EP256 - The Silent Language Holding MSP Owners Back with Ian Luckett

IAN: In this episode of the IT Experts podcast, we're going to help you understand the silent language that could be holding you back.

INTRO: Welcome to the IT Experts podcast, the only podcast to help MSPs scale to 1 million, and if already there, get to five and go faster at the end of the day. Isn't it all about building a business that works for you rather than you for it? I hope you enjoy the show.

IAN: So good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the IT Experts podcast. Today we've got a little bit of a break fix edition, a little bit of a short, sharp jab into the ribs, and something we talk and hear an awful lot about at the MSP Growth Hub with our clients.

Today we're going to talk about the subject all around. Unnoticed, the language they use with yourself, and it's around that positive language and remembering that your body hears what your mind tells it. And if you believe you can, and if you believe you can't, then you are probably right. Now, what I mean by that is that many times we know that MSP business owners have grown up, been techies, 90% of them are techies and they accidentally didn't really mean to become an MSP business owner. And it starts with building confidence. If you are not confident in what you do, you're never going to achieve it. And if you don't believe what you are trying to do in terms of growing the business, building a business, affording things that you've never been able to afford before, because now you have this great asset of a business and you don't think that you are worth it, then you're going to get stuck. Because from my own personal point of view, I think be a bit open and honest here. My life has transformed since I started to work and develop my mindset. And this was back when I was in corporate and I had a two hour journey to work commute, to work to HETO Airport where I was working at the time, and I thought, what am I going to do in my time? And I found a guy called Tony Robbins. Many of you will know him, American Motivational Business Strategist, speaker, whatever you want to call him. But he started helping me understand and helping me to value myself, value what I'm doing. And this changed, and this ended up me leaving corporate and starting my own business consultancy and where I'm today.

But what I wanted to just share with you is that wouldn't have happened if I'd stayed in that mindset of working for somebody else, of being someone else's employee, of limiting my beliefs. And I remember the day when I decided to start the business up. We were sitting on a sunbed in Charmel Shake with a family, and I said, I think I should call it this. And we came up with the idea, this was before the Growth hub. And I remember going home full of energy, full of, I'm going to do all this Facebook stuff, which was new at the time and all of that kind of stuff. And I said to my dad, I'm going to build my own website. He goes, oh, I wouldn't do that if I were you, that can be quite expensive. And I thought for a minute, oh, do you know what? He's probably right. Actually, maybe I shouldn't, but. This is where you get stuck in your comfort zone. And when you're stuck in your comfort zone, you conform. The last thing you want to be doing is making yourself look silly, making yourself, fail, having to go back to people and them say I told you that wasn't going to work, and all of this kind of stuff. And in today's episode, I want to give you a bit of a kick out the bum to be honest with you, and just say you are worth it. You can achieve anything you want to achieve. If you believe you can achieve it, you can. And the reason I know that is because we are doing this every day in the growth hub, right? So we've had clients who've been working with us for three or four years, and when they come through that door to start with, they are a gibbering, shivering wreck of, they're not worth being in the room. They're not worthy of having this sort of support. I can't believe I'm spending this sort of money on the business. In actual fact, I'll give you a little tip. You're spending the money on yourself. Yeah. We help businesses grow, but we have to grow you first and we have to help you first. That's why we've got incredible coaches like Julie and also Stewart as well, who focus so much on the leadership side of things.

I just want to give you a bit of motivation, a bit of inspiration today that if you keep saying I don't have time, or I'm not cut out for leadership, your MSP is going to stay stuck. And so is your life, right? Because you're always going to do the things that you've always done. And the other important thing to note as well, and we talk about this so much, and I don't think many people properly grasp this, you will become the average of the five people that you hang around with, okay? If you go down the pub, that's become the thing of the past, but you know the age group I'm talking to now, if you go down the pub and you listen to people bitching and moaning about the government, things you can't control, things you've got no influence on, but you're happy to go there every single day, have a couple of pints of beer and not actually change anything, you will become those people. If you go out and you look for a new group of people, the inspiring people in the community, the people who are doing really well, success leaves clues, right? These people, and I joke sometimes, I think King Herod was possibly the first person who ever did anything around business development back in the day. This stuff isn't new. Napoleon Hill, Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, all of the new people that you've got right now, it isn't really any different. It's just about having a belief, having a vision, being positive about what's going and looking for the good in things. If you haven't been confident and certain in your mind, then you are going to get stuck. You are going to stay stuck. You're going to be in fear of burning out I remember so many times, I've seen so many people over my life who have got stressed and have got into a situation, whether it be family or business, and they just go to the doctor and the doctor gives you some drugs, and guess what, the problems go away. Hey, guess what, the problems don't go away. Your tolerance to those problems just gets reduced. It's absolutely crazy, and I'm not, costing a person aspersions on people who have anxiety and need medication and things like that. But I've seen it so many times when in actual fact people don't need to be on this type of medication. They don't need to have those kind of thinking around because they're just hanging around the wrong people. Also as many MSP business owners, they don't believe that they are entitled to be called a true business leader. If you believe you can and you believe you can't, then guess what, you are Absolutely right. Because these limiting beliefs will block growth and many MSPs will stay stuck. We hear lots of, we hear talking to lots of people who are maybe at three or 400,000 pounds. Yeah, I've been doing this for 15, 20 years and it's you've been doing what for 15 or 20 years, because you're just stuck and you're just staying where you are. But if that's where you want to be and you want to go and pick up the kids from school and you want to go and have your family holidays and that business is serving you right? Fair play, crack on. I'll be very surprised if you're listening to this podcast, but fair play and crack on you go to the other end of the scale and some of the most successful people that we've had, the privilege of working with and knowing in the channel. They want to build businesses that will deliver a really good multiple, a really good exit, so that they can then send their kids to private school, buy the cars that they want. Sorry, I'm always going to do about cars, have the holidays, have the experiences, have the memories that you have created along your way. You might look at some people and go, they don't need all those things, that's all been material. Maybe it is, but maybe, money doesn't make you happy, but it certainly gives you some choices on what you want to do with it. It certainly will enable you to build the best team. It'll certainly enable you to build the best environment, serve the best clients, help many more people give yourself that lifestyle. But if you don't believe you can, you are deserved of it, guess what? You're going to stay stuck and you are going to end up getting blocked because if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got right now. I've heard that many times in the past, but it's so true on doing that as well.

