Mastermind: How Did You 10X Last Year?

Foreign.

Hey, good looking people.

Ryan Daniel Moran here. Welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. Today I'm going to share with you one of the most popular talks that we had at Freedom Fastlane Live. In fact, Grant Cardone, who has about $350 million in real estate and has very successful multimillion dollar businesses outside of real estate, said that he had pages and pages of notes. This section of Freedom Fast Lane Live and this was when we brought up some of our Mastermind partners onto the stage and we shared what the biggest breakthroughs were from their businesses over the last year. Every single one of our Mastermind partners that was featured in this talk at least doubled their business in the last 12 months. And two, maybe three of them, 10x. I mean we like to talk about 10xing businesses. These guys actually did 10x their businesses in the last 12 months. And so we go into what were those leverage points? What were the big pieces that resulted in you doubling or even 10xing your revenues over the last 12 months? You'll find some themes start to come up, including team building, systemizing, working on your business rather than in your business, planning for the long term and knowing when to pivot. Also, keeping a hundred million dollar view was a recurring theme in this as most of the people on stage did indeed have that as a goal. Running a hundred million dollar company. Please note that we were fairly unfiltered in this talk, so if we use any inappropriate language or really bad jokes, I'm responsible for most of those. Please forgive us. This was a very comfortable, relaxing talk with some of our most successful partners in the Mastermind and their biggest leverage points. So enjoy this clip from Freedom Fast Lane Live.

Welcome back. Good looking people.

Speaking of good looking people, look at these gentlemen.

Okay. Apparently beauty is in the eye of the beholder here.

So come on in guys. We're going to get this Mastermind panel started.

First I was.

Someone asked and yes, we do have women in the Mastermind.

Matt used to be a woman and when we started the Mastermind. Sorry, you were the first person I saw when I looked over. But we do have women in the Mastermind, unfortunately. Maggie just had two twins and Marsha, who's an investment genius, had a prior commitment and couldn't make it, which was sad. So you guys are going to be, have to be stuck with this incredibly handsome lineup here. So the reason we're doing this is because every single business that is represented on this stage has at the least, at least doubled in the last 12 months.

There are, I think, I think three of them have literally 10x'd. So we like to talk about 10x. By the way, speaking of 10x, how many of you are excited to see Grant Cardone?

So we like to talk about 10Xing, but several of the businesses represented up here have literally 10x in the last 12 months. So we talk about it. That is actually a real thing. So what I wanted to do was basically just deconstruct what were the leverage points, what were the differences, what were the tweaks that resulted in at least the 2x but even the 10x growth. So, AJ you're a natural person on stage. You couldn't wait to be up here. So we're going to start with you. So we spoke 18 months ago, and you were basically one tenth of where you are now. And the thing that was a big leverage point for you was building a team and getting out of your business. That is a huge. Well, we at least perceive it as a huge, hard transition. And you did it. From the outside, it looks seamless and easy. And you woke up one day and had this magnificent team and you were. It's what it looked like. It looked pretty meteoric. So would you walk us through actually the transition of going from basically working all the time and being one tenth the size and then building the team that exploded your business?

That's a great question, Ryan. I think first it starts off with realizing that you've got to delegate to be successful. You've got to delegate, especially if you want to grow. And the problem I was having was I did not know how to hire. I did not know how to create systems or anything for that matter.

Right.

So with talking to you, I think you told me one great insight was spend an hour a day and create a system. So spend 30 days and see what happens. So that's really where I started. It was really about hiring the right people, starting with my people within my network. That really helped me instead of kind of going on Craigslist and going through the process of interviewing and stuff that I didn't really know about, because if it's all new to me, Right. So everyone here, I think the biggest problem that we've seen, even in our mastermind, everyone is afraid of hiring. Everyone is afraid of hiring their first employee, first and foremost, and knowing how to delegate. Right. So when I realized that to grow to really, like you said, 10x your business, we needed to start hiring and we needed to start. I personally needed to start delegating. First employee that I brought on, she started doing customer service. For me, she started answering phone calls, everything so slowly, you know, with the help of other people. I mean, we've. We have like a team of 20. But like you said, it's the time has flown, right?

Yeah.

