How to Go From $0 to $100 Million As an Entrepreneur

no matter what phase of career or business you're at you're going to have different things you have to focus on and enemies you're going to have and there's five phases you're generally going to go through so let's just say you're from zero to 100,000 what should I do here 100 to a million million to 10 million 10 million to 100 million and 100 million beyond we're going to talk about that here today and by the way if you get value out of this video give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel for some of you that used to watch the old school content from 10 years ago when I used to write on the board took me 2 hours to write the stuff out and I had paint all over my hands this is a little bit more effective yet we can still give you the same exact message as well so let's get right into it all right so think about this here if you're watching this you're like Pat I'm making 20 grand a year this is me making 20 grand a year i'm in the army what should I be thinking about at this phase this is me at Morgan Stanley Dean Wood just got my series 7 just getting started i'm 21 22 years old here what do I do here this is when you're growing your business you have revenue you have a lot of different issues compliance finance expansion hiring firing what should I be focused on here or then you're expanding into a different business line podcast marketing what do I do there then at the same time the most common thing that'll come up is the following people will ask me this question on connect all the time p I'm growing my business and we expanding into this and I just raised $5 million and I hired my first seauite and I'm going through this but oh my god my wife is giving me a hard time my kids I'm not spending time how do you balance this and then my mother is sick my father is going through this my in-laws are going I'm just so overwhelmed so how do you do all of that and still find a way to maintain this it's not easy it's very hard I'm going to show what I do with you in the five different phases is if you want today's PowerPoint PDF stick around to the very end i'm starting a circle dedicated for entrepreneurs only but stick around till the very end so phase one that we're going through I call it the shadow phase this is the 0 to 100 if you can just think about one word and it's shadow the rest of it's going to be fairly simple so no matter what business you're in think about shadow phase so most important skill set in my opinion to learn at this phase is what sales why if I can watch you make 50 sales make 30 sales and I'm seeing how you're selling i'm seeing how disciplined you are okay i'm seeing how you handle your you know negotiation with the client i'm seeing how your identity is going man this guy's very confident to ask for $100,000 check this guy's very confident to be able to ask the client to do this i don't know if I can do that i only have $3,000 in the bank if they find out that I'm broke and I'm $20,000 in debt who's going to do business with me right but just think shadow what can I do and who can I learn from that's going to give me the right habits the right discipline this guy comes in he works he does this he does that good habits are being duplicated we had a guy at Bs there was a bunch of us at BS that work together all of us left BS ballet Total Fitness years ago it's not in business anymore la Fitness Bottom we all knew those rock stars these guys were amazing at what they were doing one guy goes into the mortgage business unfortunately the guy that he watches makes a lot of money but he's also addicted to cocaine within 2 years guess what happens to that guy he's duplicating the same exact habits guess what happens to him ends up owing taxes in the tens of millions of dollars has all these issues for the rest of his life his mom and dad are trying to help bail him out because he had wrong people to shadow and duplicate so it's not only success but it's also the right habits you shadow the wrong person it can completely destroy your life so very very important this phase uh uh your enemy at this level is bad habits you pick up bad habits you're coming in late you're sleeping in you're lazy you got an attitude you're arrogant you're kind of going through some of this stuff you have to be very careful here because the most important thing to overcome at phase one of shadowing is bad habits if you're not coachable and a person that wants to teach you that you're shadowing they don't have the tolerance for you they have a lot of options of people that want to work with them so if some of those things are bad for you you're not going to get the best opportunity working with somebody that can transfer that knowledge to you phase two that we go through is a leading phase this is 100,000 to a million at zero to 100,000 maybe you can get away without leading at 100,000 to a million now you need to learn about how to lead and again doesn't matter what the job is leading by example building okay you're going through you know driving how do I drive Johnny in a different way than the way I drive Mary and you'll say man when I challenge her she doesn't respond well but the same way I challenge him it works well so maybe I need to learn how to challenge her in a different way than the way I challenge him that's that's tough how do I do this this isn't easy and that's a part of where the EQ comes in where you learn about human nature where you learn about okay maybe this is a time for me to encourage a little bit this is a time for me to mentor this is a time for me to challenge this is a time for me to steer the pot this is a time for me to bring everybody together this is a time for me to give this message this is the part where you learn a little bit timing of the message and that is an element of leading networking can I get in the right rooms can I get the right phone numbers can I meet the right people this is one of the reasons why Mancta is doing so well people are networking doing business with each other left and right it's becoming a top networking app where I can get a hold of somebody pay for their time establish the relationship there and over 3 6 months later we had a guy that mans me for 50 times we go back and forth very successful guy out of Ohio then he eventually becomes a member at the cigar lounge comes to the cigar lounge we see each other i meet his wife we're hugging each other as if we've known each other for 10 years but because this relationships has been being built on man and our business is being done good guy hung out become a member and a lot of other things that's going to be happening from it but networking very important at this phase unreasonable hospitality if you have unreasonable hospitality guys like me will pay attention to it and guys like me who pay attention to will never forget the way you treated me for example I'll give you an idea our cigar lounge right now the general manager that we just hired to be the GM of the cigar lounge It's a person that's been serving me for the last four years the way he treats me my wife my kids my dad any of my employees absolutely world class it's so amazing that I can't forget that service so if you have incredible service you're giving to people they're going to remember it's a It's one of the most simplest thing anybody can do at 100,000 to a million but it's so valuable at the highest level unreasonable hospitality next one similar to building leading is connecting you're learning how to connect with people in different meetings you're negotiating with a boss how do you connect with them you're negotiating with a vendor you're talking to somebody that's a partner an enemy how do I connect to bring down the temperament of this unhappy client you got to find a way to connect and the next one is specializing at this phase you have to figure out a way what your niche is going to be so for example I get into sales i get into financial services i'm selling stocks bonds mutual funds insurance variable annuity whatever it may be but anything I can get my hands on I I sell between 0 to 100,000 at 100,000 to a million I said "No I'm going to specialize. " So what's the specialization insurance and annuities and that's it that's it that's it the sooner you specialize now you can really be focused on only those things instead of saying "I'm going to try to do everything that's out there for me. " And then recruiting because to go from a 100,000 to a million you have to recruit an assistant you have to bring on board people that are going to do customer service or case management or engineers or salespeople but you have to get good at recruiting somebody to want to work with you so how do you do that we sat down with a couple of our executives and managers and I said "Enter me to the company recruit me to the company.

