Episode 120: The Bottom Line - Implementation Is Everything

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Welcome to The Bottom Line, a new weekly podcast series that we drop every Thursday to complement our weekly Monday podcast interviews with the industry leaders. These podcasts are going to be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business. I value your time and attention and will do my very best not to waste it. Just get what you need and go. So with that, let's get into today's episode. Everyone, so I'm sure like many of you, you have invested a ton of money in your personal and in your professional development over the years. I mean, I look back and on the other side of this camera and microphone, I've got stacks of three-ring binders and notebooks and journals and just of all the places I've been to, conferences I've paid for, coaching programs that I've, I've been a part of. And I will say this, I think you never want to trust a coach who doesn't have a coach. You want somebody who is also always investing in themselves. And so any coaching program that you decide to invest in, I would ask that coach, who are their mentors? Who are the people that they, that they pay? And if they have not paid, written a check, or put it on their credit card, more than likely, um, at least what it is they're asking you to pay, I would be hesitant and wary of that business coach or consultant. Okay, I digress. So today's episode is titled Ideas Are Everywhere. But implementation is everything. Look, ideas are worthless at this point. They really are. I mean, you can Google, you can literally Google or YouTube. Um, Google and YouTube, the two top search engines in the world. So either somebody is going to Google something and then it's going to route them obviously to YouTube, or they're just going to go straight to YouTube. I mean, I'm not the first person that I can't remember what I was trying to do. Oh, I was trying, uh, cleaning my Traeger. And, uh, you know, I wanted to make sure that there was not some aspect of cleaning my Traeger out that I needed to, to know, uh, did I need to take a certain, you know, contraption off or whatever. And so where did I go? I went to YouTube. Uh, it was the first place. And so I'm sure many of you do that. Well, the same thing can be true in your business. If you want to know, uh, how to do anything marketing-wise, you can Google it or YouTube it and get plenty of ideas, but think about how many ideas or search results are going to come up whenever you do that. And what is interesting is that whenever you click on one video and you click on another video, sometimes those will be conflicting. Have you ever had that experience? Well, the same thing is true whenever you decide to pay for your flights and your hotels and to pay for any type of program that you're a part of, or you sit on Zoom, whatever that is. Listen, learning things is good. That's fun. It's good to learn things. But at the end of the day, you only get paid, you only get results in your business based on what you actually implement and what you execute on. That's what matters. We would be better off to learn fewer things and implement the ones that we have. And really, I'm this is more of a reminder than teaching you anything here. Uh, but I look back at the programs I've been a part of and the time and the money and the effort and the energy to just get to the place I'm going, only to hear something from someone and not implement it and not do it. In fact, what I would think of is this person— and I wasn't consciously thinking this, I don't think anybody consciously thinks this— I think, you know, that's a decent idea, but I think I'm going to actually try to do it this way. So I would modify it. I would highly encourage you, if you're learning from someone who is where you want to be, maybe steps ahead of where you want to be, I encourage you to adopt it exactly the way he or she has laid it out for you first. And then you can begin to adapt it. More than likely, that person has spent years perfecting that system, that process, whatever it is that they're sharing with you, that idea. They have spent years, maybe their entire life doing that. I mean, some of the guests that we've had have on Mondays, I'm thinking about somebody we're having, David Allen. Who wrote the seminal book called Getting Things Done. I can't wait to talk to David. And one of the things I'm going to ask him is, is where— when people start— and who knows, maybe by the time that you listen to this podcast, I may have already— his podcast may have dropped, but I haven't spoken to him yet. And one of the things I'm going to ask him is, you know, when people get the GTD system, they begin to kind of make changes. Where do they— where do they fall out? And my guess is because they're not following the system. They begin to kind of modify it based on what they want, as opposed to the way the system was actually laid out. And so you will only learn by doing, by executing. You're not going to learn by just sitting back and hearing or going to the, going to the conference, going to the summit, going, sitting on Zoom. You actually only learn the most by doing. Okay. And so ideas are everywhere. But implementation is literally everything. We are better to focus on implementing the things that we are learning than it is to continuously search for some holy grail or silver bullet. I remember it was— let me go back to 2014, roughly or so, and I'm in Toronto. 2014, 2015, in Toronto. And we're doing this exercise. And I think the exercise was something around if your business was X amount bigger than it is today, maybe 10 times bigger. I can't recall what the exercise was, but it was something like that. But here's what I do recall. I'm sitting next to this guy. And he's in jeans. He's got a golf shirt on, untucked. He's got a backpack next to him. And so we're doing this, this exercise, we did the exercise, and then we were sharing, and he was my partner. And I remember, in, I went first, for whatever reason, thank goodness, I actually went first, because if he went first, I don't think I would have gone. And so he ends up telling me, and I figure out by doing it, that this guy's business is $40 million in top line revenue. And his personal income, current personal income $5 million. Now, this guy used to play professional baseball, but you would have never, never known it. Super cool guy. And I was just absolutely floored. I mean, like, wow, okay, you know, I shouldn't even be having this conversation with you. When in that moment, I'm thinking to myself, oh my gosh, how did you get— and he was actually a financial advisor, you know, or actually owned a financial advisor company. And so immediately I'm thinking to myself, oh my gosh, I want to know how you have built this company. Because I mean, I, I could really learn from you. And I wish I could tell you what it is he told me. I was just really more blown away by having this conversation with this person that does that. And obviously many of you know people that make way more than that, but it was just in the environment that I was in, in the moment really mattered. And so I look back on those moments and I think, gosh, I really wish I knew what he had shared with me. I wish I could look back on my notes and, uh, wish I had his contact information. I wish I had stayed in touch with him because that's somebody that is miles ahead of where I was at the time, and I want to be able to learn from someone like that. And I missed that opportunity. And so sometimes whenever you are— whether it's a program that you're a part of or just somebody that you've been able to get around, that's where you want to be in your journey. And it doesn't have to be $40 million in top line revenue. That may be just 2 or 3 steps ahead of you. I would have loved to have asked him this, not the things that he's doing now. Because I don't know if I could relate. I mean, he has 100 people on his team at the time. I do remember that he had a massive team and, or close to 100 anyway. But I couldn't really relate to that. But I could definitely could have related to whenever he started the business. And I would have said, what did you do to go from, say, $1 million to $2 million? Where, what were along the way, the plateaus that you had? Where did you plateau at? And what did you do to push back that? Because, you know, oftentimes there's plateaus to, you know, get to $1 million. 91% of small businesses that even survive don't make it to $1 million in top-line revenue, let alone above that. What'd you do to push past $1 million? What'd you do to push past $3 million? What'd you do to push past $10 million? What'd you put— do to push to $25 million? And now you're a medium-sized business at $40 million. Like, where were those plateaus, and who did you need to become along the way. But I can guarantee you, he was in that program, he was in that room. And whatever he took away, and it might have been one thought, it might have been one slide, it might have been one thing that one person said. But he was a doer. And he got to where he was not just by learning and sitting and then second-guessing what somebody else was saying that's above them that they're learning from. He implemented, He implemented, he executed, he learned, and he iterates along the way. So I'll leave you with this: if you want to be, do. Lead well. If you're listening to this podcast, I know you're someone who has a growth mindset. You probably want to be able to grow your book of business as well. What Direct Click specializes in helping insurance agencies leverage Google Ads and SEO to drive inbound phone calls, leads, online visibility, and even organic traffic. You can be confident in knowing exactly how well your ads are working and getting support in what really matters in your business. 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