EP 01: How I Went From Grinding to Building a Business That Runs Without Me

Hey, what's up everybody? It's Casey Zeman here. Welcome to another episode of The Casey Zeman Show. I am very excited about my guest today who I get to share the value we're going to be discussing today is going to be very exciting. I have Markell Russell who is here today, and if you don't know Markell, he is the CEO of Strategic Scale Institute. He helps entrepreneurs leverage predictable scale of predictable scale flywheel to install systems in their business so they can scale strategically while increasing Increasing profit and cash flow without burning out. His strategies have helped clients generate an estimated $1 billion in revenue. So I'm excited to talk to him today. You know, he, he understands public speaking, digital marketing, advertisements, social media marketing, you know, demand generation. He is in the world that I also live and breathe in. And so I'm, I'm really excited to have you here, Mark Well. Thank you for, for being on the show.

Thanks for having me, Casey, man. I'm, I've been looking forward to it. So I'm, I'm looking forward to, I'm to jamming out with you.

Yeah. Well, well, well, let, let, let's talk because, you know, I just noticed this, this most recent video you here that you just posted on your YouTube channel is all about removing limited beliefs about hiring. And now I make 7 figures. I would love to kind of get, I would love to hear from you as to like what it is, what is it about scale that, that, you know, you talk sometimes about thresholds, right? Like, people get stuck at $30,000 to $50,000 and they're still doing everything in their business to scale up. You know, it's like, I talked about this in another episode with another executive coach where we talked about like the elements of scale and what are the, you know, instead of just like, I think it would be cool to say like, if I'm here at $30,000 to $50,000, you know, monthly, And, um, what are, what's the difference between hitting that $30K and beyond? Like, what is it that I have to do? Maybe I, you know, and, and what did it take to get to that $30K or $50K? Like, who did I have to hire to get there? And now what do I have to do to bridge this, this sort of gap, this moat that I'm like, ah, what do I do? You know? Um, why don't you talk to me about your, your method of how, how you would scale that, that big old moat. Trying to, trying to get to that $100K point?

Yeah. So I think, I think one of the, so one of the fascinating things I'll use from my, my personal experience, right? So once I got to, so one of my earlier mentors, she used to say, hey, if, if I make $50,000 in a month, that's a bad month for me. And I used to be blown away cuz I was like, wow, $50,000 a month's a bad month. So I was like, okay, I want to hit that. And then, and then we, we finally hit it. And I think I would, I typically tell entrepreneurs, One of the things that keeps entrepreneurs from $1 million a year is $500,000 a year because we can get to $500,000 and be like, wow, like this ain't that bad. Like I'm running my business from home, from a laptop, a few tools. And they're like, I actually don't even want to get any bigger, which, which is fine. So I think that's one thing. Another thing is that we can actually get there just by brute force and effort, like just grinding, just putting in more hours, creating more content, doing more calls, doing more, more, more, more, more. And, and we can potentially get to $100K a month doing that, just depending on your business, but it's going to be exhausting. And most likely you will probably hate your business if you aren't doing it the right way. Because what I thought is that I thought scale meant just do more, just grind more, just make more sales, just get more clients, just do more stuff. So our first company, we grew to, to become an Inc. 5000 company called Inc. Um, it was called Client Attraction University and it was solely around client acquisition. So our thoughts was that Well, my thoughts was that, well, if we want to scale, we just get more clients. We just do more, you know, strategies to generate more clients. But I realized scale actually just means— scale simply means, for a simple definition, is duplication and multiplication. So scaling is all about how do I duplicate myself and how do I multiply myself? So if I decided to take a week off or go on a weekend vacation or 30 days off or whatever, the business could actually still run and grow without me. So I was talking to a client the other day, her name is Danielle, And we were looking at her processes because she's stuck at right around that $300,000, $400,000 a year. And we was laying out her fulfillment process and we was basically circling with a red pen, basically like everywhere she shows up in the process. And I showed her and it just hit me right then. I was like, your business is I/me driven instead of IP driven. So I/me driven is like, all right, some, something needs to get done. Okay, well I'll do it. Who is this dependent on? Oh, that's dependent on me. So we looked at every part of our process and we, and we was to pull her out of there. The whole thing was to implode. And this was bad for her. I use the word bad loosely. This wasn't ideal for her because she prioritizes family as being a wife, as being a mother, but her business was like pulling her out of all that. So I was like, okay, we need to, every piece of, every piece where you show up in here, we need to create a piece of IP. So now it's an asset that can actually remove yourself from this and the business continues to run. So I think around that $30,000 to $50,000 mark, if we aren't already thinking that, it's like, how do we How do we take all of our frameworks? How do we take everything that we do and we turn it into IP? And IP is just intellectual property, of course, you know, where it's like, yeah, all right. Okay. With this, when a new client comes on, what happens? When this happens, what happens? So, so right now we're doing, we start a live event tomorrow for our clients and we had, we went back to doing events at a hotel. We were using this one event facility. So our process, our SOP and everything was a little bit different. So we had to go back to the hotel. Things change up a little bit. So I was talking to my operations director earlier and I was like, okay, we need to create some new IP, a new system around how do we execute on this particular event since the venue has changed. So when you go back to hotels versus like an event, you know, things change quite a bit. So it's like, now we gotta adjust these things. And I'm always tracking each week. If a, if a team member asks me a question, I track every week, how many questions does my team ask me? And are they waiting on me to get these answers before they can do anything? Well, this is why I know, okay, I need to create some IP. And that's the same thing that helped scale us because I was stuck at that $50,000 per month mark for like 3 years. And then I ended up hiring a— it was just me. I had hired a salesperson and that was pretty much it. And, and I was like, we were just stuck there. And I hired a VA. She came on board and I was like, hey, look, I want to— I don't want to hire just a VA who was just like doing tasks. And they're just waiting for me to do stuff. I want you to come in and see how can I make things better? What can we improve? And I want like some pushback. I want a thinker, not a doer. And basically I began to train her on everything that I was doing, answering emails, sending emails, customer support, because at this time I was doing client support. I was doing coaching calls, I was doing sales calls, I was doing all the marketing, I was doing everything, sending out agreements, the whole nine. So I had, I recorded the video. This is before Loom. So I was recording a little video showing her the whole process. And she was like, she was, she told me years later, she was like, I was taken back by how much time you took to train me because nobody had ever done that before. So I literally took everything that I was doing and I turned them into processes with little videos to show her how to do it. And then when she started to take over client support, she would ask me questions like, hey, this client asked this, what should I ask? And at first I would give her the answers. And then we got to a point where she was like, hey, how should I answer this one? And then I would ask her, well, what do you think? You should ask. And then she'd answer them like, well, that's it. And now we, again, we being able to systemize these things. So now regardless of if I'm away for 3 days, 7 days, 30 days, or whatever, the team can still function. So now we actually have a company that just can run without me instead of something that's just making us money. Does that make sense?

