355 Robert Indries

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Robert Indrias is a true testament to the power of determination and hard work. Born into a modest family in a small town in Transvania, Romania, Robert spent his early years on farms, learning the value of perseverance and dedication. His family's belief that if you want to learn, you can learn in any school, fueled his drive to succeed no matter the circumstances.

Robert's travels around the globe have given him unique insights into the world of business. With these experiences, he's built an impressive empire of eight businesses, generating seven figure revenues each year. He's traveled over a hundred thousand miles, visited 17 countries, and spoken to thousands in three different languages.

Despite his professional success, Robert cherishes his loving relationship with his wife, Diana, and their close knit family and friends. Robert's achievements include generating half a billion dollars in business value for his clients, completing over 200 projects across 19 sectors, and consulting with over 1, 000 professionalsto help them achieve 2X to 10x higher levels of effectiveness. [00:01:00] He's also managed to maintain athlete level health and an amazing marriage along the way.

And before we hop into the podcast, a quick word from our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the Deep Wealth Mastery Program. We have William, a graduate of Deep Both Mastery, and he says, I didn't have the time for Deep Both Mastery, but I made the time and I'm glad I did.

What I learned goes far beyond any other executive program or coach I've ever experienced. Or how about Bruce? Bruce says, before Deep Wealth Mastery, the challenge I had with most business programs, coaches, or blogs was that they were one dimensional. Through Deep Wealth Mastery, I'm part of a richer community of other successful business owners.

The idea shared forever changed the trajectory of the business and best of all, the experience was fun. And we'll round things out with Stacey. 

Stacey said, I wish I had access to the Deep Wealth Mastery before my liquidity event, as it would have been extremely helpful. Deep Wealth Mastery exceeded my expectations in terms of content and quality.

And you know what, my Deep Wealth Nation, why they're saying this is because Deep Wealth Mastery, it's the [00:02:00] only system based on a nine figure deal. That was my deal. And as you know, I said no to a seven figure offer, and I created a system that we now call Deep Wealth Mastery that helped myself and my business partners, welcome from a different buyer, a different offer, a nine figure exit.

So if you're interested in growing your profits, preparing for a future liquidity event, if that's two years away or 20 years away, and you want to optimize your post exit life, Deep Wealth Mastery is for you. Please email success at deepwealth. com. Again, that's success, S U C C E S S, at deepwealth. com. We'll send you all the information about Deep Wealth Mastery, otherwise known as Scale for Ultimate Sale. That's where you want to be. You want to be with other successful business owners, entrepreneurs, and founders just like you who are looking to create market disruptions.

And they want to lock in their financial freedom and have success and fulfillment. 

That's the 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery Program. It has your name on it. All you need to do is take the next step. Send an email to success at deepwealth. com.

Welcome to Deep Wealth [00:03:00] Podcast. While you heard it in the official introduction, we have a fellow entrepreneur in the house. We have not only an entrepreneur, someone who knows all about success, post exit success, a smart guy, a driven fellow. We're going to learn all about the ins and outs of what really is his secret sauce to get him from where he started to the absolutely success story that he has today.

So Robert, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. And Robert, I am honored Always curious. There's always a story behind the story. So what's your story, Robert? What got you from where you were to where you are today? 

Robert Indries: Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me today.

This is great to be here. one of the main things that was really a driver for me when I was younger was that we almost never had, any money to do the things we wanted to do or to have the things we wanted to have and so on. And think that level of, poverty, hunger is very specific.

Anyone that was poor, growing up knows what I'm talking about, you feel a scarcity that you really never want to feel again. And so, that really has helped me [00:04:00] and more, as I kept going forward. At one point that shifted significantly because, I mean, now we have everything we want, our house, is quite large, I would say, and, we paid cash for it, it's in the city center.

we don't have a mortgage, we don't have any, student loans or things like we don't have any loans. We're in a very good place. I told you before the show, we're expecting our first child. So, everything's in a place where I don't have that scarcity hunger anymore.

Everything we do now is just to play a game. It's like the the game of business going on and on every month which we enjoy, my wife and I because I go to her when I have very deep, meaningful questions. And then I ask, hey, here's the situation.

What do you think? And then, we just back and forth on it. let's say the drive changes over the years. And something that has definitely helped me was to see my parents and my family's work ethic. Because they would always [00:05:00] just work all day, every day, you know, they would just do or be engaged in some form of productive activity.

They never complained about how much they had to work. Like, You would never hear that in my family. I hear it in many people oh, I have so much work to do, or I have this, or I have that, never, not once, did that conversation come up in whatever I remember about my family. Upbringing. So we would always just work and we would always be engaged.

So, my wife is the same. So when she sees me wake up, at whatever 5am in the morning, being excited to do something, and then I get to work. And many times I even crawl back in bed at seven, just to cuddle for an hour, and then I get out of bed again at eight.

It's just, we can literally do whatever we want. And then sometimes I finish my schedule at 9pm in the evening, right? For me, it really doesn't matter. I have a call with someone in, on the Pacific time zone, and it's an amazing conversation I really want to be a part of, no problem, I'm going to do that.

So, or other times it's just work on projects until late, writing a book or [00:06:00] anything. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, Robert, firstly, thank you so much for not only sharing, openly sharing, being vulnerable. I'm wondering, Robert, because you've now been on both sides where you didn't have from a financial perspective and now where you do have from a financial perspective.

so much. And so now that you've been on both sides, I'm curious, growing up where you didn't have, and no doubt it was challenging, and I'm sure lots of things going on, a lot of noise, everything else with that. But now that you've crossed that threshold and you do have, as you look back, how did not having, not being financially set, how did that shape you growing up?

