Ayman Al Abdullah:

If you're at a seven figure business and you're like, "Ayman, I'm not able to get to eight figures." It's probably because a breakdown either in process, people or performance. If you can fix one of those three things, then all of a sudden you're able to break through to 10 million and beyond.

Chris Do:

We're doing a podcast with my friend, Ayman, who I met at the event that he's going to tonight, and we've had the opportunity of having a couple informal meetings, and it's really cool when you meet another CEO who's working at the level he's working at to crawl inside his brain. So fasten your seat belts everybody. We're going to do something a little bit different, but I think it's going to be very meaningful.

And without further ado, Ayman, for people who don't know who you are, can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your story?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah, Chris, thank you so much. I'm so glad we were able to connect here. I know that we've had a lot of informal dinners and breakfast and all that, so the ability to actually sit down formally and have this conversation I'm super pumped about. I've been a long time fan of you and your content.

Chris Do:

Oh, thank you.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

So the fact that here, it's a huge honor.

So yeah, I mean for those that don't know me, obviously I'm in a very different space. I was a former CEO of a company called AppSumo, which is an online marketplace for entrepreneurs. I stepped in when they were doing around $3 million annually in revenue, and over the course of six years I stepped down, we were doing $80 million a year in revenue. We were doubling year over year, and I'd grown the team from just myself to over 140. Over the last two years, I have transitioned into doing more CEO coaching where I'm helping other seven figure founders become nine figure CEOs. So that's basically me in a nutshell.

Chris Do:

I like it. I think I saw on Twitter where you said that seven figures to nine figures, and it's very clear.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

That's all I do. If you have yet to make seven figures, I can't help you. If you're north of 100 million, I can't help you. But if you're anywhere between three to 100 million, that is my sweet spot to me. I tell people there's three phases of a company's growth. There's the startup, there's the scale up, and then there's the grow up. Startup is about product creation, scale up is about company creation, and then grow up is about legacy creation. And I'm terrible at startup, I hate the grow up, but I think there's very few people in the world that are better than me at scale up. So that's what I really enjoy.

Chris Do:

There's naturally already a lot of questions I just want to dive into. The first of which is, what is your personal background? How did you become the person to run it from employee one to 140 employees? What is your background?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I'm entrepreneur by trade. I'd started multiple companies prior in college and in high school, and I ended up getting a piece of advice from one of my mentors in college, which is, "Ayman, I know you want to go and do the entrepreneurship thing, but you should get the best logo on your resume that you can, because at the very least that's going to be the foundation for the rest of your career." And so out of everything that I applied to, the best logo that I could have got on my resume was Microsoft. And I was one of 14 students chosen for this rotation program where we basically got to be six months in different parts of the company, and my very first rotation was at Xbox. So they literally walked me into a small little closet with a cardboard box and they grabbed every game that they had ever made. They gave me an Xbox, they gave me all these stuff, and they're like, "This is your homework." And I was like, "This is amazing."

And so for the next two years, I basically got a chance to go around and experience different parts of Microsoft, whether it's Office 365, which is the subscription component. I spent a portion of that in Munich, Germany, which was super fun. And it was a great start to my career, but after the rotation stopped and the variety went away, I realized like, oh no, I'm part of a large corporation. And whether I show up to work or not, I don't have a lot of impact on the bottom line. And so I started getting the itch of, hey, I want to get back into entrepreneurship. And the issue that I had, Chris, was I kept getting stuck at the same revenue milestone. And I realized that regardless of the businesses I started, the issue was in the business, the issue was me and what was preventing me from breaking through that plateau was learning marketing.

And so what I needed to do is go, well, how can I learn from the best marketers in the world? I started looking around and it just so happened that fate that I found the opportunity at AppSumo, one of companies I had respected a long time, and obviously Noah Kagan's one of the best marketers in the world, and so the opportunity to go there and learn marketing, learn what it takes to launch a business was just an opportunity that I had to say yes to him. And six years later, I'm super happy I did that.

Chris Do:

You did go to school?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Oh, I did. Yeah.

Chris Do:

What did you study?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

So I studied accounting. Chris, I'm a recovering accountant.

Chris Do:

So you see how you don't mention that now, it's like I'm pulling it out. You're a recovering accountant?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I'm a recovering accountant.

Chris Do:

Wow. Okay.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah. Well, you got to remember, I'm in college during the last great recession, and so I'm wanting to do the entrepreneurship route and I'm just seeing all of my friends get their job offers rescinded and everything.

Chris Do:

Are we talking about 2008?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Eight? 2008.

Chris Do:

Oh my God.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

Okay, take me back there. 2008, the financial black hole opens up and swallows businesses and people and too big to fail companies.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Totally.

Chris Do:

Everybody's over leverage. Are you in school or about to graduate? Where are you?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah, I'm about to graduate.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

And I'm seeing the seniors around me celebrating job offers, and then a week later, their job offers pulled. So they're moving back home with mom and dad. Their career is stalled, and I'm freaking out. I'm like, I'm literally getting ready for this next phase of my career and there's no jobs and nothing's going on. And so I'm like, well, what is the only position in business that still is hiring? Still has positions? And the more I started digging into it, I started realizing that accounting is actually the language of business. And I love business. I love reading about marketing. I love reading about hiring. I love reading about...

One area that I did not want to spend any time was learning about accounting. The last thing I want to do is look at a P&L. And so this was an opportunity for me to go, look, I'm going to force myself to get a degree in accounting because I know that I don't mind reading about everything else and learning about everything else. This will be the one period in my life where I'm going to have to be forced to learn about the language of business. And I'm so glad in hindsight, every bad thing that happens to you, there's a great Chinese proverb, have you heard that Chinese proverb called? We'll see? So there's a Chinese farmer and his horse runs away and his neighbors is like, "Hey, such bad luck." And the farmer's like, "We'll see." The next day the horse comes back with five more horses. And he's LIKE, "such great luck." And the farmer's like, "We'll see." And then the next day, the son of the farmer is trying to break one of the horses and domesticate it falls off, breaks his leg. And the neighbor goes, "Such bad luck." And he goes, "We'll see." And then the next day, a war breaks out and they recruit all military aged males, but they can't recruit his son because he has a broken leg. And he goes, such good luck. And he goes, "We'll see."

And so you really don't know if it's good luck or bad luck. And so, in 2008 I'm like, oh, this is terrible luck. But in hindsight, I'm so glad because when now you're running 100 million dollars P&L, I can go back to that accounting degree and analyze the P&L, recognize that CEOs don't have expenses, they have investments. And every line item on the P&L should match to some level of revenue or profitability. And in order to understand how the cash flows through your business, I would've never been able to do that without that foundation of accounting.

Chris Do:

Well, I know something about you. You don't fit exactly into stereotypical, and hopefully this is not disparaging or mark to other accountants who might be watching this. You don't fit in that stereotype of the person who wears their pants a little too high. Your jacket's a little bit too big with the extra shoulder pads. You're a fit guy. You're sometimes over landing. And there's an edge to you, so you don't fit in that mold. So maybe you already knew, this is a foundation, but not where you're going to land, right?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Oh, 100%. And all of my mentors knew it at the time. They're like, "Ayman, you're not going to every dot every I, cross every T." I had to learn accounting through brute force and forcing myself in the library, but it definitely was not natural. I think that it's really important for you to recognize what careers aligned with your own personality and how are you doing things that you're like, honestly, if I wasn't getting paid, I would still do this for free. And your job is to date your career until you can marry it. And so being able to analyze, hey, what lights me up? What's the stuff that I'm looking at my calendar I'm like, I can't wait for this meeting, or I can't wait for this moment, or I can't wait for this piece of content to come out? The more that you can tap into that, well, the easier it will be for you to craft a career or craft a business that really aligns and lights you up every single week.

Chris Do:

Okay. Now I have context for the stint at Microsoft. You mentioned two years.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

So I did two years, and then I did another year and a half after that one.

