How to Build Your Million Dollar Machine with Ernesto Mandowsky

Ernesto: [00:00:00] Because if every person on your team knows that through working at your company, their personal vision and mission is being realized, then, they're going to perform at the highest levels. Like they're not going to fuck around, excuse the language. Like they know that their performance is directly driving the profit, which is directly feeding back into their lives.
Ernesto: You know, you become a bullet train.
Dustin: All right. Welcome back to seven for your leap. I'm really excited. I have a special guest today. Ernesto Mandowski. He is an alumni of our podcast profits accelerator, but much more than that, he's become a great friend. We did 75 hard [00:01:00] together, learned a lot from him and he is an operations guru and a notion nerd and all kinds of cool things that you're going to learn about today.
Dustin: And, yeah, more than that, he's just a super High octane entrepreneur and a really, really good guy. So Ernesto, I'm really grateful that you're here on the seven figure leap and welcome, and I'm just going to like, turn it over to you for a minute and let you give a little bit of context about what you do.
Dustin: And then we can start digging back into your entrepreneurial journey and finding out what has made you the man you are today. If that's not too much pressure.
Ernesto: Oh, it's all good. Thank you, Dustin. And for the listeners, Dustin is a force of nature. Having him in my life this year has been amazing. the short story on me 15 years ago, I threw a party and made 30, 000 in one night and decided, I want to get into hospitality. But more so, I wanted to do technology in that space.
Ernesto: Everywhere I looked, the restaurant people said we don't understand technology. The technology people said we don't work in hospitality. And my parents said, what the hell are you thinking about getting into [00:02:00] restaurants? So, uh, for a better part of 10 years, I sought, I seeked out a way that I could combine these passions.
Ernesto: And did so and had lots of twists and turns along the way. And that journey inspired me to start my own company about four years ago, the million dollar machine. I'll tease the audience with that little intro there.
Dustin: that's a great hook. You learned well with, your storytelling. so you use the word hospitality. I feel like I just got to have to say it, out loud. So I was just down at the StoryBranch Summit, last month and Will Goodara, I was one of the keynote speakers. He actually launched a coaching certification through story brand for his book and his methodology, unreasonable hospitality.
Dustin: And you and I were chatting a little bit before we hit record. I think we both admire that. It was an amazing talk. It's a great book. you said something that I thought was really insightful. It's like, Hey, Great. Like you've got this, hospitality, this experience, you've got this magic that, however you're serving your clients or your, restaurant in his case.
Dustin: but like, what's the technology behind [00:03:00] that? What's the frameworks? What are the systems behind that? So you want to like wrap on that a little bit about your experience with hospitality, I guess. and I envision this like Venn diagram of the, there's hospitality and then the things you think about with that, which are usually restaurants, hotels, events, and then you have technology and systems and notion and frameworks, and they don't usually overlap.
Dustin: But I feel like you're kind of living at the intersection. So you want to enlighten us a little bit on that?
Ernesto: Yeah. And, fun fact, Will Godara was a client of the company that I was working at. 10 years ago, our point of sale company was powering 11 Madison park. So that, you know, cool to see how this all has progressed, but, yeah, help people kind of understand this overlap when they go to a restaurant.
Ernesto: the server greets them and ask them for a beverage and ask them what their allergies are and ask them what they're celebrating. That is the hospitality. That is the art that is, I think what he is inspiring entrepreneurs to consider when designing their customer experience. what is invisible [00:04:00] to the guests?
Ernesto: What is invisible to everyone in the restaurant is the intense efficiency and reinforcement. Behavior is that the chef is instilling in the kitchen, in the back of the house, the back of the house in the tech company. It's like the engineering team. It's the product team. It's the account management, the services team, the support.
Ernesto: And in the entrepreneur land, in small businesses, we're one person. We're two people. We're three people. We have a VA. We don't have the
extensive amount of. Resources like a restaurant does or a big tech company. So what do we do? This is where technology comes into play. So
Dustin: That's a great analogy of when you think of the peak experience at a restaurant, like where wool comes from, you think of like teams, right? And it seems the thing that really makes it magical is teams. And if you have the right leader, there's that, I like that art. It's sort of this art sprinkled over the top of [00:05:00] the team, but there's a lot of science, right?
Dustin: And there's a lot of machinery or mechanisms in place to make all that run. And so you're saying for the people, I'll just ask you this way. In your current world and the thing that you do now, like you're not working as far as I understand, with large teams and even restaurants, but you're working with, like you just said, one, two, three person founder led entrepreneurial enterprises.
Dustin: So how do these things relate? Cause they do seem like very disparate, concepts, I guess, to me.
Ernesto: everyone can connect with the restaurant. So when you share that story that I just said, when you arrive at a restaurant, the server asks you these four questions is to quickly screen and understand. In your small business, when a client pays the invoice, you know, what's the first thing that happens?
Ernesto: they get an invoice obviously, but then they start receiving an onboarding email. Like, Hey, welcome to seven figure leap. We're so excited to have you please fill out this intake form. Please tell us when your birthday is so we can send you an automated [00:06:00] email. Um, what are you looking to gain out of this?
