Business Growth Playbook with Jeremy Shapiro

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the show. I'm your host, your favorite business coach, Robert Lyon. Today we have the great privilege of talking to Jeremy Shapiro. He's been in business for over 30 years. He's, uh, helping entrepreneurs. He's, um, been in the trenches doing all kinds of amazing insight, and I'm just super excited to have him on the show. Um, Jeremy, why don't you just kind of introduce yourself, tell the people a little bit about, you know, who you are and what you got going on right now.

Speaker B: Love it. Well, thank you for having me on and stoked to be here. I, like you had mentioned, I'm a serial entrepreneur. My last job, as it were, was back when I was in high school. And, and, uh, since then I've had a number of businesses and all those have been in service of fellow business owners and entrepreneurs, helping them to scale and grow and build their businesses and move towards what I like to call entrepreneurial freedom.

Speaker A: Beautiful. When you talk about, like, helping business owners and thinking about business, like, what do you think is your realm of expertise? Like, what's the thing that you particularly feel like you are super strong in business or that you can really help a business achieve?

Speaker B: Yeah. So, uh, I'm a growth guy. I love to scale up existing businesses. And, you know, any of us who wants to go out and start a business has to figure out, like, what is the thing we're selling, who's going to buy it and how we're going to sell that to them. Like, those are those three core legs of the stool. And once that's sort of figured out and you've got a business growing, inevitably business owners get to that point where we scale, we grow, and then like, revenue plateaus, profits start to shrink. And the thing that got us there isn't getting us that, uh, next level. And that's usually when folks reach out and find me. And so a lot of my secret sauce is helping business owners get back to growth and get back to the scaling because, like, look, that's exciting, that's fun. That's one of the great parts of having a business.

Speaker A: Now, what kind of businesses do you like to work with? I guess, like, what's your sweet spot? You think?

Speaker B: You know, it's funny because under the hood, business is business and yes, we all have special snowflake unique businesses. Uh, but the fundamentals that really drive a business towards growth are the same. So that can be brick and mortar to, you know, software as a service, SaaS, businesses.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: To, you know, E commerce and everything in between, um, what I think is interesting though is when we peel back the layers, some strategies work better in certain industries or business models than others. And there's a lot of value in what I call the cross pollination of ideas. So we can take something. For example, um, I was working with a law firm and they're very traditional in terms of how they approach things. And we were also working with a business that had a, you know, software as a service, subscriptions. And so these are two very different business models entirely. But underneath it there's some cross pollination possibilities. So what we're able to do is help the law firm to put in a recurring revenue component into their business. And this allowed them to have predictable revenue, be able to forecast far better and be doing less hunting for new clients and more, you know, reliance on sort of this recurring revenue piece, uh, they had in the business. And it let them differentiate from a traditional law firm and the narrow niche that they were in. So we're able to take sort of these best practices and ideas and implement them in different business models as well.

Speaker A: I hope I'm wrong, but it does seem like businesses, it's not necessarily getting harder right now, but I mean, I do kind of think we're in like a economic recession, we're in a trust recession, we're in like an attention recession. And it does seem like all the businesses that were just printing cash like five years ago, like you just throw up a Facebook ad and like you're just buying fallen out and you're not really like taking care of your clients, Those have all kind of flipped over to, they're panicking now, they're not quite getting as many sales. I'm, um, I'm, and I kind of sold that pretty hard. But I wanted to ask you, do you think that's the same thing or is that just my perspective? Like what are you seeing in the business world right now?

Speaker B: It's never been easier than it is today, except for maybe tomorrow to go out there, create and launch a business. And especially with a lot of the AI tools and things that are out there, you have an idea for a software product, you can roll out a pretty crappy but well intentioned and good looking product and start onboarding customers. And so these days like everyone seems to be launching some kind of micro SaaS and building up a small group of customers that are using the platform. And while there's value there, what it means from a consumer perspective is when we look at what are the options out there becoming harder and harder to tell who's the well established, large funded operating company and who is someone who just spun out a website, you know, out of their favorite AI platform and is able to onboard customers and have an okay product. And so the differentiation is becoming harder and harder. The true value of what you're delivering as a business though, that still favors the established business who truly has savvy financials in place, truly has a team and is really taking care of their customers with, you know, good product roadmap and so forth. So to answer your question, yeah, it is becoming a lot more competitive. There's just so much more noise out there. And if you can truly niche and define sort of who your market is, that has always been the case, that you can better command the marketplace and be the, the largest, biggest, best obvious choice within a small market.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I mean like people are also expecting more, right? Like if you can provide like a, uh, world class service, you're always going to be kind of success. So I think you have to like, you have to have a niche, you gotta be super focused, but then you also have to cut through the noise. Um, do you have any methods that are kind of helping your clients or like that you're seeing that kind of help businesses stand out above all the AI slop and everything or what are you kind of seeing?

Speaker B: Yeah, if you have a great product, right. I think like the inventor archetype who's created the world's most amazing mousetrap but nobody knows about it, it doesn't really matter. Right. And conversely, if you know how to market and get the word out about a product and it's terrible, uh, unfortunately it's still going to sell well. Now the longer term side of that is not great. Right? So ideally you have a great product and you're great at getting the word out about it. That's sort of the winning combination. Yeah, but for a lot of businesses now, we don't know what the quality is until we're already doing business with them. If we're not doing our due diligence. Right. So when you look at how long has a company been around, what's the track record, what's the history, you know, who are, you know, those uh, third party reviews, testimonials and so forth like that starts to add some of the credibility that is often lacking in newer companies with great marketing and crap for product. So yes, to our listeners you do need to have a great product, great service, great support and all those things. But you also have to be great on the marketing Side, you've got to understand who your ideal customer is. And the better you can differentiate and narrow that in for your icp, the better you can speak to them, the better you can market, the better you can close those deals and the better you can separate yourself as the specialist above the noise of the generalists.

