MBA1961 The Hardest Part of Business

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. 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 oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Practical business lessons delivered daily 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 the hardest part of business. Entrepreneurship can be challenging in many ways and one of the things I wished somebody told me along the way when I was in the early days in the early years of my entrepreneurship journey are what are some of the hardest challenges I will face. It's good to be prepared. It's good to know what you're up against. And on the show I try to be as honest as possible about building and running a business so that you're prepared. I don't like to sugarcoat things. I like to say things as they are because in my experience that's a whole lot more helpful than trying to sell you some sunshines and rainbows that are not always the reality. Business has risk. It's long hours, it's hard work, it's sacrifice. But none of these are the hardest part of running a business. In today's episode, I share with you what is the hardest part of business but also offer some strategies so that it helps you along the way so you know what to do when you're in it in the moment. Let's get into it let's get down.

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One of my favorite business books of all time is the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. This book is basically a masterclass on what to do when things just don't go your way, which often happens in business. And you're going to be faced with a lot of challenges. And I don't say this to discourage you or turn you away from business. I say this to you with the hopes that you say, hey, I'm in for the long haul. I'm in for this challenge. I can rise above these challenges. But also tell me what to look out for. Tell me what's on the horizon. Because knowing is super helpful. Because when I knew what to expect and then it happened to me, I didn't feel like there was something wrong with me. I knew that this is just par for the course and I knew what to do because I prepared a strategy to deal with that situation. But today I want to focus on what is the hardest thing about running your business, about business in general. And I mentioned earlier, you know, it is long hours. It's a lot of hard work. It's a lot of sacrifice. You change your whole life around to make this work. You might miss a lot of free time with your friends or hobbies you used to enjoy or longer vacations or whatever they Might be, but. But most of us are kind of happy to give that up in exchange for doing what we love. And being an entrepreneur is what we probably aspire to be in the first place. So we're like, hey, I'm living the life I want. But in my opinion, all that is on one side of the spectrum, meaning you can put all those challenges aside. It doesn't compare to this one thing. And at the end of the day, the hardest thing, in my opinion, when it comes to business is, is making those hard decisions in your business. Those decisions that you know you have to make but still are incredibly hard to do. These could be decisions to change your product, to pivot your pricing. This could be changing one of your core values in your company so that you could be more aligned with who you really are and what you represent. This could be a decision to fire somebody on your team. This could be a decision to have to let go or lay off somebody because of lack of resources. This could be a decision to disappoint customers because you're going to change something in the product or service or the way you do business. For the long term, it's good for your business for the long term, but in the short term, customers don't get it. Why is this so hard? Why do I think it's the hardest part of business? Because there's so much emotion behind these decisions. We don't want to disappoint people. When we do a decision like these, we know that there's going to be a reaction, whether it's from our customers or from our team or from our friends and family, or even from ourselves. A sense of maybe disappointment or sense of, I'm not good enough. What most people do is they delay decisions like this. And the problem with this is that the longer you delay tough decisions in your business, the longer its effect, meaning the fact that you have to make a decision and you're not reaping the benefits of making the right decision continues to build. Meaning you're missing out. Whether you're leaving money on the table or missing out on growth, or the decision is even bigger than that, and it's hurting your business, it's hurting your growth, it's hurting your reputation. These big, tough decisions are required. And guess what? You, as the leader of the business, the CEO or the founder, this is on your shoulders. No one's going to make this decision for you. No one's going to bail you out. No one's going to tell you what to do. No one's going to pull the trigger, you need to do it. Okay? That's the hardest part. You can't outsource this. You can't hire out for this. At least you shouldn't, because you want to be a person of integrity. You want to be a person that's also making decisions and communicating these decisions on the why you made this decision to the rest of your team or to your customers. You can't run away from this. And that's what makes it so hard. You have to do it. Because at the end of the day, the quality of your product, the quality of your business, the quality of your entire company will depend on the quality of your decisions. And that's intimidating. That can seem very hard for many people. That sounds very, very grandiose. And the truth is, is that it is. But we have to understand that decision making is just like any other muscle or skill that we have. We have to train it. We have to continue to make decisions and get better at it. We can't shy away from it. But there are some strategies that, that can help you through this process that I want to share with you. One of them is a simple mindset. Often when we're making decisions about our business, our products or offerings or pricing, our team, all that kind of stuff, we feel like it's hard to change anything or do anything because somebody's going to get upset, somebody's going to blast me on Twitter. Something's going to happen, there's going to be a reaction because you think that you're doing this for yourself. But one great mindset shift is you need to start seeing your business as a separate entity. In fact, you should see it as a child, like your own little child, that you need to care for, that you need to nurture, that you need to cultivate, that you need to protect, that you need to support. And as a parent of a child, you will do anything you can to do what's best for your child. People may not understand, people might agree, maybe I disagree. But at the end of the day, you're not going to care about any of that because. Because the well being of your child is your top priority. And that's the way you should see your business. It's a separate thing from you. This is something that you're managing because the honest truth is it is something separate from you. It's its own entity. Because one day your child might find somebody else to take care of or be with, meaning you sell your company or somebody else takes it over or your children inherit it. The Point is that you need to see it separately. Why? Because you're not gonna feel guilty about decisions about something that is separate from you. You're the business's protector. For example, let's say you sent your actual child to a private school and this private school was not really serving your child really well. They're not feeling welcomed. They feel like they're not getting a lot out of it. They're not learning much. As a parent, you're going to be like, hey, this school is not doing its job. My child is being affected. You wouldn't wait until late and just see what happens. You intervene, you talk to the school princip, you talk to the teachers. You try to figure to solve this problem. If not, you'd pull your child out of the school and put them into a different one. This is pretty much the same with your business. And working with a supplier, a vendor, a service provider, if they're not doing their job and serving your business, it's very clinical. It's like, hey, either you do your job and do what I am expecting or I'm going to have to find somebody else. And no one should blame you for that. And you shouldn't feel guilty about that. And that can be extended. Not just your service providers, but it could be, you know, your marketing partners, your team members, consultants, whatever. At the end of the day, you and your team and your customers are relying on you making the right decisions for your business. Right? You need to say, hey, I'm the custodian of this business. And even the hard decisions I need to make, because this is going to affect all the most important stakeholders, my team members allow my business to run the customers that pay me money. I need to make sure that every decision I make serves those people and of course, ultimately myself. You can't go bankrupt because you don't want to make a decision. You can't tank the business or tank your own income. Because the whole point of having an enterprise, having a company, having a business, is to allow people to have income yourself, team members, and for some people, empower other people, like their customers, to make an income using your platform or using your service. So if you're not making decisions for the best of the company and the company goes down, everybody loses. So as tough as this is, making tough decisions, making decisions that are gut wrenching, that are hard, that are emotional, you need to make them in a timely manner. One of the best strategies I can offer you is again, to see your business as a separate entity, like you're taking care of a child. Another great strategy that I learned from Dan Martell, someone I follow and was my business coach for a long period of time, is to ask the question, if I were to buy my own company, what would be the first decisions I would make? What are some of the changes I would make? How long would it take me to make these changes? You'd probably say, I'd make these top things I've been delaying, and I would do them immediate. Allows you to start thinking outside the box a little bit outside your own business and just see it from a little bit more of an objective way. If you were to buy your company, what changes would you make? When would you make them?

