College Dropout Makes $1M/Month | Chandler Bolt

The longer it takes to build it, the longer it'll last. Every month I would show up and.

I'd be like, guys, this is the month.

This is it.

We're hitting a million. And then we wouldn't hit it.

When your business gets bigger, that doesn't mean that you don't have problems anymore. That just means that your problems get bigger. My journey has literally just been, what's the biggest problem in my business right now? What's the best book on that problem? Read the book, implement the book, solve the problem, go to the next thing. You're not enjoying the journey, why are you doing it? Just get off the ride.

How do you build a business that gets a million dollars a month in sales? I've done that one time before. I sold my last company, my business did about a million dollars per month. But ever since I sold that company back in 2017, that's been an elusive goal for me to get back to. And so I called a friend of mine, Chandler Bolt, who recently crossed a consistent $1 million a month without doing a launch, without doing a big promotion, without releasing any new products, just consistently growing until he was maintaining $1 million a month. I wanted to know, what does it take in order to get there? What team members do you need to have in place? What major decisions led to him crossing $1 million a month? 1 of the things that you're going to discover in this episode is that getting to that type of a level does not necessarily mean working more. It doesn't mean launching more products. Sometimes it means doing just a few things extremely well. So enjoy this masterclass with Chandler Bolt on getting to a million dollars a month.

Chandler, what's up, man?

Great to be here.

The way that I like to start these is to ask, how did you make your money?

Who scaling a book publishing business? We've published, gosh, 7,000 books in the last eight and a half years.

That's amazing.

So a lot of books, one book at a time. We make our money more as a service and a coaching company than on the back end. So our authors keep all the rights and royalty. So the way mo most book publishing companies make their money is you've got a, it's like a vc. Basically, book publishing is a VC business, but authors are the businesses.

Right.

So they're betting on one out of ten becomes a unicorn. Then that's what a publishing company would call like their backlist. Right. And so then that's how they make their long term money as a publishing company. And then you, you Know, six to eight of them will just be total flops, one or two will be base hits. But they make their money on the unicorns. And that's how they.

And you guys are different. How?

We're different because we. We. Our authors keep all the rights and royalties. So we're like kind of like if traditional publishing and self publishing had a baby, but it was a better baby.

It was a designer baby.

It's a designer, a genetically modified baby, GMO babies.

So it's like they keep all the rights and royalties. We do the final mile of the publishing, coach them through the process so that they can have a bigger outcome and then take the share of that outcome.

Well, I want to congratulate you because you were very public on your own Facebook page that you guys hit and sustained a million a month.

Right.

Without doing a launch, without, like, a temporary thing.

Yeah.

So congratulations. Thank you. And this is. This is a. That's a milestone for me that I have been. That has been sort of elusive for me, so I was really curious. It was elusive for you for a while, too. There wasn't just, like a linear.

Oh, gosh. Well, I mean, if you look back, it probably looks linear. Linear. But it doesn't feel linear because there's. And. Sorry to cut off your question. But like, it, you know, it's like, okay, you'll hit 700 and you'll hit 900, and then you'll hit 750 and. And maybe you'll be there a couple months, and then you're at 9:57, and you're like, oh, we're so close.

And then the next nine months, you're.

In the eight hundreds. And so, you know, kind of like if you take a long enough curve, it looks linear, but when you're in the moment, it doesn't feel like it. And I think I joked about this at capcon is.

Feeling like an idiot because it felt like every month I'm like, all right, guys, we do our team. We call it the future of or like state and future of self publishing dot com. So we do it once a month, like our town hall, do a presentation, Q and A, all that stuff internally with the team. So I felt like every month I would show up and I'd be like.

Guys, this is the month.

This is it.

We're hitting a million. And then we wouldn't hit it.

And then we wouldn't hit it. And so we finally did. But I think. And I think what I shared with the audience there at your conference was, you know, I Think a lot of people will say that they hit it or they'll hit it and it'll be a one off massive launch, not real. So for us it was like we want this to be net sales, no launch Evergreen Month. Because that in my mind is like if we're saying this is a four minute mile, that's how we hit it, means that's how we can sustain it. And my brother, not to go too far off on a tangent, but actually you're one of the rare people I feel like who knows about my brother's band.

I'm still mad at you for holding out on me this for so many years I've been a Need to Breathe fan. Just slip it in that he's in need to Breathe. They Joke, it's like Toast man, they.

Joke is like the biggest band that.

You'Ve never heard of, but your friends have kind of thing and in. But anyways, he said, he told me long time ago, he's like, the longer it takes to build it, the longer it'll last. And that's always stuck with me because he's like, hey, there's a bunch of one hit wonder bands and musicians that just have. They. They pop off and then no one knows of them or they don't sell tickets because they don't have a true fan base. They have people who like that song. And so I think as it relates coming back to the. The question of sustainability and how do you not only hit your first million dollar month, but make it the norm and the longer it takes to build it, the longer it'll last.

That's actually a really good analogy with, with. With like the one hit wonder versus the band that lasts a long time. I mean your brother's band has been around for 20 years and they're still smashing out hits and they're playing the biggest.

I mean they just did an arena tour and they're coming back in the spring and they'll be playing at Moody center, right? Which is like this is the first time they've ever headlined arenas. Now they did 82 shows with Taylor Swift back in the day One Republic. Like they've opened in arenas and stadiums, but this is the first time. But they built it. They felt like they never got a big break, but they just kept building. Right.

Which I think, you know, there's a metaphor in there somewhere for, for us.

And our businesses is interpret how you will.

Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know. I feel like I've never really gotten a big break. But we just Keep building.

Yeah.

