Welcome to the Scale With Speed podcast. I’m Matt Manero and I’m Judge Graham. We’re happy to have you guys with us. As I hope you’ve been enjoying the other episodes as we continue to grow, the Scale was Speed podcast. Why? Because scale equals revenue and speed equals profits.

Today’s theme, but I really like how the studios are coming together. Do you like graphics?

I love them. It’s organized chaos. Right?

I saw some real estate show the other day. I can’t even remember what they were saying, but I said, I really liked that. It’s like minimalistic, but well thought out. I mean, if anybody goes to the Judge’s home office, you’ll see. He has memorabilia all over the place and it’s cool, man. It’s cool to see you, the connection that you have two periods in your life, you know, whereas if you look at my office, it’s literally like pictures on the floor. Cause I can’t commit to putting them on the wall. Cause it means I have to remember those days. But it is what it is. That’s the truth of the matter.

So today’s about, how do you celebrate within your organization? Why do you need to celebrate in your organization? And, and I, I like to sum this up, uh, and, and set it up rather with, um, you know, I believe life is hard, man. And I believe a lot of people have shitty lives. I think they pick the wrong people to marry and you know, despite wanting to be a good parent, they got a kid that twists off. Maybe they got some health issues. Maybe they got, you know, parents who didn’t record their tapes, right. Or, you know, they’ve had tragedy. And the reason I’m bringing that stuff up is because I think it is a, the magic of entrepreneurship that you and I talk about a lot. And one of the requirements of being the entrepreneur and the boss is to create an environment in which you, you, you give people a chance to change that, right?

They may still have to go home to a shitty life because of that wrong dude, dude, you, you pick the wrong spouse. That’s a big, you got one foot in a hole in another, on a banana peel. If you go home to the wrong spouse every night. And, and um, and so imagine if the work environment can actually make the person feel good about who they are and that there’s hope, and that may be some of the wrong choices they’ve made. Don’t have to always repeat themselves. And that there is a respite from the nightmare that may happen at home. And I mean, I don’t want to digress too much, but like you’ve brought this to my attention, judge. I didn’t really think about this through COVID, but you know, this goes back to what, why we got to go to school. I mean, dude, there is bad shit that happens at home man. And some of these

Kids aren’t eating abused, neglect,

You know, and the way they get away from it is through this is to go to school at least for that six, seven, eight hours a day. And then maybe if they’re fortunate enough to go and play a team sport or something, right.

And that’s where they get celebrated and they get a win, right? Because at home they’re a piece of fucking shit and it sucks. And you know, so it’s the school and sports for me are so much bigger than school

In sports. And I think, I think the same thing happens in the work environment. So if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re listening to this, you’re a business owner and you’re listening to this, which is what we intend most of the listing audience to be. We want to challenge you with the concept today of celebrating everything and finding reasons to celebrate more stuff in your organization. If you’re watching today’s podcast on YouTube, which you can go to burn the ships on YouTube, look up podcasts, Gail wispy podcasts, and you’ll find it. You’ll see the setup that we have. And what we did was we went around the offices here at the commercial fleet and we grabbed little trophies and chotchkies that we have used to celebrate people in this office. If you had gone to a one to judges, uh, previous companies before his exit, you would have seen the same day

All over the place. You you’re you’re

Ward, there was the chainsaw. And what did the red chain saw mean?

Red chainsaw once a month. Um, what did a team member do to innovate in the cut through right? To, you know, you’re, you’re in this, this forest that’s just completely dense and you can’t get out. Right. And so the, the idea of the chain saw, so everybody listening and that’s fucking pro green is like, hate me. Right. Cause I’m cutting trees down, but that’s part of it, right. It’s to innovate through. Right. And, and, and you did something for a client, right? They just, just cut through it and we won or you did something internally in the company. And it was a big deal, man. I mean, we would get up, there was a monetary award that came with it. But for that month you got this manufactured red chain, Saul trophy, you got your picture on the website, you put it on your desk and it was, it was meaningful, you know? And so that was the once a month award. And then we actually had co then also we had four core values and then there was a core value award that we celebrated too.

