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Do Good Work is not a label but a way of living.
It is the constant and diligent effort to achieve a new level of excellence in one’s own life.
It is the hidden inner beauty behind the struggle to achieve excellence.
It is not perfect but imperfect.
It is the effort, discipline and focus that often goes unnoticed.
The goal of this podcast is to highlight that drive.
The guests I have on this show emulate this drive in their own special way. You’ll be able to apply new ideas into your own life by learning from them.
We will also have 1on1 episodes with me where we’ll dive into my own experiences with entrepreneurship and leadership.
Every episode is designed to provide you with ideas that you can apply and grow in excellence in all areas of your life, business and career.
Do Good Work,
Raul
INTRO
PODCAST
ATR USB microphone & Logitech BRIO:
Outside of cash.
There were three major constraints in
your business right now and how you
handle them will determine your future.
Welcome to the do good work podcast.
Today, I'm talking about the three
constraints in your service business
right now and how to solve them.
So you might find yourself at any of
these situations in your business.
You might have.
Pipeline that's running low.
You don't have enough leads or
enough deals coming through.
That is a very common situation.
On the flip side of that, you
might have a good pipeline,
but your operations are a mess.
Your team is running a muck.
There's a lot of deadlines
that are being missed.
Your clients feel like they're being
left hanging, and you feel like you
have to superhero your way through to
make things happen, to put out fires.
On the other side of that, you might be
endless meetings with your team where
the team is listening, saying yes.
On the meetings.
So when they execute, they're not
executing or they're not executing
to the level that you expect of them.
And you're just frustrated because
you're like, why don't get it.
Why don't they get it?
Like I do.
Now, besides cashflow and cash
management, the three major
constraints in your business right now.
And right now, because every business
faces these constraints, you may
not face all three at the same time.
That actually might be a bad situation,
but you are typically facing one or two
at any given point of your business.
The three constraints are lead
generation and deal creation.
The second is your operations
to fulfill the work.
And the third constraint is
your leadership constraint.
So if we were to condense these or to
simplify this, the first constraint
is in your marketing and sales.
The second constraint
is in your operations.
And the third constraint.
Isn't your people.
And ideally you're only facing
one at a time, but odds are, you
might be facing one or two at a
time, which is completely fine.
But again, like I mentioned, A
for facing three at the same time.
You're in a difficult situation.
You're going to want to listen
to this podcast in its entirety.
As we dive into everything here together.
lead generation and deal creation.
This is your marketing and sales.
You'll see that this is probably
one of the most popular topics in
business because most businesses
die because of lack of revenue.
And lack of sales.
And sometimes that's because they build
something that the market doesn't want.
Odds are you have something that the
market wants, but you want to dial this
and you want to create more consistency.
At least that's what my clients tell me.
They want more predictability,
more consistency.
So I'm going to give you what I suggest
being the 80 20, it's not simple,
but the more direct things that if
you influence these things correctly,
you will have a higher likelihood or
higher probability of fixing your lead
generation deal creation situation.
And there's a lot to dive into here.
So we're not going to be able to cover
every single aspect, but I want to
just give you the entire encompassing
thing so that you can go ahead and get
to work and focus on these key things.
Cause there's endless amounts of
information in the market, teaching
you how to solve every single one of
these and it can get overwhelming.
So I want to simplify that to give you
exactly what you need to take action now.
So the first thing that you
need to solve is your offering.
What are you actually giving people?
And do they understand the offering?
Is the offering confusing?
I'll give you an example.
Someone subscribed to my newsletter.
And the guy has an amazing
wild, like a beautiful, website.
Let me tell you the website's clean.
The work is impeccable.
You can tell that they
do really good work.
However, I was not sure who they do
work for or what's the actual offering.
So that was very confusing just
from the onset of the website.
And that's a Problem.
If people don't know what you're doing for
them, how are they going to buy from you?
