1:44:22Grant Owen · Interview
The Future Of Marketing (Do This Before 2027)
A five-level budget framework for modern marketing — from $0 organic to unlimited campaigns — with no theory, just the strategies that drive revenue at each stage.
May 28thThe argument in one line.
Revenue in a service business scales through five distinct phases, and at each one the founder's only real job is to correctly diagnose and fix the single constraint that unlocks the next level rather than working harder on everything at once.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A service-business founder stuck between $10K and $100K a month who suspects their offer works but can't tell why it won't scale.
- A freelancer or solo operator running high margins who feels like they have a job, not a business, and wants the concrete move that turns delivery into a system.
- An agency or consulting owner around $100K-$500K a month who keeps being the person every client wants to talk to and can't get their team trusted.
- An eight-figure operator whose growth stalled after they launched several new initiatives at once and lost momentum.
- Anyone deciding whether to start their own thing now or go learn a high-value skill inside a fast-growing company first.
SKIP IF…
- You run a venture-backed software company where the product markets itself and unit economics work differently than a demand-constrained service.
- You want a step-by-step tactical playbook for one channel (ads, cold email); this is a level-by-level strategy conversation, not a how-to.
- You're looking for get-rich-quick shortcuts; the entire premise is that income traces back to slowly stacked skills.
The full version, fast.
Cole Gordon argues that the fastest path to real money is not starting your own business but learning the single most valuable skill inside a fast-growing pre-tipping-point company, because income traces back to the skills you stack. He then maps service-business growth as five phases, each defined by its own constraint: phase one is finding a selling system that works (zero to $100K); phase two is building a productized 'conveyor belt' of same-customer, same-problem, same-channel fulfillment plus a back-end money model ($150K-$250K); phase three is managing the front lines so customer-facing quality stays near your own standard ($600K-$1M); phase four is managing the managers without letting quality decay layer by layer; and phase five is modeling companies one tier above you and changing only one variable at a time. The recurring lesson is that founders stall because they misdiagnose the constraint or fix the wrong one, and that clarity on the real problem makes execution the easy part.
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Create a free account →Who's talking.
00:00hostGrant Owen
00:00guestCole Gordon
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 02:51
01 · Over $100M, cash collected
Cole opens with the headline number and reframes the whole conversation as level one to level five, establishing he has lived every level.
02:51 – 05:23
02 · First $10K and bartending
Two deals in two days for ~$11K while bartending at night; older bartenders in their thirties served as warnings, and How to Get Rich pushed him toward entrepreneurship.
05:23 – 12:24
03 · Learn the most valuable skill inside a company
The core level-one lesson: find an industry you love, join a fast-growing pre-tipping-point company, learn the skill closest to value creation, then pivot it into your own business.
12:24 – 14:12
04 · Go where the action is
Skip the big stable firm; its only lesson is that you hate bureaucracy. Network is net worth, and being near the action lets you recruit those people later.
14:12 – 19:46
05 · Break the numbing cycle
The habit to break is numbing pain with the party cycle; rechannel that energy into the grind, and think in terms of A, B, and Z rather than every step.
19:46 – 22:32
06 · Level 2: how he hit $100K fast
$100K a month came from years of stacked skills plus copying what works; to escape poverty you can just do a proven service slightly better, no heavy differentiation.
22:32 – 27:26
07 · The skills a service business requires
Demand-constrained businesses require marketing, a channel, messaging and copy, conversion and lead nurture, and sales including offers; that stack is most of the game.
27:26 – 37:25
08 · Zero to $2.5M in twelve months
After consulting and team consulting, sales recruiting was the offer that worked with cold ads; three offer iterations, then rapid scale, brutal to fulfill.
37:25 – 44:08
09 · Freelancer vs business owner
Most stuck operators are simply not good enough at marketing and sales; the fix is a productized conveyor belt so sales and fulfillment can be systematized.
44:08 – 52:43
10 · Level 3: managing the front lines
Phase three is team: the founder becomes general manager and the whole job is keeping customer-facing quality as close to their own ten-out-of-ten as possible.
52:43 – 58:00
11 · Tormenting into greatness, then stopping
Cole scaled to $1.5-2M with brutal, sales-team-style intensity, then learned to deliver feedback with neutral emotion; churn of your best people is what kills a service company.
58:00 – 1:03:23
12 · Three things that keep great people
Overpay relative to market and to their alternatives, keep expanding the gap to a bigger version of them, and build a culture worth staying for.
1:03:23 – 1:08:36
13 · $3.9M a month and still miserable
Hitting $3.9M a month left him ungrateful and chasing $100M; the mistake was overextending into new stuff instead of scaling what already worked.
1:08:36 – 1:10:39
14 · The $150K Patrick Bet-David conversation
Paid $150K to ask how to reach a billion; the answer was that plenty of recruiting companies already do it, so the opportunity vehicle was never the problem.
1:10:39 – 1:18:40
15 · Level 4: managing the managers
Phase four is training managers to hold the standard so quality doesn't decay by layer; promote internally via a volume knob and overpay for phenomenal talent.
1:18:40 – 1:24:54
16 · Diagnosing the real constraint
The founder's job is to find and fix the one constraint that unlocks the most flow; most people are stuck because they misdiagnose the problem, not because they can't fix it.
1:24:54 – 1:31:14
17 · Level 5: nine figures and the one-step rule
To model the next tier, study companies above you and change only one variable; go up-market on unit economics using the one-step-away rule.
1:31:14 – 1:38:26
18 · Entrepreneur-level executives, firing fast
Eight-figure teams need people who could each run seven-figure businesses; trust your pattern recognition on red flags and cut fast when the gut fires.
1:38:26 – 1:42:44
19 · Purpose past the money, and an integrated life
Once money stops buying anything new, purpose comes from building something great with people you like while growing; he wants an integrated, not balanced, life.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Income traces back to skills over time, so the fastest way to make money is to learn the single most valuable skill inside a fast-growing company before starting your own thing.
- Pick a pre-tipping-point company where you still get access to the CEO; a big bureaucratic firm just teaches you politics you'll never use.
- In a service business, sales is the only point in the entire value chain where money actually changes hands, which makes it the highest-leverage skill to learn.
- You can reach $100K a month by copying a proven model in a new location or niche; real differentiation only becomes necessary to scale past that.
- A freelancer becomes a business the moment they build a conveyor belt: same customer, same problem, same channel, same solution, repeated.
- The quality of your entire business equals the quality of its customer-facing interactions, so a manager's only job is keeping the front lines near the standard the founder would hit.
- Every layer of management you add moves quality further from the founder, so a five-out-of-ten front line is usually a training-the-trainers failure.
- Keep great people with three things: overpay relative to market, constantly show them the gap to a bigger version of themselves, and build a culture worth returning for.
- Weigh an employee's pay against what their skills could earn elsewhere, because a great marketer in a service business can usually just go run their own company.
- Raising a role's pay 15-20% often unlocks an entirely different tier of talent that cuts your training load by 75% and needs far less management.
- Founders don't stall because they can't fix the problem; they stall because they misdiagnose the constraint or fix the wrong one entirely.
- Mark Ford's one-step-away rule: when expanding, change either your client-acquisition system or your business model, never both at once.
- Launching many initiatives at once nearly killed the momentum of a company already doing $3.9M a month that just needed to do more of what worked.
- Intense, tormenting leadership only works when the mission is big enough to justify the pain; for everyone else it just burns people out.
- To hit eight figures you need to be an eight-figure-level operator surrounded by a few people who could each run a seven-figure business on their own.
Diagnose your phase before you fix anything
WHAT TO LEARN
Scaling a service business is a sequence of five constraints, and progress comes from correctly naming the one you're actually stuck on rather than working harder on all of them.
- Learn the most valuable skill inside a fast-growing pre-tipping-point company before starting your own, because income traces back to the skills you stack.
- To reach $100K a month, copy a proven service in a new location or niche; save real differentiation for scaling past that point.
- Turn your freelance work into a business by building a conveyor belt: one avatar, one problem, one channel, one repeatable solution.
- As a manager, treat the quality of every customer-facing interaction as the quality of your whole business, and train the team toward the standard you'd personally hit.
- Keep your best people by overpaying relative to their alternatives, constantly showing them a bigger version of themselves, and building a culture worth returning for.
- When growth stalls, resist launching many initiatives at once; usually you just need to do more and better of what already works.
- Diagnose the single constraint that would most increase revenue flow and fix that one thing, because being stuck is almost always a misdiagnosis, not an inability to execute.
- When expanding, change only one core variable at a time, either how you acquire clients or how the business delivers, never both.
- Staff each revenue tier with people who could plausibly run a business one level below yours; eight figures needs seven-figure-caliber operators around you.
Terms worth knowing.
- Pre-tipping-point company
- A fast-growing business that is clearly on its way up but has not yet broken out, small enough that you still get CEO access and real mentorship while learning a valuable skill.
- Conveyor belt
- A productized service where the same type of customer with the same problem arrives through the same channel and receives the same solution, so sales and fulfillment can be systematized instead of customized each time.
- Money model
- The back-end monetization and continuity structure of a business, meaning how a customer keeps generating revenue after the first sale through upsells, retainers, or continuation offers.
- Demand-constrained business
- A service where the hard part is getting customers because competition is high; fulfillment is comparatively easy and high margin, so marketing and sales skill decides who wins.
- Supply-constrained business
- A service like home trades where customers are plentiful and easy to win, but the bottleneck is recruiting, training, and managing enough qualified people to do the work.
- The front lines
- Every customer-facing interaction in a business, including ads, funnels, sales calls, onboarding, and delivery communication; their combined quality is the actual quality of the business.
- One-step-away rule
- Mark Ford's principle that when expanding a business you should change only one of its two core parts, either client acquisition or the business model, but never both simultaneously.
- High-ticket model
- Selling a premium-priced offer so the margins can support paid advertising to cold traffic, as opposed to relying only on organic audience or low-priced volume.
Things they pointed at.
04:00bookHow to Get Rich by Felix Dennis
13:00bookThe Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
16:40channelDavid Senra's Founders Podcast
1:08:50productPatrick Bet-David (paid $150K one-on-one)
50:00bookWill Guidara / Unreasonable Hospitality
1:31:20productMark Ford (Agora) one-step-away rule
18:00productSam Parr (A, B, Z thinking)
1:21:40productAlex Hormozi (money model reference)
Lines you could clip.
00:03
“Over 100,000,000. And that's cash collected, not contracted. That's actually money in the account.”
05:00
“You can't mentally masturbate and just figure out what you're gonna do with your life. You have to just actually do life.”
11:40
“Your net worth is your network. Cliche, but it's true. And there's no better way to build your network than to get into where it's hot.”
38:20
“Income essentially traces back up to skills over time.”
42:40
“The quality of your business is only really dictated by the quality of the customer-facing interactions.”
55:20
“There's nothing that kills your company more, especially a service company, than churn — voluntary churn where you're losing your best people.”
1:19:30
“Most people aren't stuck because they know the problem and can't fix it. They're stuck because they don't know what the problem is, or they're fixing the wrong problem.”
1:09:00
“There's billion-dollar recruiting companies, buddy. I had a $150K conversation just to learn my opportunity vehicle was never the problem.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 19:46denseLevel 1: zero to $10K and learning a skill inside a company
19:46 – 37:25denseLevel 2: reaching $100K a month and the service-skill stack
37:25 – 44:08denseZero to $2.5M: offer iteration and productizing
44:08 – 1:03:23denseLevel 3: managing the front lines and retaining talent
1:03:23 – 1:10:39steadyThe $3.9M plateau and the Patrick Bet-David lesson
1:10:39 – 1:24:54denseLevel 4: managing the managers and diagnosing the constraint
1:24:54 – 1:38:26denseLevel 5: nine figures, one-step rule, entrepreneur-level team
1:38:26 – 1:42:44steadyPurpose beyond money, marriage, an integrated life
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogystory
00:00How much money have you made in revenue?
00:03Over 100,000,000. And that's cash collected, not, like, contracted.
00:07Oh. You know? That's that's actually money in the account.
00:10Let's go all the way back to
00:12level one here with that frame. Right? So you have the experience to be able to talk about every level in every one of these categories, but at the same time, started from nothing.
00:20I think you said it was around when you were 24.
00:23Is that when you started your entrepreneurial journey? Kind of, yeah. I would say I was gonna go to medical school or do a PhD in nutrition or something along these lines of a very traditional academic type of path, and then I essentially decided not to do that.
00:40And then that actually is what led me down this long rabbit hole to discovering digital marketing and stuff.
00:47And I I really became super fascinated and passionate about that. So then I was like, I'm gonna do an agency, and basically just failed for two years. And after I mean, I did get the agency some revenue, but long story short, I ran out of money.
01:01But in the back of my head, I was always like, I'm gonna if this doesn't work out, I'm gonna get into sales, which is how I kinda started into sales. In terms of, like, a relatability perspective, I think a lot of people get stuck on figuring out what to do. I had, like, a massive I remember having, like, a month long whiffle waffle crisis between if I should stay doing nutrition, weight loss, or something like that that was kind of aligned with what I was doing all my life.
