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Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. It is my pleasure to introduce you to today’s guest, Janneh Wright, CEO of Primus Business. Business management, a firm that helps nonprofits and small businesses grow with clarity, structure and purpose. With over 25 years of experience, Jennie and his team streamline streamline operations, finance, and HR so leaders can focus on what truly matters. Mission and impact. He’s a first generation entrepreneur. He’s passionate about helping organizations build systems that create freedom, not chaos. Today we’re talking about scaling with intention, leading with purpose, and building businesses that last. Janneh, welcome to the show.

Janneh Wright: Thank you for having me I appreciate it.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, it’s very nice to have you on.

Trisha Stetzel: So tell us just a little bit more about you.

Janneh Wright: Uh, sure. Um, I am a I mean, I, I learned recently that I’m no longer a first generation, uh, entrepreneur. I found that my grandfather ran a business that’s similar to mine years ago, which is really exciting to me that this is part of my journey. But, you know, I, I started over 23 years ago in 2002 when I graduated college and I graduated, I’m in New York, and I graduated college right around, um, September 11th in 2001. And when I came back to New York City, there was really no one hiring somebody with an economics degree from from University of Buffalo. So I took my own initiative to really just start doing things in my neighborhood. Right. I started I had a minor accounting. I had been building computers my entire life and I understood how business works. So I started helping people in my neighborhood through their accounting, set up their systems, move things around. And that’s when I learned just from that, because one person would tell somebody else about me and tell somebody about me. So while I was doing this for free, I was being passed around to different organizations to help them get these things in order. That’s what I realized. There was a niche here, right? People start businesses because of the love of a craft or a trade that they’re in. And the reality that they learn is that the business section of it is a lot more arduous and a lot more strenuous than they wanted.

Janneh Wright: So that’s usually the part that causes them the most issues. So what I did was take primates, take what I was doing as a volunteer work, and just helping organizations and really creating a business from it, creating a system to help people really, uh, be able to focus more on why they started the business and not the business aspect of it, but over the years, you know, you start doing things that are all part of business. So I was doing marketing and it and the entire gambit. But you realize that that’s not sustainable. There’s just too many parts of running a business for me to do it myself. So me and my team took some time to really focus on what are the things that business owners really need assistance with, what are the things that really help them drive their company and would take a lot of pressure off their backs? So that’s why we started focusing on HR and accounting and just operational management. And that’s what we’ve been doing for the last probably like 10 to 15 years. That’s all we’ve been managing those three aspects, whether it’s consulting or or taking the entire thing over as an outsource fractional department or just helping with training and supervising other people.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, fantastic. So I’m curious, before we dive into Primus and some of the other topics around that particular part of the business, I’m curious about how your mindset shifted when you found out that your grandfather was also an entrepreneur.

Janneh Wright: It was awesome. It was awesome. I started asking so many questions of my uncles and it just as you start to realize, especially since my grandfather started a, um, a credit union, right, to help local, uh, local individuals in the neighborhood, local businesses. He also had a supermarket that he used to help with. So when I realized that the core of what he wanted to do was help individuals and help them grow their businesses and help them have the resources they would, I realize, wait, is that in my DNA? Is that is that like in the genes of what we want to do? So that made me very excited. It, you know, knowing that you are part of a legacy that is that is out there to support the world and support others in your community. It really made me feel really, really good really good about that.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. Well, how fun for you to have learned that even maybe just since the last we spoke together, right? Uh. That’s fantastic. I would love to dive into this three C’s model that you talk about. So can you take us through what that is, um, how you developed it and how it actually helps organizations create healthier and more effective teams?

Janneh Wright: Sure. So the three C’s model came about with one of my, one of my employees, my number two in the organization, the CEO. Um, as she was doing work in the HR section of the organization, she really started to think through, you know, how can we help clients really get up to speed quicker? Right. And what is what are the mechanisms that will help us really put things in place to understand where it goes? So we took that initial workflow. We started really working on it and massaging it and getting better at it. And what we realized was as we walk into an organization, the first thing that should be on our minds is ensuring the organization is safe and secure. As an organization. So that became the compliance side. Right. So compliance is like that foundation for an organization. So we want to make sure that, you know, none of the none of the acronyms is coming to get, you know, IRS no doll. We want to make sure all that is really in shape and position and even even take it a little bit further. When you talk about compliance, we want to make sure that the compliance items are easily accessible, that you can get things because if if you’re about to get to go after a grant or you’re going after a loan, they’re going to ask you for all these things.

Janneh Wright: And most times, what we realize as we’re talking to individuals when we first start talking to them, hey, where is your, uh, your your your bio for your organization. No one knows where’s your incorporation paper. No one knows. So making sure that we we can see it, touch it, and then put it into a folder where it’s easily accessible. That means the strength of the organization becomes a lot more because now your foundation is secure. You’re doing everything you’re supposed to do to be a business owner, right? You have all the right insurances. The government is not messing with you and you’re you’re confirmed. So that’s the first part. So that’s the compliance part. And what we say is the foundation organization. Then we have to talk about you know as a business owner what is the interaction between between your organization and your employees. What’s the interaction with your organization and your customers, your organization. And anybody who is a stakeholder, whether it’s your banker, your funder, or however you see it, how do they interact with you? And that’s what we call the culture, right? The culture is really about the soul of the organization, the heartbeat organization. And you want that you need that to be as strong as possible, because that’s what helps people build the trust in you, build the idea that this is someplace good to work or someplace that is honorable, and somebody has that kind of ethics that aligns with them.

Janneh Wright: So they’ll continue coming back to your business and ensure that you’re getting the kind of, um, the kind of longevity that you want. The last part is the engine for your organization, right. How do we make sure this organization gets to 5 to 10 to 15 to 20 years? And that part is consistency, right? Doing the same things over and over again to make sure it’s done properly and really efficient. I always tell the story of of the rest of the restaurant we went to, and it’s something that I ate. I used to love to eat when I was younger, called Calypso Steak. Right. This is a very well marinated steak for one of my favorite restaurants. And, you know, I would go there at least once a week to sit there after work, get a steak. I remember the day that the chef left that restaurant, because that consistency in that steak completely changed. And I never went back. Right. Because that’s the only reason I was going there. Right. And that’s that’s the kind of things we talk about what consistency can bring to your organization. It brings loyalty. It brings devotion. It brings the kind of the kind of recognition of what you’re doing over and over again. Because now I can trust that, that you’re going to do the work properly.

Janneh Wright: I can trust that you’re not going to be unethical. I can trust everything in your organization. So that’s why we call it the engine organization. Because without that part, you’re not going to win. You can have the greatest culture, you can have the greatest product. But if no one trusts you, no one’s coming back to your business, right? And you know, when people start thinking about it, it’s it’s a kind of a circle. Because in this environment, things change so quickly, right? Ai is now the big thing in the environment, you know, and when you think about how you work, consistency doesn’t mean you stick into what you do all the time. It means you have now with this, with this framework, you have now the ability to go back and check on your culture to make sure the culture fits into what’s the current necessity for for the organization. And then you drive that back into consistency through creating SOPs, through training, through delegating, through all those aspects. So when we created this framework, it was really about how do I get the ownership of the organizations to really see their business in a much more community centric way and a much more longevity way, because you’re going to create the kind of things that’s going to allow you to be here for, for a very long time.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. I love that. It’s like full circle. I see how each part or each see contributes both forward and backward to the other sees that you have out there. It’s beautiful. I love this framework. Um, when you talked about yourself and how you got started, you were talking about working in a space where you weren’t getting paid for the work that you were doing, and even thinking about these nonprofit organizations and often not running them as though they are a business. And that will cause challenges, right? In these nonprofit spaces, especially in underserved communities, because they’re trying to give back to this cause, but they’re not thinking about running it as a business. So tell me your thoughts around working with, uh, because you have full span, right? Where you were part of an organization not getting paid to now assisting these organizations. So tell me more about those experiences.

