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Igniting Entrepreneurial Philosophy: The Forge Fire Protocol Origins · Forge Fire Protocol Podcast

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Imagine breaking free from the grind and building a business that lights you up, ignites with purpose, and delivers the ultimate reward.
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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.
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Turning vision into lasting wealth, forged in fire, built for legacy.
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All right, welcome to Forgefire Protocol.
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Now, this is episode zero, which means this is our intro podcast.
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We're gonna tell you why we're here.
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We're gonna get into some of the basics today, but I can tell you that every single one of these episodes is gonna be very hard-hitting, full of content,
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And we're going to really work hard to keep it at 30 minutes.
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So we're doing that for a couple of reasons.
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One, we want you to be able to plan.
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We want these to be bite-sized so you can learn and really get the whole concept.
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Because there's a lot we've got to teach.
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When you have something that's a half an hour long, you know you can fit it in, all right?
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When we get into this podcast, we're going to be giving you tools.
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We're going to be giving you information on where you can get knowledge.
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And we're going to have a lot of guests here as well.
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So stay tuned, check in, and stay with the podcast.
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Now, here's my part of introducing this.
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And I'm going to bring in our partners here.
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But I'm Don LaPlume.
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I am the one who wrote the book, The Forgefire Protocol, and
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And I'm partnered with two great guys that have all three of us have been through the fire.
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And you're going to learn that.
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But you're going to learn the lessons that we've learned.
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So you don't have to go through those.
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You don't have to feel the pain.
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That's really what this comes down to.
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And so with that, I want to toss this right over to my first partner here, Mike Sullivan.
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Mike, take it away.
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Hey, so what I think, Don, it's important that we share with everyone here is that, you know, all three of us have built, led or enhanced powerful systems that have generated massive value.
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We've been the creators of these systems.
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We've been the facilitators.
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We've been the curators and the people who have improved the systems.
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We've done it all.
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And, you know, personally, and I know that you two as well, because we've talked about it and this is how we're here.
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We've learned a lot along the way.
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We've done a lot right.
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And we've done a lot wrong.
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Interesting.
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And the big difference, though, is today, like we've never had access to tools like this.
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I mean, with the emergence of AI on a global scale and its accessibility to the masses, we realize that we can take these systems that we've built and curated to help millions.
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And we're out here to get our listeners to a point that they never even realized they could get to, using these tools that are at their fingertips.
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Just it seems so hard for some people to leverage them and how to leverage them, which tools is a million out there.
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All we're here to do is help simplify that path
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and help you avoid a lot of the mistakes we've made along the way.
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So that's why we're here.
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Why you care, why our listeners care, is because we know that we have something special.
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We know that we've created something unique that can help millions.
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We just want to give back and help people get there and show people that they can basically get done whatever they need by leveraging the right systems to help get them to where they wanna go.
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We're here to help empower you.
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It's that simple.
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You get to avoid the mistakes we've made along the way while taking advantage of the wins.
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That's pretty much it.
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I mean, what's important, though, is that all of us have our own stories.
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And Steve, I know yours is incredible.
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Thanks, Mike.
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To start off with that story, it's going to be, I guess, you'll call it the death sentence.
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It was Saturday, September 3rd, 1988, Labor Day weekend.
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It's 9 a.m.
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I'm at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut.
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I'm with my wife, Diana, who was pregnant with our daughter.
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Our son, who's two years old, is at home with my father-in-law because he had great parent skills.
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Being told right then with two doctors, a primary care doctor, Robert Sullivan, and then a hematologist, Dr. Richard Hilleman.
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At that moment, they told me I had a blood disorder.
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And not knowing really what that was, they wanted to describe more.
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It was called CML, chronic myelogenesis leukemia, white blood cells overproducing, killing off your red blood cells, which carry all the oxygen to your body.
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At that moment, being told that, look at my wife, she's like a deer in headlights.
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One thing came true.
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I had one goal at that moment.
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It's probably not what you think, but the only goal was to see my daughter be born.
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That was it.
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The only thing I focused on.
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And I asked the question, if they wanted to check me into the hospital right then, I asked them, I wanna see my daughter be born.
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And they said, well, we need you to start now.
