Thomas Green here with ethical marketing service on the episode. Today we have RJ Grimshaw RJ welcome. Hi Thomas, how are you today? Marvelous. Thank you for asking. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do? Sure. Currently I am the Ceo president for unifying equipment finance were long established equipment finance that was started in 1978 and I’m fortunate enough to be the second ceo president. Um but however, I’m a third generation entrepreneur that just landed in corporate America really by accident. So I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. My dad owned several businesses, my grandmother on my dad’s side on the, on the forest, My grandfather on my mother’s side on a sort of distributorship back in the 30s and 40s. My uncle was the ceo of Black and Decker as well as I had another uncle that owned several optician stores throughout new Hampshire and Vermont, so it’s just naturally in my blood uh to see business owners and entrepreneurs, the sacrifices as well as the winds um of bettering people’s lives.
So a little bit of a, you know, big picture background on myself, but I love business. I’m a student of business. It’s ever changing and it seems like the, the, the change of pace just continues to get faster and faster here throughout the last decade or so. Well, thank you for the introduction. You said, you’re a student of business, What would if someone was to say to you, what’s your best lessons, what would you lead with their or what springs to mind? Um the best lesson is take action. Um so many business owners, entrepreneurs have a great idea myself included. I hold myself accountable, there’s several things that I thought over the years that boy this would be, this would provide, provide a solution for this issue, but I didn’t take action and three or four years later you would see that business and business and um you know, things of that nature, but I would say take action if if you friendly believe in your heart of hearts that you have a solution that’s going to serve a problem that people are facing, our businesses are facing on a daily basis, take action and as you take that action, you can learn and pivot and things of that nature, I’m not saying take action, that is irresponsible.
However, start your journey, don’t wait and I’ll give you a story of this, I was actually fortunate enough to be a judge three or four years ago for a shark tank type of show and there was one particular entrepreneur that has been doing due diligence and research on his idea for 12 years That that doesn’t work. I’m all about due diligence, I’m all about understanding the business side of it and the practical side of it. However, he just is, I don’t want to say lost 12 years. However, if he just would have jumped in and learned, he could at least started generating revenue and then bring it to market where he 12 years of due diligence is too much. Now. That’s an extreme case of that. However anyone that’s listening to this today, if you know you have an idea take action and start doing and and it will pay dividends. Do you think that in that example and perhaps in others as well, do you think it’s a genuine attempt at being prepared?
Or do you think there’s a lot of fear and fear of failure in those instances you’re spot on time? It’s just a fear. It’s a fear of what’s going to happen. It’s a fear of um it’s it’s it’s a fear and I’ll use myself again as an example anytime I’ve ever taken a promotion or move my family or looked at the business. My dad taught me many years ago. It’s a basic principle. Just do your t pros and cons go through. Typically it’s human nature to go through the worst case scenario at least for myself and it always lead to worst case scenario you have great learnings, you’ve increased your knowledge base and you might come back to where you are in terms of your career and things of that nature and on the other side of the positive it’s all upside. Um So you know I was actually featured in an article ah seven years ago or so on. C. E. O. S. In our industry that took calculated risks of their corporate you know of their corporate career and and the calculated the right word.
However if you don’t take action you can do all the calculations you want in the world. It’s not gonna mean anything, it’s not gonna mean anything for your family. It’s not gonna mean anything for the people you’re trying to serve. Um And there was a lot of times that I would do that t and make the decision that it didn’t make sense. However I was taking action to understand it didn’t make sense and then I can move on and move away from that idea. Does that make sense? Yeah it does make sense. Um I think I think there are there are some personality differences which can help there. So for example I I am very much um of maybe one side of the curve on that so I much prefer to take action on stuff and find out rather than should we say lots and lots of preparation. But if you are of the type of person that likes to be prepared, have you got any thoughts on what they can do to help themselves take action? So I would just say and again there are there are areas of my life that sometimes I do over prepare so I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite.
