How to Grow Your Company from Zero to Millions in Revenue

[0:00]  all right everybody welcome back to the heart and hustle podcast today we are sitting across the table from Aaron the CEO of Arizona autism United today we're going to learn all about aon's Journey how he's built confidence in himself trusted his team the process of taking an organization back when he founded it in 2006 with one employee to today where he has over a thousand employees and is doing tens of millions of Revenue per year now it hasn't always been rainbows and sunshine we're going to talk about how Aaron over came challenges how he overcame some tight financial times but more than that how he's trying to impact his community for a sustainable future today's episode is jam-packed full of amazing nuggets so let's tune in and learn all about aon's Journey let's get into the show have you always had the ability to kind of position these

[0:48]  challenges that you've come across as opportunities for you to kind of dive deeper into I would like to think that's part of my personality uh you know I'm probably not perfect in that regard but uh I do try to to look to be optimistic in that sense and in the one of my old co-workers used to talk about the the analogy of the kite and The Rock do you know this one no um so it's the idea that uh you know let's say you've got two strong leaders on your team one of them's The Rock they're very grounded they're very like we can't screw up we got to make sure all our bases are covered and can be a little more pessimistic but you know there's there's some value in that and the other one is the kite we're we're reaching for the sky we're We're Dreaming we're going big you know what I mean and to have both I think is if they're working well

[1:35]  together is a great um a great way to to thrive as an organization because without the rock the kite just flies off and you know ends up in a tree right um but without the kite you know you're just a rock and you're not really doing much so very early on you had mentioned that you did not want to be a part of corporate America and so you wanted to create your own thing what was that about eron gosh yeah you know so I grew up uh I don't know the 80s 90s um you know to me business just wasn't cool

[2:24]  wasn't it wasn't all the uh the hype of you know entrepreneurial Tech that you you see today it would just look like you know big stuffy corporate buildings and suits and you know stacks of papers and briefcases and it it just didn't appeal to me at all I I I liked doing things with people uh I liked you know to me it what's most important is feeling like I can be myself I can be authentic um I can have real conversations with people I don't have to act a certain way or pretend to be a certain way um I think that you know the business world has changed so much uh there's there's still you know pros and cons and so on but back then for me I just I always saw myself doing something kind of unique something creative something that was just I could feel good about and I knew I was I was I

[3:13]  was helping the world you know doing something positive um not not ripping people off for money not selling stuff on Tik Tok shop which is totally understandable you know question about that yeah so you know my question for you is did you have any role models or examples of Entrepreneurship when you were growing up or was this kind of a venture into a dark scary place for you none that I can think of I mean this was kind of the last thing I thought that I would be doing growing up um you know I look back and there were I I guess some things that I did that uh maybe sort of set the stage more than I realized at the time um let's see I one of the things that that uh that I did in college was um I'm not a very good musician but I'm like a

[4:01]  hobbyist musician I guess I had friends who were good musicians and uh we organized uh a a band to to compete in the the spring sing event which is like this big event they do at UCLA and um claim to fame we ended up beating Maroon 5 for the best band award no way not that we went on to any Fame like they did but uh you know it was pretty exciting at the time but I think what was cool about it is um it was you know it was a bunch of people a bunch of friends and so on we put together a big act it was a combination of like um theater and and music we did a rendition of Copa Cabana Barry Manalo it's a different story but the point is like I I really found quickly that like while everybody was excited about it nobody was going to follow through with

[4:48]  anything and suddenly I found myself as I'm the one like if if I want to do this I have to make it happen and I had to just take on this role of being an organizer um and and you know and I think that like as as unrelated as it sounds it ended up being like an experience that taught me that like I'm capable of doing that of organizing people of you know just scheduling rehearsals making plans getting follow through all the communications and it's very much like when you're you're building an organization it's all about the people and how you get them together and communicating and working together towards a common vision and staying committed and following through and showing up when they need to show up you know what I mean um and that experience was something that I think showed me that I'm capable of like organizing

