I had fellow agency owner JC Hite join me on the pod to discuss some really important topics. Namely, is it possible to scale with stability - which for JC means scaling your business while prioritizing, family, faith and personal relationships.

Here’s a look at what we discussed: 

Key Takeaways

• The "Video of Awesomeness" Hiring Hack - JC's simple 15-minute interview addition that reveals more about candidates than traditional methods, including real examples of applicants who wrote songs about his company
• Overseas Talent Strategy Mistake Most Make - Why the "how cheap can I hire" mindset kills results, and JC's approach to paying international talent competitively to get world-class team members
• The 5 Love Languages for Workplace Retention - How applying Gary Chapman's principles in business dramatically improves team satisfaction and reduces turnover (especially crucial for the next generation workforce)
• Building a "Bench" Like Sports Teams - JC's systematic approach to always having pre-approved candidates ready, eliminating the panic of unexpected departures and empowering leaders to make tough decisions
• Mentorship Through Fear, Not Ego - How JC built relationships with icons like John Maxwell, Damon John, and Dr. Gary Chapman by being honest about his fears and willing to invest in proximity to wisdom

Chapters

(00:00) Join Us in NYC at Our Exclusive YouTube Event!

(01:08) Introduction to Scaling with Stability

(08:28) Attracting and Recruiting Top Talent

(13:55) International Recruiting

(16:00) Understanding Appreciation and Team Dynamics

(21:55) Navigating Retention and Challenges

(28:35) The Importance of Mentorship in Business

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Brett Curry:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today I am delighted to welcome to the show Mr. JC Hite. He's the co-founder and CEO of Hite International. You'll hear more about that in a moment. He's all about scaling with stability. You'll also hear what that means and why that's so exciting. And I first heard JC and his lovely wife, Karen, speak at my partner and friends event, Tom Shipley deal Con, and so just hit it off. Similar values, similar faith, similar approach to business I think in a lot of ways. And so we're like dude and also Midwest guys. And so hey, let's hit you on the pod. So with that JC Hite, welcome man, and how's it going?

JC Hite:

Oh man, it's going great. I'm excited to be here. Hopefully we can add some good value over the next 30 minutes, so I'm

Brett Curry:

Excited. Let's deliver some value. Yeah, so want to get into a variety of topics. I know one of your specialties is recruiting and hiring talent, retaining that talent. And one thing we see, whether it's in the agency space, which I'm in on a day-to-day basis, or we help e-commerce brands, if you don't have top talent, and yes, we know that AI is disrupting and getting the right tools and the right approaches, that's all good, but without the right people and without the ability to attract and retain top talent, you're going to be a step behind. And so I'm excited to talk about that. I'm excited to talk about mentorship and you've actually formed friendships with some real leaders in the leadership space. I'm excited to unpack that story here about your event. Also, you and your wife work together and you genuinely appear to each other and you appear to working together most of the time. And so I think we'll throw a few nuggets in there too for those that may end up working with their spouse as well. So we're going to be fun times, but first of all, what is Hite International and what do you guys do to get a little context here?

JC Hite:

Yeah, I mean our big focus as you said there in the beginning is how do we help people scale with stability? And what we mean by that, obviously we want to scale the business, we want to grow, but what I have found is business could be one of the most destroying things in the world. It can be the most stressful. You throw your finances off, you take big risks, you can fail hard, but it can also be one of the most freeing things in the world. I never miss a ball game. I got to coach my kid. I can give to the church, I can help, I can serve, I can invest time in my marriage, and it can also be the greatest thing. And so when we talk about scaling with stability, it's really about having a business that can allow you to have a really great deep marriage, to be very involved in the church and your relationship with Jesus and as well as serve and help and raise amazing children. And so these three principles, and so we do that really focused on three areas, Hyatt International, we have an advertising firm, and we got about 80 employees in our advertising firm. And then we have our education side, which we have events and a mastermind, and then we have our investment wing, which I'm really excited about. We started investing in companies that are on that same mission of growth and how do we get more involved in the details of helping them scale?

