From Employee at Amazon to Scaling Multi-Million Dollar Agencies

[00:00:00] Jordan Ross: I went to Amazon with the only
intention, to learn how to run operations and learn why is Amazon the best
business in the world.

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

[00:00:16] Jordan Ross: I started consulting businesses
on the side, right? I started to pick up clients on my days off and sometimes
during my work days — and I immediately realized, holy crap, no one knows what
they’re doing. No one knows how to source, hire onboard, train, fulfill, manage
your time strategy, reverse engineering their success.

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

[00:00:37] Intro Music Plays

[00:00:47] Sam Chlebowski: Happy Thursday everybody, and
welcome back to Designing Growth. Sam Schabowski here, host of this podcast and
co-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 helps
agencies reach eight figures in annualized revenue through better operational
fulfillment and management processes.

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

[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 to
speak with you today because a lot of the things that you are doing and the
challenges you’re helping people overcome on that road to scale at eight figure
agency is things that I have seen firsthand at a previous business.

[00:01:28] Sam Chlebowski: A website design and marketing
agency in the mental health space that we grew to the mid seven figures in
annual 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 what
you are doing right now.

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

[00:01:52] Jordan Ross: I went to Amazon with the only
intention, to learn how to run operations and learn why is Amazon the [00:02:00] best business in the world. That was my
opinion. That was back in 2016. When I graduated, I went to Ohio State. I. Was
managing 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 the
intention, 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 do
build my business, I’m gonna bring these skills. And I, I was dead on with
that. when I was there I managed over 2,500 people.

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

[00:02:42] Jordan Ross: I started consulting businesses
on the side, right? I started to pick up clients. On my days off and sometimes
during my work days, and I immediately realized, holy crap, no one knows what
they’re doing. No one knows how to source, hire onboard, train, fulfill, like
manage, manage your time strategy, reverse engineering their success, like
customer success.

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

[00:03:21] Jordan Ross: I was like, there’s a massive
opportunity here.

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

[00:03:36] Jordan Ross: I would love to work for you for
free. Sam Lister turned into a success story. We scaled him to a million dollar
agency. 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 holding
company now. His agency does over 3 million annually, but his holding company
does 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 bringing
the intentionality.

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

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

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

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

[00:04:42] Sam Chlebowski: At that time, you know, I was
employee number two or three, depending on which way you slice it. And having
to wear all of those hats at once. You learn just so much and you have your
hands in so many different parts of the business that you never thought you
would, but I love your story specifically because you went out with this master
plan 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 as
successful 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 into
podcasts in 20 14, 20 15.

[00:05:19] Jordan Ross: And one of those early podcasts
was like, if you want to become an entrepreneur, go mess up on someone else’s
dime. 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 within
that niche, that agency niche that you’re working with? Like is it primarily
b2c, b2b? What kind of services do most of the clients you’re working with seem
to be offering?

[00:05:42] Jordan Ross: We have a really wide range of
clients. our smallest clients are doing 10 to 20 K a month, and our largest
client is doing over 120 million annually. And just part of that’s the inbound
funnel, Over the course of the last two years, I was like, I keep getting this
really wide range of sizes of [00:06:00] agencies.
We need to create offerings to accommodate. So it’s seamless. And then when it
comes 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 TikTok
agencies, YouTube agencies, content podcast agencies. Our clients literally do
everything. So there’s no rhyme or reason as to like the types of clients we
have. 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 is
systematically. 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, at
like a hundred to 120 k, at two 50 k, at five mil, at 10 mil, 20. Like there’s
these plateau areas and the plateau is always when you’re doing less than 2
million, it usually when you’re doing less than a million, it usually has to do
with 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. And
that’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 do
this. There’s a way to do this that will save you a shit ton of time. That will
make your people execute, that will bring in the right people, that will make
sure 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, you
maintain your reputation, and now you could get yourself out of the operation
focused 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 matter
for the client that we’re working with, that’s doing 120 million annually.

