Jason Taylor 0:00

I'm pretty stoked today because John Cheney is our guest today. He's the CEO of Gen AI PI, and he is an expert in helping people embrace AI to actually bring their companies to a new forefront, to get their people using AI in a in a different way and help helping people scale, start up, and just become really big doing this. He's passionate. He started many things. If you look at John's LinkedIn, he has just a wealth of knowledge here of how he's helped companies out, how he's helped companies start things, led them through technology changes. And he is a big, what I like to call entrepreneur who just likes to look at what's next all the time. With that, John, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much, Jason. Excited to be here. Yeah. John, you've uh let's get right into it. So you've led multiple companies through multiple waves of technology change, right? What leadership mindset has has stayed constant no matter how much the world changes? What stayed constant?

Jon Cheney 1:01

I think for me, the thing that really gets me excited about these new technologies is I constantly ask the question, well, I wonder if, right? Or what if, right? I I just want to say like what's possible? And then I just kind of go down that pathway until I run into a wall, or maybe discover something cool that's actually quite useful, right? Like, like for example, when um when NFTs were were big a few years ago, yeah. I didn't buy any, you know, $200,000 monkey pictures. But but I certainly looked at that technology and I've, you know, I I dug into it. I was like, why are people paying for this? And what's the real use case? Because I don't think it's this. Like this is fun and whatever. But I started saying, well, what if we what if we had our houses, like the deed to our house or the title to our car? What if those were NFTs? Because that's kind of a one-of-a-kind. It represents ownership, makes it easier to to move and to transfer. What if our medical records were NFTs? Right. So that you could say, okay, hey, this is my medical record. I'm gonna, I'm gonna authorize access to my doctor. And then at any point, I can revoke access to my doctor. And I have to sign my signature in my, you know, web three wallet in order to allow that to happen. And obviously, a lot of those things have continued to grow, and web three technology is actually a lot harder to be efficient. So it's taken a while to get to that really useful point. But that's what I always do. I'm always asking, what can I, you know, what is the way that this is actually going to change us? And not only that, how is it going to improve our lives?

Jason Taylor 2:26

Yeah, absolutely. You know, the way you talk, it's it's there's an incredibly curious tone to it, right? And um, I'm sure you've seen that episode, Ted Lasso, when he talks about curiosity and and whatnot and how powerful it is. And it's isn't it amazing when we just say, hey, maybe the status quo shouldn't be the status quo. Maybe we can change something here. Maybe we can make it better. Maybe we can go beyond what we ever thought we could. And all of a sudden we're doing something totally different and you know, living life in a different way.

Jon Cheney 2:56

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's just the one constant thing in life is change, right? And we want that change to be positive. We want it to be progress. Now, obviously, every every new technology is going to have its detractors because they focus on the negative, right? And, you know, we could sit here right now and talk about all the positives and negatives of the internet or the positives and negatives of our cell phones or of social media or of whatever, right? And so I personally just said, look, I know there's gonna be negatives, people are gonna use this technology poorly, but what I'm gonna focus on is how does this technology actually work and make our lives better? That's where I'm gonna just live. And it's a it's a more fun place to hang out anyway.

Jason Taylor 3:33

For sure. How do you get leaders to actually do that? Because sometimes you're working with companies that, you know, they're leading big companies or or or medium or even smaller companies, and they have this, oh, I'm kind of scared to do this. I'm worried, it's not fully baked yet. How do you get leaders to kind of change their mindset on that so you can help them lead this stuff through their organizations?

Jon Cheney 3:53

Yeah, you know, I think I think it has to, it has to come from the top, right? I mean, it's gotta be, it's gotta be the CEO. It's gotta be some of, you know, you you can't be afraid. The the reality is your team will follow you. If you're afraid of AI and you're just like, oh, this is scary and this is whatever, you know, I don't want to do that. No, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't really know what ChatGPT is. I and I kind of use it a little bit and I use it to help my emails. Well, guess what everyone else in your organization is gonna do? They're gonna say, oh, well, that's what's expected of me at this organization, right? But if you as the CEO are saying, hey, no, this is changing my life, like you, everybody has to catch up, well, then that will become infectious across your organization and you'll start to figure out, oh my goodness, this is crazy.

Jason Taylor 4:36

Yeah.

