James Webb on Relationships and Resilience

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Today we have a tremendous episode for you, a conversation with James Webb, the author of Redneck Resilience, a tremendous book. James has a storied career from being in the radiological industry, to running hospitals, to owning one of the largest Orange Theory franchises in the entire country. And what I loved about James' story is his resilience, is where he came from to where he got to, and all the trials and tribulations in between that he explains to us. Because as we know, working through this pain, experiencing this pain, and being able to not only push through it, to not give into it, but to thrive in moments that are challenging, in moments that we don't see coming. It's a story that I feel like we all need to hear.

I was inspired by the story. It was tremendous to meet and talk to James, and I think you're absolutely going to love this episode. Before we get there, I want to talk real quickly about Finding Peak. Guys, more than 10,000 of you listen to this podcast every month, and we have just about 2,000 people subscribed to Finding Peak. If you love this podcast, if this podcast is something that adds value to your life, you are going to love the website, the blog, and there are a lot of changes coming, there are a lot of things happening, subscribe to Finding Peak.

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So go over to Finding Peak. Subscribe today. And for all my insurance friends who listen to this podcast, which is most of you, but more and more people are listening to this podcast who are not in the insurance industry, so I feel like I need to say that. If you are in the insurance industry and you want to maximize the income that you are getting from your agency, check out SIA. I know that to different people, networks, aggregators, however you classify an organization like SIA, may scare you, or you may have a negative perception, or you may just not know what SIA is altogether.

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All I want to do is put in front of you the idea that I have had a tremendous experience and you may too. And so you know, they do not pay me or even ask me to do this and frankly, they have no way of making me say this. I say this because I've had a positive experience. I enjoy being part of the organization. I enjoy the benefits, the thoughts, the ideas that they're trying to put out, the resources, and ultimately the carrier contracts that they're able to deliver to members.

And if that's something you want, I encourage you to check it out. So with that, guys, thank you for listening to this show as always. I absolutely love you. Let's get on to James Webb. I'm going to shop booze.

I was very intrigued when your team reached out because particularly about some of the ideas around, you know, granting high performers equity and how you do some of that stuff because in the industry that this podcast is primarily focused on, the independent insurance industry, we have anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 people listen to the show and all throughout the independent channels. You're thinking people in the carriers like Travelers, Hartford, Liberty, all those, all the way down to brand new, single person, independent insurance agencies on the corner of, you know, everywhere America and a conversation that happens quite often and has been going on since I got in the industry 17 years ago has been compensating high performers. It is a, it is a, and I know we're not, we are, it's not, that's not relegated just to the independent insurance industry, but it is a major topic. A lot of really difficult conversations because, you know, kind of there's an old school methodology. Hey, you get a, you get a commission check from me, that's, that's my, you know, that's, that's my value to you and that's what you get and you should be happy with that and you have renewal commissions and those are essentially, you know, that's essentially equity and et cetera and there's, there's all these wild, but what, what's happened recently and, and I want you to get into your story and stuff, I'm just kind of prefacing what, you know, everything, why I was so excited about this and why I'm so interested is that they're just, there is not, and they're, if you were to do research, there's best practices, but I don't, I don't think that those best practices are filed widespread.

I think there, there is really no good, consistent, agreed upon solution in our industry for how to compensate, how to handle, how to give longevity and in a sense of ownership, if not real ownership to high performers who don't say, have the same last name as the owner of the agency. so, so that's why I was so excited, but before we get there, let's, let's get into your, let's get into your story, man. I mean, I'm, I'm excited to chat with you and, and, and do all the things. I'll share one fact with you about your previous comment that that's one of the highlights and one of the things I'm most proud of is I had a 14 key employees in my life work for me, a 13 wrote it out to the end. The one that didn't wrote it out, wrote it out long enough that she got her buyouts, I bought her out. Of the 13, seven became millionaires and four of those became multi-millionaires and these are people that just took a paycheck with me when they started when they were young, most of them out of college and stuck with me the longest, close to 20 years.

Yeah, that's amazing. It's a good little strategy I have. Yeah, we can tell the James Webb story. It's kind of cute and kind of fun and kind of interesting. Yeah, let's do it.

Takes a few minutes. So, James Webb, country boy from South Mississippi, born to two teenage parents. They were 17 years old and got a little too friendly in the front seat of a Ford or as my 80-year-old mother reminded me that the day it was the backseat, which I thought was funny. Grew up fairly poor. Dad was an electrical apprentice straight out of high school.

We lived in a little shack behind the electrical shop that the owner let us rent. I recognized real early in life that if I wanted anything extra besides peanut butter and jelly, I had to do it myself. So, I started working at five and building pot holders and selling them at the local bazaar, church bazaars. That led to bicycles, which led to paper routes, which led to lawn mowers and rakes. When I was 14, I bought my first car and yes, in Mississippi, you could pull that off and not get in too much trouble.

