Baktari MD

Top Tips to Become a Successful Entrepreneur W/ Stephen & Chelsey Diaz (2024)

• Jonathan Baktari MD • Season 2 • Episode 48

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Welcome to episode 48 of Season 2 of Baktari MD! In this episode we are joined by Stephen & Chelsey from  @TheRainmakerFamily    as we go over their entrepreneurial journey from wedding photographers to e-commerce and brand building powerhouses. Have you ever wanted to earn an abundance of wealth while also having time for your family? All of the tips and trick you need are right here! Find out all of this and more in the full episode! 

And when we started to see families step into financial abundance, and then, like the transformation that comes from entrepreneurship, it was like, oh, this is like what we're supposed to do. Hi. Welcome to another episode of Baktari MD. As you know, this season we're doing Crash CEO School, where we go over all the skill sets you need to move your organization ahead, get to the next level, the skill sets that will make you a better leader, more effective leader. And today I have an amazing, amazing couple. Stephen and Chelsey Diaz. And they are in charge of the Rainmaker Family. They're the founders, which is an amazing organization. And I'm having them on the show because they were able to walk away from a, I believe, a wedding photography business back in 2017 and set up their own company, their own organization, which has given them the freedom they need to one grow family as well as being financially independent. And then they've taken a step further. They're now helping others through the course that they've developed to do the exact same thing. And what I found fascinating about their story is that one, they literally pivoted in the middle of sort of working, I don't want to say 9 to 5. It was probably much more than 9 to 5. And then they pivoted to lead an organization where they have financial freedom, time freedom. And in the meantime, have acquired a lot of leadership skills, to, to manage all of that. So I'm very, very excited about having them on the show because I want people to see what can happen when you elevate your game and acquire new skill sets, both in terms of business, in terms of people skills, and in terms of leadership skills, to set up an organization where the sky simply is the limit. So, Steven and Chelsey, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being our guests. Thank you for having us. We’re so excited to be here and serve your audience. Well thank you. You know, I think I stole a little bit your thunder. But you know what? If you don't mind in your own words. Talk to me about pre 2017 post 2017. You know about you your family what you guys were doing. And then what happened at around that time. Yeah. At the time we were in the wedding business, we we got married super young. We actually started this business before we were married. I think we were in college still, and it was because I was a film major. I was, into video and Chelsey had a camera as a hobby, would just take photos. And we just had friends encourage us, hey, you guys should do a business together or shoot weddings or something. And it was just kind of like, hey, this makes sense, let's try it. And we were young, our friends were getting married and they would, hey, come shoot our wedding. And before we knew it, we had a business on our hands. And I was always very entrepreneurial and, and Chelsey was actually starting something else, but I convinced her to basically let's just go all in on this entrepreneurial thing, let's run our own business, kind of create our own terms. And like you said, you end up not working 9 to 5. We end up working all the time. And, yeah. So that's what we did in the early days of our, our marriage. And we actually had that business for ten years. so, you know, every Saturday, basically during wedding season, you know, we'd be out shooting weddings and, we at the time lived in this small little back unit and was like, you know, one bed, one bath, had this tiny little spiral staircase that I don't think was up to code. And we would work in the loft up there. I got I'm pretty tall. You can't tell on camera, so I'd have to, like, duck down to get to my computer and edit these photos. And that's that's really where our entrepreneurship journey started. Yeah. Well, you know, I give you credit. Now that I've even heard that part of the story that you, the guys at least did that because you didn't. I mean, a lot of people would just take a 9 to 5 job or work for another studio or whatever. So there must have been some early inklings of entrepreneurship, even as I hear that story, because, that certainly is not guaranteed money. If you take a month vacation, you know, your, your, your revenue dries up. So that's usually what people don't like. And they want to have a steady job. So my inkling from hearing this story is early on, there was a spark of we want more and we don't want to just clock in and out and just call it a day. Okay, so, I get this question all the time from people who pivoted a career. So let me give you the question I always get. So what happened? I mean, I know you, before we started the show, you told me some burnout, but was there something that, like, one day you said, that's it. We got to go a different direction. We have to do more than just come in and grind it out. Grind it out week after week. Was there anything pivotal that you recall that broke the the straw that broke the camel's back? I think when we got started in that wedding business, we just always were looking ahead like, what? What is our life going to look like 10 years, 15, 20 years from now? And I think both of us didn't necessarily envision photographing weddings, although it was very meaningful and we love that. But we wanted to start a family one day, and we were traveling all the time, working all these weddings, crazy hours, and we just knew even though we were young, we just knew like, this is not a sustainable lifestyle, that we can continue living. And it was just really in that season of burnout. I think we shot 43 weddings, eight weddings in May, and our friends stopped calling us. Our family kept saying things like, you're just you're so busy we never see you. And after