Get New Perspective

What's good, everybody.In this episode, I want to talk about perspective and how getting different views on your perspective can actually help you move a whole lot faster and also serve as like those bumper rails that you see in the bowling alley to keep you on track....

Let's get it going.

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 and 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's going on guys? So like I said, I wanted to talk a little bit about perspective and the reason why I want to talk about perspective is a quick story. Um, I'm recording this on a Monday and you know, you come out of the weekend, actually just at the time of this recording, yesterday was father's Day. And so, uh, you know, very involved with my family and spending time with my wife and my son Cole and you know, a lot of, of that energy like behind the scenes is like stirring up on like me getting ready for the week. And so I jump in on Monday. I knew I needed to record some stuff and I had a very clear plan that I had documented in, in my notebook for the week. I knew exactly what I needed to work on recording two episodes. It was one of them. And so I jump in and the ideas are flowing and you're in, you're taking down some notes.

And uh, coincidentally a good friend of mine reached out and she was kind of going through a new stage of growth in an inner, on her hiring process. And internally we had been talking a lot about hiring as well. And so we decided, hey, it's a priority to get on the phone right now and just jam through some of the ideas that were, that we're both experiencing some of the things that we're thinking about as it relates to building our team right now. And it really got me thinking about perspective, right? Um, I am very much one to write down my vision and review that vision every day and share it with the team. And oftentimes that serves as the guide rails for am I going in the right direction? Right. But yeah, that's my little bubble that I'm in right now. And adding a new perspective from someone that knows me that's in a similar, uh, evolution of growth, um, has even been a client we've partnered on things is the type of person that bringing her into the conversation to get her perspective allows me to see things in a new light.

And it actually coincidentally timed with, um, a chapter that I was reading in this book, which is called the 177 mental toughness secrets of the world class by s a s Steve Seibold. Right. And I want to read a quick section of this to you, um, as it relates to this conversation and kind of jam for a minute. So, uh, this is on page 35 where it's, the section is called champions embrace relativity. And the quote that he says is the great ones are highly aware of the fact that all perceptions are based on the experience and belief of the beholder. This is the reason they surround themselves with people who think much bigger than they do. Beliefs and expectations are contagious and champions are eager to catch as much as they can. And so I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, but there are a couple of pieces that really stand out and you know, as a part of my morning routine, I'm reading through my goals often, right?

I'm constantly recalibrating my brain on what are my one year goals, what are my three year goals, and what's my vision for the future of, of our business and my life. And I'm in this kind of sections around champions embrace relativity. You know, he says most people typically won't invest the time to create a vision and commit it to paper. Yet the few who do tend to aim low as a result of their own limited perspective and beliefs ask champions if their vision is big and they are likely to respond compared to what? Right? So I see this all the time. We have people applying to work with us that are say making 10 grand a month and their goal is to make 15 and like a year from then. Right? If you're only thinking 5k more than you're at, and this is just a revenue example, but this applies in a lot of different areas, often like your purse, your perspective on what is possible is so limited that you're going to constantly be doing things that well really only ever gets you to 15 right?

But if you are in your, in your mind you were saying I'm working towards and the goal is 100 k a month, the way that you think and the perspective that you need on what actions you should be taking, what things you say you should say yes to is going to totally change the game on how fast you get there and to the capacity which you do get there. Right? Because for many of you that might have that limited perspective and are saying things like I want to go from 10 k to 15 k you know, adding one new client could probably do that for you, but it will also change how you, you show up each and every day, right? Like we might have to add more hours. Whereas when you start thinking what your life will look like and what your business will look like when you're doing $100,000 a month and again, just arbitrary numbers, the way in which you think of getting there and how you get there is going to allow you to start creating that vision that you can start following, right?

That is going to, I think puts you in a position, um, to achieve the, the more short term goal, which may be is 15 k but also in a way that's scalable enough to get you well beyond that. And so what Kinda got me thinking about this, this notion of, of compared to what, right? Um, if you've ever joined a mastermind group or worked with a coach or a mentor, you know, some of my goals that I share with certain people, to them, it's a very small goal, right? You know, me saying I want to get to a million a month for a lot of business owners, that's, you know, they're like, really, that's it, right? Like they're doing way more than that because they have much bigger businesses. Right. And so that gives me perspective on, Oh, why wait a million a month? While it's a lot compared to maybe a hundred thousand a month or even half a million a month, it's not that much compared to someone who's, you know, doing say 30 million a year or something like that.

