You Can Be Elite at Your Craft and Still Go Broke — Here’s Why

0:00 Being great at what you do doesn't automatically make you great at business. The skills that got you here won't get you there. This is Path to Mastery, the raw and real business podcast for service-based entrepreneurs, consultants, and practitioners ready to stop chasing tactics and start building foundations that scale, hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop, co-founders of Empire Partners. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Path to Mastery podcast. Holy shit. Saying that for the first time after 100 episodes. Man, I'm Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop.

0:44 What's up, brother? What's going on? I know I was waiting. I'm like, is he going to fumble over the title? Is it going to happen? Man, that was a big moment. I was sweating a little bit. Dude, this is a momentous episode, and I'm super excited about it. First of all, I just want to say super clearly, if you are exceptional at what you do and struggling a little bit maybe in the messy middle to find your way in building and growing a business, you are in the right place. Period. End of story. And I just want to say before we dive too deep into the episode, we're not changing direction. We're really just clarifying who we're serving here and being a little bit more inclusive.

1:30 I want to talk a little bit about why we made the shift from the coaching equation to Path to Mastery on the podcast. And we're doubling down to Path to Mastery literally everywhere in our business for a good reason. But I want to start at the beginning, man. I mean, we started this podcast in the first place, you know, for coaches primarily. because of the fact that you and I had had so many experiences in different types of businesses over the years. We saw what worked. We saw what didn't. We saw where the holes were. And that's in businesses that go up to nine figures all the way down to solopreneur businesses.

2:13 But at the time that we started the podcast, We had both worked for and in and consulted for so many different personal development companies, worked with a whole ton of solopreneur and small team coaches and coaching businesses. And what we were seeing over and over and over again were coaches that were outstanding at what they did, but had just not been taught how to really build and sustain a profitable and ultimately scalable business. And that's what kind of brought us to... starting the podcast in the first place and, and, and starting it for, for coaches. So talk a little bit, if you would, I mean, we've seen so many things since then we're now, you know, three and a half years later in the business.

3:00 You know, I, well, a year and a half later, maybe two years, I don't know, two years into the podcast. I don't know. I don't know. Fucking timeline. Yeah. But talk a little bit, if you would, about some of the things that you've seen that in your mind sort of necessitated the shift that we're making. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's two big pieces of this puzzle. The first one, which I will refer to as the lie that we're all fed, and we'll come back to that in one second. The second piece is we saw so many of the principles and the pieces that we were doing with coaches and practitioners working in other businesses, some which we'll chat about, They're not even in the same realm of what people would think that we're working with, just even from a podcast or even from our own company or just all the different pieces of what's there.

3:50 And the reality was the same principles and tools we were teaching into coaches when applied to those other businesses had, for some people, even greater benefits. catapults in their business, both in terms of revenue, in terms of culture, in terms of all these other pieces. And so we were like, wow, okay, there's a lot of people that are in the game of business that can really benefit from what we do. And because we limited it with the first word and what we were speaking to of like coaching equation, right? Like that first word, they would have never even looked us up or they would have thought that we wouldn't be able to I'll give you the first example here. The first one, a company that makes custom dump trucks, right?

4:34 So they came into us, literally a company that's been around for 120 years. They applied the principles that we're teaching to coaches and to therapists and practitioners and people who have their own practices. They applied those same principles and they got like 30% growth last year and they also decreased their costs like 20%. It's wild. When you get into those, you know, we're talking like 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollar a year business. Like, holy crap, that is big numbers. So that was the first piece of like, are we really limiting ourselves and not helping as many people that we could help? So I think that that's one piece. The other, which I mentioned a moment ago, which I'll call the lie. We have a lot of people in our world that have been told this lie, which is if you become the world's best practitioner, you'll have a thriving practice.

5:24 And it's a bunch of crap. And when you really look at it, we've got, we have amazing people. We have somebody recently who's just crushing it in terms of their skillset as a practitioner. But when it comes to actually running a business, they just spin out of orbit. Now within that, well, what qualifies a practice? Is that a coach? Is that a therapist? Well, does this same formula apply to dentists or plastic surgeons or chiropractors or all these different other service industries that are out there? All of whom we've worked with, by the way. All of which we've worked with 100%. And so it really is just a matter of just opening a slightly bigger door for us to be able to reach more people that need help, in my opinion.

