MBA2094 Are You Starting or Running the Wrong Business?

Dear McDonald's, your breakfast menu fire tens across the board. I could be happy with anything even though I order the same thing every time. Thanks for not judging me. I'll try something new next time.

Maybe score a two for five dollar deal on a sausage McMuffin with egg and more. Limited time only. Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer Single item at regular price.

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Dear McDonald's, your breakfast menu Fire tens across the board. I could be happy with anything even though I order the same thing every time. Thanks for not judging me. I'll try something new next time.

Maybe score a two for five dollar deal on a sausage McMuffin with egg and more Limited time only. Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Single item at regular price.

I want to start this episode by defining what a successful business is. In my book, a successful business is a business you enjoy doing that's rewarding, that actually makes a profit, that actually grows in revenue and is successful financially. A business that's maybe successfully financially right now, but is at risk of failing at any moment and things are out of your control is incredibly stressful. That's not a success. Sometimes success blinds us. We think, hey, it's making money, it's doing well. I should just keep doing it. Sometimes the market will carry you. A wave or a season of new customers will carry you and kind of hide some of the shortcomings or the risks you have in your business. You might have success in the short term, but definitely not the long term. And I'll explain why. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, there is one golden rule you need to have in your business. You need to abide by this to be a happy founder, to have a fulfilling business that is successful. Now, I want to clarify. You may have some success without it, but if you want to increase the likelihood of success to the maximum, then you're going to want to follow this rule. Is this rule. Well, here it is. Whatever your business sells or offers, the product, the service, that thing that you offer your customers has to be in your zone of genius. It has to be your strength. It has to be something that you can add value to. Because at the end of the day, whatever you're offering your customers has to be great. And you can influence how great it is with your expertise. All the other moving parts in a business, the administration, the finance, the execution, all that stuff, you can build a team around it. But the secret sauce, the thing that makes your business valuable, needs to be something that you're well versed in. This is where the most successful businesses thrive. When you hear founders say, I love what I do, I really enjoy every day working on my thing, these people are following this rule. They are actually allowing their passion to fuel their success. Let me give you a quick example. One of the most successful chefs in the world is Gordon Ramsay. You might know Gordon Ramsay from his TV shows. We're going to get to that in a second. But one of his most successful businesses is his chain of restaurants, Hell's Kitchen. Now, Gordon Ramsay doesn't actually cook in the restaurants, right? He's not the chef in every single one of his restaurants. He doesn't bust the tables, he doesn't greet the visitors, he doesn't even manage the branches. But what makes a successful restaurant, mainly really good food. And he knows a thing or two about good food because that's his area of expertise when he's building out this business. The one thing that's critical to the success of this business, he is very good at. Let's say I want to get into the restaurant business and my background was, let's say, decor. Maybe I have a beautiful looking restaurant, but it's not going to last very long if the food is not good or at least competitive with Gordon Ramsay. And it's very hard for me to be competitive with Gordon Ramsay because I'm not a chef. Now, at this point, you're probably thinking, Omar, but can't you just hire a really good chef? Great question. Of course you can. And you might get lucky and get a great chef, but it's risky. And like I said at the beginning of the episode, if you want to increase the likelihood of success, you want to own the genius of the actual product or service. Why? Well, how are you going to choose a great chef? How are you going to hire one if you don't know what a great chef looks like? If you're not one yourself, how are you going to evaluate them? How are you going to improve the quality of the product if you have no idea how to? Now, you might say to yourself, this makes total sense. This is obvious, Omar. Actually, it's not that obvious. A lot of entrepreneurs fail because they don't follow this golden rule. I see tons of engineers starting pizzerias trying to compete with people that grew up in Italy from the age of five learning from their grandmother how to create homemade pizza. Is it impossible for that engineer to learn how to create great pizza, train their staff, have a successful business? Of course not. But he or she is making it hard on themselves. When you do something that you're good at, it's easy, it comes second nature. You get momentum, balls rolling. You're going to be able to really get some success early on. So look at your own business that you're maybe starting right now or currently in what are you selling? What is the actual product or service you're offering the world? Is this your number one skill, metaphorically speaking? If somebody else was doing what you're doing, can you correct them and say, no, this is how you're supposed to do it, like a master chef would do with a junior chef in the kitchen. And sometimes this is really hard to come to terms with because sometimes the answer is no. Let me give you two examples from my own experience. My first example is 12 years ago, I started an e commerce store called Zenum Designs. It was custom tailored clothes. My main product was custom tailored dress shirts for men that needed custom clothing that maybe are like me, who are 6, 5, can't just buy a dress shirt at the department store and would love a great fit. Conceptually, this sounds like a great business for me because I can understand the customer. I saw a need in the market. I had a great supplier and factory that I had very, very good contacts with and the business actually made money. Only problem is I'm not a fashion designer, nor am I super interested in fashion in general. Like, I like to wear nice clothes, but I've never bought a fashion magazine. So eventually I had to decide to let go of this business because I wasn't really enjoying it. I wasn't able to compete with all the new competition that was coming. My customers were more passionate about the product than I was, and I knew I made the wrong choice. When I started this business, I went after an opportunity and realized later on that that's not enough. My second example is this podcast, the $100 MBA Show. Before this podcast launched in August of 2014, a year before that, I had a different podcast that totally flopped. It was a business podcast and I was the same person. But why did it flop? Because I wasn't using my strengths and my experience, my secret sauce, my zone of genius with the podcast. Before I moved into full time entrepreneurship, I was a educator for 13 years. I was a high school university teacher for 13 years. Every single day, five times a day, I would teach class. Okay? All I did was teach. All my degrees are in teaching, all my certificates and training are in teaching. I have so much experience and skills when it comes to education and teaching and training, it's not even funny, right? So it only made sense for me to teach on the podcast. Once I did that, I launched the hundred dollar MBA show. The rest is history. It was super easy for me to get the ball rolling. I had momentum. It resonated with people because people started to recognize, wow, I'm learning something. Every single day on this podcast is super powerful. I haven't seen that before. I added my own level of value and expertise to the genre of business in the podcasting space. And my experience and skills is the secret sauce of, of this show. Now, again, this is just an example. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here. But the best thing I could have done was use my teaching experience with the podcast I'm starting, because it's how I can differentiate. It's how I can add unique value in the sea of other business podcasts. Now, what happens when you break this golden rule, when you don't do this? Well, get ready for a life of anxiety, because that's how it feels, because you're not in control. Let's say you run an SEO agency and you help your clients with SEO needs for their website and otherwise, right? But let's say you're not really into SEO. You don't really know too much, but you know there's a need in the market. So you hire an SEO expert to fulfill this service. One day, your SEO expert is going to find a new job, a new opportunity is going to come along, and they're going to resign. You're going to be scrambling because you can't do the work. You can't fill in until you find somebody new. So you're really in this situation where you're at their mercy. You're like, hey, can you stick around a little longer until I find your replacement? And until you do, your life is going to be really, really stressful again. Is it impossible for you to run a business like this? No, but it's not the most pleasant experience. Number two, people look for leadership. People respect expertise. So if you're the expert at the product, the service, like, let's take the Gordon Ramsay example. If Gordon Ramsay goes to one of his restaurants in Vegas, say, for example, Hell's Kitchen, and he goes to the head chef there, shows them a few things, that person is going to respect them. Because this is Gordon Ramsay. This is like MasterChef guy. He's going to feel valued and feel the value of working for this organization versus being told what to do by somebody who knows less than them, we all can relate to this. I've worked with managers before that knew less than I did. I felt like it was a really boring time in my life because I didn't learn anything. I didn't respect the person above me in the corporate ladder or in the institution, in my case, because I was a teacher, and it makes for a very disgruntled team member. So there's a lot of advantages for you building and growing a business around your expertise.

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I don't want you to listen to this episode and panic and feel like, oh my God, I am in the totally wrong business. I'm going to fail. It's going to be a disaster. No, look at your business. See how you can add your expertise, pivot your business so that you are vital to its success. A lot of people are not going to agree with my take on this episode, but in my experience it's just a lot smoother, calmer work environment. When you feel like things are under control because you have confidence in what you can provide your customers, your assurance in quality assurance is super high and at the end of the day, if you don't provide a great product or service, it's very hard for you to be successful. It starts there and that's when everything else kicks in. Marketing, sales, customer service, everything else. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on whatever app you love to use to listen to podcasts. If you want to give back, if you want to support the show, the best thing you could do is share the podcast on social media. Share anywhere, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, whatever you wish. Just let people know that you love listening to the $100 NBA show and include a link to our website 100- NBA-NET where we have some handy little buttons for them to subscribe. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I'm not one to shy away from a little bit of tough love. So here it is. Business is hard as it is. You don't need to make it harder on yourself. You need to find the path of least resistance, the path that will give you the highest chance of success. Don't make things harder than they need to be. Choose a business where your expertise, your knowledge is critical to the success. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday where we answer the question, I hate sales, but I love my business. What do I do? I can't wait to answer that one. I'll see you in the next episode. Until then, take care.

Sam.