How We Grew A 9 Figure Business!

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]This is one of the most important videos I've ever done. And a lot of people ask me, "What is it that your most successful mentees did so we can learn from that?" And before I ever have a meeting, I write down what my exact desired outcome is, what I want to discuss, what the questions are from it.

[00:00:22]And I did the same thing here. So, I'm going to read from some notes along the way, but you know, I titled this how we grew a ninefigure business. The Wii is important. These people that I'm going to talk about, and they're three members of the pantheon that I have, which is my hall of fame, Gabriel, Amir, and Karen Deepep. They all accomplished something very special in how they grew business. There's business in these three people, nine figure businesses, at least one, I think two, and then one that's well on their way. But there are lessons from these people that you can learn, and that's what I want to cover in this video. And so when I think about that, does a little luck sometimes play into it? Yeah. But these people weren't lucky. They did something that was repeatable and from which you can learn.

[00:01:21]So I want to go through this. First of all, they knew what they wanted. They knew the objective. And in that case, they know what they wanted to build, why they wanted it. It's super important.

[00:01:33]Your why, what industry or strategy they were pursuing, and then what they were willing to give up for the success that they thought they wanted. And that's important because this will not happen without sacrifice and you have to decide what cost you are willing to pay for the success you think you want. Two of them knew their industries from the beginning. The third pivoted and that's important. Pivoting is not quitting. If you've worked an industry and you can't make it work, there's no shame in pivoting. Lessons learned. Move on from that. They studied their craft. They didn't just go out and say, "I'm going to buy a business." They said, "What's the process by which I should do this?

[00:02:23]How should I do this?" And so, I think this is one of the strongest points is they didn't dabble in this. This was important to them. And they learned the acquisition process, seller conversations, deal criteria, financing options, how to build a team. Nobody does this alone. Followup and then how to evaluate opportunities. But again, they treated it like a craft. They did not treat it like a hobby. They built teams. Super important. No one who accomplishes building a ninef figureure business will do it alone. We all have things that we're good at. We all have things that other people are good at.

[00:03:07]And if you're going to scale something, you've got to get beyond yourself. Get over being a control freak if you are and bring a team in. So they use mentors, boards, advisors, operators, professionals. And they were smart enough to realize that they did not know the answer. They were not weak because they asked for help. They were smart because they asked for help. They did not complain or make excuses. You know, when I thought about this, all of these people did never do I remember hearing an excuse for why something didn't get done. And that's pretty unique because when I look across all the mentees I have, excuses are prevalent through that. But not in these three people. I can't can't remember a single time when I heard an excuse. What I heard was, "We have a problem. How are we going to fix that problem? Let's talk about that." Average people explain why they did not do it. Exceptional, successful people say, "How do we solve this problem?" And they had setbacks, every single one of them. They had points at which they could have turned back. They had Lois fail. They had things that required litigation. all of those things. A lot of people would have said, "I don't think this is for me."

[00:04:35]But quitting was not an option for any of these people. They ran into tough times that probably a thought crossed their mind. Is this going to work out?

[00:04:46]But none of them ended up saying, "I'm going to quit." Conversely, what they did realize was deals fail, sellers will change their mind, banks will disappoint you, professionals will move slowly, your first industry may not work, first target may not come to fruition. But they consistently asked themselves about not quitting, but realizing they were being tested. And how did they get through that? They did all three of those exactly the same way.

[00:05:21]They did not build these big businesses through one deal. That's a question I get all the time, you know. Oh, they must have had big deals. No, they didn't. All of these three people ended up with reasonably small deals. They did a lot of them. And wow, you do enough of them, you get to a ninef figureure business or beyond that. And that's really important. It wasn't one massive deal. And you don't need one deal on some of these businesses. We're now working larger deals. But the history behind where we got to to be able to look at those things to be able to have the operational teams that can now handle things like that. No, this was small chunks of business that added up to a large business. So you don't need a nine figure. They understood that wealth is built through turning equity. So from the beginning they realized what I want to build. Maybe not exactly how to exit but yes at some point we want to exit.

