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My guest for Episode #325 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Phillip Cantrell, EVP of Strategy at United Real Estate, founder of Benchmark Realty, and author of Failing My Way to Success: Lessons from 42 Years of Winning and Losing in Business.
Phillip reflects on more than four decades of entrepreneurial ups and downs across printing, real estate, and related ventures. He openly shares how devastating mistakes—including putting “all his eggs in one basket”—forced him to reinvent his approach. What looked like a catastrophe in 2007–2008 became the turning point that fueled Benchmark Realty’s rapid growth to nearly 2,000 agents.
“Failure is going to happen. If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not doing anything.”
In this conversation, Phillip and I talk about the difference between scaling vs. scrambling, the dangers of playing “not to lose” instead of “playing to win,” and why documenting processes is essential for growth. He also explains why your only real competitor is “the man in the mirror” and how daily reflection helps him learn from mistakes and avoid repeating them.
This episode is packed with timeless lessons on leadership, resilience, and learning from failure—whether you’re in real estate or any other industry.
“If you play not to lose in business, you’re already losing.”
Questions and Topics:
- What’s your “favorite mistake” from your career?
- How did putting “all your eggs in one basket” impact Benchmark Realty?
- What did you learn from losing agents and clients during the mortgage crisis?
- How did you develop the flat-fee brokerage model, and what risks did you see at the time?
- Did you ever doubt whether that new model would work?
- How did you rebuild Benchmark from five agents to nearly 2,000?
- Why is it important to look outside your own industry for best practices?
- What do you mean by the difference between scaling and scrambling?
- How does documenting processes create better outcomes?
- Why do you say your only real competitor is “the man in the mirror”?
- What role has reflection and journaling played in your leadership growth?
- What advice would you give younger entrepreneurs about learning from mistakes?
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- Full transcript
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Automated Transcript (May Contain Mistakes)
Introduction to Phillip Cantrell
Mark Graban: What if your career could be summed up like a sports team's record, wins losses and depending on the sport ties. And what if the losses taught you more than the wins?
That's how today's guest, Phillip Cantrell describes his four decades in business. He's the founder of Benchmark Realty. He's now the EVP of Strategy at United Real Estate, and he is the author of Failing My Way to Success: Lessons from 42 years of Winning and Losing.
In business. So Phillip, thank you so much for being here. How are you?
Phillip Cantrell: Thanks for having me, Mark. I appreciate it very much.
Mark Graban: Yeah, it's great to have you here. I, I hope everything I read was accurate.
Phillip Cantrell: Sounds good to me. Let's go with it.
Mark Graban: Okay. And we're laughing a little bit because, in my first attempt I called Phillip “Jim” because there was a name way back in my memory banks somewhere. I'm gonna write this down on a big old card. I'm gonna put in front of me, Phillip Cantrell is here today. So he is a good sport. And maybe that's one of the keys to bouncing back in, in a resilient way and growing and success.
From the title of Phillip's book, he's in the right place here on My Favorite Mistake. But Phillip, you know what, looking back at the different losses, or maybe the ties or things in your career? What's your favorite mistake?
The Favorite Mistake: Too Many Eggs in One Basket
Phillip Cantrell: The subtitle of the book of Winning and Losing is key here because there's been lots of losses as you said in the intro there, in, in a sporting record. In terms I have founded or controlled 10 separate businesses in my career. And in that time I have what I would call four wins, four losses, and I'm talking about distinct losses and then two ties, which in business really are a loss, right?
Mark Graban: Uhhuh. So the losses were like blowout losses.
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah. Like blowout with zeros behind them, man, Uhhuh.
There's the failure is gonna happen. Failure is gonna happen. If you're in business, you're gonna get your knuckles busted or you're not doing anything. That's a favorite term from my father taught me is that, son, if you don't make mistakes, then you're not doing anything.
So just know that they're gonna come and when it does strike. The key is what you learn from it and what, how you recover from it. Yeah. How you react to it. Stephen Covey talked about that in, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Between stimulus and response, there's a space. And in that space we have the ability to choose our response. And that really, I just gave you the definition of business itself. It is the response to stimuli and how well you do that determines your success in the long term.
That's a bit of a preaching moment there, but that's important for people to know.
Phillip Cantrell: Have a lot of them. I think probably the most impactful one for me was putting all of my eggs in one basket.
When I started Benchmark Realty in 2006, I started the company to serve high-end custom home builders in our area here in Middle Tennessee. And that was great. But I put too many eggs in one basket. I had five builders, and then I cut off the rest of 'em and I thought that's gonna be enough for me. I'm gonna die fat and happy, and it's all good.
