The Four Faces of Avoidance (And How They're Costing You Clients)

0:01 Being great at what you do doesn't automatically make you great at business. The skills that got you here won't get you there. This is Path to Mastery, the raw and real business podcast for service-based entrepreneurs, consultants, and practitioners ready to stop chasing tactics and start building foundations that scale. Hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop, co-founders of Empire Partners. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the Path to Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. Bishop, Bishop. Buenos, buenos, buenos, dias, dias.

0:41 What's up, you're... Oh, I so you and I were chatting the other day and you reminded me of of a story that that we're going to have an opportunity to tell on this episode. And it happens to be, by the way, I just want to give you a shout out happens to be about your well, it involves anyway, your Uncle Mark. And a lot of people listening to this may not know that you wrote a book that everybody, by the way, that has read this book, it fucking raves about it, dude. It's called Uncle Mark. You can find it on Amazon. It's fantastic. And yeah, you should check it out.

1:21 I agree. I think it's amazing. Whoever wrote that's incredibly good looking. Really, really, really ridiculously good looking. Uh, we'll link it up in the show notes to make it easy for you. But, uh, dude, let's dive in here. I want to kind of go, I want to kind of dive into this story. This is sort of real centric to a time when you were sort of, you know, kicking things off in sales. So, uh, tell us, lay it out for us here. Yeah. So it was, I wouldn't say it was my first sales gig, but it was my first phone sales gig, which for anyone who's done like hardcore phone sales, it's, it's a different animal. It's a different beast, right?

2:02 You can't see people's body language. Like you can't see where their eyeballs are going or if they're washing the dishes or whatever the heck it is that they're doing. So you have to go on a lot more blind faith. But anyways, back when I kicked into gear, I was actually doing appointment setting and phone sales for my Uncle Mark. Excuse me. For a company called Pahio. So Pahio was this was actually a timeshare company that was based in Kauai. So the one of the largest developers in Kauai. Beautiful properties. But they wanted to set up a mainland office. Okay. So hopefully setting the stage here. Phone sales. Timeshare.

2:43 Property, not here, far, far away. Okay, this was in California. So for me as somebody who I was 18 at the time, my first day, I put my, you know, my phone headset wasn't, earmuffs weren't nearly as big as the ones I'm wearing right now, but I had on my Plantronics headset, right? And I start making my phone calls. And to say that that first day was abysmal would be a massive understatement. I got my ass handed to me. It was literally because we were here's the crazy part. We were calling people who had already purchased a timeshare and then labeled themselves unhappy. Oh, oh, this is fun.

3:24 So not only are we in like the wildest industry to try and do sales and to begin with, but we're actually calling people who already spent money and they were pissed off. Oh, boy. And our job was to turn them around to get them to buy more timeshares. Right. Yeah. So this was like, you know, when we hear from people nowadays and talk about like selling coaching and like, oh, people don't want my product. Yeah, I'm going to call bullshit. Go to my self timeshare to somebody who spent 30 to $50,000. They haven't used it. They're pissed off because whatever the heck they told in the beginning, they lied to them all over Timbuktu. And now you got to go sell them again. So at the end of day one, I was literally in tears.

4:06 So in this little office, and that wasn't a little office, maybe it was like 700 square feet. So it's just Mark and I, we had very fancy aloha decor, right? And we have these two little desks and we wore our Tommy Bahama Hawaiian t-shirts and we're on the phone. And so I'm literally making these phone calls. I get to the end of the day. I didn't book one freaking person. And I'm crying. I'm like, why did I leave working at the restaurant? Like, I can't do it. And Mark pulls me aside. He's like, well, what were your expectations today? I'm like, I wanted to book every freaking person to answer their phone.

4:47 And he's like, so expectations versus reality. He's like, look, if your expectations is every single person you talk to that picks up the phone, if you think you're going to book them into an appointment, like you're just going to set yourself up to just be upside down. Because there's certain things you have control over. There's certain things you can influence. And there's a whole lot of shit you have no control over. And so if you're demanding of yourself perfection, like it's just a losing game. He's like, now, if we go for excellence, let's rewind the tape from today. And then we unpacked what came up and we rewired a whole new script and a whole new structure.

5:28 But what he gave me was huge. He goes, look, he goes, of the 10 people, let's just say you talk to 10 people. You're going to talk to two people that should absolutely schedule because they need what you're sharing with them. Yep. There's also going to be two people that come hell or high water. It doesn't matter if you speak 15 different languages and you magically land on their specific language. They still won't book because they're that angry or they don't want what you have. Now, the people who become freaking amazing, the people who can magically massage the people in the six people in the middle, that's where influence really comes into the fold. So he's like, let's just get two per day.