So the second piece you want to dive
into is your ideal client segment, not
just your ideal clients in your ICP,
but the segment who in the people that
you serve, who are your ideal clients,
value your work the most, where the value
is equal in equated to dollar amount.
Where you solve a problem for them?
It's a higher value problem solved for
them versus another client segment.
So that's the second piece.
The third is tying your business
model to your offering into
your ideal client segment.
You have to make money appropriately
for cashflow, for revenue.
But second to that, you need to
make sure that your business model
supports the offers that you make.
Because then the offering is not just
here's the goods or services that I have.
Can you buy them?
It's how you deliver them.
It's the payment plans, the terms.
And the way that it's delivered and
that needs to match with your personal
revenue and cashflow management.
Now the rest, these are typically easier.
These are typically more abundant in
the marketplace of information, but
we need to dive into the rest as well.
Diving into your positioning.
How are you perceived in
the market, your channels?
How do you reach out to your ideal clients
to generate new business, to contact them
so that they can contact you in return?
What are the lead magnets that
you're generating webinars.
VSLs what are you generating so that
you can give to the marketplace for
them to, create reciprocity, but
also learn more about you and for
them to solve an immediate problem.
lead magnets something that since the
Dawn of the internet, but I want to share
with you simple framework that could help
you when you create your lead magnets,
what type of Leader prospect you're
going to generate from the lead magnet.
So for the lead magnets, you want to
have something that is high impact.
So something that they can or watch
and they can take action immediately.
And then from there, the action we need to
figure out what's the threshold or what is
the friction from actually executing it?
Because you can teach
them exactly how to build.
a car now you can learn that in
theory pretty easily, but to execute
it, there's a lot of friction.
There's a lot of things to do in
order to execute that same thing.
your lead magnet to figure out
what you're giving away for free.
What you're giving your audience,
who you're giving your ideal client.
Can they implement that easily?
Is the effort.
Easy or is he effort high?
Now, this is important because
if the effort is high, yet the
information to consume is easy.
You could deliver it in way
where they can consume it.
But the effort is high.
Your natural follow-up offering is,
Hey, do you want me to do it for you?
And in services, that is
the best offer in the world.
Let me just do it for you.
Let me take it off of your hands.
And obviously this has to
be a cost benefit to them.
This has to be faster for them.
This has to be something
that benefits their business.
And again, going back to what we
talked about earlier, when you solve
this problem for them, the value
is so high where they'll pay you
appropriately, but also they get a
significant return on working with you.
So you've got to think about that
when you deliver the lead magnets.
you can't just give away something for
free because you think it's a good idea.
You need to identify it's going to be
something easily consumed and to take
action on, because if they can take action
on it without you then followup offer,
not going to be, can I do it for you?
Because they could just do it themselves.
So it really depends where your buyer
is in their buyer's journey and where
you want to implement the lead magnet.
Now.
Enough of that.
We'll dive into inbound
ads and warm messaging.
typically people consider ads as
an outbound approach because you're
reaching people cold, with ads.
I haven't been working in agencies
and supporting them where we were the
Kings of cold ads, meaning getting
someone from a cold ad to convert.
And buy a product immediately
from that cold ad.
Now those were the, I wouldn't say those
are the easy days of lead generation.
I'm pretty sure someone
else has figured that out.
today's market, but that was really fun
because was pretty interesting to see
someone who's never heard your name.
Never seen you.
Both through the ad and then
make a purchase immediately
within a very short timeframe.
That's impeccable When you find that.
You literally have the right to figure
out how can you scale that quickly?
And it becomes almost like a
game of a slot machine, but
anyway, that's a different
conversation for a different time.
But for the inbound ads, I want to
focus something as inbound, because
this is related to your content.
This is related to your lead magnets.
So when you create content and
you deliver lead magnets to the
marketplace, you want identify what
are the ones that are doing well?
What can I put an ad in the marketplace
to attract the right kind of buyer?
And then from there,
those ads create activity.
Not everyone is going to buy
from ads, and that's certainly
the case in today's market.
