$1,000 an Hour Mindset: How to Balance Business Development & Daily Operations

$1,000 an Hour Mindset: How to Balance Business Development & Daily Operations

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to Episode 211 of the Business Development Podcast. And today's episode is dedicated to my solopreneurs and small business owners. Today, we're talking all about how do we balance business development with our day to day operations? This is a highly requested episode, and I hope you enjoy it.

Stick with us.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get. Expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business. Brought to you by Capital Business Development. CapitalBD.ca Let's do it. Welcome. To the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 211 of the business development podcast. Officially episode one of our third year of the business development podcast. My gosh, I can't believe it. Let me just start off this episode by saying, first off, it is an honor and a privilege to be able to come back and do this show week over week, month over month.

And now year over year, I could have never seen this coming. And it is thanks to you guys, our incredible rockstar audience. And so I just want to start today's show and dedicated to all my rockstars out there. Specifically all my small and medium sized business owners. You guys are incredible. And today's show is dedicated to you today we're talking business development for the solopreneurs and the small business owners everywhere. Small businesses are the backbone of the world. Big business tends to get the fame and fortune, but it's small business that makes the world go round. Small and medium sized businesses in Canada account for 99.

8 percent of business in Canada, according to the Government of Canada, ISED website. To say that they are the engine of the economy would really be an understatement. As of December 2022, there were 1. 22 million small businesses in Canada. And small businesses employ 63. 8 percent of the Canadian workforce.

Over half of small businesses employ less than four people. That's right, guys, my solopreneurs, you guys are killing it. From 2016 to 2020, small businesses in goods, products, and services combined accounted for 48 percent of Canada's GDP. So, my fellow small business owners, you are more powerful than you thought.

But here's the thing. We are working with very limited budgets, manpower, and time. That is right, and so much of my coaching, guys, especially when I'm teaching business development, it's about teaching you guys how to value your time more. We have to be valuing our time like it's worth 1, 000 an hour, because the reality is, it is.

We have to make sure that we are accounting for, if we only have 8 hours to 10 hours every single day. that we are making the most of it, but we are dealing with limited manpower, limited time, and limited money. So what does this mean? It means that many tasks that are critical to our long term success are getting neglected.

If being done at all, we are so focused on providing our products and services that we are likely neglecting the BD work that we need to succeed long term. So today I'm going to outline five steps. To help make the most of your valuable time and put more money back in your pockets where it belongs.

Guys, this show means a lot to me because I have been a solopreneur for the past four years. Yeah, I had an employee for a little bit. It was awesome. But that employee ended up going to law school, which was awesome for them. So for the longest time, it's kind of just been me doing my thing. And you know, Shelby does a lot on the back end, helps me out with some of my marketing materials, creating cool graphics and stuff.

But most of the stuff that you guys see coming out on the business development podcast, capital business development, and our coaching, that is me guys. That is me. I am I am the be all end all. So I have a lot. of respect for my solopreneurs out there. You guys are all literally crushing it. You're doing so much.

I say that you guys work harder than probably 90 percent of business out there. And today I just want to talk to you guys because I get it. I am literally speaking to you guys from experience today as somebody who wears many hats and gets it done. There's no way. No way that I could do everything that I do now if I did not have structured process, if I didn't schedule my time effectively, if I didn't complete my work in a focused, time efficient way, there's just a lot of things that I've had to learn as a small business owner to keep everything going, to keep my shows coming out.

to keep my clients happy, to keep my coaching clients happy. There's just a lot to be done. It's funny. I sit down with Shelby regularly. Just be like, man, it's crazy how much we have to do to just keep everything moving forward. And I feel for you guys, I totally, totally get it. And today I'm going to outline five steps.

Like I said, to help make the most of your valuable time and obviously. Put time and money back into your pockets. But understand, none of this will happen for you if you will not take action. The reality is it's not enough to just be like, Oh, that sounds nice. You have to start implementing some of these things in your business to reap the true rewards from them.

But you absolutely, absolutely can't look. The reality is my small business owners, you guys are already committed. You're already in it. So why not just double down, start utilizing those calendars and start putting into effect the things that we are going to talk about today. I 100 percent believe that it will turn your business around, but we have to look at every hour like it is worth 1, 000 an hour to you.

