Be a WORRIER-in-Chief to Grow Your Business (2024)

Welcome to episode 53 of Season 2 of Baktari MD! In this episode we talk about being a "Worrier"-in-Chief, and how worrying about your business is actually beneficial for you. See how thinking of every possible problem, and coming up with hypothetical solutions can actually save you in the long run! All of the tips and tricks you need are right here! Find out all of this and more in the full episode! 

Transcript

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All of these things are things that may or may not happen, but if you're up at night worrying about them and being the true “Worrier” in Chief, it's going to make your company more resilient. Hi. Hi. Welcome to another episode of Baktari MD. As you know, this season we're doing Crash CEO School, where we go over all of the skill sets you will need to take your organization to the next level. Today, honestly, I think it's probably one of our best topics I've done in a while. I want to talk to you about a very intangible ingredient that every CEO needs to make sure his company survives the journey into start up all the way to a mature company. And what I want to talk to you about is that every CEO has to be able to anticipate problems, possible changes. So their company will survive, survive anything and everything. And I call this being the worrier, the worrior for your company. Think of it as being the “Worrier” in Chief. I know that's similar to being a warrior, but I'm talking about worrying, like, you know, losing sleep, worrying. So when I say warrior in chief, I mean worrying. Although you all have to be a warrior, too. But let's talk about what it means to be the “Worrier” in Chief. And basically, if you assume that everything in your company stops with you, every calamity happens, any things that change you should have known, you should have anticipated, you should have come up with a backup plan. And I think a lot of times what we see is things happen to companies as they progress in their evolution in their lives, and sometimes those things that happen can hurt them badly. Sometimes it can be fatal, sometimes they can throw them off track. So what is it about some companies that they're better prepared for these things that weren't obvious, that they were coming down the road, right. So I think if you have this attitude that you are going to be the warrior in chief of your company and you're going to try to stay up at nights metaphorically and think about what would happen if this or that, that will make your company more prone to be able to handle these things. So in this video I'm going to cover that. I'm going to cover some some sample topics of what you should be worrying about theoretically, and many others that I won't be able to get to. But if you are worrying about these things, that or similar things, and not only worrying about it, but taking that worry and converting it into some sort of action ahead of time, you're much more likely to survive the natural turbulence that any company may go through. So let's talk about the company in general. For example, are you staying up at night and thinking, you know, what happens if I lose a key supplier? The let's say you, you get a product that you resell or however you get there or product that you need to do your business. What happens if you lose that? What happens if that supplier goes out of business, they don't want to work with you, what have you. Will your company move on? And so, as the “Worrier” in Chief, you should be coming up and having meetings. Say, listen, you know everybody, what are we going to do in the off chance we lose the supplier? Let's come up with three backup plans and let's put those backup plans into action. Let's sign deals with these other companies, maybe buy 5, 10% of our stuff from them anyways. Just in case we're not completely dependent on the supplier. What happens if you lose a key customer, right. So, for example, there's one customer that really when it comes to a certain segment of what you do whether it’s a service or a product, can you live without a certain customer? Can you live without maybe 3 or 4 of your key customers? And if the answer is no, are you staying up at night worrying about, hey, you know what? I think I'm gonna have a meeting tomorrow morning about how we can diversify, whether we diversify, more customers in the same arena. Or maybe we have to maybe slightly go into a related arena so we can diversify. What happens if the market shifts for your product or service? Right. Something happens. The new technology comes out. Or for whatever reason, your service is not as needed as before. Do you have a plan? And again, nobody would think of this unless you're staying up at night worrying about it. And what I have found is nobody worries like the person who owns the place or runs the place. And if you're counting on other people to have worried about those eventualities, sometimes that's the case, but sometimes they're the ones. They're going to just walk into your office one day, say, you know, we just lost our key customer. We just lost our key supplier, and it's going to take six months until we can replace them or whatever. And then you're going to have to really worry. So what I'm talking about sort of anticipatory worry or let's say a new competitor comes on the market with a price advantage. However you got there, you know, can you handle that? You know, how much lower can a competitor go before it's going to impact you in ways that may be fatal? Are you staying up at night thinking about that? You know, thinking about what's going to happen if another competitor, even with the same level of service but can give a better price, can you survive that? Right. You know, these are all stress tests for your business if they happen. What happens if a new competitor comes up with the better innovation, new technology that you don't have? So of course, again, you have to be worried. You have to step in. I say, you know, maybe we should invest more in technology. You know, we're fine. But what happens if somebody comes with better technology? So we need to be on the cutting edge of that. What happens when you reach market saturation? So you've you're in a market and all the people are going to use you are using you and you want to continue to grow. You know, you got to think, well, should I, you know, how can we expand this into other markets? Again, if you're thinking about it ahead of time and solving for these when you don't have to, it'll make it a lot easier to do it when you have to right? Let's say it, new things pop up, like social media. You were never on social media before. Your competitors are now have their own podcast and YouTube channel, and they're getting, you know, 50,000 views every week and you don't have anything. Right. So before you find before one of your competitors