This Epiphany Changed The Way I Do Business

Are you watching newer businesses leapfrog you in size while you swim upstream to win new customers?

I have a theory about why your business isn’t scaling.

Let me tell you about my golf swing. It’s totally relevant, I promise. And it may get you off the hamster wheel.

My golf swing isn’t perfect. But, it did get a whole lot better overnight.

Like 300% better!

And I believe you can do the same thing with your business. Maybe not overnight, but there is a breakthrough hiding in there. I promise.

Where Do Bad Habits Come From?

I started playing golf with my Dad and brother when I was 18. They had been playing together for a decade, but I thought I could learn the game by joining them each weekend.

Kind of like how a lot of us started our businesses, right?

I loved smashing that little dimpled ball as hard and far as I could. 300 yards off the tee was my (rarely met) expectation. My agressive need for distance came with a huge tradeoff in accuracy. It wasn’t unusual for me to lose a ball on every hole. Whatever... who’s keeping score? I was judging the round by who was hitting the farthest.

Overlook my youthful ego for a moment… this is going somewhere.

Then about 4 years later, I bought Tiger Wood’s book on golf.

Yes, really.

I may have an huge ego but I was also humble enough to look for help.

It was a shocker when I flipped through the section on club grip. I didn’t mean to read about it, but somehow i got roped in.

Turns out—if you trust Tiger—a looser grip gives you maximum distance on your golf swing.

This made zero sense to me. How was I going to transfer all that torque to the club if I was cradling it like a piece of wet clay? I was using all my might to launch those balls down the fairway, and Tiger was telling me to backoff?

Turns out that muscling the grip actually restricts the pendulum swing. Using a light grip not only requires less effort, but it results in a more powerful swing. Thanks, Tiger!

Golf is a lot less work now. And more fun.

Of all the variables I was tweaking to hit better drives, my grip strength wasn’t even on the radar. If this wasn’t Tiger Wood’s book on golf—the guy who was rewriting the record books at the time—I would have completely dismissed it.

The breakthrough revelation was to do the fundamental right thing, not more things.

So basic in hindsight.

But why hadn’t I found this earlier, and on my own?

For the same reason you haven't figured out how to scale your business!

It was this aggressive grip and swing that had me hitting the ball farther than almost anyone I played with. In my mind, I just needed to figure out how to hit it straighter.

I was hacking around for years on the golf course thinking I had the grip-thing solved. But what I really had was a ceiling on my game. Since I was convinced I had the grip correct, I never once questioned it or asked anyone about their grip.

That change was too simplistic to consider. I was going to have to make a change far closer to the core than I had imagined.

Maybe you need a fundamentally different grip on your business? One that brings better results and actually takes less effort. Maybe even one that makes the game more fun?!

Have you ever asked yourself if what everyone is telling you to do—those things that got you off the ground—are holding you back from the next level?

They are. 

Effective And Scalable Are Not Always The Same

What keeps your doors open doesn’t always scale your business.

Don’t feel too bad if you've made this mistake. In fact, it’s often our earliest success that prevents us from breaking through to the next level.

And, when you find success in the early stages, you tend to form deep habits that actually hold you back from growing.

Perhaps it was a lucky break like one of the following that launched your business:

• A very large, long term sales order.
• A single referral partner that sends you tons of work.
• Providing highly custom proposals based on customer requests.
• Hiring a rainmaker who brings a book of business with them.

Could this blessing actually be a curse?

Meanwhile, the scalable companies make the game look easy. Growing right past you.

That’s because they're playing with a light grip (while you're sweating it out with power play).

So what is this business-growing equivalent to the soft grip?

A single, repeatable selling system. Yes, and it is fundamental to scale.

Peel your revenue generation back to the core and ask yourself this, “have I designed a factory-like system that turns strangers into customers with predictable precision?” Or, are you taking them as they come—dabbling in a little marketing here, a little networking there? Always looking to add more things until it clicks?

Scalable companies have a blueprint that focuses on the right lead generation system rather than adding more marketing. One system that can be used on every prospect.

Every Time. No Exceptions.

Yep, that’s it. Now you know how I felt when Tiger hit me between the eyes with that wisdom brick.

Simplify and Amplify

A scalable business has a simple and clear selling system. They’ve mapped out a process that will take a percentage of prospects and turn them into customers. And then they feed the machine.

They know that the system won’t convert everyone, and they’re ok with that. Because if you can teach the system to others and refine it over time, then you can convert ten times more people.

Meanwhile, you’re chasing every lead, every referral, and going to every event you can, strangling the club grip of your business. You can’t imagine growing a sales team because it would take forever to teach someone all the ways you use to sell your products.

Exhausting. Just like my early golf rounds.

Why Doesn’t Everyone Use a Selling System?

If you remain skeptical, take a look at all the companies in your industry—any industry—that have scaled to the level you aspire to. I bet you’ll notice that they consistently generate business. In consistent volumes and with consistent efforts.

You’ll also notice that they are marketing a lot more than you. That’s because having a consistent selling process makes all of your marketing more effective. More sales means more marketing dollars.

But from the outside, this is often misconstrued as causation rather than correlation. If they are marketing more, then more marketing must be the answer, right?

Like cooking with a recipe, getting the order right is the difference between a sweet prize-winning apple tart and a sugary mess.

And marketing agencies and advertising outlets are very happy to perpetuate this expensive misunderstanding. Ever notice how often they post quotes like “half my advertising budget is wasted, I just don’t know which half.”

Marketing companies laugh when you tell them you need to start with a single, profitable campaign. Not only is it in their best interest to eliminate their accountability, but such a small percentage of companies who hire them have done the work to build a repeatable selling system.

And that is an absolute requirement for this system to work.

What about other business owners in your circle of influence? They assure you that the struggle is real. “Part of the game,” as they might say. But, what are the ones who’ve broken through doing? Are you really talking to those that have the success you want?

And worse yet: your friends, family and even your employees hold you back because they don’t know what works either. But one thing is for sure... they don’t want to see you take any steps back in your business.

That would look like the beginning of failure to them—even if that regrouping is necessary to reach the next level of success.

So they encourage you to stay in the hamster wheel. And you build your entire business around variables you have no control over. And whenever you want more revenue—or less hassle, or higher profit margins—you can only pray that it comes along.

Powerless.

But, heh, you’re surviving, right? And you feel proud to be a business owner. Clearly you’ll make whatever sacrifice is necessary to stay afloat.

But surviving is not the same thing as succeeding.

And so few try to find a new grip on their business. They continue to muscle through it.

Meanwhile, you’re investing your life in this business, right? Trading your time, energy and gifts just to make it work is not my definition of success.

Building something that serves you and the world should be the goal. With a fundamental change on your grip, you’ll see a lot more results from your current effort.

The only question is… what will you do now that you know?

Read next: How to Scale Your Company Without Fear