The following is an automatically generated transcript of our podcast. Listen to the podcast here.
Ryan (00:49):
Welcome back to the Invincible Teams podcast. I'm your host Ryan Mayfield today. I'm excited to share with you my interview with my friend Glenn Crockett. Glenn is the CEO and one of the founders of Dave Creek Media. Dave Creek is a company that started just a handful of years ago, but has grown rapidly. And so that's what I'm excited to share with you today is Glenn's thoughts and the things that he's learned, pieces of advice that he has around building a team that can lead to explosive growth and the things that you need to do to do the same thing in your business. So I'm excited to share this with you. Now, here you go. My interview with Glenn Crockett.
All right, Glenn Crockett. Welcome to Invincible Teams podcast. How are you?
Glenn (01:32):
I'm great. Thanks for having me.
Ryan (01:33):
I'm super excited to have you here. I think you have a lot of stuff to share. But sometimes I see all the stuff that, that you have worked on or hear stories about things that I'm just like man, busy guy. Does it feel that way?
Glenn (01:48):
You know, it does. And, and I know I'm busy, but it doesn't feel that way is... When you enjoy what you're doing, when you're excited about getting up in the morning and getting started it's just different. I mean, it's, I've been on both sides where I maybe wasn't exactly excited about getting up and, and then, you know, now I can't wait to get started which is good and bad, right. I need to take more time off probably, but don't really want to.
Ryan (02:07):
Why don't you introduce yourself? For people that don't know you tell us about yourself and what it is that you do.
Glenn (02:19):
Okay. Yeah. I'm actually a military kid. My father was in the air force, so we lived in North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and through a career I ended up in Conway probably 30 something years ago. Managing a department store. I was the youngest store manager for this chain that had about 50 stores based out of Louisiana called bell lady men. And that's how I ended up in Conway and did that for a while and then eventually ended up at Axiom. And I was at Axiom for 25 years. And about three a half years ago, decided, you know, now's the time to do something different. And there were some conditions that came up. I have a father-in-law that was in poor health and may need to help with some things area and some businesses. So I was probably the guy to help with that.
And the company was changing, which they always changed. And so that was coming up. And Jeff and I had talked about, you know, maybe doing something together several times and this looked like the opportunity and time to do that. And he, he had left Axiom about six months before I did it. And so we started Dave Creek media. We actually started it without a name. We didn't know what it was. And in fact we've never, and this is, you know, for those that, that have had a lot of business training business, school training, we never have, it still did not have a business plan. We never put one together. We both very you know, we talked a lot about our lions. What is it? You're really good at focus on doing that. And so we're both really strong on the business development side.
So we decided to make the break. We decided to focus on sales consulting as the starting point. And then that kind of changed over time. And we started doing more digital marketing, and then we started adding people and got an office and then got a second office. And now we've added another office. And you know, in the three and a half years, we've really been blessed with where we started with just me as the employee to now we have, I think probably 18 people on the team. Someone who started actually this week and I'm interviewing somebody else next week in another city. And you know, we've really been blessed with that. And it's, you know, not only have we grown from a team standpoint, but our monthly run rate has doubled as well, even during the COVID time. And, and, you know, and it's, I feel bad saying that because I know there've been so many companies that have not had that opportunity, the business they were in just didn't allow them to do that. And some have closed. I've got some friends who have actually closed their business. So we don't take that lightly and we don't want it to come across as as bragging. We just know that we've been blessed during this time and, and, you know, we're still still hitting the gas trying to go faster
Ryan (05:03):
Well, and that's an amazing statement in and of itself. Cause I, you know, I've been around long enough to see basically the lifetime of this company so far. And man, it really does feel like you guys have just exploded, which, which is what I want to talk about with you today. And also like with your team, you mentioned them. And so talking about how to put together a team with that kind of explosive growth in mind. But before I get to that, there's a couple of questions I want to ask on the way to that conversation. And the first one is this, I just, I want to know for you in your business experience what's the thing that you've done that you're most proud of,
Glenn (05:45):
You know, that's that's a really tricky question. I would say the thing that I'm most proud of we have. So when COVID started, we started having a weekly update with business update with Glenn four o'clock every Monday. And, and the intent of the call was to come together and talk about the COVID rules of the week, right? Because everything was changed and there was no playbook how you deal with some of this. And the intent was to update everybody and just say, Hey, here's what's going on in our, our philosophy or our, our guidelines changed over time based on information that came up. But I guess what I'm most proud of is when we get together, we did, we do it in one of our offices and everybody's spaced out they're all in different areas, right?
