Chris Kille @notchriskille (00:00.238) whatever

Bennett Maxwell (00:01.929) All right, welcome to another episode of the Deeper the Dough. Welcome to another episode of the Deeper the Dough podcast. I'm super excited to have Chris as a guest. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (00:11.534) Thanks man, have me on.

Bennett Maxwell (00:13.319) Chris, we met maybe two and a half years ago, it probably when I joined Apex. And unfortunately, I lasted a year. I loved it. But flying out every first Friday of the month or whatever it was, it became to get a little much. But man, the things that I learned and the people I connected with on that, that's awesome. Like we were just talking right before this, you sold your credit card processing company to Adam, which I also knew from Apex. And anyways, so really, really good group.

Let's start with just a minute or two or three, however long you wanna take of a quick background.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (00:48.974) Yeah, man. Thanks for having me on. By the way, I appreciate that. So I'm Chris Kille. I live in Boston. Moved up here in February from Dallas. And you were talking about Apex. It's not so bad whenever you only have to drive across town. So I think it was like 15 minutes from my apartment or whatever. But yeah, so I'm involved. I just recently exited a payment processing company that I had been in for 18 years.

Bennett Maxwell (01:06.535) That's awesome.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (01:13.586) And a few years ago, I started a staffing company where we specialize in virtual assistance from the Philippines. So we help high performing individuals buy back their time, get more productive essentially so they can focus on things that move the needle forward in their business instead of, I'm sure you get caught in your email all the time. It's as the busy or the...

The bigger you get, the busier you get. And so we're actually able to come in and provide people that assistance that they need so that way they can keep focused on moving the needle forward.

Bennett Maxwell (01:45.511) I love that so much. started hiring out of the Philippines maybe four or five years ago. I should say overseas, but you know, pretty much everybody out of the Philippines. And to have a business that you're like, I need help, but I don't have the capital. But you don't want to go to somebody like, Hey, I'm, you know, I'm going to under, I mean, for at least I don't like doing that. You're like, Hey, I know this is what you're making currently. You've been making a hundred. I could offer you 70. You know I'm like? They're not going to be excited. And I'm not going to be excited knowing that they're not excited. Then

go find somebody in that same position, you're like, will offer you, and out of the Philippines, they're wanting eight bucks an hour or something like that. So annualized salary would be 16 grand, you offer them 30, and then they're stoked, you're stoked, and you can get such good, high quality people. With the caveat of people are people, you have to interview them, you have to make sure the process is on onboarding and all that, which is where companies like you're coming to play, because there's so much unknown, like, wait, how do I even?

pay somebody, how do I know they're working? So, big believer in that. I'd love to dive into that a little bit more about the services you offer because I think it is such a big untapped market, especially in startups. You can get help, you can get good quality help for less pay without underpaying your employees quote unquote, compared to what they would have. But I'd to hear a little bit more about that, what the services you guys provide.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (03:11.566) Yeah, so you're absolutely right about the disparity and the gap in between salaries from here and there. As you were saying, $100 ,000 employee here, you can get for $20k -ish over there. And what I have found is not only are the people in that category usually more qualified, not all the time, but a lot of times they are, that typically they're going to have a better work ethic.

right, and they're grateful, right, for the opportunity. lately, I mean, I've been in business for a long time, and I know you have too, but we've seen the enthusiasm of the American worker getting smaller and smaller each year, we'll say, especially when you're looking at people that aren't in senior level positions, right? So, you know, lot of the, some of the people coming out of college now are, you know, are just, in my opinion, a little entitled.

You know, I did find that this great solution is to, you know, to find somebody else that is in another country that you can provide an opportunity to. But the way that we started out was we were kind of, I was trying to find my way and I wasn't sure what product and service that we wanted to offer from there. So we offered everything. I was the guy that if you wanted this obscure unicorn type of employee, you came to me and I would find them, right? We got very, very good at that.

what I found was that wasn't really serving our ideal client or you know, and that person is going to be that business owner that's doing less than 5 million a year in sales that, you know, finds themselves bogged down, weighed into their email, they're themselves doing repetitive tasks all day every day. And, you know, I'm sure you know this whenever you first start out, you you wake you go up in the office in the morning, and you've got a full head of steam and you're super motivated. And then you open your email and you're like, my

and the next thing you know, it's 2 p and you haven't done anything, right? That's my client. And so what we do is we provide high level executive assistants with high bandwidth to learn new skills. So we can still find those people that if you need somebody to have a very specialized skill, they may not have it right now, but they'll definitely have the mental capacity to learn it

Bennett Maxwell (05:32.583) I heard a lot of, you you can't hire overseas because they're not as competent. I was like, well, why? Like who are you hiring? Right? There's, there's a lot of people overseas that are not competent. Just like there's a lot of people here talking about entitlement. My brother just opened up a dirty dough in California. and three, four months ago, they raised the minimum wage for any chain with over, I think it's 60 locations open to $20. So like,

you're 16 years old and you're getting paid 20 bucks an hour by default if you work at Dirty Dough, you know what I mean? And it's like, how does that not cause some sense of entitlement? like, anyways. So I definitely see that. I mean, I just had somebody in my inbox on LinkedIn yesterday maybe from Bangladesh. don't know, I don't follow the news usually. And he's like, where, at the brink of

Chris Kille @notchriskille (06:00.632) sell a of cookies.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (06:11.17) Yeah. Yeah. It's real.

