Many business owners want to scale their business, but they’re unwilling to put in the effort required. Your current business is exactly the business you want because it’s a reflection of who you are. Merrill Chandler discusses with his coach Gerritt Bake how interpersonal value equals enterprise value. Gerritt Bake is a strategic planning specialist at Performance Capital who helps Merrill build enterprise value in his business. In this episode, you’ll discover the importance of having clarity, accountability, and commitment. Join in the discussion to gain valuable insights into building enterprise value in your business!

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Your Business Is Exactly the Business You Want…Whether You Like It Or Not With Gerritt Bake

In this episode, it’s all about the mayhem because I have a special treat for all of you. My guest is going to be Gerritt Bake. He is one of my coaches and one of the men who is contributing so powerfully to me becoming the CEO I’ve always wanted. We’re going to dive really deep into what it does mean to convert your entrepreneurial, your hobby into a business and what we can do about it. We’ve had a series of these in the past and now I’m bringing you my coach, Gerritt Bake.

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I have a treat for you. My guest is Gerritt Bake. I call him Coach Gerritt. Coach Gerritt is one of a very small group of individuals that I’m having me coach on how to build enterprise value in my business. First of all, welcome Gerritt. I’m glad to have you here with me.

Thank you, Merrill. I’m excited to be here.

I’ll let him introduce himself in a moment but I want to tell you why he’s here from my perspective. Many of you know that I joined The Multiple Club. It’s what I thought was a mastermind group, which turned into a personal and soulful revolution of my entire being. I was attracted to this group because they were going to help me build an enterprise that was worthy of investment or was attractive to be purchased. The first day that I get to my first outing with these guys, I learned about what’s called IV instead of Enterprise Value, EV, IV. The rug got pulled out from underneath me. I landed smack dab on my face. Coach Gerritt was key and instrumental in making sure that I got back up dusted off and I’m now having a blast. I’ve never had more fun in a business in my life. Gerritt, tell my audience a little bit about you, how you ended up being like this coach magnificent and how you contribute to building IV and EV. Let’s play and all that.

I appreciate that, Merrill. We could be here all day me trying to introduce myself with all the interesting things that I’ve experienced in life but I’ll give you the reader’s digest version, as they say. I’m originally from Arizona. I was a police officer down there for years in Mesa, which is a suburb of Phoenix. I thoroughly enjoyed my career, the people I worked within the city. I got to this point where my business and I had a job as a police officer was overtaking my personal life. I know that most people struggle with this idea of work-life balance. What had happened was I had to make a choice and the choice was in my mind that I had to choose one or the other. I had to choose business or my career.

Too many times, men choose business thinking that money is going to solve all their problems but not understanding that a business without a personal life or a foundation to stand on is going to fall apart. That’s what happened to me. I got to this point where I had to make the decision. The decision was like, “What’s more important to you?” At that point, I said, “I need to build a solid foundation in my personal life.” I went down the path of personal development. A few hundred thousand dollars later, I had built this rock-solid foundation. What it created was an opportunity for me. This was an opportunity to start a business, helping other people do the exact same thing. I retired years ago and I have been doing so ever since.

You retired from being a police officer. You’re going full-time, full hog into guiding people down the very self-awareness path that you yourself have been on.

There’s this thing and I know a lot of your followers and your readers have this idea that they’re more important than they are because that was me. When you have a job, you are just a cog in a wheel. If you leave, they will quickly replace that cog and the wheel keeps spinning. When you realize that, it’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing because it allows you to see how many opportunities are in front of you, which a lot of your followers are real estate investors. They’re starting to see this. The supercharger in the whole thing is building that solid foundation in your interpersonal value so that you can explode your enterprise value.

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Let’s discuss that. Back to when I met you, here I am waking up at 6:00 in the morning. All of us are staying at the same hotel. We picked up at our hotel. They said, “Wear all black.” I’m thinking I’m going to a seminar on how to build enterprise value, how to get my business ready for investor funding. We pass the office and then we pass 3 or 4 stoplights. We’re on an oceanfront drive on our way to a beach in Newport Beach. I’m like, “I do not know what’s happening. Let’s go get the blood going through our veins. Let’s get pumped up. Let’s get excited, this, that and the other.” This was an exercise in finding out that my business is exactly where I am as a human being. We would take a look at my business in a moment as a projection of me. Gerritt, walk us through, when you say interpersonal value, what I ended up at the beach and I’m finding out that I’m a slug and my business is a slug, “That’s weird. Why would those two be the same?” Walk us through it.

