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Episode 89: Growing your business to the next level with Brett Gilliland
176 Plays4 years ago
Which quadrant are you in: employee, self employed, business owner, or full investor? You may be thriving - way to go! You may be feeling stuck, or not know the next steps to grow your business. Either way, this podcast is for you. Brett Gilliland, founder of Elite Entrepreneurs, walks us through how he equips business owners to achieve their next level of success. What you’ll learn: Why changing your tactics as you grow is important, the 3 steps of a successful business owner, and how intentionality & discipline plays into your effectiveness.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Purpose
00:00:00
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in. And before we get to the show, would love for you just to like this podcast and rate it. It allows us to reach more people and help other people start getting this philosophy that uncommon wealth. Enjoy the show.
00:00:15
Speaker
Everyone dreams about living an uncommon life, but how we define that dream is very different for each of us. And for most, it's a lifelong pursuit. Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living that life or enjoying the journey to get there. We're going to also give you some tools, tricks, and tips for starting or accelerating your own efforts to live an uncommon life.
00:00:40
Speaker
a life worth celebrating and savoring. Please welcome your hosts, Brian Dewhurst and Philip Ramsey. Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of The Uncommon Life Project, where I'm your host, Philip Ramsey. And I am Brian Dewhurst. Thanks for tuning in. We're grateful that you're here. Brian and I are super thankful to have this avenue to communicate with the people that are in our following, that are going down this uncommon life.
00:01:07
Speaker
But at the core of it, we are people who want to help you invest in your gifts and resources and talents to get you to the next level.
Interview with Brett Gilliland: Scaling Businesses
00:01:16
Speaker
Today, we have an amazing guest on the show. I can't wait to unpack where he's come from, where he's at, and how he's impacting others. So Brian, you're always better at this than I am. So hit me with the bio. I'm going to try to not go full radio voice here. But yes, we have the one and only Brett Gilliland.
00:01:35
Speaker
He is the founder, creator, and mastermind of Elite Entrepreneurs. Brett helps business owners that have eclipsed the $1 million in sales, or seven figures, and helps them and their teams with targeted coordinated action to grow to $10 million and beyond, and to achieve that with a lot less chaos, which we can relate to. Welcome to the show, Brett Gilliland,
00:02:00
Speaker
Thank you, Brian. And Philip, it's fun to be here with you and your uncommon community. What a great way to talk about it. We call them the uncommoners. I don't know if we've ever said that out loud, but there you go.
00:02:12
Speaker
gift to your listeners. We extracted that, the uncommoners. There you go. Okay. I love elite and I love entrepreneurs, but how, where did you come from? Like that wasn't the business you always started. You obviously created this business. Where did you start thinking like, Hey, this is where I want to go. What's your background to get you to where you're at today? That's usually where we start. So
00:02:34
Speaker
Fantastic. I had the unique privilege to be part of a fast growth company. It was called Infusionsoft. It's sensory branded. It's now called Keep. But we were at seven figures. Just like all seven-figure businesses, we were scrambling to figure out how do we keep growing this thing? How do we build it in a way that allows us to sustain the growth?
00:03:01
Speaker
And so we learned a ton about setting the vision with our team. We learned about aligning effort. We learned about setting up the people processes and systems to higher lead and fire to the vision. We learned about all sorts of the meeting rhythm that
00:03:18
Speaker
keeps it all going. We did all of this work and we grew to 10 million, then we grew to 30 million, then we grew to 100 million. We were serving small businesses. Our software was a CRM solution, marketing automation for small businesses.
00:03:34
Speaker
They saw how well we were growing and the great place to work we had built. They were like, you guys are doing this thing that we're trying to do. Can you teach us your method? Can you teach us the secrets of how to grow? We're a software company at the time and we thought,
00:03:53
Speaker
we're a software company, we're not a training company, but then we just kept getting asked enough and one year back in 2011, so it's been 10 years, we were anticipating a revenue shortfall and we went to the team and told them, hey, it's not going to happen. We can't see a path to hitting our goals. Don't go spending that year-end bonus prematurely because we can't see it happening.
Infusionsoft's Success and Team Dynamics
00:04:17
Speaker
Don't do the Griswold thing and go get the pool. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. So then the team got together basically after that meeting and said, no, we will find a way to do it. And out of that was born some new offerings. And one of them was, we said, well, we could teach people this thing that they've been asking for. And so we started to teach our way of scaling a seven-figure business and
00:04:43
Speaker
10 years later, we're still doing it. We've taught hundreds and hundreds of businesses how to do this, and it's just been a lot of fun. I don't know if that scratched the itch on the background, but that's how it happened. Oh, three years ago, Infusionsoft decided, hey, we're done being a training company. We're still a software company.
00:05:03
Speaker
I bought it, we spun it out, and now it's on its own. The business is called Elite Entrepreneurs. It has no more tieback to keep now, but it's been great. It's fun, and that's what I get to spend all my time doing now.
00:05:18
Speaker
So it sounds like it spun from like an identity crisis. Infusionsoft was having an identity crisis, but it solved a need to fulfill the requirements for everyone to go get the underground pool. And so did you hit the record or did you hit the number? Yeah, so we hit the number. Thank you for asking. We hit the number. This by far is one of the highlights of my time at Infusionsoft.