However though I’ve tried to develop a system to work through if there is something that I’m trying to prepare for because at the end of the day preparation is everything my my two boys, I have two sons and actually they’re, they’re young men now just celebrated their birthdays yesterday. Matter of fact, they’re born on the same ah same day. So you want to talk about preparation, there’s some preparation for you, huh? Makes it really easy for my wife and I to remember their birthdays. Uh but preparation is so important. However, you just can’t continue to over prepare and over prepared and when I say preparation, if you know what the objective is that the goal is, and when I used to coach sports preparation took place during the week and then it was game time on the weekends. So if you’re looking at at ideas, you have to have a timeline that you’re going to move on. So if you’re preparing for something, you need to say, okay, I’m going to work on it for the next 48 hours to prepare, but then I’m going to take action and then you narrow that window like the example of the gentleman that did his due diligence preparation for 12 years, he never had, he never had a date that he said, okay, I’m gonna get to here and then I’m going to go forward or make that conscious decision to go forward.
Um So I would just say put, put some, put some book stops around it in terms of some timelines and we all know that when you’re making goals, smart goals, they always have a timeline associated with what you’re trying to achieve and people have to remember that. It’s about the journey and the knowledge and the learnings during that and not look at it, it was a failure. If you decide to take action, it doesn’t work out. It’s always, and that’s where I say, I’m a student of, I’m a student of um, a business because every single day I’m trying to learn and I will fail today. There’s no doubt about it. I’ll make a mistake today, I’ll fail at something today, but but it’s about the learnings from that. Um, and knowledge is so easy to get to, it’s almost too easy to get to. And I think that that’s why some people over prepared because you can seek knowledge anywhere. You look now today with the tools that we have 100% in line, with with your answer and I can say that there’s plenty of things which I have done and also, shall we say, learn from, which didn’t help me with what I was trying to achieve, but help me later on down the line.
So I 100% agree with what what you said there, just coming back to your story. I would like to add to that real quick little thomas, sorry to interrupt you, you just made a very, very, very critical point and it’s important, whatever you’re working on that, it someone aligns with who you are, for example. um I look at a lot of business opportunities, I look at a lot of pitch stacks my mask to sit on advisory boards and things of that nature and I I’m very disciplined to stay in my lane in my knowledge base where if I am trying to learn something new, I know that it’s going to help me long term with, where I want to go. An example of that is um, if it’s, if it’s something that either I don’t have an interest in two I have, I know nothing about and they’re they’re making a big ask of me to sit on an advisory board or out with something. I don’t want to take a lot of time to try and learn that if it’s not going to selfishly, okay, help me in the long term or help that person who’s asking that in the long term.
So I would say you have to be understand who you are, understand who your strengths and your weaknesses are, and at the end of the day it has to resonate with you whatever you’re trying to do or find people that it would resonate with that may be handed off to them uh, and do some type of JV or, you know, an equity joint venture, something like that, but stay true to who you are and your core. I believe some drivers, thanks for the qualification, I did want to talk to you about what you originally mentioned, which was your family. Um A lot of your family are either sort of C. E. O. S or business owners or entrepreneurs when um I asked people about their story. Typically I like to ask about who their mentors are, who their influences are and if someone is particularly entrepreneurial, whether they had a influence at that age, did you go straight into being a business owner or entrepreneur or did you what you know when you started out with, you influenced at the beginning, influenced by my father um Gene and he was my mentor, he unfortunately passed away um at a young age um actually at the age of 61 from a from a heart attack.
However the the 30 years that I was able to to learn from him growing up um and I don’t want people to think that um My first my parents first business was a mobile home park in 1967. They built a 40 unit mobile home park. They did the work themselves, I wasn’t born yet but they did the work work themselves. So it wasn’t a silver spoon where it was just instant instant success and I was born into this, I saw my parents sacrificed as well as my mother was a mentor, I saw what it took, she raised four boys and ran you know that the mobile home park when my dad was running a rigging company and other companies so to answer your questions questions specifically, I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I read, you know, my date myself, I, I read, you know the entrepreneur magazine’s when they used to actually come in the mail to you or inc magazine. Uh, this was pre internet of course, so that’s where you, your, your knowledge came from.
