MBA2192 How to Make the Most of a Failing Business + Free Ride Friday

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Hey O welcome to the $1 RMBA Show. The best business lessons in all of the Internet 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 by co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away access to our two day live training, the Hundred Dollar MBA. It retails for $100 over at 100nba.net live or you can win it for free. Just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday, just like today, to see if you won. It's that easy. In today's lesson, you'll learn how to make the most of a failing business. What if you have come to the point where you've recognized your business is failing? You've tried pretty much everything and the needle is not moving, the graph is not going up and to the right and you've put in money, you put in time, you put in effort and you've come to the point where you realize okay, my business is failing. What do you do?

What are your options at this point.

You might feel overwhelmed or even out of options. You have that sunk cost feeling where you've poured in so much time and energy and money into your business and you're like, is it all for nothing? You're wondering, is there any way you can turn it around or make sure it's not a total loss? You, you get something for it. Well, in today's lesson, I'm gonna share with you. What are some of the options that you can explore if you're in this position? I want you to use this episode as a thought experiment. Go through some of the options in your head, maybe even pause the podcast to see how it would play out in your business, in your situation. And if you're not in this situation, this is still a very important listen because you might get stuck down the line. You might be in this position at some point. Like Jeff Bezos says, every business is bound to begin to fail. Fail at some point. Our jobs as entrepreneurs is to delay that as much as possible. But if you're in this situation, let's talk about what you can do. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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First, I want to recognize the fact that this is not fun, right? Being in this position where you feel like you're not winning, you're not growing, you're not achieving the goals you've set out, you feel like you're spinning your wheels like you're trying so hard, but nothing's really changing. Let's just acknowledge the fact that, hey, this really isn't great. The other thing I want to point out is that if you have the self awareness to realize you are in this situation, that's a good thing. You're actually way ahead. A lot of people, many people are not that self aware and allow their business to get driven into the ground and are left with no options. So in today's episode, let's talk about the options that you have. If you have recognized that, hey, my business is failing month over month, it's not growing month over month. I'm not getting better. I don't see any improvements. Do I walk away? Here is what you can do. And I'm going to start with the easiest and the fastest thing you can do to maybe turn things around. This is kind of a low hanging fruit. You've been trying to turn your business around for some time and you might have tried different things, but the common factor in all this failure is actually you. Okay? You are the person that is the common thread. So you need to change that up a little bit. And the easiest way to do this and the quickest way to do this is to get somebody else involved to take a look at your business and give you a new perspective, challenge your decisions, challenge the way things are. And this is why I recommend hiring a coach or an advisor when you're stuck. At the very least you can hire them for a few sessions and they can tell you, hey, you have no moves to make. Pack it up. Or they could be like, have you thought about this? And you're like, oh, I actually haven't. Why aren't you doing this? I haven't considered that. A coach and an advisor is coming in cold. They're seeing things without all of the baggage you have over the years in your business. They might also see opportunities that you are just missing. My recommendation. Ask some of your friends or other entrepreneurs that you know, whether it's on social media or on email. Hey, do you recommend a business coach? Most people, you'll be surprised, have been coached before. I certainly have and it's incredibly helpful. And I can recommend coaches. If a friend of mine asked me, I know there's a particular situation and be like, hey, this person would be perfect for you. So ask for help because it might just mean saving your business. Here is another option. Sometimes our business or our product or our service is fantastic. It's great, but we're just not talking to anybody. We need to niche down. This might seem counterintuitive, but most of the time when you niche down, you get laser focused and you actually grow. I learned this from Nathan Barry, who is the founder of ConvertKit. When he started ConvertKit, he was just marketing as another email marketing software. But then he realized, I can't compete with all the big names out there, the mailchimps and the awebers and the activecampaigns. I gotta niche down so I can specialize and know who exactly I should be talking to. So he niched down to bloggers. And he actually started out specifically mommy bloggers and then fashion bloggers. By niching down, he's able to talk directly to these people, advertise to them directly, build a product that is best for them instead of being ignored in a sea of other software. If you're at the point where you're stuck and your business is not growing. You have nothing to lose really. You should just give it a try. Niche down, niche down for a few months and see what happens. Find a niche that really values your product. How do you know that? Look at your existing customers, survey them. Find out who really values your product. Who are your best customers, who are the ones that stay on or spend the most. You'll probably find a percentage of your audience that is in a certain niche or genre that you can focus on. This is also the story of Twitch, which used to be Justin tv. They used to just be streaming video and kind of like your own self made reality channel. And it was really hard for them to promote and to sell because a lot of people don't understand the concept. But then they realized that 20% of their audience absolutely loved their product and it didn't matter how much they had to pay or what features they had, they would use it really often. And it was gamers, people that play video games and stream their video games. And that's why they niche down to just video games and called it Twitch. Now obviously Twitch does more than video games now, but they grew with that niche. And as you grow your company then you can go wider. But if you're stuck niche, another option is to move markets altogether. Again. You can have a great product or service, but you're just in the wrong market. Your market, your customer doesn't really value what you have, but your solution might be really valuable in a different market. For example, I know this entrepreneur does social media marketing services, manages people's social media platforms and their accounts and make sure that their Twitter and their Facebook and their Instagram and their Tiktoks are filled with great content. They used to serve online entrepreneurs, but they started to stagnate because online entrepreneurs started using some automation software or social media software. Online entrepreneurs are a little bit savvy, so they're willing to use the software rather than a service. But then he switched markets, stopped serving online business owners and served a totally different market. Local professionals, dentists, lawyers, mechanics, plumbers. It's a totally different market, same service, but this market really values what he offers. Because they're not tech savvy. They don't know about the latest automation software or social media software that they can use to schedule their tweets. They just want to focus on their business and make sure they have a social presence so they can drive traffic to their website or their actual shop instead of cold calling and cold emailing people to get clients who's fully booked for the next 24 months because these people are dying for his services. All right, we kind of talked about all the options that you can kind of pivot, change, move around, adjust your business. But let's talk about what if we have to go a little bit hardline, do a little bit more of a radical change, and that leads you to the option of replacing yourself. This might be hard for you. This might be difficult for you to admit, but maybe you need a new CEO. Maybe you need to hire somebody to take over your business, and it might mean giving them some equity. But now you can just be an investor, somebody that is on the board, somebody that is there to advise. But now you got somebody who maybe be able to take your business, change things around, and make it work. Now, this is actually a real viable option for a lot of people because there's a lot of people that want to start a business, want to grow a business, don't have the money to start one or have an idea, might have worked at a company at a high level. They have experience in helping businesses grow, but never actually a business owner. So this is an opportunity for them and for you. You shake things up, you get somebody else with maybe more experience in that market or your business and basically remove yourself from the equation so that somebody new can make different decisions and get different results. I actually picked this up from Dan Andrews, who runs a podcast called the Tropical mba and he has a book that's called before the Exit. And this is one of the options he talks about before you sell your company, maybe just replace yourself and get a new CEO.

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All right. We went through a whole bunch of options that you can explore if your business is failing. The last and final option I want to share with you is sell the business. Sometimes it's time to hang them up and to cash in your chips. Now, if your business is not doing fantastic, it's not growing. Yes, you're not in the best position to sell you're not going to get top dollar for what your business is worth. Maybe, but you'll go home with something and you'll allow your business to live another life with somebody else. There are a lot of different marketplaces and options to sell your business. You can go to microacquire.com or Flippa or Empire Flippers where you can post your business and all the details and get people to bid on your business. This means you're going to have to say goodbye to this part of your entrepreneurial journey. And maybe you are ready to say goodbye. Maybe you're ready to move on and maybe start something new down the line. Maybe it's time for you to pull out any equity you have left in this business since you put so much into it. Now, selling a business doesn't happen overnight. It takes time. They say the average acquisition takes 18 months. Now obviously you can do it faster. It depends on the size of your company and all bunch of different factors. But once you make the decision to do so, get started because it's going to take some time to get a buyer and go through the whole process. My advice, do this exercise. Spend three days. It could be a long weekend where you have to live your life as if you've already sold the company. How do you feel? Do you have regrets? You have to keep on pretending that you sold the company and go through that whole thought experiment for three days. Have you lost meaning in your life? Are you depressed? Are you elated? Are you excited for the next chapter? Journal how you feel about all this, what's going through your mind, what the experience is like. Because it's good to go through the motions and the emotions before it actually happens. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. Today's episode's not over though. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's free ride. And the winner is Colin Potts. Colin says my desert island of choice still five stars. Hey guys. Love the cast. Since first listening to you guys you've inspired me to get started and give me the guidance to do it. I'm now in pre launch with two businesses. Thanks Colin for that amazing review. You are our Free on Friday winner. Your mission is to email me over at Omar at 100 MBA net so I can hook you up with a free ticket to our two day live course online called the $100 MBA live over at100mba.net live. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday to see if you want. It's that easy. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on Apple Podcasts. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Being in a rut, not easy. But personally, I start to feel better when I have a plan in place. When I'm taking steps towards a solution. This allows me to feel empowered again and understand that whatever I'm going through, it could be solved and it can get better. Thanks so much for listening and we'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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