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Sparking Success with Aaron Opalewski.
Aaron brings you conversations that spark innovation, cultivate leadership skills, and pave the way for your business success.
In each episode, we delve into the dynamic world of business and leadership, exploring strategies, insights, and success stories that fuel your professional journey.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (00:00.11)
Welcome to Sparking Success with Aaron Opalewski. Aaron brings you conversations that spark innovation, cultivate leadership skills, and pave the way for your business success. In each episode, we delve into the dynamic world of business and leadership, exploring strategies, insights, and success stories that fuel your professional journey.
Well, hey everybody, welcome back to Sparking Success. My name is EJ Swanson. I'm joined here with Aaron Opalewski. Aaron, how are you doing today, man? I'm great. How's your fingers? I'll give everybody a close up. I broke two knuckles on my pinky and one on my right ring finger. It hasn't made it very easy for typing, but, you know, it's got a little extra undue attention that I definitely didn't want around.
the office and the studio, but it is what it is. It'll heal. I got three to six weeks. So a few episodes, maybe you guys will see this. Maybe I'll get some bright yellow of this tape. We'll make sure our branding is on point. That'll be perfect. But that's not what we're talking about today. Today, we're going to talk about growing your business at different levels, at $1 million, that $3 million, the $10 million.
Mark, which is all different things that you've encountered over the years within that. Now specifically, we're talking about gross profit. We're not talking about sales. A lot of people have talked about a million dollars in sales. In a few episodes back, you talked about the great illustration within the real estate market and how you can do a million dollars of sales with, at least in our general market.
a house or two houses or maybe, you know, three, that type of thing. But that's different. So start us off by that today. Tell us a little bit. Just give us a recap of the difference between sales and gross profit. Yeah, I mean, I think revenue in some businesses, that's a high margin revenue in some businesses. It's not right. So I'm more interested in what's the gross profit of the business. Right. You know, how I define that is the actual dollars that the business has not passed through dollars.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (02:20.878)
the actual dollars that the business has to operate. Yep. So, you know, let's look at the staffing business, you know, just because we have a lot of those. Yeah. So I hear revenue stuff all the time within staffing. And there are, you know, there's good things about different revenue points and all that stuff, specifically with your reoccurring. OK, not really going to get into that a ton today. Maybe we will. Sure. But.
Great, give me your revenue number and staffing. I want to instantly know, well, what's the gross profit? Yeah. And I actually love hearing both of those numbers. Generally, when I hear the revenue number first, it tells me a story before even going any farther that the gross profit percentage margin probably isn't going to be great. So if that's off the charts, it's you're in your head going, ah.
Not necessary doesn't make it a bad business. Okay tells you what type of business it is. Yep More conversations with the operators or owners or whatever will tell you more about the acumen or what their focus is. Yeah which You know, I've been in a situation where we're very focused on our revenue number and growing that and we still are we want to grow the revenue number But if our revenue Went down, but our gross profit soared up
I would be interested as to why yes, but there would be a lot of good things in that because there's there's more money there to actually do things with. Okay. So we've had that happen at at points where our gross profit grew and our revenue didn't really go down, but it kind of held. Okay. And it was transitions in different types of service lines that we're selling more compared to straight contract staffing where we have a lot of pass through payroll dollars. Got it. So.
I want to take us off track. No, that's a good talk about just this part like in and of itself. Yeah, and we should pull out a full episode on that here in the near future. Within that though, there's definitely a journey crossing that 1 ,000 ,000 mark 232 10. And as you go through that, there's been a couple of both key indicators and points that have really made sense to you within that. There's also different models, obviously, that people can explore.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (04:46.25)
between how they're setting up their business and things like that. But walk us through some of that today. Yeah, I think, you know, just from doing it multiple times, you know, you start to see patterns and like stick points or things that are going to be necessary to cross, you know, those different gross profit amounts within a staffing business. I'm a business junkie. Yeah, people ask me like, what's what do you do for?
fun or hobbies or whatever. And, you know, I work out, but outside of that, um, I like building businesses and like reading on stuff. I'll listen to, you know, some podcasts. I listened to the last now. I think who you listen to is really important. I agree. But, um, I do listen to some and you know, it's generally related to, you know, all this and episodes like this, like I want to be learning about actual business stuff. I'm not talking or listening to a ton on like mindset or anything like that. I, you know,
really already like disciplined in those areas. So yes, I have one or two that I will listen to. But when I'm looking for knowledge, I want to learn more about like other businesses and how I could, you know, either learn from that, like just in general or more so like, hey, like, that's interesting. How could we implement that in in this business? Got it. Workforce solutions business. Okay. Our real estate business and our, you know, business that
owns and operates some food and beverage, you can learn a lot of stuff. I just love that. That's my hobby. Right, right. I appreciate that. You're learning along the way, certainly, and there's some things within that. So as people are growing their business, as people are looking to hit that million dollar mark in GP, what are the things that you see?
What are the challenges that typically arise as people are building those businesses out? Well, here's what's going to work. The person that's running that organization needs to be the best salesperson period. That's the key period. Wow. Or you need a vehicle that produces those opportunities. OK, and they must be able to account manage and service that extremely well. OK, I kind of look at those as one in the same within the recruiting business. They're not.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (07:08.366)
And ultimately, you want that person to be the best salesperson. But if you have opportunities funneling in within staffing and recruiting, the fulfillment is part of the sales process. Got it. And so if we can generate a lot of opportunities for them to work on, projects for them to work on, the fulfillment is just not more important than actually getting the opportunity. I'd argue in hot markets, it's more important.
The opportunities come either. Your reputation, the lifetime value of a relationship depend on if you fulfill and do a great job for the client and that's ultimately what's really important. But they got to be the best salesperson within the organization. And when you say organization, that's certainly a smaller team at that million dollar JP mark. Is that 15 people? How do you typically classify that?
Good question. You know, we're sitting here, it's March of 2024. So interesting to see how this continues to change within technology. And look, there's companies out there that do this with one person. Single. And I'm not saying that that couldn't be done within, you know, I think as soon as you say that, you're setting yourself up to get smoked, right? Right. We have not done it with one person. And I think...
you know, regardless of technology, some issues with that is you're one person away from not having an organization. Yeah. So you have a lifestyle business at that point, or you have something in its very beginning stages, you want to move it to kind of the next stage, even if it's still within that 1 million marker by adding some people. OK, I think it's somewhere between three to five people. Got it. Depending on the business, depending on the margins within that three to five people. Yep. I like to.
stick towards three, personally. Yep. Because three is enough where one person leaving or something happening doesn't complete. It disrupts the business. You've just disrupted 33 % of your business. However, it doesn't completely decimate it. And you're in a situation where you have people that are starting to bring in some of their own unique abilities, and they can work together well. They can learn from each other and draft off each other well. So I have really like three.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (09:32.206)
You move up to five on that and just personally, I think your margins get a little tight. OK. And you you start to add complexity to the situation. So I like going with three, but going up to four or five on that is not like a deal breaker or bad thing. Like we've had one of our businesses that crossed a million in GP. I believe when we actually crossed, we had five. OK, we built the momentum to cross key point here, built the momentum to cross.
with a core team of three, and then we were kind of on that ride. And as you're on that ride, generally when you're riding like that and you're riding up, you're probably adding too. OK, I got you. But the key within that million dollar GP is that the owner operator, the person who is running the day to day business is your best salesperson and is out there knocking down deals. I haven't had one.
personally worked out where that wasn't the case. Right. OK. And in instances where we've had to go a different direction because that that's happened within some of our businesses. I look at one now where we had to do that and now it's on the right track. OK. Because we have the right operator tracking and they're doing a great job. OK. You know. So yeah. There's I've yet to see a situation where that leader can't sell. Got it.
I for me, I'll never look to partner that way. I gotta see that that person can can do that part. Yeah. Okay. Now they're building up to a million dollars in gross profit is a you know a feat for a lot of people that that certainly happens if it's the right person. You know that that comes pretty naturally. They're driven towards that. I don't know if it comes naturally. Okay, because it's tough like nothing about that is easy. Right?
everything about us. I look at it as like you get that person, right? Whether it's just them or they have a second person or you start with three, whatever it is. That's one of the things that we've done. You it's to start with one, two, or three. I like starting with three the best. Four, everything we just talked about. But, okay, so can they do $100 ,000 in sales? If they can do that, they have a viable service. Okay. Okay.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (11:55.248)
Then we start to move up the ladder, and you go towards with a team of three, we're probably going to have to hit in our businesses 500 ,000 to start to move into a profitability zone. And then go into a million, that's the goal of that team. And that should be well into profitability. Most businesses operate between 15 % to 35 % that operate well on their profitability off their gross profit.
And so we're definitely going to do that in that instance if we're tracking at a million with three people. If we're not, something would really be off kilter, and we probably wouldn't set the comp plans that way. There's just very, I can't foresee any situation where that dynamic wouldn't.
produce that kind of outcome for us. So probably much better. We'd probably be ahead of that 35%. OK, I'm following you there. The big jump, or I'll use the word, and you probably have a better set of words, gain in momentum, is between that $1 million and that $3 million mark. Would that be accurate? It's the first big jump. The first big jump. Where my opinion is things change. So you start going from.
Okay, just that one person as a good salesperson to one of two things. Either that person is potentially an elite salesperson and they can drag it to three million with some other people, but they probably are, I would be going up to at least five and then maybe trailing towards in between five and 10 people. So you got an elite salesperson or you have this.
really good capable salesperson that's starting to, you know, you're starting to bring in enough business where either you have someone else that's really good, that's ideal at that point, or you have people that through your training and development are capable and you're able to put business in front of them and they're good fulfillers. Like we talked about, either work. And I don't want to, I mean, both are good. Both are good. It's always good to have elite,
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (14:16.004)
salespeople around. Yeah, definitely. But within staffing, you need elite fulfillers. Otherwise, that's why a lot of our people at these stages, they do both. OK. That's why we have a mantra, we're all recruiters. Yeah. That changes where it's very straightforward, is that the one in three million levels, like guess what? Your ass does the full cycle. Yeah, yeah, by all means. OK, now I think there's key things within that that I would want people to do.
to hear. The key thing is, you're, as the operator, as the business owner within that, the key man within that segment, you are still working. One million, three million. Now, sales production, sales production. Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Those are your biggest things. Obviously, you've got to attract the people or have a vehicle to attract people onto the team.
how you're gonna keep people on that team is by leading by example, doing a great job, being a working mentor. And you're in a situation there, especially with three to five people, where you got small unit cohesion, you can put kind of the team around each other and they can learn from each other, they can draft off each other. And if you're an elite, you know, or a really good salesperson, right, they're picking that up. Got it.
Hopefully you've hired some people that have the characteristics and capabilities to learn with that and run with that and grow. That again would be an ideal situation to get people like that on the team. They don't have to be. 1020 years of experience necessarily. They could be totally green, but if they're a sponge, you know that can work really well. OK, and that's that's also what you would say in your.
background you would be looking to add to the team at that person, you know, at that point. The person who is the sponge, is there a mix between that? Well, I mean, some organizations like that, we've seen this, I guess we've kind of seen this in a couple of ours where we had two people with a little more experience. Okay. It's kind of like that mid -level. Yeah, well, whatever, you know, it's like what you thought was experience then, it's like, okay, well, you know.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (16:33.488)
There's different gears to that. People that have some experience and know how, right? And then you put people around them to learn. It depends on the operator. Some operators are able to do this and maybe it's even better for them to be kind of on their own and build that team. Others work better in pairs. They complement each other. Yeah, I gotcha. Okay, what are other keys going from that one to three million?
that people listening right now need to know? I think the biggest key would be that person that crossed it over a million and is either elite or really good in sales needs to understand, I got to keep doing this. It's not time, oh, I'm hiring people. Now it's time for me to step back or give all the sales respondents. No. You are making a mistake, in my opinion. And if someone.
Was coming to us because we'll talk to people like in these stages, right? This is actually the stage if we were looking to add like this is the stage we prefer right now is to take the the company that's crossed a million or maybe even three million but in these stages not not really below at this point Yeah in these stages and like if that operator was crossing a million they're like I want to come completely out of sales now and I want to do X Y and Z or I want to go be on the golf course or whatever.
that's not one we'd partner with. Unless I could walk them through the reasons why I believe that they're heading down a path that's gonna cause pain for the organization. If they listen well or they're open to that, then hey, we could have a really good potential partnership if they wanna do those things. Hey, that's their choice. That's not gonna be something that I think will work or sign off on.
you know, we wouldn't bring that company into the portfolio. Yeah. So you're pointing out the aspect that that movement from one to three million, that person has got to stay key within sales. There's a makeup of the team that is important as you're adding those people. What else goes into the recipe?
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (18:51.088)
Well, you want to, you know, okay, so you're adding more people. So now you have to start to think about like career development. So career paths, career mapping, some of that, you know, hopefully comes naturally through your adding enough accounts where it's like you have opportunities to kind of bring people up into at least like account management roles is one of the ways that we have done that. It's got more complexes. We've added stuff and had other companies that have grown, you know,
bigger and we can take some of those things and stack them into companies earlier or have that all set to go. But you're starting to work on that. You're starting to work on kind of your onboarding. You're probably going to look at starting to offer benefits and things like that internally. Those are things I definitely recommend because you're now building out a team. You know, you could there's some people that would say, oh, offer up equity that acts first X amount of people. I've never done that, so I can't comment on it. I.
I have talked to people that didn't work well for, but I'm sure there's documented cases out there where that's worked as well. I just can't speak on it. We haven't done it. What within that are the systems and structures? Because I think for a lot of those people that are the key staff or the key salesperson, how important are the systems and structures within that to be able to then pass it down to other people? Or is that what?
you would suggest would be handed off to someone else? So good question. If I don't answer, you let me know. But I think I would focus on stuff that's still team related before you're going major externally at this point, I think, because you're starting to build this team out. So it's your onboarding. It's your overall compensation packages. It is your.
Onboarding overall compensation packages and then your career path thing. Okay, those three things would be the things that I'd start with and yes There's just a ton else to do but because you're in the beginning stages of building out a team I think well don't have that stuff built out. It's an important time to start to do it Can you get to that through that three million level without a lot of this stuff in place? Absolutely. Yeah, but then when you move into the next layer of things
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (21:16.336)
I think you're kind of behind the eight ball and it gets more complex as you're adding more people. Okay. What? And I think you have a harder time than at that point. Unpack that more. What makes that that harder at that point? Well, you have you're getting more people. Yeah, you just have to and more people brings more complexity. Yeah. So you got you got more people. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So you go from the the the 3 million mark. Yep.
What are the things that prepare you to go to that 10? Because it's not just more. I mean, it is more staff. It's more systems. Yeah, well. Going from three to 10, now you're now you definitely need other people selling right now, other people doing production. Yep, I've yet to see. Now. I don't want to say I've yet to see. We haven't done it in our businesses, right? But like.
Even you look at someone that's like doing like, OK, this person has a great brand or social presence or something like that. Well, that's a different level lever from like their direct ability to sell. OK, they're getting themselves out there through paid ads or content. Those are kind of two different sales vehicles in themselves. So that may be a way to do it. Yeah.
You know, so those are two levers. Well, another lever may be outbound, you know, salespeople or inbound salespeople. These are two other levers. OK. And long term, whether it's going at crossing 10 million or not, at some point you want to build this to have any value, because if you know that's the way we want, we build our inbound and outbound teams to talk about it in general terms.
We did that before we focused on content or paid ads. And so we're now going harder on that stuff, but it's after building out those other things. I'm not going to knock either way, but I can tell you from a business valuation standpoint, if it's just you and something happens to you or you want to go, you sell and you don't want to be involved anymore. Yep.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (23:43.696)
Well, that business is not going to be very valuable without you involved. It's really going to impact your multiple if you get one at all. So I can't say one's better than the other. I have way more experience in building the teams first, and time will tell where to learn it on this other end. I'm excited about it, and I like what we've done within that stuff. But you start to build out the teams.
Yeah, on that other end. And so you got to get hopefully this is happening at the 3 million level already. But if it hasn't, you start to have to get better at delegating. You got to get a lot better. You're not going to get there, in my opinion, without at least the way we did it with teams on learning how to delegate, learning how to do performance management, hold people accountable, create recognition systems, create good compensation, you know, to back that up.
And then accelerates over time because you're gonna need people to get elevated within the organization, okay? So again if you start you don't have to be perfect, but if you start your career Mapping and career pathing like on your way to three million You're able to escalate this better than if you're just starting after you're over three million Adding people and you're probably losing people if you don't have any of that stuff set up got it And it's just gonna be more it you know things move faster the
the bigger that number is and the more people you have. So if you don't have those foundational things set up, you're just going to have more of a mess to sort out. You can do it. Sure. But it's just going to be a lot more work. Well, it's a lot of work either way. OK. I would rec. It's like I just compare it to building a strong foundation. Yeah. If you do that, and at no point does that mean I think you should hire ahead of like.
where you're at in a revenue standpoint or a gross profit standpoint, like I would recommend as I have already in this, I talk about like a three to five range. I'm saying, hey, I like three, stay lean, you know, on the number. I have been happier, felt like the businesses run better when we're lean and executing ad than when we've over staffed and diluted who we've hired. Okay. Or created.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (26:10.64)
too much complexity, too fast, and our training and development suffers from it. I feel bad in those situations because there's been times where I feel like we've lost people that.
if we would have gone about that a little, like if we wouldn't have been overly aggressive at times, that maybe some of them would have worked out.
You know, some of them probably won't write, right? Right. Right. Because what we do is definitely not for everybody. Yeah, it's hard. Everything about it is hard. Yep. I love it. But it's not everyone. It's not for everybody. Yeah. And so but I just think like, man, where we've really kind of maybe broke that rule that I'm mentioning, there's some situations where it's like, I look at how we have some stuff set up now or when we're in our sweet spot. And it's like, man, like, I feel like we could have.
developed some of those people more. That's a hard, you're not asking me this, but it's probably one of the hardest things for me, is, cause I see the potential in everybody. And I always try and look at these situations and I look at the patterns of like, where we've got aggressive and overly aggressive on that stuff. I think we've lost more people that if we would have just like focused on the people we had. It's not even necessarily the people that get hired.
There's some people that might be like on the cusp of like becoming good. You know, they're average. And if you would have poured more in. Yeah, then you put more people in and then we're putting more time into them. And we got this stuff better assessed now. I'm not going to say it's not perfect. But you can probably see even from, I don't know whether you see this or not, but we're having our best month of the year so far. And we hired a lot in.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (28:06.32)
Q4, we expanded a lot with, you know, cracking off four companies since August, including Bolt. And, you know, we really ramped up in that time. And we've still hired a little bit, but we have really focused on the team we have now and kind of facilitated through some of this stuff. And we have had some people transition out and we've made some ads and we sit here.
on whatever it is, March 11th today. And we're on track for the best month that we've had all year. And we're going after record months in some of our service lines, ever. And I look at that as, hey, as we crank up on those levels, we then really got to watch what's happening. We're watching it, right? If we see things like halt or retract a little bit.
that's a quick indicator. We have these report card things that we're watching and as soon as we see that on a ramp up, we're like, okay, let's assess this, let's watch this and that's what we've been doing really since the beginning of the year. Now we're seeing that really kind of shift. So. And that's probably one of the keys within that three to 10 range, right? Is really coming back to and dialing in.
It's key in the 3 to 10 range, I think. It's more key in the 10 to 30 range, which is the range that we're in now for gross profit. And these things intensify. So while it's very vital in the 3 to 10, it's even more vital as you move to that next gear. You talk a lot about foundations, setting strong foundations for things to be able to grow in the future.
Within and maybe I'm I'm sticking a little bit in that three to ten You know range a little bit, but right now what other keys are In that three to ten got to have great operations at that point. Okay compliance becomes important Safety becomes safety is always important right now just the volume, you know, right? So these things are
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (30:27.92)
very important, you need to be forward thinking about.
Well, we haven't had a company that's like exploded on that within a year or anything like that, right? So so your longer range planning is well, you got to so you you got to start to think about life changing for people to okay So it does their role change, you know, so your best salesperson, you know They may be your best salesperson for a period of time. Yep Operate certain way. Well, maybe they get married. Mm -hmm. Maybe they have a kid. Yep or kids
Maybe they already had those things, but they're getting older and playing sports. And life changes a little bit. It doesn't have to. And I'm just using those examples. It doesn't mean those things happen. And automatically, that happens Everybody's at that same stage. But you just have different seasons of life for people. So I've found it helpful to plan for that within our recruiting, retention, career path.
And then as we've you know as we moved into that three to ten million, you know bucket and gross profit Those things started to happen a little bit more got it. You know and so You got people out from it like we have one of our biggest business unit leaders going out on maternity leave Yeah, happy for yeah, definitely. It's gonna be awesome I love how you guys have celebrated her too. Just so you know like it's so it's so neat just to watch that so
Business still goes on though, right? And she's running this huge business unit. And so we've been planning for that since our planning sessions in October. So I think I got that right. I know it was at least one of them. Our first one was in October. But we've been planning for that. Like, OK, what are we going to do? We're not going to just figure this out last minute. We need to figure this out ahead of time.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (32:28.08)
And that's completely cool. It's part of our responsibility that the team is like in maturing, you know, at that that at these levels, it's like, well, we can't just fly by the seat of our pants on this. Yeah. You know, who is so why your development so important? You know, who is potentially the next business unit? Who's been involved and deeply knows the project? Who's on that team that can step up and take on more responsibility?
And I think we're implementing all of those things in this instance to help with that situation. So stuff like that happens. And it breeds opportunities for others. And we have a responsibility on this stuff to make sure that programs continue to work well for clients. So I think that stuff becomes important. Yeah. And I think that the key word that I love that you just said is that's a maturing.
as you're growing, it's not just maturing in the GP, it's also maturing in your business acumen, how you're running things, what you're doing. That makes a ton of sense to me. I feel like I have a hundred questions I could ask because I'm just so eager for those different stages within that right now. Yeah, we're covering like a sliver of this stuff right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you want to, even in this episode, do you want to launch further into the 10 million plus? Or, I know one of the things that we're really careful about is beyond theory. Obviously, you've done that, the 10 to 30 already, but do you want to talk more in that 3 million? Do you want to?
Give us a couple nuggets in the 10 because I we definitely as we've been talking through this we want to do more of a whiteboard session within this as well because there's some really Keys there. Where do you want to take this? Well as we've crossed 10 and gone into the teens. Yep on that. I'll tell you Something that we've had to do is go back
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (34:42.192)
and go through processes. Okay. And go through like you saw like last week, we had our CRO of talent, Fletcher doing training. Yeah. With our recruiters. Yeah. And again, back to that mantra, we're all recruiters. That's right. Figure out, you know, that can evolve and change. But there's an example of it. Yeah, they're at top levels, you know, leading by example that way. And
So mind you, it wasn't just our recruiters that were sitting in there. It was our account managers. There were other people because we're all recruiters. Yeah, that's key, I think. Yeah, so we have stuff that, since we've crossed that and continue to grow and surge ahead, we're looking at.
kind of like a point of frustration, but it's also we're just embracing it and going in and making our tweaks. Like where we look at processes that we were really good at and how we're communicating them now, like again, back to those like early stages of where you can kind of have everyone work around you. Well, how well these processes are documented isn't as important because you guys are all together. You know, if you are together, you know, now there's remote work and there's ways to do that within. Yeah.
But like that part's not important. Well, it becomes more and more important. Well, we've done a relatively good job of that across these levels. Well, we looked at it recently and we feel like a lot of the stuff needs a refresher, needs to be tweaked, needs to be communicated in a little bit different way. We need to use different technologies and resources right down to using Bolt for some of this stuff.
So that we can capture it better and then redeploy it to the team better. So we're making a lot of adjustments and tweaking our processes and procedures right now. Not changing them, but just tweaking the delivery and how we're getting them out to the teams. And that's so that they're duplicatable. Or we make sure that they're consistent, OK?
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (36:49.57)
And so that we're working with our leaders who are teaching this stuff more day to day to make sure we're giving them good reminders as well. Yeah. Because it's one thing to teach them.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (37:03.672)
as time goes by, we gotta get better. We're working at getting better at having good reminders and frameworks for them and everybody, right? But just how we do that so that we keep consistency across the board with that. Okay, here's where I wanna wrap up today. I wanna think for the person or think about the aspect, the person who's sitting and listening or watching today.
and they are like they've been stuck at a million for two, three years. They're just not going over that bubble.
What do you say to them if they're stuck at that million? I think I know what you're going to say. I think you need to evaluate what's working well for you and what isn't. Maybe you need to whiteboard that out. You need to be able to address things that maybe are uncomfortable. And that's what I would recommend. You just got to be.
Able to do that. You probably have a bottleneck which happens, you know, these are where the bottlenecks are right 1 million 3 million 10 million Now somewhere in between 10 and 30 million. I'll tell you tell you won't we cross? Yeah down the gross profit like we're we're finding one This we're trying to crack over 20. Yep We're we're I don't know that it's a
full out bottleneck, but if we're not there yet, something, you know, it, yeah, there's something there. I just told you what I think it is for us. We got to get make sure that we're staying consistent with our messaging. Yeah. And I think we do a good. I think we do a positive job in that on the value side. I say positive, we can improve. Sure. There too. Yeah. On the tactical like training and development, I think that we got a little bit of a situation where.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (39:03.888)
there's, okay, here's how we do it, but here's how I do it. You know, I got you and we're trying and look, you're gonna have some of that, like some of your best people are gonna, you know, they need to follow the rules, but they're gonna play in the gray and in some areas and it's your job as a leader to kind of corral that back in. Well, okay, now when you got, you know, 60, 70 people running around.
and some big personalities. Like, OK, keep an average. Here's how we do this and why. And even down to our documentation. As we're growing to these bigger levels, it's becoming more apparent that when those things are done, one way I've heard this said is local or global behavior. So when it's done, it's like, OK, I'm going to do this.
more for the individual, well how that's hurting the overall. So that's like a local behavior compared to like global behavior. Let's operate in a way that's best for the overall team. Yeah, I got you. Okay. What if somebody stuck at the three million mark? So obviously, you know, one million builds your team. Okay. That's that's usually the better people around you. Yeah. Or you need to maybe you have great people. You need to figure out what you need to do to empower them.
to develop them. I mean, I'd like to think if you have great people, if you truly have great people around you, yes, there's always room for development and stuff, but they've probably also been able to pick up quite a bit. I'd find it more likely that the leader is scared to empower them or delegate responsibilities. That's why I think I said delegation becomes a big thing. You gotta be willing to give some of this away. You have to, I like to say,
Let them dent the car. Just don't let them total it. Yeah, that's good. You got to be willing to do some of that work with people on that, hopefully with empathy, with some confidence through your own track record, but enough empathy and calmness to where you don't just like bulldoze them, right? Like if someone makes a mistake, let that mistake be an investment in them and in their future. If they keep making the same mistake, well, that's where your performance management skills.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (41:22.01)
need to be there or be improving. But sometimes where people make a mistake, like, yes, that sucks in the moment, but they learn a lot from it. And they don't make that mistake anymore. And it helps them get better. Got it. I'm thinking about that 10 to 15, 15 to 20 right in there. The 10 million mark, what is it that has been?
as you've crossed that, as you continue to surge beyond that, what's the thing that as you crossed the 10 million mark that you think others should be looking at?
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (42:09.808)
I mean, I don't know that I can speak too well on what others should be looking for with that because that's been more recent. The last two years that we've crossed that on the gross profit line, I know for us it's making sure that we continue to push up our reoccurring revenues because we've had them since day one and it's been a focal point of our business. That's been an area.
And some of the service lines that actually kind of has stayed stagnant Was stagnant. Yeah, sorry just hit the mic. You're right And then we've grown some some of these other service lines so it's like okay We do want to keep that growing too now I look at some of our other ads that are reoccurring and it's like well those are like Our one reoccurring area isn't as high margin like not as much of it is GP as some of the others sure it's like man Also, look at this
And we've done X, Y, and Z, these three other lines that are reoccurring that are high margin, 100 % gross profit areas. And those are all going well. But cool, that's good. What about that area that we need to make sure continues to grow? So that's where a lot of our emphasis has been on right now, making sure that that area gets back up to speed. So what does that look like? You look at.
we've invested in a couple of teams that we have. In some, I just said don't hire ahead. Well, in some instances, we did and that we weren't doing as many of those types of projects. But we still have the client base and the ability with the new business development team set up to go grab those projects. In some instances, it's as simple as tapping a client on the shoulder and saying, hey, like.
We're helping you more over here. Like we used to do this. We have a team baked out specifically for this. Yeah, like let us back in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. And so that's a little bit different than when you're hiring ahead and like trying to like grow on organic market like got it. Those are two different. In my opinion, those are two different things. OK, man, I Aaron. I feel like I have so much yet to learn. Sorry if I didn't answer that well. No, I think you did. Yeah, I definitely think you did.
BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (44:35.984)
I mean you've shared a lot today and anything you want to wrap with? This stuff's hard. Yeah, it's not easy. So, you know, I just want to point that out because I think you know one of the the good qualifiers for me, you know, just as we're interacting on this is a couple of times I said even in this episode like oh it's it's you know, it's gonna be hard and you're like it's always going to be like.
that's part of it. Sure. I get it gets harder like the bigger you get. Yeah, the more stuff that happens, but you're also more battle tested that handle. Yeah, that's good. So that's good.
Well, I, um, I, I thank you for the wisdom today, Aaron, and for all of those, um, listeners out there, each of you who are listening, maybe that's where you're stuck the 1 million mark and you're planning on growing past that. Some of the wisdom Aaron shared today will take you there. Maybe it's the three, the 10, or maybe you're even well beyond that. And you can share wisdom with us. Uh, we would love to hear that. Make sure that you're, uh, liking and subscribing to the sparking success podcast. And we'll have another episode out for you, uh, very shortly here. We're so thankful.
that you've joined us today. Aaron, thanks for everything you shared. We appreciate it. Thanks, EJ.