Episode 289 - 10 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
221.24236
Summary
10 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask themselves: 1. What is your vision? 2. Who is your ideal customer? 3. How big do you want to scale your business? 4. Who are the most dangerous people to work with? 5. What are you looking for in a partner?
Transcript
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30 seconds, one time for the underdog, ignition sequence start, let me see you put em up, reach
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the sky, turn the stars up above, cause it's one time for the underdog, one time for the
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I'm Patrick Medevi, host of AITEM and today I'm going to talk to you about 10 questions
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If you work closely with me, you will hear me talk about two different types of people
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that are the most dangerous people you'll face in business, so let me explain to you what
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The first one are people who are lazy but ambitious.
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They want the power, they want the fame, they want to get to the top, they want control,
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So in order for them to get to the top, they do by backstabbing, manipulation, games, all
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that other stuff, as long as you don't get there, they want to get to the top.
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But the second most dangerous, that are way more dangerous than these guys, are people
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These guys are clear on their vision and they're clear on who they want to be.
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What ends up happening when you're clear on who you want to be and you're clear on your
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vision, 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, 10 year, 20 year, you end up attracting the best talent
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and you end up maintaining the best talent because your vision is that crystal clear.
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So question number one for you is, what is your vision on where you want to be and who
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The second question you have to ask yourself is, who is your ideal customer?
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I have many CEOs and entrepreneurs that will sit right here and I'll ask them, who's your
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Rolls Royce knows exactly who's their customer.
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The guy buying a Focus, you are not buying a Rolls Royce.
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Sam Walton, Walmart knows who's their customer.
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Apple, you know, you go to AT&T, even Lululemon.
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If you've ever seen this interview, it may be the best interview on YouTube for entrepreneurs.
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I interviewed Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon, who's worth $3.9 billion.
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He said, a 32-year-old female who's career-oriented, making six figures, isn't married, has a cat,
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The third question you've got to ask yourself is, how big do you want to scale your business?
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This is a very important question, and a lot of people say, well, I don't know.
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I guess I'll find out when I go through it, and we'll see.
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It's kind of like getting married to somebody and not having a conversation about having kids.
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And then she tells you, I don't want to have kids.
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Business, you've got to know how big you want to build it.
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You want to be a small shop in a city where everybody knows, and they come to you for bread,
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He was number one in selling batteries in Germany.
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The sooner you know your vision, everybody around your wife, your husband, your kids,
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your family, anybody that's around you knows what you're doing,
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You know the level of teammates you need, support, board.
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All of these things has to tie to the vision that you have.
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So going back to it, this is slightly different than the vision of who you want to be
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This is about how big you want to scale your business.
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The sooner you know that, the sooner you'll be able to get the team around you to help
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Number four is technical, but I hope this makes sense to you.
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Do you know what formula drives numbers in your business?
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Do you know what formula produces results that drives numbers in your business?
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For example, if I advertise here with this commercial and I say this, it produces the
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If I make this many calls and I have this many salespeople who sell these three products,
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If we lead with this product and we have this product as a secondary and we sell during
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I had stacks of data on my desk and I kept pulling everything and I pulled out formulas.
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We have 12 vice presidents all around the country, right?
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I took everybody's formula and I saw how much money was left on the table for each individual.
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If you do this behavior times this behavior divided by this minus this, you would have made
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The more you know your formulas that you teach everybody else, you end up increasing your
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But the less you know your formulas and the less you teach it to other people, you end
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up leaving millions, if not billions of dollars on the table.
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Next one is kind of tough for the people that are A-type, cocky, confident, maybe semi-arrogant,
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Let me explain to you what I mean by weaknesses.
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If you're an A-type personality, you're winning, you know your strengths.
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You absolutely know you're good in certain areas, right?
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You may be great with a lot of different things.
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But I guarantee you, there's a lot of areas that you have weaknesses in.
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The reason why I wanted to know ASAP what my weaknesses were, which was operations, HR,
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payroll, systems, all of these things were my weaknesses, I immediately went and hired
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So my weakness was no longer being highlighted because I hired the right people that were
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10 times smarter than me in these three or five areas that I was weak in.
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Where is time being wasted within what you do on a daily basis?
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There's a lot of people that are doing business.
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When you take a moment and you actually take a sheet of paper, right?