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We want you to start you on a normal medication, should control your white blood cell counts, but we need to put you on intravenous to wash that out of your body because it could cause other complications.
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I understood that what they were saying, I understood the seriousness of it, but it did not deter me from my goal, see my daughter be born.
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I told them that.
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and they wanted me to check in.
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I asked them this question.
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If I get up and leave right now, how long do I have to live?
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They looked at each other, the hematologist said six months.
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Literally, I jumped up, I was thrilled.
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It sounds crazy, but I was.
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I said, great, come back after the daughter's born.
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I looked to my wife, put my hand out to her.
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Dr. Sullivan, who was a great doctor, put his hand on my shoulder, looked at her, I said, please tell your husband to sit down.
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I look back at her, now she's crying.
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I mean, really crying.
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And that's when the fear hit, that came.
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But I didn't yield, I didn't stop.
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I wanted that one goal, see my daughter be born.
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So we decided that I would get checked in.
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If I was responding to the medication, I could be discharged and come back as another patient.
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I knew that I was leaving the hospital, whether I was responding or not, no matter what was happening.
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Things went well.
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Her due date Wednesday morning, she went into labor that morning.
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I got to the hospital two towns away where she was delivering.
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I got there in time to see my daughter.
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That goal went on.
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Going from there, I found a great doctor through a family friend.
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He was at Yale New Haven Hospital and Dr. Joel Rappaport.
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He had started a bone marrow transplant unit down there and it was something that could be a potential cure.
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So I went and talked to him and there was something profound that he said to me that day.
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I asked him the question, why should I come here?
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And he said, here's what you're looking for.
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You're looking for the head cognition when the middle of the night determines the protocol to save your life.
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Think about that for a moment because I'm going to connect it back here.
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Another thing he said, because I kept the lane to do the procedure.
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Number one, I had great chances.
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I had a sister who was a perfect match.
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That was rare.
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Second thing, my disease goes in a fast phase and a slow phase, and there's no notice of change.
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It changes like that.
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I kind of thought in the back of my mind, somehow, someway I would know.
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And the doctor kept reminding me I want it.
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Finally, he said to me about a year later, he said, you know, not making a decision is making a decision.
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And he was right.
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And I made the decision to go in and I only had a 50-50 shot.
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I'm still here today and I'm grateful for that.
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But at that time also, there was something that kind of really rang true.
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And I'll take it, I'll call it the Rocky Truth.
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And it's from the Rocky III movie where he's training and he's gonna fight Klubberlain.
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And he's not really into it in the beginning.
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And he gets told there's no tomorrow, there's no tomorrow.
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And there's that Rocky Truth.
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So there are three things, one having that goal,
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having that there's no tomorrow.
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And by not making a decision, is making a decision.
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So make a decision today.
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Don?
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That's powerful.
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I'll tell you, we're grateful that you're here, Stephen.
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I gotta say that, my friend.
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So my story is a little bit different.
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I'm not gonna get into health, I'm gonna get into business.
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Because in my case, I've owned and launched many businesses throughout my life.
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I got a little bit of gray hair,
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My businesses, I've done everything from when I was 18, I launched an advertising firm and learned a ton, right?
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I didn't know anything about business really other than what I had read and listened to.
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But that was the first business.
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Since that time, I've launched multiple tech companies.
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I've launched, I've had a commercial mortgage company, a regular mortgage company.
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I actually launched my own network marketing company.
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So I've done quite a bit.
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In fact, even before launching that network marketing company, I had built a network marketing business, multiple of them, many of them, actually several of them.
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And I built teams over a hundred thousand people.
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So, which is a pretty tough thing to do.
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So I've been in business really all of my life.
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And this one story that really sticks out in my mind, because it was, it was, it really transformed how I look at business.
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All right.
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All of those other stories, all of those other businesses were great learning experiences.
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And you're gonna learn a lot about those and the lessons I took out of those.
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But there was one story where I launched a tech company, had two business partners, and in our first year in business, we took off, we did millions of dollars in business.
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This podcast, by the way, Forgefire Protocol, and the book behind it is to show you and guide you on launching a business that you could exit with, do an exit with in three to five years for $10 million or more.
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That's the objective here, right?
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And this particular business that I'm talking about, this tech business that I had launched, we did enough business to,
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for a valuation of well over $10 million in that very first year in business.
