Bryan McAnulty:

Is your creator business actually valuable, or did you accidentally build yourself another job?

Fredrik Sandvall:

Usually, it's twice the work for half the salary, and many are subsidizing the business because they don't have a boss now, but indirectly they do.

Bryan McAnulty:

That may sound harsh, but it's one of the biggest traps that creators and entrepreneurs fall into. Your content may be working, your audience may be growing, and your revenue may be coming in. But if everything depends on you showing up every single day, then what have you really built?

Today we're going to interview Fredrik Sandvall, a former Swedish Special Forces Captain and UN Operational Chief who led more than 250 officers in high-pressure international operations. But Fredrik didn't stop there. He went on to become an investor, strategic advisor, bestselling author, and podcast host, helping founders and creators build businesses that are not only profitable, but durable, valuable, and designed to create real options.

Fredrik Sandvall:

However you run your business, try to build it so, in theory, it could be sellable. You might want to go to something bigger. You can enjoy maybe traveling. All of those options are perfectly fine.

Bryan McAnulty:

Fredrik has raised tens of millions, helped scale platforms more than tenfold, authored books like Trust Is the New Currency, and now teaches creators and entrepreneurs how to stop relying on constant heroics and start building systems that compound.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Trying to think about, how could this happen without me? Giving you as a founder, you as a creator, options. How you can allow the business to run without you.

Bryan McAnulty:

Welcome to The Creator's Adventure, where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey everyone, I'm Bryan McAnulty, the founder of Heights Platform. Let's get into it.

Fredrik, welcome to the show.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Great to be here. Let's go.

Bryan McAnulty:

What is the first thing, or what is the biggest thing, that you did or you are doing that has helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Fredrik Sandvall:

I would say it's investing in myself. That has brought me to many interesting places, and curiosity. Those two, compounded over many years, have led me to—I had no imagination, or stretched imagination, that I would end up in so many different places and roles. That's the biggest one.

Bryan McAnulty:

Thinking about that, I would agree on how important that's been for me as well. But I feel there are some people who are maybe still scared of doing that. Was there some point in your journey where you had not yet fully invested in yourself and you had to make that switch and fully commit? Or were you always like, okay, I'm just going to go with this, and let's see what happens?

Fredrik Sandvall:

I think I've always been there, but it became even more so. When I was young, it was with the Scouts and other activities. But when my parents divorced, when I was like 15 or 16, that's when I really had to step up as the oldest son and almost become like a dad to my dad. That was a big change.

Also, we were living with Dad and not with Mom after the divorce, which is also really unheard of, four siblings. That was my biggest step up outside business, and also to leverage the resources, time, and other people as well. I've been doing that ever since.

Bryan McAnulty:

Wow. I feel like there are a lot of people where you have to—not necessarily go through something, but something has to happen that has to convince you in your own mind that you have to now take these actions to move forward in something faster.

I think a lot of founders who maybe found success earlier in business, it's of course all their hard work, but it's because they've been actually working on it behind the scenes and figuring things out for themselves, and having this deep urge that I have to find a way to make this work, earlier than others would even start thinking about it.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Yeah. Also, kind of competing with myself and not with others. Especially today, you can compare with others, but that doesn't serve you much. If you try to have yourself as a benchmark, and how you can improve whatever you are up to, and also try to add some kind of long-term plan to your achievements, not just thinking for today or tomorrow.

With the military, where I started my career, I always had a couple-of-years-ahead plan, which helped me to progress much faster than anyone else because they were not thinking even midterm.

Bryan McAnulty:

I want to get into your idea of the OPPORTUNE framework, but before we do that, I want to go back and start with your story. When you moved from Special Forces and UN operations into entrepreneurship, what was the moment where you realized how business depends on systems and not just individual performance?

Fredrik Sandvall:

I have business degrees and so on as well, in addition to the military. When I actually pivoted, I felt super ready. Many people who come from the military into what we call the other side of the fence, which is like the civilian darkness—it has many nicknames. When it was time to leave, I'd already been doing that transition mentally for many years, doing some small consulting.

The military is around systems. Successful organizations are the same. One of the things I wrote about, like you indicated in the book there, is owner dependence, which is the biggest problem in most organizations, especially smaller ones. It is all around you, the founder, because you, in your mind, might be the best at sales, the best at everything, and you hold the keys to the treasury, and so on and so forth.

That means most people cannot take a longer holiday, and most people do not have something which is actually even possible to sell in due time, because it's only sellable with you and your brain in the business as part of the deal.

