In today’s episode, I’m dropping some #realtalk
I often hear agency owners complain and saying things like…
“My prospects and clients are cheap”…
“My sales call didn’t go well because they didn’t want to spend what I’m worth”…
And I sit there and think to myself…
When was the last time YOU invested in the growth of YOUR business?
When was the last time you spent what you ask your clients to spend on your own growth?
When was the last time you paid to get the right help like you want your clients to pay you?
When’s the last time you showed up the way you’re asking someone else to?
The point is, you might just have to look in the mirror and start acting like the client you want to have.
Cuz if you’re not…well, this is the very reason you’re attracting these people over and over and over.
That’s why I put today’s video together for ya.
Transcript / MP3
Oftentimes you’ll have we’ll hear the people that say things like, well, my clients are cheap and they start complaining about the type of person that they’re dealing with and you know, my ideal client is the type of person that has a budget, yada, yada, yada.And the reality is, and often what I’ll ask is when was the last time you invested $10,000 in the growth of your business?And I’d say 95% of the time the answer is, well, I haven’t.For three years. My agency built funnels and automation systems for the biggest names in marketing today. Since then, I’ve 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.Guys, this is another episode of the Scalable podcast. I’m your host, Greg Hickman and, and the topic for today’s episode that I’m coming at you with is be the client that you want to have. And there’s this notion in business and sales called the mirror and it’s this notion of what you project you reflect. And this really shows up a lot for clients that come through our programs and work with us in our training and coaching that are trying to Uplevel the prices that they, they charge for their clients, but they have a little bit of friction or resistance when trying to get their ideal prospects to pay the amount that they’re now trying to command. And usually my first question is, and say, you know, someone came to us and they’re like, you know, I’m having a really difficult time. You know, we have this thing that we’re charging $10,000 for and we have all of these reasons and case studies to show that when a client follows our process and they pay the 10 K that it’s like a 10 X return for them.Yet it’s really hard to sell this thing at 10 10 K and oftentimes you’ll have, you know, we’ll hear the people and say things like, well, my clients are cheap and like start complaining about the type of person that they’re dealing with. And you know, my ideal client is the type of person that has a budget, yada, yada, yada. And the reality is, and often what I’ll ask is when was the last time you invested $10,000 in the growth of your business? And I’d say 95% of the time the answer is, well, I haven’t. And now before you think I’m going to get all woo woo on you, there is a lot to be said for asking your clients to do things that you are not willing to do yourself. The same goes for your prospects. If you’ve never invested the $10,000 in your business and you’re not having trouble selling something for 10,000 and trying to convince other people to buy something for 10,000 it’s probably going to feel a little bit weird and inside your brain it’s going to probably help you push away from feeling confident in being able to make that sale.Now, it’s not even just show showing up in the sales process or trying to get paid a premium amount, although that’s where it shows up a lot. But we deal with agency owners and I know many of you are agency owners and service providers. You might have had a client come in and now they’re not showing up or they’re not getting you the assets that you, you needed that they said they were going to get you in order to do your job well, and now you’re chasing them and you sort of feel like a babysitter and that feeling sucks. Right? Well, again, I’d flip it back to you and said, where in your life or where in your business are you actually being chased by someone that’s really trying to help you? Where are you not showing up? Where are you showing up late? Where are you not doing the work?Where are you complaining about things not working the way that you want them to work? Right? All of these things we deal with from our clients and our prospects and oftentimes we’ll complain about it and more often than not, we’re actually showing up the exact same way in our business. You get on the phone with a prospect and they, they bleed to you and they like, they want nothing but the this solution that you have and they’ll do whatever it takes, but they won’t actually do whatever it takes because they won’t make the investment. They won’t put themselves in a position where, yeah, it probably feels a little bit uncomfortable to move forward to get the result that they want and they go back to what’s comfortable because as humans, we always go back to what is comfortable. So again, back to you. Where in your business are you showing up and staying in that comfort zone where you’re just expecting a new result from doing