People who are out there selling based on a process are typically not making the kind of money they want to make. Do your clients care about your process or getting bogged down in minutia or having you explain every tiny detail to them? No. They care about whether or not you can solve their problems.
✔️ If John Doe is consistently failing to hit his sales metrics even though he's "got a lot of try," he can still be fired. Why? Because results matter.
✔️ Sometimes in life, we need to decide: do you want to fight to be right or do you want to be happy? Do you want to stay stuck in your old ways or do you want to innovate?
✔️ In the words of a former manager: "Some people like control more than they like money." Sadly, that is true. If you are running a business to make money, avoid the control freaks.
✔️ Beware of hope-ium and optimism porn! Do not let people convince you that changing directions or giving up on a business idea that's gone absolutely nowhere makes you a failure or a bad person.
✔️ The importance of the end results is not Machiavellian. It's not "win at all costs and screw the world." It's about not getting bogged down in irrelevant details and not getting so set in your ways that you refuse to make necessary changes.
Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
People who are out there selling based on a process are typically not making the kind of money they want to make. Do your clients care about your process or getting bogged down in minutia or having you explain every tiny detail to them? No. They care about whether or not you can solve their problems.
✔️ If John Doe is consistently failing to hit his sales metrics even though he's "got a lot of try," he can still be fired. Why? Because results matter.
✔️ Sometimes in life, we need to decide: do you want to fight to be right or do you want to be happy? Do you want to stay stuck in your old ways or do you want to innovate?
✔️ In the words of a former manager: "Some people like control more than they like money." Sadly, that is true. If you are running a business to make money, avoid the control freaks.
✔️ Beware of hope-ium and optimism porn! Do not let people convince you that changing directions or giving up on a business idea that's gone absolutely nowhere makes you a failure or a bad person.
✔️ The importance of the end results is not Machiavellian. It's not "win at all costs and screw the world." It's about not getting bogged down in irrelevant details and not getting so set in your ways that you refuse to make necessary changes.
Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
Hello, hello and welcome to today's episode of the Causey Consulting podcast. I'm your host, Sara Causey and I'm also the owner of Causey Consulting, which you can find online anytime at Causey Consulting llc.com. Today, I want to talk about results. I listened to a podcast the other day that was recorded by an attorney. And he was talking about how results are really the only thing that matters. And of course, in some respects, he was talking about that from a legal point of view, your clients hire you as an attorney, because they care about the end result, they want to know that you can solve their problem or fix their mess for them. They're not they don't want to get bogged down in legalese, and jargon and file a motion for that. And then an injunction for something else over here. Like they want you to solve the problem. They don't want to become legal experts overnight, they want you to use your expertise to solve their problem. And I agree with that, in so many respects, like from my perspective, as a consultant, I only choose to work with clients who want me to produce an end result for them, it's okay, if they don't know how to get from point A to point B. That's one of the reasons why they're hiring a subject matter expert to do the work for them. Whenever I get on an intake call with someone and I can tell that they're going to start micromanaging and nitpicking, or they're not clear about what they want. And they're thinking that I can be a magician to just conjure something out of thin air, I just walk away from it, it's not worth it to me to get in the middle of that. I have enough experience doing what I do that for me to try to boil that down and pour it into somebody else, it would take a very long time. And I'd rather just do the work myself, frankly. But the attorney in the podcast also extends his same theories out to like politicians and talking heads in the news media. And he used an analogy that I really liked of the weatherman, that's always wrong. It's like from new cycle to new cycle from election to election, you know, like, these talking heads in the media will make these predictions that don't come true. Or you'll see people on social media tossing theories around that never bear any fruit, you'll hear politicians promising the things that they're going to do or not do, and none of it ever comes true. But nobody is ever held to account for it. It's like the bad weather man that makes irrational predictions about the weather gives bad forecasts that don't come true, but yet he gets to keep his job. And people keep tuning in to watch the broadcast, even though they know on some level, surely that they're being fed lies and misinformation. I want to say something here very clearly. Especially if you are a service based business provider, you have any type of business where you are going to be working in in close quarters, or in tandem with your clients. There are many people in this world who would rather hear comfortable, pleasant lies, than to hear an uncomfortable truth. Even if that truth could lead them to having a better life, a better business, doubling their revenue, they would rather hear the fluffy bullshit than to hear an uncomfortable truth. I'm just going to stop for a second because I really want you to hear me. I have always been picky on both sides of my business, both the consulting work that I do, as well as the executive coaching work that I do. I've always been picky about who I took on as a client. I've never had to take all comers, anybody