The Best Frameworks To Go From $0 To $10M In 3 Years w/ James Ashcroft

A lot of early stage entrepreneurship is just guessing until you figure something out. It's just trying a bunch of things until something starts to work. But I've noticed in a lot of entrepreneurs that once they find that thing that starts to get going, they think that the way to grow forever is to keep guessing is to keep just throwing things at the wall and hope that things stick. And, and this is why I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs get something going off the ground and then they suffocate it because they're on a hamster wheel of just trying different things. And this is when Frameworks for growth, Frameworks for scale. Borrowing the playbook from somebody else who has built an eight figure company and had a ridiculous exit can be really helpful. For example, my framework for getting to seven figures is you pick a person that you want to serve, you identify four products that you're going to launch to that person, and then you get them to 25 sales a day at a $30 price point. That's a million dollar business. And it takes eight to 12 months to be able to do that and get to seven figures. I met a man here in Austin who creates frameworks for people to grow beyond seven figures and scale to eight figures. And I found some of his frameworks to be very helpful. Because when you're that entrepreneur who is used to guessing all the time, there becomes this point at which you don't have any more time for guessing. And now we need to have some destination that we're calibrating to in order to bring the company forward. If you want to grow that business from this thing that is just kind of working haphazardly into something that is an organized machine that produces consistent value for the world, you need a way to get there. And James is the guy that I met that works directly with entrepreneurs to help them find alignment towards that vision. And in this episode we're going to go through the frameworks and the processes that he walks entrepreneurs through in order to go from this chaotic business that is just a bunch of people producing value and some stuff is working to a business that is healthy and is in striking distance of an eight figure exit. I recorded this specifically for those of you who follow my work and have gotten something off the ground. And maybe you use my framework or somebody in our community to get your business off the ground and now you need some help. Cause I love to see our students make that pivot from seven figures to eight figures. I invest in those businesses. I have a fund that puts up the Capital to help people scale from that. But James had some frameworks that I thought would be really helpful for you to see what pieces you need to reorganize in your business to go from seven figures to eight figures.

James, how do you describe what it is that you do now? Like, I want to hear talk about the exit and how you built your business and all that, but how would you describe what you do now?

I would first and foremost say I'm a coach. Right.

I'm a facilitator, I'm a champion for my teams, but at the end of the day, I'm a coach. That's how I describe myself in one word. You know, I help them get clear on where they're going and facilitate conversations that need in the room.

And it's important when you say coach, in today's world, anybody can call themselves a coach.

Right. Life coach.

Yeah, a coach in anything. But you're coming from the lens of somebody who has had a good amount of success, built companies and sold them in boring industries, and has now worked with a variety of different people and basically used, I wouldn't call it like a predictable playbook, but like a framework that you can put companies through that will accelerate them. Is that a fair summary?

Absolutely. I mean, it's all about frameworks and best practices at the end of the day. Like, if you look at the most successful people, they just rinse and repeat, you know, successful frameworks. So I just bring frameworks that are proven to my teams and coach them through those and. And get everyone operating under one system.

Yeah. My framework that I give to new entrepreneurs is if you have four products that sell 25 sales a day at a $30 price point, you've got a million dollar business. Right. And that, that is a framework that allows people to go, oh, I can plug in for these variables.

Right.

And be able to execute on that. It doesn't mean it's easy. It doesn't mean that the playbook is going to look exactly the same every time. But the framework kind of gives you some boundaries through which you can execute. So I've always struggled myself to come up with frameworks that help people go from $2 million to $12 million. Right. I kind of intuitively know what they are, and when I'm working with somebody in the fund, I can. I know what buttons to push. But you've got frameworks that you actually put around these. Could you share one or two of them to kick things off?

Yeah. So, for example, if we are looking at people, an Organization, Right. There's. There's a tool called the talent assessment. Okay. So if you look at the, you know, vertical axis and horizontal axis. If you look at the horizontal axis, Culture, Right. How do you. How do you codify culture? You know, it's. It's core values. Right? Core values, alignment for an entire team. And then you look at the horizontal axis. It be performance. Right. So look at that matrix, kind of like an Eisenhower matrix. Right. And if you're high culture, high performing, you could be an A player, a potential. For example, if you're high culture, low performing, you'd be in that top left quadrant. Right. We call those different names, like campers. Right. People. We love to have an organization, but not necessarily high performers and then so on and so forth. Low, low culture, low performing. We call those gotta goes. And then you have high performance, low culture, high. I like to joke around and call them terrorists. Right. They're holding your company hostage. Right. But that's a framework that we can all clearly understand. Right. And just go back to your previous point. I think these are all simple but not easy to implement.

Sure, right.

But it's a common language.

But as soon as you said that, I can start to put people into buckets, right. You know, there's people really good culture fit performances mid. And then there's people with high. Like, I immediately can see that and start putting people into buckets. And. And that is very clarifying just to see what the next moves need to be.

Right, right, right. So. So for example, just imagine a team with me in the room, and we're going through this on the whiteboard, right? So, so high, like 99 would be an A player. And we just have conversations saying, what do we need to do to move people from the left up into a player territory? I like it as well because it's a leadership and management tool. So you could. You could say, hey, someone was previously an apotential top, right? They've moved into the camper territory. You know, the first thing I teach my teams is like, look in the mirror. Like, have we dropped the ball? Do they have the resources they need? Have we set the expectations, all of these things, and have conversation with the teammates and move them into that a potential quadrant. So, so again, it's just a simple framework that we can now have a common language around and say, hey, you know, so and so is a camper. They used to be an A player. Like, what's happened?

You know, I'm curious about what the leaders of the team, people like me who have teams of four or six people where they fall on that quadrant sometimes. Because like there are times like am I a culture fit for my own company? I used to be. Yeah, I don't know about right now. Or am I high performer? I used to be not like you. Because as a leader, you ebb and flow. Sure. Right. So how, how do you address that when that comes up?

So, so the first thing is, is that whenever I'm engaging, it's the same rules for the CEO, whoever's the owner of the company. It's like we all play by the same game, right? So we're going to have the other team even assess them. So sometimes that does come up, like low performing CEO or an owner that's maybe checked out a little bit. I just facilitate this. Tough conversations. There's also things that go on in personal lives, right. So we need to flesh those out. If we have someone who's high performing and low performing now, perhaps something on their personal life, medical issue, family event, etc. And usually the, the owner or CEO of the company, the founder, whatever, whoever the, the kind of the, the head of the company is, we just have an honest dialogue, figure out what's going on and perhaps, you know, they've always kind of had all hats on, you know, wearing every single hat in the organization. As we've built out the structure of the organization, perhaps their roles aren't clear and now they're just finding time to kind of meddle into things and causing disruption, which I'm guilty of in my own businesses over the years. Like, you know, as I put teams in place to run, like handing over the keys is not an easy right to do. It's really not to let go and kind of find yourself displaced in their own company. So, you know, it's all about just having an honest dialog, you know, and those are some of the ground rules. You know, one of the expectations of every session I have is open and honest opening to changing the way you think, think about things, changing your perspective around things. And honest saying what needs to be had. Sorry, saying what needs to be said. And that is just absolutely critical that I empower teammates, go, hey, you know, so and so, you used to be, you know, really passionate about these things and your performance is amazing. What's going on. And we just have those tough conversations. So hey, listen, if someone comes into my room and says, you know, I'm not willing to change, I don't want to play by the same rules, then we quickly, you know, address the, maybe they're not a right fit.

