MBA2483 Q&A Wednesday: What do I do when things aren't working in my business?

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, honest business strategies and advice to help you along your business journey. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenhom. And today's episode is Q &A Wednesday, where I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. Today's question is from AJ. And AJ asks, hey, Omar, what do I do when things are simply not working in my business? My online catering business has really plateaued. I used to get a lot of referral work and get a lot of business without trying, but things have slowed down and it seems like feast or famine these days.

0:51What advice can you give me? Thanks. Firstly, AJ, you are not alone. This is so common. Most businesses will experience this at some point where they don't see consistency in business. They don't see things developing like they used to. They're not getting the same level of business as they used to, but don't worry. I got your back, but there's a caveat. I will be giving you some tough love. This is not easy for me to say, but there are some things that many of us need to hear when we're in this type of position. I needed to hear this when I was in this position. The good news is that if you are open to the advice, you're going to be able to change things around.

1:27Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. A lot of people think that business is happenstance. It's chance. It's luck. It's circumstances. It's just not working right now. Don't get me wrong. There is a level of luck or element of luck in life and business. There is an element that our circumstances will contribute to our success or our failure, but it's not the only thing. It's not the deciding factor. The level and amount of control you have in business is far greater than the amount of not having control. Yes, it contributes, But the amount of control you have in your success is enormous.

2:08I want to start by saying that. Secondly, businesses is basically systems. You have to have systems that work. And one of the systems that a lot of businesses neglect is their marketing and sales. It's a system. Inputs and outputs. What do I mean by that? Well, what you're doing right now, the inputs you're doing or contributing in your business, those things are not working. How do I know? Because the output is not what you want. So if you want different results, you need to do different things. So if you're not doing much to bring in business right now, that's not working. Okay, you need to do something else.

2:47And even if it worked before, it's not reliable. You need to have a reliable system to bring in business. Think of it this way. If I were to buy a business and I'm examining all the aspects how that business runs, I want to know exactly how do you bring in customers? What do you do to bring in customers that's repeatable so that when I buy this business, I could just do the same actions and bring in customers. But if you tell me, oh, I don't actually do anything and it's just by chance how people get, you know, get to me or referrals or whatever it might be. If you don't have a hard factual system that can be repeated by anyone, then you don't have a real business or you have a very low value business.

3:27I can't really do much with your business if I decided to buy it. And that's not a fun business to be a part of because you're not in control. So what you need to kind of look at right now in your business is you need to see how would you build systems around your business if you're just kind of building your business from the ground up? Forget about what happened in the past. Forget about how you were successful before. What would a successful business have in place? Well, they would have a way to bring customers consistently, whether it's running paid ads that give them return on investment.

3:55So even if they're paying for ads, it pays for itself. And then some because they're bringing in customers or maybe they have really good SEO. So therefore, when people search on Google, they found them easily or find them easily, I should say. Or maybe you really focus on getting great reviews for your business so that you show up on Google reviews and TripAdvisor and all other kinds of review sites. Maybe you have an affiliate program. You have to have a system, OK? You can't just say, oh, I hope, you know, business comes my way today. So find a system that works for you and implement, okay?

4:28You need to do different stuff. Now, this is going to take some time to build because at first, you're not used to doing this stuff. You're not used to having a system. But once you start having a system and you start seeing the fruits of your labor, you know, this might take a few weeks, maybe even a few months to see the fruits of your labor. But once you see it, it's going to feel incredible. I remember when I started doing this and somebody gave me this advice and I broke down my system is, okay, how am I bringing in customers consistently? What can I do? What inputs can I do to bring in customers?

4:58And once I broke it down and started to build the system out and I started to actually implement the system and started getting customers, I was like, oh my God, I have an ATM. I can print cash now because I can just do these actions and customers come, they pay me money. I do the service. I do the business. I give them a product. Amazing. And guess what? You double and triple down on it. You start seeing this as a game. You start bringing things to the next level in terms of your system of bringing in customers. And by the way, what I'm talking about today is applicable to every aspect of your business.

5:27Recruitment. What is the system of bringing in great talent? What's your system for that? What's your system for reinvesting your profits into your business? What's your system for retaining great talent in your team? What's your system for improving your products and your services over time so you're competitive? Business is just a bunch of systems. And a lot of people don't talk about this because honestly, it sounds boring, but the boring stuff is what makes businesses successful. This is what people don't talk about that needs to be talked about more. And this is what I try to do on the show is that really the stuff that people don't want to talk about or do is really what makes businesses work really well.

