# Billionaire: If I Lost Everything, Here’s How I’d Make $10K in 90 Days

Channel: Grant Owen
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxbTW0hTw70
Duration: 51 min
Language: English
Words: 10097
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/cxbTW0hTw70

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[0:00] What is one thing that someone has to unlearn in order to make their first dollar not from their job? Control. Control. You've got to step away from control. And instead of it, we live in this world where everything that's thrown at us in this world is about self-improvement, self-growth, self-development. Right? We're going to

[0:21] 10x oursel. We're going to cold plunge. We're going to get up and run 10 miles first thing in the morning. Right? Everything that we're taught is that if you want to be excellent, it's all about self-development. If you really want to scale and you really want to grow, [sighs] you have to remove yourself from it being all about you. And it's authentically got to be about everyone

[0:42] else. Let's say I took away all 17 of your companies. Okay? Let's say I took away all of your wealth, all your connections. Yeah. Your job is to make $10,000 in the next three months. Yeah. What are you gonna do? If tomorrow you said, "Vic, you've got to go make $10,000 right now. Launch a business in the next few months," I would probably

[1:00] sell what I know. But I've spent the last two decades tactically, hands-on, building businesses every single day with teams of people, getting punched in the face, having a lot of carnage along the way. But I've learned a great deal, and I would leverage that knowledge that I have to go educate people. But every business is conveying a fix to a painoint or they're conveying a better solution that's driven by knowledge and their ability to assemble a deliverable that's going to increase the speed of play, make things less painful and allow you to be more successful. How do I find my first customers? I like sometimes like

[1:37] it's like, "Oh, sweet. Okay, I've identified I'm I'm really interested in this or I believe that this can make money or I see other people doing this and that could interest me. How do I go then and get the get someone to buy my stuff? If you really are just trying to go out and build a business, you've got to start with relationships. Um, the reason being is what you're going to learn is going to largely come from understanding what the pain points and the opportunities are with who you want to serve. So, I'm having a lot of conversations with people in a marketplace of of what they need. It's

[2:07] no different than, you know, I had a I had a multi-billionaire business partner when I was a very young man and it it always intrigued me that he always walked around with a yellow notepad and he was a multi-billionaire and I was in my 20s and it he you don't walk around with a notepad because you have the

[2:26] answers. You walk around with a notepad because [clears throat] you want to learn. So the first thing I would do is slow down. I would be very educated. I'd be very thoughtful. I would collect information. What's the balance between there? Because I get stuck there a lot. That becomes its own trap. It ends up becoming this thing where it's like, I don't know enough, and I'm not going to press go until I have it all figured out. With something like this, especially where someone's saying, let me take the leap away from my job or

[2:54] away from security or away from control. Yeah. How do I take that leap and have it be educated and be okay with a little bit of failure? I don't want to be contradictory, but we are in a economic cycle right now where speed of play really matters. Everything's moving really quickly. Um Warren Buffett has a great quote. He moves as fast as is smooth. And so if he's wobbly and out of

[3:20] control, that's moving too fast, right? Um I think there's a lot of opportunity in the marketplace where businesses and individuals are being reckless. They're moving very, very fast. And so, um, when I say move slow, your question is, how do you not have paralysis because you're overanalyzing something? And how do you also make sure you're not running towards a cliff? Um, we live in the information age that is the best that it's ever been, right? I mean, you can get more information today very quickly to assess, do due diligence on does this

[3:54] make sense? How fast do I need to move? Think about where we are today versus where we were two years ago. I mean, literally two years ago, you had to like be a research analyst and you had to understand so many different pieces of the puzzle in order to try to identify the the one point that you were trying to understand yourself. You don't have to do that today. So I would say if if someone is trying to build a business today that it's more important to build it with a strong foundation of knowledge, authenticity and a true understanding of what's going on in the marketplace in lie of being a hype

[4:32] marketer. Um run like hell from hype marketers. I mean run like hell. What I'm collecting from you right now is that like relationally, if you are making connections and you're slow and calculated in the diagnosis of the problem, uh it's going to be very easy for you to find solutions for them and you're probably going to make your first $10,000 doing that, 100%. And you know what's even more important? You're going to build authentic trust with whomever that client is, and they're going to give you a lot of grace and a lot of kindness, and they're going to work with you over time. I see so

[5:05] many people overselling. They're just overselling. And at the end of the day, I'll tell you what the good people do. They get honest and say, "Yeah, I probably can't deliver that scope of work, you know, and and they dial it back." When they do that, do you know what I want to do? I want to do business

[5:21] with them more. Level two is 10K to 100K. I think there's a difference between what we're talking about and the person that's first shaking hands and they're kind of green and they're saying, "Yes, please hire me. Cool. I'm going to do a lot of work for you." And then there's a different trap in there where they kind of can become like a glorified freelancer or consultant. You might not have consistent MR. You might not actually have a team and you might be a solopreneur that's frankly just like a highly like a a

[5:44] well- paid but like employee. Well, level two I think is the most important level. Um and it's the reason it's the most important level is in level one you prove to yourself that you could generate revenue. Yeah. Right. And everything has to start with a dollar. Something happened to you. something happened. So when you get to level two, now we're building what needs to be a business. I will say in many cases today,