Sure, sure. So. So I want to go into the story of your at least most recent exit. But first, is there one or is there one more framework that's in your tool belt that you come in and use in companies?

Yeah, I mean core values I think is another great one. Right. It's all part of the vision for where the company's going, understanding who the company is. You know, core values are the non negotiables that expected behaviors. You know, there's a great book out there, Core value Equation that my friend Darius wrote. He talks about visible manager of the business. Right. So we got to get clearly articulate the core values, the characteristics of the people expectations.

And so let's dive into that a little bit because oftentimes, you know, I work with entrepreneurs on helping them make their first million get to $100,000 a month million dollar business. And a lot of times that is just you're finding out what you're going to sell.

Yeah.

And you're going to sell it and you're going to sell some more of it.

Right.

And there's really no time to pause and say what's my values as I'm getting in to sell this thing. Like sometimes that's appropriate, but it's definitely in the backseat when you're grinding to the first million.

Sure.

Right. So at what time is that appropriate to ask those questions, James?

Yeah, I mean if you've got a tiny team, you know, it's like what's the leverage of your time? Right. Like you said, you're just trying to get product market fit, you're trying to get the right products out there. You're just trying to get people that can come on the business where moves will have to just get things done. Right. But it comes to time where you just like, especially as you start putting in that second and third layer of the organization, putting teams together. Well, you have to have some kind of North Star about who is going to join the team. Right. So core values are always there in the business. Usually they're just, you know, a characteristic of the founder.

Yes.

Of the company.

They're always there because someone has to start the business.

Right. Steve Jobs had him baked into himself, you know, you know, Hewlett Packard, for example, you know, customer service, this, these were all things that were just baked into the founder early on. They're just not sometimes verbalized. Yeah.

You know, when I'm, I'm thinking of an example of about two weeks ago, I was, I was talking with one of My team members and we were going over the copy of one of our sales pages and he was just adamant, like this is how it's done. And I was like, this doesn't speak to our person, this doesn't match. And it was, it was positive conflict, there's some positive friction. And what he was learning was what my value hierarchy was, is more important to speak directly to our ideal person than to sell on a volume game. And that's like an internal value for me because of who I want to target in the company. And, and sometimes you don't even know that's in you when you're running a seven figure company. You don't know that that's in you when you're starting something new. And it's just you. And that has to be drawn out in some way so that you can properly communicate it to outsourcers or team members. So I'm guessing that a lot of that is sitting down with the founder and just getting it out of her or his head and communicating that to the team. Is that the case?

Well, I do it with the team, right? So usually I work with executive team, leadership team. So let's just keep it simple, right? This would be, you know, the founder, CEO, head of sales, marketing, operations, finance, right? That would be a core. That's the DNA of every business.

So we actually go through a process and it does involve sticky notes and big windows. Literally thinking, hey, think about the A players of this organization. Think about each other, right? Think about maybe someone who left the company in their own accord. They were terrific. Just like, move on. Like these, these people were true A players in this organization. Just write down their characteristics, right? They might be like gritty, they might be, you know, like attention to detail, you know, get shit done, whatever it is, right? And we throw those up there. The important thing is that most of the time when, when teams or founder does this by themselves is that there's different kinds of values, right? You have what's called aspirational values. These are values that we're aspiring to become. We have accidental values, right? They just happen to be who we are right now. So there's a case study of a, of an agency in California and I use this when I teach my teams out in California and they're kind of this young trendy, like they all wear black kind of cool agency. And they literally have one of their core values, like cool and hip hop, you know, okay. But the problem was as it was scaling, they were like, there are some great people out there. Who have more experience, hey, perhaps married folks like myself, you know, older, more seasoned leaders who could help them get to the next level. And they quickly identified, they're like, hey, that was an accidental value. It's just us in a moment of time. But it really has nothing to do with who we are and what we're trying to achieve. Like really just the, again, the non negotiables, the culture, the characteristics that we never violate from. And they ended up changing them and actually scaled the business because they realized they needed. That's wisdom. So those are, those are those accidental values. And the other ones, they're called like permission to play values. So they're just like, you see this a lot. Integrity or honest or. You know, I always joke around, like an accounting firm that says good with numbers. That's not really a value of like a core value, you know, so it is a bit of a deep dive. We go in, I have clients all the time who come to me and they're like, oh, we got them baked in. We just made new T shirts, we got stuff on the walls. You know, they're great. I take one look at them, I know they're not. And then we, I ask them to go through the process with me, and 99% of the time something's tweaked or completely changed that really makes all the difference. Because just going back to the framework, once we have these core values and I talked about the talent assessment, the verticals, the vertical axis there, that's how we can codify the culture. So it's really important. How could we start benchmarking talent against the wrong core values? And this is where a lot of companies go really wrong. So these are all pieces of a puzzle, right, that have to come together to make this whole system work.

Now you just quickly breezed over what you call the DNA of a company. You had finance, had a sales CEO. Could you clean that up a little bit? What, what, what, what was, how did you define the DNA of the company?

Yeah, so, so every business at its core has, starts off with the, with the same functions of the business, right? So let's, let's put the founder aside for a second. We have sales and marketing. Sometimes that's separated, right? And then we have operations and then we have finance or admin. Those are really the three buckets right now. Now whether we, you know, bifurcate sales, marketing or know admin away from finance, and that, that just depends on the structure of the company. But that is the DNA. And if you think about it, Especially if you go from, from left to right. And I actually, I actually write if those are bifurcated like marketing to the left, sales, operation, finance, because it's a flow of the business at the end of the day, right. Marketing drives, leads to sales, sales closes, hands off to operations. Finance collects the money. So, so that's, that's the core DNA and that's the place where I start with my clients because it never deviates from that.

Yeah, I actually want to go into that a little bit deeper because I've kind of discovered this accidentally right. When you, when you are running a company and you're profitable and you're growing. I've gone through periods where like we think we do the right things and then it breaks, you got to trim back down. And it's often because we're getting away from those buckets, right. Or putting like a director in place before we have three A players that are ahead of those three buckets. Right. So for example, I've struggled with this in sales and marketing because I'm fairly good at sales and marketing. So hiring an A player to like anchor that, to get me out of that part of the business is a bit of a struggle. So when you have a founder, that is really the, the starting point of a business because it always is somebody who can wear multiple hats and build something to a million dollar business, then bringing in the people in those three roles is what's going to anchor the business so that it can grow. So I'm curious how you prioritize those hires when you've got a founder or a team of two or four that's lean and scrappy and has just gotten things done. What do you do to start bringing in those leaders of those buckets?