And then, I got involved in the printing industry and worked full-time through high school. By the time I was a senior, senior pressman for the company, I thought that might be what I would do and then I enrolled in the local junior college on a music scholarship of all things because at some point I could sing before other things corrupted my voice. And walking through the school one day, saw a sign that said I want to be an x-ray tech, called this number and I thought, what the heck, I'll become an x-ray tech. And so, did a two-year slave labor program, was an x-ray tech. One of the local colleges gave you credits for x-ray tech hours.

So, I actually went back to college at night or in the daytime, worked at night and got my bachelor's degree and the day after I got my bachelor's degree, they named me president of the the x-ray tech school I'd graduated from 18 months earlier. So, I'm 21 years old, got 15 students, six are my age, three I went to high school with. So, quite a management learning lesson. Did that for a few years, really enjoyed teaching but wanted more. So, I flipped a coin, literally flipped a coin and said, Dallas or Atlanta and as I say, packed up a pick-em-up truck and a bass boat and went to the Redbird Mall parking lot in Dallas, Texas, slept in the parking lot trying to figure out what the hell I'd just done.

Got involved in the hospital up in Louisville, Texas. Three months after I was there, they promoted me to director of radiology. So, I was the youngest director of radiology in the United States at 24 years of age, had about 50 employees. Went to night school, this was way before the internet, got my master's degree, thought I was going to be a hospital administrator. Then this thing called MRI came out and changed my life and I left the clinical side of medicine and went into the MRI business and was one of the first people in that industry.

Learned a very valuable lesson, worked my butt off, built the second largest mobile company and sitting in my big office in Dallas, Texas at 30 years of age, 300 employees thinking I'm hot, you know what? And the phone rings and they go, Mr. Webb, we just sold the company, therefore, since you have no equity, you are fired. And I learned a really valuable lesson about being my own boss and sort of starting my entrepreneur journey and it took a little while to get there but eventually in 1995, I started my first company internationally, went Trinidad-Tobago, started, traveled all over Latin America and the Caribbean. Got crazy stories we can talk about or not talk about.

Probably the only guy you know that's been held at gunpoint by the Sandinistas. Probably the only guy you know that was kidnapped by the Guatemala Rebels and released. So just a lot of fun stories. Sold that company in 2000. I was living in Boca Raton, Florida.

Moved back to Dallas, Texas to start another company with some buddies of mine. 2003, 2003, 2003, I was dead broke, couldn't pay my house note. Started all over and made a couple of business decisions people said wouldn't work and they did. And so the next month there was $9,000 there to distribute to my partners and the next month there was $10,000 to distribute to the partners and as we kept growing, we got to a point around 2010 that if I wasn't personally pulling in $600,000 to $700,000 to $800,000 a month in distributions, I'd kind of want to know why. And we branched out into other areas outside of radiology so we were building medical imaging centers then and we went into surgery centers and then we went into toxicology labs.

