IAM918- Author Focuses on Core Values

Darius Mirshahzadeh is a dad, husband, twin, brother, and son who was born and raised in California and now lives in Austin Texas. He is a serial entrepreneur, author, conscious capitalist, speaker, and entertainer. Darius’s passion is to make the world a better place using his talents and engagement. He is all about the P’s: Passion, Pizza, Puzzles and Pink Unicorns. Darius is a mad scientist CEO who has grown companies from start-ups to just under 1,000 employees in three years. He is an expert on core values and the author of the new book The Core Value Equation.

• CEO Hack: Making decisions based on core values
• CEO Nugget: Self-development so you can be the person you want to be in the future
• CEO Defined: You own the losses, your team owns the wins

Website: https://therealdarius.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealdariusm/
https://www.facebook.com/thecorevalueequation/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Xl3VZYwezJo0dwfgabnhw?view_as=subscriber
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariusmirshahzadeh/

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Transcription

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00:20 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:35 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the IMCEO podcast and have a very special guest on the show today. I have Darius from your shots today of the real Darius.com. Darius, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:45 – Darius Mirshahzadeh

Hey, Gresh or Gresham, what do you prefer?

00:47 – Gresham Harkless

Either or, I always go for Gresham if we're doing a laser-focused podcast. So you can do Gresham if that's cool with you.

00:51 – Darius Mirshahzadeh

Let's do it.

00:53 – Gresham Harkless

All right, perfect. Well, before we jumped in, I wanted to read a little bit more about Darius so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Darius is a dad, husband, twin, brother, and son who was born and raised in California and now lives in Austin, Texas. He is a serial entrepreneur, author, conscious capitalist, speaker, and entertainer. Darius's passion is to make the world a better place using his talents and engagement and he is all about the P's. Passion, pizza, puzzles, and Pink Unicorns. Darius is a mad scientist CEO. He has grown companies from startup to over, to under a thousand employees in 3 years. He is an expert on core values and the author of a new book, The Core Value Equation. Darius, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:31 – Darius Mirshahzadeh

Let's do it, baby. Let's do it then.

01:32 – Gresham Harkless

So, kick everything off a Wonder one, rewind the clock a little bit, and hear a little bit more about how you guys started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story? We'll let you get started with your business.

01:41 -Darius Mirshahzadeh

Yeah, as well. So, I actually think I was kind of like born a CEO, where like for me, I was always like, I'm the boss, you know, like I was the boss when I was 5. And I always just had that kind of swagger to me where it's like the president of my class. And I was like, first grade, like, who wants to be president? I'm like, I want to be president. So I've always just kind of had that urge to lead, which is a good and bad thing. It's a great thing for entrepreneurs and CEOs. It's not such a good thing if you're like trying to get jobs out of college, because you're automatically being put into a subordinate role.

So I would find myself like, I take these temp jobs and they're like, you want to start at the bottom? I'm like, can I just work with the CEO directly? I swear to God that happened to me. And they're like, no, man, you got to start at the bottom. Like I did. I'm like, I'll just do whatever you want me to do, but I want to work with the CEO. And they wouldn't do it. I'm like, oh, that's cool. I don't want this job then. And so, you know, and I'll take a step back. The moment I realized I wanted to be CEO, and that I was basically unemployable was when I was 22 years old, I got a job at the White House in DC.

I actually lived in Arlington, Virginia, kind of near your neck of the woods, Ballston station, I took Ballston station to OEOB, an old executive office building. And then I ended up moving into DC and Foggy Bottom. And so I lived there for the summer. I was entering in there. This is a Clinton administration. I'm dating myself a little bit, but anyway, I was doing that job and I was like, man, I would never work at the White House unless I was the president. You know, like that was like my takeaway was like, I don't want I don't want to do administrative work, but I can see myself being president, but I couldn't see myself in a support role.

And there's nothing wrong with those roles. I mean, those are amazing roles and amazing people doing them. But you, you know, it, I think one of the most important steps to learning who you are is learning what you're not, right? And so I just do it. I'm like, man, I don't like being in these support roles. I'm not good at it. I don't like it. And so right away, I just knew I had to do jobs where I had a bit more control over like where I was going to end up. So typically when you have that, you end up kind of in like, you have a couple of choices. And this is back in the year 2000. So it's not like being an entrepreneur, then is not what being an entrepreneur now is. Like even, even remotely close.

Like I was the only person I knew who was an entrepreneur. Now it's like you ask everyone what they do and they tell you that their job is and that they're an entrepreneur. And I'm like, wait a second, my guy, you can't pick one, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, aspiring to be an entrepreneur is I think a lot of people nowadays, it's like you got the richest guys in the world are entrepreneurs, right? And that's the thing. Like, like you have Elon Musk, who's the richest guy on earth, the second richest guy on earth that fights him for Jeff Bezos, these guys all started from the bottom, if you will kind of grew their way up as CEO. So, I ended up kind of pivoting if that's the word that I think is the popular word now for trying to figure out the hell you're doing.

