How to Create a 7-Figure Business Without Working 60+ Hour Work Weeks with Austin Netzley: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by high level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down how to create a seven-figure business without working 60 plus hours a week. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Austin, Netsley, and EO Fire Studios. Austin is the founder of 2X and author of the updated book from six to seven figures. And today we talk about how systems make things much more repeatable, consistent, and not reliant on you and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Austin and our sponsors.

0:35Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white-label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, success isn't a solo journey. It's about who you surround yourself with. That's why I built the Freedom Circle, a powerful community of entrepreneurs ready to support, inspire, and share the ideas that move you forward. Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more. Austin, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:27What is up, Fire Nation? It is so good to be back. John was my first online mentor. So, John, first of all, thank you for getting me started. I'm so excited to be here. Man, something about becoming successful that most people disagree with, I would say, is around operational excellence. Like operational excellence is not as sexy as sales and marketing, but I think it's your real moneymaker as an entrepreneur. I mean, we've worked with hundreds and hundreds of businesses around the globe. And if you can really combine the right strategy with operational excellence, you'll actually get what you really want and what you started in business to begin with, which is like time freedom, you know, and not being owned by your business, which is great profits and cashflow, which we both love, John, and we love to talk about, but consistent repeatable growth and the ability to really be in control of your time that comes from operational excellence.

2:11So most people don't focus on this enough and that's what we do. So that's how we've gotten some of the results that we've been able to achieve. Absolutely. And operational excellence is one thing that we thrive on as well. Thanks to Kate Lynn Dumas. She's been rocking that for 10 years now, which is kind of hard to believe. And man, you definitely brought me back, Austin, to the Fire Nation Elite Days. Those were some good days. I actually was mentally transported to Kate and my first apartment in Pacific Beach, which was not the one we ended up at, which was like right on top of the bay, like overlooking Pacific views.

2:46Now, this one was a little less, shall we say, impressive. It was what it needed to be. And we kind of used that first kind of catapult in the first couple years of business to continue to parlay to where we are today. Now I'm speaking to you from my home here in Puerto Rico of six years. And you're in Austin, Texas. We're both doing the right thing when it comes to taxes to minimize that as much as possible. So I'm excited to bring that into the conversation as well. But I want to start off by talking about the differences, really the key differences between low six, so we're talking like 100 to 200K a year, and a seven-figure business.

3:23What are those differences? Well, the big thing that it always starts with is the mindset. for sure. Like there's a big difference between the mentality of somebody doing 150K and 2 million per year. So that's where it really starts. But the big one that I want to focus on is strategy. From our standpoint, strategy is the 80-20 of growth. And if you haven't heard of 80-20, it's the Pareto's principle showing that 80 % of your results come from 20 % of the inputs. Well, strategy is, again, that 80-20. So if you get your strategy right with true product market fit, where it's narrow, it's focused, it's strategic, and it's built to scale without you and your time, then scaling seven figures is actually pretty easy but most people don't nail this at all they rely on muscle and grit and just like ultimately create a job that they've created for themselves and a business that really owns them so the framework that we use uh for is to get more traction is called model one so what we're looking at is are we serving the right people the right products at the right price with the right positioning in a way that can scale so that's a mouthful but if you get this right where you're really clear and targeted on the right people with just a couple products and you've got the right price and the right positioning and you do so in a way that can scale, you're going to get more traction in less time.

4:31But most people are afraid to go narrow. They're trying to be all things to all people. And ultimately, again, are just very reactive in their business. So to summarize, we've got to get the right mindset and start thinking like a seven-figure business owner. And then number two, we've really got to spend a lot of time on really nailing strategy and getting product market fit. I like to say niche, you're flipping face off because fire nation, if you're not willing to niche, to really narrow things down and be focused on one or two things that are really working for you, you're just not going to be the best solution to real problems in this world.

5:02And until you are the number one solution to a real problem in this world, nobody's going to seek you out. You might be able to get clients and customers, but nobody's going to seek you out because people only seek out the best, the number one solution to their problems. So become that become the best. And Austin, let's be honest. you work hard. I work hard. And I will say there were some days in the early days that we talked about at the beginning of the episode, like 2012, 13, 14, maybe in the 15 as well, where I was working 40, 50, 60, sometimes even 70, 80 hour weeks when I just had to get things done.