Until 2007, the fall of 2007, when the economy, the mortgage crisis began to set in and things began to slow down and it hit the high end market first, and it hit so hard so fast. It was like somebody flipped the light switch off and forgot to tell us the store was closed.
Uhhuh. Yeah. And literally, the phone just stopped ringing.
Simultaneous with that, my largest builder came to me and said, “My, my houses are not selling, and I believe it's Benchmark's fault, so I'm gonna go start my own real estate firm, my own real estate brokerage.”
And I said. “That's tough.” I had 13 agents at the time but that's a business decision. I thought. What I didn't know is at the time that he had already enticed seven of my 13 agents to go with him before he came and talked to me.
Oh, no. So kicked to the curb and then stomped in the guts is what I, yeah… phraseology.
So the big mistake from the big takeaway was putting too much in that one basket.
The Pivot to a New Business Model
Phillip Cantrell: In the end, though, the magnificent outcome was that up until that point, we were a fairly traditional brokerage. Everybody was on an 80/20 split. I was the rainmaker, so we were down to five agents and I said, I had a conversation with a man in the mirror and I said, “Dude, you gotta do something serious and you gotta do it right damn now.”
And so what I did was I took October, November, it's really November, December, and January and reformatted the, rewrote our business plan, reformatted the model, and relaunched February 1st, 2008, literally staring at the abyss. And we reformatted from a percentage-based commission model to a fee-based commission model. In other words, we charged our agents a fee per transaction instead of a percentage of their commission dollars.
So that was fairly revolutionary at the time. There are several national companies that do it now. I like to say they copied us, but I know that's not true. They're all smart people. They came up with it on their own.
So it was a huge turning point for our business. And we went from five agents and… When I sold the company in 2020, we were at about 1400 agents, and I still maintain a consulting role here as the founder. In fact, I'm broadcasting from my office here at Benchmark and we're now right at 2000 agents in middle Tennessee, Southern Kentucky, and Alabama.
So the fact that we, had we not had that mistake, had I not made that mistake, had we not had that catastrophe, we would not be anything near what we are today, that's for sure.
Mark Graban: Okay.
Phillip Cantrell: Wow.
Mark Graban: It's a lot.
Phillip Cantrell: I know.
Mark Graban: Sorry. Yeah. It there's some things we can unpack there. Yeah. Yeah. It's great to hear that you focused on the pivot, the reformatting, the reinvention, the relaunch instead of, I guess, wallowing and, yeah. Feeling sorry for yourself or cursing or folding my tent, going and hanging my shingle on somebody else's wall. You know that not just cursing the person who left and…
Phillip Cantrell: Yes.
Mark Graban: …stole other agents, or, like they're free to leave, but I'm, it feels yeah, I'm sure it felt like they pulled the rug out from under you.
Phillip Cantrell: At least they're all independent contractors. So that's the thing about this industry is that our business value has two legs and can walk out the door.
Mark Graban: So do you think if things had just been marching along without that moment that gave you pause, would you have just continued down a path that was not as good as a new path?
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah. Absolutely. I… And that's something you couldn't have anticipated at the time, right? No. I have when I got in real estate in 2002, I moved from a 19 year career in commercial printing to real estate. And I characterized that as, I had four kids, a wife and a vicious ex-wife, and none of 'em worked with me. So failure was not an option.
And suddenly I found myself right back in that spot after working myself into a sweet spot, I thought. Had that change not occurred, had that jolt not occurred and I considered a God thing that, I was getting pretty cocky. Now it's getting pretty proud of what we were doing here. And pretty happy with the way thing was. And I thought I was gonna write off into Sunset, have a nice little business, and then the rug got yanked out from underneath me by an impact item that I had no clue was even in the offing. I, you can't predict economic events. Yeah. You can't even guess what they're gonna be in the long term. I probably could have been more astute at paying attention to economic trends, it is what it is.
But yeah, I was planning on just growing this to perhaps be a more regional servicer of high-end new homes but never got the opportunity because it all collapsed because of the crisis.
How the Fee-Based Model Worked
Mark Graban: I wanna ask more about, doing that different fee model and what you expected to happen or what you hoped would happen or the risks involved? I don't know this industry, so maybe could you give us a bit of a breakdown, let's say if there's a, make the numbers easy, maybe a million dollar home…
Crosstalk: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Graban: …what that impact was on the agents or your business under those two different models.
