My CEO Coach Destroys My Limiting Beliefs — Transcript

If you could wave a wand and get the business to where you would like it to be, >> where would it be? [laughter] >> 50 million a year would be the 10x goal. >> So 50 million, that's the goal. Can the current business get us to 50 million? >> That's not realistic. How often have you told yourself that? Maybe it's something you want to make or a business that you've thought about starting or a different life that you've been potentially imagining for yourself. And it's not necessarily that you think it's impossible. It's more like, sure, maybe that's possible for some people, but probably not me. The chances are just way too low. That's not realistic. I say this to myself all the time thinking I'm being intelligent. But looking back, I've noticed a pattern that makes me question a little bit about how seriously I should really trust that voice. I thought I didn't have any limiting beliefs. But like even just this conversation like I thought I'd won the personal development game, Eric.

[laughter] >> Now to illustrate this, I want to show you basically how much money I have made over the last like 20 years of my life. I tried building my first business to make money on the internet back in 2007. And this is how much money I made that year. $50 from making random websites for like a friend's dad. This first $50 I made completely changed my life. But before this happened, my friend James at school told me it was possible to make money on the internet and that I didn't have to ask my mom for permission to like do it. And I was like, nah, mate, that's just not realistic. But after a few months of him proddding me, I gave it a go and then my life completely transformed. So it was $50 in 2007, about $100 the following year, basically nothing in 2009, around £250 in 2010, and then around £100 in 2011. I was a kid in school making websites on a freelance platform. And man, I felt so rich because I was making all this money. But then in 2012, just before I got into med school, I got scammed out of my entire life savings, which was about a thousand pounds back then. And a thought crossed my mind. What if I could build a business that could make back 10 times the amount of money I'd lost?

Initially, I said to myself, that's not realistic. But after a few weeks, I let myself explore the idea, and I ended up building my next business that was actually successful. So, we did about £10,000 in year 1, around £80,000 in year two, and then £150,000 in revenue in year three. And then these kind of numbers that had once seemed completely unreasonable and unrealistic, these suddenly became the new normal. But if you told me at the time that I would one day have a multi-million dollar business, obviously I would have said, "No, that's not realistic." Then in 2017, I started my YouTube channel and made basically no money for the first couple of years. But then something pivotal happened in 2019. I graduated med school. I was working full-time as a doctor in the National Health Service in the UK while running my first medical school admissions business and keeping my YouTube channel afloat. At the time, this YouTube channel was making around £3,000 a month in income. And one of my mentors, Rohan, told me at the time that I should hire a full-time video editor.

And hiring that editor would cost about £3,000 a month. And so I told my mentor that like, mate, this is just not realistic. I can't possibly pay 3K a month for an editor when 3K a month is what the YouTube channel makes. But he encouraged me to try. And through the course of many conversations, he talked me into doing it. And so Christian became the first full-time employee that I ever hired. And so, thanks to my time being freed up with this, the business was able to grow from 30K a year to around 300K a year, roughly 7 to eight times more than I was earning working as a doctor. At this point, I'm making more money than I've ever seen in my life. And then in 2020, just as I'm about to launch my first YouTube course, I have a conversation with two of my other friends and mentors, and they challenged me to think bigger about teaching online. My initial plan was to just publish it as a series of videos and sell it for $200. But they encouraged me to turn it into a live cohort experience with high touch and feedback and charge $2,000 instead. And at the time, I was like, "Guys, that's not realistic."

Thankfully, I listened to these guys who were more experienced than I was, and I actually did it. And this is what happened to our business revenue that year. We jumped from 300K to about $1.2 $2 million. I became a millionaire at the age of around 26, which would have been completely and utterly unfathomable to me when I first got started. Then, thanks to COVID, the business blows up to around $4 million the following year. And since 2021, we've now been hovering at the plateau of somewhere between $4 and $6 million a year in revenue with margins somewhere between 40 and 60%. So, you can do the maths on that if you want. Now, with all these different jumps, at every point where I'd hit a plateau in my business journey, thinking, "Oh, this is it. There's no way it could possibly get any better than this." Almost always, a mentor or friend with an external perspective was able to challenge me to think a little bit bigger. My first response is always, "Nope, that's not realistic." And then because I listen to them, we end up breaking through the plateau and then achieving success that I never would have thought was possible. So, you would think that I'd learned to be a little bit more skeptical of the that's not realistic voice in my head. But recently, I had a conversation with my CEO coach, Eric. And again, his was an external perspective that challenged me to think a little bit bigger about my own business. And my immediate response was, of course, that's not realistic.

See, the thing about that's not realistic is that it really does feel like you're stating a fact. Imagining a dream that you want, but saying, "Oh, no, that's not realistic." sort of feels like you, you know, by by saying that you you've got this foundation, this like firm grounding that you know for sure that this is not realistic. Now, unfortunately, I never previously recorded any of those conversations where my mind broke and I was able to think bigger about a thing and then that's not realistic got turned into a possibility. But in this conversation between me and Eric, we had the cameras rolling. And so, you're going to see me encounter an idea that initially seems completely, utterly, freaking absurd. and you'll see how an experienced CEO coach like Eric helps me work through the ideas and all the feelings and limiting beliefs in me that come up as a result of this conversation. If you're running your own business or maybe thinking about starting your own thing on the side, maybe to build an extra stream of income or whatever, I hope there's a lot you'll get from this conversation. But whatever your situation, there is one question that I hope you will take away from this video.

