090: Use The 4 Minute Mile For Business

The ‘limits’ in business often look like rules, industry norms, and typical conversion rates.

But many of these limits exist simply because people believe they do.

In this episode, I share the story of the four-minute mile and how the thinking behind it applies directly to your business - from lead generation, to how you manage your team, to how innovation actually happens.

As you listen, you’ll learn:

• How to apply the four-minute mile mindset in business
• The danger of blindly following metrics, systems, and industry norms
• How to shift your team to being more results-driven instead of hours-driven

If you're an established service-based business owner who wants to think bigger, operate differently, and stop being boxed in by conventional thinking, this episode is for you.

Enjoy!

For your Complimentary Consultation click here or visit: shannonstone.com.au/consult

Resources:

• Website
• Facebook
• Facebook Group
• LinkedIn 
• Instagram

If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.

Transcript

The 4 Minute Mile Story

Lead Generation

Team: Hours vs. Outcome

Innovation

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Have you noticed so much business and marketing content out there is so abstract and airy fairy? Like what they're saying sounds good, but what do you actually need to do? That's where the Good Marketing Good Business Podcast comes in. This is where I share practical strategies to help you grow your service-based business. And in case we haven't met yet, I'm Shannon Stone, award-winning business and marketing consultant. And for the last decade or so, I've been diving in deep with small business owners, helping them to make more sales and get more done in less time. And today's episode is no different. Enjoy. Hey guys, welcome to this episode. I'm very excited for this episode today. We are talking about the four-minute mile, the four-minute mile for your business. And we're taking this story and using it as an analogy to help you in a few different ways in business, which I think is a really nice way for us to translate some things that will help your business to grow. So I want to apply this to lead generation, I want to apply it to team and then also innovation. And I think we really learn through stories. I feel like sometimes stories, you know, everyone's like, tell your story or make sure you know you're telling stories through your content and things. I really feel like, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, when we hear that and then everyone is doing it, it just doesn't have the same effect. But I really do believe that this particular story and shared in this particular way is going to have a really good effect. I think it can take, I think the right stories take theory and help you to turn it into something really tangible and tactile. So I'll give you a quick rundown of the four-minute mile, what that actually was, that story in 60 seconds, and then we'll talk about actually applying this to business. So if you don't know what the four-minute mile was, way back in the day, experts, humans, everyone, no one believed that a human being could run a mile in under four minutes. Now a mile is 1.6 kilometers. I've done some research for the story in the episode, but no one believed that it was actually possible. And experts actually believe the heart would explode for anyone who was able to achieve that. So not only did they think it wasn't achievable, but in attempting to, or if you were able to cross a mile in under four minutes, you would probably die because your heart would explode. Like that's the visceral extent to how much they didn't believe this was humanly, physically possible. And I love a story like this because in 1954, Roger Bannister comes along and he breaks the record in three minutes and 59 seconds. So he achieves the mile, and it's the first time on record that someone was able to beat this. So all the way up until then, no one believed it was possible. They thought it was physically impossible, the heart would explode, you would probably die. Experts are saying this, not just everyday people. So Roger, he achieves it, breaks the record, and this record had never been set before. And I did check that record keeping, official record keeping started in 1913, so like 40-ish years earlier, but unofficially records had been started since the 1800s. So for 100, 200 odd years, there had been some kind of record keeping happening, but no one had achieved the mile in under four minutes. So Roger does it in May of 1954, and just 46 days later, someone else comes along and breaks his record. Like I just can't imagine how that would feel. Like Roger, he has this named after him called the Bannister Effect, but he was only able to hold that title for 46 days, which I don't think is a bad thing because he was the first person, and then it went on to have so many victories, and his name definitely lives on because here we are talking about it now. So it's like no one believed it was actually possible. Roger went and did it, and then 46 days later, someone else went and did it that same year. Three more people did it, and in the next couple of years, in the next five years, 22 more people broke the record. So for hundreds, at least a hundred years of official, unofficial record keeping that that had existed, no one had broken that record until Roger did it. And so the idea with this four-minute mile is it's like it's impossible until someone does it. You know, everyone thinks, you know, you can't earn a certain amount in a certain time until someone does it. Like the first person to to do anything, no one thinks anything anything is possible until someone actually does it. And I as a like I I see myself as a strategist at heart. And so I think anything and everything is possible, and it's why I really relate and resonate with this story because when we apply it to things