Right. And so similarly, like you're saying, hey, we're trying to chase down this million dollar months is like, like, all right.

Well, you know, I'm really glad you said that because just that reframe about it helps me sort of take the tenseness out of it. Like I don't matter until I met a million.

Yeah.

When will I finally be important?

Yes. And then you hit it and you've already.

Yeah.

But I do want to know what.

You did in order to finally break through that, that milestone and how you're sustaining it. And yeah, I want to reverse engineer a little bit about how you got there because I know you didn't start with this big business that was spitting off cash.

Yeah, it's been a long winding road. But I think if we fast forward to that moment in time and say, hey, how do we break through? There's the obvious stuff, like great people, you need great process and systems. And that kind of stuff is how it sustains and how it builds. But you know, what it takes to get to a million is not what it takes to get to 10 million a year is not what it takes to get to that next level. And so we, I felt like we were just bumping up against some of those headwinds where for us we went from 0 to 1.32 in the first quote unquote year of business. Like, we had incubated for a year or so before that, but then it was all right, you're, we're at a million, then we're at 2 million. Then I want to say we jumped to 4, then we were maybe 6, 7 and a half, 9. I'm blurring some of the numbers together, but it's like we're growing it at a fast clip. And then you realize as you get bigger, okay, we're used to growing at 40% a year or even 100% a year. Well now when, when you're at, at 10, trying to get to 12, which is million dollar a month.

You realize that the percentages get harder as the numbers get bigger.

It's like, all right, well we got.

To add 2 million in revenue, which.

When we were smaller, that was doubling in size. But now that's 20% growth.

Right.

Which we're kind of like pissed off.

About that because it's like, well, 20% growth, that's not that great for us at least. And, and so I think to, to fully answer your question of like what it took, it, it took building multiple scalable customer acquisition channels, which I would actually say, and I'd love to get your take on this, I think is both our biggest strength and our biggest weakness. And when we see, when I see a lot of people that have hyper growth, they get really good at one channel and then they massively scale that channel. Now the downside of that is you're very channel dependent. And let's say it's Facebook ads, for example, or it's Google search or whatever, they change the algorithm or the cost goes up, maybe you're out of business. A lot of B2C businesses, I'm sure you've seen in your world who, hey, that math just changed with Facebook and Instagram and now you just don't have a business because it's a keck to LTV payback period. Kind of arbitrage that just. When that math don't work. That math don't work. Yeah, right. But so I think that that is how I see a lot of people do it. And for us, we've been multi channel, like two, three channels. And I think that's how we finally broke through because it's almost like this horse race where at different times we've had certain channels running faster.

Does that mean like your YouTube ads start to outperform your Facebook ads? Is that what you mean?

That means like I would. Our biggest channels are business development and partnerships, SEO and content, and then paid. So our worst channel is paid. And that also represents, I think, our biggest opportunity over this next 12 months or so. But that though. And so content has really grown, but now biz dev has taken off and, and we're doing a lot of partnership stuff.

Was that your first, your first channel? The. The partnerships?

Yeah.

So like, I know this story about you buying out your partner. Yeah, we'll talk about that a little bit. But I think if I remember correctly that at the time the business was mostly a launch model or you, oh, 100%. You just like launch and burn kind of old school. Very few businesses make that pivot into being a real business.

Yes. When there's a hard pivot.

So I, I'm sort of processing. That was your first channel, so it makes sense that it would be the most matured. You did the smart thing of taking some of that revenue and that profit investing into content and inbound, if you will. And it is hard for people who have organic growth to make paid work sometimes.

Right.

That feels very logical to me. That flow.

Where I've seen people make mistakes is they get a channel working and they're afraid it's not gonna work. So then they start another channel and now their attention is just split.

So that's probably us. Yeah, I think we're probably making that mistake.

Larry, That's a great. I'm going go home and change some things.

I work a lot in E commerce.

So people will get to a million on Amazon and then they want to build a funnel when they could just double and get to 2 on Amazon. But they're afraid there's going to be.

An algorithm change, which is a legitimate.

Threat to your business. But the fastest way that you'll grow is to double down on what's working until it starts to flatten a little bit. And then you take that profit and you invest it into the people that will grow the second channel rather than you just diverting your focus.

Right, yeah, that makes sense. And I think, you know, it's funny, I was reflecting back on my time with. With your audience at capcon, which is a lot of fun, by the way. Thank you for having me.

Thank you. I kind of called you in an emergency because one of our speakers canceled last minute. And so we put together an eight figure panel.

Yeah.

And it plays to live in Austin.

And I think we played pickleball at my place the week before. And I just told every. I told the speakers or whoever it was when I got there. I'm like, hey, I'll be the backup guy.

You know, call me, call me whatever you want, as long as you call me.

And it worked out great.

It was fun, though. And I. I think back because I feel like this, the story that brought the house down. It was a lot of laughter, which.

You know, Ryan, my self esteem is very highly correlated with how funny people.

Think that I am. And so I was at an all time high that day because I feel like you were really laughing at my jokes. And it was more of like an.

I don't do a lot of panels, but I do a lot of speaking.

So it's just kind of fun to.

Just riff off the cuff. But it's exactly to your point. We were scaling and we would launch or we would. It was a launch model. We would launch twice a year and you would have this big spike. And sure. Okay, we quote, unquote, made a ton of money in one month, but everybody knows that's two to six months of work.

Yeah.

That you're just capturing in one.

That's right.

Which is super risky. And. And also not very sustainable. It's all affiliate model and you're just hitting up your friends all the time to Promote your next launch. And I just remember when we did it, and this dovetails with me buying out my business partner.

We had this massive launch in January.

We go from in debt to, like, rolling in cash.

And.

Then for the next probably three.

