Shiny Objects vs. Power Tools: How to Make the Right Business Moves | 003

Hey, I'm Sharon Galluzzo, your host, and I'm so glad you're here for this podcast. How would you like to learn how to increase your sales 30% per quarter, not just once, but quarter after quarter after quarter. That's exactly how I built my award winning multiple six figure business that did just that. I am the president and CEO of profit connections, and I am your profit growth strategist. I help entrepreneurs and franchise owners create rock solid businesses with consistent sales through my position for profit programs. And more importantly than what I do is why I do it, because I believe in unleashing the full potential of entrepreneurs to create resilient, successful businesses that, in turn, make a massive positive impact in our world today. I wanted to talk about who gets into business and why, how did they even get there? And talk about a few things that come up as a business owner.

So we're going to talk about that today. So first of all, why do people start businesses? What's their what's the inspiration? So I have some statistics from guidance financial that I wanted to share with you today. 60% of people who start a business want to be their own boss. I can that relate to that very heavily. That's the reason my husband wanted to start a business. He's like, I want to be my own boss. Those were his exact words. So I know that a lot of you out there are relating to that. 47% are dissatisfied with corporate so kind of maybe similar to the other one. However, when you work for a really big company, or even if you work for a small company, there are all of those rules and regulations and systems and processes and and sometimes it feels like the direction that the company is going doesn't make any sense, or you no longer can buy into what it is that they're doing, the direction that they're taking, so they're just dissatisfied with corporate in general, and maybe with their jobs in specific. 31% are pursuing a passion. And this number surprises me, that it's so low. I would think that it would be even higher, because almost everyone that I meet is very committed to their passion. They're committed to the change that they want to see in the world. They're committed to that project that they've worked on for so long, or the invention that came out of their own brain. And they are pursuing that passion.

If that resonates with you, I get it. 21% are the lucky few who said, Hey, an opportunity presented itself to me. This just fell in my lap. How many of you have of you have heard someone say, oh, it just fell into my lap. So that's another reason that people start businesses. 23% are newly unemployed. I think that this number might even go a little bit higher, based on the way the economy is just at the moment. So they have left their job, and they have decided, instead of pursuing another job, or maybe parallel to that, they're going to start a business and do something since they have the time now, and sometimes people have the resources, especially if they've got gone through a buyout, if they've gotten a little bit of money, then they go, Okay, this is the perfect time to start that business I've always been Dreaming of, and 23% are not ready to retire, so they are left to whatever their job was of their whole career, and now they need something else to do. So I think they're clearly looking at all these statistics. People are coming to business for a lot of different reasons. However, almost all of these reasons have something in common, and that is, they have worked for someone else, and now they're starting a business, and this can be a particularly difficult transition, because when you are an employee and you work for someone else, you have a lot of structure in place. You have times you need to be at work. You have reports that you need to file. You have evaluations. You have bonuses that might be coming in. You have a lot of external structure. You have a boss looking over your shoulder. You have performance reviews. You have a lot of external structure and drivers around being an employee.

Let me tell you about Holden. Holden is amazing. He is so good at what he does, and he was so good at it that he finally just. You know, instead of working for someone else, I'm going to go out and I'm going to start my own business doing what I do the my expertise, but I'm going to do it for myself now. And so Holden works really, really hard. He comes in every day on time. He works all day long. The minute that his butt hits the seat, he is on it. He's listening for his phone to ring. He is doing everything in his business that he needs to do, and he's really, really, really good at it. He's good at what he does nobody else can compare to the quality that he has. He's even really good about having a good relationship with his customers. He's very good at customer service. However, Holden's business has plateaued. He's grown just a little bit. He's also he also goes through the feast and famine like it's he has a lot of work, and then he doesn't have any work, and he has work and he doesn't have work, and he he hasn't figured out what is missing in his business, and the challenge that Holden has in his business is that he is running his business like he was an employee. He's coming in and doing all the stuff he's supposed to do. He hasn't made that I like to call it a paradigm shift. A paradigm is whenever something completely changes, like you completely have to twist your brain around to a new way of thinking about something.

And that is one of the challenges that most people who come from another job, not from another business, owning another business, but come from the the work environment of being an employee, into owning a business, this is one of the biggest challenges that you're going to face in this arena, because nobody is checking your homework. I always say homework like you're still in school, because, as Jess loved that phrase, however, nobody's coming along going, Hey, did you file your taxes? Hey, did you take care of the credit card statements? Did you do this? Did you you have to figure it all out on your own and do everything and stay motivated and and suddenly you realize that, you know, maybe it's even easier to be an employee, because I didn't have to worry about all these things when I was an employee, I just had to show up for work. And so many people, when they start a business, they think they just have to show up for work. And unfortunately, that is not the way it works when you're the boss, and the next thing that happens, because you're trying to do everything, what you end up doing is going okay. So what do I need to do in my business? I need to make more money. I have bills to pay, to pay my vendors. I have all these things, so making more sales, that's what I need to do. I need to do that. And so they go out onto the internet, or they go to a webinar, they listen to this or that or the other thing, and they're they are invited to an experience. They're invited to purchase something that is going to make them money. And now they have a decision to make, right?

