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How far away do you get when you, when you relinquish control?

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Because the thing is, is you relinquish control,

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but you still take full accountability and responsibility

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for the results.

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That's what's wild is that you have to say,

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I'm going to give this over to you.

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I'm losing control and yet I'm still responsible.

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That'll trip you up.

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The wealthiest people in the world see business as a game.

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This podcast, the game is my attempt

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at documenting the lessons I've learned

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on my way to building acquisition.com

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into a billion dollar portfolio.

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My hope is that you use the lessons to your business

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and maybe someday soon partner with us

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to get to a hundred million dollars in beyond.

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I hope you share and enjoy.

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What's going on, everyone?

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I want to talk about the entrepreneurial journey

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as it relates to control.

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And the reason I think this is so important,

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and this is probably the biggest reason

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that people get stuck.

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All right, and so at the end,

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so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to explain

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kind of how control shifts throughout the entrepreneurial journey,

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where people get stuck,

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and I'll tell you basically the most valuable rule of thumb

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that I've learned in scaling our companies.

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So first thing is the reason entrepreneurship is so difficult

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is because it forces you to change who you are,

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your identity, the values that you supposedly have

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as you continue to grow.

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I'm not saying you're honesty, et cetera,

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those types of values,

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but the way that you see the world and how you operate.

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Because in the very beginning,

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you, most of us at some point,

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have to transition from a lack of control

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to complete control, right?

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And what I mean by that is either you,

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you know, went straight into entrepreneurship

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where you shifted control from your parents to yourself, right?

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Or if in many other instances,

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you started, you had a job,

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someone else was kind of responsible for your income

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for the most part because they're paying you,

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you weren't generating it yourself.

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And then, and so you're very limited, right?

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And then you jump to taking complete ownership

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over all of your outcomes, right?

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And so you have complete control.

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The difficult thing is that the thing that takes you

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the first step, that huge leap of saying,

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I'm going to be completely in control,

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is usually the thing that will stifle most entrepreneurs

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who are trying to grow, right?

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Because if you have complete control

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and complete ownership, that's great,

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but there's only one of you, right?

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And so what that leads to is kind of this, this buyback.

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And I think the first time I heard this recently

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was, Dan, we're talking about buyback principle

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and I just like the terminology.

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But basically, you just continue to buyback your time

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as you continue to grow the company.

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And so in the very beginning,

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most people are buying back support time.

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So it's just kind of like, you know,

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lower skilled support tasks that they're doing in their business.

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So it's like them, and then they've got maybe an assistant, right?

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And then after that, there might be higher level support

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or administrative tasks that might be like billing, collections,

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contracts, all that kind of stuff that might happen

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in the business after you have like

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your kind of support role taken care of.

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From there, the next level of control

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that people have to give up is selling, right?

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No one can sell like me.

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No one gets it like I get it.

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People just don't relate to my customers, right?

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And the issue is control.

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You're trying to control the whole thing.

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And the thing is is that every time you add someone in,

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you buyback more of your time,

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you relinquish control.

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And so the thing is is that every level of entrepreneurship,

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I'm telling you right now,

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it is always uncomfortable because the thing

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that you are now holding onto is the thing

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that you have to give up.

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And this has been one of the hardest things for me.

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And a lot of part, a lot of this is because we identify

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with being the thing, right?

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In the beginning, I'll give you a simple example

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because we work so many gyms in the gym lunch company.

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People will be like, no one treats trains a class

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like I do, right?

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So that's the first level of fulfillment, right?

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First level of delivery is training, right?

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It's also the first thing they need to outsource.

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And the reason for that is because the market

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will pay someone $15 an hour.

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Somebody will come in for $15 an hour to do that work.

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Well, if you have work that pays you $100 an hour,

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then you should be doing the $100 an hour

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and not the $15 an hour work.

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But they think, because they like to feel special,

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they like to feel unique, no one can train like I can train.

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Well, I mean, obviously,

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there's probably some people who train a lot better than you.

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So maybe you should let them do the train, right?

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And then after that, usually the business owner will do

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contracts, billing, you know,

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and they're usually not that good at it anyways,

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because they're entrepreneurs.

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And so that's the next thing that happens, right?

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And so then the next piece might be

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some sort of assistant of some kind

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or some sort of right hand operator that would help you out,

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right?

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And then again, there, it's like, well,

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no, I don't trust anyone with the money.

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If I'm not looking at the money,

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then we're gonna lose.

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Well, I used to say the same thing

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until I had someone who was better at tracking the money

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than I am.

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Huh, crazy, right?

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It's I had to give up control of the money.

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I'm not saying I'll look at it, right?

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But I had to give up control of it.

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And so then I'm just selling, right?

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Because that's the highest value thing I could do at the time

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was I could just talk to people

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and get them to give us money, right?

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But then eventually, there's too many,

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too many consultations that have to happen.

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I still have to run the business, right?

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And so I have to give that control over to someone else,

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which is probably one of the biggest

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and most difficult people.

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This is usually the thing that gets

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in the way people going.

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I would say it from a million over,

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sort of doing over a million,

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so up to a million dollars a year,

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you can just sell yourself, right?

