Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Sharran Srivatsaa: An Inside Look - 046

Episode Date: May 9, 2018

In just 5 years, Sharran Srivatsaa took over a struggling $300 million business, 10x’ed it, and transformed it into a $3.4 billion business. In this episode, Sharran and Bedros Keuilian show you how to 10x your business, to the point where investors will practically beg you to liquidate. Watch or listen to discover why knowledge is gold when you know how to directly apply it to your business. “Know your business better than anyone else.” - Bedros Keuilian Here’s what you’ll discover: 5:14 - How a big enough “why” can take you from an amateur to an elite entrepreneur. 12:13 - How you can use small rituals to condition yourself for success. 20:33 - Why your business needs singularity of focus to meet and exceed its goals. 24:07 - How to position your business to be sold at maximum price. 28:05 - What mental shifts do you need to make to 10x your business? “Greatness is in the granularity.” - Sharran Srivatsaa

I want gold in that dumpster. I mean, I used to find full sandwiches. I used to find burgers. I used to find burritos. And so for like a good four days. And I would eat it and I would be so grateful. And I'd wake up and I'd do it all over again. Hey, friends, Bedros Kulian here.

Welcome to another episode of the Empire podcast. And as you can see, that is not Craig, which means we are doing another inside look. And today I've got a very special guest, a dear friend of mine. And one of the most high performance entrepreneurs that I could think of, Sharon Shri Vazza. Sharon, how are you, buddy? Thank you for coming out here. And for those who don't know, you got on board with a company called Tell Us Properties. What did Tellus Properties do?

Why don't you give us a little backstory? Yeah, so my partners and I invested in, we have a fund that invest in technology companies, real estate companies, et cetera. So we had invested in this company called Telos Properties. They were selling high-end real estate across the California coast. And in the early stages, for some reason, it was going in the wrong direction. So they brought us in just for an outside look. And that was about six and a half, seven years ago.

And that's when we kind of, me and my partner took over to turn the company around and grow it. Okay. So about six and a half, seven years ago, you take over, you become president. Right. At that point, if you don't mind me sharing some numbers, the company's doing over 300 million a year. Right. So they're doing about 300 million a year, one, one and a half. half offices, about 45 agents overall. So, you know, people watching and listening to this are going,

wow, the company's doing 300 million a year. Obviously, it's massively profitable, was it? It was, it could have done a lot better. Right. Yeah, it could do. So in the beginning stages, even though it was doing $300 million a year, it was not that profitable. And what you were able to do in a short period of time, in fact, in five years, is to 10x the top line on that, didn't you? Yeah, so we took the company from about 300 million a year last. towards the end of last year, we finished the year at $3.4 billion. So we did a 10x in a five-year period. We were on the Inc. 500, four consecutive years, growing 10x in five years, which is a big

kind of win for both of us. And the interesting part was we set out with that goal. Like we, when we took over, when I took over, I was like, we need to do 10x for many reasons because otherwise the economics just didn't get exciting enough. It didn't, it was not exciting enough to leave everything that I was doing on Wall Street to come do this. But I said, well, if we can do a 10x in five years, this gets very exciting because it gives us options. Because all these entrepreneurs think about how do I get the exit? The exit is not the answer. Right. The options are the answer. The options. Yeah. You want to give yourself the

options to exit or to stay and enjoy and scale. Right. Exactly right. And so to finish up the story, at the end of last year, a public retailer company out in New York bought us, which was probably one of the largest transactions in two independent companies buying each other's history. And I just served my term into integration and delivered a great company to a public company. What a great story. And so, of course, everyone watching and listening to the Empire Podcast Show, our audience is typically folks who want to start their own business and don't just want to be solopaneuers, but want to become an entrepreneur at a level where they're making a massive impact.

They're making a lot of money. They understand money as a vehicle to change and impact and freedom. You've had that, but you weren't born from money, were you? No, I was born in India to very humble parents and with very humble roots. I remember my mom telling me, we only had one child because we couldn't afford another. And that... That's a lot of pressure on you, isn't it? That still stayed with me.

I don't think she would ever say that again. She probably forgot. She already told me that, and I remembered that. But I took that as a gift. I took that as an opportunity. I took that as more responsibility because they had, apart from birthing a child, they almost had invested in me, right? They said, hey, they had a singularity of focus on investment.

