In "Grit, Determination, Resilience" episode, Chris discusses the necessary mindset behind being an entrepreneur and balancing the extreme highs and lows that come with it. As an entrepreneur, he has experienced his fair share of diverse problems. Confronting these problems with grit, tenacity and determination has been a key to Chris’ success. He talks about the current job market and the importance of finding employees who have been battle-tested in their respective fields. He searches for those who have experienced both success and failure to show that they have been demonstrated that same grit and perseverance that he himself has harnessed. Finally, Chris talks about having his clients’ best interests at heart in every aspect of his business.

Chris is the President and partner at Juhll.com, a full-service digital marketing agency. It offers its clients a full range of services, specializing in strategic digital paid media to acquire online customers and generate leads. He’s also the founder, operator and investor in Banks.com, a financial online market place aimed to become everyone’s trusted, go-to resource for all things financial on the web.

He operates his businesses focusing on the importance of being honest and transparent. In the episode "Having the Right Mindset" he talks further these and other values that are important for him in his mission as an entrepreneur.

• 00:49 – The mindset necessary to be an entrepreneur  
• 02:12 – The myriad of diverse problems Chris continuously faces as an entrepreneur
• 05:16 – Chris’ definition of grit
• 07:02 – The time commitment required for the entrepreneurial journey
• 10:40 – The importance of finding the balance between the extreme highs and lows of entrepreneurship
• 13:42 – Why the job market is so volatile
• 16:30 – The mutually beneficial partnership between Chris and his clients
• 21:29 – How Chris proves himself to clients in just three months
• 23:14 – Chris’ approach to working with clients using outdated systems
• 27:58 – Chris talks about the software systems Salesforce and Pardot
• 32:47 – The importance Chris places on having his clients’ best interests at heart

“After ten years, I would have honestly thought that I had seen it all. I am beginning to learn that I have not even scratched the surface of seeing it all.” (02:25)
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“You can look out the window and you can blame every single person that walks by or you can just look in the mirror. And you can go, ‘Well, I guess I gotta do a better job next time.’” (06:36)
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“I want people that have been to war and back and have won, and have failed too.” (14:16)
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“Look, it doesn’t always work, man. It doesn’t always work. And it’s not always their fault, it’s not always our fault. It could be forces beyond our control. Could be a loser product, could be a bad product.” (20:25)
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“Software companies are not my clients. They are not. My client is my client. My client is trusting that I’m gonna be one hundred percent impartial if I do make a suggestion.” (31:04)
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“Everybody has to be vetted for this growth mindset and this ability to have grit and determination and resilience because it’s gonna happen. You’re gonna need it and you’re gonna need a lot of it.” (34:16)
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Chris Snyder: But that's not the way life is. If you're going to be an entrepreneur you better wear it. Here's the thing, you better wear it for a long time. I'm not talking six months. I'm not talking a year.I'm not talking two years. I'm talking 10 fucking years.

Speaker 2: Welcome to Snyder's Showdown, an original Juhll Agency production. This is the show for unvarnished conversations about what's really happening in the world of digital advertising. It's stories from the trenches about what's working and what's not with your host, President of Juhll Agency and owner of Banks.com, Chris Snyder.

Chris Snyder: In this episode one of the things I want to focus on is your mindset around being an entrepreneur and being able to deal with the ups and the downs, and actually expecting it to happen and being okay when it does happen, and remembering that you actually signed up to do this shit, right. I signed up to have all these problems, right. You can look at them as problems, or you can look at it as an opportunity to solve something that maybe no one else is solving and it puts you in a different place in your life, and maybe you really enjoy that. Because I got to tell you and it feels like, and I haven't quantified this but I should start writing this stuff down,it feels like for every good thing that happens you have these highs and you have these lows. The highs feel like really super high, and then the lows go really, really low.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Chris Snyder: Maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm bipolar. Who knows? I'm not bipolar.