6:09 Yeah, no, I agree with that. I also think this, man, I think that one of the things for me internally is that you and I both knew that the things we learned foundationally about business were not centric to coaching. We just happen to have the experience later in our business careers of seeing what successful coaching businesses actually look like. There are not many of them, by the way. But we saw through lines for all of the foundational things that we had learned about business in general from some of the true titans in business, by the way. And I agree with you.

6:50 I think that the hard part is knowing over time, like we had, you know, one of the real big eye openers for me was when we started working, we had more therapists that were coming in the door and just really going, my God, these people are incredible at what they do. And there, you know, this is just not working from a business perspective. So many of them were on the verge of either closing their doors or barely making it by, you know, and asking themselves the question of like, my God, why am I killing myself? I basically built myself a job, right? I've talked to, you know, we've worked with some attorneys that are in exactly the same boat.

7:30 So I agree with you. I think, I think that at the end of the day, it's, It's more about just the recognition that what we do is applicable in other areas. And it's not that we want to be everything to everybody, but more so what we want to do is get really clear about the businesses and the people that we can help and help those people now that we've spent so much time focused almost solely on coaches. Yeah. With all that said, and I want to be really clear, coaches, listen, y'all don't go anywhere. All right. We didn't all of a sudden forget how to build coaching businesses.

8:13 And it's not like the content that we make from here forward is not going to be for you. What I want to be really clear about is this. There are a lot of people in your lives that have told you, speaking of lies, by the way, there are a lot of people in your life, in your business that have told you that you're a special snowflake because coaching businesses are just different than other businesses. Well, fuck that. Let me just not beat around the bush. That's fucking ridiculous. No, they're not. Yes, they have nuances just like every business does, but you're not. I mean, you are special, but not in the way that not in that way, not in the way that you've been told. I better fucking stop this before I go down the wrong rabbit hole.

8:55 But do you agree with me here? Is it just me? This drives me crazy. Crazy. What's happened is we've had marketeers, marketers that have become really good at trying to convince people that their business is unique and that your struggles are your own. They've gotten everyone hoodwinked that I've got to do something different. It's so much more challenging than any other industry that's out there. It's not. Business is business is business. And I think that that's the big distinction is like what. What is it that we're bringing to the party? It's really, we want to help you guys just become better business owners. At the end of the day, if you want to be badass in your coaching business, you got to become a better business owner. If you want to become badass in your therapy business, you got to become a better business owner.

9:36 If you want to become badass in your custom dump truck company, you got to become a better business owner. Like it's just, it's the same, the same thread. It just shows up in slightly different ways. And that's just the reality. Yeah, I agree with that. And I would also, I also just want to add this. I mean, you know, both of us have had the good fortune of having success. I co-founded and helped build an eight figure company in, you know, the energy industry before I ever got into coaching. You know, you've been and I've seen the inside through consulting of the actually some of the most profitable companies on the face of the planet, literally.

10:16 You've had the good fortune of, you know, being behind and working inside of businesses, you know, everywhere from seven figures to nine figures, you know, including things that we're doing right now. And I think that the one thing that I want to mention as well, though, is you're listening to this is that. We are absolutely here to share with you everything that we've learned over the years and also to say we haven't learned at all. Like if we're not growing, we're in deep shit here. Speak for yourself. Brooke has learned it all, ladies and gentlemen. But you know what?

10:56 That's one of the things I think I want to be really clear about. Like we're growing, we're evolving. We see things in ourselves and in our own businesses and things that we trip over and mistakes that we make and things that we do that work, things we do that don't work. We want to share all of that with you guys. This is definitely not the podcast where it's like us just sitting up on a high horse and you know, delivering, you know, the gospel here. We've had the good fortune of seeing a whole lot of businesses and our own. And we just want to share all of that with you and do so in the context of truly serving you towards a business that is profitable, sustainable. Because this is one of the things, Brooke, I want to dovetail here into some of the patterns that we've seen that really led us to start Empire Partners in the first place.

11:47 And I'm going to use a word that I know gets thrown around a fair amount when it comes to business owners and entrepreneurs and it's burnout. The B word. The B word. I want to ask you in your mind, when you think about, when you think about the big B, uh, what do you, what, what are the patterns that, that are, you know, that you've seen that are leading business owners, practitioners to that spot where they're going, fuck, what have I done with my life? This is not what I signed up for. I'm not getting what I want out of this. You know, I'm not living the life of freedom that I was sold. You know, what, what are the patterns?

