The 4 E-Myth Personality Types Business Owners Need To Nurture (Or Rein In)

Eppisode 110

Brian: [00:00:00] This is the six figure home studio podcast episode 110

[00:00:19] welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast I am your host Brian Hood and I'm I here with my and I'm here with my bald beautiful today Man

[00:00:29] Chris: [00:00:29] Do it Just keep going It's fine It's fine

[00:00:32] Brian: [00:00:32] and I'm here with my bald beautiful amazing purple shirt a cohost who I have tried to introduce multiple times now and I'm finally going to just say yet we're doing it Christopher J.

[00:00:42] Graham how are you doing today buddy I can't talk today I just going to keep dropping F bombs I'm going to believe I'm out though because it's the right thing to do

[00:00:50] Chris: [00:00:50] Kids believe I'm out for the kids I'm great man I am in the process of moving my office and I'm in my new office not moved in but with our whole life Desk recording rig

[00:01:02] Brian: [00:01:02] Is this the office that the trombone player put together a few weeks ago

[00:01:06] Chris: [00:01:06] Yes exactly Yes Well actually no That one's upstairs but Andy moved out He moved upstairs

[00:01:11] Brian: [00:01:11] Oh you're on upstairs right now I thought you're upstairs Anyways so if you don't know a couple of weeks ago there was an episode where there's a lot of construction always happening on Chris's end and it literally sounded like a trombone player

[00:01:20] Chris: [00:01:20] It was amazing and extremely difficult for my add to continue to try to finish that almost done episode Once the trombone plane began that was hard man Um but yeah I'm good How are you Brian What is new in your life

[00:01:34] Brian: [00:01:34] I am doing great My man I have a just Updated the whole entire six figure home studio website I've got a few little side pages still to update but the whole site has been refreshed and it looks so much better Let's say our podcast

[00:01:45] Chris: [00:01:45] You killed

[00:01:46] Brian: [00:01:46] was the page I put the most work into to make look the best So if you go to the six figure home studio.com/podcast go there and tell me how good I did so I feel better about myself Validate me please

[00:01:56] Chris: [00:01:56] I'm not saying this to flatter you but my wife and I both looked at it and it's like the best podcast webpage I've ever seen Tell us about some of the new features you can like search episode lyrics

[00:02:07] Brian: [00:02:07] No no there there is a search feature of the website but it doesn't work so don't use it I'll make it work later I don't know how to actually make it work yet The cool thing is you can actually open the podcast from that page to different apps like Spotify or Stitcher or iTunes or whatever

[00:02:22] Chris: [00:02:22] My space

[00:02:23] Brian: [00:02:23] Not my space You can listen to our player right in the browser So that's always fun And you can go to the show notes pages from our most recent episodes on that page So uh and there's a nice little video that you and I shot together that we're running on We started running Facebook ads so maybe you'll see our Facebook ad on there If you here's the here's the only ask I have If you see our Facebook ad for the podcast where Chris and I are talking side by side comment on there and just give us like the post and comment below to give us social proof And that will make other people want to Let's see what the podcast is all about When they see people telling us nice thing in the comments You also can say terrible things if you want or just delete those and only leave the good things

[00:02:59] Chris: [00:02:59] Yeah I'm excited It kind of feels like we are digging in on this podcast and after about two years or so it has worked and grown and uh we really have not tried to grow it We've just tried to make it

[00:03:13] Brian: [00:03:13] That's the thing Part of this has come from the fact that like I read something recently it was long story short with just saying that you should spend 50% of your time creating content and the other 50% of your time Promoting that content and I would say we put about 98% of our time into creating the content and about 2% of the time and to promote them I don't even send emails out when new podcast episodes air like I have an email list of like 30 something 40 something 50 something thousand people that I just don't email very often Especially never about podcasts that needs to change

[00:03:43] Chris: [00:03:43] Yeah Well I think some of that for me not the this is like a we're going to talk about ourselves for the whole band your time but yeah

[00:03:48] Brian: [00:03:48] No God no

[00:03:49] Chris: [00:03:49] it's been wild to watch the feedback to the podcast grow and like each month has been Overwhelming compared to the previous month And so yeah it is like kind of a weird thing of being like getting used to Oh a lot of people listen to this and I have so many new friends and this is so great

[00:04:07] Brian: [00:04:07] Yeah I I definitely agree So that's why we're kind of doubling down on it We're running ads for the first time We're going to see how those ended up doing as far as podcasts growth Get more people into our little community and ecosystem here Get us some more six figure sexiest which is what our Facebook community has coined themselves as is the six figure sexy So if you go to the six figure home studio.com/community maybe we should add it make it slash taxis I don't know but slash community and join our Facebook group That is the name that our community has unfortunately adopted for itself

[00:04:37] Chris: [00:04:37] Well speaking of that I'm going to make a confession

[00:04:40] Brian: [00:04:40] What's up

[00:04:40] Chris: [00:04:40] I don't

[00:04:41] Brian: [00:04:41] First of all I don't like the fact of what I just said followed by you admitting to some sort of confession so I need to know

[00:04:47] Chris: [00:04:47] Well I don't love the term sexy

[00:04:50] Brian: [00:04:50] Oh okay Yeah that's I can see why Yeah

[00:04:53] Chris: [00:04:53] I think it's kind of cute I'm just maybe this is like my hyper-sensitive politically correct liberal side that

[00:04:59] Brian: [00:04:59] it is

[00:05:00] Chris: [00:05:00] feels it's a little exclusive and it could create some awkward scenarios at Nam when we meet someone like so many people and be like Hey we're sexy Okay

