I've been in business for 14 years. I've scaled six brick and mortar gyms. I did 30 plus gym turnarounds across the country and built service companies to over $30 million a year. Today, our portfolio at acquisition.com is over $250 million annually. And so, in this video, I'm answering your questions about how to scale your service business. And for all these questions, I try to make, you know, my answers as tactical as humanly possible so that you watching from home can immediately use them. Enjoy. I am a chiropractor. We do right around 2.4. Been stuck there for 5 years. I'd like to get to 3.6 to get out The swamp. Stuck or growing over 5 years? We've been at 2.4 for 5 years. Yep. And so, I don't know what's stopping us. I'd like to get out of the swamp. Heard. Um and then profit margins, you're at 30%, right? Yes, sir. Yeah, okay. I remember seeing 600,000 as a profit number. I don't know if that's still accurate. Okay. Um okay, so you got 600,000 in profit and you have Do you have You own a partner or you're 100%? 100%. Okay. Um Well, what what do you want to have You just want to Like what do you want to have happen? Do you want to Like what do you want to do? Do you want to go to many locations? Um no, I want to I I want to grow a uh uh main big location. And um you know, create a space for family to eventually, I mean, grow in there. If they If they don't want to do that, then I would probably change my goal to be an exit Okay. What's your square footage? Uh right now, we have 7,700. Okay, so decently large. >> Yeah, we occupy about 4,700 of it. Okay, got it. And so, are you at capacity within the space right now? No. We used to have a supply issue till about 2 weeks ago. How great. >> And then we hired another doctor. So, now it's become a demand issue. And that's where we're at now. So, how do you get customers now? Uh we Our highest is referral. Uh then we get about The next highest would be paid ads through Facebook. >> What percentage are ads? Uh we do probably about 20% from ads. About half is from referrals, another 20% is from Google. Okay. So, you separate Meta ads from Google ads when you talk about ads. Yep. Okay, got it. Um We don't actually currently do Google ads, but that's where they said they came from. Heard. Got it. Which I would probably see as word of mouth, like I Googled you or I Googled somebody. It's probably SEO, something like that. But um okay. So, 2 and 1/2 million, like what stops you from just spending more money on Meta ads? Uh trust that we're doing it right. I mean, I just want to feel like we're doing it right. >> than you put in? Yeah. Well, so you might have one of these guys. Which is that we need we need attribution tracking. So that you can know if you're putting a dollar in and getting $5 or $10 or $20 back out. We have no clue. But as soon as you get attribution tracking, cuz fundamentally what what you lack right now is an input-output equation for the business to grow. And so every business needs to know what are the what are the core actions that I do that increase how much money I make. And if you can't define that for the business, then for sure as [ __ ] your employees don't know what it is. If you don't know what it is, right? And so for you if you are not supply constrained and you're demand constrained, that means lead generation is the issue. If lead generation is the issue, what's the activity? The activity is going to either be I'm going to be making content, I'm going to be getting affiliates that are going to be promoting my [ __ ] for me. Uh I'm going to be uh running paid ads. Right? Those are going to be kind of like the the bigger buckets that you're going to be going into and then you got people who do those things on your behalf. And so right now, do you make content? Yes, sir. Okay. What percentage comes from that? Uh we just started it uh about 2 months ago. How much do you do? Uh we >> going to tell you to do more. I'm just curious. We do four videos that gets created into short and long per week. Uh four videos for the month. And >> Heard, okay. Don't Yeah, don't >> chopped up. Yeah, yeah. Okay, got it. Okay, so you've got four longs and you chop this into little shorts and things like that. Okay, got it. Um All right. So, short-term, long-term. Short-term, we're going to get the data tracking in place. Second step is going to be putting the ad the the ads funnel in place and kind of like what the sales motion is behind that. For local, the good news is that uh it's easy to do because there's already so much trust locally that you don't need to have nearly the complexity of kind of like the funnels and indoctrination and education prior to someone making a purchasing decision. You can pretty much just like one call close, two two conversation close anybody. Um even at very high ticket numbers, which is one of the benefits of local. The downside of local is that you've got a market that's this big. Correct. That's the downside, right? So, if you don't want to expand markets, then you need to dominate the market you're in. And so, it's going to be a multi-pronged approach. And it's kind of like I was saying earlier, like we're going to start with ads because that'll just get you more in because I'm guessing right now, if you have a good reputation, good brand, then the ads will actually help you more than they would help somebody who doesn't have that footprint. But then we're going to start probably layering in the the content as the second um kind of the well that needs to continue to get dug. Again, this is going to be long-term, and so you're going to want to be a thought leader. And then what happens is that if you can if you can succeed at building the brand long-term, and it sounds like you're a more long-term guy, so I will I'll speak in these terms. Um what happens is your radius actually continues to expand. And so, if you take it to the natural extreme, you can go to the Amen Clinic in New York or whatever I think it's New York um because they