Inside the CEO's Den: Secrets to Running an 8-Figure Business CIFC Episode159

Hey guys. What's up? Matt here. Welcome to an episode of Coffee Is for Closers from my new office. It's just me today. It's gonna be a bit of a shorter one, but I'm gonna be walking you through a couple things that we've been doing and a few kind of insights into the business and I guess, I guess what it takes to actually run an eight figure business as kind of the CEO and I think like just kind of break down what I think CEO should do and, and yeah, like what does it actually take to run this thing? Should you be super busy? Should you be not? So if you're a business owner watching this or a sales rep that's watching this or listening to this, make sure you kind of watch the way through the end, like subscribe and then notification for all that kind of good stuff because I'm going to give you a lot of insight into what it actually takes to be the head and give you kind of behind the scenes on what it looks like for a large kind of mid eight figure business. All right guys, see you in a second. Ex special forces sniper turned entrepreneur, I've scaled numerous businesses to eight figures. My name is Mad Rider. This is my podcast and I'm telling you to put that coffee down. All right, so what does it mean to be like CEO and what it, like what businesses do we actually run here? Like what do we do here at Seventh Level and Sales Sniper and all that kind of stuff. So for those of you who don't know like Seventh Level is a sales training organization and Sales Sniper is a sort of done for you and, and sort of really moving into the realm of consultancy. We're doing a lot of consultancy at the moment. We've been. Excuse me, I do have a bit of a cold. We've been quite blessed to where like Alex and Layla Hormozi have been super kind and sort of sent us a few clients from the acquisitions.com portfolio. Been working with Jim Launch. We've been working with a guy called Jason Phillips and a couple other and a couple other ones that I can't remember the top of my head. Really, really great businesses with phenomenal offers and phenomenal products as you would expect if they're working with Alex. But there's just some things that kind of need twisting and twe in order to really make the businesses hum. And so we've had an incredible opportunity over the last little bit to really kind of break down what's been working, what's been not and use the insight that we've created over the last few years running our own eight figure coaching business and having a few different verticals and then running the back end also the front end of a lot of other sort of seven and eight figure businesses like what we have at Sales Sniper. So Sales Sniper is vastly becoming a bit heavier on the consultancy side. We're not really taking on clients for done for you sales. What we are doing is kind of building out sales teams, helping sort of figure out what the actual acquisition thesis of the business should be. If you don't know acquisition thesis is it's like what's the model in which we get clients? How does it work? Have we planned it? And we found that a lot of businesses are just really falling flat with that side of things and there's not a lot of thought gone into it because they don't have things like budgets that aren't projections. They haven't got a plan for the next 12 months. That's one thing that I've been extremely tight on when it run, when it comes to running our businesses is setting what I think is long term realistic. KPIs with, with, with growth and you know, non growth months kind of mixed in there. It's not that every month has to be bigger than the last, it's just that every, the beginning of every year should be bigger than the last, you know. So yeah, it's been a really, really interesting ride that we've had over the last, you know, sort of couple years. You know, we're now running, you know, you know, a run rate of probably close to $40 million, which is really exciting and very interesting I suppose from, from a business perspective to sort of run that and having a startup and sort of the beginning of 2020. So it's been a bit of a wild ride. But like all in all what we're doing at the moment is kind of combining everything together and having under kind of one banner to simplify the operations of how this business works. We've adopted a similar methodology to how Apple works where we have a function and unit. Okay, so like for example we don't have a VP of marketing for sales sniper and for seventh level and for our B2B and for our B2C and for our like female component which is NPQ red. We also don't have one for our insurance component which is, you know, which is seventh level Financial Group which is phenomenal. We've started our insurance vertical which is, which is great for us. So we have a VP of marketing. We have A marketing department that sits as the marketing department for all of those as a function for all of those units. And some of those units are also separate entities as well. But like we have a function, so we have a finance function that runs as the finance function for all the business units, we have a marketing function or the business units, we have a sales function for all the business units. So there will be individual sales teams in each one. However, like the VP of sales is currently unstaffed, but say our chief of sales looks over the sales for all of it. The VP of sales would then look over all the directors of sales and the directors of sales would be over each individual business unit as like the sales manager, as it were. And so adopting that structure has allowed us to really streamline with like minimal requirements for super high level management and sort of been able to put people in the areas of genius of where they're required to be, which allows us to run at a higher profit. So that's the model that kind of Tim Cook and Apple and probably not Tim Cook, probably more Steve Jobs really innovated as a CEO where he took like, well, why do we have a marketing department for, you