Latest / The Start, Scale & Succeed Podcast / You Don’t Have a Business You Have a Job with Jesse Gilmore (stage 2) - Ep. 394

Transcript

You Don’t Have a Business You Have a Job with Jesse Gilmore (stage 2) - Ep. 394 · The Start, Scale & Succeed Podcast

• 0:00
  Scott Ritzheimer: Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again
• 0:02
  to the start, scale and succeed podcast, the only podcast that
• 0:05
  grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As a
• 0:08
  founder, I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and there's a trap
• 0:11
  that nobody warns you about. The very skill set that made you
• 0:16
  good enough to go out on your own can actually become the very
• 0:19
  thing that keeps you from ever building a business. And when
• 0:23
  you're the best at whatever it is that you do, and you're the
• 0:25
  best at the work that you've started, you can also become the
• 0:29
  bottleneck very quickly, because every deliverable, every client,
• 0:32
  every fire runs through you. It makes the work harder and
• 0:37
  harder, and the better it gets, the bigger you get, the deeper
• 0:41
  you fall into this trap. And fortunately, it doesn't have to
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  stay that way, because my guest today, Mr. Jesse P Gilmore, is
• 0:50
  going to help us figure out the exact way to get out of it and
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  what you can do next. And he's well qualified to do so, because
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  Jesse is a transformational business coach and the founder
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  of niche in control, where he helps agency owners to scale
• 1:03
  their businesses while reclaiming their time and peace
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  of mind. He's a creator of the leverage for growth method. He's
• 1:11
  host of the leverage for growth podcast. He's also author of the
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  agency owner's guide to freedom. And there it is. Jesse has
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  helped over 100 marketing agencies to break through
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  plateaus and systematize sustainable growth. Keyword
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  there his mission to help business owners to scale, not
• 1:29
  just their profits but their freedom. And he's here with us
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  today. Jesse, welcome to the show. Glad to have you here. One
• 1:34
  of the things that just jumped off the pages of the book as I
• 1:37
  was reading through it was this idea of a distinction between
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  owning a job and owning a business. And I think a lot of
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  founders, especially in this stage two that we're talking
• 1:48
  about, have a job, you know, it might have a little bit more
• 1:53
  freedom, but probably, if they're honest, it has a lot
• 1:55
  more responsibility than it does freedom. And so what's going on
• 2:01
  here? Maybe, what are some of the signs that somebody has
• 2:04
  built themselves a job instead of a business?
• 2:06
  Jesse Gilmore: Yeah, that's a great way of starting off our
• 2:09
  conversation. And in my first businesses, everything kind of
• 2:13
  funneled through me. If I had worked didn't work, work didn't
• 2:16
  get done. That is very similar to that people are kind of
• 2:19
  feeling trapped. So if you took off a week, would the business
• 2:23
  even sustain or grow without you? That is a big kind of like
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  indicator or self assessment type of question. Also, as you
• 2:30
  take on more clients, does it increase your personal hours?
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  These are very simple ways of being able to determine whether
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  or not you are actually the bottleneck, or what I would
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  consider to be what's called a single point of failure, where
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  everything relies upon a single person, and it's a certain
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  stage, like you talked about how this is stage two in your model,
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  where there is kind of, like a reason why it's there, but
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  doesn't necessarily mean that you have to stay there and
• 2:56
  leverage for growth methods all based around freeing them up and
• 2:58
  kind of moving through the different stages. But I would
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  say, anybody that's listening to this, those two questions, if
• 3:04
  you can answer them, they'll determine if you're in this
• 3:06
  stage right now.
• 3:07
  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, I love that you brought that point
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  there at the end, because it, to some extent, succeeding in stage
• 3:14
  two is about being the answer to all those questions, because
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  somebody has to do it, and there's nobody else around. So
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  if you don't answer it, it doesn't move. That's That's by
• 3:23
  design, not just by default. However, if we get stuck in
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  that, I think that's where it becomes really problematic. How
• 3:31
  do you help folks to recognize when it's time to start
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  addressing that? Like, how does someone know if, if building the
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  business is to the degree that they have is just a necessary
• 3:44
  part of the game, or that they are stuck in a pattern that's
• 3:46
  not serving them well anymore.