[6:09] people aren't building a business. They're just building a glorified job that has a higher pay grade. And here's what they're missing. Here's what's fun. And this is if there was anything I figured out early in my career that that has been just transformational for me is that rich is loud and wealth is quiet. And is what I mean by that is you see a lot of people that get to that $10,000 a month to $100,000 a month and they want to tell you about it. They want to tell you everything about it. By the way, building credibility in the marketplace by telling everyone how much revenue

[6:44] you're doing is not normal business, right? I would spend all that energy on building a business that has predictability. And I see so many times people have a business that goes from 0 to 10,000, 10,000 to 100,000. They're at that level two. Guess what they do with that money? That money looks like a new watch. It looks like a new car. It looks like a trip. It looks like a bunch of

[7:07] like crazy digital marketing campaigns. If you go from making 10,000 a month to a h 100,000 a month, man, don't take a big distribution. Pour every dollar back into the company, but build the business so it has predictability and it has reoccurring revenue. Right. Do you have any uh failures in that? So, I'm going to tell you how I learned that. Very early in my career, I had a business partner. We agreed that I was going to get a salary and that I was going to get distributions um that were enough to cover the taxes that I would have liability for at the end of the year going from 10,000 to

[7:42] 100,000 a month. It took a while, right? And then 100,000 to 200,000 to 300,000 to a mill. I mean, it just keeps going. And we had a model in place that we weren't taking the money out of the company. And when I was a young guy, right, let's just say 30 years old. And all of a sudden, you know, I'm making enough money that I'm getting paid. I should be getting paid like a pro alete and I'm still getting paid like I'm in, you know, the lower levels. And the reality of it is is

[8:10] the money wasn't for us to get richer. The money was to build wealth in the business so ultimately we could become wealthy. And so that for me changed the way I thought and I learned to live on a lot less. Um, it was frustrating cuz I had friends that were making quite a bit less than me and were driving around Ferraris and you know they they had new Rolexes on and life was good and flashy and I still had what felt like a managed budget. But I would say that that lesson the lesson was we're going to reinvest in the company. Just because the company's profitable, we're not going to

[8:42] pay oursel was transformally transformational for me. So, when you're in level two, I would say um you don't have to brag about what you're doing, man. When you jump from that 100 or 10,000 to 100,000, you don't have to brag about it. Um I would stay humble about it, but I would deeply reinvest in the business because if you're reinvesting in a business, you're reinvesting in a

[9:04] business for predictability. You're reinvesting in the business because you want to build enterprise value. Before we keep going, I want to take a minute to tell you about Riverside. If you make content for your business or even wanting to start, it has never been easier to do it well. That's where Riverside comes in. You record a conversation right from your browser in up to 4K and your guest just clicks [music] a link, no downloads. And they just launched the thing I'm most excited about, Riverside [music] Agents. It's an AI production team built into the platform. The second you stop recording, one agent preps your session, one edits the episode, one clips the

[9:37] best [music] moments, and one gets it all posted. You have the conversation and your production pipeline just runs. It is a one-stop shop, including hosting and distributing it across all platforms. [music] I cannot encourage people using this platform enough. It has made my life so much easier, and I'm so grateful to have them as a partner. If you're wanting to get started in the podcasting game or the content creation game, all that you need to do is click the link in the description and use code grant for one month of the Grow Plan. Test it out for yourself and see how easy it makes your life. Thank you to Riverside for being a

[10:04] true partner in this conversation. Now, let's get back to the episode. I think this is a good idea to talk about like the the concept of opportunity vehicles. Yeah. As someone that jumped into an opportunity vehicle that didn't have enterprise value, right? It the value of my agency was me. Yeah. Um it was my knowledge. Yes, we had a team. Yes, we had systems. Yes, we had

[10:24] processes. Yes. Uh we were excellent. But at the end of the day, it wasn't like I was going to get 20x multiple on the agency because the agency was just me. You built yourself a job. I mean, that's what you built yourself a job. You had a job and as you wound things down, you

[10:40] wound down your job. Yeah. Right. I mean, you literally wound down your job. And I think this is an amazing lesson for people that are watching this. You spent 80% plus of your time making sure that you were delivering a highly valuable product to your customers. That's what you did every day, right? You wanted to make sure you were delivering so that reoccurring billing would stay in place. You could keep that contract in place. you could win them over, right? And the risk, the greatest risk as an entrepreneur is taking your hands off of the reins and spending that time. And this is this is where wealth is made. Wealth is made

[11:18] when you have a system in place that you are spending the greatest percentage of your time recruiting and developing talent to make the business sustainable without you. Founder dependence is a real thing. I wish someone told me that I wasn't building enterprise value that I was just building myself a nice job. Yeah. What industries should you avoid or what industries should attract you if your goal is, hey, I actually might want to

[11:44] exit from this. I would never want to sell something to someone once. Um, I would want to get into a business that wasn't project based, that had long-term retention. Um, I think the term is you can have your cake and eat it too. I have a framework of really how to build a durable business. And the first thing you have to do is have a good sight picture of knowing where you're going. Um I never want to have a business that I'm having to push push push my product to the marketplace. I want to have [clears throat] a product where people are pulling it. So when you think about

[12:16] building your agency, you started out as a soloreneur doing your deal. Yeah. And you hired a few more people, right? And if you think what was the difference between you being a soloreneur that wound your business down to go do something else versus having an agency that you can bring an investment bank in and selling it. You say, "What was the difference?" Do you know what the