[5:35]  people around a common goal which I think while I didn't have the example of an entrepreneur um kind of showed me that uh you know when you're building an organization there's a there's a skill there and for whatever reason that that one stuck out to me as something that you know and I look back and I'm like I I kind of did have the seeds of the way I operate today you know what I mean it's really cool to see how those Original Stories kind of have a big impact in the vision that we're able to cast and get other people to believe in you know when we talk about you don't want to be a part of corporate America and you didn't want to you know work for the man that was a vision that you had for yourself at one point in time but in 2006 you started AA with one employee now today you guys are doing tens of millions of dollars in Revenue you guys have over a thousand employees which is

[6:23]  absolutely nuts so how did we decide to put all of our energy and focus into this space specifically what was kind of the decision process like yeah you know I worked in the field first um my uh my youngest brother was diagnosed with with autism when I was in high school um we were about 16 years apart so he was just a toddler uh and I wanted to learn about it and I went to college and there was a program there and I learned about uh applied Behavior Analysis or ABA therapy and so on so I kind of got into the field that way and and had a clinical interest um I didn't know anything yet about running an organization but what happened was I went to college out in uh in La where there was quite a bit of H infrastructure for Autism Services but then I moved to Phoenix where my family

[7:10]  was um not where I grew up they moved here after I went to to college and uh I was new to the area and discovered that at the time there was there was very very little available to help um kids like my brother and so my family was struggling other families they knew were struggling and so I kind of got into it by accident in terms of uh starting to work with lots of other families and got recruited by a local nonprofit to start a program a parent training program um that was basically like hey let's take what you learned in college and start teaching parents because they don't have anything here and they they could benefit from this um and so you know doing I apologize I lost my train of thought what was the question again no

[7:57]  so we were saying why did we choose to invest all of time into this space right right right so I began working at this other nonprofit and I had never known what a nonprofit is I I knew the term but I didn't understand it and so first I was there to help the kids and help the families but um I had a close relationship with the executive director it was a small organization and I just started asking questions like how are we doing all of this for free you know this was a very Community oriented they were great at fundraising and it was all new and I just you know again my sort of like disdain of of corporate America but then suddenly discovering like wait a minute there's I I really like this like organizational stuff I like this this team building and systems creation and and process and and measuring impact and

[8:45]  you know and making a budget work and like how are we doing this I need to learn more and so that was really how I got turned on to the world of nonprofits and once I discovered that I was like that's it for me that's that makes sense to me I I I find that I really enjoy like the like you said the entrepreneurial component of it but I love doing it in a nonprofit environment where we know and we feel like everything is is Mission oriented and um and and for for a cost and so um so that to me was sort of the journey and uh I I worked there for a couple years and then I I knew some other families that wanted to start something new that was really more focused on just providing Services just growing the the pool of services available to the community because there just wasn't a lot available and what was

[9:33]  out there wasn't very good and there were more and more kids being diagnosed and more families moving to Arizona and it just uh it was such a need and I thought you know this is a great opportunity for me to be be at the beginning of something um which would allow me to learn as I grow because I I was new to it I'd never started a business before or anything like that um but I I had you know enough of a foundation who I felt like if we started small we could do it and I could learn along the way um and at the very beginning it was tough I mean we we didn't have any money we nobody knew who we were you know didn't have any staff so it was it was a grind for sure um and there were you know certainly times where um you know I can remember uh some extended family members saying you know

[10:20]  well why don't you do this do something else part-time so you know at least have a little income and that kind of yeah the very beginning and I said you know what practically that makes sense sense but if I don't give this 150% it's never going to happen like there's just not enough momentum if I'm not all the way in so I'm just I had my wife's support she was she was totally behind me and we just said you know what if we're going to do it let's do it and if it fails then you know then it wasn't meant to be but but we know if we don't give it everything we have it's going to fail so we just went all in and uh it took a couple years to kind of really feel like okay I think this is I think this is going to make it you know um and then it's just been uh it's been a journey ever since if you could go back to that younger version of Aaron right you could sit across the table for him

