[00:00:00] Hey, hey, hey. So hey, let’s talk about the seven mistakes I see entrepreneurs making when they’re trying to grow their business. So, are you an entrepreneur who is struggling to grow and to get beggar and to really provide the impact that you want? Or let’s just be honest, get the money that you deserve, right?

That you’re working a whole lot hard, but not getting the rewards that you think that you should be getting. Well, I’d love to talk to you about those seven mistakes that I watch people will make. My name is Richelle Shaw, and I’m the author of, The Million Dollar Equation of “Jackpot: How to Build a Million Dollar Business in Las Vegas without the Casinos” and of “The Million Dollar Equation for Doctors”, where we help them build their practices.

And so where I’ve found the biggest mistakes that entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs make when they’re trying to grow their business is that number one is that they are unclear about their message. [00:01:00] They’re unclear about really who they want to serve and what it is that they’re doing. You know, what is your mission?

It’s never just about selling things. It’s if you are not solving a problem. If you are not solving your customer’s problem or your potential customer’s problem, then you’re gonna have a hard time selling and it’s going to stagnate your growth. You can hustle only for so long, but at some point you need to be able to have a really great structure so that now everybody is clear about your mission.

So what is my mission? My mission is that I wanna see a million businesses hit a million dollars in revenue. Why is that? Well, because less than 9% of all businesses ever grown, ever started, ever reached the million dollar level.

That’s crazy. Less than 9% and less than 3% of women owned businesses ever reached the million dollar level. So why are we in business? You know, being in business is to make [00:02:00] money, right? But in order to make money, you have to create your mission and be very clear about who you’re serving. So that’s number one.

Number two is, You need to really get clear about who your customer is and who you’ve chosen as your customer. So did you choose your customers? Yeah. You do. You actually choose them. A lot of times, you know, you choose them by allowing them to either. Bargain with you by just taking whoever comes to you instead of setting up a system of sales choreography that you can get the customers that you actually want.

So you need to be very clear on who you’re gonna take, the yes and the no, the ones that you say, absolutely not. I’m never going to take this. Kind of customer, but sometimes you take them because you feel like your revenue is stagnant and that you’re not in the right place. So you just take any customer.

I wanna get you out of that habit because choosing [00:03:00] bad customers only creates a bad business. You end up choosing a tribe of discounters, right? A tribe of people who. Don’t really value what you’re getting. You don’t want to create a tribe of people who are just takers. You wanna create a tribe of people who love you and who can’t wait to buy your next item, whether it be a product or a service. That’s where you need to focus.

And so number one is being unclear about your message and who you serve. Number two is making sure that you’re choosing the right customers who will be there for the long run, the ones that are gonna be there forever with your business, not the ones that come in and come out, and that you just sell one time and you keep going.

So that’s why the growth isn’t happening, because you haven’t built a sustainable long-term business. You’ve built a right now. Right? So remember when they used to talk about us, about who we’re dating, and they’re like, don’t just get a right now person. Get a person who’s gonna be with you for life.

That’s what you [00:04:00] want when you’re building your business. You don’t want a right now customer. You want a customer who’s gonna be with you for life. That’s how you get to the real growth that you want and need in your business. So let’s focus on choosing the right one and not just. Anyone, not anyone who can pay you is never the right customer.

You wanna choose the one who’s gonna be there forever and who’s gonna love you, who’s gonna talk about you, who’s gonna pay you and refer you. That’s going to be the best process into getting them. 

Number three, I noticed that not only are you choosing the wrong customer, but you are getting your customers by chance and not by choice.So what do I mean by that? I mean that you’re just randomly kind of out there. So I would, when people find out what I do that, yes, I help businesses grow. I help entrepreneurs, you know, change their lives. Change the lives of other peoples and their families. They always love to tell me, oh, well, I don’t need any marketing help.

