Minimal Effort, Maximum Business Growth

Is 10x possible? Is 10x growth and 10x cutting to give you 100x? Like, there’s a lot gonna happen today when we have this show. Because we have a phenomenal author who’s coming on. Mimi, I know you announced the show today. Can you just sort of give us a bit of a background? Oh, here we go.

Well, he’s got, he just came in himself right there. William Penna, who wrote 100X. And so if you’re going to look at this book on Amazon, look for his name as well. And it’s pretty clear. The cover is very, very, very clear. It is 100X. There’s a couple books called 100X. But look for William’s books, William Penna, and maybe I’m pronouncing that wrong, Penna.

Um, Yeah, it’s close. Is that close enough? It’s Pena. Pena. I knew that. I knew that. Yeah. So we’re just gonna, we’re gonna wait a couple minutes to let people come in the room. If you haven’t already, uh, Done this, uh, and you’re listening to this in podcast or YouTube, um, which is interesting. Now we’re getting some pretty good traction on YouTube.

We have 14, 000 members on YouTube on startup club, but if you’re listening to this in a replay on clubhouse on YouTube or in podcast, you might not know this. It’s actually a live show on clubhouse that we do every Friday at two o’clock Eastern. I would say it is the premier show on startup club. The one that we talk about cracking the code, what it is that serial entrepreneurs do serial entrepreneurs, what do they do over and over again to start scale, exit, repeat.

And today we have a very special guest guest and author of the book, 100 X, uh, William Panea.

Is that correct again? Uh, no, no, no, it’s good. I mean, I’m, I’ve been known by different names, but that, that’ll work. It’s actually William Pena. Pena. Sorry. Pena. You’re Pena. I got it. Got it. You’re a Pena in our ass. There we go. Sorry. I’m teasing you. Oh yeah, there we go. We’re starting. We’re starting it with a little bit of, no, I mean, Look, this is an idea.

This is a concept that you put together that a lot of people who came before you have also, um, studied and there is a formula you can actually follow a particular formula. You’re going to hear one today from William Vienna and, um, I’ll never get it right. I’m sorry. But, uh, but you’re going to hear one today about a form of how you can scale your company.

I know in start, scale, exit, repeat, we dedicate the largest section of the book called scale to what it is that you need to do to scale your business. You know, is it, um, people? Is it your story? How does it change? Is it the money that you need to raise? And are there systems that you need need to implement?

And that’s what we talk about and walk through in the book. Start, scale, exit, repeat, uh, before we jump down to you, William, to make an intro on this show, we are still waiting for people to come into the room. Um, Michelle, who is my co host, Michelle van Tilburg. Uh, I just wanted to ask you about this question because you’ve gone through a lot of issues.

Interesting things that are incubator here in Fort Lauderdale. You are now the CEO of paw. com. You took over a few months ago and you, since you’ve taken over, you’ve been implementing a number of things to scale. So I’m really curious from your perspective about today’s show. Well, I’m super excited about this show.

This is, I’m going to say like, to me, this is one of the most fulfilling stages of a business. Where, you know, you have a winning idea, you know, you have a winning business model and then you get to go in there and really try to scale it up. Um, for me in particular, I like this also because I tend to be a very detail oriented person.

And, and I’m really interested to hear what William’s going to say, because, um, what I found is that you really need to know You know, just all the levers of your business and how it’s operating and, and, and, you know, where the costs are going and, you know, what are these levers that you can pull so that you can scale?

And I find that can be oftentimes the challenges of founders, probably not as much founded founders, but like CEOs that haven’t been in the business because they don’t want to get their hands dirty. They don’t want to get quote in the weeds. Like there’s a lot of criticism. William, like people get a lot of criticism for, you know, getting in the weeds, but I find you have to, if you really want to scale and, and learn what works and move, move things, you know, at a hockey stick.

But, or is it the opposite, right? Cause a lot of entrepreneurs don’t let go of the weeds. They don’t let go. And then they, they, they, but I’m curious, like. We’re, we’re sort of biasing the conversation already. We got one going in the weeds. We got one saying, don’t go in the weeds, William. Tell us first of all, I want to hear about your background.

Uh, yeah, no, just to start, uh, well, let me give you a little bit of background of how I actually came across this concept of a hundred acts. Like you said, a lot of people have, have, have researched it, have done it in my own life. I think, you know, I, I became an entrepreneur late in life. You can say, um, I think I didn’t really start being an entrepreneur until I was, Yeah.

40. And, you know, I work for everybody else. I, um, I work self employed for a long time. And then I stumbled across this concept that there are these opportunities that have a massive or a greater impact than other things. You know, the 80 20 principle on steroids and that if you really took advantage of it, you could get a lot or have a great impact with the least amount of effort.

And so I applied it. And, uh, in a very short period of time, I think it was a span of about maybe three, four years, I was able to go from zero. It’s more like negative 4 million, by the way, that was another story, but yeah, it was about a negative 4 million. But then I went to, um, building these two eight figure companies and, and actually I had another six figure company.

And, uh, the part that was the most impactful for me was I was able to do it just working maybe two to four hours a week, So just with that background, I wanted to kind of get to the question that you just mentioned. What I discovered was this is that it could be some weeds or it could be some other levers.

The key is which which are the weeds or which of the levers that give you a 10 X return, but that you can do, you can And once you identify what they are, then how can you do them using 10 times less time, effort, resources, and money? So I guess it’s in an S in one sense, we’re both, they’re both right, right?

It’s because some weeds are incredibly impactful and some of the big levers are incredibly impactful too. It’s just identifying which ones they are because there’s like 10, 000 different things you have to do. But once you identify what those greatest, um, impactful sort of, uh, uh, things that you do in both of those arenas, then you, you realize there’s not many things to do.

And once you just focus on those 80 percent of your time on those, you tend to have a humongous return with a very, um, short amount of sacrifice of effort, time, resources, and money. And I think that’s, what’s different with your thesis here is that it really isn’t a hundred X. It really is 10 X, but using 10 less, 10 times the less amount of effort.

And I’m just like, You know, I think of when I’m, I’m trying to think of examples here that everybody would know, and I’m thinking of Steve jobs and how here’s the CEO of a company, but he would get in the weeds. Like Michelle said, he would get into the weeds. He’d figure out exactly what customers really, he thinks they really want.

He gets involved in product design and whatnot. And I don’t think Tim cook does quite the job. I think it’s a different, maybe it’s a different philosophy or whatever, but, but Steve jobs really got in there. And he really did a hundred X in his company. And I think that’s, that’s interesting. Cause I don’t know, Steve jobs was your best leader, traditional leader.

You know, he, it wasn’t exactly a consensus builder. He was a little bit tough on everyone. And I call him the best level four leader of all time. If you read the book, Jim Collins, good to great. But you know, is, can you talk a little bit more about this concept? And maybe you can share some stories, like let’s talk about stories, right?

But this concept about working less, cause you’re, you’re making a claim here, which maybe sounds a little too good to be true. And, and, and a lot of people might be skeptical listening to this on the show, but can you give us some real stories of one, how you were able to 10 X and then how are you able to reduce.

Do you see a matter of effort by TEDx? You want real stories here? Sure. Sure. Um, it’s funny if it’s okay. I want to share two stories. Uh, one, my own personal story. Like for example, I remember we first, when I first started, I decided I was going to create a publishing company. So then I thought immediately, okay, so if I’m going to publish something, What does the market, what is the market desperately want right now?

And what is something that I can work the least amount that I can, um, and not necessarily even have that high of a quality of product, but be something that I know will still be globally. There’s a global demand for. So what I found out is one children’s books. The one thing that’s phenomenal about children’s books is they don’t really care how much quality the book has.

So I didn’t have, I was not, I wasn’t really that great of a writer. So I said, Oh, you know what? If I focus on this. Then I don’t have to worry about the quality and all the editing and all that, you know, the, the work that goes into it and I could write a shorter book and then I found out, okay, what’s the big demand in the Children’s world right now?

And it was video games. So I picked the most. A popular video game there was that had just come out and then I decided I’m going to write books on that video game, fan fiction on that video game. So what happened was I put together a book, my son and I, we put together a book. It took us five hours to do it.

It was a, it was a very thin book, but it was on this, this video game. And I kid you not. Because it was the right audience and also to it, it kind of leveraged the demand that was out there. It ended up in, in, we put it out one day and the next day it had already 200 five star reviews. And by the end of that year, we had, I think, over a million copies sold.

So, and the most incredible part of that is once I wrote the book, I didn’t have to, I did all the work, it was done, I didn’t have to do anything else, I didn’t even market the book. So, I didn’t have to work that hard to be able to get a substantial big impact because I had tapped into two very powerful levers.

One was, uh, an audience that was desperate or who really, um, didn’t need a lot of effort and work to, to serve and a subject matter that had was so hot and the trend was so big that it was easy for me just to be able to get all the, the 10 X returns with 10 times less effort. So that was one for me that, that was really surprising because I just went out to write this book and I accidentally tapped into that, but I did, uh, Purposely go after that market.

So that helped me to really scale very quickly. So that was just a great example of just being able to, oh, and, and just following up with that is what I ended up happening was that one ended up selling, I think, 4 million copies because then later on, because it was such so, so much huge demand for it. I ended up partnering with Scholastic, which is like the biggest book, um, uh, publishing company in the world for children, children’s publishing company.

And that strategic publishing company. Uh, relationship that strategic partnership then now 10 X that even more because it took it global because I had tapped into a market that was a huge demand and the best part about all that I was working 15 minutes a month. with that business. So that, that was an example of by tapping into the levers that create those, that have those 10x opportunities.

I was able to reduce my time and effort substantially. So that was one story. Um, I don’t know if that made sense. Um, the other, the other story, I think it does. So we’re talking about high demand. Yeah, that’s one of the high demand. That’s one. Number one. And then two, you, you, you, Brought on distribution number two.

And that’s 10 X, 10 X. And I think those are just simple concepts, but maybe not. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t, I just don’t know. Like, I mean, there’s so many books that launch, I mean, look, star scale, like to repeat. It’s, it’s been an anomaly and you know, it’s, it’s been a 10 year mission with, you know, six full time staff and 200, I mean, it was all big effort.

Yeah. Yeah. And we haven’t sold a million copies, you know, we sold tens of thousands of copies and that’s been a huge success and, you know, one number of awards, but. But what you did just seems almost too good again, back to too good to be true. Like, how do you get that sense that, that there’s this particular market demand and you could produce a, in five hours, a book.

And I, I’m just, I, give me a little bit more. Sure. Sure. No. And, and, and if this, Maybe this, uh, strategy I ended up getting gaining a really good strategy from that experience, I realized that, okay, number one, the market has got to be so I have to be such a such a large demand in that market that it’s I’m able to create that kind of impact.

Like, for example, the business market for business books, I realize is not that big, so you put out a book and it becomes really popular, but you end up selling maybe 100, 000 copies. You know, and it’s lifetime because the market, it’s, there’s a demand, but it’s not that big of a demand compared to fiction books for children, which is massive.

And, and you know, it’s just, you know, one, because children are always bugging their parents to buy something that they want. And parents just wanted to, you know, help their kids, uh, to, to, to read or to do these different things. It’s, it’s. Much larger, emotionally driven market. That’s why I chose to do the children’s books first before doing the business books, which I’m doing now, because I knew that the, the, that the man was big in business, but not as big as 10 times bigger with children’s books, like much bigger.

That’s one of the reasons. So what I started doing was I started doing this. I started saying, okay, I don’t want to put out something that people don’t want. So instead of me writing a book and finding out later that people don’t want it or that only sell so many, I’m going to pre sell the cover. Like I’m just going to make a cover.

I’m going to put it out there and pre sell it. And if there is a massive demand for the cover, then I’ll write the book. So in other words, I’ll test the demand first. And by testing the demand first, I saved myself a tremendous amount of time because there’s, there’s not a huge demand. Then I won’t write the book.

So like, for example, I did it with another book and again, this is publishing, but it also, the principles also apply in other industries too, meaning that there’s, they are areas in all these different industries that carry a substantial, much greater impact. And if you’ve got to identify them and then focus your attentions on them, they tend to have a greater, um, 10 X, a hundred X type of returns.

So what I did was I found, I put out a cover for a book or I kept putting out covers for books to see if there’s any demand. By about the fifth cover I put out, all of a sudden I had 400 people buy the cover and that was even before I wrote the book. I thought it was a fluke. So I said, no, no, no, let me try it again.

So I extended the presale to for two months and 500 people bought it the next month. And I said, okay, I need to write this book. And that book, I think I made like 100, 000 on that book in a span of like 12 months or something from writing that book. Because I, I tested the demand first before I actually wrote the book.

So in summary, what I’m saying is, is sometimes the market will determine how big the impact is going to be. I mean, we all know this, uh, but there are these, oh, these extreme markets that if you can tap into. Then sometimes that rising tide lifts all boats. You can have the second, you know, it’s not even that great of a quality of a product, but because the market is so huge, it’ll just drive it forward.

So that’s what I tapped into when it came to publishing. All right. Well, remind us the name of the book. I, we, I, I, you know, I’m sure everyone is dying to know what that was. So can you remind us what, and like, is it on Amazon? Like yes, no, it’s a, it’s a book called diary of a Minecraft zombie. Oh, I love that.

If, if, if many of people don’t know it, your kids will definitely know it because it’s a big in, in the Minecraft space is a very big, uh, big book. One other thing I didn’t mention that I also tried to do was I tried to add some competitive advantages to it. Uh, I tried to contact Mojang at the time to, you know, to let them give me the opportunity to write these books.

And because they did give me that sort of freedom, they were very loose back then before my, you know, uh, Microsoft bought them, uh, they gave me the freedom to do that. I also was able, once I got that kind of confirmation, I was able to publish these books on Amazon. But when Amazon would all of a sudden start removing books who were, who were, uh, trying to use Minecraft, they removed every other book except for mine, because I could prove to them that I had a, a, uh, a con, you know.

I got the approval from Mojang to be able to write these books. So there was a point where my book was the only book Minecraft book in all of Amazon for about a year. Well, I’m hearing two themes actually, right? Like you’re addressing a broad audience. And if I could say that sounds like it was underserved and yeah, you tapped into two genres.

One zombies, you know, I’m a zombie fan who doesn’t love a good zombie movie and gaming like I love how you really got creative there and didn’t overcomplicate it. And also, yeah, I’m a huge test of AB testing. I think that was absolutely brilliant. And it’s something that I hadn’t thought of doing. You know, I think you said on Amazon.

And, and, and one more that added to it was that I tried to go after a market that didn’t require me to work so hard at. So, like, for example, like, you know, we put together a business book. You’re talking about, you know, levels of editing, developmental editing, and you’re doing a lot of work to make sure this book is, is, is, uh, turns out high quality book.

With kids books, you, I did all the editing myself. I had so many typos in that book. later on. I fixed them. Right. But in the beginning I had so many titles, but the kids didn’t care. They were just incredibly happy. So I, that, that reduced my effort as well. So I was able to get the 10 time greater return with a 10 times lower effort.

Nice. And your business book, what, what is, remind us the name of the business book that we’re talking about right now as well. So the business book is a hundred acts. The one that we’re talking about today. And it it’s basically taking this concept of that. There are these. 10 X opportunities in the world today.

And we all know them, right? Grant Cardone talked about 10 X saying, and be able to, you know, get your, your business to a higher level. But his answer was massive effort or massive, you know, uh, you know, yes, exactly. Massive time and effort and hours and, and putting yourself out there. Uh, what I found was that I tried to do that, but it wasn’t sustainable for me.

So I said, I wonder, and it was, it was a great mentor of mine who helped me with us. He said, well, if you, why don’t you try to get 10 times. much greater effort with massive leverage. And I said, that’s fantastic. So I said, okay, so let’s see, is there a way of doing that? And I started learning that all it really took was to stop and take some time to be creative.

Cause most people, we just kind of start working or just I said, well, why don’t we just stop, take a pause and ask yourself, is there a way I can do this, get it and get a great a 10 times greater return and use 10 times less effort and just pausing and stopping to think about it all of a sudden you start coming up with ideas of getting the same thing done, but in having 10 times greater output and 10 times less effort kind of similar to Tim Ferriss had a question a long time ago.

Uh, he used to ask all the time, is there an easier way to do this? But most people don’t stop to actually ask those questions. They just keep plugging away and they wonder why they’re only getting incremental results. I absolutely love it. And I’m trying to do something like that right now. It’s amazing how people sometimes don’t get it.

Yeah. But, you know, I see we have somebody, um, that has joined us on the stage, Jason. You’ve got William here, he’s an expert in scaling up businesses and if I dare say starting as well, because you’re teaching us how to identify business ideas that can easily scale, as you said, low effort, high return. So Jason, what is your question for William or Colin or a story you might want to share with us?

Oh, it’s a question, definitely, and it still, uh, relates to my story. Um, I wrote my first book in grade 5 about becoming Prime Minister, and then in grade 19, I was diagnosed with Genius Illness in 1999. Schizoaffective psychosis disorder in university, so it’s high spectrum So it’s like I planned a whole career in one document.

It’s not hard for me, but I realized 25 years I haven’t found anybody else that that has done that and So I did a million dollar exit But what I’ve found is the problem might solve their global problems like disinformation Like abuses of power, like lack of knowledge. Um, you know, you know, to see the problems because I do, you talk about Grant Cardone and I’ve been on, on an app with him.

I have a 10 year challenge. So when I meet individuals, they’re like, ah, I can’t buy for that right now. I have no time for that right now, but nations do right. Like, uh, corporations plan out 10 years. But when I find an individual parent, They have more pressing issues, and even governments, they’re trying to get elected the next term, right?

Five years. So, I’m trying to expand this idea of the 10 year Dream Decade Challenge, and I have a 25 year book course. So, of course, if I go to a publisher, I don’t have the evidence because I don’t have a lot of people that have bought into it. In two years, I’ve only sold 13 copies. On my website, and when I paid for ads, not that many people want to take the Dream Decade Challenge.

They’re like, help me today, you know, help me in the next TikTok. So, um, what would you recommend? Because I just look for Scholastic, and Scholastic, they don’t even take, really, take manuscripts. And I don’t have like, I worked at Microsoft Canada and Bill Gates. I took Bill Gates public advice. He said, if he had to start over, he’d do what I did.

He wouldn’t start. He’d finished school, work for other companies. I went back to work at Microsoft second time and I was number one on the team. And then I worked for a financial institution and only in the pandemic, I went full time, right? Like a lot of people, but at the same time, my first corporation was from 99.

It does everything for free. So these are things that nobody has ever heard of. So they say, who are you if you’ve been in business for 25 years doing a corporation, right? Who are you if you wrote your first book in grade five about becoming prime minister? Because I was just doing my job. I worked at a company for five years, for six years.

So when I tell people I’ve been planning to run for prime minister since grade five, 1988, they’re like, BS. I never heard of you. Right. So like when I go to a publisher, like skill scholastic, they’d be like, where’s your market? I never heard of you. You haven’t been doing this since 1988. You do you see the problem?

Yeah. So. Yeah. So what would you recommend? Because if I called up Scholastic, they’d say, who’s Jason Humphries Kinte? If Oprah calls her, calls them up, they’re like, sure. We will read your manuscript. Sure. We’ll put money behind it. You see what I’m saying? Yeah. Yeah. No, for, for one, I, and I would one start by self publishing, of course, because like you said, a lot of those companies, and this was from the publishing world, I’m sure many of you have experienced this, uh, In the publishing world, they’re just looking to, you know, see what’s the next thing is going to sell to make the money right to build what they’re trying to build and the kind of books that you’re talking about, Jason, which, which, by the way, I have to commend you.

That’s that’s a noble cause, right? That 10 year plan that you have also to to make that kind of global impact. It’s because it’s not the most in demand thing right now. Unfortunately, that’s the issue, right? We don’t have a market that demands for it. So that automatically means it’s not going to sell as quickly.

Right. But it’s worth writing because it’s going to change the world at some level, at some point, or it’s going to make a great impact for the world. And I think it was Robert Kiyosaki who said that. He said, you know, it’s, you’re either going to write a best selling book or you’re going to write a book that changes the world.

You can’t have both. You know, I remember him saying that. Uh, or, or it’s incredibly difficult to do both. My strategy or my ideas in a situation like that would be, okay, I have this 25 year plan or this 10 year plan that I have of what I want to accomplish, but I know that in order to accomplish it, I need to have a great number of people in my corner.

Okay. So then what I would do is one or two things. This is just brainstorming. One, I would, uh, well, one obvious one is start an audience. Now start putting out your content now so that people you can start attracting the people that can be part of that audience. Because once you have a big enough audience of people who know and love what you have, you’ve attracted them, then you can really do, you know, you can leverage that in a big way.

Uh, that’s one. And that one’s a simple one. That was a lot one that many people are doing today. Uh, the second one would be, Okay. To, to kind of like take that 10 year plan and break it up into one year segments because you know, every part of your 10 year plan or your, your 25 year plan, there’s probably different milestones that you want to hit that may be really popular at the time.

For example, like if I, I used to work as a consultant, if I go into an organization and I try to change the entire organization, I know I won’t be able to change the whole thing at the same time. But what will I do? I’ll focus on one area that people do have a big demand for. But that will gain me enough sort of influence in the organization that now I can start growing that influence, uh, and make it bigger.

So, and, and little by little, I solve enough of the local problems. That my influence begins to grow so they’re going to start allowing me or be interested in me solving the global problems as well. I’ve had to do that a couple times with organizations. And so, so one way to be able to have that large impact is just take, taking it one chunk at a time.

But the chunks have got to be something that is in demand at the time. Because eventually you’ll grow in so much influence by being able to meet this demand. That when it’s time for you to start saying, all right guys, I’ve got this humongous audience. I want to teach you about this thing, this. Long term plan that I have.

It’s a little bit easier. So that’s one strategy that I’ve seen has worked for other people and has worked for myself as well. Yeah, a great job. I know you had some thoughts around Jason as well. So you want to chime in? Yeah. Hi, Jason. It’s Nav here. So William, uh, I agree with what you’re, um, suggesting to Jason.

Jason, I also saw your message on chat saying that you’ve. Been um, you have your website and you’ve been marketing for two years I believe i’m not trying to speak for lumion I think what he might also be trying to say is that This would be my recommendation to you is start making small tik tok videos or instagram reels um You know, like start dropping breadcrumbs, you’re going to get a much more sticky audience with that.

Um, the other thing I was going to share with you is I’m not sure if a lot of the folks here are familiar with the book The Alchemist. Um, So he wrote the book in 1998. However, I believe it took 25 years for the book to finally gain traction after Oprah shared it on the Oprah Winfrey show I know a lot of us don’t have access to Oprah But all I’m trying to say is that sometimes the journey can be really long what I would Suggest is to enjoy the process and what a lot of us tend to do is we want to go to zero from a hundred in a direct path, however Um, it’s not a direct path for a lot of us a lot of us have to take a lot of extra left and right turns So my recommendation is going to be To embrace those left and right turns.

I’m not sure if this is your primary stream of income My other recommendation would be to have Another stream of income while you are working on this idea that way, um, you know, like you have a way to carry yourself financially. And then you’re doing this on a side and it’s not taking up a hundred percent of your focus.

And, um, you know, maybe you develop this on the side, you build your audience on, on reels or wherever you prefer, and then have that audience. So that way, when you do write something and also meet the audience where they are. I’m, not too sure about Uh, the content of your book. It sounded like it was for autistic kids.

So maybe start going to those events and those Um, you know support groups, uh for for those kids So they so you meet the parents and the kids where they are so you can get better Um, you know, like, uh, traction, people get to know your name. So I believe those would be like the three things I would do. Uh, start, uh, creating short video content.

The second one would be to meet people where they are. And the third one would be to have some kind of a financial backing so you’re not strapped for cash. And if I could add one more now, that was fantastic. If I could add one more to that list, uh, you know, cause this is also one of those hundred X levers that if you tap into it, you will have great, like you’ll be able to get there a whole lot faster is you mentioned how, like some of the, the, the, uh, ideas that you have are very large ideas.

Not everyone has those kinds of very large ideas, but a lot of very highly influential people think that way. So if you were to get an audience with them, even sitting down with them at some point, you’re going to. start finding people who think just like you, but they have a lot of influence. So what I would do is I would start listing out my dream 100 people, highly influential people that I think would really be.

And I actually learned this from from another gentleman. But it does work. I’ve tried this myself, and it really does make an impact. The people you think will be a perfect fit and actually think like you or even teach like you. And then you just make an effort to try to get in front of them and try to build relationships with them in some capacity.

And there’s some processes to do that as well, because I think just by making the effort, eventually you’ll get in front of them and you will be able to resonate with them because they’re thinking they think just like you. And now you have someone else on your corner that not just can Get your information out, but could get your information out to millions of people.

And I’m just not talking about influencers. I’m talking about really highly influential people who are feeling the same thing you’re feeling. They just don’t have the time or the effort to go out there and make a difference. But when they meet you, they realize, wow, now they could do it through you. So that was just another one that I’ve seen has worked really effectively for me and others.

Thank you. That’s good advice. And, uh, you know, as that goes to genius owners, I’ve been doing that for two years. So Colin is one of them, right? I presented to him. So I’ll keep it up. Thank you. That’s a good advice. You got it. And good luck. All right. Awesome. That was fun. So now, did you want to ask a question or give some experience to the audience?

I joined at the very tail end of this conversation, so, um, not sure what kind of 10 x experience I can share with the audience right now. Um, sure. Did you have a, but I thought you gave, Jason was great though. I thought those three, those advice for Jason was great. Yeah. And it made, but you think of something too because Jason, I’m thinking, you know, you said, I think you said it’s like a 40 year plan.

I might have that not quite right. You know, think about like movements and popular things and culture that are happening that you can make the correlation with. Like it’s reminding me of something that was really popular, which they called loud budgeting, right? That’s like a trending thing where people are very, you know, it’s like quiet quitting or loud budgeting.

Like, I think there are correlations that you can drive to that maybe make your concepts and your. You know what you’re trying to do a little bit more relatable. Yeah. That’s good advice. It’s interesting. I do all of those things on LinkedIn, on Tik TOK, on YouTube, on Instagram, on Facebook. So I’m not quite sure.

Like I’ve done all of those things for two years and I’ve sold 13 so, but I’ll keep up the work. Can I, can I add something? Um, go ahead. I’m sorry. Uh, you go, I can, I can wait. Okay. No, no, you know, I’m glad you said that Jason, because you sort of ran into something that I ran into as well. And a lot of entrepreneurs run into it’s part of the book as well.

Uh, if I can share a quick story, you, we all know the story of Sarah Blakely, you know, Spanx, she created Spanx. Um, you know, she just wanted to find a way of, you know, wearing her pants so that, you know, her pants have smoother look. So she created this thing called Spanx, took 5, 000 of her own money. And she went out and started to sell her product.

Okay, now she sold it, maybe some online. She sold a little bit on videos that she put together. And she was having this incremental type of results. But then she decided, okay, how can I 10x this thing? Or she was thinking, okay, how can I get this to really grow quickly? And then what she did was she went after department stores with a vengeance until she got Neiman Marcus and once Neiman Marcus carried her brand, I mean, she went really after it, then all of a sudden she went to a completely different level.

And, uh, I mean, totally different. It was like massively 10x everything she did because now the distribution was so big. But the thing that happened was that after had been around the markets for a while, someone got, got it and then told Oprah about it and then Oprah shared it on her channel, you know, on our show and then it went to like, it went escape velocity.

That thing just went into the billions, right? But what I learned from that was that and she wasn’t the only one. Damon John did it to other people do it too, is that most entrepreneurs spend 80 percent of their times on things that grow their business incrementally. Their marketing, especially, you know, posting online is great, but you’re not going to see the, the, on social media, you’re not going to see the return till four years from now.

It’s great. And we need to do it, but it’s incremental. Running ads, same thing. It’s incremental. Um, sometimes cold calling can be incremental, but we spend the majority, 80 percent of our time in the incremental things where there’s these exponential marketing efforts that we make that if we were to spend 80 percent of our time there, We wouldn’t see just incremental returns like 13 sales.

We’d see like, you know, 13, 000 sales. So there’s a list of exponential things that have just a bigger return when it comes to marketing. And then there are the explosive ones like the Oprah Winfrey relationships kind of thing. So I think sometimes if. I’m sorry, guy. Oh, no, you finish finish. No, I was just gonna say sometimes if we were just to shift our focus to more of an exponential marketing focus, and then automate, delegate, simplify the incremental things, uh, then we would probably see greater returns a lot faster with a lot less effort and a lot less work.

Yeah, I agree. That’s what I have to do now. And that’s what I’m doing now. Because I’d rather spend 4 months trying to get Oprah, or 4 months trying to get Tyler Perry, or 4 months trying to get a government deal where they put my thing in all of the libraries across Canada. That’s what I’m doing now. I’m going to spend 4 months doing that, and then I get the one sale and it’s 100, 000.

You know, it’s like, you know, a hundred thousand orders or a hundred dollar book, you know what i’m saying? That’s that’s what i’m going for and when I run for prime minister next decade, trust me people gonna buy it. That’s awesome So another thought I had jason is that a lot of times when we’re marketing something we’re coming from a place of It’s the whole Steve Jobs concept of marketing where don’t tell them they need a technology.

Don’t tell them they need a book. Tell them what problem you’re solving for them. What I’m trying to say is when you’re going at people from a place of, um, I’m marketing your gifted book, like you’re on the spectrum book, what that assumes. And what it does for you is it minimizes your audience only 3 percent of the people who have kids who are diagnosed neurodivergent or people who are aware of it, um, You know, only your market is only that.

However, if you go from a place of, uh, open web, because I feel like, uh, what I mean by that is a lot of people don’t even know they’re neurodivergent and there’s a lot of functioning neurodivergent people, for example, in technology, because I, I work in tech. I see this all the time. I see leaders. I see individual contributors who are neurodivergent.

And they don’t even know it. And it takes a group of us to realize, Oh, I think she behaves this way because I think she’s on the spectrum, but I don’t think that person was ever diagnosed. You know, I feel like there’s a lot, like if you specifically, I can tell you this for a fact in the tech sector, a lot of people are neurodivergent in accounting.

A lot of people are neurodivergent. So instead of going from a place of like, uh, people knowing, maybe start asking questions in a different way. Have you been recently divorced? Have you been through this kind of an event and and then people are going to be like, oh shucks Yes, I was recently divorced.

Wait, is there something here? Maybe there is something about my personality that maybe there is maybe like on a scale of zero to ten your neurodivergence is only like Say like zero is the lowest and ten is like what was that movie? Forest gump like ten is like forest gump and then 0, 1, and 2 are like very functioning people who work in the tech sector, but they’re still, they still have traits of it and they keep running into issues with, or you could ask, Have you lost a lot of jobs lately?

Like, have you been through a lot of jobs where you were let go? Like, if you start asking those kinds of questions, I feel that people, you’re casting a much wider web, you know, and then thank you for that. We have got to run a show with you on neurodivergent diversity, because we’ve done that before already.

And it’s an incredible topic. Uh, I do want to focus. So on this topic today, we got 20 minutes left, and we’re very lucky to have William Pena on with us today. And I have two questions before we jump to Mike and Roman. Um, one is I’m going to ask you, William, because assuming we’ve got the idea, right?

Assuming you’ve got some traction. I’m going to ask you the 10X repurpose question. How can I repurpose what I’m doing so it gives me a 10X bigger return? And, and because I don’t often get the mic here today, which is fine. It’s okay. I’m not used to that, but that’s okay. I like that. I love the audience. I love the stage today.

The second question is, can you, you know, I’m asking to ask you the 10X leverage question. How can I eliminate, automate, delegate, or simplify what I’m doing so I can use 10X less? Now you’re asking that question for a specific business or for a specific situation? I’m asking it because that is verbatim in your book and it really is the two, two thesis is that this concept that you can leverage and, and, and, oh, look, we, again, we, in our book, start, scale, exit, repeat, we, we spend the largest section on scale and this concept that you’ve got here around.

Take what you do really well, repurpose it, and give 10x bigger return. Talk to that, and then at the same time, eliminate, automate, delegate, or simplify, which is in some ways getting out of the weeds, like, I’m not going to go back to that debate, but this whole concept of, you know, reduce, reduce, reduce, and allow others to And I call it delegate responsibilities, not tasks in the book, and that’s how I get there.

But I want to hear from you and on those two questions. Sure. Uh, here’s a quick exercise that helps me to do it because I always have to constantly do it to myself as well. For example, let’s say, uh, currently our goal or the goal for the business is we want to hit 10 million. Uh, and now we think all the different things that we need to do to get there just by asking the question.

Well, what if we 10 X that? What if we went after 100 million? What would we have to do in order to make 100 million in the same time frame? Let’s say we were trying to get to 10 million in a year or two. Well, what if we had to do 100 million into in two years? Then all of a sudden, your brain starts to expand and it’s the ideas that it’s going to get because that’s a different level of of strategy you need to have to get to 100 million.

And because it’s different now, all of a sudden you realize, Oh, Yeah, that it would take this greater or this different or, or let’s say it’ll gray. It’ll take partnering with this company or it’ll take What’s another good one? It will take getting funding so that we can expand to these territories But then you ask yourself, well, why don’t I do that now to get to 10 million?

So just by expanding the goal to 100 million, it broadens your mind to come up with more impactful ideas. Then now you can apply to your current actual goal that you’re going after. I would even expand it further. I would say, okay, let me get to a billion. Like if I needed to get to a billion in two years, what would it take?

Your entire mind thinks differently at that level. And now with that different mindset, you can now apply it to the 10 million. You start realizing, wow, I’m not going to spend time because it changes what’s important. When you’re going after a larger goal. So then I said, Okay, well, let me focus on those new important things to get the 10 million.

And then what I’ll do on the other side, I’ll say, Okay, now that I’ve got these new ideas and this new strategy, granted, it’s gonna be incredibly uncomfortable because if you were doing it, you would get to 100 million. So it’s almost like it’s gonna stretch you because now you’re doing a different strategy.

But once you say, Okay, now that I want to get to that different strategy, how could I do it? with 10 times or 10 less steps. Let’s say I thought I’d have to do all these things. Well, how can I cut out 10 steps? Just something as simple as that. Oh, well, I could probably do it faster if I did it this way. Oh, I could probably cut out that and I can cut out this and cut out that and realize, oh my gosh, I can probably do it really quickly.

Like for example, who’s going to get me and how am I going to get an audience with that company that I want to be a strategic partner with? Oh, I can co call them. I can keep, you know, going after them. I can keep trying to get up the ladder. Well, you know what? I know Colin. Colin has friends in that company.

You know what? Let me talk to Colin and see if Colin can actually introduce me. So by cutting out or or making myself try to get there 10 times faster, I all of a sudden came up with new ideas on how to get there faster. So another way of doing that, of course, is instead of doing it in two years, trying to get to 10 million in two years, how can I get to 10 million in six months?

I experienced that with the book. When I wrote the book, I thought it would take me a year or two to write the book, but then I thought, Well, how can I do it? I thought it would take me 24 months to write the book. And I said, No, how can I do it in 24 weeks? And then I thought, Okay, I would have to do this.

And then I said, How can I do it in 24 months? And once I started thinking that way, I said, Oh, I’d have to change everything to start writing this way. And guess what? I ended up using that same strategy. I ended up writing the book in 15 days. But because I had, number one, 10x the goal, you get much more impactful strategies.

And by 10x ing or reducing by 10 or 100x the time frame, you become more efficient or more effective at the way you get there. It just, it’s interesting. We have all the resources in our brains, but those exercises kind of force ourselves to think differently and come up with better advice. Well, I wish I, I wish I had you in 2012 before I started start scale eggs to repeat, it was too much.

I guess, you know, I guess that’s what I went into, you know, obviously I was running many companies along the way. It wasn’t, but every time I got on a plane, I was, I was simply, you know, right away. And, um, and in any case, uh, we have Mike on the stage. Mike, thank you for being very patient. We have William Pena on as well.

He wrote the book 100 X, uh, something that if you haven’t already picked up, just go to Amazon and pick it up. It’s a very easy read, by the way. I love the way you wrote it and how it was simple. And like, just the paragraphs are short and whatnot. It’s a very, very easy read, easily digestible with big concepts.

Mike, do you have a question or a thought about how you can 10 X your business? Sure. Yeah. I kind of have the way I think about it. Um, So, basically, the two critical things for success. Um, the two V’s. Value and vibes. So, um, Sorry, what was the second one? Vive? Vibes. Values. Vibes. V I B E S. Got it. Yeah, so, um, the value is critical.

Um, that’s in some ways the harder part, and I think a lot of people, you know, have some challenges there because it is hard to provide unique value, but You got to look at how people respond when you offer them your product very carefully, and especially the people who decline, um, which will always be some.

Um, so, you know, everybody is really excited about their own product, but from the other side of the table, you know, it’s just another sales pitch. Um, so you really got to lock down your value and make sure that your product is great. Um, that’s going to help you a lot. Um, basically it’s going to be hard to grow with a mediocre product or service.

So it’s gotta be good. Otherwise it’s just. The market’s going to figure it out and it’s, you know, as quickly as you acquire customers, you’ll lose them too. Um, so you have to be really solid on the value side in order to grow and do 10x. Um, the next step is the vibes. Um, and this is about how your branding is presented and how you interact with people.

Um, people are driven by emotion and they, um, they like to buy from the people they like. Um, so it’s a lot about lifestyle. And tapping into, um, what people are truly looking for, which might not be what they tell you or what they think they’re looking for, but it’s a lot of kind of basic things. Um, so, so, you know, I always think of the basic sales structure.

Is important when you’re doing marketing to really understand it. That’s the AIDA attention, interest, desire, and action. And, you know, the hardest parts are at the beginning, um, really getting people’s attention. Um, so that’s where kind of like the vibes come in. You want to be putting out just the right vibe so that it’s going to attract The kind of people who you, who will buy from you and, and maybe some other, you know, lookers, tire kickers too, you want them around.

Um, and then, um, you know, once you’ve captured their attention, then, um, you really have to engage and make sure that they’re making that progression. All the way through to interest, hmm, this might be something I like to, wow, I love this, this is something I need. Um, I, I don’t know if I’ll be able to live without this.

I’d be worried if the guy down the street gets this before me. Um, and then, then they’re going to buy. And that’s how then that motivates that action, make that action very easy for them to take. If they don’t take it, call them back, get them, get them on board. If they say, call me in a week, call them in a week and just stay on them and stay on them until they’re finally ready to pull out their credit card.

Um, uh, it, it does work. Um, and if you can keep your kind of branding consistent, then you’re always putting out that vibe and that will snowball. And you can do 10x. Do you mind? That was well, well said. And if, if I could add something to that, how to 100x that, that you just said, Mike, cause that, I mean, that was fantastic.

Cause that is the foundation of all, you know, commerce, right? You create so much enough value that people, um, they, they’re willing to reward you for it, right. By paying for it. I wanted to add one thing that I’ve, I discovered accidentally, which was. You know, if, if we keep putting out, putting out offers for products or new products and.

We won’t, we don’t create the products that just get a good result or even a great result. We only put out the products that get a mind boggling explosive result. Meaning that, uh, you know, you, you test one in the waters, you get some sales, great. You know, you could probably build a business from it, but I’m not going to, you know, go after that one.

Let me keep trying. Let me keep trying. And then after 10, 20, all of a sudden you tap into something that globally everybody wants it. Kind of like chat GPT, right? A hundred million people bought it in one, one month. That if we were to focus on those type of opportunities, so it’s, it’s almost like the product’s going to sell itself.

And then adding the things that Mike mentioned on top of that, it would take it to like a hundred X, like, like, Even further than that, I believe, um, that’s what I experienced when I kept testing different book covers until I found the one that globally everybody wanted. And then the thing kind of just sold itself.

I tried it again with a, um, another company that I was trying. It was a binoculars company, right? I was putting out products, products, products, products. And then I found a niche in the birdwatching world. And then in a very short period of time, we made like a million dollars in a month. Like I think it was like in a matter of months, once we tapped into that market, it blew up so quickly because we had tapped into an opportunity that was globally in demand that no one knew about because most binoculars are made for hunters, like 90 percent of them and birdwatchers were demanding someone actually serve them.

