I got a brand new episode for you to marinate on (get it?)For a lot of us, we’re operating in our business without any key metrics. And we try to fix problems without knowing these specific metrics…And that doesn’t help us assure we’re going in the right direction…Or the activities we’re spending our time on our helping our hurting…Or that we should stop doing…And it doesn’t help our teams help us either.This episode might come off a little ‘ranty’, but it’s something I’m passionate about and I think will strike a chord with a lot of you.
Transcript / MP3
Entrepreneurs are, are really interesting creatures. Um, you probably will resonate with this and why I say that is, well, I’d say we’re interesting and we’re funny creatures for a long time. For many of you in fact, probably are operating in your business with no metrics, no measurement, like you’re really just kind of flying blind and winging it. Then, um, when you want to go get some metrics and or measurement, you want it all. Thus making the what you’ve got ineffective… for three years, my agency built funnels and automation systems for the biggest names in marketing today since then have transformed that agency into a hyper profitable training and consulting business. While everyone is out there talking about scale, like it’s some sort of destination, we’ll be asking the real question, how do you transform your business into a more scalable model using the knowledge, skills and expertise that you already have? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share the strategies I’m using to build my multimillion dollar business. My name is Greg Hickman and welcome to scalable. What I wanted to talk about today is this notion of you can’t fix what you can’t see.And so you’re going to see me first of all looking down a bunch just cause I, I was taking a bunch of notes this morning on my iPad and okay, entrepreneurs are, are really interesting creatures. Um, you probably will resonate with this and why I say that is, well I’d say we’re interesting and we’re funny creatures for a long time. For many of you in fact probably are operating in your business with no metrics, no measurement. Like you’re really just kind of flying blind and wane it then um, when you want to go get some metrics and or measurement, you want it all. Thus making the what you’ve got ineffective cause you’re trying to measure everything. And I was on a conversation with a buddy of mine yesterday. We were just kind of catching up and jamming. We’re in similar places in our business dealing with, you know, different obstacles.And he was sharing a story. I have a mastermind that he was just at a with a bunch of high six and seven figure entrepreneurs. And there were a handful in the room that, um, call it, have had success over the years and then call it, have gone backwards and, or just not where they could have been in, you know, many of the ways that they were talking were in ways where there was a little bit of ego, like, look, I’ve been in this game for 15 years and you know, I shouldn’t have to do these things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what was interesting about it as we were kind of talking, um, cause we were kinda deal, we were kind of jamming personally about some of the things that we’ve been working on. And for me, uh, you know, it’s been about trying to get our Facebook ads working.Um, we will go through stretches of like three or four weeks where they’re crushing it and then they’ll go through two or three weeks where they’re not. And I go and talk to my friends who both run ads, have ads, agencies, other entrepreneurs that I know that are doing the ads. And a lot of people are just experiencing the same thing. And it, and it kind of led to this conversation of you can’t fix what you can’t see. And when I have my Facebook metrics open, which are actually open right now, I can start to see, because I have data where things are broken and a lot of agency owners that we chat with, they come to us and they want to automate their business. They want to systemize their business, but they don’t really know what to systemize, where to start. They want to launch, you know, a group coaching program or a mentorship program and they’re not sure what pieces to actually package up into their service and who exactly to serve.And because they have no data on what’s actually working for their clients and what’s the most valuable to them. Thus they can’t kind of look at anything and say, Oh yeah, this is where our clients are winning. When we do just this one piece and what ends up happening it guy, I kind of see this whole thing of you know, you can’t, you can’t fix what you can’t see. Like, if I’m working on my ads and I don’t have the, the setup correctly, I could very easily say, Oh man, like my sales video or my webinar is not converting when really that’s not even the case. It’s the copy in my ad indoor the copy on my landing page because not enough people are clicking through. And if I set up my ads and I can actually see that, it’s like, Oh well there’s not enough people getting to, for example, getting to my webinar to say that the webinar’s not working right.And so in most entrepreneurs they’ll be like, Oh my webinar’s not working. They’ll, they’ll go fix that when they’re not even solving the right problem because they don’t have the data. And where I see this happening in, in agencies is, you know, this is a little bit of like a, an ego and entitlement thing that I think is happening right now in, in our marketplace. And I’m guilty of this too, so I’m not, I’m not saying like, Hey, like this is all your guys’ problem and not mine. Like I am being vulnerable here. I definitely have an ego. And I go through waves of like, you know, dealing with that and what I think you’re seeing right now and you look, you can learn a lot by investing in coaching and buying courses and mentorship and you should do those things. But in many cases, and I see this more and more agency owners honestly, that are somewhere between like 20 and 30 K a month.They sort of feel like they’ve figured it out. Like you cracked the case and the next, the next consultant or person that you hire, it’s almost as if you think you’re going to hire them and they’re going to create this seven figure business for you. Look, no matter who you hire, they’re not going to create the thing that you want for you. You have to do that yourself. And some cases that might require you to learn some more skills that you don’t have. And this is probably a good indicator that if you’ve ever hired people before and then you don’t trust them, you don’t trust them because you don’t know what they’re doing and you probably don’t know what they’re doing because you don’t even know where you want to take your business. You hired them, you didn’t train them. You expected them to come with all of these skills and knowledge about your business and you kind of threw a bunch of stuff on them and they weren’t able to make any sense of it either.Because really deep down you have no idea where you’re going and you have no tracking or metrics to help even indicate to yourself, let