You know, I get all my customers [00:05:00] through referrals. I go really? That’s bad. They’re like, what? That is not bad. That’s, that’s like, that’s the best ever. That’s what businesses want. Yes. But if you don’t have a structured system to how those referrals are coming to you, that’s not good. You want a structured system to who,who your people and your friends, your tribe that’s out there is referring to you. 

You don’t just want anybody, because anybody doesn’t understand the structure. They don’t understand what your business is providing. They don’t understand that you are charging a different price. They don’t understand that like they’re taking the recommendation, but a lot of times you still have to jump through hoops to get the right customers through a referral.

So I wanna make sure that you’re getting your customers. By choice and not just by chance, not just by random people, that’s not going to help you build a sustainable business that lasts forever. I ran a mastermind for 10 years with the same people that referred new [00:06:00] people to us, but I made sure that they got the right folks.

Not people who needed us, but people who wanted us. There’s a big distinction between people who need your service or product and people who want it. You know, people only buy what they want. They don’t buy what they need. They don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want. Oftentimes you will see them, you know, in a horrible neighborhood, but they’re driving a big, big car, a very expensive car, and it’s like, really?

So you’re choosing to live in a neighborhood that’s not the best neighborhood, but you’re driving a really beautiful car. Well, why? Because that’s the status that they want. People buy what they want, not. What they need. And you’ll notice that in this country that credit card debt is the highest that it’s ever been.

You know, I am the money honey. So I do all the financial segments for our local Fox five here in Las Vegas. And when we talk about consumer debt all the time, consumer debt is. [00:07:00] Outrageous. And it’s not because people are buying what they need. I mean, there’s a small segment that are in debt because they just had to buy what they need.

But most people are in debt because they’re buying what they want because they say, I deserve a vacation, even though they can’t afford a vacation. So they put it on a credit card. They say, I deserve a brand new car because, They want a brand new car, not because their old car isn’t working. They just decided that I need a brand new car cause they’re trying to keep up with the Jones.

So when you are creating your business and when you are thinking about who that ideal customer is for you, you should think about selling them what they want, not selling them what they need. And so that’s where I think a lot of people get mixed up. Right? They get mixed up in and I’m gonna sell them what they need because they need it.

They should be buying from me. And then they get frustrated when the people who actually need it don’t buy. It’s like, well, you know, because you targeted the wrong thing, you’re focused on the wrong thing. You’re focused on what [00:08:00] people need instead of what people want. People buy what they want, not what they need.

Right? So, I give the example all the time with a client of mine that is a physician. And you know, if people, when they have a headache, what do they want? They just want you to fix it. They want you to give them the medicine so that their headache will go away.

They’re not thinking about, Ooh, am I dehydrated? Do I need more water? Did I eat something really bad last night? Am I hungover? Should I stop drinking? Should I stop this thing? That’s not what they’re thinking about. They’re just thinking, just fix the headache. They buy what they want. Not what they need. Because if you really look at medicine, medicine doesn’t really solve the problem.

It just aleves the symptoms and so your business needs to solve the problem, not aleve, the symptoms. So that’s number three is making sure that you are getting customers by choice, not just by chance. And how do you do that? Is making sure that you sell. What they want, not what they need.

 So number [00:09:00] four in this is that I think that several folks that really, it’s stagnating their growth in their businesses, that they’re thinking too small.So they’re thinking about the things that they can actually accomplish themselves instead of building a team. You know, there’s no, it’s really difficult.

 I’m not gonna say there’s no way, I’m just gonna say it’s really difficult to build a seven figure business with just one person. Right? There’s, it’s, unless you’re charging somebody a million dollars, then you can just handle that one client.

But if you’re not, then you can’t do everything. You need to have the right team, and you need to think about going and getting bigger and better customers and building a better business. So even if it is that you’re selling a million dollar product and you just want one customer, That’s never going to work.

You’re not building a sustainable business because if that customer goes away, then guess what? Now you gotta find another one. So now you have a roller coaster of revenue instead of a focused amount of revenue coming in, a predictable source of revenue coming in and [00:10:00] flowing through your business. All right.

