[#048] My First Billion: Rise of the Phoenix

Monday, during our Strategic Planning Call, we were finalizing our Q4 plan and targets.

With every quarter, we come up with a theme or rallying cry.

Our ad coach, Mike, shared one…

Our head of content, Chris, shared one…

And then I said to our Ops Director, Bianca (who we call “Bi”)...

What you got?

She said…

For some reason, I’m thinking…

“Rise of the Phoenix!”

Everyone said, hmmmm!

You know the sound the room makes when they all agree.

I'd heard the saying before, but I never really looked at what it meant…

So I did some quick research (which means I did a quick Google search and then asked Chat and Claude lol).

Here's the short version…

The phoenix is a mythical bird. At the end of its life, it burns up in flames...

…and then it's reborn from its own ashes. It comes back new, and often stronger.

Not just a better version... a brand new Version.

What looked like the end becomes the beginning of something greater.

The fire becomes the setup.

A spiritual example is the death, burial, and resurrection.

Richard Rohr calls it "the great fall and the slow rise."

I was like... that's it.

That's exactly where we are.

Because here's what the fire looked like for us…

At one point, I scaled to a 42-person company.

We had big growth goals, and we kept hiring to chase them.

It looked good from the outside. Inside, it was heavy.

More people, more moving parts, more weight on my shoulders.

100s of thousands of dollars per month in payroll and ad spend.

Now we're building a new company, from a different place, with a leaner team, a different scorecard, and different values driving the growth.

On that same call, we ran our SWOT analysis.

And we removed half of the threats we usually have.

Most of our old threats came from two places...

The arbitrary growth goals we set, and the big team we built (and kept building) to hit them.

So we're building the new company around something simple.

The Oreo framework.

Think about an Oreo…

The top cookie is the least amount of risk.

We protect the downside first, before we focus on the upside.

No more setting fires we have to put out later.

The bottom cookie is the least amount of effort.

We build systems and teams that run without us babysitting them.

If it drains the team every day, it doesn't make the cut.

And the filling (everybody's favorite part lol) is the most options.

Every move should buy us more freedom and more paths forward, not lock us into a corner.

Least risk, least effort, most options.

I see how Jesus felt when He told Peter, “flesh and blood (mortal man) did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”

I believe this was God speaking to us through Bi and giving us the team rallying cry!

And this past weekend at CEO Camp, we got a glimpse of it.

We built the room with our ideal clients... with a focus on quality, not quantity.

 Maybe you're in the ashes right now…

A business that got too heavy, goals that ran you instead of you running them, or a season that burned down what you built.

Whatever it is, don't miss what God might be building on the other side of the fall.

Tell those you love that you love them.

Marquel

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are 2 ways we can help you grow your coaching or consulting business 2 or 3x this year:

1) Binge my best trainings... for free on YouTube.

2) We'll install a paid ads system that consistently generates qualified leads. Go here.

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