Exited the medical imaging company in 2017. Public knowledge for right at $100 million so nice payday. exited all the surgery centers one at a time because we sold them to healthcare systems in the various markets. Exited toxicology about that time got involved in Orange Theory Fitness which I had no idea what that was and just accidentally stumbled upon it in 2014 and we ended up building 33 gyms across North Texas became their largest franchisee and we sold that in December of 2019 about two months before COVID hit for almost as much as imaging center companies so it was it was a nice couple of paydays I still have four or five companies now I work with and it's a little different now you're not worried about whether Ryan punches a clock you're more worried about the bigger picture stuff so that's sort of my business story and can't stop being an entrepreneur really love it really love it Bob and my employees in the business and you know I have a crazier personal story but that's a different conversation so I'm interested in the so obviously when you were a kid you had a very entrepreneurial spirit you described that all the different jobs you had and you know selling at the I think you said the church bazaar and then you know you go and you become an x-ray tech which is not an I'm assuming you know not an entrepreneurial endeavor and then you know you have this period of time sounds like close to a decade between you know when you become an x-ray tech to where you're sitting at 30 company gets sold and you're fired talk to me a little bit about that time were you were you constantly chomping at the bit were you trying to be an entrepreneur were you finding other things that were entrepreneurial oriented outside of outside of your your nine to five while you were while you were kind of like in the punch the clock phase that you know I hear that a lot from people who seemingly have entrepreneurial traits they they all seem to go through this we'll call it bureaucratic winter right where they where they there's a period of time in their lives where they where they aren't an entrepreneur and what you see is the I think the people who truly are entrepreneurs they tend to there's cracks right they find little ways of getting involved or or they become big time entrepreneurs or whatever were you finding that in your life and were you kind of always aware of that underlying sense that you wanted to get back and do your own thing or were you content for that period of time while you were not an entrepreneur I don't I don't know if content is the word but I definitely didn't have that entrepreneurial thought process I'm working eight to five punching the clock and again this is pre-internet so I'm going to night school at North Texas to get my master's degree because I thought I was going to be a hospital administrator I was trying to go up the corporate chain and I thought I was going to be a hospital administrator and it and it and it wasn't until Barry O'Brien knocked on my door and said hey we're starting this mobile MRI company you want to join this and I went heck no man I'm going to be a hospital administrator and make $150,000 a year and he convinced me in a funny little side story doing 130 miles an hour in his Dodson 240 ZX in Connecticut to leave the hospital space and you know jump out here and work for him so you really got it tuned to the business side of it so I worked with hospitals and I worked you know we were building mobile routes so we get you know 10 hospitals together run a mobile between them got to learn a lot about the sales side and all that but no I really didn't have that entrepreneurial spirit it was just climbing the corporate ladder yeah yeah yeah and then you get fired where you was your next thought time to start my own business did you go through a period where you were feeling down you know what did that look like you know I so I own my own or I founded Rogue Risk a national independent commercial insurance agency which is I'm the CEO of today I founded it in March 9th of 2020 so seven days before the zombie apocalypse at upstate New York and in two years was able to build it to the point where I was acquired in full so I basically traded equity in my company for equity in the parent company owned by a PE company and became an executive director in that company as well and but to get to that point that entrepreneurial point I was fired from the previous three executive positions that I had had I was a CMO a CMO and then a CEO of three consecutive companies and was fired from all three positions and it was like I kept even though I felt like something was wrong and I guess this is where I'm trying to get to and just to get your experience on it I felt like something was wrong but I kept going back to that corporate job I kept going well you know this is two hundred thousand and you know this is two hundred thousand dollars a year with a bonus that's not bad you know let me try this again and then I would just keep butting heads and it wasn't until I went off and became my own boss that I realized kind of this is much more of who I am so I'm interested in how that worked for you and you know there were obviously dips in between now the third time I was fired the dip wasn't exaggerated the first time it was like oh my god I'm a loser you know I'm never going to have another good job again I worked so hard again you know and then I got another job and then I got fired for the next one you're like I'm sure I can find another job and then the last time I was fired I was like fuck it I'm just yeah mine was a little bit different mine had a little personal impact on it I had a young daughter had been separated from my wife we literally got back together the day before I got fired so it was it was really hectic and I had bills to pay and had to have a paycheck and since I was a little bit known in the industry I was fired one day had a job the next day but in Atlanta so I had to move to Atlanta Atlanta the city is wonderful but the lifestyle I had there was not very good so that you know that's 1991 92 I would call those the tough years I literally got a chance to move to Florida to take over this company and it's in my book I'll tell you but anyway that's the only time I ever told a boss to F off he tried to keep me hired because he said he said I'll fire your boss if you'll stay and I said no I'm going to go down to Florida and fix this company and so I went through a divorce had to worry about my daughter had to have a job had to have a paycheck moving to Florida sleeping in hotels sleeping in rental places finally got my first apartment about six months later and so it was a very tumultuous time for me but it was about a paycheck at that point I really had to worry about the paycheck do you think in fairness to my own story as well very similar I also had two young boys at the time as I was bouncing through and felt like it wasn't until that third time that I was fired I just felt like I was fighting the universe you know what I mean like it wasn't even that I really wanted all the pressure and to go back to zero I just you know I was also sick of it not working do you think do you believe that those hardships are necessary like those moments where you are you're on a couch or you're in a motel or you know I unfortunately was recently divorced from my wife I'm living in a hotel for three months and you're miserable and you feel like you know you're not a good father you know all these things you're having all these emotions do you feel like those times are necessary to navigate to success in business or do you you know because I think there's a lot of people in the insurance industry a lot of individuals who I