At the risk of asking a rhetorical question, when it comes to your business, would you like to grow your profits?
Of course, your answer is a resounding “yes.” But good intentions don’t guarantee great outcomes. According to LendingTree, 56.8% of businesses fail within seven years.
As the saying goes, change your life and business by changing the questions you ask. At the heart of the issue is asking what you need to do to grow your profits and how you do it. The great news is that there are five powerful strategies to help grow your profits.
Who am I, and how do I know?
I started my eLearning company, Embanet, right out of school. I had no money, experience, or team. Living in my parent’s attic and running my business, I found a new best friend, otherwise known as failure.
My grit and passion kept me in the game long enough to uncover strategies for business success. And not any success, but massive business success.
With business success came the proverbial knock at the door from a buyer. The buyer was with a multi-billion dollar company and was smart and experienced.
I said “no” to the buyer’s 7-figure offer and “yes” to mastering the art and science of a liquidity event. Then, two years later, I said “yes” to a 9-figure offer from a different buyer.
What’s the point of a liquidity event if your business isn’t profitable, or worse, doesn’t exist?
My early days of failure taught me five powerful strategies that helped to grow my profits.
Today, I pay it forward through the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. At the heart of the Deep Wealth Experience is the exact 9-step roadmap and five strategies.
Would you like to learn the five strategies to help grow your profits?
Please keep reading.
Why Finding Inflection Points Today Helps Grow Your Profits Tomorrow (And Beyond)
Find inflections points that put you out of business to go into a bigger business – Jeffrey Feldberg
Your mission is to find inflection points for growing your profits. Not any inflection point, but a game-changing one. Finding and acting on inflection points allows you to put yourself out of business. You’ll be the one to put yourself into a new business that is better and more profitable.
Here’s a rhetorical question for you:
Would you rather your competition put you out of business or yourself?
Inflection points, or what some call blind spots, are changes in your industry. There are two different outcomes for one inflection point. When identified and acted upon, an inflection point helps you grow profits. At the same time, you ensure you stay in business. Left unchecked or missed, an inflection point can put you out of business.
Read “Perfect Advice You Need On How To Master Business Blind Spots.”
Hindsight is always 20/20. With hindsight in mind, an inflection point example is Blockbuster and Netflix. Blockbuster was the 800-pound gorilla at the time and ruled the movie rental industry.
Blockbuster did identify an inflection point, otherwise known as streaming movies. Around the same time, Netflix was a rounding error compared to Blockbuster. Netflix identified the inflection point of streaming before it was possible.
Blockbuster ignored the inflection point. Netflix, and others, put Blockbuster out of business. Blockbuster went from a business titan to no longer being in the industry.
The same inflection point. Two different outcomes.
If going out of business happened to Blockbuster, it can happen to you. So how can you avoid the fate of Blockbuster?
Please keep reading.
Why You’ll Grow Your Profits When You Turn Off Autopilot For Your Business
Within your success today are the seeds of failure tomorrow – Jeffrey Feldberg.
There is a tremendous irony in the seeds of failure tomorrow are in your success today.
Built into the human condition are both apathy and laziness. As the saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The expression couldn’t be further from the truth about your business.
Read “7 Important Things You Need To Know To Create Massive Business Success.”
Let’s go back to the beginning before you started your business. Once upon a time, you found a painful problem you were passionate about solving. Your solution was unique and world-class. As a result, you transformed prospects into clients who became raving fans.
Wishful thinking has us believe that the above narrative is a “happily ever after” one. But, instead, there’s a narrative within the narrative. Your success today attracts new competitors tomorrow. Yet, at the same time, the only thing constant is change itself.
Left unchecked, your clients and the marketplace find other solutions. As a result, either new and more painful problems arise, or instead, the competition is better.
With success, it’s all too easy to put your business on autopilot. The flawed assumption is that what works today also works tomorrow. Yes, for some time, you’ll grow your profits doing nothing. But, like a frog in boiling water, when you do nothing, failure creeps up on you until it’s too late.
Instead, your mission is to welcome success. At the same time, you’re always looking for new painful problems to solve. In the process, you’re not on autopilot. Instead, you and your team are active in finding painful problems.
How do you find painful problems?
Please keep reading.
The One And Only Question You Must Ask To Grow Your Profits
We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong – Bono.
In the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience, Step 2 is X-Factors that insanely grow your profits. One of the X-Factors is the “magic wand question.”
When speaking with clients, here’s what you say:
“When it comes to your business, what keeps you up at night?”
A quick story.
In the early days of my eLearning company, Embanet, I asked the magic wand question. I asked the Associate Dean at the business school whose program Embanet hosted.
The client felt relieved that I asked the question and told me two things. First, Embanet solved the problem of keeping online students in the seats. Second, the new problem was how to fill the seats in the first place.
Please know that I asked the magic wand question hundreds of times. Most times, the answers I received were interesting but not relevant. But not on this day.
Persistence and grit paid off on this one day. The answer to the magic wand question, in turn, did two things. First, the creation of Embanet 2 to solve the problem of filling the seats. Second, Embanet 2 put Embanet 1 out of business. We were now in a bigger and more profitable business.