They said, this is our son. We're not going to dilute this pot. We're going to give him everything we got. And there's an immense sense of gratitude that comes with that. Early on, it was like, it was lonely growing up, right? I got comfortable living alone and not having siblings, but there was a deep sense of responsibility when my parents shared that at the time of the lives that they had at that point,

they could have only done well for one child. And I'm super grateful for that. And so the fact that you're an only child and your parents have gone all in on you, did that put any kind of pressure on you as you were growing up through elementary school, junior high, high school, and on? I don't think it did per se, but I think the hard part was I think it did for them. I think what they got out of it was, hey, we made this, we've had one child. We want to give him everything possible.

And they recognized that me being born in that infrastructure, in the system, which is India, was not conducive to who I was. And it was amazing. My dad, I remember, we were sitting on a park bench. And he told me, I was probably an eighth or ninth grade, eighth grade maybe. And he said to me, it's a tough conversation to have with an eighth grader. He said, this may not be the right country for you.

And we need to pick one thing that is your passport to leaving here. And I was like, what, what does that mean? Eighth grade. So that's what, 13 years old? 13, 14, 13, 13, 13 years old. And he said, it can't be a team sport. You're tone deaf, you can't sing. Academically, you're like a B plus A minus student.

And there's way too many people much smarter scholastically. And so you got to pick an individual sport. And I said, okay, so I kid you not, the only right in front of us outside this park bench was a set of tennis courts. And he's like, can you cut it? Like, what are you talking about? And so. That's a lot of pressure, right? And so he said, we don't need you to go pro.

we don't need you to win trophies, we don't need you to make money, this is a way for you to get out of the country. And we will do whatever it takes for you to get using this to get out of the country. Holy smoke. So, I mean, here you are, again, it's very rare that I get to interview someone who's an immigrant like I am and became an entrepreneur. And I moved to the United States when I was six years old. I didn't have a culture and friends that I had already gone to school with and then had to leave them. So now you're in India. you're going to school there.

You have friends. You've adopted to the culture. And you're 13, 14 years old. And your dad's like, hey, look, we need to get you a passport to the United States. That's where your future is. School isn't it. Your grades are okay, but not okay, good enough. Team sports, not so much, singing your tone deaf.

There's a tennis court. Can you get good at it? So you got obviously good enough to qualify you for a passport. What does that process look like? All I did was, I think, Academics was secondary after that. I woke up and play tennis. I went to school and I trained.

Now again, I have to stop you. Mom and Dad were not professional tennis players. Oh, no, they, nothing. Yeah. Up until that point where you're sitting on the bench, looking at the tennis courts, you had never been on a tennis court. Yeah, just recreationally maybe,

but yeah, I'd never taken a lesson or anything like that. Yeah. Go on. Yeah. And then, so it was, but that also goes to show the, you know, looking back, kind of the singularity of focus, saying, I'm doing this for a very specific reason, this is a chance for me to show some skills, show some capabilities, so that somebody somewhere will recognize

how decent I am at this and I'll get a shot at something. Sure. And so I tried my hand playing at the professional tennis tour just to get out of the country. That was the passport out. Right. And then that's when you get colleges and universities starting looking at you. They're like, okay, he's not just a kind of a player, tennis player in some country. He actually has exposure and experience.

And so that happened. But then I actually did decently well where I played on the pro tennis store. and I qualified and I got like what they call one ATP point. So I was a true professional. And so once you play pro tennis, you can't play college tennis. So that disqualified me from going to college in the United States, which was now even worse. So our plan worked too well. Right.

