How To Stop Solving Problems That Do Not Exist | Ep 956

I've been in business for 14 years. I've scaled six brick and mortar gyms. I did 30 plus gym turnarounds across the country and built service companies to over $30 million a year. Today, our portfolio at acquisition.com is over 250 million annually. And so in this video, I'm answering your questions about how to scale your service business. And for all these questions, I try to make my answers as tactical as humanly possible so that you watching from home can immediately use them. Enjoy. I am a chiropractor. We do right around 2.4, been stuck there for five years. I'd like to get to 3.6. Stuck or growing over five years. We've been at 2.4, five years. And so I don't know what's stopping us. I'd like to get out of this swamp. And then profit margins. You're at 30% right? Yes sir. Yeah, okay. I'm missing 600,000 as a profit number. That's still accurate. So you have 600,000 profit. You have a partner. You're 100%. 100%. Okay. Well, what do you want to do? What do you want to happen? Do you want to do? Do you want to go to many locations? No, I want to grow a main big location. And you know, creative space for family to eventually grow in there. If they don't want to do that, then that would probably change my goal to be an exit standpoint. Which your square footage? Right now we have 7700 square feet. Okay. So decently large. Yeah, we occupy about 4700 of it. Okay. Got it. And so are you a capacity within the space right now? No. We used to have a supply issue till about two weeks ago. And then we hired another doctor. So now it's become a demand issue. That's what we're right now. So how do you get customers now? We are highest as referral. Then we get about the next high to be paid ads through Facebook. What percentage are ads? Probably about 20% from ads. About half is from referrals. Another 20% is from Google. Okay. So you separate med ads from Google ads when you talk about ads. Yep. Okay. Got it. We don't actually currently do Google ads, but that's where they said they came from. I heard. Got it. Which I would probably see as word of mouth. Like I Googled you or Google somebody here. It's probably S.E.O. something like that. But. Okay. Okay. So two and a half million. Like what stops you from just spending more money on med ads? Trust that we're doing it right. I mean, I just want to make more money than you put in. Yeah. Well, so you might have one of these guys, which is that we need we need attribution tracking so that you can know if you're putting a dollar and getting $5 or $10 or $20 back out. We have no clue. But as soon as we have the attribution tracking because fundamentally what what you lack right now is an input output equation for the business to grow. And so every business needs to know what are the core actions that I do that increase how much money I make. And if you can't define that for the business, then for sure is shit your employees don't know what it is. If you don't know what it is right. And so for you, if you are not supply constrained in your to bank and train that means lead generation is the issue lead generations. The issue what's the activity the activities can either be I'm going to be making content. I'm going to be getting affiliates that are going to be promoting my shit for me. I'm going to be running paid ads right. There's going to be kind of like the bigger buckets that you're going to be going into and then you got people to do those things on your behalf. And so right now do you make content. Yes, sir. Okay. What percentage comes from that. We just started it about two months ago. How much do you do. We're not going to tell you to do more. I'm just curious. We do four videos that gets created into short and long per week. Four videos for the month. And I got. Don't yeah. Okay, got it. Okay. So you've got four longs and you chop this into little shorts and things like that. Okay. Got it. All right. So short term long term short term we got to get the data tracking in place. Second step is going to be putting the add the ads funnel in place and kind of like what the sales motion is behind that for local. The good news is that it's easy to do because there's already so much trust locally that you don't need to have nearly the complexity of kind of like the funnels and indoctrination and education prior to someone making a purchasing decision. You can pretty much just like one call closed to two conversation close anybody even at very high ticket numbers, which is one of the benefits of local downside of locals that you've got a market that's this big. That's the downside. Right. So if you don't want to expand markets, then you need to dominate the market you're in. And so it's going to be a multi prong approach. And it's kind of like I was saying earlier, like we're going to start with ads because that'll just get you more in because I'm guessing right now if you have a good reputation and good brand, then the ads will actually help you more than they would help somebody who doesn't have that footprint. But then we're going to start probably layering in the the content as the second kind of the well that needs to continue to get dug again. This is going to be long term. And so you're