Live Coaching an Entrepreneur to have a 6 figure breakthrough

Okay, great.

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Breakthrough Maze. My name is Joe Apfelbaum, CEO of Ajax Union, and today we have a very wonderful entrepreneur joining with us. Tell us, where would you like to have a breakthrough today?

Okay, great. So Joe, I would love to have a breakthrough with my business. I started as doing freelance work for recruiting. I have 2 clients and I'm working full time and I want to go to the next level. I want to start hiring people and bringing on new clients, but I'm kind of at this phase where I'm stuck and I don't know if I should get more clients first or if I should hire people first or what the next step is.

Okay, so when you think about your business and you want to grow your business, you already have 2 clients, and obviously if they're using you, they're happy clients, you're producing results for them. What is it? What is your goal ultimately? Like, if I ask an entrepreneur their goal, many times they say, I want to grow as much as possible, I want to do as much as possible. But if somebody wants to eat as much as possible, then they're just going to gain weight. And if somebody wants to exercise as much as possible, they're just going to exercise as much as possible. But if they're very specific, instead of saying as much as possible, they give a specific metric as to what they want to do and how much they want to do. That's where really— that's where it really all begins. It all begins on really being specific and setting a specific goal. Because if your goal is not specific, you're not really going to be able to hit it effectively. Does that make sense?

Yes. Um, so I guess I should— ultimately, my goal is I want to not be doing the work myself. I want to be managing people and the business basically functioning where I have employees and I'm just managing their work. So to get to that point, that's where I'm just kind of like stuck as far as do I hire somebody first or do I get more clients?

So the question is, where do you, where do you even begin? So what I think you're asking me is, You want to be able to grow the business. You've never really hired an employee before, and you know you want to get to that level, but you're not sure where to even— like, do you just hire somebody and give up what you're making now? Do you have to make that investment? Can you still make— and, and, and where do you even— what do you even do that? So, if you wanted to grow a business, if you're thinking about growing a business, where would you want to grow the business to? What is it that you want to earn from the business? Because If you want to earn $1 billion, you're going to be thinking very differently than if you just want to earn $50, right? So think about what you want to earn. And I can't— every person has their own reason why they have a business.

Yeah.

And what they want to accomplish with the business. You really want to be thinking about, okay, why do I have this business? What do I want to earn from it? What— why am I doing this? And how can I be more effective at doing this? So, so what is your goal? If I have to— if you have to pick a goal, and I know it's very difficult to pick a goal when you've never really done it before from a business perspective, but if you were to get a job, it's very easy for you to set a goal. You look at your personal expenses, you see how much you want to be saving, you see what you're worth and what people are offering you, and from there you take it from there, right?

Yeah.

So, but, but it's a little bit harder like this. So what is— if you had to set a goal, what would you set it at? What is your intuition telling you?

Um, well, my intuition is telling me, because right now I charge clients by an hourly rate and my hourly rate is fairly low considering, you know, kind of my personal goals. It's kind of where I'm at where it's like the minimum I need to be making for a personal salary. So bringing on a new employee, I'm going to take a little bit of a hit. So that's where I'm struggling a little bit.

What is the purpose of bringing on another employee if you're going to take a hit? Why would you bring on another employee if you're going to take a hit?

Because I— so that's like the other difficult part about the business is because it's a freelance position, You know, hours fluctuate. So, you know, one month I can be on a lower end at like maybe 20 hours, and then based on needs, you know, the next month I could be at 50 or 60 hours. So that's where I'm trying to figure out, um, you know, how to kind of standardize and, you know, have things functioning as more of a business versus a freelance type of work.

Right. So the question— so it seems like the question is kind of changing a little bit now, right? So it's going from, how do I hire somebody, to, hang on a second, why do I even need to hire someone? I can't hire someone until I really get a good idea of what my business is to begin with. And that's why goals are so important. That's why it's so important to really set your goals and to figure out how to set goals. For your business. So you can't, you can't even come up with a structure for your business until you decide what type of business you want to have, what your goal is for your business, what do you want to achieve. So let's take a step back and let's go to— let's set some goals for your business. What do you want to accomplish with your business? How much money does you want your business to generate?

