Swine Vet Turned Podcaster Shares His Small Business Operating System and Productivity Hacks

Marcio Goncalves [00:00:00] You will, you get everything. I mean, from the hair you make, you make brushes, you know, heparin come from pigs for human utilization in transplants, you'd have the, the valves for the heart valves and, and those things. Hi, this is Jack Leba baseball player in second grader from St. Louis, Missouri, and you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:28] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we talk to a swine veterinarian, Marcio Gonzales. He's an interesting character. He ran a virtual conference on swine and he invited me to come on and do it in my virtual reality headset. So people saw me as an avatar inside of this galaxy. He's one of those guys that actually loves pushing the envelope. And what you'll see is as we begin this conversation, we talk a little bit about pigs and where they come from and how they're like humans, that kind of thing. But eventually we get to his real passion, which is the productivity and how to improve your efficiency at running a business, getting more out of your time, and really just making a business run. How to work with your employees. This is a fun conversation. I really had no idea where it was gonna go, but it was one of those ones that I'm really glad we were able to do. So I'm glad you could be here. If you're interested, we talk a little bit about some of the talks that I give, and if your organization is interested in doing that virtually, or I am actually doing some traveling starting in the new year, then you can head to my website, Vance Crowe dot com to learn more about the types of talks I give and to contact me to figure out if I'm a good speaker for your stuff. Until then, we're gonna head over to this conversation with Marcio. Thanks so much for joining. I'm glad you're here. Dr. Marcio Salve, welcome to the podcast.

Marcio Goncalves [00:02:01] Hi, Vince. It's great to, to be here. Really appreciate that.

Vance Crowe [00:02:05] You're an interesting character. You are a veterinarian that grew up in Brazil and you focus on pigs, and this is like a crazy thing. I was thinking about this today on my run. Pigs historically in the Bible, in all of the writings and the way you talk about them, are considered the lowest of all of the animals. It's something, you know, to be a swine is to be somebody that's down in the muck. Yeah.

Marcio Goncalves [00:02:29] What

Vance Crowe [00:02:29] In the world made somebody like you decide, not only am I gonna go become a veterinarian, but I'm gonna focus on pigs?

Marcio Goncalves [00:02:36] Pigs? Yeah. You know, after I went to vet school there in Brazil, initially I was thinking about dogs and cats and, and, but learning about pigs, I went to the pig group there, the pig department, and those folks were running a very tight group of people, you know, both of the professors, they had a PhD in Germany and they were Germans, Brazilian, with the German heritage. So very well run. And I like that. I like, you know, efficiency and, and discipline and that kind of stuff. So that is a good start there. And then I start learning, and I have this little theory, which is a lot of people hate math or hate stats is just because you don't know it. Once you learn something, you start liking it. It's just, I think it's a little bit of a, you know, self. We try to be safe, I guess, on things that we don't know. But then I learn and went to a bunch of internships every summer and winter, and then I would go and first time I went to a small producer, I, I found one or two things that I thought I could help. And then you start learning, learning, learning. And I, and then I think it's, it's, it's, you know, it just go like that. But also the populational aspect, Vince, the business side of things. So those things together really drove it.

Vance Crowe [00:04:03] You're an interesting character because you were in the regular swine industry. You were a part of the nutrition science. You were trying to help people say, Hey, what is it that you need to feed your pigs to make 'em grow big and and healthy. But then you left it and you're now running a business where you're, where like, well, why don't you tell me about swine it?

Marcio Goncalves [00:04:22] Yeah, so SW net, we launched about a year and a half ago now, is we have a podcast about, about pig production where I interview, you know, try to find that those brightest people around the globe when it comes to pigs. Then we, we create a web conference and we have a few other different business models as well. So it's been fun. The first podcast I created about eight years ago, events in Brazil in Portuguese, so it's still running, you know, but it's Meia Joy

Vance Crowe [00:04:56] Man, eight years ago the podcasting world was so much smaller than it is now.

Marcio Goncalves [00:05:02] Yeah, yeah, exactly right. I, I, I did an internship in, in the West and, and I learned about a podcast about pigs. It's called Swine Cast, and it's running now for 15 years. It's crazy to think that. Right. And I was, I went to Brazil and I was like, man, we need that. And, and I wish I was driving to farms, so I was like, we need something like that, you know.

Vance Crowe [00:05:23] So tell me about pigs, man. What is it that you think is interesting about them? Why, why have they gotten the low status? But everybody loves bacon, so they have a high status. What is it that makes people, so what, yeah, what is it about pigs that you find interesting?

Marcio Goncalves [00:05:39] Yeah, I think it goes back to some of the diseases that was in the past. You know, if you didn't cook the meat very well, you could get, you know, neuro cystic ssis or, or tho those sorts of things, you know, and, and as you know, pig pigs used to be in the mud and, you know, just look dirty now. They look clean. Right. And, and a lot of science behind it. And yeah, I mean, pigs today, there's a book, I forgot the name right now, but it's a book that talks about every thing that, that you get out the, that out of the pig. And, and, and virtually is, is literally ev everything with the exception of the scream, scream if you, you know, if their voice, if you will, you get everything. I mean, from the hair you make, you make brushes, you know, heparin come from pigs for human utilization in transplants, you'd have the, the valves, the heart valves and, and those things. So it's, it's amazing. And funny enough is one of the animals most similar to, to humans. It's surprising, but, but it is the closest. One of the closest.

Vance Crowe [00:06:54] Yeah, I've heard that before. Why is that? Because, I mean, I know that they do transplants and things like that from pigs. So why is it that we consider pigs the closest to humans?

Marcio Goncalves [00:07:04] I think it's just from the physiology, you know, the, it's, I dunno why, you know, they don't look similar to us, but from when you, when you look at the physiology and the biology of the pig is similar. Good question. I wouldn't know why. Right. It's an interesting one.

Vance Crowe [00:07:21] So you, you have an exceptional amount of discipline, like when I look at your business model, when I see the things that you've put together in a short amount of time, tell me a a little bit about the, the way you think about setting up a business and making it run.

