7 Millionaires Asked Me For Business Advice

Summary

• I've learned that focusing on a specific niche can help dominate a market, e.g., neuropathy clinics. With 160 clinics out of a potential 2,000, there's room for growth to possibly 300 or even 500.
• When dealing in niches, offering rollups where customers can see higher collective sales values can turn small individual sales into substantial collective exits, like a $100 to $200 million deal if executed well.
• For service-based businesses switching to licensing models, it's key to understand if your customer base is ready to execute on their own or if they still need the done-for-you model.
• In businesses without recurring revenue, create value through reoccurring seasonal sales and maintenance check-ups, which can turn one-time product sales into regular income opportunities.
• For real estate flipping operations, consider expanding into new geographic markets rather than changing business models, if the primary constraint is the market's size. Marketing can also significantly boost sales without changing the business.
• Achieve reliable and valuable business growth by tightening onboarding processes, ensuring frequent and personalized communication with clients, and hiring specialized talent where necessary.
• For SaaS companies, focus on reducing churn by understanding and retaining the right customers who find lasting value in your product. This might involve adjusting marketing to target those high-retention customers and improving the onboarding experience.
• Build a brand identity rather than just selling products; this can redefine the business's value and market potential. An endorsed brand can significantly surpass the raw sales figures of generic or white-labeled products.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest focusing on a specific niche to dominate a market segment. For example, if you're in a service-based business, target a particular audience like neuropathy clinics. This approach allows you to streamline your efforts and resources, making it easier to become the go-to provider in that niche. Once you have a stronghold, consider expanding gradually but maintain a focused approach to keep the quality of service high.

A good way of generating recurring revenue, especially if your business sells products or services with no natural recurrence, is to create seasonal products or maintenance check-ups. This approach can turn a one-time sale into multiple sales throughout the year. For instance, if you're in the holiday lighting business, offer updates or additional decorations for different seasons or events. This keeps your customers engaged and provides regular income.

If you're a service-based business considering transitioning to a licensing model, first evaluate your customer base to see if they are ready to execute the services independently. Customers who still need a done-for-you model might struggle with a licensing model.

To scale a real estate flipping operation, focus on geographic expansion into new markets rather than altering the core business model. Use marketing to extend your reach within these new markets.

Achieve reliable growth by refining your customer onboarding process, ensuring frequent and personalized communication with clients, and hiring specialized talent where necessary. These strategies will improve customer satisfaction and retention.

For SaaS businesses, prioritize reducing churn by understanding the needs of your best customers and adjusting your marketing strategy to attract similar clients. Improving the onboarding experience will also help in retaining these customers.

Lastly, building a strong brand identity rather than just selling products can significantly enhance your business’s value. A well-positioned brand can redefine market potential and drive higher sales.

Implementing these steps can streamline your efforts, optimize resources, and drive growth effectively.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi> #### "Don't get stuck on the little things. Big wins come from big plays."

– Alex Hormozi

"The ultimate version of the business serves more people who are worth more money."

– Alex Hormozi

"Price is only an issue in the absence of value."

– Alex Hormozi

"You can't get rich from saying no to things that aren't money."

– Alex Hormozi

"Most people don't have a business problem, they have a skill problem."

