0 (2s):
Boom. Shake the room. Fire Nation, JLD here in Welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Marketing Against the Grain. Today we'll be breaking down how to build a billion dollar brand with innovation and stories to drop these value bombs. IBOs, Sam Olo and the EOFire Studios. Sam is a multi-eight figure entrepreneur who finds the genius in other people, creates revolutionary products, and uses the power of storytelling through social media to build brands. In today, Fire nation, we'll talk about product innovation, content innovation, storytelling and social media, scaling your business with systems and so much more.

Business Made Simple (38s):
And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Sam and our sponsors Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals, Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business with episodes like How to Get Out of Your Day-to-day Operations Without Crashing Your Business. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts.

NetSuite (1m 1s):
If you've been sizing NetSuite up to make the switch, then take advantage of their special financing offer today. Defer payments of a full NetSuite implementation for six months, no interest, no payments. Visit netsuite.com/fire to get the visibility and control you need to weather any storm. That's netsuite.com/fire.

0 (1m 22s):
. Sam, say What's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 32s):
What's up Fire Nation? My name is Sam Olo and I think the number one thing I hear touted around a lot when it comes to being successful is find a problem and deliver a solution to that audience. And you can build a business. And I think that's not necessarily completely wrong, I'll just say it's massively overused. And to keep it simple is because problem solution is is the most basic form of transformation. People for whatever it is, they always buy transformations, whether it's through a product or a service, they're paying to go from point A to point B.

1 (2m 14s):
But if you want to re be really, really astute and build a business that's timeless and really profitable, you need to sell more than just problem solution. What you need to do is sell identity transformation, which is the highest form of selling. And once you're able to do that, then I think that us through the myth of find a problem, deliver a solution is too rudimental. It's too rudimental. Identity transformation is where it's at. If you wanna build a thriving, successful brand

0 (2m 44s):
Fire Nation, apply that to your business, to your solutions to problems. Are you providing identity transformations? Because as Sam is sharing, that's what people want. And we're talking about building a billion dollar brand with innovation and stories. And two powerful topics that you love talking about, Sam, are product innovation and content innovation. Tell us more.

1 (3m 8s):
Full disclosure, I'm not a billion dollar brand yet, but I believe that we are well on the way there. And when it comes to the decision to be or or build a billion dollar brand, the number one thing I think everyone understands is foundational to whatever business you have, the product. Product innovation is the driving force. You can have the best marketing in the world, and I know it's the age old, you know, argument between what's more important marketing or product. But I just think it's safe to say without a phenomenal product. And bringing innovation to a marketplace is gonna be very difficult because if you want to build a billion dollar brand, you've got to own the means of production.

1 (3m 52s):
You need to own the product that you're selling. And if you're going to break into a marketplace and instead of fighting over a red ocean, you really want to build a a blue ocean for you to swim in and grow into. You need to bring innovation. And innovation can be done in a multitude of ways. Easiest form is obviously changing aesthetics. The second hardest form is changing, let's say the functionality of how something works. And the highest form is functionality and aesthetics and problem solution, like I said at the beginning. So when you're able to put all of that into one category, that's when you get revolutionary breakout products like, like the iPhone or you know, the jet engine, things like this that are really foundational to how we live now.

1 (4m 38s):
So yeah, that's, that's what I think innovation is and why it matters to entrepreneurs. You've got to focus on your product first and foremost. And then to go along with that, which is the, the other side of the argument, the marketing side, which is content. When I talk marketing, I start with content. That's the first touchpoint any business has with your, sorry, any customer has with your business or brand. It is your marketing, not just paid marketing, but when I say marketing, I mean anything that involves you presenting to a perspective customer. So content innovation is really about crafting narratives. I always tell people who own businesses that are focused on, on, on marketing, lead in the way paid social, so on and so forth.

