Breaking Boundaries: The Inspiring Saga of Rob Nixon from Teen Archer to Business Phenomenon

They'll do a money grab. They'll. They'll accept a client, sell a product or service that is not in line with what they really want, and guess what happens? You end up stuck in that area. The startup is easier on the blank sheet of paper. The existing business is harder. It just takes a longer time to unravel. But if you decide that going forward your ideal customer or client looks like this, then the hard bit is living up to the rule.

All right, so, Rob Nixon. Listen, before I get started, because I definitely want to hear and share your story. I know your story, but I think it's super valuable for so many people to hear it. It's inspiring and challenging, and there's such good content in there. Anyway, before I kick off with that, I just want to recognize you for a moment and. And share with the audience that, you know, for me, you were my first coach in business. I remember back to when I first started my practice. I remember trying to track Rob down in the Australian time zone, because that's always been our biggest challenge, is that we're on the opposite sides of the world, but yet here we are. And I remember chasing him down and said, well, whenever you come to North America, like, whatever date that is, you let me know and I will be there. And I remember you let me know. I flew down to Vegas and every room in the entire conference that had a breakout room was emptied because everybody had to hear what you had to say. And you know what? You have. You have transformed the way I think you have been the greatest influence in my professional career. So I appreciate you so much. I just want to say that up front, but for the rest of the community and the audience is listening, maybe tell the story of Rob Nixon, how you got started and where everything. Where everything got to now.

Well, Bob, before we get to that, just wanted to say that many people in my career have attended things, read things or whatever, but you implement stuff, right? You. You get things done. And when I met you, you were a minnow of an accounting firm. Just a minnow. And we worked together for a couple of years, and now, you know, the future is very bright for Go Run Associates. So, mate, not everyone implements like you. So I just want to start with that. So, mate, well done, you. It's really cool.

I appreciate that.

Alrighty, you want to. You want to tell. Want me to tell a story?

Yeah, tell a story.

Okay, cool.

I could listen to you all day. So, you know, take it away.

All right, so first of all, for those that haven't picked up my accent. I'm Australian, born in New Zealand, moved to Australia in 1979. I'm 54 years old right now, age of 16, dropped out of school, didn't like school much, but I was heavily into sport. I was actually an archer. So I was Australian archery champion, twice in the Australian team, all that sort of stuff. So from a very early age I was committed to goal setting and winning. I only do things if I'm going to win, I'll pull out of a market or whatever. If I'm not going to win, there's no point being number two. So I had that from the age of 14 when I started winning, particularly at archery. So I Left school at 16 in country New South Wales. I don't know where your audience is going to be, Bob, probably globally, but we were five hours west of Sydney, literally on the edge of the outback. So dust, flies, heat. It was quite horrible, quite frankly. Right. But that's where I grew up, that's when I went to school, you know, so number of jobs after school, a couple of little entrepreneur, entrepreneurial flings. And then I was blessed in, in late 93 of meeting a guy who asked me to present. So I was always. I started getting into personal development from the age of 17, you know, reading books, whatever texts I could get. I didn't have a formal education so I figured I'm gonna self self learn. So read about business, read about personal development. Anyway, I was learning these training programs, one on telephone selling, one on customer service. And this guy called Gary says, can you present this sales training program? I'm 24 years old, right. To a retail auto parts store. And I got, sure, I'll do that. Right, Just wing it, you know, how's your dude? Absolutely full of it, even back then. And anyway, so present this little session for four and a half hours. I got paid $855 and I thought, wow, that is amazing. I'm going to start doing this. So I start doing these seminars, got no idea what that means. And then I create a seminar company. Bear in mind the town has got 35,000 people in it. It services about a three hour radius with 150,000 people. We're in the middle of nowhere, right? Basically. But I'm in the seminar business and so I decided to run a seminar business. Got no idea about that. Going broke a million miles an hour, you know, full on, you know, full on TV ads. Come to my seminar, I'm really awesome, dial this number type thing so bad, right? But we were having to Go. And I was running these seminars, big seminar, eight people. Eight people in the pub. And you know how I've evolved since then, Bob? So you go back and you imagine a public seminar on customer service with eight people in the pub. Anyway, it was a disaster. Anyway, I meet this guy called Ellis, Ellis Ryan. And he says, I'm an accountant and I live in a little town called Coonamble. Now I knew coonamble, about two and a half hours north of where I was. It was a 3,000 person town. It was a two accountants town. He said, this seminar is awesome. Will you come to my town and do this seminar for my clients? I said, sure. And I knew, because I studied marketing, I knew the leverage of, you know, if someone who's got the database promotes someone else, there's a high, higher degree of propensity over tenants or whatever or response. So I said, how many clients you got, Ellis? He's 126. So here we go. And I said, right, here's how it's going to work. I will control the marketing. And Bob, this, I look back, how ballsy this was, right? I said, I want three things from you, Ellis. I want your database, I want your letterhead, and I want your signature. I'm going to recreate his letterhead, recreate his signature, and I'm going to mail from my postage stamp to his database and control the marketing. It worked. 56 people turned up to the services club and I made a profit of two and a half grand. I thought, wow, these accountants can fill a room. But I can't. I'm going to accountants. And that was May 1994. And I haven't done any business with anyone else other than accounting firms in the last nearly 30 years with a chance meeting. So off I go, right? We're still in the seminar business and I start cold calling accountants. We'll do this cool seminar for you. I'll take all the risk, I'll take the profit. You'll get the praise we had back then. Now a big four, but it was a big eight. Accounting firm send me their entire database, their letterhead and the partner's signature. Can you believe that, Bob? It's just.

