Meet The 5 Freelancing Villains Secretly Sabotaging Your Results

376. The Five Failure Patterns

===

Brian: [00:00:00] Most freelancers don't fail because they lag talent. They fail because they get stuck in patterns that hold them back. And I've seen this after coaching hundreds and hundreds of freelance clients.

Brian: So many people know what to do, but they can't get out of their own damn way.

Brian: There's so much mental junk just preventing you from implementing what you already know will work On top of that, getting success and maintaining success are two very different things. Everyone's so focused on,mastery and getting better and better and better. But maintenance is the name of the game when it comes to business, especially in an infinite game like business.

Brian: For those who are not familiar with the term, infinite game, infinite game just is a game with no real end. goal of the game is just to keep playing for the rest of your life. Just like fitness. If you think about fitness, for an example, getting abs. Is a finite game. You want to get abs right, but keeping abs is the infinite game.

Brian: very different skill from gaining abs. It's really easy. I would not say easy. I've never really had a six pack in my life. To be fair, it is easier to get ABS than it is to keep abs for your entire life, and that is business maintenance is not fun.

Brian: It is routines. It is repetition. It is doing boring things really well, which is [00:01:00] boring, which is why most people suck at it, myself included in certain areas of my life.

Brian: And so we ended up avoiding it all together. And so going back to the freelancer. Client acquisition is something that you can do, right? You can do all the things right, like get your ads up and running.

Brian: bringing in leads. Or you could do content marketing that's bringing in leads.

Brian: You could do cold outreach, whatever the thing is. That's actually bringing in leads. You can get a funnel built and performing well. You can get your calls booked on your calendar. You can have a sales process in place. There's actually turning strangers into a client. You can get all those things right, but if you're ignoring these invisible self-sabotaging patterns that you have. You will not be able to maintain that success for very long if you can even achieve success in the first place.

Josh: The longer you take to admit this to yourself and actually fix it, the harder everything becomes in your business as far as gaining success and then maintaining it for the long term because you and only you are responsible for building and maintaining your business.

Brian: And if you're not in the driver's seat, you're not actually pushing things forward. Everything goes downhill from there. All these little things that you've been neglecting, all these little things you've been putting off will turn into raging fires that will make more work for yourself. And then everything becomes a thousand times harder than it needs to [00:02:00] be.

Brian: If you take a hard look at your business, just take an objective look and honest look at your business.You're not stuck because you're not working hard enough. You're not stuck because you don't know what to do. It's not a strategy problem. It is merely a self management problem. And as many times as I've seen these patterns play out in our clients and friends of mine and myself in certain circumstances, I could tell you from experience, it is not about working harder. It is not about learning new things. It's not about changing your strategy probably again for the 50th time.

Brian: And there's nothing wrong with any of those things, but they ignore the root cause, And that is the entire point of this episode. It's not about doing more, it's about understanding the survival patterns that you default to when things get hard. Because the truth is You don't rise to the level of your strategy, you fall to the level of your patterns. and again, I've seen this play out with some of our clients where they have a damn near flawless strategy that they're trying to execute, and yet they can't get out of their own damn way to execute it. so in this episode, we're gonna talk about the five patterns that secretly sabotage your success so we can find out what it is that's actually keeping you stuck so that you can break the pattern.

Josh: if this is [00:03:00] your first time listening to the podcast or you're new here.

Brian: Hi, I'm Brian Hood. This is The Six Figure Creative Podcast, is a podcast for creative freelancers who want to earn more money with their skills without selling their soul. If that's you, you're in the right spot. I bring my experience from my background and as an entrepreneur forover 15 years now.

Brian: Running multiple businesses, building multiple six figure businesses, buildingmulti seven figure businesses now, and now six figure creative as a whole, as a team of 11 people. 11 or more people at this pointwith different experiences and different backgrounds.

Brian: And one of those team members we actually have here today on the show after this, probably longer intro than normal. It is Josh Love. Hey Josh.

Josh: Hello. How's it going?

Brian: so Josh is one of our coaches here.

Brian: He is, been with the coach with us for like the last year and a half. He was head of marketing for an eight figure software company outta Germany. He ran a team of six people in the marketing department there. so he has tons of experience when it comes to marketing, digital marketing, and he also more recently ran a six figure design agency before I poached him as a coach over here at Six Figure Creative.

Brian: So, thanks for coming over here, dude. I want you to kind of take over from here. You've mapped out these five archetypes, or patterns that are [00:04:00] basically self-sabotage patterns. I'm excited to dive into these with you today, man.

Josh: Yeah, it's gonna be great. And I think the thing here is that, I know them because I've done them myself and I've also seen them, you know, happen in other people. so a hundred percent guilty of some of the, patterns and behaviors will through today.

Brian: if you can't already tell uh, Josh is British. And so if you're American, I dunno what is about the British voice, especially Josh's British voice. I just feel like I can trust him. It's just like, he just sounds so smart.

Josh: I should have worn my glasses today.

Brian: There you go, dude. That's right. Cool. Yeah, so let's get into this man.

Josh: So today we're gonna be diving into a set of patterns that most experienced freelancers will run into at some point during their career. And one thing to point out here is these are not personality traits, right? These are behavior patterns that most of us default to when things get hard. the thing is it's not necessarily to ask.

Josh: Which one of these am I? It's more trying to identify which one of these am I more likely to default to when I'm under stress, right? When I'm going through a load of things, either in the business or in outside world.

Brian: I already can tell [00:05:00] you which one's gonna be me. Like I know my, my default behavior pattern when things get stressed. So when we get to mine I'll, talk about it a bit more, like how I fall into it and what I do and like how it shows up in my business or in my life, or my personal life, or anywhere else in my life.

Brian: Perfect. Yeah, I'm excited to, uh, maybe I should try and guess which one you are before we get there. when we get to that number, say, I think this is yours, Brian.

Josh: Okay, perfect. So I think the thing here is that stress really does change the way that we operate sometimes. you know, if you're under a lot of stress, it can kind of like, shrink your ability to be able to make decisions and make good ones in the moment.

Josh: It can amplify how reactive we are emotionally to certain things and can kind of, pull us into behaviors that try to make us feel safe and familiar, but can actually sabotage our momentum.

Brian: and by the way, if you're a client of ours. These are probably based off of you, like,we've kind of like bucketed our clients into kind of these categories so that again, as we bring on more coaches, as we bring on more clients, we can start to figure out how do we best deal with each of these, types of patterns so that we're able to help the person as much as possible.

Brian: [00:06:00] Because I have found again and again. the client issues we're dealing with is not with their client acquisition. It's helping them get out of their own damn ways. And this is kind of what we're discussing today, is how do you get out of your own damn way so that you can then fix all the things in your business.

Josh: Yeah, 100%. And the one thing that I would say to that as well, like if you are a client listening to this, the only way that we are able to identify these is 'cause we've all done them ourselves at some point. So, you know, we're all in the same boat here.

Brian: Yeah.

Josh: so let's get into the first one here. Josh. What is the first pattern?

