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Forbes
03-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
CLASS: Culture, Leads, Accountability, System And Support
Daniel is an entrepreneur, founder & CEO of MyOutDesk devoted to providing growing companies with proven, reliable virtual assistants. As a colleague and I racked up the miles on a sunbaked stretch of highway outside of Roswell, New Mexico, we weren't thinking so much about alien conspiracies and secret government bases. Instead, we found ourselves dissecting what really propels a sales organization from 'good' to 'category-defining.' This wasn't just road-trip chatter; we've both spent years in the trenches, building teams, closing deals and learning (sometimes the hard way) what works and what doesn't. Somewhere between pit stops, we realized we'd arrived at a shared framework, one that we've both tested, broken and rebuilt across thousands of real estate transactions and multiple business lines. We call it CLASS: culture, leads, accountability, systems and support. Nail all five, and growth feels inevitable; miss even one, and friction shows up fast. Culture: The Nonnegotiable Culture isn't pizza lunches or happy-hour selfies. It's clarity of vision and the willingness to protect that vision at all costs. If even one top performer tramples your core values, the entire group sees the compromise and standards can slide. Keep culture tight by: 1. Posting the annual team vision where everyone can see it, then revisiting it quarterly. 2. Pairing every KPI review with a personal "why" check-in. Numbers matter, but so do the lives those numbers fund. When vision is explicit, peer-to-peer accountability kicks in. I no longer need to police behavior; the team handles drift long before it lands on my desk. Leads: Fuel With A Dashboard, Not a Fire Hose Handing someone 1,000 internet leads without a success rate is cruelty masquerading as generosity. My organization publishes our conversion math up front: a 3% appointment rate on cold leads and a 30% face-to-face close rate once the meeting happens. Every "no" is worth roughly $20 in future commission, so rejection becomes a deposit, not a deduction. I've found that this simple reframe keeps morale high and pipeline math honest. Accountability: Mirror First, Metrics Second Our one-on-ones open with cameras off for five minutes of real life: family, health, mindset. Only then do we flip the camera on and pull the numbers: calls, connections, contracts, even date nights. If a goal lives on their sheet, it's fair game. Accountability without empathy feels like punishment; empathy without numbers feels like a hug that never pays the mortgage. It's best to choose both. Systems: 95% Automated, 5% High-Impact Human A referral event for 6,000 past clients takes our marketing machine months to orchestrate, yet the agent's total 'life' is a handful of personal calls and face-to-face handshakes the day of the party. The 5% human effort delivers 95% of the client loyalty. If a task can be templated, delegated or triggered by software, it comes off the salesperson's plate. The result: they negotiate, prospect, follow up and sharpen skills. Nothing else. Support: Trust That Frees Talent The hardest leap for top producers is surrendering control to a support team they can't yet 'see.' We solve that with explicit SLAs, weekly department huddles and KPI scoreboards that make all the behind-the-scenes progress fully transparent. When agents realize 95% of the transaction is handled better (and faster) by specialists, they lean in rather than hold on. Scaling Signals: When To Rebuild Your CLASS Growth isn't a straight line; it's a staircase. Every time we jumped from 50 to 100 transactions, then 100 to 500, something in the CLASS broke: Lead flow overwhelmed systems or culture lagged behind a rush of new hires. The pain is the indicator: Either hire for where you're going or revamp the pillar that's buckling under pressure. Here is a quick diagnostic you can use: 1. Culture: Do standards slip for rainmakers? 2. Leads: Are reps drowning or starving? No one should be both. 3. Accountability: Are one-on-ones coaching sessions or coffee chats? 4. Systems: Is admin time creeping above 5% of a rep's week? 5. Support: Do producers still type their own contracts? You're late. Stewardship Over Ownership Early on, I set myself a personal "allowance" and treated surplus revenue as the company's, not mine. That discipline allowed us to hire ahead of need, weather market downturns and keep our promises to the people rowing the boat—even when transaction counts dipped 40% to 50%. Teams sense fiscal stewardship; it breeds loyalty that bonus checks alone can't buy. The Leader's Mandate • Cast a horizon worth chasing. Paint the future so vividly that your best people can't imagine building it anywhere else. • Equip talent to outperform the plan. Embed clear KPIs, repeatable playbooks and ongoing coaching so every producer knows exactly how to win; then watches the scoreboard to prove it. • Scale yourself first. Keep learning, delegating and reinventing fast enough that no one on the team "graduates" beyond your leadership capacity. Your growth ceiling sets theirs. CLASS isn't theory. It's the operating system I trust with my livelihood, reputation and, most importantly, the families my businesses serve. Master the five pillars, and growth stops feeling like a gamble; it feels inevitable. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Forbes
27-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Win Or Learn: The Entrepreneur's Mindset