And then we have a laptop set up where we can see people on zoom. Those that are, that are working from home. And what we've told everybody is if you feel uncomfortable that maybe you've been someplace that, that may not have spent may not be, could have been at risk or whatever may not be safe, then you can work at home and there's no judgment. You can do that as long as you want to, or if you believe somebody else in the office did something that you're uncomfortable with, you don't have to tell them, just work from home. And so we've been able to do that, but what, I guess, what has been the thing I'm most proud of is looking around the room at all of the people that are in this room, knowing that it started with one person and, you know I'm responsible for the day to day, but I could never have gotten here, had it not been for, you know, the partnership with Jeff.
And so but being able to look around the room and see the number of jobs that we've created and knowing that we're working towards a goal that will create even more jobs right here in Conway. And that's the thing that gets me most excited. It's funny, I'll tell people, I'll look around the room and I'll sell these people. And I go, man, this is incredible. We have all these people here, but then I want to grab a paper bag and keep me from hyperventilating going down. I'm responsible for all these, you know, so but that's probably it, you know, the, the, the numbers obviously are important, but it's more about the people that we're impacting and providing a culture that hopefully people want to be a part of. That's the thing I think I'm most proud of.
Ryan (07:58):
Yeah. Well, I love that. And, and that hits me in a personal way because I'm, I'm friends with several of those people that aren't in that room. So that's super cool though. I love that answer. You know, let me ask this, whenever you go to start a business like Dave Creek, how quickly do you know, I mean, you mentioned that you don't have a business plan even to this day, but how quickly do you know where you want to take that business in terms of growth? Did you have any idea that you'd be where you're at now? Did you have completely different idea about that?
Glenn (08:29):
You know we always knew we wanted to have large scale. I'm going to do it. I'm going to go at it, you know, as big as I can. And, and I believe that I truly, truly, truly believe that God put me in this position to do exactly what we're doing. And if he's given me that much responsibility, then it's my obligation to do the best that I can possibly do. So, so that's part of it, but I believe some of it also is the mindset of, of growth. How big do you want to be? We were, we never intended and we love the local market, but we never intended to be solely focused on just serving clients in Conway or just serving clients in Arkansas. We always wanted to have a national brand serve clients all over the place, because that's what I was used to at Axiom.
You know, I didn't have to travel to New York all the time or, or wherever to meet with clients. I could do it remotely. So it's, it's having the right mindset, that my scope can be much, much larger and everything we do should be built in a way that can be scaled to be across the U S so also knowing that, because we had a business to business, business, B2B business, that we were not reliant on people coming to us to make purchases as if I were a retail or a restaurant or something like that. Right. We could go wherever we wanted. And I've always had the mindset that if business got slow, I don't do a lot of the direct sales. Now we have teams that do that, or a team that does that I participate in. I still do some of it, but I've always had the mindset that it business got slow, that I could personally go out and get whatever business we needed, because I believed in what we're doing for clients.
And I could go get more. So you know, part of it is the mindset that that you can go much larger. You know, Ryan Jeff and I co lead the 10 X accelerator here in Conway and the focus of that entire group. And we've been through four cohorts in three years and is to help them understand how to 10 X their business and a lot of it is, you know, the math is easy, all those things, but it's the mindset of thinking, how do I make it 10 times the size? Because 10 times the size is a completely different mindset than growing about 20% a year. So it's, I think it's, it's more about getting your mind to think that way. And then you're planning to go in that direction as well.
