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The $100 MBA Show
MBA2647 You’re Wasting Time on These 3 “Productive” Tasks
00:14:31
You’re hustling hard—juggling emails, brushing up your site, squeezing in another chapter from that business book—but by sunset, it still feels like nothing’s really moved. If you’ve ever stared at your to-do list wondering how all that busy turned into zero momentum, you’re in good company.
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You ever have one of those days where you are working nonstop, your laptop's open, you have about a thousand tabs going on at the same time, Maybe you've had like six or seven coffees and at the end you think, why don't I feel like I actually have done anything? Yeah, me too. And that's what today's episode is all about. Welcome back to the $100R and 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. There are tasks that feel productive, they feel like progress, but they're actually traps. They burn your time. They feel like you're making momentum, but you're really not. And the worst thing of all, they keep you from the stuff that actually grows your business. So in today's episode, I'm gonna break down the three productive tasks that are actually silently killing your results. And of course, I'm gonna tell you what to do instead with some real world examples from entrepreneurs who learned the hard way, including myself. So I'm gonna make sure that this is crystal clear. I also want to share that this is actually something I struggled with for a very long time. You know, my parents were immigrants. They came from Egypt to the US and they worked really hard and hard work and work in something to be proud of. And I inherited that. And that's actually a good value. But sometimes you wear busy as a badge. You think that just being busy is a Good thing on itself. No, working on the right things is more important than just keep on working. Right? Just working to. To exhaustion. No, we want to work smart and hard if we can. But also recognize that you can't work hard forever. Right? There's a limit. You. You will burn out. So let's make sure we're pacing ourselves by making sure that we're focusing on the. At least that's what I learned. And I want to share with you what turned things around for me and how to do it right. Let's start with the first fake productivity tasks that we do all the time that derail us, that distract us, and that's tweaking your website or AKA design. Procrastination. Right? This is one of the most common traps ever. Tinkering with our website. Tinkering with the banner on our Facebook page or on our Instagram. Tinkering with the bio on our YouTube. Tinkering, tinkering, tinkering instead of talking to customers. I've seen this so many times in myself and other people as well, of course. But you'll often hear something like this. I just need to perfect my homepage before I start promoting. Right? I don't want to send traffic to the page until it's totally optimized. Or another example is I'm still figuring out my color palette before I launch. I really want to make sure that it looks really impressive. Stop. Stop right there. Because the reason why this is so killer is because there's truth in those statements. Design does matter. The details do make a difference. But there's a time and a place for everything. In the beginning, you need to validate your idea. You need to make sure that you have something that people actually want. You need to make some sales, you need to get some customers. You have to have a reoccurring way for people to buy over and over. Right? Those are the important facets of business that you need to prioritize over those little tinkering details. And often it's just like procrastination. It's a procrastination tool to work on something else other than the thing that we actually need to work on, which is getting customers. Right? Let me give you an example from a really well known online educator, Marie Folio. Right? New York Times bestselling author. When she launched B School, her original sales page wasn't really fancy. It was actually pretty basic. It was basically a long block of copy, a headline and a video. No flash animations, no parallax scrolling or anything like that. Just A clear message and a strong offer. She pre sold millions of dollars worth of courses before upgrading the design and making it a better website years later. Heck, let's go closer to home. Webinar Ninja, my software company that I built for 10 years, recently got acquired by Proprofs. But before I actually built the actual Software Back in 2014, I created a simple landing page with mockups of what the software would look like before I designed it, before a line of code was written. I pitched the idea, not a finished product, pitched the promise and we sold over 250 beta spots that gave us enough capital and validation to build the actual product. The bottom line is your homepage is not your business. Your offer is. Sell the offer, tweak the site later. Listen, a lot of people look at the hundred dollar MBA website one zero zero, MBA net if you're curious and they say this is amazing. This is beautiful. The branding's incredible. There's so much that is put into it. I'm like, you're right, we've worked a lot on it and it's expensive to build a website like that. But we didn't build this website from day one. This is something that we worked on over and over. And our latest iteration, our redesign recently, is after doing the 100 MBA for over 10 years. Right? It was something that grew with us and improved with us. You want to grow your business? Who doesn't? Everyone will tell you it comes down to saying the right thing at the right time to the right people. But how do you know what right is? Luckily, Constant Contact is here to help with their all in one platform. You can create and manage attention grabbing campaigns in just a few clicks. Email, text, social media, events, landing pages, you name it, it's all in one place. Constant Contact's AI Content Generator helps you turn a rough idea into a ready to go message faster than ever. And with hundreds of customizable templates, it's easy to make something that looks and reads like your brand. You also get automated sending, real time reporting and tools that actually help drive sales. So you're not just marketing your business, you're growing it. Get a free 30 day trial when you go to constant contact.com try constant contact free for 30 days at constant contact.com constant contact.com are you on the right track?