I pivoted for a couple of years and started businesses didn't have any real success till I was 25 and I started my first big company that turned into a big company I was a mortgage lender, and I got into the mortgage business and kind of worked my way up. Started my first company at 25 and that was my first real success. I grew from myself and an assistant in this little shabby office in downtown San Francisco to about 150 employees in 3 years by the time I was 28. And I broke the whole way up. Like I didn't know what I was doing. I was guessing. But you know, growing at that age with that level of experience from really a 0 to almost a $10 million business by the time I was 28.

Yeah, my this is a long time ago. This is almost 20 years ago. And I was I was no joke. And I did a really poor job. The one thing I did a great job of was, you know, pushing to keep growing the business and making some money. But I did a bad job of actually building the business. And so I got lucky, I got accepted into this entrepreneurial program called Birthing of Giants at the time, now called the Entrepreneurial Master's Program at MIT. And that was my first step in understanding the concept of scale in a business. And I got introduced on top of that to this concept of having core values in your business. And so I really got obsessed with how to build a business that could scale painlessly.

And mostly because I was in a lot of pain, I was getting crushed and I was like, I don't like this, isn't fun. And I wanted it to be fun and I wanted to build something of impact. And I knew that the way I was doing it wasn't working. So long story short, that business grew like crazy. It was number 40 in the Inc 500 in 2007. So for those of you who don't know what that is, we were the 40th fastest growing private company in the entire country. But big asterisk, we were a subprime mortgage lender.

So Some people may know what that means. For those of you who don't know, in 2008, we had this thing in the whole world called the subprime mortgage meltdown that was caused by subprime loans. And that happened to be the product that I built my business on. So it was really cool. I went from having 150 employees to 10 employees in about 90 days.

06:49 – Gresham Harkless

Wow.

06:50 – Darius Mirshahzadeh

Because what happened with my business was overnight, the buyers of our product went from really excited to buy the product to 0 overnight. Now, as if you run a business, you don't run your business from one second to the next, takes you time to build your pipeline. And so for us, you know, we had a, probably a 3 or $3 million to 2, $3 million of revenue pipeline that literally we got, I think $200,000 worth of revenue out of over the next 8 weeks. So that $2 million turned in, and then we were doing about a million a month before that. That million-a-month, $2 million pipeline turned into $200,000 of revenue that came in.

And it's not like we didn't have $2 million overhead. So I jokingly say we were a train that fell off the track and was getting towards the end of the cliff. And I just couldn't cut fast enough. So when I was at the Inc 500 conference, I went from the 40th fastest growing company in the United States, I jokingly said I was wearing my tux accepting my award as I was the 40th fastest shrinking company in the United States. And luckily or unluckily, depending on how you look at it, we ended up going to the edge of the cliff and we stopped skidding. And then the business lived in entrepreneurial purgatory for the next 2 and a half years.

We basically, the rest of us, 7, 08, 09 into early 10, we basically made no money. We stayed at that $2 million level and eventually, we just got crushed and we went out of business. So that was my first big win and my first really big failure. Now, I didn't tell you as I had started a bunch of businesses and stuff before that. When I was 22, the first six-figure business I lost and this was my first seven-figure business, almost eight-figure business that I lost. And I did it all by the time I was 32 years old. So I had a lot of experience under my belt at 32. Oh, 10, 11, pivoting more, I pivoted from 7 to 11. So and for those of you guys that aren't mathematicians, that's 5 years of pivoting.

And that's a fancy way of me saying that I basically went to work and cut checks and didn't get paid. But in 2012, if you try long enough, hard enough, eventually you either quit or you win. And we won again. And we built a business. It was a joint venture we were doing with what's now a company that was acquired by a public trade company. But we had a huge win. We grew a business from basically 0 to 75 million in revenue very quickly. Ended up getting bought out of that and then pivoted and excuse me and then took that group and then went and did another deal with a company that's called the Money Source which is the company that I built with my partners from from 30 to a thousand employees in 3 years, became the 40th largest lender in the United States.

And it's a very prominent business now. They manage a hundred billion dollars with the mortgages. They're the 40th largest lender in the United States, and the 10th largest government lender in the United States. And it became my biggest win to date and I exited that business in July of this last year.

09:56 – Gresham Harkless

So. Well, yeah, that definitely is, it sounds like the definition of a roller coaster ride of you having the highs of the really high highs and then some and not as great lows. But the point thing is that you kept riding the ride because as you said in the very beginning, a lot of times people are trying to be something but often when you tap into who you are then you have another choice but to be yourself. I often say And so you're doing a lot of work now around the core values that I mentioned you know, and you have your book. Could you take us through a little bit more on what that looks like as far as like how you work with your clients and then a little bit more about your book and what you feel kind of sets it apart from Mixed City?

