What I Learned From Mo Farah About Scaling - with Adam Strong

Greg: [00:00:00] So are you looking to scale your construction business? If so, what is the number you’re looking for? 1 million, 2 million, 5 million, 10 million, or maybe more? And not only that, are you looking to exit your business one day? Well, if that’s the case for you, you’re really going to enjoy it this week’s episode because we’re talking to Adam Strong, who is a scale specialist.

He works across many industries and helps business owners not only scale, But then look to achieve an exit. And what’s really fascinating about Adam’s past business experience is that a lot of the lessons he learned was from sports, particularly his sports where he was training with the Olympic gold medalist Sir Mo Farah.

So we’ll learn a little bit about that, his story about how he connected with Sir Mo Farah and some of the lessons he learned. And then we’ll be looking at some of the common pitfalls that you may face as you try to scale. And we’re also going to touch on the subject of should you build a personal brand too?

So lots of content that we’re going to discuss today. Let’s jump in. Adam Strong. Great to have you on the show. [00:01:00] Appreciate you being here.

Adam: Looking forward to the conversations, Greg. Great to jam. Ready to jam.

Greg: Excellent. So as we spoke about in the introduction, we’re interviewing Adam today to talk about scaling. So Adam’s got some nice experience about how to scale businesses.

He’s worked with some athletes and different things like that, which is going to be interesting to explore. So Adam, maybe just to introduce yourself to everyone, can you tell us a little bit about your business journey? How did you get started in business and what got you into talking about scaling?

Scaling and specializing in that.

Adam: Sure well, I actually started up my first business at the age of 11. So that’s when I first started up my first business. And it actually was through complete accident. Complete accident. I grew up on a West London council estate. Didn’t really have huge amounts of money.

And, you know, just as a young kid, you just kind of like I was in a bit of a daydream if I’m honest [00:02:00] with you. And I was just walking not that far from where I lived at the time. It’s just started seeing these golf balls appear in all these streams and rivers, which was not that far as there’s like, there’s a nature reserve.

There’s a golf course. I didn’t know at the time, but I was like, okay, it is, this is just weird. It’s like the universe is sending me a sign or something. I don’t know, maybe it’s an epiphany. So the next day I goes back with a bucket and I start collecting all the golf balls. And, you know, I wasn’t stealing the golf balls, they were just lost, right?

They were just lost from people playing the game. And then I started walking, walking along the edge of the fairway. And one of my first encounters was as I was walking around hole 15, I had two old guys waving them, waving their golf clubs hysterically. And I was thinking, what the hell is going on here?

So I’m looking around and they’re coming over to me. They’re like, do you know where you are? I’m like, yeah, this is a golf strip. Why? Like, yeah, but we could have hit you in the head. [00:03:00] How old are you? 11 years old. What are you doing? I’m like, I’m finding lost golf balls. Oh, right. Okay. So what do you got in your bucket?

So they looked through my golf balls and effectively they, they, they’re like, so, so do you want to sell these golf balls? I’m like, huh, never really thought about that. And so I started to learn very quickly, Greg the importance of branding, of course, because golf is a very expensive sport, branding, conditioning, even color is very important to a golfer.

You know, so the white golf ball doesn’t sell as well as like a yellow one or a different color. Do you know what I mean? So so then we started getting into the negotiation and sales and just over a short period of time, I not only got ahead of the curve, but I learned very, very, very quickly about sales and negotiation, when to walk away from a deal when is the right deal to kind of like shake the hands on and so that we both walk away with [00:04:00] with a smile on our face.

So that’s kind of where it began for me at the age of 11.

Greg: That’s a great lesson for any 11 year olds that are listening to this. Get yourself out on the golf course and make yourself some money. I’ll tell you, I’ve, lost a few pro video ones in my time. They’re not cheap. So if any if any

kids are out there on my local golf course, you’ll make a fortune if you just follow me around.

So Adam, that’s, that’s a really interesting and yeah, lots of lessons to be learned from that for sure. So tell us about the next phase of your. Business development then because you also talked about how you work with some elite athletes. So just tell us a little bit about that. Well,

Adam: interestingly enough, 11 was a very special age.

