Secrets to Get to Your First 1 Million Dollars in Business

What’s holding you back from making your first million dollars in business?

In this episode, we’re pulling back the curtain on the EXACT strategies and mindsets that have taken us—and countless others—to seven-figure success. If you’re ready to level up from six figures or build your next million, lock in as we discuss the three game-changing principles to scale your business. Plus, stick around for our bonus tip on dodging the common traps that can derail your growth right when you’re on the verge of greatness!

Key Topics + Chapter Markers

• Intro: [0:00]
• Secret #1 to hit your first million [2:24]
• Secret #2 to hit your first million [8:20]
• Secret #3 to hit your first million [15:41]
• Bonus Tip: AVOID this common pitfall when scaling [29:13]

Resources:

E-Myth by Michael Gerber – A foundational read for anyone building a business. Find it here: The E-Myth Revisited on Amazon

Download The Free Outbound Sales Playbook:

• Master cold outreach, close more deals & drive revenue to your business using The Outbound Sales Playbook. Battle-tested on over 1,000+ businesses and proven with over 100M data-points, this Free E-book will give you the tools you need for predictability and scalability in your marketing and sales efforts. Disclaimer: Only download if you want more customers!

Join The Takeover Community:

• Sign up for The Takeover newsletter and get the latest marketing tips, sales strategies, and business insights delivered straight to your inbox. Join a community of entrepreneurs & high-performers dominating all areas of Sales & Marketing. Sign up for the newsletter.

About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy: Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• PEMA.io is a Inc 5000 Outbound Marketing Agency specializing in Enterprise Sales & Appointment Setting. With over 7-years and 1,000+ clients served in the industry, PEMA is the leading agency for cold outreach appointments & systems. Learn more about PEMA.io here: www.pema.io/discover

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:24 Secret #1 to hit your first million
• 8:20 Secret #2 to hit your first million
• 15:41 Secret #3 to hit your first million
• 29:13 Bonus Tip: AVOID this common pitfall when scaling

Transcript

00:00

It's time to tap into your big money energy. This is definitely an episode you want to lock in on. Also stay to the end because I want to give you a bonus on. I have seen so many people get to that point where they're, they're doing enough revenue every month to be a million dollar company and then crash because of one really critical mistake. If you think you can't afford it, you can't afford not to do it. Welcome to the takeover with Tim and Cindy, where we show you how to

00:28

dominates every area of life and business. Let's get with you. In today's episode, we're gonna be talking about secrets to landing your first $1 million in business. So whether you are a small business, maybe at the six figure mark, looking to hit your first seven figures, or maybe you want to know how to generate your next million dollars in business, this is definitely an episode you want to lock in on because we believe

00:58

Everybody should want to be a millionaire. And I think the main reason boils down to one word and that is access, access to people, opportunities, places, things, access to reaching your potential. So we want to dissect some lessons that we've learned along the journey and more specifically, three things that you need to have in your business in order to unlock your first million dollars. So Tim, do you remember when you made your first?

01:27

million in business. Yeah, I remember there wasn't like a moment that I woke up and like, wow, I made a million dollars. But it was just, it was more so when I started making enough money every month that I realized I'm like, oh, I'm making a million dollars a year now. That was pretty cool. And I thought I was cooler than I actually was. And

01:50

and I did some stupid stuff with the money, and you know, but that's another topic for another. The lessons learned. So we're gonna talk too about how to get there. Also stay to the end because I wanna give you a bonus on I have seen so many people get to that point where they're doing enough revenue every month to be a million dollar company and then crash because of one really critical mistake that's easy to avoid.

02:17

if you know about it before it's too late. So stay at the end, because we're also going to go over a bonus on how to avoid crashing once you've made your million. So the first key or secret to landing your first million dollars in business is, go narrow to go wide. So when we're looking at going narrow to go wide, what'll happen a lot, and I've made this mistake, I've seen a lot of people make this mistake, is they go, hey, we can help everybody do everything.

