Why 96% of Businesses Never Hit $1M And How AI Agents Are Changing the Math with Jairek Robbins

0:01John Lee Dumas:Boom! Shake the room, 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 why 96 % of businesses never hit$1 million and how AI agents are changing the math. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Jairek Robbins and to EO Fire Studios. Jairek has coached business owners across 137 countries for over 20 years. He's built 265 plus AI agents that help CEOs reclaim 15 plus hours per week. He is the founder of Executive Office AI. And today we talk about why only 4 % make it, about the four bottlenecks, about AI, toy versus teammates, and oh, so much more.

0:44John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Jarek and our sponsors. Feeling overwhelmed at the thought of getting your business up and running? Here's my advice. Keep things simple. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify. And start hearing, sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash onfire. Go to shopify.com slash onfire. 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.

1:21John Lee Dumas: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. Jarek, my man, my fellow Puerto Rican brother over here. I love it so much. Say what's up to Fire Nation. And of course, share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Fire Nation almost started off strong. I actually put a very personal post up a few days ago and I got an unbelievable, massive wave of appreciation. I got a few haters on it. Oh, yeah. That happens. I was talking about I have a father with insatiable goals.

2:03They're unbelievable. I'm wildly proud of the man. Like he doesn't feed a million people. He feeds 100 million. No, no, no. A billion. Right. No, no, no. A hundred billion. Like this dude goes big. and when I went into you know work I who do I compare against well person closest to me that I admirably be respect and honor and look up to not only physically but but in everything that he does he's a heart of gold and incredible work ethic and so I judge my own success against his and and in that you know I launched my first book and my dad sells a book and sells millions of copies per week I launched my book and in 10 years, 30 ,000 copies.

2:44Yeah. That's great. And to me, I was like, well, that was a flop. Like I kind of messed up. I missed it. It didn't work. Fast forward. I remember even telling my dad about it. And I was, I was like, dad, I sold 30 ,000 copies. He's like, honey, I love you dearly. Like I'm proud of you as a man and a father and everything else, but 30 ,000 copies. Like that's a joke. That's you barely scratched the surface. I'm like, I know, right? It kind of sucked. And then one day I got a letter in the mail from an airman who'd been deployed. She had some level of PTSD. She was struggling mentally and emotionally.

3:16She said in the letter, dear Mr. Robbins, for the last two weeks, I've had my firearm in my mouth every single night, not knowing if I could live like this any longer. Someone gave me a copy of your book. I read the first two chapters and I wanted to say thank you because it reminded me of my reason why I wanted to keep on living. And all of a sudden, a book that only sold 30 ,000 copies felt like they were 30 ,000 sacred copies that made their way to the person who needed it most at the exact moment they needed it. Oftentimes, we measure our success against our idols, our champions, the people we look up to in life.

3:53And sometimes we need to remember that success could just be getting to the one person who needed you most in the moment they needed you.

3:59John Lee Dumas:Jerick, I'm glad you're talking about this right now. It's so powerful. And I have a huge belief system around the compare and despair situation we have. I mean, literally everybody in this world could compare themselves to somebody. Maybe it's financially, maybe it's physically, maybe it's emotionally, maybe it's fill in the blank. Maybe it's height, maybe it's will help. It doesn't help. You're going to despair. It either makes you feel amazing if you ask AI to do it. It'll be like, you're the top 0.000 % of humans who've ever walked the face of earth. Congratulations. Or it feels like shit.

4:31If you go on Instagram, you're like, God, why does everyone have a yacht and a jet? It doesn't work. It absolutely does not work.

4:37John Lee Dumas:Yeah. I keep telling my audience, I'm like, fire nation, compare yourself to one person, you yesterday. And if you're winning that comparison, not every day, by the way, we all have bad days, but more days than not, you're on the right path. Well, if you have a day, just realize it's easier to win tomorrow. It's easy to win tomorrow. Absolutely. You're probably gonna win tomorrow. And listen, I know Tony Robbins. I mean, I got to spend four days on an island with him in Fiji. And you are in that man's presence. And it's just like, it's this force field. And I left that island being like, I gotta step my game up.

5:08John Lee Dumas:But then I remembered who I was, you know? I'm just a dude in Puerto Rico. It is part of the magic. Part of his magic, which was some of the haters I got on my post, was they thought I was tearing at his magic. I'm not. I'm grateful for his magic. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him, quite literally. But like the concept of I'm not tearing at his magic. I'm just saying, please value the one just as much as you value the stretch, if not more. Because in the end, my grandma, who's one of my major mentors in life, passed away last week. And she has the key to the city of Los Angeles, businesswoman of the year.