01:23Yeah. Or if I should do this marketing thing that I was more passionate about as that shiny object, this or that. Honestly, it doesn't matter.
01:30You just have to do something, because you can't mentally masturbate and just figure out what you're gonna do with your life.
01:37You have to just actually do life. And through doing that, and just trying things, and trying to build things, and just trying to actually dive in and try new things, you will find out what you're actually passionate about.
01:49So for instance, you know, now I'm known for sales and sales recruiting. Well, nobody wakes up when they're 16 years old and says, man, when I wanna grow up, I wanna be a salesperson. Nobody's fucking said that ever.
02:01But what happened was, is I just kind of, I did one thing, which led to another thing, which led to this, like, okay. I'm gonna get into sales because I ran out of money, and I need to build back my money. And, like, I was kinda, like, interested.
02:10I'm pretty good at this sales thing. Let me, like, do more of that. And then, like, I just narrowed down focus on that, and I got super into it.
02:17And then I became passionate about it through tons of repetition and tons of training, and actually getting good at the thing, and then you kinda get obsessed with it.
02:26But you don't start that way. In a service related business, which SaaS would fall in software as a service would fall into that, so anything to where it's a service, the only way the money exchanges hands, the only way the company makes money is through sales.
02:42Mhmm. Right? So without any sales, you don't make any money.
02:45It's the only place in the whole value chain of the business where
02:48the money exchanges hands. So it's a pretty valuable skill to learn. Tell me about what was it like when you first made your Like, you made your first 10.
02:56I remember I closed two deals within two days. So I've been taking a bunch of sales calls for my agency, and I closed two deals within two days.
03:04Those two deals, I had made, like, 11 k or something, which had, you know, felt like a 100 fucking grand at the time. And so I'm bar I'm bartending at nights to, you know, pay my rent and all that stuff during that time.
03:16It's one of the only professions where genuinely, like, you can get fucked up every day Mhmm. And make money. Yeah.
03:22Which if you like booze, is is not a good combination, which I did, you know? So like, it was a fun thing, but you you burn out, man.
03:30You you start to hate people. I was really ready to go, and I I thankfully was ready to channel all of that energy into something productive, which was a business.
03:39How much did you like, did you feel stuck throughout it, or were you like, I I know I'm not gonna be here Oh, no. I I knew I I To me, those those older guys who were in their thirties, and, like, they're kinda like 28 to 35 who were still working at a college bar at that time. Yeah.
03:54I knew, to me, those people served as warnings. I was like, good for you, man.
03:59No judging, but I ended up like you. And then one day, I was kind of getting a little bit I was already into personal development, but I hadn't applied it to making money yet.
04:10So I was reading a book called How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis, and I read it during a bar shift that I was closing, and it was over winter break. And in that book, really, he tries to convince you not to get rich or not to not necessarily just not start a business, but not to get filthy rich or whatever.
04:27But for me, I read that and I was like, I wanna get rich. And what I really got from that, and he says it in the book is like, if you really wanna make money, you know, you shouldn't be an attorney or a doctor or this or that or whatever, like, you just need to be an entrepreneur. And I was like, okay.
04:39Well, that makes perfect sense. That's what I'm gonna do.
04:42Yeah. At this level one
04:44that I I think about for like an audience member that is making a decision of like, I wanna do something. Most of those people that are probably watching a video like this are already having their mindset, like, I wanna get rich. This is the big misconception is is if you start a business right away, it's super tough.
04:58Because the issue is is that you don't know what you're doing, and you have to learn like, if you think about business, there's marketing, sales, operations, fulfillment, finance, legal. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff, and then you're gonna over complicate everything. And then with the each of those core areas, there's a bunch of mini skills that you have to learn.
05:13So starting a business I'm I'm not saying you can't just, get out of college or get out of high school and start a business. You certainly can.
05:21Right? I think actually a faster track, and this is another take a step back to take a step forward, is to number one, just find the industry that you're passionate about.
05:29Find a fast growing company within that industry. So it's, you know, it could be something they could be doing a million, they could be doing 3,000,000, 5,000,000, 10,000,000. It kinda depends on the industry.
05:38But, like, not a brand new company, but not a huge bureaucratic mature company. So, like, a fast growing company where you kinda have access almost to the CEO, so you can get a lot of good mentorship.
05:49Find that company, go work for that company, then learn a skill that's closest to whatever the value creation is in that company. So if it's a software company, you probably wanna learn engineering or learn code. That's the most valuable skill in software.
06:01And, you know, service based businesses is typically sales and sales teams. Or in, like, a home service business, they're not demand constrained, they're supply constrained. So, actually, the the skill there is being able to recruit, train, and manage usually bilingual, low level talent.
06:18So that's the skill you would wanna learn. Right?
06:21And then once you learn that skill, you'll make a ton of money because you have the most important skill in the company. Two, you can later pivot that into a business, whether that's a new business or you consult on that skill that you've had. And then once you get really good at that, you also, just because you're a part of that business, you'll learn by osmosis a lot of these other skills just by observing, and then you can go off and do it.
06:40Mean, that's what I did. Because I went, started tried to do the nutrition blog thing, didn't work. Did the agency, lost all my money.
06:46Then I got a job. Got into sales. First sales job was okay.
06:50Second sales job was okay. Third sales job was where that was kind of what I was describing. Like, I was in the industry I wanted to be in, in a company that was in that perfect growth curve.
06:58I had a lot of access to the CEO. I got tons of mentorship, and I got really, really good. And I also learned how a real 8 figure company operates by osmosis through that.
07:07And then when I left to build my own thing, I automatically I had built so many skills along the way, just kind of through that journey that stacked all together. Mhmm. And that's why within the first thirty days of starting, did a 100 k and never looked back.
07:20I think a lot of guys get stuck at the idea that they should just try to make $10,000 a month. That was, like, their perspective. I wanna make $10,000 a month.
07:27I'm gonna do my own thing. I'm gonna escape corporate, $10,000 a month. Mhmm.
07:30Is that a lot easier than people make it out to be? Well, 10 k a month is not very hard.
07:35But I think doing what I just mentioned is a faster route to actually get to 7, multiple 7 and eight figures because you have a really, really good foundation. I mean, if you wanna make 10 k a month, you gotta just generate a bunch of leads and make some sales.
07:48It's not very hard. Right? But it could be a lot more work than what you want it to be.
07:53And I think you could just have a lot more fun. And the other thing is too is, like, your net worth is your network. Right?
07:58Cliche, but it's true. And there's no better way to build your network than to get into, like, where it's hot.
08:05Like, what's a good company? Yeah. Right?
08:07And start to meet people in your industry and go to events and meet people within that company and see people come and go and keep up with them. Like, that's something that you should really do. It allows you to also, if you start your company later, recruit those people.
08:19Yeah. Right? Like when Jeff Bezos left the company that he was working with two years after his non compete was up, he recruited like a shitload of freaking people.
08:26Like, just the day after, it was like, bam, they were all coming. Yeah. And so and the other thing I think about is, you know, Jimmy Ibeen with Beats?
08:34And Doctor. Dre? One of the things that was that's such a good documentary, but what created Beats is he essentially saw what Steve Jobs was doing.
08:43And he was like, there's something special going on there. Like, I just need to get into that vicinity, start meeting people, and just get get close to the action. Yeah.
08:51And through that, just one thing eventually kind of snowballed into the creation of Beats headphones. Right?
08:57What a And so, like, that's why I say find an industry that you're passionate about, and really getting into a fast growing company. It's It's like you kinda wanna pick a company that you think is going to be great, but is not quite there yet.
09:09They're pre tipping point. Yeah. Because that's really because what you wanna do is just go where the action is.
09:14Yep. That's where all the best talent's going. That's because once you have that network,
09:18it's it's so key. I think it's really interesting. You're the first person I've heard that, like, sometimes people say, like, if you're feeling stuck or if you feel like you have to get in this environment, go join a big company because you're gonna have structure.
09:28No. No. No.
09:28That's the worst. You just Yeah. That's the second trap.
09:31All you learn there is that you hate all of that stuff because you're young, and you wanna break the rules, and you wanna move fast.
09:37You learn that you hate that stuff, and you're like, I wanna be a freelancer entrepreneur, and I I need to, you know, start something now and do 10 k a month. Really, need you wanna work. It's not a startup, even though it could be.
09:47It's like pre Tipping Point. Yeah. Like, read Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.
09:51It's like pre Tipping Point company. I wish I heard that when I was in my twenties, like, early twenties.
09:57I wish I heard wanted to not go to one of the major firms, but somebody who's like a disruptor. Yeah. And whoever was leading that firm would've been somebody who probably worked at one of those big firms and is now splitting off on their own, and like, there's a good chance they're gonna succeed doing what they're doing, or at the very least, you're gonna get paid and learn a fuck load.
10:13They're taking all the risk. Yeah. Every I worked at three companies before I
10:17went. I did my own thing, and all of them were Fortune 500 companies. And I feel like
10:22Yeah. What do you get from that? You just learned bureaucracy and politics.
10:25Yeah. Which was helpful, but I also just learned I hated that. And at certain levels of those companies, there is high level stuff going on.
10:31It's just like if you're an entry level person out of college, right, you're just probably not gonna learn that much. Yeah.
10:37Identifying the problems of some of these mid sized companies, or even smaller companies that are at that tipping point, that in itself is its own business. Like if you're someone that like If you're the first salesperson hired, or if you're in the first like 10 people hired,
10:49and you're instructed to like, hey, we don't have a system, you have to build the system. Yeah. I would say that's even too early.
10:55Right? Like, you wanna go into somebody with somewhat of an established system you can learn. Like, you don't wanna essentially be going into something where they're like, we have nothing built Help help us.
11:04Help us build it. Yeah. If if somebody's gonna ask me to help build their business for them, I want equity.
11:09I don't even care. It's like, if they have no systems whatsoever, no, no, no.
11:14That's what I said. It's too early. Yeah.
11:16Right? You need pre tipping point. So you wanna be able to go in and be able to learn these skills, but it's just not so big to where you're not gonna get any access to the CEO, or be able to see them speak on a regular basis, or whatever, and you're gonna be able to get real mentorship, and it's a company that moves fast, breaks things, etcetera.
11:32Right? That's kinda where it is, if that makes sense. I love that.
11:35But once you learn the skill, you're right in the sense where, like, you can use that to easily just do consulting and start a business. Like, this whole thing about, like, should people be entrepreneurs, or should they not be entrepreneurs?
11:45Like, are entrepreneurs born, or are they made? Or can you become an entrepreneur? Like, it's such bullshit.
11:50Because realistically, like, yes, not everybody is gonna be Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or some big tech CEO type person, or some billionaire. Right?
11:58The same way people aren't gonna be Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. Okay? Like, I think we can all accept that.
12:03But if you have a skill, and you simply just consult two or three other businesses on it, and you make $20.30 k a month doing that, you have a business, is that achievable for 99% of people? Pretty much, yeah. So everybody can be an entrepreneur.
12:18Now, again, not everybody can be Michael Jordan. But
12:22we all know that, and I think we're okay with that. There's someone that's stuck here, that's in their twenties, that's probably either doing the bar life, or they might not have identified, like, the thing I was going to college for, I don't like anymore. What's an essential habit that they need to break?
12:36So what I would say is, if you're kind of stuck in a cycle, especially like the party cycle, right, you're ultimately doing what you're doing to fill some sort of black hole, or numbing some sort of pain. Yeah.
12:48Right? So what you have to do is, number one, feel the pain that you actually have, and then you could still numb the pain, but you gotta find a more productive way to numb it. So, like, I I shifted from numbing the pain with party, drugs, alcohol, etcetera, to getting super obsessed about getting rich, doing a business, whatever.
13:06And that massive grind work cycle was effectively soothing the pain. Did it really heal the pain?
13:13I think it does over time to an extent, but not really. Like, you that's a different type of work you need to do. Yeah.
13:19But you kinda just need to rechannel that. If you listen to David Sender's Founders Podcast, one of the biggest commonalities of all these dead, like, mega billionaires that are just exceptional is that almost all of them are riddled with either fear, anxiety, perfectionism, something like a massive insecurity, etcetera.
13:35And this overall kind of pain that ultimately they're running away from that just fuels them to achieve insane things. But at the same time, the only issue with doing that way for long term, think it's a good way to get started, is also as he details in a lot of that podcast is that they sacrifice and unbalance other areas of their life to be able to achieve those things.
13:54Something that Sam Parr told me, which I loved, which is that, like, I think you should look at the a, the b, and the z. Everybody gets so caught up in the a, c, d, like all the steps, and they're trying to calculate each step. Really, you need to know where do you wanna end up, and what's the first two steps to do.
14:11That's smart.
14:12The next level, level two, is people that are looking to make a $100,000 a month. You said you hit a $100,000 in your Yeah. First 30
14:20But that was after I already failed with all these other businesses. Sure. But like, tell me how that worked out.
14:25Well, so fundamentally, if you really break it down, what had happened was is I did this blogging thing. I learned a lot of skills there, made no money.
14:34I did this agency thing. I learned how to do ads, media, copywriting, funnels, still lost all my money. Then I went into sales, learned sales at an extremely high level, but then also throughout my sales career doing it at different companies, I learned even more about marketing.