Janneh Wright: Sure. I think that the one of the biggest things that we’ve noticed, especially with, you know, smaller organizations, that they’re starting to grow and starting to get to where they want to get to and where that that usual level of issues usually show up. Nonprofit does not mean not making a profit, right? I think that’s one of the lessons that people have to get in their head. A nonprofit does not mean not making a profit. It means that there’s no one person who’s going to accept that profit and put it in their pockets, right? You’re supposed to as a business, you’re supposed to make more revenue than expenses for a nonprofit. You do that and you take that excess money and you put it back into programing into the next year or the next factor. So the first part is, is understanding that as a nonprofit, you’re still a business. You still have to make a profit. But that profit is not going into anybody’s pockets. It’s going back into the community, back into the business. Once you start to understand that cycle, you start to realize that the things that other business does make sense, right? You have to you have to do things to make your clients happy. You have to do things to make your funders happy. You have to do things to make everyone who’s who’s supporting the business. You still have to accept their money and accept the way that that they’re looking for an organization to to run because you still have competition, right? There’s still other organizations who are doing the exact same thing you do. You’re going after the same funders for for funding. You’re going after the same people for clientele. So you have to think of it as still a business to be ran and a business to, to make a profit on.

Janneh Wright: Now the question of how do you do that? How do you really create the type of business mentality when you’re when you’re talking to individuals whose sole purpose is to save the world is a little bit harder, right? Because it’s it’s it’s a disconnect sometimes. Right. They don’t want to hear corporate talk or they don’t want to hear information. That’s like let’s talk debits and credits. Let’s talk accounting. They want to hear I helped X among the people this month. And if if I if my business goes out of business while I’m helping people they might be okay with that. But for me the longer your business stays intact, the more people you help. So you change the mentality from, I’m doing something to help the community, that I’m going to create this business to help a lot more people, because I’m going to run it in a much more effective way. And I think the other part, I had a conversation before of, you know, it’s not just your clients that’s being supported by this nonprofit, it’s your employees. So you have an obligation to create this business in a way that protects your employees as well and protect their future. So when when I’m working with with nonprofits, I’m trying to get that just across because I’m going to create the same financial reports I’ll create for a fortune 500 company, right? But I understand that I need to soften it a little bit and make it a lot more people centric than I would for a for profit organization, but it’s still being run as a business.

Trisha Stetzel: I know people are already ready to connect with you, Janneh, so can you just shout out your contact information so folks can connect with you if they’re already interested in doing that?

Janneh Wright: Sure. You can either email me directly at Jay Wright at Prime. Com or go to our website which is WW Prime US. Com as well.

Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. Thank you for that. And you guys know it’ll be in the show notes. So if you’re sitting at your computer watching you can just point and click and connect directly with Janneh. I would love and I know you don’t just work with nonprofit organizations, but it is a space that you hold very near and dear to the work that you do. Do you have a particular success story or a story you’d like to share about a business that you’ve worked with in the past?

Janneh Wright: Sure. Um, it’s for profit or nonprofit. Either one.

Trisha Stetzel: Either way. Whichever direction you want to head. So yeah.

Janneh Wright: So one of one of my my I wouldn’t say my first, but one of my first five years of in doing this work, I had a client who was transitioning out of a fiscal sponsored organization. And what that is, is, you know, fiscal sponsorship organization, organizations who hold other nonprofits within them allow them to use their 500 1C3. The issue that they were having with this organization was really around culture, right? Because when you’re a smaller organization inside of inside of a bigger one, your culture doesn’t really matter as much as the bigger culture. And, you know, and getting information from that bigger organization is usually also hard, right? You you have your $100,000 in revenue. They have their $3 million in revenue, they’re going to spend more time on their $3 million revenue than yours. So as this organization starts to grow, what they wanted to do was really move away from them. So they came to Primus to help really design out and really run all of their back office services. So we became their accounting department, HR department and some operations. What we’ve learned over that time was because we were able to do this work for them and take these things off of the hands of the CEO and off of his staff. They were able to actually grow that organization like 100 times quicker than they would have if they stayed where they were, because now they didn’t have to worry about bills getting paid or employee concerns or employee issues because Primus was managing that.

Janneh Wright: So their ability to focus on their mission, focus on fundraising, focus on developing the program and the clientele made them a much stronger organization. And their growth rate was ridiculous, right? I mean, within the first like two years, I think they raised over like 2 or $3 million, which was great for them. One of the conversations that I love is, you know, as as the CEO of this organization was talking to other CEOs, one of his conversations always like, I don’t worry about accounting or HR, I don’t worry about bills getting paid. I worry about fundraising because I have the trust and knowledge with that. And his team are going to make sure that these things are being done appropriately and right. And the way I know that if something goes wrong, he calls me right away and say, hey, here’s the issue, we gotta fix it. This was going on. I don’t we don’t hold back anything. We’re very much, you know, very transparent as an organization because our job is to make sure that you feel secure in your work so you can continue pushing the organization forward. So their growth rate was was immaculate. They they developed an organization that was that was completely, you know, caught a lot of people off guard, how quickly they moved up and the amount of people they were able to help because they can focus on what was important to them was ridiculous.

Trisha Stetzel: That is amazing. And I, uh, you mentioned before the areas that you really focus on are operations, finance and HR. And a lot of us small business owners don’t like to do that stuff anyway. So thank you, Janneh, for taking care of the hard stuff for us so we can go and do the things that we love. Um, I’d love to talk about executive reporting or the data that you’re able to provide to these business owners to really catapult them into, um, strategically driving growth in their businesses, just like you just described. So talk to me more about how we can use that data to drive growth.

Janneh Wright: I think everybody has heard like, you know, the data is king, right? In any organization like the more information you have, the better you’ll be able to to make decisions for the longevity organization. So one of the things I talk to people about all the time is, you know, accounting isn’t just for tax season, right? You don’t have to do accounting from December to April and that’s it. If you have the right accountant and the right information, you design your accounting, your design, your chart of accounts appropriately. The information you can get year over year is very valuable. You can understand, like, you know, I, I have conversations with some of my clients now say, hey, one of the biggest problems we have is from February to to to May is a blank period. These are periods where none of our funders give them any funds, right? So as they’re going after new funding, they’re trying to go after funders who fall within that line because of the the information I can give them from the last four years of data, because we know exactly what’s going to happen. And even on the other side, expense side, we slow down spending during those times because we know it’s the slow period for your organization.

Janneh Wright: So data helps you really see information from a longer point of view and understand what’s happening. The same thing with HR. If you’re tracking, um, retention rates in HR, if you’re tracking information about manager evaluations and you start to see things like employees are leaving at a certain rate or a certain time period, employees are saying for the first couple six months. You can now go and do more investigation, understand why this is happening. So that way you can break it up, because the most expensive thing to your organization is trying to replace an employee, right? It can it can end up being $1,000 because you’re losing the productivity. The employee who left, now you’re spending time interviewing, and you have to spend time training after you hire somebody. So you want to use that at all times to understand what’s happening within and outside your organization. That way, you can make better decisions on how to tackle things and move the organization forward as quickly as possible.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. It’s so important. So did you guys hear that those of you who are afraid of the numbers, you don’t want to deal with all of the stuff you need somebody like Johnny and his company to come in and help you with that. And the bottom line. Right. Uh, we need to let you do what you’re great at so that we can go and be passionate about the things that we’re good at exactly. As entrepreneurs. Yeah, thank you for that. So, um, where where those listeners right now are thinking, gosh, this would be fantastic. Where do they start, Janneh? Like how what is it that they need to have in their business or get organized with? What’s the first thing or first piece of advice that you would give to people listening today who really want to move into this growth, but they don’t quite know what they need to do first to get there?

