The DIFFERENCE between 7 FIGURE and 8 FIGURE CEOs..

What I want to talk about in this video is the difference between a 7-figure and 8 versus 9-figure CEO. And this came about from a question that somebody asked me at dinner the other night. He was saying, you know, what do you think is it like, what do I need? What am I missing to get to the next level? And right now I think that he's at, you know, multiple 7 figures and almost into the 8, but having a hard time and is really stuck right now. At that like $7 million mark. This is something that I sat and I thought for like probably 3 minutes before I could answer the question. And I felt like it would be really valuable to share because it just comes from my experience. Um, in looking back to say like, what was the difference between me as a 7-figure CEO versus me now as an 8/9-figure CEO, right? Depending on the company. So this is what I would say. I wanna start with a premise, which is that most people, when you're starting off, are still engulfed in this illusion that business is amazing. And that for some, somehow that your business is going to be perfect, should be perfect, should have no problems. And the question I would ask you is, does anything in life come without problems? No. Yet for some reason, and probably because of social media and all of that, people think that their business is broken because they have problems and because 50% of business is pretty much problems. And so they assume that their business sucks. And the reality is, is that that is just not the case. That's just how life is, right? And so I think that that's the first thing I want to start with is I think that when you're at 7 figures, one thing that prevents you from getting any higher is that you consider things to be problems that are simply not, right? They're actually just facts of business. And this is a pattern that you see with people in other areas of life as well. I'll give you an example. So say that you're trying to lose weight and you know nothing about losing weight. And so you're like, "I don't know how much weight I should be losing each month." And you're losing 3 pounds per month and you're like, "This just isn't fast enough. I'm doing something wrong. Is it my eating? Is it my exercise? Am I not getting enough rest? What's going on? Why am I not losing more?" While if, say, myself comes in, somebody who understands weight loss and nutrition, and I'm like, 3 pounds a month is great. Like, there's no problem here. Like, this is exactly what should be happening. And it's so funny because you see this in business too. It's that people spend all this time trying to fix something that isn't broken, but in their mind it is broken because they don't have the perspective to judge and to understand that it is just something that comes with the job. It comes with the business. It comes with having one. And so that's the first thing I would say is that that's the biggest difference between being at like a 7-figure or an 8, 9-figure business is that it's where you spend your time on these problems. Because if you believe that these things are problems, then where does most of your time go? Probably trying to solve these things that are just actually not able to be solved, right? And so they're not even problems, therefore they're not to be solved. They're dichotomies that are to be managed. Okay? You can manage this. So an example would be, say you have a— we'll use the example of a gym, right? Say you have a big box gym. If you have a big box gym and it's $10 per month to join, say it's like Planet Fitness, would it be reasonable to say that they would have higher churn because of the low barrier to entry? I would say yes. However, I have seen many people who have big box gyms that are really cheap to get into and then they have churn that's maybe like 12 or 15% month over month and they're like, I just don't know how to fix the churn. I just don't know how to fix the churn, etc., etc. And the reality is, is that the churn is part of, like, you cannot have lower churn without lower upside, right? You would have to raise the price probably and increase the barrier to entry to lower the churn, which then means that there's no point in doing the method that you have in the first place, right? And so this is what I see in a ton of people in business is that you are constantly looking at things that you consider to be problems that are actually not. And that is why you stay stuck at 7 figures is because you spend all your time doing it And that's why most people are so busy, right? I know that was for myself. Like, I was so busy solving problems that didn't actually matter. Like, they weren't even problems. I can't even count the amount of times I, like, called people in on meetings at, like, 7 PM or 6 PM or 8 PM at night to talk about things that just didn't matter at all. Like, and I can prove that they don't matter because I don't remember them today. I just remember that I was being a frenetic— like, I had so much frenetic energy around these things because I didn't know. And so I would say that if you look at the difference between 7-figure and 8-figure, 9-figure entrepreneur or CEO, that's the biggest one. It's just, what do you consider a