To who you've become today in terms of how you saw the world, what you thought, what drove you and where that took you for today. 

Robert Indries: Well, that's a very good question. Something that I do think it helps you with or at least it helped me specifically. I don't want to generalize. So it helped me with the grade of humility that is incredibly beneficial in my life now.

[00:07:00] So I was the guy that didn't have. Clothes, or new clothes, until I was like 14, 15, right, I would just wear hand me downs or second hand clothes from the shop. So, we never had anything there, and I always felt or sometimes I was made to feel that, by wealthier colleagues or wealthier people, or, you know, that nature.

Other times I just made myself feel like. would go to some other child's home and they would have full of toys. And I was like, why don't I have toys? You know, I would literally feel, it was so weird. still remember to this day, it's nonsensical, but they had action figures and they had, whatever.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And 

Robert Indries: I still remember to this day how that made me feel like, why don't I have that, right? it puts a hole in you at that age. Now I don't have that hole anymore. I have everything I want. when I say everything I want, I don't have, like the private jets and, the seven star hotel trips and so on, but we also don't need to show [00:08:00] off to anyone, which is, I think, again, something that came from that upbringing. I know many people that are born poor can't wait to become rich so that they can show off, right? Like with expensive cars or anything like that. Really don't feel that at all, neither me nor my wife, and that's great.

For example, when we were in the UK, we'd love to go to charity shops, they're called, where people would, donate their things, and we would literally go on like, this treasure hunt, and we would find, first editions of books. So we really love, or whatever, like some cool things there, and we would just go treasure hunting, that's what we called it, and we also would donate a lot of our stuff, because the same joy that I'm sure we get when we go there and we find something we really like, that someone gave away, I'm sure we did the same when we gave away, our stuff, so it's just a cool thing that we do, so it helped me in that way.

And I also think It helped me, a sense, to value love that we got in our [00:09:00] home. I'm one of the fortunate people that had both a mother and a father. And I'm very fortunate that both of those individuals love me a lot. They had different ways of showing it, obviously, and, they weren't perfect by no means.

However looking back at, the, just the amount of love we had in our family that's why I never felt financial scarcity, even though we didn't have anything. I would very seldom almost never complain to my parents about it. I do remember some pressure points. that I put my parents in when I was a teenager.

Now, understanding how teenagers work and rebel and so on and so forth, now I see, why I did that. It wasn't me. It was like the, whatever it is genetically that's going on to people when they're in their teens, right? However, even to this day, I regret putting my parents in those positions, because, for example, I really wanted a phone.

Phones for us, for [00:10:00] our family, were expensive, like you couldn't have a phone, but everyone in class had a phone, so there was just those moments when now looking back, I'm like, I'm so sorry, you know, I know it was difficult as it was to put me through school, here I am, the little entitled brat, you know, asking for a phone.

So, I obviously don't do things like that anymore, and not even before that, so it was like a specific few years I remember when I used to do that and luckily that went out of my mind very quickly I appreciate that family love that has occurred within my family growing up tremendously, and so that's what I want to mimic with our children as well, even though now we have financial wealth.

I do not want to spend my, my adult life whilst my children are young, thinking that, it's okay if I'm not there, things like that. I want to give them love. I want to be there. I want to, be part of their upbringing. So that's helping me a lot as well. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Robert, as you're [00:11:00] talking through this, what I'm hearing loud and clear, and it's really interesting and again, thank you for being so open, so vulnerable.

Rowing up, it sounds like it was really, if I can use a bit of a posh word, a galvanizing point for you in terms of you knew what you didn't want, and the flip side of that is, okay, I know I don't want this. And really, I want this, and that was success, but what's interesting, and it's not just from you, I've heard this from really being a privilege to have, like yourself, very successful guests on the Deep Wealth Podcast, I hear a very similar theme, hey Jeffrey, it was great when I got the success, but that It's the family.

It's the love. It's the connections. It's all those sayings that we hear that when we don't have money, we say yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Let me get the money and then I'll worry about that stuff. But when people have crossed the threshold and they do reach a set, yeah, Jeffrey, look, the money's nice, but it can't buy love.

It can't buy the happiness. It can't buy time with loved ones and relationships. And it sounds as though [00:12:00] you really found a nice blending of the two, the success and But at the same time, being grounded, being rooted, if you will, in what's important in life, in the relationships with the people around us in the family.

And now, congratulations, by the way, on the upcoming birth, the opportunity to distill those values with your own family now that you're creating. So all of that journey, learning those lessons, when you get to success in business, success It's not luck, at least not when you do it multiple times like you've done.

So you've shown the world, Hey, I'm not a one hit wonder. Maybe the first time was lucky. Maybe it wasn't, but the second time definitely wasn't. The third time, definitely not. And on you go. So I'm wondering, Robert, maybe we can tackle my questions from two sides of the coin. What didn't you do that ensured you became successful in your companies?

And then the flip side of that, and maybe it's one of the same answers, what were you doing that helped get that success? Because [00:13:00] again, like I said earlier, success is not an accident. It's deliberate. It's knowing what to do and not to do. So I'm curious, what was that with you that you found worked for you?

Robert Indries: What didn't I do? I did not

do other people's work for them. That is, I think, one of the main things that has helped me. Once we agreed that, hey, you do this, You are responsible for that. From that point onward, if they would have questions, they could not come to me with direct questions. This is the rule in my companies to this day.

What they can come to me with is here's a situation I'm dealing with. So here's the context. And here are two solutions to deal with that, right? Solution number one and solution number two in order. So one is the one. You want to take, and two is just to get your creative juices flowing, right? So never come to me with just one solution, one pathway to resolve a [00:14:00] situation, come to me with at least two, if not three or more.

