Local Market Monopoly

Clarence Fisher: All right, welcome back. Welcome back. Glad you made it through the intro. And I am excited today. We're going to overcome some setbacks. I got my guy, Tim Calise in the house. Tim, what's up, man?

Tim Calise: Oh, great to be here, Clarence. Thank you for having me on the show. I love it.

Clarence Fisher: Awesome. Glad you showed up. Not that most people don't show up, Tim. All right. Okay, so here's the deal. When we talk about, I've covered all of, not all of what you've done, but you are highly qualified in this topic today. And I'll tell you, one of the things that pulled my ear was Alex Hermozy, that just, I'm like, okay, so he's worked with Alex and you've worked with all these founders. What is it that you've done with them?

Tim Calise: So I have positioned myself and found great success. I figured out my zone of genius is being the co-collaborator or co-creator alongside really ambitious founders. So take a guy like Alex. Alex is phenomenal at knowing where he wants to go and even how he wants to get there. But when you're building organizations, especially ones that give you the level of freedom and even potentially enterprise value, sellability of the business, you need to build a team and you need to build process and you need to translate what's in your head to be able to then deploy into the organization. And so for Alex and for other folks, I help both be a sounding board and a creative partner, but also partially the translator into, okay, here's where we're going so that somebody like Alex can continue to look forward. And then we build the road behind to make sure that we can support whatever that vision might be.

Clarence Fisher: That's awesome. So is it kind of COO type work or is it. How do you explain that?

Tim Calise: Yeah, great question. So a COO works primarily whose interests and compensation are tied to the organization. I work directly with the founder or the CEO or the person. And the reason why that's relevant is because a number of the folks that I've had the chance to work with, I've actually gone from one business to another. So I don't stay with the business. I am an asset of the founder. And that is really important because here's the dirty secret that many people won't tell you. Even a founder of a $10 million fast-growing business is probably just as unsure and worried and worried just in general, thinking about what the future might look like. A lot of times they are not able or comfortable enough or feel it appropriate to talk to somebody within the organization while they're going through the ideation process. So imagine if you will, it's like, "I think I want to do this, but I'm not quite sure." You go to the team inside of the company and everything you say, you almost can't work through it in public.
And so I have a great chance of being able to be that partner, that go-to person to help figure all of a lot of those things out, build the plan, and then be able to translate it into execution for the team.

Clarence Fisher: Man, that is so awesome. There are wives of entrepreneurs everywhere loving you because we run these ideas across from my wife. She's in the shower. I'm like, "Hey, what do you think about this?"

Tim Calise: I got a great lead magnet. What do you think of this headline?

Clarence Fisher: Right, exactly, exactly. She's like, "I don't know. Do it, do it." Which is cool. Over the years, my wife has, she'll spit some stuff at me out of the blue. I'm like, "How did you learn that?" And she's like, "You've been talking to me for 10 years or so." But that's awesome. How did you get started doing this?

Tim Calise: So I started my career in my early 20s in the finance investment management business. So when I was 22, I started a long short equity hedge fund, which in very short means a mutual fund, but you can also bet that stock prices will go down of certain companies, so you can play both sides. And we grew that from basically a million dollars under management, which is the metric that you use in that business, how much capital you have, to over $350 million within about three and a half years. And then that took us to 2007 where for those that were in and around the marketplace in 2008, things got pretty ugly. We voluntarily gave all of that capital back at the end of 2007. So we avoided the downturn. But after spending four plus years really evaluating companies, I thought I could, and I was always entrepreneurial from an early age.
I basically went out on my own and my wife and I built a multi-seven-figure fitness business. And so I learned all the tools and tactics and things you need to know when your money's on the line. It becomes really quite personal very quickly as those of us have been in the arena can attest to. And so I just learned, and I just love this idea of being creative and taking, and I was never artistic in the traditional sense, but the idea of business as an expression of problem solving and value creation was always really interesting to me. So I see a problem, how many different ways can I think about fixing it or addressing it and then optimizing it for a business that is both profitable on a cash basis, but also sellable to somebody else? And that has kind of been a repeated through line throughout my entire career.
So being creative, but also understanding what institutional investors and retail investors for that matter value and look for and things like that along the way.

