Unleashing Your Inner Leader: A Conversation with Yigal Adato

Welcome to the "Chasing Financial Freedom" podcast with Ryan DeMent, the show that helps you achieve financial freedom and live the life of your dreams. In this week's episode, Ryan sits down with Yigal Adato, a seasoned entrepreneur and leadership expert, to discuss how business owners can implement battle-tested leadership skills into their business and life to make more money, have less stress, and live that epic life.

As the founder of the "Unlock the Leader" program, Yigal has helped business owners across the country achieve their goals and reach new heights of success.

Join Ryan and Yigal as they delve deep into leadership and entrepreneurship, providing listeners with valuable insights and actionable strategies for achieving financial freedom and living on your terms. Whether you're a seasoned business owner or just starting, this episode is a must-listen.

Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform to stay up-to-date with the latest episodes and help us reach more listeners like you!

Transcript

Unleashing Your Inner Leader: A Conversation with Yigal Adato

[00:00:00] Ryan: Hey guys, Ryan DeMent from Chasing Financial Freedom Podcast. I hope you guys are having a great day today on the podcast, we have Yigal Adato, and Yigal is helping business owners across the country implement battle tested leadership skills into their business and life so they can make more money, have less stress, and live that epic life.

Sir, welcome into the show. Thanks for coming on. 

[00:00:25] Yigal: Thank you so much for having me. Honored to. 

[00:00:27] Ryan: Cool. So before we we jump into everything, let's just talk about you as a human being and what you have going on, and then we'll go down some rabbit. . 

[00:00:36] Yigal: Sure. I am a husband to my wife Sharon. I have three amazing daughters as well.

And one thing that a lot of people don't know about me is that I used to be a rockstar. So opening up Woodstock 99 was the first band to play Woodstock 99 and was a musician all my life and then got into business and sold my prior business. And now I love, as you said, coaching and consulting business owners.

Not just so that they make more money, but so that they're present with their. 

[00:01:05] Ryan: That is awesome because we all struggle with that. And I know I do on a daily basis. But the other thing is when you're going after your passion, they always say it, it's not work. But if you're not present in all aspects of your life, how good is that passion if you're not there for your family and loved ones?

So we've got a lot of talk about that's really cool. Let's get right into it. You're coaching, helping business, so businesses, so let's talk about that ideal client that you're helping. What does that individual client look like? 

[00:01:32] Yigal: Yeah, usually it's a small business owner.

They might have a team of 10 plus people, sometimes even less. But I like to work with the owner who wants to be able to lead a team because in my. It's if you want, have that financial freedom as you speak about, if you want to have that time with your family to be present, you have to be able, an incredibly engaged team to be able to do the work that needs to be done so that you can go home at a, at an hour that is right for the family.

So you can go exercise that you can go on vacation. So I love working with business owners who are team minded and want to grow, but they know that they can't do it all. 

[00:02:14] Ryan: and we all think we can do it all. We're not Superman. So there, that's a problem. Is there a type of industry that you typically focus in on or is it just all small businesses?

[00:02:24] Yigal: I'm a big fan of what I call a customer facing, so retail, brick and mortar service based. It's just what I know. I used to own a chain of pawn shops and I love the interaction between. Customer and team member and what it takes to lead that. And so I'm not really into the IT or software, any of that type of things.

I love working with people who actually have to work with humans coming in and out of their business. 

[00:02:54] Ryan: I gotta ask, what got you out of the Paw Shop business? 

[00:02:56] Yigal: It's funny I was doing it for 17 years. We did very well. My brother was my partner and at some point we just the culture wasn't working out well.

The team wasn't as happy and as engaged as we wanted them to be, and so I grew up, Leading in a youth movement for many years. So I asked my brother, I said, Hey bro, do you mind if I implement some of this leadership stuff that I've learned over the years into our business? His answer was, I don't care as long as you don't mess with my sales.

Don't . Don't let the profit go down, do whatever you wanna do. And I started coaching the managers and the supervisors and just realized how much I loved doing that as opposed to DA the day-to. Of operating my business. And so about a year and a half later, walked up to my brother and said, bro, I love you.