Josh: So the first one is what we call the forecaster. And this is really someone who is always trying to look ahead and basically solve every problem that they don't actually have right now. and so obviously, you know, one of the main goals with marketing and client acquisition and just business in general is to just focus on.

Josh: the number one constraint in the business at the moment. for many of our clients, and for many of people watching this, it could be, you know, the leads and getting actually people coming into your business. Another, constraint could be sales and forecasters are basically not focused on the number one thing that is in front of them, but the 12 steps ahead.

Josh: And [00:07:00] really this is, this comes from a need of always needing to feel prepared, right? Always needing to know every single detail before they start something. And because of this, they're always taking in so much more information that they need to be and often get stuck in analysis paralysis, just trying to figure it all out and actually digest the information that they have, taken in essentially.

Brian: Yeah. This is literally me. This is like you just described me to myself where like if I get stressed, I just move to this default of like, I just have to research, I have to learn it all. I have to know everything about the problem, and like there could be some good sides to it. I am such a generalist at so many things because this is my default response that like, when I'm stressed about something or when I feel stupid about something, I just research it by default.

Brian: Like that's my go-to thing. And so I become, I wouldn't say an expert, but I become knowledgeable in lots and lots of different things, both in business but in personal life. So there can be a healthy element to this, but like what's the dark side of this?

Josh: for sure. I think the dark side is almost like slipping into perfectionism. So it is a great thing to be able [00:08:00] to, take in all the information and, have a level of understanding so that you feel prepared to solve the problem. But the dark side is like slipping into perfectionism, having very, very high standards and needing every single detail to be on point, especially when it comes to execution.

Josh: So. This can really slow you down and having high standards can be very different from perfectionism, for example. So, having high standards can be more around, you know, wanting to see results or progression in whatever it is that you do and not focusing and, you know, obsessing over every single tiny detail that no one sees.

Josh: And I think that can be the dark side of taking in all this information. You almost feel like sometimes you have to act on it, straight in the moment. And so, you know, a lot of the antidote from this is, focusing on progress, rather than perfection. when you know, actually implementing some of this stuff and bringing it into the business.

Brian: what have you seen with your clients with this specific archetype or this specific pattern?

Josh: so I think the need or the kind of like desire to want to solve all the problems that are coming up ahead [00:09:00] and, you know, have everything kind of like mapped out, can lead to a ton of overthinking and over analyzing every single detail. when you are in this space, you are really looking at more information than you probably should be, considering every single tiny detail of how something works and then looking at how all those details affect other things.

Josh: And almost like the second order consequence of whatever it is that you're focusing on has 10 other things around it. and so there's so much information and data for your brain to process. And when you are learning a new skill where you're going into marketing or running paid ads for the first time and all this stuff, that's already a lot to learn.

Josh: And so if you are also trying to figure out, a million things after that and take in all that information as well, it gets very, very overwhelming and that's what a lot of people get stuck with.

Brian: I think it also leads to over complication. Like I've seen clients because they're this like obsessive researcher or they wanna know all the things about something. They tend to also overthink how those all things play together. And so when they come to you with work or something they want you to review [00:10:00] or some feedback on something or something, they're gonna try,they have so over complicated to the point where it just won't work.

Josh: Yep.

Brian: will not work. It's like it is such a hot mess. maybe I'm kind of stepping on some of the other patterns we're seeing in the future on this episode. there. Lot of these are spectrums kinda like, personality types a year. Like I'm an Enneagram seven or I'm an Enneagram eight.

Brian: That's a spectrum. It's not like you're a number. Your life does not just amount to a number or a pattern.

Brian: So if this is something that you struggle with, like what are some solutions or what are some ways that we can kind of break this pattern? again, this is not about you've solved it, it's gone, it's perfect, you're done. It's, again, this is maintenance mode, right? This is the constant work of fighting this pattern or fighting against this pattern.

Brian: I've had a fight this sort of pattern for years and years and years. I've gotten pretty good at it. what are some things that you, you think we should consider when it comes to breaking this pattern?

Josh: I would say one of the things is to really try to, focus on speed. because with that comes, a lot of iterative learning. There was a study or an experiment at some point where people went and, split a pottery class into two groups, right? So group A made like, 30 pots [00:11:00] in, 30 days, and Group B focused on creating one pot within 30 days.

Josh: And the one that created you know, more pots, one every single day. They were by far way more superior and had a higher quality of standard of those pots because with speed, you almost have to do learning on the job. And you can actually get results back quicker, form a hypothesis about that, and then adapt the situation that is, in front of you.

Brian: I've heard that story kind of play out in different scenarios. The first time I ever heard it was a photography class at a university, and they basically said like, you have the whole semester to create the perfect photo group A. And the group A was like, you have to create a photo every day or something like that, like submit a photo for every day.

Brian: And it was like, which one do you think had more progress? Either way? The point remains is just like repetition. quickly, implementing things, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't work is the antidote to this as opposed to somebody who maybe moves too fast. That type of person, we've gotta slow down.

Brian: This type of person is too slow. We've gotta speed them up. So that's again, why we need to know what sort of pattern you fall into. So, You know the antidote for fixing that,

Josh: Yeah, for sure.

Brian: I think one more [00:12:00] thing here, Josh Worth mentioning is just in time learning. This is something we,that I do with books and this helps with like my over learning where it's like there's just in time and there's just in case information. Just in case information is like, I just need to know this just in case.

Brian: in case I'm a billionaire. One day I'm gonna read this book for billionaires. Like it's kind of irrelevant, like to my life and my circumstances, but I have like stacks of books that have post-it notes in my house on them for like certain things that I've done when I've done this, when I've done that, when I've hit this milestone, when I've done that.

Brian: And that way it's like just in time learning for those moments in life versus just in case I ever need them. How do you do this with clients? Making sure they're just in time learning or with yourself, if this is something you struggle with.

Josh: I think it's almost like trying to get out the state of mind that absolutely everything has to be perfect. The situation is that you can still run a successful business and, things will fall through the cracks and, just getting comfortable with flying the plane as you also build it at the same time is, a great way to kind of like speed up a little bit of [00:13:00] momentum, but also kind of get out your own head and thinking that everything has to be a certain way and you have to have all the information right in front of you.

Josh: And just, taking one next step to figure out, what do I need right now, in order to unlock the next stage of what I'm looking at really?

Brian: Yeah, I think six figure creative for anyone who doesn't know, like we've been around for a while, since 2020 was when six figure creative like, was first renamed from six Figure in the studio, but we were kind of like just, I was a solopreneur for like most of my life. And then we started hiring 2023 and since then we doubled in 23.

Brian: We doubled in 24. we'll double again this year in 25, if not a little bit more. And that alone has forced me to have to learn how to build the plane as we fly it. It's just like, there's so many little things where we have to, like, I just can't over plan, I can't over strategize. We just have to kind of like take things as they come.

