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You get so caught in the monthly goals and weekly goals

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That you forget to make the long-term investments that are important and not urgent

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers how to make more

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Processor and how to keep them longer and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe

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What's going on everyone?

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Happy Sunday. This is coming from downtown Austin

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Wanted to talk to you about one of the most profound belief and perspective shifts that I've had over the last few years

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And I think 2020 was that year for me where I made one of the most profound internal shifts and

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The shift has yielded me unbelievable amounts of decreases and anxiety

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For me and honestly just increases my increased my level of certainty and I can understand why

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So many people fail to a much higher degree and I think one of the biggest curses that I had earlier on in my career is that

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You know within months I went from

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It's just everything kind of aligned for me

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Mind you after five years of eating shit

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But nonetheless things did align for me

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And very rapidly went to from making not a lot of money to millions of dollars a year in profit

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To my second year

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doing almost 20 million dollars in profit

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Yeah, and that that fundamentally I think ruined me in a lot of ways earlier on because

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I saw that as my

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My benchmark, you know what I mean? I saw that as like if it's if a business is not doing this then it's failing

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We're doing something wrong and I think that it was a really poisonous viewpoint for me our toxic viewpoint and

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I want to share with you what what what I've shifted to and what has been such a dramatic improvement in my life

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And I think my business

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So when I look at investors and people make a lot more money than me and people have much bigger businesses than me

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I see this common thread of

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Looking at it from an investor's time horizon and so I feel like an entrepreneurship everything's about tomorrow

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Everything's about this week everything's about this month and making payroll and all that you know

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You have all the day-to-day things but you get so much you get so caught in the

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monthly goals and weekly goals

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That you forget to make the long-term investments that are important and not urgent

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And when I look at the billionaires of the world and all of them are trying to build you know escape paths to Mars to me

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I see that I'm sure there's the cool factor

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But the fact that they're all kind of thinking about the stuff

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Just leads me to think that they're thinking on such a larger time horizon than the rest of humanity

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Which is probably one of the reasons that they're more successful

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and

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One of the things to think about this is kind of fast versus inevitable

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And I have tried to shift my perspective to wanting to do tasks and actions on a repeated basis that I know

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That if I repeat them over a long enough time horizon will lead me to inevitably

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Accomplishing my goal and so it what it does

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By shifting that way is I look at tasks. I look at projects. I look at initiatives in a very different light

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I also

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And I mean I wasn't super effective by competition in general mentally because of other things

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But I think this has been probably the last nail on the coffin for me in terms of like well so and so is making more or whatever

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Right the things that we do to compare ourselves

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if you remove the time horizon and think of

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Not next year, but maybe next decade right

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I've been using five years because that is a timeline that I feel like I can wrap my head around in Israel for me

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Um, I had a mental retrial to me and he was like and you know this guy sold his thing for three three point four billion

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Uh, and he's like bro, you need a hundred-year timeline and um, I I took that in I accept that

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But I it was not it's not real for me yet and so five years or something that is real for me that I can believe in

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and so

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uh

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What that does is if you think about time as an inevitable force that's going to move forward one way or another

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Think about for a second how and this is for me

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Do I see time as a threat?

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Do I see time as a liability something that I'm always saying isn't is working against me

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Or is time an asset that is working for me and I think this has been the single greatest shift in perspective for me

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Is now seeing if I extend my time horizon then time stops being a liability in a threat and becomes an asset

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And how things compound over time now works to assist me rather than hinder me and so I'll give you a simple example

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so

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I have never believed in SEO right or really even inbound marketing and I have had a major shift in perspective on this

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um probably in the last 12 months

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And the reason for that is because you know, if you your first 12 months of of doing you know

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SEO and I'm saying that as a general as a catch all time really just any inbound marketing and that is not

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paid advertising that results in people because that's technically kind of still outbound right you're you're putting ads out there

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And then getting people to respond rather than basically pool based marketing where you're putting you're creating a water hole for people to come towards right

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And so I've I've never really invested much thought into inbound stuff at all

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I mean the only example of that is really this kind of log slash podcast which I never did for a really any business purposes

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It's just more for me to document my journey um

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But nonetheless

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uh

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Thinking about this in terms of that perspective of and I've been talking to people who are like oh yeah

