Zero To A Hundred – Episode 3: AI, Exits & Financial Mastery With Brian Sallee!

Accelerators! 🚀Welcome back to “Zero to a Hundred,” where we turbocharge your business journey!

This week, we’re sitting down with serial entrepreneur and tech visionary Brian Sallee to unravel the secrets to business success.💡

🔹 What’s on the Menu:

• Harnessing AI for seamless financial management
• Key financial indicators every business owner should track
• Mastering the art of business exits and scaling.

🔥 Why Tune In?

• Get ahead of the curve with cutting-edge insights on AI and its impact on your business’s financial health
• Learn the three D’s every founder should master for success
• Real-world strategies from someone who’s been there, done that, and came out on top

💬 Gem from Brian: “Make data your superpower—turn insights into action.”

📞 Get in Touch with Brian:

• 🌐 www.brians360.com

Don’t miss out—hit that subscribe button and let’s take your business from zero to a hundred! 💥

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

AI, Exits & Financial Mastery With Brian Sallee!

Hello, accelerators. On Zero to Hundred, we are going to welcome serial entrepreneur and tech executive, who has exited multiple companies and also IPO’d companies, and he’s also an exit expert, Brian Sallee. We’ll cover everything from how to integrate AI successfully into your business for financial management, what numbers you should be tracking on a monthly basis, and the 3Ds that you need to master to realize financial success as a business owner. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s accelerate together. Brian Sallee, thank you for joining us.

You’re welcome. Thanks for having me, Jarrod. Good to be next.

Pleasure. On Zero to Hundred, we want to get to the bottom of it and the bottom of the profits, meaning, how do we make our businesses more profitable? You are an entrepreneur through and through, have done some amazing things. You’ve sold companies, I believe you’ve IPO’d companies as well, but as things continue to change, and drastically, with the onset of AI, if you’re talking to a business owner, what should they be doing in terms of using AI to help them with the financial management of their business, or just to frankly make their businesses more profitable?

AI For Financial Management

Great question, and I think it’s a question more people should be asking. In short, I think that the short of the answer to your question is they should be using AI to make data crunching invisible so that the results become as easy to read as the dashboard on your car, whether it’s key performance indicators or a stopometer. The power of AI for a founder to be able to ingest massive amounts of historical or real-time data and overlay them at levels that we’ve never been able to affordably do before is an amazing superpower that founders and business owners can’t take advantage of.

You’re not the only person who said this, and I never thought about it. You talk about a dashboard. Let’s say you go onto a program like 90 or something that’s a management platform, like a QuickBooks. You have a dashboard. Let’s say you’re a business owner. Let’s set the programs aside. What should you have on your dashboard and be tracking on a monthly basis to have the best insights on the health of your business, especially financially?

The Four Quadrants Of Business

I think it does vary a little bit, in some ways, per business what that specific is, but at the end of the day, no matter what your company is, I like to think of a business as four quadrants. You’ve got sales, you’ve got marketing, you’ve got operations, you’ve got finance. We’ll spend most time on finance, but I don’t care if you’re selling a product or service, consumer, business, indirect channel, you’re touching all four of those quadrants. Somebody has to find out who you are, they’re turning back with you, they’re engaging with you, hopefully at a profitable level, we can dive more into that, and then ultimately, you have to fulfill them operationally. I think the best place to start with KPIs, dashboard, whatever you want to call it, is to have 1 to 2 very specific measurable indicators for each of those four specifics. As customer-unique as you think your business is, it really can be simplified to that level. If you can simplify it, I think, I would submit personally, if not a better founder or CEO, you might be at least less stressed.

Very smart. A lot of the viewers, the audience, are existing owner-operators of their businesses, quite successful. If they want to take their business to the next level, what are some of the key things that they need to be focusing on to grow their businesses, make them more financially healthy, and potentially look for an exit?