[12:37] difference was? One person. It was one person. It was that one person that you didn't hire. It was that one person you didn't have. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. You've watched so many. How many businesses stay successful beyond 5 years? I'll tell you what it really is. Businesses that fail at that fiveyear mark are usually because the founder is fatigued and beat up and it's all about them and they're worn out and they're tired and they can't figure out how to bring talent in. They can't figure out

[13:07] how to scale. What drives the success of every business is margin, right? So, if you're always fighting margin and you're always fighting profitability in a business, Yeah. It gets really fatiguing. Yeah. Right. I mean, it gets to be a beatdown. Yeah. And so, um, and then you're like, well, where's the breakdown? There are some businesses that people just shouldn't be in that doesn't have

[13:32] healthy margins. And when you say margin, talk to me about the difference between margin and let's say the concept of like IBIDA. Yeah. IBIDA matters if you're in the M&A world. Yeah. Uh, and it and it and it is important, but if you're an in if you're running a business, a for-profit business, I would tell you the most important number that you're going to look at is net income. Profitability is the greatest insurance you can ever have when you're running a business. There's nothing you can plan for everything in the world, but if you have profitability, you have insurance that

[14:02] you can keep going and you can succeed. So, um, I I've always spent my time focused on net income because that's what we can spend. I can't reinvest IBIDA into the company. Ibida comes into play when you're going to market and you want to be able to show someone um you know where the business is if you add

[14:20] everything back. Tell me this. You're communicating two different things. One is it profitability and two is like training and and and talent acquisition. What would you say is more important in this phase? Is it more important just to like pedal on the gas? let's just get as many sales as we can and focus on revenue or is it you need to find people that are

[14:39] as good as you and train them up? I don't think you're gonna necessarily find people as good as you. I think you're going to find people that have um the appetite to learn and develop and to get bigger, better, and stronger. And I think that in level two, you absolutely have to protect the profitability of the business. Um so you don't get owner fatigue. Uh you obviously you're a sales machine, right? You're always going to be a sales machine. Sales are never going to go away. There's never a level where you're like, we're not going to focus on growth anymore. Yeah. But level two is exactly when you need to bring

[15:10] that. The only way you're going to get to level three and to have predictability and start building enterprise value is if you've gone past the phase of being a soloreneur. So many people build businesses with the mindset that they want to create an amazing value proposition that their customers are going to buy from them. They want to deliver something great to the

[15:31] marketplace. And here's what they miss. They miss what matters almost as much and maybe more than that. You've got to create an opportunity that the smartest and the best people in the world want to come work for your business. So your outward view, all the marketing, all the efforts that you have on the outside to

[15:52] drive revenue, it's certainly important. It's the price of admission. You've got to have a good product. You've got to generate revenue. But think about if you're spending as much time making sure M that grant come work with us. This is going to be an amazing opportunity. If you look at what Elon Musk has done with, you know, every business he has, he's the greatest recruiter in the

[16:13] world. And he starts out with telling you how amazing what and how crazy and outlandish of things that they're going to do. And people want to be a part of big impactful things. They like crazy. Yeah. They like crazy. like we're going to like the greatest scientists in the world want to figure out how they're going to get thousands of satellites up in the sky. They want to understand how

[16:36] they're going to get a rocket to Mars. They want to understand how they're going to build an autonomous vehicle that's going to be able to just drive people around while they sleep. Those are challenging, fun, impactful things that people want to work on. So, when you're when you're when you're in level two and you're building your business, that's where you start thinking about what can I do in this business to make

[16:54] Grant want to come work with me, right? You shut down your agency. because someone showed you a very interesting, intriguing, impactful path that you could go down. Yep. Right. Yeah. For real. And I wish I would have been ahead of that guy, [laughter] right? I mean, I'm still recruiting you. I am. I am still recruiting you right now. [laughter] So, but but that [snorts] you have that has to be

[17:16] authentic. Yeah. Smart, good, amazing people that you want to work with, they have a filter. You people like, "Oh, you have to build a culture." When you're when you're a soloreneur and you're building a business, the whole game isn't how much market share can you go get. It's not how much reoccurring revenue can you go get. It's not that's not the

[17:34] game. Yeah. The game is how can I work with the smartest, best, most amazing people. Yeah. And then guess what happens. The outcome is the outcome is going to be great success. It all comes back to people. This is a great time to transition to level three. How did you make your first million?

[17:53] Good question. Like the actual business? Yeah. Okay. I'll be happy to tell you. Yeah. I was 25 years old and in the United States there was a significant failure happening with tires on Ford Explorers. So, Ford Explorers were having tire failures and people were dying because tires were underinflated and it was a big issue. Um, and the government said that they were going to enforce a policy to where everybody that manufactures vehicles that are sold in the United States had to have instrument panel lights that told you when a tire was going to fail. And they said that within 3 years, anyone that sold a vehicle in

[18:31] the United States, any manufacturer, had to have basically a light on the dash. We called them an idiot light that said, "Your tires are under inflated." because everyone was scared to death because they didn't understand why these tires were exploding and cars were rolling sideways down the highway. Um, when I was uh in my early 20s, uh I started attending trade shows all over the world. Um I tried to go to at least one a year that was out of the US, one that was in the US. I mean, I can tell you a great story about riding a cargo plane to Taiwan so I could go to a trade show,

