Scaling a seven-figure business is no small feat, but imagine amplifying it to over $100 million. That's the kind of meteoric rise Brett Gilliland, founder and CEO of Elite Entrepreneurs, has navigated, and I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with him and unravel the strategies behind such explosive growth. Our conversation is a treasure trove for any entrepreneur aiming to elevate their business, with Brett's journey from Infusionsoft to Elite Entrepreneurs serving as a testament to the power of strategic investment in oneself and the transformative influence of a solid CEO group.
We take a close look at the pivotal moments that can make or break a small business, from the strategic shifts crucial for survival to the resilience needed to power through revenue dips and market changes. You'll hear firsthand how Stephanie's influence was instrumental in steering a company through tough transitions, including the daunting task of establishing a new sales funnel and online presence. This episode is a playbook for adaptability and foresight, showcasing the essential role these traits play in not just weathering storms like the COVID-19 pandemic, but emerging stronger and more customer-centric.
Lastly, we unpack the unique blend of leadership coaching and strategic business planning that propels entrepreneurs from being bogged down in day-to-day operations to mastering the art of working on their business. Discover the importance of dedicated strategic planning time, and learn about the 'elite ignition' program designed to turbocharge business scaling. For those who recognize the value of a robust support network and peer guidance, our discussion highlights the remarkable growth that's possible within 18 to 24 months through commitment and the willingness to evolve. Join us for an episode that's not just about reaching new heights, but sustaining them.
Scaling a seven-figure business is no small feat, but imagine amplifying it to over $100 million. That's the kind of meteoric rise Brett Gilliland, founder and CEO of Elite Entrepreneurs, has navigated, and I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with him and unravel the strategies behind such explosive growth. Our conversation is a treasure trove for any entrepreneur aiming to elevate their business, with Brett's journey from Infusionsoft to Elite Entrepreneurs serving as a testament to the power of strategic investment in oneself and the transformative influence of a solid CEO group.
We take a close look at the pivotal moments that can make or break a small business, from the strategic shifts crucial for survival to the resilience needed to power through revenue dips and market changes. You'll hear firsthand how Stephanie's influence was instrumental in steering a company through tough transitions, including the daunting task of establishing a new sales funnel and online presence. This episode is a playbook for adaptability and foresight, showcasing the essential role these traits play in not just weathering storms like the COVID-19 pandemic, but emerging stronger and more customer-centric.
Lastly, we unpack the unique blend of leadership coaching and strategic business planning that propels entrepreneurs from being bogged down in day-to-day operations to mastering the art of working on their business. Discover the importance of dedicated strategic planning time, and learn about the 'elite ignition' program designed to turbocharge business scaling. For those who recognize the value of a robust support network and peer guidance, our discussion highlights the remarkable growth that's possible within 18 to 24 months through commitment and the willingness to evolve. Join us for an episode that's not just about reaching new heights, but sustaining them.
Anytime I can work with somebody who has been there, done that has some perspective of from experience, that's that's valuable. That helps me see things in a new way. I see that as as a value in coaching. Anybody who can just help me see myself from another perspective from the outside is super helpful.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast designed for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, a small business coach and founder of Boss, where we make business ownership simplified for success. We offer professional business coaching, business loans and much, much more. To learn more, go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom.
Speaker 2:
Brett Gilliland is founder and CEO of Elite Entrepreneurs, a company that specializes in giving seven-figure business owners the knowledge, processes and tools to grow to 10 million and beyond. Brett is an expert in organization development, leadership and strategy and spent 10 years helping Infusionsoft grow from 7 million in revenue to over 100 million. As the leader of Elite Entrepreneurs, Brett has helped hundreds of struggling seven-figure business owners overcome their biggest challenges and achieve new levels of success. He has also played a central role in the development of Infusionsoft's leadership model and was serving as the VP of Leadership Development when the decision was made to spend Elite Entrepreneurs out of Infusionsoft. As the new owner of Elite, brett can't think of anything else. He'd rather be doing professionally.
Speaker 2:
Let's get to Brett now. All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots podcast, where we help small business owners create a business that can run without them, and today we have a very special guest. In fact, you might want to buckle up for this one, because you got two coaches on this show and we're going to share some good stuff, so introduce yourself, my friend.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, thank you, michael, for having me here. My name is Brett Gilliland and I'm co-founder and CEO of a business called Elite Entrepreneurs. We love to help seven-figure business owners figure out the keys to overcoming common pitfalls or challenges that they encounter when they're trying to scale their businesses. It's a lot of fun, been doing it for many years now and I'm just glad to be here with you.