Speaker 2: No, but when you're in it I think people forget that later on if you would see one of the challenges you had six months down the line, or six years down the line it never feels as big looking back as it does when you're stuck in the middle of it.

Chris Snyder: Not only does it not, it doesn't feel as big.It's amazing to me how the problems are always different. Are you kidding me?How in the hell after 10 years I would have honestly thought that I have seen it all. I am beginning to learn I have not even scratched the surface on seeing it all because you can put some categorization around problems, right. Maybe they're raw business problems like product market fit. How do we get product market fit? Depending on what kind of company you're dealing with that is gonna be a unique problem to solve, but at least that's something during your day that you're like, all right, I already know I signed up to solve a product market fit problem. I signed up to get these guys traction, right, to get this company traction. We signed up to try to land their third round of funding, and by doing that we got to do this thing, right.

Chris Snyder: But during the course of, I would say, regular business's usual things you have all these, I call them two by fours. You're whacked in the head by a two by four, and just when you're taking your casual leisurely stroll on a Friday. I mentioned on another episode how great it felt to get a referral, and how great it felt to have the agency team appreciated for the work that we do and delivering results. And then right after that I was on the phone talking about another problem that was just so completely out of left field and had nothing to do with growing someone's business. It's like,what in the hell just happened there? Really, what happened there?

Speaker 2: You don't have enough time to celebrate the wins.

Chris Snyder: Well, you do I guess if you make the time. As I look back on it over the years, and my business partner and I we have not really celebrated any of that stuff. We really haven't. I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't of, or should of. It just it always feels like when you're bootstrapped and self funded it always feels like you better figure out the next thing because even though you got that referral, and you got that win today, and you're gonna sign that contract, and you're gonna work the next six months to grow it, and you're gonna work the next six months after that to maintain it, and you're gonna hope that they don't cancel after 18 months or two years because now they have built that team, right, and they don't really need you any more because you're, air quotes, expensive, right. Even though you helped them get there. That's where my mind goes. Once that deal starts and gets inked that then the real hard work begins, so even celebrating some of this stuff is a little bit difficult for me.

Chris Snyder: But I guess the point I was making is, as an entrepreneur having this growth mindset, and having the ability to have this grit and resilience, and I'm not talking about this grit and resilience like oh, I went out in LA and I forgot to bring my extra jacket. Because guess what?It gets cold here at night. By the way, it's not very resilient for you to go out in LA and for it to be 62 degrees, you forget a jacket and you have to shiver for 45 minutes. That's not grit, just FYI. It's not grit.

Speaker 2: Some people in California would probably argue with that who've never left the state.

Chris Snyder: I mean look, it's chilly.

Speaker 2: I've lived in New York, so I know what cold is.

Chris Snyder: Thank you. That's my point. I think even more importantly and I have to catch myself too because I get a little pissed off about stuff like this still when I really shouldn't. I really should just take a step back and say, well look man, you signed up for it. You knew so-and-so was gonna pull a move, or you knew so-and-so was gonna do something. You knew that client wasn't in a great spot, or you knew that vendor wasn't in a great spot, or you knew those guys were on holiday, or you should've known. There's two ways to look at this stuff. You can look out the window. You can blame every single person that walks by, or you can just look in the mirror. You can go, well I guess I gotta do a better job next time. But I always go through this little whiny phase of why can't it just be perfect?

Chris Snyder: But that's not the way life is. If you're gonna be an entrepreneur you better wear it. Here's the thing, you better wear it for a long time. I'm not talking six months. I'm not talking a year. I'm not talking two years. I'm talking 10 fucking years. That's the journey. That's the journey. People are trying to figure out how to get to Mars, right. They're like, How are these people gonna live up there for two years? Look, as a human being I look at that and I go, there's no fucking way. I'm not going to Mars,no way. I don't have it in me to sit in a cramped little compartment for two years. I just don't. The thought of death really wouldn't bother me as much as the thought of sitting in a spacecraft for two years.