1 (5m 25s):
If you want to let your product teams be better, if you want to let your marketing teams be better, the number one thing you should have them do is get them to study film. Hollywood is the number one industry when it comes to selling something that's completely intangible. They sell nothing but a story. And if they get the story right, if they are able to wow you for an hour and a half to two hours in a cinema or at home, they make hundreds of billions of dollars. If they get it wrong, they lose hundreds of millions of dollars. So I really think it's that much of an knife edge. And since they are the epitome of selling story, if you wanna learn how to build a brand that is story driven for your business and for what you do, study Hollywood, study how they make films, study how they write scripts, study how they deliver archetypes and depth and richness in what they do and apply that to your business and brand

0 (6m 27s):
Fire Nation. A lot of takeaways here, some things that I was writing down for notes is content is first and foremost with your marketing, you need to craft narratives. That is such a key part of this process. Think about that. Fire nation products is first and foremost, content is first and foremost when it comes to your marketing. Now one thing that you really believe in Sam, is the power of storytelling. So I wanna talk about storytelling and I wanna talk about applies to social media. How do we do this the right way?

1 (7m 2s):
It's a brilliant question. It's one of my favorite topics as well. You see, storytelling, I think is a craft that has stood the test of time and it's actually one of the most, I would say pivotal reasons as to why human beings are the epitome or the apex of society or of the world of, of the universe. Basically, we don't know of any, any intelligent life outside of the earth and we are top of the food chain. And I would say that goes number one. Two, storytelling. Being able to pass stories and wisdom from generation to generation is why we are all here right now. And how this applies to the new medium of social media.

1 (7m 42s):
And social media is new. If you look at the existence of how we've done things as a species, social media is completely new, a blink of an I thing. And people are still trying to understand with a myriad of different platforms how storytelling is done properly. And I would say this, it goes back to my previous point, storytelling. Whether you're doing it on TikTok or you're doing it in YouTube, whether you have a VSL or you have 30 seconds to present something, storytelling isn't just about one piece of content, it's about, like we just mentioned, crafting a narrative, a story around the brand and the product you are, you are building.

1 (8m 22s):
And the word I think encapsulates it the most is the brand fantasy. When someone closes their eyes, whether you realize it or not, they have images, words, feelings, emotions, associations connected to your brand. And you're lucky, even if they do, most of the time, 99.9% of businesses out there have zero association. Cuz if someone closed their eyes, no one knows who the hell they are. So from the beginning, storytelling isn't just about one piece, it's about being conscientious to say, right, we have this product and we want to sell it in A, B, C, D, E, F, G ways.

1 (9m 2s):
You won't know what's the best way straight away. You've gotta do a lot of testing, you've got to find the right message, you've got to find the right audience. But when you do, it's then down for you to make that story as rich as possible. Some of the biggest brands in the world, okay, the reason they're so big is because they have such a deep, rich legacy, heritage and story that the a the average person thinks it's just, oh, why do I love X brands so much? It's just because I do. It's not, if you actually look behind it, there are so many intangibles and, and again, I'm not necessarily the most spiritual person, but I do believe in, in energy and the power of the spoken word.

1 (9m 43s):
And if you put something out there invariably it leaves an imprint. So these high heritage brands, they have such deep stories if you look behind them, and I believe that's why they're so prestigious, they're so highfalutin, let's say not in a bad way, but they hold such esteem amongst people. If you talk about some of the most, you know, whether it's fashion or, or cars or whatever it may be, or even sports teams, they have a history that comes with such depth of story that, that intangible is what naturally gravitates people to them. So when you craft a story online, it's more about, again, I can't give you specifics now in this short form, but I just want everyone to understand that if you, the more, the more in depth you take the story of what you're doing to heart, don't think nobody sees it.

1 (10m 34s):
They do. They do. They really, really do. You can't fake it when you are legit. When you're genuine, you can't fake that. So if you, if you have a genuine intention to craft a brilliant story, and like I said, study Hollywood, study how they do it, there is a formula, people, this is not by accident, it is by design. So if you really invest into, into crafting a brand narrative and a brand fantasy and a brand story, believe you me, it will pay you back in kind

0 (11m 1s):
Fire Nation. As Sam's talking, I'm just picturing all the brands that I respect, that I admire, that I look up to, and I can easily trace the fact that it's really the story that they've been able to portray over time that's super meaningful. And I, it just kind of brought me back actually to this time with this guy. I was talking about this Mercedes commercial and it was, seemed like it was kind of directed towards kids and like, why are you directing this Mercedes commercial towards kids? I mean, they can't buy your Mercedes obviously. He's like, I know, but those are the people in 10, 15, 20 years that are going to be buying exactly a Mercedes. So we're planting the story now with them so that for the rest of their life that you know, up to the point they can afford in Mercedes, that that's the story they think about when they think about the brand Mercedes.