Yeah, it's really tricky, especially on the revenue side. Right. Like you have a founder and typically founders and revenue aligned. Right. And then you have, you know, operations and usually aligns with a second in command which we can come back and talk about. Like in some circles are called integrators, COOs, whatever you'd like to. And a lot of times companies, founders, as they scale, become keenly aware that they're more visionary and that's more revenue. Like going out.

Yeah.

Brand selling, all that. And so that's a whole thing that we can get into. But certainly replacing yourself in the sales function of the business is a tricky one. Right.

So I tell my teams like we have to do, we have to create the revenue, right. We have to book the revenue. And until you can build out that Team, I think it's the car putting the cart before the horse. Getting a sales manager. Right. You have to build out that sales team that is the tricky part. Like so usually it's the, the, the visionary, the CEO actually sitting in that sales manager as a temporary basis in order to teach the teams, but then hiring to remove themselves out of that sales manager when the revenue obviously profitability allows for that. And just to know that one of the cardinal sins is, you know, making your best salesperson the sales manager, that's a no go ever. I mean, for the most part. And the second, you know, what makes someone a great salesperson doesn't make them a great manager by any stretch. So just keep that. I see that mistake all the time.

This actually makes total sense in like I work with a lot of physical product brands and so you, the founder gets good at one channel, for example, like Amazon.com and they know all the buttons to push and they know all the strategies that they need to execute in order to take something to seven figures. But then getting themselves out of that role is really hard. And so they become very good Amazon brands or they become very good Shopify brands, but they're never able to break out to that next level. They're never able to surpass low seven figures because all their time and attention is what they're good at, which is clicking the right buttons on Amazon and knowing how to work the algorithm and how to optimize for this type of sale. And they're never able to get past that. And that's a hard but important thing to go through if you want to grow from 7 to 8. So is that kind of an example, a proper example of what you're describing about how visionary founder and sales often are aligned, but then you've got to fill in that bucket in order to kick the founder out and get them to go to the next stage of the vision.

Yeah, I think it depends on what you're trying to achieve as the founder of the business. Right. If you're.

I mean, is the team all aligned about different channels or are you going to go all in Amazon if you're going to have to bring in experts at different channels at some point? If the founder is 100% Amazon expert with nothing else, then how's anyone else going to get trained? Unless you bring in someone who is a Shopify?

And that's what you mean about putting that CEO in that marketing or sales role until they can systemize themselves or train other people. I see.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean someone has to have the system. Right. You can't just tell a whole bunch of salespeople, go sell in different channels with no one's. There's no strategy behind it.

Oh, I know many, many people have tried.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's an expensive mistake. Right. So, you know, bringing in someone who's an expert multi channel. So I think that's just the next step that you have to, you know, higher above yourself. I mean, that's a big concept. Right. Like my last company, everyone in my leadership team room knew more about the business, their specific function of the business than I ever would have. You know, that was an adjustment for me. You know what got me here, couldn't get me there.

So let's, let's talk about your last company.

Yeah.

Because you sold it in 20. 20.

21.

21.

21.

Okay. Yeah. And it was not sexy on paper.

No.

Right. It's not, it's not the one no one's selling courses on how to get into this space. Sure. So would you share?

Maybe they should. It's a complicated business.

Well, tell us a little bit about it.

Yeah. So you and I were talking about, you know, unsexy businesses and all these things which I think many times are the sexiest businesses out there.

Boring businesses.

Business is the best. Right. So I was in fire security. So we did the installation, test and inspection and monitoring of fire suppression systems in commercial buildings. So think schools, think hospitals, high rises, all those things. What I loved about it, recurring revenue, high barriers, entry is heavily regulated, you got to have a lot of licensing and it was a great business. So my book was sexy. But you know, I don't think a lot of people, entrepreneurs go, hey, I want to get into fire security or I want to get into, you know, the next, you know, regulated business. But, but I'm telling you, the margins are great and if you know what you're doing, it's a way wonderful business.

How did you get into that? So you, you acquire this mom and pop local business and you start to apply the, these frameworks to be able to prepare it for growth and eventually a valuable exit. So what are the first few moves that you make and for, for those listening, what I'm listening for as you're answering this question is, okay, you have a business that is doing okay. What universally can you apply into that business to help create room for growth? So yeah, you take your frameworks to a random mom and pop business, you buy it, what do you apply first?

Yeah. So just to be completely transparent, this is Something I talk about with. With prospects and teams that are working the journey. We never got a coach in the company. Right. That's. That was my mistake. I truly believe that had I hired someone like myself or another colleague of mine to come into the business to implement these things properly, the sky's the limit. Right. So that's really my story. I have colleagues who coach because they implemented, did the work that I teach now completely to a T. That's their story. Mine's the other way of saying, I can look you in the eye and say, hey, listen, I left money on the table. I made it harder than it should have been to grow the business because I didn't have, you know, a playbook like I teach now.

Yeah. It's the same thing with me when it comes to investing the money. After the exit, it's like, I made so many mistakes. Yeah. Please call me. I can save you millions of dollars of stupidity from my mistakes, and I wish I could go back and do it again. Right. And. But now I help people who are going through an exit process prepare for something like that. Right. So your story is almost exactly the same, just with a different application.

Yeah. And I think if we. If we have, like, a baseline of what's really important, I think core values around people, we got very clear about our core values. We got very clear about our mission. We got very clear about the business that we were trying to put together because there was no structure to it before. They did a great job as mom and pop building this business. Wonderful people. I mean, the reason we bought it, we saw the customer deck and some of the biggest, you know, names and developments. Property managers in South Florida. That's a big market.

Yeah.

Marquee names that you see at stadiums. This is amazing. They have these relationships, so that's why we found it so attractive. We just felt like just up leveling again, technology and things like that. But we just wanted to get everyone on the same page about what we're trying to build. Right. And those are just conversations and taking stuff very seriously when it comes to, like, safety, you know? You know, how we treat people and understand the core values and just putting some of those processes together.

Where did that come from? Like, the mission and the values? Where did they come from when you took over the business? And I asked, because it's such a blind spot for so many entrepreneurs who are getting things done, who are making money, who have profit, who have customers, and they're completely blind to this.

Yeah.

So where does it come, you not being in this business coming in, taking it over. Do you make up the core values? No.

You don't make up.

Do you make up the mission?

No.

Where does it come from? No.

So we did an acquisition again, right. So we had to get in there, really understand the business. Right. But my partner and I, we brought the values that are important to us and they aligned with the company that we bought. I mean, it was all part of it, right. Safety was a big thing, especially with my partner. He'd been in residential security. Understanding, you know, the safety is truly important. And we just met with the team and we just went over this stuff. And this is why I said before there wasn't like a specific workshop like I do with my clients, like best practices and like one really good way to do it. We kind of cobbled it together and it took a while for them to kind of get baked into the company and change things, tweak them a little bit. But at the end of the day, I think we nailed them. And, and, and it really did help. And then, then we were just focused on growing the company, bringing in the right people to help us grow this thing. That was really. So I think, I think having a good vision and good people side of things is really, really important. I think if you get that right.

