3 Misunderstood Keys To Grow Past 7 Figures On Amazon #TheOnePercent

That is how you scale past a million. That is how you get out of this perpetual hamster wheel that so many Amazon sellers stay stuck in, which is looking for the next product to just put into the system. I don't understand why I'm not growing faster. I can't understand why I'm working more than ever and taking home less while my sales are going up.

It takes one free person to create change.

This is the show for them.

We are the creators of the free world. This is capitalism.com and we are the 1%.

Hey, a quick note for you Amazon sellers and brands who want to be on Amazon and haven't made it a priority yet. I am often asked about changes with reviews or changes with Amazon terms of service or changes with what's working with ranking and all of that kind of jazz. And I'm proud that I have partnered with one of our backroom members. His name is Jeff. He runs an agency that specializes specifically in optimizing your Amazon presence. So if you're a brand that is neglecting Amazon and you've heard me talking about it and you're like, we know we gotta get this together, or if you're an Amazon seller and you know you need to turn your attention to audience building and funnels and the stuff that is really going to grow your company, I would recommend that you give a quick shout to my boy Jeff at Turnkey Product management. They're@TurnKeyProductManagement.com and as I said, they're in the back room. They work with my team and the rest of the big companies and equity groups that are involved in our little circle. And they're usually ahead of everybody else in terms of what's working, what's, what's compliant, what review strategies are cool and kosher and are actually effective and they're not out there hawking a bunch of info products. They're out there actually doing it. So they're an implementation agency that just handles it for people and they run their own businesses, some of which they have built and sold, kind of like yours truly. So I feel really good about partnering with them and recommending the big companies and the brands that I work with to outsource their Amazon management over to Jeff and his team. So if you're looking to add some automation into your arsenal, I would recommend the good folks@TurnKeyProductManagement.com and Jeff and I are on speed dial with each other and are collaborating on what's working. So you're always getting what's the latest and greatest in the Amazon world. So contact those guys if you're looking to outsource, automate and optimize your Amazon presence@TurnkeyProductManagement.com.

So I need to get a feel for the room. So how many of you are.

Over seven figures at this point? Over seven figures. Okay, good. Little bit more than half the room. That's good. And nobody likes to raise their hand after saying under seven figures. I was gonna say who's under seven figures? But no one likes to do that after everybody raises their hand for I'm over. So about half of you. A little bit more than half of you. Is anybody doing over five? Doing over five. Okay, so.

Almost all your sales on Amazon at this point? Yes. Okay, cool. So we're gonna cover scaling paths a million. And.

I mean this with all respect.

Amazon sellers tend to be spoiled entrepreneurs. We've got it really easy.

You got in at the right time.

Amazon does all of the. Sends you all the customers.

We kind of have it easy. And the danger that a lot of entrepreneurs and really, like, there's a difference between sellers and entrepreneurs, or we could think about it as.

Owners. You own the business or you run the business. There's a difference. And it is just as much of a learning curve to scale past a million than it was to get to the million. And so what a lot of entrepreneurs in this world do is they fall into the trap of just doing more of what got them there. And that has, like, when you're on a platform like Amazon, which has amazing scale, that can get you pretty far. It can get you really far financially. It makes it very difficult to be able to walk away from the business. And it makes it really hard to be able to sell a business if you are still in that mode. For those of you who are, is anyone here over a million and has under a team of less than three people?

Okay.

This is the beauty that Amazon allows. But we get oftentimes trapped in that hamster wheel. And so what we need to do is look at the business like a business. And this world can get so incestuous when looking at what other people are selling, how other people are doing it. And again, if all you want to be is an Amazon seller, you will do just fine. If you want to run a real business, then we have to zoom out and, and get a bigger picture. So I don't know how well you're gonna see it. So I'll just explain this in intimate detail.

I look at business in essentially three Parts.

