Growing a successful business

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing an interview with Beate Chalet. Yes, that is a difficult name to say. And we're going to continue that conversation anyways because it's easier to talk to her than it is for me to pronounce her name. She's also known as the growth architect. Hopefully you caught the first episode. If not, go ahead and rewind back, go back to that, check it out. A very good discussion with her. We're talking about a lot of things that maybe stop you or fears or concerns about stepping off and doing your own thing. And she pretty much just blows them all away. She shoots them all down left and right. We're going to continue talking about how to grow, how to build that organization that's going to last and make sure that you have a good time doing it. So here we go back into our conversation. Now, is that a lot of what you end up doing is sort of working through the, hey, you've got a couple of these lofty ideas or whatever. You've got a couple of ideas around your business, but really helping them reset to say, going back to some of those first things you said about, hey, I want to work three days a week or I want to get up in the morning or I don't want to get up in the morning or those things around what makes you for like a better term happy and what is going to make you productive and successful and finding ways to sort of marry that with the, how do you get your business to fit into that mold so that you don't get stuck somewhere down the road where you go, the business is awesome, but I hate my life because it's wearing me out because I live in Hawaii and yeah, it's awesome, but I have to get up at three in the morning and I don't do that very well. Yeah. And then people are shocked and they go like, you can, you can do that. Well, yes, of course you can do that because you, you created this, you are not, there is no police out there that says you must work in a business that makes you miserable. I mean, that just doesn't make any sense. So and then we are up against our, our old behavior pattern of you have to work hard, you have to prove your value. A hard work will lead to the goal. I know a lot of people that don't work very hard to make a fortune and I'm going like, how do you do that? Like how can you, how can you like only work? Like I know a guy who works maybe like 15 hours a week. He makes about $4 million a year. And I'm like, I want to know what you do. That's what I want to know because why am I, why am I working like a multiple of that and I don't make a fraction of that. So that's where you want to go in and say, if it exists, it must be possible. If it is possible, it must be possible for me. If it is possible for me, the question is not, can I, the question shifts to how can I? That's what we architect. So that may be a very good lead into, you have a five star success blueprint that you use. This goes back to that idea of having a solid foundation, which I think is key for success anywhere. You've got to have that because like you say, when it gets rocky, if you don't have a good foundation, everything falls apart. You have a house of cards, but if you've got a solid foundation, then you can weather those storms. So how do you, what is your, what is that five star success blueprint that you use and how do you apply it? How would they apply that? Yeah. So the five star success blueprint was born exactly out of the same, same idea. It's like, what's the pattern? What's the, what's the path? What do we need to do in order? What do we need to follow to be successful? And when I looked at it, you know, and I think this is just the part where, why, why I do what I do, because this part is so easy to me. I look at this and like, doesn't everybody know how to do that? And then people have blank stares and I recognize it's not so. But for me, I see the patterns. I'm always looking for the pattern in everything. And I looked at this and I said, well, it's very simple. You have to figure out in the five star success blueprint. Number one is the idea. What is the original idea? What is it that I'm doing? Why am I doing it? Who am I doing it for? What does the avatar of the person that I'm selling to looks like, feels like, what do they experience? And most importantly, what is the problem that they have that I and only I can solve? So this is all about the value proposition, the uniqueness. We call it the unapologetic value proposition. We call it the airtight avatar. So we have a whole thing around that. Once you have that piece where you can say, this is who I am. This is what I do. This is who I do it for. This is the problem I'm solving. Now you go to the second step and the second step is the offer, because only then can you create an offer that is right for that person in that language that resonates with them to solve that problem that you've just identified. That's already where 90% of everything goes wrong. Because somebody goes out and says, you know, I want to have a $2,500 product. I can give them four hours and a strategy session. I'm going to have to write the ebook. I'm going to give them five online modules. That's not solving anybody's problem. That's just you kind of justifying on why you could charge somebody $2,500 without even knowing if they want that or if that resonates with them. So now when you have an offer that is solving that problem, we go to step number three, and most of your listeners are going to love that part. Then we create the systems. Then we create the workflow, the project management, the whole piece, the CRM, the automation, the how does this actually work? How do I get leads in to get this offer in front of those people? And how do I then sell and perform? So this is this whole part of how do we get this done? But again, you know, it's a very specific order to it. And then you go into and then you go into the fourth step. And the fourth step is the team building, because then you need