Janneh Wright: Sure, the first thing I usually tell I talk to organizations about is the leadership, right? The CEO, where we’re usually that’s the biggest bottleneck in any organization, especially as a founder like myself, we have too much control over every aspect of it, and for good reason. Right? We’re the ones who built this. We we ran with this for how many years? So yes, of course there’s going to be we’re going to be the person who wants to make all the decisions that can’t last. Right? So the first thing I tell people when you’re talking to a CEO, especially a founder, is I want you to sit down and write out your to do list, right. I want you to write it out like a job description of all the things that you are responsible to do inside the organization. Now, you take that list, and I want you to circle all the things you actually want to do within that list. Write the things that you don’t want to do are things that you need to either. Find somebody else to do it. This is the outsourcing side or the delegating side because one, you don’t want to do it and you’re not in your wheelhouse. It’s not something that you’re strong at. And if you spend the time that you’re doing these things you don’t want to do on the things that you’re good at, your organization will grow, right.

Janneh Wright: So understanding that that’s one of the first parts of this, like you need to understand what exactly it is that you’re good at and the things that you want to do out of your entire list of things. And our list as founders is long. And once you realize that, I think that’s when you’ll start to understand where do you put all your energy and time in growing your business? What is what is the best utilization of your skills, your visionary view of your business? And it’s definitely not doing the accounting right. It’s about programing. It’s about raising money. It’s about the service or the project that you’re making. So once you develop that as the first part, the second part is now what do you do with that list of the things you don’t want to do, right? Having a number two in your organization is an important part. Who’s that person who’s helping you get things done right? Do they have the specialty to do anything on that list? If they don’t find someone else, outsource it. That’s why necessarily that’s what promise was created, right? You could outsource the entire HR and accounting process to us.

Janneh Wright: Now you and your staff can focus on program, focus on service, focus on products. I think developing that is one of the first things we talk about. I learned this, um, this phrase from one of my mentors a few years ago. It’s something he developed called today versus tomorrow. Right. And today versus tomorrow is an ideology that as a CEO of the organization, my job is about tomorrow, right? My job is to grow the company is to see the vision, is to move the company forward, to make this work. You need somebody who’s responsible for today, who’s going to keep your clients happy. He’s going to make sure the product goes out on time. Who’s gonna make make sure everything inside the organization is done in a way that enhances the building of the organization going from today backwards. So once you develop those two things right, you start to understand where you need to live. For me to grow your organization, who you are inside the organization, how the organization is going to survive with or without you because you should go on vacation every once in a while too. And once you realize you divide, you make that distinction is possible.

Trisha Stetzel: Uh, I love this. And yes, we should all get to go on vacation. The business shouldn’t be completely dependent on us. And I, I love that you’re helping other businesses with that. Specifically where we need to let go of some of the things, especially if we’re the founder owner, uh, and the doer of everything. Right. And creating that list. What a what a great way to get started. So your entrepreneurial journey has spanned a couple of decades plus. What? What’s a lesson that has really stood out for you? Uh, it could be the hard, you know, the hard ones or the easy ones. But what really stands out for you as you’ve gone through your own journey?

Janneh Wright: I think one of the things that I usually talk about for me is the discovery of the difference between being a business owner and a specialty business owner. Right. And to explain a little bit is like, you know, by trade, I’m an accountant, right. And for many years before I added on all the parts, I ran an accounting business as an accountant, I understood that that’s what my business Lane was. But I didn’t want to be just an accountant. I wanted to be a business owner. So my ability to pivot and bring in other places and other aspects of the organization that was valuable to, to, to my clientele was part of what changed me from being an accountant business owner to a business owner who does accounting. Right. So now I can see where where my clientele needs were. Right? The HR part, it was a need that I saw came on. The admin part would need us all came up. But if I was only solely focused on being this one thing, it puts your organization at risk, right? Because anything can happen that can that can jeopardize one part of your revenue source. So understanding what you want to accomplish is more important than the skill level that you have in that one area, right. What is the longevity? What is the what is the end result? What do you want to do with your business? Because I’ve seen organizations who go out of business because the environment around them changed, right? You have an organization who sells a certain product to a certain demographic in a certain neighborhood. If that neighborhood demographic changes, do you shut down or do you adjust your your product offering to accommodate the new people in demographic, in your demographic? I think that’s where a lot of people get themselves in trouble when they get really too focused on one item, not realizing that pivoting and expanding is part of this journey of being an entrepreneur.

Trisha Stetzel: Diversification, right? Good word. Diversification. Alright, as we get to the back end of our conversation today, I have one more question for you. Um, when you think about the leaders that you’ve worked with throughout your journey, both in your business and those in that you’ve worked with, uh, on your business, um, what’s one piece of advice you’d share about leading with purpose and building something that lasts?

Janneh Wright: So it’s a it’s a weird piece of advice. I think it was the greatest piece of advice that I got. Um, someone asked me, what’s the end result of this business? Right. What is my what is my exit strategy? Where do I want to go with this business? And as a business owner, sometimes we don’t think about that, right? We’re not we’re not thinking about. Oh, as my business shutting down or or am I passing on to my kids or am I selling it? We’re not really thinking about that. But to think about that is an important part of this journey as well, right? Because it if you’re selling your business the way you I’m going to go into the accounting side of my brain right now. If you sell your business, the way your balance sheet looks would be different than if you’re trying to transfer this business off to your kids, right? Because if you’re if you plan to sell the business, you want to reduce how much loans you have, you want to reduce how much liabilities you have. But if you’re trying to transfer this business to your kids, getting more debt so you can grow, the business is part of it because you’re trying to expand and get bigger. So all these things are part of that conversation and trying to figure out exactly what it is that you want to do at the end of the business retire, sell it, pass it on to someone else. It helps you really create a vision for the company and what you want to do.

Janneh Wright: Right. So I go through this process every couple years and I that I create, like a five year game plan. Right. So the five year game plan is where I want to see this company in 2020, in 2030. And I’m going to follow that game plan all the way through. Same thing when get 2030, I’m gonna create another one, because I’m getting close to the point where I want to be done and retire. What’s the next problem? And for me, part of what I want to do with this company is pass it on. Maybe not to my kids, but pass it on to somebody else. That way there’s always going to be an organization out there that’s clearly focused on supporting nonprofits and small businesses, but I don’t want to see that idea die out, and I want to see it expand even more. So my goal is to to to pass this on to somebody else, whether it’s family or not. So the way I’m designing out this company is for that is for that reason, right. So it’s really designed to be able to give it on to someone else, but it’s helping me focus on what I want to do and why I’m doing what I’m doing going forward. So that was the biggest advice that I’ve ever received, and I think it was one of the most precious things I hold dear to. Someone who said to me is like, understand what you want to do with this business at the end of your tenure with that business?

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Begin with the end in mind. That’s such good advice. And many of us don’t think about that. We don’t think about ever leaving the business because we’re so busy working in it. Right. Or our heads are full all the time. Janneh, this has been so thoughtful and I appreciate all of the, um, amazing bits of advice and information you’ve brought to the conversation today. Thank you.

Janneh Wright: Thank you, I appreciate it. This was great conversation.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. All right. Tell us how they can get in touch with you one more time.

Janneh Wright: Sure. So you can email me directly at J, right. W r I g h at com prime seo com or just go to our website, see what we got and send us a message at Prime. Com ww.com as well.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that and let Johnny and his team do the things that you’re not good at, and you don’t want to do the things that you did not circle on your list of things that you’re doing today. I love that, Johnny. Again, thanks so much for spending the time with me today.

Janneh Wright: Thank you for having me.