Uh, 100%. And I, I like that you're calling, you know, an SOP an IP, you know? Mm-hmm. Because that's, that's what I'm hearing. I'm hearing you created, you know, operating procedures that are, that are intended to create clarity so that someone can just run without you, right? And you know, the thing about SOPs is they're not necessarily, they aren't like automatic, you know, you don't really know what they're going to be yet until you figure out the bottlenecks and then assign an SOP around that bottleneck, which is very interesting. You kind of evolve that. I wonder if there's a faster process in order to get there, you know, like, like How do you— is that just like time and reflection on, on client, uh, on, on, you know, what I love that you just talked about is like you circle the points where it was like you, right? Or her, because this is your client, like where she was the bottleneck or where it was requiring her and how to now sort of change that. Is that only through time that you discover that? Or is there like a rigorous, like faster bootcamp? Sort of like way to like, it doesn't take 'em 6 months to a year. It's like 1, you know, 30 days to implement that, to try to move on a much more rigorous, you know, pace to get to that point.

100%. So I think just, I think the fact it took me way longer because nobody was teaching it. Right. So now I can actually share a more simplified process. So what I would recommend is that a lot of times as entrepreneurs, especially depending on where we are, especially if we're in that window, $30,000, $50,000 a maybe a little bit less, $20,000 or whatever. We're like working to make money. And, and it, and it turns into a thing where we start these businesses to create freedom, but, but they actually just became jobs. We get, might get paid higher, more money than an average job, but it's still a job nonetheless. So typically what I advise now, and anybody who's listening, what I would recommend is that instead of working to make money, we work to create assets, right? So anything that you do right now is an asset, right? So for example, if you check your emails right now, Today, when you check your emails, record a quick Loom of you checking your emails and how you filter your emails, because now you can hand it off to somebody else. If you edit your own video, so for example, let's say, for example, if you shoot videos and you edit them with whatever tool and you edit on your phone, like record a screen share or just, or just turn on the camera and record yourself doing it because now that becomes an asset that you can hand over to train somebody else. If you use an AI tool to write copy or something like record that whole process. So like whatever you're doing right now on a day day-to-day basis, document a process. So now you can share it with somebody else because now you're creating these little assets because a huge profit waste that business owners make is they hire new people and then they don't have a system to put the people into. So typically when I'm working with leaders, I'll say they'll complain to me about their VAs and their team members and how they're underperforming and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I'll, my question is, well, what's your training process when you onboard them? And they'll typically look at me like a deer in headlights and they're like, well, what do you mean a training process? Like they told me they could actually do the work. And I'm like, well, if, if you was the general manager at a Chick-fil-A and you hired somebody who worked, who worked at Wendy's for 15 years, they understand the fast food industry, but you still want to train them on your process. So you want to have a process. So now if you hire somebody, you want to take them from hired to onboarding to actually executor so you can get an ROI on this hire as fast as possible. But When, when it's just us, or if it's just 1 or 2 or maybe 3 people, we're not thinking from a standpoint of everything that we're doing is an asset, but we actually gotta codify the whole thing. So literally anything you do, if you posting on Facebook, what's your process of how you make posts? Like record it. Literally, I open up my Facebook, I click on here, I type here. Here's how I structure my text. I normally go 5 lines out, 3 paragraphs long, and I like to do a lot of white space and like literally design that. You can train people around. And that's something that anybody can be doing like right now. But it, it does take a little, just a little slowing down, but sometimes you gotta slow down to speed up and it becomes infinitely valuable because now you got these little things that now you train somebody, you can duplicate yourself, multiply yourself, and now these things are still happening without you.

