How to go from $0 to MILLIONAIRE [33 min training]

Summary

• My name is Leila Hormozi, co-CEO of acquisition.com, and my expertise lies in guiding businesses to reach between 3 to 10 million in revenue.
• I've noticed many entrepreneurs ask about how to reach a $1 million revenue milestone, so I dedicated time to create a simple framework based on my years of experience before starting acquisition.com.
• Before offering guidance, I reintroduce myself: I've taken home an average of $1.2 million a month before turning 30 and have sold thousands of fitness programs, serviced B2B clients, supplied supplements, and built and sold businesses for eight figures each.
• My journey began in fitness, where personal transformation led me to pursue entrepreneurship, culminating in the success of Gym Launch and later acquisition.com.
• Only three percent of businesses make it to $1 million in revenue. My mission is to provide knowledge and practical steps to increase an entrepreneur's likelihood of crossing that threshold.
• The journey from zero to $1 million involves navigating through the four levels of entrepreneurship: entrepreneur, starter, producer, and master.
• Entrepreneurs often have ideas but lack actionable progress. They need inspiration and action to move past analysis paralysis.
• Starters need to adopt the mindset: If someone else did it, so can I. This stage requires resourcefulness and learning through executing rather than overthinking.
• Producers make inconsistent progress with a flexible infrastructure and must learn to trade money for time, hire help, and let go of the control to scale effectively.
• Masters have predictable sales and solid systems. Their growth is exponential after the $1 million mark, requiring focus and the ability to say no to distractions.
• Entrepreneurs often get stuck due to fear, comfort in a safety net, or lack of support from their environment.
• To level up, one must either find safety in the unknown through mental strategies or take decisive actions (e.g., "burning boats"), invest in mentorship for clarity, let go of perfectionism, and selectively heed advice from only those who have achieved the desired success.
• Reaching mastery and $1 million is about consistency in selling what customers want and focusing intensely on that one product, one channel, and one customer avatar.
• Once at $1 million, the challenge is not to get distracted by new opportunities; maintain focus and avoid over-complicating systems. Strategy is about making choices and often saying no to diversify focus.
• Learning is a compound process; once you've hit $1 million, getting to $10 million becomes simpler. Identify what stage you're in and what needs to be changed or acquired to move to the next level.

Video

How To Take Action

To grow your small business or boost personal growth, let's break down some steps for you:

• Get Inspired and Get Going: You've got ideas; now it's time to make them real. Take small actions every day to move past just thinking about them.
• Learn by Doing: Don't wait until you know everything. If someone else made it, you can too. Start doing stuff, even if you're not sure it's perfect. The key is to try, learn, and improvise.
• Trade Money for Time: As you make some progress, don't try to do everything yourself. Spend a little money to get help, so you can focus on bigger things. Hire someone even for small tasks to begin with.
• Focus, Focus, Focus: If you start doing well, keep doing what works. Don't get distracted by new ideas. Zero in on what your customers love and give them more of that.
• Learn from the Right People: Not everyone's advice is good for you. Listen to folks who've already reached where you want to be. They know the way and their advice is gold.
• Keep It Simple: Once you hit a good flow, don't complicate things. Don't add too many products, don't jump on every new opportunity. Stick to what you do best.

Remember, it's not about fancy tricks; it's about selling what people want, keeping at it, and getting better little by little. Identify where you're at right now and take the next step that makes sense. If you ever feel stuck, ask yourself, "What's the one thing I can do right now that'll help the most?" and then do that. Keep your eye on the prize and keep learning, and you’ll find each step up gets a bit easier.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"The only thing that compounds faster than interest is learning"

– Leila Hormozi

"Strategy is choice. Strategy means saying no to certain kinds of things"

– Leila Hormozi

"Consistency trumps intensity"

– Leila Hormozi

"If you've never done something before, of course you suck"

