If You Want More, You Have to Think Differently | Ep 274

this is the thing if you don't have a goal for the business how do you know if you're making progress just by like arbitrary measures okay money views whatever it might be but it's if that's not getting you towards a greater goal it becomes very Difficult to keep going at some point. What's up? How you guys doing?

oh man this is new okay so we had a different stage and they were like it's gonna be different i was like it's different it's interesting we're gonna see how this is gonna go with heels maybe it's gonna poke a hole you guys get energy

feeling good okay great so we will yeah we're gonna get right into it right into it let's do it amazing so my name is peter livingston and i work for a faith-based non-profit and we sell classes and books and education to men 50 24 25 to 54 who need practical help in life.

And we're about at $6 million in revenue. We're trying to get to $15. And the thing that's stopping us is that we're scaling faster than our team can handle from a pacing perspective. So we're hiring which will help, but how do we... How do we know when we need coaching for the team members that are on the bubble and just to give them more time versus when have we passed the threshold that we're outpacing or not able to coach those team members into becoming what we need them to be?

It's a tough question because I think it comes down to the business model and what you want to do now and in the future. Let me explain. When you're hiring people, so you're hiring people for a position, you want to think, okay, what skills does this person need to come in already preloaded with? I'm not going to take the time to train them on these skills. And that's where we list

requirements right it's like you want to come in with these skills like i think degree all that's bullshit we just want skills right we we approximate a degree approximates to a skill and that's why we put it on there but really we want someone to have skill

and so whenever i'm thinking about hiring somebody i'm thinking what skills do i want them to already come into the job with because i think that they'll take too long to train that's the first thing i think about when i'm hiring now then when somebody comes in if everybody is taking too long to train, then maybe we don't have the right type of mix of the teammates, or maybe we don't have the right level of skill of the person.

The other way you could look at it is, okay, well, how much do we invest in the people? I think that adds a ratio more than do we want to or do we not want to which is I think As a team, when a team's small and you're not growing fast, it's easier to invest in people. There's less people to invest in. You have more time and you have more resources.

and then when you're scaling you need to be doing the thing and then it's like everyone's just trying to find extra time to pour into people which is usually when people have to switch into okay now i need to hire people who come with more skills yeah that's our problem more the second yeah

okay so you're at the point now where would you say coming in like what are the skills let's be like super specific what are the skills that are missing in the teammates or that you're working on training into them Yeah, so I would say we're a young team. So there's a level of polish that we're trying to instill into the team and drive culture. But I think that we're kind of going from generalist more to specialist.

And so on the leadership team, we've got guys that have talent but their ability to manage a team and deliver on their job, that's one of the things that we're really working on. And then we're just trying to bring in more specialists. that can raise the bar professionally of what the expectations are. Yeah. So there's no straightforward answer. It's like multiple golden BBs here. What's your leadership team look like? What's it comprised of and how experienced are those people?

Yeah, so CEO, Landon, CEO, myself, and then we've got a head of sales and marketing and then operations and operations for us is producing content. So we do a lot of content. We have one content provider that produces about a billion views last year. So we have a wide end of the funnel on social. And so everything we do is digital and kind of a one-to-many system. And have you ever grown a business like this before?

I've worked for large brands before, so I haven't been from the ground floor at this level. I've been from, I work for a lot of billion dollar brands, so I've done larger things, but not from this level of scale to you know, from one to six is where we've gone from the past two years and then trying to get to 15 in the next couple. So let me ask you this. How do you guys train people right now?

It's a lot of on-the-job training or implementing more of a robust onboarding system, which is focused on a lot of culture and then a one-on-one onboarding for the actual job and the role specifically.

And so that's one of the things we do want to improve is like our onboarding process. Cause I know there's tons of good data on retention and how much that matters for, you know, what that employee is going to end up being in their tenure and whatnot. But that's one of the areas we definitely need to grow in.