Bryan McAnulty:

What would you say are the first signs that a creator has built a business around what I think you would call heroics instead of enterprise value?

Fredrik Sandvall:

Exactly. It's as simple as, if you're just a little bit honest with yourself, you would see if you are super needed in the business. Also, if you can actually take a holiday more than a week or two weeks, that's a sign that you have started to take big steps in the right direction.

It means that if you can be away for a couple of weeks, maybe it works even better when you're absent. That's quite a cool revelation for many founders, and that is ultimately one way you can see that actually there might be something else on the other side. You don't need to sell your business just because you're exiting out of maybe some of the key responsibilities.

Bryan McAnulty:

Yeah. There have been moments that have been humbling for me in business, where you look at all these things where you thought you had to be not only so involved in it, but all these things that you tried that felt important to you at the time, and you realize, well, what actually moved the lever or moved the needle there?

You start to realize, these things could have happened. It didn't have to have me so much in the details on them. Some of them actually turned out to not nearly be as important as I would have thought.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Exactly. I'm super curious to dive into your business as well, off camera. You've got something really good going on there. Linked to what you're working with, and obviously I'm guessing most of the audience is in that space as well, another key thing is if you're the creator and the founder of a business, that means you're usually also the face, and most of the intellectual property might come from your head. You think that you are indispensable.

But what I've seen with some of the best mentors I've seen is, over the years, the transition from them being the face to actually allowing people in their group of people they have been training to grow into the roles of coaches. It might be some kind of franchise model, or they're trainers, or train the trainers.

There are some really cool things you guys can do, listening, by trying to think about, how could this happen without me? That links to many aspects of your business as well.

Bryan McAnulty:

Real quick, Bryan here. You know me as the host for this podcast, but what you might not know is I'm also the founder of Heights Platform. It's an all-in-one platform that over 10,000 creators have used to build their online courses, communities, and digital product businesses. We recently added some awesome updates to Heights AI to help you turn your idea into a viable business. Heights AI can build entire product offers, review your content, and even coach you on how to grow. You can try it for free for 30 days. Links in the description. Now, back to the podcast.

I think many watching or listening, maybe some are saying, I plan to build this thing because I would love to sell it one day. I think others are building something they really enjoy, and they want to keep working on it. That's great.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Exactly.

Bryan McAnulty:

But there are still things that may be holding you back from growing if you're dependent on all of it. It can still be about your vision. You can still be contributing to it in very powerful and impactful ways, but you have to find a way to be able to grow that, right?

Fredrik Sandvall:

Yeah. Same. You would never have been able to reach as many people as you have if you didn't have a platform and systems. Otherwise, it implodes when you start to touch too many people and they reach back for help. It doesn't work if you don't have some framework, and also how people can spend time with you.

All creators listening, the cool thing you've done already is you have probably put some stuff out there online, which means people can spend hours with you, and they can Google you, and they can find out stuff about you before they even get in touch with you.

Through your years of accumulated content, you've created great lead generation that you might not think about, because right now, today, most people Google you before they will even pick up the phone or send an email.

Bryan McAnulty:

You teach the OPPORTUNE framework as nine value levers for building repeatable assets. Can you walk us through what the framework is?

Fredrik Sandvall:

I'll start with the very first one, which is all around owner independence. I think that's pretty much the most important one, which we've touched upon already. What does that really mean? It means that you can't exit the daily operations because you're needed in so many aspects of things.

One way to, if we focus on that one as maybe the most important out of all of them, is to try to get what you're doing outside your head, to make it more visible. A few years ago, it was super popular to do a Loom video, where you were talking through a process. Nowadays, you can use AI to pull all those standard operating procedures out of your head, create workflows with or without AI.

The cool thing now, depending on how tech-curious you are, is you can do many of these things and leverage your time also without having more people in your team, or you can enable your team by also allowing them to have more AI tools and multiply their time.

Again, owner dependency, staying on that theme: one of the first roles to hire, which most people don't, is as simple and relatively cheap as a personal assistant, part-time or full-time, to do those less valuable tasks. That's also one way you can focus your time on higher-value activities. For example, how you can allow the business to run without you.

That's the main one I like to focus on of the whole OPPORTUNE framework. Are there any of the other ones in particular you're curious about? They are actually mentioned in some kind of book out there that you can find. I'm sure Bryan might put a link to it.

I wrote a book called Options Strategy, and that is all around giving you as a founder, you as a creator, options. You can keep doing exactly what Bryan said. You can keep building, having very much a lifestyle business. You can enjoy maybe traveling and doing your trade. You might want to go to something bigger. You might want to have it as something like a side hustle. All of those options are perfectly fine.

