Full Transcript
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Host opens the episode with a teaser from Chiron on the "lazy entrepreneur" principle, then introduces the guest.
Host (Tiffany): I love investing in really lazy entrepreneurs because they're like, "This happens, this happens, and I make a lot of money." That's it. The hardworking, smart entrepreneurs have this complex web of businesses, and there's only one probable shift that you have to make to the next business. So let me give you the framework.
Host: Meet Chiron Shvatza, investment banker turned serial entrepreneur and CEO of Acquisition.com alongside Leila and Alex Hormozi. He made five exits and scaled two companies to over $8 billion. And today he's going to reveal his money-making secrets.
Chiron Shvatza: I will tell you probably one-third of my net worth has been created from my email list.
Host: What? And the exact playbook he would use to grow any brand. We fear talking to our customers. We think that they want the extra calls. They want the hand-delivered baskets. But they don't care about most of those things. The two best questions to ask are: what is one thing, if I took it away, would make this not valuable for you anymore -- and the second is -- that will probably get you to a $300,000 business very quickly.
Channel housekeeping -- "What's Your Dream" project update and subscription request.
Host: Previous videos we have talked about a project called "What's Your Dream." We're changing things up -- we are now going to be looking for various dreams that we can help with in small ways. So let us know in the comments what your dream is. Our team is going to be looking through all of those comments and you just might hear from us. All right guys, let's get back -- wait -- can you subscribe? I don't know how to do this. This is so awkward.
Host: Sean, if I wanted to 10x my company, what would guarantee that I don't accomplish that?
Chiron: A lot of times people think that they have to improve and grow every other part of their business. But if you actually just improved one part of your business, everything else will be forced to lift with it. To do great things, we must do fewer things. And unless we accept that, it gets very hard to build a scalable business. Because if you think being a million-dollar business is complex, imagine a hundred-million-dollar business. The complexity is not linear. It is extremely exponential. So our job is to figure out what are the few things that I can do and do them extremely well.
Host: Yeah. So is there a way that people who are currently trying to scale can figure out what is that one thing they should focus on for this next season? How do they evaluate that?
Chiron: The easiest way to figure out the thing to focus on in your business is to pick the thing in your head and then assume that you've accomplished that goal. Hey, let's assume I've already got all the leads that I want. Does everything work? Oh no -- we'll need to hire more people. We'll need to get more marketing. You have to go through the assumption phase because the last thing you want to have happen is you do the thing and then you get stuck with everything else.
Chiron: Also, it's really important to apply some kind of diagnostic to your business. In a service business, it is three things: traffic, systems, and skills. The job of traffic is to fill the funnel with opportunities. The job of systems is to convert those opportunities into appointments, cash, contracts, whatever. And the job of skills is to deliver, actually fulfill, and get paid. If I would take the traffic, systems, and skills framework and I knew nothing about your business, I would overlay that on your business and say, "Well Tiffany, do we have a traffic problem?" -- meaning, do we have an unlimited source of leads filling the funnel constantly? Then: do we have a systems problem -- meaning do those leads automatically start getting converted into contracts? And then: do we have a skills problem -- meaning somebody is delivering that in a highly skilled way? Most of the time it is the owner.
Host: Right. And so it's like, do I have the ability to transfer the skill to someone else? So when I look at traffic, systems, and skills -- no problem with traffic, generating a ton of leads; no problem with systems, we're converting those; but the skills is Tiffany delivering everything.
[05:00]
Chiron: So now the scalability on that is the constraint. So I have to do whatever it takes to transfer that skill to someone else. And now they know that if I transfer the skill to someone else, I have a scalable model.
Host: Let's say the leads are not great right now and the systems are not great either. Do you fix the systems before the traffic?
Chiron: Correct. Because otherwise two things are going to happen. One, the first set of people that came in are going to have a bad experience. And two, you're going to be really upset that you paid a ton of money for traffic and they didn't convert. So you always get the system right first. Think about it this way: should we build the plumbing or should we send water through the pipes first? You would build the plumbing first. Now, what is the smallest version of the plumbing that I can build to get this to work?
