How to Reclaim Your Time and Boost Business Productivity with Nick Sonnenberg

23:38So to the best of your ability, use words to describe the graphic, but when we put it here, we will be able to expedite it. Let's start with a question, right? have you ever felt like you're drowning in work and you just need to hire that one other person and then that's going to be the end all be all and it's going to solve all of your problems. So that's, let's just use that as the precursor, right? So, but oftentimes you hire that person, three months later, you're drowning in work just as much as before. A big mistake that I find entrepreneurs in terms of vocabulary or leaders saying is like, oh, we need to hire someone.

24:11You don't need to hire someone. What you're really saying is you need more capacity. You need more capability. And you think that hiring is the only strategy that's going to work to give you that result. Right. It's like people don't want to buy a drill. They want the hole that the drill is going to produce to hang the frame. But ultimately, they want a frame hung. Right. And so buying the drill is just a step in that process. Right. But if there's another way to do it, you know, superglue or something, like maybe you don't need a drill. Right. So let's just start with that. So first, it's you want more capacity capability.

24:44Now, every person that you hire, it's not just the recruiting, onboarding, training salary that you're paying. You're paying this invisible extra complexity factor that gets introduced, and that's what we're talking about. So it's the same from network theory, right? If you're the only person that owns a cell phone, it's worth nothing. Now, two people own a cell phone. It's worth a little bit more because you have one person to talk to. Every person that gets added to a cellular network, the network becomes exponentially more valuable, right? There's exponentially more combinations of people that you can talk to.

25:16It's the same applied to business. Every person you add to your team, to your organization, there's exponentially more ways for information to get lost, miscommunicated, so on and so forth. So the graphic, it's going to show, you know, when you're a three-person team, there's three ways to connect. Three dots, you connect the dots. There's three ways that you can transfer information. When you go to a five-person team, now you connect all the dots with lines. Now there's 10 ways that you can transfer it. You go to a 10-person team, now there's 45 ways, right? A 100-person team, there's 4 ,950 ways.

25:48So it's an exponential equation. It's n times n minus 1 over 2. So in the 100 case, it's 100 minus 99 over 2. So 99 times 50. So whatever your team is, you could do the math yourself, and you could see how many different ways there is for information to get transferred. and literally every person you add it, that's in some cases, that's the most expensive part of the hiring. It's not the salary, but you don't see it. You don't see that on a balance sheet or a P &L statement, but it's there and it is harder to manage more people. It's exponentially harder. So everything I'm about is how do you maximize revenue per team member, profit per team member?

26:23So back to the performance, like one metric of success could be for something like that is, hey, we're gonna take your revenue per team member from X to Y. And we want a percentage of that. Oh, that'd be amazing. That would be amazing. Okay. So as we get into the possibility of brainstorming, how best do we set this up? Like if I'm going to like, I'm going to bring you my poo so you can poo poo on it. How do we fix this? When you come in and you're looking at my business, how do we best frame this up? Well, I mean, why don't we start with this? So what is either sucking your soul, wasting time, stuff that doesn't light you up that you do on a daily or weekly basis?

27:00and why don't we talk about that and see if there's ways that we can get that off your plate. And then the next step would be, you know, more generally across your team, what's low-level work that no one on your team likes doing or that your team is complaining about or there's just inefficiencies that you see on a team level and let's talk that through and try to brainstorm, is there a way to clean that up? Okay, well, can you just like call me out? Because what I will say is we've done a lot of work about time optimization and things that I need to be pulled out. We've done time audits. We're currently doing another time audit of myself and the leadership team.

27:33So very important to us. We are a systems and process-driven team. I feel very proud to say that. We're tiny, but we're mighty. How big is the team? There are six full-time employees and then four contractors. Cool. Yeah. But when you showed the grid of 10, I was just like, yep, a team of 10 in all the different ways. Absolutely. And I was just like, okay, this is where I have this beautiful opportunity to come in and be like, we're going to get bigger. Not because I want to or it sounds cool, but I only, once we've completely stretched out our capacity, would bring on somebody. But I have the systems and processes to something for success.

28:05Now, having said that, I am so stressed. I have no hours in my day. And I have looked at everything. And everything that is on my to-do list is something that only I can do, at least at this point. And so when we see, like, there is, like, a major revenue opportunity for us, a lot of the times that the people want the consulting, they want to come to me. Even though we have set up preliminary protocols, verifications, see how viable this opportunity or client is, who's making the introduction, we have done all of those things. But it seems like we're not having a standardized way or an offer because everybody wants it done a little bit differently.

