Driving vs. Managing: Which Are You Doing In Your Agency?

I want to talk about the immature business owner, compare that to the mature business owner. And, um, I have a story that I want to share that happened, uh, just this past Friday and I'm in a mastermind group. Um, not a paid one. Actually I meet with a couple of guys, uh, once a month, um, from a couple of different groups and we kind of chat about where things are at and get feedback. And, um, one of the guys who I'm going to kind of circle back and tell this story, I gave him this example of the immature business owner versus the business, the versus the mature business owner. And this concept is something that I originally heard Alex, Charfen talk about on his podcast, um, which I'm now blanking on the name of the podcast. Cause I haven't listened to it in a while. ...

Cause it was a long, it was a while ago, but I have these notes. And once he said this concept, it really stuck with me because at the time I think I, we were trying to grow, but I was acting like an immature, a business owner. And um, my notes really kind of cover this, this concept. And he basically said, and I'm paraphrasing. You have to make things easier for your team. You can't keep changing things in the moment anymore. Immature business owners change things in the moment. The more mature a business is, the more the business is going to be predictable. The more it's going to be a profitable, et cetera, the more it's going to be fun. And he said, so as a matured business and a mature business owner, you have to actually delay gratification and understanding that like you can't operate, you can't just drop the job of a diamond, change everything and move a different direction.

Especially if you've already communicated to your team that you're going in a specific direction. Now I'll challenge you that this is actually even harder when you don't have a team because you're your own team. Or maybe you have a couple of contractors and things like that. So it, it's almost like you can get away with this and, or make excuses because you don't have a team. So that's why I'm kind of, I want to caveat that I don't think this has anything to do with just the team. Although when you do have a team, it does make more sense. But I want to think, I want you to think about how you make decisions and how quickly you change direction, if you are kind of on your own or just have kind of a team of contractors. And so you have to learn to start delaying the gratification a little bit, to let the things that you've already put in place, gain traction and get momentum, which means often times your behaviors are going to have to change.

And I know in many ways, without telling you, when you join our program, like we're actually helping you change your behaviors. But this is something that I think is, is really, really important. And it's this notion of as an immature business owner, you're more likely going like you're, you're driving the day to day. And as the mature business owner, you're managing the day to day and you need to, obviously in order to grow, we need to start thinking about our behaviors and how we can actually manage the day to day versus drive the day to day. And we're constantly, I find in that immature state, just working tires, working tirelessly, um, on like the, to do list, right? Whereas when I talk to mature business owners or people that are, you know, in the masterminds that I'm in and all that stuff, and you know, people that are making more money, doing bigger things, yada yada, yada, you often find like they already know their next three to five moves.

And they're like tirelessly focused on the future. Not necessarily the, to do list, but the future, like those next few bigger moves and why I'm sharing this is because I'm in this call I had on Friday, uh, one of the owners that, uh, I'm in this group with, um, he is doing really, really well growing. And he's at that phase where he's kind of upleveling and to put in perspective, he's going from like 150 K a month to trying to get up to two, 202 50 consistently. He's been pretty much stabilized. He's been able to stabilize at one 50 a month and he's trying to get to 200 a month. And he was talking about all these things that they're already doing that very clearly he knew would get to solving the problem and allowing them to get consistent 200 K months. But then he woven this new thing towards the end of the conversation of like launching a lower ticket offering.

And, um, he made it seem like, Oh, it's like, we're also thinking about doing this almost as like an afterthought with, um, you know, Oh, it's not going to be too difficult. Cause it's, you know, I already have the content it's already recorded and I basically stopped. And I said, Hey look like what's more important launching this lower ticket thing or getting to 200 K a month and stabilizing at that. And he's like, well, 200 K a month. And I said, well, it sounds like you already have all the things that you need to do to get to 200 K a month. You just actually need to do them a little bit better. So why are you launching this, you know, this down sell thing or this, you know, um, this front end product, cause you see a lot of people in our space do it.

And um, it's like, Oh, well, a lot of his reasoning was that it'd just be easy because he's already done most of the work. But what I shared, I shared this, the story of the immature business owner versus the mature business owner and that we, we have to delay the gratification of some of these things and we need to focus on the future, not on the, to do list. And, uh, he really resonated with that. And the thing that kind of got him to kind of stop for a minute in his tracks was the notion that while, you know, he could go execute on this and you know, really in a week this thing would be live and available to sell, but by doing so, it would actually create new obstacles for the system that he was able to get running to 150 K a month.