Clarence Fisher: That takes a special person to take a problem, a business problem, and actually wrestle with that. I feel that way because it's not easy to solve these problems.

Tim Calise: Yeah, it's not. And the numbers would bear it out depending on where you read. It's one of those 50% of all businesses fail in the first 18 to 24 months, 90% fail within five years. So the problem has never been as important as it is today. And so the idea of how. I also have this part of me that is like the David and Goliath. I like helping the Davids overcome the odds, if you will. And on the outside, it could appear that the 90% and the 10% are kind of random. I hope I can make this work. Hopefully the market's where it needs to be. Hopefully I can make money at this and all those things. And the reality is there's a playbook. There's actually a formula to help reduce the risk of failure and increase your likelihood of success. So one example of that is I specialize in service businesses and we either install, meaning we create or we refine their recurring revenue component of their business.
It looks something like a membership or a subscription or a service of some kind. And the reason for that is because so many business owners that I know and I've come across look at their business as a single sale or they're wanting to just get that first sale. And the reality is we are all pursuing some version of financial freedom.
So if you want financial freedom, then having an idea of what tomorrow looks like and be able to make decisions for tomorrow and the next week and the next year with some level of certainty, generally speaking, plays to our favor. So if I could tell you, if you didn't sell another thing, Clarence, from now until the end of the year, and you have $300,000 of capital of revenue that's going to come into the business versus you have to sell your way tomorrow, pay the bills the next day, you'd probably feel differently about your business and about where you are. And so that was one of those key things that I've learned along the way, which is how do we build visibility into the future, which builds confidence? The more confident we are, the better we execute. The better we execute, actually the less risk there shows up tomorrow.
So again, just by a lot of trial and error, have learned some principles that I've been fortunate enough to be able to pass along to other folks.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. How have you, with service businesses, and I found it interesting that you've served tech and service business, they seem to be two totally opposite ends of the spectrum, but especially with service businesses. I've worked with some service business owners where it's a little difficult for them to get that recurring revenue kind of mindset. So how do you make that happen?

Tim Calise: Yeah. So the first question I would ask would be, do you believe that trust matters in a business relationship? So between you and a customer? And most people will say yes. So if you think about when we acquire a prospect or a new customer, a new client, they have voted with their dollars that they have some version of they know, like, and trust you enough to go through at least one transaction. That is one of the hardest things of all in a business is to convey a potential value proposition and have someone to say yes. It's also one of the most costly things, which is why acquiring a new client is usually three to four times as expensive as a retaining one. So we've learned some of these metrics along the way. So now you've earned the trust of someone to solve a very specific problem.
Do you also believe that in the future you'd like to solve additional problems for them or be the go-to resource for them, the person they look to because you've earned their trust over time? And most people will say yes. So then the question isn't, can I stay in a trusted relationship with my client over time? The question is how?
So now we can have a conversation of, okay, we know what problem we're solving today, but most times when we solve a problem, we also uncover a new problem. So let's use fitness as a basic example because I think it's one we can all identify with. Most people don't need to workout more. They need two things in addition to workouts. They need some kind of nutritional guidance and they need some kind of accountability to make sure they stay in the middle of the road. They stay consistent. So what that looked like for us was we could charge approximately $70 to $80 a month for a fitness membership, but we could charge 275 to $400 a month when we added nutritional guidance and accountability coaching to our offering.
So you could say we sold them out as a package, which we did, but really we provided three services. And the reason for that is because when somebody came into the gym, we could solve the movement problem, which is you want to take action, you want to work out. But if I didn't offer the other pieces, the solution set would be incomplete. And so in the beginning, we would refer out to other people to do those things. And when we had enough volume, we brought those things in-house. So now when somebody came in, I wouldn't say, "Welcome, Clarence, to the gym. We're going to have you working out." I would say, "Welcome to our transformation studio. And what that means for you is we're going to cover everything you need. We're going to get you to move and tell you exactly what to do. We're going to give you nutritional and supplementation guidance, and I'm going to make sure that we have somebody here so that you don't fall off the wagon." How does that sound?
I basically wrapped you in an emotional hug like you are where you should be, and I've thought all of this through and you don't have to worry about it. To go to the complete other side of the spectrum, I work with a home services business. A great example actually would be a lawn care company. I would ask them, "What business are you in?" And they're like, "Oh, I cut lawns." It's like, "No, you're actually not in the lawn care business. You're in the home beautification business because the outcome you are delivering is the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Smith can walk down the block and everyone's going to know that your lawn looks the best. That's actually the business I'm in. So in that case, I not only cut your grass, but I'll make sure that I weed. I'm going to make sure that there's no leaves on the ground.
And when the snow falls, I'm going to make sure that you're plowed and the trees are trimmed and the gutters are cleaned and X, Y, and Z." I just listed off, I think, eight or nine revenue streams because we know what business we're in. And when I go back to the beginning, we've earned the right and the trust of the client to be able to deliver all of those services.