Trisha Stetzel: All right, my friends, that’s all the time we have for this show. If you found value in the conversation that Johnny and I had today, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, veteran or a Houston leader ready to grow. And be sure to follow, rate, and review the show. It helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours. Your business, your leadership, and your legacy are about one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. It is my pleasure to introduce you to my guest today, Michael Dodsworth, founder and CEO of Fanfare, a platform that helps brands turn product launches, events and collaborations into unforgettable experiences. Michael and his team are redefining what it means to launch something in today’s attention economy, helping companies not only create buzz but capture real, actionable insights that drive loyalty long after they drop. So sneak peek into things that we might be talking about from ticketing and retail to live events and brand partnerships. Michael’s journey has taken him through some of the most high stakes, high pressure corners of commerce, including launch disasters, sold out moments and everything in between. His mission, with Fanfare, is simple but ambitious to make every product launch feel like an event fans remember and brands can learn from. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Dodsworth: It’s great to be here. Nodding along to my own intro. It’s a good sign.

Trisha Stetzel: Well, I’m so excited to have you on the show. So Michael, tell us a little bit more about you.

Michael Dodsworth: Uh, so I, as you can probably tell from the accent and not from around these parts, uh, Fanfare is based in LA. I found myself on these shores through all kinds of different forks in the road. Uh, but started life in the north of the UK. Uh, became an engineer pretty early in life. A software engineer. Um, my brother brought home a Commodore 64, and that was me hooked. And since then, I’ve been building software. I’ve been building platforms. Uh, found my way into San Francisco through an acquisition of a very small company and had the opportunity to work in amazing places with amazing people and on issues of scale that I think is pretty rare and unique and has helped kind of build this appreciation for these, these moments, uh, these launch day shenanigans that we all see. Um, but these surges in traffic, the bots, the bad actors, like these are all very, very gnarly technical challenges to try and get your arms around. And we don’t see we don’t see a lot of brands and vendors, even even people with lots of resources been able to take those on. So that’s that’s kind of the, the, the origin of me. Uh, the origin of Fanfare really came out of just frustration as a consumer, having spent my life loving going to live events, going to festivals, and Struggling every single time to get tickets. It’s just incredibly painful and it’s a pain that we all share. Like everyone has their their bad moment like it may be.

Michael Dodsworth: You know, you sat in line for four hours, for five hours, and you saw all the tickets vanish onto the secondary market. But maybe it’s, you know, you booked tickets to the US open, and when you turned up, the tickets were not valid. They were illegitimate tickets. Uh, so I’ve, I’ve heard all kinds of stories, uh, on that spectrum. I’ve felt a lot of that pain. And, uh, I set out at the start of, uh, when was this? This was 2016. Uh, we started a company rival, which, as the name suggests, is going after the likes of Ticketmaster and so on. And we really wanted to provide some competition. Uh, we felt like there really needed to be a better way for consumers to do this. You quickly realize that it’s not just the consumers, it’s the people on the other side of the fence, the teams, the promoters, the artists are also having horrible moments when things go on sale. Uh, and we we built this platform, uh, it was looking good. And when we were at the start of the pandemic, uh, rival was scooped up by Ticketmaster. And that kind of I was hopeful that this would allow me to solve for these frustrations at a larger scale. But that’s not how things turned out. So I ended up just, uh, being frustrated that these problems weren’t being solved and starting my own thing to to go after this.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay. All right. So in the vein of Ticketmaster, uh, or beat them at their own game, what lessons have you learned with the experiences as you’ve moved through this journey with Fanfare?

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah, I think, uh, we, I mean, we had all of our values on the wall, and one of them was, uh, respect the problem, solve it simply. Uh, the more we spoke to team owners, to promoters, to venues. The realization of all of the complexity of what they’re doing, just managing these venues is incredibly complex. Working around the seasons of all of the different teams, the sports, the artists like, it’s incredibly, incredibly difficult what they do. And it’s not something that you can just stand up a platform that does something very simple, and they’re going to be able to do their day to day. So that was one, um, it was interesting learning about the the different incentives that different people have in the ticketing industry. You know, I think, uh, and, and often at cross-purposes. Uh, so we really wanted to slow the process down and make it more deliberative and more more careful and so on. But the promoters want to say, you know, sold out in 50s. Right. And so you’re kind of thrown at odds in all kinds of different circumstances. And I think that’s the source of some of the frustration that people feel when tickets go on sale. And there’s there’s only a small sliver of tickets available.

Michael Dodsworth: That’s often because the teams have kind of passed off risk by giving tickets to brokers and third parties and so on. So there’s a lot, I think, at play there. Um, and I think one of the really important, like, um, things to learn from the teams was they, they were they were all trying to create moments. They weren’t just trying to sell tickets. They were really especially the the really forward thinking teams were trying to think about ways that they can really create fandom and really go after, you know, creating experiences that people will remember. Well, uh, good experiences, like the moment they took their kids to see their first baseball game and what could they do to try and elevate those experiences? Like, could they offer them, like a better seat if they knew that this was their first time, could they try and get them back in to the venue if they knew that? These people are kind of on the cusp of becoming lifelong fans of the Dodgers. Say, uh, so these are, I think, interesting realizations. Like, they’re really thinking about how they can, like, create something that’s memorable and they just didn’t have the means to do it.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. The client journey, that’s what’s really bubbling up for me, right? This whole client journey. So you started your story with being on the other side as a patron, trying to buy tickets, and now you’re on the inside working with the teams who are trying to create moments. How did you at what point did you realize that it wasn’t just about selling the tickets, it was about these moments that these teams wanted to create for these families or people who were just buying tickets?

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah, I think it was it was more just reminding me Of. Like what? What memorable moments have I taken? Like, why am I a fan of a particular person or a particular brand even? And it is often these kind of special, special experiences that we share. Right. I think, um, you know, I can remember my first football game. I can remember a rugby game, uh, rugby final. Like, these are like memories that really stick. And, uh, I think hearing the teams talk about what they wanted to do and thinking, like, living in that, you know, the, the, the mind of the family going in and having like, special treatment and like, merch given like all of those things I think would just have created an amazing experience for me. Um, I think Covid taking that away also reminded me how much I missed those experiences. Like being around people, been around groups of people who all like, commonly share in something. I think I really missed that. And, uh, yeah, I think that reinforces me how. How important these, these opportunities are for teams, for artists, for for brands. Even so. I think that’s that’s where it came from.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. So there’s so much noise out there, Michael. Just so much noise. And we’re all bombarded with so many things that are going on. So how does Fanfare cut through the noise and really create this moment or this journey for the client?

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah. What we’ve seen is like, why the noise gets created is often because the brands have very little information or understanding of what works, what doesn’t work, so they end up just bombarding people. Like my inbox is filled with, with the only one.

Michael Dodsworth: Absolute like I, you know, I have just kind of carved out an inbox over there that I just occasionally look at. Um, just because they don’t know what channel works, they don’t know how often they don’t know, like what’s really going to move the needle with people, what’s, you know, what’s important to people and so on. So I think without all of the, the information and the the ways of using that information, they just kind of scattergun approach it. And that’s what we all feel like when we see those messages go out. Uh, emails in particular. It’s because they’re just, you know, they’re trying their best, but they don’t really have any way of focusing. So I think for our brands been able to give them those tools. If you want to create an experience that’s special, you need to carve out some experience just for your VIPs or just for your, you know, loyal subscribers. And then you don’t want to send messages too often. The most effective way is to reach people is maybe the Friday before, maybe two weeks before. And here’s the channels that work with these people so that, you know, there’s there’s a very high signal to noise on the messages that the brands send out. So when people see a message from a brand they care about, they know it’s not just spam, right? They know it’s something important and they may want to look at. So I think that’s how we’ve tried to help brands with this, like provide them data so that they can make more focused decisions about how they reach people.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. So we’re moving from Michael, the patron, to Michael, the engineer businessman, making sure that we’re looking at the data. Uh, and I think that is so important. Um, as we get kind of to the middle of our conversation, I know folks are already interested in connecting with you. So would you give us the best way to find you and connect with you?

