The Step-by-Step Process for Solving Any Business Roadblock

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, episode 337

Welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income. If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place. Let's talk about the best method for solving any major problem in your business. If you are a business owner, right now you have problems in your business. The skeletons in the closet and some of those are very big skeletons. So if you have major problems in your business, those problems have to be solved. In this episode, I'm going to break down the best method for solving those problems. This method was created by some of the smartest people in the history of humanity. This has evolved over time. It is time tested. It is a proven way to solve problems like this, and it works perfectly for freelancers. But here's how most freelancers solve problems. You have a problem, you ignore it. That's the first way. If you don't ignore it, you have a problem, you hear about some kind of idea, you want to try it out, and putting that in air quotes, you want to try it out. And then you just kind of move on with life when that didn't immediately solve the problem, or you kind of half implemented it, those half built bridges. And when you solve problems this way, those problems start to compound. Because again, I'm using solved and air quotes, because if you ignored it, you obviously didn't solve it. And if you're the dabbler, like I talked about a second ago, where you're doing these half built bridges, that not only did you not solve the problem, you also wasted a bunch of time dabbling. So it's in some ways worse than the ignorer. So not only do you have a lack of leads for your business, not only do you suck at sales in your business, not only does your pricing suck because you're too scared to raise your rates in your business, you're also slow at fulfillment because of perfectionism. And you hate your clients because you let them walk over you. These are all solvable problems. Every single one of those things I just mentioned are solvable problems. Many people have some or all of these problems in their business right now, and you're either ignoring them or you're just dabbling and half building bridges to the solutions, and you're never actually fully solving these problems. Now, this sounds really stupid and condescending, but it's worth repeating here. If the problem isn't solved, it won't go away. It doesn't magically solve itself. That's why I hate word of mouth as the main source of clients for freelancers, because it lulls you into this sense that the problem has been solved. Or this feast or famine, when you finally are feasting again, that famine's not gonna come again. And then when it inevitably does, because you're just relying on word of mouth that you do not control, now you start to realize, oh, I actually have a problem. When the famine comes back again, and now you're back in the same exact position you were before, where you have more month and money at this point. Remember, we're talking about a problem-solving framework in this episode. So when you don't solve the problems, that's when those things start to compound. They start to stack on top of each other, one after another after another, until you hate your business. So in order to end this compounding effect of our problems stacking on top of each other, we have to start snowballing our problems. And to snowball our problems, it means just solving the biggest one first. Throughout this episode, I really want you to take, what's the number one problem, that big hairy problem you know you have, that first big one on the start of our snowball right now, I want you to keep that top of mind as we talk to this episode, because it's going to be very helpful for you to have that top of mind as we think through this framework. So what is the framework? What is the big thing I've been building up? It is the scientific method. It sounds really like a letdown when I say it out loud. But the scientific method has been around for centuries. It has evolved over time. It has been created by tons of smart people, way smarter than me and you. It is used at very high levels for solving all sorts of problems in all different mediums. And it can be utilized by freelancers to solve the problems of your business. So in this episode, I'm going to break down the scientific method as it pertains to freelancers. This is a proven time-tested approach to solving problems, like actually solving them, as opposed to ignoring or just half-built bridges, right? And when we actually solve the problems, we can start that snowball. So if you haven't heard of this podcast before, hello, I'm Brian Hood. This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast. This podcast is for freelancers who offer creative services, and you'll want to make more money from your creative skills without selling your soul. If that sounds like you, you're on the right spot. From our returning listeners, welcome back. We are 337 episodes into this podcast at this point, so you know who I am if you've been listening for a long time. Now, just as a reminder, I'm about to outline the scientific method and how it again, pertains to freelancers for solving problems. Think through your number one problem you have right now, the big thing that keeps you up at night, right? The number one thing. Don't worry about this process for small, tiny problems because it's likely overkill, but we're talking about those big problems, the things that can really affect your business in a good or a bad way. If it's solved or not solved, this is what this method is great at. So if you're watching YouTube right now, I've got the image of the actual scientific method up here. It's just a random image I found. There's a bunch of different small variations and tweaks in the scientific method, but this is the one I like the most because it's simple, it's straightforward, it's easy to understand. If you're listening right now, no worries. I'll explain each of the steps to you. You can also go to the show notes page at 6figurecreative.com/337, and the image will be somewhere on the page if you scroll around. One of the first things you notice about this is it is a circle. It is a six step circle. And that's because for the scientific method that to work, it is coming at it with the approach that it will not be solved the first go around. It is an iterative approach, meaning you go through this loop one time, and you have started the solution. Based on what you have learned, we're gonna go through the loop again, and again, and again. Because sometimes solving really large problems is more than just one thing. And I think that's why so many people failed to solve the big problems in their life or in their businesses, is because they go through the loop one time, the problem wasn't solved, they give up because they're frustrated, and they just assume that that's how life is going to be for them. So let's talk to these six steps. I'm not even going to give you the overview because it's just a bunch of gibberish and scientific method terms. I want to really simplify this, pertaining to you and the number one problem that you have in your mind right now. The first up is observation slash question. What is the observation we've made in our business? What's the question that we have? Basically, what is the problem you're trying to solve? Or what's the big unanswered question about your business that you have right now? A really good place to start is go back to episode 332, where I