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Hey everyone and welcome to our new podcast, the Ascent Collective. Build,
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acquire, scale. We put this podcast together because we've been working with
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businesses for the last 22 years to do exactly those things. Build the systems,
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build the tools that they need to have a good solid business that actually
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delivers the result that they talk about to their clients. acquire, which means
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get the clients, but not only just get leads, but actually take the client uh
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get them interested in your product, market to them, nurture the client,
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convert the client, sell the client, deliver the service, and retain the
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client while building a retaining fan uh a massive fan, a raving fan across the
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way, and then also scale, grow your business so it's not dependent on you,
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and build it to points where you probably didn't think it could possibly
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go to. We've been doing this with clients for 22 years, so we want to
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share these lessons here. not only the tactics and strategies that you need to
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do to get to the next level, but also the mindset, behavior, and frame shifts
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that you may need to have as an entrepreneur to get the results that you
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need to have. So, in this first episode, I'm going to talk about the most
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important shift that I've found over time, which is the paradox of
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achievement, which means that basically to become excellent in any field,
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business success, entrepreneurial endeavors, or anything like that, you
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need to hold two completely critical and conflicting
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task in your mind at the exact same time. You need to be able to operate off
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both of these systems. So number one is you need to be able to see reality for
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exactly what it is without any delusion whatsoever. Meaning you need to be able
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to accurately assess where your business currently is, where your athletic
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performance currently is, where your weaknesses are, where your strengths
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are, where your opportunities are, and where your skill deficits are, where you
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may need to hire, where your how healthy your business really is. So you need to
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be able to see business and see reality is exactly what it is. Now on the second
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side of that is you need to be able to redefine the rules of your reality and
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challenge all your underlying belief systems to prove that you are more, that
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you can do more, that you can be more. Because the vast majority of business
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owners have a lot of these beliefs underneath them that actually stop them
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from moving forward. One of the most common ones is marketing doesn't work
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for my business. And if you say that out loud, you should feel dumb because
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marketing works for every single business. Marketing is simply making
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people aware that you exist. And to say that marketing doesn't work for your
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business, it means that your business will simply cease to exist in the minds
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of other people, which is clearly not true. So let's unpack this with an
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example, okay? Because this is a really nice way to learn. I had a former
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student who believed that building a digital product would transform reality
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in their business. Now, this person had delusions built into their operating
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system because their business was nowhere near as healthy as what it
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needed to be to actually launch a digital product. To launch a dig digital
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product to be successful, particularly in a niche realm such as coaching, you
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need to have a very large and very engaged following for it to be worth for
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the juice to be worth the squeeze. Okay? You need to put a ton of effort in to
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building an audience that's actually waiting for you to release something
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before you actually start selling it. If you wrote an ebook right now, so say I
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wrote an ebook today with everything I know about business, it would sell maybe
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six copies. Okay? Because I haven't pushed any kind of awareness towards
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that. What would have suited their reality far more would have been making
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offers to get people to come into best service delivery program. So their
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coaching or whatever it is. Now, this person at this point didn't think that
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offers would work with for them and they made one offer via an Instagram story
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and no one bit on it. So, they decided that offers didn't work and that they
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weren't going to put the effort in when in reality offers do work. You just need
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to make a lot more of them than what you realize because people don't know who
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you are. They don't care about you. They don't care about what you do. They just
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need to be told what you can do for them and they need to hear it hundred times
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over before they actually buy off you. So this person was, you know, really
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embodied this paradox really, really well because their view on reality was
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here and what they needed to do around marketing was here. So they just weren't
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addressing these things. Now this happens in physique, physique, training,
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athletic performance as well cuz that's something I've done for the last 22 to
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23 years where a lot of people don't actually get to the point where they
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want to be because their view of where they are is here. In reality, it's here
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and or maybe even here. And their effort level needs to be here. And they bring
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it down all the way to here. So these things need to be defined really really
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accurately for people to actually win at the thing that they want to win at. And
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I could go on this 100 more examples. But what I think would be more useful,
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okay, is to actually give some operating systems to use this for the better.
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Okay, so number one, and this is one of the most important ones and also the
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most painful ones. And a lot of the time I tell my students, I'd rather have the
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pain of knowing now rather than the pain of finding out later. It's always
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important to find things out and deal with the pain in the moment rather than
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delay it. So get some help accurately identifying where you are. And don't be
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offended by what you hear. Okay? A lot of people say they welcome feedback
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until they actually hear it for the first time. speaking to someone who says
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that they're really good at sales and they close one in 50 clients that they
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speak to and you tell them they suck at it, they will generally be very shocked
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that you said that and also very very upset.
