Discouraged Business Owner: Why Your Biggest Disappointments Are Your Biggest Opportunities

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes, and you're listening to the Business Bootcamp podcast. Today we are recording out at the shop in a live environment, not in the studio. But today, we're going to be talking about what happened in 2020 and how you can turn negatives into positives. Everything happens for a reason, I believe, but things also happen really, really bad sometimes. And how can you take those horrible things that happen and actually turn them into a positive thing for your business? And before we get into this show, though, a big thank you to this sponsor, which is Gusto. If you haven't already, go to gusto.combootcamp try out their free software for 90 days, and just an incredible platform to be able to get your W2s at the end of the year. As we head to the end of 2020, check it out today, go to gusto.com bootcamp all right, so 2020, for a lot of us in our businesses, depending on your industry, was either really, really good or really, really bad. But regardless of what industry you're in, obviously with the pandemic, we had an election season. It was just a crazy 2020 for so many of us. And whether you were shut down or whether you had the best year of your entire business career, 2020 had a lot of ups and downs for so many of us. And what I want to talk about today is, yes, 2020 was ups and downs, but every single year is going to have its negatives and its positives, and there's going to be things that try to take out your business. There's going to be potential pitfalls. You're going to lose your best employee. You're going to have the, you know, a financial crisis could potentially come. We have. The housing market could crash. Like, all these things could potentially happen. And you got to think about not if those things are going to happen, but when they happen, how are you going to adapt? How are you going to turn that bad thing into a very good thing? So, for example, let's say, for example, you lost your best employee, the employee that you really leaned on, the one that was always, you know, you're kind of your go to person. They led the people in the field or they manage your office. They've been with you for the longest period of time. And that can be very discouraging as an owner to be able to have to lose that person that has supported you for so long, supported you in so many different regards. And it can be very, very demoralizing. How can you take that? Negative, very negative Thing and turn it into positive. What you can do is you can start to realize that you need to systematize the business and simplify it to where when you lose a key hire, when you lose that key person, then the business doesn't fall apart. So how can I take this negative, very negative thing of losing a great employee, someone that's been with you for a long time, someone that's managed so many different elements of the business, but when they leave, the positive part is, okay, they've left, but now we can make sure that we are anti fragile and that we actually build the business in a way that the systems run the business. Instead of being dependent on having an incredible number two or an incredible employee, or an incredible office manager, or an incredible foreman, or whatever it is that person that you've been leaning on so long, how can you make the business more system centric instead of personality centric? That's something that can be a huge positive. It can be a catalyst for you changing the way you run your business. Because no longer can you rely on someone that's had a ton of experience and be able to know how to do everything and knows all the different scenarios. You actually gotta build a manual to train your people. You have to build systems to, to make sure things are simple. You can no longer offer 50 different types of services. You might have to cut down to a lot less in order to make sure you can create systems and procedures and simplify your business. So this massive negative of losing a great person can actually turn into a massive positive for your business because you realize that, hey, I might lose a hire, I might lose someone in my team, that someone that's been here for so long, how can I simplify their role? How can I take something that they've done for 10, 15 years that only they can do? How can I simplify it? How can I reduce the services that I offer, reduce the amount of training that is required for new hires so they can become profitable more efficiently and more quickly. So that's one of the things that could happen really negatively to you in 2020 or even in the future. And so what are the other things that could go really, really badly for you in 2020? Well, in 2020, we had the whole pandemic and for some of us, we got shut down and we literally could not work for a couple weeks. Well, what are some of the positives that we could take away from this massive negative that for some of us we were shut down, we could not even work for a few weeks on Landscaping and hardscaping and we could only do maintenance type work for some people. They just dodged that bull and they're like, oh, great, I'm passing through that. We're good. Like, thank goodness we were able to get through that when it wasn't a 2007, 2008 issue where this lasted multiple years. But what you need to do is take that negative and be like, look, I've got to get