How to Get Out of a Sales Slump | Ep 868

So it's like I put all my effort whenever I start any business or any product line into like, why is this different? Like, that's my full— like, I don't even think about pricing. I don't think about anything until I answer that question. And I have to at least be able to articulate it to them really simply, which is like, here's the 5 things that happen that suck. Here's how we don't have any of those 5.

My name is Ryan. I have a real estate law firm and we sell real estate closings to homebuyers. We did $2.5 million last year. And we're on pace to do $3.5 million.

You say law firm? Yes. Okay.

I want to be at $10 million in revenue. And I also myself operate a marketing company. My wife operates the law firm. That's what's, I believe, stopping me.

Okay.

She's the lawyer. I do the marketing and business.

Okay. How much does the agency make?

$450 top line, $200 EBITDA.

And how much does the law firm make? I know you're on page 255. What's the bottom line?

About $500,000.

Oh, interesting. Okay.

This year it'll probably be closer to $750,000 with the 3.5.

So do you not want to full-time market into your wife's law firm?

She's a client.

Of your marketing agency?

Correct.

That's smaller than her law firm? Correct. Why not join hands?

It's tough to turn something, stop something that's making $200,000 in my pocket every year.

How much time do you put towards the agency?

30 to 35 hours a week.

If you took 30 to 35 hours a week and put it towards the thing that's already making, you know, 7 times as much money, do you think you'd be able to find a way to get the extra $200?

Yes, because our constraint is to get more butts in seats. I guess my problem is like shutting it down. How do you like how to shut something down?

Like the right way, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a great question. So it's actually kind of like the example I gave with the price raise, which is I just give people ample time. So if I think that something's going to disrupt someone's business, you know, for your own reputation, I'd say, listen, you know, it's been an amazing time. I know that, you know, you guys have been loyal clients. I just want to let you know two things. Number one is we stopped accepting new customers. And number two, we're going to be phasing, basically phasing this out over the next 6 months. And so I wanted to give you guys 6 months. We will continue levels of service for this period of time. Also, I have 3 recommendations of people who I trust in this industry I think will do a good job. And then you negotiate deals with those guys to give you kickbacks for all this book of business, and you'll probably be able to make $100 grand a year just from referring the business out to those guys, which they'll happily do. And then that's a very easy way for you to keep the money, get it to 100% passive, and then move on and help the— help your— I mean, I don't want to say help your wife. It's like you guys do your business together and crush it. Yeah.

Would it be smart or dumb to hire an operator just to operate the marketing company instead?

Yeah, I think that would be not smart. Cool.

Thank you.

Perfect.

My name is Ricky. We have a bar cocktail mix that we sell to B2B.

Cool.

Country clubs, resorts.

You should partner with Ben Potts, who was on the Cashcast.

Sure.

Yeah.

We do $3.5 million last year in revenue. And, uh, our biggest thing that's stopping us was my father. He was the main salesman that he had a position. He's doing this full-time as well as trying to focus on whether we should try to grow the business awareness, just 'cause a lot of people don't know about it unless they know us or referrals, or just try to just get more accounts.

Can you explain a little bit more about the product?

Yeah, so a piña colada, strawberry daiquiri, margarita, stuff like that. It's mainly, it's a frozen product. Like comes in frozen, lasts 2 years. Once you thaw it, it lasts a week, but it's mainly for people who are high volume. So you can spit out a lot of drinks.

Like cruise ships and things like that.

Yeah. Mainly like a frozen drink machine or like a blender.

So.

Got it. Okay. And so the question is whether you should focus on awareness?

Oh, like growing the brand? Cause it's like, it's not very public. It's only mainly people that know us. We talk about it or just people who The guests are like, this is amazing.

You're currently all word of mouth?

Yeah, basically.

Okay, so you have no— well, you have your father who's— who does sales.

Yeah.

And how does he do sales?

Previous relationships from being in the industry for over 20 years.

Outbound? Yeah. Okay, so what stops you from mechanizing his existing outbound motion and then getting like 10 guys to do it?

We haven't done it. It's just, you know, probably lack of— yeah.

So like, I mean, if I had to pick between more of that thing, right, and this brand new thing that you've never done, I definitely would mechanize the existing thing.

Yeah.

So, so yeah, it's going to be a conversation that you're going to have with your father. Obviously we can help, but like breaking down like, okay, let's take this thing and break into 50 pieces because it's not like, hey, how do you do outbound? Like that doesn't work. It's like, okay, what's initial contact look like? What's first message? What's second message? What's going to— what's the script? What's the opener? What's the offer to get them kind of enticed? Once we have that conversation, what's the thing that we can increase the pain between where they're at and where they want to go so we can insert ourselves.

Yeah.

One of the biggest things at least is with getting them to actually try the product because it's like, I was like, oh, it's just, it's another mix. So once they taste it, it's different. But, you know, getting to that personal decision is, you know, the hardest thing.

