These are the 3 main things that I believe have made this growth curve possible. Not only this, but I believe these 3 main things are tactical but also “philosophical” in nature, so that they will grow & scale with us well past our current phase (to $1mm, $2mm, and eventually $8mm+ per month down the line).
Here they are: Tolerance, Focus, and Tactical Implementation
Tolerance
You will earn whatever you tolerate. If you think $30k is the baseline of what is acceptable, you’ll earn that as an average. If we thought $30k/mo was acceptable, the bottom of what we were willing to tolerate, we would miss the lead indicators and think, “ It’s okay. It’ll get fixed. Blah blah blah,” and we’d never grow past it.
Focus
Too many irons in the fire leads to confusion. One product took us to over $100k in monthly revenue. We didn’t write books, record podcasts, create courses, etcetera. We did one thing really well, better than anybody else, and then expanded once we got things working really well.
Tactical Implementation
Implementing & completing a specific, predetermined amount of activities every day. Do less. But do it better. A small handful of activities will take you well past 7 figures. Figure out what they are and do them well, consistently.
In this post, I’m going to attack these 3 items in reverse. We’ll start with tactical implementation, then move to focus, then tolerance, which in my opinion is the most important.
Tactical Implementation
In today’s culture everyone is obsessed with tactics.
- How to make good landing pages
- How to write good hooks in your copy
- How to set up Facebook pixels
Everyone is talking about these things. We’ll absolutely go toe to toe with anybody else in the biz when it comes to tactical advantages, but think of tactics like “fertilizer.” They might amplify or speed up a bit of the growth cycle, but not if there isn’t good soil to begin with.
Doh.
But “soil” is boring. It’s not “advanced.” Most people want the sexy… and most people are dirt poor. Despite having access to all the same information, all the same ‘tactics,’ all the same principles the wealthy have, there's something CORRELATORY to an obsession with “tactics” and being “unsuccessful.”
Most Important “Tactic” #1: Understand the proper place for a tactic VS a strategy.
A strategy is: “let’s specifically one type of person with a painful problem and ignore the rest.”
A tactic: “let’s use Facebook ads to a webinar to get leads.”
Most Important “Tactic” #2: Don’t blame “the market” for your “marketing” problems.
People love to blame their markets for the poor performance of their ads, staff, offers, etcetera.
If your market isn’t responding, drill down to find a better strategy. Or get a mentor who’s actually done what you’re trying to do – who can say “I did this, and look this is what you need to do better, so change that, change this, then try that…” That’s PRICELESS when you’re trying to grow something quickly (we invest, at a minimum, about 6 figures a year in mentorship, coaching, masterminds, etc).
Most Important “Tactic” #3: Sequence, Sequence, Sequence.
At the VERY beginning, before we’d taken a single client for Traffic And Funnels, we got on the phone with about 10 people and asked them what their problems were / what they needed help with.
Within those 10 calls, we’d enrolled 3 new clients, each with different offers. It didn’t take us long before we’d “drifted,” trying to promote things we thought were cool but that our market didn’t want.
Don't copy the tactics of a $100 million company. Their methods will bankrupt you. Find someone skilled at growing businesses IN YOUR SEQUENCE, and follow them.
Focus
THE biggest failure I see in entrepreneurs today is a lack of focus. Focus is a discipline, a muscle, and if you don’t practice it then it’s going to atrophy.
Right now, for instance, the reason I’m writing this is because I came to Starbucks, pulled out my iPad, put in AirPods and blocked off 30m to an hour to write it. It’s only happening through extreme focus because, contrary to what you might think, we don’t just “spout” off content in our sleep…
It takes work. It takes focus.
Each month we have a specific outcome that we want and then we have objectives that must be hit to create that outcome. Too many entrepreneurs have so many outcomes that they have no objectives… they can’t even think properly. There’s always too much to do.
This is a failure in your ability to FOCUS.
One past client comes to mind (he’s no longer a client because of this actually). As soon as he’d get one thing sort of working, he’d stop and start something else.
His 2nd month with us he did $80k in sales (after previously doing $30k at best). Then the month after, he went out and contracted an engineer to build a SaaS.
Why?
Because he’s an entrepreneur who’s lost the ability to focus. A lack of focus doesn’t prevent you from making money… it simply prevents you from making a LOT of money.
When we went full time with TF, we did over 6 figures our first month. It’s cause we’re good at this marketing stuff… we’re not young bucks trying to do something we’ve never done before…
But the 2nd month, different story.
For some stupid reason we decided to launch a podcast and a newsletter. Our 2nd month… LOL – that month we did $40k in sales. From over 6 figures to under $40k.
Focus is boring. It’s unsexy. You’ll constantly have ideas that you want to pursue, but you must set BOUNDARIES around your entrepreneurial hyperdrive…
We won’t create another product until we’ve done 6 months of $500k/mo first. We took forever to start a podcast. We canceled our old newsletter and refused to start another one until we broke a 1 million dollar quarter.
We have these “indicators” that protect us from all these ideas that we want to implement.
A lot of times clients will come in and say “I’m missing something I’m missing something. You guys do podcasts, blog posts, emails, etc. That’s why I’m not doing 100k/mo… why can’t I do those things?”
Too many things at the same time will kill you (and your business). The problem – most times – is that you’re doing too much. If you cut out all the WRONG activities, and only do the RIGHT activities, your workload decreases, your bank account increases.
Enough said…
Tolerance
Recently I made a post in our Traffic and Funnels Facebook group about this principle: CVVCR (choices validate vision create reality). Go dig it up if you don’t remember seeing it…
Tolerance is the LARGEST driving force behind growth in any business. The most successful people you see, oftentimes, don’t really understand that they’re successful. They’re “tolerance” levels change as they grow so they're constantly at this place where they’re right before, on the cusp, “almost” where they want to be.
You should never “arrive.” As soon as you do, you’re done. Depression. Anxiety. All of the bad things set in. Human beings are wired for the “push.” We MUST be reaching or we are doomed.
When Chris and I first started, it was acceptable to do $30k in a month – because that was actually pretty good. If we did $30k in a month now our whole team would starve. It’s no longer acceptable. We cannot tolerate it.
Tesla, has $4 billion in cash and just took out another loan for $750 million. Southwest had $1 billion in cash when 9/11 hit in the United States – while every other airline operated on razor thin margins and no cash on hand. They survived and profited, other airlines laid of thousands of employees to make it.
You cannot expect to make $100k/mo if you’re “cool” with doing $10k/mo. It won’t happen. You can’t get down to 11% body fat and perfect physique if you’re “cool” with being fat. Results come because they’re expected and under no circumstances will you tolerate anything less than the result.
Over time, what’s happened, is our revenue & team etc has grown and it’s an “up” then “down” kind of thing. It doesn’t just happen in a straight shot where you decide “I’m never gonna make less than $50k/mo” and then you never do…
You’ll miss the goal sometimes, then it’s up to you to have the right environment to get you back in line.
Pair these principles I’m sharing with the right coaching, and you have a recipe for making all the right choices, all the right bets, and that’s where wealth can be generated QUICKLY with very little risk.
You know where to find us if you want to talk about it.