Chiron: That's why it's really helpful to have one delivery method. One traffic source that you can control. One conversion method. One delivery channel. For example: I get leads through paid ads, they convert on a one-on-one call, and I deliver all of them in a Facebook group. I'm making this up, right? So now you know -- hey, I've got this one channel, ads working. If the ads break, I'm done. But at least I know the ads are working. Now you can hire a specific consultant to watch ten of these calls and say, "Give me a way to get my conversion from 30% to 35%." Now you don't have to change anything else. You just say three different things in your script and automatically the funnel works better.
Chiron: So the 111 is very clear because then you say, "Cool, the 111 worked. Can I add two traffic sources? Can I add three traffic sources?" Very simple -- is it organic? Is it paid? Or is it activity or joint venture? So 111 will probably get you to a $300,000 business very quickly if you can dial the 111 in. And then you just add another traffic source. Then it'll break somewhere. Then you probably need a different conversion source.
Host: One traffic source, one conversion mechanism, one delivery channel. And then you'll be able to diagnose that very quickly. Okay. So what is it that makes a business model scalable?
Chiron: There's this awesome football analogy. I had a business partner who played for the Miami Dolphins -- a defensive lineman who played for legendary coach Don Shula. I said, "What makes Don Shula this legendary coach?" And he said every single play that they mapped out ended up in a touchdown. No other coach in the history of the NFL plans that way. Most of them are like, "Hey, run spider three-wide banana and you'll get eight yards." In Don Shula's plays, every single play had a possibility of hitting a touchdown.
Chiron: The lesson there is we start the business and we think that we will figure it out tomorrow. What we want to do is project out, saying if I continue to do this thing, is it sustainable enough for me to have it grow? Because then you start to realize -- I'm already working 14 hours a day. There's no way if this grows from $3 million to $30 million that I'll be able to grow in that way. And you want growth by subtraction, not multiplication. This happens, this happens, and I make a lot of money. That's it. The bigger question to ask is, what would it take for this to be $10 million? What would it take for this to be $100 million? And when you put that frame on it, you start to realize that the current model doesn't work because the complexity starts to fan out.
Chiron: I call it the curse of capability. Smart, capable entrepreneurs will put themselves in situations to do complex things because they're capable of doing those things. I love investing in really simple, really lazy entrepreneurs. Because they're like, "How do I find the easiest possible way to do this thing so I can make a ton of money?" The hardworking, smart entrepreneurs have this complex web of businesses. And a lot of times when we invest in them -- cut this, cut this, cut this, cut this -- oh, you have 90% of your time back and only 10% of revenue dropped. The hardest part is to get out of the curse of capability.
[10:00]
Chiron: I'll give you a crazy story. One of our first companies -- Telus Properties -- in the real estate business. We bought it. It was roughly doing $300 million when we bought it. I was a passive investor in this business. And as I got some financials, I realized that the then-CEO was embezzling from the business. We did the forensic accounting and we bought the CEO out. I didn't have enough money. I reverse-mortgaged my house and bought the CEO out, thinking it would be a short-term thing. I was a banker at Goldman Sachs at the time. I took a leave of absence to help right the ship.
Chiron: Starting to look at the business, I realized -- by mistake I put an extra zero in a spreadsheet cell. The $300 million suddenly became $3 billion. And those numbers all looked phenomenal. And I looked at it and said: if that is true, can I make it work? And so I pitched the board on this idea that I'm going to take majority control, run this five-year plan. But I have no idea what I'm doing. And they said, "As long as you stay with the original thesis -- build this boutique real estate company in and around Southern California -- we're good."
Chiron: What we realized was no one wanted a boutique real estate company in Southern California. Our messaging was completely off. We had 30 real estate agents at that time and I sat down and asked every one of them, "What would be the one thing that if I took it away, you would not want to work here anymore?" And unanimously all of them said this one thing: "Me being here saves me at least one day a week."
Chiron: So I said, "Great. That means our value proposition is: you should come to Telus because our job is to save you at least one day a week. What would you do with another 52 days a year?"
Chiron: That grew the business from $300 million to $3.4 billion -- 10x in five years -- with that one value prop pitch. Nothing else. That's all it was. Every question that we built was: "Does this continue to help our agents save more than one day a week? If yes, do it. If not, don't do it." We need a $10 million ad budget -- does this help our agents save them one day a week? No. We're not going to do it.