like our lead generation and what's possible with conversion rates and the amount of activity we need to do in order to see a certain result, all these kind of things, I just love to flip things on its head. And this is where I say like the theory becomes really tactile because it's stories like that that help us to have a bit of a baseline or reference point to say, well, actually, it's not a 3% conversion rate from your website or a particular conversion rate if you do sales calls or if you do events or if you send proposals. Like, yes, sure, there are particular rhythms in place, but it is not the be all and all. And I really want to talk about that. So now we've got the foundation of this four-minute mile mindset, this four-minute mile approach and analogy. Let's start by applying it to lead generation. So, number one in lead generation, like we're always often told that it's a numbers game. You just have to do a certain number of outreach, and then you like it's an equation. You do this, this plus this equals this. And while I believe numbers are definitely a measure, it's not the ultimatum. Like if we think, okay, where we reverse engineer, okay, we want to get 10 clients a month, okay. In order to do that, we need to do this, these number of actions or content or emails or open rates, all these different things. It's a measure, but it's not the ultimatum. And I think a really tactile way to look at it is, for example, and why I'm very opposed, I think if you listen to more than one episode, you probably understand I'm pretty opposed to just categorizing things as a numbers game. I'm a very quality over quantity type of person and the way that I approach business. But say, for example, you talk to 10 people, 10 people this month or 10 people this week about uh as sales calls, and maybe you have a 30% conversion rate. So maybe three out of the 10 people actually sign up to work with you. Now, that's a typical good conversion, good, like I say in inverted commas, good conversion rate, it's acceptable, that's what I should say. That's an acceptable conversion rate. But for someone like me, if I'm like, wait, we spoke to 10 people and three of them said yes, what about the other seven? And so if you adopt the mindset of it's just a numbers game, we're in the acceptable range and adverted commas, we're just gonna keep moving forward. Like, I cannot move forward. I want to know what about the other seven who didn't sign up? What about the other seven people who you absolutely know you can help? They've come to you for a certain reason to solve a certain problem. Like, I'm still stuck on that. I cannot pass go and collect$200 until I find out why didn't those seven people actually sign up. And this is why I'm a quality over quantity person, and this is why I think me and my clients can get exceptionally high conversion rates, and you know, it's always the dream for people. How can we do less and achieve more? Like, that is literally the dream of every business owner, and it's definitely not from a lazy kind of thing. For me, it's like, well, where did those seven people disappear to? Like, why would we not work with those people? And for sure, not everyone's gonna work with you, not everyone's gonna say yes, but I still want to know why the no's a no, because we can learn so much from that. A really good story I learned or picked up along the way about lead generation. There was I I can't remember where I heard it, but there was someone who was running events, and he was chatting to someone and said we get 18% conversion rates at our events, and the person he was talking to, she didn't hear 18, she heard 80, 80, whereas he was 1818, very big difference in conversion rate. So she heard that from him, she went off and she was running events, and then at some given time in the future, she goes back to the guy and she says, you know what, we're getting 80% conversion rate, but I just you know, how do we close that final 20%? And for him, then it's like tables a turn, like he is no longer the mentor, he is the mentee. He wants to know how are you getting 80% conversion rates? I'm getting 18% conversion rates, and so I think this just paints the story perfectly, where it's like you can kind of sit on your laurels or just sit in that accepted range of like I'm just getting 18% conversion rates, and that's really good because it's above industry standard, or three, 30%, three out of 10 people are saying yes to work with me, you know, that's acceptable, and then just moving forward. But I think it's when you question and take a like slow it down and actually say, hold on, why aren't the rest of the people saying yes? Why are we just treating this as a numbers game? Like, yeah, sure, it's a numbers game, but it's every single one of those numbers is a person. It's a person with an interaction, it's someone who's said yes to signing up to your email list, they've opened your email, they've clicked your button, they've booked in for a call, they've spoken to you, and then what? Like every single thing is an actual person. So I would I feel like it's almost like a waste of time if we approach things like a numbers game. The last bit I'll share on lead generation or this is slightly sales, is it can be the same thinking that then gets applied to following up with your leads, the maybe the seven out of ten people who didn't actually say yes. It's like if you just follow up, you know, two or three times, or follow up, you know, you might have an SOP standard operating procedure that says, you know, we follow up this time, these ways, that kind of thing. Like if you just stick to the structures that you or someone else has built, you're always, I don't want to say always, but you're very likely to lose out so many times. So sometimes we have to revisit what are our systems telling us, what are our standard operating procedures telling us? Like, what is our business telling us about following