1828 – Confronting Fear and Embracing Content Creation with Adam Strong

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2:08Let's push the boundaries of customer experience together.

2:16With us right now, it's Adam Strong. Adam, you are known as the business strategist. You're the host of the podcast, The Business Strategist, which to our friend that's listening to our conversation right now, you can search around in your podcast app and you can find the show there. And then Adam, finally, your website is adamstrong.net. Adam, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate the invitation. I'm looking forward to jamming with you, my friend. Absolutely. Well, I'll let you kind of explain the work that you do in the world, who you serve. Sure. So I've been an entrepreneur for the past 30 years, which is kind of cool.

2:57And yeah, I guess for me, because I've had been on a bit of an entrepreneurial journey, right, Josh? Like I started up my first business at the age of 11, right? And now I'm in my 40s. I mean, I love what I do, right? Went from starting up my first business at the age of 11 and then went into elite athletics. So that's distance running. so no kidding we're gonna talk about that we'll talk about that when there a bit of a midlife crisis at that same age which i'll explain what that means it's a little bit early but you'll kind of get it when i'll share the story but now what i do is i use those skill sets from elite athletics from building and scaling businesses over the past 30 years and working with many different clients and leaders and now what i'd love to do is i'd love to work with people like your audience, experienced business owners and business leaders looking to disrupt what they do, you know, to challenge their mindset, to be able to create that what I call, you know, I don't know if you've ever heard it, but in soccer and football, European football, right?

4:03There's this terminology in athletics as well, and they call it fine margins. You might have heard of that. Have you heard of fine margins? I'm not sure, but describe it. Maybe yes. Or said a different way, I know what it is. For a friend that's listening that may not know, go ahead and tell us anyway. Sure. So fine margin is kind of like, you know, you might have a well-oiled machine. You might have a thriving business, right? But how do you kind of take it to the next level? The fine margins between, it's a bit like the difference between the person that won the silver medal and the person that won the gold medal.

4:39No one talks about the person that won the silver medal. They always talk about the person that won the gold medal. So that's what I mean by fine margins. Fine margins as in, what can we do to take things to the next level? What can we do to make those subtle improvements? That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, so all those little 1 % things. So we're just kind of evaluating. It could be like every step of our customer journey that we offer, for example. And we're like, what could we do to improve the conversion rate here? Or just try to be empathic to friction that may exist in a customer onboarding sequence or certainly any kind of acquisition.

5:15So a lot of the work that you do, Adam, is under the heading of growth. And so who would be examples of folks that you work with and what are some of those goals that you create together? Yeah, it's a great question. So the typical types of clients that we tend to work with are people in the professional services industry. So that could be your attorney, it could be your lawyer, it could be your CPA, it could be your IT specialist or architect, it could be your tax specialist. So people that serve those particular industries. And what I have found is I found a correlation, Josh. The correlation is, is that they're extremely good at what they do.

5:50So they might have their degrees or their PhDs or whatever it is, extremely knowledgeable at what they do. They may have a very good client base. And they also have some really good referral networks. So they have good partnerships in place. All right. But what they lack is basic business acumen. Right. So most of us didn't go to the school of entrepreneurship. Right. OK. So if you're like me, I've got a bit of a head start for most people, but most people didn't go to the school of entrepreneurship. They have to learn skills. So yes, you can have a business strategy to scale up, but ultimately it isn't just about skillset.

6:31You've also got to have things like mindset in place. Like for example, if Josh, if you came to me and said, Hey, Adam, I want to scale up my media, my media company, right? Or my podcast or whatever it is. I'm like, great. Tell me more about it. But if I gave you the strategy to be able to do that, because I know how to do those things, right? But if you're not ready here, it doesn't matter what strategy I give you. it's not going to work, right? I use it in the same analogy in athletics, right? So I used to study and train with Olympians, okay, in the form of distance running. And the former world and Olympic world champion was my training partner, okay?

7:07Now, my coach, who was, you know, he won all the medals back in the heyday. He basically, what I loved about my coach is he used to work with just normal Joe Public, normal Joe Public without any special skills or talents and turn them into champions, right? That's what he used to do, okay? But with my coach, what was really interesting is like, okay, so what do you want to achieve, Adam? Okay, I want to achieve, say I want to complete 10 kilometer race in under 30 minutes, right? This is what you need to do. But if I'm not ready here, I'm not going to be ready because my belief system is going to impede me.