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The reality is again it's a disconnect. You cannot be good at sales and close
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one in 50 people unless you're selling a product that is incredibly incredibly
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expensive in niche. Okay? So it is highly unlikely that you are good at
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sales if that is your ratio and that is just a cold hard reality that we need to
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accept. So if you get the feedback, take the reality, accept it, and use it as an
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opportunity for growth. Because as I'll talk about in future podcasts and future
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content, that all these lacks are just simply skills that we haven't learned
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yet. And once you learn that skill, then you can move forward and actually get
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better at it. So the good thing is all these things are improvable. Okay? So
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get help accurately identifying where you are and don't get offended by it. Go
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to a mentor, go to a colleague, ask your customers. There's so many ways to
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actually get feedback. And if you act on feedback, what will happen is you'll
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actually change your behavior and you'll learn. And learning can be defined as
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same conditions, new behavior. So if you can do that, you're going to win. The
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next one, and this is something that's very controversial, is to compare
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yourself to others who are doing exactly what you want to do and what you want to
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achieve. Now, I know there's some bad sides to comparison. Okay, that's, you
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know, very easy to kind of identify, but there's probably some good sides to it,
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too. So with this, what I would be looking at doing is
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say you wanted to build a personal training online business. You would go
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look at your competitors and see how much they do, how much content they do,
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how good their quality content is, what's their marketing like, what are
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their sales processes like, what is their onboarding like, see all that kind
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of see all that kind of stuff and compare what they do to what you do. I
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have people come to me who want to build online businesses and they want to get a
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lot of money and they want to, you know, win at the game, but they're unwilling
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to do any of that work. I say go look at everyone else and what they're doing,
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who's actually winning. And the volume of work that they're doing far surpasses
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them in an order of magnitudes. So, what you need to look at is other people.
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This also applies to physique development. People think they're
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training hard. I'm like, go look at a professional athlete like or a
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professional bodybuilder or whatever kind of physique archetype you're after.
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What will happen is you'll see very very quickly where you lack. It's very easy
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to see when you do that. So what you do is you use comparison as a starting
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point and then you don't judge yourself as you get better on where that person
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is now. You judge yourself based on whether you got better than where you
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were before. Okay? So if we started off doing one piece of content a month and
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we compare ourselves to someone who does five a day, if we move to one piece of
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content a week within two weeks we're doing a lot better. So compare yourself
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to that. Hey, I've improved 200%. Then you can do the next improvement and the
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next improvement. So comparison is to give you a goal of what to aim towards.
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Comparing yourself and actually basing it off that is a good way to actually
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create value within yourself and belief that you can actually do the thing that
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you want to do. Now the third process that I like to do here is create a layer
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of proof. Okay. Now what we need to do is actually to redefine our reality.
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This is now about redefining our reality. We need to actually prove to
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ourselves that we can do the thing. And a lot of people will use manifestation
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and mantras and stuff like this. This doesn't work because this doesn't
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actually give you any proof. It's kind of like if we use the example of the
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black swan paradox. If we say the thing that all swans are white, okay, as soon
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as we see a black swan, it totally destroys that belief system. We need to
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then do the same thing with our ability to work and our ability to achieve
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things. So do harder stuff. Give yourself a deadline and hit it. It's
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really, really simple. If you hit the deadline, you've learned one thing.
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You've gotten feedback that you can actually do more stuff. If you miss and
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you don't hit the deadline, cool. You've hit your you found your current
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capacity. You can then analyze that to where do you need to improve the skills
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to do more, okay? Or to do it faster. So, for example, it used to take me up
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to two hours to set up a better ad campaign for a new client, which is a
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fairly significant portion of a day. I challenged myself to do it in 30
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minutes. Now it can be done in 30 minutes. The time will be to then
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challenge it more and more. You will get to an end point, okay, with this. So
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that's something to be aware of that you will probably get to an air point, an
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end point. But when you create a layer of proof, you actually build real
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confidence and you rewrite what you're capable of. The first time you sell
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anything for $100 per delivery, you probably freak out. As soon as you sell
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it twice, you then believe that you can do it and your sales rate, your sales
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closing rate will go up rapidly. The same thing happens for every single step
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that you go through. So you need to be constantly giving yourself harder and
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harder stuff to do and then move towards achieving that and that will be
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rewriting your reality and redefining your reality. The problem is most people
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go and look for problems that they know how to solve. So they don't actually
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redefine their reality of new stuff that they can do. We see this all the time
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with lots of lots of people and I'm not going to belabor it with a ton of
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examples. But the cool thing about that exercise is you get to redefine and you
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get to accept reality for what it is. Both of them give you feedback to get
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better, which is one of the most important things to do as a business
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owner and entrepreneur. Now the next uh thing to help you
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rewrite reality is to get in rooms with people who are exactly where or ahead of
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where you want to be. Now, first example where I really learned this was when it
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was in my semi-professional basketball career and I got to play against some
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Sydney Kings players and college recruits and they were so much better
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than what I was. It totally redefined what I was needing to do in the gym,
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what I was needing to do on the court and the ability, the skills, the
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athleticism and everything that these players had. So, when you apply this,
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you can apply this to anything. Get in a room of business owners who are ahead of
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you and they will give you better ideas than what you currently have right now
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because they've already been there, they've seen that, they've done that.