Okay, let me ask you this. So if you're like... how when do i know i've put too much or i've put enough time into training somebody what does the mechanism of training look like are they watching a video are they watching you do something are they sitting what does that usually look like

yeah it's usually on the job training with someone who has either done the job or is overseeing them so they're shadowing them yeah exactly and we do a kind of we do a crawl walk run phase with most things so it's like i do it you watch then I do it, you help, then you do it, I watch, so on and so forth. That's fantastic.

I think based on everything that you're telling me, where I think that you would get the most is the onboarding for sure. Like one of the first things I did when we went into high growth and gym launch, which was like eight years ago, maybe when that happened, was I just was maniacal about the onboarding and how much time you put into people in that and how it's structured and how many touch points there were and how much context transfer.

So structuring that out as ruthlessly as you would, if you were, I looked at like this, I just use this frame. Okay, so let's say that you just sold an enterprise client that they're going to make the company $150,000 a year. How are you going to onboard that person? Okay, well, let's look at the employee and think about how much revenue they're going to help generate. Why would we not onboard with that kind of vigor?

And so I think that's a good frame shift. The second piece is that it's kind of like there's two ways that you have to do it, which is like one, I think at the leadership level, Maybe you need to consider that you need to bring in even just one person who has a little bit more experience in a high growth company. It's very different. to have operated in a large company and to have operated in a small or medium company but to have gone from small to medium to large

is completely different. So something I look for constantly in people that I'm recruiting when I'm in high growth is it's not good enough that they've just been here. I need people who have been through the journey. Ascended to there, yeah. Exactly. Because it's a different pace that you have to take. And the reality is this, is that you will not be slowed down by most likely your marketing or your sales or your market, but your people. So slow people, slow business.

And it's not for everybody. It's just not. And so if you want your business to go faster, you have to look at people who have a sense of urgency and work with a bit of intensity. I look for people who have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder. I do.

right and it's like alex is a little weird and so i'm just being honest so like i look for people like that to join the company because i see the people that come and they apply and they they're like oh i've been at the companies where it's 80 i was like you don't have enough anxiety for this so there's not a little you just don't have that drive it's just not there and this isn't gonna work you're not gonna like this right you're not gonna like it you're not gonna go fast enough and so

I think it's a little bit of looking for that, especially with leaders that you're bringing in. The second piece is setting the expectations for people on the team. which is like how you want to work. And I think constantly reinforcing to them what high growth looks like.

and how you act in accordance with it and what's normal is something that you have to continue to embed in the team. Because here's the thing, for example, I just made a podcast on this because I think it's a really important subject, which is when a company is growing quickly and they have a really potent culture, I don't view firing people as bad. Because I'm letting go of people who are clearly not a culture fit and clearly dragging down the other hundred people in this company.

I'm doing us a favor by getting them off the bus so I can protect everybody else who's on here. Most companies firing people like that means, oh, the company's not doing well. Oh, the person, the company didn't give them a shot. The company didn't...

there's so many instances like that that have to be a reframe the other one is change change in a lot of organizations means things are bad things no longer work things when high growth things are constantly changing and so the change management has to be normalized to people this is good this is just how we do business

So for what you're asking, there is not one cookie cutter answer because it's a million little things, but I'm curious which one resonated. Yeah, I think that... they all resonated like we've been we've been doing a lot more culture talk or conversations and lunch and learns and whatnot on pacing because we've realized like in the hiring process that's a differentiator of not only

asking pacing related questions, but then asking experiential questions to show if they really are that or not. We've also thought about doing the Colby just to kind of see where people are on the quick start in terms of the hiring process.

I think I really like what you were saying about, because we do have a lead team slot that we need to hire. And thinking about someone who has been through that growth journey, I think that's something I hadn't thought about quite in that way. That's super helpful.

i also think it's the frame which is so many people especially as an employer people are fearful of setting the frame for the people on the intake call or like when you're set this is what we're looking for in the job because there's been there's so much regulation there's hr bullshit and all this stuff

but like the most powerful thing that i think about is my job is not to sell you on the job my job is to tell you exactly what it's like inside this company and if you don't fuck with that then you don't take the job and i almost look at it as like i'm you know i'll say to someone i'm like i don't know i scared the fuck out of that guy and he still wants a job so

you know i mean you know it's just i mean it's the honest truth because when you're growing fast i'll give you an example there's two roles i just hired for and i was like dude it's so fucked up that's why i told them i'm like i don't know it's really fucked up so like you're gonna have to fix all that shit and i can't really help you because i don't have the skill And then they're like, great, I actually like fixing that shit.

