How Ernesto Mandowsky's Six-Pillar System Changes the Game for Entrepreneurs

[00:00:03] Hector: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santiesteban, and I am your host today, merely your guide. Our special guest is Mr. Ernesto Mandowski. He is the creator of the million dollar machine and someone who has helped me to be able to start to begin to scale our operations because Ernesto, there's so many business owners who, you know, we were talking before they look at previous revenues, they look at what they did last year and they look at what they did next year and, or what they want to do next year.

[00:00:31] Hector: And there's usually. A gap between that. we did X amount this year. We want to do Y next year. And then the question becomes, well, like, how do we do it? And if it was like me, what I understood is we couldn't keep doing the same things that we were doing. we had to do something differently.

[00:00:45] Hector: where you came in and helped us to sort of see that light. So, we're going to get into a bunch of that. But before we do that, I'd love for you to catch up the listeners a little bit about how you got to this place and then, how you see and, yourself working with clients or so, you know, the way that you look at the way that you serve the people that you work with.

[00:01:02] Ernesto: Yeah. Thank you, Hector. And I'm excited to be here. quick backstory on me is I spent 10 years working in one of the funnest, craziest businesses in the world. And that's the restaurant business. People love the idea of food and Netflix is having its moment and Instagram, but no one realizes that behind closed doors in the kitchen, it is chaos.

[00:01:26] Ernesto: It is sheer chaos. And maybe that's the same thing in business today, like on the surface, our websites are beautiful, but like behind closed doors, it's a mess. And four years ago, I realized I wanted to take my superpower, my gift, which is this intersection of. Building systems and hospitality and warmth and help business owners create that change so that they can serve a five star experience and not only serve a five star experience.

[00:01:55] Ernesto: We do it over and over and over and over again at scale so that they can live into their truest potential

[00:02:02] Hector: Yeah, it's interesting that you started in the restaurant industry. I read an article recently that said that there was a type of business that was really trying to utilize robotics and AI and, you know, essentially have their goal is to have one hostess at the front. And essentially that was it.

[00:02:18] Hector: And the restaurant would kind of run

[00:02:20] Ernesto: run itself.

[00:02:21] Hector: And what they realized in doing that was that they couldn't use the old layout. They couldn't have the kitchen in the back that, I mean, they had to really redesign the restaurant from the ground up in order to create this new experience. And that's sort of what I've realized in kind of growing my business is that what got us to a certain point.

[00:02:40] Hector: Actually is what's preventing us from getting to the next point. And you kind of saw that with our with our operations is that, things started to break down when you hit a certain capacity. And I imagine that you see that a lot in the restaurant space, too.

[00:02:52] Ernesto: Oh yeah. And restaurants and I mean, that's life. we start doing this thing. We create a habit, we get used to the habit, but once we reach a certain level, now isn't serving us anymore. we need to create a new habit, create a new habit that will help us. Do something totally different.

[00:03:09] Ernesto: And sometimes it does require a ground up total redesign. That's what's happening in tech companies as they're growing their businesses. They have to totally scrap the code and rewrite the code. You know, when they're at 10, 000 users, a hundred thousand users, a million users, they have to continuously reinvent.

[00:03:26] Ernesto: Themselves that they could serve more people,

[00:03:29] Hector: Yeah. And that's a lot of our listeners do is they find something that they can do. oftentimes it's a service. They're doing it for somebody and then they, get good at it. And more and more people start coming to them. And then they'd be like, okay, I need help. And let me add on this person and let me add it.

[00:03:41] Hector: And it becomes this sort of,

[00:03:43] Hector: hogwash, I think you might have something like it's a Frankenstein sort of business that ends up emerging almost out of necessity, just because they're trying to keep the food coming out the door.

[00:03:52] Ernesto: That's exactly it. That's exactly it. and that's what happens when you're a solopreneur, you're kind of driving the train, you have all the context. That you have carried because it is your vision. And there's this part of us that is afraid of actually letting go because we have to be in control.

[00:04:08] Ernesto: And so we choose to build the whole thing ourselves, even though we don't have tech skills, we don't have project management skills, but we like build it anyways. Cause we have to put out the fire until we find ourselves in a place where shit, I can't, I can't, I can't grow anymore.

[00:04:23] Hector: Yeah. What do you think are the blind spots that, keeps someone there? I think what's. Great about working with someone like you is that you have sort of a different perspective. You come in and you can see things either because you're further away from it, or you have, certain experiences, but what are some of the things that you think business owners are missing when they're transitioning from this?

