5 Critical Mistakes Killing Your Business!

Are you unknowingly sabotaging your own success? Discover the 5 critical mistakes killing your business and learn how to defy the odds and boost your productivity with Dr. Lyman Montgomery. As a seasoned entrepreneur, Dr. Montgomery shares invaluable insights drawn from personal experiences and success stories, illustrating the transformative journey of overcoming obstacles. Delve into practical tips that emphasize focus and determination, helping you drive sales and achieve your career goals. Learn how to avoid the pitfalls of micromanagement, unclear goals, and emotional decision-making, while fostering an open-minded, collaborative environment. By embracing these strategies, you can enhance your focus, nurture professional growth, and achieve personal empowerment. Don't let these mistakes hold you back—engage with our community by liking, commenting, and subscribing. Stay motivated, stay focused, and transform your business and life today!

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CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Avoid These 5 Mistakes That Will Kill Your Business
01:25 - The Unintended Casualties of War
07:01 - Mistake #1: Lack of Focus
08:17 - Mistake #2: Clear and Concise Goals
11:00 - Mistake #3: Over Micromanaging Team
14:11 - Mistake #4: Engaging Team in Decision Making
18:10 - Mistake #5: Emotion vs. Data in Decisions
20:35 - Welcome Back
21:53 - Commit to Openness
23:11 - Get a Mentor or Coach
26:36 - Keep an Open Mind
27:00 - Closing

Transcript

Hello, everyone. Doctor Lyman Montgomery here, your podcaster. I'm so glad that you are here joining us for another edition of exciting information that you can use. We wanna talk about how to avoid 5 mistakes that will kill your business. Five mistakes that will heal your business. You see, as a business owner, I've made just about every mistake you could think of. I've hired the wrong people, I've promoted the wrong people, I've had to terminate people, and so all of us as entrepreneurs, as business owners, have found ourselves in situations where we've oftentimes said, man, if I only knew then what I know now. If that's you, I'll leave a comment if you're watching this on YouTube or whatever platform you're watching or seeing today's podcast. Five mistakes that we must avoid or our business will suffer. Those whom we love, oftentimes, are the unintended casualties of the mistakes that we make. I'm reminded of a client of mine several years ago that thought it was a great idea to start a company, and the company was growing by leaps and bounds. And as with any new company, any new venture, any new opportunity, there's a period of time where you are selfishly involved in that endeavor. This person had a new family, had recently gotten married, and because this person was spending so much time away from the family, the person was not taking care of home, and as a result, the relationship began to deteriorate. Now there's one of 3 ways that you can look at that. You can say, well, was it because of the sacrifice of trying to build a business, or was it that the individual had the wrong partner to begin with, or was the timing of. In this particular situation it was about timing. And I want you to write this down because I think it is critically important as an entrepreneur to consider the cost. Whenever you enter into a new venture, you enter into a new partnership, or you launch a new product, service, or even an idea, It's imperative that we add up the cost, that we sit down and make a calculated decision. Is it worth it? How much time will it take? Have I communicated with my loved ones that for a certain period of time, I may be away from the family? If you've not done that, then you are guilty of the 5 critical mistakes I'm going to talk about shortly. And these 5 critical mistakes can have a detrimental effect, not only on your bottom line in your business, but on your relationship, relationship with your partner, relationship with your friends, relationship with your children, and even your internal relationship with yourself. So, you definitely want to pull out a notepad, take note, matter of fact, even reach out to someone, your team, and say, listen, you need to listen to today's podcast. 5 mistakes that will cause your business or your family to suffer. You don't wanna miss it. Now, you might be saying, well, what are the 5 mistakes that business owners tend to make? And, because of these 5 mistakes, they have suffered loss, they've invited anxiety, they've added on stress unnecessarily, and there have been tended casualties of war. Now some would argue that business is a game, and other will say business is war. I disagree with both of those analogies. I don't believe that business is a game, because we're dealing with real people. I also don't agree that business is synonymous with war, in which you're trying to annihilate your competition. No, my friend, what I believe is that business is simply business. It shouldn't be personal and decisions should be made with the intent of helping others. Matter of fact, if you were to ask me, well, doctor Lyman, how would you define business? I would define business by saying business is your ability to add value to others that brings about a change or a transformation that they were seeking. To me, that is the essence of business. And these five mistakes that I'm going to share with you will not only cause you to suffer in business, but could also cause your family, your loved ones, your friends to also suffer. Point number 1. A lack of focus is the primary reason why most businesses suffer. You cannot have SOS syndrome and be successful in business. Now