[11:07]  for let's say 5 minutes and he's just embarking on this journey being who you are today with all the experiences and Lessons Learned what would you tell him from an advice perspective to kind of navigate these next challenging years you know obviously we made many mistakes and had many M opportunities along the way I don't know that I would consider those regrets I think a lot of those end up being really important learning EXP experiences um I think I would obviously encourage myself not not to give up and not to feel defeated um I think that one of the things I'm proud of that I I really tried to do and probably could have done better but I think did enough is just really forming relationships with people um and and really trying to bring in people that I knew and trusted uh into the early stages to help build

[11:54]  it because I didn't know what I was doing enough to really you know just like outour Source things um and so really being oriented towards teamwork and being involved in everything I think there were if I would give myself advice it would be you know be be willing to let go of some things a little sooner um but but we got there eventually um but I think what's what's brought us to the point of success we have today is the relationships that uh that I have with the people that I work with and that we have with each other and also that we have externally um I felt very strongly at the time that I I saw a lot of contentious relationships between um providers and funders or health plans or or state government systems or between

[12:45]  families and you know uh uh those systems that sort of are gateways to their services and sometimes it was appropriate the families I know felt like they had to fight for a lot and they did sometimes um but I saw a real um issue I felt there was a real issue with providers having a very negative attitude toward those systems that ultimately fund them and make their services possible um and I thought there was a great opportunity there to take a different approach and just be much more collaborative and and recognize that like these are people on the other side of of the uh the aisle here on the that that work for the the state systems or the health plans and you know they're in their own they have their own contingencies and pressures and environment and you know orders and so on and regulations but like they're people they care they want to do a good

[13:32]  job um and if we treat them better and and and work together we can probably accomplish more and um I think we've we've done pretty well with that and and I have a lot of relationships and have had over the years um with some some leaders or people at all levels um within those agencies and I think that's gone a long way towards improving Services um and making you know things better for families and man it's easy to stand on that post if you will and say we're not changing right and to have that I would say negative relationship or perspective about the entire system how did some of the best leaders who I've spoken to on this podcast have always said something very succinct what you just did when we come across challenges we can either look at these as obstacles that we're going to have to overcome or opportunities you said this is an opportunity for us to be more

[14:20]  collaborative and to build these relationships have you always had the ability to kind of position these challenges that you've come across as opportunities for you to kind of dive deeper into I would like to think that's part of my personality uh you know I'm probably not perfect in that regard but uh I do try to to look to be optimistic in that sense and in the one of my old co-workers used to talk about the the analogy of the kite and The Rock do you know this one no um so it's the idea that uh you know let's say you've got two strong leaders on your team one of them's The Rock they're very grounded they're very like we can't screw up we got to make sure all our bases are covered and can be a little more pessimistic but you know there's there's some value in that and the other one is the kite we're we're reaching for the sky we're We're Dreaming we're going big

[15:08]  you know what I mean and to have both I think is if they're working well together is a great um a great way to to thrive as an organization because without the rock the kite just flies off and you know ends up in a tree right um but without the kite you know you're just a rock and you're not really doing much and so so I think I'm I try to be a little of both but I think I'm a little bit more of that kite personality and that's that's the optimism uh that that's the seeking the opportunity is like you know hey there there's always a way to improve this um and you know one of the thing one of the other examples was when I started the the funding for the services we provided was very low and and as a result the standard of quality was extremely low it's one of the reasons we we founded the

[15:56]  organization and I didn't know enough about the system to really understand what the opportunities were but I looked at it and was like I think we can do better like just full stop you know that's that's enough for me I'm not going to make any promises of what we can and can't do but I know we can do better than that I don't care how bad the funding is and so that that was sort of the uh yeah The Optimist in me just believing that with the right people the right attitude the right Mission we could build something that had the same funding source but at the end of the day day gives families a better a better service experience and and that's really what we started from I love this conversation about optimism you know part of my personal brand and what I've tried to build on the world of the internet and the people around me is I've always been incredibly positive

[16:43]  I've been in some dark times and the way for me to control getting out of those times was to be positive and was to be uplifting of others now over the recent years some people have said Keenan you know I've heard the label you're toxically positive and so I've tried to reframe this I've tried to reframe this into the the statement of practical optimism being practical being able to look at the situation but still having the power to choose to go towards the optimistic side and I feel like that optimism is the foundation of long-term success but also specifically being an entrepreneur being a Founder having to navigate unknown lands to be able to get your services and funding and everything else that comes along with that and I'm guessing that you kind of resonate with that too yeah I I love what you just said I I totally agree with that I I've heard that phrase more and more over the

[17:32]  last year or two of toxic positivity that kind of thing to me I think that's that's relevant when people feel pressured to only act yay everything is great when there's all kinds of problems that nobody wants to address head on right and and and that's like an when you're in an environment where you're pressured you're you know if you you say no to things or you you disagree with with the boss or something like that and that's really looked down upon you know that that's toxic right you want to have open honest conversations you want to confront problems headon um that said when if you have that uh that level of trust within your team and people are comfortable speaking out there's nothing wrong with being like optimistic like I'm so glad you pointed that out let's

[18:19]  dig in because I believe we can do better I believe we can fix that you know what I mean um and I think that's what you're saying is like yeah you've been to some some dark places but you believe believe that can be turned around and I mean look at you you're doing it so the sun will always come out tomorrow you know what I mean you just got to believe in that sun coming up you know you got start somewhere you've been intentional in using the word trust a couple times and I think this is really important for our younger entrepreneurs our younger leaders who are tuning into this you know there's a saying you can go fast by yourself but you can go far together one of the things that I often hear is kind of like the it's my baby fallacy AKA I'm the founder I believe that I can control everything but when we start to grow you don't have the opportunity to do that so you have to put trust into your team to execute how are you or how did you as a young leader

[19:08]  develop that skill set of trusting others to execute on the vision that you kind of put out there for them yeah so I I used to say that I'm really glad that I started a nonprofit um because it's not mine you know what I mean even though for many years it certainly felt that way and they felt like well if if I'm not I don't keep going like this thing ends um that's not the case anymore but in the early stages for sure you know you're kind of driving the ship um but I felt a sense of freedom and that like it's not my money on the line first of all like I think for an entrepreneur that has you know put in their own investment or whatever that's a lot of pressure you know it falls apart you're you know I can understand that and there's probably a lot of I know I would have struggled a

[19:54]  lot with uh spending and investment decisions when it's just you know it's coming out of my personal bank account um on the flip side you know wasn't getting paid very much because it's a startup nonprofit but you know that was part of the deal um so I think that for me there was always a little bit of um healthy separation there where um it felt like my baby but I always I I would always remind others that like hey it's not my organization you know people would say like your company i' be like well it's not mine you know but but I'm I'm in the leadership role um because I felt it was important to um constantly remind ourselves that like we're all in this it's a community organization you know the idea is someday I step away and it it goes on without me right um and we're doing it for a larger purpose that said you know

[20:43]  everything you said is is still applicable um especially in the early stages where you know at the beginning like you said one employee that was me got to do everything got to figure everything out if there's a system that's needed got to build it got to you know whatever it is um um and then those things are you know they're not they're starting from scratch so there's not a lot of like monitoring or quality control it's a lot of basically it's in my head and and hopefully I didn't forget to do anything and you know I was disciplined enough to double check everything Etc um but that's not very sustainable if you want to grow um and so at a certain point you have to start uh handing over first little tasks then eventually big responsib abilities right whether um you know like like like

[21:31]  billing and and and the finance and the um things that are you know compliance or the quality of of services um Etc and so um for me you know again being being young being inexperienced um there at a time when you know Arizona was still uh not as as large as it is now in terms of the population and the business infrastructure and the nonprofit infrastructure and our Serv so it was a lot of uh pioneering in a sense uh certainly in our field and kind of making it up as we went along and I started I remember the very first remember really my my very first hire uh other than like you know providers to work with families but to help with managing the

[22:18]  organization um I really struggled with that I was like well I I can't just hire a stranger like I I would have no idea if they were you know I can't I wouldn't know how to watch what they're doing and you know what I mean like I was so new to it so I just had to Think Through who do I know you know who do I know that um would be a good fruit for this and would be interested and so the first few people that we hired um were people that I either knew personally or sort of like there was you know friend of a friend kind of thing whatever there there was enough there that I felt like there I could we I could place some trust in them um and there was an enthusiasm to kind of like let's build this together and and I think that was really it you know just once there was a little bit of momentum and it was like okay now I'm starting to get a feel for what it's

