Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 19 - Simple Plan to $100k/Month
Synopsis:
In this practical breakdown, Mike Shreeve lays out a simple, three-stage path to $100k/month.
Stage 1 ($0–$10k): find real buyers, craft an offer they’ll pay for, and sharpen sales.
Stage 2 ($10k–$50k): leverage fulfillment, keep what’s working, and add scalable marketing (think book/low-ticket funnels that offset ad costs).
Stage 3 ($100k+): develop A-players, raise lifetime value, and install systems that reduce complexity.
If you’re vetting Peaceful Profits courses, services, or coaching, this episode is loaded with Peaceful Profits marketing strategies and success frameworks you can apply today.
Transcript:
Simple Plan to $100k/Month
[00:00:00] Hello my dear friends, hope you're doing well. Mike Shreeve here. Thank you very much for taking a listen to today's episode. We're going to be talking about the three stages of growth on the path to 100, 000 a month. So we're going to start at zero to ten and we're going to go from ten to fifty and then we're going to go to 100k and beyond.
Those are the three separate stages. Regardless of where you are at currently in your business, I recommend that you listen to the entirety of this episode and go through all three sections simply because Oftentimes one of the things that hangs people up in their growth trajectory is actually that they didn't set the foundation at the previous stage Appropriately, so they're [00:00:30] being hung up by things that happened in the past that they need to get corrected Okay, so the purpose of this episode is to help you to know have some guide posts if you're looking for You PNL look like and how much money should you be making?
What should you spending it on and things like that? I do have other episodes of the podcast in the show and the YouTube all that kind of stuff where you can find that information Here we're really going to be talking about What it should be feeling like, what it should be looking like, what you should be focused on, things you should be working on, and I'm gonna be keeping it as simple as possible because, again, like all things in life, the more [00:01:00] simple it is, the more likely you are to actually do it.
And that's not a knock on anybody, that's just, that's life. If you're listening to this episode, you might be a parent with kids, and a spouse, and having to navigate that relationship, and you probably have hobbies, and your kids have hobbies, and there's already so much complexity built into life as it exists today.
Now, that we don't need to go purposely creating something that adds to that complexity. In fact, if we do add complexity, it's less likely that we'll get it done. Just like all the other very complex things in our life that we look at, wake up one day and think, Gosh, why haven't I done that yet?
I can tell you, I'll just give [00:01:30] you a really quick example. I don't think anybody cares, but my biggest fitness breakthroughs were when I stopped thinking about complexity. I stopped complicated training programs. I didn't do anything like that. I don't even do weights anymore. I do body calisthenics I keep it very simple.
My running regimen for running ultramarathons is incredibly simple. It's incredibly boring I don't use cutting edge science and that's when I actually started to get PRs and etc. Okay, so that's just an example I'm sure there's other examples you can think of in your own life where simplicity actually helped you to accelerate So let's go through now the three different stages [00:02:00] That you need to be at again regardless of where you're at.
I highly recommend that you listen to all three 10, 000 a month. Okay. This is the part of the business that Everybody I ever talk to wants to go the fastest. I've never met anyone at, say, 50k, who wants to go to 100k faster than somebody who's at 0, who wants to go to 10. It is the thing that we just desire, that we want it to go faster than anything.
The problem is, this is the part that feels the slowest. At 50k, [00:02:30] going to 10, to 100k, it feels way fast, because things are starting to break and the wheels are coming off. At 0 to 10 it feels slow. The reason it feels slow is one, because if you're coming from, we'll call it quote unquote the civilian world, so you're not a business owner currently, 0 to 10 it is, it's a different way of living to be a business owner.
You can't live like regular people who go to a job and turn their job off when they come home and are, realistically expecting a paycheck [00:03:00] every two weeks and don't actually have to be responsible because they can always pass the buck either up or down and etc, right? The IRS isn't going to come after them if the company doesn't pay taxes.
The, they're not the ones who are going to get sued and etc, right? So it's a completely different world. The tempo is very different. You do a lot of work and it moves the needle a little bit. For some people that can be incredibly frustrating if they're not used to that in their life. Also, zero to ten thousand dollars is the biggest skill gap.
I'll give you an example. [00:03:30] If you have never sold yourself before in your life, and I don't mean you, got a job because you aced the interview. You've never convinced a stranger to give you money for something that you said you would do. That is a that's not going from You're good at it, so let's get a little bit better.
