Pod Insights The $100 MBA Show Business Failing? Stop Everything And Watch This. About this episode Many founders assume their business is failing because of the economy, the algorithm, or some outside force they can’t control. In reality, the problem almost always comes down to three specific clogged pipes that choke growth. If those pipes aren’t cleared quickly, the business may not survive. In this Q&A Wednesday episode, Steve asks, “My business is tanking. What should I do?” Omar tackles this tough question by breaking down the real reasons behind a struggling business and offering a step‑by‑step approach to figure out if a company is worth saving. He explains the three clogged pipes that sabotage growth, how to pinpoint the biggest bottleneck, and practical strategies to fix the leaks fast. If you’ve ever wondered whether your business is failing or just facing temporary challenges, this is the episode you can’t afford to miss. Press play to learn how to clear the pipes, stop the slide, and get your business back on track. MBA2756 Business Failing? Stop Everything And Watch This. Recommended episode to explore:The Growth Rate Most Businesses Should Actually Aim For To submit your questions, visit 100mba.net/q. Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Today's episode is supported by Cash App. When it comes to Bitcoin, you may be surprised to learn that it was invented way back in 2008. But you still haven't made the jump to Bitcoin yet? Cash App makes it easy. When you buy Bitcoin on Cash App, they hold real Bitcoin for you, one to one, and you can withdraw it anytime. It works more like real money and less like something locked in an account. No extra steps, no restrictions, just access and control when you need it. With Cash App, you can actually do that. For a limited time, new customers can get $10 added to their balance. Just use code BITCOIN10 when you sign up. And don't forget this part: send at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank.
0:45 Speaker 00 Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Bitcoin services provided by Block Incorporated brand. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast. Small business owners, listen up. You started your business, but you can't do it alone. And that means you have to hire people to help. That's where Justworks comes in. Justworks is a payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong, so you don't have to worry. So you can focus on the parts of running a business that you enjoy, knowing everything else is running smoothly. You don't have to worry when it just works.
1:28 Speaker 00 A lot of founders think that their business is dying because of the economy, or the algorithm, or some outside force that they can't control. They're wrong. It's almost always one of these three specific clogged pipes, yes, clogged pipes, that I'm going to show you today. If you don't clear these pipes in the next 30 days, you might not have a business in the next quarter. So in the next 10 minutes, I'm going to help you determine whether your business is actually failing, whether it's worth saving in the first place, and if it is, exactly what needs to change. You owe yourself the next few minutes. So turn off all distractions, because this might be the most important return on investment you will get all year.
2:16 Speaker 00 Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.
2:29 Speaker 00 I got a quick favorite ask. If this show has helped you in any way, leave me a quick review. You could do so wherever you listen to podcasts. This helps me and my team reach even more people who need the same no-fluff, practical business advice that you're getting from the show. It only takes a few seconds, but it makes a huge difference. Thanks for being a part of our journey to help others on their journey.
2:53 Speaker 00 The first thing I must address is that you are not alone. This episode actually comes from a listener, Steve, who wrote in with a question saying, "Is my business tanking? How do I know? And what should I do?" By the way, if you've got a question you want to ask, just send it over at 100mba.net/queue. So if you're like Steve and you're asking yourself this question, there's your first sign. There's the first signal. We only ask ourselves these questions when we feel like there's something wrong in our gut. And the hard truth is, is that when there's doubt, there's no doubt. So let's go through the three steps I promised you. Step one, let's find out if your business is actually failing. Here's the good news. This part is simple. Business is not mystical, okay? It's actually just math.
3:38 Speaker 00 And if you're self-funded, meaning that you have no investors that are propping you up, the only number that actually matters is profit. How much money are you keeping? Not revenue, and also not followers, and not engagement. These should be signals that should lead to profit. Profit is the bottom line. If your profit is consistently growing, you're healthy. You're okay. If your profit has stagnated or declined for two quarters in a row, something is wrong. And it's declining fast. You are bleeding. And the worst thing you can do when you're bleeding is pretend that nothing is happening, to pretend that, "No, I'm fine." So that is how you know if your business is failing.