Because the reality is. It is. It truly is. We have to make the most of our time. There's a lot of things I used to do that I don't do anymore. And there might be some things that you guys got to look at and say, is this really worth doing? Is this really moving the needle for me and my business? As we move forward, efficient use of time makes all the difference.

So let's just start it out. Number one, time management is absolutely critical to your success guys. You know, I'm just going to start out by saying I did not always do this. I was not always the time ninja that I am today, but here's the thing. I recognize that as a small business owner, as an entrepreneur, as somebody working with limited time, limited budget, limited resources, and wanting to accomplish a lot, you guys know me, I strive to be the best.

I strive to change the world. I strive to make an impact every single day. As all small business owners should, at the end of the day, you're not in it to just get by, you're in it to get ahead. And if you are in it to get ahead, you got to figure out how do we make the most of every hour we have. Let's talk about, you know, regardless of what your business is, okay, most small business owners, we get into business because we're good at something, Kelly, I was good at business development, you might be good at welding, you might be an electrician, you might be a media expert, okay, whatever you are, whatever you're great at, that's amazing, and I get it, that's ultimately what you want to do, but here's the thing, if you are a business, You also have to make the time to market yourself.

You got to get yourself out there. And I would argue that the ways that you're doing it today might not be as efficient as you could be, might not be as targeted as you could be. And I'm hoping by the end of today, you could kind of analyze the things you're doing and just ask yourself, is this a good use of my time or could I be doing it better?

The one thing that we all need to take time to do regardless, whether you're a solopreneur, a small business, whether you have a small team or a big team, we have to make time for business development and we cannot neglect it. We have to make sure that at least at some point in our week, we are dedicating a block of time.

Every week to doing new business development. Why do I say this? Why is this so important? Because no matter how many clients you currently have and no matter how great the relationships and how solid you think they are, your clients can leave at any time for any reason. And if you're a small business.

Losing one client sometimes can be the difference between life and death for your organization. And so if that is the case, if losing a handful, two, three clients would make all the difference, whether you make it or don't make it, you have to be dedicating a small portion of your time as a Mr. And Mrs.

Solopreneur. To business development each week. We also have to schedule times for this, for our calls and data entry. Cause if we are doing business development, if we're following the active marketing process that I talk about on this show, we have to do it every single week. And if you are dedicating a small block of time to do that business development.

To do your digital introductions, your follow up calls, your data entry, your CRM entries. It works best if we schedule the same time each week to do this. So if you decide that, Hey, Monday's aren't really crazy for my business. Monday might be a good time for you guys to do the business development, right?

If you're working a five day business week for yourself, you must dedicate at least. Half a day per week. So if you're doing eight hour days, you need to dedicate bare minimum four hours of concentrated direct business development every single week. And it works best if you actually slot that time for the same time every single week in your calendar.

And that leads us to the next part. Schedule all meetings, events and work tasks in your calendar. And follow it guys, follow it. I can't tell you how incredible a calendar has been in my business development career. I didn't actually start using a calendar the way I should have been until I started working for myself.

So I'm one of those people who's a total advocate for calendars because I had to learn the hard way, because I recognize that I was wasting so much of my work day by not scheduling my tasks. If you look at my calendar. Every day, I almost always have five to six items scheduled into my calendar, and it might be simple.

It might be client calls that day. It might be show planning for the BDP. It might be a recording time. It might be three meetings that I have that day. It might be another podcast that I'm doing for someone else. But my calendar is pretty much consistently, every single day, stacked full of meetings and tasks that move the needle for Kelly Kennedy.

Capital Business Development and The Business Development Podcast every day. And I can't tell you how incredible and life changing that simple little thing has been. Here's the thing. When I know that I need to be making my calls between call at 9 and 11 a. m. I make my calls between 9 and 11 a. m. It's magic, right?

It's like a little bit hard to believe that if you have something in your calendar. And it's scheduled properly that you might actually follow it. Guess what? Turns out you tend to follow what's in your calendar. So it is an incredibly efficiency boosting time. And guys, I have a lot to do every single day.