And so, this basically forces everyone on the team to actually think about how they can be self sustainable within their role. Not needing me there. Many people ask me, Robert, how can you run 11 businesses at the same time? Or manage. They say manage. How can you manage 11 businesses? And the very simple answer is I do not.

You cannot, or I don't think you can manage. Maybe some people can pull it off, but I couldn't. What I do is I hire very competent individuals and I teach them how to be self sustainable. And within that self sustainability, I then add value by removing bottlenecks. So when they have a bottleneck, let's say.

For example, right now, one of the CEOs of one of my businesses is discussing an exit, and so, they come to me asking, okay, what do we do in this situation, [00:15:00] This is the offer, this is what they're saying, this is our numbers, this is our context, etc. And so, within, All of that, they have access to me personally, one to one, to say, okay let's think this through properly, right, as owners of this asset what do we do?

And so, through that engagement, we can remove all of the bottlenecks that they would otherwise have, or, leave money on the table, or fail, or lose clients in certain situations, or whatever the case may be. So that has, I believe, significantly helped my businesses that I was number one willing to let go of control.

Number two was teaching people how to be self sustainable in their roles. And number three, whenever they needed me, I was always there. And sometimes they did need me on the weekend or sometimes, you know, they did, need me for extensive hours or whatever things of that nature. However, I can tell you in the vast majority of cases.

 the right people, you also need to be careful of hiring and, fire people that aren't, [00:16:00] don't fit your culture, etc. There's a lot to discuss that obviously one podcast episode can't handle. What we started doing is, because we used to do coaching to help people grow their businesses towards making it.

But not to help them with the exit. We would just let them do that, but we will just work with their business, like coach them. And we stopped doing that a while ago after helping over 300 companies. We then, what we did is because when we would have coaching calls, let's say weekly, I would have a conversation with you and we would agree, okay, these are the five items you need to do until next week.

And then next week we would have a call, and you only really did one of the five items we agreed. And, you know, we're like, okay, well, you basically overpaid me, 80 percent of my hourly rate because you didn't do 80 percent of what we agreed you should do by now, right? And so what we started doing is instead of us being the advisors, we can still be advisors and so on [00:17:00] and so forth as part of the package.

However, the main thing that. We sell in one of my companies is implementation, is execution. So companies in 19 different industries come to us and say, Hey, I have this company. It's making X million or tens of millions or hundreds of thousands sometimes if they're small. However, I don't know how to grow this to the next level or I need help.

I don't have the bandwidth to do things. And guess what? My team knows. And we just plug people in the right skill sets, and we just help them accelerate. We recently did that with a company, the things we do is typically multi year engagements. So, we had a company, when we started off with them, they were at 20 million.

In three years, we took them to 50 million. And right now, they are finalizing the M& A, the acquisition papers, I can't disclose the numbers or the names, but it should be in the press next week. it depends on when this episode goes out, but it's a very big [00:18:00] deal.

Very specific significant acquisition. These people are inviting me to private yachts and so on and so forth. I mean, they're doing all of this stuff because they love how much wealth I create for them. But again, I don't do it as you do, helping people, basically get to a higher liquidity number and so on and so forth.

I just love business. I am just an engineer by background. And so for me, there are only zeros and ones. That's it. All of life, everything in life is zero and one. So if someone gives me a business that's doing X million, I can tell you, okay, these are the seven things you need to do, and then you'll be doing 20 million.

And then you come in and say, okay, this 20 million business, don't sell it for 10 million. This is how you sell it for 50 million, and so, I really enjoy I worked with a lot of people like you in the past that, help people get a lot of money for their assets. And we typically like each other a lot because both of us make people, so much wealth that they're like almost crying at the end.

They're like, Oh my God, I can't believe this just happened right after it's done. So yeah, [00:19:00] that's some of the things I've done. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah. Lots there to unpack. And you're right, Robert, each one of those things could easily be a podcast episode in and of itself. Let me ask you this though, because one of the things that you spoke about, and I couldn't agree more with you.

so much. At Deep Wealth, we have all these fancy terms for it. We're really saying the same thing. If you go to step two X Factors in our nine step roadmap, one of the X Factors is where the business owner is not running the company. The business owner has a leadership team, Who runs the company? One of my favorite questions to ask a business owner.

First time I meet that business owner. Hey, does your company run without you? And there's always these ums and ahs and buts. So let me tell you, and the short answer is really, no, they're just telling some, some lies to themselves or drinking their own Kool Aid. But let me ask you this because what's difficult, even for myself, when I was growing my business and even today with my new businesses, as a business owner, it can be challenging to walk away and leave it in the hands of someone else.

It's a very specific mindset that's needed. to walk away and say, okay, maybe that person's not going to be 100 percent as good as [00:20:00] me. Maybe it'll be 80%, but that's good enough. Maybe the person will be 120 percent better than me, and that's terrific. So what did you do, Robert, when you were bringing people in?

You weren't abdicating, you were delegating in a smart way. What was your mindset to say, Hey, you know what, it's okay if I can still do it the best, but it's okay that someone else is going to do it because I'm not doing it. And that's really the main thing. What was a strategy or a mindset that put you at ease with that?

Because so many business owners saying, I can't take it. I'd rather have a smaller company because I want to have that control. I want to be the one doing that. 

Robert Indries: said it so right, especially, at the end, and the question is amazing. Thank you. What I can tell you is that the. Shift for me is realizing what I want some people want, I guess, I guess, I'm not sure.