Marcio Goncalves [00:07:36] Hmm. You know, it's, it's interesting one, there's, there is, there is personality task called strength finder. I dunno if you've done that one. I, I love that. Right? And for me, achiever came as number, came as number one. And then I think we had analytical compe competition focus and something else. But it's good that, that I want to always get things done, but it, we can also maybe dive later into the, the bad side of it can be bad too. Right? But for the business, we overall, we just wanna keep growing and, and grow fast if as fast as we can, you know, I'm trying to think where, where do you wanna go on that, that route there, Vince? Well,

Vance Crowe [00:08:26] 'cause you set things up and you kind of just make them run. You have very like systems and you have Yeah. Like processes and like, every time I talk with you, you're like, Hey, this is the thing I'm working on and this is how we're moving it forward.

Marcio Goncalves [00:08:38] Yeah. Yeah. We have weekly meetings and, and I have a team. I have one person full-time now. Three or four people now part-time. They're one full-time. Yeah. Like having those weekly meetings and everyone has their own tasks and, and hopefully because a business is, is arrows, right? Everyone is an arrow. As long as all the arrows are going the right direction, it's, it's the ultimate goal. Sometimes doesn't feel like, like we're all going the right direct the, the same direction. But two books that really shaped my thinking is one is called Traction by Gino Wickman, I wanna say his last name. And the other one is the E Myth Revisited by Michael Gober. Thinking about the business as the product, not the product as a product. It's huge. And I think, and that's what also Michael Gerber reports, which is 90% of the small business fail, is because you have this person that's the technician that you wanna be doing all the work and, and it burns, you know, it, you burn out. And, and he talks about that. If, if the business doesn't run without you, you have a job, not a business. And that's the worst job in the world because you are working for a lunatic. It's, you know.

Vance Crowe [00:10:04] So tell me about what was the traction, tell me about that book. I've never heard of that one. The e E-Myth is one that's very popular. Everybody knows that one that's in business. Yeah,

Marcio Goncalves [00:10:12] Yeah, yeah. And I've heard about that one too. And you know, everyone's busy don't have time, but you heard it once and you hunt it again. And so I, I read it, read it again. And now that's the one book that the E-Myth is the one book I have in my card to give to people. Right. Traction is great. It's similar concept about running, it's it's operations, like how to run the business. So it goes back to the vision, the, the KPIs and the people. It's very detailed when it comes to having that weekly meeting. What's the agenda of the weekly meeting? So we basically, we normally start with good news. Everyone say, Hey, something good about the business and personal, it's good. It creates a good envi environment in the, in the, in the discussion because everyone talks, which is great. And also you learn about everyone on the personal side, you know, and then goes into the issues, the KPIs, the, we do the, everyone goes over their own tasks and then at the end you rate the meeting, oh, give a, give it a rating. Oh, it's seven, eight. Okay, why? Right. Hardly be at 10, but that's the go. But a seven or eight, okay, well we started late or whatever else. So you are always, and you create that sense of comfortability and, and now everyone knows the, the expectations. Right. So I, I like that.

Vance Crowe [00:11:38] And how long did it take you to get buy-in from the other people that you're working with to, to start to do meetings in that way?

Marcio Goncalves [00:11:45] It didn't talk, didn't talk a whole lot in the beginning. Yeah. The first few weeks. It's a little awkward when you do that personal and note, but yeah, it doesn't talk a whole whole lot. You know, I I, we, I don't like meetings either, even though I have more than, more than I'd like to. But a weekly meeting on the business one hour, I think it's crucial. You know, I, I know lots of people that, oh, I, we don't, I don't need a meeting because we talk every day. That's terrible, man. 'cause then you never stop and think you, you don't have, not necessarily the big picture, but the intermediate picture, it's where that one hour a week, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:12:28] Yeah. I think that that's an easy trap to fall into, right. Particularly now because we have things like Slack and you're able to connect with people that you can be like, Hey, we're talking all the time. But if you don't actually sit down and say, what is it that we're trying to accomplish here? Where are we going? And, and people surprisingly want a lot more feedback than you might imagine, right? So they want to know, am I doing well or not? And I found that people are really comfortable being told they're not doing well as long as they've got a path to be able to start doing well.

Marcio Goncalves [00:13:00] I love it. Yes. And that's being one of my frustrations over the years. I remember my first job in Brazil and I was like, three months in, I was like, how can I get, what can I do to get better? And the answer was normally like, no, you're doing fine. I'm like, really? So that's, and I know it goes back to personality. That's a little bit of my personality too. I think, you know, it's hard to generalize, but when you are trying to get better, you know, Elon Musk has talk about having negative feedback, and that's really the only way that you can get better. You know?

Vance Crowe [00:13:39] Where do you get your negative feedback right now?

Marcio Goncalves [00:13:44] I, I try to ask people, you know, what can we do better? What can we do better? And it's tough because a lot of times it's, a lot of times it's tough to get some of the negative feedback. Right. But it's, it's good. I love it. You know, you and I are just talking about the, the camera here, you know, how to make it better. And that's great, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:14:07] Yeah. I've, I've, so I think that for a very long time, I was one of those people that really liked to tell people like, Hey, you're doing great. Hey, this is so exciting. And then I had a mentor that, you know, I, I remember distinctly one time I had met with him at night, and then the next day he called me up and he said, Vance, three things. First, if you're gonna show up at my house on Sunday night, I, you need to start dressing better. Do you own a suit? And I had been like, no, I, I don't own a suit. Wow. And he was like, well, you need to get one. And so I'll teach you how to do it. So bring your checkbook, come over here, we're gonna go get one. Then he, then he asked me some question and making reference to something that I had said about in the news. So he wanted me to send him an article. So it proved to me he was listening to me. And then the third thing he said is, are you putting on weight? And I had to be like, yeah, you know, I guess I am. And it was one of those moments where at first I felt horrible about this, right? He, he says, I don't dress well and then I'm putting on weight. But then I look around and I'm like, wait a second, why didn't anybody else tell me this? Right? Like, And if you don't have somebody around you willing to tell you those things, then you just don't know. So I come in with the assumption that once I've started to build rapport with somebody,

Marcio Goncalves [00:15:21] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:15:22] If I see something that I think they would want to change, if they knew that they, that, that they were doing it incorrectly, I just try and I put it there, and then if they don't accept it or it causes consternation, then I back way off. Yeah. But it is really increased the velocity with which I can build friendships, because you find out that most people don't give negative feedback.

