8. Can You Deliver? Why it’s Not as Hard as You Think

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to Episode 8 of HOW TO MAKE MORE MONEY, a podcast that helps you get seriously good at the game of making serious money.

I’m your host Kelly Hollingsworth, and I’m so glad you’re here. If you’ve been listening, you know that we’re on a seven-episode spree of the seven skills that take your business to seven figures and beyond. Today we’re going to discuss the fifth skill. So if you’re just joining us, you may want to check out the last four episodes, episodes 4 through 7, at some point to hear what the first four skills are.

The skills we’ve already covered are about attracting and converting, two critical functions in every business. And today we’re going to talk about delivery. Delivery is another important function, and what we’ll discuss today will help you make it easy and fun.

This is a crucial topic, because many (if not most) entrepreneurs have a sense of dread around delivery. This dread can be subtle or obvious. Often it’s completely unrecognized. But when it’s there, it causes you to play small, if you play at all. For some people, dread of delivery keeps you out of the game entirely.

So to kick things off today, let’s talk about delivery dread. What it is. How it affects you. And what you can do about it. And then, once we’ve cleared that up, we’ll talk about how to bring your A GAME in terms of delivery, because that’s where you can really shine as an entrepreneur.

What is “Delivery Dread?”

So first, let’s consider delivery dread. Delivery dread is something I’ve seen a lot of over the last three decades. The first place I saw it was in working with hedge fund managers. Those who were struggling to really grow their assets under management were comfortable accepting investment from certain people, but not others. They were comfortable soliciting for investment in certain venues, but not all venues. Sometimes they’d be comfortable accepting investment from people they knew, but not from people that were brought to them through a referral, or vice versa. They would accept money from people they didn’t know, but not money from people they did know. It was all very complicated for them.

Why was this going on? Money is fungible. Every dollar is just like every other dollar. So what difference did it make, where the money came from? The reason it felt okay to accept certain money but not other money is what they would make it mean if the fund suffered a loss. They felt that certain people could tolerate the loss more than other people. Or they felt that, regardless of the amount of risk tolerance that the various people would have—maybe everyone in the fund had the same risk tolerance—if there was a loss the manager would feel worse about some people suffering the loss. For example, all other things being equal, if their mother took a loss, that would be better or worse than if a neighbor or a stranger or an institution took a loss.

What they were experiencing is what I call delivery dread. They were thinking people are investing in my fund because they want to make money. They want to turn a little bit of money into a lot of money. And if that doesn’t happen… In other words, if I can’t deliver, then it’s going to be a catastrophe. For them, and possibly for me. They’re going to be angry. I could get sued. I’m going to feel guilty. They’re going to get divorced. Then I’m going to get divorced. Their kids won’t go to college. My kids won’t go to college. I could ruin their lives. And mine, too. Everyone could wind up homeless. It’s too much responsibility.

From this inner monologue, we can glean some insight into exactly what delivery dread is. It boils down to three basic low-profit thoughts. The first is, this isn’t going to work. My clients aren’t going to get what they came for. The second is, when it doesn’t work, the clients are going to feel negative emotions and possibly come after me. And the third is, when the clients feel negative emotions and possibly come after me, I’m going to feel terrible and suffer other damages too—divorce, lawsuits, etc. 

Who suffers from delivery dread?

You don’t have to be a hedge fund manager to know what this feels like. I see “delivery dread” everywhere. In financial services, obviously. If you’re a registered investment advisor, financial planner, broker, etc., delivery dread is often front and center for you. What if the investment or program you sell doesn’t perform? And people are harmed irreparably?

Struggling coaches and consultants also routinely suffer from this affliction. What if my clients don’t get results? They’re going to be angry. And I’m going to feel terrible. I will have harmed them and put myself at risk, too.

And then there are the lawyers, accountants, architects of the world… Professionals who offer services designed to solve problems are often scared that they’re going to make a mistake that will create problems for their clients.

And delivery dread doesn’t just come up with services. In the sale of physical products, there’s often a concern: what if this doesn’t work for someone? And bad feelings come out of that.

