MBA2292 The #1 Habit That Will Help Grow Your Business

Summary

Summary of "MBA2292 The #1 Habit That Will Help Grow Your Business" – The $100 MBA Show with Omar Zenhom

Release Date: April 20, 2023

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Introduction

In episode MBA2292 of The $100 MBA Show, host Omar Zenhom explores the pivotal habit that can drive substantial growth in any business. Drawing from over two decades of entrepreneurial experience, including successfully bootstrapping multiple multi-million dollar businesses, Omar delivers actionable insights designed for real-world application. This episode focuses on identifying and cultivating the most crucial daily habit that ensures consistent revenue generation and business expansion.

The Vital Role of Money in Business

Omar begins by underscoring the essential nature of money in sustaining and growing a business. He poignantly states:

“In your business, in any business, money is oxygen. You need money, you need revenue” ([00:54]).

He elaborates that while early-stage businesses often rely on hustle and time investment to launch products or services, sustaining and scaling the business require a steady inflow of revenue. Money serves as the lifeblood that enables businesses to:

• Improve Products/Services: Enhance offerings to meet customer needs better.
• Hire Talent: Bring in skilled professionals to drive innovation and efficiency.
• Invest in Marketing: Fund campaigns that attract and retain customers.
• Ensure Personal and Team Well-being: Provide a comfortable lifestyle, reducing the need for desperate decision-making.
• Access Training and Networking: Invest in personal development and build valuable industry connections.
• Acquire Essential Tools and Services: Utilize products and services that streamline business operations.

Identifying the #1 Habit for Business Growth

Addressing a common question about daily routines, Omar identifies the #1 habit that every entrepreneur should adopt:

“Your number one habit every single day should be doing something that directly helps you make money” ([04:20]).

He emphasizes that while various routines—such as waking up early, meditating, or journaling—can benefit entrepreneurs, the most impactful habit is consistently engaging in revenue-generating activities. This focus ensures that businesses remain sustainable and continue to grow.

Understanding High-Impact Revenue-Generating Actions

To clarify what constitutes a high-impact, revenue-generating action, Omar introduces the "two-step rule":

1. Crafting an Irresistible Offer: Developing a compelling proposition that attracts customers.
2. Delivering the Offer Effectively: Presenting the offer through appropriate channels (e.g., webinars, sales pitches).

He explains:

“If I'm two steps removed, then that's an action that directly impacts sales” ([06:30]).

Example: Preparing for a webinar by crafting an enticing offer directly leads to increased sales during the event.

In contrast, Omar distinguishes less direct activities, such as social media posting, which typically require additional steps before resulting in sales:

“Tweeting something out, putting something on social media... this is not an action that is directly impacting sales” ([08:15]).

While social media can aid in brand building and lead generation, it doesn't immediately translate to sales without further engagement steps.

Practical Implementation of the Habit

Omar provides a structured approach for entrepreneurs to integrate this habit into their daily routines:

1. Time Blocking:

   • Action: Open the calendar app and allocate at least one hour each day for money-making tasks.
   • Purpose: Scheduling this time signifies prioritization.
   • Instruction: “[...] put a time block of at least an hour” ([12:06]).

2. Task Identification:

   • Action: Determine five specific revenue-generating tasks for the next five days.
   • Examples:
     • Launching an email campaign with a special offer.
     • Hosting a webinar to showcase products or services.
     • Developing a new service or upselling existing customers.
     • Forming strategic partnerships to expand market reach.

3. Commitment to Execution:

   • Action: Dedicate the scheduled time blocks to these tasks without delay.
   • Emphasis: Consistency is key to building the habit and reaping long-term benefits.

The Compound Effect and Consistency

Omar highlights the compound effect of consistent, daily revenue-focused actions:

“When you do these actions every single day, day after day, week after week, month after month, things start to snowball” ([09:50]).

This consistent effort leads to:

• Exponential Revenue Growth: Each small task contributes to increasing sales and revenue.
• Enhanced Skill Development: Regular focus on sales activities improves proficiency and effectiveness.
• Positive Team Culture: Emphasizing revenue generation encourages the entire team to prioritize income-driven actions.

Scaling the Habit with a Team

As businesses grow, Omar advises expanding this revenue-focused habit beyond the individual to the entire team:

“The next level of this is when you start building a team or if you have team members, is to give them tasks to do to grow the business” ([14:30]).