[00:04:45] Hector: Okay. Frankenstein, potpourri hogwash sort of model into and we're actually want to run an efficient machine, you know, we want to create a million dollar machine. Like what, what are people missing that you often see that they don't?

[00:05:00] Ernesto: Well, to quote a, rising influencer, Renee Brown, she talks a lot about vulnerability and I think there's a certain level of pride that we have, we develop as we're building this business. But, we are afraid of maybe opening up the kimono and actually asking for help. And I mean, you were amazing.

[00:05:20] Ernesto: barely knew each other and you were like, yeah, take a look. And you just opened up really quickly. And the faster you opened up, like we were able to get in there and like, just point out three things and you can do these three things. And like, you're already starting to see. How you can make the change.

[00:05:36] Ernesto: And so business owners today, I mean, people in general, they're afraid of opening up. They maybe they've been hurt before. they're right. Closing down, they can be right. But being right in that case isn't helping them solve their problem, which is. growing their business and figuring out a way to flow and serve more customers.

[00:05:53] Ernesto: So I would say people can open up, people can open up quickly. The faster you could get over yourself and open up and ask for help is the faster you can get towards solving the challenge that you're currently facing.

[00:06:06] Hector: Yeah, what helped me with that was we're in a mastermind group together and enjoying some of these groups. What I've realized is that I'm not so special in the sense that my disaster is not that unique. I think that we all have this idea that we're so unique in our wretchedness or our disorganization or our, that there's something unique about how And I've started to realize that, most of the time it's not that out of the ordinary, like, I can't tell you how many times I'm like, it was so bad. I've seen it before. It's like going to the doctor. You're not going to believe it. And he's like, I've seen three today. Just like that, you know?

[00:06:44] Ernesto: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we have to choose to go to the doctor. We have to choose to go to the person. That's why they say, like, you know, have your checkup, clean your teeth every six months, have your physical once a year. You know, when you have these cycles, you follow the cycles of life, but there isn't really like a, Oh, business systems cycle.

[00:07:04] Ernesto: but I think everyone needs to like have a routine group of people that they share these things with. Cause as you said, our challenges aren't such special snowflakes. They're actually things that everyone goes through.

[00:07:15] Hector: Yeah. And when someone comes in, the state of, basically mass capacity, and I'd imagine that there are a lot more people or a lot of businesses out there where they realize if we want to grow, we can't just do more, like working harder Works up to a point, but there's at a certain point where everybody's working as hard as they can and working them harder is not is actually going to be detrimental, to the long term, health of the organization, if you will.

[00:07:42] Hector: So when someone comes in and a place like that, where they're feeling. Max to their capacity. where do you like to look, right? If you, if someone comes in for a certain symptom and they're, you know, I have a fever though. Like, okay, well let's look here. When someone comes to you and they said they're maxed out of capacity, where are the places that you like to look where you might be able to identify some, opportunities grow.

[00:08:01] Ernesto: a great question. And people who are listening are like, okay, Ernesto, what's the silver bullet? Like, what is the place? And unfortunately, there is no one specific thing. And if I were to look somewhere, it would be where work happens. Where is your collaboration happening? Is it in Slack? Is it in Notion, like in your case?

[00:08:24] Ernesto: Is it in Asana? Is it in Trello? And when I look at those spaces, and this is something I told you, You know, I see 15 views with no description, no context. I am a per a brand new person into the organization and I have to spend 30 minutes of your time to like, figure out what this is and when you look at your digital workspaces.

[00:08:47] Ernesto: that is the first place to look at, looking at that and making that as focused as possible is, the first place that I would encourage people to look at or to focus. Marie Kondo, their digital spaces and you will immediately see a way, an opportunity to improve your productivity.

[00:09:05] Hector: So because you brought up Marie Kondo, I remember when I started it, actually it was my, girlfriend at the time, she read the book, she watched documentary and everything got pulled out of the closets and it never made it back in. and I would imagine that someone starts to do that too, where they go, okay, you know, let me start, Diving into my system, my product management system, but then have you seen that where they get into the process and they get stuck or they get frustrated or like, how might someone be able to move past that sort of thing?

[00:09:34] Hector: in some people's minds and in some instances it can be a lot that they're, unpacking and going through. Yeah.

[00:09:40] Ernesto: it is a lot. It is definitely a deeply spiritual trauma opening experience. But you get past it by creating a constraint and, giving people permission to be imperfect and to keep moving when I work with people, the first way we work together is a three months, very focused program.