versus people who have just been at this level in a company forever they're like oh god how do we fix that you know i don't want that right now so i think a lot on the front end can help set the tone for how people act because Culture is just the norm of how people act in your company. And if your culture was one of speed, they would act with speed right now.

but it's not yet and so that tells me it's like the front end is the main piece that you've leveraged at and then even telling people i don't think i've reinforced this enough guys we have to act with urgency we need to go fast we're not making haste decisions but we're every day in the micro going quickly. I think it's just more of that messaging will help a ton, especially if it comes from the C level. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much. Of course.

My name is Samuel and I'm a mortgage broker from Sydney, Australia. We did 300,000 last year. I say we, it was just me. I have first deployed. Me and my week. That's so grand. I did 300,000 last year. And I and my first employee as of a couple of months ago on track this year so far to double last year.

and i would like to get the business to 2 million in revenue asap however quickly i can do that i guess my question is i feel like i have a million questions but the main thing is and selfishly If you were me, how would you get the business? to 2 million revenue our entire all of our business comes from referral partners we've never run an ad i don't know how to run an ad

It's just been from referral partners and then existing clients referring business. So I guess, yeah, my question would be, have you worked with mortgage-broking businesses in the past?

and what's worked, if anything. Yeah, it's specific to the business. There's a million ways, just like any business, that you could grow it. So the question is this, which is like, Why are you not at 2 million right now? Is it that you don't have enough leads from the referral mechanism? Is it that you don't know how to convert those leads? Not enough leads and...

Almost all aspects of the business. I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. That makes sense. With where you are right now. Yeah. That's normal though. So just get used to that. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry.

because i sorry just quickly so i feel just as confused now as when we did i did zero dollars makes sense like i just thought it would feel different doesn't feel any different yeah success doesn't create the feelings you want yeah success and happiness and contentness and certainty all so different no because it's just like new problems at a new level you know what i mean like

At every level in business, unless you've been there before, you're going to feel like you don't know what the fuck you're doing. And people will tell you this and that and this and that, but it's just like, everyone's just trying to do their best. I mean, I can say that. Even at the level of acquisition.com, it's like, of course there's an element of, well, now I haven't been to this level. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing now.

you know what i mean it's like you can accommodate for all the levels below now i think the more you learn the more you like pattern recognition there's the same cycles at different levels just a different magnitude of problem or magnitude of the cycle you have to go through all right it's leads it's customer success it's retention it's employees whatever it is for you if it's in terms of getting leads it's just you right doing all this

now i have one employee with me full of time helping because i needed the help i was okay what are they doing i'd like administrator stuff inputting daughter and documents etc yeah just all the stuff that takes up a lot of my time really so how do you get leads right now

referrals from accountants like how do you ask them for leads i can just get either introduced to them through my existing network or i'll just call them and say hey i'm coming into the office to chat and then i tell them i'm really great and they're not like fuck off no i do some research on them before i call them and you know build some rapport over the phone okay and then i just say i'm the best you should work with me

and then and then they give me something i don't know what i'm doing i have to figure it out so okay yeah and so here's my question are there no more accountants left to call or is it that they're not referring business to you or is it that you don't have time

i think it's a mixture of both and i partly part of me feels like i know the answer which is just call more people and just get in front of more people more or less oh yeah also yeah i wanted to ask if you if you've worked with a mortgage working business in the past and what's worked

Has it worked to kind of just call more people, get more relationships and more referral partners, or is it better for me to onboard more brokers? You need to stop asking this question because this is the thing. Every business has their own unique advantage.

so yes i've worked with mortgage brokers and so some of them use referrals some of them use paid ads some of them have an organic following it doesn't matter it's the same as any business okay and so it's just what is already working for you we don't want to say you know what i don't know if we can get more referrals so i'm gonna run paid ads what a fucking waste you're gonna give up on this thing that's already making your company to where it's at

Now, the next logical step is that you've been doing it and it's been working, but it's just you. So my first thought is, okay, so you're calling them, you're doing these things. Why don't we get somebody else that can sit next to you, learn how you call them, and then all they do is fucking dial all day.