Oh, my God, like I'm starting to sweat just thinking about it.

The crown jewels of an accounting firm, right?

Oh, man.

So, you know, I think a lesson in that is, you know, you've just got to ask. You don't get, you keep asking.

100%.

So, accountant seminars initially. Then I got picked up by a company called Results Accountant Systems. As an employee, which was awesome. The next six years I traveled the world helping accounting firms through as an employee because the seminar business was toast. That didn't work, right? Stupid business, helping accountants.

Well, with 3,000 people in one town, how many, how many conferences can you do with one of the accountants?

You know, to give you an idea how naive I was, I even moved location 150km closer to Sydney to widen my reach. Right. It's just ridiculous. And then within six months I'm traveling the world. So, you know, who'd have thought? So I joined a company. We were a training, consulting and content company in my 20s, still absorbed in lifelong learning, absorbed in books, absorbed in education. And I got the opportunity to travel the world in my twenties, training accountants. Then I ended up running that business in Australasia. We grew that business to 25 million and in 2000 exited. So that was a wild ride. And you know, there's parts of your career where you go, wow, that was so fundamentally seminal to my. The rest of the career as a foundation. And that was amazing. You know, we, we worked with tens of thousands of accountants all over the world, grew a big business and I was right in the thick of it, as in the leadership team. So that was huge learning. But that business got sold. There's a whole story around the turnaround. We're not going to get there. That business got sold. I did a big turnaround to that company in last 29 and got sold. So what do you do? Well, I decide. I got headhunted, would you believe, for a very short project from a public company. I'm only 30 now and that was about acquiring accounting firms. So now I'm in the M and A world, right? So we acquired some firms, got out of that one. That was never going to work. I thought, right, I've got some research here. I'm going to start a software company. I had no business to be in a software company in 2001, but decided to. We raised capital of just over a million dollars really fast. I didn't know what I was doing. But what I did realize after four years, that business wasn't for me. It was a boring business. It was a technical business. The people were boring, the product was boring. So I, as part of my quest for lifelong learning, I did this test was called Wealth Dynamics. And I got this report and the report was on my desk at like 5am in the morning at a call of Chicago, trying to sell my software to Chicago. And I looked at this report. Chicago meeting didn't go so, well, you know, we've got the big fat. Not now. And. And I've gone. This report spoke to me and so I waited a couple hours calling business partner up and said, I'm out of here. I know, sorry. I said, I need to come visit you. He said, what for? I said, I'll tell you when I see him. And I got to his place. I said, I'm leaving. He said, you can't leave. You're the founder. You're the shout, big shower. No, I'm leaving. And he said, when? I said today. He said, you can't leave today. I said, I'm leaving today. Anyway, I left within two weeks because I trusted that what I was was not matched to the business and that was really important. And so I decided that I was going to start a coaching company to accounting firms in Australia, only we're not in the U.S. i've been in the U.S. many times through the employee company and started a coaching company. And in, in the end, we end up coaching. There's in Australia, New Zealand for accounting firms. There's 12,000, there's 10,000 Australia, 2,000 New Zealand. We did business with 4,000 of them. Massive penetration. Coached 800 of them just in Australia, New Zealand. We were so dominant for a long, long period of time that, you know, we just, we had coaching rooms and coaches and Australia, New Zealand, you're in, you're in Canada, Bob. You know, big country, America, big country in your doorstep. Lots of everything. We're tiny, right? But we dominated because we had great marketing, great sales, great people and a great product and. And you need that if you're going to be successful. We were selling an idea. We're selling hope, we're selling, you know, a business improvement for accountants. And so I grew that business over a number of years and a great lifestyle. And then in about 2000, we were going to be acquired. That's right. And so a big international company is going to acquire us. And they dangled a number which, the number looked pretty good. And, and we get down to the first part of due