MBA2374 How To Drastically Improve Your Business in 1 Hour

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show because a better business begins with you. That's why we deliver practical business lessons that you can use to create the business of your dreams. 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 in today's episode, you will learn how to drastically improve your business in one hour. Yep, you heard that correctly. I'm going to give you an exercise that you can do that's going to take you about an hour to complete. And after that hour, you're going to feel empowered, informed, and ready to drastically improve your business.

0:49This exercise will work whether you've been in business for a month, a year, 10 years. It doesn't really matter. But it does require you to be 100 % honest with yourself. I'm going to walk you through this exercise step by step, give you real examples of how to implement this exercise and what it's going to do for your business afterwards. words. If you're driving or you can't actually do the exercise right now, don't worry. Listen through right now. Get your head around this concept, the exercise, and then listen back again when you have a paper and pen handy. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

1:23So this is actually a pretty big promise. Drastically improve your business in one hour. But I wouldn't make this promise if I couldn't fulfill it. I've done this exercise over and over in my business, and it's helped me tremendously throughout the years in several different types of businesses. So let's jump into that exercise right now. You're going to have a piece of paper or maybe a few pieces of paper, like a notebook and a pen. And it starts with one question that you need to answer honestly. And we're going to break down the answer to this question and break down how to answer this question in today's lesson.

1:58Here's a question. If you bought your own business today, what would you change? If you were going to buy your business, what are the first things that you would implement, change, improve? And it's important to ask this question from this perspective because you want to be objective. Most of us have poured our hearts and souls, have cried over our business. But now it's time to be clinical. Now it's time for us to be objective about our business. And let's say we bought our business. As a new owner of this business, what would you do differently? And we're going to focus on five areas. What would you change?

2:35What would you do differently? How would you improve these five areas? And those five areas are finance, marketing and sales. So number two is marketing and sales. Three is product. Four is operations. And five is team. Let's get into the details of each one. Let's start with finance. I like to start with finance because money is oxygen to every business. Without it, you cannot survive. You can survive with bad marketing, with even a bad product that can improve over time. You can improve your team. You can improve your operations. But if you don't have the money to pay the bills, it's impossible for you to sustain this business.

3:10Beyond that, if you don't have your finances right, if you don't spend on the right things, if you don't invest in the right things, your business will not grow. It will not serve you. So look at your business right now. You're about to buy this business. How would you do things differently when it comes to the finances? What costs would you cut? What areas would you reinvest in, spend more money on? How much money and where? Where are some ways you can consolidate or save some money? Would you raise capital? Would you get investors? Would you leverage the asset to get a loan? What would you do from a finance point of view if you bought your business?

3:45If you're about to buy this business, What are the things that you would change as soon as you bought it? What are some of the finance decisions that you can make immediately that can have an impact on this business you're about to buy in the first few weeks, in the first month, in the first year? Start thinking like an investor. Start thinking like somebody who's buying a fixer-upper house and is looking to improve the state of it. What would you do to make sure that your profit margins are bigger, that your retention was higher, that you lower your cost per acquisition? Look at all the areas in finance in your business that you would improve.

4:19Be brutally honest as if this isn't your business. This is a business you're thinking about buying. You're about to buy this business right now, and you have to have a game plan to turn it around, to make it better, to make it a monster in the marketplace. Number two, marketing and sales. Take a look at the business. What would you continue doing when it comes to marketing and sales? What would you double down on? What are some things you just stopped doing altogether? Are there different markets you'd go into? different regions, different demographics, different niches you would actually try to get involved in?

4:50What about your sales process? How can you improve that? Would you make some hires in the sales department? Would you automate sales through product-led growth? Would you get the customer service team to get involved in sales and get them to upsell existing customers products and services that they can use and need? How would you acquire customers in new ways? Would you go into digital marketing ads like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and TikTok? What about Google ads? What about SEO? What are ways that you would improve in that area? Write down a laundry list for each of these, finance and marketing and sales, and force yourself to just dump all the ideas that you can come up with as if you're buying this business.