It'S 85% of the way you use the word vision. And it's one of the things in our incubator, when somebody is doing one and a half million, two million dollars, we, it sometimes it takes two, three months to unpack that vision and get it on paper and enroll the rest of the team into this vision so that everybody knows this is actually what we're building. Yeah, we're going in this direction. I like to say you can three step your way to a million dollars. Step one, get four products at 25 sales a day. You know, step two, build an audience in a community that loves you and buys from me all over and over again. And then four, bring on. Or step four, step three, bring on a team that systemizes those operations. Like you can three step that process, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But three, stepping your way to 10 million a little bit more difficult, right?

Because it's a little bit more creative.

Because somebody has to sit down and say, this is what I'm actually here to do. This is the game that I'm trying to play. And it's so unconscious when you're trying to just grind your way to a few million bucks or be free of your job or buy a business that looks good on paper.

Yeah.

So would you either tell me a story or walk me through the process of how you bring that vision to life and enroll people into it. Like Cameron Herold is a mutual friend of both of ours and he has his processes for this, but you actually sit down in the room and help people with this. So walk me through what that looks like.

Well, just to tell you what Cameron does, you know, he calls it vivid vision. Right. It's a similar thing called, you know, three year picture, which is basically saying, what are we building here today? I mean, truly, you know, let me back up a bit because I think it's important to understand what Jim Collins called the big hairy audacious goal. Familiar with that? Yes. Right. So that's the big ten year, the summit of the mountain. So I always say to my teams, imagine ourselves today, you know, we're at the foothills of the Himalayas and we're looking up. Are we seeing the same thing? We've seen the same mountain. We're climbing. That's really, really important. So from there in the, in the 10 year, then we can start working on the three year same. We want to get there in 10 years. What are we going to do in the next three years? Again, it's just a conversation and I let teams get very, very creative. Right. We definitely work on things like revenue. And you'd be surprised at how many companies I'm working with, a company that's doing, you know, 10 million in revenue and sometimes I suspect they're not on the same page just for fun, you know, so just write down the number going to be in three years and you know, I go around the room and it's like you know, 15 million, 25 million, you know, 50 million. And usually the CEO visionary, you know, is like $158 million or something, you know, so you got to get on the same page about the size. There's just different strategies. Right. Acquisition or private equity backing is very different from organic growth. So get very clear on that and say, okay, what do we want this to feel like? Like we have multiple office locations, you know, some of this low hanging fruit, like literally was it feel like when we walk into the office, you know, what are the departments, what are our products? And really painting this picture, you know, it takes several hours and go through it. And then I like to create just bullet points that tell us a story about where we're going, you know, like what does the culture feel? I mean, they go nuts in my room. You know, some of them get down to granular levels, which is really important. There'll be like, you know, a ping pong table, you know, and it might be just some blue collar manufacturing, but for them that just instills a culture of fun, reflects who they are and what they want to build. So really have fun with this. And you know, what are the awards we're winning? Are we winning Best Place to Work awards? And, and by the end we, you know, we have all these bullet points and I actually have them sit around the table, shut their eyes and kind of sit there, take a deep breath, and I read them and paint that picture for them. And you know, 999 of the time they open up their eyes and that's amazing. Actually, I have one sales guy who like literally banged the table and said, now that's a vision I can sell, you know, And I was like, that's amazing. Right. So.

So I want to ask you, James, like, I've gone through similar exercises. Yeah. And there are times where I'm like, I don't know. I. I don't know. Yeah, I don't, I don't see it. It's just I have, I have a gap here and I can put it on paper and I can tell you then the numbers of it and I can tell you like what I want, but it's like, it feels empty.

Were you doing that with by yourself or do you have someone help?

By myself.

Yeah. So, you know, highly, highly suggest that you get someone to be a sounding board for you. Right. Like ask those questions. There's five whys. Why is this important? Why is this important? Help me get very clear. It's impossible most of the time to write this stuff by yourself. Yeah.

You know, as, as you say that I'm thinking about this. This is pretty personal, but I'll, I'll go here. So, you know, I have a supplement company, it's called Sheer Strength. We sell supplements on the Internet. Right. And someone asked me the question, what's the why that makes you cry? And I didn't have one at first, but so I sat, I just sat with it and I was thinking about there's, there's a, a person in my life who has three kids and they don't have a father figure in their life. And one of the kids in particular, I've just kind of taken a liking to like a little bit of a mentor. He's nine years old. And I just like, I get super emotional whenever I think about this kid and how I just feel this desire to fill this gap. However I can, I can never Replace the loss of his dad. But I can be a surrogate uncle and. And all of a sudden the, like, the feeling of what I really want to do in my supplement company just pops off the page at me, where it's like, I want to empower dads and men to be able to close the gap that we have from fatherless homes. And that's when, like, emotion comes and drive comes and that influences how I write copy, and it influences what products I launch in it. And all of a sudden, a very different company starts to emerge than the one that would, like, hit all the checkpoints in what makes a great business. Sure. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, you can't read that in a business.

Those are metrics.

Right.

Success metrics is very different from. From purpose. I think what you're talking about is purpose. Right. Which is understanding why we're doing what we're doing. Right. So I would imagine for you it's something around, you know, empowering health into X. You know, in this case, a father. Right. So they can be around for their kids. Living the best life is we're healthy, we go to work, we're engaged, we come home, we have great marriages, the kids love us, we feel great, we've got tons of energy for the weekend, all those things. Right. That's a powerful mission. You know, that's something I try and live by. We talked about, you know, my past and my physical endeavors, doing triathlons and things like that, because I. I woke up one day as a complete mess, you know, fat, overworked, not paying attention to my young kids and wife like I should be and turn my life around. And that for me was. Was my mission, that was a purpose. And now, you know, nothing's more important to me than my family and being around forever. Joke around with my wife. I'm going to be, you know, pestering her for the next 50 years. So.

So how old were you when you had that call?

39.

39 when you had.

Yeah. What were you doing?

Because that was before the. You bought into the.

Yeah, so at the time, I was juggling two businesses. Right, right. I had another business that was reselling construction products from Miami into the Caribbean. So that was all about going around the Caribbean, wining and dining European project managers who. Who. Just wild guys. I mean, it was. It was. It was crazy. And then, you know, coming back and then building another business up the, up the highway. I was all over the place, just stretched super thin, wasn't eating right, smoking, drinking, you name it.

Wait so you went from smoking, drinking, and skinny.

So fat.

Well, you just said. You said underweight. Not eating or not eating and fat.

Not eating, right.

Oh, okay.

Oh, not if I said that. No, no. I mean, absolutely.

Just eating and fat. Oh, just a good catastrophe. Some supplements for you.