know struggle with the fact that especially second generation leaders who were born into families that had agencies that were successful they lived with success whether it was their father uncle aunt mother whoever they lived in success and were brought up in success and then went to college and walk out of college and walk right into a successful business that is at least steady if not growing and I think a lot of these people come to me and they ask me questions about different things and I can tell they never really got punched in the mouth before they never really had that moment where they picked themselves up off the ground and they're struggling with you think you have to feel that you almost need to have those types of experiences or where do you fall on that because the story is so similar you hear so many of these everyone is different but the same they had these moments that were terrible and they had no idea what they were how to get through and they did do you think that's a mandatory part of reaching elite levels of success that you have I don't know if it's a mandatory part but I will tell you this I look back on it and I'm glad I had those lessons I'm glad that I had that chance yes I would have loved to be more second or third generation wealth that might have been cool I don't know what kind of person I would have met so many nice people that are second third generation wealth and I've also met some real pecker heads that are third generation wealth what I have found is that most of the guys that go through what you and I went through tend to be the nicer people on the planet tend to give back more and that's a big thing for me is giving back more so did I like the hard lessons heck no am I glad now that I'm 63 years old looking back on it you know when I'm sitting in the couch in Rockwall Georgia crying on the couch because I'm getting a divorce and I'm worried about my daughter yeah I think about that and it helped shape me and helped me make me I think more than anything it gave me that resilience that determination to drive forward harder but yeah I mean it's a mixed answer but I'm glad I had them why do you think it is that some people have these moments these hard moments and maybe not perfectly certainly not perfectly but they bear down they push through them they get better they continue to find their ambition they continue to find I don't want to say motivation because we know that's bullshit right they continue to maintain a discipline of some sort that keeps them moving forward in a positive direction while others just wallow they just they kind of sit in it they never get out of it it becomes quick sand to them and then they wake up six months a year five years later and haven't taken a single step forward is it family is it built in is it who you surround yourself with what why is it that some people push forward through dark times and others kind of sitting in it so I'm a huge huge fan of relationships I think relationships will define your life and for me it was developing relationships during these hard times mentors people that help me see help me guide one of the reasons I love being a mentor now and spend a lot of time doing that is helping people get out of that thing I also think there's part of it's just a personality nature there's just some people aren't meant to be people out there that need a career they need the nine to five job nothing wrong with that I'm happy for them I'm happy they're making their $75,000 a year salary and paying for their house note but that was never for me mine was about I'll tell you another quick side story it's Second Avenue Baptist Church I'm 17 years old graduating from high school and they go around the room and if I go James what are you going to do after high school in a very tiny voice I said I'm going to change the destiny of a family and I said that at 17 years of age and again if my mom didn't have the cassette tape I wouldn't believe it but yeah that's amazing I think for me it was always about I want more not just for me I want more the amount of people I'm able to help now is crazy yeah family that we're able to help now is just something I always dreamed of so I am not going to be able to reference who the person is for some reason I want to say it's Simon Sinek but it doesn't matter because I have no idea to be honest but I was listening to a podcast interview about about successful individuals this person was breaking down X number of successful individuals they had talked to or whatever and one of the topics that they brought up that I had never really considered before that I thought was incredibly insightful a defining characteristic or a through line characteristic of the individuals that this person had talked to was this concept of thinking generationally they don't they think they don't they're not building no matter how successful they are no matter how much personal income they take in their day-to-day thought is not about their own success it's about the success of their bloodline their children their children's children their you just said changing the destiny of a family my father used to say to me all the time once you have children your only goal is to make your kids better than you that's it so you get to be as selfish as you want to be until the day you have kids and then you don't get to be selfish and everything from making your kids a better version of you and you know that kind of mentality to me that makes a lot of sense there's there's a lot of nonsense in success literature but that idea of thinking generationally one it gives you a longer timeline two it forces you to prioritize activities and decisions that have a greater impact than just the next couple thousand bucks you're going to put in your pocket that does that make sense to you have you seen that in other people that you surround yourself and the mentors you had I think that is one of the most critical factors in my life and in the life of a lot of people I know I use this fun example I have a friend who's successful got a vasectomy at 18 because he never wanted children he's got 18 excited cars in his driveway he's got his plane in his hanger and he might have enough money in the bank to pay his grocery bills so he has zero interest in worrying about all that and I am just the complete opposite of that I mean I have a company out of Baltimore that I hire that does family governance I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on my estate making sure that it's estate tax free making sure how many 678 trusts are involved and all sorts of crazy stuff but it was always my single driving factor did I want to drive a Lamborghini someday yes I did yeah did I want to live in Mexico someday yes I did but you know my wealth manager now he knows that that I'll make the money his job is to protect him period end of story he protects it for my kids I don't touch anything out there and make my own money now for what I want to do what I want to buy where I want to live and you know we're continuing to do projects we've got a couple more we've got one potential grand slam we'll see if it happens and then you sort of get to a stage in your life also when you're 63 which is not that old but old enough and then you start beginning to think a little bit more about yourself okay wait a minute I've got 15 years on this planet 20 years on this planet you know and you gotta balance that with the fact that I got a new granddaughter coming in three weeks so I gotta be back in Texas but I want to do the round the world trip one day and you know so it gets bound but wealth allows you to do that and when you think about your family it allows you to do that and so yes to answer your