Polina Groman - Co-Founder of The Social Club | The Price of Scale

Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot has been a huge supporter of the show. They have so many tools that can help your business. The one that I want to just mention today, so you go check it out, is their new AI chatbot. It's called campaign assistant and it's a totally free to use AI tool made for marketers and business leaders who spend hours a day on content creation. Campaign assistant will transform the way you build marketing campaigns at scale, craft personalized emails, ads and landing pages in a matter of minutes. Just pick the content type, add key selling points and let AI take it from there. It works seamlessly with all of HubSpot's marketing and sales tools to scale your output across email, social, and more. So AI your way to your most effective campaigns yet at HubSpot.com slash campaign dash assistant. So my grandmother raised me. She was a Holocaust survivor and on her deathbed, right at the time that I had my first child. She looked me in my eyes and she said I got it all wrong. I want to apologize to you. I know that your whole life I was raising you to live for your family to do everything just for your kids not to think about yourself, not to really take care of yourself because I taught you that being a good woman and a good mom is just taking care of others. I was wrong. I'm sorry and I don't want you to live like me. I don't want you to live a life of regret. I want you to live a life of happiness and that literally put me in an interesting position because I my grandmother influenced pretty much everything that I've done until that point in my life and it made me open up my eyes and ask myself. I love my child more than anything in this world. Why don't I feel that way about myself? I constantly please people and partners and do backflips to raise money and everything else. When this happiness come in because I make money theoretically I'm all the unsuccessful. I'm married. I have a healthy child. I'm living the dream. Why aren't I happy? And this set me up in a really interesting way because it made me open up my eyes. I had to get real with myself. I had to understand what I was running from and why I was chasing money so hard. What was your grandmother not happy? She dedicated her life to living with a man that she didn't like. She was afraid to leave. She was living in an abusive relationship. Mental health was not something that was spoken of back in those days and she always lived with a fear that somehow she would have no value to society unless she would be a good cook or cleaner and she had to be the best mom because it's all that she had but she had so much inside of her that she never expressed because she didn't have the courage. And even in your life up to that point you were never the stereotypical housewife quote unquote you're still building things you're still very successful family business by any measure any standard someone looking at you would be like she's killing it. So did you how did you identify what that thing was where you weren't happy because I think a lot of people would be very confused by that you weren't your grandma. Right I wasn't but I wasn't living in integrity with myself so yes I was making money and doing all that but I didn't have genuine friendships that I really wanted. I wasn't really in a healthy personal relationship. So from the outside my life looked amazing and I felt tremendous guilt for not being the traditional housewife because that's how I was raised but inside I knew that the building locks that I built for success were not it that there was something else and it was a lot deeper and I needed to see what was it what did I need because theoretically I had the things that I was chasing my whole life and what it was is being enough I had to figure out how to be enough being myself and how to stop being a people pleaser and how to stop saving everyone and how to stop being a pushover and how to turn myself into a real leader so I can lead myself so I could lead my personal professional life and get to a space where I could look at myself in the mirror and say I'm happy. And when you look at the before and after of that point you were by most people's degree or measure successful before and successful after so how do you how do you actually measure success before and after that point? I won't work with people just because there's a money number attached to it anymore I won't sell my soul anymore to projects or relationships that are out of integrity and that are not in alignment with my values I will not smile and feel resentful and be passive aggressive I learn how to communicate I learn how to be the person that I always streamed I could have as a friend I had to become her first. Do you think that a lot of people it's an interesting conversation because I think a lot of entrepreneurs have a lot of issues that they don't discuss now I've never been a woman female entrepreneur which obviously has a whole other set of things that you're thinking through I think a lot of people maybe just focus on the metrics that everybody says it should focus on and they don't focus on any of those thoughts that you had at that point and when they do achieve measure of success whatever that is I think it's very hard for people to unwind their life and to basically build it up from scratch I think that's scary as hell like that's super super scary so in your life maybe give some context as to what had led you to success before this point and then also what did building your life back up breaking it down building it back up look like and what were some of the things that you had to do and why did you have to do them because I know with your husband I know there was some items there that were like not in line with who you were and and I think that story is really important and impactful because again a lot of men have issues and they don't talk about them I'm sure a lot of women feel stuck in a lot of situations that I think maybe a little bit of your experience would help them understand how to navigate if you ask most women of what is happiness mean to them they will say freedom and everyone everyone wants that too right what does freedom mean to a woman it means I can be myself messy broken in some parts and still be loved I don't have to constantly think about being young and trying to belong and a lot of women don't want to think about these things so they get very busy especially in their careers and they get very busy with things that don't really matter because they don't want to face the fact that I'm a woman I'm not going to have the same opportunities as the guys sitting next to me no matter how hard I try we just live in that world instead of complaining about it you have to build your own opportunities if you want to have authentic genuine friendships you have to become that person first that's really difficult thing to do especially if you're successful you have people maybe on your team that are yes people and you have people in your life that are yes people because you do things for them you do favors for them and as women not too long ago we weren't providers our job was nurturers so we lived in a society where our job was you have babies and to nurture babies in communities and if a woman wouldn't God forbid not want to have a child back only 70 80 years ago we're not speaking about a thousand years ago there's no place for her it was like she was damaged goods so women I think a lot of us have conditioned ourselves is we could do it all I don't need anything I don't need anyone I'm strong but the female empowerment I think is really messed up because what a lot of women don't realize is you did not invent the girl power the girl boss that you are not a lot of us would say yes some all for that that was invented by the government to take the mother outside of the home and not to get too political most women don't understand that a lot of the issues that that we go through with female empowerment are not real these are manufactured things so for example do I know that if I want to get on the same stage as a man with the same qualifications me that he's going to be offered about a contract yes I know that I'm not going to cry about it any longer I'm going to negotiate better terms for myself or I will be in integrity and say no what a lot of us do is want to cry about things and want to complain about things and we don't want to take action we just want to be in a bubble of complaining and of whining men and women but especially women really love to do this impacts and they love to have girl dinners for conversation of how bad the world is how unfair things are and for me personally I don't waste my energy any longer on any of those things life is really really short and to answer your previous question how did I do it right because theoretically if you're successful how do you kind of break things down but also I want you to I want you to tell the story of what you built with your husband too because that frames it as well sure so I dropped out of college to work on Wall Street because one of my friends was a co-caller and he told me that they print money here and you don't need to because as a teenager I worked in McDonald's I worked in clothing stores I had odd jobs I always worked that's just how my family was we all worked and we helped out and he was like you have to come here you know you like to speak maybe you could do this on the phone it's a lot of fun so I tried it and I thought it was the greatest thing ever I'm like why doesn't everybody work as a co-caller this is so much fun and it was not an easy job but it definitely gave me the foundation of a lot of things right because nothing will prep you for the real world as being hung up on when you're you know doing co-calling for living I was the only woman on the floor that was in the secretary I eventually got licensed and it was really really great foundation for me and then I was bid by the entrepreneurial bug because we're pitching penny stocks and a lot of different things back then and I was like how do these companies do it they just kind of raise money and they have these ideas I have a lot of ideas maybe I could do it it was ignorance as bliss because I had no idea what anything was it didn't come from that world