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Speaker 1
if you walk
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Speaker 1
into any company, you can see the stories they've been telling yourself the market shrinking. No one would pay that much for this product. You know, one makes those margins. It's actually not true. It's it's a story they've built
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Speaker 2
I was chatting with Indy over the weekend, and she was going through some old videos of her,
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Speaker 2
and then there was a surprisingly inordinate amount of videos where it's just her stating, I am great at this or I hate this with zero evidence behind any of it.
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Speaker 2
So she's working. She was watching someone do a backflip. Mrs.. Or for she was doing it. Now she goes, I can do that. I'm great at it. That's not washed.
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Speaker 1
So could she do it?
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Speaker 2
No, no, she could not. Oh, that was very good.
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Speaker 2
She just watched a video once. I can do that. I'm great at it. Yeah. Threw herself into it, which is dangerous on one side, but it's such an awesome label. Protein things on the positive side, and it got me thinking about the stories that we kind of tell ourselves and whatnot.
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Speaker 2
kind of went through those words, but. Definitely mapping
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Speaker 1
Yeah, I used to I used to have a story that we needed to give an enormous value upfront to grow fast, and there was some truth in that at some stage. But there was a point where we'd become established. So when I was moved away from that era, moved myself away from that area, but also I was focusing on something else, one of the people in there that was in charge of growth and that was heavily driven also by Alana, which is the thing we used to give away for free.
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Speaker 1
What happens if we put a price tag because it was high value, and so we put an $8,000 price tag on this initial, this initial thing that we used to give away for free. And then the opposite of what I thought would happen, we actually got more clients signing up because they, they aligned with the value, and the ones that wanted the free stuff were generally not the right client anyway.
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Speaker 1
So you go from a lead magnet that used to cost us money, time, energy, effort and bring in the wrong client to something that made a tremendous amount of money, was a huge, margins and attracted the right client. So the story I had was in the story in my head that people wouldn't pay for this thing, but actually a lot of people would, and not everyone would.
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Speaker 1
The right people would. And that's where my story was wrong.
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Speaker 1
And this is this is something we have to probably look at all the time, is what story have we allowed to creep into the the thinking of a company culture. So, you know, we we when we're working together for so long, which we have been partners in all these businesses, what are the stories that no longer serve.
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Speaker 1
Because it can be very destructive to it's great to have the loyalty, fun, friendship and all that in one side, but you got to also then go, what's the flip side? Is there anything that we've been around for so long that actually has become a story that's no longer true, but we've taken it as gospel.
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Speaker 1
essentially in an entrepreneurial or startup environment, you need to be moving fast. So the assumption is we're going to get a lot of things wrong. It's the change bit that we have to get right, which is we've got evidence it's there. Or give an example, a couple of years ago, you know, everyone knows we had the research business as part of building the technology for backup ball.
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Speaker 1
And we sat there and we used to give full reporting to clients. Right. And this was one of the biggest time things that took about 30 to 35% of every consultants time reporting back.
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Speaker 1
But actually from a, a client outcome, the question wasn't asked is how many actually read it. And so there was a perceived value from receiving it. But actually, if you ask how many Reddit or knew it, it the percentage didn't justify the time investment of getting it client facing ready, let's call it. And so the question then became is, well, how do we just remove all reporting?
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Speaker 1
And the story was that all clients needed the transparency that was that had started from years ago. That was what we were trying to fix in coaching and consulting, which was every step was measured, everything could be tracked. There was all three lines to everything. There would be nothing nontransparent from why you're successful and why you were not.
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Speaker 1
But actually the the that was what we thought we needed to deliver, not what actually the client want. Then we just needed to have it so we could show it or look at it or analyze it versus the deliverable was completely different. So we were wasting 30% of our weeks doing things that had no real impact, where that that energy could be deployed in areas that was actually helping the client more, or changing the business model.
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Speaker 1
I think a lot of businesses do this, and I think it's it's a worthy quarterly activity to go through and go, if we had to do this activity the complete opposite, what would we do? What's redundant, what actually has no value?
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Speaker 2
and that's a funny because it's you ask the question
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Speaker 2
about what
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Speaker 2
it's a stupidly simple question that says, why do you do that? And when you're so embedded in something, that question, you sort of go, I have no idea why I do this anymore. It's just what I've been doing.
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Speaker 2
the amount of people that would be walking around in business blindly doing the wrote and feeling trapped by it, not having someone to pull them up and go, why? So they're never going to move out of
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Speaker 1
know, I mean most people are looking for some form of certainty.
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Speaker 1
So they choose not to vigorously chase, growth opportunities,
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Speaker 1
because what they've got now, which is a form of certainty, it's replicated, it's done. Everyone knows what they're doing, albeit the inefficiencies. I just want this for the next ten years.
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Speaker 1
it's a common thing of family businesses. It's a common thing in, you know, particularly in M&A and mergers and acquisitions.
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Speaker 1
You actually see in the numbers go, go go go. That's steady for the next thing. They didn't run out of market. They ran out of desire to want to take additional risk based on the set that they've created for. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just it's an interesting human, an interesting psychology in, in how people grow companies.
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Speaker 2
it got me thinking. So just what were talking this.
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Speaker 2
We've I've kind of framed a lot of the stories that kind of stuff in there. The stories are very powerful for like self and for our. When you are looking to make a change.
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Speaker 2
you can create the next chapters
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Speaker 2
before they're actually written. Like you can shape the next bit by telling a different
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Speaker 2
Yeah. It actually have to go behind it. Otherwise it's just wishes.