have a national reputation, but people would fly there. And so, that's how that's what it looks like as you continue to expand the brand because people just be more willing to travel to you and pay premium prices. Which I'm sure if we looked under the hood, the prices probably get tweaked, too. But like those those are some things. And if you're in the swamp, cash flow is actually the biggest thing that you need. Right. Um and so again, the pricing and packaging is probably like again, if I was the order of operations, pricing and packaging would probably be number one so we could free up cash flow. The freed up cash flow would then funnel into the ads so that we could get did well did attribution then we'd put the ads in place start start flowing putting flow through there and then the baseline that happens after that is we're just going to increase the cadence on the on the content that demonstrates thought leadership. Leadership. That's the path. That makes sense. Thank you. Uh how do you we're we're having trouble also hiring good high quality doctors. Mhm. In Wyoming. It's actually ladders up at the first problem, cash flow. Okay. We need to fix the pricing so that we can generate more cash flow so that we can pay doctors so that we can actually get the business to not rely on you as much. Boom. Real quick, if you were a business owner and you were not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. My team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it in these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at. No matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can just book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll fly you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live. >> I sell basically complete digital marketing services to service based businesses in Australia. I move SMBs? Uh like cleaning companies, stuff like that. Cleaning, yard work, and Average revenue for them? >> revenue per company is anywhere between half a million to 2.5. Tough. Uh they're the ones I sell. Uh I moved pivoted the company's gone from zero to 500k in the last four four months. It's I pivoted from fitness. Uh just happened so it worked out well. Uh so they've all been wound down getting other people operate. I'd like to ideally get to eight figures. Uh in terms of what's stopping me, I well, I spent the whole 28 hours here going through every framework I could to figure out what's wrong. Yeah. I just want to figure out >> Can I tell you what it is? Good. I also want to figure out where would be, besides like getting operations moving out to other people and making sure I'm not involved in delivery, where would be the best use of my time. >> channel suck. Yep. Yeah. That's what's going to Yeah. So, you're four four months in, so you're it's it's brand new. >> It's very new. And you haven't seen all the [ __ ] that's about to happen. So, what's going to happen is because you're because you're servicing SMBs, Yep. their volatility will translate over to your volatility. Mhm. And independent of how well you do, they will start churning. Um and you have probably mastered the sales function, which is why you're growing quickly. >> Yep. Um but you also will have like CAC will never be cheaper than it is today. Yeah. CAC will never >> So, CAC will always go up. Mhm. And churn is going to start eating into the business because SMBs suck. And so, we what's going to happen is that your margins will continue to compress and compress and compress and you have to spend more and more. CAC will go up. You'll have to hire more people because of churn, that's what you're going to think you're going to have to do in order to fix the churn, but it's not. Whatever, let's go to it. And so, you're going to keep going, keep going, keep going. And so, revenue keep going up, but the margin gets smaller and smaller until eventually you're just like, I feel like I'm running a nonprofit and I have to just keep selling stuff and I don't even feel confident about it cuz I got all these people complaining, but it's really cuz they're the business owners who suck. And then you think, maybe I should take over more responsibility for the business owners. I'm going to start maybe doing some sort of sales motion, some sort of you know, nurture motion because they suck at sales, they don't know how to run their business and that's why they can't market with me, but I'm going to do this cuz I want to take a you know, responsibility this and all of that is just wrong. Yeah. And so, if you want to get to three million bucks a year, you can just do what you're currently doing. Yeah. You'll just sell more and LTV will probably be What's your price point? Uh $450 a week. A week. Okay, so you're 2K a month ish. Yeah. So, you're right in the sweet spot of churn. Like that is like if you like 1,500 to 3K a month for an SMB, average stick is going to be 4 to 6 months. Mhm. Um and so you can back now back of napkin how many you selling a month right now? Uh I'm selling about 10 a month at the moment. Cool. So, if you're selling 10 per month, right? And uh you said 2K was your price point, right? So, let's say that we have five turns on that on average. 