SPEAKER_01 1:37

In this episode, we dive into big bets. We talk about how most people are playing it safe when it comes to their businesses. We talk about treadmills. We talk about how to look 90 degrees and where you're going versus right down at your feet, which is what keeps a lot of people stuck. And so this episode is more of a challenging episode when it comes like your mindset and how you operate in experiences that we have had and we've seen with brands that have had exponential growth. And how most of it comes down to the fact that they were playing it too safe. They were playing it too small, taking these small bets when the answer was actually very different than the things they'd been doing, and they had to take these big bets to get big outcomes. Enjoy the episode. I think most businesses just play it way too safe. And this kind of, I was in a conversation, I was on a coaching hall yesterday, and and there was a client of ours that we're working with. And by all standards of what she's doing, all this stuff. Like, knew all this stuff. She she's been around our in our in our community and stuff for years, and like knew everything front to back, all of our frameworks, how to grow, of which other people have experienced similar or growth within some of those frameworks. And and she so she knew all this stuff, but she was playing when she I was observing like all of the stuff that was happening, how she was operating. And I told her, I said, you need to be making way bigger bets than you're playing right now. Like a lot of the bets were really, really safe, these little small optimizations. And I think that so many entrepreneurs do that, and because of that, they stay really small.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Well, it makes sense because I feel like people when especially when you get to a certain point in business, I think it might be easier to make those bets when you're starting out because you kind of have nothing to lose, right? Like you either have a business or you don't, and you're kind of a step away from both of those when you're starting out. So it's kind of easier to make those bets because it it's it's like it's kind of an all-in bet no matter what, right? Versus when you get to a point of having a sizable business, the bets get a little bit harder because there's a lot more on the line, especially if you're full-time in the business, you have a team, it it you start to look at those bets as what can I lose? What what could I possibly lose? And then it makes it like, well, I should probably play it safe because if I take a big bet or if I if I push too hard, then this thing that I have could go away. So it makes sense, I think, why business owners think that way. But I think there's it it can hold you back substantially when you think that way.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

You know, I've if I reflect back, so I just turned, I just had a birthday this last week, and I always reflect on life and and all the the good and the bad, and and I just remember all the moments that we were the most stuck, is where we were just doing the same stuff over and over again. And it wasn't until we did something drastically different, like so abstract thinking of any way that we've operated or anything that we've done that we suddenly saw this massive amount of growth. And and and I and I just remember like it was, I don't know, it was like six years ago. We had been stuck forever revenue-wise, uh and the company was just kind of completely plateaued for like several years. And it was so frustrating because like I watched all the all the you know, all the big guys. I I I knew all I had all the head knowledge of what to do. Well, because at this point, this is kind of when Alex Ramosy was blowing up too, right? This maybe not quite. Not quite yet. He wasn't even on the scene yet. Okay, he came on the scene the summer after we did this first boot camp. Gotcha. Like so for for context, like in our business, our acquisition was like the greatest constraint. So we were constrained. What acquisition? Yeah. Our acquisition was a lot of word of mouth. Yeah. It was very slow, barely a couple. I mean, we were spending like a few thousand dollars a month on ads. It was like so, so little acquisition. And we decided to entirely change the funnel, entirely change what we did. We ended up doing this live boot camp the first week. We uh we go to this, we do this three-day boot camp or like let's take a bet, spend like seven grand in a week.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

The whole seven grand. Which was a lot. Which was a lot back then.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

It was a lot back then, right? And so, like normally we would spend three thousand dollars in a month or something, and we're like, you know what, let's spend seven thousand dollars in a week on this new acquisition funnel.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

And wasn't it reliant on the email list primarily?

SPEAKER_01 6:00

That first one and honestly, the email list is what really carried us. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

The ads didn't do super well. I think what ads did okay. 10 or 15. I don't remember. Like it wasn't very many.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

We had a little over a hundred people to the thing. Yep. And we do this live event and we make like thirty thousand dollars off the back end of it. So we're like four X-ish, you know, on ad spending and keep in mind a lot of those were like goodwill from our email list. Then we're like, ah, let's do this again. And then we spent, I don't know, it's like twenty or thirty thousand dollars in a two weeks, a fourteen-day span. We learned 14 days for this this short cycle was really, really good.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

