When to Change Your Business Model

Business brain episode 465 for Wednesday, July 12, 2023. Greetings, folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take all kinds of different things that we find in our lives and our businesses and we put them through the Business Brain to give us a little bit more perspective to training our business brains together to keep living that charmed life. Sponsors for this episode include a new sponsor, Pearl Diver. At Pearl Diver IO. This is a cutting edge platform that provides information on the people who are visiting your website and also zinch@financingthatworks.com they're waiving their $250 application fee just for you because you're a Business Brain listener. We'll talk more in depth about both of those in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in sunny California, I'm Shannon Jean. How's it going, man?

It goes. I have adopted a new habit that I would like to share every six months, maybe year. I try to take several hours and just this is not a new habit for me and just sort of live in my head. Not, not looking at a phone, not reading a book, not watching tv, just sitting, meditating, if you want to call it that, just living in my head, you know. And I will do some meditation where I'm just like breathing or whatever, but just sort of pondering things. And it was in the midst of one of these. Recently I did this, you know, a couple weeks ago, actually over the 4th of July weekend, I had a sort of a down afternoon. I'm like, ah, it's been a while. I need to do this. And I got up, you know, as happens, my body, I had this urge, Shannon. So I went in to pee. And because I was in this mode where I wasn't looking at screens or anything.

Yeah.

I didn't bring my phone with me. And I noticed that I have developed this habit where every time I have nothing to think about, like, I'll, I'll look at my phone while I'm. While I'm in the bathroom while I'm peeing. And, and so I didn't. And I, I noticed how much I was able to just stay in my head. Those moments of what I'll call. And my apologies, folks. Urinal, I'm not apologizing for. This is great urinal inspiration. Right? It's that downtime. It's those brief little moments of downtime. We talk about the value of driving, which gets a little bit hypnotic, or showering, which gets a little bit hypnotic. And you can sometimes your mind processes, ideas and new things sort of sparkle forward. And the same thing happens when you're peeing. You know what you're doing in there. You don't need to actively think about it most of the time. And so it's this gift that you give your mind multiple times a day. Countless times a day. Well, maybe not countless, but multiple times a day. I, like, I have found. And so I've been doing this for the last, whatever week and a half that it's been. And it's such, it's been such a. Like I said, it's truly a gift. So I share this if, if it's a practice anybody else out there wants to adopt. But, but the idea of just not looking at your phone all the time and breaking the habits of, oh, I, you know, I'm going to go pee. So let me just read my phone while I do. It's like that. You know what?

Yeah. I often joke that, you know, it's like, I'll never forgive Apple for inventing the smartphone because they old. It's the death of downtime.

Yep.

You know, January 5th to, you know, 2007, you can put it on the calendar.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, or once they started shipping.

Once they started shipping, always have this.

This information feed in your hand, which is incredibly powerful.

Yes.

Amazing. And it's what you can learn from. It's great. But I'm a huge fan of completely Unplugging. And in fact, I, I threatened to start a new trend called no Phone Friday. Oh, that. Not because it rhymes, but it does. That makes it a little more powerful.

Alliteration is what it is.

Yeah, that's right. It makes it a little more powerful.

That's just me being pedantic. So. Yeah.

Yeah. But wouldn't it be great to just say, hey, Fridays? I, I don't have. It's no Phone Friday, so every other rest of the week you can get a hold of me this way. On Fridays you may. Maybe you email maybe because that doesn't mean you don't work if you're at your computer, that kind of thing. But when you walk away, you really get to walk away.

Yeah, no, it's been interesting and it's been interesting over the last 10 days. I'm still very aware of actively not choosing to, like, pull my phone out of my pocket or whatever every time I go to pee. Like, it's, it's still very. It's not a new habit yet. It is something in development for sure. It's. It's it's amazing. I'll catch myself. It's like, whoa. Nope, gotta put that down. Like, okay. And it's been, it already. It's been great. Like I've had great ideas, you know, because I'm giving my mind, like you said, a bit. The ability to be bored. So.

