The 5 levels to build an 8-figure business | 323

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm making this podcast for myself 10 years ago when I launched my first business. I became a business owner in May of 2016. I bought two uh Mita shops and I was 28 years old. Today we do 55 million dollars in that same business, 36 stores, continuing to grow at like 15 to 20 percent per month on our existing stores. We're trying to buy new ones, lots and lots of stuff going on. And today I want to talk about something that I think is super important, which is that building a business is like climbing a mountain, all right? So picture a mountain where everybody starts at the bottom, right? We all start at the same place, we all start at zero. And there are levels to the game, all right? And there are specific jumps, milestones that you have to kind of hit at different levels. And the most common mistake that I see other owners making today, even ones that when I reflect back to be like, what are some of the big things like I wish I knew? This is it, which is that you're doing what you believe is the right work, you're doing the right thing, but you're doing it at the wrong time. And so today I'm gonna walk through these five levels to this mountain and what you have to focus on at each one of those, and then go from there. So, level one, zero to a million dollars, right? So if you are doing less than a million dollars a year, the number one focus for you should be building your skills, all right? Skills of how to sell, right? We are all in the sales business, whether you want to admit it or not, we have to be able to sell, which means we have to talk to people who have a problem that we can help solve. Whether that means fixing a car or installing artificial grass in their backyard or painting a house or a roof or cleaning a window, removing jobs, it doesn't matter, right? We they have a problem, we have a solution. You have to get really good at selling, which means understanding what the problem is, asking great questions, overcoming uh objections they may have, to gain more clarity, using payment plans to help make things affordable, right? There's all these different things that you can do personally to get it done. And the better that you get at it, the easier it becomes to hire people who will eventually do it for you. So if you say, Well, I'm not really good at sales, I'm just gonna hire a bunch of people to do it, well, like how are you ever gonna get better then, right? And to know what is good and what's not. So selling, marketing, how do we generate leads? How do we take you know dollars, what what it and turn them into you know opportunities, what's the best platform, all this stuff. Hiring. Man, I've hired hundreds, if not thousands, of people in my my life now. And I can tell you, I've gotten way, way better now than I used to be. Like before I could hire anybody if they could fog a mirror and I'd be like, they sound good, like look good, like let's give it a shot. Now, I mean, I can tell within minutes. Get me on the phone with somebody, I could tell you within two minutes if I think this person's gonna make it or not. You know, last like no, it was like earlier this year, we hired uh a new manager. I met him on day one, and my my dad was there, we like help, he was helping with something, and you know, he he he'd been in business a while. I learned a lot from him. And we both look at each other and we're like, this guy ain't gonna make it. Day one. We both knew, and guess what? He didn't make it. It's like the just the aura, the energy, the like how sharp somebody is, how how motivated. There's these factors that you learn the more you do it. But I mean, I could tell you all about it, but like you're not gonna internalize and execute it until you do it yourself. So you have to be able to do it, right? You have to hire a lot of people. You have to be good at operations, like you have to be good at actually running the business, whether that is like the process that we do of managing cars to get them in and out, for dealing with vendors and inventory and all the things related to actually delivering the service that you do, right? Those are the skills, those are the foundations. If you cannot build a strong foundation, you can never build anything on top of it. So don't worry about anything else except for getting really, really good at selling, generators, hiring people, and running operations, right? That's what you have to focus on. Level two is a one million dollars to two million. Now I say that, I what I also mean is like one location to two locations if you run like a retail business, but some something it you have to like modify these a little bit for your your um business, but these are these are pretty close. So if you're doing uh over a million dollars, you're not quite to two, the main thing you have to focus on is systems because you can't be in two places at once. You get the business up to this point by being the hero, by being the one who sells it and manages all the job and deals with hires all the people, does all the things, right? Everything is related up to you. But the second that you are now split between two locations, you can't physically be in two spots at once, then the business can potentially suffer and fail. I've seen this many, many times, right? Where guy's really, really good at one, buys a second, they both drop. And now they're making less money with more stress because they they they're trying to still run both of them, versus what you need to do is create systems. Systems are just a documented, consistent way to do the thing that you already do. So this is my system on how we sell, how I hire people, how we handle the cars, whatever it is, right? So you have to systematize yourself, your process, and train your people. That's what you have to figure out at this stage. And by the way, if you want to hear, I did a whole YouTube video on this. It's called the eight-figure roadmap. You can go to my YouTube, you'll find it there. I walk through all this stuff. I have some great visuals. So keep that in mind if you're more of like a visual person. All right, step three, level three. If you're at 2 million to 5 million, so you're doing less than $5 million of revenue or you know, between two to five locations, your main focus is gonna be standards, which means you have to have clear expectations that are enforced and consistent across every single location. So think of process as like how we answer the phones, that kind of thing, and then think of standards as the way you do everything. This is like consistent operations across the board. And there's this idea that you get what you tolerate. So if you have low standards, you let people get away with stuff, then they are going to continue to do that. Because at this stage, you are growing from the two locations to the five locations. This probably means that you've hired or about to hire a district manager, a multi-unit manager, somebody who is going to take over your role in terms of hiring and driving sales and putting out all the fires and just like dealing with all the things operationally that currently you do. That goes over to the district manager, and usually people hire them, that person, around three, four, five stores, something in that range. Okay, so standards. That's what you have to really work on setting and creating. And