Strategic Management and Scaling

If you want to be the CEO, be the CEO. But find out how to be a true CEO, because a true CEO is not actually working in the business very much the true CEO. You've at that point got direct reports that do all of the things that are not leading.

How much more successful would you be if you had lunch once a week with insanely successful entrepreneurs who share their biggest secrets on how they think and achieve success? Grab your seat at the table, because this is Business Lunch with Roland Frazier and Ryan Deiss. Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch. And today's a snackable episode with Roland where he's going to get into some more tactical strategies that you can start using to live a rich and happy life. If this is the first snackable episode you're hearing, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to some of the other episodes that Roland has put out. And if you want to get notified every time we release a new episode, go to the new businesslunchpodcast.com website and we'll send you detailed notes along with every episode. That's businesslunchpodcast.com www.businesslunchpodcast.com and you can sign up for the free email newsletter where you'll be able to get all the highlights and resources from the episodes.

I want to answer the broader question of, like, now that we talked about how scale doesn't happen, I think we should speak to how does scale happen? And so let's flip the script. Let's talk about the things that need to be in place in your business if you want scale to occur and if you don't just want scale. But if you want to be exit able, if you want to be able to exit your business one day, whether that means exiting the day to day or selling out completely, we want all of the above for you. And to talk about this, how you scale, how you exit, I would like to invite to the stage my friend, my business partner, the person who's taught me more about scale than anybody else in my life. You know you love him. His name is Roland Frazier. Let's give him a big round of applause.

Thank you, sir. Welcome, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Hey, so Roland and I just. Quick backstory on Roland.

If you.

By the way, how many of you know who Roland is? Can I get a whoop? Oh, look at that. Yeah. There was a time when Roland was kind of my dirty little secret.

I get that a lot.

Yeah, he goes, roland and I met because he came to an event like this. We had a Mastermind. Roland joined the mastermind that we had, and he was an attendee. He was. He was sitting in the mastermind, and every meeting he would show up. And the basic structure of a mastermind is like, what do you need help with? We'll try to help you. What's something that you can give to the group? That's the basic structure. You ask for help for the things you want help with. You give in the areas where you figured some stuff out. And every day, he'd show for the Mastermind. He's like, I'm good. I'm good. But he did two things. Number one, he took notes for everybody and distributed the notes. And number two, he gave more than everybody else. We actually had this contest, who gave the most, who had the best ideas? And he won it meeting after meeting after meeting to the point where it's like, okay, you can't do this anymore. Right. It's not fair. But I remember going to like, so who are you? Like, what do you do? And I got to learn more about Roland. And, you know, I think very much like a startup entrepreneur, like a founder, like an operator. Roland has all that. He also thinks like an investor. And when we get into talking about on day three, how do you make the mental shift from entrepreneurial operator to entrepreneurial investor? That's what Roland has taught me, and that's what we're going to be talking about. But what I want to go into now is what I think is the coolest thing that you've ever shared with me. And that was this concept of kind of the. The five exits of the entrepreneur. And so, again, goal here is to lay a foundation on which you can hang all of the other pieces on. So can you Talk through the 5 exits and how these work? Yeah.