Jon Cheney 4:36

So um, so yeah, there's definitely it has to come from the top. If it doesn't, then you'll be sending, you know, even if it's a silent message, you'll be sending a message to your team saying it doesn't matter.

Jason Taylor 4:46

Yeah. I often say, and I've said it in several of my shows, and when I go around the world working with leaders, I say the speed of the pack moves to the speed of the leader. And as a leader, you're always on stage. People are looking at you. People are saying, hey, what what's he or she thinking right now? What are they doing? What are they into? And what's acceptable and what's not acceptable? Are they shrugging their shoulders? Are they rolling their eyes right now? Do they look mad? Do they look happy? Right. So as a leader, you're always on stage. So when you do have something that's coming at the forefront in technology, it's so important to, in my opinion, to think, hey, you know what? Let's embrace this. You know, let's use it with caution if needed, but it's not changing. A lot of times people say, I've actually heard this quote, AI is the single biggest thing that's happened to mankind since fire. And when I heard it put that way to me, I was like, what? Wow. And the the gentleman who was speaking, who's a keynote speaker at this at this session, he just said, Yeah, Low, think about it. Without fire, we couldn't cook, we didn't have light, we didn't have heat, right? Same with AI. He says AI is changing everything on the planet right now. So for you to actually, and I looked at some of your stuff and your posts and whatnot, and what you did with education and your your like it's just you're at the forefront and you're embracing it as opposed to saying, you know what, it's not for me.

Jon Cheney 6:05

Yeah, the phrase that I like that I, you know, we kind of tie to our organization is AI works, right?

unknown 6:11

Yeah.

Jon Cheney 6:11

And uh, and that's funny because it's, you know, it's got a few meanings to it, right? But again, we're just trying, you know, we're working with organizations. People are like, yeah, AI doesn't work, you know. Well, it does because we're using it. We're doing it. I'm doing it in my company, and you know, we eat our own dog food for sure. And then we're going into companies and we're improving efficiencies at these companies. And we're not, one thing that that I really try to focus on a lot that I think is super important is I think that organizations that use AI correctly will actually end up hiring more people because they will be better at finding customers. They'll be better at growing, they'll they'll be making more money. And when you're making more money and you have more customers, you naturally are going to want people to take care of those customers and you're gonna want to continue to explore and expand. And that's going, you're gonna say, okay, who's taking care of this? Because even though AI can do a lot of the tasks, someone still has to be responsible for watching that AI, for managing that AI, and for making sure that the processes are right and making sure that the KPRs are KPIs are coming out the way that they should be. You know, all of that stuff still requires humans. And in every instance where we're working with a company and we're having successful implementations, they're not coming out and saying, okay, thanks to Gen A IPI. We've fired 20% of our people. Like we've not had that happen yet. We just have to.

Jason Taylor 7:26

I had this uh one guest on and he said, uh, AI won't replace people. However, people that don't use AI will be replaced.

Jon Cheney 7:34

Totally.

Jason Taylor 7:35

And it just sums up of what you just said there, right? Like get on board, use it, learn it. And guess what? It's fun along the way. John, you've uh you built a lot of companies from the ground up. What's the first cultural hire every growing business gets wrong?

Jon Cheney 7:50

It's usually their friend. Yeah. Um and I say that because I'm guilty of it for sure. Most people are willing to look past imperfections, especially in their friends. Right? They know, oh yeah, he's a little bit lazy, you know, but he's a good guy, you know. Yeah, but I love it. His wife is awesome, and I love his kids, and you know. And that might be true, and that's great as a human. But sometimes sometimes you you look past well, what happens is you got your friend and they're doing okay. And maybe they're doing just enough to to stay on the team, right? But then you bring in some elite, you know, player and they're like, Why is why is this guy on this team? Like, what's he doing here? I don't know if I want to be on this team, if that's the kind of guy that we're gonna, you know, right? Whereas if you if you say, All right, forget about all of that, I am it's merit-based, performance-based. I am gonna have a bunch of winners, a bunch of elite people here. And if you're not elite, that's okay. You know, there's other teams. This is the NBA. That's what we're gonna be here, right? Yeah. And so I think that's one thing that I've certainly struggled with is I'll bring people in that I just I thought I think they're a good person, even if it's not even my friend, right? I'll I'll bring them in and I'll be like, yeah, I I really like kind of what they bring to the table here and kind of the feel, but but ultimately maybe they're not as good at their job as as they could be. And I think it's it's it's easy to to also, as a leader, maybe forgive a little bit of that, right? When they're not doing as well as they should be, could be, as somebody else might be able to do. You just say, well, that's okay. I don't want to give up on my people. And I want to train them, I want to help them, right? And those are all good feelings and good things. But uh, and it's really hard too. It really is hard to just be like, hey, you know what, we gotta like go, let you go because we we we need to bring somebody in that can do this at the right level. And and so maybe some leaders are better at that than I am. I'm maybe a little bit of a softy, and that's probably a weakness in my game as a CEO, um, because I genuinely do believe in people's potential. It's something I talk about a lot, write about a lot, and uh care about a lot. And so, uh, and so I kind of let that bleed into some of the people that I I bring out of my team. But but man, there's such a difference. When I'm just like, yeah, that guy is crazy good at sales, right? And this guy's just okay. And you can vary night and day you see the difference, but I still somehow lead both of those people on the team sometimes.

