Could this be a page from your journal?
Entrepreneur’s Journal Entry - Day 456
06:00am… Ahhh, I remember the days when these journal entries were cathartic and give me clarity for the day ahead.
But these days, they read like a script for the movie Groundhog Day. I’m starting to wonder what the point of them is, because I’m not resolving anything.
I have more on my to-do list than there are hours in the day, and it has been like this for months. Driving sales is a daily grind. Getting the team running without my constant input? That’s a grind too. One week we’re on fire, and the following two we’re scrambling. Will business always be like this? I hope not, because I’m exhausted.
I know something needs to change. I’m just not sure what. If I’m being honest with myself, I’m in denial. My business isn’t progressing, and I’m not making the money that others think I am. My relationships are hurting, and heaven forbid I take a breather for myself.
I’ve debated quitting to live an easier, simpler life. But that would be giving up. I’ve come way too far, and invested too much effort into this business to do that. I can’t escape the voice that tells me there HAS to be a better, simpler way to grow a successful business. I mean… I know there is. Because other entrepreneurs I know don’t seem to have it this hard.
But how do I do it? This isn’t what I signed up for, and I just don’t know what to do next. Ah well, I guess that’s a question for tomorrow. I’d better get cracking with work.
If you relate to this, grab a coffee and buckle in. Because the 2X Growth Methodology will change that. For good.
“You don't get any points in life for doing things the hard way.” — Tim Fargo
Introduction To Your New Growth Bible
- The exact levers to scale your high 6 or 7-figure business
- The very important order of attack to get the most traction
- The #1 critical element that will help you achieve all of your goals
- How to free up time and get 2-3x more out of your current team
- The numbers (and map) to see how you can exponentially grow your top and bottom line
- How to grow with consistency and control — without more hours, ad spend, social media, or expenses.
Before we start, let’s cover 3 critical points…
There is a pivot point in every successful business owner’s life. Where growth by hustle and muscle is replaced by growth through leverage.
And my mission is to help you make that pivot.
But before you learn, you must be willing to unlearn.
A lot of what I’ll show you may be at odds with what you’ve learned so far in your journey. It goes against everything the “gurus” would have you believe.
Our approach is extremely logical, and you’ll come see that. I expect you to have lots of “a-ha!” moments.
It is, however, going to be about the proven principles to scale for long-term success. It is going to be about simplicity, and helping you achieve your big goals without the grind.
So if you’re ready to make your life easier — and learn a new, better, simpler way to scale — then let’s get started.
Here’s the first point you need to understand. Write this down. It seems easy, but 99% of entrepreneurs don’t really understand this.
What you focus on is important, sure. But even more important is the order you work on those things.
For example:
If you try to run ads to generate leads before you have an irresistible offer, you’ll burn your hard-earned profits and not get an ROI.
Trying to hire before you’ve optimized your model, so it’s scalable? You’ll work more with less money to show for it.
Hiring a marketing agency before you’ve honed in and validated true product-market fit? It’s doomed to fail.
The good news: the strategic way I’m going to show you will make growth faster and easier.
You need to attack the right things in the right order. And here’s a small hint: stop thinking, “I just need more leads to fix everything.”
That is low 6-figure thinking and what will keep you and your team on the short-term hamster wheel.
This is a huge distinction. Many online “gurus” will teach you how to grow at any cost.
And those “costs” are usually your time, your profit, and even your health.
I see many businesses hustling weekly and monthly for new leads and sales. They seem to focus more on revenue and sales than profit, consistency, and cash flow.
Short-term hamster wheel vs. long-term success. You choose.
I will teach you how to turn your business into a predictable and profit-producing MACHINE.
- Do you want the time freedom to take your family on a stress-free vacation?
- Do you want to generate more profits, 3-4x’ing your take-home earnings each month?
- Do you want to grow faster to the next level — building the momentum you know is possible?
- Do you want to start a new business while your company thrives without you?
- Do ALL of these?
Critical Point #1: There is a very strategic order to growth.
What you focus on is important, sure. But even more important is the order you work on those things.