I went through what I call a midlife crisis very early on. Now just bear with me before everyone starts cracking up. So basically, because I didn’t particularly have a great childhood, I lost my hair through alopecia. I went through the childcare system, et cetera. And, and when I was a young kid, I was kind of very timid, very introverted, didn’t particularly have a lot of friends.

[00:05:00] My parents had split up when I was very, very young. And so I had this, I didn’t really have the kind of mentors or the types of people that you can look up to, do you know what I mean, Greg, when you’re a young kid and stuff like that. So, My father kind of, he took up distance running not that long ago.

And he was like, well, why don’t you try this? It might help you. I’m like, okay, well, that’s interesting. So I went along to the local running club, down the local running track at the time. And I’m like, so. I’m interested in joining the club. And she was like, okay, so what experience you have? And I’m like, none.

And she’s like, Hey, what do you, what, what event are you interested in? And I’m like, well, I’ve heard distance running is quite interesting. So people at my age were just interested in sprinting about how fast they could run. But me, I was interested in the long game. So she was like, okay, cool. Well, let me introduce you to the guys down on the track.

So we walked down there and I said, [00:06:00] I forgot to tell you something. She says, what’s that? I said, I’m an asthma sufferer. She went, oh, an asthma suffering. So when I was younger, I used to suffer from quite bad asthma. And so she’s like, okay, well, we’ll figure it out. No problem. So for the first, for the first six months, I found it extremely difficult.

When I first went down to that running club, I got a lot of imposter syndrome. I started comparing myself to all the other people, all the other athletes down there. And I’m like, You know what? Maybe I’m jumping into the deep end way too much here, you know, I’m starting comparing myself to where I was compared to they’ve been training for years, right?

We get that, right? Even if it doesn’t matter what environment you’re in, we get that. So first six months, I reckon I could barely run 150 meters without really getting out of breath because my lungs hadn’t adapted. So I found it really tough, really, really hard. And for not one reason, I don’t know what it was, but I just kept [00:07:00] persevering.

I just kept on persisting and just really just just kept going. And so this is where I met my training partner. Who’s the current world and Olympic world champion, Samo Farah. So we came from very similar backgrounds. He came from Somalia, came in flew into the UK to get away from the war in Somalia.

So he lived with a, with his aunt and cousins. He didn’t speak very good English, was bullied a lot at school, save for me. Cause of my, cause of my, cause of not having any hair and stuff, and we basically used our, I suppose, I suppose you could call it negative experiences, but we turned it into more of a competitive streak, so we’d use that to compete against each other.

But a healthy competition, Greg, right? So we don’t use this healthy competition. So while all the other kids of our age were playing video games, I love playing video games, by the way, on Tuesday and Thursday night, when it was like [00:08:00] minus three, minus five Celsius we was out in our shorts and t shirt, putting in the hard work, boggy, Boggy, muddy grassland on the back of the running track and just put it into their work.

And over 18 months, within 18 months, me and Mo were effectively running for a national level, a national level. We almost got to, well, he obviously went on to bigger things, obviously. But yeah, we got into national level and I, I removed my asthma and disappeared after about seven months completely.

And it was like a bit of a transformation. There was just so many lessons that I learned just from that short period of time.

Greg: Wow. Yeah. So let’s, let’s dive into those lessons in a second, but I think what everyone wants to know, Adam is, did you ever beat Mo?

Adam: He was do you know what? It’s interesting. The answer to that question is [00:09:00] not really, but in training, yes. But not really in competition. Mo had a, a slightly different So He had a very different background, because obviously, when you’re coming from a place like Somalia, which is warm climate, and being black African as well, you have a huge advantage, so I don’t know if you’ve seen that, but a lot of gold medalists are generally Kenyans, Ethiopians, so those types of, because their bodies are slightly different, their metabolism is different, so, I use that as an excuse more than anything else, so I

don’t know if you’ve seen that, but I use that as an excuse more than anything else.

Greg: Excellent. That’s, that’s, that’s great. So, well, fantastic story there to, yeah, to be able to train with Mo Farah. So, tell us some of the lessons you learned with, with training with someone that was going to go on to be an Olympic gold medalist. What lessons did you learn from that experience and from your experience of you overcoming your adversities with asthma and being able to compete at a national level?