Ernesto: Like you're already collecting this information. And because we don't have teams and teams of people, we use technology. Technology is very powerful because it allows you to simplify and streamline a lot of these processes. But where, we fall short with technology, the small person teams, Is that they are so busy and focused on dishing out situational specials instead of delivering a prefix promise. Our friend John Mies, I don't know if he said, or if you made it up like the promise for a price. It's like, Hey, what's the fixed promise. You know, I say prefix promise, because when you go to 11 Madison park, you're not asking them to change up their 300 menu because it's proven. the chef knows what he's doing.
Ernesto: And so you respect and honor that person, [00:07:00] but entrepreneurs are too busy, like changing things up every day on the fly because they want to meet their client's needs, not realizing the sabotage it's creating.
Dustin: That's awesome. Yeah. Like, I'll give Tommy's credit for that term, but, a term that I also don't take any credit for. I really believe in. The idea that creativity is really bred from constraint, it's really hard to be creative when you can just do anything. where the creativity really gets powerful and starts to have a big impact is when you put it in a container, right?
Dustin: And it's like, here's your constraints. And so I love that analogy there with like the menu at a world class. Restaurant experience is fixed, I can't just go in there and order anything I want because while that sounds appealing on
one level, on another level, it's overwhelming and it just doesn't actually create the best experience.
Dustin: And so as entrepreneurs, though, I think we can tend to feel like we're stifling our creativity if we put constraints or systems or processes around the way that we deliver things, and I think that's a [00:08:00] problem, for a lot of
entrepreneurs, especially solo entrepreneurs, which, who, uh, Many of us, I'll include myself in this bucket, have a history of sort of jumping around to different ideas and launching different things and trying new offers all the time.
Dustin: I'm thinking we're being creative, but actually what we're creating is confusion. We're not creating a great experience for our customers or ourselves. so yeah, what do you think of that? Like the idea of creativity and constraints in that relationship?
Ernesto: So, uh, the beautiful thing about constraints and creativity, you can now brainstorm, okay, if we know that the onboarding process is fixed, now you ask the question, how can we make it beautiful?
Dustin: Yeah,
Ernesto: But even then, a lot of people know that technology is powerful. Why do they never get around to it? One, cause they maybe don't necessarily know exactly how to configure the technology, but two, they have so many offers. That are always changing. You can't build technology like that. You have to build technology around a constraint around a fixed scientific repeatable process. So once [00:09:00] you decide that, okay, this is how I'm going to run my podcast guest accelerator or my marketing agency service or my coaching service or my events.
Ernesto: Once you decide that scientific step by step approach, now you can bring in the technology and now you can actually build this out really quickly to start saving the time and realizing those benefits.
Dustin: I love that. you know, a little later, we're going to make this really practical and give people like a step by step scorecard of. What systems you need in place and what are the individual metrics or key numbers that you need to reach your business goals? I kind of jumped right in here in the middle.
Dustin: I, was like hospitality and it triggered me and we got right into the needs, which I think is really useful because it kind of gives people some insight into. How you see the world and how you have some amazing analogies, honestly, between like the restaurant world and the entrepreneurial world of the business world.
Dustin: But I do want to take a step back. talk a little bit more about your own journey into this. So you have a really, you're, you alluded to the fact that you did this event and it sort of set you [00:10:00] into this direction with your young life of hospitality and you know, ultimately working around the restaurant industry in different ways.
Dustin: So. Tell me a little bit about those early days. Were you working for other companies? Was that event something that was your own venture? Like, when would you say you went from an employee to an entrepreneur in your own career?
Ernesto: I was always side hustling
Dustin: Okay,
Ernesto: as a full time employee. The uh, traumas from my parents around being a responsible young man and getting your going, getting your engineering degree and getting your job. And you also were an engineer and I think you spent over 10 years. Doing engineering. I worked at Deloitte.
Ernesto: I was a consultant tech consultant learning big project management systems. But even while I was working on government projects, I was moonlighting researching with the hospitality team at Deloitte until one day I had an opportunity to join one of their [00:11:00] hospitality projects, which is really cool. we're doing casino technology for a cruise company.
Dustin: Oh, wow. That's a whole nother one. Well,
Ernesto: yeah, yeah. We're not, we're not going there. before working at Deloitte, I had started baking bread and I just loved this idea of baking bread, baking challah bread, challah is like a Jewish version of brioche, which is like the French. French toast made with milk and butter and it's delicious.
Ernesto: That's why French toast is awesome. And even while I was working at Deloitte and coming home on the weekends, I was still baking hollow bread and that turned into, I'm going to go to culinary school. I'm going to build a business around my hollow bread. I told everyone in culinary school about my passion
about technology and restaurants, which actually led to my first job inside of restaurants. all throughout this time I was baking bread, even while I was, when I was working in the restaurant, I was baking bread and learning from the bakery that I was setting up, [00:12:00] for the business I was working at. even until today, I still am baking this challah bread, which has become this. symbol or metaphor why I even started this company.
