Ep 55: How to Overcome the 5 Biggest Challenges Facing Your Business

Ep 55: How to Overcome the 5 Biggest Challenges Facing Your Business

In this episode of Dawn of a New Era, we’re going to look at the biggest challenges facing your business right now.

Many people talk about leads, revenue and all of the commercial metrics to measure how sustainable and profitable your business is, but let’s dig a bit deeper. So we are looking at the root cause of those things. Business it’s all about cause and effect, and if you have listened to my previous episodes you will know my passion around business is what we call the pillars of success: marketing, motivation and mindset.

These three pillars are the critical factors that will build the foundation of your day to day business.

Did you know that my podcast Dawn of a New Era has reached the top 5% most popular shows out of 2,249,182 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score?… Just 12 months and 55 episodes in – SUBSCRIBE NOW

Here are the highlights from this episode:

{1:57} The strain of starting and running a business

{4:34} Don’t get caught out by burn out

{9:58} Sell and save

{11:37} Putting all your eggs in one basket

{15:11} Preserving quality during growth

{16:52} Daily audits

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Dawn McGruer’s Marketing * Motivation * Mindset Group    



 
Speaker. Author. Podcaster. Strategist.
 
Multi-award-winning speaker, strategist & best-selling author of Dynamic Digital MarketingHelping to inspire entrepreneurs to rise to meet today’s challenges and be powerfully present to shine online.
 
Connect with me and let’s Dream Big * Work Hard * Make it Happen
 Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube 

Ways to work with me
Read My Book | Speaking | Training | Strategy | Retreat

Welcome to Dawn of a New Era, a business and marketing podcast with a difference ranking in the top 5% globally for people who want to start, scale and grow their own business. Dawn McGruer shares tips to improve marketing, motivation and mindset, as well as her own real life challenges and experiences as an entrepreneur. Guests include some of the world’s most inspiring leaders too. So if you are an aspiring, established, or serial entrepreneur, this is your go-to podcast to fast track results and rise to meet today’s challenges and master the art of online influence and business success, and the void common pitfalls along the way. Never miss an episode and subscribe and listen at dawnncgruer.com.

 

Introduction

 

Dawn McGruer:

Welcome to episode 55 of Dawn of a New Era. In this episode we’re going to look at the biggest challenges. And in fact, we’re going to look at the five biggest challenges facing your business right now. Many people talk about leads, revenue, all of these aspects that we’re looking at commercially to assess how sustainable and profitable your business is, but let’s dig a bit deeper and look at the root cause for those things, because in everything in business, it’s cause and effect. It’s all about different actions, different circumstances. And if you have listened to any episode before, you will know that my whole passion around business is that we have what we call the pillars of success. And three pillars of success that I always talk about are marketing, motivation, and mindset. These three things are what we would call the critical success factors, the pillars that are going to build the foundation to your day to day.

 

The strain of starting and running a business

 

Now, when we look at the challenges within business, and we look at the effect, is that, yes, many businesses are not generating enough clients to be sustainable and profitable, but where does this all come from? Well, generally it comes from things like when you start your own business as a founder, everything is dependent on you, and every single element of the business falls on you. Now, that causes a huge amount of strain for anybody, even the most organized or experienced entrepreneur, it is tough in the world of business. And with this whole founder dependence, what we need to do is shift some of that balance and start looking at what can be delegated. Now, if you are stuck in the issue whereby maybe you’re a new business, or maybe you’re pressured on the cashflow side of things, outsourcing seems like the most ridiculous idea, but actually you need to try and find a way that you can boost your business by freeing up some of your time, and looking at what are the activities that are revenue generating? What are the activities that are revenue draining?

And start trying to think, well, is there a way that I could get to either working capital into the business to start getting those activities out so that you can focus on the things that are going to make you money? I’m not ever saying to anyone to start accumulating debt, but sometimes in the beginning, or even sometimes in the most established business, businesses need a little bit of a boost and a little bit of a help. And working capital means that you can put the money in and then you can just put the money back into that loan account as, and when you’ve got it. Now, it just takes that little bit pressure off where this founder dependence can shift slightly. Sometimes when you’re stuck and it all comes down to money, it’s very difficult to get yourself out of it. So there’s different ways and different means that you can use. Now, that is challenge number one with hopefully a resolve of maybe looking at how you can delegate some of the tasks that don’t need you, because you can’t always stay the person doing everything.