Chiron: We fear talking to our clients and our customers. We really fear that. We think -- because we're smart -- we think that they want all of these things: the extra calls, the one-time touches, the Loom videos, the written reports. But they don't care about most of those things. They just want one day a week. The two best questions to ask are: "What is one thing that if I took it away, this would not be a valuable engagement for you anymore?" And: "What is the one thing you wish I added that would make you stay forever?" They will tell you what to eliminate and what to keep. That simplifies the business. Our job is to deliver that one thing. What is your one day a week? That's what we need to deliver for them.
Chiron: There was this CRM called Mailchimp. The number one reason why people chose Mailchimp was because it gave you your first 5,000 contacts free. Every other CRM charged $39 a month, $100 a month. Mailchimp was the only one that said, "Your first 3,000 contacts are free." Most people said, "Why would I go pay for something else?" And that's when they became one of the biggest CRMs and got bought by Salesforce for a couple of billion dollars. They just built their business model on that one thing. And so when you figure out that one thing, it becomes your universal front door. And that's when everything starts to work.
Host: There was something you had mentioned in a video -- about making your business sellable even if you had no plans on selling it. Should every founder be building their company to sell even if they don't plan on it?
Chiron: Yeah. The goal is not the exit. The goal is options.
Host: Right. My dad always used to say, when you don't know your options, you don't have any.
Chiron: Right. And I think most business owners are in that place. I'll give you a practical example. I had no idea how much the business was worth. So I said, "Well, why don't I do a soft shop of this business?" So every summer I used to take the business to market as if I was actually planning on selling it. I identified three to five of the key people that I think would buy the business. I put our package together like I was going to sell. I went through that process.
[15:01]
Chiron: And then I said, "Hey, buyer A, here's all our stuff. How would you value us?" And let's say he said, "We think you're worth $50 million." I go, "Well, great. Why not 75?" He says, "To be 75, you need to do these five things." I was like, "Okay, thank you so much." Then I go to the next person. "It's $60 million." "Well, why not 80?" "To do 80, you need these five things." So I take that list and I say, "Hey COO, this is your business plan for the next year."
Chiron: And then next year you come back and say, "You said if I did these five things, it would be $75 million. Oh yeah -- you did all the things. Awesome. Hey, why not $150?" "Well, to get $150, you need to do these six things." "Great. Thank you." Go back, do those six things. When you do that and go back to the same potential buyer, they see two things. Number one, they see that your business is malleable and adaptable -- that it can actually grow by putting the strategies in place. Second, they have confidence in you and the team -- that given a new strategy, you can implement it.
Chiron: Everybody wants to buy a business that can change and grow, and an operator that can change and grow with it. The crazy part is potential buyers also told us what was not valuable. So I would ask them: "Hey, why didn't you give this market in Orange County any value?" They're like, "We don't have any synergies there and it's losing money because of these three things. So we gave it no value." And I'm like, "Amazing. I'm going to deprioritize that part of my business." So it also allows you to know which one to focus on, which one not to focus on. That gives you optionality. When you don't know your options, you don't have any.
Host: So what are the different types of options that somebody can have in their business, other than growth and maybe having an outside investor like private equity?
Chiron: I think about it in three ways. Do you grow the business yourself? Do you grow the business with someone's help? Or do you grow the business with your employees? Growing the business by yourself is saying I'm going to fund this growth -- I own all of this. The second is taking outside equity -- that could be bank equity, private equity, or an investor. Now you have somebody else as a co-owner, but they give you the capital and the resources to help you grow. The third -- which I have done once -- is an employee stock purchase plan. You can sell your business to your employees.
Chiron: One of my friends runs a wealth management firm. He sold 50% of the business to his employees, but his employees only had to contribute 10% of that to buy in. He got the other 40% from the bank. So he made $50 million, sold 50% of his business to his employees. Now he has 50 shareholders, none of whom are going anywhere. Then private equity came in and said, "We love your business because you have 50 shareholders -- all of them vested, none of them going to leave. So we have no risk of defection. So now we want to pay you more." He got a $50 million check and recently got a $250 million check, and all the employees got a piece as well.
Host: And it's also a really great way to find and source those A-players, right? They're very much invested in this particular company.
Chiron: Yeah. I will give you a way in which entrepreneurs can give a piece of ownership to a key employee without actually giving them ownership. This is called phantom equity. What that means is you and your husband have 100 shares in this business. You create a new program called a phantom stock program -- just a document that says this phantom stock program mirrors the company. It's completely separate. But if we ever sell this business, you get 10%. You have no liability. You have no tax consequences. But if we sell this business, you get 10%. By the way, if you leave, this goes away. So now you bring an A-player on board, give them phantom equity, and now they feel like, "Hey, I'm building the business. I feel like an owner, and if this business sells, I get a piece of the pie as well."