– Leila Hormozi

"Startups have a 10 chance of success. Ideas never executed on have a zero percent chance"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

what is up welcome to my channel my name is laila hormozy co-seo of acquisition.com which is a portfolio of companies that is about 100 million per year in revenue and my goal with this channel is to get you from wherever you're at in your business between 3 to 10 million in revenue for free that being said video that i have made for you today is actually um i try to really break down because i get this question a lot i get this question leela how do i get to a million dollars in revenue and i talk a lot on this channel about how to get to you know 5 million or 6 million or 10 million i think honestly guys like that's because i don't know that's where i live and that's where i spend most of my time is just helping people who are already at you know between three and six but for a really long time in my career in fact the six years prior to starting acquisition.com all we did was help people get to really that one million revenue mark and so i kind of put my head down and worked a couple weeks on this presentation really outlined like a simple framework for how to get to a million in revenue so uh let me know what you think in the comments i hope this is valuable and useful for you if it's not let me know if it is let me know i would just like feedback so enjoy the video and uh hope that i've earned my whatever 40 45 minutes that this is all right like i said in the introduction today we're going to talk about how to make a million dollars so this is definitely a different kind of piece of content because i usually talk about you know making eight figures or like you know being the ceo etc but a lot of people ask me like how do i make a million dollars and i kind of want to put together like a generic how-to for those people that are asking and so this is gonna be a little bit different than my normal content but i think it's really important so if you're starting out and you're at zero or you're at you know i don't know 10 grand a month 20 30 40 50. whatever if you're not making a million dollars yet this video is for you that being said what i want to share today is really a couple things the four levels of entrepreneurship to get to a million dollars because i can talk about and i have talked about you know levels of entrepreneurship to get to 100 million plus but i haven't talked about how to get to a million and it's really a journey of its own i also want to include in there why most people stay stuck and don't make a million dollars and then how do you level up past this that being said who the heck am i and i'm reintroducing myself to those who don't know who i am because i think that you know hopefully this video uh helps a lot more people than typically watch my channel and i think that it would do you disservice not to explain why i'm qualified to talk about this at all so for the last half decade i've taken home an average of a hundred and a hundred one million and two hundred i don't even know how to say the name uh over a million dollars 1.2 million dollars a month as a 29 year old from portage michigan so i have personally sold over 3 000 fitness programs serviced over 6 200 high ticket b2b customers provided supplements to over 200 000 people in the united states and personally built skilled and sold three businesses one service one sas and one e-commerce four multiple eight figures for each one so i say this not to sound uh like i'm pumping myself up but to motivate you because crazy enough is i started where all of you guys are right now so if you're watching this you haven't made a million dollars i had no [ __ ] experience before i made a million dollars in fact no management experience i had no formal training i didn't barely had taken any courses and somehow i still managed to make a million dollars so if you have zero experience you can still do it too that being said you know it really started with um and many of you can relate to this because there's something in your journey that probably got you started wanting to be an entrepreneur or make a million dollars for me it was my fitness journey so as you can see over here on the side i was a fat and you know basically drinking all the time i got arrested six times you know i just didn't know what i was doing with my life and i felt honestly terrible about myself and it wasn't until you know one day i kind of woke up to realizing that if i kept going down that path i was just going to become this person that i really really really [ __ ] didn't want to be and so it's really driven from a place of insecurity and fear that you know drove me to you know lose weight and really go into my fitness journey stop drinking stop doing drugs stop you know being a [ __ ] ass and turn my life around and it really changed me as as a person entirely so naturally what i want to do is help other people do the same and i see this a lot in people that are you know starting their first business is it kind of is derived from something you did for yourself you know like you've achieved something for yourself you figured out something for yourself and now you want to help other people do it too and so for me that was in fitness and so i actually end up moving from michigan to california i didn't know anybody i took my prius packed it up two days after i graduated college i drove out there and i was like i'm just gonna go apply to uh every gym that i can think of and try to get a job some more and that being said i ended up getting a job at a big box gym called 24 hour fitness in california and then i kind of started dabbling in online training you know i'm doing fitness i'm learning that i'm realizing that it's all sales and marketing and you know the fact that i know how to move your elbow the right way nobody gives a [ __ ] about and so i started dabbling in online training because that was actually really hot back then and then at that point that was really the peak of my fitness career right so i was drinking monster all day i was doing fitness exercises i was doing competitions i was doing races