For example:
If you try to run ads to generate leads before you have an irresistible offer, you’ll burn your hard-earned profits and not get an ROI.
Trying to hire before you’ve optimized your model, so it’s scalable? You’ll work more with less money to show for it.
Hiring a marketing agency before you’ve honed in and validated true product-market fit? It’s doomed to fail.
The good news: the strategic way I’m going to show you will make growth faster and easier.
You need to attack the right things in the right order. And here’s a small hint: stop thinking, “I just need more leads to fix everything.”
That is low 6-figure thinking and what will keep you and your team on the short-term hamster wheel.
Critical Point #2: It’s not just about growth. It’s about predictable, profitable growth.
This is a huge distinction. Many online “gurus” will teach you how to grow at any cost.
And those “costs” are usually your time, your profit, and even your health.
I see many businesses hustling weekly and monthly for new leads and sales. They seem to focus more on revenue and sales than profit, consistency, and cash flow.
Short-term hamster wheel vs. long-term success. You choose.
I will teach you how to turn your business into a predictable and profit-producing MACHINE.
Critical Point #3: Everything you want to achieve is possible on the other side of the machine. Everything.
- Do you want the time freedom to take your family on a stress-free vacation?
- Do you want to generate more profits, 3-4x’ing your take-home earnings each month?
- Do you want to grow faster to the next level — building the momentum you know is possible?
- Do you want to start a new business while your company thrives without you?
- Do ALL of these?
This is ALL possible only if you turn your business into a thriving, growing machine.
It’s about operational excellence — but much more than that. And the cool thing is, it’s closer than you think. You just have to shift the way you are working.
So let’s dive in…
Phase #1: Elite Strategy & Foundation
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
— Abraham Lincoln
- The structure for your business, and how it’s set up to scale (your business model).
- Your go-to-market plans of what products/services you’ll provide to who, and how you’ll reach them (achieving product-market fit).
- A well-thought-out, simplified plan of action—including your order of attack and key levers
Elite Strategy & Foundation Step #1: Simplify
After working with hundreds and hundreds of businesses around the globe to help them scale, I can tell you this:
Over 99%+ of the time, we have shifted our client’s strategy and model to scale better/faster/easier. Over 99% of the time!!
So, long story short, I can guarantee you that you are making things way harder than they need to be.
I realized this myself years ago. After hustling, grinding, and hitting a wall, I walked around the streets of Chicago thinking about my job as an entrepreneur. I had this thought I couldn’t shake…
“There must be a simpler way to grow a successful business. It doesn’t have to be this damn hard.”
So that sent me on a journey and is now at the core of what 2X is about. We are here to help make things easier for you as you scale.
And the first step is to simplify.
We have to cut things out. Get your business lean and aligned on what matters most. In this case, it’s helping you drive consistent, profitable and faster growth — to help you achieve your big vision.
Elite Strategy & Foundation Step #2: Nailing Product-Market Fit
Nailing the right strategy and model to scale comes down to three of the most impactful words for your business: Product-market fit.
With true product-market fit:
- Your offers are so good they sell themselves
- You’re able to get traction and drive growth with your offers
- You get a lot of referrals and word-of-mouth marketing
- You’re making super happy customers that continue to buy from you
Most business owners go their entire career without really getting this and, as a result, rely on hustle and grind to get sales, keep clients, get referrals, etc.
This is one of our most important frameworks, and it’s called Model ONE. Here it is mapped out:
- Are you selling…
- The right people
- The right products
- At the right price
- With the right positioning
- In a way that can scale?
These five crucial elements will help you to:
- Simplify your business.
- Get super targeted on who you serve and how.
- Increase your marketing traction and sales conversions exponentially.
- And lead to a better, simpler, much healthier business.
If you want to get more traction, then this is where you need to start.
And if a single element isn’t optimized then you’ll experience more friction and running your business is much harder than it needs to be.