Jason Taylor 10:01

Yeah. Question for you. So you said something cool there because I I'm all about leadership, culture building, all that stuff. You said, you know, sometimes I I try, I think they have the potential, and you might wait a little too long. How long, how much time do you give them before you say, hey, you know what, it's time to cut cut bait right now and just say, hey, you know, all the best in your future. Wish you nothing but the best, but it there's not a place for you on this team anymore. So how much time do you give them as a leader?

Jon Cheney 10:25

I think the main thing you have to do is set standards. You have to set, you know, hey, at our company, let's just take like an SDR or a BDR, right? Someone who's just setting meetings, right?

Jason Taylor 10:36

Yeah.

Jon Cheney 10:37

For the AE's to go close. Maybe you say, look, our standard is two a day. If you can't hit two a day, you're not cut out for this team, right? In month one, you need to be able to set 20 meetings, right? So that's about one a day, right? Take about 20, 20 work days. In month two, you need to set 30. In month three, you need to be at 40. If you haven't hit 40 by by uh month three, then, you know, thanks for trying and you know, we're grateful for all your work. And here's your paycheck, and you know.

Jason Taylor 11:01

Got it. Yeah. See you later.

Jon Cheney 11:03

I so I I think you just have to set standards. I don't know if I could say, yeah, 90 days is the right amount of time, because sometimes you've already let that 90 days go. Sometimes you're already at 270 days. You helped someone way, way too long, you gave them too many chances, and you have to just be like, all right, I gotta make a cut right now. And I've done that before. I've made cuts where I just like, okay, this person just has to go. And sometimes there's some last straw or something like that. Or, or, you know, what usually happens for a lot of companies is um, you know, they need to cut, they need to cut backs. You know, something's not working right, and they're, you know, cash flow and things like that aren't working well. And they're like, Where could where do we cut? Oh, we've been kind of looking at this guy for a while. We'll do that. And and I think I think that's fine. I think it's very reactive, and so I don't think that's the best way to do it. The reality is this, and I I just I just want to say this, and then you know, we can move to the next topic here. But don't be too hard on yourself as a leader. Like, yes, maybe you should have cut them before, right? But you genuinely had reasons not to. You were trying to be good and help them and give them chances and and uh and I think that's genuinely a good thing to do. But when it is time to make a cut, you know, you just got to go make that cut, but go easy on yourself as a leader because um I I hate firing people. I I hate having to. It makes me feel like a failure, actually. Not that they failed. It makes me feel like, dang it, I couldn't find a place for this person that used their strength. I couldn't figure it out, right? I couldn't, I couldn't put the pieces together, and that bothers me. And I want to be able to say, no, this person can absolutely provide value. They're awesome. I want to be able to push that forward. But ultimately, you know, you got to do what's right by the shareholders and you got to do what's right for the company, and you got to do what's right for the team to be inspired by these other people that are excelling and uh and actually performing at their job.

Jason Taylor 12:41

Yeah, incredibly self-aware thing for you to say, and very vulnerable when you say, when you say, Hey, yeah, there's times I look at somebody and think, oh man, that falls on me. I often say when I have to get rid of somebody, I I often think to myself, did I do everything I could to get them to the place I needed them to be? And because I'm like you, I think they have a mortgage, they have a car payment, they, you know, they have a life, right? And now I'm going in there the next day and I'm I'm basically, in not so great words, crushing it, right? I'm just saying, hey, you know, you're out, right? And so very much like yourself, I look in the mirror and I think, Jason, did you do everything you could to actually help that person get to a better spot? Or did you kind of not do the fully committed thing and just kind of hope that it happens and now you're letting them go? So incredibly self-aware, what you said. Let's go on that leader comment for a sec. So great leaders create more leaders. I talk about that every day, right? What's one habit on that you intentionally build into your managers to make sure that that happens?

