A Guide to Strategic Prioritization and Revenue Growth

Starting the conversation:

Consistent effort to do the right work pays off. Clear metrics, dedication to the way work is done, and aligning every team member’s work to the primary objective are all elements of strategic growth decisions. Troy Munson, CEO at Dimmo, talks about the importance of making sure the right work is getting done.

The more narrow the focus, the more access your team has to opportunities for being innovative and creative. Limitations are more than places to learn, they are openings to connect and work with others on a clear, common goal. Limiting both goals and what is tracked ensures decision-making on what projects and ideas to explore, as well as measuring their efficacy.

In this program, you will learn to measure it or let it go, choose company-level performance indicators for the entire company, and how to prioritize the right work. Jess Dewell talks with Troy Munson, CEO at Dimmo, about recognizing that it goes against one’s instincts to be BOLD and prioritize the right work.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Troy Munson

What You Will Hear:

0:30 “I’m a seller, creating no need for sellers.” 

• Use your time differently, make the sales process much less cumbersome.

7:10 You don’t know what your customers want, nor the challenges they face.

• Churn = manage sales for good customers.
• How much do you want customers to succeed?
• Know your use case and how that fits into your customer’s business.

14:40 What tech have you let go of so that you can use more of something else?

• Technology is essential, assess how much you are using it to delegate or delete effort.
• We are on tool overload, it takes effort to know what you need.
• Technology can keep your teams focused — how well do you do that?

19:40 Let go of what we want for the greater good.

• Troy’s mission to know what is important is at the foundation of Dimmo’s decision-making.
• Metrics must clarify the next step.
• If we can’t measure it we let it go.

22:30 Troy Munson’s CEO learnings — behind the scenes of how he attained his current success.

• Only four KPIs for the entire company.
• All experiments are welcomed when they have clear goals and a way to measure the efficacy of the experiment (and must directly tie into one of the main KPIs for the company).
• Technology helps us break into new areas.
• The ability to break down actions from the bottom up with more transparency to the company.

28:10 Do the right work right now. Always.

• Question what to let go and what has become a burden.
• Contemplate what is in your control, and what you can delegate.
• Know what you must know and then manage your time.

34:13 How to prioritize the right work right now.

• Know the three most important things, why they are important, and what is needed to do the work.
• Use “do not disturb” on your phone.
• Finish a task before starting another.
• Bonus: Track your time and use tools like focusbuddy.ai.

41:20 What CEO time looks like for Troy.

• CEO coach to work through situations and self-development.
• Fridays are a review of what happened, reports, daily check-ins
• Find the company pulse through reflections and internal + external information.
• Clear boundaries for meetings; Mondays are deep work time blocks.
• 50-60% of CEO time is dedicated to moving the business forward and building revenue.

55:40 It is BOLD to go against your instincts to get the right work done.

Resources

• As a company scales, their north star metric is pipeline.

Transcript

Troy Munson 00:00
Okay, let’s focus on one technology that helps reduce churn, but like, let’s not focus on getting technology for the other things that might be like kind of important but not too important or the ones that need to be delegated or eliminated.

Jess Dewell 00:11
Having been in tech companies, I’m like, oh yeah, the stuff I delegated always came back to bite me in the butt.

Jess Dewell 00:16
I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by. At the Bold Business Podcast we are normalizing important conversations. Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly are going to be what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training and the programs that you are already using. This is a supplement to that. It can sit on top of it. Fuel your soul, fuel your mind. And most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out, maybe you’re ready to scale, maybe you’re going through reinvention. The conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on. I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

Announcer 01:07
You are listening to the Bold Business Podcast where you will hear firsthand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 01:20
Building a business takes effort. There are three things that Troy Munson, founder and CEO of Dimmo and I are talking about that stuck with me after our conversation concluded and they are if we can’t measure a process or a goal, we must let it go. Keeping our KPIs on the smaller side. Dimmo has four. That’s what all work is measured by. Allows all business areas to be working together to achieve their goals. And the third thing is that Troy leads his team not only by example but, but through a lot of hands-on trial and error to make sure he’s doing the right work and he’s leading his team to do the right work. Dimmo is a product that is changing our sales process. It’s getting the value sooner in the conversation by automating parts of it so that our reps, us the connections that we have, human to human, can be real and valuable and get to the core of what’s going on. He has been selling to medium and large enterprises for over seven years. At the time of this recording, Dumo is seven months old and he has had so many learnings that he’s already shared that he’s been able to bring forward from the experiences prior to Dimmo and by the way, make sure if you’re not, follow him on LinkedIn and see where he’s at and where he’s going. Because his audience there is incredibly engaged talking about sales, specifically technology sales. And it is something that I know you will be interested in. Learn more about him. Learn more about his company. Most importantly, see what else he’s saying besides the awesomeness that we talk about here, which you won’t hear anywhere else. Sales can suck. And you’re in this realm of helping companies better understand their sales cycles so that the selling that they do doesn’t suck. Fair?

Troy Munson 03:29
Fair.

Jess Dewell 03:30
Okay. It’s important because we love to hate it, we need it, it’s necessary. There’s decision-makers, and yet it’s all about the people. It’s all about the timing. It’s all about finding when somebody is ready to buy and knowing what that is. So I want to know from you, Troy, what made you want to fix the sales process and add value with Dimmo?

Troy Munson 03:53
It’s funny. I’ve been a longtime seller, and essentially what I’ve. What I’m building right now is a platform that allows you to evaluate software without sellers. And so I get asked quite often, are you trying to get rid of sellers? No, not necessarily. I don’t think that, like, when I look back at everything that I’ve done and everything I’ve done to close deals, I’m like, there’s no way that technology will replace me. All that to say there is, I believe, a lot of room to eliminate a lot of the process. And so all that to say is, when I look at it, the average company nowadays, like, less than 50% of their company or of their sales reps actually hit the quota. So that’s one thing that’s not fun. And then people are closing, like, 15 to 20% of their deals these days. So my entire idea of making the sales process better isn’t to eliminate sellers, but it’s more. So how do you make the evaluation and buying process a bit easier so somebody can go out there and do their homework before they talk to you, just to waste your time. Waste their time. And then, you know, you have three, four, five calls, and next thing you know, it’s just not a good fit? So, yeah, that’s what I’m trying to fix is like, how do we let people be educated? And then they go inbound? And now it’s up to the seller to be able to expand that deal and to be able to strategize and be more of like a consultant versus a sales rep. Hey, thanks for letting me know that I’m the best fit and we are the best fit for your challenge. Now let’s talk about your challenges, and let’s unpack it. And so that’s what I’m trying to do is how do we just educate people, arm them with more information than they’ve ever had.