12:29 Yeah. Yeah, burnout is a fascinating thing. And obviously it's been picking up some steam in these last couple of years in the wake of the pandemic and just everyone burning out. Right. So within that, I see burnout in a very interesting way. Maybe it's not an interesting way. Maybe it's normal. Maybe it's not interesting, Brooke. Maybe it's not interesting at all. No. But no, I see it as symptoms, right? So what is burnout? Burnout is us out of alignment. Here's the other thing I'll say. Burnout for most people is when we're not in momentum. Like when you look at like those moments in life where you're just churning and burning and it's fun and things are rocking and you're growing and you're expanding, we don't usually throw burnout into the mix.

13:13 So, okay, well, when do we throw burnout in the mix? Well, burnout is usually when we're working our asses off, our asses because we have multiple. We're working our ass off. And as a result, we're not moving at the same level or the level we think we should be moving forward. So, okay, so it's safe to say that burnout is the opposite of progress. Right? Well said. And in the world of coaching or even in the world that we're talking about practitioners, we're talking about practices. We have these pieces where if people are burning out, it's only because their business isn't growing at the level they thought it should grow and or the role that they have within it is not what they thought they would be doing. Or they might be thinking, I shouldn't have to work this hard.

13:55 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And we label it burnout. Why are so many ending up working so hard and yet coming away with so little? Why? Why is it happening? So first, I mean, shoot, one of the big companies we're working with, we literally talked about this last week, right? They've been doing what they've always done, and they're hoping that they're going to continue to get the same level of growth that they've gotten. And what they have not paid attention to is that the earth literally has moved underneath their feet. Their market share, their client profile, the strategies that they're putting into play.

14:38 They're going, if we just do more of what we always did, we're going to get continuous growth. The game's changing. You know, for a lot of people, I mean, you tell me if you get your inputs and thoughts on this as well. There's so many people out there right now in an industry or in business, and they are blockbuster, and they don't realize it. And Netflix is right on their heels. And if you look at the advent of AI that's come into the fold these last couple years. There's so much that's happening where the technology and the strategies and just the different dynamics. And the biggest one is the psychology of it all. People are not shifting their psychology. They want to get what they got and they want to get more of it and they want to do less.

15:21 but they're not changing their approach. And most importantly, they're not changing their psychology, which I mean, I'd love for you to double click on this. The whole foundation of Path to Mastery is this shift of psychology first, and then the tactics and strategies and those pieces come as a secondary. But if you don't change that piece, you get people who get stuck in the messy middle because they go, oh, I'm a business owner or I am a manager or I'm an operator. They have these different... identities that they carry that keep them stuck. But I'd love to get your inputs because I know this is your, is your wheelhouse for me. Well, I, yeah, no, I agree with everything that you said and I think it is largely due to psychology. And I would, I would just, I would say that very clearly, um, I think what's at the crux of it is that the skills that make you elite at what you do are not the same skills that make you elite at building and growing and scaling a business.

16:21 And that's the hard part, because at the beginning of any kind of, you know, practice based service based business, you start with a couple of people. Right. And you you you start to figure out your craft. And then you get more people and then you learn more and then you hone your craft even further. Right. But you reach this tipping point where you're unbelievably good at what you do, but yet, The business itself is not, you hit that ceiling. You either experience the up and down revenue months. One month is amazing. The next month is a shit show. Or you've got a revenue ceiling that you're bumping up against that you can't seem to get past no matter how many hours you work.

17:07 Or you find yourself in a position where, you know, you basically cannot grow the business beyond where it sits right now, even beyond revenue. And, and I think that that really just boils down to the fact, first of all, I just want to be clear, it's not your fault. Like we don't get taught how to run businesses, uh, you know, and, and certainly wherever you hit pause on that. Right. So take somebody who went and got their MBA. Yeah. Now, if you're listening to this and you have your MBA, you're going to probably want to yell at me, but I'm just gonna call this out. The textbooks that you're reading in your college course, when you get your MBA, when were they printed?

17:53 Okay, now I want you to think about this. And this is why, honestly, this is why I left the whole medical world. I was sitting in class working on my undergrad to become a doc. And I'm sitting there, I'm looking at the books and they were like 30 years old. I'm like, where the hell do these books? Modern medicine, we're looking at books that are 30 years old. But then you look at business. Where do those books come from? Did they even have the internet when those books were printed? Okay, so maybe let's say that these books were printed five years ago. They didn't even have AI at that point. And you're getting your MBA and you're coming into a world where you have a robot that can move 50 million times faster than you can. And that's the business we're in. So, sorry, I just had to double click on that because there's this whole preconceived notion that if I went to business school, I'd have these tools and skills that I need to grow.

