Why All Those Half-built Bridges Are Killing Your Business | The Dangers Of Dabbling

Episode art
Level with me for a second… Are you actually moving forward in your business, or just dabbling?
 
My freelancers fall into the trap of trying to do everything. The result? Ten half-built bridges leading absolutely nowhere.
 
It can be tempting to jump on every new, fun, shiny object you hear about.
  • Ohhh that CRM looks awesome
  • That direct offer funnel strategy Brian talked about was 🤌🏻
  • It's time I start productizing my services so I'm not reinventing the wheel with every project
  • I should probably start taking social media seriously
  • Oh… what's this “Boost Post” button do on IG?? (i.e. the “donate your money to Zuck” button)
In our latest podcast episode, I’m breaking down the dangers of dabbling and how this approach is costing you time, energy, and income.
 
It's time to stop chasing shiny objects and start building a plan you actually stick to.
 
It’s nearing the end of the year and you’ve got two months left to finish the year strong. Let’s make it count.
 
 
In this episode you’ll discover:
  • Why podcasts can be a distraction for freelancers
  • Creating a plan and following it until it's done
  • Why you shouldn't work for free out of pity
  • The theory of constraints
  • The four main constraints on your business
  • Options you're facing right now
  • How we can help you

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334. Dangers of dabbling

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Brian: [00:00:00] Podcasts are some of my favorite things in the world. I listened to dozens of different podcasts. I have a podcast with hundreds of episodes and podcasts can be incredible. They can also be terrible for freelancers. And I want to take this episode to talk over why now on one side, ~this podcast, ~we've got.

Brian: Client acquisition series. ~to answer, ~If you're free to answer, that's probably helpful for you. We've got the lead gen series, we've got the sales series, we've got the differentiation series. We've got 10 plus episodes about pricing and who knows ~ what's else. ~What else? In the 330, other episodes of the podcast.

Brian: Since this is 3 34, we have a lot of content out there. Right?~ But this is ~so, it sounds amazing on the surface, ~but so it sounds amazing ~and it kind of is. But it also, there's a downfall on the other side of that. And this is the downfall for so many of you right now. Listen to the show. I hate to say this is, this is going to hurt my download numbers.

Brian: And I've said this before in the podcast, but you see this amazing sea of advice out there, the advice buffet for the six figure creative, and then you see the advice buffet for the Chris does of the world and all the content he puts out there. That's amazing. And you see the advice buffet for grow your video podcast.

Brian: Ryan quarrel, his show's amazing as well. And then you see the advice buffet for. [00:01:00] Alex Ramosi and all the incredible stuff he puts out. almost all of it I listen to.

Brian: And so now, not only do you have just this show, you have all these other shows out there. And all the other YouTubers that you probably follow as well telling you different things that you should do in your business, or in your life, or in your creative pursuits. And what that creates is this dissonance, this horrible dissonance in your brain.

Brian: I've seen this again and again and again and again and again.~ again and again and ~This dissonance is, there's a billion things I should be doing, I have no idea where to start. Or even worse, In a lot of cases, there's a billion things I should be doing, I'm going to do all of them. And so you end up doing like 10 different things, dabbling in 10 different things at a time.

Brian: And then you end up with 10 different half built bridges to absolutely nowhere.

Brian: So not only is this a slower way to actually fix the problems in your business, because you're,~ you're, ~context switching between 10 different things at any given time, you rarely actually finish anything. ~You again, ~that's what a half built bridge is. You start it, you never finish it, or you finish it, you never do anything with it.

Brian: And the things you do finish and actually do something with, you don't even sustain it long term. You just cast it aside to move on to the next thing. And I want to challenge you to think about what is the last thing you implemented from this [00:02:00] podcast or really any other podcast that you listen to?

Brian: What did you do? How long did it take you to do it? What were the results of that thing? Did you actually keep it up after the fact, once you actually completed it or did it, did you keep up long term if it was like a thing that needed to be done more than one time?

Brian: a good example of this was we had an episode not too long ago about, creating lead magnets as freelancers, ~building an email list is amazing. Hold on. I got to sneeze again.~

Brian: ~And an email, ~building an email list as a freelancer is an amazing resource to have many reasons. And so we had a whole episode on lead magnets that actually work for freelancers.

Brian: I would link you to it but that's just going to do exactly what I don't want you to do, which is. Oh, there's another shiny object to work on. So this episode, by the way, is going to have no links to anything else in it. This is going to be a weird episode. The show notes page will have no links to other episodes because I don't want you to say, Oh, that's something I need.

