6 Business Lessons Every Service-Based Business Owner Needs to Learn from Product-Based Businesses

You're listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast with Debbie Sassen, Episode 147.

Welcome to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Debbie Sassen. I went from being a financial adviser, author and chronic under earner to building my business to six figures as a financial planner and money mindset coach. And then, on to multiple six figures as a full‑time money and business coach.

I help entrepreneurs create money making businesses and build wealth, using sales and money mindset strategies in alignment with authentic Jewish values. Now, let's dive into today's show.

Hello my friends and welcome back to the podcast. I am bringing you some fire today in the podcast, six business lessons that every service-based entrepreneur needs to learn from product-based business owners.

I realized recently, it hit me in a way that it has never hit me, that I come from a very long lineage of product-based business owners. So I'm going to tell you what I have distilled my lineage down to, in a minute.

But before we get there, I want to tell you that my group coaching program Wired for Wealth is currently open for enrollment. Open enrollment closes tomorrow, September 19th, if you are listening to this podcast the day it drops, or the day after it drops.

I know that if you get into Wired for Wealth now, we still have a week and a half or two weeks before the Jewish holidays, I will be able to give you just the very, very few things that you need to focus on growing your business so that when we get back to work full-time after the Jewish holidays, you hit the ground running.

Otherwise, what's going to happen is you're going to go into the holidays, you're not going to be thinking about your business, not focused on your business, you're going to go through, enjoy the holidays, of course, with your family, and it takes a while to decompress after the holidays, and then it's going to take so much longer for you to get your vibe about going, to get yourself in the mood, in the zone.

It's just going to waste time that you don't need to waste. It's just such a shame to squander these valuable days and minutes and weeks away when you can sign up now. And then, whether it's October 28th or November 1st that you're going to hit the ground, you're going to hit the ground running and not wonder, “Oh, what do I do next?” Because I'm going to be there on your side helping you.

So go to my website, DebbieSassen.com/consult, and sign up for a consultation so we can talk about if Wired for Wealth is the next best step for you.

All right, my friends, let us jump into today's podcast episode. Recently, I made a trip to Germany, in July this year, 2024, to visit the department store that my grandparents owned and ran in a little town called Paderborn. The building, which is a gorgeous architectural masterpiece really, was rededicated by the Volksbank who bought the bank.

There was an exhibition on my family as this podcast episode was dropping. I think that the exhibition on the Grünebaum family, Steinberg and Grünebaum, is closing down, or closes down very soon, at the end of September.

But I have really been thinking about what it means to be a product-based business owner. Because that's my legacy. There's so much that I've learned about my family by being involved in this reopening of the building and seeing just how dedicated they were as business owners.

I'm going to bring this to you... I'm just going to point out that my dad was a product-based business owner. He's still alive, and he sold his business when he was 80 years old. He's still involved as a consultant to his business. He still loves to go into the office and help them.

But technology has advanced a little bit. And my dad doesn't know all the fancy digital marketing things that people do these days in their businesses, podcasts, etc. But he is a very wise business owner.

Both my grandfather on my mother's side and my grandfather on my father's side were product-based business owners. I mean, a department store is products. And then my grandfather on my mother's side had a photography business, which is how my dad got into the photography business. Because until my parents got divorced, my father worked for his, what became his ex-father-in-law; but it was his father-in-law when they were married.

Interestingly, my stepmother's father was also a product-based business owner in the pet supply business. I don't know on my mother's side; I never asked my great-grandfather. I did know him, unlike my great-grandfather on my father's side. But it's really my great-grandfather on my dad's side who was the one who opened the department store in Paderborn, in Germany, that became my family legacy.

I mean, it's no longer in our family, unfortunately, and we don't need to talk about Nuremberg laws and things like that and why it's no longer. Nevertheless, I have learned lessons, and I'm going to share those lessons with you on the podcast.

I think this is a very important episode. You’ll want to bring a pen and a paper so that you can write these down and be able to remember them. And you can then use yourself as a benchmark. Where am I showing up in my service-based business like a product-based business owner? Where can I uplevel? The first lesson that is so important to learn is that I think product-based business owners understand risk so much better than service-based business owners.

