Overcoming Annual Business Struggles: A Focus on Time, Talent, and Treasure

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Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Business Struggles, Leadership Tips, Scaling Challenges, Financial Management

Episode title: New Year new you_podcast

Description: In this episode, Chris Inman sits down with Josh Muller of Maple Creek Coaching to discuss three critical areas every entrepreneur should assess to improve their business in the new year: time management, optimizing talent, and financial oversight. Don't miss out on the actionable tips and strategies to make this year your best yet!

Time Stamps:

• Introduction & Importance of Self-Evaluation [00:00:01]
• Time Management Tips for Business Owners [00:01:30]
• Networking Effectiveness and Strategies [00:04:48]
• Delegating Tasks and Optimizing Talent [00:09:06]
• Evaluating Financial Investments & Spending [00:13:47]
• Good Debt and Leveraging Capital [00:15:36]
• Closing Remarks [00:17:31]

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Transcript

0:01

Yeah. I think a big reason why people should evaluate their time, their talent, and their treasure is because it's just a really important thing to look at every single year, every single quarter, and every single month. I mean, if you're not looking at things and you're not evaluating where you're spending your effort, then you're going to waste a lot more before you get anywhere. Welcome to another episode of Struggles, presented by ncbi, the podcast where we navigate challenges together. Welcome to another episode of Struggles, presented by ncbi. I'm Chris Inman with Idea Cleveland, and joining me today is Josh Muller with Maple Creek coaching. Awesome. So, Josh, it's a new year, so it's a new you, right? That's what we're going for. So new year, new you. And we're going to talk about three elements that you should assess to improve your year from last year. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And most of it has to be around, like, we all do these things at the beginning of the year, right. We start thinking about ourselves around the holidays, around family. We take a little bit of a break, we pump the brakes, Right. And so then we evaluate. You know, I'm evaluating my body, which is always a sad thing, but I'm always thinking, hey, how can I improve that and be healthier in the next year? And so we do that with our New Year's resolutions for things like that. But sometimes we don't do enough to check in on ourselves around our business and what we want to strive for. Especially as business owners. We're just such in the grind. And we have three areas we're going to talk about that you should think about how you're putting your effort into your company and assess how you did last year and see how you can improve yourself this year. The first thing being where most business owners have a hard time really gaining control of is their time. Oh, for sure. They spend time at events, they spend time with their employees. They spend time on so many things wearing too many hats. There's so many things that take up our time. So what are some tips you have first? And like, how do you evaluate? How did you actually use your time valuable last year? Yeah. Well, the biggest thing is if you could take a check, if you take some of your bit, you can look back on your calendar. Everyone keeps a calendar of events in general, Right. And so we tell ourselves where we're to go. Or maybe we have an assistant that says, hey, you need to be at these events. But then down the road, you. You need to stop and look back and say, okay, let me take some of my busiest weeks that I spent and let me just go through them and say, and if you have time, even at the end of this year or into the next year, you know, evaluate around that, saying, hey, I, I spent my time in these areas. So you actually like audit your time. And if you would just journal or write down what you spent your time on and was it effective? Like if you're in the middle of capturing that, you can actually take your day by day. I'd say just at the end of the day, write a summary around what you spent your time doing and whether it meant anything or whether it made you feel good about where you were at. If you're spending all your days in meetings and they're mind numbing and you feel like you're getting nowhere and the meeting's just drone on and on and it could have been done in an email, but you're spending all this time ineffectively with your team, maybe just talking about things. That's one thing to evaluate. Another would be like how much networking are you spending your time for the return that you seem to be getting. And you need to evaluate like what groups give you the most return because there's only so much time in a day. You also need to evaluate is that your job to be doing that or should you reproduce your abilities into someone else, like a sales lead or someone else to take care of that particular thing. So it really matters to actually first evaluate what's your role inside your company and where is your best effort spent. If your best effort is spent in leading things and not doing things, I mean if you go in and when you put your hands in things, they all break. You should probably be letting someone else do that and you should go focus on getting money in the door, you know, making relationships. So those are some of the things to take stock of. And I think it's really important to reevaluate that quarterly. If definitely not, I mean if you can do it annually for sure. Yeah. So it's thinking about like the time, like let's go with your first one. We're talking about networking. You get invited to so many networking events, you almost need to eliminate some. Oh, for sure. There's too many now. Yeah. So I think that when you go and you think about where should you be networking? I think you need to be networking with people that are like minded, that have that givers gain mentality that we learn about in BNI and they're willing to think about your business. Maybe not for themselves, but for other people in their community as well. I go to so many networking