What Does Success Look Like For You

Most business owners don't actually have the answer to the one question that would be their guiding principle.Their north star to the exact style of business and life they actually want. ... And the reality is, it's easy to avoid answering this question because at first glance you probably think you have an answer.

But until you sit down and you have to write out your answers to this question, you don't really know where you're going.

Let's dive in.

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 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 good guys? So just recently I've been brainstorming a lot with the team. Um, one of our initiatives in the over the next 90 days is really kind of planning out kind of the next evolution and enhancements of our product suite and my operations manager, Lisa really sat me down and asked a lot of really, really, really hard questions and I wanted to share one of those with you today that I think whether you're in a slump or you are looking to take your business to the next level or you are considering maybe a pivot in your business and you're really unclear on maybe where you want to go and what you want to do. Answering this question is going to be really powerful. Now the challenge here is answering this question is really hard. At least it has been for me and I've actually been on a mission asking a fair amount of other entrepreneurs, ones that are, I'm really close with to see how they answer this question and the answers that I've been getting have been really fascinating.

So the reality is as you're growing your business, you're going to hit moments where you see other people winning and you see that they have certain things or they have certain accolades, certain number of followers or awards or they're getting on stage or they've hit a certain amount of revenue or they have a certain size team and if you don't stop for a minute and ask yourself, well, what does success look and feel like? To me it's super easy to just adopt sometimes consciously and many ways subconsciously what other people have been accomplishing and setting that as your definition of success. I know I'm very of this in the past and it wasn't really until I'd say the last six months where I've really gotten real with myself and spent the time actually answering this question, so there were a handful of questions that Lisa gave me it for my team.

Again, she's the operations manager and she said, look, Greg, until you tell us what you want out of this business moving forward, then it's really difficult for us to engineer those sorts of results, right? We can go after specific numbers and things like that. But is that what success looks like and feels like to you? So the question that I want to ask you is what does success look and feel like to you? Is it the accolades? Do you need to be on the inc 5,000 list or the INC 500 list? Do you have to hit a certain amount of revenue for you to feel successful? And at first ask I guess, or at first glance, the, the answers might seem obvious, but as you take some time to yourself, for example, I started writing down all of the things that I felt success meant to me.

Uh, what are the things that I want to accomplish in the business? What do I want the business to be able to afford me to do in my life? Um, what sort of things do I want? Uh, how, how do I want other people to view me? And this is actually is where it got really interesting for me. And I don't know if this is, you know, hitting a nerve with some of you, but I would guess it, I guess it is is or some of you is impacting you in that you write down all of these things and literally nowhere on my list did a specific number come up for like how I wanted my life to look like. Uh, the things that made me feel successful were very much the, the inspiring and the fulfillment that I would receive from helping others. And then, you know, I'd say from a materialistic side of things, there were some, a few things that I wanted to have in my possession.

Like we want a mountain house. Um, you know, what sort of car do you want to drive? Sometimes people you know, want really fancy cars and sometimes cars don't mean anything to people. Right. And depending upon where you live, maybe that's not important. Maybe travel is important to you or eating out and getting like five star restaurants is important to you. No one can really answer those questions, but you, and so I think the challenge that a lot of entrepreneurs face is when you get into the trenches, right? And then many of you as agency owners, service providers, your heads down doing the work, right? You never actually take a minute to say what do I want? And five years from now, what does success look like to me? What does it feel like? Does, does it mean there's a certain number in my bank account and do, do I really need that award?

And I think the one thing that I'm still working through and actually had a conversation with my wife personally the other night was, do you want the fame or do you want the fortune? Right? Because I know a lot of people that have the fame that don't have the fortune and I low a lot of people that aren't famous and have really thriving businesses and successful marriages and are amazing spouses, et cetera. So you know, on the Internet, scrolling through Instagram or whatever, it's very easy to see other people winning. And you saying, oh my God, it's must be because they have like 50,000 followers or they're speaking on these stages or you know, they just got on the inc 5,000 list. I know companies that make a lot of money and grow very fast that aren't on that list, don't care to be on that list.

And it really starts to put things in perspective for you. So really I think the question that you need to start asking yourself and I'd say get a Google doc or a journal, go to a coffee shop and spend two hours just answering it, writing down bullets, bullet points of, you know, I want this or I'd like this to happen. Or this is what success looks like for me is my clients winning. Or having a bunch of testimonials, you know, on our, on our page and people like thanking us for how we've changed their lives. And as you start doing that, you might be surprised. I'm going to guess that you will be surprised with what's not on that list. And the sooner that you realize what success is not for you, I think you will be able to get way clear on what you actually need to do to get there.

So that's really what I wanted to share with you today. Spend 60 90 minutes and then revisit it. And I say, do this exercise a couple of times. I've been, I've spent the last week kind of coming back to the same document answering these questions and really asking myself, how do I feel about this answer, right? Do I want to want these things or do I actually want them like Tim and guess what? There's no right or wrong answer. If success means to you that I'm, you know, on the top 40 under 40 then you can start figuring out a plan to get on that list. But what I'm guessing for many of you is you'll realize that things that sound like they would be nice aren't as important as say other things. So I want you to spend some time with that and I'd love for you to come back and in the comment section share, you know, maybe one or two things that Aha moments that you had while going through this exercise.

And if you're at a position where you, your business has been moving forward and you're actually looking to start systemizing some of those things to maybe remove yourself from the aspects of the business because part of success means that you aren't running the day to day. What we'd love to chat with you. Um, you can grab a link below, schedule a call with our team, learn a little bit more about our foundations program, where we work on setting the foundational aspects of, of productizing your business and then also creating an automated sales and marketing machine to bring in the right clients for that new productize offering. If that sounds like something that would help you, we'd love to chat with you. But again, your call to action, your next step for this video is spend 60 90 minutes at least in the next 48 hours. Asking yourself what does success look and feel like to me?

And then drop in the comments below and share, you know, one Aha moment or takeaway from that exercise after being with those answers for a little bit. Hope you found this helpful. Uh, I know a little bit different than some of the stuff we've been talking about recently, but something I'm going through right now with my team and it's been super eye opening for me and I know once I share the results with them, they will be way more clear on where we need to go and what we actually need to do to get there. So once you know where you want to go and get real with where you're at right now, putting a plan in place to get there is a whole lot more realistic. And guess what? It's not as stressful either.

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, visitmyscalable business.com to learn more.