Advice from a Serial Entrepreneur - Ideal for Small Business Owners Success.

Hey, I've got a special video Today on the 5 Minute Marketing Friday Message and it's my interview with a gal here locally. Her name is Leslie Spohr and I've worked with her for a long time. She's a dear friend and she's helped me a lot as a business coach and I thought, wow, I need to share her and her story and what she does with you. And if you need some help, she's a great resource. But in the meantime, enjoy this week's video. Thank you. Take some notes and then reach out to Leslie if you need some help. Thanks.

Most people know that I run executive errands. I have a lifestyle management company where we take care of people's homes and do remodeling work and all kinds of different tasks and errands and things. But I also own a second business and that one is a small business consulting business. I've worked in Consulting for 10 years in aerospace and I've been doing it for small business owners now for.

At least 10 years. And I really love helping small business owners get be successful. So many people don't know what they don't know. And for me, it doesn't matter what industry you are, business is business. And there is a way to run business. There's a set of industry best practices. That's the kind of stuff that I can share. Whether you are working on a car or making cupcakes or doing a pool service, it doesn't matter what you do, I can still help you.

Well, when you sit down to start a business, most people do what they know how to do because they love it, it's a hobby or they've been doing it for somebody else, like working on a car or and so they want to open their own automotive shop or they want to open their own H Vac service, or they want to do landscaping, whatever they want to do, they're good at that task. But they may not know how to run a business necessarily and they can find themselves confused and lost about where to go. So when it comes to setting a price point, most people don't think. They don't take the time to sit down and think about where they want their business to be in five years or 10 years. And the reason that's important is because before you set your price point, you have to know that you can grow and still make a profit. So while if you set your price point here now, but your business is here, you're going to make a bigger profit later, as your business grows, your profit is going to get smaller, but you still want to make a profit. And too many times people set their price point at where they're at right now. And then when they grow, now they've got a problem. They're either losing money, which makes them unhappy, which makes them frustrated, which means they can't sleep, which means they want to throw their business away. Right. Or they have to raise the rates. And then now they've got to go retrain all their clients. And I can tell you it's better to start off higher than it is to retrain your customers and your clients because they don't always understand a price increase. And it's hard to. If you could sit down and talk to them one on one, they would probably understand it. But you don't always get that opportunity. Depends on what business you're in. Right. So it's just hard. But you need to think about where you want to be so that you can set up price plan. Who's your ideal client? And you know, there's just so many considerations to take into account.

Well, you know, we're talking about a new business owner starting out, getting the pricing right. But you know, for years you, you consulted in the aerospace industry. So you're talking about the largest corporations in the world. And you're going in and you're finding, you're finding things that they do that a 1% could be hundreds or thousands or millions of dollars.

That's true.

So how do you approach a company? Maybe they're watching, they say, well, we've been in business for how do you approach a company like that? That said, we want to improve what we're doing. What kind of things would you look for?

Well, the first thing I would do is go in and do an as is process review. A lot of people have what we call low hanging fruit, which means immediate opportunities to improve their efficiency or their productivity and thus their profitability by small changes. And in a smaller company, those changes can have a huge impact. So I would want to go in and say, okay, how are you doing business today and tools are you using? And what technology do you have and how do you control your invoicing? How do you track your billing, how, how fast do you pay your own vendors? How often do you bill your clients? Do you pay in arrears or in advance? Or do you charge in arrears or advance? I mean, there's all these little things in a process that can be smooth out and, and streamlined so that you can be more profitable after that. Then depending on the business. I want to look at a time study, which we've talked about before, about what do you spend your time on every day? And of those things, how many of them are directly responsible for helping you achieve your goals? And how many of them are things that your business needs but you don't personally have to do? And how many of those things don't need to be done at all? And then we can start to make a decision about what can you outsource? Can you hire somebody else to do some of this?

Where is your time best spent, I guess is the bottom line so that you, as the owner, can be the most effective for your business? Which means bringing new business, you know, new opportunity development and. Or overseeing employees or, you know, it just depends on the kind of business where you go with that. But it's. It's kind of. Let me give you an example. It's kind of like somebody who wants to clean out their house, right? You make three piles. You have keep, donate, and trash, right? So we want to do that with your business, but with your time, what do you want to keep doing? What can you delegate or donate? And what can you just trash altogether and never do again? Because we, all of us, all of us, myself included, have things that I do during the day that are really unnecessary. I can get caught up in Pinterest for, you know, a couple hours. So I try not to even look at those emails that come to me that say, oh, we have new pins for you. Because if I do, I'm down a rabbit hol. And I'm not the only business owner that that could happen to.

You know, Leslie, I know that you enjoy doing this, this part, this, this consulting and coaching. How does someone get a hold of you to find out more?

Well, you can take a look at my website, which is conciergebusinesssolutions.com or you can call me, which is 760-898-9604. Or you can email me at infoonciersbusinesssolutions.com so I'm pretty accessible. I'm on Instag, Facebook and Twitter. So you can find me in one of those places, too. That's one of the things these days, is that we have to use social media whether we want to or not. And you want to keep your company visible. That's a whole other topic is how do you keep your company visible? How do you build your brand? How do you get the locals to know you're here? Especially in our desert where people are so transitory, you've got people coming and going all the time. Some are snowbirds, some are visitors. And depending on what your product or your service is, you have to know exactly how to reach those people when they're here.

Well, Leslie, thank you so much. I know you love doing this. I know you're busy. I really appreciate you taking a few months. I just wanted to make sure to share you with our community because you've been such a great resource for me and Swimming Point Media and helping us spot those things and smooth out those stuff that I wanted to say. Hey, you know, it's like a referral. I want to refer you to other people who may may need that help. So I just want to thank you for joining us. Hey, thanks for joining me this week on the five Minute Marketing Fridays. We'll see you again next week with another great episode.