For Episode 101 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast, Rennie is joined by Mandi Ellefson. Mandi is the creator of the Scale to Freedom Scalable Service Growth™ model that allows consulting agency owners to spend less time in their business and have greater freedom, success, and profits. She has consulted with over a hundred consulting agency CEOs helping them immediately free up to 20-50% of their work week to focus on accelerating profits.
For Episode 101 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast, Rennie is joined by Mandi Ellefson. Mandi is the creator of the Scale to Freedom Scalable Service Growth™ model that allows consulting agency owners to spend less time in their business and have greater freedom, success, and profits. She has consulted with over a hundred consulting agency CEOs helping them immediately free up to 20-50% of their work week to focus on accelerating profits.
Mandi is a published author and host of The Hands-Off CEO Podcast. Her clients have grown to five figures of net profit every month, added millions of dollars in sales, and have exited the day-to-day business to scale growth. Some owners now passively manage their business or have even sold their companies.
In this episode, Rennie and Mandi cover:
01:57 How they know each other and how Rennie has helped Mandi and her husband personally.
02:33 What Mandi’s company “Hands Off CEO” does and how they help people not be a victim of their own success.
04:33 The charity Operation Underground Railroad and Mandi’s philosophy on supporting these types of organizations and why it is important to her business.
07:15 Who Mandi’s clients are – those who can no longer scale their business beyond where it is, even though they are successful.
09:31 Why Mandi feels she is good at failing and the story of what she considers her biggest failure.
12:38 The insight that Mandi received from working through her biggest failure and how it became Hands Off CEO.
15:29 An amazing case study of one of Mandi’s clients and how much time she was able to free up for them after working with her for a short time.
18:17 An example with this same client of the ripple effect and how he has been able to give back to his community.
20:22 Two offers from Mandi – To attend one of their executive briefings, you can go tohandsoffceo.com/briefing. Or to download their Ultimate Roadmap to Scaling that will give you some really good tips for how to increase the cash flow in your company visithandsoffceo.com.
To attend one of Hands Off CEO’s Executive Briefings, register at handsoffceo.com/briefing.
To get the Ultimate Roadmap to Scaling visit handsoffceo.com.
To learn about Mandi visit https://www.handsoffceo.com/about/
If you'd like to know how books, movies, and society programs you to be poor, and what the cure is visit wealthonanyincome.com/tedx. You'll hear Rennie's TEDx talk and can request a free 27-page Roadmap to Complete Financial Choice® and receive a weekly email with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or money.
AND if you'd like to see how you can increase your wealth and donate to the causes that touch your heart. Please check out our affordable program ‘Wealth with Purpose’.
Rennie’s Books and Programs
https://wealthonanyincome.com/books/
Wealth with Purpose:
https://wealthonanyincome.com/wealthwithpurpose
Rennie’s 9 Days to Financial Freedom program:
https://wealthonanyincome.com/programs
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Rennie Gabriel 00:09
Hi folks, welcome to Episode 101 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast. This is where we talk about money tips, techniques, attitudes, information, and provide inspiration around your business and your money. I'm your host, Rennie Gabriel. In past episodes, we spoke about how to understand the numbers from your business, how to measure the level of pleasure based on where you spend your money, how to track your money in 5 - 10 seconds, and what determines how close you are to Complete Financial Choice®, and how to run your business without being in your business. And last week, we had yours truly talking about the Three Secrets of the Wealthy. Today we have as our guest, Mandi Ellefson. Mandi is the creator of a model that allows consulting agency owners to spend less time in their business and have greater freedom, success and profits. She has consulted with over 100 consulting agency CEOs, helping them immediately free up 20 to 50% of their work week, to focus on accelerating profits. Her clients have grown to five figures of net profit every month, adding millions of dollars in sales, and have exited the day to day business to scale growth. Some owners now passively managed their businesses, or have even sold their companies. Mandi, Welcome to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast.
Mandi Ellefson 01:43
Thank you so much for having me, Rennie. It's a pleasure.