Well, sometimes we like to say in the industry that we are chasing shiny objects. We're just chasing after whatever said the right words. That's gonna that, I think, is gonna plug that hole. So whenever you are looking for ways to build your business, and absolutely 100% you need to get out there and know it, find out what you don't know. You need to get the tools that you need to have to build your business, and you need to know the way that you need to go so that you are actually building your business and not building roadblocks in your business. So what happens whenever people who are running businesses go, oh, that idea. I'm going to go do that idea without doing the things that I'm going to talk about in a minute, they're actually building roadblocks in their business. That's a shiny object. So a shiny object versus a powerful tool. That's the conversation that I want to have now, when you see something that says, hey, if you do this program or this product or this subscription or whatever, you're going to make more money. That's a That's what everyone says. It's you're going to make more money. So how, as a business owner, can you go, Okay, well, is that a shiny object that means I'm chasing after something that's possibly going to build a roadblock in my business? Or is that a power tool that's actually going to get me where I want to go? So let's break this down. Whenever you are presented with an opportunity, you will have a few questions that you need to answer.

Well, the first question you need to answer is, where are you in your business? Now I think there are. Three levels that you have in your business. Your first level is what I call foundation. That's, whenever you're sort of building everything out, we're building the foundation. We're putting the pieces in place so that we can have actually have a business that is the foundational part. People can be in foundational phase from one to however many years, however long it takes them to actually get all the pieces in place. There's no timeline for it. It really is just let's evaluate where you are in your business. Now, once you have that foundation, and a lot of times, people will have a foundation that has holes and gaps in it, and that's okay, you can still move forward from that position. So the first level that you're going to be is the foundational piece. Now the second level that you get to is, I call acceleration, which is when you are building onto your business, you're not just doing the basics, right? You are now able to add in more products, add more services, pull in different pieces of software and machinery. If you're you know, if you have a business that needs more equipment, you're going to be able, at acceleration phase, you're going to be able to pull it in a little more of those kinds of pieces. And then the third level is innovation. And at innovation, that's when you start really building, growing, scaling, changing, doing things in your business that it doesn't really look a lot like it did at Foundation, because now you're starting to actually put some spins on it and and really, you know your your your customer base. You know what they're looking for. You're innovating along with them, and you're innovating along the trajectory that you want your business to get to. So those are the three levels, foundation, acceleration, innovation.

I wanted to start here, because what I see a lot of business owners do is they might be in the foundation phase, and somebody presents them an opportunity that actually is the appropriate fit for someone who's in innovation. So the foundation people maybe will need that in a few years, and they don't need it right now, yet they listen to the presentation, they go, oh yes, it's going to make me more money. I'm going to fall Yes, that's what I need. I'm going to get that shiny object. And it's a shiny object because it's if they are not ready to implement it, what they're building into their business, of what they think they're building acceleration into their business, and they're actually building roadblocks. So you have to be cognizant in your business when you see an opportunity. Hey, Am I ready for that? Is that? Does that even fit my industry? I remember one time in our business, we went to a conference. And the the attendees at this conference were people who were very tactician, if you read, um, the E Myth revisited, you know, the tactician like they they were in doing the stuff. They were very much, you know, mechanically inclined in it. And every piece of work that they took in, took took a long time to do, took hours to do so the function of doing the work took a very long amount of time, like clock time. It really did take hours and hours to do. And everyone in this room was at a level of foundation acceleration. They were not in the innovation stage. And we had a presenter come, and he was so sweet, very wonderful man, and he was so fun. Very much. A great time. We had a really fun time with him. However, what he was promoting was the four hour work week, which is great for somebody in innovation, or someone who is in an industry where the work does not take hours, and hours like to do two jobs in this industry would have taken four hours.

So there was no way that the people in this room were ready for the four hour workwee concept. So so I you have to actually realize that if you well, if so, if all of those people in that room had said, Yes, we're going to do the four hour work week, they would have put so many roadblocks in their way because they weren't ready for that. That doesn't mean the four hour workweek will not work in that industry. It's just it will not work in that industry at that level. So whenever you're presented with an opportunity, you have to look at, where am I in my business? What's going on in my business? So. Does it and does it actually fit my business model? The second thing that you need to think about is, does it lead to your actual goals and where you are going? And you might say, Well, yeah, I want to make more business however, it's actually a little bit deeper than that, and that's why I think that it's so important that along the way in building our businesses, you you're listening to podcasts, you're getting mentors, you're getting coaches, you're taking classes, you're learning what you don't know. A huge part of what I do with my clients is help you learn how to run a business like a business. And frankly, when you come from the from corporate, or from an being an employee to running to being a business owner, you make that paradigm. You make that shift. It's a lot. It takes a lot to learn how to be a business owner and get all of those foundational pieces in place so that you can actually be successful in owning the business. So one of the pieces that's really important in learning to run a business is learning what your goals are.