And then the next time And something with that was these big bets that we were taking of okay, let's spend 20,000, was also let's spend 20,000 over two weeks, and we will we know we won't get that paid back for three to four weeks. So that was even a bigger bet of like we don't we won't actually see the ROI of this for quite a long time in if we even see it. If we see it. And that's the big thing, because like if you're if you're even e-commerce, you can kind of put money in and kind of see the res the response pretty quickly. For us in this situation, it's like we put money in, we have to wait four weeks before we know if we actually made the money back or not.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Yeah. And you know, it it we've taken bets before and they didn't pan out. That's the other risk you have with it. But then like we kept doing this. Then we a month or two, a few months later, we do this again and we put fifty or sixty thousand dollars in a 14-day window time. We had never spent anything like that before. Like remote 50 grand in 14 days for us was huge. And I remember we would start small, like uh like I don't forget what it was like a thousand dollars a day or five hundred dollars a day.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Yeah, probably five hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

And then we were ramping up by the last few days, we're cranking like seven, eight thousand dollars a day in spend, which was just exhilarating. It really was it was so much fun. And so, like, there's all this energy, we're doing it. We got, I think that one of the last ones we did, it's been a couple years since we've done a bo done a boot camp, but we had eight hundred and something people join this boot camp, and then we collected, I don't know, well over six, probably almost two 150,000 cash or something like that right out of the gates. So, like what when I reflect on this, I look back at our journey and I look back at the clients that we work with that many of them that have the largest growth. Now they do a lot of the same high-level things, but there's some point of which the ones that have this outlier growth do like really they make these big bets that by all standards would be abnormal, kind of weird or different or or risky. Some of them are kind of like risky, and then so they go all in. I remember it was maybe like like two years ago, one of our clients, Kylie, she ended up, she was coming in, she was doing like $20, $30,000 a month, and we had her performance at like she was spending several hundred dollars a day on ads, and we get to Q4, we find this pocket, it's performing really well. And she's like, What if I just went to like $2,000 a day? And I was like, I mean, if you're willing to do it, I think you should do it. And she said, Okay. And she puts $2,000, starts just ripping, goes from like $20,000 to $30,000. And then she goes like three grand or four grand a day in spend during this window of time, and she does like $200 and something thousand dollars in a month, coming up from like $20,000 to $30. Yeah. And it's like, so she just took this huge bet when she saw it and she just swung for the fences. And we have story after story. Some clients like launch new products to new industries, and they take these way bigger bets that pan out in really positive ways. Now, to be fair, there are sometimes we take bets and the bets don't pan out. Yeah. But I think that anytime, if I reflect back on our journey, it's like every time we've done something really vastly different than what we've been doing, astronomical growth is has been some of the outcomes. And it's through all those bigger bets that we've had one big bet that overpowers the losses and it becomes this huge thing.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Yeah, there's a few things. I think one of them, an analogy that I I heard was business owners are running on the treadmill, right? So think about yourself just running on a treadmill, and you think you're getting somewhere because maybe you're even increasing the speed of the treadmill and you're like, yes, I'm going faster, I'm going faster, I'm going faster. But what are you going faster at? Running on the treadmill. You're not getting anywhere. You're still at the gym in the same longitude and latitude that you were when you started, when you got on the treadmill. It takes a big bet to get off the treadmill and actually start running. And and you know, you could throw in some anal additional analogies of, you know, you might trip on the way or something, but you have to get off the treadmill. And it really takes a big bet because I think people get stuck in thinking I'm going somewhere when I'm running on the treadmill and I'm running faster, but you're not actually making any progress. You're not actually moving yourself anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