10K? Yep. Right? And 10 per month? Yep. So, you're going to get to 100K-ish per month. Um and then you will stall. And so, at that point you'll either have to increase unit sold or increase LTV and then you'll keep thinking, "Man, if I could just get this to go up, it would be amazing." But you won't be able to. Yeah, cuz it's just a nice number. >> Um and so, the only way to really make SMB work is to go the opposite end is to go super super cheap. Yeah. And then build something that cost you nothing. So there's nothing to deliver. Yeah. So, it's like $400 a month or less for an SMB if it's a nuisance style. So, I'll give you some examples. Um if you were like, "I can get you ranked on first three of maps in your local area and I charge $400, $500 a month." They'll do it cuz they can see it. Yep. And they'll pay for that. Um review management um and SEO stuff. Uh they will pay $300, $400 a month and they will stick on that. You'll get like 30 to 40 month stick rates on that. Um but you'll close way more sales velocity. Uh so, LTV's actually similar to this but CAC stays super low Yep. um as a result. But I know you just got a fitness which you probably got out cuz it was terrible and hard. Um you might need to just go and get to there and then you'll feel good about things. Um like you might need to walk this path rather than believe me. But that's probably what that's what's going to happen. So, what do you want to have happen? Not walk to not have to walk the path in the first place. Um Get less amount of time. >> So, this is like the just me just being real like marketing there's so I mean obviously a lot of marketers follow my stuff and so I get a disproportionate amount of marketing agencies and I've seen every model under the sun. Um SMBs suck as customers. Um, and so you have you have to do this one or the other. You have to go up market if you go down market. Um, and you guys are really cheap and it's something that's super automated uh or you do truly do more of these high touch services but you do with a business that actually knows their metrics, actually has a sales process, already has a proven model uh rather than all of them just like wanting to change their stuff all the time, not knowing what they're doing to begin with cuz like they're expecting you to figure out something that they haven't figured out themselves. Um, and so that's so like your price either goes up and you serve a higher level avatar uh or it goes down and you serve the one you are now but you make sure that your delivery is almost nothing. Yeah. And then it becomes a CAC issue because you have to offset CAC and so then it becomes big head long tail, one time set up into very small recurring monthly high gross margin. Understood. >> Those are the two models that work for what you want to So drop low, go high. And then the middle's just a dead zone. >> Where everyone dies. Cool. Makes sense. Thank you. We do uh we're a WAS so website as a service um based company. So we build websites, do digital marketing services, that kind of stuff. We cater to small medium businesses, small businesses. Uh average revenue per customer is 450 bucks a month. Okay. Subscription based company. Yeah. And we're at yeah, we're at 20 million uh bucks in revenue and we're at 20 million >> Notice. Example, right price. Really small, you price it super low and it works. All right, go ahead. And we want to get to 80 80 million bucks in revenue in about 3 years. Okay. So uh the question we're asking ourselves is we're in an industry where AI is very disruptive. Um every day that goes by, you know, it's constantly degrading and decaying our product. Uh and at the same time we have kind of this one channel risk that we're living with. All of our sales, 100% of our growth has been done through outbound cold calling. Love it. Yeah, it's great. Um, but again, cold calling is becoming harder and harder in the industry is decaying. So, we're we're constantly we're trying to figure out >> is decaying? Yeah. What do you mean by that? Churn is going up? Churn is slightly ticking up, but um, at the end of the day, you know, AI is making it easier and easier for our customers to be able to build their own websites. >> Yeah. Well, yeah, I know. With the type of customer we deal with, they're not usually super sophisticated, so it we do have time. >> out about ChatGPT, so Yeah, exactly. So, we we have time, but >> Some of you guys still fax, so I think you got time. Yeah, but this is the question, right? So, do we double down on on on marketing and create like a an inbound channel and really invest hard into that, or do we do um, do we try to innovate on the product and figure out what else they need and like build a revenue engine? Uh, right now we're kind of we're doing we're trying to do both, but it's obviously limiting. So, this is this is really really good. I love that you asked this. So, um, I went on this long rant the other day about this particular topic, which is solving problems that don't exist. Okay. So, unless cuz like you have a narrative, you have a story around AI is decaying the business, but all I hear is that you have customers and your job just got way easier. Explain. So, you know what I mean? Like, if you were like, "Our churn is escalating by 10% per month." I'd be like, "We have a problem. We need to change something." But, if it's not really showing up in any meaningful way in terms of the business itself, I think there's plenty of people who will just be super laggards on this and are not going to be Replit, Vibe Coding. They never bought your [ __ ] to begin with. Yeah. Like, the person who is super into AI right now wasn't hiring WaaS anyways. They built their own website Mhm. before AI made it code easy. Haha. Like, it cuz I mean to be fair, website building software not that complicated. Um so, you said there was two paths. So, one is you know, change the product around. My opinion, I wouldn't that's probably wouldn't be where I'm focused unless I had some business metric that was way off that that I'm not seeing. Um I would be doubling down on the acquisition side. What's your LT What's your number of months average stick? Uh so, it's a 29 months. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the game. It's It's usually a Yeah, it's 30 to 40. It's It's the the highest I've seen uh was 38 for this type of business. So, like you're right. You're right in the in the sweet spot there. You're a little higher priced. I think they were $2.99. Like Yeah. it all works out in the same, you know, same same. So, yeah, I think you just double down on inbound. So, paid ads. Paid ads, yeah. Yeah, and I would just see if you could get them to prepay for the quarter so you can offset CAC. Mhm. Okay. Um on that subject, if you don't mind, in terms of prepaying for the quarter, you know, again, our customers are pretty price sensitive. There's people that are cheaper than us, obviously, as you've seen before. Um my fear is the amount of churn that will generate some, you know, we build 90% of our customers on credit cards and we hold on to 10% that pay us through like pad and through checks and that kind of [ __ ] It's all It's awful, but you know, we're going to experience churn if we're like, "Hey, you need to you know, prepay us up up front." You'd still >> We wouldn't churn, just close fewer, right? Um close fewer? Absolutely, and I think customers that are with us would leave us. Why would the people who are with you leave you for how you treat your new customers? Sorry? People that are with us would leave us. >> you change your billing process for existing customers. Got you. I'm saying if you're doubling down on inbound, what will go up is CAC because you'll have media spend in addition to the sales commission. And so, to offset that from a cash flow How cash flow positive are you right now? Uh so, we did 3.6 in EBITDA last year. Generated about >> Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That's lowish. It's lowish. Yeah. Yeah, I'm curious about that. >> Hm? We're heavy on people. Dude, AI. I know. I know. Big thing. I know. It's like you're worried about them doing it, you're not even doing it. >> Correct. Right? Yeah. Right? Right? Yeah. So, like um okay, so this is what I would actually do. I would probably spend the next 6 months reorganizing the workflow, probably reduce head count by 50% using AI workflows in order to actually do the same thing, increase the margin from 3.6 to like 7 um or more. With the ash added cash flow, you wouldn't have to change the price on the front end. You'd be willing to go negative for a quarter in the acquisition knowing you're going to get 29 on the back. Hm. That's how I'd actually fix it. Okay. Makes sense. Chill, right? Cool. Yeah. Nice, man. I sell CFO advisory. We will do probably about 2.9 this year. >> Amazing. I would love to be at like 20 million. Okay. Um but what's stopping me? I have we've made all this stuff. I have two books. I've fired my CPA. I have Tax-Free Millionaire. I've made all these courses. I don't know what to do with them. I don't know how to market. I don't know how to advertise. I've never done any of this. You're doing 3 million a year. All organic. Yeah, I mean, you're obviously not marketing shitty. Um so, you've got all this stuff, right? You got these books, you got these courses. You make content? Yes. Okay, so you are marketing. Well, I've never put them out there. Like I don't know what to do with it. Wait, huh? Okay, hold on. So, you've got all this stuff in your back pocket. So, you've got Tax-Free Millionaire book and/or course. You've got Fire Your CPA book and/or course. And you make content about tax accounting [ __ ] Yeah. And so, people come in and buy your tax planning [ __ ] Right? And you're trying to get to 20. Yeah. Do people churn out? Well, I've never tried to sell anybody on the stuff that I've made. Well, but we don't need but like forget let's erase those for a moment. Those are not real things for the purpose of our conversation. If you didn't have those things, what would you do to grow the business? People call our office and they come in and I sell them for monthly service. And I get referrals for tax planning. In person or virtual. Yeah. Okay, but you're local? I'm local. We have a bricks and mortar. I have a billboard. But most I do, yeah. But most of our clients are are are not in Texas. Okay, heard. Okay, so they're coming from the content. They call up. You guys sell them whatever. Referrals, yeah. Absolutely. And what are you growing at annually? What am I what? >> Growing at annually. Uh last year I was 2.2. Okay, that's great. Yeah, super good. So whatever, 30 35% annual growth, that's awesome. Okay, so what's the um So you you want to get to 20 and I'm guessing you just don't want to wait like 7 years to get to 20 at that compound rate. Yeah. Right? So as long as you're keeping customers, when I said do they churn, that's what I meant. Like are they stay Do people stay with you? Uh the people that are on monthly stay a lot more than the people that come in just for a one-time tax plan. >> What's the um This will be fun for you. Okay. So what's the I'll give you like some some business accounting. Um what's sales velocity right now? I don't know what what >> How many units a month do you sell? Uh on the monthly reoccurring? Yeah. There's probably about 190 clients. >> No, how many do you sell every month? Oh, new ones? We're we've closed down for new sales cuz I'm trying to figure everything out. So nothing right now. Nothing. Well, that will not grow the business. That for sure. That There's my Yeah, I'll be here all day, guys. Okay so So you have a goose egg there. Okay. But, okay, you have this other stuff. Why do we care? Well, that's what I want to do. Like, I like the products. I like to educate. I like to be in front of the camera. Like, I want to do all that. Okay. Well, what's wrong with the business that you decided to stop selling stuff for? It's [ __ ] hard. That's why. >> get you. It's No, like, to fulfill on it and >> Sh- You could always just start a business where you sell everybody else's stuff. Um well, I missed my joke. You missed it. Okay. And what I'm trying to get to now, like, AI, what you were saying is going to completely obliterate our industry, which I'm really excited about, because I want to dive into it. I want to leverage AI tools and even overseas partners doing low-level stuff, because people in our industry are really slow and outdated and they Yeah. But, all of these are not things that you would solve with marketing. You're supply constrained and so you're like, "How do I market more?" I'm like, "You can't even take people." Well, I want to market like for courses and to buy my books and things like that. >> a