Business is Good with Chris Cooper

This week, we're going to build entrepreneurial resilience: the ability to just keep going when things go wrong.

Listen to this episode, and then visit the Daily Directives section at BusinessIsGood.com to complete daily exercises for resilience all week.

I'm Chris Cooper, and today I'm discussing strategies for overcoming adversity in business. Setbacks are inevitable, but they can be managed by spreading them out over time and making them less impactful. I've found that taking a long-term view, recognizing small wins, and maintaining a practice mindset can prepare us for future challenges. It's also crucial to evolve and improve with clients, staff, or products, and to view departures as opportunities for growth. Every challenge is a stepping stone to greater opportunities, so it's essential to stay resilient and see setbacks as part of the journey.

Understanding Adversity in Entrepreneurship

I kick off the podcast by emphasizing the importance of learning from mistakes and sharing those lessons with other entrepreneurs. I introduce the concept of "$13 days," those times when progress feels like a step backward. This is a normal part of the entrepreneurial journey. The goal is to spread out these backward steps over time, making them smaller and less catastrophic. I share a personal anecdote about my mentor asking me about the last significant setback, which highlights the importance of perspective.

The Long View and Bright Spots

I advise taking a long-term view. Look back at past rough weeks, and you'll see that they happen less frequently and with less impact over time. I introduce "Bright Spots Fridays," where we reflect on our achievements to train our minds to focus on positive outcomes. Recognizing and celebrating small wins helps us stay resilient and better handle adversity. The purpose of Bright Spots Fridays isn't to brag; it's to acknowledge and learn from our successes.

Practice and Preparation for Future Challenges

Every challenge is practice for a bigger but similar challenge in the future. Each setback is a learning opportunity. I use the example of a staff member quitting as a rehearsal for handling more significant departures down the line. By preparing processes to prevent similar issues, we become better equipped to handle adversity with less impact. This cycle of audit and improvement is crucial for continuous growth and resilience.

Client Relationships and Successful Exits

I talk about the natural end date for client relationships and how important it is to view client departures as a success rather than a failure. I share my criteria for a successful client exit, like the client continuing their fitness habit or achieving significant life changes. By focusing on the positive outcomes of client departures, we can feel more confident and prepared for future changes. This concept extends to our staff, products, and services, underscoring the importance of continuous improvement and evolution.

Creating Opportunities Through Adversity

I suggest seeing every challenge as an opportunity to create a seat at the table for something better. I share Emerson's quote, "Heartily no, when demigods go, the gods arrive," to illustrate how removing one challenge opens up space for a greater opportunity. Examples include replacing a damaged company car with a better one or using a staff departure to attract a more suitable candidate. I emphasize the importance of a linear approach to growth, where overcoming one challenge paves the way for the next opportunity.

Top Tips for Working Through Adversity

To sum up, here are my top tips for working through adversity: take the long-term view, maintain a practice mindset, recognize that nothing lasts forever, and see challenges as opportunities. Count your wins, prepare for future challenges, and evolve with your business. Remember, setbacks are part of the journey. Stay resilient by focusing on the positive outcomes.

I invite you to join the private Facebook group for entrepreneurs for additional support and discussion. Let's continue this conversation and work through these challenges together.

Connect with Chris Cooper:

Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Why founders don’t make money

They are product oriented -inventors not investors 

They quit too soon - in the product crew successful, they have done its job

They failed to scale - They are irreplaceable in their business.

Connect with Chris Cooper:

Website - https://businessisgood.com/

I'm a product guy.

I want to believe that if I keep making my product better, I'll make it more profitable.

Unfortunately, that almost never works - we get caught in the Technician's Curse and never stop iterating on our product, tweaking it, improving it...and never having time to market it.

But there are SOME ways that improving your product CAN make it more profitable:

Being the best in class creates a huge advantage, because the best clients will ascend to your service (if they know about it.)

Tactically, you can also try:

• Outcome-based pricing 
• Pursuing greatness as a marketing strategy. 
• Improving client retention by improving client outcomes.

I walk through all of this on today's episode!

Connect with Chris Cooper:

Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Connect with Chris Cooper:

Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Characteristics of Missionaries and Mercenaries

Missionaries:

• Purpose-Driven: Focused on the company’s vision and values, often motivated by making a meaningful impact.
• Long-Term Commitment: Likely to stay with the company through ups and downs, seeing their work as a calling or part of a larger mission.
• Team-Oriented: They prioritize collaboration and the overall success of the team over personal gain.