Strategies for Scaling:

• Delegation: Assign specific revenue-generating tasks to team members (e.g., email marketing, webinar hosting).
• Empowerment: Enable team members to take ownership of their tasks, fostering accountability.
• Reinvestment: Use the additional revenue generated to further scale and optimize business operations.

Homework Assignment

To facilitate immediate application of the episode’s lessons, Omar provides a practical homework assignment:

1. Schedule Time Blocks:

   • Action: Open the calendar app and block at least one hour each day for money-making tasks over the next five working days.
   • Timing: Begin with the current day and continue for the subsequent five days.
   • Instruction: “[...] put that one hour for today, okay? And for the next five working days, don't worry what's in the block right now. Just put money making task” ([12:06]).

2. Identify Five Revenue-Generating Tasks:

   • Action: Determine five specific actions that can drive revenue during the scheduled time blocks.
   • Examples: Email campaigns, webinars, new service offerings, partnerships.

3. Commit to Execution:

   • Action: Adhere to the scheduled time blocks and diligently execute the identified tasks.
   • Goal: Establish the habit through consistent daily practice, leveraging the compound effect for business growth.

Omar emphasizes that while planning is straightforward, the real challenge lies in consistently implementing these tasks daily. However, once ingrained, the habit becomes second nature, leading to sustained revenue growth and business success.

Conclusion

Omar Zenhom wraps up the episode by reinforcing the transformative potential of adopting a consistent, revenue-focused habit. By prioritizing daily actions that directly generate income, entrepreneurs can ensure their businesses remain viable, grow steadily, and become resilient against economic fluctuations. Additionally, scaling this habit across the team amplifies its impact, fostering a unified focus on revenue generation.

Omar encourages listeners to implement the homework assignment immediately, stressing that the simplicity of the approach belies its profound effectiveness. As businesses begin to see tangible results from consistent revenue-generating efforts, the motivation to maintain and scale these habits will naturally follow, driving long-term success.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• “In your business, in any business, money is oxygen. You need money, you need revenue” ([00:54]).
• “Your number one habit every single day should be doing something that directly helps you make money” ([04:20]).
• “If I'm two steps removed, then that's an action that directly impacts sales” ([06:30]).
• “Anything you focus on consistently, you'll get better at” ([07:45]).
• “The next level of this is when you start building a team or if you have team members, is to give them tasks to do to grow the business” ([14:30]).

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates Omar Zenhom's key insights and actionable strategies from the episode, providing a valuable resource for entrepreneurs seeking to enhance their business growth through consistent revenue-focused habits.

Transcript

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Omar Zenhom]

Just submit them with a text. Switch your business to ramp.com hey. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Because your business needs you at your best. That's why we deliver 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 2014. And in today's lesson, you will learn the number one habit that will help grow your business. One of the most common questions I get asked is like, what's your daily routine? What are the habits that you do every day to help you be successful that day or throughout your career? And the short answer to that is that everybody's different. My daily routine might suit my needs and the things I do work for me, but maybe not for you. But there is one thing that I'd actually recommend to every single entrepreneur. One habit that I found that actually makes a big difference in your success. If you can stick to this habit every single day, every time you get up to work on your business, I'm confident it will help you grow, will help you earn more revenue, get more customers, be in a better place. And I'm going to share with you today. So if you don't like waking up early in the morning or doing meditation or yoga or journaling or whatever it might be, no worries. Just do this one habit and, and you should be sorted. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So you might be wondering, what is this one habit almost talking about? Well, I'm gonna share with you, don't worry. But before I do, I need to preface it with a very important statement. In your business, in any business, money is oxygen. You need money, you need revenue. Without money, it's very hard for you to grow. Now, I'm not talking about when you just get started because in the beginning you're exchanging a lot of hustle and time and eff effort to put your business out there in the world to offer your product or service. But in order for your business to stay alive, it needs oxygen. It needs money. Money allows you to improve your business, improve your product, hire new people, spend money on marketing so you can get more customers, pay yourself and have a comfortable lifestyle so you're not making desperate decisions. Money allows you to get better by getting better training and coaching. Money gives you access to people that you normally wouldn't by going to events and social dinners. Money allows you to the services and products you're using to run your business. Money gets to buy you great ideas because you can hire great, innovative, smart people. I can go on and on and on. So it's safe to say that making money in a business is important. Bringing in new revenue, bringing in new customers that are paying your business money sounds like a priority, right? And yet I will talk to countless entrepreneurs and I'll look at their calendar and I'll look at what they do every day and making money is not a priority. It's just not there. And why do I say it's not a priority? Because it's not something they do every day. It's not something that they practice. It's not something that they try to get better at every day. It's not something that they have to do or the day is not complete. They might have a sales conversation or one marketing meeting and they just think that their business is just going to boom and blow up because the product is so amazing, or that their idea is so amazing, or that somebody's going to believe in them, they're going to fund them and the rest is history and they're going to be billionaires. No, that's not how business works. That doesn't work for a small mom and pop. That doesn't work for the corner pizza store that's in your neighborhood. That doesn't work for retail, online offline services. The businesses that make it and thrive regardless of the economic situation are always going after More revenue. They're laser focused about bringing in more money into the business. More sales, more revenue. This is why I say this all the time. When anybody's looking to invest in a company like in Shark Tank, they ask, how much revenue have you made? Money is king. Okay, now that we've established that, let me tell you about the number one habit. And it should be obvious by now, your number one habit every single day should be doing something that directly helps you make money. Now this sounds really simple, it sounds really plain and almost like elementary. But this is why people don't do it, okay? They think there's gotta be more to it. And I'm telling you there isn't. Your job as the founder of your business is to make sure you're doing something every single day to make more money, to make more sales, to bring in customers. Let me give you a practical example, okay? Tomorrow I have a webinar. It's a partner webinar. I'm being invited to speak in front of another audience about how to sell more of your products and services using webinars. The winner is tomorrow. But today, I am going to focus on crafting an irresistible offer for the webinar. I'm working on my slides. I know that the better this offer is, the better my presentation is. The better I'm going to convert on the webinar. The more customers I'm going to get, the more money I'm going to make. I know this is going to directly impact what I say and what I do. And what I offer will directly impact how much money I make on that webinar. This is important because without a great offer, I'm gonna have mediocre sales or very weak sales. But more importantly, if the offer is great and it converts great, I can use that same offer over and over for future webinars. This means I'm improving and increasing my sales exponentially every time I run a webinar. This is high, high impact. I know this will help me make money. Now, a lot of people get confused about what actions actually directly make you money. What is kind of an extrapolation and a little bit far off? Well, I'm going to give you a very straight up rule. If I'm two steps removed, then that's an action that directly impacts sales. So what do I mean by two steps removed? Well, if I craft a great offer, that's step one, and then deliver that offer on the webinar, that's step two, Then the next step would be for the customer to buy If I do those two right, then the customer will buy my product or service. There's no other step after that. It's create the offer, it's deliver the offer. Done. Okay, sale made. So let me give you an example of something that is not two steps removed and is not directly gonna help your sales. It doesn't count as one of those activities, it's just counted as something else. Tweeting something out, putting something on social media. Why? Because you might write something very compelling or you might have some good content that you're putting out there, but it's not two steps removed. Why? Because you're gonna one, create the content. That is one step. And let's just say it's a bunch of words or, or a photo you take, not a video. That takes many steps. But let's just say, let's put that as one step. Create the content and then you're gonna post the content. Okay, Those are two steps, right? In order for this to actually exist on social media, the next step is not buy, because it's impossible. People can't just buy something right off Instagram. Probably what's gonna happen is they're gonna go to their profile, they're gonna click on your link tree, they're gonna see your website, they're gonna look at your website already. This is like two steps, right? Then we have a third step where they're probably going to opt into your newsletter, that's the third step. And then they're going to get your emails, they're going to read your emails as a fourth step. So as you can see, this is not an action that is directly impacting sales. I'm not saying don't do this, I'm just saying that this doesn't count as your daily habit of doing something that directly impacts sales. Now, this two step rule is just a rule of thumb that you can use at the start just to help you out. But then you will be able to be your own judge. Now, throughout the day and every day, I work on my business. I work on different things. I record a podcast, I attend meetings, I create videos, I run webinars, all kinds of stuff, right? And that's all good. I have to do these things to build and run my business. But on my calendar, on every day, I need to do something that directly makes money. For example, I meet with my product team so we can create a new feature in Webinar Ninja. Now if this feature is an improvement, that's fantastic. I should do those things that helps the business. But this doesn't count as something that directly helps us make money. Now if this feature was an add on feature, something that we can sell as an upsell or something that we can sell as an add on for our existing customers, where literally when this gets created, I can just send an email to our customers, hey, we have this new add on feature. It costs X amount of dollars buy here. You get the point. Now the reason why I encourage you to do this every single day, to make a habit of every single day doing tasks that directly impact sales, that gets you customers, gets you money, it's because compounding when you do something like this, when you do these actions every single day, day after day, week after week, month after month, things start to snowball. You start making revenue without even trying. Because every day you're doing one task that might take you an hour, two hours, 30 minutes, whatever it might be that helps you a certain amount or a certain dollar amount and then the next task does the same thing. Does the same thing, does the same thing. These efforts compound and all of a sudden your business becomes a money making machine because it's your focus. And listen, anything you focus on consistently, you'll get better at. So if you're consistently focused on making money, you'll get better at making money. If you're consistently focused on being a better singer and taking singing lessons and singing songs and singing throughout the day, guess what's going to happen? You're going to get better. And it's just this compounding the consistency that you're doing every single day allows your business to be making money day after day, week after week, month after month. And with your focus being this and this being such a priority for you, this starts to trickle down across your team. People start realizing that revenue is important. We got to make sure we're doing things that are helping grow revenue. Because again, when you are making more money, when you're making revenue, all things are possible and you just got to get into the habit.

