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Intro: I’m Paul Higgins, an ex-corporate executive turned business owner who, for five years, struggled to grow a cloud Consulting business whilst battling a chronic disease. With the help of mentors and experts, I got the business model right, built a sales and marketing engine, and developed a high-performing team that ended in a successful exit. I received a kidney transplant from a mate, and now on my second life, I dedicate my time to helping other Cloud Consultants go quickly with less effort to enjoy life. Detecting an accent, I'm an Aussie working globally from Melbourne, Australia. I interview successful Cloud Consultants sharing their scaling story to give you inspiration and practical tips. I have dedicated experts for Cloud Consultants on the show to save you time and money by working with the right people. If you want to scale quickly with less effort to enjoy life, you're in the right place. Let's get started.

(0:55): Imagine this,  you're working long hours and putting in 100% effort. It comes at the sacrifice of your family, friends and those hobbies that you really miss. But the results simply aren't there. You wonder what you are doing which is causing this rut and you can't seem to get out of it. 

(1:11): Hello, I'm Paul Higgins and welcome to episode 488 of the Cloud Consultants Show. Today we'll cover the five things which are causing you to be in this rut and how to turn it around. Now, I want you to pause for a moment and do one or two things. One is write down what you think these five things are, if you've got the ability to do it, or if not,  just think about it in your head,  right? You might be out riding your bike, walking, whatever it is, just think about it in your head. What do you think are the five things that are holding you back from getting the results that you truly need? So pause and just take a minute to do that. 

(1:51): OK, you've got your five, right? Let's see how many of your five are the same as mine. So here are my five. Working with the wrong clients, abdicating sales, stuck in delivery, feature driven, and the last one, and one I don't think you would have thought of,  stubbornness, being stubborn. So did you get the same as me?

(2:18): OK, let's start with a number one,  working with the wrong clients, and then we'll go through each of them individually. So when you have your first sales call with a prospect, you intuitively know that they're not the right client for you, right? Everything's screaming, don't do this. But it would help if you really had that revenue, right? And you might have just employed someone, you might have promised you got something personal that you got to pay for, whatever it is, right? And you think, you know what, maybe this time around it will be different, right? I'm an optimist and I really believe that this person won't end up like the last person when I had that exact same feeling. Sound familiar? You know how this plays out, right? I cannot ever think where that hasn't played out the way that I thought it wasn't going to, i.e. when I thought they weren't the right client, they never ended up being the right client. So how do you prevent this? Look, it's really simple, hard to implement, but simple to come up with. You come up with a really strict criteria on who you want to work with and then you stick to it, right? So another way of saying it is position yourself towards the people you want to work with, which will help repel the people you don't. And ultimately, it all starts with your LinkedIn profile, which is one of the most powerful tools. And yes, you can replicate that in your website, but your profile is what most people come and look at first. So by clearly saying who you want to work with on your profile, it helps the wrong client to deselect themselves, right? So you don't even have to wait to get into the call. And at the end, I will give you a resource to help you with this, right?  

(4:00): So that was the first one, which was all about working with the wrong clients. So the next one, number two, abdicating sales. So sales is hard, right? And I get it. And especially if you're an introvert, you've come from a technical background and you've never done sales before and you've had limited training. I understand why you want to give it to someone else. And look, I always do role plays with my clients and I just forget how much experience I've can help others with and I can understand, you know, because I sometimes find it hard to do sales and I've got all that experience. So I completely get it. But trust me, 99% of the time when you advocate sales,  e you get someone else to do it, it does not work. Right. Actually, I haven't found the 1% yet, but I just wanted to have a little bit of a buffer there. Hiring a sales development person to work on commission, which really you can only afford probably in the position you're in, just sounds too good to be true. And guess what? It is right as the owner, you should do the sales, but that doesn't mean you have to do all of it. So I get that. Right. You can give the sales admin part of someone else who then leaves you with the most important thing, which is the calls. So we've covered so far working with the wrong clients and abdicating sales. 

