7 Essential Communication Skills to Develop with Jeff Watson

Mike Hambright (00:00.866)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with my buddy, legendary Jeff Watson, the attorney and real estate investor out of Ohio. But we’re gonna be talking about something that you might not expect, I guess, which is how to be a better leader, really how to be a better communicator with your team. There’s so much that we as entrepreneurs have in our heads and we, it’s like, by the way, it’s like spaghetti for most of us, right? And we think it’s super clear and we expect our team to just understand what’s going on in our minds.

But this is really a lesson here on leadership, how to become a better leader, how to communicate better with your team and those that are around you. And so we’re gonna tackle that today, so listen up closely. Mr. Watson, how are you my friend?

Jeff Watson (00:41.26)
I’m doing excellent. Pleasure to be here Mike. Looking forward to this.

Mike Hambright (00:43.586)
Yeah, always good to see you. So yeah, I’m excited to share this lesson when you know, the reality is, is when I have guests on the show, we always talk a little bit upfront about, know, what should we talk about today? And the show I did earlier was from a lender. It was very clear. We were going to talk about lending and what’s going on with rates and stuff like that. I did not expect to be talking about clear communication and being a better leader with you. I didn’t put a lot of thought into it, but you know, I think if you’ve been around for a long time, there’s probably about 20 different things we could talk about, but.

Jeff Watson (01:12.328)
20, 20, maybe 50, you know, yeah. you know, the one thing is instead of me getting hyper technical on something, I really want to provide value that appeals to all types of real estate entrepreneurs. You know, whether you’re just beginning or whether you’re that seasoned pro that’s kind of beginning to think about winding down your business, anybody in between, whether you’re a mortgage broker, loan officer,

Mike Hambright (01:12.898)
I’m excited to jump into this. Yeah, well, right, right.

Jeff Watson (01:42.326)
real estate agent or broker, anybody in the space can always benefit from some of the things I think we’re gonna discuss, we’re gonna be discussing today. And that is about one of the fundamental elements of leadership, particularly as an entrepreneur, is clear communication. And I address this in a book I just was blessed to be able to release in December on Amazon called Boaz on Business, Building Multi-generational Wealth in Chaotic Times.

And Mike, you you and I already talked about the book. You grabbed it as soon as it became available and I appreciate that. So when I was studying the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament, I saw a clear blueprint for how to run a business. And I’m going to give everybody a spoiler alert. Boaz in the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament was a long-term real estate investor. There’s no other way to look at it.

The man bought real estate for cash flow, for multi-generational cash flow. So we’ll leave that alone. But when you’re reading the book, I could see a blueprint for how this man, was described as a mighty man of wealth, therefore a successful businessman, how he operated his business. And one of the first things that jumps out is the level of effort. Hear that word effort put into communication by Boaz to his team.

And so Boaz worked at it. So being a good communicator, clearly communicating, requires effort. We’ve got to work at it. And that’s a challenge sometimes because we always think we’re so busy.

Mike Hambright (03:25.772)
Yeah, for sure. Hey, Jeff, before we before we get too far into this, tell us a little bit about your background for anybody that’s listening to us that doesn’t know who you are. You’ve got a rich background. Tell us kind of highlight. Give us the highlight reel.

Jeff Watson (03:37.838)
Sure, sure. It’s a serendipity moment of being in the right place at the right time. I was just an average, above average litigation attorney in Cleveland, Ohio. Very, very hard place to learn how to try cases. I mean, was some of the best lawyers in America headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. And I was trying cases in Cleveland, Ohio. And I recognized I was swapping hours for dollars. So I got into real estate. No education, no training, just my own hubris. Bought some rental properties.

figured out a lot of things the hard way. And then I showed up at a couple of educational events and I heard about this concept called a short sale. And I understood it and the legal issues of it kind of appealed to me and you know, we started having fun with short sales. And then I realized the whole transactional matrix of a short sale at that time, this is 2003, 2004, was just way too complicated, way too complicated.