00:05:39
Speaker
literally that you can't even, I can't describe the emotional moment of the whole team erupting when my good friend and the CEO said, we did it, we hit it, we hit the number and there was this spontaneous applause. Everybody stood up and he just started to high five a couple of people around him and then he ended up just going around the whole team like every single person
00:06:04
Speaker
We were probably about 80 people at the time, maybe 100 or so. It was just a moment I'll never forget. We had a briefcase full of cash and we handed out their cash bonuses. It was just fun. Good times. Wow. What a cool thing to be able to draw on.
00:06:21
Speaker
other people's gifts and resources to unify them in one path and then achieve that victory. I've been in rowing. If you know anything about me right now, I'm heavy into rowing. But there is something about being in the same boat, pulling in the same direction for that common goal, and then getting that goal. It gives me goosebumps. Of course, I'm high-fiving everybody, and I'm totally throwing money around at that point.
00:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, so you're probably a big, you know, the boys in the boat. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's awesome, right? So if you haven't read that book, you uncommoners out there, the boys in the boat. I'm so happy right now. I'm so happy.
00:07:02
Speaker
Can't recommend it highly enough, but that so Brian mentioned this phrase in my intro by bio targeted coordinated action when you can align the team and have them pulling in sync the way that they do in the boat.
00:07:19
Speaker
That's winning, right? That's true high performance. You can't exceed that. And it's not just getting more sales. It's not just serving customers better. All of that's important. But it's the way we come together as a team to make it happen. And that's the transition at seven figures. At a million bucks,
00:07:40
Speaker
You can't be the sole entrepreneur who like, carries it on their path. Yeah, you're not going to beat a team solo in Poland. Like you just can't. And to me, that's the best part. Like let's say you're on top of the mountain.
00:07:55
Speaker
and no one's there on top of the mountain with you. Like have you ever seen the Don wall? We're going into the deal now. There's a documentary called the Don wall. Have you seen that? I have not. No, it's so good. It was about a rock climber who tries to go up this like impossible pass at El Capitan and Yellowstone. Okay.
00:08:12
Speaker
Yeah, basically there gets a point. I'm kind of spoiling it, but it's for a reason. He gets to a point and he gets past because it's two people trying to get up this and they're like living on the mountain in order to get up this thing. Well, this one guy gets through this pass and his other buddy isn't getting through. And so there's this huge controversy kind of like the drama down below is like, does he leave his buddy or does he not?
00:08:35
Speaker
And there comes a point where the guy who's went through this hard pass is at this point and he gets up there and he's like, I felt so alone. And at that moment I knew I was going back down. I don't care how long it's going to take for my buddy to get through this hard pass. We're doing this together. Like, and that's what you're thinking, like a very targeted coordinated action because you want to be on top of the mountain with people, right?
00:08:59
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. What mountain is there that's worth climbing without that experience with people? Yeah, love it. That's what it is. That's what we do. We help people make that transition from entrepreneur to being at the top of the mountain with people. Right.
00:09:21
Speaker
Brian, you're going to have to get us back on track because I could go all day. Well, he sent us this document called the Stages of Growth, and it kind of walks through the five stages of going from a solopreneur to a growth company.
Stages of Business Growth and Transition
00:09:37
Speaker
We work with lots of different businesses, and I definitely feel just in our own trajectory and then being closely involved with so many other different companies,
00:09:46
Speaker
There are checkpoints along the way where you really have to, you know, you have to change your tactics to get through those plateaus, the glass ceilings, whatever you want to call it. Could you walk our listeners through kind of these five stages and how your elite entrepreneurs, you know, is guiding companies through those stages? I want you to do that. But before you do that, because I don't know if everyone will have this document in front of them. First, how do they get to this document if they wanted to stop the show and look at this?
00:10:16
Speaker
So answer that now. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. They can just go to grow with elite.com. That's our website, grow with elite.com. And they can find this, an option to download the stages document. I think we have a pop-up right now that's about the elite business growth method. We have an ebook and inside of that ebook, that, that same graphic is there. So the stages document could be in the ebook or as a standalone.
00:10:43
Speaker
Perfect. And then I want Brian, cause I do really think that a lot of people are, uh, they know about Robert Kiyosaki's book and going for different quadrants. So it's basically that, but I want Brian quickly to just articulate what the stages of that Robert Kiyosaki that a lot of people are familiar with. And then I want you to go into Brett your document. Cause I think it's absolutely brilliant. Okay.
00:11:08
Speaker
Yeah, sure. The four quadrants for Robert Kiyosaki's cashflow quadrant, it's just like a cube broken up into four smaller cubes. And the first one is a self-employed, or no, employee cube. You're working for somebody else. Then below that is a self-employed, your typical dentist or the person who starts the cupcake business making cupcakes, financial advisors, people that work for themselves, essentially, but in a business.
00:11:33
Speaker
then you transition to business owner where you know the organization is essentially running itself which is why we have you on today bread and then from there once you achieve that. And that is you know you could that business could run without you there then you know you're using your capital to transition into.
00:11:50
Speaker
a full investor, you know, where you have multiple investments, maybe multiple companies, stocks, other things. Those are the four main quadrants. And I think for a lot of our business owner clients, it's, you know, how do you get out of the self-employment box to the true business owner box? And so I'll shut up and let you, you carry it from there. Yeah. So I love that backdrop. Yeah. So, and Brian, you just started to say the quadrants two and three, we're just going to, we're going to, we're going to
00:12:19
Speaker
drill down on that. We're going to kind of blow that out and separate that into multiple steps in between, you know, I've created a job for myself and now I have a business that can run without me. Like there's a lot more, there's a lot of in between, between those bookends, right? So yeah.