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So, they have that benefit of experience. They have a different view
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of reality and then they can see different things that you can't possibly
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see right now. And that's a really fast way to redefine your reality because as
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you meet these people, you realize that they're the exact same as you. They all
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have to go to the bathroom and wipe their butt every day. So if they can do
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it and you're around them, you could probably learn how to do it as well. And
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a lot of the time they'll probably help you on the way. And now this last one I
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think is the most important one for making this work from more of a
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perspective of I guess the belief that you have in
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yourself. Okay? And not beating yourself up and not being down on yourself and
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actually applying some degree of self-compassion which I'll talk about
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again in the future. But apply something to yourself to not beat yourself up. And
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that is to simply accept that the difference in where you are and where
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you want to be is simply a skill deficit and not a character flaw. Okay? So just
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because you haven't achieved your business goals, your income goals, your
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physique goals, for example, it doesn't mean you failed. It doesn't mean that
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you are a failure. It simply means that you don't have the skills yet to
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actually get to that uh point. So what you're doing is you're paying the skill
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deficit to work up towards that. You're paying a skill debt. And when this
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happens, it means that you don't need to be personally offended by it. And I'm
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going to give a couple examples there. I am not very good at doing anything to
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do with cars. I have zero interest in cars. Okay? So, if car can drive me to
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the gym, to the shops, and get me around, I'm pretty happy with cars.
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That's all I need to know uh for my particular goals that I have. Now, if
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someone said to me, "I suck at cars and I don't know how to do anything with
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cars." I would not be personally offended by it because I know I have a
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skill deficit there. I know I don't have the skills, the knowledge to actually do
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anything to repair the car. I don't take it personally because I've got no
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personal investment in it. On the flip side, if we talk about someone in their
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business and we say, "You suck at marketing or you suck at sales or
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whatever it is," we generally tend to take that very very personally because
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it's our business. So therefore, we often perceive it as being an extension
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of ourselves when the actual reality is if we're going to assess it carefully is
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that we don't actually have the skills to do that particular thing yet. And if
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we don't have the skill, we can then simply learn the skill to do that thing.
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And this here is so transformative for so many business owners because as soon
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as they start going, okay, cool. It is a tangible skill that I can learn, not an
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inbuilt quality that I do or do not have. I can therefore get better at it.
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And the cool thing is, the really cool thing is you don't have to be the best
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in the world. Okay? A lot of people won't do things because they feel they
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have to be the best in the world at marketing, at sales, at strategy, at all
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these things. In reality, you just need to be better than most people. And since
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most people don't try, it's not that hard to get ahead. You just need to do
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it for a good amount of time, and you'll probably get there. We just need to get
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above industry average for the vast majority of skills for our business to
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absolutely crush it. And the industry average is generally very very low. So
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that's something that a lot of people aren't aware of. So and with learning as
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well, we're also learning the skills. I want to go one more thing with that. We
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want to make sure that we don't have conceptual knowledge that we actually
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have embodied learning that actually influences our behavior. Because when
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we're looking at business stuff, it's not how much we know about the topic,
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it's about how much we can do the topic. Okay? because thinking about it and
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talking about it doesn't actually move the needle towards where we want to be.
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So for example, I'm going to use a nutrition one which is very easy for
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most people to understand and wrap their head around is people can know about
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nutrition and they can know about calories and macros until you know the
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cows come home but until they can actually follow a diet it doesn't mean
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anything. So the skill of knowing about nutrition and the skill of applying
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nutrition are two very different things and it's very very important to be able
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to actually identify it is there's no point learning CAC customer acquisition
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cost unless you know how to change customer acquisition cost. So once you
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learn something like that so customer acquisition cost is how much it cost to
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actually get customer into business. The first thing you need to do is define
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reality. Identify your customer acquisition cost from there. Is it above
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or is it below industry average and are you happy with it? So, for example, if
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your customer acquisition cost is $100 and the average for your industry to
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acquire a customer is $20, you have a bad customer acquisition cost. From
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there, you can go into working out all the different factors that will actually
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change your customer acquisition cost. We've got a current series on the
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website of 23 ways to reduce your customer acquisition cost. So, if you
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can apply and learn all those individual skills, it is highly likely that you
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will get your customer acquisition cost down to below that $20 mark. And the
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cool thing is as well is because you've seen what your competitors do, you know
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it's real. So, not only have you identified your reality, you've created
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some you've identified where your gaps are and now you've got a tangible set of
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skills and things that you can do to learn and implement to actually get
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better. So if you apply learning, you can actually get to the goal where where
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you want to be and become a better entrepreneur. So
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key wrap- up, key point here, to be successful in business, in athletics, in
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life in general, you need to be able to hold two conflicting views at once. You
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need to be able to simultaneously identify your reality for exactly where
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it is without delusion. And then you also need to be redefining that reality
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by developing the skills and the belief that you have to do the thing that you
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need to do. If you follow the five tips in this podcast, you will get well close
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to being able to do that. You will improve rapidly and you'll see that this
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is one of the most profound skills that you can learn in business and life to
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get better results. Thanks heaps for listening, guys. I'll see you at the
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next episode.
