Ravi Abuvala Founder of Scaling with Systems

Hey, Dave. How are you doing?

I'm good, man. How are you?

I'm good. I'm excited to talk to another guest today on the show. You know, got a lot of stuff going on, so it's great to be able to step outside and focus on someone else's business for a little while. I think we have, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it is. It works out really well. And, you know, we love systems here. We talk about it all the time. If you've heard, you know, more than a few shows, systems are the key to, I think, the key to my success. And we have a guest on the show today that is going to really kind of blow up the concept of systems and talk about how he built a business around teaching others why those systems are so important, as well as tackling consistency and the things that you do every day to make things happen. So I'm real excited about it.

Yeah, he ties it all together, though. It's. It's like it does. It's all one thing, and. And you just keep it going, and then over time, it builds up on itself and you're starting to make money and you don't have to stop. Yeah.

And I wasn't. Where the show goes today was. I did not have that in my head where it was going to go at all. So I really learned a lot about the different pieces of this. And plus, you know, he mentioned some of my absolute favorite books. A couple of them that I have on my nightstand, a couple of them that I have on my desk right here that I'm looking at. Things like the E. Myth and the slight edge. So there's some really great content in today's show, and we're glad you're here.

Speaking of great books, make sure to pick up our mistakes pocket guide to at BusinessShow Co well, slash mistakes. I guess you'll hear why at the end of the episode. All right, folks. Well, he is Shannon Jean. I am Dave Hamilton, and this is episode 274 of the Small Business Show.

I've really harped on the importance of a personal brand, like, from the beginning. And it's something that I've invested since I started this online advertising journey. And personal brand allows you to have credibility before you really have results. That's what I say all the time right before you have success. You know, if people that see you. I just showed another program. The gentleman said, on average, someone has to consume 7 hours of content before they make a buying decision from you. And if they've been looking at Your Instagram stories, looking at you on Facebook, looking at you on LinkedIn like they feel like they already know you. Listen to the.

Hey, our listeners know, Dave, that you know, we're huge fans of systems here. We talk about it all the time. We believe in that. Scott Adams, you know, talks about his philosophy about systems over goals and how systems give you an open ended process that you can adjust and tweak and iterate to continually learn from and ultimately succeed. So when we were contacted by Ravi Abuvala from Scaling with Systems, I was really excited, especially after visiting his website and learning more a little bit about him. We knew our listeners would really benefit from hearing about a system for scaling your small business. Thanks so much for joining us today, Ravi. We really appreciate your time.

Absolutely, my pleasure. I checked out some of the other things you guys have there on your guys show and even just what we talked about before this as well. Anybody that loves systems as much as I do usually ends up being a pretty exciting conversation. So thank you for having me on here and everyone that's listening to this. Thank you guys for letting me your ear for a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, you're in the right place, man. It's system.

We're gonna geek out here. We're gonna geek out.

Yeah, it's good. I'm excited about it. So I want to hear, I want to learn all about what you guys do at Scaling with Systems. But the one of the first things as I alluded to, I noticed this phrase on, on your website as I was reading it and I'd love for you to just expand on this concept a little bit because I think it's, I believe it's fundamental to what we talk about on the show a lot and it's probably fundamental to your business. And that quote is, our program has served over 300 entrepreneurs who want to spend less time in their business and more time on their business. So tell us what that means to you and how that kind of wraps into your business.

Yeah, awesome question. And I think anybody that's listening to this, if you've been in the business world long enough, you've heard that adage, right? Everybody here has. And the general concept behind it is that, you know, most people when they're working, you know they have a business. And these are actually some really interesting stats I saw published by the Small Business association of the United States. And on average, a solo entrepreneur in their business makes a little less than $70,000 a year. And on average, a business owner that employs anywhere from one to 250 people make around $6 million a year. And so people aren't always a solution. But you know, when you have more, people usually have more systems, you have delegation and you're, as the business owner, you're not doing everything. And when I started in this online business game, essentially I started an advertising agency which I still have today called Prospect Social. And I started it all by myself and it was a little bit of a nightmare. Fitness was always a big part of my life and health was always a big part of my life. But I was about 50 pounds overweight. I didn't even notice it. I was very unhappy. I was working 15, 16, 17 hour days. I'm sure some of your listeners can maybe relate to some of this. And then I started learning about the powers of systems and that even though I was working 16, seven hours a day, I wasn't really getting anything done. I mean, I still wasn't closing deals. We weren't having month over month growth and I was getting burned out really easily. And that's when I started really reading great books like the E. Myth with Michael Gerber, which ironically I'm actually working with Michael Gerber on some stuff right now and, and a few other things, a few of the really great books, including Jeff Bezos the Everything Store. And I just started realizing the power of having really great team members. Good to Great by Jim Collins, like, and having systems in place so that you could start to work on top of your business. And when I realized that, it was like a light switch went off in my head and all of a sudden like what we did in the past eight months from January to October, we did in the month of November and then we doubled it in the month of December. And it's just been a wild journey since. Um, and so what, that's kind of what we aim to help people with. Inside scaling with systems is essentially removing them from those day to day tasks. We place them with virtual assistants that we train the Philippines to do both those tasks for them. But even just of elimination or automation or anything like that can usually get people out of their business long enough to even realize, like, who are we working with? Who's our ideal customer? What should our offer be? How do we, how are we getting clients? Is it on demand or are we just working on referrals? And it gets, I think business is a lot of fun, a lot of fun when you're on top looking down and trying to think like, how can I, what do I need to change here? Who do I need to hire here, whatever it is and not inside of it thinking like, how many emails do I need to send a day, how many sales calls? Right, yeah. Et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, it sounds, I mean it's such a simple concept, but I personally over, you know, 25, 30 years of one business after another, I always have had that struggle. Right. When I get to that point because I love being involved and it's hard to realize when you kind of need to get out of the way and let it grow, you know. Do you find that working with small businesses that, you know, it's common for guys like us to hit that ceiling.

