From Employee at Amazon to Scaling Multi-Million Dollar Agencies

Overview:

Jordan Ross explains how he went from employee at Amazon to scaling multi-million dollar businesses through his own company, 8 Figure Agency.

During the episode, Jordan shares the story of how he intentionally took a role at Amazon to gain the experience necessary for achieving his ultimate goal: running a multi-million dollar business of his own.

In addition to Jordan telling the story of how went on to start 8 Figure Agency, Jordan and Sam discuss common roadblocks that prevent agencies from scaling, tips for improving your agency's onboarding process, and how to lead high-performing teams even when it's no longer possible for every new hire you to be an "A" player.

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https://youtu.be/_qOIIB3kG2g

Resources from Episode 43:

• Send Jordan an Email
• 8 Figure Agency - Website
• 8 Figure Agency - Facebook Group
• Follow Jordan on Twitter
• Follow Jordan on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to Jordan's YouTube Channel
• Try Motion.io for Free

Episode 43 Transcript:

[00:00:00] Jordan Ross: I went to Amazon with the onlyintention, to learn how to run operations and learn why is Amazon the bestbusiness in the world.

[00:00:07] Jordan Ross: I had an org chart of 800employees beneath me at the age of 24. And at Amazon they do things in a reallyspecific way, when I was there, I knew I didn't wanna be there, right?

[00:00:16] Jordan Ross: I started consulting businesseson the side, right? I started to pick up clients on my days off and sometimesduring my work days -- and I immediately realized, holy crap, no one knows whatthey're doing. No one knows how to source, hire onboard, train, fulfill, manageyour time strategy, reverse engineering their success.

[00:00:34] Jordan Ross: I feel like there is a massiveopportunity here.

[00:00:37] Intro Music Plays

[00:00:47] Sam Chlebowski: Happy Thursday everybody, andwelcome back to Designing Growth. Sam Schabowski here, host of this podcast andco-founder of motion.io. Today on the podcast, I am joined by Jordan Ross.Jordan is the founder and c e of eight Figure Agency, a business that helpsagencies reach eight figures in annualized revenue through better operationalfulfillment and management processes.

[00:01:09] Sam Chlebowski: So Jordan, how you doingtoday?

[00:01:11] Jordan Ross: Sam, I'm fantastic.

[00:01:13] Sam Chlebowski: Amazing. Amazing.

[00:01:14] Sam Chlebowski: So I was really excited tospeak with you today because a lot of the things that you are doing and thechallenges you're helping people overcome on that road to scale at eight figureagency is things that I have seen firsthand at a previous business.

[00:01:28] Sam Chlebowski: A website design and marketingagency in the mental health space that we grew to the mid seven figures inannual recurring revenue. Uh, and then we were actually acquired in 2020.

[00:01:37] Sam Chlebowski: , I would love to know Jordan,just a little bit more about your background and how you got started doing whatyou are doing right now.

[00:01:45] Jordan Ross: so the high level overview is mybackground before running my consultancy eight figure agency was at AmazonFulfillment.

[00:01:52] Jordan Ross: I went to Amazon with the onlyintention, to learn how to run operations and learn why is Amazon the [00:02:00] best business in the world. That was myopinion. That was back in 2016. When I graduated, I went to Ohio State. I. Wasmanaging within 90 days of working at that company, over a hundred employees,and I was 21.

[00:02:11] Jordan Ross: So I went there with theintention, I want to build a business. I wanna learn how to be an entrepreneur,and this is gonna be a great study ground. It's gonna be my MBA for when I dobuild my business, I'm gonna bring these skills. And I, I was dead on withthat. when I was there I managed over 2,500 people.

[00:02:27] Jordan Ross: cumulatively I launched threedifferent buildings, at my, peak. The most employees I was ever overseeing. Ihad an org chart of 800 employees beneath me at the age of 24. and at Amazonthey do things in a really specific way, you know, and when I was there, I knewI didn't wanna be there, right?

[00:02:42] Jordan Ross: I started consulting businesseson the side, right? I started to pick up clients. On my days off and sometimesduring my work days, and I immediately realized, holy crap, no one knows whatthey're doing. No one knows how to source, hire onboard, train, fulfill, likemanage, manage your time strategy, reverse engineering their success, likecustomer success.

[00:03:05] Jordan Ross: All these things that I had builtinto my just inner workings of running a business. I would step away for a weekor two at a time and my team would be. Not only fine, they'd be doing sometimesbetter than when I, got back and I was, looking at the marketplace through myfirst few clients at a company.

[00:03:21] Jordan Ross: I was like, there's a massiveopportunity here.

[00:03:23] Jordan Ross: And serendipitously, my firstclient ever was an agency, Sam Lister with blank slate. You know, I hit him upon LinkedIn. I was like, yo, I saw you had a. Issue you're facing. I'd lovejust to hop on a call and just add some value. And I said, Hey man, I'm lookingto break into this space.

[00:03:36] Jordan Ross: I would love to work for you forfree. Sam Lister turned into a success story. We scaled him to a million dollaragency. He sold, Sam had a friend, David. David became the client. David,within 18 months, went from 10 K to over 2 million arr. David runs a holdingcompany now. His agency does over 3 million annually, but his holding companydoes several millions.

