Dave Gillen’s Post

**The snarling beast** This is the state that famous copywriter John Carlton says you should be in when you sell your product. It's something every business owner needs to try, so here's how you get into that state. Picture yourself really angry, and you're about to shout at a potential customer who is considering NOT using you or your product. You're going to SHOUT at them about the stupidity of even thinking about making that choice. This will uncover the core truth about why people should buy from you. You might end up saying things like... 📣 You will NOT find a comparable product anywhere near this price. 📣 We're the ONLY company to guarantee your results. 📣 We put DOUBLE the prep work into our jobs. 📣 Nobody in town can do this for you in LESS THAN 7 days. 📣 Ours last 3x longer than ANY alternative. 📣 It's worth 10x what we charge. 📣 Those cowboys will SCREW it up by... This is going to allow you to hit people in the face with the big reasons they would regret any other purchase but yours. And help you sell your product with passion. #marketing #sales #beastmode

If you want to be the CEO and earn the big bucks, you can never do this again: Run the business. As long as you are part of the business... >>You can't scale yourself. >>You can't sell yourself. >>You can't do the top job, so you can't get paid for the top job. The CEO role is lucrative, but you have to leave your old role behind to accept the role. P.S. The hard part is your business will SCREAM at you to come back, hold it, feed it, like a baby. But this is part of your business growing up. #scale #growth #businessownership #CEO #delegate

If you do one thing this week... Create a new role in your business. This role doesn’t need much time—just one hour per week. It’s a non-operational role. In this job you must not fill orders, answer emails, or manage people. Instead, your role is to stand outside the business (looking in). Identify the gap between the business you have and the business you want. Whether it's profit, lifestyle, or something else—spot the gap. Then come up with some ideas to close it. That’s it. P.S. And you can do it yourself. If you commit to this weekly, you'll begin to close the gaps just by spending regular time on them. And if you can keep showing up for this one task - especially when things get busy - you will always have the ability to change/rescue/grow your business. You are smart. You can solve these problems. You just need some time focused on the right things. #CEO #growthofficer #owner #business #brisbane

**Is this 5 minute efficiency boost worth $50k to you?" Making more money in a business is sometimes easier than we think, and here's an example. The 5 minute efficiency boost. Efficiency means getting work done faster. And if you get work done faster, you make money faster. And speed matters, because when we talk about making more money, what we really mean is making FASTER money. Because when a person makes $1m in 10 years compared to 1 year, the difference is speed. So what can we do in 5 minutes? Write down the 3 easiest ways you (or your team) can improve efficiency or productivity. Some that my clients have used: ⚙️ Start recording billable hours for all staff ⚙️ Staff to self-report on billable hours each week ⚙️ Set a productivity metric (KPI) for staff ⚙️ Install an incentive or bonus scheme for productivity KPI ⚙️ Staff to start timing every job they do ⚙️ Set a time limit for each job ⚙️ Write a 5 minute plan at the start of each job ⚙️ Set times for email/phone calls for less distractions during jobs ⚙️ Put phone on silent in key productive times of day ⚙️ Divert calls to a designated person/voicemail to protect important work You can come up with these yourself, or (better yet) get suggestions from your team. Once you've got your list of 3 things, schedule two team meetings. One to share the new measures with them. And another 1-4 weeks later to check on execution and results. If you increase efficiency by 10% that's $50,000 in a $500k/yr business for just a couple of hours of effort. If you're a freelancer on $50k it's $5k worth of extra income or 10% extra time in your week to grow the business. --- The trick is in making the list in 5 minutes, so you only capture the big obvious things, and so a small simple project doesn't become a big complex one. #efficiency #productivity #roi #speed

**If you need an excuse to get organised this week** There's one big reason to bring some order to your week, that has nothing to do with productivity. If you want to get help from a chef to bake a better cake, the person helping you will ask to see your recipe. If they can see what you’re doing now, they will immediately see some ways you can improve. If you can’t tell them the recipe (“oh it’s different each time” “oh I don’t measure the quantities”) then it’s hard to help you, and they will say you need a consistent recipe to make a consistently good cake. Bring some order to your week, purely so you can see the quantities going into your cake. With your recipe visible, your advisors, team, and peers all gain the ability to help you.  And most importantly you’ll find it easier to tweak your own recipe. You’ll see things like “oh we don’t have enough leads (cake) I’ll add some more marketing (recipe). It's part of going from amateur to pro. #cake #order #chaos

**How to be an ideas person without killing your productivity** If you're an ideas person, you love the excitement of something new, and you are always finding ways to make things better. But at times you may be unproductive, because when you invest too much time in new ideas (things that don't exist yet), there can be a lack of time spent on things that do exist (current customers, or things that keep your business healthy). So how do you get the right balance? For this you have to put your CEO hat on, and decide how much time you think should be spent each week on new ideas. And let's say we decide on 1/2 day per week, and we put it on Friday afternoon. Now you put a sheet of paper on your desk, write at the top NEW IDEAS TO EXPLORE ON FRIDAY and whenever an idea or strategy pops into your head during the week, you write it on the list and continue with what you're doing. This allows you to stay on task without sacrificing your idea, and then on Friday you pick one or two most valuable ideas to work on. Rather than spending time on 18 ideas that never come to fruition, we work on 2 ideas that we can turn into something. And we get to go deep on them, because we've got our 4 hours reserved, and we've also cleared some of those junk ideas that would have sucked up a lot of our creative energy for no result. #ideas #creativity #productivity #CEO #friday

"Overworked Business Owner Takes a Much-Needed Holiday, Returns to ‘We Hardly Missed You’—And Suddenly Unlocks the Door to Business Growth That Has Haunted Her for Years!" Saw this story play out AGAIN this week, as I have many times before. If you never teach your business to walk on its own feet, it's not going to skip and run and jump and do all the wonderful things you have planned for it. --- Observation: Owners usually have a goal to step back from the business, but they imagine it on a 3 to 5 to 10 year timeline. When a holiday or illness or pregnancy forces their hand, they miraculously figure it out in a month or less.

**There are NOT 40 hours in a week** Your next week is likely to fail if you continue budgeting to 40 hours. If you work a typical week, you get nowhere close to 40 real hours. In reality the number is closer to 20 than 40. Keep making this mistake and you'll feel like a failure. Never getting everything done. Falling further behind each week. "Why does it matter? I work hard either way." 1️⃣ When you have a good week, you deserve to feel good about it. 2️⃣ If you were limited to a small amount of fuel in your car for the week, would you rather know about it in advance so you could PRIORITISE? Or get caught out mid week and miss your most important trip on Thursday? #fuel #40hourworkweek #9to5 #8020principle

If you want to be the CEO and earn the big bucks, you can never do this again: Run the business. As long as you are part of the business... >>You can't scale yourself. >>You can't sell yourself. >>You can't do the top job, so you can't get paid for the top job. The CEO role is lucrative, but you have to leave your old role behind to accept it. P.S. The hard part is your business will SCREAM at you to come back, hold it, feed it, like a baby. But this is part of your business growing up. #scale #growth #businessownership #CEO #delegate

**Never solve the whole problem** Solving a problem completely can be a large, complex, and ongoing project. Think about solving operational efficiency, a complete sales system, or an end-to-end marketing funnel. If it takes a long time, the business FAILS TO BENEFIT for that period of time. What can we do about that? Your job is to solve the easiest, fastest portion of the problem that you can finish this week. Because... >>Your business profits immediately >>You get that winning feeling (instead of that "working on it" feeling) >>Long projects always get delayed (short ones don't) You end up with a business that is never perfect. But it's better every week. --- "Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change." -Tom Peters