THE THOUGHTFUL ENTREPRENEUR PODCAST
Unlocking Holistic Revenue Growth: The Visionary Entrepreneur's Path
In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge interviewed Jackson Calame, founder of First Class Business, to explore the nuances of helping visionary entrepreneurs achieve holistic revenue growth and sustainable success. Jackson's methodology is grounded in effective leadership, human connection, and a thorough understanding of business infrastructure. This blog post distills the key insights from their discussion, providing actionable advice and detailed explanations to guide entrepreneurs on their path to success.
Jackson Calame compares First Class Business to Alfred, Batman's butler, ensuring that visionary entrepreneurs can concentrate on their strengths without burning out. The company offers a robust support system covering various business operations, including infrastructure and process, vision and culture, leadership and management, marketing and sales, and fulfillment and support operations. Jackson emphasizes the importance of regularly assessing business infrastructure, cultivating a strong organizational culture, and investing in leadership training for sustainable success.
Jackson underscores the significance of entrepreneurs focusing on their strengths as visionaries and CEOs. He advocates leveraging resources like webinars and books, such as “The Effective Executive” by Dr. Peter Drucker, to enhance executive effectiveness. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to identify their core competencies, engage in continuous learning, and delegate tasks outside their strengths to capable team members. By doing so, they can maximize their impact and drive their businesses toward holistic growth.
About Jackson Calame:
Jackson teaches visionary entrepreneurs how to unlock sustainable revenue growth and expand their legacy by becoming a Power Brand in their market.
96% of businesses fail within the first 10 years. Jackson teaches businesses, not only how to avoid failure, but how to win, by becoming a true leader in their market.
Having worked in, launched, and scaled several successful startups in the b2b industry & SaaS space, servicing thousands of SMBs, Jackson has seen firsthand that even the best operators struggle and often fail. The problem begins with poorly managed growth, due to establishing a weak foundation, which inevitably leads to collapse. Jackson and his teams prepare business owners and executives to bridge their growth gaps. Collectively, we often fill the roles of COO, CMO, or CEO during this transformative process.
Your key to success as growth occurs and operations shift, will require that you evolve. Developing an incredible culture, built around a clear vision dedicated to customer satisfaction, must be the focal point of a company's mission in order to ultimately thrive. Most operators think they are prepared for this. The truth is, you aren't. Personal growth will be necessary. Personnel shifts will occur. Cuts will likely be made as accountability begins to expose who your contenders are, and who your pretenders are. It’s not personal, it’s business. And in order for everyone to win, a business can only afford to have leaders who pull their own weight, who add value to the mission, not anchors who will hold you back.
If your business is ready for a powerful shift that empowers you to maximize your potential, Jackson and his team members are the key players you need on your team, to make it happen.
About First Class Business:
First Class Business is founded on the principle that we can help you achieve sustainable revenue by partnering with you at a higher level than you would typically find among business consultants. We come alongside you like a business partner who can help you form a strategy at the highest level but then ALSO help with the process of execution, measurement, and adjustment as needed to see the vision through.
This rare combination of high-level service is designed to supercharge your goals as we make your vision our own. Invite us into your world and let’s work together to unlock the full potential of your own first class business.
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Links Mentioned in this Episode:
Want to learn more? Check out First Class Business website at https://firstclassbusiness.io/
Check out First Class Business on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/79133881
Check out Jackson Calame on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacksoncalame/
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Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00:05) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt in required, where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence comm and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you. With us. Right now it's Jackson Kellum. Jackson, you are the founder of First Class Business and the host of Vision Pros Live. Jackson, thank you so much for joining us Joshua Champion.
Speaker 2 (00:01:18) - Happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:01:19) - Thank you so much. Your website is first Class businesses. Oh and tell me a bit about what first class business is what you do.