[00:06:27]So run this like a real business that's has financials that stand up in most cases audited financials that you could stand behind and make sure that the acquisitions are doing the same thing.

[00:06:41]You don't want a hodgepodge of bad financials, bad practices, bad operational plans, and the the KPIs, key performance indicators for running a business. If you're going to exit, that has to be tight.

[00:06:57]And so they did not also acquire businesses randomly. They thought about what are we building?

[00:07:05]Who would eventually buy this and why?

[00:07:08]How do we make this more valuable?

[00:07:11]When might we exit? What needs to be in place before we exit? Think about those things. And again, remember that wealth is created through those e exits, not usually through the income along the way. Really important, super important to me. They protected their reputation.

[00:07:33]There are times that you will do things and say things that you have an easy out the way most people look at it. But your reputation is what you'll trade on in this business. So when you say you're going to do something, do it. It may have a cost, but in the bigger scheme of things, people will end up saying, "This person's a standup guy. Here's the situation I had." And guess what? They didn't turn and run away from it. They dealt with it and they honored their obligations. Really important. And equally important, and this is something that gets all kinds of mentees, they did not get sucked into the operating vortex, and it's one of the most practical lessons here is that a lot of people wonder, should I be in this business? Should I be running this business? First of all, you're probably not the best person to run the business.

[00:08:29]In some cases, if it's in health care, for instance, and this is a fortunate byproduct, you are probably, unless you are a medical professional, you can't be in that business practicing what that health care business is. So, that's a good thing. You have to manage those people who are in that business, but you don't want to get sucked into the vortex. Many people end up getting inside the business and they never get back to work on other acquisitions. They end up working in the business as opposed to working on the business. So remember that. But kind of in summary, they they ended up all of them with clear criteria. They knew what they wanted. They knew what they did not want. It allowed them to move quickly when looking at acquisition targets. If it didn't fit those criteria, they didn't say, "Well, if we fix it through marketing or administration, we can get this fixed." No, they moved on to the next one. And important to remember as well, if you only have one deal, you will behave like you only have one deal.

[00:09:38]You'll wonder, "Oh, I got to make this work. It's taking me so long." No. Put a pin in it. Move to the next one. Okay.

[00:09:47]And then if I look at these three people, the lesson is not that these three people are special. Maybe they're a little special and nobody else can do it, but they followed a repeatable pattern. They had clarity. They learned their craft. They built a team. Again, nobody does this alone. They were persistent.

[00:10:09]Really persistent. They had integrity.

[00:10:12]They knew the acquisition criterias and stuck to them. They had an operating structure that was repeatable. So when you added another acquisition, you could run it. You could run it. You could run it. You didn't have a a sea of chaos.

[00:10:27]And then they had a long-term acquisition program. They knew what they wanted to do. So you can go to brucelepantheon.com.

[00:10:35]You can listen to the interviews of these three people, Gabriel, Amir, Karen Deepep. You will learn some things from that. I'd encourage you to do that and study what they've done. Study what they thought. Study how they thought and then ask yourself a very uncomfortable question. Am I behaving like someone who says they want this or like someone who is actually building it? And there's a big different. Words are cheap. The deeds will show you how serious you are.

[00:11:10]Your calendar will show you how serious you are. If people looked at your calendar, looked at what you're working on. Would they see this is a top priority? Or in today's world would they see so many hours of Facebook, so many hours of YouTube, other distractions which took away from this being such an important focus that you could be successful and ultimately build the kind of businesses that we're talking about here. So I hope this helps. I hope that you learn from it and learn from these people. There's a team around each one of them that allowed them to do this.

[00:11:51]They were the leader of the team. They were the founders. But the teams ended up what helped them get there. And they became, even if they weren't in the beginning, good at delegating. So that's how they did it. Now go and duplicate it using the same process. And I hope that we're talking about you in the future.