[00:03:56] Jordan Ross: And everyone I kept working with,there's just like, everything turns to gold. It's [00:04:00]like it can't be this easy, but it was, it really was. It was really just bringingthe intentionality.

[00:04:04] Sam Chlebowski: I love this story because thatintention behind going to Amazon and saying, this is it. This is gonna be mymba. This is a stepping stone on a path to a larger journey.

[00:04:13] Sam Chlebowski: That isn't something I'veheard even a similar version of when I've asked that question on the show,

[00:04:19] Sam Chlebowski: I was fortunate enough earlierin my career, and I had that sort of MBA experience, but it was something thatI fell into. I remember my boss, who is my co-founder now at motion.io, He cameover to me one day and he said almost exactly that, Hey, man, this is gonna beyour MBA.

[00:04:34] Sam Chlebowski: This is gonna teach you how torun a business. Because you are a part of a small team and you're gonna see howthings work and you're gonna see what this growth is like.

[00:04:42] Sam Chlebowski: At that time, you know, I wasemployee number two or three, depending on which way you slice it. And havingto wear all of those hats at once. You learn just so much and you have yourhands in so many different parts of the business that you never thought youwould, but I love your story specifically because you went out with this masterplan and that intentionality behind it. It's honestly no surprise to me.course, hindsight is 2020, but it's no surprise to me that you have been assuccessful as you are with this business.

[00:05:12] Jordan Ross: Yeah. Thank you. You know, it's,um, I'm really blessed. I just had foresight. I started going deep intopodcasts in 20 14, 20 15.

[00:05:19] Jordan Ross: And one of those early podcastswas like, if you want to become an entrepreneur, go mess up on someone else'sdime. Go learn the lessons at a company before you build your thing.

[00:05:27] Jordan Ross:

[00:05:27] Jordan Ross: And. Know, that's what I did.That was, that was the intentionality.

[00:05:29] Sam Chlebowski: Is there a specific segment withinthat niche, that agency niche that you're working with? Like is it primarilyb2c, b2b? What kind of services do most of the clients you're working with seemto be offering?

[00:05:42] Jordan Ross: We have a really wide range ofclients. our smallest clients are doing 10 to 20 K a month, and our largestclient is doing over 120 million annually. And just part of that's the inboundfunnel, Over the course of the last two years, I was like, I keep getting thisreally wide range of sizes of [00:06:00] agencies.We need to create offerings to accommodate. So it's seamless. And then when itcomes to the actual agencies themselves, they, it's everything under the sun,right? C r o, web dev advertising, copywriting, seo, right?

[00:06:11] Jordan Ross: You name it. We got TikTokagencies, YouTube agencies, content podcast agencies. Our clients literally doeverything. So there's no rhyme or reason as to like the types of clients wehave. I mean, the, the reason is agencies, the consistent thing is operations, right?The cornerstone of how we approach the game, and this is my methodology.

[00:06:29] Jordan Ross: The only way to scale issystematically. Like if you want to scale from six to seven, seven to eight,eight to nine, the only way to do that is through. Processes and people,period. Right. And the biggest bottleneck, and I'll walk you through a few of them,right. The agencies typically plateau as a solo founder at 30 k.

[00:06:49] Jordan Ross: As a dual founder at 50 60 K, atlike a hundred to 120 k, at two 50 k, at five mil, at 10 mil, 20. Like there'sthese plateau areas and the plateau is always when you're doing less than 2million, it usually when you're doing less than a million, it usually has to dowith time and people and onboarding and training.

[00:07:08] Jordan Ross: When you're doing more than that,it has to do with training and retention and delivering results and systems.Mm-hmm. And it's, it's just all the same people, people and processes. Andthat's the one consistent thing that we delivered to all of our clients, right?there is a methodical way to do this.

[00:07:22] Jordan Ross: There is an easier way to dothis. There's a way to do this that will save you a shit ton of time. That willmake your people execute, that will bring in the right people, that will makesure they don't leave after a year that you, they stick with you for a while.That they get developed the right way so that you deliver the results, youmaintain your reputation, and now you could get yourself out of the operationfocused just on sales and marketing or whatever it is that you wanna focus on,right?

[00:07:43] Jordan Ross: It's all the same. Doesn't matterfor the client that we're working with, that's doing 120 million annually.

[00:07:48] Sam Chlebowski: Especially businesses who aretrying to reach a new level of scale. Either they've built a system that isn'tworking or they have yet to build a system to solve a future problem or afuture need. what would you [00:08:00] say themain types of problems that you are seeing there?

[00:08:02] Sam Chlebowski: How do they manifestthemselves and what do they look like?

[00:08:05] Jordan Ross: So let's go with like, um,general systems for execution. What the biggest mistake is there, and thenlet's go with the people system. Cause I think I call them hard and softsystems. Hard systems were software oriented and soft systems more like peopleoriented. So the, the first mistake is, I'm gonna give an quick analogy ofbuilding a house.

[00:08:22] Jordan Ross: The number one mistake that anyagency owner makes, like this is by far the number one thing. They go to buildthis beautiful home, like it's gonna be magnificent. It's gonna be a million or10 million, right? Like imagine you want to go build this a million dollarhome, or $10 million home, or $20 million mansion, whatever.

[00:08:38] Jordan Ross: And they go to the plot of landand they just start digging and they start building, they start scrapingbuilding and they get to one story in one room and they're like, I have no cluehow to get this to two. Holy shit, I didn't screw in this electrical. I have noplumbing That is exactly what they do compared to, Hey, let's, we got this plotof land.