What's something you've been calling unrealistic before you've even given yourself permission to explore it? Feel free to pause the video now and have a think about what might that thing be for you? What's a dream that you've got? something you maybe like the idea of working towards, but you've been like, "Nah, it's unrealistic. It can't possibly be done." And to what extent have you actually given yourself permission to explore it, even just hypothetically, even just modeling out what it might look like. So, once you've got an idea in mind, let's move on to chapter 2, the 10X question. This is a totally driverless car. You might have seen them around some major cities around the world. Lightbeamed internet, molecular recycling, turning seawater into fuel, even teleportation. These are all projects that have either been attempted or actually launched by X, Google's moonshot factory. And their whole shtick is how do we explore these ideas that seem like they're in the realm of science fiction and how do we actually bring them to the real world?

Now X is part of Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google and is run by this guy, not to be confused with this X that is run by this guy. The guy who runs the Google version of X is called Astroteller and his job title is literally captain of moonshots. And for most of us, if you had pitched us the idea of building a self-driving car or building hot air balloons that could beam internet down to people on Earth, we all probably would have said, "No way. That's not realistic." But back in 2013, our friend Astroteller wrote a very cool article in Wired magazine where his whole argument was basically that 10x can sometimes be way easier than 10%. The idea here is that if you imagine taking any kind of goal, like let's say you've got a business doing a million a year in revenue, just to keep the numbers understandable, if you were trying to grow that business by 10%, you'd be thinking about like how do I do more of the same just like a little bit better? Can I maybe build a slightly bigger audience, have a slightly more expensive product? Could I maybe take a few more sales calls? Whatever the thing might be. But instead of thinking about 10%, if you were to think about 10xing the business, so growing the business by 10 times to 10 million in revenue, then chances are you can't just do more of the same stuff within your box just a little bit better. Chances are you would have to explore thinking completely outside of the box and doing something

completely different. Now, this idea that 10x can potentially be easier than 10% was the basis of a conversation I recently had with my own CEO coach, Eric Partaker. And before we dive into that, again, I want you to have a think. Let's take your own income for example. If you're watching this, you probably have a job where you're earning some amount of money or you're a student where you're studying something where you kind of have a sense of what your starting salary would be once you graduate. What would happen if you imagined earning 10 times more than that. Maybe that seems completely unrealistic, but what I would gently encourage you to do is just like model out what it might look like. Obviously, this is easier to do in the context of your own business where there is no limit to how much you can earn.

It's just purely based on your own skills and your own hard work compared to if you have a job where, you know, in a way there's lots of other factors at play dictating how much you're earning. But even if you're not an entrepreneur, I hope there's something you might gain from watching me and Eric kind of grapple with this particular question. Oh, by the way, quick word from the sponsor of this video, which is very excitingly perplexity computer. Now, there is a question that I get asked a lot from everyone, which is which AI should I be using? There's obviously all sorts of different options and all sorts of different models. And I really don't think that is the right question anymore because you can literally have access to all of the models all in one place. That's what you get with perplexity computer amongst other things. And one of the reasons why I love it so much cuz to be honest, the different models have started to specialize in different things. like one might be particularly good at writing, one might be particularly good at data analysis, and this might change week to week depending on what features are coming out. And so you either have to keep all of this context in your head about I'm going to use Claude for X, I'm using Chip for Y, I'm going to use Gemini for Zed, and you're having to pay multiple subscriptions. And you're having to sort of juggle this and keep up to date with everything that's going on. Or you use Plexity Computer as your one-stop shop to be able to access all of these models without having to pay the extra subscriptions. You just tell it what you want to do in plain English. And it's way more than a chatbot. It's actually generating up a virtual machine on their

infrastructure. kind of like having your own openclaw, but just without any of the security implications coming with having your own OpenClaw, if you're familiar with that. It's got hundreds of built-in integrations. You can even get it to build your own integrations if one doesn't exist via MCP or API. And you can do all of this without needing to know a single thing about learning how to code. You just ask it what you want, and it will go out and build it for you, deploying whatever model is the best for [music] that specific use case. So, for example, you could tell perplexity computer something like, "Find me all of the numbers from last week's ads, tell me what changed on Y," and write it up for the team. And so then instead of one model trying to grind through the whole thing, it will split up the tasks based on what model is best. For example, it would ask you to connect your meta ads account and then maybe Claude would be the one going through the data analysis on the meta ads account and then it would pass it on to Gemini because Gemini is better at deep research and deep analysis and then it would pass it on to something like GPT6 Astra which would be better at writing it up for the team. And because it plugs into your calendar, your email, your Slack, your notion, whatever you're using, it's able to have all of that context without you having to provide it every single time.

So, if there is stuff that you need done in your business or for your job or even for your life, I've used it for a lot of trip planning as well. I'd really recommend trying out Plexity Computer. There'll be a link down below if you want to give it a go. Chapter three, confronting the 10X [music] goal. That all sounds good. What's step number one? >> So, step number one is we need to set a 10X goal. So, what's the business currently doing right now? >> Uh, so we've been doing around 5 million a year in revenue, US dollarsish, for the last few years, fairly consistently. Even though it's been different products and different display, we've always just ended up somehow somewhere around the 5 million mark. Okay. If you could wave a wand and get the business to where you would like it to be in a few years time, >> where would it where would it be >> now? And and I don't Okay, look. So, here's where people start to trip themselves up right off the bat is that they start to consciously or subconsciously start layering in all the reasons why they shouldn't start to think in this way.

>> It could be, oh, I've been here before. I've tried this before. This doesn't go anywhere. we send we seem to stay at this revenue baseline or oh I don't really want that so why think in this way so the key phrase here to get value from this exercise is to suspend disbelief so pretend like like I said you could wave a wand and just you pick the number it doesn't come with burnout it doesn't come with extra chaos it doesn't come with my life is compromised what's the number if you could wave a wand [laughter] >> for the for the sake of suspension of disbelief 50 million a year would be the 10x goal.