I have stuff to do for a podcast sponsors. I have stuff to do for clients. I have stuff to do for myself. I have stuff to do to move the needle. There's no way. Absolutely no way that I would be able to do it all if I did not get great at following a calendar and scheduling my life. And I know if that sounds really boring and horrible to you, it felt that way to me too at first.

So I totally, totally understand how you're probably saying right now, Kelly, I don't want to do that. I don't want to schedule my life. But trust me, the thing that you're avoiding your calendar is the thing that would probably make the largest impact in your life and business. So just think about it. I know it's a hard sell.

I know it can be hard to digest and hard to like think like, is that really going to make such a big difference? But I can tell you right now from my own personal experience, it makes a massive, massive difference in your efficiency. Okay? So start using your calendars schedule at least half a day a week dedicated to your business development and schedule your time to make your follow up calls, your digital introductions, your LinkedIn time, the client work you need to be doing.

Have it all blocked out, have all that time blocked out and just watch. It's absolutely going to change your life. Number two, do your homework on your customer. Okay, we have to understand who our customer is. So much time is being wasted reaching out to the wrong people. Let me tell you that right now. So much time is being wasted reaching out to the wrong people who cannot move the needle for your business.

Okay, if you are working for yourself, you do not have the luxury of wasted time. I get it. You don't have time to waste. You don't have money to waste. Advertising budgets have to go as far as humanly possible. And what does that mean? That means we need to get granular on who buys our product and service and what industries we are specifically.

targeting. Okay. We have to do our homework on our customers, guys. This is probably like one of the most important things in business development period, but it is ever so more important when you are a solopreneur because we need to make sure that we are targeting the right people so that every single call we make, every single reach out we make, it's going to hit with impact.

We don't have time to waste. We don't have money to waste. Do that research upfront. Understand what industries are you marketing to? Obviously in Alberta. We're probably marketing to oil and gas. And as a sub industry, we're probably marketing to industrial construction. And here's one of the funny things about the oil and gas industry in Alberta.

The best clients aren't typically the oil and gas companies. They're probably the industrial construction companies performing 99 percent of the large project work for the oil and gas companies. So figure that out, figure out for you, what is the main industry that you want to work in? And then what are the sub industries who support that main industry?

Because nine times out of 10, those sub industries can actually be better clients than the main industry itself. The next thing you have to understand is. What is my service area? What is the location that I can be the most competitive in? For 90 percent of you, it is your home base. You are most competitive where you're at.

Why? You have the lowest travel costs. It costs you the least amount to get equipment to site. It's just likely where you are most competitive. That does not mean that you can't be competitive somewhere else. It just means make sure that you've handled everything in your home turf before you start to expand out.

And then think about that from a logistic standpoint, because the further you got to go from home, the more expensive it is to mobilize. The more expensive it is logistically. So just think about that. Where am I most competitive set up shop there, take over that market and move out from there. Okay. And last but not least, identify every single buying position, okay?

You know, I was just on a podcast earlier today and I was really explaining and trying to hammer this home. It is absolutely critical that we identify not just the industry and sub industries we want to work at. So not just the companies that we want to work in, in those specific industries and sub industries.

But also understand who at those companies understands our product and service so that when we market to them, they're not like deer in headlights. They can understand why our product and service is important to their company and market directly to those people. Okay? This is a step that so many people are skipping.

They're just XYZ company. Let's get in touch with procurement or supply chain or someone there and figure out what to do next. Okay? The problem with this is you might have to talk to four or five people before you talk to the simple person you could have researched in the first place, wasting tons and tons of time and maybe not even getting to that person, maybe getting roadblocked or told to go somewhere else before you even talk to the person who understands why they need your product and service.

Okay. Do your research upfront, figure out who buys your products and services. Is it the plant manager? Is it the director of operations? Is it just a project manager who understands what the products and services are that you offer and why they would be important to that company? Reach out to those people.

If you can get to the right person, this can eliminate probably four different follow ups and bounce arounds and just get you straight to the meeting. You've been trying to get to in the first place, identify the buying positions. You don't have time to dick around with other people. Number three, your social media strategy is not a nice to have.

