Episode 380: Grow Your Business FAST with AI, Team Building & Starting from Scratch
As businesses navigate the increasingly complex landscape of the modern market, staying ahead of the curve crucially entails leveraging technology like AI, fostering team motivation, and implementing smart sales strategies.
In this episode, Adam and Chris tackle 10 burning questions from the community, each centered around pivotal business topics like AI, team building, social media strategy, and more. With only 30 seconds to answer each inquiry, the duo delivers rapid-fire, insightful advice to help business owners navigate common challenges and seize new opportunities.
Show Highlights:
- Establish your target audience and create a product or service that addresses their needs. Engage with potential clients on social media and make irresistible offers.
- Tailor content to specific audiences, leveraging their pain points to build engagement. Ensure your strategy aligns with clear calls to action.
- Stay ahead by understanding and integrating AI into your business processes. Regularly invest time in learning and utilizing AI tools to enhance productivity.
- Focus on strengthening relationships within your team through targeted team-building activities and understanding individual strengths and weaknesses.
- Effective communication of vision and strategy is crucial when implementing internal changes to ensure buy-in and smooth transitions.
Links Mentioned:
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
Adam’s website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod
Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod
Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod
Coaches, consultants, and business owners – lower your marketing costs, increase ticket prices, and get more high-ticket clients: https://3daybrandbuilderworkshop.com/start-here?el=Pod
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
[00:00:00] Adam Stott: Welcome back to Shotgun Business. Today we’ve got 10 questions, 30 seconds to answer each question. We’ve done this quite a few times. We’ve been super popular. I’ve got Chris back today and we’ve got questions on AI. We’ve got questions on motivating, change, team building, and so much more. Let’s dive in so you can get some fast answers on how to grow your business.
[00:00:23] Right,
[00:00:24] here we go, Chris. Shotgun business. Replacing Steve in the seat with these shotgun questions. We’re gonna do 30 seconds, I believe, part one. Is that right?
[00:00:36] 30?
[00:00:39] Yeah, you confused?
[00:00:42] Chris Cook: Well, that’s what I’m saying. Oh, was he meant to be 20?
[00:00:44] I’ll tell you what, let’s do 30 and really test him. Right. Okay. Lots of questions from the community.
[00:00:52] How long were you thinking? A minute each? I thought we were going a minute. I’ve done 20 30 seconds before. I can do whatever you want,
[00:00:57] Adam Stott: mate.
[00:00:57] I don’t know if
[00:00:58] Chris Cook: he can do 20.
[00:00:59] We’ll see.
[00:00:59] Adam Stott: Okay, cool. So hit the timer when we go through it, buddy, and we’ll see what we got. Right. So Shotgun Business is all about you raising your business acumen.
[00:01:08] So if you are a listener that’s not submitted a question, this is going to be awesome to you because you can hear Okay. Common business challenges that everybody’s experiencing. These questions have come in from people either via our big business events, school group which is a community. You can go and find the, in the description, the link to that you can join.
[00:01:27] It’s free where you can be surrounded by thousands of other business owners. They’ve been crowdsourced from my Instagram and from sometimes the comments on YouTube as well. We’re going to read out the names of the people that have put the questions in. We’re going to answer as many as we can, and we’re going to stick to 30 seconds per question.
[00:01:42] question. I know some of these are quite expansive. They’re quite big questions, but we do our very best to nail them in 30 seconds. Chris is going to ask them, then we’re going to jump in. Who’s the first question from Chris? Let’s jump right
[00:01:54] Chris Cook: in.
[00:01:54] Okay. First question is from Andre Perdom. This is from Instagram.
[00:01:58] If you were to start from zero followers and contacts, in other words, no network, what would be the top five things you would do?
[00:02:06] Okay.
[00:02:07] Adam Stott: Number one, Is I’ll establish zero contacts. I’ve got to get my product going, right? So I would establish first of all, or service. Who do I want to serve? Who is the type of person that I’m going to offer a product or service to?
[00:02:20] I would then build a product based off of their product. or a service based off of their problems and their needs. Once I built that product, I would go out and I’d start having conversations with them on social media. I would choose one social media platform, either LinkedIn or Instagram. I’d go and find those people.
[00:02:38] I’d start having conversations with them, start making an offer to them that was irresistible to get the business. I mean, to get five in, in 30 seconds, six, I think I did pretty well. That was a, that was that right. That was a difficult one, but there you go.
[00:02:52] Chris Cook: Right. Next up, Tom Olga. He’s from the BB school group.
[00:02:56] Yeah. How long I have to reset that one there. Go on. How long does a social media strategy take to put in place?
[00:03:06] Adam Stott: Not long at all. Really? I mean, you first of all, okay, it’s actually similar to what I just said. You need to understand who you creating content for or ads for. You need to then make sure that you speak to the people’s audience.
[00:03:22] Pain points that gain points and you start putting content in place with a strong call to action of how they can take the next step with you. The thing to remember here is when you’re marketing, you’re not selling what you’re marketing is to get people to take the next step with you.
[00:03:36] Chris Cook: I’ve done that one.
[00:03:37] Okay. Great. Love that. Okay. Next question. This is from Vic Beaumont. She’s part of the gold circle. Yeah. She asks, how can we future proof our businesses, particularly those that operate knowledge based services that will be largely replaced by AI? Well, you’ve got to
[00:03:55] Adam Stott: lean in to AI. You’ve got to start studying it now.
[00:04:00] You’ve got to start using it now. You’ve got to start leveraging it and understanding it. I would, I’d make it a part of my knowledge base that I spend. Let’s say three hours a week at least, perhaps more where I’m just looking at that one topic and really looking at how can I build in AI to my business so you know more about it than your customers ever will and you’re in front of the curve.
[00:04:22] That’s why I would say that.
[00:04:24] Okay,
[00:04:24] Chris Cook: great. Okay, next question. So Priyanka from your Facebook asks, How do you motivate your team to deliver interesting
[00:04:33] fear? No,
[00:04:39] Adam Stott: I think, that as a business owner, you have to drive the business. I think that you have to motivate and inspire people to want to be a part of the journey that you’re going to go on.
[00:04:51] So for example, the best way to do it is where are we going? How are we going to get there and get everyone bought into the vision of where you’re traveling
[00:04:58] Chris Cook: towards? Okay, next question. This comes from Hannah Viney, our friend and a member of Circle. What have been the biggest struggles you’ve experienced during the growth of BBE?
[00:05:11] Adam Stott: Biggest struggles during the growth of BBE. I think that I don’t really see it as a struggle. I just enjoy it. I love doing it. You get day to day challenges, but I’ve not had one big problem that I’ve not been able to. I feel like that we’ve not been able to solve. I think the one thing that is people realizing often how one.
[00:05:34] Conversation one opportunity one discussion can change everything for him and a lot of people don’t realize that actually just one nugget one new pathway in one new direction can generate people hundreds of thousands to millions of pounds in revenue and often people don’t realize that and you know, What sometimes happens is that people might be in education for a year or two and quit just before the magic happens.
[00:05:58] And it’s more of a frustration for the client because they were so close, you know, and that’s something that our best clients understand that a little bit longer.
[00:06:05] Chris Cook: Yeah, no, that need a little bit more. That’s okay. Next question. This comes from Dennis Layton on Instagram. When recruiting for a financial manager role, how do you know?
[00:06:15] When you’ve got the right candidate,
[00:06:17] Adam Stott: So financial managers, different levels. So first of all, you need to understand what level you want. Do you want to finance manager? Do you want to finance controller? Do you want to head of finance? Do you want a director of finance? You want to CFO? So you’ve got to understand what the distinctions are between those different levels.
[00:06:32] And then you’ve got to look at your business and where your business is at. I think one of the things that a good finance manager has is good overall financial acumen. They can raise you money, create you money, find you money, and they are proactive. So there’s some good tips. So that was quick.
[00:06:49] Chris Cook: Okay. And Eva C asks or says, I have a small team of five who are all really good at their roles. Recently they’ve stopped getting on with each other. This is starting to impact my bottom line. What should I do?
[00:07:06] Adam Stott: Focus on team building and relationships rather than your bottom line, because if you focus on the team building relationships, that will build your bottom line anyway.
[00:07:14] I think that the way the question’s framed is if we went out and we and we took those people together and we got them to, I’ll tell you what actually, I’ll give you a really practical thing, one thing you can also do, which we’ve done recently, is really get people to understand their strengths and weaknesses.
[00:07:28] So there’s strengths and weaknesses tests you can do. If you were to get all five of them together, get them to do that and appreciate the differences between each other, then very quickly you get people to understand that everybody’s different and everybody can add value in different ways. That’s very good.
