Are You Sabotaging Your Business? W/ @AymanAlAbdul

this is a thing that they repeat to themselves yeah you only have to do sales and marketing if your work is not good enough and I think that's a mentality and a mindset that's very popular within the creative culture yeah that then holds you back well if that was true then Van Gogh would have been famous while he was alive a lot of creative people make the mistake that it's about the craft oh actually what's limiting me is not my design skills but rather my ability to attract clients so your ability to not pick up that skill to attract clients is actually what's preventing you from making six figures 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 I need help yeah someone just throwing this out there sure 47 bigger business yep last year we did five and a half million we're into this weird place now where where we seeming like we'll fix one problem and then we'll break something else looking into your crystal ball what are we doing wrong [Music] okay um obviously we're in a different place and we're doing a podcast with my friend Eamon who I met at the event that he's going to tonight and we've had the opportunity of having a couple like informal meetings and it's really cool when you when you meet another CEO who's working at the kind of level he's working at to crawl inside his brain so fasten your seat belts everybody we're gonna do something a little bit different but I think it's going to be very meaningful and without further Ado even for people who don't know who you are can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your story yeah Chris thank you so much I'm so glad we were able to connect here yeah I know that we've had a lot of informal dinners and breakfasts and all that so the ability to actually sit down formally and have this conversation I'm super pumped about I've I've been a long time fan of you and your content thank you so the fact that uh here I mean 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 it's like an online Marketplace for for entrepreneurs um I stepped in when they were doing around three million dollars annually in revenue and uh over the course of six years I stepped down um we were doing 80 million dollars 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 uh that's basically me in a nutshell I like it I I think I saw on Twitter where you you said that seven figures to nine figures and it's like very clear that's all I do if you have yet to make seven figures I'm 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 like that is my sweet spot like to me I tell people there's three phases of a company's growth there's the startup there's a 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 um are better than me at scale up okay that's what I really enjoy this naturally already a lot of questions I just want to dive into the first of which is what is your personal background like how did you become the person to to run it from like employee one to 140 employees what is your background uh I mean I'm entrepreneur by trade okay you know I I was um I'd started multiple companies prior in college and in high school and um I ended up getting a piece of advice from one of my mentors in college which is Eamonn 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 like the foundation for the rest of your career and so out of everything that I applied to um 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 like 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 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 um I spent you know a portion of that in Munich Germany which is super fun and it was a great start to my career but you know after after the rotation stopped and the variety went away I realized like oh no I'm part of a large Corporation and I have like 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 wasn't the business the issue was me and what was preventing me from breaking through that Plateau was learning marketing 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 the companies I'd 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 takes the launch a business um was just you know an opportunity I had to say yes to him and six years later I'm super happy I did that if I ask you a question that you're not comfortable answering just say oh yeah I will edit it out because my curiosity is going to take me to places and ask those questions where I'm sometimes listening to the car with other people like hey why didn't you ask that so right I don't want to be that totally doesn't ask you did go to school oh I did yeah what did you study so I studied accounting of course I'm a recovering accountant yeah so you see how you don't mention that now it's like I'm pulling it out yeah you're a recovering account I'm a recovering accountant wow yeah okay well you got to remember I'm I'm in college during the last Great Recession and so I'm like wanting to do the entrepreneurship route and I'm just seeing all of my friends get their job offers rescinded and everything every time in 2008 2008 oh my God yeah okay take me back there 2008 the financial black hole opens up and swallows businesses and people and too big to fail companies totally everybody's over leverage are you in school or about to graduate where are you yeah I'm about to graduate okay uh and I'm seeing the seniors around me celebrating job offers and then a week later their job offers pulled right so they're moving back into back home with Mom and Dad right you know 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 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 what 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 like in hindsight every bad thing that happens here there's a great Chinese proverb called have you heard the Chinese proverb called we'll see so there's a Chinese farmer and his horse runs away and his neighbors is like 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 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 then 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 terrible luck but in hindsight I'm so glad because you know when now you're running 100 million dollar p l i can go back to that that accounting degree and analyze the piano and recognize that CEOs don't have expenses they have investments in 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 have never been able to do that without that Foundation of accounting well I know something about you you you don't fit exactly in the stereotypical hopefully this is not disparaging remark to other accountants who