Over and over 100%? Yeah, it's really well said. And it's, it usually comes down to one of two things. It's usually an ego thing, number one, right? So it's like I'm the best at this and nobody can do it as good as me. And so I have to continuously do it, right. Like I'm working with a guy right now inside Skilling Systems. He runs a fitness coaching company. He does about $50,000 a month right now by himself. No automations, no virtual assistants. So he's doing really well. And we're like battling back and forth because you know, he thinks that if he changed his model to group coaching, which is something that I do as well, that his service delivery is going to lack, they're not going to have great results, etc. Etc. But you know, in reality what you realize is this, number one, when you systemize your business and you remove yourself from it, you allow yourself as a business owner to make your product even better, right? So a lot of my time as a business owner is spent on our service delivery, right? Creating better modules, learning more stuff, relaying that to my clients, relaying that to my students, etc. Etc. And the other thing as well is you're just allowed to impact more people. If you truly believe that what you're doing really helps your end consumer, your incline, whoever it is, then it is your absolute obligation in my opinion to reach as many people as humanly possible. And you can't do that on a one to one basis. You can't do that if you're working just on referrals. You can't do that if you're only person inside of it. So usually ego plays a big part of it. And what I'm sure is that I'm like the people I have on my team. I'll be honest with you, David Jenner are like 100 times smarter and More talented than I am. Like, I, I am nothing compared to these guys. I would be nothing compared to these guys. And I used to think I was something until I started recruiting some really great talent. Like Jim Collins talks about him. Good to great. He says, you know, don't figure out where you're gonna put him on the bus. Just get him on the bus. And that's essentially we've built our companies. And so, yeah, that's usually it comes down to an ego thing. And the only other reason I see it is just kind of what I was just having a talk with my CEO coach right before this call, and he said, you know, you don't know. I'm only 26, right. And it's like, you don't know what you don't know. And, you know, I know you guys have been in business so much longer than I have, and you guys have so much more knowledge on this stuff than me. And so even some of my clients, they.

No, we don't. No, we don't. We might. We having made maybe a few more years worth of mistakes than you, but that's it. Like, we don't know more than anybody.

That's what people pay for, is mistakes, is avoiding mistakes. I'm sure you, we could sit on this call after we get over with this and we could talk for hours about the mistakes that you guys made. And you're like, robbie, you avoid this, you're going to get offered this. Don't do that. And that would be so valuable for me because then I don't have to go through the same mistakes that you guys did. Right?

Well, we, we wrote a book about it and you can, we'll actually, we'll get you a copy. So there you go. You don't even have to buy it. So there you go.

Yeah, so the other, only other way was that they just didn't know. They didn't know the power of virtual assistants. They don't know what automation looks like. They don't know what systems looks like. They don't even know. You know, most small business owners are in small business because they're, you know, like, like Michael Gerber talks about their technicians almost. Right. So it's like the chef, yeah, of course, he becomes a restaurant owner. He doesn't know about owning a business. He doesn't know about hiring employees. He doesn't know about systems. So it's usually one of those two things that we see. But it's like once they see the other side, there's just no going back.

Yeah, okay, so I want to dial things back a little bit. I want to talk about scaling with systems. So talk about how you got that started and how you and your team go about kind of bringing your services to a small business owner.

