How to Actually Scale Your Business (and NOT Lose Money)

What if the difference between momentum and burnout is one boring decision: survive? We pull back the curtain on scaling Gold Shark Media AI—from the rush of early wins to the sting of hiring too fast—and walk through the simple rules that kept us in the game: prioritize sales, protect cash, and make practical choices that extend runway instead of shrinking it.

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We start with the unglamorous truths of growth: how outsourcing led to smarter hiring, how overstaffing cratered margins, and why treating every client like your own business turns churn into retention. Then we go hands-on with our all‑in‑one AI CRM, showing how a single dashboard captures leads, conversations, funnels, tasks, ads, and analytics without juggling five tools. If you’re a realtor, contractor, or agency builder, you’ll hear how white labeling the platform can turn services into a software-powered offer, with clear setup options and monthly plans that match your stage.

Along the way, we talk brand strategy that resists narrow boxes. Real estate, media, and AI don’t compete when they tell one coherent story about solving problems in public. We also share a sober look at digital assets: research deeply, avoid hot-money shuffles, and invest with patience. The point isn’t speed; it’s compounding—skills, relationships, testimonials, and systems that add up quarter by quarter.

If you’re building while balancing a day job, if you’ve learned the hard way that cash flow beats bravado, or if your tools are running you instead of the other way around, this conversation offers a map and a morale boost. Subscribe for more candid playbooks, share this with a founder who needs a reset, and leave a review with the one process you’ll fix this week.

Chapters

• 0:00 Learning To Outsource And Hire
• 0:30 Host Intro And Career Juggle
• 0:56 Sales First And Client Acquisition
• 1:21 Real Estate And Brand-Building Philosophy
• 2:06 Year-Over-Year Growth Lessons
• 2:30 Gold Shark Media AI Overview
• 3:16 Centralized Dashboard And Integrations
• 3:34 White Label Setup And Pricing
• 4:28 Mindset, Pace, And Market Outlook
• 6:06 Agency Reality Check And Scaling Pains
• 6:58 Spend Less, Survive, And Persist
• 7:35 Early Sales Roots And Entrepreneurial Drive

