6 SIMPLE things Business Owners need to do to go from $1,000,000 to $10,000,000
In this instructional video, Shanli Liu, CPA, CTP shares six concrete leadership shifts that distinguish 7‑figure business owners from those who scale to 8‑figure revenues. Drawing from personal experience and observations of other CEOs, Liu argues that growth is less about doing more work and more about changing mindset and systems. The six shifts are: (1) actively solicit and act on employee feedback rather than assuming satisfaction; (2) recruit people who are smarter than the founder in their functional areas; (3) acknowledge knowledge gaps, stay curious, and be comfortable saying “I don’t know”; (4) move from hands‑on individual contributor tasks to building, hiring, delegating, and managing a leadership team; (5) recognize operations as a flexible, profit‑driving engine instead of a bureaucratic burden; and (6) transition from hiring out of desperation to hiring with logical, patient, and cultural fit criteria. Liu frames each shift with vivid analogies, contrasts 7‑figure versus 8‑figure behaviors, and emphasizes the need for flexibility and continuous personal evolution to reach higher revenue tiers.
Chapters
What is up? In this video today, what I want to talk about is the difference between a 7 and 8-figure leader. And this came from my Instagram. A few people asked me, you know, what's the difference between a leader at 7 figures versus 8 figures? Like, how do you get from 7 to 8 figures? And so I outlined 6 things that I think make the biggest difference in terms of like, if you're at 7 figures in terms of how you're doing annually as a business and you want to get to 8 figures, what you have to do as a leader to get there. And so I want to dissect those 6 things and explain what they look like when you're at 7 figures versus 8 8 figures. And guys, this just comes from my personal experience. So if you are at 7 or 8 or 9 figures and you feel differently, like, cool. But this is what I experienced and it's what I noticed to be the evolution of myself, as well as a lot of leaders that work in our companies. So the first is that when we were at 7 figures, something I didn't do was I didn't ask employees for feedback. And the reason I didn't ask for feedback, I didn't have formal mechanisms in place, is because I figured, well, I'm talking to them all the time because the team's not that big. And so like they have plenty of face time with me, they have plenty of time to give me feedback. Well, in order to become an 8-figure leader, in my opinion, you actually have to ask for feedback from your employees. In fact, you have to insist upon it. And the reason for that is because people can have all the time with you in the world, they're still not going to tell you how they feel about something or they're not going to give you, they're not going to tell you like all the bugs under the rocks unless you ask, right? It's kind of like when someone in a really immature relationship, like people in high school, right? It's like until somebody asks, like, hey, do you actually still wanna be dating me? The girl won't break up with the guy. She'll be like, no, no, no, we should keep dating. And then as soon as he asks, she's like, yeah, I've actually been thinking like maybe we shouldn't be dating, right? It's kind of like that. Like it's just like this assumed communication until somebody asks and it's like, boom, ball is dropped. And the reality is that's what a lot of 7-figure leaders do is they're the boyfriend that's not asking the questions. They're just assuming that the girlfriend is happy And that, well, we spend all this time together, she would definitely tell me if she wasn't. But in reality, that's not the case. It's actually the opposite, is that they will tell you when you ask direct questions and you don't let them off the hook. And that is what I've seen be a huge difference in terms of a 7-figure leader versus an 8-figure leader. 7-figure leader is very passive. They don't ask a ton of questions. They don't even ask for the feedback because I think they actually are almost nervous to receive it versus an 8-figure leader wants it. They're consistent. They're hungry for it. The second thing is that when you're a 7-figure leader, often you are the smartest person in the room. And so recently, we had a company that sent us over some diligence for— we were looking at, you know, acquiring a piece of it. And I looked at the whole team and all the qualifications and all the pay and all the background, everything. And I was like, I know why they're at 7 figures. Like, looking at this, the absolute smartest person on this entire team is the CEO. And they had a pretty sizable team, you know, I think they had 17 people, and they were doing 7 figures. But I knew that if they want to get to 8 figures, then that CEO has to seek out people who are smarter than him, right? And I think a lot of the times, especially when you're at 7 figures, the reason that you're not able to get to 8 is that you believe that you're irreplaceable. And you're like, well, I'm definitely the smartest person in this room. There's nobody better than me. I can't find anyone, etc. And I think that that's just often a limitation if you've not been exposed to bigger businesses before, or you don't have a family where people have done business, or you don't know a lot of people in business who are doing more than you. So then you have this limited thinking that tells you that you're irreplaceable and nobody else can do it like you, right? It's just because you don't have the vision to see. And so that's the second thing, that's the difference, is that in a 7-figure team, typically the CEO is the absolute smartest person in the room. 8-figure team, that CEO is recruiting people to be smarter than them in that specific area. I'm not saying that they should be able to run the company better than the CEO, but I'm saying that in their arena, they are smarter than the CEO. The third thing is that a very interesting character difference that I tend to notice in a 7-figure leader versus an 8-figure leader is that when someone's at 7 figures and they're running a company, um, and they don't know the answer to something, they seem to be very insecure. Okay, so oftentimes they're insecure because they feel like they should know all the answers, um, versus when you're at 8 figures, you can say, I don't know, and you could have confidence in your I don't know. And I know for me it was really hard because I felt like when I was a new leader and I had a company and people would ask me questions and I really didn't know the answer to them and I felt stupid, you know, like I just, like, it'd be like people with bigger businesses, vendors, lawyers, etc. They would ask me questions and I actually got this from my husband, which is he said something to the extent of, listen, I'm golden retriever level here, so you need to talk to me like a golden retriever level. I don't have the answers. And I remember hearing that and I used that on every phone call I had after that. And it almost felt like this permission to be like, I don't know, I'm new, I don't know. And I'm admitting that I don't know. And I think that that's a transition that has to be made because if you pretend like you know everything, then you never are going to acquire the knowledge to actually know everything because nobody's going to give you