So there are so many ways to do that. But yeah, I mean, you need an outbound motion. There's probably a combination of conference/trade show that would work really well too, especially because you are a taste— like literally taste it. And it would probably crush in that setting. Okay. Probably be very easy to sell.

Yeah.

I just don't, I don't think you should go brand now, especially since you built the whole business off B2B.

Yeah.

I would just do more of that for now to start. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, no worries.

Thank you very much for the event.

Yep.

Very well executed.

Awesome. Thanks.

I'm Max. Nice to meet you. So we sell a variety of different, like lightweight home service contractor equipment to home service contractors and industrial contractors.

Cool. Love that.

Family business. We've been doing it for, couple of generations now.

Cool.

We are— I was going to ask a different question, but it got answered by your, by your team earlier in the day. So I'm going to skip the revenue level question. Just say we have two P&Ls that I have fought to very much focus our teams. We've divided and conquered one, one, one part of the team focused on one P&L, the other part of the team focused on the other P&L.

Okay.

And we're going very deep into the niche and really niching down to who the core avatar is for each of those core product lines.

Okay.

In doing that, we have a fulfillment bottleneck that's on the horizon that we have to make a call.

For both or one?

For one. So we started a plan to relocate our production facility to a different state during COVID because New York wasn't so friendly to manufacturing companies.

Or business.

Or business. It was ridiculous. So I moved to Texas and we moved the business to a different state. And now we have to decide if we want to continue that plan and move the other 50% of the P&L. And kind of make manufacturing a center of excellence that's based out of this new state.

Okay.

And recapture some of our EBITDA by consolidating the cost structure.

Why not do it?

Because it's a huge distraction for the team while we're, while we're really sales and marketing constrained. So right now we need to like hack sales and marketing to take us to the next level. But we have this like over the next 24 to 36 months, we have this ticking time bomb of one of our production facilities. The building's kind of dilapidated. Lease is going to expire.

So you're going to have a constraint. Basically, you have an upcoming constraint in 24 to 36 months that will happen with basically manufacturing procurement, whatever. Right. But you have a today constraint of sales and marketing. Now, is the constraint that you just like, if you fix it, then the business will grow, but you are profitable today?

What do you mean?

So is it— so the one that's coming in 24 to 36 months is an existential threat. Right? Because like if you, if the building's falling apart and you have to find a new location anyways, that's an inevitable threat. Like if you don't solve that, you won't be able to continue that line of the business. Right? The, the constraint in terms of the short term is just, I want to get bigger. And the thing that's limiting me getting bigger is sales and marketing. Correct? This is definitely like Eisenhower matrix of non-urgent and important. And so this actually feels like a project that can be done. I don't normally say this, but like in parallel, because I do think that you'll get a lot of improvements within the business if the whole team is centralized. And so I would, I would definitely encourage that. You also have tax improvements and all that other stuff that, that comes with moving to Texas. And the thing, the reason I lean towards saying like, that's probably worth doing is that let's say that it's played out the other direction. Like if we crush marketing and sales in a good way, it's like we're just gonna exacerbate how quickly that next constraint's gonna come. Mm-hmm. And so I probably lean towards like, let's pull the facility in, then we can crank the hell out of this. The reason I said concurrent is like a lot of times the leaders that are going to be in charge of one are going to be very different than the leaders that are in charge of the other. So it might be something that you can do at the same time, which again, I don't normally say it, but like you just finding, you know, basically managing the move between these two places a pain, but not like, to me that's like a 12-week project. Okay.

And if it, and if we're capital constrained in doing both, Any capital constraint?

Okay, so there is a capital constraint. That's why I asked about the profitability.

So, so, well, we're profitable, but to like fund a move and like do it securely or we're not.

What would that represent in terms of percentage of yearly cash flow?

From what do you mean?

If you were to move, how much cash does that represent for you as a percentage of how much free cash the business generates per year?

45%.

Okay. So about half your pro— roughly about half your profit would go towards the move for one year.

Conservatively.

Okay. Conservatively. So if we were to increase marketing and sales, then we could get more cash flow.

Mm-hmm.

And would we be able to do that without incurring the supply constraint that the existing dilapidated location would cost us sooner?

Yeah.

So you're saying like max out these two facilities and then use that—

Yes.

Can we, can we make more money faster so that we can do the move faster?

Yeah, probably.

Okay, then it would be sales and marketing first, free up cash, deploy the cash as the reinvestment strategy. There's a good return on capital, so it totally makes sense. Bring that in, recapture EBITDA, and then it makes sense. Okay.

And take anyone who's like on the marketing and sales projects, like totally off that and just have them start planning for this move. Like have someone own that now?

