Why More Customers Might Be Killing Your Business (The 80/20 Rule Explained) | Greg Heinemann

Introduction – 0:00

Charles Eide: the following 12 months after we made that change, 

Greg Heineman: we almost tripled EBITDA without any meaningful change in revenue. This really does work. You just have to have the courage to 

Charles Eide: implement. Coming up this week, a good friend and mentor of mine, Greg Heinemann. Greg has done some incredible things, including teaching me about the 80 20 principle and how it can change your life.

Greg Heineman: When I came to the business, I knew we were struggling to grow organically and you sort the customer’s biggest, a littlest, and you separate them into quartiles. The top quartile of customers was about 89% of revenue. The next quartile was 7% of revenue, X quartile 3%, and the bottom quartile just 1% of revenue.

But the indirect and sg and a was track 20. Percent each. You know, we call it weed the garden. You look at the garden and you’re like, yo, you’ve got some good plants here, tomatoes and carrots, but what are all these weeds? And they’re like, no, no, we grow them all. It’s taking resources. Your tomatoes are smaller.

Are you going to eat that weed? No. So you gotta get it out of there. Everything is in that first quartile, like that’s the fort. That is the business. And these littler accounts are gonna keep you away from better [00:01:00] serving, better understanding those top accounts. 

Charles Eide: If someone’s hearing this right now and they’re like, you might be right.

How do they figure out what to start with? 

Greg Heineman: You shouldn’t just randomly be trying to do this on your own. ’cause if you make mistakes shooting from the hip, there could be consequences. So I would advise.

Chess & Strategic Thinking – 1:20

Charles Eide: Why don’t we just start with some chess? 

Greg Heineman: Alright. 

Charles Eide: All right. What has chess taught you about business? 

Greg Heineman: I think the core skill that chess teaches is you have to think ahead. Like, if I do this, what’s he going to do? And then if he does that, then what are my options? Mm-hmm. And if I do each of these options, what could he do in response?

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: And then if he does that, then what do I do in response to that? And if you run like everything in life that way, you almost develop this active radar of you’re always scanning for like threats and opportunities and trying to figure out how to kind of best capitalize on them. So it’s rare that something comes at you.

You didn’t anticipate 

Charles Eide: I’m [00:02:00] getting blocked in here.

Shit. Wait. That’s checkmate. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: Ah. Granted it took longer than I thought. That’s true. When we traded Queens early, that was gonna be 

Greg Heineman: a little longer game. 

Charles Eide: Nice game. Big game. Nice game. All right, Greg Heinemann, welcome to Clear for Takeoff. 

Greg Heineman: Thanks man. 

Charles Eide: Thanks for being here. 

Greg Heineman: You bet, buddy. 

Charles Eide: You came all the way up from Tennessee.

Greg Heineman: I did, 

Charles Eide: yeah. You got a whole thing going on down there. We can talk about that later, but I want to dive right in. 

Greg Heineman: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: You have a really interesting story ’cause you started out as like A-C-F-O-C-R-O, saw the writing on the wall and did something really unique a lot of people don’t do. 

Greg Heineman: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: Can you tell me that 

Greg’s Origin Story – 2:46

Charles Eide: story?

Greg Heineman: Sure. You want how, how far back you want me to go? 

Charles Eide: Well, you know, maybe where you started as being gifted and what you’re good at, and then, 

Greg Heineman: alright, let’s start with this. I actually started in school. I thought [00:03:00] I wanted to be a doctor. Right. And uh, you know, it was a job that people with ability tended to do.

They tell you it pays really well. I kind of always performed well in high pressure situations, so I thought, you know, maybe do like the ER thing or maybe serve the military in the form of like the guys that really get, get hurt on the battlefield and you gotta stabilize ’em before you get ’em to Germany or wherever to put ’em together.

I thought that would be like a rewarding career, a lucrative career, and I thought I’d be good at it, but, uh. Uh, freshman semester I run the math right. And I literally spreadsheeted out what the career would look like over the long haul. And, uh, it didn’t look very lucrative, so I thought I must have made an error with my math.

Right. 

Charles Eide: So hold on before you keep going math. How early in your life did you realize you were gifted at math? 

Greg Heineman: I mean, right away, like in school it was always one of the stronger subjects, but I think, I think there’s a difference between just being good in the classroom and having like a [00:04:00] filter in your mind that every decision runs through what’s the mathematical implication of this?

Charles Eide: Hmm. 

Greg Heineman: Just automatically. And 

Charles Eide: then you also knew you wanted to do well financially. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. I mean, if you’re gonna work, you might as well make money. Right, 

Charles Eide: right. Okay. Sorry to interrupt, but I just, I thought that was interesting. You started out being really good at math and you were driven to, to have.

Financial success, which in your freshman year changed the way you looked at things? 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. I mean, you, you can’t make a good decision divorced from the math, right? So part of, to me, the natural decision making process is the job looked good. I thought I’d be passionate about it and I thought he’d be good at it.

Charles Eide: Mm-hmm. But 

Greg Heineman: I still had to figure out, well, what’s the math look like? And you know, if you talk to most parents, if you talk to most people in society and say like, is a doctor a good profession? People say, yeah, right. So I kinda went into it pre-programmed with this is a good deal, but I still had to vet it for myself.

So you start doing the math, and again, I thought I had like an error in my math. I took it to my advisor. Yeah. I mean, ’cause it didn’t [00:05:00] look very lucrative to me. So I took it to my advisor and I expected that he would find a hole in my math. 

Charles Eide: Oh. So it’d be like, what am I missing 

Greg Heineman: here? Yeah. Like, I thought I did something wrong.

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: Right. And I mean, I spent a ton of time and I couldn’t find the air, but I, I mean, it’s such a good profession. Everybody aspires to do something like this. Right? How 

Charles Eide: noble? 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. So I thought I made a mistake in my math and I just can’t find it. So I’ll take it to the college professor because like he’s smarter than me.

He’ll figure this out, right? And so I like presented all this math and I’m expecting him to get into the details and he just leans back and he says, is this how you see the world? And I’m like, 

Charles Eide: what? What do you mean? 

Greg Heineman: And he’s like, do you use like math and logic and reason to make a decision? I’m like, well, how else would you make a decision?

And he not 

Charles Eide: emotions. 

Greg Heineman: It’s not how I was programmed to work. Right. So when he. Asked that question, you know, he, he said and gave me probably some of the best advice in my life, you know, maybe you should [00:06:00] consider business. He said, A lot of people that go into medicine, they get into it ’cause they wanna help people.

They don’t worry about the math. Right. And, uh, I switched my major. 

Charles Eide: Really? So you were like, this is not the whole equation for me. I want more than what this can do. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. I mean, what, what it looked like to me is that you could work till you’re 60 and retire. Well, um, I’m not against working, but it just didn’t seem like it came fast enough.

Quick enough. And part of it was, you know, you, you don’t really get in the game till you’re in your mid thirties, right. By the time you finish all the school and then you got a out in the debt. You know, I didn’t come for money so. You know, I, I would’ve had to take a little bit of debt there and, and then it takes a long time to pay that off.

Yeah. Right. And I even, I guess in college I understood that you had to look at the tax implications and you’re earning ordinary income, so taxes are high. Yeah. A after tax, after payments, you know, the, the, the take home income that you could do something with wasn’t that substantial. 

Charles Eide: Mm. 

Greg Heineman: And so I changed the [00:07:00] business and, uh, as I started looking at business, it became pretty clear that the money was made by being an entrepreneur.

Charles Eide: Mm. 

Greg Heineman: Right. I didn’t go to Harvard. I wasn’t gonna go to Wall Street and fleece, you know, the world. So, you know, you really make the money through entrepreneurial investment problem. You know, I didn’t come from money and I really wasn’t a guy that starts something out of his garage. You know, I used to say, I don’t rub two sticks together and make fire, gimme a little fire and I’ll make a big fire.

Charles Eide: Hmm. 

Greg Heineman: Right. My mom used to say, people are your tools. Right. Which is kind of a. A less sensitive way to say it than I’d say, say it now. But I’d just say I work really well with people, inspiring them, encouraging them, pushing them, right. Creating vision that they can buy in and believe in, and really go. And then, you know, as I matured as a leader, I realized like I wasn’t the guy that was there to score the goals when I was younger.

I wanted to be the guy that was there taking the winning shot. 

Charles Eide: Mm. 

Greg Heineman: Right. But as, as I got older, especially when I became a CEO, I [00:08:00] realized like there’s over 300 people that work for me. If I can set them all up to score, like as a team, we’re gonna score way more points, right? So, you know, I guess in the end you end up being an assist guy or facilitator of other success.

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: And as long as they’re buying into your vision and doing what you’re asking, and that success is driving it in, in the direction that you set team wins. Right? 

Charles Eide: So you decided to switch to business, and in your early twenties you landed somewhere. And that kind of started something really big for you.

Greg Heineman: Yeah, so I mean, I thought I wanted to 

Charles Eide: do commercial real estate, 

Greg Heineman: um, because it was pretty easy in the industry to like get a piece of a deal and then a piece of another deal. And after you’ve got pieces of a bunch of stuff, you’d have the capital to start doing your own deals. There’s sort of a path and, uh, entrepreneurialism.

But you know, that that really wasn’t the Lord’s plan. We ended up selling a business and I worked for a family and, uh, we sold a business to another individual, and that individual [00:09:00] actually solicited me right at closing, like the ink’s not even dry on signing, you know, 10 million documents. And he is like, why don’t you quit working for them and come work for me?

