How to Get to 8 Figures in Revenue with Former $100M CEO

Spoke at his conference a couple years ago, actually in Austin. And Ayman is actually responsible for taking a company called AppSumo from 7 figures to 9 figures, right? So that's, you know, let's say $1 million to over $100 million. And he's got a ton of experience, very wise. I consider him a good friend. And today he's gonna talk about not just business, but really how this all ties in with personal growth as well.

Hey, everyone.

Today we're gonna be covering what it takes to go from founder to CEO, navigating the transition from player to coach, and what it takes to go from 7 to 8 figures. And so what do you do? You go and you go to all the conferences like this one, you read all of the books, and you're like, there has to be a way to grow this business. There has to be a way to get out from the 7-figure slump. But what ends up happening is that you are drowning in information and starving for knowledge. Not sure what to do. There's way too much going on. Do I focus on marketing? Do I focus on hiring? Everyone's giving me different advice. What do I do to take this business to the next level? I found myself asking that same question, and so I went on a vision quest. What does it take to grow an 8-figure business? If you can see here, less than 1% of 1% make it north of $50 million. It's an incredibly difficult place to do it, and hopefully with today's talk we're going to help you come up with the tools in order to get there. And so the reason that it's difficult is because you have to bring different ingredients to different stages of the business. The first one we talked about is product creation. These are the ingredients. It's really about that product creation, then it's about that company creation, and then it's about that legacy creation. And if we were to break it down, it's really about what I— this is a framework I created called the 12 Plateaus of Progress. These are the different things that will stop you at different levels of revenue growth. And this is what's gonna prevent you from getting to the next level, and we'll unpack some of those. And when we're going deeper, when you really think about it, regardless of what type of CEO, whether you're a 7-figure CEO, 8-figure CEO, whether you're Elon, Jeff, Steve, myself, you like how I threw my name in there? These are all elements that are fundamental in order to take the business from 7, 8, 9 figures and beyond. If you could just nail 3 decisions, the person, product, and promotion. So person is who's your ideal client? Who am I serving? Who's my most profitable? They're usually the person that will want to purchase from you multiple times, that will want to sing your praises, and they're also not a pain in the ass. What is an irresistible offer that I can deliver to them? And then how do I promote to them? But today we're really going to be talking about the next 3 stages, which is what it takes to go from 7 to 8 figures. And that's really around process, people and performance. So let's unpack that. A lot of times people are like, oh, it's about people. It's people first. People first. That's how you get to the next level is people. That's bullshit. Okay, let's start with process. Process is actually way more important. And the reason— and we'll unpack that why— and the reason is because if you don't understand how your business makes money, you're not sure how to hire for your process. If you can automate the entire parts of your business, I mean, the perfect business is a computer plugged into the wall that's running 24/7, never calls out. Never, never asks for a raise, just wants to continue to show up. And so if you can automate the whole parts of the business, you 100% should. In fact, I consider hiring as a last resort. That's kind of why we're going back to why you should start with process. Hiring should be the last resort. So if you can automate the whole parts of your business, you 100% should. If you can't, there's going to be parts of the business that you are going to have to SOP. And for the most part, most businesses, even the Teslas of the world, they kind of look like this. There was a lot of duct tape and shoestring. The business is like, it's an engine, but it's not a very well-refined engine. It's not very— and so your job as the CEO is to constantly be coming in and polishing and refining and taking things to the next level. And so if process is building the machine, people is building the factory that builds the machine. And so step 1 is how are you assembling the rock band? So, So assembling a rock band, when you're first starting the business, oftentimes you are the one that's on stage, you're the one doing everything, and you wanna slowly be stepping out. You wanna be figuring out, how do I hire the best guitarist and the best vocalist and the best drummer so that I can step off of the stage and worry about other parts of the business? And this is not just you writing a job description and taking things to the next level. The best people have to be searched, they have to be cultivated, they have to be found. Additionally, you have to find the right people for the right job. You have to be able to match the personalities for the role. So our salespeople are incredibly extroverted. They love jumping on Zoom calls. Our copywriters hate Zoom calls. They love just writing incredible jokes. And so matching those personalities for the roles that you're looking for is incredibly important and understanding that. And the way that we do that is with a framework called the Moscow Method. So, Moscow is what are the must-haves for the role? What is an absolutely mission-critical thing in order to have success in this particular role? But what's also important is what are the won't-haves? We won't hire job hoppers. We won't hire people that aren't culture fits. And so, it's really important for you to have crystal clarity on who are you hiring. And if you've nailed the process when you're hiring for people, you are one good hire away from cutting your problems in half. And 2 good hires away from a completely different company. And so when you're able to really focus on what is my process and then how am I backfilling that process with incredible people, that's really how you're able to start punching through to 8 figures and beyond. And so at this, at this age, you are the editor. That's your number one job. You are walking around with a red pen and you are constantly crossing things out that don't match your voice, your tone, your company's vision, the company culture. And that's your job, is to constantly be going and refining. And at that stage, your output is really the output of your organization. That's how you know. There's actually an Andy Grove quote. If you haven't read his book, High Output Management, it's phenomenal. It's like the Bible for management. And that's really how you're going to be able to measure your output, is whether or not you're bringing on the team that's able to deliver the output you're looking for. Another great book, The Score Takes Care of Itself. It's about the details. It's about understanding what does it take to get to this next level. Bill Walsh, he took over the San Francisco 49ers when they were the worst football team in the NFL. I think they were 2-14 the year he took over. Within just a few years, he took them to winning 3 Super Bowl championships. What do you think the first thing he did when he took over the company, or took over his company, which is the football team?