To six months, we lost money every single month.

And I just remember thinking to myself.

If I would have literally done nothing.

This month, I would have made more money than trying to run this freaking business. Like, all right, we lost 20 grand. If I would have just said, we're not going to pay any expenses, we're not going to do business this month, I would be $20,000 more profitable than I am trying to actually run this fricking business. And of course, there's cash and accrual and all that stuff.

And so it's not exactly that simple, but it really just shifted for me is like, I love incremental Kaizen. Kind of like, all right, let's get a little bit better, let's get a little bit better. Let's keep getting better every day, and over a long enough timeline, we're going to win. But it's hard to do that when you're launching twice a year. So that's where I really felt compelled to both, I guess, maybe do two things simultaneously. One, shift away from the launch model, but then secondly, shift away from the Chandler Bolt show and more to where. Where it's like, all right, personal brand. Brand at the forefront to. All right, now this is self publishing school at the time. Now it's self publishing dot com, but all right, now this is self publishing dot com, not just Chandler Bolt. Now, yes, I will grow my personal brand within that, but it makes for a way more valuable entity that's not tied to me long term if I did that. So I feel like that was probably the big pivot that just felt like it had to happen.

Yeah, that. That makes a lot of sense. Like it. Actually hearing you talk about it, it sounds like a much more logical evolution than I was anticipating.

Well, mixed with.

Oh, crap. This isn't working.

Sure. You still have those moments.

Oh, yeah.

Are you kidding?

Life just isn't magical once you cross.

No, no, no, no.

A month mark.

No, it's. It's not all unicorns.

Hi.

It's.

I mean, yeah, this.

That's the thing. I mean, I'm sure you've seen it. And anybody listening to this, watching this has seen it. It's. They call it the entrepreneur roller coaster for a reason, because it's up and down. And it's. What you realize is that and this is actually, I feel like an evolution I'm trying to go through right now. It's way easier said than done is when your business gets bigger, that doesn't mean you, that you don't have problems anymore. That just means that your problems get bigger.

So it's like, man, why do I.

Feel like I got problems all the time?

It's like the business is just bigger.

Or like, take for example, something as small as, like employee turnover.

Yeah.

You know, nationwide average is about 20%, 17%, that is where they leave. And 4% or so, 4 or 5% that gets fired on a, on a yearly basis. Now that means you're, if you're, if you're average, according to the national statistics, you're turning over your team every five years. Now let's say you're at 10%. You're beating average by a lot. Congratulations. Well, well, if you've got 10 people, you might lose one person a year. If you've got, you know, we're like 60, 70 plus, then it's like, oh, wow, we're losing seven people, 10 people a year. So then you feel like, man, am I just an idiot? Do we have this crazy turnover problem? Like, what's going, is our culture not good? Like, what's going on? It's like, oh, well, no, the numbers just got bigger. And so now we've got to replace key people on a more frequent basis. We got bigger, which means our problems got bigger.

One of my goals for this year is to grow this YouTube channel by creating content that has no ask, that has no call to action, that has no result associated with it for selling courses or programs, just creating amazing content that my community needs. The one ask that I do have is that if you're getting value out of this show, would you hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you're listening or watching this episode? It helps me go out and have leverage with the people that I know can serve you. I like bringing the entrepreneurs to you that are getting their fingernails dirty and don't have huge platforms so that you can learn from them first. It helps me do that. If you hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast player or on YouTube and that helps us go out and get the guests that I know create the most value for you on your road to 1 million.

There. There's something in your story that I don't know and I'd love for you to fill in this gap. And you said you have what, a 60 or 70 person team?

Yeah, about that. 7, 60 full time, let's call it 10, 20 contractors.

So when you started this business, this was a launch model. This is like Internet Marketing 101.

Yeah.

You have an offer, you sell it, you launch it, and then you're broke for three months.

Yeah.

You end up buying out your partner, which was a stressful process all on its own, its own story. But not many people make that shift from, hey, I have an offer that I'm launching and selling to now. I have a real business.

Right.

With making a real difference with the product that I have that employs 60 people. That's a big transition and it's taking you years to make that transition. But not many people make that transition.

Right.

So can you walk us through your mindset as you were converting this into a real company?

Yeah, it's a great, great question.

I, I mean, I think I cut my teeth on more traditional businesses. And then.

The launch. Internet marketing world was just what I learned first. So going way back, like in high school, I ran like a landscaping, lawn care and pressure washing business, then ran like a canteen thing. Then moving into college, ran a painting business, like a house PA business you've probably heard of, like student painters or college pro painting and all that stuff. So like an internship meets business incubator type deal. They give you a zip code, some training and some marketing materials and say, have at it. I always think it's like the Navy seals, I'll tell people, because some people have never heard of it. It's like, I'm like, all right, this is like the Navy SEALS hell week, but the business equivalent. And it's for seven months. I mean, you're just getting your butt kicked non stop. It's. But so you get, you get recruited in the fall, you get trained up in the spring, like January, February, you go to the big training, you go out, you start knocking on doors, putting flyers on mailboxes, like the whole deal. You sell all spring, you recruit and hire painters, and then you paint all summer. And so that's really where my first year in that company, I, my, I was the number one in the country, number one in the com. In the company. And as a rookie branch manager and that was my goal. It's like, hey, I want to beat everybody. And. But it just taught me so much. And so that gave me the confidence to drop out. And then as I was dropping out, I learned about the whole Internet marketing world. So that was like, all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna segue. And I published a couple books as I was dropping out of school. So then it felt like, all right, Internet marketing world. Okay, I've done some of this book stuff successfully. Let's kind of merge the two and start teaching this. But always coming from kind of more that blue collar.