Clarence Fisher: That's awesome. What a distinction. And I really like that you said at first, so you came up with all of these ways to help your client, and then you referred out at first the ones that you didn't have in-house, which is awesome. You're still taking care of them. And I would imagine at some point you're still making a little bit of revenue off that, but then bringing it in-house when you're ready. So there's no excuse not to take care, complete care of your customer, of your client.

Tim Calise: Exactly right. So often we think about from our perspective, what can I offer? Instead of change the lens, which is what does the client need?
In that landscaping example, I might not do any of those things other than I mow the lawn and I might do a little bit of light cleanup. But I have a friend of mine who has a snow removal company. I have a friend of mine who I refer out to for tree trimming. I have the local gutter cleaning company, and most of them will pay between 10 and 20% referral fees on any business you bring to them. And here's the thing, service businesses, generally speaking, operate between 10 and 20% net margins. So you can make the same amount of money with no risk and no overhead.

Clarence Fisher: That's awesome.

Tim Calise: Because you're thinking about putting together the package that you deliver to the client. You're the one in control.

Clarence Fisher: That's great. So let's dig into this getting to success. From what you just shared with me, you are more than qualified to make this happen, which is awesome. Great to. Man, we've got nuggets already. So now we're headed to success. We want to be one of those businesses that don't fail. As you said, there is a blueprint. It really does seem like it's up in the air because most businesses start from a technician. So this is what I do. I've done this for maybe someone else, and I'm really good at it, so I'm going to step out and you know what? I'm going to do this on my own. And then you find out, wow, there was a lot of stuff behind the scenes that I had no idea about when I just showed up for work and made my widget. So now we're headed to success.
What are some of the pitfalls that you have found that businesses fall into?

Tim Calise: Yeah, there are many, but I'll give you the few that are top of mind for me right now. The first is, I think we've all heard about the idea of find your niche or niche down or something like that. And the longer and longer I am out in the marketplace, the more I believe in less of going to an existing market and figure out how I can participate in that market, the more I believe in we should be creating a category or a market of one, which is unique to us. So if you feel like you're in the competitive waters of there's lots of people that do the same thing that I do, and this doesn't have to be a major shift, but for example, we could say I do business coaching. Huge niche, very general. Instead, I could say, "I help business owners between $250,000 and a million dollars a year in revenue who are married, who live in the Southeastern part of the United States, who have been in business for two years and like the color blue." And the reason why that sounds kind of silly, but it's real, is because if you're going to hire a photographer for your wedding, you could say, "I'm a photographer," or, "I am a photographer for weddings that take place in August because the lighting is right and that's all I specialize in." You're more apt to go with the specialist than the generalist.
So the question is, what about us that is unique? I am probably one of the only business coaches that I am aware of that in their lifespan, I've had a billion dollar line of credit by hedge fund. I raised $300 million, and I've also worked with Alex Ramosi. Let's just say that's my niche. I have wide range of experience and I'm going to package that for you. So one thing is if you feel like you're competitive, figure out a way to be slightly different, not necessarily just quantitatively, but what about you that is unique that nobody else can replicate? That's the first.
The second lesson that I've learned is test before you build or sell before you build. And I just had a discussion with somebody yesterday of a $4 million revenue business, and they are launching a new product. And the CEO said, "I'm not going to be able to chat for the next day or two. I have 16 hours of content I need to film for this new product." And I said, "Please promise me you won't do that." And he said, "Well, what do you mean?" And I said, "You're going to build 16 hours worth of content facing a camera, and hopefully it's right. Hopefully it is what the market wants." I said, "Here's what you should do. Put out a Facebook post right now and say, I'm thinking about launching a new product. It's going to help these people in this way. And if that sounds like something you want, I'm going to give an inside look to 10 people who will join me in helping build this product.
He got 47 replies. And the product is going to be a $16,000 product, just to give a sense of numbers. We pre-sold 10 at $16,000 a piece before we built it. And those 10 people will be the live audience for when he is filming the content.

