When Things Aren’t Going Your Way, It Might Be Time To Re-Invent Yourself

If things aren’t necessarily going your way, you might need to reinvent yourself to get to the point where I am now in business. I went from being the mobile guy for over a decade to be in the funnel guy and now we train and coach digital agencies on how to launch more profitable, predictable revenue streams. And each and every time I had to reinvent myself or wanted to reinvent myself, not only did things get easier, but we were able to grow faster and getting and hitting the goals that I had for myself, both personally and in the business. I just got there a whole lot faster. So if you feel like you kind of just been chugging along doing the same thing and not much has been changing, it might be time for you to reinvent yourself. So let’s dive into a Facebook live that I actually shared into our free Facebook group called the scalable service provider. I’ll link that up below where I sort of shared my story on my, my evolution and reinvention so that you could hopefully have some inspiration to maybe make some changes in your business that you need to make. ... So let’s jump in for three years. My agency built funnels and automation systems for the biggest names in marketing today since then have transformed that agency into a hyper profitable training and consulting business. While everyone is out there talking about scale like it’s some sort of destination, we’ll be asking the real question, how do you transform your business into a more scalable model using the knowledge, skills and expertise that you already have? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share the strategies I’m using to build my multimillion dollar business. My name is Greg Hickman and welcome to scalable.

I wanted to hop on today. I was recording this morning, been recording a couple of podcasts episodes. This will probably end up being one of them. But kind of this notion of reinventing yourself. And I talked to obviously a lot of digital agency owners and service providers that are not necessarily happy with where are their businesses at right now. And I’ve also been interviewing a handful of our clients that have had success and, and one of the recent clients, Tim made a comment that said, you know, he knew that he needed to make a change in his business or else, you know, this time next year, 12 months from now, he’d be in the exact same place. And that was sort of the tipping point when he decided to start working with us. And since then his business has dramatically changed and we’ve been working together for over a year. And this concept of reinvention, um, you know, in many ways a lot of our clients are transforming how they do business.

And in order to do that, they also need to transform how they look at themselves and call it reinvention. And I wanted to quickly share, many of you that are either new here or you know, never even heard this story. I wanted to, to share a little bit of my backstory because I’ve had to reinvent myself multiple times. And if you ask, uh, you know, some of my closest friends I remember, you know, my peers often used to say like, you’re a master at reinventing yourself because for the longest time when I started my, when I started working for myself, when I jumped into entrepreneurship and I left my full time job, I was the mobile guy, I helped companies use mobile websites, mobile apps, text message marketing. And I came out of the agency world and specifically kind of the retail world. And I was trying to help small, independent retail companies do all, you know, capitalize on, on the mobile opportunity while also trying to figure out how could I help the people, um, that I really wanted to serve, which were the online entrepreneurs with mobile.

But when I tried to help them with mobile, none of them really actually cared about mobile marketing. They were interested in what it meant for their business, but I really had nothing to sell them so I couldn’t really sell them any of the services because at that time they’re really outside of responsive WordPress websites. There really wasn’t much to offer, but for the better part of a decade, I was the mobile guy and I got into the online entrepreneurship space by speaking at events that had online entrepreneurs about mobile marketing and so for about, again a better part of a decade, I was known as the mobile guy and when I broke out on my own it was hard. I couldn’t break 10K a month and I kept hitting my head against the wall. For any of you that used to listen to one of my original podcasts called zero to scale.

When I launched that podcast, we did 101 episodes. Me and my co host, Justin, episode one I had a company called mobile marketing engine and it was a productized service around text message marketing and we were trying to get to 20 K a month and around episode 50 it was somewhere between like 40 and 50 as when I pivoted and systemly the company that I have now came to be, and it was a really difficult decision to make because I have S I’d spent the better part of a decade becoming the mobile guy, but I wasn’t able to build the business or the life that I wanted at that time. I think I was way early to mobile. I was in it for a while before the iPhone even came out, so to date myself, but it just hadn’t hit the market that I really wanted to serve and that would allow me to create the business and lifestyle that I wanted.

And so it came time where I had to say, okay, what’s more important? Me being the mobile guy are mean me being me, having a business that is, you know, successful and that can grow. And it took me a really long time to shed the like passion for wanting to continue to be the mobile guy. And finally I said, you know what? Let me go see if I can go get a few clients in on the podcast. If you followed that podcast and that journey, my cohost, Justin said, how many new clients would you need to get in order to consider the next thing? And at the time, the next thing was helping people with infusion soft because I had been using that in my business. I knew a lot of online entrepreneurs used it. And so he said, all right, well how many clients would make you unlock the permission to think about what this could be if you took it to the next level?

And the fi, uh, I said, if I can get three clients in the next 30 days, uh, I would consider, you know, what this could be. And maybe transitioning out of being this mobile guy. And in six days we had seven clients and within 30 days we were making more money than we were making in the mobile business. And it was clear to me that I needed to start making a change and I utilize a lot of my experience and learnings that got me to that, you know, to be where I was at being the mobile guy. Um, and with the new angle, the new approach, the new offering, I was able to get off the ground a whole lot faster based on the things that I had learned doing it the old way. And so why is this all important? Um, well, very quickly after that, because I started doing the Infusionsoft stuff, I became known as the funnel guy, at least for a specific market of people that, you know, knew who I was and nobody even knew that I was the mobile guy anymore.

And people were just like, Oh, Greg’s the Infusionsoft funnel guy. And that allowed me to get my business, you know, moving really, really quickly by reinventing who I was and what my expertise was. And I talked to so many digital agency owners today that have been stuck for 12 months, 24 months longer and they’ve been doing the same thing because they don’t want to stop that. They love what they do more than they actually love the result that they want that thing to get them to. And it might be time to reinvent yourself. It might be time to say, Hey, I’m no longer the agency that does X, Y, Z because I want to serve this market over here and my skills can work over there or maybe I don’t want to do done for you anymore. And I want to add on coaching and consulting and start making that transition.

