Unlocking Business Growth: The Holistic Consulting Approach | Ep 39

Josh Long

00:00:00.880 - 00:20:44.695

This is episode 39 and on it I go over my holistic approach to consulting with small businesses and why I am betting on it being the future to help more businesses thrive. This is the Bottleneck Breakthrough podcast.

I'm Josh Long and this is all about helping you find and fix the biggest challenges in your business to unlock growth and profits that last. Hey, glad to be here with you today. Excited to dig in on a topic that I don't think anybody else is talking about in the small business world.

And obviously I think it's self serving because it's exactly what I do. But I want to help you be equipped and think about how to grow your business and how to tackle the growth of your business as best as possible.

And that topic is through holistic consulting.

I think that there are a lot of people out there that like helping small business owners that want to help them in various specific ways but don't have a bigger picture and don't help small business owners get that bigger picture of what's actually needed to unlock growth in their business. And there's a couple layers to this that I think would be interesting for you to explore.

And the first of them is that there's a lack of diagnosis in the consulting world.

Until you get to the big companies, and even at the big companies like the McKinsey's and the Bains and the BCGs and those guys, I still don't think there's a lot enough diagnosis going on. There's a lot of reading of the tea leaves of the markets, there's a lot of discussing around, well, what's dropped in revenue.

But at the end of the day, companies and consulting firms just haven't found a path to really get under the hood and uncover what exactly is wrong in a company and what's causing it to be held back.

And so that's what I've been doing for decades, for about 17 years now, is get under the hood and ask questions and try to uncover what's really going on. But it only goes so far. When we get into the tactics, right?

When we go through the levers of the bottleneck breakthrough method and look at your marketing and your sales and your management and your systems, those are really tactical. Those are what I would call Newtonian physics related.

When we get those unlocked, they unlock some growth and they're very linear and, and it's great and they make sense. But then eventually we run into a wall. And that wall is the mindset of the owner. And I talk about that in the book too. It's in chapter 14.

And I put it at the end because most business owners just don't want to tackle that stuff and they don't want to deal with what's going on inside. And I think it's the most valuable place to unlock growth for your business because it doesn't just affect the business.

It affects every part of your life and it affects how you view the world, and it affects how you show up in the world and what you reflect and how it reflects back to you. And so I think bringing in the mindset and getting really involved in helping my clients with their mindset is the quantum side.

It's the non Newtonian.

The things that they're like little hinges that swing giant doors that you'd have no idea what opens up until you release it, until you release the friction that's in there, the trauma or the limiting beliefs that are holding you back in how you run your company. And I didn't come to this holistic concept until recently.

I had posted a while ago or recently that I wanted to offer helping companies fire bad employees. And a friend of mine reached out to me and he said, man, that is really brilliant. And I said, you know, it was kind of a joke.

I've always said that I should do this as a service.

I've helped so many clients get rid of poor performers, and I've never done it fully for them, but I've always been involved and I've helped be the catalyst for it.

But I said, you know, I was always worried about the liability if there was any kind of potential legal liability for it, of a bad termination lawsuit or something like that. Wrong for termination lawsuit. And thankfully, I talked to an attorney friend of mine and he said, no, no, the way you're doing it, there's.

There's no liability. You're completely fine. And so I thought, you know, I'm just going to plant this flag.

And my buddy said, you know, that it actually positions you in such a way that is so comprehensive because you're not just going to go in and say, oh, who do you need fired? I'm going to go fire them. It's.

I go in, I do an assessment, I figure out who's performing, who's in the right roles, who needs to be given a chance to change their role or given a chance to improve, which most of the time, if people aren't performing well, they don't improve. Unless your management is so bad and your communication so bad that when we fix that, that they thrive.

But those aren't those types of business owners aren't reaching out to me for help. So most of the time we let somebody go and then we figure out what needs to change.

Do we need to redistribute their work that was probably being poorly done and partially done to the rest of the team, or do we need to replace them and find somebody new? Which obviously steps right into my recruiting, which is my favorite thing to do, and that I'm likely better than anybody you'll ever meet at it.

Getting A plus performers for any role. Obviously I'm focused on sales. I love recruiting executives and management.

But like, I'm doing a project for my chiropractor right now, just helping him out, getting a new receptionist. And the gal, I've got two gals. But the one that's the top, they're both fantastic. But the one that's the top, she's just a plus plus.

And it's hers to lose if she doesn't want to do it, if the company, if his little practice is too small, but she's got perfect experience.

And so as I step into a company and get into this more holistic approach, the joke of starting from the angle of firing somebody, it requires a deep diagnostic, a deep, deep understanding of your business.

And the problem is that there's so many providers out there that just have no ability or they don't have it in their business model to be able to do that kind of diagnostics. So they fall into the one trick pony. They're the hammer that thinks everything's a nail and that's all they can do.