Because let's just think about a department store. Sigmund, that was my great-grandfather, he left his hometown… I forget the name of it… and moved to Paderborn. He had to find land. He had to find a place. He had to open this department store somewhere, whether it was renting the property or buying the property.

I'm pretty sure that he bought the property. He actually left his hometown and his parents told him, “If you're successful in Paderborn, we will move and be close to you.” But he went off on his own and started something from nothing; from the idea in his head that he could supply goods to the community of Paderborn.

And he became very successful. But before he became successful as a department store owner, he had to put money into his business. And this is where I have seen also, in my days working on Wall Street… Because I worked with so many businesses. Ford Motor, for example, was a longtime client. I don't know if they still are, but certainly in the days when I worked at Goldman Sachs, Ford Motor Company was a big client of Goldman Sachs.

We're going to talk about relationships and customer service in a little bit. That's one of my points here. But if Ford, for example, was going to open up a new plant in order to produce their cars or assembly line, or even they want to put research and development together in order to improve their products, cars, you have to put money into those products, into your warehouses, into your inventories, your showrooms.

Money goes in before a dollar even comes out. And I think that their ability as product-based business owners to understand and assess risk, to understand the long game… Because the moment you start research and development on a new car, the moment you start thinking about maybe if my clothing company wanted to expand to be a department store, not just clothing, and we wanted to bring kitchenware, pots and pans and serving spoons, napkins, linens, if we want to bring more products into our department store, we have to buy them. We have to use money to buy these products.

And we're not going to see, whether it's a dollar, a Deutschmark, a Euro, a Sterling, a Shekel, we're not going to see money for a while. And so product-based business owners have to take money from somewhere. Now, sometimes it can be from money that's in the family, but then it's a loan from the family to the business.

Very oftentimes, there will be people who are specialized in lending money. It can be a bank; it can be another funding agency. If you have a smaller business, it can be a credit card company. But you cannot start a product-based business without money.

And so many service-based business owners want to start their business without investing money. It is 100% holding you back. If you would take money, if you would invest it to learn the skills that you don't yet have, it's like buying the inventory that you don't yet have.

It is renting the warehouse, the storeroom. It is renting the place where you're going to have your cashiers and your salespeople showing up. If you would have a little bit more capacity to take on risk, I am 100% sure that you would be able to collapse time and make money more quickly.

And then you pay off the loan. You pay off the interest on your loan over time. There is no rush to do it. Once you have some money, you have to pay it off immediately. It's okay to have debt. When I was working on Wall Street, there was something called “revolving credit facilities”.

So let's say, for example, a department store is going to have seasonality. Around the end of the year, the Christmas season, maybe it starts even from Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all the way through the end of the year and into the beginning of January, sales often increase. Have you ever wondered why there are so many sales in the United States in particular? You have President's Day sales and Labor Day sales and “white sales” and summer sales and Halloween sales, Thanksgiving sales, Valentine's Day sales.

There are so many different types of sales because there are times during the year that are not the natural sales season. So something new and interesting goes out in order to boost sales. But really, it's the end of the year, the last six weeks of a calendar year, that the department stores make most of their money.

Maybe they can run a sale in order to recoup some of that money back, money that's been lent to them, until they're going to have this huge influx of money at the end of the calendar year. And sometimes, in order to smooth out their cash flow, there are facilities called “revolving credit facilities”. You can just come to these.

You can use these mechanisms with your bank to borrow money at the end of the month, or during the course of the month if you can't meet your bills, because you always have a certain amount of money. It's like a line of credit. You might know that with your credit card you're also assessed, that if you want to buy on credit, whether it's $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, that is just like a revolving credit facility.

That Visa or MasterCard has already said to you, “Yeah, we'll help you smooth out your purchases over time, over the end of the month, and you're just going to pay us back when it's convenient for you.” And of course, they are very, very happy to charge you interest rate. The interest rate is just the price of borrowing money today that I don't have available to me. That's all it really is.