Brian: Oh, that's something I need. I'm going to add that to my 10 list of things to do. But we had an episode about lead magnets. I'm using this as an example. Many people listen to the episode and said, Oh, I need a lead magnet. And then they half built a lead magnet.

Brian: Many more people ~ They built it. ~took the time and energy into creating a lead magnet, but then they never released it. It's just sitting around on their hard drive somewhere and then even fewer people, but a [00:03:00] lot of people built it, released it, got a little influx of new leads coming in, felt good, ~never, you ~but they never, continuously promoted it.

Brian: It was just a one and done thing. That is so much wasted effort, so much wasted energy, so much wasted potential on these again, half built bridges.

Brian: So today I don't want 30 more things you need to do right now.~ you need to do right now. I want to talk about the one thing ~I want to talk about the one thing you need to do right now, and that is this create a plan that you trust and then follow it until it's done.

Brian: That's it. a plan. You can trust and then follow it till it's done. Put your head down, tune everything else out, including this podcast ~and just follow this and just fall ~and just follow the plan.

Brian: You will actually finish what you started. If you do it this way, you'll move further, faster, and you'll actually get the change that you came to this podcast for. You listen to the show because you want to make more money, From your creative skills without selling yourself.

Brian: And that's the whole like, gist of the show.

Brian: So we all generally want the same thing, but there's one or more things holding us back from that goal that we have for ourselves. So if you put your head down and actually follow a plan, you will see more. Results, even if that means you have to stop listening to show for a while. And that bums me out to say, but it's the truth.

Brian: So if this is your first [00:04:00] time ever listening to the show, it's a weird one to start on. But this is the six figure creative podcast. I'm your host, Brian hood. This show is for creative freelancers who want to make more money from their creative services without selling their soul. If that sounds like you, you're on the right podcast, maybe a weird episode for you.

Brian: Maybe go poke around some other episodes first and then come back to this one. ~But it is the end of Q4. I'm sorry. So it, ~but it is the end of the year right now. It's Q4. For those of you who think it's in quarters, that's a very busy way to think, but that's just kind of how I've grown brain.

Brian: It's the last one fourth of the year is the easier way to say it. The last three months of the year right now. you basically have like two months and a week left. At this point,

Brian: I want you to end this year strong. I want you to set yourself up to succeed in 2025.

Brian: And the whole gist of this episode that I want to talk you through setting about planning for yourself. The whole gist of this came from a conversation we had with a potential client.

Brian: This guy had a family of five, so three kids, wife, and himself. I think he might've been the sole earner. I don't know exactly, but that means that there's just a lot of pressure on him to actually like succeed as a freelancer. He had been dabbling for the past few years. He's been listening to this show or at least watching us on YouTube for the last year and a half.

Brian: Off and on, many of you can probably relate to this, he [00:05:00] was making like 50 to 60k a year, something like that.

Brian: And ~all of it, ~almost all of it, at least the last few months, ~all of it ~was coming from one well client. as a contractor. If you listen back to the episode I talked about where contracting is for suckers, this was the ~classic example of that ~classic example where it's a one sole source of income paying you as a contractor, a pretty decent amount of money to make four or 5k a month as a contractor is not a terrible thing.

Brian: And that episode actually referenced somebody who was making 20k a month from Dropbox as a contractor. And I'll talk through all the reasons that was actually a bad thing. Not saying you should turn down 20k, but just saying, gist of the episode is, as a contractor, you have all of the downsides of a day job.

Brian: You still have a boss. one source of income.

Brian: You still have to work within their systems, how they do things. And then you get none of the upsides of a day job. You don't have the job security. They can fire you, replace you at any point. You don't get any benefits. nothing on that side that you get. a horrible position to be in, especially when you're a family of five.

Brian: And he was the classic dabbler. He was trying all these little things here and there. Halfway completing all of them. Doing nothing to change the circumstance. Just coasting along with the one whale client. Paying him as a contractor in the last two months, [00:06:00] he had had no real freelance projects, just the contract gig.

Brian: And because of this, and because of obviously having to pay for his life and his family and stuff, he couldn't afford our help.

Brian: And so left the conversation just saying, I hope I can save money so that I can afford your help. And that's a terrible position to be in. And I want to help this person, but we are not a charity. we're a for profit company, just like you are as a freelancer. I don't expect you to work for your clients for free.