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

everybody in this room is making between $1 million per year and $12 million per year and we just talked for the last 60 Minutes on how to scale their business enjoy all right so you got neuropathy um you're doing 5 million year what's the model uh done for you scheduling okay Le okay is it local neuropathy stuff yeah so diabetic dinners and all that jazz dinners and yeah familiar with the model okay um so then what's the what's the what's the big play uh our we're we're niched pretty well like I think we're probably the biggest in our Niche um it's a smaller group meaning like there's maybe 2,000 doctors that do neuropathy specifically um so and we have 160 of them so it's not we're still there's still huge potential for us to I think we get 300 or 500 or th000 maybe I don't know what's the Ang go for you um I'm I'm just cash okay yeah yeah no I I asked because it's like is it to build it to sell it is it to have yeah I mean I think selling would be cool it has to it have to go to different verticals I mean I'm like I'm way too risky on the checklist oh not necessarily I mean cuz the thing is is like the the ultimate version of the model that you have is like you've got 160 out of like 2,000 neuropathy clinics right so you've got like pretty decent you know you got whatever that is 8% um of that like pseudo of like niche of a niche of a in Market but those guys make how much these these guys make a year like um uh between a million and 5 million right and so this is where this gets like way more interesting in my opinion so it's like you've got 320 million year I'm just using an average right per year that you're driving in revenue and it's like man I'm making five I'm like this sucks right of that you're like how can I get more of that um and so the thing is is like I think the the ultimate version for like the the quote info and agency space that I know those are different things but fundamentally they serve Niche Niche avatars that are B2B um the ultimate version of those businesses is rollups of the the customers you serve because if you think about what like a rollup does I don't how familiar you are with it but like you get everyone on the same marketing you get everyone on the same price points you get everyone on the same packages you get basically you consolidate what everyone's operations are and that's what the majority of super Niche agencies and kind of in info Consulting whatever you want to call it do with businesses so they do all the heavy work of integration for what a rollup would do and then they just say like okay I'll stop there I just won't like actually push it over the edge and monetize the whole thing um and so like most of the Physicians that I know hate being Physicians they do it purely to make money and want to be out of it as soon as possible and so like selling them on the idea that like okay your practice does you whatever 2 and a half million a year of Topline and whatever 1 million in profit uh that's awesome and then you have your you know taxes that you're taking home 600k year after that like that's great but what if and on your own this thing could maybe sell for I don't know 3 million bucks maybe like maybe if you're really really you know we're being really generous but if you were part of a group of Physicians that were a neuropathy you know thing Nationwide uh we could probably sell for like your thing could probably sell for 10 million and so all I'm asking for is a you know 20 to 30% slice of that but times 160 and so obviously of the 160 you wouldn't do with all of them I mean if you did that would be a monster deal but like if you could get like 10 or 20 of them to roll together because they all probably do have enough like enough profit together to be meaningful so it's like if you get the roll up to be like1 to $20 million in terms of profit that would be a meaningful exit that would be probably like a 100 to $200 million exit and you have 20 to 30% of that but then after that point you're now the guy who did that and so then your whole reputation changes your Dynamic changes around pricing you're a long-term stick all of that kind of stuff changes because it's like oh I'm the guy that can get you to hear and that's also the like get rich know if you don't have to do this again which is a much more compelling offer can I ask you a side question you guys uh when you switch to licensing so I remember I know o OG flying around and then more less OG they were flying around for you and then more recent them doing it for for themselves right and I gave them the ads that we test yeah right so the the transition for you from doing it for them to doing it to then doing it themselves and you being a coach does that I would never use that word but yeah yeah does that work do you think that that looking back would you would you have done it that exact same way would you have switched to the licensing model and like and is that what you're calling licensing joke I mean because like we had ads that we would test every month and then we would just let everybody else use them and tons of people tried to use them that weren't are because they would copy the gyms that we had ads and they'd like I'd have ads gyms using my face to run ads for their gym it happened all the time so um would I do the model we had again yes the reason that we didn't do done for you was two things one is or like the reason do it yourself for your avatar doesn't work is that they make too much money yeah a gym owner the value of learning the skill exceeds their current skill it makes more sense for somebody who makes $35,000 a year to learn how to Market and sell than somebody who makes a million dollar here to learn how to Market and sell they've already leveled out of that in terms of like because they can pay somebody less than they make to do this for them whereas the gym owner can't it makes sense for them to learn that skill and then from the reason I didn't do a rollup is because group based service uh there's zero there's zero market for it no one wants to buy them if I had been in a market where people were buying for like for sure I would be I would that would have been the model I would do beautiful yeah out of respect for I'm going to rock and roll does that make sense sweet yeah so we do permanent holiday lighting that's R off a Smartphone um on homes and businesses um my question I guess would be or I guess our constraints we have no Revenue retention um and so we've dabbled with you know maybe doing like a a maintenance plan you know where we upsell people things like that um or you know having paid subscriptions in our app but so who's your