Delivery dread is so pervasive it even arises in situations where results are guaranteed. For example, one of my clients offers a way for business owners to not pay credit card fees. Instead of paying 3% to Visa every time someone pays with a credit card, her company charges a nominal flat fee. So you pay a small amount of money each month with this small flat fee, and the 3% of your revenues that otherwise would have gone to Visa goes back into your pocket. If you have clients who pay you $1 million in fees on credit cards, you will save about $28,000. Maybe even more than that depending on what your flat fee is.

Even in this context, where results are guaranteed—it’s just a matter of simple math how much her client is going to save—my client was suffering from a bit of delivery dread.

So it comes up for all of us. So, the basic answer to the question of, who suffers from delivery dread—is pretty much everyone. If you haven’t taken a look at this topic and seen how it’s affecting your life and taken deliberate steps to dissolve it, you probably have some amount of delivery dread going on, and it is affecting your business.

How does delivery dread affect your business?

How does it affect your business? In a nutshell, it’s costing you a fortune. There are too many ways to count the manner in which way delivery dread drains money out of your business, but today we’ll discuss a handful of them.

Delivery Dread affects where you do business

The first thing that happens with delivery dread is that it limits you in geographic terms. Here’s an example from my own life. My law degree is from Gonzaga University’s law school, which is not far from where I grew up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. At graduation, almost everyone in my class owed at least six figures in law school loans. If you had a scholarship, you owed on the low end. Maybe a hundred… hundred and thirty grand. If you didn’t have a scholarship, you owed on the high end. A few of my friends owed $250,000 by the time they passed the bar exam.

I owed I think about $130k, and I thought, “I’m going to pay this back asap.” So what did I do? I graduated from a law school in Spokane, Washington, but I took the bar in New York and Illinois. Why did I do that? Because I knew what lawyers in New York made. And lawyers in Chicago. And I knew it was a lot more than lawyers in Spokane, Washington or Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Around the time of graduation, I was talking to my friends from law school about this. They were taking jobs for $20 or $30 an hour, with $250,000 in debt. I was horrified. So I suggested they take the bar in a higher-paying jurisdiction. I say go for the money every single time. You don’t have to live there. Just take the bar and have your license there. But they looked at me like I was crazy. And eventually I figured out why. They were thinking that if they were practicing in New York, there would be a higher standard than practicing law in Spokane or Coeur d’Alene. And they didn’t think they could meet that standard. In other words, they didn’t think that they could deliver. That’s why they didn’t go for the more lucrative license (and the bigger hourly rate that comes from having the more lucrative license).

When you have a fear of delivery, you will do the same things my colleagues from law school did. You will think, I’ll work with the people who are close to home–the people who are in my town. The people I know. But I won’t reach out to people who are in that bigger city who pay a lot more money for this good or service that I sell, because I’m not sure I can deliver in that environment.

Delivery Dread limits your niche

Fear of delivery also shows up in your niche. Or “nitch” if you prefer. In your “ideal client avatar” to use a marketing term. It’s the thing that has you working with only a certain group of people—who generally look and live very much like you do– and not others who would pay more for what you do. If you do accounting, for example, you could do accounting work for a small business that would pay you $25 or $30, $50 an hour. Or you could do accounting for a hedge fund that can pay you $250 or $300 an hour, or in some cases, even much more than that. If you have a fear of delivery, the bigger hourly rate feels daunting. As if you won’t be able to do it. It must be so much more complicated.

But guess what? It’s still just accounting. Like every business, a hedge fund has revenues and they have expenses. It’s debits and credits. It’s no more complicated than any other kind of business. But if you’re an accountant who thinks you can’t deliver in the environment of a hedge fund, you will forgo the $250 or $300 an hour, or even more than that, and you will make the $25 or $30. You’re still doing the same work. You’re just doing it for a lot less money.

Let’s say you’re a weight-loss coach. You could coach stay-at-home moms who don’t have a big financial interest in losing weight. They want to lose weight for appearance, health and other reasons, but not doing so isn’t costing them money. OR you could coach people in the public eye—actors, actresses, professional athletes—who have all the concerns of anyone else who wants to lose weight, plus a serious financial interest as well.

Guess who pays more? The coaching isn’t any different. It’s still just weight-loss coaching—helping a human learn to not overeat, and to not eat foods that add weight, if certain foods are a problem for that human.

