground. They've got to be able to fly up here close enough that we can speak the same language and they can understand what's going on that visionary brain and then translate it to the rest of the organization and in language that they can understand. If not, then it's going to be really frustrating for everybody. The integrator's weaknesses are, you know, they've got to be comfortable with being number two. They've got to be comfortable with, you know, living in a thankless world sometimes. They've got to be, you know, comfortable with being focused on execution,

40:58you know, first and foremost, they aren't necessarily great at coming up with the big ideas at being able to see a different way out of the trap, you know, a different escape path out of the, out of the room where it's stuck in. So, those are things that would fall on, on their, their challenges list. And you're experienced what's the earliest sign that a visionary integrator partnership is going to fail? They have stopped working to get aligned and it's starting to look like this. It's starting to, they're starting to blame each other. Oh, the brain will work. That's right. We want that relationship to be, you know, obsessively focused on staying on the same page. And so what that means is they should show up almost like two halves of the same brain. Right? So we've talked it out so much that even though I might explain it differently,

42:03if someone would ask me the question, the response I would give is in the same neighborhood as the response you would give. Right? So two halves of the same brain. So if they, if they are no longer committed to that, and it's, and it's, you know, it's gotten to the point where it's kind of like, well, you and you, and it's just finger pointing and blaming the other one, then that's a pretty, pretty tough crack to overcome. Is, do you think an integrator could build many integrators below as the company starts to grow? So, so good question. If you think about it in the spirit of what we mean by the integrator function, then no, but the pattern shows up, if that makes sense. So the integrator has to be able to deal with a visionary and they've got to be able to manage and lead a true leadership team of a business. So that's a pretty high level skill set, right? But if you look in the departments, a lot of times you'll have a leader that has visionary tendencies or has

43:09integrator tendencies, and sometimes a combination in there can be a good thing. But it's, but it's different. It's, you know, it's like a mini version of the pattern that we're talking about applied in a different way. I've seen it show up in in sales teams where you get a, you know, a sales leader that's really good and and they are more visionary in their in their wiring. And you get an integrator in there that's almost like a chief of staff. That's kind of the model I've seen it in where they they sort of handle all the administrative stuff that has to happen and they make sure that that machine stuff works, you know, just very, very smoothly and predictably. And it frees that sales leader to really spend time on the human side of things and and and how people are aligned, how they're skilled, how they're motivated and and driving towards whatever the goal is.

44:12I don't know if that's answering your question. I really love that example. It makes a lot of sense in a sales department. There's the the micro and macro person involved up. Are there more visionaries or integrators in the world? So there are more visionaries and the ratio is about four visionaries for every one integrator. But keep in mind back to our three piece puzzle. This one integrator is not necessarily a good fit for all four of these integrators. In fact, they may only be a fit for one of these integrators. So it gets to be a pretty challenging math problem pretty quick. And so the the advice I've always given visionaries who you know connect with this, the the structure resonates with them is don't wait. Get to work. Go go find your integrator because at some point, you know, some people some visionary entrepreneurs are going to get left in the musical chairs game

45:14without a without an integrator chair to grab. Why do most success wise for newer is become the bottleneck eventually of their business. So I saw a quote from Peter Drucker the other day that somebody put out that I thought was funny, but he says, you know, the the bottleneck always appears at the top of the bottle. Yeah, and I think it's true for our organization, right? You know, the bottleneck is there. So you know, the way I think about it is as the visionary goes, so goes the visionary integrator relationship as that visionary integrator relationship goes, so goes the rest of the leadership team. And as that leadership team goes, so goes the entire organization. And so I really think it has that kind of a cast date effect. And so what's happening is you've got a visionary who with good intentions and a lot of times out of old habits and just inertia from the way it's always been done, they're grabbing things, they're holding on to things,

