What’s more challenging than growing a business? Not much.
Over the years, it’s become increasingly complicated for startup founders to know which focus areas will accelerate growth. Which levers do you pull and how hard?
Today’s guest, Abhi Golhar, co-founder of NPHub, has all the answers.
On this episode of Evolved Sales LIVE, host Jonathan Fischer sits down with Abhi to discuss the three most critical areas, or levers, you can’t afford to ignore when scaling your startup.
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Meet Abhi:
Abhi Golhar is a nationally syndicated radio host, podcaster, and contributor to influential business publications including Huffington Post, Forbes, and CNBC.
He is also a highly regarded speaker, trainer, and consultant with a focus on leveraging AI, SaaS applications, and custom software to make launching a startup successful at every level.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Abhi Golhar 0:00
Hi. Welcome back. Thanks for joining us. I'm Jonathan Fisher. growing your business is not only challenging, it's become increasingly complicated. Which levers do you pull to accelerate your growth? Well, the good news is, according to today's guest, it may be a lot simpler than you think. I'll be Gauahar has been a syndicated radio host, TEDx, and keynote speaker, and podcaster. He's also a prolific author, having written nine books. And he's a regular contributor to business publications, including Huffington Post, Forbes and CNBC. In his work as a business consultant, and as a founder himself, obvious, identified the three most critical areas or levers which you can focus on to accelerate the growth of any company. Avi, welcome to the show. Fantastic to have you.
Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Thanks so much.
Yeah, so leading off, if you wouldn't mind, maybe just share for the listener? How did you arrive at the insights you're going to be sharing with us today?
Yeah, so I started my journey way, way, way back way back in 2000, to 2003, as a student at the University of Michigan, I had this epiphany of being part of the square root club. And I don't know if for those of you that know, the square root club is I was president founder, and I think the only member of the square root club, that's where the square root of your GPA is higher than your GPA, and it's so poorly my first semester at Michigan, that was my GPA. My GPA was like 0.83. Okay. And as the eldest in an Indian family, that was Alyssa say frowned upon. I was so in the depths of wallowing in self pity that my buddy Tommy McAfee said, Hey, it's okay. The world is not over, except you smell like crap, and you haven't eaten anything. So let's go fix that. And he gave me a couple of pivotal books, Rich Dad, Poor Dad thinking Grow Rich guide to investing and that the rest of that year, I read everything under the sun regarding private equity, business building, and of course, investing for long term whether that's ETFs, equities, real estate, etc. That's where I started. A year later, I had a mentor of mine, he and I, Michael, and I built a company called rent to buy, rent to buy this is pre Dodd Frank lease option agreements. And we ended up selling that company to a national car rental agency, which still exists today. And I thought, going stepping into my classes as as an underclassmen at Michigan Engineering, I thought, you know, does this am I fulfilled here? And that's when I discovered the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment, I could achieve academically, but was I fulfilled in doing so. And the answer, of course, was no, these achieving part was easy. The fulfilling part being fulfilled is very difficult. So when I continued to go on my journey, I thought, how can I continue to add value to my investors, my clients, the customers of the businesses that we invest in acquiring? And the only way that I know how is the three pillar framework we'll go through today?
Wow. So that's quite a story. Well, I think it's really neat to hear that you don't come at this just as a subject matter expert from learning, which is great, nothing wrong with that. But you're not really a student, like the old saying, right, those who can do those who can't teach, hey, better, better yet as those who have done and teach from their experiences, so I love it, that you've been a founder and bring that in the trenches experience. A lot of our listenership comes from a very similar background. I love that square root club has been a long time to suffer.
It was it's so I was I was so devastated. I'm like, there has to be, there has to be more to this world than just academics. And once I went down the road of entrepreneurship and self starting and having the early failures, it, it started to reveal itself over time. And I'm like, oh, wait a minute. So there is a recipe, there is something that you can do every day in your business, regardless of what stage it's in, to grow it or to scale it, or to not do anything with it at all and keep it as a lifestyle business. So you run a business, and you own a business and you don't own a job. two very distinct concepts.