And then maybe what you do is first they dial all day. You go into the office and have a conversation. And over time, that person can train so that they can make the dials and go into the office and have the conversation. And then you're just facilitating and overseeing everything on the back end.

That's the area where I think you're going to get the most leverage. Now, the key is this. For you to keep conversion at the same percentage that you convert people at, you need that person to literally be tied to your hip. They need to watch you. They need to sit with you for weeks. They need to hear everything you say. They need to draft a script.

out of what you say on the phone. They need to come with you in person and follow you and listen to what you say to that person in the room and then they need to understand somewhat what happens after. That's what I would do if I were you. I'd be like, well...

you've not run ads before, you don't have an organic following, you've been doing referrals, it's working, but the constraint is that's just you. So it makes sense that you would bring somebody else in, you would have them just learn exactly what you're doing, and then you would figure out how to get one more person.

to call the leads and generate business from the referrals. That's what I would do. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. Of course. Thanks. Well, good to meet you. My name is Michelle Haynes. I sell software services more specifically.

partnership long-term vested partnership when it comes to technical implementation i don't know that means can you explain again yeah it means i don't want one project i want to be with you for 10 years and anything you need technically i want to do that for you and present your life outsource tech for our business you got it okay that makes sense we do about 35 million in revenue right now we'd like to be at 50 million by end of 2026 and we've been at 35 million for three years in a row

going to reframe this question it's less about what's stopping me it's more of i know that the problem is focus so I would love to hear more from you. You lived this. You experienced this. running at 35 million is not what was required when we were running at 10 or 15 yeah and none of us really know what the fuck we're doing either like we just wake up every day what needs to be done we get it done we look at is it going to work long term

What's your advice for creating that focus when you're needed everywhere and you don't have the training to do the things that you necessarily are responsible for doing, but you care? Sounds like you let other people dictate where your focus goes rather than you.

that's a problem you're a comment so this is what happens and this is for everybody in here is that you are the founder the ceo some of you the coo you're at the top of the company every single person this is never going to get less it's always going to get more they all want something from you they want your time they want your resources they want your money they want your attention they want your approval

And what you have to recognize is that that only becomes a scarcer resource. And if you don't make it a scarcer resource, then it is the reason the company doesn't grow. and you have to treat this is the hardest thing for so many people you have to treat your time differently than what you did a year ago two years ago three years ago i say this all the time if my calendar looks the same quarter over quarter i'm doing my company a disservice because it means i'm not going to grow

So if your calendar looks the same, are you accepting the same conversations? Are you saying yes to the same hour-long bullshit meetings? Are you still allowing other people who don't know what you're focused on or don't know how to grow a company to dictate where you should spend your time? Yes, I am. I'm doing that. I want to make you angry about this. I'm feeling very passionate. Yes.

I get passionate about it because it is, really think about it, right? So there's people in your company who have less context than you on what's important and what's happening. And you are allowing them to dictate where you spend your time rather than you just dictating where I need to spend my time. And with what I have left over, I will spread those resources to the people who are asking for it. If I think it's worth my time, because it might not be.

So I look at it like this. The way that you dictate how you spend your time and what you prioritize is also how you train your team on how they do their time and how they use their time and you train them on how to use you. And so there's two things with this, which is like, one, you become the reason that the company can't grow because they're constantly, one of my mentors says, on the team.

They won't let go. They're still, they're not even on bottle feeding yet. You know what I mean? And that is a terrible analogy that I will take off of my recording. And I never put that on the internet. It was men that used this analogy, not women. And I didn't think about it. So anyways, you're allowing them to be dependent on you.