[00:08:56] Jordan Ross: Let's bring in an architect.Let's bring in the blueprint, let's make our designs, let's figure out how wecan intentionally get here. Right? The story started with you asking me, how'dI get here? I went to Amazon with the only intention to become an entrepreneur.Like it's literally not a mistake, right?

[00:09:09] Jordan Ross: And I think entrepreneurs, theyjust jump in focusing on the next month too, right? The number one. Reasonentrepreneurs, anyone is successful. This is a golden rule, is reverseengineering your success. So the system to do that is, hey, let's, from astrategy perspective, let's build that blueprint. Let's reverse engineer success.

[00:09:28] Jordan Ross: Do you want this to be a milliondollar home? A $10 million home? A hundred million dollar home like communitymegalithic structure? Then once we understand what we want to build, what's theroadmap to get us there? So for an operational roadmap is once a client closes,this is obviously one of the things, you guys help with that motion.

[00:09:45] Jordan Ross: What are all the steps that weneed to execute to onboard them? Deliver results in month one, retain them for12 months, for 24 months. And what are all the interdependencies, right?People, software, communication, workflows and all that, all that stuff. And wecall that, um, [00:10:00] the, the processroadmap. So that's the first thing.

[00:10:02] Jordan Ross: Like people go in with a lack ofintentionality and as a result of it, they're not reverse engineering theirsuccess and they're not building a clear workflow and poor process roadmap thatthen dovetails into. Just how to execute and how to build SOPs and trainings andhow to manage talent and all that fun stuff.

[00:10:19] Jordan Ross: That's number one. And the secondthing for people is they don't treat people like that really hot person. I'mtrying to go agnostic. You're like that really That amazing, beautiful personthat you wanna date so bad and you want to like marry them or you wanna be withthem for so long. Like I, I remember when I met my wife.

[00:10:37] Jordan Ross: I was blown the, I was blown awayby her. I was like, this woman is, oh my goodness. So I, I got up all my, I gotall my friends together. We, we were gonna do a pedal wagon, we're gonna do barhopping. I'm gonna take her out to this nice dinner, and that's our first daywe ended up getting married. you need to treat your talent as if you want themto stay with you for 10 to 20 years.

[00:10:58] Jordan Ross: I didn't just end up married tothis amazing woman that we're building a family around. It's, I really wantedto be with her, so I made sure that she was blown away. And for our talent, ithas to be similar. Like what do they care about? Right. Do you understand whattheir desires are and what their dreams are?

[00:11:12] Jordan Ross: What their financial goals, andwhat their personal goals are? Do you understand what their professionalambitions are? What they want need to develop in what they need to get trainedin? Do we have a roadmap? Do you intentionally make them feel seen, heard, andloved? What are the the five love languages?

[00:11:25] Jordan Ross: What are, what's their lovelanguage? Do they need like a words of affirmation or do they need like an actof service? Do you take something off their plate? Right? So when it comes topeople, the number one people issue is you need to treat your talent like,Loyalty. Like loyalty royalty, sorry. And when you do that and you buildintentional roadmaps for their career, careers and their lives, they're notgonna go anywhere.

[00:11:47] Jordan Ross: As long as the financialcompensation's set up, why would they

[00:11:51] Sam Chlebowski: You'd mentioned trying to findpeople who are there for the long term, people that you think could stick withyou 15 to 20 years, even if that isn't the reality or the end [00:12:00] result.

[00:12:00] Sam Chlebowski: I would call those types ofpeople A players, and. I think one of the things that is hard is once you getto a certain scale, sometimes it's just not possible to hire just a players.

[00:12:11] Sam Chlebowski: You know,

[00:12:12] Sam Chlebowski: A players are people who haveinitiative, who can own projects from beginning to end, who think like an ownerand not like an employee.

[00:12:19] Sam Chlebowski: And I guess one of thequestions that I'd ask is, What happens when you need to hire a B player or a Cplayer, somebody who, it's just a job to them. How do you think about that? Howdo you approach that and what tips would you have for people who are hiring atscale?

[00:12:35] Jordan Ross: first off, Sam, I just wannashout you out cuz you were one of the best podcast.

[00:12:39] Jordan Ross: I've been on so many podcasts.Guys, you need to keep listening to this man. He knows what he's doing. Youlisten. what an amazing question. So this is actually something that I'verecently started to focus on, on my content because what happens when you'redoing sub million on an annualized level as an agency, that what usually thefirst one or two hires.

[00:12:57] Jordan Ross: Is, is outta necessity, not outof like, this person is the best person that we could hire for this role. A lotof times you will grow beyond them. Like when you get to two, 3 million, youcan afford better talent. You're probably gonna find someone that's better thanthat, but this person has ownership and they're probably not a player.

[00:13:12] Jordan Ross: How do you, the likelihood,right? Mm-hmm. How do you work through that? Right? So I, I think for me, let'sjust kind of going back, one, do we understand what their dreams, goals, andambitions are? I. Because one thing, Sam, that always that happens reallycommonly, divorces can be really ugly and a lot of times your team members canleave and it could be disastrous.

