MBA1684 5 Business Insights You Should Take Away from 2020

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Hey, welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Because your business needs you at your best. That's why we deliver 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, a complete business training and community online. Check us out over at 100mba.net in today's lesson you will learn five business insights you should take away from 2020. No doubt 2020 has been a challenging year for all entrepreneurs no matter what it brought. Even for those who saw business booming because of COVID 19, there are challenges with immediate demand. Many businesses that were not up for the challenge saw a lot of angry customers. But whenever you have an eventful year like this past one, there are so many golden nuggets. There's so many things you can learn and take away and use for years to come. So I wanted to distill those learnings. I wanted to distill those golden nuggets for you and offer it to you right on today's episode. These insights will help improve your business for 2021 to be stronger, to be more profitable. It will increase your confidence and your will to succeed. There are so many things that I took away from 2020 that it was actually a challenge to Boil it down to the top five. But regardless, I did it, and I'll be offering them to you today. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Five powerful insights you should take away from 2020. Here we go. Number one, and this might sound obvious, but we're going to go down a deeper level, and that's you can't control everything. That's probably the biggest thing we saw in our face every day is that you cannot control everything around you. Okay? If you run a coffee shop, you can't control a global pandemic, Right? If you're on a software company, you can't control. If some of your staff members are infected with COVID 19 and you're down manpower. These are things out of your realm of influence. You cannot control it. So you might be saying, okay, Omar, we get it, but what's the point? Well, the point is, is that you have to recognize and come to terms with the fact that in business there's going to be things you cannot control. And you have to be ready for that. You have to be ready for the inevitable. There's a great book called the Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The subtitle is the Impact of the Highly Improbable. If you don't know the author, Nassim Taleb is an investor and he's made all his wealth off the fact that bad things will happen. We as human beings sometimes ignore that fact, that big disastrous things like the COVID 19 pandemic and is bound to happen in our lifetime. Now, I know Taleb specifically considers Covid to be something we could have avoided rather than an unpredictable disaster. But for business owners, the principle still applies. For those of you in your 30s or 40s, you have it pretty good. Actually, we've had a pretty good run without any disasters. Most people go through a lifetime where they've seen multiple wars, they've had to serve pandemics, disasters, huge national disasters, or even environmental disasters. But the human brain is not wired to always anticipate this. If you really want to understand how the pandemic really affected economies, how it really affected your own business, and how you could have benefited. If you haven't already read the book Black Swan, it will allow you to put everything in perspective and allow you to utilize this experience so in the future when this happens again, because it will happen again. It's just a matter of time when another thing like this happens again. How can you make sure that it doesn't affect your business, your personal life, but in fact, you'll be prepared and you'll be ready. And that leads me to number two. You can't control everything, but you can control how you prepare and react. A lot of people, when this pandemic hit, they kind of just put their hands up in the air and said, you know what, there's nothing I can do. No, there's plenty you can do. Let me give you an example. Many businesses actually saw an uptick during the COVID 19 pandemic because they prepared and they reacted properly. Nicole, my co founder and wife, has a personal trainer. Her name is Amy Mitchell, and she runs Goddess Fitness. She runs these outdoor boot camps for women. And anybody who's in any business that is a physical business, in person, business that has people congregating, you would think Covid would just totally annihilate that business. No. Amy had the foresight and said, hey, I got to pivot, I got to change. I got to have other offerings on my site. And she offered online training, people training with her via calls. She also helps them with their nutrition and diet plan. And recently, Amy shared with Nicole that 2020 was one of her best years for her business because she made that change because she had the extra revenue stream from online clients. And when restrictions eased a little bit in Australia and things got back on track, she still had her physical boot camps. And the online clients didn't leave, they still kept on going. This is a perfect example of being prepared and reacting properly, understanding that things are changing. Something happened, something is different now in the world. I can't just do the same things. I got to change, I got to react, I got to adapt. Number three, those who make it when it's tough, they thrive on the other end. And this became very apparent in countries where the COVID pandemic was under control. And things started to open up and economies started to kind of go back to normal. There were many businesses that just threw in the towel, just didn't adapt, didn't change. The people that survived that rough patch, they actually now are market leaders, are now really thriving because there's a whole lot less competition, there's a whole lot less noise, and people who made it when it's tough can really go on and succeed when things are back to normal, when things are easier. For the business owner, going through something like this is like going through a war. People can't just be business as normal. When bombs are falling from the sky, it's a rough time time. But those who survive that and it's peacetime. Again, they're going to become the market leaders for the next foreseeable future. So people that do the first two really benefit those who know they can't control everything. So therefore, they prepare and they adapt and react properly. They survive that rough patch, and they come out super strong. So even if you're in a country where things are still locked