Bennett Maxwell (06:25.901) there's a curfew or brink of a civil war, this and that. And he's like, I will work for free. I will work for free to prove my worth. And I'm just like, yeah, I don't really find that as much here, right? The opportunity is very different. So to find and connect those people. I learned in a startup course, it's called Startup Ignition, to place a dollar amount on your time. If you're in sales, it's easier, right? Like there's so much money I'm making anyways. And then, okay, I'm worth a thousand dollars an hour if I'm pitching. So I need

hire somebody else to do everything just like what you said, like the emails. Very, very big proponent on that, especially when you get into like finance and bookkeeping. Use QuickBooks and there's people that already trained to know how to do that. As an entrepreneur, don't spend your time on QuickBooks. Spend your time growing the business and outsource the rest and know where you're driving revenue. So very, very big believer in like, that's one of

catalyst to really start growing your business, like to get that mindset of like, okay, I can outsource and it's more comfortable to outsource when there's lower risk financially. So why did you make the shift from, mean, I didn't know you had your credit card processing for 18 years. You did that for 18 years. When did you start EO staffing? And then we'll talk about the overlap and why you chose to sell.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (07:32.737) Yep.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (07:47.938) Yeah, I actually think this is a pretty cool story. So I started EO three years ago. And it was started, it wasn't even out of necessity. I didn't think I was gonna start a new business. I had no desire to, but what had happened was a few years before that, was at a, whenever I was neck deep in payment processing and I was living it, breathing it and it was slowly killing me. That's a whole nother story. But I was at a conference and

I heard a speaker was in Charleston, South Carolina, and this guy was up on stage and he was talking about virtual assistants. Kind of got my attention. I was like, what is a virtual assistant? I thought that it was AI or something like that. Well, a virtual assistant is somebody that's not in your office beside you. And he was talking about all the things that they could do. me at the time, I think I was successful, but I wasn't financially where I wanted to be yet. And in payment processing, what a lot of people don't realize is

The margins are so very, very small, right? You make money on every single transaction, but it's fractions of pennies at a time. So you have to have a lot of accounts in order to be able to get financial freedom, essentially. And so I talked with him after the show, and I was asking him how much they were. And was actually, even VAs were out of my budget at that time. So I said, you know what? I'm going to figure out how to do it on my own. And it took me about a year and a half. Now, I'm granted, I'm very.

grateful that I did that because it was how I was able to start and scale this very quickly. essentially what I did was, as you were saying, I like doing sales. So I took all of the non -revenue generating activities, my paperwork, my customer service, my tech support, my installs, things like that, and I got it off of my plate. So now all I had to do, I found one person first, her name was Diana and she was great. so she took all that. And then once she got too busy, went and hired another one.

But now that I wasn't focused on all of these, I mean, there'll be some days where I'm just taking customer service calls all day long. And that's me making $0, just sitting and trying to save money from going out the back door, So firefighting all day. so anyway, so I scaled the company. I had more time to focus on sales. And so I got bigger and bigger clients. And then we took it a different direction and did really well. But if I didn't have that time, I would have never been able to get there.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (10:12.13) And then so EO started because I was telling one of my buddies, Paul, about it. And he was like, well, hey, can you do that for me? And I was like, yeah, I think so. And I did it for him. And then he told one of his buddies and I did it for him. And then next thing I know, like I've done it for four or five people and it's really rewarding, right? So payment processing, people call you, they're, hey, you're charging me too much. You're charging me too much. And there's no, no one ever calls you to tell you thank you. And with this business, you're actually installing something that's not a commodity.

that is you can actually see the results, they're tangible, right? Hey, you invested this with me, I was able to find you this person, know, and place you in their business and now look at you. And so, you know, so then I said, you know what, I'm just gonna ditch payments and fortunately, Adam, you know, came into my life and it was a great fit. And, you know, there were, know, we're, and we're moving in the right direction again.

Bennett Maxwell (11:01.959) A lot of it was, if I understood you right, like just day -to -day enjoyment of what you wanted to do. You're like, this aligns with what I want to do. I need to ask Adam why he likes getting those customers. I'm just joking. I'm sure he's got that figured out. He is a very, very patient, caring individual. You said that it was slowly killing you. I want to ask a little bit more about why, and then the follow -up question would be, what advice do you have?