Yeah. And, and, and one thing that I, I wanna point out is that like this stuff is boring. Like this is the boring stuff, but the boring stuff is the scalable stuff. And a lot of people, you know, we, uh, If you're an educator or a creator, you're, you know, your mind is, you know, you may have this ADHD brain that you always try to focus more on the high dopamine actions, such as like, I'm going to do a Facebook Live, get on, boom, do my thing. I'm going to get clients. I'm going to get them to show up to my event. I'm going to hustle, hustle, hustle. That mentality is there because that works for you and has worked for you. And it has that high dopamine hit. But at the same time, you know, what are you trading for that? Right? I think that's your, what you're kind of pointing out. You're pointing out that, that those, those building the framework and architecture of a scalable business is going to be far more valuable than those moments. And it's hard. It's hard for someone who is, has that, I have that ADHD mind where I'm like, I gotta do that, that, that high leverage, you know, Action. And, and then, you know, and then, you know, so I still want to do those things, but I also have to remember that, that there are elements of both that can be applied, you know? So this was great. Thank you. Part of my thought on this is, uh, you know, is there a way in your mind, do you see there's a way like where you can hire someone to help you with these processes or is it like you've just got to dig into the trenches and like build it yourself? Like, what are your thoughts on, you know, bringing somebody in to help?

Yeah, I think so. I think, I think there is a, I think there is a world where you can do both, right? So it, so it just kind of depends on where you are. The interesting thing is when you're at $30,000 to $50,000 a month, to hire somebody good is gonna cost you a, a nice little check right now. You might can find somebody okay, but the thing is A lot of times you don't know what you're hiring for. So what I found is that a lot of business owners, they try to skip steps and it ends up being more expensive in the long run. So for example, a lot of times people, they might try to hire salespeople, but they haven't really dialed in their offer just yet. So they're expecting the salesperson to dial in their offer and that's not what they do. Or they'll hire a marketing agency to come in and dial in their marketing and their messaging and so forth. And it's like, that's not what an— that's not what an ad agency does. An ad agency comes in and they run ads and typically The best time to hire an ad agency is when you have some assets already crushing it and they're going to come and help you, you know, scale that because they got more capacity to, you know, create more creatives and things of that nature. So from an operational system standpoint, if you hire somebody in, you still going to have to take the time and explain to them, these are the different elements of my business, here's what this looks like, and so forth and so on. So, so something simple somebody could do, they can, yes, they can hire somebody. Yes, it just depends. But you got to get somebody who really understands this stuff. Number 2, a simple, again, if you want, if we want to make this even simpler, we can literally, let's say for example, you sit down to work for the day and let's say all your work is done at a desk in your office. What if you just turned on Zoom and you just shared your screen and then you just recorded a long Loom video and then you took that long Loom video and then you hand it off to a VA to like break down and turn these into simple step-by-step systems, or you take the transcription and then you drop that into a Claude or ChatGPT or whatever and help you document and systemize these things. So now you at least got a rough draft version. And like, and like you mentioned earlier, these assets that we're creating, these are living, breathing organisms. So it's not like, hey, we create them one time and they're done because there's new ways to do it. So typically with ours is we're writing on the top of it, last updated on this particular day, because once we find a new way, a simpler way, now we can update it and then make it better. Because the biggest thing I like to— I like, I believe, and I share this with our clients, is that we work, we build businesses to create freedom. Not to work, right? So it's like we gotta create these assets because the more valuable we are to the business, the least, less valuable the business is. And it's like when we're scaling, I'm looking at how do we build? I told our team, it's like we and our clients are like, we're building the business to sell. We're not looking to sell our particular business. However, we're building it to sell. So if you build the business to sell, you just have a better business anyway. You can build a business to sell, not wanna sell it, but you have a better business. Because now we can actually run without you. And it's just, it's just thinking about your business at a higher level and thinking about it as a company and not something just makes you money. So a huge shift I had a few years ago, probably about 5 years ago, was that because I came in like the online marketing world and I was just thinking about my business as an online business, but it wasn't— I got to a point and I was like, wait, this isn't an online business. This is an actual real company, like an Inc. 500-level company. I just run it mostly online, but it's a real, no different than a Microsoft, no different than an Apple, no different than a— so that's when we start thinking about, okay, what's our mission? What's our vision? What's our principles? And how do we install actual corporate structure? And again, this ain't the sexy stuff. This ain't the stuff, you know, people talk about on IG typically, but it's the stuff that creates like real enterprise value in the business.

Yeah. No, I, I love that you, I love that you mentioned that because Because I was, you know, that, that's kind of how I worked for many years as well until, you know, yeah, probably like 2018 or '19. And then, and then that's when, you know, we started to, you know, we still don't necessarily have corporate, corporate structure. We have more, a bit more of a flat structure, but We do incorporate mission, vision, and value. And, and then of course, SOPs. I'm going to ask you, where do you keep your SOPs? Do you do it at like a triennial or do you use Google Drive? Like where, where do you commonly keep all of your stuff? Do you keep it almost like in a members area that your, any new hire comes in and they go through this kind of an onboarding process? Like what's your, what's your, even people use EasyWebinar to actually pre-create sort of flows and processes via, you know, longer form webinars, but what's your, what's your process? Where do you put things?

So, so we actually do twofolds. The first time initially we did like a members area and then we had everything into a members area. My operations director, she loves Monday, so she's indoctrinated us on Monday, monday.com. So we have, so when we onboard, so people can kind of go through and like check off stuff. But, but I also firmly believe that, uh, that software companies, their company, like anything could happen. So I don't like to, I don't like to just depend on like one of these companies. So we also have everything backed up. And, uh, in like a Google Drive folder as well. So it's like, so we got some just in case.

