MBA2114 Why You’re Not Growing

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Member NYSE SIPC 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 foreign. Welcome to the $100 MBA show Business Insights. You need to build the business you want 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 my co founder back in 20 and in today's episode you will learn why you are not growing. If your business has plateaued, you are no longer seeing the growth you used to see. You're kind of coasting, you're not bringing as many customers month over month as you used to and you're kind of stuck. It's a really tough place to be because you had some success and you know something's working. But you also know something isn't working because the growth is just not there anymore. You might even be worried to change things because maybe things will get worse. These are all valid concerns and thoughts we all have when we're in this situation. But in today's episode we're going to dig deeper. We're going to talk about why this happens and how to get out of it. My guess is initially you're not going to really love my answer. But bear with me. I'm confident by the end of the episode we'll be on the same page and you'll have a plan of action to move forward and get your business out of this rut. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. I want to start today's episode by saying that this is totally normal. If you've ever seen a company's growth, if you've seen it on a chart, it's peaks and valleys. It's some growth and then some plateauing, and then another spike of growth and then some plateauing on and on. Hockey stick growth is very rare, and you shouldn't expect that from your business. It's just unreasonable to expect that. So there's nothing really wrong with you or your business. This is par for the course, but you have to know what to do in these situations. Many people that come to me with this problem, they're looking for strategies. They're asking me, omar, what do you do in this situation? What are the techniques I should use? What kind of sales or funnels or marketing strategies should I implement? And yes, I can recommend some things, but inside of me, I know that there's a good chance those things won't help, because I've been there before. And the things that get me out of those situations are not tactics, they're not strategies. They're not the latest, you know, marketing hack. When your business stops growing, it plateaus. It means you've stopped growing as a leader of the business. Who you are as an entrepreneur has reached its end in terms of potential. You need to now improve that potential. You need to improve yourself so that you create a new ceiling or a new level again. Hear me out. Every decision you make in your business has an impact on your results. Would you agree with that? And how do you make these decisions? Most of the decisions we make in our business is based on what we know. Our wisdom, our insights, our mindset. It comes from our brain, right? It comes from what's between our ears. Whatever's going on in there will directly impact the actions we take that will impact our business. That's just the facts. The thing is that when we start our business, we have so much energy and hustle, information, experience, that we've been kind of building until the time we actually launch because we were learning and reading books and listening to podcasts, and now we start doing and we start implementing and we start reaching our potential. But maybe a year or two or three or even a decade later, we start to see some plateauing. And this is normal, because you're probably really busy trying to run a business, try to pay all your employees and make sure that everybody's happy and make sure you're growing and you're marketing and you're selling and you're improving your product, and the last thing on your list is improving you. I found that whenever my business plateaus, it's because I'm thinking small. It's because I have reached basically where my thinking can allow me to go. I have to change something about me, about my mindset, the way I approach things. I'll give you an example of what happened in the past. After a couple years of Webinar Ninja, our software company, we grew the business quite well because we had a good product, we had some good momentum in the beginning. We then started to get new customers through Facebook ads and Google Ads. But then it was just wasn't cutting it. So I was kind of spinning my wheels because I was spending more money doing the same thing, right? I was like, just let me just build more ads, let me spend more money on marketing. Let me hire a firm that's better at it than me. And it really didn't move the needle too much. It didn't change things because I was thinking the same way. When I was approaching marketing, when I was approaching getting new customers, I was thinking, hey, let me just do what I was doing all the time. This is what's getting me customers one by one. Instead, I stepped back and I started to read some books, talk to some experts that really look at sales in a different way, that maybe are experts outside of my world of software, their sales, maybe in retail or in consulting. I think I read the book the Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes like three times in a row because he was talking about things I just didn't understand. And it took me three reads to have it sink in. And what it was was this idea of changing the way you spend your assets. And I was just looking at my assets in terms of money. How much money do I spend on market? Let me spend more money. But really what you should be looking at is how much time and effort and money, yes, you're spending in relation to the impact or the results you're going to get. For example, If I spent $10,000 this month and 30 hours of effort, and that would get me, let's say, $30,000 worth of sales, that's great, you know, that's great profit. And I just kept on doing that and just upping the ante or spending more money. But what changing my mindset through books, through talking to some experts, through realizing what I am right now, the way I'm thinking about this is wrong. I Need to change to see some results. I started to say, well, what If I spent $10,000 and 10 hours and got a hundred thousand dollars in sales? How do I do that? What actions do I need to take to get that kind of result? And once I started asking myself different questions, it started to change my mindset a little bit. It started me to realize that what I'm doing right now is not going to get that result. I got to do something different. What are those things? And then it took me on a different path. I started to realize that I could spend that money and time doing partnerships. People that have audiences that would love our product, pay a one time fee or an affiliate fee to our partners, run some partner webinars and promotions and that would allow us to get a whole lot more sales for the same amount of money and less time. But I got to that point because I recognize what I'm doing now. The way I'm thinking about this is not solving the problem, it's the reason why I'm stuck. So the only thing that really is going to solve it is I have to change how I make decisions or the way I think so that my decisions are different. And changing your mindset is not easy. You're changing your belief system, you're changing what you thought was true. And I know we're just talking about marketing as an example, but it could be other things. In business and in life, you might be doing okay and hitting, you know, six figures, maybe $500,000 a year and you're doing well. But why aren't you doing seven figures? And really ask yourself that question. Because sometimes we give an automatic response like I'm good where I am, I'm happy with half a million, I want to keep my business small. We just have these automatic responses based on our ego. But maybe the answer is, I'm afraid or I don't think I can do it. I don't think I'm a seven figure business owner. And the truth is, is that you're never going to make it unless you believe it. Nothing ever happens until you actually believe it could happen. Because that's the first step is actually having the convict that something is true and can happen. And therefore you take the steps moving forward. Imagine going to Paris on a holiday, but you never believed you can afford a plane ticket, or you never believed you can travel or save up for the hotel and accommodations and spend a few weeks there. It just wouldn't happen. If you don't believe it first you believe, yeah, I could do That I could save some money, I can buy a plane ticket, I can get some accommodations, I can take some time off from work so that I can make it happen. Once you've established that you can do it, you believe you can do it, then you take the steps forward to actually implement. So if you're stuck, there's a good chance that it's a mindset thing you need to change. In my experience, nine times out of 10, it's something in your mind, it's something in your mindset, something in your belief system that needs to change. It might be I'm not good at sales and therefore that's why I don't do sales calls, or I don't do webinars, or I don't get on zoom calls with people, so I can, you know, close that sale. And that's why maybe you're not hitting your numbers because you told yourself a story, but what if you told yourself a different story? What if you changed your mindset when it came to that? You take different actions, you take those calls, you do those demos, and the results would be different. So how do we move forward? How do we change our mindset? This is what I recommend, this is what works for me. Number one, you gotta accept the fact that it's you that's holding you back. Whether it's who you are, your skill set as a decision maker, your mindset, your belief system, it's going to come from within you. Now, what's going to help you change are some external factors. It could be, in my opinion, a combination of books, maybe some courses or some videos or interviews from people that are experts in this area that you're stuck with, maybe even some one on one coaching or consulting. If you know somebody who is where you want to be, reach out to them and say, hey, I will pay you for your time. What's your hourly rate? I love to jump on a few calls to work out some problems, to work out some things I'm stuck at. You might pay a few hundred dollars, maybe a couple thousand dollars, but it's going to make your business probably 10, 20, maybe even a hundred times as much. It's a crazy, crazy investment. And guess what? It's not going to change until you change. So seek help from those resources. Number two, recognize and admit to yourself that you're in a transition phase, that as soon as you made the decision, hey, there's something about my mindset, the way I think, the way I am, that is holding me back. As soon as you recognize that you now are no longer in that situation. You're now in the transition phase where you're now going to move to the step or the stage where you've changed, and it's going to unblock you and your business. Step 3 recognize that most of the issues you have with your business are probably from insecurities you have with yourself. This is a hard truth, and this is what I've learned about myself. There's a lot of things I was insecure about as a business owner. I am still insecure about a few things and understanding that you're not perfect and there are some things that scare you, it's okay. And that's the first step in the many steps you're going to take now to move forward. Next, have a plan in place to start changing. Pick up that book that is the number one book on Amazon on the topic you're struggling with. Sales, marketing, hiring, HR, whatever it is, growth. And commit to reading 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at night. You will see an incredible change in what you're putting in your mind every single day. An hour of reading. You'll probably wrap up the book in about a week to 10 days. Reach out to those experts. Put some things in the calendar so you actually commit to reaching out to them. Like schedule time to go on Twitter and find these people and ask them if you could pay them for their time. Number five. This is incredibly helpful. I go through seasons of journaling, and when I'm stuck in my business, journaling really helps. It gets my thoughts out of my mind onto paper. It makes it real. It makes me analyze them. It makes me admit to the fact that, hey, I'm stuck, but also helps me think clearly and question what these things I'm writing. Do I believe this really? Or is this just the fear talking? Lastly, as you start this process, start documenting the decisions you're making in your business. Are these decisions changing? Because the decisions you make in your business will impact your business. It will impact the results, will impact the growth, will impact how well you do. So if you want things to change, you got to do different things. So you got to kind of track the decisions you're making. Are decisions changing? Are you doing things differently? If so, that means you're progressing. Even if you make a wrong decision, it's okay. You're learning from it. You know what not to do. It doesn't mean don't make new decisions. It just means that one didn't hit the mark. I want to just tell you up front that this episode Was really hard to put together. Why? Because it's a tough topic to talk about. Because the experience itself is a little bit weird. You're kind of just like walking in somewhat darkness and you're trying new things, you're learning new things with the hope that things will get better. And let me tell you something, it will. Because you're trying new things, you're doing things differently. Instead of just sitting in that dark room and not doing anything, Just the status quo. You're getting up, you're feeling things around, you're trying new things. You'll find the door eventually. But one way to guarantee you won't find the door is if you just sit there and continue to do the same thing over and over again. Because what got you to this point where you're stuck is what you've been doing over and over. So it's not going to get you out. You got to do something different. The last thing I want to pass on to is going to sound really, really crazy, but it's actually really healthy. It's actually going to help you a lot. You need to think of the worst case scenario. I want you to visualize in your head that your business totally collapses and it goes to zero and you have no business whatsoever. You go out of business, I want you to go through that whole thing. What does that feel like? You wake up in the morning, you have no business. You go out of business, you have no employees, you have no revenue, Nothing. Rock bottom. How do you feel? How's your day going? What are you gonna do? How's it different from yesterday when you had a business? I want you to walk through those feelings and those emotions. I know that sounds painful, but the point of this is that you start to realize as bad as that is, as horrible that is, it's not the end of your world. It's not the end of life, okay? And no one wants that to happen, but it's important to feel that so you can realize, hey, I can survive that. And most of us are not doing things differently. When we need. We're afraid to lose our business, we have this unwarranted fear. Or not unwarranted, but I would say the level of fear is unwarranted. It's too high. Now, the chances of you going completely out of business when you have a good track record and you're doing pretty good is pretty low. You know, in most cases, I don't know your business in particular, but the point here is, is that I want you to go through the Worst case scenario. So you can understand that even in the worst case scenario, you could still live. You're probably okay. You probably could pick up the pieces. And the I love about entrepreneurship is that your skills, nobody could take it from you. Your experiences, nobody could take it from you. You can go out of business and you'll still have your skills, your experience, your network, all that stuff stays with you for life. Now we're going to go through that experiment again just so that we can realize, hey, I could take a few risks to do things a little bit differently, based on knowledge, based on information I got from experts, based on consulting, and I could do a little experiments to see if it moves the needle. Thanks so much for listening to the Hunter lmba Show. I'm really happy that I did today's episode this topic, because it's something that I get asked a lot and I feel like the answer I give needed some explanation. I needed to kind of do an episode about it so that I could just point to and say, hey, listen to this episode. It's gonna help you get through a rut. If you love today's episode, leave us a rating and review. Let us know what you think of the show. We haven't asked for reviews in a while, but go ahead and do so on your favorite podcast app. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss an episode and you get the next episode automatically. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Business is 90% mental, okay? It's a mental game. It has a lot to do with what you believe, right? And it's 10% skills. The skill part is easy. You could pick up skills. You could hire out for skills if you know what to do and what you do comes from what you believe. 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. Of.