And I was flattered, but at the time I wasn’t interested. And, uh, but we did develop a relationship and three years later, you know, I, I signed up to work for him and the vision that he cast was like, you know. I don’t think I’m the guy to take this business forward. And I think you’re that guy. And like one of the, the amazing, I mean like we’re talking fraction of a percent freak attributes that he had was self-awareness.

Charles Eide: Hmm. 

Greg Heineman: I mean, he was like 35, 37, something like that at the time. And he, he brings me on and I’m 25 

Charles Eide: Geez. 

Greg Heineman: And says like, you’re the future of this company. Like I’m already holding us back and you’re the one that’s gonna be, you know, the guy. Like, man, I sat in CEO round table groups with, with guys that were in their sixties and they couldn’t see that they’re the thing holding their company back.

Because here’s the reality, man, we all hit a ceiling. [00:10:00] And it’s just like there’s a spot in the business lifecycle where, where, you know, a good CEO is uniquely gifted to be, but it gets to a point where you’re not gifted for that next level. Mm-hmm. The business 

Charles Eide: outgrows 

Greg Heineman: all of us. Right. Um, and even I’d argue the guys that are running giant corporations.

Probably wouldn’t be the best when it’s real small. Right, 

Charles Eide: for sure. 

Greg Heineman: And so to have that awareness at such a young age, amazing. Right? 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: And he looked at my youth as an asset. He didn’t look at it as a liability. You know, previous people that I’d worked for and you know, a lot, a lot of humanity would talk about youth as like inexperience and this kind of stuff.

And he looked at it as straight up an asset. Like you’ve got the energy, you’ve got the inquisitive mind. Like you’re gonna ask questions that we don’t normally ask ’cause we’ve been in it for a while because you’re coming in with fresh eyes, youthful eyes. So I mean, he saw that as an asset where like nobody else did.

Charles Eide: How did he figure that out about you? 

Greg Heineman: Well, [00:11:00] I mean, when we did the deal, I mean, I think he could see that, you know, like I was brought in to close a, a sale of a pretty good size manufacturing company to another one. And he kind of saw me. Deal and work both sets of lawyers to get done what we needed to get done.

And, you know, um, I mean I did a good job getting a good deal for, for the guy I worked for and I think after the fact he maybe saw some of that too. 

Charles Eide: Mm-hmm. 

Greg Heineman: Um, and so, you know, I think he did spot talent and, you know, he was tenacious to pursue it. Three years later he got me. 

Charles Eide: So he, so you come on board and you start out, do you start out as CFO 

Becoming CFO – 11:35

Charles Eide: then?

Greg Heineman: Yeah. He, he basically said like, you know, you’re the successor, but what job do you want? 

Charles Eide: Mm. 

Greg Heineman: And I said, well, I mean, you’re telling me the problem with this business is it’s not making money. So I guess I need a job that figures out how to make money. So, and 

Charles Eide: how big was the business at that time? 

Greg Heineman: It was about 40 million in revenue.

Charles Eide: Okay. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. And profitability fluctuated 

Charles Eide: really. 

Greg Heineman: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: Was it, was it profitable at all or was it kind of like pretty low for the business? 

Greg Heineman: It was super low for [00:12:00] what we should have been doing, and it was pretty volatile. Some years we’d do, well, some years we wouldn’t do well. 

Charles Eide: Hmm. 

Greg Heineman: Um, and so, you know, that he, he knew that was a problem and he wanted to, uh, wanted to do something different.

And honestly, like when I came in, the initial plan was we were gonna take, you know, the limited amount of capital that business would produce and buy other companies. And I’d run those companies, um. But about, you know, it was probably like six months into the job, like two things happened. Thing number one, I started to learn the business and didn’t think it was, I thought it was a way better opportunity than, than I think he did.

And I was like, dude, I think our first acquisition should be this one. 

Charles Eide: Really? 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: Like internal. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: Like get it right. 

Greg Heineman: We already knew the business, we already knew the players, like our employees. Um, and I thought it was fixable. Now it created a strategic weakness for me because there was a plan as to how I would get equity when we buy other companies.

Charles Eide: Sure. 

Greg Heineman: Right. The other weaknesses is now who’s gonna have control of this one? 

Charles Eide: Mm. 

Greg Heineman: Right. But I had [00:13:00] learned a long time ago, you know, in, in, in a job before, like you have to take care of like the fort, you can’t just ignore it and go do another thing because if the fork falls. Your outpost is done. 

Charles Eide: Yeah.

That’s home base. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. And, and I had had that experience with another company that I’d worked for, and then also, like I had this, you know, moral sense that my job was to do what was right for the owner kind regardless of what he thought needed to be done. 

Charles Eide: Mm. 

Greg Heineman: Like you always do what’s right for him. And even if it meant what’s not right for me, I viewed that as like my moral obligation.

So in saying we should fix this company, uh, I knew that it would make a challenge for, for me to get into control and into ownership, but it was like the right thing to do. And a, the second thing was I fell in love with the people. 

Charles Eide: Hmm. 

Greg Heineman: Like I went to it as just a job opportunity. And I was gonna be like a stepping stone in my career.

But then I started working with these, these [00:14:00] manufacturing people, and they were kinda like the salt of the earth. They’re like what America used to be. You know, people showed up, they worked hard, they put their all in. They weren’t just in it for themselves, you know? And having experience with these people, I’m like, these people deserve to be well led.

And so I fell in love with them and I couldn’t just go do something else. 

Charles Eide: Hmm. 

Greg Heineman: So those two things made me say, Hey dude, let’s make this the first acquisition and try to fix this company. 

Charles Eide: So you worked with him to fix it? 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: How did you fi, how did you fix it? 

Greg Heineman: Well, so the challenge for the business was, um, we had a lot of customers and a lot of the customers didn’t pay a whole lot.

They were small and especially smaller, more entrepreneurial customers demanded a lot of resources from the business. 

Charles Eide: Okay. So they’re paying less and they’re asking a lot. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. High maintenance, right? Yeah. And, and some, it wasn’t like they’re bad people, it was just they didn’t have internal [00:15:00] resources that like a typical bigger customer would have, so they’d want you to do some of their job.

Charles Eide: Sure. 

Greg Heineman: Right. Um, and so, you know, that was a big problem. And then, you know, I thought when I came to the business, you know, I knew we were struggling to grow organically. And, and to me, like acquisition’s a great strategy for growth, but you gotta be still growing organically. ’cause that’s the proof that like your business proposition’s still relevant in the market 

Charles Eide: for sure.

Greg Heineman: Right. And so, you know, I thought our issue was gonna be, our sales funnel wasn’t very good. Like we needed a lot more in the top end, but like we were seeing good opportunities and lots of them, but our win rate was like 3%. 

Charles Eide: So it was really low. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: What would’ve been normal? 

Greg Heineman: I mean, I’d have liked to see 25%.

Charles Eide: Oh, wow. Right. 

Greg Heineman: And, and I think if. In our industry. It, it’s tough, but I think if you’re really, really good, you know, we could even get to 50%. That was like kind of the stretch, 

Charles Eide: one out of two at bats, you win. 

Greg Heineman: That’s what I wanted to see. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: Um, so then you start looking at, well, why are we, you know, having these challenges?

And the answer is, we’re quoting everything and we’re putting in like [00:16:00] this much effort. 

Charles Eide: So you’re just quoting, but you’re not putting in the effort to follow through and really walk them through a process. 

Greg Heineman: No, the, the, the, the best opportunities, you know, the customer’s cost sensitive and so you had to really do a great job figuring out how am I gonna make this super efficiently at like the quote stage, you couldn’t win it and then engineer it.

You really need to engineer it when you quote it. The problem is that takes tons of time and resources. And if you’re only gonna win 3%. Doesn’t work, 

Charles Eide: go out of business. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. So the, the, the quandary was how do we not quote the little stuff, focus more on the big stuff and how do we re-engineer our internal cost structure so we can’t really service the little stuff.

Charles Eide: Mm-hmm. 

Greg Heineman: And, and then we’re lean enough to really compete on the better stuff. Right. And those are, those are gonna involve like, systemic changes to the business. [00:17:00] 

Charles Eide: So you started seeing the need to make these huge changes, 

Greg Heineman: big decisions. 

Charles Eide: Like what? Like what did you have to do? 

Greg Heineman: Well, I mean, ultimately I had to get control because these decisions needed to come from the very top.

They couldn’t be second guessed. And when you make ’em, it’s kind of like skydiving. Like you commit, you jump from that plane, there’s no redoing it. And like those decisions involve letting go of a lot of excess staff, that you can’t have to compete on the, the best opportunities. And it means you’re gonna tell a whole bunch of customers, we’re not doing that anymore.

Charles Eide: Okay. So you just brought up something that scares the crap out of most business owners especially Yep. Smaller businesses where you’re saying, lean out and we can get it, we’ll talk 80 20 now, but lean out the, the, the, the overhead that’s servicing the not profitable stuff and then tuning the business to only go after big opportunities.

Greg Heineman: Yeah. I’m leery to use the word lean ’cause [00:18:00] that’s a specific manufacturing concept. But think of it like this. If the business is structured in a way that it’s kind of a giant pile, you don’t wanna lean the pile. You restructure the business so it’s well honed tune machine to do what you need it to do, and then you 

Discovering the 80/20 Principle – 18:16

Greg Heineman: can apply lean to that.

But I, I’m not really here to talk about lean. Yeah, 

Charles Eide: yeah. 

Greg Heineman: Like let’s talk about 80 20. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: So, um, I knew this was what was wrong with the business. Okay. And, but I didn’t have a, I didn’t have a term for it. I didn’t say, I didn’t come into it saying this is a preto principle problem. Okay. I, I went and heard, like our accounting firm begged me to go hear this speaker speak like, like almost more than you begged me to come do this.