Clarence Fisher: Wow, that's great.

Tim Calise: So instead of spending 16 hours hoping we're right, he's going to do a shorter version with 10 people who then we'll do Q&A at the end so we can film the video again if we need to. But now we made $150,000 in revenue to create a product with now feedback from the live audience who will know exactly whether we're on track or not. And if we need to reshoot it, we'll reshoot it in private. So the lesson there is the reason why many people fail is because they have an idea, they go and build it, and they hope there's a buyer on the other end. And instead, anytime you do anything at all, go to your potential audience and say, "I'm thinking about building this thing. It's going to look like this. It's going to do this thing for you. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, we'd love to have you be a part of it and sell it before you build it." And it will reduce so many of the mistakes that we make.

Clarence Fisher: Wow, very cool. How often can you do that?

Tim Calise: Pretty much anytime.

Clarence Fisher: Anytime?

Tim Calise: Pretty much. There are some exceptions. I had somebody who asked, "Can I help them raise money to build a biosciences company?" You can't test when you have that kind of model. But coaching consulting, it works. B2B and B2C services, it works. Because the reality is why are you building the product in the first place? It's because you have a buyer, a client on the other end who can get value from it. So instead of guessing whether you're right or not, let's just go to the audience and say, "Hey Clarence, I'm thinking about building a podcast distribution business. It's going to take folks like yourself and it's going to have these additional benefits, and I'm thinking of pricing it at X. If I built something like that, does that resonate with you?" And you might say, "Oh my gosh, that's great. Go build it and then I'll be a buyer." It's like, "Awesome.
Visa American Express or MasterCard. We'll have it ready in 30 days. Thanks for being one of my early supporters." Or you might say, "I love everything about it except I don't value this one part that you talked about and you're missing this other thing. Oh, that's really interesting. I've heard you're the fourth person that said that to me. Maybe I should include that before I even build it." The other thing would be software companies. I built a software company in the past. We think we have to build these big scalable infrastructures. Build an Excel spreadsheet, just say when it's all built, it's going to look something like this and it's going to do a little bit of thing like this. And in the beginning, it's going to look like it's put together with duct tape and chewing gum. But does it give you the outcome?
Does it give you the thing that you need? Can you build it with Zaps? How do you build what we call a minimum viable product before you go and raise money and go all running around building something? We built a $2 million software product in the past that never saw the light of day because by the time we finished the 18-month build, it was so cumbersome we couldn't even figure out how to actually market it.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, wow.

Tim Calise: So these are real issues and big companies still make these mistakes. So save yourself a headache and having a willing buyer is probably the most important thing in the whole equation.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, that's great. And when you are in love with your people, I guess do these ideas come from just trying to figure out how to help them more? Or do you think it's probably not just revenue-based, but the idea is how do I help? How else can we help?

Tim Calise: Yeah. So when I'm working with folks, the common experience is many service businesses especially subscribe to what we call the Ascension model. I didn't make this up. It's very well out there, which is sell them a low ticket item and then hopefully resell them or upsell them into the more expensive item and continue to do that until you maximize revenue. The problem with that model is that buyer avatars, buyers are different from the beginning. Not all buyers will start at low ticket, and then some of them will upgrade and some of them will upgrade from there. If I had an opportunity, if I had someone who was making $10 million a year, I'd just have somebody in a mastermind group, he's the organizer, runs a publicly traded company. He wanted LinkedIn work done. He was like, "I need a better LinkedIn profile and all of that." The Ascension model would say, "Well, let's sell him a $47 course so we can learn how to do it." And then we can say, "Hey, if you want help with that, we also do consulting work and I can take care of that for you." He will never buy the $47 course.
He just wants the problem solved because he values his time more than the money. So instead, he bought a $15,000 two-hour consultation where someone who knew what they were doing refreshed his whole LinkedIn page.
So what I mean for those that are listening is there are usually three categories of buyers that will ultimately want to do business with you, lower ticket, mid-ticket, and VIP high ticket. You should have an option for each one immediately in the beginning. And there's some strategies. There's actually a playbook that you can actually use to help sort those people and find out who they are and where they should be placed. But generally, your low ticket to high ticket should be at least a 10X multiple. So if your bottom tier service is $100 a month, you should have an $1,000 a month option, if not more.

