Find Your Unfair Business Advantage with Zachary Green

‍Chris Ronzio (01:58):

Welcome back everyone to Organize Chaos. I'm your host, Chris Ronzio, and today we have with us Zachary Green. Hey, Zachary.

Zachary Green (02:24):

Hey Chris, how are you doing?

Chris Ronzio (02:26):

Fantastic. Thank you so much for being here.

Zachary Green (02:30):

It's my pleasure. I'm a big fan of yours and your show, and really honored to get a chance to spend some time with you today.

Chris Ronzio (02:39):

Oh, well, thank you so much. All right. Well, I just want to dig into your story because it's such an interesting story and I've heard you on other shows and speaking before. I know you've done even a Ted event, right? So you've got a phenomenal story. You are a veteran, you are a former volunteer firefighter, and you turned into a really successful entrepreneur, which is such a cool trajectory. So let's dive into it. I know you call it your warrior's journey. So can we unpack that starting at the beginning?

Zachary Green (03:08):

Certainly. So, I wrote a book about a year ago. It came out just a few months ago, and I wanted to be an autobiography. And as I was talking to my editor, he is like, "I'm sorry, man," he goes, "but nobody other than your wife and your mom wants to read your autobiography, unless your name's Beyonce or something famous, no one's going to read it." So they said, "Why don't you tell what made you who you are?" And as I started to reflect on my life. I realize that the common theme has been learning from adversity and challenge.

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Learning From Adversity

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Zachary Green (03:43):

So my adversity and challenge starts at a very young age. Very significant ADHD, very significant dyslexia, learning problems. I went to about eight different schools from kindergarten, all the way through high school. And I had a lot of teachers and administrators basically say, "Look, you're never going to amount to anything. You're going to be a failure. You're not going to do well in life." And instead of that hurting me, that actually motivated me. It made me want to show them all that they were wrong and that I had this greatness ahead of me.

Zachary Green (04:17):

And it's funny because it's called ADHD in school. But when you get out of school, it's called multitasking. And then all of a sudden it's like, "Hey, this guy's a great energetic multitasker." Any great entrepreneur, got to be able to do multiple things at once. So it's one of those things that, it does get better. If we're talking to some students out there that are challenging, you can use those disabilities. I say, is superpowers to be able to do things that other people maybe can't be able to do.

Zachary Green (04:47):

So I've always had a deep love for our country, even deeper love for the Marine Corps, always at a very young age, wanted to do that and found myself down at Parris Island, arguably the Marine Corps recruit Depot, arguably one of the toughest, most difficult trainings of any branch in the military in a really God forsake and place of Parris Island, South Carolina. And what I learned was, I struggled a lot during recruit training as a lot of people did.

Zachary Green (05:16):

But there were certain kids that just flourished down at boot camp. And the common thread was, those were the ones that really had a tough life growing up. The kids that grew up in the coal mines of West Virginia, the projects in New Orleans, the mean streets of Boston, Philadelphia. I lived in a pretty upper class neighborhood. Parents that really gave me virtually everything in my life. And so for me, it was a real struggle not having my parents there, and the fact that we were all equal.

Zachary Green (05:46):

And so, again, as that warrior journey starts, they already had their hardship. They had their adversity and they were able to flourish. Got out of the Marine Corps. Two years later, September 11th happened, affected me very deeply as it did all of us. I felt guilty that I had left the Marine Corps and my brothers and sisters were still taking the fight to the enemy. So I joined our local volunteer fire department as a way to give back and continue to serve. Now, at this point in time, my full time job was at Eli Lilly.

Zachary Green (06:18):

I was in brand development and marketing. Learned a lot about solution selling rather than featuring benefit selling. And I got lost in a fire very early on in my career. It was a horrifying experience. I'm down to 20 minutes of air. I can't see my hand in front of my face. Finally, found my way out of the building, and I'm talking to my captain. I'm almost in tears, I'm so upset. And he starts making fun of me. And he is like, "Look, that's normal. You've got to get used to being in that darkness, or you're not going to last in fire service too long."