So you give them a flow, like through a project management solution, Monday, Asana, what, what have you, but then also keep the backup, um, and neatly sort of categorize it. And I mean, that's, that, that's, that really is, I think, a very important part of like, um, you know, when you start to think in that more of a, like more of a company rather than the solopreneur mindset. Can we go, can we, I wanna dig in a little into your, what, what made you come online? Like what were you doing, you know, before you came online? And, you know, obviously, you know, you've, you've, you went through a few different, you had the, the, the Strategic Scale Institute is what it is now, correct?

Yep. It's correct.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's taken you, you know, you've, you've gone through the, your own evolution. How did you get started with all this? Like what was your, You know, cause I, I'm talking to you, I know, I hear, I hear like years of, um, like knowledge. Okay. So, so I, I could, that it reminds me of like things that I know. So it was like, let's, I would love to hear your story of like how you got started doing this.

Yeah. So, so quick backstory. So I, I actually dropped outta high school in 10th grade. So I have a 9th grade education. Um, I, where I grew up, like the only people who had money are drug dealers and who we called the candy lady in the neighborhood where you could go buy like honey buns and stuff like that. Everybody else who I knew, for the most part, didn't really have money, but I always wanted to be a millionaire when I was really little. And the only people who I knew who had money was like my cousins and so forth who sold drugs. So I was, you know, pulled in that direction. So I dropped out in 10th grade. I went full-time selling drugs. I had my first son when I was 19, and I was actually in jail when my first son was born. And I was like, man, my dad wasn't around when I was growing up. So I was like, I'm going down the path he was going. So I was like, I gotta do something different. So I got out. And I was like, I'm gonna get a job. I gotta get 2 jobs 'cause I like to have money. That didn't work out. I went back into the streets. However, I started a record label. And so I was taking artists who, who rapped and did beats, and I created a record label and I got a studio and the whole 9 yards. So I was taking the money I was making and I got like a storefront. We turned it into a studio. And that, so I'm probably around 19-ish, 20, around this age. And then, so that led us to being in the club all the time because we had to promote our records, promote our artists and so forth. So I see the club.

What, what, what, what city, what city were you in? Is this—

I'm in Atlanta. I'm in Atlanta. Atlanta.

Okay. All right. So I just wanna, I wanna paint the picture of like where, where you were finding your, finding your artists and things like that. So, okay. Yep.

So I was in, in Atlanta. So a lot of them, like people I went to school with, cuz I always kind of been a visionary. I always was a leader. I always had some level of influence, so to speak. Right. And this was before social media really like took off. So I was, um, So I, we used to be in the club so much and it used to be a lot of us. A buddy of mine called me one day and he was like, hey, my cousin is opening up this other club. And they're in the club. I don't know if anybody, if you know about the club industry, the clubs are typically, they, they're ran by club promoters, not the people who own the club. So they bring in club promoters to promote the different nights. So he brought me on, he was like, hey, do you want to take one of the nights? Because we, we gotta get the club packed. At this time, I ain't know nothing about club promotions, none of this, but I was like, sure. I always tell people, like, my yes has always been more valuable than my gift, right? So I was like, I was just like, sure, I'll figure it out. So he gave me a night. It was Tuesday. We called it Get To It Tuesday based on our label was called Get To It Enterprises. I was like, okay, cool. I can promote my artists. We can make us some money. And the concept I came up with was independent artists could come, they could pay $25 to perform. And it was a strip club that we was doing because in Atlanta, that's like a big thing. So you can come pay $25 to perform. The girls will perform with you and whoever won would make $250. So that was our whole concept. And one night I was in the club at somebody else's mixtape release party and the guy came to me and he entered and he was like, hey man, who do you know got a cell phone? And I was like, well, everybody I know has a cell phone. And he was like, what if every time they paid their bill, you got paid? And I was like, well, that'd be cool. And he was like, one of my mentors are going to be in town. They're millionaires. They're looking for some leaders to expand in the area with. You know, would you like to come out, you know, and meet them and hear what we're doing? And I was like, of course, legit millionaires, of course. So I went to this meeting, it was at their home. It was at somebody's home on a Wednesday in Riverdale, Georgia. So it's about 15 minutes from the airport. So I go there, the house looks nice, cars look nice. So everything is checking out. They do this presentation. It was like, hey, this is a ground floor opportunity. It's videophone technology and voice over internet protocol. This is where the future is going. It was like, imagine being in a room when Facebook got started and Google got started. Like, this is that thing. And I'm like, whoa. And they're like, um, this guy made all this money. They're talking about the young guy who invited us. So I'm like, I'm in. It's $500 to get started. I'm like, hey, do y'all take cash? And it was like, well, no, you gotta have a card. And I was like, well, I run a cash business. So they had to teach me how to get a prepaid card. So they helped me get a prepaid card a couple days later. I joined. It was network marketing. I had never heard of it before.

I knew it was gonna be network marketing. Yeah.

