Greg Herbert- A Friend for Life

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Introducing first, from Lithuania, he weighs 123 kilos, the Russian Nightmare, Nikita Kolov! Now, the devil's nightmare. Welcome back to another episode of It's Time to Man Up! Today, I am excited.

You're going to love this story. This man and I go back many, many, many years, and entrepreneur extraordinaire. I think that might be how I would introduce this man, Greg Herbert. Greg, welcome to the Man Up Show! Thank you, Nikita. Good to be here. Well, I think I heard a little chuckle from you in the background there as I was introducing you, but I really mean that.

That's not tongue-in-cheek. When I think of Greg Herbert, I think of a businessman, entrepreneur extraordinaire. I mean, just because of how many things you've been involved in in the past, business-wise, and the successes that you have had, and we're going to get into all that. But before we do, let's do this for our listeners. You and I met, gosh, I was trying to figure it out, Greg.

You may or maybe you know more spit. But if we go back 20-plus years, does that sound right to you? Oh, for sure, over 20. I think I've known you about as long as I've been married, maybe even before that when Vivian and I were dating. Okay.

That would have been 25 years or so ago. Okay. Yeah. And of course, you reside in the Phoenix, Arizona area. Now, you're currently up in Ohio, correct? You have family back in Ohio. Ohio. Right now, you guys Buckeye fans are just curious. Of course. Anybody from Ohio not a Buckeye fan?

Well, you know, I don't know. For the record, I was a Buckeye fan for four years. Did you know that?

I did not know that. Good for you. Thank you. And I'm a big 10 guy. Like I'm a Minnesota Gopher guy, right? So your first, so your question for me should be, so why were you a Buckeye fan? That's a great question. And the first question that came to mind, why were you a Buckeye fan?

And what happened to you? Well, two words, two words, two words condensed down into one name, James Lornitis. Okay. Know that name? I know it well. I figured you probably did.

What, what are the most, correct me if I'm wrong. Now you would probably know the history of the Buckeyes better than I, but one of, if not the most decorated linebackers in Ohio state history. Is that correct? Yeah.

Yes, I would definitely say that. I mean, he won many, many, many accolades up there. In his career with, with Ohio state. And then of course he went on to be drafted into the NFL and played several years.

And I think maybe, I don't know if he still holds, but at one time he held the, the, the record for the Rams for like most tackles or something like that as a linebacker. Yeah. He's a beast. He is. Yeah.

Hashtag B E A S T. That is correct. James was a beast still is, still is. He just recently, do you know what I mean? Still is he just recently, do you know where he's working now? Any idea?

No, I don't. He got hired on by Notre Dame. What were the Buckeyes thinking?

Hello. Oh yeah. He was even living back in Columbus. He loved Columbus. Now, now he moved. He had moved the family up to a, what is it, South Bend, I guess it is. I didn't know I hadn't followed him, but I figured you'd have the scoop on being good friends with his dad.

Yeah. Which his dad, for all of our listeners out there, for maybe those who haven't made the connection would be a guy by the name of Road Warrior Animal. Road Warrior Animal was, was James's dad. I mean, hey, James won't appreciate me saying this. I'll have to encourage him to listen to this show since we're talking all about him for the moment.

We're going to get to you and Vivian, but your bride Vivian. But let me just say that I saw James back in the days when he was in diapers, James diapers, James, I'm just saying. But now anyway, but yeah, great career in the NFL and great career with the Buckeyes. And so, so you're, so you're back in Ohio currently because you got family there, but let's, we first met in Arizona, share, share with our listeners a little bit about Greg Herbert.

I already mentioned your lovely bride Vivian, but just share, take a minute and just share who Greg Herbert is. Well, I was born and raised here in Ohio, and in a town right outside Columbus, Ohio, and graduated high school, went into the military, and the special forces became a Green Beret. Okay. Afterwards, got into the construction industry and did all kinds of, pretty much every kind of construction except for building buildings.

So structural steel all the way down to underground utilities and everything in between, excavating, paving, concrete. We did that for many years until 2008, about the same time I was transitioning and helping out a mutual friend of yours and mine, Dan, who had gotten a vision for an apparatus that creates rapid and just powerful teamwork. It's something that he approached my wife and I about, and we prayed about it and we got involved in it and patented it and tested it and have seen it just completely transformed teams and companies and all the things that really takes a team to the highest level. Yeah. You've seen that, you were there in the inception of it and your soul, you've seen it at our conferences, the Ashley International Conference, which is how you and I originally met.