14:48I learned about operations. I learned about programs. I learned about fulfillment.
14:51I learned about organizational structure. Mhmm. So I stacked a ton of skills during that time, and when I was a salesperson, I I did everything possible to really just succeed at the highest level.
15:02So I was even doing my own organic content and lead gen, so I learned that skill too. So I had stacked all those skills. And then by the time I started my company, which was not called closers at the time, but became closers, that's how I made the money so fast.
15:16Mhmm. Is because income essentially traces back up to skills over time, more or less.
15:23Right? So if you're trying to get to a $100 a month, I mean, number one thing is making sure you have all the right skills.
15:28The other thing is too is, okay, if $100 a month is your goal, right, and that's really like you want more of a get me out of poverty type of business, right, like a cash flow type of business, you should just really do a service and just look at what already works and then just try to do it slightly different or better.
15:44And honestly, not even don't even overcomplicate it. Look at what works and just do it.
15:49Because to even get to a $100 a month, you could basically just copy somebody else. And I'm not saying you copy them like, let me give you an example.
15:58I'm not saying, like, you rip off all of their stuff to where it's, like, plagiarism. Yeah. What I'm saying is is, like, let's say you worked for a roofing business.
16:05Okay? You could open your own roofing business in a different location and probably get to $1,000,000 a year relatively easily by not doing any differentiation whatsoever.
16:16Just locationally? Just Yeah. Just locationally.
16:18Mean, like, think about it this way. If you're a an agency like, most agencies can get to a $100 a month who do, let's say, ecommerce ads.
16:29You can probably get to a $100 a month in your agency just by doing basic marketing and then knowing how to do sales, and just making sure you're halfway decent with clients.
16:39Like, you don't really need to do this massive differentiation. Right?
16:44Now to get past that, you you do need to have something that's unique and different about what you do, That makes you unique, different, better, superior, whatever, and have some sort of positioning or counter positioning, etcetera. I think that's really important. But I just think people really overthink, like, you can take a proven business model and just learn it and do it and hit seven figures.
17:03It's just that's just really execution. That's it. What's the what's the essential skills?
17:07You mentioned, like, as long as you have a certain set of skills. So it depends on the business. Right?
17:10So each business is a little bit different. So in a service type business, which I think is as easiest to start to get to, let's say, 7 figures and create some financial freedom and to make cash flow, etcetera. The main well, look, there's two types of service businesses.
17:25There is, like, more home service type of businesses and other service businesses that are supply constrained, which means it's very easier to get customers. It's hard to get employees. Or there is especially the online type of service space is more demand constrained.
17:38There's a lot more competition. It's harder to get customers, but fulfillment is typically higher margin and pretty easy. So depending on which route you go let's say you went the route I went, which was more in the online services.
17:48Really, in demand constrained businesses, there's the you have to know marketing really well. So that includes media buying or some sort of channel that you have to know.
17:59So, you know, cold email is a channel. Media buying is a channel. Cold calling is a channel.
18:03I would recommend probably media buying or, like, ads or cold email, organic, one of those three. Mhmm. Right?
18:10So you have to know that. Okay? Then you also have to know packaging, psychology, messaging, copywriting, kind of that whole sphere of things.
18:19Okay? Then you have to know all the conversion related skills, which is kind of like lead nurture. So a great example would be how do you lead gen people from DMs?
18:29Or how do you get your appointments to show up? Or how do you take leads that opted into a funnel, didn't book, and get them to show up. Then you gotta learn sales.
18:36So that's really it. And you also gotta learn kinda within sales has this category of, like, offers. Yeah.
18:42So how to make sure you have an offer that's good. Okay?
18:47So that's really it. Because a fulfillment is not too bad to figure out. Tickets are a $100 a month.
18:53Now to really get to past that, there's a lot of systems and different stuff, and productizing your fulfillment can be very difficult, but that's that. Now again, with more of a home service side, it becomes more about, can you actually recruit, hire, and manage the team and the techs to be able to do that effectively and have systems for that?
19:13Right? Because getting the customers like, if you have a cleaning business we've got cleaning businesses work with us, and their marketing and sales is so easy.
19:21Yeah. People are just like, yeah. Like, we need it.
19:23Yeah. Because those businesses are so supply constrained Yeah. That there's still a lot of demand in the market.
19:29And, like, if you've worked with a home serve like, you have a house. Yeah. You know, trades come to your house.
19:33Do they do a good job? Do they do they do they routinely give you a plus jobs? No.
19:37No. It's like, you usually expect it to not be good Yeah. Or it it to be something messed up.
19:42Or for them to mess something up, and then you find out, like, two years later when another trade comes that they mess it up. So this is why I hit a 100 k a month so quickly is I was able to do, like, a lot of organic marketing, and then I generated in this initial launch 15 sales calls.
19:57I actually could have generated way more, but that was as much as I could take. So I generated 15 sales calls over the course of two days, or maybe it was like 12. I closed all 12.
20:05And I closed them all at what would be considered at that time a premium price point. Mhmm.
20:11How much should I consider trends, or how much should I literally just go and copy something that's working, and how do I identify, like, what actually is? Well, I would figure out different industries that you're passionate about, and then I would look at kind of the trends within an industry. Because, yeah, you don't wanna get into, let's say, newspapers, physical news.
20:28Okay? Probably not a good business to get into. Mhmm.
20:31Right? So even if you're super passionate about that for some reason, which is probably gonna be unlikely Yeah. That's probably not where you should go.
20:37But, like, if you find the industry that you're passionate about, and as long as, you know, the trends in that industry doesn't suggest that because of AI or some other thing that it's gonna go extinct Yeah.
20:50Then you're probably gonna be fine. I would just pick something you're genuinely interested in, because that'll allow you to work longer hours.
20:56And I'll I'll give you an example. So the key to reading a lot is to read shit you're interested in.
21:02Like, you can't do this thing where you try to really regiment yourself, and you're like, I gotta learn this and this and this, just because, like, it's like pulling teeth. At what point did you hire a team? Did you did you do a 100 k solo in the Yeah.
21:14Had a solo. Then to get to about 200 k a month ish, a 150 to 200 consistently, I only had two people. So I was like, had a 90 margin 90% margin business with two employees, maybe three.
21:26And two of them were part time, and just me. But I was just muscling that thing to existence.
21:32And a big reason I was able to do that was because, again, I would convert I would generate some leads. I would convert, like, sixty, seventy, 80% depending on the month, and I would do that at very premium price points. So and then I would do all the fulfillment myself, and then I would do all the upselling myself into continuation.
21:49So that was pretty cool. I mean, it was kinda stressful in a way.
21:53I think it would be like walking in my mean, I'd be, you know, be like sleeping now. It'd be super easy. But at that time, it was a little stressful, but it wasn't as bad as it sounds.
22:01Like, it makes me sound like a total workhorse, which I was at that time, but it's, like, not super unachievable because I had all those skills. Mhmm.
22:09Like, you gotta think all I was doing is I might generate 10 to 15 sales calls a month. I was converting 60 to 80%. And then out of my customers, I was converting into continuation 60 to 70%.
22:21I mean, that's crazy. Right? What were you selling to them?
22:24Sales consulting at that time. This is before I did the recruiting. Once I launched the recruiting, it was like like, that's when we went from within twelve months zero or 150, 200 k a month to 2,500,000 a month.
22:38Yeah.
22:39And so you were identifying, okay, I'm consulting them. They still suck.
22:44At the end of the day, they need they need fulfillment. Well,
22:47no. What what happened was I was consulting them and training sales teams, but I knew what I always knew from my previous experience with other companies as I was selling and watching other success stories in the industry is I knew at that time, if I was going to scale this big, I needed to find some sort of offer that worked with ads to a cold market, and not people who are watching or looking at my organic.
23:13Does that make sense? Yeah. So I was trying to figure out what that was, and I pretty quickly figured out, like, I was getting asked so many times, do you know where I can find good salespeople?
23:23Where can I get a good salesperson? This and that and the other. And that's where I knew that's what the offer was.
23:28And the only person running ads at the time in the entire sales trainer industry for my what I was doing was doing that. There's only one person.
23:38So that was validation too.
23:40How fast did you go from that 200 to 2.5?
23:44Twelve months.
23:46In that twelve month period of time, what was that scale like?
23:50Brutal. It was I mean, in a way, it was super stressful because we were scaling so fast. So there when you scale that fast, you're kind of intersecting two things.
24:00Number one is is you realize you have an opportunity window that's very unique, and you really wanna capitalize on that as much as possible. It's like a once in a lifetime opportunity. On the other window, you're like, scaling fulfillment that fast is pretty difficult, and inevitably, there's gonna be drop balls or customers that you could have fulfilled on very well that because it's a new team member or whatever it is or a new process or we didn't have this process we should have had because we're new.
24:26We don't know what we're doing. You drop the ball. Right?
24:28So balancing those two things was shitty. You know, I would say.
24:34I think we did a pretty good job. Like, we didn't, like, lose our reputation by scaling too fast. But, like, there's people we worked with back then, that year time frame, and I think most people had pretty good results.
24:43But there's people, if I could go back, I would say that, for sure, we could've easily delivered on
24:50now. But back then, you know, we were just What did you what did you identify in yourself, like the skill sets you learned in that entrepreneurial phase? Because, like, you've stacked skills, and then basically, you're saying, I made a lot of money very fast at 9% margin because of those skills.
25:02Mhmm. What did you have to add on?
25:05I mean, I had a lot of the skills to get to 200, to be honest. And in fact, I got to that level pretty fast. And I really stayed there for about seven or eight months, maybe we'll call it.
25:19200? How many? Like zero to 200.
25:21I probably stayed there for seven to eight months. And the reason I stayed there is because I was trying to figure out what the offer really needed to be.
25:33Mhmm. Like, I went through iterations. At first, was doing sales coaching, then I started doing sales team consulting, and then after that, I started doing sales recruiting.
25:40Right? That and then after that's when I scaled rapidly. Right?
25:43So it took me three kind of major iterations
25:47on the offer to sort of figure out what hit. What do you think the gap is? So that's you, and that's your story.
25:52What do think the gap is in the average person? I think I mean, a lot of people get stuck under a 100 k. Is that just small mindset inefficiency with identifying the right offer?
26:04I think number one, a lot of people just aren't very good. So you just gotta be you gotta be first and foremost really good at what you do.
26:13Especially at a small scale, you should be getting referred pretty often.
26:18Right? Like, at our scale, we still get a lot of referrals, but, you know, we're so big that, like, most people already know who we are.
26:25Yeah. Does that make sense? So, you know, we're not gonna grow through referrals at this point.
26:29Like, you probably already know who we are. So most people, you I I think the first and foremost thing is get really good at what you're doing, which a lot of times you can just brute force through effort, especially in a service based business. Yeah.
26:41Like, you can just brute force through, like, attention to detail, effort, etcetera. The next thing is most people just aren't that good at marketing and not good at sales. Like, I'm just being honest.
26:51Like, they can't write an ad. They don't know how to write an ad.
26:54They don't even know how to write anything persuasive whatsoever. They don't know how to structure. They don't know anything about marketing philosophy, anything about copy.
27:01Then they don't know anything about selling. So, I mean, I think if people just learn those things, they would do very, very well.
27:08Yeah. I I think it's really that simple. But you would be surprised.
27:11Even people at $2.03, $400 a month, they're not that good at those things. Yeah.
27:17And those are the main skills you have to learn to really scale in a service based, demand demand constrained type of business.
27:25Doesn't mean your product is not important. Like you like I just said, you gotta be really good at what you do. No doubt.
27:31But, unfortunately, unlike software where if you have a really good product, it can kind of start to market itself a little bit, and the service is much tougher.
27:41Like, you have to know those marketing and sales skills sales skill sets.
27:45What's the difference between the people that get stuck is, like, the freelancer and the business owner. I identify there's a lot of people I think it's like a lot of people that you are, like, are just not good.
27:54If they hit, like, 30 k a month, they start talking as if they're a business owner, then they hit 40 k. And then The main issue with those people is that
28:02if they're they have to productize their service and have a very clear offer Mhmm. And what they're bringing on people for and an outcome. So where you're attracting the same person with the same problem needing the same solution Mhmm.
28:16Through the same channel repeatedly. And then that way, you can fulfill on the same service, solving the same problem, getting them the same outcome, which allows you to do two things.
28:26Number one is systematize your sales process because it's very difficult. Like, let's take the full service, I do everything for everybody agency. It's very difficult, imagine, for a salesperson to have somebody come on through all sorts of different channels.
28:40Then, like, somebody's coming from an event, a referral, a network, a this or that. And then they have all sorts of different problems. They're like, I need Google Ads.
28:49I need SEO. I need a website. I need this.
28:51I need that. And then there are also different businesses. We do financial services.
28:56We do insurance. We do coaching. It's like all over the place.
29:00So it's very difficult to train a salesperson on how to do that. It's not impossible. I'm just saying it's very difficult.
29:07And then with fulfillment, imagine you're just customizing fulfillment essentially every single different person that comes in because it's different business, different industry, different expectations, etcetera. So then what happens to fulfillment?
29:18Lot of complexity. A lot of you need to be basically the savior to force all these results into existence, and there's no streamlined operations.
