Scott Empringham 10:04
Yeah, yeah. So you, you just touched a nerve here. And that’s probably the most. It was another tough day, the very last day, I was shutting the office down and handing the keys to the attorney and the office was empty. My kids were there, sort of playing. And I was in my office, I just lost it. I was crying, I the door closed. And I was looking out the window thinking, the hell am I going to do? And she walked into my office, and she was like, a tiny little a little thing. She was like, 910. And I sort of wipe the tears. And she said, Daddy, are you crying? I said, these are happy tears. I’m thinking about, you know, the next step. And, and she, you know, little kids, they don’t, they don’t know, you know, they don’t know. And part of the beauty is that this sort of genuine they she goes, I said, Yeah, we’re going to start over. And she said, that’s great, you know? So she comes up, and she climbs on my lap. And she says, What are we going to do now is, I’m going to start another company, of course, she was I want to help you. And I said, Oh, great. And so I pulled out my phone, because by the way, my attorney had taken my laptop, because I couldn’t I literally had nothing but my freaking phone. And those were all assets of the company. So I took out my phone, and she said, I want to help you. So she What are you going to call and I said, and bring a media. And so I opened it up, she set up an Instagram account for me. She already knew how to do that. And she picked out the first post, we sat on the lap, and she’s almost to a quote. And it was like every day is a new start or a fresh start. And if you look at my account, say my very first post on July, whatever it was June something when I shut the thing down, was that post, and she helped me do my first post, and she kind of got me over that hump. And you know, just, it was amazing, amazing day.
John Corcoran 11:54
I don’t think you quite appreciate it now. But five years from maybe 10 years from now you’re gonna look back on that moment, and just gonna so cherish that moment you had with your daughter? Yeah, maybe you can tell it. Tell her the story at her wedding or something like that? Yeah, yeah.
Scott Empringham 12:11
It was because of the kids. It was because of the kids. You know, you know, Simon Sinek’s Start With Why? There’s no, there’s no question that that was the why, you know, my buddy, when I, when I mentioned that my buddy came over and banged on the door. Um, he, he said two things that kind of stuck out. He said, number one is he said, you know, you’re not nearly at the beginning, you have 20 years of business experience, you have all this different stuff. And he said, You’re not at the beginning at all. He said, what you need to understand is, when you figure this out, you will have a great not only story to tell, but you’ll be able to share this with your kids and your kids will be watching you very carefully. And imagine the example you could set for your kids. If they see you rebound from where you are now imagine the possibility you can create in their mind when they realize what dad went through that he started not only at zero, if 50, but half a million dollars in the hole, if you could pull this off. What would that mean to your kids and that guy, my yo buddy Anthony djerassi He got under my skin when he’s talking about setting the example for my kids, you know, we’ll do more for other people, we will find ourselves when he kind of brought my kids into it. That was what I needed to kind of take a step forward to ethic. I will figure this out, I will own this and I will figure this out. Yeah, that’s great.
John Corcoran 13:32
You know, the, the amazing thing too about this is that it wasn’t easy to redo what you did, because you had to pick a new market, you needed to generate cash in a short period of time. So you previously had been dealing with these really large enterprise customers with really long sales cycles. And so you actually pivoted. So it talks a little bit about the different choices that you made in the market, you know, changes that you made in terms of the client prospect you’re going after?