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah, it's pretty straightforward, and I actually discuss this in detail in the book if you really want to go deep on that. Okay. Not fairly deep detail. But to give you an analogy, so the, if you have a commission rate of, and I'm picking a number out of the air of 2% on a million dollar home. That's what, $20,000, right?
Mark Graban: Yep.
Phillip Cantrell: In our model now that the agent would pay us $650, so tremendous swing in, and then the broker payout in our world is the individual agents' largest expense.
Crosstalk: Sure.
Phillip Cantrell: It's not viewed as an expense, but it's an expense. They're paying their broker to hold their license. An individual, unless you have your own broker's license and have a firm also, you can't get a real estate license to just go sell real estate. You have to be affiliated with a firm. And honestly, I feel that's a taxation issue. It's easier to tax one than it is to tax many, that's the way the rules are written, Uhhuh, so we had to play the game.
But in that, that was fairly revolutionary at the time. And during the down market. So what does it do? Your revenue per agent nosedives. So that means you have to have more agents? We are, I characterize myself that Benchmark is a recruiting company that happens to be in the real estate business.
Oh. For a long time though we didn't take newbies. Those that just had never sold anything. They needed to go hang their license at another firm where they could get the training. We focused on providing the tool set for those who were experienced producers, and that even though we needed more heads, we had more productive heads. So that accelerated our rapid growth. And really helped us through that process.
So it's really magical when you get in a crisis, all—pretty much all—medical advances in the history of the world have been made during times of crisis, during war. They're not made in peace time, and they're not made rapidly in peace time, but in time of war, they're made very rapidly. And so I equate our situation that we had to that.
Mark Graban: Yeah. And so you had, the stressful situation you put this other model in place and it's just one other follow up question. So at that flat fee. It's obvious how that's better to pay $650 instead of 20,000. Yeah. But so then if it's a $2 million house, is it that, is it still, is it a, it's still a flat fee. The fee's the same.
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah. Whether it's a hundred thousand dollars house or a hundred million dollars house, the fee is the same.
Mark Graban: So I could see where then that's appealing for attracting agents. And then from the benchmark side, now that becomes a volume game.
Phillip Cantrell: Yes.
Mark Graban: Then you're bringing in less per transaction. You need more agents, more transactions.
Phillip Cantrell: Network. We moved from the, we moved from the small town retailer to the Walmart concept. That's essentially what we did, and you've gotta have a pretty serious back office.
Looking Outside Your Industry
Phillip Cantrell: And this is an important point that we're headed toward here, and I'll go ahead and point it out for you, is that when you're in an industry, the worst thing you can do is get developed tunnel vision. And the words, “Because we've always done it that way,” are the death knell of a business. Yep.
You have to actually look outside your industry and apply practices, and that's really what I did. We collectively and of course many good people along the way have helped me refine this process. I don't wanna thump my chest and say, “Hey, look at me.” I'm just saying I was the brainchild for it. But taking best practices from other industries and introducing them into your industry is the way you kill your competition.
Mark Graban: Yeah. And did you, as you were starting down that path, did it seem to be successful in working right away, or were there moments of doubt? You do something new and you're looking back, were there moments where you're wondering, gosh, am I making a mistake?
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah, anytime you do something new, there are moments of what have I done? What have I done? I've got four kids at home and, yeah. So I distinctly remember. I think that, so we had done collectively in 2005, probably $30 million of real estate sales. And total 2008 we did 10 million and I think I did six of that myself. We now, today will do, this year we will do 5 billion. Just to give you a comparison number there. Yeah.
And I distinctly remember. So we need to have lots of heads that pay fees, we need to get people signed up fast. Okay? I distinctly remember at the end of 2009 or beginning of 2009, that this is gonna have to turn, it's gonna have to have more production, or we're gonna, I'm gonna have to go get a J-O-B. It's just that simple. Yeah.
And spent a lot of time on my knees, talking about that with the Lord. And a, what I will call a maven, and I talk about this in the book also walked in the door with her license in her hand from a local, regional, or national-affiliated franchisee. And said, “I'm sick of that SOB, would you take my license?”
Now, I didn't know at the time that she was a Maven. I just thought she was an agent that wanted to join us and I thought, okay, this is great. I'll join us. Within six months, 65 other agents had followed her out of that office.
And so that's the opportunity of, that would not be there if I had not remained steadfast in continuing to drive forward with the new model that we had established. Yeah. But yeah. Discouragement is an evil twin that rises in the dark of the night.
Mark Graban: Yeah. That's another lot. Another great way of saying that.