And so my, so we found a loophole, which is in the United States, Division III tennis, you don't get academic scholarship. So I applied all these Division III tennis schools and I went to a Division III school and that was my passport to come into the States. Gotcha. So this is a very interesting story. So two big takeaways that I got for. our audience that I want everyone to listen to and since we're actually doing an Instagram live

too for all of you guys right now is one your reason why was big enough right that you went all in and hell or high water I'm going to become a fucking amazing tennis player where I can get a passport and come to the United States right and it wasn't so much that you were born with some organic natural skill sets of tennis hand eye coordination mom and dad certainly didn't have this genetic gift your reason why was big enough that you were able to invest the time and go see singularly focused on that one thing. And so that's a really big lesson here for everyone, because when you're coming up with the business idea, when you're coming up with the venture, starting a partnership, you really want to start thinking about what is my reason why? Because

the going is going to get tough. And when the going gets tough, if you don't have a compelling enough reason, it's easy enough to quit, which is why we see so many people give up on their dreams and aspirations. Yeah, and maybe you can talk to this. I think the why has to transcend you a little bit sometimes. So if a lot of, A lot of people have a very strong why. They get it. They understand it. They know their impact of the world.

But if my why was tight, like my dad, my why was socialized with my family. And I think that became a family why. Sure. I think that got more compelling. So it was not a, so when I woke up in the morning, no one allowed me to sleep in, right? Like it was not a Sharon thing. It was a whole family thing. And I think when we have the ability to socialize our why, socialize our goals,

and community drives achievement, right? Like when you can get a community to drive achievement, that's when all things kind of break loose. And just thinking about your why and writing it down, it's cool, I get it. You should at least do that. But if you need to start socialize it, when you can be a part of a mastermind group, when you can have a coach and mentor to support you through that process, the why accountability, I think really ups the ability, ups the ante. Well, the entire tribe gets behind you. Right. In this case, the tribe started with your family and, of course, the community got bigger, right?

Right. That's amazing. All right. So then you come to the United States. You find your way into a college because you found a loophole. And let's fast forward a bit here. I remember when you told me the story, and I think it was over a steak dinner. This was so entertaining. You were learning to sell, like, stocks and bonds and all that stuff.

And you guys had the thing stuck in your ear, even though, what was it? The phone. Yeah, the headset. Yeah. But it wasn't plugged into anything. And now you weren't great at sales. Oh, I knew nothing. Right?

I knew nothing about it. Just like tennis. You knew nothing about. So now here's something new. You're in New York at that point. Tell us how this happens. So fast for many years, I went to business school of Vanderbilt University down in Nashville, Tennessee, got recruited to go work at Goldman Sachs. I had 39 one-on-one interviews to get the job at Goldman. Sure. So this is not... Well, hold on let me just share that with everyone.

39 one-on-one interviews just to get the job at Golden Sachs. Yep. Right. This is not including coffees, dinners, phone cart, nothing. This was 39 individual one-on-one interviews. Right. Now, have to do that. How many things have our listeners and viewers tried a few times and then quit? In your case, it was 39 people that you had to impress. Right. And you had to almost get consensus. Sure.

And so we were, so I walked into training and the entire job was calling on presidents and CEOs of fast-growing companies and introduced them to a Goldman Sachs relationship. So the interesting part here is that you have no idea what question you're going to get asked. If you're selling a stock or a bond, you know that you need domain expertise in that stock or bond, and that's all you're going to get asked. Sure. But if I was calling you and I was introducing you to a worldwide firm that could do anything, you could ask me anything, right?

You could ask me anything. And so, and I had to have really good composure and exposure to what you're asking and deliver a good result. So the first day we walk into training, I thought training would be like three weeks. Training was six months every single day. And you're talking 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every single day. And so we walk in, they hand me a no limit Amex card, corporate card. They hand me a BlackBerry, it's a BlackBerry Days, and a headset.

And I said, well, why do I need this headset? I'm not making any calls. And the managing partner tells me, put it on, and don't plug it into anything. Because you've got to get used to having that as a part of your body. First, I thought he was crazy. But now, even today, I go, I walk into my office every day, I put my jacket up, I sit down to my chair, I open my laptop, I put my headset on. It doesn't matter what I am doing.

I'm conditioned. And I think there's a symbolism of seriousness that comes with what you have and how it's a part of your body. And I'm so much better with it. You'll really appreciate this. My wife, I was doing a client call in my home. I had my headset on. I'm doing my call in my home office.

And it was like late Friday evening. I finished the call and you can kind of hear me. And so I come out. I'm like, hey, honey, how's it going? The kids, how's it going? She says, oh, Sharon, like, what do you want to do for dinner? Where do you want to go? And then I say, well, you know, how about maybe?

maybe Ty, maybe. She's like, you were terrible. For an hour, there was no, not one, not one um, you were extremely articulated, you were extremely decisive, you were so focused, you were so influential.

