Good morning. And welcome to the Monday morning marketing Podcast. I'm Esther
and I'm Melanie.
And today we're joined by Dan Holloway, business coach for creative entrepreneurs, helping them to start, grow and scale their businesses and help them understand the difference between the three. And we're talking about sales and mindset. Welcome, Dan.
Hello. Thank you for having me. Awesome.
Great to have you.
So excited to be here.
Well, we're glad that you're excited to be here because we have been using this podcast now for almost 100 episodes, and we have not dedicated enough space, enough airwaves to sales and mindset agreed for the small business owners, especially for creative entrepreneurs. So what gems are you bringing to us today?
So many to not fit into a couple of minutes where I tend to start is whether you're starting or growing or scaling. And I'll explain the differences between the three in a second. I think a lot of the time, the clients that I work with, they struggle with understanding where they're actually at, and that's the whole kind of like when you're in the trenches and when you're really struggling to kind of just either get clients in or actually deliver to your clients or when you're trying to figure out how we're supposed to scale the product you've already got. There's a lot of in the trenches work and any entrepreneur to me, any that haven't at some point you all struggle with understanding your place and where you're at in that journey, and that involves stopping and taking it out of the turrets and kind of just looking around and figuring out where the hell you are, right?
Yeah.
And I think a lot of the time when you're starting, it's not even about learning what you don't know because you don't know what you don't know. A lot of the time starting is all about understanding what your plan is. And I'll talk about journey in a second as well. Understanding what your plan is and really, in technical terms, that's your strategy. But you don't really yet think strategically something you have to learn and gain over time when you're growing. That's when you've got some customers coming in. But it tends to be linear based growth, because often it's all based on the amount of hours you have in a day, and depending on 30 days in the month or 31 days in the month, exclude February for a bit. You've either got 720 hours or 744 hours in a month. Right. Exactly. Considering you need to sleep, actually have a social life, eat do those things that humans have to do behind closed doors, all that stuff. You have a finite amount of time. So growth tends to be very linear, and it's most often than not linked directly with time. Okay.
It's interesting you mentioned linear because our last guest actually mentioned linear making you're saying FOMO can be quite linear as well. It seems to be the keyword of today's marketing spiel, I suppose. Is this becoming a trend? Is this something that we have to accept as a way forward for marketing? These linear platforms.
Actually, I say it depends. So I see linear as steady, progressive growth over time. I see exponential, I. E. Scale. So linear growth is linear. Scale is exponential. Exponential growth is that kind of exponential curve, the kind of the hockey stick as they described. And this is again where a lot of businesses struggle. Often, people are told in the entrepreneurial world, you need to have a scalable product. You need to scale your business, you need to scale your revenue. You need to do this. You need to do that. And a lot of the time, that's just not the case. That's not true, because if you have a lifestyle based business where actually you want to do hourly based work, you're earning a decent income. You're not interested in potentially exiting to venture capital or kind of like going crazy scale, then actually, linear growth. If your lifestyle type of business is actually a very good thing because it's just steady, progressive growth over time. And that's exactly where you want to focus yourself. And if you start focusing on scale, then actually, you attract yourself away from the business you actually have and the business you want. Right. And if you want to have a scalable business, on the other hand, then actually, that's more high volume. That's less customer interaction that's detaching yourself from hourly based services, kind of style products and more into digital products or scalable products. It's a completely different mindset, completely different type of business. So to answer your question, I think the terminology of linear is a buzzword. That what people are using. Very few people actually understand what it actually means in the context of business and what it actually means in relation to the business they want to grow. And that understanding the difference between growth and scale, linear and exponential when it comes to mindset as well, the shift that makes in your brain you're like. So actually, all these people are telling me, I need to have a scalable business. I don't want a scalable business and you don't have to focus on it.
Well, seeing as Esther took up so much at the beginning of the podcast, I'm going to ask another question now.
Go back and listen. I did not. It was all just Dan's intro.
I'm sorry. I'll have a shorter intro.