I think that does start to evolve, but that’s a really good question for each business to unpack. There are some things that are timeless. You have cash flow, how much cash is at hand. I think that’s fairly agnostic, relatively speaking, whether you’ve got a product or service. Again, if you’re indirect or direct, at the end of the day, you have a bank account. I think profitability is definitely another one. If you can understand, almost in real time, what drives profitability for you or what drives cash flow, no matter what type of business you have, that probably is going to either help you be more healthy, or at least help you scale faster. In my opinion, at least 80% to 90% of the time, it’s not 100% of the time.

What would you say a healthy business looks like? I know I’m generalizing because every business is different, but if there is a basis that you could give to the audience of what health looks like, especially if they are looking to exit or sell a business?

Building A Proactive Business

In my opinion, the holy grail of business, instead, that I like to strive for with my portfolio, and even the coaching that I do, is really about having each of those quadrants as much as possible in proactive mode rather than reactive. If I were to list the past probably 100 new stress points of founders that I’ve talked to, and I have talked to dozens and dozens every single week, I have the coolest job in the world. I’ve talked to people all over the world, multiple languages, multiple time zones, every single day, I would say that the vast majority of them are when they’re reacting to something versus being proactive. I think any type of business, you could look at those four quadrants. Financially, let’s dive into that. Six months’ cash on hand, no brainer. Six months’ cash on hand, financially, that’s a great place to start or shoot for, with the holy grail.

Six months where you understand what your AP and AR is, really phenomenal. You can do better, that’s awesome. If you can’t do it, you may not be able to, but you’ll actually go through the same thing. Operationally, if you know what’s happening six months ahead, that’s the holy grail. Many businesses, even service-based businesses, are scrambling by lunchtime because of inventory, supply chain, staff. Your widget might be different than the next guy’s widget, but you still have a component of your business that you either fulfill somehow.

You fulfill either with a tangible product or equipment or your own time or something. Six months is ideal. Marketing, it’s not as popular to talk about because we all want to talk about AI and all that, but really the holy grail is a tap. It’s a dial where you could have six months’ worth of lead flow. In my opinion, that’s the dream, where you know that you can twist up, you can twist down. You know that in December you’re going to crush it, or you’re going to stall because it’s Christmas. July 4th, you’re going to crush it, or you’re going to stall. I’m exaggerating for effect, but many businesses are cyclical.

You might sell a ton of product around the holidays, or all of your clients might be on vacation around the holidays. Last but not least, it’s sales. Same thing with sales. If you’ve got that pipeline in six months, in my opinion, if you can hit six or more in each of those four quadrants in virtually every business, that’d be amazing.

If you’re looking to build a business that has market value or enterprise value, and you’re potentially looking to exit, what I’m hearing is you have to be proactive in your four quadrants. From the standpoint of sales, having a lead pipeline that could potentially be up to six months is massively valuable. From the standpoint of marketing, you actually have a mapped-out plan, which is a six-month plan. From an operations standpoint, having a plan around operations, but also having a team in place where, if you were to leave for a week or a month on vacation, the business would continue to prosper. From a financial standpoint, it’s having six months in reserve. You know that you’ve got the operating funds in place to keep the business going to reach those goals. Correct?

Exactly. Exactly.

Maximizing Your Business Exit

Awesome. Let’s talk a little bit, because you are unique in terms of some of the guests that we’ve had on the show. You’ve exited how many businesses?

About a couple at some level.

Talk us through your last exit. How did you create the market value? What was the acquirer looking for from you that you were able to put in place and get max dollar for the business? Hopefully, you got max dollar for the business.

There’ve been a couple more, especially with the IPO, but one of the easiest ones to talk about, or maybe just relate back to everyone, is in the technology space. I served in the business that originally was me as an IT advisor, MSP. We grew subsequently through revenue phases. We hit 6, 7, 8, and exited for nine figures. We’re on that entire track over ten years and ended up as what became number four on the NASDAQ. Through that process, we moved through a couple of different phases. One of the early things that I enjoy talking about, I can clearly share, that resonates with a lot of founders, is about three years in, we were doing everything for everybody in the technology space.

