I currently have six businesses that you would classify as 7 figure companies. The funny thing is I've structured them all the exact same way, even though they sell different products and they're in different industries. And the beauty with the structure we've created is that it does not rely on me to operate day to day. I can focus all my time and energy on different things we can do to grow the company. I'm going to show you step by step how exactly I do that and how you can structure your business the exact same way.

When I first got started in business, I had no type of corporate business experience.

In fact, I've never had a real job. The only boss I've ever had in my life was when I was playing pro baseball. So when I was developing all my own businesses, I was pretty much winging it based on what I thought we needed. Well, as you can imagine, as we grew, things started to get really sloppy because I was not properly equipped to handle that growth. I was essentially just winging it, trying to figure things out.

As I went along, I was hiring people the wrong way. I didn't hold anyone accountable, and I didn't know how to find the right people for the right seats. I'll be honest with you, I started to get really frustrated and overwhelmed because so many things were happening and our growth was actually going backwards because of all the mistakes I was making. What I've realized for myself and other entrepreneurs is that it typically takes some kind of struggle to make them realize that they need to get help.

That's exactly what happened to me. I ended up hiring my very first business consultant, whose name is Gary Harper. Now he and along with the rest of his company at Sharper, came to my office for three days and sat with my entire team. The very first thing he told us during those three days was that nobody has their current role in the company. He was going to remove every single person out of whatever job they were currently working and then place them back in where they should fit based on their personalities, based on their experience, based on their desire.

It was a pretty terrifying experience for the first day because not only did all of my head people get removed, but I also got removed out of my position. What he said was a lot of business owners don't realize that they're actually in the wrong seat. They might be the entire bottleneck of their company. After going through all of these different things for three days, I realized how much of a bottleneck I actually was. I learned about myself as an entrepreneur far more than I ever knew before that.

The biggest thing that came from this three day consultation was that I learned how to structure my company the right way so that it did not rely on me as a bottleneck anymore. People could take accountability for their own departments and things could run seamlessly. In the years since then, I've continued to refine what he initially showed us and add my own twist and variations to it. We realized that different things work for us in our business, and now we have our own methodology of how we structure things and how we hold our meetings and keep people accountable. So that being said, let's jump into how I operate my businesses.

As of today, I use many of the principles that are taught in a book called Traction by Gino Wickman, and his system that he promotes is called EOS. If you're just getting started and you can't afford a consultant, then I would highly recommend reading that book because it's going to give you everything you need to start running your business the right way. Now, if your experience and your business is already moving along, I would just hire Gary. 

Now, going into how my business is structured, we start off at the top with the visionary and the integrator. These are terms that Traction uses, that Gary uses, and other business systems use as well. Essentially, the visionary is your CEO and the integrator is your COO.

You might be thinking that your company doesn't need a CEO or COO, you guys aren't big enough for all of that corporate structure. Whatever you want to call it, just know that there needs to be somebody who is in that visionary role and somebody who's in that integrated role. For me, I operate as the visionary. I am the guy who's coming up with the ideas. I am the face of my company.

I'm the one who's out there promoting it. I'm the guy doing all the marketing and drumming up traffic and leads for the business. This is what the visionary is supposed to do. They're supposed to come up with new and great ideas. They're supposed to get sales, and they have to be able to drive traffic for the company.

Here's the thing. Visionaries cannot function by themselves. Visionaries also need an integrator. The integrator or the COO, is the person who is going to be executing all of the visionary's crazy ideas. They are going to be the person who is behind the scenes doing the detail work, making sure that the ship does not burn.They're handling the day to day operations at the office. They're making sure the sales team is doing what they're doing. They're making sure that fulfillment is happening, that customer service is happening. They're overseeing the entire business operations on a detailed level. Now, the unique thing is, with the visionary and the integrator, they are drastically different personalities.

I can tell you, as a visionary, I do not want to go oversee all the different departments. I don't like holding people accountable. I feel like it's a waste of my time. I feel like it's boring, and I just don't want to do it. The integrator, on the other hand, should like those kind of things.

They like seeing structure. They like seeing people's tasks done. They're really into all of the details. And so when you combine those two personality types, that is when you get a business that really thrives. And this is what took me so long to learn as an entrepreneur, I did not realize that I was functioning as both the visionary and the integrator.

Many of you watching this video are probably doing both. You are definitely doing both if you don't have any employees. Here's the thing. If you look at every great business that ever existed, they always had a visionary and an integrator. Typically, though, people don't know who the integrator was because they're not the face of the company.

Take, for example, Apple. When they first got started, you had Steve Jobs. Who was this visionary, this guy coming up with all these great ideas. He was the face. He was the salesman. He was getting traffic to Apple, making sure that investors wanted to invest in Apple. He was doing everything a visionary should do, but he didn't want to go and program computers. In fact, if you read his biography, he really wasn't that great of a programmer compared to all of his peers. So what did he do? He went and found himself an integrator in Steve Wozniak.

Steve Wozniak was really into the details. He understood how to execute Jobs’ vision, and in turn, Apple became what it became because they had both the visionary and the integrator. And I'll tell you, the biggest turning point for me was when I realized that every single business I had needed an integrator. It needed somebody who was going to be able to execute all of the ideas and traffic that I was going to bring those businesses. So if you look at all six of my companies that I have today, I am the visionary in each and one of those companies, but they all have an integrator whose sole focus is to make sure that company succeeds and executes all of our new ideas, and they make sure that everything underneath them is running smoothly.

One other thing I'll add is if you're starting a brand new business and you want to partner with somebody, you better define whose role is what. You can't have two visionaries or two integrators. If you have two integrators, you're never going to come up with innovation and you're going to have a tough time marketing. If you have two visionaries, both of you are going to be stepping on each other's toes. You're going to have all these ideas, but no one's going to actually execute them. So if you're going to partner, make sure you're going to figure out who's doing what role. 

Now, once you get past the visionary and the integrated roles, you now have all the various departments underneath them to make things very simple. For general business, you've got your marketing Department, you've got your sales Department, and you've got your operations Department. And within each of those departments, depending on how complex your company is, there are always going to be some type of sub departments. For example, let's take marketing, for instance.

If I'm running an online business, I'm going to look at all the different ways that I can market my company. Maybe I have my social media marketing department and they're in charge of running all the Facebook ads, the YouTube ads, the TikTok ads. Then we have our affiliate marketing Department. There's going to be someone who's responsible for pushing that program and getting new ambassadors. Then you can have your SEO and PPC marketing. This is going to be for all of your keyword searches. Then you could have your outbound marketing channel. They're responsible for cold calling, texting, or even direct messaging potential new customers. So you would do that across all of your departments. You would have your sales marketing operations, and then you would put all the sub departments underneath those.

From there you're going to have a full organizational chart. You're going to have the visionary at the top, the integrator right below. Then you've got marketing, sales operations, and then underneath those three, you have all of their sub departments. This is your organizational chart. Now, the big key with this chart is to start writing all of the roles and responsibilities for each of those positions.

The visionary's role is to come up with new product ideas, to draw traffic to the company as the face, to get potential investors and big relationships and do things on a bigger level. The integrator's role is to manage the sales, marketing and operations. The marketing director's role is to handle all of the subcategories related to marketing. Same thing applies for the sales manager and the operations manager. Then within each of those sub departments, you're going to write out what the tasks are for those different things.

So if you're talking about Facebook ads, this person is responsible for writing the copy for it. They're responsible for getting the video. They're responsible for the funnel of the ad, and you're basically writing job descriptions for every position in your company. Now, here's the big key with it, the marketing manager is overseeing all of these different ways to market. It doesn't mean that the manager themselves have to be the one doing it. They just are responsible for making sure it gets done. So maybe they are doing some pieces of it and maybe some other pieces they're hiring out. But either way, it's their responsibility to make sure that it happens, and then it keeps trickling up. It's then the COO's job to make sure that the marketing manager is doing all of the things that they're responsible for, and then it funnels all the way back up to the visionary, who in the end is the face of the company. So everything that happens with the company, both good or bad, is going to fall on them.

They have a full responsibility to make sure that the company does what it's supposed to do. Now, I know this can seem overwhelming, especially if you're just getting started in business, But let me tell you something. Starting out, you are going to be filling all these positions. I have been there.

I filled every position in my house flipping company when I got started. As you evolve and you have more success, you're going to be able to hire out other people to fill some of those positions. Now instead of you filling them all, maybe you're only filling 60% of them and somebody else is filling the other 40% And eventually, if you're having success, you're going to be able to start adding different people, and you're going to be able to take yourself out of more and more until eventually you get to sit in the one seat that you want to be in. And I can tell you, as an owner, in the big scheme of things, there are probably three different seats that you want to fill.

You're either going to be the integrator because that's your personality. You're either going to be the visionary because that's your personality, or if things go the right way, you're going to be in this other position that we didn't talk about, which is above the visionaries that is called the owner's box. The owner's box is essentially just like an advisor. When you look at all of these companies and their board of directors, they're pretty much sitting on the owner's box. They're trying to advise the CEO on quarterly meetings and just tell them their thoughts. In the end, they're not really involved in the day to day business. Everyone else has their roles for running that. As it stands for me right now, I am not in the owner box on any of my businesses. I am the visionary on each and every one of them, but at some point, you may see me transition into the owner's box.

That would mean that I would have to bring in a brand new visionary or promote somebody else to become the visionary from within and that could happen. I’ll be honest with you, I really enjoy being the visionary of these different companies. I love coming up with new ideas. I love making social media which draws traffic to the businesses and I love raising money and building big relationships with people that are going to be customers or clients of my business. 

Overall this is the reason I'm able to have so many companies but not be stuck in the day to day problems of all of them. I'm able to do what I do really well, which is be a visionary and I've got other people who do what they do really well in all the different departments underneath. So I'm really proud of what we've been able to accomplish and I know that that this structure works because we've done it over and over again and as we start new businesses we're going to continue to use the same structure. Anyways, I hope you got a lot of value out of blog! I’ll catch you on the next one. Peace.

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