28:43For custom consulting? Yes. Yes. And to me, I look at this and I'm just like, I don't even know. Yeah. The team and I are looking at this like, how do we systematize this? It feels like it's very specific to a client. And sometimes they want three meetings for ultimate clarity and then they want the legal team sitting in and all of these like different structures. And there is a part of me that when you had said, oh, performance based, I think that would radically change the type of client that we would be working with. But then I feel like that's a whole nother expose because I'm like, well, I'll get into your numbers.

29:15How messy are these? Like, what are your conversions? Like, you want me to win, but is the lever broke? And so I just don't even, I feel like there's opportunity and I feel like it's a hot mess. And I think I, how do I start systematizing at least some aspects of it to start saving us time? So tell me a little bit about your business. Like what's the business model? And then also tell me a little bit about the different technologies that you guys use. How do you guys work together? Oh, we're getting so integrated. I think I'm sweating. I'm sweating. I'm sweating. Let's just start there and see where the conversation goes.

29:43It's like I'm dealing with like a PhD with productivity. And I'm like, I think I'm good, but I'm like literally like a fourth grader. Let me also say, though, like no one is at full productivity. Like I just make the assumption that I'm doing everything wrong and that there's a better way to do something. So, like, you know, with AI and like all these new tools, there's always a better way. Like there's not a single thing that any of us do where it's like, I would say, fully optimal. Now, there's something that maybe is good enough and there's lower hanging fruit and you should, you know, focus on that.

30:10But I think having a student mindset is really important no matter what stage you are in your entrepreneurial journey. My aspiration is always to be the dumbest in the room. And so I'm very well qualified. So let's begin. I don't think so. So I think it behooves that there is like an origin story and there seems to be like a six-year iteration and like a beginning. I dropped out of law school because my mom had brain cancer. I decided I wanted to become a photographer and I didn't own a camera. I built a six-figure business in 11 months. Then we continued to grow by creating educational resources and starting a digital store for photographers.

30:39Companies started looking at what I was doing, asking me to create content for their businesses for photographers. This was before the influencer. I did that and I realized I was trading time for dollars. I said, I don't want to do this anymore. Then they said, can we hire you as a consultant? I said, what is this word called consultant? I consulted for a year and a half and then I realized I was still trading time for dollars, although I was making more. I said, what would be the next scalable jump for me to serve more people? I got into course creation. I created multiple seven-figure revenue streams on the back of courses.

31:05Then I said, people want more continuous. How do I diversify our revenue streams? I created a membership. Created a membership, it got off to a great start, another seven-figure revenue stream. And then I realized there was a ton of friction between our membership and the promise of the membership, which was to help small business owners market their business. We were making them create the content, pull down the content, either put it out in real time or schedule it. And so we thought to myself, how do we create synergies and remove the friction? So in 2021, hired a CTO, became an official SaaS company.

31:32I know. I don't know a single line of code. I don't know anything about tech. That is the origin story. We spent about six years building to that point. We now have a president who sits on the inside of Social Curator. It is$59 a month. We serve small business owners. It's a machine. The team was like, why don't you have Nick go through our systems for Social Curator? I'm like, no. The thing is freaking, it's a chef's kiss. This is what people, business owners dream of. My time there is so small, the team is going with it and growing. Another arm of the business is courses. I feel like we've systematized our courses and the way that we launch our courses.

32:03Now, what we don't really talk about is consulting. I used to do small hourly consulting. And then I realized that companies would pay a whole lot more, not just for an hour, but for a project. So they would have me come in. I would be consulting based on the project. And then they started asking for deployment because we possess a skill set that many business owners just don't get. So what's an example of the type of project? Okay. So they would come in. They're like, what's going to be our marketing strategy? How do we deploy it to, let's say, a segment of our audience? How do we start testing this?

32:35How do you say, we need you to lay it out for us. Our team can take it and run. To me, that always felt like a sweet spot because I'm just like, okay, we've done this. We feel really good about this. Then there's organizations who are just like, what you speak of this digital marketing is pure magic. And I'm like, okay, well, we can't deploy on the strategy because you need these pieces together. And they're like, how do we begin these pieces? And I'm like, oh. So then I think to myself, okay, do I try to take a referral fee to send them out to say like, hey, this company needs a community. Do I send them out to a community manager?