Jess Dewell 05:27
My new car is two months old now, and I will tell you what. I hated that process. And it’s. I would have hoped it would have changed, but when I get in, I expected. I did my homework. I expected to come in. I expected to pay cash, because that was how we were going to do this. Whatever that meant. Whatever payment it was, pay that day and take away, no financing. And we still had to negotiate. I was like, we got to this place, and we’re sitting at the desk, and the person across from me goes, these are the three things you can negotiate with me. And I’m like, what if I don’t want to? They said, you really need to. So we got an extra hour with that process to negotiate something. I couldn’t just say I wanted or I didn’t want. I just had. And I was like, seriously? Seriously. And I know I’m not picking. I’m picking on cars only because it’s the last big purchase that I personally made out anywhere for Red Direction in my home life. Whatever. Right. That was it. I know that there’s a little bit of a cliche there, and I’m also a little tentative to be talking about this because I actually hate that stereotype. How about that? That’s what I got right now.

Troy Munson 06:39
Yeah. No, it’s funny. It’s funny you say that, because that is becoming a big thing where people know what they want. But for some reason, the company. And I will say there’s, like, a devil’s advocate play here, too.

Jess Dewell 06:51
But, yes, and I want both. That’s why I set it up that way.

Troy Munson 06:54
Yeah. Yeah. So people know what they want a lot of the times. And I’ll actually say, I’ll start it this way. A lot of people don’t know what they want, and a lot of people don’t know what’s out there. And honestly, a lot of people don’t really know what their challenges are. Like, they have their challenge, but they don’t really know the implications unless somebody can illuminate that. Right. And so I say that because, like, your car story, and I know it is a cliche, and heck, there’s, like, Dimmo for cars out there now. Carvana will drive you the car to Your house and you can drive it for seven days and then be like, no, I hate this. All that to say is people will go inbound and they’re like, I’ve already done my research. I want to buy this technology. But that company will have a strict sales process. Whereas first you have to take them to stage one, then you have to move them to stage two, then stage three, and then they need to talk to you. And then there’s this whole sales process, and it really pisses people off where it’s like, hey, like, I want to buy it. And then somebody’s, no, I don’t want to buy it. But on the other side of that, the devil’s advocate side of that, not it doesn’t really relate to your car scenario, but it does relate to the buying software. A lot of companies have realized what kind of companies or customers churn. And so I think what they want to do. If you’re a product, you sell a product and you typically churn. With companies less than 100 employees, what they’re trying to do is really just make sure, like their NRR doesn’t go down too much by letting people just buy without a sales process. And I totally understand that. So the devil’s advocate is let’s make sure that we bring on good customers. And to do that, I do need to vet you. So I don’t know. Now that I’m talking about this out loud, I don’t know how to solve that, but I’m wondering if there is a way to solve it with Dimmo. But now, now my mind’s wandering a million different places. But man, what’s.

Jess Dewell 08:36
So that’s.

Troy Munson 08:36
That’s the devil’s advocate side.

Jess Dewell 08:38
I actually really like this devil’s advocate side because what it allows for us to really recognize is that there, there is an, should we say, established pattern that is facing severe scrutiny right now because of the ability to use technology. And then there’s this other side of. I really actually like that you brought this up. The cus, the management side, we need to know who our best customers are. And by us doing the vetting, we’re helping you succeed too.

Troy Munson 09:17
Yeah, and that’s important. I’ve actually been at a company where we were getting funding, so it’s like this whole growth at all cost, just sell anything and everything. And so we did that for the first year and we all the sales reps did really well. We sold something very shiny that wasn’t out in the market. And so it was like the first one. A lot of People wanted it, but our Churn was through the roof. It was fun to talk about, it was fun to sell, but it was not fun to renew. And then that’s when we started to understand, okay, like our best customers need to have X, Y and Z. And so it can ruin your company if you do just let everybody buy your product. Because then your churn goes down. And at that point, let’s say you have a hundred customers or forty customers, Churn like that revenue is gone in twelve months. Like it’s great to have it then, but it’s gone in 12 months. And yeah, there’s there. You just, I think it’s really annoying as a buyer to want something and not being able to have it. And I think even just like in general in life, right, if you really want something and you can’t have it, it’s like, come on, please. But yeah, I think there’s gotta be a happy medium.

Jess Dewell 10:18
There does have to be a happy medium. And so we’re gonna have people who don’t know what Churn is because they’re in industries that are technology adjacent or not at all. And so Churn is software as a service, some sort of recurring billing that want a longer customer life cycle. So not one month or three months or 12 months, but years. Right. And whatever that metric turns out to be for your company, Churn is when they end and are they ending before the life cycle of the customer ends?

Troy Munson 10:47
I’m so glad you brought that up because I now that you say that, I’ve brought up a few different things like NRR net retention rate. That’s another term that’s very popular in SaaS. And that just means. So yeah, Churn is essentially, let’s say you sign somebody on the month or a year contract, are they going to renew or not? If they do not renew, that’s a churn. So you get to that 12-month mark and hey, we’re going to go with a competitor. We just don’t want to use your technology. That’s a Churn customer. Another way I put is just a lost customer, somebody that was a customer. The they don’t give you revenue anymore. And then yeah, to break down that NRR thing real quickly, it’s just, okay, great, let’s say they paid you $50,000 for a year and you expanded them to $100,000 for a year, then that’s a 200% net retention rate. So net retention rates essentially just are they going down on their spend or are they going up on your spend? And you do that across your entire customer base. So it’s usually never. It’s never math that easy.

Jess Dewell 11:38
But yeah, it’s nice for the broad stroke. I love that. Thank you very much. And I’m thinking about this too. And so people out there who have. That are not transactional, that have any sort of repeat business could actually use our conversation. And every time they’re hearing churn in their business model as well. Even though the metrics may look different, even though the thoughts behind it would be, I’m going to. I’m going to call it adjacent. Because it’s the same stuff. We want to keep our customers as long as possible. And what makes them go right. Whether it doesn’t even matter.

Troy Munson 12:07
Yeah, yeah. Every company wants the same thing. They just call it different things in different industries.

Jess Dewell 12:11
Yep, that’s right. Are you a feature guy? Like when you’re trying out technology or toys or tools or cars, do you. Are you a feature guy?