Speaker A: Yeah, I just feel like a lot of business right now is just keeping plates spinning. You know, it's like you really want to like focus on the product, making it a world class experience, dealing with the clients in a way that they feel happy after they use your product. And then you also gotta be like authentic and putting out content and all this stuff. And it's just kind of annoying if

Speaker B: I'm being honest, you know? Yeah. You know, when I talk to business owners, uh, it's, it's funny how many of them still are building and growing a business on things like referrals or direct mail or, you know, out cold outbound outreach. And you can still build businesses using all these different marketing methods without developing, creating or publishing any content online or having any kinds of socials. Right. Conversely, you obviously have your brands doing phenomenal work on socials and doing nothing else. So it's not an either or. Right. There are so many ways you can get awareness out there and get new clients coming in. It's up to you to pick as a business which one fits your brand and where you want to go much, uh, more heavily with your marketing dollars.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think I was talking with another podcaster yesterday. He put it in a good way. He says the businesses that are succeeding right now are winning on three fronts. It's a win for you, it's a win for the customer, and it's good for the community, the world. You know, it has a bigger aspect and those are the businesses that are still thriving and still succeeding. And then all the ones that were kind of, you know, printing cash and we're just kind of, you know, freestyling. They're falling apart is what I'm kind of thinking or saying.

Speaker B: You believe in like the three Win Freestyle. You totally can throw some money at marketing, build up a large customer base, but if you've got a crap product, your churn is going to be high. And the businesses that win this game have high customer lifetime value or a clv. And the only way you keep that is, is by having customers stay with you for a longer period of time. Right. And so if you don't deliver on the quality or the service or any of those things after that purchase, you don't keep your customers with you, and you're constantly going out and your marketing dollars are doing less and less and less. So you get to this point of diminishing returns. Right. And that's why business businesses can't last. They can go all in on your, on their Facebook ads, whatever else, but that's only going to work for so long. The businesses that are making it, they're taking care of their customers. Right. They have repeat business. Right. They have good reputation, they can build and leverage and roll it up. Yeah.

Speaker A: And that's kind of what you got to go for. And it just, it just takes more work. You know, flat out, you just got to kind of do the work. I mean, entrepreneurship was never easy. Right. It's always been pretty hard. I think there's been, you know, probably millions and millions of people who never succeeded. But then the people that do succeed, they do certain things. Correct. I guess. And I guess my question for you is like, with the clients that you're working with now, um, you know, what are you seeing, like their biggest bottlenecks are or that you're really happy to help people and like what kind of results are they getting or what are you fixing in businesses nowadays?

Speaker B: Yeah. So depending on where a business owner is, you know, on their entrepreneurial journey, there are sort of different levels to unlock. Right. So early on is figuring out that, you know, that market fit and where does your product fit in, how do you communicate that and who are you actually selling to. Once you figure that out and you're established, that's usually when you're heading towards that seven figure mark. You know, have an established process, you know, how you're getting customers and where you're getting them and, and how to actually get the new business. Right. Beyond that, we start looking at what are we doing to scale up the revenue and moving you towards that eight figure mark. And you definitely are talking about having teams here, expanding the product portfolio and all these other things. Beyond that eight, moving from the eight towards nine, you've got to dial in all the operations. So a lot of my specialty is with the business owners approaching at that seven figure mark and moving towards that eight. And so they've typically at this point figured out how to get out of their own way. As a business owner, they've moved past being a solopreneur because there's only so much you can do. And the rest of that typically comes from team. Right. Vendors, contractors, agencies and so forth. But you're leveraging the time and the expertise of others. Beyond yourself, right? So that's usually one big mental hurdle to get over for earlier stage business owners. And then from there is helping business owners to get out of sort of the, the forest of their business and take a look at things like when was the last time you increased your prices? How are you differentiating yourself in the marketplace now versus where you were differentiating, you know, six months ago, 12 months ago, et cetera. What else do you have available for your customers? And how do we expand that product portfolio up and down, left and right? There are a number of ways to do that and there are like so many tactics and strategies we can do that. Unlock additional revenue and increase the profitability in your existing business. So you don't have to be focused on how else do I get more customers? But we can instead look at what more can we do with your existing customer.

Speaker A: Right? How can we basically turn one customer into a lifelong customer and how can we fix the holes in your CRM? How can we do better SOPs? How can we get people that are actually going to do a good job at these roles and move the needle, you know, and it's just kind of like created an A plus team and things like, of that nature.