my parents were regular blue collar workers I was told that I have no business even doing this like who might to even talk to these people like my mom would be like do these people know that like you're nothing I'll be like well I'm not nothing as you'd be like no like you're nothing compared to them I'm like yeah I think they know but I'm still I'm still gonna be brave and try because it because because I actually think I could help them I was just crazy enough to try what you need to be yeah and again you have to be ignorant you can't be too bright and educated on a lot of topics because then then you have analysis paralysis right and you know I wanted to be an entrepreneur I wanted to build my my husband he was in the same mindset and we built companies to build a two recycling companies one company we had an idea from a magazine at an Italian magazine where a company was recycling use cooking all into biodiesel I'm like oh my god this would be so much fun and he would be like you think we could like do this because no one does it here we researched it and I'm like yeah why not let's just try it and you know I went to my investor pool that that I built throughout the years and pitched them this idea and they all look at me and they were like you're crazy right like what are you talking about why do you want to take this dirty oil that's garbage and like you have no experience doing this you don't even know what equipment you gonna need I'm like I know but it wouldn't it be like wonderful if we didn't rely on traditional you know gasoline and and it was just honestly a show because we had no idea what we were doing and in 17 months we built a seven-figure company and one of our huge competitors that was in the sanitation space because that's who occupied that space one could have said they were maybe a mafia guy you know that threatened to break a legs maybe and he just got sick and tired of us taking his customers so he bought us and it was it was amazing it was just like you saw the sopranos like I just make a deal and I was like yeah let's make it and they're like sweetheart can and go bring us some coffee so we can make the deal with the owner of the company I'm like I am the owner of the company not just my husband and he was like I'm sorry we don't have conversations about money with the women wow what year was that it was it wasn't that long thing I know you're not that old yes it was 2007 it wasn't that it wasn't you know it wasn't a hundred years ago that was a test you off honestly no I was really used to that and it always motivated me when somebody would be like fetch me some cookies or you know you shouldn't be even you know in this room that always motivated me to kind of work harder so people would take me more serious I know a lot of women don't have that mindset they're like how dear he or how what they or that would piss you off no I actually felt really grateful to be in these rooms because I was raised that I don't belong there that I'm nothing so I felt that at least at least I could be applying the wall and learn things and eventually these people will and did realize by value so I was very humble by how I was raised and it was actually really helpful to me versus a lot of people who are raised and really you know loving homes and they understand money and then they understand all these things they get really hurt because they're like well I'm a college graduate or I'm this like how dear you speak to me and I'm going to sue you I wasn't of that mindset at all I was of the mindset like I'm glad to be here don't prove myself and I work as artists I have to to prove myself and that was our first company the second company was in the similar space it was also a recycling company but we recycled use clothing into insulation we sold it as feedstock and we had more experience in the space we had a little bit more connections the only reason why we didn't stay in that industry is because New York City actually got into the same business they started collecting use clothing at that time and you don't compete with the government and one of our biggest buyers actually bought us out very similar you know they so what we were doing they saw our systems they actually wanted us to stay and manage some parts of the business so it was really great and really really good experiences I could tell you a lot of the bad things that happen but the reason why I want to share the good stuff is because a lot of times when we think about things that happen to us or for us in the past we only remember the bad stuff you know these people screwed us or this guy said this to me and we get triggered by that right I learned to and I teach my kids is you have to learn to remember the good things because you will become and you will be more stable and you can build anything on shaky ground and the ground is you you're the soil anything that you want to build starts with you right because the idea comes to you for a reason and I believe that if you can sustain yourself and calm yourself down and not get triggered or influenced by negativity your journey will be a lot smoother and a lot happier because most of it is in our heads what do these people mean why don't they like me why don't they want me is it because I'm this I'm not good enough and you get into this cycle where you they're radically abusing yourself because you're allowing this if somebody was speaking to a child that way you would never allow that but what about you yourself there's a child living inside of you and you constantly throw rocks at that child and I think it's important for people to know that failing is inevitable right we failed a lot when we were raising money we got thrown out of investor meetings like I'm just giving you the good parts because that's what I choose to focus on and something happened for me to choose to rebuild my life in addition to my conversation with my grandmother is I went probably years without sleeping without resting really with work 60 70 hour weeks I wouldn't sleep I would have chronic migraines my nose would bleed all the time and everyone that I knew was suffering from one or some of the these same conditions and they would be like entrepreneurs building yeah and they would just say it's normal this is why high performers do this is what separates the weaklings from people that are strong and successful this is how you function so I learned to function through pain through insomnia through heart pulpitations I just felt that that's what it takes to be successful and one day I woke up and my body was covered had to tone hives and I wasn't allergic to anything I went to the doctor probably first time in years and they took my blood test they said something's really wrong we can't diagnose it just yet but go to this doctor go to this specialist and all of a sudden it's had to go into doctors haven't been to doctors in a decade and nobody could pinpoint what it was but I was getting progressively worse where I couldn't move my joints I was in excruciating pain and no one could tell me specifically what was there was a lot of theories there was a lot of opinions but everybody was of the opinion that it's going to get worse that it's a rare disease and that you need to go on steroids for the rest of your life and that's when I knew that I needed a break I didn't want to go on steroids wanted to have more children I didn't want to be the person that would be and I'm not advising anybody else by the way not to take doctors orders that was just me what I decided to do and I knew that my body my mind and my spirit were like screaming for me to stop I just couldn't work at this intensity at this capacity any longer a breaking point of you being out of alignment yeah yeah and your body was physically manifest it was just shutting down yeah and it took about three years for me trying everything that you could imagine you know acupuncture western medicine eastern medicine everything in between healing modalities nothing was working and I said you know maybe I should listen to the doctor because it's just getting worse and now I'm in physical pain to the point that I can't get out of bed my eyes would hurt if I would be in the light my teeth would hurt it would just be the most craziest thing and I decided that um you know to get to know myself because all I knew was how to perform I was a good performer I knew how to raise money I knew how to write business plans I knew how to help other people become successful what I didn't know was how do I kind of take a break and not ruin everything that I built because I thought if I would stop even for a second that I would go back to being really poor the way that me and my sister grew up and my family grew up and I just couldn't allow that because I promised myself that when I'm gonna have kids my kids will have everything and they will be spoiled with love and presence and everything that I didn't have so I can't stop so I think it was also a mental thing feeling that everything will be taken away if I rest or nobody could do it like me so I don't can't have I had a bunch of people on my team always that did absolutely nothing that just took advantage because I didn't trust people so I had to kind of take a step back and reassess my life because now I didn't have a choice my body was just breaking down and I couldn't function anymore and I was also in a personal relationship where my relationship was very much tied into businesses and I was very happy unhappy sorry personally and I just thought that there's no way out because because there was just there's so much crossover yeah yeah you've built so much together it's just yeah it's like it's just it's a good web yeah you can't undo yeah yeah and you know I think that a lot of women convince themselves that that's just how it is if he doesn't cheat on you and he doesn't beat you that's how I was raised that you should be lucky because even if he does those things that's okay that's what men do and you know I just knew that I don't want to live like people in my family I don't want to live like many women that I knew just wanted to be happy you know since that was a child I didn't require a lot I required sunshine required I love people you always had a lot of friends around me and I just wanted to make people happy and I just knew that I built all these things and now