02:44

and your message is watered down, your lead generation won't work because you do too many things. And when you say, well, we're a full service marketing agency, how big are you? Me! So, you are a full service marketing agency that's great at a million things. Number one, it's going to be hard to get leads, it's going to be hard to get meetings, and it's going to be hard to convince people to hire you if you say you can do everything. So, figure out, number one, where is there a problem?

03:13

that businesses have, that people have, that you're capable and really good at solving. Double down on going and solving that problem. The bigger the problem, the more you can get paid for it. So if you're going after to solve a problem with recent college grads, they don't have a lot of money. So you could go do that if you're really good at helping people get a job after graduating from college, but there's not gonna be a lot of money there. So find where a problem that you're really good at solving

03:42

where there's money as well. So those same skills, for instance, if you're a career coach that helps college grads, you could easily transition that into, hey, I help executives get their next role. I help executives level up to their next company. Very, very similar skills, but it's the audience you're gonna go after has a lot more money. So really narrowing down what's the problem I solve, who has the money to pay for it, and then I'm not gonna do a million things. I'm not gonna...

04:11

do help them get the job and do their admin work and do like, I'm gonna focus on and be very, very narrow on the problem I solve and I'm gonna stay narrow on that because when the moment you start going too wide, the moment you start saying, well, you know, like I did a SEO company and then we were like, okay, and we do social media and we do LinkedIn and we do all those things and we stopped doing the core thing that we were good at doing. We stopped innovating that so we were good at it.

04:39

But it stopped innovating because we started putting all of our attention on innovating other products. Yes. We could have just doubled down on getting better and better and better and dominating SEO, which is what people came and paid us for originally for that business. So it's go narrow to go wide and more specifically we're talking about annual service offerings. As we see a lot of businesses will fall into this where they have one thing that they do and then they add on and they add on and they think the misconception is the more service offerings that I have.

05:08

the faster it's gonna get me to that million dollar business. But it's actually a misconception because it's actually keeping you stuck. As Tim is mentioning, you're not able to go fully into one thing and become the expert such that you're innovating and you're becoming the best in the space for that one thing where people know, hey, Tim does B2B lead generation and he does it really well. But now you are just like Joe Schmoe that does five different marketing avenues, right? So you never really get good.

05:37

at that one thing. So going narrow to go wide is that once you've narrowed down, people know you for a certain thing, they come to you to solve a certain problem and you can repeat that over and over and over again, that is how you scale. And then of course, when you break past that million dollars and now you have more resources, you have consistency in leads and in new customers, you can then start to branch out. But.

06:03

People are doing that way too soon or too early in their business stage that it's actually keeping them stuck and preventing them from breaking through to that million dollar business. And it's a similar thing, and I'm gonna throw in a bonus here, is a similar thing to people saying, I'm gonna create multiple streams of income. Wealthy people, once they've gotten wealthy because they've laser focused on one thing that made them a ton of money, and now they're making money.

06:28

and they're doing wealth protection. They're trying to put their money somewhere where they can save it, like in real estate or different things. Now they're creating multiple streams of income because they have so much overflow of wealth coming from one channel of income that they go, oh, we need to diversify this a little bit. But if you're trying to, oh, I'm gonna create multiple streams of income inside my business and I'm gonna do this thing on the side. And it's like, guess what? If you are competing against me and I am obsessively

06:58

laser focused on becoming the best at lead generation through outbound appointment setting. I will destroy you. I will take your clients and I will leave you with nothing. That's just the way the world works. There is going to be a competitor out there that is obsessed and wants to win and dominate their space just as much as Cindy and I do with the lead generation. So whatever you're going into, your obsession and your folks should be on.