Yeah. Amen to that. Well, before we jump into the content that he's got for us listener, I want to remind you as a live audience member, you got the opportunity to get a Ask Me Anything time at the end of our show today. So go ahead, don't wait and put those questions in the chat section. We'll bank those at the end of the conversation, you'll get the chance to have obby answer your question, maybe if I choose you, so get right on it, folks. All right. Well, I'll start us off. You mentioned that there is this framework that you kind of ran into from your real life experiences. What are those three components? Let's start unpacking.
Yeah, three components. It doesn't matter if you are a early stage startup. If you are a company in growth, if you're a company that's a little mature or a company that's in decline, those are the four stages of any company, startup growth, maturity and decline. It doesn't matter what stage you're in, there are three components to any business that you need to be aware of. The first is revenue, primarily a marketing and sales function, you need more revenue, let's go invest in Google ads, marketing, let's go invest in a sales team sales. So these are two core components that should be part of your business to bring in revenue. So of course, revenue is a very important part of any business, second, EBIT, da EBIT, da also known as earnings before taxes, interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. EBITDA is an indication of an operational function, how efficient is your business being with its current operations, whether it's people, whether it's technology, whether it's IT infrastructure, what is it, and what you want to see is the gap between revenue and EBIT da, continue to get larger. So that's, that is like a big, big, big deal, you don't want revenue. Depending on where you are in your business, you don't want revenue to completely escalate like this, and ebit.to stay like super low or super level. Conversely, sometimes you also don't want it to do one of these things. Because that also means you're being very hyper inefficient in your business, so something else to consider. So there's a two things revenue EBIT dot and then of course, the multiple the multiple is a multiplier, a value, whether it's 123 or 4x, that you multiply on EBIT da or you multiply on revenue to get the valuation of your business kind of back of a napkin math. For example, if you build a technology company and your technology companies primarily run by a marketplace, then guess what's going to happen, you're you'll be valued at a technology multiple at a marketplace multiple generally, if you're doing relatively well, you'll, you'll see a revenue multiplier, if your if your industry say is no, I don't know, housing, you're creating a marketplace and housing, and you have a and there's a VC or a private equity company that gives you an 8x on revenue. That means you take eight times your revenue number, and that's your exit number. That's that's the valuation of what they're giving you at the time. every business, every industry has its traditional multiples. For example, if you're in the plumbing industry, you might see a one to 3x or two to three and a half x multiple on EBIT da not necessarily revenue. And there's a reason for that. But generally speaking, you will be given it you'll be assessed the multiple on either revenue or EBIT that the reason the multiple is important is the following. Just like renovating a house, if you have a two bedroom, one bathroom home, and let's say you decide to get rid of the roof and add another floor, and now you have a five bedroom, three bathroom home, what are you effectively doing there, you're effectively forcing the valuation of your house, very similarly in the business, what can we do to force the valuation to be a little higher. So if you have a let's say, you have a plumbing company and your plumbing services company in your market gets a two and a half or 3x Multiple on EBIT da, maybe build an app. And maybe that app will add a component of being tech enabled for a new buyer to step in and pay a little extra because now you're making the overall the overall operations of the business more efficient by introducing technology. So those are the three levers. Those are the three powers in business revenue, EBIT, da and the multiple that you need to pay attention to
these really interesting areas to discuss one by one. And I'm thinking of some some rather cheesy EBITA jokes, I'm going to spare the audience that, but but I like the comparison with real estate where there are some tweaks that you can make that may not be very high in cost, but could be very high in value. And it kind of brings to my mind, I always like to look at the what you want to avoid is just as valuable, right? Probably there's lots of things that get attention that that business owners think are going to tweak value. Let me let me go ahead and proffer that question. What are some things that distract that you think you're gonna add a bunch of value in terms of EBIT or revenues and it just doesn't gonna
get you there? Yeah, so for example of growth requisition has been a really hot topic lately. I want to buy a company or invest in a company and then have this business invest in or buy other businesses that are related to or like the business that I currently own. So for Example staying with the plumbing analogy, let's say I own ABC plumbing, CO, ABC plumbing CO will go purchase XYZ plumbing Co. Sometimes that can be a distraction, because you have no idea how inefficient or efficient XYZ plumbing company is being run. And if you go acquire this company, you have to somehow then merge them. And fold them into your existing support structure into your existing entity into your existing HR, your existing payroll, technology, customers, clients, salespeople, etc. that entire process should not be taken lightly, though it is a good opportunity to go by revenue. Okay, so I'm over here on this side of the screen. I'm ABC plumbing Co. and I'm grabbing this guy, I'm grabbing XYZ plumbing company, and I'm saying I'm gobbling up your revenue, and that revenue then becomes part of my ABC, plumbing co the revenue there is good, that's you were buying revenue, and we're starting to scale that and grow. But if that doesn't go properly, if the if the if the merger doesn't go, well, we don't have a proper plan for that if we don't know what people were keeping what people were firing, what people were hiring, what people were outsourcing, that process can take a year or two, just to stabilize. So that's one thing that many people do that they probably shouldn't do, because either one they may not know how to they haven't addressed the actual impact of acquire another company. And last but not least, it could also be capital inefficient. So something else to consider is just that if I'm buying company XYZ plumbing CO and I have to raise five or six or $7 million. Well, crap, now I have to add that to my liabilities. And I have an expense for interest to the bank every month to do that. Is it worth it? Maybe it is. Maybe it's not. But that is a big distraction. There are gurus there are people in the space that are saying just go buy as many companies as you can well. No, not yet. Not right now. Start with one master that then do the second one.