diligence. And they said, we like everything you've got, but we don't like your coaching business. I said, well, that's where all the money is. And they said, yeah. And I tried to replicate it, tried to license it. We had a franchise system at one stage, you know, lots of, lots of methods to scale it. And they said, we can't scale that business. Said, yeah, neither can we. So the deal ultimately fell over, but I got a taste of because we had some software. The previous company I sold out of, we built some bits of software and we got a taste for software valuations in 2012. And so we thought, well you know, they like that, but wasn't really a revenue line. So out of thin air we created some software and we decided to market it and the accountants loved it. And we'd start off with bullets before the missiles and then got a taste of, you know what, we're going to go all in on this software thing. We're going to turn the human based services coaching business with content into a software and content business. And so consequently we were going fast, right? Had to raise some capital, end up raising. First of all I put in at a business partner, we're 80, 20 between us, put in 6 million. So 4.8 of mine, 1.2 of his. Then we raised 12 million. So we're 18 million in to create a business. And this business was going bananas. We were growing at 8 to 10% a month. So we were doubling every eight months. We did some two acquisitions. We opened up in the UK office in initially San Francisco, then San Diego, in the Philippines, Australia, joint venture in Sweden, joint venture in Finland. This in the space of two years. It was crazy and it was fast, really, really fast. Had 196 shareholders by the time we raised the capital. We're an unlisted public company with a half of nine figure valuation. I think that's right thereabouts. And we were on this trajectory and so everything is busy, everything is going super, super fast. The clients around the world loved the product. It was analytical product, linked into cloud accounting so the accountants could get visibility on their clients. Predictive analytics. It was really cool, right? But with bigger business comes complexity. And I was diluted right down from 80% to 35. With bigger business comes complexity. And complexity means governance. You know, we're unlisted public company, had to get a chairman, CEO, board of directors, all this governance, right? Anyway, push comes to shove and the board and I have a fight and I wanted one thing, they want another. And I've said well F you. And they said well how about U F off? And so in April 2000, initially April and May finalize 2018, I got kicked out of my own company that I founded. Still with the equity, but now no, no business. And on top of that, a one year global restraint. Not a 150 kilometer 100 mile restraint, a one year global restraint. I couldn't poach existing clients, past prospects, team members, clients, any clients at all. Couldn't compete on product, couldn't compete on service. And on top of that, all of my IP I developed over the last 20 something years was owned by the company. So I've exited with a global restraint, which was tight, and I honored that to the, to the day. I exited with all my content not owned by me, so I couldn't use that. I exited with, you know, great stories, case studies, couldn't use those and no business at all. So. And Bob, you were part of that little exit, because I remember I was.

In a couple of ways. One, I was a shareholder of that company. And two, I was also on all of those lists.

I think. That's right, you were. Look, when you, when you turn away a million dollars worth of new revenue in the first 90 days, please, Rob, can you work with us? Sorry, I can't work with you. And as a sales guy, that's hard work to turn away a million dollars worth of revenue in 90 days. The first 90 days of business. So, yeah, so that, that takes us up to. Before some even more cool stuff happens. And, and Bob, for time, let's not unpack the detail of the exit. Hassan, to say to be kicked out of the company that you founded by your business partner and mate of 20 years, plus the board was quite a demoralizing, angry period in my life.

Brutal. It was brutal.

Yeah. Yeah. But then things went well.

Well then, so, so talk about this, because I think, you know, for a couple reasons, one, I think your entire story is, is super cool, but I, I would focus on that period of a year where you dealt with so much adversity, so much challenge, but what you had was everything you've learned. Maybe you couldn't share, you know, case studies, connections, but everything you learned over your entire career, you brought with you. So walk us through what happened in the next, I don't know, 90 days after you, your company un unfoundedly kicked you out.

