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I Made The Inc 5000 7 Times. Here are 7 Lessons I Learned | Ali Katz · The Great Wealth Transfer

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  We were at 8 million in revenue in 2022, but we were two weeks away from not making payroll.
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  What had I done that almost caused me to lose the company? I certainly thought I was being a leader,
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  but I wasn't. I was delegating tasks and not ownership. If you cannot read your own
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  numbers, you cannot run your own company. I created value statements with my COO. The words were
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  so right, but then the actions weren't actually aligned with the words. You know, I really can see
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  that we have a crisis of trust globally and personally. In 2012, I filed bankruptcy and
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  ten years later we rebuilt together. And as a result, we just made the Inc. 5000 for the seventh
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  time. So here are the seven lessons that I learned from making the Inc 5000 7times.
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  So my company made the Inc 5000 for the seventh time. New law business model made it again, and
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  the biggest lessons that I've learned actually were from the two years that we didn't make it
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  2425. We did not make the Inc 5000 after having been on it six times in a row 18, 19,
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  20, 21, 22, 23 and then not on it 24 and 25 because of what happened
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  in 22. that's where my biggest lessons came from. We were at 8 million in revenue in
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  2022, but we were two weeks away from not making payroll. I needed to step back in in a big way
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  because frankly, I'd abdicated my leadership in that year. As a result, 24 and 25
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  were not our fastest growth years. They were rebuilt years. Years where I had to take a big
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  step back into the company and look at what had I done that had almost caused me to lose the
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  company? So here are the seven lessons that I learned from making the Inc 5007 times. All
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  seven of these leaderships are related to the ways that I abdicated leadership, and my guess is
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  that you are as well. And when we're doing it, we can't see it. We don't know that we're abdicating
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  leadership. We think that we're being leaders. I certainly thought I was being a leader, but I
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  wasn't. And here's all the ways. So the first one is that I was delegating tasks and
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  not ownership. And so often those of us that are control freaks, maybe you do. We do that. We give
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  people tasks, tell them, do this, do this. Do this, do this. Instead of delegating ownership
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  for a number, for a goal, for a metric and say, do it the way that you want it. Come back to me.
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  Did we hit the milestone or not? And then let's look together at why you didn't. What resources
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  you need. So we want to delegate ownership for an outcome, not a task or a set of specific tasks.
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  Because if you're doing that, you're never going to be able to lead. You're going to be managing,
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  you're going to be stuck in management. And because I didn't want to be a manager, instead I
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  just over delegated in many cases and gave up complete leadership entirely and you may be doing
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  the same thing. So really specific example of where I might have been delegating a task instead
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  of ownership, where you might be delegating a task instead of ownership would be building my email
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  newsletter list. Right. Building my audience, building a list. You need to build a list so you
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  may hire somebody and say, send out this email at this time. Have it say this and
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  make sure it's going to these people. Instead of saying, okay, we want to build our audience,
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  and these are the metrics that we're going to look at week in and week out. And then you tell me
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  what to do and what I need to be saying, what I need to be sending when I need to be sending it.
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  That's a world of difference. I'm going to give you ownership for building our audience. And then
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  I'm going to tell you the metrics that we're tracking as we're building our audience. And then
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  we're going to meet regularly to see what's working in, not what's not working. Instead of me
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  telling you, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to send out this to this people at
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  this time. This is the post we're going to make. And really micromanaging every part of that
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  journey. All right. Here's lesson number two. Never give someone a title that they haven't earned and
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  grown into yet. And I did this one again and again. So you don't make this mistake. And I see a lot of
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  people make it where they give people the title chief of right. Chief revenue officer,
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  chief of staff. COO. Right. That's a big one. Oh, I want I so want somebody who's just going to run
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  the company. So I'm going to give them the title of COO. Well, if you give someone the title of COO
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  and they've not earned that title yet, and then they can't live into that title, they're not going
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  to be able to. And here's the bigger problem with that is there's nowhere for them to go from that.
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  There's no development path from COO. So if you hire an online business manager or virtual
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  assistant and you call that person your COO, but they've never been a clue. They haven't earned
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  that title. They're not going to actually be able to grow into it. So you want to start people with
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  titles that actually represent the reality of where they actually are in their own
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  developmental path, so that then you can invest in their development, in their growth, and give them
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  milestones to hit that allow them to earn the title on a developmental path. So very often we
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  are giving people titles that they haven't earned that they're not ready for, and then they have
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  nowhere to go. As a result, I made this mistake again and again because I wanted people to be
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  operating as the owner, the CEO, but they weren't ready for that title yet. Lesson number
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  three reporting is not admin. It's visibility. So you've got to have visibility
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  into your numbers and know what metrics you're looking at on a weekly basis. So again, you're not
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  just getting reporting on specific tasks. And whether they were done you're getting reporting
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  on specific metrics, whether they were hit. If not, why not? And then you can be in a collaborative
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  process around what does it take to hit those metrics. This is how you'll develop leaders. And
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  that brings us to lesson four. If you cannot read your own numbers, you cannot run your own company.
