Episode 22 | How to 10x Your Business in Just 2 Years

In Episode 22 of the Disciplined to Win podcast, hosts Nick Subich and Nick Frazetta dive into a powerful conversation about how to 10x your business in just two years. Drawing from their own experiences in scaling successful ventures, they share practical strategies, mindset shifts, and key disciplines that every entrepreneur can apply. Whether you're just starting out or looking to take your business to the next level, this episode is packed with actionable insights to fuel your growth and success. Tune in and learn how to supercharge your business and create exponential results!

Transcript

All right. Welcome. We're back with discipline to win episode 22. Today we're going to talk about how to 10 X your business. Yes, I said 10 X your business in just two years. Make sure you like, subscribe, Follow

to make sure you're not lost in hearing about the whole process and how to take your life to the next level.

 (Music)

Today we're going to talk about how to 10X your business in just two years. We really want to reframe your mindset for you small business owners out there that you can do more than 5, 10, 15% growth per year in your business and that it is possible to unleash 10X type growth in just two years. Nick, do you want to sort of set the stage on, I mean we really haven't even known each other that much longer than two years. We've known each other about three years at this point. Do you want to talk through about where we were two years, where we were today and then we can talk about how it's possible to get there. Yeah, totally. So it was, I think it was six of us, six people in the organization total including the two of us. So it was the two of us, four other individuals.

We were doing one three, one four in revenue I think when I first joined you even before we partnered.

And then today we'll sit doing 12 plus million in revenue. So we've done a 10X from a revenue standpoint in two years. And then from a people standpoint we've almost 10X as well. We started at six and we have 50 employees as it stands today. So yeah, I mean a lot to get into today in terms of how we did that.

But I guess to start, and we've told the story a little bit before, but when you were about three or four years ago you saw a little bit of stagnant growth in the company where you only grew about 10%. Talk a little bit about that and what I guess changed your mindset to start ramping up the growth that we've had. It was my first year of owning the business. We grew by 400% in one year, went from $300,000 in revenue to $1.2 million in revenue. And I'm like, this is awesome. I'm just going to do this again this year with the same people, with me doing the same thing and then did the same, pretty much the same revenue number again in year two of owning the business. And when we met we were in the middle of year two, like towards the end of year two. We were about to do the same level. And whenever we ended up getting introduced is when I had the epiphany of why we met is because I realized that I was doing the exact same thing and I was purely working 100% during the day in the business and then I was trying to work on the business only in the evenings, night and the weekends. And I realized that that was the main reason that we weren't growing at a rapid scale anymore. Because before I owned the business, the business was not optimized to its fullest extent of the people that we had. And because I didn't own it, I obviously couldn't control that. So I spent 18 months getting the business to absolute max output of the people that we had in the building. And then it was like, okay, we're at max, if we want to push it farther, we're going to need to do A, something different and B, get a lot more people in house.

And I think that a lot of, and to do that, you obviously have to spend money. And I think that a lot of business owners never scale because they view the income, if they're a solo entrepreneur, if they're a sole proprietor, they view the income as their money, not the business's money. So if they're going to hire somebody else to grow their business, they view it as taking food off their table. And I think that that is the sole thing that they never scale and they grow 5, 10% a year just because they can't spend the money to actually invest in the people that you need in your organization to continue to grow. And with me, that was never an issue.



 Obviously in your 20s, like, we're going to put as much back into the business as we can just to continue growing and growing. And I had that epiphany that we're not going to grow nearly the fat, the scale that I want to if we do the same thing, if I'm in meetings all day, and then getting you in the door was sort of step one of being able to double my output because I immediately wanted you to learn everything I did. And I wanted us to be able to do, be like, you know, irreplaceable, be able to do the same thing as each other. And that alone took us, you know, really in our first year, even before you were a partner, that took us another, you know, 40% growth of just like, basically me and you being able to like maximize both of our output.