Yeah, it’s ongoing. Um, and here here’s the reason why celebrations matter because in the real deal world, um, there’s not a lot of that goes on because by the time the wire hits, you’re all so freaking exhausted from that deal. Anyway, that popping champagne really only happens in the movies. I mean, you know, dude, I mean that, like now you have had that official pop champagne moment, like wire came in, we’ve been paid on the exit guys. We’re literally going to celebrate, but in the normal course of doing business and doing deals, that’s that, that thing happens only in the movies and on TV. Again, commercially by the time we are done with a big deal, dude, we’re, we’re already, we’re kind of onto the other deal because it’s strung out so long. It just doesn’t start in the morning and finish. And everyone says, Hey, we’re going out to a steak, right.

It goes on for months and months before the deal. So you’ve got to find something to celebrate. So let’s talk about why we celebrate matters, Judge. I put a couple bullet points here for us to help the listening audience. And, you know, I did kind of start talking about it where, you know, some people have shitty lives, man. And you know, I believe the entrepreneur business owner has to do everything they can to help people not have a shitty work environment that correlates with their shitty home life. And I know dude that I know that bad things happen to good people. You know, I’m not saying that the shitty life is that person’s responsibility or cause I just know that it happens, man, this, I know you could have married the best husband in the world. And then, you know, he starts boozing too much.

And, and you know, he ends up not being that dream husband that you thought, you know, but you got kids, so you don’t want to leave his ass, man. Could you imagine if you were able to at least get the respite at the office that said, this place thinks of me differently than my shitty husband does. I just think it’s so important, man. A number two, this is a big one too, dude. Maybe even bigger than the first one. I’m not trying to get back to it, dude. Your winners require celebration. Like if you ain’t patting your winners on the back, they’re wondering why you ain’t celebrating that and that, I mean, you want to take it, you want to take that and expand on that

Fuels more winning, right. Celebrating. Um, you know, I, I get back to w w I think the previous podcast we talked about, like when did I really understand winning is when I scored my first touchdown in eighth or ninth grade. Right. And so that was like, Holy shit, everybody’s celebrating. I feel this euphoric winning. And so if you’re in an environment where people are winning, but they’re not getting the euphoric celebration piece of it, the wind doesn’t correlate. Right. So that’s why it’s so key that it has to have this comradery and the celebration. And then all of a sudden that fuels, right. The guy or gal that maybe didn’t win that deal. They’re like, Holy shit, I want that attention. I want to feel celebrated. I want the trophy. And it just rolls. We talk about that, that momentum, Matt, I mean, celebrating creates an environment that fuels winning and winning can’t happen.

Yeah. And you know, what’s awesome. Um, if you really drive this into the culture, regardless of the size of the organization, it does feed on itself. In other words, your other divisions may start having celebrations. You don’t even know about like, yeah. It looks to me like in this office, there’s like two or three celebrations going on today. I’m not even sure what the hell we’re celebrating.

Well, I know you’re, we’re, we’re having a barbecue. Right.

Well, I know that there’s a birthday, there’s a birthday. I think there’s, there’s some anniversaries. I just know there’s balloons and shit on the wall. And I wasn’t in charge of it because the team said, it’s okay to celebrate. It’s okay to reward. Now let’s go do more of it. So number three, on the list of why celebrating matters so much is it’s cheap. If you’re watching this right now on YouTube, I’m holding up an award here. This goes out every week in our, in our morning, scrum. Um, if you hit a certain number in our office of, of, uh, rev, gen, you get this, now this, uh, gold plastic American flag, kind of, um, Chachi chotsky ribbon on it. It goes around your neck. And I remember when we started buying these, I think you can get a packet of 20 for under 10 bucks, 50 cents. Okay. 50 cents a piece or less. So these are all over the place in people’s cubes in this office. And you know, when their name gets announced on Monday, they walk up and get it, dude. Nobody’s nobody’s like, yeah, no, thanks. They want this freaking 50 cent token, man. So celebrations are cheap. Can I, can I have you tell a story? Yeah, man.