46:15they're not letting go, they're not being honest with themselves about the the current reality that's that's going on around them or with them. And and that's why. So so it starts here so we can get the visionary to get clear themselves. You know, that clarity allows them to begin to focus on the right things and it sort of it sort of begins to unlock all of that chain reaction. I think it's been a lot easier for me to let go. I do miss certain things. Some day they must be not in the truck, but ultimately the fact is I just know there's better people at better things. I've even said if there's a person that could come around this business better, but I don't think there's a visionary that could just step in to this last 20 years of business. And you know, I'm willing to get advice and get consulting and be work on myself a lot. But also like I got a clear vision of what it's going to take to 10Xs business again. And eventually it needs to become more corporatized and I hate that word because I don't like the

47:16word corporate, but it's structure. It has there's a what it means to be corporate to me is just we show up, we do the job and we get a certain output. We've hit our budget within 1% the last four years. And I give that a lot of props to the team. I mean, it wouldn't been that way if I was running the whole thing every decision. So I think for me is like giving more things up. And I think it's sometimes hard for a lot of people like me on what exactly does he, but I spent all night whiteboarding every night and I'm in front of the KPIs and I'm working like and not all my ideas are good. And I will say the couple guys I talked about, they're very good at saying to me, if that's important to you, which one of these do you want us to remove that were important to you before? Because we can't focus on 30 things. We can't focus on more than five at any given moment. Yep. That's that's a great question. And in fact, it leads me to the, you know, we talk about the integrator saying know a lot, but there's a lot of power in the response being, well, yes, if

48:17yeah. And yes, if we let go of that, yes, if we're able to go do this other thing, right? And so it brings the reality focus back in. There's a couple things you said there, Tommy. So one, you know, if you want to go ride in a truck, you should go ride in a truck. And that's fine as the visionary to go and spend time in the field doing things, being around things, keeping your finger on the pulse of what's going on. Take quick story. So we were skiing in Utah about a month ago. And my son and I are waiting to meet some people at the, at the lift and this guy walks up to us in a resort jacket. And he's like, hey, where are you guys from? Like, I have some Texas, you're just meeting some buddies. He goes, I mean, we talked for a little bit and he goes, hey, you want to go up early? Yeah, let's go. He says, all right, just you two, let's go. And so he took us down, we hop on the lift and we're riding up. And the conversation as we're going up is, so what do you, you ski patrol, you ski instructors, you're day off, you know, what are you doing? He goes, no, I'm the, I'm the CEO and general manager of the resort. This is just how I get first hand

49:21contact with what's really going on and how satisfied our customers are. And it was great. Not about me. What a great example, right? I mean, he's out there, you know, getting his feedback. It's not any, any, he's not, you know, jumping down in and making decisions and giving direction and kind of change in things where he's doing what we call an end run where he's stepping around the the structure of the organization, but it doesn't mean he's not out there. It doesn't mean he's not, you know, getting the information and sharing the information that he needs to to make this thing work. So that's an opportunity for any visionary. And when you use the word corporatize, when I think about that, along with the words, really structure and process, structure is what's going to ultimately free you. Right. If you don't want structure, you're going to be stuck for a long time, right? So structures you're friend. And so get comfortable with that and don't equate that to corporatize. When I hear corporatize, I mean, I think about a lot of mindset stuff, you know, a lot of things that go back to the culture that make it not entrepreneurial.

50:27It's bureaucracy, you know, corporatized systems are not, frankly, accountability sucks in corporate structures. In entrepreneurial structures, you can make it great. And it's fun and, you know, it makes a difference and you feel good about it. And so all those opportunities are right there. You know, the question I probably get the most and I've talked a lot, a lot, a lot about your books is how do I find a good integrator? As where do I go? Can I go on and deed or glass door? Is it recruiter or, you know, any of these? What's the best way to find that? But so it's funny that you asked. So with the book Rocket Fuel, you know, we wrote it specifically for the visionary and Gina and I are like, alright, we got to, they've got the attention span of a net. So how do we keep this thing short and sweet? And so we write the first chapter about them. Visionaries read the first chapter and they go, yep, that's me. These guys have been following me around. They know all about me. And then they read the second chapter and it talks about the integrator and they go, you know what, that actually makes sense. And then they go, I want one.