Daniel is an entrepreneur, founder & CEO of MyOutDesk devoted to providing growing companies with proven, reliable virtual assistants. The common framing around failure in entrepreneurship—of things being win or lose—doesn't work for me. You're either winning or you're learning, and learning is iterative and 'the entrepreneur's mindset.' I've been establishing, growing and selling businesses for almost 20 years, and that's the mindset I decide to approach every entrepreneurial endeavor with. I know 18% of small businesses fail within their first year (and 50% within the first five), but I also know there are a lot of people like me out there who also decide every day to pursue a passion or idea that's as likely to fail as it is to succeed. That decision is the first of a million-plus decisions entrepreneurs have to make. And there are just as many different routes that could get them where they want to go. As someone who's faced the inevitable decision paralysis countless times and worked with thousands of entrepreneurs who've experienced the same, I've learned a few tricks for turning decision paralysis into progress—because action, even if in the wrong direction, is better than stagnancy. Is taking the initial leap the hardest part … or everything that comes after it? Well, that's for each founder to decide. What isn't up for debate is that the decisions made during the ideation and planning phases of the entrepreneur have the power to significantly impact future business success. Product-market fit is paramount. Find a clear path to customer demand, and offer customers a value proposition that no other company can. While your business idea must be unique, the elevator pitch for it can be formulaic: I provide this (product/service) for people (describe the person/customer/business) that want (outcome). In its simplest form, business is humans helping other humans; if you're good, then the business will grow. To be good, you must commit to a pursuit of mastery. A dedication to your business's growth and development is a dedication to your own personal growth and development as well. Ongoing education and improvement in marketing, operations and delivery are critical, but sales mastery is nonnegotiable as founders are constantly selling their vision to customers, investors and employees. Consider whether a blended workforce is the right choice for you. It can be a good idea to hire internal staff for the most technical and high-value tasks, and hire outsourced staff for the process-based tasks. (Disclosure: My company helps with outsourcing, as do others.) But for many entrepreneurs, the first 'hire' should be a technology system like a CRM or ERP platform that supports those team members and you in every business decision from customer acquisition to product or service distribution. This kind of blended model that employs physical, virtual and digital team members takes advantage of the strength of AI in its current era and gives humans the ability to leverage that technology to help better the business. Some of the most common entrepreneurial decisions are the most difficult to make because there's no right or wrong answer or one answer that fits every entrepreneur. The good news is, in my experience, it's less about what you decide and more about how. Separate CEO from self. It's your business, but the business is not you. It should be treated as its own entity, and decision-making should be based on what's best for the company, not the individual(s) running it, because those are not always one and the same. Founder compensation is a good example. While taking a salary is typically preferred from a personal perspective, it may not be best for a new business that still has entry-level revenue and weak financial stability. As the business grows and scales, so can the market value (and salary) of the CEO. Focus on the long term. I've learned that effective leaders prioritize the long-term health and mission of the business above personal gain or convenience. They lead 'from the front,' never asking employees to do something they wouldn't be willing to do themselves. This approach can foster trust, build credibility and effectively motivate teams to stay the course in the short term for better results in the long run—results that everyone on the team will professionally and personally benefit from. Do the due diligence to turn curiosity into context. Ask questions. Understand the 'what' and the 'why' of every situation, be it managing employee performance or evaluating pitches promising grandiose visions. As a founder, you'll inevitably possess a broader context than individual contributors and must tailor your communications and operations decisions to reflect that big-picture view. Be okay with saying no—strategically. It's a necessary skill for leaders to protect their business, their time, the team doing the work and the customers they serve. Establishing guardrails early on and sticking to a disciplined evaluation process when determining things like whether or not to hire friends and family or take on investors can prevent biased decision-making based on familiarity or immediate appeal instead of true business and customer needs. Often, situations are less about the decision and more about how you approach making it—less about a founder's checklist and more about a founder's willingness to take risks. While market opportunity and product-market fit are paramount, successful entrepreneurship often stems from an innate drive and passion for pursuing a vision. It takes courage, commitment and an inner self-assuredness to turn a gut feeling into a foundation for a profitable venture, not another failure statistic. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