customer most of the time uh it's kind of a it's a healthy split between like elderly and then like people want to keep up with the Jes okay and so the light so tell me more about like tell me more a little bit more of the product is have a better understanding of it yeah so basically um we install an aluminum track system into their existing soft and it's got LEDs and so you can do any holiday game day accent lighting it's all right that is that like the Philips hu type type deal I don't want to like oversimplify what you're saying I just want to make sure I understand it it's kind of like that it's much bigger cooler what's the average ticket uh about 5,000 okay how do you get customers um through Facebook and I guess meta ads but ads you didn't paid ads in your local yeah okay got it how many locations just one okay one location what are margins um we're about 60% depends on the season um so you make you make a million bucks you keep 600 no well we checked about 51 okay great you're doing half awesome what's CAC um 300 300 bucks for 5,000 LTV that's great okay so um so a couple things so if you want to get Revenue retention um you want to measure how long you've been in business so I've been with the company for a year okay about two years first year was just you know vetting products out and stuff got it but do you own it yeah okay got it okay you said been with the company so I was like I don't know what that means I've been with the acquisition. comom as well um um okay so uh so again we're thinking about this from a revenue retention perspective um one is is there so you install this thing for the lighting um what else do those people want like is there anything else you can add on top of it because like you have to Keeping Up With the Jones I'm sure that during certain Seasons they want to do other razzled Dazzle things and so like you can you can assemble and then disassemble things multiple times a year uh for seasons for Super Bowls for things like that I don't know if that's too different from the type of lighting that you currently do but like it's not too different now I get people asking all the time if we'll do their trees or if we'll do you know other stuff that's not permanent yeah so I would see the impermanent lighting as like you run two to three seasonal campaigns a year so I'll bet you Easter would be one if you're in Utah I'm sure that'll be big Christmas will obviously be big in Utah um and then you know pick your third date maybe maybe Halloween's not as big in Utah um I don't know I'm just I'm just messing around um but even if you had you know one or two cracks at the Apple um cracks at the Apple whatever bites of the Apple uh every year on top of that that keeps you top of mind and then like when you go there you're like hey we also do it like we'll do standard double check is everything working okay with the lights it gives you UPS opportunities but you still like generate other revenue and then when they want to replace it's like hey did I tell you about the new lights cuz these ones are old now the new ones are oh my God let me tell you let me show this thing on my phone I did for your neighbor Susan down the road hers looks sick didn't know if you're interested in that um so it's like those become UPS opportunities and instead of saying like it's um recurring it becomes reoccurring so it's slightly different so like Coca-Cola has no recurring basically no recurring members uh member like memberships but we buy Coca-Cola products all the time so we have reoccurring it's reliable Revenue it's just not on a membership or a subscription and so basically all you'd have to demonstrate to make the the the company a lot more valuable is Simply Having the data to track that we sell a customer for lights and we sell one out of two another thing every year whether that's an upgrade a a maintenance fix or it's lights that we do for Seasons like if we can just show that half the people continue to buy something from US every year that's still makes it a very valuable business does that make sense that would be it so my name is Cameron uh we do Residential real estate flipping in the state of Missouri uh we did 15 million Revenue last year for 3.7 um gross before overhead so 2.5 after you take into account our team 15 meaning like the how much the houses were when you sold them and then the three we sold $15 million yeah it was like house sale price the profit on each project was 3.7 which is it helps us tell how well we're doing on the projects and then you take out our team and you end up with 2.5 like evida I guess sure um I was trying to think of the constraint all all week you know uh zero Revenue retention got highlighted in the in the thing but for us I think it's going to be that I would we've kind of captured the market we can capture which for what we do is a driving radius like we've I would say dominated Within 4 hours of where we're at which is like you drive 4 hours to a house to evaluate it and 4 hours back your day is gone um so we're kind of at a push or pivot moment of like do we we do no advertising it's 95% foreclosures and then like a few word of mouth so do we pivot would you say to the rest of Missouri like almost franchise out like get four little like find other big cities and and try to get the rest of Missouri there's probably like four quadrants or would you go go into marketing cuz I know I mean doing 95% foreclosures it's like we don't control our income of properties whatsoever and we kind of have like that that one funnel and like if we're clo like if the economy gets good then you have no deal flow kind of exactly and constant through Co foreclosing was literally illegal in Missouri and we made 2.7 that year so somehow we made it happen like you said it's just a lot freaking harder but there's ways um so I don't know if it's a push or a pivot I would say that's our main con there's things we can improve on but that's like the one that keeps us up at night right now let me just say what's the goal we have a mission statement and it's to uh make sure that all houses within our reach are at their highest and best value because we don't see a house falling off the market as a good thing that just makes other real estate more expensive um I I know the goal is not necessarily to ever sell so it would probably be to expand I guess okay so so you know path one is you just go to another city and I wouldn't necessarily call it franchising you just expand it's just like opening another lighting thing like that's you just that's just the normal way of things like if you just get better and better at it you open another location um I see that as another another set of skills for