valuable business right now. No, I I I do. Yeah. >> I know. Why are we Why would we start another business that's not selling people? >> me, but I I want to do that, too. Yeah, I mean, like, like, I make the content I continue to repeat and I get I get my my memes made of me of like, "Alex is going to say it's shit's hard and hard things are hard and hard hard hard." And it's because it just never stops being hard. It just always sucks. Like, the course thing will suck, too. You just don't know it yet. Ask the course people. They'll tell you it sucks. >> That's great advice. Right? They're like, "It sucks." Yeah. Customers aren't sticky. They'll expect you to do everything. They're like, "I'm not a tax-free millionaire already and I bought your $17 course." Like, [ __ ] you, you know, like Like, that's, you know, that's what's going to happen. But, you have you have a service that people aren't turning out of. I'm guessing >> Yeah. I mean some, but they're pretty sticky. Yeah. No No one who No one who has bad churn stops selling. I'll say that. So like the fact that you're comfortable enough that you're like, "Oh, we don't need to take customers for a while." Like I'm sure your stuff is better than you think. Um but I think that we have to think Basically, you're supply constrained. And so we just need to fix the supply constraint of your business. Because if I said, "Hey, we found a way What are your margins right now?" About 20 25%. >> Okay. So if we said, "Okay, let's see if we can find um offshore talent that can give your existing team two or three x leverage. So you don't have to increase internal head count, you can increase external head count. And then when AI comes in, you can basically wipe those guys off the map and then fine, right? So it's like, yeah, they don't have jobs or families. Uh They're overseas. They're not real. Um I'm kidding. So I know half you guys are overseas, so that was a joke. Um But yeah. So I think that we need to create operating leverage. We have to look at basically how the services are being delivered so that we can figure out how to get each person two or three more, you know, x in terms of their ability to deal with customers. Um probably there's a little bit of tech that's missing because this is for everybody. Everybody Every entrepreneur I talk to is like, "I want to be AI first, right? And then you're like using Jeff GP for emails." Like that's not how you're AI first. Um the first thing that you have to do in order to have an AI first company is you have to be a data first company. Because AI works with data. If you don't have data, then there's no [ __ ] AI. So you have to have complete data first from your approach and have an architecture in place so that you know all the elements of the business from data and then we can put the AI layer on top to put reinforcement training in place in order to actually train it to do stuff. So if that's where you want to go, which does have tremendous operating leverage, and like just for everybody, this is the once-in-a-generation move right now. So, 25 years ago cloud computing came out and then, you know, software went from CDs to cloud and that and then all of the software companies and all that boom was the last 25 years and all the billionaires were made. The next boom is this, right? And so, we're early and so the hard of this is like, "Well, the pieces don't all fit together perfectly yet." And it's like, "Well, that's the figure out that we make lots of money from, right?" Okay. So, I don't think the solution is you selling a course cuz you just happened to have recorded it. I think that we need to fix the supply constraint first and then you'll use all those things as marketing assets to increase demand when the time comes. So, save those in your back pocket. There's nothing wrong with them. But, I want to look at the model, increase operating leverage that'll probably also increase margin, start making this number more than zero. Okay. Which I promise, you can take this to the bank, if you do make that not zero, you will grow faster. Um you'll make more money if you sell people. Uh and then I think from there, so it's like increase operating leverage through offshoring, add in data layer. Once the data layer is there, then we can add in the AI component that further increases operating leverage. Once you put the remote team in, you'll then be able to sell again. If you get to the point where you're like, "I've now reached my new two or three X capacity without even marketing." Then great. If you do need to market more, then use the assets that are in your back pocket to go do more lead gen. It was like four or five steps, but that's how I think they're at. Thank you. I sell roofing and exterior remodeling. Sweet. Uh we do uh close to 6 million this year. >> Amazing. Um I would like to be at 100 million. Okay. So, what's stopping me and I'll I'll be a little bit vulnerable. I would say it's comfort, distractions, and fear. And food? Fear. Oh, sorry. I was like All right, good to know. You know. >> food. No. Sometimes I feel that way, too. Uh So, the the comfort is I have built the business. I've replaced myself in every aspect. I can work two to three hours a week and it run fine. Okay. Um fear, I would say the fear of losing family time. Mhm. Uh the work-life balance. >> Sure. And the distractions are uh my other I've got another business, junk removal business. Um I've got real estate. I've got uh just all kinds of little businesses. >> you think you should do that you're not doing that you want me to tell you to do? So So I know I need to go all in again. And And I did that the first five years that I that >> worked out? And it worked out great. >> Uh-huh. Um went through COVID. Um I got, you know, kept the business going really well. Mhm. And I worked myself out of a job. Got comfortable. Okay. So I don't know what I'm looking for you to tell me to do. Well, I'll say I'll say this differently. Um I think regrets come when we