And you can't, once you take your headset off, you can't choose dinner? And that's when it started to actually make sense where small trigger, small rituals is when we can condition ourselves

to really up our game. You know, it's funny that you say that in my book that's coming out September, whatever, 18, I talk about your starting ritual. Like, what is your morning starting ritual? If I don't go through my morning starting ritual of water, protein shake, coffee, play with my dog cookie,

and then get on my couch with my laptop, with my phone turned upside down and pushed away from me, things don't work out well. But when I go through those five or six steps, every single time it's a predictable outcome in my favor. Right? It's that starting ritual. And when the headset goes on you, boom. You are clear, you are concise, you're deliberate in the way you communicate. Well, you taught me this, the difference between a crop duster and a fighter jet, right?

Yes, sir. The fighter jet, which fighter jet pilot walks in and just says, sure, we're ready to go. Like, there is a checklist. Right. And I always look to you. I always think about, hey, I'm not being a crop duster right now. Right? Or my life was a fighter jet.

I love that. I love that. It's a lot of pressure to put on yourself. Good. All right. So, tennis, you come to the United States, and I know you were at Goldman Sachs and you ultimately become a great salesperson, but somewhere between there and there, there was this time where You are the immigrant in a new country, and I'm guessing your family wasn't wealthy.

You guys didn't come here with a lot of money, right? No, I didn't. So my parents were, so when I came to college, I came a couple of weeks earlier for orientation and things like that. And so my parents were great. They sold almost everything that they had, and they wrote me this check, this international cashier's check to go pay for the first year of school. And everyone says, well, you got this gift?

Yes, my parents did that for me. Sure. So I go to financial services and deposit this check, and they're like, hey, this is an international check and whatever. going to take two weeks to clear. I was like, okay, no problem, but I had no money for two weeks. I had room, but I had no money for anything else. Sure. And so what I did was I was walking around. I would go to every pizza party there was. I would steal every jar of peanut butter there was. And finally, I found this guy who gave me kind of this side job loading and unloading from a dock.

So he would just pay me, pay me cash. But he would pay me at the end of the week. So I kept working and I was hungry. And I saw this dumpster. And I saw these people putting just packages of food inside this dumpster. And I said, well, maybe there's something in there just because I was hungry. I'd been hungry for days. Maybe there's something in there. Maybe there's something sanitary in there. So when it got dark, I waited.

I didn't want, I was really conscious. I didn't want my friends to see anything. And he thinks I waited. Is that Sharon in the dumpster? And looking back, I was so embarrassed then, right? But looking back, it warms my. heart that I did whatever I needed to do to survive. It's called resourcefulness.

So I jumped in the dumpster and man, I found, I found gold in that dumpster. I mean, I used to find full sandwiches. I used to find burgers. I used to find burritos. And so for like a good four days, I found like packed meals. I mean, not even just trash, half eaten. I found packed meals in there. And I would grab it.

I would jump out. I would make sure no one was looking. I would run to my dorm room. I would heat it up in the free microwave. and I would eat it and I would be so grateful and I'd wake up and I do it all over again. And one night, I kid you not, I saw this group of kids

like throw a bunch of subway bags, subway sandwiches in there from a party. And I was like, this is amazing. I have food for four days in here. So I wait, it gets dark, I jump at the dumpster, and I reach and I see a box of Pop-Tarts and this big subway bag.

So I grabbed the subway bag and I grab this Pop-Tart. And as I grab this Pop-Tart, something to wax me in the face. And I look and I see two, like, glowing eyes. There was a raccoon in the dumpster, waxed me in the face, and is fighting over this Pop-Tart. And at that point, I was not given up.

