The Content Capitalists
Is content creation a waste of time and money?
Instead of theorizing, I ask my clients and others like them how they use content in their $1m to $600m /yr businesses.
Skip blogs and "best practices" - Instead, hear it straight from the practitioners of today.
There are as many ways to make a million dollars with content as there are people doing it.
The Content Capitalists
Systems that Grow to $1M | Ernesto Mandowsky
Most business owners aren’t even scratching the surface of what tech can do.
In this episode, Ernesto Mandowsky unpacks how simple systems can turn your small business into a million-dollar machine!
Ernesto, Founder of Million-Dollar Machine (MDM), coaches service-based businesses to stop running on chaos and start building systems that generate 7-figure revenue.
We also talk about why business owners need to stop ignoring tech and start using it to scale faster and smarter. How to automate the daily grind and focus on growth The power of systems to create consistent, predictable revenue Why most business owners are underusing tech and how to fix that
Want a business that runs itself and scales to a million dollars?
Hit play now.
Follow Ernesto Mandowsky at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernestomandowsky/
https://www.themilliondollarmachine.com/
https://www.instagram.com/mdm.ernesto/
https://web.facebook.com/emandowsky
Follow Ken Okazaki at:
https://www.instagram.com/kenokazaki/
https://www.youtube.com/c/KenOkazaki
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-content-capitalists-with-ken-okazaki/id1634328251
https://open.spotify.com/show/09IzKghscecbI7jPDVBJTw
Ernesto: Most of humanity barely taps into technology and its potential, whether it's AI or NFTs or the next big trend, people listening, hop in, really take time to understand how these tools work and how they can change your life. Because that is going to be one of the most highly leveraged activities. The Content Capitalists Podcast.
Ken Okazaki: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Content Capitalist podcast. Now I've got an expert with me. His name is Ernesto. He helps businesses with systems and integrations, and that's what he says he's the best in the world at. We're going to unpack a lot of that. Now, when someone is helping you with systems and integrations, you want to know that you can trust them a thousand percent to not just tell you all the details, but also make sure that I'm omitting things that are important.
We're going to talk about that in just a little bit.
Ernesto, welcome to the show.
Ernesto: Thank you, Ken. I'm super excited to be here.
Ken Okazaki: Glad to have you here too. Now Ernesto, you've been helping businesses. You've been. working on your own business for some time. Could you give us a background of who it is you help? How does he help them? And what kind of transformation you help take businesses to? If we were to look at it as you come into, you know, the situation that they're in where do you take them and how do they end up?
what's the ideal result you're trying to get them to?
Ernesto: So many small businesses struggle with scaling. It's a big word. It's complex. Sometimes it's very overwhelming. What we do at MDM is we turn small businesses into million dollar machines. And we do that with systems integration. We do that with connecting your technology, your tactics, which is how you do things, and your team, which is your people.
Making sure that those three things are aligned so that you can produce. seven figures in revenue on a recurring basis with predictability and with a high level of confidence.
Ken Okazaki: Got it. And that sounds like a lot of complexity and a lot of things that, you know, I think if I were to think about how can I integrate all these things, then like, I definitely want somebody who's done it a few times before to walk me through that.
How did you get into this? Were you always a kind of a nerdy, techie kind of person growing up?
Ernesto: I definitely was, uh, the only plot twist was that I wanted to own six restaurants. That's what catalyzed my whole journey. I wanted to get into hospitality at a young age. And when I went to college, I studied systems engineering. So I always had the question of how do I connect systems engineering and hospitality? And it was 2012. And I just finished taking a database programming class. And I remember saying, huh, maybe, maybe we can start keeping track of guests at restaurants and what they like to eat. You know, we could start to understand what their preferences were. This was way before toast, way before Uber Eats, way before all the technology boon, way before Instagram and food was crazy.
Uh, but I had that dream. I worked with a nightclub one summer, developed a CRM for them, and I said, this is it. I want to live at the intersection of restaurants and hospitality. So for the rest, for the next 10 years, I worked across different companies, always being the person who was working with the restaurant owners and the management teams, connecting the inventory system with the sales system, with the scheduling system, so that if anyone ever had a question, you just looked at the system and it just told you in 30 seconds or less. Uh, you don't have to spend hours on hours like putting together an update for, you know, for anyone.
Ken Okazaki: So what I'm hearing is that when you came in, there was a lot of manual work, a lot of, you know, like, you know, post it notes here and there and stuff kind of being done by memory and the result after working with you is that there is a string of events tied together when action A or trigger A happens, then all the things that need to happen to take that to.
The ideal outcome, you kind of automate and connect everything. Isn't that right?