Yeah, awesome question. So I'll keep the story of how I got started really short. So my first ever business prospect, social, like I said, really struggled. First eight months, then revenue has been increasing, you know, anywhere from, you know, 30 to 90amonth since then, since I learned about systems, processes, et cetera, et cetera, month over month growth and it's been a blast. But the beginning was a really a struggle. And so when things started going really well, you know, I'm 25 years old, I'm running a seven figure company and I do what any naturally person would done that situation. And I just started traveling, right. I just, I was like, I got an online business, I don't have anything holding me back, whatever it is. So I started going to, I lived in South America for a few months. I lived in Europe for a while. And a lot of the guys that I had been like, we all started business at the same time. They all started messaging me like, hey, how are you doing this? Right? We all, I, we started the exact same time. You know, you're doing something. Obviously I'm not. Well, it's really not that hard. It's just a little bit of standard operating procedures. It's having these virtual assistants. Well, can you show me? I'm like, yeah, sure. So what happened is just like friendly things that I was just doing for literally some of the guys that I met in this online business world. I was just telling the story on another interview yesterday. My now coo, my chief operating officer inside of Scaling with Systems. He was one of my first larger clients and he had done like, I think a total of 40 or $50,000 the year before we worked together and the first 30 days that he worked with Scaling With Systems, he did his annual revenue the year before from having the systems in place. And I was speaking on stage at an event in New Jersey, in Jersey City for real estate agents. That was my original market I was in for my advertising agency. And he had posted this Facebook group with about 55,000 people inside of it and saying, you know exactly what I just told you, right? Worked with Ravi and I, this is, this wasn't a company at this time. This is a fun side project for me. And I get off stage and there was, I don't know, maybe 250dms I had in My Facebook inbox for people looking to work with me and I'm like, oh wow, you know, shit. I guess, you know, just like any.

Other time to start a business. Exactly.

Yeah, that's not a bad thing.

That's pretty much what happened. And so I, I pretty much just created a course first and then I got on the phone, I figured out what people are lacking. You know, they didn't know where to find virtual assistants. So now we have a training facility in the Philippines, 30,000 foot training facility where we train virtual assistants on how to work with overseas entrepreneurs. They didn't know how to create and write standard operating procedures. We taught that. They didn't even know what center opportunities they should have. So they get like over 200 of our center operating procedures when they join our company. They didn't know automation, they didn't know how to make it to. Their leads are automatically nurtured, how the leads are automatically followed up, etc. Etc. And so like I just wrote all these things down on these calls with these people and I just created a program around it essentially. And it, what started as like a really casual thing ended up, I mean, in three months after I officially was like, all right, let's do this. We had matched our revenue for my advertising agency, which had been around for a year longer than that. And I was just like, wow, there's a huge need for that right now. And it's something that I just really love. I mean, I really, really love it. I'm just like you two, I just love systems. I love helping people. I love helping small business owners get outside of it. And so, yeah, and so now we essentially help business owners remove themselves through its group coaching. There's coursework and then like I said, there's a fully trained virtual assistant that will come in and do you know, because a lot of times the issue is not they don't know what to do. A lot of times a lot of great business owners know what to do and it's the actual execution of it, right? They know they should be doing more calls, they know they should be following up more, they know they should be doing more outreach, they should be running ads. It's just they either don't have time or as you and I both know on this call, it's just not a priority. Right? Everyone has the same amount of time. So we just find somebody and train them so that when they come in the company, they're doing the things that they know they should be doing.

So you help. Just so I understand it you're helping them identify areas that they could either delegate or outsource with the, the virtual assistants and then getting them on a path to where they're actually using those assets to free up their time, that type of thing.

100%. That was actually better than I explained it for my company. That was actually really well said. Yeah, 100%. And the thing is, is that I'd say seven times out of 10, the businesses that we work with are service based businesses, both online and offline. And a lot of the biggest issue is just lead generation. Right. And what I'm seeing is that, you know, you can have the best product in the world, you can have the best employees in the world, the best everything in the world, the best. But if you don't have people coming to it, it's useless. Right. It doesn't really matter. So usually the first thing that we have the virtual assistants do is set up sales funnels, automated client acquisition to the point that they're getting new clients, customers, whether it's B2C or B2B, kind of on demand. And then once we have that down, then it's like, okay, great, how can we work on the back end making a duplicatable process, removing them from it? And that's when I think a lot of the fun happens.

Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. Are you finding that most businesses can benefit from using sales fun funnels these days?

I, I would say I have not found a business that would not benefit from using us. I mean, it's like I'm literally sitting in my house. Last night we had a sale. I mean I was like 11:30 last night, I was reading and I was, I was talking to my roommate and I was like, what, how incredible of a time do we live in right now that I have totally automatically leads that have never heard of me before, consuming my content, giving me their information that they want to speak with me, watching a one hour video that explains everything that I do and, and then deciding at the end of the video, yeah, I want to work with this guy a little bit further. Here's my money. And it's just unbelievable to me that we live in a time that like you have pretty much a 24, 7, 365 sales person, you know, closer on your team, that's automatic and you don't have to pay him any money. And that's what essentially a sales funnel is, in my opinion. And do I think that every business is going to do it? I would be hard pressed to find Obviously there's, you know, exclusions, but I would be hard pressed to find that in one way or the other could not benefit from some kind of sales funnel that at the very least would warm your lead up to exactly what you do. I'm working with a life insurance guy right now and, and he's helping me with some of my taxes. And you know, he, after we got the call about how life insurance works, I'm like, how. Why do not more people know? He's like, oh, we hold these seminars, but they're twice a year. And yeah, I'm like, dude, you should just be having a video that explains everything you just told me on this thing running 247 365. And if you can explain it like you just explained to me, it would just be a no brainer. Right?

