Jeff Morrill: Serial ethical entrepreneur, expert on hiring, and author of Profit Wise
Today's guest is Jeff Morrill: serial ethical entrepreneur, expert on hiring, and author of Profit Wise: How to Make More Money in Business by Doing the Right Thing.
Jeff Morrill co-founded Planet Subaru and businesses in retail, telecommunications, real estate, and insurance. In 2021, TCK Publishing will release his book Profit Wise: How to Make More Money in Business by Doing the Right Thing. Using the secrets shared in the book, his companies generate over $100,000,000 in annual revenue and win many awards for customer care, environmental stewardship, and team satisfaction. Jeff’s achievements in building ethical and flourishing companies have been featured in USA Today, Automotive News, and Entrepreneur Magazine.
What you'll learn in this episode:
-Unorthodox marketing moves that actually work
-How to avoid hiring mistakes
-How to live well and do good at the same time
Show Notes:
JeffMorrill.com free guide
Jeff Morrill
Fri, 2/19 8:12AM • 35:31
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, people, hiring, book, company, questions, person, marketing, regrets, team, tree, thought, conscientiousness, salesperson, build, learned, goats, interview, car dealership, hear
SPEAKERS
Erin, Michael Benatar
Erin 00:13
Hey, everyone, welcome to call me crazy. We're really excited today to welcome on Jeff Morel. He is a serial entrepreneur. He's an expert on hiring. And we're gonna talk about his book. He's the author of profit wise, which is a book on how to make money in business by doing the right thing. So, Jeff, welcome to the show.
00:32
Great to be with you. Thank you.
Michael Benatar 00:35
Yeah, we're super excited to have you on I think it's, it's kind of a interesting time for us. We're actually bringing on people to kind of onboard into dope dog, our company. And I know right before the podcast, we were talking about, you know, hiring and how important that was. And can you give everybody just a little bit of brief background on your history? And then we can kind of dive into some hiring information? Because I, we need a lot of it?
01:02
Yeah, sure. Sure. I'm looking forward to it. So I graduated from college and couldn't find a job, which is how I ended up in the service department of a car dealership. And it turns out that, that you have to be really careful about that first job you take out of school, because here I am, many years later, and I'm still connected to that same same line of employment. But my brother and I, for some years, while we were working for other people discuss the idea of owning our own business. So we started looking, and it took us a while, but we found a bankrupt Subaru dealership in just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. So we moved out for Virginia, that was our first business that was in 1998. And we've opened some others to organically really, I can't say that we, we went out looking so hard to find them. But sometimes when you're in business, they kind of come your way, opportunities roll down like bowling balls, you know, and they sometimes they hit the pins. And so some of those things worked out for us. And I guess just to conclude the the very introductory biography, I think if you look at why I've I've been blessed with the many things that have found me I'd say the first is a lot of luck. And the second is a gentle persistence. And and I encourage people that are interested in business or starting a business just to to keep on doing the things that they need to do to keep getting closer to to finding their dreams.
Michael Benatar 02:34
And how did you involve kind of the ethical side of business, because a few weeks ago, we spoke to somebody that actually, I had no idea there was a B Corp that you could actually register for, and have that a core part of your business. How did that kind of become part of your kind of vision for being an entrepreneur,
02:54
I guess we were raised in a family where we were encouraged to think about the consequences of our actions on other people, and in to try to do something for our little corner of the world. And there are a lot of ways you can do that. In fact, I originally, as I said, Before, I accidentally ended up in the car business my whole life. Growing up, I thought I was going to do something in politics, because I thought that was a nice way to, to, you know, in government has the authority and the ability and the budget to really change society in positive ways when it works well. So that was my original interest. And in what I discovered later, I can't say that this was some grand master plan, but but you can improve your corner of the world, basically, no matter what you're doing. And businesses because of the volume of dollars that flow through them, you have a lot of opportunities to direct those dollars in ways that are pro social. So I'll give you an example. I mean, we are effectively a sales organization, we sell all sorts of things, we sell vehicles, at the car dealerships we sell insurance policies, through our insurance business, we sell space on cell tower infrastructure, I mean, we sell a lot, but the other thing we do is we buy a lot. And the way we spend our money can really help the world. One of the things we buy if you think about it sort of in a capitalistic terminology is labor. And that's sort of a, you know, economic, an economics course way of thinking about the relationship that we have with the team members that that actually do the work in our companies. And so the dollars that we spend there, we've tried to do that in a way that invites people that are traditionally not very well represented in our industries, to to join our companies. And that's a way of serving the communities that they come because it strengthens them financially. It helps those individuals because they they have a career path and they get skills that they wouldn't have otherwise had and they certainly they earn a lot because we have industries that are just you know, there. There's a lot of revenue flowing through them. So there's they get a chunk of that revenue for themselves.
