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Hey guys. Welcome to Problems to Profit. I am so excited to teach you today's podcast. This is the 10 main lessons I've learned in business. Automating and scaling 18 different companies in 30 minutes or less. So let's test me here. Here we go. 30 minutes or less. My name is Preston Brown. I have scaled and automated now more than 18 companies. I mean, we're still in process on some because it's fun. It's like having a new kid. Every new business is like a new baby. When they are a startup. You don't get to schedule when the diapers come, you know, it's not automated right out of the chute gate. So I want to kind of go over beginning to end of the journey and just kind of break it down into 10 things I've learned. But before we go, what are you going to learn? What are you going to get out of the day? If you follow along, if you take notes, if you pay attention, spend that attention and learn this. You're going to learn tips on scaling your business, guys. You're going to learn tips on, you know, frameworks, modalities that you can use to leverage growth, scale, automate, optimize, all of those different big words. You're going to get advice from an entrepreneur who's been there and done it. Not some coach that goes out and collects money and wants your money but doesn't have a track record. Let's jump in to this episode. On this episode, I wanna share the biggest needle moving lessons I've learned while starting growing and tuning these businesses into profit centers that run without me on a day to day basis. So what are they? Without further ado, I wanna get into them and I wanna break down each one. So number one is you can't do anything without a team. Let me say it again, you cannot do anything without a team. At least not anything at scale. The team might start when you start up with just you. But as this baby that you have grows, this business that you start expands, you eventually overwhelm the plate. Like imagine like a plate full of food. Eventually you keep piling more food, more food, more food, more customers, all of their needs, more problems. What is a sale? The solution to a problem a customer has. Right? And you start piling all this up. Eventually the food starts overwhelming the plate. When things start falling off the plate, this is where you start getting those things, like bad reviews. Well, how do we correct this? We need to have the right team. You need to be in a process at all times of looking at who do I need? Who's my first hire? If you've already had your first hire, who's my next hire? What do I need them to do? How am I going to measure them? What am I going to get out of them? You cannot do anything at scale. If your goal is to have an optimized automated company one day, which is the only company with value without a team. So that's number one. What are you gonna do? What is your team about? What is the mission? And who do you need? But also maybe who do you need to get out of? Who do you not need? Who are the members of your team that are damaging your culture, damaging your communication, not delivering on your outcomes? You can't do anything without a team. So we'll go more into that on other episodes, but the next one, Trust people to the level that they teach you you can trust effectively. I see entrepreneurs all the time and they're going through this process where they either give too much trust or they don't trust enough. Trust is one of the most important words in business. Okay? If you don't have the ability to trust, then your team has no value. Well, how do you know how much you can trust? They're going to teach you that. Your team is going to teach you how much you can trust them. Okay, which leads me right into number three. Number three is linear. With number one and two, it literally goes direct. You don't get what you want in business, number three is you get what you measure, you get what you measure. Let that sink in. If you're thinking about, I get what I measure, what are you measuring? Well, you're measuring your team. You're measuring the processes that they work within. You're measuring the outcome your customers are receiving. You're measuring the income that you should be generating based on that outcome. These are called KPIs Key Performance Indicators. They should link all the way down to the job descriptions that each member of your team has. I can't tell you how many businesses I've gone into. And I'm like, well, can you show me that employee's job description? And I get this like, book pulled out and they'll have like, it's like 20 pages, 30 pages. I mean, it's rare that I find what is a real job Description, which is one page with like 10 high level bullet points. Like, you don't need to teach people, hey, you should wear clothes to work. Hey, you know, you should pull up your pants. You don't need to teach that some of this stuff's common sense. Okay? I get these thick, ridiculous job descriptions. When I talk to business owners and entrepreneurs, I'm like, show me this employee's job description. And then I sit with the employee and the owner and I say, hey, do you remember reading this? Do you know how many of your employees have actually read their 20, 30, 40, 300 page job descriptions that you're giving them your policy manual, all this stuff? I guarantee none of them. None of them. What you need to do is have a simple 10 bullet point job description where all of the bullet points on the job description are easily measured. 