Richard Matthews Video 1: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to this wonderful recording. My name is Richard Matthews and today I’ve got my, one of my greatest friends in the world here, Richelle Shaw. And Richelle is man, she is a powerhouse in the business community. She is the author of the Million Dollar Record. And she is the host of her own podcast called The Million Dollar Equation, and she is one of the people that I have learned the most from over the last, I don’t know, five or six years in growing my own company.

So, Richelle, tell me, what’s new in your world today?

Richelle Shaw – Video 1: Hey, gosh, what’s new? What’s new in the world is that it’s the going to be the 12th anniversary of the million dollar equation. And so we’ve got a new rewrite coming out of all the things that have changed right in 12 years of implementing it and the roller coasters, the.

The quasi reception recession that we supposedly have and, you know, so that you can basically make money in any economy. So we [00:01:00] are going to relaunch the book 2024, probably somewhere around September. Right. So in the next 12 months, but the fun thing is just talking about all the things that have changed and all of the good yummy stuff that has happened. 

Richard Matthews Video 1: Yeah, absolutely. I know my company push button podcasts. We’ve ran your million dollar equation podcast for quite a while. And I get a lot of compliments from my team. They regularly your shows their favorite one. Right. And the reason. because they learned so much from it and I’ve learned a lot from it and from you and from reading your book.

I actually, I still, I use, you know, when I talk to our own coaching clients, I use you as an example a lot of times talking about your book and your methodology and how you teach businesses. And I can’t say for a hundred percent certainty that the reason my camera seems to have died, but I can’t say for a hundred percent reason, for certainty why my Company has grown as much as it has, but we’re 10 X the size we were several years ago, 10 X.

[00:02:00] And a lot of that we can put all the way back towards the stuff that I have learned either from your book or from your podcast, which is fascinating.

Richelle Shaw – Video 1: Oh, that’s so fun. Well, you know. Part of it is truly simple strategies, right? And simple systems that work. And then you don’t even have to touch it after that you allow the systems to work together. So what happens is most of the time, when I look at any business or when I’m called in to consult with any business, right, I can pinpoint exactly what the problem is and what system isn’t working so that now, the CEO can focus on that particular system and really build it correctly. Right? So sometimes it’s what Jim Rohn says, you know, little hinges swing big doors, right? And that’s exactly what it is. It’s a small little hinge that we just have to adjust so that now you can go in the better direction. I don’t even want to say right direction.

Sometimes [00:03:00] it’s just the better direction to get there faster. Cause who wants to grow a business slowly? I don’t know. I don’t know anybody who does. 

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Yeah. So you were saying you really help your CEOs change what it is that they focus on and what they’re looking to build. And one of the things that I’ve noticed is the shift that I’ve had to make should go from and I don’t know exactly what your terms are for these, but you know going from a baby business to like a child business to a teenage business. I feel like we’re an adolescent business now. What I’ve had to focus on as CEO has changed a lot, where at the very beginning, it was just like what’s our product and what’s our message to the market and like can we actually sell something and now we’re focusing on like Bigger problems, I guess, or bigger issues.

Things like company culture and things like the systems and processes that run that culture and the lead generation aspects of the business. How do we scale? Like they’re bigger questions that have bigger impacts and and make more money for the company. Right. And it’s, it feels like I’m moving into more of a CEO role and less of a do work role.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: Sure. Well, I think, you [00:04:00] know, most people when they get started, which is why if you don’t know how to make sales, you really stay in that infancy. I don’t care if you’ve been doing this 30 years, you’re still a baby business. If I use your terms, right? Cause the real work comes after you’ve made sales.

That’s when the real work comes with the work that we have to put together is, okay, now that you’ve got a customer and you’ve made some sales, how do we sustain this thing? How do we keep it going? How do we make sure that three years from now your business is still open and available? How do we make sure 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, right?

How do we become Sears? And then how do we not become Sears in the end? Right. So it’s you know, what do we need to put in place? And so often, you know, so many founders stay in that, Okay. How do I get a customer? Right. And they stay right there. They stay in the business [00:05:00] too long. They stay working in the business too long, whether it be producing the product providing the service, whatever it is, and they never really become a business. They just have a good job,

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Yeah,

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: Good job, a high paying job, right? But a business isn’t a business until you can go on vacation and see that deposit happen.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Yeah,

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: Money is still coming in and you are doing nothing. That is when you know that you have a business. And so part of your job now as CEO in your teenage years is to become more responsible.