But my encouragement is, however you run your business, try to build it so, in theory, it could be sellable. That means more systems, like having accounting in place, having procedures in place, so ultimately you could sell it. You don't have to, but it will certainly become more enjoyable to run it. Those are some of the key things there. Any of the other ones you would love to jump into?

Bryan McAnulty:

No, well, first, just a point on that is that even if you're saying, I will never sell my business, having these things in place helps ensure you get to do the things you want to do.

You mentioned accounting. I would guess most people don't love figuring out accounting things when they wake up in the morning. But if you don't have systems for that, there may be something that happens, and now suddenly there goes your day, figuring out some kind of problem of where your money's going or has to go, or something like this. If you have systems in place, you don't have to worry about that. You get to focus on the things you care about.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Yeah. Since we started with sharing some of the useful things from the framework, I'll carry on with the second one, which is the P of OPPORTUNE: how you can take whatever you're doing and turn it into a product.

It is really easy to try to sell anything that people like to buy. Try to stay away from that. Especially many of us who are slightly more creative, we might want to fix all the world's problems, especially if people pay us to do it.

But by taking what you do and turning it into a product, and trying to reduce the number of products you offer, even if your service is the product, you can still give it a proper name, a proper description. The cool thing now means your team can sell it. You can start to say no to people, and that actually is quite liberating as well.

Instead of trying to make everything bespoke, there are usually a few standard solutions that fit a big part of your audience, or solve the problems which are more high-value, or the things you like to help with the most.

The easiest thing there: try to package it. Try to make it into one A4 page. What is it? What problems does it solve? What's the pain that usually leads people to look for it? Ultimately, what is the deliverable?

The cool thing, if you do that, now you can do basically the best hack in the whole book: instead of raising finance, sell first, then deliver. Especially as a creator, this is really cool, because you can have a waiting list, maybe some kind of scorecard so they can find you. You can have a waiting list. You're oversubscribed. That means now you can be more picky.

Now it'll be easy to actually deliver later, and you can have a tap where you allow people slowly to get into your ecosystem. That's one way you can make it easy for yourself and for your team by not doing everything for everyone.

Bryan McAnulty:

I think actually it's even more important now, because I know when I started in business, I wanted to offer the bespoke solution. I could do anything for anyone. I think a lot of people start this way. I don't regret it, because it allowed me to experience offering these different things. I did web design, print design, even a little bit of video production, a big range of different things.

But that meant it was hard to really get good and specialize in one particular thing. It meant it was hard to acquire clients, because it was more just like, okay, what is the thing you need? We kind of have it backwards, because we think, if I offer everything, then everyone is my customer, right?

The reality is you only have so much time. There's a lot we could talk about with that, but when you can be specific on your niche and on your offer and what you're able to deliver to somebody, even within the same exact offer, you could say, I could help anyone with this.

The person who doesn't understand it at all, yes, eventually you could educate them, and then they can become part of it, and then they can get to the level where you can really serve them and impact them. But the amount of time it would take to maybe educate them before they can even buy from you is completely different from somebody who already knows they need your solution and is ready to buy right now.

Being able to validate that and say, here's something we offer, and then you can purchase. The reason I'm saying I think it's more valuable now to consider going this route to start is that now, with AI, I think everything is shifting toward this outcome-oriented model.

I talk about, with courses, that you want to base it around a specific result or outcome you want to achieve for somebody. But with AI, I think software is going this way. I think agencies are going this way. Everything is, how can you just sell the outcome directly?

The service, the agency, or coaching existed to help guide you so you could eventually achieve the thing. The software existed so you could use the software in order to eventually achieve the thing. But now we have AI. It can kind of just help deliver the thing to you. As a creator, if you're selling a course or community or something, it's like that as well. You get really clear on that outcome.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Yeah. Let's carry on with the flow here, if you don't mind. The second P is actually around how you can do predictable sales. Most people selling what we are selling have feast and famine. Basically, you've got a lot of sales, and you've got nothing.

Since every sale is a one-off, some of us have different levels, but you usually benefit from having more of a subscription model, which can lead into the next one. I mean, [names unclear] have a great way you can use the upskilling of the selling.

But the strongest reason you would like to have monthly recurring revenue, which ideally doesn't stop, unlike a one-off course fee, is you don't need to resell the whole time. Now you can focus on upselling instead of new sales, new sales, which takes a lot of time and costs a lot in terms of attention and marketing right now. That's another one.