going to want to be a thought later and then what happens is that if you can if you can succeed at building the brand long term and it sounds like you're more long term guys. I will speak in these terms. What happens is your radius actually continues to expand. And so if you take into the natural extreme, you can go to the Aiman Clinic in New York because they have a national reputation. But people fly there. And so that's how that's what it looks like as you continue to expand the brand because people just be more willing to travel to you and pay premium prices, which I'm sure if we looked at the prices probably get to eat too. But like this. There's some things and if you're in the swamp cash flow is actually the biggest thing that you need. And so again, the pricing and packaging is probably like again, if I was the order of operations pricing and packaging will probably be number one. So we could free up cash flow, the free to cash flow, we then funnel into the ad so we could get date well data attribution. Then we put the ads in place start flowing putting flow through there. And then the baseline that happens after that is we're just going to increase the cadence on the on the content that demonstrates thought leadership leadership. That's the path. That makes sense. Thank you. How do you where we're having trouble also hiring good high quality doctors in Wyoming? It's actually letters up to the first problem cash flow. We need to fix the pricing so that we can generate more cash flow so that we can pay doctor so that we can actually get the business to not rely on you as much. So real quick, if you were a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. My team and I put together the $100 million scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies have had. And where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it in these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at no matter what you're struggling with. Someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information. And if you want us to actually help you de-contrain the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out on the thank you page. You can just book a call with my team. And we will look into business, see if we can help. And if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live. I sell basically complete digital marketing services to service-based businesses in Australia. I move like cleaning companies, stuff like that. Cleaning or yard work. Average revenue. And average revenue per company is anywhere between half a million to 2.5. Tough. And I move on to the ones I sell. I pivoted the company's gone from zero to five hundred can last four months. I pivoted from fitness. It just happened. So it worked out well. So they've all been wound down getting other people operate. I'd like to ideally get to eight figures in terms of what's stopping me. I spent the whole 28 hours going through every framework. I could figure out what was wrong. I just want to figure out. Can I tell you what it is? Good. I also want to figure out where would be besides like getting operations and moving out to have a people and making sure I'm not involved in delivery. Where would be the best use of time? You'll get three, tenels suck. Yeah. That's going to happen. Yeah. So your four months in, so your it's brand new is very new and you haven't seen all the shit that's about to happen. So what's going to happen is because you're because you're servicing SMBs. Yep. Their volatility will translate over to your volatility. And independent of how well you do, they will start turning. And you have probably mastered the sales function, which is why you're growing quickly. Yeah. But you also will have like, Kack will never be cheaper than it is today. Yeah. Kack will always go up. And churn is going to start eating into the business because SMB suck. And so what's going to happen is that your margins will continue to compress and compress and compress and you have to spend more and more. Kack will go up. You have to hire more people because of churn. That's what you're going to think you're going to have to do in order to fix the churn. But it's not, but whatever, let's go to it. And so you're going to keep going, keep going, keep going. And so we're going to keep going up at the margin, get small and small and small and eventually just like I feel like I'm running a nonprofit. And I have to just keep selling stuff and I don't even feel confident about it because I got all these people complaining. But it's really because they are the business owners who suck and then you think maybe I should take more responsibility for the business owners. I'm going to start maybe doing some sort of sales motions, some sort of nurture motion because they suck at sales. They don't know to run their business and that's why they can't market with me. But I'm going to do this because I want to take a responsibility of this and all of that is just wrong. And so if you want to get to $3 million a year, you can just do what you're currently doing. You'll do some more and LTV will probably be what's your price point? $450 a week. A week. Okay, so you're 2k a month ish. So you're right in the sweet spot of churn. Like