Wins, Losses, and the Value of a Tie
Mark Graban: Yeah. Yeah. Our guest again today, Phillip Cantrell. The book is Failing My Way to Success. You, you mentioned, the 10 businesses, and I was gonna ask, you mentioned one of them was commercial printing. Was it a wide range of different businesses?
Phillip Cantrell: Two industries. Two industries, okay. Commercial printing and real estate.
Mark Graban: Okay. So various companies in age?
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah. Real estate and affiliated industries such as title and mortgage. Okay. In fact I have a big loss in title. A big win in title and then nothing but a big loss in mortgage. Yeah. I'll never do that one again, for sure. Yeah, that one's got a lot of zeros behind it.
Mark Graban: Yeah. So 4, 4, and two. It's a 17 games schedule in the NFL now, but, and then there still are ties. Yeah. But that, that record scales to being roughly what, eight, eight and one or, seven, seven and three, that doesn't, eh, that would rarely get you into the playoffs.
Phillip Cantrell: Exactly. Exactly.
Mark Graban: But in, in business and in life, it you feel like you're in the playoffs. And that's been, it's technically a .500 record, but it, does that feel like a winning record?
Phillip Cantrell: In retrospect. I got a bag of cash, so who cares?
Mark Graban: You can retire and in the end, yeah, get outta the NFL with your health.
Phillip Cantrell: So that's an important point, is that the reason that I'm still here, the reason I'm sharing this, the reason I wrote the book was to help those who follow behind us. And I think that's the obligation of every leader my age, who has done what I have done. And we, the easy temptation is to take the money and just go to the farm. Or go to the beach house or whatever, and I get that. I pay property taxes in three states and that does not matter to me. What matters to me is the fact that I wanna reach back and help those that come behind, not step on the same pitfalls in landmines that I stepped on.
And, oh, go ahead. Yeah. When I wrote this book, I said, “I don't really care about the money if it helps one person. I'm calling it a win.”
Crosstalk: Yeah.
Phillip Cantrell: And I'm finding tremendous reception from millennials. The Gen X they're still young and dumb, just like I was, they haven't figured it out yet, but the millennials, Gen Z…
Mark Graban: I'm Gen X,
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah.
Mark Graban: A lot of 'em are…
Phillip Cantrell: …sorry, not present company excepted.
Mark Graban: I'm, us Gen Xers are in the middle aged now, but the millennials…
Phillip Cantrell: …are hitting their forties and they're looking around and saying, “Oh crap. Nobody's here to teach me and guide me through this, and I've gotta repeat the same mistakes,” and I am getting solicitation after solicitation. Okay. “Would you coach me? Would you mentor me?” And I have no, I had no intention of doing that when I first started this. Yeah. I just wanted to share my knowledge.
Mark Graban: And it helps people to share the losses and the ties.
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah.
Mark Graban: And I'm always grateful. We've had more than 300 people willing to come on this podcast in five years.
Phillip Cantrell: You're doing the same thing. Are willing to, this is exactly what you're doing. So you're a Gen Xer that's kicking butt, man. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Graban: And No, I'm, and then I'm reaching a stage here where, yeah, I would like to help the next generations that are coming through in my profession. And you're right. That's fulfilling. So yeah I try to be open about my my losses, but tell us about a tie. Like I'm curious which of these businesses you look back why do you consider that one to be a tie?
Phillip Cantrell: Probably the probably the title business. So if you know what title insurance is, all mortgages, all mortgage companies require that you have title insurance to ensure the clear title on your property and it insurance, just like property and casualty insurance, car insurance, whatever, it insures against a loss so that if the Cherokee Indians come back and say, “This is our burial ground, we want your house” they'll defend you. You may not get to keep the house, but at least you'll be indemnified or they'll be indemnified against the loss.
So it's a interesting business and typically requires attorneys to be involved. Attorneys should be involved in a real estate closing anyway, in my opinion. I never do a real estate closing with a notary. I love notaries, but you need an attorney sitting at the table.
Mark Graban: And why is that a mistake to not have an attorney? I've never done that.
Phillip Cantrell: There's, what happens if you're looking at the deed and the the buyer has a question about the deed that they're getting ready to sign acceptance of, and there's a dead easement on there or an access agreement that they don't understand. Notaries are good, but they're not legally trained to explain such matters. And if something arises at the closing table, such as unfinished repairs during the transaction that you need to escrow money for, a notary really is not suitable to do that sort of performance. That's legal work, right? So you need a, you need an attorney's legal degree to get to do that legal license to do that.