Hmm. Are there specific risks in in, in tech sector? Because we all know that valuations can be overblown in that space. That may be less of an issue today. But just historically speaking, does that bring some unique challenges when it comes to due diligence and an acquisition model?
For sure, technology is one of those technologies is one of the one of the most oversold and oversold services that is also one of the most ascertain what are the services that is the most underperforming. So for example, if somebody sells you a software package, and you don't implement it properly, what's the chance that you're going to use it? Almost none. If you want to go build an app on your phone, for example, somebody might sell you a package and say, hey, it's gonna cost $100,000 to build an app and it's gonna take a year, the likelihood is that it's really going to cost you $200,000. And it's going to take two years, which screws up your timeline. And now you have another competitor that's come out with something very similar technology is, is to a business. The way that the way that a V eight engine is to a Toyota Corolla it can supercharge your life, but if installed incorrectly, it will ruin your car.
That is, that's an apt analogy. I don't know very many Toyotas that would even take VA one or two. But it's a really good, good good food for thought. So what are some other you know, pitfalls when looking for ways to improve the performance of your company that distract founders today?
Over leveraging is a big deal. There are many businesses today that are over leveraged, we've borrowed too much money, we have too many lines of credit, and we just owe too much to our creditors. And we're not bringing in as much as much revenue to support our debt. Big, big, big, big problem, especially in a world where one inflation is a is a thing to interest rates are they'll they'll stabilize but if you go get a loan from the SBA right now you're looking at about a 10 and a half percent interest rate but two and a half of that interest rate being variable every quarter. So you're really you should really be underwriting at maybe 11 and a half 12% interest over a 10 year amortization period with a five year balloon. If you're not efficient with your capital and you don't have Have a very specific objective for it, you will lose the game. And by that, I mean, you'll end up scrambling to find other revenue streams to support the growth of your company. And also to support this new debt. Another distraction our expenses, many times, you'll see co founders go buy really luxurious cars because they they want to meet the 6000 pound rule, you buy a you buy a really expensive Beemer or a really expensive Toyota four or G Wagen, that's more than 6000 pounds, and you can write off the entire cost of the car or the cost of the tank, I guess at that point, you can do that. But now your business has to start has to support that monthly load. And if you don't, if the business can't, then you're personally guaranteed guaranteed the car loan, then you have to, and those payments are crushing entrepreneurs today. So be very careful with where you spend your money. We're we are in a recessionary environment. So keep in mind, there are other opportunities to go find businesses to invest in to go find other people to partner with to add value to your business. And that's where the focus needs to be not necessarily on what can I do tomorrow to just have a crazy debt load or a crazy expense load or which of these four or five companies can I go acquire just because I want more revenue, having more revenue is not an indication of how successful a company is having revenue with EBIT, da and a solid multiple weaponizes Your business valuation and that's ultimately what you're working for.
So let's let's back up a little bit. Now I'll be in talk about how do you recommend to business owners and leaders to work these Levers as a were? What's the analysis? What are the steps of analysis? And what are the what are some of the key ways they can implement on those?