Brett Curry:

I love that man. And you and I are a hundred percent aligned on that scale with stability framework. It's one of those things where why would you do this if the most important things in your life fall by the wayside? And so I think the idea for everybody is how do you get your business to align with your personal mission and to help fuel healthy families in a healthy relationships and things like that rather than destroying those. And so love that approach. That's awesome. And Yemen, just excited to dive in. Now you are just coming off the heels of a really big event. Can you tell people about

Brett Curry:

Scale

Brett Curry:

With stability, what that was, where that was, and kind of how that went down?

JC Hite:

Stupidest thing we've ever done, but it worked out really well. So I'm always really honest with ideas. Sometimes it's just you take jobs. And so we wanted, on this framework, we wanted to do an event, and so we did Skill with Stability Summit, and then we had the crazy idea, we have a university, Harding University in Arkansas that we're very passionate about. So one day I told my wife, what if we had the event here? And she was like, why in Arkansas? It's in Arkansas. It's 45 minutes from, there's not a Marriott here. There's not wide. I was like, well, let's think about it. They already have av, they have all the rooms, they have space, they have food, they have all, and then we're bringing people to our alma mater. We're bringing in celebrities here. Could this be something that, and it worked really well. We had 750 people. It was a brand new event. That's crazy, man, from logo to you name it, and seven 50 people. We had Daymond John came down. We ended up inviting three college students and pitched Damon and I. That was super cool.

Brett Curry:

Many shark Tank. By the way, did either of you invest in these pitches?

JC Hite:

Well, we did not invest in anything on that one. They got an award for the best pitch, and so we actually got all three of, makes a lot sense, the money sense. So it took the pressure off of the table there. We actually were, the premise of the pitch was that as entrepreneurs, we all have millions of ideas. So which ideas do we jump on and which ideas do we shelf? That's brilliant. Brilliant. And that's based on timing. It's based on who you've got around you. It's based on money, it's based on a lot of factors.

JC Hite:

And so the calling was for these students to pitch the idea that should be the thing that they take off the shelf and jump into. And then which one had the best. Anyway, it was fun. We had Willie and Corey Robertson there. They talked a lot about marriage and faith and raising children and how you're in the middle of this huge jump and just everyone's pulling you and everyone's wanting you and wants access, and how do you raise really healthy, God-fearing amazing children in that cycle? And so I feel like they've done really well, which

Brett Curry:

Is really the hardest thing. And you and I have talked about this a lot. I mentioned it on the show as well. I've got wife and I have eight kids. There's really nothing harder than raising a family. There's nothing more rewarding and there's nothing more important. And so getting that right in the midst of businesses is awesome.

JC Hite:

And you have a limited business, we can fail and start

Brett Curry:

Over again. Totally, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JC Hite:

I guess technically you could just have another child and do it over, but probably not the best approach. And Karen and I, anyway, we got two, you've got eight, so it's fun. So yeah, we had Dr. Gary Chapman came to the event as well, and Dr. White and who wrote the book Appreciation at Work, which we can talk about here in a minute as we talk about team. But it was good. It was fun. Super fun.

Brett Curry:

That's amazing. And yeah, I know you mentioned John Maxwell, one of the all time greats as far as leadership goes. And so yeah, Harding University in Arkansas attracting some big, big names, attracting 750 people, which if anybody has done an event or tried to do an event, they know that is a monumental lift. And we do events a couple of times a year, but they're for just business owners and smaller events. But dude, it's still a lot of work. It's a massive, massive lift. And so kudos to you guys for doing that. I want to talk about attracting and retaining talent. And I want to kind of frame it this way. I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts on the drive in today called Founders Podcast, and the host was reading the original Jeff Bezos shareholder letter.