07:27

What's the problem I solve? And now let me become the absolute undisputed best at that one thing. And when you've dominated that and you've got a whole team around you supporting you, it's like, yes, you can add on that next thing. There's product offerings that we could offer and be really good at. We could charge money for ourselves training. We could charge money for Facebook ads. There's a lot of funnel building for the CRM management. There's a lot of products we could go out and sell.

07:56

that we're incredibly good at, but we don't because we're obsessed with being the best at the one thing we do, which is outbound appointment setting and ultimately client acquisition. And that's how we've become at our company Pima, literally like the best in outbound. Yeah. So I think it's so important. What we've learned on the journey is what you say yes, what you say no to rather is just as important as what you say yes to.

08:20

So not every client is that perfect client. You don't have to say yes to every single request that comes through to your business because your time, effort, energy, resources are so important as you're scaling. So keeping in mind that the fact that you're narrowing down, that you're focusing on that one service offering and getting really good at that is benefiting your business, allowing it to scale because all of your and your team's time, effort, energy, resources.

08:46

all going into that one thing and that is how you scale. And on that topic too, go narrow to go wide, let's talk about how it relates to marketing channels specifically. Because I think this is an area where people stay stuck. Yeah, so what I see happen a lot, and you know, having been in the outbound space since 2015, what a big cycle that'll happen with people, companies of all sizes really, is that they will have a...

09:14

a lead problem, meaning they don't have enough leads, they don't have enough appointments, maybe they've built, I've known some really big companies, $40, $50 million a year companies that were built entirely on referrals. It was all built in-house, getting referrals from their clients. But there becomes a point in every business, whether you're a small business or whether you're doing $40 million and you've been built on referrals, where you go, hey, we cannot grow beyond what we're doing now, we need to go out and get more clients. How do we do that? Well, you need lead generation and you need...

09:44

sales conversion. These are two processes required to get more clients. And a big mistake that people make is they go out, they find a lead source, it gets them some leads, but then they can't convert them because they think the lead generation process is supposed to, if it's done properly, will help with the conversion process. And it can help a little bit, but the conversion process is a different process that I don't care if you give our sales team...

10:11

cold, cold, cold leads. If it was the right person at the right kind of company, even if they don't have any clue what they're getting on the phone for, our sales team has a good enough process that we could predictably close the coldest of the cold leads so long as it's the right person. The mistake that people make is they get a lead generation service, they try it, maybe they try two things, oh, and it doesn't convert because they're not investing enough in the conversion process, the sales process.

10:40

And so then they hop to another thing and then another thing. And then they're like, well, none of it works. So I'm going to just do I'm going to post on, you know, my LinkedIn once a once a week and I'm going to create a little content. And they do all these things and they go, they try all these different things and nothing hits because they're not narrowly obsessively focusing on where are my clients, how do I get their interest, how do I get them to say yes to a call? Once I have them on a call, how do I convert them?

11:07

And when you obsess about, number one, let me find the channel where my clients are. If I can narrowly focus and obsess on where my people are and become incredibly good at getting meetings there, incredibly good at converting those meetings into clients, that's gonna take a lot of work and refining to get it there. The mistake people make is because it doesn't work right off the bat and they don't get Rich Quick, which everybody says they don't want to get Rich Quick scams but at the same time they buy into them because everybody wants to get Rich Quick.

11:36

Easily no work. When you start jumping, legion jumping from one strategy to another strategy to another strategy, you're never gonna scale. Like you never, absolutely will never scale. So you've gotta go narrow, and you've got to obsess over perfecting your lead generation and conversion process literally on one channel. And then you can add a second channel. Once that's producing and it's replicating and it's growing and it's scaling, then apply it to the closest next channel. For instance, if you're

12:06

Scaling well with LinkedIn scale that thing to the max as many leads and clients as you can get from it And then once you've kind of hit the borders, but you're gonna hit a border with every channel They go what's the closest thing to this? Well, the closest thing is not running ads Of course, there's a lot of learnings you had from here interacting with your client That's gonna help you create high-performing ads, but the closest thing might be cold email Because it's so closely related and so that's how I think about being like obsessed about

12:34

going narrow and being the best at that one thing, getting incredibly good at that one thing before going wide. Yes, and we often get asked the question around what marketing channel avenue do I even start with, right? And I think where people mess up is they're trying five to 10 different marketing channels, trying to see which one works the best. So our recommendation is try one or two. Two I think is a good.