Same thing that I say to my kid, I’m not going to wake you up anymore. It’s your responsibility to set your alarm and to get up. I’m not going to lay out your clothes anymore. I’m not going to pack your lunch anymore. If if you want to eat, you need to pack your lunch.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Yeah.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: you don’t want to eat, you don’t.

And so that’s what’s actually happening in the [00:06:00] business is that you’d have to just become way more responsible. Not that you weren’t before, but we didn’t really care. 

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Yeah.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: To make some money so we could pay our bills. Now it’s okay. Those are paid. Now let’s go into the next level.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: It’s interesting. One of the things that I noticed a shift as we started going from it was just me as a solopreneur early on to hiring our first couple of employees. Now we have a team of like 13 people now that one of the numbers that I pay attention to, and I don’t know if it’s a number you’re supposed to pay attention to or not, but it’s a number I pay attention to is the number of people who eat around the dinner table because of the payroll that our company invests in.

Right. And that’s our staff and their family members and their Children. And I know that number. Right. And it’s a lot more than the employees that we have and I think about that every single day. I’m like, if we don’t do the right things, all of these people don’t eat. Right. And how do we cause to your point, there’s that’s that responsibility.

We have to have more responsibility and we have to make payroll every week. You know, or every other week, right? Because we’re bi weekly, but the point really is the same, right? [00:07:00] You have to make those things, and you, it shifts from I need to make sales to pay my bills to we’re making sales to continue to provide for the families that rely on our business.

Right? And that’s not just our staff, but it’s also our clients as well, and the people who rely on the value that we provide, and like, it’s It just feels more grown up and your responsibilities as a CEO change and they change into a higher, sort of a higher level of things that you have to you have to think about, which is, you know, they seem boring on the surface, but like standard operating procedures and hiring and culture development And, you know, all the processes that allow you to do what you need to do.

And to your point you talked about going on vacation. The vacation test is a lot more, I have a more morbid test. I call it the the bus test. Like if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, can the company survive without me? Right. And that’s,

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: Yeah. And can it thrive without you? Right. You know, part of it, and I will say that I’m so proud of you. Like every time you say that, I just want the world to know how proud I am of this dude right here. Right. Because when I met you, you know, it was [00:08:00] just you know, and your beautiful wife.

And I think, I don’t even think you had all the kids that you had, like you

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Probably not.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: Oh, right, right, right. And so, so that’s when you know that things are good, too, is you start adding mouths to your own. It’s like, hey, when things ain’t good, you’re like, Oh, no, ain’t no babies coming, right? But when things are great, you start adding to that.

But so I’m super proud of you. But you truly have Like, I think your business has turned the corner, even from teenage to now, you are definitely young adult with the first house, right? You’re not even teenage anymore because, you know, I used to tell when my mother, right, my mother would be like, why are you so stressed?

Right. When I owned the telephone company, I had 52 employees and I said, really? And she’s like, yes, like it doesn’t make any sense. And I go, well, well, because if I don’t do what I do, you know, 185 people don’t eat.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: it’s a lot.[00:09:00] 

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: 184 people don’t eat. And she just would look at me like so strange, right? Cause she, she was always an employee of her whole life. And she’s like, why would you take on something like that? Like, that doesn’t make sense. Like you need to get rid of some of those people, you know? And I now embrace her scolding as she just didn’t want me to be stressed and overwhelmed, right? She wanted the best thing for me and that was her way of giving it to me is saying, stop that, you know, but instead of, okay, go get them. I’m really proud of you. So, you know, even from. We talked about, you know, the, even the inspiration for the million dollar equation, right?

Is that I had built this million dollar business we went from $300,000 to $36,000,000. So that’s a big leap, right? And all of these people and 7,000 square foot facility and half a million dollar switch that the calls were going through. And, you know, my, my I.T. people back 30 years ago, we’re making [00:10:00] over six figures. Like it was a lot. My payroll every two weeks. I can’t even describe that. 

My carrier bill to the different carriers that I use, my highest one was over a million dollars a month.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Yeah.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: So, you know, when folks say, that their Facebook ad, I go knock it off, hush. Don’t tell me, don’t tell me about it. Like it’s so minuscule compared to what I had to pay, even when I rebuilt back, I lost it all after nine 11 and then I rebuilt back my million dollar business in five months and everybody’s like, well, how’d you do that? So. By implementing The Million Dollar Equation, right?

And so during it, when we talk about it and when we put it all together, it is about making sure that you take the systems, you implement the systems and you let it ride. 