It's time for me to go. He actually said, I've been waiting for a year for you to say it to me. So we parted ways as amicably as possible, and then I started my journey down coaching and consulting. 

[00:03:55] Ryan: That's cool that you guys could do that and you move forward and you're going after your passion. So what can, let's just, let's dive into it as business owners, what can we do?

to make sure that we're present in all aspects of our lives and be able to improve our business too. 

[00:04:10] Yigal: Yeah, so there's three things I always teach from the get-go. It's clarity, courage, and commitment. We call it waking up the leader. And so clarity. Many years ago when my wife sat me down, I was about seven months into my marriage, new Wes went on the honeymoon, came home, bought a house, nice car, did the whole thing.

She basically sat me down in city gall. I didn't get married to be. , you're working tons of hours. We're not intimate with each other. We're not having conversations. I don't know what you need to do, but go figure this out. And Ryan, she was a hundred percent I was 40 pounds overweight. I was working 14 hours a day.

I was coming home and sleeping on the couch, and we didn't really have that life that she wanted or that I. And I actually grew up in a, in an environment where the men in my life, that's how they worked 14 hours a day, six, seven days a week, they were overweight. They weren't really present.

And so I knew I had to do something about it. And the first thing was getting that clarity. It's what am I lying to myself about? And I realized that I was lying about my health. I was lying about my business, how well I was leading it. I was lying about my marriage. That I was happy that my wife was happy, and so I had to get clear on what exactly I wanted.

And I wrote those things down. Had a conversation with my wife and said, she said, great, my wife is better, by the way, one of my best coaches. And she goes what are you gonna do to get there? And the biggest thing, it's really easy to write stuff down. It's really pretty goals, all that stuff. I just knew I had to take extreme courageous action.

And so I started to take courageous action, started going to the gym. , I started paying for a trainer. I've never done that. I lost 30 pounds within four months. I started working on myself, so reading books on marriage going to therapy, how do I get my marriage into the place I actually want it, and where my wife and I are both happy.

And then I had to commit into the process. So if you do those three things, and it's way easier than it sounds because most of the time business owners, they don. Actually answer the question, what do you want? I've had people on live events, I've had them on Zoom calls and I ask, write down five things that you want and I'll get blank stares.

I wanna make more money. Put the money aside. What do you want? Because so many, for so long, we've chased the growing the business. That we've forgotten what we actually want 

[00:06:34] Ryan: for our. It's it's so true because when you start growing the business, you start losing focus of why you started the business and why, and what the why behind it and the passion and I'm on that journey now, is because we're in the affordable housing slash workforce housing space.

We're starting a development and I'm like, okay. , that's great impact. We're gonna build 16 houses, put people, put families in it that are well deserving. But what else can we do? What else can we do to change lives? And so a coup, about a year and a half ago, we decided that we're gonna do a nonprofit.

And the nonprofit would be for financial literacy. And I'm like, what else can we do ? And that's where I'm at. I'm on the third step. I'm like, what's the third thing I can actually do? I don't know yet. I have that conversation with myself on a daily basis of what other things can we possibly do to impact.

and make other people's lives better. And I know what you're talking about is being present. I struggle. I do. I truly do. And I know what that is. And I think with me trying to find that why is gonna help me personally and professionally as I start going through these mo going through these steps to find it.

[00:07:38] Yigal: And I think we all struggle with it. I'm not perfect. . I get called out by my wife, by my kids. It happens because we are driven to grow a business. , and we're told to keep growing and keep hustling and keep doing that. We forget about ourselves, our families sometimes. Yes, we're doing it for them.

We're doing it for them and the legacy that we wanna build. But the truth is, if I was to ask a lot of the listeners like, what else do you want? What do you want? And I get answers like, I want more intimacy with my spouse. I want to go on vacation more. Great. So how do we get there? A lot of times we don't tell ourselves the truth, and that's the biggest issue is that we lie to ourselves so much.

How many times do you ask your friends, Hey man, how's everything going? How everything's going? Great. Then you're a few beers in and he is like crying, things are good. My wife and this. I'm like, what happened? Everything's great. , right? Like, where did that go? Yeah. So we lied to ourselves so much.