imagine the upside that we don't have without taking into account the cost that we didn't suffer. And so Sure. Uh I think I think we regret um when we imagine the upside that we didn't get without also considering the downside that we didn't suffer to get it. Um and so I think that's where a lot of regret comes from cuz it's not it's not real. So it's like maybe there's some girl that got away or some business opportunity that got away and we just imagine this amazing thing but not the trade-off that we would have to do in order to get it. We just imagine the upside without the downside. And so I would say a couple things. So one is um I think that there are there are trade-offs that we always have to make. And I don't I don't think they're right or wrong. I think they're just they're preference. There's no right answer to how much work-life balance you want to have. It's right for you. And so said differently, if I like cookies and I'm good with that, and I also want a six-pack, I just prefer cookies to a six-pack. It's just that's the trade, and I think the dissatisfaction comes from wanting both. Right. Right. And so either want less or trade more. Okay. And I think that's really what it comes down to in terms of like is there a path where I can work no more than I currently am um to go from 60 to 100? There probably is. It depends on how much you're willing to pay other people. And so you might have to take a short-term hit in terms of profitability uh to bring in the level of talent that you want to expand the business on your behalf to where you want it to go. And so as long as you were the type of person character-wise that they would want to follow and believe in your vision, and you can make your vision big enough that they think that their aspirations can fit within it, you can get that type of person. But like it's it's 100% like you're you're graduating right now into the who game. Yeah. Um but there's levels of whos. You know, like I remember um the first time I hired a $50,000 a year employee, and I was like this is the [ __ ] This is what I'm talking about. You know what I mean? Like I went from minimum wage, you know, labor to 50, I was like this they're they can read, they can write. Like let's let's go. You know what I mean? Uh and then I I hired my first six-figure employee, and I was like oh what was I talking about? Like this is what's going on. And then I have my first 250, first 500, first million, first multi-million dollar per year employee. Um it's just levels. And so um Sheron, who's our president, said this to me years ago, but I always remember he said the best the best talent's always in the future. So whatever we have today, the best people are always ahead of you, not behind you. And so um I think for you, if we if you really do want to accomplish it without making the trade, you will make a trade cuz if you change nothing, nothing will change, right? So we have to change some some component of your life. And so the question is which thing do you value the least? Do you value having more profit or more time with your family in the short term? In the long term, you can make it up. You won't make up family time in the long term. You can make the profit up in the long term. Right. So, if you're willing to give up short-term profit, you can bring in high-level talent, and then they can lead the growth. Okay. In terms of the uh the fear stuff, I mean, I would just say like just hold hold the line. If you don't you're like, "I'm afraid of losing time with the family." It's like just don't. Like I you know. And then in terms of the real estate thing, I see real estate cuz I know about entrepreneurs. I have a ton of real estate. Um I don't like as long as you're not like actively running it. Um Like that's what I'm a big fan of like REITs and funds. Yeah. Uh because you have if you have, you know, good partners in that stuff. Um they can just run it. You can make better than the market and then but it's not it doesn't change anything about what I do. Like me putting in the S&P or me buying another big building changes nothing about my life. And so, it's not a distraction unless you're like, "You know, if we could add a gazebo. And what if we added a different roof cuz I'm a roofer. And what if I combined what I'm really You're like, "Dude, stop. Just like let the real estate be the real estate. Let the business be the business and just keep them apart." As long as you're good there cuz I think it's a distraction. Um Actually, let me double-checking that real quick, which is when you said your the distraction thing that you're afraid of, why are you afraid of that? I'm not afraid of it. >> Okay. >> I'm just I've got ADHD and I I I collect gold and silver. I buy houses. I buy buildings. I mean, it's just Yeah. a little bit of the red dress. Well, as long as it doesn't change anything about what you do, I don't care. But if it's like, "Now, I check this stuff all the time and it like eats up my days." Then yeah, I would say that's a problem. Um And it's only a problem if you decide it's a problem. Like you might just like that stuff. It's just like I sacrifice my goals cuz I enjoy this ADD. You know what I mean? Like the cost of the big thing is the new stuff that you have to give up to keep it going. Yeah. Thank you. I feel like there's some amens. This is great. It's like a good meal, right? Yeah. I appreciate it. Um but yeah, that's the like the cost of the big thing is all the new stuff you have to give up that you don't get to pursue. All the exciting things that you will no longer participate in because you want to do one thing big. Okay. And I think um for me personally, I had this moment um I think a while ago, but like I had this realization of how long it takes to get good at anything. And then I thought about oh, I only have like 30 or 40 more productive years at most. And so I'm like, I've got like four or five big seasons in me left. Yeah. And so that's it. And so I don't have like unlimited shots