Why Small Businesses Really Close: Stop Obsessing Over Marketing [Ep. 23]

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In recent conversations with founders, almost every chat circles back to one thing: marketing. And it makes sense, it's the part we see everywhere, it's how people find us, so we obsess over it. But here's the truth most business owners don't hear until it's too late: marketing is just one of the five areas running your business. 

Here's what we cover:

• The 5 core areas of every business — and why focusing only on marketing creates problems on the backend
• The cashflow reality that quietly closes businesses that still have plenty of customers
• Why "something's broken, I need to hire someone" is often the wrong first move — and what to do instead

If you've been treating marketing like it's the whole job, this is your nudge to step back and look underneath it all.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hola amigas, this podcast is for Latina entrepreneurs building businesses while navigating faith, culture, and yes, motherhood. We unpack how your story shapes your leadership and build real-life systems that help you grow without burning out. This is where Gozura meets strategy. So let's go. In recent conversations with founders, I have found that the topic that we mostly chat about is marketing. And I totally get it. It's like the one that we see everywhere we go. I mean, hello, that's how people find us, right? So we tend to kind of obsess a little bit over it. And we sometimes tend to forget that that is not the whole business. There's so much more to it than just posting, chatting, and posting over and over again. Okay. There's a lot more that goes into a business than just marketing. And actually, it could feel a little bit overwhelming because when you are focusing on marketing, marketing actually is the umbrella of a lot of things that happen underneath. Like, for example, branding, your the branding that you're trying to portray and show. Then there's data that you're collecting, the analytics, all the information on the back end. Then we have networking, we have engagement. All of that is all part of marketing, including pricing and offers. So I can totally understand how founders can feel overwhelmed by the marketing aspect of it, because that in itself, it's a big role. I mean, companies hire departments for marketing to help out. It's a heavy lift, right? But I want to talk about this other things that we sometimes forget to think about, and it's actually a very important part of the business. So if you don't know, but if you do know, kind of in business, there's five different areas. One is leadership, operations, marketing, our favorite, team, and finance. So if you can see there's five, not just one. And here's the thing: we know that marketing is important. I've explained it, but when the other areas of our business are in the backseat and we're not paying attention, it will create chaos as you grow and then later as you scale. Okay, because they're different things. So when all your energy goes to one thing, bringing in the cells, then everything else in the back end, your leadership, operations, team, or finance, one of those things will be affected. Sometimes it's just one or the other. Sometimes there's two things that are get affected. Um, it would be really bad if all five are gone wrong, but mostly is one or two things that need a little bit more attention in order to not feel as chaotic. So, how do we know this? How do we know that something is needed and we need to think about pivoting to something else? Because we know that bringing business is very important. Otherwise, if we don't have clients, we don't have transformations, we don't have any business. But research found that 82% of small businesses that closed their business was because of cash flow. So the money, not because they run out of clients. And that was based on a US based bank study. So think about that for a minute. Most of these businesses still had the customers, their marketing was working. What took them down was something in the business, a different area that nobody was watching. In this case, it was finance, right? Cash flow. What was happening there? Something wasn't managed properly, it was overlooked. So it's not because owners didn't care, right? I'm sure, like as you're as a business owner, you want to know everything about your business, but you sometimes get overwhelmed about doing it all or not wanting to learn something, or you just kind of hand it off to somebody else thinking that they're gonna run with it and be of the best interest. And subcases we have seen that that is not the case. Some people just go into the business to collect a paycheck and can care less, and they'll do the bare minimum just to stay employed. So it's very important for you to be involved and know enough to have conversations on the things that are important in the business, which reach actually brings me to the point how it's also important to know that four in 10 bit small businesses can't even cover one month of expenses if something happens. That is insane. It's very scary, especially with payroll. Payroll is expensive, and so if you're running payroll weekly or bi-weekly, you better have a good grasp in your cash flow and your finances, otherwise, they'll you will have problems. When something feels broken, don't just don't just assume that you need to hire somebody because that's the other thing that I see happens. You think something's broken, I can't handle it anymore. I need to hire somebody. Now, maybe you do, maybe you don't, but first you have to actually understand what's going on underneath the issue, underneath the project, underneath the challenge, under underneath it, underneath it all. Like the song by Quin Stefani. You have to figure everything out what's really underneath it. Okay. So in order to take a step, so take a step back and think about this in very simple terms. I can say is take a look at something that you're doing in a different area that you're continuously doing over and over and over. The repeatable stuff. Write it down. Or do you have it written down? Do you have that process written down? Take a track of your what you're doing right now, how long does it take you? And then start start seeing, start differentiating what you're doing, right? Now, people get a little caught up when I talk about systems because they think systems to them could be, especially right now, it's could be something tech, but it's not tech. I'm talking about the way you do what you do. That's really what a system is. How do you do what you do? Do you have it written down? Can you hand it off to somebody if it's repeatable, if it has been checked, and you have been running it for a while now? And then eventually, if it's the right thing to do and is the right time and everything aligns, then that's when you would probably bring somebody to take over in order to own it. But as long as you understand overall how your business works, and that's when you would bring somebody to help out. I want to ask you a question. Could your business survive two weeks without you right now? And if not, which area do you think it's holding you back? So think about that, write it down, and let me know in a comment, send me a DM if you have any questions about that. I'd be happy to chat with you about it, navigate further. Before I leave, I want to let you know that I am running a free SIP and learn workshop on July 13th, 11 a.m. Pacific, 2 p.m. Eastern Time. I'm sharing what I've learned with working with seven to eight figure businesses, and I'm just not gonna be talking. We're gonna be doing real work together in that time. So it's gonna be part learning, part doing. Registration link is in the show notes, and I really hope to see you there. All right, amigas. Hasta luego, bendiciones.