BILLION DOLLAR BULLSEYE

5 Years, 2,153% Growth, And A $2,000,000,000 Valuation

...Here’s The 7-Step Formula That Got Us There

Can you get rich building and running a business? Absolutely.

But if you’re anything like me, you probably got into business because you want to get out of it.

Which is a smart move: at least half of the money you will ever make from that business will come on the day you sell it.

But the reality is, institutional investors go for big deals. If you stay small, you’ll have an incredibly difficult time cashing in on the asset you’ve created.

So whether you want to exit or systemize and collect passive income checks, no matter which way you slice it – scaling your business to its maximum potential value is in your best interests.

Take for example, my last company, Kajabi: Kenny Rueter and I took our annual revenue from $6M to over $100M in 5 short years.

Within just 5 years, that figure shot up to $100M - That’s a 2,153% increase in growth. And to top it all off, Kajabi also received a $2B valuation.

Keep reading to find out what the Bullseye Formula is, and how to implement it for yourself.

This growth resulted in Kajabi earning a valuation of over $2B.

People always ask me how we did it. And my response has always been, “I don’t know. It’s not like I have a seven-point, almost-never-fail, double-unicorn strategy.”

But now I do – it’s called the Bullseye Formula, and I’m going to walk you through it right here, right now.

Now, I can’t promise you this post will magically build you a billion-dollar valuation.

What I can promise you is that you’re about to learn a method of scaling that has an undeniable, proven track record; this post is the last thing you’re ever going to need to read about scaling your business.

The 7 P’s

All businesses can be broken down into seven foundational areas that I call the 7 P’s:

Purpose,

Profit,

Product,

Prestige,

Promotion,

Persuasion,

& People.

In that order.

The theory behind scaling a business to a 10-figure valuation is simple – you just need to get your 7 P’s firing on all cylinders. Sounds easy enough, right?

But the devil is in the detail – in this case, it’s the order of operations.

See, to reach your full potential in that area, each of the 7 P’s must be built directly off of the P that comes before; you need to be purpose-driven before you look at profit potential, profitability will let you make a product that’s fit for your purpose, and so on.

Lacking in one area puts more pressure on your performance in those around it. You end up over-emphasising, over-resourcing, and overcompensating in other areas of your business in an attempt to solidify your foundation.

This might not sound like a big deal, but you’ll feel it – this imbalance makes it incredibly difficult to sustain the revenue and growth that you need to realize your scaling goals.

It takes a focused, methodical approach to growth to hit your target.

Speaking of targets…

Note that the rings are in the same order that I initially listed the 7 P’s – starting with Purpose in the center, and finishing with People in the outermost ring.

With our business foundations plotted like this, scaling said business becomes just like playing a game of darts.

Only with our game, the aim isn’t to simply hit the bullseye – it’s to expand it.

And that right there is the magic of the Bullseye Formula. When you’re aiming at a bullseye the size of the whole dartboard, how can you possibly miss?

Expand Your Bullseye

Let’s go back to the order of operations for a minute – this is exactly where my formula comes into its own.

Because the only way you’re able to expand your bullseye and make it a billion dollar one, is by mastering each successive ring, in order.

This bullseye expansion in action looks something like this:

One key thing I need to note here is that the three inner rings, Purpose, Profit, and Product, are your core foundations; they are worth more than any of the outer rings that follow.

The outer four rings are still important, though – they act as amplifiers. Think of them like the spots on a traditional dartboard that doubles or triples your score.

When you have your three core rings interlocked, and you hit Prestige, Promotion, Persuasion, or People – that hit increases the size of your bullseye (and in turn, the value of your business) exponentially.

But remember, these amplifiers only work when you have your core three locked and loaded.

The main idea I want you to take away from my ramblings so far is this: order of operations is what will make or break your scaling efforts.

Anyone can dedicate their blood, sweat, and tears to building Prestige – but without solid Purpose, Profit, and Product supporting it, that Prestige is empty, hollow, and prone to collapse.

The Bullseye Formula is specifically designed to make sure you are always focused on the business levers that matter most, in the most effective order.

Now we’ve got the theory out of the way, we can see the Bullseye Formula in practice. Let’s go through each of the rings, discuss their importance, and find ways to strengthen them.

