20 Key Business Concepts in 20 Minutes 9-10-26

0:00This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and Becker Private Equity podcast. Today's discussion is 20 key business concepts in 20 minutes. So here's the discussion today. This is a discussion for business leaders, for founders. Some of the points are more focused on founders. Others are more focused on business leaders. Really anybody trying to run part of a business or grow a business. We hope you enjoy this. We'd love your comments. My text number is 773-766-5322 and we're going to cover a lot of ground in 20 minutes. So the first concept is there are five phases of a business and this might seem rudimentary. There's the idea phase and the reality is everybody has an idea. There's the developed and actual product or service and this might not seem like a lot, but it's a huge difference just having an idea that you've actually got something to sell, something to bring to market. Third is you've got revenues, real paying customers,

1:03not a family member buying your product, but a real paying customer. And we'll come back to the concept of don't ask your friends if it's a good idea, commercialize early and ask real customers. Fourth is you've got profit and fifth you've got scale. And again, everybody has an idea. Very few get to the next stage. If you actually got to the spot, having some revenues, God bless you. If you got the profit, even more, then scale as a whole other animal, but that's the concept. Those are the five stages of a business. The three phases of a founder or leader. The initial phase of a founder or leader is what we call a one person wrecking crew. They sort of do everything. I remember this in the early stages of my business, practicing law, bringing in clients, building a media company, planning the agendas, hosting events, writing the newsletter, doing everything. Then the second phase, you start to hire people and they leverage you. They don't replace you. They're not necessarily better than you, but they allow you to go too x further because they're helping you expand what you can do.

2:07Finally, third is hiring people that are better than yourself and they can accelerate things without you. When you're at a spot where you've got everybody in the different department to chair positions that are better than you and you're no longer the limiting step, this is where you've moved to the right direction as a founder, the third stage of a founder a grower. There's a concept that being indispensable feels good. It's satisfying. You feel very important. Being dispensable where you're not needed and everything is much more important. Those are the first two concepts, the five phases of business, the three stages, the evolution of a founder or leader. The third concept is four key business concepts. We think about everything coming back to this and we think about so much of business, the simplification to great people and great teams. We think about four niches, four centricity concepts. The first is niche centric that you really are targeting an ideal customer and ideal market.

3:07You're not all things to all people. Second, your team centric. You're really building a great team. All the discussion about their out of solo pernolers, the real gift is people that can have great drivers, great ideas and build great teams. Third is your customer centric. You realize that business is really all about very simple to give your best people and your best customers. Those two things. Fourth goes to niche centric that you've got true product market fit. Something that people really want they really need. Are you solving a real problem for customer really needs it? Can you identify who your true customer is and know you're working with? If you can't do these things, you really shouldn't be a business or you're going to be a really inefficient business. The fourth concept when we talked about it already and we're trying to get through 20 and 20 minutes is bake business very simple. You need great people and great customers. That's about it. When I hear people explain to me their business and I can't understand what

4:08they're talking about, I know that they really don't know their own business. Focus on taking care of your customers and your people really well. The fifth concept which goes to the concept of, don't ask your friends if it's good idea. Very early on, you have to be talking to markets and talking to customers and figuring out if they really want what you're selling. If people don't want what you're selling, you essentially have what we call an advanced hobby. Other than that, you're not really in business. You could be building beautiful software. You could be a beautiful lawyer. You could be doing whatever you want. But you're not actually dealing with customers. You're not really doing anything. You have to be talking to customers early. It's talking to somebody recently who says I got to do these 30 pieces of research before I talk to somebody and I literally want to shoot myself when I hear that from a salespeople. Sixth, you need a couple great leaders and a couple great customers to accelerate. You need to know who we call your right or die people,

5:10your right or die customers. Those are all important. You recognize and build around those customers. You recognize and build around those people. You have to be relentless in identifying those people. You typically don't know who they are until they really work with you and if you're relentless in helping them to thrive. Those are our first six points. We've got through six and six minutes. I feel like we're doing pretty well. We hope you're enjoying this. The seventh concept is know your own business. Know who your best customers are. Your best people are. Where your revenues and profits come from. Track what works and double down what works. And finally, fifth, focus and double down constantly on the most important things. We're big readers of the concept of essentialism by Meg Reg McKeown and also of channel capacity. You have to constantly know what are we focusing on? Who are best people? Who are best customers? We're going to put most of the resources into those types of people. The eighth concept is you're very best people in your best areas.

6:11People used to ask me in the law firm, why does that lawyer or that lawyer always get the best opportunities with the best growth customers? Because they've proven they can grow those customers. You're trying to build a new area. You better out and you can you care about it. You better put great people on it. That's the concept there. Best people on best customers and best areas. Ninth point solution versus broader solutions. This is a long and hard subject for entrepreneurs. Most people start with the point solution. The reality is in the long run, customers only want to work with so many different point solutions. So sooner or later, you've got to develop a broader solution and a broader way of doing business. 10th goes back to customer centric and customer prioritization. The least important thing for your most important customer is really important. So we constantly think about constantly prioritizing when I was really running a legal business. We spent every week in huddle meetings talking about what are we doing for our top 10 clients? What are we new to and make sure they're being taken care of? So we're working with them. We're the

7:13best leaders on those top 10 clients. Similarly, in any other business, we were as our revenues coming from and we have our best people on that. And the least important thing for a very important customer is very, very important. Periodically, we've had people obsess over something for a non important customer and it's not to say that we don't want to do good work for non important customers, but you have certain customers 20% that pay the bills. You better be taking care of them first and foremost. The 11th concept, and we threw about 10 so far in about 10 minutes. So I feel like we're keeping on track again, a quick commercial. If you like this, text me 7773-766-5322 and love to discuss it with you. The next concept is, don't listen to the naysayers. Anything you start, you're going to have people that are naysayers and think that you can't do it. Don't listen to them. If you have a conviction around it, make it happen. Also, don't ask your friends if something's a good idea. Most friends will tell you, yes, it's a good idea, but the real test is go to customers, see if they actually want to buy

8:18what you're selling. If they don't, you don't have anything. 12th, we call this the greecest role. You can't in any business be over-aligned on any one great person. Everything is about building great teams. So for example, when starting a legal practice, I had one great lawyer working for me. When that person left me, I didn't know what to do with myself. It led me to the belief. You can't have too small a business because you need to be able to have a deep enough team. They're not so reliant on any one person or any one customer. 13th, we call the Gordon rule. And tough economic times, people will take a job at almost any pay. What you find is once you've hired them, if you're not paying them fairly, then they'll start immediately looking for the next job. So even though you can pay them less than they're worth, you better pay them what they're worth if you want to keep them for a long time. The 14th rule or concept to talk about business is, I'm not believing the overnight success rule. I think some people have it overnight. Success is certainly not me. If you want to be graded something and build a great practice or build a great

9:22business, you better be obsessed with it for a prolonged period of time. For most of us, there's going to be family, there's going to be business. There's not going to be a lot of guys nights out, girls nights out for a long time until you really build the foundation of a business. The 15th concept that we talk about is in any business you build, you want to hear what we call a thrive, thrive culture. You're thriving, the business is thriving and your people are thriving. Then there's some Venn diagram where they all overlap. We've been in businesses where all the bus cared about was him thriving and not the people that everybody else. You need a situation where your best people are thriving side by side. If your best people are making more money than you, God bless them. You want to build what we call thrive, thrive cultures. Next, constantly talk about here in teams. As you got to sort out your teams, we sort of look at this three buckets of people. Those you absolutely need to have. Those that are very important contributors and those that shouldn't be on the team. It's very hard, but at some point you

10:25got to get rid of those that don't belong in the team. The other concept we talk about here in the thrive, thrive culture is this concept we talk about often, which is love your 90% if you got people that do 90% of what they do great, you better find a way to love them and not worry about that other 5 to 10% too much. 16th concept in this again goes against the grain of essentialism, goes against the grain of some other things. It's this concept to burn the boats. Every time Twitter talks about you need to burn the boats, you have no choice but to succeed in your business. I'm a big fan of burning the boats. After you've proven you can make a living from your business, not before. So I like the concept. It sounds great. I just don't believe in it, but I do believe in once you forget what you're going to do, that you better focus on it and double down on it and triple down on it. 17th concept is you're going to get punched in the face. Meaning someone's going to criticize what you're doing. Remember early on in building a media company, one of the competing media outlets used to write nasty things about me. I remember in

11:28the law firm, people saying you're too young to try and build a practice. You have to take these day sails, these punches in the face. You need to absorb them and view it as a sign of progress. You know, somebody once told me that you're when you get punched in the face, it means you're actually having an impact. And thus it's a good sign that you're getting punched in the face. And I think that's largely true. You don't want to get punched too hard. You want to get knocked out. But you got a view it as you absorb it, get back off the mat and keep going. 18th we call the stomach ache rule over the years. We've had a new competitor, a lost customer, a lost employee, next to judge how important that employee was, how important that customer was, how concerning that new competitor was based on the level of stomach aches that I got. Over the years, those stomach aches have reduced, but they're ever present when something challenging happens, and what you want over time is you get past it, you move on, you have to make the effort to move on, but you do so. 19th concept is no new ideas. One of the great fouls,

12:34these businesses that there's no bad ideas, and it's not that there are bad ideas or good at bad ideas, but there are times in every business. There's what we call closing time. You've got to finish what you're doing. Close it up and not focus on new ideas, new ways of doing things. It goes to this concept of channel capacity. You can only manage so many ideas and so many thoughts at one time. Finally, 20th and we tried to get through 20 business concepts in 20 minutes. There's this concept, this business cliche that culture each strategy for for breakfast, and I get the underpinnings of it, but I do view it as about the worst cliche in business. At the end of the day, you need culture plus strategy plus execution and plus real customer need that you're fitting. It's a lot more than culture each strategy for breakfast. Culture is strategy for breakfast sounds like a fantastic bumper sticker, but the reality is it's a lot deeper than that. Again, 20 concepts in 20 minutes. We hope we didn't put you all to sleep. We hope you enjoyed this. We hope there's pieces this that you find informative and useful. At any time, feel free

13:38to text me with your thoughts and ideas. 7-7-3-7-6-5-3-2-2. I wanted to a special thank you today. So, Chanel Bunger our producer, the most patient and best person in the world. Chanel, thank you so much.