[00:07:41] And do some team building, take them out, go and get them drunk. Well, hopeful they don’t fight. I don’t get them drunk. go and take them out for a meal. Yeah. , depending on what they like, you know, take them to the gym, just go and do some team building. Yeah, because love that. Like you said, if you’ve got five great people, you wanna keep ’em
[00:07:56] around, then you wanna build that. Right.
[00:07:58] Chris Cook: Okay. Next question. How do you navigate internal changes in the business?
[00:08:04] Adam Stott: I see how you change is how you succeed. You got to be evolving, you got to be innovating, you got to be changing. Communication in change is very important. Explaining to people, this is where we’re going. This is what the vision is.
[00:08:16] The CEO, it’s their job to. Define the vision and explain how we’re going to get to the vision. And then the rest of the team is coming on that journey. Your COO is to make sure that day to day we move in that direction. And your CFO is making sure that you do it financially in a sensible way. I think define the vision first of all, and take people towards that is how you navigate change.
[00:08:38] If people understand why you’re changing. They’re going to be a lot more, a lot less resistant to it. Especially if they can see that there’s some benefit in it for them in the long term.
[00:08:47] Chris Cook: Okay. Next question comes from Jane Elliott done from the big business entrepreneurs school group. What is the quickest way to grow and increase online sales for a startup?
[00:08:56] Paid ads. Okay, . Simple as that. Only 30 seconds.
[00:09:01] Adam Stott: You see, it’s pretty simple. You run paid ads. And look, some people go, well, I’ve tried that. You know, it’s working for millions of people. If you tried and it didn’t work, it’s not, ’cause it doesn’t work, it’s ’cause you didn’t do it right. You need to try it again.
[00:09:14] And then you need to try it again, you need to try it again, you know, if a baby got up and walked and fell over, you wouldn’t say, look, just forget walking, it ain’t for you. Okay. Yeah. You would tell them to try again until they can walk. And that’s why I would say to business owners with ads try and try again.
[00:09:29] Keep refining your creative, keep refining your copy, keep refining your message and get out there. That is the fastest way that You can grow a business
[00:09:37] Chris Cook: and sell online. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, great. And I believe this is our last question. So this comes in from James. It’s fast. I’m not speaking on.
[00:09:46] If he listens to this
[00:09:47] Adam Stott: on like 1. this is going to be like, it’s going to be a nightmare, right?
[00:09:52] Chris Cook: So this is actually a similar question to what you spoke about before. And this is as a service provider, should I consider developing an AI offering now? I see an opportunity, but I’m unsure where or when to start.
[00:10:05] Adam Stott: I would first of all study it. I would study it. I would know it inside out. I mean, I use AI all day long, every day. I never type anything. I use it all by voice. I love it. I use it for everything. I don’t use Google anymore. Every type of search. I want to know what films are on. I’m going on chat.
[00:10:22] GBT. If I want to know where the best restaurants are, I’m going chat. GBT. If I’m in Nice, which I was last week in France, I want to know where the best restaurants are. I’m going chat. GBT. I don’t use Google at all. I’m all in on AI in terms of the way I use it. But then I use it for business as well. So you want to really become a really good AI user, not just some of the plays of it.
[00:10:42] Use it, understand it, understand how you can benefit. Great. because then you’ll be able to navigate other people towards it in the future.
[00:10:48] Chris Cook: Okay.
[00:10:49] Adam Stott: Great. Last question. Yeah. Was that the last one? We got through those pretty quick. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed that. And if you’ve been listening, imagine what it’d be like if you were getting your question answered.
[00:11:01] Don’t sit there in fear or sit there in a place where you’re not sure. How are you going to grow your business? What are you going to do? No question is a silly question. We are here to support and help business owners to start their businesses. And if they’ve got a business that they’ve already started, they want to grow their business.
[00:11:17] We can help you on team. If you want to scale your business, understand how to invest and to really scale your business up. You can ask any question. in the comments, or you can email that into info at big business events dot co dot UK. That’s info at big business events dot co dot UK. So go ask a question now and you could be featured on the next episode of shotgun business.
[00:11:39] I want to say a big thank you to listening. You know, we really appreciate you being here and we’re looking forward to helping you in the future of your business. Thanks again, Chris. That was great episode. Really enjoyed it. Enjoyed it.