Why Most Companies Get Product Wrong (and How to Fix It) | Chandler Bolt

Finding Peak with Ryan Hanley

In this episode, Ryan Hanley interviews Chandler Bolt about the fundamental shift required to move from being a business operator to a scala

Key takeaways

• To scale, founders must transition from working 'in' the business to working 'on' the business by delegating any task that can be done 80% as well by someone else.
• Chandler Bolt advocates for a 'talent bench' approach, keeping job listings open constantly to ensure a pipeline of high-quality candidates is always available.

Main topics

• Business scalability
• AI automation in operations

Notable quotes

Most people just have jobs and they think they have businesses.

Conclusion

The episode provides a tactical roadmap for entrepreneurs looking to e

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) You've got to build a business that runs without you. Most Speaker 1 (0:02) people can't do that. Most people just have jobs Speaker 2 (0:05) and they think they have businesses. How do you remove the ego aspect of no one can do this the way that I do it? It's a lie. I mean, it's a lie that you're telling yourself. It's a lie that you've Speaker 1 (0:15) bought into. It's hard. Don't get me wrong. I honestly believe that most people at their heart of hearts don't actually want to scale their business. This Speaker 2 (0:23) is the greatest. time in human history to do this, to get out of the weeds in your business because AI exists. Speaker 1 (0:37) I'm so excited to have you back on. Like, it's got to be four or five years. I should have gone back and looked. It's been forever since you were on the show. Dude, I follow along like from the outside with your journey. Every once in a while, we'll connect on socials or whatever. But dude, it has been incredible watching you go from kind of, and I don't want to make this sound small, but like selfpublishing.com was like your only thing. It was the thing. It was kind of just coming up. You were having some early success. Awesome interview, guys. If you're interested in self-publishing, go back, listen to that episode. It's phenomenal. I'll have it in the show notes if you're interested. Especially if you're thinking about self-publishing, go back and listen to that episode. That was like the core of what that episode was about. Dude, today, man, freaking pure entrepreneur, blowing up all over the place. I see you on all kinds of shows. You know, like 30 Under 30, which screw you for being so freaking young. You know what I mean? Like, dude, it's awesome. I'm just so, I'm happy to have you back on the show and I'm just excited for all the success you've had between our last conversation and this one. Speaker 2 (1:38) Really happy to be back. Speaker 1 (1:40) Thanks for having me. So dude, so many people struggle to scale. And this is really where I'd like to start our conversation is because your story and what I love about your story is that it evolved from like, and again, I don't mean this to be trite, like self-publishing guy, right? To now you're entrepreneur guy, right? Talking about bigger topics, you've scaled that business, you're scaling others, like you're helping other people. So when you look at that, Speaker 1 (2:11) How do you make that transition? How did you make that transition from I am the operator of selfpublishing.com to I am a entrepreneur leader who is now taking over and kind of maturing into a larger role and a larger business? What does that look like? And the reason I'm... I will end the context here. The reason I asked this question first is because this is one of the number one struggles that I get feedback on from this show right now is I'm too in the business and I'm struggling to make that jump from in the business to on the business. Well, Speaker 2 (2:52) first, I'd rather be known for something than known for nothing. And so many people, they don't get known because they're worried about being known for something. And that something is maybe what they don't want it to be forever or whatever else. It's kind of like we give the advice we give our authors is, hey, be known for something. And it can be super niche. For me, I'm the book guy. All right. Okay. Because then once you are known for something, it's very easy to piggyback that off of that or to transition from that into something else. What's really hard is being known for some broad thing. from scratch. So I just went all in on being the book guy. And it just so happened, I think this is, I stumbled into this, this wasn't intentional, but then it became intentional, is I think if you have a business where you can help people with a very specific problem that the most successful and wealthiest people on the planet have, well, then you've got an automatic inroad into network with those people. And so for me, all Speaker 1 (3:45) the smartest, most successful people publish books. Speaker 2 (3:48) And I know how to do that at a really high level. And so I can solve a problem for them. So now I'm valuable to them so I can get into those rooms and I can get into those conversations. And so first off, be known for something. I'd rather be known for something than known for nothing. And then you ask the question of working on the business versus working in the business. I think then you've got to graduate out of the weeds. How do you do that? And the last part is two pillars of transitioning from working on the business. or sorry, working in the business to working on the business. And I think this is where most people get stuck because it's hard. So you need what we call a safe, bigger profit bridge. So obviously you need paying customers. Then you need product market fit. If you don't have product market fit, you can't scale. Therefore, you can't scale beyond you. You just have a job. Most people just have jobs and they think they have businesses. It's nothing wrong with that, but you just have a high paying self-employed job. So don't call it a business. Now, for it to become a business, you need those two things. Then you need profits. You got to be profitable. You got to have margin. You need good process and you need good people. That's what it takes, in my opinion, to scale to eight figures and to create a business that runs without you. But then you got to figure out what your time's worth. So many people... They treat their time just like it's worthless. It's insane to me. Take the amount of money that you earned over the last 12 months divided by 2,000. It's roughly 2,000 hours that a normal person works in a year. That's your hourly rate. Then audit your calendar. Figure out what are you doing that you could pay someone else less. than that hourly rate to do. And if you're spending time on that, well then, yeah, of course, you're always going to be in the business. You're not going to be on the business because you're just doing jobs that you should be paying other people to do. How Speaker 1 (5:40) do you remove the ego aspect of no one can do this the way that I do it, no one understands, my team won't be as passionate or care as much as I will, so therefore I always have to know what they're doing, when they're doing it, et cetera? Speaker 2 (5:56) It's a lie. I mean, it's a lie that you're telling yourself. It's a lie that you've