Brian: Just like I wouldn't expect my employees to work for me for free. Hey, we've got this person who really needs our help but can't afford us. I'm sorry, but we've got a long line of people who can't afford our help and do need our services just like you should have a long line of people who need your help and need your services and are willing to pay for it.

Brian: If you want to do charity, take your earnings from your business and put it into a charity of some sort that's actually using the funds in a meaningful way.

Brian: But I digress. The reason I'm bringing this story up is because many people, Come to us in a similar position where the transgressions of their past ~has ~led them to a point where we're having a conversation about fixing the problem that they need fixed, ~but the, ~but because they're in this situation in the first place, they cannot [00:07:00] afford help.

Brian: And so they are then on their own to go back and try to fix the problem that got them to this, place in the first place, and they're unable to solve the problem. And we've seen this, we follow up months later, a year later, same as acquisition or worse. And I don't want that for you. So this episode, I want to talk through creating what I call an MVP, a minimum viable plan to fix your situation.

Brian: So you can get out of whatever terrible cycle you might be in, or even just you're doing great and you want to do better, whatever your situation is, I want to help you get out of that with this episode.

Brian: And this is the simplest, most minimal, straightforward plan that you can create.

Brian: It is literally two steps. the plan is two steps. The execution is much more than that, but the plan is this. Find your one constraint. What is the one thing constraining your business right now? Alex Ramosi calls this the theory of constraints. And that theory of constraints is your business will grow to the level.

Brian: Of that constraint and will not get past that. And if you alleviate that one constraint, the business will grow until the next constraint is hit. And so in freelance world, there's usually two constraints that hold you back. I'll talk through all the different constraints that it could be, but there's usually two constraints.

Brian: Constraint number one is a lead generation issue. That's like the most common one. You have no new [00:08:00] leads every month. Therefore you have no clients every month. It is the most simple one to fix. It's the one that we see day in and day out that we fix all day, every day. Most common. But once you fix that issue.

Brian: ~Of generating leads~

Brian: and you start to gain clients and you get enough clients and your roster fills up. Then you hit a time constraint and that is where I can't take on more clients. My roster is full and therefore my business is stuck. And until I alleviate the constraint of time, then I cannot grow my business any further.

Brian: So those are two main constraints, but I want to talk through all of the different constraints there could be in kind of a logical order, because one of these things is holding your business back right now. And everyone listening to the show, if you're still listening for whatever reason, because I feel like this is Almost a doom and gloom episode, but these are necessary.

Brian: Sometimes it's like tough love, Brian coming out. I would bet that 99 percent of people have one of these four constraints I'm going to talk about. There's monthly leads. Do you have a constraint around the amount of new leads you're bringing in every month?

Brian: Constraint number two is monthly sales. Are you consistently turning those leads into clients at a high percentage? Constraint number three is Are your clients worth enough? ~You're ~just because you're closing clients doesn't mean they're actually worth an amount that can sustain your business ~and constraint.~ and constraint.

Brian: Number four is slow fulfillment. Are you actually wasting [00:09:00] time being a perfectionist time? You could be better spent fixing these other problems in your business or delivering the results faster. Remember your clients don't pay for perfection. They pay for results. They pay for outcomes.

Brian: usually one of those four constraints, if alleviated, will grow your business to the next level, whatever that level is, to the next constraint. So either you don't have leads coming in every month, you do have leads coming in every month, but you can't turn them into clients. You do have clients every month, but they're not at a high enough level to sustain your business.

Brian: Or, you do have leads, you do have clients, high value, but you spend too long fulfilling on the services. Which one of those four is it? What is the one thing that if you fix it, ~we'll ~we'll grow your business.

Brian: When you find that constraint,

Brian: there is no shortage of episodes on this podcast to fix ~any of those things, ~any of those things. if you can just find that one constraint and spend the next one to three months, spend the rest of this year, fixing that one constraint, you'll see your business grow. Alex Ramosi. Again I swear to God, I quote this guy too much.

Brian: I need to like.~ I need to like. ~find more content out there, but he just, his stuff's so good. I'm sorry. And if you hate Alex, apologies, ~I tried, ~I'll try to deliver it in a way that's doesn't trigger you in whatever way Alex Homozy might trigger you. I don't know [00:10:00] why he would, but he's not for everybody, I guess, but he just knows business and business models better than anyone that I've seen.

Brian: But Alex says, If your business is struggling, spend the first four hours of your day, every day fixing that one constraint and nothing else. It sounds very aggressive.