Right. And, and I was like, man, if they really think this, like I’ll just humor him and go. 

Charles Eide: Sure. 

Greg Heineman: So I went to hear the guy speak. The guy was an ex ITW employee. Okay. And ITW Illinois Toolworks was a company that, that was family owned and run [00:19:00] 500 million in revenue in just a couple hundred thousand dollars in profitability.

Okay. A lot of family members worked there and the family said, this isn’t right. Everybody that’s family is getting fired and we gotta go get a pro to run our business. And they found this guy gone to Harvard named Nichols and they’re like, Hey, will you take this? And he says, I take it under one condition.

I think the Prado principle applies to business and I want to build an operating system that like harnesses or aligns with that family says deal. And that dude created it. W’S 80 20 platform. Which the simple version of it is you stop doing the, the 80% of what you do, that only makes 20% of the difference and you do more of the 20% of what you do.

But that makes 80% of the difference. Right? And there’s a lot of details to that. But when he built that system, that company went on a a 20 year run of 19% annual compounded profit growth. [00:20:00] Not revenue growth. Now, I mean, I know you’re not like a recovering CFO like I am, but 19% compounded annual profit growth is like the stuff dreams are made of.

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: Okay. Yeah. And to sustain that for 20 years, they cracked the code. Okay. And when I heard this guy speak about this, I said, that’s like my problem. But it’s, it’s already been solved and there’s a system to do it. I need to do that. I need to run that playbook. Right. Because I had a, a general or contextual understanding of the problem.

But like, if they’ve already invented the wheel, like I’m gonna start there and I might tweak or modify a few things, but like, I might as well learn from guys that have done it before. Right. The challenge was, it’s, it involves big decisions. 

Charles Eide: Mm-hmm. 

Greg Heineman: And like, like I, I think we should talk about like the actual math a little bit.

And you might have to put like a schematic on the screen, but like what, what ITW found, so over the 20 years they found like a very consistent distribution to businesses that they bought. [00:21:00] If you sort the customer’s biggest to littlest and you separate them into quartile. So for easy math, if you have a hundred customers, the top 25 biggest ones 

The Math Behind 80/20 – 21:10

Greg Heineman: next 25.

Next 25. Next 25, okay. The top quartile of customers consistently was about 89% of revenue. The next quartile was 7% of revenue. Next quartile, 3%, and the bottom quartile is just 1% of revenue. Okay? So that’s your 80 20 distribution. But then what they found is when they tracked the business’s cost, not the direct cost to, to make whatever it was they were making or do whatever they were doing, but the indirect and sg and a okay was, was tracked 25% each.

It didn’t matter the volume of business you were doing with the customers, it just tracked the number of customers. Okay, so now we’re gonna ask a math question. If, if your top quartile. You have 89% of your revenue and [00:22:00] 25% of your cost, what percent of the company’s profit is found in quartile one? 

Charles Eide: All of it.

Greg Heineman: So you’d say like a hundred percent. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: Higher. 

Charles Eide: Yeah, I suppose. ’cause it’s making up for the, the bottom court quartiles that are losing. 

Greg Heineman: That’s a hundred percent right. And so they found 150 to 200% of profitability was found in quartile one. They were crushing it there and getting their butt kicked on the bottom.

You know? And I, and I, again, I know you’re not a recovering CFO, but like if I said to you, Charles, we can grow your business by 4% revenue, those bottom two quartiles. But it means you have to take on 50% more overhead. You’re gonna take that 

Charles Eide: no way. 

Greg Heineman: But you have it. Why do you keep it? ‘

Charles Eide: cause I’m unaware.

Greg Heineman: ’cause I think there’s a piece of that. And I think a piece of it is, ’cause I just said you gotta lay off half of the people. That’s big stuff man. 

Charles Eide: And 

Greg Heineman: these are people you go to work with. There’s probably a few you don’t like, but a lot of [00:23:00] them, you like them, you love them, they work hard. They try, 

Making the Hard Decisions – 23:03

Greg Heineman: right?

Charles Eide: Yeah. And it’s not their fault. 

Greg Heineman: It’s not, the business is just structured incorrectly. Right? And so for us, our distribution was 93 and a half, four and a half. A little better than one. A little less than one. So we were in even more extreme distribution. I had 240 customers, okay? And I knew a lot of customers had to be fired, right?

I knew that I was gonna have to lay off staff, and those are hard decisions to make. You know, a lot of owners will say, well, if I get rid of customers, like all my eggs are in one basket. But dude, here’s the thing, your eggs are already in that basket, that quartile one, that’s the whole business. And then some, you lose one of those customers.

Your business is in deep trouble. 

Charles Eide: Yeah, 

Greg Heineman: okay. These ones at the bottom, they’re losing you money. You’re better off to get rid of ’em. All right. Make the business stronger. And you know what? Refocus effort, some of the cost that you had [00:24:00] down here, you don’t have to lay it all off. You retarget quartile one customers, how do I better serve my best customers?

And then from a sales side, how do I get more customers that look like that? Right? But those are big decisions. Jump from the airplane stuff. You fire those customers, you think they’re coming back, you let those employees go, you think they’re coming back. So I mean, it takes some serious conviction to make that move.

Buying the Business – 24:27

Greg Heineman: That was the challenge. 

Charles Eide: So you saw that alive and very real in what you were doing. And you said it’s time for some big decisions, but you needed control first. 

That’s 

Charles Eide: right. So you had to buy buy the business. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. I mean, at first I wanted to structure a deal where, uh, ownership still own the business and.

I shared in like the growth and increased profitability or increased valuation of the business. Um, but really it came down to fighting about control. Like, I knew I had to have control and we couldn’t agree on that. So, [00:25:00] you know, a day came by and I went to the owner and I said like, what’s the number? And he kinda laughed.

And I said, no, no, no, I’m dead serious. Like how much you need right now in the bank after tax and how much you need overall. And then I’ll tell you if I can get it done, I’ll need two weeks. And, uh, to his credit, he took it seriously, said All right, went home, came back the next weekend, he said, this is what I need in the bank to give up control and this is what I want overall.

Right. And, uh, you know, we got the deal done. 

Charles Eide: So how old were you when you did that? 

Greg Heineman: Um.

Charles Eide: Like how long had you been there? 

Greg Heineman: Yeah, I’d been there probably five or six years. So, I mean, I was in the late twenties. Yeah. 30 maybe. Something like that. 

Charles Eide: Okay. So, so he says, yeah, you figured out you do the deal and now you own the company. 

Greg Heineman: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: What did you do? 

Greg Heineman: Um, I [00:26:00] mean, I ultimately ended up, we had 240 customers when, uh, when I kind of stepped away from running the business, we had 43.

Implementing 80/20: Firing Customers & Staff – 26:09

Greg Heineman: So, I mean, ultimately I fired almost 200 customers and, uh, we, we identified 76 positions that needed to not be with the company anymore. 

Charles Eide: How many were there before? Like how many total were there? 

Greg Heineman: There were, there were just under 400. 

Charles Eide: So you had to lay off a little less than a third of the staff? 

Greg Heineman: Yeah, maybe closer to a quarter.

A 

Charles Eide: quarter, 

Greg Heineman: yeah. But yeah, we had to, we had to do that now. Some people had transitioned, like we identified what we were gonna do and some people transitioned and we just had a hiring freeze on for a few months. But there were a lot of people that had to, you know, have a bad day. Right. Yeah. And, you know, it was a hard decision, you know, and because, ’cause I try to treat everybody the way I would wanna be treated.

You know, we paid a very generous severance that took into account how long you’d been with the company. I mean, one guy [00:27:00] had been with the company 26 years. Wow. Right. And so we, we gave him 26 weeks of severance. 

Charles Eide: Wow. 

Greg Heineman: Right. And I wanted to take care of those people. I, again, like you said, it wasn’t their fault.

Now the people that we kept were the people we thought would best help us win going forward. Yeah. Right. But we wanted to say that, you know, if we were that guy or gal that got let go, that, you know, we would felt like we were honored for the time we had served and taken care of. Right. No one got less than four weeks.

Even if you’d just started yesterday. Um. So we tried to take care of those people. But when we did that day, my two top lieutenants dealt with the, the firings and I dealt with the people that were left. Mm-hmm. Because I needed to tell them like, this isn’t doomsday, this is gonna work and this is why we’re doing what we’re doing.

And 

Charles Eide: so did you separate them into two groups of people? 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: And so it was like this big, like two different gatherings. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: And did, did they tell everybody at once when [00:28:00] they let ’em all go? 

Greg Heineman: Yeah, there was a little bit of people like on off shifts that, that we couldn’t kind of hit all in one go, but most of the people were kind of told right away.

Charles Eide: And so you have a room of what, 300 people ish? 

Greg Heineman: Well, there were two different divisions, so we kind of staggered the timing. So it was like we did one division and then, you know, maybe an hour later we did the other division. 

Charles Eide: So you traded it very much like a, like a PE firm would they come in? They figure it out and then they they do their, they do their move.

Greg Heineman: Yeah. I mean, I knew what we needed to do. I would like to say that we are significantly more compassionate than maybe a lot of PE firms. Yeah, for sure. Because it wasn’t just about the money. Right. You know, we, but you know, like I think a lot of business owners, they, they really struggle with, with making a decision like this ’cause they really focused on the people that are being let go.