Putting The Concept Into Action:

How To Build Your Own Billion Dollar Bullseye

Ring #1: Purpose

The Purpose Driven Center

"It was wild but relatively simple – all because our purpose was at the center of our target."

There are two key pieces that make up Purpose: your internal driver, and your external driver.

These two drivers work together as a set of decision-making guardrails; they keep you on the right track, and give you the momentum you need to persevere through the more difficult seasons of scaling.

INTERNAL DRIVER: Why are you doing what you do?

Your starting point for Purpose should be solely about you. Because when you’re steering the ship, nobody else will sacrifice what you will.

You must have an internal purpose that is so deeply personal that it will keep you pushing through every single barrier you face.

So, ask yourself: what is my internal driver? Why do I do what I do?

In order to discover and define the strongest possible internal driver that you can, you need to dig beyond the surface; you need to understand the why behind your why.

Say for example, your why is money – so why do you want money? What does that mean to you?

Maybe money really represents success and stability. Maybe it means being a provider for your family. Or maybe it represents freedom from being chained to a desk.

EXTERNAL DRIVER: Why do you do what you do for the people you do it for?

Your external driver is not about those in your immediate circle, like your team – it’s about your customers.

Your external purpose is the problem that you solve for them. In essence, it’s your customer’s why.

"Your external driver is not about those in your immediate circle, like your team – it’s about your customers."

I’m a very big believer that if your business does not have a purpose to guide it, all of the other rings of the dartboard will very quickly move you into simply being a commodity.

Your internal and external drivers are the building blocks for identifying your business’s overall purpose; it is absolutely vital that you nail these elements before anything else.

Push Strategy vs Pull Strategy

Most business owners typically skip over the step of defining their internal and external purpose, and jump headfirst into creating things like mission statements and value sets for their employees.

But this is a big mistake – it creates something I call a Push Strategy. You as a business leader artificially manufacture these values and visions, and push your employees to embrace them.
And how many times does that work? Not many, if at all.

Workers don’t want to be told what’s meaningful and valuable – they want to contribute what is already meaningful and valuable to them.

Your team needs to be compelled by your purpose (PULL), not commanded by your mission (PUSH).

If you constantly rely on a push strategy to get your team to buy in, you end up with a business that’s virtually impossible to exit – because you’re either;

• The sole believer, who diluted your purpose to the point of being completely ineffective, or
• The tyrant, who forced your purpose on people who ultimately don’t care enough to work towards your goals.

A pull strategy is the most transformative way to articulate, improve, and optimize both your internal and external purpose in business.

The most effective way of creating that elusive pull is to publicize and promote your purpose – or as I call it, ‘purposing in public’.

Purpose In Public

When you put your purpose out into the public sphere, you’re showing the world what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and who you’re doing it for.

You give people the opportunity to see what you’re all about, and voluntarily put their hand up and say, “ Man, I really want to be a part of what they’re doing.”

Purposing in public then becomes a methodology of attraction; a pull strategy.

Promoting purpose in the public eye is the single best thing you can do to hit the Purpose target dead center.

When I talk about purposing in public, I’m talking about all of the real stuff. This goes beyond transparency – it’s a full pulling-back-of-the-curtain and exposing every aspect of your why.

It’s uncomfortable, but worth it.

Purpose is at the center of the Bullseye Formula for a reason; it provides direction and helps you make goal-aligned decisions.

It opens the door to high-growth opportunities, and shapes everything from how you use your money, to what products you develop and how you treat your customers.

Knowing what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and who you’re doing it for are the greatest foundational shifts you can make as an entrepreneur.

Ring #2: Profit

Your financial systems will naturally become more complex and sophisticated as your business grows. But in the beginning, you must stay accountable to your bottom line.

Allowing your business to freely accelerate top line results that effectively feed the bottom line is a foundational principle that ensures you’re going to have a fighting chance.

Which Numbers Matter?

Up until now, we’ve been talking about ‘numbers’ as a relatively vague concept, which begs the question: which numbers need to be tracked?

To ground those mystical numbers in reality for you, I’ve built a list of metrics you should be across to master the Profit ring.