But if you get it all right:
- You’ll generate leads left and right
- Your conversion rate will increase
- You’ll create raving fan customers who stay with you a long time
- And generate constant referrals and word-of-mouth
This is possible — if you nail your Model ONE elements. This is how you become the market leader. And as you learned in the first step, the key is simplicity and getting focused.
The first absolutely crucial piece that dictates all of this defining your Ideal Target Audience. If you nail this, by eliminating “pain-in-the-ass” (PITA) clients, and focus on your ITA, everything will be a lot easier.
Elite Strategy & Foundation Step #3: Strategic Quarterly Plan
We need to align your team on the highest impact actions. This will help you to remove major bottlenecks and drive growth by working on the most important things.
The way you do this is with a quarterly/monthly strategic plan.
So let me ask you:
Do you do strategic planning every month/quarter?
Is your team super clear on the highest impact priorities to focus on?
Or are you being reactive and working on what’s right in front of you?
If you don’t have a strategic quarterly/monthly plan, you will stay stuck on the hamster wheel forever.
Your company should be pulsing, reducing reactivity and working from a great strategic plan.
Now, with these 3 steps in place, you have the foundation to scale.
- Your business is simpler (meaning way more time, energy, resources, money, team time to focus on what matters most)…
- You’re getting more traction with a better, more focused and strategic business…
- And your company is improving substantially every month and quarter, by working on the right key levers in a more focused way (instead of being reactive and constant short-term focus), pulsing to the next level.
Elite Foundation & Strategy Summary
- Strategy is the 80/20 of growth; take the time to get this right and it’ll pay dividends.
- Cut things out of your business aggressively and focus on what matters most. Because simple scales.
- Make sure you’re selling the right people, the right products, at the right price, with the right positioning, in a way that can scale.
- Define your Ideal Target Audience first and it’ll make the rest a lot easier.
- Make sure you have monthly and quarterly planning that keeps you focused on the right things.
Phase #2: The Operational Machine
“Without strategy, execution is aimless. Without execution, strategy is useless.”
— Morris Chang
- Most businesses suck at operations. And as a result, they:
- Aren’t profitable
- Aren’t getting the most out of their team
- Have key leaders stuck working “in” the business
- Don’t have clarity on exactly where to focus or what to fix
- In short, they’re reliant on hustle and grit. It’s time to change that once and for all.
- Get very clear on what’s working and what’s not
- Get your team aligned and clear
- Help hold them accountable
- Drive more performance
- And exponentially grow your business.
Operational Machine Step #1: Numbers Are The Guide
Numbers are your guide. They show you what’s working, what isn’t, where to focus, and what to fix. Your numbers, tracked correctly, paint an accurate picture of your business.
Most business owners suck at using numbers as their guide. They only look at their financials once a month — 15-20 days after the close of the month — so they’re always on a short-term hamster wheel fighting to bring in cash for the upcoming bills.
Using revenue and profits and your cash position as the primary numbers to see how you’re doing is like driving your car but only looking in the rear-view mirror.
Quite frankly, this is dangerous.
Instead, you need to see the road ahead. You must act faster, make decisions, get your team clear/aligned, hold them accountable, and flat-out drive results.
Numbers are fact. They are reality. They don’t care about stories or excuses. They tell you exactly what’s going on: what’s working, what’s not, where to focus and what to fix.
When we come into a company or start working with a business, the first thing we ask after the vision and goals is, what are the numbers?
Your Success Formula
A LOT of business owners don’t know them! They think they know some of the key metrics or financials, but when we look into it, they are often significantly off. And if you don’t know the numbers, you can’t make objective decisions.
I can’t emphasize this enough. Numbers are at the center of your multi-million dollar business machine. If you want to make your job easier and start making better, faster decisions, let the numbers be your secret weapon.
At 2X, we track a lot of numbers to pinpoint the problems and opportunities to address. But you don’t need to start there. There are two primary ways to think about your numbers:
Your business is a formula. There are a set of key metrics that drive your business. Once you uncover them, they’ll give you complete clarity on where you currently are, and the key levers you need to pull to achieve your goals.
To make this even simpler, let’s break your business down into 3 areas. We call this your “Value Chain.”
