WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.760 I was CEO of one business and I said, oh, I'm outside of the day today, I'll start another business. 2 00:00:05.760 --> 00:00:08.640 Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more 3 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:11.920 per customer, and how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned 4 00:00:11.920 --> 00:00:19.120 along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. So when I was 28 years old, we made $28 million 5 00:00:19.120 --> 00:00:23.360 and $17 million profit. And the next year, I made one of the biggest mistakes in my business 6 00:00:23.360 --> 00:00:29.840 career, which was I started another business. And so what I ended up doing was I was CEO 7 00:00:29.840 --> 00:00:33.760 of one business. And so I said, oh, I'm outside of the day today, I'll start another business 8 00:00:33.760 --> 00:00:37.120 because there's this big pile of money right here that I can't say no to because I'm a capitalist 9 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:42.480 and I should definitely do that. And so the next year, we did $37 million in top line revenue 10 00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:46.480 and then we did $13.4 in profit. So my profit went down and my revenue went up. 11 00:00:47.200 --> 00:00:50.240 Now I could try and, you know, BSU and tell you that it was because we reinvested in 12 00:00:50.240 --> 00:00:55.520 infrastructure and all that stuff and we did. But candidly, it was because starting the business 13 00:00:55.520 --> 00:00:59.440 at that time given the skills that they had was a mistake. And so what I wanted to do is talk 14 00:00:59.440 --> 00:01:05.920 to you about a conversation that I had with my neighbor who was a trash man. And he went from 15 00:01:05.920 --> 00:01:12.480 trash man to cash man and sold his business for multiple 8 figures. And we were talking one day 16 00:01:12.480 --> 00:01:16.560 and he was really excited and I was like, hey, man, what's going on? And he was like my non-competence 17 00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:21.280 today. And I was like, oh, well, I mean, what does that mean for you? You know, he's like, well, 18 00:01:22.480 --> 00:01:25.200 I'm going to start another business. And I was like, well, what are you going to start? This is 19 00:01:25.280 --> 00:01:29.360 exciting new chapter, et cetera. And he's like, oh, I'm going to do the exact same thing again. 20 00:01:29.360 --> 00:01:32.240 And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, I'm going to build the exact same trash company. 21 00:01:32.240 --> 00:01:36.640 And I'm going to sell it to the exact same company you bought my first company. And I was like, what? 22 00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:41.200 You have this opportunity to start with all the capital and all the knowledge you have now. 23 00:01:41.840 --> 00:01:45.360 You want to do the exact same thing? Don't you want something like new and different? And he was like, 24 00:01:46.160 --> 00:01:50.480 no, he's like, why would I start over brand new? He's like, I'm so good at trash. And I've spent 25 00:01:50.480 --> 00:01:53.600 the last three years working for the company that bought me. I learned stuff from them. And I already 26 00:01:53.600 --> 00:01:57.280 had my knowledge that I came in with, you know, with my own company. So I understand the scale even 27 00:01:57.280 --> 00:02:03.040 better than I did before. And I know how to start it from the ground up. And what you have to 28 00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:08.320 understand about my neighbor is that he's not a warden or Harvard MBA. He's not some like statistical 29 00:02:08.320 --> 00:02:12.400 math genius or anything like that. He's a blue collar guy from Wisconsin who maxed out his credit 30 00:02:12.400 --> 00:02:15.680 cards to start a trash business where he literally was the first one picking up trash 31 00:02:16.560 --> 00:02:20.240 for residential homes and whatnot. And then he just scaled that business through word of mouth 32 00:02:20.240 --> 00:02:24.640 and service of the smile. And there's a lot of things that I feel like I learned from him that I 33 00:02:24.640 --> 00:02:27.920 see all these people that reach out to me. And there's tons of people who are much smarter than I am 34 00:02:28.640 --> 00:02:32.880 who reach out. And they're like, hey, man, like, I've got this, I had a conversation either day 35 00:02:32.880 --> 00:02:37.520 with an agency owner who, sorry, an agency coach, he coaches agency owners on how to scale their 36 00:02:37.520 --> 