MM#103--#1 Reason Why Small Businesses Don't Grow

Welcome to the theory to action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately, and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser. 

Hello, I'm David and welcome back to another Mojo minute. In the last two years with COVID, small businesses have been especially hurt trying to navigate various government policies and procedures. And incredibly, If COVID wasn't causing these small business owners heartburn over the last 14 months now, small businesses nationwide are battling the worst inflation in the United States since the 1970s. Unfortunately, this is a self inflicted wound. And frankly, it doesn't have to be that way. But that is a mojo minute for another day. 

For today, though, and in our mojo minute that we're exploring today, we will find out how businesses small businesses can create a simple and yet effective marketing plan. And to provide our expertise. And our book of the day we are going to lean on Alan Dib. With his simple and yet effective book, titled The one page marketing plan, get new customers, make more money and stand out from the crowd. And real quickly before we do, we've talked in past Mojo, and it's about creating systems and our personal lives, and how to help us be more efficient, and super productive. Whether it was atomic habits, and talk where we talked about building systems, or the psychological side of systems beating goals, and our desire thinking, be sure to check out those Mojo minutes respectively, for those great nuggets of wisdom. 

So I thought it'd be super interesting that when reading and reviewing Alan dibbs book on marketing, that he taught a very valuable lesson on why creating systems matters. Let's go to the book to discover if we have a small business. Why systems are super important. 

Quote, many small businesses get bogged down with fulfillment and administration, while neglecting their marketing and sales systems. After all, no one is pressuring you with deadlines to get you to do more marketing. And all the seemingly urgent issues generally fall into the fulfillment and administrative functions. This causes some situation in which the businesses are beginning to struggle, even though they might be offering excellent products and services. The problem is that customers don't find out about how good your products or services are, until they've bought from you. And if your marketing and sales systems aren't in place, they will never buy in the first place. And never find out how good you are. It's a vicious cycle. Some rely on reputation and word of mouth. While these are great, it takes a long time, a very long time to build up enough business purely on reputation. Smart businesses, on the other hand, go to great lengths to perfect their marketing and sales systems. After all, there are very few business problems that cannot be solved with money. Unquote. So just to repeat, quote, The problem is that customers don't find out how good your products and services are until they have bought from you. Unquote. 

Boy, that makes super good sense. And if you're a small business owner, you know how much sense it makes. But it also sucks. It sucks because you have no time to do sales and marketing. And it sucks also because that means you have to be better at marketing and sales as an owner. And how do you get better at marketing? How do you change that? Well, you guessed it systems. Now the next logical question is what is a business system then? And can you give me a great example? And the answer is I thought you would never ask the question. And as always, let's go back to the book.

Quote, the poster child for business systems is McDonald's. This is a complex worldwide multibillion dollar business that is essentially run by Pimply teenagers who can't be trusted to make their beds. How do they do this? McDonald's has amazing business systems, their operations manual covers every minut detail of the business, from big things like hiring and customer interaction, to knowing exactly how much sauce to squeeze onto a Big Mac bun, and how many pickles should be on it? Unquote. Dang, their business, their business systems are that good and bad detailed. Business systems should be implemented, so that your business can run almost without the owner to be there. And if you are a business owner, and your business requires you to pull all the levers every day to make everything work, well, then I'm sorry, but your business is not scalable, and you will never grow. That's a hard reality. But it's true. And truth is what we are looking for here. It's a theory to action podcast. So as a final point, Alan provides us with four benefits from implementing systems into our small businesses. Number one, it builds a valuable asset. Wouldn't it be nice if one day we were to sell our businesses that you could, we could all point to many systems and how they run without the owner or general manager or superstar sales rep. To be involved. Alan helps us to understand this concept by this quote. Without systems, it is not so much the businesses worthless. It's that they are they are the business. And without them, there is no real business to sell. 

And I'll read that again. So it makes more sense. Without systems, it is not so much the businesses worthless. It's that they are the business the systems. And without them the systems, there is no real business to sell. That's the first valuable asset. When you put systems in your business, it becomes the business and allows you to automate and automate is 21st century leverage. Which brings us to our second point number two, leverage and scalability. systems give your business the ability to expand period. And number three, consistency, McDonald's delivers you the same experience over and over again, because of their systems. Now granted, maybe the food is terrible. But your experience is roughly the same over and over. They are consistent. And our final point number four lower labor cost. If you're not reinventing the wheel each time you and your staff are saving money by being more efficient. 

So in today's Mojo minute, if you are a small business owner, what systems do you have in place to make your business more efficient, and to be able to run without the owner making all the decisions? If you are a potential owner, and you're looking at buying a small business, a key metric to review is what automated systems does the seller have in place for the business to run itself? It's a very valuable asset. And for those of you that are not in small businesses, you can certainly pick up on this great advice and these nuggets of wisdom. Because you can ask yourself what systems do you have in place to help you in your personal lives run on an automated fashion. And finally, Alan gives us all great advice. actionable advice. He tells us quote knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing I'll read that again. Knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing. It's a very good quote. I love it.

So let's put theory into action and begin today by doing what we know and taking action in our lives. And when we do, we will be on the road to a flourishing business, and a flourishing life.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at T Mojo academy.com where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on