MBA2055 Q&A Wednesday: I don’t love my business. I can’t sell it, what should I do?

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 O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. Powerful business insights 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 today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q Wednesdays I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you got a question you want to ask just go ahead and email me over@omar100mba.net Today's question is from Lauren and Lauren asks. Hi Omar, I've been running my e commerce business for about two years and recently I had to get honest with the fact that I don't love my business. I don't enjoy it at all. The problem is that I'm in a position where I can't really sell it. It's not worth much. I haven't been profitable even though I've had sales in the business. What should I do? I feel like every day that goes by is a day wasted working on something I don't love. Thanks for sharing this question Lauren. I want to say that you are not alone Lauren. A lot of entrepreneurs start businesses and then later on feel like they Just don't want to do this anymore. I've been there actually with an E Commerce business. In today's episode, we're going to explore Lauren's situation, her challenge here, the rut she's in, doing something she doesn't enjoy and taking a look at what her options are. What can you do in this situation? I'm going to be asking some questions that Lauren should ask herself. But as you're listening, ask yourself these questions. These are the same questions I asked myself when I was in a similar situation. The whole point of starting a business is getting the chance to do what you love every day, to have that life, freedom, to have that autonomy. And if you're not getting that anymore, then it might be time for a change. But let's make sure we salvage or get the most out of this transition, out of this situation. We're going to discuss all the details 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 1 line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a price guarantee on my top text 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 at $25 after with autopay not available if with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days. So Lauren's had it with her business. She doesn't enjoy it anymore. She's been running her E Commerce business for two years now. It's not getting the results she's looking for. It's not profitable despite having some sales. And she kind of feels stuck, like, I can't sell this thing. What do I do? Close my doors, disappoint my customers? What do I do? So what I'm going to do here is ask a few questions that Lauren should ask herself. And if you're listening along, please do the same because you may be in the same situation, might be close to the situation or might be in the situation in the future. And it's good to kind of check yourself. So the first question I would ask myself is, why did I start this business in the first place? I need to really understand this and I really like writing things down. It's important to put things on paper because when it's on paper, they're real and they're staring at you. Right? You can actually analyze things. You can actually be critical and be objective. So write down, why did you start this business in the first place? Write down all the reasons. The small ones, the big ones, the ones that you might think are insignificant, the emotional ones, the practical ones. For example, when I was in a similar situation, my E commerce business, my clothing line, and we're talking about, what, 15 years ago, I had to write down these reasons. I had to say, you know, things like, I saw a great opportunity and I have a good product, My customers love it. I started this business because people loved what I offered. I started this business because it was exciting and fun in the beginning. I started this business because maybe I felt like I needed to change whatever it is. Write down the reasons why you started this business. Then ask yourself, do those reasons still apply? Do they still exist? Are you still getting these things? Are you happy with these results? For example, do you? One of the things I wanted to get out of my ecommerce business, I wanted to build a business that's beyond myself, with team members and locations and kind of a worldwide presence. And that was a challenge I really wanted to accomplish, and I did. But does that challenge still exist for me? Am I still hungry for it? The answer was no. You know, I kind of been there, done that, and it wasn't as appealing or as exciting as I thought it was going to be. One of the other reasons I put down is I like the idea of creating a physical product and putting it out in the world. Do I still like that? I started to realize, actually I just like the idea of being a creator. And I thought it had to be a physical product, but doesn't necessarily need to be physical. It could be a book, it could be software, it could be a course. So I started to analyze the reasons why I started a business and I started asking myself, are those reasons still valid? Am I still getting something out of those reasons? For you, it might be, yes, you are getting something out of it. You just need to remind yourself. The next thing I would ask myself is, do I need a break? This is a really good question because sometimes we forget that we don't really operate at our best when we are tired, when we are burnt out. It's not the best time to make decisions when you're in the state. When's the last time you took a break, took a holiday, took two weeks off, and just did nothing but think, read, enjoy your loved one's company. Stepped away from the business, get some perspective. If you are burnt out, I suggest don't move forward on any decisions until you take a break. And trust me, most businesses under the sun will not just totally tank. If you step away for a week or two, even an extended weekend can really make a difference. If the stock market takes a break on the weekend for a couple of days and doesn't collapse, you're going to be fine. As a small business owner, it's just not going to die in one day. It's going to be okay. If you don't get back to people on email for a few days, put an autoresponder, say, hey, I'm away, but I'll be back this day. This is when I'll be able to respond. If you are burnt out, take a break, step away. Get some perspective. Because it just might be the fatigue and might be just the frustration. You might be really just clouded in terms of thinking and need some time off to think clearly. So let's say you've done all that and you have decided I don't want to do this anymore. And that's fine. That's a valid conclusion. Okay. That's okay. No one can tell you you're wrong. But now what? What do you do with this business? Now? Lauren said, I can't sell the business because it's not really profitable, even though I had some sales. I'm going to question that, Lauren, because a lot of people sell businesses that are not profitable all day long. Big businesses, small businesses. And the reason why people buy these businesses because they believe they can turn and make it profitable. Now, it doesn't mean that you're in the strongest position where you can demand top dollar for your business, but you can probably get something for it. Getting acquired is so much easier in terms of a transition than just shutting down your business. I'll explain that option in a moment as well. But if you've been around for two years, there's a good chance your domain authority is worth buying. Just the domain, just the URL of your business, your competitors, people in your market, people that are in your industry might love to get that extra traff. Whatever traffic you get to your site, let's say it's minimal. Let's say you get 5,000 people coming to your site a month. That's solid traffic that's targeted because of your SEO. Many people in your industry are paying a lot of money for 5,000 visits. They're paying maybe $5 a visit every single month. So you can save them $25,000 a month if you just gave them your URL. And I'm not even talking about the business and the inventory and the customer base and any kind of income you're making. I'm just talking about literally just your DOM domain name. Many businesses that don't do well might just need a pivot or might need somebody else to take it over. They could change the business. They can not even use the business and just use the domain like I mentioned. They might use a customer base just to market to. And you might be surprised. You could probably get a decent amount of money to at least recoup what you invested in the business. So you're not leaving empty handed. I know many small business owners that have created small businesses and sold them over and over and over. Small niche sites where they're selling businesses for $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 that really haven't been alive for long. Six months, a year, getting some decent traffic has some SEO. Some of them don't even have customers. So I would reconsider. And if you're wondering, hey, how do I sell this site? Well, there's some great sites that allow you to sell your business empire. Flippers is one of them. Flippa.com and there's many more. Just Google it. Don't be afraid to put out a business that's kind of small, that doesn't have a lot of traction, that may be not making a profit at the moment. Let the buyer decide what they're going to do. You are seeing your business in a certain way, with a certain lens because it's the way you built it. But somebody from outside might look at your business, say, okay, I'll take that and that and that. I really don't care for these things, but I'll just buy the whole package so I can get the things I want. Now if for any reason you decide not to sell your business and you just want to close your doors, that is an option. This is your business and I know that this might disappoint some of your customers, but your life and your time and your energy and your happiness is important. And you should not continue something that is not making you happy, that is not getting you what you want out of the agreement, out of what you put into this business and the reason why you started it. So just consider the fact that it's going to be okay. Just relax. People have closed their doors all the time. Businesses close their doors all the time. And you could just give your customers ample warning. Physical retail stores close all the time and say, hey, going out of business sale. We're closing our doors. Everything must go. And you could do the same. Sell at your stock. I remember when I did this, I actually took all my inventory, took it to a trade show, sold it in bulk just so I'm not out of pocket. I think I sold most of my things a little bit above cost, so I was really just trying to make sure that I don't complain completely. Lose all my money in this whole transition and you could do the same. Give your customers ample warning. You had a good ride. Tell them the reasons why you're closing your doors and have a plan forward of actually closing the doors and shutting down. Create a to do list so you don't get overwhelmed, so you know what you have to do and when you have to do it, like in what order. And my advice is, before you start another business, take some time to think about what happened here. What did you learn? Again, write it down. What are you going to do differently the next time around? Write it down. Who did you become in this process? How did you change? How have your values changed? What do you want out of business now? Is it different than before? Give yourself a chance to debrief and recap what happened so that you can move on to the next stage in your entrepreneurial career in a better position for success.

