Dashboard: Is Staying Small Selfish?

Loren Feldman How big are each of those businesses?

Lamar Tyler Black and Black, the first brand that was around, Marriage and Family, we actually sold it in 2022. Our company Traffic, Sales, and Profit is a multimillion-dollar company. So we've been on Inc. 5000 list 4 years consecutive from 2021 to 2024. We got about 25 people on staff right now, primarily based in Atlanta. but then a few across the US and a few globally as well.

Loren Feldman I ask in part because it pertains directly to the topic that I most want to discuss with you today. I always enjoy reading your posts on LinkedIn. I learned a lot from them. Thank you. You wrote one recently that I found especially intriguing. You wrote that, quote, staying small as a Black business owner is selfish. Why did you write that? What's your thinking?

Lamar Tyler Well, the reason I wrote that— well, thank you for reading on LinkedIn, right? It's no fun to write if nobody's reading. This is number one.

Loren Feldman I know that feeling.

Lamar Tyler So be like, I love to write. I don't love to write that much. Thank you for reading. But what I meant by that is we need more big businesses. And when I'm talking about big businesses, I'm not just talking about Teslas or Facebooks or Microsofts. What I'm talking about is we need more small business owners to get from, hey, solopreneur to going into growth stage, from growth stage to scale stage and being able to move beyond. And the reason I say that is a few specific reasons, Lauren. Number one, when these companies grow, they feed so many other parts of our community. And this is, you know, I was speaking directly to Black entrepreneurs on this post, but this is for any small business. You could take it across America right now. If I'm a small business owner and I start as a solopreneur, which most small businesses do, I think we get enamored by looking at the big names and tech companies, but most businesses in America are not huge billion-dollar tech conglomerates and, you know, fintech startups and et cetera. They're mom-and-pops that start out with somebody has a specific skill set or they see a specific need in their community they want to solve. They go into it, but as they're there as a solopreneur, solopreneurship is risky and it's dangerous. And entrepreneurship has risk all in and of itself. But solopreneurship by itself, right, means no matter how much money I make, if I'm sick one day, if, you know, my kids need me, if— and now a lot of times people are taking care of their parents as well, right? If I step away from the business for too long, the business takes a direct impact. The reputation that I built starts to sink. And all these people said I did great work. Now, even though they paid me, I'm not delivering and fulfilling like I should. So as we grow bigger, say now we got a handful of team, like your community needs not for you to have a handful of team, it needs more so that we can create jobs. You know, as you know, like most of the jobs in this country are created by small businesses. So, you know, so many times I meet small business owners that really have passion for their team and employees. A lot of times we talk about how the workplace does not favor the employee, but that's not what I see a lot of times in small businesses. Of course, you know, big corporations where it's nameless faces, but I see small business owners all the time that are sacrificing their own livelihood, their own families to take care of their own people that work inside of that business. So we need you to take care of more people. And then when we see that direct impact with us creating jobs, of course, that directly impacts the communities that we serve and right there as well. But then one of my bigger things, Lauren, I wanna talk about is so many times I see business owners that say they have a product or a service that serves people. It helps people. It overcomes a major challenge. And one of my, you know, bigger thoughts around this is if you really want to help people, if you really want to serve people, serve them bigger. Because if you're serving 100 people right now and this is changing their lives, I'd rather you serve 1,000. If you're serving 1,000, I'd rather you serve 10. If you're serving 10, I'd rather you serve a million. Because if you have a solution, the world needs that solution. And if, you know, like, like too many of us are just playing too small so that we're not serving the solution at scale.

Loren Feldman Well, let me be upfront about one thing to start with, which is I am myself a solopreneur right now. I would love to have a bigger business. I just haven't figured out how to do it. So I just want to acknowledge that. But more to the point of what you're expressing there, it almost sounds as if you're thinking of this in moral terms as opposed to a personal business decision of what's right for an individual owner. Is that how you think about this?

