4 Leverage Points That Create A Breakthrough Business

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Hey fastlaners, Ryan Daniel Moran here. Welcome to Freedom fastlane. Over the last several years, I've really been able to hone in on what it takes to have a million dollar business and beyond. And really this came out of finally getting it right. If you haven't read the book Ready, Fire, Aim. It is, you know, one of the, probably one of the best step by step book to having a really big profitable business. And I based my methodology of getting to the million dollar level and beyond loosely off of that book, Ready, Fire, Aim. And really locking in the strategy to grow a business to that level and far beyond has really allowed me to crack the code on what it takes to, to build what I call a breakthrough business. Something that moves beyond the kind of cash flow level where it's just there to pay for your lifestyle and moves beyond that to something that affects more than just you, that has the ability to break out, to really create something special. And because of that, because I've kind of been able to deconstruct that a bit. And I've worked with several hundred students now on creating million dollar plus businesses inside of our tribe, which by the way is going to be opening to the public here in a couple of weeks. And we're doing a training class over at the blog to kind of kick it off that we're calling the Breakthrough Business Bootcamp. That is a class that is showing you all those leverage points that have created breakthrough businesses. But as a result of working with the tribe and working with a lot of both students and new mentors that I've met over the last few years, I've noticed a few leverage points that have come up consistently, a few leverage points that have come up over and over again that when applied have created the difference between a business that struggles to get to that million dollar point and a business that breaks through that point and breaks into new territory and is able to grow far beyond what it previously was limited to doing. Or if they hadn't applied, these leverage points would have a difficulty breaking out of. So today I'm going to share four of those leverage points with you so that you can implement them into your business. And if you want to break out of the level that you currently are at and go beyond that, and I say if you want to because not everybody does. I mean, some entrepreneurs, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs get into the entrepreneurial game because they just want to have a cash flow business that makes 100 grand to a million dollars a year and, and they're fine with that they don't want to grow beyond that, and that's totally cool. But if you want to have a business that is bigger than you and a business that will also grow to the level that it can be sold for a nice chunk of change so you can bank that money and invest it or move on to other things, this will put you in a better position to do that. So I'm going to give you four of those leverage points today. There's more, but these are some of the ones that I've seen make the biggest impact. So let's start with at number one, the number one breakthrough point that businesses implement to be different and bigger than those companies that struggle is mass market appeal. And even more so, I would say having several products under their brand that maintain mass market appeal. Now, not every product on the surface looks like it appeals to everyone. And I'm sure that we, when you've gone into business trainings before, they've told you to niche it down, find your niche and service that specific small market with a product directly related to them. And that's true if you want to have a cash flow or a small business. But the breakthrough businesses that I've studied, the ones that have gone beyond that struggling point or beyond the point of just being something that spits out some cash flow, is that it does indeed have mass market appeal. Now, not every product, and said this again, but not every product on the surface looks like it has mass market appeal. But there's a way to kind of force a product into the mass market, and that is by having an appealing brand or product story. There are lots and lots of examples, but I'll think of one that affected me and that was when I was in college. I was really, really into kind of hippie superfoods. I was mostly a vegan for a while, and nothing wrong with that, I'm not anymore. But the one product that I bought a lot of was goji juice, goji berry juice. Now, goji juice is kind of a niche item. It was at the time anyway. Goji berry is a little bit more well known now. You can find them at Whole Foods. But at the time it was, it was a very niche idea. And the thing that kind of sold me on goji berries was the story that a certain company told about their goji juice. And they talked about how there were, I think it was some, either yogis or monks in China, or as Donald Trump would call it, China would live to be over a hundred years old and that they would maintain their virality Virility, their virility. There we go. They maintain their virility, they would maintain their energy, they would maintain their sense of being youthful. And the reason that was was because of they, they lived next to a goji field or something like that. And what that does psychologically is it ties your product or your service back to a certain result. And when you tell stories around your brand or around your products, you psychologically create a connection with your customer to the solution that you want without. Or at least by delicately dancing around saying that you are the solution for that thing or that you will do that thing, the customer naturally assumes that that is the case. Stories, for whatever reason, pass through our BS meter in our brain. So we can create a mass market appeal. Even if our market doesn't necessarily create or appeal to everybody, we can broaden the base that we market to by having an attractive brand or product story. So what most people will do is they'll say, hey, this is my product. These are the benefits for it. But without a compelling story, there's kind of a limited market to why it's impactful or who you can target. So if you come in and you've got a sales letter or an Amazon listing or a sales page or whatever, however you're taking orders for your product and you're just listing features and benefits, that's great. You're probably going to do better than most people who get out there without it. But you're going to be pigeonholed into the people who are searching for your product or who stumble upon your page the minute that you create a much broader story around that and you connect that to how a larger audience can relate to and pass through that BS meter and give them the psychological impact of seeing how your product or service can bring them to a different point, the result that they want. That is when you can do more mass market targeting, that's when you're retail ready. That's when you can drive cold traffic to a sales page without that story that creates that widening of the base. You're limited into a very specific market. And I feel like I'm. Forgive me, I repeat myself a lot here on the show, but I want to make sure you get this point and at risk for repeating myself when you don't have that, you're limited to the traffic or the eyeballs in that market in that specific niche. For example, what's the difference between a product or service that can get affiliates in an area that isn't directly related to their field versus you've got a product or service that only your other affiliates in your exact market or your exact circle can promote. I'm not saying the story is always the thing that makes the difference, but a lot of the time it is.