Chris Snyder: Now think about your journey as an entrepreneur. Think about this, you're in the same spacecraft that has no gas,no food, no electronics, shit's breaking. Maybe it's on fire every once in awhile. You don't have a fire extinguisher, so you have to piss it out. In which case your piss floats, right. It gets in your face. It's like that's being an entrepreneur. Who would sign up for that? Who would sign up for that?

Speaker 2: There's probably a long list of people who would.

Chris Snyder: Well, my point is if there's a long list of people who think they want that, but there's also a long list of people, and I know a long list of people, that think they want it because the macro says,look at all these entrepreneurs. Look at them driving their Ferraris. Look at how great their life is. Look at the company that just got 100 million dollars in funding. Look at how amazing so-and-so is. I'm not gonna mention any names, right. You see them all. You see them all. Do you know what? That is a fraction of what real entrepreneurs are dealing with every single day. Every single day.

Chris Snyder: Real entrepreneurs are trying to figure out how to keep the lights on. Real entrepreneurs are trying to figure out how to provide the three, or four, or five, or 10 employees they have with proper health insurance, so they don't leave, right. That's what real entrepreneurs are dealing with. Real entrepreneurs are not only doing their accounting, not only are they in JIRA, not only they're a recruiter, not only are they the manager, not only they jump into AdWords once in a while, that's what real entrepreneurs are doing, my opinion.

Speaker 2: Which is the hard work.

Chris Snyder: It's the hard work, right. I think that there will probably be some folks that have built some pretty big businesses with some funding, or not funding. I don't know. That say, well I mean look the reason why you're still getting your ass kicked in 10 years later is because you haven't figured out how to scale, right. You haven't figured out how to scale. Okay, fair enough, right. I also haven't figured out how to take someone else's money and be beholden to investors and live on a hamster wheel the rest of my life with everybody telling me what to do.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Snyder: Right. I can spend my energy raising money all Goddamn day. Actually, instead of doing this podcast for two hours a week, or whatever we've been doing I can just go hunt down VCs, fly my happy ass to San Francisco and start asking people for money, but that's not me. I don't want to do it that way.

Speaker 2: That becomes a job in and of itself.

Chris Snyder: That becomes a job in and of itself. Do you know what I'd rather do? I'd rather free cash flow everything, make profit, and do shit the way I want to do shit because that's I mean that's me. That's not a knock on how anybody else is doing anything, right. That's just how I do it. I think one thing that you have to have if you're going to be an entrepreneur,and I started this episode by talking about a really, really high point and then going really, really low. I think one of the things I'm gonna work on a little bit more, even though I've been working on this for a long time, is just being willing to accept the fact that it's gonna be really high and really low.Honestly, it's our job to keep it even. It's our job to keep it even and not lash out, and not try to over think this stuff because the forces of nature are just gonna happen.

Speaker 2: What have you experienced when you don't keep it even?

Chris Snyder: I think when you don't keep it even you lash out, and maybe you say some things that you shouldn't say, or maybe even do things you shouldn't do because you're coming from a place of emotion instead of really thinking methodically about the problem. You're potentially attacking the people and not the problem, or even attacking just the overall situation and how unfair you think it might be. I tell my kids if I hear them say,"No fair," they get wherever I go, "Don't say that. I don't ever want to hear that because life isn't fair and I don't ever want to hear that again." Well, guess what? It's no different than me whining about something that I think shouldn't of happened. I'm probably whining about it because I think it wasn't fair. How is it fair that I'm working 10 hours a day during the Christmas break and Jimmy is out doing whatever Jimmy is doing? That doesn't seem very fair. Well yeah it does. I make a lot more money than Jimmy.

Speaker 2: We really rag on Jimmy on this podcast.

