Lessons - Mastering the 10X Growth Framework | Sharran Srivatsaa - CEO of Srilo Capital

Now, let's talk about the formula for how you actually, you know, 10 act like a playbook. That's right. Yeah. Here's a playbook on Argentina something, right? So there's a, it's unfair to say that, um, oh, yeah, this will work for anything, right? But, but there is a, there's a, I call it a heuristic. There's, it's a guideline. Like go with the framework, right? Framework, there's three parts here. Part number one is singularity of focus. The, if you think that you can add 1700 skews, 18 business lines and all to get that result, you're crazy. That stuff does not work. Like after you've achieved the 10X, then you can add more to it, but the, the, what drives the bus is, hey, I'm going to turn my focus to one big bone. I'm going to wake up and I'm going to nod on this big bone. I'm going to ask everybody in my organization to figure out what is this big bone that they cannot. And the question becomes for them, hey, I'm waking up in the morning. Am I doing something that's helping me with this big bone or it's not? So the filter becomes very clear. What everyone's working on different initiatives and different divisions. Yeah, you start to have some creative revenue on a lot of the stuff, but the singular visions never driven forward. So I'll give you a very simple example. When we had, we decided in on our real estate businesses growth that we would drive everything by people. So it was all, it was straight up everything related to acquiring great sales talent. And that sales talent drove our business. And so everyone was like, well, yeah, we should train productive people. We should have sales skills. And I'm like, I don't care about any of this. Our goals go higher and recruit and retain the best sales people possible. And that's really hard to do in a competitive environment. So our singularity of focus was if we got to 600 plus really productive sales people doing what they did, they would drive our business. So that was our singularity of focus. Now, every time I did anything, my team would say, sure, and why are you driving to San Diego? Is this going to help us annex? Like they would ask me that question so that it would be good. Yeah, it's really good because then I would ask them the same question saying like, hey, why are we? Why are we spending three million dollars on this advertising campaign? Does it help us get there? Right? So the filter is really important. So number one, singularity of focus on the problem with the singularity of focus is as an operator, you and I, I call of the, when you're inside the bottle, it's hard to read the label. You think 17 things are important. But as an advisor, when I'm looking from the outside, I could tell you 16 of those are noise. Yes, it may drop revenue a little bit, but it's really hard to do by yourself, right? So that's so singularity focus is number one. Number two. Call of the cadence of accountability. Accountability is an interesting concept, right? Like, hey, if you want to, if you want to lose weight, what do you do? You take an accountability coach. You've got to get that picture of it. Every single meal that you order that through. Yeah, yeah. You need some form of accountability, right? Yeah. So I'll tell you, I'll actually give you the practical accountability that we had. So I was like, hey, we need to go recruit some really badass salespeople. And normally what I would say is, hey, we'd have this chicken call every Friday to see where our recruiters are at getting these great salespeople. And we made kind of bumping along progress. And I was like, well, this is stupid. This isn't it. We're not growing as fast as we need. So Scott, this is exactly what we did at 9.45 every single morning, we had 11 what we call sales managers. Their job was to go recruit great salespeople at 9.45 every single morning, five days a week, we got on a phone call. And the 11 people went in order. It was like Jim, Jack, Scott, Johnny, same order every single day. And they would real out two numbers. They would real out. They would say, two, zero, one, five, eight, seven, whatever it was, right? The first number was how many appointments did I have yesterday? And the second number was how many appointments do I have scheduled today? So think about that for a second. I say two, zero. Then you go, you say three, one. And the next person goes and says zero, zero. How do you think that person feels right now? Terrible. I'll tell you all, people feel terrible because they can be moving in the opposite direction. Right. I hear what you think. Yeah. But nobody, what we saw was nobody that said zero, zero, ever turned up the next day and had a zero, zero again. Right. It's a lot of added. Right? Yeah. And you also realize that if somebody could do, it also gives you a perspective of what is possible. If someone said seven, three, I had seven appointments yesterday and three today. That's crazy. Someone that says zero, nine, you know that, hey, I was busy, whatever. And Scott, all we did was this. There was no judgment. It was a, you wake up, nine, forty five, we went in order. And if someone missed the call, I paused for ten seconds to let everybody know that that spot was not taken that day. I mean, it got very, very clear. And it sounds militant, but that was the single most important thing that drove the accountability. Because we knew that appointments drive people. We knew them. Because without meeting with people, you're not hiring anybody. So our cadence of accountability was this 15 minute chunk that we installed in our business that literally changed the nature of our entire business. Right. So number one singular to focus number two cadence of accountability. Now, in the different companies that I work with, that accountability is a different thing. It just so happens that in our business week, that was the 15 minute chunk that we came up with. Number three, good process and good process alone drives good results. So a lot of times what we say is, I'll figure it out later is what the average entrepreneur says, right? And that's why they, that's why they'll like doubling your business is actually easy. You can tighten a few screws, get a few bowls, sell and make a bunch of extra calls, you know, offer a bunch of discounts. You can double your business. But when you do that, it's very hard to sustain a doubling because you hacked your way to doubling it and everything starts to break. So the one thing that we realized from a process perspective was when a new salesperson came in because we drove our business with people that we needed to have like a badass onboarding program. And that's all we focused on