The Unpopular Truth About Business Growth

In today's episode we discuss topics that many entrepreneurs are NOT going to want to hear. We're going to talk about the struggles most people NEED to go through to succeed, and why success is not a straight, upward, linear path.   Resources Mentioned JeremyReeves.com Want To Work With Me? Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at [email protected] Enjoy! Transcript Jeremy Reeves: Hey everyone. Jeremy Reeves here again with another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast. Today is Monday, May 9 and it is finally nice here in Pennsylvania. I do not know if you guys are in this region or if you are not, but our entire last week we went literally the entire week with no sunshine whatsoever. It is you know, spring and summer are taking very long time to get here in Pennsylvania and it is kind of annoying but it is what it is and you know, we live in Pennsylvania so we are kind of used to it. So I am in a very, very good mood today because it is -- well I guess it is only about 50 degrees out right now, but it feels really nice because the sun is actually out. So what we are going to talk about today this is something I was thinking about over this past weekend and what I was thinking about was you know, the kind of unpopular truth of growing a business and that is, that you have to look at it in terms of a long term perspective, alright. Everybody -- not everybody I talked to, but a lot of people that I talked to -- and it is mostly people that have not -- they are not already hugely successful in their businesses, they might be doing well but you know, all of my clients that I know of that are in you know, above million dollars that kind of thing like they kind of hit the pinnacle of success, they do not look at things in terms of short-term views, okay. They do not look in terms of like, hey, you know, you are going to do work for me and it is going to work right out of the gate, okay. They do not like look at it like that and it is because I think they have been through the ropes, they have seen that in the real world, things are not really work like that, okay. So you know, the whole message of today is to look at your business long term, okay. To look at whenever you are trying to accomplish something you know. We all have this big whopping goals on our mind you know. Right now, I am leaning down, I am trying to get down to 170 pounds, I am at about 186 right now and I am not looking at it in terms of like, oh how fast can I cut down. How fast you know, I am just going to go to this wild crazy diet you know, I am taking it slow, I am not doing anything crazy with it because what happens is when you try to sprint when you should be you know, kind of jogging toward the goal, you tend to make a lot more mistakes and do more long-term damage and you know, in terms of health, things like you know, like actually this week I am taking a maintenance week you know, to kind of reset my metabolism because I have been dieting now for 6 weeks. I started around 195 I think, yeah 195. So I am down you know, 9 pounds in the last 6 weeks. So you know, it is kind of time to give my body a break from dieting so that my metabolism does not get you know, kind of hit too hard and also because I am really close to breaking a personal record with my shoulder presses which is 75 pound dumbbells. So 75 pounds on each arm obviously, that is why dumbbells instead of barbell. So I want to hit that this week which is (inaudible 3:16.3) that I am increasing my calories because that is one of those like mental barriers I have been trying to hit for a while now, but anyways, in terms of business you know, people do things like if there are looking at it in the short term view, they do things like a whole bunch of promotions because they are looking at it in terms of you know, I want to hit X number you know, X revenue number this month, okay. I do not even look at monthly numbers anymore because it is too short of a timeframe. I only look in terms of quarters now especially in my business because you know, as you know, most of our revenue comes from working with clients and if we get absolutely hammered in 1 month and you know, kind of work on our asses off and you know, we get all the invoices in that month then the next month we have to slow down a little bit or we would not be able to fulfill for our clients. So it kind of you know, deeps a little bit. So we look in terms of quarterly goals, right. The bigger thing here is you know, I see a lot of people and it is like they give up so easy right. They give up so easy and what happens when you do that is that you kind of play this like mental games with yourself. You play these things where you know, subconscious, you are thinking, oh, I am not, you know, you start get into the downward spire of -- oh will this test fail, that means you know, I am never going to be successful, that means I am not worth being successful and that means you know, this is never going to take off from me and you know, they must have been lying to me that is going to work and blah, blah.. you know, that kind of thing. And you do not want to go into that because then once you go into that negative state of mind then you kind -- it kind of becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and you start getting demotivated, you start doing things that is self-sabotage all that kind of crazy nonsense. So what I want you to do right, is I want you to look at your business. I want you