Brian: And been a really, actually, really good for mebecause now that I have a team, I am essentially forced to make decisions faster. I am forced to not have to research all the time. I'm forced to have the answers in a lot of scenarios. And again, in my situation, that's a good [00:14:00] thing. So sometimes we just need a, forcing function to help us break these patterns.

Brian: Which can be great to have friends. You're working with a coach or a mentor you're working with, having a team that you work with. anything to kind of break that pattern up? ' I found myself,if I'm left to my own devices, I'll just go back straight to the patterns that I've been to before.

Josh: For sure. Yeah. And I think by, you know, just putting things out into the world and like reducing the time it takes to do stuff, you're able to get so much secondhand learning from actually doing the thing. you can spend so long, you know, preparing for a client call and, you know, spend months figuring out the exact script and the right sales structure and how to communicate everything.

Josh: But actually just speaking to someone will, make things go faster because you have to kind of like, learn on the spot and make those decisions faster. So you don't get caught into overthinking, over analyzing, trying to make everything perfect.

Brian: So that's the forecaster. What's the second personality trait or I guess pattern?

Josh: So the second pattern is dabbling. Okay? So the dabbler will really go from tactic to tactic, [00:15:00] never really giving anything enough time to bear through. So typically what they do is skim through things very, very surface level and just don't spend the time needed to really fully understand everything and give it enough time, to actually, start a compound and do its thing so that results actually are coming from it.

Brian: this is something that I've,I think is probably one of the most. Destructive patterns to be in. I've done this myself. I think I counted up like six or seven, six figure income streams in my life. You don't get that if you're focused. I think at a certain time in my life, I was proud of that.

Brian: And the older I get, the less I'm proud of that. And the more I listen to her mozy aboutthe woman in the red dress, like all these quote opportunities that are basically just distractions. The next thing to dabble into, because it's exciting, that is the antithesis of maintenance mode. Maintenance mode is boring.

Brian: Do boring work. You have to maintain. It's keeping the abs when you, you know, you want to have the donuts.the dabbler is ooh, donuts. Ooh, a piece of candy. Ooh, I wanna do this. Ooh, I wanna do that. That seems fun. Oh, [00:16:00] let's go on that trip and eat just exorbitantly for a month straight, which I just did.

Brian: So, YesI've fallen victim to this myself.

Josh: I think many of us have, myself included. And, the way that we see some of these things playing out, a more business context, especially with some of our clients, is that these are the types of people that will offer like infinite number of service. They'll have like a, a Franken service, uh, menuof what they do.

Josh: So maybe they offer websites and SEO and landing pages and branding and then it becomes. Almost like quite confusing for their avatar and the people that they're trying to attract, what do you actually do? Because they're always moving from topic to topic.

Brian: Yeah. Web designers, their clients. Like, I need a copywriter. Do you know everyone? Oh, I guess I offer Copywriting services now. we need to do Facebook ads. Uh, I've done that once before my entire life, I guess. I do Facebook ad services now. we need somebody to do, a logo for us.

Brian: Well, I'm a web designer. I,I do design. I could probably make a logo for you. I do brand design now. Cool. So it's like, you can see how these sorts of things start to stack up and, there's maybe nothing. Inherently wrong [00:17:00] with increasing the lifetime value from a client, asking for more services from you once you've made the sale.

Brian: But where that can be detrimental to you is when you either let that take away from your core service and the skillset that you have, and you try to promote those things on the front end because it'll appeal to more people and you end up pushing everyone away because they can't place you in a box.

Brian: I don't necessarily want to hire someone to build my website when they offer 30 or 50 other services. I want somebody who specializes in web design. I don't want somebody who works in every damn genre of music to produce my album. I want someone who just does country music or just does hip hop or just does death core.

Brian: You see what I'm saying? So the dabbler can start to dilute your own message as a freelancer. On top of just never implementing anything your business in the first place. give some examples of what you've seen with clients where they, struggle with dabbling.

Josh: I think the most prominent one would be wanting to change course. immediately, as soon as something gets a little bit difficult. when going through all the marketing stuff, there's gonna be a bottleneck at some point. Be it on the ads, be it within your emails, [00:18:00] be it within the sales, and at that point of friction, when things, get tough and they don't necessarily have the answers to how to solve those problems, the default is let's change everything.

Josh: This doesn't work and move to something else completely different. Undoing all of the work that they've just done, or undoing all of the learning and not necessarily having the context that. You would have to start all again from ground zero by, completely switching strategy.

Brian: a lot of this times we just have to set expectations properly for clients. So an example might be after a hundred dollars in ad spend, they're freaking out because they haven't gotten any leads yet. That sounds terrible, right? And so you're like, oh, this doesn't work in my niche. I'm just gonna something else.

Brian: the problem is they usually don't have another opportunity. They don't have a good network. They don't have, the skillset to do content marketing or the wherewithal to do it and actually do it well. they don't have enough past clients referrals to keep themselves busy. They don't want to do cold outreach 'cause that's a whole other treadmill.

Brian: And so paid ads are really their only option. And after a hundred dollars, they just wanna give up and move,to quote something else where when you look in their business and you dig in and you [00:19:00] realize, oh, their clients are worth $25,000 each, and you've spent $100 on ads trying to attract a $25,000 client, you've gotta have a little higher threshold of failure before you give up on something like paid ads if you want something like that to work.

Brian: And we've seen this with clients time and time again, is. They just don't realize how much work it takes to get to the point where now your ads are working, especially for higher tier B2B services. But when you get there, are you willing to spend a thousand dollars to acquire a client worth $25,000? Most people would say, yes.

Brian: even $2,000 that's still over a 10 to one return on ad spend? And I think most freelancers just aren't thinking through it with clear eyes either because of frustration, which is a valid thing sometimes, or they just see a shiny object of something else they wanna try. AI is huge.

Brian: Now I'm gonna use AI in cold outreach and some other convoluted thing that's not been proven to work long term yet.

Josh: It is switched into the shiny object syndrome. Just going after whatever is kind of like fancy in the moment. And I think these types of people as well can kind of just like oversimplify things and think [00:20:00] things are easier thanthey should be. And then that can cause quite a bit of friction just in terms of how things are actually executed.

Brian: Yeah. I think, uh, another part of this is just thinking everything should be easy. Like when you think everything should be easy or that even worse. I think I talked about this before, when you're naturally great at your craft so you think success comes easily because you succeeded at being good at whatever you do, music, production, design, songwriting, whatever.

Brian: You became good at that creative skill without that much work or effort because it just came so natural to you because you loved it so much and you actually practiced it all the time without it being practiced. 'cause it was fun. when you're hit with something that you're not a natural at, you don't really wanna do, don't have that natural skill set or it's actually work to do now it's just all of a sudden you don't wanna do that let's go focus on something else that just seems more fun, more exciting, more shiny.

Josh: Yeah, it's almost like trying to avoid doing the hard thing,

Brian: Looking for shortcuts.

Josh: looking for shortcuts and, thinking that there is almost like one silver bullet to solve all the problems. And you know,homeware saying, is it a thousand golden bbs?

