Tina Tower [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to her Empire Builder Show. I am your host, Tina Tower, and today we're talking about problems. What I want to talk to you about is 10 problems, universal problems that every entrepreneur faces and how we can fix them. Because while we feel like our problems are all unique, there are the same ones that you'll come up to time and time again that if you can anticipate them, everything will be way easier. Because there is a saying like, so business isn't supposed to be easy. It can often be hard. But what makes it easier is when you accept those problems as just part of the game. So if you choose to play the game of business, it means that you're going to have to anticipate these problems.

Main Episode

Tina Tower [00:00:47]:
It means that they're going to come up. And then instead of these problems coming up and going, oh, my gosh, like, I never knew this was going to happen. This is so bad. This is so hard. It's like, hi, like, I knew you were coming. Let's, let's sort this out. Let's work with it. So smart people don't always succeed, but focused problem solvers do.

Tina Tower [00:01:07]:
And what I mean by that is I know very many smart people that don't succeed in business. And while, yes, I do think a little bit of smarts is required to be a successful business owner, the people that outlast the people that do well are grade A problem solvers. You get paid in proportion to, to the number and severity of problems that you are able to solve. And so by seeing all of these problem solving as games, it's like leveling up. As you know, when you're in Mario Kart and it's like, is that the right game? I don't know what the notification is. You know, you're in a different game and it's like, and next level. And then you've unlocked the next level. The more you can do that, the better your business is going to grow.

Tina Tower [00:01:54]:
So let's go through the 10 universal problems that entrepreneurs face and how you can think like a CEO to help you be able to solve them. So problem number one is no clear vision flying by the seat of your pants. Many entrepreneurs are just running towards, like, these vague goals, like, I just want to have more money, more freedom, more clients without actually having the strategy behind it. So to be able to get around that, I think that you need to define what does success look like for you. It's so often that I see people that are running businesses, and then one day you wake up and go, I don't know how I got here. I don't know how. This is my life. When did I get to this point? I've gone the wrong way.

Tina Tower [00:02:44]:
I need to go back. That is often because you haven't set the vision for yourself. You have been following somebody else's vision. Whenever you're hearing things, even what I'm saying right now, be discerning and go, is that the right advice for me right now or do I need to let that go? Because when you really adopt the vision for your own business and your own life, it means that it makes it so much easier what to say yes to and so much easier what to say no to. You can then write it down, make it measurable. So what you want to do is hold yourself accountable for not only the grand vision for your business and life, but also when you're going to achieve those things. I'm going to achieve that in a year, I'm going to achieve that in a month. I'm going to do that this week, and then keep those promises to yourself.

Tina Tower [00:03:30]:
Action and problem solving will beat smarts every single day of the week, guaranteed. So you want to reverse engineer the outcome in there. So when you're looking at your vision, when you're looking at your goals, ask yourself what needs to happen in order for me to bring that to reality. So if you want to do $100,000 launch, for example, no matter where you're up to now, you want to go completion backwards, you want to go, all right, if I need $100,000 launch, this is how many people to enroll in my program. If I have this many people enroll in my program, this is how many people I need to attend my webinar. If I have this many people attend my webinar, this is however many people I need to register for the webinar. If I need this many people registered for the webinar, this is how many people I need to download the lead magnet and reverse engineer it and then work out, okay, if I want this many people to download my lead magnet, what marketing do I need to do to make that happen? What does my social media content plan need to look like? How many podcast interviews do I need to do? How many articles do I need to post? Do I need to go speak on stages? How am I going to expand that audience? Like make it real so that instead of saying I want $100,000 launch and then just kind of working your way, winging it, hoping that it's going to happen, you've got that strategic plan and that really clear vision in place to make that happen. Number two is poor time management.

Tina Tower [00:04:52]:
So being busy but not productive, because nearly everybody I know is busy. But when you look at people's actual result driven output, that can be really, really different. And I think that motion like doing can be confused with progress. And so every week you want to ask yourself on a Monday, what is the progress that I'm going to make this week? What is the needle moving activities that I'm going to do that will inch me closer to that vision and bring it to life. And they're the things that you've got to worry about and not anything else that is happening. So be really ruthless with your prioritisation. Look at everything you've got to do and ask yourself to run it through three lenses. Is it going to bring you joy, make you happy? Is it going to enhance the customer experience? Is it going to make you money? If it's not those three things, it's probably not a priority.