Basic, boring business world and wanting to scale companies, not just pose in front of Lamborghinis.

We, we. We actually met for the first time when you were visiting Austin and you were attending a Keith Cunningham event.

Right? Yeah. Yeah.

And you told me we were at a dinner. And I just remember you saying, I've realized how little I know about my own business. This was, this is like six years ago. Right. And that seems to have been a transformational experience for you. Would you explain to me what you learned there and how it impacted your business if that was a big moment in your business?

Yeah. Oh, man. Well, I mean, first off, Keith Cunningham is the man. I mean, I don't think people can see this in the screen here, but we got the road Less stupid right behind us. I saw it on the way in and. And that guy is just. I've went to that four day NBA multiple times. Brought like my financial controllers with me.

Doesn't host anymore, does he?

I don't know. He.

I feel like he's doing the Tony Robbins thing where he's like, this is the last one that Tony will ever. Or that Keith will ever be at. And then I think he's maybe brought.

It back a time or two, but.

I can't confirm that because I want to go. And I've heard about your experience, but it was awesome.

It was awesome. I. So I actually. Don't quote me on that. I don't know if he still does them or not, but it was just really great. And, and getting down to. Because I always kind of had this chip on my shoulder that I dropped out of school, but I need to operate like I'm still in school because I felt like I missed the most important classes. Right. You take the first two years of college, you get all the prereqs and none of the actual stuff that you want to learn. And so I felt like, all right, I missed all those business classes. So I'm going to take what I call the college dropouts approach to learning, which is reading books. And just like, that's been a big part of. You know, a lot of people want to find mentors, but the smartest, most successful people on the planet have written books on the best things that they know. And all you have to do is pay them $15.

Yeah.

And spend you Know a few hours and read it. If you can't see me right now, I'm pointing to 12 months to 1 million, which, if you're listening to this show and you haven't bought that book, what are you doing? But, you know, the smartest, most successful people have, have written books on the best things that they know. And for 15 bucks in a handful of hours, we can learn from them. So I'm very passionate about that because my journey has literally just been, what's the biggest problem in my business right now? What's the best book on that problem? Read the book, implement the book, solve the problem, go to the next thing.

There's that almost like a chip on your shoulder type of approach. Like, oh, for sure, I didn't finish. There's something I don't know and I.

Take that personally.

And I got to learn it.

Yeah, for sure. And it's definitely a chip on my shoulder because I feel like when I.

Dropped out of school.

You know, there's this period where you haven't really made it yet, where you feel like you got to explain yourself. Where I would run into people and they're like, well, what do you do for work? And I'm like, well, I'm. I dropped out of school, but I'm starting this business. But like, I'm not an idiot. Like, I didn't flunk out of school, you know, like, I was actually making pretty good grades.

And I've ran businesses before, so before I know it, I've got like this five minute long speech, just basically trying.

To prove to them that I'm not an idiot for driving that school.

And because it's, it's cool when it's cool, but it's not when it's not right. Like in hindsight, when, when it's like.

Oh, cool, now you have a successful business, people like, oh, whatever, you dropped out of school. But in the moment, I had people coming out of the woodwork saying, like, what are you doing? This is stupid. Like, why are you dropping out? This is not a good decision. So, yeah, there's definitely a chip on my shoulder. And I guess to circle back to the Keith Cunningham thing and the, and the reinventing.

Finding out what you don't know about the business. It's, it's new levels, new devils. Like, all right, we've just leveled up now. There's totally a totally new set of problems. So how do I relearn? Because I think most, most people, they're. They're founders, not CEOs, and, or they're a CEO of, of, you know, a few million dollar business, and they're not the right person to lead a $10 million a year or $50 million a year organization. So I think it just keeps, you know, you keep leveling up and assume that you don't know what you don't know, and then try and figure out what that is.

What did. So what did you learn at that experience with Keith that shifted so much? Because, oh, gosh, it seems to have been a really pivotal moment.

It was, it was. And I've been through that event multiple times. And it's crazy that you remember that dinner, too. That's one of the things I've always respected about you. From early on, I just remember that dinner, which was. I don't say true Lux or. I could picture that.

Roaring forks.

Yes, roaring forks. That's it, that's it, that's it. And I could picture that booth that we were at. And I just remember you were on.

The right hand side.

I'm like, that dude is a genius. His mind works in ways that my mind does not work. And I'm going to talk to him.

More and learn from him. And, and, but.

And that was in that pivotal moment, though, where you. You asked the question of what I learned from Keith Cunningham. Like.

He has this one pager that he is kind of like the punchline of the whole event where he teach, he. He just breaks it down super. I feel like we have similar styles where he, he's like, all right, I'm gonna break this complicated thing down into very simple steps. So he's like, hey, we're opening an egg business. And you're, you just sold 10 eggs. And he walks you through basically learning accounting and finance and all this stuff. But he has all these one liners. One of my favorite is revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. Cash is king. You know, revenue is the wiener measuring contest. Profit is, I'm going insane if I don't have it. And cash is, I'm going out of business if it's not there.

Yeah, right.

