AJV (00:02): I know that we’ve all bought into the idea that more is better at some point in our lives, personally or professionally, whether it’s more money more things, more accolades, more accomplishments more travels, more stuff, like more friends, more customers. Like I know for all of us that we suffer from the, I think I need more or I think I want more syndrome. At some point in our life, and maybe as you’re listening to this, you are suffering from the more syndrome right now. But this is actually a conversation about how you build more with less. And really specifically this is about how you build a better and bigger business on a smaller audience. And that’s what we wanna talk about. So there, there’s a couple of things that I wanna bring up. And a lot of this stems from an amazing conversation that I had with a phenomenal entrepreneur named Robin Robbins. AJV (01:07): And she’s another redhead located in Nashville, Tennessee. I was fortunate enough to be able to interview her on our podcast, the Influential Personal Brand podcast. Go listen to that episode. It is an NBA and entrepreneurial lessons. But there was something that she said in there that really got me thinking about this concept of less is more, right? Not more is more, but less is more. And she said in the interview, your company rides on the who internally and externally. And we’re gonna talk about that for just a couple of minutes. And I think this is a really important thing because I think a lot of times when we think about the who, we think about one or the other, we think about, you know, books like Start With Who, which is about like recruiting and hiring. And we think about cultural aspects of who we hire and how we build our team. AJV (02:03): And I think those are really important. In fact, we talked a lot about in this interview how hiring great leaders is how you grow your organization. It’s like you will only grow as fast as you grow your leaders, right? Because you, as the entrepreneur, the business owner, cannot do all the things, be all the things to all the people all the time and expect for you to grow. That’s why so many of us wonder why we started our businesses in the first place, right? Because there was this dream of time and, and margin and space and creativity and freedom. And then what actually happens is you are the person doing all the jobs and you don’t even get to do the thing that you like anymore. ’cause You started it because you were really good at this one thing, but now you’re trying to learn finance and accounting and billing and operations and customer service and all the things that you didn’t even want to do when you got into business. AJV (02:55): But that’s because you are not relying on the, the strength of a leader, right? And you don’t have to have tons of people in your organization to make them super, super impactful. But one of the best pieces of advice that I’ve ever got is hire great people, pay them very well, and expect a lot out of ’em, right? And I think that that’s, it’s a lot about a who, right? One great person, one a player, can do the work of three very average players. And I mean that, and I have seen that up and down and all around in my professional life. It’s like one A player literally can do the work of three C players, right? And some of that’s attitude, some of that’s experience, some of that’s determination. But a lot of it is really just work ethic. It’s like, how hard are you willing to work to figure out the thing versus relying on someone else to figure out the thing for you. AJV (03:53): And I think that’s a really important concept. If you’re in that position of like, Hey, I do wanna grow, I do wanna scale, then the first thing you need to do as you’re thinking about growth and scale in your business is going, do I have leaders that can help me get from where I am to where I wanna be? Because where you started won’t sustain you, right? And I think that’s a really important truth. It’s like, what got you here won’t get you there, right? That, that, that’s true, right? The, the sales, the operations, the staff that’s needed to go from zero to a million is very different than one to three, three to 10, 10 to 30, 30 to a hundred. That’s a completely different ballgame. It’s a completely different level of systems and operations, staff skills, experience, and most importantly, people, right? AJV (04:45): It is a different level of people. And so as we’re talking about this concept of your company rides on the who, there’s the internal components that, you know, do you have a players and are you paying them well enough that they’re not just a paycheck away? And do you expect a lot of them? Do they have growth potential? Do they like the culture? Do they like you, do you like them? Those are all things that when we talk about building an organization that hinges on great leaders and a lot of that is great leaders who can build great systems, right? It’s like you, you are the assistant until you hire the assistant to do the jobs that you’re currently doing, right? Because the thing is, is like somebody else will always be better at what you’re doing because they can be more dedicated and focused than you can as the business owner, you should be doing other things. AJV (05:37): And that’s getting clear on the money invested into quality people is worth it because it frees up your time to go do the next thing, whatever that may be. So there is this internal component of the who really matters. And a lot of the growth of a company is directly correlated to the quality of the leader, right? But then there’s