Lamar Tyler You know, I think it's both, right? Because I think from a moral standpoint, like I said, I mean, not everybody, but I mean, a lot of business owners, again, that want to serve people. That's why they've created what they create. Or again, they feel like what they've Uh, founded product or service has direct impact to the masses. So let's, you know, really let it impact more people. But just on the business side of it, let's go back to that. If we talk like, you know, dollars and cents and how does it work, as we've worked over the last— we've done Traffic Sales and Profit for 11 years. As he worked over the last 11 years with a lot of different business owners, what we've seen is that, let's say in revenue range, solopreneurs, under, let's say, $300,000, is extremely risky. Because what we've seen is that when they take a punch— and if you're in business long enough, you're gonna get punched. If I tell people you have not had a bad year, you just haven't been in business long enough, right? Like, like those companies, when they take a punch, a lot of times they get punched right out of entrepreneurship and they got to go back to work. And what we say in, in these days, it's just not a lot of jobs for you to go back to work with. I mean, people are getting like, you know, laid off drastically because of changing times, because of the economy, because of the markets, because of AI, right? It's a lot of change and disruption happening. So we need you to at least get to a size where you're stable, meaning, hey, if revenue slows down, if I lose my biggest client, if different things happen, it doesn't knock me fully out of the game and I can exist. What we try to— in Travis Is the Profit, I try to speak to is if we can get them higher into the 6-figure range, And then what I really want them to do is get in the 7s and then at least shoot for 8. What it does, it provides a lot more security, meaning, hey, if I lose my biggest contract, let me give you real terms. The 2024 where a lot of companies have slowed down, right, when the economy started to slow down even more, 2024, 2025, I had $20 million companies that slowed down to $12 million. I had, you know, $12 million companies that slowed down to $8 million. you know, $8, $9 million companies to slow down to $2 or $3 million. And, you know, $1 or $2 million companies slow down to the 6 figures. Again, at the bottom, there is no place to slow down to. But also at the higher end, not only do you protect yourself revenue-wise from the punches that come, but you insulate yourself from the punches that come in your personal life. Because as you have more team and the fulfillment can happen without you in the business, and hopefully the sales in the front can happen without you, That means again, if something's going on in my relationship, when there's a death in the family, because there will be a death in the family at some point if you're an entrepreneur for a long time, right? Like, like these things happen. Life doesn't stop because we choose, decide we want to start a business. Like we can step away from the business and things still exist, you know? And I think that's one of the, the more dangerous parts of being a small business is that a lot of times we don't accommodate for life. And life is going to happen to you regardless.

Loren Feldman I get that completely, and I agree completely. I think the argument you're making there is that businesses, especially very small businesses, need to think a little bit larger just for the sake of their own stability, which is a slightly different argument than doing it for the sake of your community at large. Also a worthy goal, but, but a different one. And I guess my question to you is, if somebody feels they have gotten to that point of stability, if they, if they If they say to you, I built this business to create a good life for myself and my family, isn't that enough? How do you respond to that?

Lamar Tyler You know what I would say? Everybody's wired different. Everybody has a decision to make. But I still would encourage you to look and say, you know, what can I do beyond that? I would, you know, what I would challenge them to say is that there are people that need you outside of your family alone. And a lot of times, of course, that's why, you know, a lot of people do what we do so that my family, my kids can have a life that I didn't, you know, have, right? But what I'm gonna say is that, okay, once your family's secured, can we look across the street to the kids on the other side of the street? Can we, you know, provide opportunity for them? Can we look to kids in other neighborhoods, other parts of the cities, other parts of the state, other parts of the country, and provide opportunity? And I think that's the great part about entrepreneurship, is that we provide opportunity. And, and for most people, I don't even think, Lauren, that it's a dedicated decision constantly in the beginning. Like, at some point it may be, hey, you know what, I see a lot of companies that go bigger or try to go bigger, then they kind of settle back down. But for a lot of people, it's a few things. Number one, it's just like you mentioned, thinking bigger and realizing, hey, I can be bigger than we are. Because way before you get to, hey, I want to be large, there is an area of opportunities called comfort. And I always talk about that comfort is the enemy of success, right? Because, you know, you may not have the Maybach you wanted, but you might have Mercedes-Benz, and that Mercedes-Benz is pretty nice. I may not have my dream house, but I got a nice house, right? And I might have the nicest house out of, you know, everybody else in my family. So really going big requires you to move beyond your comfort zone into some new areas where you may not be comfortable. And that challenges people a lot too.

