The Business Octopus - Blog #General

The Entrepreneurial Journey

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 17:14:36 +1000

Going from solo to mogul

Most founders are accidentally building a job, not an asset.

They pay themselves a wage. They work harder than anyone they've ever managed. They lay awake at 11pm thinking about Tuesday's invoice.

And then, somewhere between year three and year seven, they realise the business can't run for a single week without them in the room.

That's not a business. That's an employment contract you signed with yourself.

A real business is an asset — and the test is simple. **If you walked away tomorrow, would your business be worth something to someone else?**

If the answer is "no" or "I'm not sure," you don't have a business. You have a high-paying job with no boss.

That's fixable. But you have to know which phase you're in, and what each phase actually demands of you.

## Get paid twice

Before we walk through the phases, the goal:

Every business should pay you twice. Once while you run it, and again when you sell it or hand it off to management.

Most founders only ever see the first cheque. They build something profitable but not valuable — a business so dependent on them that no one would buy it. The end-game becomes shutting it down. A decade of work, no asset to show for it.

The phases below are how you avoid that

## Phase 1: The Learner

Your entrepreneurial journey starts long before you think it does.

It starts in school, in your first job, in the side hustle that didn't quite work, in the boss who taught you what *not* to do. Every conversation, every project, every screwed-up quote you sent to a customer — that's all training.

Two things matter here, and most people get them wrong.

**It's not about how well you did at school.** Richard Branson is dyslexic and built a multibillion-dollar empire. School gives you a foundation — basic maths, communication, how to work with other people — but business is fundamentally a series of human interactions. If you spent your school years figuring out people, you got the more valuable lesson.

**It's about your ability to keep learning.** Books, podcasts, YouTube videos, masterclasses, mentors. Mix the depth — some surface-level scans, some medium dives, some deep work. Avoid living in the social media shallows, because surface-level only gets you surface-level results.

The most underrated phase of the Learner stage is your time as an employee.

You probably won't go from school straight into your own business. Most people start as an employee somewhere — and that's a gift if you use it. You learn how management structures work. You see what processes do (and don't do). You watch how businesses make money, lose customers, and recover. Someone is paying you to learn.

The trap is staying too long in one role. Tunnel vision sets in. The fix is to vary your experience — different industries, different functions. Spend time *doing* the work, then spend time *administering* the work. Spend time customer-facing, then back-office.

The competitive edge often comes from cross-pollination. Drones used to be aerospace tech. Now they spot vermin, spray weeds, and check farm equipment kilometres from the sheds. Whoever brought drone thinking into agriculture didn't invent the drone — they connected two industries that hadn't talked yet.

That's a skill you build in the Learner phase

## Phase 2: The Solopreneur

This is where most businesses die.

You're doing everything. Finding the customer. Doing the work. Sending the invoice. Chasing the payment. Posting on social. Answering the inbox. Updating the website. Doing the bookkeeping. And then, when you finally finish all that, you have to find the next customer and start again.

There's a saying for this: **"Kill a bear, eat a bear."**

While you're eating the bear, you can't hunt. So between each meal, there's a starvation period. You finish a project, look up, realise you've done no marketing for two months, and the pipeline is empty.

You feel like you're drinking from a firehose. You probably are.

Two things make the difference between solopreneurs who break through and solopreneurs who burn out.

**Document as you go.** The single highest-leverage thing you can do in this phase is record what you do. Every process, every script, every checklist, every "this is how we do it" video. You think you're too busy. You're not. Because the day you hire your first employee, you'll need all of this. If it doesn't exist, you'll have to take time out of running flat-out to create it from scratch while training a new person who's costing you money. Better to document a little every week than build the whole library in a panic.

**Don't document things that aren't solidified.** If you've done it five times and it might still change, don't write it up yet. If you've done it fifty times and you know that's the way, write it up. Or at least write it in a format that's easy to modify when the process evolves.

The first million in revenue is the hardest because you're learning every part of the business for the first time. Once you've made it, you have a plan, a process, a structure. That's what makes the next million possible.