Chris Snyder: Yeah. I love Jimmy. Well I mean look, and it'snot about the money. But by the way, it doesn't even matter. I signed up for this shit, so stop whining about it. Understand there will be highs, there will be lows. This business is full of chances for you to demonstrate your grit, and your resilience when bad shit happens. Let's get after it, right. Let's do it.I think if you're surrounded by people that are okay with that ... By the way,on the client's side and on the partner's side. When I say partner's side,again, I'm talking about our business partners like the outsourced specialized teams. I'm talking about contractors. If you're surrounded by folks that really get into that hey, we have grit. We welcome the challenges. When we get knocked down, when that two by four ... You walk around that corner and that two by four is just like bladow. Holy shit. You're dazed for a minute.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Snyder: And then you're like all right, let's get this shit together, right. All right, now we got to figure it out because guess what? I don't have any other options. This is the option. Which actually comes back to another point that I should've made in a prior episode about why do we think it's really hard to hold together a Demand Gen team? Why are employees churning?Why is the job market so tough? Well, I mean maybe because there's so many other safety nets and so many other options. There's no reason for anyone to demonstrate any grit. They don't have to.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Snyder: They don't have to. Let me tell you that's not good for growth, and that's not good for business. That's not good for personal growth. That's not good for professional growth. That's not good for business.I want people that have been to war and back and have won. And have won, and have failed. And have failed too. I have failed plenty. But you gotta make sure that they've been through that. You gotta really understand that when we come through the other side they've bought in to the principles, and the values, and the growth mindset of this firm.

Chris Snyder: They understand what it's like to go out and create value for these companies, or create revenue from a Demand Gen standpoint, or learned the new Google algo, or learned what kind of data Facebook is no longer ever going to include on your targeting, so your job just got 100% harder. Well that doesn't mean you stop selling Facebook ads and go work for Snapchat because your job got harder. That's not what it means. It means you figure it out, and you demonstrate that you have grit. You demonstrate that you can persevere, which is helpful. It feels good when you do that, and you win. It feels like shit when you do that, and you lose, but give it some time. You'll win if you stick with it.

Speaker 2: You've got to be incredibly comfortable with the idea of failure, and not see it as The Scarlet Letter. I think what I've realized is that as an entrepreneur this idea of failing fast and failing often sounds pretty shitty, but I think you just get up faster.

Chris Snyder: Yeah.

Speaker 2: You dust yourself off faster because the first couple you just sit in there wallowing in that puddle of mud that you just landed in. And then you realize that no one's gonna fix this. No one's gonna lift you out of this mud, and no one's gonna give you the next option to try.And then you're like, okay. Okay, now I gotta get up. I gotta clean myself off.And then you just keep doing it.

Chris Snyder: I agree. By the way, I don't know how you create a test for this. When you think about hiring someone, or you think about taking on a new client there's got to be a grit and perseverance test.

Speaker 2: You're saying there has to be one even for clients?

Chris Snyder: Absolutely. Listen man, I'm gonna tell you right now shit's gonna hit the fan. It's gonna fucking hit the fan. I know it will. It always does. No matter what we are in digital marketing. This is not a CPA firm. It's just not. This isn't the recyclable waste industry. The same trucks that have been rolling down this road when I put my trash can out are the same Goddamn trucks they had in the 50's. Not much has changed, my friend.They're not picking up garbage with drones now.

Speaker 2: Not yet.

Chris Snyder: I mean look, I'm trying to be a little bit funny about it. But at the end of the day shit changes in our business every single day. What I really want to understand is we're going to war together,right. I'm not doing it by myself because if I was doing it by myself I'd have my own fucking product and my own fucking company just doing that one thing.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Snyder: Just doing that one thing. But I'm not. We'redoing it together. You hired me to do it together with you. You hired me because I believe I have the ability to bring a team, which I couldn't do it by myself, to bring a team in a business process and human beings together in this big fucking Kumbaya circle that eventually will get blown up. And then we got to figure out if we can all get ourselves back together and sit Indian style again and start signing Kumbaya, right.

Speaker 2: How do they respond when they hear that?