I'm just assuming some people want to be the Elon Musk's that are involved a hundred percent in whatever it is that they do. Other people don't need the spotlight don't need to be involved or things of that nature. And I'm [00:21:00] one of those individuals, what I care about is to grow assets, grow value in the world, right?

So all of our companies have specific visions, specific missions, and so on and so we are literally making the world a better place, one company at a time, right? this is something I've done 11 times already, right? So as you said earlier, it's not something that's luck, it's a mindset.

of attaching your definition of success to something else. Let me go into that a little bit deeper because this is so crucial. Once I made this mental change, everything changed for me. So before I used to be incredibly happy when I could solve an issue in one of my businesses. I'm like, yes, I've done it right.

I'm not sure I fixed it. And then as I. Like this didn't last for long, by the way, this lasted maybe, you know, a few months or a year or whatever. And then I realized, why do I need to keep fixing things? As an [00:22:00] engineer, I'm thinking, if I keep needing to fix this motherboard, it's broken. I can't, what am I doing here?

I either create an amazing motherboard. And all of the voltages go correctly, and all of the redundancies are there, and so on and so forth, everything works perfectly, or I'm not done yet. So what I attach success to, and the feeling of I've succeeded to, is that I've built a motherboard that does exactly what it's supposed to do.

And I just look at it and I just marvel. That's it. I do nothing else. I just look at it. If I want to improve the motherboard, right? Add the GPU, do this, do that. I am the visionary. I'm the strategist. I'm the director of the show. So I can say, okay, you know what? And I think people in the future will play video games much more, or we'll do video editing much more, whatever.

We need a faster GPU here, right? The motherboard is cool, but we need something else here. And so as the [00:23:00] visionary and director, I can step back and look at the future because I'm not bogged down with the day to day. 

What is the future of my industry? What should my company be prepared for?

And that's what I work on. So everyone comes to me and they're like, okay, what's next? And I can tell them, this is next. This is what we should work on. But then I do nothing, they do everything, right? And they take pride in doing everything. And I take pride in not doing anything, right? So it's a mindset shift.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, what I really like about that is you're really seeing it from start to finish and you're also setting expectations up front, Robert. So it'd be one thing if you brought some people in and they don't know any better. Okay, Robert, I'm done this, what should I do? And you're sitting down, you're planning it out, you're actually teaching them.

What not to do, but you're saying it's okay to do that. So I like how right up front, okay, this is how it's going to be. And this is what you're going to be doing. This is what I'm not going to be doing, but here are my expectations. And [00:24:00] as I mentioned earlier, You're not abdicating. I've made that mistake of abdicating.

Bring somebody in, completely walk away, believing that they're going to do it. And as I say, Deep Wealth, you can't believe, you have to know. And that's where the challenges begin to arise. So I love how you're bringing somebody in, you're delegating smartly, but here's the question for you. So you've got it right.

You got the mindset, right? You have the discipline. Don't ask me what to do. You tell me what you should be doing. And if I think that's on base or off base, or if I can add to that, I will, but I really want you to take that initiative. Terrific. So that's one of the X Factors. It's you with your mindset of putting that right person in place, hopefully getting the right team in place, and you've done that.

One of the questions I have for you is because you've built a culture of success across the 11 companies. And when you're bringing people on board, it's not a science, it's an art. The biggest roadblock that we see is, how do I know I'm bringing the right person in right up front, as [00:25:00] opposed to three months from now, or three years from now, or six months from now.

Any tell tale signs, Robert, of what you're looking for that has you run the opposite direction as fast as you can, this is not the right person, or, hey, yeah, bring this person in closer, this is absolutely the right person for this position in this company, let's get this going. 

Robert Indries: On my end, I like to say that we almost got it down to science.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay. 

Robert Indries: The only reason why I say almost is because people lie, right? And so even if you do scientifically everything you need to do to hire the perfect person, They might have lied during the entire process, right, and you don't know until you've actually worked with them. Many times I like to say it's like a relationship, or like a marriage, like you can be with someone and they can wear a mask for five years and then in year six they're like, no, I'm not that person actually, right.

And so, Or they change. They can also change. That's also why, like you hire someone and then five years later, they have very different goals than five years ago. And so they're just not a good fit for your company anymore. So [00:26:00] that can happen as well, but we have systems for that. So we actually wrote a book on the subject.

It's called Unshackled. It's in pre sales right now. , but basically Unshackled, the seven levels of business excellence in that we have an entire chapter. On how to hire and what to look for. And we look for like 10 criteria that are very important in people.

And so what to look for and what to run away from is the same thing, right? If they have it, bring them closer. If they don't run away. And all of these are important. 100 percent of them. The issue with compromising is you get what you compromise for exactly like in a marriage. So if someone's 90%, right.

But they have a drug problem. Guess what? Three years from now, they might probably still have a drug problem and they'll be in and out of rehab and so on. So that thing you compromise for might literally break your entire marriage, [00:27:00] right? Or they might have an alcohol problem or a gambling problem, whatever, right?

So whatever you compromise for, you need to understand that you've Consciously decided to compromise on that and do not expect them to change, even if they said they will, because when you hired them or when you married them, they weren't changed. They were that person, right? So whatever past traumas or whatever you want to say made them be like that's still there three years from now, right?

They're the same person with the same childhood and background and traumas and so on, and it takes a very significant amount of work to pass that. And so believe that all of these are important, like everything, and we don't have time today to go in that. However, I'm going to say some of them, for example work ethic.

If someone doesn't have a very significant work ethic, they're not good for us. And I believe they're in [00:28:00] general not good for business. They should probably not have a job until they starve and then they actually start working. Because there are too many lazy people out there and society allows it.