5:43She has floor to ceiling plaques of first place in every single sales team she's ever been on. And I'm watching all of this stuff getting put in boxes and most likely going to the dump. Yep. But you know what sticks? How she treated the people she crossed paths with, the relationships she built, the memories she had, those sacred moments where she connected with one person and made a valuable difference in their life at that one moment. That stays forever.

6:10John Lee Dumas:Jerick, I want to shift to your magic because we have a lot to talk about. Your magic is powerful. It's amazing. We're talking about why 96 % of businesses never hit a million dollars and how AI agents start changing the math. And I mean, you're doing insane things right now when it comes to this. And I want to talk about why only 4 % of businesses ever reach$1 million. What are the top performers doing differently? And of course, recognize this, Jarek, we have a lot to get to, my man. So I want to get to the AI stuff sooner than later. So take it away. Here, I'll jam a little. So here's what really messes my head.

6:40And this one kind of irritates me. Most people get in the business, including me, for freedom, flexibility, some cash flow to pay for the life you want to live. And then you land up in a jail cell called your work with your name on the door that most businesses, 96 % never hit a million bucks, 82 % struggle on their cash flow. The average business owner is working 52 hours a week. And according to research, 43 % of business owners take zero vacations every year. That ain't freedom. I don't know what they got into. And so here's what should make every entrepreneur uncomfortable. If that's what's true, then what's causing it?

7:28I'll simplify this just, you know, for the sake of the timing of the show, there's seven things, but I'll give you four real quick. Number one, no repeatable sales system. The founder is doing 80 % of the selling and the ceiling. The max capacity is their calendar. If they're not selling, they don't win. And people say, oh, I get that. When I was a solopreneur, that made sense. No, I've seen firms with 15, 20, 50 employees that if the partners at the law firm aren't closing big deals, there's no revenue coming. And the pressure's on because if they don't close the next$20 million contract, they're going to have to start firing a bunch of these people.

8:06And so it's wild. It doesn't just go away when it's a solopreneur. This can be at scale sometimes, and it's called a founder's trap. They have not created a process that gets the information out of the founder in a repeatable way that others can perform just as well. My mentor told me, when you create a system, specifically around sales, you need something that an averagely intelligent human, on their worst day, can't mess it up, which made me laugh so hard when he said it. I was like, it's kind of a low standard, don't you think? And he's like, trust me, I've been business in my whole freaking life.

8:44That's what you need on a repeatable sales system. Averaging intelligent person can't mess it up. Number two, they're flying blind on cashflow. They might know their revenue. They have no clue on their cash position 60 days out. They don't know what their days receivable looks like. They don't know what their days receivable or payables look like. I just talked to a client between my webinar and this interview, and he was trying to figure out how do we optimize his cash conversion cycle? Because he's got a ton of profit, but not as much cash. Uh-oh. You got to know these things, and you got to have a pulse on exactly how the metrics are moving month over month, year over year, quarter over quarter.

9:25look for cycles and patterns. This is the kind of stuff you'd hire a$2 ,000,$5 ,000 a month partial CFO to handle for you if you could afford it, or we'll tell you a solution in a few minutes. Number three, trying to scale chaos. Here's the thing with AI. People think I'm going to implement something like AI and it's going to fix all this stuff in my business. AI is an amplifier. If you have a giant pile of chaos and you throw AI on it, it will only amplify the mess. So there's a few things you got to fix before you amplify to make sure that you don't get bigger problems in all directions. Because it lands up not only getting more chaotic, but it also gets more expensive.

10:09The fourth one, this is the one that nobody talks about. The identity crisis that happens at every stage of growth in business. the job of the CEO changes every time the revenue doubles. Most can't let go of what got them here. And so what's crazy is I've watched someone, he's trying to go from 13 to 25 million. And every time he goes for the big push, I just talked to him. His name's Andy. He's in California. Every time he goes for the big push, he's like, I'm going to do it. He gets, you know, five feet across the bridge and goes, ah, and runs back. And I asked him what keeps pulling you back.

10:45And he said, honestly, I realized I have to give up a part of who I am and I don't want to give that up. And I said, Ooh, I know what that trap is. You're addicted to what got you here and not prepared to do what's going to get you there. Yikes. And so here's the key to remember. You didn't start a business to become the highest paid employee, but that's exactly what happened. And so AI is a multiplier. It's going to multiply whatever you already have. If you have a strong foundation, which we can quickly help you get in place, AI will accelerate it massively. Broken foundation, you're going to have a whole pile of problems.