I mean, think of Airborne. Do you remember Airborne? Airborne was. I don't even know. It's still around. But it was this effervescent multivitamin that you. Is that the right word that you put in water and then you drink and it was. All it was was a multivitamin. That's all it was. So if it didn't have a brand story, if it didn't have a very compelling brand story, it would just be limited to sitting on the shelf with all the multivitamins, hoping that it would stand out. And that's what most of you are doing. You're putting your product or service on the shelf, literally or figuratively, and hoping that it stands out with better packaging, better reviews, better pricing. But there's no compelling reason why it should be you. And the only people that you can then attract to your product or your service is those who are already looking for it. Unless an affiliate who also sells multivitamins or some other health related person picks up your product and markets to their list. That's the only way that you get attention. Why was Airborne different? Because it was a multivitamin. That's all it was. But what was the story? The story was that it was created by a schoolteacher who traveled a lot and was tired of getting sick and bringing illness back into the classroom, so she created her own product that would solve that problem. They had to add disclaimers later saying that it wasn't a cure or a cure for a disease and it wasn't a preventative and.

It wasn't guaranteed to make sure you didn't get sick because it was just a multivitamin. And what happened as a result? It blew up. Oprah picked it up. I think the big guns at CEO space really helped it spread. It went everywhere. I remember driving past a Walgreens, a Walgreens, and the sign, the front sign on Walgreens said we have Airborne. That's how big it got. Why? Because it had a compelling and clear brand story. That all of a sudden what didn't just stand out to people who were already looking for a multivitamin, it stood out to people who were just tired of getting sick. That is the leverage that you get from having a compelling brand story. And that's the reason why somebody like Oprah picks it up and Oprah doesn't pick up one a day vitamins because one is a product. The other has a very compelling brand story that allows you to buy new traffic, get into retail. By the way, that is one of the biggest things that makes you stand out in retail. It allows you different exposure that wouldn't have been there before and it opens you up to brand new customer bases. So the first leverage point is mass market appeal. And the way that you can force that is by creating a brand story that generates mass appeal. The second leverage point is having a customer centered approach versus a product centered approach. And by that I mean does your company exist in order to create change for a customer or does it exist to provide a product? It's a very delicate difference. But there is a very clear difference. Because if you're in business to just put out a product versus you're in business to serve a customer, one is very dependent on outside channels and the other is you can pivot at any point. If you are always in the market to serve young single men versus you're in the market to sell dating products, that's a very different approach. It's my opinion, and from what I've observed, that having the customer centered, meaning I serve young men who are single, that that allows you to sell more products that aren't directly in your line of sight. By that I mean if someone enters the dating market and they're selling a dating product and they're in the market to sell dating products and that's what they think their business is, then they're kind of pigeonholed into what they can sell. They can sell the dating online course, they can sell the pheromone spray, I guess they can sell the pickup lines course they can sell.

