Look At These 3 Areas When You Hit The Wall

What’s good, everybody. I’m Greg Hickman and this is the scalable podcast. And in this episode I really want to talk about, um, three things that I’ve found need to be in alignment, uh, in order for you to really find success in growing your business in a sustainable long-term way. Not playing this game for the short, you know, playing the short game, but you know, having a vision for the long term and being able to play that long game, these three things need to be in alignment and it’s usually the reason why I find agency owners and service providers kind of struggling to grow the minute they reach some sort of adversity. Let’s dive in.

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 scale up.

Alright my friends. So like I said, uh, there’s, there comes a time

for a lot of agency owners and service providers for myself and I’ll show that story of um, you start hitting friction in, in growth. Like you start feeling resistance and usually it really comes down to having an alignment in, in three areas. And if any one of these three areas is off, it’s usually the cause of why you’re having this friction in this resistance or feel like you’re hitting a wall and, or struggling to grow into the next level. And so I want to kind of cover these with you because, um, outside of any type of business owner, uh, agencies, service providers, freelancers, it’s the most common for a lot of different reasons. And so, um, let me pull up my iPad here cause I want to kind of kind of draw this out for you. Uh, you know, so if you’re listening, you know, envision a circle, like a pie and it’s divided into three equal parts, right?

So you have a pie is divided into three equal parts and I’m on one piece of the Pie. You have, uh, the what, right? This is the, what you do, right? This is the, what you sell, what outcome you deliver, what results you get for your clients. Then in another piece of the puzzle, you have the who right, who you do this thing for. And the last is, um, is how you do it, right? The model in which you deliver the what for the WHO. All right? So we have a piece of a pie that has three equal parts. The what, the WHO, and the how, right? And so typically what I find is, you know, when you hit that wall or you’re, you know, maybe you lose motivation to keep growing your business, one of these three typically goes out of alignment. So, uh, let’s, let’s kind of talk for a minute.

Like, um, when we kind of made our first transition from agency into kind of our first group program, um, you know, in our agency we were working with a lot of, um, you know, a lot of people selling primarily courses and information products, which was fine, but we were a service provider. And so the first wave was, hey, like I can help other course creators design these sales funnels, which we can do. Uh, right. Like I knew how to do that because we had been doing it for other people, but I started to feel like something’s not working, something felt off. And that’s because I was actually running out of stories, uh, for, and an experience once we stopped working with those clients out of experience on how to continue to help those people grow because we weren’t actually selling a course. We were selling like a done with, you call it a high ticket, you know, coaching, consulting program, right?

To course creators. So I felt like I was running out of stories to tell and experiences to share because all of my experiences were with my previous clients. And so I started to feel friction and that’s when we made the transition to, well, I actually love service providers for a lot of different reasons because they’re the ones that do a lot of the work. And I think, again, like we’ve heard in previous episodes, they have the biggest opportunity to thrive in, in the kind of application of knowledge economy that we’re in now. And uh, so that’s when like the, the second cohort of our program, I introduced it to more service oriented people. So we had some course creators and service people and I was able to get results faster for the service people. Right. And so my, in the beginning, um, you know, if we look at, you know, my, what like my, what was helping, uh, my, what was helping, um, our clients develop an automated sales system to sell more of their course.

Right? So the who was course creators originally, so originally like, Hey, I was able to get them because they liked the experience that I had on, uh, you know, with our previous clients and in the early stages, you know, we’re able to get them the results, like the how we were doing it was definitely helping them. But when I hit a wall of like revenue and you know, we started adding more and more clients, like I started to feel some friction in like, I don’t know how to talk through other examples that are not just always talking about some other client versus my own stories. The, the how actually switched from from green to almost like so red, right? Like, well, I didn’t know necessarily how to help them beyond where I got them because I wasn’t building that sort of business. Right. So that became out of alignment and that also became out of alignment because we were serving course creators, right?