Chris Do:

Okay, so three and a half years.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

What was your role at Microsoft having come out of an accounting program?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah. Well, that's the thing is while my degree was in accounting, the program was more on finance and strategy. And so the way I was able to parlay that was I had joined another organization, took on some leadership level roles, got it to the point where I was able to basically get face-to-face to the owner of this program. And for her, she's typically recruiting people from Harvard, from Wharton. I went to a school in Miami called FIU. It's like the very first time that they really went out of their target schools in order to recruit someone. And I guess she saw something in me and I'm forever grateful for her, and she just took a chance. She's like, "Hey, let's see if we can go to a non-target school. This person has started and sold two companies, now president of this other organization. Maybe there's something there."

And I'm forever grateful. She really helped kickstart my career because the alternative would've been, I mean, I was doing internships. 70 hours a week, Chris, in a cubicle with no sunlight. And I remember them over the intercom going, "Hey, we're changing the billable hours this week from 60 to 70 hours a week." That's billable hours. So that doesn't include launches meetings. So you're working 80, 100 hours weeks. I was an intern. I remember the person sitting next to me who's working there two years. He's just started crying at his desk after hearing-

Chris Do:

For real?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

For real.

Chris Do:

Wow.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

And I was like, "This is not the career I want to go into." I'm like, holy-

Chris Do:

You're like, "Can the universe give me a sign if this is right?" And the guy next to you is sobbing and you're like, "Okay, this is definitely not right." Was this at one of those big accounting firms? This

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Was at one of those big accounting.

Chris Do:

The dungeon that you're in. Oh my gosh.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

It was like, this is terrible, and I am so glad that I'm going through. I mean, you're dating your career before you marry it. And I was just so thankful that AI was like, I need to do anything but this. Yeah. I was just grateful that I was able to find transition.

Chris Do:

Okay. There's a theme here that I find that overlaps between your life and my life and the life of other people where we knew maybe something wasn't right for us, but we pursued it. And eventually, we find it. But then we need someone to believe in us that they see what we might think of ourselves. What do you think your boss saw in you as a person who's atypical of who she would recruit to work in Microsoft? In that age, what does she see in you? Do you have perspective on that?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I know that you go into this a little bit, which is like the hero's journey. We all need these outside mentors and individuals that really just see something in us. I don't know. I honestly don't know what she saw in me. I was the president of the organization at the time. I had a couple public speaking engagements. I had put together some strategic proposal for Microsoft and sent over a letter. I think she saw a little bit of culmination, all of that. I think at a core, she probably just saw a little bit of grit and hustle that frankly, I was part of the graduating class in my high school that allowed the top half to exist. Meaning, I barely graduated high school. I barely broke out. And the reason is I was hanging out with the bad kids in school. My brother has three felonies and I was the bad kid in high school. So I was lucky to even make it to university. So I think she saw a little bit of that grit and that hustle and that ability to like, "Hey, this person, there's something there." And I'm forever grateful that she saw that spark. And I know that she really took a chance on me. And so my entire two years in that program was trying to help prove that she had made the right decision.

Chris Do:

So before we move on, we can say the hustle and the grit. How does that manifest itself in a way that a stranger can look at and see? What does the tangible result of hustle and grit? How does it show up? Does it show up on a piece of paper? Is there an essay, a story that you write? Do you put in a mugshot? I mean, what are we doing here?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I think she saw the numerous atypical things that were in my story. Having started two companies in college, sold them both. The ability to transition from one major to another, the ability to take on leadership positions. I think she saw this overarching threat of someone that just wasn't satisfied with the status quo. For whatever reason, she was looking for an individual that maybe as part of the rotation program, it's multifaceted. The ability to step in and immediately provide impact in a multitude of different areas, whether working at one type of business unit like Xbox, and then immediately transitioning over to another business like enterprise sales. So I think that she saw the ability that I was multifaceted in that regard. I don't know, maybe she saw a little bit of who she was when she was younger. I think she came from a similar background. And I think that sometimes the ability for you to spot the next generation and go, "I see a spark in this individual and the ability to help them raise up." I mean, I'm forever grateful for her. I think I send her a letter every year. I'm forever grateful that she took that chance.

Chris Do:

That's great.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

As a leader, you have to be able to spot talent. And it's hard to pinpoint and say to someone, "These are the 17 things you need to look for." Either you see it in yourself or there's an instinct and there's something weird about how you don't fit into a box. Your high school transcript or your college background or the clubs or organizations or the fact that you hustled and built two companies and sold them. Something in there spoke to her and she could see that. And I think that's one of the big things. It's the hardest thing that any organization that's growing up or scaling up needs to do is you have to be able to spot talent.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

100%.

Chris Do:

Right? And it's not that you can just go down the list of the Ivy League, magna cum laudes or whatever, and just pick them out and say, "Those are the ones, because sometimes those are not the ones you want to work with."

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Not at all.

Chris Do:

Some of them could be total jerks. Some of them could just have birthright into these things and you never know. And so we talk about this in a little bit about maybe branding and personal branding that what makes you weird, makes you wonderful. And so what we try to do, because living in such a conformist society and culture that we try to say, well, this doesn't look right. I didn't go to Wharton. I don't have these pedigree or the degrees or whatever it is that I need to. And so we don't feel like we can show up as who we are. And that's one of the biggest mistakes is when you start to understand that you're different and that you're atypical, that's your one shot of getting in.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I love that. It's funny you were mentioning spotting talent. And it reminded me of we were spending six months looking for our head of customer support and we were really struggling. There was a lot of people that were coming from traditional tech, customer support backgrounds, and they just didn't have that it factor of the ability to step in and build a team. Number two, understand what our customers need and really go above and beyond. And I remember going to my favorite restaurant for brunch with my wife, and the hostess was there. She remembered my name, she remembered my favorite dish and sent it out to me, and then swung by three times in order to make sure that I was having a great experience. And I'm literally sitting there having brunch, and I'm like, "That's her. She's going to be the head of our customer support."

And so I ended up reaching out to her, "Talking to her about the opportunity." And for the next three years, she joined the company, she accepted the position. She's never been in a tech position before that. She built up the team, got our customer support to the best position that we've ever been in the history of the company, and was just absolutely phenomenal, was absolutely a player in that regard. And you talk about one of the key positions, the key jobs of the CEO's spotting talent that maybe doesn't come from a non-typical background, but what is the one or two things that they need, that core personality that they need in order to be successful at that role? And for her, it was the empathy and the ability to make sure that she's going above and beyond to make sure our customer is happy.

Chris Do:

She's a very people-centric person.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Totally.

Chris Do:

Has an attention for detail, facts and figures and names and preferences that intuitively she knows how to respond to. It's like you can go to school and learn that, but it's much better if that's just built into your DNA.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

100%.

Chris Do:

And which company did you hire her for?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

So this is for AppSumo.

Chris Do:

Okay. Yeah. I didn't want to make the assumption.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yep.

Chris Do:

Okay. I hope that one day that I'm in a position where a company is so thriving that, because I meet people like this all the time, I'm like, that's a good person. That's a good human. And they're in the wrong positions.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Totally.

Chris Do:

And I'm not that financially successful. My company's not big enough where I can just pull people out. But as you're running app Sumo and you're expanding massively and pretty quickly, it looks like you have ample opportunity. Let me try that theory out. Let me try it and see what happens and collect all this data.

Which is one of the reasons why I want to talk to you today is because I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs who are going just from six to seven and trying to figure that out. And I think there's going to be a lot of wisdom that you can glean from listening to this. More importantly, applying some of these lessons, but more stuff to come.

Okay. Following up on something you had said that you had hit some financial milestone that you just couldn't shake. Is that between Microsoft and AppSumo?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

It was.

Chris Do:

Okay. Can you talk a little bit about what that milestone is and what you thought the problem was?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

So it was actually even before Microsoft, so it was at the two previous companies. We were getting stalled out, let's say in the six figure range.

Chris Do:

We, meaning your company?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

The two companies. So I started one stalled out, can't punch through. So I sold it. Started another one, I'm like, oh, it's the idea. The issue is the idea. So I started another one and then I just kept hitting that same revenue milestone.

