Edmonton Business Consultant | Entrepreneur Myths – Part 4

Another myth that I’ve seen as an Edmonton business consultant. That you can sell customers if you’re not sold on the product or service. Sometimes I get business owners and they come in and they, they learned a little about, about an industry and they’re viewing it more as a vehicle. Uh, then they have a passion on it. You know, I was in construction before and pretty good salesperson, I didn’t really care. I just couldn’t do it longterm, right? Either you’re going to run into a wall or your customers are gonna perceive what you’re doing and either way you’re not going to sell it very well. Um, that everyone should say yes to buying your product or service. What will I tell all my clients? That if your booking rate is 100%, your prices are too low.

If you are selling everything at 100%, you are not a great salesperson. You are just working for free too much. Um, that’s pretty much what you’re doing. The market will, will, will dictate that, um, that you can capture a large percentage of the market, large percentage of the market. There are certain government organizations and they drive me nuts because my tax paying dollars go to support these people doing these jobs. And you’ll go into these government organizations, they’ll say, hey, I can help you with your market research, I’m an Edmonton business consultant. I can help you then. Right? And they’re going to spend days on the market research and you’re going to spend weeks waiting for this market research and coordinating with them and emailing back and forth. For most of you in here, and I would probably say all of you, but maybe, maybe there can be one exception, probably not.

There’s probably even all of you in here, if you can capture 1% of the market in your market, 1% of the local Edmonton market, you will probably be the richest person in your entire family. Have you captured 1% of the plumbing market or 1% electrical market or 1% of the restaurant market? It is absolutely enormous and people are spending hours and hours of market research. That’s really good if you’re a coach trying to be Pepsi, but it’s not really good if you’re Bob’s plumbing trying to be Jim’s plumbing. Um, that you will sell 100% of your supply or capacity. I see these in estimates all the time. People are making projections and they think, well, my restaurant has this capacity, my daycare has that capacity. My guys can do this many jobs. You will never sell at 100% capacity over the longterm, so you can’t project on a 100% capacity. Um, you are going to run out of cash for something that’s going to happen that you can immediately increase your personal income or revenue increases. We’ve got a really good example from enough on that one. Here we go, that every customer is a good customer.

Every customer. A lot of times when I’m consulting with business owners and they’re talking about a difficult customer and spending hours and days on a good customer and they think that’s a customer, it’s my product, it’s my service. It’s the way I’m doing it. And nine times out of 10, if that scenario has only often happened once, but what I’m going to give back to them is it’s not your customer. It’s the fact that you don’t have any leads, that you can’t fire that customer. That’s the problem. You can’t get rid of that customer. You have to deal with it because you got no one else to deal with. Um, because, uh, 5% of the population at least are jerks. I mean, 75% of them are lying on resumes. They’re later going to buy your product or service those guys. So, take the advice of an Edmonton business consultant, you’ve gotta be, you know, if only the paranoid survive sometimes, um, that your initial product or service has to be perfect or you start selling it.

If you spend too much in product development phase, you are probably going to go bankrupt. I could tell you my, I didn’t have that going because my business model doesn’t look anything like that. This slow I had when I first started. And that’s how it should be. Where everyone here, take this advice from me, your Edmonton business consultant, you’re, you need to constantly be evolving because the market conference constantly evolves. So you’re never going to have a perfect business and all that. You’re never going to have a perfect product and [inaudible] that you could, yeah. That you can grow forever based on word of mouth alone. I love this. These companies, they lie to you and say, oh, we grow based solely on referral. So number and they’ve just given you their glossy sales package and they probably spent $10,000 printed up. They got their truck wrapped out front. They got to, you know, $20,000 website, but we grew up just based on word of mouth alone.

Word of mouth is your foundation. It’s the bottom of the pyramid. That’s where you’re going to get it. But the pair of it doesn’t stop at the base, does it? It goes all the way to the tippy top. They’re usually the ones in the biggest booth at the home and garden show. Those are the ones who girl born in Buffalo, um, that uh, that you can grow forever based on networking alone. Networking is factor of your time. Can you play an unlimited amount of golf with potential business partners or for what everyone’s birthday if only, if only, that’d be fun. Only do that so much that you could make any sort of progress with them. Friction. There is going to be friction along the way. That’s why you get paid more. In my Edmonton business consultant experience, for every million dollars of revenue you’re probably going to get sued. Once I bought that for a staff, that’s probably the stuff that you’re going to, uh, run into.

There’s going to be friction and eventually, you know, I wake up every single day knowing that someone is pissed off at me every single day. Even if I have a 99% success rate with my clients, one of those is pissed off at me for something. And that’s just how you have to be able to roll with that, Edmonton business consultant, and, and not ignore the other 99 because of that one. That’s the trick, um, that you will ever be done learning that you will live or be done learning. Um, you’ve learned a lot since just the journey I get, uh, I’ll, I’ll, I’m going to drive this point home. I have a, I have a family who has 30 years experience in garage doors. I have been doing it for professionally for over 10 years. And yesterday I learned something new about garage doors. It’s just, and that’s, and that’s just, it’s something I specialize in, let alone business, which again was a, a steep learning curve that, uh, you know, I jumped head first into [inaudible].

That’s, that’s, that’s just the reality of the situation. Um, that ideas are harder and more important than implementation and ideas are how everyone thinks. It’s the idea. It’s the idea. I mean, Warren Buffett’s that at best its business schools were ward complexity in the business world rewards, simplicity and successful entrepreneurs have the ability to do the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. They find out what works and they just keep doing it and they do it for long enough to see if it’s going to work in the first place anyways. Next Edmonton business consultant myth, that text message or email is efficient for back and forth communication. So the phone companies have tricked you guys into thinking that text message and email is efficient for back and forth communication. My phone, we bill flat fees now. We have for a number of years now, but I have 10 years of experience and selling my life in increments of 15 minutes, 10 years of my life, selling my life in increments of 50 minutes.