So why focus on ads when you create
awareness and with that awareness,
you have different signals.
Those signals are people
hitting your website?
Going into your CRM, maybe messaging
you, maybe interacting with you.
And those you can follow up on which hits
on the warm messaging, the warm outbound.
The warm, reaching out to people
around, Hey, I saw that you
downloaded this thing or you got
this video, how can it be a service?
How can I be more value?
And again, moving them
down the buyer's journey.
And then finally this has been around
since business has been around, it's
just developing cold outreach and
reaching out to new people who don't
know you building a relationship,
not just sending crazy ai sdr.
messages that fall flat Through
cheap copywriting frameworks.
So just doing proper
outreach and I always urge.
Myself and clients to never
automate the first message, because
you need to automate what works.
And if you're doing net new
messaging to new people who don't
know you and you give them crap
you're going to get crap in return.
It's as simple as that.
And then finally referrals.
What can you do in your referral
programs with current clients, with past
clients and just follow up with people
and just seeing how can I generate
new business through my warm network?
And that's typically
the best place to start.
If leads are down and
deal creation is low.
And even if you've done this
before, and you said, cause I've,
had prospects on the call said.
I've done all that.
I've done it.
And I'm still not there.
It might be the way that you're
executing the activity might be
your mindset executing the activity.
Cause when I hear that, I
typically think you're telling
me that exercise doesn't work.
Exercise works.
You just have to do the work the right
way, the appropriate way consistently
over time and you will get results.
Now that is lead generation
and deal creation.
Obviously we can't solve.
Every single situation
that you're facing there.
So if you have more nuanced
questions around that, feel
free to message me on LinkedIn.
So next let's dive into operations.
So in operations, I have a mental
model that there's two Rs, for
lifetime value with your clients.
And the two RS are
results and relationship.
The more results that you have,
but the less relationship you
might have a lower lifetime value,
because if you're replaceable, then
you know, You're replaceable if
you're just there doing your job.
That's great.
But humans like to do business with
humans, typically, at least today.
And with that, we have
to have relationship.
And if you just have relationship and
results, You're not going to have a
client around for more than like a month,
two months, maybe even three months.
So that is the situation.
There is the more results that you get
and the higher the relationship, the more
you can increase your lifetime value.
So this is in relation to operations
because operations translates to
your systems, your processes and
technology, which typically only
translates to one thing that matters
customer experience, which is.
It's a metaphor for your brand.
It's essentially your customer
experience equals your brand.
It's not a logo.
It's not the color schema.
It's not how beautiful your website is.
It's your brand.
And the way that you can craft an
amazing customer experience through
the operations is to look at these
following areas of where to optimize
and seeing where things breaking.
Because if odds are, if you're super
hero-ing your way through the entire
week with back-to-back meetings, with
your team, trying to figure everything
out yourself, trying to execute and put
out fires, then you want to optimize
the different phases of the customer
experience that your team can handle it,
or systems can handle it on your behalf.
The first one, the most
important one is onboarding.
So when you onboard your clients,
what is the experience there?
What is the timeframe What
information that you need?
How do you transfer that information?
How do you make their life easier?
So you can plug and play versus
asking the same questions.
That's actually a question that
I'm personally trying to solve.
When clients onboard with me, they
usually have to fill out a proprietary.
I think it's 19 or 21 questions.
It changes.
We might take away questions and add
questions depending on where they're
at, but it's about 19 questions and it
feels like some like we'll have to answer
all of these questions again, obviously
when they go through what they do tell.
Tell me that was very enlightening.
That was a great experience because
you ask questions that I actually
haven't thought about, or I was apprised
that you asked this type of question.
Now that's okay, but I'm always trying
to figure out how can I plug and play.
Is there a way for me to plug and play
to their Google drive so that I can
just extract the right information with
their permission, of course, and then
get all that information, leveraging
AI so that I can onboard them fluidly.
And all they have to do is click a few
buttons for me to get access to that.