Ernesto: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Chefs use clipboards to count their orders, but entrepreneurs of today, they use the clipboard on their Apple Notes or their Trello boards. what we do is we help automate a lot of the processes, so when they have an idea and they put the idea somewhere, it goes where it needs to go, the person needs to get informed of that idea, and take action, whether it's this podcast, for example, or when you sign on a new client, or when you're off boarding a new client. Yeah. Got it. So were you creating systems that were deployed across like franchise or a chain, or was it like individual restaurants, one by one? So the first restaurant group that I worked at was, individual one by one. It was eight different concepts. We were rolling everything up into one reporting tool. Eventually, I worked at a family owned group that had 26 restaurants. And we just kind of rolled everything up into one main system. And, you know, when I transitioned into running my own company, small businesses just the same.
Ken Okazaki: They all needed. a place where they could bring all of their digital information into. And so that's what I have specialized in helping them achieve. Got it. You know, it's interesting so many people, when they think about, uh, People who aren't entrepreneurs but many people who think I want to start a business. I, I'm finding that they many times gravitate toward a restaurant. You know historically restaurants have had razor thin, you know, profit margins and are tough to manage.
Ernesto: Have you found that to be true and why do you think people gravitate toward that? I think there's an allure behind restaurants. I think people like the mystique or the experience of being the host that can go from dinner table to dinner table to check in with the guests. profit margins are not all that high, but for small businesses, they're not all that high either. they start to really scale, I think there's a lot to learn.
Ken Okazaki: I mean, everything in the small business world can be learned from restaurants in terms of like, how do you really create a five star experience for a guest? So that's why now in my work through MDM, we teach these concepts of project management and checklists and processes that like we use the stories from the restaurants because everyone knows what a restaurant is, everyone's eaten out, everyone knows what that looks like and feels like, so they can connect to that story a lot more easily. Got it. So Ernesto, right now, you told us a bit about how you got started, restaurants and things like that. And I believe that, you know, you've expanded to businesses in general.
Ernesto: what kind of businesses do you help now and what kind of transformation are you seeing? So it's primary service businesses, so software development shops, coaches, consultants, mastermind leaders. Uh, organizational trainers, anyone who is in a service. Sure, we have some product clients, but it's mainly service. Because delivering a service is a complex activity. It does require lots of movie pieces, lots of, taking things from here, putting it there, sending this email, following up, collecting this data.
Ken Okazaki: And so it has been the biggest opportunity to show people, like, how do you use tools like Zapier? or a tally or a notion to just streamline all this information, get it in one place. Yeah. So let me get this straight. You've got, uh, well, first of all, I'm glad you mentioned coaches because I've got a lot of coaches who listen and on this podcast, and, uh, I think probably 60 percent of the people I've interviewed so far, you know, starting with my own clients. We're coaches, you know, and that's, that's also quite appealing to people because they have this image that, you know, you're this one man show and you could earn a million dollars a year and, and things like that.
But a lot of people, what they don't see is that a lot of coaches, they spike and then they crash. And a lot of times, I believe. It's got to do with them not having the systems in place so that they can maintain momentum as they pick it up.
Ernesto: you give us some examples of coaching clients and the kind of mistakes you saw them make and how you were able to fix those? Sure, so Hugh is one of my favorite clients that I worked with and continue to work with. Hugh's a coach, he has a coach, and when we started working together, it was like the typical, hey, you know, we have ten, you know, ten sessions, and he comes to the session, And maybe 30 to 50 percent of the time is in teaching concepts. So, what we did was we took all of his concepts, we turned it into a course, and we turned his manual delivery, his manual service, into a consistent, streamlined course that supported his coaching. So now, he could have the same information delivered to the client, he now can be a lot more present with his clients, knowing that they at least understand some baseline concepts that they can connect on.
And he now feels the confidence, like, okay, whether I have 3 clients or 15 clients, like, I'm not going to overwhelm myself or burn myself out by having to repeat myself and teach the same material over and over. Now he has a course. Now that course is being delivered via email on a drip basis to match the cadence.
Ken Okazaki: of his program. So we have all these other aspects outside of the session as they say in the coaching world, the magic happens outside of the session, not necessarily inside the session. We have all these things happening outside the session to reinforce whatever is happening in the session. Coaches can serve their clients a lot more deeply and the clients can experience. Deeper transformations, it can experience deeper insights, and everyone is winning. Got it. Got it. so now, could you, do you have any idea what the scale of his business was before you started working with him and, how it is going now? Well, we started working together when he was just getting started, and now he's on zero, basically. And, you know, multi six figure trajectory now, where he has coaching, he has masterminds, he has events, and it all started based off that, that core curriculum that we were able to build on top of. Got it. Got it.