That's going from, I've never done it before to now I have to do it for the first time. And there's a lot of skills involved in making that happen compared to what's the difference between somebody who can sell 50, 000 a month and somebody who can [00:04:00] sell 100, 000 a month. The answer is volume of leads.
If you can sell somebody profitably at 50, 000 a month, all you have to do is get more leads and you'll get, you'll hit 100, 000. That's not nearly the skill jump of going from I've never sold to now I'm selling. As we know, whenever we're learning new skills, and changing beliefs, and learning new ways of being as a person in the world, in the context that we have created by becoming a business owner, that creates a significant amount of discomfort.
And as we all know, discomfort seems [00:04:30] to slow time. So if you've ever gone for a very long run, and you start to get to that point in your run where it's okay, things are really starting to hurt, and you look down at your watch and you're like, oh my gosh, it's only been two minutes since I last looked at my watch.
That kind of thing, right? You're watching paint dry. Oh my gosh, I can't believe it's only been 30 seconds since the last time I checked my watch. That kind of situation. It's important for you to understand, if you're in the 0 10K, That is, that's a very real thing. It's also very normal. That is stage one of business.
You want it to go much faster, but it's going to go slow because you have [00:05:00] so much catching up to do. And that's not a dig on you, right? It's, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to remove the romanticism that can create so much fear and anxiety. A lot of people, they start their business, they think they're going to be rich in two days, they aren't rich in two days, and they say, I must be broken, or everything around me must be broken.
This is, this must be broken because I wasn't. I didn't completely change everything about me and develop a hundred skills in two days. That is unrealistic. What's more [00:05:30] realistic is to realize the gap that you are under. Another gap. Maybe you've never in your life had to adjust to the needs of others at the scale that's required to run a business.
I'll give you an example. In the help business, you get paid for helping people with something that they believe they need. That's how money changes hands. Nobody's going to pay thousands of dollars for something they don't believe that they need. Maybe you've never come across that [00:06:00] before in your life, where you had something you wanted to do, and everybody rejected it because it's not what they want to do.
I know plenty of people who go through life that way. In business, you can't continue to operate that way, because no one will ever give you money. Adjusting the details of your dream To achieve the shape of your dream is an uncomfortable skill. Gosh, I wanted it to be this specific offer, but the audience doesn't seem to want to buy it.
[00:06:30] They don't seem to want to pay for it. So now I'm going to have to adjust. And for some people, that's difficult. For some people, that can be the thing that stops them. I don't see why. Adjusting small details to be able to make a significant amount of income helping other people. That's the shape of the dream.
Let the details take care of the details, right? I could have a whole episode here about letting details take care of details and how helpful that is in growing a business quickly. But these are just examples of why you want it to go fast, but it seems slow. So what do we do with all of that, right?
[00:07:00] Okay, how do we actually get to zero to ten thousand dollars? Thank you for describing how terrible it is, but how do I actually do it? There's only two things you should really be focusing on. Everything else is pretty much a distraction. Finding people who are serious about getting help. Finding people who are serious about getting help, and there's lots of ways in 2022 to find people.
I personally prefer to use LinkedIn. I find that the people on LinkedIn are more they're more likely there to get some kind of help, right? LinkedIn isn't a platform that you just sit and scroll [00:07:30] mindlessly in the same way that you scroll mindlessly on Instagram. Or you scroll mindlessly on Facebook, or TikTok, right?
Not saying you don't, people don't scroll mindlessly on LinkedIn, but there just seems to be a different sort of timber to the the attitudes and the purpose of people on LinkedIn. But, the first thing you should be focusing on is finding people who are serious about getting help. Not people who prostrate and, signal to others that they want help, but people who are actually seriously looking for help.
That's the one thing you should be focusing on from zero to 10k. And then the [00:08:00] second thing is finding out what help they're willing to pay for. Those are the two things that will get you to 10, 000 a month. Finding people who are serious about getting help and finding out what help they're willing to pay for.
Now, if we translate this into, Marketing speak, we're talking about offer creation and we're talking about marketing and sales. So those are the two skills that you're needing to learn And again, i'll reiterate this a couple times probably today But in zero to 10k a month if we're talking about offer [00:08:30] creation Part of offer creation is learning how to figure out what people want and creating an offer around that Does that make sense?