if you have that district manager in place, that's gonna be one of their big jobs is enforcing it. Level four, five million to ten million, or between five locations to ten locations. At this point, structure, creating an org chart, having defined roles on who does what, who is responsible for what things, having clear systems for communication down the levels. Because at this point, you have 10 locations. It's gonna be you, you're gonna have two district managers, you're gonna have each of those district managers gonna oversee five stores, you're gonna have a back office, it's gonna have like a controller, you might have like another bookkeeper, so maybe somebody with payroll, it kind of depends on you know how many employees you have in the model. And there's like a it's like a good amount of people, like your your corporate support overhead is gonna be you know a significant number of people. And so you need to have this structure. Otherwise, what happens is like it's chaos, right? Like it is complete chaos of like, who do you call for this, or I don't want to move up on that, and then everyone's bugging like so-and-so, but that's not really their job, and then or maybe the district managers become the bottleneck for everything, but then now they're just like the traffic controller instead of focusing on what we need them to do, which is like hiring and training and getting better people in the stores. So you really want to work on the structure and having clear next hires of knowing, all right, as I grow, this is the next role I'm gonna need to make. Maybe you're at eight locations, you want to get to that 10, and you're thinking, all right, I'm one district manager, I want to have that second, so I gotta like who who on my team could I promote? And you know, we're we're figuring all that stuff out. Level five, 10 million and beyond. So we've we've hit the eight-figure mark. We've we've we've we've hit 10 million, it's been awesome. But now we want to know how do we get to 20, 30, 40, 55, like me. It's all about strategy, all right? Strategy in terms of how are we going to grow? Are we going to look to get into new markets? Are we going to grow by acquisitions, acquiring other ones? Are we going to go by development, right? Of new locations from scratch. You're making major decisions on how you're deploying capital. It's not just money anymore, it's it's capital at these numbers. Take it on debt, right? What kind of debt? Are you gonna try to get seller financing? Are you gonna try to grow, you know, you're gonna take on big bank debt? SBA. Are you gonna you're gonna search for equity investors, somebody who can bring a lot more to the table to help you with strategy? That's the main reason, a lot, one of the big reasons people take on equity investors is they want somebody who can help them see things that they don't, and they know that the the sum is gonna be bigger than you know the parts with it all. Or you're gonna find everything from cash flow. You're gonna run this thing lean and mean and take all your money, continue to pour it back in and compound that money as fast as you can. I mean, that's you know, I I did a lot of that. I've done almost all these, exact except equity investors. I'm I don't have any, but I am an equity investor for for other people. And they bring me on because they want my strategy and insight and coaching, and you know, it's more than just money that that I can help them create. And the thing to know though is that growth is a stair step, it's not a straight line. It's not like, oh, it's this linear path. No, no, no, no, no. It it is it is a massive jump up, like you're going up a stairs, like you go hard, you hit a wall, and you have two decisions, right? You're two choices with a decision made. Do you do you step up to that next level, or do you just stay facing that wall and stuck? A lot of people stay stuck. A lot of business owners get stuck in that like one to two location mark because everything relies on them and they really can't, don't want to, don't know how, fearful, tried it, it didn't work, right? There's all these excuses, but and unless you're able to make that next level up, you're never gonna continue on your on your dream. And that is honestly one of the biggest things that I help owners inside of my uh coaching program called Eight Figure Franchise E, is like this whole concept, everything we just talked about, which is how where are you at right now, what is the biggest bottleneck that you're facing, what are you focused on? What is the next critical move that you have to make to be able to move to the next level? And that direction is worth like a ton of money, to be totally honest with you. Because think about this, like if you were maybe you're you know you're a hard worker, you want to if you're listening to my podcast here, like you you you you want to win, you're all in on this thing, right? Like, I don't I don't think anybody who's made it this far is is is like lazy, right? But there's this whole thing, like if you leave California and you want to go to like Philadelphia or whatever, and you're off by like you know one or two degrees, you end up in like North Carolina. I don't I don't know that for a fact, but there's something like that. But that's the idea, right? Like just because you go hard and you go fast and you make you make moves, like if you are not pointed in the right direction, you can end up in the totally wrong place. So that's really my goal in putting all this stuff together here is to kind of help you figure out what is that next best move. If you go watch that video I made, uh I give you some tips on how to diagnose it yourself in terms of like what are you focused on? If you want my help and my lens to like look at your business and tell you, all right, this is where you're at, this is what I see, this is what I would be focused on if I was in your shoes, then there's a link that says send me a text, shoot me a text, your name, your phone number, a little bit about yourself. Happy to get you more information in terms of like what that looks like. And otherwise, what happens if you don't properly do this? You're gonna have owners at less than a million dollars, say you're doing 500k revenue right now, and you're thinking about like org charts and you're thinking about like you know, strategy and your next acquisition. It's like, bro, like we gotta get your sales process down. We gotta figure out how the heck that you're gonna get this thing to a million dollars and double your revenue in the next six months because you're selling like crazy. That's like the only thing you should be thinking on. And the reverse, where there's owners at five million who are micromanaging sales calls, instead, they should be building their leadership team, right? Work they are working down, they are doing the things that they used to do, which got them to that point, but those aren't the same actions that are getting them to that next level. So that's all I got for you today. Think through this, what level you're at, what you're focused on, are you focused on the right thing, at least the big rocks that you gotta move over the next you know, 60, 90 days or whatever. And if you want my help, I got a couple spots open this month. Uh, here we're still in June. Resets, I I cap it every month. And if I can help you, love to. If not, I'll see you tomorrow. Cheers.