And I know this one's a hard pill to swallow. I get it. You didn't go into business to have to manage social media. Me neither. But guess what? It's changed, okay? It's changed. And no matter what, no matter how much you hate this, when you go to book a meeting with someone, when you reach out to them, there's a solid, very high chance they're gonna immediately Google you or check your LinkedIn.

Almost immediate guys. That's just the world we live in. So we need to make sure that our LinkedIn profile is up to date, complete, is reflective of who we are, has all of the data fields filled out. We need to make sure that we look like rock stars on LinkedIn. Okay. Especially as business owners, we are going to have to participate in this new social media world.

And I get it. I get it. It's a hard pill to swallow. You never asked for it. It's just a by product of the 2020s guys. It's just something that has ultimately happened. And you know, I've talked to a lot of business owners who aren't happy about it. I get it. I get it. It's a lot. It's a lot. I'll be the first to say it.

I feel overwhelmed by it a lot, a lot of the time, but I am doing it. I am not just doing it. I've doubled down on it. I have this podcast. I'm active on social media. I probably do at least a post a day, if not a post every second day, I talk about things about my business. And I talk about things that personally affect me in a personal way.

And so I hit it from all angles. Why? Because that's the world we live in. That's just the world we live in guys. You don't have to like it, but you do have to accept it. Just like there was a time when. You didn't have a cell phone and people didn't call you at night. And that was really convenient. I get it.

But that time is done. We are now in the social media age. Okay. And it's something we have to embrace. It's something we have to get good at and make sure that we are ultimately participating in our social media strategies. What do I recommend? I recommend that as a small business owner, you at bare minimum are posting at least once per week, and I would say alternating a personal post, something more personal to you, an opinion you may have, a family picture, just something worth talking about that everybody can connect with.

Mix personal posts like that alongside your corporate posts. Why? Because your corporate posts don't get engagement. You know it. I know it. Here's the thing. If you want to get eyes on your corporate posts, you are going to have to connect with people. And if you want to connect with people, you're not going to do it with your corporate posts.

It's just very unlikely, but you are very much going to connect with people as the human you are by posting real life things that people can relate to. You have to alternate. Your corporate posts with your personal posts. And there's a lot of big businesses right now getting this completely wrong and having no idea how to handle this.

This is one of those situations where you, Mr. and Mrs. Small Business Owner, you guys can knock this out of the park. And you can get more eyes on your brand than you ever could have imagined. But you have to, have to, have to embrace social media and your personal brand here as we are heading into 2025 and beyond.

It is going to Benefit you, you have to be adding value in these posts as well. Okay. Make sure that like your posts, aren't just willy nilly or AI based posts. Okay. Make sure that you are also providing value. You are an expert in something, Mr. And Mrs. Small business owner. You have lots of life experience, business experience.

You're likely an expert in your field on some level. It's time to embrace that, embrace that expertise and share it with the world. The reason I did the business development podcast. Was I knew there was nothing out there for business developers. There just wasn't for whatever reason. It was just the super overlooked area.

And when I got into business development, I had to Google it. Cause somebody told me, Hey, do you want to be a business developer? And I was like, what the heck is business development? I never even came across it in college. I kid you not. I didn't even come across this in college and there was nothing guys.

There wasn't books. There was barely anything on the internet. And so the business development podcast. came to life to help people grow their business, to help teach the business development discipline to business owners, to future business developers, and to give a resource that did not exist when I got into this craft, you can do the same thing for your craft.

And even if there is lots of information out there, your take is unique. Your experience is unique, and you can bring your own angle. No matter how much information is out there on your craft, you can bring your own angle to it. And you should. You absolutely, absolutely should. On LinkedIn, we must be connecting with 100 people every single week.

One of the benefits you have as a LinkedIn premium member is the ability to send 100 invites per week to anybody you want, for the most part, okay? We must be taking advantage of this, and the way that I suggest you take advantage of this is this. You have identified the buying positions at the companies you want to work at for your products and services.

Start connecting with a hundred of those buying positions every single week and hear me out on why, okay? Because there's a couple reasons here. One, obviously we're going to add them to our digital introduction stage of our CRM and we're going to reach out to them later. But! Now that you are doing your weekly posting, your personal posts and your corporate posts, they are seeing them.