Scott Empringham 14:02
I’m so glad you asked that so so you’re 100% right, automotive clients, 9090 days minimum, just to get something going in six months in a year, your sales cycle, so I knew that was out. But two decisions, two things really changed. I had this plan. I had an eight step sort of blueprint that I’d always done with other clients and help them set a target, do all these different things to build a social media campaign. And as I crafted that plan, one of the very first things I did was starting to serve I started reaching out to people I met with a guy named David Meltzer, who was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire. And as I sat down with them, I still have this interview, had a little moped little phone setup. And I was walking them through this, and I told them part of my story, and he stopped me and he got really intense. He said, Did you know that when I was like 40 I think he said, did you know I lost everything and he goes how’s everything going? Right now? And as he told me the story, he asked me if I landed any clients where I was now is the very beginning I said I’m I’m just starting, and he goes, Can I offer you one piece of advice I said, you can offer me any advice you want. I’m freaking desperate. And he said, The secret to living is giving. When you set out and you put this plan together, the very first thing you should be doing is thinking who around you. You can help right now, who can you serve right now? Who can you give to and contribute to right now? And it changed my thinking, because I was thinking about all these new clients, I was going to try to help her go out and get, but it was kind of lack thinking. And when he said that, the very first thing I can think about is what if I took this eight step blueprint that I have, I converted into a workshop and I called some of the business owners that I work with every day through EO, I just offered it for free. I never really thought about that. And I do all the speaking and I do all the stuff for automotive. And that was the very first thing I did. And a gentleman asked me if I wanted to be on the board. I said, I’d love to serve. I had no idea I was even going to be around in 30 days. I said, absolutely love to serve. And he mentioned, you know, he said, Listen, if you ever had a workshop or something now it’d be a great time I said, I will, I’ll put money. So what’s your speaking face, and I’m free. I will do this for free. I wouldn’t I serve like crazy. And in serving and giving. I was able to put myself out there and people started saying, hey, we’d love to do it. And then, of course, I took that I put it on social media, a couple of my automotive clients called in, and within 88 days, I generated enough revenue to pay off my line of credit, save the house, a full 500,000 Full 500,000 in 88 days, eight days. Wow. And I was able to pay it off. I have a picture that I have in my workshop now, where you can see the bags under my eyes. I look like death warmed over. But I’ve I did a selfie. And she was pretty funny. She’s like, please don’t do a selfie. And I was like, no, no, we’re doing a selfie. And she right behind me, I’m holding up a check. And it’s fine. Like whatever it was, and I’m holding up a check. She’s in the background. And on that day was a dad paid off line of credit. I was exhausted. But I’d say the house. Kids were still in school. And life was even.
John Corcoran 17:07
It’s remarkable, because you know, I’ve interviewed well over 1000 entrepreneurs, and so many of them who have had a story like this where they struggled and they had to rebound, they rebound and they rebound bigger than they ever were before. And if you talk to them at their low point, they’ll never believe it. You know, they think it’s not possible, but it’s because they’re minimizing how much they know how much they experienced they have. But you know, it makes it a lot more complicated by the fact that you shifted markets. So that’s what makes it even more remarkable, I think is that, that you you change your target market, it’d be one thing to rebuild with the exact same target market, but changing makes it a lot harder. And what’s phenomenal, is you built back up to an EO qualifying business over seven figures in revenue in I think something like 14
Scott Empringham 17:55
months, 14 months,
John Corcoran 17:57
14 months. Amazing. I mean, there’s so many myself included, that took forever to get some figures. And so to do that in 14 months is just phenomenal.
Scott Empringham 18:07
What I had one other experience, he just reminded me that years and years ago, I had a mining and transportation company. And I’ll never forget, I raised all this money. And my goal was to mine this agricultural mineral and get it up to Fresno and Bakersfield. And it was this really high quality industrial mineral called gypsum. I ended up losing the company after like four or five years of being in business. And the very last day when they were repoing my equipment, I’d shut everything down. I was in my 20s a truck came up the road. And he parked and he said, he said hey, do you have any chips? I said no, no, we shut everything down. And he pointed to this massive pile. It’s about a quarter million tonnes of low grade, but totaled 50% gypsum this low grade sort of agricultural mineral. A said I’ll take that. And, and I’ve been essentially stepping over that every single day in pursuit of this high grade. Gypsum because I was so focused on selling the high grade gypsum up to Fresno and Bakersfield. I lost sight of John just taking advantage of what was already on the ground, already mind. Less quality, and I could have sold it throughout that valley. I was in Blythe, California at the time, I could have sold it throughout that little market and generate some revenue. And that hit home. And it’s funny how that experience came back to me. You know, 20 years later, and trying to remind myself that there are opportunities around us all the time that we’re probably ignoring or missing. And sometimes we see to whack on the side of the head to think about all the opportunities we have all around us. Literally around podcast, podcasting. You make people aware of it all the time. Sharing it that
John Corcoran 19:56
is that is for me personally, that was an asset that I was stepping over for a long Time, you know, because I’d been doing it for a long time. And it wasn’t until about three or four years ago that we started helping others with it, we didn’t realize that it was something that people really, really wanted help with.