00:02:42.000 businesses. And he was probably a five or six million bucks a year. And he was like, I'm thinking 37 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:47.760 about going into general business. And I was like, why? And he was like, well, it's just I'm people 38 00:02:47.760 --> 00:02:52.160 are asking me for, you know, help there. And it's I'm just turning down money. And I was like, 39 00:02:53.040 --> 00:02:58.560 duh, that's the point. The put like a strategy means knowing what you say no to. And, you know, 40 00:02:58.560 --> 00:03:01.840 I shouldn't be nice. I shouldn't like just because somebody asked me for something doesn't mean I 41 00:03:01.840 --> 00:03:05.200 should change my entire business to say, yes, right? You have to know who your avatar is and who it 42 00:03:05.200 --> 00:03:09.280 isn't. Because otherwise, if you try and be, you know, every, everything was it all things to all 43 00:03:09.280 --> 00:03:14.320 people, you're nothing to know one. And this was a huge mistake that I made earlier on in my 44 00:03:14.320 --> 00:03:19.280 career is because I didn't understand the, the, the growth that I had to do was not through doing 45 00:03:19.280 --> 00:03:24.960 something different and new and exciting. But the growth was going to come from me sticking with 46 00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:29.520 it was from developing the character traits of grit from developing the character traits of stick 47 00:03:29.520 --> 00:03:35.200 to it. And this from developing the character traits of perseverance, of focus. And I think that 48 00:03:35.200 --> 00:03:38.800 at all levels in business, you get seduced by a woman in the red dress, which is the analogy 49 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:42.240 that I like to use. Because at every level in business, like if you know the matrix, those 50 00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:46.640 are women in the red dress who walks by, Neo looks again, and then it's an agent pointing at gun 51 00:03:46.640 --> 00:03:51.360 on it. And I think that a lot of the opportunities that that come around towards us as we scale up 52 00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:56.000 and it happens at all levels of business, every one of them looks seductive and attractive. And at 53 00:03:56.000 --> 00:03:59.840 every level, it actually becomes more and more attractive. And you have to kind of defeat them 54 00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:03.920 emotionally because it's so hard to turn down, you know, in the beginning, you have to turn down 55 00:04:03.920 --> 00:04:07.200 $10,000, then you have to turn down $100,000, then you have to turn down a million dollars, 56 00:04:07.200 --> 00:04:12.720 then $10 million. And you know, for me, it turned out I wasn't able to turn down about, you know, 57 00:04:12.720 --> 00:04:18.640 $20 or $30 million of your opportunity when I was doing about $20, $30 million a year. And what 58 00:04:18.640 --> 00:04:23.920 it ended up doing is it cost me a tremendous amount of time and effort and probably lost growth 59 00:04:23.920 --> 00:04:28.560 on my main business at the time because I didn't know what I didn't know. And so what I'm 60 00:04:28.560 --> 00:04:32.480 sharing with you guys, Mosy Nation is hopefully the lessons that I learned from this, which is, 61 00:04:33.120 --> 00:04:38.640 you can't be CEO of two businesses. You can't serve two masters. You have to, if you're the one 62 00:04:38.640 --> 00:04:42.480 running your business and CEO making a mistake is the one running the business. Even though if you're 63 00:04:42.480 --> 00:04:46.960 not doing the day-to-day, just because you're like, oh, I'm an owner, you get paid for what you do, 64 00:04:46.960 --> 00:04:50.000 you get returns and what you own. And so if your business cannot run without you and you're like, 65 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:53.120 no, it can run without me. Just because it can run without you for a day doesn't mean it can run 66 00:04:53.120 --> 00:04:57.520 without you. You have the attention. It's the shower time, headspace where you're thinking about 67 00:04:57.520 --> 00:05:00.480 new ways to improve the business. You're thinking about your threats, you're thinking about innovation, 68 00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:04.640 you're thinking about the team members need to circle back with. It's the small nuances that 69 00:05:04.640 --> 00:05:09.120 create the excellence in the business that your headspace has to be dedicated to. And when I 70 00:05:09.120 --> 00:05:13.040 split my attention and I became CEO