It started with one person creating systems and then adding people to plug holes, but also empowering people to make decisions because you can't be there micromanaging each person. Right. So that's why even when you outsource, if you're the person managing those people all the time, you're kind of creating a job for yourself. So we've empowered our people to create systems to take charge and make decisions. And honestly, all we do now is kind of go to meetings pretty much all day. That's our day.

And what were the first initial hires that started to get the ball rolling and got you a little bit freer of your business and got more control of your time? What were those first key people first?

I think the first hire was pretty much a project manager.

She's a great doer. So the way I look at it, initially when you hire, especially in a startup like environment, you're going to move them around quite a bit, right. Because they're wearing multiple hats. So from my experience, every position that we hired for initially, they kind of ended up doing something completely different. They evolved, the role evolved as the company needed stuff done. Right. So I would say just hire a profile.

That's a go getter that can get stuff done and that is flexible and knows the start of grind. Right. That was the key to our first few hires.

And Dan, I want to kick it over to you because you, at least as I understand it, you oversee the team or have helped to facilitate the building of that team. Would you talk a little bit about the hiring process or the candidate selection process and actually building out that team?

Yeah, I think a lot of folks kind of think about. And Jeremy, we were even talking about this this morning. A lot of folks think like, oh my God, I spent too much time today on this thing. I gotta find somebody to do whatever that thing is. So what we're really focusing on is like, let's skate to where the puck is going. Let's not figure out like what was the hassle today. But ultimately, what do we anticipate the hassle going to be? The next three months, the next six months. So the hiring process that we look, we definitely write a job description, we figure out what the role is. But as AJ was saying, like, you need somebody that can handle ambiguity, you need somebody that can change a lot. So even more than hiring for a particular role or for a title, we hire profile and the go getter that aj, so that avatar of the person that can change jobs and just crush it every time.

It sucks to try to find them because they're so rare. Like it's tough to find those people that you can just basically plug into a void and they just make it better. Like AJ's first hire, now VP of our marketing department, she started in customer service and was a project manager at a website company. So she had the profile to be able to move into higher value tasks and priority items. And now getting to the place where she's delegating and she's moving the needle. So her. Our hiring process is we have a lot of the people who would be the kind of person supervisor do the weed out interviews and we basically get one out of every five person that goes survives that process. And then we'll basically put them to the test and put them through a pretty rigorous interview process. And if we feel like they've got what it takes, we'll bring them on. But we hire slow and fire quickly and we're trying to make both of those speeds faster. So hiring even slower than what we do already, firing even faster than what we do right now.

Would you back up a little bit and talk about that process that you go through to actually get them vetted if one of five survives even the next round. What is. Yeah, no, that's walking on coals or something. What are they actually doing?

I don't know if they're walking on calls because I'm not in four out of those five or meet them, but little plug for Criteria Corp, we get an aptitude test, a personality profile and typing test for every candidate that tries to apply. So not only did we do that, but we actually tested every member of our current team. So we had a red herring of like what that looks like walking around what that looks like on the team. So we could say, okay, so that's like him or that's like her. And honestly, you can be really surprised with the type of people that you would interview with. And then you give them the test afterwards and you're like, oh my God, thank an IQ of one, please. Thank you for saving our time. So we've definitely dodged a bunch of bullets that are really personable, but frankly don't have the intellectual horsepower to be able to handle it. So we've gotten lucky a bunch of times in places where we were both signing off and it was like, thank God we actually gave them this test. So make it easy on yourself. Put systems in place, get people through the funnel. Don't make dumb mistakes of something that a computer system could tell you that person cannot handle this job. Do not put them in the place to fail.

And have there been any mishires along the way?

Yes.

Yeah. Perfect process would be perfect if it weren't for people. And unfortunately people are imperfect. So we have had to make some character fires, people that just weren't honest and tell the truth, made mistakes and tried to cover it up. Like obviously our culture has no place for somebody like that. So you can do all you want to try to get it perfect, but you're not going to like people are going to disappoint you. The point is to the baseball analogy, right? It's a long season, the winning percentage is low. So all you got to do is over time do better than the competition. With hiring, you don't have to have an undefeated season. You just have to do better than everyone else.

Jeremy, you have just completely exploded. And in the last year and when we started working together, you, I mean, we were friends beforehand, but when we started talking shop and you joined the group, the business was kind of, it wasn't solidified under a brand. It was more of a cash flow play at the time. And now it feels like a real business, or I at least perceive it to have that appearance. It looks like a real business that's. That's bigger than you. What were the transition points there of something that was spitting out cash and growing to really having it dialed in to having a message and a consistent brand?