events where people just hand you a business card, ramble about what they do, and they don't give two shits about what you have to do. And you're like, man, there was no real connection there. You also go to these networking events and you see these people, they collect 1,000 business cards. You never hear from them again. You're like, oh, okay, I thought we'd connect. I gave you a business card to connect, not just so I can spend money to give you a card. It's kind of interesting. Do you think that it's okay? I know what the answer is going to be to just say no and start eliminating some of these. And how many do you think is enough? Because I think that's a guilt thing that people have. They feel as though they have to attend these because some. Someone in their circle invited them. So a couple things. If you're a person starting out and you have no network, absolutely go out and network as hard as you can because there's nothing that will drive people in the door as much as you can build relationships. Now, there's other things like digital marketing that you should be doing in combination with that. It's all about being top of mind. And so if you're not present in people's lives, you can't be top of mind for them. But the there comes a point where you cannot get to everything and if you tried, you'd be basically exhausting everything in your life. It has to be life giving. And most of those things honestly can be pretty terrible sometimes. I remember one of the most terrible events I ever went to. I was just like. And I basically still found one good connection at that terrible networking night. And so yes, you really have to evaluate like where you want to put your efforts and where it feels like you're getting some return. But it's hard because even with the most terrible events, you could find one of the biggest gold mine people you've ever found for yourself in that terrible event. So it's really good. It has to go with your time. Oh, for sure. And if your time and your time. With your family as well. Oh yeah. Most of these are evenings. Yep. And that's a big part of it. So you really have to evaluate what's most important to you, what really drives you and where you're getting results. And again, constantly evaluating that and putting some real tracking on it will actually drive you to make better decisions. If you're just like winging it every time. You're not going to notice when something's working and something's not working 100%. I mean, if you have a CRM put in your CRM where you met these people, because you can go back and then be like, hey, I was invited to XYZ's networking event. You'd be like, well, I wonder who I met there. You can actually go back in your CRM, pull that up and be like, oh, yeah, all right. I've got 10 people that I've met that are really good connections, strategic partners. I got two clients out of those networking events. And really it's all about the follow up in the end too. Like if you're not following up on people, you're wasting your time as well. Like if you're really not. If you make. I even make notes on the way out the door, kind of like a doctor would. And I record things on my drive home to remember those people and then I put it right into connecting with them within a week or so. So if you don't do the follow up, you're wasting that effort. You're only doing one tiny part of that if you don't do the follow up. So it's a big deal. So the other thing that you kind of hit on is where are you putting your talent? So at a certain point as business owners, we have to give things away. We have to start wearing less hats, for sure. We can't be all things to all people in the company and we can't be great at everything. We can't be the salesperson, the accountant and the doer. Right? Yeah, I'm great at very little. And realizing that is a really important thing. And not having too much pride in yourself to say, okay, I am not great at that. I should find help in that area. I'd say way too many people that are business owners, especially solopreneurs, starting out or building towards a team or even when you get to have a large team, people forget to delegate. They act like they're going to delegate and then they actually don't do it. I don't know if you've been around too many people that have been what I call a seagull manager. They fly in, they crap on everything and they leave and they think that's delegation. But you really have to let people in your team own the work that they do and you'll get better results because it'll truly be them. Like putting and investing and buying in. And when you don't allow for that in your company, you clip your own legs out from under yourself because you're basically saying, I'm going to pay someone and then I'm going to tell them something I want them to do and then I'm going to take that away from them again, we when they might not do it, just exactly how I want them to do it. Part of that's explaining clearly what you need out of that interaction first and really trying to get the essence of what you're trying to do and then trusting them that they can actually work on it for a bit and get better at it. Very few business owners actually truly do that. They do the I'll give it away and then rip it back and it's not effective and it's a big waste of everyone's time and definitely a waste of your money because you're paying payroll on that. So I would say trusting your people, trusting a process that you build and building that from the beginning takes a little bit of time. It's not like it's going to be done tomorrow. You got to be patient with it and develop it. It's not just going to be instantaneous. So take what you in the self evaluation. Go back, think about the last year. What was that one hat, that one area in your business that you put off as long as you could? Biggest problem people have is they push off billing and accounting. Oh, yeah, they push that off. I was horrible at that, horrible at that. And I would just keep pushing it off, pushing it off because I hated getting into the numbers. And it's not what I really. I never built a business so I can be an accountant. Right? So take that thing that you despise