They are seeing them. Your potential future customers are seeing your company posts. Amazing. It's better than a billboard. That's random. You don't even know if they're going to drive by. You know, for a fact, they're on LinkedIn and you know, for a fact, they're seeing your posts because you're connected with them.

I can't think of a better way to advertise here than that in 2025. So start adding 100 potential customers every single week. Reach out to them, introduce yourself, drop a brochure. And from that point forward, they're going to be seeing your marketing on LinkedIn. They're going to be seeing your posts.

Heck, you might even generate some friends out of this. It is a win win scenario, OK? You only get 100 contacts per week. You have to use them or you lose them. Okay. And remember, this is for your personal LinkedIn. I'm going to take you into a little bit of a different one here in a second. On your personal LinkedIn, you need to be connecting with 100 contacts per week, use them up.

every week because you don't get 200 next week, you get 100 again next week. So 100 per week, if you don't use them, you lose them. Start adding potential clients on LinkedIn 100 a week. And in no time flat, you're going to have thousands of people, thousands of potential future customers who are going to be seeing your posts over the next year, who are going to be building brand awareness around your products and services.

And at some point, guys, it is going to pay off in your favor. Trust me on this. Add your 100 contacts per week. And this next little tip is a tidbit, an interesting one. If you have a corporate LinkedIn page, you are allowed to send 250 invites per month to your LinkedIn page. And actually I didn't figure this out until like later, way later.

I've been doing it for about a year. And I've been growing both my Capital Business Development page and the Business Development Podcast page quite considerably by sending my 250 invites on the first of every month. So remember that even though you get your 100 per week, your business page gets 250 per month.

So start using your credits, start inviting people on the first of every month to your page and start growing brand awareness, not just to you, but to your company too. This is something I did not know that you can absolutely start doing tomorrow. If you have a corporate page, you can send 250 invites per month.

Start doing it. Number four, dedicate at least half a day per week to BD tasks. We talked about this a little bit in the beginning, but I really want to hammer this, OK? If you work five days a week in your business, I want you to spend half a day to a full day per week. On your business, I'm talking BD tasks, guys, I'm talking getting started on your weekly calls, doing your digital introduction, sending your 100 invites a week.

And then when they accept sending them a quick introduction to who you are, that's personal and attach a brochure, let your brochure do the selling. You're not selling shit on LinkedIn. Understand that. You're building a connection. You're building interest in your products and services. When these people accept your invite, introduce yourself quickly, attach your brochure, and just say, you'd love to meet them down the line.

That's all you got to do. They will look at the brochure and they will likely look at least at the first two pages. So make sure that they are visually appealing, they're compelling, and they build interest. Okay. From there, we have to be doing our weekly follow up calls. Okay. We got to track down the information to these people.

We need to call. We need to leave voicemails. Okay. It's going to take anywhere between six and 10 weeks on average to make initial contact and potentially book that meeting. Did you hear me? Six to 10 weeks on average. Don't give up after two calls. It is absolutely, absolutely critical that we are reaching out once per week to these people.

Okay. No more than once per week. We don't want to annoy them. But once per week asking for what we want, which is a meeting, okay, find the direct contact information, either call them and talk to them or leave a voicemail or get their direct emails and make sure that we are following up once per week, explaining who we are, what we do attach your brochures and say, I can't wait to meet you.

It would be a pleasure. What's your availability over the next couple of weeks? Let's set something up. That's it. It's very simple, but you must ask for what you want. So if you get them on the phone, ask for the meeting. If you get them on the email, ask for the meeting. But remember, we are always working to get to the meeting and we got to be doing our digital introductions.

We got to be doing our weekly follow up calls and we got to be updating our CRMs, okay? So effective data entry is also critical. I like to use PipeDrive. You guys can use whatever you want. Salesforce, HubSpot, PipeDrive, whatever. Pick whatever CRM you want for your business development efforts, but do make sure that we are keeping accurate data inside of our CRMs and we are leading everything to the meeting.