Yeah, that's cool. Well, that, that's great is, is being able to step in and kind of tease this information out. I mean, you do a great job and obviously you're passionate about it of, of looking at these things and developing systems around it. So it, it's. As a small business owner, you just, you know, you're so into it and you just gotta, it's hard to get your head above everything to, to take that kind of advice. So that's cool.

Yeah. And I'll even say like, I appreciate you saying that and you know, once again, I'm nobody compared to my team and everybody else. But I will say one of the big benefits that I have is that like I, I do. I don't know if it's a natural inclination, if it's because I've been reading Personal Development since I was 16 or what it is. But for some reason when I see a business like, I see it in the sense of like, how can this be more efficient, right? Like, how can there be sales funnels involved? How can there be stuff eliminated? How can they stop offering so much stuff so they can focus on one thing and make that really great? And it's just like, I mean, it's hard for me. I almost have no friends because that's all I talk about. Right? If I go out anywhere, it's like, that's what we're discussing is like how I can optimize businesses even more.

That never happens to me. That's so funny.

I don't know what it is, but I love it. I really, really. And at a young age to find something that I think that I'm half decent at and then I really love. I'm really blessed for that, honestly.

Yeah, that's great. And it's great to recognize that and being able to enjoy talking about it and coming up with solutions. I mean, I do something similar. I look at almost every business or I walk into a business or look online, and the first thing that comes to my head and how can these people make any money? Or how are they making money, you know, and thinking about it, because I've got a lot of background experience. So that at. At where you're at in your business development and all that kind of stuff is, I think, portends a great future path because you're. You enjoy it a lot and that's the best. That's great.

And I'll say really quickly on top of that, Shannon, ironically, and I say this when I talk to other people as well. I think any great business owner, when you experience someone else's business in your mind, you're like, this could be better here, this could be better there. Right. Like, I don't think I'm the only one that thinks that. Right. Go ahead.

Yeah, everybody. Everybody does it. And, and it can be really helpful to find, you know, fellow business owners. I mean, certainly somebody, you know, could come to someone like you, but also just having your sort of board of, of. We talk about a board of advisors, but. But even more than that, just a board of peers. Right. And it's hard as a business owner to find true peers that are also running businesses separately from you. But, you know, it's not the same. You go out to dinner with your neighbors or whatever, and it's like, well, they, I mean, they're doing fine. They're. They're. They're on a great path, but they're not necessarily business owners. Right. They're. They're career people, and that's fine. But when you, when you find those people that can truly be your peers and you let them see a little bit behind the, you know, behind the curtain and vice versa, you see behind the curtain with them, the help that can happen there between, you know, all of you is amazing. So. Yeah, no, you're totally right, Dave.

You're like describing a mastermind group really well, and that's, I think, so ironic. So I live in San Diego, California right now, but I. When I started my online journey, my business journey, I was living on my brother's couch in the panhandle of Florida, and I went to. I paid for this mastermind event, and I went to this mastermind in Atlanta, Georgia, and the three roommates that I have right now, they all. I Met them a year ago at this Mastermind event. All different businesses, all different industries, but we all kind of complimented each other in one way or the other. And then we ended up traveling a lot together and now we live full time in San Diego in this house. And it's like, you know, like you exact. Like what you just described. We can't go out and talk. Like, I pull my hair when I go out. Like, not that we ever go out, honestly, but if we do go out and I'm hearing people talk about like, you know, Becky at work or, or shoes or like, you know, I'll be honest with you, even football or sports, it's just like, this is not how my brain computes. But with us with, like, even on this call right now, when there's this kind of synergy back and forth, it's just like systems and, and business and processes and how you can help and what you should be focusing on, it's, it's a beautiful thing that happens. And like the fact that I can live with guys that have the same kind of mindset, I, I'm truly, truly grateful for that as well.

No, that'll help you level up. Yeah, yeah. Immersing yourself amongst people that are either at, or even better above your level, like, that's, that's excellent. Yeah, it's great.

Great.

So, you know, we talk about all different kinds of business owners on this show. Some that have been in business for decades, some, you know, you're a couple years into your new company here are you where you, are you at where you thought you would have been at. And as for your own system that you've developed for scaling with systems, I mean, have you iterated and made. I'm sure you have talk about how you've iterated and made adjustments over the last couple of years.