Chris Kille @notchriskille (11:14.436) He's got so much patience,

Bennett Maxwell (11:30.929) to somebody that's in that similar situation. They're in a business or whatever they're doing and it's slowly killing them, what would you do differently now with that

Chris Kille @notchriskille (11:38.222) So the reason why it was, and I'll tell you this, had right before Thanksgiving, I had what they called a cardiac event in the hospital, right? I was supposed to get a, I have a deviated septum and I was supposed to go in for surgery. So I had a pre -op and fortunately it was in a hospital complex. I walked in and I started getting flush and I'm sweaty and I dizzy. so I asked them to take my blood pressure and my blood pressure was two something over 180. And they were

hey, you gotta go to hospital like right now. And so took me over to the hospital. You know, it's bad when you walk into the car when when you're being wheeled into the cardiac and the whole the whole lobby is filled. And they go up and they talk to the person and you skip the entire line. Right. So yeah, so they took me and they put me in the CAT scan. They thought, thank God, it was nothing. Right. It was just, you know, I just had a wild cardiac event, apparently. But

What got me there was I was going through some really stressful times in my life as it was, but for me, I was taking people's complaints and criticism incredibly personally. And so I was very, very involved in micromanaging in the business where because I'm so customer service driven, I always wanted to know when there was somebody that was having a complaint. And so when you get thousands of customers,

you know, there's no days where nobody doesn't call in complaining. It's just the nature of the beast. And so that compounded with other events, you know, that were going on in my life. I was going through divorce, I was drinking a lot. was, you know, but this was just the stress that it just pushed me over the edge. you know, when that happened, I, you know, started.

actively distancing myself to the point where it was, we started, we didn't start going backwards, but we were very close to going backwards because I just, I was, I gave up and I just didn't want to do it anymore. And, you know, and so whenever I was able to fully remove myself, almost completely remove myself from it, that was when the stress started, you know, started to subside and I'm getting healthier and not, you know, it's been almost a year. I'm not drinking anymore. It's, know, it's, it's, it's been a lot better of a situation for me,

Chris Kille @notchriskille (13:52.824) Just the level of stress that I was just soaking in all day. was like a stew of toxic is what one of my employees said. I just lived in a fishbowl of toxicity. But yeah, getting all that stuff off my plate was great.

Bennett Maxwell (14:08.391) So what would you say, because one, I relate to that a ton. it's, I feel like mine come in big waves, know, it's like everything's going great where everything's just terrible and I don't want to freaking get out of bed. Cause I'm just like, I can't tackle all of these problems. Like there's just, it's just impossible. For me, I really dove into psychedelics, therapy, Buddhism, and just more of the mindset and philosophy, meditation. Anyways.

And I came to the conclusion

Thoughts appear in my head, I never know what I'm gonna think before the thought arises. thoughts are a byproduct of neurons firing, which I also don't control. But yet, there's something that happens that I feel like I am in control of other thoughts, and I can control the whole freaking world, and that's what is causing the stress for me. So diving into the more like, no, I believe consciousness is a pure awareness or observation of the life that you're living.

And that's kind of it. And with that mentality, it's like, okay, all the mistakes that I made, I just made them because those are the thoughts and the actions that my organism did. Anyways, for me, that's why I continue to go back because it's stressful. tomorrow something else is gonna happen. I'm just gonna be like, okay, let me put in my headphones and listen to a dude named Alan Watts talk to me about why I shouldn't stress, you know? And it's more the philosophy. What would be your advice be to somebody in that stage right

Chris Kille @notchriskille (15:41.3) It's one, it's not an emergency unless you are in like healthcare or, know, I would always, everything, I had such a sense of urgency about everything, right? And you can close the laptop and go to bed or you can, you don't have to show up tomorrow. Like if it's on your brain that much and it's really, there's very few things that constitute an absolute four alarm fire. Like what I was saying now is, and I heard this from one of my mentors,

There's two different fires. There's a dumpster fire and there's a kitchen fire. Dumpster fire, you can let it burn. It'll be there whenever you get back. You don't have to worry about it, right? Kitchen fire, the fucking house is coming down, right? So is this, so now I say when something comes up that's a stressful situation, is this dumpster or is this kitchen? If it's kitchen, we go find the people that can solve it. I'm not the one, I don't solve any problems. Well, I make decisions, but I'm not the one actually in the weeds anymore. have people on my team, thankfully, that can do that.

But hey, kitchen fire, we pull in who's responsible for this. We formulate a plan and then they execute it. Dumpster fireman, that can wait until I'm ready to deal with it. And we got a couple going right now and we'll get to it when we get to

Bennett Maxwell (16:54.469) maybe a year and a half ago, I had a guest and we were talking about just that, where does that sense of urgency come from? And he said, well, there's some things that you just, you have to do. And I challenged it and just like out of nowhere, but really is there, is there anything that has to be done today? I like that you said healthcare, healthcare that yeah, people are actually dying. Outside of that, what is the percentage of kitchen fires versus dumpster fires? I've been doing it for a year and a half, maybe, maybe a year of just

No, it's gonna wait till tomorrow and if it's the weekend, it's gonna wait till Monday. And nothing's changed in my life other than less stress. Like the business doesn't not grow.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (17:32.095) Or you can even go a step farther instead of saying tomorrow or Monday when I feel like it. It's when I'm emotionally ready to handle this task or inconvenience that has come up.

Bennett Maxwell (17:51.239) So the sense of urgency, a lot of us have it. And I think it's like overdrive stress. Like if I could just solve all problems, I'm gonna be happy. And I could feel safe and I could love myself or whatever that root cause is. How do you go to adapt that? I mean, if I pull up my phone, again, a year ago, I couldn't go to bed. I couldn't go an hour without having zero notifications, like zero of these little icons, because that means I wasn't doing something.