[23:05]  like to work as a team to have you know some delegated responsibilities to have you know U meetings where we we share what we're doing and we set priorities and you know delegate tasks and things like that and and then eventually you start to uh you know emerge like what it what the next role could look like and what it would be like to hire someone new and train them and I mean it's you know we do it all the time but it it was pretty foreign at the beginning um and again some mistakes were made and and some some hires that didn't work out but also some amazing people that we we hired uh in the early stages that we didn't know but uh just made a great connection with and were with us for years and so that those are very powerful experiences too when it does work and you see okay this is this is what it looks like when it works you

[23:53]  know this is how we can begin to build a team I had another amazing CEO on the show previously his name was Gino and he talked about having compassion as a leader he said Keenan you know two of the most compassionate people in your life were your parents because when you were younger they trusted in you to go through an experience sometimes fail sometimes get back up and get an understanding of why you failed now they could have easily taken you out of that situation and had you avoid that all completely but they allowed for you to have the space so you could fail and that was compassion and I feel like we need to be more compassionate as Leaders to allow for our team members to have the space so sometimes they need to fall down so they can get back up and have a true understanding of why they failed which is really important as we kind of

[24:39]  grow in an organization as well absolutely yeah and I think that uh again for me at that time not really having that strong uh business background um I didn't really know how to lead with you know metrics or um you know scoring people's performance or you know hard deadlines that kind of thing for me it was much more about um you know values and purpose and absolutely compassion um you know making mistakes totally fine I'm making mistakes all the time um it's all it's much more about are we doing it together are we open like you said the trust we're talking about what we're doing we're we're all invested in improving and um and we're

[25:30]  having a good time too that really important as well I mean you know to do work like that especially in the early stages um there's not a lot of reward there yet unless you're really enjoying it and and enjoying the challenge and enjoying each other um so the Dynamics of of the team to me is is everything in today as well um we have an unbelievable senior management team we've grown a really really strong team of of program leaders and supervisors um and then each of them have have their own teams for different departments programs um and you know we're in what they call a people business so we we've got to have um a culture that is is all about people enjoying working together and collaborating having fun but working hard um being committed uh being

[26:19]  accountable to each other and I think all of that was is exactly the same as what I was looking for in the very beginning you know one of the things that I often think about as I get a little bit older is the perspective of the journey is so important you know often when people reach these huge Milestones like a thousand employees and tens of millions in Revenue often when we reflect we go back to the times when things were uncertain and we are working as a tight-knit team have you always had that sense of perspective to kind of think about where you came from and where you're kind of going I I you're right you do think a lot about the the struggles when when through the perspective and I remember you know uh our first office every time it rained the floor would get wet and I'd be running across this giant

[27:09]  Courtyard to the town hall to borrow their mop because I was the only one that worked in this office I mean it was just like wow um I remember you know going through some real Financial struggles as an organization where it got real scary and it was like oh my gosh like you know there were some major changes in our funding sources and we just weren't prepared um and I really we you know I got real vulnerable with our team and it was just like I I can't believe this is happening I'm so sorry I don't know how we're going to get out of this but this team was so incredible everybody just rallied and um we we just got better I mean we we completely turned it around and and now are doing great um but I think one of the reasons is you know at our lowest moment everybody could have walked away and

[27:57]  found another job and they didn't they cared enough about the team to say we're just going to work harder we're going to talk every day we're going to prioritize we're we're GNA just you know get really geared up to do what we have to do and um and we pulled it off and we got through it um so I think that uh you know when you're building something like that um I agree the reflecting is important somebody asked me the other day we were we were having a conversation about we we've had a lot of growth in the last three three plus years like a lot more than than we've had in previous years um and so we were we were talking about and reflecting and and someone said you know when you think back to you know how far this has come are you just like you know in awe of of the milestones and I said

