Stop Solving the Wrong Problems in Your Business

0:00John Jantsch:So what if the reason so many leaders stay stuck is not that they're not working hard enough, but that they keep getting very good at solving the wrong problems?

0:20John Jantsch:Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz. My guest today is Kevin D. St. Clergy. He's an entrepreneur, speaker, mentor, and author of Beyond Blind Blaming. Stop solving the wrong problems and instantly unlock results. After building and exiting his own company, Kevin's focus is work on helping entrepreneurs and leaders uncover the hidden assumptions, mindset blocks, and false diagnoses that keep them stuck. So, Kevin, welcome to the show. Thanks, John. Appreciate you having me. So term, I want to start with, as I often do, words out of the title, blind blaming.

0:58John Jantsch:It's doing a lot of work here. How would you define it? You know, I'm imagining one of my business owners listening to this. I'm sitting at a stoplight right now, wondering why their numbers are flat. So for them, how would you define the term blind blaming? Yeah, I'll start with the story. It's the origin story that everybody likes. I'll be quick. But when I was 10 years old, I was a phenomenal baseball player at a batting average of 550. And for those of you listening, 550 is epic. It's great. And people noticed. I was getting a bat every other time I went to bat. Babe Ruth in his heyday, 394, just to give you an example.

1:30So my dad and I went to work. He worked with me on my mindset. I mean, I was young, but I loved baseball. And we had a buddy who was actually used to coach for the Dodgers, who was helping me with my swing in the offseason. We practiced every day. The next season, I stood up and I was ready, but something was different because I started swinging and missing. In fact, I missed every time I went to bat for the entire next season. And I literally went from here to zero. And you probably guessed what I heard from the stands. Come on, kid, keep your head in the game. Play to win this time. And then you can probably really imagine what my dad would give me lectures on on the way home about how bad my attitude was.

2:01And that's the biggest problem. Who, by the way, still thinks that's what it was back then, even though he's read the book. But what we found was two weeks after I quit, because I'd had enough of the abuse and eventually started blaming myself, thinking I'm just not right for this game. I quit baseball and I went to a fluke eye exam. We figured out what the real problem was. I just couldn't see the ball. Doctor said, sorry, kids practically blind without glasses. And here's the real problem. The adults in my life for that two-year stint never stopped blaming me for something that was completely out of my control.

2:30And that's what we call blind blaming. And I see it in business. I see it in relationships. I see it everywhere. We all go through it. So for people that are down on their business, they immediately start thinking of things like, well, it must be my market, which I know you've taught for years. And a lot of times it's not their marketing. They're just not answering the damn phone when people call.

2:48John Jantsch:How many times I've run into that, you know, that exact scenario. It's like, you know, we're just not getting enough leads. And, you know, we do call tracking and things like that. And we were like, yeah, you are. We've listened to the phone calls. You know, that's not really the issue. But so how does, let's start there. Well, there's, I mean, I can go a lot of directions, but since we went there, how, like, if you're working with a client, you're working with a business and you can clearly see that they're blaming the wrong things, you know, for the results that you're bringing. I mean, how do you circumvent that?

3:20John Jantsch:How do you change direction with that? How do you help them recognize that they're, you know, looking at the right? I mean, and it's rampant. I mean, perfectionism is, you know, is an example of blind blaming, I think a lot of times. So how do you... The book's broken into three sections on purpose. It's awareness. So I'm finding that once people start reading about blind blaming and they're more aware of it, Then it starts to make sense. Then we teach them the RCD method, which is how they get past blind blaming. It's very simple. But remember, simple doesn't always mean easy. But it's simply reflect.

3:53RCD stands for reflect. Is there something else going on that I can't see? You've got to learn to ask yourself that question. Because if you keep solving the same problem over and over again, and you're not getting any different results, that's where we lead to insanity. But that's what we go through as small business owners. And when you get really big, like we did with our agency, we had 450 clients with 900 locations, Sean. So I have plenty of scars of people like, Kevin, I don't think your service is working. Really? I'm showing 22 leads last month from your call tracking number. Yeah, but we only scheduled two.