Yeah. So first things first, the state I was in because I was all on black, right. We had, I had no business, had a business previously. Still own the equity in that business, but. And all the, all the business assets were locked up over there. As my wife said, all of your shit was unraveled in one go. Right. Which is really interesting. So what I was presented with was a complete blank sheet of paper. I was presented with a blank sheet of paper for the first time in my business career. And this is really, really important before we get into what I did. Right. So what I did, business wise, is piece that I'm Going to take you through. So if you think about business, you know, unless you're a complete clean startup and even, you know, startups just get busy and they have collect baggage systems, people, clients, whatever, all my baggage was gone and I had truly a blank sheet of paper. So what I did, and this is the order of what I did before I got started in the new business five and a half years ago. Number one, and this is six points to this. Number one. I looked at my bucket list, my list of lifelong things and achievements I wanted to do. Then I thought, okay, what I'm going to do here is change the entire thought pattern of me previously. I was wrapped up in the whole massive transformational purpose. Change the world through accountants, change everyone else's world, right? And because I had a big plan, a big plan of get all these accountants get their clients, push data and content through every accounting firm, influence their client base. We get 10,000 accounting firms, we get, you know, 100, 100 clients each will change to a million businesses, right? I was on that track. When I got exited with my blank sheet of paper, I really started to think about, well, what is it that I want? And I realized I didn't want to change the world. I want to change my world. And I want to change the world of. When I say the world, I want to change the world of a small few of clients. I'd had the big offices, big team, big valuations, big travel, big client base, big everything, right? And so what I did look at my bucket list and said, you know what? I'm going to redesign my business to suit my bucket list to suit me with what I want to achieve in my life. And I think that's number one where it starts. Number one, what is. And there's some bit of content here, Bob, for your listeners and viewers. I believe it starts with what you want out of life. Then business should be fuel for your life, not your life. The business should fuel your life as we know and we can talk the story how nearly died two years ago. So that changes things. Again, you get a different perspective that we're not here for a long time. So let's design a business that suits what we want to achieve in life. Step one, step two. Then I asked myself five questions that I've filled on my blank sheet of paper. This took me about four hours. Question one. Right. I'm going to start a business. Number one, what do I want my business life to look like? My working life? How will I be working in this business? What will I be Doing what type of work, what type of clients will I serve, how much will I work? You know, business life. For example, if I'm traveling, a business life. By the way, I've got 32,000amonth in debt repayments at this point in time. So I'm up, up to the here. All assets over there, I got zero.

But you need some cash.

I need some cash, right, But I just didn't knee jerk into the business. I didn't knee jerk it. I want my business life, all right? I want. If I'm traveling, I want a driver at each end. I want to be front of plane. We set a rule that accommodation whilst away must be equal or better than what we're like at home. We're not going to live in ruddy hotels. Business life. I'm only going to work for 20% of the year, 73 days maximum worked, right? So this is before I've got any income. So question one was, what do I want my business life to look like? Question two, what do I want my numbers to be? And so I wrote down 64 clients, max. I wrote down a revenue number, I wrote down a profit number. Accounts receivable number zero. Zero accounts receivable. I wrote down one location and not multiple locations. In fact, when we get to culture, it was no location. I'll talk about that minute, right? So numbers. So this is business planning, business life. So bucket list first, business life second, then numbers. What I want to look like? Three, what services and or products do I want to sell and deliver or the company and in my career at that point in time, I'd worked out there'd been over 20 different revenue streams in my career to the same marketplace, 20 different products or services. And I go, well, that's hard work, let's just pick one. So I picked the one I hadn't done for a few years, which is the coaching business. I'm going to reboot the coaching business, which I'd closed down a few years prior because we're into software and I'm going to do it in the USA and Canada. And so I'm going to coach accounting firms in the USA and Canada, but only 64 at a time maximum. So services hours end up being one, and it's still one. Question four, what do I want my culture to look like? People, team environment, you know, you know, behaviors. And one of the things I wrote down was virtual culture. No office. I know whether we're on video here, but if we are, we're inside my clubhouse. I built a golf Course in my. In my yard. I own the world's best backyard golf course. Just Google that, folks. The world's best backyard golf course. You'll find Yarraval. I'm in the clubhouse. This is my place of work. The rest of my team are dispersed everywhere. So. So culture number four, then number five. Who do I want my clients to be? Now, I knew they were going to be accounting firms, but they couldn't be on the hot list. Of course, from a cold start, they needed to be. And then I say, okay, I only want a specific type of accounting firm. And I designed a criteria of ideal, A class client. And back then it was between 500 grand and 5 million revenue. Now it's between 1 and 10. It's always been one to five partners, always been coachable and ambitious. So I'm looking for the ones that want to grow. This is before I've sent an email, created a pitch. There's no website, there's nothing. Right. So I've filled my blank sheet of paper with the questions at the top and the answers below. And the answers below became the business rules. The business rules before we got started. This is business by design. Business by design starts with one. What do I want my business life to look like? 2 numbers. 3. Services. 4. Culture. 5. Clients. Clients come last. I come first. I come first. I'm taking the risk. Business owners take the risk. You know, it's our signature on the credit card, it's our signature on the lease. We're the ones that get sued. Every team member will leave us. We're the ones left. So if that's the case, why should I put the client first? Because I'll leave as well. I'll put me first because this business should enrich my life. First. I'm the risk taker. So business by design goes one through five. Business by default goes five through one. Let's just get started. Go. All these clients, right? Oh, well, we need to hire some people. You'll do services. I'm gonna do this. That right. Invent. Oh, New ideas. Right. Numbers suck and life isn't good. And how many times do we see that? You know, I've been working with. I've been in business over 30 years and I've met so many businesses, not just accountants, but entrepreneurs. They're just crazy busy not having a good life. And it's like others rule their world. Clients and team members and government agencies, and they rule their world. I didn't want that. So that was the first step, Bob.