Number five is you haven’t scheduled your success. Like you haven’t scheduled the things that are really important. So every day when I look at my things to-do list. Hey, hey, hey. Guess who does that? Ah, awesome. And Hey Monica, good to see you too. So every day in my business, when I’m looking at. At what I need to do at my to-do list, right?

I’m not just looking at my to-do list and going randomly, like I’m scheduling my success. I start with my green pen. You know, everybody like laughs at me cause I have tons of green pens on my desk. But I start with my green pen and I look at my to-do list and I circle the things that are gonna make me money right now.

And I do those first so that I can always have revenue coming into the business. And then I secondly, go to my future money, the money that’s gonna come in, in two months, in three months, and making sure that I’m handling that process. And then lastly, I delegate out [00:11:00] the minutiae. I make sure that I’m not doing the things that I have to do every single day.

I’m doing the things that somebody else can do for me. Right? I’m having that done, and then I’m only doing the things that only I can do, which a lot of times is writing copy, closing sales but sending out an email, I don’t need to do that part. And if you’re not building that bigger business, that bigger box, then you’re always gonna have these little growth, you know?

And then the ups and downs instead of a steady trajectory of rocket ship growth because you know, how do I know this .Well, I talk about how I grew my business from 300,000 to 36 million. I lost it all after nine 11, but then I rebuilt back my million dollar business in five months. How did I do that?

By doing exactly what I’m telling you. I was clear. I was very clear about who I was serving. I was very clear about which customers I wanted, and I chose them, and I made sure that I gave the customers that I chose an actual [00:12:00] system to refer other people like them, so that I didn’t get discounters. I didn’t get hagglers, I didn’t get people that I didn’t want.In my business, that doesn’t make sense, right? I only got the people that I absolutely wanted to work with, and that’s how this actually works.

 Number five, let’s still go on with scheduling your success. You need to have some type of marketing calendar, a promotional calendar, so that you’re clear about what you’re doing every single day in your business.

So today is the 19th. So on the 19th in my telephone business, I would be focusing on getting ready to disconnect service and sending replays to people. Right? Sending stuff to them, reminding them about your bill is due tomorrow, your bill is gonna go off. We just now sent the bills that were due on the first, and I created a promotion for the first of the month.

That’s what’s going on today. I knew every single day what I should be doing in my telephone business, and you need to know that too. You need to schedule your [00:13:00] success. If you’re not scheduling it, you’re leaving it up to chance and random. I don’t like random. Random creates stress for you. Random implementation gets you random money and random money creates stress.

If you don’t know how you’re gonna pay your bill on the first, then guess what? You end up not choosing your customers. You end up just taking what comes to you and that doesn’t work. That doesn’t work. It’s not, well, it doesn’t work long term. It’s not my recommendation. All right.

Number six, focusing on the wrong things. So you need to be focused on the right metrics, on the right metrics of your business, on how much it costs you to acquire a customer. They say it on Shark Tank, you hear it on the profit, you hear it all the time because it’s really, it’s that’s going to be your lifeline of the business. How much does it cost you to get a new customer?

What is that? What is that? How much does it cost you to get a new customer? And when you get the new customer .Right? [00:14:00] How much does it cost you to keep them? And whatever that investment is, that’s the investment that you can spend to acquire and keep acquiring. So I’ll watch people that they will start and stop their marketing.

It’s like, okay, so when you do that, then you start and stop your money. You realize that right? You realize that. So I used to have this one, this one client who he would make, he would sell a big job and then he wouldn’t do anything else for, until he needed money again. And I’m like, you know, that doesn’t work.

Like consistency over time really helps with business growth. So if you’re not consistently implementing, then it’s gonna slow down your money. You want it coming constantly flowing into your business so that you can sustain it and get to the million dollar level because it compounds, right? It doesn’t just come one time.