Speaker 2:
Well, I appreciate you taking the time, and I promise you the listeners do as well, because I know, just from what I know of you, that you have a lot of good information to share with us today. I kind of want to start, though, of your journey in life, because I know a lot of business owners have trials and tribulations, or a little bit of a stuck in their mindset from something that they dealt with growing up, anything like that that you experienced, that you had to overcome, and, if so, how did you change that?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, great question. I come from a large family. That's not a challenge, it's just a part of the reality. So I'm the oldest of 10 kids and for most of that growing up time we were in a four bedroom house, so mom and dad had their room and the 10 of us had the other three bedrooms. When I was 15-ish, I slept on the couch. Literally that was the place where I slept at night, which I didn't mind. It's kind of like the Brer Rabbit, brer Fox stories and Brer Rabbit. It's like, hey, throw me in the briar pack, it's like, that's what I'm comfortable with.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, anyway, my dad ends up buying the house next door. We put a door on the side of each house and knocked down the fence and all of a sudden I had the master bedroom suite in the teenager house next door. So it had a good ending. But growing up in that kind of circumstance, my dad was a business owner himself. I watched him work hard to provide for a large family and there were some really great years and great times and there were some really difficult times. But he and my mom were always very prudent with money, and so I know that was a long setup.
Speaker 1:
But in my business today sometimes I can be a little bit too prudent with money, like I think well, I wouldn't spend that personally, so why would I spend that in the business?
Speaker 1:
But I've come to realize, thankfully, being surrounded by other growth-oriented business owners, I've come to realize how important it is for me to invest in myself in ways that I wouldn't have done in my personal life but in my business life. In order for my business to grow, I need to be growing, and so this year for the last eight or nine years we've had a community of seven-figure business owners. So people come and we provide mastermind opportunities for them and we have events and we do all those things for other business owners. But I wasn't doing that for myself, and so this year I joined a CEO group, paid the money that I wouldn't normally spend in. It's good for me to invest in myself. So I don't know if that's what you're looking for, but some of us have upbringings, like you said, that kind of lead to ways we view money or ways we view success or ways we interact with people, and if we don't overcome some of those patterns, we might be artificially holding ourselves and our businesses back.
Speaker 2:
Well, I love the one thing you said joining the mastermind group. I'm a big believer in coaches should have coaches. I mean. You know what I mean. I mean I can't expand it more than that. It's just if someone's looking for a coach, your first question should be do you have mentors or a coach or something you know? Because if they don't, I don't know how else you can grow within.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, no, I think you're spot on, and for years I found ways to develop myself, but not to the extent that I am right now, and it's been great.
Speaker 2:
That's awesome. That's awesome. So when did your entrepreneurial journey begin for you?
Speaker 1:
Well, I mentioned my dad having a business and so I worked in the business. That doesn't make me an entrepreneur, but I was in a family run business as a teenager. It was a construction company and I would work out in the summer heat in the Phoenix area like super hot grunt labor kind of stuff. But seeing how business ran and being exposed to some of the weight that my dad carried as he tried to run that business was good for me. I went to school and got an education in business and just assumed my default path would be to go into business with my dad.
Speaker 1:
I mentioned coming from a large family and I'm the oldest, so he as I was getting close to finishing up my college education, he decided without talking to me, by the way, he decided to just exit his business. He said to himself I really don't want for my kids to think that they have to do this thing Like I. Want them to figure out for themselves what they want to do in life and not feel like this is the path to come work in the family business. So he took that option off the table.
Speaker 2:
Wow.
Speaker 1:
We're not doing that. And so I was like, okay, well, that was the default path for me. Now what you know, what am I going to do? So I went. I went and got a normal job for a while and then I worked in and then I didn't love that job and I decided to go back for more schooling.
Speaker 1:
Now that I had a little more clarity about what I wanted to do, I went back for more schooling and I went to graduate school and studied organizational behavior, which is a geeky phrase, right? Organizational behavior? Who's ever heard of that? Well, all it really means is I studied the ins and outs of organizations. What makes them tick? If I want different results, how do I even analyze an organization, the body of an organization, and figure out what parts need help? Much like a doctor is trying to, you know, figure out what's going on with you and you have something wrong, so that they can prescribe the solution.