question 100% believe that majority successful people think long term long term yeah what's up guys sorry to take you away from the episode but as you know we do not run ads on this show and in exchange for that I need your help if you're loving this episode if you enjoy this podcast whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast platform I would love for you to subscribe share comment if you're on YouTube leave rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes etc this helps the show grow it helps me bring more guests in we have a tremendous lineup of people coming in men and women who've done incredible things sharing their stories around peak performance leadership growth sales the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business but they all check out comments ratings reviews they check out all this information before they come on so as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you I need your help share the show subscribe if you're not subscribed and I love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments or if you're on Apple or Spotify leave a rating review of this show I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy it listening as much as I do creating the show for you all right I'm out of here peace let's get back to the episode so pivoting to your book and some of the ideas and particularly I want to spend some time thinking about what I prefaced our conversation on which is one of the things that we as an industry struggle with the most which is cultivating our high performers keeping them happy keeping them invested keeping them growing I don't know how familiar you are with property casualty insurance industry but there's a lot of issues around employees will hit a number and then they'll just stop growing right whatever their number is everyone's got a different number it could be 100,000 it could be two it could be five it could be a million a year they hit a number and they just stop and there's no more growth they manage the book and that's what not that having an employee who consistently brings in a million dollars is a bad thing but you can't grow a business that way because they just sit on it and there's all these different compensation models all these different philosophies and as I said it's a mess there's not a tried and true methodology that has circulated our space that people sit back on and go we take care of our people by using the whatever system it doesn't exist not that you have to speak to the insurance industry if you're unfamiliar but just in general would love to start to cultivate that where does it begin at hiring culture building where does this begin and how do you start to think about this when you're building a company when we started preferred imaging in 2000 we had three employees and it was really starting from the bound up and initially you focus on growth and culture we were a little bit of a party company we had some fun probably did things you probably shouldn't do nowadays with the current environment we had a lot of fun and through happy hours and played poker tournaments and you know kept people busy and motivated that away but as we got bigger you know the financial situation becomes involved in it yeah we did the commission structures and we did the bonus programs in the case of my sales reps in one day I took them $23 a scan get as many as you can and I saw guys go from $60,000 a year to six figures a year just working because it was commission only so I really liked that and I just reinitiated that into another company just literally the last few weeks bringing them back from salary commission to just commission only and you give them that little cushion of three months here's your cushion and I sort of back into it you're doing $60,000 you're doing 500 scans you get $30 a scan you make the same amount of money you do another scan you make extra $30 another scan you make an extra $30 so that was that model but then I started looking at really the bigger picture model and that's the one and I'll describe it through an LLC model it can be done through an LP and it can be done through an Inc too so what I did is I took my LLC and the beautiful thing about an LLC is you can write anything you want in the operating agreement I can tell you you got to wear a hat that says COMO on it every day at work or you don't even have a job I can put that in a company agreement so I went to the company agreement and I went class A shareholders that's me and again class A B C doesn't mean you can be class red green blue whatever class A is me I have all the voting power no one else can vote but me I control the company I went to Ryan you're one of my key people I'd like you to have 2% ownership in the company you will get profits and losses just like me there'll be no difference although you don't need to vote and two there's a five year vesting period so stick around and as we make money you'll make money and if that in that five year period you can come to me and you can say you want to become a class C shareholder which gives you two more years of vesting so now you've got seven years profits losses and then after that multiple and in my deal I put it three times X made it a 36 month payment if I wanted to so I could pay out distributions for 36 more months and what was really amazing about it was it got such a good point with four or five of my employees that they only drew a $30,000 salary to cover their health insurance benefits the rest of it I remember my president made $700,000 a year distributions but she had $30,000 salary so she was highly motivated now if you think about this in a bigger sense it's really just a profit share plan but they get to say they have equity so they get past that seventh year it's not really equity but it really isn't so I found for people to say I own part of this company was highly for me to control it me to make sure everything happened the way I wanted to happen was important to me but when they hit that seven year mark they owned it and as I mentioned 14 were owners in the different companies 13 wrote it out to the exits and the one that left left under good terms I paid her a three multiple and I think I just wrote her a check because it that was my model was ABC shares get to a certain point you're vested there's things I might have done different you know if you want to be selfish I might have done different I might have said okay if we exit you only get a four multiple even if I exit at a seven but I chose not to do that however I exited so there's different little things you can do inside the model yeah but that was my model right there and it was highly successful I'm about to do it again with an employee that's I'm in a new company in the pet pet industry gotten out of healthcare never want to go back into healthcare and so you know we're in the pet space we're in the female weight loss space we're in the charter space and so I'm starting to bring those people in the same model and so I know for seven years they're going to stick around because they want that exit and they want those distributions and distributions are a hell of a lot more than commissions let me tell you yeah yeah yeah I would agree with that I know one of the things that when I founded my agency I wrote down this term you know I was kind of mapping out what I wanted to do and I wrote down this a no ceiling insurance career because at multiple times in my career I've been told I have no shot at equity or property or really any kind of ownership structure because my last name was different than the last name on the building and you know that to me you know I'm 42 today you know when I was in my 30s those were unacceptable that