Growing Beyond Your Shadow as a Business Owner — Vinnie Fisher // Fully Accountable

Quotes

• “We created a landing page for your listeners, that’s www.fullyaccountable.commartech and the reason for that is I want you to have a copy of my best-selling book for free and I want your listeners to have a look at a CEO mindset. What I want you to realize from there is this idea that business have cycles and what you and I need to do as marketers to really hustle up the first phase of a business is about getting an offer to convert.” - Vinnie“When a business gets into this 7-figure of annualized revenue you’ve now reached rare earth. Only 7% of all companies reach 7 figures or a million dollars of annualized revenue. What got you there is side hustle offer creation. What’s going to take you from the first phase of the 7 figures up into the late stage of 7 figures and then 8 figures is process and people.” - Vinnie“You actually have to start changing the habit structure of what got you there so it can take you somewhere else and that is ridiculously hard.” - Vinnie“One of our struggles as small business owners, is that the typical finance principles and department maturity were all built and designed for bigger businesses. They are the same principles but the resources deployed are usually for bigger businesses.” - Vinnie“Here’s a great principle that big finance talks about. Only deploy 25% of your free cash flow back in the capital meaning deploy resources. Otherwise, you’re deploying too much cash out of your business. While in direct-to-consumer ecommerce, we deploy so much of our cash back into capital that we actually stretch ourselves thin. Early on, I get it. We gotta do that. But somewhere along the way, we need to practice a little bit more maturity and not chase all channels at the same time.” - Vinnie“That’s good advice. When you’re just starting out you need to think about what are your quickest monetized channels, and often those end up being paid channels. You’re not cultivating marketing strategies that have the highest ROI. You’re starting to think about the things that have fast returns so you can start to get to the level of scale.” - Ben “We talk about profit margin, for me, it’s about the amount of investment that you have to put in, the pace of return is equally important as the amount of return.” - Ben “I think of businesses in season and the way I think of seasons from my line is 5 years. I think about the first and second half of the season. Each businesses have their flow and cycle and one of the problems is, if you go a little too fast at the beginning of the season, by the time you get to the end of it or the middle of it, you may be too tired, a lot of injuries pile up, or you’re out of cash so there has to be a cadence to the growth.” - Vinnie“When it’s time to throw a little bit more to the fire is when you’re gaining momentum and not ahead of time. Most businesses, 4 out of 5 of them will go out of business for running out of cash.” - Vinnie“If you can go longer in your return for a dollar-in, dollar-out, you’re probably going to be competitive. But you got this cash flow problem, how long can you tolerate until you’re run out of cash. That’s the struggle that has to be measured constantly as you look through your relationship to spending the dollar to when you get the dollar back.” - Vinnie“There is not just a calculation of what the return is from a marketing channel, there’s also a dance for when that return happens. As you mature as a business you can start to make more bets that are long-term payoffs. So it's the equivalent of PPC vs. Content Marketing. One of them gives you that immediate return and the other one helps you grow strong for the long haul. But when you’re desperate for energy or growth, you can put your money in a place that’s going to give you that immediate burst of return as opposed to focusing on content.” - Ben “I would’ve realized early on that I have a hero complex. I think I could fix and solve all problems so I want it to be really clear. I believe in people over process. I believe in adding good, credible people in my team so the core values that sit on my company website, if you want to know Vinnie Fisher go read the US section. I use that as a way to bring people to my team. People say, I got a killer team and guess what? That’s the biggest secret to being able to adapt to what we do. When I have really good people, doing really good things then I add in management and process them.” - Vinnie“It starts with recognizing that if you want something to grow beyond you, your profit margin is going to go down because you have to pay somebody else. You have to accept that. Along the way, you start taking risks and you start filling in needle-moving activities that you can’t handle yourself and you go out to get good people to join your team, that’s the risk of growing something beyond you.” - Vinnie“This organic thing called running a company, it’s not easy and I’m not here to suggest that it is. You have to know a lot about yourself as the leader of the company. I am not a good manager. I am actually quite good in certain tactical spots if it's my bailiwick and I’m quite good on the creative element of anything that is in my zone but I never, ever wake up understanding that I have a category of management. I’m a leader, not a manager.” - Vinnie“What I learned early on is a process-driven manager. You would start out with a Project Manager title right at my hip because that person would like to improve what’s behind me. They don’t want to create a new road, we have a motto here at the company and we’re okay walking down the dirt road as long as we’ve paved behind us. I have pavers on my team who create processes. Why? Because real brands deliver consistency. Excellence is delivered through consistency.” - Vinnie“Me speaking and amplifying the things that I’m not going to be the best to do for our company, that humility in leadership actually empowers the people who are good at it.” - Vinnie