Are You Leaving MILLIONS on the Table with Small System Changes?

You spoke about how people are always looking for like the new system or the new tool, but like really look within, like look within their own working styles about what they could, how they could be more effective of what they already have. Solution is not out there. Probably something you're already doing.

Welcome to the High Voltage Business Builders Podcast, a show where we interview high voltage entrepreneurs growing and scaling through e-commerce, real estate, and other wealth without Wall Street ventures, showing you the path to making your first or next Million.

All right, folks, welcome back to the High Voltage Business Builders Podcast. As always, like, comment, share, engage, leave snide remarks or comments. I don't care. Just get the conflict marketing in the comments so that we get some engagement and help me beat big tech and social media so the guests today can hear what's going on. You can hear what's going on. We can get this out for somebody who might need to hear what's going on. I sound like a broken record when I say it that way. I'm always like the Kamala Harris of podcast interests. So, all right, we're going to talk about systems of business and automation design. the people and human factor of growing a business. And I brought on a guest today who knows something about that. So Ernesto, tell me what you know, man.

Well, I know not a lot, but I do know a lot about systems and people. And I think we get so caught up in this idea of learning the new strategy or learning the new tip or tactic. And if we just focus on what is already present in our space, the projects that we have, The products that we offer, we could look at just improving what we already have instead of finding stuff.

It's what I call the 2 millimeter shift, right? It's that little move to the right of something that you were already doing okay, or something you got interested in. Just go 2 millimeters to the right. Don't try to create something completely different or unique, or go try some really weird growth hack. I know everybody's into these big growth hacks these days. Uh, they even do whole webinars with growth hacks, and I'm like, no, I don't really want to be on a webinar like that. I did one, one time, and I'm like, no, I don't think I'll do that again.

Kind of attracts— I don't want to hack anything.

It attracts the wrong mindset, right? It's like, well, I need this shortcut because I have to have this big problem solved. And it's like, well, most problems are not solved in just short amounts of time, are they?

No.

What's been your experience with that?

I think change doesn't happen all at once, but the decision to make a change happens all at once. I think a small example, people are overwhelmed when it comes to their day. They're overwhelmed when thinking about their to-do list. They're thinking about all the emails that they haven't responded to. But the moment you decide to get smarter about your emails, you could literally delete all the emails prior to 30 days in the past. You haven't gotten back to them in 30 days, you're not getting back to them. So make these quick decisions. Say, hey, I have to change how I work. And this is like one just very small example to keeping your own personal hygiene when it comes to work.

No, I like that. It's true. Change takes time. And depending upon who's involved in the change, it may take people and resources and What we used to call in the old days of the corporate world, a change management process of some kind in order to get everybody moving to the right place. Could be migration of website, could be rolling out new product lines, could be new SaaS rollouts, could be a new marketing strategy or something that takes time. But you're right, the decision to change is immediate, isn't it? It's just, I'm going to change and that's that. If you're really serious about it, then you do the next step. You take action.

Yep. Yeah, you do the next step and then the next small step and then the next small step. But then after many small steps, it does.

You're a totally different person. Yeah, I've been building up for a large change myself, and it finally came. I don't know why I didn't do it sooner, but as you just said, I just woke up one day and was like, okay, I'm going to change this. And for me, that was just personal intake. Like, I just started tracking my macros and started watching better what I was going to eat and just started being conscientiously aware of how many steps I was taking every day and realizing, okay, 2,000 to 3,000 steps a day is not going to cut it. I'd have varying ranges. We live on a homestead, so some days I'd get like 15,000 steps and work outside for 8 hours and was, you know, dead tired. But then, be in the office and doing things, and be 2,000 to 3,000 steps in a day. And that was it, which is like base sedentary. So, I've made an effort since April to get out and do 8,000 to 10,000 steps every day, and to just watch my macros. And guess what happened?

You lost weight?

I lost about 30 pounds so far.

Yeah.

Oh, wow. That's incredible.

Just watching the macros.

Good for you.

It literally was just intake and outtake. I just stopped. I made the conscious— now, the change has occurred since April. It's now July. Well, June. It's going to be July maybe by the time this rolls out. And I've got a goal in mind to just never stop doing this. I don't have like a where I want to be in the weight goal. I just have a goal to not stop the change. Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally. I mean, and just looking at your example and like high voltage businesses, if you want to grow more sales, then like look at the macros of the sales building area of your business. Like look at the daily outreaches, look at the prospecting messages, the phone calls, like look at how much activity Yeah. You're doing in your day-to-day, and you will magically see sales will pick up.