5:36I mean, I was doing that. I was putting in the grinds, but man, let me tell you, now I'm sitting here 10 years in, I'm working six days a month, seven days a month max. I'm taking months off at a time. I just got back from an epic one month trek out to Europe for my bachelor party, then a little solo JLD time, just kind of walking in the woods of Italy. And it is a situation where I still work really hard. I really do. But I work really hard six days a month, seven days a month. And then I have the other 23, 24 days a month to travel, to relax, to chill, to focus on other things, to focus on health, et cetera.

6:14So not many people that are listening here are like hoping to be working 60 to 80 hour work week. So how can we still grow our businesses without these crazy hours? Well, do the exact model that you've done, John, and you've done this for years. So I really, really admire what you've done there. You and Kate have built just an amazing business. But the first thing that we see with so many six figure business owners is they've got to simplify. All right. At the end of the day, most things that people are working on aren't really driving big results When you really break it down, the majority of leads, sales, and profits come from just a few levers.

6:49So we've got to understand what those couple levers are and then build our business around those. And then the second piece is we've got to turn your business into a machine by leveraging systems. Again, Kate has done this so well to turn everything that you guys do into a machine leveraging systems. And then you're able to delegate it on down. But again, one of your biggest jobs is to learn what is working and what is not, cut out or change what is not, and double down and grow what is, and then systemize that. So if you do that as an entrepreneur, you're going to be very, very successful. What most people just add on more and more and more and more to do, that's not the path.

7:26You have a very simple, successful business because you know what works. People should follow that model. And by the way, that was us at one point. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to say that we built this perfect business from the ground up day one. At one point, Kate and I looked at our business. This was like in 2016, 2017. We're like, we have 13 employees, which I'm not saying it's a crazy huge number, but I'm like, that was like a number that we thought was kind of big for us, for what we wanted. We're like, we have like 12 different offerings. And frankly, if we really sit down, only a couple of them are really bringing in the massive revenue.

7:59And we just spent the next year after that, you know, just trimming our team down to where we're at now of just three, full-time employees from 13. That's a huge difference, both financially on a month-to-month basis, revenue-wise and expense-wise, but also just on a bandwidth, managing all those employees. So we essentially took 10 people we were managing off of our books to bandwidth and financially. And we essentially just stopped doing the things that weren't bringing in significant revenue. Yeah, maybe they were bringing in a few thousand here, a few thousand there, but for a percentage of our business, which was making a couple hundred thousand dollars a month, that wasn't a big percentage.

8:36And it wasn't enough for us to keep doing those things because we had other desires for our time, for our energy, for our focus. And we just narrowed down to the couple of things were really working that were really working. And guess what? Our revenue never suffered. In fact, in some ways it's gone way up in some certain areas that we doubled down and focused on. And we are now literally living the time bandwidth mindset that we want to be living right now. Now, I want to talk about the scales because we did talk about that for a second. And you mentioned what Kate's done and what you've done in your business.

9:09But what are the best ways entrepreneurs can actually leverage the systems that they're building so that they can still scale? Well, the first thing that you've got to realize is everything in your business is and should be a system. And people are working in that system. They just don't realize it. It's often in their head, right? So what we need to do is spend a little bit of extra time and get that out of your head and start to turn it in to something else or something that somebody else can start to follow. But everything in your business, like I said, is a system. It could be your sales script.

9:36It could be how to run a podcast. It could be how to get on podcasts and doing the outreach for that, setting up social media or doing social media posts or even writing copy to invoice it, like everything. I could name every single thing in your business and there should be a system around that. And if you do this where you properly record a system around a particular thing, you can easily delegate it to somebody else because there's very few things in your business that are actually really complex if you break it down with the proper system. So systems make things much more repeatable and consistent and not reliant on you.

10:07And that's what we want is to be able to have things be consistent, repeatable and scalable that aren't reliant on you. So that's what we've got to do is start to spend a little bit of extra time to turn everything that you're doing. And the thing is, it's like, it's not just you. If you have a team, have your team start to create systems as well. And eventually they'll be the one running all the systems and it's a beautiful spot to be. But just imagine yourself 12 months from now, if you do systemize your entire operations, the freedom that you can have, the growth that you can have by doing that.