>> Okay. >> But then I'm thinking, well, 20 would be pretty sick. >> Yeah, >> even 10 would be pretty sick, which is a doubling. But then I'm like, well, if we're going the whole hog, why not do 100? And then I'm also kind of thinking that like, yeah, but now there's all these like constraints cuz like, you know, the business that we're in is not going to get us to 100 mil, maybe. >> Precisely. >> But it might get us to 10 or 20. And so like, do I how Yeah. >> Yeah. >> You know what I mean? >> Yeah. So you fast forwarding to all of the reasons to disbelieve is the main inhibitor for people getting value from an exercise like this rather than just taking that next step which is just set the goal. So let's let's go with for simplicity should we just say 50 million because it's literally tax.

>> Yeah. Go on then. All right. The goal is 50 million a year. Okay. >> I'm saying I don't really want that. I don't really care about the money. It's not about the money. It's about the fun and all all of these things. But we're just going to going to put it aside for a moment. >> But I do want to address what you just said there. I'm going to, you know, challenge everyone watching to say, "No, it is about the money, you know, that the money that it's okay as well." You know, people have this like relationship sometimes to money where it's, oh, I shouldn't want that or, you know, is that okay to want that? There's nothing wrong with wanting it, and you don't have to like prove it or justify it to anyone. I think it's completely fine and healthy to say, "Hey, it's it's both things. It's about the money. And you know what? Um, going back to the athletics, you know, analogy. If I was an athlete, wouldn't it be nice to win an Olympic gold medal? Like, why wouldn't you want to if you could? And if you were pursuing an Olympic gold medal, would society say that what's wrong with you? You know, do do you have such a big ego that a bronze isn't sufficient or that, you know, just qualifying for the Olympics isn't isn't

enough? We wouldn't say any of that, you know, to the sports figure that we, you know, admire. And it's the same for business. There's nothing wrong going for Olympic gold. And there's nothing wrong for all the things, you know, that come with it, including, you know, the cash and the money. So, okay. So, 50 million, that's the goal. >> Oh, so that's really interesting to see watching it back cuz this conversation happened about a month ago while I was in London. And Eric didn't give me that much context on what the conversation would be. He just said that there's an interesting 10x framework that he would like to explore with me. Now, obviously, when he said that, I was like, "Okay, so are we going to explore getting the business to 50 million?" And I didn't even let myself complete that thought because it just seemed so freaking unrealistic. So before we dive into the ins and outs of applying this to my own business, again to get value from this video, I really recommend applying this to something that you care about in your own life. It could be your business revenue. It could be your income. Those are nice easy numbers cuz you can just multiply them by 10 and see what happens. But even in your health, even in your relationships, whatever it might be, what might the 10x version of that look like that you have not yet given yourself permission to explore? Is there a girl that you want to ask out who you feel is completely out of your league?

This was the situation with my wife, for example. I had a crush on her for absolutely ages before we got together. She's the most beautiful girl I had ever met, and I just always assumed, nope, that's not realistic. Whatever that thing is that you have been putting off, what would exploring a bigger possibility look like, even if you're just exploring it hypothetically? It's so easy for us to reject a goal that seems like outside of our comfort zone. And I experienced this firsthand during this conversation where I you can see my visible discomfort with the idea of even thinking about the number 50 million. And that just seems completely freaking absurd. Even now, it just seems completely unrealistic. But that feeling of discomfort around imagining a bigger goal can be a very interesting feeling to sit with and [music] to explore from that space even just hypothetically. You don't of course have to go for the goal.

I'm I don't even know if I want to go for the goal of 50 million. But there is value in at least hypothetically exploring the possibility just to make sure you're not like sabotaging yourself. Now, if you do try this, I would love it if you would let me know by sending me an email. My email address is on screen, so please drop me a line if you do this exercise with whatever insights or whatever you've learned from it. But for the rest of the video, I'm going to show you how the conversation played out in the context of us exploring the 50 million goal for our own business. We're going to talk about all the changes that need to happen in terms of the business, in terms of the team, and in terms of me as an individual. And that final part goes well beyond the business side. So there'll be timestamps down below if you want to skip around if like the business stuff is not particularly interesting to you. And so that brings us on to the next chapter, opening the black box.

>> So okay, so 50 million, that's the [music] goal. >> Go on then. >> Um, [clears throat] so can the current business get us to 50 million? Uh it depends how we define current business. We we'd have to make quite a lot of changes in order to think. Yeah. >> Beautiful. Okay. So this is another common mistake that happens once people set a 10x outcome is that they go, "Oh yeah, but my current business can't 10x." >> Yeah. Precisely. That's the point. If your current business could 10x, you probably would have 10xed it already. So the point is is that a change is required. And if we stick with the flight metaphor, so a training plane is called a Cessna. And you're not going to 10x your altitude in a small little training plane. We need to create a new high performance aircraft. And we do that by redesigning the business model.

So the business model is that that aircraft. Now I want to make this super simple because when I say a term like business model, people can get a little bit confused like well business model, what do you mean? This sounds out of my depth or league. No. Business model in simple terms just think of three things. So you have your product so what you sell and at what price point. You have the market so to whom do you sell and via which channels? Yeah. >> And you have delivery. How do you actually get it to them? Your product and or your service. So in order to go from 5 to 50 million let's just go through each of those and I'd love to hear what changes do you think are required to hit a 10x outcome. So, for example, with product, if you're currently selling a product uh for a dollar a piece, okay, well, do we want to sell 50 million of those and every single year? You know, is that going to work? No. We probably need a product that has a higher price point that doesn't place so much burden or stress on on on selling. So from a product

point of view, when you think about all the products that you're currently selling, which of them have the chance to support a 10x outcome and which of them, you know, are maybe keeping you down? You know, there's a few uh it's not impossible. And I was at a mastermind in Scotland like over the weekend where there were some people in that group doing about 50 million in revenue from kind of high ticket coaching, consulting or like servicesy type things. >> Okay. So it is so it is possible. >> It is yeah it it doesn't defy the laws of physics.