Ryan (10:52):
Do you ever worry about you know, outrunning yourself? Is that a fear?
Glenn (10:58):
A little bit? You know, I refer to it when I talk to people about that, I refer to it as the dance. So you have a lot of business development, right? So now, you know, we've got the sales now I need to hire people to deliver the sale, deliver what we sold. Right. I have some, but we may get ahead of them. So I need more delivery people. And then we get delivery caught up. Now, there we need, we have some bandwidth, we need to go sell more and we need more delivery and they need to sell more. So it's that, it's that constant back and forth. And just in the last, probably four months, we have actually separated the two disciplines. One of our offices is focused on sales. The other office is focused on delivery, and I have somebody leading the delivery side and I'm leading the sales side. And what's kind of funny the way we describe our roles is it's my job to make it rain. It's his job to make sure we don't drown. So we, we have separate roles. He's focused on making sure we're optimized to, to do the best that we can for our clients. And my job is to help us identify opportunities and scale our business through a new salespeople and other strategies. Yeah,
Ryan (12:06):
Well, that makes sense. I want to hear more about how you came to the decision to split that role up that you were playing into those two separate things, but I want to back up a little bit and go back to when, you know, you're still kind of starting this whole thing at the beginning. What's the thing for you when, when do you advise people to make the first hire, right. When you're trying to grow a business and grow a team, how do you know when to make your first hire?
Glenn (12:34):
For me, it was we were, we were very much we had a backup plan. You know, when I decide to leave Axciom, it was okay, well, let's, let's try this for three months, which is not a long time, right. To see it. And it wasn't that we needed to completely replace my income in three months, but we needed to see that it was moving in that direction. And so what we did is we actually had a date. It was July 1st. So July 1st was the go or no-go date. And we said, this is how much I need to make each week. And every time I make that amount, each week, we added on to the decision date. So if in the first month I earned two weeks of that, then it became July 15th is when we make the decision. And every time I earned money, we kept adding it on.
And I was blessed to have our first client, my first week out. We added a consulting client the very first week out. And then, so it just kept working and kept working in. So when we were able to have the funds to go hire somebody, we hired somebody that could do something that I wasn't as good at. Right. I didn't hire another salesperson. I hired someone part time to help me with some of the delivery work. And then, and so that allowed me to do more business development. You remember back to the dance analogy, she was doing the delivery. Now I could sell more and she would kind of get ahead of me. So then I would go, then I hired another sales person. Then I heard another delivery person. And so it, it just kept that back and forth. So for us, it was very much, we would have the money in the bank or to go hire somebody before we would jump out and and take the risk.
So we've been, we've bootstrapped everything to the point where, you know, I was executing campaigns. A lot of the stuff that we do I'm very, very tight. You know, like the office rent, I painted a large portion of this and, and Jeff's wife actually helped paint some of it, you know, some of the fixtures and stuff, and the office are built. So whatever we have to do to save money is kind of what we're doing. Now. It's more about what is the most efficient. We still want to be conservative on spend, but I don't need to be painting walls. I need to be focused on growing the business versus painting the walls. Right?
Ryan (14:52):
That makes a lot of sense. You know, you mentioned your first hire being somebody that didn't do the same thing that you do. Do you think that is kind of a truth for all businesses, as people are trying to grow a business and start something new, should the first hire always be somebody that's different from you? How do you know what to look for?
Glenn (15:11):
Yeah. I absolutely believe that because if you know, I even have a saying; it's kind of cold, but if both of us are doing the same thing, one of us is not needed. Right. So, you know, and that, that is kind of cold. But if, but if especially in a B2B world, you need someone that can compliment you. We merged with a company bigger picture marketing here in Conway. Jacob Michealas had an agency that he was running was really him and a part-time person, but he had some skills that we didn't have. He, he, in fact, he came on board in March and one of the reasons that we've kind of accelerated our growth is because of the skills that he brought to the table. So I don't have to worry about how to set up a drip campaign for email.
