Episode 142: The Bottom Line - Time Under The Bar

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.

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Hey everyone, it's Bradley.

It's Bradley.

So if you've listened to the podcast for any amount of time in 2022, I think it was back in end of March or so, I started to track my calories because I needed to lose some weight. And glad to say that it definitely does work. I've mentioned it in some of the interview podcasts. Well, this episode is not going to be about working out. It's really not going to be about weight loss, but I do want to share with you a conversation I had with someone that has really resonated with me and how I have applied it to business and to give myself a little bit of patience whenever it is I am trying to learn a new skill and develop myself. Well, along the way, as I was losing some of the weight and actually really getting into the rhythm of what it means to track how much water I was taking in, etc., and I use MyFitnessPal. I am sure many of you are familiar with it. I was just very unaware of all the empty calories that I was taking in and didn't even know exactly how many calories I should be taking in. So now I try to stay right around 2,300 calories. I don't really watch exactly what it is that I eat, but just by the nature of tracking the calories, you end up eating a lot healthier and drinking more water than I would have before. Well, along the way, I asked someone— they're fit, they're strong. I had lost some of the pounds that I needed to lose, but I wanted to begin to get stronger. And this was a conversation recently, and they said something really profound to me. They said, Bradley, it's really just time I've spent under the bar. That's really what it is. And I said, what do you mean? They said, I don't really think that I do anything special when I'm in the gym. I don't have some complicated workouts. I don't do— I'm not in here 7 days a week. It's just I'm in here consistently moving around some weights. I've just spent more time under the bar. And that has really stuck with me in terms of— because I was thinking, I've got to have this plan. I've got to have all these certain exercises, et cetera. And it's just not the case. And so when I think about that and the application of it to business, I think about when 2019 or so, when I began to really understand that I had a deficit, uh, 2018, 2019, a deficit in marketing. I really studied and spent a lot of time, uh, time under the bar in sales, but I had not spent enough time in marketing. Now, for some of you, marketing may come very easy. Maybe even you got your degree in marketing whenever you were in college. That was not the case for me. I got a degree in finance and everything from my very first job, um, up until this point had really been in regards to sales. I've done sales training, uh, leads had really been given to me. So my very first job was selling Yellow Page ads. And so marketing really wasn't marketing, it was cold calling and we were reaching out, but they gave us a list of our current customers, uh, to pay. And then they gave us, uh, kind of a canvas basically. To be able to go around in a certain area and call on the businesses in that area. And all the calls we were making were cold calls. We were literally knocking on the door of these businesses and, uh, uh, we're door knocking basically. And so I learned a lot in that, but I learned persuasion. I learned sales skills. I had not really learned around marketing. And of course at that time, that was in 2003, 2003, 2004. Timeframe. So Google Ads were not nearly as popular at the time. Certainly Facebook is— wasn't— was not really even out at the time, et cetera. So things have changed quite a bit in the digital landscape. Well, for a long time, I just used that as a crutch or as an excuse, as something that I thought I understood what marketing was, but I really didn't. And so I needed to spend a lot more time under the bar understanding what does digital marketing even look like? Not only that, but what does local marketing even look like as the, as dynamics are changing? And how do you do that whenever you're selling a service? How do you do that if you're, if you're a local business such as an insurance agency or a chiropractor that's wanting to be able to bring leads in? So whenever you're trying to work to scale a business, you really got to understand lead generation, lead nurture, etc. And I really didn't. And so I'm just using that as one example. Maybe it is sales for you. And so what I hope that you take away out of this is to give yourself a little bit of grace. If there is a deficit and I heard somebody said this, higher levels, higher levels, no, new levels, new devils. That's what it was. New levels, new devils. And so it really gets into this idea of, You're either growing or you're dying. So the more that you grow, there's going to be deficits in your beliefs. There's going to be deficits in your skills. There's going to be deficits, deficits, even possibly in your character traits of what it takes for you to continue to grow. And that's healthy. And so for me, just really getting a basic understanding of marketing was certainly a skill that I needed to understand and start learning at the time. What's a skill where you're at right now when you really think about it in your own journey, in your own business? Maybe it's leadership. I just really don't know exactly how to develop a culture. I hear culture, I hear it even talked about in these episodes, but I just really don't understand what it means to develop a healthy culture in my business. Hey, sometimes the hardest thing to do is to reach out to somebody and ask for help. That's another peer, that's another agent that's maybe a few steps ahead of you to say, hey, I'm kind of struggling in this area. Can you help me? I understand that you once struggled in this area too. What did you do specifically to be able to help you? And that helps you to put more time under the bar. That's been a healthy analogy, I guess metaphor for me to think about. Is I don't have this thing licked, but what do I need to do to put the time under the bar? Maybe that is reading a book all around marketing, just going deep in marketing. In fact, I'm probably going to do an episode at some point talking about information. You back a few weeks ago, I did one, ideas are everywhere, but implementation is everything. And that is so true. When you're learning something, you realize I need to put some time under the bar here. Okay, what are the podcasts I need to listen to? What are some of the best books on this topic that I need to— so for instance, one of the best marketers in the world, um, ever of all time is Dan Kennedy. Uh, so I've really studied a lot of Dan Kennedy over the last couple of years. Uh, 2018, I didn't even know who Dan Kennedy was, uh, let alone that he was probably one of the most influential marketers of all time. Uh, Frank Kern, Frank Kern is one of the best online ads people there is, and whether it's Facebook, YouTube, um, Google, et cetera, I mean, he knows everything there is to know about ads. So that's an example. Those are some of the people that I've wanted to be able to study so I could put the time under the bar of them. So I started gathering their books and then as I was learning, I was just, just retaining information. What do I now, do I now need to do with this? I'll give you a specific one around marketing. Copywriting. How do you write really good either landing pages or even what if it's marketing email? Doesn't have to be a landing page. Some of you are not in a position where you're doing landing pages for customers, but for some of you writing really great emails, how do you write a great email subject line and a hook and a call to action to get people who receive your email to be able to respond to you? That's quality copywriting. So, well, who are some of the best copywriters and what are the What are the templa— the principles that they're using? Ultimately, hopefully you get the point. It's just time under the bar. If you can take an honest assessment, come at it from a place of humility and say, I just don't really know what to do here. And then go and find, search out a peer, see what books, resources, courses that they've invested in. The absolute best money that I've ever spent. You hear me say often, The best use of money is to buy back your time. Well, one of those things, it's not just through getting yourself an executive assistant or through your team, but it's also through buying information and knowledge, going straight to people that have spent possibly their entire lifetime trying to understand this, understand these things. And I could just shortcut all of that if I go straight to them and buy that $1,000 course. And learn the secrets of success that they've put together. They've already done all the 10 years. I don't want to have to wait 10 years to do it, but I do understand it's not going to happen overnight. I've got to be able to put some time under the bar. Hopefully this has been helpful to you. Share it with someone. We appreciate, um, you doing that. And if you leave us a review on Apple or Spotify, that really helps us continue to get the word out. All right, everyone. Hope this has been a good return on your time and attention. Till next episode, lead well.

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