Chris Do:

What is that number?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

So it's somewhere in the six figure range.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

So if you're getting stuck in the six figure range, what I ended up realizing was if you have a business and you know who you're serving and you have a decent product, if you just hustle, you can get to six figures. The issue to break through to seven figures, what I didn't realize was it wasn't the idea, it was the lack of marketing. It was the lack of the ability. I call it the person, problem, promotion. And it's that last component. You can get to six figures selling something, you can get to seven figures selling something consistently. So that promotion, that ability to get customers at scale was what was preventing me. I didn't have that skill to figure out, and both of them were digital businesses, to leverage digital marketing in a way that consistently brought in enough attention and awareness and leads into those existing businesses. So what I needed to do was unlock that skill, break through that plateau. And then all of a sudden, like now I literally just started another business and we hit seven figures within five months. And it was just because we nailed that scale, we figured out what marketing is.

Chris Do:

I have a certain belief around making $100,000 that in America it's not that hard to make $100,000. That if you're not there, it's because of a couple different things. Now, there are special circumstances, I know it's going to hurt a couple of feelings here. What is your take on that? What's your hot take on, can you make $100,000 in America if this is what you want to do?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I mean, I've built six figure businesses half an hour a day. So is it hard to make $100,000? It's not hard if you have the right skills. What's hard is developing those skills. So is it hard to make $100,000? Absolutely not. Is it hard to develop the skills to make 100,000? Yes it is. So I think that figuring out what those skills are. If you're only focused on trading your time for hours, I remember Chris celebrating a 25 cent raise with my mom. Taking her out the Cheesecake Factory. And being like, "Mom, I just got-"

Chris Do:

And you went out.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Oh yeah, I had to treat mom right. And at that time, I just didn't have the skills to break through anything more than minimum wage.

Chris Do:

Right. Same.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah. So the ability, number one to like, well, what are the skills needed in order to break through?

And the beautiful thing about America is that there are so many skills that pay six figures. If you love talking to people and you're one that's always recommending the best movies and the best restaurants, you're a natural salesperson. Join an industry and you can make six figures selling the things that you like selling. If you're a tinkerer and you're always pulling apart the radios and your watches and figuring out like, oh, I love how things work, and you're always playing around on the internet, learn programming, that's a six figure skill. If you love art and you love being like, I wish they would change this billboard, or this color scheme is ugly. Become a designer. That's a six figure skill. Figure out what are you're naturally good at, and then get really good at learning that skill. That alone, I mean just trading your time for hours in a six figure skill capacity will allow you to make six figures.

Now we can go one level deeper. How do you do that at scale? That's basically how you're building a business. That's another skill. And so I think that you're 100% right. If you are really good at figuring out what is that six figure skill, it actually is not difficult at all in order to make. But if you're only surrounding yourself with people that are making minimum wage, that are spending their afternoons just binging Netflix, that are spending their weekends just drinking, not really going above and beyond learning like, hey, actually I want to make a little bit more because that's going to help me unlock a lot more in my life. I think you 100%. Once you've dedicated to yourself and go, this is a must. It's almost inevitable that you'll make six figures.

Chris Do:

There's going to be a couple of people in our audience and our community's going to listen to this, and they're grinding their teeth right now. Like, "What do you mean Chris and Ayman? I'm a designer. I'm not making anything like that." And sometimes they'll say, "Easy for you guys to say, y'all had the silver spoon or you had the opportunity." Or, "I live in a country where people don't have anything like that, and the annual salary here is $20,000, and that's considered good." How do we help people overcome that? I'm just curious, and if you could maybe direct your attention, energy towards, I'm a designer, because they can relate versus sales or coding or development or something like that. What do you think? What are they missing?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

It's funny. They're immediately leaning in with like, "Oh, I live here, or I do this." It is 2023 right now. I remember paying one of my designers $9,000 a month, so making $108,000 a year, and I had no idea that she was living in the Philippines. Location is irrelevant. We work on the internet. And the only reason that they're charging with their charge in is they're going, "Oh, well, this is what my peers are making." But in this new environment, Chris, the peers are, we're all working on the internet. So your peers are the peers of your skills, not the peers of your location. And so the only person that's really limiting what you're charging is, number one, your own limiting beliefs, what you think you're worth, versus, "Hey, I can design better than that person that's making $250,000 a year." And, "Oh, actually what's limiting me is not my design skills, but rather my ability to attract clients." And so your ability to not pick up that skill to attract clients is actually what's preventing you from making six figures.

That same designer with a waiting list that's two years long is now making half a million dollars a year. So what's preventing her from making that half a million dollars a year is probably not her design skills, but maybe this other skill that she doesn't have. And she's spending all this time becoming a better designer when she should just become better at how do I create more demand for my design services?

Chris Do:

Do all roads go back to marketing and sales then?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Up until seven figures? They do.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I mean, the three frameworks. Startup startup is about person, problem, promotion. Once you've hit seven figures, it completely changes. So seven figures is about process, people and performance.

Chris Do:

There's a lot of Ps going in here.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Well, it's the nine Ps, it's nine steps.

Chris Do:

Oh, you got nine Ps.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I got nine Ps.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I make it easier for people to remember. So I call it the nine plateau.

Chris Do:

You got a lot of P is what you're saying.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Well, it's the nine plateaus, right? So these are all the plateaus that prevent people from getting to nine figures. So if you're at a seven figure business and you're like "Ayman, I'm not able to get to eight figures," it's probably because there's a breakdown either in process people or performance. And if you can fix one of those three things, then all of a sudden you're able to break through to 10 million and beyond.

Chris Do:

Okay, so we're touching on something here because a lot of creative people make the mistake that it's about the craft. See, I had two Cs there. I keep going here. I could get somewhere.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I love it. Yeah, there you go.

Chris Do:

They need to have the courage then to understand that it's more than that. So people just put their heads in the sand and say, well, if I'm the best X, Y, Z at this craft, I don't need to. And this is a thing that they repeat to themselves. You only have to do sales and marketing if your work is not good enough. If your work is good enough, you don't have to do any of that. And I think that's a mentality and a mindset that's very popular within the creative culture, that then holds you back.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Well, if that was true, then Van Gogh would've been famous while he was alive. Nobody knew who Van Gogh was when he was alive. It's undeniable that his art is incredible. But he didn't get famous. His art didn't really take off until he died. And so the ability for him, for someone to go, this person's art is incredible. The world needs to see it. You have to marry the ability to promote with the art. It's one and the same. And I would argue the world's best creatives are just as creative at the promotion as they are at the art themself. The promotion is the art. And so if you take a look at, let's just use YouTube as an example, what do the best YouTubers do? They deeply understand thumbnails. They deeply understand, click-through rates. They understand how to leverage the algorithm to get their videos out there. What good is your art if it's got six views? It's not changing the world.

Chris Do:

You're speaking my language now because it's about scale then.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

It is. Yeah.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Well, it depends, right? What are your goals? If I want to be the unknown artist, and I'm cool living the shadows, amazing. But if your goal is, Chris, I want to be a full-time artist and I'm tired of working bagging groceries, I want to spend all of my time doing art. Well, then you're going to have to learn to make money from your art. And that's not going to happen by just being an artist.

Chris Do:

This is hurting some creative souls right now. He didn't realize listening to this episode that you're going to get some healthy dose of shut up juice. Because now you have to figure out what to do. Let me just clarify a couple of things. Person, problem, promotion. Person, is that you?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

No. That's your ideal client.

Chris Do:

Oh, okay.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

All right, tell me more then.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Well, I think that you have to start with who am I serving? I think the best entrepreneurs, the best creatives, they deeply understand their audience. They deeply understand who they serve. I think that a lot of time, and it's funny, if you don't have this foundation, it'll crumble as you scale your business. Because building a business without an ideal client in mind is like writing and love letter and addressing it to whom it may concern. Imagine that. Imagine you wrote a love letter to your wife, and at the top it said, to whom it may concern, she'd throw it out and you'd never get married. Versus, writing a love letter to that individual. Everything you do, every piece of marketing that you roll out, every piece of product, every strategy is directly tied to that individual.