[00:05:10] Brian: [00:05:10] Oh I it sounds like some weird like anime porn like hi I'm a sexy

[00:05:17] Chris: [00:05:17] and maybe it's going to stick but I would love it if we had a better name than the sexiest

[00:05:21] Brian: [00:05:21] Yeah Somebody somebody a comment in our Facebook community and come up with it and sorry John John I'm not going to get a last name in case he doesn't want us to blast him John came up with that and he's he it's it's been sticking so far for like months and months so someone else could come up with a better phrase The thing is the alliteration works The six

[00:05:37] Chris: [00:05:37] it does

[00:05:38] Brian: [00:05:38] we just need something that's like a name for the group of people in which Take their business seriously and hopefully has a little more serious name to it So we're open to ideas right now So you can either comment our Facebook group or you can just open up your phone right now and email podcast@thesixfigurehomestudio.com and give us your idea of what you could call our Facebook group and our just our six figure home studio podcast listener community because a lot of podcasts have names for their community members

[00:06:04] Chris: [00:06:04] Yeah maybe we should do like a poll or something but I'd have absolutely no ideas

[00:06:09] Brian: [00:06:09] Here's some that exist right now You've got the believers for Justin Bieber fans You've got maggots for Slipknot fans What other group names are out there

[00:06:19] Chris: [00:06:19] Well you've got a what is what is insane Clown posse called themselves

[00:06:23] Brian: [00:06:23] Oh those are the Juggalos

[00:06:24] Chris: [00:06:24] Which is hilarious to me Cause like your band is called the insane clown posse Your community should be called the insane clown posse Like the name itself refers to a group of people

[00:06:36] Brian: [00:06:36] Yeah yeah So again podcast@thesixfigurehomestudio.com just email us with your ideas on what we should call ourselves

[00:06:44] Chris: [00:06:44] What if what I just said about the insane clown posse ends up being the thing I regret saying the most of anything we've ever said in the podcast

[00:06:50] Brian: [00:06:50] We get so much just hate mail from Juggalos who listen to this podcast We just have like that's a weird segment that just has latched on to this podcast and is not let us know that And now they're like how dare you But smirch the name Juggalos All right Let's actually let's let's end this show We got it We actually got to talk about something of value today

[00:07:12] recenter yourself Chris into the nose out through the mouth

[00:07:18] Chris: [00:07:18] As we prepped our outline for today's episode I said to Brian if I could send any episode we've ever recorded back to myself 15 years ago I think this would be it

[00:07:31] Brian: [00:07:31] You didn't say that

[00:07:33] Chris: [00:07:33] I mean they said basically that it was approximately that No I did say that I a hundred percent said

[00:07:38] Brian: [00:07:38] it's 16 years ago anyways you change that light Your birthday was like in March or

[00:07:42] Chris: [00:07:42] Whatever I mean you got you You get the point We've got some ideas uh that I think are going to help you guys understand why your business is so frustrating for you Here's the bad news guys You have multiple personalities And they're fighting inside of you and you think I'm kidding but like this is it's it's basically a little book report plus some new ideas from Brian and Chris on the E-Myth revisited We've mentioned it a million times It's probably maybe the number one small business book of all time

[00:08:13] Brian: [00:08:13] It's one of the most recommended books in the business ecosystem Hands down

[00:08:17] Chris: [00:08:17] It is absolutely huge and was absolutely one of the most important parts of my journey of starting to grow a passion into a business that supports my family and we're comfortable It's great So we're going to talk about the E myth revisited and the E myth revisited is Basically a story It's not so much like a first you need to do this and first need to do that It's a story about a small business owner who is struggling who meets a mentor a business coach and the business coach explains how to make her business run so much better in great detail and her business grows and everyone lives happily ever after And it almost seems like her and the business coach person are going to like fall in love Or something and they don't it's kind of it's a little a little weird

[00:09:04] Brian: [00:09:04] sounds remarkably like the hero's journey that we talked about in episode 101 so just to bring this back to us the benefit of this the topic today is that we are talking about the four personality types three of which are from this book one of which we've invented because it is much more relevant to us as creatives And we are going to talk about the four personality types Which one are you That's the question I feel like every one of us has one that's really strong and maybe a secondary one that's like kind of our backup And then the other two were really weak on and it's hurting our business a lot So this is one of those like choose your own adventure figure out which one of these four personality types is you because there's pros and cons to all of these It's not that one is better than the others There's just only having one of these is bad

[00:09:48] Chris: [00:09:48] Yeah It's balancing these four personality types that leads to a successful business If your personality types like these each pieces of you that are helping to grow a business are not balance Your business will fail

[00:10:00] Brian: [00:10:00] Yep So really quick we're just going to give you the four real quick that we're going to talk about and then we'll actually deep dive in each four of these personalities The first personality type is the entrepreneur The second personality type is the manager The third personality type is the technician and the fourth the one we made up Is the artists which us being in a creative field it makes sense that there would be an artist personality type because there's a lot of art in what we do So Chris uh anything you want to talk about before we dive into this first one The entrepreneur here

[00:10:28] Chris: [00:10:28] Yeah I mean I can't emphasize enough how important this was on my journey Uh reading the E-Myth rocked my face off and I remember I read four hour work week started to grow and then met with the people who ended up becoming my first mentors and was like Hey what book should I read next And they like simultaneously or like the E myth revisited And I was like okay okay And uh I'll tell you I read that book One time and then started to implement and then came back one or two years later and I think I was like $80,000 a year The second time I read it and it was so fun to reread this book and be like I did those things They're working this and it was just like

