At some point in your business journey, you will hit a snag. An obstacle. A bump in the road. These bottlenecks hold you back from the kind of growth or results you want. In the 384th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with business consultant Josh Long about the various bottlenecks that hold us back and what to do to breakthrough and achieve more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Stuff to check out:

Bottleneck Breakthrough by Josh Long (book)

The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

Blue Ocean Strategy by Chan Kim.

The Copywriter Club Facebook Group

The Copywriter Underground

Full Transcript:

Every business—large and small, successful or struggling, profitable or barely scraping by hits it’s share of bottlenecks. If you’re struggling or barely scraping by, those bottlenecks are usually obvious. Not enough leads. Not closing enough projects. Or not enough profit. Identifying bottlenecks in a successful business can be a little more difficult… it takes a deeper look at what’s holding you back or slowing you down.

Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I had a chance to talk with business consultant, coach and author Josh Long.

Josh is the author of a fantastic book, Bottleneck Breakthroughs, that is written to help business owners of all sizes figure out what’s holding them back. And during our conversation we stepped through what it takes to grow and build a business at all stages, and how our businesses are slowed down when we don’t pay attention to the six levers Josh wrote about in his book.

We stepped through all six and if you’re a copywriter or content writer with your own business, you’ll definitely want to hear what Josh had to share.

But first, I want to tell you about The Copywriter Underground. You’ve heard about the library of training that will help you build a profitable business. You’ve heard about the monthly coaching, and the almost weekly copy critiques and the helpful group of members ready with support and even the occasional lead. Last week we recorded an exclusive training for Underground members on the diagnostic scorecard that helps you close just about any prospect or project on a sales call. It’s the kind of business secret you don’t read about in free facebook groups or even on most email lists. But right now, you can watch that training and get the diagnostic scorecard to help you close more projects when you go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu and join as a member.  But hurry, that training disappears in a few weeks.

Now to our interview with Josh…

Rob Marsh: All right, Josh, I'm familiar with you and your book and some of the stuff that you do, but just to get started here and let our audience know, tell me a little bit about how you became a management consultant, business coach, author and all of the things that you're doing today.

Josh Long: Yeah, Rob, thanks. Well, when I was in kindergarten and they said, what do you want to be when you grow up? I just thought, you know, that's what I want to be—a consultant.

Rob Marsh: Yeah.

Josh Long: Not quite, not quite on the radar. Back then I was trying to get into med school and I had a professor who suggested I get my MBA while I was waiting to get into med school. I didn't even know what MBA stood for. I got in and went to Fresno State. They had an entrepreneurship program. And you could major in your MBA in entrepreneurship. And I was like, that's crazy. And I loved it. 

I had met my wife while I was in grad school, and every doctor that I knew that was married before med school wasn't married after med school. I knew that I valued her more than my career, so I decided to go the entrepreneurial route. 

I got out, tried a software venture in grad school that failed, but it was a really cool opportunity. Then my roommate was in the mortgage business, so I got into the mortgage world. I quickly learned how little I knew how to run a company. So a friend of a friend introduced me to a guy named Dan Kennedy and I latched onto his stuff and just gobbled it up. And it really helped me understand what it takes to get clients, and to sell to clients, and to understand that dynamic of just building demand and then go from there. 

And then I filed bankruptcy. I had a mortgage brokerage for four years, and went down in a ball of flames. And while I was licking my wounds, figuring out what I wanted to do, I had read a guy's book called The Ultimate Sales Machine by a guy named Chet Holmes. And I really liked it so I reached out to him and went to work for him and grew to be his right-hand man in that company for a couple of years. I ended up becoming marketing director and realized I could go out and do consulting on my own. I have done that since about 2010. And so that's how I ended up getting into management consulting through the door of Dan Kennedy and marketing and Chet Holmes and sales and I’ve been doing it ever since.

Rob Marsh: So mentioned Dan Kennedy, Chet Holmes, you've worked with Jay Abraham, I think.

