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Mr. Biz Radio: How to Quickly Scale Your Biz

Unedited transcription of the show is included below:

(00:05):

Welcome to Mr. Biz radio, Biz. Talk for Biz owners. If you're ready to stop faking the funk and take your business onward and upward, this show is for you. And now here's Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth.

(00:20):

All right, welcome to another episode of Mr. Biz Radio with me, Mr. Biz Ken Wentworth. And we've got someone who has an absolutely amazing story of determination success building a corporate career, building a a as an entrepreneur, building a successful company. And I wanna bring him on because again, I, I can't wait for you guys to hear his story. After immigrating to the United States at only 13 years old from Moscow, Russia, with no fluency in the English language, Albert built a corporate career, decided at some point, and we're gonna ask him about this in a bit, geez, you know what? I think he'll be doing more. And so he, after his corporate career, he started his own company. And he's taken that determination relentless to relentlessness to lead the next generation of young elite entrepreneurs through his company Axe Elite, with the mission of inspiring and servicing 100,000 new entrepreneurs nationwide by 2030, which starts with making one person better today. Our guest this week guys, is Albert. I'm, I'm giving it a shot here. Albert, Albert Shakhnazarov

(01:25):

How That's perfect. That's perfect. Thank you. Good, good so much Mr. Bi for having me. I really appreciate it.

(01:30):

Yeah. Yeah. So I've been looking forward to you know, we've got some mutual friends and they reached out and said, Hey, would you be interested in having Albert on the show? They shared with me some of your background or anything. I said, oh my gosh, this would be amazing. So let's start with that, Albert, tell us a little bit about your, your amazing journey.

(01:46):

Yeah. You know, my story starts 32 years ago when I was born on the floor of the refugee camp in Russia. My family had to be politically prosecuted and forced out of our own country. So my father took my pregnant mom and my older brother and flee the country, and they found safe home in the refugee camp. And the refugee camp was 350 square foot room, two twin beds cooked up public bathrooms, public showers, and that's all we had. You know, I tell people all the time, I don't come from much, but I do come from a beautiful, loving and supportive family. A family that constantly, you know, understood what it takes to be able to stick together. And my father sacrificed everything, you know, working day and night, every single day, 1516 hours, to be able to get us out of the refugee camp, to be able to get us a better future.

(02:46):

However, no matter how hard he worked, and no matter how many opportunities he faced the system, the government that we were part of constantly, you know, cut the ends and constantly, you know, brought him back to zero. So there was a political differences in Russia at the time, and there was a group called Skinheads. And the skinheads, you know, they wanted people that, that looked like us, that were a little bit dark skin, or had dark features such as dark hair or beard. They did not welcome them in Russia anymore. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So my dad actually got jumped by seven skin hats, and they broke his entire right side of the face into a hundred different pieces. My older brother was buried in the snow and we found him after two hours where he was basically, you know, brought to emergency room and brought back to life and all these segments of my life, right?

(03:45):

It, it brought us here to United States of America. You know, you talked about consistent perseverance. That's something that my father had, and he consistently wished for us to have a better life. But he knew the wishing upon a better life, nothing is going to come, and he had to take action. So therefore, we wrote a letter to United States of America to the White House every single day for 18 months straight. And we wrote over a hundred different letters explaining how the situation we're in, how we're looking for an opportunity to be able to come out to United States and really find our safe home and start a new life. And by the grace of God, we were given one chance to come to United States of America with sponsorship for only one month. And that's how, you know, we came to this country. I constantly saw my father work every single day on the day that we came to the United States.

(04:40):

Ken, he went in and started knocking on every business asking for work because he knew that he had only one month to support his family because everything else he had to pay for. And I saw how hard he worked, and I promised myself that one day I'm gonna be successful, and one day I'm gonna make sure that my father didn't sacrifice his life at the age of 40 to come to a different country with no language, no culture, no friends. I'm gonna make sure that I'm make him proud. And, you know, when I turned 17 years old, I started to build my corporate career in sales. I didn't know what sales was. I had no idea how to be a good salesperson. But everybody told me, if you want to make a lot of money with have no experience or education, there's one vehicle, and that's sales.

(05:23):

I studied English, I work hard, I work my fingers to the bone because I had a mission. And that mission was I wanted to make my father proud. I wanted to make sure that my last name, the Shakhnazarov last name, had a ring to it, that when people heard my last name, they knew that it was a guy that was willing to go out there and do whatever it takes to achieve his dreams and his goals. And I excelled in every corporate job that I had. I excelled. But one thing I noticed that no matter how hard I worked, no matter how much hours I was putting, I was always getting paid less. And I was always overlooked by my management, by people because of the difference of my language culture, or because I didn't have education. So I said, I'm gonna leave the corporate world and I am gonna go in and I'm gonna create a vehicle for older people that were once overlooked.