Now I'm like, I can actually have 20 emails and go to bed over the weekend and, you know, my assistant will work on them and maybe I wake up with five of them. What's that mindset shift though, like that you need to tell yourself internally that it's like, it's, the house isn't on fire. It's just an issue.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (18:27.992) Yeah, you're one.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (18:35.106) Yeah, it's that actually was something that from a mental standpoint I came to I figured out this year and one of the main things that where that came from was I used to make snap decisions if something came in and somebody was pissed or there was a Dumpster fire going on I would drop what I was doing. I need to solve this right now and a lot of times it was

Sometimes it was the right decision, but a lot of times there was no force. now like I get a lot of ideas I'm sure you too you do too all the time, but now we've got a rule in the office we don't make snap decisions anymore like we can write it down and we can we stick to the plan and you know when things come in, you know, we evaluate is this a dumpster or is this a kitchen fire and you know to back to your point of the assistant most of your dumpster fires start in the email inbox.

and kitchen fires too for the most part. how you react is how it's what's up to you. my EA, Faye, I know she's been communicating back and forth with yours. can't remember her name, but it's great when you have the assistance in the inbox actually set. I was like, I didn't know what I was doing today. So in our meeting, on our morning meeting today, she's like, okay, you have this, you have this, you have this, and then you have Bennett at four. I was like, shit, I got Bennett today? That's amazing.

she'll take the two or three hundred emails I get a day and she will doesn't she doesn't respond to them unless it's something unless it's a project that she's actually working on but she she acts as that she's the gateway right the gatekeeper essentially so out of those two or three hundred emails I might see three or four of them and they're the only ones that that are that require my attention everything else either gets routed or it gets dropped into you know it's spam you know how many junk emails we get a day so she makes it to where my morning

I wake up between 4 .30 and 5 .00 whenever I do. First thing I do, I go get a cup of coffee and a water and I go open my inbox, which a lot of people say probably isn't the best thing to do, but I like to get that done. Usually there's only three or four emails in there and things that I have to work on. And one of them is an email from Fay that's basically like, here's your day. Here's what we need to do is call our action items email. If anybody listening to this actually wants a template for that, can I give something away? Okay, cool.

Bennett Maxwell (20:51.354) Absolutely, Chris.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (20:52.726) So if anybody follows me on Instagram, it's not Chris Kelly, it's down here at the bottom, N -O -T -C -H -R -I -S -K -I -L -L -E, and DMs me the word action, I'll send you over my email template and my template for action items, which is the email or the guide that my assistant and I follow every morning to set my day up. So I go in and I have two or three emails to respond to usually, and then here's the key, here's another thing that I taught the other day, I don't actually type them out.

So I use a recorder. So I'm either on my phone or I'll use Loom or I'll use Screencast. And as I'm reading the email, I will just, I'll just say how I'd respond to it. And I sent Faye the link. She types it up and off it goes. And so I get my day done. Like no lie, dude. Like this morning I went to the gym and I had my trainer at six and I, outside from meetings, you know, I had podcasts and I you know, so a couple of sales calls and things like that. I didn't have to do anything. I went home. I took a nap from 12 to two.

Bennett Maxwell (21:34.671) genius.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (21:49.662) I went out to lunch by myself today. I just didn't feel like doing a whole lot. And fortunately, I'm in a position where that is totally fine. Business is not going, I'm not going out of business tonight if I miss a day at work. And if I didn't have a team in place, five, six years ago, there's no way I could have done that. And so it's because I didn't have the right people on my team.

Bennett Maxwell (22:08.711) Yeah,

I've with dirty dog hired executive, like C level people pretty quickly hired a CEO that ran a company called Maui, Wowie smoothies and coffee franchise system, like 600 plus units. And it drove me crazy. Like, no, you don't need to respond to everything always today or, or, or not even today. She was, she would get onto me all the time. She's like, don't text them back. Give me an hour to respond. Like all I need is an hour. I'm just like, okay, I'll calm down. And then she's still with us as president. hired the former.

Jimmy John's CEO during their rapid growth. And he's even way more like that. He's like, don't respond. was like, yeah, but we're late on this. He goes, they're going to email you again. They'll email you again and you're in a better position. I'm just like, this is so backwards to me. Like, but these guys know what the hell they're doing. They have the experience. I'm just like frantically like, no, I just need everybody to like me, you know? I just saw people's problems that they could like me. And I, and then you look at experienced executives and you're like, wow, they've already gone through

Chris Kille @notchriskille (22:49.646) Doesn't matter.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (23:01.144) Yeah.

Bennett Maxwell (23:09.307) Probably, I mean they probably already gone through that and they probably saw that that was not useful and that just caused undue stress and then they let go of it, you know? anyways, super cool on that. Chicken or the egg? Okay, you're talking, like I'm listening to you and I know I've had comments to me as well like, you don't have to work all day every day, you have an assistant to do everything that you don't wanna do, like what a life and it's like, I need to grow my business to be able to do that but it's like, well how the hell are you gonna?

Chris Kille @notchriskille (23:33.368) Must be nice.