Marcio Goncalves [00:15:41] I love it. That's exactly right. You know? Yeah. I love it. I, I just love that the only way we can keep improving, right? Yeah. And then I wanna get your insights on the bad side of being a, you may wanna call type a personality or driver or whatever. I, I, I mean, I consider myself one of those and, and I consider myself one of those as well based on, you know, personality tests and whatever else. It's a tough one, man. Sometimes it's, it's almost like you have a monster inside your head, and then it's 12:00 AM trying to go to bed. Last night I was just riding some stuff on my, on my platform there with my, where we keep our tasks and ideas. But it's great, you know, it's great because you keep e evolving the business, but man, it's, you got tired, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:16:39] Yeah. I think there was something, I was actually thinking about this today. Running really helps me. And I have never been like one of those people where I'm like, oh, I just love my run. The only thing I love about my run is finishing it. But while I'm doing it, it, it allows me to get outside of my own normal thoughts and, and pop out. And one of the things that I realize is my personality type, it is very easy to make observations about what other people are doing wrong. And if I put that level of reflection on myself, then I move forward a lot faster. But it takes, it's so much easier for me to be focused on what other people aren't doing to keep up with how fast and how far I'm going. So I really try and focus as best I can to be like, for everything I'm dishing out, like, am I taking it? And I think that that causes quite a bit of internal angst. So I, I think that maybe that knob is turned up too high all the time, but

Marcio Goncalves [00:17:38] I don't know. I love it. Yeah, I can see that. And a lot of times, you know, you, you have friends and, and you, sometimes I, I feel that, that you wanna help some of the friends on some areas that, you know, you learn from them and you wanna help in a different area. And sometimes I, you know, I got a little frustrated when you're, you're trying to, to help. And like you said, if the person doesn't wanna help, then probably should be focusing on yourself and, and trying to improve yourself a little more.

Vance Crowe [00:18:08] There is this crazy YouTuber that people should look up, but he's just, he's just just giant of a man. His name's Wes Watson, he's got huge arms and tattoos all over his body. He was in prison. I don't, I don't think he was, I think he was like a bad dude for

Marcio Goncalves [00:18:24] A really

Vance Crowe [00:18:24] Long time. But one of the things that he said that really struck me was he was saying, Hey Wes, he was saying that he, somebody had asked him a question, Hey Wes, why is it that I can't get my nephews to follow what I'm telling them to do, dah, dah, dah, dah. And he says, well, people don't listen to you if they don't wanna be like you. And that was like a, a, you know, a nail to my heart, right? Because that is one of those things that if people aren't asking for your advice or they aren't responding really positively to your feedback,

Marcio Goncalves [00:18:55] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:18:56] Then you need to take a look at yourself and say, well, you know, maybe I'm not right now. Em emulating a person that they wanna be. Yeah. And that's when you gotta be like, all right, well what do I have to do to be somebody that's worthy of being admired so that they would want to listen?

Marcio Goncalves [00:19:12] I love it. That's, that's powerful right there. I love it a lot. I like it. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:19:19] You're such like a gentle talker. So like, having the bounce back and forth. Are you like this with your business meetings?

Marcio Goncalves [00:19:26] No, I'm intense. I'm fairly intense. Yeah. Yeah. Very intense. So I'm intense. I mean, I mean, I, I try to be respectful and, but we, we wanna get things done. I, one thing that one business philosophy that we have is every task has an honor and it's one person, not you, one person. Right. And everyone knows who that person would be. And the thing is, if you cannot get done in time, someone needs to get done in time. And I tell my team, look, if you're busy, because some of the part-time folks have school and whatever, lemme know because I'll get it done, you see? But, but that's, and some once in a while I would, we drop the ball. Like we had one in instance a few weeks ago. But, but that's one way I like to at least keep the ball moving. We have the task, we have the owner, we have the deadline. If you get it nice, if you don't get it, let me know. I'm gonna get it done. Someone is gonna get it done. You know, so that's just an example that one of the philosophies, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:20:33] So as a guy that's created a business that wasn't there before, how have you been able to figure out where you wanna go? Right? Like, what is it that you want to do? Because I think that oftentimes people look at a business owner and they think, well, they always knew where they were going or they always knew what to do next. And so it was just, the path was obvious to them. But if you actually go talk to people that own businesses, they have to continually figure out where are we going next? So what, how do you like cycle through this thinking?

Marcio Goncalves [00:21:02] Yeah, there's a book by, I I wanna say it's Michael, what's his name? Michael Gladwell about, it's called the Drunkards Walk. And just the randomness around being business and people talk about pivoting, you know? And but, but that's one thing, right? You see what's working and you throw a lot of things on the wall, you see what's working and then you, you push on those that work and yeah, just feedback. And a huge one for me, Vince, in that arena is as far as when you have a, a, a business and you, again, we are, are trying to improve the product, but you haven't made $1 yet. Oh man, that's very common. And it's terrible. 'cause you need to talk to the cus you know, customer or potential customer and, and get that if that verbal transaction, would you buy this? Not your mom, someone that it's not close to you. Right. And would you buy this? Yeah. It doesn't have to be your wife. She's gonna buy whatever you do. Right? And, and that's huge. You know, and, and, and yeah, just talking to potentially and getting that feedback and, and changing, you know, pricing structure and those kind of things. You know,

Vance Crowe [00:22:23] What is it that you are selling right now?

Marcio Goncalves [00:22:26] So yeah, I mean the podcast is free. We do have sponsors there and the web conference, we have sponsors and we sell the tickets. And then I have online training on, on sign nutrition as well. You know, those would be the most, we also do a few other things, like I told you. One is we manage some social media for some of the, the suppliers in the wine industry. Facebook ads and things like that.