That's one way I know it's not easy
because some of the work that we
do is strategic, but if you're in
bookkeeping, if you're in something
where it's like literally plug and
play, I know with QuickBooks, we
would just get access and boom, you
can onboard almost instantaneously.
Again, I'm not saying it's the perfect
instantaneously, but it's just an example.
But think about what can you do to
reduce the friction of onboarding?
I have a client right now where
they're onboarding their type
of clients that they work with.
So the clients of my client, they're
super busy, so they're not going to
complete the onboarding in seven days.
It might even take 30 days
to complete the onboarding.
That's not a good look.
It's not a good thing.
So what can we do to increase the
client experience so that the clients
who onboard can do it quickly can do
it fluidly, but we can get to work
and deliver value because the number
one KPI for operations is time.
To value, at least in your
onboarding, it's time to value.
And if you're smart, then you know,
maybe my time to value is 60 days.
Maybe it's nine days, maybe for some
of you, it's 180 days you needed to
know, how can I create the quick wins?
And this comes into your
relationship management.
When you work with the client
and you review their sales call.
you have AI plugging all the information
CRM from the sales call, which some tools
do that, which is pretty amazing when
you do that, you review that information.
You identify.
Okay.
Cool.
Client, ABC needs this particular goal.
I actually have an introduction or I
have a tool or I have a resource that
can help them achieve that right now,
while we work on building, whatever it
is we're building or developing for them.
So again, that's another way to increase
the time to value and increase the
client experience and increase that
perception of working with you, being
a good idea, because even when you buy
a house, when I bought my house or when
you make a big purchase or you work
with someone, you're always thinking.
Did I make the right decision?
Is this the right decision?
So you, when you onboard it, prove to your
client that they made the right decision,
they were smart for working with you.
Not only that, but you actually care.
And second, you're going to
fulfill on your promises.
I cannot believe.
How normal it is for people to not
fulfill on their promises for you
just to be consistent and for you
to follow through on what you've
promised in your contract agreement.
Incredible.
How much does that?
Small percentage of effort will
take you to building the right
relationship for getting the
right result with your clients.
Now that is all around onboarding and
the rest is when your client management
weekend week out, when it comes
to the month, check-ins quarterly.
Check-ins whatever the process
looks like to maintain that
client relationship over time.
And then from there you
want to identify, can you.
Up sell the client to a different
service, cross sell to another service.
Can you add or take away things that
they don't need so that they know that
you're doing things their best interests.
I have one client who actually focuses.
To deliver services at such an amazing
cost that at some months when they
have a budget, they actually refund
the client saying, you know what?
We didn't use the rest of the budget.
We can either refund it to you,
or we can use that budget for a
future built or a future scope.
What an amazing experience.
And they do that intentionally knowing
we're here for our client's best
interests, not our best interests.
And in today's age, you do need to prove
that not just with your words, but with
your actions and you operationalize that
through your systems and your processes.
It's not that Complicated.
The most important hack that
I would recommend for teams.
And this is actually it's off script here.
I like to tell my clients that the best
thing that you can do is to actually hire
an operations manager or hire someone on
the ops side to support you as you scale.
I know that there's multiple ideas
around what the best hires are,
depending on where you're at.
Having a very solid operations
manager is going to solve a
significant amount of your problems.
If you already have them
in or not doing well.
And that's another situation
we would dive into.
And step number three below that we're
going to dive into just a second.
But that is a key thing.
Having an operations person.
Regardless of their job title, as
long as they have the experience that
they can support you, having that
person only focus on this will make
significant leaps and bounds even more
so than just like focusing on sales.
Because again, depending on where your
constraints are, if your constraints
are leads and sales focus on that first,
if you have good leads and sales and
your constraints and operations focus
on operations, if you have both at the
same time, obviously focusing on sales
first, but at the same time also focusing.
How can I improve the client experience?
Because once you get people in, they're
going to go out through a leaky bucket.
You don't want that.
All right.