29:27You wanna create a conveyor belt, a system, and a system is a business.
29:32So most of those people just don't really have a business. They freelance.
29:36So that's the main thing.
29:38Did you feel like a freelancer when you were doing a 100 and No. I knew exactly what I was doing from the start. Yeah.
29:44But I I learned that lesson because I sold for a company that taught a lot of coaches, consultants, agencies, and people in this space. And so the nice thing about that was I was able to look back throughout my time there, and it was like I was getting all of this data on who succeeded, who didn't succeed, and what were the common patterns.
30:04And so I knew I had the pattern recognition going in. Yeah. So I knew how to do that from the very beginning.
30:10That was a very key thing that I I never messed that up because I I knew how important that was. You hired three people on your team, two part time. What made you like, did you have a skill set of identifying talent pretty early?
30:25Somewhat. I really, in the beginning, was able to hire from my network. And what I was able to do that's very unique, not impossible to replicate, by the way, is, again, I was able to take a small amount of leads, close them at a very, very high rate, and at a very premium price, and get good LTV out of those people by upselling them.
30:46And that was all me by myself. So as you can imagine, if you have a 150 k, 200 k business with 90% plus margins, you have a lot of extra capital to be able to hire somebody very good.
30:58So that is not what most small businesses have. What happens with them is they have very low margins from the very beginning, and then they're like, okay. I need to hire.
31:06But then they use that extra capital to hire somebody like $4 a month who's just not that good. And so they just don't get that much time back. I was able my first couple of hires were basically directors right from the start.
31:18Now they didn't start as directors, but they actually ended up being core directors of my team. And that was my first couple of hires. And the only reason I could pay those people what they needed to be paid was because we already had such high margins from the very beginning.
31:31That's a huge advantage. Right? So, like, we were able to do, I think, $500 a month with eight or nine people.
31:39That's, like, wild. Yeah.
31:41Right? Maybe less. It might have been six.
31:43I don't know. I don't know the exact number, but we were able to scale really big. I mean, even over a million a month with I mean, at that point, maybe twenty, twenty five people.
31:51It might have gotten a little inflated then just because, like, we had, like, more setters and stuff, but but not that many people.
31:57When you were at that level, something I've I've I see with the consultative agency model is that a lot of times people want you. Like, the person wants you. They wanna talk to you.
32:06I paid coal, and they don't want your team. How do you how do you increase their frame so that you actually have that system where you're not putting your time into every single one of your clients and basically being the CRM even at 500 k a month?
32:21I think there's two parts to that answer. 50% is just in your head.
32:26I don't think people really care as long as your team is phenomenal. Right?
32:31I think that's the first thing where I think a lot of people, they have their ego wrapped into that, and they just have that belief because it's an ego belief, and I would say that they may be having that belief and also doing that behavior because they are trying to avoid letting go of control, or they're scared of not getting results, they're scared of failure in some way.
32:56So I think that's 50% right there. I would say the other 50% is it's not a black and white thing.
33:05It's not a light switch. You just don't go from you working with all the clients to you working with nobody, and it's all your team.
33:14. So a great example is you might work with everybody and do everything with everybody.
33:21But then slowly, what happens is you start to hire some people, and maybe, let's say, you do 12 calls with a client. Well, you now do the onboarding call, and then you do the call three and call seven and call 10.
33:34But they do all the calls in between and all the client communication, and then you just kinda hop in and QC it. And then you slowly give away some of these middle calls, you just do beginning call, middle call, end call, which is the upsell call.
33:46And then you get rid of the middle call, and it's just beginning and end. Then you get rid of the beginning, and it's just the upsell call. Then you even get rid of that.
33:53You see what I mean? Yeah. And then as that process happens, you have this team.
33:58People are still getting really good results. And then essentially now, if they're worried about, well, do I need the access to you? It's like, well, you don't need access to me.
34:07All these people have gotten results for, look at their results, it hasn't required me. Yeah. That's one model.
34:13The other model is there's people out there who just take percentages, then they have 10 clients, and they make a lot of money just by doing that with 10 clients.
34:23That's a very valid model too. And you have a very low team, very high margin, a lot of simplicity, and if you like working, there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah.
34:30So that's another way to do it. And I think Jeremy Haynes, that's the model he does. Yeah.
34:35And it seems like he's done really well with that. Yeah. Where he's like, you take 10%, 20%, 30%.
34:39Yeah. And they just like, they're like, yeah, you're gonna get me, which means it's gonna be really expensive, but it's gonna be, you know, 10 times better than the other agency or whatever. Right?
34:47Yeah. I think that's And also for a lot of agencies, especially in this industry, I like that model.
34:54I think that's a good model. I think if you're doing ecommerce, if you're doing, like, a lot of high volumes of clients where it's like like if you're a Google Ads SEO agency, or what is it, Google Maps SEO, like, can do really local like, you can have, like, a factory.
35:09So you just gotta kinda know what industry you're in, what's gonna kinda hit. If I was doing home services, yeah, you don't need to work with every like, they're not gonna give you a percentage.
35:17Yeah. You know? So it just kinda depends.
35:19But I think for this industry, that's very smart. Do you think people get stuck at their retainers being way too low? Because, like, mean, to be honest, to do 500 k, you either need a lot of clients
35:27or your retainers need to be decent.
35:30For agencies. I mean, yeah. I think a lot of people charge probably too low.
35:33I also think a big issue is is so many people are so used to not getting results from agencies that the pricing kinda gets commoditized down a little bit because people just assume that that money's going out the door and might never never come back.
35:49Yeah. Right? So, yeah, I think people aren't charging enough.
35:54I think you can charge more if you have a great reputation. Mhmm. You get a lot of referrals, and you have a lot of case studies, and you have a lot of proven results, and then you can charge more, have less clients, but at the same time, you're like, look.
36:05We charge more because we actually do a really good job. We don't take on a lot of clients. Yeah.
36:09Yeah. And then I also think just typically with agencies, having some sort of performance incentive is probably the best way to get charged more.
36:18Yeah. Yeah.
36:19I like that. Yeah, because I think a lot of people get stuck. I think I think that's my I've always been stuck there myself of just being like, do I wanna go highly consultive, or do I wanna build a business?
36:28Because like, I was stuck in that freelance middle ground. I have a team, but I still feel like the freelancer. Like, if I do enough if I do enough revenue, if I can delegate more, I can hire the right people.
36:38And then as soon as I'm like, ugh, I still wanna kinda be hands on because I enjoy it. I enjoy the consultative aspect of it, and I'm realizing more and more that that's not even a business. Like even if 100 k a month at really solid margins is like, it's not a business.
36:51It doesn't feel like one to me.
36:53It feels like it's Who just like really cares? I mean, at the end of the day, what's your goal? What's the amount of money you wanna make?
37:00What do you like doing? And then if all that aligns, who cares if you're doing a lot of the work? If you get to a $100 a month, or $200 a month, $500 with a lot of team, you're still gonna be doing a lot of stuff.
37:11I mean, so I I don't think there's anything wrong Yeah. With that.
37:16Yeah. Yeah. And and the bonus too of doing a lot of stuff yourself and just having that high margin model is you you can just get referrals out the wazoo.
37:25Yeah. Because you'll do a really, really good job. People like working with you.
37:28They have an affinity towards you. It's not a company. It's easy to refer a person, not a company.
37:31Yeah. So there's nothing wrong with that either. I feel like you guys got referred a lot as a company.
37:37Yeah, yeah. How does that, how do you build the culture of that? Well, I think number one, we knocked down some major case studies, right?
37:43So we worked with like Frank Kern, then Dean, and then Tony,
37:47and then just after that, it was, like, any bit Dean and Tony could basically Everybody. Everybody.
37:52Right? And so that obviously very that helped a lot. I was very grateful for that.
37:57I did those accounts by myself just because I mean, did those accounts one on one, but that was just because and I did it for money that was not financially significant to me whatsoever, but I did it because of what I gained in reputation.
38:12Yeah. And so what was the question?
38:15I got referred a lot. So that was one thing.
38:18Then the other thing is I was offering a service that, frankly, wasn't really being offered at the time, only by one other person.
38:27So I did have that nice, like, kind of, like, blue ocean type of deal. I also caught a trend where everybody in that time in 2020 was growing really rapidly and needed salespeople.
38:38Yep. Right? And then also to make margins work with ads, you had to do the high ticket model.
38:42So I caught a very good trend, and that was quite lucky. I did capitalize on that trend. And then, you know, we did a great job, and we just got a lot of referrals, and we just kinda ripped through
38:53a lot of the market by doing a great job. Alright. Well, yeah, I wanna I wanna end the level there because I I have a lot of questions on scaling team.
38:59So level three,
39:01this is a million dollars a month. Yeah. Let me just break it down for you.
39:04So basically, I have a framework. It's five phases.
39:08So we've already covered zero to a 100 k. That's really figuring out what you're selling, how to sell it, and how to convert it.
39:15Or what you're selling, how to generate traffic, and how to convert it. That's actually one of the hardest parts, like zero to a 100 k. Yeah.
39:21Because what you're trying to do is develop the optimal selling system. Yeah. Right?
39:24Phase two, and we talked about this, is kind of creating what I call the conveyor belt Yeah. Which is really taking your initial, essentially, hypothesis on what you thought your service and offering was gonna be.
39:37You've now gotten a bunch of customers, and you've realized it's broken my fulfillment. What do I need to do to create a productized fulfillment system that's going to have that thing where people are coming in, same channel, same problem, same business, same fulfillment, and it's a productized service.
39:52Right? So you have to do that because you have to that lays the foundations for scale. And also, in that time, what's gonna be your back end slash continuity or as Hermozy would put at your money model.
40:02Right? You wanna kinda figure that in phase two phase phase two. You don't really wanna figure that out, your monetization, unless you're really experienced like a Hermozy or something.
40:10But if I'm a beginner, I'm probably not gonna figure out the money model in phase one because you have no idea what you're doing and you kinda just need to get some flow. Like, you just need to get something to happen.
40:19You gotta sell some stuff. Right? Then in phase three, right, and and phase one is zero to a 100 k.
40:25Phase two, let's call it, you're adding a back end, you're product know, productizing your service gets you to 2 to 300 k, or maybe a 150 to 250 k. Then really 200, let's call it, to somewhere between five, six, 800 is essentially phase three, which is team.
40:41Okay? So with team, there's really gonna be two phases.
40:45The second phase is phase four, which phase one is you're just the general manager of everything. Mhmm. Okay?
40:52So you might now have a salesperson. You might have a guy who runs your ads. You might have a guy, couple couple fulfillment people, CSMs.
40:59You have somebody who's doing your finances. You have, like, an operations kinda admin who manages a VA or two. But you're the general manager across everything.
41:07So what's your primary responsibility? Is to make sure the so the quality of your business is the quality of what happens on the front lines. Right?
41:15So it's all the customer facing interactions of your business. So if you think about the quality of your business, it's let's say you run ads. It's the ad they see.
41:23It's the copy. It's the video. It's the funnel.
41:25It's how they feel. It's what the brand is. Then they book a call, let's say.
41:28It's the lead nurture. It's the message they get, the emails they get. If the setter calls them, what's the setter like?
41:33It's the closer. What's the closer like? What's their performance?
41:36And then it's the onboarding call. What's that like? How do they feel?
41:39What's that performance? It's the communication in Slack. It's the actual, you know, outputs they get from the service.
41:45It's all that see how that's all the front lines? Yeah. So the quality of your business is only really dictated by the quality of the customer facing interactions.
41:53So if we know that to be true, if you're a manager, what's your job? It's to assure that those customer facing interactions are as good as they possibly can be.
42:03And in essence, are as close to how good you would do it if you were still doing it. Right?
42:10In a service business, a lot of times, you were usually doing the thing Yeah. Before you passed it off. So that's an easy analogy to make.
42:17Obviously, in different businesses, it's not gonna apply. But you're you're essentially just making sure if you were a 10 out of 10 in copywriting, you wanna make sure your guys are as close to that as possible.
42:27Get them to a eight or a nine out of 10. Right? So you're really just training them up to that standard that you have to have in your mind, and you have to have clarity of what that is.
42:37So if I'm trying to train a sales guy, my only job is to train that person up to quantitatively what metrics they should be hitting, but also qualitatively, like, I should know what a really good sales call sounds like, and I'm trying to close the gap from where they are to where they need to be.
42:51It's very, very simple. And then I need to make sure that they're paid well, that I'm supporting them both in their work and emotionally, and that they're not churning and they're not quitting.
43:00Right? So that's and I need to recruit people too. So that's recruit, train, manage, hire, etcetera.
43:04So really, you're just trying to bring up this efficiency of the front lines. And you need to learn management and leadership, which again is just recruiting, ramping, ongoing training, and management.
43:15That's all it is. It's very simple, but it's tough because a lot of people have a lot of emotions and things that block them, and they don't know how to give people feedback.
43:24They're either too direct, or a lot of people are just a pendulum swing. Super passive. You know passive aggressive people?
43:30It's like the nice guy in dating. Right? It's like, he's super passive, rollover, rollover.
43:35But then when he finally tries to stand up for himself, he does it in, the most, like, psycho aggressive way possible. He just, like, goes crazy. You know?
