Shadowing Practice: How to Build and Scale Your Business to $25M - Learn English Speaking with Video

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It's not going to work at first and the reason for that is the bigger you are, the harder it gets because the more people you have to move through.
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That's how you get big because no one ever built anything big by themselves.
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In order to build a business you need two things
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and these two things are developed over time and usually through trial
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and error which is why it's so difficult to build business and that is context and contrast.
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So when you are taking new actions to build your business and you're trying to calibrate what's working and what's not working,
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it isn't until something works that you say ah I figured out how to do it and now you have context.
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And when you try to do something you fail and it's not working now you have contrast.
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So what happens in the building process is you're making lots
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of curated decisions all day long relative to sales marketing operations finance people leadership strategy
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and sometimes they work
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and sometimes they don't work well the issue is as your business is getting bigger
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and it goes through the breakpoints 1 million 3 million 8 million 15 million 25 million the width of
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that decision-making process
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and the number of people involved now where you're getting inputs from multiple people the decision-making becomes much more difficult
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because you're uncertain which of the 15 elements
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that you listen to across the 10 people explaining things and
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which one did and which one did not work
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so what happens is you start to create this belief system
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that when things work it's because you guys did it right and when things are broken it's because it doesn't work.
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The truth is when things work, it's because you figured out how to make something work.
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And when things don't work, you didn't figure out how to make it work.
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And if you embrace that as the reality versus it won't work, then what happens is you don't suppress your belief lid.
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So when John Maxwell talks about the law of the lid, if you recall there's three lids in scaling a business.
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You have your belief lid, you have your operational effectiveness lid, and you have your leadership lid and inside of your leadership lid,
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you have your me leadership, your we leadership, and your us leadership.
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And what that means is when you're $3 million or less, it's all about you.
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You gotta have the leadership.
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And when you move to 8 million, it's all about you.
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You're gonna be dragging everybody and pulling them along and trying to get them to all do their thing.
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But in order to get from 8 to 15 million, it has to move from you to two additional people helping you
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which is the rule of three and if you don't have three people
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and you try to go to 15 million your business will statistically break
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because you don't have enough people pulling that all those other people behind you
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and john maxwell also talks about law of chain and just imagine
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that your chain is linked to every single employee to another employee to another employee to another employee
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and you're pulling everybody up this big hill
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and all of a sudden two people come alongside you
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because they have enough belief in you they come along at eight million
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and they start helping you pull and you're like oh finally someone's helping me and
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if you try to go from eight to 15 million without the three people pulling you will eventually wear out
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and get pulled backwards which is called a slip back and
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and most likely breaks so when you take
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and you think about how you should be making decisions what is the process for decision making
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and when you try things and and they don't work, instead of saying they don't work, change your language to we didn't do it right.
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Because in our experience and all the research shows that when business owners take action and they get a negative result,
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it's higher probabilities they did it wrong than the thing didn't work.
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And so that's where you start to get this context and contrast.
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And how you build the muscle for this is first, why are you doing something?
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And then you visualize what that outcome looks like.
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That way you have a target.
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Now, while you're moving to target, you have to create understanding.
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And this is where you're going to gain context and contrast is little micro decisions that are turning your why into reality.
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It's not going to work at first.
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It's going to be clunky at first.
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It's going to be difficult at first.
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And the reason for that is the bigger you are, the harder it gets because the more people you have to move through.
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And this then goes into the law of addition, which as you're adding people if they don't understand your why
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and they don't understand the target they don't know how to support it
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so they get lost in the journey and so once there's understanding
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and you start practicing and having little successes little failures
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because you don't want to practice too much too fast
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which is why you don't want to over try to grow too fast
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and too fast isn't more than 10 a year too fast could be more than 50
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or 100 a year so i just want to make sure you understand that 8% to 12% growth is not success.
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It's mediocrity, by the way.
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So a lot of people get confused with how they set their targets for growth.
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Now, as you're gaining this context and contrast,
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you're gaining understanding and you're documenting it and you're training it because it's now through consistency where you get the multiplier effect.
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The more you do it, the water over rocks, the less resistance you have, the more you figure out, the more people believe it, the easier it is to see it,
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the easier it is to train it because it works, It's the same, it's always the same, it always works, and everyone has high belief that
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if you do this you're going to get this result now once you figure
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that out you need to replicate it through other people you have to go out
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and duplicate what you have already proven works that's the operational effectiveness lid
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so once you figure it out it's consistent now the next
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technical move is teaching others to do it until they're consistent and getting the same targeted result.
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And you're gonna have to build your business one human being, one person at a time.
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And you're gonna have to connect the chain to them and be at the front of that, which is gonna be difficult for you as a me leader.
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And that usually gets you to 3 million.
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It might get you to four and five, but eventually you need to get a couple people coming around on your wings and you become we leaders.
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You're all pulling in the same direction with a stated objective.
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You're not trying to do the same thing.
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You're not tripping over each other.
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You're running everything someone is the visionary is like here's where
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we're going here's why we're doing it here's the kind of people
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that are going to help us here's what the big picture
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looks like then you're going to have the operator the integrator making sure you're crossing your t's
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and dotting your i's and people are set up for success
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and your training's in place and they understand what they're doing
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and then you're going to have your builder to go out
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and get more clients more customers more people and along
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that process you're going to target 250 000 to 500 000 of revenue per employee so that every time you add someone,
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the business needs to do $250,000 to $500,000 more revenue.
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That's going to drive 15% to 40% profitability within your business, and you're just going to continue to do that 20-mile march to $3 million,
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then to $8 million, then to $15 million, then to $25 million.
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And that's how you get big, because no one ever built anything big by themself.
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Thank you.

English Learning Practice: Business Scaling Insights & Language Tips

Speaking Goals for This Clip

This video targets advanced fluency and complex idea expression, ideal for IELTS speaking practice. You’ll learn to discuss strategic concepts (e.g., business growth, leadership) with clarity, using nuanced vocabulary and structured arguments. It also helps with shadow speak—mimicking natural pacing and intonation when explaining multi-step processes, a key skill for high-band IELTS performance.

Phrase Bank: Reusable Expressions for Business & Leadership

  • "trial and error" – learning through attempts and mistakes
  • "calibrate what's working" – assess and adjust effective strategies
  • "belief lid" – a mental barrier limiting growth potential
  • "rule of three" – a principle requiring three key people for scaling
  • "statistically break" – fail due to predictable structural issues
  • "slip back" – regression after initial progress

Fix Your Weak Spots: Pronunciation & Rhythm

Practice shadow speech with this clip to master stress and intonation in long, complex sentences. Focus on words like "operational effectiveness" (stress on "op-ER-a-tional" and "ef-FEC-tiv-ness") and "leadership lid" (emphasize "LEAD-er-ship" and "LID"). Notice how the speaker pauses before key terms (e.g., "the law of the lid") to signal importance—mimic this to improve clarity.

Another area is rhythm in storytelling. The video uses phrases like "when you’re $3 million or less, it's all about you" to contrast stages of growth. Repeat these lines to practice shifting tone between explanatory and persuasive language, a critical skill for IELTS speaking tasks that require comparing ideas.

Finally, use the concept of "context and contrast" to refine your own speech. When describing challenges, replace vague phrases like "it didn’t work" with specific ones like "we didn’t execute it correctly"—this not only improves accuracy but also demonstrates advanced vocabulary use, a key IELTS criterion.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.