51:30And then that's when it gets hard. And so the last time you and I talked, you know, it was, this pretty early on in that book. And so the short answer is you still got to do all the same recruiting stuff. You got to do to find somebody who's a, who's a great leader as a candidate. The good news is since then, lots of recruiting firms have actually started to specialize in this niche. And so there are recruiting firms out there now that they specialize in finding integrators. And they've gotten really, really good at it. And I look at LinkedIn and people use integrator in their tagline and their job titles. You've got people that are actively using that language. You've got a lot of people that are, when they're posting jobs, they're specifically posting it for an integrator. And so we've got a sort of a model job description for what that looks like that somebody could start with. But that's gotten a lot easier. But it comes back to for the visionary. First, you got to get really clear on who you are and what you want, what the business needs. So

52:32back to the three piece puzzle. There's a process in the book that kind of talks through that. And then once you're clear on that, it's all right. Put the word out. Put the word out to your network. You know, make it public, hire a recruiter that can help you if you want that kind of help. And start having the conversations. What's the hard truth about visionaries that most people don't want to accept? Which people? I change the visionaries. A lot of the people listening are business owners. I'd love for more. Yeah. So, so here's the hard truth. Actually, I think we talked a little bit about. I think it's that structure fuels freedom. Yep. That's the hard truth is is structure fuels freedom. And actually that what you want, that freedom that you want, you're all your spastic efforts to kind of do whatever you want and protect your ability to just kind of run unstructured is the

53:34thing that's that's taking the most freedom away from you. And so spending that time to kind of focus in and go, okay, here's here's how we're going to build this thing intentionally. And in a way that then we can begin to plug other people into this thing. So I'm not doing it all myself. That's the thing that's ultimately going to give you that freedom that you want. For me, that happened in 2017. I heard a guy really knew a lot about home services and he goes, show me your manuals, your standard operating procedures, show me your org chart plan. None of that existed. Show me what key KPIs you focus on. And so it went through and spent the next year and a half building standard operating procedures and checklist. And we built the exact scripts for the call center. And that just completely freed me. It was like, then it was an expected outcome. And then it was like, I remember getting bored. And all of a sudden I became the visionary again. And man, the business would blow up. And then man, we'd have to go build systems around it. And then we then I'd go back in and I'm like, here's the next step. And then we break it again.

54:37Here's a good question. How does a visionary distinguish between intuition and impulsiveness? Between intuition and impulsiveness? I mean, I'll just tell you how that lands on me. So intuition is, I just know. And sometimes that's the, I can see the pattern. You know, I can see the matrix. I can't explain to you why or how. But I just know that that's the thing. That's the space. That's the answer. That's the idea of whatever. When I hear impulsiveness, that's the urge to move and jump into a space or a certain direction or whatever action goes along with that. And so I think both of those things are positive.

55:40In fact, both of those things in a way are superpowers. But they're both also come with challenges. Right? So if I can't explain to you why I'm into it that this is the answer, then you're going to have questions, doubts, uncertainty, whatever. And so I get that. And so there's some health to having that conversation that back and forth with a with a great integrator. Because a lot of times they'll ask you questions and things that you should be thinking about. And then sometimes, you know what, they need to just trust you. And that's how we get there. And so those relationships develop over time on a foundation of trust. So that doesn't happen from the beginning. We have to work at that. And then on the impulsiveness, you know, sometimes it's the timing of the move that's everything. And because we saw it and felt it quicker, we were able to get an advantageous position because we're able to get in there first. But we can also really hurt ourselves by moving too fast without having it thought out. So that's where I think that back and forth with the integrator can really help you a lot. And you know, increase the probability that we have a positive outcome