this external component that we talked about in this interview that I thought was also really awesome, and I thought this was really important. And I’m actually looking at my notes from this, and I, I loved what she said. She said, this is Robin, Robin said this, get you get more customers when you get more specific and you can go listen to the interview. But she has built, built a multi eight figure business, I think somewhere in the 40, $45 million annual revenues, recurring revenue business. AJV (06:32): And what I love is that she shares this. She goes, there are very few people who can actually even buy what we offer. And I, I don’t quote me on this, go listen to the interview, but maybe 10,000. That’s it. So I think a part of it, she was like, we know anding about our customer, what they need, when they need it, what they can afford, what they’re trying to do, what size they are, how many people they have, what revenue they’re at. We know everything about them, and we have built our solution. So specifically catered to this small group of 10,000 people, she goes, we have built a, you know, $40 million business servicing a, a very even small fraction of that people, she was like, but our whole thing is we don’t have to have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of prospects to build an enormous business. AJV (07:25): We just need to get so clear, so specific that we are so dialed in on that niche specific audience that we can get bigger with a smaller audience, right? That’s because you can do more for that audience. It’s, versus it’s the difference between doing a little for a lot of people or doing a lot for a fewer amount of people. And in her case, it’s not super small, it’s still thousands. But I think that’s a really important concept because a, a lot of the more conversation that I hear in my world is I’m trying to get more followers, right? Specific on social media, or I’m trying to get more subscribers or I’m trying to get more leads and I’m trying to get more clients and, and people are kind of consumed with this idea of I need more. And I just wonder why, right? AJV (08:16): It’s like, do your current subscribers or current followers buy from you? I don’t know. Maybe they do, but I bet a lot of you get most of your business from word of mouth and referrals and your current customers. And I bet that if, if we all took a really deep hard look at who our audience is, we could all admit we don’t need millions, don’t even need hundreds of thousands, don’t even need tens of thousands. And most of us don’t even need thousands of people to go after, to build a very life sustaining, fulfilling life-giving business that’s making a positive impact on the people that you are around on your family. It, it could be generational change, and you could do that with dozens of clients. So more is not always better. Sometimes less is better. ’cause You can do more for those people when you have less clients. AJV (09:10): And so I just wanted to challenge everyone in this conversation of going, you can grow to a very large size business with a very small client demographic, and you’re able to do that because you know your client demographic so intimately, right? But there’s not just the external who factor. There’s the internal who factor, which is the, the cultural dynamics of you’re only gonna grow as fast as the leaders in your company, right? You and I love this whole thing, it’s like you can never, you know, grow faster than the systems that you put in place, right? And I think a lot of times when you do that is when you self implode, like when you grow faster than your systems and processes can manage, is when we see these have amazing potential companies implode right before our eyes because they couldn’t sustain the growth. AJV (10:00): They didn’t have the right systems, the right processes, nor the right leaders in place to do the thing. Don’t make the same mistake. Don’t don’t over romanticize growth, right? There, there is a, a power in boring organic growth, right? And nobody likes to talk about that because we wanna talk about how you went from zero to seven figures and the next six months. Like, but that’s not always good, right? Sometimes the boring organic just kept doing the same thing, kept growing as we could, right? We, we grew as fast as we could. Sometimes that’s just better because you stay a little more sane, but it allows you to grow your systems and processes appropriately, and it it allows you to recruit or grow your leaders appropriately. So more isn’t always better, right? Sometimes less leads to more. And I just thought this would be a really great conversation as, as we’re all looking at, for at least us here at Brand Builders Group at whatever ev what at everyone’s talking about in the market. AJV (11:11): More money, more followers more clients, more leads what have you just said? What can I do with less, right? What, what could I do with what I have? And instead of focusing on more people or more leads or more followers, what if you just said, no, I’m just gonna focus on serving the ones I have better. And it doesn’t have to be more or bigger. I just wanna do more and better for what I currently have. Because if we do a life changing service to the people we have, they will tell others about you, right? We talk about this all AJV (11:52): The time. The best form of marketing on the planet is a changed life. And that goes for clients and employees. , right? The best marketing, the best recruiting on the planet is the proof of a changed life. And sometimes that happens by doing more for fewer people.