of two companies and I always split my term to serve two 71 00:05:13.040 --> 00:05:18.000 masters, I basically made the same amount of money and I just did this. And I think what ends up 72 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:21.920 happening for most people is that one of the truths that I've observed is that the amount of 73 00:05:21.920 --> 00:05:26.160 money that I make is only proportional to the skill that I have is an entrepreneur period. That's 74 00:05:27.120 --> 00:05:31.920 that. And so if you start more businesses, you're just going to end up leveling out. And so 75 00:05:31.920 --> 00:05:36.560 even though it looks like small and attractive, it's a small quick win that we're choosing to take 76 00:05:36.560 --> 00:05:41.440 rather than confronting the hard brutal facts of why is the business I'm currently doing not growing. 77 00:05:41.440 --> 00:05:45.040 And if it is growing, well, is there a way that I can grow it better? You know what I mean? Can I 78 00:05:45.040 --> 00:05:48.160 improve the product in a new way? Can I? There's all these things that we can do to improve the 79 00:05:48.160 --> 00:05:52.000 existing business. And I'll tell one more story to drive this home. So I got reached out to 80 00:05:52.080 --> 00:05:57.280 by a guy that I went to high school with and he owned a general contracting business. And so I was 81 00:05:57.280 --> 00:06:00.160 like, cool man, like, what do you guys do? What do you guys specialize in? He was like, oh, well, 82 00:06:00.160 --> 00:06:04.560 we do a lot of roofs. We do a lot of roof repairs. We do new roofs. We do. He's like, but I'm also 83 00:06:04.560 --> 00:06:07.760 doing like real estate stuff and contracting and flipping and all this other stuff. And I was like, 84 00:06:08.400 --> 00:06:11.040 man, that's a lot of stuff. I was like, why are you doing all those things? And he said, 85 00:06:12.160 --> 00:06:15.760 you know, I need to grow the different revenue streams of the business. And I was like, 86 00:06:16.560 --> 00:06:21.360 dude, there's, there's like 200 million homes in America that have roofs. I was like, the biggest 87 00:06:21.360 --> 00:06:25.200 roofing companies in the world are billion dollar companies. I was like, why? Why do you feel like 88 00:06:25.200 --> 00:06:31.120 you need to do more things to grow bigger? Because what happens is the better you get, the bigger you get, 89 00:06:31.120 --> 00:06:36.640 it's not the bigger you get, the better you get, better begets bigger, not the other way around. 90 00:06:38.720 --> 00:06:43.600 Hey guys, real quick. If you're new to the podcast, I have a book on Amazon called 100 million 91 00:06:43.600 --> 00:06:47.600 dollar offers that over 8,000 five star reviews and it has almost a perfect score. You can get it 92 00:06:47.600 --> 00:06:51.760 for 99 cents on Kindle. The reason I bring it up is that I put over a thousand hours into writing 93 00:06:51.760 --> 00:06:56.720 that book and it's my biggest gift to our community. So it's my very shameless way of trying to get 94 00:06:56.720 --> 00:07:01.680 you to like me more and ultimately make more dollars to that later on in your business career. I 95 00:07:01.680 --> 00:07:06.320 can finish the part with you. So that's my gift. Go check it out. Amazon and back to the show. 96 00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:11.920 And so the deeper you can sink your roots in, the more time you can put under the bar, 97 00:07:11.920 --> 00:07:17.520 this has been my finding, the better the business becomes. And then as a result, the bigger it becomes, 98 00:07:17.520 --> 00:07:21.280 because it comes from the disproportionate gains and knowledge we get at the end of the track, 99 00:07:21.280 --> 00:07:25.840 not at the beginning. In the first year of whatever business you do, you're going to learn more than 100 00:07:25.840 --> 00:07:30.800 you ever will about that business than any other time. But learning what you learn in the first 101 00:07:30.800 --> 00:07:34.960 year is not the stuff that makes you better than the rest of the playing field. It's learning what 102 00:07:34.960 --> 00:07:39.040 you learn in the 10th year and the 20th year in that same business that gets you the disproportionate 103 00:07:39.040 --> 00:07:43.360 returns. And so the easiest way to think about this is like if you think about the Olympics because 104 00:07:43.360 --> 00:07:47.440 they're on right now, or they are, hopefully when you're watching this, who knows, but the 105 00:07:47.440 --> 00:07:52.000 Olympics, right, you've got sprinters. And if you're the best sprinter in the world, you win the gold. 106 