And I want to spend a second here on the meetings, okay guys? Meetings are everything. They are everything. The whole point of business development is to get to a meeting. It doesn't matter how many calls it takes. It doesn't matter how many emails it takes. It doesn't matter what you've done. Everything you are doing is to get to the meeting.

Measure your success in meetings. Okay? It's not how many calls you make. It's not how many emails you send. It's not how many weeks you followed up. It's how many meetings were you able to accomplish from that work? We got to get to a point where we are having consistent meetings and consistent work over time, consistent business development work over time, week over week.

It does lead to consistent meetings over time, which is ultimately going to lead to more business for you and your organization. Okay. Measure your success. And that leads us into the next part. Measure your success. Okay. We have to be measuring our efforts. With capital, I always provide a weekly report to my clients.

Guys, this weekly report isn't just for my clients. It's for me too. It's to keep me on track. It's to keep me honest. It's to keep me doing the work I need to be doing on a consistent basis. Do weekly reports. Even if you work for yourself. Just put into the report. How many digital introductions did I do this week?

What companies were they? How many calls did I make this week? How many meetings did we book? What companies were they? Just start to track your efforts. Start to track your efforts. Even if you're not going to send this to anybody. Just track your efforts for your own good. This is all statistical data too that you can use in the future to figure out how many calls it takes for you to book meetings on average, how many digital introductions you've done over the course of a year, how many companies you've talked to.

It's a lot of really cool data that you can extrapolate from later and start to get some statistics on yourself, which is fun. But ultimately. It is for your own benefit. Reports are for your own benefit. Yes. The clients love to see them, but they are for you. They are to keep you honest. They are to keep you on track, track that data, measure your success in meetings.

Once again, I talked about it briefly before, but this is super important guys. Business development needs to be measured in meetings. Why? I can't make a company buy. No matter what, no matter how great the meeting was, I can't make them buy. But here's the thing. What I do know is statistically how many companies do buy over the course of a year, and you can figure this out too.

You got to figure out obviously the average customer value at your organization. You've got to figure out your meeting closure rates, and you've got to figure out your growth goals. But if you can figure those things out, you can actually extrapolate how many companies you need to talk to on average to close your growth goals.

So you actually can measure success in meetings. And you can identify how many meetings you're going to need in a year up front. And for anybody listening to this right now, who wants that math done for them, I am happy to help you for free on this one. So feel free to shoot me an email. If you have a question, give me your average customer value, your revenue growth goal for the year and new business, and your estimated closure rate and percentage based on if you met with somebody, what are the odds that they will buy your product and service within the year?

With that data, I can tell you exactly how many meetings you need to accomplish that growth goal in the coming year. And so happy to do that for you, but you can also figure that out yourself, fairly easy math, but understand measure success in meetings. It's how many people you talk to, not how much a customer will buy.

It really does come down to how many people you talk to in a year that is going to make or break your revenue growth goals. And last but not least on measure your success, okay? We have to measure our success in meetings because you have to measure success in something you can actually control. Okay?

Business development really starts to become a hamster wheel for a lot of BD employees. Why? Because they're given arbitrary growth goals over the course of a year. And typically they don't have any idea what it will actually take to accomplish them. If we can measure success in meetings, we can give employees something they can actually work towards that is tangible and easy to understand.

They can know whether they met their goals over the course of the year, whether they didn't. And for employers, if you can do that math that I was talking about earlier, you can still hit your tangible growth goals while measuring success for your employees and meetings, trust me. This is going to make your BD team so much happier and so much more goal oriented than you have ever seen before.

Give them measurements and metrics of success that they can actually accomplish saying, I want you to make me 5 million over the next year, but not understanding what it will actually take to get there. It can feel like an impossible task and can really demotivate your business development and sales teams. Measure success in tangible, easy to understand and actually achievable metrics.

Measuring success in meetings is all of this. And then some, man, I want to take a minute here. I want to take an honest minute. Okay. An authentic minute with you, my business owners who are also doing business development on behalf of your own business, I understand how challenging this is. I'm not sure that I would have understood it if I wasn't in business development myself and running a business development company.

It is substantially easier to do business development for someone else's company. And I don't know whether it's because you have a disconnect or what that actually is, but doing business development for yourself is hard. And I think it's because nobody ever wants to talk themselves up too high, right?