33:02And then I lose that lead. And I'm like, or do we bring it in house? We can do this stuff in our sleep. But then I'm like, oh, the pressure on the team to actually do deployment. Now, it would still be in a strategic way. We're not going to go in and actually physically build the community. It's to go into their team and say, who's responsible for what? But every company wants something very different. But it's very lucrative if we go in and start doing the deployment. What kind of businesses are hiring? It is all over the place. Today's bid was going to a multi-level marketing company. But you said that the SaaS company is crushing it?

33:34Yeah, it's doing so well. I love it. So is there, I guess. The nature, I mean, we can get into a business diagnostic. Yeah, I mean, whatever's going to add the most value to your listeners right now. But I'm just wondering, like if you were to just completely, what would happen if you just totally shut down consulting? You put all that energy into just scaling the. The consulting thing is new. So we have attempted to scale social curator and due to the nature of the person that we serve industry wide, the churn of the entrepreneur. Despite how sticky we are, the business itself doesn't survive.

34:09So no one's paying$59 a month for marketing if their business isn't surviving. It's a very short time span. Got it. So what kind of, who's the end customer? Like a brand new entrepreneur? A small business owner. Somebody that's doing less than$60 ,000, maybe has a VA. They know they need to show up on social media. They don't know the how. They don't have a plan. They don't have a strategy. Consistency is a big deal for them. So we create coaching. We create resources. We create education. It is basically a digital marketing agency. But the problem is, because people don't have time, they're like, how am I going to go in and learn?

34:40Even though all the tools are here for me, how am I going to learn how to do this? And how am I going to stay consistent with it? It becomes, I need to take you eight steps before you actually get to this point. And people are like, I'm so overwhelmed and my business isn't surviving. Got it. Yeah. And is it the same people, these 10 people across all these different revenue streams, the consulting, the tech? Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And so all the same collaboration tools. Yep. You're using Slack for all these things. So Notion is like our main hub. It's the Bible. Asana for task management, Slack for team communication.

35:11And we don't email each other unless it's on a very professional capacity. Were you guys doing this before you read the book? No. Okay. So after you read the book, you made a couple of changes? No, I'm so sorry. This is how we built the system. Oh, good for you. Yeah. So you figured it out yourself naturally. I think that I really want a good, healthy work-life balance. And I became like very dogmatic. And I'm like, this is what belongs here. This is what belongs here. And there's clear accountability of who dropped the ball where. Totally. Totally. And then you don't have this scavenger hunt where you have to look in like 16 different places to find.

35:42On the consulting side, is there an opportunity to do group workshops or group? Like, for example, we hit the same thing, right? There's only so much you can scale yourself until you, you know, so productizing things or going group was one of the approaches that we took. So we do these two-day workshops where we'll get 15, 20 people together. What's the size of the business that you're attracting for the 15 person? We have people anywhere from five to 100 million usually coming. So at 100 million, they're not hiring you to come in and do the consulting on that level? They might do both. So it's not like an either or, right?

36:14But, you know, it's good value because it's a fraction of the price of having me come, you know, for X number of days or my team coming X number of days in person. And one person's issue, even if it seems totally different, like the issue you're bringing up, there's other people that maybe have faced that or might have an insight that I wouldn't have. And the solution or the ideas generated from your problem might spark someone else to solve something, even if it seems on the surface totally unrelated. So we found these two-day, let's call it workshops, come with your biggest business issue. Usually people come with a process issue and we'll figure out a way to use AI and automation to go and automate and AI-ify that process.

36:58Oftentimes, though, the conversation that we have to solve your problems, super interesting for the next person. And then that might trigger some other ideas for them. So we found that actually the group much more scalable and it really didn't take away from the client experience. Did it impact results or timeliness of results? You know, like private consulting is private consulting. So like if I spend X number of hours one-on-one, like we're going to move a bit faster than in a group. But, you know, bang for your buck, like in terms of value, like people are getting a lot of value. On the consulting side, though, yeah, it's a challenge.