[00:13:37] Jordan Ross: You can lose clients with a badbreakup of employee. So one, if you're treating this person the right way, thethe whole time when you leave, Hey, I think I'm gonna be heading out. I don'tknow if this is the right fit for me or, Or you could bring together aconscious conversation, Hey, I wanna really sit down and just talk through yourfuture.

[00:13:53] Jordan Ross: And you go back to where thisconversation started. Where do you want to be in a year or two or three? Wheredo you see yourself growing in here? Like, and a lot of times if [00:14:00] there's a, if it's not fitting, bothparties will usually see that, usually, and the conversation doesn't become,let's get you to your next, like, let's get you off.

[00:14:08] Jordan Ross: Like, hey, let's figure out howwe can help you evolve to the next part of your career. That allows you to dosuccession planning that allows you to ensure that this person's taken care ofin their next role. Like you could help source that for them. Um, and I thinkthat's where it's just leaning on the principles of genuinely goodrelationships.

[00:14:28] Jordan Ross: When you do that, everyone isalways taking care of, like if I ever part ways with someone like where Iparting wa with, so on my sales team, I helped him build his dignity. He hadlike 10 K M R. Huge win for him and huge win for me wasn't ugly at all. Heactually a deal literally just closed from me.

[00:14:45] Jordan Ross: Amazing. Amazing. Before thispodcast, right? So the people you source and before your first million wereprobably not being a player, but if you treat them the right way and you constantlyunderstand what their needs are, when it gets to the point where it's not afit. Either A, you're gonna be able to part ways, um, respectively, or B,you're gonna have to move them into the role that enables them to succeed.

[00:15:08] Jordan Ross: Cuz you don't need only Aplayers, you need A and B players. But C players, in my definition, are theones that need consistent development and consistent like coaching. And you,you can't afford to have those people on your team. So for those people, youneed to cordially. Part ways. And a huge mistake a lot of agency owners make isgiving more loyalty than it's actually deserve.

[00:15:29] Jordan Ross: They, they're with me from thebeginning. Yeah. But what got you to one or 2 million is not gonna get you to10. And, and if you really want to get to 10, you have to have the people onthe ship that are gonna get you there. do you feel like that, uh, answer,

[00:15:40] Sam Chlebowski: I mean that absolutely nailedthe question for me Especially part of that too, about, some of those earlyhires and sometimes businesses founders, CEOs being a little bit more loyalthan they should. There's a really great book, I don't know if you've read it,the Hard Thing about Hard Things, by Ben [00:16:00]Horowitz, you know, kind of legendary Silicon Valley guy.

[00:16:02] Sam Chlebowski: And there's one specificsection about him having to. Basically demote one of his best friends that washired very early on to a lesser position to have him not, in charge of so much.And like the book says, it was a very hard thing, but at the end of the day, hewas able to, Make that work and keep everybody happy because, the person he wastalking to, they weren't gonna get a reduction of their salary or anything likethat.

[00:16:28] Sam Chlebowski: They were just shuffledaround, to have a role that was at that point in the company's growth, more fitfor their skills. basically he was saying that there's a way to frame thiswhere. The right people will understand that. The right people will understand,Hey, you were a great fit for this role at the time of where we were.

[00:16:46] Sam Chlebowski: We've grown past that, and Ithink that one of the mistakes that can happen, especially in corporateAmerica, but it can flow down to either high growth companies, startups, techstartups, you name it, is being afraid to have those canned discussions aboutwhy you're doing something.

[00:17:05] Jordan Ross: Oh my goodness. I love that youbrought up that point and I actually could not agree more, and I think onethings I learned through my marriage is the work you have to do.

[00:17:16] Jordan Ross: Personally, when you meet aperson that you're gonna spend the rest of your rest of your life with, is thesame exact work you're gonna have to do as a founder. Like, literally like, andguys, I had to go through a lot of therapy. I really did. You know, like it's,it's so interesting. In my professional world, I'm able to have candidconversations.

[00:17:31] Jordan Ross: I had to go through a lot oftherapy to make sure I could say what I was on my mind without. Making the remy wife upset cause I was just afraid I was gonna make her upset. And I thinkthat point about Ben Horowitz, it's, it's so true. And the right people willalways be down. So do you mind if I just drop in a quick story from a client Isaw where this really will click for maybe a lot of people I would love nothingmore.

[00:17:54] Jordan Ross: I love the, the real worldanecdotes. Let's go, let's hear it. So I worked with this company, um, jumpfour 50, um, in [00:18:00] 2022. They, they got acquired. I was working with them after their acquisition. when I, when I came into picture, we were on year eight of the company. So this is a multi eight figure, business, like doing more than 10 mil, like multiple eight figures.

[00:18:13] Jordan Ross: Right. I was meeting everyone ontheir team and I met employee number one. Employee number one was in adepartment. I can't say I don't wanna. Say which one he was in. He was in a department,he was not in a director level. So we had the two co-founders. They brought ona president, they brought on two guys who were overseeing the whole fulfillmentteam.

[00:18:31] Jordan Ross: And they had of like, so theythree heads of all the departments and then the departments, they haddirectors. So I think for each department they had two or three directors.Right. So creative paid, you know, analytics. Right? So they had another, youknow, 2, 4, 6, 8, like eight to 10 of those level. Then they had employeenumber one who was in like a senior level role.