that shows up and says, Hey, I might be interested is treated as a viable prospect. No, I've always been picky. But I would say on the coaching side of my business, I have become insanely picky. I really only take people on on a case by case basis. And even then it's a very limited engagement type thing. It's become like you remember back in the 90s. You know, if you're listening to this broadcast and you weren't alive back then obviously you don't but for those of us who were you know, and had like our teenage and college age years in that time, you know, back in the 90s, when going to a rave was all the thing you wouldn't know in advance, you get some number, you'd have to page some guy and go to a phone booth and then he'd tell you where to go. And it was always like a moveable party, if you will. I've sort of applied that same concept to my coaching program and how I choose to take on clients. I don't I don't put out on A lot of marketing anymore. And I'm not out there like really waving a banner saying, Hey, I'm an executive coach, you should come in and talk with me and see if this makes sense. No, I'm, I'm like the 1990s rave, you got to know a guy who knows a guy and paged me at midnight. And then I might talk to you, but otherwise, no. And that's because I have discovered more than ever, how many people would rather hear the uncomfortable would rather hear the comfortable lies than the uncomfortable truth. And like the old cliche goes, talk is cheap. Being in the coaching space has made me realize that that cliche is a vast understatement. Talk is beyond cheap, it's completely worthless. You have to watch what people do and evaluate their actions, more so than their words. I can't tell you how many examples, not just for me that I have seen, but other people in the industry peers in the coaching space, people that say I'll do anything, you know, I really want to turn my business around, I know I'm in a sales slump, or things were going really, really well. And then COVID hit and I'm trying to pivot I just don't know how. So you start giving them ideas and brainstorming or saying, Well, all right, look, one potential problem is this. Some of them get offended, some of them get sad get to get there to get your feelings hurt, and it's hard for them to rebound from hearing an uncomfortable truth. Your it might be something as simple as, okay, well, the profile picture you have on LinkedIn is a picture of you drunk on vacation with beer bottles everywhere, that's probably not a photo that conveys I'm trustworthy and knowledgeable, you know, or your website looks like your five year old child did it. It's got Comic Sans font all over it. And it's really out of date, you should put a little coin down to have your website refreshed by a professional. It's amazing to me how many people can hear something that in my mind doesn't seem to be a personal attack, you're just simply saying, hey, it's perhaps not conveying a message of trustworthiness to have drunk pictures on your LinkedIn profile, or your website looks very homespun very DIY, it's probably time to kick it up a notch and take things in a stronger direction. And in their mind, it's like you've stuck a knife in their heart and the idea of like doing that refreshes anathema to them. lest you think I can't put my money where my mouth is. I remember when I was self employed before I had DIY my website. And in part of that was because I was just trying to save the money to have it done in in a more professional way. I also did that this time around, I DIY, the sales copy, DIY the website. And then once I had enough money to have it refreshed, I did it. And I made that a very important priority because your website is such important social currency now. Plus, with all this damn censorship that's going on with big tech and social media. As I keep telling you guys and I keep consistently being proven right on this point, censorship is the wave of the future, it's not going to go anywhere for quite a while, you need to have a website so that people can find you like not on Facebook, not on LinkedIn, not on Twitter, and it needs to look professional, it needs to look smart and slick, like you give a damn about it. And I had also had a professional photographer, take a headshot of me, and I didn't want this like, you know, stuffy olan Mills, you know, type I went to a portrait studio, again, if you'll allow me a slight diversion, unless you think I'm joking about that, or using some kind of hyperbole. I had a job a few years ago, where the owner made me go to a portrait studio in a strip mall. And and get in front of a super cheese background and like, cocked my head to the side, you know, and it was it was so surreal, the whole strip mall and the photo studio and all of it was like, getting into a time capsule and going back to like, I'm gonna say maybe, I'm gonna say maybe 89 or 90. It got back to my younger years. It's like people still do this. So I was adamant like, no, when I'm gonna go out on my own, I'm not going to have like some cheesy olan Mills portrait studio crap. So I had a professional photographer come out and take my picture and you know, had some some, you know, airbrushing of fine lines and whatever that it didn't want in the picture. I'm telling you this to really say it was professionally done. So I go to a business advisor. And as we're looking at the website, of course, he says, Hey, it looks very DIY that's not professional. I can see to that point to him because it was DIY and he said, you know, in the picture, he said, you know, okay, do you do you want me to give it to you straight? Or do you want me to kind of sugarcoat it? And I'm like, No, I want you to give it to me straight. I don't have a lot of time and energy for sugarcoating you can just tell me whatever you're thinking. And he said, this looks like a picture. Like it's a nice picture of you in a nice outfit, but it looks like somebody took it with an iPhone. And I was horrified by that, because I had paid money for a professional photographer to do it. And I told I told the advisor that like, I had somebody