So raise your hand if you are currently doing anything in the business other than just managing. So are you working in your business at all doing any of the jobs? Okay, thank you. Yeah. So a lot of you. Right. And I'm wondering if you guys have this. This is kind of how I started, was the first business that I started. I was very proud of that. I was like, nobody's gonna outwork me. I'm gonna be there before anybody else. There wasn't anybody else at first, so it was easy. I could show up at any time, crush it, but then I'm gonna be there. And also I'm gonna get everything done by the weekend. I'm going to get everything done by the weekend. And that kind of started out that way. And then business Started to grow and I found myself working longer and longer and harder and harder to get the things done so that I could have my weekend. And eventually I got to the point where I couldn't get done. And I had. And I would tell. I had three business partners and I would tell them and said, I believe in the in. I know it's a myth, but I believe the myth of unlimited capacity. I can do whatever needs to be done and I can't find anybody that's going to do it as well as I can. Which is the most arrogant thing you could possibly say, right? I can't find anybody that could possibly do it as well as I can. I'm indispensable to the company and I am forever chained then to the line. And I didn't get it for the longest time. But if you are working in your business, in it, meaning you're doing those things and a lot of people raise their hands, that's fine. If you are on the journey towards escaping from that, if you're not, then you have ever longer hours that you're gonna have to work ever harder to grow because you don't have the capacity to grow. And on our sheets, it was kind of interesting when you guys signed up or signed in to come here. We asked you some questions and the number one thing that you said that you wanted was more leads and customers. And I want to challenge it a little bit. The second thing that you said was you wanted processes and systems. But that was about half as many responses has said they wanted more leads and customers. And then after that it was people. I think that maybe a little bit of a mind shift for you as we talk about this. You won't be able to make this first exit from the line. We call people who are doing the actual servicing or producting or whatever in the business. If you're wearing a hat that is causing you to interface directly with a customer and in any way, then you are occupying the line. And that is going to be something that if you want to grow and scale, which hopefully everybody is, you're at the right show, right? There's a Blue Cross convention here too. So, okay, so if that's what you want to do, you're going to have to get off the line. And the only way to do that is to go like you are a worker. When you're on the line, you have to. That first escape, that first exit, is to move from being a worker to being a manager, from doing to delegating, from working in the business to Kind of having one foot in working on the business and one foot in working in the business. And it's okay to do that. To do that, you're going to have to figure out what are the essential roles that you're occupying now and what would somebody look like that could do those essential roles? And you might start with the least productive things, like if you're really good at sales, if that's what you're selling for your business, which is very common with entrepreneurs. If you're the person that's in charge of sales, but you're also doing the books, then get somebody to do the books. Because sales brings in the money. Right. Find those things. First. Think about how can I exit the line in the most elegant way that's not going to adversely impact my cash flow?

Yeah. In the next session, I'm actually going to show you a specific process for doing just that. If you think about when he talks about being on the line, when we talked about mapping the value engines, those value chains, that's the line. If you're responsible for any of those boxes, you're still on at least some of the line.

And here's the cool thing, something kind of magical happens when you do that first thing. And several of you said that you're in the 1 million to 4 million business range. And several of you said that was actually the bulk of you. But I'll tell you what, I go into businesses all the time where they're doing 40, 50, 60, $70 million plus and the founders are still working on the line, they're still in that critical job. So you can have a big business and still be stuck on the line and ultimately not scale. Because if you've built the business to 40 or 50 million, the path to 100 is super fast with the right people on the bus. But if you are on the bus, driving, sitting, riding, repairing, doing everything to it, you're just not going to be able to make that happen as fast. You might still be able to make it go, but one of the benefits of being here is we're gonna show you how to kind of skip a few steps. So think about like process wise, because it's easy for us to say you need to get off the line. And you're like, screw you, I can't.

I don't have time.

I won't have enough money. I don't have enough money to hire the person. At some point you'll have to invest in you and your business to get the other person or people that are going to replace the, the least productive things that you do. So that. Let's say you're selling, let's say that you're marketing, let's say that you're closing, right? So that you can do more of that. Because when you can do more of that because you hired that person, even if they kind of suck at it, as they probably will initially, because you're not going to, as Ryan said earlier, you're not going to have time to train them. Please don't make it be random intern person.

Right?

Get a quasi qualified person. But, but man, I'm telling you where your business suffers. On that non essential thing. You're going to have more time to focus on that thing that is essential, that's feeding the lifeblood of the business. And you're gonna be able to do a whole lot better. I hope that. Does that make sense? I'm gonna ask for some response. Does that make sense?

Okay, good.

Because it's important. So you gotta get off the line. You've gotta lose that I'm essential to the business kind of thing. Even if you are right now, you can't keep that. That is a mindset that will stop you from ever growing. Okay, so now then we move from that. And now we're a manager. Okay. We've gone from worker to manager. Now you're, you've got some people that are doing that, but you're still, like I said, you got one foot in working in the business and one foot working on the business. You're headed in the right direction.