bought into. It's hard. Don't get me wrong. I struggle with this probably as much, if not more, than the next person. But most people on your, well, first off, people on your team, if they're in the trenches doing the thing, they're better at it than you. And if they're not better at it than you, well, then you probably don't have good process or good training or you suck at hiring. And so get better at those things and then a lot of your problems will be removed. But demoralize this rule or is this mantra 80 % done by someone else is 100 % freaking awesome. Like if you can just get somebody else to do it. most of the way as good as you, that's great. That's good enough. And you'd buy back that hour. Like what's worse? Just take the pure math of it. Say an hour is worth 400 bucks for you. What's worse? Spending time on $50 an hour tasks and doing it 5 % better than somebody who could, I mean, what is that worth to your business? Not much. And so, but so many people, they're just. They're penny wise and pound foolish. They're tripping over quarters to Speaker 1 (7:10) pick up nickels. Speaker 2 (7:13) They're just running on a hamster wheel in their business. Speaker 2 (7:18) You just got to get out of it. Speaker 1 (7:20) Yeah. You know, it's funny. I was talking to an entrepreneur the other day and he's in this phase and he's really struggling with it. And he's like, man, he's like, you know, we lost this account the other day. And I was like, well, like in the grand scheme of things, like how big was the account? And he's like, well, you know, like he explains to me that the size and scale of it. I'm like. So really, it didn't mean much. Like you're still, everyone's, you're still paying your people. The lights are still on. Like, it's not that big a deal. Like they lost a client. Yes. Okay. I said, all right, well, why not just learn from the mistakes so that they don't do it again? And he's like, well, I can't have this happening. I'm like, dude, dude, you just told me that the account that was lost was like this small account that really in the grand scheme of things had no impact. I go, do you lose accounts ever? Well, yeah, occasionally we lose. I'm like, so, okay. So, so you do on a monthly basis, occasionally lose some accounts and you, you know, cause you're growing, you're putting more on. That's a standard kind of business. That's the way most things work. And, but because you weren't involved and it was lost somehow now you need to come all the way back down to like the foot soldier level of your business. Like that makes zero sense to me. And it was like this idea that if he lost an account. Then there was like nothing else that could be done, you know, but because his teammate lost the account, it was like, oh, well, he just wasn't trying that hard. And I'm like, but like you have to your point. I think this idea of 80 % of someone else's work is, is good enough for a hundred, you know, versus a hundred percent of yours. That is such a hard concept for people because they get like. Speaker 1 (9:04) their personality, their self-worth is attached to the business. So as someone who was known for this thing, right? You're the self-publishing guy. Like, you know how to help people write books. You know how to, and now all of a sudden you need to ascend to this more like founder, CEO level position. How did you detach from that? How were you able to like emotionally say, I'm okay giving up. just the book guy and becoming this bigger thing? Like, how did you do that? So Speaker 2 (9:36) let me answer that in two parts. I think first, entrepreneurs have this fallacy about people in AI. And I would say people in general have this fallacy about people in AI. And they assume that they can do things better than AI does it, and then people do it. And they don't look at the actual math. And so if you think about it and look at the stats about, you know, wrecks per thousand miles driven. by FSD, full self-driving, or self-driving capability versus humans. Already today, AI self-driving is better than humans. But there's this weird fringe kind of outlier effect that causes people to stop that innovation or prevent delegation in the case of people. They say, oh, no, no, no, no. But what if one AI driver kills someone? It's like, well, no, daily. thousands, millions, like who knows how many people are dying because of human drivers. But it's just this weird thing where if we feel like we can't control it or it's almost like a weird impulse that's not grounded in reality. And so I think whether it comes to delegating to people, whether it comes to delegating to AI, they likely can and will do it better than you. And the biggest thing that's holding you back is A, looking at the math and B, just detaching from that. long enough to try it, what's the worst thing that could happen? It's usually, to your point, what you're talking about with losing the account, it's usually not that consequential, but we're just so terrified of these worst case scenarios that are unlikely. And so first, I think there's just this mentality of, hey, you've got to just try it for a month. Default to, hey, this AI can do it or this person on my team can do it. Just be a default yes for a month and see what happens. I promise your business won't. fall apart. I promise there's not going to be detrimental, irreversible things that happen. Almost everything's reversible. So almost just like that mantra and then trying that, I think is what most people should do. Now, secondly, to directly answer your question, how did I get out of the weeds? Early, early on, I was coaching authors. We sold the thing, we started coaching authors. And within about six months to a year, I knew I've got to get out of coaching authors. A-S-A-P. Because as long as I'm stuck in fulfillment, this business is not going to grow. And most people listening to this, watching this, probably are familiar with the sales fulfillment yo-yo. You sell, sell, sell. Oh, crap. I got to fulfill. Fulfill, fulfill, fulfill. Oh, crap. There's no sales in the pipeline. Sell, sell, sell. And so you're just constantly yo-yoing back and forth between sales fulfillment, sales fulfillment, sales fulfillment. And your business ends up flat. Well, that's because... Both aren't happening at the same time. So then you got to figure out how do I get out of one or both and replicate myself in one or both as soon as possible. Obviously, you got to do this early in the entrepreneur journey, but you got to keep doing this as you scale. It just might look a little bit different. And so early on, I said, oh, the fulfillment piece, I'm really good at sales and marketing. This fulfillment piece is easier to delegate. So then I hired coaches that were successful authors that I had already coached. So I said, all right, cool. They can do it. They can do it for less than my hourly rate and they can do it better than me because they just recently did the thing. And it's been two years since I published a book. It's been two months since they published one. So they are going to be better in the trenches. And so then I immediately gained back 10, 20 hours a week in that thing. And then I just. Kind of as we've scaled, I've kept applying that same methodology, but I would say that's the practical thing that every founder needs to ask