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#332 Usman Kayani - The Sales Systems Behind 8 & 9-Figure Businesses

• Darren Lee

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0:00 | 34:56

Why Revenue Stops Scaling

Darren Lee

Someone who's worked for like multiple eight-figure businesses, nine-figure businesses with Virgin. What's actually the hurdle for people actually being able to scale their revenue? Where does it actually break down? So if you're a guy making less than a million a year, why do those guys never actually make it?

Usman

Well, if they're less than a million, a lot of the times it's the lead issue, but once they fix the lead issue, then it becomes a sales team issue.

Darren Lee

Then why do so many people fail to be able to bring in their first rep?

Usman

Well, the first rep they they fail because they don't know what they need to provide for that rep. Because hiring someone there's a sense of duty, my job is to make sure you make the income that I promised you. Let's say a good closer needs to make 8 to 12k, let's say. And if you can't provide that opportunity, don't hire someone. Why do you have the vision that you have? Well, it goes down to like a deeper story where when I was around 26-27.

Darren Lee

So I want to get your perspective. Somebody who's worked with like multiple eight-figure businesses, nine-figure businesses with Virgin, right? What's actually the hurdle for people actually being able to scale their revenue? Like, where does it actually break down? So if you're a guy making less than a million a year, why do those guys never actually make it?

Usman

Well, if they're less than a million, a lot of the times it's a lead issue, but once they fix the lead issue, then it becomes a sales team issue. Then the sales team issue is first they start hiring a setter, closer, and they start trying to hire people. What they do is they see hiring in two different ways. They see it as offloading responsibility rather than taking on a responsibility. That's problem one. And the second one is they they don't know how to manage that person. So there's two problems that come up. So let's say they hire their first closer or their first deployment setter. Their job is to make sure the system is built. System is defined by the list in the CRM, the workflows, the scripts, the daily management. That all needs to be in place before they hire someone. Instead, what they do is they hire someone, and many times they'll say, What do you think of this script? How do you think it should sound? And they ask that to the set-in closer, instantly changing the power dynamic on business owner to employee. Now the prisoners are running the prison and no one gets results.

Darren Lee

But do you think in the beginning they are inherently bad actually at sales, but it's founder-led sales, so people get away with it?

Usman

Yeah, yeah, that's right. They they can't really self-diagnose how good they are. So they could be great. It's biased. Or they could be awful, they just will believe it's my business and no one can do it better than me.

Darren Lee

But then when they bring in the reps, like what the question is like, why do so many people fail to be able to bring in their first, second rep?

Usman

Well, the first rep they they fail because they don't know what they need to provide for that rep. Because hiring someone, there's a sense of duty. My

Leads Versus Sales Team Bottlenecks

Usman

job is to make sure you make the income that I promised you. Let's say a good closer needs to make 8 to 12k, let's say, to attract someone who's at least decent. And if you can't provide the opportunity, don't hire someone. Fight until you know you can provide the opportunity. Because if you hire someone who's a closer making 3 or 4k a month, what are they actually gonna do in your business? Like, they're not gonna make money, you're gonna be frustrated at them, they're not gonna you're not gonna hire an A player, you're just gonna be frustrated. Your job is to get to the point where you know that you can provide that opportunity to someone, so bring in someone good and give them a system, and then they win.

Darren Lee

What what point is that? So, like people will say, people, some people will advise don't bring in a closer until you make it 100k a month. What's your opinion?

Usman

80k is good, but like what if you've got a 20k offer? Then then maybe not.

Darren Lee

So, this is the thing: uh, like a lot of guys that are running fitness offers, the advice from fitness mentors is 100k is a baseline. We've had a guy that was doing 40k and we just put in a closer because he wanted to get off the calls. It was a fitness offer, 10 calls a day.

