Unlock Your Competitive Edge with Chris Dreyer of Rankings.io
The Circuit of Success Podcast with Brett Gilliland
Building Relationships and Trust
In this chapter, they discuss the importance of building relationships and trust in business. They also delve into the concept of search engine optimization (SEO) and its significance for business owners. They explain that SEO involves ranking your business at the top of Google for your industry, and they discuss the challenges and strategies involved in achieving this.
On this episode of the circuit of Success, host Brett Gilliland interviews Chris Dreyer, the CEO and founder of Rankings.io. Chris talks about his competitive upbringing, his journey to becoming a digital marketer, and his decision to start his own agency. He also discusses marketing tactics, relationship equity, SEO, and branding, as well as the importance of having a coach or mentor and taking care of his health. Chris is looking forward to growing his business and real estate portfolio. Tune in to learn how to unlock your competitive edge!
Speaker Brett Gilliland: Welcome to the Circuit of Success podcast. It’s the Circuit of Success podcast. With your host. Brett, Dreyer. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Brett, Brett. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Go over. Brett Gilliland visionary wealth advisory. The circuit of success podcast to start this show. Welcome to the circuit of success. I’m your host, Brett Gilliland today. I’ve got my old buddy Chris Dreyer here. What’s up, man? Excited here. Speaker Chris Dreyer: It’s good Speaker Brett Gilliland: to have you back in the building. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Yes. Yes. It’s changed. It’s changed. I miss it. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yes. So Chris used to be in our office building here now. He’s living the life in Southern Illinois. Right? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Southern Illinois Murfreesboro, Marion. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Love it. It’s a good area. God’s country. Right? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Right. What else? Speaker Brett Gilliland: It’s awesome. Well, it’s good to have you, man. You are the CEO and founder of rankings, Inc. Five thousand man, five years in a row. Six years in a row. Who’s counting? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Who’s counting? Who’s counting? That’s old news. Speaker Brett Gilliland: You know, it’s just old news. So six years in a row, man. And, What I think is cool is I I didn’t know much about you or your business and, you know, here you are. You’re on our second floor and like, what is this rankings dot I o thing? I don’t even know what I o is, and it’s like, you know, as we’ve, you know, gotten to know each other, and I’ve seen you grow over the last five, six, seven years, whatever it’s been, It’s been amazing to watch, man. Thank you. So, but before we dive into all the great stuff, let’s talk about what’s made you the man you are today. And go into that back story a little bit because there’s a drive that’s in there. Oh, yeah. We gotta figure out what that’s about. Speaker Chris Dreyer: But let’s let’s hear. Let’s look. Like, what do you wanna know? How far back? Speaker Brett Gilliland: Hey, whatever, can some moments in your life that you think, this Speaker Chris Dreyer: is Speaker Brett Gilliland: probably why I do what I do in today’s world. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Yeah. So the audience is probably gonna think I’m a crazy person after some of this, but, let’s see. So in I was really competitive in sports, and my dad was like, always drilling me. Like, weekends were practice. It didn’t matter. Like, we got the reps in. To the point where, like, some of my friends, like, they would wanna come to practice with the dad, and then they’d come and be like, no. We’re never going again. And I was like, yeah, it’s practice. It’s not shoot around time. Alright. So that kinda Dreyer stem from him. He’s very Rick Ricky Bobby esque. Like, second place is the first loser. It was, like, basically my dad. So he pushed me. I went to college. I knew my mom always told me I was a rebel, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was honestly a terrible student Speaker Brett Gilliland: I Speaker Chris Dreyer: don’t know how I ended up with a history education degree. And I thought I was gonna be a basketball coach and do the collegiate path. Just stay with the competitive side. And I got this job at Herron High School, and I was the detention room supervisor because if you’re a supervisor there, it was the same track teaching. So I could do that for two or three years and be a fourth year teacher. Right? And I typed in how to make money Gilliland I took this course. And by the end of my second year teacher, I was making, like, four times the amount doing digital marketing I was teaching. And it was just Speaker Brett Gilliland: time to go. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Time to go. Yeah. Well, I got paid those summers off. So it was like, I get paid the whole summer, and I got this. And I moved to Florida, and my roommates all work from home, and it just wasn’t the best environment as a party environment. And my I hit this first Google algorithm that everyone talks about and it took my income down from like, let’s say sixteen or like two Wow. Back in, I wasn’t the saver of money, or the investor. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Mhmm. Speaker Chris Dreyer: And so I got on Craigslist because that’s what you used to do. And I typed in SEO, and I sent off my resume to so many people that I hit their filter, and that’s just an insane amount. And I got hire I got three job offers, and most people say Chris, well, which one you did you take? And well, I took all three because they’re they’re remote full time jobs. I had my team, and they’re all agencies. So I got to see what worked, what didn’t work, And after about a year and a half of that, I I got the confidence to start my agency. So that’s like the fast paced version. There’s a lot of chaos and, little things learnings and, Speaker Brett Gilliland: victories and losses. Mhmm. Yeah. So what, when when did you bet on yourself to say, you know, instead of getting this nice gig from these big agencies, I’m gonna bet on myself Gilliland I’m gonna go out and do this on my own. What was that turning point for you? Speaker Chris Dreyer: The real turning point was I had the three agencies because I had a team, and I and I today, everyone talks about delegation and working on your business and SOPs and all these things, but I already had that. I had a knowledge base and processes that my affiliate team was from the Philippines, and I was using a company called OdAS. It’s now Upwork. And so I was the best employee to all three jobs. Because the amount of productivity I could do was so much more than everybody else because I had a team behind me. And I that’s where I got the confidence always say, you know. Speaker Brett Gilliland: The team behind you is from these other employees. Right? These other companies. Yep. Speaker Chris Dreyer: I I like to say that confidence gives you confidence. You probably heard a version of that. And I just the confidence increased enough to where I started the agency. And just from a math perspective, it was like, I only needed a handful of retainers to to make the equivalent of what I was from a salary perspective. And I knew that I could hustle and do it, and that’s what I did. Speaker Brett Gilliland: It’s just a math problem at that point. Right? Yeah. So, for that, so you started that, and and I think what I’ve appreciate it over time watching you. What what I think is also scary for a lot of people is you you went into a niche market. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Right? Oh, yeah. Speaker Brett Gilliland: I’m only gonna work with lawyers. Right? Attorney lawyers. Was that scary? And if so, how did you overcome that? Speaker Chris Dreyer: The scary, yes, different aspects of it. Right? The the first thing I thought was I didn’t have I was under capitalized, And I knew that if I was gonna hit multiple industries, I need to have a lot of capital to really have the best chance to succeed. I know there’s a lot of stories of other people that did it, but so I looked at Gilliland being transparent, there’s a status component to legal. It’s not like you’re doing home services for you know, pest control, not saying anything’s wrong with pest control companies. There’s a little status component there. It’s been around for a long time, so a little bit more insulated to from risk versus new tech or AI or web three or whatever, not to say those aren’t emerging too. And I made that decision, but the real decision that I did was different is I took not only legal, but I did a subset for personal entry law. And that was the real scary part because it’s, like, I’m saying no to all these areas of law, and I’m only gonna focus on this one. So my Tom, significantly smaller. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Yeah. And so when you think about that, then how did you go about marketing yourself? Right? So if you’re a new agency, I could work with this big guy or a big gal, New York or, you know, California wherever. How did you differentiate yourself to then get the client? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Yeah. That’s a that’s a a big question here, right, is differentiation. And back in the seventies, this term evolved, and it was a USB. That’s when it came about. But really what it what it meant was how are you distinct? How are you distinctive in the market? One way to be distinctive is to be the best and to be to focus on a certain area. There’s perception that you’re the best in that field, but, you know, you gotta remember every brain surgeon has their first brain surgery. There’s a perception there no matter what you know about them from their background. So that was that was part of it. The a lot of times people talk about marketing and and doing different tactics, and they miss the relationship equity. And for example, even in the legal space, I don’t I don’t know the top criminal defense firms or family law, besides maybe some locally they hear on the radio. But in the PI, there’s an awareness that comes about, and you kinda move up the ladder from a relationship equity. And now, you know, I know Morgan and Morgan. I know Mike Papantonio, but it took time to develop that. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. So how did you do that, though? So, like, the yeah. I mean, so because I think about it in my world too is trying to find the people that I’ve been able to be around, you know, in my career. I didn’t start that way, though. Right? I was working on people that, you know, we could barely rub two nickels together, and that’s where we all started. Right? And so I’m always curious about how you got into the circles and the roles that your people you’re with now. Speaker Chris Dreyer: In the beginning, I didn’t have a ton of capital for distribution for TV and radio and all these things. So I had to do the things that didn’t scale. So that’s lot of one to one, shaking hands, taking people to breakfast, taking them to lunch, building that network, and doing social media, all the things that that don’t really scale have to do them kind of individually. One of the first things I did was I knew I was in the legal vertical, and I was just looked on LinkedIn. I’m like, who is in the legal space that I could meet with, and I had breakfast locally. In fact, like, right across the street with a few Gilliland I just stayed connected with him. There was fine law, reps, some, from Thompson Reuters, and ended up being referral relationships. And That’s kinda how it set the tone. Of course, once you get more capital, then you can pay for paid ads and distribution and you know, even your your podcast, things like that build over time. But early on, it was a lot of belly to belly, a lot of shaking hands, a lot of relationship stuff. Speaker Brett Gilliland: It was funny because I wrote down this is five years ago now I’m forty five, but when I was forty, I wrote down things, and I one of the things I wrote down on the top forty things I’ve learned in forty years was take the lunch. Because a lot of times people are like, I don’t wanna take the lunch or not, you know, it’s not gonna result in anything. It’s not gonna be I’m not paid for it. Whatever it may be. And it’s just I found for years. They they go on belly button to belly button. Right? Eyeballed, eyeballed, build a relationship. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Mhmm. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Good things come out Speaker Chris Dreyer: of it. Speaker Brett Gilliland: And you don’t know when, But good things come out of it. Do you agree? Speaker Chris Dreyer: I I couldn’t agree more. And and there’s a certain trust component Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Speaker Chris Dreyer: That comes from that. And you know, even though when we’re talking about leverage, there’s not a lot of leverage that is one to one versus what we’re doing, you know, your audience. It’s like a keynote presentation every week. Right. But those are the things that I think the trust component is a little bit of an intangible. Speaker Brett Gilliland: So talk to us about SEO search engine optimization. Right? So people hear that, but the the layman terms for guys like me that we hear it. We don’t know exactly what it means, you know, whether I’m a lawyer, a financial guy, Carboner, whatever it is, how important is it, and what in the hell does it actually mean for us as business owners? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Really good question. So search engine optimization is essentially when we think of this, let’s just call it Google. Yeah. Google owns the lion’s share. It’s it’s making sure that your business ranks at the top of Google. For whatever industry you’re in, and there’s a lot of challenges to go with that. Of course, you can do paid and and do that immediately, but that could be very costly. The from an organic perspective, it’s creating excellent content, targeting keywords, making sure you get your content endorsed, which is backlinks from other websites, and each space is a little different. Right? If even in law, if I was gonna target, say, a patent attorney, there might be only one in the city. Just by the nature of being the only one, you automatically rank. But when we’re talking personal injury or criminal defense, ton of saturation, ton of competition, Gilliland it demands real expertise. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Speaker Chris Dreyer: And that’s what it is. And that’s that’s when I think of it, it’s just one channel of many, and it’s and we’re just playing the game of attention arbitrage. Speaker Brett Gilliland: And I think too, I I learned this years ago from I can’t remember where I even learned this, but even if you make a, charitable donation to somebody, Right? They even said, ask for your website to go on that thing, right, that website for cancer, whatever it may be, because that helps. Right? It helps back in the algorithm. Is that right? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Oh, yeah. And I’m sure there’s there might be some SEOD is listening, but, yeah, it’s it’s an endorsement. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Speaker Chris Dreyer: When another website has your link, to your website Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Speaker Chris Dreyer: On there. It’s it’s an endorsement. It’s a vote in terms of trying to win that election. Point Speaker Brett Gilliland: system. Right? Mhmm. Basically points, the more points I get the higher up I rank it. Speaker Chris Dreyer: It’s a math game. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yep. So the podcast certainly doesn’t hurt. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Doesn’t hurt. The big thing about podcasts is a lot of us, including myself, we we transcribe. Yep. The episode, and a lot of times we’ll put a link to the website of of who your guest was. Well, that’s a link. So it’s a good tactic for You know, the guest, it’s it’s excellent for the host too, from a distribution perspective. Speaker Brett Gilliland: I like it. How do you focus on branding and how I’m is branding for a, for us business owners. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Oh, boy. Branding, it’s it’s absolutely essential. There’s there’s so many components that goes into it. I I think that it’s what it really comes down to is is memorable, standing out in a crowded space, And when people talk about the rising costs of these channels, a lot of times they’re talking about direct response, marketing, and because it’s very short term orientation, and they’re not looking at a long term perspective. And really when you’re getting those lower CPA’s, those lower costs require client, it it it comes from brand and word-of-mouth marketing. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Okay. And so you focus on that from just the name of your company? Is it I mean, what do you focus on when you think of branding or a different word, whatever word you use? Do you think about there? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Yeah. It’s it’s critical. I think of a company and personal brand. So myself, I have my interests, my hobbies, my expertise, but then the company has its own, reputation that it wants to surround itself from. And it goes back to being distinctive, like, how do you stand out amongst all your other competitors, and those are the through line messages that you wanna reinforce to your audience. Speaker Brett Gilliland: So how would you do that? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Yeah. So the thing that I did, I hired an outside consultant. We read every single review. We surveyed our clients. We surveyed our our employees. And it it was a lot of data. And we found kind of some commonalities of what people were repeating, and and we’ve kinda leaned into that. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. So would you say, how many employees do you have now? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Right now, we got, for rankings, we’ve got around forty, forty two. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Okay. You said for ranking. So is there something else as well? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Yeah. I I have, seven companies now. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Okay. Speaker Chris Dreyer: So I’ve got a real estate company. I’ve got another agency got a content company, got a media company, and it’s and I’m not trying to blow you. It’s it’s it’s it’s came from basically the main cash cat, which is rankings, just opportunities. It’s led itself to these others. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yep. I like that. What, what habits would you say you have, or what are you doing right now to stay in the game and be a student of the game, for you and your industry and your businesses? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Yeah. On the edge, some obsessive learning. I mean, we were talking. I was joking. I was hanging out at Barnes and Noble today. The every morning I read a I read or listen to an audiobook or a podcast. So I’m at, like, eighty four business books this year to date. Got a business coach, Bobby Castro. He had a little exit of a billion bucks. That’s it. Just a little manages like seven hundred Gilliland or million in real estate. So he’s helping me think bigger and raise those ceilings. And then, in a few masterminds, and I’m just a a student of the game. I love the game. Speaker Brett Gilliland: So talk to us about that coaching. So, I mean, I looked, you know, some of the sports stuff behind, you know, I at Michael Phelps back there. And, you know, he had a he had a coach. He’s the the greatest Olympian of all time and best swimmer of all time and and, it’d be hard to believe his records will be broken, but, you know, he had a coach. He had a nutritionist. He had all these things. So why is having a coach so important? For you. Speaker Chris Dreyer: The biggest thing is it just lifts the ceiling of what you think is possible, and and I really need to equate this. I would say there’s a coach perspective and then there’s, like, a mentor. A a coach would be more, like, accountability and, like, working on the tactics. And I think when I said coach previously for Bobby Castro. He’s more of a mentor. Like, here’s what’s possible. Here’s here’s how here’s what worked for me as opposed to just holding the accountable. And I think there’s, excellent reasons for both. For me, I’ve always struggled with the diet and health. So a, you know, a fitness and diet coach or nutrition coach, which I have now, is way better for me because I haven’t had the consistency, and I’ve need a little bit more accountability or tactics. On the business side, I’ve got the tactics from reading and all the masterminds. Right. I need more of the mentorship. So it’s just evolutionary and and just learning, you know, you’ve gotta continue to improve your skill set to compete. I think Speaker Brett Gilliland: putting your money where your mouth matters though. I mean, I’m assuming all those aren’t free. Mhmm. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Oh, definitely not free. Speaker Brett Gilliland: You’re writing a big check for that stuff. Yep. And so why is that something you feel that’s necessary. Cause a lot of people would listen to me, like, dude, this guy’s screwball, right? Or I have a business coach. I’ve paid a lot of money to coach over the years. Why are we doing that? There’s Speaker Chris Dreyer: money is the equivalent of it basically keeps you accountable. Like, there’s no sunk cost. Right? It I think of it like this. Like, if I was gonna go to the gym and I don’t have a personal Dreyer, I could maybe make an excuse to not do something because, you know, hey, it’s I don’t have the time, whatever, but when I’m paying someone, and I’m gonna let that person down because they’re spending their time. There’s a different level of accountability and commitment that goes with that. And for me, I I find that that it’s just very, really effective. Yeah, I’ve had multiple coaches in different areas and disciplines because a lot of times books. They are mindset or motivational Gilliland they really don’t get tactical for, say, financials. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Right. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Or different things of that nature. It’s just really challenging from that medium. And I’ve needed those for different disciplines. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. And I do. I agree. I think the books, I I read a lot. You know, ten pages a day minimally. But when I think of that, it is it’s not the real meat and potatoes. Yeah. Right. And and so I think that that’s another good reason to to go out and hire a coach and and doing that. So let’s talk about the grind as well. So do you enjoy the grind? I assume so or you wouldn’t be doing what you think. Yeah. But, like, what what is it about the grind that you enjoy? Speaker Chris Dreyer: I’m gonna sound like the biggest nerd in the world, but Speaker Brett Gilliland: I used to be a Gilliland Speaker Chris Dreyer: I would play, like, the the RPGs, the role playing games where you, like, you have this guy and they level up. They get some coins. They buy better equipment, or that’s what that’s what business is. Like, you you start with a few employees, and then you get more, and You have more capital to invest in things, and it it is truly the game. I enjoy the game. I hire people I enjoy working with. One of the fir the easiest way is to leave the company as if if, like, you’re toxic and just Yeah. So it really matters for value. So Yeah. That’s that’s what keeps me going for the for the grind. And it’s just I can’t I can’t have that same enthusiasm playing a video game and Speaker Brett Gilliland: Right. Speaker Chris Dreyer: It’s like that. Speaker Brett Gilliland: So how how do you how do you handle the stress? Is that easy for you? I mean, because it’s not just a game because this is, it’s a big game we’re playing. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Yeah. The stress one’s really tough. I haven’t really perfected that one. Honestly, the hang out with the family and wife and traveling and and getting away and decompressing, really going away from tech really helps me And, yeah, I’m I’m still working on it. I can’t I would say that’s one of the biggest issues of shutting it off. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Okay. Yeah. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Head hitting the pillow. It’s still, just firing on all cylinders. So I might have issues sleeping, but some might need to improve on. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. So how do we do that? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Maybe maybe get a coach for it, maybe talk to people that have had the same challenges. And and I think I have an awareness that that is an Gilliland it’s changed because when it was just me and the wife, I had more time now that I’ve got my son it’s like, oh, like, I gotta be really intentional about all this. And, so, yeah, it’s it’s gonna be a lot of effort to improve there. Speaker Brett Gilliland: And I was just as a, you know, the old wily veteran I am. My my oldest is eighteen now, which is hard believe. So I got eighteen down to nine or eight. No. Nine. It’s just it’s crazy. Right? Life get busier. And I think the more the people that listen to this or for yourself, whoever, the the more we can structure our time, right, and be purposeful and have the ideal calendar, the idea of day, the ideal week, I have found that is to be more way more productive. Speaker Chris Dreyer: I couldn’t agree more. You hear these individuals that have mastered it. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Right. Like the Rob Dyrdick where he’s like managing by a Gilliland then you have the Jesse Itzler that’s like talking about these Is it Missogi and these experiences that he has? The He’s a Speaker Brett Gilliland: phenomenal follow. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Oh, yeah. Amazing. Amazing. And So I think those are the individuals that model because clearly they’re both phenomenally successful Gilliland the there’s a lot that we can learn from. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yep. So what when you when you think about AI and you think about chat, GPT, I’m asking a lot of guys these questions now because it’s, you know, it’s all you hear about. Right? So what are your thoughts on those things? And where’s our world gonna be five and ten years from now with this stuff? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Really good question. It makes me think of, like, Ravacans, four c’s of leverage, which is like capital code, and then there’s content and collaboration. Right? Well, tech and software being AI is this code. It’s just a form of leverage. I asked our team when it came out. I’m like, look we are we farming without tractors? Speaker Brett Gilliland: Are we Speaker Chris Dreyer: are we row cropping this content? Like, can we use AI? And that’s what it is right now. It’s a tool there has to be human oversight for, especially in the legal vertical. You could really run-in the issues. So can it help you you know, ideate headlines and outlines and things like that more quickly or do some research? Absolutely. Can enhance your productivity. Is it a standalone right now? Not right now. Thankfully, I may not not have the SEO gig anymore, but but Speaker Brett Gilliland: that’s where we’re at Speaker Chris Dreyer: right now. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Do you think it will? I mean, I think it’s gonna take some people’s jobs away. Don’t you think? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Oh, yeah. I think so. I think Google’s gonna change. Look, the the search generative experience. We for a long time, people are talking about these no clicks and how AI is gonna eat up. Well, there’s rich snippets now. Speaker Brett Gilliland: If you Google if you go to Google Speaker Chris Dreyer: Now they’re for snippets where it doesn’t take you to your website, so it’s just gonna be more of that. The thing that people don’t talk about enough Danny Sullivan talks about this is the more content goes on Google and the more adoption it gets. So there’s more adoption, so there’s more usage. So it’s not gonna be just complete fall off entirely from these AI scenarios. Speaker Brett Gilliland: And I think it’s still gonna be a human experience there. Don’t you think? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Human experience. Also, AI is gonna want to consume as much original content and thought as possible. So being truly unique and not just urgitating things is gonna have a lot of value. Speaker Brett Gilliland: So what would you tell yourself now? So you’ve been doing this gig since, what was it been six years, you said? Speaker Chris Dreyer: So the agency been ten years a little over ten years, but on entrepreneur on loan for about sixteen. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Okay. So what would you tell yourself fifteen, sixteen years ago. Ten years ago. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Whatever. Geez invest. Throw in that that throw it in that index fund. The I would say what what would I say? I would say don’t be afraid of hiring. It was a little bit. I tried to do everything myself. Even early on, even though I had some freelancers and just have to look at things differently Gilliland and scale yourself, that’d be one of my biggest tips. Speaker Brett Gilliland: What is it scary to hire people? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Oh, it’s so I was really resistant to, like, HR. I was like, we don’t need HR. Like, why do we need HR? You you hit this certain point, I think, you know, into eight figures where you have all these additional administrative cost. You have HR and finance and a bunch of mid managers, but they’re a necessary component of scale. And, yeah, so that that was something I had to get over. It’s just more people. Speaker Brett Gilliland: What fires Chris up today? What what are you what are you excited about? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Jeez. Just just growing as a business owner, I I think that there’s levels in this game. Like, right now, I’m I’m a CEO, and I wanna be an owner and a chairman. And instead of me having to figure out who I need to hire, hire the CEO that figures that out with scale. So that’s that’s like what I’m excited about. Speaker Brett Gilliland: How long is that away you think? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Couple couple years probably. Yeah. It’s exciting. Right? Yeah. It is. It is. Speaker Brett Gilliland: So what’s next, man? What’s next for you and what are you gonna continue to build? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Yeah. I’m I’m really trying to grow the real estate portfolio. I I look at it as like the it’s the equivalent of buying SEO retainers permanent SEO retainers that sign year long contracts that are used to raising their rent every year. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Speaker Chris Dreyer: So I’m looking forward to more of that. And, man, just being a dad, you know. Once my kid starts playing sports, that’s gonna be a whole another journey. Speaker Brett Gilliland: You gonna do it the same or different? I will do it a bit different than my Speaker Chris Dreyer: dad, the discipline, the training, and coaching, be there, maybe a little bit more of the positivity. Sorry, dad, but, Speaker Brett Gilliland: sorry, dad. Yep. What’s the drive? You know, I I think about that a lot right now with, you know, two high school kids in sports, and a eighth grader in sports, a fourth grader in sports, like, you know, my my dad didn’t push me. I went on and played some college Gilliland. And, I mean, they pushed me, but but it wasn’t like I probably had a different deal than what you had. And so I don’t know what’s right, man. You’ve had all sorts of people in here, and you hear all sorts of different stories, and it works a million different ways. Speaker Chris Dreyer: But I Speaker Brett Gilliland: want them to follow their passions do it the way they wanna do it, and I’m sure that’s what’ll happen with your son. So when you hear, achieving a future Dreyer than your past, what comes to mind for you? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Geez legacy. I would say legacy. Cheat, you know, teaching the values to to my kid and his kids and and passing on the financial wisdom to or to have these opportunities and just that’s what I think I think of legacy. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Yeah. It’s awesome. Last question, fears, how many of the fears you’ve put in your mind have actually blown up to the magnitude you put them in Speaker Chris Dreyer: your mind to be? Oh, that’s a deep one. Immediately when you said fears, I was thinking of bs because I’m allergic. But bs, a bs. Speaker Brett Gilliland: I just had this conversation yesterday. We’re at golf tournament, a charity golf tournament, and a guy was telling a story from a few years before. He went back to the golf cart on this hole we were on, and he took a drink of his beer, and all of a sudden, a Wasp was flying around in his mouth. And he got stung, like, six or seven times. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Oh, that’s like my worst nightmare. Speaker Brett Gilliland: No epi pin out there or whatever. And I’m just like, oh, So anyway, I apologize, but did they just happen yesterday? I’m like, that’s good. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Fears, I just tell. You know, I wanna be there for my Gilliland I’m trying to secure, you know, everything as much as I can, but I I think that that’s probably the biggest fears is staying healthy. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Is accountability there? Speaker Chris Dreyer: It’s there recently, but it hasn’t been in the past. Yeah. I just did, Fricella’s, seventy five hour. I just finished two days ago. Speaker Brett Gilliland: How you feeling? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Fill up better. Drop about twenty, got some new habits, working out every day, and it was tough. Really tough. Speaker Brett Gilliland: So seventy five hard for those listening. He’s probably heard of it. Be anybody listening to podcast notes about it. But if not, so, two workouts a day forty five minutes each. One of them has to be outdoors. Right? Mhmm. Read minimum of x pages with Ten pages. Ten pages a day. You get drinking a gallon of water. No booze for, seventy five days and, no cheating on your diet. Yep. Is that correct? Speaker Chris Dreyer: Yep. So Speaker Brett Gilliland: what were you eating? Speaker Chris Dreyer: So I just did keto and I did the the factor meals, so that helped out a lot. But then the no booze wasn’t, you know, I I have drank you know, every weekend for a long time, but that wasn’t as hard. Honestly, the hardest one for me was the gallon of water. Just because I felt like there was no options. Like, I wanna soda, but, oh, man, I got another forty ounces of water. I gotta get in. Yeah. Speaker Brett Gilliland: That’s awesome. So you feel different? I do. I do. I look Speaker Chris Dreyer: I look a lot different too. And I had, was the inside tracker? I hear that on who’s at Hubermann’s podcast. Yeah. And I bought that and what triggered this is like my cholesterol and every all the numbers are terrible. I was like, I gotta make a change. Speaker Brett Gilliland: So what’s the inside trackers that the thing that goes in your arm? Speaker Chris Dreyer: So they they basically come to a blood, blood draw on, like, all different types of, metrics. And it’s really in-depth and it has an app, and it shows you, like, you should be and where you’re at and recommendations. And I I got, like, a really bad score. And I’m, like, okay. It’s time. I need to I need to fix this. Need to improve. Speaker Brett Gilliland: Well, I think for me accountability is there. You know, we did it and of course it worked so well for about ten months. We stopped doing it over the summer and we’re just getting ready. I hope we’re gonna get it back together and I say, I hope It’s it’s me. I started this thing, but it’s thirteen of my neighbors and my buddies. And so I sent a group text out and then, you know, we gotta meet my backyard 6AM. And it’s like, you know, if I’m not there, there’s, you know, twelve of my buddies in my backyard. It’s kinda weird, you know. So for me, I need that accountability. I think that’s what’s what’s got it. I gotta do it and get it back on it. But man, it’s been awesome having you, Chris, on the second success. Appreciate your time. It’s always good to see you, my man. Speaker Chris Dreyer: Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for having me.
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