Bryan McAnulty:

That's a great point. For people who don't fully understand what you're getting at there, the idea is that to acquire a new customer takes a lot of effort, a lot of money, a lot of all kinds of things. But once you have a customer, the person who is your customer is the person who's actually the most likely to buy from you. They don't need to be educated on what you're offering.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Exactly. You can imagine sometimes the coffers might not be full. I'm actually writing a book about how you can pay yourself first, but more about that another year.

Your operating cash is the O in OPPORTUNE. Basically, how you can start to plan your expenses and think about cash flow. If you have an accountant or bookkeeper, they can actually start to help you with something called cash flow management. That is not to look at your bank balance. It is a little bit more advanced than that.

People who you pay for that service, unless you do it yourself, know what a cash flow statement might be. Otherwise, you can just Google it. That can really help. Instead of you running out of money, and you might owe a lot of money for tax and other things which are unforeseen, this comes back to having the accounting in order, so you don't end up overspending or maybe spending everything you should pay later.

It's a little bit deeper than I just mentioned, but that's how to think about your operating cash, how you can have an understanding of what you're doing.

Same thing here: bookkeeping, unlike accounting, is a little bit lower-value task and can also now be more automated. That means you shouldn't have to wait one year to see, are you profitable or not? You can actually see that today. You might spend a lot of money on AI tools. You might have put some other things in. By having it visible at least on a monthly basis, not an annual basis, you can now start to track it and do something about it as well.

Bryan McAnulty:

Yeah. Even if it's just to find out if you're profitable or not, or maybe even find out that actually, because you're growing this recurring revenue and you have new customers coming in, maybe you have capital to spend that you didn't even consider that could help to grow the business in some way.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty:

Another question: if you look at a creator business, how do you separate, this person is popular right now, from, this business has durable value? What are the clues you would look for?

My producer helped write this question for me, but I wonder if this would also relate to, oftentimes we see the influencer-type creator who has all these views on YouTube or all these subscribers, and they have a big audience, but they're actually not building this durable value for it.

Fredrik Sandvall:

You're really spot-on with that. If you look at any kind of company out there, if you look at the founder or influencer and then compare them to the brand, it's usually like a ten-to-one ratio. If you look at how many people follow Elon Musk versus how many people follow Tesla, or X, or SpaceX, or whatever is next X. Usually, the founder is the most popular one to follow.

That becomes a problematic part here. If you ever want to sell, how can you distance yourself, your face, if you ever would like to leave the business? One way to do that is to try to capture the intellectual property and have that in one entity.

That's also one way you can maybe think about planning some kind of semi-exit. You might license out your intellectual property. Someone else can use everything you've done, but for a fee. You don't need to sell or kill your baby or company. There are many ways you can monetize that.

But I really see the founder, the face, the key person of influence—there are many names for this individual—and that's really hard, especially when you might have a very large following, to get your number two or three in the business to also become more visible, lowering your own dependency.

But now, the cool thing with AI, social media, and content generation, I know more than a handful of friends who have already replaced themselves with AI voice, AI video, AI bots that can basically respond to questions and do the work in their absence. We are getting there faster and faster.

Bryan McAnulty:

Let's say a creator wants the option to either keep growing, sell, partner, raise money, maybe even acquire another business in the future. What decisions should they make today so they get more of these strategic options later?

Fredrik Sandvall:

Be open. Communicate your intent. There are two ways really here. You've got working in the shadows as one way to do it, or pitch it to the universe, and leads will start to come.

I used to work with real estate investments, so people knew I was always buying the right kind of deals, and people knew they could get really good returns by giving me money, from companies, pension funds, private investors.

That meant I always had a funnel of real estate things and a money funnel, and I just had to match them at the right time. That was playing it with open cards and showing the opportunities that were out there, and that led to really great lead generation in terms of opportunities.

Same thing here. I have very recently started to communicate that I'm very interested to talk to owners who are making at least a million in profit, because I know I can either help them, guide them, point them in the right direction, or potentially even partner with them to help them multiply their business value.

I'm starting slowly to pitch that to the universe, and I'm sure people who run into that information would at least like to find out more. Then I have, let's call it a funnel, where I give value. They've got books, podcasts, some owner/founder tests they can do themselves, so they can just fish around, get to know me better before they even need to reach out: what do you actually mean with this partnership thing?

In this book, there's one page out of well over a hundred which just talks about this briefly. Pitch what you want, and who knows? You might get it.

Bryan McAnulty:

It's a great point. I think people don't actually move forward with that. They have this idea, and they don't put it out there into the world.

Fredrik Sandvall:

I know. Ideas are great until we put action to them.

Bryan McAnulty:

Yeah.