So first, you should identify the most important metrics to track for each phase of your business.
For marketing, maybe your top metric is the number of qualified applications per month.
For sales, it could then be your close ratio of those qualified applications.
And for fulfillment, it could be customer lifetime value (LTV). So, the start of your success formula would look like this:
Then you need to track what those actual numbers are right now. For example…
If you get really intentional and focus on driving the key metrics for each phase one by one, where do you think you could get them to in the next 6 months? Let’s set your targets to achieve for each step.
This will be your success formula. This is what you’re working towards.
Then from here, you’ll be able to track your progress for each metric. Everyone on your team can be clear on what metric to drive, and you can see the impact. Even modest improvements compounded lead to some massive results.
In this above example, with fairly small improvements for marketing, sales, and fulfillment, the business 2.5X’ed their sale value. Plus, they are above the magic $1 million per year rate of $83,333 per month.
This is the power of the machine and Value Chain done right. This approach is priceless.
The Top 10 Numbers
The second way to master your numbers is by identifying the top ~10 metrics that drive your business. If you do this, you’ll be well ahead of 95% of entrepreneurs and have more clarity than ever of where to focus.
Those 10 metrics may not be immediately obvious, and they are often different for every business. Sure, some will be similar (e.g. revenue and profit), but you need to figure out what the most important numbers are for your business. Ask yourself:
If I had to make all of my business decisions based on only 10 numbers, what would they be?
- Profit
- Cash
- Client Satisfaction
- Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
- Cost to Acquire New Customers (CAC)
- Employee Satisfaction/Performance
- A Leading Marketing Metric (e.g. number of qualified leads)
- Number of Sales Opportunities (e.g. sales calls scheduled)
- Sales Conversions
- Revenue Growth (total rolling 90-day revenue chart)
- Average Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
- Churn Rate (how many clients cancel; you could also do client success rate or customer satisfaction, such as Net Promoter Score, but we like churn as a top metric to know)
- Cost to Acquire Customer (CAC, broken down by channel and overall)
- Monthly Free Cash Flow (you could track profit margin)
- Number of Sales Opportunities (booked sales calls, only counting those who are qualified)
- Close Ratio (of total qualified sales opportunities)
- Core Capital (making sure we are ahead financially; more on this soon)
- Employee NPS
- And a leading metric for our top marketing focus at the moment
If I know these, I’ll know at least 90% of the story of what’s going on in the business. From there, we can then understand where our time and energy need to go.
If you don’t know the top numbers that drive your business yet, block off some time this week to figure them out.
You may not be a “numbers person” but if you drive your business without knowing these, it’s the equivalent of driving your car blindfolded. You will not get where you want to go, and you will crash a lot on the way there!
Now, one other thing to note. The first time you dive into the numbers, they may be more depressing than you thought. But having this view will give you the power of clarity that can then lead you to make much better decisions moving forward.
One of our clients has had a ‘successful’ multi-million dollar business as a well-known market leader in his niche, working with celebrities. The bad thing is, prior to 2X, he didn’t know his numbers at all.
When we dove in, we realized that most of his business was not profitable! He wasn’t pricing himself the right way, so a lot of his high-end projects were not only stressing him out, they were literally losing him money. This put him on this seemingly never-ending financial hamster wheel. Without knowing the numbers and his finances, he was positioned to be stuck working and chasing money forever!
But then getting clear on the metrics wasn’t easy at first. He said, “I didn’t sleep well for a month, but now I know my damn numbers!” Now he has a great plan of action on what to do (and what to stop doing), and has been profitable and growing, even during what is typically his ‘dead’ season!
I cannot reiterate enough how important knowing and acting on your top metrics are.
You can either guess and hustle or make easier, better, faster decisions using the numbers as your guide.
You’ll join the elite business owners when you do.
Operational Machine Step #2: Systems
Now that you’re going to use the numbers to drive a lot more clarity, now we need to build your machine.
And the first step to do that is with systems. They’re our superpowers here at 2X, and they will change your life.