(5:18): So we've covered so far working with the wrong clients and abdicating sales. So number three is stuck in delivery. I think you know this one all too well, and I'm guessing it would have to be in your top five. I'd be absolutely shocked if it wasn't. You might have reworded it differently, but ultimately it's the same thing. Am I right? Have you ever watched the dog behaving badly shows? There's one on in Australia at the moment and it is not the dog they focus on. Right. And that's, I think they're called the godfather of dogs or something. This current person, they focus on the owner, not the dog, but the owner. Right. And it's the exact same thing here. It's not your team's lack of taking on responsibility that's holding you back. It's you not letting go that is holding your back. And one simple way to find out. Right. And you definitely deserve this is go on two weeks leave. Now you've got time to prepare for it, etc. And you know, you can look at the current tasks you're doing and you can, you know, I always look at the three days you can do it, which is one option. But if you're not there, you can't, you can delegate it and you can delete it. So do all of that in preparation for two weeks, but go away for two weeks. And unless it's an absolute emergency, no one can contact you. It's a forced constraint and it's going to really help you getting out of your own way, letting go and letting other people in the same take on that responsibility.

(6:41): Okay. So, so far we've covered working with the wrong clients. Number one,  number two, abdicating sales and number three, stuck in delivery. So next is number four, which is feature driven. Okay. I read five to 10 LinkedIn profiles, probably more than that, a day of tech consultants and what do I get? I get certifications, right? Even worse. I see profile banners covered with certifications. If you're a Salesforce partner, unfortunately, you're probably amongst the worst. Right. I hope you don't personally do it, but I see so many that do. And I'll say this and I'll only say it once. Your customers don't care about your certifications. It's just a right of entry, right? It's just the right to play the game. They only care about the results you get them. Stop selling drills and only sell holes, right? How often do you talk about the features of a product rather than the results and the benefits that it's going to provide? Right. You know, all the detail and I get that you're bringing it, what you do, you know, all the machinations, how you could do it, but that's not what your customers want, especially if you're working with business owners that are time poor. Right. They just want the result.  

(7:50): So, okay. We've covered so far four things working with the wrong clients, abdicating sales, stuck in delivery and feature driven. You're ready for the last. So this last one is my favorite because it is something that I see all the time, which is the easiest to fix, to be honest. And I mentioned it before. Yes. It's been stubborn or stubbornness and check GPT defines stubborn as a person's unwillingness to change your opinions, beliefs or actions to despite receiving valid reasons or permission to do so. It often applies a firm resolute or obstinate attitude in maintaining a particular stance or refusing to yield to other requests or suggestions. Right. So that's the definition by chat GPT. Just test and see if you get the same one. 

(8:40): But what I love is that, you know, you're an independent thinker, right. And you have taken the brave step to set up your own tech consulting business, which is absolutely wonderful, but that doesn't mean you have to do everything on your own. Right. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. I know this because I was so stubborn when I started my own tech consulting business and it costs me millions, literally it costs me millions of dollars in lost opportunity by not listening to somebody else. I once had a mentor in 2013 who was incredibly successful and he showed me the facts as to why my strategy wasn't going to work and, you know, he really gave me a proven path out of it, but I was too stubborn to listen. I'm going to be the one that runs against the grain. I'm going to be the only one that can do it. Right. And the sad thing is it wasn't just the money that was the lost opportunity. It was the damage that I did to my marriage, which really, really hurt me  because they could see that I was being stubborn as well. And I would not listen. So you don't have to do it all on your own. Right. Be open to getting help. Okay. Let's recap the five. One, working with the wrong clients, two, abdicating sales, three, stuck in delivery, four, feature driven,  and number five is stubborn. 

(9:56): And as I mentioned, I have a resource to help you with number one, which is working with the wrong clients. Just go to paulhigginsmentoring.com/ICP. It's going to be in the show notes and get the resource to help you to create your ideal client profile, to repel those wrong clients on your LinkedIn profile and everywhere else. So three key actions. One, download the ICP resource. Paulhigginsmentoring.com/ICP. Take one action and one action only out of the five. Right. And then make it public and commit to it. Bottom line, avoiding these five things will save you money. And it will also save you relationships. Ready, set, go. See you next time for more quick and simple ways to grow your tech consulting business and live more of the life you want right now. 

Outro: Learning is just one piece of the puzzle. it is now time for action. Head to Today's show page at paulhigginsmentoring.com/podcast, get the links, and put it into action. Head to your favorite podcast platform, subscribe, rate, and review the show. Suggest topics for me to cover at [email protected], and don't wait one more minute to gain access to content, especially for you, a cloud consultant at paulhigginsmentoring.com/newsletter. This could be the difference between wasting time figuring it out yourself or scaling quickly with less effort to enjoy life.