43:43No. It's like you just need to be in a healthy way to where you have clear boundaries. You're setting clear boundaries for other people.
43:49You're setting clear expectations. You're holding them accountable to not just your values in the company, but their expectations are when you guys agreed to work to work together. Yeah.
43:57Right? That's really what leadership is. And a lot of times, I think people need to go through therapy to actually not learn leadership, but to get rid of a lot of the emotional triggering to be able to have better interpersonal relations.
44:09As a society, we are fucked with interpersonal relations. Like, we are terrible at communications with as a society in general, with our spouse, our family, our in laws, our parents, our employees.
44:23Because, like, really, employees are, like, kind of a there's a family dynamic there whether you really like it or not. Mhmm.
44:30You know? They have to be your friends. Yeah.
44:31You have to like Well, they have to be your friends. They look up to you as a mentor. They're gonna project onto you how they felt about their bigger brother, or their dad, or their mom, or this other person.
44:40Like, a lot of that stuff happens. So you need to be able to communicate with people in a way that essentially is just very healthy, good communication.
44:48But really to do that, it's more removal before addition. Because you have to remove all this emotional triggering and bullshit that you have to be able to actually have healthy communication and leadership, etcetera, you know?
45:02Did you go to therapy during that period of time? Well, no. I mean, I was able to pick it up naturally pretty well because I worked I keep going back to this, which is why it's really important.
45:12Because I had experience in a really great company that I came on at $3,400 a month. I left when they were doing, let's say, 1 to 1,500,000 a month, which at the time was, like, really big in our industry. That had not been done too much.
45:24And so throughout that, I learned through Rosmosis really how departments are run, training, managing, somewhat of hiring, leadership.
45:33Like, I kind of knew that stuff. So I was able to model what I learned there leadership wise when I first started my company. Now, the thing was is when I first started, I was insanely intense.
45:43Right? So I was insanely high standard and demanding, just very brutal, and demanding a performance.
45:51If you think of Jensen Jensen Huang from Nvidia, he talks about tormenting people into greatness. I mean, that's for sure what I was doing. Like, I did not care how you felt.
45:59I was just, like, pissed that you just weren't as good as me every sick second of the day. Now, that can actually work if you have a massive vision like you're going to Mars.
46:09Mhmm. You know, SpaceX, Elon Musk. Like, he kinda has a very intense direct leadership style as well.
46:15For most of us, that's just gonna burn your people out, and then they're gonna be like, why am I even putting up with this? Whereas, like, in SpaceX, they're like, oh, why am I putting up with this? Yeah.
46:24Because we're going to Mars. I'm changing the world. That's why that big mission is and when you see people like Steve Jobs and Musk, these people with really, a lot of people will call brutal management styles Mhmm.
46:36It works because the mission is so important. Right? Because burnout really comes It's not like a physical kind of thing, like I think how most people think it is.
46:45It can be. But a big part of it is emotional to where, essentially, people just wake up one day, and they're like, why am I even doing this?
46:53Yeah. You know? And so, look, if you don't have Google's mission of organizing the entire world's information, then that stuff's probably not gonna work for you.
47:03And arguably, I don't know, I'm not a billion dollar founder, but maybe there's a better way to actually manage people that doesn't require that. I don't know.
47:11That's beyond my pay grade. But for me, I was extremely intense like that in the beginning.
47:16What I kinda learned this just the hard way, just through exhaustion, because you can only be like that for so long. I started to really kinda smooth out my edges. And then through some good coaching, it's not really therapy, but it kind of is coaching on interpersonal relations and your emotions attached to that and how that affects decision making.
47:33I have a really good coach for that. I was able to really smooth out some of these edges. And what's nice is is where you wanna be is not necessarily passive.
47:42You wanna be very clear with what your boundaries are, what boundaries are being set, what expectations are being set, and direct in a very non triggering way.
47:52So if you've seen that guy, Will Gadera, who was the inspiration of the movie Bear or the show Bear, and he wrote that book on Reasonable Hospitality.
48:03He has an interview, and it's the best example I've seen of this, where he gives people feedback very directly, and it's very nuanced and very detailed. But the key is, is he says it with extremely neutral emotions.
48:19Mhmm. You know? So, like, I forget the exact example, but he's like, yeah, know, when you're He's like, next time when you're, I I can't do it.
48:26It's like, it's something about there was a server, and he was, like, very particular about how they even walked out to the table. You know?
48:32But the way you deliver the feedback is very, very key. It has to be neutral.
48:38And you also have to frame it in their own best interest so they can get to where they wanna go. I went to 1,000,005 a month, 2,000,000 a month plus with that tormenting people and the greatness
48:51a sales.
48:52That's the same I old kinda traded, treated every department like a sales team, which isn't the worst thing in the world. But it just wasn't necessary, I would say, and it's because I didn't know how to do anything better.
49:03I've talked to people that have worked for you.
49:05And everyone almost talks about it as if it was this military experience.
49:10It's almost like Delta,
49:12like SEAL Team. Well, it depends on the era and which they worked.
49:16Mean, it's very early, then yeah. But even now, it's very demanding.
49:21It's just not I don't wanna say we were toxic before, but, like, if toxic was here, we were maybe, you know, here.
49:30Like, we we we were I was very intense, and stuff was not delivered in a very emotionally mature way. But that doesn't mean that if you remove that, and you start delivering stuff in a healthy way, that it doesn't become high performing.
49:45And in fact, I would argue, especially with a company like this, doing it that way increases performance. Mhmm.
49:53You know? And increases longevity, which insanely increases performance.
49:59There's nothing that kills your fucking company more, especially a service company, than churn. It sucks. People churn.
50:05Individual It team sucks. No.
50:07Not involuntary churn where you're firing people. That might just be like leveling up the team.
50:13That's fine. Voluntary churn Mhmm. Where you're losing your best people.
50:16Mhmm. You know? And sometimes it makes sense for some people to leave.
50:20Sometimes it doesn't, and they still wanna do it anyways and try it, and maybe they come back. Because I don't view relationships as linear.
50:27We did this thing, now we're not doing this thing. I'm 33, you know.
50:32Some of my employees are 28, 27. I view relationships like this. So essentially, we might do something together for a little bit, then you go off on your own thing, I go off on my own thing, then we converge, and we might be 47.
50:47And then next thing you know, I don't even know, you used to work for me, now we're business partners, or I'm investing in your company. What benefits me out of burning a bridge or getting pissed?
50:59You're dealing with a lot of egos too, especially in this in this space. How do you keep your talent that is those like, there's the all star all star players, they're great, and you're saying, like, there's nothing that kills a company more than
51:11great people leaving. How do you keep great people? Three things.
51:15Number one is you pay them a lot. K. Number two, and when you pay them a lot, to expand on that, it needs to be overcompetitive, obviously, or kind of overpaying for other positions within that industry.
51:31Right? So you wanna pay top dollar. The other thing is is you need to think of that person's alternatives with their skills.
51:40So if this person with their skills could easily do x, which is starting a business, could easily maybe work for this other company doing y, You need to weigh those alternatives and make sure the pay is high enough that those things aren't necessarily wins or there may be unnecessary risks for them to take.
52:00Right? So pay. Okay?
52:02That's big. And a lot of times, it means paying your great people a lot, but you should feel good about that. Like, I feel good about paying wages.
52:09You know, there's like a big affordability issue or whatever right now. Like, a big part of that is just increasing wages. I like, like, I would rather pay my people than pay the government.
52:18Yeah. So I'm all about, like, I'd rather overpay on people. It's a, you know, it's a write off on taxes anyways.
52:23Yeah. Pay your people well. Number two is, every single person, you would know this if you have a recruiting business or you do a lot of interviews, one of the biggest reasons they'll leave and they'll say they're looking for a new thing is what?
52:35They'll say, well, I don't feel like I'm growing anymore. So here's the thing. As a manager, what you wanna do essentially is everybody's starting, you know, their skill set might be right here.
52:47You always wanna show them the gap between where they could be. And and it can be very tough with your best people because you're like, man, I just wish everybody on the team was like you.
52:57But still, if you double click into your best people enough, there's thing you can point out essentially to be like, look, you are the best person, best performer on the team. But you wanna grow.
53:09Right? And I know that it's tough because nobody else from this side is motivating you, but I see a version of you that looks like this. Mhmm.
53:17Where you're doing behavior x y and z. And what I wanna know is, do you wanna get there or not? Because if you do, I wanna help you do that.
53:27So even with your best people, you wanna consistently expand the gap.
53:32You need to have them chasing a further ideal version of themself. That might mean sometimes expanding their position and responsibilities. Sometimes it might not.
53:42That's number two. Number three is ultimately the culture and the team feeling. Mhmm.
53:46So if your team is fun, if there's really positive relationships, if they feel like that culture is high performance and it motivates them to compete and do better, a lot of people will come back just for that.
53:58That's very, very key. Let's see.
54:02And you, what was the mistake you made after you hit that million dollars a month?
54:09The main mistake that I made was I scaled very fast, which has its pros and cons.
54:17I don't regret it. But once I in January 2023, we entered into the year doing about 3,900,000 a month cash, And we did, like, 3.8, 3.9, 3.97, all the way through, like, May or June that year.
54:36And, I mean, you gotta think, like, just three years ago, we were at zero, basically.
54:41We're, like, 100 k a month. So that's a pretty crazy growth rate. And we were insanely profitable.
54:46Insane. And I was not happy.
54:51I was not content. I was very ungrateful. Not at my team, but just at myself and at the world.
54:56Why? I just felt like I deserved so much more. It's a black hole.
55:01So anyways.
55:03Well, actually, wanna I wanna ask on that. Yeah. Can I ask on that?
55:05Yeah. Like, who are you looking at that made you decide that?
55:10It's hard to say.
55:13I would look at a lot of people. I was very obsessed with a 100,000,000. And I would look at a lot of people, you know, we all look at Hermoji.
55:23We look at these other other, you know, people in tech. And I was mad that I wasn't getting the recognition from, let's say you know, our industry doesn't get traditional business recognition, kinda like tech does.
55:37And honestly, now I understand why that isn't all I really have much of an issue with it, but that pissed me off at the time. The second thing that pissed me off was I just felt like I was capable of doing those level of numbers, and I didn't have a clear path to get there.
55:52I think it was less about it wasn't that I felt like I needed to be there right then. It was that I was a little upset that I didn't feel like I was in the right opportunity vehicle to get there. I've I've I've hence I've since learned that's just a big sack of bullshit.
56:07Right? Like, my opportunity vehicle could do. There's billion dollar recruiting companies, buddy.
56:12So I'll I'll tell you an example. I went to Patrick in '20 this is 2024.
56:18I went to Patrick Patrick at David's office, and I did a one on one with him. I paid a $150. And the main thing I wanted to figure out was how to go from 40,000,000 to a $102,100,000,000, or a billion dollar company.
56:31And I'm like, dude, well, I I'm going through this whole explanation. I was like, I'm just not in the right opportunity vehicle.
56:38Like, what do you think? Should I should I get into this medical should I commit more to this medical business? Should I start a medical spa type chain thing?
56:45Because you had a Should do tech? Private equity. Right?
56:47You had a Well, that's yeah. But I'd already shut that down by this point. So I was like, what should I do?
56:51Because I'm I I don't feel like I'm in the right opportunity vehicle, and I need I need to get in a better opportunity vehicle to to be able to scale and, like, really just keep growing this. And he just looked at me like, I mean, at first, was just confused.
57:06And then he's like, all of a sudden, kinda looked at me like I was stupid. And then he was like, well, this recruiting company does a billion dollars.
57:17This recruiting company did, like, 6,700,000,000 this year. This recruiting company did a billion.
57:23This recruiting company did a billion. And he's like, goo, how many companies did over a 100,000,000 in recruiting last year? And it's like a bunch.
57:30And he's like, so but what do you say? He's like and he wasn't even trying to be mean.
57:35He was just like, so what are you saying? And I just was like, oh, point taken. And since then, that's when I actually realized there's no reason this business can't scale.
57:49Is it maybe as easy to scale as, let's say, a software company or something like that? Maybe not. But there's no reason it can't, and it's a very good profitable business.
57:57It works as a platform for other businesses too. So that was one of the main lessons I had from him.
58:03But that was the funniest thing. As I drove home, and I was like, man, the biggest takeaway was simply just his confusion. And just like, what?
58:12But the big mistake was is we had so much momentum going into 2023. There was really nothing wrong. We were doing so well, and we just overextended into all this new stuff.
58:23And we really needed more leaders in the organization who could have taken on some of these roles, and it could have worked in terms of not overextending our organization too much. That was the big mistake.
58:34And it really because then what happened was when I came back into the one company, it was the first time in five years or four years that I just had one company. So I had so much energy.
58:45I wanted to change this, change that, change this, change that, do this. And ultimately, I just implemented way too much shit at once.
58:52Mhmm. Very few of those things worked. They the plan sounded really good, but it just wasn't smart.
58:57I just went through this whole thing of basically a year of, like, trying to implement all this stuff, spending way too much money, and then kind of, like, getting to, what was it, May or April.
