I had to bury my Million Dollar formula

I was recently on a call with Shakthivel Pannirselvam.

If you do not know who he is, he is someone in the field of marketing who is known for his concept called Zero Rupee Marketing.

I called him because I wanted to get his opinion on something specific.

I am working on a new product related to LectureHead, and I wanted to know whether this product would actually be a good fit for my audience or not.

That was the plan.

But the conversation went somewhere completely different.

And honestly, I am glad it did.

He became like a big brother to me in that conversation.

And he told me two things that hit me so hard that I had to stop and rethink everything I was doing as a founder.

If you are a founder, or if you are building something right now, I want you to listen to this carefully.

Because these two insights might be the exact thing that is holding you back from going to the next level.

Let me start with the first one.

Number One: Whatever got you here will not get you there.

When he said this, it felt like someone turned on the lights in a dark room.

I paused.

I did not respond immediately.

Because this statement is simple, but it cuts deep.

Let me explain why this is so powerful.

As founders, we all start somewhere.

We try something.

We test an idea.

We put in the work.

And then, at some point, something clicks.

You go from zero to one.

You get your first customer.

You get your first sale.

You get your first result.

And that moment feels amazing.

You finally figured it out.

You finally cracked the code.

But here is the problem.

Most entrepreneurs get stuck at that exact point.

They keep doing the same thing that worked when they went from zero to one.

They repeat the same process.

They use the same methods.

They hope it will work again.

And it does not.

Or it works, but only to a certain limit.

You hit a ceiling.

Your revenue stays flat.

Your growth slows down.

And you start wondering, "Why is this not working anymore?"

The answer is simple.

What worked at zero to one will not work at one to ten.

Let me give you a real example from my own journey.

I started with offline classes.

That was my zero to one.

I was teaching students in person, building relationships face to face, and slowly growing my business.

That worked.

Then I moved to online.

That was my next phase.

I built teams.

I created systems.

I scaled.

But now, to go from where I am to the next level, I cannot use the same tools. I had to bury my Million Dollar formula to go to Next Level.

I cannot use the same methods.

I cannot use the same old techniques.

I have to do something new.

And this is where most founders fail.

They are afraid to let go of what worked before.

They are afraid to try something harder.

They are afraid to fail again.

So they keep doing the same thing, hoping for a different result.

But that is not growth.

That is stagnation.

If you want to go to the next level, you have to have the guts to try the hard things.

Not the comfortable things.

Not the safe things.

The hard things.

The things that scare you.

The things that you are not sure will work.

Because that is where the next level lives.

On the other side of discomfort.

Now let me ask you something honestly.

What is the one thing you keep doing in your business because it worked before?

What is the one method you are holding on to even though you know deep down it is not taking you where you want to go?

Think about it.

Because until you let go of that, you will stay exactly where you are.

This is not motivational talk.

This is psychology.

Human beings are wired to repeat what worked in the past.

It is called the law of least effort.

Our brain wants to conserve energy, so it defaults to familiar patterns.

But growth does not happen in familiar patterns.

Growth happens when you break the pattern.

So if you are stuck at the same revenue level for six months or a year, this is your answer.

You are repeating what worked before, hoping it will work again.

And it will not.

Now here is the second insight he gave me.

And this one is equally important.

Number Two: Efficiency.

He asked me a very simple question.

"How many hours is your team working?"

I said, "Eight hours."

He paused for a second and then said, "They should be working ten hours."

Now, before you react to this, let me explain what he actually meant.

He was not talking about overworking people.

He was not talking about burning them out.

He was talking about understanding efficiency.

And this is something most founders completely ignore.

As a founder, trying out new things always gives you a high.

You are experimenting.

You are launching.

You are building.

That feels exciting.

But trying out new ways to improve your team's efficiency?

That is a different kind of high.

And most people never experience it because they never track it.

Let me break this down for you.

Do you know the efficiency of each person on your team?

Not just whether they are busy.

Not just whether they are working hard.

But whether they are producing results at the rate they should be.

Let me give you an example.

Let us say you have a content writer on your team.

And their job is to write scripts.

Now, on average, how long does it take them to write one script?

Let us say it takes two hours.

If they are working eight hours a day, how many scripts should they be writing?

Minimum three scripts a day.

Now calculate that for a month.

If they work five days a week, that is 20 working days in a month.

So they should be writing at least 60 scripts in a month.

But most founders never track this.

They just assume their team is working.

And when results do not come, they think the problem is somewhere else.

But the problem is efficiency.

Here is what Shakthivel told me to do.

Track the baseline first.

If your content writer is writing 15 scripts a month, that is your baseline.

Now ask yourself, why is it 15 and not 20?

Is it because they are slow?

Is it because they are distracted?

Is it because the process is not clear?

Is it because they are doing other tasks that are not their job?

Find the bottleneck.

Fix it.

And then push the number from 15 to 20.

That is a 33 percent increase in output with the same person, same cost, same team size.

That is efficiency.

And this does not apply to just content writers.

This applies to every role in your business.

Sales calls.

Customer support.

Product delivery.

Marketing campaigns.

Everything.

Most founders focus on hiring more people when they want to scale.

But the real leverage is making your existing team more efficient first.

Because if you cannot make five people efficient, adding ten more people will only create more chaos.

Let me repeat that.

If you cannot make five people efficient, adding ten more people will only create more chaos.

Now here is the uncomfortable truth.

When you start tracking efficiency, you will realize that most of your team is not working at full capacity.

Not because they are lazy.

But because there is no system.

There is no clarity.

There is no accountability.

And as a founder, that is your responsibility.

You cannot expect your team to be efficient if you have not defined what efficiency looks like.

So here is what you should do after watching this video.

Pick one role in your team.

Track how much output they are producing right now.

Calculate what they should be producing if they worked at full capacity.

Find the gap.

And fix it.

That is it.

Do not try to fix everything at once.

Start with one role.

Improve it by 20 to 30 percent.

Then move to the next role.

This is how you scale without burning out your team or yourself.

Now let me bring both of these insights together.

Whatever got you here will not get you there.

And efficiency is the key to getting there faster.

These two ideas are connected.

If you want to go to the next level, you need to do two things.

One, stop repeating what worked before and start trying new, harder things.

Two, make your existing systems and people more efficient so you can execute faster.

Most founders only focus on one of these.

They either keep experimenting without optimizing, or they keep optimizing without experimenting.

You need both.

You need the courage to try new things.

And you need the discipline to execute them efficiently.

That is how you go from one to ten.

If this take was useful to you, the way it was for me, hit the reply button and share your thoughts. I’d be happy to read them. See you again!