Podcast Episode

From Broke to $30M: Why Being Profitable is a Moral Obligation

RJon Robins

Episode Notes

Summary

In this episode of Digital Dominance, Jeffro interviews RJon Robins, an attorney-turned-entrepreneur who built multiple eight-figure businesses by helping service-based business owners, especially lawyers run their firms like real businesses. RJon opens up about going broke despite being an expert in business systems and shares hard-earned wisdom on profitability, mindset, and marketing. This episode covers how personal problems often manifest as business problems, why profitability is an ethical obligation, how to build a marketing machine that runs without you, and why scaling your business means giving up the hero complex. Whether you’re a lawyer, therapist, plumber, or creative professional, the insights are powerful and widely applicable.

Takeaways

  • Profitability is a responsibility, not just a goal.
  • Business problems are usually personal problems in disguise.
  • Trying to be the hero keeps your business small.
  • Systems and processes aren’t boring, they’re what make scale possible.
  • Authentic marketing attracts the right clients and repels the wrong ones.
  • Hiding your values in marketing creates problems with both clients and staff.
  • Your business isn’t your baby, it’s your mule.
  • Entrepreneurs often resist systems because firefighting gives them an adrenaline rush.
  • To build a marketing machine, you must productize your services.
  • Entrepreneurial maturity means wanting what you want—without apology.

Chapters 

00:00 Intro to RJon Robins & his journey from broke to eight-figure businesses 
05:35 Business problems are personal problems in disguise
08:45 Authentic marketing attracts the right clients (and repels the wrong ones)
11:42 Letting go of the “hero complex” to scale your business
24:10 How to build a marketing machine that runs without you
32:09 Your business is not your baby, it’s your mule

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjonrobins/
https://www.facebook.com/rjonrobins2
https://www.facebook.com/HowToManageASmallLawFirm
https://www.instagram.com/rjonrobins/
https://www.instagram.com/howtomanageasmalllawfirm/
https://howtomanageasmalllawfirm.com/
https://rjonrobins.com/

Free High-Converting Website Checklist: FroBro.com/Checklist

Transcript

Jeffro (00:00.394)
Yeah, of course.

All right, welcome back to Digital Dominance. Most business owners were never taught how to build a business and they were taught to just deliver a service. So they end up stuck, overwhelmed and underpaid even when they’re good at what they do. Today’s guest is R. John Robbins, an attorney turned entrepreneur who built an eight figure business helping law firm owners run their firms like real businesses. But don’t worry, this episode is not just for lawyers, whether you’re in plumbing, mental health or… And it’s like marketing, you know, the systems are John shares are powerful for any service business. We’ll be talking about how to use marketing to attract the right clients and repel the wrong ones, how to build a marketing machine that runs without you and why making a profit isn’t just a goal. It’s a responsibility. Welcome to the show are done.

RJon Robins (00:46.222)
Thanks, Geoffro.

Jeffro (00:48.062)
Well, I’m really excited to have you here and have this episode. And I want to start with this idea that being profitable is an ethical obligation. So please tell us more about that.

RJon Robins (00:59.51)
Right, so you mentioned that I had built an eight figure business servicing the legal industry. I’m sharing this not for purposes of bragging, but just to give some context. But before I tell you about what I built and what I’ve got, what I’m doing, I wanna just let everyone in the audience know that 12 years ago, I was flat broke. mean, like hardcore flat broke. mean, like my wife had become ill.

And because I had failed to follow my own excellent advice, right, about prioritizing profits and creating systems and procedures, you all the stuff that we do for the businesses that we help to manage today, I had failed to follow that advice. And the worst part about it, Jeffro, is I was already in the business of giving that advice. So I was going around helping people build very successful businesses, like really successful businesses, by writing business plans and marketing plans and sales strategies and financial control systems and policies and procedures for production and all that kind of stuff. But like a freaking idiot.