Yeah, AIM Conference, right? Larry Karachuk, who we've had on the Man Up show, by the way. In fact, not to interrupt your story, but I couldn't do... We couldn't just do one side. I ended up doing three shows with Larry because he's got so many stories we couldn't condense it into one show. So yeah, we did three with him. But yeah, so yeah, and we'll talk more about that because I was there for the... Power Plus Two is what you're referring to, and let's talk more about that. And then you've done, besides that, I mean, you've also as an entrepreneur, I mean, you've done online stuff, is website development, all kinds of stuff, right?

Yes, exactly. When I got away from doing construction, I had a lot of requests for a lot of different friends and families and ministries to help them with their businesses. So I think kind of by default, I became a business consultant and marketing guy because that's how I always grew any ventures through marketing and then just taking all the business we could possibly handle and handling it more work than we could handle and growing into it. And I knew that any business with enough customers and knowing how to fulfill the needs can obviously grow the fastest. Right.

So business consulting turned into mostly, I'd say, 90% marketing because with enough income, you've got all the choices you need to make. And so, yeah, I've been doing that as well as the Power Plus Two thing. Yeah, the equipment.

Yeah, the equipment. I want to really... Yeah, I want to talk more about that, too. But Vivian, you mentioned, so you mentioned your bride, you know, that you met her. She's a big guy. He's been married 20... How many years now? 25, 26 years? Yeah, it'll be 25 years in October. I think they call that a silver anniversary, don't they? Something like that. If I remember it.

And so I'm going to talk about it because she refused to come on the show, so I'm going to throw her under the bus first because she refused to come on. But Vivian, I love you, Vivian. I love you.

I'm having some wonderful memories with you and Greg out there in Arizona because I've made probably 15 years or more made trips out there for the AIM conference you're referring to, the Athletes International Ministries Conference, hosted by Larry Karachuk and, of course, Tommy Barnett out there. And boy, we could probably do two shows on that alone, just talking about some of those stories and whatnot. But that's it. And then I know you have a daughter. Yeah, Brianna. Brianna and two grandchildren, right? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so lovely family, wonderful family. And so let me backtrack just a little bit. Yeah, when I first met you, Greg, I think you had the asphalt business, or at least that was one of the businesses you had and one of the most successful and or biggest asphalt businesses in the state of Arizona, if I recall, if I remember right. Yeah, in our industry and niche, we were one of the biggest and one of the fastest growing.

Yeah. And then, of course, as we got to know each other, of course, you opened your home to me and got to spend time with you, a lot of time with you. My girls got to spend time with you and with Brianna and just so much history and so many stories there and a couple of my favorite memories. I mean, you've got connections all over the world.

By the way, let me just say this before we go any further. Thank you for serving our great country, by the way, and not to stereotype Green Berets, but you certainly look like one. If anyone did, you look like you fit right in. Hey, hey, can you tell our listeners just a quick is there a quick Green Berets story that you could something that just pops in your mind that that would be a blessing for our listeners to hear. Well, one of my favorite memories is when I was in Fort Dix, New Jersey, one of the sergeants came, you know, busting almost through the door, all, you know, seemed all upset and this and yells, Herbert, Herbert, get down and get a haircut, which is what they usually say when you have an important meeting or you're getting in trouble. Okay. Get a haircut. Command Sergeant Major wants to see you in his office now. So, our hair is typically always short anyways. Right.

Which hair is out of place, but okay. It'll cut around the ears and I went and saw him and he says, you're going to be having lunch with somebody today. And he's, I forget what he said, a four-star general. And he said, he came to me and he says, I don't want to have lunch with the officers today since I want you to pick me two of your guys that you would recommend would be good to have lunch with. And so I was honored, of course, went and sat down me and wanted another guy in my unit and sat there and had lunch for about an hour, hour and a half with the guy that reminded me, I felt like I was having lunch with Jonathan Winters.

Okay. One of the questions I remember him asking me was, Herbert, why did you want to be a Green Beret? And I thought about for about a second. I said, well, I think it was John Wayne. And he laughed. He said, the movie, John Wayne did a movie a year, gosh, decades ago called The Green Beret.

And I don't even know if I would have thought about it. Had my dad not told me when I actually went in, he said, you always said you were going to do this. And I said, what are you talking about?

I said, you're about 10 or 11 years old. And we were, you were laying on the floor watching The Green Beret and I was behind you on the couch. And it was over.

You turned around and looked at me and you said, I'm going to do that. I had completely forgotten about that. But watch what you speak. Right. Careful what you say.

Careful what you pray for. Right. But yeah. Yeah.

You were prophetically speaking, Greg, I think is what you were at the age of 11. Anyway. Yeah.

Yeah. It sounds prophetic to me, but keep going. Keep going with the story. This is a great story.

What made it more exciting and memorable to me is when I think it was Desert Storm that broke out and the guy who was heading it up is on the news. I've never seen him since. I don't think anybody really knew who he was. It was General Schwartzcroft.