5:30Be brutally honest. You have an hour. Do it. Don't shortchange yourself and just do this for 15 minutes. Do it for 60 minutes. Come on, go all in. You'll be surprised how much incredible information you're going to get out of yourself and how much inspiration you're going to furnish for yourself for the months to come. Number three, the product. Whatever you're providing customers, a service, a physical product, a software, coaching, courses, content, it doesn't matter. What are you giving customers? What's your product and how would you improve it? Are there areas in your product that just need to just completely be cut off, need to be let go, Kill those darlings, as they say in the startup world.

6:13There are going to be things about your product that many people don't really care about and they're just bloating your product. What are some areas that just need improvement and just some small improvements can make a drastic difference? Maybe your product is ripe for some upsells, some expansion revenue, some other side features products that you can sell to existing customers. How can you improve the delivery of your product, the experience of buying the product. Go ahead and buy something from the store, from the website you're about to buy, your own website, right? And have that critical eye.

6:45What would you change? What would you improve? Do an audit. You're going to absolutely love this process because you're going to come up with great ideas to implement immediately. Take a look at what products sell the best. Take a look at the services that actually don't move the needle and are duds. Are they worth the effort and the energy of sustaining and having on the website and supporting? If you have a physical product, how are you packaging it? How are you delivering it? Are there areas you can improve? Be critical. All right, we talked about the finances of the business. We talked about the marketing sales, talked about the product.

7:19Let's get into operations. How is the business running? Is it a well-oiled machine? Are there standard operating procedures for everything? Is there a manual, a guidebook for everything? Is it well-documented? What about the HR department? Is there clear protocols and procedures for HR matters like taking leave and evaluations? If you opened up your business to the public and showed them your operations, would you be embarrassed or would you be proud? If you're not proud, what would you change? Change it. Make it a priority. Put it on your list of things you have to get done. How are you communicating with the team and making sure everybody's on task and being held accountable?

7:57We talked about team evaluations. How are they being evaluated? What do those evaluation forms look like? Are they improving? Are they not improving? What areas in the operations of your business can you just flat out be better at? How can you be more efficient, time efficient, money efficient? What about training your team? Is there a system for team members to be trained, to improve, to follow instructions? Operations is basically the playbook for your business. What improvements would you make? And lastly, your team. This is usually the toughest part because you got to be honest. One of the exercises my coach, my mentor, Dan Martel, once taught me was, imagine you had to fire everybody on your team.

8:39You just had to. It was just mandatory. Who would you rehire in a month's time? That's a clear indication of who actually adds value to your company that you can't do without and who really doesn't. Take a look at your team members. Are there members with potential, but they're just not contributing enough? They need a little bit of training, a little mentorship. Is there any ways you can invest in your team members so they can get better, whether it's online programs or courses or a conference, maybe something in a local area. Even just a book can change things around. Are there hires that you would make that are new, positions that need to be filled?

9:12Are there whole departments that are being neglected that you haven't even started? What areas of your business would you expand in? Would you make more hires in, let's say, engineering or product or customer service? Where does a company need more talent? Where will you get that talent? Where are you going to find them? What caliber of talent you're looking for? Fresh graduates that you can train and help develop? Or senior people that are going to hit the ground running and be worth 10 people? Get honest, get critical. Five areas in your business. If you were to buy your business today, what would you change?

9:45What would you implement right away when it comes to finance, marketing and sales, product, operations, and team? In one hour, you're going to have a plethora of ideas to improve your business drastically. You're going to have a list of to-dos. Your job is now to prioritize these to-dos, to put them in order, to plug them into your calendar so you can work on them. And before you know it, day in and day out, your business is going to start to transform because you are doing the mission critical things to make it a much better organization. Because you're honest, because you're objective, because you went through this one hour exercise that can drastically turn things around for you.

10:23I can't tell you how much of a favor this exercise was for me. It saved me a lot of agony and heartache before it happened, before things got worse. I caught it, it got better because I made those changes. Thanks so much for listening to The$100 MBA Show. Hope today's episode was helpful. If you enjoyed it, let us know in a rating and review. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app. That way you never miss an episode. Before I go, I wanna leave you with this. No one's coming to save your business. okay no one's going to come and tell you what to do you have to tell yourself what to do you have to be the leader of your own business exercises like this remind you that you got to hold yourself accountable because your business needs you at your best your business needs you to be critical your business needs you to be honest so that you can be the best business possible thanks so much for listening and i'll check you in wednesday's episode i'll see you then take care

11:24Thank you.