4:22 Speaker 00 Bottom line, are your profits going down two quarters in a row? Step two is find out why is your business failing? And like I said, it's only one of three things. More good news, right? There's only three things, not a million things. Here are those three things. Your economics, your product, your acquisition. Those three things will dictate the success of your business. That's it. Not bad luck, not the algorithm, not the market. Let's break them down. The first one is your economics. Your economics are broken if your margins are thin. You're not making enough profit. If your costs are too high, if you're underpricing yourself, if you're overstaffed, if you're spending too much on ads,
5:05 Speaker 00 for example, and not getting a return on investment. You cannot outwork bad math. This is something that I had to learn the hard way. I never thought I was a numbers guy until I became a numbers guy because I was forced to because the numbers matter in business. It is business. If your customer costs you $400 to acquire and you only generate $300 in profit from that customer, you're digging a hole. You're just dying a slow death. So what do you do in this situation? What do you do if your numbers don't make sense? If your math doesn't make sense? If your economics are broken? Well, here are some things to look at first. Number one, your prices. Maybe you need to raise your prices. Number two, cut expenses ruthlessly. Sometimes you need to cut expenses drastically in order for you to start being profitable.
5:50 Speaker 00 Listen, when your back is up against the wall and your business is dying and you are forced to cut expenses, the first thing you start to feel is relief because you start to realize, oh, I should have done that a long time ago. You need to cut every little thing that is not directly correlated to earning more profit. Maybe you need to improve your retention, how long you keep your customers or get customers coming back for more of your products and services. Maybe you need to simplify your operations. Maybe things are just too complicated and therefore costing you time and money. Listen, I've been there before where my business is just not working economically and I had to make some drastic moves. I remember vividly that week when I realized this, I cut my expenses by 20% in that moment and then eventually got cut by 40%. So this is not sexy.
6:35 Speaker 00 This is not fun, but neither is bankruptcy. You don't want to be there. You want to save your business. So do whatever you gotta do to make sure the numbers make sense. And I know you might break some hearts, meaning you might have to let go of some people on your team. You might have to cut off some vendors that you don't need and some relationships that you may be built. But you have nobody to serve if your business goes under. If you can't survive, then you have failed as a leader because your job is to survive. Your job is to thrive the business, to keep it going. And if you don't do what you need to do, then you have failed. And part of that is sometimes is making tough decisions. The second reason why your business might be failing is your product. This one will hurt a bit. It will hurt your ego.
7:17 Speaker 00 Because if customers don't stay, if they don't refer you to other people, if they don't come back for more, if they don't rave about you, your product is just not strong enough. It's just not good enough. It's not something that they actually love and want and yearn for. It's not a need. It's maybe a nice to have at best. And what I've learned is that you can't market your way out of mediocrity. If you're constantly grinding for sales, if you're constantly chasing, if you're constantly feeling like you have to convince people, your product isn't compelling enough. I'm telling you, I've been there so many times where I had to just admit, my product's not good enough. I need to get better. What does a strong product look like? A strong product creates a win for your customer fast. They get immediate relief to the pain that you solve.
8:01 Speaker 00 It solves a really painful problem for them, something that they really don't like living with. And you're doing them a huge favor with your solution. It delivers results consistently, so it doesn't just happen or work sometimes, or if the season's right, if the weather's right. No, it delivers results no matter what. When your product is 10 times better than your alternatives, growth feels easy. It's light. It's simple. And your business starts to feel like a pleasure. So if your business is failing, ask, would I buy my product at this price? And be brutally honest. Maybe you're just not that valuable. And the easiest way to justify any price, if your product is $1,000,
8:43 Speaker 00 or $50,000, or $1 million, is you increase the value. The higher the value, the more you can charge. Today's episode is supported by Rosetta Stone. I absolutely love Rosetta Stone because it's helping me learn Italian faster than I can ever imagine. Why do I want to learn Italian? Well, who doesn't love Italy? But of course, Nicole's family is Italian and I love to have some quick Italian conversations with her mom. And Rosetta Stone just came out with Rosetta Stone Sapphire, their biggest launch in over a decade. One of the coolest features is chat missions, which turns conversation practice into a game. With chat missions, you're put in interactive scenarios and given three objectives. A mission to accomplish, like asking how much something costs, ordering a cold brew coffee,
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10:13 Speaker 00 Support for today's episode comes from Square. You probably know Square is the thing you tap your card on at your favorite coffee shop, restaurant, salon, or local store. But for the person running that business, Square is a whole lot more than a way to get paid. Square brings the tools you need to run and grow your business together in one system. From payments on appointments, to staff, inventory, sales, and customer relationships. Whether you're selling lattes, cutting hair, detailing cars, running a restaurant, or starting something new. Square keeps your business tools working together so you can focus less on managing the moving parts and more on what's next. And right now, listeners can get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/mba. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash go slash M-B-A.
