Vertical Momentum Podcast with Richard Coffman – Guest Appearance

Todd Hagopian Shares How to Declare War on Stagnation on Vertical Momentum Podcast

Todd Hagopian joined host Richard Coffman, also known as the Comeback Coach, on the Vertical Momentum podcast for an in-depth conversation about resiliency, business transformation, and turning neurodivergence into competitive advantage. The episode explored Hagopian’s 15 years undiagnosed with bipolar disorder, how he went from “Tony Stark to Tony Stagnant” when medication muted his hypomanic edge, and the systematic toolbox he built to recapture that productive power. The conversation delivered practical frameworks including the 80/20 Matrix of Profitability, base-core-custom pricing strategy, and three metrics every business needs to track.

What Is the Vertical Momentum Podcast?
What Is Todd Hagopian’s Definition of Resiliency?
How Did Todd Hagopian Turn Bipolar Disorder Into a Business System?
What Is Stagnation and How Do You Declare War on It?
What Business Frameworks Did the Episode Reveal?
What Are Todd Hagopian’s Top Three Pieces of Advice for New Entrepreneurs?
Where Can You Listen and Connect?
Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Vertical Momentum Podcast?

Vertical Momentum is a teaching podcast hosted by Richard Coffman, known as the Comeback Coach, featuring conversations about resiliency, entrepreneurship, and overcoming personal and professional challenges. The show serves veteran entrepreneurs and those starting their business journey, with 100% of merchandise proceeds supporting veterans struggling with depression and PTSD.

Host Richard Coffman brings personal experience with borderline personality disorder to conversations that explore mental health alongside business strategy. The show’s tagline captures its philosophy: “The only way to go is up.”

The podcast emphasizes that listeners have a choice every morning—to be a victim or a victor of their circumstances.

What Is Todd Hagopian’s Definition of Resiliency?

Todd Hagopian defines resiliency as getting through that period of stagnation that we all hit, then figuring out a way to think differently to get through it. Stagnation is the death nail of a business, manifesting when innovation dries up, best people start leaving, market share stops expanding, and companies struggle to figure out the next thing to change the game.

“We all have our thing that we have to get through. Whether it’s bipolar like me or PTSD or three divorces or whatever, you’ve got your thing that you’ve got to power through.”

Personal resiliency matters equally in business because personal lives constantly try to intrude on what we’re trying to accomplish. Declaring war on stagnation must be proactive, not reactive.

How Did Todd Hagopian Turn Bipolar Disorder Into a Business System?

Todd Hagopian turned bipolar disorder into a business system by building processes that mimic hypomanic productivity after medication removed his natural edge—remembering how he attacked certain things while hypomanic and creating repeatable frameworks that any leader can implement. After 15 years undiagnosed, sleeping only two to three hours a day while becoming a turnaround manager, he finally sought help at age 36.

“I basically went from Tony Stark to Tony Stagnant overnight. Do I really need to choose between success and sanity? That doesn’t seem fair.”

When medication stabilized his life but eliminated his competitive edge, he faced the sanity versus success dilemma. Rather than accepting that tradeoff, he started building ways to mimic hypomanic approaches through documented processes.

After turning around four companies and realizing in the 13th month of his third turnaround that he’d forgotten tools from the first one, he wrote everything down into a real toolbox. The fourth turnaround went amazing—everything turned around a year faster than expected.

The system has about 10 parts, but leaders don’t need to go one through 10 in order or use all 10. Each system is self-sustaining—if you need innovation, you go to the smashing orthodoxy system.

What Is Stagnation and How Do You Declare War on It?

Stagnation is when innovation dries up, best people start leaving, market share stops expanding, and companies can’t figure out the next thing to change the game—and if you haven’t had a transformation in three years, you need one because technology is moving so fast that you must relook at everything. Todd explained that every company needs to transform every three years.

When someone says “this is the way we’ve always done it,” it needs to change. That phrase is the trigger for transformation.

Turnaround management requires alignment up and down the chain. Leadership usually knows what they’re getting, but working with employees who’ve spent 30 years thinking they’re doing fine while the company is in serious trouble requires different approaches. Some people self-select out, while others who were previously lagging get super excited and become completely different employees.

What Business Frameworks Did the Episode Reveal?

The episode revealed multiple business frameworks including the 80/20 Matrix of Profitability for pricing different customers different ways, three essential turnaround metrics (revenue per minute, profit per minute, and flow through), smashing orthodoxies for innovation, and the base-core-custom pricing platform. These frameworks work in small businesses as well as Fortune 500 companies.

The 80/20 Matrix of Profitability

The 80/20 Matrix examines how much money you make from each customer and each product, then looks at combinations. Your best quadrant—highest profitable customers buying highest profitable products—gets protected with good margins. Worst customers buying worst products that no big customers depend on get 40% price increases or elimination.

Often you’ll find a huge set of customers and products making up 3% of revenue while consuming disproportionate work. Eliminating it lets you dive all that work back into good products and good customers to explode your business.

Three Essential Turnaround Metrics

The three metrics needed to turn around any company are revenue per minute, profit per minute, and flow through. Calculate by dividing total revenue or profit by total man-hours (employees times 2,000 hours per year). Flow through equals profit divided by revenue—if you made an extra million in revenue but only $200,000 in profit, that’s 20% flow through.