12:57

kind of way to start, as long as you know where your ideal client lives. Start on those platforms, test about one to two different strategies, and see which one gives you the best client acquisition cost, which means how much does it cost me to acquire this client from the lead generation to the sales process? And then that's actually something that you can replicate, because if you're spreading yourself too thin on marketing avenues, like Tim was mentioning,

13:24

and you have five different balls that you're juggling and you're trying to see which one works, nothing is going to get your full attention. Nothing is really going to maximize or perform at the level that it has the potential to perform at. So ultimately you are staying stuck. So in that concept of go narrow to go wide, think of it in your marketing, in your sales, in your service offerings, because that is how you scale. And also remember, whatever channel you're trying to sell your product on,

13:54

There's a bunch of other companies that sell similar products to what you sell that are having great success on every one of those channels. Right. I mean from meta ads to cold email to LinkedIn to Instagram DMS to whatever channel is out there. There's people that are selling similar products to you if it's the right platform. Right. They've dialed it in. And so.

14:21

Just because you can't get it to work in a short period of time doesn't mean that that channel doesn't work. So the question you have to ask yourself is number one, are my customers there? And if they are, number two, what are the people that are effectively using this channel to get clients, what are they doing that I'm not? Yeah. Right? Because there is people that are, if your customers are there, that means your competitors are there too, and there's some, one of your competitors.

14:49

multiple of your competitors that are using that channel very successfully and you got to go figure out what they're doing and you know copy it. Until you become the leader like all you're doing is copying other people right? Even Steve Jobs talked about it, he's like I'm just building on the people that came before me and there's going to be people that build on me when I leave right? It's not like too many people try to be like this totally unique creative thing and

15:11

If there's something that's already working out there, go use that and then you create that as your baseline. Like, okay, let me copy that. Well, now I've got a baseline for performance and now I can internally adjust that and make it better for my specific offer. So that first secret, ladies and gents, to making your first million dollars in business is go narrow to go wide. And this is arguably one of the most important parts in scaling and in actually having a sustainable business as well. So let's move into the second key or the second secret, which is get.

15:41

married to Sam.

16:06

I've been married to Sam for a long time. I'm married to Cindy, but I'm also married to Sam. Sales and marketing. There's only two, really if you break down any business, there's only two departments in a business. It's the department that gets clients, and there's the department that keeps clients. That's the only two roles of a business. Get clients and keep them, and make them spend more money with you over time.

16:34

Of course, so sales and marketing is that first one. And then they're married. Sales and marketing is how you get clients. And you need to be obsessed, obsessed, obsessed, obsessed with sales and marketing. Now you don't have to become the best marketer on the planet, but you have to be good. You don't have to become the best sales person on the planet, but you have to be good. You have to understand, if that's 50% of your business, I say it's more, because without.

17:02

Clients you don't have a business right so yeah the first part of the business is sales and marketing and you have to become Obsessed with it you have to love it you have to dream about it on the weekends How do I do my marketing better? How do I do myself better and you don't have to be the best at it long term? You don't have to be the best at it But you do have to be really good at it and you and the better you are at it Even as you grow on scale and you start to outsource and you start to have other people do it and you hire other Companies to even do the outsource like there's companies that hire us

17:32

all the time. That's what we do. People outsource our appointments, sending to us, which is super smart because we can actually do it lower cost per result by outsourcing to us than they can do it in-house. But you have to have a good enough understanding of sales and marketing that when you go hire a company that you know what you're talking about, because you know what? There's a lot of, a lot of just companies out there that aren't very good at marketing and sells. And they, but they sell themselves very well and they're very persuasive, but they cannot deliver well.

