This weekend I was in St. Louis visiting my friend Nick who runs a massive real estate development company along with his three brothers.
His dad started the company, but he and his brothers along with 350 team members are scaling it to a whole new level!
Anyhow, Nick and I got to talking while having lunch and the topic of dumb business moves came up…
…and between the two of us we have about 40 years of business experience so as you can imagine we’ve made our share of dumb business moves.
So I wanted to share some of the dumbest moves we’ve made so that you can avoid them – or if you’re making these dumb moves, you can stop it.
DUMB MOVE #1) Never tolerate mediocre employees who don’t meet your expectations or share your core values. When you as a leader tolerate a substandard employee you’re telling your other team members that you accept a lower standard of work. Soon two things will happen…
First your employees will begin to lose respect for you for tolerating a substandard employee. Second, they’ll begin to lower their performance levels. This is one of the fastest ways to destroy your business. Look, in all of life you get what you tolerate. So if you’re tolerating mediocrity in your business then you’ll begin to lose customers, profits and the respect of others.
DUMB MOVE #2) Don’t try to do too many things at once. This is a rookie mistake that I made and I see a ton of business owners making.
New entrepreneurs will try to have too many programs, too many services, too many offerings and too many businesses.
Look, there’s nothing wrong with having many businesses, products, offerings and income streams. Hell I have a ton of businesses and income streams.
But before you spread yourself too thin you’ve got to get your core business dialed in before kicking off the next one.
I call this having entrepreneurial discipline.
And that means having singularity of focus on ONE THING until you have a healthy and profitable business that has strong systems in place and competent people running it so that you can create the next business, product or offer.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen business owners try to create multiple things at once and then they find themselves stressed, overwhelmed and broke.
DUMB MOVE #3) Poor marketing leads to poor profits. Once you have a winning product or service that’s profitable, it’s time to scale it.
There’s nothing wrong with organic traffic from social media. But if you want to take your business to the next level then you’ve got to scale it by running paid ads on social media platforms where you can reach more of the right audience at a MUCH faster rate.
But here’s the thing with paid ads and traffic – it doesn’t work at first.
You can’t think that you’re going to run your first ad and it’s going to magically get you great leads who will buy your stuff.
It’s going to take some experimenting with the right ad, right offer and sending them to the right sales site until you find the formula that delivers the highest ROAS (return on ad spend).
I’ve got coaching clients who run all types of paid traffic, everything from social media ads, to paid email drops, to radio and TV spots.
In fact in my businesses I spend about $300K a month in various ad spend to help us generate millions in sales each month.
DUMB MOVE #4) Bad leadership is the kiss of death. The biggest blind spot that most entrepreneurs have is not realizing that they lack good leadership.
Truth is, for most of us leadership is not factory installed. And if you’re not an effective leader then you’re not going to be able to attract great team members.
I always say that leadership is the problem, leadership is the solution.
Effective leadership is this: Having a clear vision for what you want for your business and then being able to communicate it with your team. It’s being a good problem solver and fast decision maker. It’s being emotionally disciplined and having the ability to make everyone around you better.
But like I said, leadership is not factory installed for all of us. It’s like a muscle, and like any muscle you have to train it and develop it.
When I started investing in becoming a better leader I saw a massive shift in my people and profits. Hands down, it was one of the biggest needle movers of all.
Want me to help you take your business, profits and leadership to the next level?
Looking forward to helping you level up in business and in life!
Bedros Keuilian
PS. Lots of good stuff here for you: https://bedroskeuilian.com/