Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / Confessions of a Small Business Owner: 3 Times I Almost Failed

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Confessions of a Small Business Owner: 3 Times I Almost Failed · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

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  3, 2, 1, 0, ignition.
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  Lift off.
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  Ending small business failure.
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  Welcome to the small biz chat podcast with the number one small business Burt, Melinda
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  Emerson.
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  Melinda'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 dream of.
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  Now here's your host, the small biz chat lady herself, Melinda Emerson.
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  Hi, everybody.
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  This is Molly Emerson, the small business lady.
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  I wanna welcome you to another solo podcast of the small biz chat podcast.
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  I am so excited to be here with you today.
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  You know, this month marks my 24th year in business.
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  And my coming up with my 14th year as your small business lady as America's number one
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  small business expert.
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  And I know a lot of times when I get up on my year anniversary of my business, I oftentimes
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  will tell about all the things that I learned or the best advice that I have.
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  But this year, I thought it would be really helpful if I shared with you all three times
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  over the last 24 years.
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  That I actually thought I wasn't gonna have a business that I actually thought we were going
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  to go out of business because I think sometimes, you know, people see pictures of me
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  or they see me on TV or You know, kinda one of my webinars and they think everything's great.
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  Everything's rainbows.
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  My phone rings off the hook.
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  And that's true now, but that was not always true.
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  And so I thought that it would be really helpful for you all to understand a little bit
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  more about my journey.
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  So there's three stories that I'm gonna tell on today's podcast.
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  The first story I'm gonna tell you is about the first time I just wasn't sure that we were
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  gonna make it, and it happened.
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  In 2004.
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  So I started maybe, like, 5 years in my business.
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  And, you know, we had a good 1st and second quarter 3rd quarter was just okay and 4th
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  quarter was terrible.
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  And for the first time ever, I got down to Christmas and I could not pay my staff.
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  I couldn't give out the paychecks the week before Christmas.
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  And, I mean, I remember how I felt.
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  I remember feeling lower than a snail's belly.
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  And at the time, my husband and I always spent Christmas in Florida with his family.
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  And honestly, the only reason why we were still able to go to Florida for Christmas was because
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  I had bought the plane tickets in August Otherwise, we wouldn't even even had enough
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  money to go be with our family for Christmas.
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  And I remember packing up for us to leave And I'd I'd had no Christmas presence.
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  I I had no money to buy anybody anything.
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  I think we barely had money to pay the rent at the fists and and and the mortgage here at the
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  house.
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  I mean, it things were really, really tight.
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  And I wrote out all of the payroll checks.
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  I signed them all, and I gave them to my assistant before we left.
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  And I said, you can't give these to anybody, but I wanna at least sign them just in case
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  some miracle happens and I can actually pay everybody.
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  And I just remember getting on that play lane and feeling like I had a f in black marker,
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  most simple my forehead.
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  I mean, I felt bad.
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  I felt like a failure.
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  I felt like I had let my team down.
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  I was showing up for my favorite holiday with no presence for anybody.
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  I mean, it was just really bad.
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  And so we finally got to Tampa.
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  We landed.
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  We were in the baggage claim waiting for our bags to come, and my cell phone rang.
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  It was one of my clients from Verizon, actually.
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  He was one of my client.
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  And he said, hey, Melinda.
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  I've got this project that I want you to do for me in January.
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  I'm thinking to myself, lord, are we even gonna still be in business in January because I had
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  no money and no and not even coming in?
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  It wasn't like I was waiting on a check.
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  There there was no check coming.
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  And he said, but listen, I gotta get this money out of my budget.
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  So for before the end of the year, they're gonna take it back.
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  So I'm gonna wire to your account $40,000, and we can settle up later, you know, with the
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  proper paperwork and everything.
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  Just know you owe me a project in January.
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  Would that be okay?
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  And he will never know that he saved us.
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  But that Christmas, we got saved by a client who had to get the money out of his budget.
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  Before the end of the year, and it and it saved us.
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  It it saved Christmas for us.
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  It saved Christmas for my staff.
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  And I remember being like, You know, that could not be anything, but god, that just saved us.
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  But, you know, over the years, there's been so many sort of, like, really, really close calls
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  like that.
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  It, you know, a year later in 2005, I got pregnant with my son ended up on bed rest for 6
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  months.
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  And I, you know, back then, wifi wasn't in everybody's houses.
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  I basically got sent home, and I was at home.
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  I had a palm tree cell phone trying to run my business, and you could imagine it didn't run
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  so well.
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  I also was the number one rainmaker salesperson in my business.
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  So when I got pulled out of my business, There was a couple of things I learned from that.
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  Number 1, that you have to have someone selling in your business other than you.
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  Number 2, I had built a culture of I made all the decisions, and everyone had to come to me
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  to get decisions made.
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  So when I wasn't there, I had built a culture of people proactively thinking and doing things
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  I built a culture.
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  You had to come ask mama.
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  You know, I had a bunch of doers.
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  I didn't have any thinkers working for me.
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  And I realized that I had made the number one stake in business.
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  I had built a business that couldn't run without me.
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  And I swore that I would never ever run a business like that again.
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  And that's actually what led me to become the small busulating the first place because I
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  said, my gosh, I really would have run my business better if I had had better advice.
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  But back then, there wasn't anybody really given small business advice, not in mainstream
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  media, like, where you would really see it.
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  I mean, certainly, Michael Gerber had written the e myth and stuff by then, but real advice
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  on what to do, how to handle things, you know, what kind of workers you really needed.
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  You know, that kind of stuff.