What is different? The positioning is different—your message and who you’re talking to. And the dollars are different. They’re definitely higher. Yet, if you have a fear of delivery, you will choose to work in the low-stakes environment. If a stay-at-home mom doesn’t lose weight, is it that big of a deal? Her life is going to be the same as it was before she hired you. If Angelina Jolie or Matthew  McConaughey or a famous athlete don’t lose weight that they wanted to take off for a role or a game or a championship, that’s a different story. The studio or the team has hundreds of millions of dollars riding on the efficacy of your weight-loss coaching. Your job is the same—you have a client who wants to lose weight–but the stakes feel higher. To the unmanaged mind, that can feel heavy.

The desire to avoid this feeling of heaviness keeps many of us working in a low-stakes environment. Doing the same work, just with far less visibility, and for far less money.

Delivery dread limits your prices

And this brings me to a third way that delivery dread is costing you money. When they are suffering from delivery dread, many entrepreneurs alleviate that by charging less than the market rate for whatever it is they do.

Here’s how the thinking goes: this may not work out. Whatever I’m doing for this client, they might not get the results. And if I charge them a lot of money, I’m going to feel guilty. But if I don’t charge them very much money, and it’s a big pain for me to do the work for them relative to how much money I’m making, then I won’t feel guilty. Because I didn’t really get a lot out of it either. And I suffered a lot of annoyance and irritation along the way, because I wasn’t making any money doing all the work that I was doing for them. And so if they don’t get anything out of it either, and they’re irritated and annoyed, then we’re even. I don’t have to feel bad at all.

Delivery Dread creates less-than-delightful delivery (and costs you dollars)

This kind of thing is so common I can’t even tell you, and it doesn’t just affect how much you charge. It actually affects the quality of how you show up and how well you serve the clients that you have. Because when we are thinking this isn’t really worth it, how do we show up? How do we serve our customers? Generally not very well. So, all other things being equal, delivery dread also creates the result of less-than-delightful deliveries.

And this brings me to the biggest cost of all. If you have delivery dread, you actually don’t serve your clients or customers on a level that they find delightful. Instead, you’re mired down in the muck and mud of fear and anxiety and everything else that is going on in your own painful emotional state. Dread is not an emotional state in which we perform very well. We tend not to perform well when we’re afraid. That’s just the bottom line. So it doesn’t just cost you in terms of clients you bring the door, this delivery dread. Or what those clients pay when they come through the door. It also costs you when they walk out the door. Every client you work with can be an ecstatic messenger for your business. They can shout to the rooftops that people should work with you. Or they can be a match that lights a circle of scorched earth around you, in which referrals absolutely do not come to you.

Delivery dread sucks all the fun out of your business

The other thing that happens when you’re suffering from delivery dread is your business just isn’t fun. It’s dreadful. If you have this going on, you experience a lurching effect in your business. Picture driving down the street with one foot on the gas but occasionally you take the other foot and slam it on the brake. Fun, right? That’s another thing that delivery dread does to you—it keeps you from getting anywhere fast. If you have it really bad, you never even make it out of the driveway.

So those are some of the big ways that delivery dread can affect the success of your business and how much money you make. It prevents you from entering more lucrative markets. It prevents you from working in situations where the stakes are higher and you could be paid a lot more. It prevents you from charging higher prices. It makes you feel like it’s just not worth it, which can prevent you from showing up in a way that is worth it, for everyone involved. Not just for you. But also for your clients. It can create a lurching effect in your business that feels terrible. And when it’s really bad it literally paralyzes you. It keeps you small. It keeps you stuck in a box.

So now that we know what delivery dread is, and what it’s costing you, the question is, what do you do about this? What’s the solution?

How do you solve delivery dread? Notice where it’s coming from

Step one is to notice where it is coming from. You can’t solve for delivery dread until you know the cause. And often it comes from a business-killing cocktail of different causes, all mixed up together.

Are you offering a guarantee? Or an opportunity?

The first thing to look at is, what is the happy ending your business creates? When I was running my hedge fund, I was very clear about one thing. My business creates the happy ending of opportunity. I couldn’t guarantee that my fund was going to make money. It was a certainty in my mind that it would. When I started my fund, I put every dime I had in the world into that fund, plus $250,000 that I borrowed on credit cards at less than 2% interest. I wouldn’t have been selling the fund if I wasn’t certain in my mind that it was the best bet available. But I was also very clear on one thing. It was an opportunity. It wasn’t a guarantee. I had to be very clear in my own mind to eliminate delivery dread when I was going into the room and offering my fund to investors, that I was offering an opportunity. I was not offering a guarantee. And that’s one thing that really diminished delivery dread for me, and allowed me to show up in a confident way. Everyone who was investing in the fund completely understood that it wasn’t a guaranteed thing.

And guess what? It’s exactly the same with your business. Everyone who invests in an opportunity you’re offering… Everyone who purchases a physical product that you’re selling… Everyone who buys a service designed to help them get to their happy ending, understands exactly the same thing. There are no guarantees in life. Everyone just wants a shot.

Recognizing that can go a long way to helping you solve delivery dread.

Are you in beta state, where your success (and feelings) depend on the circumstances?

The next thing to notice about delivery dread is that it is very circumstance-dependent. If I’m working with clients in this geographic location who pay me this amount of money and the stakes are only this high, and not any higher, then I can feel okay if I don’t deliver. If I’m working with clients in a different geographic location who pay me more money, and the stakes for success feel higher, and it doesn’t go well, then I have to feel bad.

Another place delivery dread comes from is fear of confrontation. We wouldn’t really dread not delivering if there were no consequences to it. Events that occur with no consequence do not create fear. It’s like a soap bubble popping. It’s no big deal.

When we are experiencing delivery dread, it’s because we are fearing the consequences of not delivering. This is classic fear of confrontation that we talked about in episode two. It’s one of the five fears you may be suffering from that you didn’t even know you had. Fear of confrontation comes up when we fear litigation. When we fear the customer being upset and coming at us. And here’s something interesting. Often, the confrontation we fear the most is the one where we just beat ourselves soundly about the head and shoulders. This is how it usually goes, by the way. If a business doesn’t deliver from time to time for some reason, most of the customers just shrug it off and say, “Well, it happens.” It’s the business owners who are flogging themselves. So the confrontation that you fear the most often comes from inside your own head.

Note that this is also circumstance-dependent. If you perform, you can feel good. And if you don’t perform, you have to feel bad.

If you’ve been following along with the past episodes, you know that any circumstance-dependent problem is solved with the skill of high-profit thinking. We discussed this in episode 6 on Dissolving Fear for Fun and Profit. High-profit thinking solves all of this because it puts you in the alpha state, where you recognize that your own emotional experience of anything is circumstance-independent. You determine how you feel in any given situation, and you determine what you’re going to do about any given situation.

Now, one thing I really want to stress here: I’m not suggesting that you feel good about not delivering. Nothing could be further from the truth. We should all strive to deliver to the best of our ability. “Stand and deliver” should be the mantra of every entrepreneur. What I am saying is that when you recognize that your experience of the world and your reaction to it is determined by you rather than the circumstances, you will not only feel better. You will dissolve your delivery dread. You will also perform better. You will deliver better.

Are you feeling unconfident about the performance of the people around you?

This brings me to another ultra-common cause of delivery dread. If you’re in the alpha state that’s created by high-profit thinking, you will perform. You will deliver.

How about the people around you? As we discussed in episode 7, coaching is the skill that helps you help others into the activity of high-profit thinking, so they can become the alpha in their own lives. So they can perform better. We talked about that in episode 7, in the context of closing, but the skill of coaching doesn’t just work in closing. It works everywhere. At home. With your team. With vendors. Everywhere. When you can coach, the level of performance from everyone around you shoots through the roof.

I love to watch the Netflix series Cheer because it’s one of the greatest examples of great coaching that you can see on a screen. Monica Aldama is the cheerleading coach for Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas. According to her Wikipedia page, she has coached Navarro’s elite co-ed cheerleading team to “14 NCA National Championships in their division, in addition to 5 “Grand National” designations. Grand National status is bestowed upon the team with the highest overall score in that year’s competition. Aldama’s team also holds the record for the highest score achieved at NCA College Nationals. Her cheerleading program has been called a “dynasty” and her athletes refer to her as the “Queen.” Aldama’s success has had her appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Oprah’s live tour.”