was too young and too ambitious to accept the fact that there was never going to be anything more than where I was so I wrote down this idea no ceiling insurance career and essentially what I wanted to do and we are doing is building out a plan which allows people to kind of trial by fire work their way through a set of escalating positions to the point where when they proven themselves which will be around the five year mark they vest into a profit sharing plan on their book of business and stuff like that so it's it'll be interesting we're still young so we haven't seen all the pitfalls that come with these different things as we go but I will say that you know the producers that we get here the sales people that we get here tend to come in and fire pretty hard because they see that there's a future for that and some of them don't have the ability we've had people come in they don't have the ability or culturally they're not good fit but the idea that I could come in work my ass off make money and ultimately have this future where I'm sharing in the upside of what I create that it's incredibly motivating I couldn't agree with you more I like your structure a lot and you have me thinking because we aren't yet using different share types we're using more like phantom equity structure but I like the term equity I really think that's a motivating factor over profit sharing I just do and it's the same thing from a dollar perspective but when I tell people they have ownership I hand them a stock certificate they know all the rules they sign the operating agreement it's a little ceremony almost a huge deal I agree with you for some reason profit sharing doesn't feel real they are going to hose me somehow they spend a bunch of money before the end of the year there's all these negative thoughts that creep into your head but like you said even if it's distributed the same way feeling like having ownership in something it's a sense of pride and it feels very important so what you know so so so so redneck resilience what what made you write this book what was the impetus of it what what like why why did you decide to write this why did you of all the things that seemingly you still have an incredible amount going on and didn't need to take on another project what was the reason for putting it together you know i'll i'll backtrack a little bit share a little bit of my personal story because i've had a crazy life again i mentioned i'm the only guy you know that's probably been held at gunpoint yeah by the sandanese soldiers when i was young i bit off my tongue fell off a swing set bit my tongue completely off had to have it sewed back on three different times with no deadening medicine no pain medicine i learned a lot about that that led me to disregard blood on my pillow when i was 17 only to find out i had some brain tumors oh wow had to go get those out um you know lost my hearing this other year because of it uh you know had a tough year in 1990 going through divorce and child and losing jobs and all those sort of things um side story to the side story country baptist southern boy marries big city jewish girl from chicago marcia in 1993 or 1995 very supportive spouse another thing i talk to people a lot about is having that support system around you that you need that dramatically that support and i had it with her she knew i had to work 17 hours a day she knew that i had to do things now we set up certain things we had date night date night was religion we had dad coach kids sports i coached 17 seasons of some kind of sports so i'd have that relationship with my kids grew grew grew grew grew um the sad part of the story is and we were really doing well in life making a lot of money uh building our big you know 12,000 foot dream home and marcia was unexpectedly without any symptoms diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer yeah taught us completely by surprise i took off from the company took care of her may 20th of 2012 the day she was dismissed from md anderson i was diagnosed with stage three renal cancer and uh made a decision to forego radiation and chemo and i said just got me got me open got me take the tumor take the kidney take the bowel walked out of the hospital 19 hours and she lasted six more days so i'm raising two little boys and uh when i was ready to get back into the real world of dating i went on match.com and which was kind of fun and i lied and said i was an x-ray tech which was cute and uh you know sort of went that route and met kathy she was my first first date in uh 20 years in the last first date for the rest of my life so we we got together we dated three years she helped me raise my boys uh we got married now eight years ago and uh have this this wonderful wonderful life we get to live uh and all that's really due to this resilience it's coming back and getting knocked down and i use the term resilience it's not just getting knocked down and getting back up why the hell do you want to get punched in the vase again it's getting knocked down getting back up and finding another path yeah you know i think that's one of the keys to resilience i don't know if i answered your question but that was sort of my personal part of my story yeah no i mean it makes a lot of sense and i think that you know you you there is an art to knowing when to keep doing the same thing you know and not getting results i think some people some people take a concept like resilience or perseverance or dedication and they just continue to get up and try to do the same thing and get the same results and then wonder why they're not moving forward and i think that the insight that resilience isn't just getting back up it's it's giving back up and having the self-awareness the situational awareness to be able to to to make a decision if if the reason you got down knocked down isn't because you're just not on the right path maybe and there's a lot to that so do you what do you think you know obviously your your your personal life has played a major role in your in the success of your of your professional life what what was it about being raised or was there anything about being raised in the south being raised southern baptist was was there was there anything in your upbringing in particular that you think helped you develop resilience or was this an inequality in you that you've cultivated over the years yeah I think when you watch two 17 year old parents that have three children by the time they're 24 and you watch them go through what they went through I learned so much from my parents my mom went back to nursing school when I was in high school became a nurse practitioner we were in college at the same time that's funny she would get up every morning as a child and make biscuits and we lived near a farm so we lived off a milk straight from the cow wasn't we lived off of eggs straight from the chicken we lived off of squirrels and fish and things like that but my mom would get up every morning at five o'clock and cook us breakfast for school and get my daddy ready to go to work one of my biggest resilient lessons was my dad decided to start his own company when I was in high school and two things came out of that one I said dad I want to go to work for you after high school and he said no I want you to go to school so you don't have to work for a living and I didn't really know what that meant until about 2006 I was stuck in an ice storm and I saw a lineman on a power pole in the middle of the ice storm and I went that's what my daddy meant get an education where you're not climbing the pole nothing's nothing wrong with climbing the pole but he was telling me get this education the other thing that happened to him was his accountant