I think what helped me was I focused on the people we were keeping. Hmm. One of the promises of 80 20 is you’re gonna make more money, you’re gonna have more time and you’re gonna have less stress. All of that accrued to [00:29:00] the benefit of my people. Our bonuses went up, we still had stress, but less stress than we had before and I think a lot of people started to realize like, the, the new opportunities were winning, they’re stressful, but they benefit us.

It’s worth it. I think before there was a lot of stress and you look at it and you say, we went to all this effort and like how did it help the company? You know, somebody had an idea and we helped them launch their product and they sold like 10 of. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: So like we went to all this trouble. We, we worked late.

’cause again, the commitment of the people was excellent. So we did all this, you know, we told our family, no, we’re not gonna be home on time. Maybe we skipped a deer hunting season even. Right? And then what did it matter at the end of the day? Like, that’s tough, man. That’s tough. So I looked at like, I, these people’s lives are gonna get better.

They’re gonna do cool stuff. We’re gonna, you know, be able to invest more in the business. And so, you know, that [00:30:00] focus, I think really helps get it done. 

Charles Eide: So when you did this 

Greg Heineman: mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: What were the results and how long did it take for you to see them? 

Greg Heineman: So we, we took about six months to, to lay out our plan.

And 

Charles Eide: before you let people go or after? 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. Yeah. We wanted to have like a really tight plan as to exactly what we’re doing. ’cause we knew conceptually what we wanted to do, but then we had to get really specific, like which customers, which people. 

Charles Eide: Mm-hmm. 

Greg Heineman: Right. Uh, and just again, it’s like 

The Results: Tripling EBITDA – 30:36

Greg Heineman: jumping outta the plane.

You gotta make sure you’re right. But we, we felt very confident we were right. Um, so the following 12 months after we made that change, we almost tripled EBITDA without, without any meaningful change in revenue. And one of the things that I’d say to the audience is, this really does work. I mean, it’s transformational change for the business.[00:31:00] 

Revenue vs. Profit – 31:00

Greg Heineman: You just have to have the courage to implement. 

Charles Eide: You always tell me revenue is for 

Greg Heineman: vanity. 

Charles Eide: Profit is for 

Greg Heineman: sanity 

Charles Eide: and cash flow 

Greg Heineman: is the reality. 

Charles Eide: Is reality. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah, I, I heard it somewhere, I mean, a consultant told me this way back in the day, a Vistage speaker, but it’s always stuck with me because a lot of people talk about, you know, my business grew from X to Y and if you’re talking about revenue growth, like, so what, 

Charles Eide: yeah, 

Greg Heineman: like doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, the question is how much did the profit of the bill profitability of the business grow?

Because that’s what enterprise value’s based on, right? And so it tells us that, you know, the profits are what matter. That keeps us sane. You gotta keep seeing more money. But like my business was very capital intensive. I mean, I invested everything I made back in the business, plus took on more debt, you know, I’d make more profit, then I could get more debt and I could invest more.

And so, you know, the cash flow is the reality of [00:32:00] what you really feel. And it just kind of teaches us to focus on what matters the most in terms of the business success. And if you do 80 20, there will be more profits. There will be more cash flow. Like one of the, the, the core promise to 80 20 more time, more money, less stress.

To, to put real numbers on it, you know, the business was at about 3 million of ebitda. We went to eight. Wow. And, and really, I mean there was a big chunk that was cost savings and then we focused on our best customer and got a little bit more work. But that little bit of more work with the lower cost structure all went bottom line.

Charles Eide: Yeah. That’s insane. I remember when you invited me to. Listen to it. One of the 80 20 guys teach your team. 

Greg Heineman: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: That was what changed my whole business trajectory because I came and listened to that and when he did the whole 89 broke it all down. I was like, that’s not, my business is different. That’s 

Greg Heineman: what everyone says.

Charles Eide: [00:33:00] Yeah. People don’t, he doesn’t understand my business. 

Greg Heineman: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: And so I sent it off to our finance people and sure enough they came back with like, oh my gosh. 

Greg Heineman: Right. 

Charles Eide: This was a hundred percent for me it was the first quartile was 91%. 

Greg Heineman: Yep. 

Charles Eide: And it was, it was so eyeopening. ’cause you were like, look at all the work we do for nothing of profit wise.

Yeah. For nothing. 

Greg Heineman: Yep. 

Charles Eide: Which is absolutely insane. 

Greg Heineman: And like the credit you get is there were like six other guys just like you in the room. Only one had the balls to do it. Something about it. Like seriously. Or I was And like, and like, and like look at, look at how your life is different now because you did.

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: I mean, I remember that version of you. It was nothing like the version now. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: Right. But it took courage to do that. Especially, I mean, like we always say like, you do the math and the math gives you beer muscles. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: It gives you some confidence, right? Yeah. But like, you know, we did your math, but you’re not a math [00:34:00] guy.

Right. 

Charles Eide: Definitely not. I 

Greg Heineman: mean, it took extra courage to trust What we were saying is, dude, this will work. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: Right. 

Charles Eide: And it was scary. 

Greg Heineman: It It is scary. 

Charles Eide: It was so scary because we were, we at the time, because we’re in events, we were running around doing a lot of small video projects and uh, really anything for a buck.

Right? That’s right. Non-profit gala, lots of them. 

Greg Heineman: Very common. 

Charles Eide: And that stuff fell into that bottom two quartiles. 

Greg Heineman: Yep. 

Charles Eide: And we, I mean there, we’ve had a few years in the last few years, especially when you put some pressure on me like three years ago 

Greg Heineman: Yep. 

Charles Eide: To like really get serious about it. 

Greg Heineman: Yep. 

Charles Eide: We’ve had years where we’ve had 40% year over year growth.

Greg Heineman: Right. 

Charles Eide: I mean, it’s like, I mean, we’ve made the Ink 5,000 list the last three or four times. Yeah. Three or four years in a row. And it’s a hundred percent because of this. 

Greg Heineman: That’s right. And I mean, the step one, you, you, you lean the business. Right. You get rid of the customers that are, that are, you know, we call it weed the garden.

Right. And like if you’re a gardener. Which, I mean, you bought a farm, maybe you’re gonna be a gardener, but like you [00:35:00] take the weeds out ’cause they deny resources that are needed to grow the stuff that you really want to grow. Right? 

Charles Eide: A hundred percent. 

Greg Heineman: And so, you know, you have to remove that noise from the business.

Those customers that are well intended, but they’re not helping you grow, they’re, they’re robbing resources, right? And then, you know, you might trim some of that cost out so you have capital to grow and then you retarget everything on better serving the big customers. Like in your business you have a show, do you have their big show, right?

Mm-hmm. And then the second piece is where do more customers that look like these exist and now I gotta go win those. And like for us, that meant really doing a great job on the engineering, but we couldn’t do the engineering if we were quoting a million things, you 

Charles Eide: didn’t have the time. 

Greg Heineman: Right. And like, you know, Jim Collins in Good To Great makes the argument that you should put your greatest talent on your greatest opportunities.

That’s hard to do. And there’s a million little fires being created by million and little customers. 

Charles Eide: A hundred percent. 

Greg Heineman: When you eliminate that noise, all of a sudden you got a bench full of really talented people and you can [00:36:00] deploy them in the, what I call the tip of the spear. Right. Your weapon’s so much more deadly.

Charles Eide: Yeah. It’s so wild to think about how understanding this is one thing, doing it is totally different. 

Greg Heineman: That’s right. 

Charles Eide: And the, the, the crazy thing I’ve learned in the last few years is that in implementing this, the business and its people naturally creep back down to the old way. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: And you have to constantly be educating on this 

Cultural Challenges & Maintaining Focus – 36:34

Charles Eide: over and over.

Even people who understand it will come and say, Hey, I got this little gig, but it’s all profit and it’s on a day that we, we have nothing going on. And you’re like. I think that this is more like taking supplements than taking a cure. You have to do it every single day. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. There’s definitely some like regression, uh, in the people building it culturally, uh, is hard [00:37:00] to do.

You know, when you come from a culture where we do anything that makes, that makes a dollar, right? For, for us, a cultural, uh, you know, monument that was hard for me to overcome was looking at gross margin percentage. You know, you have two customers, one maybe makes 20% margin and one makes 50% margin, and everybody loved the 50% ’cause it was more profitable.

Right? But I looked at the 50% and, you know, 50% times, you know, five grand of revenue is 2,500 bucks, right? I mean, I can’t even pay for a guy’s time for a short period of time, let alone for, for a lot of time. Right. So I really struggled with communicating this concept of like the percentages and everything.

Like we gotta look at how much we invest and we gotta look at how many dollars come back. And like, as a finance guy, that’s kind of how we’re taught and wired. But as a normal human being, or at least as a guy that’d been trained in this company, um, [00:38:00] that’s not how we thought, right? And so I really struggled to put it in their language.

You know, I could write all the math on a whiteboard, but like, people like, like catchphrases that like stick in their head. And so there were two concepts that finally got this point across. Now one’s a little crass, everybody kinda remembers from math. Zero times any number still zero. Okay? But technically, you know, if the customer’s paying five grand or something, it’s not zero.

So I tried to use that, but it didn’t stick well. We often had an expression, if we didn’t do well on a job or something, we’d say we didn’t make dick. 

Charles Eide: Mm. 

Greg Heineman: So I said, Dick times, anything is still Dick. Right? 

Charles Eide: It’s true. 

Greg Heineman: It is. So, 

Communicating Value: ‘Lands with a Thud’ – 38:40

Greg Heineman: you know, there’s no percentage you can multiply dick by and end up with anything other than Dick, right?