Brian: Yep. Meaning, it's the thousand tiny things that are gonna be successful for you, not the [00:21:00] one big stupid thing that you think it is. And that's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people. ' they don't wanna shoot the thousand golden bbs at something to kill it.

Brian: That just sounds boring.

Josh: and hard work.

Brian: It's like the RPG where you're like, you've got this little knife and you're trying to beat a boss at one HP at a time. It's just like awful. so how do we counter this? Like What are some ways to fight this?

Josh: I think one of the things is to almost try to build up a bit of a, desire to have kind of like delayed gratification. I think the whole world general right now is very easy to expect things really instantly. You've got food coming to your door really quickly.

Josh: You've got, Amazon coming you can order anything

Brian: I literally will like, sometimes not order a thing because I can't get it same day or like,actually no, even, here's a, here's a better example. I'll be on like Amazon and I'll be looking through different options and like, Hey, this one has better reviews, but this one comes today. I want it today.

Brian: I wanna get this one today. Let's get it. It's got like horrible reviews. I don't care. I get it today.

Josh: And that's great for those [00:22:00] situations. But again, when you're trying to play the infinite game of business, right, you want to be able build systems and stuff like that, that are actually gonna carry you through for a longer period of time. And so I think one of the things to overcome this and to stop dabbling is really just getting really focused on the number one thing that you, should be doing and that you have actually committed to.

Josh: example of this is like, let's say for example, you have 10 units of focus. And they're all going on 10 different things, right? You're basically gonna make one unit of focus, one step, on 10 different things. Whereas if you actually have 10 units of focus and you just focus on one thing, you actually make 10 units in one direction.

Josh: And I think that's the thing that dabbler, struggle with, is they don't give enough time for actually things to take root.

Brian: Yeah, there's a, uh, it's an old video from Sam Ovens back in the day where he visualizes this and he draws like acircle and like this is your circle of focus. And then he puts those 10 units of focus as like lines drawn out. Kinda like if you're looking at a sun, like a child's drawing of the sun.

Brian: It's like 10 different lines around the circle, and then that's like your focus. It's just spread everywhere. But then [00:23:00] whenever you stack it up and focus on one thing, now that line is just from the circle. There's only one line coming off of it, and it's 10 times longer. And that is how you succeed at something.

Brian: It's not the billion different directions. It's the one thing that you've actually focused on until you see to the end.

Josh: For sure, a hundred percent. I think it's that commitment as well. Just like I have seen something through, I'm not gonna change because we all know it ourselves, like eating healthy, we always make, new Year's resolutions on January and most of them are broken by February. It's the same thing to a certain degree, the same kind of like pattern here.

Josh: And. down blues, just need to almost see that there's no shortcut to stuff like this and just commit to doing the thing, focusing in and actually making progress in one direction.

Brian: One more thing to add to this I've seen this with some of the people we work with is they just don't know what they're doing is actually good. they see something as like a failure. Then we look at the numbers, the data, what it's actually telling us. We're like, this is actually incredible.

Brian: You're doing fantastic. Just keep going. people give up because they don't see instant success, but they don't realize, oh, they spent $500 on ads and they haven't got a client yet, they don't realizethey have like [00:24:00] 25, 30, 40 leads they got from that. Or more, maybe a hundred, maybe 200 leads.

Brian: They got 15, 20, 30 book calls. Maybe they weren't all qualified, but you got like 10, 15 potential clients out of that. And then they just realize when we start talking to 'em, they just suck at sales. There's nothing else they did was wrong. They just suck at sales. so we review calls, we figure out the worst parts of their sales process and help them work through those.

Brian: And all of a sudden they start landing clients. We just had a client do this, week,which he had like 30 calls in a row that he just bombed. He wasn't recording any of them, so we couldn't help. We finally talked him into recording some calls so we could review them and see where he is going wrong.

Brian: And boom, he closes three clients after that. this is something we see all the time is they want to jump from thing to thing because they don't realize how what they're doing is actually good because they're not thinking through, oh, I just have to fix this one little thing and it's,and it's over.

Brian: then you have that big jolt of like,dopamine because you finally had the big win and you didn't even think to celebrate all the small wins along the way.

Brian: That could be another thing that kind of keeps you motivated long term is knowing what those things are to celebrate and then actually celebrating them. And it can be difficult if you [00:25:00] don't know what you're doing to know how to celebrate those wins, but. The point remains, the more wins you can celebrate.

Brian: Even the small wins along the,the journey to victory is how you ultimately get to the end to get that big dopamine hit to reward yourself so that you've told yourself, oh, I get rewarded if I see things to the end. That's the way to get outta this,dabbler phase is as an entrepreneur, a lot of times we're rewarded for change because, oh, I quit my job.

Brian: That's a big change, and now I'm an entrepreneur and I had some success, and then I pivoted to this other niche and I had success there, and then I pivoted this other service, or I added these other services and I got money for that. You're rewarded for constant change and sometimes to have a really successful business, we have to go against our entrepreneurial instincts and actually stick with something for a really long time and see through the end until we start getting the long-term rewards.

Brian: And that's how we get out of the dabbler phase. So that's the dabbler. what's the third? pattern here, Josh?

Josh: so the third pattern is what we call the reactive rambler. And these are the people who are like always on, they've always stressed, they've always got a to-do list, like the length of their arm. And [00:26:00] typically what we see is that they're always busy, right? They've always got a million things to do. And I think really the crux of the problem here is that they're bad at prioritizing and bad at, time management basically.

Josh: So they're always doing a hundred things at once, and it's almost like they're just trying to keep their head above the water. And I think from what we see, these guys just need like ruthless time management and way better prioritization in terms of what they need to be working on first. And what actually is not even important

Brian: I was about to say, when,anytime I see this type of person, They're struggling. I don't have time. I don't have time to do this very important thing that will fix all the problems in my business. then you say, what are you doing?

Brian: you start talking to them. You get on a call. You just have like, tell me all the things you've been working on. And they justlist it out. Here's all the things I've been doing. Here's my to-do list right now. And you look at it and you're like, you can probably throw like 80% of that away and just never do that because you're focused on the wrong things.

Brian: It's not fixing the bottleneck in your business. It's not fixing anything that's actually wrong with your business. These are just busy tasks. what is it is a survival pattern because you feel like you're not enough, so you want to do more and [00:27:00] you wanna work harder.

Brian: Is that what it is?

Josh: I think it is a survival pattern. It's almost like these. External things are coming to you and you almost don't know exactly how to organize them in the right way to make them go away, Because they have all of these tasks that they're doing and they're always trying to solve everything, almost like all at once.

Josh: So I think it's definitely some kind of survival pattern from almost getting overwhelmed and then just defaulting to try to tackle absolutely everything all at once. It's almost like a fight mechanism.

Brian: how do we, how do we break this pattern?

Josh: so I think the thing in terms of breaking the pattern in terms of you've got so much going on. You're always busy, you're hiding behind the busyness and actually not focusing on what you need to be doing is literally just ruthless prioritization, right? So understanding and getting a really clear handle on what specific tasks and activities actually would drive revenue, right?