Right?

So then the next thing that we're going to do is go from manager to leader. And that's a really interesting step because you're gonna move from delegating to leading other delegators. And that's a very, very difficult step. And I don't know, do we have a session on doing that?

Well, yeah, Richard's gonna be talking about how do you bring on an operator to kind of be that number two. And yeah, the first step is to be that person. So we'll talk about exactly what that means. So yeah, day three, for sure.

So that's an important step. And I'll tell you something that goes against what I see a lot of books about and a lot of gurus saying, I think that if you are the CEO of your business, if you are a true CEO, which we'll talk about what that means, then that's okay. You don't need to find that person to replace you as CEO yet. You don't maybe need to find that person ever. Because it's actually okay to sit in some of these roles. And I'll tell you, having gone through and hired several CEOs that are hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars that get equity in the company that we paid expensive search firms to find, a lot of them suck. They really do. It's difficult. And I'll tell you, it's been a very hard road for me personally to get on board with that because you're like, man, you know, I know the business and nobody's going to care about it like me. And I'd say that that is generally true. So my advice to people these days is if you want to be the CEO, be the CEO. But find out how to be a true CEO. Because a true CEO is not actually working in the business very much. The true CEO, you've at that point got direct reports that do all of the things that are not leading. So that means that you have somebody that's capable of creating financial statements, forward looking FP and A, they call it financial planning and analysis, all of that kind of stuff, budgets and such. On the finance side, you've got marketing people that are coming up with, God forbid, their own ideas of how to market your business. And they're actually following up and they know the numbers and they're giving you reports and dashboards that say, this is how things are going. These are our conversions, these are our numbers, these are the areas that we're going to work on. Here's my plan. Looking forward. Holy crap, that's amazing. Right? And your salespeople are giving their reports and so on and so forth. That's. To be a true CEO, you're just a coach, truly just a coach to those people. And that's going to require that you have the ability to make some investment in some key people. And those people are not going to be inexpensive, but they're going to ultimately be the key to the ultimate growth and success of your business. So for everybody here that wants more customers and more leads, it's like for the business to scale, it's not a hack. It's not, hey, here's this cool trick on Facebook that we learned. So here's this button color that converts better than the others because all of those things ultimately fade. And what you need is a system for creating leads. And the people that are going to put the system for creating leads in ideally are heads of marketing. So that's to me like, that's a big deal. And the ideal CEO is really focused primarily on the vision of the company and then coaching. So that's moving from manager to leader. And like I said, you've got a. You're kind of doing a tap dance in and out of working in the business. It's nice, by the way. It's very, it's very.

We get that on video.

It's very light. Right. But you're really focused in the. On now. Then the next step is you're gonna say, okay, and you can occupy as we go forward. You cannot grow and scale the way that you're going to want to that real companies that have significant valuations and vacations and all of that kind of stuff do with if you are going to stay in that first role of line manager or if you stay in that second role, excuse me, that first role of line worker or that second role of manager. You can, however, keep your toe in all three of the next things. So we call them exits, because ultimately you will be moving probably out of those roles in the order that we present them. But as you move from the CEO spot as a leader into the board of directors as a governor or director, that's the next exit. And so now we're going from the CEO who's creating the vision and communicating to the board and outside people to someone who's truly saying, what is the company doing and how do we make the company be a good corporate citizen? How do we hold the CEO accountable for meeting their vision? And how do we look at valuation of the company and moving it forward? And so that is the next step. And now you've moved from leader to governator. And when you go from that governing spot to the next place, you're moving from a governor or a, from a governing role into an investor role. And so the reason that we say you can occupy more than one of these is very often you'll be the CEO of the company. You'll have a great team under you. They're super qualified. You've got a scalable company at that point and you want to take some chips off the table. So you're still the CEO. You sit on the board of directors because you are the primary shareholder, most likely, and you're also an investor because you have a significant amount of your net worth or value tied up in your company. It's probably your biggest asset. And so when you can sit in those spaces, but then as things move, you are going to say, I need to move out of that CEO position, I need to hire somebody to do that, or you sell the company, because that happens a lot, too. You're just like, I'm going to sell it while I'm CEO, director, investor. Okay, but. But that's really the. The process. And from the CEO on at director and at investor, you are working above the business. Above the business is. I don't. I'm not worried about the widgets, products, services that the business sells. I'm worried about the business itself. The business is my product. That's what. That's all you are as an investor. When you own stocks, you don't really care so much about Apple selling iPhones and what's going to be in the iPhone and what's the operating system going to look like. You think about how do I increase shareholder value, which is also going to increase value for you. So these are really the five exits. And it's kind of a process of moving from working in the business to on it to above it. And if you can get to the point where you're working above it, then you can scale as an investor and you can own multiple businesses. And once you get this, it really empowers you because you can go through the cycle, which we'll talk about on day three of acquisition growth. Exit, which is kind of an acquisition operating system. Does that make sense? So that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. You awake?