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And that's great.
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You think, well, that's awesome.
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You did great.
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But here's the thing.
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We used a service from a very large, well-known tech company.
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I won't mention the tech company.
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It doesn't really matter.
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Just know that they are a behemoth.
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And I was David, they were Goliath by a long shot.
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And I can tell you that they didn't like what we were doing because they planned to roll out the technology that we already had.
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They planned to do it.
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And so it was probably about nine months in and things are going gangbusters.
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Right.
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It's fantastic.
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We're we're.
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shooting for a great second year.
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And what happened was they decided, well, you know what?
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They're using part of our technology to build off of.
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We're going to tweak that.
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We're going to change it.
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And when they did, it effectively shut down our service.
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Now, we had tens of thousands of subscribers all across the world.
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We're already on six out of the seven continents, right?
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So we grew.
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But it literally shut us down.
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We had to bring our team together, find a way to overcome that.
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We did, it took us about three days.
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We were back up and running.
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All of our clients were happy, everything was good.
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And we were good for many months until they did it again.
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They did that four times to us, four times.
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And each time they did it in a different way to make it even more difficult.
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Our thought was, hey, look, you know what?
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We're competing with them, they're just gonna go buy us.
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Right.
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That, you know, we're thinking this is great.
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They'll buy us.
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They'll say, oh, we can't put these guys out.
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No, no.
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They had a whole different plan.
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But I learned so much.
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You'll learn more about that story down the road.
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But I learned so much from that business and those experiences battling that behemoth that those are those lessons.
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I never, ever want to repeat.
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I'm glad I learned them, but I'm glad I only have to learn them once.
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And those are the types of things that we're going to share with you.
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And not only are we going to give you a guide to build that business, to find the right business, we're going to get into all of that stuff, but really to build a business that you can one, be proud of, two that you can avoid many of the pitfalls in business.
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You won't avoid them all.
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We, it's just that there's, there, there are pitfalls in business, but we're going to help you to learn from our mistakes from our
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Short sightedness, right?
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From our different things that we had that were challenges, really from our challenges.
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And also our wins, though, because we have many wins.
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And when you've got to win, you want to be able to replicate those.
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Why did you win?
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Right?
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And what led up to that?
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So you can repeat that stuff.
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So you're going to learn all of those things.
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Um, but that story that, that changed how I looked at business.
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And quite frankly, that was the nexus, even though I didn't write the book until years later, that was the nexus for Forgefire protocol.
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So Mike, tell us your story, my friend.
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Yeah.
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So mine combines business and a little bit of sports, which is you get to know me, not a big shocker.
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Um, so a couple of things happen.
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First and foremost.
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is in 2007, the Patriots had an undefeated season, and then they lost in a Super Bowl.
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I tell this story because of this.
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So I'm at my friend's house.
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There's a whole bunch of us over there.
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The minute that we had a dropped interception and then Tyree catches the ball on the top of his head, I got up and walked out of the house, and I said, that's it.
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I'm like, stuff like this only happens to teams that win.
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I don't need to see the rest of the game.
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I'm out.
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And I walked out, I went home, never looked at the TV, woke up the next morning, went to put on sports radio in my car as I pulled out of my driveway.
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And I was like, why am I going to listen to about two weeks, three weeks, maybe longer, of people complaining nonstop about something they have no control over that has already happened?
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I can make much better use of my time.
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So I went on Audible.
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and I got the book Blue Ocean Strategy.
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It was the first book I had in Audible.
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And I just played it, and I turned my car into my mobile university.
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Now, at the time, my ride was about six minutes, so it wasn't that beneficial.
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So I had to find other times to read as well.
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But from reading that and growing as a person and growing to someone who had started a job at a company and had ascended from
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like a low level person on the technology side, like being like a help desk technician, up to a lead engineer, up to the person designing the infrastructure, up to the IT manager.
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And feeling like I was on a really strong upward trajectory.
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And through this reading and growth, I'm sitting there one day and I'm like, where can you go from here at this company?
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You've progressed position wise.
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You've got all that title improvements.
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You've more than doubled your salary.
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but now the CFO is married to the CIO and they're on the picture with the founder for the building being built with the shovels in their hands.
