Hi, Hunter Hastings here. Systems thinking is one of the most important skills for every business executive in every business. We have a tendency to think in linear terms. If I do x, y will be the result, or if I follow this specific process, I'll get this specific outcome. The world doesn't work that way. We live in complex adaptive systems where the interactions of multiple variables are so complex and unpredictable that linear thinking doesn't help. How do businesses cope? Well, they design their own systems. If you design all of the elements of the system with all the timelines and all the relevant constraints, you can make it work for you. Our guest today, Joe Zentmeier, is a systems designer. He designed a system for an indoor climbing gym. That combines a lot of variables, a lot of global supply chain elements, and integration into a neighborhood and into the hobbyists of indoor climbing. Then he made that into a multi-geography system. How can you take one location system and expand it across many locations? Then he built a bigger system, which is indoor climbers are hobbyists. What would be a for many different kinds of hobbyists to come together in a community and enjoy participating in their hobby? Systems thinking and systems design is a big skill. We're going to talk to Joe Zentmeier today, who's the master of it. This is the Value Creators Podcast, your source for a new kind of business education, escaping from business administration mode and entering dynamic entrepreneurship mode. We're guided by entrepreneurial economics, which is the source of all growth and positive change for businesses of all sizes in all markets. We talk to experienced experts in value creation so that there's business learning for you in every episode. Joe, welcome to the Value Creators Podcast. Hi, Hunter. It's great to be here. It's great to have you here. So you're, it says on your website, a serial entrepreneur. We'll get into that. But we're going to talk about you as a systems builder. You build businesses that create communities, you say, and specifically retail businesses that are focused around hobbyists. And then there's various expansions on that. But the one that I've spent most time learning about is your, your indoor climbing gyms business. Yeah. But I want to talk generally about systems building. So, so let's start there at that product level, the, the indoor climbing gyms. I mean, from what I've read, there's, there's a lot of components, a lot of moving parts, takes a long, long time to plan and, and get launched and integrate and run and, and so on. Tell us about systems building from that aspect. Yeah. You know, so for a rock climbing gym business, you know, you know, a typical rock climbing gym is 20,000 to 40,000 square feet, is a multiple million dollar investment, both in real estate and in building enhancements. And then, you know, depending on the size of the gym, you might have 20 to 40 employees working there. And so, you know, there's a lot of systems in a business that size and a location that size. And then there's there's all the mini systems, and then there's the big system that is the business, right? And, you know, climbing gyms is one of those businesses where probably the hardest part is just getting them open, like figuring out the puzzle of finding a location, figuring out the right allocation of capital and financing, finding the right business partners, getting that first location open, and then subsequent locations open later is probably the hardest part. And, you know, so in my case, you know, you know, I built seven locations in about eight or nine years. And one of my approaches was really to focus on building a team. And like, having a group of people that I could work with that were knowledgeable in real estate. And that was really necessary, because the requirements of a rock climbing gym are pretty unique, you know, you need a high ceiling, there's going to be attachment points for climbing walls, even though it's pretty much a large warehouse and needs air conditioning, you need to put a locker room in there. And so figuring out like the right mix of real estate experts to work with was kind of a key part of kind of the rock climbing building system. You know, and it goes, it goes from having like the right type of financing partners, investment partners, real estate partners. And so that was kind of the start. Yeah. So how do you go about that, Joe? How do you combine the real estate and the financing and getting the equipment and doing the design and so on like that? Do you have a giant checklist? Do you use good software that you can talk to us about? Is it, you know, how much of it is experience? How much of it happens on the go? Tell us about that. Yeah. I will say that there was a fair amount when I was doing the first one, having the ego to think that I knew, believing that I knew. So there was a fair amount of that. But, you know, like I spent two and a half years studying the business that I ultimately started and kind of game planning different strategies for how to expand and understanding what the pressure points were for building locations, what the challenges were. And when I say understanding, like I did a lot of reading. I did a lot of talking to experts in the industry. And I really built strong relationships with real estate partners. And it's easy to say that, not so easy to do. Like when you're that guy that, you know, is doing a newfangled concept, the real estate people, in my case, they see it all the time. You know, you're just another fish. And, you know, you just kind of have to find people that you connect