Lessons from Pre-$1 Million Businesses with MNIB Consulting Founder Breanne Dyck
The Nitty Gritty:
- Why you should figure out a different way to do what’s already working rather than start over with something new
- Why the hub-and-spoke organization model isn’t sustainable for growth
- How when you focus on things that feel easy to you, your results will improve
My guest this week on the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast is Breanne Dyck who published an interesting article earlier this year called “15 Lessons for Pre-$1M Online Businesses” that got a lot of play in our community. Breanne learned these lessons as she built her own business as the founder of MNIB Consulting Inc. and as she continues to help others build theirs. In this episode, we explore some of the lessons she wrote about with a focus on how they impacted Breanne’s business, MNIB Consulting.
Don’t Stop as Soon as Something Starts Working
Every time we pivot we get closer and closer to the thing that is ultimately going to work.
– Breanne Dyck
Breanne describes the big business model overhaul MNIB Consulting just went through where they reviewed all the products they have ever offered and evaluated what was working, what was not working and what’s the least complicated way to combine the things working and be the most transformative and impactful for their clients. As a result of this evaluation, they simplified their client support and made it very easy for their clients to come to them when they had questions.
Your Approach to Team Is Part of the Problem
What matters is, are you hiring someone that you can give ownership to of their entire area of responsibility?
– Breanne Dyck
The hub-and-spoke model of team development, where everything still goes through the CEO, doesn’t effectively free up the CEO to work within their zone of genius. Breanne describes how she specifically built her team from the org chart framework described in Gino Wickman’s book Rocket Fuel so that was not the case. When she hires new team members she gives them ownership of their entire area of responsibility.
Do What Feels Easy
Too often entrepreneurs get caught up in the “I have to do this” mentality even if it doesn’t feel easy. Breanne felt that way about blogging. She knew she needed to produce regular content, but blog writing never felt easy to her. So, she found ways to regularly produce content in different ways such as a daily email, posting in Facebook groups and podcasts.
This format for content is more conversational and off the cuff and allowed Breanne to process ideas as she was having them. And, you know what? Her daily email, a task that feels easy to her, is working remarkably well and the response rate is 10X that of when she was writing regular articles.
There’s so much more in this episode including how a line in Profit First by Mike Michalowicz led to a breakthrough for Breanne about how she would grow her business, what percentage of revenue online businesses should dedicate to salaries (including yours) and why Breanne stopped list building. Access the full episode to learn all of this and more.
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