I had two kids and my kids had everything that I could dream of and my kids were kind of mean and I couldn't understand like where was it disconnect because I would give them so much love and I would give them so many presents the disconnect was they didn't have access to me wasn't available emotionally to my children to my team members to myself I was a performer and this health situation forced me to stop it was no longer like I just couldn't get out of bed so I had to sleep I had to nap I had to go in sunshine I had to do anything to make myself smile so I just wouldn't physically break down further and I started to understand that there's a part of me that just never lived I could buy myself what I want I could go where I want but I don't want anything all of a sudden like I just didn't want anything and I started asking myself so like when do you get happy because I reached the milestones that I set for myself and I had everything on the outside but I was so so unhappy and everybody that I would speak to would just say you're ungrateful you know you're so lucky and I'm like oh luck has nothing to do with it this took years in making this didn't happen overnight you're so lucky you should just be grateful that's what everyone of my family thought that's what my friends at the time thought what did your husband think my husband didn't like me to think you know he married a very different type of person than I am today and he didn't really care about my opinion he just thought that I need to immediately get better and get back to work because I was being lazy and I was not being disciplined and how dare I take naps or do anything else because that's for losers so it was a really difficult time in my life because I just realized that everything that I've built was not what I wanted and but I also felt like I don't have an option like I'm trapped okay so what do you do now to find happiness you deconstructed the whole life I hired a mentor and for business of course because I could only justify hiring someone to expand you know business obviously not myself got from it I would I would hire someone to help me but no no no so I hired a mentor it's wildhouse stubborn you can be even like at your lowest points yeah yeah and the first thing this guy asked me is like what do you want like like if I could wave a magic wand and give you anything that you want what do you want I answer couldn't answer that question I just want to be happy he's like what does that look like he goes if you could have a perfect life like what does that look like and I literally described it like I want my kids to be close to me I don't want to be staying home on but I want to work with people that I really respect I want to help other people and I want to genuinely be happy he goes like so what's preventing if I'm doing that I'm like what do you mean me he goes right so where can you start where can you start and I really was so confused I'm like that's why I hired you I don't know and then he goes I think you need to learn to be a leader that starts with you you can't lead people if you don't know how to lead yourself you will never build anything sustainable or worth building if you're doing it just to chase money and to get honest with yourself and you also need to forgive yourself and I'm like what do you mean for what for being brave because you're going to lose a lot of people and you're going to lose a lot of things to get to the happy place and you have to be willing to go there otherwise not things going to change and you will always be stuck stuck is a choice not having clarity is a choice all of those choices can be different when you choose to take action nothing is going to happen in your head you have to take action you have to take massive action in a different direction of your own happiness you want to build something that's worth building go do it and be willing to fail you don't like people that you currently have working for you stop feeling bad for them fire them you have to become a leader and I didn't know how to do that so I said it to learn and I started to learn how to become a better mom because I was really important to me I started to spend more time with my kids I stopped running away I stopped being busy and I started finding time for things that really really truly mattered not theoretically not one day not when I hit this goal not one if but like today and I started living my life from that moment on if if today is my last day on earth am I happy with what I'm doing and I don't mean like you have to do everything that makes you happy that you just you know want to do nothing that's not what I mean I mean are you proud of yourself are you living in integrity with your own values whatever that is are you brave enough to cut people out of your life that's how well I'm up for you and you have to ask yourself that every day because we don't teach kids or help people by speaking we do it by doing and that's when things started getting radically bad because started losing friends and I decided that I don't want to be married anymore and I decided that I don't want to have a close relationship with my parents anymore because they weren't feeding my happiness and it was really difficult and was really lonely and it was really confusing because I'm supposed to get happier but I'm just losing everything that I've worked so hard to build and then I have never been through a business lawsuit before my husband I won into business with someone that we did business with before and that person went rogue and used misappropriated company funds or commingle that will client fund them we had to sue him there was no other way I didn't want to I don't believe in lawsuits but we had to and this lawsuit has taken the win out of my sales it was a three-year nightmare it caused multiple six figures we won the lawsuit and couldn't collect the penny still can 1.6 million dollars plus interest can't collect a single penny we had to pull kids at a private school it was really difficult it was really difficult because it was finger pointing you did this I said it to my husband he said you did this to me and blah blah blah blah but it it was a really big blessing because I learned a lot of things during that time I learned that business is very personal most people want to separate the two but in my experience it's not it's very very personal if you chase money you will never ever have money sustainably and you will always be chasing if you decide to do business for people that don't have your values then you're asking for trouble money cannot be the leader in your life you have to be the leader in your life and again you have to be brave enough to say no but you also have to be brave enough to fail enough times until you get that yes with the people that are your people and are meant for you this lawsuit also opened up my too many different things you know I knew that I could no longer work with my husband I needed to make a break I've never I shouldn't say never because I've done it in my early 20s but I'm 43 so I'd say for majority of my life I haven't done things on my own it has been us not me and it was really scary to say like oh I'm going to do it now and I'm going to do this and I'm going to you know build this by myself and my kids required more attention because they started getting older and I had to be there for them so it was an interesting time and then COVID happened and everybody was stuck at home and it was very very difficult I have never spent that much time with my husband or my kids because we were never home always busy and I had to learn to really sit with myself and find peace being do nothing and being just with me and it was very very difficult because my whole life was running away so this was like a this was like an inflection point of all these different things the lawsuit burnout health mentor COVID so sometimes the universe shows shows you everything at once yeah it wants to shake you up so that's wild so as you're going through COVID um you're solidifying what your future is going to look like and all these compounding stressors I think are probably further so they're helping you double down on on the decisions you're making yeah so as you go through COVID you realize that you no longer want to be with your husband you're not going to be in business with a lot of these people that you're in business with be ever again um you want to have a better relationship with your children less of one with your parents like so many shifts happening simultaneously so how do you architect this life for you that is going to be happiness because you're probably still in the process of this now COVID was not that long ago but at least you've sort of progressed down this path yeah I learned something really important that I think would help a lot of people we all know what to do we just looking for someone else to tell us because they may be more successful or they may have more accolades after the name the truth is we know what to do right I don't need to pay someone to tell me about a strategy I've built businesses before but we pay people to give ourselves an excuse to say oh it's their fault the thing didn't work what really moved the needle for me financially professionally bringing in wonderful new friends into my life and everything in between was radical forgiveness toward myself towards situations toward things that didn't work out and taking radical responsibility for my decisions and understanding that it's me versus me there's no other people if someone cheated me business where have I been cheating myself right you have to start asking yourself honest questions for honest reflection if you really desire change right so I had to start asking myself if I want to have friends that are loyal and committed yeah I'm loyal and committed but am I loyal and committed to myself how could it be a good friend if I'm not being a good friend to myself so I had to really start looking at myself as if I want something it starts for me if I ask another person of something I have to do it not think about it if I want a committed client I have to be a committed person first if I want to work with people that are decisive my energy has to be decisive and everything radically changed the relationships that I built didn't go out the window there were a lot of good