[19:02] but I was really intrigued by trade shows. And I had remembered seeing a device that you could screw on the valve stem of a tire and if the tire was properly inflated, it would be green and as the tire lost pressure, it would turn yellow and red. And as I was reading in the paper that these Ford Explorers were having bad accidents, people were dying because of tires being underinflated, I knew that the government was going to take forever to mandate and work with the manufacturers to get that product in place. So it was part integrated into the vehicle. But I remembered seeing this device at a trade show in Taipei,

[19:37] Taiwan. And um I flew over to Taipei, Taiwan, and I found the guy that made the device. and I brought the device into the US and I started selling it. So essentially they had a product, you didn't license it, but essentially you you productized it. It was almost like, "Okay, sweet. I'm just going to pay you

[19:56] to manufacture." They had no idea how to sell it. Thankfully for them, they had no sales and I'll tell you why. And so I went over, I sourced this product, I shipped it over. And you know, it was before we had digital marketing and everything else. So, um, it wasn't it wasn't really easy to advertise to individuals to say, "Put these on your car." So, I started going to car dealerships and saying, "Hey, if you want your customers to be safe and you want to convey that you care about their safety, you should start putting these devices on the tires." And, uh, the first big dealership I got was in Phoenix,

[20:26] Arizona, and it was a Honda dealership. And, uh, I was so excited. They had 400 vehicles out on their car lot, and they had 1,600 tires, right? I personally in the heat of August screwed these valve stems uh these monitors on every valve stem and I got a call the next day uh from the general manager of the dealership and he said, "Vic," he said, "I have 1,600 flat tires." Now, my product was designed to keep the tire inflated, not to go flat. But I didn't take into consideration that it's 130 degrees on the asphalt in Phoenix, Arizona in August and the seals inside of the devices melted and he had 1,600

[21:04] flat tires. So the minute that happened, you know, I had to make a decision. Was I going to be tenacious and try to fix the problem or was I just out of business? And I had no money. Um I mean that was the first thing I'd ever done entrepreneurally in my life. And the decision I made is to go back over to Taiwan and put that guy in a headlock and say, "Man, we've got to figure out how to get this right." We got the product right. It took the government in the US, I think about 7 years, uh, to get the actual integration of the

[21:32] onboard tire monitoring systems built into vehicles, and for that seven years, I sold millions of those devices uh, to car dealerships all over the 1600 tires. What did I do? Yeah. Well, when the guy called me to tell me that his 1600 tires were flat, he he I mean he there were a lot of fbombs that went along with that [laughter] conversation, right? Like and and I I genuinely, if I recall, I think

[21:55] he said he was going to kill me. Yeah. I didn't know what to do um for him except to tell him to take them all off and put air in the tires, right? I mean, what's he going to do? And so I got on Eva Airlines the next day. I flew back to Taipei.

[22:08] It wasn't like you popped the tires. No, no. The air just went out. Air just went out. Yeah. So, he had to fill them all back up. But, I'll tell you what happened. This guy's name was Tom that was the general manager of this dealership. I got this product back and I went and begged for forgiveness and asked for another chance and took care of him and they ended up being one of my biggest customers of the country. He told everybody about the product and we sold it everywhere. And so, um, that really that one product was the catalyst for me

[22:32] getting into the automotive industry. And then once I got into the automotive industry, which I really encourage people to do that are entrepreneurs, is think about the whole ecosystem in these businesses that you serve because companies don't want 20 partners, right? They don't want they they they want one partner, not 20 vendors. And so I learned by being in that ecosystem all these different areas of where the auto industry had opportunities to go and I built relationships and I compounded those relationships and started 10 companies in the industry and had a blast doing it. But it was I didn't get

[23:07] a loan. I didn't have a line of credit. Um I didn't borrow friends and family money. Um I just sold my ass off and saw a pain point in the industry that I wouldn't served. When we're talking about the concept of of making millions of dollars, let's say that the goal is to make, you know, we've talked about making 0 to 10K, 10 to 100K, 100K to a

[23:27] million. What in that like who did you have to hire? What systems had to be built for you to be successful? Because I can't picture you placing millions of little tire pieces on a bunch of different tires. When I started my first company, I realized that no matter what I sold to my customers, and I really encourage people to think through this in business today because it's such an untouched

[23:51] opportunity. So, here it is. I never got just um overly passionate about the products and services that I sold to my customers is what I got overly passionate about was how could we serve them in a way that we could train and develop them. um and and almost in an obscure way. Um in a few of my companies, we were training and developing our customers in and I'll give you an example. Um when we were working with car dealerships, one of the uh you know, our ICP was service advisors on the service drive of a car dealership. So the the the lady or guy that walk up to you with a clipboard and

[24:28] say, "Hey, we know today they have hopefully have a digital iPad, but they walk up to you and say, "Hey, what's wrong with your vehicle? What's going on?" Um, we didn't train them on how to do the tactical uh elements of their job. We trained them on leadership skills, time management, all of these other things. And the reason we focused on these other things is I knew if we could get to their heart, we could get their business. And anytime that you help someone get better, they want to do business with you. If you go into a business and you're focused on training and developing and