[20:00]
Host: That's incredible. Now I want to ask you some rapid-fire questions. You recently announced that you became partners with Alex Hormozi and Leila Hormozi. What kind of questions were they asking that gave you insight that they thought differently?
Chiron: While every other founder was asking first-order questions -- "Hey, what do I do? What do I do now?" -- they were asking, "Hey, if I did this, what would it mean for one year, two years, five years, ten years down the line?" The ability to see second- and third-order consequences is insanely powerful because you start to realize that it's chess and not checkers. And sometimes you have to sacrifice the pawn to support the queen.
Host: So if there's one lesson that you've learned in business, what do you feel is most important?
Chiron: The number one thing an entrepreneur can do to set themselves up for scale in the early part of their lives is to freeze lifestyle. Most business owners feel stuck because they're working in the business and they want to be working on the business. The reason why most people are stuck is they're like, "Wait a minute. I did $500,000 this year. After all my expenses, I made $150,000. And to hire somebody pretty good, I need to pay $200,000. I don't have the $200,000." The problem there is if you now go to a million, you're making $300,000. And now you're used to a $300,000 lifestyle and you still can't hire the $250,000 person.
Chiron: In the last 14 years, our family runs on the same monthly nut. Our net worth is probably 50 times what it was 14 years ago, and we still run on the same monthly nut. It gives us a lot of optionality. So I can say: if this is my monthly nut, everything above this is just risk-adjusted. And as people make more money, they just turn up lifestyle. And then it's very, very hard to turn down lifestyle.
Host: Okay. Biggest misconception about building wealth -- what would it be?
Chiron: The biggest misconception about building wealth is us thinking that it is a "what and how" problem and not a "who" problem. So I came up with this thing called the 10-10 forever rule. Who are the ten people that you would invest in for the next ten years who would pay you forever? Instead of investing in the next hot stock or the next hot startup, you say, "I'm going to put Tiffany in my 10-10 forever. Whatever she says I'm going to do. Whatever I can do to support her, I'm going to do -- because I know that this relationship is going to be worth more than anything else." And once you do that, you realize that wealth creation is a who strategy, not a how strategy.
Host: If I'm having trouble finding A-players no matter how much I try, what am I doing wrong?
Chiron: Whenever you hire somebody, you're looking for one of two things. You're looking to solve the pain of today or the growth of tomorrow. Those are the only two reasons why you hire somebody. The number one reason why it's difficult to find an A-player is because we don't articulate exactly that. So let's say it is the pain of today. Write up all the pain. "I don't have time doing this. I have poor quality doing this. This sucks. The clients are having a bad experience. Without this, I'm stressed. I don't sleep." You do all of that. And then you upload it to AI and say, "Turn all of this pain into a job description." So now what you get is somebody who, when they read it, knows that when they do the thing, they are solving exactly that. The A-player actually reads your job description. They actually care. It's not that they are an A-player. It is that they are an A-player for you. That's the fit. And you've got to give them your puzzle piece.
Host: So you mentioned in another video that if you lost your email list, it would be like losing a third child. Why is that?
[25:00]
Chiron: In the modern world, email is a gateway to everything. To sign up for a social media account, you need email. When you're in a social media account or listening to YouTube, you're in constant scroll mode. Email is the only medium where you evaluate every single message on its own priority. You don't swipe and say, "That's Chiron's post -- what should I do?" You just swipe. But in email, you're like, "That's Chiron's email -- what should I do?" You make a choice on every single message. Email is also a personal platform. Someone actually raised their hand, went in, gave you their email address, and opted into your list knowing that you're going to send them something. I will tell you, probably one-third of my net worth has been created from my email list. We built a billion-dollar business off my email list.
Host: Hear me, everyone. I am literally going to have an email list now because of this conversation. I know that you have said that one of the most important components of business in general is writing a memo. Why is that?
Chiron: Internally, we have this acronym called WAFM -- "Write a F------ Memo." So when someone on Slack is like, "Hey, do you want to do this?" I'm like, "WAM."