Rennie Gabriel 01:46
Yeah, we've known each other for a long time. It's so cool. Well, I've got a good idea of what you do, but tell me more and tell me why you do what you do.
Mandi Ellefson 01:57
Right. So yeah, we have known each other for a while, it's been great. And my husband and I have had a great opportunity to consult with you on our wealth and have a nice long-term impact to show from it too. So that's really good. And I can, I can vouch for what you do, and what you teach here on the podcast. And, you know, we really having that great pleasure of working with you and, you know, helping us build our wealth, helping us be able to create the lifestyle that is really, that we really want and to create that freedom. So that's, it's been, it's been really great.
Rennie Gabriel 02:32
Thank you.
Mandi Ellefson 02:33
Yeah, so my company is Hands Off CEO and we kind of do what the title says. We help CEOs become more hands off in their business. We help them be able to increase their price point so that they can have the profits and the cash flow to be able to hire the right people who can then grow the company, who can run the company, who can grow the company. And to really have, to develop those, the management layers in place that allow you to really let go and to do so safely and profitably in a way that they can really make the biggest impact in the world, both in their business, and also with their free time. And you know, you asked, Why do we do, why do I do this? Why do I do this? So the real reason is, there's a couple things and we might talk about this a little bit later on in the podcast. I know what it's like to be stuck in a business and feel like your freedom is taken away from you - just becoming a victim of your own success. And I know how stressful that can be. And you're just wanting to make it work for your family, you want to make it work for your team and for your clients, and you just kind of get stuck in this place where you can't move ahead but you can't move back either. The problem is, is that the most intelligent and capable and giving people are the ones who get stuck in this situation. And they have the most imaginative ideas and systems and frameworks and products that they're bringing into the world that have a tremendous impact. And if they're stuck, they're not able to make the impact in the world that they otherwise would make and in the lives of the people who they touch. So that's why I do this work.
Rennie Gabriel 04:18
Thank you. Thank you, Mandi. And as you know, I try and lead by example from the standpoint of donating 100% of the profits from the work I do to charity. Tell me about the charity that means the most to you and what they, what do they do?
Mandi Ellefson 04:33
Yes, so a charity that we support, Operation Underground Railroad, what they do is they save victims who are enslaved in trafficking, especially children in sex trafficking. This is a cause that is near and dear to my heart to be able to help the most vulnerable, to be really able to have that freedom, and we need to protect those people. This has been really on the rise for a while and growing our company allows us to generate more awareness for this cause. It allows us to be able to generate more of our profits to this. And you know, at the end of last year, we were able to make some nice donations to this that I was really proud of. I think in our world, we don't need a lot more people creating these organizations. We need more people supporting these organizations, because in helping them support them to do their good work. Because you know what? My highest and best gifts is not running a charity. That's not where my gifts are. My gifts are helping other people scale their companies. You know what? A huge piece of that, we only work with clients that actually have the desire to give back in some way in their community. And we really encourage them to be supporting the different causes that are aligned with their company's values. It's not only good for business, but it drives you forward, especially when, you know, some of the things that you're teaching, once you hit these, these milestones, once you are building wealth for yourself, once you no longer need to be growing your company, like what is your big "why" at that point? And if you don't have a bigger reason, a bigger cause, then you can get yourself into a place of complacency. And there's really no reason to rock the boat if you don't have a bigger cause and a bigger reason to really be supporting.
Rennie Gabriel 06:13
You're absolutely right. And it's the ripple effect. In other words, you by growing other people's businesses who donate to the causes that matter to them, is creating the kind of expansion you couldn't even do by yourself.
Mandi Ellefson 06:29
Exactly, exactly. And we see this also as an exceptional tool to be recruiting staff and retaining them. Because the generations now they want their work to matter.
Rennie Gabriel 06:43
Yes.