Like, again, I could listen to you all day. And I would say, you know, part of the benefit of you, one, you had all this knowledge and experience at this point. This is not something that people think of when they're getting started in their business. You know, they're thinking about scarcity, they're thinking about paying their bills, they're thinking about that, you know, $30,000 a month debt obligation, first and foremost and saying, how the hell can we figure this out? It just, it's all cash, cash, cash. Right.

Yeah. And they'll do a money grab. They'll do a money grab. They'll, they'll accept a client, sell a product or service that is not in line with what they really want, and guess what happens? You end up stuck in that area. By the way, previously, Bob, guilty is charged on all that. Guilty is charged.

Oh, for sure. Yeah, we, I think we all are. You know, I think when we're all starting something out, it might be pure passion and excitement about what it is that we're getting involved in. It might just be financial that you're thinking, oh, you know, this is a high demand product, service, whatever that looks like. And that's the excitement and maybe that's the draw. But suddenly you find yourself going, you're doing all things for all people. You're right. You know, you bring somebody in. I know during COVID a lot of people were essentially hiring anyone who had a heartbeat, which was not by design. It was out of necessity to survive. And yeah, I think the reflection of going, man, if we all had to do it over again, how would we do it? And I think your process would be a really great starting point for anybody who is starting to build something that they were truly proud of, or someone.

Who'S already got a business and they want to redesign it. The hard part about that is they've got existing baggage to unravel, existing systems, clients, team members, partners, methods, you know, offices that they might not want in the future. And so the startup is easier on the blank sheet of paper. The existing business is harder. It just takes a longer time to unravel. But if you decide that going forward your ideal customer or client looks like this, then the hard bit is living up to the rule because you might be in a cash crunch and that customer is going to bring you 20, 30, $50,000. We need that. Right. And you end up bringing them on and they're a B or C class client or not even nothing close to an A and, and then you're stuck with it because you're either chasing Shiny objects or the business isn't good enough to say, no, we're not doing that, you know, sorry. Because what we do, Bob, we invite our clients to be clients of ours. We interview them, right? And we instead, we don't sell to them. We interview them to see if they're worthy to, for us to work with them. Because it has to be a match, right? So. But it's the hardest part. On the blank sheet of paper, five questions is living up to the rules.

That you write down and having a hard stop. It means it's a no go if it doesn't meet this criteria.

You bet. So as a result of that, every single week with that file, the this week's one was from the Middle east. We turn away prospective clients because they don't fit the box. Because if we find go backwards, right? If, if we've got a great client base, all A class clients, they. And we've got a great team. So that's five, right? A great team that they interact with and a great product, service or whatever it is, and you're charging, pricing it appropriately, numbers. Then the owners will have a good life. It starts one through five, designing it and then being belligerent about following through on the rules. And so we turn away opportunities every month, like projects, products, we turn away clients, every single prospective clients every week without fail. Because we've said this is what we're all about. It's very tempting. And by the way, being tempted many, many times.

Yeah, no, it's hard. And I know we don't do as good a job of with that as we probably should. Where I'm more, I don't know, maybe I'm just someone who likes punishment, but I'm just going, I just want to help everybody. You know, it's, it's not a great mindset for a business owner who's trying to design what that looks like.