6:09 Let's start there. And then, you know, 20% is probably a better way of looking at that. And then let's massage in to see how much stronger we can get to get some of those six there in the middle. And it just changed my paradigm entirely where I'm like, oh, I don't have to enroll each person or get each person to book an appointment. Um. I just have to get better and better and better. And it was literally over the course of about 30 days, I was running about a 50% to 70% clip. So weird. That's freaking awesome. And I think that, well, first of all, I think we've talked about this before, but I was actually on phone sales in a bullpen selling timeshares.

6:50 No way. When I was like 17, 18 years old. We did not talk about this. How did we? I don't even know how we've skipped. So just for all you listeners, we also just found out we have we share the same middle name. We didn't know this. Yeah. Literally, just the other day we find this out. Yeah. Freaking wild. Okay. So you were in a bullpen doing time for sales? I had no idea. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. The point of your story is more important, but my dad had a partnership where he and his primary business partner funded this travel agency.

7:30 And the travel agency decided to do like a telemarketing offer. And, yeah, so same thing. I was selling vacation packages, which eventually turned into timeshares because, you know, they'd take them out on the boat, you know, for like two and a half hours, lock them up, get your drone. I like to do a higher timeshare. Sweat it out until that fucking card comes out. Yeah. Yeah. So that's pretty crazy. But, you know, going back to your story, I think one of the most powerful things about this is that it shifted your lens of, of what success looked like. And if I'm just listening to you, you know, tell this story, when you started, you, you had your, your, your perspective was obviously warped compared to like what actual success was going to look like.

8:25 Right. Yeah. And it's fascinating because. What that boils down to at the end of the day, we see this in business constantly. People don't have, they have either A, they don't have the experience to understand what success should actually, you know, should actually look like. Or B, they have a sense of that and they're not actually, they don't actually know their numbers enough to know, are they on track? Are they off track? Are they like wildly successful? Are they, you know, in the fucking dumpster? And I think that having that realization early, it's really interesting. What did that do for you as it relates to like metrics and numbers and understanding that when you got that lesson early?

9:11 How did that shape things for you? Well, it was interesting because that first day when Mark's like, well, how many did you book? The reality was I didn't book any. So it was very easy for me to be like, oh, zero. His next question was, which was a fascinating one is he goes, well, how many people did you connect with? And I'm like, I don't know. Hmm. Right. So he's like, well, where are you tracking? And I'm like, tracking what? So it was because I was so nervous to get on the phones and I wasn't really thrilled with the results that were happening. I didn't want to track anything. Right. Because all I was thinking in my head is win, lose. Like there was that, you know, the days of playing sports, like we either win the game or we lose the game.

9:53 And then when he highlighted for me, hey, we need to like track the activity to see how good of a job we're doing with it. It's like, oh, when you flip over your baseball card and you see there's like 15 other things that people are engaged on. I'm like, oh, there's probably some other numbers that I should be looking at in the given day. And again, this was just purely with booking appointments. Yeah. Most people just look at how many appointments did I book or, you know, how did my day roll? And when I really started looking at like, how many calls did I make? How many people picked up? What time of day were they picking up? How many people did I have a meaningful conversation with? And then how many people did I book and how many of those were like, I started like unpacking the different pieces to the puzzle to really figure out like, oh, yeah.

10:34 We're making all these calls, but they're end of day and no one's answering their phone. Like that's kind of a big deal. Let's flip flop that so that we can make a better move. So going back to the original question, I wasn't tracking squat to begin with. And I honestly, I had an aversion to tracking because I was scared of what the numbers would say because I felt like I wasn't winning. Okay. So I love that you said that because that leads us kind of like right into what we're going to focus on today, which is it's around metrics. It's around tracking. It's around why these numbers are important, actually understanding what numbers are important, what happens if you don't, what happens if you do.

11:17 Because at the end of the day, what both of us know through a lot of experience is that in the world of business, if you don't know your numbers, I'm just telling you right now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, if you're not already fucked, you will be. Not the good kind. Not the good kind. Seriously, you will find yourself completely out of business before too long if you don't pay attention to this stuff. And I think what's interesting about this is that I think there's a lot of avoidance around tracking metrics. We deal with this all the time. All the time.

11:58 And I think that what we did is we kind of broke this down. We're going to have some fun with this, but we kind of broke this down. And I want you, as you're listening to this, I want you to kind of track along and figure out if you're avoiding tracking your metrics right now, which one of these are you? So the first one is the non-starter. This is the person who says, yeah, but it's too, I'm so early on in my business. I'm not far enough along that this matters yet. Right. So they put it off until later or when I'm when I'm making enough money or when I'm a real company.

12:46 Right. I can hire somebody else to track all these things for me. Uh huh. Yeah. So I want to talk about this, dude. What? Tell me a little bit about what you've seen here. What are the dangers of that mindset at the beginning where it's like, ooh, I'm just not big enough yet or it's not important enough yet? So this was an interesting Markism as well as obviously working with Tony Robbins. This was a huge piece there. The thing that both of them beat into my brain was you build the business for what you desire the business to be, not for where the business is at, which might sound semi counterintuitive when we talk about path to mastery of like, are you in startup stability, success or mastery?

13:29 However, when it came to habits, when it came to the muscles we're cultivating, they're like, if you want to be a $10 million business, behave and adopt the identity and the mindset of somebody who has a $10 million business. And one of those key pieces was you have to track your numbers. You have to track your metrics. And I think where the wheels fall off for so many people. Usually when people get into business on their own, there's numerous reasons why people do it. Whether they lose their job, so they go, screw it. I'm going to do something to offset my income. Or they quit their job and they're like, I'm going to go out on my own. Screw you. I'm going to give it to the man. Right? Or they do a side hustle and it starts to take off.

14:10 But what we see happen so often is this is a fundamental, like a core fundamental. And it's a muscle that you have to build. And I'm going to be honest with you. It's not fun. Well, let me take it back. There's ways to make it somewhat fun and you can hijack your brain, but we can talk about that today too. But all in all, it's not really fun to just be like counting beans, right? One, two, three. How many calls did I make? I don't know. Let me tabulate these up. It's boring. But it's so necessary because when you get into these bigger companies, when we were talking about this yesterday, so a company that will go unnamed, I was asked yesterday to look at their reports.

14:50 So I pulled up their system to look at their reports. I shared this with you, Ryan, so I won't popcorn it over to you. But for those that are listening, I want to put this in context. So this company is doing probably $150 to $200 million. They had 35,000 reports. What the fuck? 35,000 reports. Now, their world's a little bit off track because they didn't have somebody who's like the report master. Anyone can create a report. So when you have a huge company, there's a lot of reports that get created. Now, they also had 8,000 dashboards. Now, each dashboard carries 20 reports. That is a whole... So I think there's also another piece to this, which I want to make sure we chat about today, which I think I'm anticipating we will.

15:35 You can go overboard on numbers to a different degree. And we'll, we'll talk about that here in a second, but, uh, If you want to build that muscle of like, if you really want a truly established larger company where we see people get stuck in that startup to stability world. The first question we ask is, what are your numbers? And they usually go, I don't know. I don't know. So how do you optimize to get out of startup into stability? Like the first thing we usually ask people to do, start tracking your damn numbers. So, but from your perspective, what are some of the other pieces you're seeing just as it relates to? I would just add this. I think that people have this backwards. And I would sort of equate it to this.

16:17 You know, as you know, I was a big golfer for a really long time. I wouldn't categorize myself as that right now because I'm just not playing, which is ridiculous. And that's another story for another day. No shame on it. And the Pats are astray. I've played golf very well for a really large part of my life. And it's funny because I played so many times with people who are not very good. And we would talk about that, but I'm not very good. It was several. They would they would talk about they would talk about their clubs. And they would say, oh, yeah, you know, I just, you know, I've had these for I've had these for years.

17:03 And I think about going out and like getting fitted for my clubs, you know, but like I'm not good enough for that. So here's the interesting thing. Anytime anybody would tell me that, I'd say, OK, so check this out. You're not very good as it is like no judgment. Right. But you're not very good as it is. And your logic is I'm not going to buy the more expensive, better, more forgiving golf clubs because I'm not very good. So basically, you're just kicking yourself in the balls, you know, while you're at it here.

17:47 When you're not good, you need all the freaking help you can get. You better go get fitted. You better go get some decent golf clubs if you suck. Because a pro could go get a stick and put a spoon on the end of it and hit a golf ball better than you can. And you think that you got to wait until you're really good to get the great clubs. It's the other way around. And it's the same thing here. We should end the call right there, by the way. I don't even think we have to talk about the other pieces. And we're done. But it's the same thing here where at the beginning, the beauty of tracking your numbers at the beginning is that it's so simple.

18:35 It's literally so simple you could write it down in a notebook. It doesn't cost anything either. That's the crazy part. It doesn't. And here's one of the other pieces is that later on down the road, one of the other things that stops people is when they already have a machine that's running and things are getting better and there are actual metrics to be tracking. Now, all of a sudden, it feels like it has snowballed. And if you'll just do this from the beginning, it will be simple. And as you grow, it gets complex, but it's not this huge, heavy lift now. You're just incrementally making it a little bit better and a little bit, you know, a little bit more sophisticated.

19:19 So... That's what I would say about the beginning. Not to, well, I'll piggyback on the golf one. Because in surfing, it was the same thing, right? People are like, I'm going to try surfing out. And I think that's kind of the piece too, is like, there's not a full commitment to excellence, which I think comes into that whole play. And in the surfing world, similar to the golf club analogy, people would just go out and buy the cheapest board they could get. And they'd go out in waves that they shouldn't be in. And they'd be like, I suck. It's like, no, you put yourself in the wrong situation. You're not doing the right things. And then now you give up because you're not doing the right things.

19:59 Yep. Yep. And you're only tracking one piece of the puzzle versus those micro improvements. And that's where the momentum really comes from. Yeah. Yeah, it's really true. It's really true. All right. So number two, if you're not the top starter... You might be the ostrich, the old head in the sand. That was me. Uh-huh. This is the person who is avoiding tracking because they already suspect that the numbers are quote-unquote bad. They don't like it. They don't like how it would feel. And so they don't want to see it.

20:41 So I'm just going to stick my head in the sand and pretend that there are no numbers. They don't exist. Because they're bad, right? This is a tough one. And honestly, I feel like each one of these, by the way, points to what informs your identity. You make decisions like this where I'm just going to stick my head in the sand and pretend that this doesn't exist. Where else are you doing this? Ruh-roh. Yes. The interesting one with this thing. And I guess it's not even limited to our space. I think it's just life in general.

21:21 We give meaning to these numbers. Yep. There's a story we attach to it. So like, just like myself, I was like, I needed to book everyone I talked to. So I had a meaning that I associated to it, which was if I don't book everyone, I'm a failure. Hmm. Right. Which went back to when I was early in high school, I used to love talking on the phone. Girlfriend. Right. And I talk on the phone all the dang time. And my dad came, he would come in and be like, are you on the dang phone again? He's like, you're going to go broke. What are you going to do? Make money talking on the phone? Well, then when I was not getting people to book appointments, there was that part of my brain that was like, you suck. You're a failure.

22:02 Your dad is right. Now, lo and behold, fast forward in time. It was pretty interesting because my dad's like, you make a ton of money on the phone. I'm like. Imagine that. But with this, when we attach our stories to these numbers, here's the crazy part. Most of us have no freaking clue if the numbers are even good, bad, or indifferent. We just assume if it's not 100% that we've lost, like I did, right? Mm-hmm. And so I think that'll be an important piece today. And I know in a little bit, we're going to go over what things we should be tracking. And I think we're going to hit on some different pieces too of like, what are industry standards? What's good, bad, and different? And like where, if you're hitting certain numbers, you're actually killing it. And I think that, that clarity is power.

22:44 Yeah. Because then we can gauge against something that's real and not perfection. Yeah, that's really well said, dude. And And I think that this is a key, you know, there's the story that we write about it. And in a lot of cases, yeah, there's baggage a lot of times, right, that holds us back. But one of the superpowers I believe is necessary to develop is, especially if you are a business owner or an entrepreneur, you would better get really good at finding a way to take action in spite of how you feel.

23:31 Let that sink in for a minute. Because we do this all the time. This will be a snippet that will be put on social media. But say that one more time because it's a critical piece. You have got to get good at making decisions and taking action in spite of how you feel. This is the kiss of death. And by the way, in business, I know a lot of people who run their whole fucking business on how they feel. Not a good idea. Not a good idea at all. And I think that the one, you know, one of the things that's so important here is that this is a muscle.

24:13 I don't feel there's a number I'm going to put down. I don't feel good about it, but I'm going to put that motherfucker down anyway, because I know how important it is for me to know what it is. And it also gives me a baseline to, to work off of, right. To, to improve. You're going to say something. There's two things. And just cause you had a, you had a nerve on two pieces. One, one, So when Uncle Mark, when he was having me document my numbers, I mentioned like the stuff we can control, the things we can influence and the stuff we have no control over. He goes, most people look at the stuff that we have no control over and they have an emotional reaction to that number.

24:57 When he's all, when in reality, your emotions should actually be hooked to the number you do have control over and the numbers you can influence. That's just like gravy, right? Like that's that's the cherry on the cake. And he's like, so what most people do is they look at, well, how many bookings actually happened today? And they judge their life around that the end result. He's like, what you should be judging yourself on is how many calls did you make and how many more connections did you make today compared to yesterday? If you judge yourself on that, you have absolute direct control over it. And guess what? Your emotions, your state, your experience, the journey is going to be a thousand times better because, you know, you can wake up every day and go, I'm actually in the driver's seat.

25:39 And if we only gauge on the result at the end, which we ultimately don't have total control over, we have influence. We have pieces we can put in play. But if you're judging yourself at that other number, it's a freaking yo-yo and you're at the mercy of the wind. And so just to kind of why I want to highlight this, this has more to do with how this plays out or how it shows up. And I know for our listeners, I want to share a story with one of our clients. Actually, there was somebody I spoke to this week. He was in the process, he's been delivering his coaching for free for probably about six months. And he was doing it really more as a pro bono, as a value add for people in his world. Well, he decided, you know what, I'm going to move to charging for my services.

26:20 So he went straight to the people he's been delivering the services to for free. And he said, hey, I'm going to start charging for it now. And they went, yeah, I'm not ready to pay for the services. Well, the meaning he gave that, he went 100%. Now, when I said how many people were there total... Three whole people. So three people who had been getting the service for six months for free, never had the paradigm that they would ever have to pay for. It was just more of a buddy call. Now find out they have to pay for it with no context. They all say, I'm not going to pay for it. So guess what he did? He literally goes, my offer sucks. Nobody's going to pay for it. I'm not cut out for this. I can't help people.

27:01 I'm going to go do what I'm comfortable with. And he goes, 100% of the people don't want what I have. And this is how numbers can fuck with us. Right? So I just want to share that because I know as we internalize things, we can look at numbers and go, oh, because of these numbers, therefore it means something I'm not supposed to do. It's the universe. No, it just means what you're doing is not the right way. And we just need to go back and change our approach and figure it out and stay on the mission. But... That's such. Well, first of all, it's funny because we talked about that just yesterday. And I think it's a really powerful story. And I think one of the other things, too, is just on the subject of the things that you can control and the things that you can't.

27:43 I want to go back to my original point about, you know, getting really good at, you know, being willing to take action despite how you feel. You can control that. And so at the end of the day, this isn't about the outcome, you know, where things get really good. The very best, the elite of the elite that we know in the world, in any industry, are really freaking good at recognizing where they're headed, but knowing exactly the things that they can control.

28:23 That they can do over and over and over again, that they believe will get them to the outcome that they want. And that is, you know, that is one of them. One other piece, just before we move on to the next one, you know, and again, another Tony-ism, you know, where focus goes, energy flows. Yep. Right. So a lot of people are also tracking things because it makes them feel good. Like as an example, I worked eight hours today. Okay, well, that's great. Like... That doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing the right things or you're focusing or tracking the right metric that's going to actually move the needle or get you to grow your business. And so you mentioned golf and we talked about surfing. We've got some other sports wells here.

29:06 So playing basketball, I know you and I both played basketball and it was a sport we absolutely love. I remember there was a moment, there's another Uncle Mark moment. He goes, look, if you're the best at shooting layups, jump shots, and free throws, you will dominate. And I'm like, huh. So what did I do every day? I went out and I practiced layups, jump shots, and free throws. And because of that, it was knowing the core fundamentals of what I should be doing and not blowing it out. It's why we're so militant about have three things you focus on each quarter, not 300. And just do those three things so freaking good that you hit home runs.

29:46 That's another big piece is you don't have to track everything under the sun. And we have, I know that's going to come up here shortly, but yes, I just want to highlight the fact, track the shit that's actually going to turn the dials. So that way you get focused on it because if you're focused on it, your energy is going to flow to it. And if your energy is flowing to it, you're going to improve. And if you're improving, you're going to make more money, help more people. Okay. I'll shut up now. So. No, it's, it's, it's well said, man. It's well said. And I think that also, uh, it's, it's important because this goes beyond, this goes beyond talent. It goes beyond ability. Uh, it goes beyond even expertise, uh, at the end of the day, you know?

30:28 So these are all things that you can affect in, in, in the world of business. If you're not paying attention to optimizing for the things that you can affect, you're going to be in big trouble. So, um, Um, speaking of how you feel, if you're not the non-starter or the ostrich, you might be the drifter. Now, the drifter, Brooke, we know a few of these. The drifter is the person who... It's like very flow. Brooke, I don't need to track anything. I just feel my way through my business and feel my way to success in my clients.

31:13 And I just let the universe tell me if I'm on track or if I'm off track. And By the way, metrics and spreadsheets and numbers. Oh my God. I'm getting a headache just talking about this right now. It's not for me. It's not for me. I need to go do Headspace for 15 minutes. But Ryan, I'm a Virgo. Virgos aren't good with numbers. Okay. Listen, we love you. Okay? We love you. We do. We're like, we love you. And- If this is what you're doing, this is why you're avoiding your numbers.

31:58 I'm going to go strong here. By the way, before he does this, this is why Orion loses friends frequently. Uh-huh. It happens. But look, man, I love your woo. And you can use it as a strength. In this case, it is an excuse and a crutch to not be a responsible business owner. And a business owner who can actually grow and scale to impact more lives, which is what you care about so deeply. Because the truth is this, as I said just a little bit ago, if you're not willing to do this, I'm just going to be honest with you.

32:44 You should go work for somebody else. If you're really good at what you do and you just don't want to do things like track metrics and, you know, know your numbers and that kind of shit. Go work for somebody else. Do you know what's funny about that statement, Ryan? If they went to work for somebody else, guess what they're going to have them do? Track their numbers. Metrics. True. So you had your little social media moment in the sun. So I'm going to I'm going to seize mine here. And this is going to make people really. But I think it's just, again, we're spitting truth here for a moment. What I think so many people, what happens, and I think there's an element of the feminine, but I think more importantly, it's really happening in the spiritual community.

33:28 As we've come under the gnosis that we should be taking actions based on how we feel. And there's a huge movement of, well, how do you feel? Just do what makes you feel great and just do it. You know, how do you feel right now? Well, based on how you feel, do that. I mean, I literally know people that are, there's a diet that's, if your stomach's grumbling and whatever you're craving in the moment, that's what you should eat. Listen to how you feel. Oh, that's right. I'm going to set Ryan sideways, but right. So why I want to highlight, this is so fricking critical. Our actions and progress, or lack thereof, determines how we feel.

34:08 So if we wake up in the morning, we go, how do I feel? And based on how I feel will determine what I do today. You are literally, this is the equivalent of being out in the middle of the ocean without your sails set. And you're going, whichever way the wind's blowing, that's where my boat's going to go. And the reality is that when we take action, it shifts the way we feel. And when we get progress and we get momentum, we feel better and we want more of the progress. And this is why you've, I mean, I know you're preaching the choir here, but it's like, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life because it's a passion project when you're passionate about it. So if you're waiting to get passionate about something to go do a dang thing, you're bass backwards again.

34:51 You've got to take the actions so that the passion gets cultivated and it's a muscle that shows up because you're moving the boulders. So, yeah, that's all. That's well said, dude. And I would just say this, too. I want, you know, if you're one of my one of the things that I've realized over time is that the magic happens when hustle meets flow. And I don't believe that you can go to the polar end of the masculine energy or the polar end of the feminine energy and ever truly realize your full potential as a physical human or as a spiritual being in this world, whatever it is that you believe.

35:33 Uh, and I think that to your point, there's, there comes a time where it, regardless of either end of the spectrum that you're on, you've got to ask yourself, what is it that I want? And here's something that's really hard. This is going to be hard to hear. But if you are using this as your excuse to not grow your business, you're going to be You're literally saying to all the people that need you, all the people that you could make an impact on, I'm sorry. I'm too woo for you. I'm too woo. That's going to be the title for the episode.

36:14 I'm too woo for you. I had to. You know what? That's a good song title. That's a good takeaway for our spiritual offers. I'm too woo for you. You can't handle this. It's like too legit to quit. Yeah. Still a little fucking MC Hammer. I'm still making an AI video of MC Hammer doing, I'm doing with fire shoot pants. Oh, God. Okay. Woo. Oh, trade and the wheels have fallen off. What are we doing? Where are we? What's happening? Where? I'm Ron Burgundy.

36:56 Damn it, Phil. Okay. All right. Okay. Number four. All right. We got to move on from this one. So now, if you're not the non-starter or the ostrich or the drifter, you might be. This, by the way, this is the outlier. This is the outlier of this group because this person is laughing at the first three and they don't even know. You might be the hoarder. And the hoarder, you alluded to this earlier, dude. This is the person who is tracking everything. Oh, you want to see what I track? Oh, yeah. They've got the biggest fucking dashboard with 50,000 things on it.

37:41 And meanwhile, they have no idea what they ought to really be tracking. Either that or, to your point earlier, and talk more about this, but they're true. They're tracking things that make them feel good instead of the things that actually move the needle. And these are the things, by the way, everybody in life does this. Everybody will tell you about the numbers that feel really good and not tell you shit about the ones that don't. So, yeah, this is a fun one. So when working with Tony Robbins, it was really interesting. So every year in January, we would have to bring Tony our plan for the year.

38:25 Now, part of that meeting was also reflecting back on the year that had just completed, right? So it was like, here's all the learnings we had from last year, and here's all the things we're going to change, and here's our grand plan for the year ahead. Now, this involved a lot of data, a lot of analysis, a lot of planning, a lot of documentation. And so it was always fascinating to see it because, how do I want to put this? There's a lot of people that wanted Tony to be happy with their work and their effort, similar to just how we want to make our parents happy, right? And so they would highlight and showcase the things that looked really good from the year before. And they would do everything they could to bury the stuff that would make them potentially be caught in an intervention because it was not a pleasant experience.