And I'll give you an example, Chris. At AppSumo, we were serving everybody when I joined. We were doing Udemy courses, we were doing SaaS tools, we were doing fonts and icons. So we're serving designers, we're serving solopreneurs. And so I took a step back and I analyzed the data. I'm like, look, who is actually, who loves us the most? Who do we love to serve? Who's our most profitable customer? And that's the key phrase, who's the most profitable customer? And most profitable is the person who sings our praises, isn't a pain in the to work with, continues to buy from us. And what we realized is there was one individual marketing Agency Matt, alliteration. I'm a huge fan. Marketing Agency Matt was buying from us at almost a 10 x rate of everyone else. And it's because Marketing Agency Matt was buying licenses on behalf of his clients. Versus the solopreneur, she was buying one license.

So when we doubled down a Marketing Agency Matt, our marketing changed our strategy changed, product, everything changed. So now we're rolling out, instead of you can only buy one license of this tool, you're buying 10. Instead of it having no marketing agency, now we're rolling out white labeling, we're rolling out the ability to have multiple seats. So we're doing all of these things for marketing agency in mind. That one decision alone, changing who we're serving, directly led to us 3Xing our customer lifetime value, which then allowed us to triple our revenue as a subsequent. So it has to start with who do I serve? Because from who you serve, which being the most profitable customer, your customer lifetime value increases, which makes your customer acquisition costs so much easier. It makes the ability to think about strategy and marketing. So person, then the problem, then promotion.

Chris Do:

Okay. Do you credit your analytical accounting mind to comb through data and trying to look for the needle in the haystack to find your most profitable customer? Or is it become apparent that somebody looks at it and like, dude, what are we doing?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah. I mean, I definitely have that data-driven mind, but at that time, I have a great team. They're the ones that are asking questions on my behalf. They're able to go deeper. And who should we be going after? How do we get better at marketing? And so the ability to have a team that has higher standards than yourself, I think is really critical at that stage when we're doing around 10 million in revenue, in order to figure out, hey, let's dig into the data, let's be a little bit more data driven. Not too much. I see a lot of people, they get hamstrung and they almost paralyze themselves with data. They get analysis paralysis. But I think that if you can get 70% accurate, I think you can make a decision and move forward in a way that has a lot more clarity and gives clarity to the team. I say all the time. A CEO can be uncertain, but they can't be unclear.

And so make a decision and move forward, and you're going to have much better clarity for your entire company in order to have, hey, this is who we serve. How does this serve Marketing Agency Matt? They're using the lens of that with product decisions, marketing decisions, everything goes through the lens of how does this serve marketing agency? I think Amazon famously leaves a seat open at every meeting for their customer. How does this serve our customer? And I think the best companies in the world deeply understand that. And the worst companies in the world, the Kodaks, the ones that fell from their graces, it's because they ignored and they forgot who they actually served.

Chris Do:

The problem with the person is not easy to see. It's not easy to commit to. And it's one of the biggest challenges that people have because the logic goes, if I narrow who I target, then I leaving a lot of opportunity on the table? To which you respond with?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

We were very worried about that. But what we realized is when we cut our target audience, we triple our revenue. And the reason that that happens is it's not that you're ignoring Solopreneur Sally, but by having that focus, you're able to then deeply serve one individual, which allows you to increase your revenue. And as a subsequent side effect, Solopreneur Sally is still served because now she's getting better deals because we're selling more. So we're able to have better negotiating terms with our partners. And so the entire ecosystem benefits as a result. Apple, from the very beginning, here's the crazy ones, the ones that are pushing the envelope. Everything they do, every piece of equipment they roll out is to help creatives. And that doesn't mean that I can't do my accounting on a Mac. That doesn't mean I can't use my Mac for Chrome, but by them focusing on the creatives, those that are pushing the envelope, they end up serving everyone else. Now, they're a $2 trillion company, with all their marketing, they're basically just serving one type of customer.

Chris Do:

There's something that I'm reminded of that Blair Enns says, which is the market is bigger than the target, and we worry that if we just go for the target, we lose out on all this. But in fact, when you're super clear, you know how to write your love letter. And everything becomes clear, the messaging, the tactics, the strategy, the product mix, all that kind of stuff becomes super clear. You serve them really well. And then there's actually, you hit all these other people around, which you said like Solopreneur Sally is still served and sold.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah. Well, let's just use your designer example. If I go to your website and you're like, I'm a designer, it's like, okay. Maybe I like some of your designs. Whereas if I go to your website and you're like, I only design homepages for SaaS platforms doing north of seven figures. Now I'm like, this is exactly what I need to hire. All of your examples, your portfolio, everything related to that is deeply aligned to the one thing that you're best at. Now all of a sudden when I go to your website, I'm like, this is exactly who I need to hire. And a lot of times people go, "Well, I want to serve everyone. I want to show my entire portfolio. I do logos and I do this, and I do that." And now people don't want to hire mediocre. They want to hire the best. The best for what they can afford.

And if you dilute yourself and say, I can do a little bit of everything, I'm going to go for the person that specializes. I'm going to go, who's the best logo creator in the world? Who's the best branding specialist in the world? Who's the best YouTube thumbnail creator in the world? And the market is big enough that you can run a seven figure business being hyper targeted on one thing that you focus on. I mean, I think, what? Mr. Beast spends $20,000 per thumbnail. Yeah, it's like there's an opportunity regardless of what you want to focus on. And I think the key is just figuring out how do I get hyper-targeted on who I serve in a way that is going to serve them and allows me to grow my business by being hyper-targeted on the one person I serve?

Chris Do:

Is the problem then the person's problem in the market, what problem you're solving for them?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah. That's exactly right.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

So once you've identified who you're serving, where is the demand? What are they looking for? What is the problem that they're looking for? And so for the designer that's in the audience, if you have a portfolio and you're noticing this same ideal client keeps coming back to me for the same type of work, they keep coming back to me for social media images, how do I just become the world's best at social media images? This is all I do is I want to make you world-class, high engagement, ready, social media images, they keep coming back to me for this. Now all of a sudden, you can expand and you can grow and be like, this designer is the best in the world at social media images. And I'm only going to hire her for this.

Stuart Schuster:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Welcome back to our conversation.

Chris Do:

I'm going to work with Marketing Matt. I understand Marketing Matt's problem. They're buying multiple licenses. They need white labeling, all the things you had said before. What's the promotion part?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

In the promotion part is now that I've figured out who's the ideal client, what is the problem that I can uniquely serve for them? How do I get these clients at scale? And this is once again, a discovery process because it's going to be unique to every individual. Some people are really good at showing up to trade shows and getting customers. Some people naturally, they used to work at an agency doing Facebook ads, and so they're really good at creating high converting Facebook ads. Some people are really good at content marketing and they're like, I can leverage YouTube or TikTok. That's going to be unique to every individual, and you can run a seven figure business with just a single marketing channel.

So figuring out and the ability to sort of date. There's a great book called Traction, which talks through the 19 different types of marketing channels. What is the one marketing channel that I can focus on? Maybe it's referrals. So how do I have a incredible experience with my existing clients to the point where they can't help but want to refer me to future clients? So figuring out, number one, what is the way that I can consistently get more clients with one channel? And then how do I become world-class at the singular channel? That alone, Chris, can get you to seven figures.

Chris Do:

So it means that you have to do something to get yourself out there in front of your ideal client?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

That's right. So if you're more extroverted, gregarious, maybe it's an in-person thing. It could be that you're within a community where there's lots of opportunities so then you're going to maybe not go to a trade show, but maybe chamber of commerce. I don't know how people do these things. And if you're a great content creator and you know how to do that work, that channel.