And working with a couple of other friends and some folks at a title company on the east side of Cleveland, we came up with a much simplified, much more simplified way of structuring through contractual paperwork and transactional structuring a back-to-back short sale where you buy a property discount from a bank and quickly resell it for a substantial profit. So we created all new paperwork to do it and that paperwork just took off. Got in business with a couple of great guys.

Mike Hambright (04:54.414)
Hmm.

Jeff Watson (05:02.016)
I’m still in business today with Greg Clement and we’ve got some really good operations there out of Northeast Ohio and it took off. The next thing I know people wanted to talk to me and I was getting invited to speak about this and that because I kind of cracked the code on short sales.

Mike Hambright (05:19.148)
And that was before short sales had really blown up. Yeah.

Jeff Watson (05:21.422)
Right, because short sales didn’t take off until 2008. And by then, I’d figured it all out. And so, know, Greg and I, we’d done hundreds of short sales, and I’d helped him, and he’d done, was just an amazing marketing guy with short sales. And he had a partner by the name of Josh that was good at negotiating, and they got these things sold, and, you know, lot of revenue came through the door as a result of that. And so we systematized it, we taught it, put it in a book, and it just, it went like wildfire. It just took off. Well, you know, fast forward.

I meet a mutual friend of ours, you and I have a very mutual friend there in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and I’m hearing about notes from Mr. Eddie Speed. And I realized that buying a defaulted note is vastly superior to trying to do a short sale. So I began gravitating towards notes, and that leads me down to where I’m always trying to figure out more and more about self-directed IRAs. So I knew how to use an IRA to do a short sale, I how to do an IRA to make a loan, how to buy a house, how to sell a house, how to do

Mike Hambright (06:08.43)
Hmm.

Jeff Watson (06:20.974)
All these things. And I got more more focused and that led me to be sitting on the board of directors of a company formerly known as Quest Trust Company. You know, a large company there in Texas that has now just recently closed its doors. And I got into the IRA space. Well, the short sale thing, Mike, also got me some attention I didn’t want. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae did not like some of what I was doing.

So that required making multiple trips to Washington DC to explain what I was doing. And I was able to co-draft the short sale deed restriction language that we still see today on a lot of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, HUD, USDA loans. When a property is resold, coming out of there and it’s got a 30 day deed restriction and then after 90 days you can resell for an unlimited profit, I helped write that language getting it from 180 days down to 30.

Mike Hambright (07:15.458)
Mmm, wow.

Jeff Watson (07:16.054)
And so that was a big feather in my cap and that showed me how stuff in DC really worked. politics is a brutal sport. It really is. full contact. And then…

Mike Hambright (07:25.122)
No doubt. Yeah, you were you were an early you were an early Doge team member. You just didn’t know it yet.

Jeff Watson (07:32.046)
Very true Then speaking of that then round two of early Doge Was when the former administration had this monstrosity of a build called build back better that was going to decimate the self-directed IRA industry My good friend John higher created a website hands off my IRA he and I did multiple speakings and videos on that we crafted communications and we just pounded

Mike Hambright (08:00.75)
Yeah, I remember that.

Jeff Watson (08:01.246)
Eight moderate Democrats, because the Democrats had the majority in the House and the Senate, we pounded these eight moderate Democrats, I got face-to-face meetings with three of them as a result of the relationships I built in DC. And those relationships got me the opportunity to explain to them, listen, this is how bad this is. And they agreed to take it out. They agreed to take out the sections that would destroy self-directed IRAs from that bill. Now that bill eventually died.

but we probably slowed it down and gave it about 100 cuts, so it died by 1,000 cuts. We did that to it over in the house. And so that was next big thing that got me to really understand the impact of what you can be doing when you’re able to harness the voice of thousands of investors. And Mike, I’ll tell you this, there’s a great member of Congress, he’s still in Congress today, I emailed him just this morning.

Mike Hambright (08:47.458)
Yeah, for sure.

Jeff Watson (08:58.294)
I remember talking to him there on the sidewalk outside one of the office buildings and he said to me, are you telling me?

that if we take this language out of this bill, all of those phone calls will stop. And the way he said all regarding phone calls, I knew his office was blowing up. And I said, yes, sir, if you take it out, we’ll get them stopped. And he said, it’s out. We’ll take it out. So yeah, but that was the power of.