Smashing Orthodoxies

Smashing orthodoxies means identifying and challenging the 20 biggest industry assumptions. Monster Energy smashed orthodoxies with tall skinny cans and 40oz sizes when everyone used standard 12oz cans. Todd’s team changed the laundry industry by putting gray and chrome washers in circulars instead of only white—$900 million category completely changed with one decision.

Base-Core-Custom Pricing

The base-core-custom platform offers: base model (cheap and fast), core model (everything they probably need at higher price with reasonable lead time), and custom model (requires more work, must get paid for complexity). This works in software, manufacturing, and small businesses.

The Empathy Lesson

At his 90-day review during a major turnaround, Todd received feedback that nobody knew who he was despite great numbers. He did 100 one-on-ones in 30 days with 160 employees, asking: “Tell me what you would change if you were sitting in my seat. Tell me what I don’t understand.”

“Nobody cares about working an extra half hour if they really feel like it’s good. People don’t complain about being productive. They complain about being unproductive.”

What Are Todd Hagopian’s Top Three Pieces of Advice for New Entrepreneurs?

Todd Hagopian’s top three pieces of advice for new entrepreneurs are: it’s always easier to buy a business than start one (banks give up to 90% financing and you can use 401k money without taxes), cash is king because running out of cash is the number one reason businesses fail even when doing fine, and outsource everything you’re not good at because you’ll never become the expert at SEO or marketing.

1. Buy a Business Instead of Starting One

It’s not as hard as people think. Banks usually give up to 90% to buy a business. There are ways to use 401k money without paying taxes or penalties. Todd took his 401k and bought a multi-million dollar business with just a couple hundred thousand, no dollars out of pocket.

2. Cash Is King

You will have times when customers owe you money, you owe other people money, but you have no money in the account. Todd had to sell his business earlier than wanted because he grew too fast—customers owed him $660,000 and he owed other people money. Have enough cash reserve to get through a year.

3. Outsource Everything You’re Not Good At

There are cheap ways to get things done. Even if it’s not cheaper than you think, it’s worth it. You’re not going to become the expert at SEO or marketing materials. Pay somebody and invest those hours into doing something else really good.

Where Can You Listen and Connect?

The Vertical Momentum episode featuring Todd Hagopian is available on major podcast platforms. The conversation covers resiliency, bipolar disorder, business transformation frameworks, and practical advice for entrepreneurs at any stage.

Connect with Todd Hagopian:

Website: toddhagopian.com (extensive free writing on frameworks)
Book: “The Unfair Advantage” on Amazon and Barnes & Noble
Twitter/X and LinkedIn (send connection requests, not follows)

Todd does not do consulting: “I’m not in this for the money. You’re not going to make a bunch of money selling a book. I just want this out there. If you have questions, just hit me up and let’s have a conversation.”

Connect with Richard Coffman at Vertical Momentum. Remember: “The only way to go is up.”

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Vertical Momentum podcast about?

Vertical Momentum is a teaching podcast hosted by Richard Coffman (the Comeback Coach) covering resiliency, entrepreneurship, and overcoming challenges. The show supports veterans struggling with depression and PTSD through merchandise sales.

What is the 80/20 Matrix of Profitability?

The 80/20 Matrix examines profitability by customer and product combinations to price different customers different ways. You protect your best quadrant with good margins while applying dramatic price increases or elimination to unprofitable combinations.

What are the three metrics to turn around a company?

The three metrics are revenue per minute (total revenue divided by total man-hours), profit per minute (total profit divided by total man-hours), and flow through (profit divided by revenue). These help identify whether you need to cut headcount or can profitably add people.

What is smashing orthodoxies?

Smashing orthodoxies means identifying and challenging industry assumptions everyone accepts as standard. Examples include Monster’s tall skinny cans versus standard 12oz cans, and putting gray washers in circulars when the industry only showed white.

How long was Todd Hagopian undiagnosed with bipolar disorder?

Todd was undiagnosed for 15 years, sleeping only two to three hours a day while building his career as a turnaround manager. He finally sought help at age 36 when he had persistent headaches and chest pains and realized he couldn’t “just disappear” with two kids depending on him.

Podcast Transcript

Richard Coffman: Hey guys, welcome back to Vertica Momentum. I’m your host, Richard Coffman, also known as the Comeback Coach. Guys, this is going to be an amazing episode. If you’ve ever felt stuck, if you’ve ever felt that you needed to get out of a rut, this is the episode for you. My brother Todd is going to be dropping some serious knowledge today on us. He is an author, speaker, executive. He’s a Swiss Army knife of positivity. Todd, my brother, welcome to the show.

Todd Hagopian: Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it. I am looking forward to talking to the comeback kid and comeback coach.

Richard: So Todd, first question right out of the gate. What is your definition of resiliency?

Todd: My definition of resiliency is getting through that period of stagnation that we all hit. Stagnation is the death knell of a business. It can come in many forms — suddenly your innovation dries up, your best people start leaving, your market share isn’t expanding, you’re having trouble figuring out that next thing to do in the market to change the game. That’s all wrapped into this title of stagnation that I call it, and what we talk about as declaring war on stagnation. It has to be a proactive war, and my definition of resiliency is hitting that wall and then figuring out a way to think differently to get through it.