Zachary Green (06:52):

And that really hit me because I'm thinking like, "No, this is a real problem. And we should find a solution to this problem." And I remember this glow in the dark material we used back when I was in the Marines on the back of our helmets to see each other in the dark. And I found a way with some brilliant scientists and developers to put this into firefighter gear and into helmets and tools, made a prototype. Everybody could see the glow in the dark material as I was working my way down the dark hallway, and they'd start buying them as soon as I get outside.

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Zachary Green's Entrepreneurial Journey

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Zachary Green (07:24):

Over the next six months, I went from fire station to fire station, selling it out of the trunk of my car. What I would do is go into a fire station and say, "Hey, Chris, my name's Zach, I'm a firefighter from Cincinnati. Can we go in the bathroom and turn the lights off together?" And if they didn't beat me up, they were like, "Oh, this shits pretty cool." And the reason I did that is I wanted to show them that disorientation that we all encounter when we go into a fire.

Zachary Green (07:50):

And instead of focusing on the features and benefits of the material, I show them, "Hey, here's a light reference point to see your way out of the dark." And almost every time I would sell out everything I brought. Make $5,000 in six months, I go to this big trade show. In the trade show, we did a$100,000 of sales in three days. I just had a small problem.

Chris Ronzio (08:14):

So from $5,000 in six months to $100,000 in a few days?

Zachary Green (08:20):

So this was the problem.

Chris Ronzio (08:21):

And what's the price point on these things?

Zachary Green (08:23):

They ranged anywhere from $20 to $100. We had a portfolio about five or six different products.

Chris Ronzio (08:28):

Wow. So you're moving some volume?

Zachary Green (08:31):

Well, no, I just sold those. I hadn't even produced them yet. And that was the problem.

Chris Ronzio (08:36):

Oh, okay.

Zachary Green (08:37):

I had no money to buy the raw materials. I had no production capability to process those orders. I had no way to distribute them and sell them. And all my buddies like, "Dude, you've got to stop taking orders. This is getting on the verge of almost being unethical because you know there's no way you can fulfill these." And I'm like, "BS, I'm a Marine, and we accomplish our mission no matter what, I will figure it out." And I did. It got ugly. I had to refinance my home, max out my credit cards, convince my wife that rating our 401k was the right thing to do, because if I could just pay the money to get the raw materials, I could process this order.

Zachary Green (09:19):

We did, we shipped it, we got it all worked out. More orders started to come in, and it started the cycle of practically selling myself out of business because sales does not equal cash. Revenue does not equal cash. When you get paid, that equals cash. Over the next couple years, I grew it into about a $30 million revenue company over the next 10 years, but there was a lot of ups and downs along the way. And that's hopefully something we can unpack as we continue to talk here. And those warrior tactics, those warrior traits is what not only helped me survive, but also flourish and build a $30 million revenue company.

Chris Ronzio (10:05):

Wow. What a story? Okay. Well, there's a lot to dig into here. So the first place I want to go is, when you were joining the Marines, when you were in Parris Island, which I've been to Parris Island, I went there for a graduation, my brother-in-law. And when you're going through that, did you think at some point, "I want to be an entrepreneur. Did you always have that in the back of your head to be looking out for those kind of problems to solve?"

Zachary Green (10:32):

At bootcamp? The only thing I thought of is how I'm going to get through the next hour. I didn't even think about what was going on after that. I just wanted to survive, but I will tell you as a very, very early age, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. When I was literally like six or seven, that was one of the things that I wanted to do. In the Marine Corps, it was about... First, it was about survival. And then it was about how can you flourish and grow and be successful?

Zachary Green (11:04):

And that building steps, they break you down those first couple weeks, it's brutal, brutal. And then they start to build you back up. And even though each week it's progressively more and more difficult, it feels easier because you're getting more in tune to that new way of life, and you're using all that adversity that happened in the previous week to grow and be better prepared for that next step that was going to happen in that training evolution.

Chris Ronzio (11:34):

And so there's a little bit of a parallel, right? Probably to the entrepreneurial challenges you faced as you were growing the business up to the $30 million plus in revenue. You talked about the ups and downs, but it's almost like as you solve one business problem, that makes you a little more confident for the next problem, and the next problem, and the next week. Do you think that ability to bounce back and move forward came from your experience in the Marine Corps?