[28:46]  you know what I'm not at what what what makes me the most like grateful and and in awe is not the the numbers you know of of dollars or or clients or Services it's the fact that there are this many people that choose to dedicate their career to this organization like that is so meaningful to me because I think you know where you work and what you do with your adult life is one of the biggest decisions of your life you know if if you have the opportunity to make those choices and the fact that people um choose to work here and choose to commit and choose to continue when it when it's hard and and and really pour their energy and their passion and and share it with their family and friends like

[29:33]  that is so meaningful to me and that that you know I don't take credit for that personally but that makes me so proud that like we built something that people love this much you know and it's and when you talked about you know my baby that's where it's like it's not my baby you know this is our thing we've done it together and and we want to share it with the world and invite others to join and like that's the attitude that I love the most and this is a form of great leadership as well right it's not me but it's all of us we even had a little moment where you were talking about before we hopped on the podcast where I was like this isn't me but this is the team and it feels so good to be able to kind of push the glory and the recognition to the people around you because this isn't just us like we're not the genius with the million hands right we've got Lives who are showing up every day giving their most valuable reset or asset their time

[30:21]  to be able to impact other people which is so powerful man um so huge congratulations it's cool to be kind of reflective on the podcast because often I feel like we all don't get enough time to be able to kind of look back and be appreciative of those early days so that's really cool yeah I I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it because it is it's cool for sure you know there was something we talked about in our previous conversation which was Innovation right and what I came across since we talked last time was a keynote speech um by Jeff Bezos and he was talking about the culture of innovation but also the culture of open failure inside of Amazon and he said guys I want to tell you about $690 million mistake called the uh the fir phone the competitor to the iPhone and to the Google pixel now we spent 690 million bucks and it was a big failure but we

[31:10]  did get Alexa and we also got the Kindle out of that now many people would look at that as a huge failure as an organization but we've built the safe space for people to be able to experiment and continue to push us forward what do you kind of think about that modality of experimentation and failing forward in the culture yeah ironically I'm actually reading a book right now called the everything store the biography of Jeff Bezos it's a great read for uh if you enjoy business books um it's very well written and uh yeah they had a lot of uh experimental failures and and Jeff Bezos absolutely drove that culture uh drove people crazy according to the book but um you know it was just always pushing like there there are absolutely no limits that we're going to not expl an idea that we have

[31:59]  so kind of the extreme um Innovative attitude there I think um I think a you know Innovation is sort of an overused buzzword but uh I do think that absolutely it applies to the way we approach um our programs and services um we are Innovative in the sense that we try to come up with ways to make Services uh accessible to people who typically don't have access to them um to make them effective for populations that they're typically not effective for uh to you know make them to to fill gaps in needs for ages or um minorities or uh socioeconomic groups or just individuals

[32:49]  with really difficult behaviors that kind of thing um we look at that as again that optimistic attitude of like okay nobody's doing that because it's hard it's expensive um it's you know what I mean like all kinds of Reas or we don't have the expertise we don't have the experience but you know what like people need it people are asking for us and if we can help and if we have an idea that we think is worth exploring like let's do that and and a lot of our programs have kind of gotten off the ground um with that attitude uh we have one program in particular called clinical family coaching that our um one of our clinical VPS Dr Aaron Wars developed and it was extremely Innovative because you know he had a

[33:37]  background in Behavior Analysis and so do I and so do many others um but what we were taught with ABA was that there's a pretty straightforward model where you've got the behavior analyst and then you've got some technicians that are um you know in they're they're not um Master's level licensed but they're um you super provides them and they do day-to-day direct therapy and then the behavior analyst has a treatment plan and does assessments and guides them U does some training with the parents Etc and that's very effective um for certain populations usually younger children um it's and sometimes older as well but it that model doesn't work really well when you've got older children really really

[34:25]  difficult Behavior challenges and family Ames that are really struggling with all kinds of other things you know in the the the the realm of life whether it's you know they they're in poverty or they um they have you know all kinds of difficult um Family Dynamics or um you know there's just other factors that are making it really difficult to just participate in a straightforward Therapy Program and these are often families that have bounced around for years to through different programs and it's like they're at this point because either none of that worked or it's just not working anymore and so we developed a program that is I I just I just never seen anything like it um it's so intensely focused on parent and caregiver coaching that it's not like

