Episode 1 - The Budding Entrepreneur Maiden Voyage

Hey everyone, this is Randy Bridges, your Budding Entrepreneur. Welcome to our maiden voyage of this podcast. Since this is the first episode, it's probably good to get our sea legs of what my podcast is all about. 

See, I'm going to be talking about everything I have and did go through in becoming a business owner, and what I go through in the crazy world of entrepreneurship to reach my goal of earning one million dollars a year. 

Now, first off, I'm going to get personal and tell you something. Doing this scares the crap out of me. It makes me nervous, but I really wish that years ago I could have found someone to give me a clue about what I was getting myself into by going into business, to tell me that I wasn't alone, that these experiences, both good and bad, are a normal part of growing your enterprise. 

And so today, I'm starting a journey that I have no idea where it will end, but I'm happy that you are by my side. Sharing this experience is worth everything to me, because the life of a business owner can be very, very lonely. Again, I'm happy you are by my side. 

So let's get real for a second and talk a little bit about my backstory. 

First of all, I discovered early in life I wanted to be a leader. I wanted to have some sense of discovery for everything that I could, and I eventually realized that leadership presented a good match with my skills. As I worked in and with the various companies that I was employed by, my leadership opportunities grew, and I was able to work on solving their problems. You know, many times companies don't want you to solve their problems, because a lot of the issues that they deal with are baked in. 

It's how their company got started, and unfortunately, it leads to a lot of challenges. Now, the biggest thing I discovered in all these companies was there are a lot of issues and challenges that were just duplicated among the different companies, and it didn't matter whether it was management, was education in college, educated in college, or on the streets, everybody kept encountering the same challenges and issues as each other, and that was really strange to me, because regardless of age, regardless of wealth, and regardless of any other normal factor, these issues and challenges were often the same. So, as I continued to look at these companies, and I was trying to help them grow, there were three points that I found that were in common.

Now, most businesses had little or no foundation that would support their everyday needs, let alone their growth. They were usually very off the cuff, put together by people who knew they didn't want to work for the man any longer, and wanted to be the man so they could control the world that was around them. Now, eventually they decided, the second thing was that they tried to get to a larger company, and they really just simply built on the old foundation that wasn't really well established for them, and they used the same one that got them to where they are.

Now, anybody who's ever built a house knows you can't add a second story without putting in some more foundation, some more, you know, you need better parts to hold everything up, and there they were using the same thing all over again. Now, for those who did decide that they wanted to build a new foundation, usually bigger, they'd often destroy the old foundation in favor of the new one, just simply because, hey, it just gets in the way. The concept of being able to scale back down never met, you know, never crossed their minds.

So, there was only one problem in this assessment, and it was the scariest part about it. I was guilty, as a business owner, of doing the same things as everyone else. As I started my business in 2008 with a partner, I really didn't give any thought to the why for my business. 

I never thought about focusing on the old services and maintaining them while I was building new services. Nope. Cast those old ones away. 

They don't matter. And, you know, any models that I made for the business were always new. They weren't necessarily built on what got me there.

And so, this was the beginning of my business building mission. It forced me to face a simple reality. I needed to solve this for others, as well as myself.

So, at that exact moment, I promised myself that I would work with every business owner I could to implement a good process that would put the proper foundation in place and prepare them for their business growth. Now, in searching for that promise, I began to look for problems I can model, right, because why do something new that, you know, it's a mistake I had already made once. So, in the words of Anthony Robbins, model success, success leaves clues.

And so, if you're looking at other companies and other ways to get this done, you know, that's your best choice. So, about a year into looking for this, I found one company that helped me structure the process of building my system, my actual business system, while also sharpening my automation and marketing skills along the way. Now, this was Aaron Fletcher's, the Fletcher Method, and I'm not, you know, just saying that because I'm getting paid from him. 

That's honestly, I signed up for the program. I'm still in the program and it helps me to stay growing as I go. It allowed me also to create a signature solution, something that I had always wanted to do, but it was just not quite there on the, you know, it was off the tip of my fingers.

I couldn't really picture exactly what I would be doing, what it would look like, but I knew what I'd always done just wasn't cutting it for me. So, this allowed me to put together a nine-step process that I actually used all of my knowledge. I went back 35 plus years to see what was it that I needed to do every single time to deal with these clients and what they, or the businesses I worked in, either one.

And, you know, what did I do to solve that? And so, that was a major part of it, of my growth along the way. Now, I wanted someone as an avatar, my ideal client, to be someone who I could connect with really easily. So, everything I did in this program was geared around the professional service mindset. 

It's my own business type, so I know it really well, but it's also the bulk of the clients that I've had for several years. That made the thinking and planning process much simpler. And remember, cutting things down to the simpler bones is often the key to success.

