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Selecting the right people can make or break your life in the

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trajectory of your business. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get

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more customers, how to make more per customer, and how to keep them longer in the

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many failures and lessons we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and

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subscribe.

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As you build your wealth there are people who you will need to help you and have

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in your arsenal and that means lawyers, accountants, invest professionals, people

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who you invest with so those are different things. People you do deals with,

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people you do business with, people you might get mentorship from, and selecting

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the right people can make or break your life in the trajectory of your business.

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I can tell you that firsthand I would not be where I am today if I didn't have

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the mentors and advisors and council that I have received over the years and

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over time one of the hardest things is trying to figure out who you're going to

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trust and what's the process that you have to go through in order to find

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those people and so having done this for a while and we've moved a lot of

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money in our businesses and for those you don't know me my name is Alex Ramozzi

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I'm a portfolio of companies that does about $85 million a year and the whole

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goal for this channel is to document our journey from $85 million a year to a

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billion dollars a year and revenue in our portfolio and just share the lessons

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that we've learned along the way and so I boiled this down to two things two

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traits that you can look for so I try to make this as simple as possible and I

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don't just do this for you I do it for me because I think you know we're kind of

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in this together in this crazy thing we call life. Anyhow so the two things that

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I look for and then I'll show you the tests that I think through for each of

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them so the first is integrity and I know that might sound silly but when I

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think about it you need someone who you can trust like if you're giving

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someone your money like or you're trying to take someone's advice or counsel

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you need to trust their intentions all right and so it's not just whether they

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have integrity it's whether they have your best interest in mind all right so I'm

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going to get to how I solve for that in a second but that is the first

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character trait of you need that you need of a counsel of somebody of any kind of

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counsel really whether it's investment law etc. The second is efficacy or

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their skill set right so let's think of both let's think of different scenarios

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here so let's say you might trust your mom implicitly but she doesn't have the

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skill of knowing much about you know how to structure insurance policies or

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trusts or you know investments in tech startups right you might know how that

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skill but you might trust her intention right for you specifically on the

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reverse of that you might see that there's this person who's got lots of skill is

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prodigious in this but it also means that they know exactly how to screw you if

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they want to right which is one of the double-sided things of being really good

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at something right you know all the details you know how to write the agreement

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structure the deals in order to make sure that you you know get the best best

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outcome right and so the idea is to find someone who has both your best

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interest at heart and has the ability to deliver on what you want right and so

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it's both of these things and so you're like well yeah maybe that seems

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obvious for me just even boiling down to that was very helpful for me because

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when I look and I look through advisors look for people I want to get get

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counsel from I have to look at these two things all right so here's how I test

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for the integrity piece and here's how you can kind of like of you can control

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for risk here right one is I always try and interview as many advisors as

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humanly possible all right and I do that because I'm going to get as much

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information from each of the counsel during this process that will give me

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perspective from which to make a judgment right one of the biggest problems with

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this like you think about Julie who's trying to lose weight right she goes in

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the gym and then she talks this ten personal trainers one personal trainer

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says it's all about high fat low carb another guy says hey don't worry about

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that key to stuff it's all about high carb low fat and then another guy says

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no you really just need a balanced thing and then another guy says it's only

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about calories it's only about counting your macros and so you get this huge

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perspective so that hopefully you can make a judgment call otherwise when

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you talk to the first guy and he says it's all about keto then you're like well

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I guess this is it right I guess these guys all have opinions when in reality

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there is a truth you just don't have the perspective in which to make a judgment

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yet and so the first step in this is that I interview as many as as I

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possibly can from reputable sources so this is right reach out to my network I

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make posts etc to try and get as many referrals as I can all right so that's

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step one step two for the integrity piece is that I try and have aligned

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incentives now a lot of times they're incentive systems that appear aligned but

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not are not in reality so let me give you an example so in the real state

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market if you're a realtor for example you may think oh this realtor has my

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best interest at heart right because they have an incentive to sell the house

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and so that is why they're gonna get compensated so they want to sell it for as

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much as possible ah but they aren't incentivized to sell it for as much as

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possible they're incentivized to sell as fast as possible and give the deal

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closed all right and so think about this for you selling a house for $500,000

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that's worth $500,000 is a normal you know that like that's normal that's the

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market price right but for you to make an extra let's say $25,000 or $50,000

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would be really material that would be a huge extra outcome for you you would

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probably push a lot harder to get the extra $25,000 or $50,000 now let's say

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that you could probably sell it in a day at $450,000 because it's below the

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market value of the house right now here's what's crazy is that if a selling

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realtor you know like total it might be 7% 2% goes to the buyer and 5% goes to

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the seller if 5% is going to your realtor right 5% of $500,000 right is 25

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grand okay and so for them the the $50,000 decrease to drop you from 500 to

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450 means that they're going to give up $2,500 so they're gonna make $22,500

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so let me ask you question now the reverse if they sell for $5,25 they're

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gonna get $27,500 right and so it's a $5,000 swing off of a you know $25,000

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nut for them and one of them might take them three months and one of them

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might take them a day so what is there in Senate real quick guys you guys

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already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything and