10 or less by the way, for almost every job. My CEO I think has like nine things on her job description. Most of them are about what she measures on others. But every employee has 10 or less bullet points. They're all easily measured. And you don't get what you want, you get what you measure. And when you get what you measure enough times, you develop going back to number two, the ability to trust. And once you have the ability to trust, then you can have conversations with your team and ask them for more things that aren't on their job description, things that you're not measuring. What you will find with some of the folks and a lot of the folks you have, a good team is they'll start delivering on those things, increasing the value of the team member, the employee, okay? And that increases your bottom line, which means you eventually get to increase their pay as well. Number four, luxury products get you luxury margins. When you're in any new business, guys, margin is one of the most important things you can have. It's better than efficiency, it's more valuable than efficiency. Like let this sink in, okay? Efficiency comes when you know your product or service better. So if you've been in business for like 20 years, 10 years, you should be very efficient at, you know, acquiring what you need to develop the product or service, delivering upon the client needs. Why? Because you refined it down by serving customer after customer after customer. When you're a startup, there's a bunch of shit you don't know. And that shit you don't know is the shit that's going to hurt you. If you don't figure out what that client's needs are and how to best serve them, your business is not going to make it. You will be replaced by the market. Well, what gives you time to figure that out and compete with the bigger brands? Ding, ding, ding. Margin. Luxury products have luxury margins. I can't tell you one of my favorite businesses that I'm in is the home building business. And it's fun because I get to coach and train a lot of young builders that want to get in. And a typical thing they tell me is, oh, yeah, I want to get in and deliver the most affordable product. I'm like, great, that sounds awesome. How many lots do you have? Oh, I have 10 lots that I'm going to get throughout the year. Okay, well, the most affordable product has the lowest margin, meaning you get to make the least amount of mistakes. How many homes have you built? Well, none. These will be my first 10. Well, so you're not going to have any cushion when things go wrong. Do you think you already know it all? Are you going to learn nothing this year? The builders that I find that succeed are the ones that start building the luxury products. Because the consumers expecting a luxury product are willing to wait a little longer for it because they know it's quality, giving you a little leeway there. They're willing to pay a little more for it. Meaning when you have your mistakes in that home and this translates and democratizes to every business out there, luxury products equal luxury margins. You can go buy that cheap little used Droid phone. Android. Sorry, guys. Yes. Apple is a cult. If you are watching this and you use that Apple phone, we're part of the same cult. If you use that Android. I'm sorry, I don't ride a horse to work and I don't use candles for lighting. I have a light switch in my home. And I don't mean to offend you, but I do think you should probably upgrade to a luxury product. I know it costs more, I know the camera's not as good, but all the other functions are better. So luxury products, luxury margin. Yeah, you pay more for nice shit, guys. And when you do that in your business, guess what happens when you can scale a luxury product? You make more money. You create more money. So, next lesson. I know I've beaten a dead horse on number four, but number four is a fun one for me. And I think that everybody who starts that way generally has a better life. Number five is you choke on too much opportunity, but you will rarely ever starve to death from lack of opportunity. Let this sink in. Common mistake entrepreneurs make, and one that I made several times, is once you start getting successful, once you start making money, you're like, oh, my gosh, I replaced my job. I no longer have that dickhead boss. Or wait, maybe that dickhead boss is me. And it's funny because when I became the dickhead boss, I actually woke up earlier in the morning than when I had the dickhead boss who wasn't me. I worked later at night than when I had the dickhead boss that wasn't me. But you know what? It replaced itself with something called passion. I loved my product, I loved my service, I loved all that. But when I started making money and I started having success, I started doing something really dumb. I started realizing my own greatness and pride comes before the fall. And once you figure out a way to create money, like guys, you're creating money, you're no longer earning, you're no longer a slave, you're creating like, think about this. People go to work and they're like, oh, I'll sell you my time for a few bucks. When you're an entrepreneur, there's no limit. You're literally creating. You're turning something into far more than what it was. Oh, I'll go acquire this at five bucks, this widget, and I'll sell it at ten. Well, the more you do that, the more money you make. If you could do it with some web driven protocol and a thousand times a day, there's no limit to the wealth that you can generate. You're creating wealth with entrepreneurship. Then you get this big ego about you and you start realizing, oh, wow, I'm the shit, I'm gonna do it again. And you're generally still fairly new at this point in your business. You've generally built to a point where you're what I call an operational entrepreneur. You're beyond startup, you're out of the cash flow suck, you're