Troy Munson 12:22
I am. And I’m a bad feature guy because I will always hear what this is like. There has been several times where I have tried a piece of technology or tried something out, even like a Netflix or something like that. Netflix isn’t a bad example. But you’ll what I’m saying here soon I’ll try something out because of the features. Then I’ll never use those features that I was excited about. And then I will forget to end the trial or whatever if I am trying something out. So I’m like that. But I am like, features definitely get me like, oh, that sounds interesting. That solves this little tiny pain point that I have right now. Let me try it out. And then I never even try it out.

Jess Dewell 13:01
So yeah, I am not that way. In my house, I am always the one, oh, who knew it did this? Or in. In Lionel’s my car’s name. In Lionel’s example, the backup camera works differently. And I. That took me a little while to get used to. But the feature I didn’t know I was going to have was auto sensing rain windshield wipers. And in the Pacific Northwest, when you don’t really have rain, you have variations of misty to rain. The kind that doesn’t really get you wet. It’s just annoying on your windshield, that is. I’ve only had one other car with that feature and I went bonkers about that. Isn’t that funny? And I love that though, about the whole concept of I try something for a feature and then what happens? I don’t even use the feature now. Do you actually end up not using the feature because it became unnecessary. Going back to. I didn’t really know what I wanted. It was just shiny and cool. Or was there another reason? It’s not actually the use case I thought is not actually a use case I got or have.

Troy Munson 14:04
It might be a. It might be a mix of like it is my use case, but it also might be a mix of how can I get distracted with my normal work and go try out something new. Because me, I’m. I’m very tech-driven. That’s. I’m always. And. And because I run Dimmo right? We’re a place where you can go evaluate software and we have 500 technologies. So I’m always like when I add a. And I manually add all the companies on the sites, when I add them, I’m like, oh, this sounds really neat. And then I’ll go try them out and then I just forget. I just forget. But I will say, of course.

Jess Dewell 14:34
Actually, you’re in a very. Talk about feeding your habit.

Troy Munson 14:38
I know, I know. It’s the same thing.

Jess Dewell 14:41
A really cool job you created something that allows you to get distracted but have fun too, right?

Troy Munson 14:46
Yeah, exactly. But yes. So I think that’s why there’s many. I use a tool called Fathom to. To record my calls. I think it’s amazing. I think it’s the best call recorder that I’ve ever used. There’s so many awesome features that I want to take advantage of. I just forget to. There’s so many that it comes when it comes like summaries and transcriptions and that I can use and put that in the chat GPT and make content out of it. All this stuff, but I don’t know.

Jess Dewell 15:09
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. I’m your host, Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business.

Announcer 15:22
Right now you’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast hosted by Jess Dewell, a nationally recognized strategic growth consultant. She works with business owners and executives to integrate just two elements that guide business through the ups and downs of growth. Number one, know what work is necessary. Number two, do all the work possible. Schedule a complimentary consultation to find out [email protected].

Jess Dewell 15:52
Hey, we think we want to know something. We use it like you said. What was the name of the technology?

Troy Munson 15:57
The one I use is called Fathom.

Jess Dewell 15:59
This is an interesting thing because I’m going back to this use case thing. Or maybe we don’t know what we want. One of the things that People do when we have budget considerations or re re allocating or we’re making sure that we’re spending smart money and we’re getting rid of all the things we forgot we turned on. Right? And in a company, because there’s a lot of those across all of the people, across all of the levels when we’re optimizing our work. And every once in a while there’s like this clean house that occurs. Is there a reason that you have found and maybe you’ve discovered this through a piece of technology you use or just process flow, right. As. As the. As the CEO and founder would be. How do you decide to use a technology more heavily versus have tool pieces of technology to get the job done?

Troy Munson 16:45
I love this question and I feel like I was asked this somewhat recently and I’m going to explain it very similarly to the last time I answered it. Have you heard of the Eisenhower Matrix?

Jess Dewell 16:54
Yes, I love the Eisenhower Matrix.

Troy Munson 16:57
Beautiful. This is exactly how I’d go about evaluating and using tech. And so what I mean by that is you have your urgent task, which typically nothing should belong in there, even though we think that they should. Things like that, right? And then we have your important task and then we have the task that you should delegate and the task that you should eliminate. So there’s four boxes, right? The way that I look at what technology should I be using or should I use two and things like that is I would only, especially if you’re trying to save costs, save money and all of that good stuff, get rid of the technology that you’re using for like the delegated task and for the tasks that you can throw away. So for example, let’s say urgent. Let’s. We’re going to just keep this, the churn train going. So let’s say urgent is to decrease churn. So really what that means is it’s to make sure that we’re not losing as many customers as we thought. In my opinion, Thumbs up. In my opinion, what I think would. Would be best there is, okay, let’s focus on one technology that helps reduce churn, but let’s not focus on getting technology for the other things that might be like, important but not too important or the ones that need to be delegated or eliminated. And for example, for us, very specifically, we actually just went through this. We had our like Eisenhower Matrix, all this fun stuff, and we cut out two or three different tools because I was like, yeah, we’re trying that out and we’re spending 99 bucks a month here, 49 bucks a month there. But we don’t need to. We’re trying to bo of the ocean as a small team, and we’re losing our sense of focus because we have all these shiny new tools and all these things that we want to try. But at the end of the day, we just care about retaining our customers, driving revenue and driving traffic to our site. Like, those are the. The three biggest things. So let’s only focus on those areas. So that’s that. And then just knowing, like, being in the tech space, it’s very easy to like, I don’t think this is a term, but we’ll call it a term like tool overload. It’s so easy now, kind of. Yeah. It’s like you can have tool overload.

Jess Dewell 18:48
That is a truly original.

Troy Munson 18:50
Even being a sales rep, when I worked at companies, they were like, here’s your 15 tools. Go use them. I’m like, I just need something to identify my prospects. I identify people I want to reach out to and get their contact info. As I said, that’s all I need. I will make the rest work. I’ll use the Internet. Yeah, that’s like how I think about it is use tools for what’s important.

Jess Dewell 19:09
I have never thought about using the Eisenhower Matrix to evaluate tools because here’s what I just, here’s just what went through my brain. Because what you’re doing is helping companies become more efficient and manage their growth and understand what drives their revenue and growth levers. And what I’m doing is the people, the messy middle y part of how we’re using it. And your description right here. I hope everybody just stops, hits back button about two minutes and listens to this whole thing again, because this is a quick, easy way for you to evaluate what are my roles and responsibilities at each position that is filled in your company, what are their tools that they’re using and what tool helps where and know what can I get rid of? Can we leverage a tool in a different way so that. Because I will tell you, if I had to use 15 tools to do my job, I just wouldn’t.

