First and foremost, happy July 4th to those that celebrate it!
All right, let me set the stage here…
This new episode comes with a story.
One that is a big lesson for me…
We built a funnel. A common one that a lot of our clients build and you hear people talking about.
A Facebook ad, which is the traffic into our funnel, which is the Webinar into an appointment.
It was going really, really well.
Multiple months.
We just kept adding more traffic and more traffic and all of a sudden the ads stopped working.
So if we look at what really happened here, the ads that stopped working is really like the symptom.
I felt they had stopped working.
So when I say ads stopped working, we saw that through a decrease in leads coming into our pipeline… which resulted in fewer sales that month.
And as an entrepreneur (as most entrepreneurs do), we’d go to look at the problem and we try to fix the problem.
And for me at the time my mistake was, I didn’t really look at the problem as a lead generation problem.
As an entrepreneur and product creator, I have really loved focusing on the product and how we serve our clients.
I quickly said, well, maybe the ad stopped working because of the product and I jumped into, “well, let me fix the product”.
The product must be broken, right?
Wrong.
It steered us down a path that wasted a lot of time.
Transcript / MP3
What’s good, everybody. Greg Hickman here.And in this episode, I want to talk about finally dealing with the root cause of your problems. Let’s go. … All right, so let me set the stageYou know this episode is called dealing with the root cause, right? Dealing with the root cause of the problem and that comes with a story, right?And so we built a funnel. A common one that a lot of our clients build and you hear people talking about.Facebook ad, which is the traffic into our funnel, which is the Webinar into an appointment.It was going really, really well.Multiple months.We just kept adding more traffic and more traffic and all of a sudden the ads stopped working.So if we look at what really happened here, the ads stopped working is really like the symptom.I felt they had stopped working.It was more of the symptoms cause I felt like lead flow reduce, right?So when I say ads stopped working, you know, we, we saw that through a decrease in Leeds coming into our pipeline, which resulted in fewer sales that month.And as an entrepreneur, as most entrepreneurs do, we’d go to look at the problem and we try to fix the problem.And for me at the time my mistake was, I didn’t really look at the problem as a lead generation problem.As an entrepreneur, product creator, I have really loved focusing on the product and how we serve our clients. I quickly said, well, maybe the ad stopped working because of the product and I jumped into, well, let me fix the product.The product must be broken, right?Like that’s, that’s going to solve this ad’s not working problem. Like, well, once we fixed the product and the ads will start to work, the messaging, I’ll start to make sense. And obviously as you can even hear, and as I’m saying it, that just sounds ridiculous, right? You can’t solve a lead generation problem with a product solution. Right? And so I kept kind of spinning around. I’d say, okay, well let me fix the product. And then I looped back around, I’m like, well the, you know, the ads are still not working.And I kind of kept going in this weird cycle of like deciding how to fix the product so that the sales and the ads would start working again and that we go from decreased in decrease of leads back to were, you know, we’re flowing with leads and everything’s working. But I was kind of focused on the wrong area. So symptom and problem is that we, the problem is we don’t have enough leads to hit the sales numbers we want and we don’t have the number of leads we want because our ads stop working. Right. And obviously you could go deeper like, well why the ads stop working and you keep going deeper, deeper, deeper and you start to get to the real root cause. But very quickly before I even started solving for the problem, which is we need more leads, I went and started fixing the product.And uh, I find this to be common a lot with entrepreneurs. You know, as entrepreneurs, as entrepreneurs do they like to create and focusing on the product you get to create again versus I feel like ads, yes, you’re creating messaging and copy unless you’re like a copy writer or an ads person. I don’t think that that’s something that you typically jump into and you look at as creation, like, you know, packaging up your intellectual property and adding a new training or repackaging your training to sell it as a different program. All of that won’t solve the problem that at least I had, which was, you know, we just need more leads. Right? And so this kind of brings me to today’s lesson, which is like the issue will remain the issue until you solve the root cause. And you can’t solve in my, in my situation, you can’t solve a lead generation problem with a product solution. You can’t solve a product solution with a lead generation or lead generation solution, right? And so the lesson here today that I’d like to share with you guys really is, is don’t get caught dealing with symptoms but not dealing with the root cause. So don’t get caught dealing with symptoms but not dealing with the root cause.Okay? This is why we don’t get the things that we want, right? Guys? Like you’re out for this thing, you’re out, you have a goal and you set your eyes on it and you go forward and then you hit an obstacle and you actually, in many ways, we’ll start solving, solving other problems that aren’t going to help you get closer. And it kind of reminded me of what I learned reading the book called the road less stupid, which I’ll link up in the show notes and I kind of want to share a snippet that I kind of paraphrased from, from that book. And basically in that book, and I’m blanking on the author’s name, my apologies, but the book