how I have scaled businesses

Summary

today’s topic is scaling. I started online with a laptop, a $5 product, $100,000 of debt, and zero idea what I was doing. today, multiple companies, twenty plus employees, millions per year, debt free. it didn’t happen overnight. ten plus years. lots of 18 hour days. lots of zero in the bank.

1. context first. my wife and I had so much debt the minimum payments ate 65% of my military take home. that’s the pressure that produced the diamond. pressure crushes and pressure creates. you don’t always get to choose which.

2. three things scale a business. clarity and simplicity in marketing. acquisition math. and mindset. this episode is only the first one because the other two need their own episodes. but the marketing one is the most foundational.

3. the marketing clarity formula. problem plus unique solution plus result or expectation equals clarity. example. people don’t have time to work out. so we built a 30 minute system that works anywhere, the CX11 protocol. then the result version, “200 men have lost 20 plus pounds.” or the expectation version, “you’ll cut the weight in 3 months or it’s free.” both versions read sharp in 5 seconds.

4. the unique part matters. you don’t make stuff up. you build an actual methodology and name it. naming it differentiates you instantly. the expectation version requires you to actually deliver, which is a feature not a bug. if you can’t promise it you shouldn’t.

5. simplicity. when I started I had one product. then two. then 20. and I was bad at selling any of them. to scale I went back to one. one $49 product called One Man, One Barbell. all my focus, all my advertising, all my messaging on that one thing. it fed my family for years. focus your time on one offer. communicate it with the formula. let the others sit. try harder.

Transcript

from $100k in debt to multiple companies

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. Today I want to talk about scaling a business because when I started online, I started with a laptop, a $5 product. My wife and I were over $100,000 in debt, and I had absolutely zero knowledge of how to run a business.

But today, across multiple companies, we have over 20 employees, do millions per year, and I am debt free. So how does this happen? Well, the first thing you need to know is it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s happened over 10 plus years. I’ve had to work 18-hour days at times. I’ve emptied my bank account to zero or nearly zero at least half a dozen times.

I’ve lost best friends who did not support me. I’ve read over 300 books, and I have spent well over $150,000 in business courses and development, just to name a few. But something that’s more useful for you, I’ve boiled it down to three things. The first is clarity and simplicity in your marketing.

The second thing is acquisition math, so actually understanding the mathematics behind acquiring customers and scaling a business. And the third, no one really wants to talk about as much, but rewiring the mind or mindset, which was a lot for me. Now to keep this podcast short as I like to, I’m only going to focus on clarity and simplicity in marketing today and not get into the acquisition or mindset stuff until later episodes.

three things that got me there

So online business for me all started as a side hustle because my wife and I were in, as you heard, a lot of debt, over $100,000, and our minimum debt payments were about 65% of my military take-home pay. So when I started in the military, I just knew right off the bat, my paycheck, 65% of it was going to go to our minimum debt payments before we were able to pay for housing or invest or buy groceries or anything like that.

So it was a lot of pressure to have your take-home pay cut down to basically 45% usable, disposable income. But the funny thing about pressure is that it can crush things, but it can also produce diamonds. And so within a year of starting my business, I made some, albeit very little money, however, I quickly realized I was hitting a wall, and if I wanted to scale revenue, it was going to be very, very hard, and it was hard.

But here’s what I’ve learned in scaling a business. The first thing I learned is clarity and simplicity. So being able to communicate what I offer, why I’m different, and the value I can add to someone’s life in five seconds or less. Let me put it this way. People do not care about your business. Take yourself as an example.

How much do you sit around and think about a product or service? The answer is probably very little because you have a life, which is a good thing. So I realized I could not expect my customers to care about my product enough to read a 2,000-word about page to truly understand what I do and how I’m different.

So here’s the formula I use to communicate in marketing. It’s problem plus unique solution plus results slash expectation equal marketing clarity. So here is a fictitious example. So the problem, you don’t have a lot of time to work out, like a lot of people. The solution, I provide effective workouts that can be done in under 30 minutes, and then you can go to either a results option or an expectation option.

the marketing clarity formula

So the results option would be, we’ve helped 200 men lose 20-plus pounds with our training. That would be if you have actual results to back you up. The expectation option would be, cut the weight you want in three months where it’s free. So putting it all together, the results way, most people don’t have enough time to work out, so we developed a 30-minute system that can be done anywhere and anytime.