18:34 And we're seeing lots of really intelligent people that have business degrees that are getting their ass handed to them right now. So, sorry. Well, no, you're 100% spot on. And I think to stack on your point, there's a big difference between theory and practical application. Like, you know, I... I remember the, I'll never forget on that specific subject, I will never forget the very first job I ever got in radio. I'd gone to school for broadcast journalism and I completed two of my four years and then went to the army and came back and decided I wanted to just try to go get a job in broadcasting.

19:18 And when I finally did, I remember my mentor Steve says to me, yeah, so did you go to school for broadcasting? And I said, yeah, oh, yeah, I did. Absolutely. He goes, great. Fucking forget all of it. And I'm like, wow, glad I didn't, you know, glad I didn't spend the full four years, you know, or more. But I think this is awfully true in business as well. Like, I hate to say it, but your textbook can't prepare you for the real world shit that that that goes on around here. And and I think the other thing, too, man, is this. I'd love for you to talk about this. You've seen this a lot, too. I. I think that, you know, you and I kind of talk about the five phases of a business in sales, marketing, fulfillment, leadership, and technology.

20:05 And one of the things that we see very often with really elite practitioners is oftentimes they're usually, they have some level of proficiency in maybe one, maybe two of these if they're lucky. Very few are elite at any of them. And they're expecting to actually build and grow a business. Here's the problem, right? All five of those cylinders have to actually be working, you know, in order for you to build something that's profitable and scalable. So talk a little bit about that because I think that that's the recognition that a lot of people are missing.

20:51 of different things in their business, but not necessarily understanding how to optimize all those five areas. Yeah, I didn't know. It's a really, I'm actually glad you brought this point up today. Since we've been tracking quite a bit with our members, right? We get to see activity reports every single month with people who are in our world. And it's fascinating because whenever we look at, well, how much activity did you put in compared to what you were capable of putting in? There's always this gap. There's always this chasm because we always have this belief that we could be doing or we should be doing more. And the fascinating piece, and I'll say it this way, the mass majority of people, mass majority of practitioners, people who are running a business, business owners, most people are very, very busy.

21:37 Very few are very intentionally productive. I'm going to say this one again. So I just want people to grab this. We're not, and by the way, this is burnout as well. Part of burnout is that you're doing all kinds of actions and activities, but you don't know if it's taking you to the freaking destination you're trying to get to. Right? If you imagine walking over the mountain range, we're here in Colorado. Right? Imagine you're walking over the mountain range and you go over the first hill, the second hill, and you look up and you're like, shit, the peak's still there. I feel like I just summited three different mountains. There's a certain point where you go, this is tiring. Right? Versus you get to the top of the mountain and you see the desert and you're like, Ooh, there's a straight line now that I've got to run down. That's what's happening to most people in their business. They get to the top of a mountain.

22:18 Like, Oh my God, that was so tiring. And then, Oh, now I got to hike down this thing. And so going, going back a peg for anyone who's driving, I'd encourage you to pull over. This is This is the moment you take notes. Right. So there's these core five areas that Ryan just mentioned, right? You have to become elite or as we would like to say, you need to master the path to mastery. You need to master each of these five areas. Marketing, by the way, they don't. If you're if you're a practitioner of sorts, show me one frickin practitioner certification program that actually teaches you how to go out and generate leads. They don't. Effectively. You go to chiropractic school, you go to dentistry, you go to any of those schools.

23:00 They literally tell you in dentistry, allocate 30% of what you earn and put it aside because you're going to have to go hire another company to go get you patients. That's how much they teach you about marketing. Right? So, okay, that's the first bucket. You've got to become a master of marketing. The second bucket, sales. Sales. What's the number one challenge that people, if I'm going to use the medical world since I'm clearly dropping bombs on them, we're going to get nailed by the powers that be in all of our systems. But how many of them actually teach you proper, heart-centered, authentic, integritous selling? For those that are listening, I'm holding up my hand right now.

23:41 Big zero. Goosehead. Zero. How do we know this? Well, what's the number one malpractice issue that happens in every freaking practitioner that's out there? Bedside manner. Hmm. What is that? Communications and selling. Huh. Who knew? So that's out. The third thing, and this is where they put all their energy and time, is what we would call fulfillment. Yeah? So fulfillment is you actually being really good at what you do and doing the thing. They put all their energy into that because the main reason, A, they get to charge lots of money for it. It takes a really long time. So they get you into their world. But here's the biggest piece.