Chris Snyder: Well, I would say I've never really said it in that way. But I guess now I could just set down a recording and instead of saying very calmly and rationally at an executive room conference table, hey mister and missus client, you do realize that if this was easy I wouldn't have a job. You do realize that if it was magic and I always had the magic wand I wouldn't be sitting here today. I would own my own fucking private island. I usually get really weird looks when I say stuff like that. But it's true. Why would I be sitting in someone's office if I had all the answers? I don't have all the answers because the answers ... The questions change all the time and the answers change all the time because that's digital. We've talked about it.Over and over again we continue to talk about it.

Chris Snyder: How do my clients react when I go in there and I basically tell them I'm not here to save your ass, I'm not here to save your life, I'm here to help us together get to where we think you need to go, but we're gonna need you to participate in this journey? Because if it was easy as just paying someone a half a million dollars for the year, so they could make you 10 million dollars don't you fucking think I would've figured that out already? I mean let's be clear, if all I had to do was give some magical firm a half a million dollars and I got 10 million dollars back don't you think I would've figured that out already? Don't you think someone would've figured that out already? Nobody's figured that out already because it doesn't exist,so I don't think I should have to say that, but I will.

Chris Snyder: I'm really in it for the relationship, the partnership, expressing my commitment and dedication because they got to find someone to do this work. They gotta find someone to do this work.Unfortunately, there's not a lot of good choices. Our choice is better than most, way better than most. Look, it doesn't always work, man. It doesn't always work. It's not always their fault. It's not always our fault. It could be forces beyond our control. It could be a loser product. It could be a bad market. It could be Facebook shutting down all the publishers. Who knows why stuff doesn't work? It could be a bad apple on the client's side who's sabotaging stuff. It could be a CMO change, and they're gonna bring in their own people.

Chris Snyder: It doesn't really matter at this point. It just matters that everybody understands this shit's gonna be hard. You better have some grit and some perseverance. You have to believe in us. We have to believe in you because we're all giving a lot of emotional energy to do this stuff, so let's fucking get it on, right. It ain't gonna happen overnight. Give us 90 days. That 90 days will turn into six months. That six months will turn into a year, and hopefully that turns into two. But that's about the cycle.That's about the cycle. I wish it was a lifetime annuity. It's not.

Speaker 2: You think that three months is enough for you to demonstrate, at least start to show, that you can add value to them?

Chris Snyder: Absolutely. That's the gig. That's the gig,man. That's easily the gig. Do you know what? You don't need to turn a business around in three months. You need to prove through your process and your management in your people and your trajectory that you can turn the business around in less than a year, or nine months. We've done it in six. But guess what? I'm not giving anyone six months, no one. They're gonna get three. I can tell you right now in the first 30 to 45 days I'll know if we're communicating and being effective, and solving problems together. I'm interested in understanding how they're communicating and operating. That's what I'm interested in. I'm also interested in understanding if they can produce results, and they have a plan to reduce results, and how they communicate that plan to me, right.Those are all things you can learn within the first 45 days.

Chris Snyder: The second 45 days as you continue to climb and ram you will actually start producing some results and people will begin to get happier. All of a sudden the place is real chirpy. People are happy. It's like blue birds singing. It's awesome. But it ain't gonna happen overnight. And just as much as clients need us to be bad asses, we need them to be bad asses too. They need to have grit. They need to have perseverance. They need to have good people. They need to have some good systems because if they don't we need to put it in our SOW and we need to help them get good systems to measure our performance.

Speaker 2: How much of that is you educating your client to unlearn any bad behaviors they may have picked up from working with other folks who are not as disciplined as you?