Scott Empringham 20:11
And then you’re reaching out to people who have these great stories to share. And they never had the opportunity or maybe the foresight to share them. And then you finally put a mic in front of them, they share it, and maybe it helps somebody and, and there’s and that that was the big takeaway that I hope I never forget, now that I’ve leveraged, you know, a year and a half ago, two years ago, when it all kind of had to start all over, I asked a different question. Rather than thinking about this dream market that was really far away, I thought, Who around me? Can I help today? Yeah, because I don’t have time to build up a market, right? That I’m going to serve 90 days from now.
John Corcoran 20:46
And one other thing that’s, that’s fascinating is that you also had never sold digital courses before. But you realize there were a lot of people that wanted to work with you, you realize that your fees were probably higher than what they were willing to pay for, because they’re just a different size business versus, you know, the large car companies. And so you started creating digital courses. And that’s not easy, because that’s, you know, selling a digital course versus selling a high end done for you service can be very different. So talk a little bit about shifting in throwing that into the mix.
Scott Empringham 21:18
So two things, one is opportunity, or you know, is it necessity is the mother of invention. Right and, and going back to sort of the principle number one of just giving at when I created the workshop, when I created the workshop, I actually created the blueprint for a course at that time. Now, the good news is I didn’t have any clients at the time. So I also had all this free time to do it. Time. So people were telling me, hey, it’s going to take three months or six months to do this thing, or it’s going to take certain amount of time I hunkered down, over like the holidays, over some holidays. And I put together in November, December, I just hunkered down and I put together the course. I leveraged my workshop I created in the workshop, I created exactly what to do. And the course I created exactly how to do it. And it was a natural complement to the workshop. And so when I did the workshop, people would say great, and a lot of times they would get everything they needed in the workshop to go execute, they already had a team and they can go do with the stuff that I was talking to him about doing. Other times people said, Great, how do I hire you and I’d say, Here’s my fees. And then say I don’t want to pay those fees and say, or you can buy the course it’s a perfect, I’ll buy the course for my director of marketing, I’ll buy the course for my internet manager, my, my, my social media manager. And they would do that. And it was a way to serve, and be able to serve at a level that was palatable for small businesses, and really worked for me too.
John Corcoran 22:39
And he’ll tell me how things have been different or how you have made decisions differently this time around as you’ve grown the business, you know, as you grow to, you know, seven figures in revenue and above, you have to hire people, you’ve invest back out, you have to purchase software, you have to invest in equipment, things like that. Have you made decisions differently at all? This time as you’ve been growing the business? And in terms of how you’ve grown it?
Scott Empringham 23:09
That’s a great question. I think number one, the biggest thing that sticks out is I’m far more humble than I was when I got to 10 million had to do 11 million, I had a good friend, my who’s my CFO, he’s a CPA, he actually made an interesting comment, he said, and I just had lunch with him a couple of weeks ago. And he said, You know, it’s interesting, I think you’re smarter than you probably ever have. But you’re far more humble than you were when you had the company and so humility and self awareness is something that I think is a brand new, hopefully evolved aspect of everything. And so I asked the question I go in knowing that there’s so much I don’t know, that I can learn so much from other people. And so now, I’m far less likely to a do it on my own. I find people who are brilliant at what they do, and I defer to their strengths, and I really try to soak it up. But I and I know starting with nothing, I just don’t know. So I try to soak that up. And then two, I’ve been far, far more aggressive in looking at outsource talent, global talent. You know, there’s so much talent out there when people say I can’t find, you know, good people are smart people. Some sometimes it’s they’re not looking in the right places. And there’s some really wonderful talent in a global marketplace. It’s really, really competitively priced. And, and is far less expensive, and far more nimble than anything I’ve ever known. So I have you know, 40 employees before and it’ll be a while before I get back there.
John Corcoran 24:38
Your father was an entrepreneur also. And he was really instrumental helping you as you recover from all this right?
Scott Empringham 24:47
Yeah, yeah. So you do your homework. Yeah, my dad, I grew up in Emerald Bay, Emerald Bay in Laguna Beach. It’s this amazing little beautiful community on the beach and He was in real estate. And he worked for this big company. He built cities. But while he built cities, he also started mortgage companies and escrow companies and all these different title companies. He had a little piece of those things. He did very, very well. But when I shut everything down, it was right around July when I mentioned, he called me up. And he’s old school. And, and I think his exact words were something along when we had lunch, and he said, well, listen, no more cry, baby, cry, baby. I’m gonna write you a check for $10,000 I’m your partner. I’ll take 10% go to the bank deposit. Let’s get the show on the road. Let’s go. I said, no nonsense is Yeah, is it no more Cry Baby, Cry Baby. And I was I was crying like,
John Corcoran 25:43
actually, that should have been your first Instagram post that quote right there. But yeah, you gotta like put that on a poster. Put it on the wall. Yeah.