Troy Munson 20:04
Yeah, well, you wouldn’t. You would try to rely on the tools to do it for you.

Jess Dewell 20:07
And then. And then I end up going to what I would use. Like, so now I’m thinking about if I’m a director in a company or I’m the president and somebody said, here’s all the stuff that you’ve got to use for all of this reporting and getting it. I’d be like, who can get that for me, but then also at that director level, it’s. What do I already know? Because it’s hard. It is hard to relearn a process and maximize time when we’re doing so much under pressure and under tight deadlines. And it’s. I think we’re getting to a place that’s even. We’re going to feel it more than we have in a very long time.

Troy Munson 20:43
Yeah, I’m in full agreement there. Literally, last Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we sat down as a team, and we’re like, let’s throw away 95% of what we said we were going to do, and let’s go back to our main focus. So we were getting sidetracked. We’re getting.

Jess Dewell 20:58
Actually, we’re not. Because this is a great place to go. And so what was the trigger that made that happen? Let’s let go of 95% of what we want to do.

Troy Munson 21:08
Yeah. At the end of every day and really every week, I would just look back at, like, revenue numbers right now aren’t too important to me. Think of us as, like. Think of us as like a YouTube. Like, without traffic, YouTube would not be successful. So, like, traffic’s really the most important thing to me because that’s how we monetize. But all that to say is at the end of every day and every week, I looked back, like, what I did, and I didn’t feel like I was making any movement forward. It was, like, great. I did all these things to feel busy and seem busy, but at the end of the day, I didn’t focus on, like, our customers. I didn’t focus on trying to get new customers. I focused on, like, content creation and making videos and trying a new campaign and all this stuff that. And same thing with my employees. We’re a very small team or four or five of us. And it was the same thing. We were all on the same page. Like, we don’t. The other thing was, like, when we laid out all the things that we were trying, I was looking at it and I was like, this. Like, pretty much, if it doesn’t have a goal, like, why are we trying this and we can’t measure it? I was like, let’s throw it away. And like I said, 95% of the things, it did not have a goal. It was like, let’s just try this and see what happens. It wasn’t like, let’s try this and try to get 150 leads from it, or, let’s try this and grow our website 20% this week. Like, it. What? There Was no goal or no metric we were chasing. It was like, let’s just try things. And so I said, we’re throwing away every single thing without a goal. We’re only going to focus on things that we can attach a goal to that we can measure. And it’s going to essentially just be website traffic and revenue. That’s it. So I think that’s what it was. At the end of each week, I was like, I’m not getting anything done. It doesn’t feel like I’m getting anything done.

Jess Dewell 22:37
Okay. How old is Dimmo?

Troy Munson 22:39
Dimmo’s young, so Dimmo’s seven months. Six or seven months.

Jess Dewell 22:43
You hit this at. Oh, I’m so impressed. Way to go. Okay. Because I’m like, oh, I actually thought it was a little older than that, Troy. And then listening to you speak, I also thought. So is this your first time around running a company?

Troy Munson 22:58
No, I’ve run full-time, yes. As a CEO, I’ve run a few side gigs that we scaled to several dozens of thousands in revenue. But this is my first time, like taking the jump, going off all on my own and trying something out. Ran a few things, generated a decent amount of revenue from many different projects, but this is the. Definitely the biggest one and the fastest growing one.

Jess Dewell 23:19
Okay. I’m gonna just call out your awesomeness of you. You may not have known it, but you’re bringing it forward. I just gotta call that out right here. I was like, really 7 months old. That’s usually something I see around 18 months to 36 months. Still toddler age of a business.

Troy Munson 23:34
Yeah. Yes.

Jess Dewell 23:35
We’re calling it months instead of years, but that’s actually really cool. So bringing what, you know, what are some other lessons that you’ve had that you’ve learned that maybe directly related. Sure. But maybe not related, but related to right now. What are the things that you can just like name off that. I’m glad I learned this and did it.

Troy Munson 23:56
Yeah, yeah. So I think one of them. I’m gonna bring this up once, one more time is like the whole Eisenhower thing. Cause again, we. We’re a small team and we tried. Like, we have a lot of people talking about us and shouting us out on LinkedIn, which is beautiful. Like, it makes our. Our lives a little bit easier. But with that, we were like, let’s just try to ride the hype and do everything we possibly can. But a few things that I immediately. Again, this one’s seven months old. It’s my first time where we’re actually like getting numbers that we want to Track and all that good stuff. And so I think the biggest thing is one is we finally nailed down and identified like the KPIs that we want to track. And we wanted to make sure it wasn’t flooding the team where it’s like, hey marketing, here are your 10 KPIs. Hey sales or me, here’s your 10 KPIs. Hey engineering, we have four KPIs, right? That’s all we have across your whole company. Yeah, that’s it right now.

Jess Dewell 24:45
Brilliant.

Troy Munson 24:45
If we have more, if we get more people, maybe, but I want to keep it. It’s really like traffic, numbers, leads, website visitors, monthly revenue. That’s the only thing that we care about right now. And then the other thing is like when we are, we’re nimble, right? So we’re experimenting a lot of things at one time. And I know that I just said that we’re reducing a lot, but for example, I was like, hey, let’s go bullish on video for three months. And so for video, what I mean by that is like creating content and going with a video production agency and letting them edit like short form content for TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and LinkedIn and every channel. But all that to say is we’re experimenting, but we do it. And for example, this is going to be a three month, a three-month experiment. And what we’re looking at there is like LinkedIn followers, how many LinkedIn followers are we getting? How many TikTok followers are we getting? And then ultimately again it all boils down to website traffic. And then I think that, I think the other thing is like now with the ability to have chat GPT and perplexity and things like that, like researching specific things that you want to try and areas that you want to break into and stuff like that. That’s another thing that I’ve learned is I don’t, we don’t need to go spend hours or weeks to go figure out which category should we launch next on Dimmo and things like that. We can literally just to a quick perplexity search and find that out. What else have I learned? And then the other thing for me is because we’re so new, there’s not like this hard revenue goal where it’s like we need to go drive 2 million this year. Like we’re, we’re still trying to figure that out. 2025 is going to look so much different. But what I’m going to do going forward starting in 2025 is creating a goal every single quarter but also understanding, like how many actions I need to take to hit that goal and then break it in a month or in a quarter, doesn’t really matter. Can divide it by three, but then break that down into a week. So do I need to do 32 emails a day or do I need to do this or that? Break it down in my week. Because I need to understand this whole bottoms up approach of what little things do I need to be doing every single day to hit that monthly number, to hit that quarterly number. And so those are all things that we’re focusing on now. And it’s, it’s like we severely narrowed our focus in the last seven days. Literally. This is so relevant and timely because we just this week we were like, all right, after Thanksgiving, we’re heads down, we’re focusing on only a finite amount of things and we’re focusing on numbers. And let’s get it. So here we are.