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  And this is such a big one that so many of us miss because we don't even know what numbers we
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  should be looking at. I knew how to make money. I didn't know how to take care of that money
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  because I didn't know how to look at my numbers. I didn't know what numbers to be looking at and
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  know how often to be looking at those numbers. And frankly, the numbers were running in my head
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  constantly, but I couldn't see them out here. And so one of the biggest shifts that I made in
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  the seven years before I ever made the Inc 5000 was to recognize that I kept
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  ending up at rock bottom, even though I knew how to make money because I didn't know how to look
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  at my numbers or what numbers to be looking at. So I developed an entire financial system for myself
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  to be looking at my numbers on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis. And I began to build
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  those systems in a way where I kind of had to fumble through. It started with having
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  quarterly meetings with a CPA company that I had hired to act a bit in a CFO role, and I brought in
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  a CFO to start working with me on a regular basis. So we would meet with this CPA company every
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  quarter. And I came to call those meetings of meetings because I would literally leave every
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  quarter. I would leave those meetings going, oh, shit. And the reason I was going, oh shit is
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  because I recognized we were not tracking the right numbers. What they were reporting on was not
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  the right numbers. And oh shit, I needed to clean it up and I didn't know exactly what to do.
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  Luckily, I could recognize that I was what I call mid process, so I didn't give up. Instead, I used
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  that meeting as the motivation that I needed to really be able to develop the systems for me to
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  know exactly what numbers we collectively need to be tracking, so that I could read my numbers and
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  make really great strategic decisions today. As a result of that, I'm able to look at my numbers
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  weekly, monthly, quarterly. Annually. When I abdicated my leadership, I let my
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  CEO come in and replace my CFO. I built a whole system for myself where I could read my numbers.
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  And then, because I wanted to empower my COO, I said, sure, bring in a CFO.
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  That's maybe a more professional CFO that is using more traditional systems. Well, all of a
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  sudden I couldn't read my numbers again, and they were telling me that they had a better system, but
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  I couldn't use the system that they had created, so I couldn't read my numbers.
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  It wasn't until I was able to bring back in my old CFO, get back on the system that I had created,
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  where I was able to read my numbers again and start making good decisions and step back into my
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  power and my leadership. So if you don't have a system right now for reading your numbers, that
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  works for you. Your next job is to build that system or to leverage a system that already
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  exists. But you've got to be able to read your numbers every week, every month, every quarter,
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  every year, and do it with what I call your eyes wide open, so you really understand the decisions
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  that you're making. And, you know, I think that this happens to so many people because we naturally
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  think, oh, that person knows better than I do. There are professional. There are professional CFO,
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  they're professional CFO. They must know better than I do, right? But the reality was that I knew
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  better about what I needed than they knew what I needed. And I wanted so
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  badly for somebody else to be running the company. I wanted so badly to just be able to do the
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  creative part. I wanted so badly to be able to have somebody telling me what to do, instead of me
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  having to tell everybody what to do, that I abdicated my leadership. I abdicated my authority.
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  And I think many times we do this, I've seen it happen again and again with friends and clients
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  where they just want somebody else to do it. So they just give over all of their power, all
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  of their control. And one of the things that you cannot give over power and control is your
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  financials is your numbers. I want you to be able to, every week, sit down and look at every bank
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  account, know exactly what's in it, what's going out, what's coming in. And I want you to have a
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  system for doing that where you're not just looking in your bank account, but you're actually
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  doing cash flow forecasting, cash flow planning every single week, where every month you're
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  sitting down and you're looking at your PNL and your balance sheet. You're making sure that
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  everything is categorized properly, not just waiting till the end of the year for that, but
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  that you're actually doing that every single month, because that way you stay on top of it.
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  You're comparing your monthly PNL and balance sheet to the two months prior, and you know what
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  you're looking at because you're doing that with your bookkeeper, with your CFO, and then every
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  quarter you're actually doing quarterly planning. Looking again at the numbers in a way that lets
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  you see how did we do last quarter? Where are we going for the next quarter or the next six months?
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  How does that tie to our annual goals? These are the kinds of numbers that you need to know, that
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  you need to be looking at on a regular basis and have firmly rooted in your body, in your nervous
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  system, where you can relax in between those weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings because, you
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  know, okay, great. We made the decisions, what we needed to make the decisions, and now we can act
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  instead of having everything to swirling in your mind, trying to hold it all together, running the
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  numbers while you're doing yoga or hanging out with your kids. That's not the time to do your
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  numbers. You do your numbers weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. And then in between you act.