Bennett Maxwell (23:39.077) grow your business if you don't have that. So it is the chicken and the egg. I think that you need to hire the assistant first. If you can get somebody, if you have a product that you can sell and you know if you spent one more hour a day, one more hour a week, five more hours a week, whatever that number is, and you could increase revenues by X percentage, that should be able to at least 5X what you're going to pay that assistant to free at that time. And if not, you're in the wrong fucking business because your business is not going to succeed. your time isn't

a few hundred dollars an hour when you're doing, or a few thousand dollars an hour when you're doing the high level items, your business, I mean, I just don't see how it can succeed anyway. So I always get that chicken and the egg. I think you definitely need to have the assistant first. Even if you start with them 10 hours, you don't need to start with somebody full time. 10 hours a week, 20 hours a week, slow raises. Love to hear your thoughts on

Chris Kille @notchriskille (24:32.902) Exactly. 100%. Assistant is the number one thing. you get, we'll get clients that come on and they want to jump right into like specialty. And I'm like, well, who, do you have an assistant? They're like, no, no, no, I don't need an assistant. Bullshit. You need an assistant. That's the very first hire you should make before, before anything else. And that's as you grow. To your point, that's exactly right. Because you are the one in the, especially in the beginning, you're the breadwinner of the business. You're the rainmaker. You're the one that generates the money. And if you

not generating money, then you are not growing. so, you know, that's the, I can't afford an assistant yet. Or my favorite is, it's just not the right time. I'm not ready yet. And, you know, I made a post about this the other day, you're never going to be ready. It is never the perfect time, right? We'll talk again in six months, and you're still in the same situation. And you still have the same excuses. And you still have all that, you know, the best time was yesterday, the second best time is today. And

You know, so it's in my, it's been my experience. I'm a little biased, but getting that assistant in there so you can delegate the low level $10, $15 an hour, $20 an hour tasks. Like if you want to, if you want to be a CEO, if you want to be a founder, if you want to be, you know, something like that, you can't, know, you're Jimmy John's guy, right? He's not, he's not, he's not in the franchises, you know, every day helping them watch, watch the, watch the equipment. You know, I mean, he's got,

Adam actually said this the other day and I heard it. The general only has time to command. That's it. So if you find yourself, I'm putting in the sweat equity and things like that. Nah, man, you're going about the wrong way. And you are doing yourself a disservice and also everybody in your life a disservice because I guarantee your family's not getting the best version of you

Bennett Maxwell (26:16.421) Hey, I was just gonna dive into guilt. And does that come into play here? Do I, I mean, I definitely relate to it. I would say the last, I don't know, it's been eight months since we brought in that Jimmy John's guy and it wasn't just him as our CEO. He owns a management company and they run another dozen franchise or businesses. But it was like management control. Like you guys are making the decisions. And the last three months, I'm just like,

Chris Kille @notchriskille (26:21.122) Okay.

Bennett Maxwell (26:44.729) I think I'm holding things up more than I'm helping on most cases. Like there's a few things I'm good at, raising money and figuring out how to get money, whether it's financing or equity or whatever. And that's what Greg, the new CEO, has allowed me to do. But that doesn't, like right now, just a few weeks ago, it all came together. We got the investment money, we signed the, anyways.

It all kind of came together and a few million dollars here and a few million there in a line of credit and invest. And it's like, okay, now what do you do? And the guilt of like, but I should be doing something. I should be working 40 hours. I should be. And I haven't been for, I don't know, three months. And man, it's hard. Man, it's hard. I still am getting everything done, but the guilt is going, it's still hard to overcome. And that made me relate to like, well, before, why don't you hire, like why do

I have to be in the weeds, I have to sweep the floors. Where does that come from? Is that a sense of why I need to defend myself, my honor, I need people to know that I'm willing to work with them or whatever, but I think it's really just an excuse to get shit done. It's easier to go wash the dishes than go fire somebody, right? But it's like, I need to show the example. Anyways, love to hear your thoughts on guilt as it plays into entrepreneurship working more or less.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (28:06.414) Well, I could say a lot about that, but I think the abridged version is that's something that jealous people installed in successful people because it happens that way. it's the it's the must be nice, you know, mentality must. man, you did this. That must be nice. You didn't see me knocking on doors for a decade, you know, working 60, 70 hours a week, you know, six days a week, 12 hours a day. You didn't see

You see this but anyway, so what? You do feel guilt because you want to be there in in the weeds But let me give you just so in my payment processing company after that whole thing in November happened I like literally I was like I'm walking away for a little bit guys, right and What I found was shocking the numbers went up the

the employees seem to be in better moods whenever I would pop in on calls and things like that. And I actually got a message from one of my support team guys, his is Clyde. I love this guy to death. Clyde is a tough pill to swallow when you get to know him, when you first get to know him. He's a little bit older, he's set in his ways, he's an amazing human though. He sent me a message and he was like, hey, are you coming back? And I was like, well, you know, I will be in some capacity and

you know, and it's just, and he was like, you listen, do not take this the wrong way, but like we're doing okay without you type deal. Right. And, and I realized at that point that I was the bottleneck prohibiting, you know, and that's one of the reasons why I decided to sell a company was I realized that I had taken it as far as I, as absolutely as far as I could. And I owed it to my clients. I owed it to my team. I owed it to my family. I owed it to everybody in my life to pass the torch.