on goal. I've got four or five big runs in me. And so I think like realizing that it's kind of like Warren Buffett talks about if every person just had a punch card with 20 punches on it and that's the only thing you could invest in, you could never sell it, you'd make way better investments. I see entrepreneurs the same way in terms of what business opportunities we'll pursue. Because if we take the hypothetical extreme that if we want to build something really big, it's going to take a long time. Then it means we can't do that many things. So. Hopefully that helps. I appreciate that answer cuz I thought you were going to say sell everything and I mean, they're investments. I mean, I'm not going to tell you sell your investments. I would say keep passive stuff passive. Don't make it active. That's like incurring cost. Cuz if you're going to make it active, then make active money. Yeah. If you're like, I want I want to take my passive money and then it make it cost me more time to get 5% better returns, it's like you're going to get way better returns in your active income than your passive. And just I would just keep active active, keep passive passive. Thank you. Appreciate you. Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage roadmap from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish I've now done multiple times. And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as head count increases that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business, what the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it, and then what steps we actually took to graduate. And we've done this across software, physical products, service businesses, brick and mortar, all of this, and it works. And it's my gift to you, it's absolutely free. And so the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.com/roadmap, just enter your info, and it'll spit it right back to you, all free. My family owns a residential fence company, so we sell fences to homeowners. Uh our current revenue is roughly about 20 million. Um I think a good goal for us would be 50. Um I think what is stopping us is leadership and A-players within our sales and management, and also standardization of our processes and SOP creation. Okay. I believe you. Okay. So, right now, do you need more customers? Not necessarily. Well, do you need more We have to figure out right off the bat. Do you need more customers, or can you not can not handle the the the stuff you got? We can handle the stuff we have. You can. So, you need more customers. We need more lead people, people to answer the leads, and people to close the deals. Okay, so you have leads. You have a sales constraint. Yes. Got it. Okay. So, how many sales people do you need? It sounds like a similar How many sales people do you need in order to deal with the leads issue? We currently have five. I would say we at least need to double that. Okay. So, what's stopping you from doubling it? Um I think it's part the nerves that the market might not last and need or require that many people. So, kind of putting all the stuff >> be a demand issue again? Yeah, well, I mean, it's not like we don't have a current demand issue. We have a plenty of leads coming in. We've got a whole separate staff that are >> the fear from? What are your margins? See, this This where it's hard for me because I'm not the CE- CEO. I'm the right-hand woman to kind of the founder, so I don't know specifically. You don't know the margins? As the right hand? No, cuz I feel like it's also kind of a data problem that we have of not being able to collect the proper data and know that it's actually correct or accurate as well. Well, I'll say it's one of two So you said we're afraid to hire these people. I would say why if it's like it's just between my ears and I have have irrational fears for things I'd be like, all right, let's get over it. If it's because we have no cash flow, then it's like okay, we have cash flow issues and we have to go down that kind of decision tree. Um assuming you don't I mean, have you ever heard of the CEO saying that they have cash flow issues? Not necessarily. >> Okay, well then I would be like, why don't we hire five more sales guys? We're in the process of doing that. Okay, there we go. Okay, great. Got it. No, you're good. Yeah. 26% is our kind of Okay, great. You know, we're there. You know, we fine-tune the back end. Mhm. Now it's upgrading sales app. Okay. We have plenty of leads coming in. Yep. Stop. The our process of how we used to do it is now changed. Okay. And like you said, it's doubling up. We're in a market where it's it slows down a little bit cuz it's winter fencing Minnesota. Cool. >> Mhm. But we still go through all winter. Cold? You know, the culture with her help Yeah. so everybody knows. Um and uh yeah, we're on that doorway to finding the right you know. Is it all a >> Not knowing the Yeah. Not knowing the right path of how to bring in the right sales manager. >> Yeah. Basically, you need to build a recruiting machine for sales cuz you're getting to the point you have five sales guys now? Yeah. Yeah. Um and are you doing any Do you do any self-gen or is it all All paid. It's all paid. Okay, yeah. So um the people who who do who do home services at a certain scale, which is right where you're at right now, you start needing to develop basically like a sales academy um that's internal. And so just like you have you've religion you got nurture you've got sales you've got, you know, uh onboarding of some sort and then you've got, you know, retention and ascension for a customer, right? You're going to have app gen app nurture interviewing works the same way. Onboarding and then retention and ascension of the sales people. It's just that we have to build a parallel structure within the business always so that we can, just like we spend money reliably in our demand gen side, we need to be able to spend money reliably on the supply gen side. And so those just have to be parallel functions that exist within the business. And so just like you probably know I'll bet you know like what your CTRs are, what your opt-in rates are, what your, you know, what percentage of leads you close, what percentage show, all that kind of stuff, right? On this side. Yeah. What's good? Well, just like you know those stats here, you just need to know those stats here. Are you guys doing L2 with us? Oh, good. Yeah, I was like cuz we build these things out of like all the time. Yeah, but that's what you need to do. We just have to build out the basically the entire sales the the the pipeline, the funnel flow of of And so I was I'll complete the thought in a second. Um So when I was talking to you yesterday, 2 seconds ago, about this how much does a sales guy make you? Right now. Gross profit. 