Brett Curry:

And one thing that Jeff Bezos talked about then, but he is talked about ever since, is our success hinges on our ability to continuously raise the bar in terms of who we hire. And so they've got this idea called the Bar Raiser program. And I'm not going to get this exactly right, but it's something like, Hey, with each new hire, we're going to ask how will this person inspire us or how will we admire this person? If we bring them on board, how will they raise the bar in their department and collectively? And then there's a third component, there's always a third component, but it's kind of along those lines. It's not how do we just hire the next person who fills a role but makes me look good, not quite as smart as me type of thing. How do we raise the bar with those hires? Now that's difficult to do and it's difficult to do if you're a small business because sometimes the best talent comes with a really high price tag, but not always. That's not always the case. And so I'll kind of make this a broad question first and we'll dig into some details, but how do you approach hiring and hiring the right talent? And I don't know if you want to start with any kind of frameworks or philosophies around that before we get into the tactics.

JC Hite:

So a few things that we do. So number one, I'll mention something on the interview process that I have found works stupid good for us, and I stole it from Mindvalley forever ago. I don't know if they still do this. And then two, let's chat about where and how I recruit from a standpoint. Then we can talk about the team itself and how do we retain them. So we require every single person that applies for high, they do one interview, 15 minutes, and by the end of that interview we asked for what's called a video of awesomeness. And on that video, it's very simple. I say, Hey Brett, you going to do a video of awesomeness? I want three things that make us awesome and three things that make you awesome. And that's it. And they're going to ask questions. They're like, okay, how long should it be? I don't know, when is it due? I dunno, well, can I use friends? I don't know. Just the video, three things. That's it. And I have learned, Brett, you can learn so much by this video. So some examples I have some people they'll take two, three weeks, but I mean it's like perfect.

JC Hite:

Well, there's certain positions that that's really, and then they have people that just take out their phone and film it. They give me exactly what they, but no more, no less. But it's done. Immediately.

Brett Curry:

I

JC Hite:

See people with their personality and some roles, you want that some roles, you want that person. Yeah, that's right. And you see their personality. You see, most people aren't comfortable filming videos. Well, welcome to the life of working at Hite. We never know what we're doing. JC is always telling us to go do crazy junk, like start a event in the middle of Arkansas. There's no roadmap. So there's no rules, there's no boundaries, there's no anything. Hey, can I get friends to help? Sure, any job you have at Hite, you can go have as many people help you. So I

Brett Curry:

Learn, this is kind of like if you look at personality tests, right? So we used to do it called Culture index. We love it. We also use Patrick Lencioni's widget, the Working Genius. There's some tools like that. They do it in some ways this cuts through all of that and just allows you to see it. Their working genius shows up their disc, whatever. You're going to see it on display on this project. That's really,

JC Hite:

Really, and I can show you some videos, but we have so many of these crazy creative videos. And what's interesting though is you start making it where first off, people wanting a job are not going to take the time to do it. It's just it's too much, right? They'll show up for another interview. But those that really want, then I'm actually hearing what do they actually know about us? What made them want to apply are the things that they think

Brett Curry:

Are your website's awesome? You were really friendly on

JC Hite:

The

Brett Curry:

Surface level stuff,

JC Hite:

All that type of stuff. And so that's my one tip. I think it's the easiest from a time standpoint for me as the CEO, because I like to be involved in a lot of our hires. It is the easiest way for me to get to know without a 30 minute meeting. I can watch a video in two minutes and learn. I could see probably did they use Brent? I have probably six people that have written songs about hype. I'm talking about full on banjo songs edited, and I'm like, dude, this is the coolest thing ever. Amazing. Anyway, that's a big one. Big one for me. The second thing, I'll say this, obviously a lot of people are going overseas for talent, but I think one thing we do way wrong there is that when for some reason in the us, our mindset is here's my budget.

