Edmonton Business Coach | It Takes A Long Time To Become an Overnight Success
Hi, welcome back to Inspired Method Marketing, your Edmonton business coach here on YouTube. My name is Karen and this is my husband, Trevor, and we are going to be talking about; it takes a long time to be an overnight success.
We hear that all the time. Oh, she’s an overnight success. So really there’s years, even as a singer or reformer, you think about those people were not success most of the time they were practicing or you know, they’ve been singing since they are born. That’s just not overnight.
Jim Collins, the author of six books says somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Walmart was just this great idea that turned into an overnight success, but it was an outgrowth of everything we’d been doing since 1945 and like most overnight successes. It was about 20 years in the making. I read the story of Sam Walton, he did not start out as Walmart, that’s for sure.
It took Amazon a decade before it actually turned a profit. Yeah, they were doing millions and millions of dollars in sales, but they didn’t turn a profit I think until 2003.
2003 first year they turn a profit. That’s a long time. You got to be able to ride that wave, that’s for sure. You do. Lots of business owners see an entrepreneurship video, attend a seminar about business ownership and get stars in their eyes. Unfortunately they soon realize that it isn’t as easy as it was. No, that’s actually a fortunate thing if you realize that quite early because when you realize you have to put the work, if it was easy, everyone would do it.
Edmonton business coach, do most businesses start out with an amazing product or service offering?
No, they don’t can usually it starts off with an idea and they think, you know, let’s, let’s start doing this. Particular service or product. But then as business owners look at the market and how people are responding then their product or service offering changes to adapt to what the clients are looking for.
If you are creating a widget and then trying to find someone who will buy that widget, then you’re probably going to fail. But if you have a viable market, viable person type of customer who needs that service, you find out what their needs are and you create something to fill that need. That’s how you should do it, and it’s the advice we give as an Edmonton business coach.
Does this mean the owner has to invest more time to make up for this?
You don’t get it right out of the gate. We tell our Edmonton business coach clients that there’s always going to be things that you need to change. You need to improve and do some investigating, some learning. You know, it takes time to learn these things. Just like Sam Walton. Walmart wasn’t an overnight thing when he started.
It took a long time to build up that momentum and become the machine that it became. They even went through rebranding, name changes, lots of different things that they had to do. So let’s say it’s not going to be any different for our Edmonton business coach clientele.
Is this a scalable model?
Well, what you have to keep in mind when you think of scale is once you have, the right product or service offering for your ideal and likely buyers, then it’s a matter of creating the systems and processes to make it scalable. That means getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and then systematizing that business and that product service.
So that you can scale if you don’t have something that is scalable and it only, only one person can do it, then you’re never going to scale. You’re never going to be able to leave. You’re never going to be able to take a vacation. You’re always going to be working on that business. We coach our Edmonton business coach business owners that they have to create something that is teachable to somebody else.
Make systemized processes so that other people can do the work for you. It doesn’t take a long time to create repeatable processes to ensure quality. Yeah, 100%. It takes some time. You have to go through many different renditions of your service. It takes a long time to get that just right. And then once you do, you like the saying goes I think is from a Dr Zoellner says, nail it, then scale it.
Who was initially responsible for all sales and marketing for a business?
The people who are responsible for the sales and marketing initially are the business owners themselves. Take for instance, when you’re doing a, let’s say a service business, lawn care, uh, electrical fence building. In fact, um, you are responsible to do all of that. You’ve got to knock on the doors, leave fliers, meet face to face with people.
That’s up to you to do all of that at the beginning. We tell our Edmonton business coach clients that these things cannot be abdicated to somebody else. You can’t rely on others to do the work for you because you are the name and the face of that business. You know, you’re the one who will be the passionate one to show people what it’s all about.
Once you understand what people are looking for and you can create that scalable model and teach other people to catch that same fire. Then you can show other people how to do that.
How long does it take to implement scalable marketing systems?
As far as a timeline goes, I don’t know the exact timeline as an Edmonton business coach. It all depends on the business, right? It depends on what you’re doing. It’s not the same for every business, but it does take, it takes some time. I would say you’re looking more than a year. I would say probably closer to three to five years is when your things are actually working the way that they should be working.
The minimum would be around a year or on the 12 month mark. Then you have at least some scalable processes and marketing in place that can help your business to grow.
How can cashflow constraints hinder growth even if you have a lot of sales, Edmonton business coach?
Well, cashflow is very important because if you don’t have the cashflow to either pay for more people to do the work or materials, this is actually a reason why businesses go bankrupt. I was just reading from a friend on Facebook, if you’re overselling and you have to hire people to fulfill, just kind of put the cart before the horse. You can’t scale it properly and actually prepare for lean times because there’s always a cycle. And if you don’t do that, you have a very high risk in going bankrupt.
I know some people have like there’s some real bad stories of in a small way, it’s still devastating to a small business just as much as to a maintenance business. Because I mean even though you’re growing, maybe your systems aren’t in place and that’s where you lack and then it can be really, really harmful.
Let’s say you’ve sold lots of lots of your product, lots of your service. Then it comes to can’t deliver on it, right? You can’t fulfill because the time when you’re getting paid from the client. And the time of your bills are due from suppliers or payroll or taxes. You can run out of money before you can actually fulfill that project. So that’s, that’s a massive problem that a lot of companies run into and we’ve seen it in our Edmonton business coach clients. Even though they’ve sold hypothetically, they haven’t collected any money cause it’s not done yet.
Is hiring outside leadership, a guarantee a success and growth?
No, if you read the book good to great by Jim Collins, you’ll see there that any of their good to great companies who outperformed the stock market over a number of years and over the decades they always hired their top level CEOs and managers from within. We always share this with our Edmonton business coach clients who believe that outside talent is the solution.
The Good to Great companies didn’t have some outside talent or outside Guru come in and take over and make the business to shine. It was all done from the inside. It’s about building that culture with, from within the company that will help you to succeed and to grow. And I think that’s where you find that perfect person because they have the culture.
How long should you plan for developing great leaders?
This is a long-term goal. It’s not a short term anything. There’s nothing. If you’re thinking of just being in business for the short term, then get out of business, like it’s a long-term long-haul process. It takes time. So you’ve got to be planning at least five years old to find the right people to be in key positions in your company because it takes time for people to understand the processes, systems, culture, the passion. Understanding customers, and the overall plan of what you’re wanting to do.
Um, and you know, it may even take a long time for you to figure all that out for your business. I was gonna say that I get all the wrinkles out. Do all the hard work of getting started. Getting started is the hard part. Refining your product, service offering. Figuring out your cash flow and you know, how to make it profitable and scalable. It all takes time. And then having the right team members on board who are willing to go the distance.
That’s something that is especially unique and you have to plan for long-term. Thanks so much for joining us here on YouTube. We are inspired method marketing. Don’t forget to like the video, leave us a comment, tell us maybe you know, a story that you have about how long it takes to, you know, overnight success and you have a story of your own. And don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and we’ll see you on the next video.