Scale An Empire VS Going Solo (What's Right For You?)

Do you want to be on the tools and do you really enjoy doing the work and carrying out the work and being a practitioner of your craft? How many clients can you realistically manage yourself? And you know, is that going to basically result in you funding that lifestyle that you want? And if it is, and that is fantastic and you know, you can kind of keep going down this path and you can kind of keep it, you know, just yourself and maybe hire some kind of contractors or you know, some part time help and you're actually the one kind of carrying out that work. It can mean that you can work, you know, anywhere in the world remotely if you want. You can be completely location independent and travel and ultimately it allows you to kind of be in the driver's seat of your own business and in your destiny and kind of how much you want to be earning and what you want to be doing. However, if it doesn't arrive you at that, if you do the math and you find out, oh, hang on, like I'm not going to be able to earn the kind of money that I want in order to fund the lifestyle that I want to be living, then really that's kind of option number two and that's kind of do I want to go and scale up and build an empire. And what I mean by that is, you know, if that's the road that you want to go down, you know, essentially you're going to have to look at some stage in getting off the tools. And what I mean by that is really not doing the things as a practitioner that got you started in the first place. So you might be a photographer. And at this stage, if you're looking to build like a full scale photography agency, you know, you will not be able to be the one, you know, behind the camera anymore really doing that work and shooting stuff, you're gonna have to build a team that really supports you, that you can train and you can impart, you know, your knowledge and everything that kind of got the business to this stage, but have other people carry out the work. And why do I say that? Why is it impossible for you to kind of carry out all the work and build a really large business? And because, you know, as you start to scale a business, there's a whole lot of different things that start to happen. You know, you need to have HR departments that are hiring people and looking after people and then you're gonna need managers, you're gonna need accounting, you're gon support and advertising and marketing. There's all these kind of different Components that really come into place when you try to level up and you're trying to get to that next level. And what typically happens with most businesses and most consultants is that a business is generally started by someone being a practitioner going, look, I really love digital marketing. How about I start my own digital marketing consultancy, you know, or I really love cooking, how about I start my own catering business? And that's kind of generally how it starts. And then, you know, you're getting paid for carrying out the work. But then as you want to really kind of scale things up and create more than just a job for yourself, that's when you kind of need to really start to focus the bulk of your time in where the money is created. And what really drives a business is sales. Right? Top line revenue is in sales is really the oxygen to all business. And if you want something to grow, you're going to need to feed it more oxygen. And that naturally means that your time and your energy is going to be moved away from kind of carrying out the work to kind of focusing on the sales and the marketing component. Now my belief is that as a founder of a business, you really need to be your company's number one salesperson. Now that doesn't mean that you're the person on the phone selling everybody and you're delivering the most revenue every month, but it means that at its core that that is really the primary focus that you have is on selling your services. That's where the money is. It's not in the providing of your services, it's in the selling of those services. And you know, really that's the kind of decision that I needed to look at. There was only so many clients that I could manage. Right when I was in my bedroom and you know, it got to the point where I had 70 clients that I was managing all by myself. I was working 18 hour days, I was carrying out the work, I was selling them, I was doing the account management and I was doing everything in between. And there's only so long that you can kind of sustain doing that. And when I looked at, okay, where do I want to go? What is my why, what does that big picture look like for me? And will what I'm currently doing arrive me to that point? And the answer was no. I wanted to build something that was much bigger than me. And in order to do that, I knew that I couldn't win the war as just a one man army. I needed to go out and really hire a team of generals and lieutenants and people that could really help me support, go along on this mission and really win and kind of reach that end, outcome of that lifestyle that I wanted. So when you do that and when you kind of decide to go down that road, if that is for you, you might find that you're really happy as being like, you know, a one man army and doing everything yourself and you really enjoy doing the work and you don't really have the ambitions of building, you know, a huge thing. And that's completely fine. It's not for everybody. The number one thing is to find out what is true to you and what aligns with your values and also what aligns with the lifestyle that you look to live. That's the whole thing. And I can't answer that for you. Nobody else can answer that for you. It's ultimately on you. You need to go away and really give some thought to, you know, where do you want to take this? What kind of life do you want to be living? And a great exercise to do that is, you know, most people kind of think like, you know, what would the ideal lifestyle be? And that's like what people always sit around and think about, what would be the best lifestyle? And it's like, that's such a big task to really envision an entire lifestyle, an entire life and what that look like. For me, really the exercise that I go through is what does the ideal day look like, right? What do I do in the morning? Am I going to the gym and am I meeting my friends for lunch and then am I playing with my kids, you know, in the park? Or what am I doing? What does that lifestyle look like? And really kind of just designing, like if there were money was no option and you had to do anything you wanted, you had a magic wand, what would the absolute best day look like for you? And then it's about reverse engineering that and looking at all the other things that's going to have to take place in your business to be able to support and to really manifest that dream day. And then before you know it, you kind of, you know, design the