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. You can find me Michael Dodsworth. Uh, is my handle. But there are not many Michael Dodsworth’s in the world, thankfully, so you can find me pretty easily. Grab some time. I’m always happy to talk about this stuff if you have something coming up, if you know you have a launch coming up or something you want to get on sale, please reach out. You can also find us on Fanfare. Uh, we’ve been trying to produce articles and blogs, uh, some content around all of these releases. Whether they go well, whether they don’t go well. The to do’s, the the do not do’s of these kind of events and what we’ve learned from it.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you for that. All right you guys LinkedIn Michael Dodsworth is the best place. That’s actually I think that’s how I found you. Or maybe we found each other on matchmaker FM which is a podcast matching. Right. Which is great to, uh, to go and meet some really cool people. Excited to have you on today. Can we do just have one little fun conversation around Taylor Swift, maybe? If there are any Swifties out there. Uh, all right, tell me the story.

Trisha Stetzel: How so? Tell me about switch to and the drop that broke everything.

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah, I mean, these these things happen so frequently. Uh, there’s the feeling I remember a friend reaching out after the switch to release and he said, I think this is part of the process when things fall over. Uh, I think this is deliberate, like it must be because it happens every time. There’s no way this is just they can’t scale to meet these requirements. And I’m like, no, no, no. They lost business when this happened, right? People went to Best Buy. It fell over. So they went to Walmart or whoever. So these are these are painful moments. And I’m kind of surprised still how often like if I need to find case studies of people who’ve had drops go badly. It’s a really easy dip into X or wherever you can quickly find people who’ve had issues. So, um, I mean, Taylor Swift, uh, everyone on the inside, I’m sure, saw that coming. Uh, you know, just a high volume on sale on Ticketmaster. These things, I mean, they go badly almost every time they happen. So Oasis shortly after that, Ariana Grande recently all had serious issues. I think in the Taylor Swift case, this was a presale that fell over. So not just in the general on sale. This was just her most loyal fans showing up excitedly to try and get Taylor Swift tickets.

Michael Dodsworth: And they’re met with just, you know, an error page or worse. Like they get their tickets and then they vanish. So, I mean, this comes from, you know, kind of an ailing platform like Ticketmaster has been doing this for a long, long time. And I would say, you know, having not invested as heavily as you would like on the technology side, um, having like scooped together all kinds of acquisitions and kind of glued them together. What you end up with is a system that, you know, when you really pressure test it, when you really put some, you know, put some people in there at high scale that it just falls apart. And that’s what you see with with Oasis, with Ariana Grande. Like all of these things just really challenge a platform that is difficult to now. Right the ship. Um, you know, I’ve worked at places where we’ve had platforms that have some years behind them, and it’s a real it’s a constant effort to make sure that they are current, to make sure that they can deal with the traffic volumes as they increase and to keep on top of things like bots and so on. So I think this is just, you know, it’s a difficult problem to solve. Um, but it’s it’s not something that you can kind of tack on after the fact easily.

Michael Dodsworth: It requires like a multi-year effort. And I, I haven’t seen that kind of effort from many platforms, uh, on in the ticketing industry, which is, I think, why rivals approach starting something new, knowing that these kind of traffic volumes happen, that you should prepare for them and you should build everything you do, uh, around those kind of events is where rival came from. And that’s what we’ve done here is just knowing that, you know, at the scale of 3 million Swifties, a lot of things can be put under a lot of pressure, and you have to be the platform that stays up around these things. So, I mean, I’ve been in situations where we’ve had outages, where we’ve had these kind of moments on the other side. It’s incredibly painful. It’s I mean, there was an outage yesterday from AWS. Uh, these things cause enormous damage. And as an engineer in those moments, there’s some scar tissue for sure, built up around those moments. Um, but it really is just been very disciplined about how you build and really keeping like this particular feature, this particular element of what you’re doing top of mind whenever you do it. So nothing really gets into Fanfare without it being fully, uh, Pressure tested to make sure that we can stay up.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Okay. So now I’m. I’m wondering, like, business lessons from Michael. Like, what have you learned about doing business along this journey? From being a patron, taking your, uh, engineer skills, building the platform, staying ahead of the game. What have you learned about business on this journey?

Michael Dodsworth: I mean, I’ve had to learn a lot quickly. That’s the. That was actually one of the reasons for starting Fanfare is I felt like as an engineer, like I had the engineering chops, but there was a whole world out there that I was less familiar, that I was less comfortable with. And the most, the quickest way of getting there was to start something myself and really test myself in that way. So, I mean, I think realizing coming from an engineering perspective, like there’s always the focus on the product, like what it does, how it does it, and the quick realization that people don’t really care too much about that. They don’t care about the details. They don’t care about the amazing engineering you may have done to build some feature. Like, I see a lot of engineers who quickly jump into the walkthroughs and things like that. And it’s not about that. It’s about understanding people’s pain. Like what are they trying to do? Why can’t they do it and listen to how they’ve been going through the motions and what they’ve done to set this up? And what are they really trying to achieve from this? Because, you know, sometimes the answer is not your platform, right? Sometimes the answer is not the cool feature you’ve built. It’s, uh, you know, it’s really talking to to people and understanding what they’re doing. So I think that was a, an adjustment. Uh, like sometimes you think you’ve gotten there and then you, you know, you read your own notes, uh, you go back and look and you’re like, I’m, I’m definitely still talking about how the platform can solve a problem they’ve not talked about yet. Uh, so there’s some great material out there. There’s a book called The Mom Test that someone, uh, pointed me at. And I point people at, uh, generally it’s just, uh, a good way of kind of level setting on that and making sure that you really are getting the right answers. Uh, and not just trying to reaffirm something that you already believe and things like that. So I think that’s been an important lesson.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. I think oftentimes we lean into all of the bells and whistles. Let me tell you about all these amazing things on my product or my service and the way it doesn’t make them feel anything. Right. Those don’t create an emotion. For some people it may, but it doesn’t create that emotion. And you, you talked about this at the at the top of our conversation around the journey and the moment. And that’s really what matters. That’s what people are looking for. And I love that. Fanfare is really focused on that. I think that’s amazing. Okay, so if it’s all right, I’ll switch gears just a little bit. You talk about the sneaker culture. Can you give me a little more insight on that?

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah. So I’m an aspiring sneakerhead. I have a large collection in my wardrobe that’s a little bit embarrassing when people come across it. Um, I think there’s a lot people can learn. Brands can learn more, traditional brands can learn from sneaker culture. And I see I see more established brands reaching for this kind of model. Um, and the idea of, you know, running limited sales, doing collaborations and again, like trying to create a community feel around a product like sneaker heads are a group, right? They, they, they understand each other. They know the pain that each other went through to get the products. Like, you can see people walking around in, you know, Travis Scott dunks, for example, and most people don’t notice it. Most people look, look past things like that. But people who know know that they went through incredible pain to probably get those products. So I think it’s that feeling of creating a community around a brand, uh, Supreme were incredibly effective. Like anything that went on sale with the Supreme logo on people would jump over to to to get after. So I think that’s a really important lesson, is trying to create a community of people who love your products, who will espouse, uh, the products, values and, and kind of bought into the story.

Michael Dodsworth: Um, and we see people doing that all kinds of different ways. Sometimes it is the narrative of the brand, sometimes it is having people buy into the, the, the origin story, uh, what the brand is going after. Sometimes it’s just the quality of the products that people put out there can, you know, form a community around that brand. People do it in different ways. Uh, we saw a soap brand in LA called Doctor Squatch do a collaboration with Sydney Sweeney where they had, uh, Sydney Sweeney infused bath water soap. Uh, like, completely bizarre but incredible way of just getting attention to your brand and driving people towards it like you’re the brand that’s, you know, it’s soap. Uh, but you’re trying to deliver and, like, inject a bit of humor into it and a little bit like, uh, you know, trying to do something a little different. So people do it in different ways. But I think trying to do something that creates this, this feeling of community, I think is really important.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. So tell me a little bit more about Fanfare and the role that Fanfare is playing in creating these communities. And uh, why someone would want to go and check out Fanfare.