Speaker B: Well, you touched on the funnel there and like that's a really interesting thing to look at, right? Our business has funnels everywhere. When we typically talk about funnels, we're thinking about things like, you know, how many, you know, impressions does our ad have, how many clicks, right? How many opt ins, how many purchases and that kind of thing. But these funnels actually exist in so many different areas of our business. Your HR side of the business has a hiring funnel, right? Your team members have onboarding funnels. They exist everywhere. But when we look at these funnels, there are holes, right? We can look at conversion every step of the way. And if you want to figure out like, you know, what hole do I fix first in the, in the funnel, look at where your verse, your worst conversion point is, right? If you have high click through to your landing page, but your opt in rate is atrocious, what do we need to do to get that landing page converting better? Right. If you have a high opt in but low purchase, what do we do there? Right. If you have a high number of calls booked but a low show rate, what do we do to close that gap? So all these gaps exist in our funnels and it's a matter of a, knowing our numbers and looking at the conversion rates and then B making individual specific changes that can then start to Move the needle in one area and then we just rinse and repeat that again and again.

Speaker A: Yeah. How do you like to help, um, CEOs track all the numbers of their business or find the bottlenecks and things like that? Do you have any strategies on that or is it more of like, like, I mean, a lot of times when I work with a business owner, they're just like spreadsheets and uh, you know, basically VAs and just all kinds of random crap. And they don't really have like a dashboard or anything like that. So I'm just curious if you have any ideas on that.

Speaker B: Yeah, so there's a really important differentiation. Like yes, we all need to track numbers in our business and some business owners don't. Right. But when we do track the numbers, I like to differentiate between, you know, a KPI, a key performance indicator, and a vanity metric. The difference between those is a vanity metric is number you look at, but you don't do anything with. It's not an actionable number. You just say, oh yeah, all right, this number is there. A key performance indicator should be driving decision making. You should know this number is too low. We have to take an action. It's too high. We have to take an action. So when we boil our dashboard down to what are the numbers that we care about because they'll inform decision making, that can simplify dramatically. And so to your question about like, you know, what are those KPI's numbers we look at? Um, the funnel numbers to me are really, really important because we can look at the number for each step of the way. And using the example we touched on earlier, if you look at, you know, how many impressions an ad has, how many clicks, right? That gets you your page views, to how many opt ins, to how many purchases to repeat purchases to all the way down your funnel, the first thing we need to do is make sure we are tracking that one place.

Speaker A: Yeah, right.

Speaker B: And that can be through VAs, it can be through, you know, your favorite AI platform, it can be through dashboarding software. There's a number of ways to do it. But the point is we boil it down to one spot, right? You can have team members responsible for their departments or their areas to report on those. Right. Once we have the numbers and we're actually tracking it now, we can start to move the levers and make the incremental changes. And the better our leading indicators are versus trailing, the earlier, we can course correct. Right. And so for example, if, uh, if your plane takes off from, you know, New York and is flying out to la. And you wait until you land to find out, do we get where we want to go? That's too late. That's your trailing indicator. You realize, oh, no, you know, we landed in Seattle. Conversely, if each step of the way, you're looking at, are we on course? Are we on course? That can be more of a leading indicator to tell you, let's course correct early. And so there's a great story that I love about this, um, if you'll indulge me. Uh, I'm an avid cyclist. And so the world of cycling, you know, there's so many parallels to entrepreneurship and business, but the British cycling team was one of the worst in the world, right? They were ranked near the bottom. They just weren't winning anything. And so they brought in a new head coach. And one of the things he looked at was all the small stuff, right? Because all the teams are going to have good bikes, all the teams are going to have good, strong cyclists. They're all, you know, at the peak of their fitness. So he's like, all right, that's the table stakes, right? We've all got to be doing that. So how do we differentiate? And so he looked at these different leading indicators and said, what can we do to give ourselves some marginal gains? What are the small things we can change in our. In our team? So, of course, it looks at nutrition, but really dialed into specific parts of the nutrition. He looked at certain things, like, what if we have the team members wash their hands before they eat every time, right? Not a wild concept, but if you can keep your team from getting sick, that stops a cold from spreading. It stops them from losing weeks of fitness that takes months to gain back, right? So he started making tweaks there. What if we. And this is one of my favorite ones, what if we paint the inside of the van white? Well, when you do that, you notice where the dust and the dirt is, and you can make sure it stays clean. Well, before that, little bits of dust and dirt and grime get into the components in the bike, which requires more maintenance, which, you know, saps off the watts from the riders and keeps them a little slower. So all these little things that we can look at and do ahead of time that can give us those little bits of gain so that when it gets to race season, there's so much further ahead. And so in our business, this is very similar. We look at what are those leading indicators on our dashboard that's going to tell us what's going to be happening days Weeks, months down the road and how do we tweak? So yeah, if your number of calls booked rate is dropping for some reason or not increasing, you know, that means you'll have less people on calls, less deals you can close, less new revenue, less renewals and so forth. So we change that early and that impacts your number down the road. Yeah.