that, like if you like 1500 to 3k a month for an SMB, average tick is going to be 4 to 6 months. And so you can back nap back of napkin. How many you selling a month right now? I'm selling about 10 a month at a moment. Cool. So if you're selling 10 per month, right? And you said 2k was your price point, right? So let's say that we have 5 turns on average, 10k, right? And 10 per month. Yeah, right. So you're going to get to 100k ish per month and then you will stop. And so at that point, you'll either have to increase units sold or increase LTV. And then you'll keep thinking, man, if I could just get this to go up, it would be amazing, but you won't be able to. Yeah, so the only way to really make SMB work is to go the opposite end is to go super, super cheap. Yeah. And then build some that cost you nothing. So it's like $400 a month or less for an SMB if it's a nuisance style. I'll give you some examples. If you were like, I can get you ranked on first three of maps in your local area, and I charge $400, $500 a month, they'll do it 'cause they can see it, and they'll pay for that. Review management and SEO stuff, they will pay $300 to $400 a month, and they will stick on that. You'll get like 30 to 40 month stick rates on that, but you'll close way more sales velocity. So, LTV is actually similar to this, but CAC stays super low as a result. But, I know you've got a fitness, which you probably got out 'cause it was terrible and hard. You might need to just go and get to there, and then you'll feel good about things. Like, you might need to walk this path rather than believe me, but that's probably what's going to happen. So, what do you want to have happen? - Not have to walk the path in the first place. - Okay. (laughs) - Get the lesson out. - So, this is like, this is me just being real. Like, marketing, there's, I mean, obviously a lot of marketers follow my stuff, and so I get a disproportionate on marketing agencies, and I've seen every model under the sun. SMBs suck as customers. And so, you have to do this, one or the other. You have to go out market, you have to go down market. And you guys are really cheap, and it's something that's super automated. Or you do truly do more of these high-tech services, but you do with a business that actually knows their metrics, actually has a sales process, already has a proven model. Rather than all of them just wanting to change their stuff all the time, not knowing what they're doing to begin with, 'cause they're expecting you to figure out something that they haven't figured out themselves. So, like, your price either goes up, then you serve a higher level avatar, or it goes down, and you serve the one you are now, but you make sure that your delivery is almost nothing. Yeah. And then it becomes a CAC issue, because you have to offset CAC, and so then become big headlong tail, one time set up into very small, recurring monthly high-grace margin. And those are the two models that work for you to do. So, I drop low, go high. And in the middle, it's just a dead zone. Where everyone does. Cool. Makes sense, thank you. We do, we're a WAAS, so a website has a service based company. So, we build websites, do digital marketing services, that kind of stuff. We cater to small, medium businesses, small businesses. Average revenue per customer is 450 bucks a month. Okay. Subscription-based company. And we're at 20 million bucks in revenue. And notice, example, right price. Really small? You price it super low, it works. Correct, go ahead. And we want to get to 80 million bucks in revenue in about three years. Okay. So, the question we're asking ourselves is, we're in an industry where AI is very disruptive. Every day that goes by, you know, it's constantly degrading and decaying our product. And at the same time, we have kind of this one channel risk that we're living with. All of our sales, 100% of our growth, has been done through outbound cold calling. Love it. Yeah, it's great. But again, cold calling is becoming harder and harder in the industry is decaying. So, we're constantly trying to figure out- Because the industry is decaying. What do you mean by that churn is going up? Churn is slightly ticking up, but at the end of the day, you know, AI is making it easier and easier for our customers to be able to build their own websites. Oh, yeah, I know. With the type of customer we deal with, they're not usually super sophisticated. So, we do have time- We just found out about Chad Jibboda. So, yeah, exactly. So, we have time, but- Some of you guys still facts, so I think you got time. Yeah. But this is the question, right? So, do we double down on marketing and create like an inbound channel and really invest hard into that? Or do we try to innovate on the product and figure out what else they need and like build a revenue engine? Right now, we're kind of- We're trying to do both, but it's obviously limiting. So, this is really, really good. I love that you ask this. So, I wanted this long rant the other day about this particular topic, which is solving problems that don't exist. Okay. So, because like you have a narrative, you have a story around AI is decaying the business. But all I hear is that you have customers and your job just got way