As business owners, we are constantly striving to achieve new heights, increase sales and boost profits. However, even with your best efforts in place, unexpected roadblocks can rear their heads and can impede business growth.
In this episode of the Influence by Design podcast, Samantha and Tim talk about the 11 mistakes that prevent business growth. They explore common pitfalls they’ve seen, regardless of the industry, and provide practical insights on how to overcome them.
From business partnerships to pricing issues, this episode helps identify and address the critical problems that can hinder your business development.
QUOTES
- “If you don’t do the work, you won’t get the outcome that you’re looking for.” -Tim Hyde
- “You need to focus on what you want your lifestyle to look like and then build the business that supports that lifestyle.” -Tim Hyde
- “When you get really clear about knowing who your one ideal client or customer is, you will pick up people in the peripherals. But more importantly, you’ll also attract more of that core customer.” -Samantha Riley
- “You need to be really clear on the outcomes you’re providing, and be clear about what your prospect will lose by not working with you – rather than thinking about the price of working with you.” -Samantha Riley
- “If you don’t make a decision, you can’t grow, build or do something, You’re just sitting in a land of limbo.” -Samantha Riley
RESOURCES:
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TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley Snippet (00:00):
The fear of saying yes to it because Something may come up down the track is so the wrong way to do it. Because if you just make that decision now, I’m going with this one, at least you’re building something that you can move over.
Tim Hyde Snippet (00:13):
In the fullness of time, all decisions turned out to be wrong. So the quicker you make one, the more time you have to correct it. The sooner you make the decision, as soon as you can actually make that work for you and continue to make it work for you.
Samantha Riley Intro (00:38):
Welcome to the Influence By Design Podcast. I’m Samantha Riley, authority positioning strategist for coaches and experts. If you’re ready to build a business that gives you more than just a caffeine addiction, and you dream of making more money, having more time, and having the freedom to be living your best life, then you’re in the right place, it’s time to level up.
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence By Design, I’m your Thursday co host Samantha Riley here and very happy to have my regular Thursday co host Tim Hyde, back joining the mic with me. How are you today? Tim?
Tim Hyde (01:02):
He’s back. I know, right? Crazy. Weeks and weeks and weeks, I’ve been traveling so much lately. And you have I’ve got barely been at home. My wife and son have been joking, particularly my son has been joking about my second going to visit.
Samantha Riley (01:23):
I was about to ask how’s the family feel about it? Because sometimes it’s great, and sometimes not so great
Tim Hyde (01:28):
looking company comes back. And we’re gonna talk about this a bit more today. Right. But it comes back to you know, what’s your can you get consumed with the business? And what’s it for? Huh,
Samantha Riley (01:37):
totally. So we’ve decided today that we’re going to talk about the 11 mistakes that we see business owners making that have gone to prevent them from growing and scaling their business. And yeah, this was, it was pretty easy. Wasn’t it team to pull these 11 together? Because they’re things that we just see over and over and over and over again?
Tim Hyde (02:00):
Oh, absolutely, Sam, and we work on limited to 10.
Samantha Riley (02:03):
But we couldn’t help ourselves.
Tim Hyde (02:06):
And every look to be honest, everybody does 10. So we thought we’d might be a bit different than making 11. That’s right, because that’s why we do they are, I think really interesting because these are almost universal. Doesn’t really matter what business you’re in. If your customers, you know, these are probably 11 that we see very similar.
And we’ve been talking a lot about doing a sort of an outtake reel. But I kind of, you know, almost inadvertently discovered that I’m working within, you know, clients in sort of automated 15 different industry sectors now. And no to the science, I’m gonna suddenly add exclusive onto all of my sales pitches and make myself more valuable. But it doesn’t matter whether you’re in trade or in finance, or in coaching or in health and wellness or whatever. These are almost universal. And
Samantha Riley (02:59):
totally, when we were chatting about this, it reminded me of a situation that I was in it was quite a few years ago, I was actually meeting a client of mine in the city. And he was a client that was very jovial, it didn’t matter where we were people would always talk to him.
And I remember distinctly we were in a bar in the CBD after we’ve done a VIP day together. And we’re having a chat. And as always happened when he was with me, someone from another table walked up and said, sounds like you guys having fun. What are you talking about? And we started talking about business. And I remember distinctly saying to this, this person that had come to our table, you know that I’ve worked with business owners, I helped them to grow and scale their businesses. And he started asking a lot of questions.