Loren Feldman I'm curious in a specific example where you draw the line. Somebody comes to you and they're running a successful restaurant. One restaurant, they're very comfortable, to use your term. It's going well. It's profitable. They love what they do. What's your advice to them?

Lamar Tyler If they run that restaurant, they love what they do. Again, I would just think about, hey, you know, how can, how can you expand beyond this? Because a lot of times I think the small business owner mindset keeps them as a small business forever. And a lot of times, you know, here's a great example, Lauren. I was on a cruise a few years back, my wife and I. And as we pulled in the dock, I was kind of standing on the deck, you know, kind of watching us, you know, kind of, you know, coming to dock. And on the other side of the dock was a ship, like a huge carrier. And on top of this carrier were all yachts, like yachts, boats, like very nice. Not like, hey, I'm going fishing later. It was like, like very nice. And I said, wow. And I looked it up. When I looked it up, right, this, this, you know, carrier was owned by a family, you know, somewhere on the other side of the world. But I looked it up. I told my wife, I said, a family owns that. Like, that's somebody— like, that's somebody's name on that company. But what I said is, a lot of times we look at, I want the yacht. Meanwhile, somebody had the vision to say, I don't want the yacht. I want to own the carriers that carry the yachts. Which is a different type of opportunity, right? But it's a different type of company. Now, again, not to say that we need all of that, but if I got one restaurant, why can't I think about expanding to 3 or 4? Why can't I think about, you know, starting a restaurant group? Why can't I think about, hey, you know what, I've, I've got name, I've gotten recognition, I've, you know, maybe I have revenue and funds I didn't have before, invest that into something else that creates more for more people. And as a byproduct, I create more for more people, also create more for myself and my family too.

Loren Feldman So how does that conversation go? I mean, let's pretend I'm the restaurant owner in that situation, and I say to you, look, I'd love to have another restaurant, another 2 or 3 restaurants. To do that, I gotta borrow some money. I need the capital to expand. To take out a loan, even a, you know, a good SBA loan, I gotta sign a personal guarantee. I gotta risk my house. I don't know if I wanna do that. How do you respond to that?

Lamar Tyler That's such a great question, because what I would say is every level of growth we'd had came with risk. There are SBA loans that we had to sign, and then we signed them when we moved on. There are times I had to put personal guarantees on things, and we moved on. And oftentimes what it looks like is we're not taking risks for the sake of taking risks, but it's calculated risk. And then most of the times when I look back, Loren, what I realized is that the risk wasn't as risky as I thought it was. when I broke the numbers down. Like, like the numbers, the numbers made sense. I went through, I educated myself on what I need to move. But what it mostly was, was fear. And fear of growing and fear of making it happen, right? So when we, we, I'll give you a few, few real life examples. We own the building that our office is in. When we moved in, I was scared to death. I'm like, hey, and I'm used to having a mortgage on my house. I'm not used to having a mortgage for my business, right? Totally different thing. But once we moved in, Like financially, it's never been a struggle. We've been here, you know, 6 or 7 years now. It has never been a struggle financially. When I did the numbers, all of the numbers and the math made sense. What it was was my fear because I was stepping into the unknown. When we used to do documentaries, one of our— I use this as a case study in my talks I do recently. One of our biggest documentaries, and when I say we did docs, like the first one was me going out. I bought a camera from a friend. I bought some software from Best Buy for like $70. Sony Vegas. And I went out for 2 weeks after work every day. So, you know, like starting my first film was $5,000 budget. And then we grew it from there. But our 4th film, it was gonna take $30,000 to do it. We were funding everything, my wife and I, out of our jobs. So we didn't have $30K. The only place we had $30K sitting at was in our 401. So I had to make a decision. Do I pull it out of my 401? If I pull it out, I gotta get it back in 60 days. 'Cause if I don't, I'm gonna get taxed with taxes and a 10% penalty, right? So all these things going through, but I had to make a decision. We made the decision, we did it. We actually did not get it back in time, right? It took about extra maybe 15 to 20 days before we could get it back. So we got hit with the penalty. But the benefit of what we did, that was our best film. It got us way more press, way more recognition. We made more money from that film than anything that we ever did before, which more than covered the cost of the penalty and the taxes. But it all came because we made a risk. So I would say like, hey, they got to like measure what that risk is. Look at, look at the numbers. But a lot of times we don't take the risk and it has nothing to do with the numbers, has everything to do with our personal fear.