Yeah. And then people like it clicked. And the second thing I said when we went to winning new opportunities, you know, back then, like Connor McGregor was kind of at the top of the UFC, right? And he made this statement that the girls at the bank love me. ’cause when I bring in a check, it lands with a thud, [00:39:00] right?

And like, I love that because what he’s communicating is the checks are meaningful, they’re big, they’re not little, right? And so I said, Hey, if we win an opportunity and we start doing that job, right, we start making those parts. In my world, in your world, it’s doing that event. There better be an improvement in the p and l that matters, that lands with a thud.

If we don’t see profitability tick up in a meaningful way, why did we go to the effort? 

Charles Eide: Yeah, 

Greg Heineman: if it just blends into the overall business, it’s not meaningful. So we, we got real deliberate about we’re only quoting bigger stuff and like, if I can tell a story Yeah. About a friend of mine that that did 80 20, you know, he, he said, you know, I went back to the shop and I told him, stop quoting little stuff, but they keep quoting little stuff, right?

And he said, what do I do? They’re not listening. I said, well take away the commission on all the little stuff. I think for him it was 50 grand of revenue. I said, if it’s over [00:40:00] 50 grand, pay a commission. If it’s under 50 grand, don’t pay the commission. And he said to me, well that work. And I said, well, we’re gonna find out if they’re coin operated, right?

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: Because like if they’re money motivated, like taking away their money should work, comes back about three months later and he says it worked right? And I mean that was key was to say, Hey, we don’t wanna do little stuff. Like, to your point, the culture pushes back. So you take away the pay. I’m only gonna pay you for this.

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: Behavior change. Right. Which was great. ’cause it meant as salespeople we’re money motivated and we, we, we sometimes say coin operated. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: You know, you put the coin in, you get the result. Right. And so, you know, that’s just an example of, of, you know, one of the critical things is saying no to even spending the time quoting.

Mm-hmm. Stuff that doesn’t land with a thud. 

Charles Eide: So does that, obviously that affects the way the sales team hunts. That affects the type of salespeople that [00:41:00] are hunting. Right. And it affects the type of customer you’re targeting. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. The sales process is different and the team that hunts it’s different.

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: And there may be some salespeople that we’re more like. Trappers, they kind of just throw out nets and catch stuff. And they’re not really hunters. Some people, they’re hunters and, and they now understand like, we’re not looking for rabbits here. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Whale Hunting Strategy – 41:29

Greg Heineman: Right. We got to eat big, big prey and like, so like a second, you know, consultants that we brought in to help us, you know, they called it whale hunting.

Like, how do you hunt a whale? The whole tribe hunts the whale. It’s not some dude, 

Charles Eide: right? 

Greg Heineman: But you got a team and each person has a job and like the process is defined and deliberate. And when the, the chief of, you know, like an Inuit village says, we’re gonna hunt that whale. Everybody knows what to do, but significant resources are expended.[00:42:00] 

But if you’re good at it, the kill rate goes up. And when you kill it, it matters. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: Transformational. 

Charles Eide: So you’re saying if you work on. When you redo this whole process in your business, hunting down, the bigger things really comes down to a very basic idea. And that is, does it impact the business’, financials, profit wise, significant enough to make sense of the go?

Greg Heineman: Right. 

Charles Eide: Right. So don’t hunt something if it’s not gonna land with a thud. That’s right. 

Greg Heineman: You know, you, you don’t find in nature, you know, predators that hunt teeny stuff. They hunt stuff that’s proportionate to their body. Mm-hmm. You know, a killer whale isn’t going to eat like small fish. They’re eating like seals and, you know, big, 

Charles Eide: bigger things.

Greg Heineman: Yeah. They have 

Charles Eide: to, 

Greg Heineman: they have to. 

Charles Eide: Unless it’s a whale with those plankton. 

Greg Heineman: The baline, but those are vegetarians. Yeah. They’re not hunters. [00:43:00] Right. Yeah. But like, but the, you know, I, I guess the point is, is, is that predators right. Kill prey. That’s proportionate to their size. It’s meaningful. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: You know, in, in nature, I think they call it the cost to capture energy’s expended.

What do you get back from energy that you spent? You know, 

Charles Eide: it better be a multiple. 

Greg Heineman: Right. And an animal in nature doesn’t survive, even if they don’t understand this concept. And really businesses in the long run won’t survive either. If they don’t understand the concept, let, let alone thrive. 

Charles Eide: I, I took away so much when you, you had one time said to me, I was saying how.

These smaller jobs have such higher profit margin. Mm-hmm. You know, we’re getting 90% profit if we do that. 

Greg Heineman: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: And I, it has never left my mind that, and I repeat it all the time around here, is you say, well, what do you deposit into your bank? Percentage points or dollars. 

Greg Heineman: That’s right. 

Charles Eide: And I’m like, I mean, if you think about [00:44:00] just that idea alone, we a lot of times get hung up on points, right?

Oh, well how, what was our percentage of profit on that? 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: And we actually changed everything here where we don’t count that we, we have guidelines for margin. Mm-hmm. But now we count the dollars for the organization as a deciding factor. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. I mean, you have to know your cost. Right. 

Charles Eide: Right. 

Greg Heineman: And you have to know if you’re investing capital, what the return on that needs to be.

But I think a lot of businesses would find that. Um, for bigger opportunities, you might not need the same percentages that you think you do ’cause you’re kind of experienced with smaller opportunities. 

Charles Eide: Right? Yeah. And I, I think you can’t build a team that does big stuff well and little stuff. Well, like there, those are two different types of people.

Greg Heineman: I’d argue. You can never build a company that does little stuff well, not little’s proportionate to the size of the business, right? 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: But for every business, whatever they do, that’s little is not gonna be very lucrative. It like [00:45:00] 80 20 principle, like the thing to understand about 80 20. So. And maybe a little 

History of the Pareto Principle – 45:06

Greg Heineman: history helps.

You know, a guy named Rado Pedo figured this out like the turn of two centuries ago. Right? And, and he studied land distribution in Italy and he found that 20% of the land was owned by 80% of the people and 80% of the land was just owned by 20% of the people. And he thought, this can’t be right. There’s some problem in this area of Italy that I live.

So he studied broader Italy, but he found the same land distribution. So he thinks it’s an Italian problem. So he goes to France, right? And he studies it in France. And you know what he finds? Same principle, right? By the end of his life I read that he was noticing that that 20% of the pea pods in his garden held 80% of the peas.

Charles Eide: Mm. 

Greg Heineman: Right? So what we’re, what we’re seeing is this is a, this is a hardwired natural law, a, a natural distribution in like the world right now. You can violate natural law at your own peril. Or you can harmonize with it, right? [00:46:00] And so, so from my perspective, like harmonizing with it makes a lot more sense.

So figure out in anything you do, the 20% that of what you do, that drives 80% of the results. And the 80% that drives 20% of those. And it, and it even applies to like employees. A minority of the employees in the business are really responsible for the majority of its success. And many of the employees are not responsible for that same percentage of success.

Now, this doesn’t mean treat them badly, but what it means is making sure that you get more and better employees in the roles that really matter is important. 

Charles Eide: Yeah, I mean, I would say even performers, right? Like in sales performance. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. I mean, if I had to pick between having, you know, a plus salespeople.

Right. You know, and everyone wants to pick on the janitor or an a plus janitor. Those roles don’t, don’t mean the same things for, to an organization, you [00:47:00] know, and, and a football team. You want an a plus quarterback and like, you know, a c plus long snapper, or you want a c plus quarterback and an a plus long snapper.

Now, as a former offensive lineman, I hate to admit it, but the quarterback matters more, right? 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: And in an organization that, that’s true too. Not every role is, makes the same impact. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: And in many organizations, they try to treat everybody the same. I’d argue that’s not even just the people that make the bigger impact should be treated differently.

That doesn’t mean you treat anybody poorly, treat them all well, but they shouldn’t be treated identically. 

Charles Eide: Hmm. 

Greg Heineman: Because they’re not making the same impact of the business. LeBron James gets paid differently than some, you know, G League guy that barely made the bench. 

Charles Eide: Right. What do you say about, you know, there’s a common term that people say, like in quadrant two and three and and four, where they say, [00:48:00] well, that work keeps the lights on.

You know, we got those big, huge clients, but you know, this other works that keeps the lights on. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. I mean, they don’t understand math, right? We just went through the math like you have a small percent of revenue and a large percent of cost. They’re losing you money, so they’re not keeping the lights on.

They’re losing you money. Everything is in that first quartile, like that’s the fort, that is the business. And these, these littler accounts are going to keep you away from better serving, better understanding those top accounts. And the more you understand them, the better you’re going to get at serving them, and the better you’re then going to get at serving others like them.

Serving Your Best Customers – 48:45

Greg Heineman: That’s the whole game, man. That’s the whole game. 

Charles Eide: How do I protect that top quartile of business? 

Greg Heineman: I mean, serve them well, what keeps them up at night? You know, I, I recently, I had a [00:49:00] dinner with some really, really wealthy dudes. Okay? I mean, really wealthy 

Charles Eide: coming from you that they must be really wealthy.

Greg Heineman: I’ve been blessed, but I mean, these dudes were very successful, okay? And one of the guys gives like a, like a keynote address to all the graduating seniors, uh, for a very famous business school, all right? And after he answers, you know, gives his address, he, he, he answers whatever questions they have, okay?

And he was recounting this year’s, you know, symposium or whatever, and he said, I gotta ask a question. In today’s world, due relationships. And he gave some really sage advice. He said, you know, back in the day, just having the relationship mattered. He said, then it transitioned to you had to have the relationship, but you also had to be competitive on [00:50:00] price.