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  And and I realized that there was an opportunity for me to how other people not make
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  the mistakes that I did.
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  After I had my son, I ended up shutting down my office in the city, moving to a more economical
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  office out in the county because the taxes in the city of Philadelphia were killing us, but I
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  also realized that I wanted to change my whole business, my whole business model.
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  And we, you know, stopped doing just videos and websites at that point.
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  I had read a trade journal talking about social media and how it was gonna be the next big
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  thing, and I decided to push all our chips in that direction.
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  But it took about a year to make the transition.
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  It took about a year for our customers to be like, oh, yeah.
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  Social media.
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  So we still had to do projects.
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  I didn't wanna do for cash little purposes until we could do the projects that we wanted
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  to do that we knew were gonna be the future of our company.
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  And so that happened in 1005.
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  And by the way, my son wasn't born into December of that year.
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  So I spent that whole summer fall winter pregnant, so that wasn't super fun.
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  But my on god here.
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  He's great.
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  He's healthy and but that was another really, really expensive, expensive lesson that I
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  learned.
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  And Another lesson that I learned very early on in my business.
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  When I first started my company, Quintessa's Entertainment, Inc.
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  I actually had a business partner.
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  And She was actually a colleague that worked with me at the television station.
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  And the reason why I brought her on as my business partner was because I thought I needed
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  I had convinced myself that she was older.
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  She had more credentials.
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  She had won an Emmy.
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  And I was like, ah, you know, I need her credentials to make my business credible.
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  And so I was working really hard.
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  I was single.
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  She was married.
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  She had a little kid.
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  She couldn't put in the hours that I put in.
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  And, eventually, I just had to, you know, kick her out of the business, buy her out of the
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  business, whatever, but I had to figure out I had to get the courage to move forward by
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  myself.
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  And remember, I was really young.
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  I started my first business when I was 26 years old.
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  And what I will tell you is there's a lot of imposter syndrome you feel when your twenty six
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  year old is turning a business.
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  You don't know who you are yet.
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  Let alone how you're gonna run this business.
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  And I'm an extremely different person, different leader today than I was back then.
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  I was, you know, probably a coercive leader would probably be the best way to describe me.
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  I certainly, at one point, was called Captain Bly by somebody.
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  You know, I think that over time, once you get more confidence in yourself, You don't have to
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  feel like you have to have all the answers.
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  Like, you have to make all the decisions.
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  But the one thing you have to do is be willing to bet on yourself be willing to believe in
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  yourself.
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  And sometimes when everyone else thinks you're crazy, like, they they like, they're gonna
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  think you're crazy for quitting your job in the first place to start a business.
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  People might think you're crazy for completely pivoting and doing something completely
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  different that was brand new that nobody even knew a whole lot about.
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  The social media first started.
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  People thought, Twitter, what the hell is that?
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  Right?
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  Who knew the power of social media that would be so pervasive in people's lives?
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  Just 10, 15 years later.
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  And I think that one of the things one of the best things I ever did was pay attention to the
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  trends in my industry, retrade journals, like, really pay attention to what's next and not
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  focus so much on what my customers need today.
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  But focusing on what my customers need tomorrow and being there and being that resource.
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  I also think that One of the things I learned over the years is you got to focus on keeping
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  your customers.
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  Keeping your customers is far less expensive than going out here and getting new ones.
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  I've always known about the power of branding and messaging because I I am a journalist and
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  communication person and marketing expert by background.
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  But I think it's deeper than that.
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  I think it's about pricing, and it's about positioning before it's even about pricing.
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  It's like, who do you wanna be?
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  Are you the luxury provider?
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  Are you the middle of the road provider?
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  Or are you the the low cost volume provider?
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  All of those business models make money.
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  You just have to figure out which one you're gonna be.
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  And sometimes you have to change.
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  Sometimes you were the volume provider.
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  Now you wanna be the luxury provider.
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  That's okay, but you have to be intentional.
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  You can't be a little bit in.
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  You always have to be all in.
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  And I think the other thing is that my faith has always carried me through.
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  There's a many, many years I worried myself to death about this business.
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  I wore out the carpet my bedroom worrying about this business.
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  I gave myself as it reflects in in irritable bowel syndrome worrying about this business.
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  And what I will tell you is that my life got so much better when I really, really relied on my
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  faith.
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  And stop leading with worry instead leading with faith.
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  And I will tell you that every time I get worried about something or worry about a check,
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  I swear to you check shows up or an opportunity shows up.
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  And so what I just wanna encourage you is that you don't get to 24 years by yourself.
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  You get to 24 years by learning the lesson the first time so you don't have to learn it again.
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  There's plenty of ways to be a fool about money.
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  There's plenty of ways to be used in business.
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  But the thing you wanna always be is of service.
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  You always wanna be helpful.
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  Don't lose sight of your customers, and don't forget about your employees.
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  They are the front line.
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  They are who interfaces with your customer.
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  And if you're good to them, they'll be good to your customer.
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  If you nickel dine them.
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  They're gonna nickel and dime your customers and just be open.
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  You know, be a reader, readers, or leaders, and just be willing to work on your leadership as
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  much as you're willing to work on your negotiating skills and pricing skills.
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  And if you do that, you'll be in business for way longer than me.
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  Alright.
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  This is Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady.
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  I wanna leave you with this.
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  You never lose in business, either you win or you learn.
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  I wish you all well.
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  Thanks for listening to the small biz chat podcast with Melinda Emerson, some scribe to
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  this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday for more fantastic
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  information and interviews.
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  You can find more sources and small business success strategies by visiting Melinda's
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  website succeed as your own boss.com.
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  Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.