I think that's it right there. Establishing our identity as a brand and articulating that to the customer as opposed to thinking, oh, everyone will buy my product, which is an ideal scenario, but not realistic, but, but really targeting that avatar of a customer of ours and articulating our message and our mission to them and getting raving fans as a result?

What was the difference in how, or was there a difference in how customers responded to the brand once that transition happened? And what did that do for overall profitability or at least top line revenue? What did that do to the direction of the company, if anything?

Well, as far as the direction, it helped us dictate what products we were going to release as opposed to doing just a me too product or looking at trends and looking at strictly numbers, which is beneficial, but to base your product launch decision only on that and disregard your current series of products and who your customer is and what they're buying. That really helped give us clarity on basically the products we were rolling out and helped us decide as opposed to having that temptation, oh, this is a really hot seller, let's go for this market. No, that's really not. Let's stay in line with our mission and our message. It allowed us to have that clarity to make decisions in those points.

And what about the customer base? Was there a transition point with their communication of them or did they start to respond differently? Did you start to manage them differently? How did they respond when you really started to dial that in?

There was definitely. I mean, as far as response, our sales increased. So that's one indicator of customer response. But just overall, we feel like people are more on board with us as a company and it's not just a transactional business. We're actually bringing someone on as a long term customer, which is just a game changer.

Overall, my perception has been that originally you were a product centered business, and now you're a people centered business.

Absolutely.

You followed the money or the marketplace at first, and then it became about who's our customer and how do we serve that customer. So kind of in the same way that sometimes hiring is messy, product releases can be.

What's the word? Analogous. A messy process. So where there's no. It's not clearly defined, but once you start to get it dialed in, it becomes clearer. And you guys really solidified that based on who you attracted? That's my perception. Is that an accurate perception?

Yes. Yes, it is.

Cool. Zach Lee, I have kind of an opposite question for you. Because when we started working together, you had one business and you made it pretty clear that it wasn't kind of the place you wanted to spend your time. It was a leverage point for other things. And since then, you have created new businesses, new products, and new lines that you feel much more purposeful about. So my perception, again, has been that you had one business that was your cash flow and that just gave you the leverage to move into other things where you ultimately wanted to spend your time. Is that the case?

Yeah, definitely.

So that's a very different process from a lot of what we've talked about in the last couple of days, which has been, let's put on our big boy pants and grow real businesses rather than just treating them as ATM machines. But you kind of took a different approach where you said, that's cool, I'm going to build those, but I've got my cash flow businesses and if they're around in three years, cool. But if not I'm just going to use that as the leverage point to other things. So would you talk through that, that mindset? Yeah.

Yeah, it was, I guess coming to a place where just being okay with the fact that I wasn't super passionate about the business that I was in, but I'm not gonna just.

Either force myself to try to build a huge brand and a huge following with it, or just use it as a cash flow machine while I can. And then being okay with the fact that I'm not. I may not be building raving fans and customers for life from it, but I can use the cash from that to do something that I am passionate about and something that I do want to still be doing, you know, 20 years from now. Or, Or. Or, yeah, just. Just being. Just being okay with the fact that what I had might have been different from what I was hearing, like at Mastermind meetings or. Or just in general, just coming to accept myself as an entrepreneur and the type of entrepreneur that I was and being okay with that. That's been a big shift for me in the past year, was figuring out exactly what type of entrepreneur I am and learning that there's, you know, not all entrepreneurs are focused solely on one business from the time they start until the time they retire from it. It can be okay to jump around a little bit and just be focused on, you know, starting what you're passionate about at that time.

Gary said something interesting yesterday where he said, you know, shame on some of us for not pivoting when we were in the position to pivot, and we knew we didn't want to be in that business in the first place. And to your credit, you recognize when that was, and you kind of. You grew it past the million dollar point. And I don't remember where you were like, all right, cool. I've got my thing. It's about as big as I want it to be. And then it was really interesting because up until that point, it was all about, how do I grow this? How do I grow this? How do I grow this? And it's kind of a rare quality to see an entrepreneur say, all right, cool, done with that thing. I'm going to move on. Most of us have this idea of we got to grow for the sake of growth, which is the mentality of cancer, and we're also just wired to do it. And when it's doing something that isn't bringing us fulfillment.