37:31Like I don't have like a magic pill for you. So people come to you and have you systematized? I don't need to know like the ins and outs of it, but have you systematized these are the options that you have to work with me? Or is it you will do some sort of customization based on? So we have a few different offerings. One, hire me to speak, right? So that's kind of one. That's my favorite. That's nice. I'm like, yeah, I'll see that all day. That one's cool, right? One of the things that I do on the leverage side with the training, by the way, is since I don't want to do the implementation and I don't want to create courses and content in 100 different tools, so I partner with agencies.

38:03And then in the cases where I haven't homegrown, I'll instead of vetting people, I'll vet partners. And then I'll bring an agency that's an expert at a certain tool to come in, and then they'll facilitate the training. Oh, cool. And then any of the implementation that happens, we have some type of rev share affiliate type of deal. Oh, that's nice. So that's cool, right? Because then I'm not managing more employees. I'm managing partners, not people. I don't have to create a whole bunch of stuff. Oh, that's good. My clients, it's a triple win. My clients are getting the best at that thing. The partners are loving it because I'm a lead gen source for them, right?

38:38So everyone's happy in that model. I think that figuring out a way to do performance based in any sort of consulting capacity is the right move or productizing. But, you know, doing custom stuff, it's a challenge. So for your stuff, I wonder, do you have an opportunity? And I think that if it's a really big company, you can't do performance based. And if it's really small, it's not worth your time. So there's like that sweet spot. Maybe it's in that like five to 20 million kind of revenue range, maybe. Interesting. So whatever it is for you, but, you know, how do you get people to just pay for results?

39:15At the end of the day, they're hiring you for what result? Like they want more leads? They want to lower their cost of acquiring a customer? Like if I looked at this particular bit, they had like three very clear objectives. What were they? That was to sign up three subscriptions, to sign up three people, three distributors, and for them to post consistently. And how they determined the consistency is three times a week in a month. But what results are they hoping for? Well, the other two seem concrete. That one, what's the result that they're hoping to get as a byproduct? The halo effect of consistent marketing across multi-channel.

39:49So, I don't know. Did they tell you a number? What is it worth to them if they got those three? What was the first thing you said? Three partners? They didn't get into LTV, but I can do back of the napkin math. And I'm just like, they're going to make a lot of money. So, I mean, I wonder if they'd be open to a conversation where it's, okay, that's your problem. How much are you willing to invest? How much is that problem worth to you or how much are you willing to invest to solve that problem? And kind of have the conversation go that way versus pay me a monthly retainer, right? And it's better for them too.

40:22Like if that problem is worth a million dollars to them and you're like, okay, cool, it's worth a million. I'll do it. You figure out what it's going to cost you. Like I'll do it 80 % of what it's worth to you. I'll do it for 80%, 60%, whatever the number is, right? That's the direction that we're trying to move in. Can you give me an example? Not saying that you will, but how are you using pay performance in the consulting that you render? So the types of ways that we're moving in the direction is like, what is this process costing you? And that could be like accounts receivable. It could be back office, nursing home, and there you have physical papers and they've got 100 people, you know, sending out whatever it is.

40:58Right. And it's like across all the salaries that you're paying to achieve, you know, to get that job done. What is it costing you? A million dollars a month. Cool. So instead of paying me to go in and like clean things up, it's like, how about I just take over accounts receivable for you? Right. And like now you don't have to worry about it anymore. And you're paying a million. How about you pay me eight hundred thousand a month? And then it's on me to use AI and automation and Asana and all these different tools properly. Now it's on me, not on you. But I think if you're confident in kind of the value you're bringing, it's a much better deal for you to try to figure out performance.

41:34right so it could be in my context it could be what are you paying to to perform that process could be what's your revenue per team member is that a goal for you to get it from 200 to 400 thousand like and then it's just very measurable and then obviously efficiency plays a big role in revenue per team member i'm not giving them marketing strategies to affect revenue but assuming that because it's a partnership at the end at that point it's not a you know dollars for hours. It's like, hey, is this a two-way good fit? Because you have risk too. Your success and you making money is also relying on them being a good partner.

42:12So it's not a one-way interview. It's a two-way interview. Let's see. And if I see someone where I believe they can handle the revenue stuff properly, and I see gross inefficiency under the hood, and I don't want to come in like the grim reaper and say, okay, let's fire half the people. But if I see an opportunity where, hey, I can tighten this up. You're not going to need to hire more people. Or there's a few underperformers. Let's get rid of that and just put a hiring freeze and let's just clean this up. You go and take care of revenue. I'll deal with this. Sounds like the dream. That's the direction that we've been moving.