So the first foray into that is I hired an attorney straight out of school. She had been a processor and she'd gone back to school and gotten her degree and I set the and passed the bar and I set the title company up as a 50/50 partnership. Never set up 50/50 partnerships.
Mark Graban: Sorry. I just another mistake.
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah, I can probably…
Mark Graban: 51, 49 at least.
Phillip Cantrell: …something somebody has to be in charge and has to be in control. And I'm sure in her stage of life she was doing the best she could, but it just wasn't working. So we dissolved that and then then went into a year or so later, did it again in a joint venture arrangement, which is a very clear legal document that lays out responsibilities and can be terminated with a stroke of a pen. It's not a marriage, right? It's an engagement with a prenup really written, with written in pencil actually and that's been one of the best things I've ever done.
Because it's a lucrative business anyway. All insurance is lucrative. I don't care what insurance guys try to tell you different there. It's very lucrative business. And that, so I would say you've got a really bad, big negative and you got a really big positive that equates to a tie.
Mark Graban: Okay. Yeah. And you move on to the next game that a a football team…
Phillip Cantrell: That's right. NFL team would you, you learn what you learn because as I said when we started this, failure is going to happen. Problems are going to come up. It's what you learn from them and how you build your business going forward. That makes the difference key to success. Yeah.
Playing to Win vs. Not to Lose
Mark Graban: Yeah. And you decided your dad talking about, if you never make mistakes, you're not really trying to do anything. Yeah. And that's a common theme on on the show here. But, I'm curious, since you've set up this analogy of a win-loss record…
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah.
Mark Graban: …I'm curious to hear your thoughts in business of what, you hear in sports of oh, that, that team's playing not to lose. Yeah. Instead of playing to win, whether that's it could be in, in hockey or football. It's just been a sport, they're just they're on their heels. They're playing defensive. They're more concerned about not making a mistake instead of going for a big play. What are your thoughts on that? If you're watching your favorite team, if you have one versus in business, do you need to make sure you're playing to win?
Phillip Cantrell: I think it's a simple matter of embracing the fact that there is no status quo in business. A business is either growing or it will by default decline. And so that addresses your question directly there, that if you do play to not lose, then you are by default losing. And that's just the natural or the universe can't. There's no way to get around that. Yeah.
And that's why you see so many businesses they initially flourish a little bit and then they plateau and they just stay there and stagnate. And what they have, what that business owner has, and I'm trying to think of the word for it. It is a, it's a job, not a business,
Crosstalk: Right?
Phillip Cantrell: So it is a job that provides them with certain niceties that they wouldn't have if they were a true W2 employee or somebody else. But still, it's not growing. It's not doing anything.
Mark Graban: And business or they can't take time… they can't take time away from it.
Phillip Cantrell: I was on a plane the other day and I guy, I was overhearing a conversation happening in the next row waiting to board the plane, and the fellow was bragging about he was part of a service industry and he had 27 reports and he had 150 employees and he couldn't take any time off. He had been down to the, where I was coming home from to fix a problem with one of his branches and he made the comment that the business would collapse if he was not there.
I would say, oh. I am like, “Dude, you don't have a business. You have a lifestyle business.” You don't have a business. That's the word I was looking for. It's a lifestyle business.
And the lady that he was talking to was a nurse, PA traveling nurse. And she said immediately, what was in my head, “That's failure of leadership.”
Crosstalk: And she hit him right between the eyes with it.
Phillip Cantrell: That's right. And he climbed, he clammed up. He didn't say another word to her. And as she passed me, she said, “I guess he didn't like what I said.” I said “You said the truth. Never be afraid to speak the truth.”
Mark Graban: Did you have a copy of your book in your bag that you—
Phillip Cantrell: I did not. I wish I had.
Mark Graban: That's an, that's a mistake, Phillip. You always have to have a copy of your book with you. You never know. You, maybe he wouldn't have been receptive to it, but you never know who you're gonna run across.
Phillip Cantrell: People who are actually bragging about stuff like that, probably I know, do not read to begin with.
Mark Graban: They, they feel important. That's worth a little bit, but like you said that's not scalable.
Phillip Cantrell: No, it's not scalable. And it's a failure of leadership, the last thing I want to do is to have any organization that I'm functioning in be solely dependent on me.
Crosstalk: Yeah.
Phillip Cantrell: That is abject failure to me. Yeah. Everyone in the entire organization should be replaceable within two days. Including the CEO, including the president. And if not, then you've got a very poor structure. You got an org chart issue for sure.