Ernesto: Why I'm even doing what I'm doing with systems and technology. Like, like, why? Cause no one cares about systems. That's, that's kind of like the sad reality here.
Dustin: was gonna say, I didn't want to like nod too hard, but like, yeah, pretty much. so what is the analogy though? So if I'm tracking you, loving parents who wanted you to go to college and have the traditional path, and you did that and you had this career, in your young career at Deloitte and you're into technology, but you start to find like little pockets within Deloitte to kind of scratch this itch with, the hospitality industry and events and casinos and cruises and all that fun stuff, While you're doing the side hustle, baking bread, presumably selling the bread.
Dustin: Then you go to culinary school and then you say in culinary school, I'm going to have a business with this bread. And now you're saying the bread is an analogy for what you do now. So you gotta close a few gaps for me here. that's [00:13:00] what makes you so interesting.
Dustin: That's why I love these conversations is like, hold on, wait, what? Is it like Deloitte breaking bread, culinary school? there's a lot there. So what is the bridge there between, , that young career and, What business did you create with the breaking, breaking bread, uh, enterprise that you were doing?
Ernesto: So Hollaback Bakery was, I guess my first official business that I started in college, uh, before Deloitte. that was what I was selling in New York and I was ditching out these breads and it was really about like, it wasn't just
baking a basic loaf of bread and giving it to someone like I made Oreo cookie stuffed hollow bread or banana Nutella stuffed hollow bread.
Ernesto: Like, Ground beef, onions, and all like empanada style, like hollow bread. Very crazy, innovative approach to baking bread, which for me, it's like, okay, how am I expressing this unique combination of flavors in a totally new medium, hollow bread. when I wrote my first book, it was like, okay, how [00:14:00] are you now expressing this unique combination of, a creator's background interests and passions all inside of a specific product?
Ernesto: That you are delivering. So like, how are you Dustin defying the seven bigger leap? And for the listeners who don't know so much about your product or your accelerator, like you're the simplicity that you bring is something that like makes your program so unique and impactful. It can keep things so simple and has actually impacted my storytelling. that's the first thing, like the challah is the expression of your uniqueness. And then the second thing I would say is that. Most entrepreneurs, you ask them like, Oh, do you work out or do you like eat healthy or do you like take care of yourself? Like, Oh no, like I don't have time. I don't have time. And it's like, well, your business is going to burn, like it's going to burn out. you're not going to make it. So you kind of like have to make the time you have to make the time to spend time with your wife or bake bread or work out. And so how do you make time? [00:15:00] Well, you create systems in place so that you could actually feel peaceful.
Ernesto: When Friday from two to five, I'm like making the dough and shaping the loaves. And I'm not freaking out on a Friday afternoon. I can just chill while I'm baking bread can like visualize that can manifest. And so for me, it's baking bread for someone else. It might be rucking for another person. It might be,
cooking.
Ernesto: don't know. But having people, like, define, find their challah, identify, like, what is that thing that is going to give them joy should be a motivation in and of itself to start a business, so you can create time for these things.
Dustin: I like that. So number one, part of this analogy is uniqueness. Number two, I wrote like four words, but I wrote time, joy, like freedom from the business. So like you love your business so much, but if you're constantly pointing at it as like, because of this. Business that I'm creating. I have no time for recreation, for family, for [00:16:00] taking care of myself, exercising, mental health, all those sort of things.
Dustin: so in essence of what you're getting here or getting at here is like the systems create freedom and then from that freedom, you can do a lot of things that actually not only make the business more effective, but it really serves you as a human so that you're not getting burnt out. And then eventually burning the business to the ground, which.
Dustin: So many entrepreneurs do like when you hit a certain level of success, it's sort of self implodes because they overextend themselves deeply into that they lose any identity outside of the business itself.
Ernesto: They lose their identity, they overhire, they overinvest, the runway shoots to the moon, the revenue doesn't hit at a pay, you know, they implode, basically.
Dustin: Is there any more to this, hollow bread analogy that we want to unpack before you kind of zoom up and talk about what you actually do for your clients today?
Ernesto: No, that, pretty much covers it. I would say, uh, humble plug. I do bake. I do like, I'm going to start doing monthly bakes so that people can actually unplug on Fridays. I mean, not fully, but like for [00:17:00] 90 minutes of the day to like bake with me. So, you know, stay
Dustin: my, you have to be careful with how you You know, like you come bake with me and now I'm Friday afternoon. Right. No, that's awesome. So this is really, this is fun to unpack because I know Ernesto pretty deeply. Right. We spent 90 days together. We've stayed in a lot of contact since then. He's helped us with a lot of projects, seven figure leap. and I knew hospitality. I knew a little bit about the baking, with the hollow bread, but seeing how these things intertwine and how they've been part of your own personal evolution, it really is insightful, to me.
Dustin: Like. Why you're so passionate about systems as like a form of freedom. Cause like you just kind of said it self effacing, but I think it's true. Like no one really wants systems. It's like, no one like goes to bed dreaming about systems and I, maybe Ernesto, but like most business owners don't, what we actually want is the things they give us, right.