" What do you mean by that do an interview tell me why somebody has to be here sell me the dream sell me the system sell me what we do here challenge me why this could be the opportunity that I ought to be a part of most people don't know how to do that that's a very very important skill set when Jobs was recruiting other people he knew how to poke and recruit them to join his vision with Apple you got to learn how to recruit by far one of the most underrecognized skill set to take that business from 100,000 to a million so now who is your enemy at this level your enemy at this level is complacency and contentment i cannot tell you how many times I was at a room in a room when I'm at this phase 100,000 to a million guys are ahead of me i'm ranked number 60 and I'm sizing everybody up and I'm like "Oh my god that guy's going to kill it and he's going to kill it and that guy's going to do so well and there's no way I can compete with her. " And look at this guy here until I realized most of these guys got comfortable at 100K 200k at a certain position at a certain title they were cruising they were no longer pushing they were no longer reading new new books they were no longer developing themselves they got complacent and very happy and content and they stopped developing so they were only talking about the first 20 books they read they were no longer recreating themselves consistently and I realized at the end of the day this is way too early to decide who the biggest thinkers are we got some time to go until we realize who the biggest thinkers are typically takes 10 to 20 years so that's phase number two now let's go to phase number three phase number three is a million to 10 million at this phase you need to learn how to process issues process issues decision-m so when it comes down to processing issues let me go on this side crisis management you're going to have a lot of challenges that's going to come up lawsuits employee leaves defamation of character rumors somebody trying to hurt you put you out of business another competitor that's spreading rumors about your company and pinning you against your business partner you have to be very very careful with this it's going to happen and by the way there is no escaping this this the bigger you get is guaranteed let me It's not like you can avoid it it's going to happen you're either going to be good at it or you're not going to be good at it if you're good at it you'll handle it well if you're not good at it you're going to go backwards if you don't know how to manage crisis next is high stakes meeting so you will have meetings at 0 to 100,000 which is maybe a high stakes meeting for you to be able to convince the guy to hire you and the person you don't have a lot of credibility why should I hire you you have to be able to have that high stakes meeting and close yourself up to the person that you're going to be shadowing right at 100,000 to a million you can have some high stakes meeting to recruit somebody that's going to come over to your business that's going to be an executive experience but at a million to 10 million you're going to have an opportunity or two or five where you will sit down with someone that if you're able to get this relationship going your business could go from a million to 25 million i'll give you one of them that I had at 32 years old 31 years old i'm in Houston at AIG's building i'm on the 41st 42nd floor i meet the CEO then I go into a room they're sitting there i'm trying to tell them "You ought to do business with me and I ought to do business with you you ought to give me a contract. " They're like "Who are you?