Yeah, yeah, you should be because you'll, your mind will do great things when you're bored.

Absolutely.

And you make all kinds of connections that you don't normally think about because you're not giving yourself the opportunity because you're looking at some feed news or Instagram. Excuse me. Or Twitter and you know, all things can be used.

Threads now.

Yep, yep, Threads. So you're always, you know, digging through. But the other thing, I think the phone does not to make this anti phone talk, but long form reading is very important for your brain. Being able to.

That means just doom scrolling Facebook for longer. Is that what you're saying? Because. Oh, what?

Yeah, it's words. You know, whether you read a magazine, whether you read a novel, a business book, whatever it is. And you could read it online. But I find that I'm only speaking for myself. But I would, I would hazard to guess that this is common. The more you're scrolling and getting, you know that quick hits of dopamine. When you come across something that's very long and formidable, your brain is telling you, don't read this. This is not gonna. There's no payoff here.

There's no payoff. Yeah, that you don't get the hit. Right.

Yeah, you don't get that hit. So I, I, I love to read and I, I carry my Kindle wherever I go and you know, always have a, have a paperback laying around. But I find I feel like instead of snacking on candy of the short form stuff, you get a whole meal when you go and read 20, 30, 40 pages at a time.

But Shannon, the candy tastes so good.

I know it does. It's bad for you.

It is bad for you. I need to get better about this. I have a new Kindle. I got it for Christmas. I read, you know, I read a bunch of for the first month or so and then I went back to my old ways. And now when I get in bed, I grab my iPad and I, you know, it's. No, I need to just like I did with this, you know, enforcing the opportunity for urinal inspiration. I need to enforce the opportunity for my brain to get a full meal because that's super valuable. All right, so you know how it is right there's all those people who are visiting your website but never convert and then they just disappear. Don't you wonder who all those people are? Discover the game changing tool that top professionals are raving about. To solve this, our sponsor, Pearl Diver. Pearl Diver is a cutting edge platform that provides in depth visitor identification enabling you to uncover valuable insights about your website visitors. By uncovering names, emails, company details and more, Pearl Diver empowers you to turn anonymous traffic into into high quality leads. With Pearl Diver you'll supercharge your marketing and sales strategy. Don't settle for guesswork. Right? Why would you dive deep into your visitor data with Pearl Diver and revolutionize your customer acquisition game? Ready to make new waves? Yeah. With Pearl Diver you'll see actual people visiting your website. You know their names, their emails, their phones, their titles, their company details. You'll never miss out on the opportunity to engage with your hottest leads. Pearl Diver matches your email interactions with identified website visitors, providing you the insights you need to close your next deal. You're going to Visit Pearl Diver IO and try PearlDiver today. Again, that's PearlDiver IO. Visit Pearl Diver today. Try it out and our thanks to Pearl Diver for sponsoring this episode. We all know running a small business means forging partnerships from maintenance to hr. The partners you rely on make sure your business can succeed and and the best partners are ones that can move with the flow of your business. And that's why you need our sponsor, Zinch, a direct lender tailored to small and medium sized businesses that makes loans simple, fast and flexible. And Zinch can approve up to $250,000 in under two days. With Zinch, you don't have to wait months to be approved for a traditional bank loan. We've all had those unexpected costs, right? You know you might have a burst pipe that runs your machinery. Big bills that you didn't expect. Costs that come from expanding your workforce, slow payments, whatever it might be, Zynch knows you have to act fast and their specialists will help you choose the best solutions for your needs. There are no commissions or third party approvals, so Zynch can give you better rates, faster approvals and keep your information secure. Get financing the easy way with Zynch. For a limited time, Zynch is waiving the application fees. For our listeners here at Business brain. That's a $250 value. Just go straight to their special URL. Financing that works.com Again, that's financing that works.com loans made or arranged pursuant to a California finance lender's Law License. And our thanks to Zinch for sponsoring this episode. And while I got you here, I want to take a minute to tell you about a great podcast that I've learned about recently called seven Good Minutes. If you're anything like we are here, you're always seeking new ways to improve, to grow, both personally and professionally, right? Then this podcast might be the gem you're looking for. It's hosted by the Inspiration Additional Clyde Lee Dennis. Each episode of seven Good Minutes is a compact, powerful bundle of wisdom, motivation and tips for self improvement. And the best part? It only takes seven minutes out of your day. You gotta check out their episode on the power of positive thinking. This gives a fresh new perspective, right? They have this unique ability to simplify and present complex ideas in a way that just clicks. And the podcast isn't just about personal growth. It's about setting the tone for a productive day every day. It's like a little burst of sunshine in your podcast routine. We highly recommend it here. So go check out Seven Good Minutes on your favorite podcast platform. Or just go to seven the number seven goodminutes.com It's a small investment of time that could bring about big changes. And remember, personal growth is a daily journey. And our thanks to Clyde and the folks over at seven Good Minutes for doing this swap with us. So Shannon, you know we have this contest going on where if you email us at feedbackusbrain show and we include your email in the show, then you're entered into a drawing for a MacBook Air this year, right?

Yeah, we do.

Well, listener Robert wrote in to FeedbackusinessBrain show and says, I have been in marketing for 30 years and I've had to evolve numerous times. I originally started in the graphic design industry doing things by hand and a small design studio. Then without fail, nearly every three years I've had to modify my skillset from by hand to desktop to print publishing to advertising to the web to social media and back to the web. Along the way, I've learned numerous applications just for websites. I went from pagemail to sitemail to Go Live to Dreamweaver, back to Go live, back to etc. And finally WordPress. Yep, I also needed to adjust my business model as other companies entered the marketplace. 99designs was one of those first threats of than fiverr. I don't worry too much about other freelancers. I pretty much have my area locked up. Most locals, most locals know who I am, he says, because I network and have a good reputation and bigger agency agencies Charge much more than I do. But now with AI hitting the scene, making it easier for novices to, quote, unquote, create, do I need to reevaluate my business model again? Do I need to restructure my pricing? Adobe Firefly can add an element into an image in seconds. That used to take me hours to do. So how do I price out that project? I think the writing is on the wall for businesses like mine and many others. So my goal is to cash out in five to 10 years, but I need to get through those next five to 10 years. So how do I know when to make a change?

That's a great question and some great examples of. I've used so much of this software over, you know, Dreamweaver, go live, all that stuff. I love Robert Ment mentioning those apps. And, you know, I was just a business owner trying to figure out how to run my website.

Right, Right.

And design graphics and stuff. But it is a great question. And I think that often in my life, I've not realized the change needed to be made until it was passed.

Right. Oh, yeah.

I've. I've had several businesses that I should have sold before I realized I should have sold them. Oh, I own one right now.

I think that's always true. You think so? Yes. Well, I. And I didn't come up with this maxim, but I firmly subscribe to and support it. The time that you don't want to sell your business is exactly the time someone else wants to buy your business. Because generally speaking, if your business is like, kicking off cash and growing and it's. And it feels easy. I don't mean to say that it is, but those moments where it feels easy, that's the moment to sell it. Because you can sell easy much better, much faster than you can sell hard. Right. You know, it's like, well, there's a lot of potential here. You just need to be smarter than me and come in and do that like that. That pitch can work sometimes because you get some egomaniac that's like, oh, I'm smarter than that guy. I can do it better. Okay, great. You know, but it's even easier if you tell somebody you're smarter than me. Look what I'm already doing. Imagine what you could do doubling my momentum here. So, you know, the day you want to sell is not. Is often not the day people want to buy.

