What it Really Takes to Scale a Startup with Colin Campbell

0:02John Lee Dumas:Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here, and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today, we'll be breaking down what it really takes to scale a startup. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Colin Campbell and the EO Fire Studios. Colin is a serial entrepreneur and number one bestselling author in 15 categories and 13 awards on Amazon of start, scale, exit, repeat. Colin started, StartupScaled and exited over a dozen companies worth almost$1 billion, including TwoCows, Hostopia, DotClubdomains, GeeksForLess, and Paw.com.

0:36John Lee Dumas:Colin also runs Startup Club with 1 million members. And today we'll talk about breaking the growth ceiling from start to scale, funding growth the right way, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Colin and our sponsors. If you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. High Level gives you website hosting, funnels, email marketing, automation, calendar booking, payments and course hosting all on one platform, plus award-winning 24-7 support. Get a 30-day free trial and my full bonus stack that includes a 50-minute private call with me and much more at highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com.

1:12John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, 50 days will fly right on by. The only question is, will you have something to show for it? I created a free YouTube series called 50 Days to Something, a step-by-step path to build a real product, service, or offer in just 50 focused days. Start today for free at eofire.com slash YouTube. Colin, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, I think that there's a myth out there about the entrepreneur. Like they're this Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and you know, it's more of a Hollywood sort of look at entrepreneurship when the reality is that most entrepreneurs don't know how to scale their businesses.

2:01They have a good instinct to start, but they don't understand and they need to use systems to help scale their business. And that's okay because we don't know what we're doing when we first get out there and we get some success behind us. But the reality is we need help. We're not all geniuses like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

2:27John Lee Dumas:Very well said. And it's going to be a great episode between you and I today. In fact, in our little pre-interview chat, we were talking about how we both strongly feel that 2026 is going to be a banner year for startup companies. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why. We don't need to get into the details now. But it's going to really tie into our conversation today because, you know, I want to talk about breaking the growth ceiling? Because you've seen a call in a lot of startups, they seem to be able to get that early traction, that early momentum, but then they slam into the ceiling. They just can't seem to break above.

2:58John Lee Dumas:So from your experience, what is really stopping founders from continuing to scale when things inevitably stall out? Yeah, I think it, the first thing is a scale mindset. and 2026 is going to be a great year to scale your business. The number one thing a startup founder needs to do is change their mindset and admit first that they don't know what the hell they're doing. And second, that they need to think different in scale mode versus start mode. Okay, what you've done has gotten you to a certain point in time, right? You've been successful as an entrepreneur. You've built a startup. Great. but what takes you to the next level is a mindset shift.

3:45Okay. Let me give you some examples and start. We, you know, success was based on your instincts as an entrepreneur. I call it weaning the baby. You know, you have to be involved in every single step. You got to watch your people very, very closely because one minor mistake and the whole startup collapses. And if you do have staff and start mode, it's all about delegating tasks and following up to ensure that the tasks were managed correctly. In scale, it's all about delegating responsibilities versus tasks. So this is where the mind shift comes in. It's about giving up control. And this is something most entrepreneurs are not comfortable with.

4:23In addition, it's also important to identify the right type of people. And here, there are sort of two thoughts I have on this one. There are two things that people tend to miss when hiring the right type of people. Okay, this is when you want to scale. When you're scaling a company, we want to hire people with runway. I got that one from Jack Welch. I'm stealing that right from him. So he was like, let's hire people with runway. And what we want to do is if they've built a company, let's say to 10 million already, and you're at a million dollars, you want to hire that person. Now don't go too far.

4:58If someone's built, you know, they're working in a billion dollar company, they struggle to succeed. I've seen it over and over again. You cannot hire people who are a hundred times working at companies a hundred times the size of yours or a thousand times the size of yours. You think you're getting some great corporate executive, but the reality is they don't understand DIY environments of a startup. And the second thing is, now let's identify the executives who are going to take on those responsibilities we talked about, right? And develop a personality profile for each of those positions and start profiling those executives.

5:32And I use the DISC method in the book. You can also use Myers-Briggs. And let me tell you this, JLD, it's a lot easier to train someone. It's a lot easier to train someone skills than it is to change their personality. Focus on runway and personality first and then look at experience. So if you have something unique in some unique challenges or you have to train them. That's easy to do, but you can't train a person who doesn't know how to sell, how to sell if they don't have the right personality. That's it.