All right, so what I want you to think about right now is what exit would you like to make in the next 12 months? So as you look out to next year, if currently you're working on the line more than you would like to, and you're like, I got to get some frontline workers so I could be a true manager, Right. That's exit number one. Right. Exit number one is, I just don't want to do anything. I've got to hire some people. I bet most of the people in this room, you've already made exit number one. Most of the people in this room, Congratulations. Whether you realize it was called that or not, you have already made exit number one. What you would really like to be doing is you'd like to be functioning as a true CEO, right? I'm seeing heads nod. You'd like to function like a true CEO? I wish I didn't have to do everything. It's one thing if I'm going to hang on to this little line roll for a bit, but I'd like to be able to function like a true CEO. Like Roland said, that's going to require functional leadership within your company, but it's going to require functional leadership that is functioning based on an operating system. Okay. That's how we make sure that if these functional leaders, when they come in, they actually do the job because they're operating based on an operating system that they're looking to improve, that they're personally optimizing. But if they leave, it's not you that has to jump back in. There's an operating system there. You can bring somebody else in. Some of you may have. May want to stop there. You may say, look, I just want to see you in my company. I'm an operator. I love operating this business. That is amazing. I would never, ever want to bring somebody else in to run my company. Fine, Fine. You may change your tune at some point, but wouldn't you just like to know that you had the option to sell it if you. If it came down to it? Right. Even you said, I never want to sell it. I want to keep it in the business.

Great.

Then wouldn't you like at some point a family member to come in and do that? That's going to require exit number three. That's what we like to live, right? We love to live above the business. We like to have CEOs, operators within our companies that are running things. That is where we both like to live. But then at some point, it makes sense to sell something.

Great.

Now I'm going to take off the operator hat, governor hat. I'm going to put on the investor hat. And then at some point, it makes sense to sell it out completely. So these are the five exits. What I would like for you to write down and think is, what is the exit that I want to make? This is the question that we ask all of our new clients. Our goal is to help you systemize and scale the business so that you can achieve your ideal exit. We're not going to dictate what it is, but. But it's important. This is the goal that we're going through. And whether you realize or not, this is what scale looks like. This is what scaling companies look like. So how do we do it? What we've realized, and again, I'll give credit to Roland, is that scale comes down to three things. Those three things are leveraged sales, bankable profit, and transferable value. These are all things you probably heard. Sales, profit. I got it. I know what those things are.

But.

But Roland, can you speak to, like, we're not just talking about sales in general. What do you mean when you say leverage? Sales.

Yeah. So really, it's just everything in terms of leverage. Leverage is just, how do I get more results from less effort that's really what that's about. So thinking about sales like the least leveraged sales is you're the person selling. You're having one on one conversations with prospects and converting them. That's the least leverage sales that you can get. Adding a sales team creates huge leverage because now you can multiply infinitely as long as you're able to sell and you've got profit and you can scale as far as you can go. So there's a lot of leverage there. That would be a form of leverage sales. And there are lots of other leverage. There are lots of other types of leverage you can get with sales as well. You want to share some of this?