Zachary Green (12:00):

Well, it's not a little bit, it's 100% related to each other. What I learned in the Marine Corps, if I did that in the civilian world, I'd spent a lot of time in prison. What I can do is take those intangibles, grit, tenacity, teamwork, courage, persistence, and apply those tools. What we learn in the Marine Corps is that you can accomplish anything, as long as you've got the right team and you've got the right attitude.

Zachary Green (12:30):

And if you can't accomplish it, you're willing to die just to make that process. Taking that to entrepreneurship. The number one thing you need as an entrepreneur is grit. It is ungodly difficult. I have been brought to my knees and had difficulty in entrepreneurship that was nowhere close than the worst experience that happened in the fire service as a Marine Corps infantryman. So yeah, it's 100% related.

Chris Ronzio (13:01):

So the grit was instilled in you as baked into your DNA through that process. And then when you leave the Marine Corps, you go to Eli Lilly. And you touched on this really quickly, but the idea of branding and looking for solutions instead of focusing on, on features and things like that, how long were you there?

Zachary Green (13:25):

About 10 years.

Chris Ronzio (13:26):

And was it all working in marketing?

Zachary Green (13:30):

No, and those big corporations, you only got jobs for like a year or two, and then you move on to another assignment. So it was sales. It eventually was sales management, then sales training, and then got to do some brand work around marketing, leadership development. And then my last assignment was strategy and development, where we were kind of changing the way that drug reps interact with physicians.

Chris Ronzio (13:56):

And through that time, were you volunteering as a firefighter or those happen at the same time?

Zachary Green (14:01):

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Ronzio (14:03):

And so almost kind of literally, the light bulb goes off or the light goes off, there's this problem that you have experience in that you can solve. And so you glazed over this in the story, but you remembered the paint that you used and how to turn this into a product, but a lot of people would stop there. A lot of people would say, "Huh, I have a product idea." Maybe tell a friend or something, but then not go into the R&D and building it. And so what were your first couple steps of actually turning this into a real business?

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Three Questions Every Entrepreneur Needs To Ask

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Zachary Green (14:36):

So, I always tell people there's three questions that every entrepreneur has to answer or that an investor has to have answered. And it really directly answers the question you just asked. The first one is, have you solved a problem in a unique and elegant way? At the end of the day, it's about solving problems. We don't need something. That's not solving a problem. The ultimate goal of a sales rep is not to be a sales rep, but is to be a trusted advisor, to be a consultant.

Zachary Green (15:04):

And if you can show someone they have a problem that they don't even know, and you show you have a solution to that problem, that's when great things happen. The second thing you need to do is have an unfair competitive business advantage. Now, I didn't say illegal or unethical, but it's got to be unfair. Go back to your Sunday school of talking about David and Goliath, David beat Goliath for a couple reasons. Number one, he didn't do what Goliath said. So if you and I have a business and we're competing against this big, large corporation, they're going to say, "No, this is the way you get done."

Zachary Green (15:37):

Well, you and I like to break rules and do things differently and do things faster just like what David did. So he didn't come to Goliath because that's what Goliath wanted. He would've ripped him apart. He stayed away. Then he said, "Look," and he goes, "What are this guy's weaknesses?" Well, he's slow, he doesn't have good vision, he doesn't have good dexterity. And here's a great tool I can use, the sling, to take him down. So that's what you need to think of with that unfair advantage. So what was my unfair advantage?

Zachary Green (16:04):

Well, ultimately, it was about exit signs. There's 100 million exit signs in the United States. They all need batteries, light bulbs and electricity. There's a loophole in the code that says that they don't have to be electrified as long as it's visible in the dark. Well, you can use glow in the dark materials to do that. Who inspects the exit signs? The firefighters. Now, I've got over 100,000 firefighters in 25 countries.

Zachary Green (16:32):

I spent a lot of time marketing myself as a celebrity entrepreneur, testifying front of Congress, going to the white house, getting featured on Yahoo's front page as the firefighter entrepreneur. So when I would call up the local fire department in Arizona, because they just failed your inspection, because your exit signs that I sold you didn't have batteries, I could say, "Hey, you know that glow in the dark [inaudible 00:16:56] on your helmet? By the way, that was my company. I'm a fellow brother. Hey, can you look at this section of the code and get this approved?"