Read “Want Financial Freedom? You Better Know These 9 M&A Business Owner Statistics.”
The magic wand question helped create a market disruption. But, while the transformation took time, it was worth it.
One simple strategy that takes little time and no money. The results, when executed well, are a game changer.
Speaking of questions, do you know the next one you and your team must ask?
Want Success? Identify What Your Business Must Stop Doing
How do you achieve excellence? Stop doing non-excellent stuff! – Tom Peters
To grow your profits, you must go on a mission. Your mission is to find activities the business is doing today that must stop tomorrow. Inflection points often provide the area to look into.
Read “Who Wants To Be Successful? Drop These Entrepreneur Qualities Immediately.”
Often the best of intentions can lead to disastrous results. Let’s revisit the Blockbuster-Netflix saga. Blockbuster made many fatal mistakes that led to its demise. One of the mistakes mentioned earlier was ignoring movie streaming.
Another fatal mistake was not listening to its customers in one specific area. The area was late fees. StreetFins pens an article with a deep dive into Blockbuster’s demise. In 2000m a whopping $800M, 16% of revenue, came from late fees.
The late fees upset Blockbuster’s customers. The same late fees set Blockbuster up for a spectacular failure. CNBC interviewed Netflix’s co-found Reed Hastings in 2017. Hastings went on record and said he got the Netflix idea after paying $40 in Blockbuster late fees. Since the interview, Hastings has changed his story.
Either way, let Blockbuster’s failure to stop certain business activities be a lesson. Your takeaway is to put time aside with you and your team. Your mission is to find areas in your business that you must stop today so you can thrive tomorrow.
Stopping an activity is easier said than done, especially when there’s revenue. But play the long game, and you’ll find better areas to grow your profits in the process.
Are you wondering how to identify the areas and activities to stop so you can grow your profits?
Please keep reading.
Here’s What You Need To Know To Find Activities You Must Stop Doing
Effective management always means asking the right question -Robert Heller.
To grow your profits, you understand that what worked yesterday may not work today. You may do everything right, but it’s no longer enough. Once upon a time, driving to choose a rental video from Blockbuster was the right thing to do until it wasn’t.
Read “The 5 Absolute Best X-Factors That Increase Enterprise Value.”
Here’s a question for you and your team to ask to reveal areas to stop doing:
Where do you see the business failing?
Answer the question by meeting with clients at their locations. You’ll see things that don’t appear in an e-mail or call.
Your field trips uncover inflection points that either harm or help your business.
With your areas identified, ease into the solution by starting an “experiment.” The power of an experiment is that it doesn’t feel threatening.
At the same time, it means you don’t need to spend much money on a “temporary” solution. So, yes, my dear reader, welcome to the art side of the business.
Questions that you and your team ask on the “experiment” include:
- What is the specific problem (inflection point)?
- What are three to five features of the solution?
- What’s the compelling narrative?
- What is the blue ocean that the solution creates?
- Who is the target market?
- What are the key metrics?
- What is the “wow factor” that converts clients into raving fans?
- What are the communication channels to get the word out?
- What is the cost structure for the “experiment”?
- What’s the compelling business model?
Here’s to you finding and stopping activities in the business. But, at the same time, you’ll grow your profits to thrive and prosper.
Conclusion
What you don’t know can and will hurt your business, or worse, put you out of business. A staggering six out of ten companies fail within the first seven years. The owners of the failed businesses had the best of intentions. But the best intentions don’t pay the bills.
There’s an art and science when it comes to growing your profits. The power of the Deep Wealth 9-step roadmap is that it performs double duty.
You prepare for your liquidity event “tomorrow.” And at the same time, following the 9-step roadmap grows your profits “today.”
The five little-known but proven strategies are your North Star to grow your profits. The strategies in the Deep Wealth 9-step roadmap are from the trenches.
What can you do, and where do you start?
Please start with the first strategy and stay with it until you master it. Once done, move on to the next strategy. In short order, you’ll master all five strategies. Along the way, you’ll develop confidence and certainty.
Along the way, you’ll add new tools and resources to your business that help grow your profits. You also immunize yourself from being the six out of ten firms that fail.
Speaking of resources, The Deep Wealth Podcast is a treasure trove to help grow your profits. Pun intended the podcast helps unlock your personal and business deep wealth.
You can do it. I know you can. Here’s to you and your success!
Your Biggest Raving Fan,
Jeffrey Feldberg
When it comes to your liquidity event, are you leaving millions on the deal table? Learn how to grow your business today through our 9-step roadmap and increase your deal value tomorrow. Visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.
Today, Feldberg's passion is helping you extract your deep wealth. The 90-day Deep Wealth Mastery program helps create a solid foundation for three areas: increasing profits to enterprise value and optimizing post-exit life. Deep Wealth Mastery offers strategies and insights drawn from Feldberg's rich experience. The strategies from the trenches get results. Jeffrey's vision is to increase the social fabric of society one entrepreneur at a time.
Learn more through https://iapdw.com/prosper
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