18:02

where if you are good at it, you know how to do it, and you're educated enough on it, even when you go to outsource it, you're not gonna be fooled, you're not gonna be bamboozled, right? That's what I like to say, because you're gonna understand all the components of sales and marketing. So you have to be obsessed with it. There's absolutely without the sales and marketing half of your business, like you do not have a business at all. I think one thing that I learned on the journey to that million dollars, the first million dollars, is that it's my responsibility.

18:29

as the entrepreneur, as the CEO, as the founder, to ensure that the business is getting revenue. Like sales is my responsibility. It was not enough for me to be good at what I did or to be like excellent at the fulfillment or delivering the service. I had to become excellent and really good at conversion, at that sales piece, at marketing. Because ultimately the success and failure of the business is on me and I think far too often,

18:57

entrepreneurs, especially in that under a million in revenue, they think that just having a good enough service is enough, but it is not. Like you have to become obsessed. Like we say, get married to Sam, get married to sales and marketing. And that looks like going out of your way to learn sales techniques, to learn how to close people on the phone, to learn what is a consistent sales process look like where I know if I get 10 leads in the door, 10 booked appointments,

19:26

I'm gonna convert two or three of them. And truly obsessing over that process because it's not just enough to be excellent at your service, you have to get really, really good at sales and at conversion because that's ultimately how you scale. You know, there's a saying that says it's not the best written book that sells, right? It's the best sold book. And you literally have to obsess over sales because the only difference between a six figure business and a seven figure business is the revenue.

19:56

So it's those that are obsessed with sales and marketing and getting really good at the conversion that see that seven figure success. And the more you sell, the more clients you get, the more clients you get, the more you get to refine your product. So guess what? If I go out and I get, you know, I'm a new entrepreneur and I go watch your trainings. We've got trainings on how to sell, how to do marketing. You can learn it. You get really good at that. If you, so imagine you have two entrepreneurs.

20:25

One person, they both are equally good at, let's just say, website design. They're both equally good at website design. They're both getting some referrals, but it's not enough to really grow out of that million dollars. If one person, they're spending most of their time on becoming a better website designer, and the other person is spending most of their time on becoming a better salesperson, how do they get more clients? Guess what will happen? So a lot of times what people think is that, oh,

20:51

Well, one person is going to get better at sales and the other person is going to get a better product. And if for me, I want to have the best product, that's a misconception because you're doing all this research on different, on how to build better websites. The other person is doing all this research on how to sell. They're selling, they're getting money. Now they have enough money to bring in more staff and more help and they have a little bit more free time to develop the product more. They also have clients that they're working with. So they're getting paid to learn about the product they're getting paid. So even though

21:20

the person one is focusing on more in sales, and person two is focusing more on developing the product, person one will create a better product because they have more money, they have more manpower and resources, and they're actually, they have clients that are giving them feedback and paying to do projects. And so when you obsess on getting clients and taking care of your clients.

21:44

Right, of course, because you want them to stay and you want to fulfill the promise you made. But when you get obsessed about sales and marketing, like your product is gonna get a heck of a lot better. I mean, there's no way operationally any of our competitors could beat what we have, but it's because we've been obsessed with sales and marketing and operations, right? And so number one is to get your money and you gotta become absolutely obsessed. If you build a great company, customers will not come. Like they will not come.

22:13

you've got to drag them into the business and you've got to convince them to work with you. You're a new person, you might have gone from being an employee and you were really good in your job and now you're in a business where you're like, okay, I got to do everything now. If there's one thing you should obsess on more than anything else, it is sales and marketing. And it's a skill that's gonna serve you your entire entrepreneurial journey for sure. And I think even on that, a really good book that everybody should read if you have not yet is E-Myth.