Mandi Ellefson 06:44
It's very important to them that they're showing up and not just getting a paycheck. They want companies that are socially conscious, that are making a difference in the world. And they want to know that they're waking up every day, they're contributing something that's bigger than themselves. And that's one of those things that can really give your staff meaning and help them know that they're making a difference.
Rennie Gabriel 07:08
Thank you, Mandi. Well, let me ask, who are your target markets? Who are you looking for as clients?
Mandi Ellefson 07:15
Well, we work with service-based companies. So examples of that are consulting and marketing agencies and growth agencies of all kinds, but they're doing b2b services. And the company is, was started, usually, because the CEO has a great deal of skill in some area, and maybe they left for whatever reason, they're like, I can do this better. I'm sick of having a job, any one of those things, right. But they're very ingenuitive and they have like fantastic results. But the problem is, is that because they have fantastic results, it's... They have fantastic results because they're so stuck in it and they're, they're very much involved in it. So when you're delivering that high of a touch services for your clients, and you're looking at adding half million, million plus for the companies you're working with, and really, these very big transformations. How do you be able to scale yourself? How do you be able to expand the work that you're doing without your hours expanding? And that's what happens is our clients, they get to a point where they're usually somewhere between half million and 3 million or so - and up from there as well. And they get to a place where they can't scale themselves and scale beyond themselves. And the more successful they get, the more trapped they are in their companies.
Rennie Gabriel 08:47
You know, it's so funny, because as you're talking about that I'm thinking of my son-in-law, who has created a very successful online advertising business that I am just afraid he's going to burn out on. I think I'm going to put the two of you together. Now your next question is kind of like two part. And that's what was your biggest failure, whether personal or business? And then what was the insight you gained from that?
Mandi Ellefson 09:19
Yeah, so I've, I was, I've been thinking about this one, because I have a lot of failures, right? If you get to any level of success, you've been failing a whole lot.
Rennie Gabriel 09:30
Yes, exactly.
Mandi Ellefson 09:31
I like to think that I'm very good at failing. I'm very good at being kicked in the face and getting back up, that persistence. And I think one of the biggest failure points that, like I really felt with supreme intensity was when I was pregnant with my younger daughter, and she's now almost 11. And I had an agency. I had a branding a web design agency And I had gone to a point where we had, had grown more than we ever had before. But it was, the agency mostly was me. So even though I had a team that I was working with that just everybody dropped the ball. And we're looking at, you know, eight and a half months pregnant, and my clients weren't getting back to me with the things that I needed to, to finish up the projects. My team was just dropping off the face of the earth. And I was just sitting here, wading in all of this minutia and depths and jumping into these these projects that, like, I didn't even know how to do some of the things like coding, for example. Like I was doing like PHP type of stuff, because I couldn't find people fast enough to be able to get it done. And then there wasn't the profit margins at the same time. It was just so incredibly difficult. To make matters worse, my husband was in this really demanding medical program. And I had a four year old on top of this, and I was just so overrun, and worn down to the point where like, my body was shutting down. My arms were actually like, there was a point where I couldn't open up the door knob handle by myself. It was so stressful. And I know that the physical things that I was, that was showing up - it was from stress. It had implications that went beyond the business. I mean, it was it would put some stress on our marriage, of course. This is at a time where we really could have used the income, right?
Rennie Gabriel 11:29
Yeah.
Mandi Ellefson 11:29
But I decided just to shut everything down. Because I needed that time with with my family. But still, what it looked like is me just like, totally burning out. My mother-in-law coming and taking care of me, folding my laundry as I was just sitting there vegging out on Netflix. I mean, this is this is kind of a raw story. But that's what it looked like for me, I knew there was a better way because I had experienced it. I was a manager at a previous company, and I had whipped this company into shape. I had so much freedom, even though I was essentially an employee. But I was able to create that for myself and you know, get my boss off my back and do so just let me do whatever I want. If I made them enough money, I knew that would be possible and that's exactly what I did. So I looked at this, and I'm like, How am I supposed to do this for my own company? That's the first part of the question.
