Taking business to the next level? Brad, Minte, other rich guys
 

Minte just clised on a new building that's half a MILLION square feet. Most GFYers work from home or an office with no more than three people and their company never will grow larger than 1-3 people. I sometimes wonder what some of you do differently.

My business has paid the bills for 15 years in a row, so we must be doing some things right, but we never moved beyond 400 square feet. What's the difference between a businessman who feeds himself and one who takes it to the next level? In fifteen years we've grown to 3 1/2 people and are considering hiring another. I'd love to hear from the big guys what they did differently from the 95% who are "successful" and will never expand beyond the spare bedroom.

that minte guy is a little suspect. posting pics of "his" cars? who does that?

What's a difference?Well a persistence i guess,if my prod would be bigger then 10% i am sure i would be on same level lol

1) operation excellence
2) strategy / ideas
3) capital
4) luck
(usually more or less in this order)

It's just money ...

i would never want to be responsible for so many lifes and families

You are talking people that have been in the business since 96-98. A shit ton of money was made long before now. BTW, what the fuck is "3 1/2 people"?

Minte is a hoarder

For me the most important part is really enjoying what I do in business. I am a mechanical engineer and moving into manufacturing was the natural step.

A few years ago, I looked at my bank account and realized that I could go out and get a new Bugatti Veyron. So I bought an Amada Laser. Last year I looked at the bank account and realized I could go out and get a Citation X. So I started looking for a larger plant.
I could easily take a lot more out of the company than I do. The fun part now is growing it. Adding new equipment,looking for companies for sale that would fit.

Lastly,we are very diversified. The plastics division makes over 800 different products for over 150 different customers. The metals division does nearly 500 products. Our biggest customer is 4% of our sales. I look back and it turned out I actually had a lot more patience than I ever thought I could have. It's been a lot of baby steps so far and a lot more baby steps ahead.

Getting in before the hoards.

What does he do in porn? With links.

its all about what someone enjoys. for me, running a company with so many employees and equipment would be pretty stressful. I like to keep it simple, just me. and of course i don't have any capital like he does anyways. he made a shitton of money in the good ole days so he can do pretty much whatever he wants now.

I'm definately not one of the big guys (only slightly larger then your company), but for what it's worth since we run similar businesses, i'll share my opinion on this.

I think the deciding factor when you take it to the next level is when it all simply becomes too much to manage on your own. On some days we have next to nothing to do and work on internal projects. On other days, we're swamped with support tickets and custom stuff. I have to code, do sales, answer support, prepare updates, quote custom projects, and chat/shoot the shit with clients to maintain business relationships. Right now, we manage really well compared to when It was just me at the start. I was always stressed out and would have a nervous breakdown every 2-3 months. It was too much, so I had to expand.

Let's say I were to hire a dedicate sales guy. Right now, I don't go actively seeking work - it comes to us from referrals and existing clients. If I did have someone actively seeking custom projects for us to do, we'd probably have much more work and require more staff which would be taking it to the next level. Hiring here is hard as hell with the whole porn thing, because poland is extremely religious so it's like trying to hire in the vatican. However, let's just say I could find staff. Without more work, I can't hire more programmers because they'll be sitting idle. Without more programmers, I can't take on that much more work rendering the sales guy pointless. Would need to deligate someone to a managerial position as well, because I don't want to be the only guy in charge and be asked a million questions all day from the staff on how this or that should be done because i'd get nothing done.

In a nutshell to me it seems like taking business to the next step isn't just growing slowly employee by employee, it's taking that big leap. I don't know how much of your biz is just selling strongbox etc and developing new versions of it vs custom projects vs whatever, but I try to think of it in the same way as having a store and opening up another branch. You take what you already have that works, and you make another copy of it. As for why I haven't done this yet - I want to get some more experience in hiring and managing staff before I take the big leap so I don't make any stupid mistakes. Another big obstacle to overcome I think is the cost vs profit margin. When I was working alone, my work was like 95% profit with maybe 5% costs (since i was creating everything using no materials, my only costs were computer hardware/software/phones/etc). With an office, staff, etc, the profit vs cost is much different and more similar to a traditional business and that was really hard to for me to adjust to.

The difference ray is the cost of the product vs the profit margin and the number of available customers. How big is the market you are in? Minte's businesses have a hundred billion dollar market. He is actually a smaller fish. Your market has perhaps few hundred million and you are even smaller fish in your market then he is in his. Find a bigger fish bowl.

With less fish in it. :1orglaugh

Agreed.

I think as an entrepruneur that is the most difficult time... letting go of your baby and turning things over to other people. They are never going to do it as well as you, or have the same passion as you. You will need to learn to accept their 100% is the equal to your 50-75% and that will be good enough.

We have just licensed over 12,000 DVD's/65,000 scenes, with the option to pick up another 13,000 in the 4th quarter. Which I am intending to do. We also have some 20 different projects going on from hosting, software, and porn. That does not even include all of the busy work that comes once once each new project is completed.