people that all of a sudden started giving me clients there were a lot of good people that remembered 10 years ago that I employed them when it did absolutely nothing for me because I've never called in favors so the good that you do doesn't go unnoticed it does come back to you it just doesn't come back to exactly the second that you may want it right I think that caring about people is something that a lot of women have naturally they're just who we are we nurture people but society tells us that that's weak you know high performance is about outperforming another person but it's really outperforming yourself and your limitations this is why you're speaking about how feminism is is incorrect it's almost like a bastardized version of what it should be 100% women don't know that it's your intuition that's your superpower because you're taught that it's bullshit and it doesn't exist it's not bullshit it's if you look at investments right women are running countries they're outperforming male ran hedge fund studio one there's nothing wrong with men they're brilliant man I hire man I work with man there's nothing wrong with men but women are running countries and they're still waiting for someone to give them permission to negotiate about a deal for themselves or to ask for what they really want or to become that type of friend that they really want to have if you're the type of woman that gossips and talks negatively about others and puts other people down to make yourself feel good you never gonna have solid friendships no matter how much you convince yourself how much you give to charity or what a great person you are you could hide from some of the people some of the time you cannot hide from yourself all of the time when you realize that everything that you want starts with you everything that you want will come into your life the second that you stop trying a lot of times when I work with clients they're gonna say I've tried all these things I'm trying so hard it just doesn't work you have to make a decision that you're not gonna try that you're gonna do it whether it takes you six months or a year you're doing it you're not trying it you're not kind of like it's a dress so I'm gonna try on this strategy and then when it doesn't work the second it doesn't work I'm gonna go look for a new shiny object because all of us do that right we have to decide and commit that our dream is non-negotiable I don't care how long it takes me I'm worth it right at the end of the day your relationships are your biggest assets right but it starts with your relationship with you if you don't like yourself you can't be a good friend you can be a good leader how can you lead other people to help you build a big vision if you don't even believe in your vision really if you give up on yourself the second that you hear a word no or if you try to constantly find the magic bullet the secret is the magic to success is you right Elon Musk has been raising money going to the moon for years and years I haven't been to the moon yet have you no right no but he's so good at enrolling people into his vision that it's just non-negotiable and now people are excited about something they'll probably never even participate in exactly being a good leader is being able to corral excitement and momentum and manufacture safety for people before they can touch it that's what I learned and it starts with you if you can't sell yourself on the idea that every door is gonna get close in your face and you will hear a hundred knows until it's a yes if you're gonna break down and blame yourself shame yourself and try to blame other people things will not work out you will always be trying and you will always be blaming economy society circumstances whether you're a man you're a woman you're you know your religion and anything else that you can hang your hat on because the truth is there's nothing to do with any of that you haven't decided you're interested you're not committed that's really the difference because when you're committed you don't stop you can ask anyone that's a mom right if something was god forbid gonna happen to your child like what would you do oh nothing nothing short of a miracle like she would perform a miracle to help her child yet would you do that for yourself oh no I don't have time I don't have the energy I don't have the money I don't have I don't have I don't have when it comes to us right and I think we have to start realizing that your children your employees your dreams are not gonna get built by thinking about it by hoping about it by kind of like sitting on the sidelines and watching other people and just copying it because you're not another person yes you can copy another person steps to success but it still has to be you infused into it otherwise it just doesn't work when we hire people just for strategy people are giving us their strategy but why does it work for one person but it doesn't work for another person because it's out of alignment right so if one person is really good on camera and they hire someone who's great on camera as well it works right because you're hiring someone to help you with what you already are good at but if I'm an introvert and I don't want to dance on reels and I hire someone that's phenomenal of that and they tell me go dance on reels and you have to test and you have to do this and I kind of do it a couple of times I'm like no no this sucks this is horrible this is not what I paid for no the strategy doesn't suck it works people make a lot of money just doesn't work for you and you have to be honest with yourself and say that's okay that I made the investment this is what it cost me to learn to get an alignment but we don't do that a lot of times we just blame whether it's in our personal relationships or our business we make a decision we don't stand behind it or we just don't have the courage to say that it's not for me but I also think that there's inauthentic teachers yes that should be better maybe better better communicating what can and can't work I mean look there are people that great marketers but the product behind you know the pretty bow is garbage that's always been the case you know there's always the use car salesman mentality people that are transactional that just want to you know sell you whatever they could sell you and then there are people that are genuinely successful because they care about their clients one of the things that I learned on my journeys that we always want more clients if you ask any business person what do you want more clients send me send me people here and then I'll be happy because I could just help these people the truth is you don't need more you actually need less if you spend your energy serving the people that already paid you you would never need more clients you don't need more traffic you need to make sure that what you're offering is so good and solid and constantly refined and that takes you not being in your ego that takes you being honest and saying maybe the product is 60 percent you know good yeah and you keep on refining it and you keep on making better and more and more people are gonna sell their friends you go viral not only by focusing on growing viral you go viral really in any marketplace by focusing on your customer not on yourself not on how quickly can I sell this the sales just happen like almost like magic when you genuinely care about the customer so instead of focusing all your energy on how to where do I get more clients what platform where do I go what's a traffic source what's the secret do I launch a podcast like what do I do people are always like like what do you do what do you do you get quiet then you ask yourself how can I make what I have already build better a quick break from this podcast to recommend another podcast we have to check out it's called the product boss is hosted by Jacqueline and Mina it's part of the HubSpot podcast network if you have a physical product this podcast is hyper tailored to you it's gonna help you take your business to the next level in a recent episode for example you spoke about the power of TikTok for product businesses and how to use it to drive sales and as somebody who is a little new to TikTok I really learned some great tips for creating content that actually converts viewers into customers they have a workshop style format that makes it really easy to follow along to take your business to the next level so if you sell physical products subscribe to the product boss wherever you get your podcast to unlock social media marketing and business strategies that create your dream business and then your dream life why did you want to talk about business models um why do I want to talk about it yeah why why are business models so important because we spoke about just in the past five minutes you spoke about how there's so many different marketing strategies you can try and how to properly penetrate a market like you can for example just focus on product basically building the best product out there and then you will spread that product the word of mouth but I know that you speak a lot about business models and why people should look at different ones and and what does that mean for an entrepreneur somebody who's starting something new is it that is it sort of uh you know playing off what you just mentioned they don't have to follow what all their other peers have already done they can sort of pave their own way or what do you mean by business models so there's many ways to build a mouth strap yeah in every niche and in every industry but let's just speak about coaches and consultants because that's specifically what I focus on this applies to anything and everyone but it'll be more context for those people right so how do you build anything right you have an idea you bring this idea to the market people start paying you and then you're like oh my god we're gonna be rich because this is gonna be amazing and it's gonna be the next apple right we sell ourselves on that idea and a lot of times it just doesn't work out that for right but there's different business models in in everything that you do right they're selling one to one they're selling one to money they're speaking from the stage there's there's selling to corporate there's just so many ways that you could do the same thing right but similar to different