Which a lot of people think, oh, profit and cash are the same thing. But he breaks down why it isn't. You got your P and L, you got your balance sheet, all this stuff, right? That most people went to finance classes are like, yeah, that's obvious. But he broke down the one pager, and we just went and executed that one pager over the next year and over the next two years, and our profitability went from like 8 to 25 to 32% or whatever. And just in little things that you wouldn't think of. Like, okay, what's your cash receivables and your turn times. Okay, let's go negotiate with all of our vendors. He's like, you can get discounts first. So like, all right, let's go. We're going to go to the accounts payable bucket. We're going to get discounts from all of our vendors. That's step one or whatever it was in that. Okay, now we're going to. Or first we're going to collect on all this past due ar, that's immediate, you know, cash to our bank account. Then we're going to negotiate with vendors. And if they don't negotiate, or even if they do, let's actually just push the payable days out. 15 days. What's the average payables in your business if you're doing a million a month? Well, you've got 500k probably in or maybe let's call it part of that, maybe 400k every two weeks in expenses. Well, if you had an extra 15 days to pay those expenses, will you now have $400,000 more in cash in your business at any given moment? And then let's pull up your receivable day. So let's change the leads. And I'm getting like super in the weeds. But it was just like going through that checklist and say, all right, these are all these levers that I didn't even know existed in my business that now we can just go from one to the next to the next to the next. And not only will we fix and provide kind of a rapid turnaround immediately, but we'll also set ourself up for just long term fundamentals of running a better business.

And what did that change as you started to grow from there? Because at that time you're also hiring people, right? You're making investments into growing the business. So that approach sort of makes sense to me when you are trying to optimize for profit. Right, but you grew during that time too, and you grew pretty substantially right during that time. That seems counterintuitive to me to both. To grow both of those things. When they're a high growth company, they're driving down profit margin. You're being protective of profit margin. This doesn't add up to me.

Yeah, it's. I mean, we want both, baby, let's.

Grow faster and make more.

I. It's a great question. I mean, I think, and this is.

Actually one of the biggest lessons I.

Learned when I bought out My business partner is. I realized that I wasn't keeping an eye on the finances as much as I should have. I kind of just abdicated that to him. And as a result, I was making poor decisions when I didn't even know that I was. So I think that's the element, maybe the Venn diagram, if you will, that is, it doesn't have to be either or. It's like, okay, we can make better decisions about how to grow and we can actually grow faster if we have our eye on the core elements of the business. And there's, you know, there's things in there like if you, if you're, you know, quote unquote growing, but you know, you've got half of your revenue sitting up in ar, well, if you just make some fundamental tweaks, you're going to grow faster because you're collecting that cash faster and just stuff like that. So I think, I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive, but I also think when you, when you know the numbers better, you just make better decisions as a CEO and run a better business.

What team members or positions were the most crucial for you in, you know, going from 2 to 10 or finally crossing over that million dollar mark?

2 to 10. I feel like it's sales and marketing. Sam, meet Sam.

Yeah, 2 to 10. I feel like it's, it's a lot of sales and marketing.

I'm interesting you say that because some people say product.

Is that what you say?

No, I'm just. We were. I hate that I'm admitting this. I'm still the best like marketer on the team and that is not a compliment to my marketing skills.

Right.

You know, we just, we've like burned through marketing agencies and.

I find it hard to hire from my own skill set because it's like so unconscious to me that I don't even really know what to hire for. So this has been a challenge of mine where I'm the bottleneck in terms of acquisition. I can only make so much content, I can only write so many emails, I can only write so many sales pages. So I'm still, I'm the bottleneck in that area. So it's interesting that you say that that was so important to you because that's, that's, I think that may be the problem that's us from crossing through there.

I feel that that's hard. I mean, hiring and sustaining good marketing talent is, I think is really, really difficult.

Yeah, I've went back and forth on this because.

I think early on to. To scale, you've got to drive demand. And what drives demand is. Is primarily marketing unless you do an outbound sales. So there's demand generation and then there's demand capture. So I feel like if you're going to grow substantially, you. If, If I could only pick one, it would probably be really nailing the marketing.

Now that's what you're calling demand generation.

Yeah, demand generation. And this even something I'm rethinking of like as we record this show, moving into next year, in the next 12 months is all right. I think strategically we need to make sure that we are investing more on demand generation than we are on demand capturing. Which means are we investing more in the marketing and growth engine than the sales engine of the business? Because if not, I think we're like, we're not going to grow as fast and we're just harvesting a slowly growing farm or whatever. Whatever.

It's better to have a backup of demand.

Yeah.

You can't.

Yeah.

That you can't fulfill than trying to like.

And it makes the sales process easier. Yeah, yeah. But. But you got to have good products. So this is where I'm really kind of fighting with myself I think right now. Which is the best on a long enough timeline, the best product's gonna win always.

Yeah. Most. At least most of the time.

Yeah. Yeah. Great point. I guess. The best product with the best distribution.

Correct.

And. And that's where sometimes distribution can trump product quality. But so then I'm really wrestling with that where I feel like I've been. My biggest strength as a CEO and as a founder is I'm really good at sales and marketing. But I think that's also my biggest weakness because we have under vest under invested in product at many points of the journey. And so that has inhibited our growth.

This is the same. I went through this transition this year, which was about midway through the year. We just made investments in product and I told the team I'm okay if we don't grow. We've. We've got to make dramatic changes to improving the product. And we made incredible strides where now my. Both myself and the entire team has conviction about it.

Right.

Which is very different.

Which makes your marketing and sales easier.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Right. And. But. But our marketing has suffered.

Right.

So there's not a much demand generation. And so now some investments need to be made in marketing and demand generation. And they're so. So I'm going through that same cycle as you.

Let me ask a follow up on that. Going back. Are you glad that you did it? And would you make the same decision?

Oh, my goodness, yes.

Because.

Because I'm. I'm at a point, at least I don't know in my career where if I am not proud of something, I just can't get behind it.

Right.

I just can't. I will, I will not put up, Put, put the energy now a different part of my career. If there's something to sell, I'll sell it now. Can't do it. I just don't have the internal juice to put my name and reputation behind something that I don't believe in.

Sure.

So I would rather lose the business.

Right.

Doing something that I'm proud of.