hearing those words over and over, you start to think, to take a step back and say like, is this really the life that we're wanting to create? And so it was those years, we call them lovingly call them now the spaghetti years where you just, you know, take pasta, throw it up against the wall and see what sticks. So we were trying everything, and that was really when we stumbled into Amazon FBA, which is now what we teach and brought our family so much freedom. I love it. I like that spaghetti analogy because the side hustle thing, I think a lot of people try a side hustle 1 or 2, it doesn't work out, and they just go, okay, you know, I guess I'm meant to work 9 to 5 or they lose a little bit of money on that first couple of side hustles. You know what I always tell people, sometimes it may be your 20th or 30th side hustle. That turns out to be the one. It's sort of like, you know, before you got married and dating, you know, you're not going to marry the first person you go on a date with. I mean, not statistically, at least. So the the the whole idea of having not letting failures determine the, you know, the arc of your future, you know, so even if you I'm sure some of those spaghettis didn't work out the way you imagined, right. And you if you had just given up, then talk about that. what made you guys be persistent? Even when the first 5 or 10 things I'm assuming were a complete bust? Yeah. I mean, I think the most frustrating part is probably that it's not that everything was a scam or nothing work, it was that all of them work just a tiny bit. Right? I think I didn't have the right compass. I was more of the crazy side hustler. Chelsey was holding down the fort, keeping our clients happy on the wedding side. So thank God for her because I'd be at night kind of after our 9 to 5 on the internet, watching webinars, learning programs, trying to figure out something, and I feel like I didn't have the right compass. Now I know the term for it is like I was looking for leverage. But but I was kind of falling into these, like, passive income type opportunities that seemed too good to be true. And, a lot of times the, the spaghetti, we were throwing would just add more stress to our plate, add more time to our plate, like, you know, naturally, it was like, hey, we're shooting weddings. We see photobooth at weddings. Why don't we buy a photo booth, right? That's a good idea. And now we have this photo booth. We're stressing out at weddings and like, oh, the tech is, you know, going off the wire. And it just we are getting into the wrong opportunities. but we did start selling, some physical products online. That was one of the side hustles that we started trying, and that was the one where we started to taste a little bit of this leverage, where it was like, wow, we put in some work to build this thing. But then it started to work without us there. And I think that someone put language on this. in that time, we went to a conference and he was like, you need to get out of, you know, vehicles where you are the person doing the thing. If you're the person doing the thing, you're using your hands to do the job. Like you, your income is automatically limited. Even if you're a brain surgeon like you only have so much time. So you have to level up to a person that can build a system like manage people to do the thing. And so when we started selling products online e-commerce, that was the first time we started to really taste, okay. Wow. Like other people are doing a lot of the work. And that's what we call leveraged income now. So as soon as we realized that, we started to really trim off all the other side hustles and things that were really just overextending us. Yeah, I've heard people say the same thing. They say, you know what? When I was looking for my side hustle, tell me if this makes sense to you. When I was looking for my side hustle, one of the ways I would filter it was not by the economic opportunity. The first question, you know, this people say is, does this involve me being there because the tell me, the performa later, tell me the you know, how much money I can make later? Does it involve me being there? Because if it does, and it may be great money, but there's I only have so many hours in the day, and that can't be the ceiling. And so I think what I'm hearing from you is the leverage concept is, yes, I may have to be there a little bit and maybe less less over time, but can I come up with an opportunity where it's not reliant on me physically being there? Because obviously if you didn't show up to those weddings to take those pictures, you weren't getting paid. Yeah. And if you took a month off with no weddings, you weren't going to get paid. Maybe. So I think the transition to go into something where it doesn't rely on you physically being there to actually generate the revenue, am I am I saying that correctly? Perfect. Yeah. Okay. So you did that and then you started to take courses and go to webinars and, and different things to educate you on this Amazon business from, from what you told me earlier. And now, how difficult was it to have enough mindset that I need to get additional information versus, you know, I'm a pretty bright guy. I could figure this out. You know, let me just go open up Amazon account and, you know, because I think there are certain people that just feel like it's not brain surgery. You know, you're not splitting the atom here trying to sell a couple of widgets on Amazon. Why do I have to take a course or why do I have to do this? Because, you know, I'll just read the instructions, I'll watch a YouTube video and boom, I'm there. I think we've seen the power of investing in education or getting, you know, getting in the room with other people that have gone further and faster than you. In our early days when we were actually in the wedding industry. So before we even ventured into Amazon or internet marketing or anything that we're sharing about today, it was it was in those early days of our wedding business. I had followed a photographer on social media for a long time, and I loved the life that she was creating and how she was outsourcing things and encouraging other photographers to do the same thing. I read every single blog post she ever put out, and I just I learned so much from her. And