(06:18):

For people that just have phenomenal will, maybe they have an average skill, but they have a phenomenal will. But I'm gonna create a vehicle for them to be able to go there and achieve their most desired dreams for them to go ahead and find their purpose. And that's exactly how Axe Elite was born, is that I wanted to give people the best chance to succeed without being judged, without being overlooked. We have people that come from all walks of life. We have immigrants, we have people that were born in the country, but they were just placed in a wrong position. They work at Taco Bell, McDonald's, and they come to Axe Elite, and they're not making six figures because we teach 'em about sales, we teach 'em about leadership, self-development, and we make the most out of their time by making sure that we dedicate our expertise, not just developing their skill, but also developing their mindset. I

(07:10):

Can't even imagine Albert, going through what you went through, and especially, you know, I'm just thinking back, you know, the journey of your family. You, you were 13 years old, you were right in your formative years and experiencing all of this craziness and, and, and the struggle to try to get ahead. And, you know, I think it's so inspirational to hear, you know, you guys came here and you had, you had 30 days, as you said. And I feel like a lot of people, I hate to, I hate this, I'm gonna sound like a grouchy old man when I say this, Albert, but I feel like a lot of people in the United States take for granted the fact that the freedoms they have and the opportunities more so that they have in this country, and they don't think about a 30 day mindset of, man, I gotta make something happen. They just take advance, and I don't say take advantage of it, but take it for granted. And, and, and a lot of them don't become, you know realize their potential, I guess I should say. Whereas, you know, you come in as an immigrant, you don't have a choice but to, but to bust your butt.

(08:03):

Yes. Yes. One thing I wanna, you know, really mention here is that a lot of people, you know, they may look at United States today, they might say, well, United States looks divided. It's not a good, United States of America is the greatest country in the world because they have given an Armenian boy a chance to make all his dreams come true. Because this is the only country that you can come with no education, but no language, and go out there. And as long as you work hard, as long as you stay consistent and disciplined and make all your dreams come true, yeah, this is the only country that gives you that

(08:37):

Super inspirational Albert. Well, look guys, we're gonna hit a break here. We're gonna come back in the second segment. We're gonna talk more about Axe Elite, exactly what it is how he built that company, the opportunities it presents. Obviously we'll give the Mr. Biz tip of the week, but come back after the break and continue talking with Albert Shakhnazarov.

(08:59):

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(09:38):

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(10:08):

Got a question for Mr. Biz. You want answered on air, email it to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Now once again, here's Mr. Biz.

(10:19):

All Right, everyone, welcome back to the show. It's time for the Mr. Biz tip of the week. And this week's tip is, sounds a little counterintuitive to start. How can you as a business owner make more money with less sales? You can have your sales decrease and actually still make more money? And it's as simple as I call it, nym mind your margins. And what that means, real simply, is you keep an eye on your margins. When your margins are good, you can improve your margins, have less sales, and you keep more of the money. So your net margin is what I'm talking about here. And again, I don't wanna get too far in the accounting weeds, I'll lose everybody, put everyone to sleep. But it's very, very important to, to keep an eye on your gross margin and your net margin as well as a bunch of others.

(11:01):

But those two are particularly important because those determine your profitability. So you can have, again, you could even have a decrease in sales, especially in these un uncertain economic times. Some companies are experiencing that. But if you mind your margins and keep an eye on those things, you can maintain and maybe you can improve your profitability. We've done this with many different companies. It's one of the things that we've focus on. When I start working with a company, it's checking out their margins, set some margin goals, and we work towards that. Take the action steps necessary. We set one, three and five year goals for those margins. So that's really, really, really important. If you don't understand that look it up. Go, go to our YouTube channel. We've got a bunch of different videos about that stuff and check it out. But very, very important as a business owner to understand your margins.

(11:43):

So Albert, let's, let's talk a little bit about I guess, I guess let's dive in and let's talk about Axe Elite a little bit. So I guess, at what point during your corporate career, having all the success sounds like you, you felt like you were hitting a little bit of a, a glass ceiling. Like, gosh, man, I really can't get over the hump. It w was there like an an epiphany moment for you when you were like, that's it, I'm done. I'm gonna do something. Did you always maybe have this idea? How'd that all come to fruition?