7:44Do you understand what I'm saying, my belief system, I'm going to start to fear, I'm going to start to judge myself, I'm going to start to compare myself to other people. And that is the reason why things, the world, society, everything else that goes along, that's what holds us back from what we want to achieve in life. So, you know, for me, I'm all about personal growth, I'm all about excellence. And kind of thinking about this, Darren Hardy wrote a great book called the compound effect. I don't know if you've heard of it, but he talks a little bit about if he was to make an improvement and you talked about sales conversion, lead generation, whatever it is, but if he was to improve your sales conversion by 1 % every single week, what would that look like to you by the end of the year?

8:30In terms of revenue, that would be crazy, right? That would be off the charts. It's the compound effect. You're either moving forwards or you're moving backwards. there's no in the middle there's no plateau right you're either growing or you're either dying right so that's kind of like how i feel about entrepreneurship anyway sorry i'm rattling on no no that's why you're here we expect you to rattle on as a guest question by the way i don't know i know you truly and you know it's interesting because someone was just um and here's the reality and i want to give hope to someone that might be a little frustrated that they don't feel like they have a great system.

9:10Like I had just gotten a message and someone was complimenting us on, you know, like how we work with people that kind of come into our world. It was highly complimentary. And my response to that is, yeah, but you need to know the journey to get to where we are. It's, you know, a trail of blood from my nose getting punched in for years and years and years and years. So here's the message of hope to our friend here. It gets better. Absolutely. Because we hope, right, if we're committed to being a lifelong learner and like every time, you know, something happens, it's suboptimal. It's an opportunity for us to learn.

9:49Absolutely. A hundred percent. Yep. So one thing I noticed that you had talked about on your LinkedIn, which, by the way, you're a great LinkedIn follow. I'll just share that. But you created a really cool kind of slide show here. And you talk about how fear can, you know, even if it's unconscious, like we might say, do you let fear control your decisions? We say, no, I'm far too intellectual for that. Yeah, no, maybe you're right, but perhaps you're not. Because we think about like, for example, these decisions we make on what we share on social or the content that we produce. Adam, would you mind maybe talking about that a little bit and kind of like especially this relationship that we have with fear, conscious or unconscious?

10:36Yeah. You know, it's a really interesting question, right? So I know which slide deck that you're referring to, which was actually done this week, which was kind of cool. So because I've been in the game for so long, I can live and breathe. I can say that I'm thinking exactly how others feel and think. So I've been there and done that, got the T-shirt. and I was actually having this really interesting conversation and it was a show that came out this week and we were talking about fear and where fear stems from right everyone has fear Josh okay and which by the way I want to normalize this this is normal it's normal to have fear fear is that can be valuable it's human it's you have to be human right yeah I mean we're all human last time I checked anyway.

11:25But like we all have fear, right? And so one of the things that I've actually, one of the things that I was speaking about in the, what you're referring to, which is the social media stuff is the reasons why we don't create enough content, right? The reasons why we don't shout about ourselves, right? We don't like to, you know, I don't, if you ask any entrepreneur, they don't like to sell themselves, right? It's just dirty, right? It's, it's something that used to do like, you know, 30, 40 years ago. It's just not. But when someone else recommends you, it's 10 times more powerful than you selling yourself.

12:00Right. So one of the things that I was referring to in the slide deck is the fear of being judged. OK, so, you know, we're living in the digital world, right, where, you know, we've got the TikToks, the LinkedIn's, we've got the Twitters, you know, all of these social media channels, right? We didn't have those five, 10 years ago. Not all of them, right? We didn't. Like there were a few out there back in the heyday of, you know, what was the platform before Facebook? I can't remember. What was it called? What, Friendster or what was the other? Oh, the other one that died. The one with the bands, right?

12:40Right, right, right. I can't remember. But there's MySpace. It was on MySpace. Yes, thank you. And by the way, our audience was shouting MySpace. Thank you. I think subconsciously we just heard that. So there we go. But it's interesting because we live in such a judgmental world, Josh. Do you know what I mean? Like we live in it. Like we're always trying, and subconsciously, and if I have a conversation with someone, and say, for example, they came to me and they're like, hey, so I'm not getting leads and I'm not getting sales and I'm not growing my business. I'm like, so show me what content are you putting out there?

13:17And they show me and I'm like, well, this piece of content was done three months ago. This one was, you know what I mean? So like there's this lack of inconsistency. Yes. Yeah. And again, kind of stemming, Adam, from empathy. Like if we have empathy for audiences and just people, people are busy. They're swimming in a sea of noise. Absolutely. You know, the fact that you're going to put one thing out there and then all of a sudden people are going to bum rush to want to do business with you. That's high hopes. Well, I think it's probably not, you know, again, empathic to where audiences are today.