And another one while I'm at it, and it's sitting on the wall here in the office, I'm just going to fly it straight out of you now, is around a, and this was a Les Brown quote, which I absolutely love. It's all you can do is all you can do, right? So don't get stressed about doing too much, but just make sure you do all you can do, which means put that effort in and really get yourself working, towards the things that are in your vision, in your personal vision, right? The final fear is around repeating the past mistakes and making yourself look silly. The one thing that I got taught by some of my coaches back in the day was that it's a test, treat it as a test. And guess what, when it becomes a test, you can't fail it. Even more because it's your own test. Then all of a sudden when you've got that process and you've proven that process, then it becomes a process and a thing that you then grow within the business.

STUART'S INTERRUPT: Hold that thought for a moment Ian, it's Stuart here. I just got a quick pit stop here for everyone that could really move the needle. If growing your MSP is on your radar, but it feels somehow a bit foggy, a bit difficult to get your arms round the concept, then download our ultimate MSP growth guide because it lays out all of the best support options that are out there in the channel so you can fast track what really works for you and make a clear decision. Alternatively, you may be the kind of person that likes to see things up real for yourself in action physically. So why not come to one of our events where you can do exactly that? And we'd love to meet you, so there's just a head up for you down in the show notes that you'll find the links to be able to take the next step. But otherwise, let's get back to the good stuff and back to the show.

IAN: Cheers.

So, you know, We hear all the time, I'm in overwhelm, I don't have time. And then you hear other people say, the cocky people like me will say, yeah, but we've all got the same amount of time in a day, haven't we? And it's yeah, okay. And it is where you spend that time, the thing that's going to get you out of overwhelm, the number one thing that's going to help you to get out of overwhelm and get into a position where you can think and actually be productive, is your team okay? If you haven't got a good team, and that might be one person offshore, right? It could be 20 people in your office. But if you are not leveraging your team, if you are not leveraging the people that you've got in your organization. You are going to stay stuck and you are going to be in overwhelm for a long time. So make sure you've got the right team. Make sure you can, make sure you can delegate because when you have that self-doubt and you don't have the right team, and I think a lot of it as well with the team is that there are people in my team right now who are better at things than I am. And in the early days I used to think I was the only person who could do that. Now I know that has resonated with many of you and some of our clients say good is good enough if someone else can do my job to 80% and I just finished the last little bit and polish that off, I think that's a really good place to be. But you're also not going to motivate, educate and engage and build a great culture with people if you are going to be the bottleneck and you're going to strangle all of their opportunities. When people want to come up and they want to learn and grow, remember, we are human. And what human means is that when you wake up in the morning, you want to succeed. You want to have a good day, you want to have a purpose. Okay? You're not going to do that if you're not building a great team around you. Because also what happens is sometimes, those relationships can get stressed and strained because of that bottleneck or because of the lack of process or because of the lack of investment into your systems that makes it a nice place to work and an easier place to work and a progressive place to work. I used to love it back in the day when I was working for NTL and Cable Tail, where we used to get the year end results and everything that we'd done all year, had proven that the share price had gone up and then we'd got more money to buy double glazing for our house, all sorts of silly little things because we were in a share safe scheme. So it was really motivational to see the business doing well. Remember, everybody wants to win when they wake up in the morning. But also, when you are in that bottleneck many people do then avoid that MD role. And when you start avoiding the MD role, that's when other people start to start filling in the gaps and kind of start doing what they're doing and burnout then comes from carrying along with those limiting beliefs and not having that confidence, that vision, that energy, that inspiration as well. So we can always go out there and go and listen to people that inspire us. I find Simon Sinek, the American Leadership Coach, extremely inspiring, very grounded.

So find someone on social who's useful, rather than just sitting there watching a cat falling off the telly or any of those kind of crazy things. Mind you, we don't even know if they're real cats anymore because most of it's AI.