[00:11:07] Brian: [00:11:07] That's your that's your inner voice

[00:11:09] Chris: [00:11:09] that's my inner voice Oh 100% yeah He's he's very exuberant But yeah I mean it was like it was really wild to read a book put what the book taught into action And then see the fruits of it uh with a dollar sign in front of them Especially to mention that I did it while improving my quality of life with my family my work life balance Like I got healthier as I did this and my business grew at the same time So let me say that again Executing on this stuff that we're going to talk about in this episode can not only grow your business it can make you healthier while your business grows And for most people that's like a wait a minute Don't I have to make a personal sacrifice and like bleed in order to grow my business No you don't And as a matter of fact I don't think that you can your personal health your emotional health will lead to business growth It's the overflow of your own personal health that I think starts to make the business grow It's maturity that starts to create you making good decisions instead of like just self-serving in the moment decisions

[00:12:11] Brian: [00:12:11] Yeah and I think that the weird sort of thing that people seem to miss when they talk about business is that as entrepreneurs if we are missing out on one of these four personality types if we're ignoring one of these four people that Honestly real quick the myth was kind of written for businesses that are hiring multiple employees and you want to hire someone at each one of these four personnel or the three personality roles For us as solopreneurs people that are running our businesses ourselves We have to be all of these things And there's no on earth who is naturally gifted at all four of these different areas in all four of these different personality types And it's not just personality types it's roles in your business that these are tied to And so If you ignore one or two or more of these it's going to wreck your business It's going to wreck your personal life and everything's going to come crumbling down If he can get all four of these in check and at least improve them it's going to improve your personal life as well because it's going to take the stress and the anxiety and the lack of money and all of the things that are adding stress to your life It's going to help alleviate those so that your personal life can also improve as well So there's this is Anne A holistic type of thing to start thinking about and implementing your business because it helps in all areas of your life not just your business

[00:13:21] Chris: [00:13:21] There's sort of a nature of well the nature sorta here is is Having multiple hats that you wear in your business and being really specific about which hat you're wearing When you know we talk about working on your business not for it and scheduling that time That's from the myth I learned that from the E myth and we just repeated again and again because it's the most important thing I've ever done for my business The big nature here is each one of these personalities each one of these hats each person and this is one of the great reasons of having like a business coach or someone that knows you well and can ask good questions Each person is going to lack in certain areas and they're going to be out of balance As a small business owner and it puts undue pressure it forces you to try to put a square peg in a round hole with the parts of your personality that don't like doing certain things and therefore don't do them and therefore cause your business step problems So I'm going to just really quickly tell you the overarching story of the myth And the basic idea if you pick up the E-Myth the cover says and not the cover but like the back of the book says you know one at a five businesses fails within five years I think is the stat he gives It's an older book so that might be a little different now But the basic idea is you are going to have I'm going to be really quick here and then we're going to correct some of the terminology for our own industry but you're going to have an entrepreneurial seizure is what Michael Gerber calls it in the book and that's I should start a business doing X Y and Z.

[00:14:45] Like you have that moment where like I want to do this thing for a living and then the entrepreneur leaves and he never comes back

[00:14:52] Brian: [00:14:52] Others love watching your way form spike when he speak in that voice It's like just is it out

[00:14:58] Chris: [00:14:58] That brings me to my next point Your technician personality is the person who does the work and who gets really excited about seeing a wave form chain shape in our industry and the technician starts to do the work and then eventually a manager comes along probably you but a manager personality comes along and starts to kind of create some systems and the technician and the manager kind of fight a lot They don't really get along great and eventually the technician fires the manager And then eventually the business is just a technician It's someone with a skill and has no idea how to run grow or maintain a small business

[00:15:35] Brian: [00:15:35] Which I would venture to say is the majority of our listeners right now

[00:15:39] Chris: [00:15:39] Yes And so what happens is because the technician kicked the entrepreneur and the manager out eventually the technician ran out of customers and then the technician went out and got a real job That's it That's most people's business story We're adding a fourth personality to this It's not in the mouth and it's the artist For most of us the artist is the reason for the whole thing For me my inner artist as a kid was playing with my parents' record player I put on Stevie wonder songs in the key of life I dropped the needle and sir Duke started playing and bam I was hooked Music was in my blood and it wasn't going anywhere and I had to make music the rest of my life

[00:16:18] Brian: [00:16:18] You had an artistic seizure

[00:16:20] Chris: [00:16:20] an artistic seizure Right And

[00:16:22] Brian: [00:16:22] I hate that phrase so much

[00:16:23] Chris: [00:16:23] yeah and we're going to change it here in just a bit We're going to call it something way cooler but it's that artist Who said I want to work in music He's the person she's the person who made the decision to be in the career field that you are trying to be in The entrepreneur was the person the internal personality who decided who had some sort of epiphany hint that's going to come up again later who had some sort of seizure of like I could do this And for me I've talked about this in the podcast My entrepreneurial seizure was well let me explain it It's five years in the future I'm super successful I'm an in demand mastering engineer How did that happen And I worked backwards from there and I said well mastering is kind of mysterious and most people don't really understand what it is so it have to make it more accessible I guess what I would do is I'd have a player in my website and you could select a song or a genre and then you'd press play and then you could hit a button And flip back and forth between mastered and unmastered And I guess that's how I'd explain what I do to all these artists who don't understand mastering Oh my gosh I could build that into mastering for a living Now I could take my technician skill as a mastering engineer and turn it into a thriving business That was my entrepreneurial seizure but the reason I wanted to work in music in the first place was I had this artistic moment at a young age where I was like must do music The end I'm infected It has to be in music for the rest of my life or I will shrivel and die inside