ways you could market it exactly but what happens a lot of times is we'll hire someone that's successful they'll teach us that model right yeah and then we'll be like oh no this is not not doing this sometimes I'm not doing this because I'm lazy and because I'm afraid that that's one side of the street but sometimes it's just out of alignment it's just not what I could sustainably do because it doesn't work with who I am and you have to be honest right the market will tell you keep on doing more right so as you grow bigger team as you grow more products as you grow more animations as you grow more more more what I found is that you actually need less so for example if you wanted to make 50 thousand dollars a month right as a coach you're consulting I think a lot of people once you hit that goal and you hit a consistent then you could scale more predictable because you've kind of build a really fabulous foundation right so what will people do they'll come up with a lot of different offers with a lot of different products they'll test different platforms they will be doing a lot of different things to hit that number they'll try and do everything yeah and it works all of it works there isn't like there isn't if you go to TikTok versus go to LinkedIn they all work because there are people that make millions and millions that dollars every day on those platforms not once a month every single day people make money but what will happen is you will get burnt out because you are just kind of chasing so many rabbits and at the same time you will just run out of fuel every single day and you will think that the only way because the so many books and so many gurus and experts the theoretical experts will tell you that you need more right so bigger team bigger team comes with more responsibility and it takes more of your time yes you're removing yourself from one thing but you're putting yourself in something else right bigger team is an investment people don't stay people are not loyal people still you things all issues that all of us face when we have a team then we start breaking down like oh my god what did I just do this to myself right more products more products more testing more things you add to the plate more things to break and more bottlenecks that you need to as a leader figure out how to plug those holes otherwise the whole thing breaks and all of a sudden what you've built doesn't work anymore because putting all your energy and your resources into something new but you feel stuck yeah yeah you feel that hiring people paying people a lot of money investing and making good decisions but it's just not working for me you know it's interesting when you talk about this like it just brings you back to like you know where I'm living in my life with marketing and even like how I took this podcast off the ground and it was always on the channel on the channel on the channel and then it turns into this like hellish hamster wheel of having to keep up with all these different social platforms and all these different mediums all the time and you know luckily I was able to scale the podcast out to to hire a team to support it but day one I was just show up everywhere all the time and in hindsight hindsight's always 2020 I see people that just laser focus on one platform and do one thing exceptionally well and market in one exactly what you're saying and then after after they kill it at that then you can sort of scale to all the other or you can you can go to all the other places but I think a lot of people just try and do everything at once it's because when you read a book of success right most of them will just will just sell you like be resilient you know like try harder go the extra money everything's always more even like multiple streams of income yeah yeah yeah more more more who has multiple streams of income successfully day one no one you make a shit ton of money then maybe you buy some businesses you invest in real estate wait how about you make your own decisions and that's okay too because you don't know what you're doing yeah right yeah but no one wants to speak about that because that's not sexy nobody wants to talk about failure but I don't look at failures failure like when I speak to my kids then they're like oh I don't want to try this like I'm not good at this I tell them the same thing that I say to myself people that are really successful try a lot of things and they need you have to look at it as a science experiment you need a couple of explosions to know what ingredient not to put in because it's a really thin line before exploding in a great way and everything going to shit right but you need those explosions so you kind of understand how to add a little bit less here or add a little bit more here right the concept of more is just built by marketers the people that want you to buy more of their things they have to start getting smarter and use the discernment and understand that do you need to be on every platform no do you want to be why is it for you ego so you're so relevant and because the market's telling you omnipresence omnipresence and also what are you doing on these platforms like you could be on a lot of platforms by running ads just for for people to get to know you right and that doesn't require you physically pumping out content and being busy right you want to start saying to yourself how do I not be busy and why am I so busy like what am I running away from that's always the underlining thing like what am I afraid of why am I saying so busy and working so hard you know the premise of working hard leads to success is the biggest bullshit of our lives because people that drive buses that are secretaries that are waiters that are stock boys they work really hard you know people that work night shift that's really really hard work why are those people successful because success is not just built on hard work it's not it's the myth since because when we go to school and this is going to sound a little political just my my business like assembly line like the Ford assembly line yes it's just it's my opinion but when we go to school we don't go to school to be creative or or to have any outside ideas right school is is think about it like projects right are not for creative thinkers get in the group and help the group get a good grade on the project but what if I want to put out something innovative and excited nobody cares about you it's an assembly line of workers right that's what school was created for and we learned that you work really hard and then you get a diploma and you get a good job and if you deviate from that you could ruin your whole life so it's always that underlying thing like oh maybe I'm ruining my life because I'm deviating from what I'm told and it boils and it goes up to really unhealthy things right because if that's foundational then we hire people to kind of tell us what to do and we invest money that we don't have because oh maybe it's this shiny new thing that's gonna save everything and I'll be good and I'll listen I'll take action and I don't care if I get sick but I'll do it I'll go that extra mile like you know when GaryVee says just out toward people or when Grant Cardone says you know knows for losers just call them a million times that's sexy marketing because they don't do that let's just be honest I think Grant Cardone does I don't love his sales tactics I mean if you go to his $100,000 mastermind honestly you will see a very different side of him that you don't see on social media he's actually very very different and very very nice and very smart but that's just not his brand oh I know no I know he's smart I just don't love his sales strategy but yes I do agree that there's probably some marketing component there's a lot of marketing component to a lot of the people that you admire are not the people that you would see if you work with them at a high level yeah they're just very very different there's the personality the actor and then there's the reality right and a lot of us don't realize that so we're comparing ourselves to something that doesn't even exist and we're doing more more more and you'll see people spending years doing everything and it's it's not working I'm trying everything and it's not working so for me it was really understanding for myself I've developed a business model that's a little different it's outside of the box and I didn't come up with it theoretical it wasn't like let me go and get a certification over the weekend and then kind of put this thing together I feel that a lot of things and I've succeeded a lot of things and what I've learned for me is that everything is based off of a relationship so working hard doesn't just mean I do shit every day that doesn't work and I convinced myself that I'm just working really hard for this unicorn that's gonna happen one day but really understanding zero to six figures is how how do I do this how do I move the needle how six figures and beyond who who is that person that I need to meet that I need to build a relationship with that I need to bring value to them first to help me where I want to go so if I was raising money today I wouldn't be raising money like I did 20 years ago because I had no idea what anything was right I would meet the right people and offer them value and they will connect me with people that write checks because they're people that write checks for companies every day but what we don't realize again because we're working so hard is that you don't need to do a thousand investor presentations you actually need to understand what's in it for them and most people don't think that way why should someone write your check not because you're a woman or because you are minority or because of your story that's all nice but I invest in things I don't write checks because you're a woman I love women I'm I'm all for women why should I give you my money but people don't want to look at things they just want to work hard on their pitch decks and they want to make prettier logos and they want to make prettier presentations but they don't want to tell an investor one do I get my money back why should I give you the money and not someone else we have to start mastering the real basics and also relationships it may take you two years to build a relationship with someone who can open up a door for you you