might be watching it you don't fit in that stereotype the person who wears their pants a little too high yeah your jacket's a little bit too big with like the taller shoulder pads yeah you're you're a fit guy you're uh some sometimes over Landing you know and you there's an edge to you so you don't fit in that mold so maybe you already knew oh yeah this is this is like some a foundation but not where you're gonna land right 100 I never like all of my mentors knew at the time they're like amen you're not you're not going to dot every eye across every tee like I had to learn accounting through Brute Force yeah enforcing myself in the library but it's definitely it definitely is was not natural I think that it's really important for you to recognize what what a lot what careers align with your own personality and how are you doing things that you're like honestly if if I wasn't getting paid I would still do this for free yeah and your job is to date your career until you until you can marry it and so being able to analyze hey like what lights me up what's the stuff that like I'm looking at my calendar I'm like I can't wait for this meeting yeah or I can't wait for this moment or I can't wait for this piece of content to come out like 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 okay now I have context for the for the stint at Microsoft in that you mentioned two years so I did two years and then I did another year and a half after that one okay so three and a half years yeah what was your role at Microsoft having come out of an accounting program yeah well that's the thing is I while my degree was in accounting yeah the 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 um basically get face to face to the owner of this uh program and you know for her she's typically recruiting people from Harvard from Warden I went to a school in Miami called FIU uh 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 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 like maybe there's something there and like I'm forever grateful because she really helped kick-start my career because the alternative would have been I mean I was doing internships 70 hours a week Chris in a cubicle with no sunlight and like I remember them over the intercom going hey we're changing we're going we're changing the billable hours this week from 60 to 70 hours a week that's billable hours that doesn't include lunches meetings so like you're working 80 100 hours weeks and I remember I was an intern I remember the person sitting next to me was working there two years he just started crying at his desk after hearing for real for real wow and I was like this is not the career I want to go into you're like I'm like holy can the universe Give Me A Sign if this is right yeah and the guy next to you is sobbing you're like okay this is definitely not right was this at one of those big accounting firms this was at one of those big accounts the dungeons yeah oh my gosh it was like this is terrible and I'm so glad that I'm going through this I mean you're dating your career before you marry it and I was just so thankful that like I was like I need to do anything but but this and um yeah I was just grateful that I was able to find transition 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 and what do you think your boss saw in you as a person who's atypical of who she would recruit to work in Microsoft at that age like what did she seeing you what could you have perspective on that yeah it's a great question I mean I know that you go into this a little bit which is like sort of like the hero's journey like we all need these outside mentors and individuals that like really just see something in us I don't know I don't I honestly don't know what you saw in me like I I was the president of the organization at the time I had some couple like public speaking engagements um I had put together some like strategic proposal for Microsoft and sent over a letter I think like she saw like a little bit of culmination all that I think at a core she probably just saw a little bit of grit and hustle that um I mean frankly I was part of the the graduating class of my high school that allowed the top half to exist meaning like I barely graduated high school like I barely broke out and the reason is like I was I was hanging out with the bad kids in school like my my brother has three felonies and I was the bad kid in high school so like I was lucky to even make it to University so um I think like she saw a little bit of that grit and that hustle and that ability to like hey this person there's something there and like I'm forever grateful that she saw that spark and I I know that she really took a chance on me and so my entire two years at in that program was trying to help prove that she had made the right decision okay 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 is the tangible result of hustle and grit like 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 mug shot I mean what do we do in here I think she saw the uh the the numerous like atypical things that were in my story like that having started two companies in college sold them both um the ability to like transition from one major to another the ability to take on leadership positions like I think she saw this overarching threat of someone that just wasn't satisfied with the status quo okay and first for whatever reason she was looking for an individual that maybe you know as part of the rotation program it's multifaceted the ability to sort of step in and uh 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 like multifaceted in that regard um I don't know maybe she saw a little bit of who she was when she was younger I think she came from like a similar background and I think that sometimes you know the ability for you to spot like the Next Generation and go like I see like a spark in this individual and the ability to help them raise up I mean I'm forever grateful for like I think I send her a letter every every year um and um yeah I'm just I'm forever grateful that she took that chance I think that might be a subject or a through line that we can pick up later if it presents itself but sure as a leader you have to be able to spot talent and it's hard to like pinpoint and say to someone these are the 17 things you need to look for right 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 like your 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 be you have to be able to spot Talent 100 right and it's not that you can just go down the list of the ivy league