Chris Do:

Totally.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

But maybe the message I'm also hearing is instead of trying lots of things, focus on the one that's going to give you the results and get really good at that.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

100%.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I want to go to events and that's where I'm going to end up making my marketing channel, 100%. I know a lot of other people, they're like, "No, I put out three YouTube videos a week and that's my marketing channel." And they're building seven figure businesses. I know people that are like, "I'm going to make one TikTok a day." That's their marketing channel. They've built seven figure businesses like that. I know other people that are like, "I'm just going to do cold outreach. I'm going to email my ideal client and go, 'Hey, I do landing pages for SaaS companies. Here's a five-minute update or five minute loom video that I created for your homepage on the things that I would do to change to increase your conversion rate.'" You decide there's so many, you just pick one, get really good at, and you can build a seven figure business.

Chris Do:

Okay. Maybe the word of the day for those three big concepts between people, problem and promotion is focus. Focus on one person, focus on their biggest problem, and then focus on the one channel, the one place that you need to be so that you can reach those people, ideally.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

100%.

Chris Do:

Okay, so we're going to get to the six figures and then we're going to get to the seven figures. And the seven figures is process, people and performance. Take me through those ideas, please.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

So, these are plateaus. These are things that are preventing you from getting to the next level. A lot of seven figure businesses, the bottleneck is the founder is now doing everything. They've brute force themselves, and maybe there's one or two key employees, but for the most part, they're doing both sales and delivery. They're the ones that are the bottleneck. And so the issue that you have, Chris, is that the process is what's the plateau to help them get to 3 million, 5 million and beyond. Now, depending on the business, if you have SaaS, you might be able to get a little further along. If you have a service-based business, you're going to get stuck. So you have to number one, go, okay, we've got a good business here. We're doing okay. What is the process from my hustle to cash in the bank? And maybe I'm doing the sales, I'm jumping on sales calls, and then I'm doing the design work later on in the week.

Which of those two could I get off my plate? How do I pull myself off? Maybe instead of jumping on sales calls, now I just have a buy button because I've gotten good enough at marketing that people can just come, buy, immediately, book on my calendar, and we're going to do kickoffs. Now, I've eliminated 10 hours off of my calendar. I say this all the time. The perfect business is a computer plugged into a wall. It runs 24/7. Never calls out sick. So maybe instead of it being a service, maybe now we can turn that into a product. Instead of us jumping on a coaching call as an example, you're going to buy my course and I can just be selling that 24/7. So your job first and foremost is how do I turn that process as automated as possible? Now, you're never going to get 100% automated. So the portions that you can't, that's where you go into the next plateau, which is people, how am I back filling my process with the best people, the highest A players in order to develop that eight figure business over time?

Chris Do:

We're going to run into all kinds of roadblocks here because a lot of people in the service space, they don't want to delegate. They want to keep their hands in the work, and they have this assumption that they're the best at doing all the different roles, or they think that it's too insignificant to put anybody against, and they can't fathom the idea of spending money on something that feels so trivial. So they keep their hands in as much of the work as possible. So they get stuck. Are they destined? Because that's who they want to be to have a lifestyle business and not really get into the seven figure range. And that's okay, and there's something wrong with that. In case you guys are wondering. Do we just determine that that's it and that's okay? Or is it something that you can help people who are stuck on that mindset to be able to overcome that?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

We have to start with, well, what do you want? If you want to be deeply involved and you're like, "No, I want to do it all." Amazing, but you only have 24 hours in the day. So there's only three levers that you can pull when you grow a business. Number of customers, average order value, so how much are you charging per transaction? And then repurchase rate, how many times is that same customer coming back? Really it's number of customers times customer lifetime value. So if those are the three levers, really the two levers, the question you need to ask is, if I want to grow this business, I can either increase the number of customers or I can increase the customer lifetime value. So if you are a solopreneur and you're the service-based provider and you don't want to delegate, you either have to increase the number of customers, and if you already have a full calendar, you can't. So the only lever that you can pull is customer lifetime value, which is, I'm going to charge more and I'm going to have them come back to me more times.

Now, if you charge too much, you're going to go up market. So some people are like, I don't want to work with enterprise level customers. I like working with SMBs because I'm working with a founder. I'm working with a decision maker. Whereas if I'm working with Alexis of the world, it's now designed by committee. So asking yourself, well, what business am I trying to build? And getting crystal clear on what does the dream look like there? If you can first answer that question, then that'll directly influence, well then how am I going to build this business? Am I going to delegate portions of it? Am I going to get out of the day to day? But if you're like, "Chris, I want to do it all. I want to do all the design." Then recognize there's going to be natural limitations on that, and there's nothing wrong with that, but you have to recognize the trade-offs that you're making there.

Chris Do:

I think this is where people are going to get stuck. And I'm going to say to all of you who are listening who think this is just crazy nonsense and you love every aspect of what you do. My suggestion is then you should buy some key person insurance. If the whole company depends on you, there may be days where you can't work, you don't want to work, or some unforeseeable thing happens, and everyone that depends on you to provide, now you're going to be SOL.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

100%.

Chris Do:

So you better buy some key person insurance.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Well, the more valuable you are, the less valuable your business is. And you'll learn this very quickly when you try to sell it. So if you tried to sell your business, just go through that thought exercise, I'm going to sell this business today. Would the acquirer go, "Well, then you need to stay and work with us?" Well, if that's the case, you don't have a business, you have a job. So there is nothing wrong with that, but just recognize that you have a job and it's unlike any other job because most jobs, if you call out sick, you're still going to get your W-2 paycheck. If you are a solopreneur, you call out sick and no one's doing [inaudible 00:44:19], the expenses still keep coming, but the revenue stops.

So if you understand that concept where it's like, okay, do I want myself to be more valuable or do I want my business to be more valuable? And if you want your business to be more valuable, you want, hey, I want an exit in the future, or I want the ability to take. One of the first things I do with my clients is how do we get you to stop working 80 hours a week so you can take a two-week vacation and the business is still running. And I had one of my clients go, his wife told him that this was the first weekend in over a year that he hadn't worked, that he's taken four vacations in the last year, whereas the previous year he didn't take a single one. So then the direct result of that is him stepping out. The less he does, the more valuable the business becomes.

Chris Do:

Yeah, I know this mindset, because I think I was there pretty early on in my professional career in that you don't plan for vacations because you think the time I'm going to go on vacation is going to be the opportunity I can't say no to, and it almost always happens. It's like Murphy's Law. The minute you plan a trip to Hawaii, it's the moment when the dream client comes knocking. So they take no vacations then.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah, it's true.

Chris Do:

And then they get stuck in that place and then eventually they burn out. Okay, I think what you're saying makes perfect sense to a left brain person. The right brain person is hurting a little bit right now. You may have crushed their soul a little bit, Ayman. So I just want to say if you want to direct any negative commentary, I'll leave Ayman's personal email address in the show notes and give you his IG handle. Don't direct it to me. I get plenty of your love, everybody. I'm just kidding here.

Okay, let's talk a little bit about performance.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

What is performance?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Well, at this point now you've building out your team, you've got the process in place. This is where a lot of companies go, "We have doubled the revenue, but our profits are cut in half."

Chris Do:

I've been there. Yeah. Are you looking into my financial history here?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I say this, it's like most CEOs at this point, they're running their business through their P&L, so their accountant sends them their P&L, and what do they do? They immediately open it up and they scroll down, they look at the profit and they go to the right. And if it's positive, they take a shot. And if it's negative, they take two shots. And that's not the way to run a business. This is at this point, you're flying a plane. You need the gauges and the dials to let you know, hey, if we're increasing expenses, is revenue and profit going up as well? Don't work twice as hard for half the money. You and I have both been there. I say this all the time, you not-

Chris Do:

I'm going to be there now.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I say, if you haven't cried over your P&L on a Thanksgiving morning, you're not a real CEO yet. And so at this point, what stops businesses from really getting to the next level is the inability to understand the numbers and the dials and the gauges. They're like, oh, if I just keep increasing payroll and increasing expenses, spending more on marketing and making this investment and doing this event, that the revenue and the profits will come. And that's rarely the case. What you need to do is deeply understand what are the inputs, what are the dials, what are the investments that I'm making? A CEO doesn't have expenses. They have investments. And so the plateau that prevents you is not growing the business into bankruptcy. Because at that point, you no longer have the profits to reinvest into profitable growth into the business. And that's where businesses go to die.