10:30 – Darius Mirshahzadeh

Yeah, so, it's funny when I wrote the book, it wasn't, I was still the CEO of TMS, and I was writing it really because I was always coaching, I got involved in an entrepreneurs organization and was really involved with an entrepreneurial side of the business, like working with how do you you know best practices and practices in entrepreneurism and that's really best business practices. And so in year 3 of Birthing of Giants, 2008, when I was at that MIT program, we went through an exercise where there were these 2 gentlemen by the name of Ken Sim and John DeHart. They run a company, well, Ken now runs it. John exited called Nurse Next Door and your listeners may know of a book by the name of Scaling Up by Vern Harnish.

So Vern actually was my mentor through birthing. He created the Birthing and Giants program and so many of the case studies in that book were people I graduated from my class and there were 60 of us in this class. So, Ken and John who are case studying that book, did an exercise with us on the night of graduation. They said, please stand up if your company has core values. So we all stood up because we were taught that day one of Burning of Giants. Then they said, please stay standing if you can say your core values at the top of your head. Mind you, those are the CEOs who created their own core values. Half the room sat down and I was in that half.

And Then they said, please stay standing if you can say your core values off the top of your head. Mind you, these are the CEOs who created their own core values. Half the room sat down and I was in that half. And then they said, please stay standing if your employees can say your core values to your company off the top of their head. Half the remaining house sat down. And then they just finished us off. They went for the kill. They said, please sit standing if your customers know your core values. Everyone sat down except John and Ken. And so I realized something's broken here. And for some reason, it was like a bug that bit me. I got the core value COVID bug. It just attacked me, man. And like, I got really obsessed with core values.

12:05 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

12:15 – Darius Mirshahzadeh

I mean, my hack is really like, like my go-to is, is, are you making decisions based on values? Because that, that, that removes a lot of waste, you know, that that's, I'm not good at the nitty gritty. So like the little hacks, like I'm just not good at it. Have an assistant and Make them do everything, but make sure everything's in your calendar. I mean, is that a hack to make sure every single thing that you're going to be at is in your calendar? Do people know that already? Because I didn't and I would double book myself to be in LA and Miami on the same day. So no, I think make sure everything's in your calendar. Probably a lot of CEOs are like, yeah, duh man.

12:50 – Gresham Harkless

So, I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something around, you know, core values or it might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business.

13:02 -Darius Mirshahzadeh

So Here's a Jim Rohn quote that I, someone read to me or I found it somehow. It's your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. Work harder on yourself than you do on your job. So this idea of going and developing yourself as a human being to be the person you're trying to be in the future.

13:19 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Absolutely appreciate that. And I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Darius, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:29 – Darius Mirshahzadeh

It's so, I love this question. Here's, it's really easy. You own the losses, your team owns the wins, baby. That's it. CEOs own it, you own it. So when you're not winning, go and you're pissed about it, you're starting to blame people in your head. No, Go grab a mirror, go look in it, and that thing you're looking at. Yeah, you, you're the, you're the fault. It's your fault. So you own it. You decide to hire that person. You decide not to train that person. You decide not to hold that person accountable to a standard. You decide not to have a standard. So, and vice versa, when you win, if you start taking credit for it, your team's going to be like F that guy. So your, my, my take is, is team owns the wins, you own the losses and get comfortable with that. And it's lonely at the top.

14:13 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that definition. I appreciate how it ties into the nugget as well too when a lot of times it starts and begins with you, but it's only when you're trying to create things that happen, not so much when you're not getting those things happening, you're not gonna blame somebody else, you're gonna blame yourself and figure out how you can make those decisions or take that action or build yourself up to be what you need to be and what you hope to see in your organization.

So, there is truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course how best they can get ahold of you. Find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:47 – Darius Mirshahzadeh

Yeah. The best place to thank you for that, by the way, Gresh, I appreciate the time here. It's sort of simple, you know, I'm on, I'm online. You go to the real Darius.com. And, that's, I have a YouTube channel, which has my show, the Great Machine, just type in the real Darius there. If you're on Clubhouse, follow me, the real Darius. I'm in there spitting like my nonsense a lot right now. That is like the most addictive app on earth.

15:10 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, it is.

15:11 – Darius Mirshahzadeh

If you could get in, get in. But yeah, the real Darius is my handle there. But yeah, you can follow me. Buy my book, Core Value Equation. If you did buy my book and you like it, you can get it on paperback, hardback, softback, Kindle, or audiobook. Give me a review. They say there are 2 things in business that are hard to do. The second hardest thing to do is to raise money.

The first and hardest thing to do is to build an audience. So for me, I'm trying to build an audience just like you are. And you help me to build a hundred-million-dollar company. I could do that with my eyes closed. But building an audience is fucking hard. So it's, you know, support, you know, my man, Gresh, here to support me and check my stuff out. And, you know, I'm an open book, I'm happy to connect with people.

15:55 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I definitely appreciate that, Darius, we will have the links and information in the show notes as well, too. And as you said, you know, so well, you know, time is the most valuable resource. So I appreciate you for taking some time out, dropping so many gems and knowledge in your book, and of course here on the podcast. And I hope to connect again and collaborate even more. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest

16:14 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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