Speaker 1:
I studied organizations and I went to work for big companies and in those big companies I saw a lot of dysfunctional things. I was like, wow, that doesn't look very healthy and what about this? And I had ideas about how to fix those things. But in a large company. It's so challenging to turn a large ship. I mean it's possible, and my hats off to those men and women who are like, no, I can do. Large systems change. But that wasn't me. I didn't have the patience for it. I didn't want to go fight all those battles to make it happen.
Speaker 1:
So I decided that, instead of trying to fix big problems in big companies, I would go help business owners of smaller companies build it right from the start. Like, why, why wait till it's broken to go fix it? Let's build it right from the start. And I got all excited about that. So I threw my shingle out there and said I'm going to, I'm going to consult small businesses and help them do this right from the start. And I did love doing that.
Speaker 1:
But about nine or 10 months into that, I found a company that I got excited about and I went internal again and they were growing. They were at seven figures and they had some funding and they were going to scale and they wanted my help to be able to scale. They had this amazing culture. They didn't want to lose their culture and they wanted my organizational effectiveness or my organizational behavior expertise, and so they hired me to do that. So for 10 years I spent time helping this company grow from seven figures to 100 million. We hired hundreds of people. We won great place to work awards across national great place to work awards. It was amazing, but we were serving small businesses in that business.
Speaker 1:
We had like 25, 30,000 small businesses who were our customers and they saw how well we were growing. We're growing fast. We had this amazing team. They were interacting with our people and saying where are you finding all these people? How did you do this? And they started asking us to teach them how to do the company building work to be able to.
Speaker 2:
Wow.
Speaker 1:
And they're like, ok, that's cool, we'll start doing that. So we built this little training and coaching business. It's not a consulting business. We didn't roll up our sleeves and jump into those businesses and help them. We just said, hey, we learned the proven method, we learned a formula for how you do this stuff. We'll teach it to you and then we'll coach you as you're implementing. So that's what we built.
Speaker 1:
And we built this little seven-figured training and coaching business inside of this $100 million business. So 1.5 million training coaching business inside of $100 million business. It's a little drop in the bucket and every year, we were doing strategic planning and it was like there's these little things that have spun up over time. That's not our core business. It's time to get rid of those things.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's who I was. I helped that company go from seven figures to $100 million. That was that's who I am. And I built this thing where we were now teaching other businesses how to do it, and so I bought that company and we spun it out. So I didn't ever grow up thinking I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I assumed I would just be in the family business. That didn't work out and 20 years later, in 2018, I decided to buy this little training and coaching business and spin it out. So I've only been an entrepreneur in that sense, a business owner of more than just a little consulting practice of one person for the last six years. But it's been great and I have a team of seven people and we're growing and when we're doing all the things that we teach other people how to do. But it's fun. It's a great journey.
Speaker 2:
What was one of your? So the show's small business pivots. What was a pivot that you experienced when you got out from under the big umbrella?
Speaker 1:
if you will, yeah, yeah, great question. I didn't share this part, it would have made it longer. So you gave me an opportunity to share more. We didn't have any customer acquisition, no client acquisition, for this newly independent business. All of that client acquisition came from the customer base of that other company and there was an annual user conference for that software company. That software company was called InfusionSoft back in the day. It's now called Keep. I'm actually I didn't mean to do this, I'm repping them today, apparently with my best and I love Keep and the CEO and I are good friends but we didn't have any client acquisition as this business was spinning out. So I mean I'll share a real pivot later. But our first pivot was oh, we got to get our legs underneath us Because we didn't. I didn't really pay the price the entrepreneur price of going from zero to a million. This business already had a customer base and it was. We just spun it out. But we had no website, no funnel. It had zero of that.
Speaker 1:
Because, it all happened through our relationship with that bigger company. So we went into scramble mode and there were four of us running that business when it was inside of that other company and there was only one other person who decided to make this leap with me. So me and my trusty sidekick her name is Stephanie, she's amazing we set out to figure out how to actually keep this business alive, because the current customer base wasn't going to stay there forever. It started to a trit over time and we had to figure out how to tell the market about us, not just this captive customer audience that we used to have.
Speaker 1:
With no working capital or anything, yeah right, well, we had sales.