39:09 And so it was really wild to see the reports that people would come up with where they're like, I'm like, what the fuck are you tracking? I'm like, what, why are we highlighting this number? This number has like no bearing on the business has no bearing on the client, but it was a good number because they showed some form of an improvement on a metric. Right. And so there became this habit of reporting out numbers because they would show growth or they would show these different pieces. But they were honestly like, in my opinion, they were meaningless because it was like, okay, that's great that you have a metric, but like, what does it actually mean? And it was really interesting because we got in this place where Tony would get so sick of seeing numbers where in his brain, he's like, okay, that's cool.

39:50 Like high five, but like, Did it turn the dials? Did it help us grow the business? Is this helping us increase our revenue? Are we reaching more people? And when he got really militant about tracking for that conversation, there was like five core metrics that he said, everybody has to report on these five. That changed the whole shooting match going forward because it forced all the people who are tracking everything under the sun, feeling like they're being really good leadership and really good managers. And I'm tracking and I'm tracking and I can tell everyone I'm tracking everything and have all these reports, 35,000 of them that I can relay all this information. But at the end of the day, it's like, well, which metrics are actually having the effect or impacting? Yeah.

40:30 And here's the other big one. Are the numbers true? That's another huge piece of the puzzle. Most people's numbers are fucking wrong. Yep. Going back to golf for a minute. Mulligan. Who's actually telling the truth? Yeah. I'll just use my little pencil and paper over here. I'll do my own numbers. carry the two Ryan's looking off to the left. Brooke kicks his ball a little bit forward, dude. This is so important. And I think, you know, what's really fascinating about this is that man, some of the, I can think of right now, some of the most polarizing figures in sports, in business, and, I have literally had discussions with people and I've watched interviews with people who there's a question that's asked, well, what do you think about this number?

41:26 And they go, oh, I don't even care. I could give a shit. Why? Because the only thing I care about is this. I know if I optimize for this, you know, I'm going to be that much closer to, you know, where I want to be, what I want to do, you know, the amount of money, whatever it is. So I think it's really important and I think it's a good bridge. You know, I hope that as you're listening to this, you can be honest with yourself because this isn't about judgment. You know, I think most of us have fallen into one of these categories, if not multiple of these of these categories, you know, at one time or another. You know, maybe you're you know, maybe you're a drifting ostrich.

42:07 But I put the pictures out of my head. This Austin is like drunk, just walking sideways. No. That's like, I did that. Maybe, maybe you're a non-starting hoarder. I've got to get all my reports in place before I do anything. Yes. But the point is, at the end of the day, it's important to be honest with yourself because we have to be able to assess who we are, what we are. What are the things that we're doing that are adding to our success? What are the things that are not? And that's a big part of this exercise. So with the time that we've got left, dude, I want to shed some light on the things that...

42:49 are really important. And I would say that this just makes good business in general, but especially if you're running any kind of a business that is service related, these are the numbers that at the end of the day are really going to be important And I want to kind of go through this sort of like, I want to just sort of mention a few categories. We don't have time to go like super deep here on these, but at least give people a sense. And by the way, as you're listening to this, don't drive off the road and start feverishly writing notes and shit like that. Because when we're done here, I'm going to give you a tool. We will link it up in the show notes.

43:30 And it's going to have all of this for you. OK, so spoiler alert, we'll give you the cheat code. The first thing I want to talk about is top of funnel. We're talking about lead flow, that kind of thing. You know, why do we want to spend time tracking this? And what are the top couple things that we want to pay attention to? Yeah, so critical ones. How many leads do you generate each month? And that can show up in every single which way you can imagine. But again, we want clever ways to win. So what are the things that we want to grow? Cool. New additions to our database, new followers on social media.

44:11 How many people are opting into your world in some way, shape or form? But really, how many names, phone numbers, email addresses are we adding to our world every single month? Yep. And I just will say one of these things that's really important about this is that if we're not adding people... You know, we're essentially staying stagnant. And that at the end of the day, however you're doing it, and we're not getting into that right now, by the way, but whether it's organic or it's paid or you've got, you know, a lead magnet or a quiz funnel or an event or a webinar or you're doing networking or whatever.

44:54 Yeah. you got to be adding people. And by the way, you know, you and I have had moments where we've, you know, we've gone a month and been like, shit, we sucked this month at just adding people to, you know, to the list. It's an important metric to track because if you get too far off track there, you're going to be relying only, only on the customers and clients that you have currently. And that does not, that's not a recipe for growth. So go rapid fire here. What are the sales activities and sales metrics that we need to pay attention to most closely? Outreaches per day.

45:36 So that can come in the form of, and again, people are going to usually love to take the path of least resistance, but I'm just going to highlight these. Calls, text messages, DMs. And warm emails. So this is not like your bulk nurture email. This is a direct email to somebody being like, hey, I'm checking in with you. Right. There needs to be a certain amount of activities that are outbound driven. They're proactive driven, not reactive in terms of or passive is another way of looking at that. Right. So that'd be the first one is how many. And then the other one is how many sales engagements are you having daily, weekly, monthly? Yep. That's huge.