Mid-roll segment -- channel sponsor note (no sponsor this episode) and "What's Your Dream" shoutout for Super Vibe / Derek. Housekeeping only.
Host: That being said, this is a great part for us to transition into our show-and-tell. This episode is sponsored by no one. Yeah, we don't actually have a sponsor. We have started a tradition where we shout out one of your dreams. And in this episode -- Super Vibe! Derek, one of our co-founders, watches the show and was super kind to send this box of goodies for us. Super Vibe uses green tea and is made out of a bunch of honestly very great ingredients. Chocolate is my favorite. But the blueberry and the matcha -- chef's kiss. If you guys can do me a huge favor and follow Super Vibe, let's surprise Derek with a bunch of sudden followers on Instagram. And if you happen to struggle with energy like me, go order them at supervibe.co. Let's get back to the video.
Chiron: The best leverage that you can get for your thoughts and ideas is to organize your thoughts. And most people have never been taught how to organize their thoughts. We've just been taught how to write an essay in school. And we live in a world where clarity of thinking creates clarity of results. So at Acquisition.com, one of the pillars of how we work is we have a memo culture. If we want to make a decision, we use a memo. And all a memo is, is just a written Google doc of your thinking.
Chiron: But what about the argument from the person who's like, "But Chiron, everything's on fire in my business. I don't even have time to really make a memo. And who's going to even really read this memo?" That is exactly the reason why you should do it. The best reason to write a memo is for yourself. I think it's more valuable for solo operators who are going Mach 3 with their hair on fire than even large business owners. Any decision requires a memo. We say no memo, no decision. Because what it does is it allows you to see everything on paper -- because fear has no place on paper. You see it and you're like, "Oh, that is what I was thinking. I'm not afraid about that anymore."
Chiron: By the way, for our executive meetings -- if there are no memos to review, we don't do the meeting. So, no memo, no meeting. We actually deliver the memo before the meeting. We require people to prepare. We say read this memo with shared understanding. Come to the meeting and all we're going to talk about is the questions in this memo. So what this does is it allows the meetings to be a lot more productive. And when the meeting is over, everyone feels like they jointly contributed to moving the business forward. You will see the meeting quality shoot up 10x.
Chiron: Also there's institutional knowledge. So let's say you get a new employee or a new partner. You can say, "There's no onboarding. Read our last 20 memos." They read the last 20 memos and are caught up on where the business is at right now. And if there's a similar project, you're like, "That's exactly the same project we did to launch this podcast. Read that memo and then write a new one." Now they just take that, they dup it, and they write a new one.
[30:01]
Chiron: Today, it's so much easier -- you can just voice-chat AI and say, "Here's everything that I want to do. Here's what I'm thinking. These are my disorganized thoughts. Put this in the memo framework." And it will automatically take your thoughts and reorganize them into a thoughtful framework which you can share with your coach, your advisers, your team and say, "Please read this before our next meeting." It's actually really simple. There are three pieces. Piece number one -- who do you write it to? Whenever I write a memo, I write it to my coach. I think about my coach in my head because she has no context. I use a section called "the story so far." Here are the seven things that have happened. Now there's enough context. And based on this, here's the issue we're solving. Based on this, here's my recommendation. I don't know the answers to these five questions. Can we meet?
Host: Take me back. I think the thing that is most impressive about you is you have lived, I think, like a hundred lives. Take me back to the beginning -- because I want to know it all.
Chiron: We were a middle-class family. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in India. And I realized early on as a kid that I was not going to make it on academic prowess. Everyone else was just as smart, way smarter than me. And in an academically dominated society, you have to have something else to stand out. I was not cutting it. I was tone-deaf, so I did not get picked for any music. I did not hit my growth spurt for a while, so I did not get picked for any sports. I was dyslexic, so it was really hard for me to read. So I would be the last kid that got picked on the field. I would get kicked out of class. It was just terrible. I would get bullied a lot.
Chiron: And my parents realized -- "Hey, we just need a better environment for you to succeed. We know that maybe the UK or the US is probably the right answer because they have a more meritocracy-based system. It'll give our son one shot at a better life." So I remember my dad and I were sitting on a park bench staring at a couple of tennis courts. And he says, "You need a ticket. You need a skill that will make you stand out to get out of India." And our entire family focused just on tennis. And honestly, it paid off. I was able to use tennis as a little launchpad to leave India.
