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There's a simple code to scale your business to eight figures or more and no one's teaching it. Most owners stay stuck grinding out 60 hour workweeks for thin margins. But the whales, they build systems, they develop leaders, and they take real vacations and grow profits whether they show up or not. And after building a $50 million a year business, I've identified eight principles that every whale lives by. I call it the eight figure code. We build teams to create freedom so we develop leaders who can run the business with or without our daily involvement. We, we don't just hire more employees who are all just followers. Most owners accidentally buy themselves a job. But the real unlock here is developing people who think and act like owners instead of people who are our followers. Now a follower is going to escalate every issue. A leader is going to solve it before you hear about it. I used to be the bottleneck in everything, right? So everyone had to come to me for every decision, every purchase, everything. And I realized like I could only do so much and my entire day was filled with other people's problems. And then I changed the question to say from how can I do this faster? To who can help me with this, who can own this? And then I built systems to automate as much as possible. I gave people responsibility, I gave them trust. And I was able to develop people from within who now run the show. And then I also hired people from the outside when I needed a talented person who we didn't have on our plate. I can now disappear for weeks at a time and our business continues to grow and thrive because I am not the linchpin anymore and I built an awesome team around us. Freedom doesn't come from delegation, right? Delegation is like you just give somebody and you expect them to do it. It comes from development, right? The difference is delegating. It comes to you and you dish it out. Development is when your team is able to identify and solve an issue and it never even reaches you because they've already done it. So if you want to build an eight figure business, especially in a service based business like a franchise that I'm part of, you need to build a strong team around you. Otherwise you're always going to buy yourself a job and be in the weeds. Number two is we prioritized cash flow over equity. We build businesses that generate consistent cash distributions every month, not just thousands of theoretical exit value. I don't care what my business is worth until someone wants to buy it or I need to sell it. Equity is locked in, right? Equity is a value that's on a spreadsheet somewhere. But cash in your bank every single week is what you can run your lifestyle on, right? It is how you pay your mortgage, it's how you support your family, it's how you live your life. And there are some people that want to build a business that, that chases a big exit, right? The next software company, the next crypto scheme or whatever it is. And while there will be some people that will hit it big, they will hit eight or even nine figures. They have not taken a penny out of the business since then, and many of them don't make it at all. And the whole thing fails. I don't like to play the lottery. I don't like to make those bets. Instead, I'd rather just stack cash every single month and enjoy my life while I'll build. So I take conservative distributions from the business, whatever I believe it can afford, and then I bank the excess profits. And whenever the business has enough cash, then I give myself a bonus based on our performance. This creates discipline from a personal lifestyle because a lot of times you could have income creep or lifestyle creep if you start making all this money that you're not used to and you don't know how to spend it. It also records progress and it protects the business, leaving us cash to grow, to expand, to diversify. All the things that I'm going to talk about here in a little bit. But cash flow gives you options, equity gives you dreams. And one day we may sell the business. But what I do care about is how much cash we're able to generate every single week. Number three, we leverage proven systems, not reinvent wheels. We copy and paste winning playbooks and focus on execution, not constant innovation. Everyone has ideas. Ideas aren't valuable. It's execution that is. So I don't chase creativity. I chase results. There will never be a beers, tire and auto. I don't care that I may not end up on the COVID of Forbes magazine every day, but that's fine. Like, that's not my goal. My goal is to make money. Just show me how to make money and I will do it. And that's why franchising works so well for me. Because somebody else already built the system. They built the playbook. My job is to hire great people and hold them accountable for executing on that playbook. It keeps it really simple so I don't have to worry about a ton of things that other business owners have to worry about. I have to worry about the thing that makes me the most Amount of money, which is execution. So many people just waste time wanting to be original. I just want to run a profitable business, right. And simplify my life as much as possible. Franchising lets you buy decades of trial and error distilled into a few weeks of training. I call it decades in today's. And so while other people are inventing, I'm executing. While they're figuring out, I'm working on driving cash flow sales, hiring better people, developing my team. All that makes growing an eight figure business easier. Number four, we harness the power of compound growth. I realized that there's no better investment than ourselves in our own business. It's not chasing shiny new objects. Look at how my business sales have grown over the last nine years. The best investment I ever made wasn't in any stock or crypto. It was $50,000 that I put down to buy a franchise in 2018 which returned $400,000 of cash over the next 12 months after making that investment. That is an 800% return in the first year. There is no other market that you can get that. And that business has consistently cash flowed 3 to $400,000 every single year since I've owned it. And what did I do