Coaching Over 1000 Business Owners Taught Me This

TITLE: Coaching Over 1000 Business Owners Taught Me This CHANNEL: Will Barron DATE: 2026-06-19 ---TRANSCRIPT--- I’ve now coached over 1,000 business owners. Service business owners, agencies, trades, consultants, people doing 200 grand a year, people doing 5 million a year. And looking through that many pipelines, listening to that many sales calls, watching that many people either break through their revenue goals or fall flat on their face, well, I’ve noticed something. The business owners who win and the ones that stay stuck aren’t separated by talent. They’re not separated by how good their work is. Honestly, half the time, the ones that are stuck are actually better at the service delivery. What actually separates them is a handful of things that almost nobody teaches you. Seven things, in fact. Seven lessons that come up over and over again, no matter what the industry, no matter what the revenue number. And here is the thing. Most business owners think that the way to grow is to get better at the work that they actually deliver. And I get why you might think that because the the deliverables are the bit of business that you actually love, the bit that you’re actually proud of. But that belief is quietly keeping a lot of really good service businesses small because better work was never the lever to more revenue. So today, we’re going to walk you through the seven lessons that coaching a thousand business owners actually taught me. So, let’s get into it. The first lesson is the one that took me the longest to fully believe, even though I’ve seen it at this point hundreds of times.

[music] The quality of your work is not what grows your business. Now, it’s necessary. You have to be good, but being good is the price of entry, not the thing that wins revenue. I met this lady called Sam. She’s currently in my business mentorship and she’s a great example of this. Sam runs a marketing agency and she’s consistently delivering amazing results for her clients. She’s constantly entering and then winning awards for her work, but she joined the mentorship because she was pissed off at constantly, over and over again, losing potential clients to one-man bands in the marketing space working out of the back room of their their dingy flat. And even though she delivered better work and she delivered better client outcomes, she was getting out-sold by these competitors who knew the sales game better than what she did. So, we sorted out sales systems and she’s doing great now, but I see this all of the time. You put out great work and then you wing the most important thing for businesses that are doing under 2 to 5 million in revenue, you wing the sales process. So, stop asking, “How do I make my work even better?” and start asking, “What needs to happen to turn strangers into customers instead?” And that leads me to the second lesson and this is something that people don’t realize is a problem until I finally point it out for them. Most business owners that I start working with genuinely can’t tell me what’s in the pipeline. Ask a very simple question like, “How many live deals do you have in your pipeline right now? What stage are each of these deals at? What is the overall pipeline value?” And there’s a pause and that pause and that awkward look on the person’s face, that is the entire issue. And here’s why understanding your pipeline matters so much. It’s because you are an emotional, busy human being. You’re in delivery most of the week. You’re reacting to whatever shouts loudest in the morning, what’s at the top of your inbox. And when the only view of your pipeline that you have is the conversation that you kind of half remember that you had 5 minutes ago with someone who’s potentially a customer, you’re not running the business, the business is running you. And the annoying thing for me as a sales coach, as a sales mentor is is that the fix is just stupidly simple. You’ve just got to make your pipeline visible. One view, every live deal within it, every stage of your pipeline there in front of you. Not because a Kanban style dashboard like this is is some kind of black magic, but because the moment that you can see the entirety of your pipeline, you can stop guessing and you can stop bullshitting yourself. You can spot the deal that’s just about to go cold before it goes cold. You can also spot the big opportunity within the smaller ones that are taking up lots of your time where you should be spending the time on the bigger, more lucrative deal that is sat right there [music] in front of you, the fog tends to lift and instantly your revenue is going to increase as well. And once you can finally see your sales pipeline in a single visual dashboard, you can finally start to do something about it, which leads us on to the next issue [music] that I’ve almost by accident become an expert in fixing because I just see it so often. For years, I’d hear business owners describe the the feast and the famine sales cycle of running a service business like it was they’d talk about it like it was the weather. Like it was something that they couldn’t do anything