Yeah. Right. And so it's very common with people, especially if you're more empathetic and you care about people. I'm the same way. It's very difficult for me to be like, I understand you're having a hard time. Figure it out. I still can't.

You're hard to figure the fuck out. Still no. Right, exactly. And so the question is, you've known this, your company hasn't grown, and it's still not enough for you to change it. So what else is it? I would say delegating, allocating, giving those responsibilities over to a team that's capable. And I'll share a little bit more context because context is decisive. Yeah. We have a really high success rate with homegrown leaders.

yeah that makes sense and when we hire in people with experience they tend to pee in your cheerios right it's here's it's just what it is right it's just here's the way to do it here's how you should fix it this is the process and i say fuck off you have no idea

Right? We've gotten to where we are today. That doesn't mean I'm attached to the structure we have. I'm open. We all have to learn and grow. But we're not going to just swap out bodies for skill sets to get to some arbitrary number. It's like we're in it for the people. We care.

And we want to grow. So it's an and conversation. People come first, and yet we can't take care of people unless we're taking care of the business. Why does taking care of people mean that we don't change what we've done or are open to testing things? Can I use a real example? I'm going to use a real example. This is a little strange. I'm not the founder of the company, so I want to say that. I didn't start it, and yet it feels like mine. And that's why I'm here and the CEO is not.

And I've got two colleagues with me, and we've been having some... They can keep me honest, so anything I say is bullshit. Are you guys going to overthrow the crown? Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's up to them. We'll get to fight for it. Take it. I don't want any part in this.

You're the tiebreaker, Leva. So Skylar comes to me. He's doing business development. And he's, listen, if I'm not the leader you need to get to 100 million, you do what you've got to do to get to 100 million. And my commitment to business and people is to say, You're the guy. Now you might not have the skill set.

But I'm not going to do this without you being a part of becoming $100 million companies. You're not a commodity. I'm not like, hey, you're out. You didn't get the job done. Let's go. It's like, how can he get the skills he needs? so that we can go far together so that's where the business and the people part sometimes they grind a little bit Yeah, if you look at it like that, like...

why would it be bad to bring somebody above you who knows more than you who can mentor you invest in you and you can stay with the company and learn from that person and that means the whole company would succeed how do you find those people that's they don't want to pay in your cheerios you know well there's you're gonna have to try harder for one meaning I think the issue a lot of companies have is that they don't frame like

so much more is trainable than people think and so much more is about how you frame somebody coming in so when i have somebody new come in Actually, when Ed came in. Ed came in and he was like, oh, I see all these. And I was like, nope, nothing. Don't touch fucking shit. I need you to build relationships with people. I know you have great ideas, but for the first two to three months, I don't want you to touch anything.

Because then you just piss everybody off. This isn't like abnormal. It's what everyone wants to do because you hire somebody who's competent. Why? Because of the skills they have. So what do they assume if you don't say anything? They assume that they should go change the things. Right. But if you're communicating consistently, then why would they do that?

so where's the communication gap yeah you know what i'm saying totally the second piece to it is that i do think in a company that's fast growing in a company where you have things that you like to do more your way you want to look for people who are not i would say don't have old career energy which is if somebody's already had a pinnacle moment in their career and they are looking to come in and they're like, I just want to find somebody who I can basically tell them how to do it my way.

and you can usually sense that because i try to give people feedback on an interview and when they don't accept the feedback or they get a little ruffled then i'm like all right you're gonna try and be like oh i'm gonna tell young little layla what to do i'm like i'm gonna book so Right. And so it's not that I don't want your input. It's not that I want your opinions, but I don't want somebody to try and be my boss. And so,

I think that you don't want that, of course. But I think a lot of this is just the framing when you're speaking to people. This is a communication issue, in my opinion, from everything you're telling me. And it's a belief problem, which is you don't need to boot somebody out of your company in order for them to be there to get to 100 million.

