Black Entrepreneur Blueprint 628 - Jay Jones - The 10-Minute Business Audit - 5 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask Right Now

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[00:01:48] Welcome to Black Entrepreneur Blueprint, the number one podcast and resource for Black entrepreneurs. I'm your host Jay Jones and Black Entrepreneur Blueprint was created specifically to educate and inspire Black entrepreneurs to launch, build and grow successful, sustainable businesses. Join us as we help build an economic power base in the worldwide Black community by building and supporting Black-owned businesses.

[00:02:17] If you're currently an entrepreneur or want to be an entrepreneur, you're invited to join us each and every week here at Black Entrepreneur Blueprint. Welcome to the BEB family and get ready to elevate your entrepreneur IQ. Welcome to the Black Entrepreneur Blueprint episode number 628.

[00:02:44] I'm your host Jay Jones and today we have another outstanding and informative show in store for you. Today's show topic is the 10-minute business audit. Five questions every entrepreneur should ask right now. The 10-minute business audit. Five questions every entrepreneur should ask right now.

[00:03:06] Now as entrepreneurs, we spend so much time working in our business that we rarely take the time to step back and evaluate whether our daily activities are actually moving the needle. So today we're going to have this episode and I'm going to give you five questions that you should ask right now to help improve your business. Now before we get to today's show content, let me just share a few things with the Black Entrepreneur Blueprint family.

[00:03:33] First and foremost, I want to welcome all first-time listeners to Black Entrepreneur Blueprint. Welcome to the BEB family. Please stick around until the end of today's broadcast and I'm going to share all my social media contact information and resource links such as the link to 1234mynewcreditscore.com. That's the numbers 1234mynewcreditscore.com.

[00:03:58] If you are having issues with your credit, you need to get approved for a mortgage, you need to buy a car, these are the guys to go to 1234mynewcreditscore.com. Now let's get ready for today's show content. As you guys know if you're a long-time listener, I always want to do impactful episodes. episodes that are going to move the needle from point A to B and also give you actionable steps.

[00:04:26] So a lot of times you'll hear podcasts or these gurus or motivational speakers and all they do is hype you up but they don't give you any direction. So today guys, this is going to be a short episode but it's going to be super impactful and I'm going to give you an actionable step that you can do today that can help you move the needle from point A to point B and grow your business.

[00:04:49] So today we're going to talk about five powerful questions that you can use to gain clarity on your business and to find out where you are. So many times what we do unfortunately is we work on the business and we're super busy and we never stop to evaluate how the business is going and what type of progress we're making. So here's a tip that I use.

[00:05:13] So every week I take three hours out of each week to actually review my progress and also review my week. So a lot of times we're so consumed about being busy and being active that you really have to pull back and you use this time guys because it's going to amplify and help grow your business and you just breathe for a minute. Take three hours. Take three hours. I usually do mine on Friday.

[00:05:38] Now I've set it up or normally on Friday but in the summertime I don't work on Fridays so I usually do it on Thursday. So I set my business up where I have a three-day weekend and you can do that too if you get to the point where you know how to get everything you need to get done in four days instead of five.

[00:05:58] So anyway I digress but I take three hours at the end of the week to review my week and also to look forward to the next week. And once again you have to take yourself out of the hustle and bustle in the equation so you're able to actually take a view from 20,000 feet. The other thing I do is I take one day a month to think and plan one day a month. I don't do any work.

[00:06:26] All I do is take a notebook and I start thinking and I start planning. So I do a three-hour session every week and I also do a one day a month plan to really sit back and think and plan on my business. And these are things that I realized over the years that I needed to do because I was so busy trying to build the business, build multiple businesses, try to stay profitable and just doing everything.

[00:06:54] You need to take time to fall back and look at and review what you're doing and find out if what you're doing is working. Identify what's working. Keep doing that. Identify what's not working. Throw that out. All right. So let's talk about today guys the 10-minute business audit. Five questions every entrepreneur should ask right now. Let's talk about question number one. Where are my leads coming from?