No, I think marketing and sales first. Marketing and sales first, free up cash flow, bring somebody else in who can project manage the move. And if they're a good project manager, you'll want to keep them long term.

Okay, cool.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

That was a fun one. That was good.

Thank you.

My name is Sam Tierling. I don't— I guess I sell a service. I own a transportation company.

Cool.

We deliver chemicals to fracking companies. Last mile transportation, I guess.

There we go. Nice.

Revenue-wise, we did $10 million last year. Year before that was $7. The year before that was $5. Nice. Kind of just kept growing. Awesome. And this year decided to slow it down a little bit. Not like Well, I guess slow it down to get myself out of the day-to-day.

Okay.

And it's worked great. While doing that, I realized that I can make more money taking and selling to customers that my customers don't sell to the same product that we're transporting.

Say that last part again.

All right. So I'm more of a specific type of person. I sell polymers or I transport polymers, friction reducers. SNF is one of the biggest they make it. There's 40% of customers they won't deal with that want to deal with me, that want to buy it from us.

Uh-huh.

My struggle is, is I figured out how to continue to replicate the trucking industry, like the trucks, and grow that. So do I keep focusing on that, which is a very cash-intensive business, like I have to put a lot of money up front, or do I use my trucks to sell the product to the end user? But I also struggle with that because how do I balance the two cash, like Sorry, I— how do I balance the two? Like, so if I, like, I'm regularly floating $1.5 million, $2 million in receivables for BKT.

Yeah.

And I want to start buying the product. Well, I have to pay in 30 days. I'm not going to get paid.

Kind of same thing as you're going to add another cash flow constraint to the business.

Say that again.

So basically, if you're buying the stuff that you're going to sell to the end users, like, you're going to add cash constraint to the business.

Okay.

Right?

Yeah.

So then they would further constrain, it would basically pile on the existing constraint. So said differently, why do it versus just doubling the existing business? Because the way that I'll explain where my thinking is. So I had a good friend of mine from high school, actually, that's a strong statement, an acquaintance of mine from high school who had a general contracting business and in his general general contractor business, he realized he was pretty good at roofs. And so he started doing roofs and I called him up and I was like, hey, how's the business going? And he was like, ah, we're growing. It's great. And so he was explaining to me, he's like, so we do roofs primarily. I was like, okay. And he's like, we also do, you know, some contracting work. And I was like, okay, that's another thing. He's like, we also kind of buy and flip houses. I was like, okay. He's like, but that's, he's like, you know, I didn't want to leave money on the table, which is like my favorite entrepreneur statement ever. And I was like, so, What stops you from being a billion-dollar-a-year roofing company? And the answer is the general contracting and the real estate flipping. I was like, well, what stops you from being a billion-dollar-a-year real estate flipper? The answer is the roofing and the general contracting. And so basically, if you already have a winning model, to me, I'm like, there's no reason to not just become even better at the thing that you're currently doing and compound the competitive advantage that you have. There's always going to be better. Yeah, there's always going to be opportunities.

I guess I looked at it as more of a control thing. Like, 'cause there's—

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For the most part, our customers we've started with have been with us for 6 or 7 years. Mhm.

On the trucking side?

Yes, on the trucking side.

Got it.

But they also do dictate the rates. Like, I can, you know, continue to raise my prices and eliminate customers, which we have done. Mhm. But you— they're only willing to pay so much. And it's like, well, if I'm selling the chemical, I'm still going to get what I want for transporting it, and then you're getting paid to sell it too. So I don't— it's just one of those things.

It's like the only reason I hesitate is, is like it's adding— it adds complexity to the business. Again, given the limited context that I have of like 5 minutes of hearing about the business, like it's a huge decision. But from my personal experience, when I had Gym Launch and Prestige Labs, I basically said, oh, I've got this distribution base of gyms. And so why don't I just sell supplements through my distribution base, which on the surface level seems like a smart idea. But what it ended up doing is that it completely slowed down the growth of my main business, which was the licensing business. And so it felt like, oh, there's this big pot of gold right here. But if I took all the attention that I put into starting this supplement company and manufacturing it and distributing it and, you know, the testing it and the flavors and the marketing and all that stuff and the support team that I had to do for the product, I could have taken all of that energy and just gone double down into the thing that I should have done. It was one of the bigger mistakes that I've made. And so if you already have a business that's gone from 5 to 7 to 10, I'm like, well, maybe next year you're at 13, year after that you're at 17. I'm like, that sounds like a pretty good business.

Yeah, I guess, I guess it was more of what I wanted to do.

If you want to do it, that's a, that's a life question more than a business question. Yeah.

but how do I, how do I make it make sense to not screw my first business up?