Usman

Look, I know the fitness industry very well. Like, I worked in gyms for many years. My first offer when I went into high ticket was a fitness business coaching offer. That's what I first did. And so I worked with fitness coaches a lot, and um it is a lower barrier to entry because uh the average ticket price of all the products is lower. Yeah, therefore, there's more units to be sold, so they have to they have to actually bring someone in earlier. But the best fitness offers do scale when they can sell it to someone, sell it like a bigger higher ticket offer to a better ICP. If they're selling to other people or just into fitness, a B2C audience, and they're selling the old way of just like monthly coaching, they're just never gonna grow their business.

Darren Lee

So that's a good question. So if we go back up work upstream, would you say one way to actually scale your business is actually to change the offer and improve the offer?

Usman

Yeah, so there's a difference between changing the ICP and changing the offer. Are you saying just the offer?

Darren Lee

Well, like it's interesting, right? The fitness thing is a great example because standard fitness coaching and you're working with Dominic, you know, the $150 a month thing is bullshit. Like we all agree that. So high-ticket fitness coaching, where you're selling a 5k package for a year, an annual plan for a year, you get good bang for buck, you can get sales velocity, you can get throughput through the funnel. So when you're trying to scale your revenue, if you're stuck at 50k a month, what is that like for a solution? Like, would you go back and just be like, okay, let's just change the offer to him to be able to bring in the setter, the closer, and all and everything from there?

Usman

Yes, but to change the offer, let's say someone's at 50k, it's not usually a tactic holding them back, it's not usually a strategy, it's them understanding that they are just they need to become a marketer and sell to the right people. They're too in their head. So someone who's like, because I was as well. Look, when I was making that much revenue, I used to think I know more than my ICP. I used to try to sell to them to the problem that I know know they have, not to the problem that they know they have. And then that used to always cause issues. So how do you make that actionable for people? First, this is specifically for a fitness coach you're asking in general, just like coaching space. You've got your offer, you're stuck at 50k. The number one thing you need to do is think if I was to start any sort of lead flow in any any space, like let's say it's Facebook ads, can I what is my cost of acquisition? What do I what's

When To Hire Your First Closer

Usman

my estimated cost of acquisition? Ask his friends, do a bit of research on Claude, look online, and if you think it's gonna cost you $2,000 to acquire a customer or a thousand dollars, then you know you can't sell this for four or five grand. You have to sell it for more. So you have to figure out just the formula. It's all businesses online is just a formula of inputs and outputs, and the more you can detach yourself from any emotion and just put it down to it's a formula of how much does it cost me and how much do I get. It's just that's all businesses.

Darren Lee

When I observe a lot of these guys, they just don't even know the numbers inside their business, let alone the sales stuff. I just mean like the cost of uh like the so the CAC, the acquisition, or the fulfillment cost. And like that, I think that is actually the biggest thing. It's what I said yesterday was about if you're trying to lose weight, you don't own the weighing skills, and now you don't own, you know, you don't use my fitness pal, and now you don't use a tracker in the gym. How the fuck can you expect to lose weight? Like you have to be able to know the numbers, whether it's the basic marketing numbers or obviously the sales numbers as well, which we're both like passionate on, right?

Usman

When I used to do this fitness business offer, I remember people used to book calls with me, my clients, and they used to say, I don't know my numbers. And I used to say, I'm cancelling this call, come back to me when you know this number, and you can explain it to me. So send me a loom video when you can explain all of these numbers, until then I'm not speaking to you again. And they used to be like, Oh, that's not what I need to do. I was like, Well, do I know more than you? Yes, is this what you need to know? Yes. So then there's a way of getting people to learn it because if your job is a coach, that's what you have to do for them. I want to know, like, why I don't have that problem now anymore, by the way.

Darren Lee

But but that's why I want to double tap on you, right? Because like we got connected through Ali from Quantum. That was an issue we got connected, but you have a fucking really good reputation in the industry. But what I want to really know is like, what do you do better than everybody else? Like, what is what is your thing?