about and some days it would rain and some days it would be dry. It’s just how my business is or it’s just how my industry is, I’d hear over and over and over again. Business owners would proclaim this as if it was fact. But the reality is you can have consistent revenue if you build a sales machine and then you feed it consistently with new opportunities. I’ve literally too many examples of business owners going through this feast and famine cycle to to list in a video like this. And the harsh reality is that they’re all living with this painful up and down of revenue. The the fear of making a bunch of cash and then not making enough money to pay payroll a couple of times a year and then get excited one month and then devastated the next when the cash that they could pull out of the business essentially disappears and goes to zero. And this is all because they didn’t build a step-by-step sales process that led to predictable outcomes. [music] Now, the idea of building a predictable sales process might seem like a big challenge to you. But the first step is just to time block 1 hour a day into your calendar with the sole single [music] I can’t simplify this any further, just one objective of moving the deals in your pipeline [music] to the next stage of their buyers journey. Don’t overcomplicate this. If you could build the consistency of pushing each of these opportunities one step closer to a clear yes or no response from the prospect each and every day, then you’ve you’ve built the foundations of a predictable sales machine and your revenue is going to become a whole lot more predictable overnight as well. [music] Now, this next one I’ve got to be careful with because it’s one of the most expensive mistakes I watch business owners make and they make it on purpose time and time again, even if it is with the best of intentions. Okay, so the logic from the business owner goes like this. I hate selling. I’m not very good at it, so I’m going to hire someone who is good at it and they’re going to magically fix this issue for me. And on paper, it kind of makes sense, right? They hire a closer, they hire a sales person, they drop them into their business, but then the business has no sales systems and they watch them flounder and the sales person either leaves or gets sacked within a few months. And I had a client last year and I won’t name him because he was a terrible client and he’ll probably watch this, [music] but we built out his sales systems, we proved that they worked, they booked meetings, they closed a couple of deals and then we handed them over to this gentleman [music] and his sales person then started jumping onto our coaching calls. And he seems like a decent lad as well all in all, but all he did was and moan about the business owner. And it turns out that he wasn’t putting our sales systems into practice. He was he was off on a tangent doing his own thing. He wasn’t consistent with any of the activities that we outlined for him. And then even worse, the business owner themselves randomly just took a bunch of time away from the business with zero contact with the entirety of his team [music] because he assumed that this sales person was going to do all of the work and make him a bunch of money whilst he was pissed about doing whatever he was doing in Fiji, bunch of traveling and and soul searching from the sound of things. So, scaling sales by hiring sales people needs to happen in two very distinct stages. First off, you’ve got to build a proven, reliable sales system, which is what we did for this client. And then you obviously need to hire, incentivize, and manage the right person to have their bum in the seat to actually run the machine, to implement the system. Just kind of half-assed hiring a sales person hoping that they’re going to solve your revenue problems is never going to work. And honestly, in my experience, I find that a lot of business owners, once they implement this sales system, once it exists, they don’t even need to hire other people because the awkward part, the bit that they were trying [music] to pay someone else to absorb, turns out to be pretty easy and seamless once it’s is all set up correctly. And if you’re doing most of the sales process yourself, and you’ve got [music] this next belief that we’re going to cover, no matter how hard you try, you’re never going to make it work, no matter what systems that you do implement. Okay, so this is the lesson that frees people the most when I work with business owners directly. And this is because there’s so many business owners have decided deep down that they are, quote, just not a sales person. They are a technician, a craftsperson, a a deliverer of great work, and the sales bit is for some other kind of human, the the confident, [music] slippery, gift of the gab type. And here’s the reframe that I give to them, and I’m going to give to you. You don’t need to become a sales person. You just need to implement a sales system. [music] And you’ve got to understand that your business is not you. They are separate. You are not your business. You might have your identity tied to the end service, and then the impact of