So I whacked the raccoon back. I was bleeding. I grabbed the Pop-Tarts. I grabbed the subway. I jump out, and I run to health services, get a tetan shot. I love that. But it was the scariest thing,

because I had no idea what that was. Sure. I mean, you instinctively just figured it out and then went into fight or flight. Exactly. And the confines of a trash of a dumpster are not big enough for flight. Like I was there for food,

and there was something in my way. And I was fighting that something. Ironically, the raccoon felt the same way. I was in here first, and then this human gets in here. The raccoon got some blood too, right? Yeah, I didn't. It's, yeah, that's definitely a fighting moment. You know, I feel like we're kindred spirits often, you know, as we went upstairs,

Dai said how much I talk about you. She's heard everything about you. And it's because of stories like this. Like, this is truly the immigrant edge. Like, I came to this country as well. And my dad, I was six, seven years old when my dad would put me into the dumpsters and we'd have to fish out food that was expired but hadn't necessarily gone bad. Right.

But you're dumpster diving for food. And it does help you understand gratitude in a way that, unless you, you're, you're done you've starved for days at a time, it's hard to understand that level of gratitude. I'm not suggesting people go out there and starve yourself, but maybe you ought to consider that, just something to consider. You're not going to die, and you're going to learn so much about yourself. So, Sharon, great. You go to Vanderbilt, and, of course, you, Goldman Sachs, and then all of a sudden you are now the president of Telos Properties. What gives you the balls to go, we're going to 10x this in five years? Like, who said you can do that?

Nobody? Okay. Nobody said I could. do that, but there was a time when I walk in and I look at the opportunity. And you're faced with the decision. You're faced with the decision where you say, hey, at this point, we're going to wrap this up and sell this business because we need to move on to something else, or we need to pour our heart and soul into this because there is an opportunity here to grow it, to make it something meaningful, to impact a bunch of lives, but that's going to take a lot of hard work. It's going to take a lot of growth.

And I just think it's going to take a lot of belief. And the math was really easy. The math was, where we are now is not going to work. Where we need to be is this number that is 10x from now for us to have options. Generally, the market goes in seven-year cycles. We need to do it in five so that we have two-year grace period so we can do something else with if something goes wrong. So we have to 10x in five years. This was not like anything brilliant.

This was a very simple. I need to get to that number. It was almost like math. Here's how the economy works. Here's where we need to be to have options. Right. And here's how much time we have to do it in. Correct.

And everything we did organized around that 10x. At any given time, do you and your two partners at the time? At any given time, do you and your two partners go, well, that's impossible? Often. Often. That happened often because there were, I mean, every business has setbacks, right? We had setbacks all the time. We had partnership issues.

we had cash flow issues. I was lending the company money, so were the other partners. We lost market share. I mean, things like that happen. Sure. But we were like, hey, we called it the singularity of focus. The singularity of focus is this. Every year we have to do this to get to our 10x,

and there is no other way. So as long as we keep plowing through our singularity focus. So we called it the big three. We said there's how we run our companies governed by three things. Singularity focus. The 10X needs to happen. That means we need to do this much every year. Number two, we call it the cadence of accountability.

And that's where coaches and mentors come. But the cadence of accountability is super important, right? Unless you say you're going to do these six things every day, like for example, if we didn't do $5 million a day, like we would never hit the billion dollar, like the $3 billion number. So for us it was just, I need to do $5 million every single day. And one, and I'd see the charts every day and I were like 3.5. I'm like, oh my gosh, like I need to do seven and a half tomorrow next next day. And the cadence of accountability actually gave us purpose on everything that we did.

And the last thing is good process drives good results. And so anytime someone would try to hack it at our business, I'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's all agree and declare that we're hacking this right now. But when we get to thousands of transactions and billions of dollars in sales, all this stuff is going to fall apart. And then we're going to have to rebuild all over again. So can we commit that we're hacking it for 30 days, but we need to build the infrastructure because good process and good process alone drives good results. Oh, three very important lessons. Three very important lessons there. And so the thing I want to share with our audience here real quick before we move on to the next phase here is, yeah, you created options for yourself.

And yeah, you and your partners came in and said, you know what, we're going to attend X to us and we only have five years to do it in. So we're going to take a $300 million company that's not doing so good. And 10 exit to a $3 billion company to have the options. And you're right. You do have partnership problems. You do have cash flow problems. You do have market share problems. And even with all that, you knew that your big goal of $3 billion.

was going to happen only if you break it down to the most achievable numbers, which is $5 million a day, right? Right. And so whatever your big goal is, guys and gals listening and watching the show right now, if you like, for example, we want 2,500 Fit Body Boot Camp locations by the year 2023. Yeah. I can't just sit there and focus on that number and manifest it. I have to close 48 locations a month in order to get there. And I know then what my daily number is for us to get there, right? And when you reduce something down to the ridiculous, and that's what's really that's called.