Erin 04:58
How has the ethical practices evolve since your very first business till now, because I feel like it's something that sometimes is maybe an afterthought or you don't think about it when you're first getting started out. And a lot of companies now are wanting to start on the right foot. So have you seen that evolve in your companies? And where maybe are you doing now that you're that you didn't do before?
05:19
I'm sure, sure. Well, the premise of my book profit wise is that the two can go together. In other words, there, there are occasions like if you're writing checks to charities, that strengthens the charity when you write the check, but it actually weakens your company, because you're taking money out of your company that you could have used for something else. But in the case of like, our very unusual way of, of inviting traditionally underrepresented people into our company, we get access to a much deeper, deeper talent pool than our competitors do. And it serves those individuals and their families and their communities that are sending those people to serve with us in our companies. So they go together. To answer your question directly, though, I think we at the beginning, we were just afraid of going out of business, like so many, so many early entrepreneurs, you know, they're just tremendous expenses involved. And, and not a lot of revenue, lots of long hours, you're so stressed out, you're not thinking especially clearly, which is probably the first 10 years of my, my business journey. So in that in those circumstances, I think maybe I was a little less focused than I've become, now that the businesses are very well established. And the revenue was more reliable, and consistent than it was at the beginning, we're willing to roll the dice more. So we're willing to take on projects that we would have been afraid to do earlier in the lifecycle of the company.
Michael Benatar 06:54
And with the hiring at this point, how is that been something that has kind of changed along your path and the things of you, you've kind of learned because for us, we're kind of going through it hiring at a very small scale. But it's still tough, because we're realizing how hard it is to get the right person or somebody that's excited about it, or somebody that wants to, you know, start here, but doesn't see that the end goal, you could actually become a bigger role in the company. And I tried to explain that I think it's really I don't, it's hard to get across like I want people excited about because I remember, as an intern, I used to intern at a radio station. And then eventually I was on, you know, morning show at some point. And I knew that's like what I wanted, and I knew I could work hard to get there. And right now I don't sometimes I maybe I'm not seeing it in people or I don't know what it is. But how are you finding the right people to work for you?
07:52
Well, we learned a lot of things the hard way. And, and one of the things we learned is that I don't think we could clearly understood that beginning exactly who we were looking for. So now I'll give you just one example, before we run an ad or recruiting ad on an online, you know, website, or something? Yeah, sure. We use indeed a lot. Okay. And before we do that, we already have most of these built, but if we have a new position, we spend that little bit of time to figure out who is the person we're looking for, like, Can we describe this person, and, and put it on paper, because there's something about that process of like, working through the requirements of the position, and the kind of qualities you want in that person. And and then having to be accountable to actually writing them that that made sure small team. In our case, maybe it's a group of managers or a small team within a department understand that so that they'll understand who they've, who they're looking for. And they'll know that person when they find that person. So I'll give an example. In the case of an automotive salesperson, we know that conscientiousness is a huge part of that position. And in for a lot of reasons, but not the least of which is that everybody has that story of the salesperson that got in the way of you buying something and they got in the way because they wouldn't return your phone call. Or they wouldn't look up the piece of information that you needed them to look up so that you could buy the product from them, you're ready to go and they actually interfered with you. So so we identified conscientiousness as a key requirement for that position. And then we have a few questions that that get at that.