## Phase 3: The Manager

Congratulations. You hired someone. Things should get easier.

They don't.

Now you have payroll. Performance reviews. Onboarding plans. Exit interviews. Training. Leadership development. A whole second job has appeared, and it's called "having a team."

Two things to know:

**Don't expect your team to work as hard as you do.** They're not the founder. They're not laying awake at night thinking about the next client or the email they should have sent. They're there to do a job, and they care about the rest of their lives. Manage your own expectations or you'll burn out the team and burn out yourself.

**Good enough scales. Perfect doesn't.** Hand off the task with a process, accept that the output won't be exactly what you'd produce, and move on. Your job isn't to do the work anymore. Your job is to make the work doable by someone who isn't you.

The fastest way through this phase is documentation. Again. The faster you document your own processes, the faster you can hand things off. Less training time, fewer mistakes, less pressure on you to be in the room.

This is also where you start preparing for cashflow swings — bigger highs and bigger lows. Systems hold the floor. Aim for a **"best worst day"**: even when things go wrong, the floor doesn't drop below a level you can predict.

Like McDonald's. Even on an average day, the burger looks like a burger. Bun, patty, sauce, cheese. Edible. Fine. They engineered the floor — and that's what made it possible to franchise.

If you can engineer your own floor, you can scale.

## Phase 4: The Business Owner

This is where you stop being a business *doer* and start being a business *owner*.

The team handles sales, marketing, customer service, and operations. You attend a board meeting once a month. A management meeting once a week. The rest of the time, the business runs itself.

Sounds aspirational. It's also the only version of the business that's worth anything to a buyer.

A business built around *you* can't be sold. A business built around systems and people can.

To get here, you have to do something specific: **pick a date.**

Put a date in the calendar — the day you'll stop being part of everyday operations. Make it real. Three years from now, two, eighteen months — whatever feels honest. Now you have a metric to work back from. What needs to be in place by then? Who needs to be hired? What needs to be documented? What needs to be automated?

Without that date, the business runs on you forever. Because there's always a reason it has to be you in the room today.

The other thing that matters at this phase is your vision document.

A one-line vision statement is fine for a tagline. It's useless for running a company. What works better is a five-page document describing the business in detail at a future point in time. How many staff. What revenue. What customers. What problems you solve. How decisions get made. Written in past tense, looking back from the future.

Why? Because it forces you to stop carrying the vision in your head. Every thought you have about where the business is going needs to be shareable. The faster you can put your thinking on paper, the faster the team can act on it without coming back to you for every decision.

## Phase 5: The Investor

You've sold the business, or you're taking distributions while it runs under management. Now you get to do the fun part.

This is where you diversify. Other businesses. Real estate. Shares. Online courses. Whatever passive or semi-passive vehicles fit your appetite. The point isn't to make more money for the sake of it. The point is to derisk your time.

If one project fails, you've still got food on the table. You can make decisions because they're the right decisions, not because you need cash this month.

That's the goal. Not "rich." Optionality.

## The dual focus

Every phase of the journey serves one purpose: getting paid twice.

Profitable while you run it. Valuable when you don't.

If you only optimise for profit, you can build something that pays well today but vanishes the day you stop. If you only optimise for valuation, you'll spend years chasing exit metrics and forget to keep the business healthy in the present.

The dual focus is what separates a business from a job.

## What to do this week

If you read all of that and recognised yourself in one of the phases, here's the move:

- **Learner** → Take a job that exposes you to the part of business you don't yet understand.

- **Solopreneur** → Record one process this week. Just one. The one you do most often.

- **Manager** → Write down what your "best worst day" looks like. Set the floor, not the ceiling.

- **Business Owner** → Put a date on the calendar.

- **Investor** → Send me a message. I want to hear what you're working on.

If you're ready to stop being the bottleneck, that's exactly what we do at Relevate. We design the CRM and automation work that gets you out of everyday ops — so the business runs on systems, not on you. Send me a message and we'll map out where you are and what would unlock the next phase.