I think that's the that's the danger. Like that's just the busy work. Yep. The busy work is like is the enemy. Yeah. And it's crazy because like we often think by being busy, we're being productive and doing high-leverage stuff. And it's like you have to, if if you do, I look at them as they're two buckets of tasks. There are maintenance tasks that maintain the current playing field and level that you're on. That doesn't grow you. Then you have compounding tasks. And those are the things that when you think, create, and lead, those are the things I believe are the three most compounding. They like astronomically grow you. But taking big bets, rely on compounding activities and trying things that might compound. But when you just fill yourself with busy work of like, I'm just doing this stuff that's like a means to an end. I'm just like customer support is a means to an end. You just do the thing and it's done. It doesn't compound or grow the business. But like big bets are those things that it's like, man, you have to be willing to take risks to grow. And what's interesting is if if everybody listening to this or watching this has somebody, you have somebody that you follow or listen to right now that you really admire. You're like, hey, call them an influencer, a creator, just someone you really, really admire. And if you go look at them and you find their story arc, they all have a story and they all tell the story over and over and over again. There is a moment in their story that they did something different that got them substantially different results. And that was a bet for them. Most of the time, I don't think I've ever heard a story with like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I built a hundred million dollar company. I just kept doing what I was always doing. And I got there. Yeah. I never hear that story. It's always like, oh, we did the thing. We had to literally cut our entire leadership team and bring in other people. Oh, we had to like literally find this other ideal customer and open an entirely new product line. We had to, it's like something vastly different than they've been doing. And I think that's this is just a reminder I want to bring to everybody listening or watching. Got to make bigger bets if you want to get bigger, bigger results.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Yeah, I think we keep talking about risk, risk, risk, which is obviously a big part of this. But I think there's I think sometimes people can look at risk maybe too aggressively a little bit, in that, well, I don't want to take any risk, right? So, so one thing that I've heard is you need a failure engine. So a failure engine would be some system, some mechanism that allows you to fail consistently without the risk. So maybe this is like, hey, you need to try a new product, you need to try a new product entry point, you need to whatever. Do you have a way that you can try that with not a lot of time investment, not a lot of money investment, but try it to say, hey, this panned out or it didn't, and and be able to fail consistently. Because in taking these risks, yeah, if you if you're saying I'm gonna take one big bet a year, that's a huge risk because you're gonna take one. And if that one doesn't pan out, then you know you probably are not going to have a very good time. But if you find a way that you can consistently change, optimize, move, and and have a system for that, then you can continually fail and it won't ever actually hurt you until I mean it might hurt a little bit, but it won't get to the point where it was a detrimental failure or a detrimental waste of time, which is kind of the other thing of like, you know, you're gonna spend three three months building a new brand or or building new ads or finding a new product just for that three months of time that you spent to to it to fail, right? Which is the most likely outcome of these things. Most likely it's going to fail. It's it's lucky if it doesn't to some extent, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:29

That kind of goes back to we've had a a frame or a uh we've we've had a thing we a little motto we always say, and that is like test fast, assume failure, exploit success. Yep. So it's like so you're proposing an interesting idea though, Dylan, is like maybe the bets don't have to be super risky, can be detrimental to your business. Maybe they don't have to be like that. Yeah. But you need to take maybe it's not about bigger bets, it's about different bets. Potentially. And I say that because like a lot of times we do something vastly different. But within that, the question is how much risk do you have to associate with that? Yep. Maybe a big bet is something vastly different, but it doesn't associate it doesn't have the associated risk, which is what you're saying. Yep. And so the question is then how do you create a system like you're talking about, failure engine or whatever? Yep, that we can test new ideas fast with the least amount of resource to get a proof of concept. Yep. Right. We're gonna assume failure, we're gonna assume most stuff statistically fails. Most stuff does, but when you find the thing that wins, you exploit that success by then going really deep and cranking the heat on whatever the thing is.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Which can still be a risk. Like, like keep in mind, you can have a failure engine. So an example of this would be how long does it take you if you let's just really shrink it down. This isn't a big risk, but maybe you've been stuck with your advertising for a little bit and you've been running to the same landing page, to the same product, to the same offer, to the same, same, same, right? How long would it take you realistically to go change your website? If you say longer than a week, then that is actually a bigger risk because now you're you have to invest a week of your time into changing this thing that it probably will fail. So if you invest that time, your risk is now the time of, you know, I'm gonna invest a week in changing my website. That will most likely fail. Same thing with developing a product. If you're like, hey, I've just been selling the same product forever, I'm gonna go away in a cave for the next four months to develop a new product or or create a new brand. Well, that four months is a big risk because you're now diverting your time to something. What if you could do it in a month? What if you could change your website in a day? What if you could launch a new offer tomorrow? That's the kind of stuff that it makes the risk smaller. And then you kind of get that proof of concept to say, all right, this did okay. Now don't take that instantly as like, oh, this is the next breakthrough, but at least it got you somewhere. That's the thinking of get off the treadmill and start walking at least, walk somewhere. It might not be running, you might not be moving at the speed. But then once you find the thing, makes it a lot easier to start running after you started walking. And then the other thing to this is when you start thinking about risk, I think a lot of people we we we talk about this as well. It's like, what's the worst? What's the worst that could happen if you decide to make a decision or or take a risk? I think an example of this is our client who had a business that was doing really, really, really well, but it was such a niche audience to that business. And then he he decided to spin off another business, and that business opened up a potential audience of everyone, basically. Like it's it's such a large audience. Now that was a risk, but how long did it take him to spin that up? Two weeks. Two weeks.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Well, he was on the podcast, a couple back.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Oh, yeah, yeah. I forgot.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Everybody go go listen to the episode with Johnny uh Cox from Gold Spartan and Cross and Hell. And we have a whole deep dive on it where he launched, just took what he did, two weeks now. That's the story I was about to bring up. Yep, yeah, because like you're talking a timeline risk or like time risk. He in two weeks used AI, built the whole website, integrated Shopify, boom, boom, boom, boom. Less than two weeks, while running his multi-seven figure other business, maintaining that, he used his excess time and capacity to go into this new idea. And it spawned because we were at a session talking about exponential goal setting. Yep. And he set a goal of like 10 million in the next two years for Gold Spartan. But the problem was Gold Spartan sells silver, gold, and bronze, and silver and gold are the number one sellers, and the margin on that is like nothing. Yeah. It's so hard because it's a commodity. But bronze has a really high one. So he's like, what if I break out bronze, build a new product line, completely different company, tailored ICP, massive total adjustable market. He did it in from zero to $100,000 months in three months.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