JC Hite:

What's the best person I can do? I can afford 6,000. Who's the best I can find? But yet when we go to latam, it's like, did you know you can hire someone in the Philippines for seven 50? Did you know that you can hire someone in Nicaragua for 2000? Like, dude, I'd have to pay six grand in the US in Nicaragua, I would only have to pay two. That's the wrong mindset. So one of our big secrets is going, okay, I would've to pay someone 5,000 in us. Who could I find for 5,000 in you? Get out.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah. It would just be the best of the best there.

JC Hite:

I mean, holy cow. So if you're willing to pay this Now, this has gotten more competitive in the last couple of years, but I really encourage companies to go find the top layer. So for example, yes, you can find someone in the Philippines for 600 bucks, but you can also find someone with an MBA that's worked for Verizon for 10 years and then a bank for five years and pay 'em 2000. And that lift is undeniably better.

Brett Curry:

Clearly going to be a bar raiser in your department, whereas the 600 a month person is going to save you some money on your p and l potentially, but you may get what you pay for there.

JC Hite:

But for some reason, our mindset when we recruit overseas is always different. It's always

JC Hite:

How do I save money? The lowest is the reason why I'm going is to save money. And if you go with that intention, then just naturally you're going to be thinking, how cheap can I pay? And we don't pay perfect. We went through some really bad seasons there. We made a couple of bad acquisitions and it was really, really tough for us. And so that's where it comes to my next point of view. Ron Kaufman wrote the book Levels of Service and it's all about how do we uplift our service and serve our team as the best way possible. I built Hite with the intention that every single one of those team members are going to pay for my kid's college. This company will bring every dream I have and my job as CEOs to serve them. We had at our event, Dr. Chapman, along with Dr. White as I mentioned, and they together wrote the book Appreciation at Work, which is the five level languages for the workplace. So it's the same once,

Brett Curry:

Right? Interesting

JC Hite:

Works of affirmation, quality, time, access, service, tangible gifts, physical touch, but we don't think about that. So often the workplace, this next generation is much more into appreciation versus rewards. So they want quality time with people. They're really interested in words of affirmation. And so just like I do with my wife, how do I figure out, especially my team around me, what is their love language? How do I connect with them? And it's incredibly different. Some of my people, man, they just want money. I mean tangible gifts is what it's about if you pay 'em.

Brett Curry:

And nothing wrong with that at all.

JC Hite:

I used to have a personal assistant, I love her to death, I love her to death, but her appreciation at work, her love language was words of affirmation. And that is not, I mean, I do really well with my wife and my kids, but outside of that, I'm the most, I'm just not very lovey word wise

Brett Curry:

With your words.

JC Hite:

And it was a problem because I would go a week without talking to her just because I was busy and she got the work done. She was so efficiently, so gc, are you mad at me? No. What happened? Did I miss something?

Brett Curry:

Did I say something? Did I say that I was mad at you?

JC Hite:

No, but you haven't like no, because you're crushing it and you don't need me to tell you what to do right now. Words of affirmation, she wanted to just be told. And so I think, okay, how do I find the right talent where and what if my strategy around finding the right talent, and then once I get them, how am I loving on them as much as humanly possible world, this next generation, they'll quit and they don't need another job. They'll quit and they'll go move back with their family. They'll quit because they got 30,000 in the bank and shoot, I can go live in the Philippines for six months without much money. And so they think differently. And so we got to be prepared. How do we build the relationship with them?

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's so good, man. And it's one of those things where yes, you got to pay people competitively and you have to have a job and a role that's structured well that gives someone a chance to succeed. But people really need that appreciation and those extra things and they need to be seen and loved. We'll use the word loved, even though it's maybe not a word you use in business a whole lot, but I love that. And we're big fans, big believers in the Five Love languages. It's true at work as well. It's going to be the work version of those things that work. And so how do you see that and recognize that in your team, and then how do you show them appreciation? How do you lead them in the way they want to be led or to see appreciation?