I mean so I mean what we talked about before in terms of there's process around leverage sales. So what I showed you before, we're going to map our growth engine. We're going to have scorecards to document it. We're going to compare this process. That is a way of having leveraged sales.

Having documented 192 ways is where we are right now.

Having just a list of things to go through that you can deploy to get more leverage sales. Whether that's increasing your average order value, upsells, cross sells, things like this. The key that you want to make sure is when you start off at the month, it's not zero every time. And if you get sick, sales don't stay zero. So it's not just sales, it's leverage sales.

Yeah.

And recurring revenue is a great example of that. Talking about not starting at zero, it's just adding recurring revenue and then optimizing recurring revenue up so that you start every month with whatever your, you know, your annual recurring revenue is divided by 12. If you think if you've got a million 2 or 12 million of annual recurring revenue then you don't have to sell that first hundred thousand or that first million the next month. And that's a big, big, big advantage.

Yep, that's. And that's when we get that ramp. We talked about bankable profit. This is what I was talking about before. Not just paper profit, not just P L profit, distributable cash. But I think most people intuitively know and understand that.

They don't.

They don't.

They do.

So I can't tell you how many.

People we talk to. And it's like, so how's your business doing? It's doing great. Great. What did profit look last year? It looked like. It looked like $2 million.

Yeah.

Okay, great. So then what did you take home? I took home $2 million.

Okay.

Because, I mean, you know, in looking at your business and talking with you, it doesn't seem like you're taking home $2 million. Did you really, like, you basically operated the business. It generated $2 million in profit. And that 2 million went into your bank account? Oh, no, no, no. I had to reinvest it in the business. Well, you, you know, that's great, but I can't tell you how many people have gone bankrupt reinvesting in their business.

Right.

I can't tell you how painful it is. Well, you probably know if you're, if you're suffering from it, how painful it is to see that you made 100,000amillion, $10 million, but you have nothing to show for it personally. That ability to bank the profit is a critical distinction. And so many people think that bankable profit means that the business made $2 million. Therefore, I made $2 million. Is it even in your bank account doing something outside of the business, then? To us, it doesn't get to count. It's necessary. It's important. And you should reinvest in your business, but you should also have money outside of your business. And that's something took me a long time to learn. But, you know, you got to do that. And so thinking about that actively, and we have 63 ways to do that. Right. That we have in our profit multipliers. That is a very important thing to do as well.

So if you've got leverage, sales and profit. And you're right, like most people don't intuitively understand bankable.

I think they think they do. I think it's insidious because you think, you know, my business is making money, but it's really.

Yeah. Is it? And ain't paying you. So. But I think, I think business owners get the concept at least of sales and profit. The one that most forget about is that third transferable value. And we talk about transferable value as happening in two forms. The ability to transfer the value creation process from you and the founding team to your employees. That's the first aspect of transferable value. The second aspect of transferable value is transferring the value of the company to someone else in the event of a sale. And you can't do the second until.

You do the first.

And keep in mind, it doesn't have to be a sale. If you don't have transferable value, you will find it very difficult to get loans. You'll find credit from banks and mezzanine lenders. And those other people that lend money are going to be hesitant because it's risky. If any of you have inventory or have ever thought about inventory financing, it's hard to get inventory financing because the lender has to think about can they sell the collateral for enough to cover the loan. And so they're not in the business of selling your inventory. They don't know if your inventory is obsolete or good or whatever, and they don't know how to do it. And so if they take it, they're going to get almost nothing for it. It's going to literally be a liquidation.

So they'll.

They'll value it at liquidation value. They'll go to, you know, whatever overstock is now called. I think it's Bed, Bath and Beyond or whoever buys that stuff, right, at liquidation value. And that's the value they'll give you. Your business is going to be valued at liquidation value, which is typically the market value of the assets that you've got if somebody can't take it and operate it without you. So if you don't have, like, transferable value, don't think about. I don't need to worry about that because I'm not gonna exit. You do need to worry about it, especially in the crazy economy that we've got right now, right? You need to be able to say, hey, anybody that might have money that I need to work my business, hey, other valuable employees that I want to hire, who wants a stake in the business, that there's a future here because there is value that can be transferred to somebody else. It's a really critical thing to think about that. I think I agree with you. I think most people miss.