If it's too complicated, it's impossible to do. So, we want to get away from that. Now, whenever I worked with a new client, everything that we did had to translate into high-volume growth, right? It could generate a strong revenue model right out of the gate, and professional services, you know, kind of match that. 

That's a really good thing. But they are hard to manage. Businesses in professional service are hard to manage because they often extend long payment terms. 

They know that they're not going to get paid right away. So, they're constantly in a scramble mode until the real money comes in. And, you know, when you have to go and get, you know, a collection agency, it just delays that money, and there's no guarantee you're actually going to get it. 

So, for many firms, this kind of a model led to their demise, and I knew that was a problem. I also wanted to focus on best in class as an ultimate goal. My definition of best in class for those who, you know, those who know me realize what this is.

Best in class is where you become the standard to which your competitors are measured, and that means you're always on the front end, which means you have to stay going, and you have to be, you know, just on the ball all the time. Now, best in class, you get it kicked around a lot, especially in, like, managed services and IT services. Ooh, best in class. 

We're going to sell our business, and we're going to blah, blah, blah, right? But in the professional service model world, it's seldom a model for business achievement, especially in the consulting niche market. So, I started rolling out this plan, and I realized my marketing ideas were solid, but the engine to drive it was lacking. Now, this is key for, I think, where I started making the transition to turn around the corner. 

I started looking for a better engine. I'd been doing everything manually. I'd been doing it all myself. 

I had a marketing company that I used, but they weren't providing me any benefit that I could really see, other than the fact that they needed my ideas. They would turn them into something, and then I'd have to sit there and feed them back. It was a great waste of time. 

So, in that search for a better engine, I knew that I was facing a major problem in the market, and that's that a lot of these marketing companies, especially software companies that are going to help you to automate a lot of this, they get bought left and right. And every time they get bought, you get a whole new paradigm that you have to work with. There's a lot of, well, we don't really do that anymore. 

You know, they're making that same mistake, right? That one, we're just going to throw away the old stuff in favor of the new. And so, I thought, you know, I really need to find some sort of a self-funded venture that I could focus on. And, you know, I started in the process of ClickFunnels. 

Russell Brunson, CEO. It looks like he's 15 or 16, but he's clearly a very intelligent and successful man. And, you know, I gave a shot like any entrepreneur. 

I pulled out my wallet, I bit the bullet, and I actually bought. I got involved in the One Funnel Away competition. I'm in the middle of it now. 

It is literally, literally making a difference in how I think about everything. Not trying to promote it or anything like that. I don't get paid for it.

But it's one of those kind of tools that I like to share as I'm experiencing different things. I'm helping people experience it with me, and I'm bringing them along on the journey. And that's what this podcast is all about. 

So, in terms of any kind of conflicts to all this, it's surprising when you get two kinds of programs to work together. You can get a lot of things accomplished in a very short period of time, but there are some challenges on how you combine those two mindsets. And I find myself pulling back from that a little bit, having to, you know, put them out at arm's distance every so often and go, okay, are we still back on track? Okay, and back in. 

Here we go. And so that really made a, you know, makes for me a good challenge to have, a good conflict. Gives me that I need to pull away every once in a while. 

And, you know, another challenge was the natural response of people. I've built this system that I use, my nine-part program. It's basically a hands-on training program. 

I work directly with the teams, but they do all the homework. They have to provide the things. And, you know, the natural response of people is, I don't really want to have my people go do anything. 

And this kind of a program, you know, I have to convince people that, number one, the kinds of growth we're talking about are not only possible, they could revolutionize the way their business runs forever. And it's a little scary for them, right? And through these two programs, I've also come to put in a self-select mechanism. High requirements. 

The clients have to reach. If they stop producing, they may get dropped from the program, you know. And this is something that I've never considered until recently. 

And so that's been a really good thing. And, you know, it also requires regular meetings and that homework, like I said, from their own people. Because the idea here is not just teaching the business owner of your client how to fix their business. 

It's to pass on the message to all levels of the business that these are the standards you're shooting for and here's how you get it done. And I learned that while working with a national chain pizza company is, I literally went in and shredded everything that this company, what our operations was doing. And I talked with the manager and laid out for 45 minutes how his business needed to change in order for him to be more successful. 

And he just kind of looked at me and said, do it. The store is yours. And I literally had to teach people how to wipe down tables, how to clean gum off of the tables, how to how to sweep in the floor and mop the floor and all the way up to not just making a pizza, but making the right pizza and getting the right people in the places. 

And it turned a very successful franchise location into one of the most successful ones in the entire state. In fact, the company had a computer system measuring what they called efficiency, but we would call productivity. And most of the stores that they were dealing with were somewhere between 30 and 25 and 30 percent efficiency. 

