Vinnie Fisher is a Founder and CEO of The Total CEO and Founder and Chairman of Fully Accountable. Today we really dove into The Total CEO, unpacked the six core areas of business, and really what we find bleeding through everything is strategy and intention.

In This Interview I Ask:

• 1:45 – Tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey. How you got started, how you progress, and how you ended up where you're at today.
• 4:20 – You're a lawyer by trade and then in 2006 you launch your direct response career. How did that happen? What launched you from a lawyer into building $300 million worth of sales for these different brands? How do you get there?
• 6:00 – Give us the founding story: how did it come about and when did it actually start?
• 7:00 – What was the driving factor for the creation of Total CEO? What problem is it solving for people?
• 9:40 – How did you arrive at the place where you knew that being a great strategist was your one thing, your core competency?
• 15:10 – With this noise or chatter that we hear out there, about just get going, how do you marry that back up into taking the appropriate time to create the strategy and the vision so that things don't fall apart a year down the line?
• 17:30 – What's that tipping point? How do you know when it's time to start operating with a strategy and get beyond the strategy of just take some steps and get it done?
• 19:05 – The Total CEO breaks down business into six core areas. Can we start talking through some of those?
• 21:30 – Let's just start with owner's mindset. How are people messing this up?
• 24:40 – Why did they have to be okay with a 70% version of themselves?
• 28:40 –  Let's move on to piece two, which is the team, and then let's talk specifically around this character not competence. Would you hire somebody who had absolutely no experience copywriting?
• 30:15 – How do you look at the speed of bringing people on in the early stages of a business?
• 34:25 – How do you interview for something like commitment? Do you give them a little task to do and then see if they do it?
• 35:45 – If I'm interviewing someone and one of my top values in hiring is commitment, what would it look like for me to actually evaluate and understand, is this potential hire somebody who meets my core value?
• 41:40 – You mentioned that you learned the importance of numbers the hard way. How did you learn that lesson?
• 43:40 – Let’s talk about sales and marketing. You imagine that most people think they're good at this. What are they missing?
• 45:15 – So channel envy means you're looking at other people's channels and thinking, “wouldn't it be great,” but ultimately what matters is do your channels matchup with your avatar?
• 47:10 – Would it be safe to say that people are ultimately buying your outcome? Your result that you're going to get for them, not your product exactly?
• 47:30 – When do I go from one to more than one product? How do I go beyond my first product, and when do I know that it's time for me to start exploring that?
• 52:40 – You said something systems and processes, and I had never heard it put like that before. You said something about pave it behind you. Just remind me what you said about systems and processes.
• 55:15 – Do I start recording this stuff after I already know the process works, or I just do it the first time? That way in case it works I've got it down?

Finding Your Core Competency

Vinnie shared the story of the baseball player Ted Williams. He got voted in the hall of fame by hitting just over 300 for his career. That means he strikes out a lot, but he was still great. The nature of business is trial-and-error. Through failure and perseverance, by identifying your strengths and weaknesses, anyone can discover their core competency in business.

• “Winners are the ones who fail and don't give up. Losing is failing and believing that you're done.”

Take a Step

“Take a step – it might be the wrong one, but it's the one that's ultimately going to lead to your success.”

Sometimes the strategy is to get going. Just go out and do it. Don’t mature and double down and spend marketing dollars when you’re in makeup mode. Sometimes you're in developing a strategy mode and then when things start to click is when you have to slow down, and not slow down sales but slow down. You have to find the tension between being able to break away a little bit and look at it, instead of just being fully immersed in it

The tipping point is when you get to a critical mass – and Vinnie describes the critical mass as when you start being unable to grow beyond your shadow or you already have grown beyond your shadow and you've lost the passion piece of your business – and you need to start addressing this big issue.

The Six Core Areas of Business

1. The Owner’s Mindset – “If your foundation’s not secure, then anything you build on top of it is not secure. So everything starts with your right alignment.”
2. 1. Entrepreneurs need an execution mindset.
   2. Entrepreneurs need to be comfortable with duplicating their processes, and not having everything completed 100% their way
   3. It’s important to have different strategies at the certain seasons of your business
   1. Vinnie favors character over competence, because he believes that any employee with the right effort, ability and attitude can be trained.
3. Your Team – “There is not an organization out there that can grow beyond your shadow without properly developing and growing a team.”
   1. Just because you don't know them doesn't mean you can't go figure them out, and the starting point for people on that is to go know the key metrics of your industry.
4. The Numbers – “If you don't understand the metrics and real numbers of your business, you're never going to grow.”
   1. Simplify your marketing strategy. Get the message clear and the problem you're solving clear.
5. Sales and Marketing – “Typically this is the area where most entrepreneurs think they're good. They think they're a good marketer or they think they're good at sales, and so having a simple, unique sales proposition and unique value proposition is critical to this part of it.”
   1. You have a core service or product you offer, and until you've reached a point of scalability or sustainability you should not go out and create another one.
6. Products and Services – You either sell a product or provide a service, or a hybrid.
   1. The new business walks down new areas all the time. The new area is a dirt road. You can walk down that dirt road, but you should be able to pave behind you.
7. Systems and Processes – You can't grow without that. “You can always walk down a dirt road as long as you have a mentality to paint behind you.”

“I'm saying to you that strategy is real, and just because you don't know how to do something doesn't mean you aren't capable of doing it, and that's the whole beauty of being an entrepreneur.”

Resources

• Learn more about Vinnie: Website
• A treasure trove of free resources are available at TheTotalCEO.com/SFN. It includes a free book, other downloads, strategy stuff and more.
• The CEO’s Mindset by Vinnie Fisher
• The Best Investment: A Better You by Vinnie Fisher
• Fully Accountable
• The Total CEO
• The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Production & Development for The Impact Entrepreneur Show by Podcast Masters