(12:10):

Yeah, yeah. I, I used to manage a call center for, you know, a large telecommunication company. And I remember they were making a difference and a change in their compensation, and they wanted to, you know, kill the heartbeat of the business. And I say the sales team is the heartbeat of the business because without sales, there is no business, right? And they had to cut in certain re certain revenue, they had to be able to make changes on their compensation. And they brought me to the office and they said to me, oh, we're lowering the compensation for the salespeople. And I didn't understand. I said, you know, that's the heartbeat for our people. And I said, you don't work for those people, you work for us. And I said, no, I work for the people. I don't work for you. Because I always put the people first no matter where I went, no matter, you know, what I was doing.

(13:05):

I understood the power of people. One is too small of a number to achieve greatness. The reason why that call center was so great winning awards is because, not because of me, it's because of the people. It's because of the culture. And at that point, I decided, and I said, I no longer want to continue to see how people get mistreated, how people don't get love, don't get support. I'm gonna go and open something that's going to make people feel appreciated, make people feel great about themselves, and build their self-conception, build their confidence, and allow those people to go out there and really feel like, you know what? I don't have to love what I do, but I'm going to do it. And because I do it with the people I love, I'm gonna learn to love it. That was my mindset. And I remember my first sales job Ken, I was given a script.

(13:55):

I was told, this is your computer. Go make dials. I said, that's not the way to succeed. That's not the way to make it. The reason why most companies fail is because they don't take care of their people. They don't care about the finances of the people that work for them or with them. For me, the number one key is make sure the people that work with you or for you, make sure they're making good money. Make sure they're financially literate, make sure they understand the importance of credit score. Go out there and educate them, mentor them, help them out to help them take their lives to the next level. So that's how the idea of Axe Elite was born, taking people from average to elite. Well,

(14:36):

It's interesting you say that because you know, I I, and I've told my daughters this too, you know, even as an employee, you know, and I'll stand by this, and it sounds like you would, you would agree with this as well, Albert. You could have the j a job that's the perfect, it fits your skillset. You love everything you do, but if the people you have to work with and deal with on a regular basis you don't like, you will not like that job. Yeah, you might be able to fake the funk a little bit and get by, but eventually you're gonna get sick of dealing with crappy people that you don't wanna deal with. On the flip side, you could have a job that, you know, you're pretty cool, you know, but there's some things I don't really care to do, but you know, whatever, I'll suck it up. But the people you work with on a regular basis and you deal with and your customers, your clients, your, your coworkers, et cetera, you love those people, you will love that job. That makes such a big difference. I'm with you, man. The people part is so incredibly important.

(15:29):

100%. 100%. I believe that an average person day-to-day faces a lot of stress, a lot of issues, a lot of drama. And nowadays people spend a lot more time at work rather than they spend it at home. So imagine coming to the place that you hate or you don't get along with people. No one wants to do that. That's why the culture of a business, it is so important. Because if people love the people, then they will continue to come back to the place. If they don't like the people, they will find another place to go to.

(16:04):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So tell us a little bit about what, what does it look like? So let's say that there's someone out there that's, that's watching or listening right now and says, gosh, let me check out this, Axe Elite, which by the way, guys, I should mention, we'll put this in the show notes as well, but you can find out more at www.axeeliteusa.com, and that's A.X. With an E axeeliteusa.com. You can check out more there. But tell us a little about what that looks like, Albert.

(16:27):

Yeah, so anyone that's has ever been overlooked, you don't wanna go traditional way. You don't wanna go to college. You don't wanna get a job that pays you a salary or hourly, and you wanna go out there and say, how can I go out there and make six figures with the love support of an organization that can teach me on how to become a closer, how to become a salesperson, how to go out there and assist Fortune 500 companies? Then you will look at Axe Elite, because what we do is that we take you under our wing. We start to really change your self-conception. That's where we start, because a lot of people, they don't believe that they can do sales. They don't believe that they should live a better life. So we start to change your average mindset to become an elite thinker and elite mindset. And then we start to work on your skill secondary, and then we work on your skill. Then we start to work on your image, and then we start to change your whole aspect in belief system and programming on what you're capable of doing. But what we do here at, actually, we're a tech-enabled telecommunications company that are basically contracted by multi-billion dollar telecommunication giants. And we go out there and we either bring them new clients or we assist their existing clients by providing solutions and strategic planning with their finances and technology.