Right? And so putting yourself around people that will give you a different perspective is really important. Again, this is why getting into mastermind groups or coaching programs where there's people ahead of you that think bigger, they have, you know, bigger vision is going to give you a new perspective and, and normalize what you think and elevate what you think is normal. Right. And so, um, for me, you know, it's funny, I'm chatting, I'm on the phone with my friend and she was sharing some of her vision that, you know, we hadn't spoken in a, in a few weeks and her vision was way clear and way bigger than she's ever been thinking before. And I was like, yeah, like I'm really starting to see that you're like how you're thinking differently on your business before it was just very tactical and I want this, that and the other thing and the vision that she has now requires more people requires, um, you know, we'll allow her to have a bigger impact and the way that she thinks about her business has completely changed and how she'll get there cause completely changed.

And so it goes on in this chapter and it basically says, um, the great ones develop the unique ability to measure beyond their own perspective. This is one of the secrets which enables them to reach for goals and dreams far exceeding anything they have accomplished in the past. The goal, dream or vision may be big to them, but to a bigger champion with a broader perspective, it's child's play. This critical thinking skill removes the intimidation factor and raises their level of expectation is $1 million a lot of money. The masses would say yes, the world class, the world class ask compared to what? Compared to a dollar a million dollars is a lot of money compared to $100 million. It's not much at all. Don't underestimate this seemingly minute subtlety because adopting this one simple principle could transform your perception of every other aspect of your life and so they gave you an action step, which is really cool.

Then each chapter, they give you an action step and it says, listen to how people around you measure the size and scope of things. When you hear someone placing value on something using their own perspective as a reference point, challenge them. For example, if someone says this is a huge project reply really compared to what? Try and see, see what their reaction is that you're going to get. And again, the whole purpose of me sharing this is that I think it's really important for you to start figuring out how you can get different perspective. Because I'll often times as demonstrated in this chapter when we're planning our own division, we're planning our own vision around our current perspective, which might not be that big relative to somebody else. Now you get in a conversation and again you say, I want to make $1 million a year and you say that to a person who's doing 30 you're going to have a whole new perspective and you're going to see how they think about certain things.

So what I want to quickly share is a couple of things that I've done personally to make sure that I'm seen a d a different and bigger perspective. So the first thing is like, like they allude to in this chapter is we have to write down the vision. So the first tip is write down your vision, like write down your goals for a year, three years, 10 years. And I, the second piece of this is I really challenge you to think ridiculously big, right? Like the purpose of this exercise is to make it sound as crazy as possible, right? Like as dream, as big as you can. I want you to list all of the things that you want. You want five houses, say five houses you want, you know, five cars, say five cars. You want certain types of experiences with your family. Do that certain type of money that you pay herself or you know the amount of money that you can donate to charities.

Like literally go like there's no boundaries, like think as big as you possibly can and write it all down. And what I want you to do is constantly review those things and I want you to distill that down into a one year and a three year vision. How I do it is I look at, um, I look at across a couple of categories, the business, personal health and relationships. And I look at, okay, in one year from now, how much money do I want in my personal bank accounts? What type of things do I want? What type of experiences do I want to have personally? What about with my relationship with my wife and my son? What about in the business? How much cash on hand? Um, how many clients do we have? What does our team look like? What does our building look like?

What do our clients look like? How many of them? All of these things and let them, let the imagination run wild. So write it down, go super big, distill it into a one year and a three year. Now again, I challenge you on the one year in the three year to go a little bit bigger than what your normal perspective is. So now another key piece of this is reviewing it every single day. I want you to start reviewing it. And I want you to do this for a little while on your own. To kind of see how your own brain starts to, uh, so just to change and evolve from this thinking, then I want you to start sharing it with other people that are kind of close to you, that are maybe in the business environment. Um, you know, if you're watching a show, you're likely looking to grow your business.

So I'd get around people that are within the same area of revenue, same business model, things like that. Uh, that could be through a couple of connections that you've already made. Um, it could mean joining a coaching program or a mentorship program where there's likeminded people. I know we have a lot of clients that come to us to be in an environment around people that are thinking bigger, that are a few steps ahead, right? So you could do something like that. It doesn't have to be paid. Um, and then have those conversations, conversations and start sharing that vision out loud with other people. Inquire about other people's vision, why that big, why those things, and see what they say to get a new perspective on how they're trying to go about achieving these goals. Right. The whole purpose of, of this, this episode is to start doing the things that are going to give you a different perspective ideally from people that are thinking bigger than you and um, are still within the same wheelhouse.

Right? Uh, you know, if you're selling courses or you're doing coaching, consulting, like being around those people I think is going to be key. If you're an ecommerce business, I would say like try to get around e-commerce folks that are having those conversations, right? Because one of the things that I've found to be most valuable is I have two or three people that literally on my phone I will send voice messages to and we'll go back and forth and each and every day, if I'm reviewing my goals and I'm acting on those, you know, tactically doing the things that are going to get me there, there's obviously going to be moments where my vision and what I'm working on start to get a little bit foggy and waiver. Right? Or I might have some doubts. Right? And you know who hasn't bins, the report where they're starting to doubt yourself or have questions about the path that they've been on.