you which I think will be valuable um and you could and this time like if it's basically there's no point I mean you could go in Missouri but you could also do any other Market that you'd want because if you're if you're going past 4 hours of driving now you're in like flying range in which case pick the right City you know like pick whatever City you want to go to um you'll also go into a city that's going to probably have competitors you know what I mean which I see is a good thing um because it means like the more competitors there are the more of a market there is um as long as you're you know number one then more for you um and so that's that's high I that's at least my perceptive perception like whenever people like oh there's a ton of competition in my market I'm like that's awesome it means there's tons of buyers um and so just side note there but um cuz the alternative of this is like literally changing the entirety of your business exactly which I I would I would like you're doing well with it how long you been doing this uh I've been doing it for eight years yeah dude you've already paid down like all the ignorance Deb so like you're at this point you're like you're like here on your curve like you're like right here and so it's like well don't don't jump back down to like here again right don't go there um like there's an ultimate version of this and so what's the who's the biggest uh wholesaler in the nation the biggest Wholesale in the nation uh is it We Buy Ugly Houses probably I mean there's a lot of me okay so what do they do that you don't do um a lot of advertising a ton of advertising pay pay for click uh mailers is huge Billboards we do none of that so I'll bet that there's still way more deals even probably even Within your current market I think so and so I would probably if I were you so either either you have to replicate what you're currently doing in a new market but you have some of the risks that you've already brought up which is like you're all inbound based on foreclosures you have some of these other things you're not like the income is not necessarily reliable um I would definitely learn the advertising stuff for your own business cuz like whenever there's an ultimate version of the business that I'm currently in it's like they already did it and so now all I have to do is do it better than them and whoever bu that business is already gone probably and so it's just a bunch of Suits who don't know how this business works and so it's just right for us to just murder them I'm just being I'm just being super honest like this is how I see it um and so I think I would just like go 100% try and pants them um and do PBC like and like also do some of the stuff they're probably not doing well they probably aren't doing social well they probably aren't running like not as well as they could obviously their Billboards I know the Billboards that they run um and but I'll bet you they've got great sales training and I'll bet you've got they've got Great Floors of people and kind of infrastructure in place and so I would look at that I would look at their overarching model as well because I'll bet you they get a piece on the back end as well like because they probably vertically integrated as much as they possibly could um within the business that that they actually make more on every deal than you do so they can spend more on every deal like they can pay more like so they have they have ways to beat other people in all these different markets cuz they're National right exactly and so step one would be start advertising more because then they'll just immediately make more within your current market like that would just that might double your business if you just did that um and then number two is I would analyze the living hell out of them like that's what I would do and then think about like okay this is this is the future version of my business one can I replicate it two is there anything I can do to make it better 100% I definitely wouldn't change my business for sure I think that I think your advice is dead on it's just what I'm afraid to do cuz I don't know how to do it it's like I'll just go do in different cities but I guess I got to learn new things darn right yeah maybe we can help um first of all sorry my English is not my first language try my what uh so I run a software company called sub magic and basically what we do is we have creators make more captivating shortarm content uh through Ai and so the issue we are solving is that everybody wants to create sh content today thanks to people like you um and they just struggle with creating niceform content that Captivate the attention of people and um so we decided to create a tool that help us solve this issue in three clicks for everybody so we grew in the last 12 months from 0 to 5 million American Revenue we plan to reach 20 million by year and um we believe that in the world there is two people that help us drive all the traffic that we have it's you and people like IMI because you are most people who just push people to create content you tell to tell to every people like you should create content to drive traffic to your business and so they com to us and say I want to do the same that Alex and so we help them create the captions the bws the zoom everything into C and so today um in my goal to reach 20 million in anual Revenue next year um we identifi that there is a something for a lot of our users that comes from school uh so they have a commune in school uh and they want to drive members in their community so they create content to drive members but they are using some magic for create nice content to drive traffic to school community and so yeah my question was like what should I do with I mean in my mind like create a partnership with people like you would be the nicest and the most smart deal I can do ever to my business so yeah what's the constraint what do you mean by the constraint so you said you're going from 5 to 20 so why bought sorry so you said you're at 5 million and you're going to hit 20 next year yeah so how are you getting customers right now that's weird so how are you getting customers right now we have four different channel uh 50% of our Revenue coming from World of M all right uh then 20% from aat we have 7 aat today that share the world share the message of the world and the rest is mainly SEO in creation what's the price uh so it's between 20 bucks a month to 150 bucks a month and our aage basket is 140 bucks a month 40 BS per user got it got it what are margins uh we do 45% of so you're still making money great that's awesome super good okay um so I so this is me looking out for you why bother like why