Hire a quarterback.

It wasn't about recruiting a quarterback or redrawing the plays. He wrote a 3-page manual on how the secretary should answer the phone. So what are some mistakes to avoid when it comes to hiring? 'Cause I know there's a lot of them. We'll cover a few of them. Number one is there's really only 2 types of people at a company. And this is a Keith Rabois framework, which is you only have cannons and cannonballs. And at your company, there's really only a handful of people that are driving the business forward. And how are you supporting them with as much people, money, ideas, and being able to support them and to help them take things to the next level. And how you identify them is they're typically the people at your company that are always stepping up. They're always taking things to the next level. They're always asking for more and they deliver exceptional results. Mistake 2 is thinking that there's gonna be this magical hire, those been-there-done-that executives that are just gonna swoop in and save your company. They don't exist. No one's coming to save you. Most of the times, the best executives are homegrown. The next mistake is thinking that micromanagement is a 4-letter word. And oftentimes, the CEO's like, oh, I don't wanna be a micromanager. I don't wanna be a micromanager. And it's like, well, sometimes you have to be, right? And I think that that's the key is figuring out, well, when is that? This goes back to another Andy Grove's framework, which is, it's called task-relevant maturity, which is when am I going to be a micromanager? And that really depends on how How experienced is somebody with a particular task? And sometimes you do need to hold their hand and help them understand how to do things the proper way. But as they get more and more mature and as they're delivering results, you want to be slowly stepping away. This is a Jeff Bezos framework, which is, is this a 2-door decision or is this a 1-door decision? And what he means by that is, if we step through this door, can I come back and remake this decision in the future? This is what performance is. Performance is how How are we measuring the results of the individuals and of the people? And how are we making sure that those are coming together? Your P&L is not your dashboard. Versus, this is a super simple dashboard. You know exactly what needs to do. You know exactly how to win the game. You know exactly what to do. Just hand Marshawn the rock. If I'm stepping into this business, I have no clue how to help you win. I have no clue what's going on. It's way too complex. And so you should have a dashboard that matches the complexity. complexity of your business. And that's really your job, is to create a scoreboard that everybody knows. Are we winning this week? Are we winning this month? Are we winning this year? Being able to create that dashboard, and it could be as simple as a whiteboard. In fact, this is— this was my dashboard, literally a whiteboard behind me at every Zoom meeting. Additionally, you can use OKR framework, you can use a goal-setting framework. You know, using that football analogy, the CEO of football team is the general manager. What is their job? It's to make money for the owners. How do you make money? Win the Super Bowl, fill the stands. I'm going to give those 2 goals to my head coach and my head of PR, and they're going to continue to trickle that down. This is how you would align an entire company. This is how you become a leader of hundreds, if not thousands of people, is being able to have a single goal that can be broken down to the individual level basis all the way down to a player level. And then last but not least is inspect what you respect. This is the inside of a Mac that was supposed to never be opened. Steve Jobs made every single engineer sign the inside of the Mac to let them know that quality matters at Apple. And so you constantly be double-checking your sales pipeline, double-check the customer support tech, double-check the things that matter to you, the things that you've put on your dashboard. If you're not double-checking those things, no one's gonna respect. If you don't respect it, how do you expect your team to? And so if you're not constantly being obsessed with the basics and taking things to the next level, then that's where you're gonna get stuck. And remember what we talked about— just because it's basic does not mean it's easy. They're not synonymous. And so taking those, those elemental parts of growing a business to that next level is really what's gonna be required in order to go from 7 to 8 figures. And that's your job, is to constantly be going more, more to the left of the screen and spending less of your time on the right side. Less of the time on the day-to-day. And that's ultimately what you wanna be able to figure out is like if you can't run your company from your phone, you're not delegating enough. We go back and we really think about what are the 3 things we wanted to cover in today's talk, which is what are those bottlenecks that's stopping us from getting to 8 figures and beyond, coming up with a game plan and objectives in order to uncover those bottlenecks, and then creating an action plan to get over it and really figuring out how are we nailing process, people, and performance in order to take things to the next level. And I know that those things are basic, but as we mentioned, basic is not easy, and that's really what allows us to get to that next level. And it's really what you learn after you know everything that really changes your life. Thank you.