Beyond A Million

JeVon McCormick is the CEO and majority Co-Owner of Scribe Media, a multi-million dollar publishing company that helps people write, publish, and market their books.

Scribe was ranked #1 Top Company Culture in America by Entrepreneur Magazine and has worked with 2,200 authors including The Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Former CEO of Chipotle, Monty Moran, and David Goggins, whose bestselling book Can't Hurt Me, sold over 2 million copies.

As someone who was named Best CEO in Austin, TX, I wanted to talk to JeVon about his approach to managing Scribe's business operations.

You'll learn why he believes most founders are following a broken playbook, the roles and responsibilities that he's focused on as a CEO, and his people-first leadership style that allows Scribe Media to continue to scale.

Key Takeaways with JeVon McCormick

• Hiring for character instead of where someone went to school.
• Why JeVon dislikes phrases such as "attract and retain" or "human capital" when referring to the people who work for you.
• Why JeVon celebrates staff who decide to leave for new opportunities.
• Should employees have to give two weeks notice when quitting?
• Creating SOPs and making sure no individual holds all the "Institutional Knowledge."
• Why startup founders need to be willing to abandon the CEO title if they're not the right fit for the role.
• What makes a great CEO?
• Why JeVon believes Tim Cook is one of the greatest operators of all time.
• The roles and responsibilities of a CEO.
• Find out why JeVon believes society has weaponized the word "diversity."
• The 3 C's that JeVon uses to find out what the company is doing great.
• Hear Scribe's work-with-you process for writing books for authors.
• Understanding the distribution of sales across audiobooks, kindle, and print.

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Los Silva is an entrepreneur and advisor who has helped hundreds of companies in eCommerce, SaaS, Real Estate (and more) to grow, scale and exit their businesses.

He owns multiple agencies in the eCommerce, social media, and creator spaces and has spent over $100M in advertising, helping numerous brands scale to 8 and 9-figure sales.

In this episode, Los shares his story from hustling to sell video projectors online, to leveraging his network and building eCommerce brands that scale.

You'll hear Los talk about the power of brand. He explains that in his early career as a digital marketer, his primary focus was on launching high-ticket offers. While it was a quick way to make money, he realized sales could drop just as fast as they could jump, resulting in a volatile business model. Today, he builds brands that last, making them more attractive for future acquisitions.

We also discuss using social media to drive sales, what to do when a business partnership fails, tactics to qualify leads, and more.

Key Takeaways with Los Silva

• The high-ticket sales funnel Los uses to sell a $35k/year consulting service.
• Paid and organic advertising tactics to target your ideal clients and drive more sales.
• How Los uses paid preview events to qualify leads and generate new business.
• Is your money better spent with a marketing agency or a publishing company? Find out which one is incentivized to actually help grow your business.
• Los shares his approach to moving on when partnerships fail.
• Hear how Powerhouse Brands helps business owners build, scale, and exit their companies.
• The downside to building an offer instead of building a brand.
• Los' prerequisites for acquiring new companies.
• Seeing beyond top-line numbers to understand the actual performance of a business.
• How Los went from losing everything during the 2008 market crash to launching Startup Jungle with Ryan Deiss.

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Tero Isokauppila is the Founder and CEO of Four Sigmatic, an omnichannel CPG brand specializing in nutrient-dense foods like mushroom coffee and plant-based protein.

Founded in 2012, Four Sigmatic is predominantly bootstrapped with under 40 employees and has grown into a multiple 8-figure business.

In this episode, Tero tells the story of growing up on his family's farm in Finland, where his grandparents brewed mushrooms during the Second World War when coffee beans were scarce. He learned to appreciate off-the-beaten-path ingredients—like Chaga—and leaned into that experience to share his Finnish traditions with an American market eager to explore healthier coffee alternatives.

You'll hear the direct-to-consumer path he took to gain traction early on in the US market, his process for collecting real-time consumer feedback, and how he streamlined operations by outsourcing manufacturing and fulfillment.

Key Takeaways from Tero Isokauppila

• The origin story of how Four Sigmatic started and scaled to multiple 8-figures.
• Pivoting from retail to direct-to-consumer (sub $10M) and the early warning signs that Four Sigmatic had something special.
• Is doubling revenue every year with a physical product sustainable?
• How Tero used influencer marketing to gain traction early on in the US market.
• Tero's process for optimizing a product offering by collecting real-time consumer feedback—and why too much feedback can sometimes do more harm than good.
• The difficulty of starting and operating a CPG business and why Tero decided to outsource manufacturing and fulfillment from day one.
• A pro tip on how to find great mentors.
• Formulating your own product versus white-labeling.
• Shocking facts about ingestible supplements and foods that most consumers don't realize. Hear Tero's helpful tips for buying safe and reliable products.
• A simple hack for conducting competitive research for your business.