So what I wanted to ask now is you particularly work with creatives. And before we started recording, I went brave you. I'm going to stand by that because working with creatives. Bless them. They're fabulous. They've got personality using out of every orifice. But by golly, they hard to work with in some sectors. What do you bring to the table for creatives that makes them actually do stuff because I'd love to know what it was.
I actually mix a lot of psychology and mindset based coaching with a lot of what I do. So I can teach the tactics all day long. But unless you actually are focused very specifically on a destination, then no tactics in the world are going to help you. No volume of tactics, no helpful tactics. It's just not going to help you if you're going to be going in all sorts of different directions. One of the things I talk about a lot with clients, and this is two deeper topics going to during this show, there's a topic called Ike Guy, which is actually a Japanese word that doesn't have a direct English translation but generally means life's, purpose or like meaning. And when you go through a Nikki Guy process, you actually go through the real drivers that you as a person are driven by your passions.
Motivating.
Yeah. What gets you out of bed out in the morning? What's going to actually make you get out of bed on the day so you don't want to get out of bed. But it also helps you to understand even where you've got like, a passion and you've got a mission. Maybe you have a profession if those three things off of the first four, actually, because vocation, passion, mission and profession is part of the inner circle. But when they all mesh together, they need to all mesh together because if you can't be paid for something, but you have a passion in it, then you never have a business because people aren't going to pay for it. But equally,
Yeah, it's a hobby.
Yeah, but equally, if someone's going to pay for something, but actually you're not passionate about it, you're going to get bored after a couple of years, maybe a few months, and your business is going to fail. So a lot of the time I work on the real deep motivator type of style, elements of someone's personality before I even start talking about business because that's what keeps them going and creatives. I found when you work with them on that level, actually, they become very easy to work with, because when they are focused on something, they're passionate about, nothing else matters. But when you try and feed them all the strategies and tactics in the world, none of which they really kind of care about because they're passionate about this one thing actually not going to listen. But equally and very similarly, I've worked for years with startups in venture capital and five equity backed worlds. I think my biggest business was I was on the senior management team of business that we went through a nine figure exit process, like real crazy crazy stuff. And even when you work on that level is no different to working with, like, solar panel ecommerce businesses. The challenges they tend to have is actually look at people more like numbers than humans, and they end up dehumanising their entire business. So actually, you got to teach empathy to the funnel hackers. And you got to teach funnel hacking and business to the creatives because they're just different ends of the same kind of paradigm. Does that make sense?
Yeah. So. Basically talk to them on a level that they understand on whatever level, whether you're talking to the creatives or the venture capitalists, it has to be where they're at.
Yeah. I mean, if you talk to the funnel hackers about sales, you talk about psychology, ethos and pathos and logos, and you kind of go into the real deep psychology level side of things because it's a framework to them. They have to understand in that kind of almost logical sense about how to sell. Whereas if you're talking sales to creatives, I actually teach sales to creative. Like picking someone up in a bar.
Is that where we're going wrong?
Go to the bars, Melanie. Have to go to the bar.
Everyone can relate to it, and everyone understands. If you can pick up someone in a bar, the psychology of sales, whether it's in a bar, picking up something you'd like to look of, or whether it's selling a product or service to someone, we won't go into the realms of the two most ancient professions in the world.
Let's not go there. This is a family show.
Exactly.
You mean farming, farming.
Farming. That psychology is no different at all. Let's talk about funnels, and let's talk about selling one to one services. Let's say coaching neither services, obviously. But the process, you basically have to engage someone and get their attention. You then have to hook them with some kind of an interest. You then ask permission in some form to actually start a conversation with them in small talk, you deepen that relationship. You deepen that connection on an emotional level, on a logical level, and then you make an ask the ask being some kind of conversion, right? That's the sales process that you go through as a human. Now that as a funnel hacker looks something like downloading a PDF, which is like an ebook or something. That ebook is on a page that has a hook, some kind of title that entices someone who is interested in that topic. So you click on the PDF. They download that. That's actually them accepting permission. So they've hooked. They've sought permission. They've gained permission. They've downloaded the thing. Reading the ebook connects with them on the motion level and logical level, and then ask them to book a call that is like funnel hacking 101. Okay. Whereas if you're in a networking event and say, for instance, you saw a speaker up on stage and you're really interested in them and you really think you can actually help their business, then you catch their eye from across the room, right? You might do a hair flick if you had hair.