with. And so there's a fair amount of like trying people on for size. They try you on for size. Yeah. OK, moving on, moving on. But also then just like, OK, this is someone I'm going to, we seem to get along. I'm going to ask them out for lunch and say, OK, let's just talk about how this all works. And so I say I built a team. It took five years. I think I went through three different general contractors. You know, I had this one in work, this one in work. Oh, this guy really gets it. He's working for us really well. And, you know, starting to get that reputation for being good to work with, you know, and being someone that kind of delivers on promises that takes time and it takes effort. Yeah. But you make a great point. Trust and reliability play a big part in making that that system work. Yeah. And it's it's a tricky thing because especially in the real estate world, it's very transactional. Right. But when you're a business owner and you're just building locations and especially when you're a small business owner and you're not actually trying to build 500 locations, you're much more like you're going to be probably be relationship based, you know, and the system you're building is a series of relationships in which you're trying to be in the center. And it's about your interpersonal skill. It's about your reliability. And it's also about being able to figure out like, hey, this is how people can make money working with me because people are motivated by money. Right. Yeah. Sure. So then you also mentioned in some of the things I've read, the neighborhood is important. So it's got to be a warehouse, as you say, because it's going to have the high ceilings and the big space. Be nice if there was somewhere to park for your right. Nice for a few bars around there and restaurants. It was safe and a little neighborhood that people would like to come to. How big a part does that play in your success? It's huge. And, you know, it's funny, you know, like if you think about McDonald's, how many thousands, tens of thousands of locations do they have? They have a formula and they can say like based on foot traffic and based on 30 similar locations, this is what your revenue is going to be. That same formula doesn't exist for a niche business because there simply aren't enough locations. Like you can't possibly do the math to figure out what your receipts and your revenues are going to be, which is obviously a very kind of scary thing if you're going to spend 20 million dollars on a location and fundamentally you're, you know, you don't know exactly what your revenue is going to be. And I think that's where, you know, being able to analyze and say, OK, like here's the population, here's the, OK, got it, here's wealth levels. So having some objective assessment, but then within that same assessment, you have qualitative factors. And so like here in Chicago, certainly a very qualitative factor is a neighborhood around, does it feel safe? You know, there's a lot of neighborhoods you can get great rent but it doesn't feel safe to walk through. Or, you know, oh, it's kind of off the beaten path, but it's right next to the elevated train. You know, OK, like so, you know, for a climbing gym, you are going to have some objective analysis that you go through as a part of a system of assessing a location. But at the same time, you got to start like kind of measuring qualitative factors. Yeah. And that's a fair amount of science and instinct. Yeah. So it doesn't sound like project planning software can do all of those things, right? Those qualitative things that you talk about. Yeah. I mean, and certainly like, you know, it's the more locations you build, the easier it gets. You know, the more you start to go, OK, like this is what I can really expect from a revenue standpoint. You know, project planning software, where it's very helpful is like, OK, you build out a budget, you know, and you kind of have an agreement for where you're trying to land financially on your asset purchase. And then, OK, here's your schedule. You know, like this is when we're trying to open. It's always going to change a lot. What I found is because I was a small business, one of my advantages was I could work with the real estate developers and essentially just say when you're ready, you know, I'm here. And so they might spend a year or two trying to find somebody that'll pay more rent than me. But after they spend a year or two, they come back and I get them and I get them at a better rent level. But part of that is just like I said, like having those relationships and getting along well and being someone that you can count on. So another piece of the community element, the qualitative element is the hobbyist community. So the climbers, let's focus on the indoor climbing gyms. How do you engage with a community like that? Where are they? How do you find them? How do you talk to them? You know, engagement is always. It's a funny thing, you know, because like the short answer is like, oh, you go online, you know, and OK, you have a Facebook page, you do social media, you have an event and you invite people to your event in your location. That's kind of the short answer. And it's and the trick with it is when you're kind of servicing a hobbyist community, they want they the hobbyists identify as a part of that hobby. Like I'm a climber, I'm an aquarist like they're identifying. And they want to be around other people like themselves. So if you as the owner of a business or the manager of a business can't authentically say, like, I'm a part of this, too, like I'm a climber, I care about climbing. It's a tough hill to climb then. And I don't necessarily mean to say that from a marketing standpoint, you know, you can't market to a community of climbers or community of aquarists if you're not one of them. But it makes it a lot harder. A lot harder. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we call that empathy, really understanding the passions and feelings and preferences and so on in the audience. If you don't have that empathy, genuinely, as you say, then you're not going to make it. Yeah. I mean, what's funny is when I fell into BusinessWise and this was part of me kind of understanding the dynamics of things is like, as much as it's important to be a part of a community that you're advertising towards, in a way, you're the worst. If you're in that community, you're the worst person to advertise to that community. Because you don't understand, you know, what you're saying, you know, the vocabulary is all inherent to you. And like any business of this, like we're always trying to bring new people in. New people are going to spend the most money, they're going to grow the community. But if you're using all vocabulary that only experts know, you're excluding them. Yeah, good point. And so my tendency was to try to connect with marketing firms that actually didn't have that much knowledge. And I would tell them like, I'll be the knowledge base for like, we'll explain to you climbing or explain to you aquariums, we'll explain to you the niche. We need you to think about how to advertise. You know, and that was always, that was a nuance of marketing planning that took me years to kind of grasp. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, interesting. So replicability, Joe, you've built several of these. What happens when you try and replicate something? Does it mostly take, do you learn lots of new things? Is it more difficult than you think? Is there a formula? How does that work? Yeah, they're always difficult. Every new location is difficult. What changed over the years that I did that was I started to build a team that did a lot of the work of launching the location. So, you know, the first one, it was myself and my business partner, all hands on deck, we're doing everything. And by the last one, I was like, okay, I have one person that's focused on marketing. I have one person that's focused on site management. I have a general contractor, this is his third one. So they don't need it explained to them what to do. I have a real estate agent that only comes to me with locations that know, that will work. And so it went from doing a lot of the work myself or with my business partners to focusing on getting people to a point, people that work for me to a point where they could do that part of the location opening themselves. And I'm developing that team of people and then developing the processes and the organization behind them so that we can keep track of everything, which is really enjoyable. Yeah. And the business school word for that is experience that you improve through experience, you're on the experience curve. So it sounds like that works. And to a certain extent, you've got this tacit understanding of what works and what doesn't when you replicate. Right. Yeah. So a simple one would be, you design the climbing walls. And if you put too many curves under the climbing walls, they're not very usable for climbing. It's very difficult to change them, to put different routes on them. You know, so our first gym, we had too many curves. Now, by the end, we would avoid that mistake, you know. And, you know, so there's those little bits of knowledge that you learn. But, you know, I would say probably more important is that built in culture and that built in base of just knowledge in this group of people, you know, that I've worked with to you for a few years. Yeah. It's really fascinating. Everyone's talking about automating businesses and business processes today. But things like that, that experience, that knowledge, that the trial and error, you know, too many curves. So we won't do that again. That's just not automatable, is it? That's just people experience working together. Well, that's kind of a funny thing. It's like you talk about, okay, like how do you approach hiring for roles like this? And it's like, okay, wow. Like if you're opening a new location, almost inherently, there's going to be creative problem solving. There's going to be things that come up that are totally unexpected. And, you know, that person that can put together your financial statements accurately once a month and never makes a mistake probably isn't a good fit for dealing with the chaos of opening a location. Yeah. So, oh, okay. Like, okay, there's creative problem solving here. They're willing to jump in and lead when maybe that's not really in your job title. And so figuring out like, oh, how do I identify those people? And again, it gets easier because now you have 300 plus staff and you're like kind of selecting among people you know. But nevertheless, like, yeah, it's like, okay, that's a different type of person. But also it's kind of like how would you ever automate that level of creative problem solving? It'd be really tough. I'm not sure I'd say it's impossible, but we'd have one building that was 30,000 square feet all on one floor. And then another building that was 30,000 square feet on three different floors. Okay. So one, we got to figure out how to move things up and down. One, we got, yeah. And I don't know how you would automate that so that a computer could figure out where to put things, you know. Yeah, exactly. I'm in the camp that we can't replace that human creativity, the ingenuity, the interaction of humans working together, but we may be wrong. 