Tina Tower [00:05:44]:
Always focus on doing the things that are going to build your business. Identify what tasks are going to be the needle movers. And know that Pareto's principle, you've probably heard of the 80, 20, is that 20% of the actions will drive 80% of the results. So what our goal is as business owners is as we learn, as we progress, as we move up our levels in our business, is discerning more and more what that 20% is, so that we can spend more of our time doing the things that are driving the results and do less of our time on the things that don't actually matter. I think that's why businesses get better and better as time goes on. I know that I used to do everything because I didn't know what the 20% was that was driving the 80% of the results. Whereas now I'm able to work a lot less. But the time that I do put into work is productive as fuck because when I am doing that, I am spending that time on the things that I know are going to move the needle.

Tina Tower [00:06:45]:
I'm only spending time on the things that are going to get me massive output. So I would always have thinking time weekly. So I usually do it at the end of each week. I will look at my following week and I'll look at the vision that I have, the goals that I'm going for, both in that quarter and in that year, and I'll see how I'm progressing with those. And then I'll look at my to do list and I triage that I Work out. All right, what are the things that are most important? I'll look at my calendar for next week and figure out what time blocks I've got available. And then I move those tasks into the calendar so that I have enough time to do the things that are going to move our business closer to that vision. Number three is inconsistent sales.

Tina Tower [00:07:25]:
Now, every business goes on this. You know, it's never a linear line. It's always going to go on this messy roller coaster of up and down. Our hope is that it will generally end up tracking upwards. But feast and famine mode is a business killer. And this happens a lot in the online business industry because we can be very launch reliant, which means that when we're launching, we can have a whole lot of revenue coming in. But then if you're not launching again for three, six months, that can create famine in your business. So cash flow can be really difficult to manage.

Tina Tower [00:08:01]:
A way around that is to build yourself a more predictable sales system. If you're doing launches, having payment plans so that you've got less lumpy revenue coming in and you've got some cash flow every month coming in from that, or you've got evergreen systems running in the background as well. So you're not just relying on launch, but you've also got evergreen funnels that are going constantly. So. So that you've always got revenue coming into the business. You always want to be focusing on building your email list and filling up that funnel. So sometimes I'll see people that are focused on everything on the launch or everything on, say you're building a new course or doing something and going, you're all tunnel vision focused on that, but without simultaneously focusing on your marketing at the same time. All these things need to be done in conjunction with one another so that by the time you finish that, you know what it's like.

Tina Tower [00:08:57]:
You've probably been in this situation before where you go, you get so busy that you stop marketing and you focus on serving all your existing clients. But then if that dries up, then you go, oh, crap, I haven't been filling up my funnel, so I've got no influx of new clients. And so you've got to go back and it swings back and forth. What you want to do is create more of a predictive sales system so that you're always focusing on delivery and marketing at the same time so that it's a little bit more predictive coming in there. You don't want to be only waiting for launch. Launch is where your big influx Come in. I have never seen anything that can perform as well as a live launch can. However, you want to be selling every week.

Tina Tower [00:09:38]:
Every week you want to have revenue coming into your business. So it's looking at your office suite and going, all right, what can you do throughout the year in terms of your marketing so that every month you've got something big that you're promoting, whether that is leading into a launch or whether that is your evergreen programs or your coaching services, VIP days, like all of those different things, so that you can have that revenue flowing all the time. Number four, our problem is weak financial controls. Now, I will say that a lot of clients that I work with don't love numbers. They will say when I ask their numbers and they don't know their numbers, I am often horrified. Because knowing your numbers is essential to building your business. You don't want to be blindsided. You want to be able to see it like knowledge is power.