easier. That's fine. (laughing) So, you know what I mean? If you were like, our turn is escalating by 10% per month. I'd be like, we have a problem. We need to change something. But if it's not really showing up in any meaningful way in terms of the business itself, I think there's plenty of people who will just be super laggards on this and are not gonna be replet vibe coding. They never bought your shit to begin with. Yeah. Like the person who is super into AI right now wasn't high and vast anyways. They built their own website. Before AI made it quote easy. (laughing) Like it, because I mean to be fair, website building software, not that complicated. So, you said there's two paths. So, one is, you know, change the product around. My opinion, I wouldn't, that's probably wouldn't be where I'm focused. Unless I had some business metric that was way off that I'm not seeing. I would be doubling down on the acquisitions out. What's your number of months average thick? - So it's 29 months. - Yeah, yeah. - No, that's the game. It's usually, yeah, it's 30 to 40. That's the highest I've seen was 38 for this type of business. So, like you're right, you're right in the sweet spot there. You're a little higher price. I think they were $2.99. It's like, it all works out in the same, you know, same time. So, yeah, I think you just doubled down on inbound. So, paid ads. - Payed ads out. - Yeah, and I would just say if you get them to pre-pay for the quarters, you can offset CAC. - Okay, on that subject, if you don't mind, in terms of pre-paying for the quarter, you know, again, our customers are pretty price sensitive. There's people that are cheaper than us. Obviously, have you seen before? My fear is the amount of churn that will generate some, you know, we build 90% of our customers on credit cards. And we hold on to 10% that pays through like pad and through checks and that kind of shit, it's awful. But, you know, we're going to experience churn if we're like, hey, you need to, you know, pre-pay us upfront, you'd still-- - We were churned just close fewer. But-- - Close fewer, absolutely. And I think customers that are with us would leave us. - Why would the people who are with you leave you for how you treat new customers? - Sorry. - People that are with us would leave us. - I don't think you change your billing process for existing customers. - Gotcha. - I'm saying if you're doubling down on inbound, what will go up is CAC, because you'll have media spend in addition to the sales commission. And so to offset that from a cash, or how cashful positive are you right now? - So we did 3.6 in EBITDA last year. - Generally interesting. - That's low-ish. - That's low-ish. - Yeah, I'm crazy people. - We're heavy on people. - Dude, AI. - I know. - I know. Big thing. - I know. - It's like you're worried about them doing it. You're not even doing it. - Right. (laughing) - Right, yeah. - So like, okay, so this is what I would actually do. I would probably spend the next six months reorganizing the workflow, probably reduce headcount by 50%, using AI workflows in order to actually do the same thing, increase the margin from 3.6 to like seven, or more, with the added cashflow, you wouldn't have to change the price on the front end. You'd be willing to go negative for a quarter in the acquisition, knowing you're gonna get 29 on the back. That's how I'd actually fix it. - Okay, make sense. - Joe, right? - Cool. - Nice one. - I sell CFO advisory. We will do probably about 2.9 this year. - Amazing. - I would love to be like 20 million. - Okay. - But what's stopping me? I have, we've made all this stuff. I have two books. I have FireMyCPA, I have TaxFremillionaire. I've made all these courses. I don't know what to do with them. I don't know how to market. I don't know how to advertise. I've never done any of this. - We're doing 3 million a year. - All organic. - Yeah, I mean, you're obviously not marketing shitty. So you've got all this stuff, right? You got these books, you got these courses. You make content? - Yes. - Okay, so you are marketing. - Well, I've never put them out there. Like I don't know what to do with it. - Wait, hmm? Okay, hold on. So you've got all this stuff in your back pocket. So you've got TaxFremillionaire, BookAndorCourse. You've got FireCPA, BookAndorCourse. And you make content about tax accounting shit. - Yep. - And so people come in and buy your tax accounting shit, right? And you're trying to get to 20? - Yeah. - Do people turn out? - Well, I've never tried to sell anybody on the stuff that I've made. - Well, but we don't need to, like, forget, let's erase those for a moment. Those are not real things for our conversation. - Right. - If you didn't have those things, what would you do to grow the business? - People call our office and they come in and I sell them for monthly service. And I get referrals for companies. - In person? - In person or virtual. - Okay, but you're local? - I'm local. We have a bricks and mortar. I have a billboard. But most, I do, yeah. But most of our clients are not in Texas. - Okay, hurt. - Yeah. - Okay, so they're coming from the content that they call up, you guys sell them. - Referrals, yeah. - Okay, got it. - And what are you growing at, annually? - What