The #1 Reason Why Businesses Fail (How To Avoid Business Failure)

I will bring a bag of stones into the next meeting. Alright? Yeah, of course. Hey guys, Sabri Subhi here and I just got done with meeting with my team and there's always just one pervasive question and problem that keeps coming up for businesses that are really trying to grow. So you know, instead of me just kind of meeting with my team and talking about it, I thought that you guys would be able to benefit from me really running you through the, the number one reason why businesses fail. So let's head over to my office and I'll run you through this right now. So really in business there is just one thing that is responsible for all businesses in its success or their failure. And before I really run you through exactly what that is, you know, let me kind of put this situation to you. I want you to imagine this scenario and think of the local high street next to your house or your office. I'm sure you would have seen somebody come onto that high street and open up, you know, a new restaurant and they go in there, they spend an enormous amount of money on the fit out. And then, you know, they have to hire all this staff and they get them swanky little aprons and outfits and they get this commercial lease that might be 36 months long. And they invest an incredible amount of resources, time and energy and put all of this debt into this thing. And they even craft like you know, a special opening offer and then they open, right? And it's crickets. And you walk by there on your way home and you look in and you think like, oh shit, I feel so bad for that business. There's no one in there. Like they've gone, invested all this money and there isn't anybody showing up. And you know, just around the corner or just down the street there's another restaurant and it's just thriving. Like you can never get a table there. There's a line out the front and they're in the same suburb and you know that business owner is like thinking, oh my God, like what's going on? And then they start to kind of blame all these other things, right, that are outside of their power. They start blaming the area that they're in, they start blaming their other restaurants in the area and they're just bringing their pants down on price and how can they even run their business at a profit? And then they start blaming the clientele. It sounds crazy, but it's the truth, right? They start blaming the people in that area and start saying, oh, the people in this area just cheap or they've got no money or they don't appreciate good food, and they start coming up with all of these excuses right now, why am I talking about restaurants and why am I talking about your high street? Because the thing is, that is paramount in all business. And the thing that really makes the difference between, you know, a thriving business and a failing business is just one thing. And that one thing is the offer on the premise of that failing restaurant and that really successful restaurant, right? When you break it down to its first principles and its core, and you really look at it fundamentally, the reason why that business is failing is because people aren't liking that offer. They don't like the food, or they don't like the price, or they don't like both, right? And that's basically all business is when you boil it down to its first principles. It's your exchanging something of value for money. And a transaction takes place where the value in the mind of your prospect is higher than what the price that you're asking for. So basically, what they look to do is just blame the area and all these things that are out of their power rather than just looking at what is within their power. And that is their offer at their food. How can they change their food up? How can they offer a different price? What can they do to make that offer? An offer that is profitable, that keeps that restaurant full, that gets people writing about it, that makes it a great, wildly successful business. And the reason that I'm talking about this is because what I see, you know, in the online community and digital marketing and business growth is that, you know, someone will run traffic, they'll sign up and they'll run some Google AdWords or they'll do some Facebook or they might have done some SEO in the past, or Instagram ads, and then they'll be like, yeah, I tried Facebook, but it's shit and it doesn't work. And you know, they kind of always like, could I just hire your agency subre to give me that secret traffic? Like, that traffic, that's just gonna solve all of my problems. And that is just the most ridiculous thing, because we don't, you know, businesses, they don't have a traffic problem. You can literally go out there and you can buy as much traffic as you can possibly want, right? So then when you look at it, then what really is the issue? And the issue is that you can't actually go out there and buy traffic at a rate that's profitable, that you can make an offer to that traffic and it's going to Convert and it's going to bring money back into your business at a greater rate with higher enough margins to sustain your business and to then pay for that traffic, right? So what most businesses do is they run a whole bunch of traffic on different channels and then they blame that traffic source as the reason to why it's not working or why it's not profitable. And they very, very rarely if ever look at their own business in a critical way and think, okay, well like people are clicking on my ads, they're coming to my website or their landing page and they're either converting or they're not, right? And we'll say that it's a lead generation campaign. So they click through to the, and they come through to the landing page and then they convert into a lead at a healthy enough rate. But then something happens when those leads basically come into the business and then a sales rep needs to get on the phone with those leads and then they start to kind of make up all these excuses like all these leads are shit or these guys aren't serious buyers or a whole, I can't get a hold of these guys or a whole multitude, a bunch of different excuses, right? And they just blame that traffic source and they think it must be the traffic, it must be the traffic, right? Well, it's actually not. Most often than not, it's like when they get on the phone, they're unable to convert that prospect. And that's because the offer that you're making to your market, it's not irresistible. It's what's called a resistible offer. It's very, very easy for people to resist it. That's why they're not buying off you, right? So instead of looking at how you can kind of shave a few points off your cost per click, click or whittle down your cost per lead, you know, you should be really looking at, okay, what is an offer that I could