There are two things that I think he did really well in that to me is is an example of getting off the treadmill. And there's two things I think he did really well in that. Number one is he did it quickly, knowing that the the level, the potential for failure is high because it's a completely different product, completely different space. And and honestly, it's kind of a high price point for the product that he's selling. Like it's it's kind of a it's a big risk, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Johnny, if you're listening, we think it's a great price point.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Well, no, if you look at any other product in that space, it it is expensive. Probably more premium, yeah. And it's because it's using premium materials, right? It's not, you know, some random metal. But it it was a risk in to some extent, but he did it in two weeks. So his time risk, his time investment in that was very minimal.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

I think I think it was a few days of just dedicated focus. Probably. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

And and I think a lot of people get stuck in, like, well, if I want to go do a thing, it has to take me three months to do it. And that is something that you get stuck in because then either you just don't do the thing because it takes you too long to do the thing, and you're like, I just don't have the time, or you then do the thing for it to fail, and then you just wasted three months of your life. And then the second thing that I think he did really well is he assessed the risk well. I don't know if he actually did this, but I think this is a good example of okay, so let's what's the worst case scenario? The worst case scenario in that situation, if he starts this new brand, launches the brand, and it flops, he just goes back to his seven-figure business that he already had. So he had almost no risk except for two weeks of time. That was his risk. So I think if like you can look at it yourself, and and really you need to get really honest with yourself and say, what is the worst case scenario? An example that I heard of this is like, who who could you hurt around you? This is like if you're taking a big, big risk. Who could you hurt around you? If you think about it, maybe you think, you know, if I take a risk, I'm gonna hurt the team, I'm gonna hurt my family, I'm gonna hurt whatever. Say, you know, you take a risk and you lose the business, right? What would that actually happen if you take that risk? Would that actually happen? If the worst case scenario is that, hey, you take this risk and you you stop acquiring customers for three weeks, is that that big of a risk if you have recurring, if you have subscription, if you have whatever? You have to create a system that allows you to fail and then also be able to exploit that system that you've already created. So Johnny in that example said, I can, I've created this business that I can now exploit. And he's kind of talked to me about this of like, he's hoping this other business will, or he's hoping that Gold Spartan will just survive so that he can grow this other business because the cost of goods on Gold Spartan just like breaks even essentially, so he can do this other thing. So it's just his failure engine, essentially, over here of like, I just have to keep this thing here because it pays for everything. So if this fails, I'm still at zero, which is a really, really good risk assessment in that, in that scenario. So I think if you're looking at it as like, I'm gonna make this bet and I'm gonna lose the business, then either you really shouldn't make the bet, or you need to build a way to where you can make a bet that doesn't result in hurting people around you, which I think is the the way that you can look at it.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

And this is where, so I was in a I was in a call yesterday with a client and she threw on the table, like she's in the skincare space, and she has this product line she's had for eight years. She's been stuck like in the business, and I I don't know what her revenue is, I forget, but like she she wanted to grow, she's been grinding for eight years and has just been stuck doing the thing, just stuck. And and so she's like, I bought 4,000 more units, and if I can't sell all of these by April, I'm shutting the business down. And of course, I had to dive into that. I'm like, well, what are you gonna go do next? Are you gonna go work for someone? And she's like, Well, I can't work corporate and all of this. And so, so anyway, I I got into it and it came down to I talked to her about this concept. I'm like, you have to take bigger bets because I'm like, what will change? What is what are you doing differently now that you haven't done for eight years to sell these 4,000 units? I said, What are you gonna do vastly different than what you're doing now? Because if you're gonna do the same thing now, you're probably gonna end up shutting the business down. Yeah. Right. Well, and she's like, Well, I have this, it's gonna help me with AOV and this. I said, those are all optimizations, and I love that, and you should do that. But eight years, I'm willing to bet you have tried to get AOV up. You have tried to, and she's and I said, What's your CPA? She's like, I literally can't. Get out of a $25 to $30 CPA.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

And I'm like, I wish I had a $20 to $30. So here's what I did.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