And so Bob, one of my stupid things, many years ago, my strategy was something for all, right? Trying to help everyone, right? If you're always accounting firms, just because I'm not an accountant, as you probably realize, but just it could be any target market that happened to be accounting firms, right? So if you're back then the strategy was if you're a startup, we've got something for you. If you're a small business, we've got something for you. If you're a medium sized kit, we've got something for you. If you're a multinational international firm, we've got something for you. It was bonkers. So Many different product and service offering. So many different people that because we're trying to help everyone and no one was getting helped.

Yeah, yeah. And. And no one's enjoying their. Their time on the journey, you know.

Just can't do it. So with that blank sheet of paper filled, then time to get busy. Bear in mind, I've got no database, I've got no content, I've got no website. I've got nothing. But what I did do, I thought, okay, I'm going to buy some cold lists, databases out of the US so I bought two databases and on the 28th of May, 2018, which happened to be. It's a public holiday in the U.S. if I recall, because I got abuse. Right. Cold data. And I started emailing the US Nothing.

Like abusing a cold data list on a holiday. Yeah. Good start, Rob.

Yeah, great start. So the abuse. The abuse, Bob. The abuse. I've had hate mail just for all your listeners. I've had hate mail every month for the last nearly 30 years. 30 years. Come December, hate mail. The most recently one was last week, was a good one. I was called a circus act.

Would you celebrate? It's like, great.

Yeah, cool.

Lots of people want to pay to come to the circus.

Delete. See you later. So I get busy with cold data, cold outreach. In the month of June 18, I sent 1.2 million emails to the United States. All cold. Dead cold. Some of them actually were dead. He died 10 years ago. Time thing. Right. But I got enough interest after all the abuse. I got enough interest to have 89 sales meetings in the month of June 18th. I closed 19 clients in the first month. I had $1 million worth of recurring revenue. Boom. Boom. In six months.

90 days.

Six months. Yes. 30 days running. 32 days in six.

30 days. So. So just share this context. What was your overhead and what were your expenses related to that million dollars in revenue?

It was currently email distribution. And I was in the. The house in a small, tiny room with a trestle table.

Right.

But that was just to clarify, that was a million dollars of annualized recurring revenue. So it's about 90,000amonth in revenue, but contracted as well. So by month six, we'd signed up 56 clients. I had 265 sales meetings in the first six months. I'd closed $3 million worth of annualized recurring revenue, 250amonth. And we're off to the races. By the way, the website didn't get launched until month four or five. All I had was the day before I hit that first email, I beefed up my LinkedIn profile. There's no content, there was some messaging and I'm here to do business. And I got myself out of a jam. And not only that, built a business that now the first six months was hard. Yakka, right? I'm selling on delivering. I had two trips to the United States in that time. Some Australian clients turned up. Wasn't the intention, but we've had Australian clients ever since, until two weeks ago. And then, you know, we're away, we're away. We did the heavy lifting. It's like a, like an, a 380 airplane, right? All the hard work's done in the first five minutes until it gets to altitude or whatever time the hard work's done, then it's coast. So overheads are about 10 to 12% of revenue. So it's a very high profit business. But I designed in such a way that, you know, with leverage that my work is only about eight to 10 hours a week, you know, so. But it's got high impact. You know, the success stories we've had have been amazing. It just shows that, you know, once you have that adversity, like being kicked out of your own company, dust yourself off, think hard, get on with it. You know, the sun will rise tomorrow, the water will find its own course. Life goes on. I'm still the biggest shareholder in that company with my wife, so maybe something comes of it. Actually it was a turning point and a turning point in my anger period, which was, you know, I can't lose here. Yeah, I'm out of the business. I've got a one year restraint, but I can't lose if I keep my nose clean for a year at day 366, I can do whatever I want, right? I win. If I, if they make a success of that company, I win. If they fire the CEO, I win. If it goes broke, this is my thought pattern. If it goes broke, I might pick it up, pick up the pieces from the insolvency people. I win, I couldn't lose. So once I got my head in the no lose space, that changed my mindset and away we go. Five and a half years later.

