MBA2561 Q&A Wednesday: I'm Struggling With Making Enough Money To Keep Going. What Should I Do?

0:05In today's episode, we answer a question that comes from Tammer that asks, I'm struggling with making enough money to keep my business going. What should I do? Here's the truth. If you don't solve the money problem in your business right now, your business simply won't survive. The issue that a lot of people have with this problem is that they say to themselves, I'm doing everything. I'm working hard. I'm doing long hours. This thing is just not working. Well, I'm here to tell you that it's not about working hard. Okay. It's about what you focus on. And it's mostly about some really tough decisions you're delaying, decisions about the numbers of your business.

0:42We're going to break it down in today's lesson and make sure we do everything we can possible to salvage the business and get you to a place where you love it again, where you feel like it's worth your time and effort. Tamara, first off, thanks so much for submitting this question for today's Q &A Wednesday episode. If you have a question you want to ask, just like Tamara just did, go ahead and submit it over at 100mba.net slash Q. Tamara, first off, you're not alone. This is very common for many entrepreneurs to struggle with, right? This idea of where you're working super hard, but you could barely make enough to make it worth it, right?

1:16Your profits are just not there. The good news is that there are specific steps you could take to get your business back on track financially. I know this because I've been through this more than once. And I wanna just say, first off, this is not fun. I know how it feels. It's horrible, right? Because you feel like you exchanged your job for a worse job, right? A job that makes you work twice as hard with three times as much stress with less freedom because you're tied down to making sure that this business stays afloat. But don't worry. I'm going to give you some exercises to do right now so that you can get back on track and start making the money that you deserve in your business so that you can start to feel like it's worth your time, worth your effort and feel re-energized.

2:04Here's the bottom line. If your business is not rewarding you financially, it's just not going to be sustainable. That's it, period, right? If you are sustaining financial blow after blow after blow, it's not feasible for you to actually continue to do that for very long. Okay. So you have to understand that it's not just about fulfillment. It's not about the purpose or the goal or the impact you're making. you still have to make it worth your time financially. Otherwise, you and your family are just not gonna do it for very long, okay? So we gotta get the financial piece of your business sorted so that you are actually taking home enough cash to make it worth your while.

2:41You're taking home enough profit so that you can reinvest into your business and grow properly, and you're focusing on the right things. So I'm gonna walk you through the steps. I'm gonna share some stories from my own experience, what worked for me, hopefully that would inform you and your path so that way you can get out of this difficult situation. Step one, you wanna understand the truth about where you are, right? You can't fix what you don't fully understand. Many entrepreneurs avoid looking at their numbers because it feels overwhelming, depressing, whatever you wanna call it, but knowing exactly where you stand financially is the first step of solving the problem.

3:19So it's time for you to open up your books, your P &L sheet, your finances. is if you need some help from your bookkeeper or an accountant or whatever, get some help. It's not going to take long. I remember when I did this, I thought this was going to take days. It actually took just a few hours for me to understand where I'm actually at. And really, what you're looking at are three basic things, your expenses, the revenue you're making, and your profit margin, how much money you're keeping. Now, I must warn you, this is going to be uncomfortable, but you just got to do it, right? Once you do this, actually, you start to feel energized and liberated because you have the truth and now you know what you have to do.

3:55You know exactly where the problem lies. And I'm gonna walk you through how to identify where the problem is so that you can get on track. So the first action step is to review your finances today. Look at your revenue, look at your expenses, look at your profit, identify where the money is going and where you can cut back or reinvest strategically, okay? So we're gonna talk about expenses in a moment and where you can cut and not sacrifice too much, right? And where you can spend and really make money. But as a first step, open up your books, get your finances order so you know exactly how much you're spending, how much you're making, and what the profit margin is.

4:34By the way, if you don't have a system for this, you don't have a spreadsheet for this, you could use my template, my P &L template that gives you everything with the formulas baked in. Just go to 100mba.net slash templates and you can download all our templates there. It's absolutely free. And I provide it because I know how important it is. And I want to make sure your path to success is easier. Step number two, you want to focus on the most profitable activities while cutting the things that you absolutely do not need. Okay. This is two prong. Number one, we're going to look at what actually brings in money and what is something that I can kind of cut out even just temporarily because it doesn't actually directly impact my sales.

5:17And this lens, this criteria is going to allow you to know what to cut so that you have some breathing room. I'm going to give you an example of what I did when I was in this situation. I looked at my P &L. I looked at my expenses. I first started with what are the things that if I just removed today, wouldn't really impact my business, wouldn't really impact me being able to get more customers, being able to provide or serve my current customers. And I realized I was overstaffed. I actually was paying payroll for a team that was for a business much bigger than mine. Like, I don't really need all these expenses on my book.

5:56It's great to have it if I was, you know, to build for the future, but I'm not. I was a bootstrap business. I didn't have unlimited funds to just be in the negative. So I got brutal with my expenses. And it was tough because that means cutting staff, people that I work with, people I enjoy spending time with. Right. But I had to get real, like either the business is going to survive or these people are going to have a job. So I had to do what's right for my customers, for my business, for the people that will going to stick around after these cuts. So I cut so many expenses, including tools, including a software, including people that are on the payroll.

6:31And I was able to get my expenses down by something like 65 % that automatically shot up my profit margin and allowed me to have some breathing room and be able to pay myself a reasonable salary, be able to reinvest in other things in the business that matter. And that's where the second part of this is focusing on the most profitable parts of your business. What are some of the areas in your business that if you don't get this right, you don't make money? Okay. So for example, with my software company, Webinar Ninja, there are some areas I just couldn't sacrifice, right? Like marketing and sales.

7:06These are things that bring in customers. Every time I spend money on this, I make money. These are the things you don't want to go backwards on or cut out. You want to actually double down on. You want to cut somewhere else and reinvest there because the business doesn't get new customers without it. For you, you might find that you can cut back on product development. Maybe your product is good as it is. It just needs to be sold right now and you can cut back temporarily on product development. Maybe you can cut back on some leadership. Maybe you don't need that many leaders in your business right now.

7:37You can go a little leaner and cut out some high salaries. I know even businesses that cut out their customer service software like Intercom or Zendesk or whatever they choose to use because it was getting expensive. It was like thousands of dollars a month. And by saving that, they can have a little bit of buffer or spend it on marketing. And they just stop offering chat support to their customers. They just said, hey, we're only doing email support. And they just use Gmail like the business Gmail, right? The G Suite email with the company domain. But the point here is that they just did email support via Gmail for free, or at least for a very low cost each month versus thousands of dollars.

8:17So this kind of lens you're looking at. What makes me money? What can I just stop doing even temporarily so that I can get back on track? Don't forget to take a close look at what's working in your business, right? What's actually helping you get more customers? Why don't we just put more fuel to that fire? So analyze your business right now. What is making you money? What is not making you money directly? What can you cut temporarily? What can you cut even permanently? What are some things that you can kind of cut out in terms of software or personnel or even departments altogether? Listen, let's just take a time out for a second, okay?

8:53This might seem a little bit drastic, but your business is going to die if you don't take immediate action. You need to take drastic action, right? cutting things out that you don't need, and almost like getting really scrappy again, like a very, very small startup. If you can get some relief financially by you just doing everything, you can do it. No one's stopping you from doing this. Actually, I know a very successful entrepreneur, Sal Lavinga, who is the founder of Gumroad, a huge company that helps people sell their products and services online. He got to a point in his company where he had to let go of everybody, and he did everything, support, marketing, everything.

9:30And it was, you know, a certain period of time, but then he started hiring again when he could afford it. Step three, simplify your sales process. If it's hard for your customers to buy from you, they won't. Period. Simplify your sales funnel and marketing so that your offer is crystal clear. You pay me X, I will give you X. This is exactly what people are looking for. If it's clear to them, oh, this is what the after picture looks like. This is what my life is like after I buy your product or service. Then I am totally clear on what I'm paying for, right? That's appealing to me. I'm willing to pay for it.