And I was always looking at business opportunities as a matter of fact, my first not official business, my first business was in our local community during the fourth of july parade buddy and buddy and I would go and buy Ice cream or popsicles before four July parade With a little red wagon and cooler and we’d sell popsicles and that was before the day of regulations and you have to have this, you know, permitting things of that nature and I think we would maybe make $50 each and back then it was like Holy Cow, you know, this is great spending money to start our summer with. And then naturally it just progressed. Um, and uh, you know, that’s, that’s where we, we, I started my first official business with my brother and my dad was our sponsor in terms of financially, which was a bar restaurant that we took from concept to a million dollar business and ultimately I sold my interest in that business to my brother and he actually ran successfully for close to 25 years and recently sold it two years ago. Um and if anyone has been in the restaurant business kudos to you, it’s probably the hardest business to run, especially in the world we live in today because there’s just so many variables and then whoever would thought that uh you know, you would be just shut down at a, you know, short notice from the government and your livelihood could be affected and successful businesses of course, as we all know, pivoted very really quick and some didn’t make it in some thrive.
So to answer your question though, that was a long winded answer. But yeah, I I love I love business owners and that’s what drives that’s my why is meeting with business owners talking to them about their business and do the fact that I’ve I’ve been a student of this, I believe I can add value and help them. It doesn’t matter what the topic might be. Most likely I experienced it or have seen someone that did experience and have access to that person to be able to help with that with that problem or or trying to grow revenue or you know, anything that a business owner might be facing. Thank you for the answer and I’m sorry to hear about your dad. Um coming back to the reasons why that you were very, shall we say inclined to go into entrepreneurship, was it because you had a clear benefit as to why you wanted to do it? Or were you just that way, influence were inclined. Wonderful question. And I love talking about entrepreneurship, which is the definition of definition of entrepreneurship is someone that has the mindset of an entrepreneur, but they’re working within the confines of a larger business or within a business.
So I would say it’s more of a mindset of ownership and life learning and passion and um energy. It wasn’t the sexiness and a lot of people unfortunately say, oh, I want to own my own business. And then if I’m talking with someone and typically maybe they’re still in college or just coming out of college in their early twenties. And, and I always push back on them and say, well tell me why, why, why do you want to be an entrepreneur? Why do you want to be a business owner? And if they say a couple words such as freedom, flexibility, I don’t have to work that hard, I can make millions. That’s a red light to me real quick where they don’t understand what it takes. I remember I saw the discipline, I saw the sacrifices, I saw the long hours. I saw the stress, I saw everything that came that, that people don’t talk about as much as we probably should. Um, we talked about the wind and we talk about the Jeff Bezos and the, you know, steve jobs and you know, you know, things of that nature and that residents, we don’t talk about most businesses are a lot of people, unfortunately by jobs and they really aren’t focused on growing the business and I I I tell everyone they should at least have the e myth read every year because it really gives great outlines of the work on your business and not in your business.
So it’s just more, I wouldn’t say that I, the entrepreneurship was sexy, where I saw it was more so a mindset more than anything else of just owning the path I wanted to go on. And then, you know, I’ve had just as much success knock on wood, surrounded by incredible people as an entrepreneur working within a company that I didn’t have to take any risk or risk any of my dollars. However, I brought my mindset that I’ve developed into the corporate environment and so many people can, you know, do that, they just don’t understand what entrepreneurship is. So you said about the answers that might be red flags as to why someone might be an entrepreneur, what what in your view is, um let’s say a good answer to that question, You could answer that question is someone that says, I have a, I have a solution um that that will provide or I have an answer that will provide a solution to someone and I’m very passionate about it and I know I’m going to work long hours, I know I’m going to, you know, sacrifice and I’m going to try and build it out and surround myself with talented people.
I’m for example right now I’m working with a gentleman out of Tampa who’s an amazing engineer, absolutely brilliant engineer in terms of developing software and applications to serve need to serve the needs of a certain particular industry. But he lacks, he’s trying to sit around himself with in terms of marketing, sales, people processes improvements internally in the business, go to market strategies, developing that perfect avatar for his client. So when I talked to him and he got to know him better, he was saying all the right things in terms of I haven’t been on vacation for the last couple of years. I love what I do. However these are my gaps and this is what I’m trying to surround people. I’m trying to surround myself with, you know, by the way, I don’t want to learn that skill set because I don’t think I’m gonna be good at it. I want to develop software, I wanted to develop solutions and do that and then bring in the professionals around me so that that that’s a good answer.