[35:13]  you know you do the therapy and you throw in a couple hours of of parent training to keep it consistent but like the program is parent coaching like there's no session in which the parents and caregivers are not participating and are not being taught how to Take the Lead because the whole concept was there's so many services where and this is true in in you know much of Behavioral Health where the model is like come in change and then leave yeah but in many cases the environment where the problems are happening hasn't changed and so sometimes it's only a matter of time before you're back at in the same boat and so the model here was how do we do this whole thing differently so that by the time we leave we're not actually doing anything really anymore we're just sort of watching from a distance to make sure the people who

[36:01]  are permanent in the child's life are are confident and um and are using effective strategies and and people are happier and they have better routines um and so that's one program that we're super proud of because it's it's worked with you know some of the hardest cases we get um where others have just not really had answers for and has had some pretty incredible outcomes that are are lasting um so got a number of programs like that but but you know the Innovation part again is sort of like let's just not be feel Boxed In by sort of standard approaches um if we you know understand our our science and our our treatment models and we're willing to be creative you know and and work with our funding sources to say Hey what if we tried something like this then you know

[36:49]  that's how things get better we do the same things time and time again expecting a different result right that is literally Einstein definition of insanity and so thinking about it with a different perspective is super healthy because what got us here is not going to get us there and you know it's just so cool to hear how many lives you guys have been able to impact Aaron the people who you've embraced the culture that you've built the leaders that you've cultivated you know it's a huge accomplishment man from 2006 to where we're at here today you really should be proud of yourself and I'm going to give you an opportunity again to kind of reflect on all these things that you've accomplished man you know uh one of the traditions we have here on the podcast is our previous guest asks you a question now this is an individual CEO from an amazing organization he wants to know what is the one thing that you know you should be doing to make

[37:39]  yourself better but maybe you're not ah yes so um let me think about that for a second I I do think that I keeping up with the the growth of the organization is a is a theme that uh that we're all talking about a lot right now and I'll give you an example we just did this project um through a foundation where we worked with a consultant and did sort of like an an overall Deep dive assessment of the entire organization and looked at programs and systems and Etc and sort of scored ourselves like how are we doing are are we are we are we in growth are we mature are we in Decline and one of the uh surprises was that um the category of administrative

[38:30]  systems um we ultimately agreed that we in Decline and I struggled with this at first because I'm like we're constantly making our systems better how can they be in Decline like we're always like trying to improve but the aha moment was that it's not that the systems themselves are in Decline it's that the gap between where our systems need to be and where they are is getting bigger because we were growing faster than we were improving proving and so I think that um my challenge is now to really understand you know not what did I need to do for the organization a year ago but what do I need to be doing for it by next year um and I think that one of the things I want to really push myself to do more of is um building new

[39:18]  relationships uh within the community um with influential people who can really uh help the organization grow um and again you know I've done that in the past but that was based on where the organization was then there's really there's so many things that we do now with our you know sophisticated management team and and all of our specialized roles that we don't have to rely on um outside people to help us with anymore so now it's much more strategic focused um and and that's an area where I do I do struggle in terms of um you know uh long-term goal setting and um and really following through on you know we do accomplish a lot but um but it but it is a little bit sort of uh

[40:08]  we have a general sense of where we're going for things but it's not as structured as I think it needs to be um because we're just bigger now and there's just more to keep track of and so really having good systems to um to manage that and to um give people very clear Direction you know people enjoy knowing exactly what they need to do to contribute um and I think we do we've improved in that area but but the bigger you get you know the harder that can be too um so those are I think that's the one area I would like to improve more on and that is part of being that Visionary leader you know I think uh you've already done an amazing job of getting you to where you are here today with the team that you've built and I can't wait to see what the future looks like Aaron it's going to be an amazing ride absolutely man appreciate it well once again everybody who's been tuning in

[40:54]  watching and listening today thank you so much Aaron thank you for blessing the show man very much appreciate it right back at you