I don't have to worry about how to build a website. I don't even know how to do that. They do that. So I don't have to worry about it. So I think when, anytime you have it's, it's Ryan, it's like a football team, right. They don't get up there and it's all quarterbacks and they don't get up there. And it's all linemen. You got to have people that are specialized in certain areas. And when you're, when you first start, when you're young, you have a lot of people to do a lot of things, but as you get more mature, you can get people that really specialize. And one of the things we do when we interview people will ask the question, what are you really, really good at? Because we're looking for specialist, we're not looking for generalist in most cases, what are you really good at?
And unfortunately, a lot of the young people coming out of school don't have anything that they're really, really good at. You know, they, they learned a lot of different things, but they're not really you know, highly focused in an area. So, you know, one of the Hannah that works for us, she came out with, you know, videos. She worked for us as an intern, did video for us. And now she's full-time and she's shooting hundreds of videos. She's really, really good, but she was specialized. We have somebody else who just started an intern and she really likes building websites. So she's more specialized. So it's easier for us to bring someone on if they have a skill that we can start using right away. .
Ryan (17:16):
Well, that, that makes a lot of sense too. So, I mean, I guess this a little detour from the conversation, but you know, if there's college students out there listening, I guess that sounds like a big piece of advice you would give them is to really hone in on something, right?
Glenn (17:31):
Yeah, absolutely. And, and to the point that we've even talked about offering to teach some classes that UCA or CBC or Hendrix that helped them understand the top roles that we're looking for. Just a a side detour to tell you why we think that's so important and there's a train coming. So I'll apologize for that. We're very close to the train, right? So in this, we haven't announced this yet. We've talked to some people about it, but we haven't announced it over the last couple of months. We've been working with a consultant out of Chicago to help us to begin franchising Dave Creek media, this consulting company. If you go to entrepreneur magazine and you do a search on top consulting, you know, franchise consulting firms, this one is number one. And so we chose them for a number of reasons, but they've been helping us with strategy and all the things that we have to do there.
So the goal is by the end of January, first part of February, that we would be offering Dave Creek Media franchises, and these franchisees would not have to do website. They wouldn't have to do social media. In fact, they can't do it. That's not part of the agreement. It's really more of a sales office. So if you were in Tulsa or Springfield and you had a really fast network and you could, you were good at you know, networking with people, you could have a franchise and all of the fulfillment would take place in Conway. So whenever you got a new client, the website would be built in Conway, social ads would come out of Conway. We might send a crew up to do video, but everything would be in Conway. We believe that for every franchise that we add, we'll be increasing jobs for our office between one and five. So the first year goal was to have 10 franchises. So that's adding 10 to 20 jobs right here in Conway. That five-year goal is 125. And so we started doing the math and all of that and it, and the number of jobs potential could be very significant just right here in Conway. So so anyway, so that's why we, we we need people that are specialized and while we're excited about continuing to create jobs right here.
Ryan (19:42):
Well, and that's a whole other level of like, I mean, we're talking about growth, you know, and, and that kind of thinking, I guess, that kind of model that really puts a new level of growth on there. It feels like. So I'm excited to see what that, that turns into for you guys. That sounds awesome.
Glenn (20:02):
Franchising is a growth strategy. That's not for all companies, right? I mean, it has to be something that's repeatable. And what we're doing is a little bit different. We can't find a company currently franchising that does it the way that we are going to do it. And I've, I've been very clear with our consultant. I said, you know, that means that, man, this is a great idea. We're first to get out there and do this. Nobody else is doing, there's a huge opportunity, or this is a stupid idea. That's why nobody's doing it. It's going to completely flock. And you know what the good news for us is that our growth is not dependent on this. In fact, we're building out our next year, our 2021 plan really doesn't even incorporate any revenue from franchises. So although we've invested a lot in getting getting it ready, it just, it doesn't include that. So it's not like we're, we're betting the farm that this would work. It's very much additive to what we're already doing.