Um, something really simple, like Maybe $100,000 a year, just starting really low.

Okay. So if you want your business to generate $100,000 a year, what do you need to do in order for your business to generate $100,000 a year?

I either need to get more clients, um, and hire people, or I need to increase my rate.

Okay. So those are the only 2 options that you see in front of you. You only have 2 options, either get more clients And you hire somebody, or you increase the rate and you don't have to hire anybody because you could just do the work.

Uh-huh.

Are there any other options that you could possibly think of if you're really thinking out of the box?

Um, well, I could expand my services, like what I provide. Um, I could change the structure of how I charge people.

Right. So now you— now you're coming up with some other ideas that seem like they're really good ideas. So number one is you could change the structure and you could offer more services. Okay, so those are 2 additional options. Good. What else can you do?

Um, I could partner with somebody.

Yes, you could definitely do that. You could partner with somebody.

Good structure.

So let's— so, so, so let's look at those things. Those are enough ideas. I mean, we can keep coming up with ideas from today till tomorrow, but those are all really good ideas. And I love the way you're thinking right now. You're ideating, and it seems like you're having a little bit of a breakthrough. It's— I kind of feel it. I kind of feel like, oh my gosh, there's a breakthrough. What is the breakthrough right now?

Coming up with ways to actually reach— or first of all, coming up with goals and then coming up with ideas to actually reach those goals. And not pigeonholing myself to just one idea, which is where I think I was spinning my wheels a little bit.

Yes, you were within— you were inside the little cradle and you were just running in the cradle and you're thinking, Oh my gosh, when is this going to end? What are my options? Maybe I should have somebody else run in this little cradle with me. And then you realize, hang on, there's a door. Why don't I just walk out the door? Oh look, I don't have to run on the cradle. So there's a little bit of a breakthrough. Okay, this is fantastic. First of all, congratulations on your first breakthrough.

Thank you.

There's a door on the hamster wheel. Okay, good. So now let's talk about this a little bit. You want to generate $100,000. Do you have a preference as to how many clients you want to serve?

I prefer to have a lower amount of clients just because it's less things to juggle. And within the clients themselves, there's multiple positions to juggle. So I would say having a lower amount, like 2 or 3, is probably ideal.

So in order for you to have let's say 3 clients, right? And also you have to realize, you have to think about something. What happens if you have 3 clients and one leaves you?

Mm-hmm.

You know, so you really want to be able to mitigate your risk and think about, okay, how many clients do I want to be serving in order for me to hit my revenue number? But at the same time, I don't want one client because then if that client leaves, I lose everything. So spreading the risk across across your client base is very, is very interesting right now. If you think about how much your clients are currently paying you, what would you say they're currently paying you right now?

Well, I— that's kind of the other thing that makes it a little bit complicated. I work with 2 different clients. It's mostly on an hourly rate. So like $40 an hour.

Okay, but at the end of the day, if you were charging monthly to those clients, how much were you— how much in the past 6 months did you charge monthly to those clients on average? Because you said you're working with 2.

On average, how many? Let's see, on average it's been about 40 hours. So let's see.

Okay, so 4 times 4 is $1,600.

Yeah.

Okay, so that's $1,600 a month per client. So if you were just getting those types of clients, because somehow you're lucky enough to be able to figure out how to get those clients, how many clients would you need to service in order for you to get to your $100,000? Have you ever done that calculation?

No, I haven't.

Wow, wow, wow, wow. Okay, so, so I think another breakthrough is brewing. Another breakthrough is brewing. If you were to get to your goal, how many clients would you need to service at this rate? I see you getting excited. Yeah.

Let's see. Okay, so $100,000. So that would be— I would need $8,300 a month. And I'm currently making $3,200. So that's an additional, at least one more client, probably more like 2.

