Latest / Amplify Your Marketing Message with Christine Campbell Rapin / 186 - Build in the Dark: Start, Persist, and Lead, Even When the Path Isn't Clear

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186 - Build in the Dark: Start, Persist, and Lead, Even When the Path Isn't Clear · Amplify Your Marketing Message with Christine Campbell Rapin

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  If you are a B2B service based business owner and you are
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  looking to gain more clients, create more impact and more
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  revenue in your business, TuneIn to amplify your marketing
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  message with Christine Campbell Rappin.
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  Every week we're going to take you through how to build an
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  audience of buyers, mastering your marketing message and
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  making offers. You've likely heard the proverb
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  from African Heritage that says if you want to go fast, go solo.
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  If you wanna go far, go with others.
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  Well, today I want to talk about the importance in my own
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  personal journey of hiring and committing to mentors to manage
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  the hardest 6 inches of the business journey.
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  Which is the one that is traversed between your two ears,
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  your mindset, your game in the silence that you have to tackle
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  not just on day one, but every day, minute by minute, hour by
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  hour, year by year. Welcome To Amplify your
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  marketing message. I guarantee you're going to want
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  to listen to this episode more than once and share it to
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  someone you know, because this is something that wasn't covered
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  in the highlight reel. It wasn't covered in the
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  business books, and it wasn't covered openly until I was at a
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  much higher level of revenue and in more elite rooms.
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  And I want to give you that gift now where you are right now in
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  your journey because I know it will serve you well.
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  I had a lot of advantages when I first started my business
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  because I had business skills. I have two degrees from great
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  universities that are well respected internationally for
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  training future business leaders, teaching them on brass
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  tacks. I can write a PNL and
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  accounting. I can understand macroeconomics.
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  Microeconomics simply puts like supply and demand.
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  I have studied human behavior and HR.
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  I have talked about and learn from some of the best marketers
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  in the world and I've understood sales systems and most
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  importantly how it all comes together.
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  Most business owners don't have that when they start.
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  They must equip themselves with it on the journey in order to
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  create an enduring success story.
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  However, I will also say, well, I had all these business skills.
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  I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
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  I wanted to have my own path to blaze.
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  But truthfully, I didn't know what I wanted to do.
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  And I kept saying to people, same thing when I undertook my
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  MBA. If I just knew what I would
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  write my dissertation on, I would start.
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  But I was waiting to be clear, to be certain.
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  Sound familiar? Well, I tell you, five years
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  into running and owning Clear Acceleration Inc, which is the
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  company that supports this podcast and supports our clients
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  around the world, I never imagined to have the business I
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  have now. I didn't get up out of bed one
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  random day and have this massive download of this massive idea
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  saying I will go be a consultant.
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  Never had this inkling that I could be paid very well to sit
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  shotgun on somebody else's business dreams.
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  Truthfully, I was not that creative.
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  What I realized early in my business journey when I had
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  started into the path of entrepreneurship and I started a
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  network marketing, I wanted to create additional revenue.
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  That was my goal. And I knew how to move product.
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  I knew how to make connections and I knew how to build
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  relationships. And that pathway led me to of
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  course, meeting tons of people. And through the connections,
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  through the conversations, I kept hearing this statement.
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  Can you show me how to connect the dots?
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  Can you tell me what you're actually doing?
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  Can you show me behind the curtain of the highlight reel?
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  Because I am working 60 hours a week or 50 hours a week or 40
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  hours a week, and I don't have any strong repeatable success
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  yet. And yet I'm watching you work a
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  fraction of that. By fraction, I mean one hour a
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  day was my commitment to myself when I started.
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  You're making money. How are you doing it?
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  And it led to conversations over glasses of wine or coffee,
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  depending on how you know me and where we're socially connected.
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  And I kept saying business is simple, elegantly simple.
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  In fact, two things predict your revenue, three things non
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  negotiable. And I would tell people in the
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  light bulb would go off and eventually I through many, many,
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  many of these conversations, people kept saying, you know, be
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  great if I could pay you to help me.