[00:18:51] Jordan Ross: Mm-hmm. And I looked at that andI was like, dude, there's like almost 20 people that are ahead of this person.He's been here from day, like literally employee number one.

[00:18:58] Jordan Ross: That is fascinating. Like thatfor me was such a representation of good culture. Like, and these founderswere, Forbes 30 under 30 winners, right?

[00:19:06] Jordan Ross: Mm-hmm. And a lot of times thatyou like, are those people, like, they were so worthy of it Because if I lookedat this business, I was like the, the buy-in that they have that their firstemployee who saw probably 20 people come in after him, now are now ahead ofhim. And he was still down to be in the role he was, and he was so bought in.

[00:19:24] Jordan Ross: That is the possibilities whenyou truly care about people and have candid conversations and care about theirdevelopment.

[00:19:31] Jordan Ross: They got acquired a multi eightfigure exit, like it's amazing. And they only did that because they did theright things.

[00:19:36] Sam Chlebowski: It is so amazing when you canget that buy-in and you can get people to trust in the mission. I know it wassomething that we did a lot of work on, at the last company I was a part of,the one that was acquired, it was something though that didn't happen overnight

[00:19:50] Sam Chlebowski: And I would love to know fromyour perspective, while we're on this topic, are there any specifics that yousee as being particularly helpful to communicate [00:20:00]things about the company and about its goals, about its mission?

[00:20:03] Sam Chlebowski: Because I think at the end ofthe day, if you don't communicate those things, it's never going to happen.You're never gonna get that buy-in. And maybe you disagree, I don't know, but Iwould love to know your thoughts.

[00:20:13] Sam Chlebowski: I

[00:20:13] Jordan Ross: got a blueprint for you. Evenbetter. I got more than thoughts. Um, so I think let's just kind of go throughsome principles around this.

[00:20:20] Jordan Ross: I think the first thing it has tobe genuine, has to be like sincere. my mission with my business is to changethe world. Now it's the b h a. It's the big hairy, audacious goal that likewe'll never get to. Yeah. Cuz it's all the way up there. And I learned this atAmazon. I learned that people need a, a rallying cry to aspire for that thing.

[00:20:37] Jordan Ross: had teams, hundreds of employees,and my whole thing was, let's kick ass and let's be elite. Like let's be thenumber one like team in the world. So we would do a thing at the, in thewarehouse, I would say, when I say kick, you say ass and kick ass. But thenumber one thing, it's be world class, let's kick ass.

[00:20:57] Jordan Ross: That was the slogan I would makefor all my teams. So it was to be the number one team in the world, right. Thatwas sincere, right? It was to let's, let's wrap our identity in being that. SoI think for what yours is, right for me, let, it's to change the world. Mm-hmm.We'll never do that. We'll, we'll change people's lives and we'll changecommunities and we will make a ripple.

[00:21:14] Jordan Ross: but I really care about that. Ireally care about making an impact. So a lot of times, a lot of entrepreneursget in this for money, so like, Maybe just let's be the best in the world. Likethat's, that's the team we're gonna build. Like, cuz that's what I really careabout, right? So it has to come first and foremost with the intentionality oflike, what do I genuinely care about?

[00:21:32] Jordan Ross: What's sincere and like what'sauthentic to me? And then the, the second thing is you need to create values,principles around it. So at Amazon there was like 14 or 15. In my company wehave a little less than 10. And these are words that you can use to sourcetalent to review people against on annual reviews.

[00:21:50] Jordan Ross: Mm-hmm. And then bring up inmeetings. But then beyond that, you, you have a, you know, I call it the mvp,your mission, your vision, your purpose, your purposes [00:22:00]for me is to change the world. The values are what you rank people against. Andthe mission is like that short term thing. What's that five year goal that wecan get to?

[00:22:07] Jordan Ross: And for my company, it's athousand. We're, we're marching to a thousand clients. You talk about, you haveto talk about all three all the time. In your one-on-ones, in your all handsmeetings, they have to come up in random orders and you have to bring instories and anecdotes because we need to hear something seven times before weactually hear it.

[00:22:29] Jordan Ross: So to going back to the questionlike, how do you articulate this? Set the intention. Start with the p SimonSinek. Start with Y. Start with your purpose. Identify your core values,because people should genuinely be. Stack ranked against those things and theyshould be valued, and that should have some correlation to their compensation.

[00:22:48] Jordan Ross: And then identify the mission.Where's, where are we striving towards for my Amazon, um, team, the p in theend were the same. Like, let's be world class, let's kick ass, let's be thenumber one team in the world. And then we, we became number one. Then it'slike, let's, let's stay at number one for as long as possible.

[00:23:03] Jordan Ross: Right? And I would talk aboutthat all the fucking time, all the time. And that's how you do it as a founder,as a, as a leader, right? You talk about it and you bring into one-on-oneconversations. You bring into group conversations.

[00:23:13] Sam Chlebowski: One of the big pieces in therefor me is the goals, specifically aligning that around whether it's number ofclients, whether it's revenue, that was something that we did that I found wasreally important to at least a couple of our teams.

[00:23:26] Sam Chlebowski: Specifically sales, marketing,customer success. Aligning ourselves to those big numbers. at one point it was500, then it was a thousand, and then it was 2000, then it was 3000. And moreimportantly, when we reached those goals, we celebrated them we would, youknow, pop champagne in the office on a Friday afternoon after we had reachedone of those big, hairy, audacious goals that we never thought we'd be able todo. Because at the same time too, you know, if you don't celebrate those goals,they're not as no matter to the people who are working towards them.