Number one. The thing that we all obsess over in this world is where you take your sales. I call it a sales channel. And the big braingasm that I have to get entrepreneurs to get is that in most worlds, this is not called Amazon.

In fact, when I'm drawing this out, I'll do three. Like, this is Amazon. Here's. Where else do you like to sell? I'd sell in retail. Been in about a thousand stores.

So Shopify is the one that everybody gets obsessed over. Okay, so.

We in this world get really good at this piece. We get really good at this piece. And for like, tune in here. I was sitting across the table from someone who was at my house. Sometimes I invite people to my house and we talk business. And he's sitting there and he's telling me about his business, and he's having a really hard time describing the business. And in reality, he was just great at one thing. He could get products to rank, he could get reviews, he could get sales. And he created a machine in which he could just funnel products through the machine. I said. I said, I forget how he described his business again, a knife business or something. And I said, dude, you are. You are not in the knife business. You're the actual business. The actual asset that you have is you have a system. You're good at this. That's the only thing you're good at. And so the way that you're going to grow past a million is either you develop the other legs of the stool, or you now take the one thing that is the most profitable and the most valuable thing in your business, which is that system, and you apply it to something else, like another business. So Gary Keller is the founder of Teller Williams Realty, lives in Austin, Texas. And I've heard him say, the most valuable thing in your business is your systems. Now, systems are not the processes that live on a hard drive that we don't follow. Those are not systems. Systems are simply the way in which you conduct business, how you distribute value. And for those of you who only sell on Amazon, and you kind of obsess over this world of what ranks, Is it search, find, buy, Is it doing giveaways? Is it all these different things? The reality is that you are optimizing for one system. That's the valuable thing in your business. So the way that you will boom from 1 million and beyond is for you to either dial in the other pieces of the whole pie, the whole thing, or you take that system and you apply it to something else. Like Another business or you just stretch that out over as many products as possible. Most people who live in this world are not really entrepreneurs. They're Amazon channel managers. It's real humbling.

When you realize that you're an Amazon channel manager. Like, oh right, I don't own anything. I'm actually just in the business of optimizing for one specific channel. I'm an Amazon channel manager. That hurts. It's actually really humbling and it's really freeing because if you can recognize that that's how you've been operating, that's where your cash flow is coming from. Assuming you don't want to stay there, then that cash flow is going to be invested into other areas of the business that ultimately give you growth. This funny thing happens. How many of you started your business with less than five grand?

Amazing, right? Do you have any idea how rare that is?

It is so rare that to live in a time in which you are not first.

Absolutely bootstrapping everything or raising money to be able to do anything. It's why this world is so special and we're so spoiled because we don't wake up every day. And when you're stressed, refreshing sales inside of seller central. The first thing you do in the morning, worry that the world burned down while you were sleeping. You should be freaking out. How amazing this is.

This is unheard of, unprecedented. It's why big brands are scared. It's why big brands are buying up smaller brands. Because we have completely opened the gates for any one person with under five grand to come in and make a splash here. It's pretty exciting time to be an entrepreneur. And yet we forget along the way that that 5 grand in which we started the business, we go into defense now. Now we're protecting every dollar. Weren't you scared to lose the five grand?

I was. We're all scared to lose the initial capital.

Guess what? The numbers just get bigger as you grow. But the risk doesn't you. For a while. For a while when you were launching the business, you sucked.

You sucked at it. And you know what happened? You got better and you got better and you got better and you got better.

And then we hit a wall. Most of the time this, this world specifically at right around a million, sometimes two, three. Like in that range, low seven figures, you hit a wall because you can no longer operate the business all by yourself and you no longer can grow as fast as you did previously. And so there's this hamster wheel that we get caught on. That's when you know you're an Amazon channel manager. And so the way that we start to get out of that is by doing things that suck for a while. Again, that never stops.

We all have this like mysterious idea that one day we'll arrive at a point which there are no more problems.

Is anyone in here married?

Have you ever arrived at a point in which there were no more problems?