Where again and I’m not looking for someone that just has all work because you have to have, I don’t call it work life balance anymore. It’s work life integration because there’s no such thing, especially with remote work and we’re tied to our phones and we’re you know there’s access to to people 24 7 that’s why it’s so important um and it’s over said and it’s over emphasized love what you do, um but it really is important you have to enjoy um no, I love golf, doesn’t mean I’m gonna make a living at it, however, that’s something I love to do and then I integrate it with, I like to golf with people I do business with or people that I potentially to do business with or people that are like minded and are going to make me a better person. So um you know that that’s a that’s a good answer when, when you’re talking to someone that wants to be an entrepreneur, you mentioned entrepreneurship, which I could barely pronounce. So, but the do you think that because entrepreneurship in some instances, I think, I’ve heard people say that entrepreneurs sometimes aren’t good at operating their own business.
So do you think that entrepreneurs are actually good operators with some accountability and some ownership applied to it? Is that fair that that is spot on, I believe, and I say all the time that every great entrepreneur needs a great entrepreneur to drive their dreams and visions are they are they are the doers, they are the operators because we know that entrepreneurs, a lot of them uh are visionaries, dreamers, they, they’re always thinking big, big picture, however it comes down to execution and your entrepreneurs within your organization or the people that are going to drive that execution of that vision, so you’re spot on with your analysis of saying that, I wish entrepreneurship was a different word because it does get confusing between entrepreneur and entrepreneurship and people do confuse that and the way that I just say is think about, you know, entrepreneurs, you’re in the business, in the business, but you think just like that business owner, you take ownership and a lot of the coaching that we do is to business owners developing this entrepreneurship culture, which is extremely easy to do within their organization and then the benefits of developing their culture as I understand it.
Um, some of the work that you do, or at least some of the topics you’ve covered is actually trying to help people establish whether they are one of those two categories. So how might someone go about realizing whether they’re an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur? It’s a great question. And as I do speeches are talking, sit on panels, I’ll see so many people all of a sudden you see that light go off and they’ll say I am an entrepreneur, that’s who I am and typically there’s five characteristics that, that I teach that a business owner can look within the organization to identify these folks or if you’re an individual, that you can self identify the first one being that you have just a passion of life, You’re passionate about everything you do, you’re passionate about just becoming a better person, number two, you’re tenacious and what I mean by tenacious is that you just you just go go go go go to figure out that solution for that problem. The 3rd 1 is you’re extremely resourceful back to the point of a business owner and a startup or wherever you are, you have to be extremely resourceful to figure out because maybe you don’t have the capital to be able to do a project.
An example of that real quick is one of my entrepreneurs within Unify came to me and said I believe that we need a portal to be able to accept payments from our customers blind spot to me was not on my radar. I said great however there’s no dollars allocated for this improvement so you’re going to have to do it with no dollars and then you’re going to have to own it if you believe it’s important and I’ll support you with doing that. Well he was able to bring together our I. T. Department, an outside provider bringing marry the to bring them together and we rolled out a portal To collect payments and how we collect close to $100,000 a month through this portal that this entrepreneur within the company drove to success ah and I was at number three number four their life learner doesn’t matter if they want to learn about business, if their life learning about hobbies but they’re not something that goes home and binge watching netflix all weekend long, they’re learning, it could be gardening, It could be, you know, a sport, it could be a hobby.
It doesn’t matter. But they’re always working this muscle right here and then last but not least is they are challenging the status quo. You’ll never hear, you’ll never hear an entrepreneur say, well we’ve always done it like that. They’re always going to be saying, well, why, why? And they will push people out of their comfort zone. However, at the end of the day, um, it’s only going to make the company better and if you are an entrepreneur and you’re asking why the way that I phrase this just to bring down the defense mechanism of human beings, which we are all defense of our own ideas myself included, I’ll say, I’m not saying it’s wrong, I just want to learn to understand it better. And may I ask some questions as you describe how we do this or how this is done today. And a lot of times I’ll say, you know what sounds great if you don’t think there’s any challenges, who am I to change? It sounds perfect, but if I believe there’s a better way to do it, I’ll keep asking and a lot of times they’ll have self discovery themselves and say, you know what?