So there was no internet back then. So I’m dating myself but I look cute though still. So that’s

Richard Matthews Audio 2: I think so.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: And I was super young, right?

So I was doing all of this at 27, [00:11:00] 28. I own my multimillion dollar business before I was 30. So all of this is going on. I am still a wreck, right? I’m not an adult. I’m an adult, but I’m not an adult. I hadn’t processed any of my trauma. You know, none of the things that, that I tell CEOs to do now, like go to therapy and do what makes you happy and all of those things, but I still had to pay

$500, $600 per ad spot that I was spending on the radio. I don’t even know who sees it. I just had to take the calls that came in.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Yeah, you couldn’t track it back then.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: No. I was getting, well, here’s how I tracked it based on the number of calls that I would get per month. Right. And so to make sure I could track it instead of when they called and said, Hey, you know, how much is your phone service?

I would say, Oh, well, I’m not sure if we provide service in your area. How about your address? they give me their [00:12:00] address and I go, Oh, and as I was talking to them, okay, well, I’m looking at what’s your name? And they’d give me their name. So now I had their name and their address and now I can follow up.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Yeah.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: So all of the things that we talk about, which is step number four and the Million Dollar Equation is what your follow up is. So once somebody raised their hand, I figured out how to do direct response enough back then to have them raise their hand and create this, follow up, buy or die thing. So even when I look at businesses now and I come in, it’s like, Oh, okay.

(VID #2 ). So you have this person on your list. They didn’t buy in 90 days and you purge them. Yeah. Yeah. Because we’re trying to keep our email costs down.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: I tell people regularly, it’s like, it’s buy, die, or unsubscribe. Those are the three options.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: That’s it. But you don’t, you know, maybe you don’t leave them on the tier one, but you don’t delete them.[00:13:00] 

(VID CLIP #2 END) 

I just,

Richard Matthews Audio 2: It’s like you

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: I just shake my head. I just shake my

Richard Matthews Audio 2: The fortunes and the follow up, that’s what they say. The the thing that sticks out, hearing you talk about that is that you’re like it’s a formula. Right? It’s The Million d\Dollar Equation. We do these things in this order, in this way, and it doesn’t matter if it was 20 years ago, or 10 years ago, or today.

It doesn’t matter if the economy’s going up, it doesn’t matter if the economy’s going down. You do these things in this order, and you just take action on them over and over and over again. Right? And at the highest level possible. Because that’s how you build a business.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: Yes. And it gets really boring really fast, right? But that’s okay because, then you just you just keep at it and that’s how you’re able to scale. Also, you cannot scale if you don’t have the systems in place. There’s no way to scale. Right? And so I tell people all the time, you can hustle your way to six figures and you can do it.

Things can be a rollercoaster. You cannot hustle your way to seven. Absolutely.[00:14:00] 

Richard Matthews Audio 2: I was, I had someone the other day, they were asking me they were like, you ever heard that phrase? If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go with the team. And I remember hearing that and going, that’s retarded. Because if you want to go fast, you have to go with the team.

Go with a team. If you want to go far, go with a team, because I look at the amount of output that my team does on a daily basis, and it is so far and above, beyond what I could do on my own, that it’s not even funny. Like, it’s not even a contest. Like, and it doesn’t matter. I could not go as fast by myself.

I could not. And I couldn’t go as far by myself. There’s just, so to your point. I can’t hustle my way to a million dollar business, because I reached my cap right around six figures of like, I just couldn’t hustle anymore. More hustle wasn’t going to let me do more things. I can’t, you can’t hustle yourself into a million dollar business unless you have, I don’t know, super high ticket product.

You’re gonna have to do one or two a year kind of thing.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: right, right. Unless you’re selling a product [00:15:00] for a million dollars, right? But boy, you know, then you only get one customer and now you’ve got, you know, you’ve got the worst thing ever is that you can have a million dollar business one day and the next day you can not have a million dollar business.

Right. So even, you know, so for years after I wrote the million dollar equation, my first client was a doctor. Right. It’s like, what? It was an OBGYN and you know, nobody wakes up in the morning because I can’t wait to have a pap smear. No, absolutely nobody.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: I’ve never woken up and thought that so.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: Yeah, right, right, right. Okay.

So no woman wakes up and says that.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Silence.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: So, you know, we took him from $384,00 to $1.2 million in nine months. Everything’s all great. So then all of a sudden all these doctors came and they started buying my book, but they couldn’t make the connection of how does it work in it? So I wrote the Million Dollar Equation For Doctors and I just built a whole agency based on that, right?