11:21John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, this is what you call straight fire, straight value bombs coming at us. And Jarek, I don't want to stop because we have so much more to talk about. In fact, we're talking about the over 265 AI agents that you've built when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Quick question. Did you know the average employer has to sift through about 250 resumes for a single job opening? Yeah, 250. That's a lot of scrolling. Well, if you're hiring, here's good news. You can now review all these resumes and applications faster thanks to ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter has a new feature that instantly shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first.

12:01John Lee Dumas:And today, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash fire. with ZipRecruiter's new feature, qualified candidates who are very interested in your job show up at the top of your list. Plus you can get an instant feel for their personality because candidates can share in their own words why they're interested in your job. It's no wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. Cut through the standard and get to the standouts with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash fire.

12:35John Lee Dumas:That's ziprecruiter.com slash fire. Meet your match on Zip Recruiter. If you've ever tried to piece together all the tools to run and grow your business while also teaching yourself everything along the way, you know how overwhelming that can be. I've been there, which is why I love anything that doesn't just add more to your plate, but actually makes things easier. And for millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is designed to help you get started fast with hundreds of ready to use templates. So you can build a beautiful online store that matches your brand. And once you're up and running, Shopify helps you stay efficient with AI tools that can write product descriptions, create page headlines, and even enhance your product photos.

13:16John Lee Dumas:Plus Shopify helps you market like you've got a team behind you with easy to run email and social campaigns. So you can reach customers wherever they're scrolling. And if you ever get stuck. Shopify has award-winning 24-7 customer support. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash onfire. Go to shopify.com slash onfire. That's shopify.com slash onfire. Fire Nation, if you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. That is why High Level is Entrepreneur on Fire's featured partner.

13:57John Lee Dumas:High Level gives you a website builder and hosting, funnels and landing pages, email marketing, appointment scheduling, payment processing, course and membership hosting, and so much more. 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.

14:36John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Jerick, we're back. you've built over 265 AI agents, saving founders over 15 hours a week. I mean, when you hear me say it, doesn't it sound crazy? It does. What are some real examples of what these agents are actually doing? Because real quick, that's where I feel like a lot of people struggle. They kind of like to use AI as like an alternative for Google, but they don't know how to use them in the real world to help them with their business. Tell us more, help us. So I'm in a bunch of group chats. I don't know if you are, but it's entertaining.

15:12we've got clodbot we've got nemo bot we've got mac mini this let's go and then every time i open instagram it goes oh no that one's dead if you're still using it clearly you're a boomer i'm like oh geez like i don't know how to stay young enough in this race and i got the best compliment ai has ever given me i said do i need to implement clodbot or one of these things with what we've built and it came back and it said an honest, fair, brutal truth assessment. What you've built is what all those things aspire to be. And I was like, okay, I'm going to hang that on the wall, make myself feel better from the six months of pounding a keyboard.

15:57But here's the difference. We worked backwards. I did not work with how cool of an agent can I make and what can my cool, you know, Ironman dashboard look like. None of that stuff matters. Here's what matters. What's the bottleneck in my business that eats up 15 to 20 hours a week? Can I produce an agent that on its own can reduce 20 hours to two? If I can get back 18 hours a week of my time, time we're now winning the game because I can do a lot with 18 hours. And so I sat down, I've got a client of mine, they're doing, I don't know, three and a half,$4 million a year spread between a few businesses.

16:42And I just interviewed him and asked him specifically, what's something that you do that's a repetitive task that's eating up about 20 hours a week of your time? He's like, trust me, I know what it is because every time I have to do it, I want to throw my computer out the window. I said, cool, walk me through it. He said, okay, I'm gonna log into five different platforms. I'm gonna analyze food ordering costs for my business. I'm gonna log the actual costs against the cost listed on the website into my site. I'm gonna go to this website then and come up with the actual cost of my menu items. I'm then gonna update the system to what the price has to be to maintain our margins.

17:22I'm gonna go over here and then place the order. I was like, gosh,

17:25John Lee Dumas:no wonder you want to throw your computer out the window this is a mess and so we sat down and i said could i whip up like i've built 265 agents so sales finance marketing operations hr strategy ceo cfo cmo the cfo alone again 1500 to two grand a month for a cfo that does two hours of work versus ours is under 500 bucks or 500 bucks a month and it does it all 24 7 it's Unbelievable. That alone is worth it. But I said, could I build you a custom agent to API into the softwares you use to reduce 20 hours a week to two or less? And we're doing it. We're getting this guy 18 hours a week back in his life and business, completely streamlined with AI.

