Lessons

Lesson Info

Guest Donna & Student Hotseat 1

I want to Dio was Start us off and started doing Q and A to, but I want to start off by talking about where most entrepreneurs get trapped where we are today. So if I can, I want to write up my business partner. This is Don Alliance Start. I want to come up. Donna is the president of Prevent this group. If I can, I want share a little story of how we met. Of course, it was a match dot com, so we had a mutual friend and didn't know it was a mutual friend. And I said, Hey, I I wrote this book about the pumpkin plan. I grew my own companies this way. I'm being called now to consult around this. I don't have the time. I don't have the expertise. That's bad. I said. I wish I knew someone that had business experience growing her own business or his own business that understood how to evaluate companies and was it was steeped in coaching, consulting and wants to do the pumpkin plan. And my friend her name is Tara said, I got the perfect person. Her name is Donna. She's read your book. You got...

ta meet with her. So we got together at a coffee shop in the toward the winter was setting on us. It was right after a big storm. A big storm is a little bit creepy. Area it was. And we're sitting there with our coffees talking, and I just sat back and she blew my mind and over immediate supposed have been 15 minutes. Went to an hour. Went about four hours of talking. I discovered some amazing things. But you're gonna discover to Donna has a Wall Street background. She's She grew up professionally on Wall Street, evaluating businesses and determining what's working, what's not working. But then she did, which many people from that profession don't have the courage that should be the lead to start our own company in jewelry, manufacturing and design, grew that business, went full cycle with it and then found and stepped into her true passion, which is coaching and consulting and started coaching practice. That's kind of why I stepped in the picture. Is it? Hey, I wrote this book. Should I read? I read it. I said, Would you want to collaborate on this? And we started working together and we started a company called Prevent US Group. Prevents a group is a group that goes out. We're now more nationwide. We have a chapter or location in Mexico. We go out throughout the country helping small businesses achieve the next level. And she's she's the core of the company on was going to share a lot. Stuff that we do. Okay, thank you. Might step off the state a hand over to you. I always love following Mike. So I have a question for you. How many of you all started your businesses? Because you love being stressed out and anxious all the time. No. Okay, I didn't think so, but I What I'd like to know from all of you is just real quick in a sentence or two. Why did you start your business with someone volunteer? Why? They started their business. I mean, I started just be true to myself in my soul. Great. Thank you. Anyone else like to share thing? Because my mom created the product many, many years ago. And when I had my first baby, I told her I wanted her to make me want and she didn't. She, like moms need these. We have got to make these and give these two moms everywhere. And I was like, That's great, Mom. You go ahead and do that. I'm having a newborn, and she's like, but I work full time. How about you help me and eso? That's how it started. And now I am the only one that looks in the company, and it is now mine. You were on a mission to help Mom. Yeah. Yes. I started to find that, um my creativity and my ideas were a little bit bigger than my employers wanted them to be. And so I was being let go from my jobs because I was excited by things that wasn't what they wanted Meteo be excited about. And so I really wanted to explore. How can I create the perfect advertising and marketing job for myself? Very common with entrepreneurs. You have big ideas, and they're bigger than the constraints of your of your company. Absolutely. Waas, the company I was working for kind of got into this routine for their weddings and their corporate events. And I found that the events that I connected the best with where the ones where I could do what I want to be creative and have a passion to it for pretty much brides and groups. And, uh, it was taking that generic, cheesy deejay that everybody thinks I wouldn't go on a deejay like taking that and making it well, tell me more of what you do. And at the end of a party, they just are blown away and they wanted to keep going. But, you know, so what I'm hearing is very similar to why I started my first business and why I continue to love being a business owner because you wanted to follow your passion and you wanted maybe flexibility. And you wanted freedom. And you wanted unlimited financial potential that that's the big dream, right? And and really, you wanted to create your own destiny as opposed to somebody else, telling you what it waas. But instead, what happens? A lot is reality sets in and you realize that you're stressed out and anxious. A lot of the time. You're overworked, you're underpaid, you're putting out fires all day long, and you think yourself This must just be what it's like to be a business owner. I guess I have to live with this, right? Maybe not. We, as Mike alluded to. We have a lot of tools that we're going to share with you over the next two days that we want you to apply to your business to help get you out of that. Now, very often, those really stressful moments are related to money or time. Shortage of money, shortage of time. Those are the two biggest stressors that we find with entrepreneurs. Imagine you're staring at a stack of bills thinking maybe I can pay half of those or you're staring at your books going. How am I going to meet payroll this month or Wow, I've got all these great commitments. How am I going to meet all those commitments in the next week? That's very stressful on. And you know what happens when we're in this kind of crisis mode? I'm going to call it is we will do whatever it takes to pull our feet out of the fire and make it through another month, even if it takes us in the total opposite direction off where we ultimately want to be. And what I mean by that is this. I'll give you an example from my own first business. As Mike said. My first business was a jewelry company and I had a partner and we did everything ourselves. Soup, soup to nuts. We designed the jewelry, we made the jewelry, we sold the jewelry and the good news waas that we would get very busy and are the way we had positioned ourselves was that are pieces were one of a kind, even a somewhere similar. No two pieces were alike. They were all handmade and hand and hand designed, and we guaranteed the quality. This was beaded jewelry, and a lot of beaded jewelry can be fragile and it breaks. So we guaranteed, If anything that we sell to you that we make breaks, we will fix it for you for free. Send it back to us. Give it back to us. So this was our brand promise, and we would sometimes get very busy, maybe around a holiday, and we had lots of commitments and we would look at our commitments for selling and say, Oh my goodness, we don't have enough inventory to meet all of these obligations and we don't have enough time to produce more to produce enough. So our solution was where we going to do? Oh, my gosh. You know, we can't go with no jewelry to this show. So we would buy, we would purchase wholesale manufactured pieces and this would get us through that crisis, and we would make the revenue and we'd make all of the, you know, we would meet all of our obligations and great, we pulled our feet out of the fire. The only problem with that waas is thes were not one of a kind pieces. They were. They were not handmade. They were mostly machine made. And when they broke a lot of the times because of the way they were constructed, we couldn't fix them. So we couldn't keep our brand promise. So we were temporarily solving our problem. But we were taking ourselves away from where we really wanted to be. We call this we call this the survival trap, and it really is a trap because we find ourselves like hamsters on a wheel in this endless cycle of crisis solution, crisis solution. But we never move forward towards anything. However, I'm going to tell you we have a tool for the hut and it's called The Survival Tap Tool. And I really like to show you the tool and demonstrate how it works and just to prepare you mentally about halfway through my explanation, I'm going ask for a volunteer to come up and will actually work with you on your business. So this is the survival trap. So over here, this circle here is where you really want to be. That's your vision. It's what I described to you as as our branding for our business, where where we wanted to be with our jewelry. This is where your business is today. And this big blue our here is what we call the path. The path is all the actions that you can take to get you from where you are today to where you really want to be. Now you'll notice that there are some other lines drawn around this circle, and these lines represent we, and we can fill these in later. All the actions that you take in your business that actually don't don't align with the path. Now, about 30% of those actions 15% 15% are in the general direction that you want to go, but may not be exactly exactly the actions that you can take in order to get exactly where you want to go. But then you see, this little line kind of splits splits a circle in half. About 50% of the actions that we take actually take us in the total opposite direction from where we want to go. Now, in order to work with this, the first thing we have to know is what? Your vision and we're going to talk about that a little later today, more in depth. But the first thing that you want to think about is, what is it that you want your company toe look like? Ultimately, because if you don't know that, then you can go in any direction and it's not going to take you towards anything. So that's that's the General survival truck. So what I'd like to do now is ask you. We're going to make a list here and a pardon My handwriting. If I hope you can read it, we're going to make a list here off some different crises that come up in your businesses. Maybe that have come up in the last month or the last six months, and I would love to hear from the online audience as well. What are some crises that you've run into in your business that you've needed to take in action to resolve it? Yes, cash flow. So we have expenses, but we don't sell enough. So we have to use the money that we get from sales to make more product. Because it's a product based business. We have to have inventory. And so we're always playing catch up. We never have the money toe, you know, get out of debt or two. Pay our bills or things because we're using the money from everywhere to go everywhere. Yes. Not enough cash, Not enough cash flow. Excellent. Thank you. Getting clients to pay on time. Clients don't pay on time. Um, anyone else have some work? Life, balance, work, life balance. So you're working the entrepreneurs 9 to 5 and not spending family time. Yes. Okay. Um, anyone else have one taking my business out of my house. Okay, So in other words, can you expand on that? So you're trying to take it out of your how? Well, I have all the inventory that I sell for others on eBay in my house. And so now I've got to an office, and I'm getting that stuff out of my house so that I actually go to work. Right, But okay, so separating homework. Okay. Um, is there okay? Pardon my spelling. I think I just misspelled the word. Is there anything from the online audience coming in? Yes. We got quite a few comments coming in. Thanks for sharing everybody. A liar. Williams is saying her big problem or his sorry is a cash flow. Choosing the wrong clients and clients not paying. Okay, Mistakes along the way. Okay, so that's that's in common here. That's great. We're getting that Amy else's air and the product. A reorder needs to be urgent. Okay, So product quality and an interesting one from 3 18 media is scope creep on projects. Ah, yes. So what do you do? You've agreed Teoh to a price, and then it gets bigger and their doctrine. Great. Okay, so here are some some examples of the kind of crises that can come up. And actually, we do have a slide that I'll show you really quickly. That has some others and some of these may be familiar to you as well. Um, Well, actually, these are I'm sorry, these air solutions, and we're going to talk about those in minutes. So what I'd like to do now is ask for volunteer to come up and talk to me about some of the solutions that you've come up with in order to resolve the crises. So would someone like to volunteer? I