Master One Channel First

Shaan tells a story about a humbling lesson from his business advisor Sully that changed how he thinks about focus.

"I've told this story before, but it's probably one of my most humbling and insightful moments—a hard lesson learned very quickly, a band-aid that got ripped off for me.

We have a buddy Sully who's my business Yoda. If I got a business problem, I go to Yoda and he sees through all the noise I bring him and just finds the thing.

My ecommerce business was early on and growing. I think we were at maybe $100,000 a month in revenue. We got there doing Facebook ads. Sully told me, 'Do Facebook ads and focus on Facebook ads.' I was like, 'But what about Google?' He's like, 'But what about what I just told you?' I was like, 'Okay, cool.'

So Facebook ads is working. We've gone from zero to $100k in three months. This is awesome. I go to him and I'm like, 'Dude, it's working. I'm thinking now we should do influencers and we should spin up Google. I really think influencers could work. Here's this cool influencer idea I have.'

He just cut me off and was like, 'You want to win, right?' And I was like, 'Yeah.' He's like, 'Cool. Don't say the word influencers until you're at $300,000 a month just off of Facebook.'

I was like, 'But wouldn't it be bad to—let's do both.' And he's like, 'Well, here's the thing: Is there any reason you believe that Facebook can't get you to $300,000?' 'No, it's got us to $100k. Why couldn't it get us to $300k?' And he's like, 'And if we couldn't get Facebook to $300k, do you think any amount of influencers is going to save us?'

A successful ecom brand should be spending basically a million-plus per month in just Facebook ads, which means you're making more than a million off of Facebook. That's where you're trying to get to. You kind of have a broken company if you can't really get there. Most ecom companies win off of Facebook ads, so you should just try to win off of Facebook ads before you go do all this other stuff.

I had expected when I was going to get advice from him that he's going to give me these amazing strategies, these new hacks, these brilliant tactics. Actually, the most useful thing he did for me was just say, 'Don't say the word influencers until Facebook is cranking $300,000 a month to your business.'

And by the way, we kept it going. After $300k we did $500k. After $500k we did a million. You just keep going off of just those two. Guess what? I still don't do influencers. It's now five years later. We didn't need it. I definitely would have distracted myself with what sounds like a good idea.

And it comes back to the Steve Jobs quote, which is: Focus is not about what you say yes to, it's about saying no to otherwise great ideas."