So diving into number three, we're
going to dive into leadership here.
Now with leadership.
This is a huge topic and I have mentors
and coaches and friends who focus on
this particular as their entire business.
But the whole idea with leadership
is you want to focus on two
core aspects of your business.
Number one is your culture.
And number two is your talent management.
So with your culture, Answering the
questions, like why do you exist?
What is your focus and why should
we get on the bus with you?
Those are the that's
how you create culture.
That statement right there
can save you tens of thousands
of dollars from hiring some.
Leadership consultant or culture
consultant to help you develop
your mission, vision, and values,
because essentially people want to
know why do you exist as a company?
And why should we care?
So why do you exist?
Where's your focus?
What are you focusing and
trying to do in the world?
Where is your focus of what the
energy, the activity of your
team and that you're taking?
What are we trying to achieve that can
relate to your goals, to your mission?
And why should we get on
the bus to support you?
Why should we care to join you?
And that has to be compelling.
And it has to be more than
just a monetary piece.
All right.
That's culture.
If you solve those problems, you can
literally pause this recording right now.
Take out a piece of paper, like one
of these and literally write it down.
It doesn't take very long.
And you can always improve it tomorrow.
Write it down today, review it tomorrow.
See what you can improve on.
Do that for 20 days, do that for 30 days.
And you'll see you have an impeccable
culture framework of where are you going?
Why does it matter?
And why should others join you?
Now, the second piece of
leadership is talent management.
And typically when I work with
founders, this is the core issue.
How can I either a manage my team
appropriately so that they can
level up and be, have my team,
execute it to the point where
they're doing it better than me.
So part of that is you hire a players.
That's a different situation for a
different conversation because that's
around hiring and attracting those.
But I'll give you a true story.
I have one of my clients that came in.
And they told me their goals.
They told me what they wanted
to achieve and to be, completely
honest with you, I was dumbfounded.
I was like, wow.
This is an incredible goal.
I'm entrusted with a lot of
responsibility to support them.
And to be the kind of person that
is required for them to level up.
So this is the lesson here.
I had to level up as a human being.
As a person so that I could therefore
pour into the person I was serving.
So see how that works.
That's the same thing with coaching.
That's the same thing with
The way that you approach your
leadership, because you as a leader
have to be a coach to your team.
If you're not willing to do
that, get out of business.
A lot of people can't
lead because of that.
You have to become a better person in
all aspects of your life for you to
lead appropriate to the next person.
And now there might be a lot of case
studies proving me wrong around that.
I don't care.
What I care about is when you work with
an actual person and they thank you for
what you did five years, eight years,
10 years later, after working with
them, that to me is significant impact.
And that is really the crux of
what I'm trying to get at here.
What I'm trying to get at here is that
if you want to increase your talent, You
have to level up as a leader yourself.
Now I have a training that I do with
teams, and I think you can find this
in most of my books and in some free
articles I'll, find a way to link it
up below on the podcast, but I have
the five pillars of heroic leadership.
And I dive into this specifically around
how to level up as a heroic leader.
And the reason I talk about it as a
heroic leader is because you want to face
reality as it is not shy away from it and
improve the situation of the reality, not
just run with the flow or be run over.
The reason why I also call it heroic
is because this is from my personal
experience and fast growth, high
pace organizations scaling up.
So this isn't just for a status
quo for keeping things the same.
This is for rapid change.
Moving forward and changing, influencing.
What currently exists to build
what could be not managing what
currently is we don't care to manage.
Don't want to manage.
You want to change the current
situation to create what's potentially.
There.
But it's not there right now.
So you have to create
it, which takes courage.
which is why I call it heroic leadership.
So the five pillars are, you have to
set Influence the thinking of your team.
Through your approach through
your tonality, through your.
Your conversation through
your tax, through your slacks,
through your messaging.
So that's a whole thing of itself.
The second is your steady.
You have to be steady through
difficult times and through turbulence,
because if you panic through
that, your team's going to panic.