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  And I kept saying this. That's weird, I don't understand
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  why you'd want to pay me. It's not that any issue being
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  paid, it's just that I didn't see this as a business
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  opportunity. Just was incomprehensible to my
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  mind until they had a key conversation with somebody who I
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  would say is a mentor. I have paid their services and
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  they said this to me in a session that I attended.
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  Never look for clients, look for problems to solve, ways you can
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  support and people you can contribute to.
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  When you do that, you will always have clients, you will
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  always be sought after and you will always bring value to the
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  world. And that appealed to me.
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  And when he said that to me, I wrote it down on a post it note.
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  It stayed as a posted note for the first two years of my
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  business in my workspace to be a North Star, to say if I just
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  keep staying in the game and I keep these principles front of
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  mine, I think I could do something great, but I don't
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  know what it is yet. I was starting to do podcasting
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  as a guest. I was a whole host for somebody
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  else's platform because I wanted to understand this idea of
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  conversation because I thought when I was observing the
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  business world, I noticed two things.
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  I observed an observation, as you've heard here, performance
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  podcasters, the most important skill you have in the world of
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  business because it creates opportunity and it helps you be
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  opportunistic. First thing I observe was that
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  once you've made the decision to start a business, nobody was
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  helping you figure out the early steps.
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  What do you actually do? And most importantly, what do
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  you do next in sequence to build momentum?
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  Everyone was talking about, you know, you from a goober
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  perspective. If I made millions of dollars,
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  I've been in business 30 years and your evolution and the
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  starting gate were just incompatible to me.
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  But I noticed that in the marketplace.
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  Second thing that happened is I really thought that people were
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  being sold sizzle. They were being sold the
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  promise, they were being sold ease.
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  They were being sold something I just have never seen in real
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  life. Because anybody who's built a
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  multi $1,000,000 business has a lot of grit, a lot of tenacity,
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  and a lot of ability to manage the six inches between their
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  ears. There's no shortcut to this.
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  And yet people kept saying snap your fingers and it's possible.
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  It's not possible. The failure rate of business is
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  massive. The fail rate in the first five
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  years also terrifying. And part of it is because people
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  were being led with the wrong conversations.
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  And so my observation led me to reflect as a human, what does
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  that mean for me? And I thought, well, there's two
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  ways I can contribute to the conversation.
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  Ignore it or solve it and play a contributing role.
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  And so I made a decision that I would play with the skills I had
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  and I would be open minded to how they could be of service and
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  be part of sparking new conversations and creating new
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  tables. Tables that I could invite
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  people to be sitting at so we could rise together.
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  But I still didn't have this very concrete business idea.
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  I think that was really the point.
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  I didn't sit in my ego. I didn't sit in my own grandiose
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  ideas of what makes me awesome. I was just open minded and I let
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  the market dictate how I could serve it.
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  I was recording this podcast with a friend of mine was not
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  about my business. It was about me as a business
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  owner managing the sandwich generation.
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  What it was like having you know at that time teenage kids in the
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  home and parents that were aging and my responsibilities having
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  to shift as a caregiver not from children but to adult, my own
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  parents and what that was like. It was a conversation I felt
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  very much I wanted to have and in that conversation in the 1st
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  5 minutes of the pre interview I found myself in a situation
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  where somebody says well how much does it cost?
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  And I said for what said to hire you.
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  And I'm like, I don't understand the question so well.
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  I want to hire you. How much does it cost?
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  I said, well, what do you think you're hiring me for?
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  She told me I need to figure out what to say, what room to get
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  into. And I want to commercialize my
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  business. And I have been trying to do
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  that for years and I can't. But it seems to me like, you
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  know how to do this, so I'd like to hire you to teach me how to
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  do that. And I was like, wow, I can
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  actually do that. She said great, so tell me how
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  much does it cost? And I throw out a number.
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  She said great, I'll go get my credit card.