when I found out she was speaking at a very well known like conference creative photography conference, I just I turned to Stephen and I was like, we have to go. Like we have to go and do this. And it was expensive for us, it was clear across the country. You know, we're super young entrepreneurs. We knew absolutely no one. But I just I knew that she was going to be there. And I was like, I want to get in the room and I want to hear her speak. And and I'm so glad we did. It was definitely a financial sacrifice for us at the time. But I got in the room and I remember, like, my hand hurt so badly from all the notes I had taken, like I had pages from speakers and I and specifically from her talk she gave like a ten point talk about like ten tips you can take to, you know, increase and create systems. And I don't remember exactly what she talked about, but all of those points I went in and implemented immediately and we had an increase in like the revenue we generated from our business and from the systems and even from like the amount of peace that I felt in running our business, just from getting in the room, just from traveling across the country. And I just remember walking away from that conference and looking at Stephen again, and we just made a commitment that like, we were going to invest in some kind of education and some kind of course conference, at least at minimum once a year, because I had seen the power of even just that one time that we stepped in. And again, I consumed all of her free content. I had read every single blog post, but there's just something about that next level of getting in the room and being connected that was so powerful. So that sent us on to now. Like, we will never not invest in some kind of spiritual or coaching or business like masterminds because they're so powerful. Well, you know, I actually have a whole podcast talking about, podcast episode, talking about finding mentors and going to conferences. I literally- That’s interesting. I mean, because I, I the power of that. But, you know, let's reverse engineer it. Let's say you didn't go to that conference and let's just say you tried to do this whole Amazon thing by just, you know, a few blogs and just calling Amazon. And what is the likelihood that you would be one successful or you would be anywhere near where you are without the mentoring and the extra education statistically, I mean, you know, your your path. Would you be here? Would you without that? I don't think so, because I think, I mean, with any entrepreneurship journey, there's going to be walls that come up. And of course, like you can find ways around the walls. But Amazon is it was so outside of our like we are creative entrepreneurs, filmmakers, photographers. Like I knew cameras really well. If I had a problem with my camera I can figure it out. But ecommerce, manufacturing, shipping, these are all like so foreign to me. And I, I didn't even know anyone in my life doing these things, you know? So, so foreign. I was like, I need to. It's like, if you're going to go to a another country, live with someone who speaks the language, that's a fastest way you're going to learn, right? Instead of just trying to watch a couple YouTube videos, there's a big difference. And so for us, I think the likelihood of success would have been way lower without mentorship and investing in courses. And and over the years, we kind of bought all the all the courses continue to invest in and in mentorship. And also you learn on the job, right? You learn from actually doing the thing. And we made some pretty big mistakes in those early years on Amazon as well. Lost, lost money, made money, you know, all the things. And that became things that we would start teaching people that were coming behind us like, hey, don't do it, you know, and and here you can learn from our mistakes. Which is really what mentorship and, and investing and learning is all about. You know, you don't have to make every single mistake that someone who is starting in your industry will make, probably naturally, because of just the way things are set up. Okay. So let's let's move forward. So you get through this Amazon thing, you're you're a success. And then another light bulb goes off. Talk to me about that. Says, you know what we could teach other people. I know you said you first started doing as friends and family. Yeah, but when when did you actually say, we know we've learned so much. We we think we have an insight into the secret sauce of how to make this work. I wonder if there's a market out there besides my friends and family and and can I can I convert my knowledge of this secret sauce into a business? yeah. Yeah. Walk me through what you guys were saying to each other at that point. Yeah. I think, like, the big conviction moment, I would say came when we were at a wedding. this is during a super busy season, and we pulled up our phone and literally I made more on Amazon that day than we made at the wedding. I think that's when like it clicked fully for Chelsey, I would say, like, because I was, I was into kind of building on the side. She's supporting it. She's like, hey, you know, hey, we need to buy inventory. Yeah. Like we're doing that together. But I don't think she had seen the vision of Amazon until that moment. Yeah. And I think every we call it our winter season. So the winter months, you know weddings people aren't getting married usually in December, in January and every single winter season, I felt I would physically feel like the weight of the world on my shoulders. Like, how would we ever have a family? I think women especially like, we want security, we want to feel safe. And every winter season, I would question that. And it wasn't that we didn't have wedding clients that were singing our praises and getting referrals. It was just like, this just isn't going to work long term. And so I would feel at every winter season and that light bulb moment that Stephen was just talking about, like that was, for me, so incredible to be at a wedding that we're already getting paid a large amount of money for. But then to be looking at this other business that Stephen was just kind of I felt like tinkering with, like on the side, make more money. And it was literally in that moment that I felt that weight that