Lessons - Finding Your North Star | Ryan Staley - Founder & CEO of Whale Boss

When do you start to branch out on your own? This is probably where you start to understand, like, okay, I have a process here. It's worked repeatedly and now there's an option for me to take this and run with it because obviously other companies need this because they're always hurting with these enterprise clients. Yeah, and so I think a lot of it started. It was really interesting, Scott, because it started. I just I didn't really work on building my brand. I was so focused on achieving those results internally and I networked it with customers or customer facing components but not with peers. I really, other company that I never peers at my company. So I was kind of like in my own bubble. And that's one of the biggest things that I tell the salespeople. It's always, always, always talks people outside of that. So what happened was I started talking to folks as I was building my brand and they're like, what'd you do? You know, because a lot of salespeople are competitive but they're like, so give me your baseball card. What are your stats? What did you execute on? Right? And then I started telling people like, huh, that's like really impressive. I'm like, it is. They tell me at work, I'm not doing enough. Yeah. You know, so like, I was like, oh, my God, like, I got something here, right? And then I started asking around. I'm like, like, do nobody else is doing that? And so I'm like, okay, this is interesting. So basically, what happened and we talked about this a little bit before is my firm, I started to work on creating a methodology and a framework around this. I started to create a course for sales reps, not for companies. My company found out about it. They didn't like it. It was in the middle of COVID and they say, Ryan, it's not free to leave, right? After being there for nine and a half years. So it was like the peak of COVID. So that's a whole nother store we can get it. I don't want to bring up the hard. I don't want to bring up bad memories. Give you a little PTSD. Yeah, it's suck, man. The first four or five months, I was just trying to figure out what was going on. I mean, that's when the riots were happening in Chicago. There was all sorts. I mean, it was a really unique time. And I kept saying it myself as a point of motivation like, Ryan, this is going to be a hell of a a comeback story. This is going to be a hell of a redemption story. And so I did an enterprise summit last year in October. And I started talking to people once again, this kind of came to the surface. And I'm like, I really want to be working with with CEOs. And I started talking to my network and people are like, well, what you did, I want you to do that for my company. And so I started to focus on it. And the more I focused on it, the more it started to grow. And so now, essentially, I coach CEOs on how to implement those systems that got that result for me before, when in a resource constrained environment where they don't have tons of venture capital. And you so you found this, you found this, this is, you know, you had your product that you proven out that it has worked. And then you just sold it. You sold this strategy to businesses. And now, when did you close your first deal as an entrepreneur? Was it? Yeah. So I started having people as funny because I started having people want, like, want me to coach them on how to sell. Because I help sales reps, like, I help 1% increase their income from never being in B2B sales. So almost like 500K and like a couple years. So, so people, I started, I had some coaching students like right from the get go. Like, people wanted me to work with them and help them. So I had kind of different avenues where I started to do that. My first consulting company that I closed was right after I did the enterprise sales summit. And it was kind of on accident because I wasn't focused on it. But I had someone from my network tell me, I want you to help me with this. And then I had someone else from a referral tell me like, Hey, like, I want you to help with this. And, and then I started getting more referrals, leveraging my own dog food. And that's where my passion for referrals comes. I basically started to create, you know, really, really good cash flow and momentum from harnessing referrals. I was even focused on that Scott, like originally, like, I wasn't, I didn't play inside my network with that. I was always silent in my company. Like I said, so I'm like, this could be the best, one of the best gifts that I could give entrepreneurs or startups that are starting. If I could teach them how to do this and systemize it. What was the biggest misconception about entrepreneurship building your own business that you had going in that you sort of matured on over the past year? Yeah. One of the biggest things is I waited too long to leverage other people. You know, I tried to loan wolf it and with my pride, I'm like, I'm going to figure this out. This is what I'm going to do, right? And I started talking to more and more people. And at the same time, I wish I would have outsourced different components of what I was doing. And I would have massively accelerated like where I was going and how fast I could have done that. Do you outsource stuff now? Like I, like, this is just, it's not just you now, you're starting to grow like team. Yeah, I have a different contract. You don't even have to hire people full time right now. That's the beautiful thing, right? So you can ramp it up whether it be with your content, whether your podcast development, whether it be Legion. I mean, you're talking about this before. Like how I'm, you know, like, I'm trying to do that now just because you, and it's like a classic like first time, I don't even know it's first time, just classic person who's never scaled before problem. They just feel like they can do everything themselves. Yeah. And that's, that's, I mean, that's a map. Like, here's the thing. Somebody told me that it's a great book to read on this is Who Not How? Have you ever heard of the book Who Not How? I didn't know it is a familiar name, but I don't, I'm not placing it. Maybe I've seen it in the past. I can't remember. Okay. So any entrepreneur that wants to get more skilled at outsourcing, read that book. Like it, it totally changes the game in terms of your time. Like you could buy your time back at a discount massively. It's insane. So that's my tip. Good.