547: The 3 Biggest Contributing Factors To My Own Multi Million Dollar Company
I’m thrilled to be diving into a topic that’s been on my mind lately. In this episode, I want to peel back the curtain and share the three biggest driving factors that have propelled me forward on this journey to owning a multi-million dollar company. Throughout this episode, I’ll break down each of these components and how they’ve shaped my business and ultimately my life.
So, whether you’re an entrepreneur, a dreamer, or someone seeking insights into what fuels achievement, I hope you find inspiration and actionable takeaways from today’s discussion. Tune in!
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
The 3 Biggest Contributing Factors To My Own Multi Million Dollar Company
Emily Hirsh
Welcome back to the podcast. Happy August for a lot of you guys. I think kids are going back to school if you have kids. My kids actually don’t go back until after Labor Day. They’ve got a unique schedule at the school that they’re in. And we are still in Wyoming, enjoying it. Just absolutely loving the simplicity where we are. We’re outside of Jackson a little bit and so it’s really nice because it’s not filled with tourists and it’s like very local farms and just quiet and beautiful. We can see the Tetons from our cabin. I’ve been doing a lot of hiking which I call my church and I’m just so grateful to be here and not in the 105 degree weather in Texas and just been able to create some amazing memories and adventures with the family. And we’re about to head out soon on an overnight one night tent camping adventure in Yellowstone with the kids. My kids have actually never tent camp before and it’s been a long time since I have. So we will see how this goes. I think it’s gonna be a really fun adventure in the middle of Yellowstone. So I thought today it would be fun to do an episode. This came to me actually, when I was in Alaska and I wrote it down. Sometimes random ideas come to me for the podcast and then when it feels right, I actually record the episode, but I wanted to talk about what I think are the three biggest contributing factors to my own success. And when I also say my own success, I actually don’t just mean monetary success. I’ve built a multimillion dollar business. I’m 28 years old. My business hit a million dollars when I was like 23. I have three kids. You know, a lot of people ask me like, how have you done it? And to me, success, like monetary success, is one thing that buys freedom. It buys you the lifestyle that you want. It is important. I think that people say money doesn’t buy happiness, which I agree, but it does buy the things that can bring us happiness or it gives us the freedom to not have to worry about money. And so it is still an important scorecard in business. But also for me, I find that my success, I rate it even higher in the freedom that I’ve created. So the ability to go to Wyoming for a month to go to Alaska for 10 days to travel as much as I do to have as many experiences as I have to seriously live life to get to the end of the year and look back and go. I lived this year. I made memories. I had adventures. I traveled. I spent really quality time with people that I love. I took care of myself. To me that is the definition of success is having that. And then of course, money often allows us to do that, right? So when I say success, I don’t just mean money, but these are the three biggest contributing factors that I believe have contributed to my success over the years. And so hopefully, this gives you some ideas. So I’m gonna say what the three things are and then I’m going to talk about each one of them and how they’re ingrained in our company values and they actually are a part of our company values. So the three biggest things are speed, depth and constant improvement. And so those are the three contributing factors that I think make the biggest difference in my company and in my life. So let’s talk about speed. First, I have always been like this, I am blessed, I guess with the genes or whatever in my personality to move extremely fast. And when I have a vision or I want something, whether that is a trip to Alaska or that is you know, launching an offer like essential or it’s a vision that I have for something that I want to bring to life. My garden, travel, you name it. Anything that happens, I want it the next day, I want it as fast as possible, but instead of just wanting it and hoping that it comes true, I actually put the action behind it extremely fast. And so how this has come up in our company is we’re extremely fast in many different ways. Number one, we’re really fast with our client delivery. And I think this is what separates us from most other agencies. And my clients have said this to me in, in the sense that when something is not converting or you need new ad copy and creative or your landing page is not converting. So you need that fixed or your sales conversion, et cetera. We are on it like that day, that week as fast as possible while still providing the depth, which is the second thing that has to coexist with speed. So we’ll talk about that in a second, but we are very fast with changes because the way that I see things is I hate wasting time. It’s probably the worst thing to me. It’s also ingrained in me like I cannot stand in efficiency. I think life is too short.I don’t want to waste any of my time. That doesn’t mean I never relax. I don’t see relaxing as a waste of time, if it’s intentional, but I don’t like wasting time. And so if something isn’t working, I see it like let’s say an ad is converting high and we need new copy and creative, I see this as a waste of a budget every single day. And so I literally, we train our team and we say, and take the monthly amount that clients pay, divide it by 30 let’s say, because there’s 30 days in a month, that’s the daily amount that they’re paying that. If we don’t make a change, that’s how much they’re wasting. And the amount of time it takes. Now again, you have to combine it with depth. You can’t often do things the same day. And I’ve learned this the hard way sometimes, but that speed is so important and it makes it so we’re very agile too. So when I get an idea and I try to create a lot of space for myself as a CEO to have those visionary thoughts and ideas. And I know in my gut that it is the right move for us. Let’s say it’s a podcast series idea or a shift to one of our launch topics or an addition to an experience that we’re already, you know, in motion and we’re creating as a part of our marketing or it could be our essential offer. That was something that came to me and it was like, like came to me and it was like, ok, this is the right time for it. And we implemented it in a month and it was so fast, right? And so when it is in alignment and it really feels like this is the right thing for the business, for myself to create the success, et cetera. My team, we’ve built a team both internally and in our client delivery to be very agile and to move as fast as possible. If something isn’t working, if we know that a project or an idea or a campaign or a launch or an offer is the right next move for the business, we’re on it. If that means reorganizing priorities, if that means, you know, shifting and getting more help, whatever it means, we’re taking the actions the next day, like once I make a decision and I know that that’s the right direction, it’s already done. And then when something isn’t working in marketing, this is so important or in business in general. Like if something is not working, whether that is your marketing isn’t converting, your leads aren’t converting to sales, your ads are your ad cost is too high or maybe it’s in your delivery and you have, you know, your clients are leaving too much, you have too high churn or you have too much dissatisfaction happening. Whatever it is, you need to take action tomorrow on that. You need to get clear on the problem and you need to get clear on the actions you can take to improve that problem. And then let’s go. Speed is so important for businesses. So this comes up in our value speed as queen. And when I interview people, I tell them it is not easy to work here because it is not a sit back and do my job clock in, clock out. We are fast paced, extremely fast paced. The amount that we accomplish in a week as a team is absolutely insane. I guarantee you, it would take other teams sometimes months to accomplish what we do in a week. We’re extremely agile, meaning our copy and creative team can adjust their priorities for something urgent. Our internal team will adjust priorities because of something that isn’t working or, you know, in my marketing that we need to shift that agility and speed is so so key and I’ve been like this since the beginning of my business. And I think the, the speed at which you take action is so important, even if sometimes those actions fail, I’m not saying every time that I go after a project or an initiative or a change or an adjustment that it works. But even if it works 80% of the time or it works 50% of the time, at least you’re moving forward and you’re taking action. OK, the second piece to this is depth. This has been a little bit harder for me to learn. But also I think that this comes through in my expectation for excellence. And so one of our company values is to over deliver every time. And in order to overdeliver, you have to bring depth, you can’t bring surface level strategy or copy or anything that you’re delivering. And this comes through in my social media in this podcast when I do launches, like I think that we create pretty epic content for free, pretty epic experiences and how we do that is that demand for excellence and that comes through in depth and so speed and depth, I think have to coexist together because you want to move very fast. But you want to make sure that what you execute has the depth that it needs to accomplish what you want it to do. So whether that’s a social media post, a podcast episode, an email that you’re writing a Facebook ad, copy, a landing page, a live launch experience, you want to move fast, but you also want to achieve excellence and those are hard to achieve together. And you know, I would say sometimes we sacrifice speed to an extent to achieve excellence because and notice that I said excellence not perfection, right? I’m not saying everything has to be perfect. I’m saying it needs to be to the standard of excellence and then you’re always going to be improving it. So anyways, the depth allows us to bring depth to the copy that we write to the experiences we create to the strategies. So when a client works with us, we spend and I invest in the resources to spend a lot of time developing that initial strategy. It probably takes double what it could take if you are moving very quickly. Because I want the depth, I want the auditing of the past things. I want the depth and the messaging and the time set to make that foundation because that’s what’s gonna bring the results. Same thing with writing ad copy or writing funnel, copy or you know, strategizing out a live experience and putting together the content or maybe it’s a new offer, a new offer, positioning. It does take a little bit of time in depth to utilize strategic brains to dig into it. And sometimes that means letting something sit for a day or two and then coming back to it and finalizing it. And so I think that depth and excellence has to coexist with speed and agility because if you only have one, like if you just have speed, but you don’t have depth, you’re gonna be very surface level moving as fast as possible, making mistakes and not producing quality work. But if you just have depth, then you overthink everything and you’re trying to achieve perfection, then you’re not gonna make progress, right? And so I think speed and depth need to coexist in a very good relationship and there’s sometimes that you might be moving faster for a certain reason. And sacrificing a little bit of depth or there might be sometimes that you need to take a pause, take a few days, dig a little bit deeper and you’re sacrificing speed.
But those two things. And so when I look at my social posts, for example, I refuse for us to put something out there that does not have depth I would rather not post, I’d rather post less than put something out there that isn’t going to make an impact. I want every one of my posts to have the opportunity to make an impact on somebody which takes time, it takes time for my copywriter to collaborate with me to follow our process where we interview, she interviews me and then she pulls content and she writes that deeper level content. And so we are probably on our social media sacrificing a little bit of speed for depth because that is appropriate, right? But sometimes I have to get a funnel live and I think the email sequence is like a seven or eight out of 10 and I can get data and I can go back and fix it in the next few weeks. And so I choose to move forward with that. And so these things together, you can make decisions and you want to have both that, that striving for excellence. Our core value of over delivering every time is extremely important in conjunction with speed and then the final piece is constant improvement. I live my life living for this. As I think a lot of high performers do because we are driven by never settling. And it’s something that I’m trying to maybe have a more healthy relationship with and have moments where I can just relax. It’s very hard for me. I’m constantly focusing on what’s next. What can I do? Better go, go, go because that’s how I’m built. But I think that there is always room for improvement. Like if you’re not growing, I do think you’re dying like I know that’s so harsh. But I think we’re put on this world to have this human existence in this lifetime to learn and improve as much as we can to get to whatever the end enlightenment or whatever that’s deep. But I do think that you, everybody is put on this life to have your own individual journey of healing and growth. And I think I was specifically put here to, to grow a tremendous amount in this lifetime and push myself really hard. But how this comes up in my business is I never am looking at something and saying, OK, it’s perfect. It’s done everything from every piece of our client delivery, our onboarding, our reporting, our weekly calls, our monthly reporting, our trackers, the way we task between team members like every detail, we just run on a cycle and we look at what needs the most improvement right now. And then we focus on that and it’s usually like on a quarterly basis, each one of those things needs some attention. And so we actually have a process where myself and my director of the ads team, we go through the list of all the major processes, all the things that impact client delivery and we look at, ok, what’s working, what’s not working, what can we improve here? We collaborate with the team, we ask questions and then we improve the process and we move to the next thing. We are constantly improving it. Same with my marketing, this podcast, my social media, our launches like we did challenges last year, just like the ultimate Facebook, a challenge. We just ran, we took everything we did and we made it better. There’s always room for improvement. Why? Because you’re always learning, you’re executing something and then you learn and you get feedback on what worked and what didn’t work. And so then you are able to go and take that and improve. And so I think that the mindset of constant improvement helps with the lack of needing everything to be perfect. Because if you don’t make perfection, the finish line and you make constantly improving and there is no finish line, your goal in your business and your life, then you see things differently and you don’t wait to launch something or wait to execute a project or wait to post that real or launch that podcast or release that funnel or put that offer out there because I think the action, the speed with your action has to be there. And then you, you go and you do things to the best of your ability with that depth and that excellence. And then you go back and you constantly analyze and you look at OK, this is working, this is not working. Here’s what we could do better and you’re going to get ideas. And even still today, I am getting ideas on how to improve my podcast after like five years of podcasting. And also just naturally, I am such a better podcaster than I was five years ago all because I’m constantly improving just by doing. And so every part of your business, your marketing, your delivery, your operations, your sales, all of those categories, what you need to do is kind of take inventory and then decide which category, which area, which piece in each area needs the most improvement. What’s gonna move the overall needle the most because everywhere probably could improve. There’s always things you can do when you really think about it to improve. But typically there’s like a couple of things, two or three things that if you do those or you put energy into those, it’s gonna make the biggest impact. And that’s where my company’s planning process comes into play as we set those bigger picture goals. And then we look at, ok, what’s gonna move the needle the most as it relates to those goals. And then that’s what drives where we put our energy and where we put our time and effort and resources. So those are the three things that I think are ingrained in our company values. They’re ingrained in the people that we hire. Like the people that I hire. They all already value this. They already value speed and excellence and depth with their work and constantly improving in their life and themselves and what they bring to the world. And that is how I’ve been able to have my company where it is right now with last month in July, a record sales month while I was 10 days in Alaska, I probably worked three hours out of those 10 days and now a month in Wyoming and California because I’m clear on my values, I hired based off those values and I live by these in improving our process, our delivery, the way we show up as a team and I’m in charge of setting that vision, but over time, your company can run, executing these with very little work from you. Now, does that mean that’s easy? No, like things still happen, you know, problems still come up. I just don’t know how to handle them better. I’m not sitting here and like, don’t think for a second, I’m sitting here going, I’m so successful and I have no issues in my business. Like if anybody says that they’re lying because that’s part of business, you’re gonna have problems, you’re gonna have curveballs, you’re gonna have things that come up and what you do as a leader is you build the capacity to be able to handle those and still live your life And I was like able to work an hour that day while we were in Wyoming because we were gonna go to the Tetons and it was a pretty big curveball. It was like, oh man, like a moment like that. And I had about two minutes where I was like, oh, I was really frustrated and I was frustrated with the team member for a second and then I pulled it together and I was like, all right, we handle it. This is, this is the way it is, this is the game, you know, you win over here, you lose over here, you just take action. And I have over the last year really built my capacity up for this by taking care of myself and regulating my own nervous system so that when something comes up, it’s not gonna throw me off. And I, and I think that the most successful leader is like if you look at you know, the big, like if I look at Elon Musk, I can’t imagine the amount that is thrown his way every day and he just is able to still function or if I look at, you know, like probably Steve jobs in his life. Like any of these huge CEO S they built massive capacity to be able to handle a huge team, a huge company with a ton of liability, a ton of weight on their shoulders and still live life. Now, I don’t know if Elon lives life, but I know Steve Jobs did prioritize family and life. So anyways, that’s a side note. I hope you guys found these three things helpful. I am gonna go jump in the car with my family and drive to Yellowstone. If you want to follow, I may or may not post on Instagram. I haven’t decided yet if I’m gonna go offline for two days or if I’m in a post, but I appreciate you guys so much. I appreciate all of you, especially those who have been here for a while and witnessed so much of my journey. I’ve gotten several messages over the last few months about how people have felt that I have grown and changed so much and they can hear it in my voice and my content that I bring, which is really cool. So, thank you. I appreciate you guys and I’ll talk to you Thursday.