magna laude 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 some of them could be total jerks right 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 you're wonderful and so what we try to do because we're 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 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 yeah and that you're atypical that's your one shot of getting in I love that you know it's funny you were mentioning spotting talent and like it reminded me of we were spending six months looking for our head of customer support and we were really struggling like there was a lot of people are coming from like 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 uh understand like 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 wow and then so swung by three times in order to make sure that I was having a great experience and I'm literally sitting there having having brunch and I'm like that's her like 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 she joined the company she accepted the position she's never been in you know a tech position before like 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 uh was just absolutely phenomenal it was absolutely an a player in that regard you talk about one of the key positions the key jobs of the CEO spotting talent that maybe doesn't come from a like a non-typical background yeah but like what is the one or two things that they need like 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 a customer that she's going above and beyond to make sure our customer is happy she's a very people-centric person totally has an intention 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 100 and in which company did you hire for her for so this is for apps okay yeah yeah I didn't want to make an assumption 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 like that's a good person that's a good human and they're in the wrong position totally and I I'm not that financially successful my company's not big enough where I can just pull people out but as you're running appsumo and you're expanding massively and pretty quickly it looks like you're you have ample opportunity like let me try that theory out let me try you know 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 more stuff to come okay yep um following up on something you had said that you had hit some kind of financial Milestone that you just couldn't shake it's up between Microsoft and appsumo it was okay can you talk a little bit about what that Milestone is and what you thought the problem was so it's um it was actually even before Microsoft up so is that the two previous companies we were still we were getting stalled out let's say in the six figure range and we meaning your company the two companies uh so I started one stalled out camp punched through so I sold it started another one I'm like oh it's the idea the issue is the idea yeah um so I started another one and then I just kept hitting that same Revenue Milestone what is that number somewhere like in the six figure range okay so if you're if you're getting stuck in the six figure range what I ended up realizing was if you have a a business and you know who you're serving and you have a decent product it's easy if you you if you just hustle you can get the six figures yes 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 I call it the the person problem promotion and it's that last component like you can get to six figures selling something you can get the seven figure 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 both of them were digital businesses to leverage digital marketing in a way that consistently brought in enough attention and awareness and leads into that existing 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 mean 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 yeah okay I am going to ask a question on behalf of our audience and I maybe want to polarize the conversation and you a little bit here I have a certain belief around making a hundred thousand dollars that in America it's not that hard to make a hundred thousand dollars 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 what is your take on that what's your hot take on can you make a hundred thousand dollars in America if this is what you want to do I mean I've built six-figure businesses half an hour a day so um is it hard to make a hundred thousand dollars it's not hard if you have the right skills what's hard is developing those skills so uh is it hard to make a hundred thousand dollars absolutely not is it it does it does is it hard to develop skills to make a hundred thousand yes it is if you're only focused on trading your time for hours like I I remember Chris celebrating a 25 cent raise with my with my mom like taking her at the Cheesecake Factory and be like Mom oh yeah I have to treat I had to treat Mom right and like at that time I just didn't have the skills to break through anything more than minimum wage and so same yeah so like 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're if you love talking to people and you're you're one that's always recommending the best movies and the best restaurants like you're a natural salesperson like 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 like pulling apart the radios and your watches and figuring out like oh I love how things work and you're always like breaking your your playing around on the internet like learn programming that's a six figure skill if you um love art and you love being like I wish they would change this billboard or I wish they would like this color scheme is ugly become a designer that's a six figure skill like figure out what are your naturally good at and then get really good at learning that skill that alone I mean just trading your time for hours in in a six figure skill capacity will allow you to pay 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 I think that you're 100 right like 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 are you know spending their afternoons just you know binging Netflix that are spending their weekends just drinking not really going above and beyond like learning like hey actually like 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 once you've dedicated to yourself and go this is a must I mean it's almost an like it's almost inevitable that you will make six figures there's going to be a couple people in our audience in our community is going to listen to this and they're kind of like grading their teeth right now like what do you mean Chris and amen I'm a designer