That ain't a good thing. But you recognized it early enough to where it didn't become a cancer. So I actually want to go into that mindset of what did fears come up as you were growing it or as you thought about transitioning? Where was the pain point that you're like, you know what, I really don't want to wake up and do this because there's probably 200 people in the room who have thought through that before or are doing businesses that are growing to that point. And it's like, do I want this to be the thing I invest in for five plus years or is this something that I just want to support me so that I can be fully invested in the thing that I actually want?

Yeah. Yeah. And it's something that I've heard touched on a couple of times so far this weekend. One being learning to develop a sense of self awareness and figuring out, like I said, what kind of entrepreneur am I? And number two being okay with the fact that.

Like, I really related strongly to what Gary was saying. Like the thrill and the fun and the passion comes in like the grind and the startup process. And once you hit success, you're kind of hoping that it goes away so that you can build it again. And that's very, very much how I am. Like, like, yeah, my products that I built that were, they were doing really well. Once it got to a certain point, then I was like, okay, this isn't really fun anymore. And I felt like there was something wrong with me that like I'm hearing guys talking about, you know, how do we take this brand from the $1 million mark to the $10 million mark? And I'm thinking, what's the next thing I can start at the zero dollar mark and get it to the 1 million. And.

And I just realized, accepted that that's me, that's what I like to do. And as long as I'm not trying to, like, it'd be just dumb to totally walk away from something that's doing well. So I've learned to delegate and find the right people and put them in charge of that and let it keep growing and let it keep, you know, creating an income for me. But I like, I want to stay in, quote, unquote, that, that zone of genius that I'm the strongest at. And to me that's, that's creating something from the start and growing it. And then once it gets to a certain point where I'm, I'm doing a disservice to the customers and to the brand by trying to, you know, still remain in control. I find somebody who good at growing it from that point and I can kind of shift my focus and attention to something new. And scratch that, that itch that I have to start something new. So over the past year, I'd say that's been the biggest growth point for me, is just accepting that's the kind of entrepreneur that I am and being okay with it and really using that passion.

I also think that that that might change when you sink your teeth into a business that you really feel dialed into, or that. Or if there's a customer base that you really want to serve long term.

On a personal note, I have spent kind of the last few years really getting clarity on who that is that I want to serve long term. And I feel very clear now and very dialed in, and you'll see a lot of that unfold in 2016. But, I mean, I started the podcast mostly because I was practicing teaching points and seeing what stuck and finding out who is it that I want to speak to and serve. And I had. When I started the podcast, I had just shut down a bunch of offers and products that I had no interest in being in. And I didn't know where it was going next, but it was like, okay, let's wrap this up and let's go in a different direction. So I'm curious just to watch it play out, if. When you find that business or that customer base that you really resonate with, that doesn't shift.

Yeah, definitely. I'm definitely open to it. It's just that I've tried before to push myself and to do things that I wasn't passionate about just because I needed to make money. And I'm just tired of. I've been tired of that. And that's where I was like, all right, if I'm not feeling it, if I'm not passionate about it, then it's doing a disservice to me. It's a disservice to the customers. I need to get back in that zone of genius and just stick with that. But, yeah, you're definitely right. It could change.

Joe Gianfola, by the way, how many of you have been impacted positively by Joe Gianfola and. Or Zonblast? Yeah, clap that up.

By the way. We. There's. There's. I get asked all the time. I'm tired of answering the questions. So I don't. About Amazon terms of service changes and how that affects blast. Like, we use on BLAST more than ever. Spoiler alert. It pretty much works better than ever. I love Joe more than ever right now for our businesses.

I love you.

Too.

I'll see you in the back later. So, Joe, you have seen more businesses grow than probably anybody in the room, because you have been the backbone of a lot of people's businesses, at least to get to the 1 million point. And so you have seen more case studies than probably you or your team can count. I want to know, of those that have been massively successful, what have been the differences between those and those that didn't do as well?

I think these, these guys are a perfect example of what we like to see and what ultimately results in success.

You know, AJ for example, he was super aggressive on promos. Everybody up here super aggressive on promos. And it takes, it takes a commitment. It takes a serious level of commitment to focus on being able to give up product at a loss as a means of, I like to say, bullying your way to the top.