Josh Long: Perry Marshall. Yep. Got to know Jay through Chet. They were good friends. I spent time down in Jay's office. He's a very kind, generous, brilliant man. Yeah, and I work closely with Perry Marshall. We've been partnering on a project for the last six years called Advanced Mastery Network, where we help companies that are trying to get across what I call a seven-figure desert. Because you can have a really great company in the $1 to $2 to $3 million range that becomes a cash cow. But you don't want to get stuck at five to seven million. You’ve got to get to 10 million if you're going to try to cross that desert. So we've been running that and Perry's a great guy. Obviously how we found each other.

Rob Marsh: Perry introduced me to you through sharing your ideas. But you know, as you've worked with these masters of business—not even online business, but business—over the last decade or two, what are the biggest lessons that you've taken away from those guys?

Josh Long: Yeah, well, the first one is, They have charisma for days like they're born with it. So anybody that thinks they want to be the next Dan Kennedy, J. Abraham, or Perry Marshall, I will tell you, you can't. It's not possible. You either have it, you're born with it, or you're not. I ended up teaching at Fresno State. I taught for four semesters, business plan writing and feasibility analysis in undergrad for entrepreneurs. The program director, who was my program director, Tim Stearns, brilliant guy, we would talk and we would debate, are entrepreneurs born or can they be made? And obviously, Tim is an educator. He was the chair of the entrepreneurship program. He created it. It was one of the only entrepreneurship programs in the nation. And so he wholeheartedly believes that entrepreneurs can be made. 

This is one of the few places on fixed mindset, I would say, that I actually believe in. Otherwise, everything else is learnable and expandable. But I really do think entrepreneurs are born. I really think they have the DNA, the wiring, the charisma, the ability to communicate, the ability to take risks. And seeing that magnified in Dan and Jay and Chet and Perry—they're just wired to be on the stage. 

The other fascinating thing is just how brilliant they all are and how fast their minds move and how fast they can synthesize ideas and data and connect dots. So that was really fun. And it was really fulfilling because I got to do that a lot with Chet. He and I would have a weekly call and we'd be going through strategy for clients. I was 15 years younger than anybody else in the company and the consulting side, and yet I was his go-to. I was his brainstormer. So that was really fulfilling to validate my ability to just connect those dots. 

Other things I would say, being around those guys helped me realize that for you to get the most from them, you have to be incredibly coachable and wired in a way that you resonate with them. Because as coaches, as consultants, as advisors, there're a lot of different personality types, and there's a lot of ways that things can get done, right? You can skin a cat a lot of different ways. But To work with Dan or Jay or Chet or Perry, you've got to resonate with them. You've got to be in their lane, so to speak, on their frequency. Because their way isn't the only way. It's a very effective way, and it can work really well. And they've got troves of success stories.

But I think this was important for me to realize because, like a guy that's really popular right now, Alex Hormozy, right? Brilliant guy. And he's a great educator. But his hustle and grind philosophy does not work with me, doesn't resonate with me one bit. I don't care. I'm not that money motivated. I have a family. I've got three teenage kids. I've got a great wife. I'm not gonna work 80-hour weeks just to achieve something. And so knowing that, I think, is another thing. 

And I'd see people that would come into these orbits and feel bad because they couldn't get results following some of these guys' advice. And Chet was probably the most hard-nosed of the bunch. He had a very grinder persona. And caring, I mean, all of them have big hearts. I think Dan is the one that reveals his the least. He tries to be the grumpy curmudgeon, but he really does care about everybody. But Chet was the most grinding of the bunch. And I realized I could fit there, I could get along, but it wasn't my nature. Like, that's not who I am at my core.

Rob Marsh: So this is an interesting idea, the made versus born idea, but also how much hustle does it take to be an entrepreneur? I actually posted on LinkedIn about this a little while ago, and there were a lot of people debating back and forth. A lot of people push back against the hustle culture.