(17:46):

Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. so, so I, did you have some of those relationships with your, some of your, some of those current companies when you were in the corporate world? Is that how that kind of came, you know, came

(17:56):

About? That is correct. That is correct. You know, I was a top producer. I, I ran multiple top call centers and everywhere I went, people already knew who I was from those top gigantic thing telecommunication companies. So when I told them that I was going into business on my own, they, they couldn't believe it because not a lot of people are willing to take that risk, right? And I, you know, I had a good job and they said, why would you do that at this point? And I said, because there's a bigger mission to accomplish, and the mission is to be able to provide an opportunity, a vehicle to other people to go out there and become elite. And they said, you know what? We would love to work with you because we know what you have done when you work for someone else. So that's why your credibility, what you do inside and outside of your business matters.

(18:41):

Yeah. And again, it comes back to the people, like you said, Albert, I mean, it's a recurring theme, how you treat people, everybody makes a difference because you just never know down the line you're gonna be relying on someone or need someone's help, et cetera. Super important. So again, guys, again, we'll put it in the show notes, but www.axeeliteusa.com go check out that you can also follow Albert on Instagram. Go ahead and check that out. We're gonna come back, we're gonna get some of his tips on how to scale a business.

(19:08):

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(19:38):

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(20:09):

Check out all three of Mr. Business best-selling books at mrbizbooks.com. Now, once again, here's Mr. Biz.

(20:18):

All right, welcome back to show everyone. We're gonna dive into this a little bit because I am, I'm very intrigued to hear some of these things from Albert because if you think about it as you've already heard about his journey, you know, you left a corporate career, took the big entrepreneurial leap, which as you mentioned Albert, a lot of people just don't quite have the, the guts to do so. So kudos to you for that, first of all, and you've built this multimillion dollar company now. So, you know, as you were doing that, you know, what are some things that you found were absolutely key and critical components in order to scale the business as rapidly as you have?

(20:53):

That's a great question. And you know, I wanna make sure that our audience understand that even though you have guts and glory to go out there and make a big business, the big business is not built in one day or one week or one month. It takes a lot of dedication and time to go out there and make it happen. When I first started my business, it was started in an attic of the worst part in Connecticut, and that's the only thing I could afford to rent it. And it was four guys with me. We were in the attic. There's sometimes that we didn't have no heat or no ac working, but we, we had a mission, right? So the first component is being able to align yourself with the mission, align yourself with the right people, and align yourself with, with a game plan on what you're looking to accomplish.

(21:40):

Because those are the most three important things. Because if you don't know where you're going, you'll never get there. If you have the wrong people by your side, they're going to slow you down. And if you don't have a plan, then you actually have a plan to fail, right? So those are the first, the first component is you have to align yourself, right? The second one is velocity. And the velocity part of it is to be able to align yourself with the mission, with the right people. Have a game plan, but you need to also understand that you're competing 24 7 with other people that are looking to take you out of the business. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And when I started, everybody wanted to take me out of the business because I was that guy that was loud, that was in your face, that was letting everybody know that we are the next big thing.

(22:27):

And look at us, we're in an attic and people say, we're gonna squish you like a cockroach. So velocity to separate yourself way from the, from the competition. Okay. Now the third one, which is to me is I think a as equally as important is once you separate yourself from the competition, you wanna be able to take massive action, okay? Because the only way to separate yourself and consistently have that gap between you and your competition is to take massive action. So for example, I'm, I'm gonna give everybody an example. Yesterday, Memorial Day weekend I was working, my competition was barbecuing. Yep. Right? Well, there's Christmas time. I was working because I had a mission and I knew the more time I take off away from my mission that I am not getting there fast enough and the competition isn't a catch up to me.

(23:22):

So the massive action is being able to work 12, 15 hour days when I first started can for the first seven years, okay? I didn't take no vacations. I worked seven days for 15 hours a day for first seven years of my career. Within the five years I retired my dad, within the six years I retired my wife. On the seventh year I started to start to plan and say, okay, now it's time to maybe take a vacation on my seventh year. That's when I took my first vacation and it was only for one week. Nowadays, people want to go ahead and have a massive life, massive dreams that they wanna accomplish, but they're not willing to put the massive action and that's not gonna work. So that's a third component. The fourth component is being able to, okay, stay consistent in that process.

(24:15):

Because a lot of people, they go in and they can do something for a short period of time. I call that intensity. But what they can do is that they can't stay consistent. And when you stay consistent, right? What what's gonna happen is that it's gonna create efficiency because you're developing a ratio of doing something for a long period of time. So you're staying consistent and you're starting to build the ratio, numbers, metrics to where you understand on how to go out there and scale your business to the next level. A lot of companies that I meet with that I sit out and coach, I start to ask them for their numbers. I say, show me these numbers. Show me those numbers. And they say, well, we have no numbers. And I say, why? Because we don't track numbers. There's no metrics there. And that's the number one kill of the business.