Dustin: And how they serve us, that they can give us a more. powerful way to express our uniqueness and a powerful way to have more freedom to be more [00:18:00] creative, like that's the juice that kind of comes from squeezing the systems systems orange, I guess. Right. So, that was really cool to unpack that.
And we, we talked a little bit about, kind of the overarching theme of hospitality and how.
Dustin: Front of the house, back of the house, and then there's a lot, a lot under the radar for truly extraordinary experiences that maybe you don't see. And, we have ways to recreate that in a small business and with the solo solopreneur or small founder led business. So all that kind of, established.
Dustin: So tell us, like, what do you do now? Like a million dollar machine, or you just wrote a book, like. Who is your ideal client and what do you do for them so that people can really get to know the present day Ernesto and how you're serving the world right now.
Ernesto: So my ideal client is someone who's been in business between two and 10 years. someone who has a growth mindset is open to change and is focused on actually growing their business, actually changing the ways that they work to create a new [00:19:00] results for themselves. it's mainly people who provide services, coaches, they create events.
Ernesto: They offer masterminds. And the reason why I say that is. If using restaurants as an analogy, if you're dishing out a product, if you're creating, like you sell me six or maybe you do still, still set like that's a pretty uniform thing. Like that's a big Mac. That is a, it's a conveyor belt.
Ernesto: it's the same, doesn't require too much complexity. Cause like once you have your formula, boom. When you're providing a service to different clients with different needs and different backgrounds, it becomes a bit more complex. There's a lot more nuance. And, these types of offers are more valuable.
Ernesto: You can command anywhere from five to 000 a client. And so when you have the conviction and the value you're providing is one thing. The other thing is how is that client going to receive a 20, 000 experience or a hundred thousand [00:20:00] dollar experience at a bargain price of 20, 000. Those are the people that I'm interested in working with.
Ernesto: And that I am actively helping design what I call the five recipes to help them build their million dollar machine.
Dustin: Love it. And so what are the five recipes? You kind of teed that up.
Ernesto: So the five recipes, it starts with your transformation. It's, the core offer that you provide, creating absolute clarity around that transformation, whether it is a 90 day accelerator program or, building of an initial website or a delivery of an event. Thanks. When you have rock solid clarity on how that transformation works, you now have the confidence that whether it's 10 or 50 people coming in the door, they're all going to get an amazing experience, which leads to the second recipe, which is connection. The connection processes is business development. It's partnership. It's sales. It's how you are enrolling [00:21:00] different parts of your network into your transformation. Once you exhaust everyone in your ecosystem, it's time to head to recipe number three, which is communication, also known as marketing. marketing is, is creating your podcast, your webinar, your lead magnets, your checklists, everything having to do with, your email service provider.
Ernesto: People think of like kit. They think of go high level, like all the marketing stuff to get people to communicate to people, the value that you offer most entrepreneurs, every entrepreneur, I would say, is very familiar with these three concepts of transformation of, you know, delivering of a service sales and marketing and where I would say 90 percent of entrepreneurs never get to.
Ernesto: Our recipes, four and five must be number four is organization. How do you now actually turn your business into a company, into an enterprise with teams, with priorities, with, your technology, with specific [00:22:00] tactics on how you do things, you start to hire people. You start to bring in more people into your organization. And. This is where I kind of start to thrive and help people take that leap into the organization with technology. but to prevent the company from just being a lifeless, technology machine filled with rules and regulations, you have the fifth and final recipe, which is actualization, which is the idea of culture, which is how do you help everyone inside of your team see their personal missions and visions inside of the companies.
Ernesto: Because if every person on your team knows that through working at your company, their personal vision and mission is being realized, then, they're going to perform at the highest levels. Like they're not going to fuck around, excuse the language. Like they know that their performance is directly driving the profit, which is directly [00:23:00] feeding back into their lives.
Ernesto: You know, you become a bullet train.
Dustin: I love that. And I guess it kind of goes without saying, but just to, Say it out loud. So would you consider these five recipes progressive, meaning like you got to nail number one enough before you moved to two, before you moved
to three and then four and five are kind of the higher levels of expression of, success in a business.
Ernesto: Yeah, I, um, I want to say they're linear. you see the success graph, it's like the line, that's like what it really looks like.
Dustin: Yeah.
Ernesto: Um, but if you think about it, okay, you have exhibit a, client is, has somewhat of an offer and, not super clear on it, like has something gets on LinkedIn is writing every single day for a year and all, of a sudden gets 50 leads.
Ernesto: And one day and 50 clients sign up because that person never did work on the transformation. Now you have to deliver 50 [00:24:00] clients and it's like, are you going to deliver immaculate service? I don't know, maybe, but I wouldn't want to put that bet. I wouldn't want to invest a ton of money in ads if knowing that like it was going to bring me a hundred clients tomorrow because I actually would deliver a hundred terrible experiences.
Ernesto: It's. So I, I think of them as a se, as a sequence, knowing of course, everyone works in a little bit of all of them.
