If I Had 12 Months to Make $10M — This is My Plan

Peter Thiel, billionaire Co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, said:

“If you have a 10-year plan of how to get [somewhere], you should ask: Why can’t you do this in six months?”

Most founders flounder not because they’re in the wrong business, don’t have enough money, or don’t have the right team. They remain mired in mediocrity because their goals aren’t big — or fast — enough.

I’ve grown two completely different businesses by $10 million in 12 months.

What follows are the 7 ingredients required to scale any business by $10 million or more in 12 months.

1 — Reverse-Engineer Your Goal

First, get crystal clear on what your goal means and where you’re starting from.

In my company, Lifeboost Coffee, we grew from $2.5M to $15.5M in one year. In 12 months, our monthly sales increased from $570K to $1.9M.

$10M per year is $833K per month. However, there’s going to be a ramp-up period. You won’t jump from where you’re at today to an extra $833K per month in month 1.

Let’s say you’re doing $2 million per year right now and you want to get to $12 million per year in one year. This was our actual growth path that year:

In the first month, we only grew by $50,000. In some months, we actually took a step backward in revenue.

Expect your growth to look the same: a small step forward, a big step forward, a small step back, another step forward. Knowing this, you can plan your operations to absorb the growth without causing your company to explode.

2 — A Product that Scales

My favorite product to sell serves a narrow, but expandable niche in a big market.

We sell low-acid coffee in the broader healthy coffee market, which is in the even broader general coffee market. That gives us nearly unlimited capacity to expand. Coffee consumption overall is relatively stable to slightly growing, yet the trend within that market is toward more premium, healthier coffee options. We’re positioned perfectly.

Warren Buffett has talked exhaustively about being in businesses with tailwinds rather than headwinds. The tiny company he turned into a trillion-dollar empire, Berkshire Hathaway, was a business with significant tailwinds. It manufactured clothing in America decades ago when most manufacturing for similar products was moving to lower-cost countries.

If you want to scale fast, you need to be in a business in a growing market. Then, you need to select a product within that market that appeals to a specific, underserved segment that can expand.

If you’re concerned that your current business or current products can’t scale, think again. Look at adjacent markets and ones in which you could pivot your business to enter. Adjusting your current business is much easier than starting a new one.

In the late 1990s, Hansen’s Beverage Company sold natural juices and sodas. Its revenue was around $30 million per year. Yet, its owners kept experimenting and pivoting within the beverage sector. It experimented with an energy drink product. Sales took off. It launched a few more energy drinks, one of which became Monster. Today, Monster Beverage is a $70 billion company.

3 — Traffic that Can Scale

Next, you need to pick a way to reach customers that lends itself to rapid iteration and has massive scale potential.

Your default option should be Meta (Facebook) advertising. You can reach half of the world’s population with one platform for as little as a few dollars to start. No matter what business you’re in, you can reach them with Meta advertising.

The whole game of paid online advertising is to be able to spend $1 and get at least $1 in gross profit back within a reasonable period of time.

We were able to rapidly scale our sales for Lifeboost Coffee because we acquired customers with Meta advertising for around $40 and made around $40 in six weeks from those customers. That meant we could scale our advertising rapidly without burning cash.

Today, because we spend around $1 million per month on marketing (mostly advertising spend), our costs have increased. That’s OK. We have a lot of revenue coming in from subscription sales, Amazon, and repeat buyers. So, we’re willing to spend $100 to acquire a customer now to keep scaling our business, knowing that after just one year, every dollar in gross profit those customers provide us goes straight to our bottom line.

In my other business, Amazing.com, which scaled by more than $10 million in one year, our primary traffic source was affiliates. The great thing about affiliates is that you only pay if they drive a sale. In that business, we sold a course for $3,500 to $5,000. Affiliates received 50% of any sales they drove. That pay-per-performance model allowed us to scale from $2 million to $14 million in the second year.

3 — Cut the B.S.