10:06But if it's muddy and they don't really understand what they're buying or what you're offering, they're going to leave your website as quickly as possible because they have a lot to do in their life. They have a lot of distractions, a lot of demands. They're not going to try to figure it out. You got to make it super simple for them to understand. One of my favorite quotes of all time when it comes to marketing and sales is a confused mind never buys. When I streamlined the checkout process for Webinar Ninja, sales went up overnight. Customers didn't need to jump through hoops. They were clear on which plan is right for them, what they needed, what they're getting with this plan, and they're able to sign up within seconds and get started.

10:42I needed them to get inside my product so they can get value as soon as possible so they can feel like, yes, this was the right decision. So unless you're selling super high ticket offers,$10 ,000,$20 ,000 deals, you don't Don't need to make it super hard for them to like get on a call with you or, you know, go through a presentation. Make it easy for them to get started. Make it easy for them to buy, to make the decision, right? If they're on your website, make it simple. So as an extra step, review your sales process. Is your offer easy to understand? Can customers purchase quickly without any confusion?

11:18Simplify where possible. Cut out steps that are not required. Do you need all that information from them when they're checking out? or can you get the basics, the bare minimum, and then get it later once you're a customer? These are the things I'm talking about in terms of simplifying the process. Step four, resist the temptation for a quick cash injection. This one is a tough one. You got to really be disciplined, but it's tempting to run a massive sale or discount and bring in quick cash, but it can hurt your margins and really set a precedent that devalues your product for the future. Now, the whole point of reason why we opened up our books, figured out what's working, what's not, did the cuts that we had to do is so that we have some breathing room.

12:04So we have some sustainable numbers to work with and make sure that we are making enough money to do things with a level head. We wanna make clear decisions about our business financially. So instead of focusing on like, how can I just get through the end of the month? That's what the cutting was for, okay? we're going to focus on sustainable revenue streams. Things like going up market, like getting bigger customers, introducing annual or two-year plans. You want a really strong user base that's going to serve you and provide you revenue, not just today, not tomorrow, for years to come. When I felt financial pressure, my knee-jerk reaction was, let's run a big sale, let's run a big offer and get some customers in.

12:45And that way we don't have to worry about this financial pressure right now. But then I took a deep breath and I said, no, if I have financial pressure, there's something wrong with the business model. There's something wrong with my finances. I need to cut out some things. I need to reinvest in things that are actually bringing in money. That's where we fix the problem, not through a sale that's just going to bandaid the solution temporarily. This helped me build a better business. Trust me, I've been there. I made that mistake where I would just rush to make a sale, make some sort of offer and bring in an influx of customers and what feel good and solve the problem temporarily.

13:20But the problem still existed. I was spending too much on things that didn't bring in customers and I'd find myself in the same place in a matter of months. So as an action, instead of thinking of doing some sort of flash sale or some sort of like clearance, think about ways you can make revenue predictably consistently, right? Say, for example, you're in e-commerce and you sell, you know, t-shirts, for example. And I've seen this with the brand true classic, they do this and they want to increase sales, right? One of the things you could do is do some sort of membership like Amazon prime where people get free shipping with a part of that membership.

13:55You know, they pay an annual fee and that's predictable revenue every single year or every single month. They're adding more value to the customer. They're getting them to come back. Could you offer something like that or a premium service or some sort of product that adds on to your existing product or service, increasing the lifetime value for each customer. Focus on sustainable ways to get more revenue, not short-term fixes. Step number five, ask for feedback from your best customers. Go take a look at the customers that use your product or service the most, that spend the most money with you.

14:29You can look at this in your dashboard if you use a payment processor like Stripe. And your loyal customers can provide really good insights into what they value most about your business, what they value most about your product or service. and you can learn how you could serve them better. Find out what other problems they have that you can solve for a fee, of course. For example, at Webinar Ninja, I reached out to our top customers and asked them, what are you using our software for? What's your business model? How are you leveraging this software? And I learned that they were doing coaching calls.