Well, to make more offers.

When you start paying attention to those interests.

That's right.

Yeah. Make more offers, make more calls, partners, you know, just make more effort.

Yeah, that's right. And we did the same thing on the e-commerce world. For us, it is open more channels or launch more products. Like, you just have to continue the process of iterating product design and pipeline. We have a methodology called the 5x5 methodology. That is 5 products that average 5 sales a day organically. That's it. But as long as they have $12 or $20 in profit per unit, that adds up pretty fast over a year, especially when you talk organic. It's not the one-buy process. You have to constantly remind people, you have to launch the 5 products. You can't launch one product and find out whether or not the whole process worked. You actually have to go and continue the process of change, right? Which is a process that can take months or years. Well, it is one of those things that it is easy to hear and it's easy to understand now. For me, after being in business for myself for 17 years, that rolls off the tongue pretty easy. What is it? It's not the same for people who are new, is it?

It's not, but you have to— we have to let people go through their breakdowns. And it sucks. I was talking yesterday to a woman. She's like, you know, who went through a big loss in her family. And like, we, all of us who are on the other side of some big event, like want to look at the newbies and like shake them and be like, listen, this is like what you need to do. But sometimes you just gotta let people—

You have to be willing to change in order to make the immediate decision to change. Yeah, I had to make the catalyst. I could have listened to things, and I have listened to things, and I know that I should be considerably less weight than I am now, even though my blood work is good, and my physical work's great, and all that stuff is a lie. I know it won't stay that way for long if I don't get rid of it, but it's just one of those days I just got up and said, okay, I'm no more. Like, why not? Like, why wouldn't I do something about it?

And now you're down 30 pounds.

So, and I have no plan to stop. So, wherever I go is where I'm going. And that's another thing about business. A lot of people, and, and I know this sounds counterintuitive to the hustle and grind or the manage your forecast and manage your sales pipeline mentality, but there are just some simple, as you said, macros above this whole thing that really make a business run, in my opinion. You've mentioned a few of the macros. What are other things you think people should kind of pay attention to and as they're doing business? Because this is all business, isn't it? It's not just e-commerce, it's any kind of business we're talking about, right?

Yeah, I think, I think you have to pay attention to why people say yes. Why people say no when they choose to work with you. Figure out like, what was it about your marketing that resonated with them? What, why didn't they move forward with you? Was it too expensive? Was it, you know, bad timing? Like, what are all these reasons? Because there's gold in this data. If it's not the right time, then you follow up a month later. If it's too expensive, then you launch a lower cost product. Like you were saying, like you have to have a couple of different products. Maybe you teach price points or not. But really paying attention to the signals coming from your every single day. And not enough people pay attention. Not enough people slow down to pay attention because they're like, screw that guy, move on to the next customer. Or they're just like moving on to the next thing. They're repressing the anger, they're repressing the sadness, they're repressing whatever emotion so that they can just move on to the next email in the inbox, the next task on the list. Instead of just like slowing down and paying attention.

It's good. It's the, the what's in it for me mindset when I refer to it as if you can't give me what's in it for me right now, then I'm moving on. I prefer to keep more of the, here's my one offer, here is my one price point. And if it doesn't work right now, maybe it works later. If it doesn't work at all, that's okay. I've kind of taken that because of the things we do, the amount of brands we already run and the business we have. And if we're going to do some consulting with somebody, it's going to be like, this is kind of the way that it is. Well, we have, do you have a different price? No, actually I don't. And that may mean that we're not good here together. That's okay. Lamborghini doesn't change their prices. That's okay.

And for the newer people out there, they might look at that and be like, oh my God, how did he develop that much confidence to not budge? Because some people might say, oh, you got to meet customers where they're at. Like, yes and no, because if you have that much lead flow, you don't need to meet people.

You may not need to. It's just where you're, where you are and what you do. I stay in my lane and it's niche and what we do is unique. And so I just stay where in my lane and whether people come, that's great. And if they can't do it now, sometimes they do it later. And that's okay too, because I really want it the right situation with the right person for the right reasons. That's how I operate.