yeah I'm not making anything like that yep and sometimes they'll say easy for you guys to say uh you 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 like twenty thousand dollars and that's considered good how do we help people overcome that uh I'm just curious and if you could maybe direct your attention energy towards like I'm a designer yeah because they can relate versus sales or coding or development or something like that what do you think what are they missing it's it's funny like they're immediately leaning in with like oh I live here or I do this and like we live in it's 2023 right now I remember paying one of my designers nine thousand dollars a month so making 108 000 a year and I had no idea that she was living in the Philippines hmm location is irrelevant we we work on the internet and the only reason that they are charging with their charges they're going oh well this is this is what my peers are making but in this new environment Chris the peers are is we're all working on the internet right so your your peers are you the peers of your skills not the peers of your location um 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 this other skill that she doesn't have and she's spending all this time getting becoming a better designer when she should just become better at how do I create more demand for my Design Services do all roads go back to marketing and sales in up until seven figures they do so I go through I mean the three Frameworks startup startup is about person problem promotion once you've had seven figures it completely changes so seven figures is about process people and performance there's a lot of P's going on here well that's the it's the nine the nine P's nine steps I got nine P's okay I make it easier for people to remember so I called the knife yeah that's what you're saying well it's the nine plateaus right so these 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 Eamon I'm not able to get to eight Figures it's probably because there's a breakdown either in processed 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 okay so we're 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 C's there if I keep going here I love it yeah there you go they need to have the courage then to understand that it's more than that yeah so people just put their heads in the sand and say well if I'm the best XYZ at this craft I don't need to and this is a thing that they repeat to themselves yeah you only have to do sales and marketing if your work is not good enough because 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 yeah that then holds you back well if that was true then Van Gogh would have 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 as 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 you're speaking my language now because it's about scale then it is yeah right okay well it depends right like what are your goals if you want to be I want to be the the unknown artist and I I'm cool living in 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 gonna have to learn to make money from your art yeah and that's not going to happen by just being an artist is this is hurting some creative Souls right now he didn't realize listening to this episode that you're gonna get some a 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 the person is that you no that's your ideal client oh okay yeah all right tell me more then well I think that you have to start with Who Am I who am I serving okay I think the best entrepreneurs the best creatives they deeply understand their audience okay 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 a love letter and addressing it to whom it may concern like imagine that you 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 SAS 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 that's the key phrase who's the most profitable customer and most profitable is the the person who sings our Praises isn't a pain they ask 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 a set of almost a 10x rate of everyone else and it's because marketing agency Matt was buying licenses on behalf of his clients whereas 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 uh instead of you can only buy one license of this tool you're buying 10. instead of it having no marketing agency for Easters 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 Matt 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 cost so much easier it makes the ability to think about strategy and marketing so person then the problem then promotion okay some things to get through here do you credit your analytical accounting mind to comb through data and trying to look for the the needle and the haystack to find your most profitable customer is it become apparent that somebody looks at like dude what are we doing yeah I mean I I definitely have um that data driven mind but I'll at that time I have a great team you know they're they're the ones that are asking questions on my behalf they're able to go deeper like who should we be going after who should how do we get better at marketing and so the ability to like have a team that has higher standards than yourself I think is really critical at that stage when we were doing like around 10 million dollars in Revenue in order to figure out like hey like let's dig into the data let's be a little bit more data driven not too much I see a lot of people get 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 a serve marketing 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 and the worst companies in the world the Codex the ones that fell from their Graces it's because they ignored and they forgot who they actually served okay the problem with the person is it's not easy to see it's not easy to commit to yeah and it's a it's one of the biggest challenges that people have because the logic goes if I narrow who I Target then aren't I leaving a lot of opportunity on the table yeah to which you respond with we were very worried about that but what we realized is when we cut our target audience we triple our Revenue yeah 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 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 the entire ecosystem benefits as a result Apple I mean from the very beginning here's the crazy ones right 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 right 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 two trillion dollar company and they with all their marketing they're basically just serving one type of customer right uh there's something that I'm reminded of