Jimmy's $750,000 Bottleneck

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Quick note: We ran Jimmy's story a while back, but we're using it now because it perfectly illustrates why Own or Be Owned exists, as well as the impact it can have when you apply the principles.

When Codie finished writing Own or Be Owned, Jimmy was one of our community members we kept thinking about. He's the type of owner the book was written for, and the trap he was caught in is the same one that had Codie flying to Santiago more than 100 times because she believed all her deals would die without her doing the work herself.

Here's how his story played out…

Jimmy Murray grew up in a blue-collar house outside Cleveland, where his union carpenter dad gave him the same advice over and over. Don't swing a hammer like me. Go to school. But after getting burnt-out as a financial analyst, Jimmy bought a small multifamily property against his dad's advice.

Then he built a property management company on nights and weekends until it could hold his weight, and was eventually able to walk away from the corporate paycheck on his son's first birthday. That was over 8 years ago.

Today his company manages 1,100 doors, with 47 of them owned personally. The business did $2.1 million in gross revenue in 2024, and that's before the $1.5 million of work it subbed out.

He did it. He built a successful business… but it was suffocating him. Here's how he was finally able to come up for air, build a business that works without him, and become a kick-butt owner.

For years, Jimmy ran all the sales calls himself.

See, no one could touch his close rate, so he didn't want to give it up. But it was costing him. To the tune of about 25 hours per week.

And yeah, deals were closing…

But that's the problem: when what you're doing works, nobody questions it, least of all you. Yet every deal he closed had to fit inside his calendar first, so his time became the revenue ceiling, which isn't something a balance sheet can show you at a glance.

FROM THE BOOK | Start Here: Your Owner Score

Codie splits owners into 3 levels.

Owner at the top, where the business runs independent of you. Operator in the middle, where the revenue is real but you're what she calls the load-bearing wall. Self-employed at the bottom, where the LLC is more of a costume than a functioning entity.

1,100 doors and 25 hours a week on the phone puts Jimmy squarely in the middle. He had a great business, with a load-bearing owner.

But what happens when the load breaks you?

At a Contrarian Thinking workshop last year, Jimmy set out to find his single biggest constraint. It didn't take long.

"They were like, 'We're going to help you uncover your biggest problem.' And my office manager Mark looks at me and goes, 'You know that you're the biggest problem.'"

His own office manager. In front of everybody.

Jimmy didn't argue, though. He took his lumps, and went home to find out how much he was costing himself.

He charged $250 an hour for coaching in the property management space, so he used that as his rate. Then he ran his sales hours against it, added the growth he'd delayed and the higher-value work he never got to, and landed on a number.

Jimmy hogging sales was roughly a $750,000 per year problem.

That number wasn't his salary, it was what the business wasn't earning because he was too busy on the phone to scale. $750K was just the sunk cost of his time. Who knows how much growth he missed out on during that time!

Very few owners take the time to do that math, but if you want to scale, it's necessary.

You know your revenue, your payroll, your rent, and your margins. But if you have no idea what you personally cost, you're screwed.

Find that number.

FROM THE BOOK | Chapter 10: Hunt the Bottleneck, Predicament

Codie wrote that chapter based on flying to Santiago more than 100 times because she believed deals would die without her there, in the room. But when she had to turn down an invitation to Necker Island from Richard Branson, she realized she'd built a cage instead of a business.

This is something most owners skip.

Jimmy didn't just post a sales job the next day on LinkedIn.

You can't hand off something that only exists in your head, and after 8 years, his entire sales process lived in his head.

So he recorded every single sales call.

He used a recording device, transcribed everything, and spent about 3 months feeding the transcripts into AI and reading back what came out.

"And then I developed a one-pager that shared our entire value proposition."

His sales transformed from instinct and improv, to something anyone could replicate and learn.

FROM THE BOOK | Chapter 6: Make the Sale Before the Call, Pitch

Codie doesn't soften it:

Here's the fix: "Record your next five sales calls. Turn them into a repeatable script. Hand it to one rep."

It took Jimmy 3 months of transcripts and becoming fluent in AI. Go here to get the shortcut.

Once it was time to hire, Jimmy found another surprise: the right person for the job looked nothing like him. Using Predictive Index, Jimmy found that the archetypes he'd assumed he wanted were wrong for his business.