Ryan (20:55):
Yeah. Well, and what you're doing, you've used this word a few times already, but the idea of scale, right. And really opening up the funnel. But if you do that, obviously your backend stuff, the stuff here with deliverables, we'll have to scale and grow and all that. So, so how do you scale a business quickly as you get this rapid growth while still maintaining healthy teams, that culture and environment that you're talking about? What's the key to that.
Glenn (21:26):
Yeah. And that's you make some mistakes, right? You try to do it and it doesn't always work. But one of the phrases we use is that, you know, always have a bench. So we interview even when we don't have a position, because if we met somebody, in fact, the person that started this week, we interviewed like a month ago and we knew we had her when we got to a certain point, it was time to bring her on. And we told her that we're, we're coming for you at some point. So don't take anything else. We're coming for you at some point. And when we got to that point, we added her. So you need to have a you need to have a. You, you need to look at resumes and meet people and, and, and no, no who you can hire next.
So that's part of it. The other is you know I firmly believe, and I tell people this, when I talked to them that if God wants them on our team, that they'll be on our team and whether it's now, or it's a year from now or two years from now, he's going to make it clear. And if he doesn't want them on our team, he's going to make that clear as well, because that's the way we're doing everything. We're, you know we've looked at locations and we've looked at hiring people and we've looked at different things. And usually there will be a door closed or a door open. That would be the indication we need to move forward, or we need to stop. And that's kind of, that's kind of our, that's how we know where to go, where not to go.
Ryan (22:50):
Hmm. Yeah. So what about just the cultural aspect though? I know that you, at this point, you probably know every single person that works in your company. But as you continue to scale and grow at some point, that probably won't be possible. How, how do you see yourself trying to maintain the environment that you have worked hard to create to this point so far?
Glenn (23:12):
Yeah. And it becomes more of a challenge, the larger you get, right? Because you're dependent on other people to communicate the challenge, the culture that you want to have. So so one of the things that, a couple of things our mission statement is to create a place that people want to be a part of people want to work for us because of the culture, the opportunities, the skills that they will gain by working for us. And then people want to work with us because if our desire to help their business grow. So we're very much looking for something because we hear horror stories of people working and somebody yelling at somebody or whatever. And we will treat everybody with respect. We also have five core values that we came up with. I say, we, I think I did it. And then some people validate them within three months after we started.
And you know, now you're going to say, what are those then I don't have them written down, but I could probably tell you, you know, one is always do the right thing. Always, that's something that's really important. Put yourself on the client side of the table, which is a big deal because we want to have an outward focus on everything we do. How can we help them? Not what can we sell, but how can we help them? That's really important. Be willing to sign your name to everything that you do. And that one's a little bit tricky because some people would sign their name and then I'll ask the question, would you sign my name? And maybe then the, you know, the standard changes a little bit. We also have looked for ways to exceed expectations. You know, we use Chick-fil-A as an example on, on a lot of that is you know, really trying to look for ways that we can go beyond what it is that that they're, that they're trying to do.
And I think that's only for, I'm trying to remember which one I've left off, but, but as you can see, the point here is that these are values that are very much outward focused, right? We're, we're trying to spend client's money as if it's our own money, but really being respectful of those that we work with and those that are on our team. So, but we do little things like, you know, I've told you, we have a a Monday catch up every business at night with Glenn at four o'clock every Monday. And I will go down to the delivery office and we'll conference people in and, you know, one week I showed up and I had, you know, branded water bottles. So we gave everybody this last week I went in and I said, it's been a while since I've given you anything, but I've got something for you.