46:16 And, and, you know, from, from there, we, we, those, by the way, the first one is an activity that, that you have control over. And the first one is going to inform the second one. How many reach outs you do is going to inform how many actual meetings you get booked. Right. Really, really important. And then from there, we kind of dovetail into like the conversion and revenue metrics, because you're going to need to know if I had five meetings, how many of those did I actually convert into a client or a customer? All right. And that number is obviously important because it's directly tied to revenue.

47:00 From there, I can then go, how much revenue did I, you know, how much cash did I collect this month? And now, you know, now at least I have a minimal benchmark for, you know, what's revenue looking like month in and month out. I can't tell you, by the way, dude, how many people I have talked to over the years where you're like, hey, OK, so, you know, how much revenue did you bring in the business last month? And they're like, oh, OK. Hmm. Wow. Yeah, I might want to know that one. But here's the deal. Track with us here, because if you don't track the first several things that we mentioned, you can't get to the last one.

47:44 Right. So this is all a stacking effect. Now, this is an interesting one, bro. The next one is pipeline health. Now, this is important. And we have a whole document that tracks this, by the way. We'll check this in the show notes, too. But it's called the WIP list, W-I-P, WIP. We did a whole episode on this. We'll link the episode up, too, for you. But why do we need to know how many prospects we have in our pipeline? Why is that important? Psychology... Mm-mm. See, it got me all emotional. Got me all choked up. Psychology is everything, right? Our mindset, our headspace, and how we're vibrating, literally at an energetic level. See?

48:24 Woo, people. We came back. I knew it was going to come. That boomerang was coming around. We need to be in an amazing space. We need to be in a good vibe. Well, what's the best way to be in a good vibe? It's having a compelling future. Well, how do we know if we have a compelling future in our business? We need leading indicators. Okay. So much of the metrics is a lagging indicator world. It's like, what did we do? What happened? What were the results? What was the activities? The leading indicator of our pipeline is honestly one of probably the most important metrics that everybody should have above all others, which is who's out on the horizon? Where am I heading towards? What am I doing to serve and help those people? And how much revenue does it reflect?

49:06 How much does it actually... calculate out to so we can see it. So case in point, every Monday, you and I go through our whiplist and we look at who are we working? What's on deck? Who are we helping? Do we need to reach out to anyone? Every single person's name also has a dollar amount that's attributed to it. So we can see exactly how much revenue is in our vibrational escrow. Why do we call it that? Because we're manifesting and we're serving and we're helping those people and we're doing everything in our power to nurture and take care of our garden. That's so well said, brother. And just to kind of put a bow on this, in addition to pipeline, because most people don't track that very well, the other thing that I find a lot of people don't track very well is the final number that we're gonna mention.

49:47 And it's just how many active clients do I have right now? And just as a little dovetail off of that, how much does that represent to me in monthly recurring revenue? Now, if you're like, holy crap, what's monthly recurring revenue? That probably means you don't have any. And that also probably means that you're running on a hamster wheel of having to get way too many new clients. So, This was super helpful just to kind of break this down. Every single metric, by the way, that we threw out today is relating back to revenue. No revenue, no business, no sales, no revenue, no leads, no sales.

50:33 Uh, so, uh, all of this stuff, Daisy chains together, we're going to throw, this is our, our monthly revenue dashboard, which we use internally for ourselves and for our clients. We're going to give that to you for free. We'll link it up in the show notes. You can go grab that. grab it. I think you'll find it really easy to track your numbers on this thing. It'll demystify it. And the best part about it too, is that it's got a tab at the bottom. Don't skip this. That's a whole how to use this sheet tab where it runs down all of the different definitions of all the numbers, why they're important, how to use it. It's got everything that you need to become a pro at tracking your metrics and really dialing in that part of your business. Well, dude, Thank you for that.

51:13 This was fun. This was really a lot of fun. We had fun. See, we talked about something serious. We made it fun. We did. We totally shunned all of our woo peeps. We love you. We love you. We do. We love you. We really do. I was going to also make mention because I know we talked about like what numbers are good, bad or indifferent. And so the beauty, the document that you created actually shows the range of where you want to be targeting or what's in there. So in that document that you've crafted, you guys go download it. It's freaking awesome. Awesome sauce. All right, brother. Well, thank you for listening to this episode of the Path to Mastery podcast. Until next time, take care.

51:55 Take care, buddy. Thanks for listening to the Path to Mastery podcast. If you got value from this, leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss a single episode. And if you know another entrepreneur who needs to hear this, do us a solid and send it their way. We'll catch you next time on the Path to Mastery podcast.