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[Ramp Employee]

Meeting on a Monday, expensing breakfast because it's in policy.

[Omar Zenhom]

Yay.

[Ramp Employee]

Wasting all afternoon submitting an expense report for that breakfast. If your company used Ramp, you could submit expenses with just a text.

[Omar Zenhom]

Yay.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

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[Omar Zenhom]

So I want to give you some practical homework. Okay? You want to get started right away. As soon as you listen to this podcast, open up your calendar app. Right now. I'm talking right now. As you're listening to this, you can do two things at the same time. Open up the calendar app and put a time block of at least an hour. At least. You could do more if you want. At least an hour every day for the next five days. If you're listening to this at the start of the day or midway through the day, put that one hour for today, okay? And for the next five working days, don't worry what's in the block right now. Just put money making task. Okay? This automatically says this is a priority. If it's in your calendar, it's a priority. Now, after listening to this podcast, you can start thinking, what are five things you can do to help you make more revenue? Bring in more customers? Increase the total revenue a customer spends with you. This could be simply be an email campaign with a sale. This could be running a webinar. This could be offering a new service. This could be a partnership of some sort. The point here is that first, dedicate the time in your calendar. Then think of five tasks you could do for the next five days to help bring you in your money. Now, the key here is that after you've done that is to make sure you commit to doing it during that time in your time block in your calendar. Add a time block before your last time block for 30 minutes to, say, organize the next five days. Okay? So the next five days, put them in your calendar. Again, think of the next five things. This ensures you're prioritizing this. I know this sounds simple. I know this sounds like, wow, is this all it takes? And the answer is yes. The answer is yes. This is the easy part, the planning and the talking and the putting in the calendar. The more challenging part is actually implementing, is making sure you do this every day, that you don't push it off, that you don't get lazy. And the beautiful thing about this is that after you've kind of done three or four weeks like this, about a total of 20 days, this becomes easy, it becomes second nature, and you start seeing the results. So this motivates you to keep going because like, wow, this is working. We're making money, the sales are coming in. I got to keep doing this. And you should keep doing it because it's what's going to help your business grow. Thanks so much for listening to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe, hit follow on your favorite podcast app so you get the next episode automatically. Also, by following our podcast you get access to our over 2200 episodes in our back catalog. So many lessons for you to dig into, but you got to hit follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get access. And of course access is totally free. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The next level of this is when you start building a team or if you have team members, is to give them tasks to do to grow the business. This allows you to scale so you can tell somebody to create that webinar for you. You can tell that person to reach out to these people and make them an offer or write the emails or find some partners to partner up with. This allows you to be able to do 2, 3, 4 money making tasks in each day. Talk about scale. Something for you to look forward to and reinvest in once you start doing this in a consistent way and start making some sales and making that cash that you can use to reinvest to scale this system. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Freeride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care.

[Ramp Employee]

Got a 7am meeting on a Monday Expensing breakfast because it's in policy wasting all afternoon submitting an expense report for that breakfast. If your company used Ramp, you could submit expenses with just a text.

[Omar Zenhom]

Yay.

[Mint Mobile Representative]

Free your team from expense reports today. Switch your business to ramp.com.