Yeah. I had never heard of it before. They was like, all you gotta do is get 2 and they'll get 2 and they'll get 2. You making all this money. So I was like, I can easily get 2. I started sharing it with my people. I signed my brother up. I paid for half of him to get started. He paid the other half. I was sharing it with everybody and it was like, oh, that's a pyramid scheme, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, y'all heard of this before? I've never heard nobody talk about this before. Now fast forward though, I went to— I was about to quit and my upline who signed me up was like, hey, we're doing a conference in Atlanta this weekend. You should come. So this was their big, big annual regional conference. So I went to the conference and I saw all these people talking about how they was making all this money. And I was like, they could have scammed me. But I'm like, it's no way they could have tricked all of these people. So I guess just based on pure excitement, I came out of the event. I started signing some people up. One of the people I signed up, um, Casey sent me a link and it was like, hey, here's how you build a network marketing business with no home parties and home meetings. You might be familiar with Mike Dillard. And he, he had this concept called magnetic sponsoring. So I watched this, I watched this 4-part video series. And then it was a sales letter. I didn't know it was a sales letter. I thought it was just a website. I read it hundreds of times and it was like, it's $40. So I was like, okay. So I went and loaded my card again. I bought it and then it had an upsell and I was like, okay, this thing sounds cool too. So I had to go load my card again. So I bought the upsells and I was like, man, these people making all this money on the internet. Like I didn't know people was making money on the internet. Like this is crazy. So then he was like, hey, your ideal audience, if you're selling network marketing opportunity, is other network marketers who buy network marketing. He was like, so sell them this book, show them this website. I'll do the selling, and then for everybody who buys a book, I'll pay you $20. So that's how I made my first $20 online. And he showed us, you also sell them the tools. So you sell them AWeber— we was using AWeber at the time— and these other tools. So now you start to build these commissions. I was like, this is crazy. Now fast forward though, while I was having some success, other individuals were trying to figure it out. So I just started creating these little short YouTube videos, um, teaching other network marketers. And I discovered that I had a gift for teaching and taking these complicated concepts and, and, and simplifying them so other people can get it. And people start getting results. And then I discovered that coaching was a thing. So people started asking me to coach them and I was like, coach you? And I saw that was a thing. So I started a coaching business. I was charging, I did a membership site for like $9 and then we went to $97. Then it was $300 a month that helped us get to $10,000 a month, which was the holy grail. Um, and then I was like, interesting. So I started a coaching business. And I was like, I see the biggest gap for business owners is lead generation. So we started a company, it was solely around lead generation. And then I was like, oh, the real problem isn't getting leads. Well, that's part of it, but it's really how do you not convert those leads? And I had figured out how to do that for our coaching business. So that's what became Client Attraction University. And again, we grew that to become an Inc. 5000 fastest growing company. And then with that, I realized I don't, I know how to make a lot of money, but I don't know anything about growing a company. So, cause I was making $50,000 a month, I'm living outta my bank account. I'm running my half million dollar a year business as if a $50,000 a year business. I didn't know anything. I hired an accountant. I, I still had the same person doing my taxes when I wasn't making no money. And then I realized, okay, I need to get an actual CPA. And then she was like, this is a mess. We had to fix everything. We had to change the entity. We had to do a lot of different things. And I was like, man, nobody's really— a lot of people are teaching how to make money, but they're not really teaching how do you actually build a company. And it's two completely different things. So that's where Strategic Scale Institute was born. Because I was like, we need to take a holistic approach of how do you build a company that can run without you without sacrificing your family? Because also everybody was teaching grind 24/7, hustle, sleep when you're dead, be up at 3 in the morning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But nobody's really talking about how do you build this where you can still be present as a father or a mother. You can still be, you know, have a great marriage. You can still be in great shape. You can still have an amazing relationship with God. You can have all the success and you don't, you know, got to sacrifice you know, one or the other. So that's where strategic scale is all about getting more without doing more.

Spending less. Yeah. But spending, yeah. Without doing more.

Without doing more. 100%.