Charged him a hundred grand a year. I had 10 doctors, [00:16:00] had a million dollar business again, right? Very quickly. Pricing is important. Your profit margin is important. It’s making sure that your staffing is important. Their capacity and managing their capacity is important.

Like looking at so many other things to see if where we can leverage. And so I always call myself like that lever. Right? You know, you don’t think it’s important until it’s moving things until you can just kind of, and you see it all going up and you go, okay.

It’s kind of like when you’re changing a tire and you put the jack underneath, you know, on that little piece that connects the pole with the other thingy. I can’t even tell you what that is, but I know how it works. Right? And so it’s, I give you those little things so that you can have a softball and knock it out of the park every single day. And then what to look for when you’re managing it, right? It’s like, okay what should I be? [00:17:00] Richelle where’s my green, yellow, red, right?

Okay. This number is always green until it turns to this, then it’s yellow. Now we need to come out of the helicopter and come down and fix this piece before it goes to red. Cause red is going to be really bad. So we help you put all of that together too. It’s just super fun. You know, for me, because I just been doing it so long, but it is a

Richard Matthews Audio 2: tell me what your ideal client looks like today. Someone who’s listening to this and going, am I a good fit to talk to Richelle or maybe pick up her book or go through her program? What makes someone, you know, be able to self select and be like, yeah, I need to reach out to Richelle because my bitch is ready to take to that, that next level?

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: Oh, fun. So someone who’s already hired their first employee. Right? Like if you, you can have some virtuals you definitely need to be at six. I would prefer you be at around 200,000 before so that we can do some things with the biz. That means [00:18:00] that you know, have solidified.

Your processes and then it’s easy. We just take it step by step. Right? I would love for you to already be marketing out, not just all based on referral or at least have a marketing plan. Like, you know, that at any point in time we can turn on the marketing and get more customers. Cause why are we here to serve more people?

Right? If you don’t have that I’ve got a million of them. So I can definitely help with that piece. Where probably my sweet spot is, you know, is the million dollars. If you’re at the million, yeah, let’s go get 10. 

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Hi, like, you

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: how to go get 10 really fast,

Richard Matthews Audio 2: So, so, so if you’re under 10, you’re like that $200,000, $250,000, you got a couple of employees, you got good processes in place, you have an idea of what your marketing is and, or maybe you got a solid marketing plan, which is like, it sounds like we’re like, we’re just past that. So we’d be a good fit.

But the and it’s like all the way up to the million dollars. You’re like, that’s, you can help them grow to a million dollars. And then once they hit [00:19:00] that, then that’s where the fun starts. The fun starts at, how do you go from 1 million to 10?

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: Yeah.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: So.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: I will tell you why that half a million 750 to the million is painful.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Yeah.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: right? And what’s painful is because now we’re really testing your processes

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Yeah.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: and we’re trying to get them to break. And they break.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: And then you gotta fix them. You gotta put the work in.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: So it’s expensive. As well as it’s, you’re not going to take out as much for you because even as you are training new staff, right, that’s expensive.

Teaching them to be you teaching them to be 80% of you making sure that we can expand that’s where the hard part is and so $ 300, $350. That’s like, you’re going to bed early, you know, you’re enjoying [00:20:00] your wife. Yeah. You know, that $550 to $800 is, it’s painful.

It’s just painful. And so then you start

Richard Matthews Audio 2: it’s the growing pains that go into the next level. Right.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: You start thinking, “Well, I want to shrink back”, instead of just, let’s be uncomfortable for a little while. And you really need somebody, to white knuckle it with you and to hold your hand and to say, Hey, look, this is exactly how that works.

Richard is exactly how that works. You’re okay. Right? You’re okay. Here’s how we fix it for the next time. And here’s how we, you know, we keep going. So I think I, I just randomly said to you earlier is that, you know, there’s 30 years in business. And in the coaching business space for the last 20 years coaching consulting, I don’t think there’s anything that can happen to you that I have not experienced from, you know, the IRS seizing all your money to I got it released by the way.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: [00:21:00] Silence. Silence.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: you know, I was parked in the handicap cause I had gotten a new car and it was beautiful. And that’s, but that’s again, you know, one of the things that we talked about pre recording was it’s really important that when you are winning, that your employees feel that too.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: they are, they participate in winning.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: Absolutely. You know, it’s not just, okay, now I get to win and now I’m going to hoard everything. And that’s what it appeared. Even though that’s not what I had in mind. And so once they called the police and they tried to tow my car and, you know, my, my receptionist is like, wait, what?