00:12:38
Speaker
So the stages helps us get a better view at that. It's funny, I mean, entities like the government will define small business as companies between like zero and 500 employees, right? Like there's so much difference and change that what does it really mean to be a small business? And so, Clayton Mask, the CEO of Keep,
00:13:00
Speaker
did some original research. He spent dozens and dozens of hours poring through the US Census Bureau data. I ain't boring, who likes to do that kind of thing, but he did that to get a better view of the landscape of small business. Then we served tens of thousands of small businesses at Infusionsoft, again, now Keep, but those
00:13:21
Speaker
Our own experience coupled with this research produced some insights that are super valuable for people who want to understand what are the stages, the steps between I created myself a job and now I own a business that can run without me. There's a lot in there. I'm not going to go into detail because this is audio format. I can't really do that, but let me share a couple of key principles or highlights.
00:13:47
Speaker
The first one is this, there seems to be a law in business on the ones and threes of revenue. It's almost like a law of physics where there's a change, there's a shift that needs to happen if you want to keep growing. From 100,000 to 300,000, that's one of the stages.
00:14:08
Speaker
from 300,000 to a million. That's the next stage, from a million to three, three to 10. And like I said before, we grew from 10 to 30 and then from 30 to a hundred. That pattern just keeps going. Now, what does the pattern suggest? Every time you roughly triple, right, from 1 million to 3 million or 3 million to 10 or 100,000 to 300,000, whatever tripling, you are entering a new stage. And you've perfectly built a business that can produce the results of the states that you're in.
00:14:39
Speaker
Please understand the meaningfulness of what I just said. You listeners out there, you uncommoners, I'm sharing a unique insight that maybe you haven't thought of before. You are perfectly designed today to get the results you're getting today. If you want to shift to the next stage of business, you have to make a change in yourself as a leader and in how you organize the business. And I don't mean like, you know,
00:15:04
Speaker
I don't know that one of those business structure entity kind of organized. I mean how you set up the people processes and systems inside of your business. So there's an adjustment that happens on the ones and threes. If you don't make those adjustments, you stop growing. You hit a little bit of a ceiling or a big ceiling and you can't quite get through it no matter how much effort you put into it.
00:15:26
Speaker
So that's the short of it. There's a stage change on the ones and threes of revenue, and there are known hurdles at each stage that you can learn, you can anticipate, you can grow to make sure that you bust through those little obstacles along the way. So that's probably the short of it for this purpose here.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah, I love this. And this document, if you go out and look, and if you haven't, hopefully this will help you. The biggest hurdles are right there. So you can kind of like generalize, put your business and your enterprise or whatever you're doing in this and see after you go through it, oh wait, that is my biggest hurdle.
00:16:05
Speaker
or it might boil it down to seeing and understanding what your biggest hurdle could be, or maybe, or I love that you've worked with a lot of people and then made this document, that this is seemingly what many, many other people in the same stage has been struggling with. So, I love it. It's a great document. Yeah, I love that you said that, Philip, because I get asked all the time. So, you know, what vertical or what industry or what business model do you guys serve?
00:16:32
Speaker
It's kind of weird, but there are some exceptions. Some of your listeners are infopreneurs or people who are like, I have a great internet based business and I don't ever want to grow a team. Like I have two or three helpers, but we're just going to run this thing as far as I can take it with just a few of us, right? Like I don't.
00:16:55
Speaker
I don't want to scale my business with a growing team. I don't want to do that top of the mountain with more people thing. I just want to, I just kind of want to. I'm good. Yeah. Go ahead, Brian. No, no, no. I'm, I'm edifying what you're saying. Like I'm good. I don't need 25 people here.
00:17:10
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want to do that. To me, that's headaches, and so I don't want to grow my business that way. If you think you want to print as much money with your cash machine as possible without growing a team, then this is not for you. But other than that, if you know you've got to grow a team to build your business, then it doesn't matter if it's manufacturing or software, professional services,
00:17:33
Speaker
cleaning companies and we work with and serve them all because every business who's making the transition at the million mark with the growing team, eight, 10, 12 people now at this point, they're starting to have the same problems, whether they're, you know, regardless of the industry. So super useful that way for everyone.
00:17:51
Speaker
I really like that you've targeted and helped people generalize. This is who we're talking about, like a very specific target market. And it is those people who are looking from that 1 million and want to grow it to 10 million. I think it's brilliant. So talk about that.
00:18:09
Speaker
and how you came up with this decision. Because it's easy for you to say, hey, there's kind of some laws that happen for the most part with everybody if they want to keep growing. We can handle everybody. So why wouldn't you go that route and why did you hone it down into and know that Brian and I totally respect you for doing that and think it's the right decision. But I want our listeners to hear your thought process as you're going through that.
00:18:31
Speaker
Yeah. Well, everybody who's listening, who has built a million dollar business, they've already proven that they can basically throw that thing on their back and will it forward. And adapt. They've hired some people. For the most part, they've hired some helpers. They're still the genius, right? They're still the master craftsman or craftswoman. They know their art and they are the producers. And so they grew up to that point.
00:18:56
Speaker
The million dollar mark is the place, and some of them might be able to push it to two or three, but the point is that stage, we're going into the one to three stage, is the place where you have to make the transition from entrepreneur to CEO, from doer to leader or leader of leaders. There's a transition there, and before that, it's all skills and understanding, and I got to learn how to sell and I got to learn how to market and generate leads.
00:19:24
Speaker
but it's very me-focused as the business owner. I'm not calling them egotistical at all. It's not about that. But that's how they built the thing. They built it based on figuring out themselves, going and making it happen in large part. That won't let them keep growing at a million. It's just a tragedy. Travis Shammockery, I don't know. Remember that?