I’ve split these numbers into three levels – Level 1 numbers being the most foundational, and Level 3 being more advanced.

The Big Question: Pricing

Pricing is one of the most important levers that a business can use to increase its valuation. A well-planned pricing strategy is critical for scaling to the exit of your dreams.

Landing a perfectly balanced pricing model takes experimentation – you won’t get it right off the bat. But with time, you will find a strategy that maximizes profitability and growth potential.

The foundation of all pricing strategies is to understand the value that a business provides to its customers.

So don’t throw your business away by joining the race to the bottom – focus on pricing your products and services based on the value they provide to your customers.

Generating profit is the ultimate goal of any business. But far too many companies boast about what their value is, while missing that profit goal completely.

All businesses need to put an emphasis on mastering their profit ring. It lets you grow, expand, and ultimately, exit well – profit equals options.

Ring #3: Product

Good Products Are Hard To Find ...and Even Harder To Create

Brian Chesky of Airbnb once said, “Build something 100 people love, not something a million people kind of like.”

Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs avoid looking at their business through this lens. For many, your product is your baby – and no one wants to be told their baby is ugly.

Once a product is created, we tend to re-evaluate and iterate everything around it. But Product is the final of our 3 core bullseye rings for a reason – it’s the single best business lever you tinker with.

Take a minute to imagine this scenario: you wake up tomorrow morning to discover that the government has outlawed all forms of sales and marketing.

No ads, no salespeople, no funnels.

It’s a pretty unlikely scenario, but humor me for a second: what would happen to your business?
Does your company churn out in three months, leaving you with nothing? Does business stay flat because your expansion opportunities were reliant on new customers?

Or, does your business continue to grow, because every dollar you generate this year is worth $1.20 the next?

That is the power of nailing your Product ring – when all of your marketing could be turned off tomorrow, and your growth wouldn’t miss a beat.

Product Creation: What Not To Do

Relying on marketing and sales as the entire business strategy isn’t the only problem I see in working with companies trying to achieve their Billion Dollar Bullseye.

Here are some actions to avoid if you want a product that will sell:

Create A Product With Inherent Virality
And Flywheel Effects

A huge part of the long-standing “Would your product sell without marketing or sales?” question is whether or not your product has inherent virality and flywheel effects; can your product be the source of its own momentum?

There are a number of ways to incorporate this flywheel effect into your business, and more specifically, your product design:

Consider user engagement: Are your customers using your product on a regular basis? If not, is there a system you could set up to encourage usage?

Design a network effect: Does your product increase in value as more people use it? Can you drive value and growth through referrals and peer recommendations?

Include a unique design or approach: What can you do to differentiate your product in the market, while still increasing your market value?

Engineer positive feedback loops: The more a user interacts with your product, the more valuable it becomes to them – gamifying your course or app is a great example of this.

Pay attention to market dynamics: Resist the urge to buckle down when your market experiences a significant change – pay attention and use these changes to your advantage.

Your Product And Customer Retention

Always keep in mind that there are only three ways to grow your business:

• Acquire more customers
• Sell higher-priced items to your existing customers
• Sell to your existing customers more frequently

Notice that 2 out of 3 of those points hinge on existing customers – you must consistently ask yourself, “How am I going to get more out of this customer base in the future?”

This all comes down to Product.

If you have a mediocre product, then not only will people only buy once, but they’ll sure as hell make it difficult for you to sell anything to them again.

On top of that, any customer success people you hire to support that product will have an impossible task, and you’ll be left with a disengaged, unhappy team.

But when you invest hard work and determination into creating a product that is truly transformational, it pays dividends.

From Fundamental To Amplifiers

As we move into the final four rings of the Bullseye Formula, I want to take this opportunity to remind you that these last rings are your amplifiers.

They are there to boost and multiply your success in the first three rings; they are only effective if you have your Purpose, Profit, and Product on lock.

So take the time to review the sections of the first three P’s – let it all marinate, and think about how you can apply those lessons to your own business.

Then you can move into the amplifiers, and get ready to shoot for the moon.

Remember, I’m always on the lookout for business owners who need assistance building their own Billion Dollar Bullseye. If that sounds like you, click here to let me know you’d like some company on your journey to the moon.