Chris Do:

Okay, I've been here before and I've been here again. So let's talk about that a little bit. What people will understand is when you start to hire people, you get to this place where it's amazing. It could just be a team of three or four people like ninjas. You hire them, you're making a ton of money profit wise, and they're like, this is great. If I'm good with five people, let's go to 10. And you get to 10, they're like, wait a minute. I'm working really hard. But then my profit percentage wise has shrank. And then we get to this question, which is, am I better off going back to the five and doing the kinds of projects that I love and forgetting about managing all this overhead? And we've been here where we can solve it of the economies of scale. Certain structures allow you to manage more people, but until you have that in place, you're just burning a lot of money.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

You are.

Chris Do:

And if we get into that position again, and it's always like this where I find myself looking back like, wouldn't I be better off with two really cracker jack assistants? And I would just work less and I would make more money. What's wrong with that mindset?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Nothing.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah. I mean, I think that a lot of people go, "I don't want to manage people." And there's nothing wrong with that. I think that you can be running a great lifestyle business.

Chris Do:

Okay. I'll have to make some phone calls after this. Mo, I'm sorry.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

There's nothing wrong. Once again, just because I am the, I'm going to take you to 100 million guy, doesn't mean that everyone should, I mean, it's a completely different environment. You're managing people and people are messy.

Chris Do:

I feel like you're talking to me right now.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Look, Chris, there's nothing wrong with going, I don't want to have any one-on-ones on my calendar. I don't want to worry about performance reviews. That's a beautiful business.

Chris Do:

Yeah.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

But recognize there's a fragility in that. So at seven figures, you lose a couple clients, things could go wrong, whereas as you get closer to 100 million, it's a different stress, but your business will last a lot longer. You're a lot more anti-fragile. And so you're trading one stress for another. And the question you need to ask is, what type of stress do you want in your life? Whereas at seven figures, hey, it could all go away tomorrow, potentially. But as you get closer to 100 million. You've built up an ecosystem that is a lot more anti-fragile. So you have to ask, what type of business do I want to create? And if I do want to go after that 100 million dollars benchmark, then yeah, we're going to have to figure out a way to do that in a way that's profitable.

And going back to that same question, which is, Ayman, doubled my hires, but I'm making less money. This is usually a direct result of either over hiring in the wrong positions or hiring in the wrong positions. Give you an example. If we, let's say, over hire in positions that don't contribute to revenue or profitability. So there's really only two levels to hiring. They're either driving sales or they're allowing us to deliver on the sales that we've made. So sales are delivery. But what happens is that 10, we're hiring assistants, we're hiring finance, we're hiring HR, maybe we're spending on marketing that's no longer delivering the results that we're looking for. And so we're basically eating away our profits with things that aren't increasing either revenue or profitability. What we need to then do is go, every hire I'm making has to contribute to the bottom line, and I need to minimize the hires that aren't.

So for finance, instead of bringing that in-house, could I hire a bookkeeper? For HR, could I bring on a fractional HR person? Could I hire a hourly recruiter rather than bringing that recruiter in-house for sales? How do we have less base and more commission? For delivery, how do I have my freelance designers getting paid on the delivery of the projects rather than you're going to get a flat salary every year? And so that way you can modulate the revenue up and down, depending on how much business you're bringing in. And now your expenses are done as a percentage of your revenue rather than as a fixed cost, a waterline that you need to exceed in order to avoid drowning.

Chris Do:

Do you have a rule of thumb formula for every person you hire X ratio of salary to income or revenue they're bringing in?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

A good rule of thumb is 5X. So with every hire, they should be bringing in 5X of revenue, and that's obviously going to change depending on your profit margins.

Chris Do:

I would love for that to happen.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah. And if they don't, then it's the wrong hire. The easiest one is a salesperson. If I'm paying a salesperson 100,000, they should be bringing in a minimum of $500,000 a year in sales. If I'm hiring a designer for 100,000, they should be allowing me to deliver on $500,000 of delivery work. So if that's not happening, then you're not getting that 5X return, then you're basically building a breakeven business. And there's nothing wrong with a breakeven business, but you're essentially running a charity. You're not really building a business that allows you to grow in a profitable way that allows you to then reinvest back into the business. Because what they're not factoring in is, well, all of the software spend, all of the payroll taxes, all of the taxes you're paying in general, all of your hidden expenses, you're not factoring that into the higher. And so if you're not factoring that into the higher, this is why revenue will double what profits get cut in half.

Chris Do:

I just want to say this, and I take a moment to be present and just say this out loud, that oftentimes in school they talk about, "Oh, there's a class on small business or entrepreneurship." They're not talking about the things you and I are talking about right now. I promise you that's not happening.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

No.

Chris Do:

They're talking about how to write an invoice, how to look at a P&L sheet. But we're talking about some pretty high level MBA-style education here, and I'm just digging it. So I am going to just remind our audience right now, if you're driving the car, don't forget to leave a review for us and make sure you follow this man. And we'll include all his programs, links and contact information in the show notes. So make sure you check that out. So let's get back to this.

Essentially what you're saying to me, if you're going to run a company that's going to have any shot of growing and exceeding your expectations, the dream business that you've always thought about building, if a person's not directly driving revenue or you call delivery delivery, I might've referred to it as production in the past, I like delivery. Much nicer sounding. Revenue or delivery, you should try to minimize the other expenses like you talked about, HR or accounting or something, whatever else, or bookkeeping.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Totally.

Chris Do:

Get those down. Don't keep those people on staff because it's going to burn a hole in your profit.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

100%.

Chris Do:

Okay. That's now performance.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yep. That's performance. Beautiful.

Chris Do:

I love the way that you've set that up.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yep.

Chris Do:

I need help. We're a seven figure business. Last year we did five and a half million. We're into this weird place now where we seemingly we'll fix one problem and then we'll break something else. And it's just, I think because we're really small company, we're about 12 people. What are we going to need to do to get to the eight figures? I'll be happy with eight. Nine would be amazing. Nine is 100 million, right?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

That's right.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Looking into your crystal ball and I'll disclose a couple of things. We're in too many channels. We're not focused enough. I already am feeling that heat from you right now in a very positive way. What are we doing wrong? Educated guess.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah. One of the seven greatest wonders of the world is the Grand Canyon. It's about three hours away from here. What allows the Grand Canyon to be the Grand Canyon? It's the borders. Without the borders. The Grand Canyon is a puddle that's miles long. It's like super unimpressive. So by creating those borders going, this is what we do and this is what we do, and this is what we're the best in the world at, those borders, create the focus that allows that stream of river to cut in a channel. That's that amazing thing that can be seen from space.

So the question you need to ask yourself, Chris, is, we have a lot of offerings, we have a lot of marketing channels, but there's probably one or two offerings and one or two marketing channels that's outperforming everything else by 3X. Everything else. How do I eliminate everything else to just focus on this one offer and then eliminate all the marketing channels that are wasting my time to just focus on the one to two marketing channels that are consistently driving it?

So basically what we're asking is, how do you create green lights all the way from someone who doesn't know who you are, all the way to becoming a lifelong customer? And what's happening right now is people are showing up to your, let's say website, or they're showing up to your social media and they're going, how do I engage more? What can Chris solve for me? Versus, Chris is the best in the world at solving this one problem and I'm going to give him all my money in order to help solve this problem. So without too deep into your business, there's probably one or two product offerings that are driving a lot more revenue, and there's probably one or two marketing channels that are driving a lot more of revenue.

If we just double those two things, we double the revenue and that one product and we double the marketing, it's coming from that one channel. That alone gets you to 10 million. And the only way we can do that is by eliminating the ones that are wasting our time, the products that are wasting our time and the marketing channels that are wasting our time. At its core, the CEO is the chief investment officer. So when you take a look at your P&L, your P&L is the story of the investments that you've made as a CEO and going, I'm going to invest 10% of my portfolio in this marketing. I'm going to spend 20% of my portfolio in sales, I'm going to spend 30% on production. Those are the decisions that you've made, and your forecast is the story of how you think that's going to change your business.