Usman

I don't try to impress people with tactics or anything like that. I just think what is your business need? And because everyone needs, everyone, a lot of the times they know what they need, they just need implementation. And I think we're just very good at implementation because the way we've been getting successful with our clients, the main thing is so we broke down, we looked at all of our clients over the last four years. What was the number one metric that made a client successful? It was getting their tracking in place in the first seven to fourteen. So then we put all of our energy, so then I hired one person, so the sales ops employee. Her job is every time you onboard a client, she just fixes the tracking of every business owner in the first seven to fourteen. Because we know if we just fix someone's tracking on how it should be done, it's the weighing scales example. Yeah, and that's all we do. So someone gets onboarded with us. After they get onboarded, they get go through a fuel full diagnostic. So they fill out a business audit form, what are their issues, what are their constraints, and then we get them a win on the onboarding call. After we do that, we tell them the first task is onboarding. They'll say, No, no, I need an appointment setter, I need this, I need that, and that we'll say, Well, can you tell us what KPIs for the appointment setter? Or can you tell us this? They'll say no. We say we have to fix the tracking. And all we do is put all of our energy within to get the tracking fixed as quickly as possible.

Darren Lee

What's the tracking you do initially?

Usman

Like what do you think? So we put in something called a sales management tracker, which has 15 metrics from top of funnel to bottom of funnel, and we get all of those metrics and their first check-in on a Monday, just like a fitness coach, like their first check-in on a Monday, all of our businesses, even our eight-figure companies, do a Monday check-in. And we they do a Monday check-in with us, and then we go and we set them their constraints for their week. We identify where it is and what they need to work on. The way we run our coaching business is extremely different to everybody else, because everyone does a course and you start at the beginning of the course and then you work your way through the course. What we do is we do a constraints-based coaching, which most people can't do because they hire cheap CSMs to run their business. What I do is I pay all of our consultants 20 to 30k a month because I pay them so much money, I can bring in good talent who can fix constraints for businesses. So the way we scale companies is not your normal methodology of an online business based upon milestones and a journey.

Darren Lee

So when they come in, that tracking. Yeah, how long does it take someone to really understand that? Because, like, how deep do they go, right?

Usman

So, we the first thing that we get, the first video is how to use the tracker. So we get them to do a research, which is can you go find the last 90 days of these numbers? The first answer: 60, 70% of people have is I don't know all my numbers. I've not been tracking, I've not been using the CRM properly, my setup doesn't use the school sheets properly, there's nothing's filled out. And we'll say, To the best of your ability, fill out these numbers. And our sales ops person will jump onto a call and fill it out with them for their hour, hold their hand until we find the number somewhere. Because sometimes we have to go through their bank statements and say, Okay, this is your bank statement, this is how much sales were made, how many calls do you have on your Google calendar? And then we look at their calendar and we work out what was the conversion. So the way we have to find out like tracking sometimes is bizarre, but once we do it, we then have a baseline.

Darren Lee

And what's the next step?

Usman

Like what way does that infer uh improvement? Yeah, good quick good question. So once we can now track those 15 metrics, which are start from uh how much are they spending? And so if it's if they're not running ads,

Fix The Offer And The Numbers

Usman

if they're running ads, we'll put their ads spend. If they're not running ads, we'll put their cost of their um editor, cost of what it costs them for a social media manager. That's also cost of acquisition, which people don't count, because we see cost of acquisition as two things: fully loaded and not fully loaded. Fully loaded is cost of software, editors, and everything. So we get them to measure that first. We get through all the metrics that they need to measure. So it's like how many setting calls they had, how many closing calls, how many outbound dials, how many messages, how many leads were Dod leads, how much revenue came in, and then we can say, based upon those metrics, what performance metrics came up, and the performance metrics were okay, you actually have a lead to booking to X, you have um your close rate at this, your show rate at this, and then we identify what is the one number that will get the most throughput for more sales, and we explain it to them, and that's when they all have a Eureka moment. Our most common message that we have in Slack after seven to ten days, we have it like we know we expect it. Oh, I get it, how the tracking should work. So we get a message in Slack from every client in the first seven to ten days saying, Oh, they finally understand tracking. Because everyone sees tracking as I know my close rate, I know my show rate, but tracking is used to help you make decisions. So when we implement tracking, we show you on how to make decisions off the back of that tracking.