see you nodding your head. Come on up to the hot seat. You can have a seat right here. Stand if you're more comfortable and I'm going to use a different color marker. Sorry. I'm gonna creep behind it for a second. Okay, So what I would like to know now and I'm going to write these on the board. I think I'm just going to make some space on the board, so we can now write down some solutions. So what are some of the crises that you've seen recently in your business? Um, well, I connect with a lot of those actually covering payroll with bank loans or credit cards. Okay, So payroll payroll. Okay, so you've covered payroll with bank loans and credit cards. Um, anything else. Um, well, the offer a new untested service for easy money connects to run a last minute promotion to get quick catch way Don't actually have to write these down because you've done all you pretty much the right proposal for an unfamiliar niche. I don't do too often do the work yourself to save money. I don't do that. Focus exclusively on sales. I don't do that for sure. So you've done some of these. So here's my question. Can you just remind us what your business is? I remember. But some other people might not have heard it earlier. And what is your ultimate vision for your business? Okay, so I'm a Google plus hangouts on air producer and consultant for organizations. And my ultimate vision is to combine my media background and my passion for media and create a second screen experience for major broadcast events like an after show for a prime time television that I'm working on currently. Okay, so that's what you want to do with your business. How would you like it to be positioned? How would you like to be seen in the marketplace? I want to be known. I think globally. I'm becoming known across Canada as one of the few consultants who focuses just on Google, plus hangouts on air. But I'd like to become known throughout media channels around the world because, I mean ultimately, I'd like to go to Sochi in February and do hangouts from the Athletes Village for whether it's CBC or whoever broadcasts it in the United States. That's what I want to do, right and financially are looking to make some money. And so Okay, so some of these that that you've done, would you say, in your estimation, that so you said you've covered payroll with bank loans and credit cards? Absolutely. Would you say, based on your vision, that it belongs here or somewhere else on this chart? Um, I don't really understand that. That's OK. So when you cover payroll with bank loans and credit cards, what what effect does that have on you and your business? Oh, my God, It I mean, it stresses me out. It completely distracts me from being able to be creative. I find it blocks my creativity. It blocks mind my abilities. See that vision? I find it disconnects me from from from feeling like I even want my vision. So here here it is. Kind of taking you away from your vision. Would you agree with? Absolutely. Okay, on which of these other ones have you? Have you done, I'd say, offer a new untested service. Okay, So what happens to your time when you offer a new, untested service? Well, I'm kind of in that situation right now, and so I'm finding that it's taking up a lot of my time, and I'm stressed because I feel like I should be focused on sales and getting in cash. But I'm really I'm also doing that, trying to offer new something, that's and is this new service? Do you see it in line with your ultimate vision? Yes. Okay, so in this particular case, it's here. But maybe for you, it might be down here, meaning it's headed a little closer towards your vision because it is a product that you would ultimately like or a service you ultimate like or offer. But it is currently taking you away from what your business needs. Yeah. Okay. So does everyone kind of get the idea of how we use this chart? Does anyone have any questions about that Sections are ones that are not quite close to our vision. The ones they're a little bit closer, actually getting at least close to her. Yes. So if you did something that was completely in line with your vision, it would be on the path right here if you do something that is completely opposite to where you want to be. So the example that I gave you about selling manufacturer jewelry really belongs here because it was completely opposite from how we saw ourselves, ultimately as a company. So the way that you would use this and actually, if you purchase the the the package if you purchase the replay off this two day workshop, this is one of the tools that you get, and you can use this over and over again. As you progress in your business, you can always evaluate the actions that you're taking on. What we recommend that you do is put those actions on the chart, figure out how close are they to your vision and then say Okay, this one is here. This is the worst one. I'm going to eliminate this from my repertoire and come up with another solution to bring in cash, for example. That takes me closer to my vision, my cue to question to build us out. The idea is, most entrepreneurs most of us are living in crisis mode in any of these decisions is absolutely appropriate in the moment. I need the money right now. I gotta pay payroll. I'm gonna do it. But the immediate decision may have a long term negative fact taking us off our path. So what we want to use this tool for is have clarity in your vision, your long term vision. Then any time you're making immediate decision, even though it may be appropriate now, is it really appropriate where your heading? And sometimes I think we're even damaging our potential of achieving our vision by making immediate decisions that fix our immediate problem. But don't consider the long term exactly, exactly. So you need to find a solution that is not damaging. It's another solution getting rid of that. That effort, like offering a new untested service for easy money, is not completely unaligned with my vision or this particular service, right? It does feed with my vision, but I need to find a better way to do it so that it doesn't. Or perhaps this is something that you ultimately wanted to do. But this is not the right timing for it. So what is something else? So if you're doing this to raise revenue, what is something else that you can do that's more in line with where your vision is today that will take you closer to where you want to go.