Yeah, so I'll say this. As leaders, we often find ourselves really giving up too soon, we lose a lot of patients, I know I've lost a lot of patients in my life, which is now the reason I have all this other stuff long hair, I don't know if you can see it in the video, but it's like down to my down to my shoulders. And and most of the time too, it's lonely like we will doubt our own abilities. And as if that's not bad enough, the teams that we have to manage also have the same struggles, whether it's in onshore teams, or offshore teams. And if that doesn't get fixed, it becomes impossible to attract and keep the top talent that we need today. So think about that, that has that has sales and marketing written all over it that has the right seat, oh, maybe a fractional CFL written all over it from a EBIT, da efficiency perspective. And if we want to enable our business to grow and scale properly, for the next generation of top tier talent, we need to become more tech enabled, that also has an EBIT duck component. So as leaders, it behooves us to truly understand the culture we're building the people we're bringing into the organization, and retaining that talent over a period of time. And one of the ways to do that is to take your ownership and open up a little option pool to attract that top talent. Recently for one of the startups that I own, we did that. And the talent that we're starting to see come into the gate is phenomenal talent, you can still pay them 100, a buck 20, a buck 30 or 8595 100. But offer them a piece of the upside, and they will go to bat for you. That is such a big problem today. In health care, dentistry, urgent care centers, all across the country are screaming help, because they don't have the right talent, plumbers, blue collar America, the same thing, consulting the same thing. So if there's one place where I recommend leaders start is culture and keeping the talent you currently have and finding new talent to support the growth of your company.
Do you think there's a challenge there? I think you've partially answered that, but maybe go a little deeper on this. Because when you're looking at the numbers, you could make some pretty stark shifts in the business that you think will improve your EBITA that may or may not have a good effect on culture. How do you recommend folks kind of balance that it first of all, I mean, maybe do you agree that that could be a bit of attention? And then if you do, what do you recommend to deal with that?
Sure. I think if you don't have the right KPIs to begin with, it doesn't matter what type of talent you attract, you are going to be measuring the wrong thing. And you just won't hit the metrics, you won't hit the success that you want for the year. The contentious part of this all is I want to make sure my EBIT does efficient. Now, do I hear? Do I hire somebody that's $200,000 a year? Or do I hire somebody that's maybe two or three years out of college fingers crossed, they can do the same job, that ultimately becomes a choice. That's a very difficult choice. If the rest of your employees are in their mid late 20s. And you bring in somebody that's a little more senior, they're not going to get the same jokes, and they have zero idea what a meme is, like, wait a minute, is it a GIF? Or is it a gift? And how do I do an upside down smiley face? And why is there Foosball in the office? So there's clearly a generational disconnect. I think one discussing it, talking about it, and truly understanding where we can meet the minds, that's crucial. Building and a an efficient off site really helps with that. It helps senior leaders connect with junior leaders. And if you can provide your junior leaders, your junior staff, or even new talent coming in at a lower price point at a lower salary level, a pathway to the top, they're going to stay. And here's the thing. If you pay somebody 50 6070 80x $1,000 a year, and you know exactly the value and exactly the impact they'll bring, they'll bring to your organization, especially from marketing and sales perspective, giving them a little bit of the upside will help you and the more money the company makes, the more money they'll make. Hence, creating more efficiencies and EBIT da, something else to consider is the concept of offshoring. And Jonathan, you probably had a question in there. So thanks for transitioning back to me. The the concept of offshoring? Should we offshore sales staff? Should we offshore? should I should I offshore my entire tech team. You know, when I call Delta Airlines, I don't I don't get somebody offshore. I don't get somebody in India, China, Philippines, Australia, I get somebody in America. I think that's pretty cool. And I think made in America today is a very big deal. I grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. And I understand that made in America, I grew up in the blue collar of the blue collar neighborhoods. And granted, I mean, I'm to pretty now so I don't do hard labor anymore. As you can tell, but there's something to be said about picking up the phone and getting somebody in the United States on the phone. That is a reputational thing for the company. If you take that entire division, outsource it to, let's say, India, for the sake of for the sake of argument. Yeah, okay, you'll be more profitable. You could pay somebody you could pay salesperson in India a couple $100 A month versus or maybe 1500 to 1500 2020 $500 a month compared to somebody here $75,000 a year, that's a big cost savings, you drive profitability, and you're driving operational efficiency. But are you building the right relationships with your customers and clients? And if you offshore everything? What does that say to your internal a team that you just hired at 85 to $150,000 a year? Does that mean you'll offshore them to? And if that's the case, and if you instill that fear in them, guess who's going to be having guests who have their resumes out on LinkedIn on easy apply? Those guys?