— Avon

Dealing with seasonality

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:23:54 +1100

It's mid-November.

Your customers have stopped making decisions. Projects are getting pushed to "next year." Your pipeline is drying up.

Most business owners do one of two things:

Panic and try to force sales that aren't there
Check out completely and wait for January

Both are wrong.

The quiet season is when you build the foundation for your best year ever.

Here's how.

The Restaurant Rule

In restaurants, there's a saying: "You got time to lean? You got time to clean."

Same applies to your business.

Downtime doesn't mean do nothing, it means prepare for the battle.

The Quick Wins:

Clean your CRM (delete dead leads, update contact info)
Write that proposal template you've been meaning to create
Document the process you explain 50 times a week
Update your pricing based on this year's learnings
Review every bottleneck that slowed you down this year
Build SOPs for recurring problems
Plan your Q1 marketing calendar
Identify which clients to fire (yes, really)

Strategic planning:

Strategic planning isn't writing a 40-page document nobody reads.

It's asking: What's changing around me, and how do I position for it?

Example: The Olympics are coming to Queensland in 6 years. What business could I build TODAY that explodes in value by then?

Ask these questions to get started:

What regulatory change is coming to your industry?
What technology shift is your competitor ignoring?
What customer problem is getting worse, not better?

The businesses that dominate aren't lucky. They saw it coming and positioned early.

The Problem You Can't Solve Alone:

Here's the trap: You don't know what you don't know.

You can clean your CRM all day, but if you're cleaning it wrong, you're wasting time.

You can build SOPs, but if they're solving the wrong problem, you've built documentation for failure.

You need people who've been there.
Who've made the mistakes.
Who can tell you what actually matters.

This is why we built the Relevate community

You got time to lean? You got time to clean.

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:23:54 +1100

Mid-December hit and my calendar went from back-to-back meetings to tumbleweeds.

This happens every year:

Customers stop making decisions.

Projects get deferred.

Nothing real happens until late January.

Most business owners panic or check out.

Here's what I learned in the military: In the downtime, you prepare for the battle.

Your CRM is probably a mess right now. Dead leads, outdated contact info, deals that closed six months ago still marked as "in progress."

In January, when leads start flowing again, you'll be wading through garbage trying to find real opportunities.

Spend one afternoon this December cleaning it:

Delete dead leads
Update contact information
Tag people properly so you can actually find them
Archive completed deals
Document your sales process
Build that proposal template you keep recreating

One client did this during Q4. Came back in January with a clean system. Closed $240k in Q1 more than half their previous year.

Not luck, preparation.

You got time to lean? You got time to clean.

Manufactured serendipity

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 15:01:01 +1100

How to get lucky on purpose

I'm going to tell you how to get lucky on purpose.

Sounds impossible, right? It's not.

Last week I was at a networking event in Austin. I didn't force anything. Just showed up, had real conversations. I ended up mentioning that I run a YouTube channel when it came up naturally.

The speaker pointed at me. "You have to talk to this guy. He's got 300,000 subscribers. You should do a podcast with him."

I didn't pitch, someone else did it for me.

This week I'm recording a podcast I didn't ask for. That's manufactured serendipity.

Here's how it works:

Hang out where opportunities happen. Networking events beat your home office every time.

Go deep, not wide. I spent over six figures with people in my community over the past 12 months. Not because I had to, because I'd observed them long enough to trust they'd deliver.

Do random nice things. Send someone a cake. Make an introduction that benefits them, not you.

It may feel like zero ROI when you do it, but that small gesture created opportunities for them. Their success created opportunities for me. One introduction led to another, which led to another.

You can't get lucky building alone in your back room hoping someone stumbles onto your website.

Our community is protective about who joins. We're selective about culture. We focus on giving first. That creates opportunities out of thin air.

Because when you consistently show up and add value without asking for anything back, people remember.

Like this member:

Then when opportunities arise, they think "this person deserves this."

Stop waiting to get discovered. Start creating the conditions where people can't help but think of you when opportunities appear.

Why keep a dog and bark yourself

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 20:48:24 +1000

Consultants come with experience

Most consultants: "Yes, I can build what you're asking for. Here's how much it's gonna cost."

Us: "Why the f**k would you want to do that? Why don't you do it this way instead?"

That's the difference right there.

See, here's what happens with most consultants: You go to them with a problem, they quote you on building exactly what you asked for. No questions asked. They take your specs, build it, collect their fee, and walk away.

Six months later, you're back to square one because what you asked for wasn't actually what you needed.

We're not the cheapest by the hour. But we're cheaper in the long run because we do a better job.

We'll save you a thousand hours of mucking around by telling you upfront

“This approach won't work. Here's what will.”

Sometimes that means saying no to projects that don't make sense. Sometimes it means pushing back on requirements that'll water down the outcome below its success threshold.

Because at the end of the day, we want to double your operations, not just tick boxes on a project spec.

That's consulting. Everything else is just expensive implementation.

P.S. I created a weekly session to workshop your digital strategy with you, we only have a few spots left for the month. Go here to claim a spot:relevate.mysamcart.com/digital-strategy-breakthrough/

P.P.S. Don’t be offended if I tell you your approach won’t work…

Value your expertise

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 20:48:24 +1000

Saying No

A $100M company called wanting help with CRM selection and business process review.

"We need five days of consulting," they said. "Analyze our workflows, interview staff, create a software comparison matrix, and give us recommendations."

I quoted $2,000 per day for five days total.

Their response: "We were thinking one to two days. Maybe $2,000 for the whole project."

They were asking me to understand a complex business in 16 hours, interview multiple departments, and deliver strategic recommendations that could impact their entire operation. For less than they pay their current consultant for half a day.

I politely declined.

Not because I'm difficult to work with. But because clients who undervalue expertise from the start rarely respect your process or results later. They'll micromanage every decision and blame you when their shortcuts don't work.

I referred them to their existing consultant who charges more, they'll get the same outcome but pay triple.

The lesson isn't about being stubborn.

It's about understanding that some projects aren't worth taking. When a client's expectations and your reality are that far apart, walking away protects both parties.

The right clients understand that expertise has value. They know the cost of getting it wrong exceeds the cost of doing it right the first time.

Welcome to the Relevate Defence Community

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 15:15:48 +1000

The Relevate Defence Community makes it easy to join the dots.

There are a lot of industry communities that are all aimed at driving membership revenue or supporting a particular audience subset. These are often social gatherings of major Defence Primes but rarely hold value for the wider Defence Industry network.

The Relevate Community aims to educate and provide a community platform where we can collaborate and work together on dealing with the complexity of Defence

Getting into the Australian Defence Industry is hard, but worth it. It can take years understand, prepare and enter the Defence industry, particularly if you are just getting started. And although it is challenging, the payoff can be very much worth it with contracts in the 7 or even 8 figure+ range.

There is a ton of information out there but no-one to guide you where to start. There are hundreds of government agencies, information sessions, websites and flyers but none of them Show you how to get started or guide you through the process. They just point you in the direction of even more resources and wait for you to figure it out on your own.

You need a guide to help you get into the defence market sooner. With the right guidance you can shave off years of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars of employee time cost and investment in getting into the defence industry.

If you are new and don't know where to start, then we can help.

The relevate defence community is a group of people that come together to help eachother understand the operating environment, keep on top of trends and help you figure out how to get into the defence industry one step at time.

There is an online course that can help guide you on understand where to start
There are experienced professionals than can help you at various stages,
There is a community forum where we crowdsource answers to your questions

You can get the TLDR of the Defence industry and fastrack your way to the critical information rather than sifting through 500-page whitepapers to figure it out.

It can take years understand, prepare and enter the Defence industry. So join the Relevate Defence Community and accelerate your Defence Journey.

Get In Touch Now