Ring #4: Prestige

Prestige As An Amplifier

Especially in the early stages of your business, providing a prestigious customer experience is invaluable – not only to your customers, but to you.

See, Prestige and Product go hand-in-hand. Ultimately, you want to be product-led – but this is difficult (not to mention expensive) to achieve right out of the gate.

Prestige allows you to co-create, refine, and perfect your product with your user base, as they are using it.

Aiming to give a prestigious experience to your customers inherently means you have to walk in their shoes, and listen to their wants and needs; you discover the exact tweaks and refinements your product needs in order to make it truly transformational.

Prestige Amplifies:

• Your external Purpose through the facilitation of customer satisfaction and success;
• Your Profit by increasing the number of customers who choose to stick around; and
• Your Product by giving you the insight you need to perfect it.

Experience Customer Experience

I cannot understate the importance of walking a mile in your user’s shoes, and experiencing your own customer experience.

This is something many business owners neglect to do – it can be confronting, but you learn things about your company and your product that would otherwise fly right over your head.

A company that has prestigious customer experience down to a fine art is Disney. They create and audit all of their experiences often, and it shows.

Disney doesn’t start at the ride – they don’t even start at the line of a ride. They start all the way in the parking lot with the parking attendant.

And they have been known to take it even further to sit down with the city boards in Anaheim and Orlando to design the road and traffic flow that goes into the park.

Disney is able to provide this prestigious experience because they audit every single touchpoint.

At every juncture, they ask, “Does this enhance the experience? Does this add more prestige? Or, is this a prestige-detracting element that we need to work on?”

By implementing this kind of philosophy, you increase customer retention and create long-term relationships with your customers – meaning repeat business, positive reviews, referrals, and exponential growth.

You may not offer anything in-person, but the principle remains the same. Dedicate the time to auditing and optimizing every single touchpoint of your business – and do it frequently.

Be Honest:

1. When’s the last time you actually went through your own support process?
2. When’s the last time you went through your own sales process?
3. When’s the last time you went through your own marketing funnel?
4. When you did, were you proud or so disappointed you never did it again?

Routine Audits And Optimization
Of The Customer Experience

If you want to take a page out of Disney’s book, there are a few steps that you and your team can take to optimize the customer experience.

Ring #5: Promotion

Promotion As An Amplifier

Promotion refers to only the world of marketing – not sales. It’s about how you take the promise of what you offer, and promote that to the world.

For many of us, Promotion is an addiction. It’s almost like a form of escapism – we use it to avoid confronting the true sources of our business woes.

It’s always, “If I just had the right marketing guy …” or, “If I just got a better agency …” or, “If I just fixed my onboarding or acquisition strategy …”

In reality, the issues almost always lie in our three core Bullseye rings; a vague and unclear purpose, wobbly profit margins, or just a straight-up bad product.

This is why the true power of Promotion is its ability to amplify – it cannot solve your product problems, or clarify your purpose, or straighten out your financials.

But once you have those three areas locked down, your Promotion will beam that alignment into the sky like a bat signal for your target market, and draw them into your circle for a long time to come.

The Principles of Promotion Done Right

When companies hit their promotion target dead center, it’s no accident. Almost all successful promotions revolve around 5 core principles:

#3 Emotional Appeal:

People make decisions based on emotions first and foremost. Use tools like storytelling and humor to create a connection with your audience, and make your brand memorable.

#5 Incentives and Promotions:

These can be leveraged to encourage your audience to take action. Use limited-time offers, discounts, and other incentives to create a sense of urgency and motivate your audience to take that next step.

The key to an effective promotional strategy is to combine these tactics in a way that is tailored to your target audience, and still supports your overall business goals.

While that sounds easy enough, this takes a hell of a lot of time, research, and finesse to get right – it’s easier to make mistakes than it is to get it right.

Improve Your Promotion With One Key Move

Take a moment to think back to our section on Purpose. To directly quote myself, if I may:

“In order to discover and define the strongest possible internal driver that you can, you need to dig beyond the surface; you need to understand the why behind your why.”

Creating a hard-hitting promotion means to take that quote, and apply it to your customers; in essence, you need to target your audience’s why behind their why.

There’s typically a deeper, underlying reasoning that drives the decision-making process, so you’ll need to question further, and listen. I recommend at least three “levels” of why.

So to revise my earlier statement, you want to find the why behind their why behind their why. Not very catchy, but it’ll do.

Let’s see this in action – as an example, say you’re a personal trainer trying to sell me on a program:

Level 1 Why:

Trainer: “What are your goals?”
Me: “I want to lose weight and be healthier.”

Level 2 Why:

Trainer: “How would your life change if you lost weight and got healthier?”
Me: “I’d have more confidence and more energy.”

Level 3 Why:

Trainer: “What would more confidence and energy result in?”
Me: “I’d be a good role model for my daughter and more active as she grows older.”

Ahhh. Did you see that? The benefit of the benefit.

Now, your entire sales strategy has shifted – you’re no longer simply selling numbers on a scale.

You’re selling legacy, and better quality family time.

You need to understand that there is only one question on a customer’s mind: Can you get me from my current state to my desired state, with as little stress and friction as possible?

Promotion of your offer needs to answer that question – and for you to do that, there are two questions that you need to ask in return:

• What is their desired state?
• What emotions are driving that desire?

When you align your marketing strategy with those answers, every promotional campaign you touch will turn to gold.

Ring #6: Persuasion

Persuasion As An Amplifier

If Promotion deals with marketing, then logically, Persuasion is where we talk about sales.

These two worlds commonly get confused, and spoken about interchangeably – but don’t fall into that trap. I’ve separated marketing and sales into different Bullseye Formula rings for good reason.

Persuasion is meant to pick up where Promotion needs to leave off. Persuasion is not meant to do the job of Promotion, and vice versa.

Some businesses lump these two roles into one all-encompassing department. This is all well and good (we even did it at Kajabi), but only if you clearly see that line in the sand.

What Is Persuasion?

Let’s first begin by defining both marketing and persuasion – they are related concepts, but with their own individual meanings and goals.

Marketing: The process of identifying, promoting, and distributing a message, with the end goal of generating leads and/or sales. It’s the art of aggregating and directing attention.

Persuasion: The process of influencing someone to take a specific action, adopt a particular attitude, or change their perception of a product or service. It’s the art of driving action and commitment.

Persuasion is sales, but not in the traditional sense.

Hard selling simply does not work anymore. Customers aren’t interested in being bullied or pushed into making a purchase – they want conversations, connections, and solutions.

Persuading someone to buy requires a lot of the elements we touched on in Promotion – a deep understanding of the customer’s wants and needs, their pain points, and what drives their decision-making.

The Key Tenets Of Persuasion

There are a wide range of tactics and strategies that can be utilized for persuasion – most of which can be broken down into just a handful of key principles to apply, in this order:

#3 Ethos:

Solidify that connection and build trust by walking the walk. Be clear in your purpose and showcase your knowledge and experience to give your company credibility.

#5 Timing:

Persuasion is more effective when it is timed correctly. Don’t rush, bully, push, or coerce. Let them make their own decisions, in their own time.

How This Translates Into Your Sales Approach

Ultimately, sales is a way to serve others; it’s a way to demonstrate a deep commitment to your goals and purpose.

This is an idea that is often misunderstood or straight up ignored by most businesses – and it’s one of the main factors that influences their lack of sales success.

There are a few core foundations of selling that, if you fail to understand and appreciate them, often result in frustration, anxiety, and an overall negative feeling about selling:

• You must understand your customer’s needs and desires. You have to truly listen, and be willing to ask questions and dig deeper to get a full understanding of what the customer is looking for.
• You have to provide real value. This means demonstrating a deep understanding of the customer’s needs, and providing solutions that meet those needs in a meaningful way.
• You must work on a foundation of trust. Be transparent, honest, and reliable.
• Whenever you sell anything, focus on the long-term. You ideally want a long relationship with your customers. This requires a deep understanding of the customer’s needs and a commitment to providing ongoing value over time.
• You’ve got to be adaptable. The best salespeople are able to adapt to changing circumstances and customer needs. This requires being nimble and flexible, and being able to quickly pivot in response to changing market conditions or customer demands.

