MBA1530 Q&A Wednesdays: So many things to improve in my business. Which one first?

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It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Product 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 $1RBA Show. Because nobody does it alone. That's why we got your back every day with our 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 $100 MBA, a company 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. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omar100mba.net Today's question is from Harry and Harry asks. I am super overwhelmed. There are so many things I need to improve in my business. Which one should I do first? Don't really know where to start. Thanks love love love the podcast. Thanks Harry for the great question. And indeed it can be overwhelming when you see that there are so many areas you need to shore up. It's almost like you're sailing on a boat that has several holes that that are leaking. Water is getting into the boat and you don't know which hole to plug first. You know you got to take action quickly but we often get delayed and get slowed down because we have analysis paralysis. We don't know what to do first. Second, third, all that kind of stuff. The good news is you're asking the question. It means you actually want to take action and you're willing to take action, and that's a huge thing. Half of solving this is just doing something, is actually taking that first step, and everything will come into place. I'll explain in today's episode how to choose which problem to solve in your business first and then what steps to take next. We got a lot to cover, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So Harry asks in our Q and A Wednesday episode, how do I know which problem to solve first in my business? Now, I like the way he worded this question. He said, which problem should I solve? And that's a really good perspective. It's a good way to look at it. Because as an entrepreneur, your job is to solve problems, okay? That's what you do. Your product is a solution to a problem for your customer. But that product, that offering your business itself is not going to be perfect. It's going to have issues. It's going to have problems, and you're going to have to solve them. And this is why you are in the company, right? This is why you're the leader, is because this is your superpower. So that's okay. We're going to solve them. So just understand that, yes, every business has problems, has things they need to solve, and you will eventually start solving all these problems. But I know the feeling, the feeling of urgency. I gotta start doing something now. Which one should I do first? I got a problem when it comes to my finances. I got a problem when it comes to my marketing. I got a problem when it comes to my customer service. You have a whole bunch of things that you want to kind of solve, and you kind of need a game plan of which one to attack first. And they all seem a bit overwhelming. They seem, you know, daunting. Big tasks. And the best way to look at this or to attack this is to look at your business as one big thing. Like, you are trying to solve the equation of your business. The whole reason why you have your business is that you want to be able to be profitable, make some money, to grow, to expand. And the reason you're unhappy right now is not because of the small problems or the problems that you have. It's because you're not hitting that goal or you're not doing that as well as you'd like to. You're not growing as fast as you like. You're not bringing in enough Money, all that kind of stuff. So understand there's really a core issue here. There's one big issue, which is you're just not winning. You're just not doing as well as you'd like. And it's important to recognize that, because what you want to answer is, what thing can I do first that will get me closer to that finish line, to my goal for my business to be profitable, to make money? Which one's gonna make the most impact and allow me to get closer to that ultimate goal? In other words, which problem is causing you not to achieve the goal the most? Which problem is holding you back the most? If you had to solve one thing, you only can solve one. Which one would you solve to make the most impact? And this is a really good thought experiment where you just sit down and you think for a moment, I can't solve all my problems. What is the one thing? And I only can solve one. Everything else I'm gonna have to live with. What is the one thing? If I solved it, it would alleviate the most stress and allow my business to succeed further. Now, mind you, that if you solve any of the problems that you see in front of you in your business, it is gonna help. But which one's gonna help the most? Which one's gonna really put you ahead of the game more than others? It's gonna make the most impact. Now, a lot of people like to answer this question with their gut. They're like, okay, I know it's this thing or that thing, and that's good and all, and you should trust your gut. But you need to verify. You need to verify. You need to trust, but verify. And the way you verify is to look at some data. It could be something as simple as sending out a customer survey to your customers. What they like most about your product, what they'd like least. You can send out a survey to those who left or canceled or refunded. These are really important people. These people can help turn your business around. I've been able to grow our business because I have a relationship with people that left my business, that left my product, that stopped paying me money, that said, hey, you know what? We're leaving, and I want to talk to that person. Why did you leave? What happened? I've done customer interviews like that and actually compensated people for their time, giving them gift cards because I appreciate that feedback so much. That feedback is gold. So you need to verify where you think the biggest problem is. Now, we do this in our company, actually, every time somebody cancels. So when they cancel inside their account. With Webinar Ninja, for example, our software, they answer a quick questionnaire where they basically just say why they canceled. We give them a few categories, they choose a category, and then after that they can, you know, cancel their account. It's like an exit survey, allows us to learn a little bit more about why they are leaving. And every month we look at that data, we find out why. Why are people leaving? These are your problems, right? Whether it's because of lack of features, it might be price, it might be the customer support. This is where you start verifying your hunches. Wow. People are actually leaving because of this reason. If I solve this problem, the majority of people that left won't leave again, right? The people that come again, they won't leave because it's not a problem anymore. Now you're going to have to look deeper. When you get feedback like that, you're gonna have to look deeper into the problem. So say, for example, you say, you know, I have a feeling the reason why we're not doing so well is because our customer support is not good enough. It's not fast enough. People are not getting answers quickly enough. So therefore they leave. Whether they're, you know, potential customers asking buying questions or existing customers that need help. So that is the problem. Don't assume the solution is, well, I just need to hire more