do this, and he had professional camera professional equipment, it wasn't an iPhone. So I feel really aggravated, that you're telling me you're looking at this as an objective viewer and saying, it looks like some somebody like you know, me, and one of my buddies just took this picture of me in a nice suit, but with an iPhone, like I felt like I'd been ripped off. But I followed his advice. And I went to a studio, like I found somebody on thumbtack that was a good legit, business, headshot photographer, and everything was very clean, it was very crisp, it was very modern, it didn't come out looking like the 1989 strip mall, Photoshop, it was legit. And I was very satisfied with it. And after I had that professional headshot done by a modern professional person, I was really able to see the juxtaposition. And I understood what my advisor had been telling me. Same thing with having my website redone. You know, once I saw how it looked with some stock photography, and professional graphics, and a good professional layout, I was like, yeah, you know, looking at it, pretending to be an objective person that doesn't know me has never encountered me before, I can definitely see the difference between everything being homespun and DIY, versus having a professional do it and make it look very slick and very polished. So it's not like I hand out advice to people that I'm not willing to follow myself. The other thing is, it comes back to the end result. You know, having having the DIY website and the photograph that apparently looked like somebody did it with an iPhone, it wasn't getting me the results that I wanted. You know, and in the business that I have. Now, when I had the money to have my website upgraded and professionally redone. I mean, I was just, I was so happy with the outcome. But I was also happy with the end result getting more traffic, having compliments given to the site and how easy it is to navigate how professional It is like, it's all about the end result. So you can get offended and you can get your feelings hurt. And you can be all all mad and sad that somebody said you shouldn't have a picture of yourself intoxicated on your LinkedIn profile, you know, or you can care about the end result. I remember I had a manager who once gave me a really good piece of advice, like I had had been working for a company with a high degree of micromanagement. And it was to the point where people's it wasn't just the creativity that was being stifled. It was like the profitability was also being stifle. Like people, people were under the thumb, so much that it was like smothering. And I remember telling this manager about that. And he he looked kind of thoughtful. And he said, You know, there are some people in life that care more about control than money. And he's 100% correct. There's some people that care more about being right. Also, it's like how if you've ever heard Dr. Phil say, do you want to be right? Or do you want to be happy? There are some people who are right fighters, they're gonna make damn sure that everything turns into an argument. It can't just be a civil discussion, or, you know, calm, basic conversation about a topic, it hasn't turned into a debate or an argument. Somebody has to be right, and somebody has to be wrong, and they're going to make damn sure that you're the one that comes out wrong, because they have to be right. Those are also people that I do everything in my power to screen out for for either consulting projects, or for executive coaching work. I don't want to bring those people into my practice at all. It's an uphill battle. And it makes everyone involved miserable. I think sometimes people associate the idea of results mattering so much with something that's Machiavellian succeed by any means necessary, when by any means necessary. And I just don't think that's true. Having a good outcome, a good result in your business should not be predicated on you doing something that's immoral, illegal, shady, weird, something that you feel gross, or unsavory about. I mean, if you're if you're doing something that you don't feel is right, then you shouldn't be doing it. You know, you have a conscience for a reason. That's not the type of end result that I'm talking About, I saw some advice the other day, I think it was on the daily sales and I want to read it to you. Because in my opinion, this is the kind of hopium so you you you could I've heard some people refer to it as things like optimism, porn or hopium, you could definitely call it that. So the quote says, you can be grinding for four years with no results. And then on the fifth year become the biggest thing on the planet. The power of never giving up is real. You know, I saw that I just put my head in my hands. And I'm like, Yeah, not every here's a newsflash for you, you know, inspo, quote, they're not everybody can afford to grind for four years with no results. A lot of people have mouths to feed, they need to keep a roof over their head. I mean, I guess if you were in a situation like you, you lived in mom and dad's basement, and you had literally no bills, or your parents were like, Hey, you know, we believe in your red hot idea so much that we will let you live in the basement with no expenses, we'll pay everything for you free of charge for four years with no results, because on the fifth year, you might become the biggest thing on the planet, and then you can pay us back like, you know, like, you're luckier than I ever was, my parents wouldn't have done that. You know, and I think there's a lot of people out there that they can't just grind for four years with no income. There are a lot of great entrepreneurial stories where someone will say, I built my business. While while I was working while I was in school, they have some other means of supporting themselves, other than the business that they're building. You know, that was one of the mistakes that I made. In my first iteration. If you caught the episode of the podcast that Michael free choose does, where I talked about embracing the splat. While the splat was me falling off into the Grand Canyon, like