I wasn’t following my own advice, like the shoemaker without shoes, the baker without bread, the plumber whose toilet isn’t working, whatever, right? And then my wife got sick, and like that, I mean, it goes away fast, right? If everything is riding on your shoulders, and you have to shrug to bend down to take care of a loved one who’s fallen, you are screwed, and it fell apart fast.

Jeffro (02:24.777)
Exactly.

RJon Robins (02:49.998)
and we lost our house to foreclosure. And it was embarrassing. And it was especially embarrassing because I, by that point, developed a pretty decent reputation as the person to go to if you wanted to build a business. But I had failed to build a sustainable business. built, I created a really great job for myself, but I didn’t turn it into a sustainable business that could keep going and keep growing and keep taking care of me and my family when I had to take care of my family. So I just want to say that from a place of humility that like, because if I start off talking about my greatest hits, I come off like an asshole. And I want to say that I say this with humility. So today I have multiple eight figure businesses, not just one. I have more than one business that grows more than million last year. One business grossed 30 million, another grossed almost 40 million, and I’ve got multiple multi-seven-figure businesses as well. And as you’ve noticed before we started talking, it’s all paper and pencil and erasers and I mean it’s not that glamorous. It’s not, listen, it’s not complicated. It doesn’t cost a lot of money.

Jeffro (04:07.593)
a lot less glamorous.

RJon Robins (04:17.074)
All the things that I’m going to share with you today are things that I was doing when I had no money, when I had no staff, when I had no resources. When no one like you would cross the street to piss on me if I was on fire because they didn’t give a crap because I was broke. When no one was listening to me, I started doing the things that I’m still doing today that I’ll share with your audience. And if you’ll do these things, there’s no reason why you can’t build a multi billion dollar or even a multi eight figure business if that’s what you want and need to achieve your goals.

Jeffro (04:56.115)
Yeah, well, I appreciate you giving that background because obviously, yes, we want to highlight the things that you’ve accomplished because that means people can learn from you. But I think it’s more powerful to hear that you went through the problem of not taking your own advice. And it is like that’s something we all struggle with. Even if it’s not just about taking your own advice, if we’re too cl-

Jeffro (05:17.574)
website. I could do a customer’s website. Awesome. No problem. Right. But when I look at my own, I get stuck. And this is kind of a universal thing to a certain degree. there’s this idea that business problems are usually personal problems in disguise. So I wanted to hear your thoughts on that as well.

RJon Robins (05:35.094)
Every business problem you’ve got is a personal problem. It’s manifesting. It’s showing up as a problem in your business, but it starts off as a personal problem. So wherever you look at any business, it doesn’t matter what the business is. It could be a restaurant. It could be a service business. It could be a manufacturing business. It doesn’t matter what the business is. Any business you look at, wherever the business is, thriving, wherever the business is doing really well, you know. That’s always an area of the business where you’re going to find the owners and or the management of the business using the business to give love, give security and or give self-esteem to the customers, to the employees, to the vendors, to the people who really make the business work.

And conversely, wherever you look at a business and you’re having a problem, you got a problem in your marketing, I’m gonna trace it back every single time to an area of your business where you’re in the marketing, where you’re using the marketing to get love, get security, or get self-esteem. You got a problem.

Jeffro (06:47.483)
Can you give us a real example of that?

RJon Robins (06:50.798)
I can give a hundred real examples, let me think. Okay, let’s talk about a simple one. Someone has a really compelling story or a really polarizing point of view. And because they want everyone to like them, get love, because they want to get self-esteem, they want lots of compliments, right? and they want to get security. They’re worried that if someone knows the real them or hears their real story that they won’t want anything to do with it. Right. So they hide their light under the bushel as they say. Right. They don’t actually use they don’t actually tell their truth. They don’t actually share their story. In their marketing and consequently the the prospects who would really resonate with that story, who would say, wow, that’s me. I’m like you, I’m like that. I wanna do business with a company like that. They don’t know about it, because you’re hiding that truth from them. And the customers who are the patients or the passengers or the clients, whatever you call them in your business, the people who are maybe put off by that idea or that story or that message, they’re gonna figure it out eventually anyway. Are you following what I’m saying? So like in my company, we’ve got core values and these 10 core values are not for everyone and they’re off putting to some people. They’re very clear values that we believe in and we don’t negotiate and we don’t compromise and it is who we are and if you love them, you’ll love doing business with us.