The coolest thing is that this new approach has helped 200-plus men lose 20-plus pounds. So we hit the problem, we hit on the unique solution. This message focuses on our system. That simple wording differentiates you from just providing workouts like everyone else does. So in my business, we developed an entire programming methodology like legitimately we did.

So don’t lie about what you do. Instead, start to focus on how you are different and create your method. And then bonus points if you can give it a name like the CX11 protocol. It doesn’t really matter. If you have a method, name it and call it your system. It’s just going to make more sense in the mind of the customer.

And then also in that, the message I just read off, you’ll see that was the results option. So if you don’t have client testimonials to back you up, you would use those. If you don’t, you obviously would never make that stuff up. Now the second option, if you want to go the expectation route because you don’t have that many testimonials, it would sound something like this.

Most people don’t have enough time to work out, so we developed a 30-minute system that can be done anywhere called the CX11 protocol. We’re so confident in our protocol that if you don’t achieve your goal in three months, it’s free. You’ll actually get a refund. So in that message, we have the problem.

one man one barbell, my $49 product

We have the unique solution, which is the CX11 protocol. The expectation there, three months equals results, or it’s going to be free, which is a very strong expectation. You could use the expectation option to communicate what they can expect or how they can mitigate their risk, like aka guarantee.

So the prerequisite here is you must be good at what you do if you’re going to offer an actual expectation or have a guarantee. You need to be good at what you do, obviously, to be able to get them that result, right? Now the next thing I learned was simplicity. When I first started online, I had one product, then I had two, and eventually I was selling about 20 different fitness programs, but I felt spread very thin and I wasn’t really good at selling any of the programs.

So to scale, I had to put a lot of time and attention on one product. For me, it was one $49 product called One Man, One Barbell. I made sure the product delivered results. I focused on how to message it to my customers. I learned the funnels I needed to build to sell that one product. I learned the advertising strategies that worked for my product.

It’s easy to put in a few sentences, but all of that probably took about two years to learn and test. So when I can just give you bullet points, that’s great, but just know learning how to focus, like focusing on how to message it to my customers, learning how to build the right funnels, learning advertising, those are all big, giant things, right?

And they take a lot of time and effort to learn. I still offered 20 other programs on my site, but all my attention was on One Man, One Barbell. That focus also meant about 90% of my revenue came from that one product. So my family survived off of a clear message and one $49 product for years. So how have I scaled businesses?

focus on one offer until it works

Well, any consulting I’ve done, new ventures I’ve gone into where we have seen explosive growth, it involves first, clarifying the message, following the formula I just mentioned in this podcast, and two, actually reducing the number of offerings, or if you don’t actually reduce your number of offerings, at least focusing only on one.

That way your customers aren’t confused and they understand what you do. So I want to urge you today to use the formula in your business, so problem plus unique solution plus results slash expectations. It’s results or expectation, and I gave you the examples there. That equals marketing clarity. And just do it with one product or service offering that you have.

Get super clear. Be able to communicate that practice on your friends, your family, and just ask if that’s clear. Like, hey, here’s what I offer. Does this make sense to you? And give it all the time and attention that’s needed to be able to learn how to sell and market that one thing. Don’t worry about all these great ideas that you have or things that you could sell.

Let’s focus on one thing. Let’s get good at it, and then you can grow from there. The fact that my family survived off of a $49 product for years means that you can do this. It was a great product. It didn’t cost a lot, and I had to market the hell out of it. So if you’re selling anything, take the 10 minutes it would take today to put together your message, follow my framework, and then just really dive … If you have multiple things that you offer, what’s just one that you could focus on next?

All of your time and attention. Do those things today, and I guarantee you will start seeing more success in your marketing efforts and the fact that you will scale your business by being simple and clear.