Here we go.
You catch their eye. You go up and say, Great talk. Really enjoyed it. What's your thoughts on blah, blah, blah. Really interested to know. And if they say, Sorry, I'm going to have time to talk about this at the moment. I'm just about to go into a meeting and say, yeah, no worries. Maybe see you again sometime and you swing it back around. That's like metaphorical kind of nurturing pile if they say, yeah, sure. You say, do you want to grab a coffee? Maybe sit down. If they say yes, you seek in permission, then you connect your conversation. Connect emotionally, connect logically. Dean, make an ask. The sales process is exactly the same.
So where do people get stuck? Where do people get stuck in the sales? Because...
They fail?
Yeah.
You mentioned the word sales. I was like. Go cry in the corner.
Why do most people not pick up someone in a bar if they're single? If they're lonely, if they really want to meet someone, why do they not do it? Because their fear of rejection, they have a fear of putting themselves out there. They have a fear of what they're going to show up like they have a fear about what other people are going to think exactly the same as the fears you have going into a sale. It's exactly the same. It's no different. We as human beings. The physiological impacts we have is no different to that than it is being confronted by a lion or something. The physiological impact
You're not helping. You're not helping.
Wildly unlikely that we're all going to face lines imminently. But. I do get that there is a particular mindset that people have to have in order to commit to sales. Okay. Over the last few years, as I've widened my knowledge and I've had the opportunity to speak to more people, I've started building an understanding of customer mapping and mindset and sales and funnels and all that sort of stuff. But you don't wake up and know all of that stuff, and you're certainly not capable of thinking of all of that stuff. When you first set up my own business, my own business, nobody else knew the business better than me. And it still took me eleven months to stand up in front of somebody and tell them about it. It was a dash of imposter syndrome. Granted, but how do we help? As a coach? As you've mentioned numerous times, how do we help the startups that are listening to or just the people who are just blindly nervous about starting sales? Because even Esther and I, we say we don't do sales, we do marketing.
I mean, I would suggest look at Ikigai and by all means.
How do you spell that? By the way, for those who can't hear
Ikigai I-K-I-G-A-I.
Thank you.
I have a mini course on that as well. So by all means, go to my website. You can have a look at that yourself or just Google IKIGAI. It's not anything that's bespoke or kind of secret or framework. It's actually embedded in deeply within culture in Japan. So it's nothing that's proprietary. The Japanese culture actually use it on a day to day basis. So I just look at that first. And the second thing is, don't expect to wake up one morning and shift your frame of mind onto. I'm not interested in sales, too. I'm going to be the best sales person in the world. It's not going to happen.
Ah come on. You coming with a miracle like these drug weight loss pills? Like, come on, we need something instant, something immediate.
It doesn't work.
You mean I just have to work on it. There's no plugins. There's nothing that will do it for me. Ai. Some artificial intelligence that will do it for me.
There are things that you can do in a therapy point of view that actually help. I won't tell you how I actually got comfortable with sales because mine was actually quite a natural thing. As soon as I got more confident myself. Actually, sales became quite easy. I don't care about standing on stage in front of people. It doesn't even bat an eyelid in terms of my mindset. I just do it because I'm more confident in myself. But actually, I became more confident in myself after having therapy. And I can tell you that mini story if you want, because it's a really short one.
Yes, go ahead.