56:43over a negative one. How's that? I love it. What's something in business? I just got like probably seven more questions. What's one system other than the rocket fuel dual ship? And you're, you know, this is some of the EOS stuff. But what's one system that every business should implement immediately? One system. Well, the first place my head goes on that one, Tommy, is the EOS we call the accountability chart. But it's the structure for how work gets done. Who's going to do it and who they're going to be accountable to? And there's a couple of reasons for that. You know, just above and beyond the whole visionary integrator thing. So one is a lot of times when I meet an entrepreneur for the first time. And I asked them to describe their structure to me. What I see looks really strange. And I start

57:45asking them questions about how it happened. And the story for how it happened sounds something like this. Well, you know, we had everything and then I met so and so at a trade show. And this guy was a rock star. And I didn't really have any place for him in the structure, but man, this guy's a rock star. And if I don't grab him, you know, I'm going to lose him. So I just made a spot for him. And then we brought him on board. And then you fast forward six months and that same pattern happened again. And then six months later, that same pattern happened again. And at some point they get to me and they look back at this thing they created. And they're like, man, it did not intend for it to end up looking like that. And so when you build your structure with intentionality, what you're basically doing is saying, all right, it's a white sheet exercise. Let's scrape all this stuff off the page of how it is right now or the way we've always done it. And let's think, all right, if we're looking into the future, you know, 18 months, 24 months in the future, whatever the next big hill is, we're trying to climb. You know, how business is like a series of cliffs. We go climb this cliff and we can't see

58:47anything beyond that cliff until we get up on top of it. And then we can see onto the next one, right? So we hit, we've lined aside to this next cliff that we're trying to get up on top of so whatever that looks like, the question for now is, okay, what's the structure that we feel like is going to give us the highest probability of being able to go get up on top of that? And you draw it out. And if you can get the team to agree that, yep, that structure, if we could do it, would, would give us the best chance of getting there. And then you go through a process to actually map people to that. And you get clear on what each of those seats in that structure look like. Yeah. What are the core roles of each one? What's the one person they're going to be accountable to? Not two people, not dotted line stuff that's going all over the place, but literally, I balled to eyeball stuff. So if I sit down at a table with Tommy Mello and, you know, Mark is responsible for this Starbucks cup, there's no slip ring us. There's no hiding. I've got to answer all the questions for how I'm doing with that Starbucks cup, right? So we drive all that stuff out of it. So I would say

59:4880% of the issues that we see in an entrepreneurial company are because they lack clarity on that structure and who owns what and who they're accountable to. We'll get into discussion of of of issues and it'll start swirling. And I'll just ask the question, all right, who owns it? And they'll look at each other. And they don't know. And that's the issue, right? If you if you can pin down where all the stuff is owned by by one person. Yep. Yeah. And I've always heard build a box, put the person in the box. Don't get a person and put the box around the person because that's exactly what you talked about. And there's all this random funkiness. Structure first, people second. Three repeat questions I ask every guest. What's one piece of game changing advice you wish you knew in your 20s?

1:00:55That the stuff I hate somebody else loves. The stuff I hate and stuck it somebody else loves and is great at. Oh, that's really good. That's one of the better answers I've ever got. If you had to start over with $10 million tomorrow, what would you do with it? I would hire a great integrator. And we would build a platform that helped visionaries get unstuck. So it's I'll do the same thing. Yeah.