 

Don’t get caught out by burn out

 

I know when I started my first business, I honestly thought, oh, it’s just easier if I do it myself, it’s quick if I do it myself, or I know it’s going to be right if I do it myself. And it took me a long time to actually learn how to delegate effectively and actually move from being a business owner to a CEO and a leader. Now, number two, fatigue. It’s something that every business owner, regardless who you are, where you are at in your journey, will experience fatigue. It’s burnout, but it can happen from different things. It could be pressures in other parts of your life. It could be pressures within the business. It could be that you’ve got staffing issues. It could just be that whole drain on your whole mental mindset. And this happens quite regularly.

And one of the things that sounds strange is that when you are fatigued, you tend to try and get this sense of control and certainty back, which means that you’re pushing more in the business, which in turn generates more fatigue. So one of the shifts I taught, because I’ve definitely had fatigue, a bit of a roller coaster in my businesses from starting at 21, to what? Being 42 now. I’ve still not got it absolutely nailed, but I have got systems in place whereby me and my team can recognize where we are fatigued, whether it’s me, whether it’s other people in the business, or whoever it is, but it is so important to look at your energy flow, and look at times in your business where you are in your genius zone, what are the things that light you up, motivate you, push you on?

And again, it comes back down to number one, is there things that you can delegate to shift you forward? The things that are sitting on your to-do list that are just dragging you down, are the things that are holding you back, challenges like things like tech. You always want to do something, but there is something standing in your way. So have a look at it and think about if you are fatigued, is it down to time, tactics, or training? And what I mean by this is that if you are time poor, you feel like you’ve just got this endless to-do-list, you need to go through a declutter and delegate. Now, if it’s down to tactics and it’s things that you just don’t know how to do, again, is there another resource that you could utilize to harness the power of whatever you need it to do?

Honestly, there’s been things in my business where I thought, do you know what? If I could do this X, Y, and Z, it would change this, things that I know that would have a massive momentum, or a massive pivot for my business. And you have to look at outside of you and maybe your team and business sometimes. When it comes down to training, it could be your own training, and it could be staff training. I’m constantly investing in myself and my team, because I think it’s really important that you have the confidence, which then in turn gives the clarity, it’s one of those things you don’t know what you don’t know. Sometimes just hearing other people’s perspectives, this is why I read a lot of books, listen to podcasts, I research online. I look at things on YouTube. I am looking at ways of doing things better, more efficiently, more effectively. And again, you need time to do some of that.

So it comes down to, for me, about time-blocking, diary management, but again, knowing the systems. In business, if I’d have somebody who was going to look at my whole model and pull it apart, tell me what was going to work, what wasn’t, that would have been just the most epic thing I could have asked for. So whenever I’m developing products and services, I honestly go back to where I was at because, yeah, there’s time and money, but it’s the results I want. And I want that person, or I wanted that person when I was 21, to guide me. And I think the thing is, is when we look at these first two challenges, founder dependence and also fatigue, these are all to do with your own growth and your business’s growth. And I don’t mean by employing lots of people, but you can sub-contract, you can get other people on board, you can learn new skills.

But the thing that would probably really have helped me in terms of my wealth and success, is that every time I’m looking at my own business model, my client’s business models, if we look at my program, the power circle, the essence there is all about 10 times in your wealth and success, but what is that? Yeah, we know what the challenges are, but what is the transformation and results? For me, it’s always about building the bridge and the gaps that a lot of my clients have and I’ve had in the past, I’ve looked for mentorship and support on, is number three, money management, right? Looking at putting profit first, who teaches you in business, how to do that?

Well, you have to either get accountants to do that, or you have to learn from a mentor. And this is something that for me, as much as I’m online marketing, I believe that the whole business mix in terms of what I teach my clients, is not just about getting the business model right, it’s about the strategy and the things to do throughout. If I’d start my business at 21, would I have got to the end result quicker? Absolutely without a doubt, if someone had taught me money management, because I was always getting people involved like an accountant to do something once it needed doing, I wasn’t looking at it in the reverse. And one of the things that I’m so passionate about across my programs is money management in terms of this profit first element, looking at the cash coming into your business and the cash going out.

 

Sell and save

 

And my whole ethos is about earning every day. So sell every day and save every day, sell and save. Now, these two aspects are something that’s taken me a long time to really master how to manage business money, because if you have started a business and maybe you’re not taking a salary or things yet, there’s something that’s going to be the first part of what you do. Looking after paying you first, number one. And then looking at obviously how you’re driving money into the business each day, and how you’re saving money, it’s something that I probably started off maybe looking at when I was doing my accounts. Now I’m looking at this each and every day across my businesses and across my clients. And it’s about having these little tips and tactics about having pots for VAT, and pots for a profit, and controlling your money and it’s strategy. Yeah.

All of these come down to navigating the pitfalls and having the outside, I suppose, eyes on your business has always been something that I think is important. I still do it with mine. I do it with all my clients. And if you take a step back, you’re always going to be more objective. When you look at your money management side of things, we have to look at your mindset for money as well. How were you brought up? What’s your feeling around money? Are you comfortable where affluence? Are you someone who likes to spend? What is your money mindset? And when you understand that it starts to fit into place. And this is all like a jigsaw puzzle. And this brings me on to number four, which is client dependence.

 

Putting all your eggs in one basket

 

Often in business, and I’m sure we’ve all had situations or times where we’ve been dependent on clients, is that if you’re overly dependent, you’re putting all your eggs in one basket. And this is something that we need to be aware of, and you want to be thinking about different streams of income, because tell you what, when coronavirus hit a lot of my clients and myself were in a position whereby it is tremendously stressful to think about team members, and what’s going to happen? We had no idea, but one thing that I knew, I hundred percent knew, was that I knew our revenue was going to be guaranteed for the next 12 months. How? Well, part of our business model is payment plans, so that we know that someone signing up for something is splitting their payment say into 12 equal payments, and paying that over the term, and looking at what money is coming into the business each and every month.

Now, that gave me a great sense of assurance, because obviously we didn’t know how many people were going to come on courses, do things, or indeed what was going to happen. And an element of our business was face-to-face events and training. So we managed to mitigate the risk by having a spread of revenues. Now, I’m not going to harp on about passive income and recurring income, because it’s not one of those things you just switch on and off, it takes time, but it’s about looking at the business model and thinking about how does cash come into your business? Because if you did turn your business into say recurring revenue, then you’ve got to understand on the other side is what is the impact? Well, that would mean reduced cash flow. So if someone’s paying you all the money up front, then cashflow is great. But then if people are paying spread over 12 months, there’s an impact to be had.

So keep thinking about the cause and effect. Not every business can do recurring revenue. Not every business will have passive income, but there is different things you can do, and business models have been a speciality of mine for many years working in the agency, looking at different industries and niches, understanding how business works, and also this whole impact that it has, because you can’t make big changes without understanding what the goal would be in terms of how is that impacted for you? Will it take longer, will it be harder, will it impact on the flow of cash coming in? How are you going to mitigate that? So there’s always this cause and effect to consider. I’m thinking about client dependence. So having lots of different, obviously revenue streams is coming in is going to be great, but is that possible?

Is it possible to have payment plans? Is it possible to get a mix of this? And it’s about balancing this the whole time, which brings me on to number five, balancing quality and growth. How is it going to work? So founder dependence. We’re delegating things out. We’re getting over fatigue by looking at the way our calendars are structured, and time blocking, and taking time out. Also, looking at the time tactics and training within the business. And then looking at money management and how our clients are coming into the business, the business models we have and the streams of income. Now, number five, balancing quality and growth. As a business grows, what happens is that maybe the fact that you’re not founder dependent anymore, that means you’re not dealing with the clients that how is customer experience changing?

 

Preserving quality during growth

 

Is it keeping it the same quality now that you’ve got other team members dealing with it? Now that you’re going through a growth phase, are you giving that personalized experience and interactivity that you wanted? So it’s always about looking at things in micro tasks, and looking at the momentum of your business. And the way that I do this is that every day I look at this sell and save as a primary. And as long as the business is always selling something and saving something, it would be very difficult not to be moving towards obviously growth and progress, and ultimately being a very successful business. But it’s about understanding your business and keeping an eye on each of the elements enough as a founder, as a business owner, or as a marketeer, that you don’t necessarily have to be involved with it day to day, but you need to understand where everything is at.

And the things I always look at is obviously, the sell and save, of course, looking at how do we each and every day move somebody from our prospect list into being a client? What are the activities? Could it be a discovery call? Could it be a master class? What are those activities? And then from a saving point of view, how can we strip out some of the costs, make the business more effective, make it more efficient? How could we balance the growth? Do we need to get other team members to earn more? Do we need to look at other automations within the business to balance the quality and growth of the business? Do we have the expertise for money management? Do we have the expertise to deliver everything that the business needs to grow?

 

Daily audits

 

So it’s about doing daily audits, and it sounds really odd that you would even think about doing a daily audit, but a daily mini audit, or a micro audit, as I call it, is perfect for just getting a sense check, but keeping touch of reality of where you’re at in business, because you could get caught up very easily in an endless to-do list. These activities may not have any impact on your business. And in fact, a lot of studies say that 80% of people’s to-do-lists are actually vanity or futile tasks that are not driving the business forward. So what you need to do is just sense check every day. Are you taking one step further forward to that business goal? What are the three aspirational goals that you have in life? What are the three business goals you have? And how are you moving forward? What are the exact tactics and actions to do this?

Now, there is lots of people out there who are very successful in business, and it’s about understanding all of the different elements that aid their success. Now, these are the biggest challenges, and these are the things that I know if you make changes to that you can get quite big differences in terms of results, and they can really help in terms of your goals. I’m always focused on the whole transformation, your whole end process. And when I do a program it’s about what is that person going to get? It’s not just about the challenges, it’s about where is that person going to get to? If I said to someone, if I gave you a step-by-step plan for the next six months that is going to help you 10 times your wealth and success, most people would say, yeah. And this is why things like the power circle program are successful because they give people not just the understanding of the challenge, but they tell people that you have the bridge to actually move them forward.

And in every single day, we’re looking at things like client dependence, money management, fatigue, founder dependence, balancing quality and growth. These things need addressing, and they can’t be skipped over. They can be for a period of time, but then pressures will start to appear in the business. And I think for me at the moment, if we look at what is having an impact, for me and all my clients is about presenting ourselves powerfully online, because there’s a huge, huge power of online marketing. And it’s about reaching and growing your audience, and turning those connections into clients.

So for me, strategy is going to play a big part of it, but getting the business model right, first of all, will be central to where everyone needs to be. Because if you’ve got that right foundation layer, it’s easier just to put those building blocks on and move closer and closer to those end goals. And, of course, your goals will always change as your business evolves, but just think about doing a little micro audit today, see where you’re at. Now, if you would like to learn more about moving your business forward, if you want to learn more about 10 times and your wealth and success, and you’re ready to take those steps, then you need to make sure that, number one, you join me in the marketing and motivation and mindset group on Facebook, just search my name, Dawn McGruer, you will see the group come up.

Connect with me personally on LinkedIn and subscribe to the podcast, because there are big changes coming. The power circle is launching in the September, 2021. So it is going to be a huge, huge concept change in terms of the branding effort that we’ve put in here, it is amazing. All of the team members and the partners who are involved in the program, some of the world’s most inspiring leaders. And I would love for you to be part of it, because as I say, it is all about making big changes and all of these powerful ways of presenting yourself online to really scale and grow your business. So I hope you enjoyed the episode and join me next week for some more marketing, motivation and mindset chat. And don’t forget to connect with me on social media.

 

Thank you for listening to the Dawn of a New Era podcast. And for your free checklist to find out how to boost your business for growth, profit, and success, and join our community, go to dawnmcgruer.com.

 

Remember to join me and all my Podcast Guests on Facebook
Dawn McGruer's Marketing * Motivation * Mindset Group

Speaker. Author. Podcaster. Strategist.

Multi-award-winning speaker, strategist & best-selling author of Dynamic Digital Marketing - Helping to inspire entrepreneurs to rise to meet today’s challenges and be powerfully present to shine online.

Connect with me and let’s Dream Big * Work Hard * Make it Happen
Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube

Ways to work with me
Read My Book | Speaking | Training | Strategy | Retreat

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