bother like let me partner with Alex like why bother when you could just go from 5 to 20 next year anyways uh because we believe we can go faster to this goal with people like you and we can reach much more higher than 20 minut we think we can be become like the all in one platform for short F content creation from IDs to editing to publishing your content and I think there is a place to take in this world where everybody's wants to be content today and there is no software to do that got it so walk me through the pro this is just me understanding the product so let's say so we've got this right so let's just use this as a case study so we record this say it's 60 Minutes um now what happens so I've got this raw footage now what so now you need to take the you need to take the instruct and create some short from content of this content right so if you are basic in Edition you're going to see an editor and ask him like Hey this is M footage can you please take some moments that are cool in the videos and doing that it will take you like probably 40 bucks per short from content spends like hours on it and you really don't get the result that you like so otherwise you use the software you put your footage and selection exactly like which part you can use it super easily you create the caption on it in two clicks you create the animation you need like after effects and then you publish your content it's it's just just makes sense for every people want speak on and so how does it identify where the moments are and how to like structure those moments this is me I just this is me seeking for curiosity what do you mean by moments moments so like we have 60 Minutes how does it know this is interesting this is valuable and then like there's a hook so I'm going to I'm going to like he said the hook at the end let's put that at the beginning that's a very good question uh so everything is based on TR strips so we analyze what you say things to Ai and we understand that you are talking about giving business adice oh that's cool okay who who talk about food and everything is based on a and we understand like we try to create sh basic finding the B the answer and we build that and then if it's not what you're looking for you can just remove it and change it to find the Bas and we rate that out of 100 to see like which shelf F should be the best part so basically we do the work if need to so it's like there's three Clips in here this one will do the best based on our guess this is the second best is the third best exactly okay super interesting yeah I mean I think it makes sense that if you're if you're trying to scale then like at this point I mean I'm guessing that if you've grown to this this level based on Word of Mouth and Affiliates like you have growth channels that are established and people are I'm guessing happy with the product what's churn churn is pretty high okay churn is all weakness puns we have churn 15% a month yeah so it's Prett high but it's Lal because we target to M Market everybody needs to create content this room content and they just start and then it's difficult to keep on going everybody is not like like somebody and sure difficult you know so they need to yeah they still have to make it before they like they still have to do the 60 Minute recording which they don't do right I'm just I'm I'm agreeing with you yeah I think part of the of the business we target like a massive Market all over the world we people from other 60 countries we do that in 60 languages so it's a mass um CH is part of the game we just need to understand who our ICB our ICB is coaches people who use schools marketing agency owner and those people are not Shing because they have a Rel they make money they make money is the business that's why you can go chuny yeah interesting also the thing is is other markets there's like Network marketers which is a massive space there's Realtors which is a huge space there's local business owners like there's a lot of other yeah Fitness coach all the people who are good in selling something in video they make great CH yeah really interesting um I'm going to move on to the next person but um yeah I mean fundamentally I think you're I think you're doing the right stuff like I don't like I always like to see if I can reduce turn increase activation like we're doing stuff like that at school every day even though we have phenomenal metrics we still want to do better and sometimes like a handful of tweaks even C and the funnel like lots of things that gets into the Tactical level but I think strategy wise you're dead on to be honest with you I mean it's a good Market you obviously have a good product I mean if it's grown to that point from Word of Mouth 50% then like you have a good product um you're growing more than your turn is so and yes I agree with you that in a consumer B like Spotify has high turn Shopify has high turn when you're in the consumer business which you are um so I mean that that that that tracks and last question what do you think about like helping School users getting more capting videos like just because you teach them how to content right um I think all of my content teaches them how how to make content more than school does yeah yeah I mean you see what I mean uhhuh no I understand yeah I mean I I I tell everybody to use all the different methods so it's like use Outreach like go Reach Out DM do cold call cold email cold whatever like door knock that's oneon-one then you've got one to many inbound which is content then you've got making ads you've got Affiliates which is what you use there's referrals like I like people to use or at least understand at least one or two different ways of getting customers um but I think you've got good stuff man very interesting what's up Alex um so I'm Joel I have a CPA firm uh based out of Baker School California but during Co we went virtual so now we serve all 50 states um I have a lot of constraints uh but I think you know my questions would be you know how do you prioritize what's revenue revenue is last year was 2.5 this year's probably going to be about three awesome uh margins last year 900,000 this year net was was probably going to be about 1 point one um awesome I don't know that's good but I mean you're running 30% margins on a on a I mean yeah expensive labor um so I mean I guess my question is but it's a super reliable business it's a valuable business like accounting firms get rolled up left and right there's tons of buyer activity there like it's very people don't turn out of their accountants I mean it's like it's it's very sticky there's High LTV the issue with accounting is most of the times um there's no one in there who knows