He said, now what I tell these kids is he said, you gotta have the relationship, you gotta be competitive on price, and you gotta do about 20% of their job. 

Charles Eide: No kidding. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. Now he says it from the perspective of like, you know, America’s not as capable as it used to be. Right. That’s part of his communication there.

But really, if you can help them do their job, how much better service are you actually giving them? 

Charles Eide: Yeah. You’re, you’re making them sleep at night. You’re helping them have a better work life 

Greg Heineman: and how are you gonna do their job if you can’t spend time getting to serve them and know them and understand what keeps them up at night?

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: But where are you going to get that time when you’re running around dealing with all kinds of little chaos? 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: You don’t have it. 

Charles Eide: You can’t. 

Greg Heineman: You can’t. 

Charles Eide: You don’t have the bandwidth. 

Greg Heineman: That’s right. You’re distracted. The weeds are stealing [00:51:00] resources, 

Charles Eide: but we don’t see ’em as weeds. 

Greg Heineman: That’s the mistake. So how anybody, anybody that has a garden, okay.

And you look at the garden and you’re like, yo, you got some good plants here, tomatoes and carrots, but what are all these weeds? And they’re like, no, no, we grow them all. What would you say to that gardener? 

Charles Eide: What kind of gardener are you? 

Greg Heineman: Yeah, yo, that’s an, that’s a weed, right? It’s taking resources. Your tomatoes are smaller.

You going to eat that weed? 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: No, 

Charles Eide: it’s not gonna do anything for you. 

Greg Heineman: That’s right. So you gotta get it out of there. Right. But it, it takes courage, right? 

Charles Eide: Yeah. So how do, how does someone start out, right? Like I had the, uh, for, I was fortunate enough to have you coaching me through it mm-hmm. And it made a huge 

Getting Started with 80/20 – 51:42

Charles Eide: difference.

But if someone’s just starting out and they’re looking at this, they’re hearing this right now, and they’re like, man, he’s, he might be right. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: You know, I mean, I know you are right. But they might go, well, I wonder what that is in my business. They run that 80 20 top down list. I mean, how do they get started?

And then how do they figure out what to [00:52:00] start with? 

Greg Heineman: So, I mean, you know, with most things in life, if you don’t really know what you’re doing, but you know what you wanna do, you get a coach. Right? Like, I remember hearing a, a, a guy that’s nationally known that speaks on sales, and, and when he retired, he wanted to do a triathlon, right?

So he hired like a swim coach. And that guy taught him how to swim. ’cause like a key piece of the triathlon is the swimming. But then the swim coach, you know, got him a runner, you know, running coach and a cycling coach and a nutrition coach. And the team of experts helped him accomplish his goal. I mean, I think you probably need to get a coach.

You shouldn’t just randomly be trying to do this on your own. ’cause it, it’s real stuff. And if you make mistakes, um, shooting from the hip, you know, there could be consequences. So, I mean, I, I would advise getting a coach that understands 80 20, you know, has a pedigree maybe with ITW. That’s, it’s pretty lengthy.

Probably would be a good idea. ’cause that’s a company that, that has built this culture of eight 20. Hmm. [00:53:00] 

Charles Eide: So get a coach. What about just the courage component? Because that’s a part that I think is scary for a lot of us is 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: You know, it is scary. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. Let so, so the guy that mentored me, he, he tells this story, so I’m gonna have to try to do it justice 

The Normandy Story: Overcoming Emotion – 53:15

Greg Heineman: here.

All right? And, uh, and, and what he does is he’s got this little chunk of concrete, all right, you remember this, you heard him do this. 

Charles Eide: I just, I just did this with a group of people. Did you really? He was so good, but tell it please. 

Greg Heineman: So, so he, he passes around this concrete, you know, and he says, you know, give me an adjective that describes the concrete.

Now, I wasn’t very good at English, but I do remember what an adjective is, right? So, so, you know, people look at it and they say it’s hard, or they say it’s jagged, they say it’s gray, right? Kind of just rough descriptions of this little piece of concrete. And he says, all right, let me tell you a story. He says, I recently went to Normandy, okay?

And I went to a place in [00:54:00] Normandy called PW Dock. Right. And Ock was like a several hundred foot tall montary that sat between Utah and Omaha Beach. Right? And there was artillery placed up on that montary that overlooked the beach and would shell our guys as they were coming ashore and it had to be taken out, right?

So this, this mission fell to the US Army Rangers, all right? And I’m gonna get the numbers a little wrong here, but there was something like 200 and some rangers that were tasked with climbing these cliffs and taking out these guns, okay? They climbed the cliffs under heavy fire, you know, massive death toll, but they take out these guns, all right?

Then they had to hold that spot during several counter attacks. ’cause the Germans understood we need to take this ground back so we can prevent the beaches from falling, right? And by the time these guys left, there were like eight guys still walking like everyone had [00:55:00] been killed or badly injured. Right.

And so these dudes made that sacrifice. So the other dudes who still made big sacrifices on the beach, they, they, they sacrificed a little less, right? And he said, this little piece of concrete comes from the, the, the gun in placements that those rangers attacked and gave their lives taken out. So he says, now give me an adjective to describe this concrete.

Right? Well, now it’s heroic, it’s monumental, right? It’s critical. It’s still a piece of concrete, but there’s a lot more to the story that drives the emotion behind that piece of concrete. And the challenge with our businesses, right, is we have emotion attached to it. You know, that employee might be the first employee that dad hired.

30 years ago, and now you’re asking me to get rid of that employee. Well, what’s he do for the [00:56:00] business today? Well, nothing. All he does is sleep. Right? But he’s the guy that helped us get the first patent, right? There’s more to this story. We have emotion. So one thing that can help is rather than saying you’re just too emotional, oh, that’s gonna, that’s gonna make a guy really wanna respond, right?

And now we’re gonna be finance guys again. The bottom of the p and l, right? You have a line that’s called operating income. You identify all the expenses that you would let go if you 80 20, right? And you call that Normandy. And below the Normandy line is the net income of the business. And what this forces you to confront every month is this is the money we could make.

And the Normandy line is the cost of the inaction. So at least you can quantify it and you might say, it’s worth it to me to [00:57:00] lose that money because these things matter. But you know what? I find you stare at that line month after month after month. And there’s something you like more. If you’re a small company, maybe you say, that’s my kid’s college paid for.

Maybe you say that’s the charitable donation I wanted to make to this cause I really care about and I couldn’t make it ’cause I’m holding on to this. Right? Maybe that’s my wife’s set up that if I die, she’s taken care of. If it’s a bigger business, maybe that’s the money we needed to acquire the thing We had to say no to last week ’cause we didn’t have the dry powder.

But you start to better understand the cost and having better understanding leads to better decision making. It’s really easy for Normandy to blend into an otherwise big p and l and not really understand what it’s [00:58:00] costing you to not act. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. It’s so powerful. I, I had, when I told this story, and I used this example, I got it wrong when I did it.

I, I had my own modified version. I said, my grandpa taught, went to the top and grabbed a rock. Sure. And then afterwards I had to say, okay, so the rock, I got out in the landscaping outside and it wasn’t my grandpa. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: But they applauded for my grandpa that didn’t do Normandy, and I had to correct them.

Yeah, 

Greg Heineman: yeah, yeah. 

Charles Eide: But it is a good reminder that we do make emotional decisions and, and they are costing us the, I think the part that may be missing is looking at those as what implications are those, like you said, the college fund or the, you know, the, the money to buy a company or whatever. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. As an economist, we’d call it an opportunity cost, right?

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. Everything has opportunity, cost, and it’s just a question of do you wanna pay that cost or not? 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: But you have to confront the data and see what is it costing me Right. [00:59:00] Financially and what could that otherwise do that, that, that helps create some conviction as well. 

Charles Eide: So you end up growing the business, growing the ebitda, and then you sold 

Moving to Tennessee – 59:12

Charles Eide: the business?

Greg Heineman: I, I sold the division. Yeah. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. There was two divisions. 

Greg Heineman: Mm-hmm. 

Charles Eide: So you sold one of the divisions. Yeah. And you used to live here in Minnesota. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: And you decided to leave and go to Tennessee. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. 

Charles Eide: Some smart business moves there. Right. 

Greg Heineman: Really what man, I, I don’t, I didn’t want to do this interview ’cause I don’t like talking about myself, but I guess it’s somewhat relevant to the story.

Like, I made enough money that I, I could do whatever I wanted to do. Um, and really what drove me to change was 80 20. I mean, why I don’t live here anymore. I live in Tennessee, you know, 80 20 applies to all of life. 20% of what I do makes 80% of the difference, or I care about [01:00:00] it 80% and 80% of what I do doesn’t make that big of a difference then I don’t care.

The Gold Mine Discovery – 1:00:05

Greg Heineman: And you know, I had a very unique experience in, uh, 2019. For years I’d been going to Canada to fish. It was kind of a, a stress relief. And I had kind of a, a peer group that I went with and we used to fish this. Big lake, 47,000 acres. But we would travel across the big lake to a nondescript piece of shoreline, I mean, in the bush.

And we’d get out and we’d go down a little moose trail, you know, moose and wolves and bear make this trail. And we’d get to this other lake where some people had stashed boats long ago. I mean, they were like last registered in Iowa in the seventies, right. And we’d put little motors on these other teeny boats, like 10 foot, 12 foot boats.

I mean, a big guy like me can barely, you know, move in the boat without tipping it. 