The problem with success is that it makes you complacent and lazy.

Success makes you think that you can’t fail and that you’re a business genius who turns to gold anything you touch.

Then you get punched in the face by reality.

As we grew sales from $0 to $70M in four years at Amazing.com, we accumulated:

• 60 employees (half at six-figures in annual compensation)
• 9 finance employees
• A $40,000+ per month office
• A $50,000 billboard
• A $1 million radio show advertising contract
• An overseas development team with a second office in Ireland (more than six-figure employees)

Our overconfidence nearly killed the company. Too many people doing too little. Too many expenses produce nothing.

We went from making nothing to making millions to losing $500,000 per month back to profitability once we cut out the bullshit.

As they say, you must “keep the main thing the main thing” — especially as you scale fast.

Apply the 80/20 rule to your whole company and growth strategy. Focus on the 20% of products, 20% of traffic, and 20% of people that drive all your growth. Relentlessly trim or reduce everything else, or you’ll kill your growth.

5 — Double-Down on Traffic and Testimonials

In our first year of rapid scaling at Lifeboost, we spent 90% of gross profit on marketing.

Every dollar that came in that we could spare, we put back into marketing.

The bigger you grow revenue, the easier it is to grow profit.

It’s much easier to make a lot of profit with a business doing $20 million per year in sales than $2 million per year.

To grow sales, you only need two things: traffic and testimonials.

Keep optimizing your main traffic source. Forget all other ways to get customers until you’ve completely maximized what’s possible with that one source of customers. Our focus for the first 18 months was only on Facebook ads.

Turn as many customers as you can into reviewers. Get star rating reviews, detailed written reviews (always try to get full name and location from reviewers, photo reviews, and video reviews.

Having massive social proof creates a flywheel effect. The more proof you get (and put on your sales pages), the higher your conversion rate; the higher your conversion rate, the more sales you get; the more sales you get, the more reviews you get; and the flywheel continues to spin.

6 — If You Sell Physical Products, Solve for the Inventory Issue

A buddy of mine grew his business from nothing to a $200 million exit in just a few years.

At one point, however, he had a decision to make. To keep growing his company, he needed a lot more inventory, and that meant getting a $10 million personally guaranteed loan. He did it, stressed out the whole time, and it worked out fantastically.

I’ve fortunately not had to do that to grow my companies. At Lifeboost, we only pay for inventory once the customer buys it (it’s a weird quirk of our operational setup).

However, if I didn’t have that luxury, I’d be doing everything possible to push out payment terms to our suppliers.

There are four primary ways you can finance the growth of your business. I recommend using these in this order. Only use debt if you’ve exhausted all other options.

1. Higher margins per order (getting customers to pay more per unit and buy more upfront)
2. Pre-order sales (selling products before they’re produced)
3. Equity financing (selling a part of your company or putting more of your own money into the business)
4. Debt financing

7 — Zero Distractions

Scaling fast requires complete focus. Knowing what you will not do is as important as knowing what to do.

I’ve had so many 7-figure business owners come to me who want to scale their companies, while they’re also pursuing 2-3 other side projects (new businesses).

Inevitably, as soon as they cut out the side projects — which they knew they should do all along — their main business accelerates fast.

Set one goal (grow your business by $10M). Focus only on that for 12 months. Watch your results explode.

Conclusion

Growing your business by $10 million in one year is very possible. I’ve done it twice in two completely different companies.

Here’s what’s required:

1. Back into your goal (know what it really means)
2. A product that can scale
3. Traffic that can scale
4. Cut the B.S.
5. Double down on traffic and testimonials
6. (In physical products) Solve the inventory issue
7. Zero distractions

“We live in a world in which courage is in less supply than genius.”

Peter Thiel

Have the courage to pursue rapid growth. You can accomplish far more, far faster than you think is possible. Use these 7 ingredients and be amazed by what’s possible.

Go Deeper to Scale Your Business by $10M in 12 Months

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