>> Yeah. >> Um >> so that's kind of what's coming to mind. [music] >> Okay. And when you think about for those businesses that you were just referencing the the products the price point that they sell it at >> um how does that compare or contrast with what you're currently >> doing? Usually it is a way higher price point and they have recurring billing. >> Okay. So we need a much higher price point and we need a recurring revenue model or like a membership model. >> Yes. And I think this this would be true of the software and also of the info products. And I'm thinking for the software, I don't know many consumer products that do 50 million in revenue, but I can think of zillions of B2B products that do 50 million in revenue.

>> Mhm. >> Um, so super focus for individuals, I think, is unlikely to get us there. But super focus for teams, the path to 50 million in revenue feels like much more of a welltrodden path if we focus on selling to businesses cuz they have more money. If you were to bump your product up to 25K per year, how [music] many recurring members would you need per year to hit 50 million? >> Oh, 2,000. >> Does that sound like a huge number to you? >> Well, actually, uh, well, I mean, it sounds big, but it doesn't sound like insurmountably big. >> And this is >> Wait, is is that right? 50 million divided by 25 1 2 3. Huh. 2,000. Yeah.

2,000 customers at 25,000 a year gets us to 50 [music] million. >> But this is the power of >> That's not completely out of the question. >> Yeah. And this is the power of really thinking through a business model before you just start you because you can design the business to fit the shoes of this new model. >> Yeah. Again, watching this back is interesting to me because I I remember the visceral reaction I had to being like, "Wait a minute. 50 no 50 million divided by I was like, "Oh that is 2,000. That's only 2,000." It's I mean, it's a big number, but it's not like an insanely big number. I can imagine getting 2,000 customers for something.

We have an audience of like 8 million across platforms. Like 2,000 getting 2,000 people to buy something. It it does not defy the laws of physics. That's so interesting. And so before literally just running the numbers, I'd immediately already dismissed 50 million as being totally unrealistic and like insurmountable and it's not even worth thinking about. But when you start breaking it down and doing the maths or even just breaking it down into the okay, hypothetically, what steps would it [music] theoretically take? They're still hard, but they now feel doable rather than completely impossible. >> In statistics, you have something called a normal distribution. And in a normal distribution you will always have data points which are outside the average outside the mean and those are the outliers. So I have a liberating way of thinking about this which is that because data points are normally follow a normal distribution so you have a lot of people congregating around the middle and then you have smaller number of outliers. It's always the case meaning that inevitably no matter what you are doing business-wise there will always be somebody who's going to occupy those outlier data points. So why not make it you? Why does it have to be, oh yeah,

there was these people at this mastermind. They were occupying the outlier data points, but why does it have to just be them? Why can't it be you as well? And when you think in that way that somebody's going to get those data points, somebody will be the outlier. >> Okay. Well, objection, your honor. >> Yeah. >> The immediate thought that's coming to my mind as you're saying all of this is I'm like, but I don't want the stress. Ah, we'll get to that later because you can't be an outlier and burn out at the same time. Okay, so an outlier, let's go back to pro sports. These professional athletes when you're watching them, are they [music] burnt out? No.

>> Because they couldn't compete if they were. >> Yeah. >> Right. So an outlier by definition to occupy that data point means that you're achieving outlier results in a sustainable way. >> Okay? And you can only do that if, which we'll get to later, you find the leverage. So you find the 20% that will create 80% of the growth. For example, we're talking about leverage within product right now. Because if you can increase the value of what you provide such that your product can go from 15 to 25K, then without even bringing software into the picture with just 2,000 people, are there 2,000 people in the world who could benefit from your advice or just 2,000 people, you will hit 50 million in annual recurring revenue. [music] So it is possible. So we talked about product, we've talked about market. Now the last component of uh business model is just a delivery. So in order to hit a 10x altitude and to deliver at a scale that services, what would need to change within our current delivery model?

>> So right now we do a lot of one-on-one calls with our students. >> And so each coach can manage somewhere between 30 and 50 students. >> Okay, >> based on this, right now it's 30. Our goal is to get it close to 50. We have friends in the space that managed to make it work really well with a coach managing 50 students. So, if that continues to be the case, one-on- ones at like 50 per coach, >> how many coaches would you need? >> 3,000 divid by 50. You'd need 40 coaches. Oh, that's not too bad, actually.

>> Are there 40 young, smart, bright, ambitious people who would love the chance to work with you? >> Yeah, we've had,200 apply when we were trying to recruit coaches. We've hired seven so far. >> So, there's not a constraint here then? >> No, not really. And [music] there are other coaching organizations that exist in the world that have hundreds and thousands of coaches. So 40 is not a huge number either. >> No. And that's if we retain if we can if we just continue the same one delivery model, which I do like cuz I think it's nice. >> And again, this is another moment where my brain just breaks because when I do the maths, I realize, oh, that's only 40 coaches. You've got 1,200 people that applied to join our team as a coach and loads of them had good amounts of experience and stuff. This is this is not an unfathomably large number. Huh.

Interesting. By the way, if you're an entrepreneur watching this video and you would like to apply these principles to your own business, Eric has very kindly created a completely free resource for us called How to 10X Your Business Without Working 10 Times Harder. That will be linked down in the video description if you want to grab it. It is completely free. >> So, we've set a 10X goal as a thinking tool. Allah Peter Teal, right? Um and now we have redesigned our business model in order to achieve it. And by doing that we've sanity checked at the same time the numbers and realize that you know what this is all within the realm of reason. It's not as you know um outlandish as it initially seemed.