Vance Crowe [00:22:51] Well, we should talk about your conference because I do a lot of, of talks and people invite me whether physically or virtually to do things all the time. But yours was extraordinary because when you approached me, you were like, Hey, I want you to do something really edgy. I want you to really push the envelope. And normally when people say that and I come back with like an edgy idea,

Marcio Goncalves [00:23:14] They're

Vance Crowe [00:23:14] Like, yeah, we wanted it to be edgy, but we didn't want it to be that edgy.

Marcio Goncalves [00:23:18] That's funny. Oh man, you no, you opened the conference. And I, seriously, I was looking at that and I watched again and I, I was like, there wouldn't be a better way to open our conference. You know? It was great. You had the, the virtual reality avatar was just amazing and just the mental setup that you had for the folks in the conference was, was just great.

Vance Crowe [00:23:46] Yeah. So for people that don't know, Marcio set up this really interesting conference and he used a thing called, what was that thing called the stream yard? It had a duck on it. Streamy Yard. Yeah,

Marcio Goncalves [00:23:58] Streamy

Vance Crowe [00:23:59] Yard. And so it actually became like a production where the people that were gonna go speak next had like this back room and we could be communicating without being seen by other people. And then it was like, Hey, you're up. And, and all of a sudden the camera was on me and I decided to do mine from inside of virtual reality. So we figured out, after doing a bunch of different test runs, how people could actually see my avatar and live in this virtual world being projected through this, this system, streamy Yard. And, and it was just like this very interesting way to run a conference. And for me, what that told me was the guy that is willing to push the envelope and try out these systems that nobody else is doing. I mean, you really are up on the edge of chaos. So I, it's funny 'cause I'm sitting here talking with you and I'm like, Marcy was so quiet during this talk, but when we were doing this, you were like, go, go, go, go, go. Push, push, push, push, push, push, push.

Marcio Goncalves [00:24:58] Yeah, yeah, that's true man. It's true. And yeah, I mean, one of the themes of the conference was wow was big production, chaos and innovation. I love innovation, I love technology. I've been following like Tesla since 2013. I would talk to people, Elon Musk, people are like, what Elon? Who? And I just love that kind of stuff, you know? And I just love technology and chaos is part of it, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:25:25] So tell me about the conference, because you had, it was several days and it seemed to go really, really well.

Marcio Goncalves [00:25:31] Yeah, it went above my expectations. It was two days from like 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM was, I guess, okay. So we were scheduling this virtual event before COVID happened. So it lost a little bit of its standard because now everything went online At the time. I was like, wow, that sounds like innovation, at least for the pig industry, not for other industries that already had some online conferences. And that's something else that, that works a lot in business is when you're wide open looking outside of your industry, you can learn things and you can copy and paste if you will. And, and a lot of times people think it's innovation. It's like, no, it's not really innovation, it's just that I saw that in a different industry. But the key there, Vince, was the 80 minutes, right? Just a TED talk format, not like death by PowerPoint type of presentation and turned out to be great. I think, you know, people, people really wanted that in our industry, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:26:30] Yeah. With talks like, I think they're just like work, if it's always going to fill up exactly whatever vessel you give it. So people will take the same amount of content that they would've done in an 18 minute talk only they'd spread it out over 45 minutes. And you know, we live in a world where the, you're, you, you can pay attention to whatever you want, right? If you're watching a virtual conference, you are literally hooked up to the internet, meaning you can watch anything that you want. And so it is incumbent on the presenter, but then also the person putting together the presentation, you must do things that keep people's attention because they have literally access to all of the other information all over the world at the exact same moment. And I thought, man, you really did a good job of pushing the envelope to make it so people wanted to pay attention there, there was a value to being present.

Marcio Goncalves [00:27:23] Yes, yes. And we asked folks on the feedback, you know, if they got their, their money back, if you will, people are generally happy. And one thing that worked very well for us is on that platform again, was being able to change between me and the speaker very quickly. You know, and just this ness worked out super well. And it's not like, you know, we had a similar conference in Brazil two weeks before when a different system and was this Skype? And so speakers would come in and would would be, they have to unmute themselves, lots of them forgot, you know? So that kind of stuff was, was good. I think overall, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:28:04] Well I have to say that, that it was worth it for me to do that talk because I now had a challenge, right? And I, I often say like, if you get a new system, like a virtual reality system, you are not going to use it because if you put it on, there's so many things to do that you don't know what to do. And so to find new things to do becomes really difficult. So I'm always of the mindset of, I wanna find a problem that I think I can solve, but I don't know how to, and by you having that talk, it was like, okay, I'm gonna do this thing in virtual reality, I think I can do it. I don't know how now I'm going to start practicing and I've got a goal. And I think that that's a really important thing to learn is yeah, finding a problem that you don't know how to solve it, but having a reason and a deadline to solve it pushes you forward. 'cause my ability to use my VR headset now went up by an order of magnitude because I was trying to solve the problem for your conference.

Marcio Goncalves [00:29:03] Yes. And, and it's tough, like you said, to find those type of situation, right. And, and force yourself into that. One thing I wanna be doing the next several months is learning more about software development and programming to create that type of challenge. I remember having that, that ecstasy when it comes to solving those problems. One good example is when I was in grad school, we were doing a lot of SaaS coding, it's like statistics and those things. And we were pushing the envelope and we pu published some papers and, and I had to go into this community like, you know, down deep and in the, and it's super cool feeling when you find that you are in the edge of science or, or even that case from statistics. So super, super good feeling, right?

Vance Crowe [00:29:52] Yeah, it is. It's really fun to find, to go and discover. My friend Kate calls it the click, right? Where you've been working on something, you're close, you're close, and then it clicks together and there really is no other sensation. Maybe you could get it by taking drugs or something, but like, it, it it the sensation of like, ah, I figured it out and now I know. And then the craziest thing is then you open up into a new plane and you've gotta find a new problem to go solve. But it's almost impossible to have clicks unless you're trying to solve a problem, even if it's created artificially.

Marcio Goncalves [00:30:27] Yes, yes. It's, it's quite a What do you do to, to keep, keep expanding on that?

