Revenue is the great deodorant for every broken company

Meg, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Mick, that's actually a a very long story, but I I'll try I'll try to save and the the audience time here. But it it really it it really started out my my background's in sports performance and fitness. And I thought that I was gonna run health clubs. I thought that I was gonna be a physical therapist really early on. I ran a number of of gyms, health clubs, and I met some really, really interesting people. throughout my journey. Actually one of them, a gentleman that actually helped me out a lot in business. I don't even know if he still knows this, but I did some offshore banking, which I had no business in being anywhere near any professional in offshore banking. You know, like I I think I was 21. I I did some real estate. I did some consulting early on. But really what what I kept hearing you know, at One Huddle, which, you know, great company, great mission. But I kept hearing, hey, listen, you're you have a great product. We need help with we need help with revenue, we need help with operations, we need help with sales. sales is something that I've always had a passion, not the transaction or not what we call closing people, but building relationships. So I I was part of the the founding team at One Huddle. I held a number of positions in there from VP of Biz Dev. to I led the coaching academy. I, you know, at one point or another I was involved in CS. But what I really wanted to help was startups. I wanted to help founders, entrepreneurs, small and mid sized companies looking to grow and expand. So fast forward, a few years ago, I folded a number of companies into Primal Trust in order to become this one stop shop for founders, entrepreneurs, small and mid sized companies from Funding to marketing to sales to operations. What I quickly found, Mick, was that people need help with revenue. And I know that everybody talks about sales and revenue, but revenue is the great deorderant. I don't know how much you know how people are gonna take this, but it covers any of the crap that's going on inside of the company. If you have enough revenue coming in, you can fix most things.

Yeah, that that's that's a great question. The first thing that I fix is the mindset. I don't know how how much that that really helps, but it's the mindset. Founders and and and entrepreneurs make we are a special kind of person because we are going against all odds. We are fighting this ever amounting battle. In our heads, in our lives, we have to struggle with if we have a significant other, if my idea is good, do I have enough money in the bank? Are people gonna think that I'm a fraud? Do I even have a business? What's the total addressable market? What's the TAM? We start looking at different things, Mick, and you have to be borderline crazy to start a business in today's day and age. Yet, so many entrepreneurs roll up their sleeves. So many founders roll up their sleeves and they say, let's go to work. I have a dream. I have an idea. Let's throw it out there. So the first thing that we start working on, and remember that the business looks completely different from a year ago. Today is, are you the bottleneck? Are you the one slowing down the process? Oftentimes the founder has the mission, vision, the core values, the idea, the dream, and he's the only one that could convey that message that could get in front of people and close. But then you really don't have a business at that point. What you what you have created is a bottleneck and what you're doing, Mick, is you're not building a scalable, repeatable system. So oftentimes it's hey let's change your mentality and what is the one thing that is really, really keeping you up at night and we try to solve that immediately.

Ha ha ha. Listen, I I'm I'm not gonna be the the first one that says this. Anything difficult requires a strong mindset. but understanding that we're not children. You know, my you know, my kids, they you know, they get up, they don't want to go to school, they go ahead and they'll they'll complain, this is too difficult. And my my son now, he's you know, much older, but when he was younger, he, you know, everything is the end of the world. my can do this, I can't do that. Now he's he's about to be 16 and you know he's a wrestler, so he knows exactly what a a strong mindset entails. But mindset is everything. You know that as a founder, myself, obviously as a man as well, but as a founder, as a man, as a male person, I know that I need to get up every day and do the difficult things no matter what. Yes, there's days that I get up and I really I would like to stay in bed. You know, my wife is next to me. I'm like, I would like just to stay here. I would like to cover myself and not confront the world. But guess what? We gotta get up every single day and do the difficult things. Do do the hard stuff. And mindset is everything. You have to understand that no matter what, when everything is burning around you, you have to be calm, cool, and collected and have your composure and still go forward. And that takes of a certain type of person. Not everybody is able to do that. Oftentimes a lot of people make just want to play safe. They want to work for somebody, which is okay. There's nothing wrong with that, but they want to work for somebody. They wanna show up their nine to five, get paid, you know, get their two weeks of vacation a year, if they're lucky, four, and they build a great life and they're okay with that. But then there's people like us that I don't want to build anybody else's dreams. And that's what I was doing. even though I was part of the the the founding team, even though companies great, companies doing big things, they had a big vision, they had a big mission. That's not what I what what what I was really interested in doing. What I was interested in doing is helping companies grow and expand the same type of people that I relate to, the same ones that are up at night saying, How am I gonna take care of my team? How am I gonna go ahead and put a product out there that the world wants? The world needs and it's gonna make a difference and a change.