The point is we don’t understand how related our personal life is to our business. When you think about this whether you’re an employee, a business owner or you’re both, a business doesn’t have problems. A business has people and their problems. If you are the owner, you’re dragging all of your problems to the office. You don’t believe me. How many days have you had where you had a fight with your spouse at home and then you try to get something done at work? If you have a bad day at work and then you try and be connected with your family at home? It becomes this fight back and forth and that’s why so many people in their mind think that they have to choose one or the other. When in actuality, there’s one that’s a foundation that builds the other and then the other reinvests into the first. It’s this constant cycle. What most people don’t realize is that its interpersonal value. In other words, the time and effort you spend on yourself, your loved ones and creating that. That allows you to create exponential enterprise value.

That’s where I am. We’re on this beach and I’m thinking I’m supposed to be learning how to be a better businessman. What I’m learning is I’m staring myself in the face at how little I had taken care of myself. I then discovered that my business was a direct relationship, a direct projection of how well I was honoring me. If we could go back to the good book, any philosophy says, “You can only love someone or something else as much as you love yourself.” How much we love ourselves is how big the glass is. Where we put the water is based on where our priorities are. We can’t love somebody more than we love ourselves.

I discovered, Gerritt, as you well know, I didn’t love myself very much at all. IV, Interpersonal Value equals enterprise value or in some cases for some businesses, the exit value for the business. How much it is being acquired for, sold for or otherwise? Walk me through your relationship with them. Why did they choose you as one of the few coaches, the very few people, so that I could wake up to this? What is it about your background, skillset, you as a coach and your experience where I would be blessed by knowing you, your gifts and your perceptions about me while you were giving me feedback about how well I was doing in the world?

Most people, when they first meet me, don’t have the same love for me and my approach. I’m very direct in my approach. If you remember, I spent years as a police officer. I was not the shaking hands and kissing babies police officer. I was the one that you probably didn’t spend time with unless you were doing something bad. I spent most of my career working on the gang unit, working on the SWAT team, working undercover and ultimately, supervising our organized crime squad. Every single day of my career was spent making sure that whatever it was that we were doing had a plan and was executed according to the plan because if not, people’s lives were on the line. At times it was mine, it was a partner or someone that was working for me. Somebody’s life or multiple people’s lives were on the line.

It was so important to have clarity, to have accountability and to have a plan to execute because if not, things were going to go sideways and it was not going to be good. When you think about a business, I know a lot of new investors and new business owners treat their business like a hobby. They treat it like something that they take care of on the weekend. It’s like when you mow your lawn on the weekend. You wonder why it looks half as good as your neighbors. It’s because you don’t take care of it. Business owners want to grow and scale their business, whether it’s real estate investing or otherwise but they’re not willing to put the time, effort and planning into making it that way.

When you ask why it is that people want me to work with them, asked to work with me or whatever you want to call it, it’s because I bring three things, clarity, accountability and commitment to the game called life. A lot of times we don’t start with your business as you very well experienced. We start with you. We start with your personal life. I know exactly what your business is like by knowing who you are as an individual, by knowing how it would be with your family by knowing how it is that you take care of yourself.

Go over those three again. I want to bring them up one by one, first of all, clarity. I have clarity calls with you. The point of the call is to get clearer. Clarity, commitment and accountability. This is why he’s my coach is because I have the desire to be the best human being that I can be. I thought I was spending all of my time on the business and that would create great returns. I could be a slug over here on the sideline, eat poorly, veg out in front of the TV, not take care of my physical body and not do anything. I’ll never miss a day of work. I’ll even work weekends. I’ll keep plotting along on the business and yet sharpening the blade metaphor comes to mind.

You tell the story of the two guys who are working their way hatcheting through a forest. One guy is beating himself blind because he’s running through X number of trees. The other guy did three times the number of trees. He’s like, “Why did you get so much more done than I did? You didn’t work as much.” He said, “I was sharpening the blade. After every tree, you sharpened the blade.” That’s one of the things that you are so good at as a resource and what we as entrepreneurs need. Whether it’s Coach Gerritt or somebody in your life, you need a point of accountability.

The hobbyist in us says, “I got to go out into the garage and tinker around on my business,” like you alluded to. Without an external point of accountability, it can’t be your wife or one of your children. It’s got to be somebody who cares enough about you to look at your blind spot and then tell you the truth. Gerritt, what would you say are the experiences or principles? Go through those three that you’ve talked about. What is the importance of clarity in this framework? What’s the importance of accountability?