Speaker 2 (00:01:27) - Absolutely. So we help with holistic revenue growth for entrepreneurs, specifically visionary entrepreneurs. So the most the majority of the market is going to see that as kind of a fluffy reality. And I'm okay with that. I understand that, but we're basically the Alfred to Batman where that butler behind the scenes who runs a house, make sure the company is running well, and when he's out there doing his thing, we're making sure he doesn't die and kill himself trying to help save the world. So that's all that infrastructure and process, vision, culture, leadership, management, marketing, fulfillment, sales and support operations. Those pillars are incredibly valuable. And too many entrepreneurs end up in a position where they can't sustain their business because they've tried to do it by themselves or with one unicorn for a long time. And books like the E-myth. Yeah, talk about how you're never going to get out of it unless you shift that mindset.
Speaker 1 (00:02:23) - Yeah. Completely. Completely. So if if you typically like working with the clients that you work with were to say, listen, I want you to keep doing what you're doing, but but as the founder is, the CEO is the visionary. if you were to say if there were 2 to 3 activities that you would advocate for them in terms of them staying in their lane, what would you recommend they do?
Speaker 2 (00:02:46) - So the first thing I would do is I would get the source of of the roadmap. How do I do this? How do I go about this? We have a two hour webinar. That webinar took me 14 years of successes and failures to create, and it is fully in line with the E-myth Rocketfuel the effective executive one Minute Manager, raving fans, five dysfunctions of a team, tribal leadership all pulled into how do you practically implement this into a system? So that would be number one. I'd go read, I'd go look at something like that. Number two, I would learn how to implement this book, Effective Executive by Doctor Peter Drucker.
Speaker 2 (00:03:21) - I don't know very many entrepreneurs who've even read that book. Most of them haven't heard of it because it's not super well recommended. Why? Well, Rich dad, Poor Dad is a phenomenal book and it's a great foundation. It's easy to read. The Effective Executive is a very hard book to read. It is highly recommended by Warren Buffett. It's highly recommended by Bill gates. I once heard LeBron James mention it. Those types of people I tend to look for, not just how many people recommend a book, but who recommends it. This has become one of my Bibles of business. If you can learn to be effective with your time. If you can learn to respect and appreciate executives, then you can move mountains for your business. So step three is not just being an effective executive yourself, but actually being able to teach others to become effective executives. I also don't know very many entrepreneurs in the world when they're teaching their teams who evaluate their teams properly, they based they based their evaluation based.
Speaker 2 (00:04:16) - What did you do today? They based on on okay. Did we get the results this week or did we get the results this month? That's too fast for an executive evaluation. What Peter Drucker teaches is we should be evaluating executives based on quarters. I don't see small businesses doing that. They jump to conclusions too fast. They pressure their executives. They don't give them the 2 to 3 hours that they need. And if you start treating all of your team members like executives, it's amazing the shift that happens in the culture. It's amazing what happens with the relationships. It's amazing what happens with the results.
Speaker 1 (00:04:53) - Yeah. What would be maybe some examples, some real world examples of maybe other, you know, folks that you've worked with or you know, just how this might look. You know, I think in theory, someone may be listening to our conversation, hear what you just said and say, okay, cool, I'm going to start treating more of my team like executives, but what does that look like? And more of a day to day role.
Speaker 2 (00:05:13) - Sounds like a leading question because I got a great story for that. So Jake Larsen, a video power marketing Jake Larsen is was put on stage by Ryan Dice and called the YouTube ad expert of the World at Traffic and Conversion Summit. Right. He had been pre-selected to be one of the ten YouTube ambassadors by the founder of YouTube. Founder of YouTube called him on the phone before they launch the ads platform, asked him to come out, and he was one of ten YouTube channels that came out to decide how do we make the ads platform better than TV? They came up with the idea you should be able to skip ads after five seconds, right? So fast forward a couple of years. He brings me into the company because I'm, quote, one of the most critical people he's ever met. That was the worst compliment I've ever received in my life. Josh. and he was right. So I come out trying to be a little bit softer to saying, Jake, I'm sorry about that, but yes, I'll help you.
