Celi Arias with Grown Ass Business

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this morning. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast expert scale strategist with Grown Ass Business, Celi Arias. How are you?

Celi Arias: Oh my gosh I am great and thanks for having me.

Stone Payton: I am so excited about having this conversation. I got a ton of questions, Celi. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could articulate for for me and our listeners, mission, purpose. What is it that that you and your team are, are really out there trying to do for folks.

Celi Arias: Oh my gosh. Um, well, I am a lifelong entrepreneur and I’ve definitely made all the mistakes and been there. And my ultimate mission and purpose is to shorten the amount of time that it gets, that it takes an entrepreneur to learn the rules of the game and to grow a scalable business. Because I always say you, you are already smart. You’re already very capable. If you even have the desire to be an entrepreneur, that means you’re bold and brave and intelligent, but on your own, without knowing all the rules of the trade, it’ll take you ten years. I’d like to shorten that to 2 to 3 years. That’s my mission.

Stone Payton: Well, it’s a noble purpose, and it sounds like good work if you can get it. But I got to know the backstory. What was the career path that landed you doing this kind of work?

Celi Arias: Oh my God. Um, so I started my first business when I was about 11 because I really wanted to take ballet classes, and my parents were immigrants and, um, couldn’t afford it. So I started my own little business, and I paid for ballet school all through middle school and high school, and I became a professional dancer. Wow. And then after college, as a dancer, I decided to study fashion design. So I got a second BA in fashion design, and I started a clothing line, and I ran a clothing line out of South America for about nine years. And I always say that business ran me. It ran me into the ground. I always joke that I didn’t party or drink in my 20s because I was just too busy running my business, so I’ve really kind of sat in all the seats as a founder. I then worked in tech startups as a COO. I’ve worked in, um, luxury sales for corporates, I’ve worked in brand partnerships. I’ve gotten to sit around the table and kind of sitting in every single seat of business. And I’ve learned over the years what it looks like to run a business from a holistic point of view.

Celi Arias: And then I realized like, oh, I even have an MBA. But I always joke, if you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, don’t go get an MBA because it’s not going to give you what you need. Um, but I learned all the piece that there’s a lot of pieces that you just need to understand in order to grow a healthy business, and it’s very doable. And you don’t have to make all the mistakes that I did. Um, so, yeah, I’ve kind of, like, sat in every seat of every type of business. I’ve coached over 300 businesses now in different industries. And and there is a game. There are rules you need to learn, the skills, you need to learn the rules, and then you can break the rules later, which is when it gets really fun. Um, but I get a lot of pleasure teaching these rules and these systems earlier on to people and just seeing them succeed much faster than I did, because it took me a very, very long and painful journey to to get where I am today. Yeah.

Stone Payton: So 300 plus businesses in. What are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about to work these days for you?

Celi Arias: Um, well, most fun is client wins. Obviously, in one of my communities, we share weekly client wins. And that is definitely the most satisfying. Oh, we have this joke that we we just say, Holy shit, Sally, it worked. Holy shit. This worked. That’s like our our joke catchphrase inside my programs. Because sometimes the easier, simpler path, the the thing that people go, no, Sally, that’s not going to work or. No, I’ve done that or I’ve tried that or but sometimes it’s the very, very focused, intentional, simple path does work, and so it’s the most fun when people go, I get texts or messages from people, and the catch phrase is always, Holy shit, this worked and we always laugh about that.

Stone Payton: So okay, let’s dive into the work a little bit. What does it look like? I’m particularly interested in, I guess, the early stages of an engagement or the work, but I’d love to hear a little bit about about all of it.