We’ve always done it like this. I’ve been in the jar, I can’t see the label, you’re right, Maybe we should change that. Is there any Anyway, we can go about finding entrepreneurs and maybe identifying them in the hiring process. So in the hiring process, that’s a wonderful question. We did an experiment and we continue to do this where we would put out a job description and we added in one state job description be, we just added the word that we wanted someone with an entrepreneurship mindset and that’s all we said. We didn’t put a description, we didn’t put a definition and it was amazing thomas to see the quality of the candidates for B where we added entrepreneurship mindset and A where we didn’t, the quality was so much higher with the B candidates because that word resonated with them. Either they knew about it or they went out and googled it and said they self identified, said that’s who I am, because remember, and this is a very important um point to make for business owners.
When you are trying to identify entrepreneurs or higher entrepreneurs, they’re going to get, give you more discretionary effort than any other team member in your company. Because of everything that I just outlined in terms of those characteristics they’re going to push and work harder than most of your team members because they are they want to learn, they have a passion for what they do. I have to make this point, which is very, very important though for the entrepreneur as well as for the business owner hiring, you have to be aligned, that entrepreneur has to be aligned with the vision of the company has to be aligned with the solution they’re providing because if they’re not, it will not work. It has to resonate with the entrepreneur. Um, and if you’re an entrepreneur out seeking that job or seeking a nuclear opportunity or seeking a new, a new position, please make sure you’re aligned with what the company’s mission is, where they’re going, what they’re doing and you believe in, it’s actually a good leadership principle that I like, which is making sure that everyone is knows what direction they’re going in and how they can help take that company where it’s supposed to be going.
So, you know, definitely worth highlighting. Um, in terms of, you mentioned, the e myth has been a, shall we say, an influence on me, What did you learn from it and why do you recommend it to others? I’m a simple guy and, and it’s really the principle of working on your business and you have to be, it’s hard, it’s very hard and I still have to, to remind myself of this, but carving out time to work on your business and having a process around that. So it’s either putting time on your calendar and then understanding what your best time is to create and work on things and really use this, um, and and always making the business better because it’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day and again, I’m guilty of this too. So I, I work on this on a daily basis. However, I’ve also told my team that surrounds me and unified if they see me going off the rails per se and getting tied up in little things in the business to push me out and say RJ Amos and then that’s all they have to say.
And I, and I self identify, you’re right. I should not be worrying as, as the ceo president on this little thing and trust your team and I’ve gotten a lot better at that. However, that’s my main learning from it. It’s a great read. It’s a simple read and I read it every year is a reminder. If I see something pop up on Youtube, you know, I’ll watch it again, but it’s just such a basic principle. And I also asked business owners to, or future entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs, I should say, you know, are you looking for a job? Are you looking to really grow something and be a business and if you’re looking for a job, but you’re going to own the job that’s fine. I applaud that good for you because you’re going to take the risk. However, understand what you’re getting yourself into is what you’re doing is you’re buying a job that, that in essence you’re taking the risk and you’re taking everything, but that’s what you’re buying. You’re not buying a business where you’re gonna be able to scale and grow it and leverage it and and and and things of that nature, how about yourself? Because you’ve read it, what was your thomas, your main takeaway from it?
Interesting question. Um I think I like the summary of it, I think the What you call it, that the actual story was was beneficial to me, so and the story was about making pies. I think I I read the or listen to the 2.0 version, so I’m not sure if it’s the original one, but the making pies and the fact that she went into business because she liked making pies and the the actual processes that needed to be put in place in order to make her a business owner was the thing which it was the differentiation between being the owner and the operator, so that kind of stuck with me, I love that. Yeah, so in terms of what you’re doing now, what does your daily activities look like? So today um my main focus is really managing the growth, We had the team had a record year last year, um so it’s really continuing that growth and a lot of my time is managing the larger relationships, managing our banking relationships, being the face for unify.
