Why Amazon Sellers Get Stuck While Others Scale

What up everybody? Today I'm going to tell you the tale of two businesses. Tale of two seven figure businesses. One of which I will invest in.

And that I think has the potential to be a nine figure business. And one that I recommended that the person shut down or at least wrap up and let it die a slow and profitable death.

This week I welcomed a group of seven figure business owners to my lake house here in Austin, Texas and we had our backroom meeting, which is my mastermind. I need to come up with a different word other than mastermind. Mastermind is so overused. But anyway, I teach a group of entrepreneurs, I work with them once they're over seven figures to get them plugged into other opportunities. I have my ultimate goal in doing the backroom is to join the company as a 20% owner advisor and or use my investment fund to buy into the company and or eventually buy the company myself and run it through a private equity model.

And or open up other opportunities for later. Anyway, that's why I do what I do in terms of mentoring entrepreneurs. I'm actually gonna be rolling out a mentoring program for people who have not yet hit seven figures because I've created, helped create. I don't wanna say created, they did the work, but I have helped at least like 400 people, it's probably more like a thousand people build seven figure businesses. So I pretty much have the roadmap to help people build seven figure businesses. And I don't like get involved or teach it except I just give it all away for free on my podcast. So anyway, I'm going to be rolling out a mentoring program for people who want to sprint to that million dollars in a year or less. More on that later. But this week I welcomed a few entrepreneurs into my home. By a few, I mean like 25. And the day before the backroom meetup I had kind of a bonus day for people who were testing out the group. And over the three days that these entrepreneurs were in town, one of the businesses.

One of the businesses is run by.

A new. Actually yeah, both of these examples are first time entrepreneurs, but the first business is this duo, this pair that has never run a, has never been in this type of business before. One of them has some business experience, but it, they've never run a business before. They have a little audience but not a big one. And they really are guessing, they're guessing.

They'Re really not sure how they're going to grow this business. But in spite of all that, they've gotten to right around a Million dollars.

The other example is a business that has followed a very predictable plan to get to over a million dollars a year through hard work, grit, hustle, follow the plan, got to a million dollars and was there to say, you know, they're going.

Tell me what to do to get to 10 million and I will do that thing.

Now between one of these two, I told them, I want to be a part of this company.

I think this company can get to $10 million, maybe even $100 million. The other I said.

Let this be automated. Let it run a slow and profitable death and go find something else. Go find something bigger. Which do you think was which?

So the answer is the person who followed the predictable plan to get to a million.

And wanted to get to 10 million. I told that person, wrap it up, milk it for some cash and go get yourself a new business.

To the team that was.

Guessing.

To the team that had sort of followed a plan to get to a million, I said, I went in on this business, I can help you get to 10 million, maybe even a hundred million. What was the difference? I will tell you what the difference was. The difference is that that business.

That duo.

Did not guess on product. They were obsessed with their product. Their product was phenomenal. Their product was exactly what the marketplace wanted.

And because of that, they'll have such an easier time getting influencers and audiences. I have a list of people that could come on board and advise that company. It's kind of like I'm sitting here drinking Zevia.

I love this product. You don't need to pay me to talk about Zevia. Friggin love this stuff.

Whereas the other team was in sell mode. Do what it take to get the sale. I don't really care about the market, I don't really care about the business. I care about the money. And I said, great, milk it for a short term windfall and go home.

But this is not a scalable business. You see, people think that if you followed a specific plan to get to a million, you can follow a specific plan to get to a hundred million. And some people can. But most entrepreneurs who are grinding their way to the first million cannot grind their way to 10 million because the game changes as that point. You know, getting a product into the marketplace, you know, that's getting, it's getting in the game. Getting to a million dollars is learning how to play the game. But once you're at a million dollars, you have to completely change the game. It is a new game at that point.

So in business, there really are Three steps. Number one is decide who your market is and get in front of them. Number two, sell things to them. Three, scale and automate. Build teams. Go bigger, right? Amazon sellers, direct response marketers, all those peeps, they skip step one. They go right to the sales, which is fine.

But most of them get in it for the money. Because of that, they have to do one of two things. They have to either own the fact that they're never going to be a real business and they have to kind of, you know, milk this thing for profitability as long as it will be profitable, or if they like their business, they go back and do step one, decide this day who they will serve and go get in front of them.

And if you don't do that, you're just gonna have a hard time. You can't roll out more products until you know who your target market is. You can't build a real brand unless there are people who are following you. You can't have a scalable, sellable business.

Unless you know the people that you are scaling to.

That was my lesson and my message to this group of entrepreneurs. What else is going on in the world? I am doing some really sweet biohacking with a new doctor here in town. I'm gonna do a podcast on it. All about biohacking here soon.

What else? I think a beta. O' Rourke announced that he's running for president. He is gonna get smoked. He is. I think he might have really hurt his legacy. He should have waited four more years. It's not gonna be a good look for him. He's gonna get smoked. Smoked. This is not the election of the white male for Democrats.

They're gonna lose, by the way.

It's gonna be Kamala Harris. Although Joe Biden could be a really interesting wild card if he runs. What else? Oh, I have. I actually put money on Kamala Harris today. What else? I. I discovered predict it.com work. Oh, man. You should not let me bet on politics. There goes all my free time. I bet on, let's see, I bet on Biden not running just because the odds are really favorable. I don't know. I. I don't know. It was 10 to 1 odds, though. Come on.

I bet on Kamala Harris winning the nomination. I think I bet on Beto o' Rourke losing.

And I would bet on Trump winning reelection, but the odds weren't good enough.

And I'm in a nice YouTube war with Andrew Yang supporters. I would love to do more content on the universal basic income. I am realizing how just.

Scant basic understanding of economics exists in the world, so I might have to do something about that one.

Okay, I think that catches us up. I'm gonna be experimenting with some live video over the coming weeks on Instagram and Facebook, so make sure you are following me, alright? I haven't slept much in the last few years, so I'm going to bed. Thanks for watching.