[00:07:48] Sam Chlebowski: Especially businesses who are
trying to reach a new level of scale. Either they’ve built a system that isn’t
working or they have yet to build a system to solve a future problem or a
future need. what would you [00:08:00] say the
main types of problems that you are seeing there?

[00:08:02] Sam Chlebowski: How do they manifest
themselves 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 then
let’s go with the people system. Cause I think I call them hard and soft
systems. Hard systems were software oriented and soft systems more like people
oriented. So the, the first mistake is, I’m gonna give an quick analogy of
building a house.

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

[00:08:38] Jordan Ross: And they go to the plot of land
and they just start digging and they start building, they start scraping
building and they get to one story in one room and they’re like, I have no clue
how to get this to two. Holy shit, I didn’t screw in this electrical. I have no
plumbing That is exactly what they do compared to, Hey, let’s, we got this plot
of 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 we
can intentionally get here. Right? The story started with you asking me, how’d
I 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, they
just jump in focusing on the next month too, right? The number one. Reason
entrepreneurs, anyone is successful. This is a golden rule, is reverse
engineering your success. So the system to do that is, hey, let’s, from a
strategy perspective, let’s build that blueprint. Let’s reverse engineer success.

[00:09:28] Jordan Ross: Do you want this to be a million
dollar home? A $10 million home? A hundred million dollar home like community
megalithic structure? Then once we understand what we want to build, what’s the
roadmap 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 we
need to execute to onboard them? Deliver results in month one, retain them for
12 months, for 24 months. And what are all the interdependencies, right?
People, software, communication, workflows and all that, all that stuff. And we
call that, um, [00:10:00] the, the process
roadmap. So that’s the first thing.

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

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

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

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

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

[00:11:25] Jordan Ross: What are, what’s their love
language? Do they need like a words of affirmation or do they need like an act
of service? Do you take something off their plate? Right? So when it comes to
people, 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 build
intentional roadmaps for their career, careers and their lives, they’re not
gonna go anywhere.

[00:11:47] Jordan Ross: As long as the financial
compensation’s set up, why would they

[00:11:51] Sam Chlebowski: You’d mentioned trying to find
people who are there for the long term, people that you think could stick with
you 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 of
people A players, and. I think one of the things that is hard is once you get
to 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 have
initiative, who can own projects from beginning to end, who think like an owner
and not like an employee.

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

[00:12:35] Jordan Ross: first off, Sam, I just wanna
shout 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. You
listen. what an amazing question. So this is actually something that I’ve
recently started to focus on, on my content because what happens when you’re
doing sub million on an annualized level as an agency, that what usually the
first one or two hires.

[00:12:57] Jordan Ross: Is, is outta necessity, not out
of like, this person is the best person that we could hire for this role. A lot
of times you will grow beyond them. Like when you get to two, 3 million, you
can afford better talent. You’re probably gonna find someone that’s better than
that, 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’s
just kind of going back, one, do we understand what their dreams, goals, and
ambitions are? I. Because one thing, Sam, that always that happens really
commonly, divorces can be really ugly and a lot of times your team members can
leave and it could be disastrous.

[00:13:37] Jordan Ross: You can lose clients with a bad
breakup of employee. So one, if you’re treating this person the right way, the
the whole time when you leave, Hey, I think I’m gonna be heading out. I don’t
know if this is the right fit for me or, Or you could bring together a
conscious conversation, Hey, I wanna really sit down and just talk through your
future.

[00:13:53] Jordan Ross: And you go back to where this
conversation started. Where do you want to be in a year or two or three? Where
do you see yourself growing in here? Like, and a lot of times if [00:14:00] there’s a, if it’s not fitting, both
parties 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 how
we can help you evolve to the next part of your career. That allows you to do
succession planning that allows you to ensure that this person’s taken care of
in their next role. Like you could help source that for them. Um, and I think
that’s where it’s just leaning on the principles of genuinely good
relationships.