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Master these lessons and you'll master the most important skill in business, value creation. Go to the valuecreators.com and click the course link. So let me ask you a kind of technical systems management question. There's a couple of theories in building these complex systems. One's the standard theory of constraints. Find the one bottleneck and solve that, focus on that. Don't try and do everything at once. That'll have some implications and you go on focusing on the major constraint. I think Elon Musk calls it sleeping at the bottleneck until you get it right. And then the other side says, no, that's too complex. You need to weave all of these different constraints together and get the mesh right. You can't just focus on one. So what's your experience in actually doing it? You know, it's a good question. I actually was thinking about it over the last couple of weeks. So it's like, you know, and more just being kind of self-reflective on like, what is it that I do? Like what is my management organizational approach? And what has occurred to me is like, my approach has changed situationally. And, you know, so to give an example, like, you know, when we opened our first location, my managers at the time neglected to think about cash management. So there was $30,000 in cash in the register. It's like, okay, well, there needs to be a process there and that needs to be fixed and it needs to be fixed now. So it's not necessarily like a constraint, but it's like, okay, hurry up and fix that. You know, there's a real risk management asset protection issue. And I think, especially when you're in a startup mode, those things come up a lot where it's like, okay, solve those problems. And where, so I would say that comes up a lot. It's like, okay, there are things that you just have to prioritize and get done because they're critical path or they're critical risk. And maybe the mistake is you end up chasing after critical path and critical risk all of the time and don't go after constraints. And, you know, an example of like, you know, a constraint that, you know, I would work on pretty frequently would be like, oh, it's too difficult to sign up for memberships. Okay. How are we going to simplify this process? Cause it takes too long. And, you know, and it's, you know, okay, focus, work on that. And I would say, you know, a mistake that I made over my years was that when you have a small team, you can work on a constraint and get it solved pretty quickly. And you can move on to the next one, move on to the next one. But when you have seven locations, not so much, you know, and you have to give more time for the changes that you're trying to implement to germinate and to percolate and to be trained in. And so changing the pace of your your, your change management is as definitely happens. But I certainly try to focus on constraints and target them while at the same time kind of identifying critical errors or critical risks. Yeah. Yeah. You got to be ambidextrous, right? You got to manage the long-term and the short-term and the big constraints and the little ones and do it all at once. Well, right. Like it's, you know, assessing upside versus downside risks, right? Yeah. So you, from what I've read, I don't know. So I look forward to you telling us, think that you can take this system and substitute for climbers, another hobbyist community. I don't know which ones you have in mind. Maybe you can, you can tell us, but you can take that system to a different, a different community. My guess is some parts would replicate and some don't. What can you share with us about how you're thinking about that? Yeah. I mean, I, I think the, the critical thing, especially when you're talking more in the retail environment, as opposed to like B2B is how you market. And there's a lot of commonalities and like how you would market towards all these different hobbyist communities. And, and I should mention, it's not just marketing towards customers, but marketing towards potential staff as well. So when you're talking about a hobbyist business, you're going to be hiring hobbyists to work for you. And so kind of unlocking how to hire the right hobbyists and how to train them in a way that is good for business and good for a hobby is part of the puzzle. What's an example of a hobby that you're thinking about, Joe, just so we can put it in context. So I'm right now, I'm redeveloping an aquarium business. So the hobbyists are aquarists rather than rock climbers. Okay. And a lot has transitioned over, right? Like people come to a rock climbing gym because they want to be able to talk to an expert and feel like, Oh, like I'm going to be safe. And people go to an aquarium store. Why? Because they want to be able to talk to an expert and feel like their fish are going to be safe. You know? So there's element of like really wanting good advice. And same thing on the marketing, like people are excited to be, to read about and understand what you do. So there's an inherent interest in content that you put out that maybe doesn't exist if you're selling t-shirts, you know? Yeah. Okay. So one of the things you say is that you can bind people together in this community by sharing their passion. Say a little bit more about that. I mean, I understand they want the advice. They want to feel safe. They want to feel like they're talking to somebody who is empathetic with them, but this binding them together, I love that phrase. Yeah. So I think the first part of it is hospitality