(25:04):

Yeah. So I say to people, you have to do something for a long period of time. You have to track it, you have to measure it, and you have to understand those numbers because if you wanna have more sales, okay, now you need to know how many salespeople you need to hire based on the closing ratio that you have. If you wanna have less salespeople but have the same value of sales, then you just need to raise your prices. So numbers tell the full stories, men lie, women lie, but numbers don't. And if you don't understand numbers, then you're not able to scale your business. And then once you put all those things together, you are going to have success. Now, the success part of it, you're gonna have to have a good team in place playing the right positions. If you don't have the right people playing the right positions, then eventually that model or your business is going to fail. You can't have a cook being a hostess, you can't have a hostess being a cook, right? You gotta know your team and you gotta understand where is the person that you are going to put plays the best in their position, and that's how you make the business successful.

(26:11):

Yeah. So some really great things you shared there. So how important for you, is it Albert? Have you, what you have found is I've got a good friend of mine. I don't think it's his original quote from him, but he says it all the time. So I always associate it with him. Is he always tell, and I, cuz I'm guilty of this sometimes, he always tells me, Ken, progress not perfection. Yes. Does that resonate with you, Albert?

(26:34):

100%. I say this all the time, is the speed of implementation that will make you wealthy, not the perfection. At the end of the day, we always try to perfect things and things will never be perfect. I can tell you right, that things will never be perfect. However, if you start to implement what you're learning and you start to implement it fast enough, you can track and measure your progress and you can understand what works and what doesn't work, and you element eliminate what doesn't work, and you start to apply what works and that will create momentum. I want all your audience to know Ken, momentum creates millionaires. That's the key. No one does things for a long period of time to be consistent enough to create momentum, to experience the magic. Because once a train goes 180 miles per hour, it can break through any wall. It won't be unstoppable, but most people are now willing to go in and put enough wood to burn to be able to gain that consistency, that speed, that massive power to walk through any wall.

(27:36):

Well, and I love the analogy hour. Now take it a step further, getting that train from zero to 180 takes a lot of work, takes a lot of effort, takes a lot of wood on the fire. Getting that train from 180 to 200 is infinitely easier. Yes. Because it's already rolling down the track to your point, you know, it's always rolling down that track and, and your, in regards to you talk about action and velocity. You know, I, I heard Grant Cardone say this at a, at a an event one time. He said, you know, we've got someone on our team that is a dedicated landing page person. He said, we'll be sitting around and we'll have an idea and we'll call him up and say, Hey, put put together a landing page for me. He said, within 15 minutes I'll have a landing page and I'll go live on social media, and within two or three hours I could have 10, 20, a hundred thousand dollars in sales.

(28:21):

Exactly. Because they take action. And he said, you know what, you know how many times we've done that and we've had a misspelled word on the landing page and people just blast us. And they're like, oh my gosh, you didn't run spell check. He said, I don't care. I got a hundred thousand dollars in sales. Like I, you know, you can, you can complain about the spelling error and we'll fix that. But you know, it go, it goes right in in line with what you're talking about with, with that velocity and just taking that action, even if it's imperfect action initially.

(28:46):

And Ken, you have a bestselling book, right? It may, it may not be the best written one, but it's the bestselling book. I am sure there's a comma or a period where it's not supposed to be, but it's still a bestselling book because you took massive action and you put out there the content that helps people and packs them.

(29:06):

Yeah. It's funny you say that. And I'm, we, we we're running outta time here, but Grant Cardone had a book and he said he put it out, he wrote real quick, he put it out and someone got back to him and said, there's like 200 spelling errors in this book. And he said, look, I didn't say it was the best written book. I said, it's the best selling book. Like, to your point. So we've been talking again this week, guys with Albert Shakhnazarov, sorry about that. www.axeeliteusa.com. Albert, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

(29:29):

Thank you so much.

(29:31):

Absolutely guys, thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Have a fantastic remainder your week. Don't forget as always, cashflow is king

(29:40):

To become part of Mr. Biz Nation, follow him on all social media platforms or never miss a show by going to mrbizradio.com. If you prefer free video content, visit the Mr. Biz YouTube channel or check out his streaming channel, which is available on 100 plus streaming platforms at mrbiznetwork.com.