And you know, you may have had it already in here, but I’m going to, I’m going to interject because it’s such a powerful story and you often share it at the burn, the ship one, that’s an emotional one, right. We know where I’m going with this, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna frame it up and I’d love for you to take it over because it’s the best form of celebration that I’ve ever seen. Right. And it ties back to, you talked about this outlet that you can make the magic of entrepreneurship. If you know, you’re having tough, you know, physically or health or whatever, you’ve created that in the story. Right? So everybody that’s watching this, the word CFF international Matt’s primary company, we walked around here, but just an amazing what over 12,000 square feet here, a basketball court, just to be motorcycles in the office. It’s just amazing. The place is absolutely amazing. One of the cool things, um, of many here at CFF is Matt does, is it, is it every day,

The bootcamp, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Monday, Wednesday,

Thursday, for years, he’s hired a personal trainer that comes in, there are showers here at the facility, um, that comes in and does a boot camp or workout Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, Monday, Thursdays, and Fridays. Um, it’s just a part of the culture. Right? And so w that’s cool, but, but expand on that story about the celebration of what

Happened in that moment. Yeah, man. So we had an idea of let’s create an award and we called it the CFF bootcamp champ award to celebrate, to celebrate the person that is making the most strides in the bootcamp. And then what we did was we took the company politics out of it. And we gave the award to the trainer who he picks, right? So there’s no, there’s no intermingling of connection or favoritism or any of that bullshit. It’s all about effort. And that’s all that guy gives a shit about, you know what I mean? He’s, by the way, just, you know, in, in the six or seven years that we’ve been doing it, we’ve only had two personal trainers. And I’m, I’m not shitting you. These two guys, I bet between the two of them, we’ve missed maybe four bootcamps, for some reason, whether it’s they got sick or the weather was bad, literally like four out of, I don’t know what the count is on that a thousand or something mean these guys show up one guy is his huge Russian like military coat when it’s cold outside.

He’s like, he wears it. It goes down with my ankle. It’s crazy. But, uh, you know, one of the things that, that, that has happened in the past is, um, when we give that bootcamp, champ, look, guy starts here. Maybe they’re a little overweight, whatever. They start the bootcamp and they start to feel good about themselves then. Right. And, uh, you know, I remember one time a guy wins the bootcamp in his first week. He worked out Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. That’s a requirement to win the award. You have to do all three boot camps for the week. And he gets the award. And I remember he got it on Thursday and I came in on Friday. I was like, Hey man, where’s that award? He said, I took it home to show my son, you know, that’s so amazing that, you know, the guy, the guy came here for some reason and he gets the opportunity to do stuff like that. So why, why wouldn’t you want to just think outside the box for 10 minutes, this weekend of what can you do in your organization to just start celebrating more, you know? Yeah.

The Impact that made on him and his family and his son go so much past transactional and money and monetary. Right. So I think, you know, Mt. What’s so important about that story is we’re trying to hit it home. Listen, you work more in your job than you usually live at home. Okay. So make a fucking big business, make a business that matters, make a fucking business that did not only people make money, but, but you change lives. Right? What Matt’s talking about changed a fucking life. Okay. That’s, that’s what the celebration shit’s about. That’s what entrepreneurs, you know, is about. And so, you know, you gotta win, right? You gotta make money and you gotta win, but you gotta celebrate along the way to build camaraderie. If you want a real business, it has to be bigger than you. As the big boss, it has to be about the people. Real business has people. That’s just how it plays out. And if you’re not winning, you can’t celebrate. And if you’re not celebrating, you’re not winning.

Yeah. Dude, Warren buffet talks about, uh, when he, when he speaks to college students, he tells them that, you know, he’s like, basically your life is the same as my life. He’s like, we both have air conditioning when it’s hot. We both have heat. When it’s cold, we both pretty much eat the same food. He says like Warren buffet eats McDonalds bread every morning and shit. He says the only primary difference between me and you is that I traveled better than you guys. Right. And he’s like, I’ll never give up the jet. Um, and he’ll never have to, but the point in the story, what he’s trying to say is sooner or later, there is enough money to live and pretty much survive. And as the business owner, the question becomes, you know, that’s when it gets fun. It’s like, I like to say when the paycheck on Friday doesn’t matter anymore. That’s when life begins. Totally. So, but judge, I appreciate you bringing up the boot camp champ, but I want to give the audience a real reason to celebrate. I want you to walk us through what it was like when you sold RP one. I mean, from a celebration stanky one, what’d I say [inaudible] um, I want you to walk us through like, I mean really what, what DO that was the ultimate celebration, correct? Me if we’re wrong. I mean, maybe you had more meaningful celebrations, but that’s okay.