Jess Dewell 27:04
Okay, so I’m going to go back. I really like this 4kpi, and here’s why. I really like the 4kpi because it doesn’t matter what business area. It’s clear what the goal is. If everybody had their own, if everybody has their own KPIs for their own business area, it’s very hard to understand how they, how they roll up. And it’s very hard to understand how they can interact for insurers, communication. So I don’t. It doesn’t matter if you’re five 50, 500, 5000, the less KPI is, the better I get. You have other sub KPIs, but at which point and where are the tipping points when you get to scale, right. Or reach that other level of people in scaling. I’m talking out loud here because this is very, I’m very curious about how this will like process between my ears and in my gut here because I do think there’s something to be said. We do try to track too much. And when we track too much, we get off goal or we try and make the numbers match the story we want to tell. And when there’s less, you just have more transparency there.

Troy Munson 28:10
Yeah, there, that’s exactly. And I think that like you mentioned, like, sure, there’s, there could be. We don’t track any sub KPI’s, at least not right now. But for example, like, I’m sure engineering, our two engineers, like, they’re, they have like their own little back and forth with each other of what they’re trying to do daily and things like that. But at the end of the day, they typically lead to more revenue. Right. Like they’re building features that customers want that they’ll pay more for. My marketer is typically focused on any sort of campaign that gets a lot of people. Like her whole thing is how do we get people talking about us so we don’t have to spend a lot of money on paid ads. Like she’s about to run a superlative campaign where it’s if you remember the yearbooks, like class of, of like class clown this and that. She’s doing that. But it’s all business focused. So she’s going to get like 80 companies involved in posting about us on LinkedIn to try to win their superlative. So she’s focused on her own thing. But at the end of the day it all boils down to those four.

Jess Dewell 28:59
KPIs and then based off of what you learn on one can influence him and help prioritize the right work right now. And that’s really the other piece of this is are you doing so you didn’t feel like you were doing the right work right now and that’s where all of these learnings have come from.

Troy Munson 29:16
Yeah. Oh yeah. I think we, my marketer and I like her and I work really closely. I think we both had this, this come to realization moment that we just, we had so much that we were trying to do that we would do a little bit of everything and get nothing done. And I would say that lasted about a month or two of the whole seven months of right. Starting to generate revenue and things. So it was becoming a burden. And so I’m glad we caught it quickly. Maybe that’s a. I recently started working with this new CEO coach and she’s been incredible. But she’s been, she’s so great. But all that to say is I think it’s. We both were like, wow, we don’t know what we’re completing at the end of the week. Let’s narrow our focus. And now she’s literally only working on three campaigns right now. Like literally just three things. It’s like a campaign blogs and I can’t remember the third ones on top of my head. But then I’m only focused on new revenue, retaining revenue. That’s it.

Jess Dewell 30:07
Let me see. I love that you have an outside set of eyes. That’s actually really good. Does this help you know what is in your control and what’s out of your control as you’re prioritizing what work and you’re figuring the bottom up approach to get to these numbers?

Troy Munson 30:22
Yes, yes. And what. And I also am realizing all of the stuff that can be delegated. I feel like I said earlier, I upload every company on a Dimmo manually. That should be like a virtual assistant task. Because it takes me, who knows, it takes me like an hour to add just a few companies. Yeah, I would probably. Could probably get them done in 20 minutes to add three or four companies. But at the end of the day, like, you get distracted. Other things happen. You get an email, all that fun stuff. And it’s not a. For me, it’s not a task that I think is worth my time. So it’s yes, one. I know exactly what to focus on. I know we’re realizing what’s working, what’s not, but it’s also. We’re also starting to find out and learn. And so I had my marketer write down everything that need that she does manually. It takes up a lot of her time. I did the same thing. Like, now we’re outsourcing that and it’s again, it’s just because we want to narrow our focus on traffic and revenue.

Jess Dewell 31:16
I’m your host, Jess Dewell and we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business Podcast. This is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results that lead to your success.

Announcer 31:34
Focused on growth? Listen to more programs like this which support the challenges and opportunities you are working with right now. Search Bold Business Podcast for the key terms at Reddirection.com or your preferred podcast listening app.

Jess Dewell 31:48
I’m going to challenge you on one thing. May I?

Troy Munson 31:51
Yeah.

Jess Dewell 31:51
Challenge you. Doing the onboarding is good for a while, but if it takes you an hour, my question would be, is, does it have to. How much Right before you delegate that? What is the customer experience? What is the inside piece? And are you accidentally getting sat where you don’t want that?

Troy Munson 32:09
Yeah. Yeah.

Jess Dewell 32:10
Because that’s what I’m thinking. I’m like, I get. Because I’m having been in tech companies, I’m like, oh, yeah. This stuff I delegated always came back to bite me in the butt because it was where our biggest black hole always was.

Troy Munson 32:20
That’s. It’s funny. We don’t really. It’s an interesting strategy. And I say that because onboarding, typically, especially with technology, is understood as we sign on a customer now let’s go make that customer happy and give them the keys of the kingdom so where they can do everything. And we help them out with all of that. Yeah, ours is because we’re like this YouTube thing. It’s. Imagine a company just creating their own YouTube channel and uploading a video. That’s what they onboard themselves. But I have to hit a. I essentially have to. They fill out a form. I copy and paste that form into our. Our backend to make it appear on the site. And then I let them know, hey, your page is live. That’s it. They don’t need to do anything. There’s no, there’s nothing really that they can play with unless they’re paying. All that to say if I’m working, if I’m working today and I get seven form fill. Seven forms filled out. Like adding those seven forms, I probably won’t get to them for another few days because I’ll say, oh, I gotta get to that by the end of the day. And then I’ll get busy with all other stuff that I had already planned for the day. So what has been happening? And this is completely my fault. And I, I think I am the fat right now, to be honest. Which is why I was like, I feel like I need to delegate. It is. I’m like two or three weeks behind from adding these companies. And that’s not okay.

Jess Dewell 33:35
No, that’s not okay.

Troy Munson 33:36
And, and I could go and schedule like six hours, four hours, whatever, and knock it all out. But I have, I got a lot of ADD.

Jess Dewell 33:43
Of ADD stuck with you.

Troy Munson 33:44
I have a lot of ADHD too. Yeah, I got. I’m all over the place. So all that to say is, I was like, what I want done is when somebody fills out a form because we get form fills every day. When somebody fills out a form, I will look to see if it belongs on our site. We don’t accept everybody yet. Like, we don’t accept services, we only accept technology. And then at the same time, we don’t have every category in the world. But if it’s a good fit for our site, I want to forward that to somebody and have that on our site within 24 hours. I don’t think that there should be anything above 24 hours. And unfortunately, I keep telling myself that I will keep getting to them, but then I get so busy with everything else. So I’m like, I need at least that off my plate. That’s one thing. There’s a few other things like uploading blogs into the site every day takes about two hours and things like that. Yeah.

Jess Dewell 34:27
Okay, so you’re. I was thinking. I was actually. I actually thought it was part of your creation process. So thank you for receiving my Challenge and actually saying, hey, yes. And to your point, so how do you time manage? I guess that’s actually true because Ivanhower Matrix can only work so much. So how are you prioritizing what’s the right thing right now?

Troy Munson 34:48
Yeah, so the way that we do it is every single day we have this little chatbot that Slacks us. It’s we use Slack and so it slacks us and just says it’s three questions and it starts at 8:15 Central. So all, actually, all of my employees are in New York. I’m in Madison, Wisconsin. So it starts at 8:15 Central, 9:15 their time, they get a Slack and they have to fill it out right then. And there’s. That’s the goal. Right? I don’t want to force you to. But it all it says is, what three things do you have to get done today? And so like we don’t. Because if we add six things, chances are we’re not going to get through the six things. So what three things do we have to get done today? Why are they important? And then what do you need help with to get them done? That’s the only three questions that we ask and that’s been submitted every single day for them. Again, this is our, like, this is our realization moment. So we just have started implementing this Wednesday of last week and we’ve used it every single day since. And it’s been really helpful. And at the end of the three.

Jess Dewell 35:42
Things, why it’s important?

Troy Munson 35:43
And yeah, so what three things will you get done today? Why is it important? And then do you need any help getting those done? It’s really. Is there a blocker? Do you need an intro to somebody? Do you need me to give you access to this tool? Something like that. And then at the end of the day it’s, hey, rate your day. The first question is, rate your day one to five. And to be honest, when you’re like, hey, I wanted to do these three things and I only got one kind of one and a half of them done. Like, it’s a very transparent. Like yesterday I rated my day at two out of five because I had six things that I wanted done. I was like, these three things are the most important. But then I was editing a podcast. It ended up taking like an hour longer. All that fun stuff. And so all that to say is I try not. Nowadays, I try not to put. Because you asked the time management question one time, one-time blocking. Like, you have to two, my phone’s lives on do not disturb. Like, it just. It never Even outside of work hours, it lives on do not disturb.

Jess Dewell 36:34
Do you have an apple? Do you change or do not disturbs. I’m editing podcasts right now. I’m at dinner with my family. I’ve decided to take a walk. Right. Because I think you can customize some of that now.

Troy Munson 36:44
Can you?

Jess Dewell 36:45
I cannot wait. I just heard this. And by the way, so this is a tech we get from total side tangent is I have a 13-year-old who has a phone and that phone is. It’s. It’s worse than we ever thought email was when we had to respond so fast and with hours, this texting thing. And so it came up. There’s this thing that you can customize and like you, I haven’t had a chance to go back and actually figure this out. But I’m thinking, how cool would it be for me to tell people that I’m recording with Troy right now? I’m recording a podcast. How cool would it be to say I’m doing my Present Retreat, which is my CEO time? How cool would it be to say this is when I’m off-site with clients or I’m out taking a five-mile hike and you don’t get my cell phone because I can’t have service there?

Troy Munson 37:29
Right. Yeah.

Jess Dewell 37:31
So it’s.

Troy Munson 37:32
That is fun.

Jess Dewell 37:33
More connected, yet still more informational with context other than just don’t disturb me right now, by the way. I can’t believe you can actually do that. That is something I’ve been struggling with. Is it just. You just left it on do not disturb?

Troy Munson 37:49
Yeah, it’s a habit I got into a couple years ago accidentally. I’m in a lot of group chats and I hate. And I know nowadays you can mute like just the group chats. Maybe I should do that. But yes, I live on do not disturb.

Jess Dewell 37:59
Good tip. Yeah, I forgot about that.

Troy Munson 38:01
But now I live on do not disturb. I have eight people that I have considered important that get through the do not disturb. And that’s just the way that I work. But yeah, so it’s like I, I’ll. I’m on do not disturb. So like the phone I, I don’t want. Sometimes it’s an issue. Right. But like realistically I never really grab my phone if I can access almost everything on my phone on my computer nowadays. So there’s that time blocking things. Like for example, I have a time block at 2:30-3:30 today to identify like the top accounts that I want to try to sell into. So top companies. And I will do that for an hour again, all distractions set aside. But then I also. What I. And I’ve been doing this for this part for a few months now. It’s essentially those three tasks. Like, I, I want to make sure that I get those three tasks done, but I work on the first task and then I don’t do the second task until I’m done with the first because that’s my ADHD that’s so bad is I’ll like, I’ll get bored of task number one. I’ll go to task number two. And I’m like, ah, crap, let’s go to three. Okay, let’s go back to one. And then like things just don’t get finished. So. Yeah. So I don’t go to number two until that. Or I don’t go to number two until one’s done. I don’t go to number three until two’s done. And then I have two. I have five tasks total. I have three of these need to get done and how that this would be a great day if I also got these done and I only work on those. And then I, I understand how much time it might take. So if it’s going to take and if I think it’s going to take an hour or a half hour, whatever it is, and then I actually write down how long it took. That’s how I time manage and what I also do.

Jess Dewell 39:28
Did you do that naturally? Taking track, keeping track of how much time it, how much you thought it took versus how much it actually took?

Troy Munson 39:36
No, I had to. It was something that was recommended by my coach. And so that’s why I’m like, you.

Jess Dewell 39:40
Have a good coach. I like her already.

Troy Munson 39:43
Yeah, I have a great coach. She’s. She’s already changed my life. And it’s been just a couple months. One, One thing that I also have been doing recently that I’m hoping that they. It’s a very new tool. Talking about technology. Hey.

Jess Dewell 39:53
Yeah.