So you— so in order for you to hit your number at this rate, you would probably need an additional 2 clients. So you need 4 clients in order for you to hit your number. And for you to make sure that you always hit your number, you probably need an additional 3 clients. Because one will always leave you. Every once in a while a client will leave or they'll lower their rate or whatever it is you've been experiencing.

Okay.

Correct?

Yes. So I think, I think the answer is I need to do both. I need more clients and I need to raise my rate because with 3 additional clients, I'll absolutely need more help. So that would be bringing on One more person at least. Um, and then to be able to compensate to pay for them, um, I would need to increase my rate.

Right. Okay. Well, that's not necessarily the case depending on what you're offering, right? You're just right now stuck on your rate. Let's, let's step away from the rate for a second.

Okay.

Let's step away with how we're going to get the work done. Let's just think for a second. About how many clients you need in order for you to hit your revenue goal?

Yeah, like you said, I, I definitely need, uh, 4, probably 5 in case somebody goes away.

So the total amount of clients that you'll have at the end of the day is approximately 7. Because if you have 2— or you see, you're saying 5 total? Yes, 5 total.

Okay.

So in order, in order for you to get to your number, you need 5 total clients. Does that make you nervous to have 5 clients?

If I was doing all the work myself, absolutely. I wouldn't, I wouldn't do it. Just too much.

Well, it's only too much if you're doing that much work for them.

Yeah.

What if you just had a monthly call with them?

I didn't even think of that, actually.

Right? What if you just had a monthly call with the client? What if you only spend— however, how many hours do you have a day? 9.

9.

So if you had 5 clients and you were to spend 9 hours Per day on each client once a week, because there's 5 days in the week, right? And 1 day of the week you would spend on just infrastructure stuff on your own business, marketing your business or whatever. So if you spend 9, 9 hours a week, let's say you're going to max out your time. Okay. How many hours could you give to each client right now if you had 5 clients?

Um, Well, but see, that's kind of going— so you're saying if I had 5 clients that I only dedicated 1 hour each day, 1 day, okay. But see, with my current day, there's 5 days of the week. I'm already full-time with my 2 current clients.

Okay, but that— but you're full-time with your current clients because The structure that you have is you don't have an effective structure of how to work with them.

Mm-hmm.

It's not because you don't have more staff. You could either hire more staff at an ineffective structure and then lose money, or you could figure out how to provide the same value in 9 hours per week, or even more value in 9 hours per week, and get 5 clients before we're even talking about getting employees. We're going to talk about getting employees because if you're making $100K, you could probably afford one employee or half an employee or something.

Right.

You could probably even afford 2 part-time employees if you're making $100K just to be able to continue to grow. Doing some things for you, right? Whatever those things are. So if your goal was to get to $100K and have 2 employees helping you and you yourself work 9 hours. per day, per week on each client. So you're still— and still provide the client with the same value. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Think about what we're talking about here. Thinking— think about the vision that we're creating together.

Yeah.

Does this vision get you excited?

Absolutely.

I think it's really— Does it sound doable?

Yeah. You know, what's funny about it is, um, You just talking about goals. It's so simple, but I didn't even like— I didn't— I was making it too complicated and I really needed to just start with number step 1, make a goal. And then how do you get there? So yeah, that definitely makes it a lot easier and doable and exciting.

So I think we should stop here. I think we should stop here. And I want this to kind of like I want this to kind of permeate and marinate in your brain over the next, over the next time, for the next couple of days. And really think about this, really sit down and spend literally an hour a day or 2 hours a day looking at this and thinking about this and ideating around this and trying to, trying to look at this and really flesh this out. Really say, okay, what about this? What is this? And just look at this and be with this.

Okay.

And I'm telling you right now, you are going to have the ability to have more breakthroughs. You're going to ask the right questions because when you're asking the wrong questions, usually you get the wrong answers. Your goal is to figure out how to ask the right questions. And that's why we have the Breakthrough Maze where we help you get breakthroughs. It's not about the solution. It's about asking the right question. Thank you very much for joining me here today. And we'll see you again next week on the Breakthrough Maze.

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