was stealing his money and the IRS came in and shut him down I was probably 17 and I watched my dad go back to work pay back every penny to the IRS pay back every penny to every vendor he ever had money to and rebuild his career in the sales side of the electrical world so a lot of resilience there from him and learning that from him that okay he got his ass whipped and he got back up and he went back to work same thing I did in Florida when I couldn't pay my house note I kissed my wife on the cheek and said I got to go back to work I'll see you in four to five years and went back to work and so I think that was really relevant Southern Baptist not so relevant I mean it was interesting we went to church you know four or five days a week I'm a little burned out on the church thing right now personally and then when you marry a Jewish girl you learn a lot about the Jewish faith so it's kind of in the middle I did agree to raise my boys Jewish so Southern Baptist kid from Mississippi raised two Jewish boys so so interesting learning experience Kathy embraced it I'm extremely extremely close to Marsha's family still her dad is my best friend so and then he calls Kathy his daughter in law so we've got this really crazy blended family that's kind of cool with grandbabies popping up everywhere so my parents were probably the biggest influence in my life in terms of driving me and teaching me and showing me seems like despite all that hardship you were able to keep you know love to a certain extent in your heart I mean it sounds like the relationships you've had the depth the depth that you've had with your employees and particularly your key employees and throughout your companies has been a big part of your success does that seem right yeah I said it earlier and I'll say it again relationships will define your life period in the store they will define your business they will define the direction you go they will define your success and I always make a joke about the fact I probably fired 498 people and 496 still send me Christmas cards because I have a relationship with them I set expectations they didn't meet them they either weren't the right fit need to go somewhere else was compassionate in my terminations to not so compassionate the rest of them I was and again about relationships I'm a big believer in that yeah I mean at the end you know not to get too cliche but you know I think this is something you definitely don't realize when you're young and it takes time and as your life gets more busy and you realize what real relationships are and you go through real hardships with people you start to understand what what relationships mean to you but do you have any I don't want to make it trite but any advice for people who maybe struggle to one of the things that I talk about with with so I normally on Fridays we didn't it wasn't this week every other Friday I have this little man meeting that I go to and it's a bunch of guys around my age like 30s to mid 40s and we just sit and we have coffee or eggs at the diner or whatever and and chat and you know one of the things that comes up every once in a while is just the the hecticness and urgency of 2023 you know kind of modern society makes kind of cultivating relationships difficult and you know we always is it you know we kind of come back to sometimes like is it just is it just a lack of prioritization is it that the world really is incredibly busy right now is it that secularism has kind of taken over and we'd rather buy something than spend time with people like you know do you have any advice guidance for people who maybe are sitting here going geez I I believe James that that 100% but man I struggle I struggle to maintain build or grow relationships with people yeah it gets harder yeah it gets harder and harder the older you get it's really hard in 2023 2022 and maybe harder 2024 I think one of the most positive things and negative things that came out of COVID is what you and I are doing right now zoom you know positively we can communicate negatively we're not in the same room yep you know I'm not meeting you afterwards for a happy hour drink I'm not going to lunch with you and I miss that a lot yeah miss that a lot and I think that that's a huge component and I wonder about the next generations how they'll overcome that how they'll develop these relationships will it always be on a computer yeah I don't know I like you already but you're on a computer yeah it's you know so one of the things so we're big into baseball my family I play baseball in college I play baseball a little while after college I have two sons nine and seven and they both play baseball and travel baseball and you know but just what we do and one of the things that I find very interesting just just watching young kids today because I I tend to enjoy kids I'm not one of those guys who finds them annoying I you know that they're they're I don't know they're funny and fun and I enjoy them and yeah and I talk to my kids a lot about it and just I tell them all the time like this experience that you're having where you're you're struggling you're winning you're losing you're you're having personal successes personal failures team successes team failures you're watching your your friends where you're you're you're bleeding and sweating and you know you're having all this you know these experiences together and traveling together I was like you you you don't know it today but you will look back on these times and the and all these kids that sit at home and they play video games and they never come out of their house and their parents have to watch every move they make and and they're just you are going to be so far ahead of them in life because you've you're learning how to have friends and how to interact with kids and one of the kids is kind of a jerk and how do you how do you deal with them and you know I mean all these kind of things that just these interpersonal interrelational skills associated with a a common goal you know winning baseball games it's just so valuable and and so many kids you can just tell they spend 90% of their day indoors in front of a computer in front of a TV in front of video games and they really struggle they don't look in you in the eye you talk to them they don't talk back and I worry about I worry for those kids it's not really my concern necessarily they're not my children but I do I do think there is going to be a major divide in our society in these generations where you have the kids that were given experiences like what I hope I'm doing for my children and then you're gonna have this other group that just absolutely does not know how to relate to each other outside of a text message or a video game chat screen or you know I don't even know what I'm talking about I don't play video games so you know like you know so that that does I just see it as such a competitive advantage if you can put your kids in that space I don't know I agree a hundred percent with you on that one and really trying to focus my grandkids on sports a little bit they're not athletes but you know they're participating and you know my one grandson spends half the day on the computer doing a program he's learned how to program at 11 years of age wow but he's also going to the basketball game that night practicing with his friends and he's also going to the swimming thing and so we're trying to really push in that direction yeah and then we have the other grandson who pretty content to play a saxophone and do his video games and never leave the house so we're really trying to get him more involved in friends yeah I have a buddy of mine this is he's known out there during COVID his son was stuck in the house for