00:19:53
Speaker
It's just that the creators of value in this country, in this world, right? Entrepreneurs are being stopped because they don't know what to do past a million. And so because of their own, they're, they're the reason why it's stagnant. They're the one who can't get out of their own way. Yes. Amen. Yes. They become this bottleneck. Well, yes. Yeah.
00:20:19
Speaker
But, you know, we run into, I would say, you know, our market maybe is more on the, you know, solopreneur, new employer side so far, getting into more of the, you know, steady operations, seven figure businesses. Again, I'm referencing this chart, which you can download from their website. But they don't teach you this stuff in school. They don't teach you this stuff even in a lot of business schools, I don't think.
00:20:42
Speaker
No. And so it's just, you know, you hear the age old thing, you know, you're a collection of the five closest people in your life. And especially when you hit, you know, a million dollars of revenue, there's not a lot of people in your life that are probably in that boat and in creating an environment where you can talk and glean things from those people.
00:21:02
Speaker
So can you share with our listeners a little bit behind the curtain of how you equip these companies and these leaders and these teams to continue to take action and break through? Absolutely. I want to say something though, Brian, you triggered something that I typically share.
00:21:18
Speaker
reason we call our business elite entrepreneurs is that we named it after seven-figure business owners. Literally, if I had an exact number, I would tell it to you but some of this is conjecture, it's estimation but somewhere between three and five percent by our best guesses, somewhere between three and five percent of businesses ever make it to a million, the rest don't.
00:21:42
Speaker
Right. So this is rare space. So when you talk about being around the five people that can help you move forward, you know, they're 95%, 97% of the world doesn't even know what you're experiencing. They haven't been there. And so that's why we call them elite, not because this is some elite ist type of thing. It's not, we love all seven figure business owners, but they don't, it's rare. It's rarefied air.
00:22:08
Speaker
And that's why they need this understanding. So let me give you a major breakthrough, hopefully, in your thinking. Because right now, right as you're approaching a million or just beyond it, you're still wearing all these hats.
Leadership and Vision for Business Success
00:22:24
Speaker
You may have hired some people to start helping change this or alleviate this, but
00:22:29
Speaker
you still largely come from a place of wearing tons of hats and so I'm going to give you the three primary responsibilities of a successful seven-figure business owner, not of an imprisoned one because we create these businesses only to find ourselves prisoner to it.
00:22:48
Speaker
We can't take a vacation without obsessing and our significant other or spouse are like, you're always thinking about the business. Why can't you shut that off? Right? It's like we can't help it because it's all right. It's all consuming. So the three primary responsibilities. Number one, set the vision.
00:23:07
Speaker
We kind of talked about that, alluded to that earlier. I'll get into more detail around that. Set the vision, number two is build the team. Number three is secure fuel for growth. Make sure we have financial runway, right? That we're not gonna run out of the lifeblood of cash, okay? So set the vision, build the team, make sure that we're not running out of money or put in a more strategic or investment mindset, secure fuel for growth.
00:23:34
Speaker
Those are the three. You need to get rid of all the other hats. If you can't get rid of those hats, then your business isn't going to grow any further because you can only go so far as an individual.
00:23:44
Speaker
Okay. Set the vision is about three things. Purpose, values, mission. You have to do this in a way, by the way, that enrolls the team in the process. The team that you do have needs to be part of it. They need to co-create it with you so that it becomes theirs. They feel ownership. They are excited. Responsibility. Yeah.
00:24:05
Speaker
ownership, responsibility, drive, excitement. There's so many benefits to doing it that way. If you ascend the mountain and come back with the answers by yourself, that works in some contexts. In the biblical sense, that works. But in a business sense, it doesn't work well.
00:24:26
Speaker
you won't get people's hearts and minds. So you set the vision with their help. And again, you're articulating what is the purpose of this business? Why does it exist? Why does it deserve to have life? What's the impact, the meaning that we have in the world? What's the cause? However you want to frame it, we call it purpose. And that is the driver of the foundation of your business. That's the thing. That's the rallying point.
00:24:52
Speaker
When you get that right, it unlocks a bunch of energy and potential and it creates this talent tractor beam. The right people want to come and be part of it. It's awesome. Purpose is the first part of setting vision. Next part is values. Let me go quickly because I think that's important. The reason why people will buy in is because then that vision and purpose is bigger than one that you can set yourself.
00:25:16
Speaker
And you know that you can't get it by yourself. And other people are taking on a life of it and adopting it as their own and using their gifts and talents and resources to get us there too. So, boom. Just change the math. You change the equation. It's not about you and just your personal growth or financial goals anymore. It's something bigger that involves them. And their special, their unique abilities, their uncommonness, right? Like awesome.
00:25:47
Speaker
Thank you for interrupting me. I just get going. You guys probably know. I love it. I love it. Boys in the boat, you know.
00:25:55
Speaker
You pull, pull, pull. I skip their values. People hear about values all the time. They know it's important, but most businesses don't get it right. It just pains my heart. I'm like, just two degrees off, and you end up going miles apart at the destination.
00:26:17
Speaker
So, anyway, values is about your way of being, and it's not aspirational. Please don't get out there and say, someday we want this. These are our values. No, this is how we be. This is how we are, right? And if you don't see it showing up in the daily walk and talk of everybody in this business, it will not have the sustaining power to carry you guys forward together.