that Blair ends says which is the market is bigger than the Target and we worry that if we just go for the Target we lose out 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 yeah 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 yeah still served and sold yeah well let's just use your designer example if you're if I go to your website and you're like I'm a designer it's like okay like maybe maybe I'll like some of your designs whereas if I go to your website and you're like I only design home pages for SAS 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 what I need to hire and a lot of times people go well I want to serve everyone I want to show my entire info I want to do 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 they can afford and if you dilute yourself and say I can do a little bit of everything I'm gonna 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 that um I think what Mr B spends twenty thousand dollars per thumbnail like it's yeah it's like there's 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 is the problem then the the person's problem in the market like what problem you're solving for them yeah that's exactly okay so once you've identified who you're serving what is where is the demand what are they looking for what is the problem that they're looking for and so um for the designer that's in the audience if you have a portfolio and you're noticing the 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 right 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 and it just and I'm only going to hire her for this yeah those two ideas are kind of I I think linked together because if you don't know the person how can you figure out the problem holding if you serve too many people there's too many different kinds of problems and maybe that's fun for you as a creative human to work on right but then you don't develop deep expertise there are no patterns that you can spot okay so we get that the the promotion part I think this is where we get hung up okay yeah I've chosen an avatar I'm gonna work with marketing Matt I understand marketing that's a problem they're buying multiple licenses they need white labeling all the things you had said before right what's the promotion part and 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 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 I can leverage YouTube or tick tock 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 like 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 that singular channel that alone Chris can get you to seven figures so it means that you have to do something to get yourself out there in front of your ideal client that's right so if you're a 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 trade show but maybe Chamber of Commerce I don't know how people do these things but yeah and if you're a great content creator and you know how to do that work that channel totally 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 100 okay yeah yeah I mean if you like I want to go to events and that's where I'm going to end up making my my uh my my marketing channel 100 I know a lot of other people they're like no I just I put out three YouTube videos a week and that's my marketing channel yeah and they they're building seven figure businesses I know people that are like I'm gonna make one Tick Tock a day that's the marketing channel they've built seven figure businesses like that I know other people I'm just going to do cold Outreach I'm going to email my ideal client and go hey I do landing pages for SAS companies here's a five minute update or five minute loom video that I created for your your home page on the things that I would do to change to increase your conversion rate like you decide there's so many you just pick one get really good at and you can build a seven figure business okay um maybe maybe the word of the day for those three big Concepts between people problem and promotion is focus yeah focus on one person focus on their biggest problem and then focus on the one channel the ones plays that you need to be so that you can reach those people ideally 100 okay so we're gonna get to the six figures and then we're gonna get to the seven figures and the Seven figures is process people and performance take me through those ideas please so these are plateaus these are things that are preventing you from getting to the next level okay a lot of seven figure businesses the bottleneck is the founder is now doing everything they've brute forced themselves or maybe there's like one or two key employees but for the most part they're doing both sales and delivering 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 three million five million and Beyond now depending on the business if you have SAS 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've got some 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 then we're gonna 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 backfilling my process with the most the best people the highest a players in order to develop that eight figure business over time okay we're going to run into all kinds of roadblocks here yeah 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 is too insignificant to put anybody against and they can't fathom the idea of spending money on something that feels so trivial so they 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 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 yeah do we just determine that that's it and that's okay and or is it something that you can help people who are stuck on that kind of mindset to be able to overcome that we have to start with what do you want yeah you know if you want to be deeply involved and you're like no I want to do it all amazing but like 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 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 like 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 a 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 gonna go up market so some people are like I don't want to work with Enterprise level customers I only want to like I like working with smbs because I'm working with the founder I'm working with the decision maker whereas if I'm working with the lexuses of the world it's now designed by committee so asking yourself well what kind of 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 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 okay I think this is where people are going to get stuck and I'm gonna say to all of you who are listening who think this is just crazy