doing and maybe it's not hiring someone full time because it could become expensive, but maybe hiring a part time. Yeah, fractional, fractional. Think about how you can just pass a fraction of that off. That makes it easier for you. Now, if you're saying, well, but that's costing me money, that's where you need to really come into that opportunity cost. Yes. If you get rid of this thing that's bogging you down and ruining your day because you're doing it, that's maybe another day that you could put on a hat that you enjoy doing. Right. A lot of people I come across, they invest in like a new car, they invest in an office, they invest in all this gear. They invest in the things that are the tangible things that they can, you know, they think are their ass, their greatest assets. But really, if we don't invest in Good people and design them a way to win inside of our organization. We end up, you know, wasting some of our biggest assets we could have, which is a person who can then multiply the activity you can do in your business. It's not like when I give away something to someone to do that, that it's just an additional person. It's actually a multiplier because I am no longer sucking at it. They're really good at it, so they're gonna get it done quicker. I'm gonna then be released to do the thing I'm better at and I will not have that to worry about except for checking in with them. So think about the release that comes from that. The abilities you're able to gain back of time and to use the talent that you're really made to do versus doing the thing that is like mind numbing terrible work for you, which trips you up and takes you way longer than it needs to. When you could hire someone that's just really good at it. Absolutely. And the last thing we want to talk about is how are you spending your treasure the money? Look at your memberships, look at who you are hiring, how much you're spending on them. Look at your investments in your company. Are you buying things that actually are bringing in money and everything? So what do you think are the. When you start pulling out your accounting and your spreadsheets of your cost per year, per month and everything? Do you do this with clients? Do you help them go through this practice and what are some tips you have for them? Yeah, so it's the same kind of thing. You really want to just take your evaluation around your expenses and really dig into them. I mean, I'm talking line by line, go through and just evaluate it and say, now why am I spending that money? What's the return on that? Is donating to this cause giving me enough airtime to really justify me donating unless I just passionately care about it? Then that's another thing. But you might not have the expendable money to be being passionate yet about something like that as a cost. So be evaluative with that as well. The other thing would be, you know, again, it's a kind of a finances and time thing. If I'm spending so much more time in one setup to get things done that I can't go out and sell. Sales are, are what heals a lot of business sales, right? It. If you can go go out and get more sales but you're stuck doing operational things, you should probably find a Way to invest and find a person to do operations for you, which is a better spend financially investing than the time and effort that you would because it's taking away from what you could do to generate more business. It's one of those things that constantly needs to be evaluated. And it's not just money. It's a combination of time and money and talent. You know, it's all three kind of being evaluated around the money as well. Absolutely. Do you work with clients that are thinking about investing in certain things? Is there a way of thinking about, man, if I had this last year, I probably could have made some extra money. But is it worth the investment? That whole bold step to go into good debt and to leverage maybe some capital that you have? Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's around getting in the right space so that people can come and meet with you. That's a great investment. Sometimes it's around like, do you need to start a podcast, for instance? More one to many opportunities versus one to one where it's a multiplier, not just an additional piece. Right. So those are good investments. Some of those things I encourage. Sometimes it's, how are you marketing if you're only doing networking at happy hour events and that's the only networking you do, or maybe you joined a BNI and that's what you're doing. Both are good options, but they're not as much of a multiplier as maybe some digital marketing might be. So it's really some of those evaluative pieces now, all of them together probably works the best. A hybrid of all of them. But again, what is your spend to acquire that client and then how are you staying top of mind and being a presence out there? So those are some of the things around that. But then the other pieces might be, you know, maybe I need to certify in something maybe, or maybe I just need to start trying something that's maybe more of a front door approach to my business versus, you know, we get all these like really intense long version of more impressive things that we want to do with people. And we, we think about these things and we think they're going to be the winning piece. But in reality we just need to warm up relationships. We with some people too. So what are those first things that you could do with someone that opens the door to more? So I say it's more important to invest in those things that will get you in front of a future client and then keep them in a relationship with you. Cool. Well, this has been a great conversation we hope that you enjoyed it. Please tune in for future episodes of Struggles presented by ncbi. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Struggles presented by ncbi, where we navigate challenges together. Don't forget to subscribe, listen and share this podcast with others who might benefit. We'd love to hear about the struggles you're facing or have overcome, and we'd be thrilled to have you as a guest on a future episode. Let's continue this journey.