Speaker A: And uh, but the system is not just enough like you have to also nail uh, down the, the way that you can improve it as it continues. Right. So it's not just enough to uh, book sales calls, it's how can approve each individual sales call as they keep on coming in. And you have to have someone in charge of those specific systems. Right. So you have to create the system to book. And it's not just for booking calls though. This is almost every time there's like a three part pillar, uh, of it. Right. So it's just like always going to be like creating uh, the systems, right. And then always proving on how the system can be improved and then you can basically go on from there to create success. But you have to have individuals that are in charge of each parts of these little businesses, right? So you have one person who's in charge of the uh, CSMs, right. So the CSMs, how are you basically, basically booking your calls. What's the system for handling customers? But then how can we improve and iterate and improve on that? And it just kind of, this is how you build a business. Right. But it's just like the ideas that you have to do is consistently not only create the systems, make the systems better, but then you have to keep the improvement going. Because once if the improvement doesn't continue to go up in the business and the business is not going to grow, right. And that's where you get kind of stale. And a lot of business owners kind of park, right? They just set up the system and they throw bodies at the problem. And, and the real problem is that you have to get microscopic like you were talking about. You gotta paint the van white or you gotta figure out how to get more into the weeds. Um, but it's hard to find the time to do all that when you're a business owner. You know, um, I guess, you know, that's just kind of what my thought was on that. But from your experience when you're dealing with successful entrepreneurs, like what are some key characteristics of how they run their business or how they're, or who they are? Like what are some key things that you see?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I'll touch on that. But I wanna address what you mentioned with the systems. Cause there's a few tactics that I love to use. There's. And one of them is all of our systems have a date on them for when they were last updated. So that way you know when it was last reviewed.

Speaker A: Oh, uh, I love that.

Speaker B: That's a good point.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, we also have the responsible party, like who is responsible for maintaining and updating the system.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And the third piece I want to mention is up top. We always have the definition of success. So yes, our SOPs have the bigger bullet points and a longer list of the steps and all. But up top, the most important thing is how are we defining success? If you were hitting this definition, we know it's all good. And so if at some point that definition stops being met, that's a good time to go back and look at what needs to change within the system so we can get back on track to the result the system's responsible for. These, by the way, are great during hiring when you can talk to a prospective hire about what the role is and show them, hey, here's how we're going to know if you're doing your job, if you're on track, and here's how you'll know then. It saves the confusion that comes later on. Especially newer business owners, when they make those first handful of hires, they're usually hiring someone and just throwing everything at them. It's just this general role of like, do all the stuff I don't want to do and I can't define that. Just everything I send your way, do it. And that is a crappy job. Right. No one enjoys that. It's not rewarding. So when they know what the expectation is up front, there's a lot of value there. Right. Now, to your question about like, what are some of the commonalities that I see in the in more successful business owners? One is this concept of Kaizen, which is exactly what you're talking about. It's this continuous, never ending improvement. Systems are at a set and forget and you're done. Right? Systems are something you build and you continually improve. But that so much applies to their ethos as well. The most successful business owners I know, like you and like me, have a bookshelf. They're constantly reading, taking courses, getting mentorship coaching, going to conferences and events and they're sharpening that sword and learning. Right? You don't just learn business and you're done. It's ever evolving. And we're students of business and students of life. We Also, I find as successful business owners view business as something that has ups and downs and challenges along the way. It's not a matter of like, we did it or not. It's the great game of business and you're playing the game and sometimes things go how you expect. Sometimes you have unexpected challenges and obstacles that come up. But the purpose of it is we rise to the occasion and we are okay overcoming those challenges and trying it and getting back up again and moving forward. And that, I think is one of the things that differentiates, differentiates us business owners from your more 9 to 5 folks, where they'll exchange their time and they'll get paid for that, but those bigger challenges aren't theirs to worry about.

Speaker A: Yeah. And then what are your thoughts on, uh, either raising money, if you know anything about those, or managing debt as a business owner? Because a lot of businesses that I work with are just going into debt right now and they say, oh, we'll make profits in three and five years. And it's just like, well, you need to be profitable now before you take on all this debt. And it just seems to be a big, a big issue that I'm kind of seeing with a lot of clients.

Speaker B: So I might be a little, you know, controversial or different in this take than I think some folks are when they look at business. Um, every business I've started has always been cash flow positive since day one. And so one that comes to mind is, you know, uh, we're getting ready to launch a new business. And we decided on a Friday afternoon we were going to get like the mock up of the site done over the weekend. And this was in the days before, like, you know, secure certificates and secure credit card processing and all that. We're going to get to that, but we're just getting the site online. And by Monday we had people signing up, which is weird because we've done nothing to advertise, promote it or talk about it. People were finding us and signing up and despite the form saying don't enter credit cards, it's not secure. Like, we're still building this. People were like transacting with us. Now, I say that because they're entering credit card details in a form that didn't work. Right. They're getting accounts, but we had no way to build them. We had no bank account, no entity, none of it was in place. This was like 48 hours old. Right. And so we're scrambling. We get the attorneys, we get the paperwork filed. We now have a legal entity. Our, you know, eins applied for. We can now go open the bank account, we can now get credit card processing. We spent the rest of that week on all that sort of minutiae that's needed to actually have real business. And you know, towards the end of that week, these new customers are reaching out, saying, hey, like, when can I get access to the platform? When can we start using this? So by the end of that week, we had all those pieces in place. We're able to start receiving money from new customers. And that's before we even got the invoice from Council for doing all the entity formation and all that. So, yeah, that's my favorite way to do it, is to have the business proven out. Um, and I've done this many times since with customers who are ready to pay you before you're even fully online and ready to go. Because that means you've proven the idea, you know, the market is hungry for this because they're willing to pay and you can now receive money on day one and build a business from there without taking on massive debt. Now that's not to say you can't build a business, um, with, you know, angel funding or seed rounds or your VC funding or, you know, uh, you know, lines of credit and the rest of that, you absolutely can. So long as that is used strategically to get you where you want to go faster, smarter, better, or in some other way.

