Most founders hit a wall somewhere around year two or three. Revenue flatlines, the to-do list never shrinks, and every decision still runs through them. Allan Khazak, founder of Vroom Media Group, lived that reality — and then dismantled it.
In a recent conversation with Sales POP’s John Golden, Khazak traced his path from public accounting to building a seven-figure business in under two years. The throughline wasn’t a secret tactic or a lucky break. It was a deliberate shift in how he thought about his role.
Discipline Bleeds Into Everything
Khazak’s first principle sounds deceptively simple: your personal habits shape your professional results. His non-negotiable gym routine wasn’t about fitness — it was about proving to himself, daily, that he could do hard things consistently. That same muscle carries you through a rough sales quarter or a hiring mistake.
Failing 400 Times Before It Clicked
Before the systems and the team, there was a brutal stretch of 400 failed sales calls. Khazak didn’t quit. He tracked what wasn’t working, adjusted, and kept going. He leans on the 10,000-hour framework — not as a cliché, but as a genuine reminder that mastery requires more repetitions than most people are willing to log.
The founders who scale aren’t necessarily the most talented. They’re the ones who outlast the discomfort.
The Real Bottleneck Is Usually You
Khazak’s business stalled for three years while he was still the one doing everything. The turning point came when he stopped being an operator and started being an architect — documenting processes, training people to handle client work, and building systems that didn’t require his constant presence.
He eventually reduced his direct involvement to 30–60 minutes per week. That’s not a typo. It’s what happens when you treat your business like something that should run without you, not despite you.
Hire for Strengths, Move Fast on Mistakes
His hiring philosophy is straightforward: match people to what they’re actually good at, and don’t tolerate chronic toxicity or disorganization that you hope will fix itself. The cost of the wrong person in the wrong seat compounds quietly until it no longer does.
Know Your Numbers or Someone Else Will
With an accounting background, Khazak is sharper than most on metrics. Customer lifetime value, acquisition costs, churn — he treats these as navigation tools, not just reporting figures. One underrated move: building info products for leads who aren’t ready to buy, turning what would be wasted ad spend into a secondary revenue stream.
AI as a Thinking Partner, Not a Shortcut
He uses AI to reduce overhead from repetitive work, but pushes back on the idea of using it passively. Engage with it, challenge its outputs, treat it like a collaborator rather than a vending machine.
The pattern across everything Khazak describes is the same: build something that doesn’t need you at its center. That’s the whole job.
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John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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