But you can place somebody above somebody who can mentor them and get the company to 100 million. They get to learn. The company will grow. You un-bottleneck what's going on. Now, does that mean you might have to use a recruiting firm and tell them exactly what you're looking for? Tell them, I don't want this. I want this. These are the kind of people I'm looking for. Here's the culture we have. Here's what I want the person to come and do.

here's what the first 30 60 90 days are going to look like and what i want them to accomplish which literally can say don't do anything for the first 90 days provide your observations like it's whatever you want yeah i don't think that these things are impossible i think it's just

At the end of the day, if the company doesn't grow, eventually it will die. being honest and so trying to prioritize it to the detriment of the company is going to just bite you in the ass later if it's stagnating right now the next thing that happens is it declines You guys know that. And so I say this because I want you to win and I want you to break past this. And that means that maybe all of you need somebody else to help you.

Because what you're explaining to me Sounds like something that even if the CEO is not translating that to you, then both of you lack an experience there, which then says, do we need to reach out for mentorship? I'm working with multiple people to help mentor me. Now, I don't have one mentor, but I have different people to help me with different aspects of my job who have been there, done that in any one area of my CEO founder responsibilities.

and so it's like how do you build your board of directors unofficially to help you guys continue to level up and grow some of them you'll hire some of them you might place above yourself some of them you'll put below you guys but even look at gosh ben francis gym shark he was out here and i thought it was so noble of him he was like i realized i was not a good ceo so i hired a ceo and i took a back seat and i just learned from him for four years five years i don't remember how long

as he was young and he was like you know i just don't have the experience doing this he's and then i realized i learned enough i stepped back in put him in a different role here we are

So I think it's also just there's so many different ways that you can facilitate the skills. It doesn't mean that you guys don't exist in a company. It's just I think you expand your vision for the type of horsepower it's going to take to get to the next level. How many C-suite executives are in the company right now? four okay how many do you think have the skills to be in the company right now Let me define a C-suite. They need to be aligned with the CEO and founder.

and alignment is the number one thing they need from that person. They need alignment, and they need the CEO or founder to clear the way for them.

to work on the things they aligned on they do not need help with doing their job they don't need like daily management they can align with a once a week call or every two week call and they can do exactly what they need because let me define intelligence intelligence is being able to take vague direction and then execute on it right and so you want people at that level that are smart and they can take a 30-minute call and they know what to do for the next month

because they're aligned with the person at the top. Got it. And so if you guys have people in the company who are C-level and they need to speak every day and they need all these things, then maybe you don't actually have a C-level and they've over-titled. That fits too. I mean, with you defining it that way, I would say we have a larger team that we can really count on who has that initiative and that vision and who can just go figure it out once they're given a directive.

And we need more. We've got 1,200 people. So it's not enough. That's not enough. And I think you all need to be looking out. You need to bring in people that... There's an analogy where it's like barrels and ammunition. right and i can't remember who wrote this article it was such a good one on most companies bringing ammunition

And the reality is that a company is constrained by how many barrels it has. A barrel, you can just point in a direction, it will just fire the fuck off as long as it's ammunition. It will clear the way, it will build a product, it will build revenue.

right ammunition they need a barrel and so what happens is a lot of people hire for the ammunition and they back up all the barrels and the barrels aren't as effective because they just have so much ammunition because you just haven't got enough barrels on board or the worst, when you try, you think that ammunition is a barrel.

Got it. So it sounds like you guys need more barrels. We need more barrels. It sounds like you need to say no. Say no. Ridiculous. I need you. This is what I think you should do is you should also just cancel all your meetings. start from scratch all right see what breaks i seriously i have people do this when they have this tendency i'm like okay great so it's like all these people really need to cancel it all

And I think the other piece too is if people want your time and you know it's not the priority, you can't feel bad when they're upset. Right. Like you have to willfully tolerate the upsetness of people on your team in order to grow your company.

because at first when you grow a company and start a company it's like you see your friends and family are like and that's like maybe your content your audience is like and eventually it's your team because because they're too far away from you they don't understand what you're spending your time on and you have to be okay with it

Absolutely. I'm good with that. I'm great with that. I think that's a great result. Delete. Can you guys hold her accountable? Delete the calendar. Wait, who do you work with? Wow, I was looking at the other two the whole time. They were closer to you. So I figured, well, that's terrible. You're like, why have you been staring at me this whole time? Also really nice. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, I have.