Michael Benatar 09:47
I was gonna say, yeah, how do you get that out of somebody just in an interview.
09:52
So we try not to have goofy questions, but in so we don't have like you hear about these like trick trick questions. That companies do that you have to work out, you know, crazy mathematical formulas just so we don't we don't do we're not trying to trick. But yeah, maybe it's maybe it's apocryphal, I don't even know. Yeah, that's true, but but you hear those things. We're not trying to do that. But I'll give you an example. Some of the questions we ask our, how do you keep track of your commitments? So someone will say, Well, I write them down, like, commit what I mean, like if you have an appointment, 10 days from now, how would you keep track of that? And, and we asked her, Well, if you're writing it down, can you show me what you're writing that down in? And, and it's not like we're at for asking anything really intimate or personal, we actually put it on the desk, let me look at it and see. And you can get an idea of how methodical they are, by the the quality of the record keeping they have in most cases, nowadays, I'm old enough to have been around during the pen and paper days. And now now it's coming into the electronic version, but but if someone can't pull up the calendar on their phone, yeah, that shows their their commitments further in their obligations, you know, to remind them to, to make sure they pay their credit card bill or with all the things that we need to make sure we don't forget. If they're not doing it in their own personal life, it's very unlikely that they're going to, they're going to be able to do it for you, in your workplace.
Michael Benatar 11:24
And figuring that out. How did you get to that question? Because I'm reading a book right now. I think it's like, neuro marketing. It's about like the psychology of marketing and sales. And there is such a big thing and just changing the question like, the book starts out, I'm only a few pages in the book, but the book starts out and it says, you know, there was a homeless guy sitting on the, on the corner, he's like begging for food. And the one guy came inside that song, and he's like, Hey, I'm gonna, I'll give you $60 if you don't make more than $60 in the next hour, and you just change the writing on the board. And instead of saying, you know, I need food, it said, What would you do if you were hungry? And the homeless guy came back in, and he handed him money. He said, Take this $10, I made more than you thought I was gonna make, because of just this one little change the same idea. But there's one little change. And that, to me is like the hardest thing to wrap my head around. Because like that question right there that you're asking people that are coming into sales?
Erin 12:29
How did you get there? Because that sounds like having someone that you hired and then learn that that didn't work out, avoiding the mistake of a wrong hire or keeping someone for too long. What do you do? Because,
12:41
yeah, this this hiring system that we have cost us millions of dollars, not exaggerated, because of all those mistakes that you're describing. But I've got one resource for you, my website, Jeff morell.com, we actually have the templates that we use every great business, those interview scripts. So if you can't, if you can't figure out how to do it, now, our positions are different than yours, perhaps but there is overlap. I mean, there's some percentage of our questions that would apply to any position in the dealership we, we have a script different script for like an automotive salesperson than we would for a person in accounting than we would for a technician, for instance, so that, but there are perhaps half the questions are the same, because we want all three of those positions, for instance, demand conscientiousness, so those we have those conscientious questions on all of them. And before you hired people to you know, the millions of dollars getting to these, this onboarding, how did you figure it out yourself that
Michael Benatar 13:39
like, Oh, well, we need to update or figure this out? Or what were some of the mistakes that maybe we could avoid in hiring at such a small scale.
13:49
I described the whole system in the book. So I don't want to read it off here and hijack a podcast. But But I'll give you you know, a couple examples. One of the things that we've, we learned organically, and it's not like we discovered this by reading it in a book, although we've put it in a book for other other people, is that it's important to have three interviews. So a lot of businesses rely on a single a single introduction to a candidate. And, and the problem that we found and that's what we used to do, too, is that while there are lots of lots of disadvantages to a single interview, one of the disadvantages, you just don't have much time you know, you have your 60 minutes or whatever. If you have two or three interviews, then you can double or triple the amount of time you have, which will, you know, give you that many more opportunities to see red flags or, or to communicate more about the position of the person so that you don't get that what we call a quick departure. That person that didn't I can't tell you how many times it happened that we hired, and within a week or two or a month or two, they quit and the reason It wasn't that they didn't like us, or that they didn't see a lot of potential with us, they just, they just didn't understand what they were getting into, and it wasn't for them. So our third interview, we call, it's actually not an interview, per se, we call our shadow day. The third interview is, is we invite someone to come and spend the better part of the day, actually watching the position watching people work the position. So in the case of let's say, an automotive salesperson, we asked them to spend five or six hours just just hanging out in the center of the showroom and listening in so that they can see exactly the kinds of things that the customers are saying to the salespeople, and the, the, the very unusual way that we work with them. So that we can create that that experience that is that has been very, those made us famous, and that's the dealership experience, you know, trying to create a, an experience that they enjoy, and doesn't have all those shenanigans involved like the typical dealership.