Clarence Fisher: So are we putting out content for each one of those levels?

Tim Calise: Great question.

Clarence Fisher: Speaking to each one of those

Tim Calise: Differently? Great question. My belief is you don't market. From a brand perspective, we talk about who we are and what our belief systems are and who we help in general, not products, because products are different for everyone. I always want to swap out products. If we're marketing a product specifically, like if you're running paid ads on Facebook or something like that, you can market an individual product, but there's actually a better, more efficient way to do that. So you run one campaign and then you slot them into the appropriate place.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. Okay. Very good. So when you come in and you're helping these entrepreneurs, do they have the vision already what they're going for? Are you helping them with the vision or is it, "Hey, I've got this thing that I want to make happen, but I need, say, you to bounce things off of and figure out how do we make that work?"

Tim Calise: So I work in two primary areas. So usually they have a vision, they know where they want to go. So the two things that I focus on, one is the diagnostic or assessment process. So it's like, where are we right now? Where's the business? Where are the opportunities? Things like that. The ones that we might be not capturing just yet. And then the second is what does the product and acquisition process look like to take someone from demand gen? A lot of people talk about lead gen. I actually want demand. And then how do we sort that in a way that is optimized to maximize the revenue opportunities we have?

Clarence Fisher: Okay, you have to explain that. Lead gen versus demand gen. I'm sorry to interrupt you.

Tim Calise: No, you're quite all right. So most people think in terms of leads, how many leads do I have? That is a quantifiable micro goal. I need three more leads. I need five more leads. A lead is not what I actually care about. What I want is at the brand level, I want people, and that's a, I'm selling. It has a sales connotation to it. I'm going to go get some more leads. That's me going out in the marketplace. If we do this right, we establish a market or a category of one, which we are unique in. We are the market. It and the provider, and people want that thing. They demand to be a part of it, which means it is our job to set the stage for people to be attracted to us, and then we manage that inbound attraction in a way that optimizes for the outcomes that we want.
So one is call it a pull method. The other one is more of a push method.

Clarence Fisher: Very good. Okay, that makes total sense.

Tim Calise: Okay. Because if you don't have people, the best case scenario is that if you have 10 slots to fill, you want 40 potential buyers. You want to be oversubscribed, for lack of a better term. Most of us in the beginning are in a scarcity mindset where I just want to sell tickets. I just want to fill slots. I need to make my sales quota. There's actually a lot of psychology around how do we flip the dynamic and have more demand than you have supply, basic economic principles.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. You're in a better position when you have demand.

Tim Calise: Yes.

Clarence Fisher: It's more fun to go to work, for sure.

Tim Calise: Yeah. And you can create that. That is not just by happenstance. You can reverse engineer over subscription.

Clarence Fisher: That is awesome. Dan Kennedy has said that when you break things down in a niche, like what you've said, it is easier to create what you're saying as far as the demand when you are the. It's easier to position yourself as the authority the more niche you get in that niche. Do you agree with that?

Tim Calise: I do. Well, yes, I do believe that it's counterintuitive. Most people think I have to make my total addressable market as big as possible, so that expands my opportunity. The reality is in the beginning, you're trying to get traction. And there's this concept called you can't boil the ocean.
And so often what we try to do is say, I'm going to try to cast as wide of a net as possible and I'll see what sticks. I'm going to speak to everyone. And then the world doesn't work that way, especially now. The best case scenario, and one of the things we do focus on is understanding the psychology of the buyer. And this is somewhat misunderstood, I think, in the marketplace in general. When we are selling a product or selling a service, what we're actually selling is a bridge between where somebody is today and the ideal desired state that they want to achieve.
It works with everything. It works with cars. It works with houses. It works with weight loss. It transcends everything, which is someone is where they are today. And by doing business with you and knowing you and interacting with you, they are better off for it. If you believe that is the case, then you have to be very specific about who the person is that you want to attract and be very specific about the outcome that you're going to deliver, which is why getting very, very tight on who you help and why and how and things like that is so critically important, which is why niches have become a thing. Because you can't attract those people if you aren't clear about that. And the more clear you are, the more narrow you have to be.