Darren Lee

And when you're looking at that issue, would you say that a lot of it goes back to volume? Or would you would you do you think that's a variable? Volume of leads. Uh volume of activity. So like my observation with the smaller guys is that they're just not doing enough.

Usman

I think most businesses on the 300, 400k don't do enough. Most businesses.

Darren Lee

Or like it's a hormonesy thing where it's like you don't you don't even know, you don't even know how much you should be doing to get the result. Like what I'm trying to say is like, let's say you do $100, like, dude, I had that podcast on Matchy Rider, then I was like before or after you. And he was saying that they pulled all the data from dialer.io, and he said that if a dialer works consistently eight hours or nine hours that day, they can get 600,000 statistically. But the average guy pisses about and he probably does 200 max, 250, 300.

Usman

Yeah, but you have to understand productivity. Yeah, I've worked all over the world now, and in the UK, if someone works an eight-hour day, they are productive for about two hours 19 minutes, which is they go to the toilet, they drink coffee, they're talking to their friends, they text them on their phone, they do all this stuff. So they're productive for two hours 19. That's kind of what he was saying. Yeah, and we look at Germany, Germany has a higher productivity, Japan has a higher productivity. So the different countries that you go will nationally like have different productivity as like cultural, how hard they just work. Yeah. So if I just know how to incentivize salespeople, because they're not the same as operational staff, you can just optimize all their incentives towards being doing more activity.

Darren Lee

So, how have you how have you actually changed that behavior? Because uh a lot of times what I hear back from from founders when they have setters is that they're pushing them too hard, right? That when they ask to put in these inputs, they they the feedback is they're pushing. Now, I don't believe that that's bullshit. I've I'm in your boat with that husband. Yeah, it's total bullshit. But what I'm saying is the feedback that comes from the setter is that they're feeling burned out and all this kind of stuff. And and it's two questions. So that's about that setting expectations. Two, what is normal for churn with setters and stuff?

Usman

Yeah, so 50% of setters in high ticket churn in the first month. And when you hire, you have to hire in twos and threes and have a bench of talent. Yeah, otherwise you have a 50% chance of getting your setter to stay for the first month. 100%. Like if we was to place 100% um someone in a business, we know that we have to provide a guarantee because they might leave. It's not just the business owner, sometimes they're shitty business owners as well. By the way, the churn is not just because of the setters, the churn is also they don't know how to manage, know how to build a system, there's so many components to it. Most commonly, it's they don't really know how to hold accountability, but they think they do. They think telling someone what to do is holding them accountable.

Darren Lee

So I think the biggest thing is like if guys are trying to actually make more money, they're now moving from founder-led sales to the team-led sales, right? But then the big thing with this is when they put in a 19-year-old setter who can't even put on his fucking pants in the morning, let alone actually set calls, they're saying, hey, you gotta do X amount of volume, and then they're not doing it. So, like, how do you set that expectation?

Usman

So, how I set expectation is when when an appointment set to start, on their first uh day, we'll show them the plan for the first 30 days. And we'll say, in the first 30 days, here's the calendar. Here's every meeting that you're going to, here's, and by the way, we templatize this for business owners, we make it incredibly dummy-proof. This is every meeting you're going to, this is every training you're going to, this is every document you're doing as a training. This is every single thing you're doing step by step. And then we'll say to them, in week one, I just want you to make a couple of calls. In week two, I want you to make 50 dials per day. In week three, uh 120 dials per day. And in week four, we want you to be consistently getting 200 dials per day. And then each week they get doing more and more volume because they're just dabbling in the dials first, and they are then doing the training, doing the product training, sales training. They're learning the all the onboarding, learning about the business. And as they get ramped up by the end of the, by the towards the last part of the month, they are now just dialing and they've now got rid of every distraction.