Josh: So what is the number one task that I can do today that is, solving the bottleneck in my business? Or actually moving me towards landing [00:28:00] clients, getting on calls with people, getting projects booked.

Brian: the Josh British term, is driving revenue. My American brain says, what makes me money? What makes me more money, and what doesn't? That's like it. Like when it comes to ruthless prioritization, when it comes to business, obviously like there's more to life than just business. We have priorities outside of our business, but I'm just talking right now, like nine to five.

Brian: ' You came into this because you, you wanted to have your own schedule. I get that, but I literally work nine to five every day regardless of anything going on in my business or my life. Like, That's just how I work. I actually say I just came back from a trip.

Brian: I definitely didn't work nine to five on that trip. But the point remains, like work with inner structure. I work nine to five, and in that nine to five hours, I'm focused on what will make the business better. And how do you measure a business being better and the business world is easy? How much revenue does it generate?

Brian: How much money does it make? Like That's basically it. And then in your personal life, it's harder to, quantify what successes in a personal life. So I'm gonna stay outta that for now, because that's,too nebulous. And it's different for everybody. But in business it's how much money did you make? [00:29:00] There's other things obviously that matter. How much did you enjoy it? Do you like what you're doing? Do you like your clients? Other things like that. But first, we generally. Need to find a way to have consistent income and consistent revenue, as Josh calls it, driving revenue for freelancers is the priority early on, because most people, when they fall to these,patterns that they're getting into, they're spurred on because of,stress.

Brian: And one of the most stressful things is not making money. So generally what I see is the best way to get yourself in a position to ruthlessly prioritize, as Josh says here, is to make enough money where you're not stressed constantly. And when you get above that threshold where you can live comfortably, now you get to be picky. Now you can say, ah, I really don't like with working this type of client, because it adds this 30 page do list every single time I take one of these clients on. So I would love to just never work with one of these clients again. Well, It's hard to do when you're not making enough money to make ends meet, but whenever you get above that threshold, now we can start to fire those clients.

Brian: So there can be a short term pain when you're trying to make more money as a freelancer. And maybe even I say it on this podcast all the time, make more money without selling your soul. You might have to sell your soul for a short amount [00:30:00] of time so that you can gain your soul back. You can buy it back in the future forever.

Josh: Just sell your soul for a little bit of time. That's all I'm saying. That's what I'm advocating here Sometimes for some people,It's gotta be done from time to time for a short period of time. Sometimes, yeah. But I think it's about making those decisions that can also, like, alleviate stress. Sometimes you have to make the decision to rest, to actually be able to focus on the other things that you've got going on. And sometimes when you're caught in all these different things of, oh, everything has to be solved all at once, and everything is a priority, then it can be very difficult to be able to act from that space and actually, respond to a situation rather than react to a.

Brian: so let's just say we've, we've bought our souls back. We've got a little extra buffer time financially, but we're still not prioritizing well, what are some things we can do to actually prioritize?

Josh: Yeah, so building out systems and templates and automations, anything so that can kind of like prohibit you from, customizing things that don't need to be customized or, buying back the ability to be able to deeply focus on tasks that are actually going to, move you forward to some degree.

Josh: So the Easy Eights framework, [00:31:00] which you talked about on this podcast many, many times, is, one of the easiest ways to be able to kind of like, prioritize certain things.

Brian: Yep. So you go to six figure creative.com/ 2 1 6. That episode is called How to Spend Less Time Doing the Stuff You Hate. It's called The Easy Eights Framework. Go check that out. It's a good episode if you suck at prioritization. and by the way, I'll just give you a brief one.

Brian: It's automate, delegate, eliminate, and mitigate. Those are the four of the easy eights. Automate the things that can be automated. Delegate the things that you can pass off to someone else. Eliminate the things that you shouldn't be doing in the first place. And then if everything that's left after that mitigate the pain and any means necessary, whether it's buying a piece of gear, whether it's buying a piece of software, whether it's practicing, so it's less painful for you or working on your process to make it less painful.

Brian: the 32nd version of the Easy Eights framework. But what else can we do? Anything else?

Josh: Another thing that I've done with, uh, quite a few clients when they are, just really, really busy, they're stretched for time and, you know, just caught up in doing lots of stuff is literally going into their calendar. Seeing how they are scheduling their days, and [00:32:00] then just blocking time for deep work.

Josh: making sure that there is allotted times, multiple times a week to just focus on one thing and nothing else. And that's really kind of like the simplest thing to do. You don't have to overthink this. There's no kind of like complex strategy to it. It is just finding time within your calendar that you can just make sure you are focused on, the most important task at that time.

Brian: the business right now is the biggest it's ever been for Six Figure Creative.

Brian: and I have a team of 11 at this point, and yet I still have, I looked at my calendar. I still have five, two hour blocks every week open for deep work in my own business. despite being the busiest the busiest I've ever been or should be on paper, I still prioritize time blocks to focus on that deep work to fix root cause problems in my business, to work on big projects that are gonna move the needle.

Brian: Things like that.

Brian: Have you seen that video of like a professor in a classroom and he is got that glass container and he's putting rocks in first and then you know, little pebbles and sand and he fills it up with water. that will be on our show notes page, but [00:33:00] It just shows how, order matters. if you put everything in where you put the sand first, which represents the little tasks in your life, you put that in first, andthen you put the pebbles, which represents the smaller projects in your life, and then you put the big stones or the big rocks in, which is the big projects in your life.

Brian: You can't fit everything. If you reverse the order where you do the big rocks first, you throw that in then you put the little pebbles, the smaller projects, you put those in second,and then the sand, you just dump the rest of it in there. It all fits just because you prioritize the big rocks first. I love that video so much.

Brian: It'll be on our show notesPage@sixfigurecreative.com slash 3 6. is that what you mean, like the time blocks are for you to work on those big rock tasks in your business?

Josh: Yeah, it's prioritizing the,the most important things first so that you make sure that all the other small things can fit around it, because if you do it the opposite way round, all the big things get missed.

Brian: Yep. I'm still guilty of this. I'm not gonna pretend like I'm perfect with this. Like There's all sorts of times where I'm like, first thing I'm doing in the day even is working on the little,pebbles of the sand. Things just a little time waster, busy things versus the big thing. the other phrase from Brian [00:34:00] Tracy, which is like an old school self-help guy who was eat the frog.

Brian: It's like the first thing you do in the day is eat the frog. It's like,just do the thing you don't wanna do first. 'cause that's usually the thing that's most important. That's like the lesson there.

Josh: I think as well it also depends for how you naturally operate as a person. Like I have way more mental clarity in the morning, whereas some people are like lasting at night, you know, like night birds and stuff like that, and can work best at like 2:00 AM.

Brian: for me it's, morning. Like my morning is my most prized precious time. if I can not have anything in my mornings, I would love that. I'm pretty good at protecting those times. So I only do the important stuff, those hours.