dream lifestyle, you know, by looking at it day by day and look at what that looks like for you. And I found that's a lot easier to kind of, you know, bite that off and chew it and really kind of come up with something that's going to be, you know, an actionable plan for you. So now that we're at that fork in the road, let's look at like what, you know, road one looks like and then we'll get to road two. So road one is really like for you to kind of keep this as a small, low key operation and really fund it as a cash flow business and where you're still carrying out the work. So at this stage you're gonna be running those calculations and seeing like, you know, what does that cost or that retainer look like from a client perspective in order for you to kind of fund that lifestyle and then work backwards for them. And then what you really want to do is look at all the different other business functions that are gonna be required in order to support you to be able to actually carry out that work and spend your time doing that work. And the logical stepping stone is before you go out there and hire any time or full time employees and have to worry about any of the other stuff that kind of comes with that is you want to look at basically starting with contractors. Contractors are a fantastic stepping stone in the beginning and it's certainly something, a model that I went down and it's where you basically start to, you know, look at people that can work on this remotely. And it's kind of like on a project fee where it's like a client might be paying you a $5,000 retainer and then you might find a very good contractor that might charge $1,000 or 1,500 doll carry out that work. And it may just be a process of you just checking over their work and then communicating that stuff to the clients. Now the best way that I have found to work with contractors is to basically create a checklist. And it may be, you know, for whatever function that there is of the business. You might have a 10 point checklist or a 22 point checklist, which is something that the contractor must follow and they must do every single step on that checklist in order to mark that job as being complete for the week, for the month, for the day, or whatever it might be. This allows you to basically bake in quality control and ensure that the service delivery of what you're actually offering doesn't go down in quality because you're not the one that's actually carrying out that work. So checklists are fantastic. Make sure that people kind of tick them off and that follows them. And that will really allow for you to kind of sleep sound at night knowing that you know the fundamentals of being followed. Now this leads us to path number two, which is scaling up your empire and really recruiting a players for your team. And this was the path that I personally, personally chose to take. Now if this is the road that you want to go down, then essentially what this is going to require is for you to essentially get off the tools and stop being the practitioner in your business and start really focusing on that prime function of your business, which is to grow revenue and to grow sales for your business. And what that's going to involve is you really spending 80% of your time on revenue producing activities. Right. You need to get out of the weeds, off the tools, and then you need to start looking at recruiting the best talent and a players to actually do that work and to carry out the work for you. Now, this doesn't mean that you scrap doing the work entirely. What this means is that you use your expertise that's taken the business to this level and you actually create workflows and processes and cheat sheets that your team can actually use to carry out the work almost to the same quality that you can provide yourself. There's a rule that if you can find somebody to do a job that you're currently doing 80% as well as you are, then you need to hire them and you need to outsource and delegate that to another team member. And that's purely so you can free up your time in focusing on really, you know, that 20% of activities that drive 80% of the output and in growing a business, those 20% of activities, I should all be around revenue producing activities. So that's really like you're going to have to take off that hat of being the practitioner and put on a different hat of really being the number one salesperson for your business. And I don't mean you're going to be, you know, client facing or, you know, pitching all the time and actually producing the most amount of, you know, sales pitches and winning clients. I mean that the activities that you focus on will be purely to drive sales for your business. Now at this stage you might be thinking, you know, this all sounds great, but I'm going to try to do everything, you know what I mean? Summary. I don't really believe this. I think that I can do it all and I can kind of wear all the hats and still scale up my business. And I guess I pose the question to you is like, you know, what's the difference between, you know, you got two kind of people that are into food, two chefs that go out there and start a catering business and you know, with one of them you go back, you know, 10, 15, 20 years later and basically they're burnt out and all they've done is really kind of create a job for themselves. They're still needing to be in the kitchen doing everything, you know, doing all the food prep and all those things, while the other person has built like a national catering business that's doing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. And I can tell you right now, it's not their ability to cook or to be in the kitchen or, you know, to Juliet the carrots the best way possible. You know, the difference is in that entrepreneur's skill and their ability to really be able to market and sell their services. Think of it this way, you know, you're not going to walk into a Michelin star restaurant and see the head chef scrubbing potatoes or chopping carrots, right? He's going to be on the pass looking at all the food as it's prepped up and it goes out to the patrons of the restaurant. Or he's going to be focusing on menu design or sourcing the freshest of ingredients or doing television interviews and press interviews. And they are revenue producing activities. You're not going to be the person answering the phone or sending out client proposals or, you know, qualifying people. You're going to be focusing on really the tip of the spear activities, which are the revenue producing activities that are going to drive your business. And I like the jet streams that kind of suck your business into the future and allow you to scale up and build something that is a lot greater than yourself. These are the things that you really want to be focusing your time and energy on. So basically what you want to do and what I continuously have to make an effort to do as I'm