[00:07:21] Now if you've ever listened to this podcast, you know I am big on systems. And if you do not have a lead generation system, then you really don't have a business. If all you're doing is throwing stuff up against the wall and you don't have it systematized where you get a sustainable amount of qualified leads, not just leads, but qualified leads, then you're not going to be successful. Okay.

[00:07:48] Now can you clearly, here's a couple of things you want to think about on question number one. Where are my leads coming from? Can you clearly identify your lead sources? Where are your leads coming from? Can you clearly identify your lead sources? Now, if you're smart, you have a lead generation system. So you should say yes. What sources produce the highest quality prospects? What sources produce the highest quality prospects?

[00:08:17] Now, once again, qualified prospects. You can have prospects. You can have a ton of prospects. But if they're not ready, willing, and able to take your offer, guess what? They're not qualified. So you have to make sure your system qualifies or pre-qualifies. And you can do that multiple ways. I'm big on using quizzes.

[00:08:39] So if somebody has an interest in a product or service, I'll ask them to take this short 10 question or 11 question quiz. And that quiz pre-qualifies them. Okay. So with one of my mortgage quizzes, if it says, ask them about their credit and they rate their credit is poor below 580. Guess what? That isn't a qualified lead for me in my mortgage business. Now, I don't throw that lead away.

[00:09:05] What I do is I direct them to a credit repair. And so that way I can get their mortgage ready. But they are not qualified to do business with me right now. Another thing you want to ask are, are you dependent on one lead source? Are you dependent on one lead source? Once again, if you only have one lead source and that lead source dries up, guess what? You're out of business, right?

[00:09:33] No leads, no money, no business. That's how it works. Okay. Are you dependent on one lead source? You need multiple lead sources. You need referral leads. You need to generate your own leads. I'm telling you guys, this is any business you're in. You're in the lead generation business. I don't care what business you think you're in. I'm not in the mortgage business. I'm in the lead generation business because I sell the same thing. Every other mortgage broker sells.

[00:10:02] Now, the spin I have on it may be a little different. And the way I present and position myself is a little different, but I'm in the lead generation business. And if I can't generate enough leads, I'm going out of business. Okay. So here's an action step. Track your lead sources for the next 30 days. Action step number one, track your lead sources for the next 30 days. Where are your leads coming from? How many convert?

[00:10:31] What sources are they coming from and what has the highest conversion? So you need to be able to track that. And today we're talking about the 10 minute business audit. Five questions every entrepreneur should ask right now. That was question number one. Where are my leads coming from? Okay. The action step is track your lead sources for the next 30 days. Question number two. What is my highest profit offer?

[00:10:59] What is my highest profit offer? So if you're selling products, physical products and or services, what is the highest profit offer? So the highest cost product may not be the highest profit offer. Okay. There's profitability that's baked in or should be baked in to every offer. Now in the mortgage business, I'm doing mortgages. I'm doing residential. I'm doing commercial. I'm doing business funding.

[00:11:29] And I have the ability to change my compensation. How many points am I going to make? As a mortgage broker on a residential loan, the maximum points you can make is 2.75%. Okay. So if it's a hundred thousand dollar loan, the max I can make is 2,750 dollars. Okay. So you have to understand that. So what is my highest profit offer? Okay. Profitability.

[00:11:58] Here's some things you want to think about. Revenue and profits are not the same thing. Revenue and profits aren't the same thing. I just explained that. You may sell a product that costs you a hundred dollars and you may sell it for $200 and you make a hundred dollars, right? That's your, that's your profit. Your revenue is 200, but you make a hundred or you could sell another product that costs

[00:12:26] you $10 and you sell for $140. Your revenue is only 140, but your profit is $130. Lower priced product or service, but a higher profit. Okay. Which product or service creates the most profit with the least effort? Most profit with least effort. And if you have systems built into your business, the effort should be minimal. Okay.