Yeah, I think it makes some excellent points there. I actually recall briefly, Delta did experiment with offshore help. And I was on the wrong end of one of those calls. And part of the problem was a training gap. But yeah, it's just when you're dealing with, you know, timeframes, and it's almost always a business trip, right? So it's pretty important and you're nervous about it. And it's not handled well. It's a big, it's a big loss. So to their credit, they did reverse that. Now, here's the thing, if you're a member of the global workforce, and you can hold those North American style skills, that's a huge advantage, too, isn't it? If you can represent and get it done? I think a lot of it's just being a human being in a technical age, but that's probably a future episode here of our show.
Yeah, but it's true if you if you understand how to show empathy today. In a world where everybody's putting out a new AI tool, I don't know how many AI tools are born every every week, it seems like my facebook reel is filled with like, here are the five new AI tools from last Thursday. AI is nothing more than really advanced machine language, machine learning or, or AI just just an automated process to help you do something different chaps GPT four is a great example of it. 11 Labs is another great example of it. But ultimately, what are we what are we looking to do here? What is the what is the sole purpose of artificial intelligence the sole purpose of artificial intelligence is to help us become more efficient at our jobs. So we can connect with the people that really need to be connected with the church how GBT four can write an entire keynote speech, but it can't deliver it the way a human can. Using your tone of voice, both high, low, fast and slow gives you the human being, the ability to be in the moment with another human being. And that works wonders when it comes to ad copy. When it comes to being on the phone as a salesperson when it comes to talking with your tech teams, onshore offshore building culture inside your organization. All of these things weaponize the three pillars that we talked about revenue EBIT, done the multiple, and let's keep in mind to the entire thesis of my thesis anyway, when I invest in companies and acquire companies is to operationalize. So really be hyper efficient from an operations perspective on maximize EBIT, da, revenue, paying attention to this, and of course, the multiple. Nothing happens to that culture. Nothing happens without the right sales teams. And we do use AI to increase value. But at the end of the day, I want to be a business owner, I don't want to be I want to build a business not not build a job.
Yeah, right on. Well, so we've got these, these three levers, I'm wondering if there's a little bit of a could you give sort of three or four steps to the listener? How could they begin, like, if they're in a running concern, like the most of our listeners have at least heard of these? But how could they maybe take first steps to implement some of the insights you've been sharing today?
Start with the user journey. This is a great, great, great, great place to start. Start at Day Zero of your website, or start at day zero, but somebody's interacting with a with an ad on Google. I click the ad, where do I go? Okay, how fast did that page load? Did it take 15 seconds to load? Because I bought the WordPress template on ThemeForest? And I haven't, I haven't made that fast yet. Okay, that could be a reputational issue. That could be a user experience issue. Because how, how much do you hate it when you're on Amazon, and it takes 10 seconds to load or 15 seconds to load the site? You're like, I'm done. I'm calling Comcast right now and getting my entire month of Comcast one gig internet speed for free, right? You're upset that things are taking 10 seconds longer. And God forbid that you didn't get the right groceries from Whole Foods. I'm on like, my wife will have me on Amazon chat saying, hey, they did the organic avocados. They sent the wrong avocados. We asked for organic, not the regular ones. And I'm like, okay, but it's fine. She's like, No, no, we want to refund, I'm like, fine. So you go to amazon.com. And you get a refund, and they refund the entire order. Yeah. So think about that. Right? The user experience is so crucial. So again, continuing, click on your Google ad, how long does it take to open up your website? And are they just going to a homepage? Are they going to a page that's specifically geared geared to that ad copy? And what's the call to action? Is the call to action? A phone call? Is it a deliverable? Is it an ebook? Is it booked some time with one of our representatives? What is it? What is the good? What is the free give? And then who's the representative? Is it? Is this person United States or offshore? And that's fine. We have in my companies, we have offshore team members that do a wonderful job connecting with people. So who is it? What's the KPI? How are we measuring success? And how do we know that we that we're having a positive impact on our people? Then after they have the conversation, what happens next? Who follows up? Is it an account executive? Does it does the information gets stored on a on a on a CRM somewhere? Who's logging into the CRM? Is the CRM pipeline efficient for your business? Is it even is that even built out for your business? What are the fields inside the pipeline? Who's moving the stages? Are we moving the stages automatically or their manual stages, a manual stage moves done by an offshore onshore team member. And in fact, who's responsible now for fulfilling once they buy. So that's a really good place to start and just be inspector Sleuth. And Judge everything. UX UI is so crucial to your reputation online. Speed is crucial. Your people interaction with individuals that will be on the live chat box on the lower right hand side. crucial mistake number one is to have an AI chatbot on the bottom right side if you have chat. If you have chat, please let there be a human being on the other side of that chat. Yeah, right. It's all love it. Just just a couple of very, very, very surface level two But I think the more that you dive in, you'll start to find revenue opportunities, efficiency opportunities, and a way to increase the value of your company. Through the multiple.