nonsense and you you love every aspect of what you do my my suggestion is then you should buy some key person Insurance yeah because 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 100 so you better buy some key person Insurance 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 like if you tried to sell your business like 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's 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 yeah right if you if you are a solopreneur you call out sick and no one's doing provide 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 the business is still running yeah and I 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 hadn't worked um that he took he's taken four vacations in the last year whereas the previous year he didn't take a single one yeah so then the direct result of that is him stepping out like the less he does the more valuable the business becomes yeah I 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 kind of like Murphy's Law yep the minute you plan a trip to Hawaii is the moment when the dream client comes knocking so they take notifications yeah that's true and then they get stuck in that place and then eventually they burn out okay I I think what you're saying makes perfect sense to a left-brained person yep the right brain person is hurting a little bit right now you may have crushed their soul sure a little bit amen so I just want to say if you want to direct any negative commentary I'll leave amen'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 um performance yeah what is performance well at this point now you've um you're 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 I've been there yeah you're like are you looking into my financial history you know I I say this all it's like most CEOs they like 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 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 right you know you need and this is at this point you're flying a plane you need the gauges and the dials to let you know hey are we if we're increasing expenses is revenue and profit going up as well like don't work twice as hard for half the money like I I you and I have both been there I say this all the time I'm gonna be there now yeah well it's like you you don't want like I say if you haven't cried over your p l on a Thanksgiving morning like you're not a real CEO yet and so I 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 and spending more 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 um 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 yeah if I'm good with five people let's go to ten and you get to 10 they're like wait a minute I'm working really hard but then my profit percentage-wise has shranked yep and then we get this 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 because of economies of scale you know certain structures allow you to manage more people but until you have that in place you're just burning a lot of money you are right 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 like two really Cracker Jack assistants yeah and I would just work less and I would make more money what's wrong with that mindset okay yeah I mean I think that a lot of people go I don't want to manage people yeah and there's nothing wrong with that right like I think that um you can have you can be running a great lifestyle business okay I've made some phone calls after this Mo I'm sorry there's nothing more local like once again just because I am the I'm going to take you 100 million guys doesn't mean that everyone should I mean it's it's a completely different environment you're managing people and people are messing like you're talking to me right now look Chris there's nothing wrong with going I I just want to be I don't want to have any one-on-ones on my calendar I don't want to worry about performance reviews yep uh they're that's amazing that's a beautiful business yeah 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 there's a it's a different kind of stress but your business will last a lot longer you're 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 there you've built up an ecosystem that is a lot more anti-fragile so you have to ask like what what type of business do I want to create and if I do want to go after that 100 million dollar Benchmark then yeah we're gonna have to figure out a way to do that in a way that's profitable and going back to that same question which is Eamon I've 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 the wrong positions and give you an example if we let's say over higher 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 my freelance designers getting paid on the delivery of the projects rather than you're going to get a flat the salary every year right um 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 water line that you need to exceed in order to avoid drowning do you have a rule of thumb formula for every person you hire X ratio of salary to income they're bringing or Revenue they're bringing in 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 margin I would love for that to happen yeah and if they don't then it's the wrong it's the wrong hire the easiest one is sales a sales person if I'm paying a salesperson a hundred thousand they should be bringing in a minimum of five hundred thousand dollars a year in sales if I'm hiring a designer for a hundred thousand they should be allowing me to deliver on five hundred thousand dollars of delivery work so if that's not happening then you're not getting that 5x return then you're basically building a break-even business and there's nothing wrong with a break-even business but you're essentially running a charity you're you're not really building a business that allows you to grow uh 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 all of the software spend all of the payroll taxes all of the taxes you're paying in general like all of your hidden expenses they're not 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 I just want to say this and take a moment to kind of 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 no they're talking about how to write an invoice yeah how to look at a p l sheet but we're talking about some pretty high level MBA style education here and I'm I'm just digging it so I I'm gonna just remind our audience right now if you're watching this video make sure you like and comment and tell us what has been the biggest light bulb moment for you if you're driving the car don't forget to like 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 