Tina Tower [00:10:29]:
It means that you are able to see problems coming early and then you can adapt and you can change so that the problem is not going to be so severe. So you want to be able to know what are your fixed costs, what are your variable costs? So if you get in a cash flow pinch, you know what things you can turn down and what things you need to keep. You want to know your breakeven point. You want to know for each of the services and digital products that you're offering, where is the money coming from? So often when you look at your products, sometimes you can be putting, say you've got two different courses and you put 50% of effort into course A, 50% of effort into course B. But course A is bringing in 70% of the revenue. I would look at that and go, all right, is it worth changing course B so we can get that to catch up or should we be putting more marketing effort and energy into course A? Because that's the one that's getting us all of the results. So you want to know all your numbers so you know where to put your effort and energy to maximize revenue and maximize your profit in there. You want to also be setting all your revenue targets and your profit targets monthly and then following that at the end of every month to see how on track you were.

Tina Tower [00:11:43]:
Were you over, were you under, how were your expenses like knowledge is power in here. So use cash flow forecasting as much as possible. Don't go with gut feel and don't go when you're bank account runs out of money because it is very stressful for those that say, money doesn't buy happiness. I always think, have you been without money? Because that is very, very stressful. So I always think, like, you know, you want to have the dashboard, you want to have visibility. We have ours on a Monday board. I talk about Monday all the time because it has nearly everything that I talk about in business, like all of our project management software. But we do weekly financial reports.

Tina Tower [00:12:25]:
So every week I have coming in that my bookkeeper prepares for me. Where does that money come from in terms of Evergreen courses, coaching, our Empress Circle, our her Empire Builder program, monthly revenue, annual renewals, like, all of the different things. So I can see the actual source of all of our income and know if we're going up, I know when we're going down so that I know what to anticipate. And then I'll look at my expenses across that and go, all right, are we all still healthy or does something need to change there? Okay, number five is fear of visibility. So you know what to do. I can ask people, what is one thing that you can do in your business in the next month to be more visible? And everyone will be able to tell me the answer to that. However, my next question is, why haven't you done it? And what I find that the answer to that is is because everyone knows what to do, but people are scared of actually doing it. And so the way you get over that fear of visibility is one to practice.

Tina Tower [00:13:34]:
I think that when you get clear on your mission and when you get clear on why you're doing things, it will propel you to take those steps, to put yourself more in the light. Because the why is greater than your fear of that visibility. I think it also comes with practice in taking that consistent small action. So I wouldn't encourage someone who's built no personal brand before. I wouldn't encourage you to go on stage in front of a thousand people. Like anyone's going to crap themselves in that situation. But a good thing to start with is grab your phone and start with an Instagram story. It can be deleted straight away.

Tina Tower [00:14:10]:
It'll disappear straight away. It's a very, very low entry to be able to practice having yourself on camera, take the steps up. Then once you've done that, practice going live, then practice going live with someone else on social, then go and guest on a podcast, then go and speak on a small stage, and then let it dial up until visibility is no longer the fear. Because you know that you're serving people and you know that you're helping people. So I Do think that the courage gets built as you build those micro steps of confidence that go up there. So if you've got like, you know, the email that you're scared of sending with your offer on it, like, go ahead and send that. Focus on serving. Don't focus on self image.

Tina Tower [00:14:55]:
So don't focus on you. I always think about, you know, when I get nervous to speak, it's usually because I'm thinking about myself. I'm not thinking about the people in the audience. So how I get over that is by starting to focus on them instead of me. Instead of me thinking, gosh, how do I sound with this? Or does my hair look too flat? Or I've got a pimple on my face, I start thinking about, there's someone sitting in that audience today that I can help, that I know even one person. If I can help inspire them to take action, if I can help them to do the thing they've always dreamed of, it's going to positively impact their life. If I focus on that person, they don't care about the little pimple on my face. And so it just helps me get out there and be able to do it.

Tina Tower [00:15:43]:
So confidence is a byproduct of doing the thing. It's definitely not the prerequisite of it. So you build your confidence by actually taking that action rather than the other way around. Problem number six is undercharging for your services. So if you are pricing emotionally and not strategically, that is usually an indication that you're afraid that people won't pay for your services. An example of that is pricing is all about positioning. Yes, it's about value. And you always have to hand on heart, be able to say that you offer great value because you need to be really aligned with your offer and be able to stand confidently behind it.

