How I Grew the Fastest Growing Company

Hey, I was just chatting with my friend Pat about being one of the fastest growing companies in the US and also in Australia. And we're sort of thinking about, you know, talking about where we're going and where we've been and sort of the journey that took us there. If you want the more concise version, then we'll kind of link it here. The difficulty is like growing with profit quickly means that one, you spend all your profit so like you don't have that much because you're having to constantly like catch up to your own infrastructure. So the way that I try and do it is try and infrastructure the business up with people to a level where is more revenue than what we have now by a decent chunk, say 40 or 50% more revenue. This business could double the revenue, could double. It wouldn't affect the day to day operations because we're overstaffed. So right now we're running quite bloated. But you have to be willing to do that in order to kind of keep the growth train going. Which is why a lot of people stop at like a level, they get there and they can't go any higher. It's because like, it's like when I learned that from running gyms, right? Like if you have a gym, you need to run at 80% capacity. If you run it at 100%, yeah, you make more money, but then it drops down to 60% because you piss everybody off. So like if you redline all your staff and you redline everything Is like to 100%, then people burn out, performance drops, you drop clients, you drop revenue. So you kind of have to figure out how you can constantly run into 80% which means that you got to over infrastructure, get it down to 60 or 50% and then grow it back up to 80. But that's difficult because it takes money. And so you're having to do with razor thin margins. You can do that. That's for the model that we have. Like it's an agency model. So it's a bit different with like a coaching business. You can fucking grow it with good margins. Like not crazy, crazy good margins, but good margins. So it's just different. So I think like the battling of that, the battling of finance, like how do you keep up from a finance perspective? Like the biggest fuck around that we've had since day one in this business is like invoicing. Because the invoicing is complex and like lots of line items and large amounts, you know, like when you're invoicing a client for $300,000. And it's 300 $1,000 line items, you know, like, and then you've got to track that back to two people, one who said it, one who closed it. And so you've got to rely on all that data entry being correct. And salespeople just, they always fuck their data up. So it's always been this like, you know, who's responsible for what? Where can you find the information? And we've changed systems so many times because, like, we'll build a system and. But then that system doesn't work at double the capacity. So you're like, fuck. So then you got to like, build another one and build another one. So now what we're doing is we're like building like really, really robust $100 million a year systems. But again, that takes time and tons of money. And so you're spending money to build an infrastructure that can support a revenue you don't have. I think for me personally, it's probably like the evolution of like what you have to be. You know, like when I was a sales guy, it's like, that's straightforward. I'd be the sales guy. Like, that makes sense. And then from there it was like I had to sort of do the next thing. So when Marco was like, I was training Marco to like, replace me. And then from there I was able to like, he would replace me on these, like, lower ticket accounts and then I would do a higher ticket, and then he would replace me on the higher ticket and then I would do an even higher ticket. And then from there we got to the point where like, okay, we're good with that. And then in December 2020, I removed myself from sales completely. And I was the biggest producer by a country mile. Like, I was producing $100,000 a month in commissions myself, like, consistently. So, like, that was a huge thing to sort of take that away. So I think it was just like, how do you figure out what you're supposed to be doing? You know, especially as we bring in like Will to run the CEO's side of sales Sniper and then we segment companies and stuff. It's like, what's your job? Because, like, my job is a little bit like kind of, you know, like if you look at my diary, like, it's not that busy anymore, but like, I was up till 10pm last night fixing problems, you know, so like, that's difficult. Knowing what I'm supposed to be doing and how I can best be utilized. That isn't just like getting too involved and then fucking things up because like if I say something it'll happen. So if I, I can nuke anything I want. So like I've gotta be careful not to like make an emotional decision and just nuke something and like what? Take, take the 24 hours to think it through, think through other ramifications and talk to the right people to make sure I don't like just fucking destroy six months of someone's hard work, which I have done before. People been working on a project for six months and I go fucking see you later, bye. Walk out and it's like what the fuck happened? But like it needed to happen, you know. And then I think from a, from a business perspective the hardest thing is like fast growth is great and it's a lot easier when you have a ton of money, which we don't. Like we have make a lot of money, but it's not like we borrowed a hundred million to do it and then probably like, like overly emotional decision making, you know. Like there have definitely been times where I've like. Which has helped now that I'm not in the day to day at all. Like now like I can be the general who's like in the bunker, who's not in danger and go. You shouldn't do that, you know, because like you get a chance to see now. Which is why generals shouldn't be on the battlefield. Right? Like that's why you're fucking moving shit around unemotionally. Like you make better decisions than the guys who are getting shot at. So like I don't think there's been any one big mistake really. Clearly. I mean, because all the businesses are growing, you know, like. But I would say there's been lots of little ones that have had like not catastrophic but like big effects. Like the calendar management issue that we talked about, like we just didn't think of it, you know, we ended up having like all of our like mid tier sales reps stacked with calls and our killers not. It's like that's a stupid problem. It's ridiculous. But it has significant effect down downrange, you know, not only do you not make sales and not collect as much cash, but you have rerun the risk of losing your best salespeople because they're not making money. That's a big fuck up, you know, that we should have caught earlier. And again a lot of that stuff is symptomatic of fast growth, you know. So I think like at some stage we probably should have like hit the pause button and gone like, okay, let's have a boring six months where we don't grow at all, which I have planned for mid next year. Like, the plan is from like July to December of 2023 is to not grow up or down by any more than like 3 or 4%. It's like we just have a really boring six months, which will then give us like the opportunity to build the infrastructure to the next level. Because by that stage we should be at like the next level of income. So we can like start to just build stuff out and have a look at what's been working, not focus on growth so much. So people can like take their foot off the gas a little bit and you know, do a. Do, you know, have a look and see what's worked and what hasn't. Who's the first person you brought on that like radically changed things? It's hard to not think of revenue generators, right? Like, but that's probably maybe not the right thought process. Like, Ben was the first person that was organized, you know, he was the first person that was like, we need a handbrake. And that dude's good at pulling the handbrake, you know. So I would say like, like the high, maybe not Ben as an individual, but the thought process behind hiring him I think was probably pretty important because like the thought process was we know we can grow this thing to the. If there's not someone there to say no and to go, hey guys, like, there's ramifications to what we're doing. Like, then you just end up like, kind of. Businesses are not hard to grow if you're super aggressive, right? Like, you know, like I was with seventh level, for example. Like I'm intentionally trying not to grow it right now. And we've grown 20% month on month nearly, right? Like maybe not 20, maybe like 10. And we're the 392nd fastest growing company in the U.S. right? And it's like that we're trying to throttle it because I have to build out things so that like it doesn't break. And so like, I wouldn't have thought of that a couple years ago, you know, I would have just gone like ra. But then having people like Spencer and having people like Ben who are like really like day to day, kind of nitty gritty focused, like you have a bouncing board to go, I want to do all these things and they go, sweet, let's do them all, but let's do it in a way that kind of makes sense and doesn't break shit. So I would say like, maybe not the individuals. But like, the thought process of hiring people like that to like, kind of handbrake you a little bit and go like, just chill the fuck out. I see tons of companies that are usually run by young guys, like in their like late 20s, early 30s, who grow the living fuck out of a company. And it's like, you can just see, it's like, oh, that's like. And then you start to hear the complaints in the market of like, oh, they can't fulfill, they can't do this. And then like, I know I've got guys now who work for me who have worked for some of those things. And they would literally go, hey, guys, we know we can't fulfill, but like, just sell them anyway. And then we'll refund people on the back end who we don't think we can provide a good service. It's like, that's just cash grab city. And like, I want to have a business in five years, in 10 years. So, you know. But I think also having the gyms help with that. I don't think there's any one big mistake. It's probably just like, you're just constantly finding lots of little ones that have larger effects than what you would have imagined. You know, it's like the analogy of shooting. You know, like you have me your barrels off by a millimeter at a hundred meters, it's not a big deal. You miss by a centimeter. Like it's middle of the face or slightly left of middle of the face, you know. But at a thousand meters, that's a meter miss. So it's like you're missing the person entirely. So I think, like, it's just a series of like, lack of attention to detail is probably what like, has undone lots of good things. Hey, so if you made it this far, you're obviously pretty interested in what I have to say, so we put another video for you here.