kind of 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 I might have referred to it as production in the past I like delivery yeah 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 totally get those down don't keep those people on staff because it's going to burn a hole in your profit 100 okay that's now performance yep that's performance beautiful I love the way that you you've set that up yep I need help yeah someone just throwing this out there sure we're a seven figure business yeah last year we did five and a half million we're into this weird place now where where we seeming like 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 do we need to do to get to the eight figures like I'll be happy with eight nine would be amazing yeah nine is 100 million right that's right okay looking into your crystal ball and I'll disclose a couple things we're in too many channels yeah we're not focused enough yeah I already am feeling that heat from you right now in a very positive way yeah what are we doing wrong educated guess yeah um one of the seven greatest wonders of the world is the Grand Canyon it's like about 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 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 like one or two offerings and one or two marketing channels that's outperforming everything else by three to three x everything else how do I eliminate everything else to just focus on this one offer and then it'll 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 them all his money all my money in order to help solve this problem so without dabbing too deep into your business there's probably um one or two product offerings that are driving a lot more revenue and it's probably one or two marketing channels that are driving a lot more Revenue how do we just if we just double those two things we double the 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 okay I think I know the answers okay it's pretty cool man yeah let's do this I don't want to give it all away but what are the final three p's and then I have a personal question to ask you sure yeah I mean the final three p's 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 like competition is a distraction on the way to 100 million it becomes the ideal focus at 100. and so those are the really the three things that are going to prevent you from taking an eight-figure business to 100 million is plan psychology and protection okay I'm sure we can spend an hour just dissecting all those parts and pieces yeah I remember there's a question I wanted to ask you it's kind of a personal information I want you to play the role of like relationship therapists I'm going to give you my my real life scenario save my marriage no pressure the scenario is this I've made enough money that 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 the schedule so crazy you don't need this why don't you scale back why don't we just right off into the sunset because we have enough as it is and to which my response there is like 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 addiction to the money or anything but it's the pursuit of my highest self yeah 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 this is uniquely tailored to you because you 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 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 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 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 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 the book kind of goes through because it's it's the book is designed for couples to go through together where it basically says even it like 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 by I believe Allison 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 like going through that book I mean I went through it with my wife it was incredibly transformational and it allowed us both to truly understanders I understand each other and she has another one for the amazing development of women but I'd recommend you read as well because there's a lot of things that uh about your wife that you need to understand because it's funny we look at National Geographic shows and when they they go through the masculine the feminine there's there they couldn't be more diametrically opposed right and then when we look at you know uh human couples we we were like oh that's just a hairy human right right and it's like no this it's completely different right and so the motivations are completely different so um yeah I think it's important for for her for both of you to recognize that you yourself are going through your own Heroes Journey yeah 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 um something that that probably is a lot more admirable I I think you understand me really well because as soon as you said that it's it's conversations we've had I 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 yeah and so it's not and I told her it's like I'm not going to be the same person anymore if I can fulfill this this idea of trying to help other people yeah and the kind of impact and the difference I want to make in the world that's right 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 in 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 100 that makes me really happy maybe that's some bigger idea or spiritual connection that I want to have but that's that's the kind of dilemma that I'm in because it does come at a price of the family yeah because why wouldn't I be doing this with my son or my wife and yeah but then I don't know who I am anymore I'm kind of a ship lost at sea without a Rudder or something like that 100 I mean there's um I mean the book really is is fantastic when it goes goes through this because um for for a lot of individuals yeah there's there's this it's it's this weird diametrically opposed yeah where it's like um if it's weird am I doing this for the family it's hard for the wife and kids to understand that yeah whereas what 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 um and so you had you have very high standards for what taken care of actually means so in your wife's mind is 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 yeah okay now I I know you have a program it's all booked up this is not about promotion it's just about information yeah um if someone's in a position such as myself or maybe my maybe the 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 is the cost what is the structure of it can you tell us a little bit about that yeah I mean right