training people all day and i kind of knew that i wanted to do something in fitness but i felt like this is just too much like this is not efficient i'm trading time for money and i wanted to figure out a way to leverage myself and so then i met this stranger on the internet um actually i met him on bumble uh you might know who he is his name is alex romosi he also has a youtube channel that is really great and i met alex and he was basically like uh you know quit everything you're doing and you'll make way more money if we do this gym launch thing together and i was like dude i've got an opportunity to have an online business i have an opportunity to or not to be in a gym and like i don't understand and he was like i swear to god you'll make way more money if we do something together and i was you know 23 at the point at that point and really young and so i was like [ __ ] it you know like worst case scenario i live on my parents couch and like that's not even bad at all like i've done that before it's like high school all over again so we launched essentially a gym turn around business together and that's when we entered the eight [ __ ] stage and this was when we had essentially no money we were living out of extended stays basically what we would do is we would do the marketing and sales for jim and we would fly out to that gym uh so i'd be like in hawaii he'd be in virginia we'd fly out to the gym and we'd do the marketing and we'd sell people into their facility and then try and you know semi help them keep those people at that point you know we had no money we were you know working all the hours of the day plus more living out of motels extended stays and uh flying around all the time so i think we did like 33 cities or some crap like that in 18 months i mean it was just it was bananas and so that's why i called the eat [ __ ] stage after nearly two years of being in the eating [ __ ] stage we finally found some success after tons of having money stolen and losing everything and having only a thousand dollars left and getting our processors shut down just tons of crazy [ __ ] we finally got some success and that's when our company jim launch was born really from there it just continued to go up uh you know we had a lot of success stories we had if you see everyone on the swords over there it's all those people making a million dollars that's the first team picture we ever took and then we had some more success alex wrote a book called jim launch secrets we were able to donate actually we donate over two million dollars to after school all-stars we started prestige labs which is an e-commerce uh supplement line and really we actually were able to scale from nothing to 50 million in 20 months and so i say this to impress upon you that anybody can do it because listen i'm not the smartest person in the world i in fact don't think there's anything uniquely special about me i just am smart enough to do it and dumb enough to believe it's possible that's what i like to say and then that chapter ended right we actually end up selling gym launch and prestige labs to apg which is an investment group and promoting uh maggie and kale owen to become a ceo and ceo of those businesses and they're actually doing really well they're continuing to grow without us and um you know we moved on to kind of our next chapter which we really took 18 months to think about what we would dedicate our rest of our lives to and we decide on acquisition.com and acquisition.com is really our mission is to document and share the best practices that build world-class businesses and we do that guys by we talk to 30 businesses a week we work with all the portfolio companies that we are invested in and we take those practices and we share them here on youtube for free and the reason for that is because alex and i had to ask ourselves like what is something that we would do if we were never paid for it and i [ __ ] wish that i had had somebody telling me and sharing with me like unapologetically and without any scarcity all the stuff that i i needed to know when i was building my business and i wish i'd had that information and so you know that's what we do and as for the portfolio companies like i wish i had had some on that i could just bounce everything off of who'd already been there who'd already done it and they were there honestly whenever i needed them and that's what we are to them and so that is when we decided to start acquisition.com to kind of uh you know bring it back around what i have realized in in doing this is that many of the people in fact we get about you know almost a thousand inquiries a month for acquisition.com only three percent of businesses actually ever make only a million dollars in total revenue so we often more than often than not you know i would say 60 of those people haven't even made a million dollars yet so they're doing you know 200 grand a year 400 grand a year maybe 500 grand a year and they're stuck they can't figure out how to get to a million dollars and so that is why i'm making this video today because i want you to understand that this is what i see the most of is people that are not able to get that million a month mark and i want to kind of provide some clarity into the patterns that i have seen over talking to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people as to why they're not able to get there and what this means just so you know is that out of every 100 people only three are going to hit a million dollars which is crazy right because there's a lot of ways that you can make a million dollars right you could sell a thousand people into a thousand dollar product you could sell 500 people into a 2000 product you could sell 200 people a 5 000 product you could sell 100 people a 10 000 product there's a lot of ways to make a million dollars but despite that you know only three out of 100 businesses ever get there and so what that means is too is like if you're watching this video and you haven't had a million dollars are you one of those three i think that if you watch this video you have a higher likelihood of increasing your success in doing so and that being said our goal is