Well, yeah, that's always the, I mean, like there's always opportunities. And the thing is, is the bigger distribution base is, which it will continue to grow, the more enticing the other opportunity will be. Right. The woman in the red dress, she just always is more and more attractive. The more distribution you build, the more skills you have and the more opportunities you see. Like, believe me, the amount of opportunities that I have to turn down now is sickening, but it's just like taken to the natural extreme. Can I build a $100 million per year trucking business? If the answer is yes, then what risks that? Everything that isn't that.

That's fair.

I mean, it seems like a simplistic way of viewing the world, but it's also really hard. But I also think it's probably the right call.

I was more or less thinking of it in transportation most of the time for hazmat companies. Once you get to where you do $15 to $20 million revenue, you get bought out.

Okay.

Quantix, Henef, Dana.

Do you not want to get bought out?

No, no. I started this because a lot of—

you could always just keep owning it because they can't force you to give— they can't force the money down your throat. Like, no, I'm just being real. Like, I mean, a lot of people take the exit then because at that point they probably have, you know, between— I know, what are margins?

20%. Okay.

Yeah. So at 20, you got $4 million in EBITDA, maybe 5, right? And so at that point they maybe give you 8 or 10 on it. And so most people are like, okay, well, for $40 million, I'll walk away. And that's why a lot of people, like usually that's, I mean, I think part of the reason that institutional investors come in at that 5-ish million is that at that point is where most business owners are like, okay, this is enough for me to be done forever. And that's probably why there's a ton of M&A activity. This is me just speaking speculatively. So I don't think there's anything inherently like, okay, if a lot of people get bought out at 20, like fine, but there's also companies that get to 100 and it's usually just a more stubborn founder who does it for different reasons, which I actually think is a good thing.

Okay. No, that Gives me peace of mind. Thank you.

Yeah, you bet.

My name's Chase. I own an exhaust hood cleaning business in San Diego. So we sell like—

Exhaustive?

Exhaust hood cleaning.

Exhaust hood cleaning. Got it.

So we do like grease removal from ducts, fans, hoods in restaurants in San Diego.

Cool.

Where we're at right now, just hit month 6.

Is that like 18-wheelers, like semis that you do that on?

Mm-mm.

What is that?

We just have like a van with a hot water pressure washer and some cool— roll, roll in the restaurants.

Guy with water and truck. Okay. Oh, so restaurants.

Restaurants.

Okay. Got it. Yeah. Yeah.

So like in all the restaurants, there's a hood system above where they cook.

Yeah. Grease gets in there.

It's like a fire hazard. So everyone has to legally do it.

Yeah. It's a great business. I, it was described to me differently in a different setting. So yeah, it's a cool business.

That's why I kind of explained it.

Pun intended.

Or else people are like, what the hell are you talking about?

Yeah.

So we just hit month 6. We're doing like $6K a month right now.

Okay.

But we have people on, it's a subscription-based business, so our book right now for like yearly recurring revenue is like right around $100K.

Cool.

I think what's stopping us right now is just like not a clear offer.

All right.

Because I deal with restaurant owners who only care about their bottom line for a money thing.

They're like, most business owners.

Yeah, true. They're like, well, if you can give me a better price, I'll give you a shot. And right now I'm just like the hungry kid that's like, yeah, I'll beat your price easy. Right. So I think what's stopping us is figuring out pricing and offer with a service that more or less is the same no matter who you go with. But we have added value adders with like customer portal streamlining, backend support, things like that, if that makes sense.

So you say that to the business owner, say that to the business owner.

How so?

There's good, fast, cheap. Pick two. And so the problem is you can have somebody else who can do this. Like to your point, like you started with the premise that this is a commoditized service. I would just break— I would just erase that from your memory because at the end of the day, like, you have to believe, you have to believe before anybody else that it's not a commoditized service. And so I would say, what are all the reasons that somebody who sucks at this sucks? And let's fix all of those things. And so what's really interesting about good, like, what does good even mean? Right? So good is basically the absence of hard, right? And so I think about this when I'm creating a product or service, and this has actually been really helpful for me in terms of like how you operationalize value. In terms of quality is you think, what are all the things that suck about the existing services? What are, what makes it hard? And so a lot of people use the term friction, right? And so something that is easy, you can't make something easy. You can only make it not hard, right? Like if I said make it easy, it's like when something's easy, all the hard vanishes and all that's left is the outcome, right? And so if we want to make our products or services easier, which then means more valuable, we have to remove all of the elements that make it sucky. And so if we're thinking about the competition that you're competing against, like maybe a lot of them are, you know, not that personable. They, they may have terrible service. Maybe they don't do a complete job. Maybe they're not willing to come back if something happens. Like, is there like, what risks does the restaurant incur if it's a shoddy job? Is there a cadence that they have to like, maybe we can treat it in a way that allows us to come half as frequently. So we're more per, more per cleaning, but they, they don't have to pay it as often, right? So we have higher gross margins and that actually works fine for us and it's less for them. Like, You know where I'm going with this?

