Latest / Forge Fire Protocol Podcast / 7 Traits of a $10M-Exit Business (Recurring Revenue + Defensible Moat)

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7 Traits of a $10M-Exit Business (Recurring Revenue + Defensible Moat) · Forge Fire Protocol Podcast

• 0:02
  Imagine breaking free from the grind and building a business that lights you up, ignites with purpose, and delivers the ultimate reward.
• 0:12
  Forge Fire Protocol gives ambitious entrepreneurs the proven five-step system to choose the right business, launch it successfully, scale it strategically, and exit on your terms.
• 0:26
  Turning vision into lasting wealth, forged in fire, built for legacy.
• 0:35
  All right, well, welcome back.
• 0:36
  We are here for episode two of the ForgeFire Protocol Podcast.
• 0:40
  And I'm Don LaPlume, and we've got Michael Sullivan here, Steven Moynihan, and we're gonna get into all the fun stuff.
• 0:45
  But towards the end of episode one, we said, look, we're gonna cover the seven characteristics of a $10 million exit business.
• 0:54
  And we actually started showing you the tool that we use when we're evaluating a business.
• 0:59
  And,
• 1:00
  So we had it up.
• 1:01
  We're going to go.
• 1:02
  But you know what?
• 1:03
  It brought us right into this one.
• 1:04
  So we promised lots, lots of info.
• 1:07
  So let's get right into the seven characters.
• 1:09
  I want to pull this up, guys, and we'll pull this on screen and then we can hit it.
• 1:15
  So.
• 1:16
  All right.
• 1:16
  You should see it there.
• 1:17
  There she is.
• 1:20
  All right.
• 1:21
  So let's look.
• 1:21
  I mean, I'd like to just talk about the first line because I've experienced this direct.
• 1:25
  Now you both have as well, but it's really near and dear to me.
• 1:28
  Go ahead and scoring.
• 1:29
  If you don't mind, talk about the scoring first.
• 1:31
  Sure.
• 1:32
  Yeah, that's fine.
• 1:33
  So let's look at it right here.
• 1:35
  Okay.
• 1:36
  So what we're going to do, this is whether you have no business and it's just an idea.
• 1:39
  You don't even have an idea yet.
• 1:41
  You're just trying to figure things out or you're existing.
• 1:43
  Yeah.
• 1:44
  And we're going to go back and just take a look at what you currently have.
• 1:46
  Because as I mentioned to you guys earlier, this has been transformative for businesses I've worked with.
• 1:50
  It's understanding this.
• 1:51
  All right.
• 1:52
  So score every business idea from one to 10.
• 1:56
  One is weak.
• 1:56
  10 is excellent.
• 1:57
  On each characteristic, only ideas scoring 50 or higher deserve a 72-hour market test.
• 2:03
  That's cumulative.
• 2:04
  Okay.
• 2:04
  So we're going to do ideas here.
• 2:06
  We're going to give it a score on a scale of one to 10.
• 2:09
  So let's look at the first one.
• 2:10
  It's just high willingness to pay.
• 2:13
  in a clear pane.
• 2:14
  So I, that's, I'm going to use a technology example I came with.
• 2:17
  Okay.
• 2:18
  So I was working for a company that was doing, didn't have a lot of recurring services.
• 2:23
  They were working with a lot of small businesses that were cash strapped.
• 2:27
  There were a lot in the growth process and a thousand dollars of them seemed like a lot to be paying a month.
• 2:33
  So some, and depending on the number of services, but if you take a look at what we're offering,
• 2:39
  I mean, going back a decade and a half, my time was over 250 an hour for a client.
• 2:46
  So if I'm even talking to you for four hours, we've lost money.
• 2:50
  And that's just me.
• 2:51
  That doesn't include the rest of my team.
• 2:53
  So the important thing to realize is that we were losing a lot of money on clients by actually way over delivering for the value that we were providing.
• 3:03
  And because of that, it was actually hurting our bottom line.
• 3:04
  So we had to take a look and say, you know, are these customers the right customers?
• 3:09
  Do they have a high willingness to pay because they understand the value of what we're giving?
• 3:13
  Now, we also have to be providing exceptional value as part of that process.
• 3:17
  But there also had to be a clear pain.
• 3:18
  They had to have an issue that we could resolve properly.
• 3:20
  that they understood the value of us doing that was cheaper than them, let's say, hiring their own staff.
• 3:25
  So the advantage that would say a lot of the time is, for example, if you hire our company, you're going to get a team of, let's say, 20 people or 30 people or just a very experienced team, even if it's a smaller team.
• 3:37
  You're not getting one guy who's been there for 20 years, who's only worked in like supporting computers and thinks he can kind of figure out networking and knows how to handle this or has heard of the cloud and let's start to use it.