Erin 16:02
What percentage would you say is culture because I think you covered like job logistics, and I love the shadow day, I think that's huge. And it probably filters out people that are meant are not meant to be. But is there an element of culture or just like general like personality that fits into all this? Or is that very secondary?
16:24
No, I mean, I think there were a lot a lot of directions, we can go with that question. First, let me say that I see culture is like a brick with a, sorry, a wall with 1000 bricks in it. And I think hiring is is one of those bricks. So one way to answer the question is, on the day, on that shadow day, we actually invite everybody in the department to meet the candidate. And, and to ask questions, whatever. And after the candidate leaves, we invite feedback from the members of the department. So if anyone has a concern on the team, they have an opportunity to voice it. And which is a nice benefit. And it's a way that we show our teams, that they have a role in picking their colleagues, like people don't just show up one day, and here's your new, here's your new partner, or here's your here's a new receptionist. Yeah, like, they there is no surprise at all, it's like they've already had an opportunity to, to, to meet them and hopefully get to know them a little bit. And they, they see they get to be a part of it. So. So that's part of the cultural dynamic, where, where we want everybody on the team to feel like they have a role to play, and that they get to influence the circumstances of their workplace. You know, it's not just the top down sort of management style, or telling them how it's going to be in here, the people that you're going to be doing it with.
Erin 17:47
That's good. What's about what size is your team, when you do that? Like are right now. Because I'm in
17:55
between all of our companies, we have about 120. But most of those are at the Subaru dealership is sort of like the the the 800 pound gorilla of our businesses. And that about 8080 something right now, people, they're
Michael Benatar 18:11
cool. And as you scale because I know there's like almost a tipping point, in a sense, at some point. How did it change once you started expanding and getting larger? Because I think there's like a weird spot. I don't know what it is. Is it like 3050 people at some point where it's like,
Erin 18:26
there's a lot of levels? Yeah, like, once you go from five to 10, that's huge. or something? And maybe 30 is a benchmark?
Michael Benatar 18:32
Yeah, did it? Did it change at all your your process as you grew? Or did you? What pour At what point? Did you see that kind of like, the the tough point, or like, Oh, you know what, this isn't working anymore? Because the team is getting so large, like for us right now. Mostly, it's me and Aaron, we have people that are freelance and working with us. And it's slowly growing, and we're noticing, you know, little hiccups here and there communication, or, you know, on slack or whatever work we need to get done. And as we scale. My fear is how do you fix that? Or what does that look like along the way with communication in the business and everything like that? Is there a certain way you deal with that kind of top down? Like looking like, Oh, yeah, these people kind of translate information here, or how do you go about it?
19:22
As as we got bigger, it actually got easier for a couple of reasons that this is some good news. It took us I don't think I'm exaggerating. 10 years to build our original team. I mean, it It wasn't like two or three. I'm always astonished at these startups that you hear about that. They're they're 18 months old and they get sold for a billion dollars. I mean, must just be that they they struck they managed to put lightning in a bottle and just just hit that very special market situation where where they are the only people coming into a market that had tons of potential because We it took us years and years and years, and it wasn't because we weren't trying and working hard at it. I think it's it's simple math that, that once you get if your team, let's just pick a number and say it's 20 people, yeah, and, and you once you get a maybe the way to think about it is like a baseball team. Once you have a really good third baseman, you can just make sure that you're providing that third baseman with the right contract. And with a little luck, you can just hang on to him. And and then once you get a really good left fielder, same thing, like, Alright, we don't have to churn through left fields, and we've got our left field. And over time, you build out positions and you don't lose those people. This was the problem earlier earlier in our business where we get that good person for, for all the million reasons that we we would lose them, we didn't know how to hang on to them, the business wasn't established well enough that we had the revenue to pay them that little bit extra to keep them in all those things. So we, we get that great person and we lose that person over time, we hung on to enough of them that we got that critical mass of key team members. So we just we just don't have the turnover anymore. So we can focus our efforts on on hanging on to the people we have instead of just endlessly cycling through the people.