Right.

Than to scale unhappiness. And so, yeah, I 100%, like, I, I am a little bit of a perfectionist on product. Like, the product is phenomenal now. And I'm still like, we can make this better. We can make this piece better. I'm probably going to make more investments in product next year, but it will be in conjunction with investments in marketing rather than in spite of.

Right. Which I mean that then I think comes back to people and leadership. Like, have you. Is your strategy moving forward like, hey, let me hire or develop a great head of product.

That's literally my next step.

I see. That makes sense. Because then you probably want to say this. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense because I think what you're saying is I'm really good at marketing, so I want to go run the marketing.

Exactly.

Right.

Yeah.

That's the thing I want to spearhead next. I had to come out of that mode.

Right.

In order to spearhead some product turnaround.

Right. Because you didn't have. I'm assuming the leadership. Correct. Product side of things.

Correct.

Otherwise they. Those two things could happen in tandem without you need waiting to.

Was that one of the big hires.

For you that had a product?

Yes. It's certainly been, I guess my current head of product is going on two years. It's certainly been extremely helpful. Yes. And it's kind of funny you mentioned. You mentioned that because, you know, you're talking, it's like almost like playing a game of whack a mole as a, as a founder, CEO, whatever, is, oh, wow, the marketing sucks. So now I need to get involved with that or hire a new head of marketing or the product sucks. But I think that was a big one. We're not there yet. We're not anywhere near where I think we can be or where we will be. But we've certainly gotten Way, way, way better. So I think a great head of product and we're kind of starting this underground movement at the company is just like a product led growth and like product led company. And it's kind of like an internal rally cry. We've got the shush emojis like hey, don't tell people, but we're becoming a product led company. You know, it's like kind of that.

Get that juice of the team.

But so that I think that. And then hiring a head of sales that really cares about customer success, those two things were extremely pivotal. Pivotal because that's not often that you can find someone who's except an exceptional sales leader and really is really, really, really passionate about the success of your company. So now I know, or sorry, the success of your customers. So now I know though that when we're selling, we're selling with integrity and we're selling in a way where we really care about bringing in the right people and making sure that they're successful. And now we've got great leadership over here that's really developing and building out the product. And so now that's kind of been the last year and some change is like, all right, I'm going to go. I let go of my head of marketing a year and some change ago and I've been running marketing which at the size of company that we're at is pretty stupid. It.

This just doesn't make sense.

I'm not going to compare myself to Elon because I'm not Elon. I'm not running like seven companies, but it's like I'm running, it's two full time jobs. Like I'm head of market like a VP of marketing and then I'm a CEO, which means I'm doing both poorly. But I think it was needed and I got under the hood and we fixed a ton of stuff and we've started growing a lot faster where we were still meeting on some of our marketing stuff. But now I'm bumping into that like, all right, I'm not giving this the attention that it needs or deserves. I'm underperforming in that role. Like I need to go back and bring in a really great head of marketing. And so it kind of speaks to what you're saying is like, all right, just, just leveling up the, the pillars of the business.

It's helpful to hear you talk through this for me because it's sort of helping me see that these three buckets of, of marketing, sales and product are at any one Point one can suffer and need more attention in order to have enough life to invest into the next thing. And it was a hard realization for me to realize this year that I had under indexed on product and I had over indexed on marketing. And at first it was, hey, I make a lot of content, I have a lot of goodwill with my audience, but I had under indexed on sales. And so put more into sales. Sales go up exposes some weaknesses in product. Now I needed to go invest in product, right? Well, now sales are flat, so we gotta invest more in demand, which is where we're investing. But I also need a head of product. And so just hearing you talk through this has helped me see that this is normal. And this is often true in a lot of businesses in E commerce, you have a product and you put it on Amazon and you get to 100 sales a day. And then you realize you need to go make changes to product or you need to go learn some marketing skills. And oftentimes, at least I experience this is when you have to go back and reinvest in one of those areas. For me, it sometimes can feel like failure because I'm admitting that my product is not as good as it needs to be.

Sometimes it always feels like failure, right?

Like it's constantly.

I'm glad you said that.

It's like, cause if this ain't broke, this is right?

If sales ain't broke, then product's broken or marketing's broke or something. So it feels like.

And it's interesting as you say that because I, I'm reflecting on how I've probably done a poor job of communicating this to my team, which is. And I think it's. One of the harder things about running a company is that you're. You see the whole field and you've got to make conscious choices. And sometimes people on the field don't see that, right? And it's. And they're like, but hold up, product could be better or sales could be better. And you're like, yes, but this other thing is on fire. And so I'm just going to kind of largely ignore you for the next three months. But I need to be plugged in enough that to like keep moving the thing forward. But like, this is not the priority. And it's hard to say that sometimes I'll just outright like, hey, I need you to step up and just run this because I got to come over here and get it. And get.

That is exactly how I felt about sales and marketing for the last six months.

Right?

Products on Fire. We're never going to be the become the company that we want to be if we don't dramatically improve product.

Right.

And the experience people have, it's not. It's not only just product, it's the experience people have. Are you even walking a customer or client through the experience? Even if all the resources are there, are they taking advantage of those resources?

Right.

And I had to admit that we weren't doing a good job there and make investments there. And I had to ignore the sales and marketing side. So again, it's just helpful to hear you talk about that. This is normal.

I think as you scale.

It goes back to one of my. Our mutual friends, Jay Papasan, and wrote a great book called the One Thing. And he talks about the four. It's like the four things that sabotage success. And one of them is fear of chaos. And I realized that's a big one for me. And realizing as we grow, like, I need to be okay with things being broken and on fire and that kind of perpetually being the case. But then the internal thing, the internal fight for me is I don't feel okay with that.