am I what? - Growing at, annually. - Last year I was 2.2. - Okay, it's great. - So. - Yeah, super good. So whatever, 30, 35% annual growth, that's awesome. Okay, so you want to get to 20, and I'm guessing you just don't want to wait like seven years to get to 20 at that compound rate. - Yeah. - Right? So as long as you're keeping customers, when I said do they churn, that's what I meant. Like are they stay, do people stay with you? - The people that are on monthly stay a lot more than the people that come in just for a one time tax plan. - What's the, this will be fun for you. - Okay. - So what's the, I'll give you like some business accounting. What sales velocity right now? - I don't know what, what. - How many units a month do you sell? - On the monthly recurring? - Yeah. - There's probably about 190 clients. - No, how many do you sell every month? - Oh, new ones? We're, we've closed down for new sales 'cause I'm trying to figure everything out. So nothing right now, nothing. - Well, that will not grow the business, that for sure. - Yeah. (laughing) - There's my, yeah, I'll be here all day guys. - Yeah. (audience laughs) Okay, so, so you have a goose egg there, okay. But okay, you have this other stuff. Why do we care? - Well, that's what I wanna do. Like I like the products. I like to educate, I like to be in front of the camera. Like I wanna do all that. - Okay. Well, what's wrong with the business that you decided to stop selling stuff for? - It's fucking hard, that's why. - Oh, it's gonna be good for me. - It's, no, like to fulfill on it. - Yeah, okay. - You could always just start a business where you sell everybody else stuff. - I'm willing to get my joke, you missed it. Okay. - And when I'm trying to get to now, like AI, which you were saying is gonna completely obliterate our industry, which I'm really excited about. - Yes. - Because I wanna dive into it. I wanna leverage AI tools. And even overseas partners doing low-level stuff. - Okay. - Because people in our industry are really slow and outdated. - Okay. - Yeah. - But all of these are not things that you would solve with marketing. You're a supply constraint, and so you're like, how do I market more? Like you can't even take people. - Well, I wanna market like for courses and to buy my books and things like that. - You have a valuable business right now. - No, I do. - Yeah. - No, why would we start another business that's not so difficult? - That's what dad told me. But I wanna do that too. (laughing) - Yeah, I mean, like I make the content, I continue to repeat, and I get my memes made of me of like Alex just gonna say, it's just hard and hard things are hard and hard hard. And it's because it just never stops being hard. It just always sucks. Like the course thing will suck too. You just don't know it yet. Ask the course people, they'll tell you it sucks. - That's great advice. - Right? They're like it sucks. Yeah. The customers aren't sticky, they'll expect you to do everything. They're like, I'm not a tax-free millionaire already. And I bought your $17 course, like fuck you. You know, like that's what's gonna happen. But you have a service that people aren't turning out of. I'm guessing. - Yeah, they're not. - Yeah, I mean, some, but they're pretty sticky. - Yeah, no one who has bad churn stop selling. I'll say that. So like the fact that you're comfortable enough, that you're like, oh, we don't need to take customers for a while, like I'm sure your stuff is better than you think. But I think that we have to think, basically, you're a supply constraint. And so we just need to fix the supply and turn to your business. Because if I said, hey, we found a way, what are your margins right now? - About 20, 25%. - Okay. So if we said, okay, let's see if we can find off-shore talent that can give your existing team two or three X leverage. So you don't have to increase internal head count. You can increase external head count. And then when AI comes in, you can basically wipe those guys off the map and then find, right? So it's like, yeah, they don't have jobs or families. They're overseas, they're not real. I'm kidding. So I know half of you guys are overseas, that was a joke. But yeah, so I think that we need to create operating leverage. We have to look at basically how the service are being delivered so that we can figure out how to get each person to a three more X in terms of their ability to deal with customers. Probably there's a little bit of tech that's missing because this is for everybody. Everybody, every entrepreneur talks you, it's like, I wanna be AI first, right? And then you're like using Jeff G.P. for emails. Like, that's not how you're AI first. The first thing that you have to do in order to have an AI first company is you have to be a data first company. Because AI works with data. If you don't have data, then there's no fucking AI. So you have to have complete data first from your approach and have an architecture in place so that you know all the elements of the business from data. And then we can put the AI layer on top to put reinforcement training in place in order to actually train it to do stuff. So if that's where you wanna go, which does have tremendous operating leverage and like just