John Gafford

They asked him, you know, who's the smartest person you've ever met?

And his response was, well, the roundabout way was, well, it's kind of changing because, you know, if you'd asked me that question five years ago, it's who's the most technically, you know, the most technically sound person at solving very complicated problems.

You know, that level of just straight IQ is what we're looking for.

But now...

if you're really, really smart, you're not that important anymore because I have a whole computer full of machines that are exactly, are probably smarter than you.

So he says, now it's this intersection of EQ and IQ where human relations are important.

So now to me, the smartest people are the people that can bridge that gap at the breast.

So in your industry with a lot of these people that are doing professional services, is that a concern?

Is that something you guys are talking about a lot?

Okay.

When somebody is, when you go to consult for somebody, that first hire that you think they need to make, what's the first hire that most people don't have that they need to make right away?

Bookkeeper.

yeah oh yeah oh for sure no no for sure we've got yeah we're blessed to have yeah we're blessed to have some really good bookkeepers that help us and and they're full time with us because we just in this business you process so much money um you know checks coming in checks going out it's it's it's millions and millions and millions of dollars in commissions and it's um it's a lot we cut probably

6,000 checks a year for commissions.

Well, let's talk about that.

So as you grow, obviously, you're scaling operations, you're scaling locations, you're scaling this.

When you sit down with people, obviously, the hiring of certain staff to replace yourself so you don't become the bottleneck is important.

But you also do a scaling plan where you're saying, here's this benchmark.

And then when this happens, we're executing this.

And when this happens, we're executing that.