Loren Feldman Glad that worked out for you. But, you know, not everybody has your skills. It's not going to work for everybody. Have you ever advised a business to take that leap, take that risk, and had it not work out for them?

Lamar Tyler I'm sure it has, right? It's, it's— and I'll say this, everything hasn't worked out for us every single time. But again, that's why you, that's why you calculate the risk, you know? And a lot of times we look at what's the worst that could happen. Rarely do we look at what's the best that can happen, right? You know what I'm saying? Like, like, like the majority of entrepreneurs I meet are not flailing because they take too many risks, right? It's like because they don't take the ones that's right in front of them that they should. So does that mean, hey, if I have a successful restaurant, you know, I'm gonna open up 100 and I'm gonna, you know, drain the savings, drain everything I have? No. What it might mean is I have a concept, it's generating great cash, I have momentum, I have brand recognition. Let me look into the opportunity to seeing, hey, if I should create, you know, 1 or 2 somewhere around town. And then maybe I get to a point where maybe I could franchise, maybe I can license, maybe I can do other things around the world.

Loren Feldman Reminds me a little bit about the debate I sometimes hear around venture capital. I'm not a big fan of venture capital. I actually think it probably destroys— I can't prove this, but I think it destroys more businesses than it helps. The attitude is, go big or go home. They put a ton of money into a business. the founder of that business, we don't want some little victory here. We want to 10x at least our money. So you got to go for everything. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And their business model is, we're throwing 10, 12, 15 companies against the wall. And if 1 or 2 stick, that's great. We will win. But what bothers me is, among those companies that don't stick, some of them could have succeeded. And some of them might not have produced 10x returns for the investors, but they could have created generational wealth for the founders. And I wonder that— now, that's a bigger example, that's more money, but the risks are greater. And most of those people will be fine because they tend to be young, and if one business fails, they'll start another and they'll be able to raise capital for that one. So It's not a tragedy. With the businesses you're talking to, if their business fails, they may not get another shot. And I wonder if there's a similar effect there. Do you worry about that at all?

Lamar Tyler Yeah. You know what I would— and you're right, venture capital is a whole different beast, right? Because—

Loren Feldman Similar dynamic, right?