[00:17:48] Brian: [00:17:48] You should get that looked at man

[00:17:49] Chris: [00:17:49] probably I've got a doctor's appointment I'm just kidding I don't have a doctor's appointment

[00:17:53] Brian: [00:17:53] Let's get down to these four personality types and talk about the pros and cons of each and some takeaways from this because again each of us Are strong in one of these four areas and weaker in the rest of these areas And we need to strengthen up our weak areas so that we can have a more stable business And I will say most of us are probably technicians but we're actually going to start here at the top the entrepreneur This is the CEO essentially of a business And let's talk about some of the pros and cons of the CEO or of the entrepreneur here And I'm going to go ahead and put first and foremost is the entrepreneur is the one who has that aha moment As Michael Gerber calls it and E-Myth revisited the entrepreneurial seizure which I think is the worst pro in the world for a pro cons list here So here's what I am forever calling this from now on I am calling this the entrepreneurial epiphany

[00:18:43] Chris: [00:18:43] I love that

[00:18:44] Brian: [00:18:44] Such a better word It's an epiphany You had this epiphany with your mastering business I've had an epiphany after epiphany but in 2014 I had an epiphany that you could actually build systems in your business I was playing golf with a guy on a golf course that I randomly just met up with We were both playing out there I and we decided to join up and and since there was a big force of in front of us playing slow And he told me all about his business Chubby's chicken in which you know he had built out this system where he's making 30 2030 40 grand a week in his chicken shack and Tallahassee Florida And he was doing none of the work And this is when he taught me about the E myth revisited That was the book he recommended to me from that round of golf That was the moment that I had my big aha moment As a technician as a service provider as a solopreneur that I could actually build out systems and hire people in my business and thus elevate my income And so that was my entrepreneurial epiphany no longer called a seizure It's a good thing If an epiphany is a great thing a seizure is not a good thing

[00:19:38] Chris: [00:19:38] Totally agreed Yeah This epiphany they are so fun and it is the seed that starts everything Business is somebody somewhere or a team of people It's a creativity moment It's a moment where you have a creative idea of if I do this then this will probably happen You know It's a hypothesis essentially

[00:19:57] Brian: [00:19:57] Let's talk about some of the other pros of the entrepreneur

[00:20:00] Chris: [00:20:00] Yeah I mean an entrepreneur you're an entrepreneur is an energy person They're big energy They're excited and they are optimistic It's if I do this this could happen Oh that would be awesome

[00:20:13] Brian: [00:20:13] I think the word really is vision Entrepreneurs have the vision for what the business is going to do and where it can go

[00:20:19] Chris: [00:20:19] Yeah It's like you know there's like a micro business plan there And for me like with the mastering company it was people will understand what I do and the one a play on my website and hear like Oh that's mastering Ah and because of they'll have fun and understand what mastering is they're much more likely to hire me I could run ads to my website which was the next thing I learned to do I got I found the right guy to build the website worked with him intensely and then started reading how to run ads It was like my first business book and started sending traffic there and people strangers started sending me money It was insane It was the craziest thing that's ever happened to me Aside from like four other things that we won't get into

[00:21:00] Brian: [00:21:00] Yeah So if you haven't heard Chris's story already go back to episode number two of the six podcasts where Chris shares his story Actually episode two and three are where Chris interviews me and I interview Chris for both of our stories You want to learn more about who we are and what we have done in kind of our stories behind this but we'll skip that for now Final pro for the entrepreneur is they are the one who sees the forest and the trees Can you explain what that means Chris

[00:21:22] Chris: [00:21:22] There's a sane you know missing the forest for the trees And the idea behind that is you know like look man like You're so focused on the details you've missed the bigger picture Um the inverse can also be true You can miss the trees for the forest You can get so focused on the big vision that you missed the execution part You didn't actually plug in the moving parts and as a result whatever you're building whether that's a song or whether that's a business is going to fail

[00:21:49] Brian: [00:21:49] And that actually leads us smoothly into the cons of the entrepreneur personality And this is why you can't just be an entrepreneur and only entrepreneur because your business is not run if you are only entrepreneur And that is because what you just said You see the forest and the trees It can also be the opposite where you get too stuck on the uh the big picture and you are unable to execute on the big picture because you ignore all the small details so you have no execution Another con is uh as Chris and I both experienced this we we started with this a lot is too many businesses and too many business ideas You want to talk about that Chris

[00:22:23] Chris: [00:22:23] I'm sure some of you have listened to the podcast and be like how many businesses these guys have and

[00:22:30] Brian: [00:22:30] I I w I looked at it I actually have I've built three different six figure businesses maybe four I actually I don't know anymore And that's not counting all the side businesses that I've tried to do and have utterly failed or that I'm currently building right now Like it's this is my struggle

[00:22:44] Chris: [00:22:44] Same Yeah Like I would tend to be too a little too much of an idea guy and sometimes I get distracted from the thing I'm trying to execute on by the new idea

[00:22:56] Brian: [00:22:56] So this is a lack of focus That's the entrepreneur's biggest issue is a lack of focus

[00:23:00] Chris: [00:23:00] A D D.