Speaker 2 (00:06:05) - he had five clients at a time. Some of them, one of them entrepreneur fire, John Lee Dumas, another one, NordicTrack, yahoo.com, CorelDRAW, all these really big entities that were crushing it, spending a minimum of $10,000 per month on YouTube ads. And he says, how do we do this? And I said, well, let's take a look at the playscape. He had two interns, 70,000 people coming to the website per month, and ultimately no other overhead. I said, well, here's what I think we do. You're going to be mom, and I'm going to be dad. You need to nurture people, help people love you. I'm going to come in and I'm going to hold them accountable with love, of course. But when they come and complain to you that I'm changing how things go, you got to have my back, too. If they aren't qualifying to become executives, if they aren't picking up the pieces, we implement procedures, resources and templates. Then you also have to be willing to let them go.
Speaker 2 (00:07:00) - You can do that. We can work together. So over the next month, we train them up. They were both very, very good interns. They both became executives, had executive behaviors. Within 1 to 2 months, we went from five clients to 20 clients. We tripled revenues. I took over strategy sessions from there. But Jake, when I when I talked, here's the other thing we did. So when I told Jake that we were going to do that and run the operation that way, this is the visionary integrator relationship also talked about in Rocket Fuel. I didn't know at the time, but I was being integrated. He's been visionary. I told those two interns, they said there's two there's three things Jake needs to be doing. One, he needs to be golfing with other executives. That's where he wins his deals.
Speaker 1 (00:07:39) - Memo to say that again, for the folks in the back. That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:07:43) - He needs to be golfing with other executives. That's where he wins his deals. Two, he needs to be speaking on podcasts and on stages.
Speaker 2 (00:07:53) - If he's on podcasts, on stages, he's attracting great audience members to us. Three he needs to be playing the jazz piano at conferences because everybody loves when Jake plays the jazz piano. If we can get Jake doing those things and get him out, if he's in operations, we are not growing as a company. If we can get him out of the day to day operations and into that position as a visionary, we will crush it as a company. So that became the focal point. I said, everybody else, by the way, we've got unlimited vacation days. So, Cooper, when you go to Europe, you focus on your vacation when you've got things to get done, perfect. But if you don't have things to get done, don't even check in, go B, go vacant. I'm watching Jake out of the corner of my eye, seeing if he freaks out or reacts. No man. Jake Larson is one of the best leaders I've ever met in my life. Great mentor to me has helped me get to where I am.
Speaker 2 (00:08:40) - I absolutely love that man.
Speaker 3 (00:08:42) - You know.
Speaker 1 (00:08:43) - When I'm hearing you describe, you know, these ideal roles that that a visionary CEO would do, I can't help but notice that these are very human to human human connection type of behaviors. And that might be contrary to how we might sometimes see the role of a CEO is supposed to just be thinking about, you know, you know, efficiencies and systems and, you know, and, I got to tell you that, you know, as someone who really resonates with, you know, kind of the more the visionary or the evangelist role or the human connection role, I like what you're saying. and, I think it's that's why I kind of chimed in there with, like, say it again in the back for the folks in the back, because I like what you're saying, and I truly believe that one of the most important things that we can be doing as leaders is connecting with other leaders, because I think great things happen in an environment where you've got two leaders that come together.
Speaker 1 (00:09:40) - They they discovered that they like each other and they look for opportunities to collaborate because someone that's a high achiever and they've got a lot of resources and a lot of things going on. And and you're a high achiever and you've got a lot of things going on, man. You get together in that, you know, that opportunity for collaboration, synergy, etc. is huge and can dwarf what you know as a visionary or CEO. We might come up with some better mousetrap idea for our own systems. someone else has already cobbled together so many other things is that coming together becomes this one plus one equals 11 dynamic. And if we could just kind of concentrate on the state committed to that, I, I love this. can you tell me more about outcomes that that might, happen as a result of this focus on connection and, and again, both connection with individuals and audiences?
Speaker 2 (00:10:31) - Absolutely. Thoughtfulness. Intentionality. Right. Those things go hand in hand. And so it's not an abandonment of strategy by any means, but it is a refocus.