And that was the guy I had lunch with. No, come on. I was wondering. Yeah.

Yeah. I just remembered, you know, feeling like I was talking to Jonathan Witter. He had kind of just a very nice demeanor. He kind of looked like him to me and his name actually wrapped under his armpit. I never really knew his name. I just knew it was Schwartzcroft something.

Because of how long ago. Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah.

You're listening to the truth network and truth network.com. If you would like to support Cole offer Christ ministries for a gift of $25, Nikita will send you his two CDs adoration and declaration for a gift of $50. Nikita will include his book wrestling with success. And for a gift of $100 or more, Nikita will include a signed copy of his newly updated life story.

A tale of the ring and redemption. Go to www.coloff.net and donate today. Hi, Nikita Cole off. Be sure to check out the man up show now available on television, broadcast and podcast. Go to morningstartv.com or the truth radio network. Check out your local listings or better yet, download the truth network app today.

You're listening to the truth network and truth network.com. General Schwarzkopf. Wow. So, so. And what a great memory with my command sergeant major, who was like a second father to me. He really didn't know.

We just, I don't know. He just always looked after me and, and, uh, I had a lot of respect for him and wow. Wow. So. Really? Wow. Okay. So unusual. So I got it.

So you're prompting me to tell you this, this quick story then on that note. So I play, uh, typically I play every year in, in, in a golf tournament called stars and stripes. It's all for the military.

It's down near Fayetteville, uh, down near Fort Bragg, uh, to support all of our wonderful military who, who have so faithfully served this nation to give us the freedom we have in this nation. And, uh, a couple, couple, couple, three years ago, I'm playing in the term, but before at the tournament, the night before they have a little, you know, a little party introduce all the celebrities and all that. And they go, Hey, we got a guy who's going to sing, dude, he sang. And it was incredible. He sang the, the, the, the ballot, uh, uh, the, uh, ballot of the green beret.

You don't want to talk about this song, right? And here's the deal. And I mean, they had choppers flying in, they had guys flying in with big flags, you know, jumping out of choppers with their parachutes and you know, parachuting in with the big flags.

It was just a incredible deal. He sang that song. I probably hadn't heard that song, get this probably for 50 years.

Let's just say 50 years. And immediately, Greg, I went back to the little 45 disc record that I had of the ballot of the green beret that I absolutely listened to probably a thousand times as a kid. Now, I never served in the military, but I just felt like, and I loved war movies and I read every war book in, in, in my elementary school library. Okay.

And when, when he's saying that bad, that on my, I probably listened to the song probably 20 times on YouTube after he's saying it that night on the way home from the golf tournament, everything. So anyway, so general source cough. What a story. That's amazing.

That's amazing. So, so in the military, wow, great story. So, so, so you transition out of the military, you, you, you go into business, you, you're, you're an entrepreneur, uh, you, you're successful as I've known you in anything you've, you kind of have, you kind of remind me, Greg, of that guy that has the Midas touch that, as they say, right?

Everything you touch turns to gold. Uh, and maybe not necessarily so, but, but in my view, knowing you and, uh, and the things that you've been involved in since the time I've known you, um, what are, what are some as an entrepreneur transitioning out of the military? Uh, and at what point did you do that and transition into business? Uh, what, at what point was that? Uh, right away, actually.

Um, well, very soon after, because, uh, I never considered myself, um, employee material. Okay. I hear you.

I can relate. I tell people, Greg, I was unemployable, but anyway, so, but, but the good thing about the military, and, uh, I wish every, I wish every teenager could, could go through basic training at least. Yeah. Like they do in Israel, right? Like, I think from, you have to serve, you have to serve two years in the military, in Israel, upon graduation from, graduation from high school.

Have to, no, no, men and women, boys and girls, men and women, whatever you have to. So to your point, LASA foundation, right? Yes. And you know, I believe that you can never be a good leader until you learn how to follow. And that, you know, basic training, even if it was, you know, if it were only, you know, two, three months, but these kids right out of high school, you know, get trained to get, because where it does it immediately, step one is to unify. And during that period is to get the rebellion out of people. I mean, if you go into rebellious and you're not willing to give that up, you're going to be gone in the first week to begin with.

Yeah. But, you know, learning how to follow really teaches you how to lead. So not, you know, not that I had that skill in high school, my high school jobs and this, that coming out of the military, you do have that.

You won't last if you don't. And that's, and that's why you see so many Fortune 500 companies being led by former military generals and, and et cetera. So, so the military helped you in becoming more disciplined in following.

It helped you in turn, when you stepped into business and become an entrepreneur, how to, how to lead others and for them to follow then is what I'm hearing. So wow. Well, that's a, and, and little side note too, by the way, which you may or may not know this guy, Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin. Do you know that name by chance? Yes. I spent time with, had lunch with him several years back at a forum conference. Oh, okay. Yeah. He's one of our graduates from Primus University, which I was on the founding board of. Wow.

The world gets smaller all the time. Jerry is a very good friend. In fact, we've had him on the Man Up show as well. Great. Great. Yeah.

Great friend of ours. And for those who don't know, go, if you watch the movie Black Hawk Down, that was Jerry's command. That was his unit. That's who he, he commanded that unit. And he was one of the guys who founded Delta Force.

Yeah. Jerry did, but so, so you're in business. What, what would, for our, our business minded people out there, let's transition for a second to and say, well, what's another takeaway or what's another nugget that you could give those out there in the business world from your, all of your past successes? Well, everything changed for me when, you know, at a young age, I would have been in my twenties and I knew that people who had been through, you know, explosive business building and, you know, and they said, I knew I could learn a lot from them.

And my landlord at the time, he had a, a whole chain of businesses all over Arizona. And I thought, you know, I need to talk to him. I walk to his office one day and if he can have a few minutes of your time, I say, sure. And so I asked him, what's your number one key to success? And he says, well, what are you doing for marketing? And I said, uh, not much right now.

I don't have a lot of marketing money. He says, well, my number one advice was as soon as you can afford it, get a quarter page, yellow page app. And he said, and when that pays off in spades, get a half page, then a whole page. And I did that. And eventually, because there were so many aspects in my construction field, there was about a dozen different things that I needed to be in, in the yellow pages.

You know, for example, grading was one, paving was one parking lots, another concrete utilities, all these different things. And eventually I had the front page of every one of those. And then it became where I was actually his competitor with yellow page placements because him and one of the biggest attorneys in Arizona, who also is a friend of mine, uh, the three of us were competing over yellow pages in the back of the yellow pages is the best.

And then the inside cover in the front cover. And they had those, but then the yellow pages came to me one day and said, you're third in line. And we're going to give you first shot at this, the outside binder of the yellow pages. I thought, sign me up.

I thought, well, that's a great consolation prize. And those, you know, among, um, you know, that obviously just grew my business to where all I had to do at that point was hire people to do the, the estimating. I called up my sales force, but they were really just estimators because they never had to knock on a door, never had to even do follow up. We were doing so many bids for so many years. And it just, it just became a matter of that point of working on the business, running the business and getting the right people in place. We counted over a five year period that we went through eight people to keep one that lasted. And that was loyal, hardworking, followed instruction.

And it's a process and a lot of hard work, but when you're getting all that business, it can ruin you or it can just make you take off and grow and grow and grow because you're doing it right. You're trusted. We were probably the most trusted. And I've heard that from many, many people trust the company in our industry. And so we would keep our customers and keep new ones coming in from doing the right marketing. Of course, around, uh, you know, in the 2000s, everything changed where yellow pages, they were phased out very quick and everything went online. So I was spending money for people. It is all the best rankings there. And after two years in two different companies, they didn't know how to do it.

At least they didn't show any progress. And so I decided to learn it on my own. I would be able to help take any business off the ground faster than I ever would have before and help other businesses and ministries and churches and anybody else who wanted to do it right. Cause you can throw a lot of wasted money at marketing. Sure. Well, let me, let me assist, believe it or not, we're out of time. So before we go, though, I mean, it's just the time just flies by here, but here's what I want to do. Uh, so, so how, how would people, if people were interested in learning more, I mean, you give some great nuggets already, you know, work hard, become trusted, be a leader.

Uh, marketing is a key. How would people get ahold of Greg Herbert if they wanted to learn more from you in any of this aspect? So is there a website?

How would they, how would they find you, Greg? Um, that's funny. Right at the moment we have a website under construction. Okay. Um, the website address is power plus two, the number two.com. Okay.

Maybe five or 10 days till it comes back and you know, learn new stuff. See, I would say, let me, uh, do they have your contact? Well, your email or anything?

Well, yeah, I mean, they can, they can go to cold off.net and contact me and say, Hey, uh, connect me with Greg Herbert. So we'll, we'll, we'll take that route until you get, which is, that just means we're going to have to have you back on the show and, uh, and talk more, uh, single it, single out the power plus two. And, and since we didn't really have time today to talk about that and, uh, fair enough, man, I appreciate you sharing some of your stories and being on the man up show today, Greg.

Thank you so much. And, uh, thank you for tuning in and Hey, stay dialed in to the man up show. Why?

Because it's time. God bless you. This podcast is made possible by the grace of God and your faithful prayers, support, and generous gifts. May God bless you for your continual contributions.

Go to cold off.net and donate today. Okay. Nikita Cole off here. And I am excited. Did you hear the huge announcement? The big announcement.

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