13:53So for empathic to the fact that they're swimming in offers, they're swimming in noise. And so how can we be mindful of that and how can we allow that to maybe, you know, influence what we share, how we share it? Absolutely. For me, from my perspective, it's all about what makes you unique to the marketplace. That's what it's about, really. What differentiates me from my competitors? What differentiates me from people in my industry? What differentiates me from other entrepreneurs? What differentiates me? Is it my values? Why do you like me? Why are you listening to me? Right. What is the problems that you're trying to solve?

14:37Like, literally, what are you trying to solve for the clients? OK, because I'm not and it's the same for you. Right. You you're not for everybody. And guess what? You have to just settle with that. Like you can't be. You know, I had someone who reached out to me, he was introduced to me and we just want a good fit. Like and that's OK. Right. That's OK. And be OK with that. but I feel like we live in such a judgmental world and we're always trying to compare you know each other and stuff like that but what I found going back to your question around the whole kind of LinkedIn I'll use LinkedIn as a perfect example Josh actually so what I found especially with the world of LinkedIn and so I love LinkedIn that's where I live right that's kind of like my my that's my playground where I love to play okay but it's taken me years to establish loyal fans on.

15:33It's taken years. It's not like a one or two month thing, right? You've got to be, there's a few things that I've learned from being on LinkedIn is consistency. LinkedIn loves education, right? If you're educating their audience, they're going to push you right to the top of the tree, right? They're going to love you doing that. LinkedIn hates you selling yourself. LinkedIn hates you putting offers out there. They hate that. As does every social media platform, by the way, unless you're paying them big bucks. Because that's where they get their money from. You think they're going to let you do that for free?

16:05Uh-uh. If that's what you want to do on social, you don't have to pay the piper. Absolutely. You're absolutely bang on. And so, you know, I say to people, well, are you being consistent? Is your content educational and inspirational, right? Because That's what it's got to be. Is it fun? Is it entertaining? Is it got a good hook? Does it reel people in? Does it entice people? Does it create curiosity? Right? So your content's got to do those things. But it also, with regards to your content, in particular, is that it's got to be varied. So you can't just put the same piece of content or you can't use the same, you know, I don't know, feature, for example, and expect the same results.

16:53And I'm a big fan of data and analytics, by the way. So I like to keep a track of what is sitting well, what is speaking to the audience. I'm not interested in boundary metrics. Yeah, they help give me an idea of if it's sitting well with the audience, okay? What I'm interested in is quality over quantity any day long. I don't care if I've got 10 ,000 impressions, but I would sooner have 100 engagements over 10 ,000 impressions all day long. But you're right. I mean, we live in a very judgmental world. And the fear of being judged, the fear of comparing ourselves, the fear of not being enough.

17:37And here's the thing, ladies and gents. OK, one, I'll be honest with you, Josh, I am probably the hardest person. I literally I'm so hard on myself because that is the way that I'm wired. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, from the back in my athletic days. Right. I used to beat myself up. I still beat myself up. Right. And in fact, I had I want to quickly share with you guys. I'm going to share with you, I suppose, my story of vulnerability, if you want. Yeah. And unfortunately, we've got about two minutes left. And so I wanted, Adam, is there, can you, can we share that? Can you share that maybe in your social and we can link to that?

18:15Because you do have a great story, but I just want to make sure that, I want to share how you work with people and, you know, someone that's listening to our conversation right now, where they go from here. And I'm so sorry. I feel so badly. No, you're good. It's all good. It's all good. Well, I mean, listen, if you guys that are interested in having a conversation, Josh has kindly mentioned my LinkedIn and my website. That's the best place. And we also have a great quiz for you guys that are looking to scale up. We have, it's called the Business Growth Quiz. It's complimentary and it gives you a great free report about the areas in your business of where you need to have focus and some direction in terms of moving forward in 24.

18:54So I hope that gives you some great stuff. Yeah. Adam, your website is adamstrong.net. Again, when someone goes to the website, certainly they can learn about the Game Changers Inner Circle. You have some great content on your website itself. And then really easy to our friend that's listening to us right now, just do a search right now for the Business Strategist podcast and folks can dive in. You've been doing this a while, 200, nearly, as of when we're recording this, nearly 300 episodes. So congratulations on your longevity. That's quite prolific in the podcasting world. So Adam, this has been great.

19:33Thank you so much for the conversation. Again, adamstrong.net. Thanks, Adam, for joining us. Thanks very much, Joss.

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