• 3:47
  No, you have people on the team who are cloud experts, people on the team who are support experts, people on the team who are networking experts.
• 3:52
  You don't need to have all of that in the amount of money you're going to pay for this big reservoir of information is about the same.
• 4:00
  You're going to pay for one great employee on your team.
• 4:03
  Now,
• 4:03
  That doesn't mean replace that person.
• 4:05
  That person could be the on-site manager, the person, that's what they fit.
• 4:08
  But you had to find companies that understood that value and that you wanted to make sure had a high willingness to pay.
• 4:13
  So we went from looking for customers that were in the $1,000 to $2,000 range, and the baseline for all new clients we sought was $10,000 a month.
• 4:22
  Now, that may sound like a lot, but in our space, it really wasn't.
• 4:26
  And that's for handling anywhere from, let's say, 20 to a couple hundred systems.
• 4:32
  And that number could range 10,000, 10, 15, 20,000.
• 4:34
  It all depends on the size.
• 4:36
  But we were dealing with industries and companies that were willing to pay that because they need to focus on what they're great at.
• 4:42
  And they don't want to pretend like they're great at something else that we were great at.
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  So once they understood that we were just basically a service or a product they could plug into their ecosystem.
• 4:52
  that takes this entire section that's a massive pain for them right now and just says, nope.
• 4:57
  All they got to know is who's in charge of it on their side and who do we report to and talk to to make sure when there's an issue or problem, we're working with them and that's being clearly communicated to staff.
• 5:05
  But by doing that, we saw very frequently 2x, 3x, 4x, sometimes even almost 5x increase on the return that they were getting on their recurring revenue.
• 5:18
  And that's over only like a couple of years, sometimes even a year.
• 5:23
  It was just applying the right customers with the willingness to pay, customers who were the right fit and had a clear pain that we could solve their problem.
• 5:31
  Yeah, Mike, it really gets into the second characteristic, you know, reoccurring or high lifetime value revenue.
• 5:37
  What that really means is- People would go there, Stephen.
• 5:39
  I definitely want you to hit that, but I got to say something on what Mike was just talking about, because when we're looking at these seven characteristics, like a big part of what Mike just talked about is,
• 5:52
  You know, if you've got a business now and you're evaluating that business and you're saying, okay, who are we servicing?
• 5:59
  Who should we be servicing?
• 6:02
  That's the bottom line question.
• 6:03
  Are we servicing the right people?
• 6:05
  And are there people that we really would be better off servicing for our business along with theirs, right?
• 6:14
  From the protocol, there's a couple of different ways to look at this because some of you already have a business and you want to look at it exactly the way that Mike just talked about.
• 6:22
  But if you don't have a business yet and you're evaluating a business, you want to be looking for a business where when you figure out what a good profitable model is and you say, okay, first of all, I can solve this issue.
• 6:36
  All right.
• 6:38
  Is there a high willingness to pay for this issue being solved?
• 6:45
  First of all, is there a market out there?
• 6:46
  Like when I was talking about repairs of solar systems in the last episode, right?
• 6:51
  Uh, repairs, inspections, is there a high willingness to pay for that?
• 6:56
  Is there a clear pain that somebody else out there has that you can truly solve?
• 7:01
  So you can provide massive value, but you can charge what you need to charge to be very profitable.
• 7:08
  Okay.
• 7:08
  And is there a lot of it?
• 7:09
  Like if there's just two, two or three clients here or there.
• 7:13
  that's not enough.
• 7:14
  You need to have a big pool.
• 7:15
  And if you've got a big pool, right, a huge pool of people that are really willing to pay for a solution that you can provide, then that's a 10 on that range.
• 7:23
  Okay.
• 7:25
  If there's only a few people or maybe nobody, maybe that's a one or a two, right?
• 7:29
  So you've got to score this, score your business idea.
• 7:32
  So if you don't already have a business, but you're planning to launch a business in order to figure out what kind of business you're looking at, what you should have done,
• 7:41
  what the book tells you to do is actually make a list of 10 different types of businesses that you're thinking about launching.
• 7:46
  We actually help you with that.
• 7:47
  We'll get into that, uh, after the protocol here.
• 7:49
  I mean, after the characteristics, but once you've got that list, now you want to evaluate the different businesses on that list based off of these seven characteristics.
• 7:59
  Right.
• 7:59
  And the first one is, is there a huge pool of people that have a lot of pain because of this issue that you solve and, um,
• 8:09
  And they're willing to pay it.
• 8:10
  In fact, they're paying somebody else right now to do an inferior job compared to what you're able to do.