Dustin: And it's iterative, you kind of got like the basic table stakes of one before you can kind of move to the next, but then it's not like when you create the culture and step five or the actualization. Then now you're done, right? Like, then you'll have another offer and then you'll have to like, change your marketing again.
Dustin: And you know, so it is iterative and ongoing. So I would think a lot of our audience, when you kind of think of them in that way, like transformation, connection, communication, or marketing, organization, actualization, I think a lot of our audience would probably be like, I only think of the first three, right?
Dustin: Like, I know I got to get an offer and I got to [00:25:00] have some good marketing and I got to be able to sell it. And maybe they feel like. It sounds almost, too aspirational to be like, and at some point I got to figure out like an organization and actualization, especially actualization. Right. We're thinking of this like hierarchy of needs.
Dustin: It's like, oh man, where do you usually kind of fit into that pie? Do you address all five? Or are you like, Hey. Once you've kind of got the first three
going and you're starting to feel the pressure that this is about to break, or I'm, I'm at my breaking point. I'm at my personal capacity. I need help.
Dustin: You come in and really do four and five, or where do you see yourself fitting in best with
Ernesto: so the really cool thing about this, I think it was the first time you were personally hearing a lot of this stuff. everyone needs all five at all times, but like, Dustin's version of actualization. Okay. You teach us about actualization and the accelerator, like what's your mission vision statement?
Ernesto: You know, it's one line, like that's enough. That's all you need when you're just starting out. When clients, you know, we're talking about the scorecard and a bit, like I have [00:26:00] thought through the maturity model of a small business owner. So when you're just starting out, you are like a pop up pilot. Think of yourself as like the food truck that shows up on Tuesday nights to the park square, experimenting with your hamburger at some point. What we say when you hit 200 K, you now become a committed cafe. you're committed to this journey. You probably quit your full time job. You're in it to win it. And from 200 K to about 750 K revenue, you are in this committed cafe stage. At seven 50, you become a booming brasserie. You start to have lots of activity.
Ernesto: Maybe you have a second offer in the business. and till about 1. 5 million, you're in that booming brasserie phase. Then you become a five star food empire. And then at 3 million, you become what I call a Michelin designed masterpiece, a business that is one of one that is uniquely known around the [00:27:00] world for what it does.
Ernesto: I can't remember the guy in Italy, Austria. Massimo Bottura is one of the restaurants, I mean, all these chefs, they have their one iconic restaurant that people become known for. And when you think of your business, you become known for that one thing. So Dustin's a seven figure lead guy, Ernesto's a million dollar machine.
Ernesto: Everyone, Tiago Forte is building a second brain. Like everyone becomes. Donald Miller, the story brand guy, like we become the one of one, people in that brand. And at each step of these five phases, you have a little bit of transformation, a little bit of connection, a little bit of, communication. It just looks a little different all throughout the way.
Ernesto: And that's what I help people kind of navigate and configure as they are going through those processes.
Dustin: Okay. That's super helpful. I'm glad I asked it that way in that you always have all five, but, different ones will be emphasized at different stages. And I would think also the entrepreneur is going to be. Innately strong or [00:28:00] focused on different parts, different, different recipes, and they're going to need more help with others.
Dustin: Right. And so I would imagine a lot of people you work with are more visionary. Maybe they have, they're good at their offer. They're good at delivering the thing they do. They've got some sort of special expertise. I'm guessing many of them are not good at or not as good, you know, at the more growth oriented things like the organization, the actualization, like especially the organization.
Dustin: Like that's the one that jumps out to me when I think of it. Yeah. The thing I Don't do well, or the thing I don't naturally do well. And I have to have a who's in my corner to help support is the organization, the scaling, the systems, the SOPs, the stuff that I'm like, Oh, I guess I need to do that. Right.
Dustin: Cause it's like, it's not like the thing that fires me up, but I also have. Felt the pain and experienced the pleasure of not doing that and doing that well, and it's super necessary. And that's where, you know, having someone like Ernesto who loves that stuff a great compliment in the business buildings.
Dustin: But did I [00:29:00] summarize that right? I mean, so you get these five phases. I love the restaurant analogies, the pop up, the cafe, okay. The brassier, the five star food empire, all the way up to a, Michelin design masterpiece, which I really liked that. That is like the, you have a truly unique offering and a unique identity in the marketplace.
Dustin: I think that's a, that's like the aspirational identity for most people that listen to this is like, man, I want to be known for something, story brand, self publishing kit, hopefully seven figure leap, right? Million dollar machine that you sort of become synonymous with, And experience that everyone knows you deliver better than anyone else.
Dustin: I do agree. I think you 3 million and up is like usually the threshold where people start to become known as in that way. So,
Ernesto: Yeah, you capture that exactly. what you didn't say. Well, I didn't say it either. alluded to it. You said, Oh, I am, I am not really great at setting up these systems. And, for Dustin or any entrepreneur to hire a consultant, like me, a fractional COO, a true fractional [00:30:00] COO to come in, I'm not going to reveal numbers, but I do know like you made a, over a five figure investment to bring someone in to help you with a couple, a couple of things like touch.