59:10That would have been March, April of of twenty twenty five. And then that's when I was like, okay. Let's just double down on what's working within the b to b sales recruiting company and just cut all these initiatives that aren't working.
59:20And then since we've done that, lo and behold, you just focus on one thing. It's grown tremendously.
59:25Like, now we have tons of momentum with that company. Mhmm. And we have a really good 9 figure vision for it too.
59:30Something that sounds like you've identified,
59:32like, at what point was it that you said, okay, if I if I would lead this team with a heavy fist, like, where did that come in? Because you said that was about two years ago.
59:40Well, I think the number one thing that helped me was meeting my fiance,
59:43because I think that just softened my life out a little bit. It just, like, relieved some of the darkness, to put it that way.
59:51That's what my team thinks too, and they're probably right. So they love it. I just think that I I wasn't in like, I think if you
1:00:00Leave me by myself. I'm naturally an angry person. Not in the way where I'm like, you know, like a crazy person or anything.
1:00:07But it's just like a silent kind of like subtle anger. So she really helped that. Then, I mean, I started working with a coach that brought down a lot of this emotional triggering that you have from when you grow up and all this stuff, and he's really good at applying it to interpersonal relationships with your team.
1:00:26He works with people in the Trump administration. He works with people who sold their company for like $500,000,000. He's he's a beast.
1:00:33He's really, really good. Mhmm. So those are the two things that I think helped that.
1:00:39Did you find that you were anxious in that season? Like, is your anxiety now different than it was then? It's not as bad,
1:00:45but it's still there. Like, I still can catch myself catastrophizing things at times or being like, fuck, and we we had a low sales day to day or but it's much better than it was.
1:00:58But I just have so much reference experience and history of, like, most things over the scope of a long time period aren't that big of a deal.
1:01:08Mhmm. And so I just try not to blow those things out of proportion.
1:01:11What's the difference at in in that season and, I guess, closer to now versus when you were bartending? Because you were saying that you coped with drugs and alcohol while you were before you were rich, and then you shifted all that energy into the development and personal development.
1:01:27Is it still as aggressive where your cope is still work?
1:01:31No. I mean, I would say, you know, a lot of men, especially, when they start something like a business, they kinda have a black hole they're trying to fill or something they're trying to way oh, run away from.
1:01:44I would say now, and that's kinda how I we've already talked about that. I would say now, I don't think you can ever completely heal kind of like your nature.
1:01:55Mhmm. Does that make sense? Mhmm.
1:01:57But it's much more . So it's always still gonna be there, but my ability to manage it and get back to more of like a normal empathetic state, a more emotional state, is much much better.
1:02:16Right? But that nature's still there to a degree. Mhmm.
1:02:19But I'm able to regulate that much better. So this is something that's really important to understand because a lot of people, if they do like coaching or some sort of therapy on whatever childhood stuff or whatever's going on, they fear that, well, I know I'm kinda fucked up, but that fucked upness got me to x amount of dollars, making a year, you know, some sort of income success.
1:02:44Yeah. And they're afraid that if they heal that, so to speak, they'll lose the drive or the edge for their competitive greatness.
1:02:53What I have learned is there's no fucking way that's gonna happen. You can't just, it doesn't To give you a visual example, you can't just purge all of that out. It can get smoothed over, but fundamentally, it's very unlikely you'll ever change sort of your natural posture in nature.
1:03:11Right? The only way that would happen to where you went through something, some crazy experience, and then you realize, like, I don't even wanna do my business. I'm not even gonna do this.
1:03:18I'm not gonna I'm gonna go live on the beach and do this and that is essentially if deep down, in my opinion, you never wanna do it in the first place, and you were doing it actually for somebody else's reasons, but you would know that deep down even before doing the work.
1:03:35I think the only exception is, this could be a wild card, is people who do crazy ayahuasca and drugs and stuff, I think that can maybe, like, fuck you up somehow. Yeah. I don't know.
1:03:44I've seen people and I'm not against that stuff, but I've seen people seemingly go way off the rails with that shit.
1:03:54And I think those people have a lot of demons. Yeah. I've also seen people I mean, Jay Paul's into it.
1:04:00Fuck. If I gotta do Ayahuasca to have his level of success, sign me up, man. I'll be there next week.
1:04:05You gotta box some people. You gotta get I mean, he's crushing it.
1:04:08He invested into, like, OpenAI and all these amazing other companies. He launched helped them launch Sora. I mean Yeah.
1:04:14He's crushing it, but and he's into it. So I'm not saying that if you do it, therefore, you're not gonna be successful. But there is some sort of, like I've seen some people do go down that route, and then you're like,
1:04:27what's going on with you, dude? Yeah. Like, what are you doing?
1:04:29For you, I mean, I met your parents last night. A lot of guys, like, it is a core thing with their parents, like, in terms of the business and the drive. It seems like you came from a very balanced and nice background.
1:04:39Like, wasn't It's not like you had this trauma, I don't wanna assume, doesn't sound like you had this trauma where it's like, my dad was an awful man, he wasn't in my life. Yeah.
1:04:47People over so that's not what it's about. You have to realize
1:04:50your interpersonal relationship with your parents as you grow up, it doesn't have to be traumatic to where your dad, you know, left you in the fucking closet or some shit. Yeah.
1:04:59Right? Just based on, you know, your interpersonal relationship with your parents, that molds how later you'll kinda interact with the world.
1:05:09And sometimes, it molds it in ways it doesn't serve you.
1:05:13It doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't great parents, or they didn't do everything right. I mean, sometimes it's okay, could have done this better, or that better, or they shouldn't have done this, but they're human beings.
1:05:22Like, we're all gonna be mistakes. That black hole come from then? Well, I think most of it came from not getting recognition from girls in high school and being very lost in that, and then feeling like I needed to prove myself and feeling like money was a way to increase my worth to be able to be seen.
1:05:46But then I got a bunch of money, and I realized it doesn't it doesn't help that much. So so then that was, like, kind of the second evolution where that was and and that's a way where sometimes just going after the thing Yeah. Like, kind of entering into the matrix is almost the best way to just learn the real lesson.
1:06:03They call that the unteachable lesson. And so that actually really helped because then you're like, okay, yeah, it doesn't it doesn't help. And in fact, it makes it weird.
1:06:11Yeah. In each of these phases, the thing you're trying to like, you've been obsessed with status
1:06:16on multiple levels. Not obsessive, but even when you went to college, you went to a smaller college, and then you said, I'm not getting the right experience.
1:06:25This isn't the group of people. This isn't the college experience I want. Wanna transfer this other.
1:06:28Oh, yeah, you're right. Yes. Yeah.
1:06:29And then when you transferred to that college, you identified, okay, the people that I wanna be around, the social life I wanna build, it requires me to do this and live this lifestyle because those are the coolest people here. And then I don't even just wanna just do that. I wanna be able to do that and get straight As, so I get the respect of the people that are not living this lifestyle.
1:06:50Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then on top of that, I wanna go to the bar scene because there's a social hierarchy Yeah. And I can navigate Oh, the social I was obsessed with status, but that was because of that pain.
1:07:00Yeah. This is level four. At level four, the thing I think is this is where I think we there's higher level insight that you might have on culture and establishing from a leadership perspective, like how to lead a team that's doing 8 figures regularly.
1:07:17So you're you're we're past the point of you have an established team. You have an established system.
1:07:23You have a money model. And it sounds like, you know, have to overcome so many things as an individual to be able to scale that aggressively.
1:07:33What are some things that you've learned, and what are some things that you've been taught by people that are doing nine figures about the things to not miss, the things to get really right when you're doing eight figures?
1:07:44Well, to rewrite what we talked about, stage three is where you're the manager, and you're managing all the front lines. So that can get you to, like it depends on your unit economics, but that can get you from anywhere from, let's say, 600 to sometimes 1,000,000 a month plus, but let's just call it 600 to 1,000,000 a month.
1:08:02Then stage four is really you have to become the managers of managers, which is pretty tough.
1:08:09Because then, it's not about recruiting and hiring and training and managing the teams. It's about recruiting, training training and hiring the managers of the teams, or promoting certain people internally and then transferring the skill of management to them.
1:08:23Yeah. So their job is now what your job used to be, which is how to actually get the front lines to perform at that high level of standard.
1:08:32Right? So your job is to translate to them, number one, what that level of standard actually is. So their level of standard might be, in their mind, a 10 out of 10, but it might be, for you, a seven out of 10.
1:08:46And then they're training their people to get to a really a seven out of 10, so their people only get into a five to six out of 10. So you can see how more layers of management you add over time decrease the level of the front lines.
1:08:57Does that make sense? Yeah. Because it gets further away usually from the founder.
1:09:01Now, it doesn't have to be that way if you hire phenomenal, great people, and you train them and alleviate those blind spots so they actually understand what a high level of training is the right way. So a big part of that is number one, helping them see by working with them what a high standard of performance actually looks like, and then helping them train their skills better on how to train their team up to that level of standard performance.
1:09:24Those are the only two things you have to do. The biggest piece of advice I can say on doing that is two things. Number one, if it's something you if it's a department you're really good at, like, I'm naturally, the nice thing about my business is I can do any role in the business, pretty much for the most part.
1:09:38So I was able to promote internally with a lot of these people very, very well, opposed to hire from the outside. So I was able to kind of, again, volume knob, not a light switch, gradually train these people into leadership.
1:09:53Okay? But then the other thing that's very key is just getting really good people and hiring those people in, whether it's from the outside or you kind of start them low and promote them internally. Yeah.
1:10:03And if you just overpay for a phenomenal manager, it makes a massive difference.
1:10:09So I'll give you give you an example. I had a very tough time finding a CMO for a long time. And the reason I had a tough time is I had this preconceived notion that 20 to 25 k a month was where I wanted to start that person.
1:10:25And then what I realized is is to get the person I really needed, I had to be able to go 35 to 50 k a month. You know?
1:10:34And that opened me up to this whole other tier Mhmm. Of people.
1:10:38Does that make sense? Yeah. Because again, you have to look at one of the big things we talked about with comp, was not just overpaying based on their kind of market rate, but also looking at what else they could do with their time personally.
1:10:54And the thing is, in our industry, if you're really good at marketing, you can probably run a business. Yeah. Because that's one of the biggest skills, it's a demand constrained business.
1:11:03So you have to pay enough to make it interesting enough for them to be able to wanna work for you, if you're gonna get somebody really good. So that's an example, and to be honest, just having phenomenal talent makes management way easier.
1:11:16Because you're more managing the person, not having to micromanage, like, their little actions and everything they have to do, if that makes sense. How do you change yourself from being a micromanager to being an executive?
1:11:27Well, you just hire better people. Like, mean, I know I I literally just said it, but it's the biggest thing is is I've learned this lesson so many times to where we've tried to create new systems and new processes and new playbooks and new training, and then it's like beating the training into the people again and again and again, and maybe some of those people level up after six months.
1:11:51Oftentimes, it's just we keep doing this again and again and again and again. Then finally, we're just like, you know what?
1:11:57If we just increase the pay of this position by 20%, oftentimes, that opens you up to an entirely different suite of people.
1:12:06And then those people come in, and it takes your training resources down by 75%. Mhmm. And so it's just so much better of an ROI.
1:12:14And a lot of times, the capacity of those people is higher. Yeah. Because each individual tasked or assigned is less cognitively demanding.
1:12:21They can get it done faster, and therefore, they have higher capacity, which means you need less people. There's been times we've just raised the pay of the entire department, cut the bottom 20%. We end up paying less in the department and having higher performance.
1:12:35So really, I like the smallest amount of team possible that's very high level, very well paid, and just very, very efficient.
1:12:45So it's kind of like how, you know, how does Jensen Huang from Nvidia have 60 direct reports?
1:12:5460. Well, there's certain management things he does in the systems, but one of the biz biggest things, and a lot of this is I'm not gonna have 60 direct reports, but he can pull this off because, again, the vision of NVIDIA is so big, and it's the most valuable company in the world right now. It's at the center of AI.
1:13:10He can attract, though, those 60 people are, like, world class people. So does he need to teach them how to, like, run a one on one?
1:13:19No. Like, they know already know how to do all that stuff. So he's more just letting them cook, and then he has some communication systems he does to very to kinda stay in sync with them without having to do a bunch of meetings.
1:13:33Does it make sense? Profitability is the most important thing because that gives you the leverage to be able to do this. Yeah.
1:13:39What
1:13:40what's what's a realistic profit margin that people should chase? For like a service business? Yeah.
1:13:45I mean, it it highly depends on the type of business and what you're doing. I mean Let's say this 8 figure not really interested in any service business unless I had extreme amounts of scalability.
1:13:57I'm not really interested in most service businesses that are under, you know, 35 to 50% profit. I mean, as you get bigger, your profit's gonna go down.
1:14:06It's just how kinda how it is. But, um, especially from the 0 to a million or million 5 a month range, as long as you're working pretty hard in the company I mean, if you remove yourself super early, your profit's gonna go down. But I worked very hard in the company for a long time.
1:14:18Your profit can stay above 40 or 50 pretty well. Now it depends. Like, other businesses are much more scalable.
1:14:25So, like, home services is a massively scalable business. Yeah. And, again, I'm not saying mine's not, but that's like a because you can expand geographically very quickly.