00:26:41
Speaker
So that's the second part of setting vision. Then the third part is mission. Again, most people get this wrong. They're like, our mission statement is to create the best widgets and have the world-class customer service.
00:26:55
Speaker
is these generic broad things. Instead of saying our mission is to summit the mountain, right? Like there's a destination. And when we get there, we'll put the flag on the ground and say, we did it and we'll celebrate it. We'll give high fives and we'll pass out money. And then we'll say, what's the next mission, right? And we'll go after that one.
00:27:14
Speaker
And typically those missions are somewhere in the three to five year timeframe. Like pick a destination that's out of little ways that can align all of our effort. And that's the last part of setting the vision. So purpose, values, mission. There's no vision statement. Setting the vision for us is getting clear on those three pieces and doing that with the team. And it galvanizes the team and aligns effort. It provides clarity. It's awesome.
00:27:42
Speaker
I think this is powerful because it's like something that, let's be honest, God's teaching me right now. But it's creating a plan and fulfilling the plan, not deviating from the plan, because there is trust
00:27:58
Speaker
and unity that happens when, hey, we're gonna get hit many directions here, but we created a plan, we are gonna execute this plan and we're doing it together. Instead of like, hey, we created a plan, two weeks later, two months later, some new piece of data point moved out and we moved the goalpost. Like, I can't tell you how disheartening it is for people around you when it happens.
00:28:25
Speaker
And there is no trust that can be established because you said you were going to do one thing and then later it changed for whatever reason. And like, we all know there's going to be some reasons why things could change, but to have the, if you're going to go do the work, you have to go through the, to the point where you're like, I want to execute this plan to my fullest. Like we're executing this plan. Like, and to me, if you're going to go to the work and you don't execute it, it almost hurts you even more.
00:28:52
Speaker
Cause now it's like, yeah, leadership does this all the time. Like, not good, not good. So there is, I think a risk here. If, if you're kind of type of a leader who like squirrel, like it's great, but like, this is create a plan, get by and from the plan, and then let's execute the plan together. So anyway, that's my, I'm getting on a soapbox, but I feel like God's teaching me that. So here we are.
00:29:16
Speaker
And he's a much better teacher than I am, so please share what you're learning. So, I love that, Phillip. And really, I'm going to give people the punchline right now because it's appropriate right now. And then they can stop listening to me babble on. But this is fun for me. So, everything that I'm sharing comes down to like two key levers.
00:29:41
Speaker
There's this parallel between personal effectiveness and organizational effectiveness. I'm an organizational behavior geek. That was my graduate program, organizational behavior. Like how organizations function and they're like a system and there's all these parts and if you want different results, you got to change the system. That's who I am. I just aimed that geekiness at seven-figure businesses and that's what we have in our business.
00:30:10
Speaker
So all of personal effectiveness boils down to two things in my overly simplistic brain, intentionality and discipline, right? Like I'm going to have a plan, Philip just said, and I'm going to stick to it.
00:30:25
Speaker
I'm going to have a plan and I'm going to stick to it." Well, the most successful individuals you will ever meet, whether you get to interview them on your podcast or not, they have a plan and then they execute on it, right? Yeah, discipline to do it. Intentional discipline. It's the same in business, the same in any organization.
00:30:45
Speaker
What are we doing? What's our intention? And how do we stick to it? And so I know all the complex parts that make that happen in a business, but that's in its simplest form. That's what we're doing. And that's what you just, you said that God was teaching you. That's what you were, you were feeling and sensing that truth and you put words to it. And I just put different words to it, but- You articulate it way better than I did with experience. All my time trying to teach people that, right?
00:31:15
Speaker
Yes. No, it's so good. It's so good because you can wrap your arms around it and you can celebrate the wins together. Like, and so we've, we, my wife and I have been kind of into hiking, but there is a lot of things about hiking that are tough. Like, and there's a lot of things that can really derail you.
00:31:35
Speaker
But even being able to talk through as a family, one time we saw, I shouldn't say we saw, somebody on the path saw two bears, no mama. And so like, okay, we have a problem. Like we just started hiking. Our end destination is up on the top of that mountain. And now we have this thing we need to talk through.
00:31:56
Speaker
What do we do here? What's the wise prudent thing to do? Talk it through. Anyway, after a half an hour, we got a big group together and we walked through this path and we got to the top of the mountain. So articulating it and letting people buy in and honestly being forthright enough to be like, listen, there's something here that could really derail us.
00:32:16
Speaker
We really need to think through what are our goals? How important are they as a family? And is it worth getting mauled by a bear? Anyway, so there may be a dumb analogy, but still for my family, I'm hoping that they get to see like we, we started with a plan and we executed the plan. And then now we have a memory to talk about the obstacle in the middle of the plan. But I think it helped us unify us at the end of the day, at the end of the day. So pretty sweet.
00:32:44
Speaker
You're right back where we started. Our story at Infusionsoft, we're not going to hit the goal. We set a plan. We've got bears in the path. We're going to give up. As leaders, we were the worst leaders. We're like, I guess we're not going to make it, people. People are like, no, we are going to make it. At least we built a team that was going to hold us to the plan. Man. No, we are going to make it.
00:33:09
Speaker
And here's how. And we did the celebration and the memory that lasted because of it was so significant, right? Right. And the experience that you have as a team to like, we're conquering the world. Like, remember that. Like, what's your next goal? We're getting it. Like,
00:33:25
Speaker
So good. Yeah. One of our key leaders, he had a phrase that he would, it was in his email signature, but he would say it all the time, it shall be done, right? Like bring on whatever obstacle, it shall be done.