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Darius Mirshahzadeh is a serial bootstrapper, podcaster, bestselling author, and the Founder of The Real Darius.

While he has started, scaled, and sold multiple 7 and 8-figure businesses, his largest company to date, was as CEO and Co-Founder of The Money Source—a mortgage lending business that he grew from 30 to 1,000 employees and $209M in annual revenue. He exited the company in 2020.

Throughout his years as an entrepreneur, Darius has ranked #9 on Glassdoor's list of Top CEOs of Small and Medium Companies in the US, was named "#3 Best Place to Work" by San Francisco Business Times, and landed #40 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies.

He's the host of The Greatness Machine podcast and author of The Core Value Equation: A Framework to Drive Results, Create Limitless Scale and Win the War for Talent.

In today's episode, Darius shares stories, strategies, and insights from building companies and hiring 5,000+ people over his lifetime as an entrepreneur.

You'll learn how he filters for top talent when hiring, the systems he uses at different stages of company growth, and how he leverages core values to increase ROI and scale 7, 8, and 9-figure businesses.

Key Takeaways from Darius Mirshahzadeh

• Growing from 30 to 1,000 employees and $209M in annual revenue in 3 years.
• Managing the ups and downs of the super volatile mortgage industry and why Darius sees himself as the Lebron James of scale.
• How to build the scaffolding to support different levels of company growth.
• Designing an environment to scale and using systems to measure and manage performance.
• 3 important responsibilities of a high-performing CEO.
• Intentionally filtering for core values when hiring.
• Why "good" is not good enough when hiring for higher level roles.
• Hiring and grooming from within versus hiring externally.
• At what point in your business do you need to build core values?
• Darius's 3-step framework for designing core values that people actually follow.
• Who needs to be part of the process of designing a company's core values? Can the core values change over time?

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We hope you enjoy this episode and that you find some golden nuggets within this interview. Trust us, it's there!

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Ryan Pineda is a serial entrepreneur and real estate investor who started flipping houses in 2015. In the span of 2 years, he built a social media following of over 1.5 million people, teaching others how to build wealth and freedom.

He now owns 500+ rental properties and has bootstrapped 9 different businesses, each generating 7 to 8-figures per year in revenue.

In today's episode, I join Ryan in his Las Vegas studio, where he shares how he went from flipping couches on Craigslist to building a growing ecosystem of multiple 8-figure brands. You'll learn that the consistent throughline to Ryan's success is his unwavering belief in what he sets out to accomplish.

In this episode, we dive into a number of topics around how he starts, scales, and structures his companies, along with how each venture builds and feeds off one another.

We also talk about his expertise as a content creator and how he leverages social media to funnel leads into businesses to generate more sales.

Key Takeaways with Ryan Pineda

• How Ryan hired 100+ people and leveraged technology to bootstrap and scale 9 different businesses generating multiple 8-figures.
• Creating an ecosystem of businesses that support and uplevel one another.
• Hear how Ryan structures his leadership team across his various companies.
• How to start new ventures without getting distracted.
• The high-margin, low-risk industry that Ryan is doubling down on.
• Owning versus partnering.
• Profit sharing, perks, and incentivizing employees.
• The advantages of a holding company.
• Long-term vision versus playing day-to-day.
• Ryan's outlook on meeting and connecting with the most influential entrepreneurs and celebrities.
• The #1 trait that Ryan believes you need to win as an entrepreneur.
• The content creation playbook Ryan uses to warm up his audience, generate leads, and make more sales.
• A breakdown of Ryan's entire content team and social media strategy
• The trend toward unscripted and authentic content.
• Evergreen content versus trending topics.
• Hear about Ryan's early years as an entrepreneur, from barely scraping by as a realtor to flipping 50 homes in a single year.

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We hope you enjoy this episode and that you find some golden nuggets within this interview. Trust us, it's there!

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BAM! 💥

Matthew Bertulli is the CEO of Pela—a green tech company founded by Jeremy Lang that creates consumer products from environmentally sustainable materials.