the same thing that you’ve been doing over and over and over again.When people come to us, oftentimes they are making a radical change in their business and it will be uncomfortable and you’re not going to be able to make that shift and get the result that you want if you aren’t willing to make that change and look, sometimes that change requires you to fire some clients. Now, I’m not saying you go fire everybody and put your family or your life in jeopardy, but at some time, at some point you’re going to have to do things that are uncomfortable to get the result that you want. And if you’re not seeing your clients show up that way, the likelihood is that you’re not showing up that way. And I’m not preaching to you like I am perfect because just the other day or the other week, I showed up the exact same way, but I’ve done a lot of work on myself and my mindset too.I think be fairly self aware. I think self-awareness is one of the most powerful skill sets you can build as a business owner really as a human. But as a business owner and [inaudible] for me and my business, I was looking to Uplevel my sales ability and aye knew of a couple people that are really good sales coaches and sales trainers and that I would be confident in working with any one of them. And I had a sales conversation with one of them that I know like and trust I’ve been involved with for many years and went through the whole conversation. You know, I’m in the sales conversation, hearing him say things, I’m like, man, like I totally like, I have clients that are saying what I’m saying and it’s so annoying and I’d even say it back to him. I’m like, man, I know I sound like blah blah blah.I hear this all the time too, but I’m different. Right. And you know, he kept diagnosing the problem and the reality was when he shared the investment, which was a completely reasonable investment, actually less than what I thought it was going to be. I said, you know what, like I got to think about it. And he’s like, well what do you need to think about? Like we just talked for, you know, an hour about how you know that this is going to help you. And I was like, you know, I’m not the type of person that makes decisions, blah blah blah. You know, you guys have heard it all too. And you know, I wanted to go back and run it by the team because this actually wasn’t an investment that I had been talking about with my leadership team. Something that I wanted to do that would help like propel our business.Right? Yeah. We have a couple of things in our pipeline of like programs that we want to invest in, but after a couple other things happen and the reason why I was, I realized why I was hesitant to pull the trigger on some of those other things is because I actually was lacking some confidence in the sales stuff. And so when I realized that that was the area that would really help, I quickly had the conversation with this person, with this coach, and he didn’t let me off the hook, which was great because I shouldn’t have been let off the hook. I was just fleeing back into what was comfortable. And it was in that moment when I said said to him, you know what? Like I just need to think about it that it actually kind of clicked for me. And that self-awareness kicked in and I was like, man, I sound exactly like the people that have been getting on the phone with me and if I’m this way, I’m essentially welcoming that behavior in my life as well.And again, that was just one situation literally a few weeks ago where I felt that way. And so I said, you know what, let’s do this. I paid in full right there and literally within the next, it was about 48 hours. I used something that I learned from his training and I made my money back 48 hours later. Right? Cause I just committed to working with him to get the result. And since then I’ve already had, you know, three or four more sales following the principles that I’ve learned from him and I’m not even really two weeks into working with him. And so I’m the type of person that, well I want my clients to put in the work and work hard. And so the second I gave him my money, I was actually about to go on vacation, but I watched, you know, about an hour and a half of training, did a handful of assignments, stayed up a little bit later knowing that I was about to go on this vacation and did the work before I went on the vacation.So I’ve put in a lot of extra time and that’s what I would expect my clients to do as well because they want the results. So they’d put in extra work. And so the moral of the story is try to be the client and not try to be, be the client that you want to have. So if you’re investing in yourself, right and you haven’t paid a premium into your own personal growth, why should anyone, or at least, why should you expect anyone to be willing to pay a premium in you when you’re not even willing to put a premium on yourself? Why should you expect your clients to go the extra mile and put in the hard work when you aren’t willing to do that yourself? It is what you project you reflect. You’re going to, you’re going to attract all of those sorts of people.And I know, look, I’m not the type of person that’s like really into the woo woo stuff, but when you start to understand this concept