It's not just your ability to come up with an expertise statement, or your ability to outline a cool course, or anything like that. A big part of offer creation is learning how to match audience desires with the things that you are. Looking for which by the way our team does all the time if you ever need help So offer creation and marketing and sales you just need to pick one offer because it's it's already hard enough [00:09:00] There's already so much skill building that needs to occur at zero to ten thousand dollars a month You don't need to be trying to run multiple offers at once Okay?
Just pick one offer. Marketing and sales. You don't need to be jumping from bright shiny object to bright shiny object to bright shiny object. It's already complicated enough. Remember, all you have to do is find people who really need help and find what they are willing to pay for, like what help specifically they're willing to pay for.
You don't need, you don't need to jump around multiple platforms for that to happen. There are more than enough [00:09:30] people on LinkedIn. There's more than enough people on Instagram. It doesn't matter to me What platform you use what matters more is that you stick to it and you understand why you're using it What you're attempting to do if you can do that awesome You can focus on those two things then it's a matter of and I know you're gonna hate to say this It's a matter of time because again zero to 10k We want it the fastest But it ends up taking what feels much longer than it should always does Even 15 years into this when I started a new business that first zero to ten thousand dollars a month I [00:10:00] wish you could skip that part.
It always takes longer than you think it's going to take it's why so many software companies You know they spend six months a year two years developing software and then they run it out to the market and then they crash and burn Because why the first zero to ten thousand dollars a month? I mean their numbers are a little bit different But it's the same concept as a stage, right?
It's essentially the stage of validating your offer That what you bring to the market is something that people want and they're willing to pay for. And if you price it appropriately, you should be making around zero to [00:10:30] 10, 000 a month. Just focusing on this. One thing I will mention, let's say that you're somewhere around here, like you're 3, 000 a month or you're 6, 000 a month.
And you think you're Mike, I don't really believe it. You're saying I can get to 10 grand a month. And all I really need to do is focus on two things offer creation, marketing and sales. Let me break it down. If you are consistently selling, But you so like when you talk to people you have a way of having conversations with people And those conversations turn into you selling something then and you're not making six figures a year That is an economics [00:11:00] issue meaning you're just not charging the right prices for what you do Okay, so again this goes back to offer creation.
Part of offer creation is making sure that you have the right economics in your business for what you're trying to do. And this is what I said earlier about how some people can't go to the next stage because they don't have the fundamentals established in the stage previous. If you don't have the right economic fundamentals in your business at the zero to 10k a month stage, getting to 100k a month is going to be so hard.
You're gonna have very serious issues with margin, you're gonna have serious issues with things like churn, being able to [00:11:30] hire. The list of consequences that come from poor economics in the beginning stages of your business is very long. Now the good news is all that can be adjusted. The number of times we have people coming to us saying, I saw a couple weeks ago somebody was talking about how they had this business and it was making like 80, 000 a month, but they were like coming in like negative two grand, five grand, ten grand a month every single month, and what are they going to do?
And we just pinpointed, look, the foundational economics of your business will, will. You're never going to get to where you want to do until you change that, right? So we changed it [00:12:00] and voila, wouldn't you know that was the only issue, right? So again, what we're talking about is the setting the foundation and in the zero to 10k month stage You're looking to set the right economic foundation for a business that is scalable.
Okay, so that's the first thing So if you are making sales and it's going good and you know You're not charging the right prices and you charge the right prices. The second thing that I see often here is that let's say that you have a way to get people to buy and you charge reasonably high prices, but you're still not hitting that 10, 000 a month level.
And all you're really missing here [00:12:30] is focus and effort because the math makes sense. You have a way to get in front of people. You probably just need to turn the dial up just a little bit, just a little bit. And if you say I can't do that because at 10, 000 a month, I'm working 60, 70, 80 hours a week.
Then the problem there goes back to offer creation because probably the offer that you're selling. Isn't a scalable offer In other words the way that you have designed the thing that you've built Again, it goes back to the foundation. [00:13:00] You're never gonna get to 100k a month because you can't get to 10k a month before it breaks Does that make sense?
Look, I apologize if I'm coming across a little bit aggressive here, I'm just trying to paint the picture of the simplicity of it, and that there are actual natural laws of business. It's not as much art as it seems, it's not as much magic as it seems. If you have an offer that you can't get to work at 10, 000 a month, it's not going to magically start working at 100, 000 a month.