Yeah, that's a great question, Mick. The reality is that we've we've pivoted, as I mentioned. Originally we were this one-stop shop and we were offering quite a bit of things. Today, what we strictly focus on is revenue infrastructure. Most companies and most leaders that I connect with, they'll they'll say, Hey, I have a lead gen problem. Most companies, believe it or not, don't have a lead gen problem. They have an infrastructure, a revenue infrastructure problem. And if you're not understanding your conversions, if you're not understanding where your leads are coming from, that's an infrastructure problem. If you don't have a system that could operate without you, you have a revenue infrastructure problem. So a lot of companies, what do they do? Well, they throw labor at the problem. So, hey, we need more sales, we need more salespeople. We need more leads. Let me put more systems in place. No, we need to have a clear understanding. By the way, Lee gen and everyone understands this. Lee gen is not a a one and done type of channel. And what I mean by that, Lee Gen is a multi-prong approach. you you have to approach it from different angles. It's a multi-prong approach. Most people are tackling inbound. So they're building funnels, they're building audiences, they're dropping, you know. Marketing, advertising, and other people are doing, well, let's go ahead and stand up outbound. So you're doing LinkedIn, you're doing email campaigns, you're calling, voice drop, AI, some type of layer. But that's where most people stop. Most people are not understanding what does a partner relationship look like? What does a partner referral program look like? What is a strategy for events? Let's build a multi-prong approach. And this is what I would challenge if anyone wants to connect with me or anybody wants to seek out the first thing is how many channels are you activating? And great, now that you have these multiple channels activated, can you even handle that that that additional inbound, that additional stress on your whole system? If you can't do that, then you need to focus on that. So most You know, founders would say, Well, I I want a senior hire. Do you have a system? Can you bring them on board and just drop them inside of the system? If you can't do that, you don't need a senior hire. By the way, most founders do that. Hey, I'm gonna hire you, Mick. You are you could sell, you're gonna be my founding account executive or my founding head of sales. That's not fair to you. Make you've never done this. You could sell, yeah, but you could sell into a system that's already established. And that's most sales professionals. They could sell into a system that's already established, that has a framework, but not everybody make could build a framework, could build an infrastructure from the ground up, working it and making sure that you could use it to scale the business.

Yeah, that once again, every company's a little bit different and we've tried to build a system that is repeatable even internally, right? We like that old saying goes, we eat our own dog food. So we're building systems, we're always refin refining. What a lot of founders don't want to hear, which is the truth, is when you tell them, Hey, we have to audit your company. We gotta make sure that we understand who you are, what you do. Are you a nice to have versus a need to have? Okay. did you just invent another widget? Okay, amazing. But the reality is that what we do, we do something a little bit different, we onboard ourselves onto that company. That's much h difficult. Originally when I started the company make, I wanted to be a fractional CRO. I'm like, I'm gonna outsource all of my services, I'll be the face, I'll have the conversation with the founder, I'll be their fractional CRO, you know, I understand GTM strategies, I understand revenue, great, amazing, perfect. But what I quickly found is That's not who we are. That's easy. I'm not gonna build another playbook. My team's not gonna put another playbook together for you, even though that that's a piece, that's a tool. What we need to do is build a full infrastructure. So before we do any of that, I need to know what you have. I've spoken with leaders and companies, Mick, and they're they're like, yeah, we really don't have anything. And then when you go inside of the company, they have a system for a system system. That is crazy. I'm like, what what what what what are you doing? Whoa, we have this and we have that. And it is paralysis by analysis. You are layering too many things. So oftentimes we go in and we're like, hey, listen, great, awesome, amazing. What is this yielding? If it's not, let's start stripping things out. Let's start with your foundation. Who are your top competitors? What are you doing different in the market? Walk me through your process. Let me hear your pitch. Let me hear past success. Do you have look-alike personas? Who's your best customer? We have a whole scorecard that we offer anyone that that connects with us just so we could understand, hey, what is your market clarity? What is your total, you know, your your your TAM, your total addressable market? What does that look like? Are you nice to have, need to have? How fast can we close? How fast can we scale? If I got you a hundred leads right now, can you even handle that? Oftentimes, if they say no, well, once again, you don't have a lead gen problem. We can find leads. Leads are easy. That's not the problem. The problem is do you have a repeatable scalable infrastructure that could help your company grow? And I don't want to hear what everybody wants. What we hear these unicorn stories on on on IG. yeah, we scale three hundred percent year over year. That's amazing. You're a unicorn. That doesn't happen all the time. Most companies take seven to nine years to really grow and mature to a product that to a company that that That could really scale. So imagine that. But that's not what we're seeing today in social media, Mick. And you know, you're you're a little younger than me. I'll say just a little bit, okay? Not not too much. Okay. But what what you're seeing on social media is hey, I started a business. I should be a millionaire by next month. What are you talking about? I'm gonna go ahead and and I'm gonna scale our business and we're gonna sell, you know, a hundred million dollars in a month. No, be quiet. What are you talking about? Yes, there are success stories like that. Amazing, perfect. They saw an opportunity.

But what nobody sees is all the work behind. Those companies come from good backgrounds that they've already done some products, they have some understanding, and when they turn it on, they're able to push that. But it's difficult when you're bootstrapping a company. It's difficult when nobody knows you. There's no brand awareness. But yet everybody says, Well, Eddie, you're gonna come on board and you're gonna sell a hundred million dollars next month, right? And I'm Yeah, okay, we're not the right company for you. We're not, because nobody's gonna do that.