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11:06 Speaker 00 The third reason why your business might be failing is your acquisition. You are selling to the wrong people. For some reason, this is where founders get it completely wrong. They just forget about this. They think acquisition just means getting more traffic, or getting more conversions, or running more ads, or posting more content. No, acquisition is not just about getting attention. It's about getting the right attention. If your audience doesn't understand what you offer, and they don't see the value in what you offer, and they don't actually have the problem that you solve, or they don't realize they have the problem that you solve, then you are talking into a void. This is wasted time, energy, and money.
11:48 Speaker 00 You need to be speaking and positioning yourself and your product in front of the right people, the people that actually want and need what you have. And when that happens, everything feels much easier when you're doing it right. When you're not doing this, it feels really hard. You feel like you're convincing people, you're chasing people, you feel like you're dragging people across the finish line, "Please, come on, get over here and buy." That's not a marketing problem. It's an audience problem. If I was selling special equipment that dentists use to clean teeth to a pediatrician, then there's a mismatch here. "Yeah, I'm a doctor, but I don't really care about this problem. I'm not trying to clean anybody's teeth here."
12:29 Speaker 00 So, you need to ask yourself, who specifically gets the most value from what I offer? Listen, there's gonna be people that are gonna get some value from what you offer. They might think it's a good idea, they might think this is kinda cool, but who will get the most value from what you offer? Who feel like this is amazing, that feel like this is a no-brainer, that this product will solve a real problem? That leads to the next thing I gotta share with you. Who already believes in solving this problem? Who is actually committed and is already trying to solve this problem, but your solution is actually the best solution to this problem? Who's actively looking for this solution? You know, they've tried some other things and it's just not working, but your thing might work the best. Because what I've found is that when you're selling to the right customer, sales conversions become easier.
13:15 Speaker 00 Let me give you a real good example. One of my first businesses was I had a custom tailored clothing line for men. It was a clothing line that people can send in their measurements and that they can get custom tailored dress shirts, casual shirts, so that way they can fit perfectly in their new clothes. Now, in the beginning, I was selling my product to all men my age at the time I was in my mid twenties. Then I realized that not all men will love this solution or actually going to get the most value out of the solution. And I realized the people that actually will get the most value are people like me, who are quite tall and long, have long arms and need custom tailored clothing.
13:56 Speaker 00 They can't just buy a shirt off the rack at a department store because sometimes the neck is too small or the arms are too short. So those people will really love my product. Not every man is going to love my product. Yeah, maybe they'll look a little nicer in my shirt, but they could get a shirt that fits them properly in another store easily. Like, there's other options for them to solve this problem. But for people that are tall and slender, or big, or have a unique body shape, my solution is the best solution. So when you have that match, objections really shrink. Conversion rates rise to the ceiling, okay? Once you identify the right audience, then and only then do you start to scale.
14:41 Speaker 00 Then you focus on a steady, repeatable way to reach them. Then you really focus on a clear message that speaks directly to their pain, these specific people. And they feel like you're speaking directly to them because you are. And then you start to simplify the path to try your offer. It's easy for them to find you and to start using your product or service because you're speaking their language. You're speaking directly to those specific people. And you can scale your efforts by speaking directly with them through a webinar, through targeted content on social media, through paid ads or aimed specifically to the specific niche, through partnerships inside of that ecosystem of, like in my example with the tailored clothing, like the big and tall.
15:24 Speaker 00 You know, for example, I could have partnered with a basketball organization because people that play basketball sometimes are a little bit awkward shape and long arms and big bodies. But here's a kicker, the order actually matters. You need to first make sure you know who you are targeting. You have the right customer that gets the most value out of your product or service. Then you have to craft a clear message for that specific person. And then you need to consistently acquire this person or this type of person. So you have a consistent acquisition system. If you skip step one, where you identify the specific type of person that gets the most value out of your product, no amount of marketing will save you. Trust me, I've tried. I tried to market my way out of that.
16:09 Speaker 00 Businesses don't struggle because they can't sell. They struggle because they're trying to sell to people who don't care. Find the people who care, then scale. By the way, if you're finding this kind of straight talk helpful, I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast because I'm working on an episode that's all about how to use AI. I titled it "The Ultimate Guide to AI for Normal People Like You and I." In that episode, I walk you step by step, how to use AI to improve your offers, tighten your messaging, how to analyze your numbers, and how to just make things a little bit easier for you. AI isn't a gimmick. It's real leverage, and leverage is what turns things around fast. So make sure you subscribe so you don't miss that episode when it comes out. I can't wait to publish it.
16:52 Speaker 00 Been working on it for a while, so you're gonna absolutely love it. All right, let's get to the next part, the next step, where we ask ourselves the question, is your business worth saving? Wow, that's a real question. Now, here is how you know. It's worth saving if the market demands what you're offering. There's a market demand for the solution you're trying to come up with. Maybe your solution's not perfect yet, but there is a market demand. Do customers still care about this problem? Do you still care? Is the core idea still solid? Is the problem that you're trying to solve a real problem? If so, it's still worth saving, but you need to refine what you're offering. And use everything I shared with you today to help you refine that, right? All the things that you need to cover, make sure that those things are in check.
17:36 Speaker 00 Now, it's not worth saving if you hate the business, right? If the market has shifted permanently, if the margins are impossible to fix, if you're emotionally attached but strategically tapped out of trying to improve this business.
17:50 Speaker 00 Sometimes the bravest move you can make is to pivot. Sometimes it's to shut it down and to redeploy your skills somewhere smarter. Remember, you are not your business. You can start again, and you can rebuild, and you can redirect. And I've started 20 businesses. Seventeen of them failed. The lessons from those failures funded my successes. And the thing about business and the thing about entrepreneurship is you only need to be right once. You only need to succeed once for it to change your life around. Now, if you are going to save your business, I want you to do this immediately. Pick one of the three problems to start working on. Now, maybe your business has all three problems, right? Like the economics and the product and the acquisition, right? The people you're serving.
18:35 Speaker 00 Pick one, fix that first. Ignore everything else, okay? Do not try to rebrand and launch something new, or change your logo, or start a podcast, or redesign your website, or have some sort of new marketing scheme. No, those are not any of the things I mentioned, okay? I didn't mention any of that stuff. I said it's either your economics, it's either your product itself, or it's who you are serving, the audience you're going after, who you're trying to acquire as a customer. All these other things I mentioned, all those little tactics, that's panic behavior. Instead, if the economics are broken, fix by fixing your pricing, raising your rates, or cut costs this week. If your product is weak, improve the delivery immediately, right?
19:18 Speaker 00 Do something right now to improve the experience. If your acquisition is low, focus on finding the perfect customer for your product and go after them. One lever at a time. That's how you turn it around. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Business isn't about working harder sometimes. It's about working on the right thing. Every failing business has some sort of bottleneck. Find it, fix it, learn from it, see the result of fixing it. Maybe you need to readjust again and repeat. If you don't fix that constraint, no amount of hustle can save you. Just trust me, when something's broken, it's not going to just fix itself by you working harder. You've got to fix that problem. If this episode hit home and you're realizing your business might need some
20:03 Speaker 00 serious adjustment, then the next thing you need to understand is growth is not optional. This is why I recommend you check out one of our previous episodes called "The Growth Rate Most Businesses Should Actually Aim For." I give you a specific number that you should know like the back of your hand that is your growth rate so that you understand if you're growing fast enough, if you're growing healthy enough. Go queue up that episode right now so you don't miss a beat and you keep on growing. Let's build something worth fighting for. I believe in you. Let's make it happen.
20:37 Speaker 00 If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.
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Previous Supercommunication Expert: Ask These Questions To Make People Open Up and Connect With Anyone. A Convo With Charles Duhigg Next Over 40? THIS Is The Fastest Way To Financial Freedom. Proven Blueprint For Quitting Your 9-5 Page updated November 6, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