with that money? Did I take it out of the business and go buy a fancy car? No. I use that money as down payments to buy eight more locations over the next few years. And I took that money to buy more. That is how I grew my sales so quickly. From 2020 to 2023. You can see I went up $20 million in revenue because we did a bunch of acquisitions. I was able to afford those acquisitions because I had cash flow from my business. I also had the track record. I had banks, I had seller financing. I was able to put all these deals together because I was confident in my execution. And I had this system of generating cash and reinvesting it. Right. Wealth is created by concentration. Building a bigger business gives you the payroll to hire better leaders. C number two. And continue to grow because you build this muscle. I see people make this mistake all the time when they have a business. I and it's got to a certain size, but they're still the one in charge. And then all of a sudden they're open up a second business. And now they are broken. Their attention is split between these two different things and they don't have strong leaders in each. And now both of them suffer. Their original business maybe a stagnant or goes down and then the new business isn't able to grow as fast. As it is, as it should, because they don't have somebody running it. I know this because I made this mistake many years ago where I was the main person driving it forward and it split my attention. And our auto repair business, the one that has created all my, we stagnated. And my other one, eventually it lost like three or four hundred thousand dollars. I had to take money out of one business to pay the other. And so sometimes we see that the grass is greener on the other side and then we realize it's fertilized with, you know, bullshit and it doesn't work. And so if you're serious about building an eight figure business, the fastest path to that isn't chasing something new, it's doubling down on what you already have and just continuing to get better and stronger and quicker and faster. And it is the biggest mistake I ever made was getting distracted in these other things. And now we have key leaders in these businesses and they are growing faster than ever. Number five, we build diversified multi unit portfolios. We have multiple revenue streams across different units, markets and now brands to build a strong defense, a strong moat rather than relying on a single location. Now you just heard me say that you should stay focused on your existing business. And now I'm talking about multi unit here. But there's a couple key distinctions. Number one is multiple units, multiple markets. Let's focus on that first. So my auto repair business, we started just in Philadelphia, just 15 minutes apart for every location. And then eventually we expanded into New Jersey, about an hour and a half away. Same exact business, just different market, different atmosphere. What happened during COVID was pretty amazing because we had some locations in the city, stores that didn't give a big F about COVID and they were thriving. We had locations in the really rich sections of town where people were super freaked out and not getting their car fixed. Jersey reacted completely different than, than Pennsylvania. Right. And so even though we had the same business because we had multiple markets, they reacted different. And so if we had only had New Jersey or only had rich stores, we would have been in a lot worse situation than we ended up being because we had a more diversified portfolio. In certain submarkets, we have stores that set records, we have stores that are losing money. And it all balances out in the end because you continue to kind of grow as a group. And so building a portfolio is, is powerful. That is the point of a multi unit. Now when talking about multiple brands, the only way I do it now is if I have an equity partner in the brand and that person, it's 100% for that person and they are driving it for and they would succeed with or without me. All right? And the other ones, I was the person driving it forward. Now all of our portfolio companies, that's not our core business. I am a partner in it and I have another rock solid partner who has equity. And for them, they are building an amazing business that will make their family a ton of wealth, an eight figure business for themselves that I'm going to help accelerate because of our systems and our strategy and our money and everything that I can provide to make it happen. You also want to be strategic here. It's not about chasing every opportunity that comes up. It's about strategic diversification. It's about doubling down where your strengths are. Right. For me it's been in franchising. So now we have multiple franchise brands, but they all run in a similar way. We use similar vendors, our back office is similar. I'm able to promote leaders from one thing to the next. There's a lot of synergies in everything that I do, even though it may seem like a lot because now we have a portfolio of companies. And so I'm working now to play offense through concentration of growing individual brands with great leaders. And I'm playing defense by having multiple brands that are in different industries, different markets that help give me peace of mind in terms of our profitability and what's possible. Number six, we tap into support networks so we're never alone. We build relationships with other successful owners and not try to figure out everything ourselves. Right? Building a business can be lonely, especially when you break the mold of what's normal. It's possible you're going to quit your job to launch a business. Your co workers aren't going to understand your existing friends, your family, your neighbors. Like everyone might think you are the craziest person to quit a great job and go off and buy a business, get into a franchise like whatever it is. And so you need to surround yourself not with people who bring you down and tell you you're crazy, but people who inspire you, who lift you up, who challenge you to think bigger. Because there's this old saying, like you are the average of the five people that you surround yourself with. And I believe it because