and it's totally fundamental that when someone walks in the door, you say hello to them. Yeah. And if you don't say hello, like you're just another building, you know? And that's something where it really takes staff training because all of these types of retail businesses are high volume and, you know, your staff are working really hard and they're seeing a lot of people and they're busy. And so it's very easy to lose sight of, Hey, when somebody walks in, say hello. And so that's something I much focus on training. And it has to be reinforced. It has to be reinforced because people lose sight of it. So that's the first part of just bringing people together. Like they just, they got to feel welcome. They don't feel welcome. Your customers, you know, they're not going to be connected. And then the other part about it is, yeah, being active online, you know, sending out emails like, Oh, Oh, they're talking to me. And then another part is just creating community get togethers, community events, whether that's online, whether that's in the location, giving people an excuse to be with you. Yeah. So what's in a, a querist, is that the right term? What's, what's an event for them going to look like? What's a, what's a physical location? Is that a retail store? Is it something? Yeah. So like I have a retail store. It's, it's on the South side of South suburbs of Chicago. Oh, it's like an example. Then we did a month and a half ago was, um, uh, a workshop on how to clean algae in your aquarium. Yeah. And, you know, we had a few people attend and, uh, we gave out free pizza and, uh, people were excited about it. And the funny thing about it is what happens is you may only get two or three people that go, but there's like another 10 that didn't go, but that are excited that you were someplace that had that event, you know? So there's kind of a hang on effect. Uh, that's really powerful. Yeah. Yeah. And it's experiential, right? For the people who go there, right. Right. Rock climbing is one experience and being at your aquarium store is another experience and you've helped them by making them more skillful or giving them knowledge. Yeah. I mean, certainly like, uh, obviously retail is, um, a tough environment to be in, but, um, retail that is successful these days is experiential. So why do people come to the aquarium store? Because they want to see sharks. They want to see angelfish. They want to see, uh, aquariums. And why did they go to a rock climbing gym? Because they want to try this thing that is rock climbing. Um, so in that particular niche that I'm in, like having good, strong experiences really matter a great deal. Yeah. So theoretically then you could identify a hobbyist community where there is passion and engagement and there's some level of skill and knowledge and so on like that. And you could formulate a business around that. And there's definitely, um, there's, uh, there's things that I look for financially. Like I really like to find businesses that have some form of recurring revenue. Like, I don't know if I'd be ever up for like pure, like I'm just trying to sell retail inventory in a physical location. Um, trying to find some, uh, recurring revenue is very beneficial and helpful. So for like an aquarium store, it's in-home service. Um, and then obviously for a rock climbing gym, it's, uh, it's memberships, you know? Yeah. But that sounds like a good pathway to loyalty, right? If you can give that experience, that service, you get loyalty and it goes on presumably forever. That's correct. As long as they have an aquarium, as long as they're a rock climber. Yeah. Yeah. Good. I love it. So, um, I wanted to go to the next level about systems and systems and systems. So I was thinking about Chicago and we talked about the neighborhood and the L and so on like that, but you've got to live in the system of, of licensing and politics and police and safety, as you mentioned, and all those other things. Do you, do you think at that level, the, the, how do I fit into the big business ecosystem? Is that part of your thinking? Yeah. Um, you know, certainly when I was, you know, so we ultimately, we built, uh, five locations around the Chicagoland area, four in Metro Chicago, and then one in the suburbs. And, um, and so I very much was watching and thinking about the real estate market, uh, within Chicago. And some of this is outdated knowledge now, or things have changed, but there was like, for an example, a period where, uh, a major real estate firm was purchasing, um, large tracts of land and kind of North side of Chicago. Uh, anyone from Chicago is going to know who I'm talking about. And, um, and subsequently like all of the retail opportunities that were near to, uh, this budding development was very expensive. And so I, there was a period of time where I had investors in my business that were, Oh, you should build a location there. It'd be like, so great. And I'm saying, it doesn't pencil, you know, it doesn't come together because of what is happening from a Chicago macro, macroeconomic perspective. And, um, I, I don't want to take this bet, this bet on this area at this time, uh, as much as this is, would be a great location for Jim, like from a subjective standpoint, but when you look at the numbers of it, um, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. And, um, and so that's where, um, kind of getting the, uh, kind of what's going on from a development standpoint within the city is really important. Uh, you mentioned like, um, kind of licensings and, um, something that has happened, been happening in Chicago for awhile is like transit oriented