Charles Eide: And we’d 

Greg Heineman: go out on this little lake 

Charles Eide: and 

Greg Heineman: we’d fish 

and, 

Greg Heineman: and the fishing was amazing. And the adventure was amazing, right? It [01:01:00] just, it made the trip, but then no trespassing signs went up, you know, on this trail, which was weird.

’cause up there, like the crown, that’s what they call Canadian government owned land is like, owns everything. So, you know, we had no way to know that would be private land. But we respected, you know, the fact that it was posted and we didn’t wanna trespass, so we stopped going. But I got a phone call from a friend that lives up there and he is like, dude, they’re selling that land.

And I was like, well, I gotta buy it, right? So I, I bought the land and I found out through the acquisition, like it was a gold mine. That’s why the land was privately held. And in 1898, the hand drawn survey of the land showed, like the Beaver dam was in the same spot. The Beaver Lodge was in the same spot.

I mean crazy, right? And it showed the location of the gold mine and, and it had run until 1933. And 

Charles Eide: so, and actual gold mine. 

Greg Heineman: Oh yeah. Like mine, shaft and everything, right? [01:02:00] Equipment. 

Charles Eide: I thought you meant like goldmine, like it’s an awesome piece of land. 

Greg Heineman: No, no, no, no. That’s, it’s real, it a real gold mine man.

Right? It ran for like 30 years and so the next spring, you know, you don’t wanna go there in the wintertime, right? So the next spring I go up there, 2019. And, uh, and I wanna see the, the wreckage of this gold mine. Like see if we can find it. Is there still a shaft? I mean, the survey showed there was a shaft, you know, and government documents talked about it, but can you find it?

So like, we found it right? And there was all this old machinery, you know, and as a, as a manufacturing guy, I mean I got the bug, so I see this old machinery, I’m like, we gotta get it running. Right? I mean, it just felt like it should run again. Right? But then, you know, after I had done a whole bunch of research that night on what is this machinery?

’cause I had all these pictures of it, right? Um. I, I started to research the company because the company that made this stuff, you know, had put their name on this giant cast iron, you know, piece of machinery and it said [01:03:00] the Jenks Machining Company, Sherbrooke Quebec. And I’m like, I wonder who the Jenks Machining 

Jenks Machining Company Revelation – 1:03:06

Greg Heineman: company is.

Right? So I’m up till three in the morning doing research on like, who is the Jens Machining company? And it turns out they were a, an industry leader of producing like remote location mining and logging equipment, right. And then they got sold and bought and you know, it’s happened several times and they’re now part of Ingersoll Rand Corporation, right.

And I was like, wow. You know, what a history. But as that story started to, to to to to sit in me right? And kind of ruminate and, and I think, you know, the Holy Spirit started to speak to me and he started to say, you know, a hundred and some years ago. There were these guys that were running the Jinx Machining company and they put a lot of time and energy into making it, I’m sure an amazing company, right?

And they sold that business [01:04:00] and probably provided for their, their, their kids and their kids’ kids and whatnot. But like a hundred years later, just a hundred years later, the only guy that’s probably thought about the Jinx Machining company tripped across your stuff in the bush somewhere, right?

Business as a ’20’ Not an ’80’ – 1:04:22

Greg Heineman: And now what, what is that legacy? What did you really work for? If you were the guy or guys or gals, whatever, that were running the Jens Machining Company, what impact did that really make financially? Yeah. But that began a change in me where I said, you know, is business really an 80? Or is it a 20? I thought if you’d have talked to me when I was 30, I’d run businesses forever.

I loved it. All right? I wanted to be like Danny Ocean. I wanted to find [01:05:00] businesses, and I wanted to take ’em, fix ’em. Call up a bunch of subject matter experts. You know, go get your marketing person, go get your finance person. Go get someone to run recruiting ops, right? Bring ’em in. We’ll turn the business around In making businesses stronger, we make America stronger.

It’s a patriotic duty, right? And I thought I’d do it forever. I was passionate about it. I loved it. I loved the people. And seeing that I could help their company become better, I could better align their efforts to benefit all of us. But. This experience with the Jenks Machining Company in the middle of nowhere made me question if business was an 80 or a 20.

And the conclusion that I drew is, it’s really a 20. And my passion for it started to diminish. [01:06:00] And I said, I need to do what’s best for my family, my kids, my wife. Those are the eighties, right? And as I looked at where I felt like, you know, the country was going, I said, I don’t want my kids to, to, to meet people and marry people in Minnesota because then they’re gonna wanna live here.

My wife didn’t wanna live here a long time ago. Gray ski in cold weather were not great for, for her happiness. Right? And I, you know, I met my wife when I was 17 and, and I had a daughter then. My oldest was 14, right? And so I said, you know. Where do I want my ancestors, my my family to live? And, uh, we settled on Tennessee.

And so the, the real impetus to moving was really kind of a dynastic family driven move because they’re the eighties now. Did that cost my [01:07:00] business? You bet it did. You know, I had a, I had a good team and they did a good job running the business, but, you know, I’m sure there was consequence to me not being in the office every day, you know?

Um, but yeah, I mean, that experience changed my life and it, it made me just assess what in life, you know, what am I gonna spend my time on? What are the eighties, and now my time gets spent on that. 

Charles Eide: You’re also doing some really cool work, helping other people be able to take time to focus on 

Full Buck Adventures Ministry – 1:07:36

Charles Eide: themselves.

Yeah. You, and tell me a little more about that. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. So for this season of life, uh, the, the big, the big thing that gets my time is a, is a ministry called Full Buck Adventures. Uh, full buck’s a term that we, we came up with a long time ago, actually a friend, one of the guys that went to Canada with, he used to say it all the time, you know, are we gonna go full buck?

Meaning are we gonna go all out? Right? [01:08:00] And, uh, and, and so the concept of full buck adventures is creating opportunities for people in full-time Christian service to kind of get away, set down all the challenges to life, de-stress, hear from God, reenergize, get refocused, and then go back into their ministries ready to be more effective.

Mm. You know, earlier this talk I talked about how when I was younger, I wanted to be the guy to take the shot. I wanted to score the goal, and then I became more of an assist man. Right. And really this role in ministry is being an assist me. We’re trying to take the goal scores and get them some education, get them some rehab, and send them back into the field ready to kick butt again.

Right. Um, and so, you know, that’s, that’s the focus. And we do that through, uh, outdoor experiences. We, we feel you can hear from God better when you’re in nature. The, the chaos of life, you know, the scrolling and all that diminishes when you’re [01:09:00] outside. And, uh, and so that’s really what I’ve been focused on, building these, you know, basically since I quit doing business.

Charles Eide: So you take these guys out and give them basically once in a lifetime experiences to do. Hunting, fishing. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah, we, we have some vacation properties as well that they get to use like A-V-R-B-O, but at no cost. So sometimes it’s the family, sometimes it’s just an individual. But yeah, hunting and fishing is a core component, uh, as well.

And it’s really trying to give them what a lot of people would deem as like a bucket list kind of trip. Um, not just some run of the mill, you know, routine thing, but a place where they can really kind of unplug, experience, you know, the best of what, what outdoor experiences have to offer and really let that stress kind of pile off and kind of refocus.

Listen, and, and, and we, we, we teach some curriculum to try to, try to encourage them in that. I mean, a lot of these guys, you’re not gonna teach them, you know, theology. They’re already 10 times smarter, certainly than me [01:10:00] at that kind of thing. But you can, you can teach them. How to prioritize with 80 20. You know, you can, you can prioritize things a little differently and make sure that you take care of yourself, because if you’re all beat up, you know you’re not gonna be as 

Supporting Pastors & Ministry Leaders – 1:10:14

Greg Heineman: effective.

It, it’s a tough job. Um, you know, I, I, I learned this by taking guys, hunting and fishing and, and, and listening, you know, to, to the challenges. Like you asked earlier, how do you get to know what the customer’s pain is? Dude, you spend time with them and listen. Right? You don’t talk. You listen. And, and so I spent time listening to these, these, these pastors and, and what I found was, you have a job that’s very high stress, twenty four seven, they’re on call and they could get a call and you know, someone’s dealing with the worst experiences of, of their life.

Their, their child is in jail or maybe dead. You know, maybe there’s infidelity in their marriage, right? Maybe it’s a business guy and his business is failing, right? [01:11:00] But it’s a high stress situation where they’re looking for hell. And that call can come in anytime. You know, one of my good friends’, dad was a firefighter, and as I understand that his dad would work for three or four days and he’s on call 24 7 living at the fire station, and the alarm can go off.

Mm-hmm. You know, and they rush out in the truck to a, a, a lifesaving type event, and that’s a stressful job. Well, he gets then three or four days off where that alarm sounds and he doesn’t have to respond to it. Right? 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: These guys are on 24 7 and on top of that, they usually give advice to people.

People don’t take it because the advice is hard. You gotta, you gotta not do what you wanna do and you gotta submit your will to what the book says. Not many people want to do that. So then you’re given advice and people don’t take it. Like we had a relationship early on and what did I tell you? You get my time.

Long as you take the advice, I don’t need to hear myself speak. Right? 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: And so if, if, if you’re gonna take that time and [01:12:00] implement what I tell you, you keep getting my time. Right? Um, and so for these, these people, you know, pastors, they put the time in, but the people usually don’t take the advice. Right?

So then do they get good results? No. So you don’t get results. People don’t listen and, and do what you tell. It’s crazy. High stress, but at least it’s a lucrative job, right? Well wait, the vast majority of the time it’s not lucrative. Right? Man, that’s a pressure cooker. And like we’ve had pastors come on events that had just resigned after 10, 15, 20 years of ministry because they’re just burnt out.

Charles Eide: Hmm. 