[25:00] helping other people, here's what I've learned. the people that you recruit that come into your business. I w I w I didn't have a salesperson on my team, they were all professional development representatives, which seems a little weird, right? They were PDRs. They were professional development representatives. That's what it said on their business card. It didn't say sales guy, didn't say business development, it didn't say any of that. Their job was to go in and

[25:24] professionally develop our customers. And obviously, the mechanism of how we collected revenue Yeah. was from the products and services that we sold. And so, The way you communicate with your customer and the way you present your offer to your customer is going to be predictive of the type of people you're going to get in your business, right? And I you don't I don't even today I don't want to hire someone and say, "Hey, you're an SDR. You're just going to go out and grind and fight and sell all day." No, you're going to build relationships. You're going to convey trust. This is what you're going to go

[25:57] do. Right? And honestly, if you look at like the info education space and why it's so successful is because it's people helping people. Mhm. But there's a lot of companies out there today that they lose they this component of we're actually helping you and they put a lot of their intellectual capacity and we're trying to sell you the features and benefits of our product

[26:21] and they don't see the whole ecosystem. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. What I mean, were you an excellent talent acquisition specialist? Were you really great at hiring the whole time? That's all I've ever cared about. Have you been good at it? Have you been just non-stop hiring a players? That's the only reason I've been

[26:37] successful. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. How many people have you fired personally? Yeah, maybe 10. [snorts] Uh, and then how many people have worked for you? Thousands. Okay. And tens of thousands. Okay. are talk to me about how that works out because most people I talk to that have hired a lot of people. Yeah. Usually they say, "Well, I've fired

[27:01] not more but just as many." I've operated companies with, you know, thousands and and over 10,000 people. Um, and so obviously I wasn't doing all the hiring and firing myself. Um, but it's to this day it's what I spend 80% of my time on is talent recruitment. I mean that's what I do every day. I mean I'm I'm I'm hoping after this conversation you're [laughter] going to join me. Uh, I mean, it's what I do every day. If you said right now today,

[27:25] what are you the best at in business? Like, what is your skill set? What do you love the most? Where do you try to hone your skills the most? What does that look like? I can tell you it's in talent acquisition. It's discerning talent. It's finding talent. Um, and even to this day, I mean, I run massive companies all over the place, but I am in the trench. I will get on LinkedIn. I will get on social platforms. And I, it's how I found you. I mean, I love to

[27:49] find talent. I love to find people. How do I know if someone's an A player, a B player, or a C player? So, my experience is that a 100% of the time an A player is someone that's a continuous learner that wants to get better. They want to develop. Um, the theory that an A player is going to be a fifth degree black belt or a ninja and they're going to have every answer and they're going to know everything, that doesn't define an A player. As a matter of fact, in some cases, that's going to define the most toxic person you could ever hire and bring into your team. And

[28:24] so, we have a very simple framework that I use across all my companies to hire people. Um, it's going to sound so simple that I don't know if people are going to uh like it, but it's character, competency, and chemistry. And those are the three things that we hire for. And you know who else hires for those three

[28:38] things? Chick-fil-A. If you go work at Chick-fil-A, they make sure you have character, competency, and chemistry. Do you know another organization that hires for character, competency, and chemistry? Delta Force. The most elite special ops tip of the spear unit in the world. I think they hire for character, competency, and chemistry. So that's an A player to me is someone that wants to learn. They want to advance and they have a good character. They have competency. Competency doesn't mean

[29:08] they're the smartest person in the room. Yeah. Right. I mean, I can tell you I graduated from high school with a 1.7 GPA, right? So, I have some confidence that people don't have to be, By the way, I like to hire smart people. They [laughter] don't have to be the smartest people in the room. But, and then I mean, they they they have to have chemistry. Are they going to get along with people? Um, when I go into a company and they say, you know, yeah, that's John. He's weird. He's crazy, but man,

[29:36] he is amazing at this. Those first two things disqualify him in a lot of ways in our businesses because we need chemistry. How do I know if someone is a C player or a B player? Let's say this way. Like I can I think all of us are looking for unicorns. Everyone's looking for unicorns. And so everyone wants everyone wants to think that the person they're talking to or the person they're

[29:58] identifying as an A player. The greatest skill you can hone as an entrepreneur and a business builder in the world is your ability to judge and discern talent. That's number one. Yeah. Um, I mean there's just that's where the scale is. I kind of get there's a lot of people that have probably a B player. How do I know whether this person can actually develop and turn into the A player I need them to be or whether or not

[30:19] they're just going to be stagnating? Yeah. And I just want to be clear that an A player is not necessarily someone that is at the highest capacity. It's someone that has the um potential to get there. And so I think the big thing that you're measuring is potential. Um, when you're looking at a B player, um, you know, I'll tell you, B players normally show up in sloppy work, um, lack of attention to detail, a bad attitude, inconsistent,

[30:45] um, overpromise and underdel. I'm okay if you don't deliver at an exceptional rate, but don't promise me that you are because I, as a leader, I have a ton of confidence in what you tell me. And the greatest risk that I found with people in my businesses personally is when someone has false confidence. They tell me what I want to hear or they have a tremendous level of confidence and they have very low self-awareness. Because if you have low self-awareness, you're never going to have high situational awareness. And if you don't have high situational awareness, you're going to be a

[31:18] liability to our entire business. How do I know if someone is bleeding towards that category where they don't belong on my team? I think the best way to identify someone that doesn't belong on your team is to have a very direct and authentic conversation with them. I have had a few employees that have left over the years that have said, "Man, I'm just not going to meet your expectations." And I'm like, "Well,