Michael Benatar 21:23
That's an interesting thought, too. Because you know what, at some point, it's almost similar. Like we're selling a product. And for us, when we're selling a product was like, well, we want new customers. But lately, we've been thinking about our current customers, like keeping them retaining them. And that goes with employees as well. You know, once you find somebody good, you don't lose them. Like, you know, we've worked with people that we really like, we're like, we can't lose our graphic designer, because she's great at doing our job. And that, that makes sense. Cuz Yeah, then it's like one less thing to worry about moving forward and getting the company even bigger.
Erin 21:57
Yeah, and there's growing pains with that. I want to dive in. Oh, sorry, go ahead.
22:03
Oh, I was just gonna finish, I think it's much easier to hang on to the person. Yeah, that's very good that you already have than to go out and find a new one. And that same thing applies to customers. And it goes back to the original comment that I opened our time together with today. alport? Is that just gentle? persistence, like just staying with it over time, because there really aren't any shortcuts there. I mean, there's no magic, you don't just find five great team members. You get them one at a time. You know, it's like, and for everyone, you know, it's always two steps forward, one, one step back, you're gonna you'll hire two and lose one. That's just the way it is. But if you're willing to stay at it, and you see the potential, I don't, I would never advise anyone to stay in something that just wasn't working. Like if it wasn't working, you don't have the vision for what's ever going to work? Well, you need to devote your your energy to something that you think will. But if you see it, and I can clear, I can clearly see the enthusiasm. When you're talking about your business. Yeah, there's there's something there. And it's the kind of thing that if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and doing the hard work, then eventually it pays off. But it does take a long time.
Michael Benatar 23:12
Yeah. And it's hard to see. It's hard to see to like you probably, you know, a few years into your business, you're like, Man, this is hard, like, how are people doing this? And you're right, with like the billion dollar companies pumping out left and right. And sometimes, as a smaller business, you're looking at like, what, are we doing something wrong? Like, is this the way it's supposed to be? And you know, we're going, it's now year four, and I think we've grown every year things are looking good. But we, you know, maybe we're not to our some of our competitors, but we still think we're doing good work and doing the right things. And I think sometimes it's like just even me saying it's like, oh, it's kind of good to hear that, you know, not everybody starts out, you know, and goes to a billion dollars. And you know, it took 10 years for you to really get the business going and find that team. And I think that's important for people to hear, too, because it's it's tough. What were you gonna ask before,
Erin 24:03
I was just saying, I like your different approach on hiring. And I know in your book, you talk about having a unique approach to marketing, which is kind of the other the, you know, forward facing outside facing part of the business. We love marketing, we're all about that. So and that we spend a lot of our time marketing for our company. So do you have any, you know, learnings after growing your businesses for 10 years in the marketing front, and what are you doing differently now?