[00:23:59] Sam Chlebowski: So [00:24:00]the other thing too I liked was, your idea of what is the overall vision and,You had shared one that worked for you, at previous businesses. One that workedfor us that I've found is anchoring yourself against a competitor or anchoringyourself to be number one in a certain space.

[00:24:18] Sam Chlebowski: If you have to go a little bitmore narrow with it, if you decided that's the path you want to take. We had areally big competitor who was. Super outdated, very similar service offeringand a very similar price point. but we had basically come in as the new kid inthe block and say, Hey, we want to crush them.

[00:24:36] Sam Chlebowski: we want more clients than theydo. We want to dominate this market. And that was another thing that I've foundthat can work really good to sort of anchor that mission into something, youknow, digestible. So,

[00:24:46] Jordan Ross: People need something to aspirefor and they need to hear it all the time. Whether that's in micro winds orthat's just in success stories, that's just in anecdotes.

[00:24:57] Jordan Ross: We, they need a North Star, andthat North Star can be a variation of several things To your point. But youknow, if we don't have a north star psychologically, like Tony Robbins says, ifyou're not growing, you're dying. Yep. It's so true. So enable your people tofeel like we're moving towards something.

[00:25:15] Sam Chlebowski: One of the articles that youhave on your website is how to onboard clients successfully. And this issomething I wanted to ask you. Somebody who is an expert in these kind ofprocesses and automation improvement, all the way from the. Systems that you'reusing up to the people that you're hiring and how you're building out thoseteams when it comes to onboarding.

[00:25:35] Sam Chlebowski: I would love for you to justbreak down, the biggest mistakes that you see in terms of client onboarding.

[00:25:41] Jordan Ross: So before we get into themistakes, I want to clearly define. I believe there's two types of onboardingthat happen with, whether it's a team member or a client. I actually believethey're the same.

[00:25:50] Jordan Ross: talk about systems. So I thinkthe first one, there's technical onboarding and that's the streamlined process.Let's get them, let's get their access, [00:26:00]let's get them into the channels, let's whatever that has to be smooth and.Then there's psychological onboarding where I emotionally and psychologicallyam bought in and people just don't get bought in that you have to bringintentionality to that.

[00:26:14] Jordan Ross: So I would say the biggestmistakes are people don't know about. Number two, people know about technicalonboarding. People don't know about the concepts of psychology around, um,priming and planting the seed and unconscious bias and. You know, the one that,you know, people know about Spy's remorse people, everyone knows about that.

[00:26:33] Jordan Ross: But like, how, how can we notonly mitigate that, but start to put the psych, the psychological seeds intotheir mind and then, you know, harvest them over time so they stay with us fora really long time. So, uh, that's the biggest mistake is people don't knowwhat those are.

[00:26:47] Sam Chlebowski: Holy cow. You kind of justblew my mind with that one because I mean, I'll admit here, I didn't know thatI had never broken those two things out, and now that I look at the twodifferent sides of it, technological onboarding and you know, psychologicalonboarding, it's like, man, that could have solved a lot of problems waysooner.

[00:27:11] Sam Chlebowski: Oh yeah. yes.

[00:27:13] Sam Chlebowski: Sometimes I think that we canlean into technology so hard, and not to say that you shouldn't be, not to saythat you shouldn't be trying to automate parts of that repetitive process, butI think that if you overlook the psychological side, It harms the onboardingprocess and it can leave a terrible taste in your client's mouth, even if itisn't necessarily buyer's remorse.

[00:27:36] Sam Chlebowski: it was like, oh, well that waskind of clunky. And it can also, , at a larger level, set the tone for anentire project. the onboarding process isn't handled properly, so that isreally interesting to hear. I think it would be helpful actually, if you wantedto kind of go into those a little bit further.

[00:27:51] Jordan Ross: Yeah, so for me, the definitionof psychological onboarding, the definition, the definition of success, by thetime the person is done, they are bought in to [00:28:00]your business, the plan that you have for them, and that they are so bought inthat they're now willing to give you a little bit of like wiggle room if it'snot perfect.

[00:28:08] Jordan Ross: So what's psychologicalonboarding? Let's, let's anchor this into a few, um, principles. So one of thefirst principles is called priming. So priming is a psychological principlethat states that we as humans are influenced by our environment. We areunconsciously programmed to perceive our environment based on the environmentalfactors that are in front of us.

[00:28:25] Jordan Ross: So the story of priming, therewas a psychological study by like, Let's just say Stanford, but it's probablynot Stanford, but that's a smart school, whatever. Um, Stanford gave a hundredpeople a hot coffee and a hundred people a cold coffee, and they said, allright, I want you to pick one person at random.

[00:28:43] Jordan Ross: Give them the coffee. And thensay, oh, can you, my phone's ring? Can you hold this? You give them the coffee,whatever. And then five seconds, 10 seconds later, someone walks up to and say,Hey, would you like to take this? Read the short story. We'll give you ahundred bucks. So 100 people read the short story that had hot coffee on coldcoffee.