Mike Hambright (09:18.392)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (09:23.35)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome. I appreciate you, Jeff. mean, obviously this industry is extremely fragmented and I know a lot of the work you’ve done is looking out for the real estate investor no matter how fragmented they are. So, and I’m happy to kind of help you through my network and my podcasts and my communities and stuff kind of beat those drums that are out there to help protect our interests as well.

Jeff Watson (09:48.632)
Well, it’s, you know, having capital to do deals is absolutely vital because going back to the short sale era, the first people that had money to do short sale transactions were people who had access to self-directed IRA money. Nobody else was putting the money out. And so that was a fundamental thing that we needed to begin to turn the market. And to take that kind of liquidity out of the market. Right now, Mike, I would estimate that we have

about 18 to 20 billion dollars of self-directed IRA cash sitting idly by waiting for deals.

Mike Hambright (10:30.53)
Mmm. Yeah.

Jeff Watson (10:32.494)
Yeah, $18 to $20 billion of idle self-directed cash. Not just cash, but cash that people have already put into a self-directed retirement account saying, want to do stuff with it.

Mike Hambright (10:43.862)
Right. And it’s just sitting there. Yep, yep.

Jeff Watson (10:45.794)
It’s just sitting there. So that’s my passion going forward is to help people figure out ways of how to deploy that capital. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (10:54.498)
Yep, that’s awesome. Well, let’s jump into communication. So we’re talking about leadership here. I’m guilty of it. Right when we started talking about this topic, I was like making notes to myself like, my God, I need to do better at this or that. And, we’ll I don’t want to steal your thunder. We’ll jump into it too. Because obviously a lot of people

It’s real quick to send a text or a Slack message or there’s so many different ways to communicate now too. And we’re all trying to like send an emoji and communicate our strategic plan for the next 10 years in a smiley face or something, right? And so I think that’s probably a big part of the problem is just like, not just lack of communication, but I don’t know, there’s a bunch of reasons that probably as leaders, we think everybody can just read our minds, but they can’t. But let’s kind of start this conversation.

Jeff Watson (11:38.764)
Yeah, well, I mean, as soon as you talk about texting emojis, I’m gonna think of what an investor friend said to me one time. You know, it was, use your words. Don’t send an emoji, use your words.

Mike Hambright (11:44.834)
Yeah.

You’re an attorney. You’re supposed to communicate clearly,

Jeff Watson (11:54.55)
Yeah, use your words. Yeah. And I mean, I was like, you know, bang, they got me. You know, they got me. They got me good with that one. So, you know, let’s talk about communication. I’m going to set the background here and then I’m to tell the story. Okay. there was a day at the beginning of the barley harvest that Boaz, a mining man of wealth showed up at one of his fields to see what was going on. And when he got there, he looked around.

and he saw something that was different. And so he went right to the overseer, the superintendent to the job site. If you’re a rehabber, it’s your superintendent, it’s your project manager. He went right to that overseer and he said, who is that?

And Boaz got a detailed response. He didn’t get an I don’t know. He didn’t get it’s all cool. He didn’t get that. He got a detailed response of who it was, where she came from, and what she was doing. And then Boaz could integrate that information with what he already knew from the community. And then he made a business decision. And here’s the key thing. The business decision he made there was a pivot for his team.

He was then instructing his team, we’re going to make an adjustment or a pivot in what we are doing. So what you thought you were doing this morning is not what we’re gonna be doing now. I know people can never relate to that, right Mike? We can never relate to that.

Mike Hambright (13:30.254)
Entrepreneurs never change their focus or strategy, never.

Jeff Watson (13:35.038)
Never, never, not at all, not at all. They’re locked in, they’re laser focused for a decade, you know? Well, you know what I mean. Yeah, maybe an hour at the best, but anyhow. So Boaz is now gonna communicate this change in how business is done. And he tells his overseer what he wants done. He tells Ruth, the young lady who was new and different,

Mike Hambright (13:43.63)
Not really. Maybe not even a day.