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  And I thought, I don't even know how to process this credit card,
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  but that was another problem solve.
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  What's important here was I listened to the marketplace.
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  I had somebody say that's of value, I want to exchange money
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  for that. And that's where I think most
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  business owners go wrong. You've got to be sure that
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  there's a market for your service.
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  Instead of you saying I will go create the demand, I stepped in
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  to something that was already needed and I was able to
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  immediate in a moment that was short term.
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  That person who hired me has become a client off and on for
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  the last four years. It comes down to whose voice are
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  you listening to? I had had that individual who
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  told me don't look for clients, for people to serve, waste of
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  support and things you can contribute to.
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  And I was in a moment where I was in that space.
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  It was the beginning of the consulting, that firm that I now
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  run, and once you have one client and you start to win with
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  them, it becomes a dopamine rush.
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  I want to serve more. I want to do this again.
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  I want to be sought after for this because I know I can really
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  contribute. And that led me to realize that
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  while I had the business skills and now I had my first client, I
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  didn't know how to create this consistently because I wasn't
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  really sure how I had got it in the first place.
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  So I looked to hire a mentor. I hired my first mentor when I
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  had one client. And here's what I want you to
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  hear. I made that commitment to that
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  mentor for a two year contract from the very first hire, my
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  first mentor. This was 10s of thousands of
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  dollars over the course of two years.
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  And I knew This is why I made the commitment.
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  I knew they had similar skills with me but more advanced and I
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  knew that they had already created a multi 6 figure
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  business and that's what I had wanted at the time.
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  This mentor help me lay some of the basic foundations, help me
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  build a website, they help me set up my e-mail marketing, they
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  helped me understand the importance of choosing a
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  marketing lane, and they encouraged me to pursue speaking
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  as a lead Gen. strategy. These were very important
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  milestones that I needed and the reason I made such a long term
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  commitment to them was because I knew my business would evolve
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  and it would evolve at a faster rate with somebody who could
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  guide me than if I had to figure it all out on my own.
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  I bankrolled this myself from savings and I want to talk about
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  that for just a second before I continue the story of mentorship
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  because you need to be prepared to invest in your business.
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  You cannot expect clients to spend with you if you're not
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  willing to spend on yourself. It it's incongruent in the in
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  the system here. You have to think about this and
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  from day one set aside a budget for the growth of your business.
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  There was a Harvard stat that came out many years ago that to
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  start up a business, a business that didn't include physical
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  product, physical location. So I'm talking consulting
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  something that is online, something that is lighter in its
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  asset build. Still needed at least $85,000
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  USD to get started in the first five years.
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  So if you're thinking you will bootstrap with no money to your
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  business, no mentorship, no support, I honestly think you
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  should give your head a shake, rethink that and decide that
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  this is a path you want to pursue.
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  You have to fund this. So you can find it from savings,
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  you can fund it from debt, but you need to fund it That is non
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  negotiable. It's table stakes.
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  So I committed two years to this mentor and I started down the
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  path and the reason I did it was an acceleration choice.
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  I had the skill set on business, but it didn't have the way to
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  play in the current marketplace as a consultant.
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  But if I knew, if I kept on my own, I would be unrecognizable
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  in five years. I didn't have five years to make
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  this work. I needed to make it work in two
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  to three. And so I started.
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  Overtime, the vision of what I wanted for my business changed.
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  It continued to evolve. And at some point I recognized
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  an incongruency with what my business mentor wanted for my
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  business and what I wanted for my business.
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  And I had to choose very certainly whose business do I
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  want to build. I think both ideas had merit,
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  but which did I personally want? And this is an important piece
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  of this puzzle, my friends. You've got to always check in
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  with yourself. Whose business am I building
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  When I recognize that some of the decisions I wanted to make
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  were not supported by the coach from a, I think that's not a
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  priority point of view. I have to decide if our path
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  would continue as my contract came up for renewal or I was
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  ready to move into a new direction.
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  I made the decision to put my turn signal on and change lanes,
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  and I'm very grateful for that. Mentor taught me a lot.
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  We're still good of personal friends.
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  I still love to see their business striving, and I'm
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  celebrating them and how they contributed to my success story.
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  But as I started to evolve, I thought I need different
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  mentors. I needed to be challenged in
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  different ways. And I'm very clear here that
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  I've used the word mentor, not coach.
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  I was looking for people that would bring three things to the
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  equation. What happens, how do I do it and
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  when do I do it? I needed direction and a mentor
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  will tell you and show you and a coach will question.
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  I needed mentors and I am a mentor.
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  He will hire me for what comes next.
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  How do I do it? When do I do it?
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  And to a high degree also accountability for it happening.
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  I don't hire people for accountability because I bring
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  accountability in my own DNA. I have good systems, I have good
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  habits. I was trained those corporately,
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  but what I do need is the what, the how and the when.
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  And so I needed to be in rooms with bigger mentors, mentors who
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  had businesses at bigger stages because I was now pursuing not
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  just a side hustle, but a business.
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  I wanted to build to more than $1,000,000 in revenue.
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  I wanted to build a sellable asset.
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  I wanted to get back into not just leading clients and leading
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  myself, but leading team. I wanted to help other people.
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  I throw on paychecks in all directions and so I chose to
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  hire other mentors. Some of the most important
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  lessons those Next Level mentors told me are these, Number one,
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  do the hardest thing you're afraid of right now #2 you can
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  do hard things. Don't make me easy stuff hard,
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  because the hard stuff will kick your butt anyway.
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  I also learned this from my mentors.
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  At a bigger level, what you do today matters.
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  Stop planning for always a future exercise, a future event,
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  a future moment. Live now.
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  Make decisions for where you're going in this piece of the
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  puzzle. You belong in every room.
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  You bring something unique to every room.
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  You have to ask for what you want.
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  You have to put in the effort to get moving, to have the lived
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  experience of what you want. And you are the spark.
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  And there are fuel sources. Starting a business in hindsight
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  is the first major hurdle. But what comes after what
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  matters most? What matters is how you manage
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  the six inches. What matters is the fact that
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  you should be curating whose voices inside your head.
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  What matters most is that you are looking to be in rooms where
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  you're mentored, not just coached.
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  And when you're looking at mentors, what mattered really
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  importantly to me is do I like how they live their life, not
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  just how do they run their business?
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  I have mentors who are very family focused, who love to
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  travel, who love rewards, who love to gift generously.
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  I watched them be not choosing balance because I think truly
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  balance is not the goal. It's not the goal for me
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  personally. I want to be intentionally in
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  imbalance around the things that bring me life, that makes my
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  life worth living. And that means I'm all in on
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  this piece and I'm all in on this piece and I'm all in on
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  this piece. Doesn't mean I'm trying to do it
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  all. I'm being intentionally
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  imbalanced and shifting between my priorities and I hired
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  mentors to show me how they do it and I also had this final
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  thing in every mentor. I've had 100% openness to Tommy
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  on my BS Tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear
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  and remind me do the dam work. This is what goes next.
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  This is why you're doing it. This is when you'll look to do
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  it again and again and again and again.
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  Mentors are a big part of the journey, my friends.
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  Invest in them. Serve a marketplace that is
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  asking you to serve it and really commit to recognizing
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  that you have to say decided on your path.
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  Thanks, you're here to do great things.
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  How can you step into your greatness today?
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  And who do you need mentoring you on the ride?
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  If you don't have a current mentor and you want to build to
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  $1,000,000 and you need foundations, you need
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  accountability, and you need a business mentor that's moving
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  fast, you should come connect to me.
• 21:00
  Christine Campbell, rappan.com. Let's have a conversation and
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  see if there's a fit to serve you, because it would be my
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  pleasure, honor and privilege to run shotgun on your business
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  dreams. It's go time.
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  I'll see you soon. We'll see you.