Adam: Yeah, listen, there was a lot of lessons I learned [00:10:00] from a very young age. You know, I’ve, I’ve shared a few from the golf ball story, for example, in sales and negotiation. That’s a really big thing, but also in sport, there’s just so much that, that you can kind of relate to. Do you know what I mean? So yeah, like entrepreneurs as entrepreneurs, we experience adversity, you know learning from our mistakes, being adaptable, which I feel like is very, very important, especially in this environment.

I suppose a lot of it is to do with mindset, Greg, more than anything else. Because mindset is the basic foundation for putting any business. It doesn’t matter if I give you, if you said to me, Adam, I want you to scale my business to 10 mil. I’d be like, okay, no worries. I can do that. But if your mind isn’t ready for that, then it’s completely pointless.

Right. You know, it’s, it’s. I used to, a lot of people said to me, so have you run a marathon? I’m like, no, I’ve never run a marathon actually. I actually did different sports. [00:11:00] Adventure racing, half marathons and stuff like that. Marathon running never really interested me. If someone wanted to do a marathon under three hours, could I help them?

For sure. If I could, I give them a strategy to do it. Absolutely. But if you, if your belief system is, is that you can’t do it, guess what? You’re probably right. So the first hurdle really is to condition the mindset more than anything else modern, my big, big, big things that I’m into and it still continues to this day is this kind of mindset of excellence.

What do I mean by excellence? I’m a big football fan. I’m sure you are as well, Greg. So Arsenal’s my team and Mikhail Arteta is our manager. Of course to I’m going to get my ass kicked in a minute. But he is really a great example of someone that is a bit of a perfectionist, but he’s also really into excellence.

And I admire people that have that kind of mindset because it’s like, whatever you do, just go out there. Giving you a hundred percent, [00:12:00] 110 percent

regardless, but I’m also about personal growth and personal development. So what, what sport taught me, what running had taught me is personal growth, like continuing to, , you probably heard of a book by Darren Hardy called the compound effect, where effectively.

You do something every day to add 1%. It doesn’t matter which area of your life, but as long as you’re adding something. So it’s continuous improvement all the time. So there is a lot of things. So in summary, personal growth, absolutely. A hundred percent persistence or perseverance. Okay. Adaptability, which is again extremely important competition.

I’m extremely competitive. But I use competition. I use collaboration over competition. So you can have competition, but you, but never compare yourself to just state. And the other thing is focus, which again is extremely important because if you’re not focused, then you’re all over the place, [00:13:00] it doesn’t matter what you do, but you’ve got to, you’ve got to learn to stay focused.

There’s no such thing as multitasking. If you’re multitasking, it means that you’re not focused. So that helps.

Greg: Really interesting. Yeah, it’s interesting. Some of the things you’re saying there reminds me of a podcast we did a few months back with an Olympic gold medalist Grace Prendergast. She was an Olympic rower and won the gold.

Very, very similar lessons there that you brought out, which really intertwine with business, which is fascinating, really, how sport and business can intertwine like that. So let’s just move that on a little bit then and talk about how you help businesses scale. And let’s talk particularly about mindset.

involved in that scaling. So if someone comes to you now and people do the same with me, they said, Greg, can you help me scale to a five million pounds construction business or 10 million, whatever it’s going to be. Someone will come up to you and do the same thing. So Adam, I want you to help me to scale to 10 million.

What are the initial things that you’re diving into? Is it, is it mindset that the first place you go, like what sort of questions are you sort of really [00:14:00] coaxing out of them to work out the strategy?

Adam: Yeah, it’s a really, really fascinating question that you’ve asked there, actually, because I’m just kind of, relit, re just kind of going back to some of our client calls.

So when we do onboarding for clients, for example, you know, yes, you need to get to know people to see how they think. Yeah. But one of the things that I like to look for, Greg, and it’s probably the same for you. Is that I like to look for gaps in people’s businesses, because effectively, if you can identify the gaps within the business and you can fill the gaps, then effectively you don’t have a leaky bucket anymore because it, it, before you scale any business, you did, you generally have to fix things first before you are ready to scale.

Does that make sense? So I always talk about the analogy of What trash do you need to sort out first before doing anything else? And it could be that you have a toxic employee. Okay. Which [00:15:00] is, reducing the culture. It’s, it’s, it’s having an impact on the culture. It could be that, you know, your, I don’t know your, your lead generation sucks, right? So therefore we’ve got to fix the lead generation or whatever it is. So it’s about identifying which area needs to be fixed or improved first before putting in place, a scalable model effectively or scalable framework. Because every business is different, right?

So every business is different. Everyone has different goals. So there isn’t kind of a one size fits all approach. Because everyone starts at a different, a different time. Do you know what I mean, Greg? So, but one of the things I like to do is get to know the individual, understand, actually, one of the things that we, are doing right now, Greg, is we working with a company called Equilibrium

so one of the things I like to do is I like to identify people’s communication styles. So, what that basically means is, like, for me I’m a red [00:16:00] personality, which means I’m direct, but also there’s an element of yellow, which I’m very social, right? So if you know how to understand how to communicate to people then you can connect with them on a much deeper level Right, so that’s another thing so getting to know them identifying their e colors or the way that they communicate as well but also really kind of getting to know their business during the qualification period.

We just get them to fit in a very simple questionnaire and just kind of ask very, very direct questions about why they’re here, why they come here, what is it that they need solving immediately. And then we go from there, basically in a nutshell, we try to find some common ground.

Greg: Yeah, great. So I just want to dive into some of that because this is really resonated with me as well, obviously.

And I’m going to learn a couple of things from you here, hopefully, Adam. So oftentimes clients will come to you to scale [00:17:00] and they will have in their mind what they think the problem is. So they say, right, I want to scale, I need to scale to this size because of this or that. And I don’t know about you, but

sometimes I, you, you’re talking to people and realize that actually they’re not looking to scale, they’re just looking to solve something else.

How do, how do you, do you ever advise people on that? Any, any thoughts around whether scale is right for everyone?

Adam: It’s a really interesting point actually, Greg. One of the things that I, and I wrote about this on LinkedIn actually the other day, Is that a lot of people really, there seems to be this kind of confusion about what scale is and what growing a business is because there are two very different types of things to do, right?

So what I have found, especially working with the clients that I’m working with is that they say that they want, they have the aspirations to scale, but actually what they’re doing is they’re just trying to grow their business. So their focus is to [00:18:00] increase revenue. Now that is growing a business. But unfortunately, when you grow a business, it’s not sustainable over a long period of time because it often leads to burnout.

It requires a lot of resources and energy to grow a business. You know, that, whereas scaling a business is very different. So scaling a business is all about. Systems are processes. It’s all about, you know, increasing profitability at the bottom line and being able to expand, it could be global expansion.

It could be expanded as your products or whatever it might be. But there needs to be this kind of conversation where tell me about where you’re at with your business. Like tell me about your revenue. What have you been hitting over the last three years? For example, if they’ve been in business for that long what sort of growth are you seeing?

You know, what lead generation where are your leads coming from type of thing. So there’s certain questions that need to be on. And [00:19:00] one of the things, and also it’s kind of, it’s to ask yourself subconscious questions about yourself, about what area of the business do you, can you identify that needs to be scaled?

Right. So it could be, for example, the team. Okay, it could be, for example the product. So the product’s been around for a while or whatever it might be. It might be a capacity. You might be already at capacity. Therefore, you need to increase your capacity before scaling. Okay, so it all depends on identifying which areas of the business that needs to be scaled and then going from there.

Greg: Yeah. Okay. That’s great. [00:20:00] So let’s intertwine that with, you spoke about gaps in business. So people will come to you and you’ll find gaps. Lots of gaps, probably, in most businesses that we sit in. So, where do you start with gaps? Because you might have gaps in marketing, you might have gaps with your delivery and your operations, you might have gaps with your team, you might have gaps with your plan, your finances.

So, where do you initially start on that? When you’re coaching your clients, do you have a set point that you think, actually, this is probably the base point that we always have to fix first? Or can you, do you generally jump around?

Adam: That’s a really, really good question, Greg. One of the things that I like to, I like to have a, first of all, I like to find out from the client where they feel needs to be kind of hit first.