What you need to then ask is, well, if I'm getting 5X return on YouTube and I'm getting a 1X return on TikTok, how do we then spend way more money on YouTube instead of TikTok? If I'm noticing I'm getting a 5X return on my pro program and I'm getting a 1X return on my digital assets, instead, how do I reallocate my portfolio in order to get way higher returns?

We deeply understand this when we're thinking about our net worth. When we update our net worth and we're going, I have so much, so I'm investing in crypto, I'm investing real estate, I'm investing in the S&P 500. How do I allocate it to be perfect? We never think about our P&L as an investment. And so when we think about focus, we prevents us as go, well, no, I want to be diversified. But when we actually look at historicals, the majority of your revenue and profitability has probably come from one or two areas of investment. And what you're doing is you're actually stealing from investing more by choosing to do other things. I'm not saying don't do them, but let's just try to invest more in the things that are working. Does that answer it?

Chris Do:

Yeah. So I think what I'm hearing you say is we're much more discipline investors when it comes to markets. There's no emotional attachment. We can see, don't put a gazillion dollars in there because the ROI on that's terrible, versus this is on fire, dump more money. So we reallocate often if we're a disciplined investor. But when it comes to our own pursuits, it's like, ah, we're emotionally involved. We can't see things. There's bias.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Totally.

Chris Do:

There's things that we want. So you're like, it's okay to have other things, because you never know, but proportionately manage the investment that you're making so that you're not overinvesting in the wrong thing. It's going to the Pareto principle there, right?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

That's right. 100%.

Chris Do:

The 80/20. Put your effort against the 20% of the things that's driving 80% of your revenue.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

If we had a Facebook ads platform and there was one ad that was outperforming everything else by 80%, you'd be like, throw more money at that particular ad. But then when we look at our P&L and there's one product delivery or one service that's outperforming everything else, we're going, cool, let's just keep doing the same thing next month. And it's like, why is there any difference between looking at your Facebook ads versus looking at your P&L?

Chris Do:

Okay. That's pretty clear, man. Let's do this. I don't want to give it all away, but what are the final three Ps? And then I have a personal question to ask you.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Sure. Yeah. I mean, the final three Ps, what really prevents eight figure businesses from getting to nine figures is plan, psychology, protection. So plan is really your strategy. How are you creating consistent competitive advantage over the multitude of your competitors? Psychology is how are you preventing burnout on the way to 100 million, which is very common. And then the last one is protection. Now that you're at the top of the heap, everyone's looking at you. I think competition is a distraction on the way to 100 million. It becomes the ideal focus at 100. And so those are really the three things that are going to prevent you from taking an eight figure business to 100 million, is planned psychology and protection.

Chris Do:

Okay. I'm sure we can spend an hour just dissecting all those parts and pieces.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yep.

Chris Do:

But I remember there was a questionnaire I wanted to ask you. It's a personal one for me.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Sure.

Chris Do:

I want you to play the role of relationship therapists. I'm going to give you my real life scenario, save my marriage.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

No pressure. No pressure.

Chris Do:

Here we go. No pressure. The scenario is this, I've made enough money, I don't need to work anymore. And so my wife is saying to me, why do you need to work? Why are you embracing and creating all this stress for yourself? Why is this schedule so crazy? You don't need this? Why don't you scale back? Why don't we just write off into the sunset because we have enough as it is? And to which my response there is there's a part that's baked into my DNA that you fell in love with, I think, which is I don't live to go to make more money, but I live to challenge myself to learn and to do personal development, and this is how I know how to do it. The instant you take that away from me, I start to shrivel and I don't know who I am anymore. It's not about the work, it's not about the diction to the money or anything, but it's the pursuit of my highest self. And it's something that I wrestle with because I know for a fact, as you've already astutely pointed out, smaller team, more profit, less work. Enjoy your life, man. At this point. How do I reconcile this?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Well, Chris, yeah, this is uniquely tailored to you because you more than anyone understands the hero's journey. And there's this great audiobook called The Amazing Development of Men, but it really talks more about the hero's journey. And when someone like yourself is no longer motivated by money, but you're rather motivated by the impact, you're motivated by how are you creating an impact on the world that is aligned to the legacy you're trying to create and the kingdom that you're trying to build. And so at this point, it has nothing to do with money. You are essentially going through a transition where you remember what it was like on the way up, and now you're at an incredible position where you're building your kingdom. And for you, this isn't monetary related. This is the kingdom that you're trying to create.

And to your point, this is probably why your wife fell in love with you. Well, she saw that ambition, she saw that drive, and now she's saying, well, "Why are you working so hard? Or why are you doing this?" What maybe would be helpful to have a conversation with her is understanding the kingdom that you're trying to build, really not just for yourself, but rather for her and for your family. And the book goes through because the book is designed for couples to go through together where it basically says it's hard for the feminine in her mind you working so hard is maybe a reflection on how much you love her. Whereas this book by, I believe Alison Armstrong, she recognizes that even if you loved her more, it would not pull you away from what you feel is your highest calling.

And so you are actually doing this not just for her, but for your family. And so you're basically building this kingdom and building this legacy in a way that takes care of her, takes care of the family, and allows you to reach your highest calling.

So I think going through that book, I mean, I went through it with my wife. It was incredibly transformational and it allowed us both to truly understand each other. And she has another one for The Amazing Development of Women that I'd recommend you read as well, because there's a lot of things about your wife that you would need to understand. Because it's funny, we look at National Geographic shows and when they go through the masculine, the feminine, they couldn't be more diametrically opposed. And then when we look at human couples, we are like, oh, that's just a hairy human. And it's like, no, it's completely different. And so the motivations are completely different. So yeah, I think it's important for both of you to recognize that yourself are going through your own hero's journey, and in order for you to really reach that highest calling, there is going to be a component that's not monetarily motivated. You're motivated by something a lot deeper and something that probably is a lot more admirable.

Chris Do:

I think you understand me really well because as soon as you said that it's conversations we've had. I can't make a strong argument or case for I'm doing it for you or the children because we have more than what we need. And I told her it's like, "I'm not going to be the same person anymore if I can't fulfill this idea of trying to help other people and the kind of impact and the difference I want to make in the world."

Ayman Al Abdullah:

That's right.

Chris Do:

Because what truly brings me joy is the generosity that I'm able to share with others and how it's reciprocated back to me. It renews my hope and humanity and just like, you know what? We might blow each other up. We might destroy our home planet, but until then, let's try to do as much good for each other as we can.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

100%.

Chris Do:

And that makes me really happy. Maybe that's some bigger idea or spiritual connection that I want to have, but that's the dilemma that I'm in because it does come at a price of the family because why wouldn't I be doing this with my son or my wife, but then I don't know who I am anymore. I'm a ship loss at sea without a rudder or something like that.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

100%. I mean, the book really is fantastic when it goes through this because for a lot of individuals, it's this weird diametrically opposed where it's like, it's weird that am I doing this for the family? It's hard for the wife and kids to understand that. Whereas what you're truly doing that for that impact for the family. And it's also the standard that you set. You are a very driven individual. And so you have very high standards for what taken care of actually means. So in your wife's mind, she's like, "We have more than we need," but probably somewhere deep inside of you, you're like, "No, there's actually something deeper here that I really need in order to make sure that I feel that I've checked that box as a provider."