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Like you yourself can sell and you can have

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these other people who are assisting you.

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But once you cross a million,

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it's usually difficult to be doing the selling yourself.

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And that's where we have to start scaling sales.

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You have to give that control up, right?

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Aimos in Asian quick break, just to let you know

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that we've been starting to post on LinkedIn

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and want to connect with you.

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All right, so send me a connection request

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and note letting me know that you listen to the show

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and I will accept it.

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There's anyone you think that we should be connected with,

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tag them in one of my or Laylist posts

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and I will give you all the love in the world.

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All right, so let's get back to the show.

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The next level after control of doing control of the sales

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is now you have to teach other people

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in a group, not just one person,

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but a group of people how to sell.

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So you have to manage sales team,

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you have to recruit, you have to hire, you have to train,

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compensate, et cetera.

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And again, this level is a control.

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But again, here, even with the sales team,

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you're talking maybe three, maybe 10 million.

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When you get to 10 million trying to go to 30,

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the level of control that you're giving up here

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is leadership, weird, right?

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Because there's just too many departments, too many people.

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You can't lead everyone, right?

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So you have to lead a small group of people

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and get them to lead the people who are underneath of them, right?

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And so again, that's a level of control.

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It's control over your culture.

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Now obviously you want to lead it.

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You want to lead by example.

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You want to be the most distilled down version of that thing

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so that it permeates, right?

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But as you continue to buy back,

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I think the question that I like to ask myself is,

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what am I trying to control?

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What am I trying to control?

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And I think if you think about that,

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and then rather, what part of my identity

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am I giving up by giving up this control?

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I used to think I was such a great salesman, right?

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No one can sell like I can sell.

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But you know what?

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I can't sell 12 guys, right?

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I literally can't, you know what I mean, I can't do it.

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And so, and if the business model requires,

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you know, only a soup like your level of sales

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to make it work, then the model's broken, right?

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You should be able to have people close half as many as you

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and still make the model work, right?

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Now obviously over time you want to get them

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to sell better than you because all they're doing is selling,

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right?

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Whereas you were when you were selling the way you did,

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you were running the business.

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And so with each of this kind of cycle

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is you have to give up control.

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And so I told you at the beginning that I will give you

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the rule of thumb that has served me very well

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in running my companies, which is how far away do you get?

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Right?

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How far away do you get when you, when you relinquish control?

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Because the thing is, is you relinquish control,

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but you still take full accountability

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and responsibility for the results.

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That's what's wild is that you have to say,

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I'm going to give this over to you.

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I'm losing control and yet I'm still responsible.

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That'll trip you up.

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But the rule of thumb that I use is no where the bodies

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are buried, no where the bodies are buried.

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And so what I mean by that is if I don't know

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where the flaws are in a department, I'm too far away.

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So if I'm, if you know, if I talk to,

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let's say a marketing director or I talk to a sales director,

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I talk to a customer support, I talk to, you know,

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finance and I don't know where the bodies are buried.

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Like I don't know what the issues are

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because every department has issues.

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Every department has problems.

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It's a business.

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It's made of humans and humans are imperfect, right?

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Which means that there are always imperfections.

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There are things that are not working as well as they could.

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If I can't name problems,

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if I don't know where the bodies are buried in the department,

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then I'm too far away, right?

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Now, when I say that,

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doesn't mean I have given up too much control.

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That's not the issue.

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It's just I need more transparency.

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I need to be paying more attention to that area.

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And this rule of thumb has served me well.

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So if I start hearing only good news from a department

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and I don't hear anything negative, I'm too far away.

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And this has been my manager or leadership rule of thumb

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that has really helped me a ton is nowhere the bodies are buried.

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And so this is the entrepreneurial journey in a nutshell.

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I got a lot of feedback from the $0 to $100 million video

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that I made of kind of the steps

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from a business model's perspective.

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But from the personal perspective,

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the issue is control.

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And that's why most people can't get stuck

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because they have all these personal issues

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that prevent them from controlling.

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I'm sorry Alex,

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they just don't trust people.

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I've trust issues.

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Well, get over it

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because you're not going to build something great

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without trusting other people.

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So if you want your mom or your dad

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or the thing that you have your trust issues with,

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to be the reason that you're not successful,

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to give them more power.

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Go power to you, right?

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Just keep giving them control over your life

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because you have these issues, right?

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Or you can decide,

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I think this person's done enough damage to me in my life.

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I'm not going to let them stop me from accomplishing

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what I want to accomplish.

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And so I'm going to take back that power.

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I'm going to take back the control over my outcomes,

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take responsibility which may feel shitty in the moment

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because it means I suck.

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But at least I suck

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and I don't point at them saying they suck

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because I can control what I do.

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And as a result, I can go through this process

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and continue to buy back

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and relinquish control, buy back

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and relinquish control, buy back

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and relinquish control.

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First of the doing, then of the admin,

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then of the ops, then of the sales

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and then of having a sales team

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and then of the leadership

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and then continuing on and on

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as we relinquish more and more control, right?

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How can you be free if you control everything?