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:55.760 And you might only be one tenth of a second better than the fourth best sprinter in the world. I 107 00:07:55.760 --> 00:08:00.400 don't know track metrics, but you get the idea, right? And so even though you're only this much better, 108 00:08:00.400 --> 00:08:04.800 the real world implications of being this much better is that just being gold and getting all the 109 00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:08.960 endorsements and Nike and Adidas and all this stuff versus being fourth and getting almost no 110 00:08:09.920 --> 00:08:13.040 notoriety. And I think the same thing happens in business, right? It's a winner take all 111 00:08:13.040 --> 00:08:19.440 world or oftentimes. And the way that you can combat that is being able to develop the stick to 112 00:08:19.440 --> 00:08:24.400 itness. It's the grit of understanding that your knowledge will compound with time. It's using time 113 00:08:24.400 --> 00:08:29.040 as an asset instead of a liability. It's not being in a rush. It's understanding that the growth 114 00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:34.320 that comes as entrepreneurs doesn't come from new. It comes from from doing the same. It comes 115 00:08:34.320 --> 00:08:38.160 from volume, right? Which is one of the core tenants that we have at all of our companies is do the 116 00:08:38.160 --> 00:08:43.280 boring work, right? We're willing to consistently confront the hard fact of like, okay, if we're not 117 00:08:43.280 --> 00:08:46.480 growing, then it's our fault. It's not because we need to introduce a new thing. It's because we 118 00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:50.800 need to confront what is not happening. Why aren't we getting more word of mouth? Because fundamentally, 119 00:08:50.800 --> 00:08:54.160 if our thing was so good, then every single person should tell their friends that we shouldn't even 120 00:08:54.160 --> 00:08:58.000 have to market herself, right? Because we should be so good at that. So there's always areas for 121 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:01.360 improvement that we just don't want to confront because it makes our egos feel bad. And then we try and 122 00:09:01.360 --> 00:09:06.560 use our business to satisfy interpersonal needs. It's to try to satisfy our insecurities and the 123 00:09:06.560 --> 00:09:10.720 holes that we have because we want to have more attention. We want to have more status or we want 124 00:09:10.720 --> 00:09:14.000 to have more interpersonal relationships or we want to have novelty in our life and we use our 125 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:17.360 business to try and satisfy our personal needs when in reality, the business is only there to serve 126 00:09:17.360 --> 00:09:22.720 the customer. And so this was one of the biggest lessons and one of the hardest, hardest lessons 127 00:09:22.720 --> 00:09:28.080 that I've had to learn. And to make this to drive this last point home, to make this real for 128 00:09:28.080 --> 00:09:32.080 everybody to show you that this isn't me just saying this, when I started my first five years in 129 00:09:32.080 --> 00:09:37.600 business, I think I had like 11 businesses. And it was only once I chose to commit to one of them 130 00:09:37.600 --> 00:09:40.800 that I saw the disproportionate returns of my life. And it was through sticking with it for a 131 00:09:40.800 --> 00:09:46.640 long period of time, right? Like I had my chain of gyms, right? And then at that after that point, 132 00:09:46.640 --> 00:09:51.520 I was like, I'm going to start an agency. So I started a chiro agency and then I started a dentist 133 00:09:51.520 --> 00:09:56.080 agency and I started, I had another thing I came to remember was I had going on and I had my six gyms 134 00:09:56.080 --> 00:09:58.720 and they were all different types of models and different partnerships. I was spread soothed and 135 00:09:58.720 --> 00:10:02.400 I was all over the place because I kept thinking the false premise, which is one of these things will 136 00:10:02.400 --> 00:10:07.200 take off when the reality of none of them will, any of them could, but none of them will if I have 137 00:10:07.200 --> 00:10:13.600 all of them. And so you have to pick and you have to commit. And the thing is that I think a lot of 138 00:10:13.600 --> 00:10:18.400 things that come with success are not intellectually difficult to comprehend. They're just emotionally 139 00:10:18.400 --> 00:10:22.240 difficult, which is why most people don't do them. Most people understand that you have to, you know, 140 00:10:22.240 --> 00:10:26.080 spend less