0 (11m 47s):
And I always thought that was very interesting. And we have exactly So many important things to talk about Fire nation. When we get back from thanking our sponsors,

Hubspot (11m 56s):
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NetSuite (12m 57s):
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NetSuite (13m 40s):
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1 (13m 58s):
Sam, we're back and you believe in scaling your business with systems. I mean, I'm a huge believer in this as well. That's how we've built entrepreneurs on fire to where it is today with a very, very small team, just five of us because we have the systems in place and I wanna hear your perspective on this. Yeah, for sure. Well you are a, you are what I call an old G for sure. The EO fire has been around from the, seems like the dawn of time. So yeah, you guys are oh geez, in this, in this game, so no surprise. But yeah, I mean, systems is, look, it's it the hardest thing. So we specialize a lot and we love, I love creative people, right? I'm not necessarily the most creative myself, but I know how to manage, grow, and bring out the genius in, in creative people.

1 (14m 44s):
But one of the biggest things that I think has led to our success is being able to take brilliant, truly, truly brilliant people. Whether that's in product design, video editing, storytelling, film making product, whatever it may be, you've got to give super creative people, especially if you're in an industry like ours where we're very focused on content and marketing and so on and so forth. You've got to give them, not necessarily guardrails, but you've got to systemize what they do. And systemizing creative endeavors is the hardest thing because the more you systemize, the more you, you take away the flexibility. Creative people need to, to, you know, to release their juices and let their, their imagination run wild.

1 (15m 28s):
But if you are gonna get to scale, and I'm not just talking about the systems of any ordinary business, like you need accounting, you need, you know, hr, all of these things can be systemized quite easily, okay? And we specialize in this, right? But the thing that I wanna focus on when it comes to systems is creative creativity. Now, systems for us isn't just a, a byproduct or something that happens by accident. We are very deliberate with it. And when I say deliberate, I genuinely mean that we take the time every single quarter for everybody in our team and we do everything using OKRs on a quarterly basis. Everybody in our team builds new systems. We actually give some of these out to the public, but most of the time 90% of them are for internal.

1 (16m 12s):
Because we understand as a team that we're only as good as the systems and processes we rely on with each other. And it's down to you to be responsible enough to have a brilliant process in place because God forbid something happens to you or you can't turn up that day, someone else has to be able to step into that role and execute to the highest degree because you owe it to the business, you owe it to the mission that we're on, to not let you be the weak link if something, God forbid happens to you. And this is the approach everyone in our team has. It's a very selfless approach. The system itself or, or systemizing our entire business isn't about us trying to be anal or, or, or micromanage.

1 (16m 55s):
It's the complete opposite actually. We're very open and lassez fair in our team, but everyone just realizes it's my duty to keep everything as structured, as clean, as organized as possible because I have to work with other people. Everything we do is a team endeavor. So if I'm working in a team, I can't have my space in the business bms, it's not fair because everyone else has their so regimented, so organized. And we have some brilliant people in our team who just focus on helping everyone else scale with their systems. So it is an absolute cri I would say, critical component to growth. Once you have a brilliant product and you know how to make brilliant content and marketing and sell it so well.

1 (17m 36s):
The next big stage, which I think hinders a lot of entrepreneurs, to go from solopreneur to real entrepreneur, that system delivery phase, system creation phase is something many people struggle with. And most of the time it's not your product that's slowing you down or stopping you, it's not your marketing. It's your inability to, to build systems and hire brilliant people to execute on those systems. So if anyone out there's listening and you and you've, you've got a roadblock for years you can't get past, I promise you start by looking at your systems first, product and marketing second, I promise you this,

0 (18m 11s):
Fire nation powerful words, where are your systems at right now? That's something that Kate and I are always working on, upgrading. What can we do to upgrade our systems, to improve our systems, to scale our systems? What can we do? We're always thinking about that. And sometimes it's just those minor tweaks, those slight edges over time compounding into something amazing. And Sam, I wanna move into the topic of fulfilling your inner CEO's journey. Talk to us about that.

1 (18m 43s):
Wow. Yeah, this is, again, you know what's so funny from the start of this talk when we're talking about story, do you know how, I've just brought this back into story again, fulfilling your, your CEO's inner inner hero's journey. This, this is just means the story you want on your life as an entrepreneur, as a CEO, that's the story you are writing every day you wake up and every day you turn up or you don't turn up, you are always writing your story. So I love that phrase because that's exactly what it is. It's your own inner hero's journey. No one can do your press-ups for you. No one can. Only you can do those press-ups. So for me, one of the big things I think when it comes to this is taking a step up from being an entrepreneur to being a CEO.

1 (19m 28s):
This is probably one of the hardest things, especially in the digital space, whether you do, you know, a digital business, everyone's online these days, right? So if you do anything with a computer and you run a business from a laptop, whatever that may be, stepping up from hustle culture and being an entrepreneur to a CEO takes not just the systems like we spoke about, but it, it really involves a mindset shift that I think is one of the biggest, it's kind of like when you watch a Hollywood film, right? There's always a point in the film where the, the protagonist, the hero or the, the soon to be hero gets to what we call the darkness. Before the dawn, the big challenge when they thought they couldn't achieve that goal, when, when, when Luke Skywalker couldn't defeat Darth Vader and didn't know how to do it.

1 (20m 16s):
And then even though Yoda and Obi one were helping him and giving him all the guidance, which is a huge thing, position your brand as the guide instead of the hero. But that's another discussion. But in that story there, he had a choice to make, he had to step up to the plate and deliver to fulfill his hero's journey. And I believed the entrepreneur to CEO step is where many people falter because it's one thing to know how to make money, but knowing how to hire other people, put the systems in place and graduate yourself into becoming a coach and really a motivator and inspirational leader is very different to being hands on in the business, making money.

1 (20m 58s):
So the inner heroes journey for me is about taking whatever business you may be. It doesn't have to be a digital business, whatever it may be, but at some point you go through what I call the seasons of entrepreneurship, just like we have every year. If you wanna study the world or be successful in any way, shape or form, study, natural law and nature is the best thing we have. Nature is our mother, right? It's, it's, it's birthed everyone in everything we could ever know in the history of existence. And nature works in cycles every year we have four seasons, and it goes the same through your life. Everyone's life is finite. At some point, we will all take our last breath on this earth. And you have to understand that just like there's seasons in your life, you are born, you are a toddler, you then go to school, then you're a teenager, and then you go into your early twenties and then your thirties and you're, everyone has seasons, right?

1 (21m 50s):
And when you look back over your life, you'll see that it's broken down into defining moments. It it, your entrepreneur journey as a CEO is the same microcosm. It's the same. When you started this crazy idea that everyone thought you were, you were crazy or nuts to try and do, you scraped the money together. You dunno how you survived the first year, but you made it happen, then the next year comes along. New challenges, you made it happen. Every step you have to wear different hats. At the beginning you wore every hat in your business, right? You know this John, I know this. So at the beginning you wear every hat, but at some point, if you want to get big, if you wanna really fulfill your potential, you've got to develop and grow into the person you're going to be. Jim Rowan is a, is one of my favorite speakers of all time, right?

1 (22m 31s):
If anyone doesn't know, everyone talks about Tony Robbins. Jim Rowan was who Tony learned from. And the thing that he says that really, really I think penetrates deeply to me anyway, is as you are going through this journey of becoming who you are, money wants a good place to stay. You don't, a you don't, you don't get money. Money isn't out there to be gotten. And that's one of the, it's a, it's a false thing in our language. It's bad language to say that we go out there and get money. No, we don't earn money. We don't get money. What you do is you attract it and are you good enough to evolve into a person that can attract, you know, the first million dollars and then you do the next things in your next growth.

1 (23m 17s):
Can you attract 10 million, then can you get to the next phase and attract 50 million? Then can you attract a hundred million? So on and so forth. So as I've gone through the gears of my entrepreneurial hero's journey, it's so true that it's not about getting money or earning money. It's about putting the things in place to then let the money come to you. Yes, there's many roadblocks and that might seem a bit, you know, antiquated or or cliche, but it really isn't. Are you worthy enough? I'll tell you one thing. Most people who win the lottery end up being broke, I believe within three to five years, no matter how much they earn or win in that lottery. Do you know why? Because they don't level themselves up to be someone worthy enough.