>> And and I'm going to give you one more simple framework that I've uh created to help you help anyone think about how achievable 10x is. So I call this my 3172 method. And you simply think in this terms. If we 3x the leads, 1.7 times our win rate or our close rate and [music] 2x our price. Let's see what happens. So let's do a quick before and after. Let's say you have a business that does 1,000 leads per year. And our win rate is 20%. So we close 200 of those. And then we're selling something that cost $10,000 per year. Multiply that all out and you have a business that does 2 million a year in sales. Now let's apply 3172. So if we 3x the leads, go from 1,000 to 3,000. If we 1.7 times the win rate, so instead of closing 20 20% 1 out of five, we now close 34%. So 1 out of three, which is like best-in-class say sales close rates. And

if we double the price, instead of 10,000, we're going to add more value and charge 20,000. Now, when we multiply those out and those all seem individually not outside the realm of reason, what happens? Yeah. We get a business that what does it do? 20.4 million at 10.2x. >> 10.2x. Yeah. >> And so that's just another way if you you know if you break a problem down into its component parts and then solve for the individual components, it becomes and it feels a lot more achievable because now we could come up with OKRs or goals or strategies to okay, well, how do we 3x leads? You know, maybe we need to pick one dominant channel, LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever it may be, and get really, really good at that. How are we going to 1.7 times the win rate? Well, maybe we just need to get world class, you know, people on our sales team or better training. And then how do we increase the price? Well, add more value. And then make sure that you are pricing based on the outcome that you're delivering rather than, you know, the hours that go into your your product. So for example in our conversation earlier

you talked about well the outcome that we deliver is we help for this higher priced product somebody you know build a business that could generate a million a year in sales and they keep 500,000 well now 25k in relation to the outcome is peanuts >> right um so 3172 is another simple way to think about 10x just mathematically playing with only three levers. You know what's interesting about this is to me 50 million seemed like before this conversation seemed like an absurd number that I'd never even I literally never considered it because it just felt like oh it's not even worth it's not even worth thinking about.

>> And then also when you were like we were like okay 2,000 customers. I was like okay 2,000 isn't too bad. I mean we currently have about 30,000 customers who paid us some amount of money. So 2,000 seems reasonable. And then when it came to the whole coaches thing [music] immediately cuz I I was like even like my brain even failed at the mental math. I was like, "Oh, it's going to need like 400 coaches." >> And then I was like, "Wait a minute. Wait, what? 2,000?" Oh, That's 40. 40 coaches isn't too bad. >> Like, it's surprisingly doable. >> And and and what you do, so remember earlier when we talked about one of the most common mistakes people make is that they don't suspend this belief. And subconsciously all these limiting beliefs are saying, "No, this is not possible."

>> Yeah. >> And one of the simplest things to do is just to actually do the math. Yeah, >> you know, like again with 3172, you 3x the lead, 1.7 times the win rate, double the price, you got more than 10x. And all of those three components individually, you can develop strategies and work against and they seem achievable. >> You know, I thought I didn't have any limiting beliefs, but like even just this conversation like [laughter] I I thought I'd won the personal development game, Eric. [gasps] >> Um, so cool. Okay. >> Okay. It was good stuff.

>> We haven't talked about the software side of things. Um, but I've kind of purposely kept that out just for simplicity sake. Um, in a way I think if you apply the same thinking to the software side, it's even easier. Um, because that's an industry that's kind of predicated on thinking in this way. >> Y >> um, but what we're trying to highlight here and I think what provides even more value is that you can apply this way of thinking to anything. It doesn't have to just be high-tech, you know, software stuff. >> Nice. [music] >> Now, this is good. This is good stuff. I mean, I've I've even read freaking 10x is easier than 2x and I just dismissed it. I was like, nah. All right. So, at this point, we've talked about what might need to change hypothetically.

Again, we're just exploring a hypothetical just in terms of product, marketing, and delivery. We are now moving on to the next chapter, which is all about the execution of the 10X goal. >> So, now we move to the execution side of things. [music] And it's almost like we got this plane, it's sitting on the runway, but we need to get it into the air now. And this is where we use physics of flight. We need to increase lift, reduce drag, generate thrust. So we need to elevate, eliminate, and execute. [music] And we're going to do that in three domains across the business. So the aircraft itself still might need some work. The leadership or the team, right? The crew, and then you, the pilot. That 3x3, your constraints to 10x growth, to 10x altitude, will live in one or more of those nine squares. So what I want to do next is go through each of the squares, and I'm going to tell you what it's about. and you're just going to give me a quick sends check of does it feel like we're good here or is this an area where we might need some work and then we at the end we'll look at all the areas that need work and then come up with very very simple things that we can do in the

next 30 days to create progress against each of those areas. Sound good? >> Yeah, sounds good. >> Cool. So let's look at the intersection of elevate and company. thinking from that 10x altitude right that we want to achieve with that goal in mind how do you feel in terms of company ambition vision the offer itself is it elevated to where it current you know where it needs to be to hit that goal >> I would say it's a yellow I think with a few minor tweaks we could get there the offer is nearly is nearly there anyway we were actually Angus has been campaigning for the 25k price point for a while >> okay >> and I was like no it's too much but Actually, when you think about if the goal is to get them to a million in revenue, which is, you know, [music] which it is, then it's it's nothing at all. And vision wise, I think our mission is to sort of build the world's best online business school. I don't really talk about revenue numbers too much with the team. I don't think many people on the team are intrinsically motivated to make revenue revenue numbers go up except our like marketing guys and our sales guys. So, I'm not I'm

not sure how to be like, "Hey guys, we're going for 10x revenue." But it's also like in order to make the best business school in the world, we would have a bunch of students and they'd all be succeeding and [music] we would have the funds to hire the world a world-class team and offer worldass support in unscalable ways like one-on-one mentorship and stuff >> and it would still be sick. >> So [music] if we're current if this square is currently a yellow, what's just one thing that we could do in the next 30 days to create some momentum to start to progress it from yellow to green? Even just actually just setting that as the goal to say to our team that like all right now we are at 5 million a year. We've been we've been doing that but now we have a world-class team and we want to build the world's best online business school and there's no law of physics that says we can't do that but it means that we need to yeah just improve everything across the board which is great.

>> Okay. So it sounds like the next action here would be to share this thinking and the vision with the team. >> Yep. >> Great. Okay. So we're moving across the framework here. Now we're talking about eliminate where where do we need to reduce drag within the company. So here I want you to think of is there any complexity waste low value products low value customers or things that compete for your time that can create drag and keep us at our current altitude and not get to that 10x altitude. What comes to mind? Well, first off, would you say that this is a red, yellow or green area?

>> I would actually say this is green. Okay, >> I think >> so. Let me just talk um for those, you know, listening who this might not be green. So, what are some of the common things that could make it a yellow or red? I'll give you an example. So somebody just goes through the exercise that you've done and they realize that wow within my current product portfolio or on the shelf here with this new product that I've thought of. I can see a clear path to reach a 10x altitude with the company but they're currently working with a bunch of customers with a product that is keeping them at a one or a 2x altitude.

>> Y >> that takes time. It takes focus. Everything comes with opportunity cost. So if the time and the energy goes against that competing interest, it doesn't go to the 10X. The 10X never happens. They say frustrated, overwhelmed because they have this vision and they now know it's possible, but they're actually working on the wrong stuff. >> So in our case, we do have a bunch of way lower ticket products. >> Mhm. >> But uh what I am working on or what we are working on is connecting those to the higher ticket ascension funnel.

>> Okay. Uh so one option would be to just eliminate the low the low value stuff and in a way that would simplify things because it would mean we would only sell two or three products and all of them would be high ticket. >> Yes. >> Uh that could be one option. However, what at least what we have found so far for our current high ticket thing is that actually all of our best customers came from a low ticket thing where we were we sold a thing for $1,000 and then they were blown away and had a great experience in the $1,000 thing and so they then wanted to apply to the $15,000 thing. >> Okay. So there's a clear progression here. Yeah.

>> And that's backed up by data, not just hypothesis, right? >> Uh it's backed up by like one or two core data points and then the rest and then the rest of it is hypothesis based on those two extrapolating those two core data points. >> And by two data points, you don't mean two people. >> Uh no, I mean like two Yeah, I mean about 300 customers probably. >> Okay. Um, >> but like two main products like our YouTuber academy and our 1K challenge has actually driven in particular the 1K challenge has driven a lot of leads >> into our current high ticket which is not yet this 25K thing, right?

>> Oh yeah, exactly. >> Um, okay. >> No, I I feel pretty bullish on the sort of low ticket ascension model. >> Okay. All right. Yeah. >> So, let's move on then to the last part within the company row here. So, we're talking about elevate, eliminate, and execute across company leadership. So we've done company and elevate. We've done company and eliminate. Now let's do company and execute. So when you think from um a partnership's point of view um when you think about driving operating rhythms in the company to create progress against your most important goals from an execution point of view where would you rate the infrastructure of the company and or its strategic partnerships to enable this new [music] 10x growth?

>> What do you mean by strategic partnerships? So for example there could be let let me uh give you an example with Skype. So when we were building Skype in the early days from a business development point of view one of the things that we did was we went to every major market in the world identified the largest internet service provider or the top two or three and then partnered with them whereby Skype was kind of co-bundled with whatever software that they were distributing and we piggybacked off of their distribution. So there could be an 80/20 partnership for you where somebody has a list that fits well with what you do or you know something like that.

>> Yeah. Okay. In that context I don't think we need it right now. Um I think we can get to we can get to 50 mil without without without external partners being involved. But I would in terms of the current operating infrastructure to work at this scale I would say we are a red. >> Okay. What's the first thing that needs that comes to mind that would if you made some progress on in the next 30 days or so would take it to at least a yellow. >> Uh one thing which is currently happening already is a more disciplined process of or system for project management across the team.

>> Uh so we ran our first project management sprint yesterday and it was like whoa like it was like no we're we're assigning [music] tasks and dates and it's a two week cycle and like oh this is cool. So if that continues then which it will then that will significantly improve our like internal operating capability shall we say >> okay >> but then there's also I think like right now some of our stuff is on circle some of is on Slack some of Google sheets and stuff I think if we actually wanted to serve 2,000 students at a 25k price point there's quite a lot of operational drag uh here so maybe this is an eliminate well it's more like optimizing the systems that will allow for us to have 2,000 students rather than 200 students.

>> Cuz the systems that work for 200 will probably break at 2,000. >> Okay. But we're not going to have 2,000 students in the next 30 days, right? >> No. >> So, in terms of keeping focus on the most important, highest leverage things that we should be doing right now at the moment, it sounds like it's continuing to progress the improvements that you're making from a project management point of view. >> Exactly. Yeah. >> Great. Now we're going to drop down to the leadership row here. >> Yep. >> So the crew, right? So we talked about the company, the aircraft itself. Now the the leadership or the team, the crew. So let's look at the intersection of elevate and leadership from the vantage point of this new 10x goal, the 50 million. Do we need to raise the talent bar standards andor culture? Um would you rate this as a red, yellow, or green at the moment? talent bar, standards or culture.

