This YouTube interview (hosts: Dunbar; guest: Sabri Suby) focuses on practical approaches to handling large, complex business problems and scaling organizations. Sabri emphasizes using mental models (critical thinking, inversion, 80/20) to avoid solving hard problems from scratch, building repeatable systems (sales scripts, checklists, SOPs) to reduce human error, and a time-audit exercise called the "King's Audit" to force the owner to focus ~80% of time on revenue-generating, high-leverage work. He also notes organizational scale: a team of 70+ and the business being "well into the eight figures."
Questions this video answers
70+ (a team of 70 plus).
"Well into the eight figures."
Spend 80% of your time on revenue-generating activities and business growth.
The "King's Audit."
Hire people who can do the job ~80% as well as you ("80% as good as you").
Chapters
Amanda Sabri Subhi joins me now in the studio. I really look at business as an incredible vehicle to really, like, make good and make change in the world.
What's your process when something hits your desk, your inbox that legit, like your heart rate spikes, you get like moments of frustration. What's like your next go to like two or three steps to mitigate or to navigate that situation that most people would never even think of.
So the way that I look at it is like, you know, I've got, you know, a team of 70 plus now. And you know, in the beginning where you're like, it's just started, right? You're like, if I only I can get to a million dollars, all of my problems are going to go away and everything. There's going to be this utopian place that I go to and there's no problems there and everything's gravy, all right? And the sun's always shining on my back. But that place doesn't exist. And the problems don't get, go away. They only get bigger and more complex and you simply need to get stronger and have the mental, mental fortitude to go through those fires, right? So the way that I do it is, you know, by applying mental models to solve problems. That is when a problem lands on my desk, right? It's typically the most complex and hardest problem to solve because I have everyone else in my organization to solve all the other questions, right? So it's like, it's like an upside down pyramid where all of the other problems that aren't so hard to get solved and the ones that arrive on your desk are the very most difficult ones to solve. And so I don't try and solve those problems from scratch every time I apply mental models. So critical thinking and have a look at, okay, this information that's coming in, let me question it. How is it coming in? You know, who is the person that's presenting it to me? What is the motives to whom would benefit if I don't solve this problem or if I do solve it, what's the 80, 20 rule on it? What are the 20% of components? It's going to give me 80% of the upside. And then also applying like inversion thinking, right? And thinking about, like, what would be the inverse of this happening, right? Like a way to do that is like, okay, instead of thinking about how do I generate happy customers, think about how do I generate unhappy customers and then just do the opposite of what that is, right? So I have a bunch of different mental models and Frameworks that I use, like lattice work that I apply to any problem that I come against. And this is just like. Cause problem solving is a muscle that you need to grow over time and you need to flex. And if you're looking at every single problem that comes into your business or into your life with fresh eyes and you're not applying framework, it just takes too much mental ram and you just. You'll never get through it. So that's kind of my process. I never, ever, like, stress out and freak out about those things because I know that I can get through anything. I've been through enough adversity to know that I can get through this if I'm determined enough and I'm creative enough with my thinking. And I just take a moment to reflect on those things using mental models.
I like it, man. And that's a phenomenal way to look at it, because I think most people, they do, they jump in like it's new every time. It's like, it should be a process that you can refine and get better at over time. I always look at, like, when I start scaling up, you know, I have to delegate stuff, that there is a difficult barrier. Right now we're working on some new programs and we're launching stuff. The sales team is not phenomenal at what they're doing. So I'm like, oh, I want to jump in and do stuff. Right. How do you get to the point of, like, just pulling back and let them just. Just pretty much take craps on the phone a couple times before you, you know, how. What's your method, your process for how you train people past the headaches that you wish you could jump in and do?
Yeah. And look, unfortunately, that is always going to be the case, more often than not. I won't say always, but typically, like, the rule of, like, if you can find someone that does something 80% as good as you, that is good enough. Right. And especially when you hire new salespeople and you just hear them, like, saying all the wrong things on a call or, you know, steering things down the wrong way, and you're like, dude, like. But it's one of those things where you have to get okay with that. And you have to understand that in order to scale an organization, you have to become a leader. And you have to look at ways that you can build in systems and procedures that tries to eliminate as much of that as physically possible. For me, in my business business, you know, we've got sales scripts for the first call, for the second call, for Follow ups for voicemails, for emails, for everything, and looking at removing all human error as much as possible. And even if it's not a sales environment, if you're running Facebook ads or building out a funnel, is having checklists in place where in order to push that thing live or to set that client live, there are just, there are things that must get ticked off in order to get them done. Because when you're scaling a business, you're really only as good as your systems.
Yeah, that's true, man. I learned that I used to own a gym years ago and it was a crap show for like years. And someone's like Dunbar, you need to have some SOPs. Like if you don't have that, then nobody has a job. They're just in there hanging out until you tell them what to do. And they don't care about the business like you do still just do stuff so they get fired. I was like, oh, okay, I got to do thinking now. It's a whole different monster. This is like business growth, right? You've grown, I'm assuming like multiple seven figures. If it's the biggest deal, you've grown. I don't even have to ask for the number. Right. But do you find that at certain, let's call it, you know, points in time, financially do all of a sudden you say like maybe like around a million dollars, like 1.5. Is there a certain level that people should look at and say when I grow to this, I should anticipate having to expand or grow or like certain types of problems that they may not see?
Yeah, sure. So like, yeah, so we're, we're well into the eight figures as a business. And the way that I've tried to done it, I don't have like, okay, when we had a million dollars in revenue, this is what we had to do. The way that I look at it is constantly trying to make myself redundant in my business. So I've got this exercise called the King's Audit. And that's basically where you audit your time and you have a look at where it is going. And your goal as the business owner is constantly to make sure that you are working on the highest value tasks that you possibly can. So I'm of the belief as like you should be spending 80% of your time revenue generating activities and the growth of your business. Right. When, when you're doing that, it's like you need to look at all of the things that you're doing in your business and make sure that you're focusing a disproportionate amount of time on things that are going to ring the cash register and bring the money in so that you can afford to hire more people. And it's a constant evolution, right? Because in the beginning you might be like, okay, I'm doing a lot of client fulfillment work. I'm doing a lot of coaching calls, right? Okay, the first thing that I need to do is find someone to do that and then I need to spend more of my time on the telephones and then I need to hire another salesperson, I need to buy time and then I need to hire another salesperson. And it just that that doesn't stop. It goes all the way up until you can get into the position where you can hire a general manager who runs the day to day of the business and you are no longer working in the business. You are only working on the business because that's the highest leverage task. If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe. We're dropping a video like this almost every single day on YouTube and if you've got any questions, leave them in the comments box below with heysubri and I'll do my best to get in there and get that answered.
