MBA2368 Must Read: Business Made Simple by Donald Miller

0:08Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, business insights you can count on with practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014. And today's episode is a must-read episode. On our must-read episodes, I share with you a book that has impacted me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways, its insights, and why you should read it too. Today's must-read is Business Made Simple by Donald Miller. Business Made Simple is a practical guide that distills essential business concepts into actual steps.

0:45Kind of like this podcast. This book is kind of like a blueprint for entrepreneurs and business leaders. It's designed to create a clear strategy and build a successful business. And I'm going to tell you all about it in today's episode. This is one of those books that are great for those who are getting started in business, but also a great refresher and reminder for those who've been around the block for a few years or more like me. I love reading these kinds of books because I love the fundamentals in anything, whether it's in business or human psychology or basketball for that matter. The fundamentals never get old.

1:17In fact, the more you know them, the more you get better at them, the easier life becomes. So let's take a deep dive into this book and find out how it can help us as seasoned entrepreneurs, as well as those who are just getting started. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's must read, Business Made Simple by Donald Miller, is a great book for those who are looking to start a business, grow their business, or even refine their business. What I love about this book is that it's actionable, it's practical, and it's really accessible. It's low on the jargon and very high on the knowledge nuggets.

1:51I really love Donald Miller's conversational style in this book. He writes in this really approachable way, as if he's talking straight to you. He offers real-world examples to make the complex concepts he's explaining a little bit more attainable. One of the things he starts out with in this book is the importance of having clear messaging. And he actually thinks it's a good way to start a business or kind of flesh out a business idea. He says you should craft a compelling and customer-centric message. That message should resonate with your audience. This is kind of like your battle cry. This is like your slogan.

2:29What do you stand for? What's that message that your business is going to be about? For example, if you sell low-cost goods, maybe your slogan is, why pay more? Or maybe you're a luxury item like Porsche, who's famous for their little quote of, life is too short to drive anything else. What's the clear, compelling message that your business is all about? Your product, your service, whatever you're going to be offering, what is the core value that's behind that business that you can rally behind? For us at Webinar Ninja, it's share what you know and grow, encouraging our audience to share their knowledge and earn a living in the process.

3:07He then says, once you have that messaging, it makes your marketing a whole lot easier. He says, when you use your clear message as a foundation for your marketing strategies, that will attract and retain the customers you want. I can't agree more. When it comes to marketing, you got to be super clear. There's got to be no confusion. They shouldn't struggle to get your message or to understand what you're trying to say. There's an old saying in sales that says, a confused mind never buys. One of the chapters he really goes deep in is when it comes to leadership and delegation. One of the hardest things that new entrepreneurs struggle with is the idea of delegation, is the understanding that you're not supposed to be doing all the work.

3:44You should be finding great talent that can do the work better than you, or at least good enough so that it'll free you up to do the stuff that brings in the money. That's the leverage of labor. The thing is that you never really practice it in a job. Most people are not delegating to anybody else. They're just doing the best job they can so they can get promoted or get recognized. Delegation is very, very seldomly done in the office. Now, obviously, if you're a leader, you're a manager, you might be delegating. But even so, I've been a manager for years when I was in teaching. And delegation is just not encouraged.

4:17It's not in the culture. But what I like about Donald Miller's approach to delegation is seeing it as a way to cultivate a strong team. As a leader, you should be the servant to your flock, to your team members, to your group. Now, how do you serve them? You don't serve them by doing the work for them. No, that's not serving them. You serve them by building their skills, by giving them things to let them grow, to expand their horizons. And by delegating and training them and giving them autonomy to build upon those skills through the tasks you're giving them, they become better for it. Another important point he makes in the book is the importance of strategic planning.

4:57You need to develop a clear business plan that outlines the vision, mission, and goals of your business. Now, a lot of people kind of get confused about this. What's my vision? What's my mission? What's my goals? And let me simplify for you and kind of distill what Donald was describing in the book. This is a task you're going to do kind of once, where you're going to build down your vision, your mission, and your goals, and they're going to revisit them from time to time. The most important thing here is that you refer to them constantly, that this becomes kind of the rulebook, the mantra for you and your team members.