That was a big one, man. That’s what all the work went towards the wire.

Yeah. The exit occurs, what’d you guys do?

Oh, it was amazing. We’ll save it for another podcast when I was six, you know, five to six days away and then the deal was off.

Oh, that’ll be a whole,

That’ll be, how do you, how do you handle bad news? Yeah. Listen man. And mean you, you visualize it, right? Yeah.

And this is why Matt and I talk about the end game. Right? If you, you should be, you should be pre celebrating what that endgame result is. And so for me, um, I built a plan and then executed it and, and, and realized it. Right. And so the celebration, there was just, it was amazing. It was, it was, it was more fun, Matt, for me to build out the, how to celebrate in the giving. Right? I mean, now listen, I’ve bought some pretty cool stuff and continue to buy cool stuff. But when that hit, dude, I was more worried about my mom, my dad, my wife, my kids, my mother-in-law right. My, my in, in what I did, um, to celebrate with them through monetary things. And in this, this, this just special moment of a dinner of like, listen, you guys fucking believed in me and, and you sacrifice, and let’s be clear. The family piece, specifically, my wife and kids in, in, in intermediate family, they were on that trip with me and they had to sacrifice just as much. So that celebration of the five years of all the shit and ups and downs and the fucking heartache and the blood, the sweat, the tears, right. You were, you were mentoring one of the sales guys this morning. And he was like, dude, it’s still fucking work. Like they understood the work. And it was this just moment of two hours of just Holy fuck.

Yeah.

You know, we know now we have monetary things to prove it, but it was a special moment that, uh, but you want mad. It didn’t last long. And I think that every real entrepreneur is always wanting that next bite or that next piece. Right. So, you know, for the two hours it was, it was Nirvana. And then it was like, what’s next? But what was, I mean, you guys went to a steakhouse. You, you came to the house, how w what was the celebration of the egg? It was multitude, but, uh, the main one was, um, it, it, my house. So, you know, Jordan went and literally, um, where you in the big house at that time, or are you in a different house? I was in a different house. You were, I was in a different house. Yeah. And, um, in that house, I remember, you know, she, um, Jordan got the wire and literally almost ran off the road Call and said, Hey, I just checked your account

Again. I hope people know I’m not coming across boastful. It’s just, you know, trying to help you see that the work is possible. And there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. For most of us, if you follow the process, it was pretty cool. I mean, she went and, and we had a bunch of really cool, special gifts, and we had a very intimate dinner just at the house. And it was good. It was awesome, dude. You’re, you’re, you’re under selling. I mean, I don’t want to like it, yeah. Yeah. I’m just, I think what we’re trying to get across to you though, is that, is that the experience that most, most business owners go through, which is this ongoing nightmare of, I can’t get away from this shitty business. It’s Groundhog day over and over and over there is a different way. Yeah. And it is through the process. We’re not trying to upsell you on burn the shifts, but it is

Come to burn the ships dot com go to our October boot camp. So one of the things we always want to do in the podcast is we want to give our audience tangible things. We call it Monday moments. You get them in every single episode,

The things that you can take from today’s podcast and put into play on Monday in your office. We call them Monday moments. The first Monday moment, judge, I’ll take it. Okay. If we want you to go on Amazon right now. And we want you to order awards, like not think about it anymore. Just go to Amazon and pull the trigger and buy trophies or metals or, or gift cards, or go to the bank and get some cash. It doesn’t matter whether it’s $20 bills or whatever. Um, you know, one of the things that we give every year at the Christmas party who are number one, guys, we have a custom made WWE like wrestling belt. Oh, that’s awesome. You know, with his name on it and the whole thing. And I think he has three or four now in his office, dude, he wears that at the crib puts that sucker, right? Not that it’s bad to the bone. I mean, it is a major like Welter, weight belt. I mean, it’s bad ass, leather, heavy. I mean, don’t think about this, pull the trigger and start ordering stuff. And everyone thinks it’s expensive, but it’s not. I bet for 40 bucks you could get this whole celebration where everything started. Totally.

