8: Stop Sabotaging Your Business: 16 Critical Lessons You Can’t Afford to Ignore

The foundation of any great business is solving a true need. The secret to success is to find a need and chill it. Whether it's real estate, healthcare, your business must address a pain point to thrive. There's too many times people come up with these amazing ideas, but it doesn't really solve a need

If you've ever wondered what it's like to be in the shoes of some of the most successful entrepreneurs out there today, look no further. Each episode, your host, Joe Simon, takes short walks with some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the game today. These inspiring leaders have successfully crossed the coveted seven figure mark in their businesses. And these candid, insightful conversations will inspire you to look at your business and your life from a new perspective and get it to the next level. So put on your walking shoes and let's skyrocket that success together.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the millionaire mile. This is your host, Joe Simon, enjoying an utterly beautiful day in the northeast. It is fall. The leaves are turning a little chill in the air. Honestly, if you live in the northeast, spring and fall are probably the best times of year. I personally love the fall because it just breaks that summer humidity and we get crisp weather. And I'll be honest, growing up in the northeast, I'm just used to seeing the seasons change. I think that's a valuable lesson in business as well. But I want to share with you today 16 lessons that I learned to reach my first million. But I think I'm gonna do a separate podcast on what I learned about losing money as well. But let's start with these 16 lessons, because I think this will really solidify the landscape of where everyone's at right now. Because if you're under a million right now and you're trying to figure out how do you get there? How do you even break that? And I can remember when I first started, that was a crusade to get there. But these are 16 points, and I want to share with you in this mini series of the millionaire mile.

Let's get started. Number one, you want to solve a real problem. The foundation of any great business is solving a true need. This is Henry Kaiser. Right? He had a great quote. I want to share this quote with you. The secret to success is to find a need and fill it. Let me repeat that again. The secret to success is to find a need and fill it. Whether it's real estate, healthcare, business must address a pain point to thrive. Can't stress that enough. There's too many times people come up with these amazing ideas or crazy ideas. I should say, but it doesn't really solve a need. It solves a want, but not a need. Number two, know your numbers. Now, I'm gonna be very transparent on this one. I remember years went by in my business where I didn't really follow the numbers. And that was a huge, huge difference in the way I ran my business. Once I was able to get the data and know what the data is and understand that data. Cause data is useless if you don't know how to use those numbers, right? So what gets met, what gets measured, gets managed. You gotta have a firm grasp of your financials, guys. Expenses, revenue, and profit margins. You find it hard to stay afloat if you let any one of those go. So if you wanna grow again, remember, expenses, revenue, and profit margins. I can't tell you how many times I've met practice owners or I've met business owners that would just tell me their top line revenue. But that doesn't mean you're actually doing well if your expenses are out of control or if you're negative every month, right, you're gonna go out of business. So, very important.

Number three, leveraging a niche, or niche. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, focus on dominating a niche. Don't try to be everything to everyone. Instead, be everything to someone so powerful, guys. Because if you can dominate niche. And again, it's funny when I say this, because I think I made most of my money when I partnered up with somebody, and we really dove in on this niche and it just exploded. And we were just like, hey, what are we doing that we're doing so well? And we couldn't figure it out at first. And then after some time, we realized that, oh, my God, we are the best at this. At the time, it was sports performance. That's what the industry we're working in. But leverage a niche. And again, there's so many ways to figure out what niche to go in. But if you follow what I'm saying here, you know, let's go in steps, right? We solving a problem. Know your numbers now. Leverage a niche, right? Number four, build recurring revenue. Now, this is more of a. I would say in the last five to six years that everyone's jumping on this MMR, or recurring revenue model, which is very smart, right? The big unicorn companies that we see, all companies that basically charge you $9.99 a month, they just charge you a nominal fee, but it runs monthly, so they get thousands of people that come on board. Let's just take Apple, Apple TV. How many of you have Apple TV. Tv. How many of you have Netflix? The most simplest thing, guys. Netflix. I know that millions of you have Netflix. So you share passwords. We get it. But think about that model. How do we do that in the business that you want to create, right? So predictable. Cash flow is key. Prabhu Kiyosaki, one of my heroes. I've met him once in the past. Love all of his books. The key to set up systems where your income is not dependent on your time. Let me repeat that for you. The key is to set up systems where your income is not dependent on your time. Hence the reason the guy's written so many books. So incredibly smart. All right, let's jump on number five, guys.