• 8:17
  And they're paying a lot of money for it.
• 8:19
  If that's the case, then you've got a potential winner for characteristic number one.
• 8:25
  Does that make sense, guys?
• 8:26
  It does.
• 8:26
  And one very quick thing just to add, when I say like $10,000, if I had said that myself 20 years ago,
• 8:33
  that I'm going to have a client that's paying me $10,000, I would go, oh no, because I had the wrong money mindset, number one.
• 8:38
  Okay, and I didn't understand my own value in the service that I was delivering to their company that was actually saving them money by paying me that amount.
• 8:46
  So what I'm getting at is when you're taking a look at that number, you may have to package multiple solutions or figure out how you can deliver that value.
• 8:53
  You may not have that answer out of the gate, but trust me, there are so many people out there that are willing to pay you for what it's worth.
• 9:00
  They're willing to pay you and they want to.
• 9:02
  They're looking for somebody that they can trust, that they can know when they go to you is gonna deliver consistent value.
• 9:07
  And that's what we're doing here is you're gonna be able to make a lot more money with fewer clients by finding the right client and the right paint.
• 9:17
  I don't know how many of you have read this book.
• 9:19
  It's called Go For Now.
• 9:21
  I've got bookshelves all around me.
• 9:22
  So I was looking.
• 9:24
  So I was paying attention, but I was just looking for the book.
• 9:28
  Richard Patton and Andrea Walsh wrote that.
• 9:30
  I actually had Andrea come in for one of our events that we hosted years ago.
• 9:34
  She did a phenomenal job.
• 9:37
  But in that book, it talks about not selling out of your own pocket.
• 9:42
  And that kind of goes to your point, right?
• 9:44
  We look at something and say, wait, this is,
• 9:46
  there's a lot of money.
• 9:47
  I don't know that I would pay this for this because maybe we don't have it ourselves.
• 9:51
  Right.
• 9:51
  Or we wouldn't be looking for that.
• 9:53
  Right.
• 9:54
  And, and so mentally, yeah, we're not there, but that's us.
• 9:59
  That's not the person who's behind.
• 10:01
  That's not the client.
• 10:01
  It's arbitrary.
• 10:02
  It's arbitrary.
• 10:02
  Right.
• 10:03
  Everybody's different.
• 10:04
  The three of us here are different.
• 10:05
  Yeah.
• 10:06
  Right.
• 10:07
  So, so it really does come down to getting it.
• 10:12
  Forget about all of that stuff.
• 10:14
  What matters is, are there people out there?
• 10:16
  Is there a huge pool of people that have a high willingness to pay for this type of service, whatever the type of service is, because they're experiencing massive pain and nobody can solve it the way you do, whether it's economically as you do or in the way that you do, you're providing true value.
• 10:35
  And so you can pull that market.
• 10:37
  They're already spending the money.
• 10:38
  So now they can just spend it with you and get a better solution.
• 10:42
  That's a beautiful 10, right?
• 10:45
  Can we agree on that?
• 10:46
  That's a 10.
• 10:47
  Exactly.
• 10:47
  Yes.
• 10:48
  All right.
• 10:48
  So sorry, Stephen, I didn't want to interrupt you, but I didn't want to go to Section 2 without covering that.
• 10:53
  Good points.
• 10:55
  You're talking about reoccurring revenue before you mentioned that, Mike.
• 10:58
  And really, we're looking at revenue that's reoccurring with a high lifetime value.
• 11:04
  If you're looking at subscriptions, retainers, memberships, you know, these high repeat, you know, monthly payments.
• 11:12
  and reoccurring revenue coming in.
• 11:14
  And with the technology that we have today, that's easier to do than it was yesterday, last week, or the month before.
• 11:24
  And you can really, you know, touch on that, Don, that you've experienced, you know, with memberships and reoccurring revenue on how that's worked for you in business.
• 11:36
  I can tell you.
• 11:36
  So one of the tech companies that I launched years ago,
• 11:40
  Phenomenal.
• 11:40
  We had so much fun with that company.
• 11:42
  It grew so fast.
• 11:43
  I mean, we're on six continents.
• 11:44
  We're all over the place.
• 11:46
  But we had the stickiest tool you could ever imagine.
• 11:50
  A lot of us think about geofencing now and marketing, but we had a device.
• 11:55
  In fact, I've got it in a drawer.
• 11:56
  I'll probably pull one out.
• 11:57
  But we had a device where you could, people were taking these things.
• 12:00
  I'm not kidding you.
• 12:01
  They would take this little device that we had.
• 12:03
  They'd put it underneath by double-sided tape underneath the table in a food court.
• 12:10
  right at a mall with tons of people would come in and this device would put messages on all of the people's phones that are all around it.