The company was ranked #9 on the list of fastest-growing companies in Canada and earned a valuation of $100M in 2020.

Matthew and Jeremy carved out a new market category when they launched Pela Case, the world's first 100% compostable, eco-friendly phone case; now a multiple 8-figure brand. They continued to expand their product line and more recently launched Lomi, their electric kitchen composter that turns food waste into dirt.

According to their website, Pela's customers have prevented the equivalent of 48,433,866 plastic bags from entering our oceans.

In this episode, I talk with Matthew about his experience starting and scaling companies. Interestingly, his first business was steadily bootstrapped over 10 years, eventually selling to a PE firm for 8-figures. On the flip side, Pela is VC funded and rapidly growing.

You'll get to hear his strategies for building a brand people want to talk about, why the investors on your cap table matter, and how he applies a bootstrapped mindset to running a VC-backed company.

Key Takeaways with Matthew Bertulli

• Bootstrapping and scaling his first company (Demac Media) and the private equity acquisition deal that resulted in an 8-figure exit.
• How Matthew helped develop an entirely new market category by commercializing the world's first compostable phone case. Pela Case is now a multiple 8-figure business.
• Launching Lomi—a home appliance by Pela that magically turns food waste into dirt.
• Deliberately crafting a marketing message so that other people will repeat it.
• The factors that influenced Matthew and his partner to transition from a bootstrapped company to venture-backed.
• The Employee Stock Ownership Plan Matthew's company uses to incentivize employees.
• How becoming financially independent impacts how Matthew makes business decisions as an entrepreneur.
• Why Matthew believes that the experience gained through bootstrapping makes you a better entrepreneur.
• Does the credibility of your VC investors impact how much you can raise?

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We hope you enjoy this episode and that you find some golden nuggets within this interview. Trust us, it's there!

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BAM! 💥

Since launching The S.M.A.R.T Blueprint in 2020, Adam Lyons has helped over 1,900 entrepreneurs scale their businesses through acquisition.

He talks about his 5-part framework to leverage customer data and uncover new opportunities, aiming to give business owners a way to generate additional revenue without new leads.

Today, I'm talking with Adam about how he went from working as a janitor to becoming a serial entrepreneur who owns over 16 active companies. You'll hear him explain his no-money-down approach to acquiring new businesses and his method for hiring people to run them.

We also talk about why he deliberately decides to stay small, the science of generating upsells, and his strategy for overcoming objections and boosting future sales.

Key Takeaways from Adam Lyons

• Teaching over 1,900 students (in 2 years) a proven framework to scale businesses through acquisition.
• Why do so many founders who exit between $10M-$20M end up depressed?
• The no-money-down strategy Adam used to acquire a CRM business that earned him 2x what he paid for it.
• The process Adam uses in all of his businesses to create new streams of revenue and increase customer lifetime value.
• How Adam uses surveys to uncover key consumer insights—and a story of how this strategy made his client $500k in a single morning.
• How to find out the biggest reasons why a prospect didn't buy. Use this tactic to overcome objections and make more sales.
• Why an expert who doesn't know marketing will rarely beat the non-expert, who does.
• Being deliberate about where you spend your time and how much you really want your business to grow.
• Why Adam will often just acquire a business that does the thing that he needs rather than pay another company to do the thing.
• How does Adam get the right people on his team to run the businesses he acquires?
• Why an ineffective upsell strategy, means you're only operating at a maximum of 30% capacity.

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We hope you enjoy this episode and that you find some golden nuggets within this interview. Trust us, it's there!

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BAM! 💥

Brian Scudamore is a serial entrepreneur recognized for building 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, a junk removal company operating 2,000 trucks and generating $600M/year in revenue.

He is the founder and CEO of O2E Brands, an umbrella company that includes 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, WOW 1 DAY PAINTING, and Shack Shine. Since 1999, O2E has expanded to 254 franchise locations and employs nearly 500 people.

In this episode, Brian shares the story of dropping out of school to bootstrap a junk hauling company from the ground up. While it took him 8 years to hit the $1M mark, you'll hear how he systematized the business and used the franchise model to scale to $600M/year in revenue.

We also talked about his process for hiring high-quality people, the PR strategy he used to get the attention of major media outlets, and his tips for building a brand that people will never forget.