a ton of respect for you and what you've done here with this team this team is incredible like the the empathy and and frank's eyes and what ed has said to us the the team here is truly a team as an athlete this I've seen a few teams that have players that do their role and do it really well. This team does that. And so what I would like to do is I would like to do something like this with tennis.

we have a tennis business right now it's an academy we do lessons we do camp but the same way business owners come to you and you're able to put this on and develop develop them and change their frameworks and change their mind i would like to do that for tennis and so where we're at right now is jeremy and i we were teammates in college and we've been doing it for two years and

We were just super opportunistic about everything. We found courts that we could rent. We used the university that we played at to give lessons and to run the camps. And so now The eight quarts that we rent are basically full. And the question is, Where do we go from here in order to develop? And then with this big end goal in mind, what are the next couple steps? And really what I was looking for is a strategy for the next 6-12 months.

just put the head down and do two or three things and I'm trying to figure out what those two or three things are. What's your revenue and what's your pricing model right now? Well, thanks, Ed, it's about to change. Our revenue right now is a little over $500. It's $515,000. What's the margin on that? About 70%. Okay. Is it just YouTube? Do you have a lot of instructors? Just us and then two part-time coaches. Okay.

so that's exciting yeah and the players are pretty good so that part we've done while we focus on ages 9 to 13. so how do you get the business they're young i started with a couple players and they became really good and then people asked where they trained and then they came to us so honestly yeah we've done no sales we've done barely any marketing um we're trying to figure that part out All we did was learn how to teach tennis and start teaching. And then we tried to fix business on the side.

and so when problems would come up in the business we would teach six hours eight hours in the texas heat and then come back and try to fix the business side as well so you know that's kind of where we're at it's going fairly well but Where we go from here is kind of...

Right. Well, right now you're supply constrained, not demand constrained. Right. And so I'm sure what the team said when you talked about the pricing model was like one of the shorter term things you do is you would raise the price. Correct.

right and test the sensitivity of people in terms of because that's the first thing is like you can't just keep overextending yourself and doing 15 because you're not gonna be able to grow the business so it makes sense as well just to raise the prices It's not the first thing I would do is I would raise the prices. The second thing I would do is I think that you have to zoom out. And let me ask you guys this. Did you start this out of college? Like opportunistic for sure.

but is it like we want to make a bunch of money we want to sell the business we like doing this because we're passionate about it we want to grow into an empire because if i don't know your goal i don't know how you make progress towards it yeah so when i would get super mad when i was a player

I would think in the match it's okay. It's fine. I can lose this match. I'm going to be a better coach than I am player because I have to stop playing when I'm 22, 23, 24 years old and I have an unlimited time horizon. Well, basically. to be a coach. So if I'm doing things wrong, I'll be able to figure it out. And so for me, it's I want to coach. I want to coach tennis. So you want to be out there coaching them. You don't want to just be building the business. I like both.

Okay, that's fine. And for you? okay so this is more of a make money lifestyle like lifestyle as in you want to do the thing you like and make money while you do it Okay, cool. I'm a maximizer and a big impact. So like for me, it's like I'll sacrifice everything. So I have to recontextualize my advice. So very helpful. So I think a great question for you is, do you know, for example, like you're saying that space is what's limited, right? So you've had to continue renting out those courts.

Are there other courts that you could rent out? Have you specced those out? There are, yes. Okay, and does it make sense pricing-wise, time-wise, space-wise? Yes, but part of our deal with the school that we're at now is there's a state champion high school team and our deal was we run our program out of this facility and we produce players for you.

and so he wants us to be the main coaches at that site so if we could do another facility but we would have to hire and train coaches give them the system and then put them there that's one way actually the team told us to go this way because we already do it and it works and we can just kind of copy the system um we were also thinking about doing school because we have a very strong in-person community and taking them to school is i think it would be a good option so we

We're thinking about the different ways that we could go from here and renting more courts is one of them. I mean, I prefer the first thing you do is just duplicate what already worked.