I had always felt lift off of me. And as I look back on that moment now, I feel like I wasn't just the weight I was caring for our family, but I feel like I was feeling this weight for other families, for other mamas that we now serve, that also to this day, I mean, like that feel that weight of like there has to be something more like, I want a business that I can own and serve and, and I feel like it was this collective thing of like, we now have like a resource. We now have a proven method that works and can lift that, like that feeling. And it's like, why wouldn't we share that with more people, you know, like, why wouldn't we offer that feeling that I experienced to somebody else? And so for me, I have that deep conviction in that moment of like, we have to tell everyone, like, who wants to hear like this really does work. So that's what we started doing. We started basically telling our photographer friends because it was like, we are in, you know, the winter season. All the photographers are like, oh, no how is this in our next season because your income is so like seasonal. So we started just like I posted in the photographer Facebook group, like, hey, we did this thing this last year. Now we're able to like take on dream weddings because we don’t have to say, yes, I re client. We're not worried in the winter season when the bank is just getting drained. And so, you know, a couple people raise their hand, teach me, teach me. And I honestly learned that I would kind of more master the information if I had to teach it. so I'd have to, like, go deeper on it. And it just helped me be a better Amazon seller. and then, like our family, we told our family, my mom was like, I want to do it too. So I have like a little Facebook group that I would just go, I would like post videos in every week and say, hey, now we're going to do this. Now we're going to do that. And I mean, there was I, there's probably, 100 people in that group. I think I remember back to about 100 people in that group. Out of those hundred people, I mean, no one paid money to be in there, right? So most people didn't pay attention. But there were two people that really paid attention and really did the thing. One was my mom, she ended up launching a couple products in Amazon. and the other was this gal Sharon. She was like a, wife of a videographer who was in that group. And he was like, hey, you know, you check this out. And Sharon went on to build a multi seven figure brand like, do it over $1 million a year on Amazon. Took her about 2 or 3 years to get to that level. And, I mean, a business generates $100,000 in revenue last per month, for her family. And so that was, I think, when I started to see her winning, it was like, well, I think weddings for us was was a lot about legacy. It was powerful to take a photo that wasn't just like an iPhone photo is something that would live on. It was something that, you know, grandkids would look at and be like, that was that was grandpa. You know, John and I, you know, like that. There's something about that legacy piece, I think, for us. And when we started to see families step into financial abundance, and then like the transformation that comes from entrepreneurship, it was like, this is like what we're supposed to do, you know, like. No, I got it. But you know what? As I'm hearing the story, I, I, I had an epiphany listening to you guys remember early on I asked you what was the straw that broke the camel's back that you guys walked away, but now I actually, I really get it. I think your Amazon journey really started when you guys started your, wedding photography business because you chose to go into something that was a 9 to 5 already. And the problem I have when, you know, when people who are watching this and say, oh, maybe I could do an Amazon, but a lot of them are getting a steady paycheck. They don't have to worry about December and January being slow. They get the same paycheck in December and January as they do every other month. So I think actually the biggest thing that hold people back, and I think the biggest thing that may have pushed you guys over, let's say you would come out of college and just gotten a job and doing photography, but it was 9 to 5. Someone signs your paycheck. eNational Testing makes getting a simple laboratory test as easy as ordering something online. With three simple steps, you can have your test ordered for STDs, general health, allergy testing, diabetes screening, blood titers, and more! You can simply go in for testing the same day and get your results quickly to your email. eNationalTesting.com’s complete health care panels come with easy to understand results at over 2,700 locations nationwide. It's time to focus on yourself. eNationalTesting.com; easy, convenient and tailored to your health needs. I'm wondering if you would have. Like you said, you're sitting there like worried. Oh my gosh, without that worry, without that thing gnawing at you, you don't take risks like that. You don't say, let's go all in on Amazon or you may not. And so what I, what I always tell people, you know, even if you do have a job because some people will take your course, they're not all like they have 9 to 5 jobs. Some of you just already- But how do you convince someone who's got a 9 to 5 job gets a paycheck every two weeks? They're not sitting around saying November, December, whatever is going to be bad. It's every month the same. Every day is the same. Yeah. So what I tell people is pretend like you're not going to get a paycheck in November, December to recreate that stress that you felt to get them off, the ledge and make them take a risk and take your course and or do Amazon. But, it's interesting because without that uncertainty, a lot of people are not prepared to take some of the risks you guys took. Do you want to talk about that, that how important was that uncertainty and whether if you didn’t have that uncertainty, would you have been as desperate to come up with a solution? Yeah, I think I think, yeah. So there's sometimes those painful moments or the friction or the, you know, how I'm feeling overextended. That is the thing that gives you the faith to take like, the leap of faith, so to say. Okay, then then what would you do if I'm one of your potential customers for your course? But I've got a 9 to 5 job. you know, I'm making 60 k a year or 70 K a year or whatever. How do you so talk to me? Like, why should I take all this risk when you know this thing is okay? It's not great, but I'm okay. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people thought they were okay in 2020, you know, and we thought we were okay. We were still shooting weddings in early 2020, and then our entire wedding season was canceled. And, luckily I feel like, miraculously, we had Rainmaker set up and guess what? Everyone was home now. Everyone didn't have. jobs. Oh, I see, oh that’s perfect. That was a blow. Like, we we help so many families throughout that year who thought their job was secure. So I think, jobs, like 9 to 5 jobs. I think there's this false security. Yes. Entrepreneurship really gives you you know, again, there's nothing that is really secure, but it gives you a feeling of a little bit more security because, like, I control this thing. It's not someone else's decision or some board member who just like, oh, we're going to cut this department and then your job's gone, right? Right. So I think for a lot of our moms now, like when we started this, Amazon, coaching program, it was a lot of stay at home moms. Now, it's honestly a lot of corporate moms. And for them, they just desire to be there for their kids more. You know, they desire to retire their husband who's who's overworking. And I think in the economy that we live in, I mean, you look at, you know, what it takes to even buy a home compared to income nowadays compared to like 50 years ago. Things have really changed. You can't like it's hard to have a single family or single spouse income, right. And live on that with that plan. So a lot of our moms, they're feeling like they're kind of living paycheck to paycheck, even if they have a low six figure job. It's like, wow. Like we're just really have enough. But they're ready for more. They're like, I want to leave beyond, like money to my kids. I want to, you know, be able to send my kids to college. I want to be able to travel when we want to travel. So a lot of the people that come to us now, they're like, they have enough. They're not scraping by like, we have helped those people. Like Sharon was one of those people that was just, scraping by, really scrapping at the beginning of their business. And we have resources for that. But a lot of people come to us now. They're kind of like, we're we're maintaining, but we dream for so much more. And a lot of times that dream is attached to something else too. Like, I want to start an orphanage in Africa and they have like this big dream, but they don't see how their current job will create the wealth to do that type of thing. Right. So so I'm glad you you shared that. So your motives can be financial. It can be, you know, you want more out of life. You want to make an impact. You want to make an impact in the world for your family. So it could be all sorts of things. I want to move on to the next thing, which is I, you know, we talked offline that you've grown your organization, the Rainmaker Family. You have, 75 people that work for you, either directly or indirectly. It's a big organization. And we talk about some of the strategies, but talk to me about what leadership skills you have need to acquire to manage an organization like that. I'm sure if we went in a time machine and plucked you from ten years ago and put you in charge of all these people, it might not go as well. If it's going well. What what what did you realize you need to learn other than being a nice guy? That that you can because you must have tough conversations. some some good, some bad, some critical, some people you have to encourage. Some people you may have to let go. Some people you have to mentor. and when do you turn on the mentoring switch? When do you turn on the critical switch? When do you hire? When do you fire? How do you enroll people? How do you build culture? So everyone's on the same page. You didn't have assuming those skill sets back in 2017. Tell me about that journey to to realizing you needed them and how you got them and what that transformation look like. yeah. Wow. I feel like I mean, I kind of come back to 2020 early 2020. We started to really see an increase was like February 2020, right before the world kind of shut down. We started to see a big increase. We had one of our we're running challenges. So just for your listeners that now we have our Amazon business and we have our Amazon coaching business, where we teach people how to do what we do on Amazon. And this like what takes up the primary, primary amount of our time. And where we put a lot of our effort in, is the coaching business. Because the Amazon business is fairly leveraged, it's fairly passive. so 2020, we do a challenge which is like, hey, anyone want to learn about Amazon? Come on in and we'll do a seven day challenge. And normally our challenges would have, you know, 5000 people. And then this challenge had 3000 people in it. 3000 people, came into this thing. That’s insane. And we, we spent a good amount of money on marketing and it just was working well. So I just, hey, put pedal the mouth, put people in here. Let's impact a lot of families. and doing the math, we're kind of like, you know, marketing. You kind of figure out percentages. You're like, typically 10% of people might jump into our coaching program after this challenge and want to work with us more in depth. And so at the time, we I was just coaching people. Chelsey’s keeping the wedding business running, and I was just doing one on ones of people. I'm like, I can't take on 300 students one on one and provide the same level of service and value and feedback. At the time, our business had been going for a couple of years. We had a handful of six figure salaries at the time that we're doing over six figures,$100,000 a year in their business. So I approached some of those people and I was like, hey, I would love to have you do what I'm doing and coach. And and it was it was very informal at the time. Now we have a full coaching certification and process and application they go through. But at the time I was like, I just saw the need and I was like, let's find a solution for the need. And so I think, just encourage