6:04John Lee Dumas:I've definitely found that to be true. I mean, I built my team up at one point to 17 individuals that was both independent contractors and like full-time employees. And man, like did my hiring processes change, you know, from the beginning to the middle, to the end, it was all about, you know, what you were just talking about. That was what made the best people on my team. And I kind of want to shift that conversation into talking about going from starting to scaling, because in your book, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, you talk about how a founder's story and business model, how it has to evolve as a company grows.

6:41John Lee Dumas:So what actually changes as entrepreneurs move from the start mode into the scale mode? Well, yeah, when it comes to the story, Do you remember a company called Blockbuster? Oh, yeah. They rented videos and then eventually DVDs. And you remember another company called Netflix? And they delivered DVDs. But Netflix caught on quite quickly that they were not in the DVD rental business. And Blockbuster obviously didn't. They thought they were in that business. But Netflix was in the business of providing entertainment easily. And you know the rest of the story there. With each company, you need to find what I call the X factor.

7:24And there's been a lot of authors who've done a lot of work on this, from Vern Harnish, Jim Collins. And this is something unique and different. It's like finding a bottleneck in an industry and solving it. Netflix determined that their X factor was the ability to get content directly to the home at a faster, cheaper method than Blockbuster. That's it. But Blockbuster didn't have a chance once Netflix launched into their new model. And the next factor is something that you have that your competitors do not. Okay? Let me give you a small example. We host some Airbnbs here in luxury homes in the island of North Captiva in South Florida.

8:01It's a really cool place, actually, in South Florida. No cars there, just golf carts and whatnot. But we're in competition. So 60%, 70 % of the homes there are all Airbnbs, and we're in competition with all these Airbnbs. And we're like, okay, how do we operate differently than these Airbnbs? And we came up with a formula where we offered a luxury experience with the same quality in every single home that we have here. Weston Heavenly Beds, Pottery Barn, Cookware, professionally designed homes. We have themes for each home. We have exclusive access to our dock, our boating boats and docks. And we even considered a private sports club on the island just for those people.

8:44Here's a couple of other good examples that you might resonate with, like Domino's Pizza, 30 minutes are free. National Car Rental, just show up and go. And by the way, if you don't have an X factor in your business, that's okay. It might take you some time. It took us six years at a company called Hostopia, and we became the best in the world at migrating email and websites, which for a mid-level executive at a telecom who feared migrations at all costs, That was what mattered most to them. And then we backed it up with what we call a nearly unbearable brand promise, NUBP. It's a 100 % migration guarantee.

9:22And literally, we were paying them market value if we lost the deal. So we won the contract for Earthlink, and it was like 80 ,000 websites and a million email addresses with this new. And by the way, two days before, we were told we were going to lose the contract. But we won the contract, and then we won Verizon, AT &T, Vodafone, British Telecom, Bell Canada. We won every telecom pretty much in the United States and Europe and South America and Canada. It was incredible how the dominoes fell. When you find your X factor, when you change your story, this is going to help you scale, and it can mean such incredible things for your company.

10:01John Lee Dumas:That's really powerful. I mean, for me, I'm just thinking back to what you were talking about with Netflix and Blockbuster. I was actually in Pacific Beach, San Diego during like the perfect arbitrage time when Blockbuster was just trying to catch up. So they would offer, and this is when they were delivering actual DVDs, both companies. And you could just arbitrage both of them because they were both just like, you know, trying to undercut each other. And so you could like sign up for Blockbuster for three months and essentially get all the services for free and then flip to Netflix and then flip back to, I mean, it was unbelievable what you could do back then.

10:35John Lee Dumas:It was basically who was winning. like the consumer of that was winning because we were basically paying nothing for like DVDs to be mailed to our doorstep for a decent amount of time until Blockbuster just had to give up the ghost. And of course, Netflix made the brilliant switch into straight streaming. So definitely things you need to be thinking about, Fire Nation, when you're scaling your team. And we have a lot more to talk about on these topics when we get back from thanking our sponsors. If you've ever tried getting a traditional bank loan for your business, then you already know that it's not exactly fast or easy.

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12:25John Lee Dumas:Everything you need to succeed all under one roof. No duct tape, no juggling five platforms, just one clean system for your business. And their award-winning 24-7 support has your back when you need it most. When you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you also get my exclusive bonus stack, a 30-day free trial, a private 15-minute call with me, JLD, access to my weekly live office hours, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something Execution Roadmap, and more. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Colin, we're back. And I want to talk about funding growth the right way, because you've had a lot of experience with this.

13:07John Lee Dumas:And I mean, growth is expensive. And so many founders, they just assume that raising capital is the answer. So how should entrepreneurs think about funding growth in a way that actually supports scale instead of just creating new problems? And let's be honest, entrepreneurs don't need more problems. That's right. Yeah. And it's really about the right money for the right type of company in the right situation. And we actually have some great chapters on the book that focus on, on, on that, on raising the right type of money. Uh, and by the way, if you plan to scale, anyone knows this, anyone who's tried to scale their business, you need funding.

13:43It really is an expensive thing to do. You want to grow, it's going to cost. Um, but I'd encourage you to first look at your customers okay we had the opportunity to interview john mullins for the book who wrote the customer funded startup and uh he he had some really good theories about using your customers to fund your startup in fact we even had one company that's in my incubator they um they got a customer and this is like a fortune 500 company that paid three years in advance for IT services for the for what they offer and this was enough money to avoid doing a second raise and I just thought that was incredible that they could use their customer to help fund their business now my favorite type of funding is raising money from sophisticated investors so in the US there's a regulation D there's also reg CF I'm very excited about reg CF for people who I I want to go out there and try that.

14:44So in 2012, we had to raise$7 million in 30 days. Okay. This is to win the rights to a domain name extension called.club. And we set the auction date. I didn't have the money and I had to raise seven. And literally, this is incredible how it all happened so fast. But I wrote a private placement memorandum, filed a reg D with the SEC, and I was able to now solicit my LinkedIn followers. And I reached out to about 40 very one-on-one contacts with my LinkedIn followers. And we sold out the offering to 27 investors. And here's an interesting thing. Even someone who had saw me speak at MIT invested in the company.

15:28So those LinkedIn contacts, identifying a personal message, soliciting to them, but you can't solicit to them unless you file that reg. Yeah. Yeah. Spiscated investors. And here's the beauty of it. We didn't have any liquidation preference. Now, liquidation preference is the concept that the venture capitalist or whoever invests always gets paid first, okay? This was equal risk for your investors. And that's what I really think is important when you do this kind of investment. That's why it's my favorite type. Now you got Reg CF as well. And you do have StartEngine and RCrowd. They tend to want liquidation preference.

16:05But, you know, the reality is there's that's a good vehicle to raise money. There's there is a place for VC. I've used VC before, but I'll tell you this. Ninety percent of the companies on the Inc. 5000. Ninety percent do not have VC backing. OK, and but there is a situation where it's a highly competitive market. You need to grow quickly or you want to do a strategic, get a strategic investment. VCs can play a strong role. And they are today, even today, Silicon Valley is by far the most incredible environment to raise money in. But the reality is there's a lot of challenges too. And most companies don't need VC.

16:47John Lee Dumas:So Colin, one thing I've always admired about you are your systems. But a lot of people are scared of systems. So I want to talk about systems without the suffocation. You're a big believer in systems. I'm a big believer in systems. Some founders think it slows them down or it kills creativity. How do you explain what scale systems really are and why they're literally essential to growth, not the enemy of it? Okay. So let me – I love telling stories, by the way. And that's how – I think your listeners enjoy it more. Totally. But let me take it back to 2006. We're running a publicly traded company, okay?

17:25We're below IPO value. We're about$1.50 below our IPO value. Our revenues are flatlining. I'm 36 years old and a board member comes to me and says to me, like, I think you're going to need to step aside as CEO and let a professional run the company. And given my brother and I didn't have control of the stock or the board, I did what I had to do. I called the lifeline. I called a friend. He says, I told him what was going on. He says, okay, let me introduce you to Patrick Dehan from Rhythm Systems. They run a goal platform and coaches. and I met with him and eventually, you know, I was talking with them and I didn't agree with them.

18:06It was almost like, you know, you go to the doctor and you say to the doctor, I want to lose weight. And the doctor says, okay, well, you're going to have to change your lifestyle. No, I don't want to do any of that. I just want to take the pill. And so he basically said he was not going to work with me unless I do this right. So I said, fine, I'll do it. And let me tell you this, it was incredible. In 90 days, we saw huge results. two days of strategic planning, 88 days of execution, three years of company goals, one-year company goals, quarterly company goals, individual goals. And we implemented profiling for hiring, daily sales huddle.

18:40We brought in core values, winning moves. And within months, it was a huge difference. Within three years, we had doubled the revenue, sold the company for 17 times EBITDA and a substantial premium to our IPO price for all of our investors. It was pretty damn cool. to say i really really enjoyed it and i remember the ceo of of the company that bought us and we're in this boardroom with like 20 25 people and i'm doing this presentation about all these you know strategic planning goals and he looks at the board he points at the board he points at me and he points at everyone else and says this is the kind of culture i want to bring to my our company and And this is a Fortune 500 company.