Jeffro (08:23.845)
Yeah.

RJon Robins (08:45.09)
But if you don’t love them, you won’t love doing business with us. But even if we were to hide them from you and trick you into doing business with us, because we wanted you to like us, or we didn’t want you to dislike us, I mean, eventually you’re going to figure out this is the way we think and this is how we act and this is how we behave.

Jeffro (09:01.657)
Yeah.

Jeffro (09:04.999)
So basically it’s like you’ve put up walls or you’ve got limiting beliefs around how you do this and so your marketing is never going to go past a certain level of authenticity because you won’t let this, you’re just like not comfortable sharing that. Like that’s the wall that is there that you have to get past in order to solve that problem.

RJon Robins (09:22.754)
Well, it’s like you’re double screwed here, right? Because you don’t tell people, you don’t show people what you’re really all about with your marketing. And so you’re not attracting the people who would really, really, really resonate with the real you.

And instead, you’re tricking the wrong people into doing business with you. And eventually they find out and leave you anyway. That’s problem number one. Problem number two. The staff who would really, really, really resonate with the real culture and the real values and your real point of view. They don’t know about them. So they don’t know that this is the place they want to come work. And then you trick, you know, staff into coming to work for you by pretending to be something you’re not, by not showing people what you really are, they eventually figure it out and decide this isn’t a place they want to work. I mean, it it goes so deep into the business. And that’s just marketing. We could talk about sales, we could talk about production, we could talk about your choice of physical plant and your systems and your procedures. We could talk about your approach to financial controls. Everywhere in your business, there’s seven main parts of every successful business.

Jeffro (10:22.287)
Yeah, it’s not a good.

Mm-hmm.

RJon Robins (10:43.234)
Right? There’s marketing, sales, production, people, physical plant, financial controls, and you, which is your mindset, your goals, who you are, what you’re all about, who the business is there to serve. Right? And wherever in any of seven main parts, wherever you’re using the business to get love, get security, get self-esteem, you’re going to have problems. And wherever you’re using the business to give, you’ll see the business is flourishing. Turn it around the other way. Anytime I look at a business and I see it’s flourishing in any of these seven main parts.

I know the owner is using the business to give, not to get.

Jeffro (11:20.313)
Yeah, well, and I think this leads well into my next thing I want to ask you, because many businesses are, you the owners are stuck in the, I’ll just do it myself trap. So what would you say to someone who believes that nobody else can do this as well as I can? Like, obviously there could be some of these limiting beliefs we’re talking about, right? But what do you think about that?

RJon Robins (11:42.092)
In many cases, they’re right.

RJon Robins (11:46.272)
You probably are the best person at building websites in your company. There’s probably no one better than you at building websites in your company, am I right? except probably everyone in your company who’s really good at building websites, every single one of them can probably build a better website than you can when you’re attending to a family emergency. Every one of them can build a better website than you can when you’re sitting down with your chief financial officer to analyze and figure out the finances of your business. Every single one of them can be building a better website than you. Jeff Rowe the hero, Jeff Rowe the best website builder in the world, every one of them can kick your ass with their website. Their websites will always outperform the website that you’re building when you’re on vacation not building a website at all. So, know, are you trying to create a job for yourself where you’re the hero or are you trying to build a business that actually serves a lot of people and does a lot of good and produces a lot of value. So there are areas of my business where I’m the best. I there’s areas where literally I’ve got data that proves that I’m 10 times better than anyone else in certain areas of my business. But I can’t beat 100 people. I’ve got 100 full-time employees. I’ve got more than 100 full-time employees. And even I’m sitting here talking to you right now.