What are your actual goals? You really need to work with somebody and get down to the nitty gritty of exactly where you want to go. Why do you want to go there? How are we going to make that happen? So you really need to be thinking about, when you you see this thing, make more money with this product, does it fit in with your goals and where you're actually going with your product, with your business? So if, for example, if it's a product that helps you milk a cow faster, and you are in you were in website design, that's obviously not a fit. However, there are a lot of times where that's not so obvious, so be real. Get really clear about your goals of where you're going and how you want to get there and make sure that you have reached the level that you need to be in. I was in a program one time, and the person in the program recommended a software package that I absolutely was not ready for, and so I bought it based on what this person told me, and it was a lot of roadblocks. It was financial roadblocks, it was emotional roadblocks, it was technical roadblocks. It just was not it was not the right time for that kind of a purchase. It was for a lot of other people. I just wasn't there yet, so you have to watch out for that. And I want you to think about your goals.

One of the things that we do whenever we work with our clients is that we get really, really clear on those goals, so that we know where is it that you actually want to go? And now we're going to map a way to get there. We're going to get you out of the maze. If you listen to the earlier podcast about the maze, you can listen to episode number two about the maze if you would like to hear that. So the cool thing about the way we work with our clients is that no matter where you are in the process, whether you're at foundation phase, acceleration phase or innovation phase, everything that we do will be appropriate for whatever level you are in. In your business, we teach you how to run your business like a business, and at any level, those things change and shift a little bit. So the foundational pieces that you put in whenever you begin, when you hit that next phase, that acceleration phase, you're going to need to switch some things up, right? You're going to need to make some adjustments, because now your business is working at a different level. And then when you get to innovation, there are going to be foundational pieces again, that need to shift and adjust. So everything that we do can you can apply at no matter what level you're at in your business. So that's the cool thing about the way we work with our clients and the let me tell you what my formula for a profitable business is. It's optimized systems times magnetic sales times energized purpose. So we want to take care of the pieces in your business that are your business, mechanical running pieces, the the systems, processes that you need to have in place, SOPs, all that kind of stuff. We want to get that that down pat, and then we're going to work on the strategy about what you want to do and how you how you're going to get there. That's why we talked about, you know, what are your goals and how? How do you run? Want to run your business?

That's all very important, because it's customized to what you want in your business. And then we talk about sales. How do. You actually have magnetic sales. How can you put things in process so that you are attracting those sales into your business? And then the final piece is energized purpose, and that is the piece that I think is so critical, because it actually focuses on you, the business owner. Because, let's face it, it is not easy to be a business owner. We think we want it to be, and yet there are, there's still a lot of work around it. And so we need to take care of you. We need to help you, make sure that you stay in touch with your why, why you're doing it, what that passion is. And if you've lost touch with that. Let's find it again. Let's, let's get you back in touch with the joy that you had when you started, and the purpose of doing the business and why you're actually there. So that is our that is our formula. I thought I would share that with you so you had a little bit of an idea of what I'm talking about in specific, as opposed to general, the generalizations I've been saying so far. So we really customize what we're doing around you and around your idea of success, your definition of success.

Let me tell you a story. I was doing a presentation one time, and I was talking about sales, and I was talking about the sales numbers and how you can get to this level and that level, and I was talking about higher and higher levels, and how you could do all of this in your business and have more money coming into your business. And then we had a break, and during the break, one of the business owners came up to me and she said, You know, that's really great and it's really wonderful information. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. However, that's not why I started my business. I started my business because I want to have time with my children and talk about a paradigm shift that was a real shift for me to understand that people run businesses, start businesses, have their own wise and they have their own reasons. Everyone has their own reason and their own personal definition of success. So success has to be based on you, on who you want to be, on what change you want to make in the world. So we're really cognizant about that whenever we are working with our clients, is what is it that you actually want? And let's build that path to get you there. So I did want to I would love it if you would let us know your comments, any questions about what we talked about today, questions we can answer further in the podcasts. We do have a lot of podcasts coming up. The next few podcasts are going to be interviews with experts, and I cannot wait for you to meet them. They are amazing.

So I do have a gift for you. It's going to be in our in our clubhouse, we have a profit connectors club. That's profit connectors dot, C, l, u, B, and that is the place that you're going to go to get all of your downloads from our guests, all of the tools that I'm offering, how to reach out and contact everyone that is involved with the podcast, and that is going to be your area to receive all of that information, it'll be written in the show notes. But again, it's profit connectors, because you're the profit connectors dot club, C, l, u, B, and check out that site, and we'll have a gift for you from today's podcast on how you can have a conversation about whether you want to ask more questions and find out if this is a shiny object or a Power Tool. So I highly encourage you to evaluate everything that you do when you think, oh, I want to go that direction. Is it a shiny object? Is that going to build roadblocks in your path, or is that a power tool that's going to get you there where you want to go faster, easier and with more profit? Thanks for joining us today. Join us again.