I just had my 20th anniversary of the day my wife made me a photo book, and I was looking at some of the pictures of that time. I was like, oh, my God. You know, it was bad.

So I got to go in here.

James is like, how often do you see founders and leaders in that state?

Quite a bit. Quite a bit. Entrepreneurship is tough, and we all know the statistics, right? Like, three times more likely to have bipolar, depression. Lot of adhd, you know, undiagnosed. A lot of marriages breaking out. I mean, it's tough. It's tough. It's not my job to. To, you know, point that out to them. It's my job to help them create something that they are proud to be a part of, that they want to be a part of, that they. They take pride in. And so, you know, usually I end up having these conversations, especially when they find my backstory. It's like, so what did you do differently? Yeah, so, yeah, trying to do some sort.

Don't you find I'm projecting here? This is true in my life, right? If I don't have that purpose driving me, then it's. I'm not going to drive myself to the gym or to eat a salad and vice versa. Like, either one of those two things could break. Either my lifestyle could break, or I could lose my purpose and my passion, and both will be eviscerated. They'll go away. But if I can light the fire in one of them, then the others, soon to follow. Like, it's almost like that passion, that drive, that vision bleeds over into the other areas of my life, but it's got to start somewhere. Yeah, right. And. And I mean, I think. I think the easiest way, like, the most clear, universal way, is that it starts with your body. I think, anyway, that's my bias. I have a supplement company that works with men. So, yeah, that's my bias. But what came first for you? Was it the drive to change your physical state, or was it a new purpose for a company that you wanted to buy?

So for me, individually, it was physical. I mean, I ended up coming to terms with my alcohol issues, right? Like, I had to make. Make pivots, so I couldn't get clear about the business, about my marriage, about anything until I got myself in Order, right. Clean my own house. So for me that was that. That created the space to then figure out what my purpose in life is. Which at the time was really about building these companies. And then it was until about five years ago, after I was in the middle of selling, well, I was building the company, long story short, moved back to Austin. I had this gap where I wasn't day to day anymore. And I really got a chance to say to myself, what do I want to be when I grow up? Because if I'm, I don't have a day job anymore. I put a team in place in Florida, handed off the keys to other people. Now is a really good time for me to say what do I want to do with the rest of my life? Like in a 20 year horizon and after, you know, I'm in peer groups and masterminds and after consulting with a whole bunch of people. The common theme was coaching and mentoring was a big part of it. And so that's when I leaned into, huh, maybe I could be a coach. But kind of had some head trash. What can I, what do I really know about teaching other people? I had to get over that. But ended up.

All that came to fruition because then I had the physical ability and I felt good. You know, I was proud of myself for doing some crazy physical endeavors, walking across the Grand Canyon back we're doing Iron Man. All this stuff that 10 years prior would have been impossible, impossible, impossible. And I used to like heavy breathe, going up steps, you know, so.

So you, you cleaned up the physical side of things first.

Yeah.

And then you had the energy to then go execute in business.

That's my story.

And then as you executed in business, that created up freedom for there to be purpose. Yes. For the next chapter to emerge. Yes. Do you see a similar trajectory with the people that you work with? People come to you, they have a mess of a business. But it's seven figure revenue. Founder may or may not be a mess. What do they clean up first?

It's so individual. I mean it true. I hate to tell me, I hate to give you a Mac.

I get it.

You know, because if I have, if I have a, let's call him CEO just for the sense of easy word. Right. Someone who owns a company, running the company day to day and their life's a bit of a mess. There's so many different pieces that it fixed would result in everything else being better. Right. So if someone's like, oh okay, 16 hour days and all this stuff, I can't hire the Right.

People.

It's like, oh my gosh, what's going on here? This is madness. I mean, that's unsustainable. So let's fix the people side of your business. Like, let's bring in. Because just to go back to the tools, like sometimes I'll actually create the org chart like on the whiteboard. Right. I'll tell the whole team and CEO I said, none of us work here. Right. Let's just think about, let's get very clear on what the roles are, the structures of the company. No people, right? And we come up with this beautiful chart and we said, all right, let's put the people back in. And then we find out that Ryan, sitting as CEO, head of sales, doing a little bit of customer service, doing the books, all this stuff, and it's like, no wonder your spouse is like, where have you been for the last three years? You know, no wonder, no wonder you haven't been to your kids, you know, play, you know, in two years, you know, like, so, so all these, all these different things. But I will say that, you know, entrepreneurs, they have the best drive. They're the backbone of our country. And, but most of the, most of the time, a lot of times they end up just creating a job for themselves.

Sure.

That's not like they would never go somewhere. Right. And work from nine to nine, six days a week and Sunday afternoons.

Right.

For what they're paying themselves.

Right?

Right.

For less than they're for less.

If they were with all that risk, I mean, if you looked it on paper, they're smart people. If you looked on paper, they'd be, I'm not signing up for this, you know, so, so it's no wonder. So if we can just fix some of the low hanging fruit which oftentimes is, is around people and lack of vision for the business. If we can get that done.

Getting a second in command, you know, a partner on board, that's a huge one. You know, entrepreneurs, they build something and they're running it day to day and they should not be doing that. They should not be doing that. That's not their wheelhouse. They do not wake up every day and say, yes, today I get to run some meetings, today I get to update the spreadsheets, you know, you know, they don't, they don't. So what we're actually building that. Structures. Go back to that for a second. Forget we work here. Right. Let's bifurcate that. The vision piece of the business. The, the culture, the brand, the big relationships, investors all this stuff that's kind of in the visionary bucket. And then who's going to run the thing day to day? That's where you get bifurcated into the CEO and CEO role. And sometimes they'll be sitting in both of them, which is fine. But if they really want to scale, they should probably bring in someone who again, wakes up every day and says, man, I can't wait to, you know, hit the budget.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, like, you know, and it will sort out all these little problems, you know, that drive entrepreneurs nuts.

And we, we think there's nobody in the world would actually find that exciting.

Oh, I can tell you.

And there are.

Oh my gosh. There are, there are, there are. And it's a lifesaver for companies. You know, I think, you know, there's some rough kind of back of napkin numbers. There's like 10 visionaries for every, you know, CEO, you know, integrator or second in command.

Is that true or is that.

I don't.

It's because that's my perception, but my experience says otherwise, that there are a.

Lot of people who'd be very happy.

Running an exciting company and like, being the person that sets me free to go set another vision.

Right. And I think those people are hard to come by one. Because they're not on the street.

Right, exactly.

You know, they should be true partners in the business. Like, you want to have some kind of incentive, say, hey, if you're going to be showing up every day, I'm going to be doing my kind of visionary stuff and running around, you know, putting the keys into their hands. They should have, have a, have an upside, but just a different wiring. You know, they're not out beating the streets. I mean, I, I did a keynote for Cameron Harold's Mastermind, his group, and he said during the break, he goes, james, watch this, man. You know, you're in, you're in your peer groups and stuff and, you know, it's all kind of like, like high energy. You know, during the breaks, everyone's at the bar doing all this stuff, you know, like you like herding cats. Again, back in the room, he goes, watching these CEOs here, I bet I told them 15 minutes. In 14 minutes, 30 seconds, they're going to be coming in and they're going to be sitting there ready to go.