Jon Cheney 13:44

I mean, I try to give them a lot of autonomy. That's one thing that I really like to do. I really, really don't have time to micromanage. So I don't want to micromanage. And so I really try to hire people just from the beginning. I say, look, I'm gonna, you know, I want you to do what you think is best. And I would rather you ask for forgiveness than permission almost always, right? And so I really just I just love to give them the autonomy. And and it really, I honestly do it kind of selfishly for selfish reasons, right? I'm hiring this person so that I don't have to think about this thing.

unknown 14:14

Right.

Jon Cheney 14:14

I'm hiring a VP of sales, so I don't have to be the VP of sales.

Jason Taylor 14:17

Yeah, it's off my card.

Jon Cheney 14:18

I want you to do it. You go do it. You figure out what your KPIs are, make your people work, hire, fire, do what you need to do, just go. Right. And obviously I can help. You know, if you have, you know, you need an idea, you want to bounce something off, you want you want to test a new product, something's not working, great, let's figure it out. But for the most part, you know, go run your department and get results and expect results from people. And um, that works really well.

Jason Taylor 14:39

Yeah, I I love how you talk about you're allowed to fail. As long as you're learning from it, let's let's do it and let's move forward. John, um, you challenge businesses probably on a daily basis to embrace AI before their competitors so they're not left behind. How do you help teams move from fear of change to excitement about it?

Jon Cheney 14:59

They just have to dive in, right? I mean, what I do oftentimes when I'm teaching people that don't know a ton, they know a little bit, right? They're using ChatGPT and they're, you know, spreading their emails, they're they're researching things, they're having to create reports and things like that. Those are cool. Those are all great uses of AI. But the first thing that I usually do when I teach a new group of leaders, usually on AI business people, is we start out the course or the whatever session, whatever I'm doing, and we build a game. Everyone, everyone builds a game, right? Something simple, right? But they code, right? They're actually coding, they're writing code. And you know, maybe they just make a Tetris clone or, you know, some something's dumb and stupid, right? And easy. And it takes five minutes. And all of a sudden, everyone in the room, you know, there might be 50 people in that room or 15 people in the room, but they're all sitting there playing their own game that they just built, right? And we don't spend longer, you know, just a few minutes doing that. But but now all of a sudden, boom, whoa, I didn't know I could code. And then we turn that into, you know, uh, okay, now let's, hey, what about a dashboard? What about some automated, you know, social media posting thing? What about some analytics that you never thought you'd be able to figure out? Anyway, and so so you just kind of start going down that road. But I think a lot of meters get stuck on AI because they don't really know what's possible. All they've seen is a few things that they've tried, and then, you know, they see these headlines flash by and they're like, I don't really know what that means, right? But it once they actually experience some of these things, right? Another thing I'll do is I'll have them make, you know, make a song with AI, right? Using something like Suno or some some fun program like that. And they realize that literally took me 30 seconds and this song could be on the radio. And I'm gonna show my, I'm gonna show my wife and kids later, and this is amazing, right? And anyway, you know, because they just don't know what's possible, right? But once they just, once they just get that, you know, okay, wow, okay, I can write software, I can write music, I can make this, I can do that, right? Then they're smart. They're smarter than me at their own business. They're gonna go figure out, like, okay, how does this actually apply to my business? Um, and so it's all about possibilities. Unlock those possibilities in their mind, and then people can go figure it out from there.

Jason Taylor 16:59

John, you're such an entrepreneur. Have you ever worked for somebody else, or have you always started your own companies and worked for yourself?

