MBA1658 Guest Teacher – Loren Weisman – How to Personalize the Navigation of your Business Strategy

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night, not working on my business, but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things, of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts. So doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform.

Ready to save on new tech? 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. Welcome to the hundred dollar RMBA show that boosts you and your business needs every single 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 complete business training and community online over at100mba.net and today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our guest teacher episodes we bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise. Today we have Loren Wiseman and he'll be teaching you how to personalize the navigation of your business strategy. You gotta make sure that how you approach your business and its growth works for you. One of the things I learned in entrepreneurship is that what's going to work for your business, the steps you take, the decisions you make, will be unique to you and you alone. This doesn't mean that the advice and the things you learn in books or in courses or on podcasts like this are useless. Business is nuanced and you need to make sure that you put your stamp, your personalization on your business strategy. And today's guest teacher Lauren Wiseman is here to show you exactly how to do that. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's guest teacher Loren Wiseman is the brand messaging strategist at the Fish Stewarding Group. He's helped brand become more authentic, have more authority and attract the right clients. And he's here today to show you how to personalize your business strategy so that you can make sure that business works for you as well as what you offer and how you offer it. You should never start a business that doesn't feel right, that doesn't feel like you. I've done that in the past and the mind is very interesting when you feel that way, when you believe that way, your brand will be limited, your business will be limited. It will not have the same potential for success because your business is not yours. You is trying to be something else. This is also critical because you need to make sure you're making the right moves, the right decisions that work for you and your type of business, your products, your services. I'm going to pass it on to Loren to teach you his guest teacher lesson. But I'll be back to wrap up the episode and give my takeaways. But for now, take it away, Loren.

Thank you, Omar, and thank you for letting me be a guest teacher on the $100 MBA show. My name is Loren Wiseman. As Omar already said, I'll be teaching you a few concepts around idea of how to personalize the navigation of your business strategy. So let's get down to business. Okay, first off, let's jump right in and identify the problem inside of personally navigating your own individual path. We run into so many people that take the subjective, the opinion and they make it fact. They tell you this is exactly what you're supposed to do. This is how you're supposed to do it. This is how you'll be successful. Herein lays the problem. Many of these people, one, don't share the entire story of how they garnered that success, of how they built that success. They don't mention aspects that range from the finances that they had access to, to family members, to networks, to a number, an array of different elements that allowed them to pick a personalized path for them that could work for them and did work for them. But here's the thing, it might not work for you. You have to, and I'm very careful when I tell people what they need to or what they have to do. But in this case, you have to look at the journey, the path and the navigation of your business as your own. It's fine to be inspired by these stories, to find motivation in them, but to follow some of them blindly, to read a book or take a course and then say, okay, this is. It can be a very bad idea. Now, it's not the snake oil salesman in every case. There are a great deal of them. The majority are them. But there are also many out there that genuinely do want to help. But don't mix the intention with the lack of understanding of your situation. So I'll give you a quick example here. So you got someone here who has had a massive level of success. He shares that. He writes it in a book. He goes on a speaking tour. He in his heart, in his soul, he wants to help others. And in his understanding, this is what you're supposed to do. So he's not sitting there trying to take advantage of you. And there are many out there doing that. This person is coming at you from the heart. But he also doesn't understand necessarily how things work in different circumstances. It goes back to the music business, and I was a part of the music business for a long time. You had people out there saying, this is how you become a star. This is how you have a hit record. This is how you do this. Put from people that experienced a very singular, linear approach to that stardom and to that hit. So this is where it comes down to taking that inspiration and shifting it to stating, okay, I really like this about this, but does it apply to me? Because every story has a great deal more to it that oftentimes isn't shared. There's certain things about you, about your authority, about your authenticity that you may not be sharing and not realize you should be, because it's just. It's so obvious, it's almost in the back of your head. But it's a big, big piece of your message, of your brand, of your vision that is you. And that does have to come out. But that's another subject altogether. Now, some of this backing, some of this. The background of this story can be financial backing, connections. People have direct and indirect relationships and available resources to them. One particular person that shares, I just did this, and he happened to have a team of 10 people and he happened to have the budget to immediately hire them, while the end result of what he was looking to create, which allowed for success, is a good thing. If you don't have those 10 people, if you don't have that budget to pay those 10 people, then to follow that methodology can cause a lot of problems. By being a little bit more of a detective, Think about it that way. You're kind of looking in, not a doubter, and it's not negative. It's being a detective into the story. And so you can look at how this person gained their success, where that path was built off of. And while you may need some of these attributes, you may have to approach them in a different way. One way, and this is oftentimes the hardest, is with patience and endurance around security and privacy. Some people say, I just came out of the gate screaming about this thing. But they had the marketing, they had the copyrights, the licensing, the trademarks, the ability to patent immediately. A lot of young businesses and a lot, I mean, tens of thousands, and that's not overblowing it. They come out of the gate announcing themselves like they saw in this motivational book or this business book, or heard from this business coach, and it immediately gets stolen. Thinking about, as you begin to build your journey, how soon are you going to open up your mouth and scream it to the world? Because there are a lot of people out there that are looking for people just like you. The people that might not necessarily have all the backing, all the finances in place, all the protection or all the security. They're excited to hear your story. They might even mask themselves as investors that want to sit down and consider giving you money so that they can learn about you and then take from you. So take that as a key thing, too. The patience to be able to say, okay, is this protected enough? Is the message, messaging is the legal elements, is the compliance? Is all of that in place first? Because while there are those people out there saying, scream your vision, you know, share it to the world, show your confidence if it's not protected, now that vision that you're screaming to the world is being taken and run with by someone else. Another aspect of that is beginning to develop. The foundation, the process blueprint of what you're going to create. And this is another contradiction in a lot of these success books and a lot of these books where people say, this is how you do it and you take care of this down the line. A lot of them had the money so that they could get through these first couple stages and then take care of it down the line. The advanced strategy that is personalized to you to make sure the name, the vision, sub products, services are all carefully aligned. They're uniform, they're consistent, they're dialed in so it looks like it's you. Videos going up, audio's going up, blogs going up. It doesn't mean that you have to have some super incredible website, but blogs allow all of this to feed back to you. This is part of that navigation plan. This Is part of that plan that allows you, from where you started, to get to where you want to go. And then as people see it, from those that want to attack it, to those that want to steal it, to those that just want to take it over, it allows it to stay with you as you find your path. It also might attract those investors, not the ones that want to steal it, but the ones that see, wow, this is just, you know, reinforced and I need to be a part of this and I can't necessarily take it over even if I have the money, because it's points back to you. This is the key part of the process architecture, of the pathway, of, you know, ripping through the forest to create that hiking trail, of your path, of your business strategy. Again, inspired by all these other elements, but dialed in so that they know it's the path of yours and it's the path that you're on. I want you to consider for a moment, take the intention, the heart of what you're creating, of why you want to create it. And yes, while you're getting blasted at times with the motivational types, the inspirational types, the types saying, just go out there, start it right now, do it today. Why wait? Well, gave you a whole bunch of reasons why you should consider waiting a little bit and reinforcing it. But in all that intention, think about the perception in your personalized navigation. Is the clarity inside of your messaging sounding like it is something that is yours, or is it regurgitating what other people have said before, making sure that you're able to dial in the voice, the tone, the temperature, the optics, that is the messaging. Yes, you want to get your logos, yes, you want to get your branding straight. But knowing that this vision is yours, knowing that this concept is yours, it can be derived, it can be completed compared to, it can be influenced by others that are similar. But making sure that you take your intention to that next step of how people can perceive can do that much more for you. Stay humble, stay true, be confident and believe in yourself. But also consider all the aspects that are out there against you so you can prepare for them, so that you can move forward the way that you want and create the success that you, you want to see. Success for you is your personalized path is playing the detective, is looking at all the attributes, all the things going on, being inspired, but also watching out. You don't have to read a book a week, you don't have to wake up at 4 in the morning. The plan that will work for you can be inspired by others, but it has to belong to you. So as we wrap up here, dig into what you hear, dig into what you read, dig into what they say happened. Realize there's always a lot more to assume success story or to even one that failed. And while you can be inspired by other people's journeys, make sure the path you take, the one you create, is the one for you. Personalize the navigation of your business strategy so you can blaze your path to success. All right, guys, this was Loren Wiseman. If you want to continue learning about the concepts around how to personalize the navigation of your business strategy, you can find out more at Lord, thanks again for joining me. And back to you, Omar. Building a portfolio with Fidelity Basket Portfolios is kind of like making a sandwich. It's as simple as picking your stocks and ETFs, sort of like your meats and other topics and managing it as one big juicy investment. Now that's pretty good. Learn more@fidelity.com baskets Investing involves risks, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Member NYSE SIPC At Amica Insurance, we know it's not just about where you're going, but who you go with. That's why we work even harder to protect what matters most. Visit amica.com and get a quote today.