What I mean by everything for everybody is that we were providing tech services for businesses. If they called in with a BlackBerry issue, BlackBerry was big back then, good money in BlackBerry, great product, doesn’t even exist anymore, I don’t think, an email issue, video conferencing, you name it, we did it. It was all direct.

Our pipeline was direct, our support was direct, everything. You called us, we were just like this little mini MSP. When it was originally just me, it made sense. You just call around, “What do you need?” A couple of helpers, a couple of IT guys, totally made sense. As we hit six figures in revenue and hit seven figures in revenue, it broke down. Literally, the entire model broke because I couldn’t handle more than a certain amount of problems and sales and marketing in a given 1-to-4-hour day. I couldn’t find other exact Brians, nor should I.

Growing a business would be finding better people. I didn’t know that. That was one thing that I was very intentional about with mentors. I was looking for technology specialists that actually 100% knew a lot more than I did in their area. By deduction, that meant they knew nothing about sales. I was looking for somebody who was way better at sales than I was because I was like, “Okay, we get where we were, but I wanted the next level.” They weren’t technologists. That began to break down.

To make a very long story short, we actually laser-focused in a couple of different areas. We laser-focused on three things. We laser-focused on our buyer persona, who was actually going to buy a product from us. We laser-focused on what the product was. We took everything to everybody. We actually came up with what we called indirect, all-in-one pricing. That was when the cloud, we were actually doing cloud computing before it was popular. We took all the complexity of technology.

We said, “Hey, Jarrod, you’ve got ten employees.” I don’t remember the real number. Instead of telling you the dollar for your box, a dollar for email, a dollar for this, we just said, “Hey, Jarrod, you’ve got ten employees, $100 per employee.” It just made it so much easier to interact, buy, sell, and support. You add an employee, it was 11 times 100. If you took one away, it was 9 times 100. The last thing was we went to an indirect model, because we realized that we did not want to be a consulting company. There were dozens, if not hundreds, in our case, Microsoft partners.

We moved our entire marketing and sales pipeline to the channel, to resellers, to indirect, whatever you want to call it.

Delegate, Defer, Delete

Gotcha. I think it’s really interesting. You talked about you and how you were an integral part of the creation, but then also part of the problem. Let’s talk about people. If you were looking at your business, and you’re saying, “I want to create the best team possible,” how would you advise a business owner to build that team of A players?

I advise, I coach people to get some name with responsibility in each of those four quadrants as soon as possible. It’s a really good question. If I’m talking to a founder who’s going to be in the 5- or 6-figure range, really, it could be 5 or 6 figures per month or per year, it’d be roughly the same, which is probably, in many cases, going to be fractional, fractional bookkeeper, fractional ops person, fractional marketing, fractional sales. That’s okay. Don’t be embarrassed by it. However, the quicker you can start to rely on somebody as a founder, the better, because you start to build those systems and processes, and then you’re in coaching mode, and you’re in work-on-the-business mode.

As your individual business grows, you upgrade that direct contact from either external to internal, or part-time to full-time. Smaller 6- to 7-figure businesses, one of the basic things that we do, and I can help somebody do this over a quick coffee or lunch, is just quickly map out, do you have somebody? If not, okay, get somebody quick. Where are they in terms of moving? Like, okay, you’re using an external bookkeeper. Does that need to come in-house? Yes or no? I don’t know. That’s up to your business.

If they’re in-house, are they part-time? Do they need to be bumped up to full-time? You can get these little levers that you pull as it works. So far, I’ve seen 100% of all businesses.

What would you say, once you get past yourself, you bring in the right people? What are maybe the top three other stressors that business owners face on a day-to-day basis? Because you see and speak to business owners around the world, what challenges are those business owners facing that they can overcome relatively easily, whether it’s mindset or people? What would you say those were?

That’s a really deep question, Jarrod.