If anything, [00:13:30] things get worse at 100, 000 a month. Meaning, if you're not making enough profit at 10k a month, which, to be frank, at 10, 000 a month, you should be like 95 percent profit margins pre tax, okay? 80 maybe would be the low end. You shouldn't have a ton of expenses, it should be mostly margin, but for an ex as an example, if you're struggling with margin at 10k a month, then scaling that thing to 100, it's gonna be a nightmare.
I would even say it'll probably be impossible. [00:14:00] Just in my experience. I'm sure there are exceptions. I'm not like the know it all wizard of whatever. In my experience, if you're struggling there, it's going to be really hard to go. Okay, so let's say that you do this though. You are focusing on finding people who are serious about getting help, and you are focusing on finding out what help they're willing to pay for, offer creation, marketing, and sales.
000 a month. Things are pretty sweet. It's a great beginning place to be. You wanted it to go faster, it took the time it took, you've been through that journey, you have the skills now, you've crossed the [00:14:30] biggest skills gap to go from complete beginner to now you have the basic functioning skills of a successful business owner.
You know how to make offers, you know how to find people who will buy those offers, you know how to sell those people, and you know how to deliver on whatever the offer is that you're doing. Now, we go to Stage 2, if you want. Some people love it here. This is a glorified job, in my opinion. But some people, this is fine.
This is perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. If that's the price you want to pay for what you want, then that's the price you want to pay. Never judge anybody for whatever kind of business they want to run. It's their [00:15:00] life. It's their choice. Next stage, 10, a month. Now, this part, I have found that this part often goes faster than most people want it to go.
The reason is because at this point is when you start to let go of the things you used to control completely. So stage two, stage one we've, we know the offer works. We know who we're selling it to. Stage two is now when we start to press the gas a little bit. So we increase the [00:15:30] volume of whatever it is we're doing, and as a result of increasing the volume, because the workload becomes greater, we no longer ourselves can sustain it, right?
You have to get some help. So you're looking at hiring for the first time. So this is would be hiring things like customer support, leveraging fulfillment, hiring juniors. For example, even if you're a coach. This is where you start to hire junior level coaches to help supplement whatever it is that you're doing.
If you have done 4U services, this is where you're hiring juniors in. But remember what I talked about earlier, if you can't have margins figured [00:16:00] out at zero to 10k a month you're gonna start to feel some pain as we go through these stages. This is one of the first places you'll start to feel pain.
So maybe if you're currently in a business where you have hires and you realize that the hires are the things that are so expensive that, that's probably because you're missing some of the foundational pieces from the previous stage. Go back, revisit, take a look at it. But because you're in this situation of hiring and leveraging fulfillment, which is one of the main focuses that you should be focusing on in this stage It's gonna feel like the wheels start falling off.
Okay, because as soon as you start letting [00:16:30] other people handle stuff Here's what's going to happen. They're gonna mess up If you can get someone to do what you do about 85 percent as well as you do it, that's a really good hire Like that's really, like really well done. Good job. You trained them well.
They must be awesome people. They're incredible. But think about what we're talking about here. We're talking about that a good hire is somebody who 15 percent of the time or, however you want to measure it. They have 15 percent less ability. The job gets done 15 percent less [00:17:00] well. If you've never experienced that before, that can be difficult and it can make the growth feel like it's going too fast.
So again, remember the purpose of this audio is for me to tell you what to expect. Expect at 10, for it to feel a little shaky. Maybe even all the way up to 100, 000 or beyond, right? So the numbers here can get a little bit because it just depends on the specifics of your economics. I'm not saying specifically at 50, 000, but somewhere in the 6, 000 to 7, 000 figure range, on that journey up to that 100, 000 a month, you're going to feel like the [00:17:30] wheels are coming off.
Now the good news here, the good news here is that In this stage, you do need to develop new skills, right? Each stage represents new skills, new growth. In this stage, it really comes down to being able to impart what was in your brain to somebody else as best as you possibly can. So this is where you really start to learn how to You know, really beginning systems.
I wouldn't even say systems quite yet. That really comes in stage three, but it's the beginning of systems. It's really bringing people onto your team, training them, beginning to [00:18:00] help other human beings do what you do. And luckily, that's not nearly as difficult as stage one. It's uncomfortable. Everyone every stage is uncomfortable letting go is uncomfortable, but you already know how to do it, right?