Persuasion is not about manipulation, deception, or hard selling – it’s about helping.

It’s about understanding the other person’s perspective. It involves aligning your message to the interests and needs of the other person rather than just pushing your own agenda.

It’s about being a human being, and helping another human being solve a problem in their lives.

Ring #7: People

The Ultimate Amplifier

The placement of People as this final ring of the Bullseye Formula is probably one of my more controversial perspectives.

Many will die on the hill that hiring the right people is a one-and-done strategy for success; it’s always something along the lines of, “If you hire great people, great things happen.”

But if you’re expecting to hire talented people to come in and fix your problems for you, it’s just not going to happen. A-players know how to quickly spot a dumpster fire, and get out just as fast.

Effective talent strategy can be boiled down to one simple fact: your team will only shine as bright or perform as well as the quality of the stage you put them on.

Missing any of the other rings on your bullseye will greatly damage or destroy your ability to hire great people. People comes last for a reason:

• If your Purpose isn’t clear, the right people won’t be pulled to your mission.
• If your Profit isn’t nailed, you won’t be able to pay them what they deserve.
• If your Product isn’t extraordinary, or at the very least, exactly fit for Purpose, then there will be nothing to support, market, or sell.
• If your Prestige isn’t excellent, then the people you hire will spend their days dealing with complaints and they won’t stick around.
• If your Promotion isn’t great, then no one will know what you do, and your amazing people will be sitting around with time on their hands.
• If your Persuasion isn’t naturally brilliant, then sales will be tough.

You only get People if all the rest is in place. Great people want to amplify an already great business.

Culture And Engagement

Company culture is something that should be at the forefront of all business owners’ minds, especially in this day and age – movements like the Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting show that employee engagement is in freefall.

We’re confronted with this giant question of what we’re going to do with this mess, and the answer we always seem to get in return is mission, vision, and value set – get everyone excited about rowing in the same direction!

But remember what I said in Purpose about Push Strategy vs Pull Strategy?

A Pull Strategy is the only way you’ll effectively circumvent issues with employee engagement. Stop crafting a purpose around the people you’ve got – articulate your purpose first, publicize it, and the right people will come to you.

Pulling is the single leverage point of getting amazingly talented people to fully buy in to your purpose, and inoculate them against the quiet-quitting plague.

Because it requires you to put your purpose on display in all its glory, and give people the opportunity to take part, or not. If they choose to opt in, they’re engaged in your mission by default.

Hiring

A buddy of mine applied the ‘purposing in public’ concept to his own hiring strategy, and it resulted in some of the best hires his business had ever seen.

He created a number of short, 5-minute videos that addressed their journey, and what employees could expect from working for his company. Simple, yet it was a stroke of pure brilliance.

The benefits of this type of approach go both ways:

• The potential hire comes in with realistic expectations, straight from the horse’s mouth. They can make their own choice about whether the company is the right fit for them, and don’t have some recruiter in their ear telling them what they want to hear.
• It also holds you, as a founder or CEO, accountable for your company culture. If the hire feels that you aren’t representing what you said in those videos, there’s an easy conversation to have.

“Hey man, I’m going to need you to go back and watch that video you sent me when I said yes and uprooted my life and family to join your gig because I don’t feel like we’re sticking to what we agreed on.” Done.

The value, camaraderie, and trust that this hiring tactic weaves into your company culture and business relationships cannot be overstated.

I know I keep saying it, but I seriously can’t stress this point enough – great people want to stand on the shoulders of giants. You must have your other bullseye rings nailed to let your company be that giant.

Your People Are Great…What About Your Leaders?

Whether you’re a one-man show or supported by a leadership team, the people at the top of any organization need to be made of a certain kind of stuff.

If you’re going to become the kind of person who can lead a business to billion-dollar valuations, I’ve got a few lessons for you to take on board:

#3 If you have an issue with someone, grow a spine and deal with it fast and face-to-face

#5 Respect people

Never talk down to them or undermine them.

#9 Tie your people’s personal goals to everything they do in the organizationTie your people’s personal goals to everything they do in the organization

When the develop themselves, they’ll grow your business.