And also talk to me about what really lights you up about this. I know when I was growing up, I was obsessed with Lego. And I, but it was only the Legos that had systems in them, you know, technic Legos, you know, the ones with the gears and the
Ernesto: Yeah, the robots.
Ken Okazaki: hinges. Yeah, so the ones that had some kind of mechanical movement and I love that, you know, I always try to figure out how to make them a little bit more interesting and attach more, you know, functions to them.
Ernesto: That lit me up and I think that in a sense that Kind of fueled my inspiration and my, creativity in business. You know, how can we, you know, get these things to work together really well, but what is it for you? why do you do it? What makes it exciting for you? And I was always curious about how things worked.
Ken Okazaki: Yeah, we're the kind of person who would, you know, like your mom would come home and you've taken apart the radio and it's all over the place.
Ernesto: I also was a Lego builder actually. I was a Lego builder and I, and I liked to
Ken Okazaki: tell me about that.
Ernesto: So I always, I always loved that idea of, putting together meals without using the recipes, kind of seeing how could I combine different ingredients to create something new, create a new taste, create a new, sensation in your mouth, the crunch, just these different, these different sensations, these different experiences.
And so I think when I Discovered tools like Zapier, all these technology tools. These all became different vehicles to self express in the way that the business or the process needed to flow. So there's so many different, I mean, there's infinite ways to customize this. There's so many ways you could put your Lego pieces together.
So what I, it was kind of be like a little playground for me. playing in the, in the zap sandbox. And then through that play, seeing how excited customers get when they see, how things are either just happening for them or when they feel the sense of relief, because all of their tags in their CRM are like perfectly manicured and clean.
Ken Okazaki: It,it just, it, it's, it's really great to see how like this play can light other people up. Got it. You know,I have this beliefand it's, it's something I created in my own mind and it's a mental model that helps me to, organize things in my business when I, when they need it. I, you know how puzzles are, or even Lego pieces. There isA perfect version, which is what's on the box and what the manual will get you to, right?
But with businesses, there is no perfect vision. Everything is a moving, living thing. And no matter what stage it's at because of externalities, things will continue to change no matter what. So there is no finish. But then again, when I go into a project that looks messy, sometimes the thing that helps me is I adopt the belief that there is a theoretical finish and I have to find that version and get it there.
And then I'll take a break once I believe I've got it to the theoretical, you know, like the last piece of the puzzle and put it. And that visual model of that last piece going in, it's the most satisfying thing. And it's like that rush that I, that you live for when you're like, yes, done. And then I just forget, you just got to block out the fact that it's about to get messed up again because of humans and time and externalities, but that, uh, it's a temporary rush.
And then it gets me to that, that, you know, that mini high. And I'm like, great, let's do the next thing. And I got to look at each thing as, you know, a block of time or a separate project. And sometimes you look at a business and you're like, I don't know how the heck I'm going to, you know, transform this thing.
Cause I got a feeling a lot of entrepreneurs. Look at their systems in their business or their lack of systems in their business, and it just looks like spaghetti. they have no idea where to start or where it can go. And how do you help them to get into that? To agree to work with you, number one, and to give them the vision for what's possible so that they want to commit and to invest with you.
Ernesto: Thank you for the question. That's a great question. Um,
I framed the conversation with what I call the growth scorecard.
simple scorecard that has six numbers on there. And with those six numbers, I can determine a revenue target. So those six numbers are, what is your average price per client? How many clients do you want to work with? When you multiply those two together, you get total revenue. When you backpedal to. The third number is your conversion rate. So of the percent of people that you meet with, how many of them say, yes, I want to work with you, which brings you to the number of meetings that you need to have with people. And the last two numbers is what percent of your email list are interested in booking a call with you.
And the final number is your email list. So with these six numbers, I basically have them map out. their top line revenue. So when I asked them where they are today to where they want to go, I just asked them, which of these six numbers are you going to change in order to get to where you want to go? And so maybe they'll say, Oh, I want to, I want to double the number of clients that I'm working with. And so I'll say, okay, well, how are you going to do that? Or what happens when, like, what happens when you double the amount of clients that you want to work with? And they'll say, well, I'll make twice as much money.
I'll say, yeah, but what about the delivery? Will you deliver? Can you deliver? And that's when they start to, all the skeletons start to come out. Like, no, I don't think so. Why? Why can't you deliver? and all the reasons that they list is the first things that we start to work on. My processes are broken.