And so my who kind of fell out of alignment, like I wasn’t super jazzed about people that were just selling courses, even though that, you know, what, what I enjoyed previously was the automation behind that. Like now I’m working with these people at a whole new capacity than before and we’re helping them grow in new ways. And I hit that was a part of the, the misalignment. And so I see this in service providers a lot. Like, you know, um, oftentimes it’s the WHO, right? Uh, you are good at what you do and you are good at even, you know, that’s a different green. You’re good at how you deliver it, but then you hit this wall and like you lose motivation, you’re not super excited. And really it comes down to the fact that in some cases or most cases, you’re just not excited about who you’re doing it for, right?

Uh, and as you know, time and time again, a reason why service providers and agencies struggle to grow is because they serve too many different avatars. And if you’re like, man, like I was helping chiropractors, got them results, but like, man, the second it gets hard for you, you’re like, you’re like, actually, I really don’t care about chiropractors. Right? For us it was like, man, I’m not as excited about serving just course creators because I’m a service provider and all of my experiences making his transition from a service provider into, you know, the information and the ticket, the High Ticket Consulting and coaching, etc. And like, there was just more stuff that I was passionate about sharing and helping other people like me do it. So I got a de energized or like unmotivated about my who and that was a part of our, the wall. And I wouldn’t have broken through that until I just changed my who now.

In some cases, you might have your who dialed in, right? Like you love who you work with, right? You love who you work with, you love what you do. Uh, the challenges that you can only serve a couple of clients at a time, right? Like, so the amount of money you want to make running your own business, you can’t even achieve because the way in which you do it for your clients, the way in which you solve the problem for your clients is not scalable, right? It’s all done for you. Everything’s custom, you’re the bottleneck and all the situations. So it’s your how needs to change the, how you get your clients. The results needs to change, right? And often to, and on the flip side, maybe you love who you work with. Um, how you do it is even great. Uh, but you lose motivation because you don’t enjoy, you know, what you’re actually doing.

Like this is where, uh, oops, this is where, uh, you know, you see the case of, mmm man, like I happen to be good at something. Uh, and it’s worked in the past that how we get results for our clients. You know, it’s like they love us for the results, but like I don’t personally as the owner enjoy doing what we’re doing, right? Like maybe as an agency owner you do, you know, funnels, Facebook ads, social media and all this stuff and you’re like, man, I don’t like doing the social media and I don’t like doing the Facebook ads were really good at those things and our clients love how we do it and we served them well. We love our clients but we don’t like what we’re doing because we only want what we want to be doing. Only a portion of what we’re doing.

Right? Maybe you don’t like what you’re doing at all. You just got in that industry in the first place because someone said that there was money there and you actually just got good at it. But you’re not like excited about who you serve, you not excited about what you’re doing and you’re not excited about how you do it. Like if any one of these is red and you know, God forbid, multiple of them are red, you’re gonna always feel the resistance and the struggle to grow and you’re likely going to not be able to hit the goals that you want to achieve for yourself. The second you run into any sort of obstacle or struggle, it’s going to be the reason why you kind of take a step back and go back into just doing the way things were not making the tough decisions because one of these things is not in alignment with you.

So, um, you need all three to be in alignment. And here’s the reality. Like if any one of these is red, any one of if, if your, uh, your who, your, what are your, how is, you know, kind of in the red zone, right? You’re actually doing a disservice to your clients, right? Because if you don’t actually like working with them yet, you’re working with them like continuing on is like you’re always going to have some sort of resentment towards them cause you wish you were working with somebody else. Right? Um, if you new to fix the how you do it, right? Like you can only serve so many people, so you’re doing a disservice to all the potential clients who could help if you just fixed the how. Right? So in each of these areas, like if you’re feeling resistance or you feel like you hit a wall, I asked herself like, are those three in alignment too? I love while I’m working with, do I love what I’m doing and do I love the way and how we’re doing it so that we can have the biggest impact on those types of people and help more of those people. If any one of those things is misaligned, you’re gonna, you’re gonna feel friction, you’re going to probably be more likely to quit, uh, and or give up. So that’s all I got for you today. Uh, again, if you’re enjoying these episodes,

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