Well, so, so I, you know, your journey and my journey are very similar, you know, because network marketing was that first thing that I saw. Like, because I was trying to figure out how to get leads into my real estate business, you know, I, I got into real estate and then I couldn't seem to— like, it was— I got into real estate, but then the market crashed. And so I went from like making $250,000 a year to like $15,000. And so I had to figure out how to like not get— how to get my house out of foreclosure and all sorts of stuff. So I was like desperately trying to find leads and I heard about these building leads online. And my first experience was like a vertical of Mike Dillard. What's that dude's name? Jonathan something or other. I don't know if you remember. Yes, that was him, man. That was the dude. And I was following him and I was following that methodology of, oh, I can generate leads online. And because I was also looking at different MLMs as well, network marketing things at that time. But then once I learned about this, like, okay, you can build leads online. I was like, well, how do I, do what they're doing, not necessarily be an affiliate marketer, you know, but like learn from them. And so then I had a— lo and behold, I had a friend of mine who was like, I heard he builds like HTML pages, right? And simplifies all that stuff. And I was like, and he teaches this stuff. I was like, all right, I'm going to talk to him. And so I talked to this guy named Chris Farrell. And I don't know, you were around back in the day then. And Chris Farrell, if you don't know, he was an online marketer who simplified everything like down to a T. He was like simple, simple, simple. And he did launches with Mike Filsaime and things like that. Anyway, he met with me at a cafe before I was doing any of this and I was like, is this stuff actually possible? Can you make money selling stuff online? He was like, and he's British, right? Just dry guy. He's like, Casey, of course you can. Listen, I'm an idiot and I'm doing it, right? So he started talking to me and I was like, all right, well, if he can do it, he gave me some really good advice. He was like, just get good at one thing and teach that one thing. Get good at one thing and execute on teaching it and simplifying how to do it in the most effective way. And he was like, you don't have to be perfect at it. 'Cause I was like, well, I'm learning about YouTube, but I'm not like a genius on YouTube here. I'm just learning about like video marketing stuff, he was like, you just have to be a few steps ahead of your audience. And, and that is enough. And so I jumped into video marketing. I was already, and then I started doing like more, you know, retainer work all around YouTube. And then I built a course, you know, and I spent 6 months building a course, 6 months building a book. And then, you know, that was my, that was my journey. And then launching those things, nothing was working. So this is at the point where I'm, I'm not even at I'm maybe at $10K, $8K for just retainer work, but not necessarily, you know, selling my courses and stuff. But you already maybe know my story where it's like, because I, you know, because I, I only made money selling my courses when I finally figured— used webinars. Webinars were the lever that I could use. That was the one-to-many, you know, way of selling. And I could just get on with people and I used that as my way of like building leads every single week. And I was terrified to doing live, like pitching. So I did no pitch webinars and just built an email list up and I was terrible at doing them. You know, I was stuttering and like, I was like oversharing, you know, but all said and done, you know, that was when I actually started making sales, like selling my course at $97, going up to $297, just like yours, man. You know, you just increase your price, going up to selling at, you know, that same course at $997, just with my 2 coaching sessions. You know what I mean? Like add it on. To it. And in that journey, you know, then that next year, you know, I made the same amount as I did in my real estate business. So I was doing like $245,000, you know, as a course creator selling off of webinars. And that was like, that's when I saw the lever. I saw that every business needs one lever to pull, you know, and you have to figure out what that lever is to get the result. And for me, it was webinars, sharing, you know, this communication, building that know, like, and trust, So that, that's what, that's what worked for me. But I love that we kind of have this same sort of like journey because, you know, even then as a course creator, I wanted, I pivoted and said, you know, I met with some software engineers and I was like, I, I was doing so many live webinars. I was like, I want to automate this process. And so, you know, they helped me to like, they were. And so anyway, that's how EasyWebinar plugin was born. And even while I was doing all that, I was still a course creator, product creator. I didn't have that business mentality yet. You know, I was still like, sort of like, you know what I'm saying? Like it was, I wasn't creating the architecture of a company like we, we just talked about. So I feel like our journeys are very similar in that, in that we figured out how to make money. We figured out how to leverage our own selves, but then we get to a point where we're like, we need to scale this to where it's not reliant on ourselves. And obviously that's where I think when you talk about IP, I resonate so deeply with that because I feel like creating a webinar And the whole reason I even created EasyWebinar in the first place was to be able to create IP that would help you to scale without you having to be there, right? Every single time, right? It was just kind of inputting a version of you in that still had that level of value. So, so I, I love that. I love your journey. I love where, you know, you know, the, the, we're kind of on that, we were on that same path together.

Yeah. So that's my first, my first, my first 5-figure month was from a webinar. It was, I remember like it was yesterday. I made $13,430.83. I love it. I was like, whoa.

I love that you know those numbers. That's so great.

Yep. It was a web— it was on a webinar. I sold a $197 product.

What, what, when, when that happened, that happened. I wanna talk about your first webinar then, cuz I, I always find this to be a very interesting thing. Like, how'd your first webinar go? When you, when you got it?

My first webinar. So my very first webinar, I don't even think, I don't even think I had, I'm not even sure if I had anything to sell. I just got on, uh, because like for me, I always been the type of person where I was just like, all right, what do I gotta lose? Like I was just looking at what everybody else was doing who said they was killing it. And I was just, I was like, all right, let me just do my version of that. So I used to do a webinar and I used to just get on and teach. And I, I, I was, you know, so excited that people even showed up. Like I'm still, So I'm still blown away today when I get like payment notifications coming in or recurring payment. I still don't take it for granted cuz it's like, it's crazy that you, you can take something that, that was just in your head. You can come up with an idea. You can come up with an idea today. You can use a platform like yours, um, with EasyWebinar. You can get on there, send out a couple links, DM some people, maybe even run some ads, get people on, and you can sell something that doesn't even exist. Like when I made my $13,403.83, it was literally a, I sold a course to teach people how to put, how to publish their book. It was called Publishing for Profit Mastery. Like, it wasn't even done. I was like, hey, for the next 6 weeks, I was like, for the next 6 weeks, I'm gonna show you all how to publish your book. Because at that time I had published a book. I was like, I'm gonna show you my whole process of publishing a book. It's $197. So I did that. I brought my guy, um, Lonnie online. You might know Lonnie, Lonnie Robinson, God rest his soul. He passed during COVID time. And Lonnie came on and did a bonus training. Lonnie was one of my guys who like helped me get started publishing my stuff. Because when I was doing network marketing, it was like Dude, you need to start packaging your own stuff instead of promoting these other people's stuff. So Lonnie came on, we did a bonus training, and then Lonnie was like, hey, we, we did a done-for-you thing. He was like, hey, if you want, if you want us to just publish your book for you and do all this stuff for you, we'll do it. And then, and so we had a couple people buy that and it was like, okay, this is crazy. Right. So I was just blown away for the whole process, but this program that I made $13,403.83, like it wasn't done yet. I had came up with the idea. I had an outline of what I could teach. And I was like, let me jump on. I had this, um, this young lady named Kate. I had followed her thing because I had, I was dabbling around with ads, um, but I didn't really understand the power of ads. But I had went through her training, I learned the ads process, and I was like, let me test this out. Um, Kate Maché, and she has a Kate and Andrew Maché. So I'm familiar with Kate as well. Kate and I used to connect, you know, back in the day. So I, we launched, we did, I did the thing and I was like, that's crazy. So then what I did is I did another training called the Rapid Business Girl Blueprint and I would, or the Rapid something bootcamp. And I was like, hey, I'm doing this live workshop, I'm gonna show you how I made $13,430.80 in one month. So I did another training showing them how I went about doing it.