24:21 They know that their customer, their students are really having a lot of emotional turmoil of, am I good enough to do this thing? So they sell you on, go through our two years, four years, six years, eight years, 12 years, however many years, get all these letters after your name so that you can be good enough to do a thing. And you have this belief that you actually are now a master. Yes, you're a master of that pillar. Fan-freaking-tastic. But you could be the best practitioner in the world and go broke because you don't have those first two pillars. You want to jump in on this piece? Because I want to have this important one. I just, I mean, let that land for a minute. You can be elite at what you do and be broke. In fact, I know a lot of people that are elite at what they do and are broke.

25:04 And I think that it's one of the things, too, to your point, Brooke. Yeah. In a lot of cases, when you're going through the programs, the college education, the certifications, a lot of them are not set up to teach you – to actually cater to someone who wants to run and own their own business. They're just not. You know, and here's the deal. You know, if you become a great practitioner and let's just, you know, take a medical doctor as an example and you want to go work for a practice and just be an employee like you can do that.

25:47 But the very moment that you decide you want your own thing or you want to actually believe that you could build a life in a business that is your own and actually believe. you know, creates the impact that you want, the life that you want, the lifestyle you want for your family, you know, without the red tape and without the ceilings, well, now you just signed up for something completely new. Welcome, you know, welcome to the real world. Welcome to the real world. Welcome to the real world of business. And I just wanna say this on this point, one last thing on this one, which is just this.

26:28 Look, I think that we talked about that word burnout. And when we talk about practitioners and burnout, and this really goes for for business owners and entrepreneurs in general. More often than not, what we're told and what we're taught in today's culture is you just got to hustle more. You're just not working enough. You're just not working enough hours. How many of you listening to this right now are like, fuck you. How many more hours do I have to work? I'm already up to 70, 80, you know, 90 hours a week. What is, you know, how much more do I have? Yeah. Mm-hmm. You don't need more hustle. You need more systems.

27:09 Let that land. Spot freaking on. Which actually, that was a very good segue too. Because the last two pillars for anyone who was like, wait, he said five. And I've only got three. I need the loop to be closed. My brain is melting. All right. So number four is you need to have your technology and systems buttoned up. Right. And I don't care if you're in a full service based business like you look at restaurants, restaurants will be the ones that go. We don't need technology or hospitality. No, restaurants are so leaning on technology these days way more than they ever did before with online ordering, with different receipts coming through and then being able to put out different orders with internal. Somebody walks up to your table now. Now they're taking your order and they're processing your payment right there.

27:51 Like the olden days are gone. And if you're a restaurant that's playing that way. You can't keep up with the numbers and the margin is just, it's going to eat you alive. So if your tech and if your systems are not buttoned up, again, can you get away with it for a window of time? Yes. Will it bite you in the ass the longer you're in the game? Yes. It's just the nature of the beast of where we're at. And then that fifth bucket, and this is a really important one because I know we have a lot of solo practitioners that are out there, a lot of independent coaches, independent therapists, independent contractors, right? The last one is leadership. If you do not show up as a leader, even as a party of one, you are screwed.

28:33 Why? Because your clients need to follow. Your prospects need to follow. Your team needs to follow. If you are going to grow in scale, you will only grow to the level of your own self as a leader. Wow. Say that again. Yep. You will only grow to the level of your own personal leadership. You cannot outperform your own psychology is another fancy way of saying that. Now, here I'm going to kind of drop one more grenade because I'm not dropping enough grenades already. So here's the grenade in the pond. If you take these five pillars, which are the most critical to actually grow and build a successful business?

29:14 Ryan let the cat out of the bag in terms of saying you got to have all five. Yes. You could actually suck at fulfillment for a really long time and make money. But then a lot of people in the marketing game and a lot of them are getting stuff with the FCC right now because they made a lot of fraudulent claims. They're really good at marketing. They're really good at sales. Not so good at fulfillment. Right? They made lots of money over the course of time. It definitely bit them in the rear. But if you want to have a really solid thriving business, you got to crush all five. So no more grenades. I'm pulling back. Well, and I would just say this, brother. You know, I think the thing is that at the end of the day, disorganization amongst those five pillars is chaos at the end of the day in varying levels.

29:58 And, you know, earlier I mentioned people who are at maybe a stage in their business where they want to grow and they can't. You know why? Because you can't scale chaos. You cannot scale chaos. So I think that, you know, each – first of all, if you're listening to this episode and you've heard us mention the path to mastery, not the episode that immediately precedes this one, but the four before that. We did a four part series on the path to mastery where you can go back and you can listen to each level startup stability success mastery. You can hear us describe what each level looks like.