4:21I was like, well, that's not my fault. That's blind blaming. So, but here's where I think people fall down because they'll get their team together and say, what do you guys think it is? And they're all in that sphere of influence. And everybody else says, well, it must be marketing. It's certainly not us as salespeople. It's got to be the marketing. I just don't have enough leads and the leads are generating their crap. So connect is the C stage. You have to connect with an outside source, a mentor, a coach. I like paid coaches. I've had one for 20 years. Just got a new one that's kind of up on the next level because I want to get the nine figures here pretty quick.

4:51So I've just needed a coach that's already there. And then I also have mastermind groups. Those are some of my favorite ways to learn. I know you've been part of them. I think you've led them in the past. And I think when you do that, these people can see what you can't see because they're outside of that sphere of influence. They're not tied down with your successes and your failures. And finally, once you know what it is, this is where D comes in. And you got to decide to do something different. In fact, it was pretty cool because I was a little worried about this in the chapter because it does use the F word.

5:17And even Jack Canfield, he's the only second guy I read the book. He's like, man, I even love your F-ing part. And I'm like, oh, my God, I just got Jack Canfield to say the F word on video. But it's MFD, make an F-ing decision. Because once you know what it is, I see a lot of people are like, no, maybe not. Let's go back and review this again. Do something. And that's a great story because when we came up with this, it was actually one of my clients. She was debating on whether to go with one or two loans. to double her business. And she's like, Kevin, what do you think I should do? And I just told her straight up, Kayla, I think you need to make an effing decision, but I didn't say effing.

5:48I've known her well enough. I helped her start a business seven years ago. And she's like, okay. She comes back a month later. And I always like to start coaching calls off these days with what's going well. And she's like, Kevin, I'm MFDing all over the place. You changed my life. Even my husband's noticed. And we're doing things. We got the loan. We bought the business. We've doubled the size. We're doing great. I'm like, MFD, what are you talking about? She's like, make an effing decision. What you told me to do on the last call, I'm doing it. And I was like, Caleb, do you mind if I use that in my book?

6:11Because I love that. And that has turned out to be the biggest thing I was worried about has turned out to be the thing that people remember the most, because they'll come up to my booth after a talk and say, man, I love the MFD part. You're right. I've got to make some decisions and make some mistakes.

6:25John Jantsch:So how, you know, you think about the entrepreneur, I mean, there's more to get done in a day, every day, seemingly than they possibly can. so you know they get really wired for go in some ways you're saying wait a minute slowing downs actually a more aggressive approach than you know just constantly going at full tilt how do you get people who recognize that you know that are part well i do a schedule audit yeah and i see do they like for me 5 to 5 30 a.m i get up early i didn't used to because i worked in a bar all through grad school. But now I get up and from five to five 30 is my quiet time.

7:01I grab a cup of coffee. I do not look at a screen and I just journal and try to come up with ideas. And I can see it on their calendar when they're working six days a week and trying to see customers or patients, whoever you're working with, because they keep losing people and they don't give them some, they don't give themselves time to think.

7:17John Jantsch:Right. How do you get them to do that? Well, I make them schedule the time. Just like yesterday, we had a client. I'm like, where's your admin time? He's like, well, I've got an administrative assistant. I didn't mean for her, when are you working on your marketing? She's like, what do you mean? I'm like, wrong answer. So once at the end of the call, we had her physically book these two Fridays in a row that she was going to take four hours to work on this. And she's so excited because then she's like, well, what do I do? So we had to actually lay out what she needs to do. So first you got to schedule the time.

7:48What gets scheduled gets done. Then you need a personal assistant to protect you from yourself, John. This is like Christina Kan, who I think you interacted with, she booked this. And Christina is constantly protected for myself because I say, hey, book her there. No, that's your time to work on marketing for us to keep the company going. I'll find another space for that person. So a lot of times I'll find entrepreneurs who are just GSD, getting us done, and they're not focusing on time for themselves, nor do they have a personal assistant. And that's usually one of the first hires that I have people do when they're a solopreneur.

8:18Yeah.