for everybody, this is the once in a generation move right now. So 25 years ago, Cloud Computing came out and then software went from CDs to Cloud and then all of the software companies and all that boom was the last 25 years and all the billionaires were made. The next boom is this, right? And so we're early and so the hard of this is like, well, the pieces don't all fit together perfectly yet and it's like, well, that's the figure out that we make lots of money from, right? So I don't think the solution is you selling a course 'cause you just happened to have recorded it. I think that we need to fix the supply constraint first and you'll use all those things as marketing assets to increase demand when the time comes. So save those in your back pocket. There's nothing wrong with them. But I wanna look at the model, increase operating leverage that'll probably also increase margin, start making this number more than zero, which I promise you can dig this to the bank if you make that not zero, you will grow faster. It will make more money if you sell people. And then I think from there. So it's like increase operating leverage through off-shoring, add in data layer. Once the data layer is there, then we can add in the AI component that further increases operating leverage. Once you put the remote team in, you'll then be able to sell again. - Turn it off. - If you get to the point where you're like, I've now reached my new two or three X capacity without even marketing, then great. If you do need to market more, then use the asset setting in your back pocket to go do more to lead, Jen. I was like four or five steps, but that's how I think through it. - Thank you. - Real quick, I'm gonna show you the exact 10 stage roadmap from zero to a hundred million plus that less than one percent of companies finish I've now done multiple times. And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business, what the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it? And then what steps we actually took to graduate? And we've done this across software, physical products, service businesses, brick and mortar, all of this, and it works. And it's my gift to you, it's aptly free. And so the links in the description, but you just go acquisition.com/roadmap, just enter your info and it'll spit it right back to you, all free. - I sell roofing and exterior remodeling. - Sweet. - We do close to six million this year. - Amazing. - I would like to be at 100 million. - Okay. - So what's stopping me, and I'll be a little bit vulnerable? I would say it's comfort, distractions, and fear. - And food? - Fear. - Oh, sorry, I was like, all right, good to know. - No, no food. - Sometimes I feel that way too. - So the comfort is I have built the business, I've replaced myself in every aspect. I can work two to three hours a week and it run fine. - Okay. - Fear, I would say, the fear of losing family time, the work life balance. - Sure. - And the distractions are, my other, I've got another business, drunk removal business. I've got real estate, I've got, just all kinds of little things. - What do you think you should do that you're not doing that you want me to tell you to do? (audience laughs) - So, I know I need to go all in again. - Okay. - I've been working for the first five years that I, - And that worked out. - And it worked out great. With through COVID, I got, you know, kept the business going really well and I worked myself out of the job, got comfortable. - Okay. - So, I don't know what I'm looking for you to tell me to do. - Well, I'll say this differently. I think regrets come when we imagine the upside that we don't have without taking into account the cost that we didn't suffer. And so, - Sure. - I think we regret when we imagine the upside that we didn't get without also considering the downside that we didn't suffer to get it. And so, I think that's where a lot of regret comes from 'cause it's not real. So, it's like maybe there's some girl that got away or some business opportunity that got away and we just imagine this amazing thing, but not the trade off that we would have to do in order to get it. We just imagine the upside without downside. And so, I would say a couple things. So, one is, I think that there are trade-offs that we always have to make and I don't think they're right or wrong. I think they're preference. There's no right answer to how much work life balance you want to have. It's right for you. And so, said differently, if I like cookies and I'm good with that and I also want a six pack, I just prefer cookies to a six pack. It's just that's the trade and I think the dissatisfaction comes from wanting both. Right. Right. And so, either want less or trade more. Okay. And I think that's really what it comes down to. In terms of like, is there a path where I can work no more than I currently am to go from six to 100? There probably is. It depends on how much you're willing to pay other people. And so, you might have to take a short term hit in terms of profitability to bring in the level of talent that you want to expand the business on your behalf to where you want it to go. And so, as long as you were the type of person character wise that they would want to follow and believe