Fredrik Sandvall:

We're all our own victims to that one.

Bryan McAnulty:

What would an investor or buyer notice about a business that a creator themselves might overlook?

Fredrik Sandvall:

Usually, the creator is too focused on the doing, the visibility, and the creation, maybe the sales. Usually, the back-office stuff, the systems, maybe the legals, maybe the insurance, maybe an insurance which is called key-person risk, which basically, if the owner dies, what will happen to the rest?

Some of these boring things are very easy to find when people do so-called due diligence, when they try to see how much you are worth. Missing all of those small, boring parts drastically reduces the value of your company. That can be used against you if you ever would like to sell.

Similarly, if you would like to buy someone, wouldn't it make sense that you can show, okay, here is us, we are leading by example? Here we're doing A, B, C in a good way. How are you doing A, B, C?

Instead of just putting demands on the company you might want to acquire, show you might be a worthy partner to buy them or to partner with them as well. Lead by example and try to find ways. There are many good advisors all over the world who can help you with this, and many good books as well, where you can pick up ideas. But don't try to change too many things at the same time.

Bryan McAnulty:

It's great advice. Now I want to go into a lightning round. Looking for a quick take, kind of a 10-second answer for these next few. What is one thing creators think makes their business valuable but actually doesn't?

Fredrik Sandvall:

Views.

Bryan McAnulty:

Expand on that.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Views are a vanity metric. You'd like to know what you hinted at before: what does it cost to acquire a customer, for them to actually take any kind of action? Turning the views into wherever you want them next. A call to action, whatever that might be.

Bryan McAnulty:

Yeah. Lead, actual customer.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Yep.

Bryan McAnulty:

Do you think most creators are building freedom, or are they just building themselves a harder job?

Fredrik Sandvall:

Themselves a harder job. Usually, it's twice the work for half the salary. Many are subsidizing the business because they don't have a boss now, but indirectly they do: customers, tax, wife, many more.

Bryan McAnulty:

What's one sign that a creator's business is fragile, even if it looks successful online?

Fredrik Sandvall:

Usually, with the open society we have, you can see any kind of creator, you can find out about their actual financial story very easily with a few clicks on Google, and you can see straight through a couple of charlatans out there. Do they actually have something in the background?

Bryan McAnulty:

That's a great point. I think the more experienced you become in business, while somebody who's not involved in entrepreneurship at all may find it more difficult to spot somebody who's actually lying about everything, once you're actually in it and have experience, you can kind of tell where somebody's at.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Therefore, referrals and recommendations are really key, from real people, not just fake pictures on sites.

Bryan McAnulty:

Should every creator build a business as if they might sell it one day?

Fredrik Sandvall:

Sounds good.

Bryan McAnulty:

What's the difference between having an audience and having a real business?

Fredrik Sandvall:

I would love to combine those two, because the audience should really be the foundation of your business. But that is not always the case.

Bryan McAnulty:

Why not?

Fredrik Sandvall:

They miss the business link. Right now, I've got a big audience, but I've not been doing any kind of asks now for more than a year. For the reason I showed you, my Superman shirt behind me here means I have not done any kind of selling for more than a year now. No ask, all just giving value, value.

That's an example of, you get the views and you get the attention, but you don't have a solid call to action where you ask for money, basically.

Bryan McAnulty:

Yeah.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Which you should have. Otherwise, it's a hobby.

Bryan McAnulty:

I agree. Fredrik, this was great talking with you. I have one more question, and that is, on the show I like to ask every guest to ask a question to the audience. If you could ask our audience anything, whether something you're curious about or just want to get people thinking about, what would that be?

Fredrik Sandvall:

This is not a pitch for my podcast, which has exactly the same name: have you invested in you? Have you invested in you?

Invest in You is something which is really key, wherever you are, wherever you'd like to go. Keep thinking about your health, wealth, mindset, relationships, all of that.

Bryan McAnulty:

It's great. Fredrik, before we get going, where else can people find you online?

Fredrik Sandvall:

Easiest is on LinkedIn. My name is very unique, so you can pretty much find only me on the first number of pages on Google and on all social media. My name, Fredrik Sandvall.

Bryan McAnulty:

All right, great. Thanks so much.

Fredrik Sandvall:

Cheers. Thank you.

Bryan McAnulty:

I'd like to take a moment to invite you to join our free community of over 5,000 creators at creatorclimb.com. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, check out the Heights Platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Central. To get notified when new episodes release, join our newsletter at thecreatorsadventure.com. Until then, keep learning, and I'll see you in the next episode.