Versus the smaller companies are those who they waver over coming to the table with 50 units for a promo or they don't understand that they're going to flounder on page 20 if they don't do something a little bit different.

So, and we're talking about it in an E commerce context, an Amazon context, obviously that's what Zonblast does. But that, I mean, that is the case in every business. The model is the same. You get customers, you do what it takes to be in front of enough customer flow so you're established in that channel, and then you grow and scale it from there. And, and he who can do it more aggressively than the next guy usually wins. The guy who can get the most customers usually wins. And that, I mean, it's an easy case study to see it done in our context, like on Amazon, by being very lasered into keywords and products. But that is applied in whatever business you're in. The process is spend what it takes to get in or hustle as much as it takes to get in front of the customers that you need to give you that core audience that will launch you from there. Yeah.

And you know, that's exactly how I launched my product. I didn't care about profiting day one. I didn't care about profiting month two or month three. I don't think anybody here had illusions about doing six figures a month, three months in. And that's probably the, the biggest big picture difference between these guys and the smaller people who definitely aren't here. And so.

It takes balls.

Honestly, I want to talk about the internal workings of Zomblast, because when you.

Started that company.

When you started that company, you.

We talked about it over the phone one day as an idea and then it became this big thing that a lot of people credit their success to. So that was awesome and really frickin hard because all of a sudden it was like that old IBM commercial where it's like one sale trickles and everybody celebrates and the next one everybody celebrates and then oh crap, what are we gonna do now? So you kind of had similar experiences where it was like, I'm going to work from midnight to midnight or something else has got to give. So what else had to give?

What else had to give? Well, I mean, to put this into context, I have four brands of my own that all do well in addition to Zomblast and a mastermind that I help run. There's a lot on my plate. And on top of all this we have. My wife and I have now a one year old, he'll be one in December 30th and we have a two year old. So there was a lot on my plate.

You've been busy in the last year?

No.

At all.

Not at all.

You sleep a lot, obviously.

And that was probably the biggest transition. We've had talks about this, about how essentially there was no delineation between personal life.

And being able to manage the companies. By necessity, because Zonblast grew up, grew so quickly, I had to devote 80% of my time. Even to this day, I'm starting to move away, to be pulled back to a higher level. But I had to, there were sacrifices that necessarily had to be made. And through.

Basically providing clear lines between, okay, this is what I do at this time, this is what I do at this time. This is personal and family time that helped kind of compartmentalize, you know, each of my businesses.

And was that difficult for you to do?

It was incredibly difficult because I had, you know, I had started online full time in 2009 and from 2009 to about 18 months ago, I was very much a solopreneur. I did basically everything and I did well, but I was doing everything myself. And I was. And here I was trying to do everything myself in six different businesses. And it was finally the tipping point for me in terms of helping get to the point where I had compartmentalized my businesses and time was my first hire, which was incredibly, you know, like was being discussed earlier, incredibly difficult to hire my first person. But fortunately he was a fantastic friend and he now takes a lead role in Zomblast. You know, I need to do that for my, for my other Brands at this point so that they can grow as quickly. But yeah, that was probably the hardest part for me because I was doing everything. And then I'm, okay, here's somebody else, go do this.

Was that a control issue? Was that just a muscle you hadn't developed? Why was that?

So, I mean, that muscle didn't exist.

You're running five businesses. Why was it difficult to say, someone help, please. So honestly, why was that so difficult?

I think it was just habit. I mean, that's what I knew. That's what I had done. I knew that other people.

Can anybody relate, by the way? Yeah, only everybody. Go on.

I knew that's how other people grew. I didn't know how to make that higher like these guys were talking about.

Trying to find that right person, that perfect puzzle piece to plug in there. That was incredibly difficult for me. And to that end, as you know, Zomblast has grown to what is now what, eight people, I think, at this point. And they're all fantastic.

And I.

The most important thing for me was trust. 100% trust. You know, take this part of the business, run with it. And, you know, I'm starting to move over, starting to do that for my other brands at this point.

Matt Davis, by the way, I just want to publicly crush on you for a second because, dude, you are just the best partner I could have ever asked for, and I'm so thankful for you. And we as a company had a difficulty for a while, really working on our business because both of us were really in it. And we have made huge strides.