Tina Tower [00:16:24]:
But I find the opposite to be true. So instead of a lot of people overcharging, there's a lot of people undercharging. And so what you want to look at, especially with digital products, because it doesn't necessarily cost you each time someone purchases. So you are pricing in line with the transformation, in line with the value of the outcome. Not the number of hours it took you to create it, not the number of videos in that course, but the transformation result. That is what you are charging in line with, you're also charging in positioning. So, for example, say you're charging $97 for a program. A lot of people are going to see a $97 program and think that it's not very substantive that there is a lot of fluff in there, that it's not very good because you don't have much in there adversely.

Tina Tower [00:17:12]:
Conversely, conversely, you could charge 9.97 for that program. And people, because of position pricing psychology, people will think, okay, this must be more valuable because it's priced higher. Now, I very much agree that you need to deliver on that value, but if you've got the same program and you're undercharging for it, you'll actually do more harm because people won't respect it. So you want to look at your competitors, look at the competitor analysis, figure out what they're charging for that, and make sure your transformation promise is better, make sure it's better, more powerful, and then price in line with that. Pricing usually isn't the problem, but it's your certainty and your level of confidence in standing behind the value of that transformation that is going to make that easier. Problem number seven is hiring. Hiring either too fast or hiring too slow. What I see is people will either wait too long and then burn themselves out, or they hire too fast before you're ready and will run out of money or not have the structure in place to be able to train people.

Tina Tower [00:18:22]:
And so what you want to be able to do is hire at the right time. So that means I don't think hire too early, because sometimes I'll see people start courses and go straight away, I need a va. And if you have the budget for that, awesome. A VA will help you massively. However, if you are earning under $100,000 a year, then you don't want to be paying for someone to be able to help you. Yet I would go over that point before I get outside assistance, because I want to keep that money for myself. I don't want to be paying it to someone else. But then once we're past that stage, what I start doing then is going, all right, let's have a look at all of the things that you do in your business that someone else could do very easily.

Tina Tower [00:19:04]:
So figure out the easiest things to be able to outsource. They're usually your repeatable customer service, any admin, marketing, scheduling, like a lot of the really basic stuff, then you want to systemize that so that then you've got all of the systems and structure in place and you can hire someone and be able to give them those systems and structures straight away and it's affordable and sustainable. Because you don't want to get in the situation where you are hiring someone and you spend 3, 6, 12 months training them, and then you can't afford them anymore. But. But on the opposite end of that, you also don't want to get into the situation where you are running full pelt and you've waited too long to hire someone and you're burnt out and you're exhausted, and then you hire someone to help you, and finally they're there and you're like, I don't have time to explain everything. I'm too busy. You want to hire at the right time. So create clear sops, like standard operating procedures before hiring as you go.

Tina Tower [00:20:02]:
So it'll make training way, way easier. And try and hire as much as possible for ownership, not tasks. So there's a big difference in that. As a business owner, we hold a lot of mental load. So what we hold in our minds is across the entire breadth of the business, you are in charge of strategic direction and vision making. You're in charge of all of your marketing, all of your finances, all of your admin, all of your content creation, all of your delivery, all of your customer. Customer service. Like, there are so many areas that you have to hold in your mind and think, where am I up to with that? Where am I up to with that? And so when you start hiring, the goal is to alleviate that mental load.

Tina Tower [00:20:42]:
So if you need to micromanage people, what it means is often that's actually overwhelming for most entrepreneurs. I've heard it so many times, including from myself in saying it's easier just to do it myself. Because if you can't outsource any of that mental load, what that means is you're thinking about it and them. So it's like two times the thing instead of just doing it yourself. So always try and hire with ownership and going with those tasks. Can I trust that person that once I've given them that task, I'm taking that out of my mental load and I'm giving that to them, and I know they've got it. And that's when you know you've got the right people on your team. Okay, Number eight is shiny object syndrome, otherwise called mythical side quests.

Tina Tower [00:21:29]:
Now, this is, you know, a problem that we're all going to come up against. And I think it's a tricky one because sometimes the shiny object is the right thing to chase, but sometimes it's not. And being able to discern when it is and when it isn't is such a superpower as a business owner. So if you are constantly pivoting and getting distracted, then you won't be able to stick it out and you won't get traction. However, you also don't want to be in a cycle where you're pushing shit uphill. Being able to discern when to quit and when to stick it is a very tricky thing. As a business owner, what I always say to people say you've started a new course. When you get traction with that course is usually when you launch and then 12 weeks later you're going to launch again, and 12 weeks later you're going to launch again.

