Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here, and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, with great shows like The Hustle Daily. Today we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active, and we'll be breaking down how to create the revenue streams of your dreams.
To drop these eyeballs, I brought Lance Knob into EO Fire Studios. Lance helps entrepreneurs avoid stress and burnout while scaling the seven-figure mark. Fellow entrepreneur, coach, keynote speaker, and best-selling author is immediately offering value just for you, Fire Nation. If you'd like two months of private business coaching gifted to you, purchase the fast and functional Jolt Business Planner now to help make your business vision a reality.
And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Lance and ours. Sponsors, interested in business ownership. For many entrepreneurs, their journey starts with non-food franchising. John Osseson, founder of Fran Bridge Consulting and top 1% consultant, represents the premier source for the best opportunities in the non-food franchise world.
Sign up for a free consultation call with John today and get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by Dr. J.J. Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing work. In a recent episode, Amy Porterfield shared her five email marketing secrets for long-term business growth. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Lance, say what's up to Fire Nation, and share something that you believe about what it takes to become successful that most people disagree with?
Hey, Fire Nation, and Fuego here, baby, so fired up. John, this may sound shocking to you. I disagree with the conventional business recommendation to simply take action. To me, that would be like hopping onto an airplane or a cruise ship without any idea where you're going or how you're getting there and expecting to arrive at your destination, which is really your vision.
Or think about hiking into the wilderness, which is a great analogy for the treacherous business marketplace without a map and hoping to get to the right place and certainly not to be eaten by a bear. I believe that to become successful, the mantra should instead be take strategic action. Over 90% of small business owners I've surveyed aren't able to break away from the day-to-day chaos and the mayhem to do any strategic work and planning and do not have a business plan in place. John, it's probably not a coincidence that the number of owners without business plans is nearly the same as the number of businesses that unfortunately fail within 10 years, 96%.
My mission is to serve entrepreneurs to improve that number. And a little bit of a sneak preview, Fire Nation, I created a tool that is the solution to this entrepreneurial problem, and I'm offering it to Fire Nation as a free gift today. Fire Nation, as I teased in the introduction, will be talking about creating the revenue streams of your dreams. And so you're definitely going to stick around for this free gift from Dr.
Lance himself. And one thing that we always hear, Lance, I mean, over and over again, it's like, oh my God, you need to build the right team, you need to have the right team, et cetera, et cetera. But how the heck can we build a leadership team that can take over all the management hats and operates our business fully? John, right from the very beginning, absolutely the very beginning, right when you feel the busiest and the most stressed with a startup, adopt the mindset that you're building your business to be a valuable asset and you will make better decisions.
We know that business ownership is overwhelmingly the best tool for wealth generation. I heard Greg Tanner say this in 2014 in Philadelphia at a Franchise Wars conference and it really resonated with me and I realized it's so true. Think about Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, they all gained their wealth through business ownership. I've identified three fundamentals to focus on.
One is people, right? Just like Marcus Ramona says on The Profit, one of my favorite people in my favorite shows, people first. Attract and retain the best people. At Breakthrough, we literally have the best team, hands down.
Second, always be recruiting on the lookout for talent. Develop your people at every opportunity as great head coaches do. Number two, notice a free-standing business with a strong foundation, a little Jenga metaphor. Do this by spending 10% additional time along the way so you're establishing your infrastructure and your fundamentals such as your processes.
The rewards are going to be exponential and net game in time and results. John, I know that you know this so well by breaking away for 90 days to travel the world for the last couple of years. The third fundamental is valuation. Learn about valuation in your industry and for your company so you have a baseline and you can measure your progress.
We sought out the most expert person in our industry, James Quinn Sr., and he taught us that for physical therapy, the valuation was at that time 1.0 to 1.1 times revenue or 3 to 5 times EBITDA. Okay, we took that information and we constantly evaluated and grew the business. By focusing on these three fundamentals, over time, you can build a business that's an asset and develop an executive team to lead your organization. We now have a five-location, multi-million dollar business with double-digit profitability.
Our team all have incentive plans wherever possible so everyone shares in the rewards. Okay, so a little final recap. Think through the perspective of a long-term investment to build a business that's an asset that will provide you legacy and can generate a steady revenue stream and profits. By nation, very, very few of us ever decide to start a business thinking that, hey, we're going to work in this business for the rest of our lives.