Yeah. So if you want to have leverage sales, you need to grow flywheel. If you want to have bankable profit at a minimum, you got to have that cash flow waterfall. If you want transferable value at a minimum, you need an operating system. And so that's why you hear us speak in these. In these terms. Now, why do these three things matter in the combination? Particular, it's because if you've got leveraged sales and you have bankable profit, you have momentum, and momentum is the most desirable state for the entrepreneur. We're rocking, we're rolling. We're that freight train that's never running out of fuel.

Why?

Because we've got sales and we got profits. We can pump it back in, we can maintain momentum. If you've got leverage sales and transferable value, you are now what we consider to be scale able. You are able to scale because you have sales, which means people want what you're selling. And you have transferred the value creation process to team members. So it's not constrained just by you. Right now you're scale able, you're not necessarily yet scaling because you don't, if you don't have profit, we'll come to that. If you have bankable profit and transferable value. Now this gets to exactly what Roland was just saying. You have options. You could sell or not sell, you could raise money or not raise money. You could get debt or not get debt, you could self fund, whatever because you're profitable because it's transferable. All financing options, all exit options are open to you, all right? You are not trapped. And if you combine momentum with scalability and optionality, congratulations, you can scale and you can achieve your ideal exit. This is the goal. And so as we're talking through and as you're remember, I wanted to lay the foundation, give you frameworks on which to hang stuff. I want you to think, okay, is this going to help me get more leverage sales? This is going to help me get more bankable profit. Is this going to help me get more transferable value? And I want you to think, what specifically do you most need right now? And we're gonna, you're gonna hear say when we give you some 10 minute tactics, we're giving you some shiny objects to chase. At the end of the day, we figure that'll be a fun way to end. But we're gonna give you shiny objects that have a home in one of these circles and we're gonna encourage you not to chase that shiny object if you don't need to fill in that circle. But here's the deal. If you don't have leverage sales, this is when you feel like the hamster on a wheel, right? When you don't have leverage sales, you are the hamster on a wheel. You can't get off. When you don't have bankable profit. We call it the toothless Chihuahua. Roland's got a bunch of chihuahuas. And there's one in particular who is the most barky and the most bitey, but has no teeth.

He doesn't.

And when I look, I remember seeing this chihuahua. I was like, this is a lot of the entrepreneurs I know, I know a lot of entrepreneurs. And y' all know their names. There's some big guru types out there taking pictures of themselves in front of jets and fancy cars that they don't freaking own, right? That in many cases they didn't even fly in. They just went out there and were like, okay. And went and got on spirit so that there's the toothless Chihuahua, all bark, no bite baller on a budget. Okay. Lots of entrepreneurs are like this. They have these big companies, but they're starving to death. We don't want you to be that. But what we most especially don't want you to feel like you're being is the Dancing Bear. Can you kind of talk about the dancing Bear where you heard about this and maybe even who you heard about this from? Oh, yeah, yeah.