Listen, it happens to every entrepreneur. So for me, when that happens, while sometimes I can go to my team, sometimes I need to step outside of that bubble and reach out to, you know, a couple people. Like I said, I have three or so people that I speak to pretty regularly that know me really well, that are in a similar business model and that I trust with everything and I can just bounce ideas off of them and they can kind of give me that fresh perspective of, Hey, like I think you're overthinking this or I think you're too much in the weeds, which is what happened in the conversation today. Then conversely, they're sharing their vision with me and we're seeing each other's visions continue to grow and get bigger and get clear. And sometimes it goes from being clear, it gets so big that it's foggy and then it stays big and gets clear again.

And then it gets bigger, clear, bigger, clear. And you kind of keep just honing in on what we need to be doing. And that constant conversation of literally just vomiting and out sometimes will help you. Now the pitfall, which is what happened to me is when you start sharing that vision with too many people and receiving the feedback from everybody, right? So I think, uh, you know, you're going to have to go through sharing these conversations, these visions with, you know, a handful of people to find those few relationships. If you can't already think of who those people are in your world to get those people into your world. But when I look at the three people that I commonly talk to, guess how I met those people? Uh, one I met, I should all three of them. I met through some sort of paid experience.

Uh, one was at a conference and it was like a mutual connection. Uh, another was, I was in a mastermind with this person and another, I was in a certification program with the other person. So all of them I had invested money to put me into a small group of people, in which case I met one of these other folks that I am now very close with. If I think about my closest friends and allies and kind of my support crew, my support net [inaudible] this game of entrepreneurship, they've all come from pretty much me investing in some sort of program or an experience where I met them, right? Because I know we're like minded because we're at the exact same event. Uh, we're both interested in growth because we both invested in the exact same thing. And we're usually in similar business models because that's the type of programs that I invest in.

I, I don't go too far wide. Um, when I'm like in books I do, but like paying for a mastermind, I want to be in a mastermind with people that have a similar business to me, um, or some with somewhat in the same wheelhouse. So all of these people are very dialed into like the market, the, the current economy. My business, I understand their business model. In many cases, they know our team, we've collaborated and so I have a couple people that I can go to and get that recalibration. I like to think of it as, you know, those inflatable bumpers that you get when you go bowling with kids. So the, so your ball just kind of goes down the alley and still hits the pins, but sometimes it, you know, bounces back and forth. It's the, the bumper rails, right? Sometimes are inflatable, sometimes they're rails, depending upon where you're at those conversations with those three people, those are my guide rails.

Those are my bumper rails. So if you don't have those bumper rails right, you're going to go in the gutter, right? And if that's, that's an example of you just relying on your, your own perspective. Once you start throwing those bumpers up because you have some, some people you can trust that will give you the real talk, right? You'll add that new layer of perspective to kind of keep you on course moving forward. All right, so quick recap of some things you should do. Write down the vision. Go as big as you want. The bigger, the better. Boil that down into a one year and a three year vision. I like to personally break it down into personal business, health and relationships of the things that I want, the experiences that I want to have, revenue, cash, profit, uh, experiences, places I'd like to go, things like that, right?

Then read that over and over every single day. Make that part of your morning routine or your evening routine so that you're constantly recalibrating on that vision, right? And I guarantee you just from doing that, you'll start to see yourself making progress towards acting and doing the things that are gonna help you get to that vision. Then after I'd say maybe you know, 30 days of doing that consistently if you don't already look to start getting yourself incorporate into some sort of peer group where you can be around other people that are in a similar place, ideally led by someone who is a little bit further ahead, whether that's a mastermind group or a coaching program, a local CEO group, whatever that may be. Find a group of people that are likeminded in a similar journey, a few steps ahead, some cases a few steps behind and start hearing about what their vision is and start sharing your vision with them and you're going to find, you're going to a get a couple of people that you're going to really nestled in on and going to become your kind of [inaudible] three people like I have.

Maybe it's less than, maybe it's more and your vision is going to continue to to expand and contract, but still getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Right, and I think that's going to help you far exceed the goals that you currently have in place because your goal is currently, for many of you, are really only tied to your own limited perspective, right? So we're doing all of these things to get a bigger, wider perspective, a varying perspectives, different angles so that we can continue to grow. But stay directionally sound. Hopefully, this was helpful, the catch in the next episode.

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 scalablebusiness.com to learn more.