up with someone on our service? If we stick to it as a numbers game, we're just gonna miss out, we're gonna leave so much on the table. And when I was kind of preparing for this episode, I was like, why do we do that? Like, or why do so many people do that? And I think a big reason is in our kind of era of business and even life as well, like as a whole collective kind of society, I feel like we just want to be given and we just want to be told here's the way to do things. And I think it's a big reason why people will buy a system or a program or a cookie-cutter approach. It's like, yes, those things are so easy to sell, and they're so easy to sell because people just want the roadmap, people just want the A, B, C, or the equation instructions. They don't want to be told that actually it there's a bit more of a blank canvas going on. It's not a uh a numbers game, it's actually a quality over quantity, it's like shifting from into a very qualitative kind of space when it comes to business. And I'll leave it at that when it comes to lead generation and sales. But hopefully it kind of shows you that if we're kind of looking at the four-minute mile, how that does translate into lead generation and sales. It's like, you know, the person with the events is a great example. She thought it was, she heard 80, but it was actually 18. And because she heard that, she went off and she just believed it was possible and she went and did it that way. But I love that lady in particular because she still questioned how can I still close that remaining 20%. And I think if you lead your business that way, even if you it's like almost quite impossible to get 100% conversion rates 100% of the time, like we don't want to be dumb, like we don't want to be like extremist and think that unless 10 out of 10, 100% of people sign up all the time, then I'm doing a horrible job. Like we'll be realistic and we'll come back to reality. But just the ability to actually flex that thinking and think, okay, why didn't the other seven out of 10 sign up? Why haven't the other 20% actually sign up? Because all of that can trickle back into other areas of your of your business, of your marketing, and you can you'll gather so much amazing knowledge and insight that can help to then strengthen those percentages, conversion rates, and all those kind of things moving forward. So that's what we have for lead generation. The next area I want to talk about, and I feel like we could just stand there, but I want to make sure we share this across a few different areas of your business. So, you know, I do believe business grows when we grow all areas, not just our sales and our client numbers. And so this is another great area. So looking at your team. So when it comes to your team, and we're thinking of this analogy of the four-minute mile, I think the way this really translates here is looking at are you paying your team or your contractors for a certain number of hours, or are you paying for the results they actually achieve? It's like you can hire someone for a particular role and you can say it's 40 hours a week, and here's all your roles and your responsibilities and the deliverables, and like all those kind of things in their job description. But at the end of the day, are you just paying them to punch in the hours and tick things off the list? Or are you paying them to achieve a certain result? And I would hope it's the latter, but and I think for most people it they would agree, yeah, I'm hiring them for a particular result. But when you kind of drill it back, it's like you're saying that, but is your approach actually supporting that statement? Or are you still measuring people based on the number of hours that they're actually putting in? So, like I have this, I remember I was thinking back to, and it could be something that I do at some point in time, but I have this very little goal inside where I'd love to build entrepreneurial-driven teams. And I think as a business owner, we're all very entrepreneurial, and part of that is being very results focused. We know that it doesn't matter what we do, sure, it matters what we do, yeah. But it also matters the results that you actually achieve. So it doesn't matter if you spend 10 hours a week on business development or a hundred hours a week on business development. What actually matters is the results that come out the other side because you're running a business and part of that is cash flow, it is acquiring and generating those clients, it's being able to pay your team. Like there are very genuine pieces that have to come out of that, and so I think of how can we have our employees to adopt this entrepreneurial mindset as well? They're usually the ones that are doing the grunt work, and I think the goal for many business owners is to work on the business more, not as much in it, but even for your employees or your contractors that are working in the business, how are you approaching it with them? Are you still kind of clock watching with them and task watching with them? And while those things are all important, I think if we start to kind of shift the focus more to we have them here and we engage them for the results they bring in. And I think people can feel like I know way back in the day, I would feel a lot of pressure for producing results. It's like I'm in a job and I'm here to produce results, and if I don't produce those results, you know, obviously this job is not going to exist for me. And I went through the wave, or I went through the path of finding the ways to achieve the results in order to keep my job. I was in very high-stakes positions where, you know, marketing roles, where you need to bring in leads and all that kind of thing. And so I think of that for the employees that we have, how can we help them to see that you know what? Yes, I'm gonna pay you the hourly rate or the 40 hours a week or the the cost of the project and things like that. But they're