down, things are tough in Covid, hang in there, try to lower your expenses as much as possible. Survive, because you want to see daylight, you want to be there when this is all over. You want to still be in business, because then it's going to be a whole lot easier for you, not only because you know the challenges are over from the pandemic, but because it weeds out the week. It's like what Phil Knight says in his autobiography, Shoe Dog, and I'm paraphrasing here, the cowards never tried. The weak died along the way. That leaves us number four. A challenge like a pandemic, like an economic crisis, can be a blessing, can be an opportunity for your team. During this rough time this year, I saw some of the most incredible work from our team members. I saw team members stepping up, doing their best work, showing what they're made out of. People that do well. When things are tough, those are employees, those are team members you want to hang on to. Those are people that are going to shine and take your business to the next level in the future. So even though it was tough, these challenges really test your team, and the cream rises to the top when things get hot. Right? It also exposes those who are only having a good time and doing good work. When things are good, you want people that are going to actually thrive, that are going to show you incredible work, solve incredible problems. When things are tough, these people are gold. And if you don't have tough times in your business, if you don't have tough times in the economy, you'll never get a chance to see that it won't be tested. And I found that a lot of our team members really stepped up during this time. They took ownership. They said, no, we're going to be amazing. We're going to survive this. We're going to make it through the other end, and we're going to be stronger because of it. And as a result, they built things in the company that are going to benefit us for years and are going to benefit us as we come out of this pandemic. Whether it's lines of code, whether it's procedures, whether it's new policies they put into place or even blog posts they wrote. Challenges are good and it can not only test you, but test your team and separate the superstars from the super lazy.

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Alright, my fifth insight that you should take away from 2020 is when there's challenges, there's opportunities. A challenge just means a change. Something changed. And change is hard. But when things change, things open up. There are new opportunities. There are things that weren't available to you before or maybe that you didn't see. For example, I was on a Mastermind call and one of the Mastermind group members invited one of their friends that runs a local cafe. They were in dire need for some help, some advice, some insights about what they're going to do because they won't be able to serve customers. They can't sit down. It's only takeaway. They're worried that the takeaway business wouldn't be enough to keep them afloat. He just let go of maybe something like 19 staff members and he was torn up and he wanted to survive so that when this is all over he can hire them back through that group. Through that Mastermind session, we came up with the idea of how about meal delivery, Delivering meals on a subscription based business. Many people used to go out for lunch when they used to go to the office. But now with COVID people are at home, they're working from home. Why not have a subscription where they get their lunch delivered to their house at the right time every day? That is an opportunity first of all, he sought out that opportunity by seeking help, by going to this Mastermind meeting. And guess what? Now that even when his cafe is open and he can take in customers and he's hired back his employees, that delivery service, that membership service, has just gone gangbusters. It's really allowed his business to skyrocket. And it was an opportunity that came out of a challenge. It was an opportunity that was discovered because something changed. People have different needs. People still work from home, even though restrictions have eased in Australia. So there's still a need for that, and there's still a need for people to go to the cafe physically. So things are different, things are weird. But when things change, there are new chances, new insights, new things we can do, new opportunities to make money, to grow our business, to bring in new customers, to add more value. So the next time we have a challenge like this or there's another wave of COVID or your business in particular in your industry gets hit in some ways. Some people got hit with Amazon. Amazon recently lowered their commissions for their affiliate program. So you might have challenges, but that means a change happened and now there's new opportunities. Seek out those opportunities. Brainstorm, find out, try things out, and you won't regret it. Guys, thank you so much for listening to the Hunter Obvious show, and thank you so much for listening to this podcast throughout 2020 as we work through this together. We're about a week away from the end of the year, and it just seems like yesterday it was the beginning of 2020. Time will go by. Things will pass. But will we progress? Will we change? Will we adapt? Will we get better? Well, if you're listening to this podcast, my guess is, yes, you will, because you're hungry to learn and you're hungry to make a difference in other people's lives and improve your business along the way. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you haven't hit subscribe on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts, go ahead and do that right now. By hitting subscribe, you get access to over 1600 business lessons in our archives. It's absolutely free to hit subscribe, and it's the only way to get access. So go ahead and do that now. It also alerts you when a new episode is available and has it ready for you right on your device. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things I love about entrepreneurship is that one thing is guaranteed. You will be challenged. It will be hard, but the flip side is that it forces you to get better. It forces you to improve. It forces you to grow. I believe that entrepreneurship is is the best personal development program you can ever take. So be happy about that. You know, be proud of the fact that you're on this journey, that you're on this personal development journey called entrepreneurship. It's making you a better person. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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