Chiron: So my parents made the biggest sacrifice to send me to the US. I'm also an only child, so they let their only child go at 16 years old. Never been to the US before. Once I landed in Chicago -- this was the days of no cell phones -- someone was going to meet me at the airport. I'm there, no one's there. Then my name gets called on the public address system. The message is, "Hey, your driver's car broke down. They want you to take a bus and meet them in Moline, Illinois." I have no idea where anything is. So I say, "Okay, I've got to go find a bus." No problem. I have like $100 in cash and change. It was supposed to be like a couple-hour ride. Well, five or six hours later, it's dark outside. I'm at a bus depot. The driver's about to get off and he's like, "Hey kid, where you going?" I said, "Moline, Illinois." He's like, "Well, we are in La Crosse, Wisconsin." He goes, "Why don't you come into the depot for tonight?" So I grab my stuff. I exit the bus. And out of nowhere, this guy jumps in front of me in a hoodie with a knife.
Chiron: So I've been in the US eight hours and I'm getting mugged in an alley in La Crosse, Wisconsin. This guy says, "Give me everything you got." He opens my bag. He rummages through my clothes. And I will never forget this. He says, "You're the worst person I ever mugged." And I kind of gather some courage and I tell him, "I'm lost. I just need to get to school tomorrow. I have $100. If I give you this $100, will you give me $50 back?" And he's like, "What?" I was like, "I just need to get to school." So he grabs the hundred bucks and he dishes me out a $20, a $20, and a $5.
Host: You negotiated with your mugger.
Chiron: I mean -- I don't think I would have the ingenuity to do it now. It was desperate times. So I got $45 and my stuff. Figured out the next day, got my bus to Moline, Illinois. Then I get to school and I was like, well, what does every Indian parent tell their kid to study? Computer science, math, engineering. And so I was a computer science and math major by default. I got very lucky because I graduated during the technology boom.
Chiron: And so our first company -- I was a very early employee. We raised a ton of money and had the first exit. And I thought I was going to get $50 million. I go to Bank of America on the closing day, go to the ATM, hit receipt, and it just prints out this paper receipt. I called the CEO and said, "What is this?" He's like, "Did you not read your contract?" And then I realized that I had a dilution clause -- called a ratchet -- in my contract. But it had over 15x'd my payout down. So I took the liquidity that I had, paid off any debts, and I spent five years teaching tennis in the Caribbean, Dubai, and on Maui.
[35:01]
Chiron: And I had a teaching pro who was one of the best in the world. He said to me, "Do you want to become the best teaching pro in the world?" I said, "Yes." He said, "You need to teach 100 free lessons and I will evaluate and give you feedback on every single one of them." That's how I got good. And then I got to teach tennis to Bill Gates, Alan Alda, Richard Branson. I will tell you the number one lesson that I learned from Richard Branson. I played with him for two hours. I said, "You run 10 companies. You probably have to make a lot of decisions. How do you make decisions?" And the moral of the story was that most people don't have a framework for making decisions. Therefore, they make dumb decisions. From that day, I started thinking about how I make decisions. And then I made a framework: number one, understand the context. Number two, isolate the issue -- what problem are we actually solving? Number three, accept the risk -- if we make the decision, what actually breaks? Number four, map the decision -- what am I going to do as next steps?
Chiron: No way would I have learned that if I'd never played tennis with Richard Branson. So after playing tennis, I was talking to one of my mentors and he said, "Remember the time that you got screwed on your deal? Do you know why you got screwed?" I'm like, "Because I didn't read the contract." He's like, "No. Because you don't know how to structure deals." So he goes, "If I were you, I would go to Wall Street." "Well, the only way to get to Wall Street is to go to business school." I went to Vanderbilt, which has the highest placement rate of getting students into Wall Street. I went to Goldman Sachs right after. I was the only student in my MBA class to get a job at Goldman Sachs. I had 39 one-on-one interviews.