And I look, it doesn’t really matter what business because the you know, whilst the delivery of a decent business is different, generally, you know, there are the, you know, similar principles are the foundational principles of every business. And they went great, cool. So if I was going to be in a, you know, open a bookstore, what would be different? And I’m like, Dude, I just told you it’s the same for all businesses. You know, and I guess that’s why I remember because we all had a bit of a laugh about it. And I think he was just trying to catch me out because he went, you know, to shake
Tim Hyde (04:13):
- What is it that the again, you know, this is a process of workflow, right? He goes from attract customer, convert customer value proposition lever to customer, increase customer forward, done, and hopefully keep customer long term.
Samantha Riley (04:28):
I’m going to say I actually prefer it when it’s Invoice Customer before deliver the customer.
Tim Hyde (04:35):
You know, but before that you haven’t even
Samantha Riley (04:40):
met yet. Exactly, exactly. So Tim, let’s dive into these mistakes because I know that there’s going to be a lot of meat and potatoes in here. So let’s start off with the first one which is choosing the wrong partners.
Tim Hyde (04:52):
Yeah, look, this was an interesting one. I think when we look at these big super unicorn companies and buy super unicorn companies, we’re really talking about household brands that didn’t exist 20 years ago, right?
Samantha Riley (05:04):
So the first one that comes to mind for me is Canva. They are a super unicorn company,
Tim Hyde (05:10):
Canvas. Absolutely super unicorn, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, all these massive companies that, you know, we think, you know, one personality led by Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs and so on right you know, we go oh my god, these these, these owners are amazing. Even if we go into Clickfunnels Russell Brunson only just discovered the article the other day that Russell Brunson has five business partners, I did not know that. I think there are six of them all up, I thought it was wow, we did the whole thing from scratch. But it’s not the case at all.
Often we find with businesses that are more successful, it’s actually a partnership. And even even Sam your business right, since. And you’ve worked much close more closely with Leon, your businesses take it off where it was before when it was just you in the business? Correct. And I think that, you know, if we either don’t have a partner the and the number of big businesses that don’t aren’t have one or more cofounders is actually very, very small.
Samantha Riley (06:15):
It is. And I think that’s because, well, it is for so many reasons. Number one is just having that support and that sounding board. But two is you will often find, and 9.9 times out of 10, they really bring different skill sets to the table. And I think that’s mostly what it’s about, you know, you mentioned early on, and I, the way that him and I work and our, you know, he’s what I would call zones of genius are completely opposite ends of the spectrum.
Wealth dynamics is another, another, I’m just gonna say wealth dynamics, if you don’t know, I look it up, I’ll pop it in the show notes. But Him and I are on a completely opposite of the spectrum there too. So we work together in tandem and able to hand each other off at different points. Yeah,
Tim Hyde (07:05):
I think when he when you understand that, unless there’s an element of vulnerability, I think in doing it, right, it’s knowing what you are really good at. And doing more of that, and working out what you are not good at and getting someone else in to do that. Now, it might be a key staff member, it might be a business partner, if you want to go down that route. But you know, knowing that you cannot do everything.
Samantha Riley (07:30):
Yeah, and what you said there, I really want to highlight we’re not talking here about having another founder or a co founder. It isn’t necessarily having that sometimes it may be. But sometimes it may be having that key employee that comes in that works with you. But it is like it’s having another person there to come in and do business with you.
Tim Hyde (07:55):
Yep. Number two, not having a clear message offer.
Samantha Riley (07:59):
Oh, my goodness, I see this all the time. And the conversation normally goes something like this. Sam, I’m not really, you know, I need more leads in my business. And I go cool. Let’s just stop there for a minute. Tell me what your offer is.
Well, you know, like, people can work with me this way or that way. No, no, no, stop, like, what’s the actual offer? Hey, what’s that one thing that one course that one offer, with that one price point with this one clear outcome that they get? And most times people can’t if they’re having trouble sort of building their business or growing their business, they really struggle with this piece.