And this was always my argument against specialized, fixed service, fixed focused services like Facebook ads. When I got really rolling in consulting back in 2012-2015, people said, well, why aren't you focusing on Facebook ads?

You've gotten great results for clients with Facebook ads. And I'm like, yeah, I have. But not everybody needs Facebook ads.

And a great example is a client comes to me and says, well, our Facebook ads aren't working anymore. And I'm like, well, take me through your funnel. And we go to the landing page. I'm like, when was this made? And they're like, three years ago.

And well, when did it stop working? Oh, about six months ago. And well, who's following up with the leads? Well, we've had some change over there too. And well, who's trained the person?

Well, nobody. So it's like if we just followed up with the leads a little better and then make a few tweaks to the landing page, guess what? Everything improves.

And then somebody says, well, weren't you here to fix Facebook ads? And I'm like, your Facebook ads are fine. I mean, we can tweak them, but they're not the liability. They're not the bottleneck at this point.

And so by going in and doing a deeper dive, a diagnostic across a company, I'm able to figure out what the prescription should be, what the solution to their real problem is that unlocks growth. And over and over and over, I've gotten results. But then they tend to level off or they tend to hit the next bottleneck.

And eventually the ultimate bottleneck in every business is the mindset of the owner. And it's not that the owners aren't positive or good people or don't deserve success. It's that they're hitting an upper limit.

They're hitting some issue that their operating system, their subconscious and their belief system is holding them back from getting to the next level.

And so I'm super stoked because I'm working with my coach, Ryan Albury, and he's stepping in with a client of ours, a client of mine he knows and has talked to in the past but never worked with. And this client we've, or I've worked with this year and recruited new salespeople and got them completely unstuck.

And I just did the math before this recording. I've increased their sales 220% in the last six months.

And funny enough, I think I can get another 40 or 50% out of that and get them closer to 300% growth from the beginning of working with me. And the owner is very aware of the upper limit restrictions that are kicking in.

And we met with him the other day and we went through this stuff and I said, I really do think there's some great stuff that we can unlock on the quantum side, on the mindset side that will free you up to accept even greater success and greater upside. And he didn't disagree.

And I had worked with him on some techniques to clear some emotional traumas and clear a few limiting beliefs that I'd learned from my buddy Justin Fairman that was so pivotal in my career, in my growth. And so I'm excited for this client to work with Ryan over the next couple weeks and do an intensive and see what we can get unlocked.

Because to me, this is, this is the culmination of the bottleneck breakthrough method of all the levers, including the mindset and tackling the mindset stuff aggressively and being able to do it in a way that improves everything across the board. Because again, we're not just here to grow revenue. We want to make the company better, more stable, have things sustained.

We want the employees to have a better experience. We want them to have more growth opportunities and be more fulfilled.

And we want your clients to be thrilled with the outcome and have you keep innovating and improving what you're offering so that your clients are happier and happier and rave about what you do for them. And then as an owner, the biggest goal is I want you to get exactly what you want out of this business.

I want it to give you the lifestyle that you want. I want it to give you the peace and the prosperity and the joy and the fulfillment that you've always hoped for.

And at the end of the day, in my own experience, that can't happen in the most full version of that until we deal with our head trash and our trauma and we start clearing stuff out. And as Ryan says, we start the purification process. And for me, that's been quite the journey this year. I've talked about it a lot on Facebook.

I don't think I've talked about it here, but I'll do a post on it soon enough or an episode on it soon enough about my journey and kind of going deep this last year and a half, coming on two years and the fruit that came from it and continues to come from it and continues to expand and grow. And so I think this holistic approach is the future of consulting, especially for small to mid sized businesses.

And I think the agencies, I've seen them, those specialized agencies, they're all dying. They've died a sad death over this last year and a half as the market's turned as they need more comprehensive solutions.

And we lived in a bull market from 2013 to 2021 and Covid kind of kicked the can down the road a little more with all the inflation and money printing.

But during that bull run, you could just show up and say, hey, I can help with Facebook ads, I can help with social media, I can help with SEO, I can help with recruiting or finding a VA or whatever it was and just be that one trick pony. And businesses had enough profit. And like I've said, profit covers a multitude of sins.

And so those business owners were able to just say, yeah, great. And I don't know about you listening to this, but how many of those providers did you work with that didn't deliver?

And if you look back on it, you wish you could have gotten your money back now, some of them, and plenty of them did deliver, but we were all flush with cash. We were all growing and dealing with a rising tide.

And so now that the market's turned and things have gotten tighter and capital markets are tighter and the consumers are tightening up, we need better results.

And I'm so stoked to do this holistic approach and really utilize both the bottleneck breakthrough method that I outlined in the book, but then the more recent sustainable scale framework that really tunes up your sales, your marketing, and the related systems. And that's what I did for this client that now is working with Ryan. Over the next few weeks.