And the way, in a way that works for you. Yeah.

That doesn't necessarily work for everybody. That's okay. And I've gone after the large business deals and raised capital in the tens of millions and $50 million plus already and done all that stuff and realized that was me angrily, egotistically driving towards my purpose. And profit, and that ultimately failed and will fail in my experience if profit leads purpose. Yeah. Would you agree with that or? I would.

I think our hashtag in my business is Power Up Purpose.

Is it?

Like, I love it. It's all, yeah. There you go. Hashtag Power Up. We power up your purpose. If your purpose isn't driving everything, then what are you doing?

And that's where I look at things and, all right, we'll turn down speaking engagements or traveling things or whatnot because my purpose is my family and my life is around here and I balance my schedule in time with my girls. and our homeschool activities and our events and the play they do and other stuff. And I'll move or arrange business meetings. And sometimes people don't like that. And it's okay because that's my purpose. I've had one guy I wanted to have on the podcast for a long time and he had to reschedule to get on the podcast. I'm like, that's okay. And then I was like, well, I had this family thing that actually came up and I need to reschedule. And he's like, well, don't waste my time. I don't want to come on your podcast now. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. More power to you.

And it doesn't work.

And then I guess it just doesn't work. And he probably will never become a guest. And that's okay. It's, uh, it's always interesting though when you challenge people where they feel their strengths and weaknesses are, where they feel their value is, and whether they feel like, quite honestly, you're wasting their time or not when it comes to business. Right. And I've had people be like, just gimme the offer. Like, don't waste my time. And I'm like, yeah, this isn't gonna be a good fit. You want me to sell you? And I'm not trying to sell you. I'm actually trying to teach you, educate you, give you a value. Or disqualify you if it ultimately is, this is not gonna be a great fit in the end. Right. Bad. You can do great deals with mediocre partners, but you do very bad deals. You can do very bad deals with very bad partners. You can take a really great deal and make a bad partner and crush the whole thing. So it really gets down to that purpose, doesn't it?

Totally.

What are some of the things you're bullish on this year, Ernesto, as you work through your business? And explain a little of your business to us if you do.

Yeah. So I, my business is called the Million Dollar Machine, and we help businesses implement systems so that they can run Like well-oiled, seven-figure businesses that are highly integrated, that allow everyone in the business to rest in their purpose, to stay focused on what they need to do. And that looks like coming in as fractional COOs and setting up all the different tools to work in concert. And what I'm excited about—we've actually recently rebranded. We've been in business for four years. Our old messaging wasn't resonating too well, and now. With this idea and this concept of building machines. Everyone wants a million-dollar machine.

Right.

And people think, they think that story you were telling me, well, well, grow my sales. It's like, it's not necessarily just about revenue because if you triple your client count and you can't fulfill them with the level of quality that you are promising, then your reputation is going to go down the drain and your million-dollar machine has quickly disappeared. So, so yeah, I'm excited about this year with this rebrand and this new way of serving customers in a way that feels right with me and aligns with, with my life, which is in a cohort model, lots of group programming. For those who need like that 1-to-1 high touch, fine, we'll make it available. But it's at a point that really needs to be the right fit for that to happen.

Yeah, that's smart. What is your kind of your criteria for people that you're looking to work with? Who are they demographically? Are they in a specific business model that you're interested in?

Yeah, so it's service providers to businesses. Usually in the acquisitions space. So people who work in growth marketing, content creators, podcast bookers, Google Ads, anyone who helps businesses grow. Because paradoxically, all these businesses internally, they're kind of a hot mess. And so it's them, it's a revenue range between half a million to a million. And these are companies that have been bootstrapped and now need integrated systems to go past $1 million in revenue.

Very cool. How long have you been doing that at the Million Dollar Machine?

3 and a half years. Okay.

And what were you doing before that?

I was working in restaurants.

What were you doing in restaurants?

I was working in restaurants. I was the back office operations and IT analyst connecting all the different softwares to accurately report on sales, on inventory, on employee scheduling. Percentage yields, wastes, all the different data points inside of a restaurant.

Gotcha. So what led you to do your breakout move? What was the catalyst?

