Episode 445: Core Problem #1 - Lack of Clarity

Hey everyone, well, we just came off of a 3-part series on the roadmap. Now, in the very first episode, if you go back and listen 3 weeks ago, I did an episode called Point A: Where is the Business Today? We detailed out— I'll go over that again briefly in just a little bit— but we talked about the importance of knowing your numbers. And one of the things, or one of the tools that we use underneath that, is the rule of 40. Second episode we did was on Point B. Where is your business going? Where are you today? Point A. Where are you trying to go? Point B. And then the third part of that is, well, what is your plan? What is your plan to remove the biggest problem or the unstuck in your business? Sometimes people like our Alex Maruzzi Alex Hormozi refer to that as the theory of constraints. The plan's job is to remove any barriers from taking us from where we are to where we want to be. And in point B, we specifically shared that's where your business blueprint comes in, your 3-year vision, your 1-year objectives, and your 90-day priorities. So simply put, we need point A, we We need point B, and we need a plan to get there. That forms our, our business roadmap. Now look, what is the problem that a business roadmap is solving? And so in today's episode, we're going to be talking about— this is now a new series I'm releasing on Fridays. This is the first of a 3-part series on the 3 core problems that I believe small business owners face. Now, particularly, we work with small business owners doing between $300,000 in annual revenue up to $3 million. And typically that range gets broken into two different places: one, $300,000 to $1 million, and second, $1 million to $3 million. The things that a business owner is doing at $2 million, $2.5 million, or even $3 million is not the things typically that a business owner needs to be doing at $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000. And so while it's good to have the inspiration and to be able to see what's possible, if you try to tactically do what a business owner is doing at a couple million in revenue, it is very different than a business that's doing, say, $20,000 a month in revenue. So I think the biggest thing that the roadmap solves, the biggest core problem that the Roadmap is solving that most business owners face in that $300,000 to $3 million range is simply lack of clarity. I say simply, but it's fairly profound. They have some idea of where the business is. They have some idea of where they want to take the business. They have some sort of a plan that they're executing on, but very rarely is any of that documented? Is any of that shared with the team? Now, in the next 2 weeks after this episode, I'm going to be talking about the next 2 core problems that we typically see. Now, let me take you back just a little bit. I think that every business fundamentally is solving some sort of a problem. When I did the work on this, uh, back a couple months ago, I started to do some messaging work within our business, and I came up with a document called Pains and Problems. And this Pains and Problems document, when printed out, is about 8 pages long. It's 8 pages long, and it talks about all kinds of things. In fact, I'll just kind of rattle off some of those to you. A few examples would be business owners are overworked and they're overwhelmed. They're exhausted, they're burnout. There's unpredictability in their revenue, there's unpredictability in their growth. They really don't have a marketing and sales system. There's cash flow stress, there's no financial system, financial management system in place. There's constant hiring and, but more importantly, constant turnover that's happening. So there's a lack of a recruiting and training system that's in place. They're really stuck as the doer, not really as a true CEO owner. They really haven't made that, made that shift. They're, they're really, as Michael Gerber talks about, really in the classic technician. And so that came, I used a little bit of AI, but I started to think through and actually tried to capture all, not maybe all, but as many of the business owners that really stood out that I had worked with. I went all the way back to myself. First and foremost, or what were the things that I really struggled with early on? What were some of the things I felt like I did well, but what are some of the struggles that I had? And then from there, I, and I would talk into AI for, you know, 10 or 15 minutes, and he had this long transcript. And I would go to the next business owner, I'd go to the next business owner, and I got that down to, you know, somewhere around 10, 8 to 10 problems, but I wanted to push that down even further into really how could I summarize that into 3 core problems. And so again, this week is problem number one, is they lack clarity. They lack clarity at a level that really helps them to be able to truly grow the company. And so I think that— but believe the quote is, if it's a, uh, if it's a fog in the pews, it'll be a mist. Excuse me, actually let me redo that one. Okay, sorry, Tim, gotta edit that part of it out. I believe that this quote is attributed to Pastor Andy Stanley. He says, if it's a mist in the pulpit It's a fog in the pews. And I think that is the perfect analogy for what it is we're talking about here. That's where it's just fuzzy. It's not that any of the last 3 episodes we talked about that business owners don't have any of that. I rarely see where they just have no clue where the business is. I mean, they They're business owners. They're smart, they're capable. They've likely been very, very successful in past careers, either athletically or they were working for a company and they decided to go out on their own. They decided to take that leap. So it's certainly not a lack of smarts. They're very, very smart. They have an idea, but it's misty. It's a little fuzzy at best of where the business really is today. They know some of the numbers directionally, but they don't really know them well enough as they've if they were flying their, you know, sitting in the cockpit of their business, so to speak. I think also, you know, it's similar with where they want to take the business. I mean, if you ask them, you know, what's the goal, what's the vision? I tend to not use the word goal, but where are you trying to go? I mean, they're able to usually give you an answer, whether it's, you know, I just really want to be away from where I am today, and I really want to be somewhere in the future. But, you know, if you ask, is any of that documented, written down, is it shared with the team? No, typically not. It's not. If you were to go and ask the team, it's not there. Do you actually have a written documented plan to help kind of keep you, you know, on track? I was actually doing an onboarding call with a couple of new members recently, and one of them interrupted me and said, you know, it really helps that all of doing this work is really creating discipline for me. It's really helping to keep me on— keeping me true to what it is I said I was going to do. I've heard that is oftentimes referred to as personal integrity. It's just doing what you said you're going to do for yourself. Not really even to anybody outside of you, but just having personal integrity to say, this is what I said I was going to do, I'm going to do that. I'm going to stick to that. I said we were going to— this was our, our plan, and we're going to stick to that plan until otherwise, uh, we, we need to be able to change. And I think that, that having very clear of where we are today, where we're trying to go, and our plan to make that happen, as we talked in detail the last 3 weeks, I think that, that really helps us to overcome one of the biggest core problems that I see most business owners make, and that is it's just lack of clarity. And what a better way to kind of end this episode again is with that quote from Andy Stanley. Andy Stanley: If it's a mist in the pulpit, it's a fog in the pews. I love that. I love that imagery, right? It's an imagery there. And so the next 2 weeks, we're going to be talking about a summary of the next 2 core problems that I see most small business owners facing. To be very clear, transparent, these were absolutely problems, of course, that I have faced in my own small business career. All right, so go back, listen if you didn't already to the last 3 episodes where we talked about Point A, we talked about Point B, and we talked about having a plan in place. We do these things well, we're going to have a roadmap for our business, and our roadmap for our business is helping us to overcome the core problem number 1, which is lack of clarity in our business. All right, I hope this— these series have added value in making you to be excited about next week's episode. So next week we'll pick up with core problem number 2. All right everyone, lead well and have a great week. Actually, let me redo that last part. Lead well and go be great.