The Conscious Habit of Letting Go

What’s the secret to creating value, scaling, and growing your business? In this conversation with entrepreneur and author Blair Enns, we learn it’s not about doing more or better. It may be about doing less.

In this episode, I’m talking with Blair Enns from Win Without Pitching. Win Without Pitching is an organization that runs sales and new business development training programs for owners and employees of design firms, ad agencies, PR practices, and other creative businesses. A lot of what he talks about is also relevant for your business. 

Blair is the author of the Win Without Pitching Manifesto, (a book I designed through Aespire) and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour (the second of Blair's books that Aespire designed. I suppose you can say the agency is habit-forming).

Listen to hear the life-changing lesson Blair learned when he says, “Some lessons take me so long to learn, like the idea that other people could do what I do.”

Blair: A brand is the inferred promise, as opposed to the stated or implied promise or anything around it. Inferred is on the part of the receiver. I can imply something to you, that's me communicating something to you (branding); you can infer something based on what I said (a brand).

I hadn't had this thought before… A brand is an inferred promise, it's not an implied promise. Value does not exist extrinsically. In the world, value is like beauty, it's in the eye of the beholder. Value exists in you. The brand and the promise of the brand exist in you, and it's very personal to you. And there might be some commonality from person to person, but it's this. It's an inference. Right?

Brian: I can try to create meaning for my brand. At the same time, nobody will derive value from that meaning unless it connects with them in some way. You are correct, it (brand) is inferred (by the receiver).

Blair: And even the meaning that you're trying to connect might not be the meaning that that people feel. At the end of the day value is nothing more than a feeling, a sense of regard, as is the brand. We can try to create value, but we never actually know the value that other people experience.

Brian: I experience inferred value when somebody tells me, “I've been listening to your podcast, it's really it's interesting.” They found a value in what they heard, and it may have been different than the value I was hoping it would write convey to them.

Brian: I read this on your website: “Blair provokes, challenges and inspires creative professionals to radically rethink how they build their businesses.” Hmm. Did you know that was there?

Blair: Well, if it's on my website, it must be true. That's all I'll say.

Brian: As a fellow entrepreneur, because we both we both run businesses, you've scaled yours up. I've scaled mine down. (At this point we have a side conversation about book printing and paper availability). Let’s talk about this this journey of entrepreneurship that you have, how books have been part of that, and part of the trajectory of Win Without Pitching.

What's the what's the purpose that really guides what you do beyond making money?

Blair: Our stated mission is to change the way creative services are bought and sold the world over. But when I think of my purpose and what I really want to do, I always think of creative people. I'm a writer and consider myself a creative person. I imagine this person can be a woman a man who's put on this earth with certain gifts. They make the decision to use these gifts of creation that give the ability to create things. And they decide to make creativity their passion and their enterprise. So that's person decides that she's going to be a designer for a business. She starts her own design firm hangs out a shingle; she begins as a freelancer. Then she's quickly faced with the realization that design is only part of the job, there's all of the business aspects of being a self-employed designer. She didn't sign up for that part of it, but she's willing to do it.

Of all the business parts, the part that she finds the most difficult is selling, because she's standing in a room with a client or prospective client about to share something she created that's deeply personal to her. If it's rejected, the rejection is personal.

I think of that young designer in that moment, is probably that's probably the most vulnerable they are in that moment when they have to sell. My whole business is built around helping that person in that moment. That's all I want to do to help that person. Give them a shot of granite to the spine is a line that a client of mine used, talking about reading the book, The Manifesto.

Stiffen their resolve, empower them, let them know that they can do this. Just stand up, be your class himself. Selling isn't that difficult. Let go of all of the horrible cliches around what it means to sell. And I just want to empower that person in in that moment. That's enough to build a business around.

A Shot of Granite to the Spine

Brian: Many entrepreneurs feel like if I share my creation with the world, and nobody buys it, I'm a failure. It's not the product that's a failure, I'm the failure.

What you do is you help people move beyond the fact that we're not the failure. The process that we've learned is broken.

Blair: There's just a lot of courage that's required to begin (creating), and then you step outside of that domain and think “Okay, now I have to (in some people's minds), now I have to be this sleazy salesperson.” That's just a misunderstanding of what it means to sell properly. That's a very vulnerable moment. Creative people are brave to begin with. But they're still vulnerable in that moment.

What Type of Business Do You Own?

Brian: These are questions every business owner must ask:

• What type of business do you own?
• Who is it for?
• What is it for?
• How do you deliver value?

When you shifted from being a consultant to the CEO of a training organization, what did that require? Did that require moving past your vulnerabilities?

Blair: I realized I had created a business that was kind of caught in the mushy middle between training and consulting between productized services and customized services. And when I started learning about value-based pricing, I realized this is a mistake. Rather than templating everything (and needing to charge on that basis), I need to charge based on the value that I create. That would free me from the financial ceiling that I had felt that I'd hit, I felt like I can't go any further, I can't work any harder, can't earn any money. That would have been the way to do it. Fewer clients; go deeper; charge more. That's proper consulting.

The Secret to Creating Value and Growing your Business

Blair: Or I could go the other way. I could productize and scale and pursue scale and start hiring people to do the work. And I chose to productize probably because I hadn't done it before.

When you start building a company and employing people, that's more entrepreneurial. I'm struck by how different it is. But what did it entail, what did I have to let go of? I am fond of saying, “I think I'm a smart guy.” But some lessons take me so long to learn, like the idea that other people could do what I do.

After almost a decade I’ve gotten to this place of embracing delegation and empowering the people around me. I've been slow to let go of things over the years. I had to get over the idea that other people could do this, not only as well as I could, but better than I could, even intellectually, I learned that years ago; the habit of letting go. Part of it is a feeling of guilt, feeling like I should be busy, where now I've completely at the other end of the spectrum. I keep saying to my team, I do not create value by being busy. If we want to keep growing and grow faster, I need to write every day. And that's all I should do.

And then when a book comes out, I spent six months speaking about that book, while I continue to write the next book, that's what I should be doing. If I could write 90 minutes a day, that would be great. I would take 60. And if that's all I did, the business would grow faster. But still, I continue to hold on to some things that I probably shouldn't.

Brian: I am resolved in the next year to let go of some of these things that I know somebody else could do. They're just things that consume my time and take away from that other value creation.

Brian: I know you're a follower of EOS, the entrepreneur operating system. How is Win Without Pitching structured since you have all this freedom now? 

Blair: Can I back up and tell you the story of how we came to be here? Referring to the book, Rocket Fuel which describes two types of people, visionaries, and integrators. A visionary is somebody who's in charge of the future. They're big thinkers tend to be charismatic people follow them. They're creative, they can kind of see around corners.

An integrator is a systems person, they implement things, they get things done, they make the trains run on time. And that book, rocket fuel is about those two relationships.

When I read that book, I took the visionary assessment, and I scored really high on that. And then I had (Colette) take the integrator assessment, and she scored really high on that. It was clear, this is how we work together. These are the different roles.

The way Win Without Pitching is structured right now, I'm the visionary, Colette is the integrator. We've got a director of coaching, and then we have coaches, team support and a customer support person

One person is supporting our clients and coaches. And when one person is supporting the rest of the team in administrative roles.

What’s the secret to growing your business?

There’s a quote pinned to my wall from Jony Ive, the former SVP of design at Apple. It's the only quote I have pinned to the walls of my office. There has to be sacrifice.

Photo courtesy of Win Without Pitching