I just. Tony Robbins and Dean Graciosi were having a conversation. I got to over here, and basically Tony was saying, you know, to Dean, he said, man, we're the Dancing Bears. We are on stage making a ton of money, but the minute that we can't be, the money's gonna stop. And so this was a few years ago, and it was. Tony had decided that he was going to write a book called Money Master the Game. And he wanted to write the book because one, he had just discovered compound interest, which is an amazing thing to discover if you've not discovered it. And he also wanted to share that with as many people as possible. But he also recognized he's had potential challenges with his voice and things like that. And if he can't talk, then he can't do his thing and he can't dance and the money stops. He didn't have. Even though he had this giant organization, he wasn't able to sell it. He sold it part of it, one of Robin's research, to his employees in an esop. But that an ESOP transaction can sound really. That's an employee stock ownership plan where you sell your equity in your company to your employees and. And then you get paid back over a period of time. But they also have a risk because if you can't perform, then the company goes down the tubes and then it doesn't work. Plus, there's a lot of regulators that are up in your business when you do that. So, like, to me, it's terrible to only have the option to do an esop. So he said, what I need to do to be able to avoid to get off the Dancing bear ball is I've got to create something that isn't me. And Money Master the game was a vehicle to do that. Money Master the game was a funnel to put people into number one, to educate them and give value and then to share with them that Tony was an advisor to a fund that he had a partial interest in with some Wall street people to get assets under management, which can be Quite profitable and can be sold. So he figured if he got $1 billion in assets under management, that he was quote, unquote set for life. And he has a pretty high lifestyle. So he did money master the game. He got 2 billion initially, I think it ultimately went to 4 before he sold it and then he sold it. So he had all the lifetime money that he was now able to make from that. Whether he spoke or didn't, whether Covid happened and shut down the world or didn't, he had good timing on that and then was able to actually sell it for multiples more of years and years of profits and then invest that again. So like that was even somebody who is worth on paper hundreds of millions of dollars. And think about a lot of actors and actresses with this too. A lot of celebrities that you see, the minute that the celebrity goes away, they got canceled, they said the wrong thing. Something in their history came up, right? They get disabled, they die in a helicopter crash. You know, all these things can happen and do and have recently to lots of people and then the money gets shut off. And it can happen to you too. What would happen if you couldn't do what you do right now in your business? Would that be a problem? If the answer is yes, you're still a dancing bear. And it's very important because stuff does happen for you to get off of. Get off the ball, guys.

Get off the ball.

Don't get on the ball.

Get off the ball. And it's amazing. A lot of people out there, they think that that's what they want. And it can be good to build media, but it's not good to build a brand. It's not good to build transferable value. And so in the next session we're going to talk about how do you get off the ball? How do you stop being the dancing bear? But just so you know how important this is, I want to show you how good companies fail. Good companies fail because they never master transferable value. And because they never master transferable value because the entrepreneur is stuck, right? The business is not scale able. And because it's not scalable, they run out of options. And whether they come to this understanding directly or they just feel it, they know they're trapped. They know that they can neither scale and they know they can't exit. And when we are in a business that isn't growing and that we can't get out of, that is worse than being an employee. Way worse. And you can, way, way worse.

You can lose your momentum too, because think about, like sales and profit. Exactly is momentum.

Sales dies momentum.

Well, but even.

Even if you can't scale, because maybe you need more money to buy more media, to scale or to buy more inventory or to hire more people or whatever, but you don't have it. And so then you're stuck. Like, if you've ever thought, I'm, I'm doing great, but I'm stuck at seven figures, I'm stuck at eight figures, I'm stuck at nine figures. How do those people get to a billion dollars? How do those people. How does that other business that's like mine or those five other ones get to 100 million? I don't get it. I don't know where that's going to happen. I've got sales, I've got profit, but I can't get to that next step. You're going to have to have some sort of capital to do that. And if you don't have transferable value, then like I was talking about, even with credit, you won't be able to get the resources that you need to get unstuck.