1:02:03I don't think I would. Yeah, I don't think I would do anything materially different. Because in here's why I say that because you're in the book, I teach something in intrinsic genius. So it's this place where what brings you joy aligns with what you're highly competent at that you have a drive and a cause. It's in your DNA. You need to go make this happen. So for me, I truly believe visionaries are the answer to most of the problems that we face. I keep seeing them get stuck in that hole that we talked about a while ago. They need help. And if we can help them go do what they what they were made to do, what what what their vision is, we can help them make that real. We can have a huge impact on the world. Yeah. I really believe that. And so that's who I want to help. That's who I want to be a hero too. And so the best way I know to do that is through teaching tools and structures that expands the

1:03:09wisdom from these lessons that all these entrepreneurs have been learning for decades and real centuries really. And if we can help more of them get unstuck and make it real, make it happen, I think that's the fastest way to the biggest dent in the universe. I agree. What's your biggest professional dream at the moment? Professional. I want to be on Joe Rogan's podcast. Joe Rogan, let's do it. All right. You know, this whole thing about thinking about, you know, I talked last time I talked to Jay. By the way, that was that was you're a close number two, Tommy. Oh good. You're a close number. No, it's good. Joe Rogan Joe. That's that's his that's his day job. So I'll give him that. Yeah. You know, last time I talked to Gina, he was telling me about how he sold like 87% of

1:04:12EOS and obviously he felt depressed. He's like, I was sitting around with bags of gold. He goes, I had everything I'd ever wanted, but no purpose. And that and then he wrote the book Shine. But I think for a visionary, it's very hard to just like, unfortunately, sometimes our characteristics and our personality are tied to business. And you wake up one day and you say, okay, I mean, for a guy like me, okay, you get to go golfing every day and fishing. That's good for about two weeks. What are your thoughts on that? Because I'm sure you've dealt with a lot of entrepreneurs that they did everything they set out to do. And the day comes, the transaction goes through, I talked to a guy that said, I'd rather give back the $3 billion to have my business back. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you see and hear all of it, whether it's after a sale transaction or whether it's the deathbed realization. And so keep this shorter. But my story on this, Tommy, is

1:05:14I was in Colorado with my wife when we were hiking. And we were having the conversation of would you rather be rich or would you rather be king? You had that conversation before? No. No. Okay. So it's sort of a classic entrepreneurial debate. Would you rather be rich? Would you rather be king? Right. And there's things that come with both of those. And so over the years, I'd probably had this conversation at least a dozen times with groups from EO or somewhere, right? A bunch of entrepreneurs hanging out drinking, talking about stuff. And on that day, for whatever reason, when she asked me the question, my answer was, it depends. It depends on which one of those is going to give me more of the freedom that I want. Right? Because, you know, powers of vehicle, money's a vehicle, you know, but which one's going to give me more of the, you know, what I call unique freedom that I want. And so as I said the words, I sort of thought, huh,

1:06:15what freedom do I want? How would I even start to define that? And so it led me down a path where I started studying all these different gurus, people that have lists. Everybody's got a list. They're six thing. They're four things. They're nine things. You whatever. And so I gathered all these lists together and I put them on a whiteboard. I love whiteboards too. So by the way, I have a five board. You have a five board? Yeah, I have them everywhere at the house in my office in the other room. Okay, so you get an infinite whiteboard. So I'm laying all these things out on a whiteboard. And I started doing kind of a cluster analysis where I'm like, okay, this thing's about the same as that thing. So those go together and I clustered them all together from all these different lists. And what I found was there are nine things. There are nine different areas that matter. And so I call these the nine domains of freedom. And so what I believe is you have to look at each of those nine domains through a future self lens and go, okay, when I'm a hundred years older, 80 years

1:07:16older, whatever, what do I want to be true in each of these nine areas? And then from there, you can draw a through line all the way back to today. And in the present, you can say, all right, here's the stuff I can actually do something about now that's going to help me make that true in the future. And there's habits, there's levers of influence, there's lots of things that you can do in now. And then you've got sort of goals along the way where I want it to be, you know, this year, five years from now, 10 years from now, 50 years from now, whatever, throughout the whole thing. And so that picture is the definition. That's how a visionary gets clear on look. This is what I really want. So in the first pillar that there's 10 pillars in the visionary book, the first pillar is know thyself. And it dives into look, you got to get clear on what you want. Because if you don't, you're going to show up there and you're going to hate it, you're going to end up with something somebody else wanted for you, right? So I sold my business. Now I have no identity. Now I have

