Why Your Business Isn’t Growing And How to Fix It

If you’ve been struggling for more than six months to grow your business beyond a current plateau or obstacle in your goal has been growth or something popped up in your goal was to move the business past this challenge and you’ve been trying things, you’ve been working at it, but you’re not making any progress. Well, the issue is most likely a leadership limitation that you can overcome. In this episode, I want to explore how to upskill your leadership to upscale your business. Welcome to the Digital Nomad Entrepreneur podcast. My name is Eric. I’m a full time digital nomad entrepreneur traveling around the world with my wife and four kids. And I want to say thank you for being here right now, listening to this episode, wherever you are, wherever you got your earbuds in. I don’t know if you’re out for a walk driving the car. Maybe you’re at an airport on a bus. I don’t know where you are, but thank you for bringing me into your earbuds there and listening. I’m recording this on a rainy afternoon here in Costa Rica. Yes, we’re still in Costa Rica. If you were listening earlier to the podcast, earlier episodes, you might be thinking, wait a second, are you supposed to be out of Costa Rica by now? Well, tell you what, keep listening to the very end of the podcast if you’re interested in our traveling, and I will unpack there about that But not everybody that listens to the podcast is into the traveling side of things. And so for all of you and for everybody, I want to get into the meat and potatoes of this episode, talking about how to upskill our leadership so we can upscale our business. And then again at the end, we’ll come back to our travel lean plans. Now, if if you’re ever going to be someone that listens to more than one episode of this podcast, you’re going to hear me talk about leadership. Now, most of the time it’s not the whole podcast episode, but I do end every podcast with a leadership tip of the week. I’m going to do the same thing even with this one, because your leadership capacity is the limiting factor of your business. Now, yes, other things can creep in. You can have new regulations come into play outside market forces, significant changes or disruption in technology. All of these things can impact your business, but a leader is still going to lead through those. And it shouldn’t take you more than six months, maybe 12 months, depending on the size of obstacle to lead through it. Now, for many of us and many of you, there’s not necessarily an outside force that’s happening. There’s a it’s it’s a it’s a personal development thing. And so I want to explore this a little bit because I do believe and in every situation I see everybody that I all of my coaching clients that I work with in my businesses, every time we’re we’re hitting a wall or we keep coming around and bumping into the same wall. It’s a leadership skill issue. So I’ve got let’s see, I’ve got a I’ve got nine things here listed I want to go through real quick. Nine is a big number. Sounds scary. We’re not going to labor on many of these very long, so not going to take us long to get through these nine things. The first thing is you have to understand that you’re a leader. So lead even if you’re a solopreneur. A lot of people think that they’re not a leader yet. They’re just trying to get a business started. They’re they’re an entrepreneur. They’re are solopreneur, but they don’t see themselves as a leader of their business. And so because of that, they see things through faulty lenses. They see things through the wrong lenses. So I was talking to one person earlier this week and he is trying to build a web design business and he was struggling and things weren’t going great. And so he picked up a contract providing white label services to a marketing agency. And he came in, was talking about this situation is and now he’s got this agreement with them to be doing their white labeling and it’s taking up all of his time. He doesn’t have time to work on his business. You know, it’s it’s, you know, all these things back and forth. And I told him I was like, well, wait a second, you have an amazing opportunity here. You’ve got a client that’s paying here that’s paying you, you know, almost $70,000 a year contract. And you’re providing a great service. You could very easily, for what he’s doing, find somebody at, you know, four or five, $6 an hour to deliver what you’re providing and buy yourself back several hours. Your mindset, you’re looking at this as a job that you had to get on your way to building your business instead of seeing it as, Oh my gosh, I just got a 70,000 stinking dollar contract. Most people’s trying to start their journey as a owner of a Web design agency. They don’t get that now. You may not be a Web designer. You may be a copywriter. You may be an online coach. You know, you may I don’t know, kind of visit business you have. But we have to start thinking like leaders. We have to understand that we are leaders. So we have to lead leaders, evaluate leaders, step back leaders, look at things at a higher level view. And you can learn to do the same things by just taking a breath and doing some of these other things I want to talk about. So whether you’re a solopreneur or all by yourself, you don’t need a team to be a leader. Okay? You are if you are trying to create your own thing, if you’re trying to create a business, if you’re trying to create a revenue stream so you can have a life that looks