8:19John Jantsch:And, you know, for years I've, I actually just blocked that time out every week that I'm going to do, you know, because there's a lot of things that you actually, you can't get done between, you know, podcast calls, right? You need that three hour ramp if you're going to do it. And so I've just had that on my calendar and, you know, and the nice thing is you can't schedule over it. No other people can't schedule over it. Yeah, I agree. And I like having breaks. I mean, Christina is really good about a 10 a.m. break from 10 to 1030. That's my walk and my snack from 12 to 1. I do take a lunch. I didn't used to take lunches.

8:54I worked through it. Just power through is a mistake. 30 minutes at three o 'clock to 330. And I usually wrap up my day between two and three o 'clock these days because I start pretty early. Yep.

9:04John Jantsch:Same here. So when you're working with a client, have you started to recognize specific patterns of language, particularly that kind of tip you off to like, yeah, so this one's in blind blaming mode. Yeah. It's the stories they're telling themselves. And I'll give you a great example of somebody recently. She's like, I can't wait to work with you. She was really excited. It was our first call. We had a great interview. And she's like, I was like, what do you think your biggest challenge is? And we got to that point. She says, well, I'll never be as big as you, but my biggest problem is marketing.

9:31and I said wait a minute let's stop let's go back it's not your marketing why did you say you'll never be as big as me she goes because I just know it I know I'm not going to be as big as you you know I'm like okay well let's work on that so we spent the first call working on mindset because our coaching program we called m3 mastery it's mindset margins momentum I just find if we build the business owner that builds the business we've had a lot of success with that over the years and a lot of times just giving them a way to dream bigger and think big makes a huge difference. We were at dinner a couple nights ago.

10:10I was on a big podcast, live podcast here in Austin with a bunch of people. And one of the people was one of my customers and she'd been invited too. And she's like, you know, before I met you, I just thought I'd be happy with just a million dollar year business working, you know, Monday through Friday, eight to five. And I never thought that I'd have a$3 million year business working Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and taking Thursdays and variety is completely off. It wasn't until you taught me how to think bigger that made the big difference for me. So build the business owner that builds the business and start thinking big.

10:38I mean, that's why we're, you know, we had an eight figure exit. I want a hundred million dollar exit next. That's my next thing. So the bigger you think, the bigger you'll get.

10:47John Jantsch:So let's go back to that marketing example. I totally agree with you. Walking that back to mindset certainly was the place to go, but we work with a lot of agencies. And I mean, so I hear this story all the time. You know, you deliver, results are still flat, everyone blames the agency. So you've probably heard that exact situation. How do you get people to walk that back? Because they're basically making that decision, if you will, that blame based on what data they can see or what data they think they have. And that data is we're not growing. Yeah. So they, I mean, we, we call it the three fatal falls of blind blaming.

11:27So the first one, we have these cognitive biases, John, that you're well aware of, because I've been following you for years and you've helped me a lot of my career. So I could say thank you in person, by the way, but I think the first fatal flaw is there's this thing called availability bias. And these cognitive biases are there to help us make decisions quicker and do things better and faster, but they can be getting the way and hinder our success as well. And the first one's called availability bias, which means the first thing that pops into an entrepreneur's head about what's wrong with their marketing, that's it.

11:54It's got to be their agency. And the people that have agencies that are working with customers, because I had a marketing agency for 17 years. I know the scars. I've got the deep wounds. For those of you who do choose to read the book, you'll see those wounds in the book with some of my examples. But once they do that, then the next fatal flaw comes into play where it's confirmation bias. They become a treasure hunter to prove themselves right. And they start looking for data to back that up. Well, I'm definitely slow. It was my slowest month ever. And I wasn't slow before I hired you guys. So it's your fault.

12:23And so then finally, when you're too busy looking at the wrong problem, you can't focus on the right solution. So that's the third table of law. So what we do though, is especially for like agencies, when we're working with agencies, I just share with them what we did when we changed our whole model from just providing digital marketing services to a business growth company and started including coaching because I was getting so frustrated and so angry of generating leads and then them not converting those leads to appointments. And so we created a front desk academy. Then I was getting really frustrated because we were putting the leads in front of them and then they weren't closing them.

12:56And of course, it's still our fault. Couldn't be then. It's not their sales process, not another sales training. I had a recent customer and she said this online out loud to everyone that when I mentioned that we really need to work on your sales process, she started crying. So it was, I was like, I didn't want to make you cry. I said, no, it's not you. You're right. I need to fix this. So I think what agencies need to do is they need to pivot a little bit and they need to start looking at the results that they get and what it really does. Because people don't think people want to sign up for more marketing.

