Scaling your Operation - How to Build and Maintain a Multi-Million Dollar Operation with James Webster

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Latinx in Power. Today, we'll be breaking down how to scale your operation. We're talking how to build and maintain a multi-million dollar operation. To drop these value bombs, I brought James Webster into EO Fire Studios. James is the founder and executive chairman of Rock Financial and co-chairman of the SBFA. He and his team have helped business owners obtain more than a billion dollars in financing.

0:35and financial. We'll talk about some of the strategies and ideologies we need to measure both success and failures. We'll talk team, how to assemble one for success. We'll talk about being flexible and not being flexible in your business life, how technology plays into ROI, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to James and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lands, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier.

1:10AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. James, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Well, John and Fire Nation, thanks for having me. It's truly an honor to be with everybody here today. Something I would agree, something that I would believe about becoming successful, most people would disagree with or don't know of, and I truly hate starting any conversation or interview in a negative way, but it's something that I felt from my own self is that people will, you will lose people in your life due to your success or becoming successful.

2:08As humble as one may be, I'm not the type of person to post things on my Instagram or Facebook about look what I just bought, look what I got. I'm one of the most humble people you'll probably ever meet, but you will lose people around you. And that might be okay because they might not be the right people to be around you. People like people like themselves. People also rise to the occasion and they become a creature of habit. People become who they surround themselves with. So if you're surrounding yourself with negative people or people that can't handle one success, you would hate for any of that to drip onto you.

2:50That's something that I've noticed over the past 15, 17 years in business. That is the reason why I end literally every single episode of Entrepreneurs on Fire with the fantastic quote from Jim Rohn, which is just reminding Fire Nation that they are the average of the five people they spend the most time with. And we have to remember that. We have to constantly be evaluating that. It is critical to our success. And also critical to our success is scaling your operation, Fire Nation. So we'll be talking about how to build to maintain a multi-million dollar operation. And here's the thing, a lot of people measure success, but few people measure failure as well.

3:29So let's talk, James, about the strategies and the ideologies that we need in order to measure both successes and failures. Another great question. There are typical ways to measure success. You got financials, P &Ls, sales reports, your typical reporting that one might look at. I like to look at the team and how are they interacting with each other? Are they happy where they are? Most people, most of us need to work. We have to provide for our families. So we all need a job. I want my company to be a place where people really enjoy being. And I think I've worked at other places before and I've noticed when people are not happy, we're just interacting with people and knowing that they don't really love their job and the way they talk about it and then seeing how my team is.

4:25I also look at what the turnover rate is and is the team staying with you or are you going through people on the team on a yearly basis, on an annual basis? are they leaving? So that's a really good way that I tend to measure, are we doing what we're supposed to be doing here? That's at least one great way that I've, over the past few years, have looked at the team and decided, you know, how's the company doing based on their happiness and how are they interacting with each other? How are they able to accomplish tasks together? and would they prefer to work with each other or alone? So that's one way that I look at it.

5:11Now, you did just mention team a few times, and I want to dive even deeper into that topic because some people think teams are the most important thing where other people, they kind of minimize its importance for various reasons. So how important do you believe the team that we assemble to our overall success actually is? Everything. I believe the team is everything. Without it, you do not have a business or you don't or you certainly don't have the same business. We we typically we tend to use a back that up for a second. I like to keep my team fairly tight. Now, we have about 60 individuals in the office and then many others outside.

5:54Some might look at that and say, well, that's not a tight team. To me, it is. I've had I've had over 100 at one point. So I like to keep a really tight team. I like to use consultants and specialists when something might be out of my team's reach or something that they might have an expertise on in order to keep that team tight and not bringing on individuals constantly because we might be lacking in one area. So we'll bring a consultant in, have them help out with a specific project, and then off they go. keeping my team, really keeping their morale up, feeling like I've got this without bringing somebody in over their head.

6:39And that doesn't know the business, doesn't know the industry, and might seem like a good fit in the interview, but winds up not meshing with the team six to eight months down the road. So just like with team and people kind of come on both sides of the equation, although I will say it does seem like the vast majority of people do point to the importance of a team as a critical component to their success. There are some people that say, hey, you need to be rigid in your business and in your life. You just have to be very stuck in your ways, very focused, not willing to deviate. Let's talk about your thoughts about how crucial it is to be versatile in business.