Chiron: 39 one-on-one interviews in three different cities. I'll tell you the craziest story about these interviews. A managing partner walks in and he says, "You're a hotshot. You want to work at Goldman Sachs?" He pushes the binder for me. "These are my prospects. Call them. Set me an appointment." I have no idea how to do any of this. And so I said, "I'm happy to make this call, but I'd like to represent you well. Could you give me a script?" He looks at me, gathers all his stuff, puts it in his bag, shakes my hand, and says, "You'll do great, kid." And he walks out. I see him at the cocktail party after. He said, "I've been doing this 20-plus years. In the last 20 years, only two people have actually asked me for a little help or a little script. I just want to know that they are coachable. I just want to know that they will listen to what I say. I just want to know that we can mold them to become great bankers. And you showed me that -- just by asking me for a script."
Chiron: So I spent six years in investment banking. And during that time we invested in Telus -- a single-office real estate company in Beverly Hills, California. Then we figured out the then-CEO was embezzling. And my wife was pregnant. So she's like, "I think this is a terrible idea." But my wife was a consultant for Deloitte Consulting. So I built her a pitch deck to explain to her, in her love language, why this was a good idea. I presented this pitch deck to her on a Sunday afternoon, and she sat there on the couch with me going slide by slide. And she was like, "Sounds like a good plan for us." So we reverse-mortgaged our house. I put all my savings into the business. I did not make any payroll for the first year. We lived off of my wife's salary. And that is originally the amount that we continue to live off till today. I had never run a company before that. I had no idea what I was doing. I was Googling how to run a business, how to make a P&L. I was Googling everything and I had to learn how to be the operator of a business on the job. I second-guessed myself every day. I was so lost.
[40:00]
Chiron: I remember they invited like 20 CEOs to a conference. This lady comes on and every time she said something, I was like, "Oh, that was good." And it felt like she was reading my mind. So I drove home and I called my dad. I was like, "Dad, this lady was in my head." My dad said, "Well, you should ask her to be your coach." I go, "Dad, she's busy." He goes, "Well, pay her." "I don't have any money." "How much do you have?" "Maybe like $10,000." "Are you willing to part with that?" I said, "For the sake of the business and me getting better, yeah." "Send her an email and tell her that."
Chiron: So I wrote her an email. "I saw you speak today and I was really impressed. Felt like you were speaking to me. I would like to offer you $10,000 as a symbol of my seriousness if you can be my coach for the year. I don't expect any meetings. I don't expect any scheduled phone calls and I don't expect to bother you in any way. I would just hope that you would prioritize responding to my emails." I sent her the email. 20 minutes later, she replied saying, "Is this a joke?" I said, "No, I'm 100% serious. This is all I have." And then she says, "Write it up." I was like, "I don't know what 'write it up' means." So I hit print, signed it, and scanned it back to her. Wired her $10,000. And she became my first coach. I've probably written that email to at least a dozen people since then. Nobody says no. And it is some of the greatest investments I've made.
Chiron: That was a turning point in my growth. We built the business. We grew 10x in five years to $3.4 billion in topline sales. And then we sold the business to Douglas Elliman, which is publicly traded out of New York. So that was a super good run for us. I'm just lucky that swinging for the fences worked. But it didn't work for a few years. It was hard on our relationship. Being with our child, figuring out being a young dad -- a new dad -- was hard.
Host: What was the hardest part mentally for you?
Chiron: It surfaced a lot of insecurity for me. Actually, even now sometimes I look back and say, "Man, am I really qualified to do any of this?" But it's amazing when someone else believes in you. I think my wife believed that I had it in me. Or she at least felt safe that it was one shot at swinging for the fences, and that we were okay even if I didn't. But gosh darn it, if I failed, I was going to claw and poke and scratch till I made it work.
Chiron: When you ask that question, it reminds me of this story. My wife -- I was so scared when this happened. This guy reached out to me after watching one of my videos. He said, "Hey, I've watched all your stuff. I would love for you to help me with my business." So I said, "Sure." Met him in person, did the consulting, visited his offices, saw his books. And then there was an investment opportunity in his business where he said he was going to go raise some money. And I said, "Well, wait a minute -- I know this business really intimately. I'll write that check." And so I wrote a check for -- easy math -- let's call it a million dollars. And three months later, nobody could find him. He disappeared off the face of the earth. With the due diligence, we found that he had two sets of books. He had a fake company. Everything that he was showing was all fake.