you might be saying, what is SOS Syndrome? SOS Syndrome is shiny object syndrome, where you're chasing everything and capturing none. When you try to sell to everyone or market to everyone, and you end up with 0 customers. A lack of focus will cause you to miss opportunities, because you're too busy, too distracted, chasing after things that are not even a part of why you're in business. So the mistake number 1, is a lack of focus due to being distracted. Point number 2. Lack of clear and concise goals. Lack of clear and concise goals. There's an old adage that says, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. Too often in business, we're trying to do too many things and we don't have a clear road map to get from point a to point b. And so, we spin our wheels firing out of control, doing a lot of everything, but accomplishing very little. I had a pastor that said many years ago, never confuse activities with accomplishments. Just because you're doing a whole lot, doesn't mean you've accomplished anything. And so point number 2 is to have clear and concise goals. Where do you wanna be a year from now? Where do you wanna be 6 months from now? Where do you wanna be 3 months from now? Where do you wanna be a week from now? And start with the end in mind. It's very similar to mapping out a road trip. You know you wanna go from Ohio, where I'm at, to California. Imagine if I didn't have a road map, a GPS, and I just got in a car, and just decided to go south. I would waste a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of gas, a lot of wear and tear, going anywhere, but yet going nowhere, Because I did not take the time to map out my route or, in modern day, put the darn address of my destination in the GPS and allow the GPS to map out a course that I can simply follow. So mistake number 2 that will cause you to suffer in your business and in your personal life is a lack of clarity, and that clarity must be concise, concise clarity of goals, clear goals. I know where I'm going. I know the path that is set before me. Number 3. Mistake number 3, and this is for business owners that have employees, over micromanagement of your team. Keep in mind, you've hired your team because they bring to the table expertise to assist you in growing and expanding your business. But if you hover over them and micromanage them to the point that they feel stifle, you will lose good people, they will not stay. So you wanna make sure that you're not stifling the growth of your team. Allow them to do what you've hired them to do. Yes. We're not saying not to provide guidance. We're not saying not to provide correction when needed, but allow them to fail, but fail quickly. You might be saying, wait a minute, what do you mean fail? Yes. The quicker that they are able to fail, the quicker they are able to learn from their failure, and to correct the mistakes, and move forward. You see it's a lot easier to fail early in the process, than to fail at the end of a launch. Let me say that again. It is much better to fail at the beginning of a process than to fail at the end of a launch. It's very similar to flying an airplane on autopilot. The reason we have autopilot, is that autopilot is able to make thousands of micro corrections much faster than you and I, to the point that they are made so quick that we don't feel them while we sit on the plane. So allow your team to fail early on, learn from their mistakes, so that they can correct those mistakes and move forward. Mistake number 4, going back to your team, not only micromanaging them, but not engaging them in the decision making process. A huge, huge mistake. Did you know that years ago when Kodak was the number one producer of film. Now I'm I'm telling my age here because I know most of you probably think if you're under the age of 35, that we've always had digital cameras. But there was a time where you had a roll of film, you put the film in the camera, and you had to take that roll of that roll of film to a drugstore or somewhere and actually have that film developed, and you had to wait a couple of days, you would go back, pick up those pictures. There was a young man that worked for Kodak who had come up with a concept of digitizing film. He went to a supervisor, had this great idea, and I think there is a need where we can digitize film. The supervisor said, oh, it never worked. Nope. Nope. Nope. He went 3 levels up, finally had an audience with one of the key executive executives of Kodak, and they said, no. They did not listen. Now, Kodak is out of business. Imagine what would have happened if Kodak had engaged that gentleman and said, let's look at the possibility and even create a spin off, continue doing film, but let's experiment because maybe there's something here. What am I saying? Don't be afraid to engage your staff in the decision making, even if they have a crazy idea. That crazy idea can make you 1,000,000 of dollars. Can you imagine 30, 40 years ago, someone coming up to you saying, I have this great idea, and you say, well, what's the idea? The idea is to sell water package in plastic bottles. Now, keep in mind at the time, why would anyone pay for water, when water is free out of the faucet. Think about if you had been that manager, that supervisor, that boss, and someone, one of your employees, they come up to you with a crazy idea of selling water in a bottle. And now, as we all know, bottled water is a multi billion with a b, multi billion dollar industry. So don't make the mistake of not engaging and listening to your staff even if they present a crazy idea, because you never know that crazy idea might be the key to your success. The last tragic mistake. Making decisions