Ernesto: We'll meet with you for a couple of sessions. That's not enough. Like that's not going to give you the lift that you really need. And so what I'm really committed to is not coming in and coaching the founder like once a month. And no, that's not really what I'm focusing on, but there is a massive population of people on the planet right now.
Ernesto: That are vastly underutilized people like the VAs in the Philippines. I'm going to like hire for 6 a day and I'm going to like scale to the moon. It's like, no, you're not. I mean, yes, maybe you're going to hire someone for 10 an hour, but like you get what you pay for. And these VA agencies, they're telling you that they're training their VAs, they are a little bit.
Ernesto: But they're not [00:31:00] training their VAs to think like COOs. They're not training them to think like business managers. And so when Dustin or when Listener, when you hire, when you join Million Dollar Machine, I don't want the founder to be in my weekly calls. The founder is amazing at like selling and serving and speaking and hosting events and podcast, like, go do your thing.
Ernesto: I want the VA. I want the business manager. I want your. Fractional COO to come work with me because, spoiler alert, like your COO doesn't know anything about technology or doesn't know how to like really tap in to the wizardry that tools like notion tools like that, like the, really the magic that can be unlocked. Well, the art of that will get Dara's talking about, the COO knows how to get things done and knows how to like move the ball, but doesn't know how to like implement the tech to take that next [00:32:00] level.
Dustin: I love that. I hit his hot button. I was trying to find it. I hit it. so you're, the. Fuel on the fire, but you're, you're bringing like the technology fuel over and throwing it onto a healthy fire, but you're really exploding it into a great, healthy, uh, kindling or inferno, I guess. Right.
Dustin: But like the thing that, as you were describing that experience, you thrive as a sort of technology wizard, that comes in here and works with people that are already doing a good job, but you really an amplifier. Of someone else's
talents, to create really, really outsized results using the latest and greatest technology.
Dustin: I mean, is that a fair summary of how you see yourself in your and
Ernesto: as you said it, like hospitality, like I use restaurants as an analogy, because it's the way to just declare your authority. It's like, people come in and like, well, I use, you Kit in this way, it's like, all right, well, you're not for me. If you want to work here, like you got to follow the recipes.[00:33:00]
Ernesto: You don't go to culinary school and tell the instructor how to cut the knives or how to butcher the chicken. Like you learn what they tell you. And so, you know, when I'm in session with people, I really channel that Gordon Ramsey energy. tell you why you're fucking up by not properly labeling your files or your Google drive, why it's a total mess.
Ernesto: And I'll just like, tell you like, Hey, you are not doing this. And like calling people out. Because they need to hear it and they need to follow the protocol.
Dustin: you're usually working most directly with the quote unquote operator, whether that's a COO or a. manager may be an executive assistant in certain types of businesses, but it's the doer who really wants to do things and they are making those advancements and they are the one that gets delegated to when the visionary founder says, I got a new idea.
Dustin: Let's do this. But you're working with them in a very direct manner and. Kind of no holds barred with the passion that you bring in and really [00:34:00] pushing them right and challenging them in a healthy way.
Ernesto: Hashtag no filter. Yeah. And a lot of these, what happens with these VAs or, operators is the visionary is so passionate about whatever you're doing that they like all this steamroll. The operator, and that does wrong by the business because visionaries unintentionally are sabotaging their own business. they're mistaking the shiny object for the excitement, you know, no, you're literally sabotaging the business by choosing to launch a podcast tomorrow or it is. and so a lot of. And because the visionary is default, like, Oh, the shiny, the visionary is not going to train their operator in a way to challenge the visionary because it's self, you know, it's not going to happen.
Ernesto: So through this and like powerful empowerment dynamic, like the triangle, it's not a drama triangle, but I'm really like empowering the operator to
be a [00:35:00] champion to stand for the growth of the business. And not just, implosion that's unintentionally creative.
Dustin: I love that. That's awesome. Well, we'll transition here in a minute to sort of just letting you teach, the listeners about some of the things they need to know in a very specific, like practical way. We love to always leave people with very actionable takeaways. two things before we get there, one, I'd love to hear just a little bit more about your own vision for, kind of the three years from now.
Dustin: I know you're expecting a child. You got a lot of really exciting things on the, personal side of your life. and I feel like you've really found your calling here and the words for it, and, you really are dialed into the people you can serve best and how you serve them best. So where do you see your own business?
Dustin: It's your like fired up about helping other people. Realize their vision and, being this empowering force. how you doing that for yourself? I guess. Where do you see your business going in the next three years?
Ernesto: So in three years, I I'd like to be in, the five star food empire territory past 1. 5 million in sales on track [00:36:00] towards masterpiece. serving 150 clients, you know, have a very vibrant business operator membership where people are just coming in and learning, you I have a team of coaches, I have my own certification program for people who want to just learn how to build million dollar machines, really have it as a way to, create wealth for themselves.
Ernesto: And there's lots of online academies like general assembly and all these like no code, like software developer bootcamps, but nothing really exists for no code operations. And so that's kind of where I'm leaning into.
