MBA1871 How To Know What Really Matters in Your Business

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Hey. Oh. Welcome to the Hundred Doll RBA Show. No fluff, just the good stuff. 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 Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's episode you will learn how to know what really matters in your business. As entrepreneurs, we often can get overwhelmed with everything we have to do and sometimes we forget what's really important. What's the most important thing? Things I need to do for my business. These are what I call big rocks. And we'll talk about why they're called big rocks in a moment. But if you don't know what matters, then you can often spend a lot of time on things that really don't matter. Things that really don't move the needle. Things that really suck a lot of time but make very little difference to your bottom line. This is why it's so important for you to take the time to figure out what matters. What really matters in your business. That's what we're gonna do in today's lesson. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining My wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

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I mentioned at the top of the episode, you need to know what really matters in your business. What are the big rocks? What do I mean by big rocks? Well, this comes from a teaching from the Buddhist tradition. It's the idea that in life we have big rocks, pebbles and sand. And if we put in sand in the jar first, then pebbles, then big rocks, there will not be enough room in the jar for everything. In our life as entrepreneurs in business, sand is a metaphor for emails and social media and direct messages and all these little tasks that take so much of our time. They're all these little small grains of sand. Big rocks, on the other hand, are the big things that we do that really move the needle in our business. Closing a big deal that is going to allow us to bring in more revenue working on our product so that our product is better than ever. Proving our service so our customers tell other people about our business. These are big rocks. These are things that take a bit of time, take more concentration, but make a huge impact on your business. And the pebbles are the tasks that are something in between. So in the tradition they say put in your big rocks first, then the pebbles, then the sands will fill in the spaces that is left behind. So we need to find out what your big rocks are. What are the most important things you need to to focus on in your business? And it's actually quite simple. I've been working on this for some time and I boiled it down to two questions you need to ask yourself. Now, I said it's simple, but it doesn't mean it's easy. Okay. This might take some real reflection and for you to be really honest with yourself, to really think about this deeply. So you may want to do this away from the computer, away from anything. Just a paper and pen. Answer these two questions and the answer to these questions can be more than one. You know, it could be a few things, but just be brutally honest and I'll give you some tips. On how to be honest. Okay, so the first question you're going to answer is what are the things I must do? I must do. Okay. What are the things I must do for my business to survive? So if I don't do these things, my business just collapses. It doesn't exist anymore. So some examples of this is I need to make sure I pay my bills, right? I pay my suppliers or my services. So I gotta make sure I'm paying my website hosting to make sure my website's up so people can check out and buy my products. Right? I know this sounds really over simplistic, but it's important because we need to really get down to what's really important. What do I have to do to keep my business up and running? If you're a small business or a business of one, I have to answer customer support emails because people ask me questions. They could be pre sale questions and it will allow me to close sales, so I need to answer those emails. If you're a service based business, you have to fulfill the service. If somebody is hiring you to be a graphic designer, you have to actually design their graphics, right? So these are things you must do just to survive, just to maintain the business. So list the things and you'll be surprised how short this list is. It's actually not that long. You might think, oh, it's going to be hundreds of things. No, it's probably going to be less than 10, maybe even less than 5. What are the things you must do? And the first one I talked about about paying your vendors, well, this is just basic finance, the finances of your business. I gotta make sure that I'm making enough money to pay the bills, right? So sales have to come in. And how does sales get generated? Well, you gotta break that down for your business. So talk about what are the tasks you have to do just to keep your business going. Now if somebody sends you an email asking you if you want to be a part of this networking event, that's awesome. But will your business collapse if you don't answer that email? No, it won't. You can answer that email in a week's time and your business would be fine, right? It doesn't matter really. It doesn't make a difference to the survival of your business. Get brutal. Okay, what are some other things that you might do then? Really? Don't make or break your business. Posting on social. If you didn't post on social today, would your business just go out of business? No, most likely not, right? If you didn't post on social, there's a good chance that you're still be able to to function as a business, still sell your product and services. Your other customers would tell other customers word of mouth marketing and you'd be fine. Okay, I don't know the ins and outs of your business and what is a must and what's not a must. You need to answer that question. So the first question is list all the things you must do just to maintain your business, just to keep it alive, just so you can survive. Now question number two. What are the things I have to do to grow my business? Now in both of these questions, I would underline the words have to one of the things I have to