How does she do this? Watch the series, and what you will see is coaching brilliance. She exudes a bedrock belief that the young people whom she coaches are infinitely capable. She tells them what they need to know, with love, and then she watches them rise to the standard that she sets. When they don’t rise to that level, she doesn’t rush into their disappointment and try to fix it for them. She lets them experience it, and fix it for themselves. She is the perfect example of the principle that when you are a coach, you cease to be a caretaker.

To solve a lot of any delivery problem, having all the people around you—at home, on your team, your vendors, everyone—rise to the level of the standard you set is a big factor. And the great news is, what we’ve talked about so far, to solve delivery dread, are skills we’ve already covered in past episodes. including high-profit thinking and coaching. These skills help you with attraction and conversion, But they’re also going to help you later on in your business, when it comes time to actually deliver, as we’re discussing today.

So we’ve covered a lot that’s going to help you with delivery. But today I want to cover the one skill—a new skill–that makes delivery delightful, and not just for you, but also for your clients. It is the fifth skill that takes your income to seven figures and beyond, and specifically it is a new skill called SERVICE.

Service: The Skill that Allows you to Deliver at a High Level

SERVICE is something every business needs, because when you’re using this skill, you are doing that rare, valuable and ethical thing of delivering your clients to that happy ending. You’re putting your thought, effort, and energy into that, and when you are the rare business owner who does this, you will tower over your competitors.

Excellent service is so rare these days, that it’s the one place where any business can shine. If it feels like you’re outgunned in attraction and conversion, you probably aren’t wrong about that. Most businesses fall down in delivery, so they have to spend the bulk of their time and money and effort on getting more clients. If you’re the rare business owner who actually delivers, you can stop playing the marketing and sales game so hard. Other business owners have to play that hard, and it costs them a fortune in time, money, and effort, but that doesn’t have to be you.

So what I want you to glean form this here, is that if you’re feeling small, like you can’t compete, the one place you can shine is delivery, because the bar just isn’t that high.

Service is where any business can shine

Several months ago, for example, I gave a woman some loose beads that I had purchased. I was thinking I was going to make a necklace with them, because they were beautiful. And I quickly realized that I don’t have time to make a necklace. And I don’t want to learn how to make a necklace. It’s just not my thing. But I loved the beads and I wanted a necklace, so one night when I was at a networking event– this was pre-Covid– I ran into a woman who said that she makes jewelry. And I said, “Would you make a necklace for me?” I had the beads in my car. And she said she would make a necklace. So I went out and got her the beads, and she said she would get back to me with how much money she needed. We didn’t even agree on a price. I just told her I would pay her whatever it cost to make the necklace.

I heard from her once, a couple weeks later. She told me that she still needed to work up a quote. Fine, okay. I’m not in a hurry.

I never heard from her again. This isn’t a tragedy. I gave her some beads. I didn’t get them back. I’m not upset about it. The only reason I’m even taking note of the story and sharing it with you is because so many people are afraid to play a bigger game, because they think that if they get in the game in a bigger way, and they are making more money, that the level of delivery is going to get so high they won’t be able to meet it. And they are ethical people. They don’t want to breach their agreements. So they back off. They charge less. They show up in a small way. They don’t bring what they really have in terms of skill to the table. And it’s all because they have a fear that they can’t deliver. And that fear is totally misplaced. Because the truth is, if you just show up and do what you say you’re going to do, you are head and shoulders above everybody else.

Just yesterday I was listening to Dave Ramsey’s podcast, and he mentioned that his son at age 13 or 14 told him that he was going to be a general contractor. And Dave asked why, and his son said, “because if you just show up when you say you’re going to show up, you’ll be successful. No one in that business even does that much.”

I’m sure some of the people do, but I’ve read articles about couples who were interviewing contractors, and when the contractor would leave the house, they would actually get into a fight with each other because one spouse would say to the other spouse, “You shouldn’t have said that. Now he’s not going to like us.” And the article went on to say that the couple kept getting one “bad boyfriend” contractor after another. They kept hoping things with the new contractor would turn out differently, but then the guy never showed up when he said he was going to. He never called, and eventually he just stopped returning their calls.