One of them is currently running a marketing campaign. One of them is meeting with a prospective new client. One of them is documenting some new procedures. One of them is working on financial controls. I’ve got 100 people who are doing 100 things that I’m not doing because I’m sitting here talking to you. So what am I going to do? Tell them don’t do anything and I’ll just get to it later? Your business will never grow. You’re not going to build an eight figure business and you’re probably not even ever going to get to seven figures if you try to do it all yourself.

RJon Robins (13:51.116)
There is some truth, you know, and I think that the problem is that a lot of entrepreneurs get get bad advice from naive, presumably well-meaning, but naive advisors, coaches, lot of coaches out there running around when someone says, well, you know, but I’m the best at this. Well, no, you’re not. There’s better people than you. No, there isn’t. There’s no one better than me. There’s no one better than there’s no one better than you at this. I give you that. But do you need someone as good as you?to get it done? Or can we get someone who can do it well enough to meet your brand promise and then scale your business up?

Jeffro (14:23.736)
Yeah.

Jeffro (14:31.662)
Right. And can you even maintain your level of quality given that you’re also trying to run the business and manage payroll and this and that? Like your quality might deteriorate because you can’t give it the focus. even if you are, yeah.

RJon Robins (14:41.202)
I’m fucking Superman! It’s never gonna be zero I’m a rock star. Don’t even say it. I’m Superman, it’s never gonna be zero rate. I’m the best and I’m all powerful except when I’m vacation. I’m trying say to everyone who really genuinely believes that they’re the best, they might be the best. They might have, you know,

Jeffro (14:48.205)
Give me more Red Bull. I don’t need sleep.

Jeffro (14:57.185)
right. Well, okay.

RJon Robins (15:07.724)
more energy than anyone and they might never lose energy and they might never lose focus and they might just be the best all the time except when you’re on vacation, except when your son gets sick, except when your wife goes to the hospital, except when you have to go off and build something completely brand new and leave someone else running the thing that’s paying the bills today. This is part of the entrepreneurial maturity that I’m always talking about is you got to develop the entrepreneurial maturity to decide Am I getting my immature kicks out of being the best at this little thing? Or am I going to sit back and look at the big picture and build something of real scale and substance?

Jeffro (15:53.475)
Right. And to your point, if you just like being that guy and you want to win employee of the month, go be an employee and be the best. But if you’re to run a business, you’ve got to step aside and take what you know and train your people. Wouldn’t they have.

RJon Robins (16:06.478)
Yeah, and this is another thing that lot of entrepreneurs have a hard time with, right? It took me a long time to understand that not everyone wants to do what we do. Most people don’t, right? This is real hard thing that entrepreneurs like, well, how could I hire someone who’s really, really good and expect them to just do that all day long? And most people just want to do that all day long. They don’t want to do what we do.

Jeffro (16:35.884)
Yeah, it’s stressful. It’s very stressful. You gotta have a certain mentality and makeup, I think, to embrace that and actually succeed in entrepreneurship, which is interesting. So, I mean, we’ve kind of talked about this. This is kind of an uncomfortable truth, right, about running profitable business that most owners might not want to hear, but they kind of need to. And I’m curious if you have any other uncomfortable truths that you want to share with the listeners today.

RJon Robins (17:03.084)
Well, this might be uncomfortable for you because we’re on your podcast, but I’m going to call you on your bullshit that you just spattered and tried to feed to me.

Jeffro (17:10.38)
Go for it.

RJon Robins (17:12.16)
It’s not stressful, let’s be honest.

Stop pretending. Stop pretending like it’s stressful. You freaking love it. Admit that you love it. Admit that you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Jeffro (17:16.012)
What do you mean?

Jeffro (17:28.044)
There are parts that I won’t move past, but I don’t like the, okay, so let’s go back to where you admitted yourself. You were embarrassed and when you were broke and everything, that’s the stressful part. That’s what I’m talking about.

RJon Robins (17:42.37)
That’s because I was entrepreneurially immature. That’s because I had my head up my ass with my mindset. That’s because of how I was thinking about everything all mixed up. What I’m trying to get across, the point that I’m trying to make here, Jeffro, is…

Jeffro (17:54.507)
Got it.

RJon Robins (18:05.986)
We don’t have to go around acting like we’re carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders to justify enjoying all the things we enjoy by being owners of a successful business. You can want what you want because you want it. There’s a wonderful book by Dan Sullivan called Wanting What You Want. And the basic idea is it’s a sign of entrepreneurial maturity when you reach the point where you can say,

Jeffro (18:20.437)
Sure, I’ll give you that.

RJon Robins (18:35.136)
I want it because I want it. And the reason I want it is because I want it. And that’s it. I don’t need to justify it. I don’t need to rationalize it. don’t need to need it in order to want it. I just want it. And, you know, running a business is fun. It’s creative. It’s invigorating. It’s exciting. You get flexibility. You get to walk around the Big crazy hairdo, you mine doesn’t move up like yours, but I got long hair, you know. You get to do, get to, you get, the business is a manifestation. The business is an expression of who we are and it’s fun and it’s great. You get to meet cool people and have great conversations and create fun things. And we don’t have to go around acting like, yeah, you know, running a business is so stressful. It’s not for everyone. Anyone can do it. They just don’t want to do it.

Jeffro (19:04.331)
you

Jeffro (19:31.22)
Right. I agree with that.

RJon Robins (19:36.226)
Was that uncomfortable for you?

Jeffro (19:36.318)
Make sense? No, I totally agree. Yes, being in entrepreneurship is fun and challenging at the same time. I still think parts of it can be stressful, but it’s not like I’m complaining about the stressful parts because I chose them. I know what’s on the other side of the stressful parts and I want to get through it and I know it helps me grow.

RJon Robins (19:56.664)
The stress that, I don’t know you all that well, but I think I’m pretty good at reading people. And I would venture to say that showing up at 9 a.m. every day and clocking in and doing the job and doing the job and doing the job and doing the job and doing the job and doing the job and then clocking out at five o’clock and then waking up the next day and showing up at nine o’clock and doing the job and do that would probably drive you insane. That would be stressful. Figuring out how to solve the cashflow problem du jour, figuring out how to put out a fire over here, over there. The problem is that’s not stressful enough for people like you and me.

The problem is that’s invigorating for people like you and me, which is why we don’t build the processes and the procedures to prevent that shit from happening. Because every time a new fire erupts, we get excited to go to the rescue. Which is also part of the reason that the business doesn’t grow faster. Once I learn to start getting my excitement outside of my business and let the business become a little bit more boring.

the business grew much faster.

Jeffro (21:20.64)
So what do you think causes business owners, entrepreneurs like myself to resist implementing those systems, even when we know we need them? Maybe we get some of them in place, but we put it off for so long.

RJon Robins (21:34.472)
Ultimately, it has been my studied observation that people like us don’t do it because it’s fun to fix the problems.

Jeffro (21:48.864)
Interesting. It’s more fun to fix a problem than knowing like, I’m bringing home extra money for my family or whatever at a subconscious level.

RJon Robins (21:49.634)
We get our low.

RJon Robins (21:58.188)
Yes, that has been my experience. And every time we run to the rescue, everyone cheers.

RJon Robins (22:08.992)
Every time you got to go solve an emergency cashflow problem, go, you get to do all these great heroics and everyone cheers. You know, there are no parades for engineers. There are parades for firefighters, but not for engineers. The, the engineer who builds the building that doesn’t catch fire and cause a four alarm fire, there’s no parade for that engineer. The firefighter who hears the call, drops everything, slides down on the pole, jumps on the truck, races across town, does their hair work stuff. They get a parade. It’s an adrenaline rush, right? And this is what I meant when I talked about entrepreneurial maturity, that part of what happens as we grow and develop more entrepreneurial maturity. I’m still growing, I’m still developing more entrepreneurial maturity. I don’t have it all figured out yet. But part of what starts to happen is you start to get excited. You start to get more excited about seeing the impact that the business is having on the world. And you start to get excited about seeing the impact that the business has on its employees.

RJon Robins (23:25.932)
and you stop getting excited about riding the rescue for preventable problems. At least that’s my experience.

Jeffro (23:35.87)
That makes sense. Well, that sounds accurate. I’m glad we got to talk through this a bit. I do want to move to a couple more things before we wrap up. out of this, let’s say, let’s talk about marketing machines, because that’s a big thing. I you got a book called The Automatic Marketing Machine. What are the core components of a system that consistently brings in new businesses or new clients without relying on the owner?

RJon Robins (24:01.39)
I’m sorry, what are the components?

Jeffro (24:03.676)
Yeah, what are the components of a system, marketing system that brings people in without relying on the owner?

RJon Robins (24:10.04)
Well, I mean, first of all, you have to have a factory already built that is producing and delivering a known menu of services. Right. So if you don’t know what you’re selling, right, if the answer is we’ll sell anything to anyone that anything needs. Right. And service businesses are particularly susceptible to this. Right. Because You’re so talented. I mean, I know you’re so you are and I’m not saying this to flatter you. You’re very talented. You’re very creative and you’re very resourceful. And if someone walked in the door and said that they wanted to hire you to, I don’t know.

RJon Robins (24:56.29)
design a skywriting marketing campaign, you could probably figure it out and have a lot of fun doing it, right? But you can’t build a cog, a cost of goods sold around that. You can’t figure out what your margins are gonna be around that. So you can’t figure out what the standard price is gonna be around that. And then you can’t build a standard sales methodology around that one-off thing that you’re just customizing for everyone, right?

So if you want to build a marketing machine, the marketing machines, it has to be able to sell a finite and consistent and limited number of saleskeeping units, SKUs, items on the menu, right? So you saw, sorry.

Jeffro (25:46.941)
So you gotta productize.

You got to productize the service a little bit.

RJon Robins (25:52.322)
Yeah, you productize it. So you have a limited number of products on the menu. Each one, you know what your cost of goods sold is. So you know what your price has to be. And since you know what your price has to be, it doesn’t need to be quoted. It doesn’t need to be bid. It doesn’t need to be negotiated. is what it is because I know what it costs me and I know what my profits have to be. There’s the price, right? And because you can do that, then you can go, you can, you you start with the end in mind there and then you go back a step to the sales method, right? And because the product is the product with known benefits, known costs, known deliveries and everything else, the sales method is a very, it becomes a consultative interview, right? Because more of a, are you right for this product? Are you right for the service? Is this product or service right for you? Not trying to figure out how to sell it to you. You know, I mentioned to you before we started the interview that we have a three year waiting list for our, for our membership for people to join, to become a member of our business.

We’re up to a, we’ve had a waiting list for three years. I said it was a three year waiting list. What I meant to say is we’ve had a waiting list for more than three years. You don’t have to wait for three years, but for three years we’ve had a waiting list. And so rather than like, you know, please buy it, please buy it, please buy it, we’re able to be very open and very candid and very transparent about the strengths and the weaknesses of our service. The prices are what the prices are. The delivery is what the delivery is. And we can really have a very simple conversation with prospects about whether this is right for you, whether you’re right for this. And because it’s so standardized, you don’t need to be a sales superstar to have this conversation. We can train smart, capable, curious, interested, honest people who don’t have to like be the best salespeople in the world to be very effective, right?which brings us back to the marketing machine, right? Because if you’ve got the product ties deliverable, and then you’ve got the sales process fairly standardized, then you can bolt that all into a machine that manufactures prospects for you, right? And the prospects can then be standardized, right? Because the marketing can screen out everyone who you know isn’t right for the product or the service and not waste their time.

RJon Robins (28:16.652)
and not waste your SaaS time. And then of course you’ve got to have data and metrics and key performance indicators, all the standard stuff.

Jeffro (28:29.648)
No, that makes a lot of sense. And I think, like you said, it’s simple, right? You just have to execute. And that’s the challenge, I think, for a lot of people. But this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming on the show and even holding me to the fire a little bit, making sure I’m seeing my blind spots. I’ve got more growing to do as well. We always do. And yeah.