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah. So we kind of facilitate these launch experiences. So if you have a product that’s going on sale, uh, like I say, building a community may mean rewarding your most loyal subscribers, let’s say. So you want to create an experience that goes on sale at a particular time, and you want someone else to take care of how that on sale happens. You don’t want to be scrambling around in the moment to try and flip things on flip. Flip things off. So we facilitate that. You want to also make sure that they are messaged in the right way, through the right channels, at the right time like that. We can help you structure all of this as a marketing and event. So all the way from announcement through to actually running the experience itself. And then once you’re in the experience doing things that I think help foster that fandom. So things like moving your most loyal members forward in line or giving them exclusive access or rewarding their time even if they’re not successful, like if you’re selling only ten of a thing, most people are going to be disappointed in some way. But if you can give them something in that moment, if you can give them early access to the next drop. Uh, we’ve seen a brand Do they call it the L club? Uh, the people who failed five times to get some particular product were now eligible to an exclusive drop. Like, if that really keeps people, uh, engaged with the brand, there’s a feeling like you are having this exchange with the brand. Like you’re giving them your time and attention, and they’re giving you something back in return. Uh, so I think that’s how we can help.

Trisha Stetzel: Um, I love that. And just creating this community and getting people involved and making them feel special.

Trisha Stetzel: Right. Making it feel special. So who do you serve, Michael? Uh, for those people who are listening, who might be interested, who do you serve?

Michael Dodsworth: So we I mean, we started life going after the people who are running drops, who know drops, but are struggling to manage the process. So streetwear footwear is where we started life. But this is like any where you find scarcity is a good place to to add Fanfare. So this can be you have a a loyal audience, you have a following online and you want to put merch out there. You want to monetize what you have. Like this is a great way of doing that. Live events, luxury products, collectibles. Um, we heard from a guy who he loved ten figure coffee grinders and was frustrated with the process. Like, we found all kinds of places where you have these scarce products and a bad process. So that’s where we can come in.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, fantastic. You guys, if you’re interested, please go take a look. It’s Fanfare and it’s f a f a r e at I o is where you’ll find that. Or you can find Michael Dodsworth on LinkedIn. I’ve got one more question for you. Before we wrap up today, you’ve seen both chaos and even magic in the world of of launches. So if you could leave our listeners with one piece of advice today about turning high pressure moments into lasting momentum. What would it be?

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah, I think the brands and the people we’ve seen successful on this really are trying to really are trying to create something that’s kind of magical for the people who care. Uh, I think, you know, trying to just give people coupons and discount codes just doesn’t cut it, like trying to to engage people, you know, and trying to keep those people engaged with the brand is a real full time effort for people. Um, and I think, you know, trying to do that and trying to create special moments for, for people, for their loyal fans is is incredibly powerful. Like, we see people really move the needle like I think, um, uh, I’m trying Stanley was a great example of that. You know, I think trying to create something that went viral was was their target and their sales numbers. I think it was three x their revenue every year for the last three. Like incredible growth from really going after this model.

Trisha Stetzel: And everybody wanted the pink one and they were always out. I’m just saying this Stanley mug. Everyone needed one. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, Michael, thank you so much for being with me today. Anything else that we didn’t cover today that you wanted to chat about?

Michael Dodsworth: I think that I think that covered a lot of it. I would just say if you if you are struggling with some of these events, uh, as a consumer, like, I’m with you, I’m with I’m with you there. Like, this is painful. Um, and I’m always open to hearing about new and interesting ways people find this problem. Um, whether that’s a brand, whether it’s, you know, people trying to book swim lessons for their kids, uh, these are all painful processes that we go through. So I’m always open to hear about this.

Trisha Stetzel: It’s not just the big things. It’s the everyday things that we’re trying to do as well. Thank you so much for being on. This has been such a great conversation.

Michael Dodsworth: Thank you so much.

Trisha Stetzel: All right, you guys, that’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that I had with Michael today, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, veteran or Houston leader ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate and review the show. It helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are about one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. Today’s guest is Aaron Trahan, founder of Performance Mindset and a seasoned executive with more than 20 years of leadership experience in both corporate and startup environments. By the age of 30, Aaron was leading $1 billion publicly traded company, a role that gave him deep insight into what drives growth and what derails it. Today, he works with leaders and organizations to to achieve sustainable, profitable growth by breaking the chaos cycle and creating systems of clarity, focus and accountability. Aaron’s mission is to help leaders get better at getting better and build businesses that scale the right way. Aaron, welcome to the show.

Aaron Trahan: Hi Trisha, thank you so much for having me excited for this conversation.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Me too. And for those of you who are not watching on video, you need to jump over to the YouTube channel because Aaron has this most beautiful Winnie in the background. And I’m not going to tell you what it is. So you guys just have to jump on and see.

Aaron Trahan: It’s it’s always good to have a cute, uh, cute, fluffy business partner, you know?

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. All right, Aaron, tell us a little bit more about who you are.

Aaron Trahan: Yeah. You know, I am someone who really, from an early age, just gravitated towards this big, bold concept of continuous improvement. Um, I was kind of just a nerd of business books from a very early age. I started watching CNBC to just learn about what all this stuff means. Someone asked me is like, do you even know what showing up on that thing running across the bottom? And I just remember saying, not entirely, but I’m I’m learning, right? And so it just this concept of growth and continuous improvement. And before I even really knew what the concept of scaling really was about, that’s it was just kind of a gravitational pull for me, and not only on an individual level of just trying to understand how can I be a better leader, how can I lead teams more effectively, but also then how that translated to an organizational level and really just finding myself, um, you know, positively obsessed with what is it that allows Those leaders and organizations to find the next level to keep growing over a long time. But more importantly, what is it that prevents them from doing that? Why do leaders burn out once great high growth organizations, you know, either become a non growth organization or fail outright? And so, um, that was kind of the invisible journey that I was on that eventually led me to, um, you know, being a seasoned executive operator to now finding myself on the other side of the table, serving those leaders, operators and businesses of trying to avoid the same mistakes that I made, being able to access all the lessons and key insights without having to acquire the same scars that I had to acquire.

Trisha Stetzel: Um, I love that. Not that you have all the scars, but that you’re able to bring all of your expertise, your knowledge and experience to others that you serve. Now that’s amazing. All right. Names always have a meaning. And I want to dive into performance mindset which is your business. So talk to me one about the name of your business. And then let’s take a little deeper dive into the services that you provide.

Aaron Trahan: Sure. Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s probably one of the most frequently asked questions that I get is performance mindset kind of what? Tell me more about that. And, you know, kind of going back to the past 20 years that I’ve had in and around all sorts of businesses, of all sorts of shapes and sizes. You know, I think the great work that Carol Dweck did at Stanford University of really bringing the concept of a fixed mindset and a growth mindset to the mainstream, I think was was pretty valuable for all of us. But I think as I started to understand the nuances there, I started to realize that, you know, when we think about that in terms of the application to business, I just found a different story kind of playing out. In reality, nobody is going to admit to having a fixed mindset first and for all. And so every room that I was speaking to, every team I was a part of, whenever I would ask the question and really explain what a growth mindset is all about, every hand in the room is going to go up and say, yep, that’s me. I’ve got to fix our growth mindset. That’s what I’m all about. And so then I started back to that curiosity of what makes people grow, leaders evolve, and what prevents leadership growth. I started scratching my head of saying, well, if everyone has a growth mindset, why are we having these wild variabilities in performance and outcomes and results? And what I realized was there’s kind of a next level to it with a growth mindset, that thinking and believing that nothing’s fixed, you can develop and grow and build intelligence and capabilities.