>> Yeah. So, um upgrading our expectations in terms of what we need for people from people, the type of people that we hire. >> Not really to be honest. >> Okay. >> I think with if we if we could just like clone the current standard of our team, it would actually get us like it we would we wouldn't have any issues in getting to this goal. We do need someone to be in charge of sales, but like we're in the process of hiring that anyway. But I mean other than that, we actually now do have uh what I hope are good leaders for each of the major departments. So I think this is actually fine.

>> Okay. >> I'm just thinking, am I bullshitting myself on this? No, I don't I don't think I am. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Um we're we have two other categories to cover with people. So we're not done yet. So next thing is eliminate or reduce drag. Do we need to remove any misaligned behavior hires? could be role confusion or bottlenecks uh founderled bottlenecks for example anything [music] in that realm that could be inhibiting us in creating drag from that vantage point of that 10x goal would you rate this red yellow or green this area uh I would probably rate this yellow there's one major thing that comes to mind which is I'm still a bottleneck for like vibe coding stuff that helps the business and I'm in the in the process of trying to find a developer to [music] take development off of my hands um and actually put it in the hands of content professional rather than me.

>> Okay. And with that new found time, given what we just discussed that we're trying to build here, with that freed up time, what could that time then be going to? >> Definitely in building out more curriculum content for the 25k [music] product, which is currently light on curriculum and therefore has to be very heavy on the coaching. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> So that's what's at stake then, right? Is we have a clear pathway now to reach a 50 million a year goal. Um it requires some of your time from a product development point of view. Uh but we need to find a developer to free up some of your time.

>> Yes. >> Okay. Excellent. And then on the execute side for leadership here, I want you to think working back from the strategy of hitting 50 million a year. >> Yeah. >> We have a completely different business now. We have 2,000 Well, not completely different actually. We just have an evolved business. >> Yeah. It's not that different to what it currently. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's that that that's what's probably the most exciting about this. Um, so we have 2,000 people in, we have 40 coaches, we have you working on product development and inspiring people with content to build all of these $1 million a year businesses. Working back from the strategy necessary to achieve that, not every role will be critical.

What do you believe will be the 10x seats to achieve that 10x outcome? What are the most critical hires or roles? Don't think about the current people. >> Yeah, sure. >> What are the most crit What are the 10X seats? >> 10X seats are uh student success, >> i.e. in charge of all the coaches. >> Mhm. >> Uh product, i.e. in charge of like the product relatedly a 10x developer in the product team would be insanely high leverage for that. >> You writing these down? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Marketing and sale. marketing lead and sales lead cuz we need the leads to come be coming in and be converting. So student success lead, product lead, developer, marketing lead, sales lead, those are the 10x roles.

>> So if you have all of those people in those roles, they should then help make this goal an an inevitability for you then. >> Oh yeah. >> Okay. Easy. So, so in terms of a simple action the next 30 days, what I would recommend that you do here is one, you sanity check the 10x seats. you model out how much those people cost, when you would be able to afford them, and then what's the sequencing, what's the timeline of the hiring. >> Yeah. >> With the goal being trying to hit that 50 million within a few years time, right? Um so the next 30 days, you're just going to map out this is [music] these are the 10X seats and when we would need to have the roles filled.

Yep. >> Only then do you look at your current people and say which of our current people can fill those roles? which of the current people plus training could fill the roles. >> Um which of the people actually don't fit? >> Um and which um of the roles do we need to find new people for? >> Easy. >> Okay, >> we've got three of them already and we're in the process of hiring four and five. >> Excellent. >> We just need to accelerate the process of that. >> Okay. And then the last thing that we're going to talk about is the self. So we're talking about elevate, eliminate, and execute once again across company leadership and self. This is the scallows altitude matrix. So with self, let's start at the intersection of self and elevate. So we're increasing lift.

Is there anything that you need to do to upgrade your personal standards, your own identity, your own performance to achieve this goal? Do you believe, for example, that you have what it takes to build a 50 million a year business? >> I didn't before this conversation, but now that I'm seeing how non ridiculous the numbers are, I think I now do. And that's the power of once again breaking things down into the components and then solving for the components. Right? >> What traps people is that they'll think of a lofty goal and they don't break it down and so they they they keep it in the lofty realm and it feels overwhelming and outlandish and then they think that well I can't possibly achieve that.

>> Okay. So this sounds like it would be a green area for you then. >> Maybe. But again I I I don't know what I don't know. So in in my mind I'm thinking do I need a mindset coach or something or Yeah. I don't know. >> Okay. You said you know people who are already occupying these outlier data points. They've built businesses like this >> to help give you that last bit of self-belief infusion. Why not in the next 30 days schedule some conversations with them and ask them what did you have to change or not change about yourself, how you operate, what you believe in order to achieve the outcome that you currently live in. H let's talk about eliminate and self. So are there any on the flip side of the coin um so any like habits distractions things that slow you down ways of working things that Ali tends to do that are actually keeping you you know flying low rather than flying high. I think one of them is uh getting involved in other

people's areas of responsibility maybe but then there's the whole like founder mode thing and sometimes getting involved is useful for building a good product and so I often struggle with this balance between hire good people and get out of the way and let them do the thing but like you know I have high standards for how I want things to be done and I often think that like the way I would do it is better significantly better than what they would do sometimes and in that context I might just like do we have the right people then or are the expectations clear enough or is the training clear enough because certainly you can't be the only person in the world that can do these things.

>> I think increasingly I'm stepping away from like now that we have in particular two senior hires in student success and in product >> whereas before those seats were sort of deal occupied by both me and Angus. And so it's like, yeah, but now that I'm seeing both of those girls do a great job, I'm like, this gives me more like trust to not get overly involved or if I need to be just like speaking to the leaders rather than trying to >> Yeah. >> speak to the team. >> Again, we're looking for leverage here.