Jeff Watson (14:04.534)
what he wants done. He tells the other young men that are there doing the manual labor what they’re supposed to do. He tells the other maidens that, you’re gonna let this lady hang out with you. She’s gonna work amongst you. But you know, Mike, he does more than just say something. He didn’t send a text. He didn’t shoot off an email. He didn’t create a loom video and stick it out there.

No, he stayed around Mike and he sat with his people after he made the decision and through his actions of sitting there and having lunch with the team and letting his actions both his presence and the fact that he made sure that Ruth had enough to eat that she was now a welcome member of the team.

And so he did that communicating through his presence, through his words, and through his action. And we’ve got to do that as entrepreneurs, as business owners, as leaders, we’ve got to do that. And we’ve got to be very clear about what we communicate. We’ve got to do that. And just sending one thing one time is not enough. I mean, Mike, let’s talk about, we can talk for five seconds about, or 50 seconds about direct mail marketing. How many touches does it take?

Mike Hambright (15:25.665)
A bunch, yeah.

Jeff Watson (15:27.192)
So do you think you tell your staff one time what you want done differently? You think it works?

Mike Hambright (15:31.438)
Of course not.

Jeff Watson (15:33.134)
Well, if you got to reach out to a prospective seller seven to twelve times, how many times do you think you got to talk to your staff about something?

Mike Hambright (15:41.902)
Probably seven to 12 times.

Jeff Watson (15:42.094)
It’s that same principle, you know? It’s that same principle. So there’s a lot of things that we see there. And I mean, I’m going to stop talking because I know you got some questions, all right?

Mike Hambright (15:52.748)
Yeah, no, think it’s easy as an entrepreneur to say, here’s what we’re going to do today. I mean, one of the things that I’ve done with my team, several years back, we went through kind of a EOS planning process. So it wasn’t just like me ripping off an email or writing something on a whiteboard or somewhere like, here’s what we’re going to do. But I gave my team, you know, we were able to come up with the plan together. So it wasn’t all me. Even if I, you know,

planted seeds for what I wanted to happen. You kind of make it their idea, right? But also it was giving them authority to tell me no, like we’re not, that’s not part of the plan. Like we could, let’s reconsider this at the quarterly meeting, but for now, you know, this isn’t what you said we’re going to do. So kind of giving authority to the team where it’s not just me coming down from the mountain top and sharing here’s what, here’s exactly what we’re going to do. And nobody else gets to have any input.

I think it’s important to, you you’ve obviously talked about being clear a lot about clarity so far, right? Is like giving my team the ability to have input because otherwise why do I have a team? Like, you know, I think a lot of entrepreneurs will identify with this. Like we have strong opinions. Like we think we know a lot of stuff, but our teams are smart folks too. And if you don’t have smart folks working for you, then shame on you, you know.

Jeff Watson (16:52.515)
Yeah.

Jeff Watson (17:10.83)
I mean, you know, if entrepreneurs think that they’ve got a lot of opinions, where do you meet an entrepreneur that went to a law school and got a law degree? Well, they think they know it all, you know? So yeah, I mean, but let’s talk a little bit more about clarity and being clear in your communication. I think I’ve outlined a couple of points there and we can talk about them. mean, from an entrepreneur, a business leader, we’ve got to be clear in our communication. I’m just going to refer to this. So when we talk about clear, we’ve got to be consistent.

There is nothing more frustrating than a mixed message in any type of a relationship.

You know, we’ve got to be consistent. A lack of consistency leads to confusion and confusion leads to lost opportunities or even worse than that. So we’ve got to be consistent and consistency requires multiple touches like we talking about with direct mail or anything else, you know, multiple touches. I mean, your father, your husband, how many times during the week do you remind your kids, do you remind your spouse,

that you love and appreciate them.

a bunch because they don’t ever get tired of hearing it and it’s not like hey I told you once 20 years ago if any change I let you know no I’m telling you every 20 minutes so that you know that’s always on the top of my mind the second element of a clear communications has got to be logical okay and this is where we as an entrepreneur in that hard crazy conflicted spaghetti-wired brain

Jeff Watson (18:50.476)
where we’re able to hold multiple dueling ideas at the same time, we’ve got to sort it out and articulate it to our team what the final decision is. And we’ve got to let them test it for logic. Like you talked about, you’ve got to let your team be able to push back. They’ve got to be able to test it for logic. So it’s got to be clear and make sense in the context of the situation.