What else? I don't even know. The workshops, I suppose, versus if they're just serving young single men who are looking to date attractive women, what can you sell? Now you can sell all the previous products, you can sell the workshops, you can sell the pickup line stuff, but you can also sell fitness related stuff. You can sell wealth building, you can sell business building stuff, you can sell fashion stuff, you can sell whatever the heck you want to that market because now you're serving the overall goals of the person rather than pitching yourself pigeonholing yourself into a specific product. Think of how Google operates. If Google was just in the market for search, which really is what AltaVista, what Yahoo, what Bing and Live.com all tried to do, and for the most part, with the exception of Bing, they've all failed. Even though they had some initial success. Why? Because Google came along and decided to organize the world's information. That was their mission. Their customer was the person who was online looking for information. So their mission was to organize it. And they did it with browsers, they did it with search, they did it with maps, and now they're going into cars. And they've been incredibly successful. Obviously what the difference was was how they were serving and who they were serving. And they were doing it not by leading with a product, but by leading with a customer or a mission. You can do the same thing in your product or in your company. I beat this into the head of those who are in the tribe, and I say, you're not selling a product. You're building a brand that targets customers. So rather than asking, what can I sell? Ask the question, who do I serve? Because when we ask the question, who do I serve? The product becomes very, very clear. I should say products become very, very clear. And even more so, the net becomes wider of what you can sell them. Because now we're all focused on a goal and a mission and a person versus one single product. The single product approach has a very short lifespan. Serving a customer never goes out of style. That exists forever. So plenty of people make lots of money selling a product. That's a cash flow business, that's a lifestyle business. But if you want to have a breakthrough business, you do that by serving a very specific customer. The third leverage point that I've seen help companies break out is aggressive reinvestment. I think every entrepreneur gets into their business thinking about how much money they can pull out of the business. But breakthrough business I've seen operate differently and forget about how much can be pulled out of the business and instead looked at it as a way that you can build the business that much faster or that much further. I have reached kind of a point in my business where, or in my career where I'm not really excited by money anymore, meaning I'm not really excited about me getting the money. I don't really feel the need to expand my lifestyle all that much more than I, than I have. I've got my Tesla, I've got the downtown place, and I don't really feel the need to expand beyond that. That has freed me up to be in the position where I can now reinvest all of my money into the business and be disattached from the result. I don't really sweat losing money that much anymore. And that ability to operate with that calmness of mind has Created a lot of breakthroughs in my business. But I've discovered that you don't necessarily have to reach the point of personal security in order to have that. Because I've seen entrepreneurs operate with that mentality. Even before they felt like they were in the clear, they still needed a steady paycheck, they still needed a certain amount of income in order to pay bills. But by operating with the mindset of, I'm still gonna let the business have its money and reinvest that money and just live off the money that I decide to take on a regular basis, then that allows them to really exponentially grow the business. From a practical sense, here's what that looks like. My recommendation is once you're in the clear, meaning once you're at the point where your business is profitable, put yourself on salary in the company and then change that very slowly. The rest is the business's money. It's not your money, it's the business's money. And that's to be reinvested into future growth. I think a lot of business owners look at it as, I'm going to take my paycheck and whatever's left in the company at the end of the day is my profits and I'm gonna take it out, suckers. But really, if you look at it differently and say, this is what the business has, to grow that much further, you're in a much better position to grow far beyond yourself. That's when you can systemize it. That's when you can get yourself out of operations. That's when you can aggressively roll out new products. That's when you can elbow all of your competitors out your way because you can spend more on advertising, you can try new traffic channels, you can really do what it takes to win the game of business. And meanwhile, your competitors are trying to take money out of the business as quickly as possible. But if you keep the end in mind that you're really investing for a bigger cash out when you sell the business, or more cash flow later, if you can delay that gratification, you're in the best position to win in the marketplace. The number one thing that determines success among entrepreneurs is the ability to delay gratification. How aggressively can you reinvest? Every penny that you take out of the business now has lost its exponential potential to give you a return in the business. That's your best investment in your business. Yes, I recommend real estate and dividend paying stock and a lot of other things that we've covered here on previous podcasts. But the Best investment you can make is in your business. And you should, you should take out as little as possible in those first few years until you are in the clear so that you can have that business that has long term staying power. The fourth leverage point that I've seen create breakthrough businesses for entrepreneurs is controlling your own eyeballs. This can be maintaining an audience, or this can be creating and maintaining your own traffic channel, meaning that you're not just dependent on one place for sales. The really breakthrough businesses have other ways of generating traffic and sales. So if their primary sales channel, be IT affiliates or Amazon.com or retail or whatever, if one of those goes away, you're at least still in business and you can pivot quickly. From a practical standpoint, this is how many eyeballs can you impact at the click of a button? Can you send an email and impact a large number of people? Can you put up a Facebook post and impact a lot of people? Can you run a commercial and impact a lot of people a YouTube video? Where are your eyeballs? How do you control those eyeballs? Where do they find you? If I put up a podcast, tens of thousands of people listen. I control that source of eyeballs. If itunes goes away, I'm not going to be happy. But I at the very least can go to my list and send them to my