You already know how to sell you already know how to fulfill you already know how to answer customer emails. So oftentimes it's not ideal It's not perfect that I highly recommend a whole host of better ways to lead a team But sometimes you can just say here's all the recordings, you know from All the customer support questions I've answered in the [00:18:30] past six weeks, study that, and that's at least a start, right?
I've got a huge skill set in making that happen. If fulfillment leverage is, main focus number one of stage two, 10 to 50k a month, then the second main focus of stage two is scalable marketing. It's very unlikely that your first six figures was done, using a funnel. You may be a funnel genius somehow and that's worked out for you, fantastic.
Most people will use some kind of organic manual method to get those first early clients, networking, LinkedIn, [00:19:00] etc. Facebook, whatever it might be. To get the volume you need to hit these kinds of revenue numbers, you have to begin to transition to more automated and paid traffic esque Models because you need to start buying back your time and that's all paid traffic is right if you have spent a good amount Of time in stage one You know that all you're doing is getting in front of human beings seeing what they need and giving them what they need Pay traffic is just a way to buy back the manual effort required to do that.
That's [00:19:30] all it is Funnels and things like that are just fancy ways of compressing the timeline a little bit and etc We can have a whole side discussion on that But what you need to do in stage two is look for scalable marketing methods Now, I'm going to warn you against a huge mistake that most people make, and that is oftentimes they'll quit what got them to six figures.
Because they're like, yay, I finally don't have to do manual anymore, right? And they'll quit it. Now, I'll admit that I'm one of those people but the reason that I do it is because I've been doing funnels for [00:20:00] a long time. I know that the trade off is there. I have confidence, I've been doing this for 15 years, I have confidence that I can make the trade off very quickly.
I don't actually recommend that for most people until it's proven out. And I really challenge people to see if they can just get help. So that the old method that was keeping their business in business continues to go. One of the big mistakes I see is that everyone throws the baby out with the bathwater when they get to a certain level in their business.
And then two, three months later, their business is falling apart. And they're like, why is this [00:20:30] not working anymore? I started new stuff and we look and say what were you doing two or three months ago? And they say I was doing this and we don't do that anymore. And business is something that you stack more often than you just obliterate or jump from thing to thing, right?
That's why time is such a valuable asset to businesses. If something's working in your business, unless you can have a really strong, compelling reason to turn it off, you should keep it on. And so that's one of the mistakes to avoid here. Now, personally, and this is just, I'm going to do my little shameless plug here, I'm [00:21:00] very biased.
I recommend a scalable marketing method that covers advertising costs, because another thing I see often is people get into this 10 thousand dollars, on their way to seven figures. And one of the things they do is they start paying for traffic for the first time, and that paid traffic budget just eats into their margins.
Remember I talked about if you don't figure it out in six figures, your margins and your economics is going to get really bad? This is another one of those areas where it can get really difficult. You are pumping cash into paid advertising with the hopes that it pays off, [00:21:30] and if you've never done it before, what did we learn from section one?
You're going to be bad at it for a while. Even if you're hiring, even if you're etc, you're going to be bad at it at first. That is going to happen. Transcribed So that means you're going to be paying unnecessarily premium rates on the traffic, et cetera. And so it gets expensive. Again, why you shouldn't turn your other stuff off until it's totally fine, and et cetera, et cetera.
But this is why I like, say, for example, book funnels, which is what we help people do. Help them do low ticket funnels, we help them create their offers, blah, blah, blah, help them scale, all that kind of good stuff. But at the core of our philosophy, [00:22:00] and my approach, is to really, to scale, you need to take the paid advertising pressure off.
Especially in that sort of when you're in that very vulnerable range of 10, 000 to 90, 000 a month, because you're bringing on other expenses as well. You're bringing on new hires. Not every new hire is going to work out when you're hiring for the first time. Most of them won't because you're not a very good manager.
You don't know how to hire properly, which increases the chances of you not having good hires, and all that kind of good stuff, right? Like I said, every stage of business, there's growth, there's mistakes, there's discomfort. [00:22:30] So I like to use methods that at least cut into, if not completely, erase the advertising cost, which is again why I like books.
Also, I like book funnels because, let's say you write a book and you write the book funnel and the book funnel doesn't work. That can happen, right? This is business. Not everything is 100 percent sure and secure. At the very least, you have a book. So you can take that book and try a different method. You can put the book on Amazon.