almost like semantics, like they're like the details. What I'm really looking for is this. I want you to produce this type of result. I want their and and what are the components that surround that as well? You know, I love, I believe in quality, I believe in excellence, I I believe in high value production and output. I want things to come out the other side and be really good. The results achieved, but also have that excellence as well. And I don't care if it took someone one hour, 10 hours, or a hundred hours. And I think, you know, the semantics of okay, yes, you're gonna pay someone there 40 hours a week or the cost of the project and things like that, but truly what you actually want is probably the results, probably the outputs and what that actually looks like. So I think if you can kind of get your head around that and maybe just some of the words I've shared gives you more of the words to then apply to your own situation and your own business. I think really shifting the culture of a team and the employees and the contractors and you as their manager and leader to be more about we're here for the results, we're not here for the time. It's like hours versus outcome. What are you actually wanting? And you know, you've probably heard of Parkinson's law, work expands to feel the time available for its completion. I think that almost sums it up with just that added layer of what do I actually want the output to look like? I want to achieve the results. So, you know, someone might say, okay, we want to get this, these amount of leads for our business every single month, but we want it to look like this. Like they need to be these type of clients, this type of caliber, this type of qualified part in the pathway. So hopefully you're kind of starting to see how this four-minute mile can apply to your team as well. It's like, yeah, hopefully you'll be able to read between the lines and take something from that. It's like I think you are probably more wanting the results. You're not what wanting clock watches and list tickers, people who are just there to kind of fill a seat in your business or to just get things done that don't really add any kind of value. So that's what I have for you when it comes to the team side of things. The last one I'm going to share with you is around innovation. So when I think about innovation and when I think about how this applies and speaks to the four-minute mile analogy, I think about it as being where it's creating space for all things being possible. Like possibility, expansion, permission, and this can apply in lots of different ways. Like if you think about who are the best clients you would love to work with, and I think it's like that question, that kind of thinking, and then applying the permission to it is like you know, the Roger. Bannister, his goal may have been and probably was I want to run the mile in under four minutes. That was his goal. So for you, that could be I would love to work with this particular client. So just entertaining the idea of what are the things that are possible, what are the things that you actually want, then we can start to figure out how we're actually going to do that. But innovation really is just expansive thinking, it's developing what your business looks like now and evolving it into something that I think is more relevant, it's it's moving you forward, it's making you even more proud of the thing that you've created. And I would also encourage you to think about, you know, your business, but also every single thing that has ever existed ever. You know, it's always come about because someone has said, you know what? Why don't we have a light switch? Or why don't we have electric cars? Or why don't we have like this, that, and the other kind of thing. So you can think about it as it applies to the services that you sell. And also you can think about it as to why you even started your business in the first place. A lot of people will start their like for me, I just wanted to make my own job with the skills that I already had because I was a single mum at the time and wanted a business that just worked around to me. So it came like that is innovation. That is saying, these are the things that I want, and how can I go out there and actually make it possible? Because you need to remind yourself that what people say is not the end truth. So someone could have rejected, and and probably I think many people did. We don't need a light switch to turn on a light, we don't need an electric car, we don't need shoes on our feet or a phone that does everything and could launch rockets to the moon because it has the same power. Like what people say is not the end truth. So you don't need anyone to shut down the ideas that you have or why you're doing things, and that could even be your industry as well. Oh, we don't do things this way, or this is the way we do things. All that is doing is putting you and your business and your industry in a box, and when you in a box, you're kind of stuck at a point in time, like when I like time stamped, like things are just not moving forward. So when I think of innovation, I think of evolution, I think of things really actually moving forward. And I bring it up in this way and in this sequence because it's like we can't go from an innovative mindset of starting our business, our services, the problems we solve, and coming from that expansion and possibility thinking to then working in a box, doing things in an acceptable way that meets industry standards and best practices. Like, I feel like it's like, which is what happens for a lot of small business owners. We start with this, even if like that innovative thinking wasn't like super innovative, I guess you could say. Like for me, I never felt like my business starting story was very innovative. I just wanted to work on my terms, literally, and take the skills I had in marketing and see if I can just get my own clients and work