1:14:33And so those businesses, it'd be okay to have a little bit less margin per se because you know there's more scalability in the long run.
1:14:41Yeah.
1:14:44The talent acquisition piece, that makes a lot of sense to me. The the making sure that you're hiring the best.
1:14:52I think a lot of people probably have numbers in their mind when you said something like that, that they thought, okay. I want this person.
1:14:58I think I need to pay them this much, and then you just broke their brain and said, okay. I need to pay them 15 to 20% more. For you as the founder,
1:15:07how much do you want to work? Are you the type of person that you're like, I do wanna still work sixty hours a week? It's very simple.
1:15:14I don't even think about for me how many hours am I working a week, how much do I wanna work. All I think about is what is my goal?
1:15:24What are we driving towards? What are the things that need to happen for me to get to that goal? And, okay, where can I put my time that's the most highest leverage towards the small things that get to that goal or the big projects that get to that goal?
1:15:38And, also, what are the things that I need to get to that goal that I don't have to do and I could delegate and I could actually focus my time on the higher leverage stuff? So for me, where I spend a lot of my time is strategy, management of executives, content, because it's something I, obviously, I only can do.
1:15:58The overarching like, if we launch, like, a new funnel campaign, that type of thing, I'll film that, write that, and then the team can do creatives off the back of that.
1:16:07I don't have to do ongoing creatives as much. But the strategy and kind of initial implementation of that, and then just high level decision making.
1:16:15Yeah. Right? So those are my things.
1:16:16But I can also think about that and also, over time, start to delegate some of those. But right now, those are kind of the highest level things.
1:16:23Yeah. And so those are the things I focus on. So I just think about where can I spend my time in the company that's going to drive us as fast as possible to that goal?
1:16:32So in other words, think about it this way. Like Elon Musk goes, he has all these companies. Right?
1:16:35And he's famously known for he goes to each company, he flies at each office, and he's like, what's the constraint? He just goes right in, drills in, fixes the constraint, and just moves on. That's kinda how you wanna operate.
1:16:46So I'm thinking, what's the one thing or what's the constraint that if fixed would increase the flow of my company into the system in forms of revenue and profit as much as possible? And that's where I put the priority of my attention.
1:16:58How
1:16:59often are you saying no to yourself? I feel like if you're someone that's driven, you probably can identify, hey, that seems like a constraint to me. I wanna fix that.
1:17:06How often are you saying like, no, I'm not gonna fix that because that's not the right
1:17:10constraint to fix your Well, not necessarily saying yes or no to certain constraint. It's like, is it the constraint or not?
1:17:17So I just need to identify, is it the actual constraint, or is it up there?
1:17:23Like, is it very important that it would contribute? Or if it's less important, then I'm just not gonna do it, I'm gonna delegate it. Yeah.
1:17:30Do you feel like that comes easily to you?
1:17:33Yeah. I I I think that yes, and it's easy to deceive yourself.
1:17:40Because I tell my AMs this. Most clients, and most people in general, they're not stuck because they know what the problem is, and they don't know how to fix it.
1:17:51They're usually stuck because they don't know what the problem is, or they're trying to fix the wrong problem.
1:17:57Right? So it's really clarity. The more clarity you have, the easier the execution becomes as a byproduct.
1:18:07The clearer you are on actually what the problem is, the more you know what the solution is. It's just kind of common sense.
1:18:13It comes naturally. Or you can figure out the resources or figure out what it you know, who you need to talk to to figure out the solution. But the hard part is identifying the actual problem.
1:18:22So I would be lying to you if I said that I always know what the problem and the constraint is. Like, sometimes I fuck that shit up.
1:18:29But through looking at the numbers, through trying to look at things objectively, I can try to find that each time. And also talking with the executives and seeing what they feel like it is.
1:18:39But, you know, when I came back into the company in 2024 after running three companies, I misdiagnosed the constraint big time.
1:18:48What was the constraint that you thought? What I thought we needed to do was launch more profit divisions.
1:18:55What we really needed to do was blast our current funnel with more creatives, scale the sales team, spend more on ads, scale scale our fulfillment team, and then also increase the rev at that time, the revenue generated from the fulfillment team by changing their incentive incentivization and changing their comp.
1:19:17That's a little bit tactical to get into, but there's a little issue there that we had to fix. And I didn't fix that actually until, like, eight months later. That was a major thing.
1:19:24Those were, like, the only things I had to do. Instead, I did nine very distracted, stupid things.
1:19:31Mhmm. Which seemed smart at the time. That's the issue.
1:19:34I can sell myself. Because you came in from a private equity, I'm going wide. Well, I came in from this idea The one thing that worked really well with the medical company was that we had three different profit divisions all driving revenue at once.
1:19:45And I I like that model. I think that's great. And we will revisit that later.
1:19:50However, I just tried to jam that down into our company's throat Mhmm. When we really didn't need to do that to even double the company. Like, could've just doubled the company by just doing more and better what we were already doing.
1:20:03Yeah. And I just misdiagnosed that, but I also was so motivated because I had, the first time, I had all my energy just to go into one company, so I just launched a bunch of new shit.
1:20:12How often is that the case, that you just need to do more and better? Most cases. How do you find people that you feel comfortable with them saying no to you, and you trust them?
1:20:24Well, you hire really good people, because those people have strong ideology. So I'll give you an example.
1:20:32I hired the social media people I have now, including you, because if I have a lot of opinions, and I also am, like, very deep into my own content.
1:20:45And so I need somebody to be able to be like, they have a strong ideology, and they're like, no, you're wrong.
1:20:52This is what we need to do. Right? And that doesn't mean I'm always just gonna roll over and listen every single time, but if I don't have that, and somebody just rolls over because they're people pleasing, it's just not gonna work long term So I wanna look for that in certain areas.
1:21:08Now, in other areas, like in sales, I have a very strong ideology, and I know that ideology works.
1:21:15That ideology has generated a lot of revenue. And I'm pretty sure there's very few people, I believe, that from I'm not gonna sit here. I've never really tried to be the best sales guy or sales trainer.
1:21:25I don't really care about that, but I do care about creating systems that make the most money. Yeah. And there's very few other trainers out there that I think have done it as well as I have outside of the few that have crushed me on social media.
1:21:36Those are the only people I can really point to. Outside of that, if you look at ads ads to cold traffic sales teams, I mean, not many people, I think, do it as well as me and as profitably as me.
1:21:50So that's a area of ideology that I have that like, I don't want somebody to come in and try to implement their own ideology.
1:21:57Like, you know, like, my shit works. But in other things I'm launching that are new, I might not be the expert in that, so I need to have somebody with a strong ideology and vision of how this shit works, and then I can learn from them.
1:22:11And the thing is, if you hire there there's kinda two hire executive type of hires you can make. The first one is they're coming in to run your system, right, because you already know what to do.
1:22:21But what do you do when you're hiring an apartment leader, like a CTO, and you're not the technical founder, you don't know the technical stuff? Well, the key thing to know you're making the right hire is that you are actually getting taught and learning along the way.
1:22:35Right? If you're not learning and understanding, okay, here's what they're doing, here's why they're doing it, it's all coming from a clear ideology that they have, that person's probably not very good. I just wanna run into it.
1:22:45So let's just say this is this is level five.
1:22:49And at this level, we're talking about trying to become a billion dollar company. How are you casting that vision for your team? What's the difference between being a really successful multi 8 figure company and scaling that aggressively to being 9 figures?
1:23:02Well, if I knew the exact answer,
1:23:05I would be at 9 figures. So I'm gonna speak in hypotheticals of what I'm doing received a lot of coaching on it too. Yeah.
1:23:11I wanna talk in hypotheticals of what I'm doing now. So I think the most helpful thing is to look at, in your industry, what other companies indirectly or even directly are like your company that are at that level, and what are they doing?
1:23:25So you kinda have to survey a lot of other people who are bigger than you are. Right?
1:23:30Now if you're the biggest person, I don't know. You're gonna have to come up with a vision yourself.
1:23:35I guess that's a separate topic, but that's what I did. Because, I mean, I really looked at a lot of these other bigger companies kind of in the info industry and then in in the traditional recruiting industry because we're kind of, like, in the middle Yeah. As of now.
1:23:45So traditional recruiting and info. Info, I really couldn't find any models that made sense because most of them that are getting really big in the nine figures are b to c.
1:23:54There's also a lot of, like, regulatory stuff that becomes hard in info at that level Yeah. Unless you're extremely famous. But recruiting, tons of nine figure stuff.
1:24:03So I pulled essentially from what's working really well right there.
1:24:09And then once I really kinda figured that out, I'm gonna model some of that, but then also look at how can I do that uniquely different?
1:24:18Yeah. So I'll give you an example. When I looked at 9 figure recruiting companies versus our companies or our our company, so we're doing, let's say, 30 mil in just our recruiting.
1:24:29And we do more with the b to c, but 30 mil with the recruiting and then a 100,000,000 recruiting company. The difference in clients, we have 800 to 900 active clients.
1:24:42The average 9 figure company has, like, 400. So what do you think the problem is?
1:24:47It's just unit economics. Right? They're working with bigger people and bigger contracts.
1:24:51So, okay, how can I apply that to our business? I wanna I wanna make sure I'm clear on this. I'm thinking about companies like like Randstad.
1:24:58Is that is that kind of a reference point? Yeah. Think a very big one.
1:25:01I haven't looked too much into them, but I think they're I don't know how big they are. But Korn Ferry, that's billion dollar type of companies.
1:25:09That's even next level. That's almost a little bit too hard to look at, even though you should look at it, because it's almost like you're doing 10 k a month, and then you're looking at what I'm doing at $30,000,000 a year.
1:25:20Yeah. Right? So I looked at kinda like companies that were like a 100 to 200.
1:25:24Okay. What are they doing? The biggest difference was that they were in different industries than I was in and union economics.
1:25:31So then I'm like, okay. How can I model that? How can I also do it a little bit differently?
1:25:35So the big thing that we're doing is we're going up market a little bit. We don't need to go enterprise, but we need to go mid market. And then we need to change our pricing model a little bit.
1:25:43But then also, how are we doing it differently? Well, we work way faster and way more high performance than normal recruiters because a lot of our recruiters are salespeople.
1:25:51Then also, no recruiters run ads. And no recruiters really know how to tap in the markets that way and do sales like we do it.
1:25:57Mhmm. So that's kinda how I'm entering into that market on the sales recruiting side. Then after we launch that initiative, we're gonna go into other markets.
1:26:07And so my assumption I made for a long time is I thought of us more we're a sales training and recruiting company as of right now. I kinda put sales training here and recruiting here in terms of identity.
1:26:19Not importance, but identity. So I'm like, we're sales first. And I never really thought I never challenged the assumption that we've created a really great, unique recruiting model.
1:26:31And is this industry the best opportunity vehicle for us to be in? So this is more of a two, three, four year vision, but what I wanna do is look at first principles of what markets would be best to enter.
1:26:44Their clients are accessible with ads. We can deliver with our current recruiting team or with a few key hires, and then they also have repeated volume in terms of hiring needs.
1:26:54So we don't wanna do, like, executive headhunting. We wanna do something where you need a lot of people. So sales does fall into that category, but there's other ones like home service techs that fall under that category.
1:27:02And then, okay, how can we create another profit division that essentially attacks that market and then diversifies our client base so we can actually now become more of a recruiting conglomerate? Mhmm.
1:27:14And one of that conglomerate is the sales training recruiting consulting company. But then we also maybe have health care, home service, and trades, for instance, like electricians.
1:27:24So that would be like the long term vision because that's much, much more of an $102,103 $100,000,000 vision when you have these multiple profit divisions. But the key is I'm not gonna launch all that all at once.
1:27:34Yeah. What I did before is I launched five different initiatives all at once. It was completely lackluster.
1:27:39What we're really doing is we're gonna continue 70% of our effort this year, focusing on doing what we've been doing and just doing it better. There's a few things that we have to do just to scale what we're currently doing that will just double the company over time.
1:27:53So we might as well just do that. 20 to 30% of our effort is gonna go into launching just one of these new initiatives this year. And then just trying to get that to the point where it has clear leadership, somebody who I can depend on and without a lot of effort from me can grow that individually, then we'll let that grow.
1:28:11Yeah. And then I'll move on to the next one. But I just can't go too fast with these things.
1:28:16Because if you How are you identifying what's too fast, what's not too fast? Well, usually You're on a chaotic lead.
1:28:24Usually, would say more than two big initiatives is probably too much. Like, two big ones.
1:28:31So for us, initiative number one is just continue to spend more on ads, do more creatives, launch some new marketing, hire more salespeople.
1:28:40Wait. Yeah. That's really it.
1:28:42Yeah. We'll double the company. Initiative number two is this upmarket initiative for the sales recruiting side.
1:28:46Yeah. Right? That's pretty much as much as I'm comfortable doing right now.
1:28:50I can do both of those. Right? And then a lot of times, I mean, there's sub tiny initiatives that you can do.
1:28:56You know, we have how do we increase referrals for the back end? Like, mean, we can do stuff like that.
1:29:01But that's a smaller thing. It's not a new thing. Yeah.