[00:28:59] Jordan Ross: So 200 people in total. And thequestions were, what are your thoughts about the protagonist? It's over 80% ofthe hot, hot people. The people with hot coffee said that the protagonist waswarm, loving, and accepting. Over 80% of the people that held the cold coffeesaid the protagonist was cold.

[00:29:15] Jordan Ross: Disheartening and rude. Samestory. Different sample groups. One factor, hot and cold coffee. Wow. We needto give our clients the warm coffee. What does that mean? Right? So when you,uh, when I, I closed the deal this morning when I closed that deal. Congrats.Yeah. Yeah. Um, so when I, when that deal closed, you know what I did, Sam, Ijust want to first and foremost congratulate you on making the best decisionyou're going to make this entire year.

[00:29:43] Jordan Ross: And here's why. That is warmcoffee. I'm psychologically priming them to believe. How many times do someonemake a large investment and they get celebrated and they, they'recongratulated. What do you, what do you tie the concepts of? Congratulationstowards? You just won something. [00:30:00] Sothat's one way I do it too, right?

[00:30:02] Jordan Ross: So on top of that, another waythat I love to do is a personalized welcome from the founder. If you're not inthe sales process, Hey, Sam, um, just Jordan, Ross here. Quick Loom video. Iwanted to just congratulate you or welcoming you to the community, whatever,whatever. additional ways to psychologically onboard them is another tool iscalled planting the seed.

[00:30:20] Jordan Ross: Planting the seed is a processwhere if we state something that will become on an unconscious level, thereceptor or the receiver of that message will. Start to want to believe, andwe'll start to believe it's going to happen. Sam want to drop? So let's justsay you're two days into it or a day into it.

[00:30:35] Jordan Ross: Sam, I'm so excited that you'renow part of the community. I just wanted to show you this roadmap of what'sgoing to happen to your business. So right now you're doing about a milliondollars a month and through our process at the end of 90 days, we're gonna getyou to $10 million a month. And I'm so excited to see your face when you arejust gleeful and so happy.

[00:30:52] Jordan Ross: When we get to that number andyou look at me and say, Jordan, you are right. We did it. I, I'm just sograteful for your service. I told this person how they're going to feel. So nowwhen I say I'm so excited to see your face, that person in their mind sees thatthey start to literally live that experience.

[00:31:09] Jordan Ross: And now on an unconscious level,that person, it's called anchoring, that person's now anchored to believe thatthat has to happen. That's now we build an unconscious bias that that willhappen. So, I'm sorry, there's a. Ambulance about to drive by, but no, you'refine. When we, when we do these things with our clients, one, it gives us theability to truly go out and serve them.

[00:31:32] Jordan Ross: Where if it's not perfect,they're, they have a cognitive bias that something great is gonna happen, thatI feel warm and I love this place. And they, these people seem, they, theycan't put their finger on it, but they just are bought in psychologicalonboarding. This works for both employees and for te and for clients, a great.

[00:31:50] Jordan Ross: Documentary, it's the WeWorkdocumentary. I think it's on Hulu. The Founder of that business was great atonboarding talent and there's a scene where you could [00:32:00]see him get people into the conference room on day one and just get so hypewith them. This, that is psychological onboarding. When we do that, our clientsgive us a longer rope and give us the benefit of the doubt, which allows us to,if the process, the technical process is not perfect, get there psychologicalonboarding.

[00:32:15] Sam Chlebowski: I mean, mic dropped rightthere. and I'll, I'll admit to you like hearing this, my first inclination is,well, is that like, overselling or is that like over promising? And then themore you got into it, I'm like, no, it's none of that.

[00:32:29] Sam Chlebowski: You are just sharing theexcitement of the service that you are providing, but it's intentional, and Ithink that if you're not intentional, you're gonna have a reaction from thatclient either way, right? Why not be excited about it? Why not congratulatethem? Why not share with them the vision of what it looks like, you know, 90days down the road?

[00:32:51] Sam Chlebowski: Because if you don't do that,you create, create a reaction that's very like a reaction that's very ho hum.Or like, uh, okay, well I just, I'm paying for this, whatever. But once youframe it that way and you show you, you know, list out kind of the breakdownand how you can build intentionality into that, it becomes a lot easier todigest and breakdown into specific actions of things that, you know, even rightnow we could be doing at motion.io to share that excitement.

[00:33:19] Sam Chlebowski: With our customers and withour users I think at the end of the day too, if you set the tone early on, oncethe project is done, that excitement's gonna carry all the way through the,just the same way. I feel like a bad onboarding experience carries through. Agood one does too.

[00:33:34] Sam Chlebowski: And at the end of the day,when that project is completed, they're gonna be twice as likely to referpeople to you.

[00:33:39] Jordan Ross: A hundred percent. Right. if Iwere to summarize all of this, there's two schools of thought that matter for abusiness. That's it. Only two. That is literally it. If you could grow yourbusiness from two schools of thought, you'll be fine.

[00:33:51] Jordan Ross: First one around systems, right?It's lean operations. Mm-hmm. And the second one, it's around people. It'spsychology. That's it. [00:34:00] Literally.Period. Right. If you know how to do, if you know how to be a lean operator andyou know how to influence people through psychology, you'll succeed. That'sall. It's.

[00:34:07] Sam Chlebowski: This Jordan has been anabsolutely awesome chat and I can't thank you enough for coming on.

[00:34:10] Jordan Ross: Thanks for having me.