really to create free training materials to make this simple for you guys and that's why i've created this video today because what else would i do with my life before i die and so that's why what i want to share with you today uh is really what i've done personally four times which is i'm not saying i've only made a million dollars four times but i have gotten over the million dollar mark four times personally and i've helped over 200 businesses directly do so indirectly i would hope it's a lot more from the content we put out there and such but i can you know recognize 200 that have uh been because of our direct teaching that being said i hope in sharing this with you and sharing my own story you understand that i deeply understand where you are i care because i've been there that was our bank account when we had only a thousand dollars and this wasn't that [ __ ] long ago guys this is like look at that that's 2016. i didn't start with any resources in order to act like we didn't have any more information than you do today and if anything i want to give you more information than i had so you understand how to get there faster and with less headache and hopefully people don't rob you and you lose all your money because that sucks and so what i want to dive into is really the repeatable process that i have learned from how to get from zero to one million dollars so let's go in who here has heard of the hierarchy of competence there's no crowd so raise your hand at the computer right okay somebody probably has somebody has probably not essentially what it is it's the stages of learning for any new skill and it looks like this you've got unconscious incompetence conscious incompetence conscious competence and unconscious competence okay so what does that look like right well unconscious incompetence is really you're dabbling in something and you don't know that you suck yet you're so new to it that you have no idea how [ __ ] bad you are and i think everyone starts there and the only reason you get started is because of this because if you knew who bad you were you wouldn't even start the second stage is conscious incompetence which means that you're aware that you suck and you're getting better at not sucking so you're like i [ __ ] blow but because i know how bad i blow i know how much i need to improve in order to get where i need to go conscious incompetence is you suck less with practice and effort so you're like i am now putting the work in i have a consistent routine i know what i'm doing to get better and the unconscious competence is you don't suck much at all with very little effort right and so you might see people that you're like i don't know how they do that that would take me hours and days and can't even imagine it's years and years of competence built up so it takes very little effort to have a high output competence leads to confidence and so right now if you haven't hit a million dollars yet you might not be feeling very confident the thing is that you're not going to get there until you get through the period of [ __ ] until you go through the eat [ __ ] stage where you feel like [ __ ] you're not confident you don't believe in yourself you never get to the other side where you do and so how does this really relate to you zero to one million dollars is all about the learning process of consistently selling something that someone wants okay what does that look like alex and i have come up with this framework for entrepreneurs zero to one million you have one product one avatar one channel the problem is you have no [ __ ] clue what you're doing that is the problem at zero to 1 million you don't know what to do you don't know who to ask you don't know where to go the objective is that you consistently sell something people actually want which is essentially achieving product market fit that is when you have found something that customers actually want to buy for the price that you were selling at or the value you provide so that being said i uh i put these into phases that i've labeled and i'm not going to give you a revenue level for what these each look like but i am rather going to label them because the revenue level is different depending on the business you're in and depending on the market that you're in and so if you look at this when you are unconsciously incompetent you're really an entrepreneur you don't know how bad you are and you're you know looking to get started but you really just have no clue how much you suck conscious incompetence when you're aware that you suck and you're getting better you're typically a starter you've gotten started you've got your feet in there so you see what it should look like and you realize that you're very far away then when you're consciously competent you're typically a producer which means you are able to produce money you're making money right and more consistently and you suck less but you're not mastery and then last level is really in unconscious competence which means you don't suck much at all and you put very little effort into not sucking you have mastered the skill and so in order to get to one million dollars to consistently sell something you have to go through these four stages to get there and that is why i've observed time over time again if you think about this in the context of something easy like sales which many people watching my channel might know this is kind of what it looks like to master sales it's like when you master sales it doesn't take much effort at all and you're very consistent that's when your sales master so first i want to define what each of these is so first i want to start off at unconscious incompetence which is when you're an entrepreneur a entrepreneur is going to be defined as someone who is dabbling yet unaware of their skill deficits that are needed to start a business they're dabbling they have no idea how much they don't actually know and so typically what this looks like is you start with an idea and three months later you have an idea you have nothing else you have no business right that is what i would define as an entrepreneur you have no tangible evidence to support that you have a business then