And the target was 85 to 90. And when I left that business and let them go on their own, they were regularly shooting 135 to 145 percent efficiency on a Friday and a Saturday night. And the corporate officers for the franchise came in and they couldn't figure out what was going on. 

And they spent two days looking at everything. They couldn't find anything wrong. Meanwhile, the computer racks up one hundred forty five percent efficiency. 

These are these are things that I look for because you have to have that kind of buy in from the client. And it has to be something that that everybody can respect. So, you know, in this program that I'm going through in the program that I've developed, I made a promise to people and it was not an easy one to do, but it is it's just three transition points. 

We're going to build a strong foundation that supports the business goals, the clients and employees. Remember, I'm dealing with professional services. We don't truly have customers. 

We have clients because we invest in them like an attorney does right or a tax person. They have clients. You're investing in their business as well as they're paying you. 

And the second thing would we would develop a flexible company that can be quickly expanded or contracted as business circumstances require. And when I'm recording this, we're right in the throes of something like a second round of covid and states are shutting down left and right and they're not getting ahead. It's it's really devastating businesses that can't adapt. 

And so if you need to have something, you know, working in this process, you've got to be able to contract. Remember, that was that that principle of the foundation. You've got to have something to go back to. 

So we keep those foundational pieces in place and keep them strong. We don't tear them down. And the third thing is to create a solid, organized and proven company that encourages long term planning and achievable business growth. 

Now, all these things are great. You might say, well, that's that's nice, Randy. Those are great plaudits. 

You know, you know, we applaud you for doing this. But here's where the promise really kicks in. Most of the people in this particular niche all bill by the hour. 

We talk with them about increasing their billable hours by three to six times in less than a year. So that means a company that's making a million dollars a year is going to be making somewhere between three to six million dollars in billable hours. Now, we can't guarantee the revenue on that, but we can definitely guarantee the billable hours because we're going to build such an efficient company.

This is something that, again, I've come back to. How many years back did I see all these problems? And I've just scooped it all up and be able, because of these types of programs, to drop it in today and say, this is my success pattern. Again, best in class. 

You set the standard to which your competitors are measured. That's our ultimate goal. That might take longer than a year for some companies. 

That might take three years to get done. But the key here as a business owner is you've got to have these goals. You've got to set a promise in front of somebody. 

And all of these wonderful words about the three transformations are the real achievement is best in class. You are the best business and you just literally are destroying your competition in the sense that you're not tearing them down. You're just so far ahead of them. 

They're going to be struggling to keep up with you. So, you know, that's a bit of my story, my background, my history. But it's also that that lead on that I'm going forward.

I'm looking for the clients that will allow me to be able to make the kind of changes that I do. It's not every company that can do that. There's a lot of business owners who are very afraid.

Their business is so in jeopardy right now. But you know what? If you can work with somebody as a business owner and you can help them to understand, look, this isn't just a simple thing for you. We're going to actually make this possible for you to achieve and reach. 

And you're going to have to work at it. It's not going to be easy. But look, it's a simple thing. 

You're really only doing these three things and there's your ultimate goal. If you can't see any of that happening, I can't really work with you. Part of these programs have taught me that there are your ideal clients and you have to serve them. 

It's a term I use, people we serve. They're not clients. They're not customers. 

They're people we serve. We're called upon to serve them. And we have to spend some time up front. 

And trust me, this journey of these programs is over a year old now. It's taken me a year just to get this far. But in the process, I've learned so much. 

I've grown so much as an entrepreneur and as a business owner itself. Business owners, you're focused with the vehicle of getting you there. Entrepreneurship is the vehicle of you giving back as well as what you gain. 

It's a two-way look. It's not just you. It's not just your business.

It's what your business gives away, what your business helps other people with. This to me is probably the most important thing about entrepreneurship. You cannot do it in a vacuum.

You cannot work alone. Business owners, yeah, you can be a single business owner. But being an entrepreneur, you have a network. 

You have people. You have a mission and a group of people that follow you. And they continue to grow as you develop yourself. 

So these are some of the things that put me where I am today. I hope you appreciate this little trip down memory lane. And we'll be coming back tomorrow to drop another podcast in.

One of the challenges that I have from the ClickFunnels portion of things is the one funnel away. This is my challenge. I have to do a podcast every single day, or I have to do a video every day. 

So I want to be able to provide this to people long term. And it's going to grow me. Hopefully it helps you to grow and that you understand: yeah, you're not alone. 

This is normal. It's not fun all the time, but the ultimate goal is achievable and that's what really matters.

So thanks for listening. This is Randy Bridges, your Budding Entrepreneur, and we're going to sign off now. Thanks and have a great, great day.