Brian: And then afternoons is where I do like meetings or brain tasks like spreadsheets or other things. and again, some people are more creative or want to do the bigger, harder projects at nighttime when their kids are asleep everyone's away from you and that's your free time.

Brian: And so I completely understand that as well. Just find what works for you and stick with it. But whatever those like golden hours are for you, that's the stuff you prioritize for time blocking the big projects. Everything else can just fit into the like, periphery of your, your schedule. Alright, so that is the, what do we call it?

Brian: The reactive [00:35:00] rambler. These are such British terms. I love it. Number four. What's the fourth pattern.

Josh: So the fourth one is what we call the vibe vampire. And this is really just kind of like a pattern that focuses way too much on emotion. So they really do get swept up into reacting to things. And can be really kind of like, deeply emotional, can be a really good trait, but it comes with its curse at the same time.

Josh: And so, you know, these types of, people when they get triggered in this way make things harder for themselves 'cause they let their emotions take the wheel. and so they're reacting from a very emotional space. and that can, create more, ripple so to speak, and more of emotions and more frustration or what have you.

Brian: I'm guilty of this, myself as well. Like I think the thing that makes me emotionally react is when it's something that I have no control over one of my big personality traits is control.

Brian: Like, I want to make sure I'm controlling situations and if something comes up that I have no control over whatsoever, it frustrates me so much. Like traffic's one of those things. Oh my God, I don't have road rage, but I have traffic rage, so like somebody can cut me off. I don't [00:36:00] care. Like, good move, dude.

Brian: You didn't kill me you made the space work, the tiny space that you had in front of me. Work. Good for you. Yeah, I had to send my brakes on, but you know, touche, maybe I shouldn't have left such a big gap open, had safety in mind for driving anyways. Doesn't really make me mad.

Brian: It makes my wife mad, but if I have to sit in traffic or if I get stuck in traffic or get into traffic where I could have gotten out, but I didn't see the exit beforehand, that like infuriates meand that plays out in just different areas of my life. In business, the same way I can overreact to things. I might lash out at a team member if something happens. I tried to be really cautious about that. I don't know, I probably lashed at you before Josh. I don't know if I've done it

Josh: Now you're pretty good. there's no nasty lashes out here.

Brian: Yeah. That's what you have to say on air, but we know what you're really thinking. let's talk about this one. So, what are some of the traits that the Vibe Vampire, has?

Josh: So Typically what we see with these guys is that they would use external reasons or excuses for why they're not where they want to be, right? So it could be things like, this is too hard.

Josh: This is not what I signed up for. The economy sucks. I don't like Trump, it's too hot [00:37:00] outside. my first batch of ads didn't work. There's always some kind of like,external reason for why they're not okay. And that creates a very kind of challenge and emotional, space to then work from because you are almost in so much discomfort, that then can, block you from taking action or actually just making decisions in a more kind of likelogical and thought out way.

Brian: Yeah. I think to add to this, the area I've seen it play out the most and in the worst way, and the most detrimental to the person is when they get frustrated by something that makes them feel incompetent. So, for example, I've seen this a couple times where someone's setting up CRM orsomething tech related and something doesn't work the way they expected it to, or the way they thought it would, or the way they saw some guide tell it to do.

Josh: or there was some bug or there was some glitch or they made a glitch happen because they did it in some horribly crazy way that no developer ever thought they would do it. Just, who knows? The sky's the limit, but instead of. Coming to ask for help. They react emotionally and that makes it very difficult to then give them help when they're reacting emotionally. [00:38:00] Yeah, I've done this myself as well. I remember when, you know, you were training us up for the coaching role and, we had to shoot, a long video kind of like explaining all the client's individual strategies. And I really struggled the first time like going through all of that.

Josh: 'cause it's like an hour long video. It's completely personalized to the individual client. And I had so much frustration and so much kind of like. the onboarding should have been differently or the microphone wasn't well enough or, you know, it's too hot out at hide so I can't concentrate properly.

Josh: I think in those situations, for me at least, it's almost like taking me out of that pressurized little, cooker, so to speak. And then just resetting yourself and coming back in with a fresh mind.

Brian: the funny part about this, you struggled more than any coach for that portion of the training. And then yet we use your stuff as examples for training all the other coaches. So like, you have like the best example that we use for training other coaches now, which is awesome.

Josh: That is cool. nice little story arc there.

Josh: start that way.

Brian: yeah, you can't overcome these challenges.

Josh: So I think another thing to talk about with this particular pattern is that these guys [00:39:00] often need to feel a certain emotion or be in a certain mood to actually get anything done, right? So again, being such an emotional creature is a blessing and a curse, but the curse side of this is like when your emotional state really dictate.

Josh: What you're doing on any given day, right? So if they're feelinginspired, that's then when they can go and create. If they're feeling tired, that's when they're gonna withdraw. If they're feeling discouraged, that's when they're gonna go and overthink things and start to spiral. So, if things don't necessarily go their way or, they're not feeling exactly how they wish they were, they don't necessarily have that override to be like, right, I feel this way anyway, but I'm gonna go do the thing that I need to do, regardless of how I feel.

Brian: and easier said than done For sure. ' some of the most creative people I know are this way, they operate this way and when they just don't have the feeling or the vibe. They just avoid the doing the creation or doing the creating or really working on honestly anything, sometimes to the detriment of their own business, of their own life, of their own, what they're working on.

Brian: One other area, I dunno if this is related, but I've just seen coming up through, like the music scene I saw this so [00:40:00] often is like the pothead songwriter. And it's like they, they rely on the feeling of being high in order to write great music. And if they're not high, they can't write. And so they're basically dependent on being high in order to write I guess the relation would be we are dependent on being in a certain emotional state to do productive things in our business.

Brian: And the faster we can get out of that cycle of being dependent on a certain emotion or feeling to do things in your business, the faster you'll get to progress. Because like I work nine to five regardless of my feelings, I still do things. It's because I've developed my business in a way that.

Brian: many people that I, see focus on more of the motivation and emotion than the habit and routine. I don't know if that's a learned trait and can be adjusted or not, if it can be, I would highly recommend anyone make that switch, at least in certain areas of their life, especially for what we talked about earlier, the time block times.

Brian: It's like, Hey, I have two hours when my kid goes to bed between when they're in bed and when I go to sleep. I have two really productive hours. I can do whatever I want. I have these hours every night or just a few nights [00:41:00] a week, but that's the only hours that I have to work on these big important tasks.

Brian: So no matter what happens, no matter what my emotional state is, I have to at least try. And what I've seen more often than not is if you just try and you get three minutes into a task, you'll complete it. But if you just focus on emotions and you're like, I have to wait for inspiration to strike me or have to be in a good mood, even a 10th, this thing.

Brian: That's when nothing ever really gets done and no progress gets made.

Josh: a hundred percent agree. And I think in some specific contexts, it's gonna make sense that you need to feel like slightly creative to do one particular task, for example, but in the context of what we're talking about, which is maintenance, right?

Josh: Sometimes you have to do those boring things. Sometimes you have to, Submit your accounts or do whatever it is that you don't really want to be doing. those small little things are really what, keeps the business going, keeps your marketing system going over time. And so when you are, pressurized and feeling all those emotional things that stop you from doing those things that you actually need to maintain, the business or the marketing systems that you build, that's when the challenge can come in.

Josh: I think.

Brian: What's funny is the parallels [00:42:00] between fitness and business, a lot of times there's like so many of them, when I talked about the abs thing earlier, it's likeeasier to get abs than to maintain them for long term. But some of the things that can ruin your maintenance mode for abs, keeping abs or just staying in shape in general or like being fit is emotions.

Brian: It's like I'm emotional eater, so if I'm filling down, I'm going to just eat an entire pint of ice cream, right? Like those sorts of things are detrimental to the thing that you're trying to achieve. it's easy to think through that. It's like, oh, if I eat a pint of ice cream, I will not be able to maintain my apps for very long if I keep that behavior up. but in business it's much harder have that same realization because you don't understand every single time you skip working on the big project that night because you weren't feeling it. That is like eating a pint of ice cream. Your business is getting outta shape.

Brian: You're losing what you're trying to do. You're not making any progress. So I think when we can think through these parallels between something that we can tangibly feel and understand. Versus something that's a little more intangible that helps us kind of recover this. What else can we do to kind of get outta this pattern?

Josh: So to get out the pattern, I think, number one is to realize that no one is necessarily coming to save you. [00:43:00] There is a crazy amount of control that you have to be able to have just, as a human in life, obviously you can lean on other people and stuff like that, Realize that the buck stops with you. You stop giving away so much of energy to things that you can't necessarily control. You're able to bring forward a bit more of a responsibility for how you choose to show up in certain things. Knowing that, not every time is gonna be perfect and sometimes you're gonna have to do stuff, even if you're in a foul mood.

Josh: But just, cracking on with it and, taking responsibility to take an action.

Brian: It's the, uh, extreme ownership. If you've ever read that book or heard of this book, it's like one of my favorite jokes internally is the company is just like, should we send them the extreme ownership book? It's like when somebody's not taking responsibility for fixing their stuff, they're blaming external factors, the economy, tariffs, the weather, who knows any sort of external circumstance that's not serving you in any way, shape or form when you blame others.

Brian: Extreme ownership is basically saying no matter what happens, I'm ultimately to blame because even if the economy does suck, I'm the one who has to [00:44:00] navigate it. I'm the only one who's gonna navigate the economy for my business or myself or my life or my family. No one else can do it for me. So it's still on you despite the circumstances 'cause hey, everyone's in the same environment.

Brian: We're all in the same economy. we're all in the same situation, more or less with some, obviously changes between people, but it does not serve you in any way, shape or form to blame others. And if I could maybe even reword this archetype from, the vibe vampire to something else, it would be the perpetual victim, the victim

Josh: Hmm.

Brian: person. It's like you just fall into this pattern of I am blaming everyone else and I feel bad and I don't wanna fix the problems, and I'm going to ignore the problems, and then the problems are gonna persist, so next time it's gonna be even worse and I'm gonna feel even worse. So I'm gonna ignore it even harder because I don't want to do it.

Brian: And so the next time it's gonna be even worse because now I'm overdoing my bills and I feel like shit. And so you can see how the spiral just keeps going down. And when you take extreme ownership over something, you're basically saying, I'm gonna break the [00:45:00] pattern. I'm gonna try to make this work. Yes, it's gonna be frustrating.

Brian: Yes, it's gonna be hard. Yes, it's gonna suck at times. Yes, I'm not gonna wanna do it, but if I could just take action of some sort and stop blaming other people or external circumstances, I will make much more progress in my life and my business than somebody who doesn't. And you can break that downward spiral.

Josh: For sure. And I think one of the ways to kind of like short circuit that spiral as well is almost like connecting to the reason that you're doing this in the first place, right? You don't have to be freelancing, you don't have to do your own thing. go and get a job if it is, too much.

Josh: But at the same time, like uncovering kind of like the motivation of why you're doing this in the first place can help you reprioritize what is important in the moment. And more often than not, it's not the economy, it's not. the tariffs or whatever's going on, it's that, you know, maybe you're building a life for your family.

Josh: Maybe you're wanting to do something that you actually love for the first time. And so having a focus on that and making that kind of like your North Star can also kind of like help get out of those cycles.

Brian: especially when it's not all about you. I think one of the biggest areas, if you wanna make [00:46:00] yourself take an action that you don't wanna do it is when you realize there's more at stake than just your own personal gain. Whether it's family, whether it's team, even if you're single and you have no family and you have no team, there's still probably some cause that you can donate to, that you actually give a shit about that will make you actually take action. 'cause you're saying, if I don't succeed, then I can't donate anything to this. Cause anything to make you move forward, honestly.

Josh: And it could also be the vision of having a family or having a team one day, right?

Brian: So that's the fourth of these patterns. That's the vibe. Vampire, or if you wanna rename it to something that I think is, appropriate and that's the,perpetual victim.

Brian: what's the fifth and final of these patterns? This is my favorite name by the way.

Josh: So the fifth one is the hot mess express. So these are the of people who are always in a rush, right? Everything was almost like due yesterday. Now the. Really interesting thing about these people is that they are very high caliber, right? They're high achievers and typically have very, very high expectations of themselves.

Josh: They hold themselves to a really, really high [00:47:00] standard and think that they should be going at the speed of light. And so they speed through everything, which can be really good in some situations. Right. the Hot Mess Express can maybe give some pointers to the forecaster who is very, very slow.

Josh: But for this specific context,

Brian: rushing through things, everything at a hundred miles an hour, you actually end up making a ton of little mistakes. And then it can end up being deaf by a thousand cuts because you actually miss quite a lot of opportunities just 'cause you're trying to go through things so quickly.

Josh: And that can really mean that you miss critical steps that either needed more thought or maybe just needed to slow down, two or three notches so that you're able to smooth through things, with, more attention to detail.

Brian: there's been very few times in my life that I've seen somebody try to speed through massive projects very because I have that sense of urgency and it actually be good. And it almost always ends up taking longer than somebody who's just slow and steady, like the marathoner versus the sprinter.

Brian: If you've ever tried to sprint a marathon, it doesn't work. Like actually, I take it back. If you look at like legit runners, [00:48:00] they run about as fast as you sprint. It's crazy. Like they're like 15 miles an hour for the entire marathon. It's, insane.

Josh: Crazy.

Brian: can maintain a 15 mile an hour run for maybe two minutes, but definitely not four hours.

Brian: So that's the exception here. That's the exception. It's throw that out. That doesn't count. In most cases, the average person cannot sprint a marathon. And that's what a lot of people are trying to do with these big projects. They're like, oh, I need to work on the rocks. I need to do the rocks first.

Brian: I need to time block. I'm gonna time block these things so I can work on them, but I'm gonna get it done 10 times fast than anyone else because I have to get it. I have to move fast. I gotta, what's the, uh, Ricky Bobby thing wanna drive fast like when he is a little kid? Anyways. Somebody out there got that reference. but the problem is you end up just wrecking your car. Then you have to deal with the insurance. it's a salvage title. Now you're gonna just get rid of the car. You have to get a new car now. Now we gotta go car shopping. then you're going to obsess over getting the perfect car, and then weeks later, and you gotta get your tag, you gotta get your insurance, you gotta pay taxes on it.

Brian: you get the point it's taking for freaking ever now versus just driving slow and steady and you get there in two hours.

Josh: And I [00:49:00] think the thing about that specific pattern as well is that there is so much frustration from all of those things. So you move fast, you make these silly mistakes, and then you have to deal with all of the consequence of those mistakes, clean them up, which then creates more frustration, which makes you feel like you are more behind, which then you speed through it again, which creates more mistakes and

Brian: now you have a,reckless driving charge on your record that you have to go to court for and slow you down even further.

Josh: Yeah, so one of the things that I've seen in clients as well is like almost feeling like they need everything to happen right now. They need clients right now, they should have done it faster, and they skip through all of the ad settings. They, put ad live beforea final improvement from one of their coach and select the wrong settings, and then they've wasted, you know, a hundred bucks or something like that.

Brian: And like time too on top of that.

Josh: And time on top of that. and this,this kind of like doubles up somewhat. So it's like, this can be somebody who, let's just say they blame us because they're not moving fast enough. And our job is to make sure it's done right, not just done fast. And we're not slowing anyone down on purpose.

Brian: we're pacing you out to make [00:50:00] sure what you do is actually going to work. And so many people they come in after neglecting client acquisition for years even, or decades in some cases. And. they come in and they want it fixed instantly. And that goes back to kind of the, the extreme ownership.

Brian: They want things done in a certain way. They want it done really fast. They may not fully understand how much work it's gonna take. So they breeze through things thinking they're gonna get it done in,in a week. they have this hard realization that it's gonna take much longer than that.

Brian: And then they blame us because it didn't get done in a week. That's an extreme example. I don't think anyone's ever been that bad about it. But that's kind of the gist of it. It's like you are moving so fast and you're not seeing results because you're moving too fast. and kudos.

Brian: You're at least trying to take steps. You're trying to take action, but the work is so sloppy, it's not gonna work. And so there is a certain threshold to where it has to be this good. It's like you have to be this tall to ride the ride, right? You have to be this good to have success.

Brian: And if you just rush through things, you don't reach that, threshold of being good enough, then everything falls flat and you've just wasted time, effort, energy, money. You've wasted a ton

Brian: of,of [00:51:00] resources. not good.

Josh: It's not good. So I think these people just need a little bit more, structure a little bit more time, right? Because that age old saying, I dunno if it's from a Navy Seal or something like that, but it's slow is smooth,slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. So, you know, having better systems, better processes, giving yourself a little bit of time to think rather than just always go, always doing, I think that they typically have that mentality because from, what I've experienced anyway, they're very high achievers.

Josh: They're actually really good at what they do and have really high expectations of like how fast things should go

Brian: yeah. This is the pattern we see for like the higher earners who come in. So like we have people in multi six figures, even seven figures that we're coaching. And that can be the pattern for a lot of them is like, they're skipping steps because they wanna move fast in a lot of cases, and it's not good. So how can we break this pattern?

Josh: So to break this pattern, really what we've gotta do is almost like do the opposite from what the forecaster needed, which was actually reducing the speed. So we've really gotta focus more on quality rather than quantity, right? Instead of putting things out there over and over and [00:52:00] over again, we just need to slow down, focus on kind of the caliber of work and making sure that the simple things are done right, right.

Josh: The right settings. We've figured out the right, ad targeting or whatever it is for that creative, if that is what we're focusing on right now, or, making sure that the copy is super dialed in, that we're speaking to the right pain points, the right, transformation that we can get the client with the ad campaign that we're working on.

Josh: And so, quality in this example is gonna be much better than just kind of like balls to the wall throwing things out there and, making stuff happen and breaking.

Brian: Yeah, this is like the opposite of the perfectionist. This is the imperf perfectionist. Like they, they move so fast that nothing they do is perfect. And that can serve you in certain scenarios to just move quickly. I think Facebook's original, like one of their values was move fast and break shit like early in the days.

Brian: Obviously not one of their core values anymore as a multi-billion dollar or trillion dollar company at this point, but that was one of their early, when they first started this, how they operated, the people who move too fast [00:53:00] and they break things as a freelancer, it's not necessarily serving you.

Brian: So I think in this case we need to slow down a bit and be more meticulous about each step It's almost like, over-indexing whatever you're not a natural at. So those people who are perfectionists and move so damn slow because they want everything to be perfect, we have to say, let's just try to move fast and break shit.

Brian: We have to tell that person that because to them move fast and break shit means moving at a very moderate pace. Like that's their idea of it. Whereas somebody who truly does move fast and break shit. Telling them to slow down and just take a beat and be a perfectionist. try to be a perfectionist.

Brian: That is just getting them down to a moderate speed, that they're not gonna crash immediately and die. So just try to get you to edge closer to the middle because hey, the best place to live. Somewhere in the middle. It's that medium life not the extremes, the extreme highs. Extreme lows. It's the medium is the best place to live in many cases.

Brian: And this is one of those.

Josh: for sure. Definitely. I definitely agree. It's just slowing down and giving yourself time to think so that you're working a little bit smarter rather than, having to do every single thing over and over and over again.

Brian: So just to recap these, the [00:54:00] first of these patterns to break is the forecaster. That's the person, again, that moves slow, tries to be perfectionist. The second one is the dabbler. That's the person who just jumps from tactic to tactic without ever fully implementing anything.

Brian: They're just moving from shiny object to shiny object. That's the A DHC entrepreneur. the third one is the reactive rambler. That is somebody who's always stressed out. they're trying to do all the things at the exact same time. the fourth is the vibe vampire.

Brian: That's the person who blames all other people They just kill the vibe, man. they don't have extreme ownership. And the fifth is the hot mess. Express. Somebody who's just trying to move too fast. they truly are moving fast and breaking shit. So if you have any of these five patterns hopefully there's, some in this episode to help you alleviate that.

Brian: But if you ever want just a second eyeball on things, or you want somebody who can actually look over your shoulder and, and startdirecting you on ways to fix this, or you feel like you're in the silo and you're alone, you don't have anyone to look at what you're working on, seeing how you operate, seeing what patterns you fall into and actually coach you through those, we are here to help.

Brian: Josh is one of our six coaches. we're always looking for people who are interested in working with, with us on client acquisition [00:55:00] and some of these personal issues that hold you back from fixing client acquisition issues in your own business. So if you want to learn more about this, just go to six figure creative.com/coaching.

Brian: The short application. See if you're a good fit and we can go from there. So that's all we got for this week on the six year creative podcast. Josh, thanks again for coming on the show

Josh: Thanks for having me.

Brian: and uh, we'll see you all next week. Peace.