In that capacity. I feel like we're more creative together and we more build on the business rather than in it more than ever now. And from your perspective, what has been those transition points of getting out of that? Because that was hard. I mean, we fought about it. We fought about when it was the right time to make that transition. That was a contention point at certain times. So what do you think the best decisions that we've made are in transitioning? Because we finally got into a much better place in that business. And I'm just curious, from your perspective, what have been the good decisions that we've made getting there?

Yeah.

So on that note, you're right. I think we've had two rough spots in our partnership, and they were both around. We need to bring on help. And so it's. Because it's. I think that's kind of been the theme up here is help and teams. And yeah, it's very hard to do. So the key that Helped us get through that was, I think, finding the right person. I think we were both, you know, had reservations and had fears, and we've made a lot of bad hires. I think we will both admit that. And we've made a lot of hires where we. We screwed up and we didn't set them up right.

I think that's where we just got the person in. And it was like, have fun. Please automate my business.

Yep, exactly. So. So I think that's where a lot of our frustration was coming from. And so really it was just about, you know, finally just saying, screw it, let's take the plunge and let's get somebody in there. And I know you kept driving home, you know, higher, higher quickly, or what I don't want to do.

Higher.

Slide slow, fire fast. Yeah, and. But yeah, and so that was the thing. That's what we were driving home. Let's just, you know, get somebody in there and do something. I think we spent a lot of time thinking about, how do we do this? How do we get out of this? And then finally we got somebody in there and, you know, and that helped us. But we spent a lot of time just sitting there thinking about it, talking about it, instead of just doing it.

Yeah, I take the approach. It's my philosophy in the same way that I'm willing to take a loss in order to. To get customers and to build up the flow of customers. I'm willing at first to take a loss on people and systems in order to make some mistakes. Enough to figure that piece out and that. I mean, there's some business gurus going to tell me I'm an idiot for that, but I just know I have to go make mistakes in order to then clean it up and figure it out. And we made plenty of them. And learning from. I remember we had like, a come to Jesus call where it was like, all right, there's this problem. This problem. And these are all recurring. So if we've done this several times, it's a recurring problem. Problem must be us. So we've got to figure it out. And I remember I'm going to walk. I'm going tomorrow morning. I'm actually going to walk you all through a process that one day, kind of in the middle of the night, I. It was like 9pm I'm a dad now. Middle of the night's 9pm So I got super frustrated because it was like nothing. One day, it was like nothing got done. It was clear what needed to get done. Nothing got done. Where's the Breakdown. And I went for this long angry walk where I'm walking around.

And calling people I trust and running the problem by them. And then I pulled out my old journals and I found this process that we went through and we re went through it and I had done it in my own businesses three, four years ago and it worked beautifully. It worked so well. We stopped doing it and then we had not applied that process to this business. And when we did it, that's when we started getting it more right, I think. And so I'm going to run you through that tomorrow morning. So we talked about the good parts, the good leverage points. What have been the biggest mistakes in your businesses on the route to growing. Because it's not like Travis said, we like, we perceive it as rocket ship up, but that's never the case. I mean we've, there's been, we've had more than one conversation. I've had a conversation with all of you at some point that all of us have. On days when it goes down, that thing kicks in where it's like, what if it's all over? I've been an entrepreneur for 10 years that has never failed fully gone away. I know I'm going to be okay. I'm disattached from the results to the point where I know I can work on it now rather than be in it. But we all have that, oh, what if we're going into the valley now and what are we going to do then? So what have been those, what have been those times? Actually I'll start with Jeremy.

Biggest mistakes.

I'm going to kind of echo what Joe was saying. I think just getting into habitual patterns of, of doing certain tasks and knowing in the back your mind you should outsource it, let it go. But just out of habit you keep doing that. And I think that's really stagnated growth at times.

But the moment I actually do let it go and find someone and get them on board, it's such a sigh of relief. Then I can focus on what's really important to drive things forward.

So the biggest mistakes for you have just been being in ruts where you're doing things you know you shouldn't do and so you spend energy on them, which takes away from your happiness. It takes away from the energy you can put into things that actually do move the needle of the business and just getting into ruts there.

Yes. And it's kind of gone through stages. I hit that resistance and eventually I'll just have a breaking point and I'LL finally find someone to take it over. But I'm still going through that to this day. I've talked with some of you in the audience and some of the people up here over the last couple days about expanding the team and really pushing that forward because that's. It's something I still battle with on a day to day basis.