Right.

So what do you do then? Do you shrink the business so that there's no problems, or do you get used to having it constant problems or the next level of problems or stuff like that?

I don't know.

You know, what do you do about that?

I don't know, man. Contemplate my life.

And decisions and all that.

Like last night, right as I'm falling asleep, right when I'm just about to drift off, every chaotic thing in my businesses came to the foreground. Have you ever had this where you're like just about to fall asleep and it's like, hey, remember that thing that's broken that is gonna kill us all and all of them come at once? And I had that experience. Sometimes I think it's.

Sorry.

I've heard Gary and Jay talk about this. Of just being comfortable in the chaos.

Yeah.

And I always took that as an approach of just relentless focus on what's right in front of you. What I'm sort of hearing you say is being comfortable with the fact that something's always going to be broken.

Yeah. I think it's probably a little bit of both, like, don't you? I'm a very like adhd, so I got to be one track. And what's that one thing? And let me just lock in on that one thing. So I think that's definitely true. But then also being okay with if I'm Doing this and other things are burning because they likely are or will be. And that's kind of the point because I am focused on this one thing that I've decided is more important.

Right.

And so it's almost like balancing those two in tandem. But yeah, it often, I mean you're catching me at a time right now. It's been a tough, probably six to eight weeks stretch. And so I've been in one of those modes where I feel like I haven't often been in where it's just, I can't turn it off, I can't turn it off. And it's, and it's just like, man, is this going to get any better and why am I doing this? And not like that's just like kind of over drop, you know, dramatizing what's happening probably a little bit, but there's certainly that, that kindling. Like I'm not like screw this, I'm walking away from self publishing.com. but it's, I'm like, hey, this is not the outcome that I'm wanting. I either need to re examine my inputs and my behaviors or like figure something out because this ain't it. Like I'm not, I'm not happy with these results. And so I think, I guess just to get one super, just to get super practical, one thing I've started doing is.

Very basic but just a end of day gratitude exercise. And we, I've started embedding some fun things with the team and we just started, I added this thing called motivational minute and it's at the end of a huddle and I'll have people who volunteer like hey, all right, motivational minute, Ryan, what you got? And then they'll just share like a fun story. And a couple weeks ago somebody shared this just daily gratitude thing, which I've heard a bunch of times, but I told it to my fiance and.

Now she's holding me accountable to that because I've been kind of grumpy and so it'd be the end of the day.

And she'll say, hey, what's one thing you're grateful for from today?

Because I've been in the thick of it lately and I'm like, all right.

That'S a good reminder. And so just realizing I gotta, I gotta get back to that as the default. And I think that'll solve a lot of this stuff.

You've grown really quickly in the sense of like how much capacity you can handle going from you know, one million dollar business to something with 60 employees. And I feel like that muscle is one of the things that wears me down the fastest. It's like part of that people that, well just the, the capacity to handle chaos. That is a muscle that continues to grow and I keep waiting for it to get easier but what really happens is you just get stronger and then you can handle more.

Oh yeah.

And I'm sort of reflecting as you're sharing with this of I keep waiting for like when we hit a certain revenue point that then it'll smooth out. But what that really does is it just increases your capacity to pursue the next thing.

Right.

And of course that's always going to feel like chaos. It never really goes away. Which is a bit of an existential bummer for dreamers like me.

Oh, big time. Because it's, you now don't have a finish line. There's never a finish line. Which I think just goes back to some of the inner work that needs to be done for guys like us, which is.

It'S about the journey, not the destination. If you're not enjoying the journey, well why are you doing it? Just get off the ride, you know, like our businesses are doing well enough where we don't got to keep doing this. They would keep making money, we'd be fine. But so if we're choosing to do it, then we can also choose to enjoy it and recognize the beautiful pieces of it that are great.

Are you speaking to yourself over the last six to eight weeks right now?

Oh yeah, for sure. Present.

Chandler, think about that. Tonight when you go to sleep, you chose this. When you wake up and look at all your problems and realize that I'm the common denominator and I chose this, it's like, alright, well then fix it.

What do you do? Or remind yourself of when you run into those sprints in which you're wondering what the heck are you doing all this for?

Hmm.

I.

That'S a good question. Trying to remember why I'm doing it and, and the, the parts about it that I really enjoy and like.

And then also I, I, I don't know about you, but I feel like it's just so easy to get into pointing fingers elsewhere mode and it's really hard not to default to that. It's like, oh, well, if there was just this thing, this would be better. So I feel like in a weird way it's just getting back to the extreme ownership style of I can remember every problem in your business. I, I, I coached with long for a long time with a guy named Michael Hyatt. And he would. His. One of his favorite questions was, okay, Chandler, what about your leadership led to this result?

And.

And he tells this story about how when he was running a public company and he went to his executive coach and he. They missed their quarterly numbers. And. And he's like, man, we couldn't have done anything differently. She's like, you couldn't have done anything differently? Like, no, we couldn't have. She's like, so you mean to tell me if this, this, and this had happened? And he's like, but the team didn't do. And he's like, this isn't this. And having that couldn't have been better. He's like, well, yeah, that could have been better. Okay, so you could have done something differently. And he's like, well, yeah, I guess, right? And she's like, okay, well, what about your leadership led to this result? It's like, well, the team. This. And it's like, no, no, no. What about your leadership led to this result? And that story always just resonated with me. And that question he just kept coming back to is, if you like it or if you don't like it, what about your leadership led to this result? So I find myself just asking that to myself, but then also to my leaders at my company. And it's kind of a joke now. It's like, oh, I know, I know.