6 Ways Self-Made Millionaires Overcome Obstacles
If you're fixing to become a millionaire all on your own, you may have assembled a fairly vivid image of what life with self-earned riches could look like. You may think of how you'll feel, and imagine a more fulfilling life than the one you have now. It's healthy to be optimistic about what the future could hold if you succeed in becoming a self-made millionaire — particularly if you're doing so through entrepreneurship, but know that unique challenges await you. Find Out: Discover More: 5 Subtly Genius Moves All Wealthy People Make With Their Money Just as you're met with obstacles now, you will be met with obstacles as a self-made millionaire. What sort of obstacles and how can they be overcome? GOBankingRates spoke with self-made millionaires to find out. The first obstacle you may encounter is that of 'starting from zero,' as Sophie Musumeci, an award-winning entrepreneur, leadership, PROSCI-certified change management expert, speaker and self-made millionaire, put it. 'In April 2021, I made $0 in my business,' Musumeci said. 'Instead of giving up, I treated it as 'Day 0' and committed to becoming the best comeback story.' To overcome this obstacle of starting from scratch, Musumeci focused on simplifying her strategy, doubling down on sales and consistently showing up. Her efforts paid off relatively quickly. 'Within 12 months, I had a seven-figure business,' she said. Learn More: Musumeci shared that spending money on her business before making money from it was 'terrifying.' 'I overcame this by reframing investment as fuel for growth, leveraging funds from my mortgage offset account to invest in mentors and marketing that accelerated my success,' she said. The biggest challenge Mark Beyer, a self-made millionaire and the founder of Mybey Ventures, faced in the journey of building out an empire was a matter of mindset. 'I thought if I just go to college, get a degree, get a job, I could build enough wealth by rising through the ranks of corporate,' Beyer said. 'I soon realized that all the millionaires I looked up to — none of them had taken this path. Instead, they were all risk-takers trying to disrupt their fields through innovation and entrepreneurial acumen. Leaving the comfort of a nice career with the perks into the wild west of business was a big risk and it required a complete change of mindset. It took me years to get there but I eventually did.' We often hear visionary self-made millionaires — and billionaires — discuss the important role that failure plays in their success stories. Daniel Ramsey, a self-made millionaire and the founder and CEO at MyOutDesk, looks back at the past decade and of being an entrepreneur and finds that embracing failure as necessary growth enables you to overcome obstacles and get clear on what you want. 'From the beginning, I knew that the most successful people were those that stayed focused on the vision and were able to push through despite setbacks,' Ramsey said. 'Regardless of your age, everyone has a chance to get very clear about what they want in life after a setback.' Ramsey recommended finding ways to connect with other entrepreneurs who have demonstrated the success you're aiming to achieve. 'It's key to embrace the world of entrepreneurship holistically and build a path forward through community,' Ramsey said. 'Furthermore when it comes to entrepreneurship, most people have gaps in resources (money), skillset (personal abilities), emotional (internal leadership). Start planning for this gap through self awareness practices and understanding your leadership capabilities to level up.' When you're running your own business, you may start to realize, even more acutely than before, just how precious time is. The feeling that there's just not enough of it is an obstacle to overcome. Being intentional with time management is key. This can mean hiring people to help, even if you're trying to be frugal. 'The first person I hired was someone to help with admin paperwork, which was a time consuming task for me,' Ramsey said. 'You have to be able to lead in bringing people on board with the vision. It's important to shift your mindset to understand the team that you're building and slow down to give them a roadmap to be successful at your company. The number one metric is how much time are you going to be able to buy back for yourself.' When you're immersed in making your own millions, you may find yourself feeling a bit cut off from the world. This can be a difficult obstacle to overcome, particularly since we don't talk about the importance of community enough — at least, not when we're talking about making money. 'We talk a lot about financial capital,' Ramsey said. 'But it's equally important to maintain social capital, which allows you to open doors that you may not have been exposed to previously. The goal is for your networking to deliver moments of connection and reputation beyond the business itself. 'I'm active in my local community and always recommend keeping a list of people in your local city and in your field that you're able to track,' Ramsey said. 'Invite like-minded peers into your world and prioritize the human aspect of your relationships.' More From GOBankingRates5 Subtly Genius Moves All Wealthy People Make With Their Money 4 Low-Risk Ways To Build Your Savings in 2025 Here's How You Can Stop Paying Interest on Your Credit Card for a Full Year This article originally appeared on 6 Ways Self-Made Millionaires Overcome Obstacles Sign in to access your portfolio