more the way you want it to that have gives you the ability to to travel more often or just to have that location independence. Then you have to see yourself as a leader. Number two, having broken systems isn’t hurting your business. Okay? You got to stop thinking this. Like, if you can just if I. If I could just figure out this, my business will be better. And I don’t have a good lead gen strategy yet. I don’t either crack the Facebook ads nut, you know, whatever. I don’t have a good system. Having broken systems isn’t hurting your business. Allowing broken systems is hurting your business. Leaders don’t allow broken systems to last. Leaders aren’t victims. Leaders are fixers. So you need to look at step back and look at your business and and remove the emotion of what you’re feeling. You’re feeling this pressure. You’ve got this sense like this. You know, you do you have all these feelings and emotions tied up with it and it’s clouding your judgment. You can easily even I know you may not use the terms you you may be you may you may be approaching things as a victim. And that’s not what a leader is. Leaders are leaders aren’t victims, leaders are fixers. So you’ve got to step back, look at your business, identify a problem, identify a broken system, and you’ve got to fix it. That’s that’s what a leader does. Number three, leadership isn’t about getting it right. It’s about making the adjustments that need to be made. All right. This is huge. So many people, they they are gun shy about making a decision because, oh, what if it’s what if it’s not the right decision? And then they fret and they stress over it. Leaders gather as much information as they can as quickly as they can that is relevant. You’re not going to have you’re never gonna have all the information. You’re going to gather the relevant information that is accessible to you right now. And you’re going to make the best decision you can. And then you need to stick with it and make adjustments. Generally, these are full swing changes. So let’s stick with this lead generation for a second. So many solopreneur tours or small business owners that have two or three freelancers that are trying to figure things out, they’ll they’ll start trying to do something for Legion and they want to try something else for lead generation and they want to try something else for lead generation and yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, because they feel like they’re not getting it right. So they go out and they try something different and they don’t feel like that’s getting it right. So they got to try something different. Leadership, again, isn’t about getting it right. It’s about making the adjustments that need to be made so things get better. And so what we have to do is you just need to pick a strategy that works for you. I don’t care if you want to do Facebook ads. I don’t care if you want to do webinars. I don’t care if you want to do, you know, fine. You know, people on Upwork, you know, Fiverr, I don’t really care what legion strategy you choose. Pick one and stick with it and get amazing at it. That’s what it takes. And not just in lead gen. It’s the same thing in your you’re selling. You know, people want to know how to you know, they’ll they’ll try one selling technique and then they try a different selling technique and then they try a different selling technique. And honestly, it’s generally not that all these selling techniques that people. They work or people wouldn’t be doing them and people wouldn’t be teaching them. But they don’t work for you. They don’t work for me because we don’t give it the time and energy and effort it needs. So it’s not about picking the right thing. You’re spending so much time looking for the right solution. Then you’re in, you’re losing, you’re wasting time. You’re not that you don’t have the luxury to do that right now. Pick a solution that you like and stick to it and make adjustments to that so that that solution to make it work, whether this is is is lead generation, lead conversion, collecting and managing money, project management, whatever it is. Just just keep making incremental progress on on the thing you’ve chosen to do. Number four, the most effective leaders are the ones who seek the most help. It’s true leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Great leaders aren’t grown in a vacuum. They seek out help. They get regular help. They ask questions. They’re constantly, you know, getting input from people. Their leaders are like little data collectors. We love collecting, you know, data and information that we can use to to make a decision or to make adjustments to decisions we’ve already made and gone public with the most effective leaders are the ones who seek the most of. It’s why. It’s why CEOs of of huge companies have boards and, you know, C-suite staff and assistants and researchers and all this stuff. The most effective leaders are the ones who seek the most help. And you don’t have to have a full team to do this. This isn’t expensive. You got to find help. What are some ways to do that? What are some ways to do that? Well, first, I’m going to stop this. That was number four. The most effective leaders are the ones who seek the most help. I’m going to give you number five here in just just a moment. Before I do that, I’m going to step in to my own podcast with my own commercial. One thing you might want to check out is I have what’s known what I call open office hours. Every Monday I have an hour of time that I’m on Zoom. And I you know what? I can’t remember. I’m a switcher. My calendar real quick and look. So it is at noon Eastern time. So noon Eastern time, 8 a.m. Eastern European time. So at noon Eastern U.S. time for that hour, I’m on Zoom and answering people’s questions. Some weeks I’ve got a couple of people. Some weeks I’ve got a more more than that. But it’s you know, people come in and ask any question they have about their business. And we talk about the five main business processes, leadership, lead generation, lead conversion, collected, manage money and project management. And we talk through problems and solutions. And you can check this out. A 14 day free trial, which means you sign up on a monday, you can come for two Mondays for free, and then after that, it’s $19 a month or $190 per year. That’s right. $19 per month is what he said after a 14 day free trial. For you to have access to successful entrepreneur and other successful entrepreneurs who are getting together on Zoom to to problem solve and fix issues of their business and learn not a bad deal whatsoever. If you want to learn more about it, if you want to sign up for that 14 day free trial D and E podcast dot com or slash office hours, also link to it in the notes with this episode. All right. That was not commercial. It was a good one. I feel that movie, not number five. You need to find a leadership mentor or mentors. Now you got to broaden your definition of mentors. I have got some significant leadership mentors in my life who have no idea I exist. Okay? Like these people, they don’t not know my name. They have never met me in person. But I have consumed their books, I’ve consumed their courses. I listen to their podcast. I am regularly mentored by some of these people. All right. I love I really, really love the these the mentors that I’ve got. It’s great. Some some of my mentors are John Maxwell. Like, you can’t go wrong with the John Maxwell book. I’m just telling you right now, you know, he’s he’s got so many books out there. They’re all great. John Maxwell Books fantastic. Andy Stanley, great, great leader. Greg Rochelle Fantastic Leader. Chris Hodges Amazing leader right there. Mike McAlary It’s great business leader. Love is love his business books. So find a leadership mentor. I love I appreciate the fact you’re here listening to this. I, I, it would mean the world to me to be able to continue to, to mentor you through this podcast, find a leadership mentor, and don’t be afraid to reach out with questions. I’ve asked a lot of these guys questions and some of them I’ve gotten answers to my questions. So. So don’t be afraid to ask questions. Number six, you got to read some books. You got to listen to some podcasts. But I really think leading books is great. There’s so many great leadership books out there. I’ve got several books listed on the resource page on my website that I recommend. Leaders are our learners. We are constantly reading new books, studying from people, not trying to implement everything we read. Again, you know, we’re gathering data. We’re looking for the nugget. We’re looking for some of our preconceived notions to to maybe be challenged a little bit. And we’ve got to be open to that. We are, yes. Looking for some reinforcement or validation of of some ideas, but we’re not looking for new strategies in every book to come back and implement and change everything and and mess everything up. We’re we’re looking to grow. We’re looking to grow, not to to copy. So number six, read some leadership books. Number seven. You got to set aside some time to work on this. You got to set aside re-occurring leadership time. When I was a solopreneur starting all out this this originally was able to be about an hour a month, about an hour a month. I told this story before I would go to a a monthly networking event and I would schedule the hour afterwards to work on my business. And then that became a half day and that became a day. And then it eventually became most of my my week, which, which I love. But I have very specific time scheduled for CEO, time for high level leadership activities. All right. Where I’m just working on my business, I’m working on my leadership. So you’ve got to set aside some time to work on your leadership. Number eight, I learned this question. I really like this question. Asked the question, how would insert business leader named here handle this? You know, I rattled off some some leadership mentors above. One, I didn’t mention Dave Ramsey. And I oftentimes will wonder, but to myself, what about Dave Ramsey would handle this? I wonder what Jeff Bezos would do in this situation. I wonder what, you know, Elon Musk would do, what Chris Hodges would do. I wonder what? Insert a leader name here. How would they handle this? And so there’s absolutely a great way to do that kind of helps change your your perspective. And sometimes we have to do that to challenge some of our preconceived ideas. All right. The other thing about upgrading or upskilling your leadership to upscale your your business, and I’m going to I’m going to share this and then I’m going to share, ah, my leadership tip of the week and then touch base with you on our travel plans for those that want to hear that. Number nine on my list here as leaders don’t make decisions based on how they feel. All right. You may be saying, ah, but I’ll feel like it. I don’t. I don’t know. That’s not how leaders work. They don’t work on what they want to work on based on how they feel. Leaders step back and go, I’m going to have the discipline to do what it takes. And what it takes is, you know, having the discipline to set aside some time and then protected and use that time to work on yourself and your leadership. And you and your business leaders are, you know, focused. They are learning, they’re asking tough questions. They’re evaluating their conditions. They’re looking for the broken system and fixing it. They’re not they don’t allow the broken system to continue. They don’t try to fix everything. They fix the biggest problem, and then they move on to the next problem. And then they fix on their own the next problem or they work on their business. You know, one approach that’s good if you’re a solopreneur I, I don’t use this approach any longer because I have a team that I can delegate some things to. But one approach to really work, to work on if you’re a solopreneur is found in Mike McCalla with his book Fix This Next where you know he’s he’s going to just he’s going to lay out the hierarchy of a business’s needs and he’s right in them. And it’s absolutely a great approach. So if you’re struggling on what to work on with your business, I would recommend going that go to go to my website and on my resource page you’ll see a link to fix this next great book to definitely check out, in fact a link to it in the show notes as well Leaders leaders are mature and we don’t let our fear. We are aware of our feelings. We’re aware of our emotions. We understand emotional intelligence. You know, we we have an IQ, an emotional intelligence. We have IQ. Our emotions are our intellectual quote it, but we also have an E Q are in our emotional we’re very aware of ourselves. We work to become more self-aware, more aware of how we’re impacting those around us. We understand our mindset and we work on our mindset. We work on ourselves even when we’re not leading others. Even if you never want to lead others, your business is not going to grow beyond your skill set as a leader. And if you disagree with me, then your business probably hasn’t changed much in a year, three years, five years. And you probably are frustrated at points in time with with with your business, with how things are going. You’re constantly feeling like, Oh, I just I’m regular. I’m always dealing with this. I can never get past it. This is it. This is the year. I’m not going to do this anymore. This is the year I’m going to fix this. If you keep telling yourself that over and over, you’re working on the wrong problem to start with, you need to work on your leadership of yourself. Then you’re going to be able to lead others. Then you’re going to have a company that an organization that you’re going to be proud of that’s going to stand up as its own thing. You got to work on your leadership now. This week’s leadership tip of the week. Don’t assume it’s a no. Don’t assume that’s a no. I was talking to one of my one on one coaching clients earlier this week, and we’re we’re working hard as lead generation strategies and I gave him an exercise to do, you know, and I do this exercise with with everybody that I’m starting out with who hasn’t who were where we’re starting out with very little in the way of leads and lead generation. So we put together an opportunity pipeline, which is crucial, a tool to have. And then I said, I want you to do this. I want you to fill in the first column who I label with untouched. These are opportunities that you’ve done nothing with. And I want you to think of every single person you could possibly talk to that you know, has a website, your dentist I know this this guy, he’s he has a kid, your kid’s pediatrician, your, you know, and I listed several oftime ahead and you get 30 and he’s like, oh, but why? You know, I don’t know what they’ll probably say. They don’t need that or they already have a website. Stop. Time out. Mindset adjustment needed. Leadership axiom lesson. Got to learn this. Don’t assume it’s a no. Never say someone’s no for them. Honor them enough to let them say no. Ask the question. Let them say no. You’re still going to be okay. Don’t let your uncomfortableness that they might say no. Keep you from doing and asking the questions. Let me give you an example real quick of how this played out and in our lives outside of the business world. I use this all the time in the business world, but I also use this one time before we became digital nomads, we wanted to test this idea. I love shooting a bullet before a cannonball, and I didn’t want to commit my family, you know, the six of us to being, in all practical sense, is homeless without testing the idea first. So we want to go on a test trip. But I also didn’t really want to put all of our stuff in storage. We were renting at the time and we were gearing up to buy a house and that’s when we decided, Wait, let’s test this lifestyle before we we go all in on buying a house somewhere. And so I went to our landlord and I said, Hey, we’re going to we’re going to leave the country for three months. We’re going to go to Istanbul, Turkey for three months. We’re going to go to Istanbul for 4 to 6 weeks. And then we’re going to take six weeks and we’re going to train, travel through Europe. And then when we get back, we will either sell everything and move out and be gone or we’ll stick around for a while longer and possibly even be interested in buying the house from you, if that’d be something you you would be interested in. And I said, But I can’t afford to pay for the house rent and travel, so I am willing to pay 50% rent. Now, at this point, we were at a month to month lease and I said, you know, I’ll pay you 50% rent. And I remember telling some people I was going to do this. I was talking to my dad about it and said I was going to do this. And they’re like, That’s a hoot. Who is who say yes to that? You know, nobody. No, no landlord’s going to accept that offer. You know you’re going to insult me. I proposed it to him. He was like, Hey, you know, this sounds like a great idea. I’m no problem. Let’s do that. You know, boom. You know, an amazing, amazing thing. He was happy. It worked out great for our family multiple times. I bought a business one time and I went back after they told me what they wanted and I said, Here’s what I’m willing to offer. And I made a proposal that I ran it by a business coach, and he was like, Nah, forget it, you’re not going to get this business. And I gave him this proposal and the guy was like, Yeah, let’s do it. So don’t assume it’s a no. Don’t say somebody. No, for them, you you do not know the amazing opportunities in life that you’re turning away from because you didn’t feel like somebody might say you were embarrassed to ask you. Like, don’t assume somebody. No. Ask. Maybe they’ll say no. Plenty of times I ask things and people say no. But but but I’ll be honest with you. A lot of times they say yes when I didn’t think they would. So don’t assume it’s a no. Don’t say somebody. No for that. All right. So for those of you that are interested in the traveling side of our lives, I had somebody send me a message the other day and said, Hey, you know, where are you? What’s going on? I thought you said you were going to be headed to Spain. Well, we’ve changed our plans. We’ve decided not to go to Spain. We’re still in Costa Rica. It is currently what is this, June 5th, 2024. We’re going to be here until September. Now, we do have to be out September 3rd. And we’re most likely going to do four months of fast traveling in South America. We were going to Spain. We were going to get the digital nomad family visa, go to Spain for a year. I found out through the process that we we were going to have to pay some taxes that I didn’t really want to pay. To be honest, it just comes out of just being cheap and an afford like it it would it would have been a financial hardship for us. It would have made it a little more financially challenging. And so we decided not to do that. And so then we thought, well, we may just go to Europe for right away, just go for three months. But honestly, my wife has been crushing it in her Spanish school. She attends a this Spanish language institute here in Costa Rica. And her Spanish is just getting better and better. And, you know, I told her, I said, listen, you know, my concern is if we go to Europe and you’re not in Spanish speaking environment, you’re going to lose so much of what you’ve been learning. And this was an aha moment I had when we were in Colombia. We had to do a visa run to Colombia because we we are we were stamped into Costa Rica for 180 days on our passport. And in some countries, you can leave and come right back in and just get stamped right back in. And we we call it a visa run. If you’re listening, don’t know what that term is. So we went to Colombia for a week for vacation. And when we were there, my wife was like brushing Spanish and she was talking to somebody and he she was asking the question. They were trying to figure something out. And he said, Oh, and he walked her over to somebody else. And he said, You can talk to her. And she’s saying this all in Spanish. And he looked at the lady there and he said, It’s okay. She speaks Spanish, meaning my wife and my wife is like a Spanish speaker called me a Spanish speaker. She was so excited. So I you know, I got I was struck by that impressed and super proud of her. And I said, you know, if we stay here for four more months, then there’s a really good chance in South America that, you know, 100% chance you’re going have to use Spanish a lot. It’s really going to help root it in you as as a second language. So we’ve decided to do that. Kids are on board with it. They’re excited. We don’t have all the details planned out. We’re probably going to end up hitting, yes, 7 to 9 countries in four months. There are a few things we want to see for sure. And kind of. Yeah. So stay tuned if this is of interest to you. If you find this stuff interesting, helpful, let me know and I’ll add more of it at the end of the podcast for for those of you that are in the full time travel, more travel, digital nomad kind of space, you know, let me know And one of the best ways to do that is send me an email. Eric at DNC Podcast dot com Digital Nomad Entrepreneur D and E DKNY podcast dot com sent me an email and let me know. In fact, while you’re at it, let me know what your favorite topic has been, what your least favorite episode has been If you’re a first time listener and you want to hear more about a specific topic, let me know what that is. I’m this is this is not a vanity exercise. I am creating this to create something that helps, that inspires, that empowers people to create businesses, to put systems together to really help them help you increase your revenue, your profits. And for those that want to your location, independence. So there’s a really quick update. I look forward to reading your email really soon. Until next time, chase the big dream. Lead with courage and safe travels.