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

[00:14:45] Jordan Ross: Amazing. Amazing. Before this
podcast, right? So the people you source and before your first million were
probably not being a player, but if you treat them the right way and you constantly
understand what their needs are, when it gets to the point where it’s not a
fit. 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 A
players, you need A and B players. But C players, in my definition, are the
ones 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, you
need to cordially. Part ways. And a huge mistake a lot of agency owners make is
giving more loyalty than it’s actually deserve.

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

[00:15:40] Sam Chlebowski: I mean that absolutely nailed
the question for me Especially part of that too, about, some of those early
hires and sometimes businesses founders, CEOs being a little bit more loyal
than 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 specific
section about him having to. Basically demote one of his best friends that was
hired 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, he
was able to, Make that work and keep everybody happy because, the person he was
talking to, they weren’t gonna get a reduction of their salary or anything like
that.

[00:16:28] Sam Chlebowski: They were just shuffled
around, to have a role that was at that point in the company’s growth, more fit
for their skills. basically he was saying that there’s a way to frame this
where. 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 I
think that one of the mistakes that can happen, especially in corporate
America, but it can flow down to either high growth companies, startups, tech
startups, you name it, is being afraid to have those canned discussions about
why you’re doing something.

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

[00:17:16] Jordan Ross: Personally, when you meet a
person that you’re gonna spend the rest of your rest of your life with, is the
same exact work you’re gonna have to do as a founder. Like, literally like, and
guys, 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 candid
conversations.

[00:17:31] Jordan Ross: I had to go through a lot of
therapy to make sure I could say what I was on my mind without. Making the re
my wife upset cause I was just afraid I was gonna make her upset. And I think
that point about Ben Horowitz, it’s, it’s so true. And the right people will
always be down. So do you mind if I just drop in a quick story from a client I
saw where this really will click for maybe a lot of people I would love nothing
more.

[00:17:54] Jordan Ross: I love the, the real world
anecdotes. Let’s go, let’s hear it. So I worked with this company, um, jump
four 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 on
their team and I met employee number one. Employee number one was in a
department. 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 on
a president, they brought on two guys who were overseeing the whole fulfillment
team.

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

[00:18:51] Jordan Ross: Mm-hmm. And I looked at that and
I 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 that
for me was such a representation of good culture. Like, and these founders
were, Forbes 30 under 30 winners, right?

[00:19:06] Jordan Ross: Mm-hmm. And a lot of times that
you like, are those people, like, they were so worthy of it Because if I looked
at this business, I was like the, the buy-in that they have that their first
employee who saw probably 20 people come in after him, now are now ahead of
him. 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 when
you truly care about people and have candid conversations and care about their
development.

[00:19:31] Jordan Ross: They got acquired a multi eight
figure exit, like it’s amazing. And they only did that because they did the
right things.

[00:19:36] Sam Chlebowski: It is so amazing when you can
get that buy-in and you can get people to trust in the mission. I know it was
something 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 from
your perspective, while we’re on this topic, are there any specifics that you
see 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 of
the 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 I
would love to know your thoughts.

[00:20:13] Sam Chlebowski: I

[00:20:13] Jordan Ross: got a blueprint for you. Even
better. I got more than thoughts. Um, so I think let’s just kind of go through
some principles around this.

[00:20:20] Jordan Ross: I think the first thing it has to
be genuine, has to be like sincere. my mission with my business is to change
the world. Now it’s the b h a. It’s the big hairy, audacious goal that like
we’ll never get to. Yeah. Cuz it’s all the way up there. And I learned this at
Amazon. 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 the
number one like team in the world. So we would do a thing at the, in the
warehouse, I would say, when I say kick, you say ass and kick ass. But the
number one thing, it’s be world class, let’s kick ass.

[00:20:57] Jordan Ross: That was the slogan I would make
for all my teams. So it was to be the number one team in the world, right. That
was sincere, right? It was to let’s, let’s wrap our identity in being that. So
I 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 change
communities and we will make a ripple.

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

[00:21:32] Jordan Ross: What’s sincere and like what’s
authentic 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 we
have a little less than 10. And these are words that you can use to source
talent to review people against on annual reviews.