Everything in your business is a system. Everything.
- Hiring people
- Firing people
- Generating leads
- Closing sales
- Getting payment
- Doing strategic planning
- Running killer meetings…
The list goes on. Everything is a system.
- Drive much more consistency
- Get a lot more out of your team
- Make for a better customer experience
- Allow you to delegate effectively (knowing the output will be strong)
"Organize around business functions, not people. Build systems within each business function. Let systems run the business and people run the systems. People come and go but the systems remain constant."
— Michael Gerber
So do you have systems? Is this a part of your team culture? Do you have effective playbooks that you and your team use?
Or are you running purely on intuition, gut, hustle and what’s in your brain?
This is a very risky way to run a business, and one that we would highly recommend you shift away from ASAP.
Same as with your numbers, you can break your business down to help you map out the primary systems you need.
Imagine your business with the proper systems for marketing to generate consistent, qualified leads… and then the system to effectively convert those leads into sales opportunities… and then the systems to make those new clients raving fans, keep them a long time, and drive referrals.
This is how our private clients have grown by over $310 Million in just a few years in our 1-on-1 coaching programs… and over $400+ Million after they finish our programs. They turn their business into a consistent, predictable machine!
And you can too.
Operational Machine Step #3: World-Class Team
The last piece of your business machine that combines with systems are: your people.
The cool thing is, systems set up your team to WIN. They help make things more efficient, clear, consistent and free up time along with brain capacity. So you want a lot more out of your team?
- Then do the exact steps in this article:
- Simplify your business and cut out the waste
- Get very clear on a targeted strategy and model set to scale
- Get everyone aligned on the key initiatives that will move the needle, setting up the business for the long-term
- Stepping away from the short-term reactive hustle and grind, and focus on building a machine
- And leverage systems to scale more efficiently and consistently — with everything you do.
- This all again goes to the very important order I mentioned earlier. You can’t really blame your team if you don’t have the first initial phase 1 ‘Elite Strategy & Foundation’ elements nailed.
We need to align your team on the highest impact actions. This will help you to remove major bottlenecks and drive growth by working on the most important things.
The way you do this is with a quarterly/monthly strategic plan.
So let me ask you:
Do you do strategic planning every month/quarter?
Is your team super clear on the highest impact priorities to focus on?
Or are you being reactive and working on what’s right in front of you?
If you don’t have a strategic quarterly/monthly plan, you will stay stuck on the hamster wheel forever.
Your company should be pulsing, reducing reactivity and working from a great strategic plan.
Now, with these 3 steps in place, you have the foundation to scale.
- Your business is simpler (meaning way more time, energy, resources, money, team time to focus on what matters most)…
- You’re getting more traction with a better, more focused and strategic business…
- And your company is improving substantially every month and quarter, by working on the right key levers in a more focused way (instead of being reactive and constant short-term focus), pulsing to the next level.
And you can’t expect your team to thrive without operational excellence either. So, if you don’t have either of these really nailed, then start there.
And with your team, here are a few key things you need:
An org chart that makes it clear what key functions and responsibilities you have in your company.
For each department, it should be clear what the key responsibilities and KPIs are for each department so that everyone in that department is clear on the key metrics you’re working towards. Then you can use the numbers as the guide to see how the department is doing.
And then from there, each individual needs clarity on their exact role responsibilities, how they’ll be measured (KPIs), and then have the proper cadence of accountability and support.
The way to make this easy is with the Role Scorecard.
The role scorecard is my favorite team tool. It’ll give you and your team more clarity. This in turn increases performance month to month by ensuring everyone is on the same page.
It takes a lot of the emotion and subjectivity out of management by having clear and defined KPIs to track and assess performance.
With each of these, your team is clear and focused, they see how it all adds up from their department to the company overall. And they have the systems to help them execute a lot more consistently and efficiently, the numbers as their guide, and now they can perform at an extremely high level.
This is how you build a world-class team.
Operational Machine Summary
- Numbers are your guide. They show you what’s working, what isn’t, where to focus, and what to fix.