And I reached into my backpack and I have these snowballs so that you can buy indoor snowballs. And we had a snowball fight in the lobby of our office Monday afternoon. So those kinds of things, and over the weekend, I'll slip in and put candy canes on their, on their desks. But, you know, it's, we really want it to be a culture of getting work done and doing really well at it. But then doing it out of respect, realizing that we're a team and I've, I've made it very clear. We went together and we lose together. There is no finger pointing, we're all gonna make mistakes. Nobody's perfect, but we do it as a team. And so but I think it's important that I try to stay around the rest of it as possible. But to your point, you know, you end up with 30, 40, 5,000 people and it becomes much harder. So it's important that the leaders that we add share the same visions that we do.
Ryan (26:18):
Yeah, no doubt at all on that. And especially as you talk about this franchise model, I'm sure that's something that you're going to continue to have to be very intentional about. Right. Also, I didn't know, indoor snowballs were a thing, so that's, that's a good revelation for me.
Glenn (26:34):
Here's, what's funny is I started throwing these around and I thought these probably are not COVID approved you know, it's like, all right, everybody wash your hands. Once you've finished the snowball fight snowballs. That's right. Don't, don't get it near your face.
Ryan (26:50):
Well, let me flip this on you just a little bit here. We've been talking about a good strategies for people when they're trying to grow their businesses. You know, not asking you to name any names, but man, what are things you have seen strategies that, that people try to do that you think in five, 10 years, they're probably gonna regret as they try to grow their businesses?
Glenn (27:13):
Well, usually the ones that, that I think are probably not going to work out are where they don't really have anything that's unique. When we meet with a client, one of the first things we ask is what's your value proposition? How are you different? Because if you're like everybody else and Ryan, you've probably read the red ocean blue ocean, you know, the, the red ocean being a lot of competition, price, compression, compression, you know, it's a race to the bottom and blue ocean where there's no competition, you know, like Apple was for awhile kind of still is where there's no competition. They don't really, most companies don't know what their value prop, how they're different. I'm about to finish a book by I just drew a blank on the author (Seth Godin), but it's called Purple Cow.
You know, we drive down a rural road and you look over and there's brown cow and all these things, and you don't even notice them, but there was purple when, you know, there's, you would notice that. And so the point is understanding what your purple cow is, and it may be the way that you present your product. That can be your purple cow, right. It doesn't have to be air pods or, you know, a smartphone or something like that. It can be just the way you package your offering or the way that you promote your offerings. So that's important also being very clear on what your ideal customer profile is. And it could be customer, patient member, whatever you want to call it, but no one who your target is. And I hear people all the time that say, well, we sell to everybody.
Well, you can't focus on everybody. You need to narrow that narrow, that scope. And so when I hear somebody that doesn't have a clear focus on who they're, what's, what's unique and has their targeting, then it's probably just a matter of time before they when they get caught up in all the competition. There's also those that are very much self-centered where I want to go sell the stuff I'm not worried about delivering. I'll just go sell, sell, sell those, usually come back to bite them over time. So and you know, and not building the right team it's important as a leader to have, you know, leave your ego at the door. And it's, it's hard to do sometimes because when things are going well, you kind of want to pump your chest a little bit, but knowing that you're not doing it for you, right. I mean, it's, if you're more about how can I make everybody else successful, then I'll be taken care of. I don't have to worry about it, but it's it. Those are some of the things that I look for. If I see someone very selfish and not very focused, you know, that's probably not someplace would want to want to invest.
Ryan (29:44):
You know, if you, if you were to run across somebody who let's say, you know, somehow magically, they were not competitive with, with you and with Dave Creek, but somebody who is starting something real similar just getting ready to get started with it, knowing what you know now, what are some things that you would advise them to do as they're starting out a similar event?
Glenn (30:04):
Sure. I would, I would tell them to do, you know, make sure you're crystal clear on how you're different. You know, what is it that you have that nobody else has or what you have that fewer people have, know who you're going to target and then make sure you know your numbers, right? You can, you can have a route, you know, it'd be like AirPods, right. Or smartphone. I can have an incredible product, but if I price it wrong, if the math doesn't work, then, then everybody's going to buy it. I'm going to lose money and I'm going to go out of business. It's not a big deal, but you've got to keep an eye on your numbers. You know, one of the things that we do as a, as a company is we, every Monday at eight 30, we have a sales call and we talk about what's in the pipeline.
What's going to bill this month, every single Monday. And usually before that call, I'm looking at our financials to see where we are counts receivable, how it compares to last year, all of those things. So those are the things that are not much fun. At least I don't see them as fun, but it's an important part of the job. Because if you don't know your numbers, you can look up one day and you can't make payroll, or you can't pay your bills or whatever. So you know, be sure to be sure, to look at, make sure you're tracking the numbers, but also make sure you have a and here's, and this is, and I skipped over this and this is so basic. Nothing happens until somebody sells something most. There are a lot of really smart people that have a great product or a great offering or great service, but they can't, they don't know how to communicate the value and get new customers. One of the reasons we were successful is because that's an area that, that we Excel in that was not a challenge for us. And so our challenge was to, as you mentioned earlier tap the brakes a little bit and make sure we had enough resources to deliver everything and then go through it again. But you know, revenue is the oxygen of your business. If you don't have revenue, your business will die.
Ryan (31:53):
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. You know, another thing you mentioned a couple of times now is these, these weekly meetings with people, whether it's, you know, state of the business COVID stuff or the sales thing, that sounds like one thing you really value is keeping your team updated on, on things what's going on. So why is that so important to you?
Glenn (32:15):
Well, most issues come from lack of communication, right? Whether it's somebody on your team a client or whatever, most come back to some type of communication issues. So being proactive giving updates, tracking our numbers, talking about things is really important to us. And like, like a lot of companies, there are so many ways to communicate. You know, we use Slack, we use email, we use texts, we do phone calls, we do face to face. So there are a lot of options out there. But I believe it's important to try to keep. And we almost, even probably a month ago, I said, well, we probably don't need our money Monday meeting. But then it became because as part of the meeting, I give them an update and then we do recognition and we give everybody on the team a chance to recognize somebody based on one of our core values.
Like, you know, this person really knocked it out of the park on this video, or this person really did a great job. You know, building this website for whatever it is. And then we have sales contests. We have little things that we recognize the top sales person every month. So ways that you can recognize people like to be, you know, they like a little attaboys, I guess a little recognition is good. So I think, I mean, I believe communication is critical. You know, there's a saying that an absence of information, people assume the worst. And so if you're up front and you're communicating, then you can keep them from assuming the worst.
Ryan (33:38):
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. There's some really good nuggets in there for people I think as far as what they can actually be doing. So that's, that's great. Last, last thing here, we'll wrap up with this. If you could go back, you know, let's say like 20 years, right. And and pop in on yourself somewhere, what advice would you give yourself about building a team, building a business that's, you know, with the goal of growing rapidly what would you say to 20 year younger you?
Glenn (34:11):
You know, Ryan, this is it's funny that I knew this question was coming because I listened to the Maggie Glover podcast yesterday. So I could so I could hear the types of questions. One of the things that another saying that we have is that the battle is won in the prep, which means that preparation helps you whenever you're proposing or whatever. So knowing that I was going to be honest, I've listened to one of your podcasts. So I, so I could prepare myself. And then I have a a Bible study in my office on Thursday mornings with some guys in this morning, we talked about it and I said, so I know he's going to ask this question. And in my mind, I'm thinking if I'm exactly where God wants me to be, then if I go back, I do the, you know what's the Michael J. Fox back to the future.