Lamar Tyler Yeah. Because your business could be making a ton of money. It could be doing very well. But you have to know they have a date where they say we're out of this. Regardless of what's going on with your business. So, so independent of that, right, as business owners, just, you know, kind of— and you may have, you know, money, you may have investors, but that's a different beast. You know, again, I think you look at, okay, where do I want to go? Now, as— this is what I would say, Lauren— as we grow, as we grow, at the same time, we are working on the back end to create financial stability for our family. So growth doesn't mean— and maybe this is it for a lot of people as well— it has to be all or nothing. I think you can do both. I think you can grow and stabilize your family at the same time. I think you can grow and create for your future, you know, at the same time and do both things. But like I said, for a lot of people, growth is scary. But what I will say is that all of the companies we've had that have, have, you know, hit high 7 figures, 8 figures and beyond, they had an appetite for risk. And there are a lot of companies, they, they get into the 6s, they get, you know, at a million, and they sit there and it's not because of the business. That's one of the things I want to really draw around. A lot of times it's not because of the business, it's because of the founder. And that business wants to run, but the founder wants to walk. And I think, you know, one of the things that can often happen is that we make an assumption that I can grow later. Like when I'm ready, I can grow. When the kids are out of the house, when, you know, I reached a certain age, then I'm gonna get serious about it. But the problem with that is that we don't dictate and we don't control the markets. And your market, your industry, your vertical has just as much to say about when you can grow as you do.

Loren Feldman If not more.

Lamar Tyler Right. If not, if not more. You're totally right.

Loren Feldman What do you look for in a business to determine whether or not it has that capacity to grow?

Lamar Tyler Great question. When I look at a business and I say, okay, do they have capacity to grow? It's like, what's the current growth rate? Right? Are they on a trajectory of growth already? I look and say, hey, you know, what does it look like inside the foundation? What's the structure? What the team look like? And then, because sometimes you have great opportunity, money's coming in, but everybody's at capacity and everybody's at capacity because it's just a few roles missing. It's like, you know, internally, like that business doesn't have the structure and the bones. You know, it's a $500,000 business that could be $5 million, but it has a $500,000 staff. You know, like, like, like one of— here's a real life example. One of the big things that holds small businesses back is that they don't have enough— they may have team, but they don't have enough leaders. So I have team, which means I have technicians, right? People that can do the specific roles and skills. But all those technicians still pull on the founder every day. So the founder doesn't have full capacity to go out and lead with vision, to, you know, generate more revenue, to generate more sales, to do more business development. Like whatever their best use is, because all day they're answering questions from the team.

Loren Feldman They're the bottleneck.

Lamar Tyler Yeah, they're the bottleneck, right? So even in those situations, a lot of times it's like, hey, it's a— let's say that's a $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 company. They just could be missing having leaders in that actually lead those teams. They can do a better job than them in most cases to lead those teams, to grow those companies, to be specific. Hey, let's bring in somebody that marketing is all they think about and all they know. Let's bring in somebody that does business development. That's all they think about, all they know, and they already have previous relationships from other places they've been. And then now we're on a trajectory for growth. So a lot of time, again, it's mindset, but then it's also what's the structure of that business? It's also what's the opportunity in the industry at that time? Because we're living in an extremely volatile time, right? I spoke in London a few years ago, and Stephen Bartlett has Diary of a CEO. I did the morning keynote, he did the evening keynote. And on that evening keynote, he said something I'll never forget. He said disruption is happening faster than it ever has before. Things that took 3 years to disrupt now take 3 months. Things that took 3 months now take 3 weeks. Things that took 3 weeks now take 3 days due to AI, due to technology, due to just volatility in the markets. So when the opportunity is there, when that door opens, we got to hit it. We got to run through it.

Loren Feldman You describe the environment we're in right now as extremely volatile. How do you see the economy right now, especially for smaller businesses?