Brett Curry:

That's

Brett Curry:

Right. That's great, man. And I always think about it, a good coach, man. I think about coaches I had because I love playing sports growing up. And who were the coaches that they were fine. I learned and they pushed me. And some were just hardcore and that was fine, but who are the coaches that I love? The coaches that I would run through a brick wall for? And I think we have the same thing with bosses. Who are the bosses that I'll show up for? I like the job, I'm going to do the right thing, but who are the bosses that I would run through a brick wall for? It's not just about pay. It's about those intangibles of how am I getting appreciation and receiving love from this boss?

Brett Curry:

That's right.

Brett Curry:

Really, really great. Hey, what are some of the other, but before we talk about retention, some of those things, I want to talk about this overseas recruiting. I think that that's just becoming more and more common in every business that I know from the agency space to the e-commerce space and everything in between. What are some of the other mistakes that people make there? So I love that you pointed out our default is how do we go to the cheapest rather than how can we pay more than anybody else and just get an unbelievable team member. What are the mistakes do people make when they're hiring internationally?

JC Hite:

Well, I think a couple of things here. I think the mindset around it is very different. Most in our culture and even the digital marketing world, we call almost anyone that's outsourced a VA in some way shape. We have our team in the US and we got 10 or 15 VAs in Nawa, and it's like we just have a mindset problem around what team looks like. This is the team. And so I have an issue with that. I think one of the things that we just have a huge opportunity for is that Nick and i's three and a half hour flight from Dallas, Honduras, all these things beforehand. So a lot of things are shifting to latam from the Philippines and Asia, things like this, which creates an opportunity to visit the team, be a part of them. So again, just like these love languages, physical touch trainer for gifts, acts of service, quality time, four of those can be done in person quality time, being present, being able to touch someone. Hey, here's what it is. The affirmation of course can be online, but there's very different when they feel the body language around it,

JC Hite:

So much can be done in person. So I think that's a huge opportunity. And again, us we're really like, what does comp look like? The world is getting flatter and flatter. I feel like there was 10 years ago we were talking about the world is flat, it was opening up the doors, but it wasn't like it was still very unlevel wise. That is starting to gradually equate more and more over time.

Brett Curry:

Yep. Yep. Love that. Well, let's talk, let's shift gears. Talk about retention. And this is one of those things that if you've been in business for any length of time, you've had a key team member leave and it's painful. And we've all had experiences where someone turns in their resignation and we're like, oh, I've got a fake. I'm sad here. This is so terrible. But then there's some people that they leave and you're just gutted, right? Oh my goodness. We had someone on our team who I mentored him and trained him, and I invested so much time in him. And then when he left, it was almost like a gut punch. I was also proud of him. He was going to pursue something bigger, which was just tough. Some people are really tough when it's really tough when they leave. So how do you think about retention strategically and also tactically,

JC Hite:

Have you ever read of the book, the Dream Manager, Brett,

Brett Curry:

The Dream Manager? I have not.

JC Hite:

I love it. It's a little fable about a company that scaled and grew and they were a cleaning company, clean toilets for a living. In that book, it talks about how they finally realized that they were a stepping stone elsewhere. There's certain roles in their company. I think I struggled especially earlier where it was like an ego Hite was the savior for everyone. You couldn't leave. Why would you leave? You are going to be served your best, we're going to be able to pay you, we're going to be all these things. And I think finally I got where that's not the case for most people. And so I try to segment and go, okay, what is my retention rate on leaders, managers, these types of individuals and then everyone else at Hite? We don't get a lot of leadership roles that open up. We just don't turn over, which means I actually need to expect there's a big group of people that will move because there's no spots for leadership unless I'm trying to scale Hite. I am in growth mode, which quite frankly right now, high digital, we're not because I don't know where the world of digital marketing is going. And so how do we treat our company more as a, I like sports teams. I think they do two things really well. Number one, they don't get affected. Well, I mean they do, but people move. That's just part of

Brett Curry:

It. People move, people get traded, people contracts,

JC Hite:

Don negotiate that. But another move really well is they're always recruiting. They always have this bench. And so one of the things that we've really tried to do from an HR standpoint, even if I don't have a, let's say a Google Ads person, I have a bench waiting now. It even changes the framework to my leaders. I mean, you've done this and I got a B player, and it's like they're not super good, but do I want to go recruit and find No. My leaders are going, I have a B player, and we got Sarah on the bench.

