If you've been feeling stuck in your business or uncertain about your next steps, this episode is a must-listen. It's all about knowing when to persist and when to pivot!
Here are some highlights from the episode:
Is It Time to Quit?: Discover the difference between a temporary setback (a "dip") and a true dead end. Learn how to strategically decide if it's time to move on or double down.
Seth Godin’s Wisdom: Hear about Seth Godin's take on quitting strategically to avoid wasting time and resources on pursuits that lead nowhere.
Evaluate Your Long-Term Potential: Find out how to assess whether your current path has the potential to lead to significant success, or if it's time to reconsider your efforts.
Passion Check: Understand the importance of passion and interest in pushing through tough times. Learn why sustained motivation is crucial and how to reignite your passion when it wanes.
Opportunity Costs: Dive deep into the concept of opportunity costs and see real-world examples of how to choose the most beneficial path for your business.
Burnout Alert: Learn how to recognize and address burnout. Get tips on how to manage your workload and maintain your health and well-being.
Real-World Examples: From Yahoo's failed attempt to compete with Google to the intense training of neurosurgeons, hear compelling stories that illustrate the dip and dead end concepts.
Strategic Planning: Explore how to plan for dips and use them as opportunities for growth, learning, and strategic planning.
Don’t miss this episode and let me know your thoughts after you listen. I always love hearing from you. If you have any questions about this episode, comment below or DM me on Instagram @jen_lehnerDon’t miss this episode and let me know your thoughts after you listen. I always love hearing from you. If you have any questions about this episode, comment below or DM me on Instagram @jen_lehner
[00:00:00.000] - Gary Vaynerchuk Hey, guys. It's Gary Vaynerchuk. You're listening to the Front Row, Entrepreneur podcast with our girl, Jen.
[00:00:10.530] - Jen Lehner Is this a dip or a dead end? Seth Godin was on my podcast a few years ago, and we talked about his book, Marketing Matters, among other things. But I so wish I would have been able to talk to him about his book, The Dip, that I read recently as well. It's been out for a while, I think, but it just crossed my desk, and it was really great. It's all about recognizing when that drop in revenue or sales or activity or engagement signals the end of the road and time to quit what you're doing, or is it just the period of struggle or difficulty that occurs after an initial period of success, a temporary setback that can be overcome with persistence. I've been thinking about this a lot lately as several of my one-on-one clients are right there, meaning things are slowing down for them in one way or another, and they are wondering if it's time to hang it up and move in another direction, or if they should double down and keep moving forward.
Read more...
[00:01:14.930] - Jen Lehner Well, first of all, one of the things that I love about this little gem of a book, and by the way, it is really short, what I would call a pocketbook, and you can read it in an hour or two. But he says that quitting isn't always a negative action. And He emphasizes the importance of knowing when to quit strategically to avoid wasting time and resources on pursuits that lead to dead ends. Technically, he doesn't use the word dead ends. He uses cul-de-sacs. But I really think dead end is more what he means, and at least that's the way I have to think about it for it to make sense. Because a dead end is an end, and a cul-de-sac, it's a dead end. It loops around. I don't know. I'm going to keep it a dead end for this podcast, okay? How do you know when it's time to quit? Well, he says, first of all, evaluate the long-term potential. If the effort that you're putting in doesn't show signs of leading to significant progress or success in the long term, it might be time to quit. Ask yourself if this path has the potential to lead to your desired outcome.
[00:02:26.830] - Jen Lehner Then you want to assess your passion and your interest. If you've If you've lost passion or interest in the project, it might be time to reconsider. Sustained motivation, as we all know, is really crucial for pushing through a dip. Now, for me, passion very much ebbs and flows. I have learned that In my business, I will, and this is like my 11th or 12th year, I will hit a wall at some point. I always do. A dry spell where I lack inspiration, but I have learned that it will return at some point. I just have to keep my head down and keep moving. I do deliberately carve in time to slow down for inspiration, which I'm going to talk about in just a little while. You want to identify lack of progress. If you've been stuck in a rut without any measurable If you're in full progress, you might be at a dead end. Your offer might not be good, your messaging might be off, or your entire business might be the wrong thing. Obviously, continuous lack of improvement despite consistent efforts indicates a dead end. You also want to consider opportunity costs. Think about what other opportunities you could pursue if you weren't investing your time and resources in the current one.