the wily coyote, I had a parachute, you know, I'd saved quite a bit of money. And I also had a very good line of credit for my business. But in order for me to become my own staffing agency, essentially, I had to leave the job that I was in, there would just be too much conflict of interest for me to try to do the same thing simultaneously. So I had to feather my nest financially as best as I could jump off the cliff and then hope the parachute opened. And for me, it didn't. So I went splat like wily coyote and it was one hell of a mess. There is no way mentally, physically, financially, spiritually that I could have been grinding on that job for four years, with the hope that maybe on year five, my ship would come in. So instead of repeating that same mistake, this time around, I made the decision to not not get into anything to where I would have to just completely rip the band aid off and leave, I wanted to keep my corporate job, and slowly, carefully and surely build up my business. And I spent plenty of time testing and beta testing, working with people who were open to it either for free or for very low cost to make sure that my modules were up to snuff that people felt like they were genuinely helped that it had a good outcome for them. You know, I put the time and effort in to do the A B testing. And to go back to the drawing board. You know, sometimes I would pretend that I was kind of like Tony Stark in the lab trying to make the Iron Man suits like How can this be faster? How can this be better? How does this need to look a bit different? You know, okay, this this a test didn't work. But the B test went really well, what was different? I put the time in to do that, while I still had corporate america paycheck and corporate america benefits. Yes, certainly, I had some early mornings, and some late nights and some busy weekends to be able to make it all happen. But I felt so much less financial pressure, knowing that I could take care of myself and cover my basics and essentially have that that time when I was off the clock from the corporate job. And on my own time, I could have that time for the AV testing and the experimenting, and the development and the trials. And it went for me it went so much better than leaping off the cliff and then hoping and praying the parachute would open. So to condense this down. The first thing that I want to impart is results matter. And you may have heard on Shark Tank how Mark Cuban says sales is the ultimate cure all the results are the ultimate thing that matters. I'll never forget a job that I had where there was a guy that was on the chopping block to get fired, and one of his compatriots spoke up and said well He tries so hard. You can't You can't fire him for not hitting his sales numbers when he's trying so hard. And everyone turned around and looked at this guy that spoke up and was like, Yes, you can, in any sales job, if you are not hitting your numbers, then they typically do try to work with you and counsel you and coach you to some degree. But if it's just not jelling, and you're just, it's not gelling, and you're not selling, then you're gonna get kicked the hell out the door. I mean, yes, you can fire someone, even though they've got a lot of heart and they've got a lot of trial, and then maybe they're just in the wrong job. Results are the only thing that matters. Second thing I want to tell you is, if you are on an intake, call discovery call, whatever your methods are, and it becomes clear to you that this client is going to nitpick your process, they want to micromanage you, they want to get all in your business, or they're like, Well, you know, I just want to know every single thing that you're doing all day long, cut, cut it loose, cut it loose. Or if you if they appear to be a right fighter, they're going to fight you every step of the way. They're going to turn every conversation that you have with each other into a debate where you're going to be wrong, and they're going to be right because they need to be in some power position over you walk away. There's so much business out there. That's good business, you don't need to saddle up with somebody that's going to be Danny the micromanager or Bobby the bully, like just just walk away and find a client that's better suited for you. The third and final thing that I will say is be where caveat mtorr be aware of anything that you see that appears to be optimism, porn, or hopium. Like the quote that I read you a minute ago about you can grind and grind for four years with no results. And then the fifth year you just explode and become you know, famous and wealthy. Maybe, maybe not. But I would say if you've been grinding at something for four freaking years and you've had zero results, that's a major sign that something is wrong. I'm thinking of Kevin O'Leary saying take it behind the barn and shoot it. You want to make sure that you are having benchmarks along the way, things that you can troubleshoot and say, all right, it's been X amount of time, and I still haven't closed a deal. Or I've had 15 discovery calls and nobody's converted, I need to figure out what's going on something is clearly broken. And I need to figure out what's broken so that I can fix it. But I just don't want to see you waste your life savings or get up to your eyeballs and credit card debt because you read some cheeseball inspo quote on LinkedIn. It doesn't make you a failure to walk away from a business that isn't working doesn't make you a failure to say I wanted to walk down this road, but there was no money in it. So I decided to take a fork in the road and go somewhere else. At the end of the day, you have to take care of yourself and your family and your happiness is really important. I would say that your happiness is also a very important result in the long run. You don't want to sacrifice your own health and well being just trying to hang on to a dream that's not worth it. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it. If you haven't already, take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review for us on iTunes. Bye for now.