And I can tell you beyond any shadow of a doubt, if you have to have a back and forth communication with another human being that you need to pick up the phone or book a meeting with them because text message and email is super slow and chances are they’re distracted when they’re talking to you as well. As an Edmonton business consultant, I use written communication to confirm and close communication loops. It is like the number one time hack. You can do what will happen and where’s the one of my employees? What will happen if I see you guys emailing someone back and forth, call them. I will tell them to call them. I pay these guys by the hour. I don’t get very happy when I see people emailing endless chains of people as they pick up the phone or call them book a meeting and somebody cell phones that it’s okay not to pay people or pay your taxes.

Oh Man, I don’t know, this sounds obvious, but you would be shocked at how many people think that this is okay. Um, everyone laughed at that. But this is every single day of my life. I have somebody who thinks it’s okay not to pay people or taxes. Uh, your customer are you sorry. Your employees are your direct line to your customer and if they’re not being paid, are they gonna be happy and aren’t they going to treat your customer like their happy employees? Just, uh, I, that’s my, my first and foremost before I even pay a single bill is that, am I paying my guys because they are my liaisons to my customers. They are building my reputation.

Well, the next one is that your personal life won’t affect your business. These are my kids. They have no idea what I do. Dad does business. The seven year old knows that dad does business. The seven month old has no clue whatsoever. And if you think you’re going to run your business and your personal life won’t affect will, you’re going to need to find a way to balance that. Like, because people think, okay, I can knock up my business when I’m, you know, 23 years old and I’ll get married when I’m 25 and everything will be rolling by then. It takes like 10 years to build a good sustainable business. So unless you’re going to put off your family indefinitely, you’re going to have the way to balance this, that you can make both work at the same time. It’s not going to be sustainable.

Awesome. Otherwise that your business won’t affect your family. What time I come home, how many hours I spend the week. Listen from this Edmonton business consultant, it affects the family for sure. Um, there are work-life tradeoffs or worklife trade-offs. It’s not, it’s not work life balance. It’s work life trade offs. I have a pretty cute story about this. Uh, my, I, I don’t have kids. I have a dog and he’s, he’s, uh, he is my kid and I used to, when I was an employee, I was able to take him with me, uh, on the job. So I had not got 10 jobs a day and had my dog with me. He loved that cause he get to see people, you get to see you, you have the fresh air, and then when I started the business, I couldn’t really do that because I had a two hour meeting with Josh. I can’t have him in the car and Josh when like my dog running around his office.

So that changed a dynamic and his behavior started to change because of it and that’s just the dog can’t imagine what would happen with the child or or with your families. This is going to affect them one way or another. It might be positive, but it’s going to affect them that your family and friends will be able to agree or even relate to your entrepreneur life. Let me tell you about, imagine if you got a job and you go home and tell your family. It’s like, I got a job. Guess what? This job means that I’m going to work twice as many hours for half as much pay for probably three to five years. What do you think they love you? They’re trying to protect you. Remember they have no idea what they’re talking about, what the trajectory looks like. 4% of the population is self-employed, 50% of are figuring out how to make it to year five. Only 46% of her figuring out how to build a real company with five employees or more. Um, so the, they don’t know, they disagree because they care about you. You have to make allowances for that and you have to understand, um, where they’re at. Um, then everything will go according to plan.

Everything gone according to plan for you. That address, uh, like I said, ever evolving for changing because yeah, no, nothing ever goes according to plan it that you can find out if an idea works quickly, it takes a long time. Even if you got the right idea, we’re going to show you like the Golding marketing strategy here to do online and do Google it and I’m an expert. It takes six to 12 months, even if you know exactly what to do. I was going to say Google is like that. That’s the benchmark. Six months at least six [inaudible] it does let me know exactly what you’re doing, uh, that you can operate a business without reviewing your numbers first.

Yeah, you’re going to need to learn your numbers. So, Edmonton business consultant, we have a draw, right? Oh yeah. These were the people who are here on time today. So someone well has lucky tickets. Seven, eight, seven. Who has ticket? Seven eight, seven. Oh, he got seven eight, seven. We have $100 for the person who is here. Your lessons business. Cool. [inaudible] okay. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to break until 1915. If you get back before nine 15, you’ll get it entry in a draw. Edmonton business consultant, as we want the questions the best, the, the, the best part of this, these bootcamps, you know, we’ve done it. This is our third one doing now are the questions. You have a lot of experience here. Uh, it’s not all me, it’s the, you got the team here. We can come up with some pretty good answers to the questions.

Any questions you have on myths of entrepreneurship or anything else? Write ’em up on the board and the break and the first thing we do and get back, cause we’re going to address the questions. Um, right after the break. Thanks body keeping me in line here. The survey, there is a self assessment. I want to know what you guys are thinking. I want to know what your stats are. If you fill this out, you’ll also get another chance to win. So if you fill out the assessment, you also get another chance to win. Um, you have to fill it out. Some people tried to scan last time and just put their name on no tickets to the people who don’t fill it out. Uh, you gotta fill it up, you fill it out, we’ll give you a ticket. If it’s that 75%, right? Yeah. If you just try to put it, you know, good as the enemy of great or whatever has to be great. Edmonton business consultant, section one. Yeah. Right behind the myth. Yeah. Tell me as many questions as you want. We want to see your questions.