Sure, yeah. Great question. So, yeah. And so it was my birthday about four days ago. And I keep a journal every day religiously for the past like six or seven years. I've written in my journal every single day. And so I usually around the time of my birthday, I find myself a little nostalgic and I go back and I look at, read old pages and years ago, and it's just like, like you just said. Right. I can see my personal iterations. Like where I was three years ago, you know, I was in, I was going to be a lawyer. I dropped out of the idea of doing law school and decided to pursue this online business as well. And the craziest part about the whole thing with me is Like I just still know so little. And every time I look back a year from now I'm like, wow, I really didn't know anything back then, right? And like my goal is to continuously look back and be like, wow, I really didn't know anything. Remember when I used to think I knew something like you really didn't know. And I think that comes from consistent learning and consistent iteration inside of your business. And so for us, one of the biggest things that like we've done inside scaling with systems was like, you know, like I just talked about that fitness gentleman that was we were working with before. It's like I used to do the one on one stuff and like that was really great. But it almost became back to the advertising agency where I was like pulling my hair out. You know, at one point in my advertising agency we had close to 30 employees. We were working with over 288 real estate agents in North America. It was insane. I mean, there's no way I could systemize it more than I could. And I still was spending, you know, close to 70 to 80 hours a week on it. And so I could see that kind of starting to be like scaling with systems. And I was like, you know what, I need to change this now. And I essentially the biggest, the biggest change that we did right off the bat was we went from the one to one approach to the one to many approach, which I'm sure you guys are obviously aware of. And it's transitioned from one on one coaching to group coaching. And that freed up like 70% of my time right off the bat, right there. And originally we didn't even really offer the virtual assistants right off the bat. It was just the coaching program. But then what I noticed was it was like, you know, I tell them to do this thing, they say okay, the next week I'm like, hey, how'd everything. Oh, I didn't have time to do it. And it's like, well, there's no point in this being in on a call with four calls in a row. I've told you the same thing, you're not doing it. And you know, it's like back when I had my advertising agency, I kept on thinking that I kept on telling my real estate agent clients like, look, you got to call these leads, you got to call these leads. And they'd be like, I'm going to call them and never call them. And then they don't renew with me because they didn't close the deals, but they're not closing deals. And I Call the leads. And I realized that I could keep on telling these real estate agents every single day until I'm blue in the face. You need to be calling your leads. And they could be, or I could take, as a business owner, I could solve that problem for them. So then we created what's known as an ISA team and interservice agent team where now we set up a call center in San Diego that would call the leads I generated for the real estate agent, it would call the leads for the real estate agent and then it would pass on live transfers or booked appointments with pre qualified leads to the real estate agents. And this was before Zillow did it. This is before a lot of the big companies did. I mean we were one of the first companies to do it. And that was when my company took off like absolute wildfire when that happened. And I was like, great. I just. And so that same concept came into scaling with systems when I was like, okay, when I need to, I have this problem, I keep on telling them to do the work. They're not doing the work. This is just like a cycle back and forth. What if I found someone who anyone can afford. So like a virtual assistant in the Philippines who came in and the first day they're doing the work for the client.

That's killer.

And the client gets to work on top of the business, not in the business. And it was just like. And that's why, I mean, I know you guys checked out the website. We've literally hundreds of testimonials. And it's not, it's not even me. It's because of these guys are finally, even if it wasn't the coaching, like just the virtual assistant themselves just allows them to have consistency. Like the compound effects. 300 emails, 500 emails, 1000 emails, 2000 emails every single day to the point that their calendars are full. And like if you just keep that up over three, six, nine months, you'll just look like a totally different business than you did when you first started.

So yeah, consistency, that's totally true. Yeah. And that consistency and getting it to happen, I, I really commend you of kind of breaking that out of the process. Because then it's going to happen, right? Because it's part of your, this system that you're bringing to them and that you're not relying on their performance. All of it, some of it, of course. But you've got this other piece to it that you can go back and go, okay, well we know this happened now I can work on this part.

And the beautiful thing about it as well, it's really well said. The beautiful thing about it as well is like, another thing that I notice about entrepreneurs is that when things are going great, too, we kind of, we kind of become like, factors, right? We kind of kick back. Like, you close a few deals in a week and it's like, you know, oh, I'm doing well, right? I need to chill. I'm not going to stop. And there's a great book. We actually give this book to every single one of our clients when they join our program. It's called the Slide Edge by Jeff Olson. And by the way, if anybody here knows Jeff Olson, I've been trying to reach him. I bought like over 500 of his books. I'm actually talking to him, but he talks about, like, the Slight edge is that compound channel, just like you were saying a second ago, that effect over and over again. But then what happens is, like, people will get to a comfortable spot and then they'll stop doing those small things daily that brought them to that comfortable spot, and then they start going back down again. And what the system is, or even just like click funnels or like automation or ads or whatever it is, is that, like, that stuff will work whether you feel good or you feel bad, whether it's sunny, rainy, you're hungover, whatever it is, like, it's still working without you. And when you have something like that in place, that's how you get the compound effect. And that's over a 3 months, 6 month, 9 month, 12 month, 2 year, 3 year, 5 year period. That's how you see some real huge.