" I said "Put me in a room with all your lawyers everybody that you have ask me any questions you want. " Great they set up the meeting there's 20 people in the room i'm at the And I said "Just give me a marker and a board and ask me whatever you want to ask me. " And I'm there with a couple of my guys in the room they start asking questions well what about this and what about that and what about this and what about that and what about this and I'm addressing every single one of them by the time I'm done they ask me to sit outside i come back and they said "You got the contract.

" I get if I don't get that contract the game's going to change i'm I may not even exist business may go out of business the company may go out of business but we end up becoming the number one writers of AIG insurance for four or five consecutive years back to backto back because of that high stakes meeting and how you prepare for that high stakes meeting is before you go into the meeting you sit down with a couple other people that you respect they're your right-hand people you ask them "Well what do you think they're going to ask me? " They're going to ask you this if they ask you "What are you going to say? " It's a good question boom boom boom no boom boom boom uh boom boom boom that's the one what if they ask you this i don't know how to answer what if they ask you this they're going to ask you this so you have to be asked prepared of the questions that will be asked in those high stakes meeting that will cover 80 90% of the question then there's a 10% that you're not going to be ready for and that's where you win no matter how much you prepare there's going to be 10% of the conversations that you will not expect it will not be anticipated it'll be surprising and if you do that right you're probably going to do a deal with the folks you're doing business with so very important when you're at the million to 10 million next one is going to be management how will you manage different personalities one person came from this corporation from Uber this person came from Chevron this person came from a big insurance company this person came from here how do you get all of these guys that are coming from five different cultures to work together how do you manage these different personalities their skill sets how do you manage the money that you have the amount of money you left in the in the bank the savings that you have the balance sheet how do you manage all that stuff but management will be one as well next master processor you will be in a room someone's going to ask questions well such and such happened you won't believe how do we handle this this person called this this client said this that customer said this and the most basic way on how to process some of these things there's videos on this is 0 to 10 how important is this how urgent is this who do we know that can help solve this problem 0 to 10 this is probably a nine an urgency 0 to 10 when it comes down to amount of importance of money being lost this is probably a seven we can lose a half a million dollars that's high and who can help us with this our lawyer our compliance officer our accountant the person that has a contact with this client that is not happy let's get that person on the Zoom with us but that's processing issues the more you get better at processing issues the more your executive team and leadership around you will get better at processing issues and then you have a new peer group a lot of times when you're here 1 to 10 million you're alone so you're not getting into that next room you need to be in a mastermind you need to be in certain groups that you're watching other people process issues maybe you're in real estate and there's one in the group that's engineer one in the group that's I don't know it's uh running a digital marketing agency another one that's in solar another one that's in insurance another one that's in property and casualty and this person's telling their problems that you needed to hear that person's giving problems about expansion into a new state this person is giving problems about their personal life and you're like "Wo this was great i came in thinking I had one issue that I'm trying to resolve but what I really needed is the eight things they're going through so you need to find new peer group that challenges you to have to grow or else if you stay with the same level of people that are below you you'll feel so successful you'll slow down cuz like oh my god Johnny is so great look at all the money he's making oh my life is so great yeah let me tell you I'm special versus you need to be in more rooms where you're like just another person in the room if you're in too many rooms where you're like this and everyone's below you you're going to be hitting a wall and you won't be growing to the next level and then clarity you need more clarity what are my next moves what am I doing this for what's the vision where are we going to at a guy I ask a question of that he's working with the CEO he says "Look I love this guy i love working with this company i've been here for 5 years but every time I ask him about vision there is no vision he just takes the profits off the table i don't know what to do with this guy what do I do there is nothing really I can say cuz that co that that entrepreneur needs to have a vision where are we taking a company to if you don't your team is going to get lost so there needs to be a clear vision of what we're doing so now we know phase one is shadowing your enemy is bad habits phase two is leading your enemy is contentment and complacency so now phase three is processing issues what's your enemy these are your three enemies reactive everything is reactive oh my god oh my god so so when it's always reactive you're disrupting everybody else's workflow right instead of being proactive you're only responding to crisis versus anticipating what could happen number two is lack of urgency you don't have an urgency it's like "Yeah we'll get to it yeah we'll hire that person yeah it's not a big deal yeah if that person quits we're going to be fine yeah it's going to be okay.