• 3:49
  Jesse Gilmore: Yeah, what I've found is that there's certain
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  kind of growth plateaus that happen right right around the
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  20,000 a month, where you're about to hire the first person
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  that's like one of the kind of plateaus. And a lot of times
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  those types of people that are like solopreneurs, that's like
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  the first stage of being like, okay, something's wrong.
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  Something is happening within the business, and I need to make
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  a decision if I'm going to stay small or start to grow a team.
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  Okay? And I think that that is one of the biggest kind of
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  steps. Another step is where you start to realize that what
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  you're doing in the business might necessarily be the thing
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  that you had signed up for. You know, as you start to take on
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  more team members, and maybe you don't find the right talent,
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  you're positioning yourself based around kind of more of a
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  default type of role, as opposed to being very specific about
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  this is my unique ability in the business. This is where I need
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  to focus, or stay as a visionary, and start building a
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  business around them. And I think one of the biggest kind of
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  unlocks, and I might be jumping into a further question you're
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  going to ask, but is you have to make a decision on whether or
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  not you want a business to kind of stay all about you kind. Like
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  a centralized business model, right? And there's benefits to
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  that. Some people are like fractional coos or different
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  types of fractional types of roles. Can make a lot of money
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  doing that solo. But if you're starting to think about what me
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  and Scott focus on, which is scale, you have to kind of
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  switch your identity, and you have to start looking at, maybe
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  I was the doer for a period of time, and now I need to start
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  thinking about, let's just be the world's greatest trainer.
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  Can I train people better than what I am currently? And if I
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  can train them, can I move into management, kind of be the
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  world's greatest manager, and then start moving through these
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  different identity shifts. But I think that one of the biggest
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  things is, is if you get to a place where you can start to
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  understand that you could hire somebody and that could take,
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  you know, things off of your plate, what is that kind of the
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  first step I always tell people to do, like a seven day time
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  log, and to get to understand that your use of time within the
• 5:57
  business, and immediately that gives you the raw inputs to
• 6:00
  figure out, should I be Doing this, or should I not be doing
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  this? If I hired somebody, what would they do? You know, that's
• 6:05
  kind of a foundational step.
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  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, yeah. There's so much to unpack in
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  there. I want to start with a statement you made earlier about
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  the choice that we're really having to make, and that is, do
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  I stay small or grow a team? And I think for a lot of folks, the
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  there's, like, a right answer to that and a wrong option, right?
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  Is it one of those is good and one is bad? Is that true? Is it
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  bad to stay small, or is it better to grow a team? What have
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  you found to be true?
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  Jesse Gilmore: It really depends on what your vision is. So a lot
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  of times, when I ask agency owners that I work with, or even
• 6:38
  before starting to work together, I'm like, What's your
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  end game? Like, what are you trying to accomplish within this
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  business? And what I find that the ones that are wanting to
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  grow and are wanting to grow a team and build systems and kind
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  of switch those roles, like we're talking about, usually
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  have three End Games. One of them is, is that they either
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  scale it to the moon as much as they possibly can, eventually
• 6:58
  sell it, or work in the business whenever they want to. If any
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  one of those three End Games are kind of like, you're listening
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  to me and Scott, and you're like, Hey, I'm one of those
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  three, then you do actually need to make the switch from small to
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  larger. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you have
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  to go, like, to the nth degree when it comes to growth. You can
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  actually achieve your goals a lot faster than a lot of people
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  think. A lot of times people have that kind of like, have do
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  be model where it's like, once I have this, then I do this, and I
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  become this. It's actually the reverse. And so I would say,
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  anybody that's listening that has one of those end games, you
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  do have to make a choice to be bigger and start growing a team.
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  For those that are kind of like, maybe that's not one of my End
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  Games. And maybe my end game is just to have complete control
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  over what I'm doing, and I only grow to a certain amount and My
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  impact is smaller. Totally fine, but that's that's it's dependent
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  upon what their definition of success really is.
