Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / When You Hate Your Business

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When You Hate Your Business · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

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3, 10, 1, 0, ignition, liftoff, Ending small business failure.
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Welcome to the Small Biz Chat podcast with a number 1 small business expert Melinda Emerson.
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Bolinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
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you need to succeed and live the life you've dream of.
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Now here's the small biz lady herself.
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Melinda Emerson.
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Hi, everybody.
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I'm Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady.
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Emerson, the small business lady, and I'm so excited to be back with you on the small
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business chat podcast.
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Today, I'm gonna be talking about kind of a sore subject for people, but it's the reality.
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And it's when you come to the point that you hate your business.
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I've been there guys.
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I've been there.
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I remember when I hated my job before I started my business.
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I can remember getting in my car in the morning and getting a headache driving to work because
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I hated being there that much.
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Like, it was a toxic environment that I worked in and I didn't work with nice people, and
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everybody just was, you know, mean and kinda always played the blame game.
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Nobody was mentoring anybody.
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Nobody was supporting anybody.
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It was just an awful place to work.
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And I was in my mid twenties, and I was like, man, if I stay around here, I'm actually
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actually gonna start acting like all these people in here.
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So I was brave.
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I went out and twenty six years old.
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I had a laptop, a fax machine, and a dream.
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Okay.
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So that's how long ago I had a fax machine.
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That's that's how long ago it was, but literally, I started my business because I knew
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that I was meant to do more than what I was doing at my job.
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And I was working for people who did not appreciate me.
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And I was like, look, I know that there's something else I can do to make money other
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than this.
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This is crazy.
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So went out and you know, started grinding.
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Started hustling.
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Started calling people, printed up business cards.
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I was out at events two, three times a week.
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I wanted to build a great business.
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And I did, but I also built a business that turned me into an absolute crazy workaholic
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lady.
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I mean, I worked 7 days a week.
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I would leave church on Sunday, and go to my office and work 3 or 4 more hours after
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service.
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And and it's because early on in my business, I convinced myself that my value proposition,
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like, that my secret sauce was that we we would just go out work people.
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That that was my idea.
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And and I and I thought that was okay.
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And interestingly enough along the way, I got pregnant with my son 6, 7 years into my
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business.
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And I had to stop.
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I ended up I was 32.
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I ended up with a higher pregnancy.
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They thought my child had a heart condition, sent me home, bed rest, and Wi Fi was not
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everywhere yet.
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So it wasn't like I was able to keep working.
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I couldn't keep working like I had been working, and it was the first time I had ever
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stopped long enough to sort of like think about working on my business as opposed to in my
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business.
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And I have to tell you when I had to stop so that I could bring my baby here, At first, it
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was like the worst thing in the world.
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Like, I was like, oh my god.
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I was never ever cut out to be somebody, stay at home, wife, or stay at home mom.
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It was an awful experience.
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But then when I sat back to appreciate the situation I was in, number 1, I was bringing
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forth an amazing life.
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And and that was important, but 2, I had to sit back and look at what my life had become.
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I was a raging workaholic.
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Yeah.
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It was a success.
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But I wasn't really happy.
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My marriage wasn't good.
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My business was doing good, but that was the only good thing about me that my business was
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doing good.
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And I was like, wow, when I was sitting at home laying on my couch in my living room, and and I
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have to tell you guys, I was also very, very sick.
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When I was pregnant, like, I was sick.
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I had morning sickness probably into my 7th month of pregnancy.
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I was so sick that I, I think I barely gained £23 the whole time I was pregnant.
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Yeah.
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That's another story I gained on my weight after I had my baby, but my point was is that I
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had to think about my life And when I thought about the business and my life that I had
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created for myself, I hated it.
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I did not love that business anymore.
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And that business was the the the most important thing to me in the whole world.
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And all of a sudden, I was like, I can't live like this.
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I can't work like this anymore.
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When this baby gets here, I'm not gonna wanna work 7 days a week anymore.