Brian: You may not need to spend ~all those hours, ~that many hours on it, and it may not take that long. It may not take one to three months to fix it. For example, it may be that you just got to raise your rates. I have a whole rant on that somewhere where I just scream at you for like three minutes telling you to raise your rates on this podcast.

Brian: Someone can reference that somewhere

Brian: that takes five minutes and a lot of courage.

Brian: the reason I bring up Alex Amosie is he makes a really good point. If there is one constraint in your business that you know, if you fix it, you're going ~We'll give you a raise ~We'll give you a raise in your business. Why wouldn't you spend four hours a day on it?

Brian: The only excuse you have is if you have other priorities in your life, family, kids,

Brian: you're making good money in your business. And the time constraint is actually preventing you from having four hours to spend on this. One of those things. And you're not willing to make the trade off. That's it. Like you're just not willing to make the trade off. And that's okay as well. Not everyone is willing to pay the price to get where they want to go.

Brian: Or you may not be willing to pay the price to get there faster. make the decision [00:11:00] myself. I don't work more than eight hours a day. I work nine to five, basically. Sometimes I get started a little earlier around eight, eight 30, I'm off by four or five every day. I don't work weekends So could I move faster if I was working 12 hours a day or more like Alex Mosey does I could definitely get faster I get if I get further~ get faster I get if I what ~but what I like my quality of life, maybe not ~but what I do what I Do is oh My god what I actually ~what I choose to do is make consistent progress over a long period of time ~You ~I have a lot of responsibilities in my businesses right now.

Brian: A lot of different things pull me in a lot of different directions. I know what our one constraint is, and I work towards it multiple, multiple times per week. I have a plan. I have my marching orders from Alex Hermosi himself sent down from the heavens in the Ten Commandments of Moses himself. ~Mr. Alex Hermosi Noah.~

Brian: Mr. Alex Noah Hermosi. His commandments, his marching orders for me from back in August. Still working on those. I have until about December 15th to finish those when I go back to Vegas.

Brian: And I've made a lot of progress on those.

Brian: But many of you know what to do in your business, you know, what's wrong and you know how to fix it. You just haven't put your head down to fix the thing because you keep hearing new ideas and new things coming at you from my show, from other shows, from YouTube different resources. And it pulls you away from ~whatever idea in your head, ~whatever rough idea you have in your head [00:12:00] of what you should be fixing.

Brian: And so the reason so many freelancers fail to make the progress that they want to make in their business is because they either fail to make a plan.~ plan. And we can go to that just generic ass quote. Fail to ~And we can just go to that generic ass quote if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. Sure. ~it, but that's, ~that's why so many people fail. They just don't have any sort of plan. They're falling whatsoever. ~ They're falling whatsoever. ~Stop, listen, think about what is your constraint and put a plan together of some sort.

Brian: Usually one to three steps of things to fix. ~The one constraint or ~the other reason people fail so much ~because they can't create a simple plan ~because they can't create a plan that they actually trust and in my outline here, I have the word trust underlined, right?

Brian: If you lose trust in the plan that you were following, you will stop following it plain and simple

Brian: and you lose trust in that plan. When you lack the confidence that it will actually accomplish what you want it to accomplish.

Brian: So if you're not confident that you can actually create a plan to fix the constraint in your business, or for worst case, you don't even know what your constraint is, you can have three options here. You have option one, which is do nothing, which is, for lack of a better thing, is basically what ~that ~so many people that I've talked to about us helping them are going to do.

Brian: They've done nothing. They talk, decide, I'm going to keep doing the same thing that I'm doing now, which isn't working and [00:13:00] then move forward to continue doing what they're doing. ~They do nothing. ~That is a great way to coast through life, not getting what you want. Option two is to create a plan that you won't trust, try to follow it, likely give up before you actually fix any of the problems you do want to fix.

Brian: And it may take you a couple of those false starts before you realize that there is a third option. Now, the third option is get someone to help you create the plan that you actually trust. This is what I did with Alex Ramosi. I paid him an absurd amount of money ~to go to, ~for me to fly out to Vegas to spend even more money on flights and hotels and food and Ubers to spend a day with him for him to look at my business and tell me what was wrong with it and give me marching orders to go off and work on my own.

Brian: He's not helping me implement it. He's just, here's what you got to fix. And I will go off and fix those things.