It, you need it to compound and build and build and build and build. And so what metrics are you looking at? What things are you. [00:15:00] Looking at in your business to make sure that you are investing properly. How much does it cost you to acquire a customer and making sure that you’re looking at your numbers every single day.

The second thing that I want to make sure that you’re focusing on is a lot of people focus on scarcity. Like they think that customers aren’t plentiful and abundant. They are abundant, they are customers who need you every single day. And it’s up to you to make that decision, right, to go get them to understand that.

It’s about being abundant and not being the scarcity model, because when you think scarcity that there’s a limited amount, then you make this other big mistake and that you do. Three is that you focus on your competition, so you’re looking at what they’re doing instead of running your race, right? You cannot be looking at what other people are doing.

I told the story the other day about when I was actually at the phone company and I was when I first got hired before I bought the company, right? So I was in sales and my boss said to me, [00:16:00] or the director of sales, he said do your presentation for the group, right? So I get up, I do my presentation, I tell my story and everybody was like, oh, you know, they love.

He didn’t really love it so much, and so he is like, well, you didn’t talk at all about your competition in your presentation and why we’re better than the competition. I said, well, because I don’t believe that we have any competition. I believe that what we have is just very special. And he was like, what?

Nobody does that. So like he scolded me and he tried to get me fired and all kind of stuff because he thought that I was doing it totally wrong, but he couldn’t fire me because the big boss, the owner who I actually ended up buying the business from, right? Said, well, look at her results. Look at how many customers she’s selling.

We’re not getting rid of this girl. Are you kidding me? So when he was asked to leave and I took his job, no. When I started teaching it, I started teaching the same thing. Don’t worry about your competition, your competition, you know, that whole like [00:17:00] SWAT analysis. Like I don’t believe in that.

Like, I think that gets you all caught up in what other people are doing instead of focusing on what you are doing. Like, I don’t know if you guys got to see my virtual summit that I did last week where. I just brought in 20 of my friends and we talked about, you know, I shared them with the world, the people that I use that run my ads, that help me write, copy that help develop strategy.

And I had a wonderful virtual summit. I have some replays. If you’re interested in that, you can put that there and I’ll put you in you can grab the re replays and join that mastermind that we have all together. But you know, they’re like, well, did you take a class on it first? No. I did it the way I wanted to do it, you know, did I see somebody else doing it first? Yes.

But that doesn’t mean that, that I went and studied them and went in depth. I mean, I definitely think that you can hack other people by looking at what offers work and kind of structuring it. But to sit and just watch them and compete with them is, I think you’re just wasting [00:18:00] your time.

You need to be running your own race. You need to be focusing on your mission and making sure that you’re talking to your ideal customer at all times, because when you’re not. Then you lose sight of really getting there. So I think that that’s gonna help, you know, that’s preventing you from growing the way that you really want to grow. That was number six.

All right. Number seven is not structuring your business to work with the accelerators. So in the book, “The Million Dollar Equation”. Yes, yes, yes. So I have the last chapter I talk about the accelerators, things that are like lighter fluid to your business, right. Things that when they get to your business, it’s just like, what, what happens?

So the first one is making sure that you’re charging appropriate, you know, prices, it’s like if you are charging low, low, low prices, there’s only one Walmart. You do not wanna be the low price leader. That sucks and it is not healthy for your business, for you not to be [00:19:00] able to make the money that you wanna make.

So I love for you to start and focus on affluent pricing, right? So I have a really fun, 14 day challenge where we deep dive into your business and we just kinda, and we get through all of this stuff, but we create products for you and services for you that have an ascension ladder and that get the people paying more and more while they’re with you.

And then I have you create a bundle that’s called an OMG bundle, an oh my God, bundle. And they’re like, well, what’s that, Richelle? Well, it’s like when somebody buys it, you go. Oh my God, I can’t believe that. And if you don’t have that, then you’re constantly gonna be ugh, struggling, struggling, struggling to get to the revenue levels that you wanna be at.

So I have this thing sitting on my desk because I talk about it all the time, right? So if you have your number of products that you have to sell and the price that you have to charge in order to get to a million. Right? [00:20:00] So if your pricing is something silly, you know, down here, oh, down here at a hundred dollars, okay?

Then you gotta sell 10,000 of them over here. All right? So how are you gonna sell 10,000 of them? Do you know? 10,000 people? Right? So it’s gonna be really hard to get to the million if you’re just selling the one thing for a hundred bucks. So you need to make sure that each customer, that their lifetime value, remember we talked about the metrics just a few seconds ago, is somewhere up here between $10,000 a year or a thousand dollars a year, because you can reach a hundred and you can reach a thousand people.

You can do that. So thank you, Nana. You know, oh my God, you can’t believe that, right? You can reach that amount of customers. And get to that million, but you can’t do it if you’re selling a $17 product. So you need to, number one in the accelerators, focus on affluent pricing and getting that right, who right.

Getting that right customer that [00:21:00] wants what you have for the affluent pricing. You know, there’s Bentley’s all the time. Yesterday I saw the beautiful Bentley, SUV. Have you seen that? It’s beautiful. I wanted it, right? But the reality said it, and I’m like, look, I have my Lexus, SUV. It runs just like the, well, maybe not like the Bentley, but why was I gonna buy the Bentley one?

You know, what is that about? But they are very focused on who they are targeting. They’re targeting, you know, those that have spendable cash and that say, yeah, I still want a SUV. I don’t wanna be pretentious. And right in the convertible Bentley. You know, the $300,000 one, I’d rather have the SUV.

And so they created that for them. Give people what they want, not what they need. Remember, because if it was about getting people what they need, then we would all drive the same car. So last year I spent 18 months just traveling around the country and speaking to entrepreneurs, right? And I would always do this little thing and I would ask them, [00:22:00] okay, what kind of car do you drive?

And they would tell me, and they would always be a Hot Chi guy in there, right? And I’d say, oh, I just wanna know what kind of car you drive. And they would be like, oh, I drive a Convertible Mercedes, or I drive, you know, an F-150 with this certain dah, dah, you know, all kind of stuff. And I’m like, what the hell is that?

And so I would say, well, why do you drive that? Why don’t you drive a Hyundai? Right? Because if it’s about buying what we need, then. Just get the cheapest car that there is available. Right? That we need to get from here to them. It’s never about that. The marketing of what you think that this car is going to give you, right?

Is what they’re buying. They’re not buying the thing, they’re buying the result. So while you are creating your mission, you need to make sure that you’re selling the result and then that way you can get the affluent pricing. Yes. Yes. Okay. Second thing. An accelerator that you need to focus on is continuity.

You know, why do [00:23:00] I love the telephone business? Why did I love the insurance business? Like I still have an insurance agency that I partner with other folks because it gives you continuity cause you get paid every single month. So you need to figure out a way that you can put continuity in your business.

Thank you for the lights. Thank you for the loves. I love you too. You need to figure out a way that you can put continuity in your business. So, you know, one of my really good friends owns a funeral home and they put continuity in their funeral home. It’s like, what? When people are dying, you only die once.

You know, how are you getting people to pay you monthly for the funeral? And he is like, well, I changed my who? I changed who I was targeting so that I could get the right customer and I could start getting continuity. So you can put continuity, somebody to pay you every single month in any business, but it’s one of those things that’s gonna change the trajectory of your business.

It’s not gonna do like this, it’s gonna go like this. So one of the [00:24:00] things that I pay for continuity in is I have a blow dry bar. And so I have my regular girl that I love that does my hair, that does my hair color. She cuts my hair. She does that, but I only need to really see her once every six weeks, right?

But monthly I pay to go to the blow dry bar so that anytime I want to go and get my hair done, I can just go there. It costs me less than what I pay my girl that normally does it because, you know, these are kids straight out of cosmetology school.

I’m in and out in 35 minutes. It takes me longer to drive there than it does for them to do my hair and I’m done. But I pay that every single month because, guess what? It’s the result, right? I can always go whenever I want. It’s not about, oh, I have to make an appointment. You know, with my regular girl who has been doing my hair for 20 years, by the way, I have to, you know, make sure that I’ve text her early and we’ve got appointments scheduled out because it’s hard to get in.

She’s [00:25:00] so busy and she’s so great at what she does, and the best use of her time is not washing and blow drying my hair, right? So I don’t even own shampoo. Why? Because I’m going to the place with the unlimited, it’s such a great value that I can just show up. They do my hair, I’m out and I can get on a plane, I can be on tv, do my money hunting segment, or I can come and be here with you within, you know, an hour’s time.

So that’s why I choose that. I want you to look in your business for some type of continuity, something. Some way that you can create a way that people can pay you every single month. And then last and the accelerators is by creating a joint venture. So find where your customers already are. You know, I watch businesses struggle to find, you know, who their ideal customer is, where they are.

And so the number one question I ask them is, okay, who already has them? And they go, oh, if they’ve been focusing on the wrong thing, they go, my [00:26:00] competitor. I go, that’s not true. You don’t even know that for sure. You don’t even know that cause you don’t know the backend of your competitor’s business. So stop coveting this thing that you don’t even know.

So tell me who else, like, who sells before you, who sells to your customer after you? Who are they? So that we can go focus on them and bring them in? So when I rebuilt back my telephone company, I targeted credit challenge customers. Customers who have been disconnected before. So where have they already been?

So I thought, well, I bet they have credit challenges, so I wondered if they already filed bankruptcy or if they’re thinking about filing bankruptcy. So I went to my actual bankruptcy attorney, so you know that I lost it all. You know that I had a 437 FICO score, right? So I filed bankruptcy. So I went back to my bankruptcy attorney and I said, Hey, What are you doing with your list of customers?

He goes, nothing. Are you kidding me? You know, once they file bankruptcy, they can’t again for another seven years, so we do nothing. They’re in that back room in the file cabinet. I said, well, Can I have [00:27:00] them? He’s like, yeah, I don’t care. He goes, but you have to go in there yourself. Like, I don’t have a list on my computer.

And so my first joint venture in how I was able to rebuild back my telephone company in five months is that I went in his back room and I sat on the floor and I wrote down names and addresses of people that were in my community who had filed bankruptcy. I had 3000 customers that I could potentially go and bring into my business.

So what I want you to start focusing on in the accelerators is who already has your customer? Who are they? And let’s create a relationship with them. Alright, so that’s. My seven wonderful tips. If you’ve got some questions, you can go ahead and put them in there. I’m here for a couple more minutes, but you know, while you’re thinking about it, I want you to think through, if you just focused on number seven, right?

And you said, okay, I’m gonna go find a joint venture partner. You find somebody who already has your customers, you bring them in, [00:28:00] you charge them the affluent prices, and then you put them on continuity and you get paid over and over and over again. That’s exactly how I rebuilt my telephone company in five months, right?

I found where my customers already were. I charged them higher prices than anybody else, and then I put them on continuity so that over and over and over again. That’s the easiest way to grow your business, right? If you are confused about how that works or how that works in your specific industry. Gosh, I’ve worked with, I don’t know, 97 different ones of putting the same practice, the same focus of The Million Dollar Equation in there.

I’d love to work with you, so if you’d like to chat about working together, you can put a p.m. You can send me a message and say, Hey, Richelle, I’d like to work with you. We will set up a time where we can chat. I am gonna have you do a couple of things though before you just jump on the phone with me.

But let’s chat, let’s see if it makes sense for you. All right. So I don’t see any additional questions, so I [00:29:00] will sign off today, have an amazing weekend, and love you for free. See you. Bye.