Dustin: Yeah. No code operations. So I kind of know what that means. But for the people out there who aren't in your world or aren't even necessarily all that familiar with like notion as a tool in particular, like do you mean by no code operations?
Ernesto: So no code automation. So,
Dustin: I didn't hear you.
Ernesto: so tools like before, back in the day, like 20 years ago, if you needed to, wanted to do anything, you need to be like a developer, you need to like
write code and you'd have to [00:37:00] hire someone in India and pay a lot of money per hour, but nowadays with tools like kit and tools like Zapier and notion and click up and circle everything.
Ernesto: It's, it's all like click, click, click, configure instead of like writing code. Yeah. So it really unlocks the ability for anyone to become an operations expert. You just have to like understand how these concepts kind of are strung together. that's where we want to live, teaching people. how do you, how can you follow five recipes to build a million dollar machine and beyond
Dustin: Perfect. I feel like I'd, be missing opportunity if I didn't, for 30 seconds here, at least be like Ernesto is in the accelerator, eight months, you know, it's a, three month experience. So I guess eight to five, you know, five to eight months
ago. so give us a snapshot of sort of like what that's meant to you, what it was like in there, what the community is like, high level things that were your sort of takeaways from being, you know, In that community and getting to know me and the seven figure leap.
Ernesto: really transformational [00:38:00] program. this is the real clip, this part, um,
Dustin: I'm going to be smiling on the camera now. So people I can flip them.
Ernesto: uh, transformational program. really I was. Aside from learning the concepts, I was going through my own rebrand of my business while I was learning everything. And so it was just like so much gasoline that was like being injected into me. I got my first five figure clients. I just like sprinted towards like a total relaunch of my business.
Ernesto: And now here I am, I wrote a book. I mean, all the clarity, like you were saying, Oh, I found the words to speak about this stuff. A lot of what the accelerator is, is just like finding the words to explain what you do and doing it on a podcast requires you to be succinct, and, uh, telling a story to keep people engaged.
Ernesto: So it was all like amazing theory to then immediately apply and [00:39:00] start like doing it, I've recorded 50 podcast episodes since the accelerator. yes, I had some help because I worked with a podcast booking agency, but like, Doing that work just really increased my confidence in what I was doing and what I am doing.
Dustin: I love that. And give kudos back to Ernesto. I mean, he's, hasn't been a passive member of the community. It was very active during the accelerator. as an alumni, he's still part of the seven figure league community and we've got a lot of cool stuff. We're going to be doing here, uh, moving into the new year to
serve him and all those other alumni, but you know, he went on his own fruition and created an entire notion version of our playbooks, right?
Dustin: So as people go through the accelerator, we've got very simple tools. Like I do keep things simple. Uh, so we've kind of got Google tools, you know, Google versions of, different things that, we're building as we go. And they work, and Ernesto is like, And this can be so much better in notion.
Dustin: And so he actually created a whole like notion playbook version of, of the same steps that we follow in the accelerator [00:40:00] with expansions, right? So you can have like a simple CRM in there and you can, do a lot of cool things that go even beyond the, strict scope of the accelerator itself. That's not, we have, there's a free bonus.
Dustin: So when people sign up and they come in, if they are a notion, devotee like Ernesto and a lot of other people in our community, they can use that version. And so I'm very grateful to Ernesto. never missed opportunity. Give him a shout out because that was really awesome did that.
Dustin: He put training videos together for people. It was really, really cool. , so thank you again for just being an awesome member of our community and such a good friend to me and just a good, resource within seven figure leap to so many people. Awesome. Well, yeah, I would love to spend just the last several minutes here, Ernesto, dumping more value on people.
Dustin: And I know you have a growth scorecard, and I think you could do some teaching around that. So I'm just going to give the mic back to you for however long you need. Walk us through the growth scorecard, what that is, the components of it. And then, of course, I think you have resource that people can go to actually use it.
Dustin: So tell us all about that.
Ernesto: So the growth [00:41:00] scorecard is basically, it's your vision on one paper, it's a one page vision for your business. So sometimes people hear the advice, Oh, you have to make a business plan. I mean, that's long and complex and convoluted and many paragraphs. And if I say, Dustin, what's your one year vision, like how much revenue do you want to make? Or listener? The person
says 400 K and it's like, great, how are you going to do it? How many people are you going to work with? You're going to say a hundred. So, okay, great. Well, that's the first number on your scorecard. So the number of clients is the first number that you start to break down this top line revenue.
Ernesto: So we have 400, 400, 000, you divide by a hundred clients. You now know the second number, which is your average revenue per client per year, which if you divide 400 K by a hundred, you get 4, 000. So immediately the first question is, is my price 4, 000? No, well, you got to make it 4, 000. [00:42:00] If you want to create this vision, the third number is your conversion percentage. So I ask an entrepreneur, Hey, what's your conversion percentage? They're going to say, Oh, I'm not really sure. It's like, well, Maybe you need some systems to start keeping track, but we're not going to go there. Let's assume the conversion is 25 percent healthy, conservative number. So if you need a hundred clients and you divide by 25%, which is really multiplied by four, that means you need to have 400 leads. So do you know 400 leads in your network? The answer probably is no, or maybe it's yes, if you know, 400 people, but are they all interested in your offer? Probably not. So that also it's like, okay, well, how do I now get 400 leads? Another question like, okay, how do I say do this? The fifth number is your utilization percentage.
