In this solo talk, the speaker reflects on the personal costs of scaling his personal‑brand coaching business to $1 million in monthly revenue. He describes how the relentless focus on selling multi‑year programs turned the business into a "prison," straining relationships and personal well‑being. This realization prompted a strategic pivot toward mergers and acquisitions, seeking ownership stakes in companies where he isn’t required to be involved daily. Ultimately, he argues that chasing massive revenue is vanity; he now prefers building or acquiring businesses that generate about $1 million a year with roughly $400 k net profit, emphasizing profit over top‑line growth as the path to sanity and freedom.
Chapters
Growing a business to $1 million a month sounds really, really sexy. But let me tell you about this. Growing to $1 million a month takes a lot of time, lots of time on your relationship, personal anguish, a whole bunch of stuff that goes with it. And you eventually start to grow. And the business that I grew to $1 million a month was my own personal brand. And I was doing coaching and mentoring and onstage and what have you. I woke up one day and I said to myself, I have to keep doing this. No matter what, I sell 2-year programs, 3-year programs, and I've got to keep on doing this. I woke up and that day I said to myself, I'm a prisoner to my business. And that prisoner to my business really impacted me. And as I kept on building that business, I was like, I'm making money, but I'm not happy because I'm tied to this business. I'm so intimately tied to this business. And hence why it put me on the trajectory of doing mergers and acquisitions. They're like, I need to be in businesses where I'm not tied to them, where I'm not a prisoner to that business on a daily basis, where I have to show up, I have to work, and I have to do stuff. That was the biggest piece for me that really significantly changed me in the way I look at things. And now I'm like, I'd rather build a business that goes to a million a year and I make $400 grand net profit as opposed to a million a month. And all you're doing is paying a whole bunch of people and keeping very little. In fact, sometimes we even just broke even. You're like, you serious? Remember, it's not revenue. Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity.