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And so that was how I got to the revelation of of hating my business.
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And I never thought it would happen to me because I love being an entrepreneur.
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I love being a successful young woman entrepreneur.
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I love being top 30 leaders of the future in America and top fifty women in business in
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Pennsylvania and, like, I loved all that stuff.
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And then all of a sudden, when I finally had to stop, and realized that I was waking up every
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day in a race for whatever craziness that was going on, that I had become almost like an
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adrenaline junkie for drama and confusion.
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And And that's how I was running my business.
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And I know that some of you out here listening to me right now, I know that that's what's
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happening to you.
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I know that that's what you're doing.
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You're working you're working so hard, and you probably have gotten to the point where that
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business that you use, that job that you used to hate, you probably had thought about going
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back there or maybe going and getting another one or What are you gonna do now?
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Because you don't love doing this business.
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Well, I'm gonna give you a formula of some things that you can think about.
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Because I know what it is to have too many bad days in a row.
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I know what it is to have a high turn with your employees.
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And, you know, start getting a bunch of customer complaints or, you know, y'all bad
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reviews and you know, I know what it is to look up all of a sudden and realize that you have a
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room full of doers working for you, but you don't have anybody in your whole business
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thinking how your business makes money other than you.
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And that is a really scary place to be.
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When you realize you're the only person in your business thinking about how your business makes
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money.
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That means you know you're exhausted falling in the bed every day, and it's just like this
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constant pressure that's on you, you gotta make it happen.
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You gotta figure out how to make money to pay all these people, pay the rent.
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Pay the the loans back.
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And it, you know, and then on top of that, you do have business, but then you got constant
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cash flow problems because You got customers that aren't paying you on time on a very
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regular basis, or you have multiple customers not paying you All of these things are
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stressful.
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And and they can damage your health.
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They can damage your relationships.
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They can damage your self esteem.
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I mean, I have a very good buddy, Barry Moltzu, is been on this podcast, and he talks about how
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he believes that he has diabetes right now today because of the level of stress he had in
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his first two businesses.
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And and I I think that there That's real.
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You know, cortisol flowing through your body is bad.
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That is not what we want.
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And if you're living on a constant diet of bull crap stress.
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That is what you're doing to yourself.
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You're killing yourself.
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I mean, there's too many small business out owners out here.
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You know, having heart attacks and stuff because running a business is hard.
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You know, you don't know what you don't know about running a business, and it is tough.
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So one of the things that we wanna think about is just how you can develop systems and things
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in your business so that you can fall back in love with your business because that's really
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what I want for you.
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And I actually have developed a little system to help you kinda think about if your business
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is going the wrong direction, you probably know why.
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And so it's about making the decision that you're ready to to tighten things up.
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I mean, like, you really have to make the decision that that troublesome employee that
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you know is a pain in the butt that is a £800 gorilla that antagonizes everyone else working
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for you.
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You have to make decisions that you're finally ready to go for them.
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And that you're willing to do the work to do a new job description, to put it out there, to
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screen applicants, to interview people, like, that you're willing to go through all the work
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to get rid of that headache.
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Or, you know, you got too many solar plane customers.
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You know, you gotta start firing them and get new ones that value you more that value you
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enough to pay you on time.
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And that's a hard thing too because that's a scary thing.
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And when you talk about fire customers, you're like, woah, wait a minute.
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But you have to realize that you can only take so much.
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And everybody's money isn't good money if they're if they're not good to you.
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And so you know, I know as a business owner, sometimes we stay in bad relationships because
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we don't have time to break up.
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No.
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I want you to make time.
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To break up with anybody that is antagonizing you and making it harder for you to do
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business.
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So that's so that's the first thing I want you to think about.
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But then, I also want you to think about why did you start your business?
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And then once you kinda get back to that, then I want you to think about why should you still
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be running it because you really need to get to an honest answer there.
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Are you still running this business because you don't know what else to do?
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Are you still running this business?
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Because you're so leveraged.