All of that said, I have had to hire different people to manage the different pieces of the business. Minions report to them, and then I only have to deal with ONE guy for hosting, ONE guy for the porn side. It makes my life much easier only having to deal with one personality, versus 3 as an example. Plus I am not the most diplomatic or politically correct. It works better for everyone this way.

Getting back on point... you can make good money doing it as a lone wolf if that it what you like. Not responsibilities, and clearing a decent profit annually. Some are perfectly happy doing that. For me, I am a creative person. Once a new idea is rolled out and perfected to the point of a formula, I lose interest and want to move on to the next thing. In time I have learned it's good to have some mindless minions to turn over the reins too.

In short, it really depends on what you want out of life. For me it's a mix of the creative ideas, and a certain dollar amount I wanted in my salary after taxes. Being able to do what I want, when I want, with little care in the world.

:2 cents:

The biggest thing is learning to give up control and also hirering people with more knowledge than yourself. Basically you gotta figure out what you suck and then hire someone do that :winkwink:

There is 2 types of employees
The ones that work for a paycheck
The ones that work to own the product they create / maintain.

If you hire only people that work for a paycheck you won't grow bigger than having a handful of people as you will end up spending all your time on them.

You are actually a very good example of someone who has really stepped up their game in the last while. In like 2-3 years you went from running a couple of foot fetish sites to doing ALOT of various projects at once.

For me, the 2007-2008 credit crunch/recession/economic collapse was a wake up call. I needed more diversity, and irons in the fire. I had to make myself more recession proof. I had simply gotten lazy.

As I said in another thread the other day, I can always afford a good lifestyle off my foot fetish empire alone. After 15 years online, I have a solid traffic and client base who keep coming back on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Fetish folk will always buy whatever turns their crank, and as long as you listen and shoot what they ask for, you will always have a business.

That being said, I simply had gotten into a "lul" where I was not reinvesting in my business like I should. Where you are trying to keep you finger on the pulse, and ahead of the curve. The credit crunch simply snapped me out of it. Now I am an endless number of projects going. Almost seems too many at times because some days I spend all of my time working through a version 1 or version 2 of some delivered script.

That said, now more so than not, I spend the majority of my time working on the creative stuff. Which is frankly where I prefer to be. Out of the daily grind or "maintenance" and just working out the new 5-10-20 year ideas. Some will be things we keep in-house, others can work out for licensing, or I will just sell it off and take the pay out and easy money.

Back when I worked at the phone company, they used to say, "The only constant is change". Very true.

:thumbsup

I've had studios before, going all the way back to 2003 off and on but prefer shooting in non-sterile looking atmosphere. That being said, I think its very very hard to move to the level of those few in this day and age in adult. If you got in early then maybe but now, very tough.

sacrafice. Not taking as much as you can to put back into the business.
ds

3 full time and 1 part time. Doubt it means a midget.

I appreciate the replies so far. The fact that we're still here after 15 years means we must be doing some things right, so I'm really curious what we're missing. I'm very curious which replies were posted by peple earning less than $150K and which from people making over $500K.

@Vrocks - good point about the size of the pond. I'm excited to get Clonebox out to the billion dollar market that is web sites in general. I just need to figure out how to market outside of adult. (Sales / marketing people and affiliates, this is an opportunity for you to make real money selling Clonebox.)

@ Harmon - by 3 1/2 people, I mean three full time more or less plus one who works with us only several hours per week.)

It makes perfect sense. Good luck to you! :thumbsup

Interesting thread.

My house is much bigger than I need for an office and I prefer marketing for other people at 50-75% adult and 10-35% mainstream with no overhead.. :upsidedow

raymor, I think to take things to the next level in the adult industry...we have to be able to sell our product again. Right now "free" is killing the sales on actual paysites (which in turn is hurting the need for paysite security for you).

I think most of us have been in a defensive mode for the last 4 years. Just trying to stop the bleeding. And once the bleeding was stopped, it became imperative to not lose any more ground.

I'm thinking that MAYBE things are finally gonna shake out one way or another over the next couple of years.
At least Fabian was able to take it to the next level. :)

Most of the rest of the industry has sort of circled it's wagons and keeping afloat in an attempt to ride this thing out and come out the other side ready to step up when the smoke clears. (at least that's what I did)

Many good posts...

I see and agree to four basics:
- passion for what you do
- taking the right risks
- giving up control and accepting the simple fact that others are better at some things than yourself
- and also very importantly: having the right idea at the right time; there always is some luck involved

Running a big company is not for everybody, as MaDalton said: taking responsibility for so many families can be very demanding; it is however an awesome feeling to succeed and feel the love from all those people coming back to you for what you helped them achieve together.

And, let's not forget enough toilets! ;)

Paul, in case you still do not know, as far as i remember, minte founded ARS. Very good business skills. Pushed that system big very fast! (although I gotta be honest, would love to know how big it really was in its prime, shoot me an email minte if you are willing to share.. Just curious :))

It takes money to make money....