00:33:40
Speaker
And there's this whole thing, you love this, Brian and Philip, you'll love this. Google sometimes, and any of you uncommoners out there, Google sometimes, the quest for the blue vase. Have you heard of this? No, I'm in it though. You're going to love it. I'm googling it right now.
00:33:59
Speaker
It's a little old school. There's a video that you gotta see. There's a little book by that name, The Quest for the Blue Vase. And It Shall Be Done. It came out of that. It's awesome. Okay. Homework for me. I love it. On the three steps or the three main things for the CEO, did you want to share anything on Build the Team?
00:34:25
Speaker
Thank you, Brian. Yeah, because I want to go to secure the fuel, but I don't want to I don't want to give you if you guys. Why do you guys care about money at all? Come on. I'm just kidding. All right. Set the vision. Build the team is next. So build the team.
Aligning Business Values and Vision
00:34:42
Speaker
Once you have that, especially the purpose and the values, the mission is critical on building the team as well, but the purpose and the values really are the filters for who should be on this journey with you. That becomes the core of that talent tractor being. That's the magnet that pulls in the right people. You have to hire, lead, and fire to the vision.
00:35:05
Speaker
Number one concept when you're building the team is to guard the front door with your life. Don't let anybody in who isn't fully on board with the purpose and who isn't a great fit with those values. Yes, they have to have the skills to contribute to achieving the mission, but most of us get that part right or good enough. A lot of us fail on the purpose and values piece. So guard the front door with your life. Every time you hire somebody, every time you bring somebody into this
00:35:35
Speaker
the sacred space of your team, you either strengthen it or you weaken it, right? You strengthen or weaken the culture every time you hire. So don't mess that up. Now, we all are going to mess it up, which is why I said hire lead and fire to the vision. You have to hold this standard. You can't say it as the standard and then turn a blind eye when somebody doesn't live it. You've got to get them out of there or the rest of the team suffers and you hurt your chances of making it to the summit.
00:36:05
Speaker
So the team is not just about hiring, it's also about growing the team that you have. Guys, your business is not going to go any further than the collective capability of the team. It's not going to happen. So you've got to grow the team and that sometimes that means adding to the team, but often and hopefully most of the time it means developing the people that you have.
00:36:30
Speaker
So bring in the best people, develop your people to be even greater, best version of themselves, whatever language you like to use there. But that's what building a team is. It's about getting clarity about their responsibilities, giving them real ownership. And because they all know the purpose, the values, the mission, they're completely aligned to how they contribute. And they know how to make decisions every day. So building the team is hiring well, and it's growing your folks so that
00:36:59
Speaker
when it comes time to face the new challenge, they're ready. So that's the second one. Do you guys want to talk about that anymore? Let's dive into security. I do. You know me. I'm like itching. Oh my gosh. Poor Brian's like, good night, Phillip. Anyway, okay. So the people that are honest with their purpose, their value and their mission, I think
00:37:19
Speaker
It sounds really good, right? And then in interviews, hopefully there's an honest dialogue with you in the interviewee of like these, this is truly a core value of ours. Like if you don't possess these things, please run for the Hills because this is who we are. We are.
00:37:39
Speaker
This is what we bleed here. Like, and let it be known that this is going to be, now, if you're not that it's going to be a rough road. And my job is to fire you. If you don't possess these things. So like, let's have a conversation right now. Let's just save each other a lot of time and heartache.
00:37:55
Speaker
Are you those people or are you not? And it's okay if you're not. But if you aren't and you say you are, eventually we're going to have a crossroads here. And so I think then, especially when a team gets bigger, we don't have this problem. So I'm just totally projecting this. It is your job to then, hey,
00:38:13
Speaker
George is not doing the core values and it is hurting the team and the team seeing that it's okay to be that way. No, George, it's time. Like George, we gotta, we gotta move on. You know, like this is something. So to me, I almost think that's protecting the team and it's also instilling values that you already communicated that everybody knows about. So it is a really good way to make sure that like you keep this sacred thing sacred and you're a man of your word as well, you know? So anyway,
00:38:42
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Two quick tips on that, just practical tips for your listeners, because it isn't easy to hire to values. Most business owners don't know how to do that. And so one thing that I teach is called a values phone screen. So you get your stack of resumes. You see all these, you know, some of them are like, wow, these skills look great. And the rest of them look like garbage. And so you do your separation.
00:39:04
Speaker
what do you do with these people that you think might be a good fit? Well, most of us call up and say, hey, let's have an interview. I want to talk to you. And so then we're already investing automatically. We're investing 30 to 60 minutes of our time to do an interview with somebody that we really don't know if they're going to be a fit with our values at all.
00:39:25
Speaker
But we're kind of, we like what it says on paper. So we say, let's spend time together. Well, by the time you get them in front of you, most of the time we're already invested a little bit. Like we want this to go forward and we want this to work. We start to try to convince ourselves that this is a good idea.
00:39:41
Speaker
We haven't done anything to assess their values fit. I like a phone screen where it's really simple, 30 seconds to 60 seconds per value. I just say, hey, I'm going to tell you each of our values. I want you to tell me what that value means to you, and then I want you to give me an example, a recent example of you living that value.
00:40:03
Speaker
That's it. And so I would say, hey, Brian, our number one core value is we genuinely care. What does that mean to you? And he was, Oh, I think that well, you should care. Genuinely, you should care, right? If you can mix up whatever. It's about right.