Tim Hyde (08:35):
Yeah, absolutely. Like I see the same thing. As a lot of Ellison’s go, I do a lot of networking events. And the number of times I hear people get up, and then they’ll kind of get into this long winded explanation of what it is they do. And I’m like, I’ve tuned out already. What is the thing you solve? And who is it for? And how does it make my life better? Yeah, exactly. I really nail it down and get really see clear and succinct about what it is that I think that you’re doing for people will transform things. And I’ve even looked at, in our businesses that are kind of in the eight figure range. And we work with a lot of clients in that space as well.
They might not have any of the other stuff put together, right? And they might have a great sales process or, you know, understanding their customer they’ve got you know, they’re kind of doing all sorts of different things. But the one thing they have nailed is that they know exactly what it is they do it who would say.
Samantha Riley (09:29):
Yeah, absolutely. Because that’s how you make the sales.
Tim Hyde (09:33):
Yep. Which actually takes me on to I’m going to jump ahead, I’m actually going to go to number 10. In our list, we’re gonna bring it forward. And I think this is the number the number three mistake is not understanding who that customer is. It’s not just what your offer is. It’s also to whom,
Samantha Riley (09:50):
yes, 100% you need to really understand who that one person is that you’re selling to and this is where a lot of people get confused by because they’re afraid of saying this is that one person I sell to, because they think that they won’t get any different, you know, people that have got different, or from a different demographic, or, you know, someone that’s outside of that box, but that’s not the case at all. In actual fact, when you get really clear about knowing who that one client or customer is, you will pick up people in the peripherals, no problems at all, but you’ll pick up more of that core customer.
Tim Hyde (10:29):
And there are a lot of those few clients as you think there are, except maybe for one legged woven for my astronauts.
Samantha Riley (10:41):
It’s probably the niche might be a little tight,
Tim Hyde (10:44):
was it’s gonna be it’s gonna be very tight niche, but you know, it exists. Maybe, maybe it doesn’t. But if you you know, your niche is actually much bigger than you think it is, and understand their customer and why they buy from you, I think is really important. Yeah. And I’m happy to share part of our process.
And I know you’re very smart thing, Sam as well. You know, one of part of our process we’d work through with clients is actually going out and calling, picking up the phone and calling clients that you have worked with and saying, Hey, what did you why did you buy from us? And what did you like about the process? That tells you so much about who’s good customer and who’s not a great customer? For you? Yeah,
Samantha Riley (11:27):
because when you do it with everyone, it helps you to drill down on really what those key features are, I guess of those real dream clients, you call them. I know. You call them soul clients or soulmate clients, because I know that’s what pani calls them. I call them Bollinger clients. It’s like that top shelf champagne. You just want that one?
Tim Hyde (11:48):
Yeah. And if you’re in a position where you don’t have clients yet, go and call 100 people and say, if we wouldn’t do this, what would be valuable in that for you? Yeah. And then you want to look out, which is this group, and then you start looking at what’s the commonality with that particular group that you can then put into your marketing and outreach?
Samantha Riley (12:05):
Yeah, totally, totally. Number four is one that you and I were just like, it’s like this was actually not only the first one that we came up with, but it was one that we were talking about for quite a long time. It’s d t, w, do the work. Oh, my goodness, I get started. This is like huge for me just do the work.
Tim Hyde (12:26):
You should have someone do it for you. But ultimately,
Samantha Riley (12:30):
well, the work needs to be done regardless.
Tim Hyde (12:33):
You know, oh my god, this would be so awesome. I keep what I you know, 17 year old son with lots of 17 year old mates. And I keep looking at them and they go, Oh, I’d love to be rich. Find out why don’t you filthy rich, I want to be able to drive Ferraris and all sorts of stuff. You know, what are you doing for that? are nothing? Yeah, it’s not gonna come to you. I go in and say, and you go to the dishwasher, and he’s there on the PlayStation. I do it soon. I’ll clean the bedroom. So late. Yeah, yeah, sometime today, or tomorrow, or the next day. If you don’t do the work, you will not get the outcome that you’re looking for.
Samantha Riley (13:03):
Absolutely 100%. This doesn’t mean that you need to work yourself, you know, to the ground or to the bone or however you want to say it doesn’t mean that you need to work 24/7. But you need to be doing the things that are going to move the needle on your business every day. And this is an I’d love to know how you do this, Tim, but for us in our business, it’s getting clear every single morning, and what are the three needle movers that we’re going to focus on today? Because there’s 25,000 things we could be doing every day.