So which area do they feel they need to be hit first? [00:21:00] I would generally then question that motive most of the time because most what I have found Generally, the gaps that are in a business is mainly because it’s a lack of clarity and direction. If you’ve got clarity and direction in your business, generally most of the, most of the things, then they, if you’ve got like a branding problem or a marketing problem or a sales problem, generally they’re very closely knitted together or there’s If you’ve got a problem in marks marketing, whether it be leads, for example, that’s generally has a knock on effect to your sales conversion because your mindset might be, well, I can’t do this.

Or you start comparing yourself to other people, right? So generally there’s a knock on effect. So I think it, what I tend to focus on and one of my Secret secret sources, if you like, or one of the things I really love to do is really to [00:22:00] get down and understanding about where you go in as a business.

Like what is the purpose? What is the legacy? What is your exit strategy? It absolutely, I just don’t understand Greg, right? People who have businesses that don’t really have an exit strategy in place, right? When you have a business is very simple. You are there to sell it at the end. But everyone has a slightly different ideology of what an exit plan looks like.

But everyone needs to plan for one. I think the stats if I’m not mistaken, is that is less than half of businesses around the world, I think it’s something like 45 or 48 percent, most of them don’t have an exit strategy and place full stop. Which is quite, which is, which is quite alarming in a way.

And I’d probably say it’s more than

Greg: that.

Adam: Exactly. I’m

Greg: surprised at that. So I thought it would have been higher because, you know, it’s very rare to find someone with an exit strategy.

Adam: Exactly. Exactly. But again, I think. There’s a, it’s a word [00:23:00] where people really don’t understand or that if I spoke to 10 people would be like, well, it’s this or it’s this is it’s, it’s a slightly generic term.

And there’s such a, what was going to say to you, it, it’s, it means different things to different people. Greg, do you understand what I mean? So, yeah. So I think clarity and direction, but that’s the first thing that I would look at, first of all. And if it’s not that, then it would be generally looking at, okay, so what is really the main culprit here?

Is it, what is the big thing that’s really holding the business back? What is the big

Greg: problem? Yeah, you go high level first, and then you, then you’ll drill down into what the actual issue might be, because it could be, yeah, something else. That’s, that’s interesting. Okay. So, what are some of the pitfalls then, if, if you’ve identified the gaps?

A business is on board, they, they want to scale, they recognize what their problems are, they’ve set a strategy and an exit plan in place. [00:24:00] What are the common pitfalls you find generally when a business owner starts to go through that scaling process? Because they start doing it, they start ramping everything up.

What do you generally see start going wrong for some?

Adam: Yeah, it’s a good point. Well, I have identified five, six different pitfalls when it comes to scaling a business. And generally, They’re not so uncommon these days, if I’m honest with you. But it generally tends to be the same pattern over and over and over and over again.

So the first thing that I found in terms of Pitfall number one is really that most businesses, especially whether it be in construction, whether it be in professional services, that’s that they have very limited revenue streams. They may only have one to two different revenue streams, which again, then holds a business back because.

industry you’re in potential clients, your audience effectively are always there judging you on the price that you give them rather than the value that you deliver. Right. Which is a very high risk strategy, by the way. You know, so, so that’s, I guess kind of pitfall number one.

So pitfall number two really would be kind of, again, we talked about mindset, right? You know, having this kind of gun the whole mindset. Oh, I’m going to do this all on my own and take on the world type of thing is only going to lead to burnout and a very unbalanced life. So, so to speak. So I suppose that’s kind of pitfall number two, really pitfall.

Number three would be having only a limited. Range of products and services that help solve the problems and challenges that your clients or potential prospects Are going through but the thing is is that not everyone is really willing to buy So for example what I mean by that is Say you had, I [00:26:00] don’t know, one to two different products that help solve that problem.

They might not be in a position or they might not feel ready to commit to high ticket, for example, because that’s generally most people’s businesses, right? So therefore, then you have to then create some things in between that helps build the element of trust. Yeah,

Greg: that’s so important.

And if, we’re just relating this to construction businesses, I guess the perfect one that comes to mind would be maybe like a plumbing and heating engineer. They, their big ticket item might be, we do full boiler systems and heating fit outs, whereas our low ticket item might be, we’re just going to come and do a boiler service for you and a, and a refurb your boiler, something like that.