now I only do uh one-on-one coaching and I'm in a really lucky position where um you know I'm working with a lot of great CEOs and yeah unfortunately I am fully booked out so what I'm trying to do to in order to help uh individuals is I'm putting out a lot of free content so like 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 um and I'm looking for ways in order to scale that feels authentic I've experimented with group yeah didn't feel authentic to me maybe I'll roll out some workshops and so if you're on my email newsletter follow me on Twitter uh there might be some emails in the future where it's like hey I'm gonna throw a workshop come here and we're gonna go deeper into how we can help scale and grow your business authentically to you have you done workshops before I love them I think they should do okay yeah like I've done I don't like throwing events like I like going to other individuals and I'm like Hey we're going to do a six hour Workshop right on you know maybe three hours in strategy and then three hours on the nine steps and I really enjoy because it's like the in person the ability to run connect the ability to answer questions or you know whiteboard in real time yep whereas I feel like sometimes you lose a little bit of that Fidelity when you're on zoom 100 yeah I think you lose most of it yeah yeah totally okay here's an offer to you I don't consider ourselves an event planning program uh Community it's probably a distraction from our main business yeah I'll probably gets slapped on the wrist for this but uh if you want to do one in La yeah um and we'll figure it out so just let me know because I'm sure everybody's listening to this who's watching this video later on they're like yes please Chris tell him to do it we should do it oh I love it and I'll take care of the the logistics so you get to do your thing and be in your zone of Genius I love that I'd love just to be like a guy who hangs out I'm like okay this is how Eamon doesn't I love that they can consider it done let's lock it in all right all right I know you it will happen yeah 100 your ninjas will call me and it'll be locked in totally just like this podcast everybody I want to end it on this one final note which is what something is always really impressed me about you the little time that we spend together is your relationship with money and how you and I see this in very successful people they understand that these things are all Investments and you have this big heart of like of this this gratitude and this reciprocity when like the 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 kind of actions that you do so you demonstrate that through actions and deeds and Minds just like in my head you know 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 and why the poor stay poor because their relationship with money is different than what I see in you well I'd like to touch on that Chris because I think that um you're maybe underselling yourself in the way that you do reciprocity like I've been learning from your YouTube channel for years and like I would argue like that's your love letters to the world like the ability for you to have all this incredible content out there and like I've been learning for you for years and like to me like I get a lot from 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 like 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 so um 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 um so I would 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 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 are 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 for my house and that's freeing up 10 plus hours in my day I'm now instead of spending 10 hours on 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 where am I spending my time even early on in at appsumo I was spending five hours every single week just setting up the deals clicking checking boxes going through checklist I ended up hiring a local intern from UT Austin for 15 an hour and that ended up freeing five plus hour 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 Sim 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 you said this pretty quickly but I want to draw our 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 isn't lie you're doing the work of someone at 15 an hour that's right as the CEO of a ginormous company 100 doesn't make sense whatsoever nope then when you use your money you 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 right you focus on those 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 you know a brilliant man working class guy super conservative with his money he doesn't have this understanding his relationship he unfortunately would will spend three hours let's say three three dollars or something it doesn't make sense to me dad I love you by the way you know it's like he can't get that entrepreneurial thing right and you start to understand this and I know people in the say Midwest would look at people on the on the coast and say oh you think you're so important that you can't do your own dry clean you can't sell your own stuff on Craigslist and they look at it like you're being too self-important yeah what they don't understand is this Dynamic 100 yeah and it's not that I don't care about the three dollars I'm just getting it after I'm getting in a whole nother I'm so I'm spending that 15 an hour in order to make the thousand dollars an hour after and so I actually think it's wasteful of the money for for me not to have made that higher number one because number one I hate doing the setting up yeah that's not my zone of Genius right 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 a seven-figure CEO and learn yeah uh and you know he's getting money you know to 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 so yeah I mean it's it's this weird relationship it's the marshmallow test for the money and so it's the opportunity to have that delayed gratification in order to have more later on um and every time I hear one of your ideas I I'm reminded of like and also because I'm 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 you in for you or literally you use your money back back your time but you also use your money to buy back more money totally so it's a net positive on both sides it's this 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 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 to the next level it's been a real pleasure talking to you Chris absolutely thank you so much for inviting me thank you so much foreign