Jon Cheney 17:05

Yeah, you know, I uh I went to BYU and uh and I took a um an entrepreneurship lecture series course thing. And it was just, you know, local CEOs coming in and talking to talking to students and sharing their journeys. And and one thing that I noticed that at least three people said over that semester, we would get one speaker a month or a week, right? And so I probably saw 12 to 15 or so people. And at least three of them said, go work for somebody else before you go start your own business. They said, just, just learn how a company runs. Go, you know, you may maybe you'll learn things you don't like, right? Or maybe you'll learn things you do like, right? And, you know, but the point is, just go do that. And so um, right out of BYU, I did work for another company for a few years and about two and a half years. And that one went public. Well, it got got acquired and then went public the company that acquired us up. Anyway, so I was not one of the founders of that. I was, I was just uh, you know, one of the one of the peons in that one. And then a much earlier stage startup said, Hey, will you come and and you know help us attack the same market that you know I was in and we'll give you some equity and all this stuff. So that was my first time to kind of be part of a company from a higher, you know, higher level. It was like, I want to say it was five percent equity. It was a good number, it's a big number. So I went in and that was fun, grew that from about five people to about 15 or 16 people. And then I really wanted to grow that company faster than the CEO did. And he's like, I don't want to raise money, I just want to grow slowly and you know, we could build this over the next 15, 20 years. And I'm like, there's no way I'm doing this for the next 15 or 20 years. And so I quickly said, okay, it's time to start my own thing. And so I I did. And that was that was back in 2016, is when I started my first company. And I'm I'm on really number three since then. Now, my whole life I've been entrepreneurial, right? I ran a kayak school. I was a I was a DJ, which was my own DJ business, right? I I um, you know, I I would buy and sell broken iPhones. I wouldn't even fix them. I would buy them off one market, off a local market, like at Craigslist or something, and they'd be 50 bucks or something. And then I would sell them on eBay where people knew how to fix them. So I'd buy it for 50 bucks, sell it for 250. Right. And um anyway, so I've always been entrepreneur and finding ways to make money on my own. But anyway, um I did take a little stint in there for a few years and worked with worked with, you know, worked not as the CEO, but I certainly am more comfortable when uh people aren't telling me what to do.

Jason Taylor 19:18

Yeah. So you said something there. You said when you when you had one of those speakers in, they said you should work for a corporation just to see what you like about it, what you don't like about it, kind of see what it's all about. Give me something you you you didn't like about it and tell me something you loved about it.

Jon Cheney 19:30

You know, I do like I like the camaraderie of the culture, right? I mean, that's the thing that's really fun is if you get in a good company with good culture and good fun people, it's enjoyable to go to work every day, right? And and I actually really enjoyed working for a company called Zinch that was later acquired by a company called Cheg. And the people that were in that office, it was just a blast, right? You know, our great, great ping pong days and and great competition. I was working with some, it was an elite kind of team. And so when we would go, you know, I'd say, all right, I've closed 300,000 this month. How much have you closed? You know, I mean, it was it was awesome. And so I really, I really liked that. And so that was something I really liked. I think something I didn't like was I didn't have any control really over my pay structure, my earnings, right? I I could, you know, I I had the structure, and then I could try to maximize that. And I did. I blew past all my quotas and broke all their multipliers and all those things. And I've always been a great salesman, uh, and that's that's what I did in these other companies. But I didn't like that they went public and within about six weeks, you know, we had a big meeting and they said, Okay, hey, you know, we're gonna basically cut all your commissions in half. You you do the same thing and we're gonna pay you half. You do double, we'll pay you the same. And I'm like, no, it doesn't work for me. And and that that's that's something that forced me to, or you know, really, really said, okay, let's let's go wood for for the next thing and found that other startup that I joined.

Jason Taylor 20:55

How many years ago was that when you started your own thing and said, Hey, you know what? How many years ago was that from today? Roughly.

Jon Cheney 21:00

Yeah, so 10, about 10.

Jason Taylor 21:02

Good for you. Good for you. Just just impressive uh how proactive and how you put things into action just by this whole conversation. In a world of AI, okay, where we're automating and optimizing work, what human leadership skill do you believe is becoming the biggest competition advantage competitive advantage? So it's a human skill now. So what leadership human skill do you think is the biggest competitive advantage?

Jon Cheney 21:30

Yeah, focusing on how people feel. Yeah. That that is the thing that the AI just can't will never be able to understand. Ever. It's not gonna become sentient, it's not gonna become alive, ever, right? It will never be able to understand how your product makes someone else feel, or how your interaction makes someone else feel, or how a boss speaks to an employee and how they feel, right? And so the things that you can do in the age of AI. To stand out are actually the non-AI things. Right? If you're a salesman, well, don't just automate the heck out of everything and send out 10 million emails and 4,000 LinkedIn requests, right? Yeah. Call someone. Yeah. When you when you're talking on the phone with them, they know you're not AI. You're a human. And guess what? My phone isn't ringing off the hook these days. Right? I get tons of emails and tons of LinkedIn messages and even some text messages here and there that are clearly automated campaigns, right? I'm my phone is not ringing off the hook, right? Except ATT when I don't pay my bill, you know?