[00:10:00] Ernesto: There's 30 short lessons, video lessons, and short, quick exercises to implement. And the idea is not to finish those three months and have a perfect well oiled 100 percent optimized machine, but you are a totally new person because Your 70 percent of the way their system is a total new way of paradigm of operating.

[00:10:23] Ernesto: So you just got to give people permission to not be perfect and tell them to keep moving.

[00:10:28] Hector: You mentioned a couple of project management systems and we're going to get into some of the like nuts and bolts. I'd love for you to maybe share a few of these lessons that you think might be helpful. How do you look at, whether it's an Asana or it's a Trello or, Whether it's a Notion or an Airtable or a, you name it, there's so many different things.

[00:10:48] Hector: I'm curious how you've looked at that landscape and sort of, your perspective on, is there a right one to use?

[00:10:55] Ernesto: Yeah, that's a great question. There is no right one. , it all goes back to, it all goes back to the goals and the intention. I personally, know, I have my 6 pillar system, which is this interconnected components, which start with your goals and your people and your projects and your promotion.

[00:11:12] Ernesto: You know, there's all these interconnected pieces. So when I looked at the landscape and I saw the different tools. I saw that note that Asana and Trello and ClickUp didn't really allow for much customization. They don't really allow you to duplicate other people's templates. They're really good in that they give you a fixed environment that people have to stay in, like those constraints that we were talking earlier.

[00:11:37] Ernesto: And that's great if you want to just get a tool that can work, but there's not much room for creativity. So when I found Notion and I saw that there's infinite customization options, infinite ability to connect different databases to each other, I basically said this aligns with my needs because I have a framework that will be customized to any number of industries.

[00:12:00] Ernesto: We've worked with 10 industries, 50 companies. And so what, this tool has been able to be molded for those 50 companies across these 10 I kind of landed on a notion versus the other ones.

[00:12:15] Hector: Yeah. Perhaps that's why we hit it off, because I was like, ah, another Notion fan. but my challenge has always been, like, how do you explain notion to somebody? To somebody who doesn't know, like, what it can do? I end up looking like a loony who's just, trying to tell someone about the next coming of, I don't know, the Buddha or something.

[00:12:33] Hector: Like, they just look at me like I'm crazy.

[00:12:35] Ernesto: you know, telling, I feel like telling someone is like you're trying to convince them to change their perspective and it's not going to work because people are rooted in their beliefs. But if you show them, now showing is a whole other story, and there are influencers, and there are these mega YouTube stars like Thomas Frank is the best example.

[00:12:55] Ernesto: Or I learned from a guy named August Bradley, when he showed me his framework, I was like, wow, like, this is amazing. No one could have explained to me that. so you're just like, through seeing things. It's like, wow, and if you ask someone now, how do you work? And they start to explain to you, well, I have my messages and I have my WhatsApp and I have my Slack and I have my emails and I have this and I have that.

[00:13:22] Ernesto: And then you just ask them a really, you know, follow up question. It's like, does that feel overwhelming? And if they're saying no, then, maybe they're in denial. I think it's just about asking people questions versus like telling them how to change their mind.

[00:13:35] Hector: Yeah, when we get into the, when we get back from Breaker Nester, I'm curious about these six pillars because I remember when you first looked at my notion, it reminded me of how , my bedroom used to look as teenager, you know, a middle schooler. It was just, Things everywhere and things and I knew where stuff was kind of, or I thought I knew where stuff was, but if anybody else would have to go find it, anything in there, there was no chance that they were even getting past the pile of clothes on the floor.

[00:14:01] Hector: So when we get back, I'd love for you to help, In whatever way, help people visualize sort of what that sort of system looks like. And so we'll get into that right after this quick break.

[00:14:12] Hector: Hey y'all.

[00:14:12] Hector: Today's episode is brought to you by Amplify Media, and we are a podcast and content production company. Well, we like to think of ourselves as platform builders or community makers because chances are you probably have a passion, a product, a mission, a message, something that you wanna get out to the world, but you might not have the time, the team or the tech skills that Ernesto does to do it well.

[00:14:28] Hector: If that's the case, we can help Go to amplify media com. That's a ml a y media com. You can also check the show notes for info. And with that, let's get back to Ernesto. So, Ernesto. let's assume, I think everybody has kind of hodgepodge their thing, even if it's just on a, napkin or a bunch of pieces of paper. So I'd imagine that very few people are starting from absolute scratch. So how does someone like that, how do they start to move towards this place of, you know, when I look at your notion that, database or your notion, everything's clean, it's organized, people know where to go and look, how does someone start to make that transition

[00:15:04] Ernesto: I have designed the 6P system to kickstart that transition, not just kickstart it, but then flywheel that momentum. So as with all change, it all begins with your goals. It all begins with the first P, which is your priority. What are the priorities right now? Have you made a New Year's wish list in the past ever?

