We also talked about various strategies businesses can use today to increase response rates and cut through the noise that fills digital marketing.

To access the slides from the presentation, you can download them at https://bbg.li/equity-slides

In this episode, Josh walks through the assessment tool he uses to evaluate sales teams, as well as the rest of the leadership team, and how it leads to recruiting better talent every time, too.

Listen to the end for a special offer only for podcast subscribers.

Since Brandon Turner is a good friend, I did everything I could to help his new BetterLife Tribe get to profitability.

We give you a behind-the-scenes of what it took to pull it off in the end.

In this episode I walk through what I look for when assessing sales teams and how I start uncovering the opportunity costs associated with mediocre performers.

You'll get some clear takeaways you can go implement today that will move the needle immediately.

I walk you through the effective strategies for identifying what to delegate and what to hold onto as you grow through various revenue plateaus.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution, and regularly re-evaluating your role is the best path to finding the right balance.

Throughout this episode, I meticulously walk through each phase of the recruiting process. I cover what sets apart exceptional recruiters from their average counterparts, with particular emphasis on the practices adopted by Fortune 500 companies which invest significantly in human resources and talent acquisition.

Takeaways:

• In this episode, I meticulously outline my comprehensive recruiting system that surpasses traditional recruiting agencies.
• We delve into the essential steps required to effectively identify and attract top-performing talent for any business.
• Understanding the specific role and responsibilities of a new hire is critical for successful recruitment.
• Effective job advertisements should prioritize what makes the company unique and appealing to prospective candidates.

Instead of generic training, he advocates for a tailored strategy that focuses on leveraging the strengths of top performers while addressing specific market opportunities. Through real-life examples, Josh illustrates how companies can benefit from strategic conversations that prioritize meaningful outcomes over chaos. By aligning sales efforts with clear growth objectives, businesses can create a more focused and efficient sales process that drives lasting success.

Takeaways:

• Josh emphasizes a holistic approach to consulting that addresses both business challenges and the mindset of the owner.
• Effective consulting for small businesses requires deep diagnostics to uncover underlying issues and opportunities for growth.
• The bottleneck to business growth often lies in the mindset of the owner, which must be addressed for sustained success.
• Consultants should avoid being one-trick ponies and instead provide comprehensive solutions that align with business needs.
• A successful consulting model aligns performance-based compensation with specific outcomes, fostering mutual success for both consultants and clients.
• Josh believes that addressing personal growth alongside business development leads to better results and fulfillment in both areas.

After struggling with sales performance, Tony realized the need for capable salespeople who could effectively communicate with customers about their custom cooling products for high-performance vehicles.

Over time, he realized he needed to upgrade his sales team and shop manager, which ultimately led to significant revenue increases. Tony recounts the challenges faced during the pandemic, especially concerning supply chain issues and how those tribulations shaped his approach to sales and team management. After experiencing stagnation in sales due to underperforming team members, he reached out for expert guidance, resulting in the hiring of a new sales rep, whose presence revitalized sales and grew revenue to their best month's ever.

Takeaways:

• Tony DeQuick experienced a significant revenue increase after upgrading his lowest performing sales rep.
• The importance of hiring salespeople who can inspire and drive growth in a business.
• Tony's journey illustrates how upgrading team members can lead to unexpected operational improvements.

On this episode, I discuss the age old question of working on vs. in your business, but more importantly, how to figure out what’s right for your business right now. 

The first of the three fundamentals of business success is luck, commonly masquerading as good timing. By getting into a business or market at the right time, the market factors act like a rising tide that lifts all businesses.

Congratulations! You have invested more effort than many of your peers to get to this point of the book. I hope you found useful insights and strategies throughout that will make you a better business owner and help you unlock new growth by finding and fixing your bottlenecks.

My goal with this chapter is to reward you for the hard work of getting here.

Alice: Which way should I go?

Cat: That depends on where you are going.

Alice: I don’t know.

Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

— Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

If you’re like most business owners, you suffer at times from Commonsense-itis. It’s a sneaky disease that labels so much of what you know and believe as common sense, expecting everyone you interact with to make the same decisions you would in any situation. The higher your intelligence, the higher the odds you are afflicted with it.

As I’ve mentioned earlier in this book, nearly every one of my clients came to me with a marketing need, typically focused on generating more leads to help grow their company. In roughly half the cases, they actually had a systems problem or, better stated, they didn’t have anything documented to keep from having to reinvent the wheel every day.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve grown up with a healthy dose of altruism burned into your subconscious. We’re taught that putting others’ needs before our own is a worthy character trait, and I don’t disagree with that. I just think it gets severely distorted, especially when used as a method of control or manipulation.

I’ve found a single activity that helps solve all of your management problems, while also setting you up well to move toward the ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) model in the future if you want.

Business owners have the habit of believing that how they think is “common sense,” and that it is handed out to everyone like candy on Halloween. They think it’s “common sense” to show up on time, to call ahead if you’re going to be late, to double check all of your grammar in email communication, and never to yell at anybody on the phone. Their list of unstated expectations is seemingly endless.

Before we cover the keys to improving your closing process, I’d like to discuss the worst sales profiles that just won’t seem to go away.

The feature that stands out about ancient Greek architecture, and especially the Parthenon, is the use of pillars to create structures that withstand the ravages of time.

All the high-growth companies I’ve worked with share a similar feature with Greek architecture. Instead of physical pillars, they have Traffic Pillars that support the entire structure of the company. Without effective marketing, a business will only go so far, and will have a shaky structure.

The challenge is to figure out which communications are most effective for your business right now, given your time, money, staffing, industry, and target market, so you can generate growth again.

Chapter 2 walks you through developing brilliant positioning by finding your Big Idea that cuts through the clutter of the marketplace to draw prospects to you.

A bottleneck is any point of friction in your business that prevents you from generating more revenue or generating the same revenue more easily. When I talk about bottlenecks, business owners always ask for examples of what they look like so they can find them in their own business.

Every day a new silver bullet comes out promising to grow your business, increase your profit margins, and make your life as a business owner easier. Unfortunately, most of them don't work, wasting your time and money. Plus, they take your attention away from other more worthwhile opportunities. The ones that do work for others just never seem to work for you. Blanket prescriptions are like that, never quite hitting the mark for all but the few with the exact symptoms.

Instead of a blanket prescription that will generally help every business at every stage of growth, the more effective approach is to find a specific solution that hits the bull's eye for your unique situation. This creates the greatest improvement possible with the least amount of effort and risk.

That's the Bottleneck Breakthrough Method.

You can apply it to the predictable growth plateaus in every business, and at every stage of revenue, whether you're at $100K or $100M. Best of all, it builds on what you already do well, so you don't have to overhaul your entire business to get results.

The goal of this book is to become a reliable and powerful tool for you to grow your business, as it already has for many others.

In this episode I share my own experience while in the middle of a dopamine fast to reset my own patterns around social media and what I consume.

I break down why this happens and how to get through this 7 Figure Desert for you.

I also share some changes to the podcast going forward and how it’s continuing to evolve.

But, there's a way to thrive through this chaos and position yourself and your business best that I cover in this episode.

I also cover the latest changes to the SBA emergency financing.

I also cover the best solutions for each bottleneck that I've found that work and answer some Q&A at the end to help listeners take action on their specific bottlenecks.

The goal is to help you know where you're at, what you should be focusing on next, and help eliminate all the other distractions that might pull you into wasting time on them.