So different between a a hundred pound call out, which builds trust to 10, a 10 grand for refit out and heating system.

Adam: Perfect example. That is great. Perfect example. So then you got to think to yourself, okay, well, if they only offer those limited products and services, like what else could [00:27:00] you then expand?

Like what other industries could you potentially collaborate with? You know actually one of my best clients from long, long time ago was actually a plumbing and the heating engineer, believe it or not. And he did exactly that. He’s now kind of almost semi retired, but he just does boiler servicing now because it’s just better pocket money.

But the point I’m trying to make is you could do like you know, you can work with a major developer that’s building, I don’t know, a whole estate of new Properties, for example, that could be one package, for example. But again, it depends on the client that you’re also, you’re also focusing on as well, if it’s a B2C or if it’s a more B2B model as well.

So again, it depends on who you’re actually targeting the first place as well. What’s going to say, yeah, the, the fourth one would be. really kind of, again, I’ll go back to mindset as well, which is think of this [00:28:00] as I use this as an example, as an example, right? The mindset for me, for example, when I, when I was in running got me to the place where I, you know, it got, it served me to the point where I was able to take You know, my coach was able to take you so, so far, but in order to get to Olympic level, I now need to take things to the next level.

I need to now go find someone that has already achieved what I’m set out to achieve. So I can learn from their mistakes. So I can learn about their methodology. So I can learn about the experiences and what I’m about to embark upon in terms of the journey. So I need to go seek out like minded people. So that’s the fourth one.

Fifth one is capacity. We talked about this earlier on. So every, every business has a capacity. You’ll know how many clients that you and customers you could take on a on an annual basis before you’re bursting at the seams. And I talk about quality over quantity. [00:29:00] So if you don’t know what your capacity is, you’ve got to start asking yourself some really big questions.

How long does it take to serve as a client? How How long does a client stay with me? You know, so what problem is it? Does that, that they want to get solved? An example of this is that if you’re an accountant so if you’re a CPA, for example, and you offer accountancy services to, I don’t know, business community, you’ll know how, how long roughly it takes to put in.

You know books which are HMRC compliant, for example that you’ll know how much it does, how long it takes to do VAT returns, you know, and so you’ll roughly know that how many clients you could take on, and then you can then work out, okay, well, I can only take on say 50 clients a year, for example, because I know it takes this amount of time.

What can I do to then increase my capacity? To then increase revenue, but [00:30:00] also increase profitability at the same time. So, so those are the five main pitfalls that I would say when it comes to scale of business.

Greg: Yeah, great. And so many of them are relatable to construction. Well, all of them are. So that’s fantastic.

There’ll be lots that people can think about with that. So one thing I’ve noticed, and you probably have as well, Adam, is when businesses want to scale and the business owner wants to scale. One of the mistakes they often make is that the business owner themselves becomes a little bit faceless or they try to become faceless in the business and it all becomes about the business brand rather than about the business owner’s brand or their personal brand.

What are your thoughts on that? The difference between personal brand and company brand? You know, if you’re trying to scale, do you need to step out of all the marketing so that you’re not seen anymore?

Adam: Yeah, it’s a good one. I actually had this question last night, not on a podcast, but just with somebody that wanted to work with me and was asking for some, for some [00:31:00] advice.

I always say to people, always build a personal brand first. And there’s a reason behind this. So when we think when, when Steve jobs was still around, Greg, what did you think of? Yeah. You thought apple, right? So, you know, if you think of Jeff, Jeff Bezos, you think of Amazon, right. When you think of,, when you think of Sir Axe Ferguson, you think of Manchester United, even though it’s not there anymore.

Right. So generally a person is more powerful than a company. Now, obviously Steve Jobs isn’t around anymore. It’s Tim Cook, but he’s still, it’s still Apple, right? So the point that I’m trying to make is, is that always focus on building your own personal brand first. There’s a couple of reasons for this, Greg.

Number one is that when you do go to sell your business, you have your personal brand to piggyback off. Okay. Cause you’ve [00:32:00] been building your brand over a set period of time. That’s the first thing. Great advantage, by the way. Number two, when you’re in construction. Or any industry you’re in the industry for building relationships, connections, and collaboration.