" Or your ego nobody can give you feedback i don't need any coaching do you realize who I am so you're kind of going through that phase those three are your enemies at 1 to 10 million so the next phase is 10 million to 100 million we call this the sequencing phase it's very because now it's about strategy now it's about what is my next move now it's about you know what should I be doing next so in this you have to master power plays you're going to go through it power plays could be towards your competitors power plays could be a statement to the marketplace that nobody is expecting no one was expecting when we first bought this property what was going to happen on election night just a couple days ago the vice president's brother is here and he says "While we were at the convention center we were all watching a PBD podcast because you guys got it right before anybody else. " We took a risk that night we licensed a software that we probably didn't need to do we're just a podcast but we brought it in tom presented it to me i said "Let's do it what is the cost let's go back and forth. " We finally got it on election night we had 2,000 people here for our podcast everybody's like "What the hell is going There's a thousand cars VIPs people coming through you know live 283,000 people concurrent live we we had a meeting with YouTube CEO and Google CEO they're like "What were you guys doing that night it was record-breaking.

" That's a power play that's a statement to the marketplace every once in a while you need to be making a statement to the marketplace when they're watching you next one next area of focus is sequencing what sequencing means is hey is this a move do I make that now as a move three or is it a move nine do I buy this software now for $2. 8 million or wait 18 months because in 18 months maybe I got to focus on hiring 19 more people first and being prepared before I go no we should buy the software this you're going to be judged on how good of a job you do sequencing investments hiring expansion new marketing campaign new product all of that is sequencing so it's always is that a moving night like imagine you're in a boardroom with all your executives we just did our quarterly meeting at Four Seasons this week and we'll sit there and we go through all these issues from 7:30 in the morning 7 7:30 at night and hey here's what's going on with finance here's what's going on with this here we should go raise capital on this business we should go hire this person here the entire conversation was about sequencing okay the next one is running mate at this phase 10 million to 100 million if you don't find the right running mate your pillow is going to feel very hard you know what it feels like when you sleep on a very hard pillow like a brick you're tossing and turning all night what does it feel like when you sleep on a real soft pillow you sleep better at night right so at this point is when you find a running mate that they're thinking and sharing pressure as much as you are in different ways there's you're going at night and it's like let me tell you what happened last night we had these three things that happened i did this i contacted that person i contacted this person thank God I got a running mate you will be judged on finding a running mate here think about a running mate as a spouse as a wife as a husband you find a right running mate life is better you find the wrong running mate divorce bankruptcy the whole night and in an area like this with running mates there has to be a criteria and there's a few points that I personally go through contacts character work ethic bought into the vision you know an example somebody that has specialized skill there are seven points that I personally go through when I'm judging a running mate and we give them a score you get the right running mate business grows exponentially very very important hire and the next point here outside of the running mate is raising money you will need to learn how to raise money and if you don't know how to raise money you're going to have somebody on your team that's raised money before so if you don't have somebody on your team that has raised money before the terms are not going to be favorable to you it's going to be favorable to the person that's given the money so you I don't need anybody to go help me raise money no problem you don't but the terms are going to be shitty for you so you're going to need to raise money with someone that's done it in the past before so they're able to get some of those controls any purchase you make over $10,000 we need you to get it approved by me you kidding me it would take me two days to get it approved by you no that needs to be a half a million we're not going to do a half a million there's like 20 things that you got to go through so if you're raising money and you're running a mate you're hired knows how to raise money it accelerates the process so now what are the enemies you have at this phase two enemies lack of recreating yourself and number two intoxicated with flattery everyone around you is going to say "Oh my god Jack you're the best oh my goodness you smartest guy I know is Jack. " And let me tell you he can't do anything wrong yeah it's the last thing you need you almost kind of need to tell yourself "No don't believe in the hype don't believe the hype don't believe the hype keep going to the next phase.