to somebody who's gonna be able to take that and take it exponentially. But again, going back to the guilt, that's just, I feel like that some people feel bad if they're not, if they don't have anything to do and sometimes not having anything to do is a good idea or is okay because you just did so much, right? You said you were doing all that stuff for months and all of a sudden now, it's ebbs and flows and it's, sometimes you're working 80, 90 hours a week, right? Sometimes.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (30:26.062) you work in 10. It's you know it work life balance is cliche but it's it's kind of true as

Bennett Maxwell (30:32.199) Yes. Anyways, great feedback on that. That's something that I continue. I'm like, I'm not going to go back to, I don't know, maybe three years ago when I exited solar and came into Dirty Dough, I'm like, I'm doing the 40 hours a week, but I allowed myself to do sprints. It's like, hey, babe, we're not making payroll and I need to go find a few hundred grand within a month. So I'm going to be on a sprint and communicating that with the family. But I feel like I've done a decent job. But now it's like, okay,

But who the hell says 40 is, you why not 20? Why not 20? Who the hell's, who's making up this shit and why am I following it? You know? And so now that's the next step. And I'm like, how to not only do it, but feel good doing it. And it's a battle. But I've leaned more into health with the extra time doing red light crap and ice baths and the saunas and the gym and whatever. do all sorts of weird shit. And I love it because I'm like, I'm actually focusing

Chris Kille @notchriskille (31:04.618) set that rule.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (31:22.763) You look great, man.

Bennett Maxwell (31:31.271) me as an individual, and I do think it gives me higher energy and all of that to show up by working less. And it's like, I can clearly see working 30 hours non -stressed, healthy, with energy is way more efficient than working 60 hours just responding instantly to everybody's needs and making split decisions. But it's still like, okay, I need to keep reminding myself to do that. I have the first question that I usually ask people and I haven't asked you yet,

Chris Kille @notchriskille (31:59.726) Okay, cool. Let's get started.

Bennett Maxwell (32:00.647) Let's get started. 18 years of payment processing, now you're in staffing. What's the goal? What's the definition of success? What's the vision? are you trying to create? When is enough enough? Not in a negative context. I just want to get your, get your, yeah, feedback on

Chris Kille @notchriskille (32:21.826) Yeah, so this is actually something that I've been working on a lot lately. Talking with one of my mentors and he was, know, to answer the when is enough enough, never, right? In my opinion, but it all depends on what it is that you're chasing, right? I feel like as entrepreneurs and anybody who's highly productive in society, the minute you stop is the minute bad shit starts happening. So you should always be chasing, you know, that next big thing. For me, for a long time, it was money, okay? And it was money and I'm still, don't get me wrong, I'm still very driven by money.

But now I'm at the point where fortunately I don't have to worry about it as much. I'm comfortable now. Where yes, it is still a priority for me, but I've now shifted my goal to helping others. you know, if, when I say that, I don't mean like the cliche, you know, Suzanne Summers, you know, type of way. It's I want to bring other people to financial freedom, right? And when I say other people, I mean my clients, I mean my customers, I mean my employees specifically.

What's really cool about the Philippines is it's easy to make an impact over there. Easier here, easier there than it is here. Like, so for instance, one of my video editors, he reached out to me and he said, hey, Chris, I'd wanted to share, my fiance and I were able to remodel our house because of the salary that we receive here. We pay above market value over there and that's how we attract and retain the best.

But that little bit extra money that, know, and to me it's nothing, right? It's, know, for us over here is not a lot, but to be able to impact his life and be able to, know, something is crazy is as impactful as remodeling their house. We were able to, you know, to, it's just the list goes on in terms of, so my goal now is to impact a thousand people. That's the number that I'm starting at right now in the Philippines and bring them to financial freedom.

And that's something that I'm chasing right now. We're going to get there. We're going to do it sooner than we think.

Bennett Maxwell (34:23.783) Awesome. Part of the Apex mastermind that I was a part of with you, actually one of the reasons I left too was because I lost like what I saw was one of the most valuable assets. I had Mike Claudio as a one -on -one business coach and I'm like, I'm like, why do need a business coach? And then I'm like, dude, I don't know. It's cause I don't know anything. I don't know that I know nothing, you know? One of the first things that he had me do is more focus on mission and vision and all of that, which is what I'm hearing

It always, not always, it mostly starts with money. Like I'm just motivated by money, but I think we fail to go to the next step. And even if you go to, it's like, okay, well, why do I want money? Because I want to be financially secure. But what does that mean? Like, what do you want to feel though? Because that's what it is, right? We just want to feel a certain way most of the time or every day, whatever. It is, always comes down to how we feel, I think. So even like helping others, that's kind

you know, why I want money and I need a business to be profitable so I can achieve the helping others. And then it's, okay, but why do you want to help others? You know, is it, I don't need to help others, there's nothing I'm trying to fulfill in myself, I just want to do it because I'm passionate about it, or I do think you always need to ask yourself, like, but why do I feel like I have to be supporting people? You know? Because I did that with employees, like we got up to 200 employees pretty quick and I'm like, man, all these people need me. Not only them, all their families

What are they gonna do without great grand Bennett? And it's like, they don't need you. They survived this long without you. Like, where's that all freaking coming from? Anyways, back to, I'm gonna have to edit that out because I'm like reading and anyway, back to the Mike Claudio and the real reasons. Can you speak to that a little bit? Like, how do you take somebody that's like, okay, my goal is to make a million dollars or my goals, they have a financial goal. How do you take that and change it

a goal that's more long lasting, more that they have more passion? How did you get from money to helping others?