do. If I didn't do these things, my business would now grow. Here's an important tip. When you're answering these questions, it has to be a hundred percent true. What do I mean by that? So for example, you might say I have to post on social or my business will not grow. Are you sure about that? Have you tried not posting on social and see if your business wouldn't grow? It has to be a hundred percent true. It has to be proven. For example, I run a software company. Every time we have less issues or bugs, meaning our total outstanding bugs is less than last month, our business grows. We know it for a fact. We know when it goes up, the business does not grow. We know when it goes down, it does grow. We track this metric, we know it for sure. So I know in order for my business to grow, I have to do tasks, to work with my team to make sure our bug count is dropping every month. And every software company has bugs. Just because the customer may not experience these bugs, it doesn't mean they don't exist. Right? There are things that maybe show up on the back end, slowing the system down because of these errors. We can fix these things up, speed things up. I know for a fact when we improve our product, our customers give us more reviews, are more willing to give us reviews online, and therefore we get new customers via those reviews. How do I know? Do I know this is a hunch? No, I know for a fact because every time we release new features, we improve the product and we send out an email or a message to our users to ask for reviews. More customers give us reviews and then we know on those review sites because we can see where the traffic is coming from. Then when people sign up via these, these review sites, they are better customers, their conversion rates are higher. So we have the data to prove this hunch. So I know I need to work on these things in order for me to grow. This is the point here. In both of these questions, you have to prove to yourself that that's factual and not a hunch. And when you have these two lists, then you know what really matters. These become your big rocks. You start to understand, wow, I'm actually spending a lot of time doing things that are not big rocks. I'm doing things that have very little or no effect on maintaining my company and growing it. And that's okay. We all experience that. I've experienced that where you have that aha moment and you realize, man, I was being foolish, I misguided, I was misled, or whatever you might think, man, why was I spending so much time on things that really don't matter? Well, it's because you didn't take the time to identify what matters. And that's what you're going to do today after this lesson, do this exercise. It's an absolute game changer. Now, identifying what really matters in your business is only half of it. Now you need to make the time and actually focus on implementing that, doing the things that matter and don't get distracted by the things that don't. So I literally take the tasks, the things I list for the things to maintain my business and to grow my business, and I pop them in my calendar in blocks. So work on this, on, you know, this time block in my calendar on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. This is a great way to force yourself to remind yourself, hey, you gotta work on this. This is what matters. This is me putting the big rocks in the jar first. And then anything around my calendar, I'll fill it in with pebbles and sand later on. What I find then is that I'm spending less time in my inbox, spending less time on social. And it really doesn't affect my business because I spend just enough time that it deserves, just enough time where it really matters. Or I start evaluating. Maybe somebody else can do this for me. Maybe I can outsource these little sand projects or sand tasks so that I can focus on the big rocks, so I can focus on the things that bring in the big bucks. 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. With the times. 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. To wrap up Teddy's lesson, the big aha moment. The big takeaway today is knowing like a fact, like you know, your name. What really matters in your business? What are the things that actually move the needle? What are the things that actually allow your business to survive and thrive? Remember, you got to prove it to yourself with data that these are the things that actually matter. Once you do that, you know for sure and then you can hone in. If you don't know for sure, find out, have a hypothesis, but prove your hypothesis right or wrong. So this exercise may take a little bit longer, a few more days than expected, but it's going to help you for years to come. It's going to allow you to have some clarity. It's going to allow you to know that you're working on the right things. It's going to allow you to feel in control and feel like you're actually doing things that matter. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, if you found this episode helpful, share it with a friend on social. Share the podcast with your friends and family on social. Thank you in advance of that. It help us help other budding entrepreneurs just like you as well as seasoned entrepreneurs. It's my honor, it's my pleasure to be able to help as many people as possible through the podcast. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things I always say is that most of business is mental. It's a mental game, okay? You gotta get your head right. You gotta get out of the monotony. You gotta question things constantly so you can get to the truth. Sometimes we get lost in the daily grind, in what we do every day, in our habits. And we don't question what we're actually doing because we feel like, hey, I guess it's working. But no, you can do better, okay? You can rise above your current situation by changing things up and questioning what you actually do every day. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Freeride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fe and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Tuxt and data detour to Metro.

Get that more for your money feeling Only at Metro by T Mobile Just bring your number $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days.