Well, I wrote a book. The book is called New Bee, and it was inspired by bees and how bees make honey. They go to different flowers, they extract nectar, they transfer pollen, the flowers make fruit, the bees go back to the hive, and they create this honey that they survive off of. We are all doing the same. We are going to courses, conferences, his events, jobs, or extract insights, we're transferring them, we're helpful, and then we are going back to our hive to create this honey that's usually offered back in the form of a job, a product, a service, a podcast, an experience, an event, a book even. And I said, you know what, there are many entrepreneurs out there that are doing the same, and I want to build a company that helps them cross-pollinate more effectively. And so that's where that— what led to my first business. It was called CPD Advisors, but the whole honey thing got lost on people. And I was like, hey, million-dollar machine.

You want to—

The whole honey thing got lost on people? I love the analogy.

It's great in an interview kind of setting. You and I here talking, get to know each other. It's great. People love it. But when it's someone trying to understand what do you do, and I use that as like the pitch.

Yeah, a little convoluted so that maybe they don't understand the differences.

Yeah.

Very cool.

So that's what—

that's it. How many copies of it did you sell just out of curiosity?

200.

It's a good catalyst. Are you writing any more books or is that just something you kind of did or something you love to keep doing or?

Yeah, I'm writing another book right now. When I start working with clients, there are 6 numbers that we, I usually start asking. And those numbers are your target revenue. How much money do you wanna make in the next 12 months? What's your average price per customer? That usually tells you how many customers you need. Then I ask, what's your conversion rate? I want to know the conversion rates, like how many leads do you need to have? And then I ask your booking conversion rate, like how many people like book the call with you? And that tells you what is your total informed audience size. So these are 6 numbers that when people think about where they are and where they want to get to, you can very quickly identify like what are the levers in my business that you need to create a change in to get to that next level of results. So I want to write a book about those 6 numbers and get people basically like, hey, here's a starting point to build a million-dollar machine with these 6 numbers.

That's very cool. And metrics are an important part of any business, and understanding which metrics to actually pull the levers on is very critical. That only comes through experience, and it sounds like you've got some serious experience. The last 3 years, how— what kind of clients and what kind of things you've been working on that may be of interest to share with us?

So the most exciting client was a 35-person software development shop. It was really cool to see how A multimillion-dollar business can run on Google Sheets, can run on Google Sheets and a couple of software tools to keep track of software development. But it blows my mind how some businesses are built like that.

Yeah.

And then when you implement tools like Notion, which is the tool I implement in businesses, you know, how much peace someone can feel once they're able to just see everything in one place. Like, it's just such a sense of relief. that any leader can get when they have everything in one place. They don't need to switch around to 17 different sheets. And it's just the appreciation that I receive.

Well, you'd be surprised on certain models, you don't have to have some of the complexities because of the way the systems are built. I mean, for us, we had certain models in spreadsheets because systems had platforms of reporting that we didn't necessarily need. So we only combined certain metrics we thought were most critical into sheets. And so we didn't need complex systems. And people came in like, you need this really heavy lifting software. And we're like, oh man, we're gonna take like months to get to learn how that software works. And that's not adding a whole lot of value when we're right in the middle of the operations and doing things that are needing real-time tactical and strategy execution. So we just, in the last 12 months, we've full-heartedly built our own system and developed our own Greenlight system that we created and developed internally and only use it with our clients and have continued to take all the data for the last 12 years and just compile that into the algorithms and the systems and the software that we use in our business. That's where we did it. Because we just kind of built our own system. There wasn't a whole lot out there that we could use. And so we took the sheets and the processes and the algorithms that we had developed.

And made it your own.

Put it into our own system and hired a really cool development crew out of Texas. And they've been helping us go through iterations on it to kind of take us off spreadsheets and we just get kind of farther and farther away from that. But systems are developing so fast, aren't they, with AI and other technologies that, uh, you can literally ask it to write code for you quicker than it will.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I think a lot of people are getting so wrapped up in the AI and the ChatGPT and they're like, oh my God, I gotta learn ChatGPT.

They're geeking out on the tech.

Yeah, yeah, they're super geeking out. And again, before, before all that crazy optimization, it's like, hey, run your test, run what you got to do.