Not yet, but one day, you know, one day, one day it'll happen.

And so some people, some people just end that one, go try it with someone else. Some people end a business, try a new business. Guess that one didn't work. I'll sell this one, get another one. Guys, this is an inside out game. I wish it wasn't. I really wish it. Like, I want the algorithm too. I want the hack too. I'm lazy too.

And one day somebody asked me what my superpower was and I said, you know what I think my superpower is? I am just willing to suck at something longer than everybody else. I'm just willing to be bad at something until I'm not bad anymore. And so I got caught. I've been caught in this rabbit hole too. You realize you're an Amazon channel manager, and so in order to change that, you have to do something else that sucks. Now what most people do is they say, okay, I know I'm good at this. I realize I'm Amazon channel manager. What I will do now is I will now also, on top of everything I'm doing, become the Shopify channel manager. I've maxed out Amazon. I don't want to be a one trick pony, so I'll get good at Shopify too. And now you are a dual channel manager.

And you run an agency that specializes in two different sales channels. And this keeps us really, really busy and making progress and eventually going, I can't do that. I guess I'll go back to Amazon.

There's a par for the course for most people.

So the second part, and by the way, again, if you are obsessed with what ranks, what reviews, what the tactics are, you're a high paid employee. You're an employee with ownership in the business. You own 100% of this Amazon channel management company.

The second part of this.

Is the product.

Now, in this room.

This gets stuck. And the reason it gets stuck is because when you're an Amazon channel manager, you think about product is what Amazon wants.

So there's a mental shift that happens after hitting this wall about half a dozen times, where for a while, if you're obsessed with Amazon, you don't even think about product, you, you think about what Amazon says has volume.

That is not the same. If you are under a million and you are still and you've got two to three products doing the 25 sales a day like we talked about this morning, it's okay to put another Me Too product in the line. But that is not how you build a business. That is, that is, that is not something that is scalable. That is not something that is sellable. There is no one. None of the keynotes at this event got big, famous, respected or rich by selling the exact same thing as everybody else. Now, there are times when there's a new trend, when there's a new market and you create a similar product to someone else. But then what has to exist is the person that you target has to be different. And that's the third part of this. Over here is.

Audience, which we talked a lot about this morning. Most people, when they hear audience, think about influencers, think about becoming Gary Vee or they think about having to create a bunch of content in order to get followers. That is not the case. Audience is who cares about you if you are in this world. Kind of the symptom of being in this world. If you are only here.

No one cares about you if you go away. And so there's this tenseness around, what if Amazon makes a change? Well, what I'll do here is I will double down on getting really good at Amazon.

And that compounds the worry. And so that's when you shut down and you go into defense mode. It's when you stop growing. And the only way out of that, the only way out of that is to zoom out. And you zoom out by hiring someone to do this better than you. Which by the way, tip for hiring. If after 90 to 180 days this person is not out earning you with this, it may be the wrong hire.

So if you were to take five grand, put it into a product and the product wasn't selling after six months, there's a good chance it's the wrong product. You made a bad decision, you got more data, you'll make a better decision next time. Trying to force it, trying to fix it. Not a good, not a good use of time.

Same with people. Now, sometimes you're the problem. Ask me how I know. Sometimes you just suck as a leader.

And it's your job to create extremely clear expectations for bringing on the person, the agency, the outside help, the outsourcer to come in and start to do it better than you. That is what you are paying for.

Most people imagine someone coming on and duplicating exactly themselves. I could duplicate myself. I'd be so much more successful. Yes, that is because you are used to owning every piece of this pie, which is why you are stuck. And if you duplicate yourself now, you are just doubly stuck. And one of you is unnecessary. So you start to make the pivot from manager out of this mode into zooming out and building the rest of the business. Now if you're over a million, in my opinion, just my opinion, I think, I think this always makes sense, but absolutely when you're over a million, it's time to take risk here.