Troy Munson 39:54
So there’s something called FocusBuddy AI and it essentially just listens to you while you work and you can mute it so it doesn’t listen to you. But I usually just keep it on all day. And if I’m like working and I get an email from somebody that I need to respond to, but I’m in the middle of editing a podcast or I’m in the middle of editing like a video that I just created or whatever I’m about to create a video. I could literally just say send an. Remind me to send an email to Jess at 5pm and then it’ll automatically put it on a to-do list for me with my voice. I don’t need to do anything. And so like it’s now there. Now what I want it to do is connect to like my, my. It will actually connect to your Gmail. So it’ll create an event for you. Yeah, great. But I want to. I. I use Trello to track like the tasks that I’m doing. So I wanted to go to Trello, add that to the to-do list on Trello and then. But all that to say I love it because it’s. I’m very distracted.

Jess Dewell 40:43
I’ve integrated with zap. I have zaps. I don’t know how to say that. I don’t know how to say it either. Tomato. Tomato. So we got you. We actually use those to make that stuff happen. Not in this case. I actually really am. I’m going to have to try out Focus Buddy because that sounds awesome.

Troy Munson 40:58
Yeah, just talk while you work. So if you’re sitting there working, just say something. Oh, crap.

Jess Dewell 41:03
Which I already do. So it’ll be interesting to see what it decided to do. I’m a talk to thinker, Troy.

Troy Munson 41:09
That doesn’t surprise me.

Jess Dewell 41:11
Because, okay, so where does CEO time fit into this?

Troy Munson 41:14
Yeah, cool stuff.

Jess Dewell 41:16
Where that strategic growth, that strategic planning time.

Troy Munson 41:21
I would say CEO time typically takes place. It’s hit one. It takes place on my coaching calls. Like, that’s like where I go in and I’m like, hey, I wrote down all these things that I need help with and I need to strategize on. That’s one. For example, we have two calls coming up. One this week, one next week. Both of them are two hours. One of them’s 2024. Let’s review the last seven months, what we did wrong, what we wasted money on, all of that fun stuff. But then also what we should focus on in 2025. So that’s the second call is the 2025 one. And then CEO time right now. Because we have the luxury of being so small and so nimble and so new. It’s. There’s not that, like very hardcore, like I mentioned, like 2 million dollar number that we need to get to. And if we don’t get to it, like we’re under scrutiny and we’re scared and our board’s gonna hate us. Whatever. Like we. Luckily we don’t have that. So a lot of CEO time right now is literally FaceTime with current customers and FaceTime with new customers. And then I’m a I post a lot on LinkedIn, so I also. It’s a lot of that as well, like connecting with the people on LinkedIn that, that, that want to hear more about Dimmo or that, like, follow me for the things that I think about and what I think about life and all that fun stuff. But yes, I would say about once a week, I look every Friday. So I guess this kind of answers your question. Every Friday I look back, like what I did and what we did as a team, and I look at that report and this is again, this is new because we just started doing this. But that daily chatbot that we have a check in checkout, there’s a report dashboard where I can see everything. So I can see like the entire week, like what we rated our days, all that fun stuff. And then that’ll just give me an understanding, hey, where did we fall short? And things like that. But for us, it’s like a. We have a. We have like monthly campaigns, we have like quarterly campaigns that we want to run. But at the end of the day each week we check in with each other to see, like, where we fell short, where we didn’t. And that’s already been done without the check ins. It’s like, what did we go wrong this week? And that’s when we realized we’re focusing on way too much because we talked and it was like, I’m getting nothing done, but I’m so busy.

Jess Dewell 43:16
Yeah, totally. We actually had a year. I did. I have never had to do this before, but I. A few years ago, I did the exact same thing you did. Got rid of was something like, was it 60%? It was over 50%. Might have been 60. I don’t think it was more than a. Of all of the things that we had ever done that were customizable, I was like, nope, we’re done. Nope, we’re done. Nope, we’re done. And that was the hardest thing I did because there was a lot of. I had years of this. So they were like just the, the little babies of Jessica or the things that I was really proud of. But they took energy that we did not have. And it took that energy away from what was really important. And by doing that, we transformed business in 12 months.

Troy Munson 44:02
Yeah. Yeah, it’s.

Jess Dewell 44:03
And it’s amazing what that can do.

Troy Munson 44:06
It is. Because we do even. I think most people in their career and their personal life probably put a little bit too much energy on things that they shouldn’t. And I think, I don’t know, maybe that’s human nature. Maybe we’re born that way. But yeah, maybe that. That is very. That’s very true. And I’m not shocked that like that things turned around after doing that after a year.

Jess Dewell 44:26
One thing I wish I had learned and I know would benefit whatever comes next for me or happens, happens. In addition to what I’m doing at red direction would be I take 20% of my work week and it is dedicated to strategy. And it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it is so necessary because you actually alluded to this through your calls with your coach on your Fridays. You’re creating a pulse of the business. So you’re actually by looking at it consciously, unconsciously, trends can be, oh, there might be a question to ask here. Oh, there might be this thing to do. Oh, I think we should find out what would a question be to just validate this. And a lot of what you’ve been talking about is internal. And I actually think before you, you actually have an external too, which is the part that I think I really like. And I. And you’ve talked by the way you’ve talked about it, which is why I’m bringing it back up here is you’ve been talking a lot internally and I’m like, I’m listening to you and you’re talking about checking in with customers and you’re talking about the priority of your customers and you’re talking about where do you want to be and the say, the commitment to the sales work or. And really that’s research. Right. Where do you want to be? Who do you want to know? Which is also the pulse of business.

Troy Munson 45:41
Yeah, it absolutely is. And I think that one like to dig even further, like that whole CEO like I worked last night, I tried not to work weeknights. It’s like my promise to the household. But some nights you have to. And I had to get some like CEO work done. I had to make sure that we were set up for success. And then all of. Some of it was also like expense related and looking at like the bank and like just that kind of stuff too. Oh, do we really need the subscription?

Jess Dewell 46:05
But yeah, I do that all on Mondays.

Troy Munson 46:07
Yeah.

Jess Dewell 46:07
Europe running out of money. I’m like, when Monday starts, I. Fridays are like my housekeeping day. What else can you fit into Friday? And it was really hard for me to shut off. So I was. And I usually. I usually. Actually Saturday mornings tend to also be a time where I’m deep into a business book or following up on some interesting trends that I have found or Right. So it’s adjacent, but it’s not. It’s about personal development as well as business development. And that’s. That’s what I like to do, is grow business. So that’s fun. And. But it’s really interesting to see how that then shows up after a day off of nothing. So Sunday tends to just be our play day, and unless it’s the spring and the summer and then it’s a baseball day, it’s fine. Because I like that.