1:29:03That's making a department currently better. I'm thinking about some companies that are doing 9 figures
1:29:09where their target demographic is such is so small. Like, the It's like a company where it's like they have three clients, and they're doing a 100,000,000 because the contracts are so big, and the infrastructure's so massive that they're basically white labeled.
1:29:21Are you attracted to that model? No.
1:29:24It's just not what we do. So when I think about expanding, I don't wanna change so whenever you expand, Mark Ford, is co owner of Agora, they were doing at one point, like, 1,500,000,000 a year.
1:29:41He has this rule called the one step away rule. So there's, like, two main parts of your business. There's the way you get clients, your client acquisition system, and then, like, there's your business, which is kinda like how your business model works and how you fulfill.
1:29:53If you go into something new, at most, you only wanna change one of those things, not two of those things.
1:29:59So if I go way up into enterprise where I have a few clients that are huge contracts and I'm basically embedded company into their into their company, I'm changing both of those things. Yeah.
1:30:09Whereas if I take my current model and apply it to home service just for recruiting, really, I mean, that's slightly different recruiting, but it's the same thing. Yeah.
1:30:17And then it's the same exact acquisition. So that's a much easier assumption to nail. Yeah.
1:30:23Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.
1:30:25Yeah.
1:30:27Are you identifying that the talent that you have in your current team can level up, or are you looking for talent that has already achieved that the the goals of what you wanna do in two or three years?
1:30:40I think our team is quite good. I I I think our team is capable of much more as of now for some of these new initiatives.
1:30:49We'll either need to recruit leaders or have people in the team step up into those positions. Mhmm. But we have a very I actually feel like we have a very overqualified team for our level of scale, which is like a good thing.
1:31:01Yeah. But it means that if we can grow more, it'll create more opportunity for those people.
1:31:07But that's a unique position to be in. I usually don't feel like that's where most companies are. It just happens to be where we are right now.
1:31:14Yeah. Because I think
1:31:16I think it's easy to identify this person's capable of running this 30,000,000 scale thing in a similar way that you level up to be 9 figure founder, you know, billion dollar net worth kinda founder.
1:31:29That same person still has to level up to be that executive level. You know? Like, I feel like that's I think that's such a big leap for an individual because they have to your vision is expanding.
1:31:41They have to also expand to that same tier. Like, I'm finding that a lot of people are just sniping people, head hunting, and sniping someone that's already built
1:31:47Mhmm. This department. Yeah.
1:31:49That's fine. And you're like, sweet. I'm just gonna You bring this person just have to make sure it's a very similar type of business and acquisition model, especially if it's on the more sales and marketing side of The issue with our industry, though, is it's kinda like a new industry, and there's not that many big companies.
1:32:04Yeah. So like in tech. Right?
1:32:06Much easier to snipe, x y z, sales director. CTO, it's built company. Yeah.
1:32:11Yeah. Who's who's built this. There's also a lot more executive headhunting embedded in that sector because there's more money in it, and it's more established, and there's more stakes.
1:32:21Whereas, like, the issue with our industry is finding a CMO who's kinda built in a $100,000,000 a year company kinda from the ground up and run that, and can come in and help you do the same.
1:32:32It's very rare. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's hard to hire headhunters who can find that.
1:32:38And those people don't self identify on LinkedIn.
1:32:42Yeah. Like, if they scaled an info company to a 100 mil. Mhmm.
1:32:46So in this kind of area that I operate in, it's kinda tough to find those people. Mhmm. Yeah.
1:32:51I like That's that's fascinating to me.
1:32:55You have to hire people talk about intrapreneurs. I feel like you almost have to hire entrepreneurs on your team to do these roles.
1:33:01Imagine your executive team
1:33:04Yeah, put it this way. Is so qualified they could easily Imagine run their a triangle, right?
1:33:09So you can do a 7 figure business with just you being pretty skilled. To get to an 8 figure business, you gotta be an 8 figure level entrepreneur, and then you kinda need, like, a couple 7 figure level entrepreneurs in your business.
1:33:22And when I say 7 figure entrepreneurs in your business, I mean certain people that if they probably struck out on their own could do 7 figures. Mhmm.
1:33:30Right? Not necessarily that they wanna be entrepreneurs. But you as an eight figure to get to eight figures, you as an eight figure type of person, and then a couple of seven figure people.
1:33:39And then to get to maybe multiple eight figures, it's you as a multiple eight figure person, and then maybe, like, an eight figure person or two, and then a bunch of seven figure people.
1:33:52Now I haven't hit nine figures, but I'd imagine to get to nine figures, you gotta be a nine figure level person, and then you need a couple strong eight figure people and then loads of seven figure people.
1:34:03Does it make sense? Yeah. Yeah.
1:34:05Doesn't mean that, like, you're take people will take it literally. Okay, mate. Physically taking an entrepreneur who who who did seven figures and putting them no.
1:34:13It's like it's just like a good litmus test of you're thinking to your team and you're like, yeah, you know, they could probably run a 7 figure business. Yeah.
1:34:21You see what I mean? Yeah.
1:34:23Do you fire fast?
1:34:26It depends. So if I see a red flag, I know what the red flags are so well that if I see them, I'm not gonna wait.
1:34:36I'm just gonna let them go. But there's other times where it takes people a while to ramp up and know where they wanna be, so you have to have a really realistic expectation. But if there's obvious culture red flags from the beginning, if there's obvious ways they show up that aren't well, or if somebody takes a sales call and I'm like, okay, I know you need to be here.
1:34:53It's okay if you start right here, but man, you're all the way down here. Yeah. Cut.
1:34:58Do
1:34:59you find yourself being more vicious in that? Like how, I guess, is that something that you've learned with experience, or has that been coached into you?
1:35:08Of like, hey, identify these things. Well, tune your gut up. I mean, if you're new and you're hiring people for the first time.
1:35:14I'm just saying for perspective, you've been an executive for under five years. Yeah. But, well, if you are just starting, it's gonna be tough
1:35:22to know what those red flags are and be able to know if this person's gonna work out and not work out, but over time, have a pattern recognition that builds. Yeah.
1:35:29Right? And then once you have that pattern recognition, you should just be quick and follow your gut right from the very beginning, and just be honest with yourself. Because you do have a bias that if you hire somebody, you thought they were gonna work.
1:35:40Otherwise, you wouldn't have hired them. But once they start performing and actually showing up, you need to be able to challenge that bias and that assumption because you might have been wrong, and they just cut bait quickly, which is good for that person and good for you.
1:35:52That person would much, much rather know now and then get on with their career and do their next best thing than spend six months terribly underperforming, feeling like shit.
1:36:04Mhmm. And then and they'd be ending up in the same spot. Yeah.
1:36:07Right? So
1:36:09yeah. Let's say that you accomplished the goal. Say that in three to three to five years, right, you accomplished, you're you're this 9 figure company, multiple nine figure company.
1:36:19What do you want your team to be able to say about you?
1:36:22Well, I hope that they feel like that they built something and contributed to something great, and they did it with people that they admire and have fun with and like, and that they grew along the way.
1:36:35You know? I think those three things, that's what I enjoy the most.
1:36:40Am I building something or creating something that's great that I can be proud of that I think is cool? Am I doing it with people that I like and wanna be around? And then am I growing along the way?
1:36:49I think beyond the money, that's kind of like we have to get up and contribute to a purpose or do something or work towards something every day.
1:36:58Right? Otherwise, you'd just go insane. Mhmm.
1:37:00So especially as men. So we have to do that.
1:37:04I think that's the way to do it.
1:37:06And so that's what I hope they think too. When did that change in you? Did you identify like, oh, I I care about the team because it guess you made money.
1:37:13At some point, your goal was I just wanna be filthy rich. Yeah. Not be poor is a better way to put it.
1:37:18Yeah. Sure. Yeah.
1:37:19You read the you read the book and said if you wanted this. Yeah. Where did that shift?
1:37:24At what level did that shift for you?
1:37:27Well, I mean, at a certain point, you're kinda like, how much more money you know, what's more money gonna do?
1:37:34Mhmm. Right? I'd like to get a jet, but at the same time, it's kinda like, you know, do I really want a jet?
1:37:40I don't know. I mean, there's not okay. Outside of that, what do I what do I wanna do?
1:37:44There's, like, not much more that I can do with money that I can't do unless it's, like, crazy stuff.
1:37:51Mhmm. Like, I was in St. Bart's, they got these crazy yachts.
1:37:54I was like, I'm not a big, like, yacht person. But I was like, man, if I wanna get into that game, I need to step my shit up.
1:38:01Jeez. But, yeah, there's not much more that you can do with money, so you kinda gotta find the purpose somewhere else. And I think, like, for me, again, it's building something that's great and with people that I like.
1:38:10And I think one of the most fulfilling parts I remember when I was starting, zero to, like, $300, $200, it was kinda just lonely, and it kinda sucked, and it was a little painful.
1:38:22But then once I started working with a cool group of people, it got way more fun. It's like a lot more fun to just work with people who you like.
1:38:30And so that's the biggest thing, and especially if you're gonna do something great, you gotta do it for a long time. And you can't do that if you hate your customers, you can't do that if you hate your team, and you can't do that if you're not excited about what you're building.
1:38:44What do you think marriage is gonna do to you? Do you think that it's What do you think it's gonna help? Well,
1:38:49I already feel Here's the thing. I already feel married in a way, and now as a guy who's engaged and about to get married, maybe you guys can tell me that you're gonna feel different.
1:39:00I don't know. So But I already feel like, like, what what do people a lot of a lot of people say in this situation, well, now I know that my other options in terms of dating, I don't have to work.
1:39:09I mean, I already feel that way. Mhmm. Right?
1:39:11I already know I'm I'm I know I'm gonna be committed to this person and building a life with them. I already feel that way. Mhmm.
1:39:16So I don't know how much is gonna change from now until nine months later when we get married. I know a lot's gonna change with kids.
1:39:24I haven't I've started to think about that, but I haven't really fully grasped it. Mhmm. I'm like, what that was?
1:39:29Do you want them? Yeah. Yeah.
1:39:31I want three kids. She wants two, maybe. Maybe three.
1:39:34We'll see. But, yeah, of course.
1:39:37And everybody's like, yeah, just wait till you have kids. And I guess I'm just gonna wait till you have kids. I don't know if anything can fully prepare you for it, but I don't know.
1:39:44I'll start to kinda get more into that mindset probably after we get married and thinking about how that's gonna look and how we're gonna manage our life, and, you know, you'll make adjustments. Mhmm. But there's at the end of the day, I mean, you wanna, I wanna be somebody who's very present with their kids and a great dad.
1:39:59Mhmm. At the same time, is there people who have been very present with their kids and a great dad, and have also achieved great things? Yes.
1:40:07So, it's possible to have it all, for sure, and I think that's the ultimate goal to strive towards, no matter what. Because that's like a cool, well rounded life.
1:40:15Yeah. Like, a life that's really lopsided, and just some areas are great, but other areas are like, sick.
1:40:22Mhmm. That's kind of a tragedy, you know, because especially if you're at that level and you're that capable of a person, you're probably capable of figuring all of it out.
1:40:32Yeah. Right? So I think that's what I really wanna get to is, and I don't call it a balanced life as much as more of an integrated life with just the right values.
1:40:42Yeah. And as I think that's the key. See though.
1:40:45So then I wanna see I might not know what I'm talking about.
1:40:48I do think no one's gonna interact with you or see your content or listen to you and not come to the conclusion that you're an intense person.
1:40:57But what I think what I really appreciate is that it's not this arrogant confidence. It's it's clarity.
1:41:04And it seems like you're also, at each phase of your life, since you made the decision, since you were sitting in that bar reading a book, saying, I don't wanna be stuck here with more hobos like this.
1:41:17Each time, you put in the inputs, you were very intense and very intentional about what inputs you were you were investing in.
1:41:27And with each phase of growth, you've been very vocal about the people that you're talking to.
1:41:34You gave Al Shmosey 225,000. You gave other people 80,000.
1:41:38You gave Patrick and David 150,000. You're very intentional to be like, these are the people that are at these levels. I wanna come into this conversation with a very clear goal, and I'm gonna walk out of there with that.
1:41:49And then you implemented it. And I think the yeah.
1:41:53I just wouldn't bet against you. I don't I think if anybody's watching this conversation, I would say, like, that's the that's the trait that I think I wish I had, I wanna have, and I wanna I wanna see more people have is just be that type of person where it's like, man, I wanna beg against them.
1:42:13So thank you. Thanks thanks for laying that out, because I think you you eloquently stated tactically, but also, like, from a personality perspective.
1:42:20I think anybody listening can pull something out of it and be like, yep. That's the thing I don't have. That's the trait that I need to like, the way that you simply, eloquently stated something, there's a mental shift that I have to make in order to be able to do the same thing.
1:42:36So, yeah, thank you, and I hope people benefit from it. And I feel very confident that you're gonna be known for those things.
1:42:42So thanks. Thank you.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The interview opens on a number: over $100 million, cash collected, not contracted. From there Cole Gordon rewinds all the way to bartending at night and reading a book on a bar shift, then rebuilds his climb as five revenue phases anyone in a service business has to pass through in order.