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

As I continued scaling that business, Gold Shark Media, as we continued growing the business, one thing that was really cool is I learned how to outsource, and then eventually I learned how to hire other people. And when I started hiring other people, then come on, don't lose a lot of money. Don't lose money in business. You know, spend as little as possible. You need to make very, very rational, practical decisions, but you need to stay in business. That's really the key. You just need to survive. You need to survive, you need to not quit. What's up? My name is Brendan Scott Ecker, and I'm a Michigan real estate agent entrepreneur, and I'm making this video just because I wanted to talk about business specifically. I just wanted to make this video as an entrepreneur, as the founder and CEO of Polcheck Media AI as an update because I've been slacking on content, I've been just super busy. Um, also, I'm also a police officer, so I have to make time for the things in my life. One thing I learned about business is that you need to find good clients, and you need to just really get good at acquiring them at a rapid rate. Sales needs to be everything. And so, if you can focus on that tactical advice, that's the tactical advice I would give any young entrepreneur. Be hungry, be motivated, and then be focused on you know, really building your financial future. And so, this was what I was motivated for. This is why I grabbed my real estate license because the way I saw it, be a middleman and be between the investors and be right between the homeowners, right? And sellers, whatever, be the middleman and find a way to make money in as many markets as you can. Real estate, Gold Shark Media, AI, focus on AI, living in the future. And some people tell me I shouldn't do this. You know, this is how you build a brand. This is basic branding, and it's the one disagreement I have with entrepreneurs when they say, well, you need to really niche down on one thing, but it's like part of building a brand, though, is putting a face to it and building a story out of it, and all of these different businesses and trying different things and becoming a master of different markets. That is the key to business. So if you can learn to do this, then you'll truly master the game. One lesson I learned my first year with Gold Shark Media AI, it was about consistency, treating the clients as if they were me. That customer retention, you know, monthly revenue, did pretty well for those clients. We still do well. Again, that was my first year of business. Our second year of business, we did it even better, and then now we're doing even better. And again, you can see a lot of our testimonials on our website at Gold Shark Media AI. Yes, our goal is to help you build your business with an all-in-one AI CRM. And what this means is being able to give you a little bit more capabilities than most of these different CRMs actually are able to do. Okay, so this allows us to handle your foundational setup, your sales and conversions, and your website and monetization. All of it happens in one place, Gold Shark Media CRM or Gold Shark Media AI. Okay, you're going to be given a dashboard where it allows you to follow all of your different leads, all of your different opportunities, your conversions, your funnels, the pipelines, everything. Any tasks that you have to do, manual actions, lead source reports, your Google Analytics reports, Google Business Profile, Facebook ads, all of it is right here. Sales efficiency numbers, everything's going to be kept in one place in Gold Shark Media AI. So you never have to worry about that ever again. Okay, you got any conversations, you got anybody who's messaging you already right here and ready to go. You don't have to worry about going all to all these different social media platforms just to go find it. But not least, you have your CRM connector, and this is just to basically white loyal, this is so you can white label your business, your your website as a software, and we help you do that by essentially creating it for you. And again, we can do this for 997. If you want us to just set up your entire CRM for you, you want us to do all of this work, then no problem, we can do that. But with that being said, ladies and gentlemen, that is it, and that is everything you need to know to build your own software with Gold Shark Media AI andor Gold Shark CRM. Okay, you can integrate everything you need to know, and you can manage your business in one place, and everything step by step. We have guides to teach you how to go, where you gotta go, how to do everything you gotta do. We have AI chatbots to assist you if you need the help right here in the corner. Everything you could possibly need. But again, we recommend the$497 per month plan so that way you can get the full effects, you get full, full services out of this when you're paying for the$4.97 plan. And if you pay us$9.97 a month, then we'll just do everything for you. Again, better deal than you're gonna get out of HUDSPA and a lot of these different agencies. Okay, so be sure to work with the Gold Shark Media, build your American dream, and we will see you next time. Envision gold. Specifically for these purposes, I like to tell this story. Year one in business was kind of I didn't know what I was doing. Your first year of business can be your best year if you do it right, if you're actually successful at having a large amount of volume and really showing people who you are. This is my message innovate, be great, and build businesses and be motivated. And the younger you are, don't think YOLO, you only live once. No, yeah, think like that, but use it for business, use it for building generational wealth, build a life for your family, build something that is worthwhile. Don't waste a single second. But it's been busy, it's been fun, it's been good, and business has been decent. I'm excited for certain markets to emerge, specifically digital assets, invest in digital assets. And when I say that, due diligence, common sense, don't be stupid, don't move money around too much, do your research, invest in the future. If you're under my age, I'm 27 years old, been in business a few years now. Um, with Gold Shark Media AI, we created a CRM, which is a customer relationship management software. And with our software, you're able to essentially automate your entire business and scale it up, track unlimited leads, 10,000. I think it starts at like 10,000, 100,000 leads you can put in there. You can get integrations, you can sync up different things for your business. And specifically, we like to work with realtors, contractors, it kind of works for that best, especially or a marketing agency. If you're a marketing agency out there, um, I understand that. If anything, I understand the marketing agency grind. If you're a new marketing agency and I can help you with that for sure, I know what it's like to work and build a startup, especially in tech, where you think you're gonna make a lot of money, you think it's gonna be really easy to make it, you think you're gonna just be a master of the game right out of the gates, but that's just not how it works, is it? Business doesn't work like that, and it never will work like that. As I continued scaling that business, Gold Shark Media, as we continued growing the business. One thing that was really cool is I learned how to outsource, and then eventually I learned how to hire other people. And when I started hiring other people, then I hired too many people, and then I lost a lot of money, and that's never fun. Don't lose a lot of money, don't lose money in business, you know. Spend as little as possible. You need to make very, very rational, practical decisions that seem boring, you know, that might seem disadvantageous to the business itself, but you need to stay in business. That's really the key. You just need to survive. You need to survive, you need to not quit. For me, I was extremely overwhelmed. That was my experience. I also had I somewhat struggled because I, you know, didn't have a lot of experience in business my entire life. I guess I did, you know, when I was in high school, I sold a lot of raider cards, what we called them for a raffle and football season, and I sold the most, but whatever. I was always a salesman, I was always some what of an entrepreneur, but I never like really applied it.