19:23I'm telling you, you can grow your company through learning these systems. I cut and then I cut and paste those systems for Dot Club and then sold that to GoDaddy Registry. And I've done that for Paw.com and other companies as well, my incubator.

19:37John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, this is real results from a real entrepreneur with real businesses. And how have you done that, Colin? You've turned insight into action. And I mean, there's not a big surprise. I mean, your book has now won 37 global awards and maybe more now because I feel like every time we talk about this, you're like, oh, it's actually 39 now. And you've launched the ultimate scale workbook. What specifically will founders be able to do differently after working through this? Yeah, we spent 10 years writing the book, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat. After my presentation at MIT to a group of entrepreneurs, we interviewed over 200 people.

20:14And it's been a phenomenal success. Even today, by the way, it's number seven in the United States for starting a business. on Amazon. So it's just, it's maintained its strength as a top selling book for, you know, starting a business or even scaling a business or even exiting a business as well. We've published the first workbook, Start Workbook, which breaks it down in for starting a business. And it's been highly successful. So we decided let's spend the next year, this last year, we spent a year working on publishing a scale workbook. And I worked with Patrick Theon from my coach from Rhythm Systems.

20:49I worked with Dan Larson, Jack Daly from the Ultimate Sales Playbook. And we've put together, I think we put together probably the most advanced workbook you will ever see for scaling a business. And it goes everything from building core values, goal setting, building an agenda for your strat planning session, even a sales playbook. And we've even intertwined AI into it. So there's AI GPTs, but also once you've completed the work in the sales playbook, playbook, and by the way, you can do this with a pen. You don't have to do this with anything else. Don't want you to touch the AI yet, but once you've completed your work, we have, have it so that you can scan it into the AI and it will actually create a formal, former, formal sales playbook as well.

21:35So this is something that is a passion of mine. I love scaling businesses is the absolute favorite part of my career is scaling. And yeah, I didn't know what I was doing when I was 36. You can just simply follow these procedures, follow these systems and implement them. And you can 10X your business. And you know what? Most people don't. Most people don't scale their businesses. The vast majority of businesses in the United States, over 95%, never scale beyond a small business. And they can. It's just a matter of, it's just a matter of following these systems.

22:10John Lee Dumas:Well, Fire Nation, I will be devouring the ultimate scale workbook. So Colin, what is the call to action? How do we get our hands on this? Yeah, that one is on Amazon and you just go there and type in start scale, exit, repeat. It'll show the book. It'll show the start workbook. It'll show the scale workbook as well. But it is the scale workbook from start scale, exit, repeat. Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Today, you've been hanging out with CC and JLD today, so keep up the heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Colin in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up.

22:48John Lee Dumas:Colin, take the mic, take us home. What is the one thing you wanna leave Fire Nation with today? What is your call to action? What's your final piece of guidance? I really want entrepreneurs, startups, especially in 2026, it's gonna be a great year to scale, to acknowledge what got you there is not what's going to get you to the next level. Your instincts worked at start, but you need the systems, the processes to scale. And I've done it over and over again. And I can tell you, it didn't come from instincts. Scaling, scaling, starting did, by the way, starting to 100 % came from your, my instincts, right?

23:28Oh, this is a good thing. And also catching waves and all the other things. We'll have to do a show on that. But the reality is it came from implementing these processes, from changing my story, identifying the right people, getting the right type of funding and implementing the right systems. And all of those are documented. You're not alone. And I think just if you acknowledge that you don't know what the hell you're doing and you start getting some help, that's the key.

23:57John Lee Dumas:Colin, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. for that. We salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Colin for sponsoring today's episode today. And Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, we are now accepting applications for entrepreneurs on fire. To learn more about becoming a guest, visit eofire.com slash guest and I'll catch you there or on the flip side. If you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure.

24:34John Lee Dumas:High Level gives you website hosting, funnels, email marketing, automation, calendar booking, payments, and course hosting all on one platform, plus award-winning 24-7 support. Get a 30-day free trial and my full bonus stack that includes a 15-minute private call with me and much more at highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, 50 days will fly right on by. The only question is, will you have something to show for it? I created a free YouTube series called 50 Days to Something, a step-by-step path to build a real product, service, or offer in just 50 focused days. Start today for free at eofire.com slash YouTube.