Darren Lee

What's the biggest thing that pisses you off, the sales teams and founders? What did they fundamentally don't understand that you have to beat them over the head, can't see what? Like, where is the start?

Usman

The main thing is for CEOs, like business owners, they look for someone who's gonna fix their business for them. So they think talent is a lot higher level than it is. So, you know, if you want to let's say hire a sales director who's a 250k base a year, he can come and build your business, he can come and build out all the systems, like David. Yes, but they think I'm gonna hire a sales rep or a sales manager, and he will build all of this for me. They are living in Cuckooland. They think the level of employee they get at a 400 to 6k base for a sales manager or a 6 to 8k base for a sales manager is someone who can grow a company's entire sales department. If they could, they would own their own business. And the difference is when you have a sales director, let's say he's at a $20, $30 million a year company, he gets um $500k a year. The reason why he gets $400-500k a year after everything's paid is because if he was to own his own business, a $3 million a year business, he would earn $400-500k. So the money always adds up because they could run their own $3 million

Tracking That Drives Better Decisions

Usman

business, but they don't want that risk. They're an entrepreneur, so they work inside your company. A sales manager who's going to make even $15, $20k a month could not run your company. So do not hand over the business to them and say, build it for me.

Darren Lee

Yeah, I think this is where like you have unrealized expectations or unmet expectations. I've observed that too, working with a lot of sales managers who came from big companies, you actually think that they're more qualified than what they are. Like they don't understand the marketing. Is it from experience? Um yeah, from observation. Like I've seen a lot of guys leave the big companies to try to build stuff and they they don't understand operations of the business, they don't understand client success because they take the sales, bro. Yeah, they're they're a cashier at a big company. And then your advice to me back in the day was don't always look at the big logos as someone knows what they're doing. Yeah, just because someone works at a big company and that business owner is fucking shit hot, yeah, doesn't mean that this guy is going to be shit hot.

Usman

Listen, I've had people from massive companies, billion-dollar companies on their CV, and they don't know Dick because the bigger the company, the more they are a clogging a wheel. Yeah. So you have to know when I worked at Virgin Active, it's great that I did it, but I actually learned far more from growing my company and growing other people's businesses than I did at like a hundred million dollar a year company. Because in that big company, I was one clog in a wheel. So it was great the experience that I got. I became a great sales leader, and I had a really good like uh accolades. I learned a lot, but I was still a clog in a wheel.

Darren Lee

Yeah, same with me and Revolute, right? Like I was they give you it's kind of similar to how you're explaining, uh Eddie Maloof was explaining. Like you get a I had a team and we had a PL and we were a trading team, and everything underneath from building the products, the employees, the expenses, the um economics of the offer, of the actual offer itself, you're given responsibility of for the most part. You obviously don't own it, and then that gives you good lessons into how you'd run a mini business, but then when you leave and you get trial by fire, you also make way more, you learn way more, you know.

Usman

Yeah.

Darren Lee

I uh I want to handle some objections, right? I think a lot of people when they're looking to go from that 100k a month mark, so like when we were making 100k a month, I remember distinctly that we were we had 75% margin, and now at let's say we'll we we average 350 to 400 a month, we've got to like 550, 600 a month, we're at 52% merge. Is that cash or revenue? That's cash, okay. Yeah, that's cash, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't even look at revenue.

Usman

Yeah, well, I don't I don't even have ticket space, people tell me that revenue.