No, no, it. But I think that, you know, like Robert's question, how do you know? I think you know, but I think you have to convince yourself and I would, I would say, Robert, I think, you know, right now that it's time to make a change because you sent this email to us, but you have to, it takes a long time and I only can speak to my experience to convince yourself because we are such creatures of habit and when things are going a certain way, you know, it is hard to make that change, especially when you're doing something that has been successful for you and you know, your livelihood, your business, your, all this, whatever it is. And I, I would say this, this is such a great email. But one thing, the thing that stood out to me was at the end where you said, you know, your goal was to, you know, do something in five to 10 years. I, I would say that in your field, especially in graphics, you know, design and those, you, you, I would say you need to start thinking about really differentiating yourself now because, and we're, and we have an episode coming up that we're going to focus on, on being different and the power of that. So hopefully that will help you as well. But, you know, what is it that is going to make you stand out? And as more and more of this stuff, and I've played with a lot of this AI stuff, it's not quite as smooth as people would want you to believe. You know, it still takes. Oh yeah, it's still. But it's, you know, we're talking less than a year old. Right. So I would say the time to change is now and to start thinking about how you differentiate yourself either with your, the products and services that you offer, the way you offer them. You know, perhaps, you know, you could offer a subscription service instead of a, you know, a per job service where you build in loyalty and management of, you know, digital assets or something. I don't know, lots of different things. But now it's time, I think you, you pointed it out to us.

So I, I have, I'm going to take something you say all the time, Shannon, and actually a couple of things that you say and try and stitch them together here. Robert has time, right? He said, I want to sell in the next five to 10 years. That is a very long time to create something like, even to create something new, right? So you've already got a foundation here. That's awesome. Think about the story that you want to tell to prospective buyers. Don't worry about what your business does today. Think about the story you want to tell in five to 10 years. Right? So give yourself a blank canvas and freedom to write whatever you want. What's the best Pitch you could give. Like, here's this design agency I've had for X number of years. You know, I used to just run it by myself. I decided about five years ago that I needed to make a change. Right. Wrote into business brain. Throw business brain in the pitch too, so that, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and they told me to make some changes. And so I sat down and I wrote this thing and I decided this was what my business was going to be and I was going to have. It's always easier to sell a business that runs itself. So if you don't want to work for the person that buys it, you're probably going to need more people. Right. Because if there's other people doing the work and you've essentially got an engine that's running that's easier to sell than. Here's what I did. You just need to do the same thing as me. You might find the right buyer, but.

Well, the difference is selling a business or selling a job.

Yeah, exactly. Right, right. And you might be selling a customer list and, you know, all of those things. But, but yeah, turn it into more of a business in that sense. But it's fine. Don't worry about what I'm saying. I know the things I'm saying here, like hiring people and all that. It's super scary. You got seven years to figure this out. So just write the whole thing out and then refine it and then give it a week and come back to it, read it again, refine it some more. Get to the point where not only are you finished refining it, well, you're not really finished, but you're, you're happy with the way it looks, but you're excited about the way it looks. Because now that you're excited, now the only thing you have, you know where you're going. All you have to do is find the path to get there. But you don't have to pave a path to some unknown land. You've got, you've created the known land. Do that, you're going to be off to the races. You're going to sell your business in three years. Guaranteed.

I like it.

Guaranteed. Yeah. It's going to happen way faster than you think once you know where you're going.

Yeah, yeah, I, I like it and I think it's great that you're thinking ahead and you see the writing on the wall and you know, it takes time, changes is, you know, it's difficult and you don't. Not sure which path to go down and how you you know, set this stuff up. But you just have to start and keep working on the normal stuff that brings in the money every single day. But carve out time, you know, maybe leave your phone, no phone Friday. Carve out time to think about, you know, those, those use those moments to. To just brainstorm notes about how could I change and how could I make the business more standalone or how do I differentiate myself?

Absolutely.

It's a great way to think and we appreciate you sending in your questions.

Absolutely. Keep them coming, folks. Feedbackusinessbrain show. You can also send us questions on all the socials and everything too. We'll put links in the in the show notes so that you can find us there. But yeah, find us. Send us your questions, send us your thoughts. You think we're. You have some things to iterate on. What we shared in this episode. Send that in too. We're all learning together. The business brain is an. Is a work in progress. We are training the together but we're never gonna finish. So just keep helping each other and we're in good shape. Thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for checking out our sponsors, of course. Pearl diver IO zinch@financing that works.com. and keep living that charm life, eh? We'll see you next time.