MBA2049 How to Improve Your Luck in Business

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Hey oh. Welcome to the hundred dollar RMBA show. Powerful business lessons you can count on 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 lesson you'll learn how to improve your luck in business. Listen, some things in business are out of your control. Some people call this luck. When it goes in your favor, you feel like it's fortunate luck or good luck. When it doesn't, it's bad luck. Things can go wrong. You can lose your entire business and lose your motivation to keep on going as an entrepreneur. So in today's lesson, I'm going to share with you some ways you can improve your luck in business to increase your chances of doing well by being mindful of the things you can't control and choosing to put yourself in a position that allows you to be in more control of your luck. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico. Whether you believe in luck or not, you can call this several things. Regardless, there are things that you don't have full control over. In business, as in life, things are unpredictable. But there are circumstances that allow more chances for unpredictability and no control than others. If I go on a trip and travel across the world and visit different cities in different countries, the likelihood of me getting sick is higher than if I just stayed home. Now, it doesn't mean that I will get sick if I travel or that I won't get sick if I I stay home. There's no guarantees in life and in business. But how can we improve our odds to get the result we're looking for? That's what we're going to discuss in today's lesson. I'm going to give you a few tips to improve your chances of good luck, of things going your way, or at least all the options that are presented to you in a situation are not all leading to a catastrophe. So let's start with tip number one, and this is probably the best thing I can give you. If you take anything away from today's lesson, it's this. Choose a market you know very well. When you're looking to start a business, to offer a product or service, make sure the market you're about to enter. When I say market, I'm talking about the people you serve. That community. Are you a part of that community? Do you understand that community? Do you know them very well as a group of people, as a culture, so to speak? Let's say I wanted to start a business in sports, a market that I know very well. An audience I know very well is in that niche would be basketball, NBA, basketball, to be specific. A market that I don't know very much about is rugby. I barely know the rules of rugby, let alone understand who are the tastemakers in that community. Who are the people that have influence? How do these people think? What do they like? What they don't like, what irritates them? What are they looking for? What are their needs? Are these are all things that can help you do a better job with your business and not get unlucky. Let me give an example, a real life example, where I chose the wrong market and how I got unlucky several times. And before I get into this example, you might be thinking, omar, why would you choose a market you're unfamiliar with? Well, it happens all the time. Entrepreneurs love opportunities. They see opportunities. They see, wow, there's a thing here. I can make money here. There's a need in the market. Let me serve this market regardless of my experience in that market or me understanding the community behind it. So let me give you that real life example. One of the businesses I had well over 15 years ago is my own e commerce store. We sold custom tailored clothing for men. I started this business because I used to tailor my own clothing. Because if you don't know, I'm 6 5, I got long arms and you know, it's very hard to shop in a normal shop when you're my size. My friends love the clothing and asked me, could you make me some clothes as well? That snowballed into a highly sought after product and business. I pursued that opportunity, but unfortunately, because I didn't love this community, I didn't love this market, I didn't understand it well. I was making mistakes left and right on how to price my products, how to market to them, how to even use the right copy on my sales pages. Because I'm not into fashion, so to speak, or I'm in love with that community or in that market or even a part of that community. Meaning that like I'm not even. I wasn't part of any Facebook groups or forums or anything like that when it came to fashion. I didn't know it was in season, out of season. So I was really shooting in the dark. And a lot of times I would miss, I would miss the mark big time and lose out on a lot of opportunities, lose out on money, time, effort, all kinds of stuff. Now fast forward to now where I'm running Webinar Ninja, a platform for live teaching. My likelihood of success is higher. I can get lucky easier because I understand this very well. I was a teacher for 13 years. I have multiple degrees and certifications in teaching. In a assessment, I understand the educational world. I know the creation world. I've created products and courses and podcast episodes. As you know, all my friends, all the people I know online are in this space. I understand. Eat, breathe, drink all of this all day long. All right, all right, let's move on to tip number two. Now, this is harder to implement than it is to say, but here it is. Simplify. The more you simplify your business, the less likelihood your business will fall into issues due to complexity, due to confusion due to miscommunication. And simplifying your business could be something as grand as simplifying what you offer your customers or even things small like simplifying the tools you use to communicate with your team. Simplifying allows you to streamline a lot of things in your business and it lowers the likelihood of things falling in the cracks of the couch cushions of your businesses. Couch. Right. I'll give you a perfect example. Our team used to use both Slack and Basecamp to communicate with each other. One for project management, one for instant communication. We did this for years and because some of the team members preferred Slack over Basecamp. But recently we said, no more. We're going to simplify things. Everybody's going to use Basecamp. I know that we're going to miss out on some fun on Slack that they do and some of their integrations, but that's a sacrifice we're willing to do to simplify things and prevent any issues. And we've seen a day and night difference in terms of efficiency, in terms of less mistakes or miscommunication. This increases our chances of doing well. But also simplifying what you offer your customers, what you do as a business, helps tremendously. Why? Because it's easy for you to communicate to your customers, this is what we are and this is what we're not. This is what we do and this is what we don't do. This allows people to self select and they don't have misaligned expectations. They actually know what they're going to get and when they get it, they're satisfied. This increases your customer retention, this increases your customer happiness and satisfaction, your NPS scores. You're just allowing yourself to get better at business or have a better business by just simplifying. Too many people think complex equals better or more sophisticated. No, in my opinion, the best businesses are simple businesses. One of the things that Steve Jobs did when he took over as CEO again of Apple is he simplified the business. He said, we have too many products and all these products are confusing. Half of them suck. They literally cut down the majority of their products and sold only a handful and said, we're going to only focus on making great products and only focus on a few. This allowed them to then really hone in on what they do, what they don't do, and get some really good fans. That built momentum over the years. And now, of course, as they grow, as they expand, they added to their product line. They would not be where they are today if Steve Jobs didn't simplify the business. Tip number three, focus on your area of expertise. Every one of us has an area of expertise. We're really good at this thing in our business. Very few of us are great at everything. Most of us are really good at one, maybe two, sometimes three things. But we're talking about absolutely legendary. Like, no one else is as good as you that you can even think of. When you focus on your area of expertise, you dedicate all your energy, your power, your focus on what matters most, your secret sauce. And this increases your ability to get results that because you're just doing what works that you know is good. Too many of us are trying to shore up our weaknesses and focusing on that. I'm a big believer on just focusing on your strengths. This will come easy to you. It's natural, and it's usually the thing that your customers praise you for. I'm going to be straight up. When customers talk about our company and talk about me as the CEO, they usually say one of two things. They say, omar is a great teacher, and I love how he explains things and helps us get better. Or they say, I appreciate Omar's leadership and ability to stand in front and represent his company. So these are the two things I really just focus on doing in my company is being a good leader and being a good spokesperson for a company, but also focusing on being a great teacher and doing the content in my business, doing the podcasting, doing the webinars, doing the videos, because I know that's my secret sauce. That's what I was trained to do from the moment I could work. Right? It's my first job was teaching. Well, my first real job. My first job was actually working at a car wash. Well, my point here is that that's my super talent. That's my superpower, right? And if I try to do everything in my company, I'm going to do everything pretty mediocre. Instead of just focusing on what I know I do really well and just giving my full strength to that, and then get my other team members to do the other things. Now, it's not easy to do that in the beginning, because in the beginning, you're doing everything. And I understand that. I did that several times. But you have to start thinking like an investor and start thinking, okay, how can I outsource all the other things that I'm not great at and start planning out, hiring, outsourcing, automating so that you don't have to do them by doing this, this covers up a lot of shortfalls, a lot of mistakes you might make that might cause you to be in bad luck, Right. Or to have bad luck. When you have a full focus on your strengths and you offer that on a consistent basis to your audience. That's all they really care about. They really are happy with that and they're okay to look the other way. A good example of this is Tesla and Elon Musk. Tesla's not the perfect company. It's not the perfect car. There are flaws. People talk about how there are panel gaps when they get the car brand new and some of the things don't work perfectly and the prices of the.