5:28Your vision is usually something really big, something grand. For example, Tesla's mission is to have people around the world lower their dependency on fossil fuels, and that's why they create electric cars. It's a big vision, right? You may or may not reach the vision, but it's important to have a big vision so you have something big to aspire to as a team. Your mission is like, what is your purpose? What are you trying to do? When you get up in the morning every day, what are you going to work for? For us at Webinar Ninja, our mission is to make it as easy as possible for our customers to share what they know with our software.

6:03And then lastly, what are your goals? What are your goals this quarter, this year, in three years, in five years, in 10 years? Where do you want to be? Whether it's financial goals, whether it's user-based goals, whether it's impact goals, these should be things that are clear to you and the rest of your team. Here's a big one, productivity. He dives into this topic in one of the chapters and he stresses the importance of time management. Now, there are a few things in this part of the book that I kind of disagree with, but there is one part I do agree with and that's streamlining the processes in your business.

6:38This will increase your productivity and your efficiency big time. For example, when I record this podcast, I don't record a podcast episode a day. I try to batch as many episodes as possible because I'm in this mode of creating content. And by doing so, not only do I become more productive, I become more efficient, and it makes things a whole lot easier for myself and everybody else on the team. Having a process for everything you do that's documented, anybody can refer to, really helps. And that's called an SOP, a standard operating procedure. Have it in every task, every aspect of your business.

7:11In Business Made Simple, Donald Miller attacks the big pain in my rear end, and that's meetings. I don't really enjoy meetings. And that's why he talks about how it's important to have effective meetings. Over the last 20 years of me doing business, I have experimented in so many different ways in running meetings. And I basically have come to terms with what I have to do. And I try to be as productive and as effective as possible in all my meetings. So that way, I don't have to do as many as I would have to otherwise. If they weren't effective, if they weren't productive. He says conduct effective and purpose-driven meetings that lead to actionable outcomes, meaning you are going to meet so you can decide things.

7:50And then once you make decisions, you have action items for everybody that's in the meeting to do. And by applying this, this makes your life so much easier because you're meeting to make decisions, not to do work. In my experience, I have found that short regular meetings are more effective than long irregular meetings. Meaning, when I meet with our marketing team once a week, it's 20 to 30 minutes, but we do it every week, so therefore, we don't have to cover a lot. For engineering, we meet every single day for only 15 minutes. It's our daily stand-up. Because it's only 15 minutes, we can keep it short, snappy, to the point, we make some decisions, and everybody goes and takes action on their to-do items.

8:28One of my favorite chapters discusses the importance of being customer-focused. This is something that I repeat over and over and over with my team. Our boss, everybody's boss in this company is the customer. They're the number one stakeholder. They're the ones that pay our bills. Because we're a self-funded company, this is even more true, okay? So our job is to make their job easy, to make their experience amazing. We want to build long-lasting relationships like Donald Miller mentions in the book, the importance of that. Now, it doesn't mean you bend over backwards and you just do whatever customers say.

9:03The best way I like to look at it is you see your customers like you see. The best way I like to look at it is say, you're looking at your customers like you're their guardian, right? Like you're looking after them. They might say something, but you have to find out what's best for them and do that for them. Filter out their feedback and give them an experience they will never forget. I'm a big believer in listening to customers, talking to them, having customer interviews, taking surveys or giving them surveys and then offering surveys even when they cancel or when they refund or when they aren't happy with us so we can learn what to do better.

9:37We're big on that because the more you understand your customers, the better you can serve them. There's a whole lot more wisdom in this book, but I'm going to let you go ahead and explore on your own. Business Made Simple by Donald Miller is a stellar book. It's a valuable resource for anybody looking to start, grow, or even pivot their business. It's super practical. It's super actionable. And it really allows you to start thinking about how can I have a purpose-driven, effective, successful business. Thanks so much for listening to the$100 MBA show. If you haven't subscribed to the show, go ahead and do that right now.

10:09Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, whether it's Spotify or Apple podcasts, go ahead and click that button right now. That way you get our next episode automatically and get access to our archived episodes, over 2 ,300 episodes in our back catalog. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. This is a good book to have around with you. I would actually buy this book in paperback, so it can be like a reference, kind of like a textbook that you can just flip through when you need some help, some inspiration, some direction. You don't have to read it in order. You can actually read any chapter at any time to give yourself some insights and some inspiration.

10:45Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in Wednesday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

10:59We'll be right back.