Zachary Green (17:03):

And almost every time it worked. So that was that my unfair advantage. Another unfair advantage could be you invented this paper coffee cup, and it's got an automatic heater in it, and you've got a one year exclusivity with Starbucks. These are the type of things we need to think about. Now, the third one's the most important. You've got to have kick sales, marketing, distribution. I mean, it's got to be good because you can take a really bad product and put good distribution and marketing behind it and you're going to do very well.

Zachary Green (17:34):

You can also take a great product if nobody knows about it and they don't have access to it, they're not going to do well. And I think the greatest example in the world is something you see practically every day, bottled water. It's free, it's water. And it's probably a hundreds, a billion dollar industry because at every grocery store, at every gas station, at every soccer game, there's bottled water because their distribution was great.

Zachary Green (18:04):

Now, the reality is I would venture almost every place you can buy bottled water, you can get free water, but it's this distribution and marketing behind it. And they talk about this water's better than that water. BS, water is water. I don't care it's going to taste a little bit here and there. It's still just water. So those are those three things that I really utilized, that I really thought about and really cut my teeth on, and focused on building my company around that and not the product itself.

Chris Ronzio (18:35):

So did you have this platform, this kind of celebrity firefighter thing at the beginning of the company, or is that something you recognized as a key advantage as you were growing the company?

Zachary Green (18:45):

No, I built it.

Chris Ronzio (18:45):

You wanted to develop this platform?

Zachary Green (18:47):

I made it myself and anybody can do that right now with the power of the internet. The first thing I did is I wanted to not focus on glow in the dark, but really highlight the problem of disorientation and lack of accountability on the fire ground and zero visibility environments. I wrote blogs, I wrote articles that got published in the firefighter papers. I was a guest on podcasts.

Zachary Green (19:11):

I went to a dozen trade shows a year and lectured on this type of stuff. I had a PR agency that got me a ton of press. I had a lobbyist that got me in with several people on Capitol Hill that ultimately yielded me meetings to the white house and testified in front of Congress. And that kind of built itself up. And I became an expert in that field by making myself an expert in that field. And it's something that literally anybody can do. And it's really easy to do now with the power of social media.

Chris Ronzio (19:46):

They just have to have the grit that you have, which I don't think a lot of people probably would hear this, and go build the kind of platform that you did. It's a special type of dedication to actually invest in writing all those blogs and making those relationships. And so if someone's just kind of listening to this and thinks, "Oh, I'm not a good writer or I'm not a... I don't record videos." What would you say to them?

Zachary Green (20:12):

You're not cut out to be an entrepreneur then. So the entrepreneur is someone that lives their life like most people couldn't imagine, so they can live a life that most people never could. I will also pull up a big BS flag and throw it right in their face if they say they can't do it because they can find somebody. One of the greatest websites on the internet is called Fiverr, F-I-V-E-R-R.com. It is a combination of all these gigs that you can get anything from someone to write the blog for you, someone who can create the website for you, your logo for you.

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Use Your Debt!

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Zachary Green (20:47):

They can advertise and get more people to watch your podcast. And everything on it's like $5 or $10. Some stuff can get a little price here, but for the most part, it's super, super inexpensive. So you can use those tools and outsource them. If you don't have the money to do it, then do it yourself. If you don't want to do it yourself and you don't have the money, find a way to get money. Charge your credit cards. The number one investor in small business is credit card debt. Debt is a wonderful thing. People think debt is so bad. You got to be cash. No, debt is great because number one, it's really hard to get cash when you're a startup. And number two, is if I can finance $10, because that $10 is going to make me $20, why in the world would you not want to do that?

Chris Ronzio (21:38):

I 100% agree with you. I think a lot of people are scared of debt. They think of it as a bad word, but it's really how you leverage it. And like you said, if you can multiply the money and get a return, then you'd keep pushing that button all day, right?

Zachary Green (21:53):

Well, look, let's say that you have a 50% profit margin on whatever it is that you sell. And your credit cards are 19%, which sounds like a lot interest. It is. You're still netting 31% by using that credit card debt to be able to get you more money, to get in to build those products. So again, people just don't understand that concept a lot.