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We have this you know, it's taken us five years to build this asset

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But now this asset creates 3000 applications month for our for our software or for our whatever right

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And I think of myself like man just building a machine that just consistently month over month

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creates more and more and more

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inbound

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Interest is just wildly compelling to me and so I think to myself. Okay. Sure. We're gonna have our outbound things

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Both outbound in terms of manual outbound with people cold call cold email etc

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You know cold DM but also we have our outbound with paid advertising across platforms

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But the kind of the third piece to this is what can we quote invest in

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That if I did it over five years. I believe it would be unreasonable for me to not have built another channel

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That is reliable and sustainable and enduring and so you'll probably see some more things for me in the next 12 months

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Along that line

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Because I think it's really awesome and I want to use compound

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Growth to my advantage rather than as a hindrance rather than as something that I compare myself to and feel

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Always inadequate and so what I think that the shift from the CEO to investor mindset has helped me with is

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The stress that I put on myself

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For like quarterly goals and looking at someone else who might have started at the same time as me and is doing better than me

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Because then I get to think to myself

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Okay, but we're not comparing ourselves now. We're comparing ourselves to

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What's gonna happen in 20 years right? Well their company still be here and I'm trying to build something that endures that lasts

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That maybe even can be passed on to a future at generation

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And I don't think those were ever thoughts of mine when I was starting my entrepreneurial career

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And I wish they had been and so I don't know where you're at right now

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But maybe if you can if you can take that perspective and think to yourself

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What could I create that and what tasks did I do what projects could I invest in that even if they don't pay off this quarter or next quarter or even the next 12 months

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I think that it would be inevitable that I would have a disproportionate pay off five years from now and obviously that

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Begets the obvious you know the the the single greatest constraint that most people have which is they can't do anything consistently

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But I believe I can do things consistently and I think that many of the people listening to this can do things consistently

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And so if you have that character trait already you've developed that discipline

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I feel like

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Using that discipline to invest in things that are going to create disproportionate returns is a good use of

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Time right for us and so I'll give you a real example around this

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We'll click wise you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything

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And so the only ask that I can ever have are you guys that you help me spread the words we can out more entrepreneurs

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Make more money feed their families make better products and have better

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Experiences for their employees and customers and the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share this podcast

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So the single thing that I have to do is leave review but take 10 seconds or one type of the thumb

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To me and more importantly it may change the world someone else

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We're looking at doing an initiative

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Uh on the gym lunch in our gym lunch company

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uh related to just generating more you know, inbound applications and whatnot and I was talking to our our GM about it

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And I was saying listen, let's let's not think about that for like this quarter

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Uh, I mean we can start now, but let's not measure the ROI until you know next year

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And I don't think I would ever have said something like that

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A year or two ago. I don't even think it would even be a thought

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um

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But it's it's been wildly freeing because either so much less pressure around initiatives

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And I think it actually improves the quality of the initiative and the execution of the team because they're not immediately

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Be like oh, it's been a week and it's not working so we're failing right and so um let me give you another really good nugget that I've had recently around this which is

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um

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Rather than looking at week over week month over month sales growth

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Instead I asked myself the question what one thing

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If I tripled it in our company what non sales related you know what non revenue related thing that if I were to triple it

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It would be unreasonable to believe that my company would not triple as well

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And for me that was inbound qualified or I'm saying about but just number of qualified applications generated that was a metric that I was like okay

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Sometimes when you're increasing the number of applications that are coming in uh, you have a new salesperson or new sales team

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Uh, and they're their close rate is low it happens right it's part of scaling a business

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But over a long enough time horizon it would be unreasonable for me to believe that if I were to triple my number of applications

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Uh, I would not see it at you know a proportional increase in sales and so what's interesting to me is that if I can

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I've never actually thought about a leading indicator because I have leading indicators on churn uh, which is like customer activation and I talk about that and other stuff

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Um, but I've never actually had a leading indicator on growth which is fascinating to me that I've never had this which is like whole areas um

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But actually measuring the number of sales accepted leads and so that is that's defined as a a lead that the sales team accepts because they showed in our qualified right they are the type of person

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Uh, who we can serve uh, you know, they have the size business that we work with you know and they showed up and they have interest right so that that would be a sales qualified lead