Lamar Tyler Great question. I think right now the economy is hard. I think it's been hard for years. And, and for my companies, I'm so glad you asked this. For the companies that are doing well in this market, I like to remind them that, hey, they're doing well in a tough market for a lot of small businesses, which means that, hey, when things eventually— because things eventually will shift— whenever things eventually shift, they'll be in a dynamic position. For the companies that are like kind of just treading, right? And, and I want to grow. I meet a lot of small business like, I want to grow, but I'm not growing right now. I tell them, that's great because a lot of businesses have closed over the last 2 to 3 years. So if you're just making it, right, sometimes you got to look at like, okay, what is the environment around me? And you can be disappointed in yourself because you're not growing at the rate you want to grow at, but you could be just perfectly just to keep and maintain where you're at. But one of the big things too about cycles like this is that whenever there's disruption, there's always opportunity. And when things are going great, the good thing is that they're going great. The bad thing is that you have a million other competitors that are in the marketplace. People that have never been in business, people that dreamed about being in business. Like, everybody comes in when the money is there. When things slow down, it sucks a lot of those people out. So this is your opportunity to get more market share, to go after it and become more visible, and to position yourself with more authority so that when the markets do change, and, you know, things come out and people are spending money more freely, spending money, but it's just different how they spend it right now. You know, they spend their money more freely. You're in a position to take advantage of it.

Loren Feldman In your LinkedIn post that we started with, you wrote at one point that you want businesses to decide to dominate, not participate, not get by, dominate. What do you mean by dominate?

Lamar Tyler When I talk about deciding to dominate, it's a mindset of going from a passive to an active role. And especially through the rest of this year, I wasn't like, you know, theoretically, as you go beyond— when I talk about dominate, I'm talking about right now, 2026. Like, let's charge hard towards the end of the year. And the thing is, most business owners that I've seen don't really have hard goals around what their numbers look like. Meaning, okay, this is my revenue goal. Most of them have like a, I want to get to this amount, but do I even know what it takes? How many sales? per month, per week, per day it takes me to get there? Do I know the activities that actually lead to those sales to get there? And then am I tracking? You'd be surprised how many rooms of entrepreneurs I go into. And as I break this down and I go step by step through this, they look at it and say, well, I never realized, you know, what my sales goals were on a, like I said, week-to-week basis. And because they don't look at it, and a lot of them, even if they have a big goal, they don't track it when they are 4 sales short for, you know, the month of June, they don't go into July saying, okay, I had to sell 50, but now I got to sell 54. They just go in thinking I got to sell 50. And then some months they down, some months they up. They get to the end of the year and they're like, I didn't hit the goal. What happened? But they're literally not tracking on a very granular pace, right? Smaller businesses may not have, you know, larger businesses have accounting teams where they can talk about, you know, this is your budget, this is what we forecasting. But for the small business owners that don't have that type of financial help, I hate to say it, but you are the financial help. You know what I'm saying? So we got to get locked in and clear. But besides revenue, setting that revenue goal, then we also have to say, what are the things that's going to require me, to go all the way through and finish this year strong, to not give up, right? As we get towards and closer to next year, we always do our annual planning in October. And I was telling someone recently, the reason we do it in October is 'cause we used to do it in December, but by the time we did the annual plan and we got our notes together, we got everything on the calendar, it was the second week of January. We had already lost 2 weeks. So, so literally, like, how are you just, like, plotting for your year and then breaking that year down to quarters, that quarters down into weeks, and executing exactly what you need, tracking your actual measurements to see if you're hitting the goals, and then making real-time adjustments on the fly?

Loren Feldman What do these conversations typically go like when you talk to a business owner and you say something along the lines of, Hey, you're doing well. Your business is fine, but you could do more. Here's where I think you should try to push things. What percentage— how often do people say, hey, you're right, I never really thought about it? How often do they say, I don't want anything to do with that. I'm happy with where things are. I don't need to take more risk. What's that like?

Lamar Tyler I, you know, I don't, I don't think people— most people I talk to don't naturally automatically say, no, that's fine, I'm small and I want to stay there. I think most people haven't really thought about what it would look like for their business to grow to that size and scale. Because, you know, again, a lot of entrepreneurs I talk to, you know, they're not around in rooms with people doing millions and millions of dollars through entrepreneurship. So a lot of times if you don't see it in front of you, like, you just haven't really considered what that looks like. Right. Right, if you're not in the right rooms. So as I talk to a lot of people, the first thing is just the thought. And you can see the light bulb go off that, hey, this could be special. This could be something bigger. The second thing that normally comes into mind is fear. And fear slash doubt, because then it goes into, could we really? But what about us? You know, I start thinking about the team that I have. I start thinking about the thing that we sell. I start thinking about all the competition. Like, all these other thoughts start to come into place. And then the excitement that they initially have that, yes, I can be big, then starts to come into, like I said, fear and doubt that I don't know, right? I don't know if I can make that happen. I don't know. I don't know if I'm the person that this company will require to actually lead it to the next level. And then, like I said, it's a decision because most times you won't get bigger by mistake. There are some intentional things you'll have to do. So you have to make a decision that if I'm even going to get on this path and try to move forward.