JC Hite:

Sarah's got right? So what our HR team is for all of our core roles, we try to have someone on the bench somewhere and we'll literally just like sales. We'll call 'em up every month and go, Hey, Brett, hey, we don't have the role just quite yet. My thinking is maybe the next two to three months. But you still wanted to join Hite if an opportunity came up, right? Yeah. Okay, cool. And so that's the conversation. We have two or three of them that are already approved, already have the videos. We're just waiting. And that brings so much security to our company.

JC Hite:

And so again, I think we have as owners just a huge God complex that we are the lifeblood of our team. And once we get over that, we just realized like, dude, I have had so many people that I hated to leave and one of two things are not true either. One, I didn't truly care about them because they ended up with a way better job or a way better opportunity or whatever. So either one or two things are not true either. One, I didn't care about them quite as much as I thought, or two as you thought you did. Exactly. And so I think we got to loosen up there a little bit. If your deal is retention, I think that goes back to appreciation at work. I think at the end of the day, nonprofits are your greatest example of people that have a lot higher retention than most for-profit companies yet they normally don't pay that much. They focus on what they're good at. And so there's been seasons where we're like, guys, we're really struggling with, we are going to love on you. We're going to be able to serve you. I mean, I've got two people right now at Hite. One just had cancer treatment, another one's got a daughter with cancer. Both of them are fully out. We're paying them. We have no rush back. We're taking care.

JC Hite:

We want to be an organization that serves our people in the greatest way possible.

Brett Curry:

Same here for sure.

JC Hite:

And that's where we can win. It doesn't matter where you're at or who you are, that's possible.

Brett Curry:

That's so great, man. And it's a really important thing. And one of the things I reminded myself very early on in business is if you look at the best companies, the Googles and Facebooks and other Mag seven companies, they attract really great people. But with attracting great people, a lot of times they want to move on to something else. They want to go build their own company, they want to go do their own thing, something like that. And so if you are constantly attracting talent, they will move on. And I heard my pastor said long ago, and I shared this from the early days of O mg, we're going to bless people when they come and bless people when they go and maybe we'll give people a hard time. And that's what we did. We did a cake you dead test type thing just as a joke. But it's always like, we're going to bless 'em when they come. We're going to bless 'em when they go. We're going to talk good about them even when they go. I think that's one of those things that's common. Like this person left and we're going to bash 'em internally. No, not going to put up with that. And so

JC Hite:

We had had a team member, and we've done this many times. We have a team member that was here for two years and he was like, man, I just don't. And we were honest with him, I don't know that you would get a promotion if we had it. You're good and I love you to death. And we had a real conversation and then we hired a recruiting firm to help him find a new job. And he stayed with Hyatt another three months, 90 days or so until the recruiting firm got him something. That's amazing. But it also I think loosens the conversation and ideally, and we're not perfect at this, but how do we create a culture where people are just really honest? And I would much rather a team member tell me, dude, I don't see my future. Cool. Let's plan it. I will help you find a job. If I know

Brett Curry:

Let's help you find a place where you are fulfilled. Yeah, weeks,

JC Hite:

It's going to be better for you, better for us weeks notice in our world, especially account managers and leaders. Man, that's tough. And it's tough when you're a smaller business with a smaller team, it's even worse. And so open, honest communication can be really, really great.

Brett Curry:

That's great, man. I love it. Well, let's transition to our final topic here. Let's talk mentorship. And you've had the privilege. I know it's been by design and by effort and by just getting out there and doing stuff. But you are friends and have mentors that are really world-class leaders like John Maxwell, like the Robertsons from Duck Dynasty, like Damon John, and we'll throw our mutual friend, Vinny Fisher in there as well. First of all, how do you view mentorship and why is that so important? And then I want to talk about how you meet these world-class mentors.