So look, let's get to some actionable tips.

First things I want you to do is I want you to replace and start to talk about your language or change your language. When you say, I don't have time, I want you to, that's negative, right? Because you are just saying, I don't have time to do this. It's not going to happen. I've already decided we're not, this isn't going to work, replace it with, I need to prioritize my thousand pound an hour task. So that's the task where you are strategically thinking about working on the business. So if someone's saying to you something, oh, you don't want to do it like that, it's going back to the far show I think it was, but you don't want to do it like that. But you want to make sure that you've then got a, you catch it and reframe the negative in that moment, rather than saying, I can't do that, or we are not going to do that, just ask, how can we do this? How can you possibly help me? A great sales coach I had Matt Elwell, he was amazing at turning this language around and it was always, how could you possibly help me? If you say to someone, do you know anybody who you can refer to me in your network? They will go, no, don't know, because I've asked the question, do you know anyone? And they're going to go, no, because the brain goes, easiest thing is to say no. Whereas if you phrase that round the other way and you say, who do you know in your network who needs what we do? Your brain, and it's doing it now, is now starting to think about who do I know in my network Who needs what you do? So rather than saying, I can't do it, how can we possibly do this? How can you help me overcome this problem? And I love doing this. Here's a little tip for you. If you're ever in a shop or you're buying something, you're buying a car, or you are in a negotiation on someone like that, and you are talking to someone who doesn't listen to this podcast, use those tips and those little tricks to say how can you possibly help me get the price of this car down to X and how can you help me get into this house, for the budget that I've got, and you just watch what happens. It's absolutely so cool. You wouldn't believe it. Give it a go anyway. So next thing I want you to use kind of daily affirmations rooted around leadership so that you are not firefighting, and I want you to truly believe that you are the leader of that organization, that you are worth it, and that your team are valuable and they are the ones that are helping you win basically on every day.

I want you to model positive language and remember the shadow of the leader. This is the shadow that's cast as you walk into your business every day, whether it be online or whether you be there. If you kick the cat and things have all gone wrong and you know everything's all gone wrong at home, and you bring it in and your body language is low and your shoulders are dropped. And all of that kind of stuff, they're going to copy you. Likewise, if you are going to run around like a crazy fool and you are not going to finish things off, then they're also going to copy you as well. If you haven't done it, I highly recommend you do a DISC profile, not only with yourself, with your senior leadership team and your whole business, so people can understand how everybody's wide, people can understand how different people get into flow. How certain people take long time to do a task. You want me to finish something off, forget it. We need a team member to do that because my brain is in create mode. I will be wanting to build stuff, do podcasts, create some videos, create new stuff, but you want me to finish it off? You're going to have to hold my feet and put them on that fire to enable it to happen or we build somebody in the team who's really good and that is their great skillset. So remember that your team will copy that behavior. Journal your weekly wins. Really simple. But creating that rhythm of review and looking back from where you've come from is so powerful to check in on your progress rather than getting stressed and overwhelmed about the fact that you haven't met the goals that you wanted to achieve the fact that you haven't made the budget, you haven't got the clients, you haven't got the thing that you wanted. Always look back because when you look back, and we do this with our clients. All the time, literally every week, get 'em to look back, look and see where they've, what they've achieved and what they've overcome. And you feel great about yourselves. And then guess what will happen? You'll feel more confident. You will feel that belief is in place. You will feel worth it, and then all of a sudden that positive language starts to flow across to your team. So guess what? You know here's the benefits and the outcomes. You are going to just by practicing some of these things and go back and listen to this again because I appreciate our fire hose due, is get that stronger self-belief. Let's get some better leadership decisions. Let's get some healthier culture as the team so that they mirror your body language, step into that MD's role. Be that great leader, be that person who wants to drive it forward. And if you don't want to do it, go and find somebody who would be amazing at that role. And you go and do what you want to do. You go and do what your best thing is, build that greater resilience. And then the chances of you getting caught up in burnout is really low. Then what's going to happen? Your business is going to grow faster because your mindset is going to grow faster. Your strategy and your plans are going to get delivered, and everything is going to be a lot more happier in your world. So look, change your language, change your business, change your life.

Thanks very much for tuning in. Believe that it's going to happen and it can happen. But you've got to make sure you've got actionable steps in the place to make sure you deliver on that plan and go and build that business that works for you and not you for it. I look forward to catching up with you on the next one. See you later. Have a great day.

OUTRO: Just before you go, and if you're curious about how this episode links with the ability to scale your MSP to a million or, or if you are already there, accelerate to five, then we want to invite you to come and take the MSP Mastery quiz, and in just three minutes, you're going to get a 360 degrees scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that can help you find more time engage in, align your people and help generate more leads in your MSP. It's really simple. Just click on the link in the show notes and if you have enjoyed this episode, we'd love to get some feedback from you by means of a rating review on Spotify or iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice. We really appreciate every single one of them. Now, you can go and enjoy the rest of your day and we look forward to catching up and connecting with you soon. All the best.