talked about the seven must-track metrics that will make you more money in 2025 In that, the first four I talk about, the core four metrics are how many marketing leads did you generate? The number of people who might be a good fit, but they haven't expressed direct interest in hiring you. So maybe it's a lead magnet you gave them. Some people do free communities online using school or a Facebook group or something like that. How many marketing leads did you generate? The second metric is how many sales leads did you generate, aka inquiries, people that have directly expressed interest in hiring you. The third is how many clients did you close based on those inquiries? And the fourth is what's the average annual client value? What's one client worth to you over the next 12 months? That's the four core metrics that you track in your business that can really be boiled down to how much money will you make in a year. If you generate 100 marketing leads, how many of those can you turn into sales leads? Can you turn 5 to 10 of those into sales leads? Of the 5 to 10 sales leads you get or inquiries you get, can you turn 2 to 5 of those into clients? Are the clients worth 2 to 5,000 dollars each? If so, you have a good business, right? The problem is most freelancers' businesses don't look like that. Most freelancers' businesses do not generate new leads. Most freelancers' businesses don't have the correct average annual client value for their niche or their industry. And so you have the pick of the litter here. Any of these will do. It's most likely, in many of these cases, going to be a lead generation issue for most freelancers. That's the good place to start. What's the number one big problem that you are struggling with right now in your business that if solved, makes the rest of your business easier to run? It could be, by the way, you just don't know what your metrics are. That's a question you have or a problem that you have. And so if that's your problem and you're like, I have no idea what my numbers are or what my metrics are in any of these things, that's the number one problem to solve first. Because with better data, you can come to better conclusions, and with better conclusions, you make better decisions. That's the first step in this, again, circle, this cycle that we're going to go through multiple times. Observation question, what's the problem you want to solve? Number two is research the topic area or just research in general. What are your options for solving this problem? There can be many ways to tackle a problem. And this is where this podcast can be handed. This is where other resources that are out there, like Chris Doe's The Future Podcast, wonderful resource for another view. Like he has a completely different view of certain areas in business. He has a lot more experience in certain areas of business than I do. I consider myself a client acquisition expert. I think he is a wonderful systems and operator when it comes to team and numbers and metrics and pricing and all those things. Like he's really good at what he does. I'm really good at what I do. In between the two of us, you can learn a lot. There's also Alex Hermosy. There's also plenty of other influencers to go to when it comes to how can I solve this one problem? There's also ChatGPT. Not a bad place to start when it comes to brainstorming. Typing in Mr. GPT or Mrs. GPT. I have this problem in my business. I would like you to help me brainstorm different solutions to how I could tackle this. My business looks like this. It is a web design business. I build websites for five to ten thousand dollars. Just so you have contacts. What could I do? That's a form of research. Don't take it for gospel because AI can hallucinate. It can give you bad suggestions. But generally for brainstorming, I love ChatGPT. It's a good place to start somewhere. And then you can take those ideas to other areas and cross-reference and listen to other resources and listen to this podcast, the other 336 episodes that we have to find potential solutions to your problem. I'm telling you in 337 episodes now, I've talked about every damn topic there is. I run out of ideas. I'm now talking about the same things in different approaches now. So something in your business, you've probably had the solution on this podcast or a potential solution for you in this podcast. But one important thing to think about when it comes to problems that you're solving is what's the actual root cause of the problem? Because many times, you can solve a surface level issue thinking that's going to solve all the problems. And you think you've solved it, but you actually haven't because the root cause was never solved. Example could be, my average annual client value sucks. I'm not charging enough, right? You do the five why's exercise. It's a wonderful exercise. Why number one is why is my average annual client value so low? It's because my pricing is bad. Why number two, why is my pricing bad? It's because every time that I talk to a client, they beat me down on pricing. Why number three is why don't you stick to your current rates? Answering that question is because I've had three sales calls in the last two months, and so I feel like I have to close every client. And because of that, I'm willing to bend on my pricing in order to just land the deal because I have to close it. And then the question is why do you have to close it? Why do you only have three sales calls in the last three months? Because you have no marketing leads. You've done no top of mind awareness. You haven't followed up with anyone in months, right? Like all these other problems in your business that you can start to solve. And then it becomes something else. It becomes a fallout systems issue. It becomes a lead generation issue. But this is an important thing to do, is the root cause analysis, the five wise exercise, before we start diving in and solving this problem that isn't really the problem, right? So that's step number two is research. So we've observed the problem, or we have a question that we're trying to figure out, or we have a problem that we're trying to solve. Number two, we've researched first, is this the actual root cause? Is this the thing we should solve first? And then if it is, what are my potential solutions? Once you know the root cause, and you have a good idea of how you can tackle it, number three is we get to hypothesis. What's the hypothesis here? Based on what you know, what's the best chance for success of all the potential solutions we have out there? And it may be that, hey, my hypothesis is I have plenty of people that I'm talking to on sales calls, consult calls, whatever you want to call them. They're sales calls. I have plenty of people that I'm talking to, but my average annual client value still isn't where I think it should be. So my hypothesis is I can raise my rates, and if I do, I will make more money per client, and it will still be better for my business even if I work on fewer projects overall. It'll still be better for my business. That's the hypothesis, right? Number four is test. What is the best way to actually test this? You come up with a hypothesis for this problem. Now, how can we actually test it? What number or what metric tells us whether this test was a success or a failure? Going back to the pricing example, how can we best test this pricing change, whether it was good or bad? What's the best metric? I know in this one, it's easy math. This is why I picked this one for this episode, easy math. What's my earnings per sales call? I'll spell it out for you.