" And then the other part is recreating yourself who do you need to be for this next phase to be ready because by the way running a $10 million year business very different than running a $100 million business very very different very very few get to 10 million even fewer ever make it to the $100 million year business so then last but not least is phase five so what's phase five about phase five is about solving for X everything at this phase becomes solving for X everything you'll sit in a room and you're trying to find a way to you know I I had a meeting with my guys and I'm telling my guys saying "Hey what's the difference between building a million dollar company versus a $10 million company what's the difference between 10 million or 100 million 100 million or a billion billion or 10 billion 10 billion or 100 billion 100 billion or trillion? " Leadership vision sure i said "Is there really that big of a difference between 10 billion and 100 billion think about it. " I guess no so what's really the difference between 10 billion and 100 billion what's the difference between a hundred billion dollar company and a trillion dollar company netflix is a $200 billion company but Microsoft is a $3 trillion company what's the difference is it just lifespan is it just a product or is it the fact that they solve for X and solve a bigger problem the bigger the problem you solve the bigger the money you make so the CEO the entrepreneur the founder has to constantly be challenging the people on how to solve forex in the meeting that we had this quarter I told my executive team I said "Let me ask you guys a question who in you here has built a $10 billion company from scratch?

" Go ahead guys raise your hands go ahead participate please raise your hands and what's this guy talking about i said who is taking a business from zero to 100 billion or 10 billion here no one's raising their hands i said I'm also not raising my hands i've never done it before so what does that mean that means our way of thinking got us to where we are today but if we want to build something that's going to be 10 billion and beyond we have to change the way we think the shift in the mindset has to be constantly challenged all right so what do we need to get good at in this area first one is uh moral authority moral authority is if I'm golfing every day guy asked me a question says "How come I can't duplicate salespeople it's so hard. " There's one guy on one of our consulting calls i said "Let me ask you a question. " And I see the backdrop of where he said you know how somebody does a zoom and they make it blurry so you don't know what the backdrop is i said "I'm sorry let's call him Johnny.

" Johnny where are you doing this Zoom from from my home office okay how many hours a week do you spend time around your salespeople oh I work from home you are never going to duplicate salespeople you're not so the moral authority to have people want to run through the wall for your company to be growing do you have the moral authority do they see you recreating yourself are you setting the example of being there are you in the office are they seeing you hiring other people are you seeing there staying late coming in early are they seeing you creating opportunities for the company what are they seeing you do you as the founder have to make sure you earn the moral authority from your guys for them to trust you and by the way at this stage at the 100 million plus the people you have on your executive team if you don't continue growing they got a lot of options of where to go to remember typically at this stage the executive team that you have is therefore in an LTIP profit share or equity if the company is not growing valuation wise why do I need LTIP profit share or equity i don't need it do you understand how that works so they're shopping but if you're at this phase and the business is growing others from other companies that have flatlin are saying "Hey man I want to go run with this guy cuz this guy's got moral authority. " They're watching your moral authority next one is replacement game you're constantly looking at mid-level management this person's got to move up that person's got to go to a different division that person here in this level that's running this many people we got to get them to go to a different department or this person's got to grow to the next level do we have the next layer of management coming in and you're replacing jobs with new people cuz the company's expanding either with people or with software or technology but that replacement game is constantly thinking about what you need to be doing i remember one time we had the software that we bought when we used to license the insurance agents our insurance uh licensing department was massive because we had to get him appointed with different carriers in different states and it was so much cost i met this Ukrainian guy who had the software amazing we had multiple meetings took us two years to negotiate but eventually when we did the deal I could license god knows how many people like this and get him appointed in 20 different companies and five different states with no issues because it was all electronic that was a replacement game instead of having everything be paperwork hands-on we were able to move it and have the software do it for us so you're thinking about replacement game especially today with AI third point is vision we've talked about this but it's got to get even to the next level to attract the right people generational planning when your company is doing this type of money that means you also have a lot of money and your net worth is high you don't want to create additional headaches you got to take some time to go hire an estate planner to put your estate in the right place estate planning nuptial what's going to happen with your kids how is it going to be passed on to them tax planning financial adviser you need to make sure that part is also squared away because most of the time when guys get to a business like this they'll do a little bit of it but they still wing it in that area for whatever reason it's like doctors i sat down with so many different doctors when I was doing financial planning they were some of the most uneducated people when it came down to finances because advisors were uncomfortable to give advice to doctors and so nobody would approach doctors they had nothing in place they're making 800 grand a year but nothing in place you need to make sure you get your finances in order as well and outside of that is legacy similar thing to what I'm talking about so at one point here if you're 68 years old you're watching this video like I'm not trying to take this business to a billion i'm trying to get out of this business i've been doing it for 40 years i want to give it to my son no problem that's a complete different thing at our consulting from bed consulting bed. com you can go and learn more about it i can't tell you how many conversations I have with father and son and daughter where we sit down and say "Okay how are we going to transition this business over to the son?