I know a lot of your audience are real estate investors, so I’m going to take that path. When you think about clarity inside of a business, what is clarity? Clarity is knowing where you’re at, knowing where you’re going but ultimately knowing how you’re going to get there. I like to equate it to GPS. We’re in 2021. Everybody uses GPS but back in the day, you and I, remember the old Rand McNally maps we would all unfold on trips? We’d get a Sharpie marker or a highlighter. We trace out the path. We’d make sure we need it there especially driving to California in their crazy freeways. What allowed us to do that, to get from point A to point B was having that starting point knowing exactly where we’re at, which ultimately helped us determine the path to get to where we were trying to go.

The issue that most business owners have is that they are unwilling to look at the reality of their current situation. Like what happened to you on the beach, it was the reality of your current situation. You can talk about how in shape or how well you take care of yourself. You could talk about that all day long but we run you through a test and the truth is going to come out. Everything that’s happened to you has happened to me multiple times. It’s that clarity that allows us to determine that path like with GPS. The only way GPS works is it has to pick up the signal about exactly where you’re at. If it can’t, then you’re never going to get to where you’re trying to go. That’s why clarity is important.

The second one is accountability. You’ve experienced this. Most business owners in some way, shape or form were an athlete when they were younger or loved to organize sports. They love the team environment but what was it about the team environment that they love? They loved the comradery. They loved the group. Ultimately, they loved somebody or a coach who could hold them accountable for what it was that they said they were going to do. That is it. It’s important for you. It doesn’t matter. You can call them a coach or mentor, whatever you want or accountability partner. You need somebody outside of your circle who’s going to tell you the truth and holds you to the level that you were going to play out or do the things that you said you’re going to do.

The last piece is commitment. What I’ve noticed in my life is it’s not about how big of actions that I take on a day-to-day basis. It’s about the commitment to the actions because that’s what matters. Some days you’re going to move the needle a whole lot. Some days, it’s not going to seem like it’s moving at all. It’s that commitment to every single day, you wake up and take the actions necessary. They’re going to help you get there. You talk about real estate investing. It is a game. It has astronomically changed. If you’re not prepared for the changes, you’re going to be overpaying for a property.

Let’s be honest. There’s going to be a reset. At some point, you’re going to be caught with your pants down. You’re not going to be a real estate investor anymore. You’re going to be in debt. You’re going to be paying off debt with your old W-2 job. It’s important. Clarity, accountability and commitment to the actions necessary to get you where you want to go the right way. Not the shortcut. Not the cheat code. Not, “How can I become a Bitcoin millionaire?” The point is you can get to wherever it is that you want to go leveraging those three things.

I’ve seen shifts in me. I’ve seen some anchors that I keep dragging along because I know they’ll shift. At some point, there are a couple of things that I’m still struggling with. I don’t care who it is. You’ve got to have an accountability partner, a coach, a mentor, somebody who will see the truth of your situation and help you face the music. In fact, when we were at my first MC weekend, I came in. I was all proud. I’m out of bed at 5:00, 6:00 in the morning. I’m straight to my workstation. I have 14 to 16-hour days so I’m hustling. The business is growing and I’m doing great. I was very soon to learn that I couldn’t run for shit on sand.

The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

When they put me through my, “Where is your business test,” which I had to do with my physical body, I was failing. I had this double bind. Two things are true that are opposite at the exact same time, a paradox. My business is growing but I’m exhausted, tired and I’m dragging my carcass to the office. I’m letting my natural energy be the thing that’s motivating me. I got no motivations other than the drive and will to win. I’m the guy using the ax. I’m dull as hell. I’m just chopping and chopping. I’m falling trees. The number of trees that I’m falling is a good number. I come with Coach Gerritt and learn that half the work can create twice the results. It was a sorry, awesome and amazing lesson.

It’s leaving me time to have more balance, to spend time on my body, on my being, on the balance of my life and not just 100% of my life in business. Coach, in addition to those three things, the accountability, the commitment and the clarity, how does my audience navigate the hobbyist? How do we get them from doing a flip a quarter? They want to do more but they haven’t got any discipline like me. Find a bunch of Merrill’s out there, coach, and what would you tell them who want to do more? They’ve successfully done some but little to no belief in themselves and/or discipline to execute.

You hit the nail on the head there at the end. People think that actions equal results. We’ve been told action, work harder and smarter. The Gary Vee Model, I like to call it, hustle and grind. I don’t know if that guy sleeps. I think he’s a robot. You go to the other extreme and you have Tim Ferriss, who came out with this book called The 4-Hour Workweek. Everybody consumes that book like it’s crack cocaine. That problem is it doesn’t exist on either end. Either end will kill you. Either your business is going to go under or you are. It’s not either of those ends, but what it comes down to is your belief system. Whether you believe that something is possible or not is going to determine the actions that you take and those actions are going to determine your results.