so long was playing video games and he broke his video controller and he hung himself in his in his closet and he was seven years old oh my god it completely wrecked his family's life and they've started non-profits now to kind of remind the people that get them off the freaking video games get them out there into the real world you know and it's I struggle with it with my own grandchildren a lot yeah I do too I mean there's part of me there's part of me one I completely understand that the hectic nature of life and in small doses these this is how these kids relax to a certain extent you know and and how they you know whatever but uncontrolled unfettered access to YouTube or to you know to video games it's not healthy it's just absolutely positively not healthy and it's a struggle you know I struggle with a lot like they you know you you have that thing inside you as a parent where you want your kids to be happy and it's something that makes them happy but at the same time you know and I think my my ex-wife and I have done a good job at this is like you get so much time and that's it then it's done you know what I mean it can't you know this is this is play this is not real life and I tell it to him all the time guys this is not real life like being being good at football on the video game is meaningless no it's fun if you know it's cool we all have hobbies you know we all have things we like to do but like it's meaningless to your life it's just a fun thing that you do as an escape for a little while which we all need to have those things that's okay but like it's not real like that is not really what's going on in YouTube stuff I'm like you're watching something that's a that's a fantasy that's like watching drag a dragon movie like it doesn't exist like you're not watching real life and that is such a hard concept for these young kids to wrap their head around they don't realize that they're watching something that just it's completely make-believe they they they get lost and maybe there's some real to that and that's very scary it's it's very scary particularly with some of the things that are happening out there in the world you know I remember back when I was a child and you know my parents said okay you watch Popeye and Three Stooges for two hours after that get your butt out in the yard yeah and and then we literally had the Second Avenue Raiders our little club and we would meet and play baseball and softball and run up and down the streets and skateboard and you know build our own little go-karts and we just don't do that now and I don't know how much of that falls on us as parents how much of that falls on us as society as the norm but I push my children to limit their kids time on the devices you know it's it I completely agree with you you know I talked to my mom about this all the time because you know just try to compare my mom was young to not not as young as yours but she was 20 when she had me and and you know so we talk a lot and you know at eight years old she was handing me milk money and sending me out into town to go get milk and eggs or whatever we needed from the store and I'm crossing streets and walking through neighborhoods and at eight and I'd come back with bags of groceries and she'd be making dinner and whatever now you know my older son is nine and we're at the batting cages the other day and I send him out to get more money I left my wallet in the car and he's like hey dad can I get a Gatorade or whatever so I send him out to the car to get my wallet and like I'm like having nervous energy and you know that he's going and I trust that he's smart I trust that he's capable I trust that he's very cognizant of what's going on but like I'm having some anxiety and I know that that same situation with my mom you know 30 years ago she wouldn't even thought twice she's just like hey I need milk there's my milk getter here's you know here's five here's three dollars go get us milk and eggs or whatever you know and it's just I don't know is it is it that we just know every bad thing that happens in the world every day through the news and media is it that the world is actually more unsafe is it I don't I don't know what it is exactly but it's definitely there it is absolutely definitely there yeah I don't think there's any question that the world is more unsafe period end of story I think access to news and social media has enhanced that problem further you brought up you know get milk my parents had a horn yeah eight o'clock at night they would toot the horn and we knew we had to come home but I might have been gone for 11 or 12 hours yeah yeah yeah so I it's a hard question to answer and it's even a harder question to solve yeah I agree with you I'm not sure what to do I'm doing the best I can with my kids I'm going to make sure they're protected I'm going to make sure that that they limit their time on social media but you know so far they're doing great all my kids are doing great I'm very happy I'm very proud of them yeah James I want to be respectful of your time respectful of our audience's time it's been absolutely tremendous speaking with you the book is redneck redneck resilience a country boy's journey to prosperity we'll have it all linked up in the show notes for everyone that's listening if if anybody wants to connect with you in any way other than just you know coming to your website which I'll have linked up and everything it's jamesheraldweb.com slash book if you want to go to the book but you'll see the links are on there and everything where is there anywhere else they can connect do you do anything in any other venue where they can follow along with anything that you're doing I don't really I mean Facebook is big LinkedIn is probably my biggest gotcha we'll have all that just look Google James Herb with LinkedIn we we try to post daily messages and we're trying to motivate people and yeah awesome well it's tremendous I love your viewpoint I love your experience I completely think the way that you've used the word resilience and the fact that you did use it makes so much sense and in the way that I think a lot of people need today because it does you know just it does feel like people are getting and maybe this is the way the world has always been but I know a lot of people right now that feel like they're getting knocked down or getting held back or or quite often or more often than they're used to whether it's COVID or it's something else the economy and I think it's positive reassuring messages that also come with a with a bit of a bit of a kick in the butt or what people need and I appreciate you and I appreciate your time thank you for your time Ryan it's a pleasure buddy yeah thank you have a good one thank you close twice as many deals by this time next week sound impossible it's not with the one call close system you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call this is the exact method we use to close 1200 clients under three years during the pandemic no fluff no endless follow-ups just results fast based in behavioral psychology and battle tested the one call close system eliminates excuses and gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible if you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning visit master of the close dot com that's master of the close dot com do it today if you like the show please take a moment to rate review and subscribe it really does help the show to grow thank you for listening happy holidays want to give your host a gift consider subscribing rating and reviewing the show this holiday season it really helps the show grow from all of us at believe have a merry christmas everyone and a happy holiday you you you you you Thank you.