is the road less stupid search for it on Amazon. Again, I’ll link it up in the show notes. Um, we don’t get what we want because we consistently select solutions that either can or cannot or will not solve the problem.Plus we select solutions that we either cannot or will not consistently execute to get us there. Woo Woo, right? Listen to that again. We don’t get what we want because we consistently select solutions that either cannot or will not solve the problem. So what I wanted was to keep the hat he paid in our sales numbers like we were in growing, right, which means we need to have a certain number of leads coming in every single month, right? To work the math. And we stopped to getting that. And so I went and tried to fix our product, right? Like you can in hearing it and even insane, it sounds backwards, but in the moment I didn’t see it that way. And so the problem kept occurring and I would fix the product and the PR, obviously the problem wouldn’t get better, right? And so, um, probably has something a little bit to do with where he says next is we often select solutions that we either cannot or will not consistently execute on to get there.Right. At the time I was running my own ads, I was good enough, but, um, it’s something that I didn’t fully enjoy doing. The thing breaks, what do I need to do? I need to go back and do the thing that I, I didn’t really enjoy doing and, or wanted to write. And so we select solutions that we either cannot or will not consistently execute on to get there. Right? So in this case, I actually avoided, uh, I chose to work on the product solution, right? And execute on that instead of executing on fixing the actual problem, which was our lead generation problem. And so picking a solution that is inconsistent or misaligned with the required skills or resources and sporadic execution is what leads to failure, right? So if you’re trying to get something and you pick a solution that is inconsistent or misaligned with your own or with the skills that you need to obtain or have to get to the end result and you only sporadically execute on those things, it’s always going to lead to failure.So I kind of want to bring this back to you guys, right? So in my case, I had a lead generation problem and I tried to solve that with a product solution and I kept avoiding going back to ads cause it’s something I don’t necessarily like or enjoy. Uh, and I focused on where I wanted to focus, which was in product, right? How do I make our courses better? How do I make our training better? You know, how do I make our coaching better? Right? And so I kept picking a solution, right? Which was me working on product that was misaligned with the required skills and resources that I should’ve been focused on, which was, let me go work on this ads thing, right? Let me go find someone that can help me fix this and understand, you know, what happened with why the ads were doing so well and then they weren’t right?So where is this happening for you right now? Maybe you have a specific problem or you’re feeling a specific symptom and you keep solving for the symptom, but you keep experiencing it. Maybe it goes away for a little bit, but then it comes back, uh, you solve for the symptom again and then it comes back, right? And so you never actually solve the problem. You’re just always kind of scraping the surface of the symptom. And you’re kind of just in this reoccurring constant pain. Uh, it just comes in waves, right? Because you solve the symptom. Next thing you know, the, the pain comes back, the symptom or maybe new symptoms and rise because you haven’t gone deep to solve the root of the problem. So the problem here is that in your world, the issue, we’re Romaine the issue until you solve the root cause.So when you start to feel something not working, you need to ask yourself, well, why is it not working? Why is it not working? Why is it not working? You know, do the whole game of five whys, go five layers deep. Keep peeling back that onion until you get to the root cause of the thing installed for that. Because if you only solve for the surface layer, guess what? A few weeks later, possibly days later, heck, maybe hours later that same problem will resurface in a new way and potentially be even worse than it was before. And so depending upon what your skill sets are, you probably want to gut check yourself and say, am I avoiding these things because I don’t like it. And then I s escaping into the things that I do enjoy, which is actually prolonging the problem. Make a sense, guys. I’d love to know your thoughts on this.Uh, this was something that I kinda had a huge Aha moment with, um, not too long ago. Honestly, or maybe like a year ago now, uh, with kind of what turned into a larger problem because I kept avoiding the root cause of what was really happening and you know, escaping into what felt comfortable. So where are you avoiding the thing that actually needs to be worked on in your business and escaping into the things that you enjoy, um, when really you need to be executing consistently on solving the actual root cause of your problem. If you’ve been looking to grow and scale your agency, but you’re tired of trading time for money, custom projects, and relying on referrals alone, it can be hard. That’s probably why if I gave you five, 10, or 20 new clients right now, you are, your business would break. I struggle with the same thing for a while until I figured out a better way. So I created a special experience called foundations to help you package up your knowledge and experience into a profitable online program, launch your automated sales system and systemize your fulfillment. You’ll work directly with me, my team, and a group of entrepreneurs just like you to implement the systems and get the help you need to learn more and see if it’s a fit. Just hop on over to my scalable business.com and schedule a call with us today.
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