And I think that's a problem. We allow people to be lazy. And I do understand not everyone needs to be a millionaire, not everyone needs to, whatever, but if you're hired to do work for whatever, eight hours, and you're hired to do X, Y, Z, do X, Y, Z for the time that you're paid to do it. Anything else?

is stealing, right? And we did have people stealing a lot of times and we found them. Like for example, someone like a developer that we give a task to, to change a few links on the website and then they send us a quote for eight hours. I'm like, no, you, it does not take eight hours to change three links on the website.

It takes maybe five minutes if I'm being generous, right? Bill me for half an hour if you must. But I'm not going to pay your eight hour invoice. [00:29:00] I'm sorry, sue me if you need to, but it's not going to happen and I can prove you didn't spend eight hours doing that, right? And so, or that's just not reasonable.

Obviously, your contracts need to, help you in that regard to say anyone it's very specific legal gibberish, but it's like anyone with a comparable skill set of the job that you were hired to do, et cetera, et cetera, right? And so if we can prove that task can be done in three minutes and we take that to court, we win in court because, we can literally prove that they stole, seven and a half hours in their invoice.

So, long story short, again, people can lie, but you can still look at work ethic, you can look at ego, it's something that we look at if they have ego, that becomes a problem because ego leads to arrogance, leads to lies, leads to hiding facts so that, their ego doesn't take a hit when they fail, et cetera, et cetera and humility is very good in that.

Intelligence is something that you can look for if the work [00:30:00] that you're hiring for requires it. If you're hiring for someone to dig holes, you don't need a high level of intelligence, right? And that's not to be rude, but it's just the world is the way it is, right? Some people are mentally gifted, other people are physically gifted.

Put me to dig holes all day long, I'd crack, like my body would just tear up, and then give the same job to someone, they would lovingly, just put a podcast on and dig holes forever, and make income for their family and they would be very happy because they don't have responsibilities, they don't have, management issues, drama or anything, they just need to do the work that they were told to do.

So again, there's a place for everyone in the world and if you're a digital agency that needs an ads manager, you need intelligent, right, and if you can tell that they're not intelligent, just run, because they'll make stupid decisions that you won't even, be prepared for it because in your mind, you would never think of doing things in a certain way.

And the reason why I'm saying these things is because it just baffles me. And I'll [00:31:00] give you one example. That's very funny. Again, I'm an engineer by background, right? I have my bachelor's and master's in engineering. I loved it. I always loved being an engineer. So at one point we hired this guy, perfect in the interview, good references did great on the task that they were given and so on.

And they said, I want to learn more, I want to do more, and so on. So we hired them as a junior, and so we hired them, and I was giving them tasks. That they can learn about. So in that specific case, they knew some things, html CSS and so on and so forth. And I gave them a Java script tab. And so basically a client wanted to watch on their website.

And so watch is a thing that, it's an animation. It like just moves in real time. And so the client wanted the border of the watch to be thinner, because like he took a uh, code off the internet, like free code that you could use, and he just plucked it in and it worked, he was happy that he made it work, the client was happy that he had the watch, this was many years ago, [00:32:00] And, but they said, could you please make the border thinner?

And it was just a black border. So very easy. It didn't have any aesthetics. And so I told the guy to do it. I said, but Robert, I didn't know how to do that. I'm like, okay, I understand. But you said you want to, right? You want to learn and improve. And this is something for us that's mandatory in all of our businesses.

You can't stay at the same level. You have to keep being better and better. And so he said, okay, yes, I'll learn. I follow up. few days after that hey, did you manage to do the watch thing? And he's like, well, no, because I studied and I learned and I tested and I checked the code and I couldn't figure it out, blah, blah, and so on and so forth.

And I'm like, okay, but it's not that difficult. Why didn't you do it? Well, I had other tasks and so on. Okay, you know what? Next 24 hours, you have no other tasks. But to do this, no excuses. I'll check in with you tomorrow. No excuses. Please make that dinner. I said, okay, next day, I come, to the office, like we had an office at that point, and I go, I [00:33:00] said, okay, show me the thin watch.

It's Robert, I wasn't able to do it. I couldn't find it. and I couldn't believe it. It was shocking. It was like, what do you mean you can't make a border thinner than it is? it's so simple. So I said, okay, look, let's do this. Open the code, please, right now. He opens the code on his screen.

And I said, please search, control F, search for the word border, literally, like that's it, like border. And he searches border. It took us maybe 37 seconds, I kid you not, and we find a class in the code that says watch border, and it was set to like, 20 pixels. I said, please change that to 10, and then save, and he changed it to 10, he clicked save, we went in, and it was thinner.

next week, the guy wasn't in our company anymore. I couldn't I can't deal with that. It's just, we tolerate laziness way too much, if I need an intelligent person as an engineer I can't deal with that. If you want to, paint [00:34:00] like a painter and you don't need a high level of intelligence to do that, perfect.

I can hire you and let's paint. But if you're painting websites. With code, you need to have a certain degree of work ethic and intelligence without which we can't work together, right? And so these are just some items that I can give as examples. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: And it sounds like Robert, and I completely agree with you, it's not only that people are necessarily lazy. Because in our minds, we're saying, oh, gee, do I really want to go back and hire and go through the interviewing process? Maybe this person will change and we're believing our own lies.

Let me circle back in again. This could be an entire podcast episode because you said something that resonates and I've seen it myself. Sadly, unfortunately, oftentimes the best sales job that someone does, it's in the interview, not when they're in the job itself. 

And so sure, Robert, you've identified, okay, in this specific case, the person was really lying and stalling. And whether it's in their work ethic or their integrity or how smart they are, and some of the other attributes that you've listed, which are important, is there anything that's tried and [00:35:00] true?