And that, I can tell you that Slight Edge book is on my nightstand. And my kids have got. My kids have copies of that Slight Edge for teens. It's, it's, it's such a little. I mean, it's a little thing, but it's so powerful when he explains how it works and the consistency and not stopping it. It's.

That's. I probably read it once every 90 days. I mean, it's like. And we just keep on in our house, all these entrepreneurs, like, you know, like last night, one of my roommates, like, let's get some ice cream at this. Like, you know, I'm like, all they say is literally just three words. Just like the Slide edge. And I was like, yeah, you know what? I don't want ice cream. Right.

I love it. Yeah. So talking about your business and starting leads me into this. You know, we talk about mistakes. We mentioned earlier, we just Published a pocket guide all about mistakes from our, you know, guests for the last five years that have discussed them. But, you know, we were big fans of mistakes because they teach us so much, and especially when you can look back on them, like you said, reading in your journal, which I think is great. Is there, is there a mistake you made maybe either with this business or your previous company that really stuck with you and taught you a valuable lesson and, you know, helped you build your business?

Yeah. Awesome question. Wow, that's. Yeah, that's. I don't think I've ever been asked that before. Yeah. So. And I actually am. I have a higher level mastermind, and I was, I had it yesterday and I was talking to them, and I had a guy and he was running a business in a certain industry, and like, I mean, they were doing multiple six figures a month, but he just wasn't satisfied inside of it. He wasn't happy inside of it. And, you know, I think it was Scott Offer. He said something like, no one really gives a, you know, what about your passion until you have $5 million in the bank. And I kind of believe a little bit in, like, you know, don't, don't start with your passion. And once again, people might be, you know, attacking me right now, but, you know, if you got to get food on the table and then, like, you'll learn from that process and learn what business is. Like, like, I didn't grow up being like, I want to run an advertising agency for real estate agents. Like, that wasn't what the plan was. Right. But I'm super grateful it happened. So. But to answer your question, like, I essentially said the same thing, this gentleman yesterday, which was my advertising agency, when it was really gluttonous, where I really, truly felt like, I mean, in my opinion, the real estate industry, and I have a brokerage in the state of Florida. I'm pretty into the real estate industry. In my opinion, the real estate industry is very fundamentally flawed. Right. I mean, I got my real estate agent brokerage in like, five days. There's no sales training involved. There's no lead handling involved. There's no real. Anybody and their mother can get a real estate license. And that's why it's like 62% of real estate agents make less than $40,000 a year. And so one of the big things in my advertising agency was. And one of the lessons I learned was that we were putting a band aid on a gaping wound. We were sending leads into these guys, but these guys didn't even know how to close a lead if it dropped in front of them and knocked on the door and wrote them a check. Right? It was like, so I was trying to solve this problem that was so surface level that I wasn't satisfied. Some of our clients weren't satisfied. I mean, don't get me wrong, we had great, I mean, we had 300 clients at one point. We were doing great, but it was so much of a churn rate and so much of a struggle. And I, I just realized that that industry, I didn't want to be in it anymore. So I, I removed myself, the company from the industry. We switched, totally pivoted to what's known as a pay per lead model. Now, now I sell to like the big guys like Lone Depot and OP City, like the guys that sell to the real estate. So now we only have like same amount of revenue, but now about one or three thousandth of the clients that we have right now. And so, and then I started scaling with systems. And so my advertising agency is still running. We're still doing multiple seven figures with a quarter of the work. But now I'm doing something scaling with systems where I'm working with people, like, with fundamentals, like really teaching people from the beginning how they should be structuring their business, what they should be spending their time on, what should be automated, what should be eliminated, what should be delegated. And like, I just learned, so I got so much more passion from it, and I see so much more results from it and so much more happiness from it on our clients. And that obviously plays back and gives me more happiness and success on my end as well. So one of the biggest things I learned as an entrepreneur when I first started out and now I would say is like, you don't try to solve a surface level problem, and it's easy to solve a surface level problem. Like, it really is easy to close deals and make money from solving a surface level problem, because it's not a lot of investment on your end. But if you really want to have lasting impact and lasting change, and in my opinion, you really want to be satisfied with something, you need to go a lot deeper than that. And to go a lot deeper than that requires a lot more energy, it requires a lot more capital, both in time, human and money. But in my opinion, it's just so much more fulfilling in the end.

That's good. That's good. Good to hear that. So one of the things that I'm, I'm curious about your business and your market, you know, whether this Coaching lead generation, helping entrepreneurs. It seems to me that it's pretty crowded. I mean, when I check in on LinkedIn each morning, you know, I just get hammered with people making pitches over and, oh, let's connect. And I want to do this or that. How do you guys go about making your business and your services stand out? I mean, what, what keeps, you know, business owners like me from just ignoring it or deleting the message? You know, how do you rise above that? That noise?