Now there’s a lot more to resiliency. There’s your personal resiliency. I’ve gone through some personal battles. I’m sure we’ll talk about here. Your folks have gone through even worse ones. I’ve listened. We all have our thing is what I say. We all have our thing that we have to get through. Whether it’s bipolar like me or PTSD or three divorces or whatever, you’ve got your thing that you’ve got to power through. There’s that personal resiliency also that’s just so important in business because we all have personal lives that try and intrude on what we’re trying to accomplish.

Richard: I love it. So I got to give a big shout out to Monster Energy. Thank you for keeping me energized all day long. I’m actually drinking the sugar-free energy drink. Being a diabetic, I want to make sure I don’t get all sugared up. And also, guys, our new swag is in. If you love winter swag — hoodies, t-shirts, stuff like that — it’s out. And if you buy anything from us, 100% of the proceeds go to help veterans struggling with depression and PTSD. I don’t make any money off of it. I’m just here trying to save some lives. So, you’ve had a lot to go through in your life. Let’s hop right into it. Let’s talk about you having to be resilient, because I know I struggle and I’ve been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. It’s not an easy thing, but it’s something that we can come back from. So tell us a little bit about your story.

Todd: Sure. My story is I went off to college and suddenly I was very drunk and not sleeping. And I thought to myself, “Man, that’s okay. That’s college.” We go out, we drink a lot, we don’t sleep, we party, we work hard. That’s what it is. I think the difference between me and the guy next to me is we would drink till 4:00 in the morning, and then he would sleep till 2:00 p.m. and I would be back up at 5:30. I went 15 years undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Did not know really what was going on, but the brain was just moving 100 miles an hour all the time. I was sleeping two or three hours a day for 15 years.

There’s some really good parts of bipolar and there’s some really bad parts of bipolar. For the audience that doesn’t know what bipolar is, I might want to take a minute just to explain, because a lot of people think it’s real bad temper and this and that, and I’m like, no, I’m just a jerk — it has nothing to do with the temper. So bipolar is where you have two cycles, and that’s why they call it bipolar. You have the hypomanic cycle — or even manic sometimes — where you’re really up, just excited, and every idea you have is the best one ever. You’re going 100 miles an hour. You can hyperfocus and then jump to the next idea and hyperfocus. You can run down these rat holes and end up with an amazing idea that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. There are a lot of good things to hypomania, which we’ll talk about.

But then there’s the cycle down, which is the bipolar depression. That is very similar to the depression that you talked about and that other disorders have as well. Bipolar has an extraordinarily high suicide rate, and that’s because the bipolar depression can be extremely low. But not only that — some of the stuff I’ve dealt with is when you’re hypomanic, you might start making huge promises. You might take on hundreds of things, and then you hit the bipolar depression and it’s just, “Oh my god, how am I going to deliver this? How am I going to make all these promises come true? How am I going to pay back that loan I just took?” All this stuff happens because you make some bad decisions when you’re hypomanic.

So for 15 years, I was flying high in business, doing real well. I was a bank manager by 25. I went back and got my MBA. I started becoming a high-level turnaround manager. They’d drop me into really terrible situations and I’d turn it around in 18 to 24 months, and then they’d pick another terrible situation. That’s when I became — which is all about resiliency — it’s the nasty kind of management where you have to go in and slash and burn and change everything and go 150 miles an hour, which was really good for me. But every time something good happened, I would follow it up with just a personal self-sabotage during a bipolar low. We’re talking multiple arrests every now and then, getting fired, bad relationships. There was just always something that hit right after the good stuff. I didn’t know why. I just thought it was work hard, play hard — this is just how it goes.

Finally, when I was 36, it became bad enough. I suddenly had this headache that wouldn’t go away. I had chest pains. I went in and was like, “Hey, I need to get figured out here.” Now I had two kids at that point — I have four now — and I’m like, “I can’t just disappear. We need to figure out what’s happening.” That was the first time I had ever asked for help, 15 or 16 years into it. They threw everything at it. Tested everything — stroke, this, that — all this stuff they thought it could be. Then they finally were like, “Have you ever talked to a psychiatrist?” And I was like, “A psychiatrist? Why would I talk to a psychiatrist about a headache?”

So I went in, and pretty immediately they were like, “This is pretty severe bipolar two disorder.” The main difference between two and one is having a documented manic episode, so they were like, “You could be one, we just don’t know because you’ve never gone to the doctor.” I had that confirmed by a couple more people because it sounded funny to me. Then as they explained it, I do what everybody does — when you start hearing something, you grab all the parts you like and ignore all the parts you don’t. So they’re explaining hypomania to me, and I’m like, “Yeah, this is great. That’s exactly what I have. It’s fantastic. This is why I’m so good, and this is why I’ll keep doing good.” And then they were like, “These pills, Depakote — they’re going to treat your headache and also treat your bipolar.” And I was like, “Perfect. I’ll just take the headache dose. Now that I know about the bipolar, I’ll manage it myself.” That didn’t work at all.

So eventually I hit the wall again and went back and I was like, “All right, I’m good. I’m quitting alcohol completely. I’m getting on the pills. I’m going to take care of myself, get back present and mental with my family.” And I did that, and suddenly everything was good. It actually worked. I felt good. I was getting compliments from people who had no idea what was going on just about being more present. That part was great. But the problem is my entire business skill and mantra just went away completely. Lost the competitive edge 100%. Hypomania disappeared. I was not the same person. That was being noticed also, and it was a problem. I was a global marketing director for a large company, doing big projects across the world, and it was being noticed.