to look into what is the thing or who is the person that can help me to run the systems so that I can send the offer in front of those people. And that is a step many, many entrepreneurs completely miss. That's where they stop at the systems. And now they are the idea person, the operator, they try to do everything on their own. But that's where scaling starts. So scaling starts with figuring out how do I need to design the system so that I can then put people in the different pieces of the system. So I don't have to do all of this anymore. Maybe you don't want to do the selling. Maybe you don't want to do the maybe you want to do the client contact. Maybe you only want to do the high level jobs and not the low level jobs. So there are definite pieces in this that you need to be very cognizant about on how do I set this up so that I can get this piece to this person, this piece to this person. You get rid of everything you don't like. You only keep the things you're passionate about. And that brings you to the fifth star in the five success blueprint. And that is you as a leader. Now that we figured out how this needs to look like, who do you need to be to lead a company that has team members that are operating a system that delivers an offer solution constantly to a particular type of client? So in that plan, sorry, so you've got that plan that ideally everybody, if the world was great, everybody would start with that. They would walk through the process and everything would be golden. They would they would walk through this. But now you've got half your or some of your the people that you get as your customers have haven't done that, apparently, because they've gotten to somewhere into that that process and they're not happy. They're they're locked in. Now, what are the like the more common mistakes that are made that have got them into that situation? Number one, it is a superhuman paradox. They think that they're at the end of their life. Somehow there's a medal or an award given out that says Rob did everything by himself and we commend him for that. The only problem is if Rob did everything by himself, there's not going to be anybody at the funeral because that's just not the way it works. Right. If you're going to be an absolute loner, there's nothing. So they think that there is somehow a medal for hard work and doing everything on your own. Or they make the the thing they make the mistake in thinking to say, I have to make the money first in order for me to do X. But that's not how it works. You have to do X first so that the money can come. So when we when we set out our company for acquisition and my business was acquired by Bill Gates, we made a conscious choice that we were going to add a second piece of the business, another collection of images. We knew when we did the projections that because we had to take time away from the existing team that our sales probably would drop because we couldn't produce in the same amount for that collection because we had to take resources to the other collection. I want to tell you this. It makes, of course, perfect sense. Wait until you see the numbers go down and then you start freaking out and you go, oh my God, it's not working. What are we doing wrong? The numbers are dropping. But we did this on purpose because we knew that if we did the projections, we would know that if we did that, then our numbers afterward would jump up higher because we had a second thing to sell on top of the first one. So it was an expansion plan. And so that's where people go wrong when they make these decisions that they are going to expand. They see a drop in revenue and then they go, it's not working. It's not working. And then they run and they go right back to where they were because they see it as a sign that it was a mistake and they don't wait long enough for it to happen, for the miracle to happen if you so want to. And that's typically what I see goes wrong. The other thing that goes wrong is the business owner that does believe in the mini me business cloning model. And mini me cloning means that you try to hire people that are exactly like you, that can do 50 things. And you think if I get 50 people, they can do a little bit of everything like I do. I'm going to have a great company. You're going to have a disaster because that's not how you build a corporate structure. You did for one of the things that we touch on because you talked about your the ideal or the airtight avatar and that process. And even with your five star success blueprint, there is the communicating that to that customer. And I know that's something we talked about a little bit beforehand is that communication steps. Sometimes there's something lost in translation is that you have a great idea, but you're and a lot of times, particularly in the technical world, you got a great idea and you have a way to describe it, but then it doesn't get across properly to that customer. I want to talk a little bit about that and how do you, how do we maybe adjust for that or communicate that properly? Yeah, that's like actually one of my favorite things to talk about because I sometimes I look at people who are really smart and very brilliant. And then when I listen to them, I'm just shaking my head. I'm like, nobody understands what you're talking about. So we had talked in the green room before we went live on this interview about the difference between if I go to a doctor and a doctor says to me, you have a hematoma. And I'm going like, what's a hematoma? It sounds, sounds dangerous. And then I look it up and it says the bruise and you go like, why didn't you just tell me it was a bruise? You know, so I didn't need to, didn't need to freak out. Everybody gets a bruise. So you want to, when you speak to your client, make sure you don't use lingo that is so specific to your industry. And we want to do this because we want to dazzle them with our brilliance, but their understanding of the problem may not be