Speaker A: I used to have businesses as well where we would literally launch the landing page and have people booking calls. And like, those were like the good old days. Now days I have to do all this crazy stuff just to get people even to know about my business, right? So I have an ad network. So I'm all about traffic, uh, and getting, uh, basically attention, right? And the thing that we've actually pivoted to is first we find the attention, right? We have a army of, uh, what are called clippers, right? They go on YouTube and they clip videos and they find specific niches and basically figure out how to, what's working, right? So like, we've tested probably, you know, 50 different niches. And the ones that actually work, we end up basically focusing on the ones that work where the attention intention is. And then we siphon the traffic just to get people over into the ad network to go and buy another product. Like it's the, the market has shifted to where people, uh, used to be searching for whatever it is, but now you basically have to find them where they are on the Internet almost and divert them more towards the, the businesses. And then what we do from there is we also do retargeting traffic, uh, we do SEO and we make our own content like you know, these kind of podcasts. And it's, it's kind of um, it is kind of like uh, you used to be able to tell people exactly what you do and everything about it, but now everybody kind of seems to have a, you know, if you can't catch their attention quite as fast or if it's not necessarily speaking exactly to them right away, you kind of got to beat them over the head a couple times before they actually get it and they're willing to participate in your business. Right. So I just think that the market has shifted. Uh, and like I wish, but I do like the idea of testing the product beforehand. But nowadays I think everything is getting too complicated. I guess that's kind of like the longest getting. Like I wish we had the old, uh, way to basically, you know, basically get in front of people with your idea, write some really good copy, write some really good marketing, uh, and they would understand what you sell and they would be interested. It just seems like things have gotten too complicated. People have too many filters or they've done it too many times and there's just kind of like this weird, um, different paradigm shift that, that uh, the customers are having from buying things online that they used to do. You believe that or am I false?

Speaker B: So I think the way you're going about it is spot on for if you're entering a brand new niche or market where you're unknown and you have no audience or list. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: The easiest way to do this is either with your own existing house list of folks who are using one of your products and you're now launching a new product, a new company, a new something, and you can leverage this existing audience who knows, likes and trust you and is used to hearing from you. Right? So you do that because you own the list. It is far easier. And a number of my businesses over the years and my clients businesses have been either a small subservice of uh, the business that was serving a need that then blew up and sort of uh, eclipsed the existing business. Right. Or this complementary business that serves the same audience that launches on its own as its own thing, but leverages and gets out the gate because of that existing audience. And the other way you can shortcut this if you don't have the audience is from a relationship standpoint, if you have affiliates and partners who have your ideal customer, right. And that audience knows, likes and trusts them, that is a Great way to launch a new service product company by leveraging that audience. But that's going to come from relationships because they got to be people who know like and trust you. And it may not always go the way you want it to go. Um, when we were launching a business, we were getting into a newer market for us and we went out to an affiliate partner who we had a good relationship with and who had a good list. And we ran a webinar presentation that we'd never run before. Mhm. And we tested it out on that call and it went terribly. We goose egged, we got zero sales. And this was a guy who went on a limb because of the relationship, promoted us to his audience, got them to sign up and hop on a call and we just bombed. Right. Of course, I feel terrible. There's a lot of relationship, you know, currency, as it were, that is, uh, destroyed from that. And so look, we just post mortem, we're like, hey, you know, you know, what works well for your audience? Where do we fall short and hit a lot of really good and constructive feedback on what we can do better? That sent us back to the drawing board, overhauled that presentation and we're able to go back out and then we were able to close at an okay rate and then we continue to tweak and improve and improve and improve and got better. So it can be hard if you can test it to your own list or you can prove it out with some cold traffic first. Then if you make it there, you know, your affiliates and partners, et cetera, you can show them some numbers of what they can expect. That's a much easier sell. So um, take away from this is develop those affiliate relationships and partners, build and own your own list as soon as you can, because there's a lot of value in that. That's far easier than trying to get into a brand new niche with no audience, an offer you don't know if it works, a product you don't know if they want, and all the rest of it, you got to have at least one of those three legs of the stool that we were talking about earlier.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean that's kind of what we ended up doing is like now we're bending over backwards for the customers that we have and we're just like giving them tons and tons of traffic and we build a relationship with the few people that we've gotten. It's just like, I guess with the problem with my business, like we can, we'll pivot from that, but it's Just like it's trying to get people to create a new habit. Right. So like a lot of business owners are already conditioned to go run ads on Facebook, to go run ads on Google. Like they know how to do it, even if it's a terrible user experience and nobody likes it. It's expensive, but they're already accustomed to that. So I'm trying to like change user behavior to use a new platform, which is always a difficult, um, thing. But I guess, yeah, it's hard, it's hard to take over that part of somebody's brain and then have them willing to trust you. But that's why we kind of started, you know, like starting people off on like a really low, low tier, like a tripwire offer and then we just over perform on them. Like it's kind of like what we were talking about in the beginning where it's like you have to basically give people a world class experience and then double down on them. Um, but you know, the, the process that I told you of how we've figured out how to actually scale has been the, the consistency of finding where the attention is, already having retargeting campaigns running to people that actually visit the site and then over perform once they get there. And it's just like, man, this is, this is like an overhaul for a software company. But um, I guess I clv though. Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, I think about uh, you know, for some of my companies we go to trade shows and man, those are expensive. We didn't. We, you know, we had a number of years where we dedicated, you know, six plus figures a year just to trade show sponsorships and events. Sometimes like we did terribly at the event. I'm looking at new customers that come on board that came to the booth and I'm like, this was so expensive to be a part of and we did not do great. And then years later, you look back, you're like actually looking at revenue that's come from those customers over the years. Since that was a really good event because the customer lifetime value makes that ROI fantastic. But sometimes upfront it can seem, you know, with a short view, uh, really expensive.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I don't have, I need to work on the patience aspect of the lifetime value of a customer.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: It's kind of like, because most of my businesses have always been like, you know, spend $2,000 on ad makes like $5,000 and you just rinse and repeat and you basically plug people into the business. Like you got to sell something expensive. I'm now selling something that Will be expensive. But I have to do multiple iterations. I have to build the trust, I got to build the relationships. Right. So that's always kind of a. Um, I have, I was watching a podcast of yours the other day and you, it said that you like to go to events and you like to host those kind of like in person things. And I kind of think that's going to be a rise because people want to get out of their house. Uh, they're sick of all the Internet is kind of dying like. But when you're in person, um, it's a good way to meet people. I'm just curious if you have any tips on maybe doing in person events or going to in person events or anything like that. Like, what have you seen from that? Working?