One of the best ways to do that is make sure that you’re always on message. And what I like to do is I like to frequently just pause and say, is that making sense? Do you understand what I mean? Do you have any questions about what you need to do next?

Because if they have no questions about what they need to do next and they know what to do and they say, the next thing I need to do is this, then I know communication is occurring. Okay. Now we live in an era of, I’m just going to call it a TikTok world. 90 seconds is a long time. More like nine seconds. If we can’t hook somebody in nine seconds or less,

We’re not engaging. We’re just not gonna get him. So our communication has to be engaging. There was a very prominent politician in my state a few years ago that the moment he would stand up to speak, I’d close my eyes, just snooze out. The dude was the most boring, disinterested guy I’ve ever met in my life. Okay? So we’ve gotta capture somebody’s attention, we’ve gotta hold it. Now there’s a lot of different ways.

We don’t have to walk around like an ongoing clown show with all sorts of bells, lights, and whistles. We can do it with very simple things like make eye contact. Make eye contact. Mirror some of their body movements. It’s all about building rapport because if we’re building rapport, we’re engaging. How many times have you sat down at a table with a seller or with a buyer or with somebody who’s either borrowing from you or lending to you

Mike Hambright (20:46.456)
Yeah.

Jeff Watson (21:07.542)
And you’ve had to have those conversations where you had to keep the conversation engaged. Okay. It’s the same kind of thing there, you know, in a good conversation with engaging time flies by time absolutely flies by, you know, and then the next element of a clear communication is to be accurate. If what you say is not accurate, what you’re saying is worthless. And I’m going to tell you right now, the poster child for that is social media.

Mike Hambright (21:18.4)
No doubt. No doubt.

Jeff Watson (21:39.668)
I’m going to go out on a limb and I’m going to say in this current environment, I’m going to say half of the stuff I see on social media I know is not accurate.

It’s an exaggeration. It’s a distortion from one perspective or another. Yes, there are some things that Team Doge is finding. I love it, but I think even some of that’s being exaggerated. I think it’s more like there’s 89,000 people receiving social security benefits that shouldn’t be getting it, not 89 million. Whatever. But anyhow, it’s still too many. It’s still a lot.

Mike Hambright (21:56.344)
Sure.

Mike Hambright (22:04.78)
I’m sure.

Mike Hambright (22:19.064)
For sure,

Jeff Watson (22:19.266)
But let’s try and be accurate here, okay? Let’s try and be accurate. And so we wanna be very specific. mean, can you imagine having inaccurate information in a real estate contract?

Mike Hambright (22:31.49)
now, of course not.

Jeff Watson (22:33.546)
I got the wrong address. I got the wrong seller’s last name. You know, I got his name right, but I got her name wrong. What good is that? You know, it’s just, it’s not clear. And you know, I’m going to pick on it. You and I were talking earlier and I told you, I’ve got one client that favorite method of communication is this talk to text.

Let’s face it. It’s it’s dependent upon the quality of your internet access. How good is your cell signal? How good is your Wi-Fi? It’s also dependent on what kind of background noise you have going on. It also dependent upon where where you might be and So I will get communications from clients in that manner that are that are they’re wrong. I Is I told you I was working on a project. I spent three hours working on a project

because the talk to text message I got was inaccurate. And when I circulated the documents, the other party just threw an absolute hissy fit because what I did was wrong. It was not what they agreed to because the text to me, talk to text, was wrong.

So it was one of those moments where I’m just like, this is a classic example. And then the last element of clear communication is it has to be relatable. How can I apply what I’m hearing, what I’m reading, what I’m seeing, how can I apply this incoming communication to what I’m doing right now?