- [07:23]
D
What do you want to be remembered for? Is this really all there is? Asking big questions about your life can feel overwhelming, but the Hidden Brain Podcast hosted by me, Shankar Vedantam is here to help you get started. All through the month of July, Hidden Brain will bring you our you 2.0 series with a special focus on purpose, passion and meaning. If you're feeling adrift, alone or burned out, this series is for you. Join us.
- [07:56]
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Fake productivity number two Consuming instead of creating. Let's talk about this one for a second. Let's talk about what I call the learning trap. You know, we love to learn as entrepreneurs. There's no doubt about it. I mean, you're listening to a podcast right now. You might enjoy reading books, you might enjoy reading articles on LinkedIn. But let me ask you this, when was the last time you published something, made an offer, or had a real conversation with a customer? Here's the truth. You don't need more information. Often you need more implementation. One of the reasons why I created this podcast was to give back to other entrepreneurs to help them along the journey, but also to ensure that I am producing and implementing more than I'm consuming. I know myself, I love to learn, I love to consume, I love to read, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you don't at least have a 5050 split where you're consuming as much as you're implementing, then you're really not going to make progress, you know, and as you start to grow in entrepreneurship, you're going to start tilting the scales a little bit more to implementation, where it's like 40, 60 and then, you know, 30, 70 in favor of implementation. Let me give you a perfect example of this. Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income, good friend of mine, good guy. He says that one of his biggest mistakes early on was spending too much time learning and not doing enough. He's not actually producing enough. So once he flipped the switch, he published his first ebook, he launched his first course and the business took off. Same for me. I ran a failed podcast before this podcast, the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Why did it fail? Well, I was focusing on all the right things, I thought, but they're really the wrong things. I was really so over concerned about the perfect equipment and the perfect intro and the slick editing and. And I forgot that really what's most important is the content. It's making sure that I deliver the best content possible in the best way I can. And that previous podcast was an interview podcast. I'm not so great at interviewing. I'm actually really great at teaching. That's what I did for over a decade before I became a full time entrepreneur. I was a schoolteacher, I trained teachers for a living. I have a master's in education. So this is my realm of influence. This is my zone of genius, as they say. I switched to teaching on the podcast podcast, which is this podcast. And that made all the difference. The old podcast wasn't delivering consistent value or talking to the right audience. Actually, when I finally focused on the message over the method and all these little small details, the show took off. Now don't get me wrong, you know, we got to over 300 million downloads in the 100 NBA show, not by just doing the same thing over and over. You know, once we established high value content on the podcast and we did it consistently, we started to improve our equipment, improve our performance, made sure all the details were kind of moving up as the show moved up, right. We made sure that we continue to improve all those finer things. But the core thing had to be established for the core value is most important. Once we had that, then we can then polish things up. So here's a rule. If you're somebody that is maybe an over consumer of content, anytime you have one lesson learned or one piece of content consumed, say to yourself, I have to do one action. I gotta take one action. So for every one lesson learned, one action taken. So if you listen to this podcast episode today, then make sure you're taking action and implementing something in your business, at least one thing. Another example is if you read a book, implement one idea before picking up another book, right? Whatever you learned in that book, implement it. If you listen to a podcast, if you watch a video on YouTube and you learn something, use it and make sure it sparks you to take action. Learning without doing is just entertainment in disguise. Really fake productivity number three, planning. Instead of selling. Let me be crystal clear. I love planning. I'm a planner. When I go on a trip, a holiday, even a business trip, my favorite part of it is the planning of the of the actual trip. You know, Nicole makes jokes about it, but it's true. You know, like when we go on a trip and we're actually there, I'm happy