Scaling a Business vs. Scrambling to Grow
Mark Graban: For sure. A leadership issue. Yeah, I agree. I wanted to talk about, since the word scalability came up, one thing you highlight in the book is the difference between scaling a business and scrambling to grow. What's the difference and, what's the warning sign that you're just scrambling?
Phillip Cantrell: Planning is the way you avoid that? That's the difference. The warning sign of scrambling is when you're constantly in a fireman role putting out fires.
Crosstalk: Yeah.
Phillip Cantrell: That means that you have not studied your processes. And I am… you ever taken that left brain, right brain test? The right brain is creative side. The left brain is the analytical side. They made me take it twice because I am 98% left brain. They didn't believe it. Uhhuh an artist is usually 70/30.
Mark Graban: And to be a business person entrepreneur, that's rare, right?
Phillip Cantrell: It's very rare. My wife often says, has to remind me, “Honey, not everybody's like you.” And then probably mutters under her breath, “Thank God.”
But I am one of those that I document document. When I refine a process, when I develop a process, when we develop a process we document it. We put everything in writing, and when we put things in writing, then you have something to refer back to. And you're constantly improving upon that and polishing on that and sanding on it, and sanding on it and polishing it and sanding it, and doing that over a long period of time. Then you've got things in binders you can't see them, but there's a wall of binders here that says these are our operational plans.
And that comes, from my little bit of time in the military is that there is a war plan for every scenario that exists in the Pentagon. Every possible world scenario that could exist, there is a documented war plan, and I would advocate that every business needs to have the same thing.
And failing to do that leads to the chaos because what are you doing? You're reinventing the wheel every day. Every day you get up and what am I gonna do today? And I tell agents, break that down to a simplest form, even if it's a real estate agent and they struggle getting their business up. And every day for them is a new day. They wake up, “Okay, what am I gonna do today? Go sell a house to somebody.” Do you know? That's fine. Except that every day you're re-covering the same ground that you paid for with blood yesterday. Yeah. And you don't want do that. You don't wanna do that.
I tell 'em in the classes that I teach sometimes, I say, “Look, you want me to double your income next year?” And everybody says yeah. I said, “Do this. Write this down. Right now, at the end of every day, sit down and write down the five most important things for you to accomplish tomorrow.”
Mark Graban: Yeah.
Phillip Cantrell: Do that every day, and in a year, your income will be double what it is today.
Mark Graban: The most important, not the most interesting, the most fun.
Phillip Cantrell: That's right. The most critically important because sometimes they're the hardest ones, right?
Mark Graban: They're the hardest ones.
Phillip Cantrell: You hit the ground running the next morning, your, yeah, subconscious internalizes that while you're sleeping at night, so you know exactly what you need to do. The brain is a magnificent organ because it will plan your path if you will give it sufficient information ahead of time. It's sufficient freedom to plan your path, and you'll hit the ground running the next morning and you'll instantly know what path you need to take to accomplish those tasks. It's really amazing. That's how I built my business. If you wanna know one thing that you wanna take away one thing, there it is right there.
Mark Graban: Okay. So there's the one key tip would invite the listener to to do that. I'll sit and do that tonight. That's habit instead of the random to do list. Yeah.
The Power of Process
Mark Graban: I like that thought on prioritization. And, I'll just also comment. I wouldn't put numbers to it. I am, I'm an engineer. I am pretty right-brained.
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah.
Mark Graban: I wouldn't say I'm probably not 98 percent right brain.
Phillip Cantrell: Left brain is the analytical side.
Mark Graban: Yeah. Oh, left brain is the analytical side. Yeah. Okay. Whoops. My, see, another mistake. I'm going to… I'm gonna fail. I'm gonna fail forward.
Phillip Cantrell: So wait, so you are 70% right brain? No, I'm 98% left brain.
Mark Graban: Another, okay. Another mistake. So I totally had that backward.
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah.
Mark Graban: So it has been a long time. So I went through that.
Phillip Cantrell: And most engineers are, 70, 80% left brain.
Mark Graban: Okay. And that might be, that might well be true, but, I am a believer in process and…
Phillip Cantrell: Absolutely.
Mark Graban: And there were in, there are settings where people balk at the idea of process, like in healthcare, people might say that nurse practitioner might have said every patient is unique. I'm like okay. In some way, yes. But that doesn't mean the work you're doing today is completely different than the work you did yesterday. And I imagine a real estate agent maybe might say every deal is unique. Every home is unique. Every seller, yeah. Or buyer is unique. But my goodness. It's not just paperwork. There's other, there should be process around how does one set up a viewing a showing of a home.