- There are a key set of numbers in your business that drive your success. We call these your success formula.
- Identify the top 10 metrics in your business, by asking yourself: If I had to make all of my business decisions based on only 10 numbers, what would they be?
- Everything in your business is a system. They’re the key to driving consistency, getting the most from your team, delegating effectively, and getting you free from the day-to-day.
- Every person and department should have clarity on their key responsibilities and KPIs. Our Role Scorecard training will help you with this.
Phase 3: Exponential Growth
“Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together.”
— James Cash Penney, founder, JCPenney
So, let’s recap. You have an elite strategy and foundation with a simple, strategic business that is set up to scale.
You then have operational excellence in place with absolutely clarity, consistency, and a world-class team running the day-to-day of your business.
Now it’s time to drive that next level of growth! Here is how we’re going to do it.
The gurus will lead you to think that you “just need more leads” — and everything else will be fixed.
This is NOT where you should start. Follow the three phases, but even further, start with the end of the customer journey…
Exponential Growth Step #1: Create Raving Fans With World-Class Fulfillment
If you ask almost any six-figure entrepreneur how to double their business as fast as possible, they’ll probably start telling you about marketing tactics and ideas.
What if I told you it’s better to save marketing for last?
Since working with entrepreneurs from different industries and all over the world—and helping our clients grow by over $310 million in the last three years—I’ve learned that…
Growth actually begins in fulfillment.
Done right, improving fulfillment makes everything else easier and possible. This little secret resolves many of the issues six-figure businesses face. When you create best-in-class fulfillment, you:
- Make raving fan clients.
- Raving fan clients buy more from you.
- They tell their friends and share about you (your best form of marketing).
- Those happy clients (and their referrals) are easier and better to work with, and become more successful more often.
- You get out of the weeds and don’t get pulled in to fix issues all of the time, so you can continue to focus on growth.
- You can also handle more clients as you grow.
- Your team is less stressed and making a bigger impact.
- Your profitability goes through the roof.
- Your average client LTV rises, so you can reinvest more back into the business.
And more!
It’s this crazy compound effect that all starts with world-class fulfillment!
Most entrepreneurs think that their products are great. But are you making truly raving fans? Are they sending you referrals left and right? If not, you have an opportunity to improve your fulfillment.
Done right, great fulfillment creates this ‘organic viral loop’—driving more leads and repeat business, more consistently, and on autopilot. It’s the best form of marketing you can have!
This one variable that most ignore brings an exponential impact across everything you do. You create a much healthier, stronger, more sustainable and scalable business, a happier team, and way less stress.
Odds are that you’re good at what you do. But I challenge you to make this a focus and take the next step. If you become truly world-class at what you do, you’ll dominate any and every niche you go into.
Get this wrong, and you’ll be constantly muscling growth. Get this right and anything is possible. You choose.
Now, one of the major benefits of doing this: with one simple lever you can drive 2-3X revenue… and even more growth in your profits!
Whether you’re at $200k per year—or $500k, $5 million, or somewhere in between—here’s a lesson I never want you to forget:
One of your best growth levers—something that will make your life way better and your bank account way fuller—is to maximize the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer.
If a customer buys from you one time for $1,000, then their LTV is $1,000.
If they buy one product from you for $1,000, and another service for $200 per month for six months, then their LTV is $2,200 ($1,000 + 6 x $200). Same customer, just a lot more revenue.
One of the hardest and most expensive things in business is to get new customers. So when you do, keep them!
With this one lever alone, you can dramatically grow your business.
There are four key ways to impact your LTV:
- Raise your prices (or go higher-end)
- Sell your customers more new stuff (cross-sell or upsell)
- Sell your customers more of the same stuff (and keep them longer!)
- Adjust your business model, the structure of how you get paid, and/or offerings
Oftentimes, we’ll do a combination of these to drive higher LTV. This is such an important key to growth that we address this on day one with all new clients.
Most of the time, it only takes a couple of simple tweaks to multiply their customers’ LTV by two to four times. This way, we don’t even have to talk about going out and finding new customers, spending money on advertising, or doing much more work. With one simple lever you can 2-4x your business!