Yeah, great question. And you know, one of my early mentors, he always taught me, he's like, people are afraid of saturation. But I love saturation because it just tells me that there's money in that market just already shows it's already a proven process. Right. It's pretty easy to go inside of there. And then if you have just a subtly unique offer, then you can rise above everybody else. And so for us, what happened was, yes, the coaching lead generation, it's a very saturated niche. Guess what? So is real estate. Right? Which we, you know, they told us we couldn't charge $2,500 a month for real estate agents. That's what we did. You know, they told us we wouldn't have an agency with hundreds of clients at that price. And that's what we did as well. And that's because we added in that back end, like qualification center. So before anybody else is doing it, I made that unique selling proposition. Like, hey, we're not giving you leads, we're giving you guaranteed booked appointments and live transfers. And so what helped us with scaling, with systems was, hey, we're not another coaching business. You don't need. I say this all the time. Everybody on this call, everyone listening to this podcast right now. You don't need more information like, look, the core. I like to think that the course is great. I like to think that the coaching is great as well. And I have a lot of fun doing it. But I'd be kidding myself if I didn't say that a lot of the work comes from. Exactly. We talked about earlier, which is the consistency of you having team members doing the work that you know needs to be done on a daily basis. And so that in the beginning just set us apart. Now there's a bunch of people coming out there offering virtual assistance with their stuff as well. But that set us apart from everyone else. It was like a very beautiful mixture of a coaching program and a service based business that kind of combined into one that allowed us to stand apart from everybody else. And that every time I launch or scale a company. Just like the advertising agency with the call center, just like this with the virtual assistants. I always think, like, because you had a great point, it's like, how do you stand out from everybody else? And it has to be a really unique way that you stand out from everybody else. And so that's one way that we've been able to do it. And then the other way is I've really harped on the importance of a personal brand, like, from the beginning, and it's something that I've invested since I started this online advertising journey. And personal brand allows you to have credibility before you really have results. That's what I say all the time. Right before you have success. You like that people that see you. I just showed another program. The gentleman said, on average, someone has to consume 7 hours of content before they make a buying decision from you. And if they've been looking at your Instagram stories, looking at you on Facebook, looking at you on LinkedIn, like, they feel like they already know you. Listen to the podcast. Like, Russell Brunson probably does it better than anybody I've ever met in my entire life. Right? I mean, like, you buy expert secrets, you buy.com. it's like all of. It's like it's telling the people. Yeah, hey, this would do. This is my story, whatever it is, and this is how you do it. Oh. And if you want to do it, clickfunnels can do it for you. And it's like you just are really subtly and softly selling, but in a way, that's adding value, and that's essentially what allowed me to stand out from that market, was that after I had spent a year building a personal brand around my advertising agency and in these programs I was joining, I was just posting value. I never thought I was going to be a coach. I never thought I was being a consultant. I was just like, hey, guys, I'm shooting videos and I'm sending personalized videos to real estate agents, and they're responding. You guys should try the same thing. That by the time I had a program out there, it was like, you know, it was insane. It was like wildfire. People were, oh, Ravi. I've been following him for a year. And so that's been a real benefit of what we've been doing, is the credibility and social proof around my personal brand, I think is really, really ignited what we do right now.

Yeah, that's awesome. I think there's just some great takeaways. I love the. The message about consistency. You know, I Mean, you got to be passionate. But you know that consistency often can beat out that passion. If you're just doing it every day and you're grinding it out and putting in the time and building your personal brand, I mean, oftentimes it feels like you're just kind of putting stuff out there and nothing comes back to you. But over time, you're building that library of content and increasing your credibility when people do find you and then get to know you. I think that's some great advice, man.

If you look, if you look at Dan Henry, I really love Dan Henry. I'm in a few high level masterminds with him as well. And if you look at his webinar and I actually did the same thing. Dan, if you're listening to this, I kind of copied you on it, so thank you. I did the same thing in my video sales letter where he talks about like, look, if you go back to my Facebook and you go back one, two, three years ago, you can see my journey every single day or week or month. Posting in there, working at my brother's restaurant, signing my first client, scaling up to having multiple employees, hitting my first seven figures. And it's documented with dates and timestamps, like, almost like I'm going to court. I can prove everything from A to Z. And so what? The benefit of the personal brand, in my opinion is like, anybody listening to this right now? Ravi Abuvala, feel free to look me up on Facebook and just go back to 2017, go back to 2018, and you can see the journey from where I was in the beginning to where I am now. And that just. And Dan said it so well. It's just like, it just lends. It's so hard to fake that. You can't really fake that at all. And so it just lends so much credibility to who you are and what you're doing. And so, yeah, that's why the personal brand, it just lowers that barrier of trust so much that people are willing to get on the phone with you.

Yeah, it's authentic.