So think about your capacity for taking on risk. If you want to grow more quickly, we can have a conversation about it. Reach out to me and let's see if you borrowing money is the next best thing.

In fact, I had a conversation with somebody yesterday whose business has slowed down so much, and I told her, “You need to borrow money.” And do you know what she did? She went to a family member, she borrowed money, and now her business is really going to turn the corner and it's going to grow again.

Point number two is that in order to grow your business… Let's say you've done the things right… you grew quickly, you grew slowly, whatever it is… when you want to go to the next level, you need to take on more risk. You need to borrow more money and do the next thing.

I look specifically at my grandfather's department store. In 1910, it was not yet his department store. He wasn't old enough; he was only 10 years old. He was born in 1900. But his father had been so successful growing this department store that they needed to expand.

There are beautiful pictures that I've seen of Steinberg and Grünebaum, the department store, in the construction stages for the new building. And that building is the one that I saw when I was in Germany two months ago. It's still standing now.

But can you think about that? You have a department store that's running, that's working, buying, selling, and then you want to have more products. You want to supply more goods to the community or even go beyond the community. You need more space.

So my great-grandfather hired an architect from Düsseldorf and they built a new building; they were in their little space while they were building a bigger space. And they obviously had to pay the architect. They had to pay for the materials. They had to put money into the business again before the expansion occurred.

And so many business owners in service-based businesses, they become their own bottleneck. Because they're maxed out in terms of their time. They need to hire somebody onto their team. It could be a virtual assistant. It could be somebody that can take some of the work off of you.

If you are, for example, a copywriter and you just don't have enough time in your day to service all of the people who are turning to you… and I know that you love your clients, and you are really, really committed to your work, and you want to give them the best work… it's very possible that what you need to do right now in your business is to bring another copywriter onto your team.

You can bring someone on who has a similar writing style, a different writing style. Maybe you are more academic in the way you write and you want to bring somebody on who has more of a humorous bent, and then you'll be able to divide up the work or do it a little bit differently. Or she will do the basic work and then you're going to be doing the refining.

But think about bringing somebody on your team, doing that next level hire, that next level expansion before you actually need it. Because otherwise you're going to be the bottleneck. You're going to be exhausted, and you're probably going to hit burnout because you're not supporting yourself well.

Another way, if you want to get to the next level, you're going to expand is by hiring a coach. And I feel this very strongly. What got you here in terms of your knowledge, your skillset, your ability to take risk, what got you here is not going to take you to the next level.

Last week on the podcast, I talked about creating a million-dollar business, and how I did that over five years. I want to do that again. I want to create a million dollars in my business in less than five years. My goal is to do it in the next two years. I want to collapse time and have a really big business.

I mean, it's a service-based business, so it's always, always, always precedented on service and serving my community and helping the people who work with me. But what did I do? In the last couple of months, I think August specifically, I hired two new business coaches.

One is a one-to-one coach that I'm working with, and one is in a group program, because I need to expand my skillset. What I know about business has not yet been maxed out. And so many people think, “I know what to do. I'm good. I've already done it.” But if you want to grow, you don't know it.

Not because you don't know it, not because you're not an intelligent person, but because you have not yet tread that path. But there's somebody out there in the world who has tread the path before you. Allow yourself to hire help and then follow their direction.

I made sure that my two different business coaches… who don't know each other; they're working in different states. In fact, they're both in the United States… but their methodologies are consistent. Not the same, but they're consistent. Meaning, I can work with both of them, and I'm not going to be getting two different types of information.

So that is something that you have to think about, is always invest before you're ready. And I'm going to repeat what I said in point number one, invest for the long term.

When my clients join Wired for Wealth, which is a $6,500 coaching program, group coaching program, for a whole year, my goal is that you 10x your income. Meaning, you take $6,500 and you grow it to $65,000 during the course of the 12 months of our work together.