people. Well, maybe not, you know, maybe you need more efficiency, Maybe your team needs better training. Maybe you need to put in some technology like resolution bots that can answer commonly asked questions automatically to lower the queue so that your agents can answer the tickets that they have to answer the conversations they have to answer in a more timely fashion. Maybe it's the shifts your customer support agents are on. Maybe there are agents that are twiddling their thumbs and those that can't catch up because the vast majority of customers live in a certain part of the world, and there's just not enough support during those hours. Don't think just because you understand the problem that the solution is simple. You've identified. This is the biggest problem I have, and if I solve it, it's going to really improve the business in a big way. Your next challenge is solving it properly. Okay? You don't want to think you solved it by doing something, and it doesn't really solve anything, and you don't find anything out until another month or two. One of the best things that we did in our business is we actually had our head of product arena take care of all our customer feedback, all the Reviews we get, she gives us a compiled report based on what our customers have said. The good, the bad, the ugly. It's so much better when somebody presents it to you as, hey, these are the things we need to improve. These are the things that people are saying. Rather than going through the process and filtering that yourself, it can be very depressing. As a leader of your business, you need to be presented some information in a certain way so you can be problem solving oriented, right? Instead of you going through the weeds. It can be really hard for you to think big picture and you might be reactive and start trying to solve problems that are not really problems because you're just going through the data right now and you haven't really analyzed it. So actually having somebody do it for you is a really good use of money and time. Also, it helps when it's not the founder because they're not emotionally attached to the business. Most founders, they're living and dying by the success of their business. They put in so much blood, sweat and tears and money and finance and sacrifice. It really pains them to see some of that stuff. So when you have somebody that filters it for you, and when I say filter, I'm not saying like they're removing the bad comments. They're just kind of packaging and giving you those comments in a constructive way. So instead of reading 50 comments that say, this product sucks because you don't have this feature, you're presented, hey, we had seven people that said they want this feature, right? Big difference. You're more acceptable to be like, hey, seven people. Wow. We need to think about implementing this feature. Great. You're given the data you need so you can solve the problem with an open mind. Introducing Fidelity Trader Plus. With customizable tools and charts you can access across all your devices. Try our most powerful trading platform yet@fidelity.com trader+ investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member nyse, sipc Thy ticket lady, Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card. They accept Discover at Renaissance Fairs? Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Geth with the Times.

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You're playing the loot. Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right? Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. One of the things a lot of businesses don't talk about. I mean, I am bewildered why I haven't heard anybody talk about this. And it happens to everybody. And that's when you solve problems. It's not like your problems go away. Problems will always be there. You just get upgraded problems, okay? You solve a certain level of problems in your business and then you realize, oh, I got some other problems I gotta solve and I got some other problems to solve. And it just continues to go on and on and on. They become higher level problems, higher quality problems. This is why I started this episode saying that you're in the problem solving business. This is your job. So just get used to it because it's not going anywhere. You're just going to exchange one problem for another. Every problem has a different level. It's like going through a video game and your problems start to have more of an impact. But that's good. That means your business is growing. You are growing. Your challenges are becoming more sophisticated. An online business that makes $200,000 a year has a whole different set of problems, different level of problems versus a company like Disney, for example. Multi billion dollar company. This is why I love reading biographies, because it gives you an insight of wow, what real problems are. I remember when I read the biography of Elon Musk by Ashley Vance, the amount of failure and problems he went through really put things in perspective. There's a big difference between losing an account where you may be losing $10,000 a year because of that and it's a blow. It's bad, but you can recuperate from it versus having your rocket ship blow up in midair and lose hundreds of millions of dollars and credibility and you're all over the news. Whole different set of problems here. I want to thank Harry who asked today's q and a Wednesday's question. I hope my answer helped focus on what's going to make the most impact. Trust your gut. But verify and get some data to back it up and then get to work. Just get started on solving it. Figure out how best to solve. Look at it at different angles. Don't just assume there's one solution. There might be multiple solutions you can implement that can save you time, money, effort. If you have a question you want to ask here on Q and a Wednesday, go ahead and ask it. Just email me over@omar00mba.net thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA Show. If you love what you hear, I'd love to hear what you think. Leave me an itunes rating and review right now. It would mean the world to us. We read every single review. And also when you leave us a review, you enter our weekly random draw week call. Free ride Friday. On Friday, we we announce a winner. We give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. That's why it's called a free ride. So just leave us a review and listen in on Friday. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Remember I said that you're in the problem solving business. This is your job as an entrepreneur. Get used to it. Some people get depressed when they hear that, and I think one of the best ways to handle that is just to reframe that a little bit. Maybe say, hey, I'm going to take on a new challenge every day. There's a challenge waiting for me in my inbox every morning, in my messages, on my calendar. I got to take out new challenges, new mountains to climb. And every time I climb a new mountain, I get stronger, I get better. I become a better business person. I'm a true believer that entrepreneurship is a skill. It's just like a skill like playing tennis or chess or craftsmanship as a wood maker, a woodworker, or craftsmanship as a carpenter. The more you do it, the more reps you get, the better you get at it, the more you can take on, the bigger the challenges, the bigger the rewards. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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