What I've seen in my Unlock the Leader program is if you don't truly unlock what you want, what's actually happening, then you lead with baggage and leading with baggage is misleading. You can't be a leader in your family community, being a parent, whatever that is. If you've got baggage sitting there not being worked on, 

[00:08:53] Ryan: For sure.

And then it affects all aspects of your life. And one of those things that you just talked about, and I truly believe it, is if you can't be honest with yourself, how are you gonna be honest with anybody else in what you're actually doing? And until you have that, and excuse my language, it's not bad.

It's just I, you have to have a company of Jesus meeting. You really have to be honest with yourself and with God or whoever you believe in and say, , I'm unhappy and here's what I wanna do in my life. How do I get there? And then you start peeling that layer of that onion back. But and I gotta ask this, I'm guessing not a lot of.

Business owners or small business owner entrepreneurs have that problem. They have the problem of being less, or should I say, being present is their problem. They know what to do to go after it, but I think they're just not present. Am I right or am I off on that? 

[00:09:41] Yigal: So you'd be surprised.

I've been coaching, I've probably to this point, coach 400 businesses in the last seven years, and a lot of the people think that they know what they need to. But they've never sat down to ask the question, is this what I should do? Is this gonna move the needle? Is this part of the mission statement of the company, my mission statement, my values?

And so many times they're hearing information from so many people that they forget to ask the question is that what I really want to do? Is it gonna move the needle? Maybe? Is that what I really wanna. 

[00:10:17] Ryan: Man, we're gonna go down a rabbit hole cuz this brings up a whole . It brings up a whole thing.

Cuz it ties into a dying business means that you don't have customers. It means you're not marketing. So are you really going after your core values to be able to find those customers and bring them in and then drive that business to your values? That's. . The best way I know how to describe it is I was doing the wrong thing.

I'm two time failure at entrepreneurship. I say it all the time. I had two failed businesses, a hundred thousand dollars in debt because I, it was all about the G word, greed. It was all about money. And until I found my passion, I couldn't do anything about it. Yeah. But I was driving the wrong customers into my business.

And until I find, I found out the why, the passion for. Nothing changed and I think we're on the same page when we're talking about that. I just think it goes a little bit deeper for me, is I don't wanna just have somebody come in our doors, our virtual doors cuz we don't have a physical location that doesn't match our core values and what we're trying to do, just because I want to check the box and get money.

I rather than walk away and say, sorry, not my type, not my customer, and be able to go out and get somebody. 

[00:11:24] Yigal: So let's go back to what you said. You said that a dying business is one that doesn't have customers. I'd like to go deeper. We're gonna go deep down the rabbit hole. Let's do go for it. The question is, why isn't there customers?

And sometimes it's not just the marketing, sometimes it's to have to deal with the leader themselves as to why are you not marketing the business? , what's going on? What's stopping you? Are you fighting with your spouse? Are you unhealthy? You've got baggage up here you haven't taken care of through going through therapy or whatever that is, some self-development to be able to get the customers.

I've had customers that for three years, I begged brick and mortar locations to get more Google reviews, and it was like hitting a brick wall. I'm like, listen, do you want to make more money? Yes. Why? And we just went, why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Boom. All of a sudden went from he went from 280 Google reviews to 1500, and all of us like, go, I'm not even doing anything.

Customers are coming in like Mazeltov. That's what I said congratulations. It's because you didn't deal with what's up here between your ears to be able to lead the business where it needs to go. You can push as hard as you want, but if you're not leading from within, it's not gonna work. You.

For me, leadership isn't just one more cog in the wheel that you need to learn. Leadership is an amplifier, right? When you have marketing strategy, customer service, sales, and you add leadership to that top layer, it amplifies everything so much more. . I went to give a speech to a company a couple weeks ago.

They do about 13 million. And I was talking with 10 of their leadership team. And the biggest issue was that there was no communication and they were coming in with bad attitudes because of that lack of communication. So one of the people in a department, we talk about something called leader contagion.

Leader contagion is a term I coined, which basically means the way you show up as a leader is how contag. You are, you give that off to your team. And he sat there and he started crying. He is oh my God. He's I come in here with the worst attitude every day. And I understand now why these people who work under me aren't doing their job because it's on me.