to think about where you are going to go, right. And I want you to -- I want you to try something. So let us just say that you want to I do not know whatever it is, whatever your next revenue goal is okay. I know what mine is. I do not know what yours is, maybe you are trying to go from I do not you are at, you just hit 6 figures, right. Now maybe your next thing is a quarter of a million, maybe that is your next goal. So I want you to think of what that timeframe is in your mind, okay. So let us just say, for example, that you just hit 6 figure, this is personal income by the way. Just hit 6 figures you know, you had your first hundred thousand dollar a year and you are excited, that is awesome, congratulations by the way, that is kind of the first big goal for everybody. And now the next one is, hey, you know, you wanted to get to 250K. So maybe you have that set for you know, next year, so like you know, in 2 years, you will hit 250K, right. What I wanted you to do is, I want you to think about that goal and then take the timeframe away from it and say, you know what, I am just going to hit 250K. I am going to try to do it as fast as I can, right, but I am not going to worry, I am not going to get stress out over when it happens. Maybe it will happen this year. Maybe it will happen next year, I do not know. Maybe it will happen in 4 years or 5 years whatever it is. And what happens when you do that is you become smarter. You kind of access a different level of your mind that allows you to think more strategically because when you take away that stress and that pressure off yourself, that anxiety, which is kind of strangling your mind. You start to become more creative and you start to work more efficiently, right. You see how that kind of you know, the loop goes you know. You can either go into a downward spiral or an upward spiral and you want to be going into the you know, the upward spiral. And also you know, a lot of people are split testing these days. A lot of people listening to this are probably you know, go getters, you are probably doers, right. You are probably doing a lot of different things. You are testing a lot of different things. A lot of them are probably failing for you. So for example, I talked about -- a couple of weeks ago, I talked about the one Facebook campaign that failed for us, right. And a lot of people are like, oh well, you know, I failed, oh my God, it is so horrible blah.. blah.. It is really not because with every failure, you learn something so that you do not repeat that mistake the last time okay. We actually just launch a new Facebook campaign and obviously there is no result yet because we just launch it like I do not know like an hour ago. I do not even know if the ads are live yet. So you know, so for example you know, I have had -- so that test you know, you are going to have these failures, you are going to have these successes, you know, and you want to minimize your failures and look back on your failures and get the lesson from it okay, that is key here it is crucial. So for example you know, we learned a whole bunch of things about the last Facebook campaign. We rushed it, that was one of the lessons not to rush it that much and actually put some thinking time into it. I tend to do that with my own stuff. It is funny when I work with my clients I sit there and I brainstorm for like days before I give them you know an answer and what we are going to do, but when it comes to my stuff, I just like throw it out there and see what happens. And then when you do win, you know, you want to look at that and say okay well why did that win, alright. So you know, I was talking about a client that I took her from zero essentially to like $1300 a day and she is only down by half a funnel, pretty much instantly as soon as she test it, so huge win. I just had a -- I am working with a client that (inaudible 8:46.4) for a couple of months now and we just put a new test together, this was after a big failure with them. So the first test that we did with them was a big failure not really a big failure is just a failure. It did not you know, increase anything. And then the second test that we implemented, they went from -- so this specifically was an email campaign and they were getting roughly 1 sale a week from that particular campaign and we implemented my new email campaign for it and so far they are getting about a sale a day from that, okay. So it went from a sale a week to a sale a day from that same email campaign that we free wrote for them, right. So another huge win, okay. So we are now looking back this week in our meeting and saying, okay, well why, you know, what is the reason, what are people responding to you know, and we found out already that they are responding to emails number 1 and 5. So then we are looking at it and saying, okay, why are they responding those emails, what are we saying, what can we emulate and do -- in the rest of it you know, the emails to kind of get it so that they are responding to more of them. I actually just had another campaign go live which is absolutely crushing. It is going to be a multi-million dollar campaign that I did. This is -- I am actually not allowed to talk about the actual company with this one or even really the specific results, but it is for a 12-figure company, I will put it that way. So it is for a very, very, very large company you have their products in your house, I guarantee it. We did a campaign for them which was not really doing anything for them. We kind