Vance Crowe [00:30:35] Well, I'm always trying to push the envelope. And I think, like, so for me, my primary business is people hire me to give talks and it would be very easy for me to find a talk that people like and then just go give it a hundred times. But at on some level, that's not, that's not, it's not just not gratifying to me it becomes almost a punishment, right? Because then I'm, I've got a set of ideas and now I'm locked into saying them and I'm not on that edge of chaos. So for me, when I'm doing proposing a talk, 'cause people call me up and they say, Hey, we have this conference and we have this problem, what can we do? I am always trying to push that thing as far as it will go. And until you find somebody that's like, okay, okay, we like the last idea, but we don't like the next idea, so can we back it up? And that really helps me. And I oftentimes propose talks that I don't even know how I will write them. And, and then I'm forced to confront it and say, oh, that's coming up. I gotta figure out how I'm gonna explain that. I gotta start practicing. I gotta start doing this. So for me, it's getting somebody to agree to something that I have not yet all the way thought through, which is dangerous right's. Dangerous.

Marcio Goncalves [00:31:50] Yes. I, I guess I, there's a law called the Park zones law, which is time the, well, the work's gonna expand to the time that you allow it, right? And if you, as you get closer, you get it done and it's all good.

Vance Crowe [00:32:09] So tell me about, you live in the us you recently had a baby. How is your time management going now that you've got these new pressures on the way that you can construct your life and your business?

Marcio Goncalves [00:32:22] Yeah, I can probably hear the baby. It's, it's been a joy, right? And it's been a lot of work as you know as well. I'd say since I was home office and I do home office and, well, most people around, a lot of people are home office this time, right? So the situation was that my, I mean my productivity went down, I dunno, less than half. And

Vance Crowe [00:32:50] Oh man, that makes me feel so much better to hear you say that. Oh my God, you have no idea. Because I'm like losing my mind with how little productivity I'm like, I, I won't succeed. I'm going to fail. Nobody told me how difficult this is gonna be. So to hear you say that, I, not that I want you to suffer, but it does make me feel better.

Marcio Goncalves [00:33:10] Yes. How old is yours now?

Vance Crowe [00:33:12] Now it's 11 weeks.

Marcio Goncalves [00:33:15] Okay. Yeah. And it's so funny, the first few weeks it's like, oh, this baby's so calm and then things go south very quickly. Oh man. You know, from when it comes to managing it, it's, it's just tough, you know, as you know. And, but again, comes back to prior prioritization and boy, we're gonna have the last, I mean, the last 12 months for us been great and it's been the best year yet. So you start thinking, well, you know, we need to, I guess we need to continue just to pri prioritize and, and keep pushing, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:33:53] Yeah. I have found that like we have finally figured out a schedule and that schedule, as long as baby goes along with it, really, really helps me. And it's a level of discipline that's hard for somebody. 'cause I, I kind of consider myself a creative, so I like having lots of time and be creative. Yeah. But that schedule has forced me into saying like, now I've gotta work on this challenge. Now I've gotta do this one. And now this is time for baby. And one of the things that I did, 'cause my, I I, I run a network called the Articulate Ventures Network. And inside of there we were doing a, we have been doing a sober October, and one of the things that I decided to do was to give up using my phone from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Marcio Goncalves [00:34:35] I love it. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:34:36] Exciting. It such a transformative experience for me because I did not realize that by dividing my time between whatever I was doing for the family, whether it's cooking or spending time with baby and the cell phone, neither one was getting more than 50%. There was some loss in the switching between the two. And I, I don't think I'll ever go back. I think I will always try and keep that six to nine break because it's been so good for me and my family.

Marcio Goncalves [00:35:02] I love it. Six to nine. So you do get after nine a little bit.

Vance Crowe [00:35:06] Yeah. And then that, because six means, hey, I'm up there cooking and I'm, I'm participating in dinner and, and making all that happen. And then you put baby to bed. But if I get baby put to bed before nine, I say, okay, well I should probably be cleaning up or I could be reading or I could be doing these other things. And it really has been as I, like, the more discipline I put to it, the more value I draw out of it.

Marcio Goncalves [00:35:31] I love it. One that I've done that is working for me is the, I removed the email app from the phone.

Vance Crowe [00:35:39] Oh wow.

Marcio Goncalves [00:35:41] Yeah. 'cause then, because we get, so we are slaves of email and email is nothing more than the most important task of someone else. It's like, oh man. So I'm checking email now once a day takes, takes me about two hours, you know, it's about 150 emails a day by the time you get all the newsletters and everything else. And it's been good. I like it a lot.

Vance Crowe [00:36:09] Speaking of newsletters, I am religious about once a week I go through, anytime I get a newsletter that I didn't sign up for or something has subscribed to me that I don't want, I go through and then unsubscribe on every single one of them. And it has saved me so much time and chaos in my inbox that by having that little bit of discipline takes maybe 10 minutes at the most to go through and unsubscribe. But it's kept, you know, hundreds of thousands of emails outta my inbox.

Marcio Goncalves [00:36:38] Yes, I do the same. Yeah, I do the same. I do, I do on the spot, you know, unsubscribe, there's some, some apps that you can do that help a little bit. But yeah, emails is a big one. Man,

Vance Crowe [00:36:52] Man, that's a good idea. I, I, I feel like email is the same temptation as Twitter because I think that the reason that that Twitter becomes so addictive is that somebody, you put something out into the world and you're like, oh, somebody responded to me. Ooh, that, that feels good. Like

Marcio Goncalves [00:37:08] Even

Vance Crowe [00:37:08] If it's a negative response, you're still getting that, like, that brain, you know, dose of dopamine or whatever that says, oh, somebody's paying attention to me. And email feels the same way. But you're right, email is almost always the highest priority that somebody else has. That's not necessarily anything to do with mine.

Marcio Goncalves [00:37:25] Yes. I read somewhere a few days ago, something about that email is mail not a chat service, you know, so, hey, once a day and then on my, on my signature now have like, hey, if it's urgent text or call, that's, and man, it's never urgent. It's like once or twice a year you have something that's actually urgent. So it's like, man, we always got scared, you know? Oh, it's gonna, I'm gonna miss something. Oh my gosh.