In product. That's when like man, I just want to shake the entrepreneur when they're making decisions just on what the algorithm or what the, what Jungle Scout is telling them is a good product to sell. That, that does, that does not create compounding returns for the customer.

If you want to be ahead of the market, you want to not have competitors. You just think about the people and what they want and what they need and you serve them and the beauty for you. And again, please recognize how rare and special this is. In pre2010.

You weren't good at this.

You didn't have a guaranteed way to put something up for sale. You do. And if you're over the million, and I would recommend earlier, but once you're over a million, for sure taking risk here you have a guaranteed platform.

To put something for sale.

When you have these two things right here.

This is revenue right here.

You, if you're only an Amazon sales manager, you don't have product obviously you don't make revenue for yourself. You are really.

That's when people quit and they become agencies, which is fine, by the way, totally fine.

But you're not building a real brand at that point. You're not building a real product business. When you've got product in sales now, you have basically guaranteed revenue. It's pretty hard to have a great product and be good at a sales platform and not take any sales. The problem here, the problem is when you, when you've only got these two dialed in, you are now at the mercy of everyone else who's doing the exact same things. This is when we start to complain about competitors dropping their price. This is when we start trying to out review the next person. This is when we start over analyzing where we rank for specific keywords because we know deep down nothing is different here. There's no reason why someone is selecting us. This is where it gets Dog eat dog. This is where people say, oh, I don't talk about my products. That's adorable.

I'm killing. I'm doing 500k a month. What do you sell? I don't talk about my business. I'm in home and kitchen.

So cute. You're not selling 500k a month. Okay, so.

You realize that only exists in this world.

It's just kind of sad, guys.

It's really sad. That means that you're in it for you. It means you're not actually building something. It means you didn't want to work a 9 to 5. You got an opportunity. You sell spatulas. And your biggest fear is that you're going to have to go back to not working 18 hours a day for yourself anymore.

I hope I don't lose everything. I would have to work only eight hours a day.

The way you get out of this trap.

Is you put something in the marketplace that people actually want. I feel so stupid saying that out loud. Creating a product people actually want, not the thing that everybody else is. White labeling from Alibaba.

And guess what? There's more risk involved in that. And there's way more upside on that too. Again, there was no internal data suggesting that Dave Asprey should sell mold free coffee. He built that industry. He was the first person to talk about mold and coffee. He was the first person about putting fat in your coffee. He. He's the first person to Talk about some MCTs being different than other MCTs.

That does not make sense to the cash flow entrepreneur.

But for him, because he was able to bring the audience to him, he can charge twice as much as everybody else.

That's powerful and that's scalable. And now you can go to the Bulletproof cafe and you can stand on a bulletproof vibe and you can pay 15 grand to go to 40 years of Zen. I'm on the waiting list.

That. That's powerful. That only happens when this is unique in the marketplace. You have a predictable way to take sales. And then we're gonna add in audience. This is however you communicate with your customers. It can be like, where do you communicate with your customers right now? That's dangerous to ask an Amazon crowd. But really, where do you communicate with your customers right now?

Instagram. Where else? YouTube. Okay, I'm gonna add in the third one because if you are not using email. Oh, my goodness. I gotta tell you guys, this is fun.

You know what my favorite audience builder is right now? Search engine optimization.

And that's how I got my start in 2006. 2006 took my first sale online. June of. Yeah, 2006. What's old is new again. And here's why. Because there's so many opportunities for entrepreneurs. Nobody is willing to put in the really, really hard time to do things like rank for keywords. It's amazing. If you are willing to grind it out longer than anybody else, you can, you can compete on any platform you want. We all want to skip to the end. No, you suck for a while. You either suck for a while or you spend a lot of money for a while. You either lose money or you lose time. That's the investment. That's what it takes. So when.

My entire focus still to this day, search engine optimization and email, it's actually how I build companies, it's how I build audience, it's how I build followers and C money. And I do a lot, a lot of content on YouTube and Instagram. Right? Because I like to. Because it still shocks me to this day that there are people who don't want to be on stage, don't understand it, don't get it. It's my favorite thing to do. When you've got these three.

Actually before we go there, when you've got this.

Audience and product and you don't have this, you've got audience and product, you know what you have.

You'Ve got fans.

If you can't take a sale, then you don't really have revenue.

Here's the trick of it all. We talked about Dave as the example of he had an audience.

He partnered with a sales channel. Right here is actually where profit margin is made right here between audience and sales channel.

If you just have fans, you've got a really, really great group of people and you're broke.

If you just have revenue, then you make a lot of sales and you get to say you have a seven figure business and you're broke. If you have audience in a sales channel, you have really high profit margins. But you don't have scale when you bring all of them together. This magic circle, this magic section right here, this is a brand.

This is a business. This is something you can scale. That is something that is what people are buying when you get acquired.

I have seen acquisitions happen. For example.

Maybe I shouldn't say who bought it. I've had a business be acquired that I've talked about publicly where what they were really buying was the systems for Amazon. It's really what they wanted to acquire.

So none of the other stuff really mattered to them. So when they acquired It. There was no real attention put into these other areas. It was all about optimizing for this. What happened to that business is that it went down, and it went down really quickly because now it had no soul. It's a fancy way of saying no one cared anymore. It became about optimizing for the platform, became about selling more of the same thing as everybody else. That hurt. That was a hard lesson for me. It was a hard lesson for me because I still had wealth tied up in that company. I still owned part of that company. And so that was a hard lesson for me to learn. And you realize it was also freeing in the sense that you realize no matter how big you are, these mistakes get made. And at every level of the game, it is a matter of remembering that it is about.

People.

And is about giving them what they need on their journey. I like to bring around the analogy of the hero's journey. If you are not familiar with the hero's journey, I would recommend it's worth a Google. Every story, every famous tale is basically an iteration of the hero's journey. Most of us see ourselves as the hero of the journey. Most of us do. And as a result, we look at our businesses as the hero in the journey. You'll notice this when you see people talking about their own brand and their own business on social media. If they are only talking about themselves, their products, why, it's great. They have fallen under the illusion that people care.

They don't actually care about you or your business. They care about them. They care about the journey that they're on. So the analogy here is most people, when they're thinking about their business, they're thinking about themselves as Luke Skywalker. And they are on this journey to become a Jedi, which means have a big payday or be financially free or whatever it is. And along the way, you're gonna run into challenges, and you're gonna hire people for those challenges. And at the end of the day, Luke will be victorious. The truth is.

You'Re not Luke. You're Yoda. Your customer is the hero. The customer is on their journey. Your job is to be Yoda, where you enter into where your customer is already going, and it's your job to serve them. This is why I said over and over, life just opens up when you realize that it's not about you. That is when people choose you over other competitors. Now, there's some tactical things that we can, like, sprinkle in. Like, if nothing else, please, for the love of everything, add an email insert into Your packaging. If for nothing else, start to practice the collection of turning sales into customers. And they're different. Peter Drucker had two functions of business. Get customers, keep customers. Taking a sale on Amazon is neither of these two. It's taking a sale because every single person has bought something from Amazon, opened up the box, someone said, I really like that. And you say, yeah, I got it. On Amazon.

When they choose you, that's when they're a customer. Until then, it's just a sale. It's like a friend of mine, he was telling me that he had just started taking turmeric, and he was, like, experiencing really great benefits from turmeric. And I was like, oh, what brand did you buy? And he says, something I found on Amazon. Like we've all said. I was like, show me your order history. I was like, that brand, that brand, that brand. It didn't matter.