24:28
Yeah, one of the things I learned is there's a phrase in journalism called man bites dog. And it captures the idea that the newsworthy story isn't the one where where a local resident gets bitten by a dog unless he gets really mauled, in which case they'll be on the front page because you know, media tend to like, like, there's another expression that if it bleeds, it leads, but excluding those I got down that let me come back to the focus of the point about the the man by the door now, if a man by stone now that's a story, right? Because that's that's not not at all what you expect so, so in our particular one one of our business, the car business an example the way we do that is everybody expects car dealers to be crooks. And, and there are plenty of them. I mean, we we've built our whole marketing approach around differentiating ourselves from them. But the way we make the story is to do something that you don't expect a car dealer to do. And so one of the way like we landscape with goats at our facility, we don't we don't have mowers we literally have lawns, you know, that. down and, and it's, you know, it's more expensive than lawn mowers. But the, the marketing value of it exceeds the investment in in the cost of the goats and, and there are so many other ancillary benefits of having the goats around. They're, they're cute and the team members like and the customers get excited about and there's a there's a certain magic that happens there. And and that story has been picked. It continues over the you know, depending on the on the season when we do it, you know, national media pick that story up. And, and I think to the extent that you can surprise people by playing against type or, or finding something that your customers are interested in, that they can't find another business supplying i think that's that's something that's worked really well for us.
Erin 26:36
It reminds me of the book, purple cow mark, older marketing book about like, that weird one off thing like what's gonna set you apart, but everyone has great product, everyone's blah,
Michael Benatar 26:46
blah, blah. And it's hard to come up with to
Erin 26:49
like, can't just come up with it. Or Yeah,
Michael Benatar 26:52
how did you come up with the goats?
26:55
So one of our sales people said that she had heard about a golf course doing it. And she said, Do you think that we could? That was it? And I was it? Was, it was her idea. I mean, it came organically from the team wasn't mine. And I made the call. But from there, it just kind of took care of itself.
Michael Benatar 27:14
And that's the it's kind of weird, because I'm thinking about that, you know, the story I told earlier, and just these little things that it's an idea that obviously you want to have, but it's so hard to find the right one. Yeah.
Erin 27:26
And you might have a bunch that are really bad. Yeah. And you know, that's okay. Yeah. And some don't. Yeah, you,
Michael Benatar 27:33
Jeff, have you had any bad marketing experiences that you're just like, Oh, this was a terrible mistake that we made doing something.
27:39
I mean, most of them. I mean, it's true, I think the way to look at it is you're putting out lightning rods, knowing that most of them will never get struck. So you make small bets. Like, one of the things we do if you're doing things that you believe in anyway, if if it doesn't attract a lot of attention, you're okay with that. So one of the things we do annually, we release bobwhite quail. It's an endangered species of birds in in New England. And we we do depending on the year to 5500 of them. And it's really cool. I mean, they'll let them out of the cages and they fly off in it. To me, when we first started doing this, I was like, this is gonna be a great store, like we're gonna get some local news crew that's gonna come and bite us. Right. And for whatever reason, I think it's a great story, none of the media thought, but we keep on doing it anyway. Because it's not, you know, it's not like a Superbowl ad, this is 20 million to do it, you know, it's a few $1,000 a year to do it. And, and there are other benefits too. So if it never gets picked up, we've still done something that's, that's really, really good for the community. So the extent that you can combine those efforts, you don't feel so bad if it doesn't work out.
Erin 28:56
I love that your company has like this underlying relationship with animals even though you're a car dealership, and yeah, so we want to hear a story from life or business where you were called that crazy business person, because you are on call me crazy. I started a business. So tell us about that. Any crazy stories that you might have had where your friends and family thought you were a little off the wall?