can be short-sighted you also can be someone that just uses people and pretends to be nice just because you want something if you're genuinely a person that cares about other people and wants to see other people when someone may have a lot more money than you but they may be struggling with their kids and you may give them advice that will literally change your lives that person will want to reciprocate back to you but you have to get to know that person genuinely not just pushing something down their throat because it's going to benefit you in the short term right to another so that's a really good point because I think that it's almost like there's sort of two levels of people that I normally see these people that are very superficial that are the first five minutes that I meet you I want to do a transaction with you and then there's people that put a month of effort into that relationship but then get visibly angry when you don't give them something it's very few people that are genuinely altruistic people and I don't think it's sorry I want to rephrase I don't think there's few people that are altruistic I think that society urgency getting everything immediately in our daily lives has trained people subconsciously to expect results immediately from anything they do including human relationships which is absolutely fucking wild you cannot human you cannot uber a human relationship right but you can't hack it you can't hack it but people believe that and and I think that it actually like really well-meaning people just don't understand why it takes an individual who has achieved success time to trust them to build something together to invest in them it takes a long time before you ever want to do business because especially if you've achieved success you've been burnt by someone people along the way I love that I love that advice right I mean to cut you off it's just a very I think it's very smart and I see it a lot I think that this is a really good business strategy and people don't use it right so before you invest in doing harmoses style videos why don't you invest in understanding your value right not from an egotistic perspective because everyone is valuable every person I genuinely believe this that whether you believe in God or not I believe in God again people are very sensitive when you use the word God I believe that one God made us he literally took a piece of himself and put that piece into every person and we can be godly we can be amazing we can be caring we are all those things but we are taught not to be because that's weak especially in business don't show them your weakness don't show them that you're afraid don't show them why not why not but you also have to understand that if I spent 20 years building relationships and I met you over dinner I'm not opening up my roller dex to you just because you're a woman or just because you know my family member or just because we're connected through you know business associates you also have to not get so visibly disappointed that you don't get what you want because if you genuinely build a relationship you will have more business I don't care what you do then you will know what to do with and you also have to understand that you have to be brave bravery is what separates people that are really successful from those that are trying you have to be brave to fail and you have to be brave to tell people that you fail a lot of times when we turn on social media we see a glamorized you know ordered it version of someone's life and we compare ourselves to that version and we feel like imposters not knowing that that person doesn't drive that Lamborghini not knowing that that person doesn't have those followers not knowing that that person doesn't have any of the things that you are comparing yourself to and feeling small next to right so what I found is a lot of times when people want to put out you know content they're emulating someone else's success they don't even have and they try to become someone else they're never going to be not because you can't have that car of course you can you can have anything that you want if that's what you really want but I promise you that once you get whatever you're chasing you're going to be very unhappy I promise you that because I've done it at so many levels the key is really understanding what value to you bring to this world genuinely honestly maybe your values intuition maybe your values that you genuinely care maybe your value is that you connect people maybe you have a combination of these skill sets those are really valuable things that people genuinely want well you're trying to sell them your agency services why don't you get to know them why don't you get to know people is human beings and understand how you could potentially support them right I've developed a business model which is very different than what most coaches and consultants do because they think it's weird a lot of people think it's weird and they don't think it's scalable because they don't understand it so I'll break it down here and if you have any questions by the way reach out to me on Instagram because I could speak for 10 hours about this model this model came from me failing this model came from me hearing a lot of nose and it came from me investing in a lot of shiny objects I've invested a lot of money just to understand that a lot of people don't know what they're doing they're selling you bunch of nonsense their courses they didn't even write or create their programs are garbage that are filled with people that are teaching the garbage that they just sold you online they don't even know the content like I've been in masterminds that cost $35,000 where a person couldn't read a balance sheet and they want me to do business with them $35,000 to get in the room with the right people I mean who screened these people were they screened for having a pulse you know what I mean it's not a knock in anyone it's you have to start using your discernment right and you have to start in the standing like where are you strong I promise you you have strength and someone else has that weakness when you can match those two things that's where you win so typically when I meet a coach consultant or speaker they have a one-on-one program or a group program they're trying to do the omnipresent thing they're making money and they are burned out they can't take it anymore they just don't know what else they could do they're doing it they're investing they're going to masterminds with which suck they are spending time with with the people that are more successful them that that are just selling them more things that they don't need and they're like like how do I not kill what I built but I don't want to live like this anymore and I've lived like that yeah it's a hamster wheel that you're stuck on and you just feel like there's no way out because you work so hard to build to where you are that you're not willing just to say oh fuck it like I'll just destroy it like you can't you feel guilty for spending the time for being away from your family for you know maybe firing people that are depending on you and their families so you constantly are like I'm so miserable here it's like being in a relationship that you hate but you feel guilty because you stay for the kids and I've been in both of these business and personal relationships and I could tell you that it sucks being in this place it sucks feeling like you're stuck so my model is a love child of finding love for myself and understanding how to use your strength to get paid you don't need to get paid for what you do you can get paid for who you are and I'll say that again because it's really confusing to people you don't need to get paid for what you do you can get paid for who you are but you have to be very specific and intentional with how you support people what how do you serve people a lot of people don't like the word I'm not a servant um you know I'm an influencer or I or I'm a founder or that's fine whatever you want to call it what value do you bring to someone and are you willing to guarantee a result most people's answer is no and by guarantee a result I don't mean pay me 30,000 dollars and if it doesn't work out I'll work with you for free that's not guaranteeing a result because if it didn't work out why do I want to continue working with you right so what I've developed is an intensive model if someone will spend two days with you as a coaching and consultant and take your nine months program and get one specific result from you in two days they don't want to go anywhere they're sold that's the KPI that you found that's the carrot okay so how does it work simple I'll there's many many ways to skin this cat but let's and by the way we don't skin cats because people are really sensitive you'll be surprised how many stages I spoke and I don't know I would say something like like skin a cat and then people will be like oh my god your racist against cats will be like what they're such a thing is oh my goodness racist against cats yes yes I was called the racist against cats and bunch of other things so now every time that I'm just being myself I will do I will do a sensitivity check in for those that are very sensitive okay there anyways moving on so if if you're a fitness coach and you tell people here's my promise to you eat all the pasta you want eat all the drink all the wine you want to lose 30 pounds in 90 days if I listen to this I'll be like yeah right no way but if I like pasta there's a part of me they'll be like what if like what what if like I want to try it I will pay you but I will start having buyers remorse the second that I hit pay and I will start telling myself you know what it's probably full of shit I'm probably crazy thinking that this is gonna work so you're living in the program already thinking it to scam but if it works oh my god I'm gonna be so excited I'm gonna tell all my friends something that happens during activation if your stuff really works right the second someone loses that first pound they're sold they're like oh my god I have to tell everyone that I know I have been drinking wine and I've lost weight whatever this person told me to do their method actually works like I cannot believe it I thought I was a scam people start telling everybody that I know because most of the times it doesn't