Yeah, absolutely. Time compress or change process compress is one of the things we learned because I could geek out for hours. I'm just trying to figure out all the different AI systems and the updates to the, the new technology. Luna's new thing that I just saw yesterday with its AI videos that are absolutely going to blow everybody away because it's just creating incredible video. Luma is insane. I gotta check that out. Let's check it out because the video is just incredible. Like, goodbye Pixar. People can literally make Pixar-style movies now. This new version comes out just by prompting into the scenes and then using ElevenLabs or some other voice AI to go in and do the caricatures. I mean, it's just going to be incredible. It's going to be pumped out creativity-wise. And the Luma Dream Machine, it is incredible, some of the video they're creating. Yeah, that just—

oh my God.

Yeah, right? Are you watching this video?

I'm like seeing it.

Yeah, dude, it's just incredible what that AI is doing for videos. It's going to change the landscape of the future of movie production and the way, uh, independents and indie films and homemaking studios can create almost full production videos coming up here soon through all the different AI. So there's the ability to time compress and things that are crazy. Like we use graphics and Midjourney and image creation tools now to prompt and prototype product designs. Even in their environment, which we can give to the illustrators and we can give it to the departments and the manufacturing and vendors and say, this is exactly what we want it to look like. And then they can help design around it. So that's been cool to kind of expand the prototyping and product development. There's just so much you can do with Compress, but there's also so much to learn that you can get overloaded so fast. I didn't even know how much you could do with AI music till I started playing around with it the other day. And I got to playing with Studio and UDO and started making music. And I'm like, holy cow, there's so much you can do with so much cool music and prompting it and learning how to get it to create incredible music. There's, it's a lot of fun. And I think that's, there's aspects of it, like you said though, to the task list. If I'm doing this task and I can use AI to compress that time down, then maybe I should do that. If I'm just purely learning it for learning purposes, you're gonna take and spend hundreds of hours just trying to learn everything. And probably get nothing done.

Oh yeah, yeah. Well, that's why in my method, when I work with entrepreneurs, like, we have 6 pillars, and the first pillar is priorities. Like, if your every task is not rolling up to one of the priorities that you've set for the quarter, then you're just going to fall in the infinite— not doom scroll, just infinite hole. I mean, it's like every 3 days, like, YouTube is producing, like, the amount of content created in centuries, like during the Middle Ages.

Every 3 years.

It's insane how much video and material and content is being created. It never stops.

It's never gonna stop. But with purpose, I think, and this is something I was speaking about earlier, and it sounds like something you would resonate with as well. There's the human factor that we always have to stay attached to some degree because there are people who don't necessarily understand, like, or even want that and may wanna be clients of ours or wanna work with us. And we have to be, you know, conscientious of those who might want that human interaction and not completely lose sight, even in, you know, systems and automations. I was joking that every once in a while someone's like, are you a bot? I'm texting with them or conversing. I'm like, no, I'm real. Not that they thought I sounded like a bot. They were just concerned that they were getting duped and speaking to a bot because apparently they had been talking to somebody before who they thought was real and they were not real.

Oh, wow.

That's so interesting. I'm like, no, I'm really not a bot. You can ask me any question. But that's what a bot would say.

Right?

Well, I'm not going to overcome that objection. So maybe just book a call and talk to me on the phone. You realize I'm real.

Yeah.

Always a good one. So is there a question I didn't get to or something I didn't bring up that, or something we didn't talk about yet that you want to cover?

No, I think we spoke about how people are always looking for like the new system or the new tool, but like really look within, like look within their own working styles about what they could, how they could be more effective with what they already have. Solution is not out there. It's not in YouTube. Probably something you're already doing, finding a way to do it 10 times more effective.

Yeah, that's a good word. No doubt. Final question. If there was someone, or in time and space, or right now who's alive that I could introduce you to, that could— someone you want to spend 15 minutes having a chat with, who would it be?

It'd be Gino Wickman, who is the founder of EOS, the author of Traction. It's a book that was kind of the inspiration for what I do.

I don't know them personally, but there's a good possibility someone 6 degrees of separation, as we like to say around here. So Maybe somebody in this group knows. So guys, do your thing. Go in, comment, like, engage. Maybe we can get you connected or an S.O. to to your author, and maybe that can happen. Who knows? But we'll give it a shot. What do you say?

I'm down. All right, brother.

Well, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with me today.

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Plus.

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