Have a Friend Who Needs Some Relief?

Jason: (00:05)
Hey everyone, we’re coming to you from a small mountain town high up in the Colorado Rockies. This is the renewable confidence podcast, a show that helps you build confidence in yourself and in your business every day. My name is Jason Owens and this episode is titled run it like a business. Sit back, relax. Cause here we go. All right, so here I am doing coaching with several different clients that were different people. Uh, not only here recently, but then of course throughout the years. And I, I keep seeing a consistent theme come up here when people just kind of feel stuck with their facing some kind of decision. Okay, what do I do? What do I do? I can go down this road or I can go down that road. What do I do, Jason? Well, my advice has been really kind of crystallizing on this one thing.

Jason: (00:55)
Run it like a business. Run it like a business. What would a business owner do? Do you want to do X or do you want to do Y? Okay, you have choices. That’s great. Uh, sometimes these questions really boil down to, gosh, I have this short term thing that I need to do to kind of make ends meet or have this short term thing that I need to do for cashflow. All right, what should I do, Jason? Well, my response is run it like a business. Here is the single question that you can use that will help you really kind of cut through all the confusion, all of the uncertainty. And that question is this, does it make sense for the longterm health of my business? Whatever this thing is that you’re going to do, do you want to expand? Do you want to go get a second location?

Jason: (01:47)
If you’re a retail store, do you want to do a joint venture with somebody? Do you want to start doing joint field work? If you happen to be, uh, more than the, the outbound sales world, does it make sense for the longterm health of your business? Okay, well, all right. I mean, whenever you start to take a lot of these choices, a lot of the opportunities that are coming your way, does it make sense for the longterm health of your business? Well, I’ve got this client that kinda needs some work done. Actually it’s not a client, it’s a prospect that needs some work done. It’s not really what I want to be doing, but it’ll be good to kinda, you know, it’ll be get one more thing to help me, you know, just kind of make ends meet. Well, okay, think that through taking that client, does that make since for the longterm health of your business?

Jason: (02:40)
If you look back over six months and you see that you have been one off and another one off and another one off and another one off, it might not make sense for the longterm health of your business to take another one off client that doesn’t scale, that isn’t 100% really what you do, but it’s a least 60% of what you do. And yeah, taking this as it would be great, but wow, it’s going to take up three to four weeks of time away from this other thing over here that I know I need to be building the thing that’s scalable. Right? Does that make sense for you to take that short term client when you know for the longterm health of your business, you need to be growing the system that you can scale, right? Well, it all of a sudden starts to cut a lot of the wheat from the chaff.

Jason: (03:27)
There’s sort of really starts to make things clear when you start focusing, focusing on the longterm health of the business. So what I mean by longterm, healthier, you guys w the kinds of things that when I look at businesses that are out there, they’re successful. They’re making ends meet, they’ve got a little bit left over at the end of the month, they’re growing year over year. When I look at those businesses that it’s, it’s pretty easy to see that they have two things that are going with them. They have consistent behavior and they have consistent processes that they can run inside their business. Now, beat by behavior. Hey, you might not like going to a network meeting. You might not like, I’m trying to do better with your copywriting. Okay? If you’re doing email marketing, you may not like the idea of doing another mixer. You might not like the idea of working on your marketing calendar, but the businesses that win are the ones that do this consistently, right?

Jason: (04:28)
Whatever that process happens to be for you, they do it consistent. They have consistent behavior. Well, okay, I don’t know that I really enjoy going to a networking function, but I’ll tell you what, when I look back over last year and I look back over, well, even the last six months, I can trace some of the largest clients in my world back to going to networking functions. Okay. Then, well, I guess you better continue going to networking functions, right? That is a consistent behavior. Uh, there’s a one business that I’m working with right now. There deal is on the first week of the month, I’m going to reach out to my people and that’s going to be through email every month we’re going to send out the, the thing, right? The newsletter, the outreach, the, the email, the, whatever you call it, every month like clockwork, that thing goes out and it provides consistent results.

Jason: (05:25)
Now is that some big super huge technical process? No, not really. It’s pretty much putting a date on the calendar and, and, and that’s your due date, right? So work backwards. Okay. You might need to have a couple, three stories all lined up ahead of time, but it’s that behavior and it’s the process to be in place. Is the beat, does the behavior take a whole lot to, to do, no, not really. I mean, in this case it’s a newsletter and you might say good night, Jason newsletters still work well, I’ll tell you what, it certainly is for this guy. Uh, no, no complaints there. I mean, I’ve seen, I’ve seen the numbers, uh, and I don’t know that it’s, it’s an in Vogue or out of Vogue thing to do. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s, it’s the hip thing to do, right?

Jason: (06:11)
It’s not some massive social media outreach, right? It could be as something unsexy as putting a postcard drop in the mail, right? And you go contact a company and say, look, I want this particular zip code and I’m going to go ahead and throw $2,000 into that zip code and Holy cow. Every time I do that, even though I don’t like spending $2,000 I get the roofing job out of it. I get the a siding job, I get the window job, right? I, I go out every time I send that batch of postcards, I ended up doing 15 quotes of my 15 quotes. I know I’m at least gonna land three of those jobs from three of those jobs on all, I’m at least gonna make $8,000 on it. Top line revenue, which means my bottom line profit from that is going to be X and that more than covers everything that I need plus covers my cost of sales for the ads, right?

Jason: (06:58)
It’s a machine. You don’t have to like doing it, you just get to turn the crank and go do it. Now why do I go back to consistent behavior? Cause it is really easy to flake out if you, especially, especially if you are a one person shop and you’ve had a bad day, the last thing you’re going to feel like doing is going to some networking event. Especially if you’re an introvert. Now, if you’re an extrovert networking event might be the thing to charge you up. And being around people is just going to make a an awful day. Just the greatest thing in the world, right? So fine, but whatever the thing is that you dread doing, yeah, got to do it. And especially for those of you who are soloist out there, one person, two person shops, it can be really easy to say, you know, I don’t want to be consistent on my behavior because I’ve got a really good excuse for it.

Jason: (07:50)
Okay. It’s a nice excuse, but does that make sense for the longterm health of your business? Does skipping this thing today, is that really going to hurt? Yeah. You’ll never know. Uh, tonight, it could be the night, right at tonight, could be the night that you meet. Uh, somebody that turns into a lifetime value, $20,000 client, $30,000 client, $50,000 client, right? You really, truly don’t know. And that’s what I love about being self employed is honest to goodness you, you really don’t know what’s going to happen on any given day. Your phone could ring you get the email from someone who’s like, Hey, I’ve heard about you for a while. You know, so and so told me to come over and talk to you. And that could be the conversation that completely makes your year. You know, every day when you get up you could have that conversation, right? Uh, pops onto your radar. So again, just going back to the businesses that I’ve seen over the long term who are, are making it and doing well and doing more than just surviving, these are people who have consistent behavior and processes in the business. All right. So with that, everyone, I am going to leave you with great encouragement. Go out there, get it done today. You have so much more to offer this world and we need you and we can’t wait for you to show up. Take care everyone. Bye.