We got in and we fixed their sales process, we dialed in some of their marketing, recruited three salespeople, and like I said, they're up 220% in the last six months and probably going to be closer to 300% and probably close to pushing 6, 7, 8 million in the next year. I think I can get them to 10 million by the end of 2025, very reasonably. And if they get the mindset stuff unlocked, then it's.

It's inevitable that they'll be hitting 10 million. And so as I take this more holistic approach, it's become more fulfilling for me, too, because I don't have to censor myself.

I don't have to hold back or not cover certain topics because they're taboo or they're sacred cows, or they trigger the owner and caused them to react. And so I'm beyond thrilled to dig into it.

And the cool thing is that the pricing model on it makes so much sense, too, because I'm sure you guys have heard of Roland Frazier and the consult for Equity Movement that's been going on for a number of years. And Roland's a great guy, and I don't think he has anything but good intentions behind it.

But you really need to be a cult of personality to pull that off.

You really need to have a giant, confident ego and be able to deliver fantastic outcomes over and over and over to justify getting equity as a consultant.

And equity is just so messy, especially for companies that aren't on a path to be acquired, because then you run into that situation of, well, what is the equity really worth? And how is the owner taking out their profits and reducing their tax liabilities as much as possible? And how does the consultant get equity?

What's left over on a distribution? And so it's all messy. And so I think that whole model creates so much strain and frustration in the end.

So then you end up with, like, perpetual revenue sharing or profit sharing agreements. And I know a lot of consultants that have done that and continue to do services where they participate in the upside.

But inevitably the owner grows resentful. I see that over and over and over again.

In companies that aren't getting acquired, the business grows and they get to a certain plateau and the owner's like, you know, I'm really good, I just want to kind of take it easy.

But they've got this provider that wants to continue growing and continue pushing so that their revenue share continues growing and they keep getting more and more out of it, but that those incentives aren't aligned anymore.

And so inevitably I've seen business owners grow resentful and kill those deals and, or stop listening to the, to the provider and then things fall apart and then it's a mess.

So for me, what I've done is I've just said, look, it's probably going to take 90 days, maybe 120 days to get in and make this change and make this big impact.

And if we get it done, what's an outcome that if we hit, if you hit it sometime in the next three to 12 months that you're excited to pay me for, what does that look like? And so with this client that I've increased revenue by 220%, we set a goal for a monthly revenue amount that was a record that they'd never achieved.

And I saw it and I'm like, yeah, definitely can hit that. And so we got in and by the third month we were setting records, we were hitting all time highs and it's been really fantastic.

And so to me, being able to say, look, what's a goal? What's an achievement that you want to hit?

And if I think I can hit it tying 70% or around there of my performance over my pay to that outcome and putting it on the back end is a great alignment.

So then I'm just doing all the work for a reasonable retainer, but then participating in the upside for a very fixed timeframe in an amount that is very clear for the owner. And this is the thing, for me, I've always preferred fixed price engagements or fixed price budgets or flat rate retainers.

I've never liked the model where the meter runs or where it's always time and materials and things like that because it just gets out of control for small business owners. And so this model really aligns interests and it focuses on big wins.

And so I'm super excited to dig into it and I'm excited to add Ryan to my team and have him bring his genius and his expertise to the table to help my clients really unlock things and improve every part of their life. Because that's the beauty of this.

Shadow work, as he calls it, or the internal work of it doesn't just make your business run better, it makes your life run better. It makes you more joyful, it makes you more peaceful. It causes you to be triggered less.

It makes my I say after every session, I just feel lighter and lighter and that lightness sustains.

And so as I continue to expand this, I'm going to make it available for select clients that I get really involved with because I don't want to try to force this on anybody. I don't want to convince anybody that they need to do this. It's like, hey, here's something I see.

Let's have a conversation and then let's loop Ryan in and if he sees something, we'll propose it. And if it's a fit, it's a fit. And the beauty is I get to pay him out of the performance bonuses, and so there's no extra cost to the owner.

Now, obviously, if you want to work with Ryan one on one, go do that. He's a fantastic guy. He's a fantastic coach. I recommend him all the time.

But from the holistic consulting perspective, I'm just really excited to lean into this and help those business owners that get it that business is not separate from personal and that this isn't a separate part of our lives that we exclude from everything else. It all bleeds together.

And getting the business to serve your needs and then getting you clear so that you can lead the business better is the greatest. One, two, punch. So let me know your thoughts. Shoot me a note.

Podcastottleneckbreakthrough.com and if you're interested in reaching out, go to my website, bottleneckbreakthrough.com, happy to help you. Obviously, I will be talking a lot about recruiting going forward. I realize that that is my superpower and I love doing it.

And the clients just keep getting great results.

And as you heard in one of the previous podcasts with Tony Dequic at Entropy Radiator, his experience has been fantastic and I'm excited to continue to help him grow and keep helping others that know that they need to level up their sales team or build a sales team and benefit from the sustainable scale framework. That's all available@bottleneckbreakthrough.com as well. Hope this has been great. Have a great day.

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