I live it like many years ago, I joined a network of very successful entrepreneurs because I wanted to be more successful. I wanted to be in rooms where the average person was running a bigger business than me, was had a higher net worth with me, was further along in life in Certain categories that I wanted to prove in instead of me being the smartest person in the room, like I wanted to surround myself by other people who'd help me get to where I want to go. And so you have to invest in that. That costs money to be in those rooms because those rooms aren't open to anyone. They aren't open to tire kickers. They're only open to people who are serious. And when you join a franchise network, you're also going to have the community of other franchisees, other business owners all around the country who are operating the exact same business as you. And everyone believes that Rising Tide lifts all the boats. And so they're going to share best practices challenges in all these different parts that has made their business successful. And if you figure things out, you're going to share it too. And so this is part of the reason that I created the Eight Figure Franchisee. It's a private community for franchisees across industries. So we can cross pollinate the best ideas from every franchise brand and we can talk about things that many franchise systems aren't talking about or not allowed to talk about when it comes to, to hiring people, to cash flow, to compensation plans, to investments outside of their brand. New franchisor is going to help you figure out what's the best next brand for you to diversify into. Right. They're not going to help you negotiate a seller finance deal with your neighbor, but we are. So it's all part of this environment that we want to build strong communities that help each other grow and push us to new levels. Number seven, we create a positive impact on our communities. We strengthen our communities by providing quality jobs, essential services. And it goes beyond just money. Right? Our businesses provide real services to real people. I fix cars, we paint houses, we make backyards beautiful. I have a partner who takes care of seniors in need. We clean kitchens so that they, they are safe and make great food. Like we create jobs. And every job that's in our organization has the opportunity to progress. I believe that everyone wants to grow and progress equals happiness. And so we help people develop, we help them grow their income to grow, their professional development, their personal development. And you know, profit matters, but legacy does too. And I want to be proud of what I've built. I'll be proud that we have taken people in our organization from a maintenance man making $14 an hour who has now grown to a managing partner of one of our stores who gets a percentage of the store's profit and now has unlimited income. Like that is an amazing story. And this guy has worked his butt off to get it. And I want to find more guys like that. Not the people who just want to, like, push a broom, but the ones who have the potential to help us build an amazing business. Because we're in the people business at the end of the day, right? We fix cars, we paint houses, we install turf, whatever it is. But the end of the day, we're in the people business. And if I can find great people and then I can give them opportunities to grow within our organization, and we can take a lot of that growth and those ideas, and we can reinvest it back into the muti community, creating jobs, supporting the food banks, the blood drives, and doing all these things to make our community thrive. The rising tide that I believe in will lift all the boats. And at the end of the day, we go to bed knowing that we did something great for. For the community that we live in and everyone around it. Number eight, we raise children who learn what it takes to build a business. We teach our kids business literacy through real experience, not just handing them money. My kids see the grind, the leadership, the problem solving, the challenges. You know, my stores occasionally get broken into and robbed in the middle of the night. My daughter always likes to know what happened and what are we going to do to prevent it and how much they steal. And, like, why do people asking me? And, like, she has all these questions because she wants to learn about the business. And now that we're homeschooling her, I am teaching her all this stuff that I know the school's not going to teach her. And she can travel with me and she can learn what it takes on how we generate leads, how we handle customers, how we manage our money, how real business works. And I'd rather give them an ownership mindset so that they know what it takes and they can build their own business rather than a passive income. Because the real legacy isn't in an asset. It's in the belief. It's in about capability. It's like giving your kids a better life than what you have. Like, I am very grateful of my parents. You know, my dad was an entrepreneur. He was a franchisee. There's a lot I learned in and kind of being in that environment which, you know, I give credit to the speed that at which I've grown, not because of money, but because of everything that I've learned and how to do it and how to handle it. And so I'm teaching my kids the exact same thing, very intentionally, probably more intentionally than anybody else. And I'm really excited to see what they're going to build because at the end of the day we're all doing this for our families and I'm just super excited to kind of get them involved, especially now as you know, my younger ones kind of get older and can absorb a lot more of this business stuff and I'm going to help her start her own business and go from there. So anyway, this code resonates with you. You might be a perfect fit for the eight figure franchisee community we are building. The most driven group of franchise operators in the country, people who say just give me the playbook and show me how to make money. Just copy and paste. Right. There's a link below if you want to apply and be on the lookout for more videos, diving to each one of these topics in more detail. And I'll see you on the next one. Cheers.