know, iPhone and a separate marketing department for MacBook and also a separate one for iPads? It's like, no, no, let's, let's combine this into a more streamlined marketing department that is overseeing every single product line so that we can work together synergistically. And now you'll see like it's so much more comprehensive, so much well thought out than what they used to be, where they'll release one, then the other than the other than the other. Whereas they kind of used to release them all at kind of random times. But now what they're doing is they're releasing the updates and they're releasing the new product lines to ensure the maximum level of upsell and cross sell, which is what we're trying to do at seventh level. Right? So yeah, so it's kind of weird, wild and wonderful running something like that. But that's been an incredibly essential part of what we've been doing in order to create a really, really cohesive long term marketing strategy. And I think it's a thing that we've probably done better than most other businesses that are, have or are our competition. So what I can see from a lot of the competition is a lot of throwing it against the wall and kind of seeing what sticks. That looks to me as a function of probably not poor, but I would say undercooked leadership teams. I See a lot of very young leadership teams in some of these businesses. And that's not to say that we're old, but like, you know, I have a look at our leadership team and there's a lot of people's late 30s, 40s and 50s which means that like we have people that have seen financial downturns, we have people that understand market cycles, our mentoring team is sort of in their 60s and people who have run billion dollar companies. So like, you know, we're looking at this as much more of a long term. And so the leadership style that I can see for some of our competitors seems to be the more short term focus, more cash focus, which is fair enough, that's how you want to run the business. There's no sort of right or wrong with that. But definitely what we're trying to do is become sales like we are seventh level will be synonymous with all things sales. And so that's a very, very long term play that's a little bit more expensive to run but hopefully has a much higher payoff on the back end. Otherwise like what's the point doing it, you know. But you have to forego certain things and you have to run the business in a certain way if you don't want to over kind of fish the wells as it were. So, so yeah, so that's kind of what we're doing on kind of a mark on like an innovative kind of strategy for our particular industry is taking like what's really worked in some of the other ones and some of the other things like Apple, like Apple's the best company ever on the planet. Regardless of what you think of them, they are the greatest company. They're the highest revenue, highest profit, most cash storage, highest level of adaptation, huge innovation in the marketplace. So the greatest company that's ever, that's ever been and you can learn an awful lot from them, not only from a management style but also from a product style. Alright, so if you have a look at how Apple runs their stuff, they have like their iPhones, they have their iPads, they have their MacBooks, they have their imacs. Let's say right now you can buy all kind of different like variations like what do I have? I usually run an iPhone mini, but like they don't run those anymore. So I have an iPhone. I don't need. I don't want the heavy one, the, the platinum, whatever the hell it's called. The, the Pro, I don't want the Pro because I don't use the camera. So I'd Rather have it be light and have a, you know, bigger battery life and all that kind of stuff. So I just use like the normal iPhone. But then from there you can get the iPhone SE, right for a while you get the iPhone C, you can get the iPhone 13, you can get the Pro Pro Max, you can get the, you know, different sizes and so like. But they've got one distinct product category and they're going after different market segments within that by adding and reducing features, which is a very, very clever thing to do. Now if you juxtapose that with a different company, which is also pretty phenomenal, is Coke, right? So Coke has a totally different way of doing things. So like Coke has got. I know this is kind of a random spattering of business stuff, but I hope it's interesting enough to kind of keep watching. So the way that Coke, Coke's mandate is within an arm's reach. So like you're always going to be within an arm's reach of a Coke. That's kind of how it works. And then the way that they've split up their management is by distribution method. So Apple has split up their sort of, you know, they have their function. So they've split up by function. So marketing, sales, you know, hr, whatever, right? And then you've got all these different product lines, you've got product lines beneath them. But like the marketing will sit over all of them. That's not how it works with Coke. Coke works on distribution method. So what they have is they would have like, they have. There's tons of different types of Coke, right? But like essentially the entire. There's a product suite that's allotted to how that gets distributed. Let's just say the distribution methods would be like gas stations or petrol stations and then we have grocery stores and then we have like more convenience ones, sort of like, like vending machines and then we have like licenses which is like restaurants and stuff like that. Those are all different distribution methods of how you can get a Coke. The pricing will be totally different depending on how you get it, right? So that's really important because you can buy like a 2 liter coke for $2.50 at the supermarket or the grocery store. But if you go to, you know, if you go to a vending machine, you're gonna pay $4 for you know, 750 mil, right? Or for, sorry, for like, you know, for like a can, it's gonna be like 250, right? But you can get that same can in a 24 pack for $8 at the grocery store.

Right.

So like how, how you get it determines the pricing structure. And, and that's also going to determine what products are available to you. Like they're not going to have like the random varieties of Coke in a, in a, in a vending machine, but they will have it at the grocery store. The read. And both will have it at the grocery store, not in the big packs, but they'll have it at the convenient ones that are down the bottom because it's like, oh, I'll try that. Okay. So like that's an impulse purchase. So like Coke has broken up their entire business into how you see the product, which is kind of a genius way of doing it, especially for that because they do have such an enormous product offering from Coke to Sprite to Fanna to all the other ones that kind of go with it and then all the variations there of just like what Apple's done. But the departments are broken up into how you get it. Like the, like the department for like getting restaurant licenses and that's totally different than the department that gets it into grocery stores.

Right.

And also like they'll go so far as to break up not only what products that distribution method will get but the makeup of the product.

Right.

As in like you know, in Mexico they use raw sugar whereas they don't. Like the Coke that's in Japan is different than the Coke that's in America.

Right.

So like they're changing the taste based off the profile of the people. It's quite interesting and quite intricate and very, very genius in how it does it. And I think that you can like learn a lot from that. So what are we doing at seventh level to kind of I guess take some of these interesting and more unique and I guess very proven business strategies and how do we, me as a CEO take that? And we try and go to market. So we're currently trying to break into different markets like us. So we've broken us done pretty well there. UK we're kind of emerging. Australia is getting pretty good. Right. But we're going to be going into sort of more French speaking countries, German speaking countries, Spanish speaking countries.

Right.

So we're going to be going there. So what we're doing at the moment is like we're having a look at those markets and we're trying to figure out what do they have and what do and what don't they have. Then what we're going to be doing is kind of breaking out the products and saying well what do we even want to people have access to in those markets, like in the initial, what's going to be a good lead in and then how are we going to distribute? Are we going to find partners over there, we give them licenses, Are we going to do our own sales and marketing and build out teams over there? Like what are we going to be doing? And especially like non English speaking countries. Right. So that's where like my job as the CEO is to try and figure out some of those more intricate strategies so that we can like continue to grow the business but not be so heavily reliant on single markets. Like we're not very reliant on any one particular product line. I would say any PQ 3.0 is probably our most successful product line in terms of overall revenue, profitability, stuff like that. But, but it is fairly broken up. So we have a pretty wide swath of high ticket, low ticket, mint ticket, etc. We're also not particularly reliable on anyone because particular method of getting paid or that's funding, credit card. I have a pretty wide, pretty good swath that like if all the funding goes down, like we're fine. Whereas a lot of other businesses rely heavily on funding, it's not, I don't think it's a great way to run a business, right. Especially with the fluctuations in the market and stuff like that. But like how do we diversify ourselves more and more and more? And as a sales rep, you really want your business to be thinking this way because like, I don't know, it's just not a good idea to not be thinking this this way. And if you're a business owner, this is something that you can do. Like what are the verticals or diagonals that I can have a look at in the business that don't that that leverage what I'm currently doing. Because if I can just take what I'm currently doing and then just shift it over here and do the same thing, I already have all the systems and structures and all that kind of stuff. So like from like an operational load it's lower. But also just from an overall like profitability standpoint, it's going to be much higher because I'm not having to reinvent the wheel, not having to dump 50, 60 thousand dollars a month into something that I know is not going to make money for the first six months. Like I have a proven method, a proven way of doing things and I'm going to go in there and do it. So that's like what my job is. My job as CEO is to kind of figure out all that stuff and not necessarily to have all the answers, but to work with the people who are finding the answers and then from there provide the guidance, have a look at what they present and bring it back and sort of go back and forth, you know. But that's kind of what we're doing at seventh level. I don't know. This is a very interesting podcast. It's going to be nice and short and sharp because it is just kind of me. But one, the last thing I will say is like my job as CEO is not to be super busy. Like that's a, that's a bad misconception. Like your job as a leader of a business or as CEO, like true sort of CEO is to be able to be there to ask questions and give guidance. And if you're on calls for 12 hours a day, you just can't do that. Somebody needs to be able to call you and go, hey man, hey boss, I need, I need your help with something. And you go, yeah man, what is it? Like that's how you provide the best guidance to people when you're not actually in the day to day fight. And like, you know there's a reason why generals are not in the fight, right? They provide much better tattoo strategic advice.

Right.

When you're not getting shot at. The people in the day to day need to be trusted, need to get out of their way to do the tactical correctly.

Right.

But then the strategic is what you're there to help with. So anyway guys, I hope you like that kind of stuff. I'm going to do a little bit more kind of businessy, kind of CEO type content. So if you do like this kind of stuff, make sure you let us know in the comment section. Make sure you like and subscribe all that kind of good stuff and I'll see you in the next video. Bye. Put that coffee down, Sam.