42:45That's so good. Okay. So this was very, very helpful. And I feel like it's added a lot of clarity for me about really taking a good, cold heart assessment of what do we want to do? What What are we willing to offer? And like, would we even entertain the, well, we could do that. Well, you know, the software company, do you have the opportunity though to charge more, like have like a, you know, bronze, silver, gold packet? Like, do you have the opportunity instead of 59 a month, is there some premium version that's like a thousand a month and you go after bigger clients? You know, that's like another thing that I'm wondering too.

43:20And there's also like, you know, not to give like too much weight, but there was also a play here where we distinctly felt like we could white label our platform and customize it for this organization for them to use in all of the language and we use ai like dotty she's your social media manager and so we build profiles and so when the prompt is given they don't have to add things that are commonly added like their name their city their job like their descriptions what do they call their so they build out a profile so that the captions are returned and the ideas are returned specifically for their ideal audience to do this at scale with a multi-level marketing company becomes like amazing.

43:51Well, I think also another important question, which we didn't get to is like, what are your personal goals too? Like how many hours a week do you want to work? Like how much, like what does success look like to you? Because I think the strategy you have to kind of reverse engineer off of that, you know, if it's, I'm trying to build a billion dollar company and I'm willing to work a hundred hours a week. It's like, it's a different, it's a different strategy potentially than I want to have a lifestyle business. And if I make a couple million dollars a year, but you know, work 30 hours a week, I'm super happy, you know?

44:21And there's nothing wrong with either. But I think your personal goals really drive a lot of the decisions also that you have to make there. What are your personal goals? Well, I want to be intellectually stimulated with what I work on. I want to be making enough money where it covers the lifestyle I want to have without having to kill myself. But yeah, I mean, I want to make a lot of money. And along the way, I want to be doing things that give me joy and light me up. So of the current things that you're doing right now, what is the most intellectually stimulating thing? Well, the algorithmic sports betting has been pretty intellectually stimulating, to be honest.

44:53It's like really going back to my roots from the high frequency trading days. Okay. And football season's about to start. So we're about to be able to start stress testing everything that we've been building. Okay. So that's pretty cool. There's different aspects of all of it that light me up. I like the speaking. I love my mastermind group. We do these amazing trips. We do the two-day workshops. We also do a week long where I rent out a hotel and I'll bring 35 people down and it's highly curated. So everyone's awesome. And back to the Ascension model, we'll do that and it's really fun. It's profitable, but it's like good people.

45:25You build deep connections and then organically things come out after that without having to be super like, oh, okay, let's get them to stage one, to stage two. It's just, let's spend six days together, have some fun and we'll have some conversation and we'll see, is there more that we can do together? Are these people for the mastermind making a commitment for a designated amount of time or just for the event? Yeah, so we have a year-long mastermind. And so part of that is we have an annual week-long event. And the interesting thing with that, I'm a part of various groups. And the structure primarily in a lot of groups is you're sitting in a room and from like 9 to 5, there's speakers kind of nonstop and maybe some exercises.

46:06I always find that the value, though, in these groups is the hallway conversation, the coffee, the breakfast. It is. It's who's in the room and having good conversations. And I find that a mistake that a lot of these people, well, that's not mistake might be harsh. I always wish, why don't we have more break time? So a few years ago, I went down to Baja in Todos Santos. Do you know who Chip Conley is? I do. So I went down to his place down in Baja. And for those of you listening that don't know who Chip is, he wrote a famous book called Peak. And he was like the chief strategy officer of Airbnb.

46:38He was Brian Chesky's mentor. Amazing guy. I went down to his hotel down in Baja, the Modern Elder Academy. And we hit it off. We were having coffee one day. And he didn't know me from a load of wood. And I was like, you know what? If you're smart enough to mentor Brian Chesky, you're probably good enough to mentor me. How about we do some calls and see if we can figure some stuff out here? And you just met him because you were a patron at his hotel? So the backstory to that is I have Eric and Alyssa who are now part of my mastermind group, but they're good friends. Eric used to be the CEO of Ink and Fast Company, and Alyssa is like the world's number one executive coach.