It's, you know what, it's remarkable. It's a story of resilience and dealing with adversity, but also, you know, and I think inspirational in so many ways. Rob where so many people go through the journey, they accumulate knowledge and skills and talent and they continue to still do the same thing they did and charge the same amount that they did. Day one, even though they can do things faster, they bring more value, they have more knowledge. And I guarantee you as good as you are at pretty much everything you do that I watch you do day one, back in your career when you had eight people show up, you couldn't have done what you did at this transitional time at that point. And that's because of all the knowledge, resources, and everything that you had available to you, aside from all the work that you did over the previous, you know, 20 years that you couldn't touch, but everything in your mind, which was pretty incredible. And thank you for sharing that story. It is. As much as I hate it, I love it at the same time, you know, because I felt like I was going through that journey a little bit with you, I had a little bit of anger because, you know, a good friend and mentor of mine was being put through this for no reason and challenging. But, man, did you ever prove the world wrong. And that's a pretty cool thing. Yeah. Okay. To transition from this, which is hard to do. I know one of the things that you talk about a lot and actually even just thinking about it as you're telling your story of your transformation, is charging your worth. And I know even when you would have started this new venture as the fresh start, imagining the price that was being charged then versus now, I'm assuming it's continued to go up as you bring more and more value and have more and more testimonials. Can you maybe share your perspective on, like, price scarcity and how people should charge their worth?

Yeah, so. So my first learning on pricing was a bit about 30 years ago through J. Abraham, one of the best marketeers the world has ever seen. And it was a simple quote, which was, it is arrogant in the extreme to dictate to the marketplace what they will buy and how much they will pay. And so when you break that down, it means that you should find out what the marketplace, what the research is, what they're prepared to buy. And secondly, let them tell you, not by verbally how much your thing is worth, but with their credit card or payment method, and don't hold on. So this is a context, right? I'll tell you some stories. Don't hold on to what you believe the thing is worth. You are worth, your team is worth, the product is worth. Let's put it out there, repackage it, reposition it, and let the marketplace tell us, based on sales and conversion rate, what they're prepared to pay. Because the marketplace is the only determiner of your Price. So that's the context, right? So let me give you a couple of stories about that. When I was in the. When I was last employee general manager, When I was 30, we had a product pack and the product pack was $33,000. And so we had a conversion rate of 78% on 33 grand for qualified prospects. I had to report in US dollars to the US company. And the. You cannot make this up, right? The financial controller of the day said, rob, you need to readjust your pricing to $44,000 because of the US Australian conversion rate. Your numbers look bad on my reports. I said, sorry. She says, you need to increase the price to 44,000 so that you've got parity based on the conversion rate of Aussie dollar to US dollar on my reports, I said, you've gotta be effing kidding me. We're getting 78%. And so here's the seller, right? We're getting 78% conversion rate on 33%. And you want me to adjust my price to 44 grand just so your reports look good? And she said, yes. Cannot believe this, right? And so I grappled with this for about two months then. And this was the kicker. I get this little spreadsheet from one of the other general managers and it said you could afford to have a 56% conversion rate on the new price and still make the same money. And I looked at this little spreadsheet and I thought, nah, we're better than that. We're better than 56%. And for no reason other than this report, I bumped the price to 44 grand. 11 grand, straight increase, same product, no change. What happened to the conversion rate, do you think?

Oh, Rob, you're going to tell me.

It went up to 81% and we sold that year, 99 of those product kits didn't clock in 100 with an 11,000 increase. That was over $1 million new free profit because the marketplace said it's worth more than what we thought it was. Incredible, right? And it's been time and time and time again that living under that context. Arrogant in the extreme. Let the marketplace and you let the marketplace decide. You put it, you think you've got an idea, let's put out that price, right? They buy it, measure conversion rate, test and measure, test and measure, measure conversion rate. And then, well, let's just put it up and see what happens. And they put it up and it's still the same. Okay. Test and measure, test and measure. Maybe it's better positioning. I don't know, let's put up again and again and again and again. So for example, last five years, my price for essentially the same product has gone up two and a half times. And when I went into the market on, you know, number question, two numbers, the numbers were I wanted to pitch it at the most premium price the market's ever seen. Five and a half years ago, more than anyone else I knew, but at least double then. Now we're two and a half times that. And the conversion rate, get this, the conversion rate has been identical, the same 28% for a qualified, marketing, qualified lead. Because we say no to a third, a third typically aren't ready, and a third, about a third, say yes, it's been the same. So go figure.

Yeah. And I see tons of that exact same story. And I know Hormozi, in his $100 million, I think leads book, he talks about pricing, scarcity. It's all the same, right? It's, let's not sell it for what we think it's worth. Let's understand the value that the marketplace sees in it and then price it accordingly. And probably test, right. Like how much, how often have you gone back through and said, you know what? I, we just got to test this out and see what happens.