That person was down that day, bought something else. Reviews are good. That day I bought something else. That is when you are taking sales instead, instead of building customers again. You live in this beautiful world where if you are good at this, you get people who give you money and you get to take that money and turn them into fans based on two things. Does the product do what it says it can do and more. And do you follow up with them in a way that makes them want to come back again and again? That is where real value is built. That is where real customers are acquired. That is how real wealth is built, because the business grows. Jason showed an example this morning. That was a native deodorant. A native deodorant was started by Moise Ali. He spoke at one of our events. He. He started the company with $1,000. Amazing. Sold two years later for $100 million. And if you listen to him talk about it, it's just about being obsessed with the customer. And check this out. They're selling a $12 product.

I mean, there's not like a whole lot of margins in selling deodorant.

And they found a way to make it work because they didn't have to go get another customer when it was time to reorder. They treated the audience so well and they put so much attention into the product that this didn't matter. That is my challenge for you. My challenge is this. Just as a thought experiment, how would you think about your business if you weren't good at this?

If you didn't know how to control Amazon and make it do your own bidding, how would you operate your business? Would you treat that customer A little bit differently.

Would you respond to that comment a little bit differently? It's funny, back in the olden days, if you watch a movie.

That takes place in a local store.

Bell rings as they open it up. Hello. Good morning, Mr. Johnson.

Oh, it's almost like they have a relationship today. You don't care. You don't care. Because if the bell doesn't ring now, it's going to ring in a second when Mr. Johnson wants to go down the street. All right? There's somebody else who's going to come into the store because we don't see each other.

You have no incentive to. You're incentivized to optimize for algorithms.

In the short term.

In the medium and the long term, the people who do these pieces win.

And that's how it's going to continue to go today. Amazon is so commoditized from a seller's perspective that anyone could come on and copy you in five seconds. Like, let's not be romantic about it. Sales channels at this point are pretty easy to copy. So if you want to win, you have to get good at the other things. You have to.

This, this is hireable. This can be hired. Like somebody else can buy ASM too.

Right? And they can get just as good, if not better than you. They cannot get better at these two pieces. They can't.

They can't because these force you to be person centric. They force you to be customer centric. Those two things are what force you to actually create real value in the world. Now, here's where it gets really beautiful. How many of you have ever walked into a.

Let's use Amazon as the example. Have you ever walked into a park. Publicly traded company, like a big company that sells a lot of product and they do millions of dollars. And you start talking about Amazon strategy and you realize that you know way more than them. You ever had that happen? And they think that you're a magician because you know how the platform works, right? That's when you know you're an Amazon channel manager.

This is hireable, it's outsourced. This is not. This is not needed to have a really successful business.

They, those big companies got good at these two things, customers and product. The beauty of this is if you're good at those two things, this can change and you just swap out something else.

The real beauty of all of this is if you start to look at, how do I not just optimize for one of these, but bring in the pieces.

That allow for that multiplier effect to happen. That's your role as CEO. That is your role as a leader. That is your role as an entrepreneur. For example.

I took equity in a company, a company I'm so excited about. Like, if I lost, like if I lose everything, I'm pumped about this food company that I'm working with. So much fun.

They were really good at this. They were pretty good at this. I am okay at this.

Together.

We'Re gonna do some cool shit.

It's almost like the world has conspired for us all to work together. They've got a few hundred thousand Instagram followers, they sell digital products, do sponsorships, I think stuff like that. To keep doing good stuff in the world. That's their business right now. They really wanted.

To do more of this. I came in and helped them clean some things up, Cast a real vision and then you marry this in. That is going to be an eight figure company in no time. No time, no problem. Most people are not willing to do the work.

Of audience and product. They go to where the money is and they start trying to elbow everybody else out of the way and take a piece of the piece. I'm interested in looking at how we make the pie bigger because all of that is just systems that other people know. And I don't really want to be good at those things. I want to build real businesses.

So let's button this up a bit into some action items for you. Number one, if you are at a million dollars or up and you cannot tell me what your business exists to do besides sell more product, you're in trouble. When you're at a million, you have done something really special. You have proven that you can take a product and make it real and take sales and get customers. That's special. Now you have to figure out who you are. What is the company that you are building.

