differentiating oneself, investing in personal and professional development, and overcoming self-doubt

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We're continuing going through a series of interviews. We are continuing today and wrapping up. This is part two of our interview with Nikki Ballou. He had an incredible part one and it doesn't slow down as we dive right into part two. We're going to talk about a lot of ways that you can make yourself better simply by viewing yourself a little bit differently, taking a different perspective on what you offer, how you price it, how you position it, how you effectively sell yourself. But then pointing back to our first part, it's really about how you better are able to serve your customers. But I don't want to take any of the thunder away from Nikki. So let's get right back into our conversation. That truly is something I see a lot. I mean, I had a very similar story. I was talking to a hairdresser that she was complaining. She was working, you know, and this goes straight to your story. She was working 50, 60 hours a week. Everything was booked. People were booked three, four months out and she'd been doing this for years. And it was really and was again a point where she felt like she was losing money going to work because she was it was just she wasn't charging enough and was just hurt, you know, with it with everything else. And this is recently with all the prices going up, she's like, I don't know what my you know, what my clientele is going to do. I don't want to lose everybody. And a little bit of it is serving those people and getting used to that, you know, getting them used to that fee. But she went in and she jacked it up. I think it was 20 percent. She raised her her rates and she told her. Everybody said, hey, I'm going to start raising my rates. And she didn't lose anybody. You know, it was still she still had more work than she could do. And that was where I say, hey, you know, you need to there's a certain part where you probably need to keep raising that that fee up to a point where you can lower the amount of hours you're doing, because if you're if you're overloaded at your rate, you're probably not charging enough. You know, it's like it's almost simple math. And you are not charging enough. The first thing I would do if I sat with her is she raised a rate 20 percent right now. I'd raise it immediately by another 50 percent immediately. And she'll probably at that point in time see who are the ones who really value the service and who are the ones who who don't. And in my opinion, she'd probably keep most of her clients and then she'd attract new ones that would come to her because, you know, she upleveled her game. So overall, she probably would still be as busy, but she'd make 50 percent more money. And I think when people pay more, they're not as like and maybe they expect more, but it seems like you don't get the the annoying kind of complaints that people are just sort of like they're just going to whine about everything. Yeah, you get a higher quality of customer that really appreciate. Like I think it is. They appreciate what you're providing. So it's not only are you serving them, but you you're serving the right people. You're not just sort of throwing that out. That's pearls before swine kind of thing is it's, you know, it's one of those where you're actually saying, hey, these are the people that actually appreciate what I'm doing for them. So I'm going to go, you know, work with them and less with the people or not at all with the people that don't need it or don't appreciate it. 100 percent, 100 percent. And here's another thing I'll tell you. I can't work with everybody. And nor can you nor can anybody. And what I've come to realize is that for me to be successful in helping somebody, they need to have four qualities. The first quality is the quality of decisiveness. OK. Now, what is decisiveness all about? Decisiveness is about killing off all the alternatives. The word decide comes from, you know, a Latin word is that it's root side, which is about killing off. You think about words with side in it. Suicide, homicide, regicide. Right. So it's it's about killing things off. Right. And so you're killing off the alternative to victory when you make a decision that you will be successful. Now, I'm telling you, for me, I've made the decision that 2023 is going to be a banner seven figure year for us, and it will be our best year ever. I've made that decision. You know, there's no I'm going to give it a shot. No, I'm doing it. Whatever it takes, we are going to make this happen. You follow what I'm saying here? So that's the first thing. Secondly, the second quality you got to have is you got to be committed. You can't be saying I'm just going to give this a shot. And if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. You got to be saying I'm in it to win it. I'm willing to be bad until I'm good. I got to be bad before I'm good. And I'm willing to be bad until I'm good. That's commitment. Thirdly, you got to be coachable, like you got to take on some help and mentorship and you got to have the ability to take on that coaching. And then last but not least, you must be resourceful because it is going to cost you time, energy and money. You're going to have to put in time to become successful. You're going to have to put in energy right now over and above what you're doing. And you're going to have to invest in yourself. And Robin Sharma, who is a former client of mine, actually, the author of the, you know, number one worldwide phenomenon, the monk who sold his Ferrari, 15 million copies sold. He told me once, Nikki, if you ever want to double your income in any given year, triple your investment in personal and professional development. So to double your income, you got to triple your investment in personal and professional development. You think about that. That just makes sense, right? Like businesses understand the distinction between investing and spending. Right. You spend money on going on a trip to Vegas, right. Buying a Harley, you know, you spend money on, you know, a beautiful Balga. You don't invest money in those, but you invest money on programs to make you a better salesperson, to make you a better coach, to make you a better thought leader, to help you grow and scale your business. Those are investments. And if you are in business, you must become resourceful and invest in yourself and in your success. If you don't, you're screwed. And it just amazes me. You know, people are willing to spend two thousand dollars on the latest iPhone, spend three thousand dollars on the latest television set, spend three thousand dollars going away on vacation. You know what I mean? Spend three thousand dollars on clothes they hardly ever wear. You add all that up, it's well over ten grand. And yet you tell them to spend five, ten grand on themselves. These folks go, oh, my God, that's too much. That's too much of an investment. And it's crazy because it really isn't too much of an investment. It's frankly probably not enough of an investment. And if you want to be successful, you've got to invest in yourself. You got to hire mentors, you got to do courses. You know, you've got to attend the conferences. That's long and the short of it. So you have you've had a lot of conversations with very, very you know, that I think everybody would say are very successful people and wide range of them. Yeah, they're it all comes down to business. It all comes down to dealing with people. But if you looked at them just, you know, at a whole, they're different industries, different different approaches in those industries. What are maybe a couple of things that you've seen that are are consistent or sort of typical among those people that have that are very successful in whatever their, you know, their chosen field is. So number one is these folks understand investing in themselves. They spend money to hire mentors. They spend money to go to two conferences. They just they get it. And number two is they all understand the importance of differentiation and standing out. You know what I'm saying? They get it. They're not going to try to sound like everybody else. They want to have their own unique brand identity, unique personal brand. And that's a big part of what we teach people is how important that is. And the best of the bunch are people who've got big hearts and care about their fellow man and woman. Maybe I can tell you one final story, Rob. So a few years ago, there was a woman who came to us and this woman, she was the country director for Canada, one of the world's largest personal development corporations. OK, been around since the late 60s. She's very good at what she did. And she brought on somebody who she thought was very talented to help her grow the company, kind of like Steve Jobs did in the 80s with John Scully, right? And just like Steve and John, they got along really well at first. But after a while, their visions began to diverge. And just like Steve Jobs, she got kicked out of her home company. You know what I'm saying? As well. And a little bit like Steve Jobs, she was bereft for a while. She was unsure of what was next for about 18 months. And then she got introduced to us and we helped her, you know, realize how valuable she was to value herself properly. We helped to realize that she had a valuable set of skills she could offer to people. We helped her narrow her focus so she stand out. Her personal brand was created. So she helped entrepreneurs, 10 million plus companies who had burnt out, overcome burnout. Great, great little niche group of people, you know. And in our first month with us, she did 10 grand. In our second month, she did 12. In our third month, she did 18 grand. In our fourth month, she did sixty two thousand two hundred dollars. It was just absolutely stunning and amazing and wonderful. And here's what happened, though, brother. She lived in Ottawa and my oldest son was 12 at the time. He plays soccer or the real football, as I call it, because you actually play the game with your feet. Right. So anyways, we had a tournament in Ottawa where she lived, and Ottawa was about a five hour drive from Toronto. Now, she had a son, my son's age. So I called her up and I said, hey, how would you and your son like to come to the tournament, maybe watch one of my boys games and maybe we could grab some lunch altogether afterwards. Right. And she said, that sounds great. So we did that. The boys had a great time together, you know, 12 year old boys connecting. She and I had a lovely chat. And then it was done. And, you know, we all hugged and we got in our car and we drove away. A few weeks later, we had one of our quarterly branded thought leader immersion workshops. OK. And this is, you know, where we teach people how to add that one to two zeros to their income by working 10 to 20 hours less a week. And we were at the section of our program where we did our famous upsell. You know, this is where we, you know, let people know how they can work with us so we can help them continue to be successful. And the way I do it is I bring on our people to share their experience. I don't do a big pitch. Right. So I asked, you know, at that point, who'd like to share their experience? And she, before I had a chance to pick on anybody, bounded on the stage and said, me. And I'm like, OK, great. And there were eight new people in the room. And she took one look around the room. You know, very charismatic woman. And then she started to bawl, started to cry, sob. And like any red blooded man faced with a crying woman, I panicked. What did I do? Why is she crying? But I kept a calm exterior. And she turned to look at me between her sobs and her tears. And she said, Nikki, you didn't know this. But when you and your little son came to visit me and my little son, my little son in that way, excited way, little boy's Duke said, mommy, mommy, mommy, who are we going to go meet? And I said, oh, son, we're going to go meet Nikki Ballou and his son. And then she said, all of a sudden, my sweet little boy became very serious and very quiet, lowered his voice and said, oh, are we going to get to meet the man who saved our family? And I. I am an old school man. I don't really cry in public. I cried. She and I hugged. And in between her sobs and her tears, she said, Nikki, when I came to see you, I didn't tell you this, but. Bank was about to foreclose on our home. We hadn't paid our mortgage in months, hadn't worked in 18 months. And my husband and I, we were fighting like cats and dogs. And it looked like. I was about to lose my precious, beautiful family because we were going to break up and we're going to lose our home. You literally helped us save our family. So we hugged. And here's what I can tell you. Here's what I got. You never know what someone's dealing with. You may not be ready to share the whole situation with you. For me, it's important to come to everybody as though they could potentially be someone just like this lady. And I ask God to make me worthy of being able to be of service to someone just like this lady. You know what I'm saying? And the thing that was cool that happened was that normally, you know, we hand out registration forms. Some people sign up, some people don't. Some people need persuasion. Everybody signed up immediately. No persuasion required. I think that's. You know, that's the interesting thing is that back to that, sort of back to where we started with the idea of selling versus people, is that there is when you actually genuinely care, that does tend to come across. And when you've got something like that, when you've got something where you can connect and they realize that this person is not selling to me, this person is is it goes back to is serving me. They think that what they are offering me will help me out. And I agree, I'm going to I'm signing up. You know, it becomes then it becomes not then it is. It's truly a people issue and not a money issue. It's not about the fees or whatever that kind of stuff. It's just like, I want to be a part of this on either side of it. And I think it is something where, you know, it goes back to if you underestimate what you're bringing to the table, it's not always. And a lot of times it isn't your whatever you're charging, whatever your service is or your product is, the whole point is that you're giving them something that whatever it is that you charge, they're going to get more out of it than they're paying into it. That's the whole that's the whole capital system, capitalist system, really. And if you're serving them properly, then everybody wins. It really is. It becomes and some companies embrace that as well as it's not it's not an expense. It's an investment. You're investing in this product or this service because it's going to make you or your organization better. You've got to go 100 percent. And thank you for that. That is an awesome story. That's just one of those stories that it's it seems like you always have to have there's always a kid involved because they're the ones that are going to just like cut straight to the truth about. Here's how we. But it is. Yeah, that's kind of stuff that I think. Yeah, obviously, it's it speaks volumes about what you have done and being in the right place at the right time and saying, hey, I'm I'm just going to help people out and those things will happen because if you help everybody sooner or later, you're going to help some people that really needed it. But I think it's also good for people to step back sometimes and realize that, hey, this can be what I'm doing can be a far bigger difference than, you know, just a paycheck or a bill or an invoice or something like that, is that I can I mean, people don't think of themselves unless they're brain surgeons or heart surgeons as changing lives. But I think there are there are ways that we can do it, even in some of the smallest services and products. Tremendous, tremendous and very true, brother. Very, very true. You know. Reason I come on shows like this is because we're living in really crazy, chaotic uncertain times. The last two and three quarters years has been a time of tumult, chaos and fear. There's a lot of people in business that are scared. You know, they were locked down and now inflation's crazy. The price of things has gone up and they're wondering if they can still survive. Never mind thrive. Come on shows, because I believe these types of chaotic times are the greatest times in history for you to become successful. Out of chaos comes opportunity. But that needs. You to come from a space of I believe I can do it. You've got to believe you can win and you can win if you do what I've talked about here and you get the right mentors in peer groups to be a part of. You want to be with a mentor who knows what they're doing, who knows how to succeed in these times. OK, you want to be with a mentor who cares. You know what I mean? They're not some charlatan marketer and you want to be in a peer group of like minded people to help push you forward. You do that. You're going to win. That's simple. Well said. I think one more we got a little bit of time. I don't want to take up too much of yours, but one of the things I want to swing back around to is the idea of differentiating within because so many people are like, yeah, I'm just a realtor. I'm just blah, blah, blah, whatever their one title or label is. There may be a is there may be a point or two that would be sort of just in general to get some people to think about how to whether they need to, which probably most people do, where they need to differentiate and maybe some ways that they can work on differentiating themselves. Well, the best way to do it is to use, you know, the the triple P seven figure solution that I talked to you about before. Focus not on you, focus on the people and the problem that they have. If you do that, then your messaging automatically will stand out from the people who say I'm a realtor, a mortgage agent, I'm a relationship coach. Your messaging will be about your clients. Like, here's what I say. I help coaches, consultants and service oriented entrepreneurs at one to two zeros to their annual income while working one ten, sorry, to 20 hours less per week. That's pretty clear, right? You you listen to that. At the very least, you're going to go, that's interesting. I wonder how he does that. I wonder if he's full of shit that might even go through your head, right. Or I wonder if he's for real. It's it there's enough in there to capture at least a spark of interest. You follow me? Yeah. Instead, I could have said I'm an online marketer, a podcaster. What does that mean? People will listen to them and they'll go. What does that mean? Does that mean he sells products online? Does that mean he, you know, he does podcast interviews? Like, that's what they're going to go because they're going to go to what they believe that to be. And they're going to try to see if that relates to them. And usually it won't. And as a result, they won't be interested in taking the conversation any further. But the first thing I said, I hope you add one to two zeros to your income or work in 10 to 20 hours less a week. They'll immediately go, I'd like to add one to two zeros to my income. That'd be great. I'd like to work 10 to 20 hours less per week while doing that. That'd be even better. OK, let's talk. You know what I mean? Versus podcaster, online marketer. Huh? Yeah, pass. Yeah, two very different perspectives of who you are based on just that, you know, not that much difference in words and effort, but it's just like getting a little more specific and getting to the core of it, getting to what you really offer. So after all of this, I know that anybody listening would say, I would love to get to know more about Nicky and hear about him. What are some great ways for them to connect with you or listen to some of the stuff you do or even reach out and say, hey, I would love to add one to two zeros and lose 10 to 20 hours of my work week. Yeah, for real. Well, look, I got a podcast, too. It's called The Thought Leader Revolution. You know, I've been very fortunate to get to interview some incredible people on it and they they have some really wise things to say. So check that show out. Have a listen. I do everything in my power to make sure that those shows are a beacon of positivity for people and lift them up. The best way to get a hold of me is through my main website, which is E-Circle Academy dot com. There are tons of resources there you can download. There's a there's a an e-book there and it lists out six steps to taking you to a seven figure a year business. It's free. It's really detailed. There's great actionable tips in there. And the best thing, though, is to actually have a conversation similar to this. And I've got a link for that. It's E-Circle Academy dot com forward slash appointment. And you go use that link. You will sit down and fill out a form. That's a bit of an application form. Just ask a few questions to make sure you're serious, you're a business person, you want to move forward and then you pick a time. You get on my calendar and away we go. Excellent. Well, I'll make sure I got all of those links in the show notes as well as we go through this. So I want to thank you so much for your time. This was I expected an incredible conversation and I got even more than that. So I think he added one to two zeros to my expectation on the conversation itself. So that worked out excellently. Perfect. And again, thank you for your time. It's been awesome. And hopefully we'll run at each other again and be able to do something like this again in the future. I look forward to it, brother. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot, Nikki. Have a good one. In that, we'll wrap up our interview with Nikki Ballou. I forgot to warn you, you probably you know, you might have needed to have a little bit of Kleenex ready. There's a couple of tear jerking stories in there, but there are also some important stories, I hope, to help you position yourself better, to understand what you bring to the table and what you can do, whether it is a side hustle or a business you have where you maybe need to adjust your pricing as you go into the year ahead, the next quarter, or whether it's something where you need to be a little more confident in asking for that raise or working with your organization to see where you can advance your career, get a promotion, get a raise, whatever it happens to be, and really look at the value that you bring, understand the value that you bring and make sure that you position yourself accordingly. In that last bit where he was, he's talking about how you introduce yourself, how you describe what you do. That is so important, no matter what it is that your goal is. If you really don't care about, you know, arguing for more pay or something like that, that's okay. I think you are doing yourself a disservice if you undersell what it is and understate what it is you do and what you bring to the table as a human being. And I know you may not have that same issue when you talk about yourself personally versus professionally, but let's face it, we are very much often intertwined. Our personal and professional lives and identities are very similar. And so let's make sure that we present ourselves in a way that is actually honest to ourselves, that we don't have that false humility and some of those other things that may also keep people from connecting to us professionally or personally, that we would be better off and they would be better off if that connection existed. Again, it goes back to stating yourself, positioning yourself properly so that you are able to do the service of presenting yourself to others. So the people that want to know you, need to know you, get to know you and they know why. That being said, I know it's got a little philosophical at times, but that's okay. Sometimes we need to, you know, switch gears a little bit and think about how others view ourselves, how we exist in the professional and personal world, what we bring to the table, what we do for others. And then for us to assess that a little bit and decide what it is that we want to bring to the table. What is it we want to do? What are the things we enjoy? So we can nail down our why and make sure that our why is what we are focused on, that we are doing the best we can, the things we like to do. And suddenly life becomes a breeze at that point. Hopefully your life is already a breeze. And until next time, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Please check out www.school.developaneur.com. That is where we are starting to pour a lot of our content. 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