[00:23:00] Brian: [00:23:00] Add entrepreneurial add

[00:23:03] Chris: [00:23:03] add So yeah like an entrepreneur that has a bunch of ideas is man there's a great quote I'm trying to remember what it is I want to say that it's it's Henry Ford again it's this idea that execution Ultimately becomes the most important thing Ideas are a dime a dozen There's plenty of them out there but execution is the thing that really takes the business to the next level So let's talk a little bit more about that My sort of overly entrepreneurial personality I bite off more than I can chew and especially lately since the podcast took off it's been really hard to sort of like manage my time because there's so many more opportunities There's so many opportunities for free headphones and I have to like limit myself to you know focusing on certain things at certain times and I struggle with it It's been a little bit of a rough year in that regard In a good example I'm sure some of you have noticed that earlier in the year I was like I'm going to do a YouTube video every week in 2019

[00:23:59] Brian: [00:23:59] How's that been working out for you

[00:24:01] Chris: [00:24:01] well here's what happened I mentioned bounce Butler on the podcast and a bunch of you were like give me that now I need

[00:24:08] Brian: [00:24:08] You had your entrepreneurial a stroke or seizure What do they call Oh okay Epiphany That's such a better

[00:24:14] Chris: [00:24:14] exactly And so what happened is I started making the videos I grew a lot It was a lot of fun I'm at some point going to get back into that but 2019 is out the door at this point It's already December and I have focused on bounce Butler that you know I made a bunch of YouTube videos and people liked them I got a lot of good feedback but I didn't get half the feedback I got for bounce Butler People were freaking out about like Oh save an hour a day You know in some cases it's definitely not everybody but a lot of people just kind of lost their mind about like I get to hang out with my family more because of your app Thank you so much So I focused on that I shifted I pivoted and put a lot more time into bounce Butler that I had set a time aside for YouTube

[00:24:54] Brian: [00:24:54] I think you did 16 videos so you got about a

[00:24:57] Chris: [00:24:57] that far into the year which makes sense I want to say it was right after Yosemite So this would be like February 14th was like the weekend that we were in Yosemite for your bachelor

[00:25:08] Brian: [00:25:08] So you want to have a you want to have too many entrepreneurial Epiphanes get around a bunch of entrepreneurs for a few days out in nature and you'll have too many ideas to know what to do with

[00:25:19] Chris: [00:25:19] and that's exactly what happened I was walking up the mountain wheezing at the back of the pack and our friend Bryant was helping me like a freaking Saint and he was describing his job which is composing for sound Stripe and that he would have to bounce stems For each of the like 12 songs he makes each month in Ableton for sound Stripe And I was like I could probably help you with that I'd made this app a long time ago that could potentially be reworked to do that for you And I mentioned it later on on the podcast and it took over So anyways we're kind of off topic because I'm an entrepreneur

[00:25:54] Brian: [00:25:54] So true So if you don't know already Chris and I this is probably our strongest of the four personality Actually I don't know Chris is a pretty strong technician which we'll get into in a minute as well We definitely both struggle with this especially me like I have entrepreneurial add So bad And so I ha this is my big struggle is reigning this in so that I can actually focus on the businesses that I have built and actually like doing the other three personality types in those businesses So let's actually move on to our next personality type here Chris the manager

[00:26:23] Chris: [00:26:23] So the manager is the person who does exactly what you think they do Like they keep the ship afloat They make sure everything is running smoothly They make sure that They make sure that you're not spending too much Like they make sure that the technician and we're getting ready to talk about has not become so focused on his ego that the business is going to fail and the manager is an important personality And I'll be straight up with you guys and managers where I need the most help with it is where I need to grow the most I've gotten a lot better at it and I'll give you guys some tips here soon on how you can get better at that but it's an essential piece if you do not have a manager And like my inner technician and my inner entrepreneur like like as I'm saying this without that manager personality it's going to be a flash in the pan He's the guy that keeps it going And a lot of you guys listen to this podcast for entrepreneurial inspiration We don't really talk about the technician side of things at all which is I think one of the things that makes this podcast interesting but the manager thing is this idea of when you schedule time to work on not for You are setting aside time for the manager Your inner manager comes out when you schedule time to work on not for and creates systems that help your business grow So Brian let's talk about the pros and cons of your manager personality

[00:27:46] Brian: [00:27:46] Yeah So pros are obviously I mean just based off what you said the pros are pretty obvious The managers are the ones in charge of systems So if you have for example a team that team has to follow some sort of system or else that team is just doing a bunch of random shit It's not really working towards the goal of the organization Now in the studio It's just one of us We don't have to think about this from the perspective of a team There's too many business books out there that talk too much about teams where almost all of the listeners in this podcast with a few exceptions are solo studio owners and they're working either by themselves or with maybe one assistant And so when we talk about systems we're talking about things that can help free up our time so that way we can work in our business in focus in our business But those things that are still important that still need to get done are either automated Or handled by someone else that or ruthlessly cut out eliminated

[00:28:37] Chris: [00:28:37] Well a great example of this is mr Tony stark from the movie iron man

[00:28:42] Brian: [00:28:42] I've heard of that

[00:28:43] Chris: [00:28:43] Okay So Tony stark is a strong technician but he also recognized a apparently as a strong manager side because he said you know what I should do I should make myself this dope ass robot suit and then my technician is going to be so good at everything So that's the manager and the technician working together Your business systems are your iron man suit