because we said if Scott comes on and he has a delightful onboarding process, he never leaves and continues to be happy producing results for us. So I literally shut down my focus on anything else and all I worked on was, how do I have the most amazing, like we brought a consultant from four seasons and you are, you know, you see sharp, we're forcing it was born was Toronto. We brought a consultant from four seasons to say, how do we design the delightful onboarding process and that was a process for us. So for us, it was how do we get to, you know, 600 plus people selling 3.4 billion dollars a year, how do we do this 15 minute call every single day and how do we have an insane onboarding process. Those three things were this very specific three things that actually drove our 10x growth. I love it and it makes sense because now you're taking that you're taking that mantra that ideology that that that that one bone you have to know on and then you just you have that one bone in each piece that will actually lead back to your main high level. And how now I'm period, how do you, how do you figure out what that bone is as an entrepreneur stuck in the bottle right. Yeah, so, so it's a, it's a series of questions and I think that's the process that's a little difficult right. And so I'll give you an, I'll give you an example. I was driving to a con, I drove to a conference that I went to there was 100 entrepreneurs invited to this conference. I'd never had a, I was busy operating my business at this time. I get to this conference. I sit down. I'm put on my hoodie. I'm sitting in the back. I'm like, hey, I can't believe I'm here. I committed to being here. It's a whole day. It's wasting my day. That's what most entrepreneurs go to conferences. There's like, I can't believe I'm here. Right. And I'm sitting there. It's past lunch and I'm like, I wasted this morning. I'm here. I might as well listen. This, this five foot four lady shows up on stage. She starts talking. But I'm like, ah, I should probably pay attention. And Scott, she started talking about leadership, building a business, et cetera. And I started writing some notes. And as she was talking, a couple of questions came to mind. So I was almost going to raise my hand proverbarily to ask the question, but I felt like as soon as I asked the question, she naturally answered it in my head. Like an eerie experience. Right. And then I would take more notes. I'd have another question. And she would magically answer the next question. I was like, that's weird. Like that. How does she? Well, what I'm thinking that's weird that she did this the whole hour. And I was driving home that day. And I'm like, this is magical. Call my dad. I'm like, dad, you will believe what happened. And just as a, you know, I call my dad because I call my dad. And he says, oh, well, you should hire her. And I'm like, to do what? Well, she can answer all your questions, even before you're thinking about them. Maybe she could help you with your business, your life, whatever. I was like, well, I don't know what I would do. And so he goes, well, writer an email on my dad was very good about, you know, scripting good about language patterns. He said, I'll give you the phrasing he told me to try writer this email that says, hey, so and so I met you at this event and you're amazing. And here was the phrasing that he says, I would like to offer you blank. And he said, come up with a number, a dollar amount that was painful to you, but still large enough. And at that point in my career, when I was 29 years old, I pick, I'll pick the number. It was $10,000, right? And I said, I would like to offer you $10,000 as a symbol of my seriousness. That was the line, right? All I'm looking for is for you to prioritize some email communication for me. And that's it. I don't need any structured calls. I don't need any meetings or anything. And I was like, fuck, I was like, dad, really? He goes, yeah, would you pay $10,000 for a degree? You're right. I was like, of course. So I wrote that email within two minutes. She responds to me and says, is this a joke? I said, no. I said, no, absolutely. I'm dead serious. She responds. She's like, here's here wiring instructions. I was like, awesome. I wired the money and she became my first coach. Literally, she was instrumental in helping me chain, come up with this 10X plan, put the singularity of focus together. Like I had none of these pieces then. And she was the one that told me, hey, when you're inside the bottle, it's hard to read the label. So while I was discussing all the things that I was working on, she was the one that pulled out that, hey, you're working on operations and dropping money to the bottom line. But you're telling me that the people are the ones that are driving the growth. Let's think about a future where if we were only the people that you're focused on, what would happen to your organization? The coach asked the right question. And I coach is an interesting thing coach mentor advisor. I try to call myself. I'm my client's private advisor because for a $250 million business, dropping $20 million to the bottom line doesn't need a coach per se because they're like, hey, they just need somebody to talk to who is nonjudgmental, who has been there and done that, right? So whatever my clients are going through right now, I have been there. Like, I know, I know that they're thinking about wanting a private jet because their friend has a private jet. I know it. And I told him, I have been on enough private jets. You don't want one. You don't want one. And I'll tell you why, you can charter one all day. Like, you may think this is a snooty thing to talk about, but that's what goes through their minds when they hit a level of success. Hey, should I have the jet? Should I have the car? Should I have the house? Should I have the bank balance? Should I have the second vacation home? Should I bonus my employees? Should I have an operator? Like, that's what they're thinking about. And when you've already been there, I can kind of wade through that stuff and because that's all noise. The other day it is, hey, here's a singularity focus. Here's a cadence of accountability and here's a good process, right? So it's a discovery process. There's no like formula for it to come out, but I've seen enough businesses, service, product, manufacturing, whatever that after like a couple of conversations, I can at least pick out the candidates pretty quickly of what is going to drive growth. And then you build a hypothesis around saying, hey, Scott, if you focused on this division only will it change your business? Well, let's figure it out. And then that makes for a really good kind of conversation.