Has anyone studied high performing entrepreneurs like they study high performing athletes?

[Kak]

Thank you for this.. this answers my question very well.

I'm not going to sugar coat it, I'm in the same boat as you and Kyle.

One goal I have written down and committed to mind like the back of my hand is a 9-figure exit. Specifically, $176m. Why? long story. (i know.. i know it's like someone coming on the forum saying "I'm gonna be a billionaire", but this is just what I want in life and more)

It seems crazy for me to say it out loud here, since I am not even at the $100k mark yet, but that is what success looks like to me.

I also had a realization recently that money really is the wrong metric to chase though (@Andy Black and Darren Hardy - The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster), and that "people helped" is a better metric, so helping a lot of people with a large amount of money being a byproduct of it, is my definition of success.

Business has NEVER been a science. It has always been an art. Building your organization is a canvas, your canvas… No two are alike.

You often ask questions in definitives. Like on your show you asked me something along the lines of “do I believe high levels of influence is essential to success” when I don’t believe that, but I do believe it’s a great asset to have.

With your last question, do we “need to know how to do all of the stuff first, before we hire someone.” The answer to that question is absolutely not. If the answer was yes, you wouldn’t have an Elon Musk and you wouldn’t have a me.

My company sells chemicals. I am not a chemist. I just know what I have, what my company (via partnerships) is capable of, what it costs, what it’s worth and who wants it. I try to leave the rest to the organization.

I am glad you said you define success like @Antifragile and I. I saw this inspirational quote on some kind of board. You know the kind of stuff they have at hobby lobby. Though the person that said it is a fictitious character, it stuck with me long enough that my mind tossed it out here.

Don’t ever arbitrarily decide that more is for other people and not you.

 

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[mikecarlooch]

Business has NEVER been a science. It has always been an art. Building your organization is a canvas, your canvas… No two are alike.

You often ask questions in definitives. Like on your show you asked me something along the lines of “do I believe high levels of influence is essential to success” when I don’t believe that, but I do believe it’s a great asset to have.

Thank you for pointing this out.. Needed this. As a matter of fact this thread has been so influential to me that I printed out @BizyDad , @Antifragile and your posts, stuck them on my wall.

With your last question, do we “need to know how to do all of the stuff first, before we hire someone.” The answer to that question is absolutely not. If the answer was yes, you wouldn’t have an Elon Musk and you wouldn’t have a me.

My company sells chemicals. I am not a chemist. I just know what I have, what my company (via partnerships) is capable of, what it costs, what it’s worth and who wants it. I try to leave the rest to the organization.

Great, thanks!

I am glad you said you define success like @Antifragile and I. I saw this inspirational quote on some kind of board. You know the kind of stuff they have at hobby lobby. Though the person that said it is a fictitious character, it stuck with me long enough that my mind tossed it out here.

Don’t ever arbitrarily decide that more is for other people and not you.

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This is what I really love about the way you think. I have never been able to tell someone I want to sell a business for 9 figures one day and not feel a bit insecure with it coming out of my mouth, out of fear of people looking at me like "alright buddy.."

But you and on your show you make it into something to be proud of, you make it feel normal and GREAT to think super big, and you point out that it really can be done. I listened to your speech last night at the fastlane summit.. Your way of communicating just makes me feel that anything really is possible. I thank you for that, wish I started listening to your show earlier.

 

[Andy Black]

Many people often ask questions in the definitive.

"Do we need to do X?"

"Do I have to do Y?"

The answer is almost always No.

I'm wary of uttering those words or phrases. It normally preceeds a limiting belief.

I'm also wary of *people* who tell us in the definitive what we need or must do. In my experience they usually dont have much experience, or they're trying too hard to sell something.

 

[NeoDialectic]

Acceptance of that is the biggest clarity, for real.

Adding my own experience with this. @fastlane_dad and I had a very lucrative business that was ran much more like @Andy Black 's than @Kak 's. We had a maximum of 3 employees at a time and that was by design. We could have made alot more money by having a bigger operation, but we just didn't want to deal with more employees and there was no one that could force us.

We probably could have gotten away with 1 or 2 efficient employee, but paid more so that we never had to deal with employee emergencies and slept better. Someone got X and out for 3 weeks? No problem, come back when your better.

Sometimes a customer rubbed us the wrong way and instead of trying to salvage what we can to make money we would fire the customer. Can't do that with bosses that are maximizing money.

If you ask another successful owner what we were doing wrong, he may say that limiting employee counts was a waste of potential, having redundant well payed employees was a waste of financial resources , and not maximizing customer value is a waste too! They are "right" in some senses! Luckily it's my business and as long as I'm ok only making 8 figures and not 9, I can run it how I want! There is so much you can do "wrong", as long as you do a good amount of important things right. Most important being providing the customer with value that they can't get anywhere else.

One of the reasons we ended up selling our business is so someone else that was willing to do many of the things we didn't want to could grow the business to new heights. But there was nothing stopping us from successfully running it this way in perpetuity.

This is one of the fantastic benefits of starting a Fastlane business and being your own boss.

 

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[Antifragile]

Sometimes a customer rubbed us the wrong way and instead of trying to salvage what we can to make money we would fire the customer. Can't do that with bosses that are maximizing money.

Hmmm… I’m going to disagree with the above posted statement. Firing bad clients is one of the best way I know how to maximize profits.