starting to make money, but you're busy, right? But it's so exciting and so intoxicating when you learn that you can create money, that what do you do? You go add another business and you add another business and you add another business after that. You become like that shit parent that doesn't know how to raise their child. And what's your solution? Oh, let's have five, six, seven more kids. I did this to where I had seven kids, not actual children, businesses. Okay. I stopped at two kids. I realized that I didn't want to learn that lesson with actual family, but with businesses. I started, I started doing well. In my first business. I was like, let me add a layer, let me add a layer, let me add a layer. By the time I knew it, I had seven companies. I actually had to shut one down. I mean, you know, lawsuits and problems and all the lessons that you didn't want to have and the wrong manager running it and the Others, I had to go in and figure out optimization really quick or I was going to lose them too. You don't want to go in and do the dumb stuff I did and that many other entrepreneurs do and start too many businesses. As soon as you start having success in your first one or two, stay there. Balance those out. Optimize them. Once they're optimized, once they're automated, yeah, sure. Add another one. You don't want to get bored. And every business that is optimized and automated becomes something that is an asset, not an obligation. Once it's an asset, not an obligation, you want to start another one, go ahead. But wait till you're through the process. You've done all of my seven steps of entrepreneurship, which you can find in another video, or go watch my masterclass and we'll actually teach you the seven steps of optimization. Right? So number five, you can choke on too much opportunity, but you rarely ever starve to death for lack of opportunity. Focus on the main thing. Keep the main thing the main thing. What is number six? Number six, efficiency is one of the greatest opportunities if you can learn to understand the magic behind it. When you can solve problems at the right stage, your business will change. Okay? If you don't understand efficiency, it's going to crush you. Mastering efficiency, at least in some area of your business, is what's going to take you from zero to super successful. Okay? And by the way, efficiency doesn't have to be in everything. There's kind of a minimum standard of efficiency, but you have to be a master efficiency in something. Not everybody who's in the same industry is the most efficient in every area. One business might be the most efficient at branding and creating a perception of value to the clientele. Another business might be the greatest inefficiency at their sales process and having a seamless sales process where they can convert more leads than anybody else. Another business might be the most efficient at costing their product. And they may not worry as much about branding, they may not worry as much about sales, but because they have such amazing ability to cost their product, they can sell at a much lower price and still make a comparable margin. Another business might be more efficient in their technology. Okay? And I'm talking about the technology that is the data management, not necessarily some of the other technologies that are possible because there's a lot of different technologies. Right? But efficiency is critical. What are you good at and where can you become the most efficient now? The next level, because you can become one of the top three, four companies in your industry, in your market, by mastering efficiency in any single area. But the next level is looking at the other areas where there are other masters and starting to say, okay, well, how can I optimize to those areas as well? So efficiency is one of the key things that you're going to learn, but it's not the easiest thing to understand. Like, a lot of people are going to go and they get this kind of analysis paralysis when building a business. They're like, I'm going to build the biggest thing ever built. Okay, but it ain't going to be the most efficient thing ever built. When you're scaling efficiency. What's interesting about scaling efficiency is you actually generally have to bring the business down in size. Normally when you're getting efficient, you're actually getting smaller. You're eliminating toxic employees, you're removing bad processes or you're editing processes to make them better. You're dealing with this constant compromise of increasing simplicity to the client, to the vendor, lender, trade. But that's compromising. As you increase simplicity, the alignment that you had previously, or if you're increasing alignment, you're compromising simplicity. So it's this iron sharpens iron effect of creating efficiency. And you got into business because you had the ability to be more efficient in one area. But when you start managing this iron sharpens iron and you start building that team and using the previous steps and learning how to measure and creating those efficiencies in all other areas. This is where you become the actual industry standard. This is where you can take a business to multiple cities, multiple states. You can become the big business, you can take it public, you can exit it for tens, 20, $100 million, whatever you want to do. When you start mastering efficiency, okay, that's the level where your business is really starting to become that optimized, valuable machine that is an asset, not an obligation. So what's number seven? And this is where life starts getting involved. This is one where I did wrong and I'm still learning this one. Okay, I think 7, 8, 9 and 10, you'll start realizing