You can send the book to your clients to use as a referral tool. The beautiful thing [00:23:00] about writing a book funnel, or even doing a mini course low ticket funnel, is that Worst case scenario, you have an asset that still grows your business, even if you have to change the specifics of the model of how you promote that thing.
And I'll give you an example. You take a book, and you put it on Amazon, even if it fails in a book funnel, right? And people will buy the book on Amazon. What do you do with a webinar when it fails? Typically, you bin it. There's not like a catalog of places webinars for fun. You toss it out and all that work is gone.
So just for your own again long term marketing for your own mental [00:23:30] sort of sanity at the you know That mid range section two or sorry stage two of this growth cycle being able to invest in scalable marketing methods that have more benefits than just scale. So offsetting paid advertising easy and profitable outs or exits, regardless of performance, etc.
Okay, so that's pretty much it. You only have those two things. So in stage one, we're looking at offer creation and marketing and sales. Just trying to find people that we can help and figuring out what they want. And that's all section one is, or sorry, stage one. Zero to ten thousand dollars a month, [00:24:00] that's all it is.
Stage two, ten thousand to fifty thousand dollars a month, we're just looking at fulfillment leverage. So making sure that we're not getting overloaded with the work, because we're increasing volume. And then we are looking at scalable marketing methods, because we need more volume in order to grow.
Okay, so now we're on to the hundred thousand dollars a month and beyond. So this part this part is the longest. So we've talked a lot about the very first part. You want it to be fast, but it feels longer. It isn't necessarily longer, but it feels longer. Then the second part is it goes [00:24:30] stage two.
Sorry. It goes fast and a little faster than you want it to go. It can feel like the wheels are falling off in the a hundred thousand dollar a month range and beyond. This actually is longer. So if you follow these processes, you go stage one, stage two, stage three. Most people settle in to stage three.
This is where, the difference between 100, 000 and 500, 000 is a little bit bigger than the difference [00:25:00] between 000, right? And it's not necessarily to do with skills as much as it's to do with structure, economics, etc. So what am I trying to say? You can go from zero to 100, 000 a month relatively quickly without having to learn too many overly advanced skill sets.
You can even keep your team incredibly small. You can run for a very long time off of one, maybe two offers, plus say like a book funnel or so. [00:25:30] Like you, you can still stay quite loose and quite free at 200, When you start getting into 8s, you really start changing the it's unlike anything you have been experiencing in stage 1, 2, and 3.
So a lot of people, when they get 200, 000 a month, they stay here for a really long time. In fact, some people stay here forever. Partially because if you've ever listened to any of our P& L podcasts where we talk about what it should [00:26:00] look like at seven figures what your P& L should look like at seven figures, you start to get into diminishing returns to scale it any more than, a couple million a year.
So it's just something, it's an interesting thing to think about because what we really are talking about is that once you hit 100, 000 a month, it's almost like driving over a hill and seeing this vast savannah after being on like a single track trail for the past 10 hours. Everything blows wide open and there are a bunch of different directions you can go, [00:26:30] there's all sorts of different things you can do, this is a good time to start thinking about exit plans.
Long term plans, what are you going to do, what does your exit look like, legacy, all that kind of stuff. Which these are big questions that take a long time to fix and work on. It doesn't mean that you can't scale to eight figures very quickly. It just means that, again, the difference between zero to 10k versus 100k a month to a million dollars a month it's not just financially larger, it's conceptually larger.
[00:27:00] It's like a vast ocean when you get to 100k a month There's just so much possibility and so many things that you can do Okay So that's again if you're there and you're I know a lot of people This is a very common thing. They hit a hundred thousand two hundred thousand three hundred thousand dollars a month and they say okay Now what?
What do I do now? That's a very common thing to hit at that level because again, it's like coming It's a vast ocean. It's like seeing the broad savannah for the first time all the stuff that i've already said Okay, now, but okay, with that said, what do we focus on when we get there?
The first thing you want to focus [00:27:30] on is developing a team members. It's very different than hiring. Okay. So leveraging fulfillment, hiring, support staff, hiring, junior coaches, et cetera. It's very different than developing a team members. When you're in stage one and stage two, you're working on your business in the sense of you're working on sales copy, you're working on marketing messages, you're working on, creating maybe some systems here and there.