What a powerful guest teacher lesson by Loren Wiseman. I want to highlight something that Lauren talked about is understanding the circumstances of the person you're learning from. This is something I did early on and it's really helped me. I really believe in asking for help, having mentors. When I started my software company, Webinar Ninja, I reached out to somebody I wanted to be like in the software industry, somebody who is maybe a few years ahead of me. So I reached out to Noah Kagan, the founder of Sumo.com and the first thing I asked them is how did you build Sumo? What's your story? How did you get to where you are today? And I understand understood the context. I understood he had a tech founder. I understood what kind of funding they got, all that kind of stuff. This is important because when I get advice or I'm trying to apply what he did in his business, I need to keep those things in mind because if they're not the same as my business, which is very likely, then I need to make sure that I adjust accordingly, that I take that with serious consideration. So always understand the context of the person who's giving you advice or advising you. There's still great knowledge and great information that you can take from those lessons, but adapt them to your business. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe right now so you don't miss a beat. Also, the $100 MBA has a whole new website with some really cool, cool things to offer you. To celebrate the launch of the new site. Go and check it out at100mba.net and send me an email and tell me what you think over at omar@100mba.net before I go, I want to leave you with this. Your business is yours. You make up the rules. You get to choose where it goes. You get to choose how you do it. So make sure you don't feel forced to do things in a certain way. This is the beauty of entrepreneurship. This is why people start businesses is so they can do things on their own terms. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

For delicious meals, you could go out to eat or you could just make a Marie Callender's meal. Marie Callender's classic Chicken Parmigiano bowl is so good. It has marinara sauce that's made from scratch and creamy mozzarella cheese over pasta. It's delicious with no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives and 30 grams of protein. You can find it in the frozen aisle. Marie Callender's what having it all tastes like.