Because $3 billion, that's a scary number. Right. But if you reduce it down to a more palatable number, like just $5 million a day in sales, and I say just because it's properties, right? It's high-end luxury properties. So that could just mean $5 a day depending on what someone's business model is. It's a lot more achievable. And you held yourself accountable on a daily basis instead of a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis.

Right. Because imagine this. Today you said you did $3 million. Oh my gosh, tomorrow I got to do $7.5. You see a difference day to day. Whereas if every quarter we go and see how well we did, I might have been off track a month into the quarter. Didn't even know it, right?

Right. So that's a great lesson there to share with us. So now that you were presented the option. So let's say our viewers and audience go, all right, I want to get to a point where I could liquidate. I can have a liquidation event and sell my company. What two or three things have to happen, or does the CEO president have to do to position their company to sell?

There's two components. Component number one is to get the highest possible offer, you have to signal to the potential acquirer that you don't need to sell. Because otherwise you're like, I can walk away from this deal at any point. And the second is deals that way their structure today are very formulaic. You get some up front, you get some stock, get some equity, you get cash. There's a lot of components of the puzzle. So there is the signaling component and there's the terms component.

And the signaling component is romance, is a dance, it's positioning. It's like a year of stuff. And that's not just, I think a lot of people will say, you know, kind of bragging is not branding, right? If I can say, you're going to buy my company, I got to not tell you about how great I am. I got to tell you, what do I have that can make you great? I had to step away from being the principal of my company and to almost being like servant leadership for the acquirer. I had to stop and say, who are they?

What did they stand for? And why does it benefit them come hell or high water to buy us? What is their advantage? It's getting in the head of the buyer to say, even if I tighten the deal terms, even if I say I'm going to walk away, Even if I, you know, play hard to get, they still want me. Why?

And you do it with integrity, but I, the interesting part is after the deal was done, and this is when you know you did it well, after the deal was done, I knew our buyer's value proposition almost better than they did. Right? So I could walk in and pitch. I had to pitch to my 700 agents why they had to do this deal, why it was good for them. And I could pitch it better than the buyers. And I think that took a while and getting in that mindset.

So I would just sit there and draw on the whiteboard like, why? Why? Why is this better? Why is this better? So number one is the signaling and the romance. The terms get very interesting and there's a really cool concept called look forward reason back. So we always say, okay, great, I'm going to take these set of terms. This set of cash, this set of options, this set of earn out, this set of, this is my title, this is what my team's going to get to do.

Now let's take that, freeze it, and blow it out a year. Does it still work? Does it still work? Because a lot of times we make decisions in the moment, a snapshot. But when you can stop and remove time, then you can see, oh, Pedro's wouldn't be happy. Shran wouldn't be happy. Does that actually find my lifestyle? What if I had to walk?

And you can actually do that. But blowing out time with terms is when that got really exciting. So we did a lot of time-term study. And we said, oh, if we had to walk away on day one, would that be good? Did we do right by our people? are our people in the right place. Talk about it in a year, are they in a better place? Okay, good.

So the managing terms, the deal is a deal, but the terms and the covenants are very, very important. You know, I learned so much just right there in that moment because I never even realized about that other piece, a romance piece. You know, I just always figured in my head, you're going to sell the steak. You're going to sell the steak,

but there's so much to selling the sizzle. And as you were telling me this, I was like, okay, there's a sizzle. is how's it prepared? What's the ambiance? We can have a good steak in a shitty restaurant and we wouldn't be able to appreciate it. We can have a good steak

in an ambiance that's just immaculent, amazing, well-lit, piano music going, and just beautiful people at the bar, and all of a sudden that steak tastes better. And there's studies that prove that, right? Which also leads us to our Instagram friend, Salt Bay. I'm sure you know who Salt Bay is, right? How the guy puts on a show at his restaurant at his steakhouses

when he's salting his steaks, it's for that reason that he's growing his restaurants faster than any other high-end restaurant out there. It's selling the sizzle and the steak and not just so much of the stakes. That's a great lesson there. If you were sitting across from an entrepreneur who's maybe doing $100,000, $200,000 a year,

and they go, you know what? After hearing you, I want a 10x. I want a 10x. What would they have to change mentally? not what do they have to do in their business because you don't know their business. What do they have to change up here to be able to 10x from where they are to where they want to be? Yeah, the first thing is transformation doesn't happen in isolation, right? That was the number one lesson if I moved back seven years.