You're working You're trying to figure out how to do support and all that kind of stuff. When you're getting into these seven figure revenue numbers. You're really wanting to focus [00:28:00] more on developing the people. Working on the people that are in your business. So that you can create leaders. So that you can create culture.
You can create innovation. So that you're creating human beings to run the thing for you. And a big reason for that is because founders, so people who started the business all the way back in stage one, if you can remember that far back, founders tend to be rather poor managers. In other words, a founder often, has been living life, I'm not an expert [00:28:30] on anything about ADD or anything like that, but here's what I do know.
There is a freneticism to the lifestyle of being an entrepreneur. People who are entrepreneur, I, I don't know enough to know whether they come wired that way or it's like the necessity of the job, right? So I'll give you an example. Like regular civilians, whenever I've ever had like corporate clients and I've gone to a civilian office, I just, I, it always shocks me how slow, like civilians are, how slow, like regular people are in a regular job [00:29:00] compared to the pace of running a business.
And just, I tell my wife all the time. Sometimes it feels like I have, I deal with more problems of a weightier nature in a single day as an entrepreneur than some of the neighbors in our neighborhood might experience in a week. Just in terms of so and so said this and this is the financial issue and this person whatever the issues are and that might be some exaggeration and I don't know everybody's life.
But the point I'm trying to make here is that to be a [00:29:30] founder, you have to operate at a very different level than the kind of team you want running your business. You, I understand why corporate. Offices are slow why everything takes a while because here's what happens at seven figures for most founders They hit seven figures and then they break it because that attitude and mentality of what's next?
Let's do this and just that Freneticism and that frequency and the pace that they're running at [00:30:00] when you start involving more and more people They will do what you say. You're the leader. You're the one who's paying the check So they will follow you and they will try to keep pace One, you're probably not very good at managing them because you haven't developed that skill, so you're not really actually able to effectively give to them what they need to be able to do what you say, but then there's something else that happens.
You're constantly changing direction. And the bigger your boat becomes, as you put more and more people into your world, the bigger your boat becomes, the harder it is to steer the boat. And to make the changes. And [00:30:30] so what you get is you get founders who are running their team, telling them to change the direction of the boat every five minutes.
And the boat's big. There's lots of people on your team now. You've got more than one customer support person. You probably have more than one junior running fulfillment. You have more than one marketing person on your team. You have vendors. You have responsibilities. You have all these different things going on.
And if you're jumping from thing to thing, moving people all around, there's It takes time for them to catch up. It takes time for them to get things going. And what ends up happening is you end up getting frustrated, which [00:31:00] plays to the team, but more importantly, the team never actually gets anything done.
And so you have this incredibly high expense of paying for team and your results and your output as a company diminish rather than flourish, flourish and expand. And so one of the big things to look out for at this level, and why I say one of the focuses at seven figures should be to develop people because as entrepreneurs, We have learned again.
I don't know if this is inherent because i'm a weird case I had to start a business right? I didn't have other choices A business is what got me off the streets So I don't know if I was born to be an entrepreneur or not [00:31:30] because that's it's not like I chose it necessarily I just I didn't have any other choices.
So for me I it feels like section or stage one and stage two of growth train you to respond to the problems that are presented and trying to create income for yourself. They train you to operate at a higher frequency, work harder than the average person, and to create in order to solve problems, right?
Let's write another email and send it. Let's create a new sales funnel and do this. Let's make a new offer. Let's get on the call. Let's do [00:32:00] something in order to solve a problem. And the problem when you get to seven figures is, like I said before, that's going to run your team ragged and they're going to be steering a ship, changing course every two seconds, and you're going to end up crashing on the rocks.
But what I have found to be helpful is that if you take that same energy, and instead of worrying about the marketing or the sales or this or that, and you take that same energy and that desire to build, and that desire to create, and that desire to do something, and you start Building people. You start creating opportunities for people within your own company.
You start doing [00:32:30] things for human beings Then what you're gonna find what you're gonna end up finding is that is the place where the entrepreneur can invest and see a return Okay So it's one of the big things that you do when you start to get to that level and hopefully along the way you'll develop Leaders, which is really the key to exiting yourself and this is just a really interesting position to be in, to be developing team members.
It's a hard thing to do, and it's a very interesting thing to do, because you learn a lot about yourself. And what you like and what you don't like, and [00:33:00] that's very interesting as well. Anyways, maybe another time we'll have a discussion on that. Alright, so that's the other thing that you'll want to do.