Aaron Trahan: That’s great. But what I was starting to understand was thinking and believing can only take you so far. It’s missing a key ingredient and it’s the willing to take action. So when I kind of think about what shows up a lot in the business world, it’s much more nuanced than just fixed versus growth mindset. I think it’s really kind of a status quo mindset of people getting comfortable with where kind of they are, and things are good enough, so to speak. But then this other group has the performance mindset, which is just the bias to action to continuously improve. They’re not looking in the rear view mirror, kind of hanging their hat on what has already been achieved, or look at what we’ve done. It’s always asking the question how do we further improve? How do we continuously get better? Where can there be areas to take it up a notch? Where am I not operating either at an individual or an organizational level at anywhere close to our full potential? So for me, it really became this status quo mindset. Are we comfortable with where things are and we’re just kind of playing the status quo game. Then it becomes the the performance mindset. Are we willing to take the action and do what’s required to truly see better performance and better results? And so for me, that’s what that was kind of the narrative that I was seeing play out in the arena of business. It’s not as simple as fixed versus growth. It’s much more about status quo versus that bias for action to do what’s required to get better performance.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, so how do we get from status quo or just this growth mindset where we’re just sitting still to performance.

Aaron Trahan: Yeah, I think it it is all around first generating awareness, right. For for everything that I do, it all really starts there. And I love kind of the saying that says a weakness or a development area that you’re not aware of will never be strengthened. Right. And so much around that status quo thinking is really that belief that, you know, good enough is always going to, at some point lead to complacency. And when you’re complacent, you’re not going to be intentionally driving awareness around where the gaps are. And look for high performers. Gaps may not be underperformance. The gap we are really focused on is where you’re performing versus where, you know you can potentially be performing. So it’s kind of it’s a you versus you. It’s am I better tomorrow than I was yesterday? And do we understand and put the awareness on where the gaps are that if we took action to evolve, develop, build the capabilities will get us closer to that full potential that makes us 1% better every day. That drives the continuous improvement. And that’s not always a comfortable place to be in. Always looking for how to develop. What more can I do? What more am I capable of? It requires it just requires a different intention to build the awareness, to learn where to act, to generate a better outcome. And if you’re in the comfort zone of the status quo, that’s just going to be an area that is, you know, never going to be found in that zone.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. So what are your thoughts around doing it alone versus surrounding yourself with the right people.

Aaron Trahan: Oh, I, um, I’m just a big believer that you can only go so far alone. Um, you know, I’ve I’ve been the beneficiary of having a lot of great mentors, a lot of great coaching. Um, whenever I realized that I personally needed to leave that one zone of comfort and status quo thinking into a performance mindset, I needed a third party. I needed a coach to help me see what I wasn’t seeing. I needed someone to not only help me identify that there are corners coming up, but then to be able to have, you know, develop some insights, um, to proactively maybe understand and see what’s around those corners. And yeah, I think if the only, only voice of accountability that you’re kind of listening to, uh, is that voice inside your own head, I, uh, I think it’s going to be tough to really tap into the full potential that I think is there for, uh, all leaders and organizations. So I’m a big believer, um, that with others is a accelerated path to ultimately getting you to your destination.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, you need to check who’s in your room, too, right? Because we want to surround ourselves, like Aaron and I, uh, have the same kind of very uplifting, above the line energy, and we wouldn’t want to hang around. I hope I don’t want to speak for you, but I don’t want to hang around with people who have negative energy. I want them to have more energy than me and more passion. Uh, yeah. So that I can strive to be there, I love that. So let’s take this from growth mindset to sustainable growth. So can we unpack why the how of growth matters more than the how fast?

Aaron Trahan: Yes, absolutely. And it’s such a great time period of the year to have this conversation, because I believe Inc. magazine just recently released their updated list of what’s referred to as the Inc. 5000, which is the 5000 fastest growing private companies in America. And as you can imagine, every small and medium sized business would love to be on this list. What better marketing for you to put on your website or in a promotional blast of saying we are an Inc. 5000 company? Now, what’s interesting about this to kind of start this part of the conversation is fast. Growth is good, but it should not be the only thing you’re optimizing for, because follow up studies from this great list of the fastest growing companies has found a troublesome kind of where are they now? Um, you know, story that’s unfolded. And what the data shows is that 68% of companies that make the Inc. 5000 list remember the fastest growing companies in America over the next 5 to 8 years, 68%. More than two thirds of these companies either fail outright or are no longer a growth company, and they’re a significantly smaller size. And I think that just really puts an exclamation point on sustainable growth, growth that you can continue to maintain and work to compound over a long period of time is always going to be a better option than just rapid expansion.

Aaron Trahan: Back to having great mentors and someone sharing wisdom with you. I had to learn this the hard way, so I’ve got very intimate, first hand experience of all the chaos that emerges when you grow too fast. So luckily, I had a mentor on my board who pulled me aside after a not so pleasant board meeting to remind me never grow faster than you and your team’s ability to manage it. And that was always a stark reminder for me. It’s that if growth starts to outpace your ability to execute your team’s ability to manage it, chaos starts to ensue. Um, look, the graveyard is full of companies that grew too quickly, were not able to implement the systems and the structure to be able to support it and maintain it. And unfortunately, far too many businesses die by a result of collapsing under the weight of their growing pains, not from competition. Um, and so I think it’s just an important reminder that growing the right way, your ability to make sure you can manage it, the ability to generate operating leverage, um, allowing the growth to compound over longer periods of time is always going to be far more important than trying to just increase the top line by all costs as fast as possible.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. Yeah. That’s such a great point Aaron. And I know people are already wanting to connect with you to learn more or even just to pick your brain. If you let people do that maybe you do every once in a while. What is the best way for the listeners to connect with you? Aaron.

Aaron Trahan: Yeah, the two places I show up, most, uh, one’s going to be on LinkedIn. I would highly encourage anyone to connect, reach out. I’m always trying to share, um, the things that I’ve learned along the way and continue to learn. I’m pretty transparent with my community there of. Look, learn from my lesson. Avoid my scars. Uh, and then for a more in-depth review, my website would be the best place to go to really understand how I help executives and organizations. And that’s simply performance mindset coaching. Dot CEO uh, so those will be the two places that you’re going to be able to get access to me as quickly as possible.

Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. And if you’re trying to connect with Aaron on LinkedIn, you can find him at r r o t r a h a n. And it’s actually Aaron Trahan. Coaching is the handle for LinkedIn if you guys are looking for him there. Okay I heard you say chaos cycle. I think we probably have an idea of what it is you described, what it is. But if we find ourselves in that chaos cycle, how do we break free from it?

Aaron Trahan: Yeah, yeah. So I think it it really comes down to one important thing. And if I could back up for a second, I think for a lot of business owners, founders, leaders, you know, it almost kind of feels like chaos is just kind of part of the game, right? It’s just if you’re in a growing business, there’s going to be some chaos that comes along with that. And I think while that’s true, I think there’s there’s different flavors of chaos to look for sure. When an organization stretching and growing and we’re reaching new heights, there’s going to be that healthy chaos that comes with stretch. But what to look out for is when the chaos really starts to hold the organization back. When you start to feel like there’s bottlenecks everywhere, you’re playing whack a mole. Your days feel much more like a, um, a day long firefight than actually doing things that are productive, that can drive the business forward. So to more directly answer your question, it all comes down to prioritization. And here’s what I’ve seen in businesses that have been a part of businesses that I help and just businesses that I’m observing is there tends to be a chaos cycle that ensues when some of the negative flavor of chaos shows up. And by the way, I’m a firm believer that when you’re experiencing that chaos in the business, that’s nothing more than the business’s way of screaming out to you that it needs better structure and needs better systems.