[00:15:27] Hector: in the past? Yeah.

[00:15:28] Ernesto: In the past, sure. So people on January 1st or December 31st, they take out their paper and they're like, what, what are my New Year goals? And like, I want to lose weight and I want to make more money. And I want to love my partner better. And I want to do this and I want to do that. It's the same thing in our business.

[00:15:42] Ernesto: We like want to do these 15 different things. And right from there, we're setting ourselves up for failure. So when you get really clear on the priority and no more than three, three priorities, that sets the foundation for everything else. So if you told me, Hey, Ernesto, my priority is to fix my customer fulfillment process. That is an amazing focus area because now you're going to look to the second P to find the people in your network that can help you do that. I'm sure the entrepreneurs, the audience listening, maybe hopefully they've heard of, Ben Hardy, Dan Sullivan, big, big coaches who wrote the book, who not how.

[00:16:25] Ernesto: It's around finding people in your network that can help you achieve your goals faster, much faster than you could alone. you found Ernesto, a who in your world that was helping you to fix or improve your customer fulfillment process. So that second P is around people getting really clear on the relationships in your network, mapping them all out in one place.

[00:16:47] Ernesto: I happen to use Notion, you can do this on an Excel sheet as well. And once you meet those people, it's around creating that collaboration. So you put together some sort of a agreement, some alignment, maybe you hire them, maybe they hire you, maybe their clients. These are just people again, that are rolling up to that ultimate priority of yours. That's when you move into pillar number three, which is projects. So now that you have your collaborations. You gotta do some work. You gotta do some work. There are some tasks involved. There's a schedule. There's timelines. You have many people inside of your company. You have resources. You can task these different people with the actions that they have to achieve and, specifically the day they have to achieve them. So when we look at notion, if I'm John, or if I'm Kelsey, or if I'm Paula, we all need to be able to look at that information and all know who is doing what by when. So that when the CEO is looking down at everything or when everyone is looking at the information, it's just very clear, when is Paula going to do this so that the person, so that the project can move forward so that the goal can be achieved, you're starting to see kind of the interconnection between the first three pillars. Once we get the work done, we're successful. The client is happy. We collect that testimonial. It's time to share that win with the world. It's time to share that message, which brings us to the fourth P, which is promotion. So how are you promoting yourself? How are you telling the world what it is that you do, how you create transformation for clients, you provide podcasting services, you help people build media channels.

[00:18:23] Ernesto: So you are a big component of, the promotion pillar inside any of these small businesses. And if you're doing these four things right now, you have a lot of activity. You have some buzzing energy, you have more business. Coming your way, it's time to hire people so that you could scale so that you could do more so that you could serve more clients so that you could raise your prices with hiring more people.

[00:18:47] Ernesto: You put them through training programs. And so the 5th P is playbooks and your playbooks are how you do everything, how you do sales, how you actually bring them through your product or service. How you promote yourself, how you do the books, how you do your weekly meetings. It's everything in your business.

[00:19:05] Ernesto: And then the last pillar is planning and planning is around your weekly meeting, your monthly meeting, your quarterly meeting. It's these different cycles that you follow where you're looking at different parts of the business. And at this point, you know, it's not any one specific tool or software, but it's these six components that are working together because once you get to the six P I teach people like, Hey, like set up your priorities on a quarterly basis, because once you get through a quarter, it's time to set new priorities and you just keep going around and around and around again.

[00:19:37] Hector: Yeah, you mentioned it's sort of this becomes this fly well that that built on top of each other because what I've seen in the past, both from organizations that I've led and organizations that I've been a part of is that you have, concerted effort. For a quarter, but then that effort doesn't build on to the next quarter or they don't compound on each other.

[00:19:55] Hector: There are almost these things that are one officer or I don't know what the word is, ad hoc sort of activities as opposed to everything. When, when you talk about everything layers on top of each other, everything is in alignment and everything is working together to make those priorities happen.

[00:20:09] Ernesto: Correct. Because earlier when we were talking about the Frankenstein phenomenon, when these founders are, putting together these solutions. Sometimes part of the solution is, Oh, I'm bringing my brother or my cousin or my neighbor, or my best friend's sister to come and be my operator or admin or assistant, there's nothing wrong with that at all, but this team that people build, maybe they don't have that mindset of how do I build a compounding flywheel?