Chris Ronzio (22:19):

And that's assuming you don't get paid for a year and you have to pay that whole interest. So there's a lot to unpack here and we've shot other videos about this. Well, I started Trainual with credit cards for the first two years and grew that business. So I agree with you. It's a powerful thing. When you were starting your business, you mentioned you tapped into the 401k and the equity in your house and all this, the credit cards. Did you continue to bootstrap the business, or at some point, did you raise money?

Zachary Green (22:49):

So there's three ways that you're going to capitalize. First one is your personal bootstrapping. The next one would be debt. And debt could be bank debt, it could be credit card debt. Now, the good thing about debt is if you become really successful, you don't have to share it with anybody else. The bad thing about debt is you do have to pay it back. They will collateralize it. They will send you to collections. They will reposes your house, your car, or whatever. Then that third one is venture capital.

Zachary Green (23:21):

And the beauty of venture capital is you don't have to pay it back. If you fail, well, it's a risk, but if you're successful, they're going to share in that success with you. And one thing a lot of entrepreneurs want to do is say, "Well, I want controller. I want to have this big thing." Well, the reality is, it's much better to have a small piece of a large pie than a large piece of a small pie. And it's okay to lose control.

Zachary Green (23:46):

I lost some of my control, not total control, but these people at the end of the day, it's all about making money. There are going to be parts that you're going to see something or they're going to see something you don't see, and they're going to help as your partner, because they did put a bigger risk out there giving you that money and they deserve to have a say in what you do.

Chris Ronzio (24:10):

Yeah. And so at some point you brought on venture capital and did it make a big impact in the business in terms of your scale or your distribution?

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The Three Steps To A Warriors Journey

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Zachary Green (24:20):

All the above, but it also made the biggest difference in me and the way that I managed and led the company. Now, if we go back to that warrior's journey, there's really three steps to the Warrior's journey. The first one is adversity and challenge. That is going to be the concept of iron sharpens iron. We think in society, as you have hardship and difficulty, that that's a bad thing. No, that's a good thing. You learn from that, and you grow from it. As the Philosopher Nietzsche says, "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." So that's interesting.

Zachary Green (24:53):

So then at some point in time, we're going to have a crucible, and that crucible is that crisis. The biggest moment of your life, that point where your forward trajectory just is not going to get you through this. Now, that crucible could be death of a family member, it could be a divorce, it could be a drug or alcohol problem. In my case, it was thinking that I was going to run out of business, and potential going into bankruptcy. In that crucible and that crisis, a couple things are going to happen.

Zachary Green (25:19):

First of all, every option is a viable option when you're in that crisis. And some people could say, suicide is an option. You would never consider that outside of that crisis, but that's what happens to people. You put that on the table. Another example could be re-mortgaging your house or selling your company or doing... These are all crises that come up that you have to build with that.

Zachary Green (25:45):

And at the bottom of that crucible is the abyss. And then the abyss stands for darkness and death and giving up. Now, you have to respect the abyss and honor the abyss, but don't spend too much time at the abyss. That same Philosopher Nietzsche has a wonderful quote where he says, "And if you spend too much time staring at the abyss, the abyss will stare back." And what he really means is then at that point in time, it's going to literally consume you in that abyss.

Chris Ronzio (26:16):

Such you in, yeah.

Zachary Green (26:17):

The example would be, you're walking your dog down the street, and there's a big freeway right next to the sidewalk. Well, you know if you go into that freeway, you're going to die. That's the abyss. Don't spend too much time worried about it, or you're not going to be able to focus on walking your dog, but recognize it, honor it, respect it. To get through that crucible, you have to do two things. You have to transform and you have to conquer it.

Zachary Green (26:41):

So conquering it is getting rid of all those bad things that put you into that and transforming is making sure you're never getting back to that place. So where does this come into? What we were talking about before? My transformation occurred when I was in my crucible and I realized the reason the company was failing was I was micromanaging, I wasn't delegating, and in the financial capacity, we were making great money. We just didn't have a lot of cash. And we got over-leveraged. We had a situation where we had a big customer that didn't pay us on time.