Yeah, that my events is all founders. Like, I literally, at the last one, I had this memory of mine because I was a little bit too brash with it. Literally pushing people back into their seat. Yeah, right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Like guys. Yeah. We are five minutes over time.

Yeah. Really.

I paid this speaker to be here. Yeah, exactly.

Don't waste my money, you know. And sure enough, you know, right before 15 minutes, they all sitting there with the pen in their hand, like ready to go. This is why. Differently.

Yeah.

You know, so they are gold though. And I see it, you know, these, these, these second in command CEOs or just a founding partner who just has a different skill set than you. I think that's the most important thing. How do you compliment each other?

Let's talk about finding that person. Because the, the majority of my audience is people like me. Founder, creation, crazy founders. Right. Who will work the 16 hour days knowing that hopefully there's payday or freedom somewhere in this journey. Right. And we dream of finding that person who can serve as head of ops or coo. Like we dream of that. But we all hang out with each other and so we just have this story that we're all alike and if somebody was that good, they'd be starting their own thing anyway. So you sit, you work with founders on finding these people.

Tell us how we do it.

Yeah. So I think it's important actually something you just said. They'll be doing it by themselves anyway. Not true. I don't think that's true. They need that visionary that kind of.

Respects the perception we haven't found.

Oh, sure, sure. Yeah. I just want to be clear to your audience that they are looking for that partner who can go out and feed the machine that they get to run. Yeah, right. So there's no real.

Like silver bullet to this question at all. You have to invest in finding them. I mean, whether you're paying a recruiting agency getting help, you. I find the biggest lever on top of that is to have a clear vision for the business. I just had a client up in Maryland go through this. Their dumpster company. Right. Talk about unsexy. But it's super sexy once you're inside because you see the culture and, and you know, he, he went. Spent a crazy amount of time really buttoning up the vision work that we did to paint that picture. And then he just broadcast it around in his network saying, I'm building this $100 million dumps company. I am. You know, this is what we're about. This is. And he attracted some people and he took them through a very.

Detailed interview process. I'm happy to go into some of the resources I like around that. My favorite by the way, is who by Jeff Smart talked about that before. Right. Which is a great tool in order to interview people. He tweaked it for his own use and spent a lot of time interviewing, vetting people and just onboarded someone who's looking very promising. You know, I think he was, I think he's been surprised at how good this candidate now working a couple months, I think he feels this guy's above the level where they are right now. And that's a great place to be. Right. Every day being like, oh man, this person knows how to take a company to 50 million, you know, so I think it's the vision, but then, you know, throwing the resources at it to find that right person because they're going to free up everything else.

Something that I've learned from experience is when I, when I was a new entrepreneur, I would jump in and just start doing everything and if I had an idea, I would just pursue it and I would make it happen. And I built lot of half built bridges. And then I would stress over the fact that there were half built bridges and I would try and force myself into completing building these bridges. And then I started to hate my life.

Yeah.

And I would go through this process of like, this is not working. What do I do about this? And what I have sort of learned over time is if I have an idea that I want to pursue, it's.

Okay for me to go there and.

Get clear on what that would look like, But I should wait until I have the proper infrastructure to pursue that opportunity. Right. We were, we were talking about visionary being aligned with sales. And I was thinking of a client that I had who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to build a new sales channel for their business. They were just certain was going to double the business. And they brought on no help to help them with that. They were just pioneering this new sales channel and it. They just lost. They just. And I see that happen a lot. Whereas if something keeps coming up for me and I know this is an opportunity, it's not the best thing to say, how do I do this? It's the best thing to say, who do I need to find that can help me execute this? And that person comes in, what do you know, With a playbook of how to do it and resources of what can help them and a network of people that they can call if they get stuck? And all of a sudden it's like, oh, I actually need to stay in my zone until I attract that person. You're just nodding like this is obvious, Ryan.

Well, no, no, no. I'm nodding because I completely Agree. You know, I have the book in my office, like in a small stack. You have here who, not how. Right. Book. It's everything. It's why we trying to figure out how to do everything. We just need to find the right who. Right. Even this podcast, all this. Right. Like, that's. This isn't your wheelhouse as far as production.

Right.

But you got the right team in place that those are the who's.

And it's funny you bring. You bring this up because it's actually been a bit of a recent discovery of mine that my zone of genius is people in communication. And I could have probably told you that a year ago, but I didn't know what it meant for me to be in that role. And I didn't know even what or who I needed in order to keep me in that role. I just know that when I'm in that role, magic happens. Yep. Things unfold. I meet, opportunities open up, people come into my life, we sell more things. And I perceive that as like, oh, there's messiness I need to clean up now. And then I get out of my zone of genius. And so what I have learned through just, I learned by beating my head against the wall.

Most do I think you need to go through this learning curve. Like, you need to figure out the how. Like, beat your head against the wall as an entrepreneur before you can really truly embrace the concepts of a who. You know, I mean, it doesn't come naturally. I mean, it sounds.

I'm glad to hear you say that.

No, well, I'm very sensitive to it because even with my teams, they come into the room and they just feel bad sometimes. They're like, man, we didn't even get off, you know, 90 day goals done. You know, And I'm like, that's okay. It's okay. As long as we. We hold each other accountable to understanding why we didn't do it and what are we going to do to improve next time. That's important. But, you know, I don't want to come off as, like, anyone who's beating their headache. That. That is totally normal, 100%. You have to learn the hard way in entrepreneurship because you don't learn from success at all. You learn from the failures. Right.

I so wish that wasn't true. No, but it absolutely is.

It's painful. It's painful. I mean, people find me because I had a call last week with, with someone and they said, we feel like we're bleeding at the edges. You know, like the company's doing well, but we're like just losing like something, you know, like they couldn't put their. They couldn't articulate it, but I knew exactly what they meant. Right. They didn't have the right structure, they weren't having the right meetings, they weren't working on the most important things. It wasn't obvious, but they just felt like they weren't growing properly. And I think you need to get to that point where you feel some frustration, you feel some pain, and you're like, okay, we're going to adopt some new thinking, some different mindset, and. And that just comes with years, frankly.

Right.

You know? Yeah. Yeah.

I would like for you to tell me a story about a client and just walk me through their transformation. They come in, they're messy. We start implementing these frameworks, some things change, and all of a sudden there is room for growth and scale just so we can kind of put everything into context. Could you share a story or two?

Yeah, I mean, it's a very common story. Right. Like we say messy in the sense that I really work with companies that have a product that's working. Right. Like, I'm not like early stage. So it's usually they've gotten to a point where they're called hitting the ceiling. Right. Again, what got us here won't get us there. And they're kind of bumping up against it. They're not having great meetings. Right. It's like, what did you do today? Nothing but seven hours of meetings. I'm like, what did you learn? Like, nothing. If I'm honest with myself, it was nothing but updates. Like, we were just chatting. Like, I walked into the meeting, heard a bunch of stuff and left more confused.