I unfortunately I sit on the board of directors for our trade association that I’m very active in. So that takes up my time very active within the our bank relationship and then just really trying to think big picture of where we’re going to go. Technologies on the forefront in every single industry and understanding how we can use and um make a better customer journey utilizing technology because the pace of our customers that are expecting that because of the last couple of years with Covid Expedited itself and it’s always changing. Um so that’s really my main focus on a day to day and then just just helping other business owners and doing things like I’m doing today and and and writing, working on one book, ready to go writing another book, which is very demanding um to do. It sounds easy, but but when you’re trying to put your thoughts and articulating a certain way that’s meaningful.
It it takes time. So um and and then just being trying to be the best father I can for my my two young sons and as well as The husband of of 32 years with my high school sweetheart, Marianne. You know, like the mention of being a parent is also something that I care a lot about. You reminded me of something that I wanted to ask you about, which is the banking side of things, which I am. If there is anyone who has neglected any kind of banking relationship, I would be the poster child of that. So I desperately need to hear your message of why it’s important to have a relationship with your banker. So R. J. Helped me change my, changed my thinking on this one thomas, you’re no different than than the majority of people and God bless my father rest his soul, he hated every banker he ever met. So for me to end up where I am today, the joke is he’s rolling over in his grave several times over.
However, I don’t consider myself a banker. I consider myself a business owner, a business person that loves helping business. And it’s like anything if you’re in business, you need a good bank, you need a good attorney, you need a good accountant, you need to surround yourself with. So to answer your question specifically, you should be interviewing a banker to handle your relationship or a bank per se, just as much as they’re interviewing you and I would highly recommend that you should go to a community bank, that the larger institutions are great for bigger companies. But if you’re a small company and I’ll define small companies revenues less than five million, you could actually probably to 10 million find yourself a good community banker that has been at a certain bank for 34 years. So they have some consistency and some longevity there. Bring them, invite them to lunch. It’s really easy if you just call or you do research on linkedin or bank’s website and you see someone that you read their background or whatever you’re on linkedin.
You see their their bio and it resonates with you, reach out to them and just a simple email. Hi, my name is RJ Grimshaw thomas. I own X, Y. Z. Company interested in forming a bank relationship. This is why I currently banquet. Would you like to grab a cup of coffee and women your lunch. It’s as simple as that. And if you and if you and you start that and it’s going to take time on your from you as well, like any good relationship and if they understand your business and you’re always proactive and guess what every business goes through challenges. So don’t be don’t don’t be feel ashamed or if you’re having challenges, they’re going to have the contacts to hopefully help you and it’s all about your network and guess what you can, if you do go with a certain bank and then for some reason doesn’t work, there’s 100 more out there. So just, it should be part, it goes back to the email thomas, it’s part of that is considered working on your business because that banking relationship is just as important. And it really proved out during pe pp during Covid so many business owners, we’re banking with large banks and I won’t mention names because again they served the purpose and they didn’t understand the value of building that relationship with someone local in the market.
And then they were they were they couldn’t get anyone on the phone, They couldn’t call and ask that unified. We were in front of the curb before Covid we put together a plan scripted out how we’re going to answer questions what we’re going to do to defer loan payments. We ensure that every single phone call was picked up on the first ring and our message was we understand or actually we don’t understand what’s going on because it’s it was a living moving challenge for all of us. But we’re just gonna defer the three payments. We’re going to send you what we call the doc. You sign one way where they just acknowledge that we’re deferring the payments. That’s it, no other questions, no other no no other requirements. And my goal and our goal and intent was we wanted to be the peace of mind for them with all the craziest going on in the world. We wanted to know that they were all set with unified and they didn’t have to worry about that because they had probably worried about their home mortgage student loans card. I mean so we wanted to make sure that we were we were taking good care of them as well as to P.