Loren Feldman You know, to some extent, I think the, the numbers are with those owners who express skepticism. I mean, the percentage of businesses that reach $1 million in revenue, I, I think it's less than 10%. It's, it's hard to do.

Lamar Tyler You know, it is very hard to do. I'm glad you said it is very hard to do. But this is what I would say, Loren. Let's say we got 2 companies, both doing $100,000 a year. What I guarantee you is that the company that shoots for $1 million most likely would do much better company that just says, hey, I'm cool with $100 million. And, and, and most of the time in my life, I can't necessarily say that I've hit the majority of my goals, but I've outpaced most other people, right? Because my goals are bigger than theirs. So even if I don't get to— if I say, hey, I want to, you know, get to $100 million, even if I don't get to $100 million, if I end up at $50 million, I'm in a pretty good place. And I'm probably further than a person that got to $1 million and said, let me just see what happens.

Loren Feldman What would you rather see? 100 strong Black-owned million-dollar businesses or one Black-owned $100 million business?

Lamar Tyler I'd rather see more, right? More of those, you know, more along the width and breadth of it. Because the thing is, for one, when you have 100 companies at that size, and let's say both of them create the same amount of jobs and opportunity, Um, but it's 100 people doing 100 different things that 100 different examples and representatives that it work. Because a lot of times, like, people in their mind just need to know that something can work and something is possible. And it's 100 people that, like, have families around, communities around them where they're an example and they're impacting lives on a different level than one person probably could. But Lord, I say what I'd like to see even more is 100 $100 million companies. That's the right answer. Yeah, we—

Loren Feldman We'd all like to see that. You gave us a little bit of an example in building your own business. I'm curious, was there one particular moment where you realized that fear was holding you back a little bit and you, you needed to, to push yourself?

Lamar Tyler That's so good. I would say that probably still happens to this day a lot of times. You know, there are times when, we needed, you know, we first needed to hire. Fear was holding back from that. We took too long. We eventually hired. There were times when we needed to, like I said, hire higher-level staff. And, you know, it's, it's scary. It's scary when you first hire. When you hire people and you're like, okay, that's cool, I'm, I'm fine with that. Then when you start needing to hire people that command, you know, 6 figures and more, then that's a new level of hiring that you get kind of scary and wheezy about. Because you're like, hey, this is a whole lot of money I'm paying this person. And a lot of times in the business, you can even get to a point where you're paying the people, especially when you're in growth stage, you're paying people more than you're paying yourself. So then that gets scary, right? When we talk about investment in inventory and materials, like, like there's so many times we've been scared. And like I said, most time it doesn't stop us from doing it, but it slows us down. And the one thing looking back, people say like, what do you wish you could change? I wish I could take back those times when I did it, but I just did it too slow. Because one of the things I said to you before is The market has its own timing that you do not dictate. And most of the time, like, we still found success, but we didn't get the amount of success that we should have because we dragged our feet kind of getting to the opportunity.

Loren Feldman All right. So last question. I got a listener listening to this conversation and you've inspired them. They're sitting there thinking, you know what? I'm the person Lamar's talking about. I, I've been thinking about this for a while. I know I could do more. This makes me think I really should give it a shot. What are the first steps? Somebody who thinks they're there, what should they be thinking about to proceed to try to go to the next level?