the answer because they're like, oh, well, you told me you knew. But somebody who's at 8 figures, they understand that curiosity is important. Saying what you don't know and what you're not good at is important, and that's the only way you're going to grow the company. The fourth thing is the difference between what you do at 7 figures and what you do at 8 figures. Okay? At 7 figures, if you were to look at my calendar, what I was doing was I was doing stuff all day. I was making portal videos. I was talking to clients. I was handling upset clients. I was looking at different billing schedules and what different billing cycles we should run. I was, you know, helping with customer flows. I was doing all that stuff versus at 8 figures, right? I was looking at assembling a team. I was looking at hiring. I was looking at firing. I was looking at delegating. I was looking at how well the management was performing. Okay. And so my, it was really interesting. I did a presentation and you have my calendar on each side and I showed people the difference in my calendar and it was like all doing all projects, all high-level individual work when I was at 7 figures. When I was at 8 figures, it was all assembling a team, hiring, firing, delegation, management. And so I think a lot of times people don't want to let go of that work because it feels really good, because we're really good at it. We're like, we really believe that that's what got us to the 7 figures. This is really hard to let go of it in order to get to 8, but it's also necessary. Like, until you let go of it, you're not going to get to that 8 figures. So you have to be able to— you have to step in that role. Otherwise you're abdicating your responsibility onto others, and they're not going to do as good of a job as you because you're the CEO. So that's the fourth one. Um, the fifth one is how a 7-figure leader views operations versus an 8-figure leader. And I think that I'm naturally more operationally minded, so I do believe there's an importance to operations. But I was also very lucky to have had a lot of mentors in the very beginning who explained the importance of it, um, because I did come from a sales background. And so a 7-figure leader often despises operations They don't like operations. They believe operations are bad. They're red tape, slow, et cetera, right? And they deprioritize them versus an 8-figure leader understands that operations are important and they are actually there to make the business run smoother, better, faster, more efficiently, and more profitably. And so I think that actually it's almost a discrepancy in knowledge because the person that's at 7 figures doesn't understand what operations is really supposed to look like. So they might not be able to hire the right person because the wrong person is going to come in and put a ton of infrastructure in place that takes a ton of resources, a ton of time, and it's going to distract the entire team from revenue-producing activities. Versus the right person is going to come in, they're going to say, these are the few things that we're going to do. We're going to work around sales and marketing and we're going to put these things into place so that the business runs smoother, we can support the customers, we can deliver a better experience, and we can be more profitable. So I like to think of it like very rigid systems versus flexible systems. And a person that's an 8-figure leader understands that you need to have flexible systems in place in order to have the business grow without chaos. Okay, 7-figure leaders, what I notice often is they talk about how they don't want to hire an operations manager, they don't want to hire anyone in HR, IT, finance, ops, whatever, right? They're like, oh, they're going to slow us down, they don't— they're no fun, etc., etc. Right? It's just a very immature way of looking at the business. Whereas in reality, you probably have hired the wrong people in the past, or maybe you just don't know what excellence looks like in terms of operations, finance, IT, HR. And so you have to get the right people on the bus, and the right people aren't going to impede the business, they're going to make it better. And then the last thing, um, is how you hire differently at 7 figures versus 8 figures. So I can see for myself for sure, 7 figures, I hired out of desperation. Like, And I, you know, I don't regret it because I can teach everyone today and I'm very cognizant of it now. So I've mastered it, but it was painful. You know, I hired people just like, who will work for us? Like you responded to an ad, you can type and talk, work for me. You know, like I was like, anybody, I don't care, raise your hand. Because I was just so desperate to have people work for us and I had so much pain around not having enough people on the team. Versus when you get to 8 figures, what I realized that you have to hire from a place of logic. And calm and patience, right? You have to make sure that the strengths of that person fit the strengths of the role. You have to understand if that person fits culturally. You have to understand if they have competency in the skillset that you need, if they can be there in 12 months. And so it comes much more from a place of contentment in terms of how you hire versus a place of desperation and lack in terms of how you hire. So 6 things that take you from 7 to 8 figures, right? First one is you want to go from not asking for feedback and just assuming to asking for feedback from your employees. The second one is you want to go from being the smartest person on your team to having people who are smarter than you in their areas of expertise on the team. The third one is that you go from feeling insecure about not knowing things in your business and pretending like you do to asking questions and being okay with the fact that you don't know things so that you can learn and explore and grow. The fourth is you focus on doing things to assembling a team. The fifth is that you go from believing operations are a waste of time and they are rigid to understanding that they are a necessary part of business and should be flexible. And then the last one is going from hiring out of desperation to hiring out of logic and a place of contentness. And so those are what I believe were the biggest switches that I made to go from leading the organization at 7 figures to 8 figures and to allow me to not want to rip my hair out. I think a lot of it comes from being able to be flexible with your personality, being able to be a flexible person. If you're set in your ways and you believe that everything that you're doing now is right, then you're never going to get to 8 or 9 or 10 figures because it all is going to look different at 8 or 9 or 10 figures. And so I hope that that was useful for you. Um, I know that for myself, I can talk about, uh, also what you can do differently from 8 to 9 figures, but I think it just kind of follows the same path if you notice, which is the trend of doing less, managing and coaching more, more CEO-related activities, less expertise-related activities, moving again away from being a really high-level individual contributor to a great manager and a great coach, and then also placing way more importance over who is on the team. So I hope that was useful. I hope that gives you some clarity into how to get from 7 to 8 figures as a leader, and I will see you on the next one.