200K just for simple math. And that's in gross profit? Yeah. Okay, and then how much >> you put down there? I'm sorry. I said So, what did you say? How much How much gross profit do they make? >> different cuz we have five in-house, five out-house. Let's think of It's really like a 10 You have your manager outside, you have your inside sales. That's kind of our pie. Yeah, okay. Um 20 million so a year Each guy's good We divide by 10, 2 million bucks. Just be Keep We'll keep it simple. And then what do you pay them? Upwards max about 200. Okay, 200 for the best guys. Okay, fine. And then gross profit on this? Uh probably right now 50? Out of 2 million? Like what's your gross profit? Not net, gross profit. What's cost of goods? Uh about half that. Okay, yeah. So, 1 million. So, for me I see this and I see a five to one which by the way like some of the best returns you get in the business are just your cost to acquire talent versus lifetime gross profit per employee. And so, if I know that we can generate 1 million dollars in gross profit, I said, "Hey, you could put 200 grand in the S&P or we can put 200 grand into this machine." It's all in. Yeah. You get a You get a million in gross profit and then you have your enterprise value probably also 8x uh for your business. It's like great, 8 million tax-free for 200k. Sounds like a deal. And there was a little add-on, you know, to be honest at the beginning of your when you came out and Sorry for your loss, but Oh, you're good. >> same kind of tension that the daughter and I Yeah. You know, so trying to fix that here and there. Are you guys related? He's my dad. Oh, there we go. That makes it easier. Okay. Uh I know, you're good. Um I mean, I I have I have no words of advice there. Um but this is what we need to do to the business. Yeah, I limit my scope. No, I just meant with the the scale. >> Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. >> That's what I meant. It was kind of a home run hit for Oh, good. Okay, cool. in a different way. No, I appreciate that. Well, yeah, I mean the whole point wasn't like hopefully everybody here didn't have somebody die yesterday, you know what I mean? But um but we all have [ __ ] that happens, right? And so like um like if I look at this thing for me, and the reason this is kind of important cuz I I was I was going to go in one of two directions. I was going to either do that or just I was going to let the spirit move me. Um but what is limiting most of y'all's businesses, which is the stuff that no one actually wants to talk about, is the fact that like you aren't good enough as entrepreneurs. So, you haven't achieved enough yet. You haven't sustained the success you have long enough, and people don't want to work for you cuz they don't believe in the vision you have. That's the real thing. Because business at the highest level can really be boiled down to find world-class people and get out of their way. You've heard Branson talk about it. You've heard Steve Jobs talk about it, and it's true. The problem is they don't want to work for you. Real. Because Steve Jobs is like, "We're going to add another hundred billion to Apple." And people are like, "Wow, that sounds amazing." And when you meet world-class talent like that, those guys are making $20 million bonuses per year, right? Different levels to the game. And so, I bring this stuff to say that if you were a small business, which is the vast majority of people here, um then you have to win on character. They have to want to work for you. And I think learning how to master these elements of like not being a hothead, not being somebody who, you know, turns on a dime. Um if you have a bad day, no one knows about it. I think those are the things that allow you to get way basically punch above your weight class because you basically always have to punch above to get that talent, and then that talent pulls the business up. And so, I'll tell you the story, and then I'll I'll switch to the next person, which is I um when we sold Gym Launch, some of you guys may have heard this, but when we sold Gym Launch, there was this long table, um like the board room in there, and we had uh my team on this side, and we had the private equity team on this side. And they'd raised $1.2 billion um in funds to do their stuff, and I was doing my back and napkin. I was like, "This guy is going to make $400 million in the next 5 years." I was like, that's chill, taking no risk. Um and I did the math on what he was going to make on Gym Launch and I was like, he's going to make more money on my company than I did. And what was interesting to me though is that I saw his entire team and I saw my team and every single person on his team was better than every single person on my team and it was this very visual stark contrast between his team and my team and I was like, got it. And so I just vowed that whatever the next business I was going to do, I needed to have a vision that was significantly bigger so I could attract a different level of talent so they could make something bigger happen. So, that's a a slightly softer answer but um you need to build the talent funnel, put that in place and then not be mean. Thank you. Yeah.