. Absolutely. So you can pay a marketing company a ton of money, and they're gonna try to get you leads. But if you're not leading the way you should. Those customers aren't gonna say, yes, your team isn't gonna service them. The marketing isn't gonna work out. The strategies, the metrics, all that's gonna fall to the wayside.

Oh, ho 

[00:13:52] Ryan: wholeheartedly agree. I just, I start at the top and I'm working my way down and going down another rabbit hole. Let's go back to something earlier you said is we're all working ourselves to death 14 hours a day and so forth. Right now we. I don't know if you wanna call it an epidemic.

I don't know what you call it. There's 12 and a half million small business owners that are baby boomers that are gonna retire, shut down their businesses, or sell them because they don't have any type of succession plan, because their children want nothing to do with the business because they saw how hard their parents worked all this time, and they're like, I don't want to be, a ball and chain to the business.

That's one of the things that I'm, I've been starting to think about is I've been introduced to a couple guys that are going out buying existing businesses and you're like, you wanna partner on some of these? You've got some great operational skills to help these businesses out, and then we can turn around and sell 'em, blah, blah, blah.

But I said, it's not about that. It's about helping that business owner, because some of 'em wanna stay on just a little bit longer. Some are like, no, I'm just done and I want to be over with. Okay, we can work with that. But the ones that wanna stay. , why not give 'em the tools? Maybe showing them the right tools to give them the work-life balance or however you wanna look at it, to be effective and not just be there to check a box, but to be that leader that you're yes, be present and be that leader.

Could they actually then maybe potentially convince their kids that they would, that business would be something for them? I don't know. That's something that intrigues me because it's I don't want to be married in my business. . But I think I can help people in that sense. When we take a look at these business, cause there's so many of them out there, and they're typically between a million and about 7 million in annual revenue, and they're about your size, they're about what you look at.

They're about 10 to 15 employees. . 

[00:15:40] Yigal: So I'll tell you a quick story. Back in the day, my first, one of my first jobs was working at my father's pawn shop. And I'll never forget it, I, I wore the shirt, I wore the nice pants. I thought he was gonna make me the manager of the store. I'm the owner's son.

Absolutely not. He made me clean the bathrooms after cleaning the bathrooms. Yeah. He said, I'm gonna give you the second most important job. Threw me in the vault right? And made me do inventory about organizing 2000 envelope. One hour, two hours and three hours passed by. And I stood up and I said, I absolutely don't want to be like you dad.

I don't wanna do this. I don't want to be like you. I don't want to be a slave to my business. And I walked out and that's when I went to go be a rockstar. I was like, I'm outta here. I'm gonna go get groupies and sing songs and and record albums and it's gonna be amazing. And you're absolutely right.

The reason why so many. Teens today or, people growing up are going to become influencers or YouTube stars is because they saw their parents who incredibly they worked their ass off. Like they really worked super hard because that's what they knew. I then realized that my father, that's what he knew because that's what his father taught him.

And they see that. They're like, that's not what I want. That's absolutely not what I want. But what I'm saying today is that you can build a. So that you, as the baby boomer, you, as the person who's gonna be in the succession plan, can run an incredible business and live a great life. I had a client of mine.

Who we took him from the sales of $50,000 a month to $500,000 a month. But the biggest thing that we did was we built a Hulk. We almost fired everybody on the team. Brought in all new team members, a new general manager. And now this guy, he goes to Cabo once a month, enjoys his family, goes to baseball games, when before he couldn't, he just couldn't do it.

So there is a way to continue the business while building an incredible team that could run it. 

[00:17:34] Ryan: It's amazing that you get a fresh set of eyes like yourself and your team in there to help businesses out, and they start thriving $50,000 a month to $500,000 a month. That is a nice, that's a nice jump. But as entrepreneurs or small business owners, we struggle with that.

So what's that battle look like? At first, I. Most I'm assuming most small business owners are reaching out to you and they're ready to go, but once you get in there and you start looking at stuff and you're digging under the hood, how much resistance are you getting during that process? So people 

[00:18:05] Yigal: call me and they're very afraid because they know I'm gonna come in and make some changes.