Vance Crowe [00:37:59] Yeah. That was my big complaint when I was first putting the phone down. I'm like, what happens if somebody needs me between six and 9:00 PM And I'm like, wait a second. Really, there's only two people, my wife and my daughter that really, really need me between those two times and they're right here. So it's all solved. But we do have that, like, it's almost an ego thing of like, well, I need to be available when, at least for me, I don't, I'm I'm not that important.

Marcio Goncalves [00:38:25] Right. I think a lot of folks, and, and then you start talking about if work for a large company that that's tough because then now you are, you need to be competing, quote unquote, with the other folks that are available all the time and that stuff. But when you start selling your own rules, it make, it gets a little better. But, but also educating the folks around you that you talk the most on your ways of communicating. In my case, it's like, Hey, with my team, it's like, Hey, if it's urgent, call me. You know? That's it.

Vance Crowe [00:38:57] Yeah. I mean the, the, the idea of going from six to nine came from a guy named Jared Holst. And I remember hearing that he just didn't take calls between that time and me being like, wow, imagine being the type of person that doesn't take calls or doesn't, you know, respond to anything from six to nine. And then one day it hit me, it was like, Hey, you could do that. You just haven't chosen to do it. And it instantly was one of those things that I was like, this is one of the greatest things I've ever done for myself. And I really want to know what are other things that you could do that would have that big of an impact? 'cause I know they're just sitting out there waiting for me to discover them.

Marcio Goncalves [00:39:35] Right. And that's funny enough, that's one area, this whole area about personal productivity. I love it, man. I'm so addicted to it. I, I, I have some future plans for it when it comes to create this literal community just focused on this topic that we're talking about. I love that. And for me, I mean, you probably watched the social dilemma on Netflix.

Vance Crowe [00:39:53] Yes.

Marcio Goncalves [00:39:54] Great. I recommend Right. We recommend that a lot to people, I think. And turning off the notifications, I did that a few year, a year or two ago now. Oh. Oh my gosh. It just, oh, I love that.

Vance Crowe [00:40:08] I have a really strong repulsion against sounds that try and grab my attention. So I have no sound on my phone. My phone never rings. Yep. Same. And then I also, you know, if I have a microwave, I, I figure out a way to turn that sound off. I want no electronic sounds trying to grab my attention because my hypothesis is your attention is the most valuable thing you own because it's the, it's your bandwidth for, for changing the world. And so if you allow these things to grab your attention Yeah. Giving away the most valuable thing you have more valuable than money because it's the present moment. And so I also gave up Twitter for, for sober October, and that was good. I had no idea how much of my attention I was just handing over to that system.

Marcio Goncalves [00:40:59] Yes. I need to, yeah. I, I found myself getting too often on, even though it's, I think it's less than average, but still it's more than I want on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. Now that I, I don't have the email on the app, on the com on the cell phone. It's like, you know, it's just,

Vance Crowe [00:41:16] You go looking for something else For sure. Just

Marcio Goncalves [00:41:18] Addictive. Right. And I've tried to, you know, when you can screen time, screen time, I guess you can block those and it works Okay. But yeah, you, you always allow more time, which is ridiculous. And also when you actually need it, let's say if you're doing a Instagram live or whatever you're doing, then the thing shuts on yourself. It's, no, that's not good.

Vance Crowe [00:41:38] What do you think of Instagram?

Marcio Goncalves [00:41:40] Instagram is huge in South America and not as huge in North America. I like it. I think it's a little younger generation than then Facebook. When I say I like it, I like it as a, again, I try to produce more content than I actually consume on, on those social media. And I think you and I talked about it, about that. So as a, as a media, I, I, I think it's, it's fine. I don't use Facebook a lot. Twitter I don't use a lot, but we do publish on those as well when it comes to social media, I guess Instagram is probably the one that I use and then link it in a little bit as well.

Vance Crowe [00:42:19] Instagram, I'm like hyper wary of because it's this, it's allowing you to have this visual. Yeah.

Marcio Goncalves [00:42:26] You know,

Vance Crowe [00:42:27] Like, and, and so it, and like the fact that the way that Instagram works is that it just keeps showing you the things that get you to stop scrolling. So of course, like a beautiful woman, I'm gonna slow down or like something chaotic, I'm gonna slow down. And then all of a sudden, before I know it, I have an exploration feed that is just like, you know, exactly the things that visually would draw my attention in. And yet I get nothing back for it. It's not like I, it's not like I'm admiring a Monet and it, and it's making me think more deeply about it. It's just one of those things where you're like getting mesmerized by it.

Marcio Goncalves [00:43:05] Yes, that's, that's exactly right. It's addictive. And again, that's why that Netflix deal is good because it shows you that all the guys behind it and they are scared of, of it and agree. I mean, it is addictive and something probably should stop looking at. I try. Yeah. I try to be selective too. I mean, try to follow the people that are putting some good content that I learn from some ideas when it comes to digital marketing or whatever else. But it's always tough. It's a tough one.

Vance Crowe [00:43:34] You know, it's interesting to think about the people that put out content because I find that there are people that I need at certain times in my life and then you kind of move past it. And it's a weird thing about, you know, the YouTube people of the world. There, there, I talked about that guy Wes Watson. I really, really liked what he was doing. 'cause he was like yelling at you that you needed to get down and do your burpees and get that workout in. And, but then I got to a point where I had transcended that I didn't need a guy yelling at me. And I would say the same thing about somebody like David Goggins or Jocko or Jordan Peterson.

Marcio Goncalves [00:44:09] Yeah. And

Vance Crowe [00:44:10] So we kind of have this, you know, we, we get a chance to understand their point of view. You move past it and you keep going, but it makes the world feel Yeah. Transient in a, in a, in a, in a deep way. In particular for a guy that's trying to create content, how do you avoid becoming the, the pers the wave that people will crash over and then keep moving on from?