It's like when you find something that works, the first thing people want to do is they want to fuck it up. They want to make it more complex. They want to change it because they say, well, I don't know how to scale that. And so you've got to keep doing what's unscalable until it's not. So I would prefer that you guys duplicate it with the other courts first. It's raise the prices for the ones that you're at, and then duplicate with the other courts.

see how that does first and that will take you six 12 months i don't think you should do anything else besides those two things plus like minor improvements and just make it better correct like we always say like in anything that's especially a physical location or anything you're doing physically nail it before you scale it It's just a lot of There's so many intricacies to doing the in-person location model and it's so hard to

scale that compared to because you have to go and you have to watch them do things you have to watch on the camera versus if it's remote it's like you can listen to a call you can get recordings whatever right it's a little more isolated so i think that that makes the most sense for you guys to do right now i do think that you're gonna have to make a decision which is okay so if that works Then what? You get another core because one more core and you're not coaching. Right.

so you have to decide really what you want out of this i mean you found something you guys are young it's making good money it has a lot of potential you're doing good clearly people really value it Do you want to scale it and lean into more of the business side for the next five years? Or do you want to continue to just remain close by doing the coaching piece? And I think that's a decision you have to make in the next 12 months.

That will dictate everything else. This is the thing. If you don't have a goal for the business, how do you know if you're making progress? by like arbitrary measures okay money views whatever it might be but it's if that's not getting you towards a greater goal it becomes very difficult to keep going at some point I think I was sick with the coaching then. and do it that way. So increase the pricing and stay heavily involved in that side of it. It's good that you know that.

Maybe a couple other locations locally would be good, but scaling beyond that would be... like you said it would take it would take away from the tennis part and then it would just be you know you're you're putting all of your time into training the coaches and putting on and making sure that the facilities are running yeah if you have more than one more location you'll pretty much be full-time running the deserts what how could we end up with a super location

So where we have all the courts, you have fitness facilities, you have all of that stuff in one place. We would need a lot more money for that. I was going to say, how do you think? Yeah. But I think that that would be the end goal. Because then instead of scaling and having facilities all over, you scale and you have a facility all in one place. And then hopefully people come to that.

so here's the thing i think what you have right now is you have an opportunity if something that's working well and you're making really good money from a population that typically isn't willing to pay a lot of good money in something that's not worth a lot to a lot of people just being honest yeah and so like you have an opportunity right now if you have that vision for wanting that in the future i always say we can have everything we want but probably not at the same time

And so I do think that you have the opportunity, like you're never going to be younger. You're never going to have more energy than you do right now. If you really want to open up that kind of location, I might say, you know what? I'm going to take the next three years. I'm going to try and just scale this and create as much profit as possible. So then... for four years from now five years now we can invest it in creating this location that we really want and dream up yeah

I don't think that's a bad idea, but it would mean that in the short term, you might sacrifice some of the coaching. Yeah. Okay, I would be willing to do that if it led to it in the end and then still keep some of the coaching.

sure we figure that out it'll become impossible and then you'll be like oh she was right the only thing i'll say is this scope out you need to do the scoping out of understanding what it takes to build something like that because i want you to understand what it would take talk to people who have find the founders of those kind of super locations i know people have built facilities like that understand how much money it takes to do that yeah It's important. And where I could come from.

Well hopefully you make a decent limit. So you're not beholden to people for the rest of your life. Yeah. that's the goal and that's that's what we're trying to figure out is how we can take the next couple steps basically bring off the the make a lot of money and then also have a way of making a lot of money so that once we have the facility you know it's kind of already filled with the business that that works You already know what to do. Raise the price, duplicate a different one.

you're gonna have enough problems between now and then and then see if you can do it one more time and one more time and keep saving the money and while you're doing that the behind the scenes is trying to figure out okay well how much would it cost what would that look like how long would it take that's the biggest thing

I mean, if you look at everything going on the market right now, I don't know what that's going to do in terms of affecting cost of goods, import, export, all that stuff. We just don't know. So there's lots of you have to take into consideration when you're talking about building something.