At this level, there's really three things to focus on. Number one, developing team members. Number two is developing lifetime value. Why are we developing lifetime value? If you've seen some of my other videos my other lessons and whatever we're calling these shows, podcasts, videos, whatever.
There's one called something like these two KPIs are all you need to worry about to make a bunch of sales, something like that. We talked about the cost to acquire a customer and how much money you make per customer over your lifetime. At seven figures, [00:33:30] your expenses are growing. Good team members are expensive, you have advertising, taxes, et cetera.
One of the things that you have to do as the leader of the company is to increase your lifetime value. In other words, continually add margin. In some of our other audios we talk about what that looks like, how to add margin. More offers more frequently, get people to pay more often, et cetera, et cetera.
There's a whole bunch of different strategies to be able to do that. But that's one of the focuses. So you're developing people, you're developing lifetime value. Next thing is so third thing is that you're developing systems to [00:34:00] reduce complexity. Because in everything that I just mentioned, in everything that I just mentioned, there's going to be a tendency toward complexity.
Part of the complexity comes from the fact that you have a team now. And team, you want to encourage their ideas, their thoughts, their buy in. But also, you have to keep track of it all. So you have to develop systems so that there are ways for people to contribute in meaningful and important ways.
Without it breaking you, the business owner, because then you're going to turn around and break the business. Without breaking the team that's involved, and et cetera, et cetera. At this stage, it's really systemizing the human [00:34:30] elements of your business. Where before, in stage 2, or 10, 000 to 50, 000 a month, the systems you're building, they're really more mechanical, right?
For example you start using Calendly Link, and using a schedule page to book calls. That's more, systems of technology, mechanical systems. At a million dollars a year or more, You're really starting to look at human systems. And how do you create a place where efficiency rules rather than complexity.
Okay that's it for this audio. Hopefully it's been helpful in the [00:35:00] sense that you know what you should be doing as the main priorities for each of the stages going from 0 to 100, 000 a month. For those of you who don't know, who aren't there yet, wherever that might be for you. You know what you should be working on your current stage and then what you want to work on next.
For those of you who are, say, for example, at a hundred thousand dollars a month, and you're wondering what should I do now to make my business better? Hopefully that was helpful. And then for those of you who are absolutely new and just getting started in that first stage one Hopefully that really helped you to see You know if you're having those feelings those struggles those frustrations you're in the right place [00:35:30] You really are and again this goes for everybody if you're in stage two and you're having those struggles or stage three, etc The point is that this is a pattern that is true in every business that I've ever worked for, that I've ever worked with and that I've ever built myself.
So there's nothing here that's specific to a particular model. This is very Broad business strategy, which is good because what that means is that it's a fundamental and Fundamentals are important in two ways one It's the thing we can always come back to focus on when we don't know what to do [00:36:00] next come back to the fundamental When we're lost, let's check in on our fundamentals.
But number two, it also means that it's their requirements I don't even think fundamentals are strong enough word. You can't grow your business unless you're fraudulent in some capacity without fulfilling these requirements for moving through that stage of the business. So lots to digest here. Let us know if this kind of stuff is what you want to hear, comment subscribe, whatever, however you're consuming this content.
It's going to be all over the interwebs. Let us [00:36:30] know if you like this. And for those of you who would like assistance in any one of these stages, this is all we do at Peaceful Profits. Is we help people through the different stages. So we take you wherever you're at and then we say, okay, this is what you need to get through stage one.
Once we get you through stage one, then you go stage two. Stage two to stage three. So if ever you need coaching, we have courses, we have done for you offers. We have all sorts of different things. Go to peacefulprofits.com/call. Give us a call. No obligation, no pressure. We get more calls [00:37:00] than we can handle.
You're never going to get any kind of like sketchy internet marketing salesperson on the phone. This is all we do all day long. Okay, if we don't get to help you that's totally cool as well. Still follow this. Because this is 15 years I've been trying to refine this down to its core essence. This is exactly what you need to be doing and need to be focusing on to get to where you want to go.
And the more clarity that you have about the path you're supposed to be taking, the faster you'll get to the end destination. It's just that simple. So take notes, print this out, slap it up next to your computer, [00:37:30] work on the core fundamentals, and you will be surprised at how fast you can move through each of these stages.
Alright, that's it my friends. I will see you in the next one.