Chris Kille @notchriskille (36:33.602) I realized, getting from money to helping others, I realized that when I was not in a position where I was worried about keeping the lights on, right? Where, you know, where then I was able to, I was performing at my best, right? know, look at marriages, right? A lot of marriages end because of money, right? I think that's like the number one reason is they just fighting about money. Fortunately, I was never in that situation, but you know, it's money

It's if they if you say it's not about it is it's it's at the core of everything and you need men and you know at the end of the day Money solves problems, right? There is no such thing as a problem if you have enough money and that's what you know Anybody who's really really really rich will tell you that right? Does that mean that their lives are perfect? Absolutely not I know some rich people some really fucked up lives, but it doesn't solve everything but it's it's a resource that you can use to it's a tool essentially, right and the more tools you have that you know, anyway, so

You know, I think for me going from, just want to make a lot of money to, you know, I, to now I want to help people make money. I remember how fulfilling it was whenever I got my, you know, my first check, you know, my, my first milestone, whenever I reached it, we'll say that. And, and, and I remember how I felt and I wanted, I now want others to feel that way because now all of a sudden I don't have to worry about, okay, now we can.

I'm not saying that anybody should like take their foot off the gas or anything like that, but life is different when you're not paycheck to paycheck. I mean, I don't think there's anybody that's listening to this or watching this that can disagree with me like that. When you are living paycheck to paycheck, it is a different life than when you're not. stress is it just, so anyway, that's my goal is to take people from that and then a couple steps beyond it because true freedom, right? It's not based on money, but money.

is able to buy you the time and the resources to get

Bennett Maxwell (38:33.511) That was my experience as well. Like, do you focus on the money or do you focus on the deeper goal? Because again, I do still believe that, well, the money is so you can feel a certain way. Can you feel that certain way without that dollar amount of money? Probably, and you can work on that. But it is, you know, I get this as well. like, okay, well, it's easy to say that it's not about the money when you got money. And I honestly have never been in that situation. I was lucky that I served a Mormon mission. I learned how to knock doors and take rejection. I came home and

started making six figures a summer, like in four or five months as a college dude. So I've never had that. And it is, I don't know, makes me, I'm like, man, I'm lacking that sympathy or empathy of that because how do you even get out of that survival mode of paycheck to paycheck unless you have the money? So if I'm hearing you, I mean, I guess that the journey was kind of the same of like, okay, it is easy to say money's not needed when you have it. And it kind of is required, at least in our journey.

to take that next step. Like, okay, I got the money, it wasn't, it's good, I feel secure, it wasn't as fulfilling as I thought, and the fulfillment didn't last as long as I thought, so now I'm gonna shoot for a deeper goal. But anyways, I appreciate that viewpoint and that honesty, and I do think that is, that doesn't get conveyed too much of like, okay, money's not important, but yes, I had to do it before I realized it wasn't important, you know? So.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (39:48.6) That's

Bennett Maxwell (40:02.983) Chris, it's been awesome to have you on the show. I really appreciate it. I'm gonna ask a question, a new question, because I'm getting all into philosophies and things like this, and you could tell me it's a stupid question. Do you have a life philosophy that you can share with us that's helped you in any way, whether it's business, personal life, through a divorce, through stopping drinking? What's a life philosophy that you can fall back

Chris Kille @notchriskille (40:31.096) So this has been something actually that I have learned within the last year as well. I've done a lot of self -development in the past year. And for me, just slowing down and not reacting. Anybody who knows me knows I'm very passionate about things. And passion is really dangerous at times because it can go into elation. It can also go into fucking rage, right?

What I've learned is to, for me, I do better when if something happens, first I ask myself, is this a dumpster fire or is this a kitchen fire? And then I pause before I say anything. And it wasn't pointed out to me until recently that I used to hate the word rage. And because I was like, when you picture rage, you think of

somebody who's like completely lost control and just a maniac, right? Like the Hulk running around smash and stuff. Well, it turns out it's that that's like an extreme version of it. But, you know, looking deeper into it, I was a like, wasn't screaming at people or anything like that. But I realized that whenever I would react, I get real big, like in a presence way, my voice changes and my body language changes. And I, I got very, very aggressive. And I didn't realize that that other people saw it too.

And so that was kind of an eye -opening moment because it was really embarrassing whenever I finally realized that, shit, this is how I've been reacting all of these years. so for me to be able to slow things down and take a step back and again, not react immediately, and I don't do it all the time. I'm not perfect with it, but I've noticed that things that used to would just ruin my day and just set me back.

right? If you slow down and you just kind of roll with the punches they're not they're actually not that bad so for me slowing

Bennett Maxwell (42:35.887) Everything. Yeah. You're not, you're not dead. I think it comes. This is what I've been focused on lot. When I say I've been spending more time on my health and it's geeking out and doing peptides and whatever I can elevate my, my mood. And anyways, but a lot of what I've been focusing on is just the nervous system, parasympathetic versus sympathetic and how you're, what state your body is in. Like is your parasympathetic or your sympathetic sympathetic is the fight and flight. the parasympathetic is the rest and relaxation.