1:08:17nothing to do. I want it back, right? Or you, you're on your deathbed and your kids aren't there because they hate you. You're on your, you know, eighth wife. And she's not there either. And you, you know, you burned yourself out 20 years earlier than you should have because you didn't take care of your body along the way, right? Things like that, right? So, so be intentional about that freedom, be intentional about the path to get there. That's how you solve that riddle. I believe reverse engineer. I got myself at 45 and I broke it down into six F's, family and friends, finance, fitness, faith, future self and fun. And basically everything mine was not nine buckets, but I'm going to look at yours, maybe a missing something there. But, uh, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of each of those things and it's building the right habits along the way to get those things. It doesn't happen tomorrow because they're working progress.

1:09:21Yeah, and your definition, your definition is different than my definition is different than my wife's definition. Everybody's definition is different, right? And the trade-off sign willing to make are different than the trade-off somebody else is willing to make. And so it's really interesting when you start to think about it like that. And in my model, they're all interrelated. So, you know, some things help other things, some things hurt other things. And so it's a whole, it's a fun puzzle to think about. Yeah, it is. That matters. And reverse engineering how to get to where you'd want to be. I think a lot of people don't really know. I think you should go out and visit the people that have been where you want to go because I've met a lot of billionaires and I say very, very few of them are seriously truly happy. I mean, they turn into alcoholics or some type of drug addict. They're definitely depressed. And I just know that money's not always the answer. It's a good tool. And it could do a lot of cool things, but it's not the only thing. Mark, I'm going to just let you,

1:10:21I got so many notes here, structural fuels freedom, be intentional about the systems. One person be accountable. I can go on and on with all the notes I have. But, you know, everybody needs to go out and read your book. What's the best way to get the book? Visionary. So visionarybook.com. That's it. I mean, that's absolutely. Yeah. We've made it, made it pretty simple for you. And we've got some actually some free tools to help help folks kind of understand what's in it. And then it's available on all major, major booksellers. But then we've got, if they go there, and they buy the book, we've got more tools that they can access if they go to that site. And, you know, we've got a community for book owners talking about visionary stuff. And some other things are tools that I talk about in the book that we expand on. Even more. I think this is one of my favorite podcasts just because I think people are going to really relate to this and it really hits home. I'm going to let you close this out, brother. Anything. Well,

1:11:22first, one other thing, how do people get a hold of you if they wanted to reach out? They just it provoked a lot of thought. What's, is there any place that's easier to get a hold of you on? Yeah. So I'm Mark C. Winters.com pretty much everywhere. So my mom insisted that I use that middle initial from the time I was a little kid. So Mark C. Winters on, that's my handle on social media. So LinkedIn, X, you know, whatever, YouTube. But yeah, so feel free. I'd love to hear from folks. And then I'll give you just the last few minutes to close this out whenever it's on your mind. Maybe we didn't hit. I think we did a good job. You know, the book I wrote because I think the visionary role is so important. And so the book lays out the 10 pillars of what it looks like to be truly great in that, in that visionary role. And so where Rocket Fuel, the first chapter was about visionaries, you know, in this book, the whole thing is about visionaries. So the feedback has been fantastic. You know, I appreciate you. Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. Amazing book.

1:12:26Really truly. Yeah. And so I hope it helps some visionaries. And I think it will. It seems like it seems like it is. And again, that's that's how we make an impact is is through those new visionaries that are listening. You know, we're counting on you to change the world. You know, the world, the world needs that continued visionary energy, driving us, driving us forward, making things happen. And so I'm eternally grateful for all of the visionaries. And Tommy, I'm grateful for you having me on today. Been a lot of fun to talk. Catch up. It's been great, man. Next time you're in Phoenix, let me know. And I go visit Dallas from time to time. So I'll definitely hit you up. And thank you for the time today. That's my pleasure.