22:42

It is a solid book and it talks about that, right? Like moving from an employee to a business owner and the multiple, 12 different hats that you're juggling. But that is a really helpful book on that journey to your first seven figures. It was one of the first books I read. I was delivering pizzas in the ghetto. Saving up for my first business. And the Papa John's manager there, he heard I wanted to start a business, he told me to read E-Myth. It's a good book. I was like, that was good advice. That was good advice. Yeah, for sure. So we'll link that in the show notes.

23:10

That takes us really nicely into the third key, which is invest to unlock your next. This is all about investing in yourself and investing in your business. And I think far too often we see people that think you can save your way to your first million dollars, but it's actually the opposite. So I want you to dive a little bit more into that Tim and what that journey has been for us investing in ourselves, investing in our business.

23:36

that blew us past that first million. There's kind of two paths I see people take. Now, number one, the read books, for sure. That's the best return on investment you can ever make. Like, invest, read books, lots of books. That said, even if you're reading books and you're watching all the YouTube videos and you're doing all that stuff, you're gonna be severely handicapped if you're not paying to be in the right rooms or paying to get the right information.

24:03

You know, my story as an entrepreneur, I mean, there was years and years and years of just trying to figure it out, you know, getting to 200,000 a year, year over year, and just hitting these caps. And really where our absolute biggest breakthroughs happened is when we started paying money to get into rooms. Specifically, it was getting into the going to a conference and being sitting in VIP section.

24:31

where the people we're sitting next to are running $100 million, $500 million companies, investing into masterminds that were, our first one was like a $40,000 mastermind, and it was like, we didn't even have $40,000 in the bank. We're like, can you split pay it? And we ended up getting in the room and making friends with people that are doing $500 million and just starting to get into the mindset. And when you're around those people, your belief for that, that goes through the roof. I mean, that specific story, our goal was to one day build a $10 million company.

25:01

And then the moment I walk into the room, you know, I have a guy come come up to us and he's like, Hey, you know, how much revenue you guys doing? I'm like, Oh, 60, 70. Oh, 60, 70 million. What kind of business do you have? And how do you think it was for me who was doing like 60, $70,000 a month? Right. How do you think I felt like for me to be like somebody believing that I'm doing 70 million a year, my belief led rent through the roof. This is just one event and we've.

25:26

We've gone to events after events and been in mentorship rooms and been around billionaires, millionaires, world leaders, and that alone right there has been the fastest way for us to grow our business. And it's not like this perfect, but if we were to show our bookkeeper, and actually our bookkeeper loves that we're investing in ourselves. It's not like this line item where I can show a perfect return on investment. We spent half a million dollars in 2023. Just...

25:55

in getting into the rooms, going to events, getting in front of the right people, being in the masterminds, going to a billionaire's private island, right? And just being in the rooms. And that year was our biggest breakthrough years and our biggest building network. And so I would say, if you think you can't afford it, you can't afford not to do it. Absolutely, because I waited way too long. Number one advice to my younger self would be to pay to get into rooms. It would have saved me eight years

26:25

trying to figure this game out on my own, I could have saved eight years for sure just by paying to be in the right room. The practical, actionable strategies that you get from coaching, from mentorship, from being in the rooms, but also as you're mentioning that that mindset shift that can happen in a moment, because when you are communicating and dialoguing and just interacting with people that are at your goals, meaning they're running million dollar businesses, and this was even before we hit the first million dollars, we were investing in ourselves in these ways.

26:54

When you start to interact with these people, not only in your mind does it unlock the fact that it is possible for you, but you start to realize that these people are no different to me and you, right? Like if they could do it, like so can I. So I think it's both the strategies that you get from investing in yourself, from paying to be in mentorship and masterminds as you're mentioning, but what it does to your mindset and the fact that you can believe that it is possible for you and that you can.