Clarence Fisher: Very cool. Okay. When you said boil the ocean, I just heard my mom say, shut the door. We're not trying to cool the entire house.

Tim Calise: The neighborhood. Oh, yeah. Yep. But we try to, not to put too many analogies out there, but businesses don't die from starvation. They die from gluttony. It's because we try to do too much, we try to take too big of a bites. I have yet to have a company that has said, in its infancy especially, we would've been more successful had we been less targeted or less clear or less niched. Amazon sort of as a bookseller. If you need to know any. The future doesn't have to look like today, but you have to. The analogy or the image that came to me was if you look at that picture of somebody wants to climb a ladder and there's lots of small rungs or one big rung and it's almost too big to take that first step, that's the equivalent of what I see more often than not.
I want to try to be the uber of, fill in the blank. How about you just help five people figure out what it is that they want and then go from there?

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So there's someone listening right now saying, "Hey, Clarence, you pulled them totally out of the vision, how we were going." And I want to take us back to that. When you're working with these entrepreneurs and helping them with their vision, we talked about the demand gin versus the lead gin. And then the next step to that is what?

Tim Calise: Yeah, so the next step is understanding the product and what is the sequence of actually taking that demand and call it filtering it in a way that is optimized for the outcomes that we want. And there's a few ways to do that. For anyone at home, the easiest thing to do is take the ideal client that you want to have, and most, especially in service businesses, usually it's not a one-time solution like a come in and in a day I can solve their problems and solve them forever. I'll use weight loss as an example just because I spend so much time in fitness. I can't have you lose 50 pounds and keep you there in a week. It's a continual process. So the question would be, what can I deliver in a very short window to show progress? Or how can I solve the first problem immediately and then earn the right to solve all the other problems into the future?
If you can break down your process into what we call micro products, meaning I might help you go from 250 pounds to 200 pounds and it's going to take 12 months, but what are we going to do in the first two weeks? So take that. What problem can I solve? So in two weeks, we can get you to come to the gym consistently three times a week over those two weeks. So we'll have six visits. We're going to have you write down everything that you're eating as an example, and I want you to check in with me every other day. Do you think you can do that? How does that sound? Oh yeah, I can do that. Cool. I just want you to do that. So to put this in a real kind of case example, at Gym Launch, we pioneered the six-week transformation challenge for gyms.
Before we came along, most gyms offered a free trial or a low ticket like pay me $10, you can come for the week and try it out, or something like that. That was the model. We came in and we created a six-week, $600 transformation challenge for gyms. And when we did, the market said, "You guys are nuts. We can't even give this stuff away. We can't even sell it for $10. What makes you think that you'll be able to command $600?" And what we came to find out was that you charge the most when the pain is the highest, number one.
And number two, by charging $600, I had $600 worth of resources to actually move the needle for you. So we became the most successful transformation program in the independent fitness industry when we came on the scene. It was great for gyms, it was great for members, and it allowed us to have longevity of clients. So in your business, I would think, what is the six-week challenge equivalent? What can I deliver in the first six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks, whatever your timeframe is, that helps move the needle for your client and earns the right for them to say, you know what? We won the battle. Now let's finish the war. We've kind of done step one, let's move on to the other steps. And they will do it with such a high degree of confidence because you've shown them that they can be successful with you.

Clarence Fisher: That is great, man. You have all these hard won proven strategies. What was the biggest mistake that you made getting started?

