Why Most Founders Never Hit a Million (And Don't Know Why)

Hi everyone, James Blackwell here, founder of 3 7-figure companies. I started them all from scratch. And in today's video, I'm gonna be talking through how everything changes when you hit your first 1 million in the bank. You think hitting the first million in your bank account is gonna change everything. Well, it does, but not in the way you think it does. So today we're gonna break down exactly what changes when you cross that mark. So there's different ways of hitting the million. So like the first time I hit a million was in my business bank account, once we crossed past a million pounds revenue in the bank account. And that took me around about, I think it was 18 months to 21 months in my agency once we crossed that mark. Now obviously after that you have costs, so you don't actually have a million in the bank account physically, but you cross that million pounds mark, then things change. Once you have a million in the bank account, then that just changes a lot because you feel very wealthy. You feel you could run this business for 2 or 3 years past its burn rate and you're still going to survive. Now a lot of business owners, once they cross that million, £1 million, they're not going to keep £1 million in the bank account in the business because that would be inefficient. You need to use the funds. Okay, so I talked about it in a previous video. I was watching Grant Cardone. He was talking about money makes money and money's energy needs to flow. So you need to constantly reinvest either in the business, in yourself to keep it growing and keep that machine working. Otherwise, if you just hoard it, he talks about reusing the bath water. So you have like 3 kids and you just keep using the same bath water because you want to save on the hot water. Same type of analogy when you have a million in the business bank account. Is there better ways you can proportion those funds, which we're going to talk about today. I've talked before about hitting the first £100K in your bank account, and that was probably the biggest thing that changed in terms of, well, you're good for a good year or two depending on your overheads. But there's a big difference between hitting your first £100K than your first actual million in a bank account. That is when you are what you call a liquid millionaire, like physically having £1 million $1 million cash in the bank account gives you a different type of power in your mindset because you can use that money to make a lot more money, you know. So once you have a million, it's a lot easier to then, like I talked about before, getting to the 5, and then once you get to the 5, getting to the 10, and so on. And that will obviously compound. Now that brings me on to what keeps founders stuck around about this $300,000 to $500,000 a year mark. So that's normally the sweet spot. So business owners that are making $20,000, $30,000 a month to $50,000 a month, they they always get stuck, and I think they need to extend their identity. So what got you from A to B doesn't get you from B to C, and who James Blackwell was version 1 is different to 2.0, 3.0, 4.0. I would say I'm on probably 6.0 version of myself, and you need to keep upgrading this new identity that you need to become. So the first identity shift is a lot easier because you go from maybe employment to being an entrepreneur and a business owner, then you have this 100K in your bank account. Okay, so that could be version 1.0 to 2.0. Then you've got 2.0 to 3.0. That'll probably be when you go from 100K to a millionaire. But then to go to a multimillionaire to 5 and 10, it requires new versions of yourself. And not everyone's prepared to change and adapt again, because what they miss is they stop doing the things that got them to there, but then they also continue to do the same habits, they have the same belief system, they're doing the same tasks, they're still trying to do everything in the business, you know. So like the person that's at 300K, 500K a year, I know if I looked at their business, they're doing all lots of admin. They don't probably have a personal assistant. They don't have a marketing team. They don't have a sales team. They don't have an ops team. They're not leveraging technology more. So there's probably a lot of things they're diving in on because that's what got them there. You know, that's what got them that original success. But they need to break all of that belief and that identity to become a newer version of themselves, to be then being that millionaire or multimillionaire. In one of my favorite books, Reality Transurfing by Vadim Zeland, he talks about your emotional bank account and how that is your inner game. So you need to master your emotional bank account. And it's definitely worth looking that up inside the book of like how you can improve your emotional bank account before you get wealthy. Because also one of my other mentors, the $50 Billion Man, Dan Peña, talks about the emotional bank account and the financial bank account. You need to make sure that emotional bank account is full. Okay? So it's very important that you constantly work on yourself in order to be in that emotional state that you can then get the financial rewards. Okay, so this is like having a mindset of abundance, of a can-do attitude, that you're already wealthy before you're wealthy. So I'm in my Ferrari today and it's a lovely car, you know, and I always aspired to have a Ferrari before I was wealthy. I would go to car garages, I would sit in the car, I would admire them, and I would just tell myself, I'm gonna get this car one day. I'm gonna have a luxury car collection, a supercar collection. And that was one of my goals was when I was working towards building my worth, that I wanted nice things. And now I sit in them, enjoy them, and it's a great feeling. But that doesn't help serve where my level is at now, you know. So I can buy many different cars, and I do buy probably too many cars. That was one of the driving factors that got me to like the 10 million, okay. So, but then when you want to go further, it's not going to be luxury cars, supercars, that's going to drive the next level. What changed for me after I got the million in the bank account was I needed to start upgrading my peer groups. I needed to be around wealthier people for sure. So I was around multimillionaires, I met billionaires. And then also like what I read, the information that I would take in, the groups I was part of, the masterminds I was part of, all of those things were very important to me because that needed to maintain at least that minimum threshold of being a millionaire to