are very interesting lessons that you never really stop learning. But business goes beyond business, work, life, balance becomes relevant at number seven. Like, you know, getting more well rounded in Life. Like the four Fs. Faith, Family, Fitness, finance. You may start in like that finance world where, you know, look, we live in a capitalist society. Money does matter. Like all the people out there like, oh, money doesn't matter. Money is the root of all evil. Those are really stupid people that are not looking at things right, guys? I mean, money does matter. Money is not the root of all evil. The love of money might be the root of all evil. But understanding money like you understand energy, like, if I have the energy to get up in the morning and play with my kids, then I'm wealthy. If I have the money to play with my kids on the beach instead of just in my front yard, I'm wealthier. Money is as evil or as good as energy is. It's just another form of it. So at number seven, you're kind of figuring out work life balance. You're figuring out, okay, well, life's not just about money. I'm starting to have money. I'm starting to get to the point where, like, I can have the fancy car, I can have the fancy vacations, I can take a month off and go do something I want. I can, you know, potentially like, go and hire my replacement at work and not need to work as hard. Or this is where you can start another business if you want to go and, you know, do do the whole route again. But what if you're hitting your 40s and your 50s, you're starting to have some health problems because you've sacrificed everything. Because before stage seven, there is really no work life balance. You have to subordinate to the baby. It's no different than being a mother or a father of a new child. If the child is screaming and starving, you feed it. You don't go golfing, you feed the baby. New business before stage seven, or lesson seven, is kind of the same as a baby. At this point, your child, this business, is a young adult. They're off, they're out of college, they have their own job. They become an asset, not an obligation. And so work life balance, I need to figure out my health. I want to figure out what is the real meaning of life. Obviously, you get to where you have money, you start realizing, man, money mattered far less than I thought. People will look up to me for it, but it's not really as important as it used to be. You start looking at your wife and your kids and you're like, holy smokes, I missed so much time. I want to put more time. And you really need to start figuring out the work life balance at level seven. Now, what's great about this is the previous stage of efficiency in business was all about business. But what's funny about work life balance is when you force yourself to find work life balance, you become more efficient too. You start accomplishing the same things you accomplished in business in 40, 50, 80 hours a week, in 5, 10, 15 hours a week getting the exact same results, you start realizing that your measurables and deliverables personally are able to be compressed into a smaller amount of time with the same outcome to a point. Right? And it just makes you more powerful. And without going through this process and you know, I did try to go through this process earlier, I tried to go through, you know, level seven a little earlier than I should have and it flopped and it failed. And maybe there's some genius out there that can, I couldn't. I had to learn these lessons in order. At this stage you become better. So next lesson, I think I've beaten a dead horse on the work life balance, the faith, family, fitness, finance. And the last thing I'll say on it is find the area where you're weakest and work on that one first. Like if you're weakest in faith, spend time there. If you're weakest in family, spend time there. But get efficient at figuring out the real meaning of life, the real purpose you have, and you'll become ten times more powerful in business than you were. Lesson eight in business investing. Because once you've mastered business, once you've started diving into work life balance and measuring that and taking that new journey, you realize that businesses are subject to markets. I mean, I guess everything is subject to markets, but businesses are more volatile in markets than investments are. Okay, now obviously there's going to be some hater that's going to go say oh no, you know, investments here, investments. Yeah, okay, whatever. Like I'm talking about intelligent investing for long term life planning. A bunch of different non correlated asset classes that can be leveraged into a security blanket for you in the case of a black swan event like a Covid or something else that could have taken your business down. That's, that's what I'm talking about. Level eight is you have more time, you've become more efficient, you've established work life balance, you've managed what is your purpose and the meaning of life. And now you need to figure out what is the game of investing. You're generally a master at this stage in your business. You're a master in the market that you live in, but you're not a master in figuring out what all the other uncorrelated asset classes that you could be in work like, but they're all measurable too. Like if you're in real estate, the bond market matters for real estate, it affects interest rates. So investing in the bond market might Be an opportunity for you to learn more about the real estate market, where you actually live. The stock market matters too. I mean it touches everything. All of the investment markets touch all of the other markets like the stock market, the bond market, the real