Mercenaries:

• Outcome-Focused: Driven primarily by personal benefits such as compensation, bonuses, and other perks.
• Short-Term Commitment: Their loyalty is as long as the benefits last; they may quickly move on if a better offer appears.
• Individualistic: Tends to prioritize personal achievements and recognition over team success.

2. Identifying Missionaries and Mercenaries in the Workplace

Missionaries:

• Look for employees who advocate for the company’s values and are enthusiastic about company-wide goals and missions.
• They often go beyond their job descriptions to help colleagues and advance the organization’s objectives.

Mercenaries:

• Identify those who frequently negotiate for higher pay or better titles without corresponding increases in their contribution to team goals.
• They may exhibit high performance but are less interested in collaborative projects unless these directly impact their personal targets.

3. The Strategic Use of Mercenaries in Business

When You’d Want a Mercenary:

• Special Projects: For short-term, high-impact projects where specific skills are crucial, and the commitment is finite.
• Scaling Operations: When rapid scaling is needed, mercenaries can accelerate growth given their focus on outcomes and deliverables.

4. Encouraging Missionaries to Thrive

Stoking Up Missionaries:

• Align Roles with Passions: Ensure that their roles are closely aligned with what they are passionate about within the context of the company’s mission.
• Recognition and Empowerment: Recognize their contributions in meaningful ways and empower them with the autonomy to lead initiatives.
• Foster a Purpose-Driven Culture: Strengthen the company’s mission-oriented culture, making the collective mission a central part of daily business operations.

If you want to join the conversation with other entrepreneurs, click here.

Connect with Chris Cooper:

Website - https://businessisgood.com/

 I get between 30 and 300 messages on FB every single day. Usually, I ask, "what are your goals for the business?" and the entrepreneur answers, "I need more clients." But in many ases, they have lots of clients, and that's not ht eproblem. They're chasing the wrong metric. In fact, they're chasing the hardest metric. They should be chasing profit. How do you get more profit and impove that metric? Getting more revenue and cutting unnecessary expenses. You improve those 2 metrics. How do you improve the revenue metric? More clients, maybe...or maybe more rev per client, or maybe less churn. You improve those 3 metrics (headcount, ARM and LEG) But what if you just improved one of those metrics right now? Like ARM? well, every client goes up $10/mo. If you have 100 clients, that's 1000 more/mo. So you improve revenue. Since that revenue doesn't come with additional expenses, the new revenue is all profit. Bingo - you've improved hte metric you actually want to improve. Now let's look at the alternative. You want to improve revenue so you increase client headcount. Well, more clients comes with some expenses: staff, equipment, etc. A good benchmark is that 44% of your revenue, per client, goes to staff. So you bring on 10 clients paying $100/mo...and you have to add coaches and equipment. So maybe about $550 goes to the bottom line. You've improved revenue by $1000, but profit by only $550. Obviously there are a lot of factors here. BUT the key is identifying the right metric to improve. Professionals can actually grow a lot faster by increasing the frequency and value of their services than by increasing their client count. This is where a mentor helps: You start with the end in mind. If your mentor is asking "why do you want that?" it's because they're trying to guide you to the endgame - the picture of success that you have in your head. You might not even have taken the time to craft this picture, which is why you're chasing the wrong metric. Or maybe you know where you want to go, but haven't 'considered all sides of the coin. THat's where a mentor can help too: they can show you the easiest ways to get to your goal once you have it. It's up to you to track these metrics. and when you become a very good business owner, you can identify these opportunities for yourself. Until then, though, if you think that 'more clients' = success, I'd seek an outside perspective.

Connect with Chris Cooper:

Website - https://businessisgood.com/

When most entrepreneurs get their business running smoothly, they turn their eyes to the next thing: the next level, the next opportunity, the next location, or the next big idea.

This means they no longer spend all of their time caring for, feeding and protecting the Golden Goose. They might entrust its care to someone else...but that person doesn't have all of the context, experience or knowledge of the business owner.

We call this "moving from Farmer phase to Tinker Phase". When you leave your farm in the hands of someone else and start tinkering, you have to mentor the new farmer.

In this episode, I talk about the step that most successful founders skip: mentoring their team.

I tell you why it's important, and how to do it step by step.

If you want to join the conversation with other entrepreneurs, click here.

Connect with Chris Cooper:

Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Connect with Chris Cooper:

Website - https://businessisgood.com/

Connect with Chris Cooper:

Website - https://businessisgood.com/

No matter what kind of service business you own, you must carefully consider their first 3 visits into your service. These first 3 interactions set you up for long-term client retention...or early washout.

Here's how to do it.

Connect with Chris Cooper:

Website - https://businessisgood.com/