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I'm like, you have nowhere to go.
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And it was the first time that I had heard people talk about the moment where you knew you were meant for more.
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But I really hit home.
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My wife was pregnant with our third daughter at the time.
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And I realized that that 40-40 plan was dead, that I kind of grew up thinking.
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I also grew up believing that if I could just make six figures, I'd be all set.
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That may have been true when my father was on his ascension back in the day.
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It was no longer true anymore.
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So I pushed myself and I found myself trying to find more.
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So I made myself really uncomfortable by going to a company that served, that company had 200 people, by the way.
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And by leveraging technology and solutions and systems, you were able to take them from like a mom and pop shop type technology department to an extremely advanced department where before people were able to have multi-monitors.
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We worked with an agency that worked with the government
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to customize these systems that provide people to have a laptop plus two monitors on the side.
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We're also able to help improve operations and take them so they ended up 3X-ing their revenue.
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Go to the next company, and now I'm dealing with major municipalities, cities, 10,000, 20,000 people inside the same thing, flying systems.
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The right systems are providing exponential results in short terms, and those results are able to be duplicated over and over and over.
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Then I went and did something where I started taking on more of a CIO role for a bunch of organization.
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The same thing.
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I took what I learned from the others and applied these systems and created new systems along the way.
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But what never changed was finding the systems that worked, learning from your mistakes and applying those systems in a new environment.
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That has worked for me every step of the way.
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It has produced massive results where companies have 2, 3, 4, 10x revenue, 5x recurring revenue,
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And it's not because we're doing anything special.
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We're just recognizing systems and applying them, which is exactly what we're doing here.
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You've built something real, but deep down, you know, the grind isn't the goal.
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Most entrepreneurs stay trapped in businesses that can't scale cleanly or exit cleanly.
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They trade time for money and call it success.
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There's a better way to build your legacy.
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This is the path to freedom.
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Forgefire Protocol is the proven five-step system designed for ambitious entrepreneurs who want more than growth.
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They want freedom, systems, and a real exit.
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It shows you exactly how to do it, step by step.
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Choose the right business, launch with precision, scale without chaos, and exit on your terms.
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Inside the ecosystem, you'll get the complete protocol, the academy, the tools, the scorecards, and the coaching that turn vision into lasting wealth.
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This isn't another course.
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It's a forge.
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The wait list is open right now.
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Join at forgefireprotocol.com and claim your place.
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Forged in Fire.
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Built for Legacy.
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We're going to get into the ForgeFire protocol.
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There's five steps.
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Here's the clear, actionable framework that we're going to teach you and that you'll see.
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It starts off with a step number one.
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Really choose the right growth and to evaluate your business, select or validate it, and look at the opportunity.
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Pick a strong market with tailwinds, realistic scalability, and alignment to your skills.
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the resources and goals that you have.
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And one thing that we all get lost in is, this is the way to phrase it, avoid shiny objects.
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Use a proven scoring system.
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And that's what we're gonna show you here.
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You'll see what we've got that can apply to you directly, to your market size, to your competition.
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And also, the great fortune that we have being the times that we are in right now with AI and to leverage its potential and to take that and exit with a great viability in your business.
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We're not just showing you steps.
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We've got Blueprint.
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I'll equate it to this.
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If you have a, if you're building a house from scratch, you have a blueprint and that starts with everything from your building lot you're on to the excavation, to the foundation, to the materials that go in it, all the way up to the framing of the house.
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If it's a stick built house, you know, the old way was using, you know, nail and hammer.
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Today, you've got an automatic gun that does it.
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That's just the beginning of AI.
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Now you have actual 3D printers that are like a giant, um,
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beam that's out there and it actually prints the house.
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That's just amazing technology.
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That's what you're going to get here.
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Step-by-step blueprint to build your business, scale it exponentially and exit on your terms.
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Indeed.
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And take it away.
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And that was great, Stephen.
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So we have, as Stephen said, there's five steps.
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We don't just tell you about these steps.
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We're going to give you the tools.
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We're going to guide you through it.
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In fact, what you're going to hear about, not just this podcast, this podcast is available to everybody.
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The book is going to be available to those who choose to get it.
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At the same time, we've built out an entire university and a community to help you so you're not building a business alone.