13:23They don't want to spend money on marketing. What they want is to make more money, grow their business and have more of an impact. And that's the change we made in 2018. When we started, when we became a business development company that provided digital marketing services, and no matter what they did with us, we would help them grow. Because let's face it, you've done this, John, some marketing works, some doesn't. Some digital marketing takes months to get going. What we did is we developed a business assessment, to help them identify holes in their bucket, and then we helped them fill it. So weekly, we were coaching them for the first eight to 10 weeks they were on board with us, where a lot of people got a return on their investment before we even started their marketing before it got going.

13:59That's when we quadrupled the size of our company. We did really well. We weren't even looking to sell. Our broker came to us and said, look, I think your business is worth this. And we started laughing. And then he got that. So it was a blessed day. Anyway, I hope that answers your question.

14:13John Jantsch:Yeah, no, absolutely. That's really where we've been for years. I mean, the only thing when people engage us, it's not to do their marketing. It's to do what we call strategy first, which is a very set engagement that has set deliverables that we work on their business objectives. First, we work on the founder and finding where they're getting in the way. I mean, and I tell you from a marketing standpoint, it changes the whole relationship to, you know, we are in day one, not seen as a vendor. You know, we're there, we're seen as a trusted advisor and all the other stuff we want to recommend, they're like, bring it on, you know, because you've changed the relationship.

14:50Yeah, because you've become a partner. And when somebody comes in with a lower price, they're like, yeah, but I lose John and his team. That's what we learned. We just did it. The story's in my book as well. But yeah, I agree. And I love that you're doing that.

15:02John Jantsch:So symptom fixing versus root cause thinking. How do you get people? Most people are in symptom. You know, this hurts. you know how do I fix it how do you get people to start thinking way beyond the symptom to you know wellness if you will if we're going to use it yeah so back to that we teach them the process so we teach them how to move beyond blind blaming with making them aware that blind blaming exists and they're suffering from it then we take them through the rcd method but a lot of times they don't really know how to dig a little deeper so we've been really big on if we're working with coaches or agencies helping them develop an assessment that does go deeper and then that's how we identify things.

15:40We have them take a small assessment that helps them step out of the box and take a look at the way they're doing things. For some reason, I mean, when I used to do it in person, it worked okay. But when they have them do the assessment and they see the results with the AI stuff we have today, it's made a huge difference. And they're like, man, I knew exactly when I went through this assessment, what's really going on. And now it just helps my coaching go a lot faster. I don't know why. I'm not, I don't, it was just something that I learned to do at a conference and we started using it. And then we started teaching our clients to do the same and they're seeing the same thing.

16:08So having an assessment that helps them step out of the box and look at the way they're doing things to identify some other things that can be is one of the first things. But a lot of times just, if you're working with a good coach like yourself, who's got a lot of experience and you've seen the same mistakes that entrepreneurs make every other day when it comes to their marketing, we know. I love it when people tell me like, well, I definitely need to rebuild my website. And I always ask why. Look, I had a digital marketing. My company's job was to produce a, some doubt so that you would switch to us.

16:39But I always instructed our practice advisors, as we called them, because we were in the medical field to ask them how many leads a month before you switch and come to us, how many leads a month are you going? And you can probably guess what we got, John.

16:52John Jantsch:What do you mean? I have no idea. No, most of the time I was like, I don't know. I just know I need to switch because my business is down. And then sometimes we wouldn't let people come on board. I'm like, listen, no offense. I'd love to earn your business, but you're getting like 30 leads a month from your current marketing company. I don't think you have a problem with this. And we used to secret shop their clinics before we'd get on the phone with them. I was like, listen, your problem is your front desk. In fact, you know, when we said, how much are your hearing age? She said, they can be as much as$7 ,000, but you probably won't need those.

17:18Great script. No, they would hang up and go away. And I said, guess who scored worse on these secret shopper calls? Do you think it was the front desk or the owner? The owner, they're the worst. So anyway, that's some of the things that we do is help them step out of the box and take a look at other of things. So, um,