that service that you deliver. But, your identity doesn’t have to be tied to all the other business activities that you need to complete to have and run a successful business. You don’t have to identify as an accountant to make sure that your accounts get done on time, and you don’t have the taxman knocking at your door. [music] Similarly, when you build an effective sales system, the system absorbs a lot of the awkwardness that you personally might feel about selling. And so, you get to run the machine, run the sales process, and just stay exactly [music] who you are. Because think about it, right? The reason that sales feels horrible to you right now is [music] that you’re doing it on instinct. In the moment, you’ve got no roadmap. Every call is a fresh improvisation where you you’re hoping that you’re going to say the right thing. Of course, right? Of course that’s stressful. But, the moment that you’ve got a defined process in place, you find someone that you can help, you help them see how you can help them, and you work out together whether the the cost of the problem is larger than the cost of your solution, and then you just ask them, “Hey, you know, does it make sense to to move forward with this?” All of the awkwardness drains out of it. You don’t have to be weird and do some kind of performance. You just walk in the buyer through a sequence of reasonable steps [music] to solve a problem that they’ve probably told you that they’ve had. There’s no manipulation, there’s no weirdness, there’s no awkwardness. And this, by the way, is is the thread running under everything that I’m sharing in this video. The competitor who’s beating you, who is worse at the service that you deliver, that is admittedly annoying, right? If that is the case, they’re probably not more talented than [music] you. They’re just more comfortable at sales. Or they’ve got better systems to fall back on and so they’re able to take the ego out of the process and just get the sales job done. Now, the sixth lesson is one that I see kill more good opportunities than almost [music] anything else. And it’s so quiet that you probably barely notice it happening. So, you end up chatting with a warm prospect, the call goes well, the prospect seems genuinely excited, there’s real interest, and then nothing happens. Why? Well, it’s cuz the business owner hasn’t actually asked for the business and so they don’t get it. You you might communicate, “I’ll follow up tomorrow.” or “Let me send over something to you for review.” Something soft and gentle, right? And then the deal drifts off into the cold, dark [music] abyss. And then weeks later, you you send the the just checking in email and you already know that it’s going to be ignored. And if it doesn’t get ignored, then you get a familiar response that goes something like, “You were great. We we loved XYZ 123, but we’ve gone with this competitor instead.” Why have they gone with that competitor? Because they asked for the business and the prospect wants the painful problem solved and so they asked that person to solve it. I mean, it’s pretty obvious, right? If I’ve got a deeply painful business problem, I want to hand that problem off to someone to solve. And often the prospect is going to give that problem to whoever in the least friction gives them the invoice to pay so they can just get it off their plate. [music] So, you’ve got to ask for the business. You’ve got to close the deal. Now, why then do so many business owners neglect to ask for the business [music] even when they’ve put a whole bunch of effort into the sales process. Well, it’s not laziness. It’s often the subconscious baggage that makes asking for the deal feel a little bit pushy, feel a little bit gross, feel like you’re you’re being the slimy sales person that you never wanted to be. So, you avoid it. And in avoiding it, you let deals that were half won quietly die. I could You’re not even letting deals die. They’re just getting gobbled up by your competitors. You’re warming up your prospect so that your competitors can come along and grab their cash. is the truth. Asking someone if they’d like you to help them solve their problem isn’t pushy when you’ve genuinely shown that you can solve their pain point and the maths make sense for the buyer. [music] At that point, not asking isn’t polite. You’re just leaving them stuck with the problem that they came to you to solve. And the application of this is the simplest thing in the entirety of this video. Before you end any sales conversation, you’ve got to ask the question, does it make sense to do and then the thing, right? And then close the sale or at a minimum, you’ve got to progress the next step of the sales process. So, you might say, “Does it make sense to get started today? Does it make sense to get that next meeting booked in the diary right now?” You might say, “Sure, I can send over a proposal. Would it make sense to jump on a quick call tomorrow and we can run through it?” Don’t let the “I’ll I’ll follow up next week” be the last thing that’s said in a sales conversation because the deal that you don’t ask for is the deal that you’re inevitably going to