So I was like, “This is terrible. I basically went from Tony Stark to Tony Stagnant overnight.” And I was like, “Do I really need to choose between success and sanity? That doesn’t seem fair. How am I going to do this?” So what I started to do was build ways for me to mimic the hypomania. I remembered how I would attack certain things, and I would build processes to do that. It started like one here, one there — remembering how I did certain things and trying to come up with a process. I ended up turning around four companies, and each of them I would implement a couple of these tools.

Right after the third one, I realized in the 13th month I was like, “Man, I forgot to do this that I did over in the first one.” I implemented it and it worked. And I was like, “I need to write these things down. I need this to be a real toolbox that I can just go to and do every time.” I did that before the fourth one, and the fourth one went amazing. Everything turned around a year faster than we thought. I was like, “Okay, I got to put this into a book. I’ve been teaching people this. My second in command, my lieutenants, my directors — they’ve all been learning this. They just have no idea it has anything to do with bipolar.”

I’m going to put this into a book. I’m going to start teaching people this. And then more importantly, I’ll have it so every time I go in, I’ll know which ones to do. Secondly, more importantly, I can start talking about this in the workplace because neurodivergence actually has a lot of benefits in the workplace. It’s one of the unfortunate things — we talk about diversity in the workplace so much, and it’s all focused on things that real good managers already know how to deal with. The race and the gender and the religion — we all know the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do. We might still be bad at it, but we know how to do it. Nobody knows how to deal with neurodivergence. They just don’t know how to deal with this stuff, and we don’t get taught anything about it. It’s always looked at as bad. I was like, this is an opportunity for us to have this conversation and show that I’ve gotten to this level and turned around all these companies because of the neurodivergence, not despite of.

Richard: A lot of people don’t realize that mental health is around us everywhere. Everybody is either struggling with something. Somebody could be on the spectrum, somebody could be dealing with ADHD, BPD, bipolar — everybody’s dealing with something. And if we can, like you said, switch it — if we can flip the script and turn it into a positive — but like you said, and I wrote it down here, you need a system. You need a system that actually works, and you need it written down somewhere. For me, I know for my podcast I have systems in place. I know what I got to do before, after, during. That’s what makes me successful, because I follow a proven system. So talk about the importance of having a system.

Todd: It’s so important. My system has about 10 parts, and the beauty of the way I tried to build it is you don’t have to go one through 10 in order. You don’t have to do all 10. You might have a business where only three are relevant. So what I try to do is make each system self-sustaining and be like, if you need innovation, you go to the Smashing Orthodoxies system. This is how you look at innovation — and you’re going to always make more money by focusing on process innovation than product innovation, even though 95% of our time is spent on product innovation.

There are always these huge process innovations that you can go after, and these are some of the ways to do it. Smashing Orthodoxies — you’ll attack your industry and be like, “Okay, name the 20 biggest orthodoxies.” And what an orthodoxy is — let’s talk about Monster, your sponsor. Everybody wants a 12-ounce can that looks like this Pepsi and Coke thing. No, they came out with the tall skinny can. They also came out with the 40-ounce can, which nobody has done except for beer. They smashed an orthodoxy and said somebody wants something different, and now it’s super easy to find the Monster when you look at the case. It’s boom — I find it every time. Now people are copying them and doing it.

So smashing an orthodoxy can be as simple as thinking about something that the industry thinks is standard and has to happen. One time when I was in laundry — this will be interesting, just 10 seconds — used to be the orthodoxy that you would only floor and advertise white washers and dryers. Now, if you look in the circular, you’re going to see all kinds of platinum and black and gray. That was us. We did that. We changed it. We decided we were going to challenge this orthodoxy. We said there’s a couple things — one, if somebody buys a gray washer, they are 100% of the time going to buy a gray dryer. If somebody buys a white washer, they might keep their old dryer. So we put it in the circular. People bought it, and they bought the dryer, and our sales went through the roof. Sears at the time — they were my customer — went crazy. It was a $900 million category, and we completely changed it with one decision, just challenging the fact that people only want white and people only want the lowest price, which is always white. We changed it, put gray, put chrome and whatnot in the circular, and changed the entire industry. Now that’s all you see.

Richard: Now, I’m somebody — I’m in recovery. I’ve been in recovery 36 years. But when I tell my sponsees, the only way you can change is you have to be ready to change. So when you’re going to these companies and you got to turn around these companies, a lot of them — almost every one of them — have to be ready to change or they’re going to be out of business. So when you go to turn around a company and you talk to the CEO, don’t you tell them, “Listen, this is what’s got to happen, or else you’re going to be out of business”?

Todd: That’s 100%. And the good part about turnaround management — there’s not many, because turnaround management really sucks, it’s not a fun job — but the good part about turnaround management is if you are a turnaround manager and they’re hiring you, they know what they’re getting and they know they’re in that situation. So usually you have alignment up the chain. Down the chain is much harder. Up the chain, they’re ready. They know it’s going to be aggressive. They know what they’re getting into. Down the chain is where you really have to work.