Chris Snyder: It's interesting. My approach to that is look,I know it's hard for you internally because generally the companies that we work with are a bit larger and they're a little bit ingrained in how they operate it, so I go build my own sandbox. I'm not much for telling people they need to rip shit out and change stuff because that takes too long. That's when people start getting fired because it turns into a project instead of an exercise in demonstrating expertise and performance. I've come into a lot of companies and they're using old school database technology, or they're using new school Tableau that nobody knows how to use, right, or they're using really expensive Cloud software. Guess what? I license Tableau I had it for two years.I think it's great if you have a PhD and you're a data scientist, or you're a very serious quant. I think it's absolute overkill if you're a regular run of the mill marketing person that just needs to work Google AdWords a little bit better, and look at some fucking pie charts. You don't need to do that stuff,man. You just don't need it.

Chris Snyder: But guess what? I sold IT consulting for three years of my life. I worked with CIOs. I understand how ingrained some of this stuff is. I understand the procurement process around this, and how they make these decisions. It took months and sometimes years. And then it took months and sometimes years to implement. Do you really fucking think I'm gonna go fight that battle? I'm not gonna win that's for sure. My approach is okay, get all the data. How? Get it in Excel spreadsheets. I don't care. Get it. We need access to their Sales Force. Never gonna happen. They'll never give it to us.Don't even ask. They'll never give it to us. Fuck it. I'll get it. We'll figure it out. We'll get it. We'll get that data. We'll build you a little mini data warehouse on the side, so every button we push and every single thing we do we know we're gonna win. We know we can measure ourselves. That's exactly how I do it.

Chris Snyder: We show up to meetings. And guess what? The team starts seeing the numbers. They're like, "Where'd you get that?That's our view. That's our dashboard. That's how we look at your business." I'm not gonna try to force you to look at your business the way I'm gonna look at your business because I've been proving to you that I'm credible enough to make you believe that the way I'm looking at things is the right way to look at things. Fuck it. I know what I'm doing is right. I'm not gonna try to convince you of that. I'm gonna demonstrate my performance to you with raw numbers. Let's go get busy in my back office. You guys go to lunch.I'm on the hook. I'm gonna do it my way. I'm not gonna force you to do it my way. Now if you want to do it my way eventually great, but sometimes it's too political, man. Sometimes it's too hard. Sometimes those people don't have enough grit. Sometimes they've been beat down so much that they've just ...their resilience no longer exists. Sometimes what folks need to get going again is some wins.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Chris Snyder: Hopefully, that's what we provide. We provide those wins. We provide more leads at a lower cost. They start generating more revenue. People start getting a little more chirpy. And then they become a little more open minded to things that may need to change. That's not my job though. I'm not some kind of fucking change, whatever they call them.

Speaker 2: Change maker?

Chris Snyder: Change consultant.

Speaker 2: Change leader?

Chris Snyder: Yeah. No, I mean honestly that's some people's jobs, right. Some people's jobs are to come in there, beat the shit out of everybody, tell them that they're doing stuff all the wrong way. Tell them that the most bleeding edge technologies are available to them, and how stupid they are for not using them. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's your 66 page Decthat really smart people produced. See? Yeah, there. Give me a million dollars and then they walk away. Well guess what? That's not helpful.

Speaker 2: That's all in the implementation. I mean I definitely was in that world of Business Objects and Tableau. It's nice to sell people these cool looking dashboards, but when you get down to the nitty gritty and you have to actually implement it in the environment. Everyone's back end systems, data warehouses, all that stuff is completely a mess and that's where stuff starts to really blow up.

Chris Snyder: Do you know what? Also, a lot of these systems are over engineered.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Chris Snyder: A lot of the people that implement these systems don't have the proper use cases, or business experience because sometimes they're third party integrators, right. They don't have the proper use cases, or business experience to make sure that they are solving the problem that the business has. Instead, someone went to a conference and someone decided that they needed Sales Force, which by the way that's not a knock on Sales Force. Sale Force is awesome, right. A lot of people use it. I've had it for years, the small business version. You go to the conference. They say you need Sales Force. Sales Forces bought Pardot, so now you need Sales Force and Pardot.

Speaker 2: What's Pardot, dude?