Chris Do:

Yeah. Okay. Now I know you have a program, it's all booked up. This is out of our promotion, it's just by information. If someone's in a position such as myself, or like for me, it would be Ben who runs my company, who needs to get the training that you're talking about to hit the nine Ps so that we can go where we need to go financially, how does your program work? What does the cost, what is the structure of it? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah. Right now, I only do one-on-one coaching. And I'm in a really lucky position where I'm working with a lot of great CEOs. And yeah, unfortunately I am fully booked out. So what I'm trying to do in order to help individuals is I'm putting out a lot of free content. So my Twitter is a great place. My email newsletter is a great place to get familiarized with the nine steps, the nine figures. So I basically send out a deeper email on each of those nine steps, and I'm looking for ways in order to scale that feels authentic. I've experimented with it, didn't feel authentic to me. Maybe I'll roll out some workshops. And so if you're on my email newsletter, you're following me on Twitter, there might be some emails in the future where it's like, Hey, I'm going to throw a workshop. Come here and we're going to go deeper into how we can help scale and grow your business authentically to you.

Chris Do:

Have you done workshops before?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I love them. I think they're super.

Chris Do:

Oh, you do? Okay.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah. I don't like throwing events. I like going to other individuals and I'm like, Hey, we're going to do a six-hour workshop on maybe three hours in strategy and then three hours on the nine steps. And I really enjoy it, like the in person, the ability to really connect, the ability to answer questions, whiteboard in real time. Whereas I feel like sometimes you lose a little bit of that fidelity when you're on Zoom.

Chris Do:

100%.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

I think you lose most of it.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah, totally.

Chris Do:

Okay, here's an offer to you. I don't consider ourselves an event planning program community. It's probably a distraction from our main business. So I'll probably get slapped on the wrist for this. But if you want to do one in LA and we'll figure it out, so just let me know because I'm sure everybody's listening to this and they're like, "Yes, please, Chris, tell him to do it." We should do it.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Oh, I'd love that.

Chris Do:

And I'll take care of the logistics. So you get to do your thing and be in your zone of genius.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I love that.

Chris Do:

I'd love just to be like a guy who hangs out. I'm like, okay, this is how Ayman does it.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

I love it. Consider it done. Let's lock it in. All right.

Chris Do:

I know you because it will happen.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Yeah, 100%

Chris Do:

Your ninjas will call me and it'll be locked in.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Totally.

Chris Do:

Just like this podcast everybody. I want to end it on this one final note, which is what's something has always really impressed me about you, the little time that we spent together is your relationship with money. And I see this in very successful people. They understand that these things are all investments, and you have this big heart of this gratitude and this reciprocity, like the story about the lady who helped you early in your career that you're always writing a note. I wish I was more like that. I have deep gratitude, but I don't take the actions that you do. So you demonstrate that through actions and deeds and mine's just like in my head, it doesn't help anybody.

And I just would love for you to touch on a little bit right before we wrap up here is how do you see money and why the poor stay poor, because the relationship with money is different than what I see in you?

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Well, I'd like to touch on that, Chris, because I think that you're maybe underselling yourself in the way that you do reciprocity. I've been learning from your YouTube channel for years. And I would argue that's your love letters to the world. The ability for you to have all this incredible content out there. And I've been learning for you for years. And to me, I get a lot from the content that you're putting on. So maybe you're not writing a letter to an individual because you're a better marketer. You put that stuff out there and you're able to serve people at scale. Even me, when I was one of your strangers just watching your videos passively, I was benefiting from you. And maybe that's the way that you've given back to your mentors and the people that have taught you in the past. So I would say that number two is I think that it's really important for you to recognize, we talk about chief investment officer, that there's really only two unrenewable assets that you as an individual can be the CEO of your own life, and that's time or money.

And to me, I deeply care about both of those two things because you're not going to be able to get the time back and money is a precious and non-renewable source. So how are you investing both of those in a way to free up more time in the future or free up more money in the future? And that could be as simple as, for instance, I have an assistant that comes by my house every single week. Now, I used to bring out the assistant even before I could theoretically afford the assistant, but here's some of the things that she would do. She would pick up all of the stuff that I wasn't using anymore, sell it on Craigslist. In the past, it used to just sit there. Whereas now every week, she's bringing me money every single week for things that she's selling on Craigslist.

And so she's doing that. She's getting rid of my boxes, she's doing returns, she's taking care of my dry cleaning. And then at the end of the week, instead of me paying her, she's giving me money back for all the junk that she's selling from my house. And that's freeing up 10 plus hours in my day. I'm now, instead of spending 10 hours on a Saturday morning worrying about different errands, I can spend that with my wife. I can go and enjoy myself. I'm buying back my time. And I think it's really important for you as a CEO of your own life to figure out, well, where am I spending my time? Even early on at AppSumo, I was spending five hours every single week just setting up the deals, clicking, checking boxes, going through checklists. I ended up hiring a local intern from UT Austin for $15 an hour, and that ended up freeing five plus hours every single week. So it's really about how am I investing this money in order to get this time back? And then how do I take that extra time, I used it to then go and do more sales calls, which then ended up doubling the revenue of the business.

So there's this deep flow between investing to get more time back, and then using that time to get more money back. And that back and forth between the two really allows you to then have way more time freedom than ever before and allow more money to be flowing into your life than ever before.

Chris Do:

You said this pretty quickly, but I want to draw our audience audience's attention to something you said. When you're setting up those deals, you hire someone for 15 bucks an hour. So the math is everybody. Math doesn't lie. You're doing the work of someone at $15 an hour as the CEO of a ginormous company.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

100%.

Chris Do:

Doesn't make sense whatsoever.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Nope.

Chris Do:

Then when you use your money, buy back your time, you use that time to go and get more money because you're focused on the tasks that actually had the biggest impact, the stuff that it's not easy to delegate to people. You focus on the sales, and that's how you blow it up. And I think this is the problem, and I don't know if this is the right way to phrase it, and forgive me, internet, which is, people who don't have a healthy relationship with money have a hard time with this.

Like my father, he's a brilliant man, working class guy, super conservative with his money. He doesn't have this understanding, this relationship. He unfortunately would spend three hours to save $3 or something. It doesn't make sense to me. Dad, I love you, by the way. It's like he can't get that entrepreneurial thing.

And you start to understand this, and I know people in the say Midwest would look at people on the coast and say, "Oh, you think you're so important that you can't do your own dry cleaning? You can't sell your own stuff on Craigslist." And they look at it like you're being too self-important. What they don't understand is this dynamic.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

100%. Yeah. And it's not that I don't care about the $3. I'm just getting it after. I'm getting it in a whole nother, and so I'm spending that $15 an hour in order to make the $1,000 an hour after. And so I actually think it's wasteful of the money for me not to have made that higher. Number one, because number one, I hate doing the setting up. That's not my zone of genius. And then number two, I could be making more money doing something else. And so not only did I get this incredible intern who has now an opportunity to work directly with the seven figure CEO and learn, and he's getting money to spend on the weekends, but now I'm freeing up those five hours in order to put more money back into the business. Yeah, I mean, it's this weird relationship. It's the marshmallow test with money. And so it's the opportunity to have that delayed gratification in order to have more later on.

Chris Do:

And every time I hear one of your ideas, I am reminded of, and also because I am a first generation immigrant, I inherit some of that relationship with money, and I have to constantly remind myself, yo, go spend that money, because it'll come back to even for you. Literally, you use your money back your time, but you also use your money to buy back more money.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Totally.

Chris Do:

So it's the net positive on both sides. It's wonderful. So I just want to say that to all of you. If you're in that space where you need to get from wherever you are to the next level, you're going to have to change your mindset, your limiting beliefs, so that you can unlock the next level, and it comes at those kinds of triggers in your mind. If you can do that, then you'll have the key. And it's not something like, oh, meet a thousand more clients. It's almost always this very small thing, but it's so critical, the thing that's holding you back that's going to get you to the next level.

It's been a real pleasure talking to you today.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

Chris, absolutely. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Chris Do:

Thank you so much.

Ayman Al Abdullah:

My name is Ayman Al-Abdullah, and you're listening to The Futur.

Stuart Schuster:

Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week. The Futur Podcast is hosted by Chris Do. And produced by me, Stuart Schuster. Thank you to Anthony Barrow for editing and mixing this episode. And thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music.

If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better.

Have a question for Chris or me? Head over to thefutur.com/heychris, and ask Away. We read every submission and we just might answer yours in a later episode. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefutur.com. You'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and creative business. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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