Rennie Gabriel 12:25
Yeah, totally burned out and had to close down a business.
Mandi Ellefson 12:29
Well, and it was kind of a temporary closed down, but I would have really liked it to continue on while I was having a maternity leave.
Rennie Gabriel 12:36
Yeah. And the insight?
Mandi Ellefson 12:38
The insight . . . well, it took a little time for the insight. But what ended up happening is, is that I was just, you know, I had to figure out what was, how to actually solve this problem. So I went and I started having interviews with other business owners who had a similar challenge. And then I would just start helping them solve that problem. Because one of my, something that comes very naturally to me is solving problems. And if I can objectively look at a problem, I can solve it. So what ended up happening is I started doing this enough, and I started to see patterns. And I'm like, 'Great, I'm learning how to do this for myself'. And and what happened was that people started asking me to do that, and paying me to do that. I'm like, 'Oh, I guess I've started a new company here.' So I ended up selling the other business that got going again, and I sold it to one of my team members of the time, she's still running that company today actually. What I learned from that was that, first of all, solving the problem for other people, can be the way to actually solve it for yourself. That was one thing. The other thing was is that I learned where my real skill set was. And I had just been yearning so much in that company to be able to create big transformations. But the work that I was doing was not aligned with where I really wanted to do the biggest work in the world. And over, the company's now, and Hands Off CEOs now 10 years old. I'm still learning. I'm still learning more about what I want to do when I grow up. But we've created some really cool things, that is just, it's been miraculous and the transformations that it has enabled for other people. So I think one of the biggest learning points from that is that sometimes, I think sometimes God gives me things that are for me, to beat me down a little bit so that I can learn the lesson so that I can be able to teach it to other people. I think that's one of the biggest lessons.
Rennie Gabriel 14:41
And it's so funny too, because it reminds me of two expressions and one is people teach what they most want to learn. And the second is the thing that saves an alcoholic from alcoholism is helping another alcoholic stay sober. That's the whole 12 step model of Alcoholics Anonymous that keeps people alive is helping someone else stay alive.
Mandi Ellefson 15:09
Right.
Rennie Gabriel 15:10
So yeah, makes sense, it would work in business too. Well, give me a case study of someone that you worked with where they were when you met them, what maybe systems you put into place, but the point is, what's the result they achieved from following the work that you do?
Mandi Ellefson 15:29
Right, so I'll give you an example. Philip he has a consulting company, he has a consulting agency, that's, well you might even call it almost manufacturing in a way. They have this really innovative product that they put in place to be able to save companies, hundreds of thousands of dollars of lobster that would otherwise die, their product, that would otherwise die. And Philip was at a place where his company was at $600,000 a year. And he was completely overrun, overloaded. At the, on the low end, he was working 60 hours per week, but it was probably closer to 120. Yeah. Really stressful, but you know, he's such a good guy. And he's just out there, supporting his family, doing whatever he needs to do to be able to support his family. But as a result, he was getting trapped into the company, and it couldn't grow any further. So what we did is we looked at what is it going to take for us to free up some capacity, so you can have some time with your family, some time to be able to grow the company, and the first week we were able to help them free up 20 extra hours per week.
Rennie Gabriel 16:35
20 hours a week.
Mandi Ellefson 16:36
20 hours a week. Yes, that is not uncommon, actually. If they're working 60 to 70 hours per week, it's, we're probably going to find 20. We actually guarantee 10. But we, and then that came from just looking at a few tweaks, a few tweaks that he could do that would really alleviate a lot of burden off of his shoulders. And the other thing I did is that also we were able to help him restructure his schedule that eliminated 38 days of travel per year.
Rennie Gabriel 17:06
Mm Hmm. That's over a month.
Mandi Ellefson 17:07
That made a big difference for his family.
Rennie Gabriel 17:10
Yeah, right. Wait a second, if it's 38 days, and talking about five-day weeks, you're talking about two months of travel.