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  Every single phone got these messages.
• 12:18
  So it was a great advertising tool, super inexpensive, very, very cost efficient, but it was a monthly subscription.
• 12:24
  So we had businesses paying for that and it was sticky.
• 12:27
  They did not stop paying for it.
• 12:29
  They didn't want to stop.
• 12:31
  Right.
• 12:31
  That's how good it was.
• 12:32
  All right.
• 12:33
  That is massive lifetime value.
• 12:35
  All right.
• 12:36
  Because.
• 12:37
  When we look at recurring revenue, we want to have revenue where it's profitable month one.
• 12:42
  And then it stays month two.
• 12:44
  But in the month two, you've already delivered.
• 12:47
  So what does that mean?
• 12:48
  Month two is even more profitable.
• 12:51
  And that continues on.
• 12:54
  And that's what that company was like.
• 12:56
  It was just phenomenal.
• 12:57
  People did not want to let it go.
• 12:59
  So you want to create something.
• 13:01
  When you think about a business idea and you're looking at number two here, you want to have a business idea where...
• 13:07
  That business, whatever it is that you're solving, people aren't going to want to just pay for it once.
• 13:13
  They're going to be willing to pay for it every single month, month after month after month, and they're never going to want to let it go, ever.
• 13:20
  Right.
• 13:20
  That's where consistency is so important.
• 13:22
  The consistency of what you're delivering and then constantly iterating and providing even greater value.
• 13:26
  I mean, what we used to do and the way that we structured is, let's say we had a client that came on board with us and they signed a three-year agreement.
• 13:33
  That doesn't mean that now it's set it and forget it.
• 13:35
  We're just not going to talk to them for three years.
• 13:37
  We're just going to deliver that same base level.
• 13:38
  No, they were guaranteed to get the base level.
• 13:41
  Yeah.
• 13:41
  But we were going to personally meet with them on either a monthly or quarterly or biannually, whatever the customer either preferred or based on the customer size, what was needed.
• 13:49
  We're not going to also waste, let's say, $500 worth of resources on a call every month to keep on having the same conversation.
• 13:56
  That's useless.
• 13:58
  But what we would do is we would make sure that we're meeting with them and we're advising them.
• 14:02
  So on top of that service that they're getting, they're also getting like a chief information officer or a chief tech and a chief technology officer guiding them through these steps and providing them recommendations.
• 14:11
  We're also taking our own product line.
• 14:14
  And constantly every year we look for ways to iterate and improve based on market trends and what we were seeing.
• 14:18
  And as things were emerging, whether it be AI, whether it be different things, cloud-based or whatever it may be, it was mostly security.
• 14:25
  A lot of things tied into security and how that interacted with areas that customers just assumed were protected, which were wide open.
• 14:31
  So we wanted to help this.
• 14:32
  We would constantly iterate and offer products.
• 14:34
  And that would bring that to their attention on these calls.
• 14:37
  Say, listen, we have a product that solves this issue.
• 14:39
  We noticed you have this.
• 14:41
  We performed an assessment.
• 14:42
  And then we'd give them an honest take.
• 14:44
  Some of them would say, you know what?
• 14:45
  You don't need it.
• 14:46
  You guys do nothing in this space.
• 14:47
  So this is a product that we have.
• 14:49
  If you grow into this down the road, we just want you to be aware that we have it.
• 14:52
  Right now, it's not important for you to understand.
• 14:54
  We wouldn't waste much time on it at all.
• 14:55
  But if we noticed a client was highly vulnerable,
• 14:59
  then that initial base rate would often improve by 20, 30, 40, 50% in the recurring revenue because we were providing additional value for something that they desperately needed.
• 15:09
  And sometimes they didn't even realize they didn't need it out of the gate.
• 15:12
  We discovered that as part of our onboarding, which is what people are doing here.
• 15:16
  When you go back and take that assessment,
• 15:18
  and you're understanding bigger issues that you have within the company, you're uncovering different revenue streams that you can leverage.
• 15:24
  You're uncovering different weaknesses that you may have.
• 15:26
  You're also uncovering strengths that you should be doubling, tripling down on.
• 15:31
  So understanding that long-term value.
• 15:33
  And then right there it says, you know, long-term value is five to 20 times the first purchase.
• 15:39
  Okay.
• 15:39
  Think about that.
• 15:40
  If you bring someone in for a thousand dollars a month, just as a simple example,
• 15:45
  That means lifetime value is $5,000 to $20,000 a month.
• 15:50
  That's what you're looking at.
• 15:52
  I'm just using that number because it's round and simple, but massive.
• 15:56
  The importance of that is significant.
