Chris Collins outlines a four-part operating framework for scaling a business: (1) Revival — marketing and demand generation; (2) Salvation — sales/closing (acceptance of the product); (3) Transformation — fulfillment and product delivery (example: CUT’s Angus Wagyu steak as a transformational customer experience); and (4) Spirit & Soul — operations, culture, hiring, accounting, and reporting that surround the other three. He advises assigning ownership for each function before scaling, hiring an operations lead and fulfillment support, and delaying office expenses until later-stage revenue (~$4M).
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So I kind of look at a business as four parts. So the first part is marketing. And I call marketing revival. And I call this the quaternity. And so this is the, the quaternity in your business. And this becomes your operating system for how you scale. And I would put this in place before I set goals to scale. And so the first department that you have is revival. And revival is like, you know, when I was a kid, I grew up a missionaries kid and my stepdad would do, you know, Pentecostal revival seminars and he would go into other towns and all the churches in the towns in Mexico would invite people to this big tent crusade. And then people would come and they would get saved. And then now the churches grew their congregation. And that's marketing, right? Going out and, and creating a revival. And then from the revival you need salvation. Sales is salvation. They're accepting your product into their heart. That's salvation. And so somebody has to be in charge of salvation, which probably right now you're in charge of revival and salvation. Am I right?
I like to think my partner is, is a big part of the partnership. Lead, acquisition, all that in the front end. And then I'm usually coming in to close deals instead strateg. So I'm partially involved in the revival, I guess.
And you're involved in salvation?
100%. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Well that's. Both of those are full time jobs to when you start getting over 2 million. That's a real, those are real numbers with real stake. So, you know, there has to be somebody in charge of each one of these to scale. And then the next one is transformation. So transformation is when they get the product. So I go to a restaurant, I go to cut in Beverly Hills and order the Angus Wagyu steak. And that thing comes out and I eat it. And I literally have dreams about that steak, which is a true story because it transformed me. I never had a steak that good. And so when they get your product, when they get the results of your product, you have to serve hot food hot. It has to be on time. So the, the back end is the transformation. And that's whatever the product is once they've paid you and they've accepted you into their heart. Now you got to deliver salvation with transformation. Right?
Delivering the results has always been.
That's a department, 100% my focus. 1. Well, wait a second. It seems like you're doing. Now you're telling me you're doing three things and I got a fourth one and you already told me you're Doing the fourth one, you're doing four, two. Wait. Wait for it. The fourth one is spirit and soul. So spirit and soul is the operations of the business. It's the hiring, the recruiting, the accounting, the reporting, the culture, the, you know, the spirit and soul that all three of these sit in. The spirit and soul. They're surrounded by it. Because it's your culture. It's how you track numbers, it's how you look at things, how you approach things. Right.
So you're doing all four of these?
Yes, definitely.
What you need to do is you and your partner need to sit down and you need to look at all four of these, and you need to streamline and write out like this is going to be your responsibility. I would say the easiest one for you to bring in, somebody to help you with is spirit and soul. An operations manager, bookkeeper, reporting, accounting, chasing invoices. If you don't have that already. That's the first one that I would bring in, and then the second one I would bring in is fulfillment. Usually entrepreneurs like yourself and your partner are really good at the ideas. You're really good at selling, you're really good at salvation and revival. But the fulfillment is where you just run out of time and energy.
And so somebody has to be in charge of the software, the fulfillment, the delivery. Now, in my company, I have somebody in charge of each one of these, and I'm over the top of all of it. But if there's something wrong with salvation, I have somebody to go to. If there's something wrong with revival, each person is responsible for their area of the company. So before I scaled, before I got an office, I would think about how to set this up for scalability and take some of it off. You're going to have to hand some of this over and be very clear of what the expectations are. Hire some good people, and you'll scale really fast. But I would build this before I scaled more.
Okay.
And you don't need an office yet.
Okay. Yeah, the. The office decision is just, you know, it's more of a credibility culture. Bring everybody together, get more done potential. Those types of ideas we've made things work with Zoom and the ability to get video conferences and stay on top of what everybody's working on and those things. But when we get together, we always get the most success. So it's those ideas that are the most attractive. But we've never brought in those additional expenses, so it's definitely. Yeah. Scary.
Well, I know.
Well, I worked out of my loft forever, so people came to me at my loft when I was growing my business. I know a lot of the gurus worked out of their houses forever before they had offices. And so I don't know that you need an office until a 4 or 5 million. I got an office around 4 million.