And it would almost definitely break and require his team to adjust how they operated to even sustain the way that they were planning on sustaining to go to 200 because they have this new element that's now woven in and inserted into the entire process. And this is where we have to look at a lot of the things that we do in our day to day and how they impact the whole. It's very simple to say, Oh, well I already have the content. I can go launch it. But how does that then have the, you know, the secondary and the tertiary consequences of doing that? How does that impact the system and the structure and the process that all of these other people have been operating around to this point. And very quickly he realized that, yeah, that would probably impact a lot of things. But the biggest thing he said was he'd actually have to then go back to his team who they really just kind of went into the, there, they already planned the next month.

And they were all like super crystal clear on what each of them had to do, why it was important. And he was about to just throw this grenade and have this new product. And he said, yeah, that would actually probably look bad because I just got everyone on board with this mission and I'd have to come back and say, Hey, now we're going to roll out this new product. And it would derail a lot of what they were focused on. And if you don't have a team, as you start to get a team, you will realize that the, there is power in being able to control yourself as the owner and delay that gratification that could come with some of these other things, because you constantly changing on a dime, which is easy when you're by yourself can really throw your team off. Um, they get set in their ways.

They don't all operate like you as an entrepreneur. They're probably more like they need to see the vision and if you're getting them bought into the vision, and then all of a sudden you're changing the vision, they're gonna, they're gonna lose a lot of trust in you and in the process, because they'll always feel like at the drop of a dime, you can change direction and by doing so, you'll actually make them less effective in helping you and the benefit of having them in the first place. You're almost eliminating that benefit because now they're constantly having to pivot. And they're always going to be a little bit slower than you because you have the ideas that, you know, the visionary in the business, but they're the ones that are actually executing on these things. And some of these things take a little bit of time and it kind of goes back to that notion of, you know, the results that you're seeing in your business right now are really from the activities that you've been spending the last 30, 60, 90 days on.

And if you want the results, like we have to start working on the activities. Well, if you're constantly changing what your team is working on those activities, and they're all aimed at slightly different results, like, are you going to be consistently getting those results that you want in the next 30, 60, 90 days? Probably not because you keep changing the direction. And so my challenge to you today is to think about how you operate great in the day to day. Like, are you just managing to do lists or are you actually starting to level up your thinking as the owner and managing the future, managing, sorry, I'm driving the day to day versus managing the day to day. Are you solely thinking about the, to do list or are you actually thinking about, you know, your next future problems, your, your next few moves? Because the more likely that, you know, again, as they're smaller, I think this, if you're a solo artist in this, I think you can make the excuse that like, it doesn't impact anybody, but it does impact you and your routine and the results that you're expecting and, or trying to achieve.

You just have the ability to, to lie to yourself. And that protects, it sort of feels safe that you can keep changing, but you're in that changing. You're not getting to the results that you're looking for. I'm hoping, I hope this makes sense. But if you do have any sort of small team, the more that you do this, the more detrimental it ends up being, uh, to the greater good. And you guys hitting momentum as a team and hitting the goals that you guys set out for yourselves. And I've, I've seen this in my own business. I saw this in, uh, you know, this obviously came up in a call with other, you know, six figure a month earners that are meeting with every, you know, every month to chat about the challenges that we have. So it comes up in my mind all the day, all the time each and every day, because I come up with new ideas all the time, just like you do, and you need to be able to curb some of those and, you know, have a conversation with your team and say, look, these are the ideas that I'm having.

Where do they fall in priority? I'm not trying to derail you. We have openings candid conversations in our team about these ideas. And, um, it takes time and really kind of curbing that, uh, that desire to drop everything and execute on this new idea. Uh, it takes practice. It takes, you know, obviously it takes a strong team to push back on you as well, which is why I think it's actually really difficult when you're by yourself because you don't have that team to push back on. And so if you're in a community like our client community, like I would lean into the community and, um, you know, have them hold you accountable to, uh, you know, your own brain kind of coming up with these new ideas that on your own, on your own accord, you might go execute that are actually moving you further from where you want it.

I want to be all of you where you want to get to. There is a handful of tactics strategies that you actually need to get there. And the more that you can focus on the fewest number of those, that'll get you the furthest, the faster you're going to get there each and every time you change direction, um, to, you know, at the drop of a dime, you're only hurting yourself and your team's potential. Uh, so watch out for that because that's the tendency of an immature business owner. And as long as you remain operating as an immature business owner, you are going to have difficulty achieving your goals. So let's level up and let's become a mature business owner, not the immature business owner. Sound good. All right, guys,