in your vision and you can make your vision big enough that they think that their aspirations can fit within it, you can get that type of person. But like, it's 100% like you're graduating right now into the who game. But there's levels of who's. You know, like I remember the first time I hired a 50,000-dollar employee and I was like, this is shit, this is what I'm talking about. You know what I mean? I went for minimum wage labor to 50,000, like this, they can read, they can write, like let's go. And then I hired my first six figure employee and I was like, oh, what was I talking about? Like this is what's going on. And then I hired my first 250, first 500, first million, first multi-million dollar per year employee and it's just levels. And so, Sharan, who's our president, said this to me years ago, but I always remember he said the best talent's always in the future. So what do we have today? The best people are always ahead of you, not behind you. And so, I think for you, if you really do want to accomplish it without making the trade, you will make a trade 'cause if you change nothing, nothing will change, right? So we have to change some component of your life. And so the question is, which thing do you value the least? Do you value having more profit or more time with your family in the short term? In the long term, you can make it up. You won't make up family time in the long term. You can make the profit up in the long term. Right. So if you're willing to give up short term profit, you can bring in high-level talent and then they can lead the growth. In terms of the fear stuff, I mean, I would just say, just hold the line. If you're afraid of losing time with the family, it's just don't. I put it in, and then in terms of the real estate thing, I see real estate 'cause I know about your entrepreneurs, I've a ton of real estate. I don't, as long as you're not actively running it, that's one of the fan of reats and funds, because if you have good partners in that stuff, they can just run it, you can make better than the market, and then, but it doesn't change anything about what I do. Like me putting in the S&P or me buying another big building changes nothing about my life. And so it's not a distraction, unless you're like, you know, if we could add a gazebo, and what if we added a different roof, 'cause I'm a roofer, and what if I combine what I'm really, and you're like, dude, stop. Let the real estate be the real estate, let the business be the business, and just keep them apart, as long as you're good there, 'cause I think you said distraction. Actually, let me double check in that real quick, which is, when you say to your distraction thing that you're afraid of, why are you afraid of that? - I'm not afraid of it. - Okay. - I've got ADHD, and I collect gold and silver, I buy houses, I buy buildings, I mean, it's just a little bit of the red dress. - Well, as long as it doesn't change anything, what would you do? I don't care. But if it's like, now I check this stuff all the time, and it eats up my days, then yeah, I would say that it's a problem. And it's only a problem if you decide it's a problem. Like you might just like that stuff. It's just like I sacrifice my goals, 'cause I enjoy this ADD. The last of the big thing is the new stuff that you have to give up to keep it going. Thank you, I feel like there's some A-men. (laughing) - It's like a good meal, right? Yeah, I appreciate it. But yeah, the cost of the big thing is all the new stuff you have to give up that you don't get to pursue. All the exciting things that you will no longer participate in because you want to do one thing, big. - Okay. - And I think for me personally, I had this moment, I think a while ago, but I had this realization of how long it takes to get good at anything. And then I thought about, oh, I only have like 30 or 40 more productive years at most. And so I'm like, I've got like four or five big seasons in me left. - Yeah. - And so that's it. And so I don't have like unlimited shots on goal. I've got four or five big runs in me. And so I think like realizing that, it's kind of like Warren Buffett talks about, if every person just had a punch card with 20 punches on it, and that's the only thing you could invest in, you could never sell it, you'd make way better investments. I see entrepreneurs the same way in terms of what business opportunities were for sale. Because if we take the hypothetical extreme that if we want to build something really big, it's going to take a long time, then in the means that we can't do that many things. So, hope that helps. - I appreciate that answer because I thought you were to say sell everything. - I mean, they're investments. I mean, I'm going to tell you to sell your investments. I would say keep passive, stuff passive. Don't make it active. That's like incurring cost. Because if you're going to make it active, then make active money. - Yeah. - And you're like, I want to take my passive money and then make it cost me more time to get 5% better returns. It's like you're going to get way better returns in your active income than your passive. And just I would just keep active active if you keep passive passive. - Thank you. - Appreciate you. (upbeat music)