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So when you do that first step, we call that the spark, which is what Steve was just talking about, that first spark.
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How do I figure out what the right business is?
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What should I really build?
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And I can tell you I've launched businesses that probably were, well, I know were not at the right time.
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Again, different things we learn, right?
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So that's in the book, that's in our university, that's in what we're going to teach.
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It's certainly a big part of the community is,
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Creating that proper business.
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What should I really start?
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But then the next step after that spark is really called ignite Because if you're gonna start a business there's a few things you need to do one you yeah You have to have the idea.
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What are you gonna start?
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Okay, but then you want to look at one of the very next things You want to look at is the end?
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What is that end?
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Are you looking to get that?
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Million ten million dollar exit in three to five three to five years.
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What are you looking for?
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That exit is key.
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I talked to bankers.
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I talked to lots of people.
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And I was talking to a banker just a couple weeks ago to see if, you know, we're working on a project, right?
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Pretty good size commercial project.
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And we're looking to bring them in to work with some of our clients.
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And it was funny.
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I'm talking with her and she's like, you know, a lot of the businesses that we talk to, they're not ready for financing.
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They haven't even thought about it.
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They don't, they didn't plan for it.
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Okay.
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What we're going to help you to do is not just come up with the idea.
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We're going to help you to understand, to get all the legal stuff out of the way.
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Or wait, let's pick the right entity.
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Let's make sure that what we're, how we're structuring this is correct.
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That we have everything in place and that everything is designed with the end in mind.
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What do you really want out of this?
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Okay.
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That's spark.
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I'm sorry.
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That's, that's, that's ignite.
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That's how we're going to ignite your business.
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Okay.
23:08
And then Mike, tell us a little bit about Forge, which is that next, that third step.
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Yeah.
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So what we do at Forge, and I'm going to keep this short and brief so you guys understand this is simple.
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It's hard hitting, but it provides massive value.
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At Forge, we successfully launched a business.
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Okay.
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We execute the launch with confidence, whether that be a product service rollout, customer acquisition, system setup, early traction, all of it.
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Okay.
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We take a look at it.
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We're making sure we've already kind of prepped you for this moment.
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And now you're getting it out there.
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Now we're launching the business.
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All right.
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We use AI tools and proven playbooks to move fast while minimizing the risk and overhead.
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That in a nutshell is what forged the lives.
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Well said.
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Well said.
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Steve, you get, Stephen, you get temper.
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So tell us about temper.
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You're really looking at.
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maybe this would be the fire part where you're to scale the business efficiently, implement systems of growth, the AI powered operations,
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that are there that we're going to show you to use that we're using.
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Keeping your team leverage, meaning minimal core team.
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And sometimes that's just the three people, me, myself, and I.
24:19
There are other times when you need people that have a skill level more than you have, and it's important to have them.
24:27
At the same time, to keep that financial discipline and the continuous optimization and the focus on a sustainable, profitable scaling instead of chaotic growth.
24:38
That's really a key.
24:40
Back to you, Mike.
24:43
Actually, that goes back to me.
24:44
I'm going to I've got to close out a send because I'll tell you, I mean, a send is all about that exit.
24:53
All right.
24:54
And we're by the way, something that Stephen said that I have to hit on.
24:58
And it's that we are using.
25:01
So everything that we're sharing with you in this podcast, in the academy,
25:06
in our community, in all the coaching and training, in the book.
25:10
This is something, this is a model.
25:12
It's not just out there, hey, we're coaches or we're, you know, I wrote this book or whatever it is.
25:18
We actually use this.
25:20
This is the model for a business that we're building right now.
25:24
And it is this business, the Forgefire Protocol.
25:26
So you're going to see us doing every single step, proving every single step with you.
25:34
All right, that's huge.
25:34
All right.
25:35
And we do have a bigger exit planned than 10 million, but that's beside the point.
25:40
All right, we've done this before though, that's the thing.
25:43
So the fifth part of the force fire protocol is called ascend.
25:50
All right, and that's when you're going to that whole different level.
25:53
That's when you are ready to exit.
25:56
You built a business large enough, profitable enough to exit.
26:01
One of the key things you got to think about when you're gonna exit a business is,
26:05
What is its real value?