Yeah.

Yeah. And then from a, from an economies of scale perspective, it's like, how can we increase— now you're super early on this, but like over time it'll be how can we increase route density so that like we don't waste as much time and so we get more efficient with the routes and we can ultimately make more than our competitors or at least increase our gross margins even we keep our price fixed.

Right.

Now that makes sense. One more question. So everybody has to get it done at least twice a year. So we're signing people a year agreement anywhere from twice a year. Some people do quarterly, some people do like 3 times a year. So based on what you just said, would you recommend potentially going more towards just pushing semi-annually but keeping price higher so that they feel like they're paying less over the year?

Yeah, I would look at my gross margin. I mean, real, real, I'd rather sell someone more. Yeah, right. Start at 4, downsell to 2 if you can, and then probably play with payment terms, which is like, can I stack more of that cash up front, right, versus getting paid quarterly?

Pay in full upfront.

Yeah. Okay.

Gotcha.

But big picture, I mean, we— I like— if I'm you, I'm putting all my effort into trying to figure out how to decommoditize my service because it is probably the most important thing. Otherwise, you're right, you will just consistently be dealing with— if you are the same to the customers, the first chapter of Offers, right? Like if you're the same thing to the customer, these two things are about the same. I'll buy the cheaper one. It's the worst comparison. It's not the fight you want to fight. So it's like I put all my effort whenever I start any business or any product line into like, why is this different? Like, that's my full— like, I don't even think about pricing. I don't think about anything until I answer that question. And I have to at least be able to articulate it to them really simply, which is like, here's the 5 things that happen that suck. Here's how we don't have any of those 5. And for that, in exchange, instead of paying this, you pay this. But this is why it's worth it, right?

And then in that, our only form of outbound right now is just like door-to-door knocking restaurants and then cold email. So then building that offer out with the decommoditized—

if that's even a freaking word—

and then put that into the offers, the emails, the texts, the cold outreach basically, and just sell the shit out of that.

Sell the shit out of it. Heck yeah.

Kyle, I sell outdoor lighting to homeowners. We do $880,000 revenue. About 40% is in the holiday season.

Yeah.

Doing Christmas lights. The problem is we don't have enough leads in the not holiday light time of year. Yeah. So the first half until basically now—

I fixed this business so many times, do you want to just walk you through it?

Yeah.

Okay, cool. So basically you have, you have one kind of existential decision that you need to make, which is, are we going to be full-time lighting? Which there's nothing wrong with that. Look at the Halloween store, like they're open 2 months a year and they just murder it and that's all they do, right? The alternative is that you basically have a home team that goes from lawn care and other home services to, you know, lighting, because the lawn care guys have the equal opposite issue. They're like, okay, well, there's grass that's growing 9 months of the year and then it's holiday season. And what do my guys do for 3 months or 4 months depending on whatever geographic area you're in?

Right.

And so I tell you which one I prefer. I prefer the keeping the holiday season business year round, and I'll explain why. But either option works. I should be really clear about that. I like thinking about it, how many months of the year are you doing the lights? 3? Yep.

45 days.

Perfect. Yeah. So instead of— so the way I think about it is how can I take— how can I equip my existing team with as many skills as possible so that the other 10 months of the year, all they're doing is getting business? And so like the perfect business in the world is you sell all year and then you only have to deliver for this much.

Yeah.

It's an amazing business. You just collect cash all day long, collect cash, collect commitments, collect cash, collect commitments all year round, and then you boom and you basically earn the living over the next 45 or 60 days, and then you go back into the sales cycle. And so that's one way of doing it. I like that because it's such a simple— like you just have to think about one thing for 10 months, which is marketing and sales.

Yeah.

And that gets pretty nasty and the cash flow is really good. The alternative obviously is you're like, okay, well, these guys don't have these skills, which then begs the next question is what type of talent would I need to facilitate Model A versus Model B? But if you have Model B, which is maybe of lower skilled people who work for you right now, but then it's like, okay, can I buy some lawn mowers? Can I buy some landscaping stuff so that I can give them something to do for the other 9 months of the year?

Yeah, so we were doing lawn care and picked up Christmas lights to fill that gap. Yeah, well, where I live, in October you have to do both. Yeah, so I got rid of the lawn care. Okay, well, just do just Christmas and you made better margins and all that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that was awesome. So what we're doing now is project-based permanent lighting jobs with the exact same team. Okay, so we can literally just shut it down as soon as Christmas time starts.

Cool.

So I guess where I'm— what you're saying would be just sell Christmas all year, which is like really hard to sell this time of year. Really, like, super easy to get leads in Christmas.

Yeah.

So my thought was sell permanent lights, and then also 50% of them still get Christmas lights.

But why not do that?

That is what I'm doing.

Well, great.

Well, so the problem is the leads problem.