[00:12:55] Another question you want to ask or think about in what is my highest profit offer is, are you spending too much time on low profit activities? Are you spending too much time on low profit activities? All right. So many times we do busy work. We do things to make us feel like we're actually working hard or doing something in reality. Are we spending too much time on low profit activities?

[00:13:21] So you want to look at what you do throughout the day on a typical day. What activities are you doing? What activities are you doing that are low profit that you possibly can hand off to somebody, a virtual assistant or create systems or AI to handle that? All right. So let me give you an action step for question two. And question two was, what is my highest profit offer? The action step is focus more attention on your most profitable offer.

[00:13:51] Focus more attention on your most profitable offer. Remember that profitable, most profitable offer may not be the highest revenue offer, but it's the most profitable offer. Okay. So what we're talking about today, guys, is the 10 minute business audit. Five questions. Every entrepreneur should ask right now. Question number one, we went through, where are my leads coming from? Question number two, what is my highest profit offer?

[00:14:19] And question number three, what am I doing that AI can automate? What am I doing that AI can automate? So can you automate something like your customer service? Can you have a chat bot or, or talking bot on your website that can actually automate your customer service? That's possible. A lot of people have it. Uh, I have it on many of my websites. Okay. So can you automate customer service?

[00:14:48] Definitely appointment scheduling. Most definitely. Now we have chat bots, talking chat bots that can actually schedule appointments for you. They can link and sync up with your calendar and literally answer questions and set appointments for you based on what your calendar looks like. So these are things right now with AI that you can do guys that you can automate that you don't necessarily have to do yourself. Lead qualification.

[00:15:17] I just talked about quizzes. Quizzes basically help people self-qualify or disqualify themselves. So can you automate with AI lead qualification? Most definitely. And it doesn't really have to be AI quiz funnel. Isn't necessarily AI, but you can create the funnel with AI. Follow up communications. Can you automate that with AI? Most definitely.

[00:15:43] So you can use AI or you can use systems like kit or, well, it used to be convert kit, but now kit. And so you can follow up with communications. So these are some of the systems guys that need to be put in place using AI and also other regular tools that are going to help you grow and scale your business. All right. And the question is, what am I doing that I can, that AI can automate?

[00:16:10] So I always talked about AI when it first got real popular chat GPT. I was saying either you're going to ride the wave of AI or you're going to get swept up under it. So now a one person company, and I can attest to that, can do all types of business in terms of monetization because of the automation capability of artificial intelligence.

[00:16:35] So you don't have to be some type of AI guru, but you do need to understand the basics. I'm going to equate this to when the internet first came out. And for all you young folk who grew up with the internet all the time, it's a brave new world right now. It's totally different. When the internet first came out, people didn't know how to adopt it, especially businesses in terms of websites. It took a while for it to catch on.

[00:17:03] So people were apprehensive about buying things online. You know, the stores and the functionality of being able to buy products online when the internet came out was, was foreign to people, but now it's common. And so with this AI and this automation guys, it may be a little foreign to you right now, but in the next several years, it's going to be super common. And so you need to be able to utilize AI so you can automate.

[00:17:33] So one of some of the things you want to look at is your customer service. And I mentioned chat bots. Now they have bots that you can talk to on the website. So somebody can click the bot and ask it, Hey, um, what time is your next appointment? So availability, ask your questions. Another thing, appointment scheduling, as I just mentioned, lead qualification. So you can have the AI actually ask, ask questions. So what's your name? What area do you live in?

[00:18:03] What are you looking for? How fast do you want the service provided? Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. All right. That's lead qualification. Then it can spit that lead out to you via email, text, or however you want it. And also follow-up communications. These are all systems guys, systemization. So when somebody comes in and they ask for customer service, you can actually follow up with them with AI. All right. So here's an action step.

[00:18:31] Identify one repetitive task to automate this month. Identify one repetitive task to automate this month. And that's question number three. What am I doing that AI can automate? Question number four. You want to ask yourself, what is my biggest bottleneck? What is my biggest bottleneck? And a bottleneck is something that's holding you up that you can't move forward. Is it your leads?

[00:19:00] Is it your sales? Is it your operations? Is it your time management? What is holding your business back from growing and scaling? So it may be sales. It may be that you don't have enough sales reps or you don't have enough sales to generate the income you need to implement some of the things or growth tools that you need to grow and scale. You know, when it comes to sales, all of that is based on lead flow, lead generation.

[00:19:29] So once again, if you're having problems with sales, you need to look at your lead generation system if you have one. And if you don't have one, that's the first thing you need to do. So what's my biggest bottleneck? So there was a quote that said anything after the leads is downhill. If you can master how to generate qualified leads, you can pretty much solve any other problem. All right. If you have qualified leads that you can sell profitably, that means you're going to generate

[00:19:59] the revenues where you can take those revenues and solve almost every other problem. You need operations. Guess what? If you have enough sales and revenues and profits, you can actually hire an operations manager. Oh, you don't have time management. Guess what? If you have enough money in the bank, you can actually hire people to do other tasks. So question number four, what's my biggest bottleneck?

[00:20:24] Sit down and really think what's holding my business back and what do I need to break through to get to the next level? Now, this is, uh, you want to talk about every business has constraints guys that limit them. And this is what you want to figure out. What are the constraints that are limiting my business right now? So for example, if you have a software business, you may have the greatest software, but you

[00:20:52] don't know how to get it out there to people. So it's probably lead generation in sales. Here's an action step for you on question number four, focus on solving the bottleneck before chasing new opportunities. So focus on solving that bottleneck problem before you start chasing new opportunities. And question number four is what's my biggest bottleneck? So solve that bottleneck first before you look at other opportunities. Okay.

[00:21:22] Now question number five, and this is the 10 minute business audit. Five questions. Every entrepreneur should ask right now. What's one activity that creates the most revenue? What's one activity that creates the most revenue? Is it prospecting? Are you out there prospecting? Is it networking? Is it creating content? Is it sales conversations? Or is it strategic partnerships? Okay.

[00:21:51] So what you want to do guys, you want to understand the importance of spending more time on your high value activities. What one activity creates the most revenue? So you need to sit down and while you're thinking, like I said, an entrepreneur does three things. Think, create, and execute. While thinking is the easiest thing, creating is the next easiest, and execution is the hardest, right?

[00:22:18] But you have to think what one activity creates the most revenue. Is it prospecting? Is it going out sending cold emails? Is it doing webinars? Is it making cold calls? Networking. Are you out there talking to people? You'd be surprised how fast and how far you can go networking if you connect and link with the right people. All right. Are you going to functions? Are you in the rooms that you need to be in? Are you talking to the people that you need to talk to?

[00:22:48] And you have to be strategic about it. Creating content. Content is king, right? So there's content out there all the time and your content could be podcasting. It could be social media content. It could be websites. It could be any type of content out there. Are you creating content? And is that the most, does that create the most revenue for you? Sales conversations. Are you setting appointments? Right?

[00:23:14] So as a mortgage guy, mortgage broker, I have to actually have conversations. That's my highest form of contact with my prospective customer. I have to uncover what their needs and objectives are. I have to understand what they're looking to accomplish. And as a mortgage professional, I just don't look, I'm an advisor, not a mortgage sales guy.

[00:23:38] As an advisor, I have to take into account how the mortgage aligns with their financial goals. Okay. So they're different mortgage products. What are their financial goals? All right. So you have to understand those conversations are paramount for me to get a new client. All right. So is that the activity that creates the most revenue and strategic partnerships? Do you have an affiliate program? Are you aligned as a, as a mortgage broker?

[00:24:07] You know, I deal with a lot of real estate agents. I deal with a lot of CPAs, attorneys, things of that nature. So do you have strategic partnerships and you need to spend more time guys on high value activities? So here's an action step for question number five, which was what one activity creates the most revenue block out dedicated time for your highest value. Every day.

[00:24:34] That's your action step for five block out dedicated time for your highest value activity every day. That is, that's it. You have to do that. If that's going to bring you the biggest value, you have to be doing that on a consistent basis. Before we get to the last segment of the show, let me share all my social media contact information and resource links. So I mentioned at the top of the show, guys, one, two, three, four, my new, credit score.com.

[00:25:03] They are a new sponsor with us. I've used them in my mortgage business. So if you are in a credit challenge, you need to get your credit straight. It's a DIY system. Only $29 a month. No long-term contracts. Go to the numbers. One, two, three, four. My new credit score.com. Now, if you want to get in touch with me, guys, anything long, hit me on my email. Jay Jones at BlackEntrepreneurBlueprint.com.

[00:25:32] J-A-Y-J-O-N-E-S at BlackEntrepreneurBlueprint.com. Facebook, Black Entrepreneur Blueprint. Instagram, I have two IG accounts. The first one is Jay Jones For Real. J-A-Y-J-O-N-E-S, the number four, R-E-A-L. Second one is Black Entrepreneur Blueprint. LinkedIn, connect with me there. Go to LinkedIn. Look for Jay Jones, Black Entrepreneur Blueprint. Also, Twitter, Jay Jones 001.

[00:26:01] J-A-Y-J-O-N-E-S 001. And also YouTube, guys. Make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel. I have additional content on YouTube that is not on the show. So go to YouTube, type in Black Entrepreneur Blueprint and subscribe. Now, if you are a first-time listener, make sure wherever you're listening to this episode or watching it, you hit that subscribe button so you'll be alerted when new episodes drop.

[00:26:28] We drop a new episode every Monday morning, 5 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on all your major podcast platforms and YouTube. Now, let's get back to the last segment of the show. So today, we talked about the 10-minute business audit. Five questions every entrepreneur should ask right now. Question number one. Where are my leads coming from? The action step is track your lead sources for the next 30 days. Question two.

[00:26:56] What is my highest profit offer? The action step is focus more attention on your most profitable offer. Question number three. What am I doing that AI can automate? The action step is identify one repetitive task to automate this month. Question four. What is my biggest bottleneck? The action step is focus on solving the bottleneck before chasing new opportunities. And question number five.

[00:27:24] What one activity creates the most revenue? The action step is block out dedicated time for your highest value activity every day. Now, I want to challenge you guys to complete the audit within the next 24 hours and create those action steps, guys.

[00:27:43] Because the only way you're going to scale from where you are to where you want to be is by making sure that you understand where your business currently is, what the problems are, and how to break through those problems. Remember, guys, that clarity creates momentum. When you have that clarity, when you understand what the situation is, then you know what to do to move to get to the next level from point A to B. All right.

[00:28:10] So you have to understand where you are before you know where you're going. All right. And so it's a history lesson. This is where I am today. Let me do this 10 minute business audit to find out where I am now so I can get to the next level. And you should do this periodically. It could be every quarter, whatever, every six months, whatever you feel is necessary to take you to the next level. I want you to remember something, guys. Your business doesn't grow because you're busy.

[00:28:40] Your business grows when you're focused on the activities that create the results. Your business grows when you're focused on the activities that create results. So take 10 minutes today and audit your business and make the adjustments that can help you change your future, guys. It's all about growing as an entrepreneur and growing and scaling your business. And this right here, guys, this 10 minute business audit is one of the best things that I created. And it helps me stay on track.

[00:29:10] And I know it'll help you stay on track also. Now, before we get out of here, guys, I just want to say that I appreciate the BEB family so much. Please continue to spread the word about the podcast, the ecosystem, the online courses, the books, everything designed to help you elevate your entrepreneur IQ. Remember, it's not about me. It's not about you. It's about us.

[00:29:33] It's about building an economic power base in the worldwide black community by building and supporting black owned businesses. Love you guys. See you same time next week. Peace.