You said it right there. Yeah. Lowering the barrier of trust. That's the, that. Because that's what it's. That's. We all make emotional decisions when we're buying something or partnering with someone. Right? I mean, in the end, it's emotional. It might, the emotion might be supported by a spreadsheet or it might be supported by other things. And what you're talking about here with your personal brand is those other things, right? Like, oh, I feel like I can trust this person, not just because they look genuine, but look at all these other people that trust this person like, they're not going anywhere. I know where they are. I can trust him. And that, you know, that's huge.

Yeah. That's awesome. So, Ravi, I mean, thank you again so much for coming on the show and talking about your journey. I'm excited to have you back on. I don't think you really gave us a mistake when I asked you about one, which is totally cool because I know you're getting going. So when we have you back on the show in a couple of years, I'm going to circle back on that one and we'll.

Oh, yeah, we'll see where you wind up. I didn't mean to not answer that for you.

No, no. You're a typical super optimist entrepreneur like Dave and I are, and it's, you know, you.

You.

You bring it in, you start thinking about it like, well, I did this, I did that. So. So it's great. And. And I love it. So tell. Tell me the. The best way for our listeners to connect with you and to learn more about scaling with systems.

Yeah, I appreciate it. And before I go in there, I just want to say this has been an absolute blast for me. You guys are awesome. Th. This is some. Some great questions that I had inside of here, and you kind of got me thinking a little more than. Than I usually do as well. So I. I appreciate you guys.

That's great.

Yeah. And I will. About my. My mistakes. I didn't mean to not say that I.

No, it's okay.

No, it's good.

We're.

We're all about self awareness here. So, I mean, for ourselves and it. And hopefully it's infectious. So it sounds like maybe. Maybe, at least for the last 45 minutes, it has been.

No, very much so. This has been a lot of fun. Yeah, no, I'm like. I haven't stopped smiling since I got on here, so. No, I appreciate you guys having me on here. This is awesome. Everyone listening to this as well. Thank you guys so much for your time. I know you could easily have spent the past 45 minutes doing literally anything else, and I want to thank you so much for. Listen, if you guys want to connect with us, you can just go to scalingwithsystems.com just as it sounds. If you guys want to learn a little bit more about the program. But if you just want to shoot me a message, ask any questions that you want to say, you know, if you enjoyed the show, whatever it is, you can just find me on Instagram or Facebook at Ravi Abu V A L A And you guys can just message me on there. I'd love to hear a little bit more about what your guys thoughts are.

Awesome. That's great man. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much again.

That was awesome, man. You know, it was halfway through I was reminded of Ryan Stuman, the hardcore closer guy. And not because he and Ravi are two very different people in, in their delivery style and, and, and all of that, but they both are like at a fundamental level of their, you know, their, their talent stack. Like at the base of it is this knowledge that sales funnels and all of this stuff are table stakes for any business. And that's kind of why I asked him that question. And Stuman was, this is the same way. Right. And they both come from the real estate world and interesting. I think there's something about that. And I, I was thinking actually even before he said it where he, you know, he talked about the real estate world being fundamentally flawed, my thought was there be. Must, must be something about the real estate world that makes people that are like go getters that are in it say this is so freaking stupid. Why is it done this way? Why don't we just do this other really simple thing that no one else does here and we'll make a ton of money and then that's what they do and then it works. So there's this, this frustration with the status quo that leads them down this path. And obviously it's a great foundation to be a business owner, to have as a business.

It is. And, and just the, what I love is the, I mean the energy coming out of this guy.

Oh yeah.

I could just feel it, you know, and that, that's, that's terrific. And I also really do because you know, the energy and that passion. But I really respect his comments about consistency. And it's like what we've learned, you know, when. And you know, we're working on these, our small business pocket guides. It's all about consistency. You know, in. And I wrote another book last year, but basically it was. I was writing an article a week and at the end of the year I had 52 articles and it was about 250 pages. And there is your book and you know, so it's that consistency. You can start it with your passion but you know, most people stop. Most people don't follow through. And so I really commend Ravi on pushing that aspect for himself and as well for scaling with systems that he can he can tie that into the services and teaching people do that. I think it's great.

It's true. Yeah. You need to have the spark that gets you going. But then, then it's like we always say, it's in the execution. You got to have the bullhead. Persistence. Yeah, yeah.

Got to grind it out, man, every day.

That's it.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

Speaking of grinding it out, we, we, as we mentioned in the intro, we. And during the show even, we, we have our mistakes book. So go ahead and go pick that up. Go to business show co guides and I made a mistake the other day when I was on my friend's podcast and I, I told them, go to business show co slash mistakes. So now that also points you to the book, so you'll never know.

That's great.

Yep, that's right.

It's going to be getting some great feedback. The paperback started shipping, I guess a week to 10 days ago. So we're getting, you know, some great comments and feedback and people sending in photos got, you know, people buying five or six copies at a time to give them out to, to their other, you know, friends and business owners. So it's awesome.

Yeah, it's really cool. I'm loving it.

Yep. But thanks for your support. Thanks for your 5 star reviews on whatever podcast director you. You're listening from and we appreciate you being here.

See you next time.