Speaker 1:
Thankfully we did have some recurring revenue, it was membership revenue. So we did have some sales to work with, thankfully. So anyway, that wasn't a true pivot in the sense that we would normally think, but it was job number one to figure out how do we get our own sales, how do we keep this thing alive on its own. So I told you, it was 1 and 1 half million. That first year, on our own, we dropped down to $900,000. That second year we dropped down to $720,000. The third year was COVID and immediately we lost about a third of our remaining customer base. When COVID hit and I was like OK, now the real pivot. Ok, yeah, the real pivot.
Speaker 1:
The real pivot was we were doing live in-person events that's how we were doing this quarterly events and we couldn't do that anymore with the pandemic, obviously Couldn't get in person, and so we had to take our two-day bootcamp that was our on-rant thing and turn it into a virtually delivered thing.
Speaker 1:
We brought the price down, we changed the delivery method. So we pivoted on our product and approach and it actually created a situation where by the end of that year we had more customers than we had since we spun out. So, thankfully, that year we were at $720,000. We flattened out. We were flat from the year before, but we stopped the slide due to that pivot and the next year we had seven figures again. So back in seven figure land, which feels awesome. But that was an important pivot. And the pandemic as awful as it was for many reasons, it actually forced us to change how we thought about our client or our customer. On ramping, where to start to provide value at a lower price point and get people in and experiencing that value and then ascend them to our ongoing programs, and that was game-changing for us.
Speaker 2:
That's an important lesson for all small business owners, because sometimes we just like to check the box, if you will, and everything's going great. And what I appreciate about the pandemic the outside of it is it taught us all that nothing stays the same. If you would have told us, even just two years before the pandemic, that the whole world world is going to shut down, we'd go, yeah, yeah, yeah, take him out back and shoot him because he's lost his mind, like, but it just goes to prove that. Don't get comfortable, for business owners always evolve, always be adept. You know, everything that you're saying is like uh, for for me it was similar live events.
Speaker 2:
I did a lot of keynote speaking that's how we got our clients was talking to groups of business owners, and then all of a sudden, we weren't set up for this online stuff and zoom and everything, and so we kind of even as a business guy, I'm I'm being very vulnerable here saying that we got a dose of our own medicine as well. Sounds like you did too, and so we practice what we preach. So I love you sharing that.
Speaker 1:
Yeah Well, and, and you know, being a coach to business owners, what it's like in the, you know call it as early as October and maybe as late as as January, but all businesses, all the, all the ones who have a shot at growing, really are doing some annual planning stuff right If they're intentionally growing.
Speaker 1:
everybody did their plans and and most of those companies did things like SWOT analysis as part of their planning, and there wasn't one company that I'm aware of that wrote pandemic on their, on their threats for that year, and so we all created these beautiful plans for 2020. And then those plans got thrown out the window, for the most part right, or at least had to make. We had to make serious adjustments, so I love that you asked about pivots.
Speaker 1:
I love that you're making the point that we all, we all know business breeds chaos. Running a business, owning a business, breeds chaos and we're the ones who have to bring some some tamedness to that. We, we have to control, at least direct the chaotic energy to where we can pull together as a team and go create something together in the future. But the world's going to happen. How well we adjust to that and and stay on our plan and create what we've intended is is up to us, I guess.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so you work with small business owners. What are some of the common challenges that you see in the majority of them?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, this will make you smile, michael, I'm already smiling. Well, you're a happy guy, but like we're going to relate on this really easily. So most business owners have started something that they created from scratch and and they know every inch of it. Right, they personally put most of the parts of that machine together I'll use the machine analogy for this business but they, they know they assembled it part by part. They know every inch of it. They know when something breaks how to deal with it.
Speaker 1:
And one of the biggest challenges for a business that gets to that seven figure mark that wants to keep scaling, is that that tricky. It's almost like Siamese twins separating Siamese twins, the tricky separation between business owner and the business. Like we have to figure out how to decouple their identity and say you get to have life on your own business. It's not inextricably linked to the business owner anymore and the business owner has to figure out how to separate himself or herself and get other people involved and give a real ownership to them so that that machine can can grow, that machine can do more than it used to be able to do.
Speaker 1:
And so I I feel for business owners it's so hard. There's a lot of personal worth and ego tied up in that creation of theirs, and when they have to start letting go and organizing work in a way that they can give ownership to another person. I don't mean equity, I mean responsibility. Right, they can give real responsibility to other people and and and empower them to run with things. That's one of the hardest seems to be one of the hardest tricks for a human being to learn for some reason. So that's where I would start.