you have a starter a starter is someone who at least gets started they have actually started the business they currently have an llc that they own right consciously incompetent so they're aware of their deficits and they're attempting to create positive business impact through acquiring new technical skills specifically sales and marketing that is typically where people start am i saying that's a hundred percent of the time no but typically it's sales and marketing and so what that might look like is you have an idea and three months later you do have a business you have an llc you know you have something that you have actually created and put together and then we go to producer which is when you're consciously competent right this is someone who is aware of their deficits and is inconsistently creating positive business impact through their technical skills again specifically sales and marketing so you are able to produce results it's just not reliable so it feels very up and down erratic there's no consistency in the business right lumpy revenue etc so what that looks like is you know you started the business and then you make inconsistent progress which is like some weeks you feel like none someone feels like there's a ton it's just up and down and then you go to mastery which is unconscious competence which is someone who is aware of their deficits but can consistently create positive business impact through practice technical skills influence and vision a master is somebody who then once they master just being consistent at the skill they make a lot more progress so you can see that between starting the business and consistently adding in that positive progress you add a lot more over time once your competence breeds confidence the growth is then exponential getting to a million is the hardest part if you can make it there it is much easier once you get there and this is usually what happens you hit a million dollars and then literally it's like compounded and you hit 10 million so much faster you hit a million and i can tell you this i've done it time and time and time again it's like it takes so much tweaking and working and skill acquisition and like breaking of your own beliefs to get to a million dollars once you've gotten there you've done a huge amount of work you just have to kind of double what you're doing to get to 10 million it's much more simple so the question is what level do you fall into and i would like you to really think about this like in terms of those levels of the entrepreneur the starter the producer and the master where do you fall and that's going to help you as you're watching the rest of this presentation on the youtubes and so again what i would also say is that if you're watching this we lose 40 percent of new information that we see or hear within the first 24 hours so i say atn always take notes that being said first off let's go into entrepreneur what is an entrepreneur what does it look like and how do we move on to the next level entrepreneur you are dabbling you do not know how bad you suck you are unaware of your suckage for me what this looked like was uh you know if i were to say what it looked like when i was on entrepreneur right i was doing some online traveling training with you know some clients online dabbling in it training some people in person dabbling with it you know honestly just mentally masturbating all day like spent all my time in my head just like constantly overthinking and then literally just consuming the shout out of everything like masters of scale you know entrepreneur on fire entrepreneur podcast gary vee tai lopez rich dad poor like anything i'd get my hands on i was eating it up but there was honestly no action right like i was literally just in my head all day whether it was consuming things or was overthinking things and so typically what it looks like is this right i got a new idea i bought a domain did nothing with it bought a new got a new idea i bought a domain i never actually shipped the project and i really liked this little i saw this somewhere i think on twitter i thought it was hilarious because i feel like this embodies an entrepreneur and so if you look at it really the level you're at as an entrepreneur you're dabbling without awareness of your suckage your beliefs are i'm not sure i could do this so i will test it out until i am sure of myself right it's like i can't go all in because i'm not sure i can actually do this the key trait of somebody like this is you're highly cautious the key skill is the skill is overthinking like you are overthinking everything and your time is constantly spent in your head overthinking that's what it looks like to be an entrepreneur here's the thing startups have a 10 chance of success ideas never executed on heavy zero percent chance and so if right now you're watching this video and you're like i need some inspiration to get started to tell me i'm going all you have to do is [ __ ] get it started like if you just get started you at least have a 10 chance if you never start you have zero think about it so the question really is why do so many people get stuck there's really three reasons at this level one i see a lot of this you've got a spouse a spouse who's holding you back people around you that are holding you back it's your spouse it's your friends it's your inner circle they don't believe it's possible they don't root for you they don't support you it is much harder not impossible but much harder to succeed when you're surrounded by people who are [ __ ] the second is you've often got some kind of safety net which i say is the golden handcuffs which it's probably a high paying job maybe it's that your spouse has a high paying job uh there's something there that allows you to remain safe and so you feel no need to jump because you're like well i've got this thing and it's really good but it's not much you want it's not for you and then lastly is fear it's just fear of the unknown and people don't know how i'm scared of this i was scared of that humans are scared of unknown they're they're scared of situations that they cannot predict and that's [ __ ] okay you're never not going to