6:06And this is why the best of the best are so few because they're willing to do the boring stuff day in and day out. They're willing to build out these systems. They're willing to kind of do the grind work that no one actually wants to do. They just want to do the fun stuff, the creative stuff. They want to talk about their business. They want to go to events. They want to go to business lunches. But the real work is sitting down and building out systems in different parts of your business and then implementing this stuff consistently over and over, doubling down on what works and not getting distracted.

6:36So to bring it back to today's question, what do I do if things are not working in my business? You need to do different things. You need to build a new system so it does work. That's level one. Once you have a system, okay, say for example, you are trying to sell an online course and you now have a system of running paid ads that go to a free opt-in that joins your email list and then you nurture them on the email list and then you invite them to a webinar and on that webinar you sell your online course. That system works for you. Let's say that every time you do that, you get customers and it's an ROI positive for the ad spend that you're spending.

7:11You have a system now. You're happy, right? Now you're making money. Now you have a reliable way to bring in customers. What do you do next? You go as hard and intense as possible in that system. You don't just rest on your laurels. You start now doubling, tripling down on the system. How can you create more ads, more different types of ads, differentiation of ads? How could you appeal to a different market, a different niche? Instead of running five ads or testing five ads, try going and testing 20 ads, 30 ads. If something works, you need to focus on it and really dedicate yourself on getting the most out of it.

7:48If you, let's say, make$100 ROI on every$50 you spend, then reinvest half of that ROI and increase your ad spend and increase your velocity at this new way of bringing customers. So step one, have a system, figure out that system, test out these systems. Once you find something that works, and that may take some time, that's okay. But once it works, now we're going to try to exploit that system as much as possible. We want to make sure we get every ounce of positive juice and benefit from that system and reinvest, reinvest up the ante. If I'm spending$4 ,000 on ad spend this month, next month, I'm going to try to go$6 ,000 and then$8 ,000 and then$12 ,000 and then$20 ,000.

8:31I'm not going to put my foot off the gas. I'm just going to continue to push down on the accelerator and do more to make sure I benefit from this system. And guess what? You can have multiple systems for the same thing. So you might get customers in one way and this ad system is working for you. But what are some other systems you can build to get customers? Why? You want a backup. You want other varieties. Maybe you want to do content creation. Maybe you want to do partnerships. That system can work for you. Refine it. Same steps. Refine it and then double down on it. Because maybe because of the forces we talked about before that can play into your business, market, luck, circumstances, the economy, whatever it is, might influence how well that thing can go on forever.

9:19You know, how well you can execute and get the benefit from that system. That might change because of those unseen uncontrollable systems. So by having a backup system, two, three, four different backup systems, I can then start to double down on that. But my advice is find one system that works, double down on it, focus on it, continue to reinvest in it. And as that's going, start a small little experiment. You don't spend a lot of money or spend a lot of time on that, knowing that you need to have variety. You need redundancy in your systems. I want to bring this home in today's episode. I get it.

9:56It's frustrating when things are not working in your business and it might feel like you're trying a lot and you're spinning your wheels. But in this situation, your job is to be sort of like a scientist and experiment. I got to do as many experimentations as possible, as quickly as possible to find what's working. So really you should be doing and not thinking as much. Yes, you need to plan, you need to strategize, but you need to start implementing on those strategies immediately so that you can get a result, see if it works. If it does, awesome. If it doesn't, move on until you find something that works.

10:28Sitting and relying on what worked before is not a strategy. If you can't reliably bring in customers and make money, make revenue, you're asking for trouble. You're asking for heartache. That's not a business that you can rely on. So get going, get working. And trust me, you'll start to feel better once you start doing things. Even if things don't work out, even your experiments fail. That's okay. But you feel like you're actually taking matters in your own hands. You're not just leaving things up to chance. AJ, thanks so much for listening and asking today's question on Q &A Wednesday. If you've got a question you want to ask, don't forget you can email me at anytime at omar at 100mba.net.

11:03If you loved today's episode, if you love our podcast and you want to help us out, if you want to support us, all you got to do is just hit follow on your favorite podcast app. That's the best way to show the algorithm that, hey, this show is great. And by doing that, you help us reach new audiences so that we can get bigger and reinvest in this podcast every single episode. So click on follow, click on subscribe, whatever it might be on Spotify or Apple podcasts. Thank you so much in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. There are levels of things not working in your business.

11:37You know, things might not just work flat out, zero output, zero results, but there's also a decline in results. You know, things are not working as well. And the same advice today apply. You need to find a system that will work better, that will work more consistently, that will actually give you the results that you need. The best businesses I've run or been involved in are the ones that just exceed your expectations, where it's like, wow, it's doing way better than I expected. And that's all due to the fact that you have a reliable system and you're implementing 100 % of your energy on implementing that system.

12:14Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care.