So I said, who here, who here has a CPA under $30? And everyone's like in the chat. I said, great. Who here has a CPA under $25? A few people. Yeah. Who here has a CPA under $20? One person. She's like, I'm 15 to 20.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Who is that one person? That's crazy. Oh, okay. All right.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

That's great. Big audience. Yeah. So I did that. I said, and I I don't want to drop the client's name, but I said, hey, I told her, I said, pretty much the whole room is an exact CPA range as you. Yep. I said, and this gets down to the conspiracy theory of natural CAC with Facebook.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

So I kind of Which I completely agree with. I agree with that too. Like no one has a CPA under $20. Nobody. Except for Kurt. But that's that's a little bit more. But he has a huge organic following too.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

Exactly. It's an is it inflated adult. Yeah. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Like I always tell clients, you're if you became the best advertiser tomorrow, you're going to have a $20 CPA. So if your margins, your product, your offer can't optimize for a $20 CPA, you're already losing. And you have to be the best advertiser in the world like that to get a $20 CPA. And even now you're sitting at 30, which is really good.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Expect to get to $25 to $30. That's what everybody. You're fully optimized. I don't know almost anybody that gets under $25 on a consistent basis. Yeah. But $25 to 30, $25 to $35, pretty natural. So anybody listening, by the way, if you're in that range, you are normal. Yep. What that means is I said, so your bet is that you're going to do most of the same stuff you have been doing for eight years and hope for a different result. Is that right? Well, I mean, I'm going to try to optimize a couple things. I said, Yeah, yeah. I think that you need to take a bigger bet. I'm like, I'm going to throw something crazier away. What if we tried to get products that were not $29.99 and we tried to get you to like an $80 AOV? Would your $25 feel a lot better for a CPA then? Yeah. Versus a $40 AOV or whatever. She's like, oh my gosh. Yeah. It's like, okay. So go explore an entirely different. I said, remove all of your bias. Go spend one day and explore every rabbit trail you come across in your skincare for an entirely different ICP. Don't even think of your current ICP. Literally just explore the possibilities of what would happen if you did an entirely different product line with not like 50% margin or something, but like 80% margin, that you could have low minimum order quantities to test out, or just find a place who would literally make to order them for you. Some places will do that, that you could test the waters on it. Yep. And and and so that's what she's going to do. But I think another way to consolidate risk, I'll say this. One thing to consolidate risk is I think anybody listening is way too freaking slow in making decisions and doing the things. Yep. What I mean by that is anybody, if you just literally said, you know what, this is making sense to me. I feel like I've been playing it safe. I've been doing the same thing over and over and over again. I need a day to explore some options. You know what you should do? You should look at your coming week. You should take one or one whole day, clear your calendar, don't do any normal activities. If you spent one day exploring, thinking, look following the rabbit trails or trying to build something brand new, you'd get real far in eight to ten hours. Yeah. And then that consolidates your risk to one day of time or two days of time for a potential huge bet that could change your whole life.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

And I think in in in that case with the the skincare brand, the the risk assessment that you can take in that is I'm shutting the business down in a year either way. Right? Like she's already saying, if I can't do this, I'm shutting it down. So what do you have to lose? You you really don't have anything to lose because you've already decided I'm I'm throwing in the towel. I I can't do this. So your your risk assessment can be either I take this risk, I take this bet, I do the thing and it fails and I shut the business down. Or I do the thing that I've already been doing and I shut the business down. So I think that is an example of you you really need to look at the like if you're in a situation where you can already see the outcome. And maybe the outcome isn't as bad as you think. Maybe the outcome is, you know, I I lose a little bit of my profit margin. Okay. You can lose a little bit of your profit margin for the sake of a bet, right? You don't want to have to fire your whole team. Now, maybe that's what it comes down to, but you don't want to have to do that. But odds are you can make a bet that doesn't require that. And you can look at the outcome and say, you know what, I'm willing to accept that outcome. Because in in her case, she's already accepted the outcome that the business might shut down. So the other outcome of taking the bet is the same thing. So if you can predict that outcome and say, I'm willing to do that, then there's really no reason not to take the bet. That's it. You just have to be really good at risk assessment and saying, what is the absolute worst case scenario that could happen from doing this thing? Odds are the worst case scenario is not actually as bad as you think that it is. That's that's what I found.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