Yeah.

You know how to, yeah.

You just accomplished, you now show them what you just accomplished.

Let me show you how I did it.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Because like you just said earlier, like you said, Chris told you, you only gotta be a couple steps ahead. So let me just show you what I'm doing, you know, along the way.

And that, you know, I, I, I was on a podcast, uh, yesterday and I talked about this very same thing. That, that he was like, what's the win that you found in your life, in your growth? What, whatever you, the big win, right? If I had to summarize it. And it was me, for me, it was always showing what I was doing and how I was accomplishing what I was doing almost in real time, you know? And it was like communicating that back, whether it was in free training, you know, where I just gave the value or I charged for it because, you know, I spent 6 months building that first course. The second course I launched, I, I launched it within a week. And I created it in real time as a bootcamp. It was live, right? So I did the same thing. I sold it for like $200 and I got like, I don't know, 20, 30 people on and I just ran it live. You know what I mean? Or something like that. You know, it was, that was, that was what it was. And I sold it for $1,000 and got 20 people on and I ran it live. And then I figured out how to do it. 'Cause like while you're going through that process, you actually fundamentally find out what your people need. Like you hear them, you may think they need this training that you're going to give them, but then if you're open to receiving the information, they will tell you what they need. And so I was able to tweak and refine and I was listening to them. I said, I would, I would like, there would be a Q&A part where, you know, it would just like hear them and they would say, this is great, but this is not what I need. I need this. And so by getting that feedback, back before the course is even built fully, I was able to tweak and refine the course to actually get them the result they need. And to me, that was like one of the most valuable lessons for me in terms of architecting course creation. It's like you can build it while you go and you can help in real time, which is almost more valuable than, than anything you can do, right? Like feedback and being able to listen listening to what people want, I think is my, is the biggest win that I've had. It's, it was like listening to what they need and applying it. Like they needed that, show me how to make $13,872.13, whatever you just said. Sorry, I didn't get it totally, but like they needed that. They wanted that. And then you did a, like a bootcamp on, on running a webinar, right? So it's like, yeah, I mean, again, I find that to be the most valuable and bringing that energy. Let's talk very quickly, because I know we're running out of time, but like, let's talk very quickly how you take that energy and apply it to, to building a bigger business that grows and grows.

Yeah.

Find, find those dots for me if you can while you're, you know, if you can, if you can think about that.

100%. So like, so like my, my perspective is like, I believe that I have a response. I, I believe that, and I think I think this is super important for any individuals who like, who, who might position themselves as thought leaders or whatever the term is these days. Right. I think we just have, I think we have a responsibility to give people like the full picture. Right. So I think one thing that I think is irresponsible to show people how to make a million dollars a year, because it's relatively simple, but it's like, now what do you do though? It's like you're making more money than you've ever made, but you're still, you're still a sole proprietor, for example. Your, your entity structure isn't right. It's like it's not going to be good or these things aren't done or you aren't thinking taxes. So there's a lot of people who make tons of money. I mean, we've seen many of them. They've made tons of money and we're like, dang, whatever happened to such and such? And then it was like a tax bill took them out because they made all this money. They bought all the cars like everybody was telling them to do. They was doing all the things, but they didn't have money for taxes or they didn't have any investments in mind. They didn't do anything right. Or it's like when you build a team, like you can have an international team or you can have a virtual team. but it's like, how do you communicate with that team? How do you lead with that team? So, as I'm doing these things and as I'm making these mistakes and I got these scars, I'm literally teaching everything that I'm learning. So, when I'm working with clients and they're like, well, I need to hire for this particular role, I can actually advise them and be like, okay, well, I've done this before. Here's what's happened. Here's the mistake that I made. And at some points I, I felt some levels of like shame or embarrassment. Mm-hmm. Because I made some And I was like, my business partner had to remind me one day, it's like, who's better for us to learn this? Because I'm like, cause then I was like, great point. And I had to have a realization where it was like, and I felt like God reminded me one day, like, hey, you can't, I can't call myself this great business advisor or this great strategist if I can't speak, if I can't speak transparently about the challenges. If all I talk about is like how much money we made, how big of a business we grew, and it's just all the good stuff. That's, that's not responsible. I have to talk about these challenges and I had to go through all these challenges because now I can speak to that with my business, with my clients are like, listen, I just want to shut this thing down. Like I'm making all this money, but I just want to shut it down. Or this is going through, I had to lay people off or I had to do this. Like, how should I feel about myself? How do I view myself? Like, what's the personal work that I need to do? I can speak to that. I can speak to like, hey, I had to have, I had to go through therapy, you know, through this particular joint. And now I believe all entrepreneurs should have a therapist. I was like, hey, I scaled my team to like 42 people. People at one point, and I had team managers of teams and all that, because I thought that growth, it was just ego-based growth. And I just was like growing in numbers and had people on the team who I didn't know and all the different things, because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. Now I can speak towards that. My whole approach forever has been, I heard this from Ray Higdon, said this like years ago when I was in the network marketing. He had this concept called ILT, like invest, learn, teach. So I'll invest, I learn stuff by doing it and then I'm teaching what I'm learning, right? I'm learning about mission, principles, values. How do you start it? How do you build a culture? You know, how do you build a team and how do you lead a team? Even if your whole team is like virtual, like, how do you do that? How do you execute on events? How do you, how do you create curriculum where people actually get results? And then again, I'm just teaching and documenting like this whole process because Jay-Z did an interview on Kevin Hart Show years ago and he was like, well, Well, if it took me 20 years to do this, it shouldn't take Kanye and Rihanna 20 years to do this. It should take them 5 years because we've, it took us 20. So it's same thing for me. It's like, if it took me 15 years to do this, it shouldn't take my clients 15 years to do it. It should take them a fraction of the time because I can say, okay, watch out for that landmine. Watch out for that landmine here. Um, then there's some, let me, sometimes like, well, it's better to teach a pe— teach a person to fish. Yeah. That's you. Yeah. That's one way to look at it. Or sometimes a client just needs a fish and it's like, well, let me just give give them this fish, I can still teach them to fish, but right now they have a specific constraint and I already got a fish because I built this asset because, okay, I've gone through that before and I was like, okay, let me build this thing out to alleviate that the next time. So it's literally my step away from when I made $13,400, $3,083 that one month and I taught that process is, and I, okay, I put out a book. Okay, let me teach that process. And I was like, okay, I learned how to hire a VA. My VA is now my operations director. She was with me, she's been with me 6 years, but she came as a VA. She's operations director. She pretty much runs the whole company, but now I can like train on exactly, you know, how we did that. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. I mean, that, that's, that's exactly what, what I believe as well. I, I think it's like, you know, you, you've taken, you know, that, that approach is such a forward-thinking approach on taking and, and kind of connecting those dots from when you were starting to do this all the way to now. Where you're helping people grow beyond that. Right. And you're right. I mean, there's so many gaps that you have to fill, and I think it's really important that, you know, that you, you know, that, that you share those hard parts as well, because as you said, those battle scars, that, that is what you get paid for. That is the, as you just said, you know, you invested in, in those, you know, school of hard knocks, done been there so that you can come and say, here's how you should be doing this.