I thought I could do it all myself. Sure. And, man, do you hit all kinds of blocks for whatever reason. May it be capabilities, maybe mindset, whatever it may be. having a coach, mentor, guide, operating board of advisors cannot be more important when you're starting burst through that much growth. So I would say number one, transformation doesn't happen in isolation.

So if you're extremely serious about a 10x growth, if you're extremely serious about kind of having that much transformation in your business, you've got to have an insane support system to help you get there. Someone that's been there before, someone that can be with you along the ride. And people that you start with may not be people that you end with, and that's okay. Sure.

But you cannot. You cannot do that much on your own. So that's number one. Number two, I learned this a hard way. And you and I've talked a lot about this, which is you can't just 10x one part of your life. I honestly thought, hey, I'm good. I'm just going to go 10x my business. Right.

It is insane. You need, your family needs to 10x with you. Your relationships need to 10x with you. Your health. Your health. Your health needs to 10x with you. One thing that broke down was my health. Yeah.

Because I would just, I would sacrifice everything else for work. And I appreciate you being this transparent about it. Your health did break down. When you and I first met, you were just on the cusp of recovering. Recurring, yeah. And when my health broke down, I realized I couldn't do everything. I was not Superman. And that's when we went and we did a search for a true COO because I was doing everything

in the business. And I believe, I was like, how am I ever going to hand over operations of our business to someone else? How am I ever going to do that? And then I found a CEO, and he is amazing, amazing. I'll tell you this, the dream CEO, right? Calls me. And he's like, hey, Sharon, how many emails do you have in your inbox?

I say seven. He goes, I'm failing my job on seven counts. Hit forward. That's when you know you have a partner. That's when you know that there's true, like, distinction in roles. And I was like, this is amazing. I told him, I was like, you and I are going to business forever. Because he's kind of the other side of the coin.

So the second thing, you cannot just, there's no 10xing just one part of your business. Which is interesting as well, if you can. can 10x your business, 10x something else and everything else will level up. Right. Everything will up. Right. You can hack your way to 10x. 10x, the lowest hanging fruit, right? Yeah. And I always tell, it's just funny. A client texted me today and she said, I'm in a really bad place. I'm thinking of pulling the plug on this new business that I started. I should just stick with the other two businesses that are generating multimillions. I said, it's okay to feel like pulling the plug. It is not okay to actually pull the plug. Today is one day

of many. What I want you to do is go get some more wins under your belt. She wasn't about to get any wins in this new industry today. She's just not in that right head space. And so she's in the fitness space. So I said, go to the gym and get your, just crush a workout. She texted me an hour and a half later. She goes, I feel so great. I'm back at the grind. Just 10x one area that you're good at. And it blees into everything else. 100%. That's such a great message you're sending. I got two more. Yes. Routines drive results. And I think if we can become a slave to great routines, they just will drive great results. And so, When I talk to clients that I work with, coaching clients, mentoring clients, it's always just figuring out, can I tweak one thing?

Can I take two things that they can do over and over, that they'll just start to see the compound effect of those results? To them, it was something small. To them, it was just flossing at night. But they don't realize that now their psyche believes that they can do anything every single day. And when I start saying, hey, routines drive results. They're like, well, I'm not getting results. Well, let's figure routines. So now there's no depression around the results.

There's only action around the routines. Focus on the routines. And my favorite one is my last one. And I think you and I connect a lot on this is greatness is in the granularity. Everybody believes that they can be the CEO, the president. They can just say, go out and have the 50,000 Instagram following, can do the speeches, can talk about, can write a book to do whatever. But you don't know what's going on in your business. I knew every single thing that happened in every single off.