Greg Heineman: We had one guy who’d written his resignation letter and was gonna deliver it when he returned home. Right? And this is a crazy thing, dude. We, our ministry like. Took him hunting or fishing and like God did a miracle. He saved their ministry because he spoke to them on these trips and helped them re-remember why [01:13:00] they fell in love with ministry in the first place.

Right. And I mean, I get none of that credit, right? I’m like the boy in the, the parable, or is a parable is real story. I’m like the boy that Jesus said, Hey, who’s got some food? Right? And some little dude’s like, yo, I got some fish and some loaves, right? But it’s not enough to feed the people. But then Jesus took that and he did a miracle with it.

And that’s how I look at our ministry. Man. We do this much, but he’s done some mind blowing things with what we’ve given him. And so for me, you know, that’s an example of like 80 20. We, we do a little, he does a lot, but we’re doing stuff that really matters. 

Charles Eide: Right. How did you know you wanted to do this?

That’s quite a departure from running a, being a business titan to Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s a huge departure, but you were called to it. Well, how did you know that? 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. I mean, so [01:14:00] when, when you, when you sign up, you know, to follow the book, all right, the Bible, like there’s no, like, you just pick the pieces you want and leave the rest.

You’re supposed to go full book, you’re all in, right? And the, the Bible talks about, you know, that we’re actually slaves. Okay? Now, in, in our world, we look at that and it’s got a very negative connotation. But a fundamental difference is what if you’re a slave to the most righteous, benevolent master ever?

Dude, I’m telling you, there’s freedom in that. You just do what you’re told, right? In this instance, God changed my heart. He took away my passion and he led me down a path. One step at the time that got 

Faith & Obedience – 1:14:51

Greg Heineman: me here in the future. He’s gonna lead me down paths and it probably will go to something different than this.

My job is to follow and to obey. [01:15:00] His job is, where’s he sending me? 

Charles Eide: Hmm. 

Greg Heineman: Dude, you employ people, right? If, if you tell an employee, I want you to do this, and they do a killer job of that, but it doesn’t lead to the results. Is it their fault or your fault? 

Charles Eide: Well, it’s my fault. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah. Because you told them to do it.

So if that employee does what you ask and does a great job of it, full buck, right? Full heart, full effort, all of that, they should have no stress. 

Charles Eide: Sure. 

Greg Heineman: But when, when you have to get, get the results, when you’re accountable for that, and especially when things are outside of your control, dude, tons of stress.

Charles Eide: Tons, 

Greg Heineman: tons of stress. And so like you asked me a question earlier in the green room and you’re like, was it stressful like buying the business?

The answer is, I understood the monumental decision I’m making when I stroke a pen and I put [01:16:00] myself irreparably in debt, my wife, my kids, everything we have is now in play. I understood the gravity of that moment, but God told me to sign that up. The results are, are his, not mine. My job was to obey. Now, did I hope that it would lead to financial gain?

Yeah. But wherever it leads the most benevolent master you could ever have is not gonna lead me into a situation that’s undesirable. It may not be what I want, at least at first. But I can trust him. 

Charles Eide: Hmm. 

Greg Heineman: That’s why we call it faith. Do you trust him? You’re gonna go full buck. You going all in. It’s a big bet.

It’s a huge bet. But you’re gonna make it. That’s, that’s the answer to that is yes. If you have faith. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: You know, my, my holding company was called Una, and is a Hebrew word that was ascribed to Abraham when God told him to leave [01:17:00] ver. Alright. And it says that, that Abraham, you know, on faith followed God.

Right. And that word faith in Hebrew and Muna said, do you have faith? Will you go all in? That’s the question. That’s an 80 20 question. You can get it all wrong, but get that right. And you have eternal life. 

Charles Eide: Hmm. 

Greg Heineman: You get everything else right, but you get that wrong. 

Charles Eide: No bueno. 

Greg Heineman: Brutal. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: Don’t make that mistake.

Charles Eide: Wow. I mean, so good. So good. Yeah. You thought you were 

Greg Heineman: gonna get me to talk about 80 20 

Charles Eide: in business, right? Oh, I know. I love it. I mean, this is the stuff that we all need to think about and hear. Honestly, I always like to close with a really important question, and I don’t think you’ll struggle at all with 

What Do You Want to Be Remembered For? – 1:17:54

Charles Eide: it.

And that is, what do you want to be remembered for? 

Greg Heineman: That’s a good [01:18:00] question. But like really in the Christian life, our goal is not to bring glory to ourselves, right? All I want out of the rest of this life is to follow the plan that God has for me so that when I get to heaven, he says, well done, good and faithful servant.

You know, there’s a parable. And to shorten it. Master gives a bunch of people responsibility like his servants, right? Which is kind of like his employees. And he says, you know, I’m gonna go away and come back and call you to account for what did you do with what I gave you. Right? And he comes back and some of the, some of them have done well.

And he says to them, well done, good and faithful servant. You with me? 

Charles Eide: Mm-hmm. 

Greg Heineman: That’s my goal. This isn’t about me, it’s about him. So I don’t wanna be remembered. I want you and whoever’s listening to this thing to say, humans don’t do this on their own. They don’t give up their money. Like, people call me up [01:19:00] all the time and they say like, what are you up to man?

You were doing cool stuff. What are you doing now? And I’ll usually, you know, prick ’em a little. And I say, oh, I’m in the process of making a small fortune out of a big one. Right? And it’s like a hundred percent contrary to what the world thinks. Like I had a bunch of dudes that are like, why did you sell?

Why did you get out? Like you could have made a billion. Right. Well, you know, what’s a whole bunch of rolls of toilet paper worth? I mean, I guess I could have done that, right? That’s just not what matters. You know, Bible says our life is but a vapor. We’re here today and gone tomorrow, right? This stuff just isn’t an 80, it’s a 20 now.

There was a season of life where I was called to do it, and like part of the paradox of money in business, the money’s the scorecard. Okay? You wanna win the Super Bowl points on the football field matter. That’s how you win the Super Bowl. And so part of like, when, when I come in and help guys, you know, like help you, 

Money as a Scorecard vs. Master – 1:20:00

Greg Heineman: [01:20:00] we gotta talk about money.

It’s the scorecard for the business. If the business isn’t making money, you’re gonna lose, right? If the business is making more and more money, you’re winning. But we can’t let that distract us from the 80 20 of life. That’s like the paradox of it. ’cause if you serve money, the Bible says you can’t serve both God and money.

You’ll love one and hate the other. The thing with the, the the dollars is it’s a cruel master dude. Like when is enough? Enough? 

Charles Eide: Yeah. I mean, I think the answer is usually more, 

Greg Heineman: dude, it, it’s hard to get off that game. And when you’ve been doing business like, and money’s the scorecard, you wanna make more of it.

The business wants to make more of it. But you as an individual, at what point does that not matter? It can it, and again, it’s a cruel master. One more dollar. I don’t remember who said that, but some famous dude was asking, you know, what’s enough? And just the answer’s one more dollar. So like, I don’t wanna serve that master.

I serve a [01:21:00] different master, right? And with that comes no stress. Serving that master in the end wins, right? 

Charles Eide: Yeah, 

Greg Heineman: don’t, don’t store up treasures on earth where Mo and Rust Corrupt and Thieves break in and steal. Store up treasures in heaven. You know, I jokingly say I’m working on my 4 0 1 H account, right?

And like, you know, dudes that know me are like, oh, he knows tax angles. What’s the new, the new thing, right? Some new program he figured out then they’re real disappointed when I talk about giving up wealth in this life for the next, right? But like, that’s what the book tells us to do. So you’re gonna obey it.

Do you have faith that your life’s better? You know, back in the day, you know, not that God would ever seek my counsel, but if he would’ve come to me and be like, yo, this generosity thing, like, what do you think about that? I just said, I kinda like to keep my bag right. I mean, that would’ve been the honest answer, but the book doesn’t tell us to do that.

It [01:22:00] says it’s, it’s more blessed to give than receive. Jesus said that. So you believe it. Well, honestly. At first, my head believed it, and I’m not sure my heart was convinced, but I lived into that. I did it. And now if he was to come to me and say, yo, what do you think? Don’t touch it. My life is richer, the poorer I get.

Charles Eide: Hmm. 

Greg Heineman: Right. It’s, it’s like a paradox, but it’s true. And it’s just man’s wisdom isn’t God’s wisdom. It isn’t, what I say will sound crazy to a lot of your viewers. They’ll take the business stuff, they’ll implement it, and if they’re good at it, they’ll get richer. All right. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. 

Greg Heineman: But their lives really won’t be richer, so hopefully they implement both pieces of money.

Charles Eide: So good. I know. I want to, that is, that is great advice. And it’s, I mean, be, that’s a good thing to be remembered for. 

Greg Heineman: Remember him, not me on my own. I’d be like a desperate, [01:23:00] I’d be spending money doing stupid stuff and you know. I probably wouldn’t have made it to begin with. Really. You know, it’s not about me, you know, I wasn’t a very happy dude, you know?

Closing – 1:23:13

Greg Heineman: And so, uh, you know, all the credit and glory goes to him. 

Charles Eide: Yeah. Thanks for sharing your story today. 

Greg Heineman: You bet. 

Charles Eide: This has been so fun. Oh my gosh. Life changing. This is so good. Thank you. It’s great to, great to do this with you, Craig. 

Greg Heineman: Yeah, it’s a good time spent. 

Charles Eide: If you like this episode of Cleared for Takeoff, make sure you leave a comment, subscribe, turn on notifications, of course, share it with somebody that you think would love it, and of course, check out my company, EideCom.

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