The power of this can’t be underestimated.
Remember: one of the most expensive things in business is to acquire new customers, so get very strategic, intentional, and skilled at maximizing the value of the ones you do get.
Consider the following questions to help:
What changes can you make to enhance your customers’ LTV? Can you sell them more products or raise your prices?
How can you keep your customers twice as long?
Can you change how you charge to get even more revenue long-term?
Map out the perfect customer journey for your ideal target customer. What is the perfect flow of products to maximize their LTV?
Once you’ve given those questions some thought, map out this structure with your conservative target goals. This will be your product map, and the blueprint to many millions of dollars done right.
Exponential Growth Step #2: Sales Conversions
When we start working with a business, there are a few quick wins we go after that help them scale to the next level. A few of these are:
- Freeing up time (so we can refocus that time to work “on” the business and drive growth, not “in” the weeds)
- Maximizing LTV (through improved Model ONE and fulfillment)
- Tapping into the “goldmine” of revenue within reach…
And one of the best levers of all:
Improving and optimizing your sales conversions.
Improving sales conversions to convert new and existing leads at a higher, faster rate is one single lever that has a massive ripple effect across your cash flow, marketing, and entire business.
And the cool thing is, it’s often quite easy to make a big impact.
If we do nothing else but help you increase your sales conversions from, for example, 10% to 15%—keeping the same number of leads, the same price, the same LTV, and everything—then you grow your business by 50%!
One lever. Massive impact,
And with the right systems and strategies, you should make sales a major strength.
Exponential Growth Step #3: Marketing
You may be surprised to find that marketing is the final piece; but here’s why…
At 2X, we’ve had some big results. At the time of this writing, our clients have generated over $310 million while still in our coaching programs during our first few years of business!
At the center of this success is what I learned from working with hundreds of entrepreneurs:
There is a very important and strategic order to things.
And in that order for small businesses, marketing is not what is most important… at least not to start!
When it comes to building a consistent, repeatable, fast-growing business that scales without your hours and grit, marketing is the last primary focus.
I know this may be a shock and it’s counterintuitive to everything you’ve learned to date, but we’ve proven it over and over and over again.
Do you need marketing? Absolutely. No question about it. Without leads you wouldn’t have a business. But to scale from six to seven figures, and do so FAST, the best thing you can do is have your primary focus be in the exact order laid out in this guide. Each phase sequentially builds on each other to help you get consistent traction and momentum.
If even one piece is off, you won’t get the results you know are possible. And this is exactly why most entrepreneurs are stuck and not growing even though they’re working hard and trying a lot. By executing the other steps, marketing then becomes so much easier and better. Trust me.
Let me put it this way: In the first 90-day sprint of our 2X Accelerator program, we talk about marketing directly less than 10% of the time. Still, our average six-figure client has more than doubled their revenue. That’s in just 90 days!
How is this? There is so much value to drive more growth more easily in the other steps as well. It is not about tactics, like most teach.
If you don’t have a clear strategy, an irresistible offer, fulfillment and operations not ready to go, you are stuck in the weeds, aren’t clear on your numbers, and everything else I’ve talked about so far, then trying marketing tactics just won’t work.
- Decent content (at best)…
- That wasn’t hitting their true pains/desires…
- For a product that was not differentiated (and definitely not “irresistible”) or validated (true product-market fit)…
- With a sales process that wasn’t very strategic or proven.
On top of that, I wasn’t maximizing customer value (LTV). I wasn’t making raving fans. I didn’t know the numbers well enough to fix the problems. I wasn’t using much social proof. And much more.
In short, I was setting these marketing agencies up to fail!
And that they did. It wasn’t their fault. It was mine. As a result, they burned through a lot of hard-earned money and literally years of time thinking that they were going to fix things. When in fact, the path to big growth and success does not start with marketing.
The fastest path to where you want to go—with the freedom, the profits, the consistency—is to follow the 2X Formula and the steps in this guide, one element at a time.