Your vagus nerve controls your parasympathetic nervous system. most of the nerve endings are right here. So like, I don't know, an hour ago, I'm getting in the car and I'm walking through my garage and I see my ice bath and I'm just not, I'm kind of feeling sluggish. And I close the garage door, because I'm not going to go upstairs and get a swimsuit on. So I just take off my clothes, jump in the ice bath, literally for one minute, just one minute, get back dry.

I mean, and so maybe two minutes, including drying and putting back my clothes, then I'm back in my car. Everything was changed. And I make sure to, fill it up right now and it goes to right here. And it's so much more cold going from right here to here. But it's because I read that if you stimulate this, relaxes you. And then I bought this thing that goes around my neck and it stimulate you. You put it on for 10 minutes a day. And then anyways, and it's like, but you can actually measure the results. How do you measure the results where your HRV rates, which is the heart rate variability, which I measure on my ring and

Watch every single night for the last four years and I've seen it increase just maybe in I don't know four months of use Having HRV rates mid 50s low 60s to high 60s low 70s. I mean It's working. It's working. It's just little tiny

Chris Kille @notchriskille (44:17.934) That's insane. I actually looked at mine today. I have an eight sleep, like the mattress thingy that goes on top is incredible, but it does HRV as well. And mine has been like 30 to actually, I'm pulling up here right now. Last night was 40 and my typical range is 32 to 39. And I actually didn't know what HRV was until this morning. actually, like literally whenever I was sitting outside the gym, I Googled it and I was like, all right, we got to work on that. So you say right in here, that'll, that can help

Bennett Maxwell (44:47.303) It's this, so I'll send you the link. It's like 300 bucks. Anyways, yeah, just sending shockwaves. But between that and stimulating with ice bath, do some, anyways. I'm getting into what you're saying. Like when you're saying rage, but it's not like Hulk rage, I interpret that in my mind, because of my mindset right now is, you're in the sympathetic nervous system. You need to change that. And doing that with my kids has been incredible. Watching a five -year -old.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (44:50.359) Okay, all

Chris Kille @notchriskille (44:59.694) I love that.

Bennett Maxwell (45:15.759) or a three -year -old throw a fit and say, hey, do you want to, like, this is the question I ask, and they're so curious because they're kids, know, do you want to know what's happening right now? Like, as they're screaming, and then they're like stopping, like, yeah, and they're like, your body is reacting, it feels like it's not safe. Do you want to know how to calm it down? Yes. Breathe like this. This is me and my daughter last night because she couldn't go to sleep, my five -year -old. The physiological side, you breathe in through your nose, like full inhale, half a second pause, then breathe a little bit more, then a long exhale through.

her slips like you're blowing through a straw and make sure you fully exhale.

Bennett Maxwell (45:53.083) You do that, and before the Apple Watch, I had a Fitbit, and it has this thing that you can measure two minutes, your EDA response, I don't know. I measured it maybe six times in a row. You put your hand on your watch, because it measures the moisture in your hand, anyways, and it tells you what your heart rate is and your HRV rate is before and after the two minutes. And I kid you not, because I posted on social media, could go like six in a row. Within two minutes, I was able to drop my heart rates per minute,

20 beats per minute less or more within two minutes. Just doing that breath and that's it. And it's like, and that's also what I do to go to sleep because a lot of times it's hard to go to sleep when your mind just freaking, I got all these problems to solve, you And it's like, no, get into the parasympathetic. that's, anyways, that's another one. I'm sorry, I started going off on the nervous system. But I appreciate the response and the philosophy and the take it slow because man, I think that is such good advice.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (46:42.466) No, I love it. That's great. Nerding out.

Bennett Maxwell (46:51.909) just slow down, no matter what your body, even though it is reacting in fight or flight, like a lion came at you, it's really just because one of your customers told you you're worthless and you scammed them or what, like just imagine the worst thing. You're not unsafe, you're still safe, but your body reacts as if a lion's chasing you. Like you're releasing the same adrenaline and the same cortisol levels and it's freaking crazy. It's like, okay, how do we train our bodies not to react like that?

There's my spill on the nervous system. I'm such a geek, dude. I'm an idiot, dude. I just Google stuff. I don't know if any of that's true, but Google said it was. Chris, I really appreciate you sharing that. What a journey. And let me comment real quick on like you saying go slow. Anybody who's listening to this podcast, just think about, reflect right now on how Chris answered all the questions.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (47:26.926) didn't realize I was going to learn that today. Thank

Bennett Maxwell (47:51.035) There was no, there's not me trying to cut you off, which I always do and I apologize. You're not like that. You are slow. You are methodical in your thought and I can tell a difference. So keep it up, man. It's awesome.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (48:03.926) I appreciate

Bennett Maxwell (48:05.361) Well, Chris, we will include the link to your offer. Madison, my assistant is going to reach out and hit you up with action because I want that as well to compare it with what we're doing. And I know we could improve it by a hundred percent by doing whatever the hell you're doing just from this conversation. So I really appreciate that. And same thing with all the social media as well. We'll include all of that. So thank you, Chris.

Chris Kille @notchriskille (48:25.934) Awesome. Thanks, dude. Appreciate you.