14:59I learned that they were doing live cohorted courses. And I thought, oh, that's great. And we learned how to create a great product for them called Course Ninja that allowed them to sell live coaching and courses. And it was an add-on product that we created with Webinar Ninja. And it allowed us to increase our revenue on something that I know customers need because I spoke to them and they told me. So as an action step, reach out this month to five to 10 of your best customers and ask them what they love about your business, your product, your service. Ask them what you can improve and ask them, what are some other areas of your business that you wish there were solutions for?

15:36And then you can come up with a strategy of how to deliver that solution. Step six, and our final step, commit to consistent marketing. This matters more than you think, but if people don't know about your product, they can't buy it, right? Marketing isn't a one-time effort. It isn't a thing that we do once and we forget about it. It's a consistent habit. Regular high-quality marketing builds a pipeline of customers you need to keep your business running, right? Just because you have a certain number of customers doesn't mean they're gonna last forever. They're gonna churn out. They're going to leave you, right?

16:08And you need to make sure that you have as many and more customers coming in. And that's where marketing is so important. I committed to consistent marketing to this day. I run as many ads as possible to promote our podcast, to promote our email list, to promote our program, the$100 MBA. And I run free trainings. I run live calls so that I can tell people what we're all about, tell them the value that we offer. And a lot of people get bored of this. They're like, oh, I've already said this, but you're saying something to new people. OK, they haven't heard this message yet and they need to hear it so that they can understand the value you're offering.

16:46One of the best things I learned from public speaking training is that you want to work on a talk like a keynote and you want to deliver it to more and more people, new audiences. And that's how you got to see your marketing is that, hey, I have a message about my business, the value I offer. And I need to just say that over and over and over the value prop of what I offer to more and more people, new people, people that haven't heard it yet. Right. And by the way, people need to hear it more than once for them to fully understand it and to remember it. So as an action step, choose a marketing channel, whether it's email or social media or ads and commit consistently of marketing, talking about your business, the value offer for the next 30 days.

17:29See what happens. Okay. See if you get more traffic to your website, right? See if you get more customers, see if you get more leads. Does it make any difference purely on just brand awareness? I have found that just doing consistent marketing allows your business to grow. Tamar, thanks so much for asking today's Q &A Wednesday's question. Struggling to make enough money is not easy. I know where you are coming from. I've been there more than once, but it's solvable, right? Basically today's episode, I'm going to just sum it up for you, is all about making some hard decisions. You're going to sit down and you're going to commit and say, I'm going to make some decisions and I'm going to make it happen.

18:07And I'm not going to leave this room or, you know, I'm not going to today go by without putting a line on the sand. What am I going to cut out? How am I going to focus on things that are going to bring in money, right? Think about all the action items I talked about today, simplifying your sales process, resisting the temptation for a quick cash grab, right? But do something that's going to actually build your margins for the long term, cutting out unnecessary expenses, gathering feedback from your customers, staying consistent with your marketing, right? These are decisions you need to stick to and you got to make.

18:38And that means, hey, this week, I'm going to have to have some talks with people on my team that I'm going to let go. I'm going to have some talks about cutting services that I don't need anymore. I'm going to have to cancel some things. I'm going to have to start spending money on here and make these decisions and follow through. You're going to feel so much better just by writing this down and taking a few steps forward in implementing those decisions. Thanks for tuning into the$100 MBA show, Tamar. I hope this episode gave you clarity and the tools to turn things around for your business. And if you're listening and you have a question, if you're struggling with anything, I'm here for you.

19:13This is why I do this is I want to help people have a better journey towards success and entrepreneurship than I had. I had a very difficult time. I learned the hard way. You don't have to. You can learn from my experiences. And the best way to continue to learn from my experiences is to subscribe to the show. Hit subscribe on whatever you use to listen to this podcast or watch this podcast, whether it's YouTube or Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever you'd like. Hit subscribe. You'll get the next episode automatically. Thanks so much. And I'll check you in the next episode.