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Speaker 1
Yeah. But even most people think that's an a, a proactive move. Sometimes the action is when I find myself in a situation and before I've had a chance to act, I've actually gone, this is one of those situations. Then you've got the bravery of making a different choice, having a different discussion, pushing back when you wouldn't have pushed back or, you know, we we talk a lot in sales training with people who struggle to sell what they want to sell because they used to take price negotiations as I don't want the product versus people reinforcing the story being, I want to reinforce you understand your value delivering so you have other people who can walk
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Speaker 1
in. And when someone has a price injection, raise their prices because they're so clear on the value and the timing and all that, where others will wilt away going, oh my God, they're going to say no, they're going to want to discount they won't do business with me. Same situation, different confidence. So I think these happen. This things happen.
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Speaker 1
You know, million times a day to everyone. It's it's what you're a conscious of. And then what are you prepared to do in the situation where you've got a chance to, to take a different path than you usually would that you've, you've said doesn't serve you?
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Speaker 1
there's some real power in that ability to realize you can choose at any point of, I no longer want to feel like this, so what would need to change? But, you know, like people go, I hate this job versus wow, there's an opportunity to learn here for my next job or my next thing. Or like, there's it's the same situation, but it's the approach to it.
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Speaker 1
Is the economy tanking or is it an opportunity to finally release some of those products? Is is is our client leaving us because we do a really shit job, or is it our clients starting to be cleaned out because we're actually bringing in the clients that we know we can serve, and they will value our products and services?
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Speaker 1
You know, we
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Speaker 1
see this in businesses all the time.
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Speaker 2
And both those can be equally true.
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Speaker 1
Yeah.
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Speaker 2
The same time. It's just how you view it.
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Speaker 1
everything is interchangeable.
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Speaker 1
Everything can be looked at. You get to choose. You make the choice. Only accept things that sit with you properly. Only accept reasoning that you believe. Because as soon as you take on something that you don't believe in, you're you're cheating yourself. And so the reality of it is, you know, going back to the first thing you said is Indy trying to do a backflip, landing on her head.
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Speaker 1
And she said she could do it. Well, she did do it. Now, the difference is a little bit of technique in the dismount, but she actually could do it. And she did it, you know. So really, when you even look at a situation like that, we're judging her for falling on her head where actually she did exactly what she's been out to be, which was to try doing something.
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Speaker 1
She could see exactly how she would do it. Now, if that leads to her doing it the next time learning, do they? She actually was right. What we're arguing is she never set the timings. She said she could do it. So
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Speaker 1
we
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Speaker 1
see that with a lot of business owners, I know I can do it and go, but I haven't done it.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, but we're not even the first quarter of the game. But I've been doing it for so long. But that's why you've set the timings. Where are we going to get to? And we're just not there yet. So what are we going to do now? It starts cutting through a lot of the crap. And I find as adults, even that situation where we're hyper aware of that and you're even focused on it, she never said she can do it right on the spot.
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Speaker 1
She said, I can do it. And I reckon she can. She may just now need some technique stuff, but the enthusiasm of that is the encouragement. And we need to take that enthusiasm to our companies, our people.
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Speaker 2
That statement five years later, it's the things you've been doing consistently, like she does gymnastics.
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Speaker 1
And so she was right. Yeah. So she was right. So yeah. Where others would see and go see, I told you you couldn't do it. And they're the people that are most dangerous because they're the ones with the lack of self-awareness, because they're taking their perception of, I can do it means you immediately must perform it. And so it's not nuance, it's blocking out stuff that when you know you can do something, you're totally invested in that.
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Speaker 1
Not the noise of someone else saying, but you didn't. You couldn't you wouldn't you? Where we're debating arguing and no one ever said when. So these are the things that, you know, as a, as a tiny example. But these are the things that happen across every aspect of our business lives and our personal lives. So
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Speaker 1
what? Why are we even debating?
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Speaker 1
Because the other thing is, who cares whether they think I can or can't? All that matters is what I believe. So this is the problem. As soon as you even consider the other person's idea. Why? Yeah. So in that example, she wants to show dad she can do it, but she actually wasn't inviting commentary or thought she was just telling you it's a statement.
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Speaker 1
And this is where I think we forget as adults because we actually listen to people like. And for me, I, you know, which is others label as stubbornness, but I never I wasn't asking your opinion. If I wanted your opinion, I'd say, what do you think of this? Not this is what I'm going to do. People take I'm going to do this as I want your opinion.
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Speaker 1
I'm like, no, I'm just verbalizing so you can enjoy the show,
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Speaker 1
mother.
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Speaker 1
You know, like you know so well. What?
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Speaker 2
No perfect sentence.
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Speaker 2
That's true. It's a I get where you coming from. There's you're having strength and will around like you're very sure of what you want. Other people. I don't know if they're as armored against other people's stories about them.
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Speaker 1
the challenges, it can feel very lonely at times, because if everyone can't see, or the certainty in which you have the feeling of what you can do and it can feel like, have I deluded myself? And that's the bit where you've got to sometimes just enjoy the loneliness of those moments, because as soon as you keep building that, building that resilience and belief in yourself and you start stacking it, the rest of the world bends to your will.
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Speaker 1
And that's the hard bit, is.
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Speaker 1
That the feeling of delusion and, ridiculousness if everyone says you're wrong because we've seen the horror stories and the, the, the horror story being, what if I am? But if you're conscious of why you see it and why I keep going and you still push through, well, that's that's the path to greatness, really, isn't it?