10:36And that gives you the opportunity that you now have, John, that you're talking about. Yeah. I love all of this and Fire Nation, we're going to keep talking about this topic to improve your business, your lifestyle when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Okay. Let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business. And they are also our featured partner, HighLevel. If you're an entrepreneur, coach, agency, or a course creator looking to grow faster and smarter, HighLevel is the all-in-one platform that replaces your entire tech stack. Seriously, think ClickFunnels, Calendly, MailChimp, Kajabi, and even your CRM, all rolled up into one powerful white label solution.

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11:46Seriously, every question that pops up, they will have your answer waiting. And if you visit my special partnership link, you'll get a free trial. So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. Awesome. We're back and I want to talk about the best levers. I want to talk about the marketing channels that you found work the best. Talk about those. So most entrepreneurs are sitting on a goldmine. And we've seen this over and over and over again.

12:23And everybody comes to us. They see some of our big growth results. And they're like, hey, how did you do it? How do I get more leads? How do you run YouTube ads? How do you do all these different things? Whatever the latest tactic is, they're always looking for new, new, new. But we often grow a company very fast by tapping into just what's around them, what's within reach. So the first place that we always start is with your current customers. So they are the best place to go to generate more revenue and a lot more profit. And what we say here at Tech is growth begins with fulfillment. So if you maximize the lifetime value of each customer, let's say that each customer is worth$1 ,000 right now on average.

12:58But if we have a very strategic process, we really optimize what the right products are, we make the fulfillment systems to make raving fans there, and we're easily able to make that$1 ,000 customer turn into a$2 ,000 customer. Well, if we change nothing else, the same number of leads, the same number of sales, with that one lever alone, we've doubled your business. So what we want to do is start there. And then again, just make raving fans. If you make raving fans, they're generating case studies, they're sending referrals to you, they're buying more from you and increasing their LTV, as I talked about.

13:28So growth begins with fulfillment and they're much easier to sell to because you already have a relationship with them. So that's where we want to really focus on. From there, we're optimizing your sales system to make sure that we're maximizing conversions. And oftentimes people aren't doing follow-up or they're not managing their proper leads or they don't have a sales script. So they're not really converting the leads at the proper level. And then from there, then we go into marketing channels. And the thing from marketing channel standpoint is, again, everybody's trying to add on new, but what we want to understand is what's working right now.

13:58And let's systemize and focus on that and scale those up. So a lot of people come in and they're getting a lot of their business from, let's say, referrals. And we're like, hey, do you have a system around referrals? Are you consistently asking? Are you strategic about the way that you get referrals? They're like, no, they just come in. I'm like, what would happen if we really put a good system around that? What if we strategically ask people? What if we make raving fans, yada, yada? Then we go through this and we can see, hey, we can 4X that one lead generation channel just by doing these couple things.

14:26So if we do this right, we're getting more leads, more consistently, with better conversions. We're having a better client experience. We're making it easier and better for your team to fulfill. Their LTV is higher. Everybody wins by doing this. That's a crazy, healthy business if we just really work from the backwards forward. So backwards starts with fulfillment. That's where growth really begins. And I love that mindset, Fire Nation. You should probably be really excited about this, is that you right now might be sitting on a gold mine. You might be sitting on a gold mine and not even know it.

14:58just because you're not pulling the correct levers. You're not utilizing the correct marketing channels. But with a couple pulls here and a couple shifts there and a couple focuses here, who knows what you could be uncovering. Now, Austin, I want to go through the initial steps that are going to help us scale towards a seven-figure business that, and here's a caveat, can thrive both with and without our direct involvement. Yeah, the first thing, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, is strategy. We've got to spend a lot of time to make sure that you make the strategic decisions on how you're going to be different, how you're going to solve real problems, who the customer is, and how you're going to be narrow and targeted for exactly who that is.

15:40So if you get the right strategy using the model one framework I shared earlier, that's going to be the 80-20. That's going to make your entire team's life, and especially your life as an entrepreneur, much, much easier. So that's where we've got to begin. From there, it's about freeing up time. So if you If I can just on a silver platter say, hey, here's an extra 20 hours a week, yes, go spend 10 of that for yourself, but spend an extra 10 to drive growth. Well, you're going to probably be able to pretty easily within a few weeks be able to start to get more traction from a growth standpoint.