So, Matt, let's go over to you. Same question.

So as far as talking about problems, I don't think we have enough time to talk about the problems and mistakes we've made. But just trying to, I mean, you know.

You know how over how much I overanalyze everything. I've always done it. And you've always been like, dude, just get out of your head. You've always been driving home. So you've probably seen a shift too, in, you know, since we've, you know, in the past six or eight months where I've been moving more towards what Travis was talking about today where just kind of making that separation to where, you know, separating your roles and your values and everything like that. And so that has been huge for me is getting out of my own head and, you know, and doing things like that.

You know, team, that's where we, in this, what we keep coming back to, that's been kind of our big theme. And that's one of the big things. I mean, how much did you like? I hated to give up control. I'm a control freak. I hate any situation where I'm not in control. And that's why things that, like, terrify me are like things I can't control. So, like, I love the beach, but I honestly kind of hate the ocean because I can't control sharks and they terrify me. I want to move to Florida, but I will not step near any, like, freshwater area because I can't control an alligator and like, stuff like that.

So it's ridiculous.

Fears is what I have. Stuff I can't control.

We were in Florida. We saw like 300 gators. How are you still afraid of gators?

Because I stayed away where I could control, you know. Yeah.

So.

And that's part of why I wanted to see gators so bad. You know, Remember I was so excited about it. But anyway, yes, that's been a big thing, is just kind of giving up control and trusting other people to get stuff done. That was my biggest problem for a long time was just not giving up control. I mean, we were.

You know, we were making what, probably a couple million dollars a year and I was still answering customer Service emails because I didn't want to give up that control.

Full disclosure. We had a customer service person.

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I just did. I just did his job for them.

Matt was still going in and controlling it, so. Yeah, it wasn't that we didn't have the team.

Yeah.

It was just there was. And by the way, I mean, let's be real. You've done it.

You've done it. Where it's like somebody's. You know what? Just this one time, I'll step in, I'll take care of it. It'll be faster this way. I'll get it done right this time rather than taking the three days to empower that person so that you're never in there again. And that was. That was something I wish we had done sooner, but we finally got there.

Yeah.

Empowerment has been the biggest thing for us. So the past few hires, I feel like. I feel like we're on a hot streak right now. And that's probably the biggest shift is that we. It's not necessarily them. We have hired some superstars. It is them. But we've freed them up and let them be themselves and empowered them. So getting over that hump has been huge for us.

AJ or Dan, what would you say have been the biggest mistakes or the biggest pitfalls or challenges?

I think my biggest mistake was not realizing my strengths and weaknesses. I suck at a lot of things, but I know who to bring in to mask my weaknesses. Right. Dan was brought on because he has a. We want to go beyond E commerce and a lot of focus. I just want to kind of hit this point home. A lot of you guys are probably thinking about how to do cash flow on Amazon. I implore you to think bigger than that. Right. Like, we were at one point doing amazing on Amazon, but I was kind of frustrated and really almost depressed, like, thinking, what's next? Right? Because the way I look at it, we're on a quicksand, right? So our focus right now is we're bleeding a lot of money behind the scenes and doing the things.

A lot of small things like branding, focusing on branding, getting our products right, stuff like that, that are not going to give us an ROI right now, but it will for sure build us for the future. Right? So I think not realizing early enough that looking at the bigger picture and going beyond just being an Amazon brand and focusing on other, like, bigger picture and focusing on bringing people to help you achieve that dream. Right. If you're not the right person to do it, go find that person that's going to help you do it. So for me, I think that's the biggest takeaway and the biggest weakness that I had early on.

So to that point, you have done something faster than I've seen any entrepreneur do, which was go into full time entrepreneurship and then think bigger than just cash flow. The trend that I've seen among most entrepreneurs is I go full time. I think cash flow, years later, you feel safe enough in order to transition into something bigger or to separate from the business as a cash flow business and operate it like a real business. You did that faster than anyone I've interacted with. I think it was about a year where it was like business start full time, treating it like a business and I'm separated from it. Are you just wired weird or, or was there like a conscious decision to say, I will not let this run my life, I'm gonna work on this like a business, not like it's my money.