based on emotion, not data. Making decisions based on your emotions, and not looking at the data. I've coached a number of business owners, entrepreneurs that have said to me, I understand what the numbers say, but I feel we should move in this direction, or I don't care what the statistics say. I don't care what the evidence shows. I feel strongly about this, and I wanna go in this direction. How many of you have made decisions based on a feeling only to have your feelings hurt? Now, I know there are some of you out there, but what about intuition? What about having that gut feeling that you know is right? This is what I have to say to them. Your gut feeling should back up what the facts say. We're not moved by our feelings, we're not led by our feelings, but those feelings are to confirm what the data shows. So I'm not discounting your emotions, I'm not discounting your feelings, so there is a place for your feelings. I'm only saying allow your emotions, your intuition to confirm what you already know. Now you might be saying, okay, doctor Lyman, that's great. You you you've told us 5 mistakes to avoid, but how can we if we've made those mistakes, how can we recover? I'm so glad you asked. In our next segment we come back, I wanna give you 5 action steps that you can take to turn things around if you're heading in the wrong direction. Hello. Thank you everyone, and welcome back to Scale to the Top with your podcaster, doctor Lynam Montgomery. Uh, today we've been talking about 5 mistakes to avoid. These 5 mistakes will cause your business and your loved ones to suffer. And so just to recap from the first set, we talked about avoiding poor planning. Number 2, a lack of clear and concise goals. You need to have a road map to get to where you're going. Also, mistake number 3, micromanaging and not engaging your team, even if they have a crazy idea, and allowing your emotion, number 5, your emotions to lead you, rather than using your emotions to confirm what the data has to say. In this segment, I wanna talk about key action steps that you can take if you have messed it up. You said, okay, Lyman, man. You you you you you call my number. I've messed up. Help. What can I do? Well, the good news is even if you've messed up in those areas, one of those areas, all 5 of those areas, there's good news for you. Today, you can turn it around and get back on the right track. The first one is commit to being open. Commit to being open. You see, a closed hand or a closed mind can neither give nor receive. So be open to the possibility of new things. Be Too often we deal with individuals that have closed off, oh, that won't work. Well, how do you know? Well, we tried that 20 years ago. It didn't work then, it won't work now. Be open. Number 2, understand that you don't know everything. Let me say it again. Number 2, be open to the fact you don't know everything. I don't care how many degrees you have, it is only a degree, a micro degree of all the knowledge contained in the universe. You don't know everything. Number 3, and this will help you more than anything else, you have to get a mentor or a coach. Stop trying to do it by yourself. You need someone that have already gone down that road, they know where the pitfalls are, They know where the land mines are. They know where the traps are, and they've already blazed the trail. They were the pioneers. They got arrows in their back to show it. Follow those that have gone before you, that have laid a pathway for you. Too often, I deal with entrepreneurs that say, well, I know I need a coach, but I'm just going to try to find it online. How's that working for you? Do you realize the amount of time that it will take you to try to figure out certain things in business? Others of us that have already figured it out? And we can provide you with the road map. We can provide you with the guidance, the coaching, the consulting, to avoid the mistakes that we've made, so that you can be successful, that you can learn from our mistakes. You see, that's what a good mentor does. That's what a good coach does. He or she allows you to look into their lives and to extrapolate or to extract their knowledge, their skill set, and their know how to shorten the distance. Here's a great analogy, which is quicker? All of them will get you there eventually. Going back to my analogy of from Ohio to California, You could walk. It'll probably take you several weeks, if not months, depending on how fast you're able to walk. If you were able to walk from Ohio to California, but you could walk it. You could take a bike, a little faster than walking, but it still would take you a longer period of time. You could take a bus, a Greyhound bus, and stop at every little small village, every little small town, but you will eventually get there in a few days. You could drive your own vehicle. It may take you a day or 2, but you eventually get there. But what if I said, wouldn't it be great if you could just get on the jet, and instead of months, instead of weeks, instead of days, you can shorten the distance from where you're at to where you would like to be in a matter of hours. That is what coaching does. It shortens the amount of time to get from point a, where you're currently at, to point b, where you want to be in your business. And so, again, if you're going to be successful, stop making these 5 critical mistakes. Get a coach. Listen to your team. Realize that you don't know everything, but also, and perhaps most important, keep an open mind. Well, until next time. This is doctor Lyle Montgomery with another edition of Scale to the Top podcast. I will see you next week. Be blessed, and remember, my friend, always stay focused.