Number five, focus on sales. Remember, nothing happens until someone sells something. This is Henry Ford's famous quote, right? No matter how great your product or service is, you need to focus on acquiring customers and fueling growth. This is amazing, because I gotta tell you guys, there's many healthcare providers out there that hate the word selling. They don't like selling, right? They're just like, no, I'm against it. I know a lot of business owners that like to create stuff, right? Because they're artists. They love creation. They love creating things, but they can't sell. That is the key to everything. If you can't do it, you gotta delegate. You can't do everything yourself. Deciding on what not to do is as important as deciding what to do, right? Learn to delegate so you can focus on the big picture. So, like I said, if you can't do sales, guys, delegate. You can't do marketing. Delegate. Of course you're gonna ask me the question, Joe. How do I find the right people for this? Look, I'll be honest with you. We do sales and marketing. We have teams that are hired out to different groups. I can tell you right now, when it comes to marketing, you sit down with them, we discuss the game plan. And sometimes they tell us, like, no, we can't do that. Can't afford that. Or sometimes, like, no, I don't want to put myself out there like that. Okay, cool. It's not a big deal. So I got to tell you guys that it's super important that you know who to delegate to. Another simple principle is the 80 20 principle. That could be a whole episode in itself. But if you look at the entire concept of delegation, of what you do around your business, what can be delegated under your salary, under what you pay yourself, really, it's a bigger concept. I'll dive into it another episode but I think it is so valuable for you to understand that as well. Perry Marshall wrote a great book called the 80 20 principle. If you had a chance to pick it up, definitely pick that up. That's my book recommendation in this podcast today. All right, guys, number seven, optimize for speed. Speed is crucial, right? But only if you're moving in the right direction. Speed is useful only if you're running in the right direction. I can't tell you how many times that I've discussed with business owners topics and different ventures that we're going to do, but they were running so fast in the wrong direction. I'm like, that's not going to make you money. But if you can optimized for speed, that means you have your team in place, you can delegate, you can do all those things. I think that's insanely important.

Number eight, customer obsession. To keep clients coming back, you must obsess over their experience. Jeff Bezos said something so important to just take away. We see our customers as the invited guests to a party and we're the hosts. It's our job to make every important aspect of the experience a little bit better. Guys, this is such a great. I'm going to read it again because I love it. We see our customers as invited guests to a party. We are the host. It's our job to make every important aspect of the experience a little bit better. If you concentrate on the customers want, if you just concentrate on obsessing over their experience. If you're in the service business, you're not in the service business. You're in the experience business. If you can just take that mind shift right there, you're going to make some money. But let's get to number nine. Marketing is essential. Now, of course you're going to say, hey, Joe, you're the marketing guy. You love marketing. Of course marketing is essential. But here's a quote I want you guys to like, dwell on a bit. Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time. And read it again. Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time. Marketing keeps your business alive. Don't underestimate its power. So true. So true. I've worked with many marketing gurus. I've worked with many business consultants. I have so many mentors over the years. And I can tell you one of my favorite lines is marketing and innovation. That is the key to business success.

All right, number ten, build strategic partnerships. This is where I thrive. I love working with different business owners, different venture funds, different people that just get this right. I just love doing this kind of stuff. You can achieve so much more through collaboration, because alone, you can only do so little. Together, you can do so much more. Find partners who complement your strengths. This is such a takeaway, guys. I can't tell you. The biggest thing is you don't want two people that do the same thing, right? And I've made this mistake before. I had two guys, including myself, we all partnered up on a business, and we were all the rah, rah, let's get this done. I'm excited. Let's go. We were the wrong people. Cause we all were only one side of the stool. If you look at a three legged stool, you need three sides, right? I like breaking it down. When you look at people, you want your operator, you want your visionary. And of course, you want the guy, the go to guy that just the action taker. So if you're out there and you're like, hey, I want to partner with you, Joe. Hey, listen, I already got the visionary rolled out. I need an operator. I need the action taker. Let's go. That's what we're looking for. All right.