how to Market and sell that's usually the issue with accounting accounting businesses it's like all word of mouth and no one knows how to like Market yeah and then the other issue is is getting good accountants because there's so much Demand right for decent accountants and so but like the accounting firms that I know of like all have like anybody who comes here with accounting firm almost always makes money they're all doing well um so there's there's big demand yeah for sure so what's the issue um I guess one would be operations um just making sure our clients are satisfied like we have a short period of time to do all of our work mostly during tax season right so we get clients have certain expectations get your tax returns down and we at capacity but then you know obviously they don't want to pay a premium sometimes so I think we need to improve our sales process to make sure that we can charge premium to give them that value that they're expecting so do you mostly have one time a year customers or no it's usually we charge quarterly okay uh for quity tax planning uhhuh is it more businesses or more individuals businesses oh great okay well that's I mean even better yeah so yeah our I mean our minimum fee right now is 1950 a quarter okay uh what's your annual stick annual stick what do you mean by that uh what's your Revenue turn annually it's not as good as I liked it to be I probably say we keep maybe 70% okay you probably want yeah you want to get over 80 I mean for for accounting firms like you probably can do a little better yeah so I think it has to do with just also making sure the clients see the value because after we give them like certain Tax Strategies they're kind of like oh I kind of learned this now I can find a cheaper accountant sometimes so even though there is that stickiness you know they especially some business owners will be like oh well I kind of s the value what you guys did last I I I'm not sure I buy that I think what someone says on the exit versus why they actually cancel aren't necessarily the same thing um cuz like I already got the value is like literally what everyone says when they want to leave anything and it's just cuz like they just want to leave um because I mean I what you want is I mean fundamentally from an accountant you want somebody who will get you to pay as few tax as humanly possible and keep you out of jail and that's pretty much that's pretty much the that's the task yeah and um make it as little work for you as humanly possible for that to occur right and so I mean just me having been a consumer of many different accounting firms and accountants and employees who are you know who did that stuff for us um I don't I don't buy the like we taught them the two or three tricks yeah um also I bet you a bunch of your business owners aren't even like close to it some of them are bigger and like aren't they're just like yeah just pay the bill I don't I don't really care just make sure it's right so I would bet that you probably have bad onboarding okay so basically the expect the basically the Delta between what they're sold and then what their experience is in the first handful of days and weeks going into it and then the communication Cadence between touch bases they probably see limited value there and so I think um I would give you the same kind of like if I were to like buy 100% of your business tomorrow I would audit the sales process to handoff like I would bet you there's a massive amount of opportunity there in terms of like how can we take more notes on every customer because the I get pissed off if I feel like I'm talking to somebody they don't know much about my business and I'm paying them $8,000 you to rub my taxes right immediately I'd be like oh yeah [ __ ] you like I know you can't be looking at like I can just do back of napkin brain math of like if you barely know who I am you definitely don't know how to save me money on my taxes right I we do have an onboarding process but there might be a disconnect between the sales well we already know there's a disconnect cuz you said there was so this is me this is me trying to help so I would go really deep on the onboarding process which is like how can I really tighten this up both terms of the personalization of the communication and how can I speed up the number of times you communicate with them because you want frequent communication as long as like it's pushed so it's not me asking for [ __ ] you know because then I [ __ ] hate you right like if you ask me for St but if it's like hey uh just letting you know we ran this today this thing is moving forward everything's good nothing for you just keep you in the loop and then two days later hey we also ran this thing um XYZ is done and it's moving forward to the next step I'd be like oh [ __ ] they're doing stuff and so like I tell this to every but no one does it and so this is me telling you and hopefully you will do it but like if you do a hundred things you want to let them know every time you're doing one of those things on their behalf and they're like dude these guys are working for me all the time like this guy works his ass off and then someone else is like well they're doing it for 8,000 I'll do it for six and they're you're like oh no these guys work their asses off for me like I'm sure I'm safe like no one actually knows it's kind of like when the guy comes to your your house like especially the nicer the neighborhood you live in you know this like he's like think I could do the like Li in for 10 grand I'm like dude you think I got this house because I let people rip me off I was like give me the r price and then it's like all right I can do it for four and you're like great you know or whatever and so the thing is is like no one really knows they just they just gut call on the fact that like my communication with this company has been crappy the expectations are poor and so if this is my external experience I'll bet you they're not crossing their tees and dotting their eyes on my taxes mhm that would be my guess right and so I think if you get all of the other stuff tight they just guess that your internal stuff's as tight which I hope it is um and I'll bet you that'll keep the stick honestly and of course accountants don't know how to deal with customers so I bet you probably need to train them again on that communication Cadence so it's basically way more personalized way more frequent uh communication and then probably very tight training on how to have touchpoint calls with the customers right or clients whatever for sure that would be like the number one thing I would do I wouldn't even do anything else I mean do you think it's scalable too