be scared of a new situation you just have to understand that's just your brain and how it works it's 2 billion years old or 2 million years old what the [ __ ] ever and it's not you this is not it's not special to be scared you have no unique situation it's just unpredictable that's all and that's why so many people say suck the question is how does somebody actually level up at this point a lot of the time you have two options which is create more safety in the unknown than the known right by basically mentally tricking yourself or burn your boat so you have no option for me it was burning my boats that was what i had to do i had to quit my job i had to get rid of my clients i had to say i'm doing this and if i fail i'm not going to die like if you fail starting new business you will not die so like what's there to be scared of like you'll be okay so that is how someone levels up now starter okay a starter is somebody who is aware they suck and they are getting better right consciously incompetent what did that look like for me when i was a starter well i'd quit my job i had decided i was going to go fly around the country and do this gym launch thing started taking online courses honestly just testing stuff you know like i was taking online courses watching youtube videos reading books you know all anything i get my hand on at this point like online learning was just kind of starting so it's like not as popular as it is today so you dig a little bit more i was flying around the country you know basically just testing out launching these gems it was like i would say the first three were just like complete tests it was like i don't even know if this is going to work and that's kind of what it looked like now what does that look like um in terms of the level well i'm a starter i'm aware that i suck but i am getting better and i'm trying to get better my belief at this point had changed my belief was if somebody else has done it there is a chance i can do it too and that's really all you need is like if there's evidence that one person on this earth who is made up of the same [ __ ] as me can do something then there's honestly no reason why i couldn't my key trait is that i'm resourceful right and in this in this phase that is absolutely the number one trait that you need is to be a person of resourcefulness the key skill right here is actually ruthless blind execution because the thing is like i said when you're going to a million you just don't [ __ ] know and you have to be okay not knowing and you have to be able to act even when you're not knowing and where's your time spent at this point you know you've just started a business you're just getting in you're 100 sales 50 coaching 50 admin 50 delivery 50 on billing 50 learning 50 programming 50 marketing you are doing all of it you are working overtime it is uncomfortable that is okay you will not be here forever it is a season and so the question is why do so many people get stuck well at this stage there's a few things that i see that typically prevent somebody from getting to the next stage right when i'm talking about you want to understand the one project one channel on avatar all those things right in order to get past the not knowingness right what do i do next who can help me who is my avatar what are my values because at this point you've gotten started but you have no idea who is my avatar what is my product what is my channel how should i market right the first thing you probably want to do is invest a mentor this could be a course this could be a coach this could be you know something it doesn't need to be like a person one on one coaching you but like some kind of program or guidance because what you need right now is clarity you have no clarity you don't know what to do next you have no [ __ ] clue doing something is better than nothing and doing something cookie cutter that somebody else tells you do is often also better than trying it on your own because right now you have no [ __ ] clue so that's the first thing the second thing is that a lot of people say suck because they don't break their perfectionist mentality they get started and they can't even figure out how to grow because they won't let anything not be perfect and so because of that they actually paralyze themselves and then they don't do anything they get started they build the business they get like one person in there and then they're like i can't do anything because if i can't do it to 100 i can't do anything at all and here's the thing in the beginning you suck at [ __ ] everything because it's just you and that's okay if you don't get past this you don't accept that you will ever actually reach a million dollars and then the last part and this is a theme you'll notice is that you typically are surrounded by idiots you know people are just getting started and you're taking advice from people who aren't even where you want to be and it's typically something that i see in people that haven't reached a million dollars and i'm like well who told you that i was gonna do it they're like well the contractor i got from upwork said blah blah or like my friend who is a mechanic said that and you're like dude if they're not where you want to be why are you [ __ ] listening to them that's not going to help you so you have to stop listening to idiots you have to only listen to the people who know where you're trying to go and have been there before and so the question on how does one level up is really just utmost clarity you need to get clarity of your avatar and clarity of your product and you only get that by finding people who have been there before watching what those people have done and using that as like almost like a stilt to get yourself off the ground because like at this point it's usually better to replicate before you innovate because you're just trying to get started and like you want to know that the method isn't wrong and if you've never done it before how are you going to know if the method is wrong or not probably only if you find somebody else who's done it now once you've gotten started and you've leveled up past that we move on to the producer phase okay what's the producer phase this is when you suck less with a good amount of practice and effort so for me what did this look like right well i was actually making a good amount of sales um it wasn't like highly consistent but i was making a good amount of sales i was wearing all the hats but still mainly doing sales as a priority but also doing billing i was also dming people i was also doing contracts i was also doing taxes i was literally doing everything and all of the hours involved the days and then i started working with multiple mentors who knew what the next step was i think that's a big piece of success when you're under a million dollars like finding somebody that you can trust everything that they say is not going to make sense probably half of what they say is going to be applicable to you but it is better to follow somebody than nobody at this point because you've no [ __ ] clue what you're doing and so what this really looks like broken down you're a producer you suck less with practice and effort the belief is that if i want to be great i have to suck first anyways that's the thing you don't become great without sucking kobe bryant whatever first time i picked up basketball probably sucked if you've never done something before of course you suck nobody's there's rarely somebody that's naturally talented at something so to hold that belief and to think that you must be good in order to do something is just keeping you stuck where you are the key trait of somebody at this point is they're determined they see a little success they see the light at the end of the tunnel and they're like i need to keep [ __ ] going now the key skill here is you've got adaptability and sales and light marketing right at this point in most businesses that i am speaking to on this youtube channel you most likely need to understand sales and some like marketing in order to get to this point where's your time spent again [ __ ] everywhere you are you are spending your time everywhere at this point it is pretty much the same as when you started it is just getting harder and harder and there's like it's building up to the point where you're not going to be able to do it on your own and so at this point typically what it looks like when you've moved in the stage where you can produce is just inconsistent is you have a really flexible infrastructure you might have a digital agency that's running your ads and you might have like two vas or something to that extent that are like helping you with dms or helping you with something involving the marketing or sales they're basically assisting you and helping you leverage yourself out of the marketing sales just a little bit and so the question is why do so many people get stuck right the questions at this point are should i spend more money i'm nervous that nobody will do it like me if i get more people in here to help me what is a priority right now and am i stable enough to invest more into this business at this point many people stay stuck because you have science working you have a little bit of leverage but you're afraid you're afraid of really committing to it and so people typically resist trading money for time you've been so used to trading time for money that's what you've done to get here to trade money for time is very foreign but the thing is that until you start you know hiring people paying more money to leverage yourself you're never going to get out of the stage the going hand in hand with this is the need for control right which is you don't want to let anybody else do anything because you're afraid nobody will do it like you the thing is you have been doing it that long you probably still suck some and the longer that you delay giving this to somebody else the longer that uh you get better and the person who should be doing it in the future gets worse and then lastly is the inability to manage time effectively is often people are still saying yes to what they said guess to when they were a entrepreneur they're still trying to maintain those friendships they're still trying to maintain that lifestyle they're thinking there's something wrong with the fact that they're working so much and they're trying to maintain what they were doing before rather than sacrificing for the short term knowing that you're in a season getting to 1 million is the hardest season and it requires a lot of focus and effort the more time you spend on a daily basis to get there the faster you will get there the more hours you dedicate per week to figuring out how to get to a million the easier it is when you get to a million and the more time you'll have back then so it's worth investing the time letting go of the control and starting to realize that you also need to trade money for time and so if you want to level up again like i said you want to learn to trade money for time and then usually take that money trade it for talent and buy back your time because at this point what you've realized is that in order to even be consistent you have to have one to two people helping you full time and so lastly we reach the level of master right master is when you are able to make a million dollars what does that look like it's usually unconscious competence you have figured out how to sell something consistently to somebody that they actually want what this looks like you are consistently making sales you have predictable sales you know that you're going to grow month over month if you continue making these sales you have happy customers you have a mentor who's helping you and you have support so delivery systems are solid you're not just you know scrapping things together you've got some people helping you so that this isn't like a house of cards and so here's the thing if you don't interfere with this process you will reap the benefit of time and what happens is that most people don't allow that to happen they interrupt the natural process that will occur to allow you to reach a million dollars i'll explain what that means in a second so you're at the level of master you don't suck and it requires much less effort so you're saving time in terms of your expertise your belief is often that consistency trumps