then being a multimillionaire. And the books I read, for example, like some of my favorite books of all time are a book by Sir James Goldsmith. So he was a billionaire in the UK. I live between here and Paris. The story's remarkable, you know. So like, it was probably reading books of people that were a lot far ahead of me. And so I could still have this aspiration of, yes, you're a millionaire now, but what about being a multimillionaire or be worth over $100 million? And then being in the right circles, hanging around the right people, because once you've got that, then I could buy— I bought nice things, you know, I bought nice cars, nice watches. You start to travel in business class, maybe sometimes first class, but really you want to have at least a few million, I would say, to go from business class to first class. But you could try it once to push that boundary to make you want to earn more money, because then when you're in higher circles, you're in nicer hotels, you're going on nicer holidays, you're staying in nicer houses or apartments. All of these things, you start to level up, you know. I felt wealthy for a little bit when I was living in my city in Newcastle. You feel wealthy, but then when you come to the likes of London or Dubai or different cities in the world, that money does not go far, you know. So you realize that you need to level up again. A lot of things changed for me. It was like, right, I can't just protect this money. I need to leverage it. I need to hire more employees. I need to grow. I need to spend more money on ads, on marketing, have different offers, different departments in the company. What was the thing that's going to get me to the $10 million and then the $100 million? So then you start to build out the business model that's going to help get you there, but then also the person that you need to become also. One of the mistakes I see all of the time when I speak to entrepreneurs is they're so focused on getting to this $100 million or being a billionaire. Like, there's people commenting on my YouTube, I'm going to be a billionaire. But if you haven't even got like $100K in the bank account, or if you've got $100K but you haven't even got $1 million, do not even worry about the $100 million because you're not looking for a $100 million opportunity. Your goal is just to get $1 million liquid in the bank first. Then there'll be way more opportunity because you're going to have a way better skill set. In terms of dealing with people, building culture, making money, and you've proven yourself. So you see there's different levels of the game. Don't try and jump from level 1 or 2 all the way to level 500. You need to go through the levels of the game. And yes, you'll have quantum leaps. There's a book about this, this quantum leap effect, which is great. So you look at an opportunity that can take you from 0 to 100 million, but you shouldn't always just look for that. You need to look for an opportunity that you're in and you just put your head down. And you grind and you put that work in to get to that million, and then you can start to think, okay, so how do I go from 1 to 10? And then how do I get from 10 maybe to 40, 50, and then 50 to 100? And then from there, again, compound interest. And if you invest right, you'll have a great network of people. Whether you get to 200, 300 million or 500 million or even the billion, none of that really matters because it's just part of the game. I would say once you've completed to 10 million plus, I feel like you've completed like the advanced mode on the game and then now you're just going to the harder levels, but it feels easier to you, you know, but then you get in a different spectrum of like dealing with private equity, VC, like are you going to invest in other companies? So for example, now I'm going to be launching my tech product. I built this a year ago. I spent over 6 figures with a full tech team. Then I decided not to launch it because I didn't have time. Everyone was talking about SaaS and I'm not launching it in a way where I think I'm going to sell it for a 12-15x multiple because I really like— now I've been researching more the, the tech with AI evolving all of the time. A lot of SaaS companies are going to struggle. I was actually on the phone to two tech founders. One is an ATS CRM system we've got a great affiliate partnership with for the last 4-5 years. I've watched them grow to over 10,000 users. I think they're doing around about 30 to 40 million AR, which is amazing, and they're not looking to sell. And then there was another recruitment software tool founder that was wanting investment, around about $200,000-$300,000 I was going to invest, but he'd already had over $750,000 investment. His burn rate was at $50,000-$60,000 a month for his team, and they were bringing in, I think, $30,000 MRR. Very basic, you know, I could have built that like in a week, and they had 100 clients on it with 300-400 users. One thing I realized, like, in my community for business owners, recruitment business owners as well, I've got hundreds of people in my community. So like, even if when I do launch a tool, like I could get it up to 300, 500, 1,000 users within 6 months. And that is the hardest thing really for a SaaS company now is actually to get the users and get paying money for the tool and have it to stick. So yeah, that's one of the reasons why now I'm at a different level of the game where I'm, I'm learning that side of the business now. What I would tell a founder right now on their way to their first million liquid is to be around the right people. I definitely would recommend getting a mentor. For sure, I still have mentors. You've got to get a mentor. Okay? So whether it's me, someone in your space, is get with someone that has been where you want to be and can reverse engineer the path. So being with a mentor, have a community, be in a mastermind, and be in the right environment, and then just head down and work. Don't consume too much content. Okay? So you need to do the work. One thing I've seen with founders stuck at this $200,000-$300,000 a year mark, they're not prepared to do the cold outreach. They're not prepared to go win the clients, go meet them in person, and really scale or stay on sales until they reach the million or whatever it is. So those are the tips that I would give to you. Let me know in the comments what you thought, where you are in your journey right now, and what is the number one bottleneck that's preventing you from getting there. Because on the next videos, I'll, I'll maybe talk more about that. So I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll catch you on the next one.