Key Takeaways with Brian Scudamore

• People don't fail; systems do. Brian explains how he systematized his business and used the franchise model to scale 1-800-GOT-JUNK?.
• The interviewing process Brian used to hire nearly 500 people.
• How to create a vision that inspires amazing people to work for you.
• How Brian used storytelling to get free PR from major media outlets like The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and more.
• The power of branding and how to measure its effectiveness.
• The parallels between running a family and running a business.
• Dropping out of college to continue growing his junk removal business.
• Why hitting the $1B mark may be easier than reaching $100M, $10M, or even $1M in revenue.

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We hope you enjoy this episode and that you find some golden nuggets within this interview. Trust us, it's there!

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BAM! 💥

Jeremy Perkins started Precision Medical Products in 2010 out of his garage and became one of the top 25 CEOs in the medical device industry within 10 years. His fully self-funded company has scaled to 300+ people (primarily contractors) and hit $80M in revenue last year.

Before getting into the medical device industry, Jeremy really didn't excel at anything professionally. He always thought he wanted to be a stockbroker, but after 2 years of trying, he realized he sucked at it.

In this episode, you'll hear how he went from being "bad at sales" to becoming one of the top medical device sales reps in the nation—and how this led to bootstrapping and scaling the #1 Fastest Growing Company in the Sacramento region, 2 years in a row.

We talk about the importance of having a conviction for what you're selling, how he leverages 1099 contractors to speed up the sales cycle, and his framework for thinking big and accomplishing audacious goals.

Key Takeaways with Jeremy Perkins

• From a stockbroker who couldn't sell anything to becoming one of the top medical device sales reps in the nation.
• Jeremy explains the competitive advantage that led to Precision Medical Products becoming the #1 Fastest Growing Company in the Sacramento Region.
• Setting a goal to help 20 people within his company become millionaires.
• How Jeremy leverages 1099 contractors to distribute and sell his products.
• Why passion and desire are critical factors to succeeding in sales.
• Creating a vision, setting specific goals, and building a life by design.
• Find out why Jeremy has the largest swimming pool in California.
• The magic of thinking big and why nothing's impossible.
• Is there such a thing as work/life balance? Jeremy explains how he practices Intentional Imbalance to be purposeful about how and where he spends his time, energy, and effort.
• The power of mentors and tips for getting them to say YES.

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We hope you enjoy this episode and that you find some golden nuggets within this interview. Trust us, it's there!

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BAM! 💥

Yanik Silver is a serial entrepreneur, author, digital marketing expert, and visionary leader redefining how business is played in the 21st century.

By the time he was 31, he had reached his goal of becoming a millionaire and produced more than half a dozen 7-figure online businesses.

We jump into this episode by talking about some of his earliest entrepreneurial wins, including Instant Sales Letters®—an info marketing business that built fill-in-the-blank sales letter templates for any niche. You'll hear how he started and scaled this business during the rise of the internet on the back of a 40,000-person affiliate network that he built from scratch.

This company was the catalyst for how Yanik thinks about business. He explains how entrepreneurs often get so hung up on the details and metrics that they lose the curiosity and joy that comes from pursuing ideas and figuring things out as they go. Following his heart and focusing on the ideas that interest him, without knowing the outcomes, has been a consistent throughline in all of his ventures.

You'll get to hear how this mindset has built several companies, including Maverick1000, The Cosmic Journal, and Evolved Enterprise.

Through his stories of building companies, you'll learn how Yanik is rewriting the rules of business and cultivating a culture that creates more profits, more fun, and more impact. He believes that business can become one of the biggest levers for good, while also being good for business.

Key Takeaways with Yanik Silver

• Making the difficult decision to listen to his gut and quit the family business.
• Yanik shares the story of building his first information product business, Instant Sales Letters—a company that made him money while he slept.
• Following your curiosity and pursuing ideas that interest you, even if you're unsure where they will lead.
• Why intentionality is more important to Yanik than setting specific goals.
• How almost going out of business helped Yanik create a better blueprint for what success looks like and gave him the direction to turn his Maverick1000 mastermind group into a thriving company.
• How Yanik builds businesses around Growth, Impact, and Fun and cultivates a culture that protects those values.
• Creating a die-hard community that cares deeply about your purpose and mission.
• The ethos behind Evolved Enterprise™ and why businesses can make an impact without compromising profits.
• Diving into the Evolved Profits business model—a no-cost opportunity for companies to reduce expenses while also making an impact in the world.

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We hope you enjoy this episode and that you find some golden nuggets within this interview. Trust us, it's there!

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BAM! 💥