intensity you realize now that what guy you started doesn't keep you going consistency is going to be a more useful tool right now than intensity key trait is that you are industrious you're working your freaking ass off and your key skill is sales and leveraged acquisition so you might still be making all the sales but you have leveraged the marketing so you are lightly involved but not nearly as much as you were where's your time again it's selling overseeing marketing coaching calls directing small vendors and contractors and typically at this point you have outsourced some of the small admin work to those people that are on your team right you've got someone else helping with billing somebody helps helping with contracts and you're managing those people and so what that might look like again is that you have a few more people on your side you know you've got uh three part-time or even full-time people that are helping you with delivery you've got outsourced accounting you've got outsourced marketing and of course these are not fully outsourced you're heavily involved in the management and then you have these people that are helping you leverage or delivery systems and that's typically what it looks like so why do so many people get stuck why is it that so many people can't level out here once you've hit a million dollars how do you level out of a million dollars it's really actually one of the hardest transitions for entrepreneurs is you ask yourself these questions right what if there's a better opportunity now that you see that you can make a million dollars you start to think where else could i make a million dollars look at all these other cool things i could do and then you think uh this is not another business this is a new product line i'm going to start you start thinking i need new things now i've reached i need something new we need a new product i think maybe enough people aren't buying it now and then you wonder should i hire help how many sops do i need like what do i need to do to grow this business so i would say the first threat to getting past a million is shiny object syndrome i can't tell you how many times i've talked to people once they make a million dollars they start like four more businesses and guess what they just have four businesses making a million dollars their life is like so [ __ ] complicated it's shiny object syndrome it's thinking that that new opportunity is better than the current opportunity but the reality is you just don't know enough about it yet to know that it has the same amount of [ __ ] as the one you are currently in the second is the lack of ability to hire you are refusing to hire help you're thinking i don't know if this is consistent i don't know what this is going to look like i don't know i don't know and you're so uncertain that you are refused to hire people out of fear of loss the thing is you will never win unless you take some risk and risk at this point is using is bringing other people onto the team and knowing that if it fails you have to fire people or if this doesn't work out it's on you but like you're never actually going to have a business unless you get past that point and then lastly is overthinking systems there's like a thing that happens at a million where everyone's like i need sops i need order and i need to have a million systems in place and you actually bog your your business down if you're at a million dollars you don't need that many [ __ ] systems you're fine on excel sheets i know people with 50 million dollar businesses that run off excel sheets there's nothing wrong with that it's working it's working so at this point you don't need to reinvest in heavy infrastructure most of the time and so the question on how do i level up is really in 90 of the cases focus there's this thing that happens when we hit a million dollars and we think we're now the special unicorn we're the special case scenario where's you know we've got to do something else we need a new product we need a new business we're in the wrong opportunity vehicle and we steal our future success from our future selves by quitting too early by giving up too early by losing focus too early and not reinvesting in the current thing we have and so at this point that is when focus is the utmost important thing that you could do you do the boring work and so i end with this quote which is strategy is choice strategy means saying no to certain kinds of things and in order to get to a million dollars you have to have the utmost focus which is often what doesn't get you started what gets you started is like the excitement of something new but what gets you to a million dollars being able to say no to everything else and focus on one product one channel one avatar one task at hand and that being said guys if you do this if you can do this the only thing that compounds faster than interest is learning once you spend all that time learning how to make a million dollars to get to 10 million is not as hard i promise is much less difficult but a lot of people steal that from themselves because they don't focus and they won't allow themselves the opportunity to even get there and so my question is do you have a clear idea of what you need to focus on to level up what i would do after watching this presentation is identify what level you're at and then ask yourself what do i need to do to get to the next level what kind of person do i need to become what skills do i need what kind of people do i need around me and that will answer the question of what you need to do to get two million dollars so let me know uh what you guys think in the comments of this video this is definitely a different style than i normally do and honestly i've had a lot of people ask me like how do i make a million dollars and i was like i don't feel i don't feel like telling anyone and putting it into a system and so this took me a bit of refining and i'm sure i'm gonna refine it to be better and better each time but i hope this provides like a broad picture of what it takes to make a million dollars so let me know what you think in the comments if this was useful and if you like the style of presentation