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You can't even punt if you wanted to because you're too leveraged in debt.
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Are you still running this business because you actually have something to contribute to your
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industry and to your customer's business?
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Why are you still running this business?
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Get clear about that because it is really, really important.
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Then look at your look at your people issues in your business because Let me tell you
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something, guys.
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50% of all business problems are not so well hidden personal problems.
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So if you are having problems with your staff, I'd be willing to bet it has something to do
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with how you're relating to them, how you're interacting with them.
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You know, first of all, sometimes we don't hire staff when we need them.
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And then when we do hire people, we tend to hire the wrong people.
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Right?
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Your cousin that needs a job, that's not the right person.
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Give him a check.
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Do not give him a job.
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I'm gonna do another podcast later on about working with people that you love or people in
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your family because I I've got a whole thing.
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I think about that, but you wanna make sure that you're hiring the best possible candidates
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for any job.
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But then you also wanna make sure that you're actually taking the time to train people.
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Because what happens to us, we're so busy.
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We're running this business.
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We're doing ten jobs at one time.
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We'll hire somebody and then be like, give them the keys and say, good luck.
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Like, we don't take the time to onboard people and train people and stuff.
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And that's really bad.
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You wanna make sure that you're spending time with your new employees, particularly your
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millennial employees.
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You wanna make sure that you completely showed them how you want things done.
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So then when they don't do that, firing them is a really short conversation because they'll
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know that they haven't done it the small biz lady way.
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They'll know.
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So it is a short conversation.
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So that's the kind of thing you wanna think about.
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But the other thing too is You have to think about what is it like to work for you?
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You know, are you a good boss?
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What is your leadership style?
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Are you talking to people like their little kids?
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Are you treating them like adults?
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Are you making them think, or are you thinking for everybody?
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You know, so you wanna make sure that you are doing everything you can to have a nurturing
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environment in your business.
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And you set the culture.
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You're the boss.
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You come in late.
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Everybody else don't think they're supposed to be late.
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If you use mistakes as a way to browbeat people and talk down to them and treat them bad.
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No nobody is gonna take any risks for you because it doesn't pay because you beat people
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up.
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You know, so you wanna make sure that, you know, everybody can't figure out what kind of
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day you're having by how you're speaking to everybody.
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You know?
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And The other thing you wanna think about too is you wanna make sure that you're treating
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your family, like your number one customers.
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Like, you wanna make sure that you're not taking your days out on your family too because
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that's a great way to hate your business and have your family hate your business because
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your business always has you in a super bad mood.
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So those are things that you wanna be thinking about as well.
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And then you've gotta think about the money and how how you can make more money.
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How can you make your business more profitable?
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That certainly will help you fall back in your love fall back in love with your business again
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if you figure out how you cannot feel like you're working for 10¢ on that dollar, but that
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you're actually making money and able to pay yourself a regular paycheck.
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Like, that's really, really important.
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Too many of you guys out there still skipping paychecks and stuff because your businesses
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aren't making enough money.
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And it's because you're not focused on that.
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You're not focused on selling and making sure your business is selling its most profitable
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stuff.
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Sometimes we're making sales, but we're making sales on stuff with our lowest margins.
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You gotta focus on the things that are really making cash money.
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Right?
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So you wanna make sure that you're really focused on that and that you're staying on top
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of your cash flow management and that you're automating as much stuff as you can.
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You know, your invoices and stuff.
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If your time is billable at $250 an hour, why would you be doing a $30 an hour work preparing
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invoices?
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Yeah.
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That's not good.
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You as the business owner, you gotta be working on the things closest to money every day.
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Like, that should be your priority.
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Even if you like building the widgets, pay somebody else younger to build the widgets so
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that you could be out building the customers because that is your most valued activity.
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So once you look at those things, I would say also too, look at your processes.
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Do you have documented processes for how things running your business?
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If you don't, I guarantee you that's 50% of what's making you hate your business.
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So you need to make sure that you document your daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly processes.