Trust me, you do need marketing. Just don’t skip the other steps or you’ll be like other entrepreneurs—running in place on the six-figure hamster wheel. The order matters a lot.
But once you do get ready to scale your marketing efforts, here’s what you need to know:
#1. Turn each marketing channel and lever into a consistent machine first. This will give you the base of consistency and execution you need.
#2. Then, grow those channels, optimizing and improving them as you go. This way you’ll be doing “more of what works” and not just adding on more to do.
Most businesses are adding new channels and tactics before they’ve validated or optimized what they have, and as a result keep adding more work without more effort. We are not going to do that!
But when you do have your primary channel(s) validated, systemized, and growing… then it’s time to:
#3 – Stack new channels and levers, one at a time, on top of each other.
The channels you’ll want are related to O3P:
- Organic
- Paid
- Partner
- PR
When you start to stack on new channels that are consistent, repeatable, growing machines on top of each other, this is another lever that leads to exponential growth!
And better yet… when we stack:
- Increased profit margins
- With higher customer value (LTV)
- With better sales conversions
- AND growing leads…
You have true exponential growth.
This is how we’ve had so many private clients add over $1 million in revenue, and many grow their business by 4-10X!
Exponential Growth Summary
- The “guru method” of just generating more leads will only get you so far. It’s unsustainable and won’t give you long-term success.
- Growth actually begins with fulfillment. It’ll create a compound effect that helps you grow without marketing.
- So you need to focus on creating raving fans, you know you’ve succeeded when they send you referrals.
- The other benefit to creating raving fans is that you’ll increase the LTV of each client.
- Increasing LTV can be done by raising your prices, selling new things, selling more of the same stuff, or changing the structure of how you get paid.
- Increase your sales conversions and it’ll have a huge impact on your profit.
- Marketing is important, but it’s the final part of the jigsaw, and you should focus on it last when everything else is in place.
So, in summary…
This may be a lot to digest. But here’s what you need to know:
First of all, STOP.
- Stop the hustle and grind
- Stop the short-term, “I just need more leads” focus
- Stop doing the same things that haven’t worked for years
To break through to the next level, you need to shift the way you do business. What got you here to your current level of success won’t get you there – to that next level of achieving “it all”… So you have to adopt the new, smarter way to scale.
Here’s your new, simpler, better way to scale a wildly successful business:
- There is a proven order to get more traction and make things easier as you scale
- It all starts with an elite strategy and foundation
- From there, it’s about having operational excellence – as you now know, everything you want to achieve is possible on the other side of the machine
- And from there, you can drive exponential growth (without the chaos and overwhelm)
So what’s next? What do you need to do?
Well, there are two paths from here…
You can do what most entrepreneurs do: try to figure it all out yourself. You can guess, grind, hustle your way, read a few books, and hope that it all just ‘clicks’…
OR
You can take the fast-track.
If you’re serious about long-term growth and success, and you want hands-on guidance and support then we can help.
After all, it’s what we do day-in and day-out with businesses across the globe.
We work with you to guide you step-by-step how to scale your business for predictable long-term growth and success.
It’s not about information. It’s about implementation, and turning your business into a growing machine using the proven 2X methodology. We have optimized our systems and strategies for years, to help save you years of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Seriously.
Let alone the growth we provide.
Looking For Help To Grow Predictably and Profitably?
We all need a helping hand in this lonely world of business. Gee, even Zuckerberg leaned on Steve Jobs for guidance.
And if you’re like most business owners, you’re either stuck and don’t know what to do next… or you’re just working on the wrong things.
Either way, we can show you how to claim back ownership of your business, by working on the things that will actually move the needle for you.
So if you’re looking for guidance to get on track and achieve everything you want from your business, we’ve got your back.
We’ve coached and mentored 100s of business owners just like you. So there isn’t a problem our team of world-class coaches can’t help you overcome with personal one-on-one guidance and the support of our proven growth methodology.
Click below to schedule a call at a time that suits you and we’ll show you exactly how it all works