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Omar Zenhom
With Amex Business Platinum, your dental clinic can really sparkle with a flexible spending limit that adapts with your business. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Not all purchases will be approved. Terms apply. Learn more@americanexpress.com AmExBusiness if you're a listener of the show, you probably own a business or looking to start one. So the question is, are you ready to thrive with your business? It's time to let Intuit QuickBooks take things like unpaid invoices and tracking expenses off your plate to take things to the next level. If you're a longtime listener to the show, you know how much I bang on about how important your finances are. Getting your numbers in order, making sure your incoming invoices and expenses are all taken care of. That's where QuickBooks comes in. It's an all in one business platform that can help you with day to day tasks like invoicing and expenses. Manage and grow your business all in one place. Intuit QuickBooks your way to Money Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments, Inc. Licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. What if doing less can actually make you more money? Sounds crazy, right? But trust me, most entrepreneurs are working way harder than they need to and making far less than they could be. Today, I'm going to break down how simplifying your business will help you grow faster, increase profits, and keep your sanity in check. Let's jump right in. Welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. Let's start with the problem. Many entrepreneurs who haven't scaled a business effectively think, believe busyness equals success. And listen, I've been there. We've all fallen into the trap of offering too many products, running in every marketing direction, right? Saying yes to every project or client. But here's the truth. Complex businesses are profit killers. Let me share with you a story. I call this my wake up call. When I was running my software company, Webinar Ninja, I was doing weekly feature rollouts. I was running multiple marketing campaigns. I was doing side projects, collaborations, you name it. Revenue stagnant. So I decided to cut back to three simple focuses. Number one, improving our products core features. Number two, running one clear, consistent, consistent sales system. And number three, taking good care of our customers. That's it. That's all I focused on improving our core features, running one clear, consistent sales system to make Money and taking care of the customers that we have so that we continue to have customers and keep churn to a minimum. The result? Our revenue doubled and our stress dropped. Why does this work? Why does doing less work? Well, here's why. Number one, focus creates mastery and allows you to get really good at what matters. Number two, simplicity builds customer trust. When things are simple, people understand them and they trust them. And number three, less overhead equals more margin. The more you do, the more overhead your business will inherit. It's just a matter of time before those costs start piling up and your margins start start getting really thin. By the way, overhead is also you doing the work. If you're doing things, not spending money to get it done, you could be doing something else to make more money. You could be focusing on what you're supposed to be focusing on and actually doubling down on what works. And therefore, your overhead on time is costing you money. Not just money. Now let's jump into three ways to make more by doing less. Number one, cut products and services that don't scale. Take a hard look at what you offer in your business and ask yourself, does this scale easily? Am I able to sell more of this thing without having to spend more time, energy and money? Next question to ask is, is it profitable? Is this product line, Is this service that you're offering actually profitable for your business? And lastly, is it distracting me from from my main business? From what actually moves the needle, actually allows me to grow? If the answers are no, cut it immediately. Let me give you a little tip. From my own experience, that last one is the toughest question to answer. Is it distracting me from my main business? Because we don't see it as a distraction, but really what we're essentially doing is running away from what we are afraid to do, afraid to grow into. For example, maybe you're not running webinars to sell your products and services and you're doing something else. You're running other campaigns just to distract you, just so you could tell yourself that you're doing something to sell your products and services when they're actually not working, but you know you actually have to do something else that you've been putting off because you're afraid to get in front of the camera. Or maybe you're afraid that you're not good enough yet, or you need to improve. Face your fears. Go after it. Often what we fear the most is the most important thing we need to do right now. Don't be afraid to cut out products or services or things that are actually selling, but are actually not making you as much money as you can because you're spending so much time and energy maintaining those products and services. Of course, if something's not selling, you would cut it, but when things are selling, it's hard to cut because we don't really see how much it's hurting us, how much expense of time, energy and money and team and resources it's costing us. So be as brutal as possible. Steve Jobs famously did this when he returned to Apple as CEO. They had dozens of product lines and he slashed them all down to just four core products. That ruthless focus is what saved Apple and set them up for world domination. You know what's fun and useful? Learning a new language. I've been brushing up on my Italian because I'm going to go to Italy soon and Rosetta Stone has been helping me along the way. What I love about it is that I don't feel like I'm memorizing, I feel like I'm learning. I'm picking up skills on how to do things that are really important, like how to order a coffee and a croissant. And that's un cafe, un corneto popavore, by the way. I use Rosetta Stone because they've been in the game for 30 years. They've helped millions of users and they got plenty of options. 25 languages offered. It's available on mobile, it's available on desktop. So you have no excuse to get better at a new language. I find that Rosetta Stone helps you learn a language really quickly enough to get by in that new country you're visiting. I'm even surprising Nicole, whose background is Italian and talks to her mother in Italian fluently. How much I understand when they talk to each other. But Rosetta Stone also helps you speak properly in that new language. They have this feature called True Accent speech recognition. It helps you perfect your pronunciation, providing real time feedback to help you sound more natural. This has really helped me not feel so self conscious speaking a language that's not my first. I highly recommend you check out Rosetta Stone to learn your next lang Unlock your learning potential today. The $100 MBA show listeners can grab Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. That's unlimited access to 25 language courses for life. Visit RosettaStone.com MBA to get started and claim your 50% off today. That's RosettaStone.com MBA to start learning. Hey, if you're running a business, you know that every time you miss a call, you're leaving Money on the table. I mean every customer conversation matters. So you need a phone system that keeps up and helps you stay connected. That's why you need OpenPhone. What's OpenPhone, you ask? Well, OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications. With OpenPhone, your team can share one number and collaborate on customer calls and texts. Like a shared inbox, any teammate can pick up right where the last person left off, keeping response times faster than ever. Plus, with our AI powered call transcripts and summaries, you'll be able to automate follow ups, ensuring that you'll never miss a customer interaction again. See why over 50,000 businesses trust OpenPhone to manage their businesses calls and texts. And if that's not cool enough, Openphone is offering my listeners 20% off their first six months at openphone.com MBA that's O P E N P-H-O-N-E.com MBA and if you have existing numbers with another service, Openphone will port them over at no extra charge. Open Phone. No missed calls, no missed customers. Number two ruthlessly prioritize tasks. Use the 8020 rule. If you're unfamiliar with the 8020 rule, it says that 20% of your efforts is giving you 80% of your results. That means that 80% of your income is coming from 20% of your efforts. Identify that 20% and double down because that's really going to move the needle. That's actually going to help you move leaps and bounds. Everything else other than that 20% that's giving you 80% of your results, delegate it, automate it, or eliminate it. For me, at Webinar Ninja, that meant prioritizing sales, sales conversations through webinars to be exact. I had to really prioritize conversion focused content and really refining our offer. I knew that that work, even though it's not going to take me a lot of time to do that work, will make a tremendous impact. Refining the offer, working on making sure that all my content is converting properly and refining my messaging and communication when I'm selling. Everything else became secondary because I knew if I nailed it that it would make a tremendous effort in my business. You know where you're failing in your business, you just gotta be honest. Are you not getting enough leads? Then that means you need more leads, you need to work on marketing. Do you got leads? But they're not converting? Then you gotta focus on sales. Are people returning your product or canceling? That means your product needs work or your customer success and support needs work. This is the beauty of business, is that you're gonna get feedback constantly. There's a reaction to everything you do, positive and negative. Number three, simplify your sales funnel. Stop over complicating it. I talk about this all the time in the hundred dollar MBA program and on this podcast. You need one clear, valuable lead magnet, one compelling offer, and one straightforward sales process. Those three things alone will change your business tremendously if you just focus on having one incredibly valuable lead magnet to get you leads. Two, an offer they cannot say no to. It just makes total sense. They would feel like they're making a mistake if they said no. And number three, a straightforward process for them to be educated on that offer. How are you selling your product? Is it via email? Is it via webinars? Is it through one on one calls? Is it on chat? How are you actually doing it? Have one way to do it and do it right. As I say, when it comes to customers, a confused mind never buys. Simplify this process. Clear, easy to understand processes allows your customers to have a clear mind to make a decision to buy. Doing more doesn't get you more. Doing better gets you more. Listen, if you're starting out and you're just trying to kick up dust and you're trying to figure things out, that's fine. I totally get it. But once you start making some money and you make some profit, you gotta work smarter. You don't have endless energy and time when you cut back, when you focus, when you simplify, you stop wasting time, money and energy and you free yourself so that you can serve better. You can earn more and grow sustainably. You don't have to be busy to be successful. You have to be strategic. I know we feel proud. I was one of those people that just wore busyness as a badge. But being busy on the wrong things is a horrible way to run a business. Want more? Join my Three Things newsletter every week I will send you three things. 1. Something to think about, 2. Something to do and number three, something to learn. It's my way to coach you from afar. Head on over to 1-000- MBA-NET. Grab any of our free guides and you'll get added to our newsletter automatically. Simplify, focus and let's grow smarter. I'll see you in the next episode. If you've been having your McDonald's sausage McMuffin with an iced coffee from somewhere else, now is a great time to reconsider. In the Pacific Northwest, it's never too cold for an iced coffee in the morning. Grab yourself a medium caramel, French vanilla or classic iced coffee for just $2.29. Beverage may cause craving for McMuffin or hash browns. Prices and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer or combo meal. B.