• 16:00
  100%.
• 16:00
  Let's talk about, because we bring in Forgefire Protocol as our system.
• 16:07
  Again, we started the launch of this on June 16th.
• 16:10
  of 2026, it is now August.
• 16:13
  We're doing multiple episodes today, so bear with me here when I say this, but August 3rd still, right?
• 16:18
  We wanted to get those out there.
• 16:20
  Doesn't matter the dates, it's the episodes, right?
• 16:22
  We wanna take you down a path and we wanna help you with this protocol to reach that exit.
• 16:29
  But I bring that in because when we looked at this business and we looked at the recurring revenue,
• 16:38
  So first of all, what we have to do is we have to be providing a value that is 10x minimum 10x of what we're charging.
• 16:47
  So when people get into the protocol, so some people just just listen to podcasts.
• 16:52
  They're not ready for the other stuff yet.
• 16:54
  Some people say, hey, I'm just I just want the book.
• 16:56
  I want to read the book.
• 16:57
  Great.
• 16:58
  You can get the book.
• 16:58
  All right.
• 16:59
  That's that's a one time simple, right?
• 17:00
  Huge, huge value.
• 17:03
  But but
• 17:04
  For our subscribers, the ones that say, hey, I want to be part of this protocol.
• 17:08
  I want to have the community.
• 17:09
  I want to have access to all of these tools.
• 17:11
  I want to have access to the academy and everything.
• 17:14
  I'll tell you flat out, because we don't have anything, right?
• 17:16
  We have, we put together a value for this.
• 17:19
  What was the value we came up with for that?
• 17:22
  When we were, when we were running the numbers, because we have two different levels of, of access, right?
• 17:27
  So our core level of access basically is, is $99 a month.
• 17:31
  Yeah.
• 17:31
  Super inexpensive.
• 17:32
  All right.
• 17:32
  Cause that you, you were mentioning a thousand dollars a month for other stuff.
• 17:35
  Right.
• 17:35
  I just want to, I want to point that out.
• 17:38
  Call it a hundred dollars a month, right?
• 17:40
  Easily.
• 17:41
  If you thought about this, you stayed with us for five years.
• 17:45
  I want you to just think about these numbers.
• 17:47
  This is why this all matters, right?
• 17:48
  Cause you gotta, you gotta put it into something that makes sense.
• 17:50
  Right.
• 17:51
  five years at $100 a month, that's 60 months, right?
• 17:56
  That's $6,000, right?
• 17:59
  Did I do that right?
• 17:59
  Yeah, yeah, I did that.
• 18:03
  Yeah, yeah, 60 months, $700.
• 18:05
  Yeah, I can do math, right?
• 18:06
  I've launched a couple tech companies.
• 18:08
  I can do math.
• 18:10
  So $6,000.
• 18:11
  You're talking about the guidance that's going to take you to from zero over that time period to a potential $10 million exit.
• 18:20
  Is that worth it?
• 18:22
  And that's excluding, that's excluding the fact that how simple this is by leveraging the tools that have been created to help walk you along the way, rather than having to take courses that cost 10,020.
• 18:33
  And that's what they cost.
• 18:34
  But those of you that don't know, to take courses where a lot of these tools are explained to this part of the business, they are 10, $20,000.
• 18:41
  You're given a worksheet and then you're on your own.
• 18:44
  Yes.
• 18:46
  Yeah, we're doing it this way.
• 18:47
  One, we want to provide that value.
• 18:49
  But two, all right, we want to help a massive.
• 18:52
  This is a phenomenal time in our country's history.
• 18:55
  I'm thinking about the U.S. here because that's where we're located, right?
• 18:58
  And this is not a political statement.
• 18:59
  Understand that.
• 19:00
  I'm not going to get into politics.
• 19:01
  Between the three of us, we all have different.
• 19:03
  We look at politics differently.
• 19:05
  It doesn't matter because it's not about politics.
• 19:08
  We're in a time in our country where the current administration is very pro-business.
• 19:12
  Okay.
• 19:13
  And this is a phenomenal time to.
• 19:16
  build a huge, huge business if that's what you choose to do.
• 19:19
  Again, that is not a political statement.
• 19:21
  That is just a fact of where we are in time, all right, in location.
• 19:25
  So take advantage of that situation, all right?
• 19:30
  And so you've got these next, let's say these five years, all right, you're going to have every aspect of what you need to
• 19:40
  from guidance to really get you to that exit.
• 19:42
  You still have to make the decisions.
• 19:43
  You have to take the actions, but it's there.
• 19:46
  So I had to bring that up because we're talking about lifetime value and revenue.
• 19:50
  And if we're talking 20X, what is our goal here?