up to your knowledge expertise. I actually guarantee you it is not. So the client comes to you and says, I want all my systems. Let's just pick a simple example, right? Classic. I just want my computer and my phone and my laptop at home all be in sync so that everything works perfectly. I want to get a handle on the Microsoft updates because we all know what that does to every machine. I just want, I just want whatever thing to run and then, and then I need to do, and then I need to bring on more people and I need to build the network, you know, and the cloud based storage and all needs to be safe. We have sensitive data for clients. I just need all of that. So what you're inclined to do now, when you have a client like that, you want to throw out that is so easy. You go to such and such server and then we'll do like a 16 point X and then we'll just plug in these 14 other things. We go to Java, we do X, you know, we do plugins on the website and you want to go on all the geeky problem solving things and it's a blank stare because all this client wants is this stuff to sync. So when you talk to somebody, you listen to the language that they're using and you say simply this where the system part comes in that I explained in the five star success blueprint. You go, glad you said that we work with clients like you all the time. Your problem is that nothing is sinking and you cannot grow or bring on other people because the system's already not working right now. We have a five star system where we first diagnose what the problem is, not to worry. And then we put our team on it and we make that these five things work seamlessly so that you then have the outcome that you desire, which is everything is working perfectly. Now you can bring people in, you can have iPads, you can go cross platform, you can do this, you can do that. You can plug in anywhere in the world and everything and you'll be in your remote servers and you can access everything. Not going to be a problem. That's all the client needs to hear. If you tell the client about the technical solution, they may just have had dinner with a guy last night who works for Microsoft. And then this guy dropped another bunch of names of things. And now the client says, well, my friend John, who's at Microsoft, told me not to use Java, that that would never work for me. And now suddenly you have to defend your method to somebody who has no subject matter expertise. And now you go even geekier and you go like, well, the reason that is, and the client goes like, yeah, I don't know what it is about Rob, but there's just something wrong with him. He seems to be a nice guy, but I didn't have the feeling he really understood what I was trying to do. All because you were using the geeky language. So for your listeners, Rob, I recommend a very simple thing. I want you to take a piece of paper or spreadsheet and you give me like three columns. In the very left column, you write down problem as client sees it. This is the understanding of the problem that they have. In their words. Then you go in the middle. The middle is my knowledge. That's your knowledge. You write everything down. You can be as geeky as you want. And then you go to the right column and now you match these lines, right? And you go outcome. Nothing's working. You know, needs a cloud-based server, needs updates on the computers, needs check for the software, hardware, RAM update, whatever that might be outcome. Everything works seamlessly. And then I want you to take a pen and I want you to take and make a big X through the middle. And write one word over it. My system. So that's it. From here on forward to all the stuff you're actually going to do, you just refer to it as my system or my method or my formula. We can get you from here to here by using my system. We can get you from here to here by using my system. Now the client goes, oh, thank God that sounds so easy because that's what clients want. Easy. That is, yeah, that that's always the challenge there is coming back as you want to. That's the that's that work ethic thing is like it's I should get bonus points because I worked harder on it. So you make it sound more impressive than, you know, than maybe it my system may not sound as impressive as all of those little jargon things. But at the end of the day, they just want to hear, solve my problem. They really don't care how you solve it as much as if you solve it. This is a value I have. I don't really care how you solve it. It has the same value. So yeah, if it's if it works, great. If it doesn't, if it doesn't solve my problem, then I'm not I don't have any reason to talk to you. If it does, then let's just move on and solve my problem so I can get on with my life. Exactly. I can imagine you go to a restaurant, you have a great meal and you say to the server, oh, my God, that was so good. Now the chef comes and he says, so here's here's what I did. I took the tuna and I seared it. And it's not the oil you think it is, but it's a different oil. And I see it for exactly two minutes and 10 seconds on each side. Then I cracked the peppercorn twice. Not too much because you don't want it. And now goes into a half hour explanation. You just want a good meal. Let's say that is a great, great analogy right there. I do want to another thing I want to mention is or ask you about is you had a book, Happy Woman, Happy World, and you talk about a thing called ego rhythm. And we started I think touched on a couple of things, but that's interesting little concept there. So I wanted to expound upon that a little bit. Yeah. So ego rhythm was a concept that I developed when I was a single mother. And I realized that things that we obsess over, we only obsess over in a particular time of period of time. And then the minute we done with that, then we think, oh, we arrived. And then another thing comes up. So if anybody's ever had children or watched children or knows of any children, you know that from whatever six to nine, they're just amazing. They think you're great. And then they turn 12 and you go, what happened to my child? And then they're 15. You say, I can't wait for you to go. And when they're 18, you're like, please, by all means, go, but go with go with God, but go. And by 21, you hope that they'll, you know, they'll kind of like tell you that you may have known a thing or two. And then by the time they're 25, it's amazing how much you learned as a parent in that short amount of time. So you look at this and you go, if I, if I believe that there's a rhythm and they're obvious is a rhythm. So nature has a rhythm. We have seasons when you look out on the ocean, you see a surfer, a surfer doesn't worry about on whether or not there's another wave. They know there is a wave after all, it's the ocean. The question is just how long does the surfer have to wait for that wave to come? Is it a good wave? And if the surfer doesn't catch the wave, he's going to try to catch another wave. If the surfer falls off the board, then the surfer gets back on the board. If the wave was a little wave, then maybe the next one is a bigger wave. So the surfer is used to that idea that something's always coming. You just have to see how, how good you surf it. So I came up with this concept of eagerness because I found that especially women have this tendency to go and look at our friends. And we say, Marla is a, is an amazing interior designer. Her house is incredible, but Kelly is been married for 32 years. She's amazing in the relationship and, and Olivia is the best mother. I mean, she's so patient and so sweet. I mean, I wished I, I could do that, but let's not forget my other friend, Jackie, she hits the gym. Her body is rock hard. I mean, she's 120 pounds, all muscle. She runs marathons. Oh, and let me not forget my other friend. And Ruth, she does all the home baked cooking. She does the cookies for the yard for the, for the bake sale at school. She, I mean, every meal is organic. And then we go like, I need to be a combination out of the best attribute of all of my friends combined. And that is the recipe for disaster. So I came up with this concept and said, what if there are rhythms in life? What if I were to give you permission when you have a child that you can step into your mother ego rhythm, and you make that your priority for whatever the three to four years, which rhythm typically is to just be that don't worry about your career. The more ego rhythms you have at the same time. And I've identified nine in my book, happy, what's the rhythm? Nine in my book, happy woman, happy world. The more you try to do at the same time, the more you're running burnout from formula. If you set that priority, that main focus on one ego rhythm at a time, and you know that that is the main focus, that is, that is the number one thing that I'm doing right now. You enjoy life a lot more without the stress. I wrote the book as a paperback book only, you know, it's also available in Kindle and as an audio book. And I've wrote the chapters so that women can leave it in the bathroom for men to read. And so when I get feedback from men, they say, well, this isn't really just for women. This is also for men. I said, well, of course it is. But you would never buy a book on either of the ego rhythms as a man or a book that's called happy man, happy world. Right. But if it sounds like it's the playbook of the other team and you could get an unfair advantage on some insider thinking that might be more appropriate. So yes, I've had many, many men read the book and told me that they love the concept. But originally it really was designed to help people to just get out of this perpetual overwhelm. And I think that's that is key. And that even goes back to some of that. The whole earlier conversation we had a little bit about businesses and getting into these things where you've got every business, there's all these things that are just part of it. You have HR and you've got finance, you got accounting, you've got fulfillment, you've got sales, you've got all of these different things. And if you're the guy or the gal that does that, then it's a recipe for burnout basically, is that you have to figure out what you can. A lot of times it's not what you can let go of, but also probably more importantly, what you're going to be happier to let go of is to say that, wow, this thing I really feel I need to do. But if you hate it, you're probably not the best person to do it anyways. There's probably somebody else that you can find that they're not only going to do it, they're going to love it. And then everybody wins. And it's one of those where, hey, they're happy. I'm happy I'm not doing it. More power to all of us and we can go be successful and then actually, you know, breathe a little easier as we're growing our business. As we're getting sort of to the end, what is your thinking of this audience of people that are in varying stages of getting started? And probably, I don't think too many have gotten to that point where they're ready to jump ship because they're just tired of their business, but they're trying to figure out how do I build this thing and build something that I want to have a year from now, two years from now, five years from now that I want to be in that situation where I'm happy doing this and not dreading every day going, oh, no, I'm shackled with the same. What's maybe a couple of key points that you want to bring out to help them over that? Yeah, I think number one, there is no easy path. So there isn't that there's never going to be a right time. So I want to the right time. The right time is when you open the bottle of wine. That's the right time to enjoy that that bottle, right? So the right time is when you make the decision. It would not be available for you if you didn't already think about that. So if you're thinking about this and this is real, then it is available for you. So you have to you have to trust and believe that. And it's always about taking that first step. So map out what it actually is that you want in as much clarity and detail as you possibly can and say, well, I want this because this is what I want to create. This is where I want to be. This is what I want this to look like. This is how much money I want to make. This is this is how I want to feel about this and then start really. Visualizing this model or looking for examples of people that are following the model that you're trying to create. Most of these models already in play very successfully with some people. I want to caution you about Internet marketing from the perspective that most Internet marketers, especially the large marketers, they do a lot of list sharing and the whole thing is designed to say, which piece are you taking? So you'll then say, well, speaking is the fastest way to grow my business because I'm going to be in front of an audience. So you do that. Then you find out as you take this that the next affiliate offer that comes through the door is, well, you're going to need to have an offer when you're speaking from stage. So now you go and you take the next program on how to build the offer. Then the next affiliate program is how to launch a product because you, of course, have to learn how to launch a product. Now you're learning how to launch a product. Now somebody says, yeah, but how do you get your leads? So the next affiliate offer is lead generation. Then the funnel hacking. Then the micro offer. Then all the pieces that you need to create. Then the online course. The next thing it's like three years later, you spend a hundred thousand dollars on one thing after another, after another, trying to find the one thing. There is no one thing. There isn't. It is your business model. That's why I'm an architect, a growth architect. Build the foundation and the house of what get clear what you want to build. And then you look for what are the pieces that I need to do that. So you shut out all that noise and you're going to save yourself a lot of time. That is excellent advice. What is the what is the best way now, everybody, I'm sure after listening to you for this last little bit and hearing your how enthusiastic you are about many of these areas, I'm sure they're like, man, I would love to learn more or figure out how to have somebody help me through whatever's blocking me. What's the best way for them to get a hold of you? Yes. So I would definitely recommend you all to take the growth blocker quiz. And that is like, what's your number one business growth blocker that really helps you at any stage in, in, in your design to figure out what, what sort of needs to be done, done best. You can find it growth blocker quiz.com. It takes literally only two minutes and then we'll send you a full report. If you are at a point where you say, well, I really want to get serious about this. I recommend you to go to the airtight avatar at airtightavatar.com. Take a look if that resonates with you, where we've created a, a $7 product really, where I take people in 15 minutes through and how to identify what your target. Avatar actually is and how to figure out this method that I call, you got to crawl into their minds. So you got to really, really be in there to understand what they're thinking in order for you to give them a solution that they, that they want to buy because of, of how they're thinking about certain things. And a lot of stuff has changed. Rob in the last six months that, um, people were worried about something else a year ago and six months ago. So you constantly have to go back to this. And if you heard something, I said, Nope, too much work. I just need to talk to you, go schedule an uncovering session. Make sure you mentioned the show this show that we can give you a 15 minute uncovering session with one of our business growth advisors to help you to figure out what your very best next step should be. And while we are at it, make sure wherever you pick up this podcast, that you go there now, give the show a five star review and write a little something of what you've taken away from this episode and share it with one other person who needs to hear what we talked about today, because it is a labor of love and good algorithm feedback gets the show in front of more people. So Rob can help more people. Thank you so much. Uh, also, if you have enjoyed this, uh, one thing she didn't mention, uh, I believe you have the business growth architect show. You have your own podcasts. Uh, and so, uh, always a great way to, to get to know somebody at the podcast. Things like that is you get to know a little bit more about that person and in their podcast. And, oh, I'm sure you get, you know, you explore more deeply a lot of these things and you can get in one episode. So, uh, recommend that to everybody as well. And I, I want to thank you for your time. It's always valuable. And this has been as I expected, as we said, you know, at the top, when we first talked, I said, this is going to be, I think a great conversation. I've gotten a lot out of it. And I think everybody else is, I can hear them applauding in the background as well. But thank you so much for your time and thank you for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a blast. And that will wrap it up. I would love to thank Viate for her time, for a great conversation, for the, uh, the props she sent out at the end. If you would like to contact her, we will have links in the show notes, check her out, give her a call. I think you'll find that she is not only an interesting person to talk to, she has a lot of good advice for you. So check it out. And, uh, you know, if you do just say, Hey, came over to you from Develop-a-Nor and let her know that, you know, we're sharing that love a little bit. That being said, go share your love with the world, out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Nor Podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success.