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  You stay present with the people that you love and you hit your goals. And so that brings us to
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  lesson number five, which is to believe the actions of the people around you, rather than the
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  values statements that they say. Again, so often we want to believe that the people that are coming
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  into our business are there for our benefits. And so we will create value statements. And I created
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  value statements with my clo. The words were so right, but then the actions weren't
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  actually aligned with the words. And when that's the case, when the actions are not aligned with
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  the words, you've got to listen to the actions. You know, they say when somebody shows you who they
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  are, believe them. And that really applies here. So you're looking beneath the words
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  to how does someone actually show up? How does someone be in the world. And that's going to tell
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  you everything that you need to know. And that very much brings us to lesson number six, which is
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  about your energy. Your energy is really your number one greatest asset. We say time, energy,
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  attention, money. Those are your team resources. We over index on time and money and time and money
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  are the results of your energy and your attention, your energy, how you feel.
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  Number one biggest asset because that's what's either going to make you magnetic to team members,
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  to clients, to prospects, to people considering working with you, or it's going to repel them. And
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  so when you can get your energy aligned and to have your attention focused on what you want to
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  create, the time and money they're going to follow. So if somebody is draining your energy, that is a
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  fire fast kind of context. You know, they say hire slow, fire fast fire fast, anybody,
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  any context that is draining your energy and put your attention on what you want to create
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  and who you want to create that with. And that brings us to lesson number seven, which is build
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  with the people that you love. And I cannot emphasize the importance of this one enough, even
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  though so many people say don't build with your friends and family, don't create with your friends
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  and family. It's just a hornet's nest. And it can be if you don't follow the prior six lessons that
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  I just shared. But if you are following the prior six lessons that I shared, you can build with the
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  people that you love and it is going to be the most enjoyable way to build a life and business
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  with what one of my friends calls life business mesh. Instead of trying to have life business
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  balance, which I don't think you're ever going to have. You can have life business mesh or life work
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  mesh where your life and your work mesh together so well that you can't even tell when you're
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  working or you're playing, because it's all the same. Because you're building with the people that
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  you love. You're having such a great time together. You're on a common purpose. You're doing it
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  together so that you can play hard and work hard at the same time and become what I call a serious
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  player, where things are serious. But you're playing in the process and you're doing it with
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  people that you absolutely love. And for me, that means I want to be building with people that I
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  want to have at my next party, that I want to be spending time with, that I want to be working out
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  with, that. I want to be going on trips with that I want to be doing life with. And that includes not
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  just my team, but my clients as well. Right? I am building with the people that I love, so I
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  am hiring people that I love and working with people I love, and I am doing it with and for
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  people that I love my clients as well. And you can have that exact same reality as long as you
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  follow all six of the prior lessons that I shared. You know, I really can see that we have a crisis
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  of trust globally and personally, and that crisis of trust
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  affects us at every level. It affects us generationally with the junior generation,
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  millennials, Gen Z, not trusting the boomers, the silent generation, those of us in Gen X kind of in
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  the middle, and we have a crisis of trust where we don't trust our loved ones, we don't trust the
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  people that we work for. We don't trust the people that we work with. We don't trust our team members.
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  Our team members don't trust us. And so when you're building with people that you love, what
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  you're really doing is you're building trust and there's nothing more relaxing, I would say, for the
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  nervous system than knowing that you can truly count on the people that you're building with,
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  whether that's your family members, your friends, your team members, your clients. Recognizing that
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  regardless of whatever happens out there in the economy, in the political system we're building
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  together, we're in this together. We can ride these waves of the meta crisis, the crisis that
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  we're all in. We're going to do it together, and we're going to make it through together. And when
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  you've got that, knowing anything is possible, anything is possible. And when you don't have that,
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  knowing when you've always got this question in the back of your mind of, can I actually trust
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  them? Can I trust my partner? Can I trust the person that I'm building with? Can I trust my
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  executive team? Can I trust my customer support team? Can I trust the people that I have hired as
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  my mentors, as my coaches? Can I trust my clients to pay their bills? When you've got that worry.
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  Now everything that you're building is tainted by this feeling of deep insecurity and fear, and that
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  permeates everything. If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together, and
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  that is going to take longer. But it is so much more worth it, because when you get there, you're
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  gonna feel fulfilled in love, full of joy, because you did it together
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  and have a real deep sense of security. I know who my people are. I know we can
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  navigate whatever comes together. And to me, and I imagine for you when you
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  have that and if you're already having it, now we get to recognize there's nothing better than that.
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  So there you have it. In 2012, I filed bankruptcy, and ten years later, I could have done it again,
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  would have been totally justified. And yet, instead, I chose to apply these seven lessons and rise
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  into my leadership. And as a result, we just made the Inc. 5000 for the seventh time And
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  even though it's been a 20 year journey, we're still just at the beginning. I can't wait to show
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  you what comes next. I'm Ali Katz, and I am a personal family lawyer, a family wealth counselor,
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  founder and CEO of a new law business model, personal family lawyer and the Eyes Wide Open
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  Collective. Nothing I've shared with you today is legal, insurance, financial or tax advice directly
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  for you. is, though for your education information and I hope edutainment as well.
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  And making these videos every single week. So please share them. Subscribe, follow and I will see
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  you in my next video.