[00:21:50] Jordan Ross: Mm-hmm. And then bring up in
meetings. 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. And
the mission is like that short term thing. What’s that five year goal that we
can get to?

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

[00:22:29] Jordan Ross: So to going back to the question
like, how do you articulate this? Set the intention. Start with the p Simon
Sinek. Start with Y. Start with your purpose. Identify your core values,
because people should genuinely be. Stack ranked against those things and they
should 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 the
end were the same. Like, let’s be world class, let’s kick ass, let’s be the
number one team in the world. And then we, we became number one. Then it’s
like, let’s, let’s stay at number one for as long as possible.

[00:23:03] Jordan Ross: Right? And I would talk about
that 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-one
conversations. You bring into group conversations.

[00:23:13] Sam Chlebowski: One of the big pieces in there
for me is the goals, specifically aligning that around whether it’s number of
clients, whether it’s revenue, that was something that we did that I found was
really 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 was
500, then it was a thousand, and then it was 2000, then it was 3000. And more
importantly, when we reached those goals, we celebrated them we would, you
know, pop champagne in the office on a Friday afternoon after we had reached
one of those big, hairy, audacious goals that we never thought we’d be able to
do. 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 worked
for us that I’ve found is anchoring yourself against a competitor or anchoring
yourself to be number one in a certain space.

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

[00:24:36] Sam Chlebowski: we want more clients than they
do. We want to dominate this market. And that was another thing that I’ve found
that can work really good to sort of anchor that mission into something, you
know, digestible. So,

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

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

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

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

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

[00:25:50] Jordan Ross: talk about systems. So I think
the 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 psychologically
am bought in and people just don’t get bought in that you have to bring
intentionality to that.

[00:26:14] Jordan Ross: So I would say the biggest
mistakes are people don’t know about. Number two, people know about technical
onboarding. 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 not
only mitigate that, but start to put the psych, the psychological seeds into
their mind and then, you know, harvest them over time so they stay with us for
a really long time. So, uh, that’s the biggest mistake is people don’t know
what those are.

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

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

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

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

[00:27:51] Jordan Ross: Yeah, so for me, the definition
of psychological onboarding, the definition, the definition of success, by the
time 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 in
that they’re now willing to give you a little bit of like wiggle room if it’s
not perfect.

[00:28:08] Jordan Ross: So what’s psychological
onboarding? Let’s, let’s anchor this into a few, um, principles. So one of the
first principles is called priming. So priming is a psychological principle
that states that we as humans are influenced by our environment. We are
unconsciously programmed to perceive our environment based on the environmental
factors that are in front of us.

[00:28:25] Jordan Ross: So the story of priming, there
was a psychological study by like, Let’s just say Stanford, but it’s probably
not Stanford, but that’s a smart school, whatever. Um, Stanford gave a hundred
people a hot coffee and a hundred people a cold coffee, and they said, all
right, I want you to pick one person at random.

[00:28:43] Jordan Ross: Give them the coffee. And then
say, 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 a
hundred bucks. So 100 people read the short story that had hot coffee on cold
coffee.

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

[00:29:15] Jordan Ross: Disheartening and rude. Same
story. Different sample groups. One factor, hot and cold coffee. Wow. We need
to 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, I
just want to first and foremost congratulate you on making the best decision
you’re going to make this entire year.

[00:29:43] Jordan Ross: And here’s why. That is warm
coffee. I’m psychologically priming them to believe. How many times do someone
make a large investment and they get celebrated and they, they’re
congratulated. What do you, what do you tie the concepts of? Congratulations
towards? You just won something. [00:30:00] So
that’s one way I do it too, right?

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

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

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

[00:30:52] Jordan Ross: When we get to that number and
you look at me and say, Jordan, you are right. We did it. I, I’m just so
grateful for your service. I told this person how they’re going to feel. So now
when I say I’m so excited to see your face, that person in their mind sees that
they 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 that
that has to happen. That’s now we build an unconscious bias that that will
happen. So, I’m sorry, there’s a. Ambulance about to drive by, but no, you’re
fine. When we, when we do these things with our clients, one, it gives us the
ability 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, that
I feel warm and I love this place. And they, these people seem, they, they
can’t put their finger on it, but they just are bought in psychological
onboarding. This works for both employees and for te and for clients, a great.