So what, I'm going to pick up what Roland left off and we'll close with this. I want to submit to you that those of you who walked into this event believing that you have a sales and marketing problem, that that is the number one problem that you need to solve. We hear this time and time and time again. Again, scalable sister company is digital marketer. So people like, hey, can you help solve my marketing problem? Maybe. But what if that's not your real problem? I want to just give you some honest, sincere, but I recognize unsolicited feedback. What you are currently perceiving as a sales and marketing problem is very likely a transferable value problem. You are stuck. You are trapped. You don't feel scalable. And when that happens, we run out of ideas for sales. We lose momentum. This is when profit dries up. This is when sales culture flatlines. This is when things start to take a dip. So we're gonna start off by focusing on how do we get you off the ball, how do we make it to where you're not the dancing bear? Because I believe that once we build some systems around what you're doing, the sales are gonna take care of themselves. We see it time and time and time again. So what are we gonna be doing over the next three days? Very simply, the goal of this event is to take you on a little tour through all of the five exits. We're going to talk about next. What does it mean to take exit number two to have an operating system in place and become that true CEO. What does it mean to fully systemize a business? Roland is going to be doing a session on AI for entrepreneurs. Very tactical stuff. But if we're applying AI and technology without the operating systems, it's not going to be able to have the same umph. So we're going to talk about how do you systemize? We're also going to then shift into how do we scale? How do we begin to put operators in place so that these businesses can scale? How do we think about tax and those kind of things as well? And then on day three, we're going to talk about what does exit number four and exit number five look like? And we're going to end with what do you do with all this pesky money after you sell your business and what do you do then? How do you begin to think not like an entrepreneurial operator, but like an entrepreneurial investor? So that is the goal for the next three days. What I want you to be thinking about on break is what is your ideal exit and right now, what are you feeling like? Are you feeling like the hamster on the wheel, the toothless chihuahua or the dancing bear? Either way, we're going to get you off all those things. We're going to get you scalable, we're going to get you exitable. That is our goal. Thank you so much. Take a 15 minute break. We'll come right back. See you out there. Thanks everybody.

Hey, Roland Frazier here.

If you're looking for a way to.

Grow your business exponentially to get more customers and ultimately increase your wealth, there's no faster way to do it than to acquire other businesses that already have the customers, products, services, teams and media that you want. If you want to double your sales, just acquire a company that has the same sales as yours. It sounds simple, but far too many people end up starting new businesses and.

That fail and forget that they could.

Skip all the hard stuff and just acquire one that already exists. There's a reason why private equity firms, family offices, big companies like Apple, Google, and some of the smartest entrepreneurs on the planet do not start new businesses from scratch. They acquire already successful businesses and when they do it, they instantly increase their sales, their profits, their if they want market share, they increase that they can get new products and services to offer all instantly. Hey look, 90% of new businesses fail. 90%. Why not acquire an already successful business and increase your chances of success by 900%? What most people don't realize is you can acquire highly profitable businesses with no money out of your own pocket in pretty much any country in the world, regardless of your credit and without having to go find a bunch of investors or needing any experience. Look, I've been acquiring businesses for over 30 years now and I cover the whole process in my EPIC Investing Strategy training and I want to give it to you 100% free. Just visit businesslaunchpodcast.com epic to get your free access to my EPIC Investing training right now while it's available.

Ever wonder how some people build real wealth through acquisitions while others just sit on the sidelines? Well, I'm here to tell you it's not about luck. It's about having the right system, the.

Right deals and the right guidance.

And that's exactly what we give you in the EPIC Deal Fast Track. If you've been thinking about buying a business, but you keep getting stuck, whether it's finding the right deal, structuring the financing or negotiating with sellers, you are not alone. Too many people waste months, even years just thinking about acquiring a business while the real opportunities pass them by. The EPIC Deal Fast Track is not another course. It's actually an implementation program and it's designed to get you from the idea to the acquisition in just 16 weeks or less. We work with you one on one to help you find, fund and close your first or next deal. And once you do, we're going to plug you into our elite EPIC board community so that you can keep scaling through acquisitions. We install three powerful systems in your business. The first is the Deal Flow Engine.

So you always have high quality off.

Market deals coming to you. Number two, we give you our offer and funding system so that you can structure offers that get accepted and fund them creatively many times with no money out of your own pocket. And number three, our closing and integration system so that you don't just buy a business, you actually successfully run and scale it once you have acquired it. Plus you'll have direct one on one support from an EPIC Deal Advisor every step of the way. And that's people that have actually come up through this system and done these deals themselves. That's the only way to become an EPIC Deal Advisor. And if you're serious about acquiring a business this year, don't just sit on the sidelines. Just text I'm in to 334-458-9034 and we'll get you in. So text I'm in to 334. 4589034 will get you in. No fluff, no wasted time. Just real deal making from people that are actually out there doing deals right now. I'll see you there.