Fire Nation in the house. JLD here ends a welcome episode nineteen hundred and forty one of EO Fire where I chat with entrepreneurs on fire. Seven days a week from accomplishing goals to launching podcasts to creating funnels and webinars that convert I have four free courses waiting for you at EO Fire.com.

Now let's chat with today's featured guest, Daven Michaels. Davener, you prepared to ignite. Let's light this on fire. Daven is a New York Times best selling author 30 year business veteran in CEO of one two three employee.

The premier outsourcing center in the Philippines. He has three centers and over five hundred employees. Daven, take a minute, fill in some gaps from that intro and give us a little glimpse of your personal life.

Sure, sure, absolutely. Well, it's great to be with you JLD and yeah, our company has been around for nearly a decade. One two three employees, the prime premier outsourcing center of the Philippines. We have hundreds and hundreds of employees and we work with entrepreneurs all over the globe and some of the biggest thought leaders on the planet like you and we do all the busy stuff in their business from Internet marketing, social media telemarketing back office tasks are mission at one two three employee is to rescue lifestyle star entrepreneurs.

Give them their time back and their lives back and we love doing it and personal thing is I've got a couple of kids a wonderful woman and we're about to make the move to become your neighbor.

You know, it's funny about that is this is actually going live on February 13th, which means you officially been in Puerto Rico for 13 days as of people hearing these words right now.

So welcome to Puerto Rico. I'll date in Conta you are my neighbor you're living right in Palmest, Del Mar. By the way, Fire Nation, all the cool entrepreneurs are moving to Palmest, Del Mar just let us right. I check it out Google act 20 Puerto Rico. You'll see why now, Daven, I want to know what your area of X pertises if you could just say of all the things that you're great at what's the thing that just stands out the most is the thing that you are just crushing.

Well, I'd say probably well two things really I know I know you all want but ultimately leverage I'm the guy that's known for leverage if there's a way to leverage it if there's a way to short cut is what I'll do it's it's my business.

But also I think it's made me successful in business is my ability to manage people.

Well, of those two I'm going to pick one and I'm going to pick leverage and I'm going to say what's something that we as entrepreneurs don't typically know about levers like what's something that you just find that if we knew this if we knew X or Y or Z it would just help us out.

I think all entrepreneurs know that they need to leverage but most entrepreneurs can't seem to wrap their brain around how to do it and I get that because I've been self employed for over three decades as you said and for the first two decades for the first 20 years I was a micromanager and still in my soul I'm a micromanager because I find that most entrepreneurs are perfectionist they micromanage and they all they something comes across their desk and they're like you know I can do that myself but that's the trap and so the key.

So the key to building a big company because I know if you're listening to this podcast you don't want to have a small company most likely you want a big company and the key to that is getting leverage on it and so throughout my day all day long I'm asking myself one question and that is is this the highest invest use of my time is this the highest invest use of my time and if the answer to that is no it's immediately outsourced or delegated to somebody else.

Now I'm going to call Davin out real quick I'm sure he's not going to mind but right before this call he was taking a nap and having let's be honest that was the highest invest use of your time because I need arrested Davin to keep up with my energy am I right that's absolutely true yeah what happens I actually came back on a flight this morning it was an early flight I just needed a break so I took a quick hour nap.

I love it. So let's shift to your entrepreneurial journey which has been over 30 years now what is the worst entrepreneurial moment the youth experience and take us to that moment and tell us story.

Oh boy. Oh boy I hate talking about it. I love hearing it.

I'll tell you why I hate talking about it is because in my journey which is over 30 years I I've I've if you look at my track record as a whole it's been unbelievable I look back at I can't believe it but and so it looks like it's just this upward journey but it was full of ups and downs because that is the entrepreneurial journey right it's ups and downs you have to take risks it's not always going to go right and why I hate talking about this story is is it's embarrassing and what's embarrassing about it is it was a time for me and I was

when my business almost folded when I almost went under and I'd love to tell you that it was 25 years ago but it was only a few years ago and that's what makes it so terrible it was less than a few years ago it was a couple years ago and I'll explain to you what happens so if you are a burgeoning business if you're growing your business you're going to get to a point in your business where you've reached uncharted territory where your company starts to get so big that you've never experienced something like that before that happened to me a couple years ago and when you get

to that point you really have two options one is you try to model through it but I think a better way to do it is you find people that have walked that path before you and you bring them in right and you bring them in is either a contractor a consultant or an employee well I did that a couple years ago our company was growing you know really rapidly and we've gone to in place where I never had that kind of growth before so I brought in a rapid growth of VP of I was dev a guy that had grown a 30 million dollar company that I had not done before

and he was unbelievable and not only was he fantastic but he became a great friend and he came on board and immediately our sales went through the roof we were already doing great but then they went crazy I'd never seen growth like this it was unbelievable

but what happened was there was a sacrifice and what happens was as we grew that new base of clients we were sacrificing our old clients because there were some things that were put into process

and I can tell you what the big thing was was that all of our customer service now went through the sales team and the reason why is because every time somebody calls him for customer service issue that's a potential way to turn it into a buying opportunity

well that whole thing backfired and it went terrible and our charge back rate started to go up it went from 1% to 2% to 3% and right around 3% I told our VP I said you know you got to get a hold of this as they were going to get the call our charge back rate went to 4% and then our charge back rate went to 5% of course I got the call

...