alone show them that you’re on course or off course. And if that’s the case, if you’ve been hiring people and then you know you don’t trust them because they’re not doing their job and it’s not working, but you really have no idea what you’re doing, it’s back to that same case. Like you can’t fix what you can’t see. You can’t have someone come into your business and work on something to fix something that you have no idea what’s at, what piece of that is actually broken. So let’s just take for example ads. Um, my buddy who I was chatting with was talking about, uh, one of the women that was at this event who a veteran entrepreneur has built multiple businesses and you know, the advice to her in that session was, Hey, why don’t you disconnect from everything for the next two weeks and go learn Facebook ads. Like go actually buy a course. Learn how to do Facebook ads yourself. I’m not saying you have to do it forever, but go learn it so that when you go to hire someone, you know what they’re actually doing. You know what’s involved. You understand the steps, the plumbing enough to be able to effectively hire and then monitor that person to see that it’s working.And I challenged many of you that are watching because historically, again, agency owners, you offload fulfillment, you offload fulfillment. And we’re so stuck in the weeds ourself that we just hire these contractors and these other people into our businesses and we don’t manage them. We don’t train them and we have no metrics to make sure that what they’re actually doing is helping the business move forward or save us time and actually cost us more money. I was talking with one of our clients who, uh, has to make a difficult decision, uh, coming up in the, in the next few weeks about an employee who is paying a significant amount of money, but that employee doesn’t save him anytime and doesn’t generate any revenue in the, and the work that he does do ends up falling back on the owner’s plate anyway and it’s a decent salary that is actually handcuffing him from investing in things that will actually help him grow.But there was really no measurements to allow him to see that this in person that he’s employed in this contracted is actually helping the business move forward. And it’s created a lot of, uh, growth challenges because there isn’t money to reinvest and they lose a client and then they’re losing money. And he’s trying to keep this guy on board, but it’s not really helping him and it’s because he’s trying to solve this problem. But he has no insight into what’s actually broken, what’s not working, what is working. And that’s why I feel like entrepreneurs are kind of interesting creatures because for most, most people that I chat with, they have no signs of measurement, um, no, no metrics. And then all of a sudden they realize that they need them, they want all of them, which kind of renders most of, most of them ineffective because they don’t even know what they’re looking for.They have all of this data. And so if that’s you, if you’re hiring people and you don’t trust them because you’re not sure what they’re doing, you might need to take that skill back in house for a little bit, just so that you can learn and understand what data you need to actually see for yourself to know if that is actually working or not. So that when you do go and hire it, you can have that trust to be able to say, Hey, Facebook ads person, this is what I expect of you and this is what I know that you’re going to be doing because I was doing it. I understand it well enough to at least give you direction versus blindly hope that you’re going to solve my businesses problems doing this thing that I don’t even know how to do when I don’t even know where I’m going.So I know this is a little bit of a rant, but uh, hopefully your, your kind of digesting with what I’m picking or what I’m, what I’m putting down here. Hopefully you’re picking up what I’m putting down. You can’t fix what you can’t see. Don’t go and get all the metrics. If you’ve never had any figure out what are the core things that would help you make decisions faster if it’s, again, for example, a funnel you want to understand where are things breaking down? Is it the ad copy? Is it the connection from the ad copy to the landing page? Is that what happens after the landing page to your actual sales conversion tool? Is that your follow up? Maybe your clients aren’t getting results fast enough, so what should take, you know, three days is taking three months and you’re losing costs and you’re losing money in the fulfillment process and delivery process.Maybe you have people on your team that you don’t even know how you’re measuring their success and you don’t even really know what they’re doing in their business. You might need to have some tough conversations and start figuring out how can you measure these things that are probably really important for you to move the business forward, to at least tell yourself that you’re either on track or off track. If this is making sense a and this is resonating with you, leave a comment below, let me know. Are you kind of flying blind with the metrics in your business? Do you have a specific set of KPIs that for yourself allow you to know that your business is going in the right direction and a quick hint, revenue is not one of them. That’s a lagging indicator. You need to be able to look at data, right?Leading, leading indicators to be able to tell if you’re on, on track or off track. The the things that result in the sale would have happened already. So you can’t go back and fix those. So what are you looking at in your business to make sure that you’re in the right direction? And I’ll even put that onto your team members and your contractors. What, how are you measuring their success? Especially if you’re not happy with them. You need to really start having some tough conversations because I think it’s very easy to think, Oh my God, I’m hiring people, I’m building my team, they’re helping me grow my business but really have no idea what they’re doing. The unclear if it’s actually serving you or preventing your growth and guess what? It is okay to take a couple steps back in order to move forward. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that it’s a bad idea to take a couple steps back in order to take leaps and bounds forward if that is what is required to make, make the transformation you’re looking to make. So hope you enjoyed this episode today. Leave me a comment if you’ve got any questions and or where you feel like you could use some more insight and, and metrics and measurement to know if you’re on track or off track. And I hope you guys enjoy, and I’ll talk to you guys soon.If I give you five to 10 new clients, would you or your agency break if so, your current agency model is broken? I struggle with this too, until I found a better way. By adding online programs, training and coaching to our agency, we doubled profits without adding more hours. If you want to work directly with me and my team to transform your agency, visit my scalable business.com to learn more.
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