00:40:21
Speaker
Right. Give me, give me an example of you living that value and he would proceed to give me an example. Right. So that's, and we just ripped through, we have seven core values. So that takes, you know, five to seven minutes. By the end of that, I know I feel their energy change if they're a fit.
00:40:37
Speaker
Right. And you know what I mean? You can tell. You can tell. Right. So I can tell. And so then I, okay, um, based on this time together, thank you for your application, but we're not going to move forward from here. Or I could say, you know what, based on our time together, I'd like to bring you in for an interview, but you will save yourself hours of time and
00:41:00
Speaker
potentially thousands and thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars in mishires by doing this one little thing called the values phone screen before you ever bring somebody in for an interview. So I said I had another one, I do, but for the sake of time, we're going to get right. Get it to Brian. Just go to Brian's. Secure the fuel. Well, you know,
00:41:23
Speaker
There's things that's been coming up in Philip's life and there's things that have been coming up in my life. A lot of the things that we're seeing with entrepreneurs is just the scaling with capital. There's been a lot of money thrown around in the last 18 months with COVID, the PPP loans, the EIDL loans, and then a lot of businesses just actually did pretty well too, especially online businesses.
00:41:50
Speaker
Um, but there's other businesses that are cash intensive, you know, and you kind of run out of runway with the local bank or the SBA program. So I'm super curious Brett. Uh, and again, you know, uh, get into this as much as little as you want, but you know, when do you really need to.
00:42:10
Speaker
let go of equity or involve venture capital or angel investors, any color on that in terms of expanding your capital base, I'd be super interested to hear your thoughts. Yeah. If you want to go to secure the fuel and then answer that question afterwards, I feel like that's a follow-up to secure the fuel, but okay. I'll do my best. We'll tie this together here. So securing fuel for growth, let's just acknowledge that
00:42:37
Speaker
Even if we have the vision right and the team right, if we don't have the money needed, and like you said, some businesses are very capital intensive, like the working capital involved to do the thing or the delay in collecting sales that have happened or whatever combination of forces that converge to make it to where your bank account doesn't have enough in it to keep investing, to keep growing.
00:43:04
Speaker
There's pressure there, right? And so this otherwise very meaningful worthy cause represented by your business is stifled in its ability to keep growing. And so capital becomes an important piece to the puzzle. So obviously all of us, all of us wish we could just fuel our growth on sales alone, right? If we sell it and we can collect it fast enough, that should fuel it.
00:43:33
Speaker
But there are some business models. We were a SaaS company back at the software company. And so we paid a lot to get customers today where we wouldn't break even on those customers for several months. And so we were burning through cash. And that didn't make us a bad business. That's just the business model we were in. But some business owners would go, what? You're burning cash on purpose?
00:43:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's the game in SAS is to acquire customers as fast as you can so that the lifetime value of that customer will pay you back. So anyway, sometimes cash is a thing. You need more of it in order to increase your growth. Now, this may sound a little counterintuitive or not the first place you would go, but I'm here to tell you from our own experience that the power of your vision
00:44:27
Speaker
will often open the doors that you need for the capital to make it real, right? One of the reasons for setting a strong vision is so that you can secure fuel for growth.
00:44:41
Speaker
Every single investor that we ever had in our business at Infusionsoft, not an elite, we haven't had to do that in our business today, but in the software company, investors came because of the purpose, the values, the mission. Yes, there had to be, there had to be TAM, right? Total Addressable Market. There had to be all these investors are gonna make this much money. All of that had to be there. But the thing that made us really attractive was the culture that we had built
00:45:08
Speaker
And that was all around purpose, values and mission. They could sense something different and it wasn't just.
00:45:13
Speaker
numbers and spreadsheets and estimates. Right. Right. So it's the 30 seconds on shark tanks where people are like, okay, like I'm listening that. Right. And the ones that don't have that. And there's a difference between kind of a sales pitch to an investor and a powerful purpose driven thing from somebody who's like, I'm going to change the world. Do you want to be part of that?
00:45:43
Speaker
It's just different. It starts with vision. The best money raising happens after the clearest, most powerful vision that you can put together as a team.
00:45:56
Speaker
So then, you know, we had friends and family around, we had angel investors, we did venture capital four different times. And I'm using we loosely, I was not the CEO or the founder, I was in the co-pilot seat, I was right hand to the CEO for many years. So I helped put together those pitch decks and help clarify the story. But it's
00:46:20
Speaker
it doesn't matter really the source of the funds as much as it matters that you need to secure enough fuel to keep going. And that becomes more a thing as you get bigger. At a million dollars in revenue, most of your listeners are going to think like, I don't need that. We bootstrapped to get here. I never want to take on debt. I never want to use other people's money. I never want to take equity partners. Okay, fine.
00:46:45
Speaker
figure out a way to secure enough fuel for growth. At some point, if their growth is limited by the fuel that they have, then they'll have another decision point. Am I ready now to do one of those other things I said I would never do? If not, then you've just artificially limited your growth to what you can fuel with your own sales. And that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you have a big enough vision that requires that you have capital to grow, then you start opening your mind up to other ways of fueling that growth.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah, it does come back to a clear vision, a clear purpose, and a clear mission. Because if you don't have that, the investors that could be investing in your
00:47:26
Speaker
It could be like, I just want a rate of return. Like they don't understand the biggest like core value of yours is like, yeah, we're going to try to get a revert return, but maybe that's not our highest value here. Yeah. You on for it or not because you don't want a guy who's like constantly beating on the door. Like why doesn't this why? Okay. Yeah. That's the worst thing you can do is convince somebody to give you money. Who's not bought into what you're doing. Cause it will be transactional. The rest of the way they're not in the boat. Thanks for, thanks for clarifying.