27:20

and reach your goals in that way. It's really, really powerful. I 100% agree. This guy is literally no different than me. But somehow he's running this crazy company with 1,000 sales reps. And I was out at an event recently, and the guy sitting right in front of me in the row that I made sure to pay to be in, the guy sitting right in front of me, he's like 2,200 sales reps on his team. Crazy. So just being in those rooms.

27:47

not only gets you access, but you're starting to learn how really, really seeks out the person you want to be. Go sit next to them. Go be in the mentorship groups with them. You start to see how they think. You start to see how possible it is. Like you said, Cindy, like, oh, they're no different to me. They're no different, but they have a higher level of belief and they have strategies that they're more than willing to share. When you pay to be in the- if you DM them on Instagram, would you mentor me? Like how many DMs do you get?

28:14

Oh, would you be my mentor? What have you bought from me? If you're not willing to invest in yourself, why would you be asking me to invest in you? So when you invest to be in these rooms, people also recognize that, oh, this person's paid to play to be here. You also have to recognize that they're gonna see that in you. They're gonna see, oh, Cindy's invested to be in this room, so she's the kind of person that I can share ideas with because there's that barrier of entry and she's paid that barrier of entry.

28:44

Yeah, there's nothing that's had a greater impact on our growth, our belief, our mindsets, our network than investing just to be in the room. And I want to pin something that you said, which is it took you X amount of time, right? To say it's 10 years, however long it was, eight years to get to the point where you hit that, say, first million or surpass that first million dollars. But what being in the room allowed you to do is actually accelerate that. Right? So this is like, we hope that you will take this as a lesson learned where it's

29:13

you can accelerate your learning or you can accelerate the growth of your business simply by paying to play, by investing in courses, mentorship, and all these amazing things that can really transform your business. You don't necessarily have to like learn from your failures because that can take you a long time. If you want to shorten that period and actually accelerate it, invest in mentors, get coaching, invest in yourself and your business. It is by far one of the most important things you can do to scale and to get there quick. Yeah. And by the way,

29:42

got to the million before eight years, but guess what, the business crashed. Which is the bonus tip that we wanna give as well, right? Is it a bit of a diss to that? It is, it is, but if I had paid to be in the rooms, number one, I would've gotten there faster. I probably would've gotten there in like two or three years instead of seven or something like that. But I also wouldn't have crashed your business because I would've had the right people around me showing me, hey, warning, warning Will Robinson, there's like, there's some danger ahead. You like pay attention, but I didn't know. I didn't know these problems were, and now knowing,

30:12

If somebody would have seen my business back, oh, you gotta fix these two things, otherwise you're gonna crash. But if you fix these two things, you'd be fine. And so that's another thing, just paying to be in the right room not only got me there faster, it would have maybe not have to have crashed and then rebuild from there. So let's share that bonus tip, which is once somebody gets to that first million, maybe they've been cruising here for about a year and they're like, we're in a really, really good spot. What can we, advice can we give them, kind of on the other side, to make sure that they're actually able

30:42

Sustain that million and then surpass it a couple things, but I'm gonna just get him to tell a story So there's a client we had some years ago and I'm talking to him on the phone and I'm like, hey, how's business going? Great, man. Great, man. We just we just said seventy thousand dollars this month I think we're about to be at be at the 85k which if you're at eighty five thousand a month your million dollar your Business awesome. He's thinking we're hiring more people. I wait holding you're hiring more people. How many people do you have? We've got five. I'm like, oh is this

31:11

Five in the US or you doing like some off-shore and you have Philippines, Colombia. No, no, they're all US or clients Love that all of our employees. Yes, and you're hiring more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna hire three more people I'm gonna say wait, you're gonna have eight people plus you and your co-founders You're gonna have ten people and you're only doing about you're like at about to be at 80k a month Yeah, I'm like dude your business is about to crash. What do you mean? Well, I'm like if you you need it

31:41

have a goal of employees per million. You should have, especially like a digital marketing agency should be like three, four employees per million dollars in revenue, including yourself and any co-founders. Now, there is gonna be points where you are staffing up for your next level of growth. So say you're reaching a million, you go, we're growing really fast, and we have predictable client acquisition systems.