But it’s about okay, well, let’s get these three things done that are going to move the needle and you realize the other things aren’t quite as important as maybe what you thought they were. IE, you know, we don’t need to work on our website every single day where some people? Oh, I can’t you know, I haven’t got my website quite right yet. I haven’t got my website quite right yet. It really doesn’t matter that much
Tim Hyde (14:00):
friction, perfection. Never progress, right? Yeah, yeah. I’m a bit I’m gonna write it on the whiteboard by coming to write one thing that I need to achieve today. And then I’m gonna turn to sort of walk out because it’s right next to the door to the office. Um, if I haven’t crossed that thing off. I turn around and sit down again.
Samantha Riley (14:17):
You’re not going anywhere today, mister.
Tim Hyde (14:20):
You haven’t done that one thing. And you said, I think it’s surprising how much that one thing, whether it’s three things or one thing and doesn’t matter, that one thing actually changes the momentum in your business and gets you so much further. And if you’ve got team members, if they do the same thing, they’re just doing one thing a day. Imagine if you had 20 team members each doing one thing to progress your business every single day. How far and how fast you
Samantha Riley (14:48):
- Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, just do the work. Do the work.
Tim Hyde (14:55):
Alright, number five. I love this one. Not understanding what your business There’s actually four.
Samantha Riley (15:02):
And we’re talking about this from a personal perspective, right?
Tim Hyde (15:05):
Yeah, I think so. Yes. And it’s important that I love, I can’t recall who said it. So kudos to them, because it’s made a big influence on my perspective, that your business is not the goal.
Okay, your businesses there and motivate you, because I know you talked about this a lot, your businesses that are to wrap around and support the lifestyle that you want. That’s its purpose, though, focus on what what is the lifestyle want to look like, and then build the business that supports the lifestyle.
Samantha Riley (15:37):
And ever since I am massive on this, and I’m really, really like, it’s the the number one thing that I talk about, for a reason, I didn’t get this right the first time. The first time round, I created a business that I’d thought about where it was sitting in its own little bucket. So there was like business over here. And then life over here, and I was trying to do both separately, and it doesn’t work. It just does not work.
You’ve got to figure out what am I actually doing this for? And then that business brings you the income to be able to, you know, fund that lifestyle or, you know, whatever it is that you want out of your business. Yeah,
Tim Hyde (16:19):
change it up. Do you don’t want a life? Work balance, we want to say we’re gonna work life balance, we want to life work balance. Mm hmm. Yeah. You’re coming into that. And certainly a couple of iCloud clients I’ve started working with lately, I’ve kind of with this front and center into the conversation and says, you know, what is the number that you would want if someone came to you and said, if he is a merchant cash, I want what you’re, you know, I want that business. I want what it does.
What would it be for you to kind of walk away and have the lifestyle? Because you don’t have a number we’ll get what are you doing it for? We do it? Alright, are we doing it? Because they actually wanted a lifestyle? From the business?
Samantha Riley (17:04):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let’s go to number six. I think this is it’s all around pricing, specifically, but then there’s, you know, split offs of pricing of things like discounting. And this is definitely, as we’re putting this, this episode together had some really interesting conversations. Are you willing to share to him without obviously without who the client is, but what you were talking about in regards to discounting?
Tim Hyde (17:37):
Yeah, I think this is one. And discounting actually affects it goes straight to your bottom line. That’s the thing, right? So not understanding, you know, we’re going to we’re going to say, but not understanding what your costs are, in terms of cost overruns. And so if you’re, if you got a salesperson, for example, say it’s our, you know, I’ll knock off 100 bucks or 1000 bucks or whatever, just to sort of get the client across the line. And then your delivery team, whoever they are, suddenly take five or 10 or 20%, sort of more time to do it, you may actually find yourself growing your business, but not actually growing your profit.
Just the complete opposite of what exactly. And often, you know, we think it’s a confidence in our delivery to say like, this is what I want to be able to do this work, and the confidence to almost walk away from it in some cases as well. Because we, you know, getting Yes, yes, is awesome, because it gives us a bit of a dopamine hit, it gives people something to do and feel oh, my God, I’m, I’m productive. But it’s not necessarily coming back to, you know, issue number five, will have actually progressed your lifestyle. Yeah.
And if it doesn’t do that, it’s probably not stuff you want to be doing. And so it’s very easy to say, Yeah, I’ll meet you halfway, or I’ll give you a discount. But if you’re doing that, you’re actually potentially compromising the integrity of the business. Yeah, more than you know,
Samantha Riley (18:58):
and you’re turning your offer, or you’re commoditizing it rather than thinking, what is the outcome that my client or my customer is going to achieve? And what is that outcome worth to them? So you flipping the script from talking about the dollars to hang on I’m just trying to match a product or a service to what it is that you want? And they’re two completely different conversations.
Tim Hyde (19:25):
Yeah, we’ll go into more detail you know, in a in a further episode, but the example that we spoke about was I’ve got a client that I’m with kind of started do some work with their sales guy regularly discounts to meet a lower price competition. Right, this low price competition says we can do it for cheaper, we can do it for cheaper, we can do it for cheaper, right?
But they have a superior quality of service, which presumably actually cost them more to deliver and meets the customer needs more effectively. And By trying to price match with his lower price competition, but at the same quality of outcome, with some cases, much better quality outcome, they’re actually significantly compromising their ability to deliver to a client.
Long term and not just that client, but potentially all of the clients at the same time. Totally, there will always be someone cheaper than you. Because you’re probably delivering a cheaper service.
Samantha Riley (20:25):
Absolutely, yeah. So that’s why you need to be really clear on the outcomes of what you’re providing, and what the customer or client will lose, or not have from working with you rather than thinking straight about the price.
Alright, let’s talk about number seven, I think this plays into I guess, doing the work a little bit. And that’s having a lack of focus. I see this a lot with people doing this thing over here, and then a bright, shiny object over here, or we’re trying to do this, but oh, we’ve got an idea. We’re trying to do this. And that lack of focus will give very, very diluted results.
Tim Hyde (21:06):
Yeah, we’re constantly surrounded. Every entrepreneur, we’re constantly around with shiny bubbles. Mm. And whilst the I think, you know, just on the other side of the other end of focus is probably agility, right? We all want to be agile, to take advantage of opportunities.
But we don’t want to be agile, to the exclusion of progress and momentum in a single direction. And that’s where I think that focus comes from, but we don’t be so focused, that we don’t think that there’s possibly a slightly better way to get to that outcome.
Samantha Riley (21:38):
Absolutely. I think it’s really important that you know, where you’re heading or where you want to be in sort of five or 10 years time. And then reverse engineering that so that you’ve got that short term focus, you know, what we’re talking about before, what are those 123 needle movers, that you need to hit every day to make sure that you reach at the outcomes that you’re looking for being really focused.
And you were talking before about someone that had an opportunity to come up where they could flip and potentially earn a lot of money, but it was going to take them away from their original business idea, which meant that they would lose their positioning in the market.
So you’ve got to decide, well, do we go over here, where there is the potential to make a lot of money, but it means that when you come back to, you know, point A and where you were in the first place, but you’re not going to have built what you wanted to build? So I’ve done that. Oh, we’re human.
Tim Hyde (22:39):
A couple of years ago, I took a short term contract. And absolutely, I pretty much had to put my business down. Right at its infancy as I was starting to get momentum to go and pursue this opportunity. This other opportunity. Would I have done that again? Probably not.
Samantha Riley (22:55):
Yeah, yeah. But you’ve also got the learning. So I think that’s yeah,
Tim Hyde (23:00):
not all the DI wires are Sam, I like to think
Samantha Riley (23:03):
exactly, exactly. So number eight, there is not one single person that’s listening to this, that isn’t going to go a half. That’s me. And that’s fear. Fear is the biggest thing that I say holding people back, whether it’s fear of risk, a fear of putting themselves out there a fear of being judged
Tim Hyde (23:24):
fear of making the wrong decision, ya know, what if something goes wrong? Yeah, one of my very early mentors in project management taught me something that stuck with me for the last 2526 years, 27 years or so. And he said, In the fullness of time, all decisions turned out to be wrong. So the quicker you make one, the more time you have to correct it.
Samantha Riley (23:51):
Oh, I like that. Oh, I really like that.
Tim Hyde (23:55):
Yeah, okay. So your investment in your CRM right now, in 20 years time, there will be a better one, which will do more right there, you know, the relationship you started, you know, in the fullness of time, will turn out to be the wrong one.
And somewhere else, you know, you’ll need to adapt and do something else. You know, the fire you made will turn out to kind of move on and go, Oh, I wish I had someone for longer. But the sooner you make the decision as soon as you can actually make that work for you and continue to make it work for you.
Samantha Riley (24:29):
Totally. And let’s just talk about that CRM piece just for a minute. And I’m just going to pull that out as an example. The fear of saying yes to it, because something may come up down the track is so the wrong way to do it. Because if you just make that decision now, I’m going with this one, at least you’re building something that you can move over.
That’s just one little example of, of what we’re talking about. And I think that one of the advance montages that I see that business owners have that grow quite quickly, is the ability to make decisions quickly. Because you can always pivot and change. But if you don’t make a decision, you can’t grow something, build something, you know, do something. You’re just sitting in a land of limbo.
Tim Hyde (25:18):
Yeah, absolutely. Number one.
Samantha Riley (25:20):
Number nine, not understanding your numbers. There’s so many numbers we need to know in our business. We need to know our financial numbers. So you know what’s sitting on your profit and loss, what’s sitting on your chart of accounts, your marketing numbers and your sales numbers, you need to know your financially marketing and your sales numbers to be able to grow because, you know, you can’t improve what you don’t know.
Tim Hyde (25:44):
Hopefully, you also know your staffing numbers. So you’re not paying for people you don’t actually
Samantha Riley (25:50):
I mean, paying for this person, where have they been for the last year? Let’s hope
Tim Hyde (25:54):
this is on my payroll.
Samantha Riley (25:57):
Do I love it happens in big corporations, it does happen
Tim Hyde (26:00):
a lot. Really channeling the Lex Luthor where you know, Superman one or two, he takes a little half cents out of the payroll and puts it in his own bank.
Samantha Riley (26:15):
I’ve heard some crazy stories of some of the biggest corporates where someone’s gone, oh, what does that put? Who is that person over there? What do they do? No one knows. It’s a bit scary, but we’re not going to be like that.
Tim Hyde (26:27):
But it’s you know, we’ve got as small business owners, we have limited resources. And the more we understand how those resources are allocated, the more likely we are to make informed and educated decisions and stuff, you know, isn’t scary.
We don’t have to sort of live on fear, we understand where, where and when, if we’re going to do discount, we can we can do this other things. And that all comes from having a real sort of regular and thorough understanding of what your numbers are. And that’s going to be the difference.
One of the biggest differences, I think, between you staying as a small micro business, and you really kind of, I guess helping a lot more people and having the lifestyle that you want,
Samantha Riley (27:09):
totally. And I can say and I know this and I’ve spoken about this before, when you shine a light onto some of these numbers that you are afraid to look at. Once you shine a light, it takes away any shame, it takes away any fear. Because once there’s a light there, all of that goes away.
So just you know, open up have a look. I remember my bank, my bank account. I remember my accountant saying to me years ago, that you should be looking at your bank account every morning and seeing what that number is don’t sort of float through the week thing you know, not thinking about it or wondering what you have in there. And that’s something I still do to this day. That was years ago. He said that to me. I want to know day by day exactly what’s going on.
Tim Hyde (27:51):
Yeah, I completely agree Sam completely agree and looking at some of the key numbers and what’s my revenue this week? I cash flow is key. In any business cash flow is king if you can’t pay the bills when if and when they fall due technically insolvent. So you know, managing those and go on a cable, you know, when am I? If that’s all numbers, okay, when am I bills to and when it my invoices coming in?
Samantha Riley (28:12):
Yeah, totally, totally. All right, let’s talk about number 10. Something that you and I love this absolutely Systemising systems, systems systems,
Tim Hyde (28:24):
the scary word, I think, I think, you know, going back to me as a sole operator, I’ve got that need systems, what are they for? Right, you know, make it up as they go along. The thing that happens is if you keep doing that, there is no efficiency in your business. Everything costs more and takes longer.
Samantha Riley (28:45):
It’s funny that you said that systems are scary. I’m the opposite. I get scared when there isn’t a system because I know that anything could happen. I am I just systems for me, it just the thing that the glue that holds it all together and holds me together so I don’t lose my shit.
Tim Hyde (29:05):
Look, I’m the same. You know, as you know, salmon as this is like this. That’s, that’s part of the theme that we do here in my companies, we put sales and marketing systems in place, so that you have a regular and have and your site is more about the delivery systems around but you know, for us, it’s all about can I get more predictability in what it is we do? So that I can forecast and have more assurance about what’s going to happen in my business tomorrow?
Samantha Riley (29:32):
Yep, absolutely. Yep. I’m a big believer in systems. It gives us peace of mind. It also gives your client or customer a peace of mind in the sense that everyone kind of knows what’s happening. If there’s a consistent delivery. There’s just so many reasons that you want to but yeah, definitely putting systems in your business. We’re going to break that one down definitely in another episode.
Tim Hyde (29:55):
Alright, let’s go into number 11. last but by no means least Hmm, yes, that’s not seeing the big picture and having perspective.
Samantha Riley (30:05):
Absolutely. This is, I would say, every single business owner, if they’re trying to do things on their own, because you get caught into your own perspective, or your own truth of what’s going on, without having someone else giving you a different world, if you did something different over here, then you’re going to get this result. And of course, it’s difficult for us, we’re in the weeds, you can’t see anything in the weeds. And there’s two ways that this is playing out.
Number one, not giving yourself time out in your business, you know, that quiet time to reflect, to see things in different ways, whether that’s meditation, or journaling, or whatever that is, so that you can come back in with your insights and really get back into the action again, but also having that that sounding board that coach or consultant that comes into your business and says,
Well, have you noticed that this is happening? Or did you know that there’s another way? And I saw a really interesting post him on Facebook the other day with someone saying, oh, you know, trying to build my business, but do I really need a coach? And it was really interesting, because a lot of people were saying, nah, now you’ll be fine. Do it yourself. And I was thinking, Hmm, I’ve had a coach since about 2000. Like, you know, this nearly 25 years, almost 25 years now that I’ve had a coach, and I wouldn’t do it any other way.
Tim Hyde (31:28):
But he’s, he’s, he’s interesting in that, right, because I’ve got a couple of coaches that I work with as well. And we, you and I often have conversations about what’s going on our business. And yeah, we coach each other. We coach each other, right? So fatally, I’ve now got three coaches, in many ways. But that is that perspective, right? Even us, as consultants, and coaches have coaches ourselves to give us perspective and insight and, you know, a 13,000 foot view on our own business, even though it’s what we do for our clients as well.
Yeah. Because you know, you in your business, you’re kind of an often you don’t have that perspective, you can’t see what was working or not working in other people’s businesses. You’ve just got your experience and your staff, you know, as I say, you’re in the weeds every single day fighting fires, and you know, and your coach is there, or your consultant is there to pull you out. And so let’s take a bit of a bird’s eye view of what’s going on here. and work out where we can do things a little bit differently, or in the loop better.
Samantha Riley (32:35):
Totally. Because we as business owners, we’ve got a certain story in our head. There’s this story that’s running all the time, when someone else comes in, they don’t have that story. So it’s a lot easier to see. And I don’t see it as a as a weakness. Having a coach, I see it as a strength.
Tim Hyde (32:54):
Yeah, absolutely. It makes for a better business. 100% Even the best performing athletes in the world have coaches. Yeah,
Samantha Riley (33:02):
I would be interested to see if there’s any Olympic athletes or athletes that make it to the Olympics that don’t have a coach, I don’t think it’s a thing.
Tim Hyde (33:10):
There’s plenty of athletes that don’t have coaches who never make it to the Olympics.
Samantha Riley (33:14):
There. That’s what I was gonna say. Plenty.
Tim Hyde (33:20):
Let’s quickly recap those, we are going to go into these in a lot more detail in the individual episodes. But let’s quickly recap the 11 business mistakes that that most business owners make, choosing the wrong partners, not having a clear message or offer not understanding your customer not doing the work.
Really kind of losing sight of what the business is actually for too much pricing and or discounting lack of focus. Fear is big mistake, not understanding your numbers, not Systemising and creating a repeatable infrastructure, and not be out sort of having a coach or consultant on your team who can pull you out and give you some perspective on the big picture.
Samantha Riley (34:02):
Absolutely. We’d love to hear from you and hear what they are so that we can make sure that we cover off any questions that you have around any of those topics. Tim, thanks for joining me again for another episode. It’s been great hanging out with you here, man, my absolute pleasure. And thank you for listening. We will catch you later in the week for another episode of Influence By Design. Ciao for now.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more head over to influencebydesignpodcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders, and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com
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