If I don’t believe, for example, that I can gain 20 pounds of muscle, then I will never take actions at the gym. Even though I go to the gym and work out, I’ll never take the actions necessary to gain those 20 pounds of muscle. Conversely, if you’re trying to lose 50 pounds, if you don’t believe you can lose 50 pounds, you might work out. You might run but you’re not going to do the actions necessary to get the results. You lose 10 pounds and you’re like, “I couldn’t do it.” It’s called the self-fulfilling prophecy. Belief leads to actions to results. If you’re a hobbyist at the time and you want to do more, it sounds good. Do you believe you can do more? If you believe you do more, the opportunities are out there.

We’ve had the conversation about money being in abundance all over the place. It is. Trust me. If you don’t believe me, go start messing around with Bitcoins and NFTs, you’ll be like, “This isn’t even real money.” All of a sudden, people are going crazy. They’re buying things with it, taking their NFT salary and all kinds of crazy stuff. It’s an imaginary thing. Money is value. That’s all it is. If you’re looking to do more, you have to ask yourself the question, “What do I believe that’s possible?” If you’re doing one flip a quarter or two flips a quarter possible. Are three flips a quarter possible?

If you tell yourself yes, then you’re going to find the necessary things that you need in order to make that happen. Whether that’s to get more fundable or to find the actual properties that you need or to find the contractors, whatever it is in particular to your business, you’re going to need to execute on that. You’ve experienced this and I have as well. You made a massive impact and massive results because what changed was your belief system. What you saw as being possible and that began with you, investing in you and is then transpired or gone through into your business.

I got to share. Back to the point of accountability, we, as a group, there were 25 of us at the time that is in this cohort. I was asked, “By the time we go to the second quarter, what major previously unthinkable things can you attain this quarter?” It’s got to be a stretch. It can’t be like, “I’ll do what I did last year.” I’ve been working on client-facing software so that my clients can have more interaction. I’m like, “That’s outrageous. That’s a 6-month, 9-month, maybe even a 12-month process.” There was a little peer pressure among us. Everybody’s like, “What are you going to stick to? We’re holding you to it.” I chose SaaS, Software as a Service. I’m going to have client-facing software by Q2 and I’m going to do $300,000 in the first quarter. This is my slowest quarter. I’m on the hot seat.

Every single week we meet as a team, that’s an accountability piece. We meet as a group, as a team. We go down. “Are we on track or off track?” I’m like, “I noticed and I got to tell you this from your coach.” I noticed that I became a little clearer and created more accountability with my team rather than leaving it to themselves. I was working on focusing on other things. I’m like, “What are we doing this month? Where are we on the tenth of the month rather than looking at the twentieth of the month?” Everything you’re talking about, everything you’ve taught me, coach, is that the belief has to be there even though it might be a stretch and I nailed both of these this time. I didn’t hit my weight goals. I didn’t hit my physical training goals but I did hit the business goals.

I want to thank you publicly in front of all of my tribe that your contribution and your inspiration to stay on track, off track and keep delivering results. We exceeded our $300,000 significantly. I’m raising my goal for Q2 because why not? It worked last time and I’m doubting Thomas kind of guy sometimes in some things. As we wrap up here, based on the accountability, in your heart of hearts, what would be the heart message to my tribe about challenges they might be facing? How can they overcome those challenges so that they can get to the point of accountability, clarity and improve their commitment? What would be steps or philosophy from your heart to the mine to theirs? If they’re struggling, how do we overcome? How do we believe in ourselves? We got to believe first. What thoughts, ideas or strategies that you have?

Thank you for that. First of all, Merrill, publicly I want to say congratulations because you did it. You doubted. You didn’t think it was possible. You throw numbers out there. A lot of people are but you’re one of the very few that hits every single one of these numbers. You had some doubts at the beginning but ultimately, you took action necessary to generate those results. You believed that it was possible and here you are. Congratulations on that.

Thank you. Now, I need to work on my weight goals. That’s my next goal.