Ken Okazaki: Yeah, that's where you start to take the conversation. That's really cool. So you're setting the theoretical goal first, and if you went in there and asked them, you know, what are the problems in your business, they could pull out any random thing, and you don't know if it's the real problem. But when you tell them, hey, this is the goal, and you draw the line, then it's very clear to them what it is, And then he could just like pull out the map and draw a bunch of red x's, dig here, dig here, dig here, dig here, And then the path is clear to get there.
So that's, that's very clever. I like that.
I'm actually kind of curious, from you, you know, this podcast is called Content Capitalists. Content Capitalists. And how I teach things, I put marketing last, not like the last priority, but the last thing to optimize. First is, you must, like, nail your transformation. You must be a master of delivering the thing that you need to do. When you become a master, you master the art of connecting and referrals and sales and rolling people in. And then when that is clear, Then you, get to marketing. ' cause if you're clear on delivery, on conversion, then you get to content. how do you see that? 'cause a lot of people, will say like, oh, I need to grow my email list, or I need to get a bigger impression count, or I need to do all this stuff. So then I say, okay, well you can do all of that. And then when 50 leads show up on your doorstep, what's gonna happen? So I'm curious to hear your perspective. So I think that what you're saying is 100 percent correct. You know, you got to have the systems and the delivery in place. Now the difference with, How I do things is I have a threshold for what kind of clients I can take on. So I am actually, today we are, uh, August 23rd in Japan, USB 22nd. Sounds like you're in the States.
in about a week, I'm about to launch a new coaching program, uh, about, getting coaches, marketing up and running. But in my agency, we only take people who are at a certain threshold. Uh, there's a few things we look at. Number one, they got to be doing about 30 percent conversions on sales appointments.
Uh, number two, they've got to have an offer that's bringing in, I think at the very lowest, we have 10, 000per sale, in terms of cash value. And a lot of them are in the, you know, some are even in the six figure range per client acquisition, right? and they have to have team and, uh, a product that they've been selling for some time. So once they come into the agency as a client, then we know that they've got already worked out the kinks in the system. They've got, uh, people who can run the systems and they're not going to be giving me a call saying, Hey, Ken, how do I, you know, use Zoom or something like that? You know, that's all those things.
I mean, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but they've got the basics down. So they look at the agency as a viable partner to help them accelerate. And that works really well. Now with the coaching program, I actually built this to fix a couple of problems that we're having in the agency.
And that is that a lot of people come in without brand clarity.
And then what they're doing is because they're paying us, so technically we're working for them, but they're the ones who came to us because they don't have strategy and they're not getting the leads and sales on social media. And sometimes they're still trying to micromanage us and we're like, no, we don't.
I think that it's a good idea to create this kind of content or in this volume. And we had enough of these conversations where I decided, you know what, I want to fix this problem upstream and I, I'm launching a coaching program. Now this is going to be a little bit opposite. I'm going to play the devil's advocate to you here.
Any coaching program is, and I've done coaching programs in the past, And one of the biggest reasons why people who come through don't get the results they're looking for is that, is one thing, failure to launch. So I'm going through teaching them everything about branding, about positioning, about the tech, about shooting video, and making sure that everybody's comfortable and then they go and shoot their videos.
They build their landing pages, their, you know, their automations. A lot of people never get there because their version of perfect of where they want to be is pegged to some person who's been doing it for 10 years, who is, you know, a mega success story. And then they look at their version. It's like, Oh, I'm just not good enough.
I'm going to keep trying to improve. Therefore, I can't launch. So failure to launch is the bottleneck in most cases. So with this next coaching program. I flip the script, they enroll, we build, we script out their ads for them, we build their first ad set, we launch on week two, and I told, I'm going to be very transparent, I don't care if you understand what's going on, it's going to be your face, and we're going to launch your ads, and that's going to happen by week two, by week three, all of the marketing and messaging scripts will be done for you, of course there's going to be inputs from them, And now we're going to show them exactly what to be saying and what to be writing and messaging the people that come in as leads.
And then by week four, organic content has already been scripted, shot, edited, and is going out to the social media. Now, we go on and on, and then there's going to be the video sales letter. is more things, but we front load this experience so that all the stuff that is, you know, getting that flywheel speeding up, that's done for them at the beginning.
And then afterwards we teach some theory, how to do it, how you can make it better. And then they're going to create the next one and the next one, the next one. Because I don't believe that people learn faster by sitting in the classroom. I believe that. You learn faster when you're in momentum. You can't steer a parked car.
You can't correct or improve on something that doesn't exist yet. And I kind of, I use the analogy, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna strap a bacon to your belt and I'm gonna set a bear on you. So then you're gonna learn to run really freaking fast. and that's that accelerated learning now they're being coached and in this coaching environment with me. There'll be safeguards to make sure nothing goes too crazy. You know, we're going to put limits on their ad budget and things like that. So that worst case scenario, they'll lose, you know, a thousand bucks a month. But I wouldn't say that's lost. I would say that's going to be an investment in their learning.
Just like, exactly. So I think there's two sides of the coin, building it all and then going, I think if there, if you have a lot at risk, then you should go that route. And like, if your, if your business depends on it, like that's your only source. But generally I ask. the people who come into my coaching program, like, if you don't make money by Thursday, then are you going to get evicted?
Ernesto: Or are we adding an additional revenue stream on top of your email, on top of your referrals, on top of the, you know, everything else you're doing, uh, maybe LinkedIn or, you know, email. And now we're going to hit social media or Yannick. So those are the kind of people we're looking for. The people who who don't need me necessarily. The ones who pay me for speed to get there faster. Once who could have figured it out, but they're just like, Hey, Ken. Well, I I'd say that people, when they, I pick this up from my mentor, when people hire me, they're buying speed is what they're buying. They're smart. They'll get there anyway. But the people who can't, you know, fight their way out of a paper bag, that's the analogy goes, those are the ones who, I don't think I could help them very much because it would just require too much handholding. So there's my spiel on, you know, On either learning the 31st or, or the other way around. Yeah. No. Thank you.
Ken Okazaki: It does seem though you've solved the problem by creating those qualifiers to make sure that people have their transformation in place and their connection, uh, in place before they hit their communication. And the other thing that this allows me to do by putting, you know, these conditions in place, is that I can have a reasonable expectation of success and therefore put a guarantee in place. And that helps the sales to conversions to go way up.
And you know, for example, Ernesto, if you came to me and I were a fitness trainer, which I'm not.
and I told you, I could get you to be able to do, you know, 10 consecutive chin ups, you know, and I'm not assuming you can't, I look at you, you know, you look healthy fit. I'm like, sure, you know, maybe let's see what's the baseline you could do. Okay. Three. All right. We could do that. You got to lose a bit of weight.
We're going to build some muscle. We're going to get lean. And, you know, within three months I could get you there because I see you have the condition that it's not a huge hurdle, but if someone were to come and they were obese, And they look like they've never done any exercise. I don't think I could ethically put a guarantee on that, but I could say, I can help you make progress in that direction.
I don't know how long it's gonna take, or if you are gonna have the patience to get there, I'll help you in that direction.
So now the second one is a bit weaker, right? So I'd rather look for people who just need that one unlock that will give them that.uh, yeah, the warp speed. Um, I would say it's the leverage, right?
Ernesto: Small movement, big result. And those are the people I look for. And a lot of times, you know, they're perfectly capable. They just need that one hint to get them there faster. Or maybe somebody should just, you know, be a drill sergeant and tell them what to do and keep them on track. I uh, definitely play that role, uh, many times.
Ken Okazaki: So let's talk a bit about, your journey. And this is the part I was very, very impressed with. before we came on, I think that maybe, you were a bit hesitant and right before we recorded, you said, Ken, I'm not sure if I should be on the podcast. The reason is I'm not quite at a million dollars in my own business right now. And the first thing that came to my mind is I think that most lies happen in entrepreneurship.
Ernesto: And when you said that, first reaction I had was Ernesto, you're exactly the person who needs to be on the show because I think there's too much bullshit going on in this world. And we need more people who are going to be transparent about what's really going on. Tell us how your business is growing, how you're finding clients, what's working. Sure.
Um, we are primarily word of mouth referral based business. and how we operate iswe have cohorts. So I, principally work through, uh, democratizing business transformation. Like, I sure there's the high ticket consultants that like go in and they help the one company or the two company at a time, but I'm really standing for.
Unlocking the power of technology for the masses. I don't know if you know, I don't know what the stats are in Japan can, but in America, like 90% of small businesses are businesses of one of, of a solopreneur. And I think part of the reason
Ken Okazaki: if you count these, these business directors that I've seen, some of my friends. They have like a real estate type of you know thing. And they have maybe five people on their team, but they've created like 300 LLCs in these
Ernesto: Oh,
Ken Okazaki: too. And, and each of those will be counted as a business right?
Yeah, so like, some of them are you know, like 0. 001 percent per business because of the way they operate. So yeah, the number of businesses is hardly relevant to like what's actually happening because people are using it as a structure rather than as a, a functioning business. But anyhow I interrupted you.
Go ahead.
Ernesto: Structure functioning business, there's many, solopreneurs that. for one reason or another are not taking advantage of the technology tools. The primary reason, they never learned how they could effectively scale technology. They never worked at a startup. They never worked at a big company. Most people are running blue collar businesses.
And so when you can teach people the powers of using a CRM or a project management tool, it really opens her up to a opens up their brains to a whole new way of, being. And so, I run cohorts four times a year, that are lined up with, the calendar, uh, every single quarter. We have 15 people joining for the Build Your Machine Accelerator, and after they completethe three month program, I invite them to join my membership. So inside of my membership, we train either the entrepreneur or hopefully they will have hired a virtual operator to continue to support them with their systems because the entrepreneur is not going to be the person with the hands on the keyboard, making sure the project management system is clean.
The entrepreneur needs to go out and generate new partnerships, create new opportunities, speak on podcasts, speak on stages, really find expansion opportunities. Where I really thrive in is focusing on supporting the people that want to dial up the efficiency. Entrepreneurs don't care, I mean they care about efficiency, but they don't want to get into the nuts and bolts of the tools to actually make the machine work more efficiently.
Ken Okazaki: They just want to know it's being taken care of. So that's primarily how I work. Um, it's, it's a lot of referrals. It's, I have a partnership program that, uh, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I'd want to dial in here because. This is interesting to me, and I think a lot of the listeners are going to be interested. A lot of people say they get referrals. Is that something that happens randomly? Do you have a system for that, where when someone has worked with you, you have a follow up process to prime them to want to refer you?
Do you incentivize them? Let's talk about
Ernesto: yes. Yeah.
So I have a partnership program. A concept I teach in my relationship management side of things is around creating triple wins, not just a win for you and me, but a win for you, me, and, and the, they, sometimes it's another person. Sometimes it's a community to the ecosystem at large.
They're winning through us working together. So. I have a partnership program where if anyone joins, it's a flat 10 percent lifetime, value commission that is paid as long as the, person that is referred remains a client, they get 10 percent forever. Once you get a
Ken Okazaki: payment, monthly payment, you give them 10%,
Ernesto: I give the source 10 percent over and over again.
once the partner refers me. Six people in a calendar year, they go from affiliate level to ambassador. So as an ambassador, they get an extra 5%. They also get a monthly AMA with me as, you know, business systems advice.and once they hit 12 referrals in the same year, they have an extra 5%.
So 20 percent lifetime revenue. So I've designed these tiers to really incentivize people to want to refer more and, uh, virtually I really want to make it a triple win for people. I've also designed that margin into my pricing so that I make sure that I'm not, you know, I'm not sealing, like you said, the person who gets evicted on a Thursday.
I got my margins in there, so I make sure that's all healthy. Um, and then the last part is all the automations inside of my CRM. So, the moment someone finishes a program with me, I immediately, in the evaluation form, I ask them, like, you know, would you like to leave a testimonial, would you, usually they say yes, or, no, first I say, would you like to earn lifetime passive income through making referrals, yes, okay, would you like to leave a testimonial so that other people can understand the impact that you have worked with, yes, okay, that sends two tags.
Ken Okazaki: To my CRM, and so that prompts the referral, the testimonial request, and the referral registration, and that just keeps track of all these people because. because we provide an amazing learning experience, an amazing transformation, they want to give back, they want to help, and so they want to share that with their network because they're going to look good by doing that, by sharing something valuable. So it's all in the, using my own tools to keep track of these people and then incentivizing them. share, share our stuff So, how long have you been running this program and using this referral system? three months. Okay. And it's, is it working? Is it working? Well,
Uh, it's starting to get people are registering. We're getting ready for our next cohort in October and I've already started to get a dozen referrals, getting ready for the next cohort, Uh huh. Now, if you were to step outside of your own business and come in as your own consultant and look at those six figures that you, those six questions, where do you see the next potential limiter to, scaling this to a multi seven figure? Business. I think it's in building out a well, because I don't have the sales team today, it would be building out the sales team, but we said multi seven figure so. To go from 7 to multi 7. Yeah. Like if you look at just the next step, what's going to happen is you're going to build the frameworks to barely get you there. What I like to do is look at three steps ahead, so then it might take you longer to get to step one, or step two if you're on step one. You won't have to break down and rebuild stuff to get to step two and three and four.
Because you've already looked a few steps ahead
Ernesto: Correct. would be to have the content machine running. in the content machine and sales team, right? But how about the delivery? Are you the one and end all when it comes to being the consultant or do you have a team of consultants? It is me, at this point, uh, delivering, but because it's all group, cohort based, it's not like individual implementation. I'm not necessarily a bottleneck. Sounds like you got that scale leveled down. Yeah.
Ken Okazaki: Hey, look, this has been really interesting for me. Now, let's say you got, say you got your referrals, which the thing I love about referrals is that you succeed more by succeeding. I think we've all been tempted by the whole MLM model and, you know, looked at it and our friends are doing it.
I, I tried it a couple, I wasn't into it, but the mathematics, you know, of course, math is not perfect. Real life is, is messy. But it works out that the more successful. You are in getting your clients amazing results, the faster your business grows. Soit's the growth is a testament of the quality of your services. Uh, on the flip side, it's hard to incentivize people when they're busy running their own business to go you know, to refer you. So that's something that the systems help to nudge them and give them those little, uh,that incentives and Yeah, reminders. So where do you see this going in the future?
Ernesto: How's your, in terms of AI, in terms of, you know, scale and in terms of business sectors, what do you think is going to change in your line of work? I think AI is going to, free up a lot of time, Everyone loves to talk about the tech, this question, where do you see the business going? Most of humanity barely taps into technology and its potential. Barely. Most. So whether it's AI or, you know, NFTs came out a few years ago or the next big trend, doesn't matter what these new big trends are. People listening, like, hop in, like, really take time to understand what it can do for you because that is going to be one of the most highly leveraged activities.
it's staggering how minimal a lot of people are like taking advantage of this stuff. And so I, I, I don't, I don't really know exactly where it's, it's going to take things, but I do know that, After creating my own custom GPT, like I'm able to have a LinkedIn content creator forever without, and I don't have to spend any more brainpower on any of that stuff. And so, you know, it looks different for every business, but like jump in, like actually learn how these tools work and how they can change your life. Reach out to someone who can help you do that. I'm not an AI specialist, but there are plenty of those. that can help you discover that. And you're probably using a lot of it and helping your clients, you know, create their processes. What are some ways that you've found a big unlock using AI in your own business? I mean, you told me about the LinkedIn content generator, but In the process, I'd imagine that there's a lot there, too. Yeah,so clients usually, people, when you visit a website, you fill out a form, fill out some certain questions. Uh, when you take in those responses, we use a zap that actually goes into a query's open AI and actually drafts an email to respond back to the lead. All within a couple of minutes of the form being submitted.
Ken Okazaki: So that is another way that you could use the power of form submissions plus open AI to create hyper personalized messages to people who are arriving cold to your website and are receiving this really free. Personalized message for them. So that's another one. There's different ways that other people can use AI, but that's another fan favorite. Uh, we've got just a few minutes left.
And what I really like to close with is asking you to, you know, to really talk to the listener here. I think a lot of people might think that, okay, I can figure it out myself. You know, I know I've got issue A, B, C, and D in my business, but if I just Google it or, you know, use AI, then I could
And then there are other people who, a bit more like me, would rather find the who than learn the how. I want to know the person who's already done this a thousand times. And therefore, when they do it, they'll do it faster and better. And not only that, I will learn something from them rather than me having to go to the limits of my experience and my, internal visualization of what's going on.
theoretically possible. How do you help people to, shift perspective here in one way or the other? When should people be business owners, entrepreneurs, when should they be thinking, oh, I can do it myself? Because there are things genuinely, I think you'd suggest, hey, you can just figure it out yourself.
Ernesto: You shouldn't hire a consultant. it's something that's for you, or, oh, that's definitely something that I can help you with going to be better for your business if you hire us rather than trying to do it yourself. And where's that balance? It's really hard to tell someone else anything that will change their mind. I think earlier when I mentioned the scorecard and those six questions,
Ken Okazaki: say they're on the fence, you know, and they're just, they're, they're trying to decide and they're genuinely asking you,
Ernesto: I asked them like, how long do you think it's going to take you to learn that? And then how long is it going to take you to implement that? And then what happens when you mess it up? And I just tell them when, because, they will. yeah. And is this like on a live conversation or is this like via emails or how's this conversation usually take place? A live conversation.
Ken Okazaki: and what's usually their reaction and how do you take it from there? I mean, they usually realize that it will take them way too much time. And then I invite them, to join into the cohort. and then I asked them like,I have a question that I include in my intake form. It's like, where's going to be your first two week vacation that you take in a year from now? You get them excited about like the impact of what they can do. You know what? I think that you are also somebody is great at engineering conversations. for people to make the decision to invest in you because those, uh, that questionnaire type of format and what you just said that the future pacing about what they, what's possible once it's sorted, I'll point to you being the solution.
And it feels now like you've taken them from a logical thinking to an emotional decision making process, which is of course much more powerful. And that to me has been from, I think that's the thing that actually hit me the hardest, I think that that's what you're really good at. You're really good at that.
You systematize the process to get people out of their, you know, PFC, prefrontal cortex, and back into, you know, the part of the brain that's going to start feeling like they need you. Yeah, there you go. That's great. I think you should teach sales. That's what you should be teaching. Yeah. Like if you could create a framework or a system in your cohorts, like here's how to close.
It is definitely all a system.And then it's also a self fulfilling prophecy. You can say, Hey, you guys all are here and you decide to invest in me because I ran a system on you called a sales conversation. I'm going to show you how to do that for your customers. Dude, that'll work. is there anything you want to share to the listeners here?
Ernesto: anything that people should be asking themselves in order to solve problems faster, to get out of business stress and to start scaling their business. And I pitch it as what's the question? Because as you know, if I were to tell you to do something, you're less likely to do it. Then if I. asked you a question where you'd elicit the answer yourself from within, then that's more real. Why would you ask the audience here? would say, why are you afraid to get started? And what they might be thinking is, a fear of looking bad or looking dumb or, wasting time or. You know, maybe they want to try doing it themselves, but they know they'll never learn it, so they never start. All these, all these reasons. It's a big reason why, it's a big driver in why, when I designed my system for learning, the transformation, it's all in group. Everyone is literally learning from one another. I'm not the sage on the stage. I am, I'm the guide on the side. Like, just framing the questions and teaching people how to think about project management, how to think about relationship management, how to set up their notion. John learns from Christine, Jessica learns from Jim, everyone's asking each other the questions and it's just like a safe space.
and everyone there has agreed, okay, I don't care, I'm gonna look dumb, but like, we're here, we're gonna do the work together. So, you know, why are you afraid of getting started, is the question I would leave people thinking on.
And once they find that thing, what would be the next question they should ask themselves? Let's say for me, I'm afraid to get started because, uh, it looks so complex and I think I can get lost. Then what's the question I should follow up with that fear that I identified? I take a piece of paper and write down the things that I think are complex. You know what is complex,
Ken Okazaki: we like think systems hard. You think so much in your head, you know, but when you get it down on paper and you start taking steps, the answers reveal themselves. Ernesto, thank you so much for that. You know, this, I think I just kind of feel like we were warming up for 40 minutes and then these last 20 minutes were like, is when we started getting deep and now we got to close this off. Thank you so much for being here. I think that, uh, two things, number one,the way you frame sales in conversations, that's super valuable.
I'd say that if you're getting people at the rate that you are, you're Well, I don't even know the number, but it sounds like you have a group coaching situation and it's filling up. Uh, that's a powerful thing. And number two is. The ability to get people focused on taking a complex problem, looking at it in a way that seems solvable through working with you. Amazing.
So I want to wrap this up and could you let us know if anybody is listening, uh, this far, obviously there's something they're interested, they want to know more about what you, what you do, how you help them, let's drop some links, how can people find out more about you?
Ernesto: While you visit our website, you can take the scorecard and get your own scorecard. You can punch in four numbers simple questions. You'll get a personalized scorecard. You'll get a sample. Five videos also giving you some strategies on what you consider adjusting across each of those six numbers And if you want to talk you can schedule a call with me And I'm happy to give a free strategy session to everyone who says oh, I want to go from 300k to 700k It's like well, how are you gonna do that?
What are your six numbers look like to get to 700k because that's what's gonna uncover all the challenges.
Ken Okazaki: It is. And, uh, at the end of that conversation, they're going to make a simple decision. Do they feel that you're the best person to take them there or they want to do it themselves or, or do they just want to stay eventually? And I honestly think that as entrepreneurs because we're so growth oriented.
We undervalue the validity of staying where you are because some people will be perfectly happy. with a small restaurant, and they get 10 customers a day, in their cafe, and they hang out and they are in the country side. They're near a lake, they go fishing every day, and they have enough to live the life they want.
And I never want to shame people like that. So, the value of staying where you are If it's truly making you happy, I think that is huge, but I think if someone walks in and you could tell they're geared kind of like we are for growth, then what I like to do is just agitatethat internal urge, like, no, you do want to grow.
I can feel that in you and this may look tough, but I think you're going to feel like it's worth it and give them that encouragement to make the decision to scale and to work with you.
Ernesto: exactly
Ken Okazaki: All right, well, we're going to wrap this up guys. Thank you so much for around all the way to the end. Ernesto. write me anytime I am interested to watch your growth and see you scale to seven figures and multi seven figures with your processes, your systems, and helping other businesses to make their leap to where they want to go.
Everybody else, I'll see you next week.
No hassle, worship here, we're a different breed. Action is what we got if action is what you need. Us content capitalists, we're breaking the flow. Cuz the old ways stay, new stories to be told. So content capitalists, get to the press.