Darren Lee

No, no, no, no, this confuses me. I don't even think, I don't even fucking quantify that. You know what I mean? I don't even I don't even think about that, man. Just cash, money in the bank. But our margin is 52%. And to me, that's great, right? It's it's you're making a ton of money, money in the bank, reinvesting, all that kind of shit. But the biggest objection I get is people saying, I don't want to hire reps because they're gonna make less money. How I handle that objection, as I say, is you can have 100% of zero, or you can have 60% of 200k a month. Yeah. How how do you think about that problem?

Usman

Uh say um you're you are better than everyone that you're gonna hire, but you're not better than everyone combined. So you could be better than one person that you're gonna hire, but if you hire 10 people, well, you can't beat them all on the amount of time they can put in. And so you have to hire people. And you can hire less people now with operational roles because of AI. But this if you can hire one or two really good salespeople in the early stage, your company will grow.

Darren Lee

I have to introduce you to Tiernan, my head of sales. Sure. He's a fucking animal. He's like the with the he's just a total, total animal. And like he's one of the reasons why we do so well. And it's because like he was a such a good key fundamental role.

Usman

Yeah.

Darren Lee

And uh great closer, great manager, great people person. But what I'm trying to say is like he's worth his weight in gold. Like, fuck knows how much I pay him a year. He probably, you know, a lot, like a lot, a lot. But it's worth every single cent. Because the way I think about it was if he wasn't there, we wouldn't make the money.

Usman

Yeah, I think um people have just got their own head. They look at every successful person a successful successful business owner online and say he's got a team, and then they justify why they don't have a team. So success leaves clues.

Darren Lee

How do you think about people coming into the vision, right? So, like obviously, you're a business owner, you you you've invested your heart and soul into the business, into the brand, into the image. How do you think about bringing people in, setting those expectations? Like we were discussing last night, people not being able to buy into your vision. How do you fix that problem?

Usman

With uh do you know? I tell everyone that every interview that I do first is a culture interview. What I actually do is a vision interview. So I every single candidate that I meet, I'll share to them like I'll start off the interview in a very informal way. I'll say, tell me a bit more about you, what do you do? I just want to learn more about you. So I'll instantly change the energy of the interview to be just a chat. And then I'll say to them, like, just to show you what I'm building, this is what I'm building, and this is what the goal is. We're trying to go to a nine-figure company all about sales leadership. We want to be the biggest in what we do. We're the only sales training company that does sales management specifically. Uh, we work with CEOs, sales managers, and this is our big goal to change the way sales leadership is done. And then if they don't respond in a way which is that looks really good, that looks inspiring, or I can I just can tell they're not excited about it, they're not gonna be in hire. I want them to be genuinely excited about sales leadership, even if they have an operational staff member, I'll talk about leadership, not just sales leadership. So I I can always vet people based upon my vision, and do they feel aligned with my vision? Well, why do you have the vision that you have? Well, it goes down to like a deeper story where when I was around 26, 27, I was a sales manager, and I wanted to get my promotion to a sales director, and I wanted to run the business. My thing was I've worked for this company for four, five, six years, and I really want to get this role as a sales director. And I told the sales director, and then he said, Sure, man, just do this thing for me. And then he got me to do a task. Then he started, and then I trained all the salespeople. I was training 400 salespeople at the time. 400? Yeah, 400 salespeople, and then I would onboard all the new company recruits, then I I would continuously hire the people, train the people, train the sales managers, and then I said to him, So when is this promotion coming? He said, Okay, I want you to move out of this location in London and move here into this site that's not doing so well and fix it. And I knew my commission will change from like uh it was at the time 6, 7k a month. I remember this is a London-based job a long time ago, to almost 40% less and not get my commission anymore. And I said to him, But I'm gonna get less commission. He said, Well, I'm not gonna give you a promotion until you move. So he was blackmailing me to take less money for me to get a promotion that already for the last eight months I was getting strung along. Yeah, and then I also looked at how he was managing others and how everyone kind of hated him, and his company was starting to perform really bad on like every metric. He was letting the whole company down as a sales director. He was he was bullying staff, he was abusing his power, he was hiring the wrong team members. Uh he was making all the bad decisions. And I remember going home one day, incredibly demotivated, and realizing that I'm working for an absolute dick and I hated my job. And

Setter Churn And Ramp Plans

Usman

I thought, I absolutely love working in sales, and I love working for this company, but this person's making my life miserable. And then only after I left after lockdown, I realized that anytime I progressed, it was because I had a good sales leader, and every time I was held back, it was because of a bad sales leader. So I thought this has to be fixed. So I started helping people with sales management, sales leadership, and they just grew from there, just continuously grew. Where I unraveled this problem in the high-ticket industry, which was great marketers pour at people, yeah. And as I unraveled that problem, yeah, I just became more and more driven towards fixing it.

Darren Lee

Yeah, man, it's crazy. Like, you know, you have guys that are really good at selling shit, but not good at running companies, let alone the fulfillment. Yeah, so the fulfillment of what's not being delivered to clients. But I mean, like, this is the issue with the webinar guys, is that they they're not interested in people. They're fundamentally not interested in people, they're interested in getting cash, leaving, getting cash, leaving, which is why their team doesn't stick around, which is why they have a sales agency, which is why they can't hire people internally. And look, it's great for your business because you can come in and just help them rip it. But for a lot of guys, including myself, when we're building businesses and we don't have we didn't have that option in the beginning, especially before you can get a sales agency or a marketing agency, you don't have that, you you need it's person to person at the end of the day. I know that we intuitively get this, but like that's why the arc of this conversation is the reason why you're not making more money is because you're not actually investing in the people around you. You've invested in you and you've become very good at what you do, but you're not actually focused on building the people around you. And man, there's no better way to learn than there is to teach. Like, I have young reps that we give a lot of energy to private access, private one-to-ones, and they're gonna have the best career ever. You know? How do you think about like building that culture?

Usman

Well, the culture is always from top down, never from the bottom up. And if your culture comes down, you are a high performer, so you have your core values because if you look at every business, their culture actually comes from the founders' core values. Yeah, so like if you're a core, if one of your core values is I will always be in shape, you're probably not gonna hire someone who's out of shape. Yeah, so then think about the type of business that you have. So everything is like an internal thing going external. So I think about if I keep my so the number one thing that I do is I remind myself on how I can increase my standard. Because if I get better, everyone gets better. So I need to be focused, I need to be in shape, I need my sleep needs to be good. Because if mine is, everybody else is gonna be. I had four days when my sleep was bad, it was four hours a day. I then wasn't making wasn't as productive, wasn't working as well. So who got affected? My entire company. All of my employees got affected because of that. And now when people have AI agents, you can say I've automated everything, but your work will be affected massively just because you're not holding a high standard. So leadership is more about everything's just you in life. People think about it in such a binary way. Well, I don't need to hire loads of people now, I can just use a lot of AI agents. But what about your general life? Are you not gonna have are you not gonna be a leader for your family? Are you not gonna be a leader for your friends? So they think about it in such a binary way between work and personal life, but it's actually leadership is just life.

Darren Lee

Yeah, and I think as like a as like a male like leader, like an entrepreneur, you can take those lessons into like your household, whether you have kids, yeah, like you know, whether you're getting married, like you need to set that fucking example. So that's why it's funny, like, business is the ultimate pursuit, right? It's a personal development too. And same for female entrepreneurs, like we only work with female entrepreneurs with 80% of female people. We work with you got 80% female audience.

Usman

Fucking is it is that why you got the hair? Is it does that bring them in?

Darren Lee

No, it's the funnels. 80% of female clients. That's crazy. 80% female. Fucking man, why that is? I I tell you exactly why. Female entrepreneurs are way more diligent, they're way more focused, they follow a specific strategy. Yeah, they don't try to question the aspirational identity that they've bought stuff from. Male entrepreneurs are highly ego-driven. Yeah, they're uh they have a lot of bad taste in their mouth when they're being told to do something, and as a result, they don't follow the plan and then they blame you and not. I know that's very true because we do accountability trackers, and the all the female uh entrepreneurs they do them every week and they're super, super diligent. All the guys, they don't do them.