• 19:54
  With what we created, it's 60X, right?
• 19:58
  We want you to be with us for those.
• 20:00
  And quite frankly, we want you to be afterwards because we've actually designed what happens after that exit, all right?
• 20:07
  And what are you going to do with those funds?
• 20:10
  And we do go from there.
• 20:12
  So that I'm sharing this because this is the business model.
• 20:17
  This is our business model that we're building.
• 20:19
  And we're doing this right alongside you proving the protocol model.
• 20:25
  All right.
• 20:26
  So so this is not just just us chatting.
• 20:29
  Right, and as you say, even on step three here, which is super important, and again, a lot of the most successful people that I know, again, understand this.
• 20:38
  Now, some of them, most of the people that I knew, like my brother used to say to me all the time, pay attention, and I'm going to use his name here, not fully, but my brother-in-lawed John.
• 20:47
  He said, pay attention to how John started his business.
• 20:50
  Okay, John focused on low overhead, extreme value, and built lifelong customers.
• 20:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:58
  40 years ago, you started a business that is still extremely successful today.
• 21:05
  And it started from the definition, and maybe we'll get into that story someday, but it started from a, not crisis, but a near crisis and understanding something and just hustling and getting it done.
• 21:16
  But understanding the importance of keeping low overhead so they can increase profits while making sure it was high value and making sure the customer always understood they were consistent, they were going to be cared for.
• 21:28
  When they called him, results were going to happen.
• 21:32
  And the importance of that low physical overhead and like low inventory risk.
• 21:37
  So you're not making promises you can't deliver on.
• 21:40
  All right.
• 21:40
  Whether it be a digital service, whether it's productized or whether it be light, like physical with partners or no heavy fixed costs or whether we're dealing with just subscription.
• 21:48
  There's so many different things in that, but it's important that we understand that.
• 21:52
  that if we go into it with the end in mind, we can structure it so that the overhead is kept low or so the inventory risk is under control.
• 21:59
  And we always know what we're dealing with for the most part.
• 22:01
  I mean, things are going to happen, but you build systems for those breaks in a system.
• 22:06
  In an IT perspective, I always made sure we were building in for, we already made sure there was duplication.
• 22:10
  And then what if my backup fails?
• 22:12
  So now I need a backup for my backup.
• 22:14
  And I need this here, this year, and this year.
• 22:16
  If those three happen, 99.9% of the time, every one of my customers is going to be fine in the next 10 years.
• 22:21
  Could there be one random one off?
• 22:23
  Unlikely, but maybe, but overall, like we're going to do, we're going to, we're going to kill it.
• 22:30
  And that's done by understanding the end in mind and focusing on that low physical overhead and inventory risk.
• 22:37
  Right.
• 22:37
  And looking at the seven characteristics as we're getting down towards the end of the podcast here, um,
• 22:44
  You talked about low physical overhead.
• 22:46
  And now we're into AI leverageable delivery and what AI does and what AI allows someone to do today.
• 22:54
  And it's really, you got to call it revolutionary because we've never seen anything like it before.
• 23:01
  And it's, to capitalize on it now, you can't wait.
• 23:07
  You know, come back to the rocky theory I've talked about in the past.
• 23:11
  There's no tomorrow.
• 23:11
  There's no tomorrow.
• 23:13
  Right here, there is no tomorrow because it's advancing rapidly.
• 23:18
  And quite frankly, you'll miss it, we'll miss it.
• 23:23
  So really take a hard look at that.
• 23:25
  And that's one of the key factors here in the protocol.
• 23:28
  We leverage that AI ability and we show you how to do it.
• 23:32
  And we have the tools in our academy that guide you through that step-by-step.
• 23:38
  Yeah, well, not just the tools, the prompts,
• 23:43
  all sorts of different aspects of how you can utilize AI.
• 23:48
  Now, some of you might say, you know what?
• 23:51
  I am not interested in AI and that's okay.
• 23:55
  I've got one of my kids is there.
• 23:59
  I won't go into that whole story.
• 24:00
  What I will say is this, okay?
• 24:04
  You can choose to use it or choose not to use it.
• 24:07
  If you choose not to use it, you're gonna be competing with people who will be using it.
• 24:12
  They'll run circles around you.
• 24:15
  That's the point.
• 24:16
  Exactly.
• 24:17
  It is that simple.
• 24:18
  It's, you know, if you think about, we talk about our academy, right?
• 24:24
  We have an online academy with Footfire Protocol.
• 24:26
  And just looking at that one little piece, if you're going to create your own academy, you're going to record your own videos, you're going to do all this different stuff.
• 24:33
  I will tell you everything we're going to teach you, everything we're going to share in our entire protocol, we're utilizing, we're doing.