development, uh, which basically meant you could, uh, develop a building or develop a location with reduced parking. If it was near to the owl and, uh, essentially the elevated train. And essentially the idea was like, you want it to encourage people to drive fewer cars, uh, and to live closer to public transit. And so we, as a part of developing climbing gyms actually developed three climbing gyms near to transit, um, which is good for us. Um, but it also helped us avoid having to pay for parking spots. Uh, so that was kind of a key part of the strategy of finding locations was like, okay, let's think about transit, uh, where people might be and, uh, utilize that, uh, to our advantage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great example of fitting into the, the complicated system. Yeah. Does it, I don't know how to ask this question. Does it ever become overwhelming? There's too many things to think about. There's too many parts of the system. There's, you know, which, which part have I done right? Which part have I done wrong? There's too many. You know, I, I will tell you, like, um, I'm one of those people that I obsess about the puzzle. That is a business. And I, I love, uh, putting all the pieces together. I love, oh, there's an issue here. I'm going to try. Oh, and now there's the issue has cropped up. And I, I'm trying to figure out the balance of all the different systems and getting them to work together and getting the right team in the system. Um, and so where I oftentimes kind of go wrong is I get too obsessed with the systems of the business and I forget about my personal system. And, and, uh, so that's something that I really, uh, have tried to like focus on and working on is like, okay, what is my personal plan? Like, how am I going to measure myself? And, uh, am I going to have like a personal system for how I manage my time? Uh, so I'm not too trapped within the systems of my business. So I don't know that I'm like overwhelmed by it, but I just have a tendency to give up too much of my time and have no personal life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But as you say, that's your system. You've got to manage your own system as well. That's right. That's right. Great example. Uh, can you give us any hints about what's next? If we, we think about other communities or other entrepreneurial initiatives? Yeah. So what I'm working on right now is the aquarium businesses. Uh, when I, I purchased this business from another owner, when I purchased it was only retail. So I've expanded it into service offerings. And, uh, and actually as of today, I've also expanded it into some online sales. Oh, good. Uh, so if you go to the website, you can buy online. Uh, and basically I'm viewing that as kind of like the three-legged stool of business. Um, online presence, service presence, and then in-store presence. Yeah. What's the website name? AquaticaChicago.com. Okay. Well, we'll publish that and encourage aquarists to go there. So your company name is Snaggletooth Gobi. Joe, where did that come from? Yeah. So it's a fun name. I like to keep it fun. Uh, basically, uh, the, there's a type of Gobi, uh, that lives in freshwater streams in Hawaii, uh, that climbs cliffs and climbs, it climbs up the cliffs behind waterfalls. Uh, so I just like the personal connection to me of like rock climbing and fish. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. Good. Well, listen, this has been fascinating. I love the way you talk about systems. I think, you know, we use fancy words like dynamic adaptiveness and things like that. And you're, you're living it, right? You're, you're a personal expression of dynamic adaptiveness. So, you know, I think the big mistake that entrepreneurs make is they just don't even think in terms of systems, you know, and like, you, you have to think about how am I going to systemize this? Yeah. Like they're, they get stuck, uh, solving one problem and then the next problem and the next problem and don't step back and go, Oh, this problem is because there's, there's no process, you know, to this. And, uh, if you're, if you're going to be able to step back from your business and run it, you have to develop process and system. Yeah. Right. And processes that other people can use as you. That's correct. Yeah. Right. Right. Good. When's the stepping back time? So you said step back. I, that's a mental expression, I'm sure, but is, do you, do you physically do that? You take a day to step back and think how's the system working? That's like, and I'd say like personal system, like, yeah, you know, when you're an entrepreneur and as I'm sure you know, Hunter, like you're going to have a period of time where you're all in and all of your time is going towards an endeavor. Um, and you have to remember to stop doing that and then, okay, reassess and okay, this is what my week is going to look like. And, uh, so for me, I spend a one day a week and I very intentionally don't answer emails, don't answer phone calls. Um, and I focus on reading and I focus on a little bit of writing as well. Good. Well, Joe, thank you very much. This has been a brilliant tour through systems management through your own systems. You're very original in the systems that you come up with. So we appreciate you sharing all of that knowledge and wisdom. Thank you. Thank you, Hunter. This has been another episode of the Value Creators podcast. Thanks for listening. You can visit the valuecreators.com for links and resources related to this episode. Check hunterhastings.com for more content on entrepreneurial business management based on value creation principles.