Okay.

So I'm running out of Christmas light customers to sell landscape lights to because that was the natural first, like easy to get them. Well, I'm running Meta ads.

Uh-huh. So lead gen for permanent lights.

Yeah, exactly. Is the problem. So what I'm trying to figure out is, is the problem like lead magnet issues or landing pages issues is where I'm at.

I think so. Now we're, now we're in the meat of it. Great. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'll bet you that the creative is probably not that good because I think it's a pretty easy thing to sell. Yeah. The permanent lighting, like you just show a house before and after and you show the dark before and after. Like, oh look, lights. Nice thing, it's very visual. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I actually think that, I actually think that the ads is probably the issue. What's the lead magnet you're offering right now?

We come to your house, do a free demo so you can see how it looks. Yeah.

Yeah. I'd probably try and enhance that offer. Mm-hmm. The nice thing is in local markets, it's very offer driven.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so I would have to think more than 3 min, you know, 2 seconds about it. Mm-hmm. Um, cuz it'll be the front end of the whole business. Yeah, yeah. But it would probably be some element of like, some amount of lights that come for free. So like, like I think something that would murder would be like, can I light someone's, like, not their deck, but like maybe they're the side, like from the sidewalk to the house, or can I just light the driveway? Like some small element. So we talk about in the, in the Leads book, a lead magnet can either be a trial of something. It can be one part of a multi-step process, uh, or it can be A third thing, but for yours, I think the— thank you. One step in a multi-step process. That's why I wrote, I wrote it down so I don't have to remember it. But I think like if I can, if I wanted to, because like I'll, I'll prefer to start with a banger offer and then add friction. Because the thing is, is like you can say, I'm gonna give this away, but you don't have to give it away to everybody. You can say, I only give it away to houses that are over X. Mm-hmm. And you can have people put their address in and then run an API to Zillow look at home value and then rank order the leads based on value of home and then basically prioritize those leads ahead of time. And so you can go to those, you know, those houses first and probably sell much bigger, bigger packages overall. But I think that like if I'm struggling to get leads, I just need them to say they want lighting. I don't really care how they say they want lighting. Yeah, I just need them to say they want it and then the sales process takes care of the rest. Mm-hmm.

Cool.

Do you like that?

I'm just trying to process.

Yeah, yeah.

Like how that would go. I mean, you're 100% right. That's the problem is people, once they say they want lighting, selling it is easy.

Yeah.

So I just gotta get 'em to say it and put their phone number on.

Exactly. So give 'em a crazy, so give 'em a much better offer than I'll give you a free sales pitch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I'm just being real. Like that's so fundamentally that's it. And so I think you saying like, we'll, we'll do the install for free. You just cover the cost of the lights. Mm-hmm. For this tiny amount. See how I'm developing it now? I like it.

Yeah.

All right.

Now you can put the markup on the lights and put zero on the labor. It doesn't matter either way. You just, Basically mix and match how you're showing the money and that way you'll still break even on that first thing and you'll just know that 1 out of 2 or whatever it is who buy the first thing, buy the 10 times bigger package and then that's just math. Cool.

That's it. I like that.

I like that too.

Awesome. Thanks.

I like the business though. Congrats.

So my name is Kiera Brinton.

Let me brace myself.

We're like going to clean out my closet for a minute. Okay.

Okay.

So last year my company made a million. I've already made a million this year. So I think I'm on track for 4, but I hope to hit 10. So here's the deal.

Okay.

Is that I get really bored.

Okay.

And so I'm also really amazing visionary. And so I've built a lot of different things and what I'm needing right now is I need clarity. Okay. And I need you to, I would love for you to help me focus.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

So I'm gonna share with you, I'm gonna share with you what I've done. I'm gonna share with you what I have and then what I would love for you to show me is how do I get clarity?

Okay. What do you sell?

Yeah, so I have a publishing house. Okay. Okay. But really what I've sold is that I take people on these 5-day adventures, like luxury adventures, and I can help people channel their books in 5 days.

Okay.

And that's what's filled my pocket.

Cool.

But it's also just not scalable.

And so, uh, why is it not scalable?

Well, because one week a month I'm on these adventures and I love it, but it's like, there's like a ceiling. And so then I like rented this island in the middle of the British Virgin Islands. I took 15 people there, we all write their books for 5 days. And so that was like scalable, which that landed me a TV show. So now I have like this TV show, but then I have like, like my publishing house and then like I have this business school for women. Yeah. And then like I'm also like a single mom of 5 kids. Also I like write books on the corner. Also I did a live event in January and closed $1.25 million in 5 minutes to a crowd of 30. So it's like, I have all these things. I just like, I just need some shit.

Yeah.

You gotta pick, you gotta pick one of your 5 kids.

The 10-year-old all day.

There you go.