That is the transition that we made after I was the funnel guy. We want to just start teaching people and training people because that’s what we really enjoyed and now we don’t really do any done for you anymore and we do a whole lot of done with you and coaching and training and it’s been great. And many of our clients are trying to make that transformation themselves. And in order to make that transformation, in many ways they have to reinvent themselves the way they approached the market, the way they sell, what they sell, the way they do, what they do all requires them to evolve and iterate and, and innovate on all of the skill sets and experience they’ve up until that point. But now when they put them towards this new thing, they actually do it a whole lot faster. And so oftentimes the, a lot of the people I speak with, you know, they’re afraid to make this transition because it’s uncertain, like most things.

But of course it’s uncertain. You’ve never done it before, but everything you’ve done up until this point has been kind of positioning you and readying you for the ability to tackle this new thing. You’ve probably learned a lot about yourself and how to grow your business up until the point that you’ve grown into now and all of those things are, you’re not throwing that away. I was throwing away the mobile guy, the label of the mobile guy, but I wasn’t throwing away all of the experience and the skill sets that I had acquired up until that point. I just refocus them on becoming this new thing and in a matter of months people were looking at me in a new way and the types of clients that I were getting I was getting were completely different clients that I wanted to serve and then we did it again as we transitioned out of being an agency into more of a, a coaching consulting and a training company, and you guys can do the same.

Many of you are in here because you wanted to scale and transform how and systemize automate your agency, but a lot of that comes with what you do and how you sell it. We got good at productizing services and helping our clients launch coaching programs because when we wanted to sell them funnels and they came to us and, and we wanted to sell them automation and they paid us to deliver this automated sales system. I said, what do you sell? And they had a hundred things that they would sell. And guess what? You can’t create a high converting funnel when the offer is we do everything for everybody. So in just doing what we were doing, we were pushed into getting really good at another thing. And I think whatever you want for yourself, whatever that is on the next, you know, the next level for you is on the other side of you starting to make a change and innovating and really starting to reinvent yourself.

Because if you’ve been stuck even for six or 12 months, let alone longer two years, like some of the people that have come to us, clearly you’re not going to get there doing the same things or trying to iterate very small fee like on the same things you’re doing is probably gonna require some sort of bigger mindset shift. Like a reinventing yourself, like a doing less, not offering all of the services but offering a specific service. Niching down. Simplifying. One of my mentors gave me a theme for w a year ago, which was simplify and multiply. In order to multiply you need to simplify things. And I think, you know, kind of bringing this back full circle is if I didn’t sit there and was willing to let go of this identity that I had created for myself and reinvent myself, what I sold, who I sold to, how I sold it, how I showed up, I wouldn’t have even gotten to this point.

And I just see a lot of people out there and maybe, maybe I’m pointing fingers, no I am 100% pointing fingers cause this is, if this is you, you need to hear it. If you’ve been complaining about things not going your way and everything you’ve tried is not working well likely the things you need to try, you haven’t even considered yet, which is why you need to go get help. So if you haven’t gone to get help to reinvent yourself and you don’t know how to do it and or aren’t willing to spend another 12 months to, you know, three years trying to figure it out on your own, you have to get help. Thankfully, you know, we’ve been able to create a process for ourselves in our clients. So if you want our help, we’d be happy to chat about it. But this is not a pitch.

This is just, I think you might need to reinvent yourself if you’ve been stuck and things aren’t going your way. And that is okay. It is okay to reinvent yourself because you need to ask yourself what is more important? The identity that you currently hold, that is has you struggling, not happy and continuing to want more for yourself but haven’t been able to get it or reinventing yourself. And in some ways starting over. But with all of the skill sets and expertise you’ve built up until this point and pointing it towards something new that you are passionate about, that you have skills for and that will really put you on the trajectory for the goals that you want. For us. We replaced all of our done for you revenue and doubled that in 11 months. And while that might seem long for you in the grand scheme of things, it’s really fast.

It’s really possible for a lot of you. This is why I like a lot of these programs that are like six week courses and 90 day programs are kind of BS because some of them are promising you this entirely new life and new business and you can’t build a business in 90 days. Yes, you can get some traction. And yes, like I know people that can’t even get out of their own way in 90 days, let alone, you know, transform their entire business. So it’s gonna take some time and you need to be committed to doing this for the long game, especially if you want to build a longterm sustainable business. But 11 months, 12 months to like dramatically transform how you do business, to kind of set a new foundation for yourself to catapult into the next level. That’s not that long in the grand scheme of things.

So if you’re sitting here listening and you are tired of where you’re at, you should probably consider reinventing yourself. And if you found this helpful, I would love you to share this with somebody that you might think needs to hear it. And again, if you want to hear how we can help you, we have a, uh, a group program, a 12 month coaching experience where we can help transform your business step-by-step, done with you, access to myself, my team, a whole group of experts dedicated to you making this transformation. Then, um, private message me, send me a DM PR, private message, wherever you’re at, wherever you’re watching this, and we can talk about how we might be able to help. But really it just might be a time to reinvent yourself. So hope this finds you guys well, enjoy your Tuesday talk soon.

If I give you five to 10 new clients, would you or your agency break if so, your current agency model is broken? I struggle with this too, until I found a better way. By adding online programs, training, and coaching to our agency, we doubled profits without adding more hours. If you want to work directly with me and my team to transform your agency, visit my scalable business.com to learn more.