Some people call that vision casting. I like to call it making decisions. What are you in business to do? And do you say that that's your business or is that actually what your business is?

For example.

I got kind of called on this recently where I say capitalism.com, my company exists to empower entrepreneurs to create the change that they want to see in the world.

Do we really do that or do we just say that we do that? Okay, if I was only committed to the mission and I couldn't think about what I got out of it, how would I change? How would I operate then? Hmm, that's a humbling question. It's a humbling question to think about am I, am I doing what my company existed or am I in this for myself who.

Do not like the answers that come up sometimes? So we decided to do like, all right, what if, what if, what if we took our front end products and if somebody showed that they completed the product by filling out a form that answered some questions, we refunded them. So the whole thing wasn't about more information or new information, it was just about getting the person to take the action. And the refund policy became, if you complete it, it's free. That's interesting. And then what if we took. What else could. If I couldn't think about myself if I had to think about them. You know, we spend a lot of money on Facebook ads. We spend a lot of money on Facebook ads to scale stuff so that we can make sales. What if instead of giving money to Facebook, we take half of that and we put it into a scholarship fee fund and a scholarship fund just exists to give five people a quarter $5,000 of startup capital and we just say, this is yours, no questions asked. And what if, then we took the best ideas and we put it to a vote and actually the world decided which of the ideas that came out of our world were the most impactful or that they wanted themselves.

You know what's interesting is I think we grow a lot faster.

It's almost like the world is conspiring for us to serve one another. But you don't see that when you're just thinking about what can we extract. I have a.

Skincare company called Foxbrim that I advise that I've invested in. And the tagline that we throw around sometimes is we exist to reduce insecurity among women by providing natural products that actually work. Now do we really do that or do we say that we do that? Well, let's look at our social media posts, talk about our products a lot. How many of it is pushing against media and how women are represented in the media because that's really the source of the insecurity in the first place. I mean, if we were really committed to the mission that we said, how would we operate differently than if we didn't have to sell product? If our products were a proxy for fulfilling a mission, how would we operate that? Is there a chance that people might be more willing to respond to that message than talking about our own products and why we think you should buy them? There's a chance. There's a chance that exists. Exists.

Does your company exist for something or is it just for you to make more sales. And if it's to make more sales, own it. Say it. Say that you exist to maximize profit by doing X, Y and Z, because you know what that will do. It will allow you to attract the employees, the team members, and the connections that help you reach that goal. But most of us are lying to ourselves. We're say we're doing one thing, we're actually optimizing for another thing. Either one's cool. But if you're at a million and you can't tell me what that business exists to do, you are in trouble. So the first thing that I'm working with, with somebody who is at a million and looking to grow is we're looking at that. What are you here to do? And number two, in here, where is your time and your focus if their time is going here? The first thing we're doing is we're looking for a way to replace the founder, replace the energy, so that instead of having all of their focus be Amazon, that person goes from 40 hours a week thinking about Amazon to four hours a week thinking about Amazon. You become the mentor.

Rather than the operator of that part of it. And now it is time to either spearhead new initiatives into one of these, or my preference, go out and partner with the people who already have this dialed in. I mentioned Brian Lee this morning, somebody who I just revere.

His entire business thesis is he goes out and partners with the people who have this and he brings in the other pieces. So I have now been looking at my existing businesses and instead of trying to sponsor posts, I go to them and I say, this is what we're up to in the world. Here's why we really like what you're up to in the world. I would like to give you shares of the company that vest over time for you to keep doing what you're doing and when it feels right, talk about our products. That's how we start a conversation. Because am I going to build a beauty audience? Maybe.

Am I going to build an audience in every sphere? Probably not.