Lamar Tyler If you're thinking and listening, hey, maybe I can build something big, this is what I want you to do. I'm going to give you a practical exercise. Step number 1, I want you to write down what is your 12-month revenue goal, like your current 12-month revenue goal. And let's say that goal is $300,000. So my goal is $300,000. I'm gonna write that down and I'm looking at it. And then next, what I want you to write beside it is what would happen instead of $300,000 if it was $3 million? And I want you to write that number down. And then what I want you to think about is what would it take for you to get to a $3 million business? And here's some examples. For some people, they'll look and say, well, you know what, I'm a consultant by myself, you know, for $3 million, let's look at how many clients I'd have to serve. And maybe right now I'm serving 10, but at that level I'd have to sell— I'd have to serve 100. So then I'm looking and saying, well, one of two things got to change, or both. For one, I can no longer do it all by myself because I can't serve that many people. So now I'd have to build out a team, and we have to look at what kind of team members and what would you need to hit that level. The other thing that happens, Lauren, as they're sitting there is they may look and say, well, I don't know about a team. I need to change my business model because that may reveal that I'm not charging enough. It may reveal I need a different offer or a higher level offer so that I can hit the same number in 50 people, not 100. But literally, if we just look at what does our company look like 5x, 10x, you know, 15x the size, we can start mapping out right now what that company, the vision that company is. How many employees does it have? How much revenue does it make? How many clients would it need? And then there are times when I look at my own company, I say, hey, at that scale, I don't want to run this company. So that means if I have that goal of, say, get to $100 million, if I have a goal to get to $100 million, it's not through conferences, workshops, you know, masterminds and stuff that we have because I don't want 20,000 mastermind members. I'm good, right? There's way too many people, way too much drama. Like, I don't want that. So what does that mean? Okay, I need to start thinking about what does the next level of my business look like? And maybe I'll do this model, you know, up to $15 to $20 million, cool. But between $20 and $100, I need to find some other mechanism, some other lever I can pull and make it get there. So that's what I would tell everybody, like, like, just look at what you have now. Say, hey, you know what, if I took that and I went 5 times, 10 times bigger, what would that look like? What would sales need to look like? What would my team need to look like? What would the business model look like? And then start to dream, start to imagine, and then start to put the action into place.

Loren Feldman Okay, I lied. I got one more question for you. You just described a very interesting, intriguing conversation with yourself that an owner should have. And I think that's good advice for any and every owner. Think about what the possibilities are. But it's the kind of conversation that's also good to have with a sounding board, with someone else who can bring, you know, different perspectives to it. Yes. So my question to you is, who should an owner have that conversation with? Is it with ChatGPT, with a peer business group, with a consultant? What do you recommend?

Lamar Tyler Yeah, you know what I would say? All the above. Because have it with your— have it with yourself first so you can poke all the holes in it that you can see. And then you can go to something like ChatGPT, right? And refine it. But what I will warn you, don't forget, whatever you say, ChatGPT is going to say, Loren, you know what? That is a great— you're right. You are positioned to grow to $400 billion. And then when you say, well, hold up, the number's wrong, you didn't do the math right, they're going to say, You know what, Lauren? You're right. I didn't do the math right. So, so have that. But I think, like you said, a peer group, a consultant, because they can see things you haven't seen. And hopefully, not only can they poke holes in it and they can look at it from different angles, but then if you can get with people that already have the experience of where you want to grow, then it's even more powerful because they may be able to say, well, you know what, between $5 million and $10 million, that model will drive you crazy because this is what happens in the space. This is what happens in the industry, and they kind of see where the potholes are among you. So first you got to make that mental decision, then you go get the help that you need to help you manifest.

Loren Feldman Lamar Tyler is founder of Traffic Sales and Profit. Lamar, I have a feeling I could talk to you all day, but I appreciate the time that you've given us. Thank you so much.

Lamar Tyler Thank you, Loren, for having me. I appreciate it.