The third is taking informed
execution because we need to take.
Actual empirical data.
And then from there translated so that we
can go ahead and execute with our team.
And again, going back to being steady,
not panic when something goes awry, if
let's say this is a common situation,
especially in the ads world, when
your ads are doing superiorly well,
you're getting a good cost per lead
or a good cost per acquisition.
And then for one day it goes bad.
And then the second was bad.
And the third day goes bad.
I'm like, okay, this could be a
trend the fourth week was bad.
And then from there, you panic.
And then maybe you reset everything real
quickly, but if you just follow through
and you started measuring appropriately,
you might see Hey, this is actually common
over, I don't know, a holiday season.
Then they're going to bounce back
up, and instead of worrying and
panicking, recreating work for everyone.
You just hold the fort
and then from there adjust accordingly,
or you actually change things
depending on what the data tells you.
Supports being steady and
support setting the stage, say.
How you approach the way that
you think, the way that you talk,
the way that you communicate
with others supports their action
determines how they do their actions.
Then the fourth is facilitate movement.
When you facilitate movement, you
want to go ahead and enable others
to work on their behalf without you.
Micro-managing means that I
need to decide everything.
I need to show you the
way, because I'm so smart.
That's not the common term
of micromanaging, but that's
essentially what it is.
And in the past, I was totally
micromanaged without wanting
to be a micromanager, because I
thought that I had all the answers.
clearly I don't.
So the way that you can facilitate
movement is empower your team to
take action through the information.
Empower them through coaching and empower
them through the knowledge that is either.
IP from the organization, access to
outside knowledge, access to other
coaching or books, access to yourself.
Whatever ways you need so that
they can go and take action
on their behalf and improve.
And this is how you can create
someone who is better than
you essentially what you want.
You want someone who's better than you
in the role that you hired them for,
them to execute and improve the status
quo, then the final is to fuel others.
So when you others here with a team.
The whole goal here is to enable not just
their training, not just their future
career compensation, not just their future
development, but also through the words
that you use, which is, again, going
back to setting the stage, you want to
make sure that they know that you care.
So this is the E Q to the IQ.
You want to make sure that you
enable their, growth, that you
affirm the positive traits that
they have, so they can flourish
and become better in their role.
And at the same time for you to
see that in real time, you have to.
Elevate the way that you see
yourself and how you see your team.
Now, there's a lot more
than I can dive into.
I do a whole 90 minute
training with teams on this.
If you're interested in that, let me know.
But with that specifically
heroic leadership is necessary.
And the key lesson here in leadership
is that you need to level up as a leader
in order for others around you to level
up Now, those are the three constraints
in your service business right now, and
actionable steps on how to solve them.
We dove into your lead generation
and deal creation, your marketing and
sales on identifying your offer your
ideal client segment and making sure
that we have your positioning right.
Knowing the difference in lead magnets,
making sure that how ads are actually
classified nowadays and making sure that
you have followup activities, depending
on your current situation the signals
that your market is delivering to you.
We also dove into your operations and
identifying your customer experience
and how that translates into your brand.
Focusing on all stages of the experience
from onboarding to client management.
And eventually offboarding, if you
want to find ways for them to either
save the client or follow up with
the client, six months after they off
board, that's always a valid approach.
And then finally we dove into
leadership and identifying two key
things about your culture, how you
craft that culture in a simple way
where you can do without hiring.
Tens of thousands of culture consultants,
you can literally do it with a piece
of paper or you can do it with AI, just
type it in and then improve upon it.
If you have something that, you
feel is the right approach and the
second is your talent management.
And besides the hiring and
recruiting, knowing that for you
to manage the talent appropriately
is for you to level up as a leader.
And we dove into the five pillars
of heroic leadership around that.
Now, these are the three constraints.
If you have any additional questions
or any nuanced questions around the
constraint that you're facing, feel
free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.
And until next time.
This is Raul Hernandez.
do good work
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This is Raul Hernandez.
Do good work.