And then though together, we realized that it was going to take so much more than just another high output person to get to where we wanted to go. Because our first year together, like I said, we went from what, like one, two to one, five or one, two to one six. So it was like a 35% growth in that first year together. So I guess from your perspective, and I'm sure I would agree with you, but it was realizing that the quickest way to scale was not going to be 100% organic, but it was going to be to go out and buy other established businesses in our industry, that we were going to be able to quickly put our absorb into our culture, hire people or appoint people that were already an existing in our ecosystem into those enterprises and scale out rapidly that way. Would you agree that we sort of realized that in January of 23? Yeah, if you have no money, which we didn't like from a capital standpoint, I put no money into the deal. Yeah, capital. We had no money. So this is a different story. You can turn extra business in a lot of different ways if you have a lot of capital at your disposal, way easier and you can get higher level people to start. Like that wasn't the case for us. Like we can only pay people pretty low wage. Like we were getting people that didn't really have that much experience and we're focusing on developing them, which for anybody starting out, they have to do that. And that's like a key component. You have to bring people in that you can see that they have a fire in their eyes. They may not have the experience, but they at least have the fire and they have the motivation to want to learn and to want to develop. And you don't actually have to pay them that much at the beginning, but you can go ahead and like offer a ton of growth opportunity, which we've done for so many people within our organization, starting from basically ground zero. But you have to focus on that development of people aside from that whole thing. We realized, yeah, it was about the end of the first year that we were working together. The only way we're going to do this is through like merger and acquisition. And that's then when we went like full steam ahead and got as much capital as possible to go out and do as many deals as possible. And we almost like from that point drew 800 percent in one year because we realized like nobody else is going to do this. Interest rates were high. The market was not great. Like all everyone else was kind of like sitting back and not being aggressive. And we took the opposite approach and we're like, it doesn't matter that debt's 10 percent or 11 percent. Like we'll go out and get any deal and we'll execute on that. What you also have to do is if you're going to wait until you are 100 percent sure that you were able to go and complete a transaction, like everything's lined up, like if you're going to wait to like, OK, I need to have all of the people I need. I need to have all of the money. I need to have all of the logistics figured out. I need to have the space figured out. You'll never get a deal done because you're just going to kill yourself with trying to prepare for every possible outcome before you actually even know exactly what you're going to need to where as when you're first getting into M&A, you need to get a deal before you're even going to be able to get money. Like if you call up a bank and say, hey, I want to borrow a million dollars because I want to go buy a business, they're going to say what business? And then you're going to say, I don't know. And they're going to be like, well, come back when you have a deal. So you're not even going to really know if you can get money until you bring the bank a deal because it's the deal that the bank's lending. They're not like giving you the money. They're giving you the money to give away immediately to whoever's selling you the business. So if you're looking to get into M&A in any industry, any small business I talk to, I try to encourage them to go and buy another business in their industry because that's the best way to scale in my opinion. But you need to get the deal first and then go to anybody that will pick up the phone that lends money and just find a way to get the funds for your first deal. And if nobody will even lend you the money, there's still a chance you can convince the seller to basically let them lend you the money and you just pay them a monthly payment for a set period of time. We've done a ton of deals like that. And we did an episode on on creative financing and we talked a lot about that. But so like go get the deal first. You don't even need to have anything else figured out. You need to build a relationship with somebody enough that you can convince them that you are able to handle adversity. You're going to be able to solve problems and you are like honest, trustworthy person that's hardworking and going to figure out a way to get this thing to close. Yeah. And I think too, when you're doing deals at the beginning, like you have to realize it might not line up with your perfect business model. So whatever industry that you're in, you may like come across a business and it may not be the most ideal purchase or it may not be like perfect in your world to be like, oh, I don't know if like the ops are going to integrate or I don't know the way that they do things a little bit different. Like you can't be picky at the beginning. Like if you are trying to rapidly grow, you need to go do it and then you will figure it out on the back end in terms of like how it's going to work with your existing business, how you're going to continue to scale your operations so that you can take on this additional work. How are you going to get the additional people? But like to your point, you have to get the deal and you have to just make it work. Like our first be picky in the beginning, our first deal was was not easy. Like essentially we were traveling like really, really far consistently in the one selling. Yeah. In the meetings, like not even close to where like our operations were like geographically, it didn't make any sense. Anyone who came across it too was like, well, why are you doing a deal that is six hours away from like where you actually operate business? It's like, well, because we that's the only way that we had to get the first one. And then once we got the first one, there was many connections that we made through different lending organizations, different higher level entities that helped facilitate these deals that then led us to the multitude of other deals that we did. And now we're in a stable position to where like we can pick and choose the people that we work with and the deals that we do and the ones that work with our business, the ones that don't. That's another component of it is like we've done bad deals like if you're going to go into M&A, like you're not going to do perfect deals every single time. You don't know what you don't know. No idea. And we did a lot of deals that we thought like, oh, this might be a great deal. And then it's turned out to look back now. It's like a nightmare deal. Yeah, like it was a terrible deal. But I would never say like, oh, I wish we never did that. It's so great that we did that because ultimately, too, when you're at the beginning and the scale is smaller, the dollar amount is smaller. So you have more room for error. Now, when you start getting into like eight figure size deals, even up to nine figure size deals on the line, like it's way, way different ballgame that you're playing. Because originally you're doing we're doing deals where there's really not that many employees involved. They don't really run a business. It's a mom and pop shop. But then you start doing deals with entities that like have their own staff. They have their own culture in place. They have all these different operating systems. Integrating that becomes a way, way bigger, bigger problem, like way bigger thing to solve. And when you have lenders involved, you can't fail. Yeah, because then your life would just you'd have to start all over. Yeah. And you have to start all over. But I think so. Maybe that's like a good starting point for people that are wanting to get into this is like they should start small. Yeah. Before you go and literally put your house, your net worth as a guarantee against something like start small before like to where you might not even need a bank. Yeah, maybe I think like the first couple that we did were pretty small. We didn't have we didn't need that much lending.



 But again, if you're trying to do what we did in 10 extra business in two years, you got to go out and tackle a big boy deal. And we the deal that we kind of launched us to the next level, we used to recognize like you're not going to be ready to take on that deal from an infrastructure standpoint or a people standpoint or even a capital standpoint living a week at a time. Yeah, it was literally like I would say for.



 Nine months every day, it's just like how do we get to tomorrow and how do we get to next week? You're never going to know what the end looks like. Like you can you want to try to manifest what the end outcome looks like. But you're never if you try to figure out every possible step to get there, you'll never actually get there because you're just too far into the weeds and trying to overthink anything. You just got to figure out how do I continue progress and like continue moving forward, even just a couple yards every day and just you just put your head down and work through it. I think so many people just get intimidated by all of the things that they don't even know. They're afraid to start. But yeah, it was literally the big deal that took us to the next level was just a dog fight the whole way through. But it honestly tested us and enabled us to give us the confidence that we know we can take anything down. Yeah. And it's there's something to be said about that from a standpoint of like you have to just totally accept that you might run it to zero. Yeah, like you really might like we were really fortunate that yeah, we were really fortunate we're on that line of like running it to zero. And again, nothing is ever guaranteed. Like tomorrow is never guaranteed. Something could happen in our business and it could run to zero. And I never worry about that because we we know the steps like we know the plan in place. We would just like start over and do it again. So you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable with knowing that yeah, you might run it to zero. Like you might blow up your whole life. Like you might for a set period of time like be living on nothing. Go right back to square one with all the work that you put in and you have to own that and be able to sleep at night every single day. Because if you go into that space, you start taking on mass amounts of debt and you start like doing these type of deals. That's the risk that you're taking on. So like I guess before you get into any type of deal, know that you can accept that or else you'll drive yourself crazy. Yeah, it's not for everyone. Like I go to sleep sound every single night because there's I know that we've put the work in and we've done the right things and we've worked hard to make sure that things work out right. And if you're not comfortable with that or you don't feel that you're there as a person, then like maybe that like rapid growth isn't for you right now. Maybe you need to do a little bit internal development and like learn about like what are you actually trying to do with your business? But for people like us who are like, you know what, I want to get to the next level. I want to take that risk. I want to take that jump. Like that's what you have to accept and you have to be comfortable with that. It's war a lot of times to where like you also can't be naive to thinking whatever industry you're in that everyone is going to help you and that it's going to be sunshine the whole way. It's a lot of dark days, a lot of just having to just deal like take the punches, take the hits and just continue on and lick your chops and move on to the next thing. But I think that is step the first place anyone looking to 10 X their business should look is how do they buy another business in whatever they do? Because boom, now you've got another most likely you've got another location. Most likely you probably have more people and most likely you have at least 50 to 100 percent more revenue immediately that you can use to. Now you have a little more scale, could hire a couple more people and then look for the next deal. Or now you have the additional cash flow. You can invest more in marketing like all those things compound the larger you get. We deal with a lot of people and you know sort of blue more blue collar industries where they say, oh, I don't want more payroll or I don't want more liability insurance or all these different things. And that's why they just you see their business the same size for 45 years because I think it all like we said in the beginning, it comes down to you have to spend more money if we're even going to remotely scale. You obviously can't keep the same cost and expect 10 times the revenue or expenses for sure of 10 X.



 That's there's no doubt about that. Our expenses have for sure 10 X. So that's just part of it. You've got the old saying you got to spend money to make money. But I would say going now to where obviously you're doing hopefully some types of merger and acquisition deals in your industry, what comes with that? And I think it goes into what you were talking about of the mindset of making sure that you can stomach the risk that you're going to take to do all of that. You also have to frame your mindset around things you're going to accept or not accept because to get to 1000% growth in a short period of time, you can't accept mediocrity from anybody like now you're getting into like we talked about in the beginning, you sort of take whatever employees you could get. But to get to a 10 times larger business, you get to a point where you can't accept people that are just going to mess things up a million times and just say, Oh, that's so and so, you know, that's just what they do. What comes with them? You can't accept those things. So like you said, you have to develop your team, which is always part of it. Or you develop your team plus a combination of hiring higher level talent from outside the organization. And I think that a lot of people also struggle with all of the growing pains that come with that entire process of finding talent, developing your team to where this all brings it down to if you're going to 10 X your business, you need a leader in the organization.



 And you're I'm a firm believer that leadership is something that can be learned. But I'd say 75% of it is natural, just confidence and belief in yourself that you have to have to be a leader. So if that's you, awesome. But you now got to do everything that you're telling your people to do and like be that person. And if not, like you've really got to get a leader in the organization. We had someone who was a guest on our podcast and they talked about they knew they weren't a leader. And they just wanted to be like the friend to everybody. They didn't really didn't want to be the person working a million hours. So they brought somebody into the business from an equity standpoint that was a leader that could be there every day, which like, you know, we obviously don't align with that. But if that's how you're going to scale your business and at least you're like cognizant enough to know that you're not that guy and you need somebody that is that guy. That is a way. That's a way. Like they've done a great job building out their business. Like it's scaling like crazy. So I think awareness, having business IQ and business awareness is a big part of it also and being aware of what you are, what you aren't and knowing all of the different attributes of types of people in your organization. So that type of really leadership development and being more than just a boss or a manager, I think, is a huge part of that because the things that come with the demands and not accepting mediocrity.



 And the amount of output it takes to grow that quickly. It's an extreme level of stress on your team. And like we've, I feel like we've pushed our team to the point of breaking like a bunch of times. And if you're not setting the example and putting out and being that guy, I think that you could also like lose your whole team in the process. So I think that's something that people have to be cognizant of also of just like if you're going to put high demands and high stress, you like you better damn well be showing that like you're like going through that and that you're capable of the same thing. Yeah, like your culture. I mean, our culture was super important to growing as quickly as we did because if you don't have a strong culture, that's going to kill you.



 You can't have people that leave at times where like you really, really need to buckle down and get things done because they don't believe in the overall mission. They have to believe in the people that are leading them and the people that see the vision and know like, hey, this is what we're trying to do because it's going to create more opportunity for everybody else. And it's going to impact the world in some way, shape or form that is a lot better and with a lot more people because that's all size and scale businesses, the largest businesses in the world. They impact more people in a positive way. That's why they are the size that they are.



 But I think another thing, like another component that we haven't really talked about is once you do start to get successful in the merger and acquisition space, the secondary part that comes of it that if you do it correctly, that a lot of people don't even think about. They just think like, I'm going to acquire this business and then like, I'm just going to take over that business and it's just going to be that fixated business. We've seen with almost every single acquisition that we've done, if you come in and you take whatever that business was and your value out of your core business was better than the one that they had, like your service model was better, your product was better, whatever it was, and you brought them into you, the amount of organic growth that you see in a very short period of time is incredible. And you don't pay for that. And you don't pay for that. And that's what like the back end, a lot of people do acquisition. They're like, oh, well, what if I lose the customers or like, what if because it's a new name, they're not going to like me where we know that our service model and our product and our deliverables are better than anybody else in our space. So when we do an acquisition, we're already thinking in our mind, well, yeah, we're definitely going to get an extra 15 to 20 percent of organic growth just because we know what they were doing with subpar compared to what you are doing. So like if you can establish that you have a better service model and you like you have worked that again, it just comes from a ton of hard work and a ton of figuring things out and doing things wrong and learning from it. But if you can establish that and you know that whatever your industry is, you can go into a mom and pop shop and provide like way more value to the clients or customers or people that buy from that specific business. You can really expect some serious organic growth. And we've seen it pretty much across every single one of our acquisitions that we've done. And that's a that's something that's really, really powerful because it's usually a immediate impact. Like it doesn't take that long either. Yeah. And and what I'll say is the number one source of growth after any type of acquisition is word of mouth. Like if you come in and you do a really good job, not even just from the clients that are existing, but just in the community, we've seen so many communities that we've seen. We've gone into where people aren't even clients of ours, but they're talking about our firm about how great of a job that we do or the great team that we have or all this, the service model that's super unique. Like you'll be amazed that when you come in, you do an exceptional job. People will talk about that because unfortunately, in this world, less and less people are doing an exceptional job just due to laziness, complacency, remote work. So when you come in, you're in person, you give them that firm handshake, look them in the eye, you provide them a great service. People are going to talk about that. And that's just another component that I mean, if we didn't have that, we wouldn't be at this 10 X in two years number that we've we've done. So that's something if you're looking to go into acquisition after you get through the first part of like finding deals, accepting the risk, all of that stuff. Your second part is why is our service model is why is our product better than who we're acquiring? And if it's not, you need to establish that it needs to be at least as good. It cannot be worse, but establish that and then go in with the thought of like, you know what, I'm going to take this business and I'm going to double the size of it in two years because I know what we're providing is better and we can go impact more people in that community of wherever that business is. 100%. I think the last thing I want to touch on that you cannot 10 X your business in two years or probably ever without is pure just belief and just knowing that you'll just make it happen. There's never we've had.



 I mean, we talk on the phone every single day, so I would say that we've had probably in a three year period, couple thousand conversations. And I don't think that out of either of our mouth, we've ever said the words we can't or like, you know, not going to happen can't do it will never happen any like we've never spoken those words. Everything is always okay, we've hit this roadblock. Let's try to figure out our next three moves that we can maneuver to get to the next level or get to the next point or pivot like, okay, we tried this like didn't work there. We're now going to pivot to this to try to move forward. There's never like, yeah, just like doesn't work or we can't do it or like we like, you know, failed and we're just going to stop like we never stop. We never say we can't. And you have to have that belief that no matter what you will find a way and we've done a bunch of transformative things in our business. And time and time again, we don't know how we're going to get to the end, but we have belief in ourselves that we will find a way and we know we'll do whatever it takes. And if you're that type of person, I believe that you can get there with limited resources like you will like you will just earn it basically like I know that we like like you said we put in the work to where if you put in the work long enough, it's just gonna work out and you got to believe that that's going to happen and it's never not for us. Yeah, we've always found a way we've always made it happen. We've always made it work because we are just optimists and believe that no matter what we'll get there. And six years in business now and that's just always worked through a bunch of crazy shit along the way. Yeah, so I think that that is the biggest thing that it will never happen if you don't believe in yourself and if you don't have the confidence in yourself. So that's something that I think people need to do a gut check, like probably from the very beginning and like I don't think it's possible without that. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And other people can have confidence in you, but at the end of the day, if you don't have it yourself, it's...



 It doesn't matter. Right. Yeah, totally doesn't matter. But that's all that I have. I think everything that we've talked about, it goes back to being at the very beginning. You got to believe in yourself and you got to be willing to take on mass amounts of risk and then do mass amounts of work, which is what we talk about in every single episode of like there is no shortcut. I wish you could sit up here and like give a shortcut of like how this works and it's a lot easier. Unfortunately, it's really hard. To this day, like we're ending our days and we're like, wow, I feel like we just got beat up today. Yeah, and that doesn't change. Unfortunately, we haven't experienced it yet. But anybody who is scaling a business, no matter what industry that you're in, would love to speak to you. Comment below, reach out to us. We love talking to other business owners. And who knows, there's a possibility that we could work together in the future. We've done it before.



 So yeah, that's kind of where we're at. And we'd love to hear your story and even help you grow if you're looking to take that next step. For sure. Until next time, stay disciplined.

 (Music)