make to these leads that would make doing business with our business a complete no brainer. And that's what I call, that's really what I've become famous for, is something that's called a Godfather offer. And that's really just crafting an offer so white hot, so irresistible that your market, see, simply can't refuse it. And that's really what you want to focus 80% of your time on. Most people spend 80% of their time on squeezing down their traffic source or trying to find the cheapest traffic that they can, or turning off certain keywords or ad sets and targeting options that are too high of a cost per click rather than looking at, okay, what's going on here? Like, I'm not really hitting market fit because not enough people are buying this offer at a rate that's profitable for my business. Right. So let me find out. What is the bullseye of this marketplace? What is that center of the market that is just. It's got such a pressing problem that when you present your offer to them, they buy with as little resistance as possible. And so that's where you want to spend 80% of your time. You want to have a look at what your competitors are doing, what their prices are, how they're bundling up their offers, like what is actually being communicated to your market. Because that marketing message doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's not just your business that's communicating to that prospect. There is a full market that is all shouting and yelling offers to that same prospect. And there is so much noise out there in the marketplace today and age that you need to know what that noise is so you can shoot a signal right through the bullseye and you can make it that your offer just stands out head and shoulders above what all of your competitors are doing. And that is the absolute central part that I would tell you to focus about in your business. Think about that. Think about what is it that I could put in front of my marketplace that would be so compelling that they would just, it would be completely a no brainer for them to do business for me. And then what you want to do is once you've kind of found that thing, you want to write it down on paper, you want to summarize it in just one paragraph of what that offer would be. Right? And you want to go over the top. Like you want to make this thing completely outrageous, right? Like to the point where, you know, if your lawyer saw it, it would give him sweats. Okay, now don't be worried about that just now because all we're doing is writing down that offer, what it is that you're offering, at what price and what the guarantee is. Okay, then write that down. And it's only you that's going to see that. Then what I want you to do is I want you to start pulling back and making that offer a little bit more watered down to something that you could actually deliver on. And you could deliver on that promise. And it's not going to get you to any hot water legally. Right now. That's the place that you want to start something that is so good that it's hard to believe and then you want to actually be able to deliver on that promise. Okay. Then once you've got that, then you're starting at a position of power. What most people do is they craft the shittest offer that they can possibly do, and then they run traffic and then they find out that it doesn't work. And then what they try to do is then they try to dress up that offer and make it better to find a point where it would work. And that is the completely wrong way to go about it. The way that I think about it is like, that I have a knife to my neck and I absolutely have to make this work. This is my last $1,000 that I'm able to pour into advertising. And if I don't do this, I will be closing down my business. I'll be firing all of my employees. They're going to have to go back to their families and tell them that they no longer have a job. And things are going to be very, very bleak. Right now you might be thinking like, man, that's a pretty negative place to operate on. Now as you're scaling a business and you start getting more money in the bank and, you know, people tend to be a little bit loose with how they look at the numbers and they start to think like, this doesn't matter so much if it doesn't work. I got a whole bunch more cash in the bank and everything's gonna be fine. And that's when you start to get sloppy, and that's when you get eaten alive. Somebody will just come in by night and just take over your whole market. Right? And really the way that you don't do that is by coming from this place where you have a knife to the neck and it absolutely must work. And if you had a knife to your neck and it must work, otherwise you would be beheaded. You are not going to be operating with a shit offer with something that is vanilla, something that is lackluster. You are going to make the absolute most compelling offer that you possibly could. Because this is literally a situation or life or death. And that's the way that I look at it. When we have clients coming into the business, we really push them to come up with offers that may them uncomfortable. I have a saying that, you know, if the offer doesn't keep the founder up at night, then it's not a strong enough offer. So that offer needs to be completely white hot just to melt through the marketplace and what everybody else is screaming at your prospects. And I tell you that if you spend even one week in your business, really thinking about this, really looking around at your marketplace, what other people are doing, Craft something so irresistible, that's the hardest thing that you can do. Because once you've done that, you know, you can make traffic that wasn't profitable, highly profitable. You can afford to go out there and not have a cap on your cost per click and be wanting to get the cheapest traffic. But being able to go out there and buy the most expensive traffic, it's the most expensive for a reason, right? It converts better, it's more profitable. So, you know, you'd be able to go and just buy as much traffic as you want. You'd be able to out muscle all of your competition and pay a premium for traffic. You'd be able to buy, you know, more leads at a higher cost than anyone in your marketplace because you are converting a much higher percentage of that track of traffic of those leads coming in with your irresistible Godfather offer. And this just allows you to come in and just beat the pants off all of your competitors. So go ahead and literally do this exercise. Go and look at your marketplace. Go put your ridiculous offer down in writing. Make it a Godfather offer to the point where it's just so good that it can't be true. But then find a way that you can deliver on it. Go and do that. Go out into your marketplace, and I assure you, the results that you get will be absolutely ridiculous. Sam.