30:41 What are the pitfalls at each level? How do you get from that level to the next level? What are the characteristics of people that are successfully doing that? We break all of that down over a four part series. So I would definitely go back and listen to those episodes if you haven't already to get some additional context. But here's the thing. You know, you just identified something in leadership that's so important and it plays alongside at each stage of the path to mastery, which is identity. Every single stage of the path to mastery requires a different identity. And each of those identities, by the way, has leadership as a core function.

31:24 So I absolutely agree with you a thousand percent. It's incredibly important. And you especially need to double, triple down on this if you're currently a solopreneur and you're going, yeah, but I don't have anybody to lead right now. That's exactly the time. when you need to learn to be the most incredible leader on the planet, because you do, you're leading yourself day in and day out. And if you start creating those habits and practices as a leader and start showing up in a certain identity, when you do start bringing team members on, it's going to be that much easier. So my friend, We're coming to the end of this one. We wanted to kind of keep it short and sweet today just to give a little bit of context of why we're switching, who this is really for at this point, all the commonalities that we're seeing amongst all of the incredible practitioners that are out there.

32:17 And if you've stuck with us this far, Please stick around because in addition to the shift that we're making in the naming convention of the podcast, we're going to have a whole lot more new features that are going to be coming later this year. We're going to get people on hot seats where we're going to bring some folks in and actually interview them on their business. Um, we're going to be bringing in more guests. Uh, we're going to be, you know, breaking down more strategies and tactics. We're going to bring some of our internal team members on in terms of our coaches. Uh, we've got an amazing, uh, chief business strategist as well that, that we'll bring in, uh, to play with us. So there's so much goodness that's, uh, that's ahead.

32:58 But Brooke, before we kind of give parting words here, any last words that you want to kind of give to the people that are listening, to our coaches that are out there, to our other practitioners before we bounce today? Yeah, I would just say know that there's a better way. There's always a better way. There's always an opportunity to grow. There's always an opportunity to get outside the looking glass. And this podcast is really one of those key pieces where if you're out there working in a vacuum or you're on an island alone or maybe you aren't, but you feel like it. Use this as a tool where you can go, great, I'm going to use this to get outside perspective, to hear different ways, to hear different modalities, to help challenge my own psychology, to play at a bigger level.

33:39 And just know whether we know you personally or whether we know of you or whether we don't know you yet, but you know who we are just because of this podcast. Know that we genuinely care about you guys. We want to see you kicking ass and reaching more people and having an even bigger impact. I love that, man. Before we bounce today, I'm going to give a little homework. I'm going to give a little homework. So I've got three questions that I want to ask you, and I want you to reflect on this. And by the way, if you go to coaching equation.com, which is still currently the URL, you can go there and you'll see a little button where you can leave us a voicemail. I'd love to have you leave us a voice note on this, but Number one, I'd love to know if you think about those five pillars of your business, sales, marketing, technology, fulfillment, leadership, which of those five right now do you feel like is probably your biggest bottleneck?

34:32 Secondly, which of those five do you feel like you're strongest in right now? And then lastly, I want to ask this question, and let's just be real with each other for a moment. If nothing changes in the next 12 months, what are the consequences? How much longer can you keep doing it this way? Now, I want to encourage you to answer those three questions for yourself. We'd love to hear from you. Drop us a voice note. You can also email us support at empirepartners.io. But I want to also throw out, if you want to figure out truthfully, maybe you're guessing a little bit. at where you're at in these five core areas of your business.

35:13 And if you really want to know the truth and you want to figure out what that stuck point is and really where your leverage point is and how to utilize that information to grow and scale and build, then, go to www.empirepartners.net forward slash quiz. www.empirepartners.net forward slash quiz. You can take the Path to Mastery quiz. It's 100% for free. It's an amazing diagnostic tool that we took a lot of time to build and has been incredibly helpful for all the business owners that we've used it with. We use it internally with our own clients. I think you'll find it unbelievably valuable and it's going to give you the data that you need to start making data driven decisions in your business.

35:58 So with all that said, my man, welcome. Welcome to the new era of this podcast. Thank you for listening to the Pat DeMastery podcast. Until next time, take care. Thanks for listening to the Path to Mastery podcast. If you got value from this, leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss a single episode. And if you know another entrepreneur who needs to hear this, do us a solid and send it their way. We'll catch you next time on the Path to Mastery podcast.