And that's where another another frame of thinking comes in of like reversible versus irreversible decisions. Yep. So, like in part of the risk assessment, you say, is the decision I'm gonna make reversible or irreversible? A good example of this. We took a bet on in our sales team and we hired a new salesperson for a role that we didn't have. And we're like, this is a bet we believe is gonna move this metric inside our business. And this is like salaried locked in, she's single mom with two daughters, leading an entire career of six years to work with us after we went through like 50 applications or whatever and all these interviews. And we're like, this is this is an irreversible decision, pretty much. I mean, technically we could just cut someone loops in in a month if we didn't feel like a panel. And we're like, we can't do that because that's not who we are. We're not gonna screw someone's life over like that. So I you look at that too, is like from the risk, can I reverse a decision or can I not? And sometimes you have to have so much belief in the decision that you you say, okay, this is the bet I'm willing to take that's a big bet that has a higher amount of risk associated, like hiring somebody for something. Yeah, that's a bigger, that's a bigger bet with a higher level of risk.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Yep. But then you could even look at like worst case scenario of that is well, I I guess worst, worst, worst case is that you fire them. But the the worst case scenario is you lose your net profit until you until you can make back that margin. Like if you if you look at, you know, how can I fix it if it doesn't pan out. Like I think, I think people really think of like the absolute worst case scenario that anything, any decision I make is just gonna make my business shut down, which is probably not the case. Or it's gonna make me have to fire everyone. Probably not the case. So I think it it just comes that it's it's you don't have to make realistic plans of what the worst case scenario actually is.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

Do you think people believe they're making they're playing things safe that are listening right now? Well if someone's listening and they're like, I don't even think I I think I play I don't play it safe. I think I play Do you think people actually see that as like I'm playing everything safe?

SPEAKER_00 30:36

That's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

You know what I mean? Like, do most entrepreneurs think they're playing, or they said, Well, I'm an entrepreneur, so I'm not playing it safe, right? By is a byproduct, but yet we work with several hundred of them. We're like, no, no, no, like some of you are mathematically, some people are playing it safe. Yeah. In some capacity, maybe less with entrepreneurs, but within the entrepreneurs, there are some that play more safe than others. And how would you identify, if you're listening or watching, that you need to be doing something different? You need to take a bigger bet.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

I think part of this comes down to the bets that you took two or three years ago are not the bets that you have to take today. So if you feel like you're still making bets, but they're kind of the same bets you were making a few years ago, then that is essentially just doing the same thing or the the same level of bets. As your business grows, and I think this might be might be where people get stuck, is as your business grows, you you should be taking bigger bets because you have more resources to take those bets with. But if you're still taking this the bets that you were taking as the before the business grew, then yeah, I guess you're still taking bets, but you're not taking the bets that you could be taking now with the resources that you have, whether that's capital or time. And I think that might be the shift. I think entrepreneurs, yes, take bets all the time. I think every decision that an entrepreneur makes is taking a bet. But is that getting off the treadmill, or is that just increasing the speed of the treadmill?

SPEAKER_01 32:07

So the question is, is it the wrong bet?

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Not even well, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Because some of the wrong bets might just be turning up the speed or the incline and the treadmill when reality you need to get off it.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Exactly. And I think, I think, like you said, a lot of people just get stuck with the busy work of, yeah, I'm just gonna, if I do more busy work, I'm gonna increase the speed. I'm gonna maybe even a bet is like, hey, I need to start working more time. I need to, I need to increase my hours. You know, that would have been a bet a few years ago because it five more hours in the week for you is substantial because you're the only person. But now adding five weeks or five hours a week is essentially nothing when you've got a team, you know, that is not a compounding bet. So I think it's it it kind of changes as the business grows. And I think once again, it goes back to what I said at the beginning of the episode of it gets harder to make the bigger bets because the bigger the business gets, the more you have to lose, or the more you think you have to lose. Because now you've got a team relying on you, you have you probably have a sizable income that your family's relying on you, all of that. So then you get to that point of okay, now is the time to make the big bet, but I have this thing and I don't want to lose it, right? So then it makes it harder to make that big bet, and and then you just choose not to. You increase the speed of the treadmill. But getting off the treadmill is scary because you've been running on the treadmill for a long time. So I think that's probably the the situation.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

So then the first question is to say, how do I know I'm on a treadmill?