I knew every single process. I didn't do it, but I knew it. You can't BS me, but the greatness isn't that granularity. And when they can find, you cannot, you cannot just be up here. Jeff Bezos knows exactly what happens on his website. He doesn't have to do it, but he understands the consumer experience. He understands what happens. He understands the outcome.

And a lot of times I'll ask kind of folks that get disconnected, the CEOs that get disconnected. I said, so what metrics are you tracking? He's like, oh, I'm tracking these two things. I'm like, great. Well, what are your folks in the field selling? Are you tracking those? You're disconnected. You're disconnected from the granularity of your business.

You're disconnected from the value chain. Nothing happens until the sale is made. And you're disconnected from the value chain. So if we can stay connected to the value chain, we can do so much more. So when you see an idea, like when I come and I walk into your beautiful offices, your headquarters, and I see an idea. I'm like, wow. I know where this can fit in my value chain because I know my value chain so well. You know it so well.

Yeah. And most people don't know that. And so when you pick up an idea, go to a conference, and you don't know where to put it. And I think that's where knowing the granularity gets really important. And you can't implement fast enough if you don't have the knowledge of the granularity. So those four things kind of really come together. That's huge. You know, and it's really knowing your business better than anybody else.

Because at the end of the day, even if you get the dream CEO, the unicorn or C-O, you still have to have your finger on the pulse and know your value chain. Because when you walk into somewhere, you go to a conference, you meet someone and you see value, what does it go into my business right you can't just say hey see where you can plug this in they may not plug it in the right place that's right right and another big thing that um was a big takeaway from me here is that you you come from this place of optimism appreciation and gratitude and i want to end this episode on that we've broken bread many of times we've traveled together and i constantly see this happy optimistic appreciative grateful man

How does one stay this way? Do you have a process of routine? How do you stay this happy? I think it comes down to two things. One is investing a lot in your personal infrastructure. And my family is very important to me. And people always talk about family being important to them. But I'm very vulnerable with my family, and that's my core.

And I feel secure in that. I work really hard to manage that. and that's really important. But to maintain that, I put all my fears down on paper. I do this practice called the morning pages, and so I wake up in the morning, and I dump out everything that's in my head, everything.

And I might write something. I'm excited to be with Bader's today, but my elbow hurts. Whatever. I get everything out to the point where there's nothing in my head anymore. And once you're an empty vessel, you can start to reprogram yourself.

You can start with good stuff. And I think a lot of times, we're already stuck with the, I didn't sleep very well, or my neck hurts, whatever and then now you look at email and then you've got more bullets coming at you but if you can if you have a good base with a family a friend whoever the personal infrastructure and some people like their meditation some people like to work out whatever it may

be you need some you need some kind of personal core strength grounding but you also I heard this amazing chord fear has no place on paper and I really like that fear has no place on paper so when I get when I'm in my head when I get stuck when I get unhappy when I get depressed and we let's let's all agree. We all have these series of emotions, right? I think it's important to have a tactic, a tool, a vehicle to work through it. And my working through it is like, you may, you may want to, you may read my journal. It would make no sense, but I just pour everything out. And man, I feel so much better after. So I learned that a little later in life, but it's a, it's one of my favorite

things. And sometimes when I'm stuck, I'll actually pull over at a Starbucks and just write and get it all out. And I feel a lot better. So much value to journaling, whether it's thing in the morning or at the end of the day doing the brain dump. I'm a big fan as well. So, Charon, how can our audience find you, connect with you, and learn from your wisdom? Oh, thank you. The easiest way to reach me is on my website, sharon.com. It's shah, r-r-r-n.com.

But I'm on all the social media channels, and the goal is to a lot of people like you have been so great to me, mentors and coaches to me. And the goal for me, how much ever I try, I will forever be in people's debt who have gotten me here. So paying it forward is the only thing I care about right now. You are amazing at paying it forward. Sean, I thank you so much for being on our show. And folks, if you like this episode, if you got great value from this episode,

please do me a favor and like it, share it, leave a comment, and of course, give us your highest review. We are here to serve you. We're here to help you build your biggest, most profitable, and, of course, meaningful empire that we can. Thank you so much for watching and listening to the show. Take care.