work so if you're an expert and you know what you're doing and your method actually works this doesn't work for beginners you have to already be really good at what you do you have to have really happy clients you have to have real social proof not for other people for yourself you have to know that you're good at this thing because otherwise it will not work right so activation the second you activated someone they raised a hand and they say how do I work with you further it's natural people don't want to invest in coaches consultants or masterminds I know it's a big when I say that people like what do you mean it's a huge industry people get burned all the time there's more bad than good I come from the I come from the view growing up that they're all scams I mean it's so interesting you go industry by industry and people have different perspectives I know in real estate they're very popular yeah coming from a tech background where I built SaaS companies you don't do that you go to conferences you go to keynotes you go to panels and you listen to other leaders that have built unicorns but you don't go to masterminds masterminds we're not like a thing especially come from a major city I think that I think that masterminds really targeted people that were the smartest person in their smaller city and they didn't have mentors or people around them so fortunately I always had tons of access so I never felt that I needed to do a mastermind ever and then you come down to Miami and it's like every two days there's a new mastermind and they're all $50,000 the thought of spending $50,000 and we've had this conversation offline before to like get someone get access to somebody it like my ego can't take it like what what kind of person has the balls to ask me your $50,000 to talk to me and teach me shit you know so there's a whole other different mindset so some people are so bought into them because some people go to like they spend half a million dollars a year on masterminds some people can ever stand them and then they get like a whiff of like Tai Lopez and then and allegedly Tai Lopez's stuff is not great and then they'll never go to another one ever again you have to understand that if they all sucked there would be no market correct so it logically doesn't even make sense to what I'm saying but there are good ones there are I've been to really bad ones and I've been to really great ones right and but they're all new the concept of a guru yes is new and novel yes and the bar to marketing yourself on the internet is so damn low that it is unfortunately led to the proliferation of shitty coaches what this gives you a phenomenal opportunity if you're an expert if you're good at what you do you actually have a phenomenal opportunity you never have to shame or say oh this person is horrible you never have to do that because if your stuff is genuinely good and you could get in front of people and produce results people will rave about you because people are so used to getting burned and people are so used to being like this is just insanity look there's a market for everyone there's a mainstream market and then there's a specialty market right I am not my model does not work mainstream I'm not speaking about organizing a result for a thousand people live a Tony Robbins tell no this this this is not it what I'm speaking about is if you again if you're good at what you do and you want to genuinely build relationship with people and you invite them to a result so if you're an agency and you run ads for people one of the results that you could do and we've done this with a client recently is we will write your ads and set everything up for you this weekend and show you how we did it so if you want to work with us great if you don't everything is done if I'm busy that's valuable to me you're teaching me and you're doing and I'm not walking away with a to-do list what happens that weekend is I get to know you because I need to get to know you right and you I want to know you as a person because I'm alive with you this is not a zoom conversation we're spending time on a yacht or we're going into a mansion or we're doing something really fun most entrepreneurs are dying to do they are dying to get out of the zoom of the rat race of making videos of shooting content and be with other people so you're taking off a lot of boxes you're taking off what I desire what I want I want to meet people I want to have fun and I want to get this thing done what happens during this environment is a person's like I don't have to go hire more people like you're my person you told me this is what's getting done it just got done on day one and on day two actually got to have fun and meet great people and on day two you told them hey if you receive value here if you receive the result how would you like to work together for six months this is what I have specifically for this group and typically 70% of people will raise their hand if you've produced a result not if you came and ra ra added them and just made them feel good anybody could go to an event for two hundred dollars to feel good if somebody is paying you the price points that we found work really well for this model is between two and five thousand dollars for the weekend if somebody is paying you two to five thousand dollars you better produce because people are not coming there to hang out with you they're not looking to just network because people will be like yeah pay me five thousand else to go on the yacht why we live in Miami there's plenty of boats and yacht chargers here that I don't need to pay you to do that but if you genuinely are good at what you do and you infuse some fun into my life and you brought value to me and I got to know you and you told me genuine stories from your life and now I understand what you're about I don't want to look for another coach I'm sold what it's a fifty thousand dollar product or twenty thousand dollar product I don't care because for a lot of people past six figures it's time I don't have time I understand how to make money I'm looking to make more money I want to scale what I'm doing I don't have time so don't waste my time don't insult me give me what I came for and if I like you I'm gonna work with you that's the model so you're building a relationship you are honestly giving people what they came for there's no hiding here right this is not a lot of times I will do an audit for someone and they will tell me how amazing they are how many courses they've sold and I'll have a five minute conversation with them I'm like this won't work for you you're not going to be able to give people a result people are not going to go and write a bad review they are going to go crazy on your life this is not this is there's no hiding here right so if I paid you and I came and you didn't deliver anything I will ask you for a refund now not seven days from now like now and I'm not going to be chasing you I will ask you in front of everybody here and I will tame this group for you and it's going to be a problem so so the reason why this is the business model that you've chosen is because it removes the bullshit yeah basically yeah so you show up you deliver your product it the level of trust you build with that group is so strong that it's going to turn into an ongoing customer massive lifetime value and you aren't artificially closing people online and then basically because you know there's two kinds of coaches there's coaches that I think are trust straight scammers let's just remove those out of the bucket but there's people that I think are better than they actually are yeah and they sell people online because they figured out how to run ads and how to draw attention how to convert and by the way there's nothing wrong with that you could do both this this feedback is a massive feedback yes but it's more than it's more than feedback uh specifically for women women like to chat or chaty we like to tell our friends if we like something or if we don't like something we'll we write reviews that's just what women do right so if I came to this thing I'm telling all my friends I'm telling all my friends I'm telling everybody that I know I'm going to take pictures I'm going to do an Instagram moment I'm going to do a TikTok moment right you're getting so much social proof here where you don't have to ask people to give you feedback you don't have to ask for testimonial they're doing it live and you don't have to choose one or the other a lot of times when people hire us they do these intensives once a quarter they don't have to do this every day but you start to realize that if you wanted to add $50,000 to your monthly revenue you could do it with one event and you could stop doing other things or you could continue doing those things there's no one size fits all there's no this thing is the you know holy grail and everything else sucks no everything works for everyone but just not at the same time some people this strategy allows you to work a lot less yes i still have the income it was build for doing less it was build for specific person it's not for everyone if you're the type of person that does really well on camera and you like doing master classes but if you had to show up live you would rather die because you think it's public speaking it's not gonna work for you can we train you yes have we train people in the past yes but if it's not your natural thing if you don't like to hug people if you don't like to see people transform in front of your eyes it's not for you some people are not that like they don't want to have the type of relationship with the client right but if you're the type of person that genuinely cares about people you want to have fun you don't want to feel apologetic about having a good time and i don't mean you invite people to drink that's not what i mean by fun i mean you want to get away from doing what everybody else is doing and do something creative and fun for you and for your clients and create monthly recurring revenue through offering a long-term program that people can sign up for on the spot there's a sales strategy here so you are covering your offer your traffic and your conversion in one event and your conversion must be exponential higher it's 70% on an average that's just wild yeah it's absolutely wild so this is why when you talk about you know all