And now that, that's a problem. Yeah. Here's how I'm doing it, doing it now from a different direction. So I have, I have a newsletter, it's called My First Billion because my vision is I wanna build a collection of companies where, 'cause I, I used to wanna just build one company to a billion, but I was like, okay, billionaires don't actually do that. They actually build a portfolio of companies. And I had, again, I had to learn that over time. So I was like, I want, my vision now is to build a collection of companies, a portfolio of companies that does $1 billion a year. So I have a newsletter called My First Billion, and in the newsletter, and I let people know as soon as they subscribe, hey, this isn't a newsletter of me showing you how to build a portfolio of companies to get to a billion, because I've never done it before. This newsletter is, I'm just documenting my process of how I'm going about doing it. Partnerships I'm, I'm in a negotiation with, partnerships that fell through, you know, what we're doing, how we're hiring, how we're firing. We just fired our whole sales a month or so, a couple weeks ago. So I, I wrote about that and like that whole experience. So, so I'm just documenting that whole process every step of the way. So it's not a how-to type of newsletter. It's literally just like in the trenches live, you know, here's what's going on type of thing. So again, it's that same, that same philosophy.

I love that, man. I love that. I absolutely love that because like, that's what people want. They want that transparency. It's so hard. It's so hard to like kind of pull and separate yourself and what you you know, the, the Instagram versus real life, but it's like, you know, when you can share that level of what you're doing, you know, they gain, they, you gain much, so much more respect when you show the real versus not. Right. And I, I think that's amazing, man. I want, I want to be on your newsletter.

Okay.

That's, that's, that's great. I mean, that's so great. And I love that you're, are you staying curious about about where you want to go, you know? And documenting journey, I think, is one of the, one of the biggest things we as, as business owners, entrepreneurs can be doing for creating that connection with people. So Marquel, this was, this was awesome. This was awesome, man. I want to, I want to find, I want to do another session with you and just talk.

Yeah, let's do it.

Talk more about this stuff. But, uh, I want to, I want to give everybody what they need. Where, where can people learn more about you, about your business, get on your newsletter, What, what's the best way to do that?

So if you wanna get on the, on the My First Billion newsletter, just go to marquelerussell.com. So M-A-R-Q-U-E-L-R-U-S-S-E-L-L.com. You can get on the newsletter there. I also put together a page called scalemadeeasy.com. So if you go to scalemadeeasy.com, got a ton of resources on there related to like scaling your business. It's a lot. So just go to scalemadeeasy.com. And of course, whatever your favorite social platform, whether it's Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, I'm there. There, send me a DM, like, let's connect. But I would say the simplest to not give a whole bunch of stuff is marquellrussell.com. That gets you in the newsletter. Scalemadeeasy.com. That's gonna get you access to a ton of resources as well that you can dive into for your business.

That's amazing. Marquell, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. And I would love to follow up with you on, on a lot of this stuff. And everybody get on both of the, the newsletter and go to the resource page. You guys, You will benefit greatly from it. Markoel, thanks again. And everybody, thank you. See you in the next episode.