JC Hite:

I am scared to death of business. I have seen so many of my friends sacrifice it all to get to the top. And I mean great people, good people that just somewhere one mistake, one bad night, one whatever, successful business. And then overnight something happened and it wasn't, and my mentorship is just straight out of fear. I look at some of these men and women that John's been married to Margaret forever, and Dr. Chapman, we were texting just a few.

Brett Curry:

Dude, how old is John Maxwell? Do you know? Or are you allowed to say he's got to be 70 or something?

JC Hite:

Eight.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, if

JC Hite:

I remember right,

Brett Curry:

Hearing about the global leadership summit's still articulate sharp as attack, just killing the game.

JC Hite:

We were just talking yesterday about him coming to scale with stability next year. And this guy, Dr. Chapman impresses me more. Dr. Chapman's 87, he

Brett Curry:

No way, he's sharp. I didn't know that

JC Hite:

He's sharp. I mean, we had him just as event the other day and we did a q and a. So the audience is asking random questions, it not, and he's joking, spitting back, no time. He knows this stuff. And so for me, I am, I'm a big believer that wisdom just transcends generations. Obviously as Christians, we believe in this thing called the Bible, and it's absolute truth. It's

Brett Curry:

An ancient book.

JC Hite:

They struggled with their marriage. And so I love this and it's been such a blessing. I remember I had a season where I had to get rid of a couple of partnerships and that caused a couple of other partnerships. It was just a big drama. And I called up John, actually his right hand, Mark Cole, and we were chatting and he's the CEO of all of Maxwell now. And I was like, dude, I just feel like a failure. I let these partners down. I broke up and that's creating drama. And then I feel stressed and just everything I feel like has been affected.

JC Hite:

And I was like, how does John prevent this stuff from happening? And he just chuckled. He is like, John's going through a huge breakup right now, right now. And the leader on leadership in the world had a bad, it didn't work and it was a drama and it was a problem, and there was legal involved and all this. He's welcome to it. And so I have spent a lot of money, time and energy connecting and being with around some of what I have seen be some of the most successful folks out there. And some have failed with it and overcome, some haven't. Right? So John will Roberton, Dr. Chapman, Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank, and the list goes on. Jesse Itzler, got a couple of

Brett Curry:

Dude, love that guy. Yeah, met Jesse, he's the don't know, he's the author of Living With a Seal, which is a phenomenal book. And Jesse just wants to live a legendary life. And I love his big calendar that he plans on and stuff. And so it's really cool. And yeah, I love the way you framed it. So first of all, mentorship and getting wisdom from people that have gone where you want to go, been where you are right now. It's really hard to put a value on that. It's so incredibly valuable. But you mentioned a couple of things. You said one, you paid for it, two, you worked for it, and you built those relationships. You're not just going to wake up one morning and John Maxwell call you unless you're doing something earth shattering or whatever. Sometimes you got to pay to be in the right room.

Brett Curry:

Sometimes you got to pay to be around people and you form these friendships. I can think about relationships that I've built over the years that started with a paid relationship like my buddy now we're really good friends. Ezra Firestone, we've done lots of business together and I call him up when there are things going on in business or whatever, but that began with a paid business type relationship. I met my wife and I go to Life church. So Craig Rochelle is the senior pastor, one of the best leaders I think right now, the Craig Rochelle Leadership podcast. So he flew into Springfield and my local pastor said, Hey, will you and Brittany go pick Craig up from the airport? So we did got to meet him and Amy, his wife, and then also Bobby Grunwald, who's the founder of YouVersion Bible app.