Chris Snyder: Marketing automation. Basically it sends emails. You can build landing pages and you can track everything. Well guess what? Newsflash. Do you know how old Pardot is? Do you know the code base on Pardot is probably 20 fucking years old.

Speaker 2: It's written in DOS?

Chris Snyder: Maybe. Look, I don't know. I know what you're talking about because I'm in that demo. But dude, I have no idea. But I can tell you right now someone went to a conference at some point, and without really understanding the business problems that they're trying to solve, and without being really super clear when they go through their vendor process they're just buying stuff that they don't know how to use. It's overly complex.It's super expensive. They have no operators. Their integrators fuck it up because they're just there billing, right. They're not sitting at the company understanding the use cases, right. It's just really messy.

Chris Snyder: So anyway, I went off on a little tangent there.But your original question was, how do you tell your clients use this, don't use this, use that, don't use that, make recommendations? I try not to do that too much. By the way I am very anti taking any kind of referral fees, or anything from a vendor. We simply don't do it. It is a huge conflict of interest in my opinion. We have for many years used Optimizely and easily,easily probably could have signed up for their reseller program and could have done however much money in revenue. No fucking way would I ever do that. No way would I ever do that.

Speaker 2: Why?

Chris Snyder: Because I think that's not my job. My job isn't to get paid from a software company. Software companies are not my clients. They are not. My client is my client. My client is trusting that I'm gonna be 100% impartial. If I do make a suggestion, or I do get asked a question that I'm going to give them what I believe is the right answer and not an answer that's fabricated to support a business model, which is hey, our agency only uses Sales Force and Pardot. No, that's not accurate. Our agency uses Sales Force, Pardot. Our agency uses Agile CRM. Our agency uses Hub Spot. Our agency uses Marketo. Our agency uses Eloquoa. Our agency uses a lot of hammers that are all hammers that have different names.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Chris Snyder: I mean it just doesn't make any sense to ever take any kind of monetary payment from any vendor that we would ever use. It makes sense for use to learn the best of breed software programs because it promotes business on our end because a lot of companies use Tableau. Guess What? I licensed to ship myself. I made a couple of RT members use it. They became experts at it and when I was at a client meeting they said, "Oh, we just bought 40 Tableau licenses." I said, "Oh, I can help you outwith that." I didn't recommend that you get it.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Chris Snyder: I just got to be good at it because guess what? That's where the puck is headed. You got to skate to where the puck is headed.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Snyder: Right. You got to catch the winds when they're right. People are gonna make these decisions outside of my recommendation. We got to understand how to catch that.

Speaker 2: You just have to have the client's best interest at heart all the time.

Chris Snyder: No matter what. It's not negotiable.

Speaker 2: Because they're trusting you.

Chris Snyder: They're trusting me personally, yeah. When I say that, I say they're trusting me personally because we built this firm on the backs of free cash flow and our own personal brand. Hell yeah, I take this shit personally because when I say something it means that I've thought about it, and it means that I've tried it. It means based on my personal recommendation no different than when someone gives me a referral fee I'm gonna sink up these parties, right. I'm gonna make the introduction, and they have to deliver because my name is on the line. My personal name is on the line. My business partner's name is on the door, right. Yeah, I take it personally.

Chris Snyder: To close this thing off I really think that when you sign up to be an entrepreneur you better be signing up to be full of grit and corresponding resilience. That's really what it's about. There's a lot of different folks that have to have that, that you communicate with on a daily basis whether they be internal to your organization or external. In our case it's usually clients. In our case it's usually specialized firms that we bring to the party. Everybody has to be vetted. Everybody has to be vetted for this growth mindset and this ability to have grit and determination and resilience because it's gonna happen. You're gonna need it and you're gonna need a lot of it.

Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to Snyder's Showdown. Visit snydershowdown.com to see the full show notes for every episode, which includes a recap as well as any links mentions in any show. And because it's Chris we'll have a few awesome quotes that you can share. There you'll also be able to signup for our newsletter, so your notified when new episodes are ready. Tune in next week.