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah. There's many. There are basic foundational elements of every task. If it weren't, we would've already been replaced completely by AI.
Crosstalk: Yeah.
Phillip Cantrell: But it's that human brain that can see and think and say, okay, I did it this way last time. Got me to this point. I need to go to this point. How do I get there? That's the human brain that tells us how to do that and adjusts for each individual circumstance. You're exactly right.
Mark Graban: Yeah. And process doesn't eliminate the need for creativity or adaptation?
Phillip Cantrell: No.
Mark Graban: I'm in the camp of, the cliche that, process sets you free to be more creative.
Phillip Cantrell: That's exactly what I was gonna say. It does, because you got, you don't have to worry about it. Okay. Let's equate it to, let's simplify this and equate it to getting dressed in the morning. If you know you're gonna put on your underwear, you know you're gonna put on undershirt, you know you're gonna put on a pair of pants, you got a belt, you got a pair of shoes, the creativity comes in, the jacket you wear, or the shirt that you select. And that's something that changes on a daily basis.
But those basics of making sure you put on deodorant, making sure you shave, all those are the basic processes that you engage in. Those are the ones that advocate could be documented. And then you repeat them exactly the same way every time.
I'm one of those guys that when I get dressed in the morning, my… this is probably getting way too personal for you, but I'm gonna do it anyway. My process in the bathroom is exactly the same steps every day. I shave, I put hair stuff on, I do the lotion, I, sequence. It's the same sequence of events.
Those are the processes when you recognize those patterns and you have to be alert to patterns. When you recognize the patterns, you document those patterns, and then you've taken that part off your brain. Your brain doesn't spend time trying to figure out how to do the same thing every day. And then the creativity comes in.
Einstein did this. He practiced, he had seven exact suits that were exactly the same. He had a white shirt, a black tie, and a gray suit, and he had seven of them that way. And the reason somebody asked him one time, “Why do you do that?” He said, “Because I don't wanna waste time thinking about what I'm wearing that day.”
Mark Graban: Yeah. Steve Jobs and others, same in that same mode. Yeah, I think for a long time Jeff Bezos wore a shirt like yours, a light blue, button-up and khaki pants. That's it, I think. Yeah, I think he's branched out. He's earned that.
Phillip Cantrell: But yeah, I've got a closet full of shirts, but they're either blue or white. Yeah. Take a pic.
Mark Graban: Yeah, but I think, one, one could have, I, a lot of people have, let's say a checklist for packing their suitcase and having that checklist doesn't mean you always pack the exact same clothes each time.
Phillip Cantrell: Sure, sure.
Mark Graban: Process can be helpful to make sure you don't forget to pack the socks.
Phillip Cantrell: You miss something. That's right. That's it. That's the key to it. And that so why don't you do things exactly the same way? And I have a saying that, we're all gonna do things exactly the same way every day, every time. Why? Because it leads to repeatable outcomes.
Mark Graban: Yes. Better outcomes.
Phillip Cantrell: And as you improve those processes, you achieve better outcomes that are then in turn repeatable. Yeah. And it's a flywheel effect. Just like Jim Collins talks about. It's a flywheel effect. It takes a while to get it moving. But you can't stop during that process, or you'll never have success in getting the fly and keeping the flywheel moving. But once you have it moving, you can spin it with one hand.
Mark Graban: Yeah. Yeah, it's easy once you get it…
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Graban: …momentum.
Phillip Cantrell: Yes. That's it.
Mark Graban: Powerful thing.
Your Only Real Competitor: The Man in the Mirror
Mark Graban: Phillip, I wanna ask one other question here while we have time. Earlier you were talking about, doing things beating the competition. But you also say, and I think this is interesting, that you're only real competitor is the man in the mirror. Tell us about that, and how has that mindset shaped the way that you lead or scale a business?
Phillip Cantrell: Okay, so I had a damaging childhood.
Mark Graban: Now we're getting personal again.
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah, it's gonna get personal. It's in the book. It's in the book. Go ahead. Go ahead. And it's a raw book. I'm just telling you it made my son cry when he read it. But the thing is that I had an older brother who was off the charts intelligent. Seriously, genius level. I don't know what his IQ is, but I'm sure it was close to 200. He's just that kind of guy. He could read a book one time and re regurgitate the whole thing. He is a PhD in geology. He's Dr. Cantrell. Okay.