Yeah, all the time. Test and measure the whole time. And if you're an existing business, you know the fastest way to new profitability is a price increase. It's straight maths like that story 56% versus 78 if you, you, you can afford, you know, when you maybe bob with your, your firm to, to prospects or clients, you work it out, simple spreadsheet. And your product is this. Your gross margin is that if you increase. And your conversion rate is this. If you increase the price by that. Of course, if you get a same conversion rate, 100% of the increase goes straight at the top, straight the bottom. But maybe you won't get the same conversion rate, but then you can work out what could the conversion rate drop to. To make the same money or another way to think about it. And let's use $1 million of revenue and 20%. Right? Simple maths. Right. So $1 million revenue now 20% increase, 1.2. Let's say you, you could then either afford a drop in conversion rate or a drop in customer count and still make the same money.

Yeah. Do, do 80% of the work, make.

More money, get more capacity.

Yeah.

Right. To sell more at a high margin and boom, all of a sudden you're doubling profit.

Yeah, no, it's it's crazy. And pricing is one of my favorite things to talk about because it is all pure profit when you get down to it. At the end of the day. And you know, for anybody who's listening, you know, one of those, I have so many different, you know, construction companies and tradespeople who are out there and their schedules are full and they're trying to price, but they're trying to, you know, price, compete. It's like, guys, your schedule is booked out for six months. Who cares if your conversion drops, you know, double the price? Obviously, if you're busy, you're either really good and high in demand or the marketplace is just so high in demand that people are willing to pay for that. Test it, try it out.

Here's an example. I was playing golf in Nova Scotia back in September and with a playing partner, what do you do? What do you do? And I helped my son out. We're building, they're building something. And he said he's so busy, he stopped answering the phone. I said, what do you mean? He said, the phone continually rings. He doesn't answer the phone. I said, what? Just doesn't accept the business. Yeah, he's 100% busy.

Right?

So, okay, what does he charge? Oh, $45 an hour. It's like, no wonder you're so busy, mate, right? You're so inexpensive. You could start in that case, I don't know what he was building. Who cares, right? But he could, he could charge 100 now, double it, and he could shed some of the customers, but make double.

Quadruple the profit and probably the shitty customers. Shed the shitty customers who are going to be super price sensitive and probably on your ass all the time as well. You know, by design time and time again. Yeah.

And it's also to, to justify the first, first of all, the first sale is to yourself. Do you believe the thing or the team, the service or the product is worth it? That's the first sale. Then you test and measure. But also you can add in what's called soft dollar options. You know, ambience of the customer experience is a soft dollar option cost you nothing, but the customer feels better. A pre and post phone call. Just checking in. You got it. Just checking in. It's okay. How's it going? Ambience of the customer experience justifies. It's a soft dollar option cost you nothing other than five minutes of labor, you know, to justify the price because the product, the customer experience is better and they're prepared to pay more for it. It's the little things, I go back to my customer service days. Right. It's the little things that make the profound difference to justify a higher price. But the first sellers to yourself get the mirror. Can you say it straight face, the fee is $50,000 or are you going to say it, the fee is $5,000. Right.

I think that's a Dan Kennedy line, right?

Yeah.

Charge as high a price as you can until you crack a smile, you know, where you can't even take yourself seriously.

Exactly.

I like that.

But also with abundance versus scarcity, and this is a kicker, talked about business by design before, which was often you'll just take anything that comes through the door. Right. If, say the breathing and their credit card works, you're a good customer. Right. But if you've got an abundance mentality, then it doesn't matter if they say no. If they say no, so what? Every no you get is closer to a yes. They will say yes. And so with a scarcity mentality, you accept anything, sell anything, at whatever price, just for volume. An abundance mentality goes. You know what, there's a better one around the corner. There's a better customer around the corner. I'm going to keep marketing, I'm going to keep selling, I'm going to find my perfect future fit customer and I'll say no to the rest. And they're going to pay this.

And if you can do that with 10% overhead costs at the same time, you know, you're in a pretty good situation.

It's a little bit more now because I've got some payroll, but it's not much more. So it's all good.

Oh, geez. Yeah, it's a tough, it's a, it's a tough overhead cost to cover. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you again. I'm so grateful for you, not only for being here, for your coaching, your mentorship and your friendship. Guys, this has been the wealthy entrepreneur. Hopefully you've enjoyed it. If you liked it, make sure you're sharing it with somebody who you know it will value. Leave a Comment Post Questions make sure you subscribe so you can check out next week. Guys, it's been the wealthy entrepreneur. It's been a pleasure to be here. Can't wait to see you next week.