And they’re like, yeah, the call came from this office right here. It’s like,[00:22:00] 

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Silence.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: so I cried in the corner and then. I realized that I wasn’t having staff meetings as often as I used to, and I wasn’t sharing the vision as often as I used to, I wasn’t making sure that we got rid of cancers, right? Because 52, you’re going to have some cancers, some people that infiltrate your system and the onboarding wasn’t correct.

And some of the things, so I knew that I had to make some severe cuts, but I think what had happened was. Once you are winning and really winning big, especially, you know, at 3 million a month is I wanted to just hold on to it

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Yeah.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: not let go because it was painful to get there. And instead of just, you know, going to therapy, which I fixed that now.

And not taking it out on my staff and everybody be together and we can grow together. So

Richard Matthews Audio 2: I Love that too, and it’s like one of the things that I’ve been thinking about in my company is, [00:23:00] you know, we follow From a financial standpoint. We’ve been following Mike McCallow. It’s his profit first stuff and one of the things I always loved about that was Your payroll account, like, it’s a percentage thing.

And, you know, we were talking about it before we started recording, the percentage doesn’t change, or I mean it does a little bit as you get bigger, but the you start to, to realize these economies of scale, and so your payroll costs becomes a smaller percentage. Which means now you, you continue to put that same percentage in there as you get bigger.

So you have more money in that payroll account and you can use that excess in the payroll account for the purpose of rewarding your team for the growth that you guys are having. And so like you can build that into your company if you think about it ahead of time. So you don’t run into those problems, right?

So you can let your team be participate in the wins that you guys are creating together. So, so here’s

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: having that transparency, I think and letting everybody know, instead of keeping that in, right. You know, cause, cause entrepreneurship is a very lonely place, you know? So how much do I share with my employees? How much, you know, [00:24:00] when you’re losing, you don’t want to lose the employees.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: yeah.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: And when you’re winning, you know, gee willikers, you know, I just got to where I’m winning. I don’t want to have to share that much either. So it’s, there’s a real fine line and you guys are doing a great job of

Richard Matthews Audio 2: So, so here’s my last sort of question for you, Richelle, we know who the right people are, what should they do if they’ve listened to this recording here and they’re like, you know what, I’m in that spot. I want to grow my company. And they want to either talk to you or they want to get your book.

What’s what should they do next?

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: Sure. Well, I always say, you know, you can find me on social. It’s a Richelle Shaw at. Richelle Shaw, right on all of them. My father’s name was Richard. I was supposed to be a boy or a rich girl, right? Rich. Yeah. So it’s R I C H E L E Shaw S H A W. So they can find me anywhere and send me a DM. I actually personally respond to my DMs unless you’re creepy.

And then. We kind of [00:25:00] take care of that. But yeah, you know, my books are on Amazon. You know, the new one is coming out. If you go to Richelle shaw.com, there’s a place that you can opt in and. And you can get on my email list and we’ll have some fun over there too. And you can hear how this process is going, the things that I would change in the book, especially the order of things, you know, hindsight is 2020 and yeah, I would love to, to talk to you about your business.

Cause as you can see, I get kind of geeked out about it

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Yeah, absolutely. And I said, I can tell you from experience just from. Consuming her content. We have helped grow our company and we are on that track to a million dollars. So, and. You know, the passion and the energy and the experience that you just bring to the table is phenomenal. And so if you’re in that space where you’re like, I want to get my business to the next level, take the time, reach out to Richelle, you will not regret it.

Also she’s just a cool person. So there’s a, there’s that, it goes along with it. Richelle, thank you so much for doing this recording with me. Hopefully this is you know, really helpful for you and hopefully it helps the people who see it too. people have been [00:26:00] here, they’ve done that.

This is not like entrepreneurship. I know they say it’s lonely, but it doesn’t have to be right. This is a story we can tell together and a story that we can work on together because people have been there and if they’ve been there and they’ve done that, they can help you. Richelle is one of those people that’s been there and done that and she can help you get your business to the next level.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: Oh, that’s so fun. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to see what the next year has for you. You know, you’re just going to keep crushing it. So I’m just so damn proud of you.

Richard Matthews Audio 2: Well, thank you, Richelle. Appreciate it.

Richelle Shaw – Video 2: You’re welcome. My friend.