problem? Now, if you're saying, okay, well, I get that. That's a 7-figure CEO, right? That's what they consider problems. It's pretty much everything that doesn't go perfectly because they just don't know any better. Like you've never done it before. You don't know what it's supposed to look like. And all you see on social media is everyone doing things perfectly and it looks amazing, which is bullshit. And so you just assume that's what's supposed to be and that if you do have problems, that you're doing something wrong. And because of that, you also don't want to grow your business because you're like, oh, it's broken. It's just, it's just this vicious cycle. And so what do you do when you're at, you know, 8 or 9 figures? It's different. Is you're very selective about the problems that you solve and you're also very particular in what you call a problem, right? Is it— and this is how I think of it now, right? I'm like, one, is it just a fact of business? Right? I like to say, is this the downside of my upside? And what I mean by that is like every business has their strategy that gets them off the ground and gets them started and is what creates all the momentum. And that every strategy, every upside, what I call it, has a downside, which is like the consequence of that. And so one, is this just the downside of my upside that I just need to accept and maybe just mitigate the best I can, right? The second piece of this is I think to myself, Okay. Say it's not the downside to my upside. It's, it's more than that, right? Is it consequential or inconsequential? Meaning how much will this actually affect the business or the team or the customers, right? Like, is it going to have a large consequence or a small consequence? If the consequence is small, I'm not going to solve that problem. I'm not going to make that decision. I can delegate it to somebody else. Now, if it is consequential and it's large, then I would say, okay, that probably makes sense that I'm involved. But wait, is it reversible or irreversible? And so that's the biggest one I ask myself. Um, and what I want to spend my time on now, and what I would say for you, if you're trying to get to an 8-figure, 9-figure rate, is you should focus on solving these problems are the ones that are consequential and irreversible. Okay. And so you look at like something like changing the price on all of your customers. That is an irreversible decision for the most part. Like, I mean, you could reverse it back, but that would be a bloodbath. So I wouldn't ever suggest to do that. Something else would be like launching a completely new product line. That is also very hard to reverse. And you can also beg to say like everything except for death is reversible, but you get what I'm saying, it'd just be extremely difficult. And so those kinds of things, I think, okay, I want to be involved in those decisions, right? So it's consequential and it's irreversible. But here's what I would say to start with thinking when you are making those decisions is rather than making the decision, thinking to yourself, how can I test this out before I even commit to the decision? Right? So if you're trying to make a decision on something that is consequential and irreversible, I would think to myself, okay, well, how can I make it so it is reversible and it's not that consequential? And this is where, like, in our company since day one, we've run beta tests, which is like, we're not going to launch a new product line. We're not going to start doing running traffic on a new platform or anything until we've done a small test. And so that usually means, you know, bringing in like a couple of people from each team. There's this little like squad of like 3 or 4 people. And they're testing out this new thing. And then we can decide from there and make a more informed decision to figure out, you know, is this going to work or not? And so then it actually makes the decision less risky. And, you know, it's funny because if you play it like that, there's not a ton of things that you need to be involved in in decision making if you are able to slow yourself down and test things and, you know, survey customers and survey employees and gather information first. Because the more information you have and the more you understand about a problem or a situation, the less risky it becomes. So to recap that, if you're at 7 figures, the biggest issue that I see, um, from knowing myself and seeing other people do it is that you're just trying to solve problems that aren't problems. They're just facts of business. They're just dichotomies that need to be managed. They're not problems to be fixed. And you're spending all this time doing that when you could be spending it doing so many more productive things like growing your business and moving the team forward. And then the second piece to that is understanding that if you're at the 8 or 9 figures or you're trying to get there, that you have to be very selective about the problems that you're solving and where you put your time into. And so remember, you want to be solving problems or making decisions on things that are consequential and irreversible. So if you found this video useful, go ahead, hit subscribe, and I will see you on the next one.