We have as much time as you need. Here’s the thing, the truth is, those are deep questions because I’ve had podcasts before where we talked about shame around money, and that being one of the problems that business owners have to get over. It’s something that I suffered from because of my relationship with money because of my family. Money, insert here, was difficult to get. It was always scarce. We didn’t have enough to make ends meet. You become a successful entrepreneur, and you’ve got this paradigm where you’re like, “What is wrong with me?” You have to work through that hurdle.

What are some of the other things that psychologically they have to deal with? Are there hurdles they need to know?

I think if I had to boil it down to three, I feel like I’m like a whiteboard, I think visually. If I think of three, I think I would say, founder, yourself, your direct reports, and then your process. I think I would submit that in many or most scenarios, just off the top of my mind, it would fall into those two open categories. I think you’re right, Jarrod. It is often a mindset. The founder is very often the problem, but not the problem that needs to be removed, the problem that maybe just needs to change something in the way that they’re viewing their business. They need to take a step back, or they need to detach a little bit, or they need to do something. The easiest conversational piece with a founder I’ve found is to bring up the three Ds of delegating, defer, delete.

Look at what you did yesterday and today, and go to the classic, what can we delegate? Everything you possibly can. What can you defer? I’m not talking about making a commitment and then not following through. I’m talking about what really doesn’t need to be done in your business. What can you defer that isn’t going to move the needle for something? Do you really need to spend time on new office chairs?

Do you really need a rebranded website or whatever it is? I don’t know what it is for your particular type of business. That’s where you, as a founder, have to decide that. I think most of us founders could really be threefold to ourselves about that. What can we delete? I think that may be even the hardest, Jared, because of the culture that we live in, FOMO, fear of missing out, digital media, social media.

I can’t tell you how many times per week I get questions like, “Oh, my business contact is doing amazing with TikTok. Should I be doing that?” It’s like this sense of fear of missing out. The reality is, yes, there’s an element of “Surround yourself with great thinkers.” Yes, join the mastermind. Yes, read, but I’m not against those things. Know where the line is.

It’s okay to delete things off your list. TikTok’s not on our priority list, so we’re going to delete everything on my to-do list. Delegate, defer, delete. If a founder is very truthful with themselves on what that list is, there’s actually very little left over to actually do.

It’s funny, I’ve gone through this with my businesses, and as a serial entrepreneur, I have got myself into a lot of trouble in terms of finance and time, and I’ve had to clean that up so I could actually get on the straight and narrow and do what Gary Keller suggests, find the one thing, the one thing in your business that makes everything else easier or obsolete. Going through the three Ds, one of my mantras is to become a master delegator. I don’t want to micromanage, I don’t want to control, but by nature, I’m like, “All right, here’s a task, we need to do that task,” and I’m going to go after it and just get it done when I could assign it to someone else on my team. I have struggled with that in the past, but I’ve got much better. The deleting is super important. You read Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too by Gary Vaynerchuk or you read Alex Hormozi, some of his $100M Leads: How to Get Strangers to Want to Buy Your Stuff and $100M Offers: How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No, and they talk about pushing out content, content, content, content. For certain businesses and individual brands, that makes sense if your content is what’s going to drive your business. Otherwise, what I’ve realized is, create good content within one or two channels that is going to target the clientele that you are going after, and let that be enough.

Don’t try to do eight different things and not do them well. Do one or two things and do them extremely well. The saying is “a jack of all trades is a master of none.” Let me finish the rest of that. It’s actually “a jack of all trades is a master of none, yet oftentimes better than a master of one.” The history behind that is that somebody who has had a lot of experience, once you’ve had that experience, it funnels into you executing still one thing, and one thing very well. I’ve had to delete, defer, and delegate at such a high level. You saw her, you just really hit a chord on this one.

I’m really realizing how important those things are for business owners. There’s a lot of ego you have to get over to be able to execute on that, but it’s completely changed the growth and my business trajectory. Those are the three D’s, spot on. Thank you for that.