Jeff Watson (24:05.888)
Sometimes it’s immediate, like stop. Sometimes it’s like look out. Sometimes it’s like hey, we need to plan for this. We need to think about how to do this. So there’s all sorts of different relatable things, but we’ve gotta be, we’ve gotta make sure that that communication is consistent, logical, know, accurate, relatable, the whole bit.

Mike Hambright (24:27.522)
Yeah, and especially for us as leaders, we talk about from a leadership standpoint, your team is doing most of the work anyway. So if they’re not clear, and like you said, punctuation matters, like words matter, and I’m guilty of it. I try to do stuff that’s short with Slack. I do voice memos all the time. And the reality is, is…

It’s like stream of consciousness things too. It’s not like I wrote down the directions and I’m gonna read it verbatim exactly the way that I would write it up. It’s like me just like, I need you to, sorry, hang on. I got distracted for a second here. It’s just like stream of consciousness stuff. So it’s really easy to make that a mixed message.

Jeff Watson (24:52.21)
huh.

Jeff Watson (25:08.11)
Yeah, I mean it’s stream of consciousness. It’s it’s not SOP. It’s not standing operating procedures out of a manual, you know, and so what you’re what we’re asking our team to do is to translate our stream of consciousness into what they assume or calculate that we want them to do. You know, I was telling you that you know

Mike Hambright (25:15.725)
Right.

Mike Hambright (25:32.621)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Watson (25:34.742)
I did a lot of litigation for a number of years. While I was building a lot of my real estate practice, I was still slugging it out in the courtroom on a regular basis. And I’d have an hour long drive to some of the courthouses and back. And so I’d have time to stop and just think while driving all by myself. No phone calls, no interruptions. And I’d think about some of these complicated cases I was working on. And I’d walk back into the office, put my briefcase down, look at my PUA’s distance and say, on such and such a case, here’s what we’re going to do.

and I’d spit it out in seconds. And they would just look at me like, what are you talking about? We have no clue what you mean. And I realized that I had to literally stop, sit down, remind them about the facts of the case. Which case is this? What are the facts? Here’s what I’ve been thinking about. Here’s how I think we can handle this. What do you think? Because you’re going to be involved with executing a lot of these administrative details.

And that’s when communication finally occurred.

Mike Hambright (26:37.326)
Yeah, and you have to ask, I was just at a big event.

5 or 6,000 people there.

And you could tell a lot of people, the presenters were professional presenters, right? And so they often ask for, does that make sense? Repeat after me. Like you’re trying to get active and gate active listening, right? Instead of it’s really easy to go to a big event and there’s a speaker and they just talk for 30 or 45 minutes and there’s no engagement. And if you look across the audience, people are on their phones, texting, heads down, talking to each other, like all these things. But if you can create this kind of active listening environment where you’re asking for feedback.

Jeff Watson (26:54.862)
Thank

Mike Hambright (27:14.736)
It forces people, you know, on some level to ignore the distractions like we’re having a two-way conversation here instead of one way, right? Yeah.

Jeff Watson (27:22.41)
Right. And a good gifted communicator, a good world-class communicator will in the first three to five seconds grab your attention and never let go for that 45 minutes. Yeah. But they’ve learned how to communicate. They’re very clear. And when you break down what they’ve said, it’s profound, but it’s simple and it’s concise at the same time. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (27:34.668)
Yeah, that’s awesome.

Mike Hambright (27:47.662)
Yep, Jeff, a lot of folks know who you are, but if they wanted to connect with you or they wanted to tell us a little bit more about how they can get your book as well, your new book.

Jeff Watson (27:57.262)
Sure. All right, so there’s a couple of ways you can connect with me. The first and best way is to go to my blog, WatsonInvested.com. WatsonInvested.com. And I do a free email newsletter. It’s free, so it’s worth what you pay for it. Mike, it’s not a big list. It’s about 8,300 names. But we have an open rate of about 26, 27%. So, you know, it’s well read. It’s well circulated.

And then the other way, know, if you want to schedule a consult with me regarding self-directed IRAs, you can book it through there as well. And the second way is you can get ahold of me by just going on Amazon. I think I stuck a link in the chat and grabbed the book off of Amazon. it’s, you know, the title is Boaz on Business and that’s to build multi-generational, authoring, chaotic times. Because I’m going to be honest with you, when we understand what was going on in Boaz’s life at that time.

It was chaos. Economic turbulence. were famines. There were foreign invaders. There was no cohesive central form of government. There was a lot of moral and religious confusion and decay. Kind of reminds us a lot like America today. You know what I mean? And so I realized that here’s a guy that figured all this stuff out 3,000 years ago. And it still works today, if you know what I mean. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (29:11.886)
That sounds familiar.

Mike Hambright (29:23.512)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks again for joining us. Thanks for sharing a little lesson on communications. We can all we can all.

be better communicators in our teams, no doubt about it. And the fact is, is I’m a podcast host with you here today, we’re talking and you wouldn’t see it and I’m not gonna show anybody, but I got a bunch of little post-it notes here of like things I need to do better at or things as a team we need to kind of clarify. And so I’ve learned some things myself here too. And sometimes it’s just reminders of things that we need to do better.

Jeff Watson (29:56.19)
I wanna commiserate with you. Because in writing this book about these things, I realized how much I needed to grow. I realized how much I was not doing right. And it’s humbling and embarrassing to be like, and I mean, I think the motto, I think the motto my assistant throws at me is,

Why don’t you do what you tell your clients to do?

Yeah.

Mike Hambright (30:32.182)
Well, as a parent too, you sometimes, you know, often like do as I say, not as I do. They’re like, you know, I mean, it’s natural as a parent to like tell them the right way to do it, even though you’ve screwed up as well, or you’ve done those things that they’re doing. But it’s easy to just say, well, just learn from my mistakes.

Jeff Watson (30:48.462)
Yeah, yeah, but I will say that the process of writing this book and getting it published Which was a huge learning experience for me has really made me into a much better communicator It’s made me into a better leader and there are a lot of things that I’m going to be deploying and Executing on that I touch on in this book that you know, okay. I’ve written it. I’ve articulated it now I have to finish it. I’m doing it, but I have to finish it in my own businesses Yeah

Mike Hambright (30:59.598)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (31:13.826)
Yeah, well, there’s things, there’s a lot of lessons like this as an entrepreneur that is a, we’ll say it’s a journey, not a destination, right? You have to constantly work. It’s like fitness. Like you can’t just go, I worked out and therefore I’m done. It’s like, no, you need to continue to work out. And it’s the same thing in communications and relationships and all those things. It’s like, you need to continuously work at getting better at those things.

Jeff Watson (31:37.838)
Yeah, I mean I ate healthy yesterday so I can kind of goof off the rest of the week. No, that’s not the way it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (31:42.382)
Yeah. Yeah. And said another way if you go eat terrible today, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t mean that that’s the has to be the new normal. It’s like, well, I might as eat bad all the time. It’s like, no, start over. It’s a new day. Yeah.

Jeff Watson (31:52.078)
No Right. It’s a new day. We can all I mean there is no place out there I’m sorry. I don’t care. There’s no place out there to learn how to be an entrepreneur except by actually doing it It’s it’s you’ve got to go to the swimming pool you’ve got to get pushed in and you’ve got to just flounder and flail until you’re you know knifing through the water like like a like a veteran swimmer and It’s not an easy process and it’s not quick

Mike Hambright (32:16.386)
Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Watson (32:21.602)
But there are fortunately more tools out there than ever before. There’s more resources out there than ever before of other people who’ve gone before you so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (32:31.214)
Yeah, awesome, awesome. Well, Jeff, hey, thanks so much for joining us today. I appreciate the lesson.

Jeff Watson (32:36.642)
Alright, my pleasure. Peace.

Mike Hambright (32:37.962)
Everybody and hope you got some great info for today. We can all be better communicators We can all be better leaders and the better leader you are the better the better your business is gonna be the stronger It’s gonna be the more profitable. It’s gonna be the prouder You’re gonna be of it the less likely you’re gonna get up in the morning and say I think I’m gonna shut it down today So let’s build strong teams to help us live the lives that we got into the business for in the first place, right? So appreciate you all we’ll see you on the next show.