So there's a lot of fear of change, and one of the worst things a business owner can say is, we've always done it this way. It's the worst phrase. Anybody in business can. , right? So I come in and first we massage, like we have three steps. We unlock the leader, we unlock the team, and then we unlock the business.

And what we do is we come in and we say, okay, how are you doing as a leader? What's going on? What needs to change for you? We work on them first, then we work on the team, what needs to change in the team, and then we start working on the business. A lot of people expect miracle. And I always tell people like, I'm gonna give you a swift kick in the butt.

It's gonna happen. I have a coach I used to wrestle back in high school, and he always used to tell me, Egal, you're going to hate me when you practice, but you're gonna love me when you win. . And that's what I told my clients. You might hate this process, but the outcome, you're going to absolutely love it.

So put your head down, keep moving forward, and let's rock and roll. If you're not ready. I'm not the coach for you. It's just not.

[00:19:11] Ryan: Yeah that's a whole nother, that's a whole nother conversation we can go into. Cause I, we get those in our nonprofit when people are coming in for financial literacy that have been, they've been left behind by the system. They don't trust anybody and they want us to fix their financial situation.

It's the financial coaches and the counselors can help you, but you gotta do the work. Yeah. And it's hard. It's the same concept until you're ready to move forward. It's, it doesn't happen. in that sense. Can we share some tips, tricks? You're a business owner. You need to make change, you've gotta start from the ground up.

The top up, excuse me. What could we do as business owners to be better at managing our business and getting some, better clarity on life? 

[00:19:46] Yigal: First and foremost, my belief is that you've gotta become a better leader. That's from wherever you are at the moment. And so many people think that they're leading, but they're absolutely.

right? So you've gotta work on yourself first and foremost. You want to change your business, you've gotta change you, not your team. There's so many business owners too, but my team, and there's excuses, but the economy, but this and that. We've dealt with everything under the sun, and we've made that transformation.

So first and foremost, look at yourself honestly in the mirror and say, where am I lying to myself? Why? We talked about that? . And then the thing. Usually doesn't happen is business owners rarely sit with their teams and say, what do we need to change? In your opinion? Not in my opinion, because a lot of times business owners come in back, I watched this YouTube video, I heard this podcast.

This is what we need to do. Sit with your team and say, Hey, we have a problem. We need more clients. Where do we think that we are? Doing a great job in this company and you will hear some incredible feedback from your team if you allow them to speak. If you don't check on your leadership because they're afraid to speak and you don't want Yes, people everywhere in your company, right?

[00:21:04] Ryan: No, you want people that have different skillsets from you also. The piece that I like to work with, especially with what we're doing construction-wise, I've gone through, and I say this out loud, probably six or seven general contractors, because they didn't align with our core values. I don't want them to have the same skillsets as I do.

I want them to have core values that match us and what we're trying to do, and it took. A lot of iterations to have those core values, one published to them, but also to agree to them. But then we also check in on each other, and I have a daily conversation with our current general contractor and his team, and we talk about what we're doing, how are, how we're working, the core values.

But the other thing is how are we impacting the people that are gonna live in these houses? And that's huge for us. And that's taken three years to get. . And I know that's not, that I'm not embarrassed, but it's what it's taken. But construction is just a whole nother beast that it's like I, I knew nothing about it when I first started this business, so I had to learn from the ground up.

And I would say I, I made some pretty big mistakes, but also at the same time, those big mistakes led us to larger wins when it came. Creating a team that, people think our general contractor is part of Truves, my company, which he's not. He has his own entity. It's its own thing, but we interact with one another.

Like we're one. And that's huge. Yeah. 

[00:22:25] Yigal: Yeah. And a lot of times, businesses are being run by the same people for so many years that we don't just sit and say, Hey, are the values still aligned? What's going on? There's a fear of letting people. There's a big fear of can I find somebody else to do this?

The truth is, if you don't let that person go, they're just damaging the culture. They're damaging the business. , and you've got to be able to lead in a way that makes the changes because the business is the baby. And if you're allowing anybody to hurt the baby, then you're being a horrible parent.

You're being a horrible. , right? So the biggest thing you ask me is like what they can do is look at themselves in the mirror and say, am I truly leading this company? Am I leading? If not, get to work on your leadership. A lot of people first go Mar, like I need more marketing. I need to learn better this and better that.