• 7:53
  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, that's so true. Really making that
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  decision based on the vision you have for the organization is
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  wise. One of the things that you said, so let's say someone's
• 8:03
  deciding to move forward, and they do want to grow a team. You
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  use the phrase, becoming the world's greatest trainer and
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  then moving on to becoming a manager. And you talked about
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  this identity shift that has to happen. And one of the things
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  that I've found, and this is, I would say, very true in the
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  agency space in particular, is their identity, is marketer,
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  right, or agency owner, or some, you know, SEO expert, or
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  something, whatever their their thing is. And there aren't a
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  whole lot of entrepreneurs that start out saying, hey, I want to
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  be the best trainer in the world. How do folks make that
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  identity shift? And can anyone do it? Or is it like for an
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  elite few?
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  Jesse Gilmore: I would like to say, with the right method, you
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  can that anybody can do it. But I think that when you when you
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  come out as a marketing agency owner, typically, you're like a
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  freelancer in the way beginning, you start working on by the
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  hour, you generate enough demand, then you leave your job
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  and you start making the choices. And a lot of the
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  business in the way beginning is based around your skills, but
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  they get to a certain point where there's only so many hours
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  you're going to be able to work. There's only so much of an
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  impact you can do if it's just based around you. And I think
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  that one of the biggest things that I can get clients to do is
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  a lot of mindset work, getting understand where you are and
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  what do you want to be remembered for when you die,
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  like really intense types of questions, and then based around
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  where you are right now, what habits are actually holding you
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  back from achieving that end game that you're trying to
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  accomplish. And I think that once people start to make that
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  mental shift, that right now, the best value that I can give
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  to the business is not by doing the SEO type of work, but
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  actually finding people that can do it better than I can, or at
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  least, as Dan Martell would say, 80% by somebody else is 100%
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  awesome, like that same kind of idea where you have other people
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  starting to do a lot of that quote, unquote, grunt work. So
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  you. Can actually focus on what you are the world's greatest at,
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  and the trainer is not necessarily the end game. In our
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  model, we think of a lot about these identity shifts, going
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  from the doer to the trainer to the manager to the leader, and
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  then eventually to the visionary, very similar to your
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  stages, where you talk about the chief executive at stage five.
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  And I think that the best thing that we can do is build
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  businesses to support the founder in that transition. And
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  it kind of gives a path out of just constantly grinding.
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  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, I love the stage approach. I'm somewhat
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  partial to it. There is you mentioned this before, and I
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  want to come back to it, because I have found it to be
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  exceptionally helpful and also exceptionally repulsive to a lot
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  of people. But this idea of sitting down is actually
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  tracking what you do. Tell us a little bit about how that I
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  think you use a one week log, if I remember correctly. How do you
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  do that? Does it take? Like, hours a day? What does it look
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  like, and why is it helpful?
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  Jesse Gilmore: Yeah, totally. So the weekly time log is one of
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  the first things I do with every single client, specifically one
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  on one, clients will do a deep dive into their time log and
• 11:10
  give them actionable things from it. But it's very simple. For
• 11:14
  seven days, just log your time every half an hour. For seven
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  days, you can sleep and then cover it all so you don't have
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  to do it while sleeping. But what it does is it captures the
• 11:25
  both personal and professional, and you get a snapshot of kind
• 11:29
  of raw data if you're a marketer right now, and you understand
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  that if you're going to take over somebody's ad campaign, you
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  look at past campaigns before you do anything else, right?
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  Same exact idea when it comes to time use and those identity
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  shifts, right? Your use of time is going to shift when you start
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  to move from Doer to trainer to manager and so forth. So what we
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  do is, for seven days, every half an hour, as much detail as
• 11:52
  you possibly can. So you can't just say client work, right? You
• 11:55
  got to kind of dive in. And this is what I'm doing. Okay? Now I
• 11:59
  started binge watching Netflix. I'm kind of bored, or I'm not
• 12:02
  going to sleep because I'm checking my phone like anything
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  that gets you to be so raw and aware of what, where your time
• 12:11
  is going, it gives you so much data, and we run them through
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  the eliminate, automate, delegate, time block
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  methodology, which, If there's something that you're doing that
• 12:22
  you can eliminate, just do it. There's no reason to automate or
• 12:25
  delegate or time block something that's not even worth it.