"Captains and Mavericks don't really work because they're super independent. We realized we needed to hire an Altruist."

Most owners hire a version of themselves, then get frustrated when that person behaves like them. Don't do that.

Take the time to figure out who's going to fit the culture and role first.

FROM THE BOOK | Chapter 7: Hire to Replace Yourself, People

You've hired, fired, and hired again, your last 3 A-players disappointed you, and you end every week saying you'll just do it yourself.

That's a YOU problem.

This is the measure of a real handoff:

With sales off his desk, Jimmy's next target was the client mix.

His business had been built around 3 customer profiles he'd named himself: Eddie Entrepreneur, Chris Corporate, and Henry Househacker. In the workshop, a 4th showed up he'd been selling to the whole time without knowing it.

Sally Single.

Here's what he discovered: The average unit in a multifamily property throws off $2,494 in gross annual revenue, so a 3-family building works out to about $7,500 a year in management revenue.

Meanwhile, a single-family house (of which, he had several) is $5,000 a year.

That's profitable on paper, until you know a single-family dwelling takes the same amount of time and energy for Jimmy as a multi-family. Same time, less profit. And if that family leaves, the revenue disappears until the home is occupied. In a multifamily, you still have revenue if one door vacates.

"I'd rather have one client with 100 doors."

So he stopped selling to Sally, and everything downstream changed, including where his shiny new hire spent their time.

FROM THE BOOK | Chapter 2: Target the 10x Buyer, Persona

Codie tells the story of a couple who owned a laundromat and were certain they needed an operator.

After taking the quiz, the score said their real problem was Persona.

They were selling cheap laundry to people without much money while a 200-person waitlist for wash-and-fold sat inside their own business, because the guy driving the pickup truck was also the guy running the shop, and he didn't have enough time for both.

Her math on what that one blind spot was worth: "One hire could generate $500K+ in additional revenue. (The owner) just had to get out of the truck."

Jimmy found his bottleneck because he came to us. But we understand sometimes being physically present for a multi-day event just isn't possible.

On Friday, September 18, Codie is going live, online to give you the same diagnostics, tools, and systems Jimmy got.

Grab a seat here.

THE RESULTS

"We (now) have signed contracts worth an annualized gross revenue of $934,000," Jimmy told us.

About half of it had already hit his top line by the time we spoke.

And it hadn't stopped moving. "We have several commitments on the fence where I think we're going to get north of $1 million in additional gross revenue."

He's clear about where it came from.

"That all came from (Contrarian Thinking). From hearing, 'Here is the biggest problem, Jimmy,' and then actually building the systems to fix it."

No new markets or products, either. He was already good at his job and he'd already built a successful. He just had the wrong idea about which part of it was broken, and he suffered through years of trying to solve it backwards.

Now, he's got a solid growth plan, spends less time on things that don't move the needle, and is ready for more.

THE ASK

Here's the big, ugly truth:

Jimmy probably knew he was the problem. He just needed someone else to help him see a way to fix it. But most owners never get the wake-up call Jimmy did.

Instead, you get a P&L that looks fine, a calendar that's full, and a nagging sense that you're working harder every year for the same result.

So on Friday, September 18, Codie's gonna give you that wake-up call (plus a way forward) for free.

She's talking about all 12 Profit Levers from Own or Be Owned and walking through them in one sitting: which one is capping you, why owners almost always guess wrong about it, and what to do the Monday after.

Jimmy's main 2 were Pitch and People. Yours might be Pricing, or Persona, or Process. But you gotta show up to the event to find out. Guessing wrong is how you spend 4 years fixing your marketing when the actual problem is that you won't get out of your own way.

Save your seat for Friday!

Want a head start?

Take the Owner Score before you show up. Codie built it after surveying more than 15,000 owners to pinpoint the exact issues that stall growth. In just about 10 minutes, it gives you a number, the archetype that comes with it, and your 2 weakest Ps out of the 12.

The whole idea is to focus on those 2, retest after 90 days, and repeat until your fat exit.

Walk into Friday’s event knowing your number to get the most out of it.

Find out where you stand → Take the Quiz

See you in 3 days.

- Team Contrarian

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