Well lobby, you've given us a really great introduction to your wealth of insights. And I wonder how the listener could even go further with you.
Yep, feel free to get in touch I. So Jonathan, just for you. I'm polishing a course that I've been creating for the last two and a half years. It's called the order of operations. And we're filming this in two weeks time, and on May 9, and may 11, it's going to be great. We've got, as it stands right now about a will have about 21 hours of recorded video content, I think that will get pared down to about 12 and a half 13 hours of video content. And here's what the course does. If you're a leader, you need to understand your KPIs. You need to understand how to use those KPIs in your business and accelerate it with very specific business accelerators. To Grow Your to grow your startup, I hit four different stages of the business and give you KPIs that you can measure your success against these four stages. Startup growth, if your company is a mature company, or if your company is on is on its way down, if it's a declining stage, for each of those stages, you have different accelerators that can bring your company back to life and grow and scale it. That course is called the order of operation, order of operations. And I told Jonathan, it's not done yet. But if you email me, I'll put you on the list. And as a thank you for having me on here. It's yours for free. It comes with workbooks and it will come with a little ebook as well. And it's two and a half years of my, my blood, sweat and tears going into this thing with with my experience as an entrepreneur. And I started with nothing like I, I started from Michigan started with, as you heard, as a Michigan Engineering student with zero idea of entrepreneurship. And when I was growing up, we never talked about entrepreneurship at the dinner table. Right? We were we were typical family that never talked about politics, sex, and money at the dinner table and money was what I wanted to talk about. We didn't and that's okay. So I hadn't learned everything on my own. And I had to learn how to bootstrap things. And that's where I've gotten to what I've gotten today.
I love it. So that's very generous of you, by the way. So you can the listener can email you correct?
Yes, you can email me ABI at Meridian 80 four.com. You can find me online on LinkedIn on Instagram on Twitter. And yeah, there you go. LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and then of course, my website abi goldheart.com. But I'm the one that's checking my ABI at Meridian 80 four.com emails, and I will respond personally, I promise it's not chat GPT for Chrome extension, that will auto reply to your email with stuff it actually is me.
That's really you love it. All right. So you're a man who practices what you preach. I can respect that.
You got it wouldn't have it any other way? Well,
I love it. Well, the time has arrived. We do have some nice questions coming in from our listeners. Let's dive into a few of these. Actually a better share start with a comment we have for man times like true story. Organic avocados happened to me a week ago.
My man Anton dude, it's it's a thing. Right? It really is a thing. It's like, you know, gee whiz. Did I want organic strawberries next time? Screw the avocados.
Yeah, yeah, right. Okay, so here's a question from kind of, toward the front end of our talk today from Karen Bailey. She's wondering in a growth by acquisition model, she leaders have like a dedicated team, maybe like do the search and due diligence steps maybe or maybe hire an outside firm because that you kind of highlighted what you know, the risks, the risks and perils as well as the potential rewards on that front?