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so the only ask that I can ever have if you guys that you help me spread the

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words we can out more entrepreneurs make more money feed their families make

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better products and have better experiences for their employees and customers

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and the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share this

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podcast so the single thing that I have to do is you can just leave review but

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take 10 seconds or one type of the thug it means the absolute world to me and

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more importantly it may change the world to someone else

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their incentive is to get the is to make as much money as possible per unit

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of time and so they're incentivized to sell as fast as possible and so this is

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one of those things where you have to put your thinking cap on and say are

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our incentives truly aligned and so when we're looking at this when I say

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there's two aspects that I look for council or somebody who's gonna help me do

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something financially legally insurance wise whatever it is so first is that

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integrity piece and are there incentives aligned the incentives being aligned

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and you could restructure that deal and say hey you know what you're gonna get

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0% on anything below $400,000 I'll give you you know I'll give you 3% on

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anything between 440 and 450 and then from 450 and up I'll give you 20% right

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or 15% or whatever right and so now they're highly incentivized to push and

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now you're incentives are aligned because each increment for you is worth

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almost as much as it is to them and that is how you would align incentives

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all right now how do you test for the second thing which is their skill set this

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one's hard all right especially if you don't have the perspective from which to

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make a judgment which when I enter new things when I'm trying to learn about

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trust and I'm trying to learn about investment things in different vehicles

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learning about storage units what about multi like you're like oh man there's so

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much stuff and there's so much nuance that you have to have right and so the

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first thing is I like to usually read two to three books on the topic all right

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and I read two to three books just so I don't appear like an idiot and so I can

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at least understand what they're saying and they're gonna respect you to they

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will it's kind of like defense if you bring your if you bring at least some

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level of knowledge they don't feel like they're gonna take advantage of you so

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this is this is a first thing that I do and this is because I don't like feeling

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exposed in these types of conversations the second thing you can do is if you

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have someone that you can trust you can bring them in alongside you and the

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third thing that you can do which is probably the the most and highest recommended

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is repeating the same action I said in the first hand which is try to talk as to

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as many of them as possible and then you will gather the insights and you'll see

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the people who demonstrate the most expertise and what you can do is take what

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one person says and say well what about this and see what they reply with right

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and as you gain more and more knowledge and this is how you so in the

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consulting world this is qualitative research right this is where you're

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literally doing interviews essentially to gather information so that you can

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make an informed decision right and so when you do these interviews and this

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is what this is the lazy part this is what most people don't do is they won't do

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this work right they won't take the time to interview 20 people or 10 people

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when in reality these one decisions the guy who you decide to you know invest in

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in their fund or if you decide to buy this building or invest in a fund that

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that buys x, y and z right or you or you have somebody who who manages your

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portfolio whatever it is right that one decision can be one of the most if not

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the biggest influence on your total net worth over a long period of time and

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people take more time to figure out what they want to where they want to go on

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vacation than where they're going to put their money right and so my ask to you

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is that if you if you put these put these lenses on think about both of these

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lenses lens one do I think this person's integrity is do I think this person has

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my best interest at heart and then two do they have the skill to deliver on

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that promise because I don't want my mom doing my investments I know she has my

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best at heart but she has no idea what she's doing and then I don't want

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somebody who absolutely knows what they're doing and does not have my best

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interest at heart right which honestly unfortunately is a lot more a lot more

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of the cases that that you'll come up with and candidly you know a lot of

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times they're literally incentivized against you you know in the insurance

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industry they're they're kind of incentivized to rip you off it's it's it's

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pretty terrible and there's a lot of industries like that mortgage brokers are

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incentivized to rip you off and so you really have to look at it from both lenses

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and these types of decisions can make the biggest impact on your net worth in

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your financial future simply based on who you decide to work with and so that is

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the framework that I think through when I'm looking at looking for counsel

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looking for trusted advisors and as a as an interesting final note that I'll

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leave you with I was watching a video of Warren Buffett and he talked about how

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his life in most people's life is more or less the same he's like I eat at

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same fast food restaurants I get the same desserts at Derek Queen I wear the same

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suits as you do except you know he's like at least they look cheap on me he

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said but one thing that he he realized that was different about him is that he

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defines a successful life based on the number of people who truly love you when

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you die and he gave a definition of that that I thought was really powerful and so

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one of his friends I can't remember the name he said survived Auschwitz and he said

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that her judge of character who was a true friend and who truly loved her was

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would this person hide me if the Nazis were coming and that's been such a

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powerful frame for me to think through which is it's not just you know will this

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person try to help me lots of people try and help other people but how many

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people help other people when their own lives are at risk just for helping

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because it's doing the right thing and so I think when when I think about that

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type of frame the number of people I have in my life that that met that meet

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that characteristic are far and few between and I think that if you can if you

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can trust the people that you do business with to that degree you will be best

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served and if I have to choose between the two I would rather have somebody who I

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trust their intention and I have eight and eight out of 10 on the efficacy then

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somebody who whose intentions I'm unsure of and they have a 10 on 10 of the

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efficacy so anyways lots of love hope you enjoyed this click subscribe if you

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did and I'll see you guys next video keeping awesome bye