Brian: And when you look at these three options, option one's garbage. It's a completely garbage option. It is the loser's path. ~If what is working, ~If what you're doing right now is not working and you decide to keep doing that you were saying I want to continue to fail ~If you're doing ~if what you're doing right now is working and you want to keep doing that thing, that's fine ~That's not ~I don't know why you'd be listening this episode here But option one for most people is garbage if ~what you if you ~where you're at right now Isn't where you want to be option two [00:14:00] still better than option one But not great if you haven't proven to yourself that you can trust yourself Many people haven't built that trust muscle yet.

Brian: People that have not built up those small wins into bigger and bigger wins so that you can say to yourself, I have a proven track record of success. So that when I, plan something, when I commit to something, when I say that I will do something, I'll actually do it. That's a very tough thing for people to build up.

Brian: ~a, it's ~it's a superpower I didn't realize I had until I started working with hundreds of people at this point is that many people don't have that basic confidence in themselves that when they say they'll do something, they'll actually accomplish it. Option three is great, but it depends on who is helping you.

Brian: If you're going to your cousin down the road, who has a bakery, a business, not at all related to what you do, or basically just someone that you can't trust to actually fix the constraint in your business, identify the constraint and fix it. Then it's not a great option. But if you have an Alex Ramos in your life, go pay them whatever they say, right?

Brian: If you want our help, we're actually in the middle of our fall enrollment period for clients by design. You may have seen some of the emails from us. If not, then you're not on our email list. That's fine. But we're in the middle of it right now. We were at 15 spots when we started [00:15:00] this process last week of enrolling for the fall enrollment period.

Brian: So this is Tuesday. Now we opened up. fall enrollment, I think last Thursday. So I'm assuming there's less than 15 spots now. I don't know what the exact number is because it's October 16th right now when I record this.

Brian: But assuming there are spots left in our fall enrollment period and you want our help, here's what we'll do with you.

Brian: ~We will work to you. ~We will work with you to create a plan that does more than even what I talked about on this episode. Identify your constraint, put a full plan together, usually four or five different phases of things to solve. Knowing once we solve this, we know what the next constraint will be because we've worked with hundreds of freelancers at this point. So we have seen inside the businesses of many, many people.~ So we know once we fix this constraint, this will be the next one.~

Brian: ~We've got to start addressing that. that. And then we've got to go to And then we've got to go to that. Right.~ So we will create a plan that is including all the things that you're not doing right now in your business that you should be doing. Which is the reason you're not where you want to be, And then we will actually help you execute that plan. Unlike Alex Ramosi, I'm gonna throw Alex under the bus who I paid a bunch of money.

Brian: And he's like, here's your plan. Here's your 10 commandments. Go follow them to the best of your ability. I'll see you in December.

Brian: Unlike that, we'll actually help you every day, five days a week at least,

Brian: to execute ~every single step in that plan. And then finally we'll hold you accountable, actually let me say, ~every single step in that plan so that you actually do things the right [00:16:00] way and you don't come back three months later and say I've done it all and we're like, no, that's actually terrible. You did it all wrong.

Brian: And then the third thing we'll do is actually hold you accountable to finish the plan.

Brian: Again, if you haven't built that trust muscle up with yourself, where when you say you'll do something, you don't actually do it. When you said you would eat healthy, you stopped eating healthy. When you said you work out, ~ you didn't work, ~you didn't go to the gym. When you said you wake up at 530, you snooze the alarm 20 times.

Brian: If that's kind of how you operate right now, then you need accountability in your life. ~You need somebody to basically parent you, right? ~So we hold you accountable by actually following up, following through, making sure you're doing the work, doing it in very short cycles where in touch with you almost every day,

Brian: to the point where we know when you have gone missing, right? I think the biggest reason people follow through with what they say they're going to do is because they know no one's watching. They know that if they stop doing it, no one's going to care. No one's going to even miss it, right? If you don't show up to your planet fitness, do you think planet fitness gives a damn?

Brian: No, they actually bank on the fact that you're not going to be there. Their business model is predicated on the fact that 90 percent of people who pay for a planet fitness membership will not show up. That's not how we operate.

Brian: So if you're interested in getting this level of attention and [00:17:00] help on fixing the constraints of your business, ~You wanna be a part of the fall enrollment period this year, ~go to six figure creative.com/fall. ~Just F-A-L-L-F-A-L-L, ~just FALL, exactly how it sounds. six figure creative.com/fall. And if you are new to us, it's the number six figure creative.com.

Brian: Fill out the short application there. We'll see if you're a good fit. If you are we'll, we'll chat over your situation to see, what this could look like for you. So that's all I got for you this week. See you next week. Thanks so much for listening to the six Figure Creative Podcast.

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