entrepreneurs, wherever you're at in the journey, I feel like you never really led into a battle that you're not already prepared for. I think it can feel like you're unprepared at moments. But if you look back, like oftentimes there's convergence of, you know, like those people were there. I just had to kind of look for them. And we're big believers in like, if you focus not on your current resources but your resourcefulness, it makes you think like outside the box. And that's how we got our first team members and, our nanny at the time, we just had a newborn, so we had a nanny. We're doing the challenge. She's like holding the baby. Like she. I'm like, we need help with emails. We're getting all these customer support emails. So she's like jumping in the inbox with one hand answering emails. And so we just kind of got by. And so I think like in those early days of the business really starting to, to, to grow, it was really like we grew to a point where it hurt and I was like, okay, we can't all be doing emails till 3 a.m. like, we need a person. And that's how you start hiring and getting into that. And, But where did you get the skill set? Because, I mean, if when you hire large volumes of people. Yeah, okay. Then you get a full dose of what HR is like and dealing with different personalities and, and how did you navigate those skill sets? Because as anyone who's tried to grow a large organization, you know, there's dramas, there's this, there's that, you know, it's lot you have to have policies, procedures, you have to. Yeah. Where did you go to? Because like when you say it, I, I don't want to sound dumb, but, like, I honestly didn't really know HR was until, like, last year. And so we, I mean, last, last year, our business had $20 million, you know, so, like, we have really grown this thing, like, really learning only what we need to learn. And I think the one benefit, that helped us as a almost all of our hires up until about 2021 came from the program. So we had already changed their life and become their mentor and led them like they had watched hours and hours of me talking without me even talking to them. Right. And so we had changed their life. They built this Amazon business that created some transformation in them alone, like they had to level up their life and their leadership within themselves. So a lot of the people that started working for us in the inbox and in coaching, they'd come through our mentorship almost for a year or two already, which that's very unique. Now we're at the place in our business where it makes sense to hire outside of our community and find people that have gone before us into territory that we are. This is all uncharted territory. We've never grown an eight figure business before, so now we're starting to really develop HR and hiring and recruiting and onboarding and all those things. But I think very much we have, learned as we gone and tried to really focus on what is the need of today, not what's the need of tomorrow. And I think those early hires went off of a lot of our intuition of like, can we trust this person? And do they have the character and the trust of if I handed a mama a student off to them, would they take care of this person? And that's what we went off of a long time. You know, we didn't have a handbook. We didn't have all this extra leadership experience. And even though our organization has grown and we have it very intense, you know, hiring and what we look for, and we want people that are thinking outside of the box and have built things beyond Stephen and I. We always go back to the character of the person, like, how are they interacting? are we picking up on some weird intuition thing about them that they don't want to talk about or shying away from? Like a lot of it has come from that, and I think that's something really important in the hiring process as well, is like hiring off of that character. Obviously, the skill set for sure, we 100% look like look at that. We just hired somebody who is being onboarded right now. And she had crazy skill set. But the part and the piece when I watched her interview was, yes, the skill set, we needed that. But on the other side is like how she cared about people and how she cared about the culture is huge. So culture to me is almost sometimes more important on certain, positions than that skill set, because we can train in that and you have that culture. It's going to affect everything else in your organization and not have like team connection. And so I think that's a big one that I love. But but but isn't but is culture kind of top down where you guys set the tone for the culture? And if that's the case, how do you transmit that? I mean, what do you and how do you go about saying, these are our values? This is well, you know, we're and we're concerned about people. We want to make a difference, whatever the culture is. You know, it's, it's not just by osmosis that people get culture. Did you have to come up with a a, a plan or a method to convey and set a culture for everybody? Yeah. and in those early days, we didn't because they all came to the program which you're given the culture. But it's so hard hiring outside and starting to really grow. we did develop like, you know, mission vision, value statement. So, you know, here's where we're going. Here's our ethos of what we hire fire and reward over. And so those are things we say every single week with our team now, because it takes time for that to get in them. And we actually went through a process. I think this is maybe 2021. We actually developed it with the team. So it was really fun to like be like, here's like, you know, we we're visionaries, we have a vision, but we kind of brought them into the process to like, let's make it your language too. Let's come up with like our, you know, our language around these things. What what do we want to be known by. And so it give our team more ownership. And that is really on every team meeting. It's brought up. It's we have a document, we show it and we do we do ethos shout outs. We call them. So every week we're like, Melissa, I saw that you were a caretaker of the team. That's one of our, our our things that we were known for. You took care of this person in a really unique way, and I want to celebrate that, you know, so every week we're saying it because, culture is I think we're looking for resonance, right? They might not fully have our culture we're looking for, like, they're not repelling it. They're resonating. And then it's caught, culture is caught. And a lot of times you have to lead culture by just saying it a lot. It sounds like you're saying things a lot, a lot, a lot. But it's just like I kind of think of it like, think of a country going into a country and catching their culture, right? There’s some cultures that are so different that it's going to almost repel you. Right? Like some cultures you can almost come into, because it's like, wow, this culture, like, you know, I think of our Filipinos, we have a lot of Filipino hires. Their culture is like actually very similar to America as opposed to like India. We've hired some people from India where the culture is very different. And so the Filipinos just like they come in like so easily because the culture is similar. And then, and then you catch it over time and it gets deeper and deeper. So the next thing before we run out of time, I really want to talk about one thing we talked about off line that I want my my viewers and anyone listening, I think would benefit so much from we talked about growing an organization. and as it grows, you know, what what are strategies to set up the model where everything is not coming to you? But yet you are still have your finger on the pulse, but it's not you're not wearing you're not the marketing head of marketing, head of HR, head of tell us about how you went about developing that model and what that looks like and, and, and what kind of success you've had. Setting up an organization where you're in charge but you're- not everything is feeding up to you. I'll let you take it from here. Definitely. okay. I got three ideas. Three tips. and this is really, I think, the difference between a 6 or 7 figure business. An eight figure business. of course, there are some outliers in where it's like the solo entrepreneur who's crushing it with some software. Right. but I would say a lot of it comes down to releasing control. when you're in the early days of your business, you're very scrappy, wear all the hats you're doing, all the things, and as you grow, you have to learn to systematize. And that's really my jam, systematize what you're doing so you can level up and hire people or bring people in to support those things and do them well, you know, and so the three things that have really helped us a ton. And some of these we learn from mentors, a lot of it came from the book traction, which is I mean, it's like the best playbook, I think, for building an organization. It covers this thing called the EOS, the Entrepreneur Operating System, and it has everything in there about, like how you run meetings, how you keep KPIs and things like that. So what really helped me as someone who, like, loves to see everything and like, you know, like want to have my hand in everything, I think I guess the first thing we come back to is why, when you look at our org chart of our organization in like 2021, right? We had this big growth in 2020, 2021 was really like, let's we we hit a wall with like, my capacity. And if you looked at the org chart, it was like, you know, me and Chelsey and then like every single person on the, Which is not a good thing. Yeah. And everyone was reporting to me, everyone's sending me messages, and we're doing this all virtually on on slack, you know? So my just days were just overextended and and we really were like, we need structure. And, we found the EOS model, which is a model of raising up team leaders, having teams underneath them and running a cadence of meetings that helps you as a leader, really just meet with your inner circle. Just like, these are my my top team, right? And they're bringing me everything from the organization. And so we started to make that shift. and so, the three tips okay, the first tip was a scorecard. We talked about that earlier, the scorecard, my favorite part of the meeting. And it's, the part where everyone in the company has a number. Okay. So we kind of think of like, what's a number that represents? Are you making an impact? You know, so for our coaches, it's, you know, it's like products launched, right? For their students or for our customer support. It might be, you know, number of tickets resolved this week. Right. So what's the number that kind of represents impact and now we like to think of numbers that help us kind of predict the future a little bit. Right. Like how many leads came in this week that helps us predict how, you know, fulfillment is going to be a month from now. So, everyone has a number. They report those numbers in their meetings publicly in front of everyone. They set goals every quarter for that number. Hey, I want to get this from 1 to 2 or 2 to 4. And they set it publicly. Then they're held accountable every week, setting on track or off track. What's your number? And then all those numbers come from all the teams up to a master scorecard that we have, and in 15 minutes we can literally look at the whole organization. They mark it if it's on track, they mark it red, if it's off track and we can literally see like how are we doing today? Is it all green? Is it all red? Is it 50/50. And that gives you an area as a leader to like, oh wow. This department is constantly red. Like if we get a red 2 or 3 weeks in a row, we just know, okay, we got to lean in that department. Help! Come in. so that's the first tip, the scorecard. Second tip is, it's really helped. End of week reports, I didn't talk about this one, But this one has been one that has been I feel like brought Chelsey a solid piece because she like as we it's hard to have two leaders of a company and do it as married couples because I'm doing a lot. She's doing a lot. And then like at the end of our day, we put our kids to bed and it's like, what happened, you know, and you want to catch up with each other and this is almost too much. And so the end of week report, we have everyone make a quick two minute video of like, what were your wins this week? What were your struggles this week and what do you what do you put in your hands into next week? Basically that's our format. Very simple. And they all send these videos in