The $70M Blueprint: How To Build An 8-Figure Business

24, Dec 2022

The $70M Blueprint: How To Build An 8-Figure Business

The Hyperfocused Entrepreneur
December 24, 2022
Read time: 8.5 minutes

Let’s crack open the black box and give you an exclusive look at something I’ve never shown before: The $70M Blueprint.

To build a successful business capable of scaling without you, you’ll need rock-solid systems.

Here are 3 in particular we used to build an 8-figure business in under 2-years.

(And yes, they’ll work for you, too.)

Most entrepreneurs fail to grow because they get lost working in their business and never find the time to work on their business. And when they DO find the time, they don’t know where to focus to maximize results.

Most businesses are just one resignation away from catastrophe.

Most companies rely on one key employee (maybe it’s you) to keep the place running. If that person ever takes a sick-day or leaves for another job, these companies are dead in the water.

Tired of losing sleep at night worrying about your business?

Or do you want to save time and frustration by building your rocket ship to 8-figures correctly from the start?

Then use our blueprint. Here are 3 systems to future-proof your business and hyper-accelerate its growth to hit 8-figures and beyond.

The Operations Playbook
The Collaboration Station
The Sharing Hub

The Blueprint

1. The Operations Playbook

You’re gonna be the one doing most everything in the early years of your business.

Sales…
Admin…
Marketing..
Fulfillment…
And so much more…

If you don’t get it done, then it doesn’t get done.

This is because in the beginning you lack two key resources that would enable you to hire good help:

Capital
Systems

The lack of capital is the most obvious thing missing in the early days. This leads us to believe it’s THE thing holding us back.

It’s not.

See, if you are good at what you do and you actually have product-market fit, then cash won’t be your problem for long.

But it will give rise to two new problems.

The first is psychological.
The second is systemic.

Let’s unpack the psychological issue.

In the beginning, you’re operating in an environment of scarce resources. Your success often depends on your ability to survive on a razor’s edge and make every single penny count.

In this world, being scrappy wins

This is why it’s so difficult for many entrepreneurs to reverse course once money starts flowing in. They struggle to transition from a world of hoarding resources to one where they’re reinvesting back into the growth of the company.

It’s at this point in your journey that you have to pay one of two costs:

The cost of hiring now
The cost of missed opportunity

Quantifying the cost of hiring is simple.

Quantifying the cost of missed opportunities, on the other hand, is not. It’s not a number that shows up on a spreadsheet.

And so most of us give too much weight to the number we can see on the spreadsheet, and we convince ourselves it’s too soon to hire.

Return on Time.
Return on Karma.
Return on Impact.
Return on Missed Opportunity.

The most important metrics in business and life cannot be measured on a spreadsheet.

In my experience, there’s only ever two times to hire:

Too soon
Too late

The cost of hiring too soon is capital.
The cost of hiring too late are missed opportunities.

As a general rule, the price of that second one is almost always greater than the first.

Okay, so let’s say you’ve cleared that first psychological hurdle and you’re ready to start hiring.

Now you’ll likely experience a systemic issue.

Simply put, you’ve been doing everything yourself from the beginning and there hasn’t been a real need to document your systems and processes.

I mean, what’s the point? Your time in the beginning is better served actually doing things that drive revenue.

Right?

Well…yes and no.

Obviously, ya gotta keep fuel in the car….

But if you ignore regular maintenance/upkeep, then it’s only a matter of time until your engine blows up and leaves you stranded on the side of the road.

So it’s a balancing act between optimizing for the present while also preparing for the future.

You’ll realize just how important this is when you make your first hire… and they absolutely disappoint you.

But it’s not their fault.

You’re the one with unrealistic expectations.
You’re the one with zero onboarding process.
You’re the one that never bothered to document a single process.

How are they supposed to succeed in that type of environment?

They can’t.

And so you’ll wind up feeling chronically frustrated by how little they do, how poorly they do it, and how long it takes them to do it.

At this point, most entrepreneurs take everything back onto their plate and resolve to never hire again.

When this happens, you might as well start a timer ‘cause that person is going to burn out eventually.

To avoid this, the time to prepare is now… well before you ever feel ready.

You do this by creating your company’s Operations Playbook.

This resource is EVERYTHING your company does and HOW it does it. It’s a living document that you’ll continually update as your business discovers new and better ways of doing things.

When done correctly, you could hand your Operations Playbook to a hobo off the street and they could execute most roles to a sufficient standard.

No more:

Worrying about that key-employee quitting tomorrow.
Frustration because that new hire just can’t figure it out.
Phone calls on vacation because your team needs you.

Do you see how something like this might be valuable?

Alright, so here’s what this looks like practically speaking…

We used Notion to create our Operations Playbook at Invictus Capital.

(For reference, Invictus Capital owns and operates ~30 apartment buildings worth ~$70M with a full-time staff of ~15 people.)