My take is AI is great, but the reality is that most companies have no clue how to use it. They're using it just like a hammer. So anytime that I want to use a hammer, right, I go to my toolkit and I pick up the hammer and I use it and then I put it back. Great, amazing. And all of a sudden, you know, people say, I created an agent. No, you're not. You're using a frontier model, which is amazing, but you're using a template. It's already built. When people say, I created an agent, you're not creating agents. To be truly agentic, Is you're trusting your process completely to the AI, to the robot, to go ahead and go and do whatever you ask it to do. What do I think about it? If we're not talking about the environmental piece that most people are complaining or worried about, that large data centers are you know consuming a lot of water to cool down. If we're not talking about that and we're just talking about AI inside of a company, AI is great. But when you just use AI in Cloud and Perplexity, you know, Gemini, chat, whatever, you're you you're using models that have already built. And we're, we got to train. Well, what it's gonna do, it's gonna take what you put in there and it's gonna get better, it's gonna learn, but you're using still a template. So you're just using it as a tool, meaning that I had to go inside of, you know. Claude, chat, wherever, and type, put in my prompt. That's why the prompts have to be so massive and very clear, so because so it learns and then say, do this. So you're not truly layering in AI inside of your business. You're just using AI to enhance some of the things. Also, you also have to understand that that is not a leg up on the competition, because the tools that you're using, guess what? So is everybody else? We're we're working internally currently today on building a true RevOS system, a true Legion system proprietary built inside through true agentic AI. And you know, 2027 for us is gonna be amazing because of the things that we built, but it's been very difficult. I I I don't wanna I don't wanna go ahead and say, yeah, it's been all rainbows and butterflies, and this is amazing. The journey sucks. But the journey is what makes everything worth a damn. I was talking to to a good friend of the business, our and he's actually our our director of mental performance, and he says, you know, t Tom Stirner is his name. And, you know, there's a story there that he talks about when you run a marathon, when you cross that line, why are you so happy? I could I I could draw that line anywhere and then say I crossed the line. Yes, I won. No, it was what it took to get there, the journey it took, the months of preparations, of training, of resiliency that you put your body through, building that stamina, building that endurance, building that strength. Once you crossed that finish line, it was a combination of all of that hard work. What do we often see? We see the wins. Yes, this guy crushed it. my God, there are a hundred million dollars in profit. Amazing. Nobody sees all the hard work, what we call the wake behind the boat. Nobody sees that stuff. And that's what we often see in business. AI is great if use property, if use ethically, not saying, yeah, we have an AI agent and we're doing amazing thing. No, you're not. You're using what everybody else is doing. So stop. I I I I hope that helps. I know. I I love AI, but I hope that helps. Meaning it's just another tool, but if used properly, it could do a lot of good things. Just like a hammer. If used properly, you could build a house. If used unproperly, you probably could hurt somebody really, r really bad. Same thing with AI.

Yeah, we're we're we're really trying to get back to human and we're using AI, hopefully, the way that it's supposed to be used to help us augment everything that we're doing and to make us faster, make us better, make better decisions. But at the end of the day, the people that drive the business is is my team, is us. And we're using AI as an additional tool to help us get there faster.

We have a lot of things. Make there a a lot of things are in the works right now. Some of it I could discuss, some of it I can't because we're in the process of putting all of that stuff together. But the reality is that we're fighting hard. We're fighting hard for for the small companies that are looking to grow. We're fighting hard for the large companies that have traction and have a really good product to be better and and for us to help those type of companies improve. At the end of the day, I think of excuse me, I think of what I want our legacy to be. Is it just us helping companies grow? No, I really want to help families change, companies change, push product out there that is life-changing and that is bettering everyone around us. the only way I know how to do it at the moment is obviously to making companies scale, companies not fail. but it's a huge undertaking. Make so not only are we Tinying up our process and getting better with each engagement. Our early clients, really early on, if they hear this, they're like, Man, why didn't wh why weren't you helping us the way that you're helping companies now when we really came on board at the beginning? But the reality is that those companies helped shape our product, shape help shape our offering and made us a lot better. There's tons of companies that we work with that Amazing leaders, amazing amazing founders. there's companies that we've been able to help grow and expand. There's companies that we're like, I wish you would come in now because where we're at now was completely different picture than when we first started. But that's part of the founder's journey. That's part of the company. You don't always get it right. You don't always get it right. But as long as we're willing to fight and we're willing to never give up, you know. a positive outcome could still come from the whole engagement. And that's what we're doing. Twenty twenty-seven is gonna be an amazing year for us. It's gonna be an amazing year for our clients. And the best is yet to come.

absolutely. They're we're definitely on on all social social media. our website, Primatrust dot co. so C O so also on IG. you search for Primal Trust Consulting, we'll pop up. LinkedIn, Primal Trust Consulting, Eddie Jimenez. You really could just search us anywhere. But our website is the easiest way to connect with myself, with the team, and let's make some big things happen together.

My pleasure, Mick. I appreciate it. Thank you.