• 24:40
  Okay.
• 24:41
  So you're going to see it.
• 24:42
  But when you go into our academy, you're going to see videos.
• 24:46
  In some cases, you'll see us.
• 24:47
  In other cases, you're going to see some of our other instructors.
• 24:50
  Those other instructors are AI.
• 24:53
  I'll tell you that.
• 24:53
  I don't have any problems with it.
• 24:55
  If we didn't tell you that, you'd be guessing.
• 24:58
  You'd be like, wow, is that a person?
• 25:02
  Comes across really well.
• 25:04
  Here's the thing.
• 25:05
  Is it going to be perfect every time?
• 25:06
  No, it's not.
• 25:08
  I'll tell you, I have cameras.
• 25:09
  Right.
• 25:10
  I was watching Mike's shirt.
• 25:11
  I don't know if any of you caught it.
• 25:12
  Right.
• 25:12
  Mike's shirt changed color because the lighting changed color where he is.
• 25:16
  Who cares?
• 25:17
  It doesn't have to be perfect.
• 25:18
  What has to happen is great delivery.
• 25:20
  Right.
• 25:21
  You've got to get that.
• 25:22
  What you're going there for information.
• 25:24
  You've got to get it.
• 25:25
  And it's going to be real and good.
• 25:27
  Right.
• 25:27
  It's got to be valuable.
• 25:29
  And and when you can get all of that and.
• 25:32
  if you were going to record a 50, 60, 80, a hundred less than Academy, think about those numbers.
• 25:40
  How many videos you'd be recording, how much content, right?
• 25:43
  If you're doing anything with an Academy, as an example, how long would that take you?
• 25:47
  How long would it take you to edit?
• 25:49
  How much would it cost to have it edited if you don't edit, right?
• 25:52
  We're talking months and months and months.
• 25:54
  And we're talking doing the same thing in days.
• 25:58
  Yep.
• 25:58
  And just a very quick comment on this, because I know we're at time, but I just want to get this out there.
• 26:02
  For anyone that's not sure on the whole AI and how they feel about it, industrial revolution.
• 26:10
  Okay.
• 26:11
  Changed everything.
• 26:12
  People were all worried about what it was going to do.
• 26:14
  Telecommunications.
• 26:16
  Look at what happened when initially, when they started saying, we're able to send communications from the United States to Europe via wireless.
• 26:27
  When that first happened, he was committed.
• 26:29
  His friends committed him to a mental asylum.
• 26:33
  Poor Markman.
• 26:34
  Yeah, exactly.
• 26:36
  So then you have air travel, even air warfare.
• 26:39
  It's done a lot of it from the United States.
• 26:41
  A lot of the planes aren't even manned anymore.
• 26:44
  And then you have the internet, which turned the local economy into a global economy, so we can all serve the entire world.
• 26:49
  And AI is the next iteration and the next biggest thing on the same scale, if not bigger.
• 26:55
  for what it's doing.
• 26:56
  Cause it's using all of those tools that I just previously referenced and it's turning it into, it's automating it.
• 27:02
  And as you said, taking that time, that was the one thing we can never get back is time.
• 27:06
  This is giving us back time.
• 27:09
  That's right.
• 27:11
  And time to live, right?
• 27:15
  Time to experience, right?
• 27:17
  And do what we'd like to do as humans, but also time to iterate.
• 27:23
  When we look at a business opportunity, we look at, all right, is this the type of business I want to launch?
• 27:28
  Is this the, you know, how do I get my responses from potential clients?
• 27:33
  How do we find out?
• 27:35
  When you're utilizing all the tools that are available to you, we're going to make those a bit, we're going to show you how.
• 27:40
  When you do that, now it's like, okay, great.
• 27:43
  I can, this is a good business to launch.
• 27:45
  This one isn't.
• 27:45
  All right, I'm going to go do this one.
• 27:47
  Because remember, you're doing this for three to five years.
• 27:50
  Yeah.
• 27:50
  All right.
• 27:51
  And in five years, by the way,
• 27:53
  If you choose not to sell, you created a cash cow and you're good just making it better over time.
• 28:00
  And you don't want to sell it.
• 28:01
  You don't have to.
• 28:02
  I want to tell you you have to sell what you build.
• 28:05
  What we're saying is we're going to help you to build something, guide you.
• 28:10
  As long as you do the work and you make the right decisions where you get to the point where you could sell.
• 28:17
  And that's the objective.
• 28:18
  And by the way, we're going to be recognizing people who hit those levels too, who get that first sale or evaluation.
• 28:26
  So we actually have a way to evaluate those businesses.
• 28:30
  So in three years, two years, if somebody makes it that fast, that's really going to be difficult.