But you know what? You're here for the long game. If you go from $6,500 and you make an extra $30,000 in your business, you've nearly 5x your money. Or you make $40,000, so you've more than 5x your money. Do you realize what a huge gain that is?

It could be, by yourself, you'll be able to add another $10,000 to your business income. But why would you stop there when you can impact more people's lives through the services you provide, and you can call in more money for your family by the income that's coming in, just by virtue of working with a coach who has tread that path before you, knows the steps, and understand the mindset.

The mindset, I’ve got to tell you, it is 90% of the work, maybe even more. Because our brains are so bratty, and they will keep us in fear and doubt as much as they can. Having an accountability buddy on your side, someone who sees blind spots that you don't know, and who will stretch you beyond what you even think is possible, that is more valuable than any other investment in business, and I know that from experience.

So think about what it's going to take to get you to the next level and where you need to invest.

Point number three, product-based business owners are not afraid to sell. In fact, their entire business is based on selling. My grandfather, who became the owner in 1926 of Steinberg and Grünebaum… and then unfortunately, because of the Nuremberg Laws, it was ripped away from him… when he came to the United States, he was a Fuller Brush salesman, among other things he did.

What does that mean? He went knocking on doors trying to sell brushes, Fuller Brushes. It's a very famous company. And you know what? Most people say no, and that's never a problem. Anybody who's in the product‑based business knows what it's like to sell and sell and sell and sell and people say no and no and no and no, and it's never about the salesperson.

When I worked, for example, in the electronics industry, I first started by working in my cousin's electronics shop. I worked there behind the film counter. You remember 35mm film back in the day? I would ask my customers, “What would you like? Would you like this kind of film? Do you want prints? Do you want slides?”

Remember when you could actually… Do you remember… I don't know, I might be dating myself. But once upon a time, you chose your film based on whether it was going to give you a print or whether it was going to give you a slide, and that was kind of what I was doing in the beginning. I was 13 at the time.

And then I advanced into the electronics department where I sold VCRs. I sold the original Apple computers back in the day. I sold Pong. Who remembers Pong? It's amazing how fascinated we were by this ball that was… whatever a digital screen looked like back then… slowly moving across to the other side. And if you don't know Pong, you’ve got to Google it because that is my beginning.

But so many people came into the electronics store and I would say, “Can I help you?” “No, I'm just looking.” “Can I help you?” “No, I'm just looking.” Or they would ask me questions when I was selling VCRs. “What's the difference between Panasonic and Mitsubishi?” And I would explain to them what the difference was. Or, “Can you tell me about these computers?”

Often, I would make them an offer, talk about the products and say, “Hey, would you like to buy?” And sometimes it was, “Yes, I want to buy.” And sometimes it is just what we get today, “I'm going to have to think about it.” Unfortunately, I never got the sales training that I give my clients now.

Because I say to my clients, “Okay, if somebody says to you on a sales conversation that they want to think about it, ask them what they're going to think about, because your brain likes to be bratty. Your brain will tell you if you're feeling a little bit uncomfortable about making a decision.

Your brain will say, “Nah, I need some more time,” when really you don't need time. You just need to know if it's a yes or no. Or there might actually be some information missing.

Back in the day, it would have been nice if I could have said to them, when they said they're going to think about it, I could have asked them, “What are you going to think about?” But I didn't. So here we are today. And it took me many, many more years to learn that skill.

But product-based business owners never make it about themselves. They are always selling the product. They're always selling the solution. They're selling their clients tools or toys. Let's think about VCRs. I was selling toys. When I worked on Wall Street, I was selling derivative products; it is a solution to a financing problem that my clients had.

We're just selling people a result that they want in their life. They're not buying you. You are not coming into their house unless you're going to go install their computer, in which case that's part of the customer service. But it is never, ever, ever about you. You have to wipe that thought off of the record.

So many business owners want validation from their business. Like, “I am an amazing person. I did well. I made money.” We're in search of validation. You have to provide the validation for you, for your existence in the world, because God has you here for a reason. So we need to find that validation from inside, never from our business, even if your business isn't working at the moment. We're going to talk about failure tolerance.

But let me just finish up with sales. You have to sell. If you don't know how to sell… Yes, some people will buy. But you have to sell way, way more than you think you need to. You've got to go out and meet people and talk to them and find out what their interests are.

Are you the person to help them? Are they looking for somebody else? Do they know somebody who could use your services or your products, if you're listening and you're a product-based business owner? But think about how much you're selling. Where are you retreating or retracting and not selling enough? Because that is the number one skill that you're going to need to grow your business. So go out there and sell like the dickens.

Let's move on to number four. I alluded to this before. It is called “failure tolerance”, specifically about decisions that you make in your business. You could be making an investment decision. Maybe you will hire a copywriter. You'll put up a website. You'll buy products for your businesses that just aren't going to work.

I think I've spoken on the podcast before about my dad's business in the photography industry. There was a time in our life where my dad invested in a bunch of watches, similar to Swatch, but not the same quality. And those watches sat in my dad's trunk, the trunk of his car, for a very long time. It became a family joke/legend; embarrassment maybe. I don't know.

Things aren't going to work all the time. And certainly with your sales calls, they're not going to work all the time. We have to expand our capacity, expand the tolerance that we have for failing, for things not working the way we want them to.

Because do you know when you fail? You fail when you give up. Otherwise, we're going out into the world, we're trying something, we're getting data back, we're tweaking our process, and we're going out again. You have to increase your tolerance for things not going well. And again, in product-based businesses, it's going to happen.

If you have a department store, for example, the department store is going to bring in a line of clothing, it could be shoes, socks, kitchenware, linens, electronic goods, whatever is being sold in the department store, and it might not go. You have to make an educated guess about the next step in your business.

And if it doesn't work, then you have a “fire sale”. You sell it back. Maybe you have some products on consignment, so you can give them back if that's the kind of relationship that you have with your suppliers. But even in a service-based business, you might run a webinar or a masterclass. I did that a couple of weeks ago. I was very fortunate that over 200 people signed up for my webinar.

But maybe you're going to put a webinar out there into the world and nobody's going to sign up. Maybe it’s because you didn't sell it enough. Or maybe just a few people are going to sign up, nobody's going to show up, and you're going to want to beat yourself up and say, “Oh, it didn't work. I failed.” No, you just tried something that didn't work, or it didn't work as well as you wanted it to.

Similarly with sales conversations. You got on the call, they said no, and it's not about you. It's about your skill set as a salesperson. And that is a beautiful thing, because it means that you still have something to learn. So increase your capacity to fail.

Number five: Reputation, reputation, reputation. In the real estate industry, we know about location, location, location. But your reputation matters. In business, we talk about “the know and trust factor”. People that know you, they're going to feel comfortable with you. If you're a likable person or if you're not a likable person, go figure out how to make yourself likable, because that will draw people closer to you. They need to know that they can trust you.

If you sell them a car that turns out to be a lemon… We all think about used car salespeople, and we sort of have this image of them as being sleazy. Used car salespeople do not have a good reputation. People need them if they don't have the money to buy a new car.

Or maybe they do have the money, but they're like, “No, it's not worth it to me to buy a new car because it loses value the moment I take it off the lot. I want to buy used cars.” But they're a little bit nervous about how they're going to buy a car because of the reputation of used car salesmen.

So think about your reputation as a business owner, about your client delivery, about the results your clients get. It matters, and it matters a lot.

Now, sometimes you can have a reputation that's punctured, that's wounded, that has a little black mark on it, and you can rebuild your image. I think sometimes you have cars that get in accidents, and something that was supposed to happen… let's say the airbag was supposed to inflate and the airbag didn't inflate and then there was something terrible that happened, God forbid… and the car company can lose their reputation over airbags that did not inflate.

But if they fix it… people have very short memories these days because we're just so inundated with information, that maybe there'll be one or two people who won't buy from that car company… most people will forget about it and they'll move on.

If you're working more closely with people in a service-based business, the word will get out that, “Oh, person ABC is not very trustworthy.” But then that business owner, Mr. or Mrs. ABC can fix the reputation and they can go talk to a new audience, speak with new people, maybe even the existing people. “I heard what you had to say. I fixed it. I'm sorry,” and they can rebuild a reputation.

But your reputation is so important. And I really think about this so strongly, because my grandfather's company, Steinberg and Grünebaum, they had a really beautiful reputation in their community.

And now I'm going to tie together point number five and point number six, which is the context in which your business operates. I was just on Grünebaum… I'm going to put in the show notes haus.grünebaum. Where you can go on Instagram and you can find it. It's all in German, but you can hit the translate button. You can learn about my grandfather's department store if you want to, but they have talked so much about how this department store was a pillar in the community.

And just today… it was just amazing the synchronicity that I wanted to record this podcast. Then I saw this on Instagram. In World War I, Steinberg and Grünebaum, before my grandfather took it over, they gave to the soldiers, the German soldiers, socks, earmuffs, and other things to keep them warm when they were out on the field.

And I really think about what's happening now in Israel during the war. It's like, this is my legacy. I come from a legacy of people who were givers, givers to the soldiers, givers to the community.

The community of Paderborn, where my grandfather's department store is situated, is a very Catholic community so there were communions. But Steinberg and Grünebaum would give communion dresses to the girls who couldn't afford them. They had a special line of white dresses for the girls in the community.

They were givers of the community. So number one, that was part of their reputation. And that goes back to point number five. But point number six, that I want to bring, is that the mission of your business, the purpose of your business, some people will call it “the context”, it matters.

It matters if you're a giver. It matters if you're a doer. It matters if your business is green, right? You want green energy; you don't want to destroy the planet. You want to reduce carbon footprint. That is part of your mission.

If your mission is a pro-woman, let's empower women. Empower women and hear their stories, listen to them, help them become stronger and more resilient. That can be part of your mission.

If it's, in my situation, to help Jewish business owners to grow their businesses. To overcome money blocks that are wired into our bodies because of our generational story that we've lived with, our inherited traumas that we've lived with for thousands of years of thriving in one community, being kicked out by an anti-Semitic government, and then having to move somewhere else where we had to start from zero.

So part of my context is helping Jewish business owners to heal their generational trauma that they've inherited. That they're not part of it, but it exists inside of them. And to help other Jewish women in business to really grow. To show our beautiful skills and our gifts and share them with the world in a big way.

Steinberg and Grünebaum, they were such givers to the community. And I really have noticed now how the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. When my grandparents, Ludwig and Lili Grünebaum, moved to the United States…

The grandparents that I knew were my grandmother Lili, who hand dipped her own chocolate. They were the most delicious chocolates that anybody in the world will ever taste. Unfortunately, my grandmother passed away and she took her recipe with her. She said that she knew when it was the right season to dip her chocolates by her arthritis. When her wrist would start to hurt her, that meant it was cool enough for her to start dipping her chocolate.

I loved the marzipan and the coffee cream in particular. Every year, around the holiday season, my grandmother had little boxes of chocolate. She also had the bigger ones. She sold them. She had her own store, Lili's Confectionary, which was her side hustle in addition to working as the head of the cafeteria at City College in Los Angeles.

But she would bring them to the grocer, to the seamstress, to the bank teller. She wanted to, what we call in Hebrew Hakarat HaTov, she wanted to recognize people for the good that they had done to her, even though she was paying them money. But she still was always, always a giver.

And it came from my grandfather and my grandmother. I just saw that my grandmother was the one, because she was the one who dipped her chocolates. But my grandfather did it in other ways. And that also came down to my family.

In Los Angeles, where I grew up, the Jewish Federation was, it might still be… I have lived out of Los Angeles for so long… But the Jewish Federation every year gave awards to people in the community who were big givers. And there was a special award for people in the photographic industry. I remember that my grandfather, my mother's father, winning that award.

Because I just grew up in a family of givers. It wasn't just that we made the money, and we were very fortunate to have the money, and it just influenced our own lives, but there was always this very Jewish value of giving back, of giving our charity, of giving our tithes, giving what we call our tzedakah. My family, when I grew up, wasn't religious the way I am now. We do it today in Israel in a different way.

But I want you to think about your business, because at some point, hopefully, your business is going to grow beyond paying your bills. And then the context of your business matters. What are you here to do? What is your unique mission that your business is going to stand for?

Just think about it. Are you going to be the business that makes the best websites for people in the Jewish world, or the non-Jewish world? Are you focused on the legal industry? Are you focused on the clothing industry? What are you here to give? Not what are you here to get, but what is uniquely special about you and your mission that you are here to give while you're on this earth?

All right, my friend, let me review for you the six business principles that every service-based business owner needs to learn from product-based business owners.

Number one: Play the long game. Expand your capacity for risk. You have to put money into your business before you start making money.

Point number two: When you want to up-level, you want to grow your business, you are going to be the biggest bottleneck. It goes back to the long game, but you're going to have to borrow more money in order to take that next step and grow your business bigger.

Number three: You need to learn how to sell, and you need to love selling. Selling is always, always a service. It's not sleazy. We are not going to be like those used car salesmen. But you want to make sure that you are selling and selling every day, because there is somebody out there in the world who wants what you have. So sell, and don't be afraid of it. It's not about you. It's about the results, the solution, the tools or the toys that your people want.

Point number four: Expand your failure tolerance. Not everything is going to work. People want guarantees. If you want guarantees, you don't belong in business. Things will not go right.

When people join my program Wired for Wealth, and they say, “Debbie, can I really 10x my business? Do all of your clients 10x their business when they work with you?” Some of them do, and some of them get close, and some of them maybe only double their investment. But you know what? They've grown. They've grown their capacity to fail. They've learned how to sell. They have now learned how to invest in their business.

There are so many ways that you grow as a business owner, and sometimes it will be a tangible 10s result, and sometimes it will be just… not really just… but it will be who you become; that person who can fail better, sell better, invest and take on risk better because you've grown as a business owner.

So really, really step into failing because it's really just learning or winning. There's nothing really called “failure” unless you just give up and then you sort of cement it in stone.

Number five: Protect your reputation. You are the face of your business. People have to know you, like you, and trust you. Your products also, but your products have to have a reputation for being sound, for being good, for doing what they say they're going to do, if you're in a product-based business. And your reputation matters.

And if something happens, if there's a black mark, go into Amazon and look at the books. Most books, or any of the products, they can have a lot of five stars. And yeah, just look. Sometimes there's a one or two star. It doesn't matter. You can always work again. You can go back and rebuild your reputation. So don't let that even drag you down.

And finally, the context of your business, the mission of your business matters. Be a giver. Be kind. Make sure that your business has something that it stands on that you are bringing to the world, because that also will connect you with your potential buyers.

All right, my friends, thank you so, so much for tuning into today's podcast. I hope that you were taking away very actionable items from what we've talked about today.

I want to remind you that the current enrollment for Wired for Wealth closes Thursday night, September 19th. When you join Wired for Wealth right now, we're going to make sure to set you up in the next two weeks. We're going to set you up so that you know exactly what to do in your business.

We're going to refine your signature offer. We're going to talk about where you're marketing, and figure out what you're doing, who your ideal client is. And make sure that when you come back from the Jewish holidays you will hit the ground running. We're not wasting time wondering and spinning and trying to figure it out, you will hit the ground running.

Also, you get the accountability of the group program. You're going to go out there the last two months of the year, and you're just going to blow it up. You're going to make money and serve your people. And I just can't wait to see you shine.

All right, my friends, I will see you next week on The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. Bye, for now.

Thanks for listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. If you want to stop underselling and underearning and close more sales, you need to clear the limiting money beliefs that are sabotaging your business growth.

Head on over to DebbieSassen.com/mindset and download my free Money Mindset Workbook. Uncover and dissolve money blocks, like hundreds of other entrepreneurs who are now building six-, multi-six-, and seven-figure businesses and creating true financial freedom.