Yes, we are in diligence on two different opportunities right now. So Karen, phenomenal question. Okay. Like, this is so good. It's so well timed. We're, we're under loi on to, I have my own diligence teams, my own teams. Why? Because nobody cares more about my money than I do. Nobody cares more about the risk that I'm going to take than I do. Nobody cares more about the debt that I'm going to have to personally guarantee say with the SBA or your commercial lender, then who?
Right on it. Yeah.
So if you have control of your own team, then you win. Now, I've also found third parties to be good. But they're also covering their ass, right? Like they will also say, Oh, these are all the opportunities but at the same time, like if you look at IBIS World for example, And if you look at IBIS World industry reports, it's like, it's like watching the worst news channel you could ever watch. Because it's all like, one opportunity. And like five terrible things about the industry, you're like, Oh, stop being a Debbie Downer, like, this sucks. I don't want to do this anymore. But at the same time, you want to be able to take a chance in the business, I would get your dedicated team. And if you reach out to me, I'll show you how I built mine. And my team is comprised of a couple of individuals. My, one of my partners out of St. Louis, he's, he's better looking than me. So that's also important. You want I mean, you're great. But I think for me, it was like I needed him to be better looking and smarter than me. Number two, I have an entire financial, I'm totally kidding about that, by the way, shallow. Number two, I have a financial modeling team, about 16 people that do all my diligence work offshore in India. Third, I have US tax and bookkeeping. And they will tell me what's what's what. So between those two, I have even analysis quality of earnings. And interestingly enough, I was underwriting a, I was reading a healthcare practice, and they didn't have QuickBooks. So I couldn't like log into their QuickBooks and see what was going on. You know, what they had Karen, they what they did, they sent me picture PDFs, of their, of their monthly p&l for the previous three years, pictures, legitimately took out their phone, printed out the thing and took pictures from their phone and then sent me the PDF on CamScanner. So then I took that massive PDF, send it off to my folks, and they had everything properly sorted. In a essentially a final report in less than two weeks. Wow, having your own Team Drives your confidence that much forward in the deal, because it's you so that I got a couple of tech teams offshore that helped me enable technology and businesses, which is why I can iterate really fast. I can take any business, weaponize it with technology. And I'd be weaponized. I mean, really, like supercharged, it's probably a better word, supercharge it with with technology, and really see growth and scale, both on the marketing side. And then of course, internal and internal operations side. And last but not least, I also have a marketing diligence team. One of the companies I'm looking at right now, it's an accounting firm. And they've been around since the early 90s. And they have zero website. They don't have Google My Business, but nothing. They have 1000 clients that have 1000 clients since 2003 2004 2005. They are local, they don't know how they don't know how to expand their business senior partner is a little older, so fantastic. So I'm having them send me their entire package. And it just goes through my filters of people. So I hope that answered your question. If you want to know how to build your own team, feel free to reach out and I'll show you how I could love it.
Great answer. Appreciate that. Lady postbac has a really interesting question here as well kind of in line with what you just said, you're kind of you're getting into a rhythm sounds like with acquiring and supercharging companies, either from that or from experiences with clients that you've had in terms of training and consulting. Can you share some AB some before and after? story, a story or two with us?
Yeah, so this is a perfect example of a company called NP hub, nurse practitioner hub. Nurse Practitioners are one of the most underserved healthcare, healthcare students in the country. And we started this company in my co founder and I started this company in 2017, with $0 in venture and just their own capital. And today, last year, we ended up doing 5.5 million top line with a significant margin. The reason that we were able to get there and now I think we have a team of about 4647 people in the United States and offshore. Before we were using Google Sheets, Zapier, hold on. I should know this, this is so old, Google Sheets 2017, Google Sheets Zapier, Google Forms and at WordPress site. And we did I don't know maybe a couple $100,000 in revenue year one, it was like four or $500,000 You're one don't kind of quote me on it. But when we built out the technology, so if you go to NP hub.com Today, it's a platform. It feels like an Airbnb ish kind of thing. But we modeled it completely differently built for students. And we supercharged it with custom technology with an angular front end. Beautiful AWS servers, they're super fast and it works and we're constantly iterating on it. This year, the revenue target is 7.5 million next year the revenue target will be significantly higher and the valuations are phenomenal. When we first started the valuation was nothing. Today it's it's let's just I can't say what the number is. But It's a significant multiple on revenue. And it's, it's phenomenal. So you can even go to was it way back? Jonathan, I think you know, this Wayback Machine to go see, like if you go to Wayback Machine Google Wayback Machine, and you can type in NP hub.com. And you can see what the original version of the website look like and what the website looks like today. And we're launching a new UX UI completely new UX UI version two, in the next month and a half, and it's going to look even better. And we've just crushed competitors. Like, it's just it's, it's not even, it's not even a thing. Now, Competitors will beat us a little bit on marketing, etc. But we are, we're definitely the leader in the country in that service.