When you're speaking with someone in an interview, whether it's in their work ethic, or their integrity, or how smart they are, and some other attributes that you've listed, which are really important, is there anything that's tried and true? When you're speaking with someone in an interview, whether they're lying or not lying, you get a sense of, okay, something seems off here.

I'm not going to take this to the next level. 

Robert Indries: There are a few things, actually. So one thing is that they didn't do research on the company or the role or so on. So immediately if I have to talk to them and explain the role that they applied for, right, I'm just on the rest of the conversation just for fun or just for courtesy.

That's it. Because I already made up my mind. I'm not hiring you, right? If you came to my job, like my offer. And you don't know the offer there's no place for us to work together. So that's the telltale sign that they shouldn't be there. So now let's assume they've done all of the research and everything's there and so on and so forth.

The other thing that's a telltale sign is they're not willing to do a trial [00:36:00] test, a trial task, right? So everyone that works for us had a trial task before they started working, right? So if you're an engineer, depends on your skill stack, actually, because, you know, there are many different things.

you're a web designer, a front end guy, you know, we give you some things to change on front end. If you're back end, we do back end. If you're a, an article writer, we ask you, please write one article. It's just gonna take you a few hours. Here's the topic, here's everything. If you do this well, right, and obviously, we're gonna give you feedback, then you also see how they react to feedback, etc.

So, basically, you give them a small test. If it's large, like if it has to be large because the role demands that they are very strategic and they need to do a lot, you can, of course, pay for that. If it's like a 28 hour task or whatever, you pay for that. But if it's something small, like they only take a few hours, if they're not willing to do that, number one, they don't want the job, like they don't want the work enough, or their work ethic is off, or they might be entitled.

Which is a very big [00:37:00] problem in today's society, and so there are many things that, are issues. We don't expect people to come to the job and work for free, but we do expect them to do a trial task. it can even be 30 minutes, but the task, whatever it is, it needs to prove that they have the competence that they Say that they have, because you cannot go past the lies.

You can go past if they are strategic, or you ask them for example, let me show you this website, if you're a conversion rate optimization specialist. Let me show you this website, what would you change? And if their recommendations are horrible, you know, that like, you can't work with them. But if their recommendations are spot on, and you really believe the website would convert better, that's Based on what they just said, that maybe on the interview for five, ten minutes, they can blow your mind.

Oh my God, this guy's great, or this woman is great, I want to hire them, right? Whatever the task is, but give them a task and make sure they're willing to do it and happily willing to like yeah, yeah, a hundred [00:38:00] percent, let's do it. And that has never strayed us wrong. Whenever someone accepts the task and is very happy to do it and does it well, we get mutual benefit from that.

They get benefit from us because. We have all of our expectations set, they know the type of work that they need to do, they enjoy it, that's what they're signing up for, right, that's the type of task they're going to get, they get paid, they're happy, and we're happy because we actually get what we're paying for, right, like we get all of the benefits that we want.

It's an amazing relationship, and even if they leave in six months, six years, it doesn't matter, but during the course of that tenure, we have added value to one another, and that's the only thing that matters in business. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Robert, I'm curious, for what you're calling the trial task, particularly if it's on the shorter side, say 30 minutes, an hour, are people doing this paid? Are they doing this unpaid? What are you looking for?

Robert Indries: Typically, it's unpaid, typically because they're so short. So we make trial tasks very short intentionally. It's giving someone a piece of code, [00:39:00] right, that you know has errors and asking them where are the bugs and why and, whatever.

Things like that. You like, you put them on the spot. And you say, what is the problem with this code? And they can figure it out. If they can't figure it out, they're lying about their competence, right? Same as a content writer. You give them a small article, a thousand words, whatever. Any good content writer can write that in an hour or two, right?

And so you give that to them. If they insist on being paid that's not a problem. I don't see that as an issue. However that makes it a little bit more complicated because you can't pay someone without the contract. The reason why many times it's incredibly useful to have trial tasks without being paid is because then as as a business, you don't need to have a contract with that person.

You can just say, do this. In your spare time, whenever you have an hour and then send it back to me, if they want payment, legally, no one should pay anyone without a contract because then you're [00:40:00] liable, as a business, you have to have a contract with someone. And so now you need to go through, legal and you need to have a contract and you need to read it back and forth, whatever.

It's going to cost you more than the value of whatever it is, especially if they fail. Imagine if ten people ask for payment and nine of them are horrible. You just wasted a thousand dollars in, in, in time spent with your team and legal and so on and so forth to do everything. Yes, you have templates for contracts, but still you need to spend some time in having someone fill out their details and sending it and putting it somewhere and then creating a.

Everything that you need to do, to make it work. It's not a lot. And I don't want to make it sound like a lot. We do it many times when we really are sold on someone like, Hey, I really believe this person's great. And so they're asking us to give them whatever, a hundred dollars for this bigger task.

It's okay, fine. Let's have a contract, that stays that we're, it's an employment contract. However, the [00:41:00] only thing that you're employed to do is this SOW, the statement of work of whatever it is. And then we can add an addendum after that to make it a long term contract after that, if they succeed.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Robert, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. And you're talking us through these different situations. And before we go into wrap up mode, there's a lot of things that you've been sharing. As an example, take the situation where we're buying a car. So before we buy a car, we definitely want to do a test drive.

I mean, who would buy a car sight unseen? We've never driven it before. Is the car driving the way that I like? How does it feel when I'm sitting inside of it? What's the driver view like? What's it like to be as a passenger in the car? 

So with that analogy, now going back to the candidate that we're speaking with, have they done their homework? I love that. Have they taken the time, their unpaid time? And I like where you're going with this. Have they done the research? Am I important enough for them to have done some research on my company?