Learning From Industry Leaders

That’s a great, great point. Hopefully, I’m not offending anybody on the podcast or listening, but one thing I’ll share that just impacted me is I heard an interview between Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, which you can respect or not respect them, but I think everybody can probably agree that they’ve done well. They’ve done really well. I believe it’s searchable, I can’t reference it, but Google it. They’re doing a little interview, and they talk about how, in their opinion, saying you’re busy is the new stupi*. When somebody says, “How are you doing?” and you say, “I’m busy,” it’s kind of like a self-proclaimed stupidit*.

If you’re busy, you’re stupi*. I get it might offend a little bit of anybody, but that really hit a chord with me. I think it’s an interview from a couple of years ago. I was listening to these billionaires, trillionaires talk, and I’m like, that impacted me. I was like, yeah, I’m not busy. We all have the same amount of time in the day. Being busy just means you can’t control your schedule. That was their point.

Being busy means you don’t have control of your company, and you’re never going to get it to be a 7, 8, 9, 10 figure founder. Your network is never going to prosper at that level if you’re busy because that means you can’t control yourself.

If you step back and look at it, and hey, I’m okay with offending people if it’s going to help them get out of their own way, I say that, and that I’m thinking about it, I’m like, why do I say that? What the focus should be? I’m all about mindset and making sure you’re using your language properly. The truth is, if someone asks you how you’re doing, say you’re focused, by the way. Whether or not you’re actually focused, say you’re focused because the way energy works, you’re going to start to go, “I am focused,” or, “You know what, I need to be focused.” Those are the people who are executing, not the people who are busy. The days when I am busy are the days where I’m like, what in the heck did I get done?

That is a really good point. Where else do you find your sources for content information on business development and mindset development?

I have found nuggets probably like you and many others have, just over the years. I’m an avid learner. Somebody asked me a long time ago how many books I read. At first, it was probably a couple of years ago, it may have changed, but they asked, “How many books do you read?” I was like, I’m not personally a big book reader. Some people are, I know people that read books end to end. I realized I read a ton.

I read all day, every day. I love looking for data every single day. I have found certain newsletters that really strike a chord with me, certain influencers that I absolutely respect, and I follow their vein of thought. There’s been certain masterminds and certain things over the years. What I do is pull those nuggets out and try to build those nuggets into my particular life. I think so, I can’t tell you if they’re better than anybody else, but they’re just people that have resonated with me at that particular time.

I was never a reader in my life. It wasn’t until more that I have become a reader and have been fascinated that almost everything you need to know is in books. The reason I went down that path is because I’ve done years of mindset work. I go to bed at night and have a really good seven hours of sleep every night. I wake up, I feel good and energized and ready to go. Sometimes my days get gray and cloudy, and I feel like I’m missing something. What I realized was I didn’t need any more mindset work.

What I needed was the technical business aspects of operations, finance, management, and sales that I had done naturally, but not in a way that was going to position my business to actually grow substantially so I could get to that 9 or 10-figure business. I’ve shifted into reading, and I read anywhere, on a bad week, one book, on a good week, three books, but on average, about two books a week. My hack is I read while listening to the audio, while having a pen in hand, and I mark through the book as I go, full pages, so I can come back to things that I want to reference. I typically listen at anywhere from two and a half to three and a half times speed. I can get through a full book of 500 pages in 2 or 3 hours. That, for me, has become a game changer. One thing that I would advise to any business owners out there, you all have those books sitting on your shelf, you all have those newsletters saved.

Mark time in your calendar to read them because you know it’s going to give you the information which is going to drive your profitability, your revenue, your success in your business. You have to continue to absorb as much content and information as you possibly can because all the information is out there. They’re not secrets. They’re truly out there.

Absolutely. I think that I have tended, I don’t want to make you blanket statements because what I’m about to say is a bit of a blanket statement, but for my personal opinion and my personal nuggets that I’ve found is that I have found some of the best nuggets from people that in my opinion have done it instead of just making a business around teaching it. Going to the billionaire who actually exited the business for whatever in their net worth is way higher than mine, and asking them for that little nugget of wisdom, I tend to prioritize that. Some of the best-kept secrets are really from people that have done it, and it’s not a priority for them to put it in a free ebook.