They buy you, people buy people. They don’t buy brands. They don’t buy products, don’t buy services. They buy you. If they like you and they feel they can trust you, then they’ll buy you. They’ll buy you what your company offers, but generally they don’t buy companies. Now, the other question I often get asked is, so if you’re saying that you have to build a personal brand, what’s the point in building a company brand?

Really interesting point. So I always say to people, focus on building the personal brand, especially if you’re turning over a under three mil, okay, end of story. But you [00:33:00] could use certain tools. That will help to build your company brand. Like for example, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, I’ve got company pages and they were really crap before, but now they’re really good because actually you can kind of double you can actually double up on what you’re actually putting out in terms of your own content and use your company page to also, you know, Bill bring it in some new people.

People can leave Google reviews or LinkedIn reviews or whatever it is. What does that do? It enhances social proof. So it increases credibility, increases authority, but it also helps you to stand out from all the, from your competition as well. So again, there is an advantage and disadvantage to both.

But I believe my number one goal, especially in our company, is all about building individual personal brands.

Greg: Yeah. And just from a practical point of view, what does that mean for people to do? What if they, is it videos, reels, [00:34:00] that sort of thing, trying to be the authority in the space?

Adam: I think, from my perspective, it generally isn’t about, because what you’ve described is really content, you know, so that’s just one way to build a brand.

A brand is not a logo, a brand is not a color palette, a brand is not, it’s none of those things. It’s actually about how you make people feel. So, the way you make people feel is Whether it be through the articles that you write, whether it be through the content that you put out. Okay. Generally your brand is about who you are as a, as a personality.

Okay. That’s what it’s about. So, in retrospect, there is no right or wrong. If you should do videos or you should do this or what’s trending on algorithm, what, you know, what, what is the algorithm saying is all BS, right? . What I would say to you. Is yeah, you can look at tech talking about the fact that Gary V is saying that tech talk is the number one place where you can get yourself viral and stuff like that.

I believe, and this is [00:35:00] just what I believe. There are two ways to, really go home with this. You can either go deep or you can even go wide. All right. What do I mean by that? So for me, in my, our business, we focus on one channel, solving one problem, looking at one audience. Okay. I give them one solution.

Okay. Is it right or wrong? It just depends. Depends on the circumstances. Now you can go wide if you’ve got the resources to do so. You can create one piece of content, turn it into about 10 different pieces of content, stick it on different social media channels, and guess what? Start building a following.

But it takes up a lot of time and resources. So there is no right or wrong, Greg. All I would say to you is Focus on where are your tribe hanging out? Mostly mine is mainly on LinkedIn. It’s probably the same for you. Focus on that one particular channel. Go deep on that. Really understand their pain points, problems, what keeps them up at night, [00:36:00] all of those things, and really create a connection with them.

Create something that’s going to help them resonate with you more than anything else. That is what’s going to create energy and that’s what delivers results.

Greg: Fascinating. That’s really interesting Adam and there’s certainly a lot to take away from that if you’re trying to scale your business, construction or otherwise.

I think you can learn a lot from what Adam’s just said there. Adam, if people wanted to learn a little bit more about what you teach and some of the things you offer, how would they get in contact with you, Adam?

Adam: LinkedIn is the best place. I love LinkedIn. You’re welcome to Check out, like Greg, I have a podcast called the business strategist, which you you’re very welcome to come and check out, of course it’s all about strategy.

That’s what I’m about. I love talking about strategy. And there are some. Quizzes and things like that, that you can do as well. One is called the business growth quiz, where you can test to see how scalable your business is. So if you are looking to scale, it might be a great, it’s a great resource to be able to kind of [00:37:00] test a measure to see if you’re ready for it.

So hope that helps.

Greg: That sounds fantastic. Yeah. So we’ll put the links into the podcast, into the show notes as well, Adam, that’d be awesome. And then the other links you’ve got there and we’re actually going to do a back to back strategy session now, aren’t we? I’m going to come and talk on your podcast about some specific construction strategies, but what you’ve told us here today is absolutely fantastic.

I think there’s so much value that people are going to be able to take away. So really appreciate your time, Adam. You’re welcome. Have a great one. Thanks guys.