[31:42] I'm not going to lower them." Yeah. [laughter] You know, I mean, I'm not. Are you sure you can't? That's so great. Okay, so let's let's move to level four here. I want to ask, what is the difference between a $1 million company and a $10 million company? What's the difference? Yeah, the flywheel. The flywheel um you know, a company that's going from 10 million to 100 million, they are not having to push their product into the marketplace. The market's pulling the product. Um they

[32:10] That sounds very similar to level one. In level one, when you're starting out When level one, when you're starting out, you want to make sure you're developing a product that the market's going to pull. that you're not having to push. Yeah. Level three, you're there. Yeah. Level three, the market is pulling your product from you. And so you're level three is where you're like, if I say level three, let's let's

[32:29] use actual numbers. Okay. Let's say seven figure is level three. Eight figure is level four. Yeah. I want to know what the difference between that. What's the like there's a gap there because I see a lot of the companies get stuck at seven figures. I see there's a lot of companies that get stuck at like two, three million. You've Yeah. Level three, you've

[32:44] differentiated yourself in the market. Level three, you're you're growing because you're doing something better than your competition. Yeah. You're able to deliver. Um and it your people are developing. Um you're a you're able to attract even better talent. Yeah. Um you've established um a brand, but you've probably also established a band. And a band is way more powerful than a brand in the sense of you've got a band of people that are inside the company that are truly charging towards

[33:11] and that gets me to the eight figures. Absolutely. Yeah. I understand seven figure. Yeah, I can understand that. I can conceptualize. It's really hard for me to understand eight figure. It's really hard to build a company that does 10 million a year in revenue. Yeah. Um but it's more possible today to build an eight figureure business than it's ever been before. It's unbelievable. What is

[33:32] the think about this? If two years ago you wanted to build an eight figureure business, you needed to hire let's say somewhere between 20 and 40 people. Okay? And that could be low. It could be high, but that's probably a pretty good range depending on the business. With the tools that we have available today, you're able to take and multiply someone's capabilities

[33:57] Mhm. significantly. So, the SGNA the SGNA the overall salary that you're spending in the company can be cut in more than half because people just simply have more capacity. They can do things faster. they have more capacity and the outcome is generally especially as a gentic AI comes along it's smarter than the human ability. So today I would say that that there's just an easier path than ever before to build a company that has as long as you choose the right opportunity vehicle 100%. If you're going to start a business or you're going to buy a business, whatever that looks like, I mean, the best indicator of what your

[34:45] future is going to look like are a lot of companies you can take inventory of today. There are some businesses you should just stay the hell away from. Yeah. Right. I mean, so this is interesting. um you know 51% of small businesses operating in the United States which is about 99% of you know it's a big number of businesses 51% of those businesses are operated by baby boomers okay and of those only 20 of those companies that are all about to have a wealth transfer we talk about all these companies are going to be sold over the next 10 years only 20 to 30 of those

[35:23] companies are going to transact I'm sorry. 20 to 30% of those companies are going to transact. And the question is, well, why is it so low? Because they're not good businesses. They're not good businesses. The market finds good businesses. It's very, very rare that people are shutting down good businesses. People are definitely shutting down good jobs.

[35:46] You consult a lot of people, right? I do. I actually coach um I consult entrepreneurs that have all the way from seven figure businesses to billion-dollar businesses and I also coach some extraordinary professional athletes that are wildly successful. So So in this what is a personality difference between the person that gets stuck at seven figures and the person

[36:08] that reaches multiple eight figures. Yeah. Their ability to attract talent. Yeah. um their ability to protect margin. Okay. Um their ability to go out and get market share aggressively. Yep. Um is there something innate about the person though? Have you found any similarities? Yeah. Yeah. I think um people that are able to build companies of large scale are relentless and they're ferocious and they're highly

[36:40] competitive. So when you say ferocious, I I think of that as a negative thing. Yeah. What does that sound like? What do you mean by first? They're highly competitive. I mean, they're competitive. They're going after it. They want the market. You know, they may be playing the art of the war. Um, where they're going after it quietly without a bunch of, you know, hype marketing, but they're going after the marketplace. I've never seen an entrepreneur take a business um up to eight or nine figures that wasn't just

[37:05] highly competitive. Yeah. They're very competitive. I would say as competitive as, you know, the most elite professional athlete. I mean, they're competitive. It's a game of competition. That's what it is. And um a lot of people don't want to compete. Um they want to win based on the fact that they've just built something great. It doesn't work, right? I mean, we can say what we want about, you know, Facebook, but I'll tell you right now, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is a hell of a fierce competitor, right? He's I mean, he fights, right? I mean, if you look at these tech companies, these guys fight the ones

[37:38] that have gotten big. And so, you've got When I say fight, it sounds negative. I don't mean a negative way. I mean in a way that they're convicted. They're convicted. They're passionate. They have energy. They have drive. They're going after it every single day. It's their sport. It's what they do. Yeah. You've interacted with all sorts of people. You've built 17 companies, sold nine of them. You actively operate four of them. I'm sure you're always happy to sell them if someone wants to and for you% you're always hiring for the ultra ultra