 

[NeoDialectic]

Hmmm… I’m going to disagree with the above posted statement. Firing bad clients is one of the best way I know how to maximize profits.

Let's just say our tolerance was much lower than what a place like Amazon/Walmart or other big much more "successful" companies would accept!

 

[mikecarlooch]

Adding my own experience with this. @fastlane_dad and I had a very lucrative business that was ran much more like @Andy Black 's than @Kak 's. We had a maximum of 3 employees at a time and that was by design. We could have made alot more money by having a bigger operation, but we just didn't want to deal with more employees and there was no one that could force us.

We probably could have gotten away with 1 or 2 efficient employee, but paid more so that we never had to deal with employee emergencies and slept better. Someone got X and out for 3 weeks? No problem, come back when your better.

Sometimes a customer rubbed us the wrong way and instead of trying to salvage what we can to make money we would fire the customer. Can't do that with bosses that are maximizing money.

If you ask another successful owner what we were doing wrong, he may say that limiting employee counts was a waste of potential, having redundant well payed employees was a waste of financial resources , and not maximizing customer value is a waste too! They are "right" in some senses! Luckily it's my business and as long as I'm ok only making 8 figures and not 9, I can run it how I want! There is so much you can do "wrong", as long as you do a good amount of important things right. Most important being providing the customer with value that they can't get anywhere else.

One of the reasons we ended up selling our business is so someone else that was willing to do many of the things we didn't want to could grow the business to new heights. But there was nothing stopping us from successfully running it this way in perpetuity.

This is one of the fantastic benefits of starting a Fastlane business and being your own boss.

@NeoDialectic Thank you for this write up!

Wow you guys only had 3 employees at 8 figures? I'm curious how that worked

Did you guys use many contractors I'm assuming?

 

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[DarkZero]

@NeoDialectic Thank you for this write up!

Wow you guys only had 3 employees at 8 figures? I'm curious how that worked

Did you guys use many contractors I'm assuming?

There is a lot of leverage in the business model they had (ecom).

Your business is service-based which means you might require more contractors/staff at scale, or more of your time.

Also, don't forget that half the equation for the Hormozis is Leila. She is an EXCELLENT operator, manager, COO, or whatever title you want to give her. I do consulting for a company that is constantly in contact with them (not a client of theirs). She is an absolute pro in what she does, and Alex gives her all the credit in terms of scaling team and systems.

There are skillsets to that and that is a very big part of the equation. Alex is heavily involved in marketing and sales. That's his speciality. He said if he didn't have Leila, he would've went out and found a Leila to fill that role because that's what was needed to grow the companies.

With that said, NeoDialectic points out something that more people need to know. You can build your business how YOU want, not how others say you should. And you can keep running it, replace yourself (exit option 1), or sell (exit option 2). But it's your business and you get to decide how you want to do it.

There are youtube editors making $100k/mo (take home) with just a VA helping them. But they are doing all of the editing themselves. Could they increase revenue while building team and stop doing the editing themselves? Yes. Do they have to? No. Also, that is freelancing. Still trading time for money.

But point is, you can build what you want. For what you do, you could have a couple of key team members for ops, SOPs and systems built out (onboarding, client fulfillment, delivery), 2 sales reps, and 4 appointment setters, and you'd have a very minimal business bringing you $50k-$100k/mo.

 

[NeoDialectic]

@NeoDialectic Thank you for this write up!

Wow you guys only had 3 employees at 8 figures? I'm curious how that worked

Did you guys use many contractors I'm assuming?

Basically yes. We contracted out all of our manufacturing and most of the shipping/warehousing, graphic design, etc...

I think we were really good at making systems in a way that allowed even low skill workers to do relatively complicated things. This was pretty important because we hired and kept our employees based on their loyalty/work ethic/trustability and not their skill level.

We had 2 employees that handled customer service, basic warehousing, and shipping. As previously mentioned, technically we could have contracted out most their work too, but it was nice to have some level of extra hands for things that come up.

Then we had 1 employee that was their supervisor, handled higher level customer service, and alot of odds and ends. Over the years he took more and more off our hands.

By the end, the business mostly didn't required @fastlane_dad and I at all to continue running (without growth). So we mostly handled all the business changes and innovation (new products, new marketplaces, new advertising relationships, etc..) and the work involved with that. Since we were usually unwilling to dedicate time to make an entire system until it was a reoccurring specific need, we handed most things associated with getting new things off the ground (coding quick website adjustments, making copy, making graphics, monitoring ad optimization, etc).

As mentioned, I wouldn't call doing all the work to get new things off the ground a "good" thing. Our job "should" be to just do the very high level things like business decisions and thinking of innovations. But if your business is successful and you are satisfied, you have more leeway to do what you want to do versus what you "should" do. On the other hand, it did enable us to build a very diverse skill set which I think in many ways gave us a leg up on competitors and the system building ability that I mentioned earlier.

If we kept the business, the next steps to grow the business would undoubtedly require new employees. The first hires would have to be a dedicated person for each of the following tasks: Traditional and online advertising, social media management and advertising, graphic design, coding/programming, product developments/management, and someone to replace our supervisor so he could level up and start taking care of the things we were doing for new venture implementations and "shouldn't" of. So 5+ people right off the bat.