[00:29:05] Brian: [00:29:05] Well they translate that for the non nerds out there who want a little bit better of a of an analogy here An example of a system that you would implement as a manager of your business is you would implement a CRM a customer relationship management system in your business so that all of your conversations All of your deals all of your back and forth all over your emails all of your followup reminders are in one central place handled by a piece of software It's out of your brain So no longer does the manager need to even worry about that The manager's the one that implemented that thing and now you can go on working in your business doing the technical stuff and all of that other stuff is handled by the system The system is now the manager essentially So as a solopreneur that CRM is your iron man suit

[00:29:49] Chris: [00:29:49] Yeah Another example from that and my career would be when I started scheduling time to work on that for I was like well what's my biggest problem Not enough customers Okay well let's spend two hours a week working on learning how to use Google ad words at the time Let's run ads for certain keywords to point people towards my website If they're searching for a mastering engineer So I spent the time doing that and then all of a sudden it was like Oh way too many people reaching out to me Cause I was really early in our industry to run these sort of ads

[00:30:19] Brian: [00:30:19] Do you remember an old keyword you would advertise for that used to work like a lot and no longer works that you can share I'm just curious what sort of stuff people were searching for

[00:30:27] Chris: [00:30:27] Yeah for sure I mean like audio mastering used to be awesome

[00:30:30] Brian: [00:30:30] Oh okay So that's way too expensive now

[00:30:32] Chris: [00:30:32] Yeah we'll probably way way way too expensive right now And so like I would do like online audio mastering online mastering engineers stuff like that you know And I would structure them in a way without getting too technical here I'd structured them in a way where it wasn't like the wrong person would search for that And I would spend all this time learning this new skill That all of a sudden my technician was like I have so much opportunity to become awesome at mastering because I have so many new projects

[00:31:00] Brian: [00:31:00] Kermit Uh so this is basically this is the Marriage between the manager and the technician which I think we'll talk about in a second but just keep that in mind this marriage between a technician and a manager because there is a a synergy you can have between these two personality types if you are a seller Preneur that I think we all need to think about but yeah let's move on On the pro list here the manager is the one who keeps the technicians in check You want to talk about this one Christopher

[00:31:22] Chris: [00:31:22] Well this is the one that's going to offend you guys a little bit

[00:31:25] Brian: [00:31:25] I'm so offended already The fact that you thought I would be offended I am offended by because I'm not a type of person to get offended easily So for you to even insinuate that I would be offended by what you're about to say is offensive What are we talking about

[00:31:39] Chris: [00:31:39] I don't even know I was like I like this I like this voice he's doing right now That's funny Um the technician here's the problem and we're gonna talk about this next This is the next part of the episode The technician how do I say this He's an asshole

[00:31:53] Brian: [00:31:53] Yeah The technician is the worst human

[00:31:55] Chris: [00:31:55] Yeah My career is based on my ability as a technician that the skill that's the thing that gets sold in my mastering business is is my abilities a technician But man he's a grumpy sob A good example of like my technician taking over Is like I would be supposed to be done for the day first year of my marriage with Alison and I would be like you know what We're going to watch a movie but I'm going to read fender Princeton reverb schematics from 1966 while we watch this movie because that's what's important right now I need to learn more about how blocking capacitors affect tone True story

[00:32:32] Brian: [00:32:32] You've mentioned that in the podcast dose times now but here's the thing about the technician and I have to 100% agree Technician Chris is an asshole and I hate

[00:32:39] Chris: [00:32:39] He's terrible

[00:32:41] Brian: [00:32:41] Chris does this thing with his eyebrows where he furrows his eyebrows It has that little wrinkle between his eyes and when that comes up technician Chris has entered his body and when that person shows up it is the person that I hate more than anyone It is a person that I want to to X.

[00:32:59] I need an Exorcist to get technician Chris out of that body

[00:33:02] Chris: [00:33:02] It's kind of like a demon Yeah It's not that dissimilar but yeah I get focused on the wrong shit

[00:33:07] Brian: [00:33:07] And it makes you a terrible human being

[00:33:09] Chris: [00:33:09] Yeah My manager my inner manager steps in and says Ooh that's not the most important thing you can be doing right now You should probably focus on this other thing

[00:33:17] Brian: [00:33:17] That happened to me last night I was trying to get this ad up for our podcast on Facebook and I was having some sort of issues so it was like right before dinner like Well I've just got home from like running errands and we're about to like we've been cooking dinner like on the slow cooker and the crockpot or whatever all day and I'm trying to wrap this up and something happens and I'm like Oh man I need to just send them a quick message on the support thing and didn't realize it was a live chat that would ask me every four minutes Are you still with us Are you still with us Are you still with us So like the entire time my brain while I'm trying to switch into dinner mode with my wife is in this technician mode and it was awful My wife hated me in that moment

[00:33:54] Chris: [00:33:54] Yeah Technicians We've kind of accidentally got into the technician part of the podcast here We were we're going to like announce that in a minute here but the technician is really bad at relationships

[00:34:05] Brian: [00:34:05] Oh wow We so ho how do we get to the technician We're not even there yet

[00:34:09] Chris: [00:34:09] Well we are so it's easier I think there is some psychology Hebrew where like let's not talk about the manager so much Let's move on I don't want to talk about him

[00:34:18] Brian: [00:34:18] It's so true Yeah Yeah We don't want to talk about the manager That's by the way the manager and the technician are not friends

[00:34:23] Chris: [00:34:23] Generally not

[00:34:24] Brian: [00:34:24] They need to be and they can work really well together if you let them but your manager personality type and your technician personality type will do exactly what we just did and just absolutely try to destroy each other The technician just tried to take over this entire section of the manager and the podcast just so you know