I think it goes back to my previous experiences where I had a lot, I've done a lot of other businesses and I treated those like cash cows, took money out and they crashed eventually. So right now my personal assets are really shitty. I don't pay myself well because I want the company to do well. So realizing, separating yourself and I think you've hit this home a couple of times in your podcast and stuff like that, realizing that the money belongs to the business and building your business is the biggest thing that I've learned over the years and depends on what your goals are. Right. So our goal is to be a hundred million dollar company and we are treating it as such. If your goal is cash flow, great, but do that. But for us that's not the eventual, that's not the dream that we have.

Yeah.

And I like to say, I mean.

Your business is the greatest place of ROI.

Of any other investment. I think the only thing that is probably better ROI is your body. Other than that, your business is the greatest source of roi. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, they get the goose that lays the golden eggs and then they want to make breakfast rather than go and buy more geese with the golden eggs. It's like, oh, I have my goose now, I'm going to make breakfast. I never have to buy cereal ever again because I've got golden eggs rather than reinvesting them to build up something where you delay gratification, but it grows into something much bigger.

If I could just say one thing that. So 2 comments here that have been running around, which is this, this team idea, but Also recognizing whether we're in a cash flow business or whether there's a 10x to our already 10x. Right. Like where, where is, where is that end road? And, and one of the things that AJ has been a visionary at is, is knowing where his core strengths intersect with the core strategies that we're trying to execute and where he doesn't know. He brought me on where my background is in the kind of the higher level thinking for larger companies and that was my background. So to combine these two kind of notions of getting a team together and kind of understanding really the right end game. It's all about vision and it's all about communicating that vision. If you have a team that's bought into the long term endgame, they know everybody on our team knows we're on track to being $100 million. Every single person. Because we walk, we talk, we smell, we look like that. That's how we conduct ourselves. We're a young team, we had fun. It's a great work environment. But I think the thing that transcends hiring well and knowing where you're at is casting a vision that people really buy into. They've got to know that you're holding the flag. They've got to know that they can follow you. They've got to know that you know where you're taking the bus because you're the person that has the vision. You see the clouds apart, you know where to go. And I think that's you know, talking particularly. Let's just take like you know, the sub 1 million or sub 2 million dollar a year businesses. It is, it's, you ask them like what's, what's their exit strategy, what's their end game? And a lot of the looks that you get is well, I'm just, just trying to support my lifestyle. Well that's fine but you're never going to be a hundred million dollar brand if you just want to show up and be a 2.5 million dollar brand. No way.

I thought that last point that was.

Made by our mastermind partner Dan was one of the highlights of this hour or so saying, you know, nobody becomes a hundred million dollar brand by accident. You don't try to be a 200 or a 2.5 million dollar brand and accidentally become 100 million dollar brand. That doesn't happen.

You've got to plan for it.

You have to decide where your pivots are. You've got to decide to put on your big boy or big girl pants and become a large brand. That's what a lot of the partners in our Mastermind are doing. They're growing $100 million companies, in fact, said this before, I'm really, I'm just so proud of our Mastermind partners who have doubled or even 10x in the last year. Up until recently, our Mastermind has kind of been an informal place for some of our most successful people to get together in a room, share our best ideas, form partnerships and share their best strategies. And it's been a phenomenal year, year, year and a half that we've been together in geld. We are changing the format in 2016 into something much higher leveraged. We're bringing in some even higher level people and we have people in our Mastermind who several of them do over a million dollars a month. And we're bringing in bigger partners. We're bringing in guests who can teach things outside of our industry and we're doing some really, really exciting, fun things. We've got some information over@freedomfastlane.com mastermind that will tell you a little bit more about what we're doing in 2016. So you can see if you might be a fit or your business might be ready to be surrounded by people who are far beyond where you are or are in the same direction of where your business is going. If you're not satisfied building a million dollar business, if you want to be building a $100 million business and more, if you want to see what the billion dollar path is for you, I'd encourage you to check out what we're doing in the Mastermind. You can either send me a message on Facebook or you can head over to freedomfastlang.com mastermind if your business is doing at least a million a year or you have a minimum net worth of $1 million and be happy to consider you as a potential fit to be one of our Mastermind partners moving forward. Thanks for listening to Freedom Fastline. Hope you got a lot out of this Q and A with our Mastermind team and I hope to see you in our Mastermind or in the Tribe coming up, which will be opening up here in the next few weeks over at freedomfastlane. Com. Thanks for listening. Keep on changing the world and I'll talk to you on the next show.