1 (23m 59s):
Let's say they won 5 million bucks. If you don't become a $5 million person, you'll quickly lose all that money. And this is just a fact. So it's about bringing yourself up and elevating yourself up first and then the money comes. If you've by some flute, get the money first. Without raising yourself as a standard to be a person worthy of earning that money, you will lose it very quickly. Be very wary of being lucky. Many people say it's better to be lucky than smart. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. If you are lucky, you will soon deviate back to your mean. And if your mean is below where your level of luck has given you, eventually it will all go away.

0 (24m 38s):
Fire Nation, countless value bombs here. I hope you go back and listen to this whole section again. So many good words that were shared. Something that I wanted to point out that I loved was the seasons of entrepreneurship. We need to realize that that is a fact. We go through cycles; we go through seasons. Nature is our mother. I love that phrase. Think about that. And Sam, you have dropped, as I just mentioned, countless value bombs. Give us the one key takeaway you wanna make sure the Fire nation gets from our chat here today. The best way that we can connect with you, any call to action you have, and then we'll say goodbye.

1 (25m 14s):
The last key takeaway I would say is, is one tiny thing. You see, as I've gone through my journey in life, I used to always think, you know, I was bullied at school, this, that and the other. And I always had a chip on my shoulder and I always wanted to be the smartest person in the room. I always wanted to be the most successful person I knew. And my life changed about three years ago when I stopped trying to be the smartest or the best in the room. And I decided instead of trying to be a genius myself, I decided to become a genius maker. And when you can take the time to find the genius in others and recruit brilliant people and get them to rally around the cause and mission bigger than themselves, bigger than you, and then you take these people and bring them together to be greater than the sum of their parts, and you are able to find the genius, especially in creative people, my life changed beyond ways I can, I cannot even describe here everything I have, everything I will ever have, I have to give down to the number one skill of stopping to focus on selling products, which I still do brilliantly, but I turned all my attention towards selling people not on me, but on themselves and bringing up more they ever thought they could be.

1 (26m 26s):
So that I would say is my number one, my last and final takeaway to everybody. Stop trying to be the genius and instead of being the genius in the room, be the genius maker in the room. And yeah, you can, you can go to, we actually give away all these systems, a lot of them for free. You can go to my website, digitalsupersystems.com, and that's digitalsupersystems.com. You can google it the usual ways, I'm sure you'll find it. And basically, we just give all the systems we use internally away for free. I'm obviously on YouTube as well. You can Google me, Sam Olawale on YouTube, check me out there, I'm gonna be posting again.

1 (27m 6s):
I'm just so, so busy. But it is something I'm taking much more seriously in the next coming months. But anyone who wants to level up their systems, we've got systems on creativity, on, on leadership, on structuring your business, go to digitalsupersystems.com, you'll get so much value there. Yeah, and I, I hope it, it can uplift and help so many entrepreneurs break through that barrier from entrepreneur to CEO. Because once I started working with brilliant systems and started working to find the genius in others and empowering them and becoming their coach and their mentor, everything changed for me. And I hope it, it can do the same for, for all of you listening.

1 (27m 46s):
And it'll be our pleasure to help in any little way to assist the next minds of tomorrow.

0 (27m 52s):
Just like the aforementioned, Jim Roone Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with SO and JLD today. So keep up that heat links for everything we talked about today. Go to eofire.com type Sam in the search bar, the show notes page will pop right up. Sam, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that we salute you, brother and we'll catch you on the flip side.

1 (28m 19s):
My pleasure.

0 (28m 20s):
Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Sam for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. Successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That is why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in a hundred days. And we're talking step by step. Visit the freedomjournal.com and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side.

Business Made Simple (28m 42s):
Business Made Simple hosted by Donald Miller is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals, Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business with episodes like how to get out of your day-to-day operations without crashing your business. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts.

NetSuite (29m 0s):
If you've been sizing NetSuite up to make the switch, then take advantage of their special financing offer today. Defer payments of a full NetSuite implementation for six months, no interest, no payments. Visit netsuite.com/fire to get the visibility and control you need to weather any storm. That's netsuite.com/fire.