The other thing, Ryan, that about 90% of the companies that we work with, we realize is that they don't know their metrics. Please, and please stop doing your books on your own. Go get a bookkeeper, an accountant, yep, and learn to read your numbers.

It's a huge mistake. 

[00:23:29] Ryan: It is. And if you are not looking at your numbers, at least on a weekly basis, you're in trouble at the end of the month. It's too late. When I first started, I was looking at our books daily. Now it's weekly. We have a bookkeeper, we have a cpa, we do all that. But I've gotta, I gotta back up just a little bit on that.

So when you're looking at a business or you're looking to partner and come in and help them, . What about if the owner is truly, or the s, the small business owner entrepreneur is the issue, but they're not willing to change. How do you f How do you fight that battle? What do you do?

I don't. You just say goodbye and 

[00:24:03] Yigal: that's it. Totally. And I'll tell you why. Yeah. Because a small business owner is supposedly paying me, right? Yeah. It's as if you go to a trainer and you walk into the gym and you start correcting what the trainer's doing. It's shut your. Listen up and do the work, and if you're not gonna be coachable, then I'm absolutely not gonna waste my time being here.

It feels horrible for the team. I feel horrible for the customers. But if you can't say, Hey, I need help. Hey I'm willing to listen, then what's the point of getting anybody a call to make that shift? 

[00:24:39] Ryan: It's that, that is the right call. Cause you just have to walk away. You don't wanna go down that rabbit hole.

But the, how do I describe it? I'll talk from my own exp my own experience and we can go from there. So one of the biggest things where I was challenged was to change, cuz I went from corporate America. I was in finances financial America, fi, finance, whatever you wanna call it. And I was running call.

So it could be collections, it could be customer service, underwriting. So at any point I had anywhere between two to 5,000 people reporting to me. Wow. . Yeah, it's a lot of people. But after a hundred it gets very, it's very simple. You put in your people in the right places and you manage that and you go out there and like you said, you're working with your people every day.

I would make a round, I would come in 30 minutes early just so I could hit my third shift and my early shift, go out, meet everybody, say hi and. . if we're not cognizant, and this is where I struggled in my first business. , I didn't translate to my business. What I was doing in corporate America didn't translate there.

So I, I basically lost everything. I only had six employees and I was into the money that I lost, the actual focus there. So I guess my first question is, the money piece is huge, but then the second piece is how do you really redirect people when it comes away from the money? Let's say they're doing quite well.

Let's say they're doing half a million dollars a year or half, half a million dollars a month. How do you redirect and say, okay, we're coming back and you as a leader, need to change and they're bought into that. I could tell you it's gonna take a while cause I was stubborn with it for a bit, 

[00:26:12] Yigal: so I don't redirect for money.

Let's be honest. Human beings want money. Business owners, that's what we're driving for. And what we create in our programs are called profit producing leaders. We're creating leaders who creating profit in their business and in their life and in different areas. . I always tell my clients, you want to make more money?

Awesome. Then let's lead. If you don't become a better leader, if you don't make the change, you're not gonna make more money or you're gonna make more money. It's just gonna take you way longer to figure this out so you, you can listen, you can lead, and we'll do this in a smaller timeframe. But I always talk about money because it's very important.

I wanna make sure that. in, in order for me to be able to come into a company and grow it, it's not just about growing the bottom line for the company. It's about can the team members get paid more, right? , can we give back more to the community? Can we donate more money? What else can we do with the profit that we bring In?

This client I told you about who went from 50 to 500,000, he upped his team's pay significantly, which allowed them to buy houses and cars and go on vacations. And for him, his goal. is that every single one of his team members owns their own home. Wow. That's cool. So we, yeah, so we were able to talk about money, but drive money into a positive.

And money's not a bad thing, right? Money's a great thing if you can lead with it. If you can do good with it, and if you can have clarity with it, you can make a lot more money and use it. 

[00:27:46] Ryan: and make, I love that there's purpose there behind that. He wants them all to have homes. That's, , that's a beautiful thing.