There’s a book written by a gentleman named Ryan Holiday. It’s called The Obstacle Is the Way. What he did is he went and researched the teachings of the Stoics, stoicism, Marcus Aurelius and some others. It’s interesting his approach to stoicism and what they were teaching. The entire methodology is all-around, understanding that the obstacle is the gift. The obstacle is the thing that helps us get to where it is that we want to go. Too many times in life, we want it to be easy, simple, shorter, not as hard and not as painful but that’s what creates the person necessary to run the business the way it needs to be run or to scale the business to the level it can be scaled to. When you think about a diamond, for example, what is the difference between a diamond and a piece of coal? The only difference between those two things is time and pressure. Which is more valuable? It’s the diamond. More pressure, more time, the bigger the diamond.

In life, it’s about switching back to your mind. It’s about switching the way of thinking that you have and saying, “It’s going to be hard to generate $300,000 to do eight flips, to raise $200,000.” Whatever it is, it’s going to be hard but you have to welcome that obstacle. You have to welcome that thing as an opportunity for you to grow and become more. The current version of you isn’t capable of that. The Merrill that I met in November 2020 was not capable of building a SaaS by the end of March 2021. He wasn’t, which is why in his mind he said 6, 12, 9, 14, 16, 24 months. It was going to keep extending. You put yourself in the container where there was positive pressure but pressure nonetheless and that helped accelerate the timeline. This is the obstacle, this SaaS but the opportunity is the SaaS. You and I both talked about different opportunities that already exist inside of using that in different spaces with different audiences. It’s embracing the opportunity through the obstacle that allows us to get the results that we’re after.

I’m going to get that book. Everybody, grab the book. We don’t have our own book club but we might as well. I’m always recommending something that I do. I’m all about, “That’s my library.” They end up from one side and they go to the other one that’s been read. Thank you for that. What I hear you say is that I’m right. Me, Merrill, does not have the power to have a $100 million company but the journey to the $100 million company will create the hero that will be the leader of the $100 million company. We get to be right. You’re not enough to do that thing. You’re enough to do this thing but if I hear you right, Gerritt, I’m enough to do what I’m doing but I am not enough. The journey will teach me how to get there and how to become that man, business owner, parent, friend and associate partner.

The journey creates the man or the woman. The $100 million Merrill is out there.

Gerritt, thank you so much for the shake and bake because I’m done shook. Thank you for taking the time to join my tribe and me giving us these pearls of wisdom. It’s another voice. I know how to color with a few crayons but I can’t color with all of them. I don’t know how. Thank you for bringing your vast expertise, your gifts and those beautiful colors that you color with so that my team has a bigger, richer and more beautiful life.

Business You Want : The obstacle is the thing that helps us get to where we want to go.

Thank you as well. For those of you that don’t know in full disclosure, I’m also a client of Merrill. I use his services because he helped me. The same thing is I have some obstacles in my way but he helped me see those as opportunities. It’s a beautiful thing.

Where can people get ahold of you, Gerritt, if they’re interested? Do you have a free gift to offer them, a website, a phone or a place for them to be able to contact you?

If you have any direct questions for me, you can send me a message on Facebook or you can email me Gerritt@PerformanceCapitalGroup.com. If you’re interested in this idea of what’s called The Hero’s Journey, I do have a free guide. If you go to WinTheDailyWar.com, you can download your free PDF. It all talks about this hero’s journey. How do we get from where we’re at to where we want to go?

By the way, I have your schwag, Win the Daily War. That’s my little reminder. I snapped, “Win the Daily War.” If you like what you read, like us, comment, share this show with others. The last thing is the first thing for me. You’re not enough to be who you are but the journey will teach you how to be there. Have the commitment and the accountability to walk that path. Thanks for that message. I love it, Gerritt. Thank you very much.

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Thank you for reading. We’re taking this one step further, one more, that plus one, that extra mile to end your day, your week on the biggest, most positive note you can do. Love your loved ones. Be kind, be generous and be thoughtful to everybody you run into. Have a great day.

Important Links:

• Gerritt Bake
• The Multiple Club
• The 4-Hour Workweek
• The Obstacle Is the Way
• Facebook – Gerritt V. Bake
• Gerritt@PerformanceCapitalGroup.com
• https://www.WinTheDailyWar.com/

About Gerritt Bake

Gerritt is a married father of three. After struggling to achieve consistent results in both his personal and professional life, Gerritt dedicated himself to creating a system that allowed him to grow in both areas without sacrificing the other. After serving as a police officer for 15 years, he decided to take his program and talents to the private sector where he currently spends his time helping businessmen Do More, Be More, and Produce More for themselves and their families. Currently, he is an advisor and investor in many businesses in the fields of healthcare, finance, and real estate. He contributes to various police associations and participates with the East Valley Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

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