estate market, I mean those are all interlinked in different ways. Now you might, you know, be in the commodities business, you know, might be in the mining business. All of these things are interconnected and correlated to where if there's an issue in one and that's kind of your area that's causing market stress and say a recession or a downturn that's going to cause other areas to go up. So where you might be invested in one area that's going down, you're invested in other areas that are going up. And you need to learn what to measure in each of those areas. Right now, if you're invested, I mean, we're doing this, this podcast and Trump just won an election. And with Trump winning an election, we're probably gonna have some very pro energy policies. So if you are invested with the right players, with the right people in the oil drilling business, maybe leases that where potential oil drillers could go out and find oil, do surveying and all that. And if you had enough different investments, I mean that's a high risk area. But if you had enough different one and kind of across the board two or three of them hit, it would be a great time to be in that industry. It might not be a great time to be invested in a company that is in China that's about to get tariff, that's about to have all the prices on all their goods go up. So like different things, different markets, understanding investing. Why? Because generally when you've hit success in business, the youngest I've seen are generally in their late 20s and they're very rare, but most people are in their late 30s to late 50s. And investing is going to be the thing that carries you through. It's not going to be your business. Your business might be the thing you can exit and make a big splash, but then where do you put the money? It's all going to bleed away. So understanding investments is critical. That's lesson eight, lesson nine. And we touched on this a little bit in the work life balance section, but this one's bigger. You need to figure out your legacy. And this is where that meaning of life that was beginning to start at business goes beyond business and level seven and investing. But lesson nine is what is your meaning of life? What is your purpose? What is your mission? What is Your legacy. You quickly realize that materials don't matter and that happiness does. And you realize that your problems and the things that you overcame in life are generally going to be the things that are your story. And by nature of that, look, what are we made of? We're made of stories. That's what makes up a human being's past. It's what makes up a human being's behaviors, makes up the lessons we've learned. And so probably somewhere in those stories and in those trials and tribulations becomes other people that you want to mentor, you want to help, you want to work with, you want to help them solve their problems and become better. Maybe you want to donate money, Maybe you want to donate time and wisdom. Maybe what is the meaning of your life? What is the impact you're going to have? Because nobody's going to remember a guy or gal that made a lot of money 100 years later. You know what? They are going to remember the person that helped them. And number nine, your legacy. Heck, guys, it's why I'm doing this podcast. It's why I want business information out there, because I think everybody needs it. Not everybody's going to become an entrepreneur. Not everybody will, but everybody needs to know it's an option. People need to understand what's really out there and choose what they want. And so my mission is to help people of any type, people that think, oh, I couldn't be an entrepreneur. Yeah, you can. It's pretty formulaic. I hear some people out there like, oh, you're born with it or you're not. Bullshit. I've seen every different type of person you can imagine become an entrepreneur and succeed, which means there's a process, there's a formula, there's a system, and you can, too. Now, you may not want to do it, but at least if you have the information, it's your choice. And that's my mission. What's your mission? And at number nine, you start looking at what is the legacy I want to leave. How do I become immortal? You know, and the fact is, we're all going to die. But if I wanted to become immortal, where at least my kids or my kids kids got something from me, what would it be? And I'd want them to learn how to be productive and not let money be the meaning of their life. Without them being foolish and thinking money's evil. I'd want them to have formulas and systems to work in a capitalist environment to where they could go out and make a living and have joy and have wealth and have success because it does matter while having compelling relationships with all the people they love. Number 10, last lesson. There's always more to learn. I'm still learning this lesson. You know, frankly, I'll be honest. I'm really only at lesson nine. Be curious, have fun, live on purpose. And you know, if I ever come up with a number 10 or a number 11 outside of BE curious and always be open to learning more, I'll add to this video. I'll get you more information on it. But as of right now, number 10 is just be curious. Because you never know the lesson God's going to give you next. Remember guys, Problems to Profit is the name of this podcast. Your problems might be your gift. Your problems might be your guide. What is God sending you to overcome this week, this month, maybe even today? Let it guide you. I hope you all have an amazing day on purpose. I hope you all have tremendous success. And if you have questions or comments, please post them in the comments on this video and I look forward to answering them for.