[00:31:50] Jordan Ross: Documentary, it’s the WeWork
documentary. I think it’s on Hulu. The Founder of that business was great at
onboarding 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 hype
with them. This, that is psychological onboarding. When we do that, our clients
give 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 psychological
onboarding.

[00:32:15] Sam Chlebowski: I mean, mic dropped right
there. 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 the
more you got into it, I’m like, no, it’s none of that.

[00:32:29] Sam Chlebowski: You are just sharing the
excitement of the service that you are providing, but it’s intentional, and I
think that if you’re not intentional, you’re gonna have a reaction from that
client either way, right? Why not be excited about it? Why not congratulate
them? Why not share with them the vision of what it looks like, you know, 90
days 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 you
frame it that way and you show you, you know, list out kind of the breakdown
and how you can build intentionality into that, it becomes a lot easier to
digest and breakdown into specific actions of things that, you know, even right
now we could be doing at motion.io to share that excitement.

[00:33:19] Sam Chlebowski: With our customers and with
our users I think at the end of the day too, if you set the tone early on, once
the 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. A
good 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 refer
people to you.

[00:33:39] Jordan Ross: A hundred percent. Right. if I
were to summarize all of this, there’s two schools of thought that matter for a
business. That’s it. Only two. That is literally it. If you could grow your
business 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’s
psychology. That’s it. [00:34:00] Literally.
Period. Right. If you know how to do, if you know how to be a lean operator and
you know how to influence people through psychology, you’ll succeed. That’s
all. It’s.

[00:34:07] Sam Chlebowski: This Jordan has been an
absolutely 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 get
into 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 really
where I’ve found my home and is what I love to do.

[00:34:32] Sam Chlebowski: Within the businesses that I
work 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. I
love this, right? I’m so blessed I could run a business that is truly built on
my 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 you
might not have heard, so I would hope you’ve got some value too.

[00:34:54] Sam Chlebowski: Yeah, it definitely is the
case 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 a
business, one second one’s a fun one. For my first question to you, if people
wanna learn more about you and the work that you are doing, where should they
go to find you?

[00:35:10] Jordan Ross: Yeah, so we got a few places depending
on 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 and
you’re like, I wanna talk to you, Jordan – go to 8figureagency.co/call. You
could check me out on Twitter.

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

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

[00:35:57] Sam Chlebowski: Very cool, and we will put
links to all of those [00:36:00] things in the
show 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 podcast
there. 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 the
beach. We live on the beach in Santa Monica.

[00:36:19] Jordan Ross: we’re not beach bombs. We love to
travel. 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 listening
are in a prison where you can’t step away. You, you got in it to build this
dream life and travel and food and fun and whatever it is, but you ended up
being 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. And
for 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. we
will 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 White
Lotus fans, that’s where White Lotus was shot.

[00:37:09] Jordan Ross: Yeah, Sicily is bomb.com. It is
still 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 Mount
Aetna, like so dl, um, you guys gotta go there. That place was fire. It was so
amazing. Beautiful food was great. People are great. That is amazing.

[00:37:34] Sam Chlebowski: Yeah. I’ve, watched the
Anthony Bourdain episode on Sicily. I’ve always wanted to go, haven’t been. I
went to Italy a couple years ago and one of my favorite places was a little
town, Farnese Italy. It was like, I think maybe 2000 people live there. One of
those towns you kind of see in Tuscany that’s built on a plateau with like the
tunnels 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 more
plug. Porto wine country where Port Wines come from. It’s a must. That place
blew my freaking mind too. I’ll say,

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

[00:38:11] Jordan Ross: Beautiful. Insane. The nicest
wine country I’ve ever been to.

[00:38:13] Jordan Ross: And we’ve been to a
lot 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 throw
one more plug. If you want to personally reach out to me, I’m available via
email too, [email protected].

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

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