The Small Business Millionaire

In last week’s podcast, I interviewed Andrew Henderson from The Nomad Capitalist. At the end of the interview, Andrew and I got to speak about business in general, and some of the challenges of growing a business.

We discussed managing bureaucracy, managing people, creating a vision, The Peter Principle, building and managing a team of people, and conducting one on one meetings. The snippet of conversation I extracted is short, but, is packed with amazing small business nuggets you can use in growing and managing your small business.

Hope you enjoy

In order for you, the entrepreneur, to expand your business, you need to get comfortable with taking risks, but, taking risks isn’t about making ad hoc decisions, it’s about educating yourself, mitigating the downside, making a decision to proceed or not, and then, executing as flawlessly as possible.
Taking risks is at the heart of building a thriving business, and in creating wealth.
These risks taken in business, not just in running your business, but, in your investments as well, will dictate how successful you ultimately become.
So how do you know when and how to take risk?
In this podcast, I review something I’ve called the Risk Compound Effect, and it goes like this:
The better educated on a particular topic you become, the finer your decision-making instinct becomes. —–>
The finer your decision-making instinct becomes, the higher the chance your bet will pay off. —–>
The higher the chance your bet will pay off, the bigger the bet you can take, and —->
The bigger the bet you can take, the more you compound your success. —–>
In this podcast episode, I will be discussing four critical criteria for risk-taking you must understand in entrepreneurship.

Every business and every person eventually reaches a ceiling. They grow just so far, and beyond that point, they need to pivot to reach the next level. It’s often difficult to tell when you’ve reached your ceiling. It’s not like there’s a little birdie up there telling you what to do next. Nor do you have your life plan written in a book that you can just flip to the next chapter.

You need to be self-reflective enough to notice when it’s happening. Sometimes, something happens to make you realize it’s time for a change.
In this podcast, I relate a personal story of what happened to me a number of years ago that made me realize that I had hit my Peter Principle or glass ceiling, and what I came to realize is that is why my business wasn't growing. I had become my business's problem.

One of the things that prove the most challenging for an owner in building a sales team is the difficulty in letting go of sales, and for a good reason. Sales are what keeps the doors open, lights on, bills paid, and profit in your pocket.
Sales are generally the one thing most business owners do well. You started your business, you know your products and processes, you’re passionate about your product and company, and you’ve built the business to where it is.
You’re also likely your business’s best salesperson. And therein lies the owner’s dilemma.
If your marketing is working, and your business is bringing in leads, there’s a temptation to take the best leads for yourself. If you do that, you’re missing an opportunity to train your salespeople on your business’s process, style, and sales methodology.
Here’s the paradox when building a sales team:
How do you scale and develop your business when ...
- You’re the best salesperson
- You don’t want to let go of leads
- It’s challenging to trust other people to sell because not everybody is like you
Is it possible that you’re the business’s bottleneck?
And on that note, I address the 9 steps that you, as the business owner or manager, need to take in order to build your inside, and outside sales team from the group up.

The small business startup mistakes I review in this podcast are two of the most common entrepreneurial mistakes that I see most entrepreneurs make when they open their business. And both, are potentially deadly to the small business.
There's a reason that something like 80% of new businesses don't make it past their first five years in business, so, don't be one of those small business owners who make these two common mistakes.
And I want to be clear about one thing, and for full disclosure purposes, I made these two mistakes when I started my business, and they almost cost me my business. In fact, I was hundreds of dollars away from closing my doors.