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  Automation right now, especially in the land of AI and and where
• 12:32
  we're at right now, it can take over large amounts of the things
• 12:35
  that you're doing right now to free you up to delegate
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  effectively. And delegation does not necessarily mean that you
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  just immediately, just give them everything you can focus on low
• 12:45
  risk tasks or things that are totally not worth your pay
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  grade, and be able to focus mostly on time block. Now time
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  blocking, a lot of people always just think about allotting a
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  certain amount of time towards a certain activity, which is part
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  of it. It's actually the minimization of task switching.
• 13:03
  So if you're working on something technical, keep all
• 13:05
  technical stuff together. If you are working working with
• 13:09
  clients, group them together, right? If you're working with a
• 13:11
  team, group them together, and what happens is, is that you
• 13:14
  have make better decisions, you have less fatigue, and you can
• 13:17
  get more done. So that's what we do. And it starts up the whole
• 13:20
  process.
• 13:21
  Scott Ritzheimer: It's so it's such a great first step for
• 13:23
  someone looking for a practical way out of this job that they
• 13:26
  created for themselves. It really is step one. I love that
• 13:29
  you do it that way. Jesse, there is a question that I have for
• 13:34
  you before we make sure folks know how they can get in touch
• 13:36
  with you, and that is, what is the biggest secret that you wish
• 13:39
  wasn't a secret at all. What's that one thing you wish
• 13:42
  everybody watching or listening today knew?
• 13:44
  Jesse Gilmore: And it might be because we just talked about the
• 13:46
  time log, but what I want to say is, is that for if you are
• 13:49
  starting to realize that the things that you want in your
• 13:52
  life and business, you, quote, unquote, don't have time for,
• 13:56
  I'm just going to say that's BS, keep it as that, because you
• 14:01
  have a lot more control over your life and business than you
• 14:04
  think. And I think that if you go through a seven day, even if
• 14:08
  it's like a seven day time log that feels like it's like nails
• 14:12
  on a chalkboard, to get through those seven days, it's gonna set
• 14:15
  you up so much for success if you just go through the seven
• 14:19
  days of roughness to get to a place where you can realize that
• 14:23
  it's all based around prioritization and mindset. I
• 14:26
  think that's that's my takeaway.
• 14:29
  Scott Ritzheimer: I love it. I love it. For those of you, for
• 14:33
  those who are listening, who are saying, Hey, I'd love to know
• 14:36
  more. Where's this book? Where can I get a copy of it? How can
• 14:40
  they reach out to you directly, especially those who are in that
• 14:42
  agency owner space, where can folks find you and reach out for
• 14:46
  more?
• 14:46
  Jesse Gilmore: Sure, so we're going through a rebrand right
• 14:48
  now, but you'll find my website niche in control. So niche, N,
• 14:53
  I, C, H, E, in control.com. If you want a copy of my book that
• 14:59
  Scott was reading right. Before this to prepare I can go to
• 15:02
  niche in control.com/book, and then I'm very active on
• 15:06
  LinkedIn. So you can go to LinkedIn, and it's just my my
• 15:10
  name, Jesse P Gilmore, and just let me know that you listen to
• 15:14
  me and Scott, so that way I can understand a bit more of the
• 15:17
  context. And I'd love to chat with you.
• 15:20
  Scott Ritzheimer: Fantastic, highly recommend it. For those
• 15:23
  of you who listen to the show, you probably like stage based
• 15:25
  advice, and Jesse does a great job at that. This is an
• 15:28
  excellent resource. Jesse, thanks for being on the show. It
• 15:32
  was just a privilege, awesome conversation. I really enjoyed
• 15:35
  it, and I appreciate your time. And for those of you watching
• 15:37
  and listening, you know that your time and attention mean the
• 15:39
  world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as
• 15:42
  I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.