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To wrap up today's lesson, the hardest part of running a business is making those tough, tough decisions. But decisions are what define our business. It's what will propel you to success or failure. This is why I emphasize it's so important to be mindful of your own health, mental and physical health. Because if you're not in the right state of mind, this is a terrible state to be in. When making decisions. When you're tired, when you're cranky, when you're upset, when you're feeling down, you're not thinking clearly, and often you'll make decisions that don't serve you. The other thing I want to tell you, just from experience, is that just because it's a hard decision doesn't mean it's kind of like an iffy choice. A lot of people feel like, why is this so hard? It should be easy. Easy decisions should just feel easy. Like, no. Even when you logically know this is the right decision for your company, it's still going to be hard. Okay? It's still going to have emotion behind it. It's super, super important for you to remember that. Why? Because we're human beings and we're emotional creatures, and this is just the nature of who. Whether we're making decisions about other people or our decisions will affect other people, like our customers or our vendors or our relationship with our service providers but one sign that it was the right decision is often after you make the decision, how do you feel? Do you feel better or worse? Often, if you start to feel better and better as the days go on, you know you made the right decision. It's just that initial blow. It kind of hurts because again, you're a human being. You have a heart. And sometimes it just doesn't feel good to disappoint people. But hard decisions are called hard decisions for a reason. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe. Hit follow whatever it says on your favorite podcast app so you can get the next episode automatically. Tomorrow's episode is all about when and how to hire for marketing. Marketing is a big part of your company. It's how you get new customers. It's huge. When is it time to hire somebody to help you out? How do you do this? Do you go with an individual? Do you go with a firm? How much should you be spending? All that and more in tomorrow's episode. But before that, I want to leave you with this. Being the founder of your company, you will do a lot of the hardest things in the business. One of them is making tough decisions. Why? Because you are taking on all the responsibility which equals risk so that you can get, you know, the fair share of the reward. This is why a lot of people, people don't start a business. They feel comfortable in a job because they don't have to deal with big, tough decisions. They don't have to deal with disappointing people on a regular basis. They don't have to get uncomfortable. But that's just the law of economics. If people are not willing to do something but you are, you will be rewarded for it. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care of.

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