Because I don't talk about this too often. I think I've talked about on the stage once or twice, but I was massively bullied when I was at school, like, hugely to the point where throughout most of my adult life, up until probably the age of 28, 29 or so, I was 29, actually, when I met my wife, she was my wife then she didn't marry me. I'm still like Tadah. We're be married. But I met the woman who I thought, you know what? I've destroyed every relationship I've ever had because I've been fearful of commitment. I've been fearful of getting hurt. I had all these reservations, everything. And I did say to her at the time, I want to stay with you and I want to be with you. But I need to go into therapy to do that. And she's like, okay, I think that's sweet. I think so. I actually had therapy. What the guy who I actually ended up working with helped me to do was try to understand where those fears came from. And he actually got me to go kind of a semi trance like state. And he got me to think back to the most painful memory I could think of from school. Then, I blocked out 90% of school, and I thought back to that time. He got me to replay the whole thing in my head and make the colours brighter and make the pain more vivid. There's me like semi trance, like crying and everything because it was just horrible, like, really horrible. And the long story is, I'll tell you that another time if you want. But that's like a long story. But he got me to relive this whole thing. And then he said, Right now, the person who's inflicting that pain on you, give them a clown nose and go through the whole thing again. And I was like, okay, sorry, through the whole story in my head on repeat, like, 5,6,10 times. He goes right now, give them full clown makeup, clown hair like clown feet, clown costume, and actually made the whole thing just absurd. And I went through this whole therapy session for about an hour and a half, just replaying this thing in my head. And then when we were done, he said, Right now, go home, just chill out and let me know how you get on over the next couple of days. And I went home. I didn't sleep at all because the entire night, all these memories from school kept on unlocking in my head. And I remember now most of my childhood, whereas before I blocked most of it out. And it was that one little thing that he got me to almost trivialise a painful memory. And that memory was a blocker. And from that point on, I'm actually a confident person. I'm actually naturally a confident person, not a damaged person. And if that hadn't have happened, I wouldn't be able to stand up on stage. I wouldn't be able to do podcast interviews like this. I wouldn't be able to sell to people because I worked with someone to actually unlock the blocks. But it doesn't happen overnight.
Well, no, there was obviously associated trauma with it as well. Do you know it reminded me as you were describing that of a Bogot from Harry Potter. And you're going ridiculous.
I'm not a Harry Potter fan.
I don't remember the character, but I do remember the name. I can't picture it.
I'm shocked. There's loads of people listening to this podcast right now going, how can you not remember that anyway? It's wrong with the Spider and the wheel shapes.
Yeah, I do remember that. Yes, same sort of thing. Make it trivialise it or make it, because basically our emotions are driven by the images in our mind. Like you stand up above a climbing wall and you're terrified of heights. You're not on a height. You're just terrified of what might happen if you got to the height. But if you change your mindset to the point of view of your picturing yourself smiling, happy joyful, high five, and your friends at the top. Then actually, getting there is a lot less scary because it's just the images in your brain that are making it scary.
Okay, so. Recapping a bit.
We got around houses, don't we?
Just conscious of the time we're running out of time here. So only scale if you have the resources to scale and the team behind you to be able to scale, otherwise, grow and grow in a steady linear pattern and then consider scaling. Once you have figured out how to sleep less, eat less socialise less
To a degree. Decide what kind of business you want. If you want a scale of wheel business that's light touch to customers, then scale of businesses for you. If you like working with people one to one, you like services based businesses. That is very, very hard to scale. So don't need more than trying. Just decide what you want ultimately. And if you're not too sure, look at if you're not too sure after that, talk to me. If you're still not too sure after that, it's pretty much not that much hope for you.
You might need therapy.
Genuinely. You might. It's not a scary thing.
It isn't.
So how do people find you to be able to talk to you?
I'm on socials. All of them actually at Danhollawaylive. Or if you go to Danhollaway.Live, that's my website. You can find me there. Grab a call if you want to learn more about the topics we've been talking about. And yes, everything is all on the website. You can find me on the socials.
Thank you, Dan.
Yeah. Thanks very much, Dan, for coming on today and for answering our questions. And I'm sure people have lots more questions to ask you. But until then, guys, we're back next week with more Monday morning marketing Bye bye.
I told you, she's the harsh one. She always speeds things up. Have you noticed that?
We can always bring them back another day? So much left to talk about till then. Bye
bye, everyone.