That was before. Right.

So I can relate. Yes. Right.

We're working on a million things. A million things. And I've done it with whiteboards, been like, okay, what are those million things? And sat there for an hour and just done everything. You can do all this in the next 90 days? And they're like, well, we thought we were. I'm like, how about we pick seven and do those and see how we feel next quarter? Because if we did seven things continuously over the next two years, every quarter, would that not be successful?

That'd be progress, right?

It's going back to the meetings, right. It's like, how about we do one 90 minute meeting a week with the leadership team, but follow an agenda, you know, and we all come prepared to the meeting and we're not wasting any time. Right? How. How about we, you know, get very clear on who should be working at this company and who shouldn't. I have honest conversations like we love Sally, she's wonderful. She's been here forever. But let's be honest, is she really contributing? Like she, like we need to stop bringing some more talent into the organization. We need to decouple the roles and responsibilities a bit because we're creating these unicorns of like early employees who do a little bit of everything. You can't hire for that, you see. I see that a lot of time in design and things like that with practitioners, whether it be like, you know, doing the design work and then also doing a little customer service and client management. But a design is very different from a client manager usually. Yeah, that's a different skill set. Right. We've got these unicorns working in the company. So. So they're messy like that and roles and responsibilities that go all over the place and no one's like really accountable and all of these things. So that, that is a very common kind of description for the teams that I work with. And it's amazing to me of just having a structure of a meeting, you know, these low hang fruit or saying what are the seven things that we can get done this quarter as a company that make. It felt like we won the quarter and then everybody in the entire organization working. I call it rowing together. Right. Actually I have this great photo. I'll send it to you. It's like, it's like a collegiate rowing team. And the image has one person reversed. And it's a great visual of what it's like to have not the entire team rolling in the same direction. I mean that's a lot of.

Yeah.

A lot of friction. Right. And you can imagine that exponentially, you know, you know, people run the wrong direction exponentially of an organization is just a complete mess.

So. So tell me a story about a client that came in that way and then had a transformation on the other side.

Have an agency who was doing well, right. They, they were in a couple of channels, you know, in the advertising world. Did not have the right team at all. Right. And she's actually the founder of this team is one of my favorite clients now because of this one move she made. So we got the talent assessment going, redid the org chart without the people.

And what were they? Just metric wise, revenue wise when they came in and found you?

Two million.

Two million?

Yeah, yeah. And ended up going through the kind of the people side of the workshop that we had got very clear on the org chart. And it was very Apparent that someone should not be working at the company. Right.

One specific.

One specific person. And as we're packing up for the day, I see her in the corner scheduling a conversation with that person. The next day is. It became so, so obvious that this person who's working the company didn't get it. They didn't want to be there. They were never going to work out and there was no hiding from it anymore. Yeah, right. The seats were there. We put them back into the seat. They're clearly not a fit. And the next morning she had that tough conversation. Let that person go. Sometimes you have to do that. Right. And so since then, we've been very strategic about who we're bringing on, making sure they're in the right spot and.

Bringing on those who's. And now, you know, they're in.

Multi channels, like doing really, really well. And. Yeah, it's just.

How much, how much has that company grown?

It's doubled in the last couple years.

That's great.

Yeah.

Good for them.

Yeah.

We've talked this entire conversation about who. Which. Which actually wasn't what I expected or what I think a lot of people expect when they think about frameworks to go from 7 to 8. But I remember my first event I ever did, I asked Gary Vaynerchuk to talk about going from 1 million to 100 million because he had done that over the last few years. And he said, if you want to go from a million to 100 million, it's about people. There's no hack, there's no algorithm. It is all about people. And the first thing that I hear people say when they have that realization is to say, I can't afford good people.

Yeah.

So how do you walk people through starting to make those investments where getting a good person is going to be a check that they're not used to writing? So how do you walk people through that?

How do you.

How do you frame that or change how they see that?

I don't think you can get away from it. I think Gary's spot on. We.

Part of my job is to manage human energy in a room. Right. A company is reflective of their energy. It is people, people, people. I referenced it earlier on. If you get the vision right, you clearly understand who the business is. Right. The things that core values, the mission, like where it's going and you get the people right. That's 85 of the heavy lifting. You have to have the destination. You have to understand what we're building here. But then you have to have the right people to Come in and actually build it. I mean, it's just there's no way around it. Unless you're in some. Some niche automation business where you can just scale infinitely with automation. If you're building something where you have to have people in seats.

I would argue not securing the money, the funds in order to hire the best people is such a bottleneck that it's going to limit your growth. I mean, sometimes you have to just invest in people and they may be more expensive. Now you. Do you want to. Do you want to save a few bucks or. Or would you put it this way? If I put someone in front of you and I said, ryan, this person is an A player, they will help you get to that next level. How much above market would you pay for that guaranteed success? A lot. Yeah, probably, right?

Double.

Double. Double. So that goes to say. That goes to say, once you find the right who, man, the world's just a lot easier. And it also fixed a lot of those problems we were talking about before about, you know, not seeing the kids on the, you know, being stressed out, working six. Nowadays now you got the right people where you don't even have to think about what they're doing. You just trust they're getting it.

That's right.

That's an awesome feeling to have. And A players, recruit a players. The worst thing you can do is build a company of like a player. You're always gonna have A's and B's and all that. But I have C and D players, people who should not be working at the company. If you don't remedy that, you are basically messaging the entire organization that you can talk about this, you know, culture and this great vision and stuff, but you really don't live that, you know, and they'll leave a place, leave all the time because of those things. So, you know, surround yourself with people, you know, if you have the ability to pay them well, handsomely, profit share, whatever.

You know, James, there were two things that reframed this for me. And one of them was realizing how much I was worth if I was in my zone of genius and how miserable of a leader, team member, boss, employee I am if I'm doing things that I'm just not good at doing. Yeah, right. And so the ROI on me being right on my zone, really high y. And so that investment in somebody else that keeps me there, that pays for it itself. But the other thing that somebody said to me was people are financed. You know, you have somebody who has a $100,000 a year salary it's not like you're writing them a check for $100,000. The downside is they don't work out in six months. Yeah. And that sucks. But it's not. You're not paying for them up front.

Yeah.

They're financed.

Yeah. You have to look at the roi. Right. And like you said, it really is a monthly payment plan.

Right.

At the end of the day. Right, right. You have to understand that if you bring in somebody to show. In your case, for example, we call this like a unique ability. Right. There's another Dan Sullivan thing. It's like, what are the one to three things that you bring that no one else can bring? Things you're great at, you love doing.

Yeah. For me, that's meeting great meeting. Meeting amazing people. Like networking. Yeah. Creating content.

Yep.

Or creating. Communicating.

Yeah.

And coming up with ideas.