really, really diligent and focused now about creating recurring revenue in my business and not being dependent on one time jobs, those massive 10, 15, $20,000 projects, or $80,000 patios and retaining walls, that, that all of a sudden disappeared because I, number one, couldn't work on those jobs based upon a government mandate or two, those jobs because they were discretionary income. Now those people were pulling their deposits and be like, hey, I can't do the job. I gotta see what happens with this whole crisis and all this garbage. And people on one time projects, people that were dependent in their landscaping jobs or landscaping businesses only on projects, and they were really affected regardless of what industry you were in. We were all affected. But what were the parts of your business, the segments of your business that actually took off? What were the ones that you realized that, look, I've got to pivot here, I've got to make changes in my business. That's a really big negative that you can turn into a positive to be able to realize from that negative that, hey, I've got to change. I got to realize that maybe 30% of my business now needs to become 75% of my business. Maybe you were selling online direct to consumer on the side, but most of your business was retail or wholesale. And all of a sudden retail closed down. All of a sudden wholesale closed down and you had to pivot to focus direct to consumer. Seems like a big negative. Maybe 70% of your business was focused on retail, but now you're doing direct to consumer where your profit margins are higher. You control the entire process from you creating the product all the way to the customer actually receiving it. These are all positives. And so when we look at 2020, there's a lot of people are gonna look at 2020 and say it's the worst year ever. You know, we just want to get through 2020, all the rest of it. And yes, there was a lot of negative things that happened. But I truly believe that the best things for your business, the greatest opportunities, the biggest changes and shifts that you can make in your business are hidden behind those negative things. The Negative things of a pandemic, the negative things of your industry being changed. The. The negative things of your entire labor market for your industry completely being revolutionized. Those are all negative things. But behind those are the positive things. The catalyst for you changing to a performance based pay model is probably hidden behind the negatives of having one of the worst labor markets ever and having to compete against uncle Sam at $600 a week in unemployment. Like that forces you to change. That forces you to figure out pay for performance and figure out different models to create a culture where you, where people actually care about your business and they didn't leave you because it was $600 unemployment versus $700 working for you all the time. Like you're working their butt off all the time. Like that was a hard decision for some employers to make in a hard place. Because look, $600 doing nothing all day versus $700 or $800 at a minimum wage job trying to work as hard as they possibly could all week. But what kept people, what kept employees in the business was the culture was a pay for performance model. So you look back and say, well, that was a horrible thing, the worst year ever. But what were the hidden potential? What were the hidden positives that we can take away that were the catalyst to change? We've always heard that technology in the past year 2020 has ramped, sped up by like three to five years. Okay, that's, you know, this negative thing that's happened. How can we turn that thing into a positive? What's the technology in your business that you need to change? Do you need a new CRM? Do you need a new reporting system? Do you need to change the way that you track your trucks or that you track your equipment, or can you improve your inventory? These are all things that we can do and use technology to do. And we can take this negative of not being able to be in person or certain parts of our business being shut down, or the labor market going to pot. All these things being horrible and negative and bad. Maybe you lost a great employee, maybe you lost your best manager. Turn these things into positives. I truly believe that every negative thing, the worst thing that happens to you is the thing that's hiding the best opportunity and potential for your business. Don't waste 2020 and just put it behind you and get behind it and just be like, oh, it's behind us, let's just move on. 2020 was a great opportunity to see the flaws in your business, see the opportunities for the next 5, 5, 10, 15, years. The businesses that adapted in 2020 and saw the positives behind all of the negativity are the ones that are going to become the next Apple, the next Facebook, the next Google. And the ones that fail to recognize those opportunities, that fail to recognize those changes are going to become the IBMs and all these large companies that used to be 15, 20, 30 years ago, and they missed their opportunity. They miss their chance to change their business and turn a negative into a positive. Make sure you don't do the same thing. Make sure you're on the right side of history. Make those negatives into positives in 2021. Thanks so much for listening to Mike Andes on the Business Boot Camp podcast. Until next time, be great, because nothing else pays.