Troy Munson 46:55
Yeah, that’s fun. That’s fun.

Jess Dewell 46:58
Yeah. And to your point, you also have some boundaries that have come up. So that’s an interesting thing. When CEO time occurs and what your boundaries are and what actually is that tipping point, because we all find ourselves there. It doesn’t. Sometimes it’s cyclical, sometimes it’s pressure, sometimes it’s in when you wake up and you’re. The tool that you normally use is acquired, and all of a sudden you have 16 million things to do to keep using your tool to do your regular three things that you’ve committed unexpected and it does show up in the world. So what’s the backup plan? And that co time is what’s our fire drill? What’s our fire drill going to be? And we don’t have to know it, we don’t have to practice it, but we have to know we have one.

Troy Munson 47:37
Absolutely. And it’s funny that you say like, this whole boundary thing, because about four months ago, I started this and this was just me. I read something on LinkedIn. This guy was like, oh, I’ve increased my productivity so much doing this, but I do no meeting Mondays. I have one meeting on Monday and that’s it. And it’s our team call to start off our week, and that is it. The entire day is blocked off for no meetings. And so, for example, if I go through my list yesterday, it’s record a podcast, edit a podcast, schedule the podcast to go out on Tuesday, and then it’s like all the. I call it my content day because I’m very content-heavy. Like I said, I’m going to start being bullish on video as well. So I recorded like six different videos for all the social media platforms. And then I had to create a product, a project for our video editing team, and I had to do pretty detailed stuff in there. So Monday’s like my content creation day, get the annoying stuff out of the way day. And then Tuesday through Friday now is just like, new customers, current customers. That’s it.

Jess Dewell 48:30
I love that. And okay day. So it’s a. It’s basically a time block for deep, important work that has many steps, the most be interrupted. Because I will tell you what, when I was doing stuff outside of that, that deep work that has many little repercussions. Oh, I gotta make sure I talk to this person about this. Oh, this impacts this external relationship this way. How do I want to position that if I got distracted, I’d be flying by the seat of my pants way more. And while I’m good at that, it is not the way to be.

Troy Munson 49:00
Well, no, it’s not. It’s not. I’m very guilty of that. And so, yeah, Monday is that it really is like the most annoying thing. Like, I hate I have somebody edit my videos, but I edit my own podcast. I hate, hate editing podcasts, but I also don’t want to go spend a thousand, $2,000 a month for somebody else to do it. Yeah, I hate editing it, but I did it yesterday and it took me like two hours, three hours.

Jess Dewell 49:24
Do you do like a podcast today?

Troy Munson 49:26
So it’s funny, we have our own podcast and it’s Dimmo’s. Go learn about technology. And so for us, ours is called Dimmo 10 Minute Tech Pitch. So our paying customers actually get to have a custom Dimmo or a podcast episode where they just pitch their product. Like, why were you started? What challenges do you solve for? Who do you sell to all that stuff? It’s like what you want to know when you’re looking at tech. So I do that and I don’t know, do two or three of those every single week. And then I, yeah, I guessed on I don’t know again, two or three a week.

Jess Dewell 49:53
What percentage of your week do you think you actually are working on your business versus in it today?

Troy Munson 49:58
So when you say working on like the revenue part of the business, like what percentage of the week or working.

Jess Dewell 50:03
On meaning the strategic things.

Troy Munson 50:06
I want to answer this weirdly, and it’s because I love it. In my mind, I’m like, everything strategic, right? Everything I’m doing is strategic love. So it’s funny, I would say what. Let’s just say, let’s just use 40 hours as an example of a work week. I would say about. It’s like half to 60% is. Let’s focus on the revenue and moving the business forward. Because I ended up. I’m in this weird spot, Jess, where because I ended up building like this LinkedIn audience. It’s where most of our traffic comes from is when I make a very educated or when I make a very build in public type post on LinkedIn, our website, numbers immediately go up. So we have this weird thing where it’s like we need to build and grow slow and to the right for sure, but we also need those quick wins. And those quick wins rely on me. So it relies on me making content, which content takes time. So it’s funny because I see that as strategic, but I also see it as taking away from the big strategy of driving more revenue. So it’s like this weird. It’s like this weird balance.

Jess Dewell 51:06
All right, Troy, what makes it bold? What makes it bold to get the right work done, even when it feels like you’re going against your instincts?

Troy Munson 51:16
I’m one of those people that. And maybe it’s a CEO thing, I don’t know. But I’m one of those people that thinks that my instinct is always right and I’m very stubborn. And you could ask my wife, she’d be like, yes, he definitely thinks that way. I think it’s always right. And if it’s not right, I think I can always find the answer. And I think that I can do it all by myself and that I’m suited enough to go figure things out. And so what makes it bold is, like we talked about throughout this episode is this coach that I’ve been having, and I essentially, it was a. For me, it was like a cry for help. It was. I was actually. It’s funny. I’ll quickly share a quick story. I was in this group. I was in this group CEO coaching thing. And so it was a group class of, like, 15 CEOs, and it was 30 minutes to learn a lesson in 30 minutes of an open floor. And you talked with, like, people that sold their businesses for billions. It was two people that were worth a lot of money that ran this. It was not helpful at all for me because I was way too. Everyone there had 20 employees, 25 employees. And so they’re all talking about, like, how to manage your employees. We’re too early for that right now. Anyways, I reached out and I said, I really do need help, but this just isn’t suitable for me right now. That then gave me an introduction to who I’m working with now. Her name’s Rachel. She’s amazing. But it’s like, I think that I make. What makes it bold is understand that you do not know everything and that you could be very wrong and also understand, like, when to cry for help. Like, we are in a perfectly fine scenario and situation financially and things like that. But I was scared. I was like, If I let this go on for another six to 12 months, like we’re gonna be done. Like we’re gonna be cooked. So, yeah, that’s when I reached out and had this cry for help. I was like, I, you might not be helpful for me as a group coaching thing, but I need help. Please, anybody help me. And I think that’s it. I finally asked for help and I’m really bad at that.

Jess Dewell 52:57
Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with 25 people. I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that. And we’ll have something that you want to share in the comments. I would like for you to engage with us. What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program? Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because, yeah, there are going to be how-to’s. Yes. There are going to be steps. Yes. You’re going to be like, oh, I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this and I could actually take action on that right now. But guess what? You’re not so engaged right now because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style tomorrow.

Announcer 53:47
Jess hosts the Bold Business Podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host, Jess Dewell. Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at reddirect.com. Thank you for joining us and special thanks to our post production team at the Scott Treatment.