Yeah. You shouldn't be doing anything else besides that. Right. And so you build a team around you to do that. So. Yeah. Invest in people. In a nutshell. I mean, so only so many ways I can say it. Like, like get very clear. Because that ROI on somebody, if you found, let's just say you were looking for someone to offload a whole bunch of roles and responsibilities and you just knew they had the pedigree to come in here and actually take all that so you could lean into your unique ability further and further. I mean, that's just priceless. It's only going to land you in. In an amazing spot down the road, you know?

So I, I have a very specific question for you, and that is, can you hire above your own talent or leadership level? So, so is the direction of a company.

Is. Is it completely top down? Meaning that the leader has to have a leadership ability to be able to recruit within the room that he create, he or she creates. Or can you actually hire above your ability to lead? Do you know what I'm asking?

We're talking different things and like skill sets. Right.

I have found my own experience as a leader. It's harder for me to recruit an A player. If I'm operating like a B right now. I could hire a new leader and replace myself.

Are you talking about like sales, for example? I'm just sitting atop the company. Right.

Yeah.

But talking about putting, let's just say, you know, department leaders, for example, like a salesman. I don't think you hire somebody who knows how to do their job better than you could ever do the job because that's their unique ability, period.

So, yes, you can, you can hire.

People who are way Better than you, ultimately. I mean, ideally, yeah. I mean, my sales manager, for example, my last company was way better sales manager than I could ever be. That was his thing, Right.

What I'm really good at is getting leadership team in a room. Even me as an operator, getting leadership team in a room, you know, talking about the big strategy, kind of the bigger vision stuff. And that's my wheelhouse, right?

Yeah.

But I'm not a great sales manager. I'm not a great operations manager. Like, even the guy who took over my company and actually ran it day to day had an amazing track record. I mean, it would take me a lifetime to get all his achievements right. But I understood what we were hiring for, what defines success, and found that person to run the business. I mean, I think that's your job, is to find that you want to be the dumbest guy in the room. In that case, I think what I'm.

Getting at is something. Something that I've learned is being able to do that requires a different level of leadership that I'm still learning how to do. Right. Hiring somebody who's better than me at a skill set means that I have to be so clear on my vision and so thinking about leadership towards the execution of that vision, which is a different skill set than what got us to this point.

I think it's humility, to be honest with you. I mean, it's like saying, I'm never going to be great at everything, so why don't I just get really great at the things I love doing and find people to do everything else?

That's freeing.

Yeah, that's, you know. Yeah.

James, is there anything that I haven't asked you that I should have?

I don't think so. I mean, I'm happy to answer any questions you have or later on or whatever, man. Good.

James, where can people find you if they want to look you up?

Yeah. So James ashcroft.com is probably the easiest. And J. Ashcroft on LinkedIn. Love to connect. Yeah.

James, good to see you.

Thanks for watching Ryan. Thanks for having me, man.

When I got started as an entrepreneur, I thought that it was all about the how. In fact, I remember sitting down with one of my best friends, Brooke Castillo, and being like, the only thing that I'm missing is the how I'm going to get there. Like, knowing exactly what I am supposed to do. And it's been a hard lesson for me to learn that it is way more important to focus on who. In fact, I heard somebody say recently that if they were starting all over again, they would think about who was on the bus, who was on the team, and then I'd figure out what the business is going to be. I was like, I hate that they're right. But the first person on the team is you. And that means operating from a good place. It means taking care of your health. It means being around positive people, taking care of yourself so that you can create the structure to attract those a level people, the people who are better than you. The people have built companies that are bigger than the one that you currently have. And also it's about you being in a place of being able to cast a vision that that is big enough to invite other people into. Oftentimes we buy into this idea that we have to pay more than another company. Sometimes that's true, but sometimes it's just creating a bigger pie, a bigger vision that other people can come into. And we think so small about our businesses that it's not big enough to have room for people who are better than us. As the creator of a business, you've got to create small something that is big enough to be able to attract people who are compelled by what you want to create. And that starts with you. And it starts with the person you want to serve. And then that comes over to your employees and it comes over to the vendors that you work with. But it starts with you. It starts with you operating from a good place and a place of abundance and the ability to cast a vision that's wide enough to attract the type of people that you want on the bus to be able to create the results that you want in this world. If you want to create something like that, if you want to build a seven figure business that eventually gets to eight figure business. My framework for helping entrepreneurs is choosing a person that you want to serve, then launching four products to that person, getting them to 25 sales a day at a $30 price point. And that is your first checkpoint. That's a million dollar business. We help people do that instead of our mentoring program. And then I have a fund that invests in those businesses and helps them scale so that they can have a ridiculously healthy exit that sets them up.

For the rest of their lives.

If you want to find out more about our playbook, you can go over to capitalism.com playbook or if you want to join our mentoring community, it's called the 1% and it's capitalism.com1. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran with capitalism.com thanks for watching. See ya.

And now a quick word from Kyle Carnahan, one of our members from the capitalism.com community.

Community, yeah. So I'm realizing like, man, I'm a fireman, but like, what am I leaving for my family? I was looking at my retirement because I'm gonna get 60 retirement. I gotta become an entrepreneur, man. Like, otherwise I'm leaving, I'm leaving a lot on the table, man. As soon as that, the opportunities to join the incubator, it was like, no question. And now I know that feeling, like when it's time to invest in something, it's time to invest in something. That shift in mindset of being around these people, people that are playing this game, elevated my expectations for myself to such a high level that like now I have zero roof of what I believe I'm capable of. You know, it's like in this community there's this give and give and give and everyone's just giving back to each other, right? And everyone's giving back to each other and everyone's making more money and everyone's being more successful and they're just giving back to each other. And that's the game. Like, who can give the most? And I'm taking everything I'm learning from the incubator and I'm starting to use it in my business now. And all of a sudden I'm, you know, like a year later, I'm driving down the road and I look at my wife, I was like, holy shit. I was like, I'm a fucking entrepreneur.

When I joined the incubator, I had my belief and my trust. All this takes faith. You have to take a step forward. In the dark, you're going to get no. So stay stuck or just make a move. So don't sit on the fence. Stop being a fence sitter.

Make a move.

Either. Either get out of here or make a move. You get the right coaches in place and the right people around you. I mean, it's just inevitable if you do the work. So, man, capitalism.com and Ryan Moran has been just an integral part of my growth and it's been amazing. So thank you.

If you found value in this podcast and you're ready to go Deeper, here are three resources sources where we can help you. One, you can grab my book 12 months to 1 million on Audible or Amazon. It has over a thousand reviews and it's the playbook to building a seven figure business. Second, you can join our community of entrepreneurs who are following a plan to build a 1% net worth by building businesses and investing the profits. You can get plugged in@capitalism.com 1 and third, if you're looking to go deeper and build a seven figure business that you can sell, you can work closely with us inside the Capitalism incubator and you can get on the waiting list and find out what we do over at capitalism.com Inc. That's capitalism.com Inc.