Aaron Trahan: That’s that’s just think about that as the language at which your, your business is communicating to you. But where the cycle starts is really going to be around your ability to properly manage prioritizations or the inability that shows up as priority mismanagement. And here’s what I see so much Uch when priorities start to be mismanaged. That could be in the form of your team feeling like priorities or switching every single week, or everything’s a priority. You know, when a business has 20 different priorities. Whether your employees say it to you or not, what they are talking about is we don’t know what the hell to focus on, right? And so priority mismanagement will always drive the next stage of the cycle, which is fragmented. Organizational focus. Focus for any business in any industry is a superpower. Period. Full stop. So when you think about the priorities at which the top level of an organization’s driving down to the team, when that’s not clear, when there’s too many, when they’re constantly changing the focus, that superpower of your organization is never going to be in the right dosage, in the right spot. So it’s going to be fragmented. It’s everywhere. So what happens when priority mismanagement leads to a lack of organizational focus? Results suffer. You see it in weak execution. You’re missing expectations. You thought sales would be here. They come in way short. We’re scrambling to figure out why. And so what do leadership teams do after this third stage? Priorities.

Aaron Trahan: Priorities were mismanaged. There’s not enough focus in the right area. Results start to show up. Weaker than expected. We need new priorities. We need a new initiative. We we need a new growth strategy to kind of get things back on track. Which then takes us back to the very top of the cycle. And you’ve now created the vicious loop. Too many or constantly changing priorities, fragmenting focus even more on, on and on through the cycle. And so to stop the cycle, to get out of the chaos cycle really comes down to a business’s ability to prioritize. And I like to think about it in terms of a question. If I was to randomly show up to your team leadership or management manager meeting, and if I was to go into the room unannounced and secretly ask everyone the same question, what are the top 2 or 3 priorities for the business, and why are these the priorities for the business right now? What would happen? Would everybody say the same thing? Would everybody say something different? So to break the chaos cycle, you have to have that team saying something similar to each other, because when they’re saying things different about the downstream chaos that that creates in an organization, everybody thinks the priority is different, which means their focus is behind something and nothing may come back and align to what is truly most important for the organization.

Trisha Stetzel: Yes, yes and yes and yes. All of these things resonate with me so deeply. Erin, thank you for taking us down that path. So does this play into that business GPS system that you talk about? Yeah. So can we dive into that a little bit 100%.

Aaron Trahan: And that’s why as I kind of in my the seat that I sit in today, kind of helping leadership teams and organizations avoid the same mistakes that I unfortunately made. You know, the past decade for me has kind of been a reverse engineering of what were the what were the tools that I was lacking, what were the frameworks and the systems that if I would have used, I could have avoided the mistakes, missteps and failures that that showed up on on my path that I had to course correct on. And yeah, because prioritization that I found is so critically important. I kind of like to think of it in terms of a business GPS. So if we were to pull out our phones and pull out whatever your maps app of choice is Apple Maps, Google Maps, whatever it is, remember, these companies that built these apps have spent billions of dollars to make it useful for us consumers. But it requires us to enter a critical data point for it to work. We need a clear destination. And if we don’t have a clear destination, that billions of dollars poured into this app will never work for us. So I’m sitting here talking to you today from Austin, Texas, right. And look, if we were to just type in central Texas into Google Maps, it’ll give us a million different options to choose from. Even if you, you know, you went into Southwest Austin. Okay, we maybe have thousands now, right? But until you get a specific location or address, that’s the only way you’re going to get an optimized route to take you from where you currently are to where you want to end up.

Aaron Trahan: I take businesses through that. Same thing is, where do we want to be over not too far out in the future because then it starts to lose its teeth. Not too short in time because we need some ability to kind of think out and plan. So I found two years to kind of be the sweet spot. So where I love to start working with businesses is really getting their teams firm on what’s our two year destination, kind of call it the vision. Within the vision, where do we want to end up? And I, I serve as kind of the challenger in the room to say, bring it down to abstract to conceptual, being the best or world class like that we can operationalize around that. How do we quantify what that looks like? How do we plug in my address in Austin and not just Central Texas or the greater Austin area. And then from there, we just didn’t execute a very streamlined, working backwards experiment. If we get the team very, very focused and aligned on what our two year vision looks like, where we want to end up, then knowing where we need to be at 12 months, knowing where we need to be at six months, knowing what’s most important over the next three months starts to get very clear and very simple. And now the prioritization of what we’re going to prioritize and what we’re not has the necessary guardrails for us to easily determine priorities from priorities. But most importantly, it helps an organization say no way more often than they are today. And as.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh my gosh.

Aaron Trahan: So.

Trisha Stetzel: I know.

Aaron Trahan: You said.

Speaker4: Yeah, Go ahead.

Aaron Trahan: Yeah. Is Warren Buffett’s always said the difference between highly, highly successful people and average people is the highly successful people say no to virtually almost everything. And it’s because the priority scope is so defined. We know what we’re going to say yes to. That fits within that scope. Everything outside of it is a no or not yet.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. I love this. So you just took us on this beautiful journey. Aaron thank you so much for this amazing conversation. I’ve got one last ask. Tell me your favorite client story.

Aaron Trahan: Hmm. My favorite client story is the one that’s top of mind. Was the call that I was actually just on. Um, okay. This is this was a client that was in the physical therapy space and also did some longevity, uh, strength training of really helping people coming in for physical therapy and a part of the country where people are very active, um, and have a huge interest in staying active for longer. But as you can imagine, someone running a big physical therapy operation and another business, the challenge was I can’t get out of the business. I kind of feel like so much depends on me. I’m the bottleneck. I’m reactive and firefighting all day long. And, you know, I’m not sure I want to keep doing this. Right. It’s like I’m working harder. Only for poor results on the bottom line. And so taking this client in his business through these different types of tools, we were able to get very clear on where we wanted to be. We were able to get very clear on what matters most. And we were able to then start prioritizing what needs to come off his plate, what needs to go on to different plates, how do we streamline the organization? Where where are the areas that’s really holding the business back? Um, and as you can imagine, the work that we’ve been doing over the past couple years where literally the call that I was just on before this call, a lot of the conversation was talked about how great the team is doing, how he’s got a team of individuals now operating like owners.

Aaron Trahan: He’s able to be 95% strategic, 5% tactical. Two years ago, it was the exact opposite. He was 95% reactive, 5% strategic margins have expanded in the business top lines expanding in the business. And he’s putting in fewer hours than he ever thought was possible in a growing, optimized business. And so it was just one of those feel good calls of seeing seeing someone be able to create the business that they dreamed of, for it to perform the way that he envisioned it performing without him having to be the bottleneck in every single step of the way.

Trisha Stetzel: Mm, I love that. So something simple, if you’re in your business and you can’t take vacation because you’re so embedded in it, you need to talk to Aaron. I’m just saying.

Aaron Trahan: It’s it’s kind of, uh. It’s nothing more than helping build the bridge, right? I think every business kind of has three islands, right? Vision, strategy and execution. And so few times I’ve seen are those islands connected with a clear bridge? That’s all we did in this case is we took the vision of what he wanted. We created a strategy that would make that vision tangible and put in the mechanisms to drive day in, day out, week in, week out execution to generate week over week progress. And so his three islands now have very tight, very solid, very well built bridges connecting those three islands.

Speaker5: Wow. That’s beautiful.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you so much for this conversation today, I felt like I went on a journey and maybe even thought about vacation for a minute. We’re growth mindset. Oh no performance mindset. This was fantastic. Aaron, thank you so much for your time today.

Aaron Trahan: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s all the time we have for today, guys. So if you found this conversation with Aaron valuable, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, a veteran or a Houston business leader. Ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate, and review the show and helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business, your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.