[00:03:41.420] - Jen Lehner High opportunity costs can be a signal that it's time to move on. But I want to go a little deeper into opportunity costs. Let's say you're a business coach or a consultant, and you're deciding between two potential uses of your time and resources. Option A might be creating a new comprehensive online course. Let's say it's going to take you 200 hours and you expect from this course to earn $20,000 over the next year. Option B might be expanding your one-on-one coaching services. That's also going to take you about 200 hours, and your expected revenue on that, let's say, is 30,000 over the next year. And again, I'm just trying to keep these numbers easy for illustration purposes. So opportunity cost. What is the opportunity cost? By choosing option A, creating a new online course, the opportunity cost is the additional revenue you could have earned by expanding your one-to-one coaching services. So calculation, expected revenue from option B, expanding your one-on-one coaching, 30 grand. And then the revenue from creating a new course is 20. You subtract one from the other, and the opportunity cost is then $10,000. Now, if immediate revenue is crucial, option B might be more attractive.
[00:05:10.630] - Jen Lehner If creating a new course could lead to long term passive income and scalability, option A could be more beneficial in the long run. What about personal fulfillment? If you enjoy creating content and see it as a valuable addition to your portfolio, this might outweigh the immediate financial benefits of Option B, expanding your one-on-one. Then you need to consider your overall business strategy and goals. If building a library of courses aligns with your long-term vision, the opportunity cost might be justified. I want to go even a little deeper because I think if you can walk through the scenario with me and plug in your own business as we walk through it, it might be helpful. Let's talk about that first option, creating a new comprehensive online course. The pros are that once it's created, the course can generate passive income with minimal ongoing effort. It diversifies your product offerings and can attract a broader audience. There's potential for upselling to existing clients and reaching new markets. What are the cons? Well, significant upfront time investment. Launching can be very expensive, and revenue is not guaranteed. Again, it depends on your marketing and sales efforts and strategies.
[00:06:33.930] - Jen Lehner Now let's look at option B, expanding your one-on-one coaching services. The pros, well, immediate and higher expected revenue. It strengthens relationships with existing clients and can lead to higher retention rates. There's direct feedback and interaction which can improve your coaching skills and your client's satisfaction. The cons, well, limited scalability as your time is finite. There's only one you. And a higher risk of burnout due to the intensive nature of one-on-one coaching. Which leads me to the next step in assessing whether or not you are in a dip, and that is or a dead end, and that is you got to check for burnout. If the effort you are putting forth in your business is causing significant stress and burnout without leading to fulfilling results, it might be time to quit. I know it goes without saying, but health and well-being are priority numero uno. But what does it look like to be in a dip? Well, sticking with the same coaching example, as we all know, When you're starting out, attracting an audience can be really slow and challenging, and it requires consistent content creation, marketing efforts, and engagement without immediate results. The dip here is the period of low engagement and slow growth while establishing a reputation and a following.
[00:08:05.310] - Jen Lehner Overcoming the dip involves persistence in content creation, networking, and leveraging social media, maybe even taking a stab at paid advertising. And success comes when the audience grows and the engagement increases. Developing a comprehensive online course requires significant time, effort, and resources with no immediate payoff. So the dip here is the hard work of creating content, filming videos, editing, and setting up the course platform before seeing any sales or student enrollments. Overcoming the dip involves, among other things, focus on high-quality content, effective marketing strategies, and leveraging testimonials and reviews to attract new clients and students. With scaling the one-on-one coaching services, that requires attracting more clients and potentially hiring additional coaches or assistants to manage the increased workload. The DIP here is the effort to find and onboard new clients, all the marketing stuff, training staff, and maintaining a quality of service during the expansion. Overcoming the DIP would mean investing in marketing, streamlining your onboarding processes, and ensuring consistent quality through training and feedback. What about rebranding and launching as an example? Well, rebranding involves updating your business identity, including logos, your website, and your marketing materials. The dip here is the period of uncertainty and potential loss of recognition as the new brand is introduced and established.
[00:10:00.450] - Jen Lehner To overcome the dip, you have to maintain clear communication with your audience, ensure the new brand reflects your value proposition, and execute a really strong marketing campaign to promote the rebrand. The DIP represents a temporary period of intense effort, learning, and potential setbacks that can be overcome with persistence, strategic planning, and continuous improvement. One example that Seth gives in the book is Yahoo versus Google. There might be some people listening who never heard of Yahoo. Is that possible? Probably. Anyway, Yahoo attempted to compete directly with Google in search engine technology, but consistently lagged behind. Instead of continuing to pour resources into this effort, which was a dead end, Yahoo could have redirected directed efforts to other areas where they had a competitive advantage, but they didn't do that, so now they're history. Seth says that the dip acts as a filter, creating scarcity by weeding out those who are unwilling or unable to persist through tough times. The scarcity enhances the value of success because fewer people achieve it, making those who do more exceptional and their success more valuable. So think about a neurosurgeon. Well, the dip is obviously those years of school and training and challenges and setbacks.
[00:11:36.710] - Jen Lehner But the truth is very few people attain this level of expertise. That's the scarcity. So there's high demand and a big fat paycheck for those who acquire these skills and this knowledge. Or maybe this example is more relatable. So think about an artist, author, a musician, or a painter. The dip be the periods of rejection, financial struggle, and honing your craft without any recognition whatsoever. And there's scarcity here because few artists achieve widespread acclaim. And the value would be the acclaim, the financial success, and lasting legacy for those who do break through. Seth would say, not would say, he did say, that we should recognize the dip early. Understand that encountering the dip is a natural part of any significant endeavor. Prepare mentally and strategically for the challenges ahead. Then he says, Commit to persistence. Develop a strong commitment to push through the dip knowing that this persistence will set you apart from many other people and stay focused on long-term goals and the ultimate value of overcoming the dip. He says to seek support and resources, leverage encourage mentors, coaches, and resources that can help you navigate the dip. Support systems can provide the necessary guidance and encouragement to persist.
[00:13:12.470] - Jen Lehner I mean, that might be if you're a member of Front Row VIP, you have a built-in support system there with all your fellow members. Of course, I'm there to support you. But if you're not a part of VIP, I think it's really important to be a part of some community, whether it's a mastermind with like-minded entrepreneurs. Minimally, we should all have a coach. I really believe we're just going to get there faster and better with a coach. He says, To continuously improve, use the DIP as an opportunity to refine your skills, improve your strategies, and gather valuable feedback. Continuous improvement increases your chances of breaking through the dip successfully. Now, this one is much easier said I've been done. And earlier, a few minutes ago, I mentioned that I do something to address the dip. I mean, it's one thing to say, Oh, yeah, learn more, create more content, map out better funnels. But if you're consuming Same with running your business, it's not so easy. But my answer is what I guess is a self-imposed dip. That's where I am in my business right now at the moment. And I also refer to this dip as my slowing down to speed up, period.
[00:14:30.720] - Jen Lehner I have very purposefully and strategically created a dip. I'm able to do this because I've got some products on Evergreen. People can sign up for my Front Row CEO program through one of my Evergreen funnels, and they still get to attend live calls with me, by the way. My monthly membership program, Front Row VIP, generates monthly revenue. All of the revenue coming into my business can cover all of my operating expenses, including salary for two full-time team members and a couple of part-time contractors. There's enough money left over for a salary for myself. But it's not the revenue that I'm used to when we're having big launches four or more times a year. But at our annual team meeting, we decided that we wanted to start creating a lot more free content. That's how I built my business initially. I did lots of free trainings and webinars and live streams, and I created tons of how-to guides and tutorials. Honestly, I loved that period in my business. I was also way more hands-on in my business, and I had more direct contact with my clients. We made our word for 2024 Create, and that's what we've been doing.
[00:15:47.950] - Jen Lehner I'm creating a program that I am super excited about that you're going to hear more about a little later in the summer. It's going to kick off in December. I also started doing one-to-one coaching and consulting again, which I love. I'm going to scale that back again in 2025. But for now, it's helping me to keep the saw sharpen, so to speak. It's also putting me in direct contact with my clients so I can learn what they need right now, where the opportunities lie. If I'm not in it and just really just up to my elbows in it, it's easy to miss. Things change. Our last objective for our Dip is to learn and improve. Everyone on My team is diving deep into AI, and we are creating new assets for our launches in 2025. We're going through online courses that I've purchased on various topics, from marketing to processes and streamlining and all sorts of things. I know for sure that without this planned Dip, I would be burned out and unhappy in a matter of months, and so would my team. Now we're just really excited. Our team meetings are filled with brainstorming and we can say yes to projects and JV opportunities that we've had to turn down in the past.
[00:17:06.510] - Jen Lehner It's just overall a really fun time that I think we all need it. I think when you set it up like this deliberately to say, Okay, I am going to plan for this, then when you go in and you look at your monthly revenue and maybe that little green line is just staying straight It's even you're not getting those big peaks that you do when you're having the big launches, but you don't have to panic. I would even say if you don't have consistent revenue coming in and you can afford the cost. Let's say you're going to go into the red for a month or two when you take a self-imposed dip. I keep thinking of, what do they call it? A self-induced coma? Not self-induced coma, but an induced coma when they put the brain in a coma on purpose to let it heal or whatever. Maybe not the most positive example. But anyway, if you're really strategic like this and you really do use the time to facilitate growth and creation and the things that you need to do, if you really do use the time like that, then you can look at the red line.
[00:18:21.450] - Jen Lehner If you go into the red, and let's just say over the course of two months, it's going to cost you $10,000. It's going to cost you... That's much you're going to have to pay your team. That's how much you're paying in your software and your services and maybe the rent in your building. Like whatever your overhead is, you've got to pay $10,000. You don't have monthly revenue coming in, so you lose, quote, unquote, lose $10,000 that month. If you're being strategic and you're creating and you're getting things in order and you're slowing down to speed up, it's okay because you planned for it. It's not really a loss. It looks like a loss on paper, but in the end, it's going to turn green again. You could think about that $10,000 that it cost you as the price of the luxury of being able to learn and exhale and really luxuriate in planning where you want to go next. When you first started your business, I found it so to explore and investigate. I tried on different hats, and I created a couple of Elstinco courses. Actually, the courses were good. I'm not going to say they were Elstinco.
[00:19:42.350] - Jen Lehner They were just the wrong... They just weren't the right courses for where I was headed, but you get the point, right? It's okay. Now, you don't want to go bankrupt. You don't want to do this and lose tons of money with no end in sight. There has to be a plan. But I think giving yourself permission to do this is really important. Back to the book, Seth's advice is to identify the dip, recognize whether you're in a dip or a dead end or a cul-de-sac. If it is a dip, consider whether the long-term benefits are worth the effort to push through. Then if you are in a dip, just plan for it. Understand that it's part of a journey, of the journey, and prepare for it. Have a plan to stay motivated and push through the challenges. Or quit. If you identify that you're in a dead end, quit immediately and redirect your efforts to more promising opportunities. I'm just going to end with two quotes from the book, Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time. Also, extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most.
[00:21:03.820] - Jen Lehner So which is it? Are you in a dip? Are you in a dead end? Or are you just crushing it? And this podcast is completely irrelevant to you today. Thanks for joining me, and I'll see you next time for another episode of the Front Row podcast for entrepreneurs.