P. P. We I was actually receiving calls from other businesses across the country. My brother being one the company, he worked for a bank with a large bank. They couldn’t get any answers. So they called me and I tried to walk them through and we were extremely proactive with that knowledge and again I’m not knocking large banks, they serve a purpose but but your audience in the world we live in people or even a good credit union, you know, a good commercially focused credit union make sure they are business focused where they have a commercial because it is different than just consumers. I’m not saying that that remember your banker serves a purpose just like your attorney, just like your accountant, they serve a purpose within your business and they understand what purpose is that purposes so and and foster that relationship. Yeah, I think the reason why um I have had opinions as I have is because it’s been the big banks. So I think maybe looking for a smaller bank might be a better solution.
But do you mind telling me about your book that you’ve written? Sure the title of its able leadership and it’s really from my experiences of when I first joined unified equipment finance and it was my first Ceo president’s role. Um so I really walked through um my my learnings from that which can be applied in all businesses and then really we take the principles of that enable stands for what what I did when we came when I came into this opportunity so able A stands for analyze. That’s the first thing that you do in terms of anything back to preparation right, analyzed the next one is build so A is for for analyzed B is for build Ellis for leverage, okay you’re going to leverage the business and then is for execute. So able analyze build leverage, execute and then there’s certain certain parameters under that and exercises that are in the book to give the business owners to be able to do.
And it doesn’t matter from my perspective and just my beliefs, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a restaurant business and finance business and marketing business, it doesn’t matter what the business is. These principles will work across all businesses, all verticals, all sizes and it’s a pretty easy concept, just like the emails and that’s what I was trying to really duplicate is an easy read, just like the one minute manager um and and a lot of it’s from learnings of my mentors from, you know, from Peter Drucker to to um you know, other people we we’ve mentioned here and then taking the life application, there’s so many business coaches and so many people and even in academics talk about philosophy of doing this, this is, this is from application and and that’s where I like to speak and write from. Did you enjoy the writing process? I did not, it’s very demanding, it’s very demanding. Um and it still is because we started off with taking action, I took the action, I started the writing, I worked with some professionals, however, it’s still sitting on my bookshelf ready to be published and I wanted to make sure that it’s the best possible product that I can put out, but I need I need I need to put it out and it is demanding.
I’m not a writer by trade, I I enjoyed it, but it, but I don’t look forward to it. You’re not going to prepare for 12 years, are you? Uh the answer would be no. What are your goals, RJ my goals, it’s really pretty basic. It’s it’s to to continue to just try and be a better version of Arjuna daily basis and that is the first most important as a father ah and then as a husband and then as a as a leader um within the organization, within within our industry and then just continue to to provide as much knowledge that I can to, to people I interact with and that’s some of my mantra. Every morning when I wake up, I wish for myself, I say to myself internally, you know, please help me. It doesn’t matter what your beliefs are, but you know I said God please help me today to be the best version that I possibly can and help my tongue to provide the knowledge that it possibly can sit and listen and have great empathy and that’s my daily mantra.
Well thank you for that. It’s a nice, nice answer. Have you got any closing thoughts for us today? My only closing thoughts is what I started with if you have a dream and you know that you have a good product and solution, take action, continue to learn um and surround yourself with with with people that are like minded that you can add value, but you also can received value from. Um it’s so important. My wife and I talked about that all the time. You’re the product of the five people, it’s cliche people talk about it, but it’s critical and you’re going to go through different chapters of your business life as well as your personal life where someone might have been in that circle 10 years ago and they’re no longer in that circle and there’s nothing wrong with that, but just continue to, to aspire to be the best person you can and when you face a challenge, just take a deep breath, learn from it and move forward because I’ve had them as well and if people want to connect with you, where do they find you Sure you can find me at RJ Grimshaw dot com, that’s my website.
I also my emails, RJ and RJ Grimshaw dot com. I respond to all the emails I do receive, I would just ask for patients. Um you know, usually a couple of days I’ll be back in touch with you any questions at all. And then for unify, our website is Team unified dot com. That’s for our equipment, finance business. We help small and medium sized businesses across the country. We finance the equipment, they need for either growth or efficiency. Um so if you have any equipment financing needs, we can support those as well. So for everyone listening, please review the links in the description and RJ, thanks for being a great guest today. Thank you thomas.