00:47:54
Speaker
You could just walk around with me and articulate what I'm actually saying. That'd be really nice, Brett. Well, they're in the boat. They're not in the boat. Their logo's on the boat. They sponsored one of the orders. They're waiting with the trophy and the celebration. They're like, we need to celebrate. Get your nap.
00:48:14
Speaker
So good. One other thing, I know we're coming to the end. I really just would love your perspective. You see so much and you're just out of such a unique perspective with where you were and what you're doing now. We're also seeing a lot of our clients coming to this point where the business internally is growing.
Business Evolution and Resources
00:48:34
Speaker
Everything's going great. You've trained up some leadership and those leaders are getting compensated, highly compensated.
00:48:42
Speaker
and they're entrepreneurial and out of a good business other businesses can start and you went through this and so any color on you know businesses forming within the business i think that's healthy i think it's a great thing of talented people it means you have good ideas it means you're serving
00:48:57
Speaker
the market, you're aware. But sometimes those things aren't synergistic, sometimes they are. And so just any color on how you guys came to the conclusion that, yeah, this isn't congruent with Infusionsoft Keep, and we're going to need to spin this out. I'd be super curious. Great. Yeah. Fantastic question. And I'm happy to share whatever insights I can. So for a long time, we justified
00:49:23
Speaker
this decision to create this little, we're going to teach our elite business growth method to entrepreneurs so they can do the scaling thing, make the shift at a million. We justified that because our purpose said, our purpose is to help small businesses succeed. That's our why. We're super passionate about helping small businesses succeed.
00:49:42
Speaker
In fact, the longer version of that purpose before we shortened it to be able to scale better as a company was to liberate and empower entrepreneurs so they can enjoy doing business while their customers and better serve their families and communities. That was our fire, right?
00:49:59
Speaker
how do i know that you know like 13 years later like we we memorize these things we lived and we talked about them all the time and so to do something that would take us off from that purpose would be the absolute no-no we're not doing it so for a long time we justified this business by saying
00:50:19
Speaker
we're helping small businesses succeed. The 3%, the 5% who did here, they need this. It is life-enabling. It allows them to continue to go, so we're gonna do this. However, it wasn't, it wasn't
00:50:34
Speaker
central to the current mission. That's where we had to make the decision eventually to say, you know what? Our mission doesn't say we're going to go educate all these people over the next three years. Our mission says we're going to create and dominate the market for all-in-one sales and marketing software. It's about sales and marketing software. It's not about this training.
00:50:52
Speaker
And so the mission dictated that we say goodbye to this part of the business. And so every year we had this conversation in our strategic planning is a time to not do elite. The elite business represented 1% of the revenue. It was nothing. It was this little tiny thing.
00:51:11
Speaker
Almost a nuisance. What's that? Almost a nuisance. Yeah. I mean, for everybody else, it was like a nuisance. For me, it was this passion project. Lifeblood. Yeah. In fact, that's how I got involved at Infusionsoft was I was a consultant to them doing this work, right? To help them do this. So this, anyway, so the purpose said yes. The mission said no. Like,
00:51:34
Speaker
we can't be distracted. We got to get back to our product and developing our partner ecosystem. That's where all our investment and energy needs to go. So we spun it out. That's good. Okay. How do our listeners hear more about what you're doing? Yeah. Thank you. How do our listeners hear more about what you're doing? Get contacted with you and yeah.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, well, we talked about our website, growwithelite.com. That's a great place to go. We happen to have a podcast as well. It's called Elite Entrepreneurs. The whole focus is the seven figure growth journey. And so I just recorded earlier today, I recorded episode 100, guys. It was a big milestone for me. So yeah, and those episodes are business owners who have been through the journey.
00:52:22
Speaker
most of them. I also bring on some experts who know something about tax planning or know something about planning for your exit or know something about whatever thing that's important to that journey, but it's business owners primarily with some experts sprinkled in, but I think the right uncommoners who are seven-figure business owners would enjoy hearing that. Absolutely. For sure. Absolutely.
00:52:49
Speaker
Well, you have been listening to the Uncommon Life Project. Brett, this has been a huge blessing for me. Obviously, I got kind of excited. I felt like I was in a boat for a second. Thank you for impacting others and helping people. Help them just have a track to run on because it's a little daunting. And if you don't do this every day, you know, you really got one shot at this and you don't want to keep hitting your head against the wall.
00:53:12
Speaker
So thanks for, one, being passionate about what you do, impacting others in the process, and really helping people step into something that's amazing. Because I do feel like, and Brian always says, it's almost like your child. You build this business and it's kind of like a child. And so you're almost like parenting advice for...
00:53:33
Speaker
And I think you need to bring it to a point where it gets married off. And whether you're still involved or you're not still involved, it needs to be able to exist on its own, so to speak. Yeah, that's a great analogy. You've got to crawl before you can walk, before you can run.
00:53:51
Speaker
You got to do those younger years before you get into the pre-adult years and then you got to be married off, right? Like it's a perfect analogy. Yeah. Well, we've been, we've been on a boat. We've been on the top of the mountain. We've been marrying kids off. This has been fantastic. Thank you for having me, you guys. Yes. Thank you, Brett. Absolutely. And tune in next time. And until then, go be uncommon. Thanks everybody. Goodbye.
00:54:14
Speaker
That's all for this episode of The Uncommon Life Project, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.