We just turned 17 years and our awesome founder and CEO, Kasim Aslam, reveals the most significant lessons he learned along his journey through life and entrepreneurship.

Kasim shares his 17 lessons in 17 years and he stresses the importance of the third Solutions 8 Core Value.

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0:00 Intro

0:25 17 Things in 17 Years

2:00 Entrepreneurship is NOT fulfillment

5:32 Get really good at systems

7:49 Recruiter & Banker

8:57 If you can’t delegate EVERY task that takes place in your company, you don’t own a business, you own a job

10:57 People are the most important part of business

13:10 You should be the dumbest person who works for you

16:03 Only do business with people you’d trust on a handshake

16:57 Paper up anyway

19:32 Life is too short to work with people who drain you

21:23 Niche down into excellence

24:19 The corridor principle

26:21 Get excited about problems! (and then melt them)

28:31 Need help with Google Ads?

29:12 Don’t be the expert, be the guide

30:49 Focus on recurring revenue

32:02 Get good at the game of money

35:08 Don’t get romantic about how you make your money

36:08 One of the Solutions 8 Core Values

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So I just celebrated 17 years in business, which is so

that I'm really proud of and also makes me feel really old.

But we posted one of the social graphics online and somebody said, well, what

have you learned over the last 17 years?

And it was a really jarring question because it felt almost like a challenge.

Cuz part of me feels like I'm still just as dumb and naive as

I was when I first started out.

and then, that's the imposter syndrome.

Self-deprecating, self-loathing, facet of me.

But then the other half goes like, Gosh, I really feel like

I've picked up a lot on the way.

I've learned a lot, I've had so many failures, but you learn

from your failures way more than you learned from your successes.

And so I took it as a challenge.

I was like, what have I learned over the course of the last 17 years?

And I wanted to come up with one really strong lesson a year.

So I've got 17 things for you.

17 things learned over the course of 17 years in business.

Now the very first thing I'm gonna preface with is the 17 years is, an interesting.

characterization of what has happened because I haven't had the

exact same business for 17 years.

Like most agencies, and I think most businesses, it's gone

through a series of evolutions.

And so while I've been in business for 17 years, and I don't wanna take

that away from myself, it's been the same entity, the same phone number,

the same address for most of it.

the business model has evolved and I think that that's actually.

My credit, it doesn't necessarily discredit the 17 year epoch.

You know, I can't say, oh, I've been doing Google ads for 17 years.

Although I was doing it for most of them, it wasn't a core part of the service.

if that makes any sense.

And that's actually gonna factor into the very first learning lesson that I'm

gonna share with you, which is drum roll.

entrepreneurship is not fulfillment.

This is lesson number one.

This is one of the most important lessons that I ever, ever had to learn.

And it's something that I, I get more bullish with as I get older

than, as I spin off more entities and get involved in more things.

If you're gonna open a bakery, you shouldn't be the baker.

If you're gonna open a mechanic shop.

You shouldn't be the mechanic.

If you're gonna open a gym, you shouldn't be the personal trainer.

When I first.

My entrepreneurial career, I thought I needed to do the

things that I was selling.

I could tinker on a computer, but I wasn't a software engineer by any means, but

I was selling software, and so I went I tried to learn software development.

I'm selling websites and I learn how to build websites, and I'm selling Google

ads, and I learn how to do Google ads.

And the issue with that is it puts you at a robust disadvantage because now,

first of all, your limitation to scale is you, second of all, when you are.

The fulfillment house.

You begin operating your business from the paradigm of, the tactician

and the tactician's paradigm is actually a paradigm of limitation.

And it has to be.

It has to be, this isn't an indictment on tacticians, but if you're the

one doing the work, it's your job to manage the expectations and

talk about all the reasons that.

Isn't going to work or the limitations imposed on us, or how long it's gonna

take or how much it's gonna cost.

so when you're approaching business that way, it's a limiting view.

But an entrepreneur should have an unlimited view, I feel very strongly.

and if you are currently performing the fulfillment, that's okay.

Go replace yourself in that role first before anything.

So many entrepreneurs, when they start a business, if they're doing

the fulfillment, they try to replace themselves with like finance or

recruiting or legal or processor.

No, replace yourself with fulfillment.

If you own a website agency and you're building the websites, farm that out.

and I'll tell you what I did.

You know, solutions eight is the number one Google Ads agency on the planet.

Here's what's really funny, fun little open air secret.

When we started nicheing down into Google Ads, we didn't do

fulfillment for Google Ads.

We went and found the best agency we can find little agency outta

Texas that ended up blowing up.

And we just sold their services.

We were just a sales engine.

But it helped me with everything.

It helped me with the messaging, the sales funnel, the

conversations, client management.

Cause we were still doing the client management piece,

vendor expectation management.

And I didn't have to do the really hard part, which was.

Learn how to do the fulfillment.

The fulfillment is available and accessible to you.

So if you don't necessarily know how to get started, go white,

label somebody else's stuff, go resell somebody else's stuff.

the entrepreneurial piece is actually everything after the fulfillment.

And that even includes improving upon the way that products for

services are fulfilled upon.

you may disagree with me, I don't care.

This is my video.

Entrepreneurship is not fulfillment.

And if you want a really good read on this topic, I'd go check out

Michael Gerber's EMyth Revisited.

And in the EMyth Revisited, he says, basically the same thing.

People get into most industries because they love doing, and I love to paint,

so I'm gonna go teach children painting.

Well, guess what you'll never do again.

If you go teach children painting, you will never.

and if you've done something, a labor of life, then you know

that you've been privy to that.

So entrepreneurship is not fulfillment.

That's lesson than number one.

Lesson than number two is.

Get really good at systems.

It's ironic that this is the lesson that came up is I couldn't toggle over inside

of my little screen share thing here.

Get really good at systems where entrepreneurship is not fulfillment,

and I don't believe the entrepreneur should be doing most of what's

happening inside an organization.

I do think that.

, if you were to take inventory of the tasks, of the skills

of the proficiencies that an entrepreneurship should be good at.

It's the systems piece because systems are what scale.

And without systems, you actually don't have a business.

You have a room of people who are willing to do what you tell 'em to do, but it's

the systems that make things function.

the systems are what?

The business, an actual functional entity.

You know, you often hear people refer to businesses as, you know,

I really want a well-oiled machine.

I've heard that analogy very, very often.

I think the very first time I heard it was in a Franklin Cubby book.

But it's turned into a cliche.

We want a well-oiled machine.

Well, the machine is nothing more than a collection of components.

tethered together by systems and it's you, the entrepreneur that needs

to get good at systems that doesn't even mean you need to build 'em.

I don't build any of our automation here at Solutions Eight.

I've got two people, Yvonne, our cto, Julianne, our director of

automation, both of them brilliant, but I know systems really well.

, I'd say it's one of my strongest skill sets I know systems well

enough to know how to lead and direct the systems that I want.

for our customer onboarding, I really want it so that when somebody fills out this

form, goes to the finance team, this goes to the client management team, this goes

to the strategy team, and this goes to the client manager, or excuse me, to the

client and these ways for these reasons.

So I've defined the system.

You wanna get good at systems and.

Doing so puts you in the position of unencumbering yourself, because

what's nice about somebody who's good at systems is it forces you to

view the entity from the outside.

. And if you're ever within the entity, you've heard this all the time.

work on your business side and your business.

Well, getting good at systems, that's what that is, is working on your business.

And so where entrepreneurship is not fulfillment, fulfillment would be

working inside of your business where you're working on systems, that's

when you're working on your business.

Which leads me to number three.

recruiter and a banker.

This came from Ryan Dice.

Ryan Dice, who Digital Marker.

He's been a friend and a mentor of mine for a long, long time.

And, I was kind of complaining to him actually at one point I was like, man,

I don't do anything I like to do anymore and I'm just running around trying to find

the best people and, managed the money.

And he laughed and he goes, yeah, on a long enough timeline,

everybody in business just turns into a recruiter and a banker.

And I thought, Gosh, that makes so much sense.

That makes so much sense.

You are going to, as you scale, need people, which is one of the lessons that

I wanna talk about here subsequently.

And you're going to need to really understand the financial piece of

business, which is another one of the lessons I wanna talk about.

But really what I've handed you are the three roles maybe of entrepreneurship.

Systems architect, recruit.

Banker and either get really good at those roles or find somebody a

partner or somebody you can delegate to that is really good at those roles.

Which leads me to the next rule, which is delegation.

If you can't delegate every task that takes place in your company, you

don't own a business, you own a job.

If you can't delegate every.

that takes place in your company.

You don't own a business.

Everything that happens in your organization should be delegatable.

And if you tell me like, oh, well gosh, I'm a high-end Salesforce

consultant and I'm the only one that knows how to do these things, great.

Well that's not a business.

you can't walk away from that business for 30 days, come back, have it be

more efficient and you'd be making more money cuz that would be a business.

As you walk through your day, a really fun thought exercise is to

look at your calendar or your task list, which should be the same thing.

By the way, if your task list isn't your calendar, then there's

just a whole bunch of list of stuff that's not gonna get done.

Learn to time block, learn to bring your tasks under your calendar, and everything

on your calendar should be delegatable.

Every task you undertake should be delegatable and delegation

is actually the last bastion.

it's the last option.

The first question, you and I learned this from Steve Napolitano.

You ask yourself three questions anytime you're looking at any

task or any any calendar event.

Question number.

Can I eliminate this?

Do I actually have to do this?

And as you get more sophisticated as an entrepreneur, you start to

realize how often the answer is yes.

Question number two, can I automate this?

And that goes back to being good at systems.

Can I automate this?

And then question number three, if the answer's no to question

one and two, can I delegate this?

By the time you get to question number three, you should have

nothing left on your task list.

Your job is the entrepreneur, is to have margin, to have the ability to dream and

grow and meet people and network and.

read and just look at what's going on.

You should not this whole hustle culture thing, which is, it's

funny cuz you'll never not be busy cuz you're an entrepreneur.

That's what you do.

But you shouldn't be busy with other people's priorities.

I love Brennan Bouchard says this, he says that your email inbox is

just a list of other people's tasks.

It's just other people's task lists.

So stay.

Other people's task list delegate everything inside of your business.

The next rule, and this gets a little touchy-feely, but I'm gonna get a

little touchy-feely, people are the most important part of business.

People are so critically important on so many levels that it gets religious.

obviously, right?

Like obviously people are the most important thing in a positive way,

and important in a negative way too.

But it comes to the positive piece, and you know, I look

at my business for example.

All an agency has to offer, an agency can only sell three things

or a combination of these things.

Processes, programs, people, processes are easily commoditizable.

You can get all my processes right now for free.

Online, we've given 'em away a hundred million.

Programs easily.

Commoditizable SASS is the most scalable business in the whole wide world.

Anybody can go build and sell software people.

That's the key people.

Really good, motivated, hardworking people that care.

People that are well trained, people that live inside of a culture that they trust.

People build your business around people, and it's really interesting because very

often you build your business around the people that are your customers.

I think that maybe you should build the business around the

people that are your staff.

You know, one member of my staff handles about 30 customers.

that's, you don't wanna talk about scale.

So do I want one customer to be able to influence a member of my staff

negatively, who's now gonna go spread that across 29 other customers?

No.

No.

I don't.

so the whole customers always write mantra.

It's not that we don't treat our customers with kindness and

respect, we absolutely do, but hierarchically speaking, it's my staff.

It's the people that are a part of Solutions Eight, that actually

make solutions eight more than any other single customer.

Find a way to find and cultivate amazing people.

I've got almost a hundred employees and I'm so blown away

by how amazing all of them are.

They're just this group of rock stars, and I've got a really good hiring system.

I've given it away online.

You can have it.

. So I have a system for finding these folks, but so much of it has to

do with the fact that I just find people that are brilliant at what

they do and I get outta their way cuz people are so, so, so important.

Which leads me to the next one.

You should be the dumbest person who works for you.

And this sounds a lot like lip service.

this sounds like something that people say from the stage or from the

pulpit or whatever, and they don't necessarily mean it, it's one of

those fun cliches that's, makes it's virtue signaling in a managerial.

Here's why.

It's true.

Everybody that works for me is smarter than I am along the access

of analysis for which they work.

Does that make sense?

That was a little flowery.

I'll try again.

Everybody who works for me is better at their job than I would be.

who works for me is smarter than I am at the thing that they're doing, and

if they're not, I'm actively working to train them to be smarter than I am.

I hear so often from peers and even when I was doing a little bit of coaching,

people would be like, ah, gosh, you know, it's so hard to find good people and if

you want something done, do it yourself.

Sounds like you've done this poorly.

You want to go find people.

And generally speaking, when I hear from people like that, what they've

done is they've surrounded themselves with people that aren't as capable

on purpose, and they don't even realize it because they're threatened.

They're threatened, they don't wanna be around people that

are competent or strong or.

and we're better because then it means that they're gonna

have to rely on those people.

Well, actually, what a wonderful place to be.

You're relying on these people, and as long as you trust those folks, like

gosh, your business is gonna grow so much faster, so much better, so much,

With more structural fortitude than if you try to do everything yourself.

So go find people that are better than you at whatever it's that they're

doing and put 'em in those positions.

That's the other thing too.

I love that quote.

I think it's Einstein.

If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it'll

spend its whole life thinking.

It's stupid.

I've had employees that weren't good at stuff, but they were

amazing at other things.

Well, that's a real easy solution there.

It's like art.

I'm gonna take this off your plate and I'm gonna move you over here.

My business partner's a good example.

My business partner, John Moran, smartest Google ADSD guy in the

whole world is the reason we're the number one rank Google Ads agency.

He is a literal savant, literal genius.

He was my employee before he was my business.

. John has a real hard time with processes.

the TCM reports, he just doesn't do 'em, just does not do 'em.

And a petulant manager type would be like, oh, John's not doing his job.

We're gonna fire him.

Well, I just lost the best resource I've ever had in my entire life.

Instead, , I decided, all right, John doesn't do these things,

but he's massively valuable.

So then I hired somebody to follow him around and do those things for him.

So, you know, we have all these things that need to be updated inside of our

system, and everything's run off of air table and, a myriad of managerial

processes that John doesn't do.

It's just not the way his head works.

And, you wanna be right or do you wanna be successful?

And so, surround yourself with people that are phenomenal and

and then enable them to be.

Equip them to be the best that they can possibly be.

And sometimes that means getting outta their way and, don't have a

quicksodic dedication to the rules.

Speaking of people only trust, only do business with people you trust on a

handshake, only do business with people you trust in a handshake, I'm almost 40

years old, I've been burned so many times.

and it's, interestingly, looking back, I usually kind of knew, you usually

go into it going like, man, this person's a little shady, or There's

something not right here, or I just don't have a right gut feeling.

Not always.

I've been snuck attacked too.

But if you don't feel right about somebody, anybody, vendor, client,

employee, partner, jump ship, life is too short and people are too important.

And the people you surround yourself with are gonna influence

you more than anybody else.

You spend more time at work than you do with your family.

So if you don't trust somebody, run, run, jumping and hide.

Now, that doesn't mean that you're silly.

Do business with people you would do business with on a handshake, but

paper up anyway, get it in writing.

Anyway, so, hey, I trust you.

I'm really excited about working with you.

Just to make sure you and I can manage expectations and we're on the same page.

Let's put it down in writing.

Doesn't have to be great.

Big legalese.

Everybody hires a lawyer.

Let's put an email together.

This is my understanding, this is your understanding.

Anybody who doesn't wanna do that or make sure, feel uncomfortable

doing that, run away from 'em.

I mentioned a, an agency that we outsourced our work to out of Texas.

Interesting thing about the, that agency is we were really good friends with them.

We'd go down to the city where they were and we'd have barbecue together.

And I was on the phone with the CEO every day for a year and a half.

He and I were either chatting back and forth, or talking back and forth.

I thought he was one of my best friends.

We ended up scaling outside of their abilities to

fulfill, caused some friction.

they have a whole side to their story, so maybe we didn't handle it properly

or whatever, but we basically sent over a letter saying, Hey, we need

y'all to be able to perform better.

If you can't, we're gonna find somebody else.

We gave them 180 days notice.

Or something close to that.

They turned around and they gave us a 30 day notice, which

is all we were contracted for.

So in 30 days, as I'm scaling up, I think I have, hundred clients at

this point or something close to it.

I'm gonna lose my only vendor and I have no contractual recourse and my very strong

opinion is in, maybe I can be forgiven.

Attempting to assume somebody's motivations, but I think they saw, oh,

we just created our biggest competitor.

Let's try to put them outta business.

And then I had to create an entire Google Ads agency, a fulfillment agency.

in 30 days.

So that whole piece, entrepreneurship isn't fulfillment.

Well, I'll make sure you have fulfillment covered.

And I didn't have a black backup plan and I didn't have that because

I thought I could trust these folks.

So do business with people that you feel like you can trust, but paper up anyway.

Cause if I had it in writing, Hey, if anything ever goes wrong, this is

how long we have the transition out.

they stole accounts that.

owned.

There were MCC accounts with my name on 'em.

They said Solutions eight, and they wouldn't hand them over.

They actually locked us out of 'em.

So, interesting things happen.

Trust, but verify paper up, get it in writing, and, and

that goes for a lot of things.

if you're hiring a vendor or an employee or a co.

Most of my employees, 90% of 'em are offshore somewhere in countries where

employment agreements aren't enforceable.

I have 'em signed one anyway, just to make sure we're on the same page and

we're all talking about the same thing.

Speaking of next lesson, life is too short to work with people who drain you.

So if you have somebody who's, and it doesn't matter, your biggest client.

Most amount of profitability.

Your best employee business partner that's just a rockstar salesperson.

If you get a knot in your stomach when they call you, that's the sign.

What's interesting is they're always costing you more than they're giving

you, and you just don't know it.

I had a business associate who was like this.

She she wasn't unkind to me, but she was.

, she took more than she gave when it came to, energy and discussions.

And it just always felt very combative.

And, even though we were friends and we were growing a business together,

I never felt like I was being fairly treated or getting the whole story, or it

always felt like I was being maneuvered.

And what I found was, is I actually avoid, I started avoiding her.

I started working later in the day.

and, Planning my time around when I knew she wasn't gonna be there.

Cause I just, constantly felt like I was under attack and

it, hurt my ability to perform.

It hurt the growth of our business.

And, even though she's bringing in all this business, it just wasn't worth it.

And when, finally made moves to resolve that situation, and I

don't want to mischaracterize her, she wasn't a bad person.

We just had personality types that just clashed.

They just didn't work together.

And I told my wife every day for a year and a half, I'm like,

man, I'm so glad I'm out of that.

But you don't realize it when you.

. So I'm trying to offer this to you now.

I wanna give you permission if there's somebody who drains you.

and that's the note for me, is if I see their name in an email or if

I see their name come up on a text message, or they call and I have a

negative response, that's when I know I need to not be in this relationship.

Little more tactical.

Next lesson niche down into excellence.

I've built four multimillion dollar agencies.

I've had two exits, and it's all come from nicheing down.

We had the highest performing real estate investment campaign

on the planet for seven years.

That's Google Ads for real estate investing like you wanna talk about.

You can't get more niche than that.

We've got an agency right now that serves Montessori schools.

There's only 4,000 or 4,500 accredited Montessori schools in the United States.

You can't get more niche than that.

Solutions eight started as a full funnel agency.

We were offering website development and graphic design and content creation.

and as I started cutting off services, I started making more money and scaling up.

And then it was John who decided, Hey, let's just be Google Ads specific.

And when we did that unbelievable growth we almost couldn't control it.

Now you'll notice that there's, there's.

Niche down into excellence.

Here's what this means.

Niche down, choose a niche.

And there's, there's two axis for nicheing by the way.

There's the x-axis is nicheing down into a service offering, and the Y

axis is nicheing down into an industry.

And so, example would be a Google Ads agency.

So I'm not just a marketing agency, I'm not a traffic agency,

I'm not a paid traffic agency.

I'm a Google ads agency.

Bam niche down into my service.

And then you might say, well, I only do Google ads for landscapers, or I

only do Google ads for e-commerce.

Which would be a broader niche.

You don't have to niche down into both.

But nicheing into both.

Like, when we do Google ads for Montessori schools or Google ads for real estate

investors, that's when you get to be better than anybody else has ever been.

Niche down.

Excellence.

We're the best Google Ads agency in the world.

Why?

Because all we do is Google Ads.

I actually don't know another agency.

I know a couple of freelancers and you know, let's say smaller organizations,

but like a group of people of let's say 10 or 15 or more, right?

Like a substantive size organization.

I don't know their, another agency that does only Google ads, all of them do paid.

, you know, Google Ads and Facebook and whatever, or Google Ads and Bing.

Or maybe they do Google ads and funnels, or, because we did only Google Ads,

it was so easy for us to get good.

It was all we were doing.

you know, it was Gary Keller's one thing niche down into excellence.

it's been the most important lesson I've ever learned in my entrepreneurial life.

Maybe it should have been first is finding your niche and there's

no niche that's too small.

and there's so many niches that are underserved.

I think there's gonna be an entrepreneurial gold rush

towards little, niche businesses.

And I go back and forth between niche and niche, by the way.

Cause I don't know how it's like, nobody wants to work for like a,

Italian restaurant for instance.

A little mom and pop, single location Italian restaurant gets

no love from marketing agencies.

They're all going after dentists and doctors and lawyers.

But what about nail salons or coffee shops or dry cleaners?

Nobody's going after 'em.

So there's this huge market, and if you were to create.

, real phenomenal collateral for them.

You'd have a blue ocean niche down into excellence.

Get really good at what you're doing, get really good at what you're offering,

and if you don't know what to do, The next lesson is the corridor principle.

I spent so much time as a young man who wanted to go into business for

myself, trying to figure out what I was going to do, trying to figure

out what the next move was, trying to figure out what the best idea was.

And the problem with that is you're, in the bleachers watching the game.

And until you're in the game, you don't know what the play's gonna look like.

And the corridor principle says that you are not going to discover

the real opportunity until after you've already entered the corridor.

if you don't know what to do, by the way, go drive an Uber.

I really mean that.

I really mean that if you don't know what to do, if you have no

idea where to go from a business perspective, go drive an Uber.

Uber drivers get to have more conversations with more interesting people

every day than I think anybody else.

or go work for, whatever, throw dart at a map and go work

for wherever that dart hits.

go work for a financial consulting firm, or go work at a manufacturing

plant to go work at Target, or go work at an Amazon fulfillment center.

Here's what's gonna happen.

You're in the corridor and all of a sudden you're.

Gosh, the way they stock these shelves is really inefficient.

Or the way this company's getting their leads is weird, or these

guys aren't answering their phone.

I wonder if I did a phone answering service for financial consultants

specifically if that's something they'd be willing to pay for,

especially if I could do the lead intake qualification and scheduling.

And they're actually paying to schedule.

Hmm.

The corridor principal says that you're gonna find all the opportunities

after you've entered the corridor, and that's been so true in my life.

It's comical.

I didn't know that a Google ad agency would be the most successful facet until I

was already running a full funnel agency.

So give yourself permission to start poorly.

Start without a.

You know, a fully formed plan.

Don't be stupid.

But just get out there and start playing.

And the odds that the corridor you enter is the corridor you stay in are very low.

That's okay.

Good.

in the very beginning I wanna outsource medical and legal

transcription, and somehow that led me to a Google Ads agency.

Like, what an evolution.

But I had to get out on the field before I was gonna learn that lesson.

So get into the corridor and then pay a.

and what you'll notice is when you're in the corridor, the

opportunities are problems.

So when you're in the corridor and you know you're at work or you're doing

whatever you're doing and you run into a problem, get excited about the problems,

get excited about problems, problems are.

The entrepreneur's fuel.

That's what brings the opportunity.

So when you, encounter problems, train yourself on a gut level, on a physical

level, pay attention to your body.

By the way, I think it's so important to, really, was talking about

earlier, if you get a And not in your stomach when somebody calls you.

Like those signs are, that's 2 trillion years of evolution at play.

it sounds so like hippy dippy, Sedona magic rock bullshit, but it's not.

It's like there's a reason that your body responds to things and it's because

we used to be chased by like bears and velociraptors, and we needed to have

the instincts in order to handle them.

And now we're ignoring those instincts and we shouldn't at all.

When you encounter a problem, train yourself, train your mind,

and train your body to get.

And then this is the most important part.

People naturally ignore problems.

I don't know why we, all of us, we procrastinate, we put it off, we hide it.

We try not to pay attention to it.

Train yourself to melt problems.

I've learned this from my friend Calvin Corelli.

Calvin is the CEO of Sinclair, phenomenal SaaS product.

I have three businesses built on the back of Sinclair.

It's an unbelievable piece of machinery.

And I worked with Calvin for about six months, maybe a

little bit longer than that.

I've never met a human who tackles problems with a vengeance, with a

hatred, but also with an excitement.

And what's funny is I would be looking at this problem, and for me it would

be this titanium cube that couldn't be opened, cracked dismantled.

And then, and Calvin would just sit there and, and I would watch

him in real time, just melted.

and it would just melt away into, vapor, into, into ether.

And it's because he just got obsessive.

He didn't know any more about the problem than I did.

maybe he's smarter than I am.

But all of a sudden he would start to Google it and he'd start to search and

he'd call people that had encountered it before and he'd ask em what they did.

And, he would just get obsessive with solving these problems.

And then once he solved a problem, guess what he has?

If he wants it, here's a business.

Every problem you solve is a.

Every problem you solve is a business.

So get excited about solving problems.

Next lesson.

Don't be the expert, be the guide.

I don't run Google ad campaigns.

I haven't run an end-to-end Google ad campaign.

since before we niche down into Google Ads and I don't pretend to, instead I position

myself as the perpetual student and then I present what it is that we're learning.

You know, I've got 200 clients and 80 some odd employees inside of Solutions.

Eight specifically, and we manage a hundred million dollars in ad spend.

And so I have a lot of information and I just present the information

distilled through the eyes and the lens of the experts.

, your imposter syndrome comes from the fact that you're probably an imposter.

And it's so, it's honesty and integrity.

that's showing itself.

And so all you have to do is be honest and integrous about

the way you present yourself.

I really love what Brene Brown said.

If you haven't read Daring Greatly, by the way, it's unbelievable.

But Brene Brown said, I'm a tenured map maker, but amateur traveler,

or maybe it's, I'm an expert map maker, but amateur traveler.

That's okay.

That's okay.

So you can be really good at kind of showing people how things are

done, but then when you go to do it yourself, you're still learning

as long as you present yourself.

That way, those people that are super polished and pretend like

everything's perfect and they've never failed, like those are the people.

Are going to crash and burn, and you kind of actually hope to see it a little bit.

But when you show up with authenticity and reality and truth and you're

just like, Hey, I kind of figured this thing out, and it's pretty cool.

Let me know if you have any questions.

I think people really resonate with that.

Next lesson, far more specific.

Focus on recurring revenue.

If you're building a business, it's as hard to sell a thousand

dollars one time as it is to sell a thousand dollars a month.

And that will always be true.

Focus on recurring revenue.

That's why you get multiples when you exit.

SaaS companies are trading at 50 x 5, 0 50 x ebitda.

It's unbelievable.

consumable, e-commerce specifically are trading it like, 10, 20, 30

x depending on how they're doing.

Agencies are now starting to.

6, 8, 10, 12, 13 x.

For larger agencies, it's because of, of recurring revenue,

build recurring revenue models.

It doesn't have to be the only thing you do, but make sure there's

a recurring revenue component to what you're doing, because I can

tell you he's a paid traffic guy.

Customer acquisition is the most expensive thing you'll ever do.

It's the most expensive thing you'll ever do.

It's more expensive than manufacturing.

It's more expensive than ideation r and d.

Like it's the most expensive thing you'll ever do.

In almost every business, in most businesses that we see,

customer acquisition is actually more expensive than cost of.

Wow.

So why wouldn't you put yourself in a position to where you only have

to pay that once and then you get the benefit every subsequent time?

Focus on recurring revenue.

Go find a recurring revenue business and get good at the game of money.

I can't tell you how many buddies I have that.

, they do really well.

I've been in business 17 years now, y'all, I've seen this where I've got buddies

are, that are making more than me, but they're spending more than they make or

they're spending very close to all of it.

And there's this game that you play, especially as a young person, young

men and women have to be really careful with this because it's so

tempting to want, you want people to know that you're successful.

And so you, and you get the Rolex, cuz Rolex had that whole thing

about climbing the mountain, right?

They had that ad that was brilliant.

There was like, you climbed Everest and you want people to.

by the Rolex, but there's a saying, my father's from Pakistani, he

has all these old folksy Pakistani sayings that, they're kind of

funny, but they make a lot of sense.

and one of the sayings he has is, if you're gonna have an elephant as a

pet, you have to have big doors, right?

. And I know that sounds kind of silly, but if you really think about

it, there's a lot of wisdom there.

If you're gonna have an elephant as a pet, you have to have a big door.

Well, if you need big doors, then you have to have high ceilings.

And if you have high ceilings, you have to have a big house.

And if you have a big house, you have.

Plot of land.

If you have big plot of land, you have to have a fence.

and you go all the way back to this elephant and your man, just

don't get the freaking elephant.

Right.

I had a buddy who hopefully never watches this video and he's got three or four

supercars, you know, he's got the Ferrari in the Lamborghini and the Audi a eight.

And he came out to dinner with us in San Diego and he spent 45 minutes trying to

figure out where to park cuz he didn't wanna park somewhere where his, you know,

million dollar car was gonna get dinged.

And I'm not wealth shaming, I'm just saying that until you can afford

to truly without concern or worry.

It's really important that you realize that money is the fuel for

your entrepreneurial endeavors.

Don't be stupid with it.

There are two types of money.

This is my rule, and you can make it your rule too if you want.

There are two types of money.

There's money that your time buys you, and there's money that your money buys.

You.

There's money that your time buys you, and there's money that your money buys you.

And the money for time trade is the most miserable trade you'll

ever make in your entire life.

And I'm saying this is somebody who's done it for a very, very long time.

What you wanna do is the money that your time buys.

You can only be used for the absolute bare necessities of life.

And then to purchase things that make you more.

. So this might be like a rental house or annuities or bonds or whatever it

is that you wanna invest in, right?

So the money that your time makes you used for the necessities, and I

mean the bare necessities by the way.

So if you want, the big house on the hill and the luxury

car, that's not a necessity.

It's a roof over your head, safe place to sleep.

if you want your kids go to school, organic food, necessities and then

value producing assets, which result.

, the money your money buys you.

Cuz when you have businesses or assets or real estate, that's yielding money.

Now this money, what are you allowed to do without money?

Whatever you want.

You want a Ferrari, buy a Ferrari, that's great.

Buy seven of them, one for every day of the week.

Different colors.

Doesn't matter.

This is money that your money buys you, but you have to get good at

the money, the game of money first.

And I know that that's not fun, but this is how you accomplish financial freedom.

Speaking of don't get romantic about the way you make your.

. I'm a Google ads agency right now.

I can tell you that Google Ads is marching its way towards four

obsolescence at some point in the future.

And all that means to me is I'm gonna have to evolve.

Now, do I think Google Ads is going away?

No, I don't think that at all.

I think that the way that we run Google Ads is going to.

change, but I was an SEO agency before Google Ads and before seo

we were, heavy into software and before, so, you know what I mean?

Like, don't get romantic about the way you make your money, because especially

in this world, regardless of what industry you're in, it's going to evolve.

Blockbuster got real romantic about the way they made

their money, loved late fees.

Banks got real romantic about the way they made their money.

And, and they're being usurped on a number of levels.

Don't get romantic about the way you make your money, get romantic about serving

the people that you love to serve.

And what that will do is it will yield the subsequent opportunities, the direction

that you potentially need to go and.

That leads me to last lesson, which again is a little

touchy-feely, but I don't care.

It's love.

And I know that's a word that turns everybody off.

It's, you know, in our core values at Solutions eight, we have

truth, responsibility, and heart.

And I said heart because I'm a coward.

And I was afraid to put love because it felt like, oh God, we're gonna have

to put up with some, with this idiot.

But I I don't care as much anymore.

. I think love is so important.

it's what animates us.

you do things because you love them.

You play an instrument, you play piano cause you love piano.

You play with your kids cuz you love your kids.

You seek out your spouse cuz you love your spouse.

and when you do things well, you learn to love them.

Exercise, for instance, I didn't really like to exercise in the beginning,

but I found a way to love it.

Julio Giron has a quote that I.

And all my hiring, I ask people to tell me what it means to them.

And he says it's from the prophet, which is a really worthy read, by the way.

But the quotas work is love made visible.

Find a way to instill love in everything that you do.

And if you can't, you're doing the wrong thing.

and I'm not saying this as, judge, I'm telling you, this is somebody

who's been a victim of my own designs.

I have done things in the past that made a ton of money that I didn't.

I've had endeavors and entrepreneurial pursuits that did very well, but

they lacked the love component and they were at best neutral, but at

worst, very often soul sucking.

spending time with people that I don't like in rooms that I don't

like doing things that I don't like, and who cares how much money

you're making if you don't love it?

Find a way to love what you do.

Find a way to love the people you do it for.

Find a way to love the people you do it with.

Find people that you love to be around, like make.

essential theme.

Make it primary, make it foundational.

and then you can go after things like, financial success and growth and scale.

But it's okay to stop and say, you know what?

I really wanna love this.

I really wanna love my days.

For so often, I was just, I would torture myself, truly torture myself.

By forcing myself to do things that I didn't want to do cause

I wanted to be successful.

You, I wake up at four o'clock in the morning and I run through this

insane laundry list of habits, which actually, you know what's really

funny is I love waking up early.

Now I love waking up early, but I didn't used to because the things

that I made myself do, I didn't love them and I was doing 'em just because

I just wanted to be wealthy and.

, it cost me, and it actually cost me more than it earned me because there is you'll,

I mean, you'll have to wake up at four o'clock in the morning, work hard 12 hours

a day every day for your entire life.

You'll be successful for sure, but you'll be successful at a cost.

And it wasn't until I started integrating love into my daily themes

that the success I experienced.

. It wasn't just sweeter, it was actually more scalable cuz it

didn't fall off every time.

if the minute, if you're doing something you don't love, the

minute you lose motivation, you lose the ability to do that thing and

you lose motivation all the time.

Motivation is the most fickle master of any.

So find something that you love and focus on that.

And if you can't find, the thing you love to do, and this is my experience

generally especially, is when you're younger, it's hard to find the thing

you love to do because you're afraid.

. You ask a kid, what do you wanna be when you grow up?

And they have all these dreams and all of 'em are funny, right?

It's always like, oh, I wanna be an astronaut or a zookeeper.

And that's great.

but then as, people get a little bit older, Post pubescent, they

stop answering that question because they get fearful.

I used to, I didn't wanna put myself in a box.

It's like, ah, I don't wanna commit just yet.

So if you don't wanna commit to the service, that's fine.

Commit to a group of people.

Who do you love as people?

maybe you love athletes or you love, stay-at-home moms, or you

love Montessori schools, or you love people that are struggling.

Autism or who do you love?

And then find a way to serve them, but build love into your life.

Make it an ever-present, ongoing recurring theme and surround yourself

with people that you can love.

And that's really weird too.

You know, I don't tell my employees this often cause I don't want to get sued.

But God do I love these people.

Most of them, there's a couple that annoy me.

Hopefully they don't watch this.

They know who they are.

You know, I have nearly a hundred employees now, and it's just every

time I'm on the phone with one of 'em, every time I learn a little

bit more about what they're doing.

I was on the phone with a young man who's, he's making a movie, and it was

just so much fun to see him light up.

I'd done some film in the past and so he asked me to connect just for some advice,

and I didn't give him any good advice.

I didn't help him at all, but it was really fun for me to watch him.

do this thing that he really cared about.

it made our interaction on every other level.

Whenever they happen, it makes them more real.

Cause now I know you I know the things that you care about.

So find a way to surround yourself with people that you love.

find a way to, serve people that you love.

Find a way to do things that you love.

and they don't have to be sexy.

. You know what I mean?

Like, yeah, everybody wants to be an actor or everybody wants to paint,

or everybody wants to work with music or everybody wants to help kids.

Nobody wants to empty the garbage.

Nobody wants to clean out the gutters.

Nobody wants to, fix septic tanks.

But you can find love there.

You can find there's love in the septic tank.

You know what I mean?

Like, if you're an emergency plumber, whatever it is, there's

so many ways for you to find.

The love that exists within the confines of what you do because of the value

you're providing to other people.

So find a way to embed love into your life and and then I think

success really becomes inevitable.

Then it's just a matter of time because it's infectious.

People know, they can tell this went way longer than I thought it was.

I wanted to get one of these a minute.

I thought this was gonna be a 17 minute video.

I hope this is helpful.

I'd love to.

What you've learned on your journey through life and through business.

I gave you my 17 over 17 years.

What are the fun lessons that you have to offer me?

We can start a dialogue in the comments.

Other than that, I'll see you all tomorrow.