18:13And so we didn't build these to try to come up with a bunch of cool things that walk around an office and high five each other. Ours do that too. But we built it to try to reduce the workload by 15 to 20 hours a week of each person in the company. We did it to then say, could we replace a$500 an hour consultant? All the things they know that the stuff, the big boys pay for in the business world, fortune 500 companies have budgets of six figures, seven figures a year to hire all these consultants to come and give them all this great insight. Can we replace those 500 hour consultants for just 500 bucks a month?

18:56And we've done it. Like I was just talking to a client. He said, hey, I'm trying to figure out my cashflow conversion cycle. We whipped open his account. I clicked sync with QuickBooks. It pulled his most recent financial data. And then we asked the CFO in his account, hey, take a peek at January versus February. Tell us how our cash conversion cycle is doing and three things we could do to improve it in the next month. Oh yeah. This thing took 15 seconds to think and boom, gave us an exact roadmap of how to optimize his cash flow and his business. Wow. It's unbelievable. It's so cool.

19:31John Lee Dumas:Jarek, Fire Nation's listening right now. They are so excited. They're so passionate. They're just so on fire because I mean, of what you're sharing right now, they're just like, I want to do this today. I want to do this right now. But guess what? They can't possibly because they don't have the direct guidance. Now, listen, you live in Puerto Rico. You live in Puerto Rico. I live in Puerto Rico. I've been to your house multiple times. They've been in your cold plunge. You've never been to my house. I'm still pissed off about that, by the way. We're going to change that at some point. But what I want to get to, what I want to get to, my man, is you're throwing an event on this lovely island, the Isle de Encanta, the Enchanted Island, Puerto Rico, our home island.

20:08John Lee Dumas:You're throwing an event here. It's going to be in June. It's going to be amazing. I'm going to be there. You're going to be there. Other amazing people are going to be there. Tell Fire Nation what needs to happen for them to get there. Let's promote the heck out of this. Absolutely. Go to executiveoffice.ai. There's a big banner or skinny banner going across the top of the website. Click it, sign up, or in the show notes, JLD will have a link to go directly there. and here's the key. It's 48 to freedom. Why do we name it this? Here's my pitch. You give me 48 hours. I will help you get freedom back in your business.

20:43My goal is to free up 15 to 20 hours a week of your time in your business at this event. This is not a AI conference that we talk about best practices and I show you my funny agents and stuff like that. This is 10 % education where I'm going to teach you why we're doing it this way and how it all works. 90 % hands-on agent building. And I'm making it super simple. So if you're non-technical, you're still going to love it. I'm making it, which agent do I want? Lead, management, and nurture. Click the button. Turns it on. Which system do you use? PipeDrive, HubSpot, Go High Level. Great. Click the button, connect.

21:21Done. Your system is now connected. Awesome. How do you want it to engage? Every time I get a new lead, do a web crawl, find everything about this lead, and then create a custom conversation to interact with them over the next 12 weeks, lead score them. And if it heats up, move it over to my hot lead account and tell me to reach out immediately. All you got to do is touch three buttons and we're going to have that up and running for you. And then think of every other category of business, similar setup that we're looking to do. So 48 Hour to Freedom, it's at the Condando Vanderbilt Hotel in San Juan.

21:52It's a five-star hotel, one of my favorite places there. Our room we're in has a 180 degree ocean view. So we're not going to get stuck inside. We're going to have a beautiful place to do this. It's June 2nd through 3rd. And you're going to be building four custom AI agents specifically for your business. And our goal, you give me 48 hours, I'll help get you your freedom back in your business.

22:14John Lee Dumas:And by the way, Fire Nation, I'm going to be there laptop open working right next to you because this is critical stuff for me, for Jarek, for you, for every human being that wants to be making an impact, adding value to this world going forward. So Jarek, one more time, give us that URL, that call to action. Like you said, it'll be in the show notes page, but give us that strong call to action where we can find out exactly what's going on and then we'll say goodbye. That's right. Executiveoffice.ai. Banner's at the top. Click it, come and join, sign up, and we'll see you there. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

22:49John Lee Dumas:You've been hanging out with JR and JLD today. So keep up the flipping heat for links to everything we talked about. Visit eofire.com, type Jarek in the search bar, J-A-I-R-E-K, and the show notes page will pop right up. Jarek, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your fire with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, Fire Nation. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Jarek for sponsoring today's episode. 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 EO Fire.