If I do that, then do I change the path of where I'm going now? And I'm not where I'm supposed to be. So anyway, after all of that, that's way more than what you're looking for. But you know, the, the one thing that I would say it, it really all count came down to your peer group, the people that you're around and whether it's it's me at 40, or me at 20, or me at 12, that peer group can influence you and guide you down a path I'm in Conway, Arkansas, because of a peer group in college. You're probably here because of a peer group, some connection with somebody somewhere got you here. And if you could think about the people that you're you're with you know, there's a, there's a famous philosopher, Daymond John from shark tank. He said, if you hang around four broke people, you'll be the fifth, right?
So, and it's not about earning money, but it's just about the the direction that you can take and the knowledge that you gain and the connections that you get and that kind of thing. And I'm not suggesting that you be faking that, but just look, you know, look around and see the people that you're with are these, the top people that, that are really want to, you can still be friends with them or whatever, but is this the kind of future that I want with this peer group? And if that's not the right peer group and find a way to get into a different peer group, and it's not that you have to be best friends, but, you know, go to somebody and say, Hey, can I meet with you once a month and learn how you've done, what you've done and those kinds of things.
So I have the privilege of being on the board at Renewal Ranch and many of those guys that are part of that, you know, a lot of it is because I got in with the wrong crowd, they just got with the wrong peer group, and that's kind of how they ended up now they're with a different peer group and that can break free from that. So if I could advise myself on anything, it's, it's make sure you're with the right peer group lots of advice. I mean, I could go on, on advice about, you know, how to set up the business to do those kinds of things, but more of a general about life kind of thing is just be very conscious of the peer group that you're with regardless of your race.
Ryan (37:03):
Yeah. Well, I love that and I can see that you're totally right. Like when I look back over just life and the different places I've been yeah. It's, there's always some sort of connection to a peer group there, so yeah, definitely agree. Well tell people just about what you're doing right now, what Dave Creek is up to and, and how people can get in touch or get involved with anything that you might have going on.
Glenn (37:26):
Yeah. you know, as I mentioned, we will start franchising very soon, hopefully very soon then if, if it takes off, like we think that it will and there'll be lots of opportunities for us to add other resources. So if you have something you're good at website sales, whatever what I would suggest is go to our website and connect with us. We just put up a new website, we've changed our color scheme. We've changed our logo and preparation for this rollout but go there and send us your resume connect with us. You can contact me directly at Glenn, G L E N N at Dave Creek media. And I will get back to you as quickly as I can. I'm a ha have a lot going on, but I also try to take time and meet with people.
And, and I'm trying to be better at just having relationships versus showing up and trying to fix a problem. Right. So you know, we'd love to connect with you if you have ideas. I do some business coaching and oftentimes it's at no cost. You know, my, my wife gets onto me because I would be doing all of this for free. I just love it so much. And then, and I challenge people that if you're not doing something that you completely loved, then try to find something that, you know, something you can earn a living at. We tell all of our kids that we don't care that a lot of work that you go into, whatever career path you choose. Number one, it has to be legal. That's number two, you have to be able to live and support your family with whatever direction you choose to take. And we've got a couple of children that are in ministry and, you know, that's not typically a hot pain job, but they're okay with that. They are they understand that they have to do little, some extra things or, or change the way that they're, you know, they're living. So but the man just find something that you're excited about doing. And I mean, it's it is a completely different world once you're doing that.
Ryan (39:23):
Yeah. Well, that's been a really good stuff, Glenn. I appreciate you taking the time to be on and to have the conversation with me. And I'm sure that people listening will appreciate it as well. So I will put all that stuff, your, your email and the website and everything in the show notes. So people can find that easily, but yeah, again, just appreciate you and thanks for being on.
Glenn (39:44):
Yeah, man. Thanks for inviting me. This is a lot of fun and you know, you and I need to get together, have some coffee. We've got a little coffee shop, very close to us down here and I see your motorcycle out there sometimes. So I did just pop in and, you know, grab some coffee.
Ryan (39:56):
Yeah. Hey, that sounds like a plan I would love to. Very good. Appreciate it. Thanks Glenn.