Lessons From The IBA Growth Program
We have just finished a huge week in Darwin with 22 remarkable business owners, who have each been a part of one of the seven Accelerate With IBA cohorts.
You are not your business
We try to create responsive and adaptable programs, so when the group told us they’d like a change in the language of the program, we were keen to agree.
We’d structured the week around seven questions, most of which used the word “I”.
The feedback was that they’d prefer to frame the questions around their businesses, not themselves.
Fair enough.
Interestingly, I’ve been in several other programs where the founders were specifically working through “I” questions rather than business questions, because that’s what was truly holding their businesses back.
In any case, we’ve long held the view that “you are not your business”; a business failure is not a personal failure, a business’s strengths can be different to your own, and a business does not need to carry your stories and insecurities.
That semi-detachment is helpful, particularly when it comes to advertising and taking risks.
Your business making big claims is not the same as you personally bragging.
Your business experiencing rejection or a setback is not the same as a personal rejection or setback (even though it will feel like it at first).
Your business will have an identity of its own, formed by you at first, but eventually by the whole team.
You’ll find that there’s a culture and reputation that take on a life of their own, and while you can influence or nudge it, you ultimately can’t force anything.
Hopefully, that semi-detachment can be liberating.
It lowers the stakes of your decisions, and means you don’t have to automatically carry over all of your stories to the business.
A good test question for those stories is “would I tell another entrepreneur to limit themselves in this way?”.
Growth across multiple currencies
I spoke to one business owner who was concerned that her revenue had been stagnant over the last three years.
Stagnant is another way of saying consistent, but I got the point, a lack of growth can seem alarming.
The catch is, her business is trading in several different “currencies” at once, and some are easier to measure than others.
These include:
· Revenue
· Profit
· Assets
· Quality of your work
· Family time
· Joy
Each year, you have a mix of these currencies, and get to make some interesting trade-off decisions.
So for example, you might make the same amount of revenue in two years, but if your costs are lower in the second year, you’ll keep more of it as profit.
Or perhaps your revenue is the same, but you worked four days per week instead of five.
Or your revenue is the same, but it’s with better clients who help you create better intellectual property and make the work more joyful.
It’s hard to call that “stagnant”.
Vice versa, you might increase your revenue by saying “yes” to too much work, or worse clients, or by not creating assets, or by eating into your personal time.
A business owner is constantly trading between these currencies, every time you say yes or no to a client, every time you re-invest, every time you review your calendar, every time you set your prices, every time you hire a new team member.
To me, revenue growth is less important than portfolio growth.
A Double-Checker and a Butt-Kicker
Sometimes growth comes from removing a bottleneck, and that bottleneck can be a technical problem or a story you’re telling yourself.
Removing a bottleneck takes courage and diligence – you want to make sure you’re right, but you also don’t want to waste time.
In a lot of cases, the entrepreneur suspects that they know what needs to happen, but it’s not eventuating.
That entrepreneur probably needs two good people in their life:
· A double-checker, who can objectively assess if their technical solution is fit-for-purpose.
· A butt-kicker, who can nudge them out of decision paralysis and call out their weird stories and rationalisations.
Each one on their own is insufficient, but the combination is powerful.
They don’t have to be the same person either, as long as you have someone knowledgeable to check your plans, and someone who you’ll listen to about moving out of your comfort zone.
“What will show Google that we know our shit?”
This was the question that helped one business owner reverse-engineer her successful SEO strategy.
By understanding how Google measures trustworthiness in her field, she worked out what content to create, and it worked beautifully.
You can borrow this question too – how does Google measure expertise in your field?
How do you show Google that you’re the right person for people typing questions into the search engine?
Google is a moving target, but information is readily available.
What worked five years ago might not work now, but it’s not hard to find the most modern advice on what is currently proven to be effective.
The Accidental Price Increase
One of the funniest stories of the week was during Lucrative Questions, when a business owner told us about how a mistake changed their pricing.
They had a new team member talking to a prospective customer on the phone, and the team member called out “What’s the price for (product) delivered to (location)?”.
The owner said “$70 for the product + $45 delivery”.
The team member said to the customer “Ok so it’s $70 plus $45, and $45 for delivery”.
As the owner went to correct them, they heard the customer instantly and cheerfully accept the offer and finalise the deal.
There’s mixed emotions whenever you find out you could have charged more, but in this case, the owners reviewed their pricing and saw that the market was willing to pay more, and that this extra margin could be fuel for the growth of the business.
“Hey how’d you do that?”
We ran a session called “Hey how’d you do that?”, in which people could ask questions to those in the room who had achieved something noteworthy or uncommon in their business.
Rather than hearing case studies from Silicon Valley or household brand names, people prefer stories that are honest, unpolished and realistic.
I’d argue that these are the best stories because they’re not for public consumption – you can be more upfront about how something actually happened.