Usman

No, I really agree. I actually a lot of my best

Vision Hiring And Leadership Standards

Usman

staff are women. Yep, and you know, something that I've got a real gripe for is the manosphere because you know this Louis III documentary at the moment, I'm on a bit of a tangent here. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? But to me, this is like super important because the manosphere is an absolute fucked up place online because you see these guys online, like clavicular and these red pill guys, and they are promoting a certain agenda, and people think that is now the only way. Yeah, do you know having like women around you that are happy, not feeling like though you they are out of fear because they don't have to do anything for you, it's all out of choice, and this malosphere is like a crazy space because the internet gobbles up these uh young guys and makes them see the world in a very different lens.

Darren Lee

And even to add to that, right? Uh, female entrepreneurs they attract females for their offers generally, and women by the emotion, men by logic. So for female entrepreneurs, it's better for them to build a cult, it's easier for them to build a cult. Yeah, whereas guys have lots of conflicting views, uh, they try to like tear people down, all this kind of stuff. So everything is like net, net easier. Uh, there's a there's a pace morby clip I gotta send you. I think it was Pace. You know Pace? And uh I think it's him now. I'm not 95% sure, but regardless.

Usman

You know something about Pace whilst you're on that topic. I met Pace last year in uh in Scottsdale. In last year. Because he lives in Scotland, he lives in Arizona. Yeah, and when I met him, he was talking about community because he has this amazing community that he's built, and now he was he's traveling around America and building, and he has people who build communities in his real estate niche and they run communities in their state for pace. Sick. And I just think the way he's built it is incredible.

Darren Lee

So to double tap on that, he was the the clip I was seeing was that he only hires female female employees, and it's obviously like a very controversial hook. Do you see this? Yeah, I've heard him say it for so only female entrepreneurs, and the reason being is because he says he hires a guy, a guy will come in, either argue with him for six months, or take the shit and leave. Take the shit after six months anyway and leave. Yeah, whereas and the guy the and the idea is I said it to David this morning, I said it to him fucking this morning, that guys think that they can outshine the master and they get egotistical and jealous, and they they say, Fuck you, I'll go do it myself. Yeah, whereas women want to build you up, they just in general, they want to build families, they want to build you up, they want to build businesses, so they're happy to actually come in and assist. Whereas the guys are like, nah, fuck this guy, I know more than uh than Uzman, I can do this myself. And I said this to I really, I really do believe it. Yeah, and I said it to David a minute ago. I go, David Dra goes, why I goes, why have why did you not do your own thing? And you went from Sam to doing a thing, and then now he's with uh Cole. And he was like, I just realized that I can make way more money helping someone else build their business because of my skills. And I was like, I've never heard a type A personality in my entire life say that. But I said it to him like an hour ago. I goes, that is the first time I've ever heard someone say that who's obviously incredibly competent, he's insanely competent. That he's like, I'm gonna make more money and I'm gonna double tap and I'm gonna help someone build their business. David could arguably build, he could build an eight-figure

Gender Dynamics And Closing Thoughts

Darren Lee

business, right? Eight-figure business. But why did he not do it? It's because he has the awareness to know that he could make more money with less of the stress. Yeah. Probably he doesn't take the business owner's stress. I don't know. I'm just speaking at a high level here. I don't I obviously don't know the guy in detail. But I'm saying, isn't that an interesting observation? Because most guys who build info offers and stuff, they end up burning out because they didn't want to be a business owner to begin with. They weren't an entrepreneur. Yeah, they're an entrepreneur and not an entrepreneur. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Sick man. Well, dude, this is a sick session. We're in the 40 degree heat. It's nice and hot, your legend, bro. Thank you, man.