47:15We were having dinner with a group of 10 people, and they said, hey, we're doing a trip down to Baja. Who wants to come? And I was the only one that raised my hand, so I third-wheeled this romantic trip down in Baja with them. It was great. We were doing like sunset walks, the three of us. It was just like, it was just really hilarious. Anyway, so they knew Chip and I went down. They're amazing people, Eric and Alyssa. So we had a great time and that's how I got to know Chip. And I made the ask, because if you, you said the phrase, 100 % of the things you don't swing at, you strike out. So I just made the ask, hey, would you be willing to do this?

47:47And he's such a nice, generous human being. He said, sure, let's give it a try. And after a few months, I was like, Chip, I feel bad that I'm just getting this free advice from you. How can I give back? Would it help you if like maybe one day I organized something and rent it out? I didn't have these aspirations of running a mastermind group. He said, actually, we had a cancellation. How about next month you rent it out? And I was like, okay, well, four weeks to like pull together 30 people to come down to Mexico. It's not the easiest thing to figure out, but I'll figure it out. So I started thinking like what's missing from all the groups I'm a part of.

48:23And it was how do we just it kind of just struck me. The formula was simple. Go to a great place, curated group of people and just give them a lot of free time. And like no one's going to have a bad experience. And so that's what we did. Like I organized it. It's free time all day until two o 'clock. And then one of the guys, you're going to meet him at dinner tonight. He used to play for the for the Jets. His name's Josh Martin. Awesome, awesome guy. He would lead morning workouts or they had like a meditation teacher there. This guy, Teddy, amazing, but all optional. So we do morning workout optional, then breakfast together, talk to people.

48:56Sometimes people want to do like a morning sunrise coffee with me and we'll look at a sauna or whatever it is and talk process off the clock. I stopped talking about my dream trip, a sauna and coffee. Let's go. Oh, yeah. Or whatever you want or a beach walk. And then, you know, then it's free time. Go to your room, do your Zooms, connect with people. like when I had my book coming out one of the guys was a well-known New York Times bestselling author John Levy and he sat down for like four hours with me and mapped out my entire marketing launch plan so you get these experts in different things right if you came you'd be an expert at marketing that a lot of people would be able to get a lot of value out of you and like you would meet you know the former CHRO of Chipotle or the CMO of Sony or like other good connections and then from two to six we have hot seats so people share anything they're stuck on that could range from a business but also personal sometimes people should i break up with my boyfriend should i have a kid and so we're talking that through and then there's also talks on cyber security or culture or whatever it is chip is there and he'll give a talk and then we have dinner and you know have drinks go to the jacuzzi whatever and we do that for six days so you really get to know people and so we did that the first you know a few years ago now and it went so well yeah we sold it out in a month and it just went so well people are like can we do this again so that was the genesis oh interesting yeah well i feel very fortunate and blessed to be able to meet these brilliant people oh yeah they're awesome yeah that's just fun okay right but i think you have to teach me how to be fun because I full on land in and I'm like, optimize for business.

50:36I'm more like you, actually. Okay. Well, anyway, somebody's gonna have to teach us. Somebody will have to teach us like this is the system for fun. Do you have a mastermind group or have you tried one? So what's your mastermind? I swear, I swear by masterminds. It's literally like this is a cheat code for success and started them early in my digital marketing experience. And now I'm doing three programs. So I do something called Hampton. I do a peer based mastermind and then the Vive program. So you're a member of three. I am a member of three. I also host the Jasmine Star Mastermind. Ooh, and what's that about?

51:06It's for seven-figure entrepreneurs. We talk about scaling. And a lot of things that we see, a lot of the pressure points and deep desires from that one to five stage is optimizing their systems. I take very little credit. I work with a team of just system ninjas. And so being able to go through that, speak to those pressure points, but we also do hot seats. It's like, where are they at? And then that five to 10 range is really gonna be like scaling the team. What is the culture? How do we start leveraging this? And I've always believed the first mastermind ever hosted, the number one piece of feedback that I'm like, hey, I want to know how to get better.

51:35It's give us more free time. And I was like, yeah, lesson learned. Lesson learned. It is free time in the connection. Totally. And the hardest part for me is just curating the right group of people. Absolutely. And saying no to a lot of people in order to really get the group to that really tight, high-level group that you want it to be. Absolutely. So on your side, what's the key area of focus for you going forward right now? Or what's most exciting for you? Oh, are you turning this podcast on me? Yeah, now I'm - Are we really going there? Are we really going there? Welcome to my podcast. This is your host, Nick Sonnenberg.