So another one is, and I love this one is to run a contest. So a lot of you here that are running businesses have millennials in, in, in that organization. And what’s even below millennial, whatever’s coming up is getting the workforce to, um, dude, those stat groups aren’t as highly motivated by just money, right? You need to be running a contest. Would it? Maybe it’s a snooze button. It’s a vacation. It’s some sort of incentive. Maybe it’s a cool pair of shoes. You can get, you can’t get anywhere. What’s the contest you’re running that has meaningful value to the audience. You’re trying to motivate. And now listen, Matt and I won’t, we won’t be really clear when we say you need to celebrate dude. The celebration has to be fucking armed. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. There has to be winning happening that ties back to the dollar and cents because that’s just how it plays out because this is a profit, um, podcast.

And we’re assuming you’re running a for profit business. So everything has to be tied back to capitalism. I’m making money and I’m winning, but dude, you should be celebrating those, but you should be building contests that motivate that inspire that make people want to do it right. When’s the last time you surveyed your audience. Okay, dude, if you, if you’ve got 40 sales reps in there, they’re all types of backgrounds and ethnicity and age and sex and gender and all those things. What motivates them, right? Because it may not just be money. We need the DoubleClick and the understanding of what it is. And you build contests that inspire and motivate

Zee. You are the funkiest dresser in this office. So, or the most dapper is funky and dapper. What would we, what would be a contest that would interest you now? Z is our, our, uh, in our marketing department, he handles all the video editing and all that sort of stuff. Today he’s wearing yellow and black shoes. He has a gorgeous gold jacket, gold and a turquoise jacket, a gold diamond watch on, looks sharp as shit drives, drives a car that is faster than almost everyone in here except for the judge’s car. Well, I don’t know. You see, you’d probably like to drag race that one. So he wants to see how that plays out. How much horsepower does your car have? 400 horses. It sounds like it’s got about 800. What would motivate you Zee in a contest or contest for a marketing guy right now that would motivate you specifically

The best dress For Z would be. He gets, you know, a I’m making this up. I don’t know where he’s shot, you know, a, a thousand dollar gift card to Nordstrom judge, $1,300

Gift card. It depends on what we’re with it, right? Depends on how big the carrot is. If he generates 300,000 sales, let’s get the guy a fucking thousand dollars gift card. Well, see, that’s interesting. Yeah.

Say that. See, I wouldn’t have made that connection. You know, I wouldn’t have said that you would be inspired for the best dress. That’s the purpose of, of figuring out condoms, but you know, what’s cool about that mat. That particular contest is, is, you know, how you feel, right? How you look, the swagger you carry, if you’re in shape or not, or whatever, ultimately ties to better performance. So if you started running a best dress, guess what?

Yeah. Motherfuckers around here would be looking better. [inaudible] hair cuts would be more frequent, you know, clean shaven would be happening more, you know? So, uh, you know, there’s been a fix even in that.

I love even just knowing that that’s a piece that you would think the organization could recognize you for, you know, that’s cool, man. So, um, number three on the Monday moments, dude is this, this is hard for some entrepreneurs because we have found that a lot of entrepreneurs while they, while bravado and all that is what the persona is. The reality is most are fairly introverted. Um, but we, we suggest you give the, we, you run the contest, you give the award in a public setting to bring the team together. This isn’t something you want to just slide under their desk or put on their chair, dude, celebrate this sumbitch with everybody, bring the team together and say, here is the award ceremony. Yeah. So for those again, I always come back to, I mean, athletics shaped so much of my life. And so for the folks listening to that, that he had ever been in that locker room post, when did ask the freaking environment you want to create, right? You as the leader that had coach and after you create that win and you left the blood, the sweat, the tears, the dedication

And everything on the field. It’s that moment. It’s that kind of moment that you want to celebrate. Like, you know, when Matt, same bringing everybody together. You know, I remember we used to bring in our Monday meetings, I had gigantic freaking speakers. I’m sure the tenants above and below hated us and did it about 7:30 AM. I mean, it’s, it was like death metal or eighties fucking notorious VIG rap, and just bang it, it just, just this mentality of something’s coming. Yeah. We’re just gonna win and then we’d run in and everybody’s jumping and clapping and hyping and dude that’s, that’s what that’s.