7:18I think it's very, very crucial. It's very important, and we are. But I also don't jump ship and do an about-face if something is not working on week two. Um, I, I strongly believe that a significant initiative, it takes six to 12 months to start seeing any success. Um, we might plan out a vision of ours for, for right now, we've been building a remote sales team, uh, for the past year and a half or so. And we had a vision of it. What, what is this going to look like? How are we going to start with this? And then as we start going, We're realizing, all right, we need to pivot here. We need to change here.

8:01We need to add something here or remove something there. But the overall project or task or initiative that we're working on stays the same and we're staying coarse. I've seen way too many times in business owners or heads of department that have an idea and team buys into it. I'm also a big believer in that the team really should buy into the initiative or the vision that you have. But the team will buy into it. Something doesn't go right, even month one. And all of a sudden, the owner is about facing it. Okay, we're going to try this. Now we're going to try that. To me, that has never worked.

8:44So where I like to be nimble in what we're working on, And I like to take that vision, whatever it is that made that big plan that we have, stick to it. But yes, on the smaller things, things are going to come up and you have to be able to pivot and fairly quickly, too. So it is a little bit of a balancing act. It's not abandoning ship after a week or two, but also realizing, hey, this isn't going to work. What's some other options we have? And let's start initiating that immediately. And Fire Nation, versatility is fun. I mean, look at that as a way that you can actually enjoy how you're operating day to day because, man, the world is an ever-changing place.

9:32It is exciting. It is fun. It is dynamic. And those people that are just rigid and refuse to budge on anything, I mean, you're just missing all of this new awesome opportunity that, by the way, some of which will not end up being awesome. It will not be a fit for you. But at least you've tasted it. At least you've tried it. At least you said, you know what? this might work. It might not work, but it might work. And then over time, you have a business that is staying ahead of the curve, that's able to ride the wave of technology, et cetera, which we'll be diving much more into, Fire Nation, as soon as we get back from thinking our sponsors.

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10:47Add to all this, re-imagine marketing and content hubs with new ways to create breakthrough content, updated features to generate better leads, and support to help up-level your marketing and revenue forecast. And you've got HubSpot's all-on-one customer platform. Get ready for growth without the growing pains. Visit hubspot.com slash spotlight to see all the updates. James, we're back and I now want to talk about technology because we're all focused on ROI, that return on investment. And some people do so by ignoring technology, even though it can be a very important factor into that overall ROI.

11:27So talk about how technology plays into ROI, your specific return on investment? Huge believers in technology. Although I'm at that age now, like my daughter can teach me things on my phone and computer that I didn't know was possible at this point. But I am young enough to still realize, okay, technology is super important and must, must be used in the business. We're big believers in technology. We spend a tremendous this amount of time and money on new technology. We have a team of seven developers that are full time that are working for the company that are constantly, we have a tech stack that's usually a page or two long that we're constantly chipping away from.

12:15And we're also looking at that and deciding what's the most important, reprioritizing what we're working on today or what's next, and really just reevaluating what's the most important. But, you know, we spend a tremendous amount of time, money on new technology. We believe in doing more with less. So we want to do more. We want to grow the business. We want to do more business. But we don't necessarily want to just throw bodies at it. I've noticed, and it's all these things that I'm talking about today, I only know because of making mistakes on and have made many failures on or learning from.

12:59And throwing bodies or throwing employees at maybe a problem or what we might see as a solution is not always the best bet. And we try to keep the team really as tight as possible. I want to have a core team of individuals that are working very well and almost like a well-oiled machine together. And in order for us to grow the business without adding bodies, at least in my business, in my industry, I need something there. And in the past, it was always bodies. We want to do more business. We have to add more people. It's not necessarily the case today. It's not going to come without a hefty price tag.

13:39But all the technology that we implement in the business only helps us drive that, either continue to stay where we are without adding new bodies or continue to increase the business, which is what I prefer, of course. The team is well bought onto that. They know what's important with technology. They understand why this is our mentality. the team also doesn't want to have a million new people running through the door every 12 months and distracting them as well from what we're here to do. Now, we've been talking a lot about focus today, which is an acronym that I love. Follow one course until success.