Brett Curry:

Yeah,

Brett Curry:

The Bible app. For those that don't know it is the most downloaded Bible resource, almost a billion downloads. It's a free app, a church put this together. But Bobby's a business savant and he's built businesses. He's been in life church for like, I dunno, 26, 27 years. But we took Craig to church. He got mobbed like a rockstar. And so Bobby's just hanging out. So I started talking to Bobby and I start telling him about some m and a deals that I'm working on. And so then a week later, Bobby calls me, he's like, Hey, how's the m and a stuff going? So he's like mentoring me and coaching me a little bit, which is just super cool. So I think you've got to be able to do all those things. How can I get out there? How can I be the one to form a relationship? I did a partnership with Russell Brunson back in 2009. I saw him in the lobby of an event and came up and just start talking to him. You got to be willing to talk. You got to be willing to pay, got to be willing to put yourself out there. But man, I'm telling you, those relationships are more valuable than almost anything else in business. It's huge.

JC Hite:

I mean, I feel confident I can call any one of those folks and they would make sure my wife and I were not homeless. And so big secret, that's why I do events. Events are not really profitable, but events fund some of those relationships in a big way. Most of those guys are less. If you've got a really good mentor, I find they never tell you what to do. First off, I rarely get told what to do, but there's, they

Brett Curry:

Help you process things. Yeah, that's right. Stories.

JC Hite:

But I think so many of us of entrepreneurs think we're special. And what I mean by that is that we've got special problems or man, no one else has these relationship issues and no one else is running a $4 million company and can't figure out how to do payroll. And no one else has struggled with turnover and no one, we feel we're special in a negative way. And the reality is once you talk to these folks, everyone's got the same stink issues. Everyone's struggling with fire, everyone is, and the encouragement there is to give you a little bit of peace in the ability to go, okay, it's a normal problem, so how do we fix it versus wallowing it in it compounding in a negative way.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's so good. Yeah, we noticed that in early 24. We had just grown headcount massively. E-comm was scaling and we were scaling we through two rounds of layoffs. And so it's been remarkable though, as I've shared that with other leaders. They're like, me too, man. And this is what happened. We did it. This is what happened afterwards. This is what the mistakes we learned while we were doing it. And so one of the worst times in my life as far as business goes, but every business goes through something like that. And the cool thing is those that are mature and who've done it before generally want to help you not crush in and give you some tips. We'll just help you walk through it. So dude, this has been fantastic. We're kind of coming up against time here. What do I want to do though? Let's talk about your events. You're going to do scale with stability part two, I believe, next year. So any plug you want to give for that would be awesome. And then you also have an event for agencies. And so would love to hear kind of who that's for, what type of agencies, what that looks like. And so it's, tell us more about that.

JC Hite:

Yeah, the Commitment Summit is in Cancun. That is kind mean. It's a VIP type event all inclusive. We got Mike Mitz coming, several others. We have had John Maxwell there, Damon, John, Jesse came, all those guys. Nowadays it's turned into, it's anywhere from two to 10 million agencies coming together. We got speakers in the morning and then everything else is like hot seats working together in the pool, collaborating. And a lot of people ring their families. It's fun. Four nights, three days. The commitment summit.com scale of stability summit is just more holistic. It's all about helping businesses scale with stability. And it's a faith-based conference as well. And we are scaling it. So right now we'll have our location in April, which is in Arkansas. It's kind of in the south, but we are actually debating Brett having another one, either Missouri, Nashville or potentially up. Let's go. And so as you're talking about your church, I'm like literally someone just the other day was like, have you considered having scale stability Summit at one of Greg's churches?

Brett Curry:

Love church location. I think it's pretty smart. They'd probably up for that. So that's amazing, man. Love what you're doing, keep up the good work. You guys are building an amazing business, profitable, scaling, growing and all that, but you're also doing it the right way, sticking with your mission, taking care of your family, good relationship with your wife. So love what you're doing, man. Thanks for delivering value here and looking forward to connecting with you in person soon.

Brett Curry:

Yeah brother.

Brett Curry:

Alright, man. Thank you so much. And thank you for tuning in as always. We'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the podcast, have you not done? So we'd also love that review on iTunes, helps other people find the show. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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