Tim Calise: My ego. For a very long time, and it all goes back to probably when we're in our early years, I had a belief that I had to prove that I was the smartest person in the room, coupled with the idea that it's supposed to feel hard because this kind of gladiator mentality inside of me was like the person who ends up victorious is the one who can withstand the most amount of pain for the longest amount of time. Which meant in early years for some of the businesses that I started was like, oh yeah, this feels hard. I just have to keep going because this is what being in battle feels like.
And the reality was I was just lying to myself. It was like I couldn't admit that I was not doing things right or well. And I made a lot of mistakes along the way. Many painful ones personally, but also financially. I took way too much risk. So some of the idea of sell it before you build it. The cutting room floor of things that I had spent hours building that never saw the light of day, I wish I had just followed my own. I wish I had known that earlier in my career. And the thing that held me back was I need to go to the market saying, I know what you want. So I've already built it, now come buy it. That was ego to me. That was like instead of being open to feedback and open to being malleable, let's figure out what the right solution set is, I had to sit behind my computer and come up with the perfect product because that's what smart people do.
That's so easy to do. I like the collaborative process. It's so much. When it's right, I mean, we hear things like simplicity scales, complexity fails. We hear these words, but I don't think I actually ever internalized what it actually meant until I was in the thick of it. And it was like, this feels complex and it shouldn't. Oh wait, somebody told me once it should feel simple, not complex. Oh, that's what they're talking about. Don't touch the stove, don't touch the stove, don't touch the stove. Sometimes you touch the stove because you just can't help yourself. And I've learned a lot of lessons along the way.

Clarence Fisher: So did you get over that through necessity where things are so tough that, hey, I know there's been times when I'm working on something and it's so tough that I have to pull back and say, okay, what's the smallest thing that I can do here? Because I'm in this way too deep. And then that works. And it's like, well, I just spent all that time. I could have just done this one thing. How did you realize that that was not the way to do things?

Tim Calise: So I'll articulate it in a way that I understand it now. How it really came to be was someone who was one of the managers of one of my clubs sat me down and said, I'm going to fire you. I need you to leave me alone because you have a tendency when things are going smoothly because you're an entrepreneur, you like to test things and tweak and change. I'm trying to build a club and an organization where continuity is the name of the game. We can provide consistency of the experience. Every time you come in here and change some things, it makes it harder for me to actually deliver upon the promise that I'm making. So she told me I wasn't allowed to come back to my own facility for four weeks. Wow. She's like, "Do you trust that I can do this?" And I said, "Yes." She goes, "Then you may not come back.
Literally don't talk to me for a month because you cannot come around here and throw grenades." And I give her a ton of credit. I'm still in touch with her today. It was what I needed to hear.
Also, that's kind of one experience. The other thing that I needed to give myself permission to do, and if you're looking for permission, I'm going to give it to you right now. I needed the permission to accept the nos that I was so fearful about getting, about hearing. So when you spend, you hear it all the time, I put my blood, sweat, and tears into this business. And then when I went to market, if somebody says no, it feels like they're saying no to you, the person, when really they're saying no to an offer. So I changed my thinking from, I need to build a product or build a company to I need to build a set of offers that have no bearing on my individual self-worth. And if you can do that, and an offer is just simply going to someone who might be a buyer and offering them something.
Attend my webinar, read my newsletter, sign up for my VIP group, buy this thing, whatever it might be. I need a distance between my professional persona and my personal persona. And if you believe that, that here's the shortcut that we're all looking for.
It's what I've now termed speed to a hundred nos. If you are starting out or you're thinking of testing something or you're unsure if you have what we call product market fit, meaning the thing you offer meets the specific audience you're trying to sell to, I'm going to give you permission to go try to get a hundred people that would be good clients of yours to say no to your offer. Instead of saying my goal is to sell something, your goal should be I'm going to pursue the nos. And the hack is if you pursue the nos, you'll get to yeses faster than you would the other way around. So that is what I pursue now. Anytime I'm trying to do something, I want a hundred people to poke holes in it. Because if I can get to a hundred nos, I've learned everything I need to know about sell probably millions of dollars worth of stuff.

Clarence Fisher: That's great, man. I read a book recently called Go for No. Have you heard of that?

Tim Calise: Yeah, I haven't, but I don't come up with a lot of these concepts. The oversubscribed is a book by Daniel Priestly. Great book. These concepts though, you read about in my concept. I think I've just applied combinations of them that I've seen what has worked in my experience and continue to be a practitioner.