gets 100,000 views a week on their YouTube channel or on their, other social media, on LinkedIn, whatever. Yeah. Well, you know, you can sit down and say, listen, none of our competitors are in social media in any sort of big way. So why should we? Right. But then what happens when one of them actually does breakthrough, right. And has, you know, decides to, you know, go on to LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube or TikTok and they get a massive audience that you could I mean, imagine how much advertising dollars you would then have to spend to get to that same market. So if one of your competitor beats you to that, that essentially free market, although not totally free because you have to pay for production, this and that. But you have to if you're not sitting up at night worrying about it. Right. Because one attitude is you can say, well, you know, none of my competitors are really that big on social media, so why do I have to be? Well, what happens if they one of them breaks out? So you got to think about that. eNational Testing makes getting a simple laboratory test as easy as ordering something online. With three simple steps, you can have your test ordered for STDs, general health, allergy testing, diabetes screening, blood titers, and more! You can simply go in for testing the same day and get your results quickly to your email. eNationalTesting.com’s complete health care panels come with easy to understand results at over 2,700 locations nationwide. It's time to focus on yourself. eNationalTesting.com; easy, convenient and tailored to your health needs. Let's talk about things that, you know, nobody could have expected like a pandemic, for example. Right. If nobody would have expected a pandemic, some people were better, better prepared to survive that some of it may have been luck, but actually, maybe some of it was preparation. Maybe they didn't realize the pandemic was going to come, but they knew something was going to potentially happen maybe or any kind of natural disaster. You know, what happens if there's a, you know, a, a hurricane or, any kind of natural flood, whatever. And, you know, technology's out for a week or two. How how will your business survive and had recover from being offline for a few weeks or a couple of weeks? Do you have backup systems set up? So again, natural disasters, pandemics, what have you, the people who are better prepared, right. The people who already knew how to do zoom meetings during the pandemic, had some idea, or had had already been geared up for that, you know, probably did a little bit better than those people who had to adapt, because it's always better to have learned the techniques and knowledge you need when you don't need it, than when you then if you have to get it when you do need it. So let's talk about like even your own staff, your own, you know, the people in your company, you know, are you staying up at night saying, hey, you know what happens if I lose this key staff person? Or what happens if in this department, you know, we don't have enough to handle, the volume of work that's going to come in, given our new marketing campaign. So understanding and anticipating and worrying about it at night or driving to work, whatever, Are you staying up at nights worrying about maybe. Hey, you know, this one person is doing really great. Let's promote them and give them more responsibilities and a bigger title. because they're really moving the ball forward versus not noticing or waiting. How about managing your culture, right? I mean, you want to wake up one morning, say, oh my gosh, how did the culture in my organization get so toxic where I'm going to have to fix that? Well, the whole idea is if you could have been managing that culture all along, promoting a healthy environment where there's a lot of inclusivity and, there's a lot of ability for people to express themselves and, you know, have their suggestions heard and what have you. You don't want to start doing that once the culture gets a little bit toxic. Managing your cash flow. On my last podcast, we had a whole podcast on managing your cash flow. Right. So a good CEO is staying up at night worrying. Hey, you know what? We're thinking about bringing on these two new consultants, that are going to cost us this much money. How is that going to impact my cash flow? And what happens? Okay, maybe we have enough money for these two consultants, but we're not going to have any money left over for cash flow wise. If something go south. Understanding when to bring in or when to spend more money, when not to spend more money, when to, put money aside or went to be prepared for an unexpected expense that you weren't thinking about impacting your cash flow. All of these things are things that may or may not happen, but if you're up at night worrying about them and being the true“Worrier” in Chief, it's going to make your company more resilient. It's going to make your company be able to survive things that you hadn't expected. No one had expected it, right? Nobody expected to lose their director of marketing because of, you know, some some personal issue that came up last week. And next thing you know, you're losing a senior key person or someone who had a lot of special talents in one area or whatever it is. So really the real job for a CEO on top of everything else we talked about, is to stay up at nights metaphorically and just say, you know, where could this go wrong? And of course, we want to highlight, you know, where things are going, right? But it's also important to talk about, you know, where where could things go wrong? What can I put in place today to address those things. So in case they go wrong we're ready. And if they never go wrong, fine. Then you have another list of things to start thinking about that could go wrong. So always, always think about that. You are the “Worrier” in Chief. And remember, if you're not going to be the “Worrier” in Chief and you're going to send that message that, hey, I'll just deal with whatever comes along comes along, but I'm not going to sit there, have meetings, anticipating things. That message is going to be sent down through the culture of the organization. And the heads of your department will think like that theoretically. So the more you send a message that we have to be prepared for any eventuality, whether it comes or not, whether it's high chance, low chance, medium chance, anything that could seriously damage, any aspects of our company, we're going to stay up at night and we're going to come up with plan B, C, and D in case those things happen. Okay. So I hope that was helpful. If you've stayed this long, please comment like and subscribe. it really helps us grow and bring you more, more information like this. and we will see you on the next episode of Baktari MD. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye bye.