Ernesto: And so how I define utilization is the percent [00:43:00] of your. email list that actually chooses to book a call with you. Just to be really conservative, I use the number 10%. So if you need to have 400 leads, 400 discovery calls, and you divide by 10%, that gives you the sixth number, which is the number of subscribers on your list.
Ernesto: 400 multiplied by 10 is 4, 4, 000 emails on your list? No. Well, maybe you need to create some sort of list building mechanism to do so. Clients don't give a crap about systems, but they care about their vision. They care about make wanting to make that happen. And so I've created the growth scorecard just to give people a simple way to actually articulate their vision.
Ernesto: Because if they don't actually create a plan on how they're going to make this happen, then it's just going to be a dream. So if you're listening and so it's too [00:44:00] much math to keep, you know, keep up with, or, you you're driving and your pencil, I have a very simple way that everyone can get their growth scorecard.
Ernesto: I actually don't speak to someone unless they take, they get their growth scorecard. Because when I speak to them, I don't want to like find out about their visions. It's like, Hey, what's on your, like, I saw your scorecard.
How are you going to make it happen? We just like immediately get into building mode.
Ernesto: to get your scorecard, you just go to score. yourmdm. co It'll take you to a quiz. It's five questions and you'll get your scorecard right in your inbox.
Dustin: That's awesome, man. I love that. So I'll say this slowly because there's numerous letters in here, right? So score dot your MDM. co. And so, your MDM. co is Ernesto's main website. So that stands for a million dollar machine. If you're thinking, what, what are those letters? So score dot your MDM. co simple five question, intake, it will Create [00:45:00] your one page vision with these very specific numbers, and I love this.
Dustin: Like when you think about the types of things Dustin loves and the things I like to teach from, these are the types of tools and frameworks that are, they're so powerful. They're like simple and sophisticated, right? And I think that's what's so cool, because as you were. Going through those numbers, which on the surface, you think, well, everyone business knows that I guarantee you, 90 percent of the people listening to this don't know all those numbers.
Dustin: And so even the act of having to even assume a number creates a really healthy thought exercise. And then you're going to find a few of these most likely that you're like, I'm actually really good at converting leads. I seem to have a really high number of calls coming from my email list.
Dustin: If only I could double my subscribers, I could double all the stuff above it. or maybe maybe 400 K is not the right goal, right? You, maybe I want to do a 600 K or maybe it's just 200 K, but you get to decide how these numbers shake out, but going through the thought exercise of having to commit to a number.
Dustin: And then. Analyze what changes would be required to change that number. [00:46:00] That's a business strategy, in a nutshell right there. and then Ernesto, what happens when people, they fill out the scorecard and they say, I really need some Ernesto in my life. Are you going to walk them through and review these metrics and then come up with a plan of action they could take to improve whatever is lacking?
Ernesto: So on that one pager, they're actually going to get like what the last 12 months, like the now the current state and then immediately to the right. It's like the future state with that that vision number there. so they'll receive it. They get
a video course, start explaining how they could actually impact each of those numbers.
Ernesto: And when we get on the phone to talk about it, you just put the numbers. We put the numbers in, I asked them, I will ask you, do you want some help with that? I think you taught me this sales strategy. Do you want some help with that? And they're going to say, yeah, sure. And I'm saying, okay, great. Well, these are the ways that we can get started.
Ernesto: let's build a million dollar machine.
Dustin: Beautiful, man. That's awesome. Well, you definitely dropped the [00:47:00] value. Bomb there at the end. no, we were kind of coming all the way back from the initial precipitating event, all the way through, you know, the unreasonable hospitality and, around to some F bombs and some Gordon Ramsey.
Dustin: was a good, and close out with, the gross scorecard and make this super practical and actionable for people. Know your numbers and, uh, you know, knowing your numbers and then be able to create systems to improve those numbers and put you back into your own zone of genius doing the thing you actually love to do by having someone like Ernesto help you with the parts of the business that maybe you, don't enjoy or don't feel as strong in.
Dustin: to actually create more freedom systems, create more freedom. I think is maybe a contrarian thought for some people, but it's totally true. I've experienced it myself this year, in my own business and I've seen the power of what Ernesto can do for others and what he's done for me and our community.
Dustin: So Ernesto, guess final call to action. Yeah. I can maybe repeat. I does the scorecard where you want people to go next?
Ernesto: Get your scorecard and start today.
Dustin: It's your scorecard score. yourmdm. co Ernesto, Amandowski, heck of [00:48:00] a guy, great friend and a really, really smart, person to have in your corner to empower your operator and help you realize your one page vision. So Ernesto, thanks again, man, for being here. I look forward to seeing you in the community and, keep up the good work.
Dustin: Okay.
Ernesto: Thank you. [00:49:00]