on my own schedule and go to all my daughters' events and you know, so she's not having to go to before and after school care, all those kind of things. So I don't want us to go from whatever interpretation or level of innovative thinking to then working in a box, doing things the substandard industry norm best practices way, because where did they even come from to begin with? So something to think about. Innovation is one where it's a little bit more blank canvas-y, but I think it's one where you can create some really great things from it. So there are three different ways that you can take the four-minute mile story and analogy and apply it to your business. We've got lead generation, we've got team, we've got innovation. I want you to take those three different areas, and if there's any other you want to apply it to, do it as well. But I think it's one where it's almost like you have to sit in contemplation or definitely take a look at the companion article for this episode. It always goes up on LinkedIn and it's always the same title as the episode as well. But I think it's really when it comes to something like this where it is a philosophical thing, it's a mindset thing, it's like, how can I actually apply this tangibly? Like, yeah, sure, that sounds great in theory, but how are we actually going to apply this? So, you know, we talked about lead generation and that not being a numbers game, or you know, shifting your team from being paid an hourly rate to being paid based on the results, or we spoke about innovation and not starting or not continuing your business, you know, going from that initial expansion kind of thinking into working in a box. So when it comes to a topic like this, one of the ways I think it is really great to apply something my mindset coach Jess Cameron taught me, and it's basically something along the lines of the old paradigm will exist until the new paradigm comes into full effect. So it's like the old paradigm might be, you know, things are a numbers game. I do pay my employees per the hour. We are working just like our industry, which is kind of putting us in a box. So that is that is probably the old paradigm that you've maybe not in all ways, but in some ways, have been operating under. And then you want to think about what are the new paradigm ways I want to work in. It is maybe shifting, you know, paying your team for the results, or, you know, I do want to question, you know, why we're getting only three signups and forgetting about the seven signups a week, um, you know, looking at our conversion rates differently. So if the old paradigm exists until the new one comes to effect, the best way is to just slowly start to take pieces of the new paradigm and start to replace the current ones. Okay, we're gonna start following up with people in a different way. We're going to start working with our team and communicating with them in a different way. We want to train them to have more of this entrepreneurial approach to things, and I think through doing all of this kind of like piece by piece, introducing a new paradigm and a new way of doing things, bit by bit, little by little, then that's how you then overall develop your business into being more of an enterprise that works with this whole mindset in mind. And then you can say, you know, a year has passed, it's not an overnight thing, but you know, as a significant enough amount of time can pass where you say, This is what my organization is like, this is how we operate things, and it's a whole culture change, it's a it's a whole systems and operation change, and it's all come about because you've had this mindset change that you've translated by shifting from old paradigms to new paradigms, ones that actually serve you better. And just on that note, and this will be the final note, if something is working for you right now, but it's not working the best, you know, you can start to make those incremental changes. Sometimes the old paradigm stuff, how you've been doing things, some of it is still working for you. So it's not about changing everything or changing everything all at once. It can be one piece at a time, just saying, okay, we're doing things this way, but let's start to see if we can maybe like the person who's running the events, for example, one guy was getting 18% conversion, the other lady was getting 80% conversion. He went from mentor to mentee in a split second based on one number, and so for him, he could start to see, okay, we're getting 18% conversion, which up until this conversation I was really happy with. Now she shared with me a whole new paradigm. Now, it's not to ditch whatever he was doing then and start doing everything she was doing, it's about okay, we're gonna do some new tactics and see how that performs. And I think that's a really smart and healthy way to approach business. It's about doing things sometimes incrementally and not just trying to shift everything all overnight and then having everything crumble. So I think that's the best way for me to kind of sum up how you can actually apply this. So I hope you found this useful and interesting. If you did, I would love for you to let me know. You're always welcome to send me an email. It's just Shannon at shannonstone.com.au or send me a message or connect on LinkedIn. I would definitely love that. Love to hear how this and other episodes landed. That's all I have for you today. I hope you have an amazing day and I'll chat to you soon. Hey, thanks for listening. If you found this episode useful, I'd love for you to send it to a friend. The best podcasts I have found have all been recommended to me. If you can spread the word by sharing this episode, I can spend more time helping you by creating episodes just like this one. Send it, text it, tell somebody about it, whatever you need to do. The more you spread the word, the more I can focus on creating needle moving episodes to help you and your friends.