Jason Taylor 22:37

Yeah, yeah.

Jon Cheney 22:38

But but but really I'm not getting pitched products on the phone. And I think that's because we're lazy. Humans are lazy and we say, oh, you know what, we're just gonna, we're just gonna do these automations. We'll let AI take care of all the outreach. But the things that are really giving people an advantage today are the really human things that make people feel like they're actually talking to a human or doing things that help them feel special. You know, here's a fun, a fun example that I heard from one of one of my buddies. They're doing doing a campaign where their product's pretty expensive. It's about 300,000 a year. So it's a B2B product, and obviously every account matters. It's big time for them. And so they said, okay, we're gonna do, we're gonna do a special campaign. We're gonna identify a hundred companies that we want to we want to work with. And then we're gonna send a bag, a big, you know, 30-pound, 40-pound bag of of pellets, like Traeger pellets, like for your grill, right? Send that bag of pellets to the to the CEO with a note on it that says, Hey, here's who we are, here's your bag of pellets, meet with us and we'll send you the grill. Right. And so the grills, you know, it's seven, eight hundred bucks. It's not a cheap one or even more than that, if you want to get a really nice one. But the point is, they're doing a maybe $30 bet to just put it out there. And anybody that agrees to meet, great, they'll they'll throw another seven or eight hundred bucks in there. And, you know, just to say, hey, I I want an at bat here. And I think I think what happened is I think 60 of those companies responded and took the meeting, right? Which is crazy. 40 people said, I don't need a grow. And that's fine. I mean, there's CEOs, they probably don't need it, but yeah, um, 60 of them said yes, and then they closed about 25% of those. So they ended up with 15 deals, you know, at 300 grand a pop. I mean, you're you're talking four and a half million dollars of at least year one revenue that came out of a 70 or 80,000 campaign. But I can promise you, AI is not doing that. Or the the human feelings that came out of that was wow, surprise, shock. This is cool, probably funny, right? A little bit of like, wow, these guys, these guys uh, you know, have some cojones, right? They're what they're just doing this big time thing. And and and it people responded to it. I think people are looking for that today.

Jason Taylor 24:50

I agree. I think they're looking for uniqueness. I I think they actually like hearing a human voice. Um, it was funny before you and I started getting on the podcast. Um, I was I got this phone call and it was coming through Zoom. And I thought, oh, maybe this is John calling me. There might be an issue or something. And automatically it said, Hi, hello. I like to speak to Jason, please. And I'm just like, you know, hang up, right? So I I often tell salespeople and and companies it's okay sometimes, just a bit of the day. Just a bit of the day. I know you have to be efficient and proficient and whatnot, but sometimes dialing for dollars is is fun. And you know what? It was the way we did it for years and years and years, because you know, I've been in sales all my life as well. And it's now it's a different point of interaction. So what's old can almost be new again, right?

Jon Cheney 25:38

I'm not saying it's almost like fashion a little bit, right?

Jason Taylor 25:40

Yeah, right. The black too shirt, John, never goes out of style. Never goes out of style style, right? So yeah, you're right. It just you you can do it. John, when you um when you look back at your career and and let's take you back to your your low 20s when you're starting out. If you could give yourself one piece of advice from today to that, to that younger John, what would what would you say?

Jon Cheney 26:04

Save more money and slow down your desire to get a bigger house, get a nicer car, have more things, all the all that, right? Get to where you own your house as fast as possible. Live in as small a place as you possibly can early on so that you can all of a sudden have full equity in that thing, right? And if I had done that, man, I'd be so much wealthier today than I am. I mean, I'm okay, right? But the point is, it's so easy. You know, I remember I sold my company and I was, you know, paying $8,000 a month for my mortgage, right? And all of a sudden I sold my company. And yeah, there was some money, but but all of a sudden, you know, I didn't have that salary anymore. And my burn all of a sudden was just through the roof, right?

Jason Taylor 26:47

Yeah, you were bored, you were doing things every day. Yeah.

