Every Leader Needs These Five Success Factors
#LeadandLift | Episode 69 | Amanda Bedell
Have you ever failed?
Amanda had big dreams for her bakery business but she lost her business after six years of working hard on it and sacrificing her time and even her health to make it work. However, the lessons she learned because of that failure propelled her into greater success and now she is able to guide others who are dealing with the same situation she was in today.
Amanda pointed out that people love the term “failing forward” or that a person isn’t failing, but instead, they are learning. It is true that there are a lot of gems that people can learn from failure but the thing is when you are in that moment, you don’t really see where the future is going. The dream shatters in front of you and there seems to only be darkness ahead.
You won’t realize right away that this moment of darkness will earn you gems that carry you to your success and enable you to help other people too.
In the case of our guest, she says that it took years of taking care of herself, getting back on her feet, healing from the injury, and dusting herself again. But because she had made it through, we can benefit from the things she learned that helped her bring her business back on track.
Five-Part Framework For Creating A Successful Business
Have you heard of the 80/20 rule? Some people say that 20% of your customers generate 80% of your income or that 20% of your activities generate 80% of what you do. With Amanda’s five-part framework, she magnifies the 20% of activities that lead to having a successful business.
The Five-Part Framework:
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Foundations. These are your policies, procedures, business model, and how you’re different from anybody else that sells what you sell.
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Leads. Lead generation is the fuel for any business. Even in corporate, Human Resource representatives for example would need an effective way to generate leads in order to attract the right employee.
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Conversions. Rather than chasing the latest social media trend, focusing on conversions is looking at how you could tighten up your conversations and make your present systems better and more robust. In conversions, what we’re looking for is vertical growth rather than horizontal growth. How are you deepening your relationship with your clients?
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Transactions. Know how many people are buying from you, what else you have that serves them, and if there are any people in your community that you can do a joint-venture partnership with.
- Profits. Business owners tend to overlook profits and focus more on marketing and generating revenue. There are strategies to increase your business’s profitability, for example, looking at how you’re pricing your business products or bundling opportunities and looking at your costs.
It’s important that you apply the 80/20 rule by considering what is that thing that’s going to give you the biggest return on your time, energy, and money. Look for two or three things that you do and just focus on them relentlessly, then, everything will fall into place.
Going Back To The Purpose Of Your Marketing
“When you look at leads, you look at the purpose of your marketing being to bring your prospect through a buying decision.”
People have a lot of opinions about how to do marketing and a lot of them have had some sort of success to back those strategies up. However, just because it worked for them, doesn’t mean it will work for you. You’ve got to shift the perspective back to the purpose of your marketing and take a look at how you can do something different to produce a better result.
One idea that Amanda gives us is to do a joint venture with somebody that makes sense for the type of business that you do. Leverage people that have access to and trust of the people that you’re looking to work for.
Joint ventures, according to Amanda, are by far the best way to spread the word about your company especially if it’s for a B2B business. Social media isn’t always the answer and sometimes it’s the wrong answer. It could lead you to waste time, effort, and money on something that won’t bring you any return.
Knowing what marketing will work for you is a matter of analyzing your business, and your target prospects, and hiring a coach. A coach can use their experience and their knowledge of you and your business to provide a framework for you to follow and to guide you into what you should be focusing on.
Success Leaves Clues
“If you’ve got people around you that are doing what you want to do, you will get there because their influence will entice you to in that direction. Don’t feel afraid to ask people who are in the positions that you want to be in.”
A great piece of advice from Amanda is for us to find a mentor, someone who does what we want to do, someone who sees the grander picture of where you are going. Mentors and coaches will help us to set big, audacious goals and help us keep track and keep it consistent.
As you’re building your business or your career, setting goals isn’t everything, you’ll want to have somebody that’s there to cheer you on, somebody who already got to where you want to be and therefore knows what you have to do to get there too.
This ties into another valuable thing when it comes to finding a coach or a mentor. Sometimes what you need isn’t someone to cheer you on anymore, but someone to tell you the truth and to provide clarity in your situation so that you’re not driving yourself deeper into the dirt.
When you sacrifice your health, family relationships, and your own joy to get what you want, then somebody needs to tell you that whatever it is isn’t worth losing your life over. Having a mentor or a coach will help you be aware of these as they will be able to see inside your blindspots and inform you of the things that you might be able to perceive.
“If you’re lonely right now in your business or at work, you’re doing it wrong.”
Our society and culture preach that for us to have “real” success, we have to make it on our own and carry ourselves to that finish line. However, you’ll find that is farthest from the truth when you look at the lives of truly successful people. The truth is that people win together and if you want to reach your goals, you’ll need people - and all the different strengths they bring - to help you along the journey.
Protecting Your Greatest Investment
The pandemic hurled us into a period of uncertainty. We lived in it, survived, and many thrived. For Amanda, the biggest gem of learning she took from this period of uncertainty was that she had to take care of her investment and that investment is herself.
Flashback to Amanda’s bakery business, she didn’t ask for help and she lost it all. Now, Amanda has four coaches and a business advisor. She admits that it may be a little scary to think financially about hiring this amount of people but Amanda has become more successful than she had ever been thanks to all that support.
With coaches and mentors, you won’t have to be alone in your entrepreneurial journey where there are highs and lows. In your low times, you’ll have a whole team in your corner who specializes in different things.
Protect your investment, protect yourself. When you hire a coach or seek mentorship, you’re investing in your growth and in your continuous success. It is scary to think about financially, but it would be even scarier without them.
Rearview Mirror Moment
If you’re struggling right now, maybe because of some decisions that turned out to be failures, Amanda encourages us to remember that we’re going to have a rearview mirror moment soon. Take a deep breath, make a note of what comes to mind of what you learned, write it down, and say it back to yourself. Address it to your future self that has made it through, because you will make it through.
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Chabidaye Jaglal Ramnath
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Hi! I'm Chabidaye Jaglal Ramnath, your Certified High Performance Coach. You know when high achieving moms in leadership desire more joy, fulfillment and confidence in their personal life and business? I deliver that through high performance coaching. I am so happy that our paths have crossed!
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