Matt Osborne (March 2023)

I'm learning a lot. It's fantastic. I think the fundamentals haven't really changed. I think the economics have changed in six years. We know for certain that they've changed since 2019, right? So, yeah, running... It's interesting you said 'have to' versus 'get to'. I kind of feel like I get to run an office again. At one point I was like, man, that'd be cool if I didn't have to, and now I almost feel like I don't have to, I just get to. This time around, for the last six months, I've been using different parts of my brain. It feels like, Jamie, in some of the relationships that I've built in that office, I remember having in the past, and I forgot what it was like to be able to go through some of the ups and downs with the new people and the leaders and experiencing some of the disappointments. It's actually made my life better. It's made it better. It's fun. I tell people this all the time, and maybe you feel like this, Jamie, but running an office for so long or being around the direct sales industry, it's kind of like we get really good at figuring out a puzzle. I don't like doing puzzles, but if I look at our business, running an office is like a puzzle. You pretty much just have to take the time and eventually the pieces all come together. You just have to work through it. I kind of like solving that puzzle. So it's not as frustrating as maybe it was when I was six years ago or even 10 years ago or 15 years ago. There is frustration, but I'm feeling all the ups and downs, which, as weird as it sounds, it's fun.

Great. And so what do you focus on with your org? I asked this question to all the seniors who get on this call, whether it's Ed or Adam. Okay, so obviously with dozens of outside deals scattered all over the country, what's the messaging you're giving your org right now? Right here. You know, I've been... When you get it, it kind of goes back to what you were saying. Seven years, I wouldn't say I stepped away from anything, but I really stepped away from running an office certainly. It was more that I wasn't a part of the day-to-day. This time around, one of the things I'm focusing on is high rep averages so that we can get competent new leaders, then we can add great people, and then we rinse and repeat that. You and I started in an age long, long time ago where it was kind of like, let's hurry up and get to ownership because that's the only time we're ever going to make money. You're making $600 in the field, that probably was like making $2,000 today. I think sometimes since I went through that, it was okay, let's hurry, it's all about speed. This time around, I looked at it like a business. What could be the biggest, best gift I could give to one of my outside deals? For me, it's like, what would make me the happiest when I think about them? I really want them to have a really strong ICL that has high rep averages, which typically means less turnover, which typically means happier reps. It's a thriving business that my outside deal feels really strong and really good. If that could be the end-all be-all, I think that's a pretty good spot. Then the cherry on top is, who's next? Who do we promote out? Let's go. That's been my focus. I've been talking about this for about three months. I got to spend a week down in Miami at Brennan's office, being a total sponge, asking questions, not giving my opinion on anything, not saying, 'Well, we do it like this.' I was just like, 'Hey, tell me your thoughts on crew night. What are your thoughts on one-on-ones?' I felt like a rookie owner again just asking questions. I was pleasantly surprised. It's like 95% of it is very similar. It was refreshing to see and hear all that stuff. That's been my big focus. Why don't we teach these guys what I'm thinking, the way I'm working? I can't work with all my guys this way, just the ones that I feel have the capacity to have a paradigm shift. I'm talking to them about running your ICL like a real business, not just let's hurry up and build this gigantic head count and get it going. It's more like let's run like a business. What would a client like? High rep averages, they would want sticky sales, they would want high sales. Okay, so you're taking care of the client. What would a healthy ICL look like? How many guys? What would the wires look like? Okay, good. What would a healthy bank account look like? At times over the years, there's been apprehension to stay in that really strong and stable spot because people would assume that you didn't care about your people or promoting out people, or you had to choose one or the other. I've really come around to the concept that you can do both, and that's probably the best thing for my guys. That's what I've been focusing on even in our location now. Let's get the reps' averages up really high. Making sure that our newest people that come in are only surrounded by the best people. I don't want them catching the $600 flu or the $500 flu. Let them catch the $1,000 flu. I'm going to catch the $1,200 flu. Let's not abandon them after two weeks of getting promoted into leadership. Let's stick with them and let this cement dry a little bit. Play the long game. That's the message I'm weaving in. We're doing that personally here in Nashville, but we're also weaving that into a few of the offices across the country.

Well, it's not there yet. I wish it were. But they're higher than they were. We've been talking about this for almost two months now, just talking about sales being the exchange of energy and the office being an exchange of energy, and how suffering people tend to infect other people who might have been healthy. So we're talking about, okay, if they're struggling here, then we have a business and moral obligation to get their averages up or we have to protect the rest of the crew. One of the things we did, we opened this up about a month ago. Unfortunately or fortunately, however you look at it, our head count went down once we started doing it. We didn't expect that. We were like, okay, we'll give these guys more sales training, more leadership coaching, more one-on-ones, more time around us, more mindset coaching. Our assumption was, hey, if they're around these three owners and all of us giving our best, they'll step into that role. We were expecting a lift. That wasn't true. What we actually experienced was it wasn't necessarily a mindset thing or a training thing. It was a will thing. Were they willing to go work hard? The nice thing was, before we had the chance to bottom-line them or anything, they removed themselves from the game. We looked around and went, hmm, we netted negative five leaders in a week, yet our production was 25% more. The office just felt light and airy. We stuck to that same strategy of more time with our people, making sure sales training was a big piece. We're watching the averages go up and everybody's having more fun. I wouldn't call it the weaker links because that sounds horrible, but the guys that are there to do great sales, make a lot of money, and feed off the energy, cool. If you're there to move into a leadership role and contribute to the office and have high production, cool. But if you're not there for any of those reasons, the bare minimum is you have to be doing well with the sales. Those people remove themselves from the game. Now we're building it from strength.