I'm looking to build a business, bring on a team, have that team slowly be able to take over the role so that, hey, we can go travel for like 90 days a year or eventually retire or maybe sell the business because we're not the only integral part of that business. And this is the process that Lance is talking about here. And Lance, you believe in actually taking on your best people as equity partners. Now, that's, you know, is kind of a scary thought for a lot of people.
So share with us why you believe this and how we can do it the right way. Partnership aligns your interests with your most capable people to grow the business pie together. This allows us to share the wealth-generating tool of the business with our best people to literally impact multiple generations. Future generations are all going to benefit from this.
And all of our efforts to create this awesome business model that, in our case, innovatively brings physical therapy and fitness together and has this great culture and this unbelievable team, it's all going to stand the test of time and it's going to have some legacy, rather than the opposite of just getting gobbled up by some venture capitalists and, you know, selling to a giant corporation, losing your name, losing everything that you worked so hard to build. So before I move forward with partnership, I know it's a big decision and I know it's not right for everyone, right? But I interviewed many people from across all industries, both successes and failures. And together with my experience, I came up with a few key ingredients I'd like to share.
Partners have to want to create something better together, right? If they really want to be Joe Schmoe's physical therapy or Jane Doe's personal training, it's not going to work. The next key ingredient is the company's best interest has to be first and foremost, right? Robert Hershovek says this on Shark Tank.
It's so true. You always have to do what's in the best interest of the team. You have to love to teach and mentor. We introduce this throughout the company at all levels.
We take on as many high school students, college interns, doctor of physical therapy interns, you name it, people interested in healthcare fields that we can help, even future physicians. And we create great clinicians. For the ones that are the best and really are aligned with us, we keep them as great breakthrough clinicians. It's the perfect interviewing experience, the perfect mutual opportunity to get to know one another and we're able to keep our best people.
In fact, all three of our partners were interns with us. Dr. Kevin Schnitzer was a student of mine at Rutgers University where I'm an adjunct professor and he wanted to spend, I was honored that he wanted to spend his final internship with me at breakthrough. And he of course joined us and he became a mentoring teacher and he mentored Dr.
Nate Steltz and Dr. Nick Nolan, our next two partners, and the cycle continues. They are teaching our next future all-stars. Next, it's important to keep a pulse on your people's goals, both shorter and longer term.
And where they align with the company's interest, you create a development plan to achieve it. This is definitely a pearl in a little bit of our secret sauce. Development plans are really key and we might talk more about that today. So our partnership is five years strong and we are definitely reaping the mutual benefits.
Our best people will continue to enter as equity partners as part of Jody, my wife and I's thoughtful, proactive succession plan. One thing that I realized, Lance, and I'm sure you've seen this a lot as well, overwhelm, burnouts. They are so common in the world today, especially what we're all going through right now. So how the heck can entrepreneurs avoid this?
How can they avoid overwhelm? How can they avoid burnouts while they're still trying to scale and grow their business? John, this is a topic that's really meaningful to me. I personally was a burnout, overwhelmed, stressed out entrepreneur and I want to prevent it from happening to other entrepreneurs.
Even as a healthcare professional, trained as a doctor of physical therapy and a personal trainer, I pushed too hard and I lost my health. In 2011, we had 30 plus team members, three locations and we just had our third child with all three children under the age of four. I wasn't sleeping enough. I was working 80 plus hour weeks.
I was generally abusing my body and living in the haze I know many of you are familiar with. My body finally had enough and revolted. My digestive system, my gastrointestinal system just stopped working and shut down. For anyone who's had a gut problem, you know how disabling it is.
I wasn't able to eat. I had constant abdominal pain and upset. Food was going straight through me so embarrassingly I had to be close to the bathroom and run to the bathroom continuously. I vividly remember presenting to our entire team in July of 2011 at our central office in Medford, New Jersey.
We had a monthly meeting and I hadn't been able to eat for several days, probably several weeks at this point and I really could barely stand. I had pain in my joints, my muscles, my whole body ached and I had really very little in the tank and I powered through that meeting just barely and I didn't have the luxury of completely stopping, right? The whole business was supported by me at that time but I slowly picked myself up and gradually worked on myself, my business and my health. So what I did is I spent 18 months, about 20 hours a week, pouring all these lessons of life and business into my book, The 4% Breakthrough, which is a process that we used to gather purpose and business fundamentals and actionable health information to help entrepreneurs avoid overwhelm and stress.
And John, I know you love processes and step-by-step and the same for me. So I literally made it a step-by-step process. You have to do one step and move on to the next step. Now the last section, the health section, you can break in anywhere.
The areas that we cover are mental health, nutrition, sleep, exercise and posture and ergonomics. That section, fortunately, wherever you break in, it's going to have a harmonious effect and it'll have a compound effect, a snowball effect. So you'll be able to have some exponential results. But that's really it.
The book is the exact process. And I will say one final point. You know, the research has always shown that about 75 to 80% of our lifestyle and quality of life was dependent more on nurture versus nature, on how we took care of ourselves, our lifestyle. And in 2018, there was a study that even showed 90% might be up to our lifestyle.
We can't blame our parents. We can't blame our genetics. It's up to us. Let's take control.
Let's do it. Let's stay healthy while we grow awesome businesses. Fire Nation, so many value bombs have been dropped here. I mean, even just in this last section here where Lance talks about his personal overwhelm and his personal burnout, I mean, this is literally the knowledge information.
And when you have it, you can avoid going through the same thing. And we have more value bombs coming up, Fire Nation, when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Are you interested in business ownership? For many entrepreneurs, their journey starts with non-food franchising.
Franchising is simply the better path for many entrepreneurs. And interest in franchising is at an all-time high. Lucky for you, John Austinson, founder of Frambridge Consulting, is here to help you explore the world of non-food franchising opportunities today. John and his Frambridge Consulting team are part of the largest brokerage in the U.S.
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500 franchisor and multi-brand franchisee. And he's in the top 1% of consultants nationwide and client placements. Sign up for a free consultation call with John today and get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at franbridgeconsulting.com. That's franbridgeconsulting.com.
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Learn more at HubSpot.com. HubSpot. Grow better. So Lance, we're back, and I want to know how you did this.
How did you pivot to go to coaching as a revenue stream that had, get this by your nation, 80 plus percent profit margins? I mean, if that's not the dream, what is? Take it away, Lance. I already mentioned that you want to spend your time with your best people.
So it's sort of like Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. You want to develop your strengths and your leaders, because that will have an exponential effect. Leaders can develop leaders. So as I was doing this, while I was wearing the CEO hat of Breakthrough, my partner, Dr.
Nate Stelts, was working towards becoming CEO. And in 2018, he took over the baton of the CEO hat. And this was my greatest investment. This was my first child, so it was very scary.
And he's handled it well. I, over the years, developing Nate and developing our entire team, I had basically fallen in love with coaching and developing leaders and building teams. The management philosophy that I adopted from my mentor to make other people successful was basically the same as coaching. So it was a natural fit, but I'm a little bit of a slow learner.
So in 2018, as Nate was taking over the reins and beginning to do great things, I sought out a franchise broker. And it was interesting. He recommended staying within the health domain because of our physical therapy and fitness business. And one of the recommendations he made was actually for an eyelash extension business.
And it wasn't perfect for my wife and I. We're pretty natural, but it had all-star franchisors. So it was really interesting to hear. And most importantly, it was awesome to be on that side of the table, on the short tank side of the table, with people presenting us investment opportunities and opportunities.
If I were a nation, you can do the same thing. Okay? So another point that I really want to mention and hammer home is a profit first concept that resonates with me. Michael Michalowicz is an accountant and he wrote a great book.
If you decide how profitable you want to be, you can actually reverse engineer it. It's going to force you to make some very difficult decisions. And there's definitely a need for coaching entrepreneurs right now during this really demanding and challenging time, John. So I've been very humbly blessed to share all the knowledge and to have a non-brick-and-mortar business right now where I can keep the expenses very low and deliver great value and have extremely high profit margin.
I have to thank you. You've inspired me in this area. And obviously, you've been consistently 80% profit margin for years. So thank you so much.
Well, brother, it is my pleasure. That's one thing that we really try to get across with our income reports we've been doing now for 87 months in a row, Fire Nation, is, hey, listen, it's not just the money that you make. It's the money that you keep. And that's why we have that percentage of net profit.
And we really highlight that every single income report. Because I know so many people, too many people, you know, that can claim a million dollar revenue, but they're taking home pennies, pennies on that dollar. And they're working so hard for it, but it would really cripple their hearts if they actually broke down what they were making per hour. And that's why that book that Lance mentioned is fantastic.
Profits First by Michael Michalowicz, because it's all about the profits. Now, another thing we hear a lot about, Dr. Lance, is... Diversify.
Diversify. Diversify. But we need to do it the right way. So how can we do that diversification the right way when we're running a small business?
So I've recently become a passionate student of investing. I've been reading everything I can get my hands on. Raman Sethi, Dave Ramsey, Tony Robbins, Nathan Aka, and currently I'm reading Benjamin Graham, one of the classic investing books, and it's fantastic. So Fire Nation, one thing, be sure to invest along the way.
In addition to growing your business as an asset, this will surely allow you to achieve financial freedom the fastest, and you'll be able to capitalize on compounding. Personally, I've become a little bit of a life and financial coach as our team's head coach. I bought each of our partners, Raman Sethi's I Will Teach You Be Rich book, and I just want to mention Raman Sethi's account, and only then should you consider other more fun investments. Just this week, our CEO, Dr.
Nate Sells, thanks me for sharing Raman's book and just let me know how much of a better position he's in as an investor and financially. And Dr. Kevin Schnitzer, another one of our partners, let me know that he's getting very close to maxing out his 401k. So some specific investing things.
Real estate. If you have a physical location, consider owning your real estate. Set up the real estate as a separate company. It's the perfect relationship.
You have a long-term renter, and you can rent yourself, and your accounts will help you figure out the way to do that optimally for taxes. Now, real estate's really resonating with me personally, and I'm looking for my first investment property to try that out and see how I like it. However, in the last 18 months, I've had the opportunity to do two crowdfunding investments, and I want to share those with you because my friend Amit connected me with NRIA, and the return's pretty cool. I'm actually being paid 10% return monthly along the way, and I'm being guaranteed on the company 12% return.
The cumulative return is 132%, and the annualized return is 26%. So just as an example, if you invest $100,000, and the term on this is five years, you'd receive your $100,000 back, and you would have $132,000 additional dollars if we hit those returns. So that's pretty special. You do have to be an accredited investor to have access to that one, but if you're not an accredited investor, there's places like Fundrise that have these similar opportunities, so consider those.
Another investment opportunity that I want to mention is, as you're helping people and your contacts and you're sharing your knowledge, you may have the opportunity to earn some sweat equity. A good friend of mine, Dr. Neil Mitchell, has a balance board that he's hoping, and together I'm hoping, to help change the world to become more healthy and fit, and it's called The Wobbler, so I'm dedicating some time and expertise to that and have the opportunity for sweat equity, and I think, John, you did that with a podcast company that we could talk about, and lastly, I'll just mention a passion project, because once you do all these fundamentals and you position yourself the right way, be patient. Investment opportunities will come to you.
There's a 140-acre airport in Atlantic City, and a friend of mine who's a landscape architect is a passionate swimmer, and he wants to bring swimming to the masses, so we've literally modeled Iceland's Olympic Village for a sports village we're hoping to bring health and fitness to the youth and adults of the community, so there will be a lot of fun investing opportunities along the way. This is a really important topic to think about, Fire Nation, because when you do figure out bringing in your profit and maximizing that percentage, now it's like, what do we do with this money? We can't just always pour it back into the business or just do one thing, because we never know what the future's going to hold. You can't have the ups and downs with everything.
Unexpected things can happen all the time, which is why it's diversifying across a lot of areas. Right now, I'm being sure that I have exposure to crypto, and I have exposure to gold and silver in case inflation may happen or deflation may happen. Nobody knows what the future has in store for us at all. Everybody can hope and think they know, but I mean, if anything's been shown, we just don't know what we don't know.
We definitely don't know what the future holds, so you have to do these things, and like Lance was talking about with my sweat equity, like being able to bring my brand into things for companies that I have people in my audience they should hear about. I can get equity in companies for that, so for not even necessarily investing a dollar amount, I'm now potentially getting some equity in a company that could be acquired or could, you know, sell someday or could do all these different things, so there's a lot of ways to look at this. He mentioned a ton of great resources. You know, Ramit Sethi is a dear friend of mine.
I recommend his book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich. It's a fantastic one. He's actually in my book that's coming out in March. He's one of my 17 contributors, so great things you just shared, Lance.
Much appreciated, and let's end with a bang. The most common pitfall that you find amongst small business owners. What is that? Going straight to action, not breaking away from the day-to-day mayhem and chaos.
I particularly see this in a lot of action-oriented people, especially people that are great at sales. Instead, we have to take a step back and reflect regularly. We need quiet, focused time without distractions. This will allow you to have aha moments and breakthroughs.
Put some time in with yourself, discovering what's most important to you, and doing some soul-searching, introspective work. Proactively create a time app. Some people call it a time box. I call it a success schedule.
It's actually my step five in my book. Carve out the areas that are most important to you and make them non-negotiable. Time for your family. Time for your personal health.
Time to work on the business. Weave this plan and your strategic work through all of your time on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis. Be sure to build in 20% for meaningful, rewarding, purposeful work because this will help you prevent burnout. Take time to set up your chess pieces for success in business and in life.
John, like you said, 2020 should have fast. The world and the market can change, and if you really don't have a process in place to do some strategic work and planning and know how to pivot, how to tweak, how to adjust, what to say no to, unfortunately, there's a much higher likelihood that you're going to end up in the bucket of entrepreneurs that fail, the 96% bucket. My mission is to help more entrepreneurs avoid that. So no matter what time of year you're planning and being strategic with your actions is today, okay?
So I mentioned to John by email a couple weeks ago that over the last couple years, I've realized that 90% or more of entrepreneurs do not have a business plan in place, and they really, many of them don't know how to do it, and even the ones that do often aren't able to break away for 40, 80, 120 hours to do a traditional business plan. So what I finally carved together out of this gap was a two-hour fast and functional business plan, which I'm calling a Jolt Business Plan, and I've created a free tool, a Jolt Business Planner that I'm offering to Fire Nation today, and if you put in the reps, Fire Nation, and you actually do the work and share it with me, I'm offering a 20-minute strategy call to help you anywhere where you need some guidance anywhere you are stuck. Fire Nation, we've gotten so much value so far from Lance here today, and Lance, I just want to personally say thank you for coming on, dropping all these value bombs. Let's end with you sharing the one thing that you want to make sure Fire Nation takes away from everything that we talked about here today.
Share with us the best way that we can connect with you, and of course, any call to action you have for us, Fire Nation, today, and then we'll say goodbye. Take strategic action, Fire Nation. Put some time in with yourself. Do some introspective work.
Discover what's most important to you. Discover what matters to you, and then dedicate yourself to it. Commit to it. You'll have some ahas and some breakthroughs.
You will survive. You'll become part of the 4% that survive in business and thrive in life. If you'd like to check out my Jolt Business Planner, go to denaliconsultingteam.com forward slash fire, and if you send it to me, I will hop on the phone with you, and we will help you get through your business plan. Please email me at drlancenob at denaliconsultingteam.com.
My Instagram is drlancenob, and thank you so much, John. I am absolutely thrilled. This is a full circle opportunity. Entrepreneurs on Fire was the very first podcast that I was exposed to.
Actually, in a mastermind, my friend John Sharp told me I listened to all 2,000 episodes, and it's a dream come true. That's fantastic, brother. I love it for all those reasons and more, and Fire Nation, you know the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with LK and JLD today, so keep up that heat, and head over to eofire.com.
Type Lance in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with everything we talked about, links to everything, and man, that's a giveaway that Dr. Lance should share with us over at denaliconsultingteam.com slash fire. That is fantastic.
He's offered to jump on a call with you if you send him the results of that. I mean, that is just a commitment to you, Fire Nation, so absolutely fantastic. I challenge anybody who really thinks they're an action taker to take action on this and take advantage of this opportunity. And one more time, you have mentioned your email address.
Dr. Lance, go ahead. Dr. Lance Knob, K-N-A-U-B as in boy, at denaliconsultingteam.com.
Cool. And again, Fire Nation, we'll have all this linked up in the show notes. You can go directly there or go directly to either one of the places we just mentioned. So, Lance, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today.
For that, we salute you, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks, John. Hey, Fire Nation, today's value bomb content was brought to you by Lance and Fire Nation. My first traditionally published book is hitting the shelves on March 23rd of 2021, and I'm so fired up about it to say the very, very least.
The title is called The Common Path to Uncommon Success. Your roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment and pre-orders, Fire Nation, are everything. So if I've given you any value over the years, it would mean the world if you would head over to my pre-order page and lock in your copy or copies. If you pre-order, I have some of the best bonuses out there, Fire Nation.
We're talking sweet bonuses and extras for you and your loved ones, if you are able to order a couple more. Head over to eofire.com slash success and check out the awesomeness today. eofire.com slash success. I'll catch you there, Fire Nation, or I'll catch you on the flip side.
Interested in business ownership? For many entrepreneurs, their journey starts with non-food franchising. John Ossison, founder of Fran Bridge Consulting and top 1% consultant, represents the premier source for the best opportunities in the non-food franchise world. Sign up for a free consultation call with John today and get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com.
Marketing Made Simple, hosted by Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing work. In a recent episode, Amy Porterfield shared her five email marketing secrets for long-term business growth.
Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts.