From College Dropout To $75 Million Selling Books

Chandler Bolt: Until I showed up to an off-site and found out from one of my employees that my business partner was trying to kick me out of the business. We didn't even have an operating agreement. He force hired someone onto the team that he was in a romantic relationship, with. The business was not in a good spot. It was hemorrhaging money.

But he didn't think I had the money, but I was I was bluffing and said, hey. I got it. Personally guaranteed. And so we got to a verbal agreement. I'll never forget this.

And we signed this memorandum of understanding. I'm doing this buyout and I'm going home to entrepreneur house in San Diego. I'm in my o four Nissan Altima with a sunroof back, bumping tunes, just celebrating, going nuts. And then after the first song or two was over, I said, alright. It's time to go find that money.

Steve Trang: Welcome and thank you for joining us for today's episode of Disruptors Where Millionaires Are Made. Today, we have Chandler Bolt with selfpublishing.com. And Chandler flew in from Austin. Talk about how he went from college dropout to $75,000,000 in sales. Guys, on a mission to create millionaires, the information on the show alone is enough to help you become a millionaire.

In the next five to seven years, if you will take consistent action, you will become one. Before we jump in, if you're here to learn how real entrepreneurs are building real empires, hit that subscribe button because every week, we're dropping lessons that'll create your first or your next million. And right now, you've got a 100,000, 250, or even more just sitting in your CRM. Resurrect all your old and dead leads with the objection proof AI calling agent text cash to the phone number 33777 to unlock the money that's just hanging out in your CRM. You ready?

Chandler: Let's do it.

Steve: Alright. So, college dropout, the 75,000,000 in sales. I love this title because I think a lot of people in sales started probably as a college dropout.

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: What's your story to get from dropping out to getting to where you are today?

Chandler: Yeah. A lot of what I learned and why the business is successful happened selling door to door. That's kinda fun with your background and and and sales as well. I mean, I work for a company called Student Painters, and we sell the paint student painters.

Steve: Student painters.

Chandler: So, basically, they teach you how to run a company by running an exterior house painting company. They give you marketing and sales training, some marketing materials, and a zip code Mhmm. And say have at it. And so the first year I was in that company, I was number one in the company, number one in the country out of all the all the people there.

Steve: Wow.

Chandler: And so I just cut my teeth going door to door. And then it and then that's what ultimately gave me the confidence to drop out of school because I was tired of learning how to run a business from professors who have never never ran businesses that Yeah. Made no sense to me. I was learning more actually running a business. So to your point, I think a lot of entrepreneurs start in sales because it's the it's the greatest training ground

Steve: It is.

Chandler: For what it takes to run a run a successful company.

Steve: So, freshman year, junior year, when did you start doing?

Chandler: Junior year.

Steve: Junior year.

Chandler: I studied abroad and then dropped out.

Steve: Okay. Alright. And so did you have any sales chops prior to that? Or you just went, like, did you so a lot of people that we have on the show, they hustled as kids and selling candy, lollipops, whatever. Yeah.

Or some things that maybe they shouldn't have been selling.

Chandler: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some, alternate medicine, sales.

I, you know, I'll never forget going to scout camp as a kid, and my mom sent me with a bunch of snacks and and a cooler full of drinks, and I came back with a wad of cash and a switchblade knife. Because I just sold and bartered for everything. And I think that was the early sales skills. But no, when I when I started learning sales, I sucked at it because I wanted to be everyone's friend. Kindly mistaken sales.

Right?

Steve: Right.

Chandler: So I'll never forget going into we had this two zero one sales training with student painters. And I remember looking around the room, there was probably 30 of us in that specific room for that specific training. And I looked around the room and I said there's there's no possible way that anyone in this room is outworking me Mhmm. But everyone in this room is outselling me. So there's something wrong there.

Steve: There there was some introspection.

Chandler: Oh, a 100%. I mean, because I didn't I'm competitive. I don't wanna lose. Yeah. But but I knew that what I was doing was not working and so therefore, I suck at sales.

Mhmm. So I gotta figure this out. So I went into that, that training with a raw wound, an open wound and a need to solve it. And then that's when I really started attacking all of my in securities and weaknesses with sales because I knew if I wanted to get where I wanted to go, then I had to get better at that. Because I was I was putting in more effort than everyone, but clearly my skill set was deficient.

Steve: It was interesting you said attacking your insecurities. Wasn't like, hey, I learned this line. I learned this strategy. Whatever. It's like, I gotta attack my insecurities.

Chandler: Yeah.

Steve: What is that? I mean, I wholeheartedly agree. But what, like, what does that mean exactly?

Chandler: I think it's wanting everyone to like you. It's being afraid to be salesy. It's all of these things that, you know, I would go door to door, and I'll never forget the first time they said, hey, you're gonna go door to door. And for every hour, you'll get one lead. And I remember going out for three hours my first time, cold calling or door knocking, and I got no leads.

And I got doors slammed. I mean, I'm from the South. People threaten me with guns. I mean, they would cuss me out. And so it was just this rude awakening.

But then within the next twenty four hours, I got I got three girls, phone numbers at college. Mhmm. And I realized that you have to become numb to rejection because these are women that I wanted to ask for their phone number, but I just didn't because I was scared of rejection. But after I got door slammed on my face for three hours, I came back to school and I said, what's one more no? What's your number?

Yeah. That's my that's my brother's favorite story. It's just it it taught me to become numb to no, but it also taught me, I think, that, you know, I was losing so I I door knock and then I go on these estimates, and I was losing the sale because I was afraid to just ask for multiple no's Or I would default to follow-up, the classic sales thing where it's like, oh, yeah. No worries. I'll come by next week.

Then I wouldn't schedule a follow-up. Then I would have all these pending jobs, and then I would tell my manager, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry though.

It's a done deal. It's all pending. Yeah. It's done. It's their their end.

Of course, they're not in. I mean, you know that. Yeah. We all know that now. But, you know, if you're if you've had any deep experience in sales, you know that that's there's that's a graveyard of hopes and dreams is in your pending jobs or your follow ups.

But I think it was embracing all those, and so I went back and attacked it. And I'll never forget, there was one time where this woman cried because I was really pushing on this job. And that was the but that was the first time where I said, okay. This is probably a little bit too far. Yeah.

And so but let me bring it back because if you don't have someone cuss you out or, you know, if you don't go to the edge, then you don't know what the edge looks like. And most people early on, you're probably not going anywhere near the edge, and that's why your sales are suffering.

Steve: I remember the very first time. Because I had that fear. Like, I was I started off as a realtor. Right? And, you know, I came in.

I didn't want anyone to know I was a realtor. Like, it was, like, the the term they used, secret agent. Right? And then I eventually, you know, took some training. I was like, alright.

I'm gonna go be more assertive, more I mean, really aggressive. Right?

Chandler: Yeah.

Steve: And I remember the first time someone called my broker. It's like, that guy is too pushy. Right? Which was, like, my biggest fear prior to getting to that point. It's like, okay.

I found Yeah. The limit.

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: And now I can dial it back a little bit. Mhmm.

Chandler: Well, and the funny thing is that might not even be your limit. It's their limit. Right. Yeah. Is all it takes is one weird insecure person Mhmm.

Who's just looking to make a complaint to wreck your self confidence as a seller.

Steve: True.

Chandler: And I think it's I I think that's a weird kind of thing that you have to come to terms with this. The whole j I think it's j Abraham quote who says, you know, if you're not pissing someone off by noon every day with your marketing, you're probably not marketing hard enough. Yeah. I find that that's really hard to instill in yourself, and it's even harder to instill in your team that Absolutely. Hey, guys.

No. Cool. People are upset about this. Great. Yeah.

Means it's polarizing good marketing. Not that we should shut down the whole thing and not do anything that might upset some random person.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, the thing we, I share in our training now, ourselves training that we have our clients is, like, you look at the most powerful people in the world, half the world hates them. Yeah. That's just the way it is. If they don't hate you, you're just not doing enough.

If you don't have haters, you're not doing enough. Okay. So you're going door to door. You're you're selling selling paint jobs and doing the paint work? Mhmm.

Alright. What kind of money were you making then?

Chandler: Yeah. So that summer, that was my freshman summer. I did a $102,000 in sales, and I did $13,000 in profit. It's funny. I was just at at at, my childhood home over the weekend, and we were going through all these things.

And I found the p and l from the painting business.

Steve: Okay.

Chandler: This is fascinating. But, yeah, $13 as a kid over summer break. I mean, then you look back on it, and I probably made less than minimum wage. I was working from February through October and, you know, hundreds of hours a week. It's the classic, you know, I'll work a hundred hours a week, just so I don't have to work forty hours a week for someone else.

Absolutely. It it was that, and I think that's where a lot of people miss the lesson of their early entrepreneurial pursuits where I'll never forget people in that program. They said, oh, I calculated this. I'm not making minimum wage. This is a scam.

Mhmm. And they lost the lesson.

Steve: Oh, they're sure as I didn't.

Chandler: And and and meanwhile, like, you know, I look back. Sure. $13 is a is a is a is a kid in summer. You know, that's amazing. But what's more amazing is all of the lessons that I learned.

I mean, I was it was better than my tuition. Yeah. You know, any any gap between minimum wage or whatever else. So it's I just think there's phases of your life where are you is it is this learning season or is this earning season? And sure.

Can they can they overlap? Hopefully. But if you invest in the learning, the earning is gonna come. It's not a matter of if, but

Steve: Only one of the things that I I've said to people are like, you know, where should I start? It's like, there's no there's no shame in learning from someone else because you're getting paid to learn the skills. Right? But people are like, I'll just go do it myself. Alright.

There's no guarantees, but, alright, go do your go go do your own way. So a 100,000, in in revenue. How did this because you were talking about, you know, call a strap out. How did this affect your lens in going to class?

Chandler: Well, I immediately started going to class asking questions for my business Mhmm. Which was interesting because then the classes actually came to life because I had something that I could apply apply them to.

Steve: Sure.

Chandler: So I'm now hearing these lectures and internalizing them for my business or taking notes for my business. And so in some ways, the classes got more lively, but in other ways, they got more useless. Because I would start asking the professor, well, hey, how how did you do this in your business? And I would start asking them these questions and they would say, oh, I've never ran a business. Then I'm thinking, why am I listening to you?

Why am I in here paying to learn from you when I'm getting paid over here to learn from people who have done the thing that I wanna do for years? And so it just kinda broke. It broke my brain a little bit. Yeah. And then to finally where the point came, you know, I'll never forget being in the office with the dean of the business school.

Steve: Alright.

Chandler: And I just came off of this internship experience. I came back the next year, and I was gonna build out a team and teach a bunch of people how to run their businesses. And so I'm I'm pitching this to her of why they should let us recruit in the business school. This is the best internship and best thing ever. This was incredible.

Meanwhile, you guys are promoting all these internships that are paper pushing, coffee running internships that are unpaid mostly Mhmm. That are totally worthless. This is really, really powerful. It changed my life. So we're having a conversation, and she said, well, let me ask you a question.

Does your boss make money off of you? And I said, yeah. And and his boss makes money off of him. I said, yeah. And you're gonna make money off these people.

I said, yes. She said, well, that's a pyramid scheme. I said, no. No. It's not.

You just you just described every business ever in existence. And this is not I said, to me, a pyramid scheme

Steve: the dean of business.

Chandler: She was the dean of the business school. A pyramid scheme is when you endlessly recruit, and the only way that you make money is through recruiting. Right. That's how I would define it. Not when you're running real businesses and training people and all that stuff.

And, like, it's not you're actually running businesses. Mhmm. And so it was just one of those moments where I said, if this person is running this business school and they don't even understand this, And their their incentives are so perverted towards alumni and donors and whatever to peddle these horrendous internships. This is not where I need to be, and so I dropped out.

Steve: Well, even looking at it now, I would argue MLM is actually still a better place to learn

Chandler: Than it in college. Than the business school. No kidding. Yeah.

Steve: I mean, like, the things that you learn in an MLM MLM is still, you know, mindset, sales conversations, networking, and saw something the other day. It was like, the most valuable skill there is on our planet is the ability to sit in front of another person and have a conversation. Mhmm.

Chandler: You can

Steve: get that more from MLM than Yeah. Whatever you're getting in business school.

Chandler: That's a great point. MLMs are probably more valuable than business school. Now I think MLMs are horrible business models, and they're in a lot of cases, they're not really businesses. But it's kind of like what Will Smith said. He said a year in door to door taught me more than, you know, two years, four years of acting school.

It's very similar because it's the ability to read people and have conversations and influence them.

Steve: Yeah. I don't know if this is accurate at all, but, like, I felt like my years when I was trying to be a professional poker player also gave me a lot of those deals. Talking to other person, reading other people, seeing how they're responding, a lot of practice there. So, student painters, is that the same one? We got Cameron Herold here.

Yeah.

Chandler: Yeah. Not that long ago. Ish. He's he's college pro. College pro student painters, very similar.

Got it. Got it. I mean, it's the same thing, just different brands.

Steve: Got it. Got it. Okay. So you do that. You get rejected by the school on your idea.

And you're like, well, screw this place because they don't know what they're doing or what they're talking about. What was next?

Chandler: So I dropped out of school. I moved across the country to well, I studied abroad first. I wrote and published a couple books. Those books started doing decently well. They started paying the bills when I dropped out of school.

Steve: You started publishing books right after dropping out?

Chandler: Yes. Actually, before I dropped out.

Steve: What were you writing about?

Chandler: I was writing about what I learned, running a 6 figure business. And I I looked around my life, and I saw that I had a bunch of friends who were wantrepreneurs. They weren't entrepreneurs, and they were struggling to make the leap. And that's when it kinda dawned on me that there's a handful of things that I learned that they just haven't yet. And so let me just write a PDF or a brochure or some I know it's not like this master plan to publish a book.

I hated English. I hated reading. I sucked at writing. I'm a c level English student with ADHD and a college dropout. I mean, couldn't be less likely to publish a book.

But I just said, hey. I've learned these things. Let me just kinda combine them into a PDF. And it just slowly started morphing into, hey, this is getting pretty good. Maybe we should publish this on Amazon.

And then we just use all of our direct sales stuff and all the door to door stuff and then just apply that to the book. And then the book started selling like crazy. And so that was but it was about the what we learned, or what I learned in in, running a business.

Steve: Okay. So you wrote this book. It's picking up steam.

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: Then what?

Chandler: Then then so that's as I'm studying abroad in Austria. And so I'm snowboarding, and having fun, and going to business classes that were the best classes that I ever had because they were ran by people who are actually running businesses. I thought that was a really interesting alternate education model, where their help their whole model is they'll bring in people who are doing the thing for a week or two weeks, and you do the whole class in a week. It's all day, every day. And the pitch for them is come run a class for a week and then bring your family, and you'll have a week of vacation with your family in Europe.

And we'll pay for everything, and you get paid something. And so I think it's a really smart model because then I started learning from people who are doing. And that's what I realized is when my when my notes for my business started getting longer than my notes for the class Mhmm.

Steve: Mhmm.

Chandler: That's when I realized this is a lot more valuable because, you know, normally, you're just writing notes for the test or for the final or for whatever else.

Steve: But I

Chandler: started writing notes in my notebook for my business, and so that was really fun. Dropped out of school.

Steve: Well, I think, I mean, I can't remember the exact name, but something along the lines of Australian school or Austrian School of Economics. Whatever that is, it's like they're well known.

Chandler: Oh, interesting. I didn't know that.

Steve: Yeah. So, like, if you look at, like, economic theory, it's like, Austrians have a lot of it figured out. It's just no one, really carries the site and source it. But if you look at, like, a lot of the principles that we use today,

Chandler: there's

Steve: a lot of overlap, Austrian philosophies.

Chandler: I believe that. I mean, those guys were really, really sharp. But from there, dropped out and moved across country to Des Moines, Iowa into an entrepreneur house with some of my mentors at the time. And because I just wanted to get in the room with people who are doing what I wanted to do. It's the Jim Rohn kind of thing of, you you know, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

And so I said, what better way to do it than to to move into their house? I literally convinced my mentor to move into his home. He's like, no. You're not doing this. Wow.

I'm like, yeah. I will. You got an extra room. I'll pay I'll pay you $400 a month. I'll sleep on a bed on the floor.

Like, it'll be no big deal. I'll add value to the house. And so I did that, and that really started sparking a lot of entrepreneurial stuff. Like? Like, I mean, we started what's ultimately now selfpublishing.com, the business I'm running today because of the ideas that happened in there.

He ran an online education business. I didn't even know that was a thing, and I had paid him to be a student prior to that. People said I was an idiot. My friends and family, they're like, why are you paying thousands of dollars to this online guru guy? This is definitely a scam.

But it was, I mean, it was more than my rent, but I learned so much about business, and that was a big part of what gave me the courage to drop out. But then when I was there, he said, Chandler, you're publishing all these books. People are asking you how to do this. There's a business here. You're sure you're working on some other businesses totally failing.

Meanwhile, people keep smacking you in the face asking you for this thing. Make that business. And so that's where that business kind of started incubating. And then it set off this chain of years of my life kind of moving around to different cities to get in the action and to get around smarter, more successful people. So it started in Iowa.

Then I moved to San Diego, started an entrepreneur house there. That spawned off into a bunch of different entrepreneur houses. Then moved to San Francisco because I was kinda coming from the bootstrap world. And I said, well, I wanna learn the venture capital world, see what they're doing. Maybe I've got something wrong.

So then we went up there, then then moved to LA, started the entrepreneur house, kinda two point o on that. And so just kind of bounced around from that.

Steve: So you're talking about entrepreneur houses. What is an entrepreneur house?

Chandler: It's something that I think every young entrepreneur should do. Mhmm. It's, essentially, it's just creating this house and bringing the smartest, most successful people together into that house. And, you know, five people, let's call it. And there are people who challenge you to grow in all aspects of life and then you just put some structure around it.

So it was nothing crazy. But we, you know, we had a chef. We had house cleaners. We had a mastermind every Monday night. We had our goals on the whiteboard.

And every week, we're checking in. Hey. How did you how did you do with your goals? And that so it's just it's creating this environment where I kinda got a taste of it in Des Moines, and then I said, alright. I'm gonna create that.

And it was really, really hard because you're kinda selling this vision where people are like, wait. What are you talking about?

Steve: You want me to move in

Chandler: with you? Yeah. Yeah. You wanna move in together? Is this a frat house?

What is this? But I just started thinking, hey. Wheel of life, let me find people who are better than me at all these aspects. So someone who's better than me in business, at least one or two, someone who's better than me in health and fitness. Someone who I look up to in my faith.

Someone who's, you know, financially super on top of it. You know, just like loosely kind of looking for those wheel of life kind of pillars and then putting together the house and creating a mastermind environment where we're all learning and growing and being challenged. And it was it was a blast.

Steve: Is there because I'm thinking, like, I can't imagine myself willing to go Yeah. And live with these houses. Or you imagine you right now living with these houses. Who is the like, for people that are listening

Chandler: Yeah.

Steve: They're like, hey, I wanna go do this. Mhmm. Like, how do you do it? Who who are you going after?

Chandler: Yeah. So you kinda gotta go after people with no kids who aren't married yet, most likely, or who who are early in their entrepreneurial career. Now they can be very successful. I mean, we had people who were had plenty of success in their business, but they were just in their twenties. And so it's typically post college or college dropouts.

They're very ambitious and motivated. It's a better rent and better setup for them. And so you just go out and find and recruit those people.

Steve: It kinda in my mind, I watched only a couple episodes of Silicon Valley.

Chandler: Yeah. But it's kinda like it's

Steve: like kinda like an incubator of sorts. Yeah. Right? But, like, everyone is driven towards the same goal.

Chandler: Yes. Okay. Yes.

Steve: So and it's not

Chandler: like we're all in business together, but everybody has individual goals that they're chasing. They're up on the whiteboard. It's very clear. Yeah. MTV tried to do tried to get me to do a show on this on this entrepreneur house concept.

But at that point, I'd moved on up to San Francisco, and I was like, hey. I don't I don't wanna do that. Because they they wanted to focus on the sexy parts of which I'm like, it's very boring, guys. I don't think you understand this. This is extremely boring.

Success is boring. Right. But they're like, are you guys, like, going out and doing crazy stuff? And all

Steve: this, like Screaming at each other.

Chandler: Show elements of this, like, a Silicon Valley or whatever. I'm like, the yeah. I don't think I don't think we're what you're looking for. Right.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, most businesses are pretty boring. There's a lot of grinding, a lot of solving problems, but pretty boring, at least for the camera. Yes. Enough drama during during the day to day for the camera.

Yeah.

Chandler: Which I would imagine is kinda like you talked about your your background in poker. Business is very similar to poker. It's it's it's it's it's boring. You need to see a lot of hands. You need to play specific bets, big outsized bets when the odds are in your favor.

There's no guarantee of success. Right. But you're playing with the odds. And then you're reading people. Yeah.

I mean, it's just like there's so many things that I think that poker teaches you about entrepreneurship.

Steve: Right. But even, like, poker. Right? They only show like, the hands where there's drama. Well, like, 90% of the table

Chandler: It's just fold. Fold. Fold. Fold.

Steve: Exactly. Okay. So then where'd you go from so you you you did an entrepreneur house in San Diego and you wanted to San Francisco, figure out what the venture capital people were doing. What did you find out about the venture capital people?

Chandler: I found out that most of them don't make any money. It's a crazy world. They make money on my business, but they all wanted my business. They're

Steve: wait. So they don't make a lot of money, but they're making fun of your business.

Chandler: Oh, yeah. Because they think I'm not successful. And so I'll never forget the first entrepreneur meetup right after I moved to San Francisco. I was talking to this guy, and he asked me this question I'd never heard before. He said, who funded you?

And I said, oh, I'm self funded. And that guy could not get out of that conversation quick quick enough. I mean, he I instantly see his eyes just moving around the room to anyone but me. And then he just stuck around long enough to ask, you know, one more question, I think, which was, oh, do you have any revenue? And I said, oh, yeah.

Well, you know, we'll do 5 whatever it was at the time. It was maybe 5,000,000 this year or something like that. He said, wait, what? You so you because most people are funded pre revenue. And and so he said, oh.

He started asking me some follow-up questions. He said, oh, you got a cockroach business. And I said, excuse me? I'm thinking this guy is is either making fun of me or maybe he's trying to fight. I don't know which one, but we're about to find out.

Yeah. And he said, no. It's a compliment because when you drop a nuclear bomb, it kills everything but the cockroaches. Cockroaches are the thing that you can't kill. He said, you've got a business that is profitable.

It's bootstrapped. It's self funded. You can't kill it. And so that's when I realized, he said, everyone here is trying to grow the next unicorn. You got a cockroach business.

And so what they're hoping on is, you know, your business is spinning off hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a year in profit. They're hoping for a golden carrot five to ten years from now. And the best case scenario, they sell for a billion. But really the best case scenario, they sell for a 100,000,000. They're so diluted by the time they get there that they don't make any money or they make maybe accumulative, maybe, of what you've been making in profit all along.

And so not that it's a horrible model. You can certainly achieve outsized returns. But I went there to learn what I didn't know, which was I'm from Bootstrap World, their VC. And I realized that the the right recipe for me is, at least, is closer to the middle, but on the on the side of bootstrapped.

Steve: So I met a bunch of PE firms last year as I'm trying to figure out, like, how do I go grow my business right now from where I'm at today to where I can have a successful exit?

Chandler: Yes.

Steve: And I do remember, like, during dinner, they're like, wait a minute. You're collecting revenue already? I was like, yeah. They're like, why? I said, because I have people to pay.

I have kids. Yeah. I have to be able to pay my bills. Like, I don't understand this this interrogation. Right?

And, like, all like, that's a big mistake. It's like, I don't understand. It's like, yeah. Trying to be profitable from the beginning is not the what they wanna hear. Right?

They wanna hear you go raise a bunch

Chandler: of

Steve: money, and then you tested this idea. And, like, they don't care if they give you a $100 and it goes to zero. It's it's just the craziest thing

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: Because they're waiting for that.

Chandler: And this is this is venture capitalist or private equity?

Steve: I was talking, like, both crowds about, like, and there it was just, like and then one of the things, like, didn't you watch the Looking Valley? It's, like, I mean, a couple episodes. Yeah. Right? But yeah.

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Chandler: Well and that's where I think if we look at venture capital versus private equity, venture capital is a far inferior model, and the returns suck, by the way. I mean, you you probably know this, but it's that they do not by and large, do not make money. It's the 1% of the 1% of of venture funds that have access to the best deal flow that make money, that make the category look good, but everyone else is not that good. And whereas private equity, I think, is a far superior business model. Because if you think about what's the incentive, venture capital, the incentive is for you to scale to a billion or be zero.

And they don't they do not want you to actually be in the middle because they don't make money in the middle. They make money off the unicorns and they're counting on, you know, one out of 10 or one out of a 100 being a unicorn. Everybody else going to zero. Whereas venture capital, their thing is, how do we buy you or invest in you by 30% of your company and then exit for double in three to five years?

Steve: Private equity.

Chandler: Sorry. Private equity. Yeah. Private equity. And so that is a much and if you look at their returns, these guys always win.

That's why I mean, I think in some ways, they have a bad reputation. Because if if your company gets bought by private private equity, buckle up. Those cats are savages. Mhmm. But they always make money.

So for me, if I'm choosing as an investor or even as bringing someone into my business, I'm choosing private equity all all day long, not venture.

Steve: What was interesting with private equity is that they, there was this video of some guy and it was like, I guess Jersey Mike's just sold to a private equity firm. Right? And they're like, I'm gonna document my journey of eating Jersey Mike sandwiches as this happens. Right? And, like, the first day, right, like, it's an incredible sandwich.

It's, like, got all the meats. Right? It's it's overflowing. And, like, three months, six months, nine months, and it's, like, there's barely any meat in it because they they they maximize the margins.

Chandler: Yeah. It's tough for customers and it's tough for employees because they're maximizing returns. Yeah. So I think there's definitely a dark side to that, and there's definitely some negative consequences.

Steve: But if

Chandler: you're an investor

Steve: As an investor. As an investor, for sure. Alright. So you go down this journey. Did you do did you take anything from this information that affected your publishing business?

Chandler: Oh, tons. I mean, the publishing world is venture versus bootstrapped.

Steve: Mhmm.

Chandler: Venture is the traditional publishers, and self publishing is bootstrapped. Right. It's it's entrepreneurial publishing. It's betting on yourself. So it was interesting seeing all those parallels to say, oh, this is why so many people hate traditional publishing because everyone has a bad experience pretty much.

No matter if you win, you feel like you lost because you don't make any money.

Steve: And Also, let's dive deep into that. Mhmm. Right? Because, again, you know, people watching this, show, listening to the podcast may have ideas like, oh, I'm gonna go get published, and it's gonna a bunch of money. So walk me through before we talk about self publishing.

Like, what are the the miss or the, the the obstacles or what you're not aware of that, hurts you in in the getting published.

Chandler: Right? They take yeah. Traditionally published route, they take all of your royalties. They keep your IP, and they do nothing to sell your book. And so people think that this is this golden ticket.

But if you've ever heard of the quote, you know, banks only lend money to people who don't need it. Publishers only do you give deals to people who don't need it. Venture capitalists only give funding to to people who don't need it. They are not gonna make you successful. You're gonna make you successful, But you they've people think that it's this golden ticket.

So even if you are massively successful over here, you you don't make any money. And so either way, it's the same kind of distribution. They're hoping for one out of 10 unicorns. Eight out of 10 are totally gonna flop, and two or three will be mediocre successes. And either way, people typically are not happy in that process.

So I learned a lot of parallels, but I also learned that capital can be a massive weapon. It can be a tool for good. And it can also, you know, in some businesses, it's winner take all. And so you gotta grab market share. So you have to raise capital like an Uber or Lyft or a you know, the AI wars that are happening right now.

It's massive capital outlays, so you gotta go the venture capitalist route.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, what you're talking about with, publishing reminds me of, you know, the things I read about, you know, having your movie made in Hollywood. It's like Yeah. Yeah. You have this idea for a movie, and, yeah, you got picked up by some big studio.

And then the royalties that you agreed to never work out because there's, there's, like, you know, the generally accepted accounting principles that most of us have to live by. Yeah. And then there's, Hollywood accounting

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: Where they just bake in all these expenses that you don't even know what they are. They won't explain what they are. And, magically, there was never any profit. Even though everyone made millions of dollars, there was no profit to be made. So it kinda sounds like publishing's

Chandler: set to that. Hollywood accounting is very similar to publishing accounting. It's very similar to music accounting. Yeah. I mean, my brother's a Grammy nominated rock and roll musician, signed with Atlantic.

This has done multiple albums. He's toured 81 shows with Taylor Swift. So I got a I got a front row seat to the music industry. And then I'll never forget we were in college, and, Darius Rucker from Hootie and the Blowfish came in to speak to our business class.

Steve: That's awesome.

Chandler: And he he told a story about how they did a a an audit, an accounting audit. It was, oh, man. What was the name of the forensic accounting? Mhmm. So they brought in a forensic accountant to go analyze all of the books of what they've been paid by their record label.

Mhmm. And they found $4,000,000 that they were owed. And he the way this guy worked, I think it was that you get 10% of what you find, and so he got R400. And it just goes to show that those record labels are totally screwing their artists Mhmm. In the same way that book publishers totally screwing their authors, movie houses totally screwing the talent and the producers and all that stuff.

It's if you can obfuscate your your your books, well, then, yeah, you just make all the money. So there's a reason why they're very wealthy. Yeah. Very wealthy. They all do really well because they know how to do this type of stuff on the back end.

Steve: And you look at it, you know, there's something that you see, in marketing and coaching. Like, you only take on clients that you know are gonna win. Right? And then you take a lion's share of that. So so you look at, like, the the, again, publishing, you know, whether it's, I don't know, Random House, Penguin, whatever it is.

I I don't know all the big publishers. But, like, you'll hear, like, politicians and and and other famous people get, like, these massively outsigned, like, writing bonuses. But I'm guessing it's not the same if Steve Trang is reaching out to Random House, or whatever to get to get it published.

Chandler: They're only giving deals to people who don't need them, And especially advances to people who are gonna largely cover that advance.

Steve: Mhmm.

Chandler: And so if you're getting a big advance, sometimes I would tell people to take it because it's free money in some ways. And then what I would do is I would just invest all that money back into the book, because that's what they expect people to do anyway. And just say, hey, I'm playing with house money over here, and I don't wanna make a dime off of this book because I'm gonna use this book to massively blow up my platform over here. Well, then that makes sense. If you just come in with that in mind, and there's no blinders that, oh, they're gonna give me a massive advance, and I'm gonna make money off the book or whatever else.

So sometimes it can make sense to take those deals, but to your point, they're few and far between.

Steve: Yeah. So then, self publishing then. So, obviously, that's your bread and butter.

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: So for someone, again, that's listening here, what, what are the what's the upside? What are the challenges that they're not aware of that they're gonna be walking into in doing self publishing?

Chandler: Yeah. It's entrepreneurial publishing. So it's betting on yourself. So there's a lot of benefits that that come that come with that, and then there's challenges that come with that. I mean, you gotta cover the upfront cost.

You gotta navigate the process or work with someone like us who can help you navigate that process. So there's more to figure out on your own, but then you keep the upside. You keep the royalties. You keep the IP. You can move on your own timelines.

You can use it in your business however you want. So there's ton of upsides where if you wanna actually make money from the book or if you wanna integrate it in your business in a meaningful way, which is most of what we help people with, is the book's not gonna make you a millionaire. But the but the book can make you a millionaire, if if that makes sense. We're it's if it can bring this book has brought in roughly 7,000,000 in revenue over the last year. Tens of millions of dollars in sales overall, but it's because we integrate into the business.

That's not royalty checks. So that's the benefit though is you get to own the IP and then how you use that IP as a massive accelerant for the business itself.

Steve: Yeah. So how how do you go about doing that? Right? So let's say I wanted to write a book.

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? How what is gonna be my involvement? Like, you know, I wanna write a book about sales and AI. Yep. What is gonna be my journey in in in doing this?

Chandler: Yeah. Are you talking about doing it yourself or doing it with us?

Steve: Self publishing with you guys.

Chandler: Yeah. So there's basically at the at the very beginning of the process, you choose your own adventure. You say, hey. I'm gonna get am I gonna get you guys to write it for me, or am I gonna write it myself? Mhmm.

And then that it's obviously, it's a lot more expensive if you get us to write it for you. Work with a ghostwriter. That person can pull out kind of your frameworks and stuff. But you're smart with AI, I would assume. And so there's some of that stuff where you can use AI to help build the basis of the frameworks to write a great book.

But then we kinda guide people through. It's pretty simple. It's eight milestones. Right? The first four are the more writing method.

So how do we mind map it, outline it, rough draft it, edit it, and then moving into kind of the publishing logistics, so cover design, formatting, and launch. But then most importantly, how do you launch the book in a way that is a needle mover for the business? And so that's where we start really nerding out on is if this is just a side quest, it probably doesn't make sense. But if it can

Steve: So publishing a book for the sake of publishing a book doesn't make sense.

Chandler: Doesn't make Probably

Steve: doesn't make sense.

Chandler: No. But if there's a business outcome that it can drive I mean, and and unless you're, you know, just like, hey, I wanna do this or I want my kids to read it. There's, like, there's altruistic kind of reasons why it makes sense. But if we're just talking CEO hat, it doesn't make sense unless it can drive business outcomes. So that's where we try to reverse engineer those outcomes.

And so we're working with Dean Graziosi and Tony Robbins on their book right now. Carlton Dennis on his book right now. A bunch of really high level business, people and entrepreneurs. And the first question I asked him is, what's the outcome? You trying to sell books?

Are you trying to bring in customers? Honestly, I asked

Steve: the same question before we started the show.

Chandler: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

It's like, what what's the outcome that we're trying to drive here?

Steve: Yeah.

Chandler: Is it book sales or is it business? Mhmm. Most time, it's business. Okay. Perfect.

How many clients would be a success for you? What's an average client? Hey, you. Okay. So then that's the outcome.

So if we can bring in a 100 clients for your business from this book, would you be happy? Okay. Well, then how do we now let's reverse engineer everything from that. And that's the only metric that we care about. And sure, we're gonna sell some books.

Maybe we hit some bestseller list, whatever else. But we're not gonna get distracted by that because the main outcome is the 100 clients or what you know, just whatever the number is.

Steve: Yeah. So beginning with the end in mind.

Chandler: Yes. Yeah. Well, Steve and Cody.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, that makes total sense. So, what are a a couple of different things, like, you say that you guys do really well that sets you apart? Because self publishing is not a new concept.

Right? I mean, I swear I saw someone added the Ingrass Cozy event, like, let's see. What was it? It was '18. So 2018.

Right? Because I actually started a podcast because I went to the Ingrass COC event. And Brendon Burchard was like, hey, people wanna hear your story. Yeah. So I was like, alright.

Let's start a podcast. Right? And so, the concept itself of self publishing isn't new. So what are two or three things that you guys do that, you know, move the needle for your clients?

Chandler: Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot. We we coach we we kinda have a mix of sure. There's the the templates, the systems, the training, the all that stuff.

But then we have coaches who have done it, and then we do a lot of the heavy lifting. That's the so that is the part where a lot of people pay us for for that is because we're gonna hold them accountable. We're gonna show them the levers to make sure it makes money in their business. And then we're gonna do a lot of the ISBN cover design formatting, all that stuff. But then they keep all the rights and royalties.

Yeah. So it's kind of like if traditional publishing and self publishing had a baby, but it was a better baby. And that's that's where we come in. And and and so I think that's where we differentiate. And then just the business outcomes.

I mean, that's where we do a lot of stuff in the real estate investing space. That's a conference I'm speaking at later today is a real estate investing conference. And so there's a lot of real estate investing books that we do. And so we know the space. We know how to drive outcomes for your business, whether that's the info side or that's raising money for your fund or whatever else.

So it's Yeah. A lot of that kind of stuff.

Steve: So we're talking about AI. And obviously, you know, really, I don't think you can go anywhere right now without seeing it everywhere. If someone wanted to go do everything themselves just using AI

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: What are the pitfalls that they're not aware of? A

Chandler: lot. I think we're in an age right now where a lot of people think that, hey. Let me just, three sentence prompt, chat g p t, and then I'll just write the rough draft of

Steve: one shot. Yeah.

Chandler: And that's just a horrible idea. So it can help accelerate, but I would use you know, we talk about the more writing method, mind map, outline, rough draft editing. I would use AI to accelerate each step of that process and not skip steps. So, hey, help me mind map all the ideas on what I could talk about in this topic. Pull from my podcast.

Pull from my YouTube videos. Pull from my articles. Pull from and and give me all the ideas high level. And then, okay, now help me turn that into an outline. And they can really help with that.

And now I'm gonna use that outline to then maybe even use AI to say, okay, now flesh out some of the outlines for each of these chapters. And then that's where the human component can come in, where I'm actually writing the chapters using the outline that AI helped me create. Or I'm using AI to edit, to title, to subtitle, to framework. That's really valuable. We we put out a couple videos on our selfpublishing.com YouTube channel.

There's, I think it was 13 tools that authors need to use that'll save them a thousand hours. And then it was, skills that people need to know. And the skill set of using AI to create frameworks from stuff that you already teach, I think is really really valuable. And a book forces you to do that. Where I might be talking about a bunch of ancillary things with disruptors or with closing more sales, but and it's almost a framework, but not quite.

And I'm just kind of repeating myself all the time. And so as you write the book, okay. Now we've got a framework. Even the the more writing method that I just talked about. Before, it was like, hey.

You mind map the outline. You write it. Moe, I guess. But it wasn't anything that would you you know, you stick your teeth into. And this was before AI.

So I said, alright. I need to create a framework from this that's memorable. So we're kind of staking our claim on this IP. And so then we made the more writing method. That's what AI can help people accelerate now.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, one of the things I see is, you know, like, there's this term. I think it's AI slop. Right?

Chandler: Mhmm. And

Steve: you see stuff out there. And, like, it's you see it on Facebook posts. You see this in Twitter feeds. You see this on Reddit threads. It's like like there's text here, but it's lifeless.

Yeah. It's there there's no emotions behind this. There's not even a journey or nothing. It is just kinda like I'm reading, but I felt, like, nothing.

Chandler: Like, I

Steve: was, like, a waste of time.

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: And so yeah. I mean, is that have you seen that when people are publishing books? They are obviously AI slot. Percent.

Chandler: And and that's for us, that's a horrible recipe. You're you're just especially if you wanna use the book to grow your business, make it a great book.

Steve: Yeah.

Chandler: And and put in the extra effort. Don't just put out AI slop because it's a short term strategy that's not gonna create long term success.

Steve: Yeah. And then so you've done you've gone to this place, I think shifting gears. Mhmm. So, we're talking about 75 mil, but I think there was a halfway point somewhere along the way where you had a massive pivot. Right?

Mhmm. Walk me through that.

Chandler: Which one? It's a bunch of them.

Steve: There's you you I think the number I saw was 42 mil, and you're like, we're not doing this anymore.

Chandler: So, I mean, we we shift. There's been a lot of pivots along the way. We shut down all of our course only business stuff years ago, and we rebranded from self publishing school to selfpublishing.com. Mhmm. Because we said, hey.

The future of this business is leaning into our strengths and going upmarket. And so

Steve: Say that again.

Chandler: The future of this business is leaning into our strengths and going up market. Yeah. Because our strengths are high level, high end production of books, coaching of books, and driving massive outcomes for people's business. But we were chasing the lowest common denominator customer. Mhmm.

And so and then those people weren't getting results. Shocker. Right? Because they're just buying a course and then not using it. So we just shut down the whole course side of the business, and we said, hey.

We're adding services. We're building out a team around that. And we just pivoted things. But there's been a bunch of pivots over the years where, you know, my business partner tried to kick me out of the business. And I negotiated a buyout and borrowed 6 figures from my parents' retirement.

Steve: And, you

Chandler: know, and then here recently, we pivoted to in person. And we're building the team in person, which has been a really fun and, new challenge. Just kinda what got us here won't get us there. We we scaled to tens of millions remote. And now we feel like to get where we wanna go, we need to build out the team in person.

Steve: Okay. So there's a lot there to unpack. So you had a business partner. Fifty fifty?

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: Like, true fifty fifty or, like, 50.1, 40.9?

Chandler: True fifty fifty. The stupidest form of partnership that exists.

Steve: So there we got something to do, squeeze. So walk me through this is a partner from the very beginning.

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: So when did when did you guys start?

Chandler: We started 2014.

Steve: 2014. And then things were mostly good until this moment?

Chandler: Mostly good until I showed up to an off-site and found out from one of my employees that my business partner was trying to kick me out of the business.

Steve: So you didn't even see it coming. There was no, like, hints?

Chandler: Not I mean, there were hints. We were kind of getting after it because we just had differing visions of what this he wanted a lifestyle business. There's nothing wrong with that. He wanted to chill, not work as hard, and just collect checks. I wanted to grow grow this thing massively.

So then that was incongruence. That wasn't we didn't even have an operating agreement, which is also a huge mistake. So I made it

Steve: Lots of less.

Chandler: Worst mistakes possible. Fifty fifty partnership, never do that. Getting in a partnership without an operating agreement, never do that. And then a bunch of things along the way. But we had differing visions.

And I said, okay. That's fine. Pay me more. Give me more equity or, you know, or a higher salary and or and more equity. But and I'm happy to be the workhorse and just drag this business forward.

But I'm I'm this isn't a charity. Not not a fifty fifty. This ain't a charity. I'm and so that's when I think some of that, I I there was friction. But then when I showed up to the off-site and that person said, hey.

He's trying to kick you out of the business. I realized what was really going down. And so then I found some mediators. And after the off-site, I said, hey. Here's three mediators.

Pick one. So you don't think they're in my corner? They're not. These are just three random people that were recommended to me. But you pick the best one that you like, and we're going through mediation.

One of us is buying the other person out. Both of those are nonnegotiables, because trust is broken. So I can't be in business with somebody I don't trust. And so that that's gonna happen, and it's happening now. So

Steve: What, when you say you're trying to kick you out of the business, do you have any idea what his agenda was?

Chandler: I think his agenda was just to kinda push me into a corner where I would be stifled. So he he force hired someone onto the team that he was in a romantic relationship, with It's always that. Seems like that happens quite a bit. And it's always in the finance role because if if you hire someone in the finance role, well, then they can pretty much do whatever.

Steve: It goes back to Hollywood accounting.

Chandler: On you. Exactly. Yeah. Hollywood accounting. And so he started doing things like that in the business to just kind of push me over to the side.

I think it's the 50 laws of power thing. Robert Green don't outshine the master. Mhmm. He was my boss previously, and I think I outshine the master. Mhmm.

And then that built resentment.

Steve: And Yeah. That's law number one.

Chandler: It probably Yeah.

Steve: Never outshine the master.

Chandler: That's a crazy book, by the way. That book is psychotic. But there there's a lot of really good lessons in there, and that's one of them.

Steve: In there. Okay. So, so you got mediation. Did it work out mediation worked out pretty smooth? Or

Chandler: As smooth as it could. Yeah. I mean, we, in fairly short order, negotiated a multi 6 figure buyout. And I think the mediator felt sorry for me because I was maybe 21 years old at the time, and he thought I was just getting fleeced. Mhmm.

Because the business was not in a good spot. It was hemorrhaging money. But I knew

Steve: him multiple 7 figures in a business that wasn't making sense. Yeah. Exactly. Okay.

Chandler: Exactly. And I and I guess it was it was it was more than a $100,000, but it might have been just over 2, somewhere in that range. But he didn't think I had the money because I didn't. And so I but I was I was bluffing it, poker, and said, hey. I got it.

And I'll personally guarantee it. And so we got to a verbal agreement. I'll never forget this. And we signed this memorandum of understanding. I'm doing this buyout, and I'm going home into entrepreneur house in San Diego.

I'm in my o four Nissan Altima with a sunroof back, bumping tunes, just celebrating, going nuts. And then after the first song or two was over, I said, alright. It's time to go find that money. How much money did you have to find? I had to find maybe a 130 k or so, that I had to raise because some of it was in a seller note.

Mhmm. So that was kind of deferred as part of the but I think I had to find a 130 k, and I started making calls. I called my parents. I called my brother. I called Hal Elride, and those are the three people that lent me money.

I borrowed a bunch of money out of my parents' retirement, and that was when it was no turning back Oh, yeah. And bought them out and had to come in and start firing a bunch of people right away to get the business back on track because we were losing money every month Mhmm. And, turn it around and paying off all that debt within eleven months. Wow. It was a crazy feeling and and, you know, do the debt free, Dave Ramsey scream.

Yeah. And then then it that was the best decision I ever made in my life, because there was nobody to blame anymore. And I realized what it actually had was happening is when the business was struggling when I had a business partner, I was blaming him for everything, or blaming the employees for every everything.

Steve: Everyone else's fault.

Chandler: Oh, a 100%. It's not my fault. But guess what? Who's the common denominator with all these people? Me.

Steve: Yeah.

Chandler: Right? And so I just I'm never forget reading extreme ownership and realizing I got some problems. And all of them are staring back at me in the mirror when I wake up every morning. And so I need to start looking in the mirror and look into myself to change and to fix those problems instead of blaming everybody else. And when I bought my business partner out, there was nobody to blame anymore.

And it was that that was the best part of it, is that there was nobody to blame, and there was failure was no option. Yeah.

Steve: And there's some more backstops. What, you you mentioned you reached out to Hal Elrod for money?

Chandler: Yeah. Yeah. You know Hal?

Steve: I I only know him from the book.

Chandler: Yeah. Miracle Morning.

Steve: Miracle Morning. It's a fantastic book. It changes how you look at life and business. Was he a mentor or a friend in this situation?

Chandler: All of the above. He's a mentor or friend, and he was one of our biggest promoters. And so, I mean, that guy self published a book that changed his life. And Yeah. I was the first person that he ever promoted.

And so at that time, I owed him money as an affiliate, and I said, Hal, you're about to move from California to Texas. Mhmm. Guess what? If I pay you today, you're paying California state income tax. If I pay you six months from now, you're paying no state income tax.

And by the way, I'll add interest on top of it, and I'll pay you interest. And he said, well, that's interesting. That sounds like so it's I mean, it was getting resourceful and saying, what are the ways that I can run that I can raise this money? Yeah. Because even though that wasn't I guess, in some ways, it wasn't new cash coming in.

It was cash that I didn't have to pay. Probably for. Yeah. A 100%.

Steve: Yeah. And then so you're saying now you transition the business to in person? What does that mean?

Chandler: Yeah. It it means, we're building out an in person team. So we've we've opened up an office, built out a media studio. We've went from zero to 20 or so people in the office. So we we got about 50 some employees total, but 20 of them are in the office now.

The rest are still remote, but we were all remote Yeah. From the beginning. And so I think I just looked around and realized what got us here won't get us there. Mhmm. I looked for businesses who were bigger than us that were remote, and I could only find a handful.

Yeah. And I looked at businesses that were bigger than us, and most of them had in person offices, whether it was the Alex or Moses or the Russell Brunson's or the Dan Martells or any Internet business that was bigger than us had an in person grand colonel, whoever has an in person office. So I just kind of realized what got us here won't get us there. We can swim against the current or with the current. And I think we're gonna need to learn some new skill sets.

And so we started opening and building in person. And it's been probably one of the hardest things we've ever done, but also extremely rewarding. And I'm seeing things start to compound that I think are gonna take us far far further and far greater than what we were capable of previously.

Steve: It's a major commitment.

Chandler: Huge.

Steve: I mean, how much have you added in monthly expenses

Speaker 2: in in

Steve: doing this?

Chandler: I didn't even wanna know. I don't wanna think about it. I mean, probably at least $10. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: And and I'm asking this question because

Chandler: I Which is one employee, by the way, which that was kind of a reframe for me. Yeah. Well, that's a highly paid employee, but it it was okay if I'm adding, you know, $5 to $10 a month in expenses. That's one employee. So can this office in this environment increase the productivity of everyone else and myself included by more than one employee?

So that was kind of just a reframe for me.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, I kinda went down this road because I've been in person office. Everyone comes in for the longest time. And, we recently moved into this space. I was like, do I want to do another one?

Because, like, people are working for me now. They're all over the country. I got three guys in Toronto. I don't know why they're in Toronto. But, yeah, three guys in Toronto.

I got guys in Florida, guys in Mexico, guys in Texas. I was like, we're international. It's like, do I really want an office? It was a tough decision for me, but we're like, no. Like, we're gonna continue to do the podcast.

Like, we we need to have this. And, it's basically just me, the media guys, and then the other engineer for our AI business. That's it. And everyone else is is is remote.

Chandler: But you used to be in person

Steve: all over the place? We used to do everything in person. Right? Like, everyone How

Chandler: many people did you have in office?

Steve: I mean, at one point, when we had, the sales team in there too, nine, ten people come into the office k. Every day. Like, every day, they come into the office. Not, like, sometimes, like Every day. Yeah.

They're expected. Same here.

Chandler: Yeah. So what did you what did you learn, and what tips would you have for me?

Steve: I mean, for me, the biggest thing was to find once I realized that the talent I was looking for wasn't here,

Chandler: it was That's the hardest part. Yeah.

Steve: That was that yeah. That was the biggest thing was that, you know, to find a great marketing person, to find it like like, find a world class marketing person.

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: Find a great fulfillment person. To find an awesome sales manager. Right? It was like, can I find them here? I could.

But in removing the requirement coming to the office, I could find really good people. And there were still you know, with COVID and everything else, there are a lot of people like, I just love working from home. Right? So, so then I guess going back here now, we're talking about, from dropout to 75 mil and then how to get to an 8 figure business. So, like, what are the major lessons?

We talked about, you know, partnership, fifty fifty, and the operating agreement. What are some other major lessons in, like, you know, what are the worst setbacks on a way, and what you learned from those?

Chandler: So many. So many. I think one one thing that comes to mind that might be encouraging for folks is the longer it takes to build it, the longer it lasts. And so you might be frustrated that you're stuck at 6 figures. You might be frustrated that you're stuck even at seven figures, and you're not breaking through quickly like everybody else that you look around and see.

But they're yeah. They're flexing. They're lying about their numbers. Yeah. And it's a flash in the pan.

I can't tell you how many bigger, more successful businesses than us went out of business in the time that we've been growing. Got sued by the SEC or the FCC or whatever else and got shut down. Because when you build things the right way and you build them to last, over a long enough timeline, you will win. Now that's not sexy. That's not fun.

There were so many times where we were I mean, it took us years to get to our first million dollar a month. That wasn't a launch. I don't count that. I think that's, that's it's great. Love it.

But that's not us just being great on a regular basis. So we were trying to get to our first million dollar month evergreen, and we were trying to get to a figures. And we were just hammering up against that. And I think we just learned a lot of of really valuable lessons, which is I mean, I I call it the five p's. It's it's a profit bridge.

Is is the scale to eight figures. You need paying customers, first off. Because if you don't have customers, you don't have a business. You got a business idea. But that's more 6 figure range.

Then you need product market fit. That's more where we're starting to get in the 6 or 7 figure range. So are people willingly seeking out the solution that I have and eagerly paying me to help solve the problem that they have? And then are we profitable? And obviously, at 6 and 7 figures, hopefully, you're profitable.

But it's really tough. I mean, that those are lean years. There's a lot of broke 7 figure entrepreneurs that don't even make what you can make at a in a decent job. I mean, you're probably not even making 6 figures if you're running a million dollar a year business. And so but then so you need profit because that's sustainable.

But then you need people and process. And so I think a lot of the stuff from 7 to 8 figures was just tweaking those three buckets of profit, people, and process to be able to scale. Because, obviously, getting 8 figures, I mean, you you it's got you gotta scale beyond yourself. You can't have a ton of key man risk. Like, there's all these things that kinda start popping up that you're playing a game of whack a mole trying to fix.

Steve: Yeah. So what lessons do you learn in regards to people to help to get you to this point?

Chandler: You need good ones? You need a lot of I mean, talent is the scarce fuel in your business always. Mhmm. And I don't know. Maybe some people are just way smarter and better than me at running their business.

But for me, it's almost always been the bottleneck. You got a problem in your business. It's probably a process problem or a people problem. If and I think a lot of people are hard on the people and not hard on the process or hard on the problem. And so then they lose great people.

And so you gotta be process oriented is is my take. And we gotta be hard on the problem, and we gotta be hard on the process. But then if the problem it we're hard on that that problem, and we create a great process, well, then I know you're a process guy, I think, engineer background. But then if we keep hammering that and then there's still a problem, well, then now we got a people problem. And so how do we find and retain the best talent possible?

And let's create a process around that. Mhmm. And so I think just learning that there's zero to one people. There's kinda your pioneers and then there's your builders. And early on, you need your pioneers.

And then you start growing and building process. And the pioneers are like, wait. What? I didn't sign up for this. This is boring.

Yeah. And so that's great. That's maybe maybe you can put them into new business units that they can build new business units zero to one, maybe. Or you gotta let go of those pioneers and transition to your builders, which are wired a little bit differently and probably wired differently than you as the as the CEO and as the entrepreneur. But they're gonna help you build and sustain growth, not just be kind of Wild West, gunslinger early days.

Steve: Well, it's funny you say, like, I didn't sign up for this. I'm guessing you probably had that conversation multiple times.

Chandler: A lot of times.

Steve: Right? And it kinda goes kinda goes back to what you said earlier was what got you here won't get you there. Because it sucks. Like, you have these people that were with you ride or die when you were small, and then you realize, hey. We need better processes.

As you build those processes, they don't like the processes. Yeah.

Chandler: It feels stifling. I'll never forget when we had our created our first employee handbook.

Steve: Mhmm. And I'm

Chandler: just thinking to myself, this is the stupidest thing ever. Why are we wasting time on this crap? I feel

Steve: like I had that same exact conversation.

Chandler: But it it's I mean, because it doesn't feel productive. And in some ways, it's not. But and so I even in the first page, I basically wrote a letter in the first page of the handbook that says this handbook can be summarized in this. Don't be an idiot. Be smart.

Make good decisions. Be an adult. And we're gonna spend the rest of this handbook explaining what that looks like.

Steve: Outlining what

Chandler: it means. Yeah. But that's literally what it comes down to is be a good person and, and and, you know, don't do stupid stuff. But I think you just you you gotta put those checks in. It's frustrating, but it's necessary to get to the next level.

Steve: Were you ever a process person? No. So how hard was that shift for you?

Chandler: Very, extremely difficult. And I think it's the classic delusional entrepreneur thinking, I'm so special and talented that you can never bottle this up. Yeah. You can't you can't teach this. You can't process this.

It's just me. But then I read the book, The E Myth. Mhmm. And I read the book, Work the System, back to back, rocked my world. Then I realized I need systems.

And then I watched a Dan Martell video or maybe we we go on a snowboarding trip every year. So maybe he's just telling me about it on the snowboard trip or something. And he said, oh, you need a playbook.

Steve: Mhmm.

Chandler: That made sense to me. Playbook. Okay. Plays. I'm a sports guy.

So playbook is process or operating system. But then it's it's like you have the glasses on now so you can see a little bit differently, but not fully. So then I'm trying to figure out what do I playbook? What do I systematize? What do I process?

I I'm not wired this way. Yeah. I'm not an engineer. I'm not someone who thinks in linear process. So then I just started to realize and kind of create some basic frameworks for how we do it.

So and the one framework that was most helpful for me was three questions. Does it take more than five minutes to do it? Is it something more that we're gonna do more than once? Or is it something that you don't like doing? If it is the answer is yes to one or all of those things, you need a system in your business.

And so I started teaching that to my people, and then they started getting it. I started getting it. And we started seeing all these things in the business where we say, oh, client onboarding. That is something that takes more than five minutes. We're gonna have to do it a bunch more than two times, hopefully, for signing up customers.

And, you know, it's it's tedious. Signing up customers. And, you know, it's it's tedious. So in some ways, we don't like doing it. So then how do we make a process around that?

And you just start seeing this everywhere in the business. And I think that's where it started to get better and better.

Steve: I want I have a few more questions I wanna ask before we do that. You know, it's funny we're talking about Hollywood math. And so, guys, this episode is brought to you by Beck CFO, the go to taxes he at Whole Farm for real estate entrepreneurs. If you're making money in real estate and you're not confident you're paying the least amount legally possible in taxes, you need Beck CFO. They specialize in entity structuring tax strategy, CFO level support, that saves our clients thousands, every year.

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Steve: had the I think it was a good point to how about talk about that because we were talking about Hollywood accounting earlier.

Chandler: You don't know under your numbers? You can't what's the Warren Buffett quote? If you don't if you don't know the score, you can't win the game, and accounting is the score. So if you don't know accounting and if you don't know your numbers, you can't win.

Steve: Yeah. It's the only score at the end of the day, the that that you have to have to know, inside and out. So we talked about, you know, getting into a figures. You've learned a lot a lot a lot of learned a lot of lessons along the way. What was the most painful lesson in this journey?

Chandler: Probably the most painful lesson is around people. And this sounds so obvious and dumb, but that people are always going to operate in with their best interest. Mhmm. And so I'm just a very loyal guy. And so it would be so brutal when people would leave the company.

And people say, oh, it's not personal. It's just business. Well, yes. It's it's when you're busy when you pour your heart and soul into the business, it's personal. And so I've watched these people leave the company, but it's because they were making what they felt was the best decision for them.

And so I think just realizing that of you can go out of your way to be good to people or you can go out of your way to to be loyal. But at the end of the day, none of that matters to most people. They're gonna do what's best for them in the moment. Now that's a harsh reality. And so just realizing that, okay, well, then I need to create an environment where what's best for people is aligned with what's best for the company.

And what's best for the company is aligned with what's best for me. And the more that I can align those incentives, the better my retention is gonna be, the better our growth is gonna be, the better the incentives for everyone. And and so it's it's always a work in progress. But I think just having to relearn that over and over and over again, I think Dan Martel would say, your vision needs to be big enough so that the people in at your company, their vision fits inside that. And so Yeah.

Constantly having to go back to that to make sure I'm setting up a an environment where my people can succeed. Because if I that's the most important part of the business. If you don't have good people, you don't you're not gonna have a good business.

Steve: Oh, no. It's impossible. Yeah. One of the things I've said before in recruiting, is, you know, I expect you to make the best decision for yourself always as my responsibility as the owner of the company. Me working here.

Chandler: The best decision.

Steve: Best decision possible. It's not easy. It's all requires a lot of introspection, a lot of internal evaluation to make sure that's true. And then, you've got your book right now. This is the most recent book?

Chandler: Mhmm.

Steve: Yep. This is what So talk to me about that book.

Chandler: Yeah. This is, it's the proven path from blank page to 10,000 copies sold. So this is all of our frameworks that we teach to go from blank page to to published author, to selling books, to use in the book to grow your business.

Steve: Yeah. So from that book, I'll have a lot of what I need to know to sell 10,000 copies.

Chandler: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's it's the blueprint. So this is where kind of teaching or or doing what we teach. We give away this book like crazy all over the place.

So I'm speaking in an event later today. We'll give away and sign 100 or hundreds of copies, and we give it away all over the place. And it teaches our best frameworks. And then people that learn from that, they say, oh, if I got this for free, I wonder what it'd be like to work with you. So it's kind of what we teach our authors too is Yeah.

Integrated into the business.

Steve: And then, you also have a a principle you teach where this is basically a what was it? A $7,000,000

Chandler: $7,000,000 business card.

Steve: Yeah. Talk to me talk to me about that.

Chandler: Yeah. So to me, a $7,000,000 business card is using the book to fuel business growth. And so there's three buckets, and then there's a core framework. So the three buckets that you use the book for is use the book to get more leads, more sales, more referrals in the business. Right?

And so we could break down all those, but it's it's using the book to get more leads, more sales, and more referrals. And then the core framework, we just did a little series on our selfpublishing.com YouTube channel where we broke down the four components, which is you need a million dollar idea, then you need to write a book that converts readers into customers, and then you need to launch have a 6 figure launch of 6 figures in customers from the book launch, and then turn it into a $7,000,000 business card or a 7 figure business card. Those are kind of the four steps along the journey, but that's how I think about $7,000,000 business card.

Steve: How many clients have you had a chance to work with that you've seen, like, that come all the way to fruition? Do you have any idea?

Chandler: Yeah. Yeah. Good question. I I know you got your 100 millionaires thing Yeah. Which I think is such a cool concept.

I don't know how many people that have been to a million from their book. Probably, my guess would be a few dozen. Mhmm. It would be just a ballpark guess, but we've published roughly 7,000 books over the last decade.

Steve: How many?

Chandler: Over 7,000.

Steve: 7,000.

Chandler: So we publish about two to five books a day. We're all day, everyday publishing books.

Steve: That's insane.

Chandler: No. Not all of them are business books. And so I think that's even within our business. What we're kind of refining is our best customers. We can drive massive outcomes in their business.

Now we can help other people publish children's book, publish a fiction book, publish a book about your life story. That's cool. We can do that. We can help you do that well. But I think where the massive impact, at least financially, that we can have is on the business side.

Steve: Yeah. That's awesome. So I would say everyone that's watching right now may have a book inside of them. What is something you wanna tell someone that does have a book inside of them?

Chandler: I would say, you can't publish the book that you haven't written and stop putting it off. So many people would maybe someday, it's maybe next year. It's they keep kicking the can down the road. There's never gonna be a perfect time to write a book. You gotta get started before you're ready.

And it it's a short term time investment to create a long term asset that just forever is an asset that you can use to onboard customers, to onboard employees, to teach your best stuff, to teach your best frameworks. And so, yeah, I think that's that's the main thing I'd I'd say is just start. Just mind map. Take fifteen minutes as soon as you get done listening to this or watching this and mind map the the book and get off to the races.

Steve: Yeah. I think that we talk about, people ask me what's the right time to, like, quit my job and go work for myself. And then my answer to them was, like, well, when's the right time to get married? When's the right time to have kids? Mhmm.

Chandler: Right?

Steve: And I think your answer is, like, when's the right time to write a book? Because, like, there's no perfect time.

Chandler: Never.

Steve: You just start. Yeah. What do you wanna be remembered for? All everything said in the dust settles. What do you wanna be remembered for?

Chandler: Yeah. I think someone who maximized their talents and built up the people around him. I think, you know, my my long standing goal has been I wanna run a billion dollar company that changes the world and long after I'm off this earth. It's still here, still making a bit big impact. Now for me, that's because I feel like I've got certain God given abilities in the area of business.

That's the area and skill sets that I can use to make a massive difference for our customers, for our employees, create profit. We can donate to nonprofits. I can change the lineage and trajectory of my family tree all within this thing in this skill set that I have. But in doing so, building peep building a ton of people up and changing all the time lives in the process. And so I think I I think that's probably it.

Steve: What is your biggest struggle today?

Chandler: Scaling customer acquisition. That's you know, we've been plateauing at 8 figures for the last few years. And for a long time, it was every year we're gone. It's not a matter of if by when. Or it's not a matter of if by how much.

How much are we gonna grow by this year? And these last two, three years, we've been down or flat, and it's been really pissing me off. And the core of that is because our customer acquisition costs have gone up, and, AI is eating some of the SERPs. We do a bunch of SEO and content, and so that's, you know, that's down significantly. Some of the other stuff is up, but it's our costs are up with that, and our cost to acquire customer is up in that.

So I think that's probably the biggest thing is just figuring out, okay, how do we scale acquisition at scale?

Steve: Funny as you're saying that, because I'm thinking, man, two to five new publishers a day is pretty awesome. I want that.

Chandler: Yeah. And

Steve: you're saying, man, the heck is not where it can where I want it to be. Oh, yeah. So what is your plan then to solve that issue?

Chandler: Yeah. I would say twofold. We're going up markets. Our average order value and our lifetime value continues to grow, so that we can spend more to acquire customers. And then I would say, secondly, we're building a media company.

And so over the last probably year and some change, we've built media in a way that we've never done. So video and social content. So we've built a studio in Austin. We're building the Chandler Bolt brand, which is all about scaling to 8 figures. For now, that's just kind of mostly for fun.

That sure. Some of those people will write books with us, but that's more a personal brand. And then there's selfpublishing.com stuff. And so I you're not gonna lead this, but I created my first Instagram, like, six months ago. Really?

I've never had an Instagram. Wow. So we're doing Instagram. We're doing YouTube. We're taking all of our strengths on content and SEO, which that has just printed millions of dollars a year for us for a long time.

So we're we've been great at that, but we've never been great at social and video based content. That's not just SEO oriented YouTube stuff or whatever else. So we're investing heavily in that media because we know it's gonna accelerate the flywheel of customer acquisition and make all of our other channels a lot more productive.

Steve: Yeah. You mean, you were mentioning, Dan Martel earlier. And, like, that's something he's done incredibly well.

Chandler: Yeah. He's a great model in that. I've known Dan for a long time, and just why having a front row seat to see him do that, I think sometimes seeing is believing. And so when you realize, okay, this person has very similar skill sets that I do, I can build that. But the difference is he went pro, and he took it seriously.

And I haven't.

Steve: And so I don't know a lot of people that invested more than him. I mean, he when he came out to our office two years ago now, I mean, it was him, his videographer, his assistant, and it was just content nonstop. And I think he was here for, like, three days. Yeah. Right?

It was just content nonstop. Yeah. And he's figured it out because his stuff's always going viral. Right? I'm watching it.

It's like, try to figure out what it is about it that's making it go viral. I'm not saying it's bad content. I'm just like, like, why this one? He's clearly figured something out. And then what would you say is your superpower?

Chandler: They probably the two biggest ones are bringing people together. You know, just whether it's I don't know. Some people call it networking, but I'm not a networking guy. Mhmm. It's just hosting things, dinners, events, trips, epic experiences that bring people together.

And I think building relationships with people I can learn from, I think that's always I've never been the smartest person in the room. I've always been the dumbest person in the room, and I'm peppering people with questions to try to learn the things that they know and just bringing them together in a way that they love. And it's valuable for them, and it's it's valuable for me. So I think that's probably one of my biggest strengths. And then I would say the other one is just operations.

It's not sexy, but it seems to be the thing that all my buddies are like When they actually Dan told me this one year, he said he said, Chandler, you are the best one of the best operators I've ever seen.

Steve: Wow. And operating

Chandler: a business yeah. It's a big compliment come from him. That guy's an operations genius. He said, but you're in an inefficient vehicle. Like, you need you need to get bring more leverage via the vehicle that you're running.

That was super early on, and it kind of shifted the way I thought about a lot of stuff. But I think my brain just thinks in but it's your biggest strengths become your biggest weaknesses. Right? So the flip side of that is I'm way too in the weeds. I'm way too in the trenches with stuff that I shouldn't be.

So now I'm just trying to hammer that out of myself of just saying, hey, dude. You gotta It's the hardest thing.

Steve: Yeah. Because that's what you're good at.

Chandler: Exactly. Yeah. But what got us here won't get us there.

Steve: Yeah. I

Chandler: gotta start putting more trust in my key people and get out of the freaking way Yeah. Because they're really talented.

Steve: What book have you gifted more than any other?

Chandler: Oh, man. Which book is it? Miracle Morning's up there. Well, more than any other. I've gifted this book to probably tens of thousands of people at this point, but that doesn't count.

So my own book, the Miracle Morning. Let me give you a niche one that'll connect the dots. I'll give you two niche books that'll connect the dots to what we talked about at the very beginning, and being lacking confidence in sales. I've gifted Maximum Confidence by Jack Canfield. It's only available in audio.

It's like an audio program, technically. And I've listened to that book once a year or once every other year for over, I don't know, really long time. And I've gifted that to so many people, especially earlier in their sales career, who are struggling with their confidence. Again, only available on audio, maybe only on Audible. It's a a few hour class, basically, on confidence that they turn into a audiobook.

And then I would say the second one is a little bit niche too, but it's extreme revenue growth by a guy named Victor Chang, and it's really good on scaling from 7 to eight figures. No fluff. Nobody talks about it, but it's one of the I mean, that book packs a punch. It's like a 120 pages of pure value that just punches you in the face right away, and, it's a really great book.

Steve: Alright. So I want you to think about some last thoughts you wanna leave all the listeners with. I'm gonna say something real quick. Guys, if you got value out of this episode, make sure to subscribe. We've got even more disruptors coming who are gonna break down the exact moves they made to win.

You don't wanna miss that. What's some last thoughts I'm gonna leave all the listeners with?

Chandler: You're capable of a lot more than you think. Stop playing small. Stop playing not to lose. No matter what you know, early on in your in your business journey, you're insecure because you haven't achieved anything yet. And then you start achieving some stuff.

Hopefully, maybe you're at that point. And then I don't this happened for me is you start playing not to lose instead of playing to win. And but because in the beginning, you got nothing to lose. So who cares? Bet the farm.

The farm ain't worth nothing. I don't even have a farm. But then then you start making it. And then for me, there was this fear of, okay, I made it. I achieved my dreams.

Now I don't wanna lose it. And so then you start playing not to lose. So that that would be my thing is you're capable of so much more than you think. Dream bigger. Place bigger bets.

You know, if you feel like you got the good hand Mhmm. Like in poker, I mean, those are the time to make outsized bets. Take risks. Don't be risky. As a mentor of mine always told me that is, hey, take risks.

Don't be risky. The most successful people take risk, but they're not risky. So place big bets. No small plans. Play to win.

Steve: Yeah. If someone wanted to connect with you, learn more about how to work with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Chandler: Yeah. So on the media side, selfpublishing.com and Chandler Bolt on YouTube and Instagram, you can follow or subscribe there. That's all things scaling or publishing books. And I would say last two resources that might be helpful. I'll give you a copy of this book, publishedbook.com/audio.

You can get the audio book for free there. And then selfpublishing.com/ apply if you wanna book a call with the team, to chat about your book and how we might be able to help.

Steve: Publishbook.com.

Chandler: /audio.

Steve: Yeah. Great. Great URL. Selfpublishing.com, publishbook URL, or publishbook.com. Incredible URLs.

Chandler: Thank you.

Steve: Awesome. Alright. Thank you so much. Steve. Thank you for coming on.

Chandler: Appreciate it.

Steve: Thank you guys for watching. We'll see you guys next time.