wednesday is one of my 3 days every week where i talk to clients

i want to take you through one of the convos, since it's a pattern i experience every week

this client and i ended up arguing about why he should stop doing certain tasks that is no longer worth his time

he is currently doing $35k in MRR and he wants to double that within the year

his only 1,5 month old paid ads setup is working incredibly well

its turning $1 into $10... in MRR...

but whenever he has some "free time" he defaults back to doing manual cold outbound, which is multiple times pr week

i pointed out that outbound was the habit that got him to consistent $20k/month

the $20k/mo with 3 hours of outbound every day is now his "forever baseline"

he’s done it once... he knows the ins and outs... and that means: he can always go back to it

everything in business is about knowing your baseline, and then trying new initiatives to breakthrough it

• if you break through the baseline = continue
• if not = go back to baseline and test a new initiative

the game my client is playing now is very different

he is at $35k/month and his actions need to reflect that

when i told him, he immediately started to push back

defending the outbound felt like defending his work ethic

it was a task that served him well at one point in his journey, but that task is simply no longer worth his time today

so i stopped him and asked him two questions

"when was the last time you closed a client from cold outbound versus a warm lead from your paid ads?"

and

"what was your effective hourly rate during those two processes?"

he had to zoom out

the math answered the questions for him

feeling a bit silly in the moment was a natural reaction

it is a common place to be

confusing movement with momentum happens easily

staying busy with old habits feels productive because it is familiar since the effort is predictable and the expectations are clear

old habits..

but they actually just keeps him anchored exactly where he is

the work that got a business to its baseline becomes the exact thing keeping it there

holding onto it protects the ego but it hurts the bottom line

my client will feel "less productive" when spending 3 hours on a single ad creative versus 3 hours on the phone

but right now, it's his highest leverage task

dropping the safety net allows you to actually play the new game

we spend a lot of time zooming out like this inside the digital coffee shop, it's why I exist

• identifying the hidden bottlenecks in daily routines
• killing the annoying tasks that drag down the effective hourly rate
• focusing only on the levers that actually scale the business towards the goals that have been set in stone

i don’t force any ambitions or goals onto my clients, i simply make decisions based off the goals they set themselves

and sometimes, that requires calling them out on their false beliefs

what bad habits are keeping you stuck at your baseline? that's today question

best,

fred