You just hit the nail on the head. This is something that I really hope the audience takes to heart because sometimes your best information and insight could come from going to the individual within your community who has had the most successful businesses, asking them to have a dinner, taking them to dinner, and picking their brain. Your community is important, especially when you have a localized or specialized product. Nobody asks them, no one asks them. People don’t ask them, and they are honored when people do. Some of them are going to tell you no, but I would be willing to bet a majority of them will tell you yes. That is actually one of the hacks and has actually been one of the hacks that’s helped me in business. I operate really two businesses. I’m invested in other businesses, and they’re quite successful, 7, 8-figure businesses.

I still have this, even just doing the podcast, suffer from imposter syndrome at times because I’m like, do I really have something to say? Can I really add value? If somebody asked me a question about how to advance their business and how I did it, I’d say, well, easily. I’ve put together an advisory, gave them some equity in my company, and they’re tied into the success of the company. The advisory board was very strategic, and they made the introductions that I needed to either raise the capital, get the debt, or access the clients that I needed to access at low or no cost whatsoever, which built my business. I’d sit back and I’m like, wait, I actually do know what I’m talking about. There are people out there. Talk to somebody that’s on the next level or two rungs up from you to get the information you need to build your business.

The Art Of Making The Ask And Cultivating Meaningful Mentorships

You’re one of the people that help business owners do that. How do you make that ask, Brian, if you want to have someone help you?

If you want to have somebody help you with this.

As a mentor.

As a mentor. I think it probably depends on the person, from what I’ve found, because I’ll say it with a smile on my face, a lot of people are busy. There’s got to be a little bit of a relationship, is what I’ve found personally. I think that’s the value of the Zoom calls, the phone calls, the coffees, the lunches, the mastermind. There’s really building a bit of a relationship. For me personally, when I have found somebody that I just have a good vibe with, like you and I just have a great vibe. I love chatting with you.

We text, we email, we call. The next person doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily whatever. It’s just that there may or may not be a vibe. I can’t explain it. I think that’s where I’ve got the mentorship from. Sometimes you just get a vibe, like you’ve been there, done that. I don’t know.

You’ve got the same family situation, the same space. I know you’re both in the technology space, you’re both in whatever. When you get that vibe, and then you find out that the person has already been further down the path than you are, that’s, I think, the time to make that ask and seek advice. I think that a lot of founders, whoops, I don’t want to get down.

That literally was perfect. Zoom did not like what you had to say.

They did not like that at all. If you’re in a storm, or you’re somebody on a trail in the woods, obviously, you want to walk in the footsteps of where the snow trail was. It’s not rocket science. I think the same thing applies to business. That’s what I look for, and that’s where I get mentorship from. A lot of what I do, Jarrod, in terms of helping others, is actually because of mentors that have built into me. It’s not hundreds of mentors.

It’s really 1, 2, or 3 in specific areas that I have known for 5, 10, or 15 years in a couple of different disciplines. I know the impact that those individuals for me. I don’t know exactly how to find them again, it just worked. It was the vibe, the right time, the right place. One or two of my very intentional, direct mentors have done things for me that they should not have done. I don’t deserve them. I don’t deserve their time. I don’t know.

There’s nothing that I could even tell my best friend to do to get their attention. I don’t know what happened. As a founder, when you find that person, respect them, listen to them, and treat them with respect. Having the right mentors is an amazing experience.

Maximizing Profitability

Awesome. You deserved it because you’re a rock star, and people know that when they meet you. Know that and take that under advisement. One more question, and then we’re going to go into our rapid-fire questions. What is the number one thing business owners need to stop doing to increase their profitability?

80% of their products, the 80-20 rule. What you did last week, 20% of your customers generated 80% of your profitability. Find out what it is, ask the tough questions, and focus on it.

