5 Money-Burning Business Mistakes to Avoid! [Must-Watch for Small Businesses]
What's up, guys? We are live on Facebook today on a beautiful Monday. So I got my friend here, Tony Cruz. And for those of you who don't know him, I'll introduce him in a second. But today we're going to be talking about the five biggest money burning mistakes you're making in business. That was a mouthful, but I completed it. The five biggest money burning mistakes you're making in business. And more importantly, or I would say more specifically, sales. So we're going to talk about five mistakes you guys are
making in sales. I see it all the time. I see it with all my clients. I see it with all the beauty business owners I talked to. 95% of you are making at least three of these mistakes, I would say. Anyways, Tony is a master sales trainer. He's trained hundreds of real estate agents. He's helped his wife grow her permanent makeup business. And they're actually starting up a new
venture soon. But I won't spoil that story for you. If you want to go ahead and say something to the audience real quick and introduce. So first and foremost, Jake, thank you so much for having me. I now know what it means to have cold air, being that I'm in Florida, I'm literally inside wearing a jacket because it's so cold outside. But as Jake said, my name is Tony Cruz. I am a national sales trainer for a large real estate firm here in central Florida. But for me, coming on here with Jake,
we've had a lot of commonalities in my business and what I trained in coaching to your business, Jake. And what I see in the beauty industry. And there are a lot of people making mistakes in the beauty industry when it comes to sales. And I saw that in my wife's business. Jake, I know I've thanked you so many times, but you literally took my wife's business from zero clients. Like freaking goose egg day that we opened up to crushing our sales goals. I
know it was at least over 2025 clients the first month, and we just expanded from there. And now jumping into a new venture that I've been bouncing off, some ideas off your mind, Jake, with this new beauty business adventure, I'm Super excited to bring it to the masses in this new business plan and strategy that we're going into in this beauty industry. Let me tell you guys how good of a salesman Tony is. He hired me. I helped him back in 2018. And then we even met up in Orlando when I came down there for Universal Studios for our anniversary. But anyways, he's such a good salesman that he stayed in contact with me. We actually became friends. And then last year in 2021, you guys probably saw that
I bought some houses in Florida. I was actually looking at beach houses in Panama City Beach. And I called him and I was like, yeah, I had some questions about real estate in Florida and everything. He's like, well, why aren't you buying in Orlando and almost $2 million later in a good condition for you? We're going to be getting more than you probably.
So first and foremost, on that note, at what point, Jake, throughout all your transactions, throughout our friendship, have I ever sold you or tried to sell you? Yeah, I don't feel like you've really ever tried to sell me. It's more just like guiding me down the path and helping me out and helping me accomplish what I want to accomplish. Yeah. And it's all about that. It's honestly, I think the first mistake is the relationship that people make and in our relationship that we have, I've told you many times, look, I don't care if you buy from me. I don't care what you do. I just want to make
sure you know all your options and know what I bring to the table. And I think that's a huge mistake that I saw and my wife is probably going to choke me out. But my wife would always try to go for the sale versus the relationship. And 99.9% of people when they're just starting their business, try to go for the sale versus the relationship. Yeah. I see this all the time, especially with new business owners who are hungry for clients understandably they're ready to make money and stuff, but then they treat people like a transaction versus a relationship. And so they'll get a lead or they'll get a message
and then they'll just send them the price or they'll be like, here's my booking link. Unless the person is already ready to buy, which they probably would have already bought if they were, you've got to build that relationship and you hit the nail around the head. And building that relationship is all about asking the right questions. And I'm not going to go into too much of what those right questions are and things like that.
But asking the right question can really open up the doors to that client, lowering their guard when it comes to price and upping their interaction with you to learn more about you because you're asking them the right questions. One thing I will say is use the word why. What brings you to my service? What would that do to your life if you had my service? Those kinds of why and what questions really go a long way and they'll eventually, in my opinion, tell you how to sell them. Now, there are scripts that I have for this, but asking just that little bit of information. Thank you so much for contacting me. What brings you to my business? Not obviously in that script. That's very elementary, but that premise of what brings you in. Yeah. And I made this mistake and I still do. Sometimes I'll catch myself because
now that I've worked with thousands of people and have probably over 1000 testimonials, I want to just be like, yeah, I'm the greatest in the world, blah, blah, blah. But I'll lose a sell. I mean, sometimes I don't, but I might lose a cell or have less of a chance if I start acting like that. Instead, I've got to ask the person, what can I do for you? Like, what are you looking for? What are your dreams and goals? And that way I can tailor my different services or packages towards them and their needs. I mean, right now it's kind of funny. Right now I'm looking into life insurance and things like that, and I'm dealing with two separate individuals. One guy is purely
just telling me the numbers and that's it, and has never asked me what my goals are and the other guy is asking me what my goals are and tailoring packages to what my goals are. Now the one guy who is tailoring the packages to what my goals are is higher in price. But guess what? I'm getting what I need, not what they want to sell me. Exactly. So that's really huge. When you are selling is to listen and to make sure you're giving them exactly what they want. Because if you give them exactly what they want, it's super easy to close.
Yeah. And without proper trading, this is really hard, especially for just like single service businesses. Like, for example, a microblading artist. They have one service microblading. So of course they want to sell that. But if you just jump straight to the cell, not only you're doing the client a disservice, but you might be doing it yourself a disservice. Because if you give them something they don't really need or want, that's how you get the crazy clients or the unhappy clients or the refunds or the chargebacks. So you have to make sure it's a right fit for both of you. Something I heard someone say is the client is always right. I agree with that. To an extent,
you are there to service the client, but you're also there to service your business. And you're also in business to do services to people you want to do service to. Obviously, when you're starting out, you want to get every person in the door. But once you
get to that level playing field, you don't want every customer that comes to the door, but you want to make sure that every customer you do obtain your building a relationship with because that's going to give you a long lasting referrals funnel. I usually find it's the opposite. The client's always wrong. Yeah, to some extent especially I was the one that did all the sales for my wife's business. I was the one answering all the questions. I will admit that I know more about Ombre browse and microblading and Micropigmentation that I want to admit to. But having those services and you just got to know who your exact audience is when you're selling. You don't want to go after. Like you said, the discount, the group on, you know, that is not the customer you want because they're looking for a deal. And in the service, they're probably thinking of ways, how can I get it even cheaper?
Well, now that you've mentioned it, that's a good transition to point number two. So the second biggest mistake you guys are making is relying on discounts or pricing to entice people. Let's say we've got Sally. She's a microblading artist and she wants to get five bookings this week. She gets some leads and then she's like, hey, my price, I'll do a discount this week,
$100 off. So instead of $400, it's going to be $300. And then she gets no bookings. And she wonders why. Well, one, she didn't tell the benefits, the value, and there's a whole list of things that she could have done better. But I'm just trying to get you guys to realize you don't
need to focus on always doing discounts and stuff. I've got a lot of clients who don't do discounts. In my opinion. You don't need to focus on the discount. You need to focus on the store you're providing. Are you providing what they're looking for? What's the word? Fort Jake? Are you reaching out to the people you want to reach out to with the message that you have as to why you're the best? I can tell you right now, 90% of the PMU artists, the beauty artists that I interact with, it's all price, it's all price. And guess what? The ones that are really succeeding are not focusing on the price. They're focusing on the story. They're providing the client. I can't tell you, especially in my market, I am following at least two dozen MICROBLADE PMU artists in my area on my Instagram, and they never discuss price. It's all about the story. A lot of artists in my
area that I follow, the top artists, I should say they focus on their story, their clients, their clients excitement, their clients reaction to seeing the browse. That's one thing I've really always wondered, why is why are artists recording the first initial reaction to their browse? Some do, but most don't. Yes. I don't see that in my market because I'm only following people in my market. But that's something that tell that story and the sales will come. You notice the top people don't talk about price. They talk about service.
Yeah. Or the benefits and the value that you're going to receive. The benefits and features. That's really my thoughts on going into that segment and really kind of catapulting into the sales and the story and things like that. I also look at a lot of artists, and I'm going to say number three, Jake is not knowing their numbers, and this is something that is standard in every industry. I don't
care what industry you're in. I would say most newer business owners don't know their numbers. And I think it would shock people if they actually pulled how many clients they had last year, how many clients they missed out on last year, how many clients that they did not follow up with. Yes. We're not talking about revenue. We're not talking about profit. We're talking about potential clients, missed clients all kinds what the potential revenue could have been. And I'm guilty of this myself. I was talking to Tony. It was like, Jake, what are you doing? Oh, man, I was drilling you, man. And I felt bad. And I even apologize for drilling Jake on like,
how many people have reached out to you, Jake? And I don't mean to use it as an example, but I'm going to use it as example. How many people have reached out to you that you either didn't follow up with or you never responded to? And let's calculate that number into your losses for the year, because that is a legitimate loss for you. So that's something to really sit back and really go through your messages and see how many people you didn't follow up with. I think for me, it's like, I'll admit, I think it's an ego thing. I think it's like, well, I've helped all these people have all these testimonials. I should be interviewing
you of why you should work with me, not the other way around. I think I said that right. For me, it's kind of having to step down from that and it's being like, okay, I got to treat everybody is like an equal potential client. I can't just expect people to sign up instantly if they don't know anything about it. Yes, people should do their own research,
and I have lots of resources out there and stuff. But you're right. I need to follow up better. Into your respect, Jake. Quite honestly, you have ten X, the amount of reviews and resources and things like that of other microplaters. Your sales funnels should be on autopilot. You shouldn't have to do that much follow up. But
at the end of the day, there is always going to be that small amount of lost business if you're not tracking your sales numbers. So if you're not tracking, how many people are you messaging you every week, how can you predict what your sales are going to be that same time next year? Wouldn't it be nice to have a predictable business that's I think what everybody wants. I think the biggest sticks out to me the most for permanent makeup artist is they'll message me about marketing and I'll talk to them and they'll ask me the pricing and I'll give them my price. And even though mine is lower than everybody else is right now, I'm about to raise it. They'll say like, well, I don't know if I can afford that right now. And
I'll be like, well, it's only one or two clients that you have to book to make that money back. Plus, you're getting all the other benefits. And they're like, oh, well, I didn't think about that. And it's just people don't really think about numbers. And investing in return on investment very often, especially new business owners.
I challenge that mindset to everybody watching is I would love for someone to show me a bank or financial vehicle where I could put $500 in a month plus ad spend. I could put $1,000 in a month and make 4000 $5,000 a month on that. That's really the ROI just starting out month one that you provided. So if you're telling me that I can give you $500 and I'm going to make three or $4,000, why are you seeing that as an expense? That's an investment. So I think there's a big mindset shift there too, with individuals in
any industry that they need to look at the dollars they're spending towards your services, Jake, are investments. They're not costs. In the minute you ask yourself, yeah, what bank could I go and put $5,000 better yet. And I caution myself by saying this, what cryptocurrency could I put $500 in and make it big the first month? There's not many out there. But what I will say is I look at every $500 bill that I give you as a $4,000 return. That's the way I calculate that. Okay.
Yeah. I wouldn't even get into cryptocurrency. I lost a lot of money last year. Yeah, we're not talking about that. I lost a bunch of money too. But
that's the way going into mindset. And I think that's the limiting beliefs about basically what I wanted to say on this part is I think a lot of people view sales or selling or following up as like, oh, I'm bothering the person or I'm being a nuisance or annoying them. If you really think about like, okay, I'm offering a valuable service, which that's what business is. You're offering a product or service in exchange for money or resources. And so if you're providing value to someone, it's actually unethical not to push your services if you truly believe in it. Because if I see a kid about to cross the street in front of a car and get hit by a car, I'm going to either grab them and pull them back or if they're already halfway across, push them to the side to where they don't get hit.
And that's how you should view sales. It's like, hey, I need to save these people from or help them with whatever they need. I don't know, that might have been a bad analogy. Yes. No, you're always helping people. And that's the thing is in sales. And I'll give this one teaser away. Okay. My favorite script is what brings you in today? Oh, I want microblading.
Great. We definitely provide that service. How is microblading going to benefit you? I asked that a lot, and I know it's kind of like, why would you ask that question? Why do you care? But if you can relate back to their response later on in the sales timeline, that's going to stick a hook in them and they're going to see that you care. You're asking, Why? Because you genuinely care. People like to do business with people who care, and that's really the biggest takeaway I
hope people get from today is asking ask, Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? But going into the limiting beliefs, I think that's a big struggle for new PMU artists. I can't afford this. You really can't afford not to, whether it's doing other avenues of marketing, which I don't see any other Avenue Besides Jake in the PMU world. But for me, you can't afford not to do something. You can't afford not to invest in your business because without investing in your business, how are people going to know who you are? Yes, for me, one of my limiting beliefs was I'm not a good public speaker. And I think a lot of people have the same because I know that video is important. That's why I'm doing video right now.
And then I teach my clients that videos important. But I found myself procrastinating and not doing podcasts and not doing many YouTube videos last year. And I kind of had to come to Jesus moment the beginning of this year just for not really New Year's resolutions, but just kind of thinking, how can I improve my life, my business and all that? And I was thinking like, okay, what are some limiting beliefs I'm having? One of them was like, I'm being limited because I think I'm not a good public speaker. Instead of if I get myself out there, I might not be a Tony Robbins or I might not be whoever is a great speaker, but I can provide value. And so if I'm letting that belief hold me back, I'm not providing the value that I can.
Yes. And really, it doesn't matter. I see a lot of artists shy away from doing Instagram and all that because maybe you're introverted, maybe you're shy, but guess what? It doesn't matter what other people think about you, because you could have I'll never forget this and kind of relating into real estate, but I had an agent, and a big part of real estate is prospecting for new business is cold. Calling is picking up the phone and calling. She had horrible English and she wanted to make it happen. She would make 900 calls a week to just get one person to
talk to her. So you have to be consistent with you whether you're doing a crappy job or a good job. Just be consistent. And the activities that you do will generally grow and you'll get better and better and better as you go on. So it doesn't matter how good you are right now. It doesn't matter if you have the best camera. It doesn't matter if you have the iPhone twelve selfie mode and portrait mode. It doesn't matter. Just start somewhere and start doing it consistently. That's all that matters. Because with that consistency,
your audience is going to grow and people are going to get to know you like you and trust you. And that's the biggest thing in sales is people need to know, like and trust you. Yeah. And that's another limiting belief since I'm not good, I shouldn't even do it. But like you said, if you practice, for example, basketball, I can practice and I'm not going to be LeBron James ever, just because my physical limitations. But
I can go from being not good at all to being pretty damn good just with practice. And that's pretty much with anything with MICROBLADE. Like I tell my clients all the time you weren't good at microblading the first time you ever did it. Probably you took some practice in training and learning and that's the same way with speaking or sales or anything.
Yes. And I mean, that was a huge limiting belief for my wife was like in her business was the sales side. And eventually towards the end, she was doing really well with talking with clients, doing up sales in service. That's another thing that I don't think people do quite often is try
to upsell something during the service and it just takes practice. It takes practice, practice, practice, and you will fail. There's no way around it. You will fail at some point, but it's how you come back from that is what's going to define yes.
I was listening to some podcast the other day. I forget who it was, but they said when you get to the end of your life, hopefully pretty old and you look back, would you rather say like, hey, I tried this and I failed, but I learned from it and probably succeed after that or I never tried and I never really failed, but I never tried and did anything in my life. I never accomplished anything. Which one would you rather go? And obviously you want to fail and learn and move on and at least say that you try and at least do your best. You don't want to go look back and say like, well, I was scared, I was procrastinating and I just never did anything.
And one thing, I'm an all in kind of guy, whether you're in or you're out. And for me, I see a lot of individuals try to tiptoe around the business, do it here, do it there. In today's world, we honestly have it too easy starting out. If you have to do a second job, do that second job, you don't feel like you don't have enough money because money is out there. Okay. Whether it's we started out with a very small loan from a family member to do the business. I put Jake
your services or put on a credit card for a few months, but we saw a massive ten X return. And I think that people really get turned off a little bit by having how much money you have to put out in the beginning, but it's huge returns. And I have yet to see an artist who didn't try fail. And when I say try, genuinely try, genuinely give it their all. Okay. Not seen one fail. Yes. I was talking to someone today, and she was like, I think she started her business a
few months ago, and she was like, I'm just so heartbroken because I'm not getting results and I'm not booked up. I started my business at the worst time ever with COVID and stuff. And I could tell it was a limiting belief. And I was like, let me look at your Facebook. And I looked I was like, I saw some before and afters, but she had no educational content, no videos. She wasn't
doing any of the stuff I taught. I was like, hey. And I respectfully said this. I was like, hey, you don't have this stuff on your page. I know this would really help. And she's like, yeah, I'm just scared to do videos. And so, long story short, we kind of figured out that it wasn't about the time of the year that she started the business. Those are all just excuses. And if she really puts it in there and overcomes her fears, and if she's courageous and does videos and does all this stuff, she's going to get bookings. She's just got to get out of that bubble.
And I really think going into that a little bit of time blocking, too. Like, a lot of people say, I don't have enough time. I got my kids at home, I got this that everything going on in their life. One thing I will say is we all have the same 24 hours. It's all about how you allocate it. Okay. So if you want to start adding video,
Jake, how long does a video, like, one of those videos you post, how long does that take you. Max of 30 minutes. I think we all have 30 minutes on our day that we could just post one little video. It's about being consistent. And we oftentimes make those choices. Like, I need to post a video. I need to do a social media post. I need to follow up with a client. We think of those in our mind as a choice, not as an obligation. Okay, you starting this business. You need to look at it as an obligation,
not a choice. Because if you look at obligation, you're showing up for yourself. It's a really beautiful experience to watch when it works because you see someone who forces themselves to do something they didn't really want to do, but then they kind of get they're like, oh, this is actually not that bad. This is actually fun. Like, I like the engagement on videos. I like getting myself out there. I like the feeling I get, and then they become addicted to it. And
then you see them posted videos like twice a day. I've seen that quite a few times. Yeah. Success is addicting, period. And for me and several businesses and things like that, I've always had those successful moments, and those are always the happiest of my life. And
success leaves clues also. And I'm a part of a lot of PMU artist groups, but I don't see a lot of PMU artists actually collaborating on a deeper level. And I think that's something that here in 2022, I hope to see that more because I think a lot of us can learn from other successful artists and how they built their business and how they grew without having to really put out huge price Tags for money just to get the content, but to learn from each other. So that's my two cent on that.
Yeah. I think happiness comes from progress. And, well, there's multiple factors, but for me, it's progress and growth, even if that video doesn't make me $20,000, just the fact that I was able to be courageous, overcome my limiting beliefs and do what I know that I should do. It's just a great feeling about that, doing what's right. So let me ask you this, Jake. What did it feel like because I was a part of that experience a little bit. What did it feel like when you bought that million dollar home? I know the answer that you want, but I'm going to give the truth. No, the truth is the truth is I didn't really feel that much because to me, it's about the process. And it's
kind of like one of my idols is Nick Saving with Alabama football. He's one of these Championships and he'll win and he'll celebrate for a minute, which we did celebrate. We had some $400 champagne, and it was a great feeling, but it's okay. What's next or what can we do next? And I really enjoyed the process. I enjoyed talking with you on the phone a lot. I enjoyed negotiating. I enjoyed doing all my research. And so to me, the growth in the process was the great part. But it's funny because I've hit a lot of milestones that I didn't think I would hit by age 30. But one of the best feelings ever was actually when I was thinking I was 26 or so, 25,
I started this little Shopify store. This was back when Shopify was pretty new. And I went through this course that taught you how to set up all the products and stuff. And I started a jewelry store. This was before I was in permanent makeup. This was like my first marketing attempts. I started a jewelry store. And I remember the first time I made like a $10 sell, and there was probably only like $6 profit on that. But I was so excited. I was like,
wow, I can make money online. I popped up on my phone, you were paid 1090, $9. And I was just so excited. And that was honestly one of my most exciting business moments. Even though it was $10, it was just the fact that, hey, I did this, I overcame it, and now I'm doing something new. So believe it or not, Jake, you gave me the response I wanted because sales is not about that quick adrenaline rush of, oh, my God, I got it. It's more so about the process and the relationship you make throughout that sale. And that gets addicting. It's super powerful when you have ten or 20 individuals in your database
that are your biggest cheerleaders and you're no longer having to focus on a lot of follow up, and you're just having leads come in that know, like, and trust you and your experience with that. I want to thank you as well. I did get referrals from people interested in doing real estate in central Florida, but those referrals came in without me having to sell them, if you will. They already know, like, and trust me because I did good work for you. So there's a built in trust factor in enjoying the process along the way. Yeah. And I will say on a deeper level, just so people don't get confused, this is not
about manipulating people or creating relationships for transactions. Honestly, some of the other best moments I've had in business where I attended or I spoke at a conference a couple of years ago in Vegas, and I actually got to meet a lot of my clients. And so that was a beautiful moment because I was able to say, okay, these are the people I've seen online. I've been helping them, and they shared their stories with me in person. And just being able to build that relationship on a deeper one, on one level is just awesome. Yeah. If you have to manipulate somebody to like you, I'm just going to go ahead and say, it may not be popular that's sleazy car salesman.
And there is a lot of that in this industry now, whether it's like, oh, I'm a seven figure coach or, like, all these other stuff, there's a lot of sleep in this industry. Yes. I don't think that's who you'd want to be, because I like my business to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, constant referrals coming in, constant lead management on those referrals coming in, constant follow up on the business coming in and having to manipulate somebody to gain a relationship. I couldn't go to sleep at night. And I could say this going back into my real estate business, I was making well into the six figures when I was full time selling. But all of my clients, I can call right now and take them to lunch, take them to dinner.
And we are all great friends. My friends are my clients. I don't have outside people. And that's what I really hope people take away from tonight is make your clients your friends, build a relationship and enjoy the process.
Yeah. And I don't want to teach you guys. I know I said we have five mistakes and we've only gone over four. I'm going to cover the last R1 quick. And then I got an exciting surprise. So not having a sales machine built out is huge. And when I say sales machine, at least there's a million different softwares and tools and just automations and there's so many things you can do to help yourself out. I'm not going
to go into all of them because there's too much to cover. But for example, save replies on Facebook saves a ton of time. That way you're not having to copy and paste out your notes if you are even copying and paste. And I hope not everyone. I know we're talking about customized
replies and building relationships, but there are certain things where people want info and there are certain ways to automate that where you can still build relationships of what you would say without being up till 02:00 a.m. Messaging leads every night. Do you agree with that, Tony? I do agree with that. And that goes back into the save replies. I remember having those save replies in my notes. I remember back when chatbots worked to the extent before they had all those rules come down. Another great thing to add to what you're saying in automation is customer relationship management systems a CRM. Do you have a database where you store your clients information, where you store maybe perhaps their birthday, the day of their service? And do you have automated systems that let's say they come in Monday at two, but they need their touch up in six weeks from now. Are they getting an automatic email a week before that six week Mark reminding
them of their touch up? And it's time to book that oftentimes. To me, we made that mistake, and I think that was a mistake I made in my wife's businesses. I didn't have that set up right from the get go because she was getting people in. She was getting a deposit for the follow up. And then the people just never came back for that touch up. And it wasn't because the service,
it was just because poor follow up on our part and obviously the customer forgetting about it. So making sure that those automated follow ups are there is crucial in this business. Yeah. So I hope you guys enjoyed this. We wanted to come on and share this value with you. Now, I don't like to be salesy or anything, but we do have a mastermind coming up next week. If you want to learn more from me and Tony, if you want to learn how to build a cells machine to get out of your limiting beliefs and basically all these mistakes that we talk about. If you want to know how to not only reverse that but how to optimize it, definitely check out our mastermind. If you want info you can message me. I'm not
going to hard pressure sell you. I'll send you the info and we've got a little video you can watch to kind of see what it's all about. Do you have anything to add on that? No I'm Super excited this time next Monday the mastermind would have started and I'm Super excited to go over limiting beliefs how to manage a business how to be a beauty business not treating it like a job but your business owner putting automation in your business follow up a lot of script practicing and week four is probably going to be my favorite week where we discuss the business model me and my wife are going to be running and how we're going to be doing it without actually having to do much of any of the work. So I'm Super excited for
that new kind of business model roll out that I think could be game changing for a lot of people. I know for a fact this is stuff that a lot of it is stuff that people have not taught in this industry or even know about. So I'm definitely excited for all the weeks but especially week four. Yes, that's going to be a huge AHA oh my God. Now I can potentially run my business without
having to be there 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's constantly becoming a cash cow. Yeah, that's huge because building a business is fun but being stuck in a business that turns into a job is not something you want. Yeah, but awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me, Jake. Yeah, thanks for joining and if you guys enjoyed this please leave a comment below or leave a review in the podcast if you're listening and thanks again for listening, I'll see you guys soon.
2022-01-23 10:48