So you just gotta, you gotta think about which one's the 10-year-old of your businesses. It's just like the, the, the roofing thing that I said, like the thing is, is the more talented you are, the more opportunities you know you could crush, which just means more things you have to say no to. And it's just like, it's the reality of it. I mean, the thing is, is there's a price to that, which is if you continue to do what you're currently doing, you pay a price on either side. On if you continue, you pay the price of how big the impact you want to have and how big of a business you ultimately built. That's the price. What you get for that trade is you get to have the novelty and the excitement of new things happening all the time. On the other side, you build something really big that has teams and systems and it just grows really large, probably maybe not bigger than your vision, but large, much larger than what you have right now. And what you give up for that is all of the novelty that's associated with doing new things. Yeah.

So which one?

Well, it sounds like you know which one you should do and you want to do something different.

I feel like when I, when I've been looking at, okay, well, what has brought people to me?

Yeah.

It's always the books. And I keep trying to get out of it because there's so many people and there's so many things in all these systems in publishing. And I'm like, but if I just ran the business school, like I don't have to have all these like editors and formatters and book covers and right. But then I look at like, well, what do people always come to me for? It's always books. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So you run the business school, right?

Yeah.

So imagine I come to you.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm saying, hey, I've got this business that everybody wants to buy from me. It has good margins. I sell it like crazy, but I have like 4 other businesses that I wanna start. They don't grow as quickly as this other one. Mm-hmm. What should I do?

Weird. Sounds so easy when you say it. Yeah, obviously. Right, right, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. No, I mean, like, that's the, I mean, the thing that we, what you're encountering is a problem I think everybody in this room has dealt with, right? It sucks. It's not like, and I was crude earlier and I apologize to them in the room, but like, it's like you have to realize that like you can't pursue every opportunity. Not only can you not pursue every opportunity, you basically have to say no to every opportunity to be able to make one opportunity worth pursuing.

And if my, ooh.

That sounded good, didn't it?

That sounded good. Yeah, that was, that was really good. Yeah. If my TV show is on Amazon Prime and I'm helping people write books, and then I'm like, but I'm pushing my business school, like that doesn't even make sense.

Yeah, I wouldn't push the business school. Just have the media asset of Prime that pushes you writing books and then help people write more books and then have a second season of Amazon Prime helping you, you know, people writing books and then sell more people writing books. Yeah.

All right. Like, I'm like, this is my financial advisor in the front shaking her head. We got this, Julia.

Yeah. Yeah. Julia's like, I've seen the financials on the book one. Like, do more of that. Right. No, but for like, I want to hit on this one. Cause I think I, I'm, I'm not really talking to you. I'm talking through to everybody else. Like the, I, I've stayed, I stayed, I had these, these massive multi-year plateaus where I just stayed stuck because I wanted to pursue every single thing. And so you have to trade novelty for loyalty. And so it's like you become loyal to the business. I also think that occurs with relationships. Like you make the trade, the new person every one, you know, every week, every month, every whatever for somebody that you know that you've built something meaningful that's deeper.

Right.

And I think that you, it's kind of like, I think business in a lot of ways is like a fine wine where like you understand it at a different level as the years go by and you go through different seasons. And I think that you miss out on that opportunity if you're going after, you know, one night stands and flings. From a business perspective?

Do you know my life? I'm just kidding. Just kidding.

I know the wife earlier. That actually came out way wrong. But thank you. No, but like, I, I, I'm, I'm keeping you up here because I just know that this is helpful.

Thank you.

Yeah, you have to, but it's okay. Like, life will not give you what you want if you want everything.

Oh, damn.

Like, we, we have to make trades or we get nothing. And it's tough. And I think there was a big, I had a big realization, I wanna say a few years back where once I realized how much work it takes to make something truly great and something big, I had this moment of like deep sadness where I realized that I could only do a few things throughout the rest of my life. I was like, oh, I only have like 2, maybe 3 entrepreneurial seasons left in me, which is kind of like crazy to think about. It's like I only get 2 or 3 more big swings. That's it. And the real real is that If the swing just keeps going, which is what I plan on doing acquisition.com, it's like, this is it. I'm going to do this until I get too old to do it. And that's it. That's all it is. Now, what I want to do is give you something tactical. All right. Cause that's, this is, we were all the way up here. So I'm going to make a video on this. Cause I think it's really helpful, which is that you have to take your creative energy. And I have a lot of that too. And you have to channel it into something that is accretive to the business, something that adds value rather than something that detracts value. And so what are the components of the business that need novelty on a regular basis?

I think—

I can give you a hint.

What?

Marketing.

Marketing. I was just going to say sales and marketing.

Lead magnets.

Yeah. Like—

So if you want to build and you want to create, I have the same itch. Yeah. I put all of my ADD into content. I've become a significantly better entrepreneur by making content because it distracts me from fucking up my business.