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Assume you are. I think I think probably ninety-nine percent of people are probably on the treadmill. Because that's the that's the human nature.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

So then okay, this is really okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Hold on, let's let me give one more, let me give one more. So I was I was on a phone call with someone who I was kind of having this conversation with a little bit. And I was, I I naturally found myself walking, and I was talking to him on the phone, and I was walking with my head down like this, and he said something that was really interesting, and it was if a business owner decides that they're walking like this, by the way, my head is down for audio at like a 45 degree angle at the table. If a business owner decides I'm, you know, looking at my next step, they need to change the the way that they're walking to be a 90 degree angle. You need to look at where you're going, not your next three steps. The problem was, and this was happening for me live time on this phone call. I'm at a 45 degree angle. I've never noticed that I walk like this, but I do. I I always I even still do it, which is kind of the point. So I was walking the 45 degree angle. He said, if you are looking at a 45 degree angle, that's the equivalent of being on a treadmill. Now it's better than a 20 degree where you're literally looking at your feet. You know, a a business owner might be looking at 45 degrees saying, Hey, I'm thinking into the future. But when he said you need to be looking at a 90 degree angle, I said, you know what, for the rest of this phone call, I'm gonna look 90 degrees. Do you know how hard it was for me to change my brain to say I'm gonna look straight ahead? Because guess what? If I don't look down, I'm gonna trip on the sidewalk. Ashland sidewalks are terrible. You know that. If I don't look down, I'm gonna trip on the sidewalk. That's why people don't look up because they've probably got burned looking up. They've probably tripped. Or it just changes your whole mindset of I need to look 90 degrees because you're so used to looking 45 degrees. And it like if you if you just like picture that and say, I need to look at 90 degrees, you may think that you are, but you're probably looking 45 because that is human biology. It goes to sports too. Everyone's like, you gotta look at the ball, eye on the ball, eye on the ball. And that is like the one thing that is taught in every single sport because human biology is to not do that.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

Except swimming, but you know.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

You know what? You got me. You got me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Swimming is not eye on the ball. Okay, any sport with a ball, okay, that's the that's the idea. But I think it it is just human nature to be on the treadmill. That's why I would say 99% of people are there.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

All right, so I'll I'll pose you another question. Let's say I'm doing all the stuff, the bets that I took, and my company is growing tremendously, and I'm experiencing massive amounts of growth. Is that a am I off the treadmill? Because eventually, if you get off and you take the bet and it pans out, are you permanently off the treadmill or do you get back on a potential other one? So I want to pose a different idea here. Okay. I think I love the treadmill analogy. I think that the measurement in business of if you're on the treadmill is if you are stuck revenue-wise. And this is really simple. I'm boiling it down to a number because it depends on well, it depends on what your goal is. But if the goal is revenue-based, which every business I've ever met desires to grow. Now, there is one I met with yesterday that was actually like, I don't want to have a team that's conditioned for my business. I don't, I want as long as I can take him $100,000 a year and I have no team and I don't have to do this or this, I'm happy. So she only has to do like half a million or a million a year, and she's like good to go. Half a million with 20% net, she's good. And so, because of that, revenue isn't as as important until if once she hits it, then revenue is not a good metric because she just wants to stay there. Yep. So, like most people, revenue is the metric. So if you have been stuck for three, six, twelve, twenty-four months, it's probably a good measurement to say, yeah, you might be stuck because you've been running the same treadmill. Yep. And you've been doing the same things that are getting the same exact results. And now you need to take a vastly different bet.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

If we're talking about business and we're talking about growth, the only caveat I would say to that is you can be experiencing growth on the treadmill. Because being on the treadmill, you're still training, right? Let's just really lean into the treadmill analogy. You're still training. You know, as you add that incline, as you add that speed, you're going to get better at the thing that you're doing. You're going to become a better runner, your cardio is going to get better, whatever that is. So you can still be growing. And it goes back to the question that we always ask ourselves is if we just kind of did the same thing that we were doing, would we be able to 2x? Yeah, probably. Right. So if you're in the position where you feel like, yeah, you know, I could probably just like 2x the business, whatever, like it, it would be hard. I'd have to increase the speed, I'd have to increase the incline. But if you're thinking, no, I want a 10x, increasing the speed and increasing the incline is not going to get you there. So I I think you could also somewhat get stuck in the trap. And then it goes to even if, and I'm gonna go back to the walking analogy because I found myself doing this. In my brain, I was like 90 degrees, 90 degrees, 90 degrees, 90 degrees. The number of times that I found myself drifting back to 45 was staggering. Because if you're at 90, let's say 90 is I'm on track for that 10x. Human psychology says I'm gonna go back to 45. I have to go back and play it safe. I have to make sure I'm not gonna trip. Where if if you if you are in that growth period and you're like, all right, hold on, we gotta play it safe. I gotta make sure I'm not gonna trip, you've just gotten back on the treadmill. I don't think that it is a a switch and and you're you're off running to the races because there could come a time if you don't stay on that horizon or even you know push yourself, start looking up into the sky, you know, let's push it further. If you're not, you know, I'm gonna push it further and further, then you know, you're only gonna get as far as 90 degrees is gonna take you. So I think I think it really just comes down to the the size of the business requires different bets. And then also you have to be hyper aware of where you're at. And and like you said, the goal, because you can stay on the treadmill in 2x. Do you want a 2x? If so, increase the speed, you're doing great. If you want a 10x, you can't stay on the treadmill because that mathematically cannot get you somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

