MBA1265 Q&A Wednesday: What have been your biggest regrets in business?

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It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that promises no fluff, just the good stuff with daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, another a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and a Wednesday episodes, I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. Today's question is from Shannon and Shannon asks what have been some of your biggest regrets in business? Ooh, this is a tough question because when it comes to regrets, you know, you learn from the things that you regret and those experiences make you who you are today. But I'm not gonna side skirt this question. I will answer it the best I can and in fact I'm gonna share biggest regrets as I was getting started as an entrepreneur. Now even though I've been building businesses for about 18 years now, I still consider myself sort of the early stage of entrepreneurship. This is a long road and if I still have 40 or 50 years left, I'm not even one third into my career as an entrepreneur. So even though these regrets may be at the early stages, we're still early in the game here guys. And there's still lots to learn. But I'll be answering that question in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So in today's Q and A, Wednesday's episode, Shannon asks the question, what are some of the biggest regrets you've had in business? And the best way I can answer this question is kind of to look back when I got started those first few years and think and ask myself, what are some of the things I would do differently? Because you learn from your regrets, like I mentioned, but the one thing that really glares, the biggest thing, and I want to share three of them today, but the biggest one is not working on building my audience earlier. When I started as an entrepreneur, I was really focused on the product, on whatever I was building, whatever I was offering. And I figured, you know, a great product will sell itself and to some extent, having a great product will do that and it's going to make things a whole lot easier. Obviously, when you build something that's great, that people want, that is good quality, but only focusing on that, the problem with that is that you have nobody to sell to. You have nobody to speak to. You need to start building an audience as early as possible. I wish I built my email list earlier. I wish I blogged earlier so I can build that email list so I can drive traffic to my site and have, you know, an email opt in or some sort of giveaway or freemium. It just wasn't on my radar. I just thought, you know, business was create a great product and sell it. Yes. But a big part of that is selling to an audience. And that's all has to do with marketing. You have to have some sort of marketing channel in today's day on the Internet. No matter if you have an online business, a physical business, a digital business, you need an audience. You need people that you can reach out to and tell what you're working on, what you're selling. So that's the biggest regret I can say, not starting to build my audience earlier. Now. This show is nearly five years old. We started back in 2012, but I wish I started earlier. This has been a great way for us to build our audience, to have people that we can serve, people that we can help, people that can be aware of what we're doing in business. So if you're getting started, I cannot implore you more to start growing your audience, start growing your email list, start building that audience and do it on your terms, on your assets, on your ground, meaning grow your own email List access to the inbox is gold. Don't worry so much about building an audience on social. Right now, a lot of people gravitate to social, think it's the easiest thing. Email is king. Build an audience with podcasting. Build an audience with YouTube. Why? Because those assets, you can use them, you can use them later on. If I build a podcast, I have those files. I can put them on my site, I can resource them. If you know one of the podcasting apps go down, it doesn't matter. I still have that feed. I still have those audio files. Same thing with YouTube and video. So grow that audience. The second regret not building a team sooner. For a very long time, I'd probably say for the first eight years of my career, I built my businesses alone. I was a solopreneur. You know, I had hired help, I had freelancers, but I was mainly the only person that was responsible for the growth of the business. And there's only so much you can do. There's only so much you can do by yourself. You know, you can't be a jack of all trades. You need other expertise, you need other brain power. You know, one of the best things I've done in my career is actually have a co founder team up with Nicole. And then from there we started growing our team to get the best experts to build the products. We want to market the products the way we want to market them. There's so much value in a great team. Show me a great business, show me a great product and I'll show you a great team. That's really what builds great businesses. It's not an idea, it's the execution of the idea and who's going to execute it. You can't do it all. It's just going to take you too long and the opportunity will pass. So really think about, you know, when you're getting started. It's okay to stay lean and do things on your own, but you have to have a plan in place. Where, when are you going to start growing? When are you going to start hiring? When are you going to start expanding? And they'll just say later, have that vision, have that plan in place, whether that's this year or next year, put it in your plan. Just like sales targets, what's your targets when it comes to building out your team? Who do you need to build that dream product, that dream business, that dream service? So that was regret number two. Regret number three, not getting into the content game earlier. Building great content, whether that's a blog, blog posts, or videos on YouTube or a podcast asset for your business. This is how people discover you. This is how people will find you. This is how people get to know you. You're giving them great value in exchange for their attention and then eventually their email, which is a lead, which eventually turns into a customer. That's how business works. And the earlier you start building your assets or building your content bank, the better. You know, if I started blogging much earlier, like in the mid 2000s or even early 2000s, the SEO of these assets would be crazy. These are the people that win, that actually take the time and schedule time to make the content and build their blog posts and write their blog posts and record their episodes. And of course, it's about quality and not just quantity, but it's about the regularity. It's about making it a priority to publish on a regular basis. So you have that momentum. So over the years you have that content that you can lean on, that you can refer to, that you can help your customers with. Customer asks a question, instead of trying to reply to them in a 10 paragraph reply, you can just point to a video that you created back in the day or a blog post you just wrote last week. It's going to help you and your team so much. On top of that, I'm a big believer that creating content improves your communication skills, which is the mother of all skills in business in my opinion. If you can't communicate what you do, the value you offer, and it's useless, if you don't understand what you do, don't understand what you're actually offering them, then they're going to just leave. They're just going to be confused and they're going to leave. So by having a content schedule, whether that's writing a blog post, publishing a podcast, whatever it is, it keeps you sharp. It keeps your communication skills to a level where most people are not playing, you have that competitive advantage. So whatever you choose to create content, whatever medium, get started now. I mean, the best time is yesterday. The next best time is today. I wish I started sooner, but I'm also happy that I did start at some point.

At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.

To wrap up today's Q and A Wednesday episode from Shannon, what are my biggest regrets in business? Well, I gave you my top three not building an audience earlier, not building a team earlier and not creating content earlier. That, along with a great product executed properly, is the formula of a great business. Basically, that's really all you need. Everything else you can really kind of put aside and you'll still be fine. Shannon, I hope that answers your question. I hope that has helped everybody who's listening. If you have a question that you want to ask, just email me over@omar00mba.net I will make sure we answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Regrets are natural, but one of the things I really believe in, and you've heard this a million times, that most people will regret the things they don't do and not what they do. And all three of mine were things I didn't do. A lot of people don't want to start something because they're like, well, what if it's a waste of time? It won't be a waste of time. You're going to be working on yourself. It's going to build your skills and you're going to learn something from it. It's going to be a great exercise of growth. There's nothing that I haven't tried, even if it didn't work, where I felt like it was a waste of time, even if I had a failure in my business or a product launch that didn't work, or even a situation where I didn't do my best on stage or on a podcast episode or whatever it is I learn, I learn how to do it better. So put yourself out there, be in the business of doing, and you won't regret it. All right, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.