If you own a series of restaurants and there’s only 20% of the menu that 80% of your customers are ordering, narrow down that menu, make it the best you possibly can, and focus on that. Also, you’re not going to have a ton of waste. You’re not going to have product that’s not selling, which could cut down on your supply expenses by way of example, correct?

Yes.

Very cool. We are going to go into our rapid-fire questions. Here we go. pH balanced water or Diet Coke?

Water.

If there were a zombie apocalypse and you could pick only one weapon to take with you, what would it be?

I just read about a laser tree cutter. I feel like that’d be really versatile. They’re available for sale now from some Chinese website. I would find one.

I just watched, which, you know, it’s so funny, a tree fell in my driveway, and it was pretty big, and I was like, you know what, I’ve got an axe and I’ll chop it up. That was one of the most physically difficult things I’ve ever done. My body was feeling it for like three days later. If you chop, God bless you. I watched Furiosa, a Mad Max movie, and I definitely would get one of the flamethrowers, just like that would be my new go-to. What is the number one book that influenced your life? For you, it could be a number one newsletter or podcast.

That’s a good one. Number one, definitely, so many.

One of your top 10.

Top 10.

It must be.

Maybe the first one that comes to mind, I don’t know if I would desecrate it above all, is Derek Sivers. I forget if it’s a chapter or book called A Thousand Raving Fans.

A Thousand Raving Fans, Derek Sivers. Cool. Awesome. I’m going to put that on the list. I love Derek.

The concept that you don’t need to boil the ocean, you just need a few. It could be 10, 100, or 1,000. Just gives me a very small quorum of raving fans that will buy any product from you profitably and build your business around it, and you’ll win every time. Derek’s an amazing guy who’s been there, done it.

Love it.

Derek.

I’m going to add that to the list. What is your favorite thing to do with your kids on a Saturday afternoon?

In the summer, definitely pool.

Awesome. In a fight, who would win, a Care Bear or a Cabbage Patch Kid?

I’d say the Care Bear.

Just so everybody knows, most people are going to be age-appropriate to understand that question. There is a generation who has no clue what I’m talking about when I say Care Bear or Cabbage Patch Kids. Two more questions. What is the biggest obstacle you’ve helped another business owner overcome in their business?

Probably getting out of the way of themselves. I think I could say I had one client, they were nine figures. They raised north of, I think in their case, like $20 million within four weeks, and I think just exited in the billions about 12 to 18 months later. That was a fun one to watch. In some ways, I had no part of it other than just to help them get out of their way. That was a really fun project to then watch them crush it.

Awesome. The last question, if you’re a business owner that’s doing $10 million in annual revenue, and I turn around and hand you a $300,000 check, no strings attached, what would you advise they do with that $300,000?

$10 million in revenue, $300,000?

$300,000 check, I just give you $300,000.

Leverage it. Find a way to leverage and either keep it cash on hand in order to grab a multimillion-dollar line or leverage it for additional revenue and prioritize marketing or lead gen towards directly attributed to revenue.

Awesome. Brian, please tell everyone where they can reach you if they have questions, comments, complaints.

Any complaints? Come over here, Jarrod. The best way to connect with me on all social media is at www.BrianS360.com. You can find out my social media profiles, any projects I’m working on, reach out to me, message me, calendar, you name it, www.BrianS360.com.

Awesome. Cool. Brian Sallee, thank you so much for joining us on Zero to Hundred. Incredible information, and we look forward to having you back in the future.

Sounds good. Thanks, Jarrod.

Important Links

• Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too
• $100M Leads: How to Get Strangers to Want to Buy Your Stuff
• $100M Offers: How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No
• BrianS360

About Brian Sallee

Brian Sallee is a serial entrepreneur, best selling author, seasoned technology executive, and expert on innovative technology and marketing. Brian has been featured on the radio, webinars, and a frequent speaker.

Wins include scaling a tech firm from $0 to #4 on the NASDAQ (2017) as well as the first AI/Tech IPO on the CBOE (2024).