Speaker 2:
I have a business owner that just talked to you recently and he said, because he was a startup and he had a family friend, you know, doing the office administration and fulfilling a role, and he told me she's leaving because it's getting more demanding. And I said, oh, you finally have a real business then, cause you know, at first it's we're on the playground playing together, having fun at work, but now it's a real business. That sounds like a lot of work. I'm out of here, I'm not your friend anymore, and that's what happens.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that can happen and it just underscores the importance of surrounding yourself with great people. But even great people will get frustrated and leave If you don't learn how to set a clear vision with them. I'll use the word with them. I. I'm a huge advocate for co-creating that future with them so that they're completely bought in. But even if you're of the mindset of I need to set a vision for them and I'm the one that sets the vision and they just do what I say, even if you're in that place, you still have to create an environment and and and clarity in such a way that they know how they contribute, they know how they play with others.
Speaker 1:
There's this next level of of people and leadership kind of thing that trips up a lot of entrepreneurs, so it's not just separating their identity from the business, but now it's leveling up to. I can't just learn and do things like I did with marketing and sales and, you know, client fulfillment activities. I built all that, but now I have to learn how to be a leader. I got to learn how to build a team and surround myself with really amazing people who can own stuff, who can, who can take responsibility and who will enjoy having me as a leader Right, that's, that's, that's the next, the next trait.
Speaker 2:
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Speaker 2:
Now let's get back to our guest. So I think many of our listeners have read the e-myth and if you haven't, I highly encourage you to do that. But using the e-myth because a lot of business owners that I talk to they have read it and but their question is still like how do I quit working in the like I'm? It takes 16 hours a day. I don't have any other time to work on the business. Have you got any advice?
Speaker 1:
for them. Yeah, yeah, first of all, you're not alone, right? We all, we all have that challenge, every single one of us. And so the ones who figure it out, what are they doing? That I'm not right. That's the question.
Speaker 1:
So the ones who figure it out. Figure out that we start where we are and then we build from there. So don't go immediately to one day a week. I have CEO vision strategy time and I'm away from the office. You would laugh yourself out of your own chair if you tried to pull it off today. So don't start there. Start with okay, if I'm working 16 hours a week, can?
Speaker 1:
I take one of those hours on a consistent basis. I hope, even if you're working 16 hours a day. Sorry, I said 16 hours a week. I hope, if I work in 16 hours a day, that I'm at least having meals. Can I take lunchtime and make that a sacred time when it's just maybe, instead of down in something in an unhealthy way for 15 minutes and getting back at it, maybe I actually carve out one full hour for lunch. Or maybe it's early morning before everybody gets to the office, maybe it's at five o'clock when everybody else is ready to go home and you're like okay, now's my hour.
Speaker 1:
Just carve out a consistent time every day, even if it's 30 minutes a day, for the first little while, until you start to see some improvements. You guys are all capable people. You can do amazing things. You have shown that already. So this is just a matter of saying I will dedicate a chunk of time, however small it is, every day, or maybe once a week at first, and I will think about little improvements in my business that will yield an opportunity for me to spend more time. Maybe next week I get to spend 45 minutes a week instead of 30 minutes a week, right, so start where you are, but carve out dedicated time and then make it sacred. So I cannot be interrupted during this time.
Speaker 1:
If you have a right-hand person or a key leader in your business, I invite you to have some of that individual personal time and then I invite you to find a way to have consistent time with him or her to just work on the business together, because as soon as you start enrolling help in this process, you'll get further and the commitment will stay there. Some of us start in personal commitment on our health, on our finance and whatever, and we're pretty good about letting ourselves down. It's a lot harder for us to let others down, and so if we'll invite somebody in and maybe it's Michael as a coach, maybe it's your right-hand person, maybe it's your significant other, your spouse invite somebody in to that conversation with you so that you have an accountability buddy or whatever you want to call it, but some expectation that somebody else is gonna ask you or help you keep this thing going. So those are a couple of thoughts to start with.
Speaker 2:
Those are fantastic thoughts. I recall when I first started my business a business over two decades ago. One of the first things I learned was until I change, nothing around me changes. So that kind of falls in line with what you're saying. It's like it all starts with you making, getting serious about making changes. I love that you have a business. You're business coaching as well. How does a business coach help people? I wanna hear it from someone else. What's the value in that?
Speaker 1:
I don't know enough about what, the way you teach things, michael, but we actually have and I use the word teach very intentionally we have a method, so we call it our elite growth method. So there's a thing right here's a method that we teach and then we're coaching to the implementation of that. So that might be a little bit different than the way you coach. There's some coaches that are just like I'm a business coach. It's very broad and wherever you're at, client will just start there and we'll start making progress and that's awesome. But we're very specific. The one to three million journey and three to 10 million journey we see those as stages of small business growth. That's our thing. One to 10 million and so we have a method around that and we coach specifically to that.
Speaker 1:
So what do I see as the value of that? Well, anytime I can work with somebody who has been there, done that has some perspective of from experience, that's valuable. That helps me see things in a new way. I see that as a value in coaching. Anybody who can just help me see myself from another perspective, from the outside, is super helpful, and I would use somebody once told it to me as the analogy of being in a jar can't read the label from inside the jar. If I'm in a good coaching relationship right now, I have a great mentor on my sales skills. I'm terrible at sales Well, I was.
Speaker 2:
I used to be terrible at sales.
Speaker 1:
Now I'm learning how to be great at sales, but I have a mentor. He helps me see things as we're role playing. He helps me see in my language, in my behavior, things that I don't pick up on. He can just observe it and play it back to me and say you just did this, do you realize you're doing that? And no, I didn't realize right. So that's super valuable in coaching.
Speaker 1:
Another thing I think that is valuable in coaching is the accountability piece, like we talked about before, which is if I just commit to myself that I'm gonna do something, I can justify pretty quickly postponing that when another thing happens, like, oh, this unexpected thing happens, I'll just put that off to another time. But if I tell Michael, michael, I will do this by you know what, by when I will do this thing by this time, then even if something else happens, I still feel some pressure, because our next meeting you're gonna ask me how that thing went. You said you were gonna do this by then. What happened? Right, give me the report. And that accountability is huge, especially for business owners who don't technically have somebody to report to. So unless you have investors right and then you do have some you definitely have somebody to report to.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so I mean those are a few of the key benefits, I think, from a good coaching relationship.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, you and I align on our coaching. I believe in a framework of some kind. I just think that it takes clarity to get where you want, and so without a framework or something, it's kind of hard to find clarity, right, yeah, yeah, so Got to have some clarity from how to do things and best practices.
Speaker 1:
There's lots of good stuff out there. Let's leverage that. And then the second point about well, I can't really see myself either, and a lot of the coaching has to do with you as a leader not you, Michael, but you as a business owner. As a leader, like how you're showing up, what your language is like, where you're coming from, and when you aren't clear, when you aren't coming from a powerful place, when you're not being very choiceful in your language and how you lead, that has implications in your team members and in your business. Anyway, it's just helpful to have that outside perspective. And then the accountability piece, which I'm sure we align on that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, well, so I believe it's less than 5%. Small businesses ever hit a million dollar mark, so you work with the ones that already have.
Speaker 1:
That's right.
Speaker 2:
What? How can someone that's never well, let me backtrack Most people that haven't hit the million dollar mark. They haven't hit it because they can't even see themselves doing that. Like that's just another world. That's right. How does one get to that point to think that way? Do you have any ideas on that?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so, and I love that true coach style you went right to mindset and what people believe is possible. That for sure is at the core of whether or not somebody can do it. But there are some, actually there's some I don't know, call them technical things in growing a business that business owners have to figure out if they wanna get to a million. They have to solve the problem of consistently generation and they have to solve the problem of being able to fulfill at that higher scale, right. So there's, if they don't do that, even if they have the belief that they can, if they don't do the work of figuring out how to get consistent revenue generation and how to fulfill, as we're growing right, a larger number of clients or members or patients or customers or whatever you refer to them, as then you're not gonna get there. So if you're trying to do it all yourself, you may not get there. Some entrepreneurs are a little more superhuman and they figure out how to get to a million, even if they're doing a lot of it themselves, like we talked about earlier. But yeah, the belief is key. If they don't believe they can get there and a lot of them are like I've never been a business owner, and that's true, right Most of it.
Speaker 1:
Until six years ago I wasn't a business owner. I was self-employed. Once I was a one person consultant shop. But now that I'm a business owner I find myself in those spots all the time. I've never been the business owner of a $10 million company. I was a right hand person to somebody who was the business owner of a $10 million company and we grew that thing to a hundred million.
Speaker 1:
So I have cockpit experience but I didn't have my hands on the controls and now that I do, that's another level of awareness and understanding. But all of us have to kind of beat that thing of like I've never been here before, how do I do it? And that's what's so valuable about having somebody who has been there before mentors, coaches, peers that can help you. I think that's key to our success.
Speaker 2:
What would you say are the maybe one or two essentials that once someone has hit that million dollar mark, kind of obviously I call it a real business now, because now they have to think differently, they have more at stake. Most people they're like, oh, if I could just hit the million, I'd have more. I'm like, no, you have more responsibility, you have more at stake. Once you get to those levels, every pivot that you make could destroy your company in one day. But what would you say are some of the essentials? The multi-million dollar companies that are required.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
So we started with that idea that I have to become a leader.
Speaker 1:
A business owner has to learn how to be a leader and they're like, well, I've been leading a team this whole time two, three, four people or whatever but yeah, you were a boss.
Speaker 1:
You have to learn how to set a clear vision with that team. So there's a level of intentionality, a future orientation and building for the future that they have to do, and then there's a level of discipline or structure or rhythm that they have to build in. Those would be the two big levers I would point to at the start that you gotta learn how to be a leader and eventually a leader of leaders. And then, on the organization side, you gotta have a ton of intentionality, clarity, alignment to a strategy that works and then a meeting rhythm around the planning and execution for not just today's results but building tomorrow. Right, that balancing act of working in the business and on the business, there's some structure and process that enables you to make sure we're spending enough of our scarce resources time, energy, et cetera on building tomorrow's success. Not just delivering today, cause that's what we all get sucked into is just today's thing.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Well, I'm gonna shout out your company and let you talk about it for a few minutes here. Elite entrepreneurs, I know you're very successful in helping businesses. Continue to get to that next level. How can someone? What benefit will they get? How long does it take? What does your programs look like? That kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:
Oh well, thank you for giving me the opportunity. We have a foundational thing that we call elite ignition, and it's actually that pivot we were talking about, where it used to be a two day intensive, $10,000 boot camp kind of experience. Now it's a $3,000 investment. It's two hours a week for a month of group instruction and we're workshopping on some foundational pieces for this scaling work its purpose, its values, its mission, mission, goals. We're just helping you and your core team together.
Speaker 1:
It's not a CEO program, it's the business owner and their key leaders coming together to do this work under our guidance. So that's how people start with us. It's like a prerequisite to then our ongoing membership programs, and our membership programs have two day live events once a quarter and we do monthly coaching and workshop things, and so there's a whole programmatic thing to help people do that scaling work. You know, as a coach, if we had a personal trainer on here who knew exactly how to get you into tip top physical shape, right, they knew the diet, they knew the exercise, they knew it all. But no amount of sharing that does any good unless there's work done right.
Speaker 1:
Lesson-wise does what we're talking about.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, amen.
Speaker 1:
Amen to that right.
Speaker 2:
Oh man.
Speaker 1:
So my point was saying that was a setup for this, for the businesses, the business owners and their teams who get in and do this work that we guide them through. It is not uncommon at all for them to double or even triple in 18 to 24 months. But it does take 18 to 24 months. It's not an overnight thing, right and so. But as they start to do the daily, weekly, monthly repetitions right, doing that exercise, doing that work, they start to align through, they start to get clear about where we're going and they align a team and the team's all excited about this now and you start to see the performance lifting and it has this flywheel effect.
Speaker 1:
I'm a big Jim Collins fan, so I'll use the flywheel analogy. You know the flywheel starts to turn and then it starts to build momentum and then at some point it starts to become unstoppable. But doubling, tripling within a couple of years is totally doable. And if you're in the place right now where you're like I can't imagine, it's all I can do to keep this thing together, to hold it together.
Speaker 1:
It's because the thing that you've built is incapable of doing what we just talked about, and so you have to change as a person and your business has to change in terms of some of the structure and process. But it's all knowable, it's all, it's proven stuff, like there are people who do figure it out. It's a relatively few, it's small, the percentage is small, but you can do it and there are ways to do it.