Yeah, that’s cool. We got, we gotta take it from a three on the Sonos to probably going to do judge state number four the last Monday moment. Yeah. Start the process

All over again. Next week. I love this one matter. I mean, it’s, it has to be habitual, right. Matt and I talked so much about it, I’m sure we’ll do a podcast on culture, but how you do one thing is how you do everything. Right. And you, you, you did that scene and I’ve been stealing that here lately. Cause it’s so true. So if you just do it once, then, then it’s not meaningful. What does a habit have to be? What 21 days or something? This has to be structured. Okay. If you’re going to give a thousand dollar gift card, like I suggested you have to make sure that the rope, the wind justifies that, right. You have to audit and survey your team. What do they want? Right. It has to be meaningful. It has to be inspired. It has to be organized. It has to be planned and it has to be executed with consistency. Okay. You can take that tip. I just said and apply it to fucking everything in business. Okay. Because that, that is, that is the key formula. But specifically for this, you have to have that consistency that rigor in and you have to, because I can promise you, um, you know, I can even tell a story one time did a, so Matt, we used to get out fearless was the, uh, the award for, uh,

The culture for us.

It’s one of the core values. And we had Amazon hope guys. Right. And I remember, you know, it was a certain one we bought. And then I think at the time my assistant or whoever was buying them, bought a different one, whether it was cheaper or it was discontinued, or it was smaller do, there was a noticeable, like what the fuck is up with my whole, like, I’ve been wanting to win that hole. And I got this little bullshit hope. Now I want that one. Okay. That shit matters. Right? The consistency, it matters. The little things matter. So I love that you put on there, start the process all over again with consistency, right? I mean, those things

Check out this story, man. Early on in my career in the commercial fleet, we used to factory order vehicles and do the financing. So we provided the vehicle like a dealer and did the financing like a bank. And we placed an order for the Dallas housing authority. Right. Uh, they drove around and, and, and, uh, checked on public housing. And, uh, we, the order, the order came in, we delivered all the vehicles, pickup trucks down to the, to the offices in Dallas. And they rejected the order. And I said, why’d you guys reject the order? And they said, cause they’re not specked out the way we had agreed on the purchase order. And I said, they’re exactly the same. They said, no, they’re not the bumper, the front bumper on the vehicles that you delivered us is Chrome. All the other bumpers that we have are matted gray and people will fight to drive the vehicle with the Chrome bumper over the matted gray bumper.

They rejected Oregon. I get it. So we had to take all the vehicles back. We just scraped the Chrome, painted them gray mat and redelivered them. And they accepted the order to make that mistake again, to be honest with you, it got us out of the factory ordering, because I said, there’s just too many things, too many freaking checks and balances. We’re out rolling, going to find it. But it’s exactly the same situation as your whole story. Yeah, totally dude, there is an expectation that’s created when you do this stuff and people fucking work

With it. Yeah. And you was, the owner needed to step up and do it. So I liked that.

This is a great one, man, dude, it’s super, super important. It’s super cheap.

So create your plan. What are you doing this week, next week consistently to motivate, to inspire your team, to win against the goal and the plan that you created. And more importantly, use the stuff Matt and I talked about today in order to sell it

Right. So let’s get after it. I want you to scale with speed. We want you to scale with speed. We also want you and let’s do the plug. If you like what we’re talking about, dude, come and drink from the fire hose at the burn, the ships bootcamp, October 7th and eighth here in Dallas, burn the ships.com click bootcamp by the books. Judge has two books just type in judge Graham for a scale, with speed and mastering current revenue and get the grit or you need more money on Amazon.

We’ll see y’all down the road and as always make it happen.