Chiron: And it took me three or four months of therapy to be able to tell my wife. And so I sit down with her. I explain everything. At that point it was a decent part of our net worth. And she looks at me and she says, "So what'd you learn?" So I told her, "Hey, based on this, I've changed the way I invest in companies." She goes, "What is it?" So I gave her my framework: good people, good intentions, good rationale, good contracts. She goes, "Huh. Seems like a good lesson." She goes, "I have no doubt that you'll make ten times or more back in a very short time." She walks away. We're both in tears. I was so nervous. And sometimes you have to go through those things to get your antennas up -- to build the frameworks around it. But you realize who is going to stick with you through thick and thin. If you actually believe in someone else -- that is the biggest gift that you can give them.
[45:00]
Chiron: Our environment shapes a lot of who we are. Some of the biggest names that we know -- Tony Robbins, Elon Musk, Oprah, Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg -- you would give each of them different scores on how well they spoke. Tony is a phenomenal communicator. Elon is terrible -- three out of ten. If they were all not perfect amazing communicators, how is a three-out-of-ten communicator the richest man in the world? I think that all of them do one thing: they have this ability to transfer belief. The job of a leader is to help other people believe in a bigger and better future. Because as soon as you believe the future is bigger and better, you have an operating system of hope. I think that's what my parents did for me. It was not the belief of today. It was the belief of who I could be tomorrow.
Host: I'm curious about Chiron back then -- had he just gotten a snapshot at the wonderful success that was ahead, what would he have thought?
Chiron: I think I'm just living someone else's life. I got super lucky along the way. A lot of people believed in me. A lot of lucky breaks. When I got to the States, my parents had made out a check for tuition -- a significant part of their life savings. I went to school and I deposited the check. The lady is like, "Welcome to college. Since it's an international check, it'll take 7 to 10 days to clear. So till then, you may not have a meal plan. I suggest you enjoy all the parties on campus." They had free food. It was pizza and root beer. I hit all of those. And then a Saturday came along and all the parties died down. I was hungry. I'm walking around trying to find food -- and I see these couple of guys toss a pizza box into a dumpster. I'm like, "I just saw them toss good pizza. In a box. This is good." I wait till sundown. I jump in this dumpster. I grab the box of pizza. I felt so embarrassed.
Chiron: Well, next day I'm still hungry. I meander away to the same dumpster and I see a couple of people throw sandwiches in. And I go, "This is amazing." Jackpot. So I wait. I grab the Subway sandwich. And then I look in the corner. There is this all-American box of Pop-Tarts. Strawberry, by the way. This is amazing. So I'm about to grab it and out of nowhere something whacks me in the face and I'm bleeding. And in the corner is a raccoon. You can't even make this stuff up. So I grab the box of Pop-Tarts, grab my Subway sandwich, I kick wildly -- I don't know what I hit -- and I climb out of this dumpster and I just run. I run to health services. She can smell the dumpster on me. She gives me a tetanus shot. That was a really low point. I was like, "I'm dumpster diving. This is crazy. I can't tell anybody about this." She hands me a gift card -- like $20 -- and she's like, "Get yourself some food and a movie. You'll be better tomorrow."
Chiron: The happy ending to that story is 22 years later, they invited me back to be the commencement speaker. I'm telling the story. Thousands of people are laughing their faces off. And then I thought, "Well, is this dumpster still there?" So I walk and find the dumpster and I take a selfie. Then on the side of the dumpster is a poster -- with Aquaman on it. It says, "Not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do."
[50:01]
Chiron: I have never sobbed so much. Because I think that was full circle of all things. Watching that poster was like -- that made everything worthwhile. That made everything real. You don't have to be an Aquaman fan. But whenever I get stuck, whenever things get rough, I just tell myself that same quote: not giving up is the most heroic thing you can do.
Host: Thank you for sharing that. You've had many chapters in your life. In one word, what would you call this one?
Chiron: I believe that this is a chapter of preparation. Because how you prepare shows just how much you care.
Host: It's beautiful. And I just want to close by saying that we just met today, but you've been a mentor of mine for quite some time. What you've done with your success and how you've shared all of those principles, and how generous you are -- you continue to see so much success now because of the way you are. So, thank you.
Host transitions to the post-interview principles breakdown segment. All remaining content is host narration summarizing themes from Chiron's story. Principles covered: Skill Stacking, Proximity, Asking for Help, Recruiting Superstars, Attention Management, Simplicity as Strategy, Finding Bottlenecks, Save for a Rainy Day, Exit Mindset, Undeniable Proof, Find Your Allies, Persistence. See Key Points tab for distilled takeaways.