[00:20:35] Ernesto: Maybe they haven't worked at a tech startup. Maybe they haven't worked in an environment where they're thinking of that mindset. So part of what I'm up to with the six pillar system, it's not just helping clients, serving them directly, but actually like inspiring these operators of a new way of thinking so that they can then come into, you know, they can come learn my framework and then show up in a space.

[00:20:58] Ernesto: and do that work and create a much larger impact than they would have otherwise.

[00:21:02] Hector: you mentioned you worked with. Dozens of companies and, over 10 different industries for you, are there any favorite stories that stand out or, real, transformative experiences, that you look back on

[00:21:15] Ernesto: Yeah,

[00:21:16] Ernesto: Totally. Last year, about a year ago, I shared this vision with a new friend of mine. Her name was Amanda she runs a software development shop, 30 people, multi seven figures. And I shared my vision and she was like, I have an operator that I want you to mentor. I said, great. And I started working with her operator, started teaching her some frameworks.

[00:21:39] Ernesto: This was around June in October, she brought me in for a half day workshop. And I kind of took a look under the hood. Like what are the tools that she's using? And it was. All Google Drive, Google Sheets, she's using, teamwork, Asana or Monday, and, I introduced her to the six P's. I introduced her to Notion.

[00:21:58] Ernesto: I introduced her to these templates. I introduced her to these ways of working. And as part of our, collaboration, she had five one on one hours with me and the course in such little time where we actually spent together live. She has told, she has an operator that she had this woman kind of take ownership over Notion and these tools. They've totally re engineered how they are surveying their customers. They've totally, they've centralized all the information in one place.

[00:22:28] Ernesto: Everyone knows who has to do what. And she told me, she's like, listen, because of this, am now calm and confident and like, I know where everything is at and I'm ready to double the revenue of my company. And that's not a 200 K to 400 K that's multi seven figures to reaching eight figures. So when someone tells you that, knowing that like such little one on one time is required, it's like, wow, this has leveraged, this is a lot of leverage. And so that's exciting because now I hope to get a lot more seven figure services, businesses to be able to scale and multiply with the resources I'm creating. Thomas Frank.

[00:23:07] Hector: the operating system that you, help to build what's nice about it. Nice is an under understated word is that. Impacts every area of the business it's like the brain, I think, Frank Thomas, is that his name? I feel like, I think,

[00:23:24] Ernesto: It's Tiago Forte,

[00:23:25] Hector: I think Frank Thomas is a, is a, baseball player. Tiago Forte is a second rate. Okay. There's someone out there. but that's essentially what it does is it impacts every area of the business because it has such a central place in it. And so it can't be overstated how valuable that is.

[00:23:39] Ernesto: without getting too woo woo. It's not just the second brain. The second brain is more of like a personal, it's, been ringing true with a personal productivity space for individuals. But you're now developing a shared consciousness. I mean, it is a shared It is a shared brain among 20, 30 people. Like when 30 people are moving, when you have a living system of 15, 20 plus people, and when everyone is coherently moving together, that is just magic, but it takes a lot of work to get there.

[00:24:12] Hector: That's for sure. this is a great conversation here. Ernesto, if people want to get more from you or if they want to go deeper or find out, you know how they might be able to apply some of this stuff to their business, where's the best place to go or how am I to be able to get that help?

[00:24:28] Ernesto: So everyone listening, I encourage them always start where you are, start where you are, come to the million dollar machine. com. There's a quiz on that first button. You answer five questions and it provides you an analysis. Of what are the 6 metrics of where you're at and what are some things that you could do to get to that future state that you desire and it has. A couple of video courses with some tips, some insights and an opportunity to chat with me directly. I'll give them a personalized recommendation and I'll point them where they need to go.

[00:25:01] Hector: I love it. We'll link all that up in the show notes as well. last question here, Nesta, in your opinion, what is the secret to scaling a business?

[00:25:09] Ernesto: The secret to scaling a business is making the time to actually do it. Take one hour out of your week and focus on and turn and put on airplane mode and close your emails and do your weekly process every single week being consistent.

[00:25:24] Hector: You heard it simply, and try that again, page simply put, and, profoundly Received for sure. I want to thank all of you listeners for sticking around with us today. we will be forever grateful for a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. And if you know someone who needs to hear this, maybe they're running frantically, just trying to keep the machine rolling, send them, hit that share button, send this episode go get connected.

[00:25:49] Hector: Go take that quiz. I don't ask the site. I appreciate being part of the tribe. We'll see on the next one. Later y'all.