How does that translate into your business when you're working with another businesses that purpose and that clarity? What, I, I guess my question is how do you relate and then how do you actually work with that business on that? Let's say you come into a business that doesn't have purpose and doesn't have clarity.

How does that relate and how do. I want to say push it down the pipe, but you can't really, unless that owner actually has that ability to do that, some owners don't want to. Yeah. 

[00:28:20] Yigal: So I'll give you a great example. I have a client they're called Pop Pops and they have a Popsicle shop, right? Okay.

Sell watermelon and pist in an incredible store. And they came into me about the culture. So we started working on leadership and culture, and I always ask what's the mission? What's the purpose? And there wasn't none at the moment. It was. And so we created a mission statement, and I can't, I don't remember exactly, but part of it was, I asked the question, what do people get when they come in?

They buy a pta and they eat it. And we came up with a moment of joy, like we're giving clients a moment of joy in this crazy world. And so everything now is based on a moment of joy and We wrote a mission statement with the word PTAs in it. Like we just really created something incredible, a value system and a vision.

But now they know that, hey, it's about a moment of joy. They were malleable. They were like a piece of clay that I was allowed to work with, and they were coachable. So we said, okay, great. Now that we have that, now let's grow the business. Now let's work on more culture, more leadership. They allowed it as long as somebody allows it and is open to listen.

Great. If they're not my client, not the avatar. I wanna work with 

[00:29:36] Ryan: a, a pasta, as I say, . 

[00:29:38] Yigal: Exactly. A hundred percent . 

[00:29:41] Ryan: That's cool. I love your passion and I love your purpose in what you're actually doing to help small business owners. We all need it. We truly do. We get goggles and we get road blinders, and we're always struggling.

So can we go to the other aspect of this in the personal life of the owners? How does that play into your coaching and what do you do there? 

[00:30:00] Yigal: It's a big part. So we believe here that when you become a better leader, you get what's called the epic effect, and that's where you live. Epic, and you build epic, right?

So for me, I'm not just gonna help build your business, it's both. Just last week we had a couple who or two owners come in and we had a therapist. I'm not therapist, but I was, Hey guys, let's figure this out first before we go down The, as you call it, the rabbit hole of the business side this is not working, something's going wrong here.

So for me, it's all about having life and where does this come from? My father, who may rest in peace, he was taught to just work 14 hours a day. So he built an amazing. , 11 stores, 180 employees. Wow. Millions of dollars of revenue, but he wasn't present. On the other hand, I had my father-in-law who was extremely present with his family, but he went bankrupt and they had to shut it down his business because he didn't have that business side of it.

So success for me, truly leading for me is merging those two together. So when somebody comes work and works with me, there's no way we're just gonna separate and compartmentalize, just work and personal. It's both. If you have an epic relationship, great. How do we work on your health? How do we work on your mindset?

How do we work on different areas? If you have an incredible business, there's no such thing. There's always problems that are going on, but we always merge the two because for me, that's what leadership is. It's not just in one area. It's on in all aspects of your life. 

[00:31:26] Ryan: I love it. Cuz I can think of a million things that I could do better and we just have to continue to improve.

But the present is being present is big. It's, I don't know how to describe that other than the, it is you're bringing out a bunch of stuff and I'm thinking in my head, oh my God, I gotta work on this. I gotta work on that. So it's I gotta sit down after this and start writing some stuff out.

The aspect of business and being able to effectively manage and be able to be present. While you're doing that, what can we do as leaders? And this will be, this is another two-part question. What can we do as leaders to. Help facilitate that one, but two, be engaged with our employees. So it actually, I call it trickle down cuz it truly is, like you said earlier, if you're present and you're doing these things and you're man and you're working with your team and being that leader, everything changes and people's attitudes change.

What are some things that we can actually. . 

[00:32:20] Yigal: So first is that you have to build a team as quick as possible. People think I'm gonna make money and then build a team. It's the opposite. You build the team to make money. Okay. , right? So for me it's build a team as quick as possible. What does that mean? Hey, go outsource your bookkeeping.

There's bookkeepers that charge two 50 bucks a month. Go outsource that. You're a small business. Go get HR off your mind here in California, HR is a monster. It's insanity. Yeah, get that off your plate. You don't need that on your plate, right? So for me, it's build a team as quickly as possible so that you can delegate and have the time to go.