Mandi Ellefson 17:19
Yes, exactly. And when you have little kids growing up, that's precious time, saved a lot of miles too. So those are some examples of . . . So we're always looking for what are those few tweaks that we could be making right in the beginning, it's going to free up the CEO, just get some perspective, again, right, some perspective and get that, that space to grow the company. From there, we helped him continue to develop leaders in his company that are going to take things over for him and we helped him continue to beef up his offer, increasing his pricing. And by doing those things, it allowed him to be able to go from 600,000 to 2.1 million in the first year.
Rennie Gabriel 18:01
Mm Hmm.
Mandi Ellefson 18:02
And then from there, we've since helped him add $100,000 in extra profit in a following year. And he's now over 4 million in his company, in his main company.
Rennie Gabriel 18:13
That's the kind of case study I was hoping to hear about.
Mandi Ellefson 18:17
Well, you know, it's been really fun too, because Philip is the kind of guy that is really making, has the ability to make a huge difference. So his business has actually been responsible for revitalizing an entire community in the Northeastern Canada Maritime Provinces. He's supporting, like, his business is supporting the whole lobster industry, which is what the whole community is based on. And they also have been able to donate and support these other charities that will teach people, literally teach people to fish over in Africa. And creating this sustainable ways to be able to keep people alive. And then on top of that - and allow them to really flourish - and they are also building out products that they can, the shipping containers that they can ship around the world and be able to like revitalize a whole community and give them an ability to actually have a self-sustaining income. These individual little communities, where otherwise they're just barely, barely making it hand to mouth.
Rennie Gabriel 19:22
This is the ripple effect we were talking about earlier.
Mandi Ellefson 19:25
Exactly. Exactly. So that's, you know, that's - this is the reason why I do this work. This is the reason why I do this work even though, you know, following some of the things that I've been, you've been teaching us like, I don't actually have to work anymore. And it's pretty cool.
Rennie Gabriel 19:42
You're working by choice instead of because you have to.
Mandi Ellefson 19:47
Yes, I'm working because it's a mission. It's because it's interesting and because it is like we can make a big difference. And I want to see more Philips in the world, making a huge difference in their quiet way, maybe don't even realize that the ripples that they're making. But we're working with like the mini Elon Musk's of the world, that are completely transforming their communities in their own ways. That's why I do this work.
Rennie Gabriel 20:16
Well, now what I want to be able to do is let listeners know how they can get a hold of you to find out more.
Mandi Ellefson 20:22
Yeah, definitely. So if you're liking what I what I'm sharing here, one of the things that you can do is come to one of our executive briefings, you can go to handsoffceo.com/briefing, and I actually walk through the steps to be able to get to $100,000 a month, in profits, and beyond, if you want to scale your company to that that level. And if you just go to Hands Off CEO, you can also download our Ultimate Roadmap to Scaling. And that will give you some really good tips for how to increase the cash flow in your company, and the profit as well. How to really lay down the framework to have a sustainable company that you actually want to scale.
Rennie Gabriel 21:00
Beautiful. Okay, well, that'll be in the show notes, so people can just click on it, and get right to the briefing. And Mandi, thank you for this great interview. I appreciate having you on the show.
Mandi Ellefson 21:14
It's been my pleasure. Thanks so much, Rennie, for having me.
Rennie Gabriel 21:18
And to my listeners. Thank you for tuning in. Next week, we're going to have Joe Applebaum, a LinkedIn expert talking about how he became one of the fastest growing companies on the Inc 500. You can listen to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast on your favorite platform. And please rate, review and subscribe. And if you'd like to know how books, movies and Society programs you to be poor, and what the cure is, then log on to wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. You'll hear my TEDx talk and can request a free 27 Page 9-Step Roadmap to Complete Financial Choice®, and receive a weekly email with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or your money. And if you'd like to see how you can increase your wealth and donate to the causes that touch your heart, please check out our affordable program, Wealth with Purpose, obviously on the wealthonanyincome.com website. Until next week, be prosperous. Bye bye for now.