So I create partnerships with the people who are good at these things. That's that. That's how you build something that is bigger than yourself. That is how you scale past a million. That is how you get out of this perpetual hamster wheel that so many Amazon sellers stay stuck in, which is looking for the next product to just put into the system. I don't understand why I'm not growing faster. I can't understand why I'm working more than ever and taking home less While my sales are going up. That's the symptom. That's the symptom that happens when you're at that low seven figures. First, you have to decide who you are. You have to start getting out of the things that you were doing all the time. And you do that by mentoring people who are better than you at it, which requires you to become a leader. It requires you to actually. My first ever event, first person I booked to speak was Gary Vaynerchuk. He was. He was still big, but he wasn't like he is now. I've been following Gary for 10 years. My dream ever since I was a kid was to own the Cleveland Indians. I heard this dude say he wanted to own the New York Jets. I was like, you're my guy. I'm gonna find out what you do because you're 10 years older than me, and you're ahead of me. And the thing he said was, if you want to go from million to 100 million, it's about people. There isn't an app. There is no algorithm. You have to tap into your emotional intelligence skills more than your mental intelligence skills. You cannot think your way into going faster. You scale human beings. That requires you to become a leader, which, just like launching your first product sucks for a while, and then you get better at it, and you get better at it.

So you start to move from operator of all things to leader of all things. That requires you to lead yourself and to lead a vision that actually reflects what you are there to do. And that is when you are free to go create partnerships and relationships. If you're here tomorrow morning and you hear Dave speak, you might hear him talk about how bulletproof really took off when they started creating intentional partnerships.

When they did their first raise, Dave was very public about the fact. He's like, I want to go here, and that requires money, and I have to go create a partnership that gives me the fuel to be able to go in that direction. That's when you can do things like scale or sell. That's when you're financially free. It's when you have f you money. It's when you're done. You at that. That point when you make that switch, that's the switch that most entrepreneurs don't want to make. And it's the reason why most people never grow past seven figures. If you want to do that, then you go put in the hard work of creating those relationships and getting really, really clear about who you want to be in the world. That usually requires that you do Less for a while, that you get real quiet, that you get real intentional about who you want to be and what you want to do in the world and then start putting in the pieces that allow you to scale past seven figures. I'm going to hang for as long as you guys want to hang. And then when I go hear John Mackey. But thank you all for being here today. I appreciate it.

Hey team, real quick, shameless plug here. If you've ever seen my company logo for capitalism.com, it's a red sea with a flame at the end. And the reason why that's the company logo is because I believe that our purpose as a company and my purpose as a leader is to light other fires. And that means creating content for entrepreneurs.

Who go on to build great companies.

Working with entrepreneurs to help them break through their plateaus and to invest in companies that really have a shot at breaking out, teaching this stuff so that more success stories get created. I like to light fires. That's what I'm here to do. One of the ways that I do that is inside of our monthly membership, which is called the 1%. And inside there, we send out a monthly newsletter which features case studies of success stories, what's working right now from.

Some of the best people in the.

World who are doing this stuff or building businesses and investing the profits. And we feature business ideas that you can literally rip off and steal. We often even just throw keyword lists.

At you and say, go for it.

Hey, we might even invest in this.

Post in the community. You'll probably find an investor too.

And the idea is to bring together investors, entrepreneurs, influencers in one place where we can light fires really, really quickly. We also have a year long curriculum that is made to help you build businesses, invest the profits, increase your profits, create the change you want to see in the world. You can't not change as a result.

Of going through this.

So you can find out more@capitalism.com 1. If you've been listening to the podcast and you're missing community, you're missing opportunity, you're missing connection, you're missing being a part of a movement that is going to make you a better entrepreneur. This is going to fix that for you. It also gives you discounts on our events and our other products. And it's more than worth ten dollar. Ten dollars for every dollar we charge. That's my rule as an entrepreneur. I don't collect a dollar unless I know I can provide 10. And this absolutely meets that. So that's@capitalism.com the number one hope to see you inside.