lose. Now, the last lesson is the one that separates business owners who create long-term revenue growth from the ones that never really get the returns from their business, from all of the effort that they put in. They never get the returns that they should, that they deserve to get from all of the hustle. And quite frankly, it’s not glamorous, which is exactly why it works. Now, weirdly, the business owners who make the most money aren’t the smartest ones I coach. [music] They’re not the most naturally gifted at selling either. They’re the ones that pick a simple sales system and then actually run it every day for a long enough period of time that it compounds. [music] And I won’t name him here because it’s kind of rude, but there’s one guy from the UK that I’ve been coaching at this point forever. He is lovely. He’s a complete legend. And he would admit this as well, but he’s perhaps not the sharpest tool in the shed. Regardless, he’s added 30% net new revenue to his painting and decorating business year-on-year for the past 5 years. His business now, that started off very small with him and one of his mates, his business is now generating over 3 million pounds a year, and he only works 4 days a week. He’s absolutely crushing it, and he’s living the life of his dreams, having come from, like myself, a very working-class family. And the crazy thing of all of this is that he’d be the first to tell you that he isn’t the the brightest, most exceptional entrepreneur out there. [music] But his superpower is just his ability to chip away at these key sales activities every day like a robot for a long period of time. And here is the thing that nobody tells you. The best sales principles are almost too simple. At least they feel too simple at first, and people won’t tell you this because they’re trying to flog AI or sell you some complex software that you don’t really need at this point in your entrepreneurial journey. All you’ve got to do is add a few qualified leads into the sales machine. You’ve got to move a few of these deals along to the next step of the sales process, and you’ve got to keep doing these two things over and over and over again. Now, if you’re smart, your brain’s going to start seeing, constantly, all over the place, all these new opportunities to take quantum leaps in revenue. To to take to go from 200,000 to 2 million, from 2 million to 10 million. Your brain has been programmed by society that making money is hard, and that sales and business is complex. And so it wants the the fancy new tactic, the new tool. It wants the the the reinvented process. So most business owners, when even when they’ve got something working, they will tinker. They’ll get bored. They’ll abandon the fundamentals of the business that’s got them to where they are right now. [music] And all they had to do was just our new prospects, move them along the sales pipeline, and then ask for the business at the end of it, and they’d be much better off. The ones that win build a sales process that works, and then they keep doing it for a long period of time. The same boring handful of actions day after day, and a few months in, that pipeline that used to terrify them is now full, and it’s visible. 12 months in, 2 years further down the line, they’ve closed more deals and generated more revenue than they ever thought was possible. [music] So, invest into a simple sales system, and then try and protect it from your own urge to overcomplicate things and ruin it. [music] Don’t reinvent every fortnight. Commit to at least a couple of months before you start to judge the results from it. And what I’ve learned having mentored over 1,000 business owners at this point is that the fundamentals tend to beat lots of attempts at brilliance over and over and over again. So, those are the seven lessons that coaching over 1,000 business owners actually taught me. So, the market doesn’t reward the best work, it rewards the best sales system. You can’t fix a process that you can’t see. Feast and famine revenue is a symptom, not your fate. Hiring a salesperson won’t save a business if there isn’t a system that already works installed for the salesperson to start running with. Take your ego out the sales process. The deal that you don’t ask for is the deal that your competitors win. And the business owners who win commit to the [music] boring stuff, doing the fundamentals for long enough for all to pay off. And if you own a service business and you’re the one doing all the selling, or perhaps you’ve got a small team that are doing sales on your behalf, and you’re tired of not bringing in the revenue that you know that your service deserves, well, click the link below this video to book a call into my calendar. I might be able to help you install a proven, repeatable sales system that’s going to help you close more sales. And if not, we’ll give you your money back. And if you want to know the fundamental sales processes that are capable of doubling your revenue in the next 6 months, well, click here to watch this video. It’s the quickest way to stop losing sales to competitors and start bringing in the revenue that you really deserve.