You've made it on time for the McDonald's breakfast menu. You think to yourself, finally, I could start my day with my perfect breakfast. But what if breakfast could be even more perfect with the hot honey sausage egg biscuit? It finally is. This won't last forever, so go to McDonald's and get it while you can.

To wrap up today's Q and a Wednesday's question from Lauren. A couple words of warning. This process is not fun, okay? Whether you're selling your business or shutting it down, it's like closing a chapter in your life. It's like saying goodbye to a dear friend or a family member. You have been a part of this business day in and day out. It's been a part of your life every single day for a couple years now. It's part of who you are in some way, and removing it from your life is going to be a little bit painful. It's going to be hard to kind of grasp some days, and sometimes when we're just talking about it before it happens, it's kind of hard to imagine. But in the process, you start to realize this business actually meant more to me than I thought. So just be patient with yourself. Understand that this is not going to be easy, but you can do it. And of course, remind yourself why you're doing it. You went through this whole process of this decision, and by doing that, you remind yourself that you're doing the right thing. And this is just something you have to go through. You have to do it so that you can be happier, so you can move on in your career and move on to the next win. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you've got a question you want to ask right here on Q and A Wednesdays, go ahead and email me over at omar@100mba.net if you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or whatever app, take the time to give us a rating. Let us know what you think of the show. If you're on Apple Podcasts where you can pop in a review, but by following us and rating us, you help support the show. Thanks so much in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. That last day of my clothing line business where I closed the doors and it was, that's it, it's over, right? That last final day was so tough. And I kind of felt like it was going to be tough because I was leading up to it weeks in advance. I started to realize the gravity of this day of saying goodbye to my business. And I did something really smart. I took a few days off. It was kind of in the middle of the week, and I just took the few days off and I bridged it with a weekend. And I just took time to just allow myself to think and to absorb what happened, but also to get excited about the future. Give yourself a moment. Right? Don't just move on. A lot of us try to move on to the next thing so that we can just ignore the feelings that we're going through in a tough situation. No, this is a moment you should actually be present for. Not a lot of people are going to go through it. So you can learn some big lessons and you can learn a lot about how you feel about your business and what kind of entrepreneur you want to be. This will set you up for greater successes in the future. At least that was my experience. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. 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 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.

Text 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.