This is legit. I just wrote a book about— I just wrote a book about when leaders get bored, they just fuck it all up.

Yeah, they just go over the city. Yeah.

And I just keep doing it over and over.

So instead, just like, just paint the city. Okay. Just paint it. Don't destroy it. Just paint a different color.

Got it.

And so that, like, and that goes for everyone. Like, my, my ADD, like, I put it into ads, I put it into, like, the reason I write books is mostly for me. Like, Layla's like, can you just write another book? Because she's like, you're just getting into all of these things that you should just not get into. Right? Yeah. And so the thing is, is that when I am in writing mode, the business does exceptionally well cuz I do so little. Yeah. Right.

I feel this.

Yeah. I, I don't normally talk about this, but I think this will, this, this feels incredibly relevant.

Yeah.

So this is gonna feel real for you and everyone else. So let's imagine the business, like everyone's revenue here represents this, like this, this line, your revenue, not aggregate. But like, let's say that's your business, that's normal business that's happening. What I realized— this is me, so this is anecdotal— is that whenever I decide to make a change in the business, I see about a 20% decrement or decrease in performance from whatever that change is. So I change a sales process, I change a leadership process, I change an onboarding process, I change something that I have to train people up on something new. Now, even if that change is something that I think is superior, I'm still going to have an immediate decrease in performance. Now, what if I assume this to be true, which in my experience it's been about 20%. So if you're like, what's the data research behind it? It's Alex doing this. All right. Now, if I think that this improvement is going to make, let's say, a 5% improvement in the business, like I think, you know, improve our, our closing rate by 5% or something like that, then I'm going to take a guaranteed 20% loss for a potential 5% increase. Bad trade. Now, how many months is it going to take me in order to make up for the 20%, you know, 20%? It's going to take 4 or 5 months, right? And it's going to— now here's the really fun thing is that on an alternate timeline, you have this thing. But when you leave people alone, they tend to just get better at their jobs. So you'll get the 5% improvement. And so what's happened is that I've actually created this rule, which is that if I don't see an adjusted, a risk-adjusted 20% improvement. So let me explain what I mean by that, which is I need to see a 40% improvement that I think has a 50/50 shot at happening for me to make any change at all. And so I have a list right now. It's Alex's big list of ideas.

Yeah.

Which I encourage you to have.

Okay.

And I have it, it's on my phone where every time I think of something else that we could do to improve this business, instead of messaging the team and saying, hey guys, emergency meeting, we're gonna do this. This is such a great idea. I just write it down. Yeah. And I just keep living my life.

Okay.

And every once in a while I'll have one where I'm like, this is actually a 40, 50%, you know, potential move. Then I'll go to the team and say, here's my reasoning behind this. And then they'll say, cool, you have 4 other 50% return moves that you've told us about in the last 30 days. Is this better than those ones? And then I'll look at it and be like, nah, it's not better than those ones. And so then I'll keep it on my list. And in the event that the entire team has bandwidth and they're all breathing a little too easy, then I can go destroy their worlds. Right. Okay. But what's ended up happening is that my businesses have improved so dramatically by me just saying, let's just, let's just let people do their jobs. And so I'm gonna be crude yet again, just to emphasize this point, which is that I have grown to accept that some shit stays fucked. And so there are tons of things about the experience that you guys went through today. Hopefully it's been really positive between yesterday and today. I hope it has been. The team was great, but there's probably 100 things that I want to improve about it. But every time I want to go improve one of those things, 4 others drop and it's not worth the cost of change. And so most of us just don't Factor in the guaranteed 20% decrease for the potential, which we are usually overly optimistic on. I think this will be 40%, but then after it's all said and done, it's 5%. Was that worth it? No. And so hopefully this is not, you know, this is not— I'm not just talking to you. I see a lot of heads nodding. This has been one of the most useful razors that I've used as an entrepreneur, and it has made all of my business significantly better. And so tactical takeaway for you is Number 1, channel your ADD into the stuff that benefits the business by being creative. Number 2, make a list of all your crazy ideas when they come up and don't tell anyone about them.

Okay.

And if it seasons for 2 or 4 weeks and you still think about it, it's like maybe when you go to the store, you're like, maybe I'll buy this dress. I don't know. I'm just pretending to be a girl for a second. And then you decide not to. And it's like, if you still think about the dress a month later, then go back and buy it. But in the moment, if you buy it, then it's usually a terrible decision. And so it's the same thing with this. Put the list down, sleep on it. If you're still thinking about that idea a month later, it probably has some legs. Yeah, right. And then number 3, if I am going to pull something off of my big list of crazy ideas, it better be worth it because I'm going to absolutely detonate a bomb in my business and it better be worth what's going to happen when the dust settles. Wow.

This was hard for me to hear and like everything I needed. Thank you.

Cool.