That might be because you had some good luck, learned from a failure, had some unexpected support, spotted a loophole, or did something without realising what it would lead to.
The catch is that the story might not be “actionable” for you – their circumstances might not be a universal recipe for success, and the entrepreneur might not see which parts of their work are the most interesting.
A great session to run once people know, like and trust each other.
Now Is A Good Time For A Resolution
We have 60ish days left in 2022, which is a long time for building momentum.
There is a temptation to delay change until the new year – which is both understandable and completely arbitrary.
Nothing magical happens on January 1.
60 days is heaps – if you actually want to make the change.
60 days for writing, designing, website rebuilding, customer conversations, ad testing, pretty much anything worth doing.
It would mean that you go into January 1 with pace, with momentum, and a mix of lessons learned and genuine progress.
If you don’t want to make the change and are stalling until January 1, I’d suggest talking about it with your coach.
You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much a single conversation can help you reframe or rewrite your goals so that you’re looking forward to getting started.
Lead And Lag Measures
I ran an elective session called “Goals, Metrics and The Monkey’s Paw”, based on this post and the book The Four Disciplines Of Execution.
One of the core ideas was that a goal needs a lead measure and a lag measure.
Lag measures are the numbers that matter most, but can only be seen in hindsight.
They might include web traffic, sales, profit, reputation, partnerships, all good things that take time to develop.
Lead measures are the inputs, the things you can wake up and do each day, which eventually lead to the progress that gets picked up by the lag measure.
They might include the number of articles you write, sales calls you make, events you attend, partners you approach, hours spent on product development, etc.
The lead measure is imprecise, but it’s the thing you can control.
So if you’re training for a marathon, the lag measure might be “how far/fast I can run”, while the lead measure is “how many times I went for a run”.
Anyway, most people don’t have a good lead measure for their goals, which is a shame because they’re really motivating.
It’s so much simpler to do the work when you’re not obsessing over the end results.
If you want to improve your writing, the lead measure is “write and post an article today”.
There’s no stipulation that it has to be brilliant or popular, you can learn about that over time by looking at the lag measures, but the lead measure cements the habit.
Lead measures keep you going, but without expectation.
Your job might be to attend five conferences this year, not knowing which one will be the one where you have a life-changing introduction to a remarkable customer/partner/funder/teammate.
You don’t need to forecast where/when it will be, your job is to show up.
Good lag measurements are valuable for determining which things made the most difference and for seeing progress, but there’s time for that once you’re in good habits and are enjoying your progress.
Sales Is Recommendations
I recently read the book The Dumbest Guy At The Table by David Shein.
He has a great quote: “There is no better salesperson than a happy customer”.
I bet you’ve seen this for yourself, both when you hear a good recommendation and when you give recommendations, they’re more persuasive than any paid-for advertisement.
It’s a theme that came up over the week – sales gets easier when you think of it as making recommendations to your prospective customers.
You don’t need to push them towards anything that won’t serve them, but rather listen to their situation, ask good questions and make the best suggestions you can make.
That’s it.
The reason why it works is it lets you be honest to everyone, steering away the wrong customers and drawing in the right ones.
They won’t all buy from you, and they don’t all need to.
The point is that you made the best recommendation possible, which is rare, and people are likely to come back or refer others to you in the future.
Sales gets icky when you make a bad recommendation – pushing a product or service that isn’t in the customer’s best interests.
People who do this get stung by reviews – unhappy customers have avenues to share their bad experiences and warn others away from you.
This is a great example of a lead and lag measure.
The lag measures for sales (no. customers, total sales, etc) can be seen over time, but are bad goals on a daily basis.
How can you pre-determine how many sales you will make that day, especially if you don’t know who’s coming to talk to you?
The lead measure (number of customers you interacted with, number of great recommendations made) is within your control.
It takes longer to see the benefits, but you give yourself the best chance of success (and serving someone well) in every interaction.
Entrepreneurial Momentum Is Contagious
There’s something about hearing business owners talk about how they spotted a problem, took action and fixed it, or how they spotted an opportunity, took action and created a news product/service, that becomes a contagious way of thinking.
I think it’s because you start to see the patterns and want to approach your own situation in the same way; breaking the challenge into parts, taking a small risk, building momentum without expectation, trying things that might not work.
Spending time with people who do this will make you want to do it too, and that’s the benefit of a community of practice.
You don’t need to be in the same industry – it’s almost better if you’re not – but you learn how other entrepreneurs approach difficulties and possibilities.
It’s an uncommon way of working, but you can learn a lot of it through observation and intentional decision making.
It was genuinely delightful to work with so many of my favourite clients again, and to see them all benefit from each other’s wisdom.
This program has had seven past cohorts, each with stunning entrepreneurs, and I’ve been lucky enough to work with the past four.
I can’t wait to see what they all do next!