[38:11] successful. Not many people have been around them. You've been around multiple billionaires. Yeah. What's something that you've learned from them and what's something you've taken in from from the billionaire class? Yeah. So, um I've had seven partners one way or another um throughout my career and life that have been multi-billionaires. Um most of those are first generation and I have I think the greatest privilege I had certainly as a young entrepreneur was being able to spend a lot of time with those individuals and see how they operated and see what really made them tick. Um, and the thing that I recognized the most is that they treated people like they

[38:54] were partners. Um, even if they weren't partners, right? They treated them as if they were partners. Um, they they weren't boastful at all. Um, one of my one of my partners when I was really young, I tell a story that he told me to never get rich and good-looking. And um, I didn't understand what he meant. I was like, "Well, man, I want to get rich and I don't [laughter] know that I'm going to get good-looking. I mean, you got this this bald-head and double chin is going to be tough to work with, but I was like, I want to get rich, right? And so, I'll never forget, as I understood

[39:25] what he was saying is stay relatable, stay approachable, um, and and and make yourself accessible um, within reason to people so you can really be be, you know, people look, we live in this world where everyone can take a picture in front of a rented Ferrari. They can stand in front of a Gulfream. They can use AI to create images. is they can do all that. I cannot think of one ultra successful multi-billionaire that I had the opportunity to work with as I was creating my own wealth that was ever um they would have never in their life done that ever. But the general rule is what

[40:04] I've learned from these people is they ask more questions than they have answers. They're always taking notes. Um they're authentic. I promise you and I promise people watching this that the people most of the people that are creating massive wealth are not doing it the way that we're watching it on social media. Yeah. But I can tell you that I could name 10 multi-billionaires that are wildly

[40:32] successful entrepreneurs. Like huge. You don't know who they are. You don't know who they are. They're not submitting their information to be on any list. Um they love that they're private. You go out to dinner with them, who's paying for the bill? Who's doing that? Like I that's a whole demographic where it's like I don't know I don't know what

[40:50] generosity looks like at that stage. Yeah. If the wealthy person at the table's paying for the bill Yeah. they're doing it in a discrete kind of way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember the first time I bought a private airplane and I took a picture inside of that private airplane with a bunch of buddies of mine and I posted it on Instagram and I remember vividly my son who at the time was 16 years old called me and said, "Dad, what in the heck is that picture?" And I was like, "Me? It's me and my buddies." He's like,

[41:17] "No, it's you flexing your plane." And you'd say, "Well, where in the world did that come from?" It came from I had told I I had the same conversation we're having that I didn't want to be rich and good-looking. But every once in a while, it gets the best of us, right? If you're authority and your validation and your credibility to the marketplace is the su is you showing materialistic

[41:40] things that define your success. You're missing the wealth. Let me tell you what the wealth is. The wealth is the Christmas party with your thousand employees that you're standing in front of and you're taking a picture. And I don't care if it's two, five, 10, a thousand. I don't care what the number is. The wealth is the people and that's [clears throat] what, by the way, that's what people want to see standing there with our arms around each

[42:06] other. I want to ask that, too, because I talked to someone recently about this. Um, it really impacted me. He was talking about how he was coaching someone and uh he encourages people to spend money on themselves because sometimes you get stuck in this phase of you're always pushing, you're always grinding and and you never take money out of the business, you never celebrate. Um and so he was encouraging people to do that and some people were doing that and then they would spend and they'd be like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm doing this for a reason. Oh, I did deserve that." And it's like they're

[42:31] waking this up. He had this one entrepreneur where um he was like, "I don't get fulfillment from buying anything for myself. I don't I don't feel any like I've already bought I've gotten I've done the yacht life. I've done all this stuff. Uh but I was able to give a bonus to somebody. I was able to give a race to somebody and

[42:49] goodness gracious that felt really good. Um, I've heard about some things that Dave's done at Ramsay in regards to how they're generous and what they give. Like, uh, you know, out of nowhere having a a party and, uh, having all the husbands bring their wives and giving renting out a mall and they each get like 5,000 bucks to just go and, hey, buy whatever you want. This place is

[43:13] yours. And I'm like, that is that has to be the coolest feeling in the world. Do you find that the people in this level are they generally the most generous people that you know? I would say that I don't know anybody that has created an ultra high level of wealth. I haven't been around someone that just got lucky and won the power ball with some tech solution. Um, these are people that have built legacy

[43:38] businesses and and operating companies. I don't think that I've been around any of them that have not been generous. Um, I think they're disciplined. I think they're structured. I think they pay for outcome and performance. Yeah. Um I think that it's very KPI driven. Yeah. I don't think that they're just walking around, you know, fanning money out everywhere, right? Mr. Beast. It's not It's not Yeah. It's not Mr. Beast,

[43:57] right? But it's it's very thoughtful. But yeah, they're super generous. And look, if generosity is um for me and and and and I don't First of all, people that are very generous don't talk about being generous. Sure. Okay. I mean, that's just not how that works. But I can tell you if you've ever had the privilege to be generous with people, the fulfillment and joy that you get from that and man, maybe that's just the Holy Spirit living in me. I mean, you know, I mean, I think it's I think Jesus brings us like so much joy from from giving and certainly does for me in my

[44:31] life. It's a hund it's not fleeting. It's fulfilling. And so if you want to build something massive, and I don't care what happens with AI, I am a madly passionate student of AI and user every day and many different tools and workflows, but I'll tell you nothing's going to be more nothing is going to be more important than people. And you know, the best way to to um gain loyalty from people is to have a