To reference then including myself we are 15 people and some on / off freelancers, we are also actively recruiting. We got 2 offices that is commercially zoned.

It wasn't till about 2-3 years ago I started trying to move a lot of the day to day operations away from myself and focusing more on managing people, the direction and strategies.

I would recommend listening to leadership audio books, play them in the car when driving, as background noise when working and so on. I listened a lot to John C. Maxwell, he gave me a lot of input which helped me a lot. I realized I don't know what I don't know, when building a business it's hard to figure out what you need to know.

As a general rule, you do not spend time on your employees, you invest time. It's very hard to do so. Typically you hire someone because you are running short of time to do everything. Taking away time from your company to train someone when you are already behind with your work is a challange.

Look at your activities and look what areas you like, don't like. What is important and what is less important. Then look at what things can other people do. If you are currently doing something that someone else could be doing then stop doing it if you can afford having someone else doing it. You are the only one (and other owners) who have a real vision for the company, the more you get other people to do the more you can focus on your vision. You also get more feedback from your employees which may help you move into new directions or optimizing certain procedures.

Most important and if possible, whoever does your "client relations" should not be invoicing them, or even know if your client is late on a payment or whatnot. If you invoice someone and they are not happy with their service, they will tell accounting in 95% of the cases. Depending on how much time you spend accounting in your company it may be better to hire a full time or part time employee to do accounting or other back office paperwork, most CPA's also offer this service and charge either per hour or per invoice. They will ALWAYS be more expensive than if you do it yourself, because you spend time doing it yourself and spend $ having them doing it. You can't increase the time you have but you can increase the $ you have by working smarter.

If your client manager is doing the invoices and your client is having some financial problems the client will try and alienate himself so he doesn't need to deal with the conflict at that time. Also you would be less likely to help the client to the same extend like when he is up to date with billing as you may think he takes advantage of the situation "not paying you". Having 2 different people dealing with the issues will make sure you can chase the payments without alienating yourself from the client and continue to provide services until you are at the point where you have to decide if you can continue working with that client or not.

The more focus you have on the happy and "neutral" clients the more likely it is they will tell you about things they are not happy about.

Every scenario is different and you are obviously doing something right being in business 15 years. It sounds like you are stuck int he same situation as me a couple of years ago, my main concern was not the financial part, I was worried on the quality and trust side.

At the end of the day, most people will tell you something different, you gotta sort through what's useful for your business and go with that.

Great simple explanation V_Rocks. :thumbsup Market size and share play enormous roles.

Nathan, Marc De founded ARS, I don't think Minte was involved with them at all. My guess is that ARS during their free trial peak was doing between 7,000 - 10,000 new sales/day.

Ah, damn, for some reason I thought minte had to do with ars. Marc de, you are right...

Minte, help me, what did you run?

Theo, would just love to know real numbers..

I'll ask his sister Becky who was running the accounting department back then. Maybe she won't mind sharing with GFY. My estimation is a mix of free and paid trials.

Maybe even more.
In the late 90's I made one picture gallery a day using old ZMaster content I had bought. I would randomly choose one of the ARS sites that fit the content.

I made over $4,000 a week doing that and just putting the gallery up on Ampland (I had some fantastic traffic back then)
I would imagine if I was doing those kind of sales with just one gallery per day using old generic content (I promote hundreds of programs so I've never just concentrated on one), that ARS had to be KILLING it back then in ways that just don't happen in 2012.

That's why I would love to know how big it really was.

It's very hard to judge in my opinion.

Steve Jobs said it best.



Imo, the difference is passion, drive, and intelligence. For example, maybe you are passionate about what you do and are plenty smart. But someone like Minte is even more passionate and even smarter. Similarly, people who are more successful than Minte may be just as passionate, but have made even smarter business decisions.

Maybe he's not a jaw-dropping illiterate? Have you read your own shit? I tried to get Google Translate to make sense of what you posted, but all I got was this:

"Please be patient. We're still working on translating stupid."

I've never "clised" anything, but I always read my posts before I hit submit (scary, eh?). I will also never - ever - hire anyone from Canada or the United States again. Even to tie my shoes.

But I'm not successful, so take my words with a grain of salt.

It is called a typo. One word. Everybody (except you) understood what he meant, and anybody who has ever read a raymor post knows he is about as far from a "jaw-dropping illiterate" as could be.

Now, what is your excuse for the drivel you posted?

Everything Jobs said in that speech is true, but if Steve Jobs had only invented a braille computer for the blind, none of us would know who he is. Not that there isn't a market for that, but there are only so many blind people on earth who would buy his product. Unless he diversified and made other things in addition to that, his growth potential would be extremely limited.

You can be the smartest, most driven, most passionate person on earth, but that isn't going to change the fact that only so many people will need your product. So you had better have a lot of desirable products or a very good one that everyone needs if you want true growth. Of course you also need the ability to hold it all together, but that goes without saying.

Someone should look up Marc De's car thread :thumbsup