• 28:36
  But whenever it is, let's say the person doesn't want to sell, well, that business is going to be able to be evaluated and you will be in the record books.
• 28:45
  of of forge fire protocol and you'll be recognized as yep i sold this you know this person sold this business uh in 37 months for 10.4 million dollars right or could have right because that's its value that's that's that's just that's just a part of it but you have to be willing to say all right i need to look at what's really available to me now where technology is today i love what you said my
• 29:11
  Because we've been through the industrial revolution.
• 29:13
  We've been through the internet revolution.
• 29:15
  We've been through the air revolution, if you want to call it that, technology.
• 29:20
  It's amazing what's happened.
• 29:23
  I look at how long.
• 29:25
  I can remember before we had microwaves.
• 29:27
  I guarantee there's people that are going to watch this and say, wow, microwaves.
• 29:31
  I don't remember a time without a microwave.
• 29:33
  I don't remember a time without internet.
• 29:35
  I do.
• 29:36
  Right.
• 29:36
  I remember a time without one of these crazy cell phone things.
• 29:39
  Right.
• 29:40
  We didn't have those.
• 29:42
  All right.
• 29:43
  I had one of those dial-up phones.
• 29:46
  So much has changed and so much is going to continue to change.
• 29:48
  It's not going to stop.
• 29:49
  It's not going to slow down.
• 29:50
  Get used to it.
• 29:51
  Be part of it.
• 29:52
  Make the change happen.
• 29:58
  I'm just going to say, and as we're closing off right now,
• 30:00
  understand too, you don't need to know all that.
• 30:02
  We're going to help guide you there.
• 30:04
  So just lean on us.
• 30:05
  Let us help take you there.
• 30:06
  If you don't know, if you do know, the tools we give you is going to make you that much more powerful and that much more better.
• 30:11
  Okay.
• 30:12
  The goal is simplifying this so that everyone can apply it and understand how to use it.
• 30:17
  All right.
• 30:17
  So.
• 30:18
  Yep.
• 30:19
  A real important takeaway on that, on that note, Mike, is really a forge collective.
• 30:24
  You're never alone on the road to 10 million.
• 30:27
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:28
  The silence of the entrepreneurial trenches, we're looking to eradicate that founder isolation by building, scaling, and sharing real-time data within a mastermind of like-minded builders.
• 30:43
  That's our goal.
• 30:44
  I see.
• 30:45
  I get to tell you, every single time I hear those words, the Forge Collective, all I can think of is the Borg.
• 30:52
  from star trek look i'm a sci-fi fan guys so get used to it you'll get some of those references hey listen as we leave here today for this episode we'll get back we'll finish off the rest of the seven characteristics in the next episode but look if you haven't already done this help us out go to forgefireprotocol.com forward slash survey take the survey all right whether you have a business now or you're looking to launch a business it's going to help you to really
• 31:18
  evaluate your current business.
• 31:20
  So it does two things.
• 31:21
  It helps you to evaluate your current business or the business that you're thinking of starting.
• 31:25
  And what's important to you in starting a business?
• 31:27
  It also helps us
• 31:28
  in collecting data that we're able to use in the academy itself and we appreciate that and by the way uh if you're in the first week of this you're by completing that survey you are going to get um a uh pre-release copy it's a digital copy of the book the fortifier protocol uh if it's after that first week all bets are off it could be some other thing but you're going to get something i promise but we really appreciate the data uh because it helps us to serve others uh and to really make sure that the protocol is top-notch for everybody
• 31:57
  Yeah, and that's going to also expose them for the opportunity for other bonuses that we have coming that are exceptional, that are coming down the pipe that we can't even say yet because they haven't been all blessed yet, but we've been talking about it a lot.
• 32:06
  So there's a lot of amazing value.
• 32:10
  We're the ones that have the blessing, so it comes down to us.
• 32:13
  Right.
• 32:16
  All right.
• 32:16
  We'll catch you all in episode three.
• 32:17
  Take care, guys.
• 32:21
  That's it for this episode of the Forge Fire Protocol podcast.
• 32:25
  Take at least one step from today's episode while the fire is still hot.
• 32:29
  Don't let the insight cool.
• 32:32
  Our goal is delivering real value for you and your business.
• 32:36
  Subscribe now to never miss an episode and help other ambitious entrepreneurs like you find the show by leaving a review on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
• 32:48
  Want the complete five-step system, the tools, the scorecards, and the exact playbooks we use inside the protocol?
• 32:56
  Head to forgefireprotocol.com and sign up now to step in to the full forge.
• 33:02
  Because we are Forged in Fire.
• 33:06
  Built for Legacy.
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