looking to constantly level up in my business is really do an audit and have a look at, okay, where am I spending my time? Like, what are the activities that I'm doing in my day, Whether it's checking emails or running client meetings or, you know, onboarding new team members or whatever it might be, is really looking, okay, what are these activities that I'm doing? And I'm constantly looking at making myself redundant. I'm trying to build a machine that runs without me. And I really want to be very strict on auditing myself, you know, every week, every month, every quarter, every year to have a look at, okay, Sabri, what are you doing? Like, what are you spending your time on doing? And then I have a look at, you know, what are the things that aren't revenue producing and I cut them out and I delegate them so I can focus on the big picture, which is growth in growing the business and ensuring that, you know, my clients are getting the Best results by managing the quality of the people that come in and work in my agency. Have a look at kind of where you're spending your time and this will dictate who your first hire will be. For me in my business, I kind of looked at what were the things that I was doing and the majority of my day, eight hours a day, was done really selling over the phone and trying to bring new clients in, which was the lifeblood to the business and continues to be. And that's obviously where all my energy was going. So I didn't have a lot of other time outside of work hours that I could do anything else. It was kind of like I would sell by day and then do all the other stuff and all the delivery in the evening. So I was thinking, what am I spending the majority of my time on? Okay, eight hours of the day you spend on selling. That was the first hire that I needed to do. I need to hire kind of a digital strategist and a salesperson that could replicate Sabri Subi and basically buy time for myself. You know, I could put somebody on that freed me up to focus on a lot of other things that were high impact. So you might be saying, but you're talking about doing revenue producing activities, Sabri, and you just said that you hired a salesperson to do those for you. That's an important distinction to make where you can be in the trenches, on the front lines, doing hand to hand combat, or you could have someone like myself that is focusing on bigger picture things. So there was only, you know, so many strategy sessions that I could do a day, whether that's kind of 6, 8 or 10 or 12. You know, I wanted to basically focus on the activities that I could reach a hundred thousand people in the day. And that was basically by kind of scaling up and using paid traffic where I could create ads that would reach those kind of numbers on a daily basis. And that's where the impact really lies. And then I could hire a salesperson to obviously deal with the influx of new leads that I was bringing into the business. So, you know, it may be different in your business. Maybe you're not spending the bulk of your time, you know, selling. You want to basically have a look at what that might be. It might be you're dealing with clients all day. Clients just keep calling you or they're sending you emails and there's a lot of communication. Then you probably want to hire like an account manager, a client liaison person that could do all of that kind of client work for you or you might find that your content constantly putting together proposals or doing accounts or sending out invoices, whatever those different duties are in your business that you are currently doing. And it's kind of sucking you away from the revenue producing activities. That's your first hire, that's the first person that you want to put in place to free up your time. So when you're kind of hiring that first team member, you're going to make the decision of, you know, do I want to hire a generalist or do I want to hire a special? Now the thing that I recommend doing is that in the very beginning when you're hiring your first team member, the reality of it is that they're going to need to wear a few hats because that's just the nature of business, right? They're going to need to be doing a bit of this and a bit of that until you can kind of beef up to the team where you can go down the specialist route. In digital marketing, in my business, for instance, you know, we only hire specialists because it's impossible for someone to be a master in say Facebook ads and also a master in Google AdWords. The platforms are just too broad for you to go really, really deep on those things. But in the beginning, you know, it's an important distinction to make, is that you want somebody that doesn't want to be pigeonholed, that want to kind of wear a few things and they love variety as a spice of life. However, you know, if you're going to go down the specialist road in the beginning, then I would highly suggest going down the contractor route and having multiple contractors that, you know, a specialist to kind of carry out that work. But definitely for your first internal team member, you want to hire a generalist. And the reason for that is when you hire a generalist, you know, it's kind of like you're getting a few people essentially for the cost of one, because they can help out with a bit of this and a bit of that. So instead of you having to go out and hire like three people to kind of do that and really kind of front load the salaries for your business. And it probably wouldn't be able to accommodate that, or it definitely wouldn't be able to accommodate that at this stage. It allows you to kind of spread that butter as thin as it will go and still kind of COVID all your bases and they can bring a lot of value in. And then, you know, going down the specialist road, the benefits about that is like they are a specialist. They know that they are a master at that craft and they can really do a 10 out of 10 job on that one component and that one function. In the business where a generous might only do it at like a 6 or a 7, they can do multiple functions at a 6 or a 7. And that really kind of is much more advantageous at those early stages of your consulting business. So just to recap, you know, the things that we've kind of covered is for you to really start to considering is do you want to build the one man army consulting business or do you want to go down the scaling route? And that's again, up to you. You're going to really look at the pros and cons and finding that lifestyle of where you want to get to and that's going to dictate, you know, where you choose to steer the ship and the kind of business and the kind of lifestyle that you're looking to build for yourself. Hey guys, we're coming to you from lockdown in Melbourn. If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe. Share it with a friend. We're dropping a video like this every day on YouTube and I will see you in the next video.