and hopefully your self awareness kicks in at certain points, you’ll realize that your being the exact same thing that you’re complaining about from either your existing clients or your prospects. Oh, they won’t pay as much as I want to charge. Well, have you ever paid a premium in yourself? They’re not showing up the way I want to. Are you showing up the way that you want them to? Right? It’s super easy for us to say, Hey, my client should do X, Y, Z, and then we don’t have to be equally as responsible. One of our core principles with our coaching program is I will be as hungry as you are, right? Cause I can’t make you hungry. I can’t make you want something and I can’t want something more than you want it for yourself.So if you show up super hungry, we will match your hunger. Right? And I think a lot of times as business owners and or agency owners, we get clients and we expect them to do certain things, but then we don’t meet, we don’t meet them where we’ve agreed to meet them. We don’t, we don’t show up the way that we need to show up for them to show up the way that we want them to show up, right? And so it’s this concept called the mirror, obviously, because what you see in the mirror is the reflection and that’s you. And so if you are being that way, those are the same types of people that you are going to attract. So if you want your clients to show up, be the person that shows up. If you want them to do the work, be the person that does the work.If you want them to put in extra, be the person that puts an extra if you want to be, if you want them to be the person that pays a premium rate, be the person that invests in premium things, right? If you want them not to complain, don’t be the one that complains. If you don’t want them to come to you with lame excuses, don’t be the person that shows up with lame excuses and it all starts with self-awareness, my friends. The more that you can work on understanding when you’re catching yourself in these moments like I did on this call with my sales coach, you’ll realize that, Oh my God, like this is why this is happening because I am this exact same thing and so that’s what I wanted to leave you with today. It shows up a lot of places. I’m again, not perfect.This is just showed up recently for me, but I was why is enough to catch it and then commit and because I committed, I know what type of worker I am and I already got the result back, right? I’m not the type of person that’s going to commit, invest in something that I want to change and then actually do nothing about it because I’m also not to the type of person that’s going to think that just by putting the money on the table that I’m actually going to show up, right? A lot of people will pay for the coaching program or buy the course thinking that the transaction is going to get them the result that they’re hoping for. And guess what? You still have to show up and do the work in the course and or the training or work with the coach or implement the thing that you just invested into.Right? So, uh, I’m sorry if I’m coming at you a little hot today. Uh, one of our core values is real talk. And so when you got to talk about stuff, you’ve got to talk about stuff. And because I caught myself this way and I’m actually now in the position of having more sales conversations, I hear it over and over and over again, right? We had a sales rep that we no longer work with. So I took the sales back over. I’m working on my sales chops because I want to be able to put together a sales process that’s more robust that I can hand it off to somebody else by the end of the year. And so I’m back in the trenches making the phone calls, doing the work. And you learn a lot having these conversations and you hear a lot of things. And for me, being back fresh into having these conversations, I’ve just, I’m just starting to hear a lot of these things where it’s like, I want, I want this result, I want it so bad.But then they’re not actually willing to do what it actually takes to get that result. And it’s us fleeing back into what’s comfortable. And I would guess that the same people that say those things are hearing the same things from their ideal prospects, which is why they’re having trouble getting the next sale while they’re having trouble getting clients to pay them on time while they’re having trouble, you know, managing scope creep because they’re the type of person that allows for that to happen in their own business and possibly in their own life. So putting this on you guys today, I want you to think about where in your life and where in your business are you not being your best client. Thus you’re attracting the behavior that you currently are demonstrating. Because if you flip that around, you’ll be amazed with the type of results that you’re going to start getting because you will be your best client. So hope you guys find this helpful. Nothing but love you guys and uh, coming at you guys soon. On the flip side, talk 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’ve doubled profits without adding more hours. If you want to work directly with me and my team to transform your agency, visit myscalablebusiness.com to learn more.
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