Scott Empringham 25:50
So that And funny enough, he said, I said, Well, I don’t have an office or anything. But it was funny. At that time. I was just grateful for the 10,000 bucks. I was like, Alright, great. I’ll just start the account, because I had a client coming in and no bank account. And he said, here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna be in my office. Now. His office was this tiny, little office. And I have a picture of this. There was a young lady who’s an intern right here, my desk. No kidding. was wedged between two file cabinets. I had no desk. It was a chair. It was like a 1960s. wooden chair. I mean, my back earned. By the end of the day, I went to this beautiful office, you draw on all the walls, and it was the bomb my old office. Now I’m wedged in this is like four months after I’m wedged in between two file cabinets. I can put my hands up on the file cabinet. And I show this, I show this picture, because my sister came in and she said it my book, she took a picture of me wedged in with my laptop on my lap, like and then when they would open the filing cabinet. I would literally have to duck and talk about humility. I mean, it was like, it was definitely but he was eating, but he’s one of these guys. He’s 83. Now he’s slowing down. But he’s tough as nails. He never complains. He never pitches. He never moans. I mean, he’s my idol.
John Corcoran 27:05
Oh, that’s great. I know we’re short on time. But I want to ask, you know, a big fan of gratitude, especially expressing gratitude publicly, to people who’ve been helpful in your business, which I know we’ve already mentioned a bunch so far. But if you look around at your peers, however you want to define that peers and contemporaries could be other yo forum mates, it could be others you’ve come across in your industry, who do you respect? Who do you admire? That’s doing good work out there?
Scott Empringham 27:34
Oh, wow. Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t say one guy, a guy named Keith Fiscus. He was the president of yo Orange County at the time. It’s July, I was just destroyed. And right after I had the meeting with David Meltzer, and he said about serving Keith Fiscus called me on the phone. And he said, I want you to be, I want you to serve on the board. And I said, No. And it was like that tap on the shoulder. And I wish I had a story, John, where I said, and I knew right then it was my calling. I was like, You’re out of your mind. I can’t pay, I can’t pay my mortgage, I can’t pay my car, I can’t pay anything. And he literally, he pretty much threw me metaphorically on his back and drugged me to that board meeting and convinced me to be on the board. And if without his push, without his inspiration, without him literally throwing me on his shoulder and carrying me through that first couple of months were four or five months where it was really rocky for me. I you know, it would I think it would have been a very, very different day.
John Corcoran 28:31
And why did he do that? Did he know that by getting you more involved that would help carry you through? Or what did he just literally needed someone to know, on the board? I think he’s not busy now. He could do it.
Scott Empringham 28:46
You know if you know, Keith, you know, Keith, and I think I know him pretty well. One. He’s, he’s, he was a he’s like a Marine. He was he’s a tough dude. And back in the day. He was a Desert Storm. So he’s got this real tough exterior. But he’s also got a heart as big as a lion. I mean, the guy’s a very tough dude. But he’s a very, very warm and a loving guy. And I think he probably needed somebody. But I think he didn’t need me. I mean, he could have got a lot of different people. And frankly, I was a big pain in the neck. There was a couple of times when I was not such a great guy to deal with. I mean, I was getting no sleep, but I was just fighting for my life. And he was patient. He was kind. He’s just a he’s a good guy. He’s a very, very good guy. And I think he knew deep down that, you know, he was gonna throw me on the shoulder and carry me a little the way until your walk myself and eventually I did. But I think that’s the kind of guy he was.
John Corcoran 29:41
That’s a great story. That’s a great story. Scott, thank you so much for all your honesty and candor and sharing your story and paying it forward and all that kind of stuff. I know you got some new courses coming out and a new website. Well, not so new anymore, but where can people go to connect with you and learn more about you?
Scott Empringham 29:58
Awesome. They can go to scottempringham.com. That’s where you can learn about the free workshop, the course, more about Empringham Media and all of our done for you services and so much more. That would be a great place to start.
John Corcoran 30:10
Scott, thanks so much.
Scott Empringham 30:12
Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Outro 30:18
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.