in everything, but I actually enjoyed the planning more. I'm a guy that loves systems and loves, you know, the buildup of creating something. But there's a difference between planning for execution and planning as an excuse to delay perfectionism is just procrastination. Wearing a tie. Okay, it's just a fancy way to say you're procrastinating. Here's a real story. I met a SaaS founder at a conference called Microconf and he was building a productivity app. He spent 10 months in in just planning mode. We're talking about sitemaps, user flows, backend diagrams. But when he finally launched, nobody bought his app. Why? He never validated demand. He never spoke to real users. He thought if he just planned it better, the success would follow. Now contrast that with Gumroads founder Sahel Lavinia. He created that MVP in a weekend and launched it to a few creators. From there, he iterated based on the feedback that he got from the creators. And Gumroad is now doing tens of millions of dollars annually. Planning is useful, but after you've started selling, because selling is validation that you're working on the right thing. So what should you be doing instead? Let me give you the filter I personally use that I teach inside our program, the $100 MBA. Ask yourself each day is this task directly tied to revenue, results or relationships? Revenue is something that will help me earn or drive sales. Results will help a customer achieve their outcome. And relationships is am I building trust with my audience, with my team, with my partners? If not, if it does not do any of those three, you're probably decorating your to do lists. Instead of building your business right? You're playing busy, playing business and not doing business. Let's get real. What are real tasks that drive growth instead of those fake wins that you tell yourself? Spend time on sending a personal email to 10 potential customers. Create a short sales video or offer page, posting a real customer story or case study on social media. Follow up with somebody who clicked but didn't buy right. Reach out to them. Testing, testing a simple ad to a landing page or asking for a referral from a happy customer. All these things actually help your business. These things should feel a little scary because they're a little bit uncomfortable. But they create momentum and they create money. Right? This is what we need in our business. So here's the truth. Most entrepreneurs fail not because they're lazy, but because they're busy doing things that don't matter. And the market doesn't care how organized your notion is. Right? It cares if you solve a real problem. That's the game. When you stop confusing motion for progress. When you stop trying to look successful and start doing the hard, real work, you separate yourself from the 99% of people just spinning their wheels by being that 1%. So execute, ship, sell. Even if it's messy. Especially if it's messy. Okay, it's okay. That's how real businesses are built. Thanks so much for joining us on the 100 MBA Show. I want to say that if you're here to the end of the episode that means you're a doer. You care about your progress, your business, your progression in life. I'm proud of you. You're one of my people. But if you want to take things further, if you want to learn and build upon what you're learning, then I recommend that you sign up for a three Things newsletter. It's absolutely free. All you got to do is go to 100 MBA net and sign up for any of our free templates or any of our free resources and you get added to our newsletter automatically. Why would you sign up for this newsletter? Well, each week I'm going to give you three things. Something to think about to grow your mindset. Number two, I'm going to give you something to do so you're actually progressing by taking action. And number three, something to learn so you're leveling up your skills and becoming something better every single week. It's my way to coach you from afar. It's all designed to keep you growing as an entrepreneur again. Just go to 100 MBA net and sign up for any of our free guides and you get added automatically for free. And I'll see you inside the newsletter until next time. Keep moving forward. Keep doing things that make you a little bit uncomfortable, that stretch you a little bit, that put you outside your comfort zone. That's okay. That means you're making progress. I'll check in next time. Take care.
- [17:05]
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Are you on the right track? What do you want to be remembered for? Is this really all there is? Asking big questions about your life can feel overwhelming, but the Hidden Brain Podcast, hosted by me, Shankar Vedantam, is here to help you get started. All through the month of July, Hidden Brain will bring you our your 2.0 series with a special focus on purpose, passion and meaning. If you're feeling adrift, alone or burned out, this series is for you. Join us.