cuz I mean my biggest yes accounting firms are scalable ey KPMG like yes they're scalable price yeah PWC and what do you think those are publicly trading accounting firms yes they're scalable what do you think about like one of the thing you mentioned I think yes yesterday was like you know the size of the brain the biggest brain is as big as you know so I I'm starting to now hire people that are smarter than me in other areas like uh but when it comes to accounting I'm still like the smartest person in the room yeah there's smarter accountants I don't say there's a slight I just say like look at the guys I keep like they're some smart dudes yeah I mean I kind of want to hire like cuz I'm more of a CEO than I am a tax nerd yeah so I rather hire like yeah go get a tax nerd yeah yeah you go recruit somebody from one of those companies who's like I need somebody who worked at Enron who wasn't a bad guy you know what I mean and figure out like who can do like the real the crazy stuff who knows the tax like who reads tax law for fun yeah like that's who you need cuz there are dudes who do who are like oh curled up on I like I know a buddy of mine who literally goes to the pool with the tax law his kids are in the pool and he's reading it and I'm like what is wrong with you he's like I just love this stuff and I was like I'm glad someone does you know like and he's like look at this hole he's like oh I'm going to crush this one and he's like he's like this is legal he's like he just like loves it's like for him is like treasure hunting so like you need somebody who's like that and if that's not you then you should have somebody who is that way yeah for sure so yes I agree and I think you should do that okay I say step one though fix all the outside stuff step two go get that guy okay cuz that stuff will make you more money today with what you already have then do the other thing right so newer SAS company we help inbound sales teams improve their or eliminate no shows improve their sales often self-efficiency um I really think the most helpful thing for me would be just you running through uh really the major learning lessons you had from Allen in terms of red plag my my background is high tiet education and for the state so I think I'm kind of coming into it you know do you have his technical co-founder I okay how good is he I spent 18 months fting so okay he's pretty good well that could mean that it just took you really long to find somebody who's bad so like um two years from now you're like I should have know yeah um so it really comes down to like has this person built a sofware company before yeah Okay cool so fundamentally like the entire game's different than the high ticket game right like it's all about Revenue retention it's all about word of mouth it's it's a product business there's actually a podcast I just made I don't even know when it's coming out about this but like what business are you really in and so like when I got into Allen I thought I was in the marketing and sales business because that was the business that I came from but you're actually in the product business so it has to be it has to be basically like taking to its natural extreme if people don't stick with it it doesn't matter so basically marketing and doing everything else like it's a right and so like unless that's right nothing else matters basically and so Marketing sales in the front end literally only serves the purpose of making the product better until there's a point where it has what I would consider passive growth where it grows on its own and then you gas the living hell out of it and then that's what makes gazillion dollar companies right like the reason I I I I bought you know school um was because the passive metrics were awesome and it took 5 years to get all of the tiny little things right so that it would grow on its own with zero they literally they had zero human being who worked in marketing like not one did you a co-owner um and so yeah Sam's still Sam's still an owner as well um and there's obviously employees that have equity and whatnot um but point being I saw that it was growing on its own and that once people get to a certain point they never leave and that's what you want to have with the business and so so the either you go like if you want low turn you either have to go up market and find the people who don't turn out or you have to help create the people who don't turn so like the Shopify and the Spotify a lot of IFI here um there's going to be there's cohort churn which you're probably familiar with if you're co-founders in this so like you're going to have periods of time where it's like okay the first 6 months we turn out [ __ ] 80% of our customers but the 20% after that point our retention curve is flat and so you just have to figure out once you get to that data cohort you're like okay what do these people look like and then you readjust the messaging readjust uh the marketing so you can get more and more of those people so you get a bigger and bigger slice of them and Fally that Loop is what will you more or less focus on um and then I think about it from when I'm trying to reverse engineer the customer Avatar it's like you have psychographics like what do they believe you have demographics what do they look like where are they from you have Geographics sry where where are they um and then you have kind of activities which is like what did they do so if I'm trying to reverse engineer what the people who spend the most money with me look like I look through those those lenses who are they where are they from what do they believe what do they do and then I try and say in my ads hey I'm looking for people who believe these things I look in the places that they're at um and then once they're in I try and get them to do the same things that the people who were successful who look like them who talk like them who believe like them did in order to be successful so like in the beginning you just do a ton of marketing to get Traction in the door and that's literally just so you can like see if people like it see where they're turning out see get basically you just want feedback and then once you find what people are liking what they're successful with obviously iterate from a product perspective on the road map to do more of the stuff that's core in terms of value but then the marketing side it Loops back and then that's what informs who you're picking on the front end who you're marketing to right so you being much more specific man totally call the people that St yes yes and the hard part is that your sales team won't want to do it and you will not want to say no to money yeah but I I understand a compan