At the end of the day, we're always kind of trying to be reserved and humble. And we don't have to be reserved and humble when we're with another organization. And so it's something that many business owners have to work on themselves with. Okay. And I'm right there with you guys. I have always struggled to market capital business development.

I've always struggled to market myself as good as I've marketed other people's companies. And I'm a work in progress and you are too. And I get it. I completely understand, but you have to start being honest. You have to start talking about yourself in the authentic, truthful way. As the expert that you are.

Show up. You absolutely got this. You have the right to market yourself. You have the right to do yourself the service. To speak to how incredible you actually are. Okay. So I'm talking specifically to my business owners who market themselves. Stop being so humble. Quit it. Quit it. You're not doing yourself any favours.

You're not doing them any favours. Say it how it is. Go up. Show them how powerful and strong and epic at your jobs. You actually are. Okay, you have permission. You have permission. Now go do it. Stop holding yourself back when you're talking about your organizations. Okay, I'm telling myself this at the same time.

So I'm right there with you. You have to believe in your ability. To close meetings, okay? You have to believe in yourself. Okay. You absolutely, absolutely can do this. And this goes back to what I was just talking about. It's so much easier to market somebody else's company, but you can do this. You absolutely can do this.

You can meet with anybody you want, given enough time and effort. You can book a meeting with any company on planet earth. I never used to believe that, but I sure as hell believe it. Now there was a time when I used to get asked to go and book meetings with the large oil and gas companies, and I truly just believed in my heart of hearts.

It was impossible. Why even bother? It's impossible. We're too small of a company. No one would talk to us. That's bullshit. That is absolute bullshit. I was wrong. I was wrong. And if you are telling yourself that, you are wrong too. You can book a meeting with anybody you want, given enough time and effort.

It's time and effort. Be consistent over time. Don't give up if you know you got the right person and keep going until you either disqualify or get the meeting. That. Is the secret to success. And last but not least, your guys ask for what you want. So many of you are making calls and you are not asking for the meeting.

Okay. You're not going to close business over the phone. You're not going to close business over social media. You are going to close business. Probably even after the meeting, but you have to have that meeting. You have to have that face to face interaction. And guys, by face to face, I mean a team's meeting or an in person meeting.

But a video call is just as good. Get to a face to face meeting where you can build real rapport. Where you can build real trust and actually make a connection. That is where the magic happens. Measure success in face to face meetings. And the more people you talk to over the course of a year, the more opportunities are going to come your way.

That's it. There's no two ways about it, but you have to have those face to face meetings. Okay. Get to the meetings. And whenever you get somebody on the phone or email, ask for what you want. Be bold. Be bold. Fortune favors the bold. And last but not least, if you need help, if you need business development help, okay, and you are a solopreneur, small business owner, you got a medium team, whatever it is business development coaching can help you.

If you need some help with all of this, with establishing your social media strategy, with establishing your personal brand, with setting up a business development process for your business that you can follow and teach other people, My business development mastery program is probably the best there is out there for you right now in business development.

It's six sessions over three months that will absolutely change you and your business forever. Book a free discovery call with me. You can do it from my LinkedIn page, or you can find the coaching link at www.capitalbd.ca, but book a free discovery call. Let's have a conversation. I would love, love, love to help.

Remember everyone, it's consistency over time that creates success. Dedicate consistent time every single week to business development, and you will watch your business thrive. Shout outs this week. Malcolm Adams, Gary Noseworthy, Antonio Gracia, Lauren Graff, Louane Vanderheyden, Stuart Morawski, Colin Harms, Adam Kimmel, Rodney Lover, Vijayan Swaminathan, Michelle Sami Wehbe.

Nathan Plumb, Ken Gee, Steven Kelly, Doug Laird, Rick Koshman, Pete Knechtel, Andrew Platten, Leigh Day, Megan Lee, Jason Kawiecki, Matthew Bennett, Sarah Francis, Terry Apodaca, Allison Mair, Mat Boyer, Bryan Hayes, Susan Poseika and Chloe Wu. Until next time, you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy, Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020, his passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.