Number eleven, bootstrap smartly. In early stages, they use your living resources wisely. It's not about the idea. It's about making ideas happen with your limited resources. Can't stress this enough. Bootstrapping is the way to get to that million dollars much faster, because you're not giving away too much of your company, right? You're giving away maybe a little bit in the beginning, or you're just hiring people, or you're partnering and saying, hey, what do you bring to the table? There's a whole concept to this, guys. I wish I learned much younger when I did. When I had partners, I would only partner with people what they brought to the table. So if I brought the money to the table and they just brought the sweat equity, it wouldn't be 50 50, right? Because they're not putting up some money. They would be like, hey, where do you think your percentage lies if you're only doing so much work? And now there's a formula that's involved in that I can share that formula with you guys just dm me happy to share that formula with you is how I figure out partnerships. It's pretty intense these days because sometimes partners don't like it. But I can tell you, I partner with different medical providers, different companies, real estate investors. I can tell you right now, person that brings money to the table usually gets a bigger percentage. That's how it should work. Okay? This is important. Two guys. Number twelve, master negotiations. Negotiations in art. So look, I love this John F. Kennedy quote, let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. I have a lot of good friends that are in negotiations because they're business owners. And sometimes we can tell you that it's like sport to us. Different cultures have a takeaway of where they look at it, as they say. Don't take offense to it. I just like the fact that I like to negotiate. Nothing wrong with that, right

Number 13. Getting there, guys. We're getting there. And I'm telling you, make sure you take notes on this because this is golden. These are nuggets that I learned over 20 years of business. And I'm going to tell you, I wish I had this in my first five. Number 13, stay adaptable. Markets and trends will change. And you need to pivot when necessary. Right? It's not the strongest of the species that survive. No, the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change. Charles Darwin, come on, man. This is. This is science class 101, right? Is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change. We've never taken biology 101. I think this is what we learned in it. But I can tell you, this is, it actually helps you in business because you realize most of us have gone through a pandemic now, most of us understand what happened in 2020. Some of us went crazy with our business. It just skyrocketed. Some of us shut down. But you had to adapt. Didn't matter how much money you had in the bank, right? It did help a little bit, but then you're like, all right, how do we move on from here? And I can tell you how you do. You focus on the systems.

Number 14, focus on systems. Your business is only as strong as your systems. Right? You do not rise to the level of your goals, you'll fall to the level of your systems. Powerful quote by James Clear. Right. The takeaway is build efficient processes that allow your business to grow seamlessly. All right? So the processes that allow your business to grow, this is how you build a self managed company. If you don't understand what a self managed company is, again, something that you want to work with me on the. I do a lot of consulting on this. I do a lot of mentorship on this. I build self managed companies because that's what I do with my own companies. So I can take these walks with other individuals. I could take these walks on my own and put a podcast together and not be at the office the entire day. Would not be at the office at all because I have a team in place, I have managers in place. And if you're a solo company right now, there's still a way where you can design it to be a self managed company, and we can discuss that as well. All right, number 15, guys, take calculated risks. So important, every successful entrepreneur knows the value of risk, right? Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. Be informed. Don't shy away from taking bold steps. You just got to be informed. You got to understand, if you're doing an investor deal, if you're trying to understand something, it is very, very important that you just understand what the deal is about. I know a lot of people that want to invest money with me and with my investors, and I tell them, I'm like, you don't understand the deal. Don't get in on this deal. That's the takeaway. You got to understand the movements of the deal. You don't understand if you're going to lose money. Is this deal for you? Yes or no? Very important, guys. So that is understanding risk.

And number 16, you have to stay persistent. Persistence is everything. This is a quote from the Bible. The race is not given to the swift nor the strong, but to the one who endures to the end. Think about that. The race is not given to the swift nor the strong. The one who endures to the end. Success takes time. Keep pushing forward. All my millionaire and billionaires out there that want to get there one day, be persistent, guys. It doesn't happen in six months. Doesn't happen in three months. Takes years. It might take two years, might take five years, might take ten years. But it's okay. Keep being 1% better every day. Right? And my last tidbit I'm going to give you guys, getting 1% better is just 14 minutes a day. That's it. If you can promise me that you can concentrate for 14 minutes on reading a book, on journaling, planning a business idea, emailing somebody, asking questions, shoot me an email. We could have a 15 minutes conversation. That 15 minutes conversation, that's how you get 1% better every day. Take action, guys. Love being with you today. This was a beautiful day out today. So I love walking outside today in beautiful fall weather. Again. If you like this podcast, you like the method, you like the style that I'm delivering this in, please, like, share this podcast. I want to help make this podcast grow. That's one of my goals in this year as well. Make podcast grow. Let's get it to as many people as possible so I can share and help as many people as possible. Great hanging out with you today and we'll see you next time. Have a great one.

Thanks for listening. We hope these walks with successful millionaires have inspired you to take the next step in your entrepreneurial journey. No two stories are the same, and it's inspiring to learn from those that have walked the path before. To read full show notes for each episode, which includes guest contact information and ways to connect with Joe, visit visit themillionairemile.com.