RJon Robins (28:51.428)
We all have blunt spots and we all have more brewing.

Jeffro (28:54.748)
Yeah, so I appreciate you for that. And so many business owners need to hear this message. so for those of you guys listening, know, especially the part about profitability being a responsibility, not just a luxury. Yeah, I think this will connect with a lot of people. So if you guys want to learn more about Arjan, his book and his company, the links will all be in the show notes. So please go connect with. One final question, Arjan. You talk about a business, you know, building a business that aligns with your personal dreams.

what’s one way a business owner can get more clear on what they actually want instead of just chasing revenue.

RJon Robins (29:32.364)
Well, it starts off with a way of thinking about our businesses, right? Most people, you, you know, I used to do this speech, I went all over the country, I stood in front of hundreds and hundreds of audiences for 10 years, over 10 years, and…

I pose the question, who thinks of their business like a baby? My business is like my baby. And in most audiences in front of business owners and entrepreneurs, a lot of hands will go up to that question, right? And I talk about how that’s a very unhealthy relationship for an entrepreneur to have with their business, right? We as parents, I’m a parent,

We are willing to do things for our children that we should never be willing to do for our business. We would kill for our children, we would die for our children, we will suffer for our children, we will sacrifice for our children with no expectation of profit. But imagine a business proposition. say, hey, Jephro, listen, I got this business opportunity for you. Ready?

You’re gonna invest a couple million dollars of your money. You’re going to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week for this business for about 18 years, maybe 20. You’re gonna take all kinds of abuse, all kinds, I mean ridiculous abuse. You are literally gonna be shit on.

All right? Shit on, yell that. Huh? Sleep deprived. And if everything goes right, we’re hoping that maybe the business might break even in about 18 to 25 years. And oh, by the way, there’s no expectation of ever making a financial profit whatsoever. Would you want to invest in that business? Of course not. That’d be insane.

Jeffro (31:11.428)
Sleep deprived.

Sleep deprived.

Jeffro (31:34.542)
That sounds like a financial proposition.

RJon Robins (31:38.284)
That’s the business case for being a parent. Yeah? It’s an entirely inappropriate relationship for a business owner to have with their business. The appropriate relationship for a business owner to have with their business is not modeled of a parent and a child, it’s modeled out of a farmer and a mule. Right? So think about why does the farmer have the mule?

Jeffro (32:05.306)
is to give himself help him do stuff he can’t do on his own, right? More output. Yeah.

RJon Robins (32:09.41)
Right, the farmer has the mule to pull the plow. And you pull the plow to grow the crops. And you grow the crops so you can feed your family. And if you manage the mule well and you plan the crops well and you do a good job taking the crops to market and marketing the crops and selling the crops, you’ll make a financial profit on top of that. Now, does that mean you could abuse the mule? No, you shouldn’t abuse the mule. Not if you want it to perform as well as it can perform. You gotta feed the mule.

You gotta house the mule, you gotta take care of the mule, you gotta train the mule. You might even develop some affection and appreciation for the mule, but it’s not your baby. You’re not gonna say to your family, hey, you know, I’m not coming home tonight, because I’m gonna stay in the barn with the mule. I mean, that would be insane. But that’s exactly what millions of business owners do. They take pride in how many hours they spend in the barn with the mule at the expense of their family. And then they sit around bragging about how many hours they spend in the barn with the mule instead of how many hours they can invest with their family. Because they’ve got a completely topsy-turvy backwards upside down. It’s really mindset.

Jeffro (33:27.022)
Yeah, well I really love that analogy. I’m glad you shared that. I think that’s a really good way to look at it and it does sound like a much more healthy approach than the business as a baby analogy. So thanks again, Arjun, for being here. Thanks to all you guys for listening. If you got value out of this episode, and I know I did, please take a few minutes, leave a quick rating or review on Apple or Spotify. This helps a ton. But other than that, take care and we’ll see you next time. Thanks again, Arjun.

RJon Robins (33:53.176)
Thanks, Sheffa.

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