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Get Out Of The Way Of Your Business

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Zachary Green (27:19):

I had a lot of bills that we had to pay. I wasn't keeping track of it the way I should have. I wasn't listening to my CFO. And my transformation was I resigned as CEO from the company I started. I brought in a real high powered, good experienced CEO. And that was how we got through that. And I will tell you most founders and entrepreneurs are really bad CEOs. And most of the reason that companies fail is because the founder doesn't get out of the way of the growth of the company. The skillset to be a founder is vastly different than the skillset to be a CEO or president.

Chris Ronzio (27:56):

Yeah, it's true. I've talked to a lot of people and only a few of them have had that kind of moment of self awareness where they say, I'm not the right leader for this company anymore. And a lot of people can try to lead their companies to a fault past where they're really the best person for the job. I know today you're not as operationally involved in the day to day. Is that right?

Zachary Green (28:16):

Correct.

Chris Ronzio (28:17):

And so what do you think were the most important people or systems or infrastructure that you put in place to enable you to successfully step out of that role and for the company to continue to thrive?

Zachary Green (28:29):

So there's this great management process out there called EOS, entrepreneur operating system, Geno Wickman the founder of it. Just Google any of his books. The book that really did it for me was one called Rocket Fuel. Now rocket fuel is just kerosene and oxygen. Either one of them on their own is not that powerful, but when you mix those two together, it can get you to the moon. And the concept was is, you have an integrator and a visionary. The visionary is the big picture idea there that maybe the face of the company, they're the ones that work on the big relationships.

Zachary Green (29:02):

The integrator works in the business. They're making sure the blocking and tackling is happening, HR, financials, all those type of things. And I was trying to act, not just as the integrator, but below the integrator, you have sales marketing, you have operations, you have finance. I was trying to do all those when the reality is I should have just focus on being a visionary. And let me explain how this worked out tremendously well for us, because we had this little thing called COVID that just happened all of a sudden. And at that point in time, I was exclusively the visionary.

Zachary Green (29:35):

That gave me the freedom to be able to say, "Okay, where are we going to go next because we can't keep doing we used to? We can't even go in and call on offices anymore." And I was able to take the plexor class we were using for the exit signs and cut them a little larger. And through my relationships with what I did as a visionary, we got in with Home Depot and literally overnight became Home Depot's number one distributor of COVID protector products. That first year of COVID was our best year we've ever had in the history of the company.

Chris Ronzio (30:07):

Wow. And all because you gave yourself that space to be the visionary, and you surrounded yourself with that team and that structure. So big fan of VOS. If anyone's listening, you can look up my episode with Gino Wickman on the podcast here, and he's a great guy, so thank you for sharing that tip, Zachary. All right. You mentioned your book briefly, Warrior Entrepreneur came out September of last year of 2021, and instantly became a multiple category Amazon best seller. So anything else people should know about that book so they could go pick it up?

Zachary Green (30:38):

No, obviously get Amazon Barnes and Nobles. If you want to go onto my website, which is the name of the book warriorentrepreneurbook.com. Type in the code podcast2021, you can get 50% off. And I'm also more than happy to inscribe it and give you a message in there, handwritten message if you'd like also.

Chris Ronzio (31:01):

So cool. Thank you for that. Well, everyone listening, check out Zachary's book, Warrior Entrepreneur. Go to warriorentrepreneurbook.com, put in the message like he said, and learn more about his journey, which we really only scratched the surface on today. But Zachary, thank you so much for being here, for sharing so openly, for telling your story.

Chris Ronzio (31:20):

And I think it was a great reminder of great products, great business ideas coming out of each person's journey. And you kind of don't know when you're going to walk into that dark room and have that great idea, but if you're open to it, if you're looking for solutions, and if you're ready to act on those ideas, you can make a great business. So thank you for sharing your story here today.

Zachary Green (31:40):

Great. Thank you, Chris and thank you for what you do for all our fellow entrepreneurs.

Chris Ronzio (31:45):

Hey, thanks for listening to Organize Chaos. If you like this episode, be sure to subscribe, or leave a review and share it with anyone in your network that you think could use the information. If you want to connect with me, you can find me on social @chrisronzio on all platforms and you can find Trainual @trainual, just like a training manual. We'll see you next time.

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