Stevens is in the witness protection program, that's why you can't see it. I can tell that I'm surprised there's like a voice changer over there. DPR, what is that exactly? Dollar per rep. Okay, a little sophisticated for me over here. What like eventually do we want to be shooting for? I think you have a healthy business if you have a thousand dollar average. I think that's healthy. We're not there at all. By just having those people remove themselves, the per piece average went up because we weren't counting their numbers. I think we would be happy to add another $100 on to our hours now, and then six weeks from now let's see if we can get that up to another $100, and another $100. We've set our sights on a thousand dollars per rep. The reason we did that was in an office of let's say 25 guys, that's a huge wire. Not only that, it allows you to promote out and not rebuild, it allows you to reload. There would be nothing better than sending an assistant manager with a minimum of five people averaging a thousand dollars, assistant managers probably doing $1,500, and knowing that they could go anywhere in the country and put up those numbers without any fear or stress of needing to shortcut anything or hire so many people because they have to hurry up and do it. Five people doing a thousand dollars a piece and the owner doing $1,500, you're not on shaky ground. You're on a nice foundation for growth. Anybody that comes in that office is going to feel that energy too. I don't know if I answered that. I didn't use the word DPR, but that's what I meant.

Not really. I feel like it probably wouldn't hurt for me to go back and look at that stuff, but I think we're already full of things that are very similar to that. I will say there's a tendency for us as owners, the longer we're around, we want to not play the simple game and we want to make it complicated because it just makes it more interesting to us. I was having a conversation either today or yesterday with a couple owners, and the reality is some of those simple things that used to stimulate us when we were brand new and really caught our eye, they still catch people's eyes and catch their attention. I think we can get lost in the weeds at times and try to teach the guys what really interests us when really I come around to thinking, you know what, probably those old Zig Ziglar bucks probably make a lot of sense. Everybody just took that information and twisted it whatever way they wanted to. We were having that conversation yesterday because someone, you guys have felt this way, right? You're like, man, I don't have any good material. My material is old and crusty and boring. Well, it might be to us, but it's not to our guys because they're new. They're the audience. If it was good for us and good for everybody else until we got bored of it, well those guys are either running their own show or in another industry or company. It's still interesting, it just might not be to us. It's interesting you say that. I never asked where did it all go, but I was having that conversation yesterday with somebody. I'm like, go check out this guy, he says the same stuff that you grew up on, just a little bit of a different twist. Even though it might seem very elementary to you and you're a little more sophisticated than you were five years ago, go talk about that stuff because that's where they are. Make sure the audience is the one we're focused on when it comes to giving them information, not us, not our interests.

I've been really fortunate to have great recruiters. Just tightening up, keeping things really simple for them, so they've been able to put a lot of people in front of me, the same amount that they've always put in front of me. One difference is possibly do more cost to do less. That's been the same. One big difference is they, you know, I'm old compared to them. Legitimately, I've had a few people over the last three months say, 'Yeah, you know what brought you back for the second interview? I wanted to see if there were people my age, what the culture was.' They assumed everybody here was bald and gray and wrinkly like me. I've noticed that's quite different. Back when I went through that stuff, when we were 23, 24, 25, a lot of people were thinking, 'Are there any adults here?' And we were like, 'Nope, no adults, just us.' So I haven't really noticed a difference. I will say this, with social media, I think people are more bombarded with messaging about other opportunities in this world. Everybody puts their highlight reels out there. Other industries probably look a little more appealing. We're not the sexy game in town at all. There was a time when somebody would go, 'Wow, it's a career path here and here's where it might lead to, and I could do this well.' They can get on TikTok and be bombarded by thousands of people flipping tennis shoes or selling life insurance, and they're like, 'Okay, this isn't as cool as what those guys online are doing.' I think that is a little different than what I was used to even six years ago.

I think people are smarter than I give them credit for. I still truly believe, even though I was super ambitious and wanted to do commission sales and make a ton of money, I still deep down inside was worried that I wasn't going to be able to do it. Within that first month, I was still like, 'Oh my gosh, this is hard,' but I have a community around me of people that are helping me grow. While people see all that stuff online, there's not emotion behind that. We do focus quite a bit on culture. I think people go through different phases. One thing we've implemented that I think really matters, and I never thought about doing it before, is within the first two weeks of them working with us, I'll sit down with them for an hour and just talk about transitions from whatever company they were with, transition over here, and talk about what are you having, are there any things that you had priorities before that you're not able to do since you're working here now? I'm trying to get in front of a lot of the 'I don't have time with my friends or family, I used to work out but now I don't' because, as you know, there's time for all of it. It's just a matter of do you have the structure in place. I've been doing that with a lot of the newer people within their first couple weeks working here, and I can get out in front of some things. What I've noticed is I build a great relationship with them because they're vulnerable with me right away. Like, 'Yeah, I used to work out like crazy and I haven't been,' or 'I work out for three hours.' Then I go, 'Okay, let's say you work out for 45 minutes instead, and let's work through those things.' So I think the personal aspect of it is the way I go. I don't know how to combat the TikTok revolution as you called it. It's working with us. I truly believe there's some psychological safety working with people like us.

Yeah, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. See y'all. Check in with you soon. All right.