Tina Tower [00:22:18]:
It is when you rinse and repeat that people start seeing that launch cycle. People start seeing that messaging and they're like, oh, I'm starting to pay attention now. Now I get it. Now I'm going to join that interest compounds. So if you run one launch and then pivot to something else, that messaging has to kind of start again and then you'll leave the audience confused in going, hang on, are they selling that or are they selling that? I'm not sure what they do. And so that way they'll tune out. So you do want to keep going, rinsing and repeating the same thing, but also you want to pay attention to go, sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes we launch the wrong thing and have to go, all right, this isn't being received great. And you have to be able to know, is this something that I am launching again and again, that I should actually be going to that mythical side quest and doing something better? And this is where I think you really need to pay attention to your customers.

Tina Tower [00:23:06]:
If you are getting poor results and like your normal conversion is below. So say you're looking at industry averages in going, okay, we know that from social media posts. If you are spending $5 a day on ads, then you're probably getting three to five new leads a day out of those people that are getting lead magnets, Then how many people are going to go into your webinar? Out of your webinar, Whoever registers, you're going to get 30% of them show up. Out of the 30% that show up, you're going to get 10% of them by, you know what all those percentages are. If you're looking at them and it's like constantly falling short and people are asking you for something different, then I'd say you're in the wrong direction. I'd say with that, scrap what you're doing and go into something else. But you also want to question, is the conversion there because you're not selling properly or because you need to work on your presentation skills or you need to hone your messaging. So this is what I mean by it can be tricky.

Tina Tower [00:24:00]:
And so usually if it's staying tunnel vision focused and going, all right, I'm going to focus on this one thing. I'm going to rinse and repeat, and only after you've done it three times, then start looking at the alternatives. Number nine is not giving yourself thinking time. So you are the CEO of your business. Even if you are a solopreneur and you are a business of one, you are the CEO of that business. And while we have to be operators, also, as small business owners, we also have to be the visionary. So you have to hold both those roles, both the doing and the dreaming. And sometimes we can be caught way too much in the weeds where we're constantly on this hamster wheel of all the delivery and the doing.

Tina Tower [00:24:42]:
And you haven't taken that helicopter view where you get to rise up and look down at your business and look at all of the different areas that you're doing and go, all right, am I on the right track here? Do I need to change anything? What I think is the way to solve that problem is by blocking out thinking time. So every, every week, putting in your calendar some thinking time, and then asking yourself a few pertinent questions. So the ones that I ask myself is, what am I pretending not to know? Now, this question is quite, you know, if I journal on it, because often I know the answer, but I don't want to know that answer. So often it's something that I actually don't want to admit is true. So I am pretending not to know it. I'm pretending like it's a difficult decision. But really, in my gut, like in my soul, I know the answer, but I'm pretending I don't know. I don't know the answer because it's the harder choice.

Tina Tower [00:25:37]:
And so if you ask yourself that question, you're bringing it to the surface, which is more difficult. But as the business owner, you have to do the difficult things in going, okay, I know this is the call that I have to make. And you're not ignoring that. You're taking that proactive action. The other question I ask is, what would this look like if it was easy? So I will always look at everything and go. I want to take the easiest route because I like to move fast. I like to take good progress. I like to get the maximum results for the minimum effort required and do that on repeat.

Tina Tower [00:26:09]:
And so I'll always look at something and go, is there an easier way to do this, could I systemize this better? Could I automate this even more? How can I leverage this so that I can do it a little bit easier? So you constantly, every week, looking at the different things that you're doing in your business and going, okay, if this was easy, this thing, this hard thing that I need to do, what would that actually look like? And then the third question I ask myself is, what is the highest value of my time in the week ahead? I'll look at the week ahead and go, if and we do have finite amount of time, but I go, with my time being so valuable and so tight, what is the best use of that and how can I be really discerning with the hours that I put in so I'm not wasting them both in my business life and my personal life so that I am left feeling nourished and healthy and well? And also the business is left feeling nourished and healthy and well. So I do think that thinking is often the hardest. But the most productive work that you can do is really taking a moment to take that helicopter view, rise up out of the weeds and really look down and go make those hard decisions so that everything else can flow a lot easier. The 10th final problem is trying to do it and carry it all alone. Like I said before, being the CEO, you're the content creator, you're the admin assistant, you're the customer service. And it will burn you out at different stages of your journey. And this is where hiring comes back into it. This is where self awareness comes back into it so that you can build a business that is sustainable without burning yourself out.