[00:34:40] Chris: [00:34:40] it's true It's true Yeah So the manager let's kind of refresh this she is in charge of systems The manager is who works on not for the manager keeps the technician and check and the manager and this is really important Makes sure the business keeps making money Right If your business fails it's usually a failure of the manager You didn't have enough manager going on personality wise

[00:35:03] Brian: [00:35:03] It could be that or CEO or I'm sorry the entrepreneur

[00:35:06] Chris: [00:35:06] Yeah The vision could have been wrong

[00:35:07] Brian: [00:35:07] It takes the entrepreneur to have the vision to know which direction to move It takes the manager to execute on that vision and set things up so that the technician in the next personality type actually make the money So it's really a synergy between all three of these personality types But yeah Let's move on now to the cons of the manager The manager has some negatives associated with them especially if this is only your main dominant personality type And again this is the person who sees the forest but not the trees They see the big picture and they don't see the individual little pieces Actually I don't know if that makes sense

[00:35:41] Chris: [00:35:41] Well let me say this when I've met people who specialize in the manager role I generally I'm put off by them

[00:35:50] Brian: [00:35:50] How so

[00:35:50] Chris: [00:35:50] I'm put off by almost nobody I love Like I my wife will tell you I love making friends with strangers It's like my favorite thing in the world But if someone's like Oh I'm not a creative so I'm not an entrepreneur and not an artist but I'm not a technician either I don't have like a specific Well the technician in some ways is a creator is a creator as well They make things And so the manager's like the least creative generally speaking And that causes problems for me personally cause I would lock myself heavily in the creative camp here

[00:36:21] Brian: [00:36:21] Yeah The managers the most corporate of all four of these personality types

[00:36:24] Chris: [00:36:24] Absolutely But again it's kinda like you know baking a cake you need you know what Eggs flour sugar and I don't I don't even know It's all okay But like you have to

[00:36:33] Brian: [00:36:33] fan It's all that's all

[00:36:35] Chris: [00:36:35] Okay You have to have all those ingredients If you don't have any flour it's not a cake If you don't need sugar it's not a cake If you don't have any eggs it's probably also not a cake Be quiet You gluten free nerds that are like talking crap to me through your

[00:36:47] Brian: [00:36:47] we're not a baking podcast We're

[00:36:48] Chris: [00:36:48] We're

[00:36:48] Brian: [00:36:48] to make a damn analogy There's probably a better one out there but it's fine

[00:36:51] Chris: [00:36:51] Yeah So let's get back to the cons and the manager The manager often struggles with only seeing the forest and not seeing the trees Does that make sense So a lot of times there'll be like well we're nude more Searles next month or and we need to do it and blah blah blah But then the technician and even the entrepreneur like dude nobody will buy that

[00:37:11] Brian: [00:37:11] It's the dog food Give the dog food story

[00:37:13] Chris: [00:37:13] Exactly Yeah It's a dog food The story that we've talked about in the past the manager doesn't really understand how the bigger picture works and they get so focused on the business itself that they don't know how to interface the business with humanity And as a result struggled to sell things or to make things or to make cool things

[00:37:33] Brian: [00:37:33] I'll just give you a free pass to tell a story that's already been told in the podcast which you do already and you just skipped it

[00:37:39] Chris: [00:37:39] I know

[00:37:40] Brian: [00:37:40] Okay so tell the story Chris

[00:37:41] Chris: [00:37:41] I've told this story before in the podcast but it's so good That's worth telling Again there's a story about a company that makes dog food and the CEO the entrepreneur is like we need every dog on earth to be using this dog food So the higher the best marketing agency on earth they pay a millions of dollars And nobody buys any more of their dog food So they fire that marketing agency and hire the second best marketing agency in the world spend millions of dollars and nobody buys more dog food So they're having a meeting The CEO is flipping out saying like whoever's responsible for this it's going to get far This is crazy And this crazy like junior employee real nerdy and not super sensitive wearing a short sleeve Like collared white buttoned down shirt raises his hand And you know the CEO is like what is it Steve And Steve is like ah well sir Um the dogs don't like it And so the moral of the story is like they spent all this money trying to manage selling more but they never confirmed that dogs liked the dog food they were selling

[00:38:42] Brian: [00:38:42] And that's the most important part That's the trees portion of this forest They ignore the trees They just focus on the forest

[00:38:48] Chris: [00:38:48] Exactly And as a result the business fails So you can't have too much manager in here that gets real toxic So yeah here's the cons The manager sees the forest not the trees They don't have a whole lot of vision They're more of an executing today type of person And they don't really understand art Like they're a little too like everything is a system and Ramos black and white black and white like they don't understand nuance super well but again they're the person who makes sure the business keeps on making money They're really important and they're probably where most of us listening to this podcast lack the most myself included

[00:39:26] Brian: [00:39:26] Agreed All right Let's move on to our third personality type here which we've already talked about in great length here but we'll keep going The technician we've already talked a lot of shit about the technician but at heart most of us audio engineers or mixing engineers and mastering engineers or any anyone in the audio world most of us at heart are the technician

[00:39:45] Chris: [00:39:45] If you like spinning knobs around your technician if you like the gear your technician

[00:39:49] Brian: [00:39:49] Yep So let's talk about the pros of the technician The pros are they are and this is my favorite part is they are a problem solver at heart This is one of the most important parts of running a studio in general is you have to be a problem solver As a technician that's a natural thing to you But as a business owner you also have to solve a lot a lot a lot of problems And so as a technician this should be something that comes second nature to you is a problem solving approach to your business