You’re walking into a company and it could be — you can work 30 years at a company and think you’re doing fine and think you’re doing great, and the company can be in serious trouble. A random mechanical engineer or a guy on the plant floor or even somebody in marketing could think that they’re doing just fine, and the company could be in real trouble, just because it’s not what they touch. And so walking into a company and saying, “Hey, we got to change some stuff — we have to change a lot of stuff, we’re going to change it quickly, you’re going to have to hang on and buckle up and run with me here.” The next question you ask is, what happens if they don’t? And there’s a lot of turnover in these situations. It’s not usually coming in and firing a bunch of people. What it typically is — people that don’t like the direction will self-select out. There’s usually a little bit of replacement at the higher level so that you get your director core, your leaders right, but then everybody else just decides they’re either going to self-select out or they’re going to get on board and get excited.

It’s really interesting, actually, because some of the people that were the previous leaders will choose that they’re not ready to do that, and some of the people that were lagging actually get super excited about the turnaround and turn into completely different employees. So you try not to prejudge as you walk in. But yeah, it’s big change management. A lot of resilience. I have probably 170 employees right now. Every one of them went through it with me. We all went through the fire together for a year and a half and got to where we got. It’s a huge testament to those folks who stuck around and the new folks who came in, because when I interview those guys, I tell them, “It’s going to be a dog fight for 18 months. We’re in it. Everything’s changing. Every single thing you do is going to make us money, no matter what you do, because you’re going to change something that was bad and you’re going to turn it good. It’s going to make us money. The bad thing is that’s all you’re going to do for 18 months — change stuff, and it’s all going to be real hard.” But if you interview somebody like that, you get the right person.

Richard: Last week’s interview with my friend Mal Balman — her episode went out this week, and we were talking about empathy. Sometimes you have to get one-on-one. You have to get granular with your employees, but you have to be empathetic when you’re talking to people to get them to see your point of view. I believe that the more people know you care, the more they’re willing to get on board with you. So talk about the importance of empathy in today’s market.

Todd: It’s a really awesome question. I’m glad you asked it because it’s one that I struggle with, as you’ll see in this interview. It’s not something that I focus on a lot, but it’s something I got some great feedback on at my 90-day review at this job, actually during the huge turnaround. They were like, “You are not doing this part of it.” Frankly, they were just like, “This is the one part you’re missing. Nobody knows who you are. They don’t think you know who they are.” It’s a huge missing cog — everything’s turning around, but nobody’s on your team.

I was like, “Man, that’s fantastic feedback.” And that’s one thing that when you talk about resilience — that sucked to hear. Everything, the numbers were looking good. We felt like we were turning everything around. I didn’t expect that meeting to be so negative. But it was, and it was a good negative. The cool thing about this is I can fix it. And I did 100 one-on-ones in 30 days. I only had 160 employees, so you can imagine — all the way down the chain, we’re doing one-on-ones with folks. It was fantastic. I learned so much.

You have to do it the right way. You can’t promise everybody that everything they say is going to turn into an initiative. But the best thing to ask during a turnaround is, “Man, I know you’ve got good ideas. You’ve been sitting there for 15 years on the floor with these good ideas and no one’s listened to them, so tell me them. Give me your ideas. Tell me what you would change if you were sitting in my seat. Tell me what I don’t understand. Because there’s days that you’re sitting on the floor saying, ‘Man, that guy doesn’t get XYZ.’ I want to hear it.” It’s not all going to change, but I want to hear it. Then I’m going to take the trends from what I’m hearing from everybody and pick the biggest thing we can change. Then they see changes coming, and we can point to so-and-so’s division said this and we changed that. And even if their change didn’t get implemented, they at least know that you’re listening and you took those interviews and turned them into something.

The empathetic part of it in my mind is: I want to hear you. My job is to make your job easier so that you’re more productive, which makes us all money and makes you feel better when you go home because you got something done that helped the company. Nobody cares about working an extra half hour if they really feel like it’s good. You don’t go home and say, “Man, I got all this accomplished in the extra half hour and it sucked.” You go home and say, “I had three extra meetings today and then I had to work 45 extra minutes because I had these wasted meetings during the day.” That’s what people complain about. They don’t complain about being productive. They complain about being unproductive. And those one-on-ones completely changed that for me.

Richard: I believe that the death knell is when somebody says, “Well, this is the way we’ve always done it.” Especially now with the AI coming out. A lot of people — especially, I’m 56, so I’ll be 57 in a couple months — a lot of people my age or older are like, “No, I’m not interested in AI.” And I’m like, well, if you haven’t started using it, you’ve already been passed by. So talk about the importance of — if you’re going to be in business — that you need to evolve with the times.

Todd: So this is all about declaring war on stagnation. When you say, “It’s how we’ve always done it,” it needs to change. Absolutely. Somebody asked me yesterday, “What is the trigger when you know a company needs to transform? When do you know you need to have a transformation?” And I said, if you haven’t had one in three years, you need one. Every company needs to transform every three years. The technology is moving so fast. You have to relook at everything and completely change your long-term strategy based on what’s happening.

AI is a great example. You can have two employees, two $65,000-a-year guys. If one of them learns how to start adding $110,000 worth of value because they’re using AI, it completely changes their value to the company. It completely changes the company’s outcome. If you can have 170 people that are all doubling their productivity because of AI — and it doesn’t mean copying and pasting and doing all this stuff — it’s just like, “Man, I need a new idea.” Boom. Give me 10. “Okay, I’m going to take this one and run with it and see if it works.” It could be that simple on how to use the new technology. You don’t have to be an AI expert. You just need a new idea that you didn’t think about that a hundred other people already have that you wouldn’t have known unless you read a hundred books trying to find it.

It’s so important. On the transformation piece — we all read the same 20 books. All of us who are trying to get ahead — if you’re trying to get into sales, if you’re trying to get into this — we all read the same 20 books. I can regurgitate them all to you. You have to be able to think differently. That’s what my system’s all about — trying to think from a bipolar-inspired, hypomanic type of management. But even if it’s not that, AI can help you think differently. You put something in — especially these orthodoxies, like they say everybody wants this, everybody wants that — what would be the case if that wasn’t true? What would you do differently with my company if that orthodoxy wasn’t true? AI will go ahead and give you a hundred ideas. They’re not all going to be good, but you go through and pick them and help you become better at your job. It can be that simple. People need to start learning how to do it.

Richard: I’m a big ChatGPT guy. I love ChatGPT. But I use it more for learning. I use it as a tool. I don’t use it as a crutch. So a lot of times, if I don’t know about a subject, I’m going to be like, “Hey, ChatGPT, tell me about automation. I don’t know anything about it. Give me — drop it Barney style — give it to me easy. Teach me something.” A lot of people don’t realize how much you can learn from AI instead of just thinking it’s made for making videos. No, it can actually be a teaching tool if you use it correctly.

Todd: It really can. And there’s some great ways to use it. Just like what you said — you get into a subject, “Tell me more about this. Okay, give me three books that I can read. Hey, do you have access to those books? Can you tell me what chapter? Can you give me a summary of that chapter?” A lot of times you can get right down and get a summary of the chapter of a random book of what you want to see. You don’t have to go out and pay 20 bucks. You don’t have to read 400 pages and find it and then remember it and come back to it. It’s just right there. And that’s — unfortunate for authors — but really good for you, that you can go grab this snippet. That’s what we need to be doing. I love the curiosity aspect of AI. If you can get in there, and especially when you’re asking it questions like that, you’re not going to run into all the downfalls of AI. It’s just giving you information. You can find the sources that it’s using. It can tell you how to dive deeper if you want to, and it’s a great way to use AI.

Richard: So talk about your book, because you sent me a copy and I actually breezed through it in one sitting. I really loved it. I got a lot out of it, and I’m implementing it a lot into my business. So talk about your book and why you wrote it, and what somebody will get from reading it. Because like you said, a lot of people will read the same 20 books — but how many people will implement one book?

Todd: Exactly. So my book is called The Unfair Advantage: Weaponizing the Hypomanic Toolbox. The Hypomanic Toolbox is this set of tools that come from this bipolar hypomania-inspired management. The Unfair Advantage is actually a business fiction novel, which I think is interesting because most business books are fairly straightforward textbook style. This is a business fiction novel that follows a shopping cart manufacturer through a turnaround where a bipolar billionaire is teaching this stagnant president all these parts of the toolbox that he can implement in the company.

If you are in business, you’re going to recognize a lot of these conversations. “We’ve always done it this way. We can’t kill that SKU — it’ll kill our business. We can’t raise this price — it’ll hurt our…” All these things, and every one of them you’re going to look in the mirror and be like, “Yeah, I went through that.” It gives you a way to tackle it. And the reason I wrote business fiction is because it’s so easy to go back and be like, “Hey, remember when Eugene said this and this is what he ended up doing and it worked?” You can go back and implement it that way.

There are three books in the series coming out. The next one will be more of the textbook-style deep dive into the actual strategies, but this one shows you exactly how the strategy would look in a boardroom as you implement it. It doesn’t go deep into the why, but it shows you what happens if you do it. And then the third book is going to be all about metrics and how to — there’s basically three metrics you need to turn around a company, and it’ll talk about those. But it’s a great book if you like fiction and you’re interested in business. It reads real fast, and you learn a whole bunch of things, and it’s so easy to go back to. My favorite book ever is called The Goal by Eli Goldratt, and he wrote a business fiction novel about the theory of constraints, which is as boring as you would think it would be. The theory of constraints — hard to read a whole book on. Business fiction novel — very easy. I go back to that thing and read it every year. I can go back to a chapter in my head and be like, “Remember this — that’s what happened. Okay, let’s go back and implement that.” That’s why I wrote this first book that way.

Richard: One thing — I can’t wait for the third book to come out because I realized that a lot of people, especially in my niche, my field, they don’t even know what their analytics are. They have no clue who their perfect listener is. They have no clue — age, demographic. So take us into the importance of — I know the book hasn’t come out yet — but talk about the importance of knowing your analytics, because if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re never going to get there.

Todd: 100%. And just so you know, I’m a big believer — nobody’s ever going to buy my book unless they hear me say something interesting or read something interesting. So I’m going to put all this out there way before the book publishes. I’m not afraid to talk about it. I’ll tell you these three metrics because they’re so important. The three metrics you need to turn around a company or drive your company are revenue per minute, profit per minute, and flow through.

What that means is, let’s say you have 10 people working 2,000 hours a year. You take your total revenue divided by 20,000 hours, because what you want to know is how much revenue per man-hour you’re driving and how much profit per man-hour you’re driving. Then the flow through is your profit divided by your revenue. So basically, let’s say you made an extra million bucks in revenue but you only made $200,000 in profit. That’s a 20% flow through.

The reason these three metrics are what you focus on is because you could be doing great in revenue and going down in profit — you got a problem. You could be doing great in both but not enough flow through — that’s a problem. And headcount is the last metric just below it. But it allows you to figure out: Do I need to cut headcount? Am I in a position where every time I put a head in, I make more money? That’s a fantastic position to be in, because then you just start pumping money into the business. There are going to be about 12 archetypes — the combination of those metrics means this is where you are and this is what you have to do to get to this. It’s going to be real prescriptive. But metrics are so important. Even if you’re just looking at a normal P&L — and this will be super easy, probably easier than I’m explaining it — it’s just going to be a three-metric dashboard. But even if you’re just looking at your normal P&L, you have to know your numbers. It’s so important.

It’s the thing I learned at ITW, which are just the geniuses of 80/20. They are probably the best company I’ve ever seen at making money. They just know their numbers. You would get in the same amount of trouble if you missed your number by $50,000 up or down, because they wanted you dead on every month. That’s how it was. I remember specifically getting yelled at because I beat my numbers 11 months in a row. I got screamed at in a meeting because it meant I was either sandbagging or I didn’t know my numbers and I just kept beating it. That was considered bad there, because your numbers are so important. If you don’t know them, you can’t build your business.

Richard: And I noticed, especially with small businesses — especially when we’re first starting out, because this is a teaching podcast and we have a lot of veteran entrepreneurs — they try to compete on price. I heard it somewhere, and I wish I could remember — I read so many books, I have so many quotes in my head — but it says there’s no sense in being the cheapest company in the world. Sometimes I think you have to raise your prices, even though it may seem counterintuitive. A lot of people are like, “Okay, well, I want to take on Grunt Style.” And you’re like, no, you can’t compete with them on price. You have to compete with them on quality or your story or something else. So talk about that.

Todd: Such a fantastic question. So we have what we call in the book an 80/20 Matrix of Profitability, and this is exactly what it is — how to price different customers different ways. You don’t price everybody the same, and you get paid for your complexity. My favorite quote — I have no idea who told it to me; it was just a mechanic — but it’s: you can have price, you can have quality, or you can have it fast. Pick two. You can’t have three. You decide which two you want and then you either pay handsomely for having all three or you get these two for this price.

The way that the 80/20 Matrix of Profitability works is that you actually look at how much money you’re making off of each customer and how much money you’re making off of each product, and you end up looking at the combinations of the two. What it helps you do is figure out — let’s take a random example. If you were to think about lowering your price on a product, you look and see these customers — are they my bad customers or my good customers? — and you say, “How much more do I have to sell in order to make the same amount of money at a lower price?” And you’ll figure that out. It’s usually pretty dramatic. People don’t realize that if you lower your price by 10%, you need to sell 30% more stuff, depending on the margin. So that’s the first thing you do — figure out what that lift needs to be. Then you say, is there anybody who’s going to buy that much? Because if there’s not, that’s a completely wasted deal. And then how much am I going to have to spend to service that much more revenue for the exact same profit as I’m making now? And then if I really want to double my revenue, how much do I have to do? It might be 400% that you have to sell. Are you going to have to hire six more people to get that done? Because then it’s a terrible move.

What often happens is the opposite, and that’s what you’re talking about — where you say a better idea is we actually raise the price by 12%. We can lose 20% of our sales and still make the same amount of money. And I paid a lot less people a lot less money. So what you do is actually look at your best quadrant — your highest profitable customers and your highest profitable products — and that’s where you protect it. You give them good margins, and you make sure that they’re driving your business. The other segments in the matrix, you’re doing different things with.

In the segment with your worst customers but they’re still buying your best product, you’re just trying to increase their volume because you’re already producing a bunch of that product and you want to produce more. So you want them to buy more. That’s a good thing — you might do some pricing stuff there. Over here on your bad products, you might increase your price dramatically because it’s taking so much complexity and you’re not making enough money. So you need to get paid for that complexity. You increase your price dramatically, or you even start outsourcing, or you start killing some of them. And in the worst matrix — where it’s your bad customers buying your bad products and no big customers are depending on it — I’ll literally put 40% price increases in there. It does not matter.

Usually when you do this matrix out, you’re going to find that there’s this whole huge set of customers and products that you’re selling that make up 3% of your revenue, and you’re doing all this work for it. If you just eliminated all of it, you could dive all that work back into your good products and your good customers and explode your business, but you’re wasting all your time down here in the red. That’s the matrix of profitability. I have a lot of writing out there for free on that — people can look at. But it’s so important. I increase prices all the time, regularly, dramatically. But I bear hug my best customer-product combinations. If you’re in that top 4-20% of my customers, you get bear hugged and I don’t let you go. You are never going anywhere. You will never have a reason to go anywhere, because I’m taking all that energy I’m saving over here and pouring it into you. It is so much easier to make an extra dollar from your best customer than to make a dollar from a new customer. So much easier.

Richard: I was talking to Alex Hormozi, and we were talking about how a lot of people will get into business and they’ll have one product. Even Alex says — even Monster, they got a 40-ounce, they got a 12-ounce. So you have more than one option. I believe you should always have that one stupid option that maybe only 4-12% of people will take you up on. But if they do take you up on that 4-12% product, it’s going to pay for the other 80%. So talk about the importance of having more than just one category.

Todd: So we talk a lot about the base-core-custom platform. You have this base model that’s cheap and fast. You have this core model that’s got everything in it that they probably need — it’s got most of the good stuff. You don’t have to make any apologies for this core product, and it’s more expensive and you can get it at a reasonable lead time. And then you’ve got this custom product that takes a lot more work and they have to have it a certain way, and you have to get paid for the complexity.

You can do this in just about anything — software, manufacturing, which is where my background is, small businesses. By the way, I owned a $2 million manufacturing company that I bought, we doubled it, and sold it. So this process works in smaller businesses as well. I have a startup that’s worth $4 million now that we started at nothing and bootstrapped up. It took a few years. It works in small businesses, too. There’s probably four out of the 10 things that work real well in all of the businesses, and then six of them are probably more towards larger businesses that I’ve dealt with. But it’s so important to have that premium pricing. First of all, you should almost always try and be premium for a small business. That is going to be a better situation.

In my manufacturing division, for example, I killed the lower end and we just went premium. That’s what we focused on. We went from a 40/60 split to an 80/20 split where 80% of our stuff was premium. And what’ll happen is your revenue will go down for a little bit. And you’ll be surprised because your profit will go up. So your revenue goes down, your profit goes up. Then once you hit the staying point and you start growing, your revenue and your profit go crazy. That’s how we doubled that business in three years. We sold it for double, but the revenue only went up probably 30%. So revenue went up 30%, but the profit was so impressive because we switched to a premium manufacturer that we doubled.

Richard: I love it. So now, this is a teaching podcast. If somebody is looking to get into business, and it’s October 22nd, 2025 — what would be your top three pieces of advice?

Todd: My number one piece of advice — and not everyone can do it, and I recognize that — but my number one piece of advice is it is always easier to buy a business than start a business. And it is not that hard to buy a business. People think it’s much harder than it is. The banks will usually give you up to 90% to buy a business. There are ways to use your 401(k) money without paying taxes. There are ways to do all this stuff. I took my 401(k) without any taxes or penalties and bought a multi-million dollar business with just a couple hundred thousand out of my 401(k), no dollars out of my pocket. So it’s always easier to buy a business than build a business.

If you’re going to build a business, that’s fine too. You need to — cash is king. It’s so important. You will have times when your customers owe you money, you owe other people money, but you don’t have any money in the account. So cash is so important. I actually had to sell my business earlier than I wanted to because we grew too fast and my accounts receivable — I had people owe me $660,000 in cash. I’m just a guy, and they owed me all this money, and I owed other people money. I finally was to the point where I was like, if I grow anymore, I could get myself in real trouble. So if I ever do it again, I’m going to make sure I have enough cash to get through a year. It’s really important, that cash reserve. I know that’s a hard leap, but people need to hear it. It’s the number one reason that businesses go out of business — they run out of cash, even if their business is doing fine.

And then the third thing I would say is outsource everything you’re not good at. Do not try to be an expert at everything. There are cheap, cheap ways to get things done. It’s cheaper than you think. And even if it’s not cheaper than you think, it’s worth it because you are not going to become the expert at SEO. You’re not going to become the expert at marketing material. Pay somebody to do it and invest those hours that you would have spent doing it poorly into doing something else really good. That’s probably the number three piece of advice I would give.

Richard: I love it, Todd. So where do we find your books? How do we get into your ecosystem?

Todd: Sure. Best place to find me and information about me and the stuff I’m talking about here — I do a lot of writing on toddhagopian.com. Super easy. My book is on there, but my book is also on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It’s called The Unfair Advantage by Todd Hagopian. Those are the best places to get me. Obviously I’m on Twitter, pretty active there. And then LinkedIn — I love connecting with people. So don’t follow me; just throw a connection at me. I’ll connect with you. And by the way, I don’t do consulting. So I’m not in this for the money. You’re not going to make a bunch of money selling a book. I just want this out there. So if you have questions, just hit me up and let’s have a conversation, just like you and I did and are.

Richard: I love it. And I’ve learned so much from you, and I’m so grateful that we finally got to sit down and have a conversation. So guys, make sure you check them out on LinkedIn. Make sure you check them out on Twitter — or X now, I’m sorry. Make sure you check out the book. I loved it. And actually, when I’m going on vacation again in February, going on a cruise, that’s going to be the only book that I take because I want to dig a little bit deeper into it while I’m on vacation.

Todd: And I’ll shoot you the second one. You can look at that one. It’ll be done by then.

Richard: Anytime you guys have questions, just hit me up. So guys, as you know, whenever I end my conversations — I’m a big believer that whenever you wake up in the morning, you have a choice. You could be a victim or you could be a victor. And you guys been following me for 13 years. You guys been listening to this show every week. So if you follow me, you’re no longer a victim of your past. You’re a victor of your present and your future. Thank you guys for always showing up and showing out. Todd, my brother, it’s been an honor having you on my show.

Todd: Thank you so much. This was a really fantastic conversation. Have an amazing week.

Richard: And remember, Vertical Momentum — the only way to go is up. I love you guys. Have a great week. Todd, my brother, have a great weekend. Take care of that neck.

Todd: Thank you. I appreciate you, sir.