What the challenges are, how they can help, and then are they willing to do some kind of a trial task to show me, hey, let me kick the tires. Let me take that car out for a test drive [00:42:00] and see what it's like. So how you're approaching that makes clear perfect sense. And for all the listeners of Deep Wealth Nation, are you picking up on this?

Robert's not closing his eyes and throwing a dart at the dartboard. Oh, this is who I'm going to hire.

There's actually a method. There's a deliberate method. So, Robert, when your book comes out, you'll have to come back as a guest. We'd love to have you back and talk all about the strategies that you're sharing in the book, but it sounds like in your book you're also sharing some of your secret sauce. And here are the 10 things that we're looking for when we're bringing somebody on.

And if they're not here, we're not moving forward. And what I love about this, again, this isn't a theory. This is not a textbook. This is what's worked in your 11 companies to date. And who knows how many more companies going forward that you're putting the system out there. 

So, Robert, with all that said, and again, we can go in so many different directions, but we are bumping up against some time. Let me ask you this. Is there a question I didn't ask, or a topic that we haven't covered, or even a message that you'd like to get out to the Deep Wealth community?

Robert Indries: Think that. People, entrepreneurs in general, and, people that are achievers, [00:43:00] they tend to take too many things upon themselves. It's crazy how many people have this belief that I need to know, I need to be the fixer, I need to do, I need to whatever, they have this self limiting belief, that keeps them in one place.

I can't tell you how many love letters, wedding invites, hey, come with us on a fully paid trip invites I've gotten from people that we've literally taken their business and said, hey, just let me do these 10 things in your business. And I promise you will be a happier person. Focus so little on their happiness on their own. Satisfaction as an enlightened being, because at the end of the day, we're part of the animal kingdom. The only difference is we have a much higher level of consciousness. If we are deliberately making ourselves suffer every day at work or every week, are we really [00:44:00] smarter than the monkey who was just living happily his entire life, and so. You need to think about that for a second. And for example, I had this person that is running clinics in the U. S., they have multiple clinics and they kept hiring chief of ops after chief of ops and they kept churning because they couldn't, manage the clinics. And they're a friend of ours because we used to help them with marketing and we generated a lot of leads for them and we just stayed friends.

 But they were having internal issues with the company, so they couldn't take on more clients. They couldn't take on more leads. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. And so when we were discussing at one point, I said, look, just take my team. I'll rent you my team.

Stop hiring chief of ops because it's not working. Obviously they're just selling you the lie and you're buying it up because you believe. I you know, that they're telling the truth. And once we started doing that, their profitability skyrocketed and they went from spending like over 60 hours a week on these clinics, I kid you [00:45:00] not, and they have two children, like they have better things to do, you know, and so they're spending so much time on these clinics and now they're spending maybe 20 hours a week on it or maybe less sometimes, because we're handling all of the ops.

So, Just don't stop thinking you need to be the hero. Again, attach success to something else. You don't need to be Superman or Wonder Woman, just be the smartest person in the room. And guess what? The smartest person in the room does whatever they want all day long. And if you're not doing that, you're not the smartest person in the room.

Because that means you're stuck. And you're stuck in a jail of your own making. And that's why the book that we have out is called Unshackled, which is basically unshackle yourself from whatever prison you put yourself into. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Some terrific advice out there, and I love what you're saying. Let other people be the superhero in their story, in your company.

It's not all about you. Let them do it. 

And if they can't do it, [00:46:00] well, that's telling you something as well. And Robert, you can tell me if I'm on base or off base, because when it comes to saying to someone, okay, you're not a fit here, we're going to have to fire you, we're going to have to let you go.

And so the one thing that I never got used to when it came to firing people, even though sadly I had to do it too many times because you have families involved and lifestyles and lives of all the other team members that are depending on the company to do what it's supposed to do.

That said, what I would share with that person, what I share with the team is, hey, if we aren't that person's destiny, if this company is not the destiny for that person, if they're not shining, if they're not really going into their full potential of what they can do, we're holding them back from reaching their own greatness. And that's a responsibility that we can't take lightly as founders, entrepreneurs, business owners. As hard as it is to have to say goodbye, we've got to give our team members the freedom that they can choose their own destiny. They can find a place where they can make that difference, where they can chart their own path to whatever that looks like. I don't know if you agree with that or not agree with that.

Robert Indries: I 100 percent [00:47:00] agree with that. What helped me a lot on my side is to look at data. So when someone is hired, we on, and we talk about this in the book as well, when someone is hired, you already tell them when they're going to get fired. You say, if this and this happen, you will have to be let go.

Do you understand what we're talking about? They need to both understand and agree. That, yes, this is very reasonable. If I fail for four consecutive weeks, whatever, I don't know, whatever it is, then I should be let go because that means, both of us are wasting our time. Like I can't figure it out.

You're not getting value. Perfect. If that happens, they already know. Many people send in their resignation. I kid you not. So many people just send in their, they know they're going to get fired because it's just You know, it's in the contract that if this, and this happens, you are going to be let go.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Robert, we're really saying the same thing here. What we like to say here at Deep Wealth, it should never come as a [00:48:00] surprise the day that you have to let somebody go. They should know, and believe it or not, when people do know, oftentimes they don't want to quit because they want to get some kind of benefits or other kinds of perks, but they're actually grateful that we're the ones that are pulling the plug.

And on the flip side, when we don't fire someone, and again, that could be a whole other episode, when we don't fire somebody, when we stall, we just keep them in their place. All of the other A players on our team are asking themselves, why is this C player still here? I'm giving it my best. They're holding me back.