Yeah. So I guess you've got a question, but so I guess the goal is the first thing you have to understand. Yeah, because then you have to measure your progress against. And if your progress is not even tracking toward it whatsoever, then clearly there's something that needs to change. And then this is where the theory of constraints, which we recently did a podcast episode on. Everybody go listen to that. Theory of constraints comes in. And I would venture to say that if you want to know what types of bets are worth taking to really grow the business, you need to go through that podcast and go through the theory of constraints and identify the constraint area because that is where it's likely best for you to take the largest bets. Yeah because that could be the unlocks that put you on a 10x track or put you on this massive thing. Now, if your goal is just to 2x, then maybe you're on a treadmill mentally and you just don't want to challenge yourself as much as you could, right? Some people, that's the safety. That's the safety mechanism, is like, well, I don't want to. This is a good conversation I had yesterday. Maybe we'll we'll close on this. I was in a call with, I don't know, maybe 10 people. And I'm having everybody, we had this huge ex last week big exponential goal setting session. Yep. And then this week we're talking about noble goals and and exponential goals and stuff with Dr. Marth Matthews, and and everyone's going around and they're like, hey, 30 million in the next three years, 10 million in the next three years, 20 million in the next two years. Like, so all these goals are kind of going around. Yep. And then a few of them were like, I just I can't comprehend that. Yep. Like the idea of doing 20 million when I'm at whatever it is, is I can't do that to my family. And that was the response. That was the response, right? So it's really common. Most of us have this PTSD of times we've tripped and ex negative experiences in the past that have said, you have to play safe. You can't go big because big equals bad. Yep. And I think that's just uh it's it's it's hardwired into human nature because we have to look at like, ooh, I touched the stove, it was hot, I can't touch the stove again. And so for most of us, when we're trying, we're hustling our way to that first $10,000 or $20,000 or $50 or $100,000 a month. There's a point, I'd say in the first $100,000 a month, that it's like, man, you are freaking grinding. You're doing eight, 10, 12, 16 hour days, you're doing all of this pain and your family suffers. You get to Q4, and if you're doing production and fulfillment, things are crazy and customer service and all of this, and you don't get to see your family, then you would probably say, Hey, if I was 10 times larger, I would see my family 10 times less, or even maybe not 10 times less, just way less than I did in Q4. But the parameters of this of the solution, you could put parameters and conditions on the solution of what you're trying to solve for. And I think that sometimes the treadmill is our own limiting beliefs of what is possible. So the idea of saying, hey, I'm gonna play it safe, I'm on track to do a 50% growth this year, 10% growth this year, or something like that. Yeah, the treadmill that right now is your mindset that bigger is is badder. Yeah. Or it's more dangerous, or it's more scary. But I don't think that bigger is badder. I think that it can be if you don't set conditions and boundaries.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

Yeah, you just have to optimize for what you want. Like if if it was between 20 million and being divorced, or between, you know, 10 million and not, then you know, you can you can say, and and this is just like theory, right? It's like, well, hey, I'll I'll take the 10 million, which is still a big bet, to get to that point.

SPEAKER_01 43:27

And some people are like, I'll take the 20 million in a divorce.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

Some people will do that, yeah. But but you have to, and and this is I I mentioned this earlier, but you have to think about who it's gonna impact to. Because if if you can actually make the bet and it doesn't impact anyone, then yeah, why not? But if if it's a if it impacts someone that you're just not willing to make that bet, then that's where you can kind of draw the line. But then figure out, you know, how could I make the bet where it doesn't impact that person? And it comes down to the constraints like you're talking about of well, I only want to hit 20 million if it doesn't do this, right? So then you can set those constraints to say, I want to optimize the business for XYZ, whether it's family, fun, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Yeah, that's where constraints and boundaries on business is actually a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right, hey everyone. Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, do us a favor, please give us a thumbs up on YouTube. Drop a comment, like what's what's the thing that stuck out to you? And if you're on Spotify, you can actually drop comments too, which is pretty neat. Let us know what's a takeaway, what's something that maybe got your gears turning, something you're thinking about, maybe an area of your business that you feel you're playing at small, but you need to go bigger and you need to solve it in some different way. Uh, and then of course, if you're listening, leave us a rating. We're trying to become the number one podcast for e commerce founders on the planet. And every rating really, really does help. It takes like five seconds. So please go ahead and do that, and we'll see you in the next episode.