16:08So number one is strategy. Number two is about freeing of time and getting into that high impact role, cutting out what's not working and really focus on what is. And then from there, it's about leveraging systems to scale, making things repeatable, consistent and not rely on you. that allows you to delegate on down, have more consistency, repeatability, have more profits and everything. So it's a win, win, win across the board. So nail the right strategy, get free from the weeds, leverage systems. Then you're in the power position to do what you want. Some people choose to double down and grow a business from then, you know, 1 million to 10 million a year.

16:41Some people choose to live an amazing life, working six days a month and making a multimillion dollar business. So you can choose. And that's the power that we want to get to is to have that opportunity to choose. So Austin, you've updated your bestselling book from six to seven figures. Talk to us about this update. Talk to us about the book and tell us what you want Fire Nation to know about why this book is a must read. Man, I'm fired up about this book. The first version of this I wrote over two years ago and I put together in about three weeks, which if you haven't written a book and it's not super short, it's a couple hundred pages.

17:19And to put a book together that quick, either A, you need some type of leverage or B, it's not that amazing. And I put it out there and it was good. We got a lot of good feedback, but it wasn't amazing. It wasn't my best work, John. So I was like, man, this is just eating at me. I really want to put something out there that I'm super proud of. And that's what I've done. I've gone back and just really refined it after the last couple of years of results that we've gotten with our private clients to show business owners, hey, what's the simplest path to get to that seven figure business? And it's walking you through step by step exactly what to do.

17:52But what's different about this book is there's a lot of visuals. There's a lot of graphics. There's a lot of things that really just explain exactly what you need to know. And it kind of slaps you over the head with the key principles that you need to understand. There's more examples. And at the end of every single section, there's tables that go through. Here's what a six-figure business does. And here's what a multi-seven-figure business does. As soon as you can see that comparison, the light just goes off of, oh, my gosh, this is what I'm doing. And this is that simple tweak that I can make that makes a ripple effect in a positive way.

18:26So it's guiding you step by step for exactly what to do. We work with hundreds of business owners to really refine this process. And one of our big goals is to double the number of businesses that scale to seven figures. So that's a big, hefty goal. So we're trying to get this book out there into as many business owners' hands as possible because we're confident that anybody that's at six figures can get to seven figures with them. this book. Now, where does Fire Nation go to find out more? Well, good news is I, for a gift, big gift for you, John, for being my first online mentor and getting me started.

18:54And so a big of a way is we're giving it away for free. So I'm not talking about free plus shipping. I'm not talking about any credit card. I'm not talking about any hidden fees or anything there. We will literally ship out the book for free. And it's available at 2x.co slash fire. That's 2x.co slash fire. And this is, again, it's a hefty book. There's a lot of visuals and graphics. Even if you just skim the book, you're going to take away a lot from it and be able to pinpoint on exactly what area of business that you want to focus on. But it's absolutely free. And I'm just super excited to get this book out into as many hands as possible.

19:27So that's 2x.co slash fire. Generous gift, Austin. Thank you for that. And what is the one takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation today? Okay. Let's end where we started, which a big key to success. It's not as sexy as what a lot of gurus are out there talking about, but operational excellence. Think about that. How can you turn your business into a machine that can thrive without you? And if you take that perspective, that's going to lead to a very healthy business. Again, where you've got the time freedom, where you've got the profits and cashflow, where you've got the ability to grow with consistency and control.

20:03Everything comes back to operations being your real moneymaker. And if you can focus on that over the next six to 12 months, you're going to be in a really good spot for years to come. So stop focusing on new, new, new, start to be really intentional, focus on operational excellence. I think you'll be in a really good spot. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with A-N and J-L-D today, so keep up that heat. Head over to eofire.com, type Austin in the search bar and his show notes page will pop right up with everything that we We're talking best show notes in the biz, Fire Nation.

20:38Plus, head over to 2x.co slash fire. That's the number 2x.co slash fire. And you're going to get a free book shipped to your door from six to seven figures, the updated version. Fire Nation, take these generous gifts, utilize them, learn from them, be them. And Austin, I want to say thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Appreciate you, JLD. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Austin. And Fire Nation, what can 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you?

21:19How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment? My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle that you've been dreaming about. This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs, and you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com, and I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software, say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.

22:07Fire Nation, success isn't a solo journey. It's about who you surround yourself with. That's why I built the Freedom Circle, a powerful community of entrepreneurs ready to support, inspire, and share the ideas that move you forward. Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more.