Jon Cheney 26:49

Yeah. And so, um, so anyway, um, it's really easy to let that creep up on you. And it just doesn't matter. It really just doesn't matter. You don't need to have as big a house as your parents did right away.

unknown 27:00

Yeah.

Jon Cheney 27:01

Right. Um, you can get there. You can get there, but just be patient. Be more patient with your money, be more patient with uh with doing those things. The power of compound interest is incredible.

Jason Taylor 27:10

Yeah, yeah. So more patience, that'd be one. That's great. And I'm gonna reverse it. So somebody leaves your company or one of your companies that you started and they they've worked with you. What in the back of your mind do you say, hey, I hope they remember most about me on the culture I created for them while I was a leader of that particular company at the time? What what do you hope that they remember the most about you?

Jon Cheney 27:32

Whenever I interview an employee, I always tell them that their job should be at best their fifth priority in life. Okay. Number one is yourself. If you can't take care of yourself, you know, you're not gonna be able to take care of others, right? And that's health, that's mental health, that's you know, er everything, right? Um, if you need to go to the dentist, go to the dentist, right? Don't come to the marketing media. Yeah. Get your tooth taken care of, you know, whatever it is. It's nothing as basic as that, right? Two, your family, right? Your family is more important than anything I could ask you to do. Okay. If your daughter has a soccer game and you need to be at it, go be at the soccer game and skip the all hands, right? And, you know, tell me, tell your team, right? Send a little report. Hey, I'm I'm gonna be at my daughter's soccer game. Here's the stuff that I would cover today. Thanks so much, guys. Um, if you need to chat with me, you know, let's let's chat tomorrow or we can chat before I leave, whatever, right? So there's definitely ways to do that. But family is gonna be more important. Three, and this for some people might even be number one, but God, your beliefs, religion, you know, whatever your core values are, if somehow your job is getting in the way of that, like like maybe I I don't I don't drink alcohol, right, for religious reasons. If my job requires me to drink alcohol, well, I just need to go get a new job, right? Yeah. No big deal, right? And you know, that that could be that. Or maybe, maybe I don't want to work on Sundays, right? Okay, great. Go get a job and work on Sundays. It's totally fine. So those three things. And then four, and this is one that spreads a lot of people, but your hobbies matter way more, right? Why? Because, you know, look, I've got a piano behind me, and if I could have a kayak in here, I would. I'm a whitewater kayaker, right? I love kayaking, I love getting out, I love mountain biking, I love the outdoors. And if I legitimately couldn't kayak or couldn't mountain bike or couldn't golf or couldn't do these things because of my job, well, then I'm not gonna be very happy. And so I want to make sure that my employees are happy and that they take time to go do those things. And so if they say, hey, I'm gonna show up at 11 today because I've got a I've got a tea time in the morning with my dad. Awesome. Amazing, right? And so, you know, yeah, sure. Sometimes there's going to be times where, you know, you're gonna be on a business trip for three days or five days. And yeah, maybe, maybe your job is gonna be a little bit more important for a minute just because you're not with your family, right? It's gonna be more important than than kayaking or golfing because you can't do it. You're on that thing. And so, but on average, your work should be about your fifth priority. And so I hope people remember that. I hope people remember that that work-life balance, if that's what you want to call it, it's really more work-life priorities, right? Yeah. That you, that your life matters more than the job does. There's a million jobs out there, and you've only got one life, and so live it the way you want.

Jason Taylor 30:08

John, we're gonna end it on that because that is such a powerful message you just said. And uh, I gotta tell you, I I love hearing your voice. I love the way you um put your thoughts into place. Yeah, a lot, a lot of what you said today resonated with me, and I know it's gonna resonate with the with the audience. And I just a big thank you for being grateful and so grateful for your time today and and making sure that you spend this time with us because you said some really cool things today that, you know, as leaders who listen to this podcast and people that are trying to start their company, scale their company, whatever, uh, man, you said some great stuff today. And that last part about, you know, looking at yourself, looking at your family, looking at your faith, it it just that that's such a great way to end this podcast. So I thank you for your time today.

Jon Cheney 30:52

Absolutely. My pleasure, Jason. Thanks so much for having me.

Jason Taylor 30:55

Yeah, no problem, John. If you love that session and that conversation as much as I did, would love to have you join our People Playbook community in the link below.