Let me go somewhere else. And they actually resent that the leadership won't make the decision. They don't have the courage to make the right decision to take the company to the next level. But again, that could be a whole other episode. And before we go on to the final wrap up here, I know I keep saying this, Robert, one last question for you.

When you go into a company and someone comes along and says, Robert, we want to become part of your portfolio. Invest in my company, big picture wise, what are you doing? What's your secret sauce of what's happening and how long does that take? What would we [00:49:00] expect?

Robert Indries: Well, my KPI. is based on how much do I need to be involved in a business until it's completely self sustainable? So I got that down to between six to 12 months. So whether the business just launched now or whether we are taking that on, It's typically the same things need to happen.

It doesn't matter if you've been in business for a long time or you've just started. Actually, many times it's easier if you've just started because all of the legacy mistakes and systems aren't there. You can start fresh with the systems that actually work. However, when you have a lot of legacy there, It takes a few months to get either rid of people that shouldn't be there or train people that should, but they're on the wrong, seat on the bus, et cetera, there, there's a lot of things to, however, it takes between six to 12 months and it does have to do with looking at every single procedure in the business.

We do not take a generalist approach. We believe that generalities kill [00:50:00] productivity. They kill progress. We believe in specifics. So instead of us going and say, well, you obviously have an issue with your sales. No. We look at the entire sales funnel. You say, okay, how many people are we reaching out to?

And you say a thousand. Okay. How many of those actually reply? Five. Okay, we have a problem,. Why are we talking or reaching out to a thousand people and only five of them are getting back to us? There's an issue. What are we saying in the message? So that's problem number one. And then we go to problem number two and problem number three and so on.

And by the time we finish our deep dive, we typically take the first one to two months to do a full deep dive and come up with everything that we need to do, , to improve the business and its profitability. So when we do that. We uncover hundreds of very specific items that the business can implement to basically remove a lot of bottlenecks and, make way for what it should be as an asset.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So it sounds like a part of your secret sauce is how does that [00:51:00] company become independent, while it's running without the business owners, because you have to have the right team in place, doing the right things at the right time, and you're really there big picture wise helping to implement that, asking all the questions, getting the right things done at the right time, having the right people lined up on the right bus, in the right seat, so everyone together can move forward, which is absolutely terrific.

 Well, Robert, that said, we're going to go into wrap up mode, and it's a tradition here on the Deep Wealth Podcast where I have the privilege, it's an honor, to ask every guest the same question. It's really a fun one. So let me set this up for you. When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time.

So imagine now it's tomorrow morning. Robert, you look outside your window, not only is the DeLorean car curbside, the door is open, it's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do. And, Robert, you're now going to go back to At any point in your life, Robert, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time that would be, what would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom?

Hey, Robert, don't do this, but do that. [00:52:00] What would that sound like?

Robert Indries: I would have a full list, so many things that I would do incredible. The one thing I would probably say to my 14 to 15 year old self, when I was going to high school, I moved to a different city. I left my parents house when I was 14.

I would tell myself, this is the girl you're going to marry. And go meet her now. This is how she is, take her flat, but into the relationship now, right? Because the one thing I really wish in life is that I would have met my wife sooner because we would have had more time.

I do understand that one of the reasons why we appreciate one another is because we had so many bad relationships before, and that's helped a lot. However I would obviously give all of that knowledge to my past self and say, look, everything you don't like in people, blah, blah, blah, and so on.

, I would have that entire conversation. And then say, this person, here's where they live, here's [00:53:00] where they go to school, figure it out, just do that. And think that's something that I would do because then I can just imagine how much more I could have accomplished in life, or both of us, and how much more happiness and how much more growth both of us would have had if we wouldn't have So, we've been held back so much by people that really, either not a good fit for us or, otherwise lying or cheating or, doing things like that.

Do not compromise on the person you will marry. No compromise. Zero. Zero compromise. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Robert, as you're sharing this with us, I'm thinking, and it reminds me of that timeless book, Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. He says so many wise things in there, but one thing that really stood out for me, plainly stated, the most important decision that we can ever make in our life, who is going to be our significant other?

That's the most important decision. And it sounds like this is absolutely what's going on for you. Great minds think alike. And what you're saying, something for us to think about, hey, whoever's going to be [00:54:00] my significant other, do not compromise.

With that in mind, there's a lot that we can think about in our own lives. Maybe we're in a relationship. Maybe we're going into a new relationship. Something to really think about for all of us because you're right whoever said that business isn't personal, well, they never had a business. They never ran a business because when we don't have it right on the personal side, that's going to spill over on the business side. We really have to have harmony in all areas of life and it starts right at home with that significant other.

We absolutely must have harmony in all areas of our life. It does really start at home with our significant other. So let me ask you this, Robert, and we'll put this all in the show notes. For someone who's listening, they want to speak to you. They have a question. Hey, maybe they even want to become one of your portfolio companies.

They'd like some advice. Where's the best place for someone to reach you online?

Robert Indries: If anyone Googles my full name, Robert iNDRIES, they should find me easily. I have a domain with my full name dot com, so if they Email, mail [00:55:00] at robertinders. com and they mention your name or the show, right, Deep Wealth, and so on and so forth. I have a group of four assistants that check my email and, filter everything out.

However, if they mention you or the or the show, I promise to reply personally. I can get on the call with them, and so 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Deep Wealth Nation, are you hearing that? Take Robert up on his invitation. Again, we'll have all this in the show notes. It's a point and click. It doesn't get any easier. Well, Robert, it's official. Congratulations. This is a wrap. A heartfelt thank you. And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe.

Robert Indries: Thank you as well.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. Did you find this episode helpful? Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to [00:56:00] you.

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