[00:34:15] Sam Chlebowski: I feel like I could sit here honestly for hours and getinto this stuff. It's like all of this kind of, you know, looking at processes,looking at personnel, looking at, you know, how you can scale is like reallywhere I've found my home and is what I love to do.

[00:34:32] Sam Chlebowski: Within the businesses that Iwork with. So thank you again, and thank you so much for sharing your expertise,because I've learned a lot too.

[00:34:39] Jordan Ross: Dude, it has been my pleasure. Ilove this, right? I'm so blessed I could run a business that is truly built onmy passions. And I think, uh, if you're listening to this, right, I hope you,you saw that passion today and, uh, I would imagine I said some things that youmight not have heard, so I would hope you've got some value too.

[00:34:54] Sam Chlebowski: Yeah, it definitely is thecase for me and I'm sure it'll be the case for our listeners. So with that,Jordan, two final questions before we wrap things up here. First one's abusiness, one second one's a fun one. For my first question to you, if peoplewanna learn more about you and the work that you are doing, where should theygo to find you?

[00:35:10] Jordan Ross: Yeah, so we got a few places dependingon where you want to hang out on the interwebs. So the website is 8figureagency.co.That's the website. You could check that out. If you're listening to this andyou're like, I wanna talk to you, Jordan – go to 8figureagency.co/call. Youcould check me out on Twitter.

[00:35:28] Jordan Ross: That's probably my most prominentsocial platform right now. Jordan underscore Ross, underscore eight F. And Ihave YouTube. I think it is the same handle. I'm not actually sure and Iprobably should know that. And I recently started a Facebook group who, ifyou're on Facebook eight figure agency group, you'll see my face, which I justrealized you're listening to this.

[00:35:48] Jordan Ross: So you actually don't know whatthat looks like. the group is blue, so that's where you could find my mind. Butyou put out a YouTube version of this though, so maybe they can see that. Seeit there. If you watch this and then you see my face.

[00:35:57] Sam Chlebowski: Very cool, and we will putlinks to all of those [00:36:00] things in theshow notes of this episode, so you don't have to worry about searching those.

[00:36:03] Sam Chlebowski: Just go to our website,motion.io and click our blog, and you'll see the show notes for this podcastthere. With that, Jordan, my final question to you, when you are not working,how do you like to spend your time? What do you like to do?

[00:36:16] Jordan Ross: Hanging out with my wife on thebeach. We live on the beach in Santa Monica.

[00:36:19] Jordan Ross: we're not beach bombs. We love totravel. We did five weeks off in Italy this summer. So part of my tagline,right? Build the dream, not a prison. I think a lot of you probably listeningare in a prison where you can't step away. You, you got in it to build thisdream life and travel and food and fun and whatever it is, but you ended upbeing stuck now where you can't break pla, pass a plateau and you're in it.

[00:36:41] Jordan Ross: My whole thing is build the bus,build the business. I could work without me so I could do the fun things. Andfor me, it's travel, it's food, it's hanging out with my wife and just dancing.We love house music. I did wanna ask a follow up question to that question.

[00:36:53] Jordan Ross: Where was your favorite area in,in Italy that you went to? So Lake Como is like my favorite place in Italy. wewill be buying a place in Lake Como at some point. but we did Sicily this year,which was new and in Sicily it was Terranea, which for those of you that are WhiteLotus fans, that's where White Lotus was shot.

[00:37:09] Jordan Ross: Yeah, Sicily is bomb.com. It isstill a lot cheaper. Compared to the other places, the busy tourist places,it's still on the DL. Uh, but like Terranea, specifically, like near MountAetna, like so dl, um, you guys gotta go there. That place was fire. It was soamazing. Beautiful food was great. People are great. That is amazing.

[00:37:34] Sam Chlebowski: Yeah. I've, watched theAnthony Bourdain episode on Sicily. I've always wanted to go, haven't been. Iwent to Italy a couple years ago and one of my favorite places was a littletown, Farnese Italy. It was like, I think maybe 2000 people live there. One ofthose towns you kind of see in Tuscany that's built on a plateau with like thetunnels under it looks like a castle, but I have not been to Sicily.

[00:37:57] Sam Chlebowski: I really, really want to go.Now you have me, uh, [00:38:00] all amped up,ready to look at some plane tickets. Sicily.

[00:38:03] Jordan Ross: Yeah, Sicily was great. one moreplug. Porto wine country where Port Wines come from. It's a must. That placeblew my freaking mind too. I'll say,

[00:38:10] Sam Chlebowski: oh, really?

[00:38:11] Jordan Ross: Beautiful. Insane. The nicestwine country I've ever been to.

[00:38:13] Jordan Ross: And we've been to alot of them. Tuscany, Italy, all in California.

[00:38:17] Jordan Ross: So yeah. Sam, I gotta bounce, but thank you so much for having me on guys. Thank you for listening and I'll throwone more plug. If you want to personally reach out to me, I'm available viaemail too, jordan@eightfigureagency.co.

[00:38:27] Jordan Ross: I love emails from podcastsbecause I think podcasts is my favorite platform. So shout out.

[00:38:32] Sam Chlebowski: Amazing stuff. Thank you somuch Jordan. And until next time everybody, Sam Chlebowski from DesigningGrowth Signing Off. Have fun, good luck, and go crush it. Take care. Everyeverybody.