52:09It's a takeover. Oh, man. I think I really, really, really want to get a good idea of how to start attracting and cultivating and courting A players. On your team? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I feel like I do a, if I could say something nice about myself, I feel like I'm really good at establishing long-term relationships and finding a really good fit for a role. I think that's why we don't have very high churn. We do have a very small team. But these people are hardwired for systems and hardwired to win. It's a very scoreboard-driven team. Nowadays, with 10 people, you can get a lot done with AI. Are you guys using a lot of AI?

52:43Yeah. I mean, big time. Like, the premise of our digital offer is to facilitate that and make it easier for the small business owner that feels, like, really intimidated by it. But how we leverage it on the inside of the team is like incredible. I mean, I think we're going to start seeing for the first time in history, you know, the first billion dollar solo companies, like one person team, two person teams that are hitting billion dollars. I completely see that. So I think if I'm like actually thinking about the future, it's how do I attract a level talent? How do I have that like Olympian mindset?

53:13How do I get somebody who's humble, gritty, somebody who wants to win, systems driven? I think it's like a perfect. Well, I wonder if you need to hire more people or if you could get another 20 or 30 percent out of each of these people that you already have. I think if I was being really honest, 90 percent of the team, it's like I feel like I'm getting 100. I feel like I honestly my team is going to listen to this. I'll just be like very honest. I feel that at least three of our team players are literally doing the job of three people. I see that to their face. I'm like, I would take you on your worst day than anybody else.

53:42That's awesome. I know. I mean, that's honestly kudos to you. The best skill I think that you can have as a CEO and entrepreneur is the ability to track and retain and recruit good talent. Thank you. I think that's my biggest takeaway is other than like celebrating our systems and looking at how to get a heck of a lot better with them and then reminding people that we had to learn the hard way. But it's not necessary because I read Come Up For Air after Vive. So Vive sent us all a book. Oh, cool. And so I think I took a picture and I sent it to you. I was like, legitimately, I'm reading the book.

54:11And it's all buttressing the stuff that we spent years trying to build. So if there is a person who wants to get the book, would you want to go into your website? Do you want to go to Amazon? Do you want? So they can go to comeupforair.com for that. And we have bonus resource. So the book's like a 320-page or so book. And I'm a productivity nerd. So if I weren't, this would be like a 1 ,200-page book. I would agree. I would agree. I think you went a lot into this book. I really packed it tight in there. You know, when I was pitching HarperCollins on the book, my publisher, I said, look, nowadays there's a lot of books.

54:43and it's like one concept and they somehow dragged it on for 300 pages with a bunch of stories. I'm like, how about we write like a real dense, but like actionable tips and tricks, every page there's something to take away. So we couldn't fit it all into the book. So on comeupforair.com, there's a bunch of bonus resources that go along with the book. Quizzes, cheat sheets, so on and so forth. So if you're interested in this material, the book is a great place to start. And then if you need training in any of these things, is getleverage.com is where you can find more information on the training.

55:15Nick, thank you for coming and speaking. And this podcast totally took a different turn than I had expected. I feel like I feel very open and I'm like, oh, I'm a very private person. And so for us to be talking about where I'm at in the business, the systems of the business, the teams of the business, like the reality of it, and I'm like, thank you for just showing me how to show up in a more humane way, but also teach people along the way. Well, I mean, after the podcast, separately, if you want to do a Zoom with you and your team, and just do like a quick, you know, hour Zoom jam session, share a screen and have me take a look at things.

55:47If there's anything that I can see to optimize anything, I'm happy to. And I would only do that. I would only do that on the condition that I would be able to sit with you and your team to talk about how to optimize way for organic traffic. Get this message out because it is so needed and it's so good. As good as I am in operations, that's how bad I am at marketing. So I would take you up on that one. Great, then it's a win-win. But I will take you up on the condition that you take me up. Ladies and gentlemen, come up for air. This is where we want you to start the journey of getting to know Nick.

56:15Do you like to connect on social? You said you're not that, like maybe marketing is not your strength, but do you want people connected? Where do you want to send people on social? Where are you most active? Where are you sharing the most value? LinkedIn is where I'm most active. Beautiful. And it's just by your name? Nick Sonnenberg. Beautiful. We'll be sure to link it in the show notes. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching and listening to Jasmine's Jar Show.