And be present. Now, the other thing is boundaries. So many business owners, they don't build boundaries with their clients. They're filled in calls at 6:00 AM, 8:00 PM at all hours of the day, checking emails every single moment, checking their Facebook. If magically you're gonna open Facebook and money's gonna fall out of your iPhone.

And I'm saying this because I went through that. So lemme check my Instagram, lemme check my Facebook, lemme check my email because if I don't answer back within 30 seconds, I'm gonna lose a hundred thousand dollars. It's not true. It's not gonna happen. You've gotta build boundaries in order to be able to build a business that can grow.

The other thing is build it now. from now you have to lead wherever you are in your a solopreneur, two team members. Fif now is the moment to make the change, not later, because later you're gonna get way too busy, way too overwhelmed, and it's just gonna come crashing down. 

[00:33:53] Ryan: How is the economy, and I know we don't say that we're in a recession, but we've got some problems going on in the economy.

How is that affecting small business owners that you're working with today? 

[00:34:04] Yigal: It is a, so there is a recession. I'll tell you why. My family owns Pawn Shops and the moment that the Pawn shop loan balance grows significantly , where you have people not just getting a hundred dollars loan, but a 5,000, 10,000, 50,000, a hundred thousand dollars.

problems are starting to occur. We started in 2007 before the meltdown, before everything happened, my brother and I looked at each other man, these business owners are walking in needing 25 k to make payroll. know, People are walking 5,000 to pay mortgage. Like it's getting, so that's it's happening.

The biggest thing a small business owner needs to realize is that you cannot do business the same way that you did in order to thrive during this. What does that mean? You've got to learn leadership. You've gotta be able to, at an incredible level. Marketing, customer service, strategy, metrics, all those things I talk about.

I've got a new book coming out like the next 30 days that talk about those four key things. Cool. But you've got to be able to make the time to learn to do business differently. Overserve your client market, for example, for the brick and mortar. Businesses and the services businesses, your Google reviews are key.

You have to go from wherever you are, 10 exit 50, extra Google reviews, because people want social proof. And if you don't have social proof, it doesn't work. As I say that, I can overwhelm a lot of people, so people need to take a deep breath. I'll take it with you.

Sit down with a piece of paper and write. Scale of one to 10, how is the leadership and the culture of my business? Scale of one to 10, how is my marketing scale of one to 10? How's my strategy, finance, goals, KPIs, scale of one to 10, my customer service? Because if you're not honest with yourself in the beginning, you're not gonna wanna make any changes to where you're going.

[00:35:56] Ryan: Very powerful. That's, those are all spot on. So I, wow. Cool. I'm really excited that you shared all this. We're coming up to the top here. We're gonna come to the end of the episode, but before we do that, how could small business owners and entrepreneurs get ahold of you?

[00:36:11] Yigal: Yeah, so I'm on social at iga Lado, almost everywhere. You won't find another, but for your crew, if you go to unlock the leader.com under resources, we have leadership assessments and we also have an ebook that's called the Unlock the Leader ebook that they can take, read and be like, whoa, I need this, I need that.

So if you go to unlock the leader.com, it's the best place. . 

[00:36:35] Ryan: And another question, and I think you answered earlier, but I just wanna refresh it. You'll work with pretty much any type of small business. 

[00:36:42] Yigal: Yeah. So I'm very well versed in the, as I said, brick and mortar retail, service-based business. If you're a software company, if you're building an app if you're trying to build something, if you're an e store, like an e-commerce store, not really my cup of tea.

Okay. I like people who see other people. Okay. That's really my, my, that's where my 

[00:37:00] Ryan: ninja skills. Okay. Customer facing. So yeah. Cool. Awesome sir. Thank you for being on the show. It has been awesome to talk to you and you have shed a lot of light that now I've gotta go back and sit down and write some stuff out cuz I, I've got a lot of work to do for myself.

My pleasure, 

[00:37:18] Yigal: once again, honored to be here. It's always a privilege to be on a podcast where people are listening and you're hosting and so I don't take that lightly, 

[00:37:26] Ryan: okay. Thank you sir.