than you make, right? But no one does it. Most people know that if you want to lose weight, 141 00:10:26.080 --> 00:10:30.720 you got to eat less than you burn, right? But people don't do it. It's simple, not easy. And I think 142 00:10:30.720 --> 00:10:35.840 that a lot of times in business at every level of the game, you have a more and more attractive 143 00:10:35.840 --> 00:10:39.520 opportunity. You have a woman in the red dress who walks by that you have to say no to because that's 144 00:10:39.520 --> 00:10:44.720 what it means to have a strategy. And that's where the compounding returns come from. And that 145 00:10:45.280 --> 00:10:49.600 of doing more of being able to stick your head down and continue through what you said you were 146 00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:53.760 going to do is what creates the growth. And so there's a story that I heard about Henry Ford. 147 00:10:54.640 --> 00:10:59.920 And he was he was walking his his CEO office was here and he walked past marketing every day. 148 00:10:59.920 --> 00:11:04.000 And so he walked every day and walked every day and you'd see this campaign that they were running, 149 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:09.200 right? And after like three or four months, he was like, hey, John, he's like, dude, 150 00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:14.080 whenever you stop running this ad, he's like, I'm so sick of it. And the CMO smiled and looked at him 151 00:11:14.080 --> 00:11:18.560 and was like, we honestly haven't even started running yet. And so we get sick of these things in our 152 00:11:18.560 --> 00:11:22.400 business that has nothing to do with the marketplace. It's only because of our own internal needs. And so 153 00:11:22.400 --> 00:11:26.560 we sabotage things inside of our own business because we want to satisfy things inside of us that 154 00:11:26.560 --> 00:11:31.200 have nothing to do with business. And so I think what happens is that's why I say like it's skills, 155 00:11:31.200 --> 00:11:34.400 it's beliefs, and it's character traits. And so a lot of times I think to get to the next level we 156 00:11:34.400 --> 00:11:38.720 have to look at ourselves and think, you know, for me, you know, which one of these things do I lack? 157 00:11:38.720 --> 00:11:42.880 Is it a belief about the world that I that is incorrect? Is it a trait that I have not developed it? 158 00:11:42.880 --> 00:11:47.920 Or is it a skill that I lack? And so I think a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck because what they do is 159 00:11:47.920 --> 00:11:51.520 they start doing too many things and they get spread too thing because they like to recreate chaos 160 00:11:51.520 --> 00:11:55.520 in their lives because whatever traumatic childhood story they tell themselves about, you know, how they 161 00:11:55.520 --> 00:11:58.560 had chaos in their early life. They try and recreate it in their business because that's where they 162 00:11:58.560 --> 00:12:02.960 feel comfortable subconsciously. And you have to unlearn those patterns in order to be able to consistently 163 00:12:02.960 --> 00:12:06.240 grow because honestly, the businesses that we have are fairly boring. I'll be honest with you. They're 164 00:12:06.240 --> 00:12:09.600 not, they're like, they're not like crazy exciting all the time. You know, we do the same things. We 165 00:12:09.600 --> 00:12:14.160 we market, we sell, we provide value, we get referrals, and we try and do as much as that as we can 166 00:12:15.040 --> 00:12:19.200 over and over again, but that gets boring. And that's why do the boring work is one of the core 167 00:12:19.200 --> 00:12:22.640 tenders that I have and it's one of the hardest learned lessons that I've learned in my business 168 00:12:22.640 --> 00:12:28.320 career because you have to say no at every level. And so my goal for this channel, Mousy Nation, 169 00:12:28.320 --> 00:12:32.720 is that you can hopefully learn from the many failures that I've had so that you don't have to 170 00:12:32.720 --> 00:12:36.480 experience them for yourself. That is my hope. And if you enjoyed this and got value from this, 171 00:12:36.480 --> 00:12:39.920 hit the subscribe button. Watch one of the other videos that we've got going on. I try and share 172 00:12:39.920 --> 00:12:44.640 the stuff top of mind that that's most relevant right now. And from the questions and the DMs in 173 00:12:44.640 --> 00:12:48.400 the comments, I appreciate all those. I read them so that can make stuff that's more relevant for 174 00:12:48.400 --> 00:12:58.160 what you guys want. So lots of love keeping amazing and see you next bit. Bye!