Marcio Goncalves [00:44:31] Yeah, that's a great one. I have. I never thought about that. Yeah. Just our goal when it comes to content is to try to get the best content we can, but it's, yeah, it's a tough one, right. When, as you said, I think people evolve, you know, and it's something interesting that you said, you, you mentioned a few names that, that I like and I've either followed as well, like Jar Peterson and others and super cool. I love to have these fake mentors that you can learn from and you are brass friends with them. They don't know you. You know, it's, it's, I love it. And sometimes people don't give value to it. For example, if for you to give, to have a one-on-one call with a guy that you like it a lot. Let's call Elam Musk. I like Elam Musk a lot. So if I could have a one-on-one call with him, I'd sit and I learn and I would take notes. Right. But just because it's free and available on YouTube, you don't, you are not very interested on that.

Vance Crowe [00:45:32] Well, you and I have a similarity, right? Like you reached out to me after finding me on YouTube. But like Jordan Peterson, he's not a fake mentor to me. I flew up to Toronto and went and met him before he became a big, huge deal. And I would say when I find somebody on social media that I think is doing something interesting, I say, Hey, they are trying to create a gravity. Well, their goal, maybe it's to have, you know, fame and fortune. Or maybe it's just that they want to be, they want to encounter somebody that they couldn't encounter just by going and looking on their own. So I have always had that mentality and it has netted me really strong friendships with interesting people because I try not to allow my mind to put them on a pedestal

Marcio Goncalves [00:46:16] And

Vance Crowe [00:46:16] Instead say, this person wants me to reach out to them because I have something to say that they're going to find interesting. Just in the same way that you reached out to me.

Marcio Goncalves [00:46:23] Yeah. Yeah. I love that you met Jordan Peterson. I mean, he is a bright guy, not well understood as well. Right. That's cool. And and going after, right. I think Tim Ferry talk about in, in his, one of his books and, and also when he gave some class on Princeton. Princeton, he, he says that, yeah, go go after some famous people and you're gonna be surprised.

Vance Crowe [00:46:51] Yeah. And it's interesting that I find that most famous people, they don't really want the sheen of being famous.

Marcio Goncalves [00:46:58] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:46:59] So there's a guy named Matt Ridley, who's Lord Ridley, he's a member of the House of Lords. He's written these books on evolution and capitalism. He's a fascinating guy. And I had a chance to go and meet him. And the, the sense of treating him with reverence, like he kind of like rebuked me. Like he was a little bit like, Hey man, let's just have a regular conversation as opposed to you putting me on a pedestal. And I had to be like, yeah, but you're Lord Ridley. But at the end of the day, he's a regular guy that would rather be thought, I think would rather be thought of as a guy that's d putting things out into the world, getting things done, wanting to talk about ideas rather than being revered.

Marcio Goncalves [00:47:40] Yeah. I love it. I love it. That's, that's the ultimate goal, you know, and, and when it comes back to to, to the business we are running and other things, our goal is just to create positive impact. That's, we are really IBC addicted to that, you know, helping if we can help people, we love that. That's really what drive us. You know, that's really,

Vance Crowe [00:48:00] You know, it's interesting, I was thinking about small businesses, one of the challenges that they have and is that there's not very high to go, right? A corporation has this constant like banana that they can hold out in front of people being like, then you could move up to manager, you know, b section subsection 1216, and then you can go up a little bit higher and a little bit higher. And eventually if you do this for 30 years, you'll be up the, at the high level. But small businesses don't have that. And so you have to find a way to motivate people in a way that isn't like luring them up the stairwell.

Marcio Goncalves [00:48:36] Yeah. Well, I'm trying to think what we try to do. I mean, I dunno if you have the recipe, but I mean, we just try to have the vision and try to create a good environment, you know, and, and we do small things like every quarter, Hey, you get, you can get some, what do you do? We can get some delivery. You get some delivery food here or up to X. And then we, you know, just small things. We try just to keep a good environment, almost a family environment, if you will. And our business all remote. And most of the, I mean, half of my team, I never met them in my life, you know, and I had a business partner a few years ago that we had a business for few years and we never, we went a business and even we broke up after that and we never met each other. Crazy.

Vance Crowe [00:49:26] Wow. You really are living in a digital, in a digital world.

Marcio Goncalves [00:49:30] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:49:32] I I think that the biggest positive that small businesses have is that you can do things that don't require you to make it equitable across 800 people. Right. It's, it's one thing to, to start a program to try and reward people when you have four or five or 10. But when you start getting out into the larger numbers, then all of a sudden trying to do it the same thing for everybody doesn't work. Or you have people feeling like that's not equitable or I, I, it's just becomes so complicated. So the benefits of being small, if you can lever those up, are, are, are only limited by your creativity.

Marcio Goncalves [00:50:10] Yes. Definitely benefits. And one of the negatives is, I was doing that last evening as we are gonna hire this new person just creating the, we call accountability chart. It's like our org chart, but has the tasks. And just going through that, I was like, my gosh, it seems simple, but boy, to get to make it clear, it's tough. It's tough, you know, I was like, wow, how, how those companies with 10,000 people doing. And what I found when I worked for some large companies that they, they actually don't do it. They don't have an accountability. It's very informal, which is the weirdest thing to think about.

Vance Crowe [00:50:45] Yeah. But that's because corporations, like, one of the things that people don't realize, I believe very deeply in the, in the prices law, that that half of the work is done by the square root of the number of workers. So if you have

Marcio Goncalves [00:51:00] A

Vance Crowe [00:51:00] Hundred workers, 10 of them are doing 50% of the work. And as you get larger and larger and larger as a corporation, because you have more and more responsibilities, you, you genuinely have people in those offices that do v virtually nothing all day. You know, they've got some process or some thing that they've got to, to fulfill,

Marcio Goncalves [00:51:21] But

Vance Crowe [00:51:21] They're just not getting it done. And the, the challenge is, if you go in and try and hack those things out, you're, you know, you're, you are going to hit some of the most productive ones and so then your productivity goes way down. Yeah. So I I I think it's an undefeatable law of nature.

Marcio Goncalves [00:51:38] I love that. I I was not aware of that. One thing that we just implemented is to create a pipeline of potential people. So now we have a pipeline, you know, it's gonna add and then fill a form, get automatic email, Hey, you need to do this, this, and that. And it's super cool when we are recruiting people, people need to send up to one minute video saying why we should hire them. And also a personality test by tomorrow, 6:00 PM central time. So, so with these three things, we already know if they are gonna be detail oriented and get it done in time within the right instructions. So I love, I just love that.