Speaker 2:
I just want to kind of piggyback on part of that that you mentioned, because a lot of business owners I don't think they realize it is work outside of the sessions. I mean I have some that well, this just isn't really helping and I'm like, well, the first thing you said when you walked into this session was I didn't get anything done from last time, so of course it's not helping and that's just. I don't know what it is about. The business coaching. Do you find that to be kind of common? It's more about the work you put in outside of the sessions than it is what we teach you.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's why I said it. That's the way I did, right? It's like, look, no amount of expertise changes the outcome, and it's great that they're learning and growing, they're trying to get help, but the progress comes, and then that's to be perfection. I'm a big progress, not perfection guy. The progress comes when we take steps that are different than what we're doing today. Everybody on this call is actually a genius at building businesses. They've done it and they're expert at building the business that they have today, which is a cheeky way of saying you're perfectly designed today to get the results you're getting today. Congratulations, you did it. You created the perfect machine to get the results you're getting today. Do you like those results? Do you like what your personal calendar looks like? Do you have the freedom you want? If the answer is no, then you have to start working on the machine that you've built. You gotta change that, and a lot of that is changing you as a person as well you as a leader.
Speaker 2:
I love that analogy. How can someone get a hold of you? Follow you social media?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so our website is called grow, g-r-o-w with W-I-T-H elite E-L-I-T-E dot com, so growwitheletecom. This is a great place to plug in. On social, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram and those other places, but LinkedIn is the place where I hang out the most. And my name, Brett Gilliland. My handle on LinkedIn, if you look closely, says built to last champ.
Speaker 1:
I told you I'm a big fan of the L-I-T-E fan and it's the number two. So the word built the number two, last champ. That's how you find me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:
Are your courses sessions? Are they in-person only? Do you do remote also Still?
Speaker 1:
It's a combination and our membership, the delivery, is a combination of in-person and virtual. But, like I'm often doing free training stuff, last month I did one that some of your listeners would appreciate and it's called, finally, how to hold my people accountable, or something like that is what I called it Like a lot of business owners like if only I were better at holding people accountable.
Speaker 1:
if only they were more accountable. There's this thing about accountability we think is the answer to all our problems. So I just did a free training on that, open it up to anybody who wanted to register and we share that stuff on social. But yeah, there's a lot of free stuff and then there's paid membership stuff.
Speaker 2:
Fantastic. Well, you've been a blessing today and a voice of hope for many. I'm confident of that and I want our listeners to know that we are two business coaches, but I almost feel like the good business coaches, we're almost like teachers, like we're not in competition. We're here to impact people, like we just have that empathy to. We know you're hurting, we know you have challenges. We're here to help. So we help each other too. My best resources are other coaches, so I don't want people to think this is a conflict or like a construction company.
Speaker 1:
I love that perspective, michael. Yeah, and hey, there are millions of businesses who need help and there's more than two of us out there trying to make that help available. So, yeah, it's an abundant world. There's lots of ways to get help, and I love that you've created this vehicle to share your wisdom and invite other people to come and share as well.
Speaker 2:
Well, I appreciate it. You've been a knowledge tree today. Any final words, if you were to say one last thing to business owners.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, thank you. My last thing would be a combination of you're doing great. Greater levels of greatness are possible, so I just admire and honor entrepreneurs in general. All value creation happens because of people like you, and I hate it when the ability for you to have bigger impact gets stifled because of the complexity of a growing team or business and you've started to burn out and feeling frustrated and receding back to a more manageable level when life was easier and I made more money seems so appealing, and yet it does the world of disservice for you not to go out and do something bigger when it's totally possible and you can do it Well said.
Speaker 2:
Thanks again, Brett.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's fun to be here. Thanks for having me, Michael.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to the Recap and Coaches Corner Recapping today's conversation with Brett. Remember, as you navigate the twist in terms of building your business, you're never truly alone. Seek guidance, embrace change and, above all, stay resilient. Hitting over to the Coaches Corner for a practical takeaway to help you implement the insight shared today. Reflect on today's discussion, Consider this actionable step.
Speaker 2:
Take a moment to assess your current support network. Are you actively seeking mentorship and peer advice? If not, make a commitment today to reach out and connect with like-minded individuals who can offer valuable insights and support on your entrepreneurial journey. Remember, growth thrives in collaboration. If you want to learn more about our business coaches and mentors at boss, go to our website, businessownershipsimplifiedforgexcoachingcom. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. Please don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast. If your business is stuck or you need help creating your business to run without you, go to our website, businessownershipsimplifiedcom, and there you can schedule a free consultation to learn why business success starts with boss. If you have a guest or topic suggestion for our podcast or just want to talk anything small business related, email me personally at michael at michaldmorrisoncom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.