Celi Arias: Yeah. So what I do is, um, I teach the five key growth systems that every business needs to have. Now, the five key growth systems are imagine if you could, in early stages, if you could afford to hire your five key executives to run your five departments, that would be the dream, right? If you could be the CEO and founder, but you could afford to hire a CMO, a CFO, a CRO, a COO, you’d be crushing the game, right? The truth is, we often can’t afford to hire those roles. So what we actually have to do is we have to learn what are the minimum things that each of those roles would be in charge of. And that’s what I teach, um, early stages. What I find here’s what I always find funny about my program is, of course, we go. We dive in deep into each of those key roles and what you have to master in each role. Everyone’s always scared of the numbers. Everyone’s always scared when we’re going to get into pricing strategy and profitability and sales forecasting and cash flow. Everyone gets really nervous around the numbers and they avoid it. But it’s always the easiest module, which I find really interesting. And I’m a creative. My background is in creative too, so I understand that the visionary founder doesn’t necessarily like being in the numbers, but we always have such a good laugh at this because the numbers are easy, because they’re black and white, they’re very direct.

Celi Arias: They tell you what’s working, what’s not working, what to look at, what not to look at. They don’t lie, right? Um, but what I think is really important in a dream world. I wish that entrepreneurs earlier on would focus on product market fit. So what happens in my program is all my clients end up kind of going, Holy shit, this product market fit work. This is the real pain. I’m like, yep, welcome to the game. Because everyone avoids the numbers thinking they’re going to be hard because we have some kind of belief around either we have some kind of beliefs that we’re holding onto around money, or we have some beliefs about math and that we’re bad at math. Right? But business math is super easy and straightforward. I mean, if I can do it, you can do it. Um, but product market fit. If I wish I could get more entrepreneurs to focus on product market fit early on. Because if you focus on what your product market fit is, early on, the way that I like to think about it as imagine that you know you’re a business owner. Imagine that your business is a building, right? It’s your building. So you naturally, you get there before everybody else in the morning.

Celi Arias: You go to, you go up to your building, you unlock, you turn the alarms off, you unlock the store, and you walk in and you go into your marketing department, and the lights are all off, right? And you can’t remember where the light switch is. So going to your marketing department and trying to do marketing and content and trying to come even come up with a marketing campaign or strategy, it’s like walking into this dark department that’s pitch black and fumbling around for the light switch. Now, if you have product market fit, you walk into that department. You walk into the dark. You know exactly where that light switch on is. You turn that switch on, and having product market fit actually turns on your marketing department turns on the switch makes the marketing work. So I feel like we’re always kind of skipping over that step and just going straight to more content, more channels, more reels, more, you know, like, what’s the next thing? Write a book, have a YouTube channel, start a podcast, do all these things. But we’re skipping the light switch, which is product market fit. And so that’s something that I harp a lot on, on my clients and my programs, and I just wish more people would be willing to pay attention to that because it does make everything else work.

Stone Payton: I love that mental model that really, to me, it really brings it home for me. So there are these facilitated conversations. There’s also you’ve got programs. You’ve got you even have software to assist with some of these efforts. Right?

Celi Arias: Yeah. In in my main accelerator program, we are actually turning the methodology into a software so that more people can access these tools and these exercises. So yeah, absolutely. Um, product market fit is a pre-step to marketing, and it’s a five step process. So you in order to have product market fit, you really need to know that you are speaking to the right people, that you have the right product for them, that actually solves their problem, right. So the product can’t just be something that you came up with that you’d like to create in the world, but it actually has to solve someone’s problem at the right price for the people and your business model with the right messaging and promotion. That’s step four. And in a business model that can scale, that’s product market fit. It’s those five pieces and we work through those.

Stone Payton: So I know the answer to this is yes. So maybe I’ll ask it a different way. Instead of asking if I’ll say tell us about uh, any uh, mentors that maybe helped you navigate this, this new terrain as you, as you came into doing, working this practice or did you is it all just built on your own scar tissue and trial and error. Did you get a little guidance?

Celi Arias: Um, well, when I was younger, when I was in my 20s and I was running a fashion line, I did have I lived in South America and, um, a friend of my mother’s who was an entrepreneur would have a weekly coffee with me to mentor me. And I always joke that he, you know, poor guy would have his head in his hands every week because I refused to look at my numbers. So this is why I always teach numbers is because, um, I would say I’m a creative. I don’t need to know my profit margin. My dresses are the best, right? I’m just going to lean on my creative skill. And he would just be like, oh no, little girl. Like, what are you talking about? Um, so I had a mentor, I didn’t listen, and I’m pretty stubborn. Um, so I always joke with him now, like, can you believe that? I actually teach entrepreneurs business numbers and business math? And he’s like, that’s your karma. That’s what you get. Um, so that was an early on experience. I’ve kind of I’ve read all the books, but really my other than him, who I’ve always talked to, my biggest mentors have been sitting in startups and either being the director of marketing or director of ops and then the COO, um, to different startups and sitting in those seats and watching watching how certain startups crumble. Honestly, watching how certain startups misuse VC funds and the funds ran out really fast.

Celi Arias: Um, watching how sales happen and how sales don’t happen. I really, over the years, got to sit in a lot of different opportunities and different companies and different businesses. And I’m I am an engineer at heart. So I think my superpower is to kind of sit back and watch and learn what works and what doesn’t work. And over time, That’s how I developed a lot of these methods. I’m also a total book nerd, and I can always recommend, like my favorite business books, but I do genuinely think you learn from doing so. My program is really oriented to like, here we go. I’m going to give you the rules hard and fast. I’m going to give you the theory hard and fast. But then we’re going to go. We’re going to move. We’re going to take action because the learning happens in the taking action. The making money happens in the taking action, the figuring out what our product market fit is. It happens in the taking action. So I’m really action oriented. Um, I think that has to do with also being an athlete as a younger person, a professional athlete, basically. Um, so as much as I love theory, that’s what I didn’t love about my MBA is like it was all kind of theoretical. We never, like, got our hands dirty, you know, and entrepreneurs have to get their hands dirty. So I think you really learn by doing.

Stone Payton: So do you ever come across clients, or maybe even just people who you think should be a client? And from the outside looking in, it looks like they’ve achieved some things and they have they have scaled, but they also it’s almost like they were, as my daddy would say, rode hard and put up wet. Like they’re they’re burned out and they’re. I mean, do you, do you see that sometimes in the folks that you’re working with initially?

Celi Arias: Oh my gosh, all the time. All the time. I always say that each. So the way I think business works is each of us has an invisible ceiling, right. Um, we can lean on our strengths. What usually happens is we lean into our strengths and our natural, God given gifts. Um, and the skills that we’ve accrued over life, we lean into those hard in the beginning. And those gifts will take some of us to five figures, some of us to six figures, and some of us to seven figures and even multi seven figures. And then there’s a point where you hit the glass ceiling of your own skills and your own perspective and what we often do as because we are, we tend to be overachievers, right? And we, we tend to have something to prove. So what we do is we burn harder on that skill. We’re like, well, I’m just going to push harder. I’m just going to go harder. And what I try to get people to do is actually not push harder. I try to get them to remove the blinders and broaden their awareness and their knowledge base. Because the glass ceiling doesn’t get broken by pushing harder, it now gets broken by broadening my skills and my awareness and my knowledge as a CEO. Does that make sense?

Stone Payton: It does. It makes all the sense in the world. And I’m it’s like you’re reading my mail or spying on me because I’m thinking I just lean into the 1 or 2 things I’m pretty good at. I just push the pedal harder.

Celi Arias: Yeah, yeah. And I don’t think that you as a CEO need to do all the things, but I do think you, as a great CEO, need to understand all the things so that you can then find the right person to delegate to, or so that you can keep driving the ship. Right? Because sometimes even when we hire a team, what will happen is we have a new team member that comes in that’s maybe also really skilled in one area says, we have to do this, we have to do this, we have to do this. It is your job as the CEO to have a really broad, open view of everything that’s going on so that you can discern, do we have to do that? Is is that true? Is that the problem right now to solve that gets us to our bigger goal. So that’s why I always think there’s a point as a leader and CEO, that you need to understand all the key growth systems and how they all work and how they work together in order to, in those moments, be the leader you need to be.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practice like yours at this point? Is it all referral based or Are you still out there shaking the trees a little bit with your own marketing processes?

Celi Arias: Um, a lot of my business, my current program is referral based for sure. Believe it or not, clever content works for me, but I don’t recommend that. I think that there is an order to building a business, and I think step one is build an amazing reputation. So step one, whether you have a physical product or you’re a service provider or you’re a coach like me, make sure you deliver on your result. That to me is a marketing strategy, right? Deliver on your results. Have people say, oh yeah, she tripled my revenue. Oh, yeah. In six months I did this. Oh, yeah. Sally is straight up legit. Her method works, right? That’s step one. Then referrals, then, of course testimonials, case studies and then marketing campaign. Now I know this is like the opposite of what you hear a lot of people say, because there’s a lot of marketing gurus just saying marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing content content content content ads, ads, ads, ads. Um, but the thing is that if you’re running ads on shoddy foundations, right, you’re throwing away a lot of money. If you’re running ads but you don’t know what your product market fit is, you’re spending a lot more money than you should than you could be. Um, so I say, like, build the reputation, build a solid product, build a referral based business first, not because I’m against content and ads. Then you turn those pieces on, right? Remember the marketing department when you have the solid foundations, then you turn on the marketing department and it works. Um, so clients come to me referral based for sure. Um, community collaborations. I speak a lot in different entrepreneurial communities. I guest teach in different communities. I collaborate with other coaches and service providers who are complementary to me. Um, and then sometimes my funny content gets people to go, oh, I love your style. I want to talk to you. But content is probably the smallest amount of client flow for me right now.

Stone Payton: So what’s next? Is there a book in you, or are you going to continue to dive into this software and tech side of things or. Yeah. What’s the what’s on the horizon?

Celi Arias: Yeah, I’m actually writing a tiny book right now, and I probably will be done with it next month because it’s intentionally a tiny book. It’s intentionally that you could sit and read it in one sitting and go, oh shit, I need to think about things in this way. And it’s basically called stop that, do this instead. Um, so I am writing a tiny book, and I am working with a development company to turn the the method into software. So you could go through these processes and systems without necessarily needing me to coach you through it. And that’s always my goal is my goal as a coach is to not make you codependent on me. My goal is to make you an amazing business owner, and I know that’s a little bit different than a lot of coaches. I always tell my clients, like, I want to get rid of you. Like, after a year, I want you to be soaring. I want you to send me other people, but I don’t want you to be in my world for years and years and years. Right? So that’s my goal with the software, is to get it into more people’s hands without necessarily. I think there’s a lot of entrepreneurs who are very self motivated the way that I was, and if I had just been told, do these things in this order, learn these skills, I would have soared a lot faster. It would have taken me much less time to get to my revenue numbers. So that’s what I hope to do for other people with the software.

Stone Payton: So interest, pursuits, hobbies, passions outside the scope of your of your work. My listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Uh, anything you nerd out about, that’s not this.

Celi Arias: Oh my gosh. Um, well, I did go to seminary. So. And that’s something that I didn’t end up practicing because to me, my service in the world is helping business owners. Honestly. So in my free time, I’m probably reading some really weird spirituality book or something about, you know, the intersection of quantum physics and God. Um, I still dance. Now I have a newborn. So now I dance around the house with a newborn in my hands. That’s been. That’s my workout. Now, I used to be really into working out. Now I work out with a baby in my hands. It’s like, you know, you got 12 pounds in your arms as you’re trying to dance around. It’s a good workout. Um, yeah. And I’m very fortunate that I live close to the ocean, so I like to take long walks and actually enjoy sitting on the ocean and listening to what God has to say to me. Honestly, that’s what I spend my time doing.

Stone Payton: I love it, and I’m so glad that I asked. All right, let’s leave our listeners if we could, with a couple of actionable, I call them pro tips. Something to be thinking about reading, doing, not doing. And look, gang. The number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Sally or someone on her team and start tapping into her work. But let’s leave them with a couple of items to be thinking on.

Celi Arias: Yeah, look, if you’re like, oh, she’s talking about this product market fit thing and I’m not sure I got it. Here’s here’s one of the easiest ways to start going out and hunting for your product market fit is ask your people. Don’t do a survey. Don’t do a survey on Instagram. Don’t do a poll. Get on a convert. Get on a call with your ideal client or your ideal customer. Get on a call with them and say, hey, what do you dream about? What is your biggest desire? Like what do you like daydream about and wish that you had? And what is the biggest obstacle getting in the way of that? Right. And then number three, what have you tried to do to fix that obstacle? If you ask those three questions like what is your deepest desire? What is your biggest pain or obstacle that gets in the way of that? What have you tried? You’re going to start getting real time feedback from your people about what they really need and what they really want for you, from you, and what they would be willing to pay for. And that’s product market fit. I think one of the hardest things for my clients is to even ask for those conversations, because we get so uncomfortable about taking other people’s time for our own market research.

Celi Arias: And I’m like, well, I don’t care. Send them a coupon, buy them a coffee, buy them a meal, but get into A conversation with your people and start learning how they tick. What words do they use to describe their desires? Their pains? What have they tried? What do they wish was out there in the world? You know, like my a lot of my ideal clients. Go, go. Oh, I just wish there was somebody who would tell me exactly what to do. Because I’m tired of the frustration of running my small business, and I’m tired of not knowing the answer. So I was like, okay, coming right up. I’m going to tell you exactly what to do, right? My methodology is based on yep, I’m going to teach you all the things you have to know and in what order, because I want you to crush it. But I’ve developed that from talking to a lot of people and hearing their frustration. So if there’s one thing that I would say is like going to be the most valuable is go talk to your people and learn what is really frustrating them and how you can help.

Stone Payton: Well, that is marvelous, counsel. And I too. While you first said it, my initial reaction was, um, Mhm. You know, I hate to ask, but then I got to thinking if someone called me and asked my opinion on that and like what I was feeling, I would be honored and appreciate the, the the exercise. Right.

Celi Arias: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think I really believe in transparency. Um, and I believe in honesty. And that is also one of my marketing strategies, by the way, speaking of marketing, I always tell, like I run a monthly roundtable and I always tell people, I’m not going to sell you anything. I know, that’s weird. We’re literally going to do a high value one hour roundtable once a month, and I’m going to teach and we’re going to share, and that’s my strategy. So I would do the same thing for these conversations and say, hey, I’m cooking up something really cool and really special, and I’m doing market research because I want to make sure it like, hits the spot for you. And I think you’re a person who would love this product. I’m not going to sell anything to you right now. I promise I will not sell you on this call. I just want to ask you three questions. Is that cool? And people really appreciate that. And I mean this. Do not sell them. Do not sell them anything. Even if they’re like, I’m kind of curious now I would actually say, oh, well, let’s create a separate time or a separate call to talk about that. Right. Um, so that you’re keeping your word as well and, and really saying, I am trying to do something really powerful and beautiful in this world, and I’m doing some market research. Are you interested in helping me out for 10 or 15 minutes? That’s all you need?

Speaker4: Yeah. All right.

Stone Payton: What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you? Tap into your work website, LinkedIn, whatever is appropriate. But let’s make sure they have some coordinates.

Celi Arias: Yeah, I’m really easy to find on the socials. Um, pretty much Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. It’s Sally gross business. So that’s c e l I gross business and my website. If you ever want to come to a roundtable, it’s up at the top of my website. My website is called Grown Ass Business. Com so super easy to find.

Stone Payton: Well, silly. It has been an absolute delight having you on the show today. Thank you so much for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm. You you’re doing really important work and we we sure appreciate you. Thank you.

Celi Arias: So much. This has been a pleasure.

Stone Payton: Well, I’ve had fun. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Sally Arias with grown ass business and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.