Vance Crowe [00:52:18] Oh, that is good. You know, and corporations are really held back by, by HR laws. Right. You get to a certain size and the government starts regulating your, your rules. True. And one of the things that they do is they start saying, you're not allowed to test X, Y, Z. You're not allowed to. So they standardize the conversations. Yeah. And so you don't get to hand select people because corporations are trying to avoid lawsuits. Yeah.

Marcio Goncalves [00:52:43] But

Vance Crowe [00:52:43] That's what also makes a small business, I think, more fun to work in because you get to hand select people based on what makes them novel and interesting and, and a part of the team.

Marcio Goncalves [00:52:54] Yeah. And then some of these folks will be almost also as either a virtual assistant or a contractor and, and often also overseas, you know, so it's, you know, and, and it gets gray area when it comes to law and those things when it dealing with different countries and things. But, but yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:53:14] I have a, an editor for the podcast. He is, he is been great. He's really helped me out a lot. And the other day he wrote me and basically said, Hey, I have everything done and I'm getting faster than what I used to be, so is there anything else I could do to make this thing better? And I was like, man, what can I do to celebrate you more? Like that is the greatest thing that could ever happen. And it's something so simple that you wish you could tell young people or people that you're working with, like follow this model, get like, just keep taking on responsibilities. 'cause we will reward this to the end of days because it's so rare.

Marcio Goncalves [00:53:50] Yeah, yeah. Like meritocracy. And one thing that I always had in mind when I was in school and, and, and different things and even working, it's like as long as you do better. It seems like a foolish thought, but for me has worked, which is as long as you're doing better than average or doing the basic things like whatever, get on time, get it done, tell you said is gonna send something, you send something. Just that it's, it's served me a lot as well, man.

Vance Crowe [00:54:22] Yeah. It, it is interesting how just, just showing up and getting things done makes you, makes you rare. And I, I find in either running a business or in, in just working with people, you know, going on a retreat or something, the people that are the hardest for me to deal with, and I think it's a part of their personality, are the ones that just stand there and wait for somebody to tell them what to do. I would much rather be like, Hey, hey, don't do that. Like, come back over here. You know, I don't want those vegetables chopped in that way than I would be to be like, Hey guys standing there just waiting for somebody else to tell 'em what to do. And I think that came from a lesson that I got when I was in high school. I had a, a boss that basically said, anytime you don't know what to do, there are always nails on the ground. It was at a construction company, so be picking up nails and then that's when you learn, like if I'm on the, if I'm on the the clock, I am always to be working. There's no benefit to me not knowing what to do next because that means I get to take a break because I'm always working.

Marcio Goncalves [00:55:27] I love it. Yeah. Well, it's good to learn like what type of personality sometimes, or not personalities, but behaviors that we don't like. For me, one is that fo folks that don't reply like terrible in communication either reply back, could be email, but but also message or whatever. I'm like, wow, I'm, I'm glad I got to pick who I work with because I it just a waste of time, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:55:54] Yeah, that's interesting. And I oftentimes wait to reply because I'm like, aha, I don't have time to think through this answer. But if I use it and actually sit down, I'm like, okay, I actually should figure out what it, why it is that I'm not willing to answer this question or what it is that I need to find out. Because oftentimes it's procrastination comes when the path isn't clear to me.

Marcio Goncalves [00:56:14] Exactly. Right. Yes. And something that I've been doing when I got some of those emails that are either tough to answer or whatever else, I, I have this little shortcut that, that says received and I'll get back to you. You know, and I try to use that sometimes when I know that I'm gonna take, you know, a few, a few days. Something else, Vince, that that, that I love a lot about business and talking about small business, but, but even large ones is the, the whole thing around progress, not perfection or, or even something that Amazon has as, as it's one of its values, which is bias for action. And like you said, just just get, do it and do it. And because a lot of times, and I talk to my wife a lot about that and we get paralyzed because we wanna be perfect and we want the, the universe to align and it's like, man, I think that that holds a lot of people back.

Vance Crowe [00:57:12] I like that, that bias towards action. I mean that's, that's precisely my philosophy and I think that if you're trying to run a business or you're trying to be a part of a small group of people that are doing something, like taking action and then correcting where it didn't quite go well is so much more valuable than waiting around for somebody to tell you what to do or waiting around for the path to become clear. Now that's not to say you should just like always be an action. That was one of the hardest things for me was to say, if I take 15 minutes or 20 minutes to think about what I'm gonna do today without, like automatically, you know, 'cause sometimes you go to write your to-do list down and as soon as you write it down you're like, well, I'll just go do that right now.

Marcio Goncalves [00:57:52] When

Vance Crowe [00:57:52] I stopped myself from that temptation and actually write it all the way out and then start planning how I'm going to attack those, I get 10 times more done than when I'm like, okay, this is the next thought I have. I've gotta go accomplish that thing. Yeah.

Marcio Goncalves [00:58:07] Super hard. It's a hard one. Yeah. Just to add to the list and sometimes mistake that I do very often I add to my calendar and which is good, I add some things to the calendar on, on a time slot. That's a good thing. But sometimes I add things that would be more of a midterm or not as important right now. And then I got overwhelmed, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:58:31] Well man, this was a really fun conversation. I had no idea where a conversation with a swine veterinarian from Brazil that's running a podcasting company would, would work out. But it turned out this is a really fun conversation about productivity and running a business. And so thanks man for showing up today.

Marcio Goncalves [00:58:49] Appreciate Yeah, appreciate the invites. It's an honor and really appreciate you being the, the o the first ever speaker, speaker in our conference, so that is great.

Vance Crowe [00:58:59] If people wanted to learn more about your company or follow you on, on social media, how would they do that?

Marcio Goncalves [00:59:05] It's the website is swine it.com. Like if you're Google it, it's swine like pigs, swine it.com. Social media will be swine at podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:59:18] Great. Well thank you so much for showing up today and we'll talk with you later.

Marcio Goncalves [00:59:22] Thanks so much Vince.