So once I tapped into that accidentally, all of a sudden it went Global very, very quickly. And we were able to scale substantially fast. So I guess what I’m saying is, sometimes, I don’t know if you ever played Mario Kart. I’m not a kid, so I played Mario Kart, the game. There’s these speed pads that you land on that makes you go incredibly fast.

Adding what Mike said to finding a, an opportunity out there in the marketplace like that. Would easily get you where you need to get to. And then last thing I’ll say about that is most people think those are scarce. I believe there’s an abundance of them out there. All we have to do is just keep trying and putting them out there.

Because if you have a, like Mike said, if you have a good product, you try to improve a good product, you can only go so far, you need to have a great product to build a market. Right. But if you have a irresistible product that just people can’t help but buy, the product will sell itself.

Well, I’m loving this conversation. And I, the analogy of the speed pad from Mario Kart that that’s, that’s awesome. William, it really resonates. Um, but you know, we’re getting close to the top of the hour and I want to make sure, um, That I get a chance to tell you a little bit about what’s happening with the book.

Start, scale, exit, and repeat. Before you do that though, Michelle, I just don’t want to leave us a point. Because I think it’s sort of cool that William’s making a point that go smaller, actually go smaller and focus. Like the, the binoculars are very focused on a very, you know, Particular niche, but be the best in the world at that.

And, and we call that the laser beam effect. Mm-Hmm. . And I just wanted just maybe you could add to that and then, and then, and then, and then I appreciate you, Michelle, coming out with, um, with the announcements that you’re gonna make. But, but I just wanted to just make sure we don’t lose that point, that in order to 10 x you almost have to go smaller.

Mm-Hmm. . What are your thoughts on that one, William? No, I think I’ve discovered that as well is that there are these micro niches that why that that have these great opportunities. Why? Because no one is serving them because they’re so small. People don’t think that they they’re, you know, they don’t want to put the money into serving them, but they’re so they have such demand and they have a lot of money to because they’re so desperate for a solution.

And some of these micro niches aren’t that small, like they’re in the millions of people, but people don’t pay attention to them. So they end up creating really great opportunities for anyone’s willing to go small and go after these because you’ll be the only game in town and they will pay you all kinds of money to get your services and it’ll grow incredibly quickly.

And the good part about micro niches is eventually you can, you can expand them a bit and all of a sudden you start growing. Into a greater, greater niche as well. So I think I agree with you. I think sometimes going small, you, you end up identifying greater opportunities because no one’s tapping into them.

Yeah. We, one thing I have had a saying of others, I’m sure have come up with this is sometimes you have to slow down to speed up and I’m going to tell you this. It also makes your marketing. Very, um, effective when you can hone in rather than doing what we call pray and spray, trying to get everybody for, you know, one size fits all.

It’s really not about that to a large extent. Yeah. All right. That’s great. I wanted to just make sure everybody here in the audience new start scale exit repeat. The book is doing amazing. Uh, the book has now hit 12 different categories as number one bestseller on Amazon. And I think when I was counting it and at like 16 different categories of top five, in addition, Colin was honored with the award from Benjamin Franklin, a nice silver award for their business category, as well as another gold.

Right, the winner of another award. Colin, what was the name of that award? Uh, that was the American Legacy Book Awards. And they both happened last weekend. And it was very interesting. Yeah, it was very interesting to get that recognition for the book that, yeah, we did work very hard on. It was a slow go. I unfortunately did not read William’s book before I set out on that journey.

Uh, it was 10 times more the effort to get, you know, but any case, no, I, I just, thank you for that, Michelle. I really think that today, William, you’ve opened us up to a mind, a mental thought process that not everyone thinks about in that we often. Launched these businesses and the vast majority 99 percent of businesses are small businesses Most businesses fail to scale the vast majority in America.

We’re talking the high 90 percent it not high 90s here fail to scale and Your methodology your mindset is all about. Well, really I’m trying to pull from here, right? I’m trying to pull for me a little bit. It’s really all about a mindset and yeah And I think that’s pretty cool because it doesn’t create necessarily, you know, millions and millions of dollars.

Of course, you might need that as part of your new mindset, but it doesn’t necessarily it’s not a select few. It’s really a mindset. So maybe you can finish with that. And I feel like we only touched the surface and really appreciate you coming on today. No, I’m great. I’m glad I’m, I appreciate you saying that.

Oh, and by the way, congratulations for the awards for the book. It’s a phenomenal book. I love, it was one of my favorite books. Oh, thank you. What I was going to say is I’m glad you said it was about a mindset. Even what Michelle said earlier is that sometimes you have to slow down to go faster because I think the simplest way to describe it is it’s a pause is that once you can pause just to think more effectively.

by asking those questions. And, you know, because our focus is driven by the questions you ask. If you ask really good questions, your brain will come up with the really great solutions, innovative, great solutions. This is more of a an exercise in helping, you know, strengthen that muscle because sometimes we don’t exercise that creative muscle enough and we’re missing out on all these great opportunities.

My favorite is I can get all those opportunities without having to work that hard, but we end up just going, going, you know, working, working, working, because we keep following the same mindset. So I agree. I think it’s just a, an opportunity for people to stop, retrain their minds, how to really be able to tap into the great opportunities that are right there waiting for them.

Right in front of their faces. All right. Well, thank you very much. You’ve been listening to start scale, exit, repeat serial entrepreneur secrets revealed same name as the book, but it’s also a live show every Friday, two o’clock Eastern. We’ve been listening to William Pena and we. Also do this on YouTube, which we’ve now hit 14, 000 followers on YouTube.

So if you haven’t already done so, please follow our YouTube channel. Uh, Mimi would also say, go to startup. club and sign up to the email list. We do a monthly newsletter and announcements every week about new authors, experts, and serial entrepreneurs who are coming on this show. Thank you very much. We will see you all next Friday.

Two o’clock Eastern. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you, everyone. Have a wonderful weekend. Thank you, William. I think this was one of my favorite sessions so far this year, so thank you so much. No, thank you for having me. It’s been great. You bet.