Speaker B: Yeah. So on both sides of that, um, I enjoy attending real, live in person, you know, talk to people face to face events far more than online. Uh, and on the other side of that, I really enjoy hosting and organizing events as well. I think there's a lot of value in that. And to your point, people are looking for that more to get out from behind the screen, to get out from the infinite doom scroll of AI Slop and all the rest of it and to have a real conversation with a real person. Um, there's so much value in that. And I see so many incredible relationships that get formed and business that gets done because of that. It's like what's old is new again. And I think we're going to see a continuation in that trend. So if you can host even informal happy hour, coffee, get together kind of events, it's a great place to now be the host of the party that can draw people in who now know like and trust you. And you become that authority figure, that leader, that organizer, uh, that folks rally around. And then when you're talking about like launching a new company, um, I've, you know, I remember very clearly I was in a high end mastermind group and had an idea for a business and sort of jotted it down almost on a napkin sketch sort of style of what I thought it would be because it was a need I had in my business. And I was able to turn to the person next to me and say, hey, I'm thinking about launching this, uh, you know, this business, you know, what do you think? And that person said like, Jeremy, that's a terrible business idea. But like if you launch that, that can, uh, we be customers. Mike. Interesting. And went to the next person. Same thing, the next person we were talking, you Know, outside of the boardroom, I got the same response, like, wait, three people independently in a row in this room that I'm in have now told me, terrible business idea, don't do it, but can we buy it? And so that gave me enough, uh, support to go and start building this out. And what do you know, I had those three beta customers right from the get go, give me early feedback. And when we launched on launch day, those three all became paying customers. And I was able to leverage their experience, those testimonials and the fact that they're my ideal customer and had really good feedback to launch a great product that was able to then, you know, build and grow and be a multi million dollar SaaS company. Because I had those conversations in the room.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: With a real person, goes with people. And that's not going to happen from, you know, some zoom event or some Facebook dm. Those conversations and being in the right room at the right time is so, so valuable.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, where are you looking? Are you. I read something about like the Bay Area. Is that where you are or where are you?

Speaker B: I'm in Silicon Valley, California, south of San Francisco.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you have real people that are in the business trenches that you're able to kind of reach out to and do events with, which is pretty cool. Do you, do you host events?

Speaker B: That story about that boardroom, that boardroom was in Florida. Like, I flew out to go to that event to be with people in person. So it doesn't have to be in your own backyard, it can be elsewhere as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, I just think that's a cool place to be. I was just gonna wonder if you, like, learn new things because you're in the Bay Area. Like, do you think there's a location, uh, advantage that you, that you kind of get from reaching out and talking to these kinds of people.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's funny because when I think socially, like, you know, who are the people that I hang out with socially and that we know through kids and, you know, community and all that. Most everyone works for the bigger companies that we all use and, you know, think, uh, of every single day. Right. We have all these just massive, huge tech companies here. Um, now there are also folks who are in the startup space and who are, you know, working at startups or creating their own startup, um, as well. But I, um, think that energy is contagious. So, you know, when you go to an event out here and you're packed together with a whole bunch of other folks who are also starting running, building, fundraising, all that, like, it's cool, it's a, it's an exciting energy of uh, that sort of creator space of folks who truly build.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, do you think I should raise money or do you think I should bootstrap? Like, what's always been your philosophy with businesses? I've been kind of like, obviously, you know, it's whatever, but what do you think about raising money? Or do you think bootstrapping is better?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm biased. I've bootstrapped every single business on my own.

Speaker A: Yeah, me too.

Speaker B: Almost all my clients have all bootstrapped their business. They're not beholden to a board or to VCs or to large shareholders. Right now look, is it nice to have a bigger checkbook to put towards bigger initiatives? Yeah, that is. Um, but I think there's a lot of value in bootstrapping and doing on your own and being able to call those shots of the direction you want to go with the company.

Speaker A: Yeah. Any other thoughts on managing, uh, yourself, uh, as a CEO or what else? When you're helping business owners kind of make right decisions, have you been seeing lately or come to mind at the

Speaker B: top as an entrepreneur, it's lonely. Right. Who do you have to share your wins and successes with? Who do you have to hold you accountable? Who can you be vulnerable and share your real challenges with? Like it's a small group of people you trust. So, you know, point one I would share is that surround yourself with other like minded individuals who've been there, done that and so forth. Right. There's a lot of value in being able to share the wins, the losses, the challenges and everything between. Right. And that goes to the second point of ask for help, get the input. Right. People have done the thing that you're finding challenging before and have the wisdom to share with you if only you put it out there and ask for that feedback. Right. And the third piece of that is make sure you have some external accountability. A lot of business owners get distracted by, ooh, shinyitis and they go chasing one thing and they don't complete the thing they're working on. And so things don't ship, they don't get things done, they don't finish that marketing initiative. And that's a problem. So you need someone who's able to help hold you accountable to get done the things you say you're going to get done.

Speaker A: Yeah. And stay focused. I definitely like, in order for me to solve my shiny object syndrome, I had to go for such a big business that it really like consumed Me and really got like, lit my soul on fire and got me excited about it, you know.

Speaker B: That's good. That's a good thing.

Speaker A: I mean, tell me a little bit about, um, the business growth playbook. I guess I'd like to chop it up and see if there's anything in there that we didn't touch on or any other good things.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, when working with business owners for the past three decades, I realized that I would often come back to like, the same framework and a lot of the same strategies, and we put them in place and we got a result. And what I didn't realize at the time was there was a structure and a playbook I was going back to, but it was all up here in my head. And so that led me to codify what the framework is. And then, uh, last year actually published a, uh, best selling award winning book called your business growth playbook that introduces the whole framework, but more importantly, it provides the actual tactical playbook that you can go use in your business today. Because I know as a reader, nothing is more frustrating than cracking open a book or hearing a speaker and getting all excited about what I can do. And then they explain the why and the what, but they leave out the how. And that's really frustrating to me. So it was important that this was a tactical playbook that had the how. So you can now go take this book, read a chapter and go implement that in your business. Come back to the book, read a different chapter and implement that, and use it almost like a recipe book of choosing the ones that are going to, you know, move the needle for you the most in your business today. And then rinsing, repeating that again and again. Beautiful.

Speaker A: And like, what is kind of like, um, I mean, I guess when you were writing the book, what was your like, key insight? Like, what was your motivation? Is it just that you kept saying the same thing over and over to business owners, or is it just kind of like your playbook for what you did to scale businesses is what was kind of like the inspiration, I guess.

Speaker B: Yeah. So the, the playbook is what I've used to scale my own businesses and what I've used with clients for all these years to help them get back to growth, get unstuck, break that plateau, and scale the business as well. Um, so it's the culmination of that wisdom and that knowledge, uh, put into that playbook form. Now when I would go to conferences and I'd read books and I'd hear from folks, everyone's always Talking about how to get more customers. Get more customers. Get more customers. Customers. If you talk to most business owners and you ask them what they're looking for while they're feeling stuck, the hammer that everyone sees that nail. The problem is, if only we had more customers, or I want to get more customers. But if you peel back the onion and you look what's behind all that? Why do they want more customers? Well, they want more revenue. Why do they want more revenue? Well, they want more profit. Why do they want more profit? Well, they want more freedom from the business. Right. And so if we get down to like what the root of this is, there are other ways we can solve for that. That's not just a matter of get more customers. So I really challenge this idea of the only way to grow is more customers. And two thirds of the book is all strategies that let you grow your business without having to think about getting a single new customer, but leveraging more of what you already have, which is the customer base. Right? Yeah. And that's touching on some of the strategies we touched on earlier. If you have a customer base, there's so much you can do.

Speaker A: So we just leverage, yeah, let's get more out of what you already have, kind of. And then also like work on the product, work on everything. And like, I mean, as you kind of like work on the business, your business will naturally kind of get better and improve and generate more revenue. You know, it's just kind of like when, when people set up the systems and then they just kind of keep putting their foot on the gas for new customers and not fixing their product and not fixing their systems and not, uh, doing the thing. Then they end up doing more work. They end up, you know, overwhelmed. They end up basically, like we talked about, spinning too many plates all at once and just kind of burning out.

Speaker B: Um, so you're much smaller businesses where it's like a, you know, solopreneur service operator, they often go in these feast or famine cycles where they're like, okay, I've got free time, I need to grow the business. And they go do some marketing and they generate new business. And then they get so busy servicing those new customers, what they forget to do is all the sales and marketing that grows the business and they sort of keep flip flopping between the two. Now that's usually when you're talking a six figure business. As you grow towards and hit that seven figure at this point, you now typically have a team and systems and processes in place and you're not turning on and off your marketing. Right. You have all of it in place running all the time. Now it's just a matter of fine tuning and leveraging what's in place and now expanding out from there. And when we look at that funnel, we can often optimize the funnel. When we look at the customer base, there's usually a lot more we can do with that customer base. And we just now have levers we can pull as you hit and start growing past that seven figure mark.

Speaker A: Yeah. Beautiful. Well, uh, cool. I got some questions that I ask everybody who comes on the show. Um, I guess before we get into that. What's the best way to reach out to you? What's the best way to get in contact with you?

Speaker B: Yeah, everything we're talking about and more is all over@your businessgrowthplaybook.com. you, uh, can pick up a copy anywhere. You buy books, uh, of course as well, but a lot of the resources as, um, well as you can download pieces of the book and get the worksheets and systems and all. That's all@your businessgrowthplaybook.com.