So I had that growing up to compete with, he's two year, two and a half years older than me, and there was, I followed him in through school and through school. There was always this comparison of “Why can't you be like your brother?” And you find this as a trait in many successful people that they are, that are driven to prove themselves. And it is a, it is hard to get, it's like trying to catch an eel, a slippery eel because you never achieve approval that you… My mother and I were like this…
Mark Graban: …and for the listener, he's…
Phillip Cantrell: …yeah. Okay. Fists like heads together. Bumping my fist together. We were always tussling with each other and yeah. We did reconcile on her deathbed and I actually share that in the book.
But the thing is that. I realized probably in my thirties that is a false reward to try to achieve success in the eyes of other people. And the only way you can ever have true internal success in your heart is to know that you have done what you needed to do and you've satisfied your own desire for it, and that's what I mean by shaving, by competing with a man in the mirror.
There is nobody on the face of this planet has ever been harder on me than I have been. At first it was because I was trying to appeal to others. Now it's because I realized this is what we're supposed to do and how it's supposed to be done.
And every day I sit down when I do my five things at the end of the day, and I still do them even though I'm in a consulting role. And EVP of Strategy for United Real Estate role is really, I consult with the CEO. Because he can't talk. When you're at that level, you can't talk to people within the organization.
Mark Graban: On… I was about to say, it's lonely at the top.
Phillip Cantrell: That's it. That's exactly it. I have been at the top, so we have that camaraderie and that companionship and that's what that title means. Yeah.
The bottom line is that at the end of the day, I always try to write down what did I learn today? In fact, I talk about this in the book and I'm sorry I keep saying that, but I do—
Mark Graban: No, that's alright.
Phillip Cantrell: I have two little binders that I carry with me in my backpack all the time. One is a black and one is gray. And they just happen to be those colors. No significance to it. But the gray one is for meetings where I make notes in meetings, although they have wonderful AI help for that sort of thing. Now I'm still an old school, wanna write stuff down. The other is for my thoughts and I sit down at the end of the day and say, “Okay, what big events that I encounter today and what have I learned from those big events?”
And I'm just… some call that journaling. I don't put it in the story format. I'm just like, here's a sentence, here's a sentence, here's the sentence. It's not a paragraph. They may not be related to each other, but I'm jotting those down. And I've learned early on that I'm a tactile learner. So I can write something out, throw the paper away, but the act of writing it out embeds it in my subconscious and my psyche. And that's… it helps me get better, that helps me get better, helps me accumulate those events.
And if you don't remember what's the old saying? If you don't know history or haven't learned from history, you're destined to repeat history. Yeah. And that's the summary of what we're talking about here, right?
Mark Graban: Yeah. Doomed to repeat your mistakes.
Phillip Cantrell: That's right. That's it.
Mark Graban: Your history.
Conclusion
Mark Graban: And that's another great habit and a great tip and it makes me think of a couple of guests who have been on the podcast who worked for Toyota, and there's a strong habit there of when something went wrong, when there was a mistake, right? Instead of leaders get ups getting upset…
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah.
Mark Graban: …the the plant manager, plant president executives would ask, “What did we learn today?” And they weren't being smart about it a hundred percent. That was serious. What did we learn? How are we going to improve and not repeat the mistake?
Phillip Cantrell: That forensic analysis is critical in every business to do a postmortem to figure out what happened. And usually you'll find out it was something fairly simple, fairly, something fairly simple way back at the beginning that caused the whole thing, the process to derail down here. Yeah. And then you document that and then you'll have to phrase it again.
Mark Graban: And the good news is that things that are simple like that are usually simple to fix, or at least we have a chance.
Phillip Cantrell: Yeah. Yeah. If you're flailing each other and blaming each other, you never get to that point. So forget about that.
Mark Graban: Yeah, see. I as I said at the beginning Phillip, you were definitely in the right place here on this podcast. I really appreciate you sharing your stories and reflections, giving us a glimpse into the deeper dive in the book. So again, Phillip Cantrell, the book is Failing My Way to Success: Lessons from 42 years of Winning and Losing in Business and I guess, and ties. That was too long.
Phillip Cantrell: It's too much.
Mark Graban: Yeah, exactly right. In the subtitle, but Phillip a winning record here today. It was definitely a win to have you here, so I appreciate it and thank you so much.
Phillip Cantrell: I'm glad to do it. And I hope we helped some people.
Mark Graban: I'm sure you did. Yeah. Thanks again.
Phillip Cantrell: Yes, sir.