to our operations manager. And she makes one video out of kind of like a summary of all of them to give us the highlights. And so that's a great way she. She clips the videos together or she just summarizes what the video said. She puts them in a document and kind of walks through in about 15 minutes. But we're getting updates from, you know, 75 people, and their team leads and all these things. So, so how we kind of do it structurally just for your listeners, if they have tiers, it's like our, our first tier employees, right? Who’re not managing anyone they are submitting on like a Wednesday. Their team leads are submitting their recaps of those ones to their leader on a Thursday. And then that would be, Kimberly, our operations manager. She does the summary to us on a Friday. So it's an end of week report halfway through the week, but we get it on Fridays. But every week we're kind of like, oh, this thing happened with this employee, or this thing needs some help over here. Here's a solution over there. And so that it's been such a cool thing to like the scorecard plus that scorecard at the beginning, the week, the end the week report happens at the end of the week. It just gives us a feeling of a little more control so we can coach those things at scale. and then the third and final one, this one's really quick. Is the 131, the 131 is something that we put in our, our ethos as like, we're solutionaries always. And the 131, it's something we do companywide and we got this I feel like I heard this from I think in a mastermind, this guy Jose talked about it. And I've heard a couple of other people, I don't know who came up with the 131, but whoever you are, thank you. Thank you so much. But the 131 says you never bring one problem without three solutions and one recommendation. So you never bring one problem without three solutions and one recommendation. And so if someone ever brings a problem to a meeting or to a team lead, if they don't bring three solutions and one recommendations, we say, hey, can you one, three, one that and come back to me. And so like. Hold on, hold on. So help me understand what's the difference between a solution and recommend the they sounds similar. So maybe you could you could clarify an example. So hey we're noticing refund rate is up to 10%, right. that's the problem. so I've come up with three potential solutions. solution one, solution two, solution three. And my one recommendation is probably solution two. I feel like so. So you say ask ask them to pick one of the three that would the most. Okay I got it. So this what it does. It trains them to one be a solutionary and not just come to you with problems all the time. So they're starting to become an owner. Like have an owners mindset, but also as a leader gives you insight into their thinking. Because what happens is sometimes they'll nail it. Hey, that's a great. I would also go with option two, right? Editfy and you say that'll be great or you correct it. Hey, none of the none of the solutions you come up with are good, right? Or the one the recommending constantly is bad. Now you know that person probably is not the right person for that role. because they're not thinking like you. And so we've had team members like this where when they first started 131, they would just kind of miss it, miss it, miss it. But over time, they started to learn to think like us. Right. Started to learn to think the way we would think. And it gets to the point where now it's like, hey, I appreciate the 131’s, but now you think like me, just like make the decision without me, right? Right. And you can- I love that. Now, I got to tell you, as I'm hearing this, I mean this amazing advice. Listen, anyone who's watching this podcast, and they just even heard the last ten minutes and they can't make an impact in their organization. Something is wrong. That stuff is amazing. You know, people often wonder, you know, why their company's stock or why they can't get to the next level. That advice and other advice like that is what you need to get to the next level. You know, I can't thank you guys enough. I know you guys probably talk about other stuff in other podcast, but I, I think this will help your people and anyone that's listening to our show because these are problems that everyone who's going to grow an organization are going to face. So words of wisdom, I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed it. Probably could go on for another hour, but, that is amazing stuff. Amazing stuff. Before we let you go, so, Stephen and Chelsey, could you tell people if they're interested in learning about your Amazon business, learning about you guys? how can they find you? What are some good ways if they want to reach out to you or learn more about what you guys have to offer? Yeah. We also have a podcast. So I'd say if you're a podcast listener, head on over to our podcast as well. That's the Rainmaker Family Show. You can find it on all platforms. you can also follow us on Instagram at @therainmakerfamily as well. Yeah, I'd say to like the Rainmaker Family podcast for all types of leaders. it's not all Amazon Focus that Instagram is fairly Amazon focus. If you want to see more of the CEO mind behind the scenes. My personal Instagram I've been putting out a lot more content around leadership, and that man might resonate more with your audience. And that one is @Steezdiaz. S-T-E-E-Z-D-I-A-Z, I'll send you, a note on that once you put in the show. Yeah, we will put put everything in the show notes. so that that'll be amazing. Well, listen, you guys have so much to offer. I hope people take advantage of everything you guys have. You guys, amazing words of wisdom. One from having a lot of mentors that you've had, but also from also from your experiences, when you meld that together, you get the success that you guys are. And I really want to thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate it. We'll hopefully see you guys again. Thank you again for coming in. I think that that concludes our episode of Baktari MD. If you, if you loved this show, please comment, like and subscribe. Give me your thoughts about some of the things we've talked about and then we will see you on the next episode. Thank you so much everybody. Have a great day. Take care. Bye bye.