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You sit there and you say, this week I spent this many hours here, here, here, here,
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And then you notice those six hours that you put into XYZ activity is what gives you the highest
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And the 13 hours that you put in area that doesn't give you return, wasted.
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But you have to know about it because the faster you're growing and the more you're in the business
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and all of a sudden you start making 100 grand a month, 200 grand a month, a million a month,
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You start becoming $100 million in your company.
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You start really believing that you got everything in order.
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But I guarantee you, there are so many areas of your business that there are leaks in, that
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time's being wasted, that you have to sit and take an inventory and figure out what
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those things are and put your time in areas that gives you the biggest return, not areas
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So that question, where is time being wasted, leads me to the next part.
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You ever hear people say things like, you know, you're working too much in your business,
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Yeah, you're working in your business, not on your business.
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And what it's on, like, am I supposed to sit on top of my business?
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Can you please tell me what's in and what's on?
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You're doing all the work you're doing because you're in it, right?
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You're doing all the work within the business yourself.
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What systems, protocols, procedures can you put in place to automate something that runs
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That's automation because that's working on your business.
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What new systems can you add to one department, the next department, this department?
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Right now, we're buying a $3 million technology.
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Because this $3 million technology, four departments are all going to be automated, which means what
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is taking today 15 minutes to process one item is going to go down to two minutes.
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Yes, it costs a lot of money, but it's working on the business.
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The other day, I'm sitting with one of my senior guys, and we're having a conversation
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And he says, Patrick, when we hire people, what kind of people do we want?
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It was a perfect question to ask because we weren't hiring the right people and selling
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them our culture, so we kept getting people and losing people in a certain department.
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We had to figure out to hire the right people because we knew who we wanted, so we don't
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have to keep going through it over and over and over again.
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This is all working on your business, not in your business.
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By the way, the list is a long list of things that I have here with standards, protocols,
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et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, just so you know that.
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So earlier, I asked you, what are your weaknesses, because you already know your strength.
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This is a slightly different question, but it's related to it.
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What are your blind spots that you currently have right now?
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I had a guy I was talking to, runs a very, very successful business.
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He is growing so fast that he's churning and burning through money, and we had a call
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Three years in a row, he calls me at the same season, saying, we grew so fast, we need $15 million.
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We need $10 million, and it's not like I need $300,000.
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I said, listen, for three, four years, we've been having the same conversation.
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Then you panic, then you sell off everything, and you go pay this off.
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Blind spot is, you're running out of money, but you're not paying attention to it because you're
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Realize that you only have nine more months of money to make you last for nine more months.
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Blind spot, maybe one department is growing so fast, but you don't have enough support
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In about nine months, you're going to crash and burn and lose a few people in that department.
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Blind spot is knowing there's a certain personality you need that you don't currently have, so your
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retention of clients staying on the books is lower because they're not happy.
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You have to sit there with your core three to five people and ask, what are some blind spots we have?
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By the way, the vision, dream, competitive, super competitive, the big thinkers, they don't think
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Those people are typically the ones that have the most blind spots.
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Conversion is, I come to your site, what percentage actually clicks on the next link that leads
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Conversion ratio is, somebody comes to my gym, what percentage of the walk-ins end up
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buying a membership, and which membership do they buy?
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So for instance, if 10 walk-in, two buy, and the two that buy, they buy one gym membership
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instead of buying sports club memberships, I want to know why are we only converting out
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of 10, two, and out of the two we're converting, why are we selling the cheapest membership?
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Number two, what can we do to close 40% instead of 20%?
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And three, what can we do to upsell and just sell these basic programs so our guys maybe
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In every area of your business, you have to look at your conversion ratio.
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The more areas you have conversion ratios and percentages, the more areas you can improve.
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And all of a sudden, your profits goes from 18% to 42%.
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It's that astronomical if you actually study your conversion ratios.
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Who are the next three leaders you're building?
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Who are the next three leaders you are building?
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Every time I have my executive meetings, whether it's new business, processing, client retention,
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no matter what department, marketing, sales, every conversation I have is, who are the
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Because leadership development in any department helps you exponentially grow.
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In every single company, you show me that's growing, there are new leaders being built
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and born because the system is built in a way to develop new leaders.
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So the question you got to ask yourself, grab a paper and pen, who are the next three leaders
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And if you don't know the answer to that question, that's a very big problem.
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You have to immediately have the next three people you're building so your business keeps
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