these all these life lessons i love and like life lessons like come together because you're so now like you know solving for burnout solving for solving for being like just this this this hamster wheel that a lot of people find themselves on like this this lack of alignment across all the things that you're doing your life i mean now this is sort of like the way that you've structured this for coaches and i'm sure i'm curious about like scale because there is a scale component i'm curious about at what point you take this as as somebody who's trying to be a coach and then you take it online or at what point you start to expand into different mediums and that's sort of like a business growth strategy but this sort of allows you to solve for that first few hundred thousand that is usually the most difficult before you can hire people to support you yeah where you're solo it's absolutely right you know i think that there's many ways to scale this thing so for us for example on the agency side instead of looking for more coaches and hiring more people we're actually branching out and we recently took on a couple of clients that are not coaches that are attorneys and two clients that are wealth management experts and we want to see how well the conversions will happen there and test and if they do we're going to go a little bit more into that market as well there's a lot of opportunity right and there's also opportunity when you run these and when you attend these you start seeing that your creativity creates opportunity right your event is not going to be like my event or like or like somebody else's right so you're not competing with anyone anymore and you know what you may say like i have a slew of clients that said you know what i don't want to do anymore masterclasses i don't enjoy constantly doing content i just now want to do content for fun just so people know what i'm doing and just do these once a month and then relax and that's a great strategy too and you could do that and then come back to doing other things if you want to the beautiful part about being a business owner is you get to choose but a lot of times we feel that we're stuck we have no choices you build yourself a job exactly it's worse than a job it's worse than a job it's way worse because you're getting quit yeah there's too many too many things are on the line so i'm just trying to think like when you when you built this out what would be what would be the advice for say a consultant coach um i will never use the word guru speaker that's it consultant coach speaker that three three uh people that say you say they fill this out then then based on this model they've had a really good foundation give some advice on how they scale without again running into some of those burnout problems because the second they start to scale if they want to scale of course then they can run to some traditional business problems that i'm sure you've solved for as well yeah i mean simplest way is if you love this model and and it works for you uh you could expand the team behind it and now instead of uh the sweet spot of of these events are small intimate groups of 20 people we're not speaking about again doing an event of 500 people but you can do a larger event and you can now bring other facilitators and scale with that you can do joint venture with other people that have communities where they will fill the room for you you just host the experience have fun and there's many ways to scale this without doing anything else but you have to learn to set the foundation and crawl before you become a marathon runner right a lot of people will do a couple of these and be like okay i could do these every day no you know you know you know what i mean planning is still involved you want people to have a phenomenal experience right there's key elements that where you don't want to cut corners right but you can't scale it you can do joint ventures you can offer now to do these for other people and you could do many many things to scale this model comfortably 200k past that i don't know that's not what we do and we haven't figured that part out for really ourselves or for our clients because it's not specifically how we serve people and support them but i think you said 200k yeah 20k a month yeah okay yeah and profit margins on these events huge 70% plus okay and sometimes you have no expenses because sometimes when we help our clients build sponsor decks it's not your regular gold silver platinum where we put your logo on the screen when we do presentations we actually do something very different that i found in my business experience works really really well we'll bring someone on and we'll tell them we'd like to keynote you and we'll give them the stage and we'll and or we'll do a ceremony for them like we will award them something or make something really great all people want to be seen and heard and honored so instead of putting someone's logo somewhere we tell people hey why don't you sponsor a dinner and during that dinner we we will highlight your achievements and that person will have an audience of i'm targeted for their own business exactly and it's more than highly targeted we showed them how to tell their story so now they see the person not not the product and then everybody there will reach out whether they want to do business with you or not they now know you know you as a human being and it's really really important for entrepreneurs to start building this muscle stop being the car salesman start being a person don't be interesting uh for someone just to to write your check be interested ask people questions start investing in relationships because everybody knows someone right i don't care where you are how small the town is there's always someone that knows someone that can recommend someone and the snowball effect right when you start caring about people genuinely and not expecting okay i'm targeting scott so scott can introduce me to to this person and then to this person all those things will happen naturally nobody even needs to ask you right if someone he brings your value and constantly adds value to life you'll be like how could i help you what do you of course it's natural right there's reciprocation right um what would be just to to wrap up what would be one uh and i know that you have something for everybody who's listening and we'll talk about that in a second but what would be one lesson a general entrepreneur lesson uh that you wish you had known when you were much younger i made a video on this yesterday uh because somebody asked me that question start backing yourself and what i mean back in yourself is start having your own back you know how you wish that you have uh partners that have your best interest at hard personally and professionally want to have those kind of friends that are like right or die right but when do you do that for yourself start backing yourself start keeping your words yourself create non-negotiables this is what i value and if somebody doesn't go into these buckets i don't want to be friends with them don't want to work with them i don't care how much money they have i don't want to do business with them start backing yourself and being honest with yourself because you will start creating the type of um energy that attracts exactly what you want without you you're lifting a finger okay amazing now um so you're going to put together something people that are listening explain what that is and then we'll do we'll put like a link in the show notes too okay cool so typically when i meet someone or people reach out and they're like okay i want to do this model i'm interested where do i sign up there's no course there's nothing for us to sell you what we do is we charge for a small business audit we dive in what you currently have to make sure that we could support you we won't work with you if you don't have a proven offer if you don't meet certain criteria because then we can help you and i don't want to work with you just to work with you we have more than enough business and we only work with people if we genuinely believe that we could help you to get to where you want to go with our services we typically charge 500 dollars for this audit it's worth every penny because we always show you the blind spots that you may not see may not know not just with our model but just in general we'll show you how to raise your authority and do a lot of wonderful things during that audit just to open up your eyes to the opportunities the goal that you're currently sitting on while you think that you're not big enough don't have enough followers not ready not there yet all of those things are an illusion your small thinking is not the market reality somebody right now is looking for you they need your services and you just need to know how to authentically connect to people that's what we typically do on the call i know that there's a lot of people that can benefit from this so for your listeners would love to offer this five hundred dollar audit complementary to dive deep and to show you some of the things that you may not see not because you're not smart not because we're gurus but just because we failed a lot and just because i've been in a lot of different businesses behind the scenes and building my own and i believe that every entrepreneur is sitting on gold and you just may not see it because you're too close agree okay where do people reach you um social website any platform that you want on polina groman it's very simple i don't have any any special names reach out to me if you want to speak to me personally say that and if you're speaking to my assistant to say hey i'd love to have a conversation with polina i can't speak to every person sometimes it's just not possible i will do my best to get back to if you have any specific questions i'll do my best to give you the resources and maybe it's not me maybe i'll connect to someone in my network that can help you amazing and last question i ask everybody what a success mean to you at this point in your life happiness really feeling happy every day and honestly i'm there i don't i think that it's not a destination i'm really happy right now i'm happy with where i am personally professionally where i am as a human being and as a mom and every day i pour more gasoline on that happiness by genuinely being myself