respect for the makes it cool but that's I mean fundamentally like if you look at Vista um I I became friendly acquaintances with their their head of pricing and packaging and he was just like if you do you know who vist is so they're out of aost in100 billion do private Equity they're they'd be like the fifth biggest company like whatever they're massive um and they only they're private equ they and they buy software companies and they triple them in in in 3 years which is their goal and they flip them and so um the founder I can't remember his name now I feel bad um is uh anyways Rich dude I'll just put that way um point being I was talking to the head of packaging and he said you want to know our whole secret and I was like what man he's like we just know our our acquired companies customers better than they do I was like what do you mean he's like so we go into the data room and we look at all the customers they have and we look at what channels they came from we look at who they are how they act all that stuff he's like then we turn off all the marketing that's not those customers and we crank the living hell out of the stuff that is that and we do nothing else and the company triples obviously it's more than that but fundamentally like big picture strategy that's what they do we get more of the people who spend the most money but people just aren't disciplined and that's why people just stay poor because then they they try and serve too many people too many different avatars they can't say no to money today so they don't get the big money tomorrow cool appreciate thank you hi I'm AR Alex uh DTC fion brand Commerce Indonesia from Indonesia doing $10 million a year add that $3 million been doing this N9 years uh thanks for making it out thank you how do I know when to expand new product line what are you selling now what do you sell now t-shirt shirt pants Jeans jacket but mostly man's were is it white is it white label or a brand say it again is it your brand or is it your brand manufactur I I'm not manufacturer I sub con to the other Factory in Indonesia and then I only own the office and the warehouse is it custom do you design it or you just slap your leg you design it knock off no that's fine I mean like hey I'm I'm I'm not I don't do competition's competition um as long as you're not hacking their databases or anything like that's I mean that's the nature of the business I understand it um okay so the question that you have is how do how do you scale it or basically how do you add more want to expand new product line let's say Woman's let's say sports oil because I'm doing casual only let's say formal um I don't think at 10 million you need to like like you could do so much more even within that within that that demographic like if you're just mostly men's wear like there's tons of massive men's Weare compan compes can I add to that yeah add yeah I'm thinking about that also because I haven't achieved 200 or 300 million yet but isn't it isn't it will make my brand to men who are l in life so I'm not building enough Foundation to capture the woman's letter in$ 300 $500 million month 500 million a month that would be a lot um it's a tough call man I'll be honest with you because like on one level I mean if you're like I want to build the next Nike then yeah you're going to have to sell to everybody but even Nike doesn't sell suits right just like like there's so like there's so many people who buy so much clothing um and I mean I think so right now I think you're a little bit of of like a brand identity spot like you obviously know how to convert I'm guessing are you running ads yeah right so you know like you know you know that game and you run really good margins I'm sure on the on the products based on and and you can you know how to run run ads at scale and so what I think right now is you have to figure out who who you want to become as a brand so if you like Men's Wear then like you can I think you can build a massive men's were company just being real I mean just being really transparent with you like you can U build a massive men's were company also like Lou Lemon doesn't do I guess they have like pants that are nice but like they're all sports wear so like I mean L's a terrible example now because they're just gone to crap but like um like if you look at these I like like I just as a framework for everybody like I look at what's the biggest version of the business that's currently here like what did they do to get there what does their business model look like and then how many steps between where I'm at and where they are do I need to take and like what lessons or what what skills am I deficient in and then it's like okay well then those skill deficiencies become the opportunity like fundamentally that's it and what their brand looks like and how they monetize like are they vertically integrated or like if I was getting into into the energy drink business I'd be like okay well Red Bull has outsourced literally everything besides marketing so I guess that might be the most important thing for a consumer packaged good that's you know RTD ready to drink and distribution so it's like they have massive brand plays massive distribution you know they have their recipe underlock and key and everything else is is so like basically I would look at the brand like is there a brand that you want to emulate uh basically I'm I'm a what problem is uh am I solving is just a billion dollar exit building consulting firm and then that is a LD magnet to PE buil media and then control the Indonesia okay so my goal just a billion liquid cast okay well let's take so right now we sell clothes so let's a couple I get it I appreciate that so I want to I want to increase the like that you get there so I think like you can make this thing very valuable without doing all of the other stuff that you were talking about so I think like you absolutely can do this and then think okay why can't I get this to $100 million a year selling men's wear like why can't I and I think that way then it's like okay is there a is there a brand person who can endorse this like if you look at the biggest retail Brands they have big endorsers who stand next to the product that increases conversion increases the premium you can charge and so instead of knocking off Zara you just become a brand and I think honestly I think that's the gap for you like you're obviously very good at the Arbitrage of media to to clicks and whatnot but like I think you need to go from that to building a brand and then that's what will make it sellable so this is what I like that's the tldr of our conversation is that's what makes your thing valuable is you need to build a brand