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What how does your business run?
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Because the other thing too is how are you ever gonna train anybody to work for you If you're
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not documenting how your business runs, it's really, really important that you have
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processes and systems for things in your business.
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The other thing that you wanna do is look at your productivity.
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Like, how could technology help your business run better.
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And if you can't answer that question for yourself, it might be worth hiring someone who
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could come in and help you look around your business and say, okay.
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You know what?
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You can automate that.
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You know what?
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You could have everybody out in the street with this app on their phone so you can make sure
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people are delivering stuff on time and you can track things.
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You know, you just wanna make sure that you're automating as much stuff as you can and that
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you're not using paper when you could use an app for that.
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And there's a lot of apps for that.
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So if you guys head over to my website fix your business dot com.
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I actually have a lot of different apps suggestions depending on where you are in your
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business because I know the problem now is that they're so many apps or so many software CRM
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stuff, a marker, an automation stuff, you don't know which one to pick.
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So I've actually taken some time to give you a list of the software and things that I think
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are really, you know, gonna serve you.
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The other thing I want you to think about is performance and, like, what what are you guys
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measuring in your business?
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As a matter of fact, are you measuring anything in your business, right, because are you
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looking at your Google analytics every month?
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Are you at your email open rates, do you know what your cost per lead is?
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Do you know what your cost per sale is?
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Do you know exactly what your sales cycles typically are.
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These are all things that you need to know.
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I mean, certainly, if you're buying ads like, you know, paid ad campaigns online, You wanna
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make sure that you are looking at all of that.
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You know, otherwise, if you're not tracking the effectiveness of paid campaigns, you are doing
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marketing that you're not measuring, which is tantamount to going into trash can, throwing
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some money in it, and lighting it on fire.
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I mean, that that's exactly the same thing you're doing because you're, like, just giving
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money away.
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And that same thing for, like, vendors and stuff you're using.
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Like, you're using an SEO vendor or if you're using a copywriter that's writing sales phones
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for you, how are those things converting?
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If they're not converting or they can't show you track record on how they've helped other
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people convert stuff.
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Do not hire them.
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I mean, it's just crazy.
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Just don't do it.
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Because, again, these are all things that'll make you hit your business, and I don't want
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you to do that.
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Want you to fall back in love with your business, so I want you kinda looking at stuff.
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But I also want you to make sure that you're looking at your website.
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We all know your website, your number one sales tool.
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Well, let's talk about that.
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Is your website ready for company?
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Do you got your welcome mat out?
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Do you have 2 or 3 ways to capture people's contact information?
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You know, do you have traffic magnets to bring them to your website?
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Are you publishing content on a regular basis so that your website is constantly updated?
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You know, these are all things you need to be looking at and doing so that you can make sure
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that your website Does your website load quickly from a mobile device?
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All of these things are very, very important.
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And you wanna be tracking that and really you wanna make sure that you are communicating with
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your hosting company.
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If things aren't loading quickly, you need to know why and is and it's something that you're
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paying somebody to take care of.
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So you wanna make sure that whoever's hosting your website, if your stuff is low and quickly,
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they need to tell you why and make sure you're not make sure all your apps and stuff are, you
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know, plugins and stuff are updated behind the hood of your website because that sometimes can
19:09
slow a website down too.
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But you just wanna make sure that you're doing everything you can so that people can find you.
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That is the key.
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And, certainly, if you're a retailer, you gotta make sure you got the basic stuff directions,
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hours of operation, click the call buttons.
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You know, please don't make me wreck my car trying to call you so that I can find your
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flower shop make sure it's right there.
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Easy for me to find.
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It's so this stuff is easy, but you're not doing it.
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And that's why you hate your business because you're not getting the business you should
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because people can't find you, and you gotta make sure that you're getting found online.
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And that people have a really good landing experience when they find your website.
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The other thing I want you to think about too is you know, do you have a sales system?
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Do you have times set aside every week to sell to call, to follow-up, to ask for the business,
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do people hear from you?