14:23But a lot of people misconstrue that by putting blinders on and just saying, I have one course. I'm focused. I'm not looking at any distractions. I am just going, going, going until I run off a cliff. And they do that by ignoring their competition in one of the ways. Now, you believe that we need to monitor and follow our competition closely. Tell us more. Why is that? How can we benefit from that? I do. I feel it's a must. It's important to know what your competitors are doing, how they're speaking to your audience as well, what services they're offering, I think it's important to know where you're pricing, how are you priced out, and just that, how are you communicating with your clients.

15:14There's technologies out there to help aid in this, depending on what you're looking at. If you're looking at what your competitive social medias are doing, how they're emailing their clients, how their website is. There are different technologies out there that can help and aid with that. But I also and we do utilize those. I also like to do two other things. One is just manually researching, going on and manually see, OK, what is it that that they're doing? And even for myself, who's pretty much at this point out of the day to day business, I'm not there deciding what we're doing in marketing.

15:56I'm not there deciding what the sales team's new initiative is. I'm there for the overall vision of the company and steering the ship, but not there for those individual daily decisions. I still myself am looking at my competition's social media, their websites, and I'm sending things to my chief marketing officer. Just, hey, thought you might want to take a look at this. Hey, maybe this is something that we should implement. And another way I do it is industry conferences. This is a great way to just talk to them and ask them. I have very good relationships with my competitors. I've always been a person that's believed there's plenty of business out there.

16:43I want strong competitors. I want people out there that are doing the right thing in my business. So I want to make sure we're elevating those types of individuals. and we're also keeping the industry clean and keeping the wrong people out. So I try to keep a healthy conversation or healthy communication line open with my competitors. I have a great relationship with them. We also will talk about different things. Of course, I'm not going to give away the secret sauce, but I'm also the type of person that believes, hey, you could know what I'm doing and I might even tell you what we're doing on how we're getting new clients or how we're keeping clients, but then it's also on that person to go and do it.

17:28So that part of it is just the execution of it that most people don't have the ability to do. Staying in tune with your competition is crucial. It's a must. It's something that's helped me for the past 17 years and continue to grow the business, continue to maintain where we are in the industry. Now, another thing that's helped you maintain where you are in the industry is process. So I want to talk process. You've grown your business over these years following this process that we're about to get into. So dive into that now. Strong brand, effective marketing strategies, one of the most crucial, reinvesting back into the business, knowing your market, knowing the industry, your competitors, et cetera.

18:14a very strong operational team and an efficient process. And team, team, team, team is everything. We've talked about it. We've hit on it a few times today. It really is the, at this point, it's not only the backbone, but the driving force to my company. And that didn't come easy. We have employees that have been with the company for 13, 14 years. And we have a good number at this point that are here with us, 10 plus. So it's important. The team is almost everything. Lastly, is something I've stuck with since day one, a philosophy that I've repeated to the team at least 99 million times is work hard, do the right thing, and success will follow.

19:00So it's a really core part of the business and what we believe and what we do every day. Well, James, you've dropped a lot of value bombs today. Give us one key takeaway you really want to make sure our listeners get from our conversation today. Great success is only going to come from working hard. The team is everything. And the only way you're going to have a team is if you're genuine to your own core beliefs. You're genuine to the team. You treat the team right. and you give them the ability to even make mistakes and show them that you support them even after that. These are just some simple things that for me over time has just helped me understand how I'm growing my business and who I'm doing it with.

19:51So yeah, I really appreciate your time, everybody that's listening, their time, and hopefully they got one quick thing out of it that they can implement to their business and continue to grow. I believe in strong business. I love strong small business, I should say. I believe in it. It's been what has grown our country. And I believe it's the engine to our economy. And my fight daily at this point is to continue to fuel that economy. No doubt, Fire Nation has gotten value bombs, James. So thank you for that. And if they wanted to connect with you, learn more from you, What is your call to action for our listeners today?

20:34They can go right to our website, www.rock.biz. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with J-Dubs and J-L-D today, so keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type James in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And James, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side. Thanks, JLB. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and James for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs.

21:15And I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, which is personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guide that you need to achieve lifestyle of your dreams. That's the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com and I will catch you there or on the flippity-flip side.

21:46The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lance, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.