Speaker A: beautiful. Uh, so the first question I ask everybody that comes on the show is money. Right. What is your philosophy or your thoughts on how to have, have a better relationship with money, how to manage money better, how to make more money? What's kind of your thoughts on that?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny because a lot of this wisdom isn't new. It's been around for millennia or it hasn't changed. But you know, the sooner your money can get working for you, the better. If your, you know, inflows exceed your outflows, that's great. If you pay yourself and invest and give back and do all those things before touching your expenses, you're in a good place. Right. I was reading a stat recently that um, uh, it's like 97% of, you know, quote millionaires, um, net worth wise, save, uh, 20% or more of their paycheck and invest. And all of them, it's at least 10%. Right. So if you flip that to, you know, what am I investing in first to put my money to work for me, the better. And if you can have that at 30, 40, 50, whatever it is, whatever it is percentage, that's a really good place to be. And if we start looking at our business as an income producing asset versus a job, that's a really important mindset shift to start getting you there because there's what you get paid from your business for the work you do. But if you hired people to do all the things you do in your business and then looked at your P L and looked at what's left over as a distribution to you as the business owner. That might not be a number you like. So build the business where the distributions to you just by being the owner of the company is a number you're happy with. And then sure, do the work in the business if you love doing it. But it should be set up so you don't have to do anything in the business, but it just produces cash flow by virtue of you owning it.

Speaker A: Yeah. And that's like, that's where everybody should kind of like get to in their business. And then once you get there, you can kind of take a breath. That's kind of what I've always found. It's like once you get over a million dollars now you can take a step back and then that's when you kind of got to go back. Now dial all the systems in, work on all the people, figure out your hiring pipeline, understand how to make more money from your CRM clients and things like that. So I love that if you find

Speaker B: out like the money you get out of the business and the time you put into the business that's going to provide an ROI number for you or an effective hourly wage. And most business owners don't want to do that math because they don't like that number. Right. So like in any math equation or any ratio, we can adjust the numerator or the denominator. So you can either put less hours in the business that improves your effective hourly rate or you increase the money that comes out of the business to you, you and that can improve that hourly rate and you can also attack it on both sides. So as you hire more people on your team, more specialists that can do things so that you're doing less in the business, that's going to eat into your, your uh, your expenses quite a lot, which erodes your profitability. But if you get to the point you're working an hour a week. Right. Um, then that number can look pretty good if you're happy with that. If on the flip side, you find you're working the traditional 90 hour week as a solopreneur trying to do all the things in the business, it's probably not going to be a very good number. So find a way that you have to put less hours into the business and increase the profitability that also comes out and you can get a really good ratio.

Speaker A: I love that. And then the next question is happiness. What do you think is the secret to a happy life? Uh, what do you think happiness is? What are your thoughts on happiness?

Speaker B: We've got to look at that individually for everyone. But uh, there's this balance wheel that can be used to look at the different aspects of your life. And if any one of those is out of whack, you're. Your wheel is bumpy and lumpy and doesn't roll as smooth. Um, so many business owners go all in on the business at the expense of everything else. They think they're doing it to take care of their family and to take care of finances, to take care of their health and all these different things. And then you go a number of years down the road and they've lost a relationship, they've lost their family. Right. They've ah, lost their health. And all for what? To build a business. Right. So instead I think we've got to look back and look at how does the business support what's important to us in our life, Whether that's family, health, wellness, community, all these different things. If you put all of those first and look at how the business supports that, you end up far more well rounded. And then you, you can physically and personally and emotionally be here for that long run with happiness, wealth, health and all the rest of those things.

Speaker A: Love that. And uh, then the final question is success. What do you think is maybe the formula for success? What do you think it does it really take to achieve success? Like to set a goal and go out there and actually achieve it? What do you think is, are the steps?

Speaker B: So first of all, I love that you're asking that. Um, it's an exercise I love doing with folks, is asking how do you define success? Whether it's for a role in the company, for the company overall, for yourself personally, whether it's for a weekend away with friends. If you know what the definition of success is for everyone, it's far easier to meet that. If you don't define success, then you'll always feel lacking, you'll always be chasing someone else's definition and you'll never get to any of them. Right? So take that step back and define what that means to you. Right? So I found the happiest Business owners, founders and entrepreneurs have put their personal life, their family, their health, their wellness and all those things at the forefront and designed the business to support that. Because if you're burning the midnight candle and you're missing out on the kids baseball games and the family dinners and you know, the vacations and all the rest of that. What are you doing it for?

Speaker A: Beautiful, man. Any, uh, last thoughts for the audience before we kind of wrap up?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think it's important to remember first, business owners, that you don't have to go that, go at this alone. What that means is don't be a solopreneur. Surround yourself with a team, whether virtual employees, agencies, whatever, but others who can help you grow the business that you're meant to grow. And secondly, at the higher level, surround yourself with other like minded business owners and entrepreneurs and founders to talk about what's going on in your business, to hold each other accountable and to truly grow. Right. Get mentors, get coaches, get people who've been there and been down that path before because they can help you and pull you along that journey and get you unstuck and get you back towards that growth. You don't need to go at it alone.

Speaker A: Beautiful. Uh, well, thank you, Jeremy, so much for coming on the show today. Jeremy Shapiro, everybody. We'll have all the links down below in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. Like, subscribe and I'll see you in the next one.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me. This was awesome. Love the show and love what you put together here.