Speaker 2 (00:10:39) - Josh, we got to get entrepreneurs and wine sharpeners to take the rose petal glasses off and look at entrepreneurship for what it is. 96% of businesses fail within ten years, so why are we taking 96% of advice? It doesn't make sense. And as a consultant of more than ten years, I've seen that the 4%, when you actually get them to open up beyond the surface level answers, most of the 4% who've won are surviving. They have debts. They have problems. They just disguise it a little bit better than the people who failed. So we've got we've got to shift our focus, like you said to. And for me, it's vision and then culture. And if you get the right vision and you get the right culture, then you attract awesome leaders to come and work with you. And now that you've attracted that, now you have something to market. So here's a real practical, the best example I've ever seen. There was a man that got on stage. He sold a car that would not exist for 2 to 3 years, and 180,000 very smart, affluent people spent $1,000 deposit on the Tesla model three.
Speaker 2 (00:11:46) - Unheard of. Right. I go in, I talk to the sales reps at the stores later, say, how much do you make? Minimum wage. Why? Because the car sells itself. The vision, the culture and the leadership made that happen. Now you have to have fulfillment in place to not go to prison in those situations. You've got to be able to pull it off. And so there are other elements that are necessary. But let's rewind back to Jake. Here comes Doctor Eric Berg, and he had 106,000 subscribers on YouTube. And it was my job to take this strategy session. He had paid $497 to meet with Jake Larson. And here comes just Jackson. I was terrified, I thought I was gonna lose my job. Oh, I thought for sure because I had to tell him to. He's got one of the worst websites I've ever seen, and I am not looking forward to that conversation. He's a doctor. He could be pretentious, he could get offended. And so.
Speaker 2 (00:12:37) - And I'm pretty direct. So I'm like, how do I how do I not lose my job? Here? He comes in, I say, hey, Doctor Berg. He says, call me Eric. I go, okay, doctor Eric Berg and he goes, call me Eric Jackson. All right. Eric said, okay, let's start with your colors. The colors of your your website, their bright yellow and bright red. That's traffic stop signs and yield signs. Yeah. And he's like, okay, I can fix that. And he takes notes. You know how many entrepreneurs have argued me about the stupid color on their website? Like, it's like I just called their baby ugly. Oh my gosh. Like, no. So okay, so he he takes notes and I'm like, well, this doctor's taking notes. I'm just Jackson. I was like 26, you know? And then I said, okay, next thing you're going to go to a bunch of restaurants this year. How many newsletters do you want from restaurants? And he goes, none.
Speaker 2 (00:13:25) - Doctor Burge. How many people want your newsletter? He goes, what do I do? I said, what do I do about that? I said, well, come up with an irresistible offer. It's got to be something that you got to incentivize people for wanting to opt. It just said, sign up for our newsletter. How many times do we see that on people's websites still to this day? Because nobody wants that. It's boring. It doesn't drive conversions. So he he said, okay, great, I can do that. I can come up with an offer. And by the way, do you guys do all this stuff for us? No, we just did video. we're a video production company. We're a video advertising company. So I said, can I just be blunt with you? And he goes, yes. And I said, your website is so awful, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. I'd never send a friend or family member to it. It looks like somebody stole your identity.
Speaker 2 (00:14:08) - Is wanting to steal mine. If I put my I would never buy from this website. And he goes, okay, give me three days. I have no idea how he did it. This is back in 2014 2015 time period. He overhauled his website within three days. Put the right branding in place. If you look up doctor Eric Berg today, he's at over 11 million subscribers. I don't know a natural path who doesn't know who he is. So that practicality, intentionality of yes, there's strategy to it. But what I'm what I'm really showing is Doctor Berg had the leadership skills and power to say, I'm going to listen to this guy. I'm going to trust that Jake hired the right person. I'm going to assess what this is and then make strategic moves. But he never argued with me. I'm not saying he listened to everything I said he knew to intuitively take what was necessary out of that and implement it. And he always respected us, was grateful for what we did. And then he went on, did the rest.
Speaker 2 (00:15:05) - I never talked to Eric Berg again, besides sending him an email a couple of years ago and saying, hey, I hope you're doing well. Congratulations on everything.
Speaker 4 (00:15:11) - Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:15:13) - Jackson. We have just scant few minutes left. can you share just a bit about how you work with leaders? Again, your website, first class businesses. So, you share maybe just about your services or programs?
Speaker 2 (00:15:29) - Absolutely. Josh. So for those who are business owners, we have a free program. It's called the Power Launch. And that webinar is two hours long to reveal behind the curtains. You're going to see at the end, it's a $5,000 a month implementation or a $44,000 month upfront that's designed to get people to go away who don't listen. Then it jump cuts and says, by the way, if you want to do this by yourself with your own teams, you can get access to this for $49 a month. That is also to get people to go away. I am not in the business of helping people who want to cut corners and want to get rich quick.
Speaker 2 (00:16:05) - Yeah. On the flip side, when I come on a show like this that's principally driven, then I give what I call free parking. Free parking is 100% free access to that entire infrastructure. There's 55 hours worth of work and there that an entrepreneur has to do. It may sound like a lot of work, but I know quite quitters can get that done within two weeks. What that will do is put you on a path to earn $20,000 a month in new revenues, within 45 to 180 days. Why is such a weird timeline? If you don't have any of the assets in place and you're starting from scratch, you have more to build than somebody who's already got some assets. If you've already built a bunch of assets and your assets are absolutely trash, we may have to tear down that bridge first in order to build a new bridge. You might even take longer than those who are starting before you. I do not believe and up front scope of works. I think they are also crushing companies because there's if somebody has an upfront scope of work to find quickly or a do it yourself done with you, done for you process that they're selling without getting to know your brand and your vision and who you are.
Speaker 2 (00:17:07) - Yeah, you are buying a cookie cutter template, right? There's no way to personalize that. So we want you to have open access. We want freedom of options. We want freedom of choice for entrepreneurs. And if people go through that and they love what we're doing, awesome. If they go through that and you're like, you know what? this is hard. I don't I don't feel like I need to do all of this. That's okay. You're the visionary for your brand. J.K. Rowling needed a napkin. She became a billionaire writing a book. You know, I'm not the know it all for what you need. I do have a show called Vision Prose to help people. Come on. And the point is, I learned the hard way. I am not the Grant Cardone of the world. I do not need a sheeple. Everybody into success. I want to work with visionaries who know they are the visionary for their life, and I can trust that they are going to follow their own intuition and take full responsibility for their actions.
Speaker 2 (00:17:53) - That's what we're looking for.
Speaker 1 (00:17:55) - Yeah. Jackson, also, I just want to point this out to to our friend that's listening. You can do a search right now in your podcast app, and you can find the podcast Vision Pros. can you share just a bit about that and then, again, to our friend that if you've resonated with Jackson, with what you've been sharing, sounds like a great next step. In addition to, going to first class business, I.
Speaker 2 (00:18:20) - Oh, Josh, we look forward to hosting you on the show as well. That's going to be awesome. Vision pros is for leaders. Leaders with visions. People who want to share their visions. What qualifies a leader? Somebody who cares about those that they serve. So if you appreciate our stage and you're in the beginning incubation stages and you come in with honesty and vulnerability and saying what you want to do, I want you on my stage. If you come in with sunglasses and airplanes and trying to impress me and and saying, I've already been on all these podcasts, you were you were walking yourself out of our.
Speaker 2 (00:18:53) - We will gently walk you towards the improvements you can make. And if you come back later, we will then help you. But most people won't go make the improvements so they never come back. So we're looking for the authentic people. No pretenders, all contenders. And your qualifications have nothing to do with your previous successes. It has to do with your authenticity of your vision.
Speaker 1 (00:19:13) - I love it so much. I'm hearing Jackson. I wish if we had more time I could get into a. I would love to talk with you someday about your use of negative and positive filters, which I just absolutely adore. Jackson Kellam again, your website, first class businesses. Oh, the podcast Vision Pros Live. if you are a friend or fan of the work I do, we will absolutely send that episode when that airs sometime in the future. Jackson, thank you so much for being a guest. It's been a true joy and delight.
Speaker 2 (00:19:41) - My pleasure. Josh.
Speaker 1 (00:19:48) - Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show.
Speaker 1 (00:19:51) - If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence. Com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together we are empowering one. Another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt in or email required, where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments.
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