29:22
This is the this is my favorite part of your podcast that this question is it's so interesting to hear what people say. But for me, it may be the the thing about opening the business originally. I mean, I would I'd love to tell you that everybody told me I was crazy to do that. But everybody was actually very supportive. I mean, they said, Well, yeah, well, you're working in a car dealership already. And so you've acquired the skills and you know, you're a hard worker and you know, I'm sure you'll work. You'll figure it out. And if you don't, then you'll land on your feet and tries I feel like there is no there wasn't the first person that told me I was I was knitting. But But here's the interesting thing that did that I thought was what the one thing maybe the only thing in my life that people have ever said I was crazy to do. And that was two years ago, my wife and I picked up from Boston, we're all the businesses are. And we moved back to our original growing up state of Virginia. And so I live on 200 acres in the middle of the woods outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. And, and people thought I had lost my mind because they're like, well, what are you going to do? You know, you've built your whole, you've spent your whole I have no kids, your wife's really independent, you spent your whole life building these businesses, and you're just you're leaving, like, how are you going to do that. And, and what they didn't understand is that over the course of the 20 years of building, the businesses, I had really burned myself out, I'd probably put put a little too much in and it was just something I needed to do. And it was time time to mix it up. And, and so the the lesson that I think I learned from that it's worked really well. And I would encourage people, even if they're not in this exact same situation in their lives, because they're, they're younger, they don't have the financial means to do it. That. But the lesson is, if you're when it comes time to do something that you really need to do, whether it's to chase a dream, or it's to, to close down something that's not working in your life, like a business that just not going where you want it to, or a marriage that that's just never gonna work, that to have the courage to actually pursue that and do it because the danger is you get to the end of your life. And you missed these key opportunities to to make changes when you had the chance. Because when I look back at my life, I mean, the regrets I have are not the things I tried that didn't work out. And there are a lot of them, but some of them were really expensive. Not just financially but you know, I had an axe I was involved in it in an accident that I was just a terrible accident. I'm still not right from but but I really don't have the regrets about that. Because I lived and did what I wanted to do the regrets I have the things they're like, they were missed opportunities.
Michael Benatar 32:06
And that's, yeah, go ahead. No, no, no, that's great. No, I really, yeah, that makes sense. It's like, you know, if you don't try, you'll never know and you don't want to regret it and just Just do it. Why not? Like you have nothing to lose. Try it out. If it goes wrong, then try something else. What are you doing on the 200 acres? Are you like building anything trying stuff out? What do you what are you doing out there?
32:29
I spent a embarrassing large amount of time with a chainsaw, cutting down dead trees and tidying the place up. Because guess what the property had been timbered about 20 years ago, and I'm learning a lot about forestry. More than I ever would have imagined. It turns out that timber properties generally don't grow back very well. Unless Unless they get a little long. So I'm, I'm giving it the love.
Michael Benatar 32:57
That's great. I've actually you know an Airbnb, they have all these tree houses for rent. If you ever build a tree, I'd love to come stay out on the tree house on the 200 acres. People are planning and people are building these wild tree houses that you can stay at that are like little cities in trees. It's It's crazy. I would I really want
33:19
I've seen those and if you saw our houses is maybe just a little bigger than a tree house, but not much. And it's a lot like that because I I had the same dream. I mean, yeah, the little boy, you know, that enjoyed climbing the tree and nailing the plywood boards into the Yeah, the V sections of the trees is still somewhere in me, so I get it.
Michael Benatar 33:40
Yeah, it's fun. Dude. treehouses are fun. I had my grandpa build me, but built me a treehouse. And it was a lot of fun. You just go up there, you don't do anything, just like sit up there in the trees and just kind of enjoy it. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And it's Geoff morrell.com. Correct. That's right. And we'll put it in the show notes. free guide there also your book is out. And that is profit wise how to make money in business by doing the right thing that will also link in there as well. Is there anything else you want to plug social media anything like that?
34:16
No, just my my website has has a lot of resources there for people. I listen to a lot of podcasts. And there was a time when I couldn't afford the books, you know, earlier in my life. And and that that didn't mean that I wasn't interested in learning. So the website has bonus chapters that the publisher couldn't fit in the book. And I mentioned before, a lot of the tools that we use every day in our businesses are right there and they're free. I mean, they're there. You don't need a password or anything. And and I think that people might benefit even if they they're not able to read the book, they might benefit from the resources on the website.
Michael Benatar 34:50
Did you do an audiobook at all? I always love when the author writes the book.
34:54
Yeah, yes, it's coming out. But the I guess the publisher, you know, not only do I not have a few For TV, I don't have a voice for radio. Oh, because he had a Yeah, he's having another person. Oh, yeah. So
Michael Benatar 35:08
I always love it just with me like throwing little extras as they're talking about it because you're locked in there for I don't know, how long do you have to read those things? But I imagine it's a very long time to do the commentary. Yeah, you should do bonus comments. Yeah.
35:20
Man for the second edition.
Michael Benatar 35:22
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
35:25
Thank you. Thank you and best wishes with your business. Thanks.