Cars keep changing and there's a waiting list.

But Elon and Tesla know that their secret sauce is incredible technology in making the car fun. That's why they have video games in there. They have Netflix every Tesla is like really incredibly fast. And they know that if they just do those things right, people will love them for what they are and kind of forgive them for the other things.

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All right, one more tip to improve your luck in business, and this one's easy. Get more shots up in basketball we have a saying you miss 100% of the shots you don't take meaning. If you want to improve your success, put some shots up. Put more shots up. If I want to make five baskets, I have a more likelihood of making five baskets if I shoot 20 times versus five times. Therefore, in business, if you want to get lucky, if you want to get success, if you want to get some traction, the easiest way is just to kick up some dust. Try things, do things. If one thing doesn't work for you, keep trying. Try something else. Modify it, tweak it, pivot I found, especially when I first got started, this was so important. I didn't know it at the time, but me just being relentless and trying things and experimenting and falling on my face and getting up and doing it over and over again, just got more shots up. It gave me more reps so that I can have more of a chance of winning. Bud of mine worked at a theme park and he worked in that games area, you know, where it's kind of like fair games where people like throw the ball to knock down bottles and things like that. And he used to tell me of a customer that was there every day and he used to play the game every day. And I would ask him did he ever win? He said, of course he won. He played every day. He says even a broken clock is right twice a day by accident. So even if you're just trying and you're not totally fully informed and educated, but you're just learning as you're going, you're going to get lucky. You're going to hit the target even by accident. So keep trying, keep doing, get more shots up. There you have it, guys. Let me recap my tips. Tip number one, choose your market well, a market that you're very familiar with, know them very well, that audience that you're going to serve and be happy to serve them. Number two, simplify your business. Number three, focus on your area of expertise. And number four, get more shots up. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app. Do that right now. By doing so, you tell the podcast algorithm that, hey, this show's all right and it's a good way for you to support the show. Plus, by hitting subscribe, you get access to over 2,000 business lessons in our archives. It's the only way to get access. So go ahead and do that right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. There's another thing I want to add to my list. A little bonus tip. Because business is hard and you need to be strong and you need to be able to persevere. And one of the ways to persevere when things get tough is to surround yourself with people that are like minded, that are trying to do the same thing. People are trying to build business, people trying to go after their dreams, whether that's in your physical space, moving to a city that's like that, like I did when I moved to New York, or even if you just surround yourself online on Twitter, in online events, or summits. Be friends with people that are trying to make it happen. They will push you. They will remind you what it's all for, and you'll do the same for them. Thanks 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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