[44:59] heart of generosity. Uh I love Sam who who runs this content and uh I was asking Sam. Sam was actually instrumental in my decision to to join Jefferson and he told me he was I just asked him I was like hey you've been working with Dan for a long time like you could leave tomorrow and you'll probably make you know 60k a month profit just like consulting for a good long time

[45:21] easily. Yeah. And hell I'd pay him a lot of that. And I think uh he told me uh he told me, "Why would I leave when I'm still learning and I get access to all the things I could ever want?" Yeah. Like why would I want to do anything else, Dan? Like I love what we're building. I don't want to leave. I don't like it's not on my agenda or my time horizon to leave. And I thought to myself, I was like, man, uh I was choosing between a couple different jobs, a couple different opportunities. And I wish you'd have called me. [laughter] And uh I I chose the one because I was

[45:56] like that I could see myself doing that for 5 years. Yeah. Do you know what and and that's just one scenario but that and I don't I don't know the dynamics that you know there but ultimately is what Dan did was gave Sam an ownership mindset and a partner mindset and saying hey I'm going to help you win uh and I'm not going to you know I'm not

[46:18] going to try to control you. Ridiculous amounts of money on coaching and consulting for that guy. Yes, they they paid they paid multiple agencies 25k 30k plus a month and just just to train Sam to be as great as he is and I would say he's I would say he's the best in the space and at least communicating about I would say shout out to him for this podcast but like I I owe a lot to him. He's I've known him for three four years and he's

[46:42] been nothing but amazing to me. Yeah. Well, he's on my feed and I've been watching him and and definitely learned a lot. So, the guy's good. But, you know, I would say that that the only thing that is uh harder than recruiting great talent into a company Mhm. is losing great talent. If you can develop and grow and retain talent, and that's what I've seen as a common denominator with all the successful business people I've worked with, their people love working with them and they stick with them. And you know, we we we hear so much about turnover and attrition and so on and so forth, but um you know, I will tell you

[47:16] that that the best business builders in the world is what they know how to do is develop and retain and retain people. That's what they that's their skill set. It's not I I would go on record as saying that, you know, Elon Musk is the best recruiter of talent um in in the world probably. Yeah. And you'd say, "Well, no. I mean, he's a CEO and an engineer and a scientist and a soant and all

[47:43] this. All of that's for nothing if he can't recruit great talent." Yeah. And you know, you look at like Facebook that, you know, and these other companies that they're like, "Hey, we're going to pay so and so $100 million to come work here." People like, "That's crazy." Yeah. No. It just tells you what their P&L looks like. It tells you what the value and that's where I want to get to with that. The value of exceptional high-capacity talent to a company should always keep a company from being shortsighted, right? But you also have a responsibility to help people understand what the P&L of the company looks like,

[48:19] right? Like let's sit down and look at it. And that's something I've always done. Anyone that's ever worked for one of my companies that wanted to sit down and go through the financial statement, it's fair game. we will sit down and go through it. Um, and you know, there's some things we're going to protect. I'm probably not gonna tell you your, you know, peer salary. You might be able to back into what that number is, but I always want people to understand the whole picture. Um, and in a lot of cases, the people that are asking those questions that want to see that, they walk away going, I love that I work for

[48:50] a healthy company and I feel like I am paid, you know, as I should be. H Vic, I appreciate you and your energy and your time and I appreciate your honesty. Also, I appreciate what you held back. Um because what you didn't say were here's all the evidence of why I'm the best. Here's all the people I've worked with. Here's all the uh here's all the reasons why I'm the only one with all the answers. If anything, you just showed me that to get to your level requires uh patience and trust in my team and ultimately um curiosity. And I I I I admire that about you. Um in our few interactions,

[49:33] I've seen that to be a consistent theme. You're inspiring me to be the type of person that whether I have a nine figure business or not is irrelevant. But I'm I'm living with generosity. I'm living with curiosity. I'm living in humility. and I'm always asking questions. I can tell you that um I don't feel like I have all the answers. I'm learning every day, but I feel so grateful um that I have the ability to learn and I live in an ecosystem and

[49:57] environment um where where I can learn. But I have a prediction for you. Um and I and I really mean this. This isn't hyper propaganda. I'm sincere. I've watched most of your podcasts and I see your disposition. I see how you talk to people. Um, I really believe this is going to be a top 10 podcast in the space [laughter] and uh, you've had amazing people on this podcast and everybody has a different perspective and let me tell you as a guy that's had a lot of success professionally and uh, and I've had a lot of success personally, right? I mean, I've got an amazing wife, two amazing kids. I can

[50:29] just tell you that I am learning. I am taking notes and learning. As a matter of fact, you've had people sitting in this chair that I've seen you talk to that I'm in like, man, those people are so much smarter than me, [laughter] right? And so, here's that mindset shift. The mindset shift for me is not it's not

[50:45] about they're so much smarter than me. It's like, what can I learn from them? And then ultimately where my competition comes out is how in the hell can I hire those people? [laughter] I mean, I love that. Or or for me, I go to how can I beat them? Yeah, exactly. How can you beat them? Well, Vic, you're awesome. You got to

[51:01] stack it. Thank you. Thank you, man. Appreciate

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