26:07
Well, we're going to tell you how, we're going to help you to determine what the value needs to be early on when you're planning for the exit, right?
26:16
So you know what your type of business, every different type of business can have a different multiple.
26:19
We're not going to get into that here today, but just understand that you're going to have a roadmap that's going to take you there.
26:26
And here's the thing, when you do get to that exit, when you get to that point where you're selling this business,
26:35
All right.
26:36
It needs to be a business that is running without you.
26:39
All right.
26:41
And the fewer the employees, the better.
26:43
All right.
26:44
We're going to teach you how to build a business utilizing technology, utilizing all the stuff that's available today.
26:49
There's amazing.
26:50
Michael said, there's amazing stuff out there.
26:53
The power of AI and all the tools that are available.
26:57
you're gonna multiply yourself many, many times over.
26:59
And we're gonna give you the prompts.
27:00
We're gonna give you the systems.
27:01
We're gonna give you the tools to do that.
27:03
That's part of this, okay?
27:05
But when you do that exit and you're finally out, and you're like, wait a minute, I just exited with $10 million.
27:10
It took me, let's say it took you five years.
27:12
I don't know how long it's gonna take you, all right?
27:14
I don't actually know you, so I don't know per se if you're gonna do it or not.
27:19
What I do know is we've got a system that'll get you there if you do everything that you need to do, all right?
27:23
In the way that you need to do it and,
27:26
and you pick the right options, right?
27:29
There's a lot of things that are gonna rely on you.
27:31
But what I can tell you is we're gonna give you that roadmap, all right?
27:35
And so with that roadmap, when you do exit, think about it, exiting with a $10 million check.
27:41
What do you do then?
27:42
Can you retire with that?
27:43
Yeah, technically you could, or are you gonna do it again?
27:46
We'll see.
27:47
That's a whole different part of the forge that we'll talk about.
27:51
So let me bring that one back to, I believe, Steven.
27:57
Was it Mike finishing this up?
27:59
I've got what I would say is I'll come back to my story in the beginning.
28:05
Three things that we're defining from there.
28:08
One is a goal.
28:09
I had a goal to see my daughter be born, focusing on that goal.
28:13
The second was the doctor that set the protocol that saved my life, who said not making a decision is making a decision.
28:22
And I made a decision to start and go in the hospital.
28:24
And I'm here today.
28:26
And the third thing is the Rocky truth.
28:29
There is no tomorrow.
28:30
And the movie, he says it three times.
28:32
There is no tomorrow.
28:33
There is no tomorrow.
28:35
There is no tomorrow.
28:37
So with that takeaway, you've got the blueprint here that you can design your business or scale your business you already have and exit on your terms.
28:50
Yep.
28:50
So the last thing is, it's very simple, guys.
28:52
I mean, if you're ready to build and you want to build with a real protocol, if you want to buy into a trusted system that's going to show you how to get to where you want to go, trust people who have been there who can show you how to get there the fastest way possible and avoid a lot of the mistakes and pitfalls that we've already experienced.
29:08
You do that by joining our waitlist today.
29:11
We have not opened our access to our library and tools yet.
29:14
That's coming very, very soon.
29:15
But we have opened up the waitlist.
29:18
And when you join the waitlist,
29:19
you have the opportunity to receive bonuses that we provide for being an early member on our wait list.
29:24
So go to forgefireprotocol.com forward slash wait list.
29:28
Again, that is Forge, F-O-R-G-E, Fire, F-I-R-E, Protocol, P-R-O-T-O-C-O-L.com forward slash waitlist.
29:39
Okay, next episode, we're going to start going into more about the system and explaining more about it to help you fill in and get a better idea of how to color in that outline.
29:47
But for today, your next action step is go right now to ForgeFireProtocol.com forward slash waitlist.
29:55
There we go.
29:59
That's it for this episode of the Forge Fire Protocol podcast.
30:03
Take at least one step from today's episode while the fire is still hot.
30:08
Don't let the insight cool.
30:11
Our goal is delivering real value for you and your business.
30:15
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.
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Want the complete five-step system, the tools, the scorecards, and the exact playbooks we use inside the protocol?
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Head to forgefireprotocol.com and sign up now to step in to the full forge.
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Because we are Forged in Fire, built for legacy.
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