If you want to be ultra-successful, all you need to do is show up. Because all of those bad boyfriend contractors, and every other business that is taking money but not actually delivering… They have clients. They’re making money. People want a happy ending so much that, in the absence of a real one, they will give their money to a business that provides a poor approximation of one. If you actually deliver, they will be thrilled to give money to you.

Why do so few businesses deliver?

So now the question is, why aren’t more people showing up? Why aren’t more business owners doing the thing where you stand and deliver to the delight of your clients? Why isn’t everyone getting that delicious word-of-mouth referral stream going, that only comes from delighted customers, and that makes growth in your business feel fun and effortless?

To understand why, what you need to know is that there are two types of currency that you can earn in your business. There is emotional currency, and there’s cash.

Emotional currency is what you get when you’re doing things in your business that make you feel better. Or you’re not doing things in your business that you think will make you feel bad. Cash is what you get when you’re doing things in your business that make your clients feel better, because whatever you’re doing moves your clients further towards their happy ending.

Entrepreneurs who don’t deliver are not serving their clients because they are working for emotional currency. They’re working so that they can feel better, rather than help their customers feel better. Businesses that serve generate cash are constantly working towards their customers’ happy ending. They delight their customers, and when they do this, they create dollars.

If you want a terrific on-screen visual of what it looks like to serve vs. indulge, take a look at that  show Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay, you will see episode after episode, endless streams of examples where the people in the business are working for emotional currency rather than cash.

The restaurants profiled in the show want to keep items on their menu that they feel emotionally connected to, rather than menu items that people would actually enjoy eating.

They do the same thing with their décor. They say, “Oh, but we love it this way. My mother decorated the restaurant.”

They keep employees around who aren’t serving the customers well, or sometimes at all, because it would be emotionally upsetting to let those employees go, and it’s emotionally comforting to keep them around.

The owners of the restaurants can often be seen throwing tantrums in the kitchen, rather than actually getting the kitchens in order so they can serve great food. Often they don’t even clean the kitchens or follow health codes, because it’s just easier not to.

So what’s happening in these businesses? The owners and staff are working for emotional currency. They would rather indulge in the emotions of familiarity and sentimentality and comfort and ease than they would earn actual cash by serving their customers.

And then what happens? Gordon Ramsay comes in and he turns them around. He doesn’t use these terms, but essentially what he’s doing is steering them away from the things they’re doing that they think will make them feel better, i.e. the indulgences, and steering them towards the service–the things that will definitely make their customers feel better. In everything he says and does he is communicating, implicitly if not explicitly, that the purpose of the business is to make the customers feel better. And when the restaurant does this, then the restaurant starts making money. And when the customers feel better and the restaurant is making money, something magical happens. The restaurant owners start feeling better, too.

So here’s an important thing to notice about delivering on a high level in your business. When you are working for emotional currency—for familiarity and sentimentality and comfort and ease — or any other emotion that serves you rather than your customers, it doesn’t actually feel good in the long-term. We think it’s going to feel good in the short-term, just like we think that devouring an entire chocolate cake is going to feel good. But when it’s over, we realize, Nope. That didn’t feel good at all. That’s the nature of indulgence. It may feel good in the moment, but in the long run, it’s totally detrimental and it feels like garbage.

What actually feels good in the long run is to direct your work, efforts, and activities towards your clients getting to their happy ending. Why? Because then you are living your human purpose. Our purpose is to serve other humans. That’s why we’re here. That’s what feels good sustainably. That’s what really feels good, not just for a moment but in a sustainable way. And it doesn’t just make you feel good. It also creates cash. When you help other humans get to their happy ending, you feel good on the way to your own happy ending of that seven figure business that we’re all striving for.

That’s why, in Gateway to Seven, one of the things we do is focus on the skill of service. We scrub your business of all indulgences. The way to feel truly good is to serve your customers and clients, get them to their happy ending, and that’s how you get to yours. Scrubbing your business of all indulgences is the thing that dials up your level of service. When you do this, you deliver on a level like no one else, and you delight your customers. And when you do that, you bring in dollars.

So that’s what I have for you today, my friends. The fifth skill that takes your income to seven figures and beyond is the skill of service. You develop it by scrubbing your business of indulgences and working to serve your clients in exchange for cash, rather than for emotional currency. What’s the next skill? That’s what we are going to cover next week. So stay tuned to find out, and thank you for being here today.