[00:40:15] Chris: [00:40:15] Not only are they a problem solver they understand complexity They are the talent They are literally the thing being sold in a service business of well we got this guy and he's kind of a genius and he can do this thing Because of that you should hire us The technician is the talented person but also and we'll get to this more in the future The problem with that is they're usually the most egotistical That's a problem for them Another pro for the technician is they can actually make a little bit of money A technician by himself by herself can get paid a little bit

[00:40:47] Brian: [00:40:47] Yup You can trade dollars for hours as a technician The problem with this is it's just enough money to ignore the other personality types to just feel like you are self-reliant that that's you're good enough You don't need anyone else You've got this handled You just make just enough money to do that Just enough to ignore the manager Just enough to ignore the CEO Just enough to not care about the artist Just enough to be selfish And that's one of the main cons One of the main negatives of being a technician of that being your dominant personality type

[00:41:16] Chris: [00:41:16] Yeah So let's talk about the cons So one of my good friends I'm not going to name his name but

[00:41:21] Brian: [00:41:21] Can we call him Dudley

[00:41:22] Chris: [00:41:22] Dudley No he told me a story one time He said unbelievable technician and you told me a story about how he was working with a band a long time ago and he finished tracking the drums He finished tracking all the band and then he spent an entire week editing drums and then he sent back the whole record to the band and the band said mm we don't really want our drums to sound that tight Could you go back to the unedited versions And he did a great job man great technician work It's a it's painstaking detailed work that takes forever And he did a great job at editing the drums

[00:41:59] Brian: [00:41:59] Technically

[00:42:00] Chris: [00:42:00] Technically yes but because the technician often sees the trees and misses the forest it was all for not it was a waste of his time

[00:42:08] Brian: [00:42:08] he missed the big picture

[00:42:10] Chris: [00:42:10] Yeah and that's a big problem with the technician is because they work for not on the business without a friendship with the manager who's helping create systems to be like Hey if you're going to put in all this time on editing drums do it to one song send it to the client get their approval and then move on to the next song and so on and so forth

[00:42:27] Brian: [00:42:27] That's something I'm manager would say right there What you just said is something that management personality takes over and that's the logical thing to do in this scenario but if that's the personality type you struggle with that your natural inclination is I'm just going to power through these drums I'm just going to get them all done I'm going to knock them all out I'm going to just keep up my workflow and then I'm going to send it all to the band and see what they think That's the technician's approach and you can see what can happen with that sort of stuff Takes hold

[00:42:50] Chris: [00:42:50] Totally and that gets complicated because the technician and I say this as a technician at heart the technician can be extremely arrogant extremely arrogant because what they want more than anything else is validation They want someone to be like wow you're the best at this ever They want to be a goat The manager doesn't really care about being greatest of all time at anything The entrepreneur doesn't really care about being greatest of all time anything but the technician loves validation and as a result has a hard time with managers because the manager will try to do something for the good of the forest

[00:43:26] Brian: [00:43:26] They'll correct them and that does not validate them

[00:43:29] Chris: [00:43:29] Exactly And a mastering engineer's favorite word I like to make fun of us for this is actually like we love saying that crap And it's because we want validation For some reason I don't even understand like why my propensity is to say actually all the time but here's kind of the problem with the technician If the technician is too arrogant and is too against the manager personality and the entrepreneur personality eventually the technician will be the only person left in your business

[00:44:03] Brian: [00:44:03] Yup Lone Wolf

[00:44:04] Chris: [00:44:04] The lone Wolf and that lone Wolf because they have no systems are going on We are going to do things like spending a week editing drums and they will eventually go to business

[00:44:14] Brian: [00:44:14] They'll also forget to eat They'll forget to sleep they'll forget to shower they will lose friendships Their social life will wither and die and they will be probably pretty unhappy

[00:44:23] Chris: [00:44:23] Yeah Overweight and divorced

[00:44:25] Brian: [00:44:25] Oh that's that's rough

[00:44:27] Chris: [00:44:27] Sorry guys I mean like we've got to look at the history Of our industry here and that sucks to say but like that I'm not going to be that guy No way man

[00:44:37] Brian: [00:44:37] This is the future we can all look forward to If we let the technician take hold and only the technician and there's no disrespect by the way there's no disrespect to technical people and technicians and all that It's just the personality of the technician can be if left unchecked by these other personality types can be absolutely a toxic human being and you don't want none of that

[00:44:57] Chris: [00:44:57] Yeah And so one of the things that we love to do on this podcast is if you mention a brand name You get the gear sloughed alert That's a tool that we use to keep Brian and I's technician from coming out on this podcast You don't want to hear from those guys

[00:45:11] Brian: [00:45:11] If it were up to you we wouldn't have the gear sled alert That was from day one From day one I would not allow

[00:45:16] Chris: [00:45:16] The gear sled was my idea Okay Okay What's that

[00:45:22] Brian: [00:45:22] I don't think it was

[00:45:23] Chris: [00:45:23] Actually it was Brian

[00:45:26] Brian: [00:45:26] I don't think it matters

[00:45:27] Chris: [00:45:27] had done I don't care It's ours now But yeah I mean the technicians at gear slit and let's talk about why that is Because what the technician wants more than anything else is validation When they don't get validation they get all Henri or ornery as you're supposed to say

[00:45:45] Brian: