When I started my new company (https://scientificgrowth.com), I set a goal to build a million dollar business in a year.
I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. But it wasn’t something new.
I have been fortunate to be part of teams that built multiple million dollars businesses (both for ourselves, our partners and our clients) over the years.
And there were many lessons I picked up along the way that made the journey a little easier (I’ll share them shortly).
The challenge was doing it with new marketers with little to no experience in copywriting and digital marketing.
While adjusting to my new “job” as a dad to my son, Alex.
Of course, there was the whole COVID-19 situation that basically threw my plans out the window.
I started my company in March 2020.
About 1 month after moving into my new office, my team was “forced” to work from home due to a lockdown.
(The funny thing was it was easier than expected. The whole team loved the experience of working from home so once the Circuit Breaker was over, we decided to continue working remotely from home.)
So yup, we started the year a little slower than expected with a few bumps in the road e.g. wrong partners and hires.
But by the time we finished the year, we officially built a million dollar business, and are aiming to hit our stretch goal.
Now, I can’t reveal too much about the business since we’re operating in a highly competitive space.
But I’ll share some lessons we learned along the way and give you some ideas you can apply to your own business.
If you find the lessons useful, feel free to give us a clap in the article.
Lesson #1: Pick a large, hungry and desperate market who is willing to pay a premium price
I made the decision to build the business in a different country simply because Singapore is way too small.
We could easily have 5, 10 even 50 times the total serviceable obtainable market if we focus on another country.
There are only 3 main niches where there is a huge group of people actively looking for solutions — health, wealth and relationships.
Of course, it’s not good enough to pick one of these niches.
You have to go a little deeper to find sub-niches where you have a good chance of dominating within a short period of time.
Once we decided on the market, the next step is to…
Lesson #2: Create a “Hey Yes” offer
We found a partner who can put a strong offer together and deliver it well.
More importantly, it was a partner with a growth mindset — and he was willing to scale up operations as we scale up the marketing.
This will allow the team to focus 100% on marketing and growing the business rather than get caught up with the operations.
There were a few “misfires” here and there. But once we found someone, we can start crafting the best possible offer.
I call it the “Hey Yes” offer.
It’s an offer so good the target market will be kicking themselves in the a** for not taking it up.
To craft the best possible offer, I dived deep into the market. Usually, I find it’s best to talk to the customer directly and ask them the right questions.
I researched just about every competitor in the space. I bought all their products and went through their funnels. By the end of the research, I have a clear idea
Once I have a good sense of the competitors, I will sit down with the partner to craft the best possible offer.
This is the part that will require the most time, because we need to make sure the partner is able to deliver the offer. Usually this takes a few weeks to put together but it’s a critical part of the process.
We also had to make sure we were crafting an offer that can scale in the market we’re targeting.
Even then, we don’t get it right the first time round. It usually takes a few rounds of testing and tweaking to come out with an offer that works.
Lesson #3: Focus on the 20% that gives you 80% of the results.
One of the most important books I read this year was “The 80/20 Principle” by Richard Koch.
It changed the way I think about life and business as a whole.
Instead of trying to do everything right from the start, I focus on the 20% that gives me 80% of the outcome I want.
Here’s a list of 20% activities I focused on for the first few weeks:
- Putting together a minimum viable offer (MVO). We didn’t spend time trying to do everything. Heck, half the product wasn’t even done when we started marketing.
- Focus on putting the MVO in front of our target market as much as possible. We do it through traffic sources that we know works for this specific niche.
- Once we have something in place, it’s all about improving the offer and messaging till we get the return on advertising spend (ROAS) that we’re looking for.
Lesson #4: Stay focused and motivated with lead measure.
I learned about this idea from an amazing book “The 4 Disciplines Of Execution”.
I recommend it for any small business looking to keep the team focused on your most important goals.
Hitting a million dollars was the goal we set for ourselves once we found something working.
Lag measures were useful for keeping track of progress e.g. how much revenue we generated.
But what matters are lead measures — critical activities that lead to and drive the lag measure e.g. how many new ads were we testing per day, how many leads are we generating every day.
The lead measures keep the team focused on taking action every day to achieve the result. Anything that doesn’t contribute to the lead measure is considered a distraction.
Lesson #5: Setup systems and processes
There are many books on this topic but one of the books that I read and re-read multiple times this year on this is Ray Dalio’s Principles.
Now, to be clear. This is NOT a book about systemization.
But it gives a big picture view of the importance of building a machine and running the machine well.
Every business is a machine and should be treated as such.
Your people and your culture are key parts of the system. This is why a majority of my time is spent on training the team.
The team is also responsible for setting up systems and processes, so we know with high level of certainty that we’re able to hit our numbers every week.
Systems include the way we email the list, run our Facebook and Youtube ads, ensure that we stay compliant.
There were times we felt like everything was put together with a duct tape but it is part of building something from ground up at an accelerated pace.
You don’t need everything to work perfectly all the time and it is expected that things break down, and we’ll just fix it along the way.
At the same time, our partner was taking lead in building up the operations and making sure we’re delivering massive value and keeping our customers happy.
Lesson #6: Expect challenges and work through them.
There will always be challenges along the way, especially when you’re building towards a big goal.
We anticipated a majority of the challenges early in the business and were able to avoid the challenges or at least minimize the impact.
At the same time, there will be unexpected challenges or challenges that came up a lot earlier than expected.
We had a few of those in the form of accounts getting disabled, slower sales on weeks due to external factors out of our control.
So here’s the approach that worked for us.
First, we’re clear about the things we can control and cannot control. We focus exclusively on the things we can control e.g. our attitude to the problem, our approach to solving the problem.
Secondly, we start solving the problem in the best way possible. If we’re not sure what is causing the problem, we’ll form our hypothesis, start gathering data and experimenting to find the root of the problem.
Thirdly, once we solve the problem, we’ll document it and turn it into a system. We set up an standard operating procedure the next time the same problem comes up.
The whole team (including those who are not working on the problem) are briefed on it and what they need to do next the next time the same problem comes up.
Lesson #7: Keep up the momentum
Maintaining the momentum requires us to do 2 things:
- Set bigger revenue and profit every month
- Remove all distractions
The first one is easy.
We set a higher revenue and profit target every month. If we don’t hit it, we’ll evaluate how else we can hit the target.
We were able to come out with creative promotions to add additional sales and profits every month without spending more.
We also found additional channels to drive more sales in less time.
The second one is much more difficult.
It takes laser-like focus to achieve our 7 figure goal.
There were many distractions that come up along the way — both on the operation and the marketing side of the business.
Over time, we learned and continue to learn is to say “no” more often.
We realized we actually made less when we try to fix what’s not broken. Or add anything to our offer that doesn’t add significantly more value to our customers.
When a new “shiny” opportunity comes up, we always ask ourselves if it will help us get to our 7 figure goal faster.
If it doesn’t, we’ll not go for it.
What’s Next?
I hope this article gives you an idea what it takes to start and scale a 7 figure business from scratch.
There is a formula to building a 7 figure business.
When you focus on the right market, offer and execution, you have a high chance of achieving the target.
The rest of it are all about building more momentum and staying on track.
At the time of writing, we’re already on our way to doubling our revenue and profits from year 1.
The team has crossed 7 figures for another funnel (more lessons from the 2nd project since we took a different approach).
If you liked this post, drop us a clap. If you’re interested to work with us to build your 7 figure business, drop us an email at hello@scientificgrowth.com.