>> Yeah. >> Right. So every hour in every week that we can save where you can be focused on reaching that 10x altitude and not having to step in somewhere >> massively increases our odds of success. And it also um directly relates to your point of yeah but how do I do this without feeling like burnt out or like you know overwhelmed. Well, if you keep stepping in in all in areas because you feel like you have to and if we are constantly using founder mode as the excuse for it, >> it's going to be very very difficult for you to execute against everything that you should be doing for the 10x altitude. At the same time, by the way, this is having to step in is something that repeatedly comes up for CEOs and typically the root issue is a painful discussion that many CEOs will avoid.

And Marshall Marshall Goldmith wrote a book um uh what got you here won't get you there. And that phrase directly applies to people as well. I've never seen in a single instance, not once, and I've built many businesses myself, have helped over 500 founders and CEOs scale their businesses, not a single data point where the 10x version of the business has remotely close to the same people that the 1x version had. Y ultimately, you have to ask what's most important, right? the future that you're trying to create or you know the past that got you up to this point and you know what is it that you most want to protect. you know, Patty um what's her name? Is it Patty McCord? The former chief talent officer for Netflix, she has this amazing quote. She said, "There's a big difference between families and teams because families strive to stick together no matter what, whereas great teams are optimized to win at all times."

>> And so, you have to ask yourself, am I building a championship team or am I trying to keep, you know, a family together? Um, now I'm not saying that you need to go through and everyone out, >> but you do need to ask yourself working back from that 10x goal together with the areas that you find yourself having to step into. >> Do I have the right people in the right positions? [music] And then are there any, you know, conversations that I'm avoiding? >> Okay, nice. >> Okay, the last thing is the intersection of execute and self. And so I just want you to think in very simple terms a typical week for you. What percentage of your week currently thinking from the vantage point of that 10x goal [music] >> is going against the highest leverage activities that will generate that 10x outcome currently.

>> Okay. So the two highest leverage activities that will generate that outcome are basically curriculum and content >> which is basically the same thing just like >> expressed in different ways right one is free and one's like external internal >> that that sort of thing uh the reason I'm struggling with this is because one of my days is a software day because we also have the software stuff that was previously scattered across three days but it's now being condensed to a single day just to avoid the context switching and all that stuff that goes with having multiple [music] stuff across the week. So Thursdays are going to be like the software day and then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday uh becomes like working on the 10x goal thing for the for this for the non-software part of the business. But then Monday is riddled with team meetings. And so in a way the team meetings are very useful as a way of because it's like the leverage function, etc., etc., but they're also not directly me filming content.

>> Mhm. >> And so that's why I'm hesitating cuz like where do team meetings fit in this situation? Well, the first question I would ask is to what degree do you need to be involved in those team meetings? And again, if we have the expectations right, the right level of people, we have 10x people in the 10X seats, >> y >> do you need to be present? Can we pull you out of some of those meetings? So, that would be the first thing I would be asking to help free up your time, right? To make you less operational >> and make you more strategic. Yeah, I would say that in the short term I need to be in almost all of these because our new senior leaders are quite new. One started last week and one started 3 weeks ago.

>> Okay. >> Uh and so while and the product is going through loads of changes right now and so in the short term I should be in the meetings but I think the goal should be to get me out of the operational meetings ASAP. >> Okay. >> Does that sound reasonable? >> It does. And in the next 30 days, I think it would be good for you to have a plan and a timeline to achieve that. Um, with the goal being to create your ideal week for your 10X week where the majority of your time is actually going and only going without interruption and distraction to the activities that are going to generate this 10x outcome.

Yeah, we've now gone through the nine squares. you have a business and you have a clear line of sight on how to 10x your altitude. And if you if you're not for whatever reason, then it means that you're still, you know, engaged in low altitude flying and your constraint or one of your reasons for that being the case will live in one or more of these nine squares. Um, to go with a slightly different like flight metaphor, but still flight, if you think of a hot air balloon, you know, you have the sandbags on it. As we clip these constraints, we clip these sandbags and the balloon rises, right? Okay. So, let's go through quick wrap up of the key constraints and things that you need to work on to 10x the altitude of the business. So, number one, we need a much more scalable product, a 25K product sold to an audience that's looking to um create a business at 1 million or more a year.

Number two, we need to evangelize this new 10x goal, building the world's best online business, share this internally with the team. Number three, we need to continue progressing Spark OS and you know our improvements within project management. Four, we need to free up your time by finding that developer ASAP. Five, we need to think through what are all the 10x seats in order to hit this plan and what would be the rough timeline for adding them to the team. And then last but not least, we need to create that 10x ideal week for you and come up with a timeline of what's going to come out of your calendar to make that all possible.

Which of those things is the most important thing to do next? >> Um, okay. What? So, thinking out loud, initially I was thinking uh the developer will actively buy back my time, which is nice, but then I'm thinking I also don't need to be the one to hire the developer because if they're going to be under our head of product, which they probably will be, then she could totally hire the developer. Actually, that first step of like actually codifying the 10x goal and propagating across to the team would be the single next step.

>> Great. >> Yeah. Since this conversation, we are now in progress of hiring a developer. We've just brought in a new sales leader to lead our sales team. And so things are happening. And man, at this point, I I don't know if we're even going to aim for the 50 million goal, but it was super super useful to just explore it from a hypothetical perspective. And so whatever your 10x goal is, it's at least worth exploring. Now, if you enjoyed this conversation and you are maybe an entrepreneur thinking of starting a business, wanting to grow it potentially to million dollars a year, there's a video over here where I break down the plan in step-by-step detail. So, thank you very much for watching. Have a lovely day and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.