Very cool. When you from reading a little bit on that myself. It appears you, you spotted an opening in the market, just to say the least. So that was just as well. I'll bet some more listeners as I am right now wondering if there might be some partnership opportunities by way of investing. But that's a different conversation.
So yes, let's do it. Stop. Yeah.
All right. Here's a question from Joshua, we can maybe end end our time on this one for the busy founder, who feels they've kind of built themselves that job. Do you find your problems? Is one primarily of mindset? Or is it more often from practical realities?
Keep that keep that question up for a second. Okay, from a busy founder, who feels they built themselves a job? Do you find the problem is primarily mindset? Or is it more from practical realities? Yeah.
Um, so this is a very good question. I think it's a combination of both. So it's a combination of mindset, of course, I'd
say, because if I'm a founder, I want to make sure that I have stable income. And I have to work inside the business, therefore, thereby creating a job for myself. And the mindset then is, let me grow this thing, let me grow this thing, let me grow this thing. And if we forget that we should, at some point replace ourselves, because we should no longer be the founders after a certain point in a company. But if we are, then that becomes a job, and then that starts with mindset, then that turns into this exactly, that this turns into what becomes your reality. I learned my dad very long time ago, and I think many, many motivational speakers say this as well, what you think becomes the way you feel becomes your actions becomes your reality. So if you want to exit your business, it doesn't mean that you have to sell your business. Many, many entrepreneurs get that wrong. Exiting the business doesn't mean you have to sell it and go to a business broker and then pay taxes on the sale. exiting your business could very well mean bringing in a killer CEO, bringing you bringing in a killer coo working alongside this person and saying, hey, I want you to take this company over in the next six months. Here's how we can do that. Thereby escaping the rat race that many entrepreneurs find themselves in, and thereby exiting. Haas hustle culture. we've normalized hustle, hustle culture. You know what's crazy, we in this country have normalized stress. It's like stress is just like a regular thing. Stress sucks, man. Stress is not good for the body stress is terrible for you. And you forget your family, forget your friends, you forget your loved ones, you don't spend any time with them, because you're in front of the computer screen. You know, drawing out drying out your eyeballs to the point where you can no longer produce natural tears like this guy. Because you're just frying your eyes and for anything to be part of the computer screen every day. Last time I checked the subway to live life, that's a way to do life. Sure. But if your focus is if you build your reality to be vat of putting the US dollar and building wealth on a pedestal you're done. You've completely lost the game and I'm not saying Joshua that's that's you right now. But if you go down that path, it could get really dark really lonely. And now like Tom Brady as as an example. You have no problem achieving but you've really failed on fulfilling your your destiny or fulfilling your desires in this lifetime. On your temporary and you're on your temporary existence on this planet. Money is a tool US dollar only has value because of the value the rest of the world places on the US dollar right like that's that's it if the US dollar tomorrow lost its value and lost. Its standing as a reserve card. currency of the world. What are we all working for?
Yeah, yeah, sage advice. Love it. I mean that focus on what really matters. Well, what a great conversation it has been Aubrey, you have absolutely knocked it out of the park. You're welcome back anytime my friend. Thanks, Jonathan.
I appreciate it. I will be back next time we could talk about I have an idea. We'll talk about hair products and and maybe some maybe some trends that I'm that I'm seeing that I'm capitalizing on in my in my own in my own businesses for the future.
Jonathan Fischer 45:35
I love it. I love it. Let's let's plan for that as soon as possible. Thanks for being here.
Abhi Golhar 45:39
We'll make it happen. You gotta write. Thank you. Yep.
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