Clarence Fisher: No, I mean that's great. What it takes to go for a hundred nos, because I read the book and I'm like, "Hey, I'm going to get X amount of nos per day, X amount of nos per week, and I don't do it. Of course not. I don't understand why nos hurt that. Well, you explained it. I mean, it's internalizing this no. When I know it really has nothing to do with me.

Tim Calise: But if you have built something, this is the big difference in my opinion, the distinction. Let's say you spent six months building whatever the product or the offer was, and then you read the book and it says, "Get five nos today." You're inviting five people to effectively step on your hard work and dismiss what you though was valuable as invaluable, which if we really trace that back, probably comes down to if it's anything like me. You are under the age of 10 and somebody told you you were no good, you got picked last at gym class.That is psychologically. People are rejecting me. It will be a decelerant. If you go the other direction, which is I want a hundred nos because the nos craft the product before I build it. It no longer is a rejection of your intellectual property. It is a supporting effort of your investigative mind because then every no is just data.
It's just feedback. It has no bearing on you. And I think for me, that was the big difference. The no was always an invalidation instead of an exploration.

Clarence Fisher: Oh man, that's awesome. And it's collaborative, right?

Tim Calise: Exactly. It's exactly right.

Clarence Fisher: So do you think that's the best kept secret in say business? What do you think is the best kept secret in business?

Tim Calise: That would be one of, for the audience that I speak to, I don't know anything about being a $100 million company or a billion dollar company that's outside of me. I want to help the mom and pop company who had a dream, who feels like or is in the head space of the thing I envision maybe out of reach. Because you actually have most of what you need. We just need to, I have a 10-year-old, loves playing with Legos. And if anybody's ever played with Legos, there are those sets where you can buy one set and it has three different forms you can follow and you can create a car and a boat and an airplane. All we need to do is deconstruct your set of Legos and we'll rebuild it in something that looks more like what you wanted. I can just act as the instruction book.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. So what do they do with that, Tim? So that's awesome. What should they be doing now? So they've listened, we've had our conversation and they're like,

Tim Calise: "Hey, man,

Clarence Fisher: That sounds awesome." What should they be doing here in the next 90 days or right after this, what should they do?

Tim Calise: Yeah. So first of all, I have a framework which I would love to give the audience for free. It is a way to think about, there's only six ways that we build products, and it's an exercise to understand how you can build a better product. We call it the product expansion formula. So I'll give that to you and I'll give you a way to get that. If you have an existing business, I would survey my existing audience. And there's a couple of different ways to do that. But primarily what you want to find out is what do people value the most in your current offering? And what do people value the least in your existing offering? Because what you want to find out is what are those building blocks that you have to work with? So one is let's build better product. The second is understand where value is in your existing audience.
And then number three would be to reconstruct it with who do you want to help and what is the outcome that you want to deliver for that audience? And then take your existing Legos, your existing building blocks, put those in as the bridge and see what gaps exist. And so step three would be fill in those gaps.

Clarence Fisher: This is awesome. Okay. So as we're wrapping up, I mean, you've given so. I did not think we were going to get that many actionable items, so thank you very, very much

Tim Calise: You're welcome. Yeah, I stand on the shoulders of mentors, and I committed two years ago when I started this existing chapter of my life that I would do things where I hold nothing back because the reality is it's hard enough trying to win in some of these situations. It gives me great pleasure to be able to hopefully help somebody who might be able to take one of these and go, "That was the missing thing that got me back into the game."

Clarence Fisher: I love it. I love it. So would that be your final words? Okay, well first, how can we get ahold of you? I know we're going to have the link in the show notes for what you're giving away, but how do we get ahold of you?

Tim Calise: Yeah, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. It's Tim Calise, T-I-M-C-A-L-I-S-E. And especially on Instagram, if you DM me, let's use Fisher, F-I-S-H-E-R, like Clarence Fisher. I will send you that product expansion formula framework. Just shoot me a note with Fisher, or if you're a listener of the show, just say, "I listened to the show," and I will send that along to you as well.

Clarence Fisher: That's awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much, Tim, for spending time with us and for giving us so much actionable content today. I appreciate it.

Tim Calise: You're welcome. Thank you for having me.