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You need to make sure that you set aside time either every day or that there's one day a
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week.
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That's all you do, but you have to make sure that you have an organized sales process.
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And that's from bringing in leads qualifying leads, getting proposals out the door, and then
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following up after you get a proposal out the door.
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What is the whole chain of that?
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Who is responsible for that?
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Are there multiple people responsible for it?
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Whatever it is, you gotta think it through.
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But the number one thing you gotta think about is how are you generating leads Leads are
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important, but you can't just let leads fall when they come in.
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How are you nurturing the leads?
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Do you have sales funnels on your website?
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Is somebody making calls?
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Do you have a call center?
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What is going on?
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Do you have live chat on your website?
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How are you closing the sales?
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Critically, critically important.
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And then how often are you planning for what's gonna happen next?
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How often are you developing a strategic plan in your business for what's gonna happen next
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year.
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You know, every fall is a great time for you to start looking at your budget for the next year.
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And your strategic plan for the next year.
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And when I say strategic plan, I'm saying, what are you gonna spend your money on?
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Are you launching any new products or services?
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What are you gonna put on sale this holiday?
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All of that stuff, you gotta think about.
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You gotta write it down.
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You can't wing it month to month.
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You gotta think it through so that you can communicate it to your team so that everyone
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knows what's gonna happen.
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That is how everybody gets invited to think and innovate on what's going to happen.
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And it's really citing when you're doing in advance, and you're not all stressed out.
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And that is how you can fall back and love you with your business, but let me tell you
21:52
something.
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At the end of the day, you got a persevere.
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You gotta stay strong enough, long enough to win in business, and you're not gonna do that
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if you don't do all this other stuff.
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You know, you can't just say, what was me?
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I gotta skip another paycheck.
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What was me?
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I can't take a laptop free vacation.
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Nobody wants to hear all that.
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You know, no one's coming to rescue you.
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You gotta rescue yourself.
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And there's a way to do it, but you have to do the work yourself, and you have to be
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consistent about it.
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The reason why I've been able to stay in business for 20 years is because I am
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relentlessly consistent and habits and things that I do in my business.
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And that is how I've been able to be successful year after year after year.
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And you have to do that too.
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So I'm gonna stop there because I feel like I may have overwhelmed some of you listening to
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me, but I really want you to fall back in love with your business.
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And hopefully, if you take even just a couple of the things I said and do them, your business
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is gonna feel differently when you do.
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So here's my action point for the week.
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Make the decision that you're finally ready to fix what's going wrong in your business.
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If you don't like it, I'm pretty sure you know why you don't like it.
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So get your mind prepared to do the work you need to do to turn things around.
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You can do it.
23:13
I believe in you.
23:14
I'm willing to Emerson the small business lady.
23:16
And if you want more tips and tools on how to fix your business, head over to the fix your
23:23
business online course, and you can get more information at succeed as your own boss.com.
23:28
Alright.
23:29
Now I'm gonna give you the action point of the week because I want you to fall back in love
23:33
with your business.
23:34
It is time for you to make the decision that you're finally ready to fix what's going wrong
23:38
in your business.
23:39
I know you know what's going wrong, and so you have to get your mind prepared to do the work
23:44
required to turn things around.
23:47
It's time for you to develop smart habits in your business so that you can live your dream
23:53
life as an entrepreneur again.
23:55
And fall back in love with your business.
23:57
And if you want more help on how to fix your business, head on over to succeed as your own
24:01
boss.com and check out my 12 week online course.
24:05
To fix your business master class.
24:07
I will help you turn things around in your business.
24:10
I promise.
24:11
Alright.
24:11
I'm Melinda Emerson, the small business lady, and I am over and out.
24:15
See you next week.
24:18
Thank you for listening to the Small Biz Chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
24:23
For more resources and small business success strategies, visit succeed as your own boss.com.
24:29
So swab to this podcast wherever you listen to podcast and join us next Wednesday.