Tina Tower [00:27:48]:
So you need to build a support system around that that is often your team and that includes your home team as well as your work team. So making sure that if you're not hiring anyone full time, say you're not at the, at the level where you're going to get a full time va, then maybe you start off with part time, maybe you start off with contractors for different things, doing different things. I know when I first hired, I had a social media contractor. That's who I started with. Then I went to a marketing assistant, then I had a va. Now my team is very lean, it's very small. I have my husband who does the ops. I have my customer service assistant, Chris, who's been with us for years, who does all of the customer service and admin.

Tina Tower [00:28:32]:
On that side, I have Faye, who is another admin assistant who does my personal side of things. I have Julius who does all of our video editing. And then I have Brittany who does all of our social media and Jem who does all of our graphic design. So I've got a really beautiful tight team for the size of the business and our output that we are able to do, but also have the home support team. So my kids do a lot around the home, my husband does a lot around the home. We have a cleaner, we take the dogs to the groomers. Like you are able to get the support that you need in your life so that you don't burn out so that you can have the life that you have actually dreamed of. So I think that, you know, I know I used to feel really guilty if I ever relaxed, if I ever relaxed, like watch TV at night, I would just like the story in my head that I was a lazy shit.

Tina Tower [00:29:27]:
And that all comes from childhood, which I won't get into. But I always like had a battle of the guilts. I thought that I had to be busy and productive or I wasn't worth anything. And so I constantly pushed myself again and again. Now though, I have very much learned the value of rest. And so now when I say I'm busy, like that is if I need to work past the hours of eight till four, I'm like, this is not acceptable. This is not okay. Because I have really valued my rest in there.

Tina Tower [00:29:57]:
I have very much let go of the badge of busy. I do not want to be busy. I want to be calm. I want to be someone that has spaciousness, that is able to feel like I can do all the work that I want to do. I can support the team, I can support my family and I can support myself at the same time. So you really need to be able to, like Tim Ferriss says in his four hour workweek book, which was written like 20 years ago and is still so good, you want to automate, delegate and eliminate. So if you go through each of the things when you're doing your thinking time, if you're feeling like, gosh, like I'm training, like I'm just like a dark here with my, my feet just pedaling at 100 mile an hour under the water, really look at everything that you're doing. I like to time audit myself when I get in that situation to figure out what am I spending all my time on and is it the best use of my time? Is there some things there that I can automate? Especially now with so much AI? There's a lot in our lives that we're still doing that we don't need to be doing.

Tina Tower [00:30:55]:
There's now technology that can do that for us. So are you optimizing the technology available to be able to automate as much as possible possible? Are you delegating enough to the people on your team, or can you get team help? And are you doing things that just simply don't need to be done? Are there some things there that can just be eliminated that don't matter anymore? And anything outside of your zone of genius, like just start working on trying to find someone to be able to do that for you? No one builds solo, I will tell you that. Like, I always think of myself as a solopreneur, but I have not got anywhere by myself. There is always that team support both at home and at work that I have utilized to be able to build my business and the life that I have. So in to wrap up business is a series of problems, and your job is to solve them. Like, enjoy the game. You've chosen to play it and the rewards are absolutely fabulous. But it doesn't mean that it will always be easy.

Tina Tower [00:31:57]:
It gets easy when we have acceptance of these problems and we know that they're going to come up and we know that, you know, when we get to the next level, there they are, they're going to be there again, like, new level, new devil. And it's our job to be able to solve them. And we want to enjoy that process because ideally, we want to be in business for a really long time. We want to run sustainable, profitable businesses. And so if you want to play that, that game, let's accept the problems, let's go. Every problem is completely solvable. Every obstacle is there so that we can conquer it. Let's go after them.

Tina Tower [00:32:31]:
Let's go up that mountain and just see what you're capable of. It's a really fun game when you learn to love it.