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and so

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Trying to say I want to increase sales by 5% a month is a fine goal the thing is is that there are so many other variables that can affect it in a short time

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summarizing like that

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Whereas saying I want to increase our number of inbound applications by 5% per month is far more

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Consistent and reasonable to do and so if you thought about like a line right if I increase I know that I can increase through consistent activity

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The number of inbound applications either through adding more people to outreach

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Uh, creating more channels for content um, and then you know, obviously there's the paid side which is you can add another platform etc

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right and so

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If I if I draw that line that is something I can consistently do and so when I'm

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Thinking about growing my business and hitting a goal like tripling it right in the next five years

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And I think okay

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Well, then let's take let's take our sales call sales qualified leads right and let's draw that as our line

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And that's going to be our baseline right that's what we're going to focus on our attention on the day to day activities around that

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Those are going to be like the stock market right there. They're going to be up and down up and down up and down

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And I think most of us are looking at such small time horizons. It looks crazy

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But if you look at it from an investor's perspective in terms of years or decades

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Then you can really see the truth and the reason that a stock will go up over a decade is simply because of the

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Trichonomic value that a company is providing right and so for me a leading indicator of growth would be the number of interested

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Increase that we get and so that is actually going to be my primary predictive metric that I will be driving

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Because I know that of course we're going to change processes. Sure. We might change CRMs

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You know, we might change our funnel or our sales like all these things are small things, but

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If I can simply increase the number of qualified applications of people who want to for example grow their gym

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By 3x in the next five years then I can reasonably believe that I would be able to achieve it and thinking that way

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It's just been amazing and so that is what I'm dedicated to doing and some of these smaller projects

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Which for me we're like well this thing isn't going to double our lead gen so I don't want to do it

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I've really shifted my perspective on that and so I'm now looking at

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Reliable inflows. It's like okay. Well, I think this one thing can generate us 20 new clients a month

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That's not huge for us, but it's it's it's noticeable and so

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Okay, well then how you know how much this takes you to invest in that how long do it you know and and and let's start it

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Let's start the let's start the snowball right and so that's one of the that's what I was talking about

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And so we're actually going to do this initiative that I think will result in about

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20 new clients a month and it's going to take us time to get there

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But I but I think it's it's going to be really really

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valuable for us right over the long haul especially and so let me just take a quick look at my notes

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Because I wanted to make sure I'm not missing anything for you

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Do-do-do

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Yeah, I think that's I think that's um that's my biggest thing right

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That's that's pretty much my message for for what my biggest perspective shift has been

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Is thinking about a five-year time horizon

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Shifting from CEO to shareholder

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Swift shifting from CEO to to board member or advisor

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And thinking about it over those time horizons and I feel like if you can just make that change

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I wish I could explain to you how much less stress I have

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Because if you know the company goes up by a little bit or down by a little bit one month over another month

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It just it just doesn't affect me like it doesn't affect my life in any way

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And I feel like I had my ego so and this is actually the last point that I had in my notes

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Which is my ego is just so much less

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impacted by the fluctuations of the business

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That it's just it's just phenomenally increased my standard of living like I'm just I'm just really not that stressed about things

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You know, it's I just can't even express it to you and so anyways

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This has been probably the biggest lesson of 2020 for me um and obviously 2020 for us was uh

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We we our profit was cut in half we did I think 13.4 in profit last year and we did I think six

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Six this year we're getting a final books, but around that this year in profit which was technically my lowest your profit in a while and

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um

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But I can truthfully tell you it's it's really doesn't affect me because I know it's a momentary business disruption

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But

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Because of a pandemic that disproportionately affected my clients than than many you know than many other industries

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Um, and I don't think it'd be unreasonable for me to believe that over the next three years right that we would we would not only recover

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But grow past where we were before and so in thinking about that um anyways, I just I just it's been

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It's just viewing time as an ally and not an ally or an asset not a threat or a liability and

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Once you can when I can hitch my cart to something that is inevitable like the past and the passing of time

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Um, then I feel like you're aligned with forces that will grow you

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Without your permission and so anyways, I'll leave you with that. I'll give it an amazing day and keeping awesome

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Catch you on the clip side. Bye