blog where I can put up the exact same content and sell the exact same products. If affiliates go away, do you have a list or do you have your own blog or a place where you can communicate with the people who digest your information and products and services? If Amazon.com goes away, do you have any customer data? Do you have a list? Do you have affiliates? Do you have traffic flowing on Facebook that allows you to still stay in business? It's never fun to lose a primary sales channel, but if you're not building what I call deplorable assets, things that you control long term, it's kind of like if one of my businesses goes away, I at least have the cash flow from my real estate holdings in order to keep me afloat. That will keep on growing and keep on producing cash regardless of what happens. If I take a risk and I fail, is there another business that is producing income for me? So I recommend going all in on your business, but diversifying the place that you're getting your eyeballs and your sales. As soon as you're at a point where one of your sales channels is independent. So if you're ranking on Amazon, you're taking a lot of sales from that sales channel. How quickly can you take that as a leverage and then move it, move your attention to another sales channel that will allow you to be independent of one or the other. One example that comes up is we've, we're working on right now, it's pretty much finalized to get a deal with Walmart, a deal with Walmart to get some of our tribe students products onto the physical shelves of Walmarts across the United States. And the thing, the thing that attracted Walmart was the product success on Amazon. So whereas most people will either try in and chase two rabbits and catch neither of them, some of our students went all in on Amazon. And because of that, now we're able to take them and say, okay, how can we take this success and leverage it to another place like retail? Well, if a product has a thousand reviews and is selling over 100 units a day, that's a compelling reason why Walmart might want to carry it on its shelves. That's not the end of the conversation, but it's a nice opener. So as a result, it gives us some leverage to negotiate those deals that we're working on right now to bring our students products onto the shelves of Walmart. What helps even further is if you're collecting an audience, whether it's on YouTube or an email list or a podcast or a blog, I don't care how. But if you're able to communicate with a large audience and drive those eyeballs, drive those buyers into a retail store, that's another great way to prove a concept, to prove that you've got some leverage. And you're not just asking anymore. You're not just asking, put me on your shelves and let me sell there. You're showing how you can take an old success or something you've built up as leverage to push another domino, to open up a new channel. So as soon as you've gone all in on a bit on a business and a channel and you have the way that you are taking orders and you have scaled that, the question then becomes, how do I control my own eyeballs? By building a list, building an audience, having the ability to impact people at the click of a button, having multiple sales channels, how do I do that? As soon as possible, as soon as I have leveraged everything I can on my primary sales channel. If you haven't leveraged all you can, if you haven't rolled out multiple products and maximize your exposure in your primary sales channel, don't pivot. But the breakout businesses that I've seen have made that pivot as soon as they had maximized everything they could on their primary sales channel. I'm going to give you a bonus leverage point because it kind of feeds all of these and that's a single minded focus. And by that I mean there is a very clear goal and that everything that happens is moving toward that goal. Now this seems self explanatory, but if you're operating in the last podcast, that was the Mastermind interview from Freedom Fast Lane Live. Our Mastermind partner Dan said something at the very end. He said, you don't start out with a $2.5 million vision and become a $100 million company. That doesn't happen. And I thought that was so brilliantly put. And that approach of starting with the $100 million view that allows you to align all of your assets towards that goal. Nobody ever stumbles upon a million dollar a month business. There has to be a single minded focus behind that goal and moving toward that goal and that that adjusts what your reinvestment strategy is going to be. How you go mass market, how you control your eyeballs, how you pivot and go retail or go into other channels. So having that singular focus and aligning everything you have behind that goal and moving toward that focus is how those breakthrough businesses have made the leap from the cash flow business that operates and does a few hundred thousand or a million dollars to the multimillion dollar point. That has been how they have scaled by keeping a large goal, a large focus in sight, and aligning everything behind that and moving toward it. And that's been the fuel for all the decisions that have moved it. Your results are determined by the beliefs you have in combination with the strategy that you follow, the actions that you take and the time that you're willing to put into it. Any of those points when if you expand the amount of time on a strategy, if you expand the beliefs that you have, the targets that you set, if you expand the action, the amount of work you're able to get done, if you expand any of those areas, you're able to impact the results that you get. But the beliefs set the whole frame. And I don't mean in a woo woo secret way, I mean in the singular focus that you have and the targets that you set and how you align all of your assets behind that and move toward that goal. We're coming out with a new video series called the Breakthrough Business Boot Camp. We're going to be releasing it over@freedomfastlane.com make sure you're on the newsletter and you'll be hearing announcements about that video series and we're going to be doing that to kick off our first training in years, which will also be called the Breakthrough Business Boot Camp and it'll be released inside of the Tribe, which is opening here in a couple of weeks. We'll be diving more into these leverage points, how to actually implement them in your business, and we'll be getting the training training directly from some of our most successful students inside of the tribe so you can take their habits and their behaviors, instill them into your businesses and grow a breakthrough business. If you want to stay up to date on the release of the Tribe and the Breakthrough Business Boot Camp, you can head over to freedomfastlane.com Tribe T R I B E where we'll be relying on releasing all of the notes and announcements for this training. Hope you enjoyed this podcast on these leverage points to creating a breakthrough business. As always, I look forward to seeing your thoughts and comments@freedomfastlane.com thanks for listening to the show. Keep on changing the world and I'll see you on the next episode.