of redid the campaign and setup a new thing for them and now it is absolutely crushing it. It is going to be a multi-million dollar campaign and it is kind of like the first stepping stone to launching this new product that they have which is really exciting for them and for us because we have a whole bunch of stuff to do with them you know over the next couple weeks or months and stuff like that you know. So there is always big wins. There is always big loses and you just have to realize I just want everybody to remember that you know, succeeding in business is not a straight path. You do not just go you know imagine like a graph, you do not start at bottom and just go steadily up. It does not happen like that. Kind of like my weight loss you know, I am tracking my weight and you will see like you know, you go and dips down a little bit and then it flattens out for a week or two and then it dips down a little bit, it flattens out. It goes up, it goes down you know. That is normal. That is how things work in the real world you know. Kind of like they always say, the old (inaudible 11:19.9) about you know flying a plane. It is not a straight shot. There is thousands and thousands and thousands of course corrections getting you from point A to point B, alright. And that is kind of like the big message that I want to give you today is that when you are building these funnels, when you are testing things, as you are trying to grown your business, when the failures come up and they will come up, do not let them knock you in your ass, okay. If they do knock in your ass if it is a huge failure and you were like for some reason it was some huge campaign that you thought was going to be like a giant winner and it flop on you. What I want you to do is take a day, get out of your house, okay, what works for me is I go hiking, okay, that is my thing. If there is some big failure and it is just totally annihilates me emotionally which often happens with client projects when I think something is going to like kill it and then you know, it does not. That kills me more than on my own stuff. So like I just rewrote a big sales letter for really big client of ours and you know it should you know, absolutely annihilate his current control, but if it does not, that is one of those projects where I am going to be -- it is going to like, it is going to kill me you know. So what I do is I take a day or a half day whatever, you know, it kind of depends and I go hiking. I just get out in the nature because that is what it works for me. For you, might be the beach, it might be you know, meditating, it might be taking a nap, maybe you I do not know take your family off for breakfast and lunch I do know, whatever it is for you, you know. Go for a drive up in the mountains, whatever it is that gets your mind off of it and it allows you to center yourself and then come back the next day and crush it right. Think about why it is not a big deal. Think about why you know, it is just going to fuel your fire to come back and just be a total badass and crush at the next time. That is what you have to do. Allow yourself to get away and kind of just you know again, center yourself. Get yourself and ground yourself. Get yourself back to a good positive free of mind because you cannot work. A lot of people try to push through when they should be just allowing themselves to you know, kind of feel the failure and learn from it and then move on, alright. So that is it for today. Really nothing about sales funnels but it is a lot about the mental model and the mental aspects of building funnels and growing a business and that honestly is just as important as the strategies and the you know, the tactics that we normally talk about, alright. So that is it for today. If you feel this episode resonate with you let me know. I hope it did. I know -- you know, I have been working on this stuff for a long, long time in my business, you know, I am in a business where we are pushing out projects all the time, right, because we have all these clients and so we are pushing our projects you know, at least 1 or 2 a week that are getting send to the client, getting -- you know, we are getting edits back. We are getting their feedback, it is going live, we are getting the results you know, so I am dealing with this stuff all the time and so I am fighting a lot of like you know, inner demons so to speak and you know, so this is the stuff that works for me. I hope it helps for you. Most entrepreneurs you know, if you own your business, you are not dealing with it as frequently, so it might actually hit you harder when something fails you know, because I am kind of used to it. I have developed a thick skin with it. With you, you know, if you are only launching something once every a couple of months and you have 2 things that fail right in a row, it might just totally crush you, you know. There is a lot of ways to kind of not let it you know. So that is it for today. I hope you enjoy this. As always, if you are enjoying this podcast, make sure you share it with your friends. Make sure you leave us a review and if you do leave us a review, make sure you email me at [email protected] and I will send you our 101 Conversion Tips you know, ebook as a thank you for giving us a review that helps us in Itunes rankings and all that fun stuff and if you want to talk about working together, then just shoot me an email at [email protected] there is a contact me form and all that fun stuff and yeah. Looking forward to see you soon.