What about my leadership? All right, we'll go think about it, and I'll go do the same thing, because I hired you and I'm managing you. So what about my leadership is contributing to this result?

Yeah, I started taking that approach and was stunned at how quickly things changed. And then I got lax. Cause we started to win again. And I was stunned at how quickly things changed back. And I have had to observe, like, oh.

My own relationship with myself and the standard I hold myself to really is the first pebble in the water.

Right.

Cerebral effects.

So let me.

The only thing I can control, too.

I think it's a great point, and I'd love to make an observation. And then a question is.

My observation would be.

You know, the quote of, I think this is Nick Saban or somebody else is like, I don't know if you've ever watched that documentary with him. And Bill Belichick is really, really good about just two great coaches, but I think he made the comment somebody else is. It's. It's easier to become great than it is to stay great. Like, it's easier to climb to the top of the mountain than it is to stay on top of the mountain. Because when you're on top of the mountain, everybody's trying to take you off. And so I'm curious for you, how do you manage that? Because I think you just gave a, an example of like, okay, we, I was really intentional about this. Then we started winning. I let my foot off the gas and that. I think that's one of the hardest things long term for me personally. So I'd love to hear if you have any thoughts about.

Well, the hardest part for me has just been getting back on, like getting, getting back in it. For example. For example, my life changed. Everything around me started to change when I hired a coach who told me, start getting up at 5:30 and go right to the gym.

And I asked him a business question and he said, ask that question after you've gotten up at 5:30 and gone to the gym. And I start. And I hated it.

And what I started to realize was that the version of me that gets up at 5:30 and goes to the gym does the two hardest things that I can do, which is get my ass out of bed and get right to the gym. The version of me that can do those two really hard things shows up with a different level of tenacity to that problem and a different level of self confidence to that discussion with an employee. When things got easier, I got lax on my habits. And the hardest part for me has been staying on the path when I don't feel like I need to.

And so that habit when I'm in it keeps me humble and it keeps me focused and keeps me calm during chaos. And so it's almost like having anchoring habits of things that are really hard, which keep me grounded enough to be able to have the calmness and presence of mind in order to make the next decision. And I got lax in the last 30 to 45 days and I'm paying for it right now.

So how do you keep that from happening in the future?

Tomorrow get up at 5:30 and go right to the gym.

And that's the single thing for you, that's okay. I'm either being complacent or not. Yeah.

Well, for me, for me it's just a matter of can I train myself to do hard things just for the muscle of doing hard things? Because I have a selfish expectation that once I reach a certain level of success, things get easier.

Right.

And when you start expecting things to be easy, you stop giving it your all.

Yeah.

When you get soft, that's it. That's my approach.

And that's almost a self fulfilling prophecy to what we've been talking about. Then when you start expecting it to be easy, then you're upset when it's not easy. Correct. So now you're pissed off about your business, that is suddenly harder than you thought it would be. But it's actually a pretty good business. And it's growing, which, you know, probably explains my last few months.

It's like, it's like, all right, we're.

Gonna grow, you know, 10, 15 this year. Well, you, it's a good year. We're gonna make good money where it's like all these things. But some, somehow there was this like, I don't know if you ever experienced.

This turning point which is like 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through the year where you kind of see line of sight like, hey, either I'm hitting these goals or I'm not. And some years it's like close and all right, we buckle down. Some years you're like, there's no chance. And on those years, and this is one of them is like, all right, I had these big goals, now we're within range. It doesn't look like there's any chance we're going to hit them. Then I just start getting and pissed.

And then I'm just like. And not a great. Then it's the, it's the doom loop.

Like the reverse spiral of what we talked about where then you're like, okay, well now I'm upset and I'm, you know, blaming others and like all this stuff.

Well, one of the things that has helped me is extending that time horizon. So if I think about my growth over, if I, if I only grow 15% this year and next year and the year after that and the year after that, things still compound to be pretty incredible, right? Chandler, thank you for being an example. Like you've broken the four minute mile for me, right? So I'm like, all right, let's go. And I really appreciate it, man. Thank you for being here. Thanks for blazing the trail. I hope to make you proud.

Good to see you, man.

Good to see you too. Thank you for having me.

As we wrap this episode, I want to share with you a few things that I took away from, from this conversation with Chandler. First, it was clear to me that his focus was on creating an amazing experience for his clients that requires focus. And I've been guilty in the past of launching this new thing over here or trying this new strategy over here. But what Chandler was a good example of is committing to an experience and making it as excellent as possible. It's something that we have been applying@capitalism.com where we took a bit of a step back and said we need to address our core product line and we need to ensure that the client experience is fantastic from end to end so that we're a leader in this space on this product. The second thing that I observed in Chandler's strategy was that he had slow growth. He didn't rocket ship up to a million dollars a month. It took a lot of time, which meant that there needed to be internal and organic, organic growth. He mentioned the three different areas that he was getting customers and each one of them had slowly grown over a period of years. We're often distracted by the things that take people from zero to a million or zero to 10 million in six months or eight months. What's the fast way to scale? Scale, scale. And in Chandler's case, he did it sustainably and consistently so that now he, he has a million dollar run rate every single month. That's the type of business that I want and sometimes that means stepping back a little bit. Not pursuing the fast growth, but pursuing, doing things with excellence, knowing that those are going to bring long term and compounding returns over three to five years. Those are the types of businesses that excite me. The ones that are going to be around for a really long time. The ones they're going to do great things for their customers and the ones that other people want to talk about, not the ones that I have to sell really hard in order to convert people. If you enjoyed this conversation with Chandler, I'd appreciate if you let me know in the comments. And as always, I'm Ryan Daniel Moran with capitalism.com and I'll see you on the next episode.

Take care.