32:09

And we are predicting like at our growth rate, we're gonna need, we're gonna be at 2 million by this time next year. You can pre-staff knowing that you're going to be losing profit for a little while to make sure that you can handle clients that are about to come. Don't do that too much. But the biggest thing is you need to obsessively focus on your employees per million dollars in revenue because I had 13 US employees doing 85K a month. And I was like,

32:38

why is my profit getting less and less? I'm not paying the employees like that much. Like they're gonna pay it okay, but not that much. And that's what made my business crash because I had 13 employees here in Miami, and an office, they all had their own computers, everything, and we're doing like a million a year, and I just was over over staffed. And when you're obsessed on like.

33:01

How do I make it three, four, maybe five max per million if you're digital? You know, obviously if you have like a local service based business and you have minimum wage employees, it's gonna be a little different. For our world, it's like three or four per million and it's really healthy. What that forces you to do, it forces you to look at a lot of areas of your business. How do I do that? Well, am I charging enough? Am I cutting costs in all the different areas?

33:26

There's gonna be a lot of different things that it forces you to look at, but if you just obsess on how do I get to three or four employees per million, then you're gonna be healthy. If you start to get bloated, excessively bloated, your business is gonna crash or you're just gonna, there was a, oh man, I don't wanna say who his name is so I won't, but there's a guy, he's running a really externally successful branding agency. It does like six or $7 million a year. And he's like, Tim, I'm not making any money. I literally some months.

33:55

I'm getting a loan just to pay my employees. So externally, you see the seven, eight, six, seven, whatever, million dollars, there's somewhere around that. I don't know exactly quote me, but he's not making money on it because he was overstaffed. He was over hiring. That doesn't matter how much you're doing externally if you're not taking home. Yes. So that's the difference between that revenue top line. Oh, I'm doing seven figures, but what's your take home? What is that profitability? And shifting that focus to what is our revenue per or employee per million.

34:24

is putting you in a mindset of profitability because the ultimate goal of being an entrepreneur, of running a business is to be profitable, is to take home profits. So we want you all to be mindful of that as you are scaling to that million and beyond is to obsess over profitability as well because that is how you sustain a business and that's what makes it honestly worth the journey is you put all this sweat equity into building a business but if you're not taking anything home, it starts to become draining.

34:54

Entrepreneurs are the ones doing all the work, taking all the risk, putting all their own money into it. The goal of your business is to reward you. The risk taker. Yes. Now the ways in which you can operate a business that effectively does that is to create great opportunities for your employees, create great culture so that they produce well, do a great job for your clients so they keep paying you.

35:22

But the goal of a business is not to give employees jobs. Your goal of a business is not to fulfill for your clients. The goal of your business is to make you profit and to reward you the risk taker. And again, the ways in which you do that is with great customer service, great employee opportunities, great culture, et cetera, et cetera. But those are tools to achieve a goal. So make sure your mindset is framed on this business is designed to make me.

35:48

money and profit and one of the most critical numbers that I can look at is how many employees per million dollars in revenue and there's been multiple businesses that I've saved from crashing their businesses because they were on that trajectory that I was on that again if I would have paid to be in the room yes 10 years ago I would have avoided but you know I was able to help them avoid their businesses crashing because of the because of over staffing. Wow this was such a good conversation. Well ladies and gents

36:16

We hope that you enjoyed this and that you learned something, whether you are on the journey to getting to your first million or you are already at that mark. And hopefully that employees per million helped save you some trouble. We really hope that it did. Make sure that you tap into all the resources that we have right below this video. And if you are tuned in on audio, click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our podcast. This was awesome. And remember domination is not a destination. It's a way of life. Stay winning.