Here’s how the Operations Playbook looks like for administrative arm of Invictus Capital:

Feeling overwhelmed when you look at something like this?

Don’t be…

Recognize that we all start somewhere and this has taken us 3 years of concerted effort to build out.

Here’s a simple 4-step process for creating your Operations Playbook:

1. Track: Create an activity log

Stop at the top of every hour and document all the things you’ve worked on in the previous sixty minutes. Do this for 2 weeks and you’ll have a pretty solid idea of all the things currently on your plate.

2. Record: Document all the things you do into some sort of software

Doesn’t matter what you use, but I prefer collaborative software that’s easy to learn (Notion, Asana, Google Drive).

3. Rank: Rank order activities

Some things you do in the course of a week are more important / higher value than others. Your goal is to determine the low-value activities you’re currently performing.

4. Document: Document the process for completing low-value activities

Your personal goal should be to stop doing things that have low-value. Coincidentally, these low-value tasks are the easiest to outsource thanks to their inherent simplicity.

By delegating tasks, you’ll have more bandwidth to focus on high-value activities (thus accelerating the growth of your company!).

2. The Collaboration Station

Congratulations, you’ve got an Operations Playbook in hand and you’ve hired your first few team members.

The next problem to be solved is internal communications.

See, the problem is we have Metcalfe’s Law working against us as our team grows.

Metcalfe’s Law states:

The value of a communications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system.

Okay, if your eyes just glazed over, don’t worry. I’ll simplify.

Complexity of communication increases geometrically as the number of people on a team grows.

Alright, maybe that wasn’t much simpler. Let’s try again.

Zero communication is necessary when it’s just you. You can move fast, break things, and everybody stays in the loop.

Communication is still pretty straightforward when there are only two of you.

But things change quickly once you introduce a third person to the team. One random conversation in the hall between person one and person two can leave person three entirely out of the loop.

This evolving communication complexity will spiral out of hand and do two things if left unchecked:

Slow down your company
Increase the rate of error

To combat this, you need a system to keep everybody on the same page.

This is where Google Drive comes in.

The Drive is a powerful, yet simple tool that requires practically zero training. We use this in our companies as our Collaboration Station.

Any document or spreadsheet requiring input from another team member lives here.

For instance,when we raise capital for a deal, we use this spreadsheet:

Now, everybody on the team can see in real time where the project stands.

Simple. Clean. Fast.

In fact, it’s so good that you could use the Drive as your company’s one-stop-shop for everything.

We prefer Notion as our Operations Playbook (linking back to the Drive when necessary), because it has easier navigation and searchability.

You could easily build an 8-figure company using Google Drive and nothing else.

(This is pretty much the only software we used to build Escape Climbing to a mid-7-figure company).

With that said, Google Drive is limited in ways that led us in search of a targeted solution.

That solution is at the heart of the third system we’ve relied on to build a $70M business.

3. The Sharing Hub

As your business grows the complexity of communication expands not only internally, but externally.

You’ll need a system for sharing information quickly, easily, and securely with entities outside of your company (vendors, suppliers, partners, and customers).

You could use Google Drive, but there’s a few reasons we’ve found this isn’t ideal.

In particular, we’ve found the Drive isn’t great for:

Secure sharing
Managing permissions
Upload speeds for large media

Instead, we rely on Dropbox whenever sharing information externally.

Your Network Is Your Net Worth

You’ve heard this said a thousand times, but I want to offer a new lens through which to view this cliche.

The value of your company is determined by its network of systems.

Your systems will either be your greatest asset or your greatest liability.

If you dream of building to 7-, 8, or 9-figures and beyond, then it’s critical you lay the foundation now.

Alright, so now you’ve seen inside our black box and taken a gander at our Operations Playbook, our Collaboration Station, and our Sharing Hub.

My hope is that you take this blueprint, tailor it to your purpose, and use it to grow to 8-figures and beyond.

Just do me a favor and promise to come back to us and share exactly how you did it!

But until then,

Stay Hyperfocused, My Friends.

This Week On YouTube

These 3 Daily Habits Made Me A Millionaire in 3 Years

Whenever you’re ready, here are some ways I can help you:

1. Unleash your hyperfocused mind to dominate life, business, and everything in between? Here’s how:

→ The Hyperfocused Masterclass: the exact system I used to overcome ADHD, write 12 books, build 4 businesses, and acquire $70M of real estate.

Join here.

2. Learn to passively invest in commercial real estate with better returns, less risk, and zeo hassle.

→ Invictus Capital: my real estate private equity firm.
→ Multifamily Investing Made Simple: Top Apple Podcast.
→ Passive Investing Made Simple: Amazon Best Selling Book with 100 5 star reviews.

3. Want more like this? Check out these 3 popular articles from the vault:

4. The Amplified Impact Podcast: A daily podcast for those in relentless pursuit of Less, but Better: