0 (3s):
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 my first million today, we'll be focusing on the key to exponential business growth. Think five years ahead, always to drop these value bombs. I have brought Carter Malloy into EOFire studios. Carter is a financial analyst, guest columnists and founder and CEO of AcreTrader a leading farmland investment platform that makes it easy for investors to buy shares of US farmlands. And today, Friday, should we talking about your big picture goal, how to prioritize forward thinking the snowball effect, expanding your executive team and managing money and so much more.

0 (46s):
When we get back from thanking our sponsors ever wish you had a mentor to help improve your customer experience and scale your business. HubSpot's new podcast, the shakeup with Alexis Gay and Brianne Kimmel has you covered. I love it because it shares how real people are building real businesses in very unique ways. Listen, learn, and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com/podcastnetwork Fire Nation. It's time to stop trading time for money and start reaching more clients and making a bigger impact. And you can do just that with online courses, try Thinkific for free today at Thinkific.com/EOF. That's Thinkific.com/EOF. Carter say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 36s):
What's up, John, thanks for having me. Most people just may disagree. That being successful is not a point in time. It's a state of mind and, and success should not be defined by a milestone, but rather by fulfillment and happiness, along the way to all of your goals and milestones, which undoubtedly will continue to evolve as you, as you grow as a person or business person, or whether, whether you, whether you're measuring stick as wealth or impact or family, or simply retiring early, the path is where I believe you should seek happiness and enjoy the ride as much as possible in foreign

0 (2m 12s):
Nation. Please don't be upset with me repeating this quote one more time, because it's so old in a good way, because it is so timeless, but it is so true. Earl Nightingale share the success and happiness is the gradual realization of a worthy, ideal, not getting to the mountain top, not the realization, but the journey getting there, the gradual realization of a worthy ideal. And I want to start this chat today by talking about big picture goals. So Carter talked to us about the first steps that we should be taking in order to identify our big picture goal.

1 (2m 51s):
I believe defining what, what makes you happy is always most important. And, and most of us, including myself, are prone to forgetting that the, the, you know, the, the meaning of life kind of questions, but it's really important to define what makes you happy and in, in business, as an example, or being entrepreneurial and understanding things like what, what level of risk are you willing to take? So, so in defining a big picture goal, as an example, if you want to build out a business, do, do you want to build out a highly niche business in a defined market area like Tampa, Florida? And if so, that could be an awesome entrepreneurial journey with lower risk and lower reward versus maybe trying to build the next Airbnb where statistically you are highly, highly likely to fail.

1 (3m 36s):
And so certainly understanding the defining what makes you happy and what, what types of success and milestones you want to have along the way are really important to, to ultimately describe that, that peak of the mountain as you, as you just, so now, one thing

0 (3m 52s):
That you're a big believer in, and I really want to do a deep dive into is being forward thinking because you know, a lot of people are very present there in the moment, or frankly, they're looking in the past, like what worked yesterday? What worked the week, the month, the year before? How can we prioritize? Forward-thinking when we're first starting a business and why should we,

1 (4m 14s):
Because you want to be successful, I think is the, the, the easy answer there. And if you don't think about the future a lot, then, then your odds of failure are gonna increase period. And when, when thinking about starting a business and prioritizing that, that those forward thinking activities, it's really important to get out of the day-to-day the, the minutiae of the day-to-day is, is overwhelming at many times, if not all times, and being an entrepreneur, I am personally guilty of this constantly getting the day-to-day firefighting and forgetting to step back and, and, and remind myself and everyone around me, sort of what's the beacon and, and what are the boundaries, right? So what is our, our north star we're looking for and what are the boundaries we want to set around that?

1 (4m 58s):
So, as an example, when thinking about prioritizing this for thinking always consider first and foremost is an activity that you're engaged in scalable. Like, can, can the business do this thing, whatever that thing may be that you're doing, whether it's revenue generating or hygiene related or people related, can it do that thing a hundred times over? And if so, how can you design a system to automate a lot of that process? And that doesn't necessarily mean software. It just means sets of instructions so that you can have other people help help us fill the goal, fill the holes there and grow faster. Then importantly, especially as, as you just mentioned early in a business, do things that do not scale, right?

1 (5m 39s):
So w when forward thinking, I think about how you can scale, but it's important to also in the early phases of a business focus on things that don't scale, that means talking to people, so speak to customers and prospects all of the time, understanding your market and your customers is the single most important you can do in building that go-forward plan. And making sure that you are, whether your intention is to directly provide them something they're asking for, or, or not. Right. If you believe you're the next Ford motors or, or apple, you still want to understand the market and understand what drives consumer mentality and or customer mentality in your segment.

0 (6m 17s):
Now, can you give us an example of a company, maybe yourself, maybe a client of yours, or, you know, maybe just a company that has no relation to you. That's, you've seen them prioritize this forward thinking when they started their business and how that worked out

1 (6m 32s):
20 acre trader, or are all about liquidity access and transparency in, in farmland. And, and ultimately what that means is helping people to invest in farmland, helping people to buy and sell farm land, and which is a very fascinating asset class. And so Florida thinking in our case was we, as, as individuals inside of the business, understood from the get-go, Hey, farmland is actually a fascinating asset class and, and can be a really lucrative one to invest in. And so we perhaps not perhaps what we definitively made miss missteps by not placing enough emphasis on education and, and education is something that is very scalable, right?

1 (7m 15s):
Providing information and data and charts and graphs and things for people to explore and get over that, that big barrier of understanding, right? So, so testing and testing and reformatting and representing information to make sure that it's, it's highly consumable so that you don't have to do one-on-one blocking and tackling to educate folks, but rather provide that to the market. So I think that's an example of providing, maybe we'll talk about network nodes today, but providing something that, that can help to amplify your businesses is just information right. To, to your constituents or customers, whoever they may, they may be

0 (7m 53s):
One thing that I talk about a lot to my audience is the snowball effect, because it's so, so hard to get that initial momentum, that initial traction, you know, it's like that Boulder stuck at the top of a hill. You just can't budge that thing. It is so hard to, but when you finally do, man, gravity takes over and you're like, whoa, check this out. So talk to us about your interpretation and definition of the snowball effect, and then break down how you think we can both achieve and maintain this type of effects with our businesses growth.

1 (8m 27s):
I really appreciate that you broke that into achieve and then maintain it because I believe they are very different aspects. If you're thinking about snowball effects or flywheel effects, or, you know, many of the other momentum based descriptors that we come up with. So the, the way for us to achieve let's talk about that. We, we discussed doing things that do not scale. This is one of those to get your first customers and to get your first partners, et cetera, to have buy-in into what you're doing. You're going to have to put forth a crazy amount of effort and just absolutely under no circumstances, can you build it? And they will come. So get in a car, walk across town, get on the phone, get on an airplane, even if it's not necessarily a hugely ROI generative event for those first customers, making sure to build trust with people and, and to build relationships, to get those first Domino's knocked down, or that, that first kernel of the snowball built achieving the snowball is really important.

1 (9m 28s):
And again, that's not going to scale. It's going to be a crazy amount of lift, but it is absolutely necessary in most cases to, to get the thing rolling. Then how do you make sure that feeds itself? And often this can be thought of in network nodes. So whether that is customers, which it usually is, or partners, vendors, bloggers, et cetera, turning people into evangelist is, is the best way to get your message out there and to get other people invested in, in your company, in the success of your company. And, and usually that is just through customers, but making sure that your customers, my gosh, especially those first one, those first customers, making sure they have an incredible experience so that they aren't customers, but they are evangelists.

1 (10m 13s):
That's really what you're looking for is finding those people that will tell their 10 friends. And, and that's, that's the beauty of network noses. If you can invest really heavily in one node, and that then amplifies your message out to 10 more people. That is a very scalable thing that you should really focus on is identifying network nodes in, in whatever business you mean

0 (10m 34s):
Fire Nation. The evangelists effect is real. Like I, people reaching out to me all the time. They're like John, like, I get so much value from your show, from your free courses, all these things. I'm just not really in a position to support you right now by like buying one of your courses or your book or this or that. And my response is always well, first off, thank you so much for the kind words, but secondly, you don't need to support me by buying something. You can support me by being an evangelist. How about you tell two of your friends, five-year friends, 10 of your friends about entrepreneurs on fire, just, just for them to check out our free podcast. Like that's a pretty easy like recommendation for your friends to check out something that's free and that can be so effective. Fire Nation is so real. So always have something for people who are coming to you and thanking you for your content or for your product or for your service that they can do.

0 (11m 21s):
That's not going to take dollars out of their pockets cause there's so much value there for sure. And we have some great value bombs coming up about an executive team as far as managing money correctly, which so many people cannot do. And some other value bombs. And we get back Fire Nation from thinking our sponsors, the pandemic has changed how we do business and how we make money. And over the past year, we've seen a lot of entrepreneurs turning to online courses to help hit their bottom line goals. But we've known just how impactful online courses are for years. We've been using Thinkific the best platform to create market and sell it online course since 2017. But don't just take it from me. Meet Kate Klassen co-founder of coastal drone company. She's been using Thinkific to train thousands of students to become certified drone pilots before creating online courses.

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0 (12m 56s):
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0 (13m 40s):
Learn more about how you can scale your company without scaling complexity at hubspot.com. So Carter is a kind of teased before the break breakdown. What first an executive team looks like, because I think there's a lot of people in our audience that doesn't even really know what an executive team looks like. And I'm actually going to be listening as well for your breakdown. And also at what point should we expand our executive team? Like how does, how does that trip occur? We know it's time to make that move in

1 (14m 9s):
Terms of understanding the structure of an executive team. It's the org structure is going to be different for every business. You do absolutely need a clear leader evangelist, if you will, internally for the business and you need somebody that is operationally minded. Often those are very two very different people within a business. So I would rather than go to organizational structure instead talking about the type, the talk about the types of people that, that you need, or at least that I think you need in a leadership team. And, and the, the qualities of those people. One is not hiring people that are all the same. Cause then you're gonna end up with a workforce it's all the same and thinks the same way.

1 (14m 50s):
So finding that are intellectually curious and honest is incredibly incredibly important. In our case, as an example, our, our, our director of investor relations, our COO, our head of marketing. These, these guys and girls are different than me, but most importantly, they're not afraid to challenge each other and to challenge me and have a very open dialogue. So, so first is that that intellectual honesty and intellectual curiosity, that's just really necessary to, to be creative and to grow a business in terms of expanding them, how to find those people and, and what to look for. And we'll talk a little bit about characteristics.

1 (15m 29s):
One is just be extremely slow and cautious, no matter how badly you need the person, because if you hire an executive and it doesn't work out, it will be disruptive to your business and potentially in a big, big way, or if not catastrophic. So it's really important that you're careful in those hires. If you're scaling up, be thoughtful about what that person will be doing, you don't want to hire the person for the job today. You want to hire the right person that can take care of the larger challenges coming down the pike at you six months out, 12 months out, probably not two or three years out because you may end up hiring somebody that's too far advanced or too far of a leader for that position.

1 (16m 10s):
But finding somebody that not only can tackle bigger challenges than what you see today, but importantly, somebody that can grow. And so I think that's when we talk about the defining personality characteristics, if somebody is going to be a leader of teams, which usually the word executive implies that they will have team members, they have to have important leadership qualities, things like empathy, and self-awareness over communication. If you are interviewing someone to be a leader in your business, and they say, I, I, me, me a whole lot that ain't your person just that's into the conversation. You've got to have people who think about others and are empathetic towards others in their organization, because that's ultimately the job of a leader is to be a servant to your organization, to, to help the people on your team and to enable them as much and as frequently as you can.

0 (16m 59s):
So Fire Nation, I hope for people that are either far away from even creating an executive team at this point in your business, you not at least have that kind of north star you're moving towards or for somebody who's right on the edge about to pull the trigger, make this happen. This is some great advice on both, you know, what's an executive team looks like, but then also how you should expand. And when you should expand, like, you know, when you actually know that the time is right, and I think this also kind of flows into nicely with the next topics. If you want to kind of, you know, end with anything about the expansion and growing of the executive team, please do, but let's kind of move that into managing money because managing money correctly is the key to long-term success.

0 (17m 40s):
And of course this factors in to what your month over month expenses are. So how can we make sure that we're properly managing our money during a major growth period? You know, when everything's exciting and fun and seems to be working, what's your feedback there

1 (17m 55s):
A thousand answers, and none of them are purely right or purely wrong, except for one when managing money, there is one rule do not run out of, it seems like a ridiculous thing to say, but there is a massive graveyard of great companies with great teams and great products that did not manage their cash effectively and they are gone. And so you've gotta be thinking about things like unit economics and margins and, and cashflow. And, and usually if you're in growth or hyper-growth periods, you may be burning cash for the sake of growth. That's absolutely okay. But you need to make sure that either one, you can see breakeven happening well before the cash runs out, or two, you have a very solid plan on how you're going to raise additional capital, either via equity or debt and start working on that.

1 (18m 46s):
Not just plan, but the execution of that. Now, if you know, you're going to run out of money before you break, even on your business. And again, that is okay, this is not a bad thing. If you're growing like crazy, it is okay to invest in the business heavily. But if you know, you're going to run out, start not just planning, but executing and talking to people and getting out in front of that capital or debt raise right now. Cause it will sneak up on you quickly. And again does not matter how great your business is, no matter how great your team is, how great your market is. If you run out of cash,

0 (19m 16s):
Fire Nation, managing your money is key to your long-term success. And Carter you've given us a ton of value throughout this interview. I mean, we've talked about a lot of really important stuff. And again, financial, we're talking about the keys to exponential business growth, which we're thinking five years ahead, always. So bring it home for us. What's the key takeaway you want to make sure a Fire Nation really gets from everything that we talked about here today, share how we can connect with you and your business and any call to action you may have for us. And then we'll say goodbye. Absolutely.

1 (19m 50s):
So I think first week we talked about big picture goals and always reminding yourself, it's about being happy. It's not about a point in time. We've, we've talked about being forward-thinking and making sure your systems and processes are scalable. We talked about network nodes and customers and evangelists. This is a huge, huge, and really important point. If you're building a business, we've talked about executives and partners for that matter. If you're bringing in a partner in your business, even if you're not about to start your business, if you have questions about that partner today, like no, just don't don't partner with them because it most likely won't work out if that they're negative considerations there. So, so always being incredibly, incredibly selective about who you choose to work next to, and not just on your executive team, but on your entire team and then never running out of money.

1 (20m 38s):
I think that's a big takeaway as well. And in terms of our business and how to find out, find out more about what we do acre trader.com is our website. We are a farmland website. It's actually really fun stuff. And we are a fast growth company. We're a post series, a business we've got about 35 close to close to 40 employees now. And that's it. We're a two and a half year old, three year old business. So it's all happening very quickly. So we, we love talking about thinking about these things. We

0 (21m 6s):
Love hearing about them here at entrepreneurs on fire. So thank you for that and Fire Nation. You know that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you have been hanging out with CM and JLD today. So keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com type Carter and the search bar. His shows page will pop up with everything we've talked about here today. And Carter, I want to say thank you for sharing your knowledge, your truth, your value with Fire Nation today for that brother, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you so much. Hey, Fire Nation today's value bomb content was brought to you by Carter and Fire Nation, successful entrepreneurs. They accomplish big goals. We're talking huge goals, which is why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal.

0 (21m 52s):
In 100 days, we're talking step by step. Visit the FreedomJournal.com use promo code podcast, free $15 discounts. And thank you for listening to my podcasts and I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side ever wish you had a mentor to help improve your customer experience and scale your business. HubSpot's new podcast, the shakeup with Alexis Gay and Brianne Kimmel has you covered. I love it because it shares how real people are building real businesses in very unique ways. Listen, learn, and grow with the HubSpot podcast network at hubspot.com/podcast network Fire Nation is time to stop trading time for money and start reaching more clients and making a bigger impact. And you can do just that with online courses, try Thinkific for free today at Thinkific.com/EOF.

0 (22m 37s):
That's T H I N K I F I c.com/e O F.