Not so dumb anymore.

Dumb and Dumber is a comedy classic, but Jeff Daniels has another comedy that’s probably more authentically Jeff Daniels than any other role. And that’s coming from a guy who could nearly quote Dumb and Dumber from opening scene to closing credits.

I use the word “authentically” because it was written, directed, and starred by Jeff Daniels. It’s a love letter to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (the U-P).

The film is called Escanaba In Da Moonlight.

I found it in the $5 DVD bin at Walmart, and to this day I think it’s the only film that is set entirely in deer camp, about opening day of deer season.

It’s about a father, his two grown sons, and their friend Jimmer who has a certain crazy-mountain-man energy.

They go out to the family hunting camp, where their family has been hunting for generations. Around the cabin are old photos, trophies, and records of past triumphs. Jeff Daniels’ character’s great grandfather is often quoted, who had a way of summing up life wisdom in short, memorable quotes.

My favorite quote has stuck with me for over a decade:

“If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

I use this nugget of wisdom when coaching small business owners along the Profit Hiker trails they pick. Spend the right amount of time on the trail, not more or less. Only you can know how much that should be.

Another version of this same idea is “the lazy man works twice.”

Do it right the first time, and you won’t have to go back and fix it later.

If it’s worth doing, then do it right.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

Silver bullets are a common trope in “Fright” lore.

One shot can take out a vampire, a werewolf, or a witch instantly on contact. Poof – vaporized.

Thus, the term “silver bullet” has been used as a term for one simple solution to a complex problem.

There have been a few actual “silver bullet” discoveries and creations over time. Penicillin comes to mind, as does insulin shots. One simple solution to a complex and seemingly-unsolvable problem.

We’re always looking for the quick fix.

It’s easy to believe that there’s a silver bullet in your business. Sometimes there actually is, but most often there’s not.

The way I describe it is that instead of a silver bullet, think of a brick house. Everything you do in your business lays another brick. Win a customer’s trust? Brick. Build a good sales pipeline? Brick. Roll out an awesome new product? Brick.

It’s a long game, but you’re building something that can last the test of time.

Don’t wait around for the silver bullet. Start laying bricks.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

I love camping.

Waking up in the great outdoors with fresh air and songbirds, getting the fire going, cooking in the open air, and of course enjoying a mug of hot coffee while the sun rises.

When you are camping, you realize that what we actually need in this life isn’t very much. Some basic food, some basic shelter, clean water, someplace cool when it’s hot, and someplace warm when it’s cold.

You know who else loves camping? Treehuggers.

Getting back to basics, staying in tune with nature, setting out with the absolute bare bone essentials, living outside, and enjoying every minute of it.

And who else besides that loves to camp? Rednecks.

They love it for a lot of the same reasons, too. They like to be outdoors as often as possible and get back to their roots, to the way generations before them lived. Rednecks might be cooking sausage instead of quinoa and smell like tobacco instead of patchouli, but the heart behind the activity is pretty much the same.

Trust me, I’ve camped with both!

If you are in the camping industry, then you have an opportunity to double your audience by speaking to both treehuggers and rednecks – but you must speak very differently to each audience in order to resonate and see results. You may even need two totally different brands (selling the same products) to accomplish that.

If you rethink your audience, you could double your market size.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

Branding is powerful.

You can’t ask a preschooler if they want celery, raisins, and peanut butter for a snack. I guarantee that your answer will be “hard pass” (or the 4 year old’s equivalent phrase, probably just “NO”).

But when you put the peanut butter in the channel of the celery, and line up the raisins in a row on top, then reframe those exact same ingredients as “Ants On A Log” – suddenly it’s that kid’s favorite snack of all time. First ballot hall-of-famer. Same kid, same food.

It’s important to keep our minds inspired, and sometimes just a quick rebrand can help.

Here are some of the most memorable ones I’ve come across… (Read these in George Carlin “rant voice”. You’re welcome):

• It’s not a used car, it’s “Certified Pre-Owned”

• It’s not a boring committee meeting, you’re joining a “task force”

• These shoes aren’t vinyl, they’re “Vegan leather” (yep, I actually bought some. they’re vinyl.)

Rebrand things that are good for you to help you stay inspired.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

When I was in Middle School, I had a couple of game-changing moments thanks to a couple of teachers who were extra hard on me.

At least, in the moment that’s what it felt like.

Now, looking back, they were just calling me to my potential like any good teacher, coach, parent, or mentor should.

That’s because I was lazy. I could do better, but I wasn’t.

One teacher in particular called me up after class one day and called me out on it. Do the work. You can do better than this. She even gave me an ok grade on the work, but she called me to a higher standard.

Why? Because I had more in store. And all it needed was some diligent work in order to draw it out of me. “Do. Your. Homework.”

My favorite Thomas Edison quote is this nugget: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

That’s why in the Profit Hiker program I call you to action after going through all of the trails.

Even if you already have a particular trail in mind, you should take time to consider each and every one of these trails for your business.

Trust the process. Do the work.

If one of the trails sounds ridiculous or unattainable at first, give it time and attention to study the trail and think about what that hike looks like for you.

You might be surprised what ideas you uncover.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

Struggling to make your marketing work?

Start by clarifying your value proposition in your advertising.

Figure out what your offering really means to your audience and how it changes their life.

Make sure your Call To Action is easy to understand and complete.

Once you have dialed in these aspects of your campaign, double down on your advertising budget.

Report the results and review to keep a close eye on your ROI.

But before you do that, consider hiring a sherpa.

Sherpas are famous in Tibet and Nepal for helping visiting climbers scale Mount Everest. Prolific in their mountaineering, adjusted to the altitude, and able to carry a pile of gear on their back, sherpas are hard to scale the world’s tallest peak without.

You need sherpas in your business life too.

Your Marketing Sherpa: A Branding and Marketing Agency

There are plenty of talented agencies that are friendly to small business marketing campaigns.

Agencies will have experience in particular sectors, so seek out one that has worked with a business like yours already. They might have intel from competitors, or other brands like yours in other areas.

A sherpa can help a Profit Hiker like you scale your target peak.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

Automation can be simpler than you may think.

It can be an investment in new software or equipment that works better, faster, or more reliably. There could be an improvement to the efficiency of your operations that’s yearning to be made, but you might instead be trying to ride it out with slow, outdated, or broken infrastructure.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is really making waves in business automations, and it might be a fit for you too. Small business owners have been using AI chat tools such as ChatGPT to generate ideas, identify patterns, or get answers to difficult questions.

Building AI in your life

Investing in an AI integration into your business can pay off huge (especially when it comes to customer service).

AI is a quickly evolving sector, and here are some pretty neat automation tools we have already seen come to creation:

1. Custom GPTs – Create customized helpers who have a specific role, and know exactly what you want out of them (no more prompt-repeating!).

2. AI Assistants – You give apps like Lindy access to your email, calendar, and so on, and you can program automations to do whatever you can imagine.

3. Marketing Apps – Tools like One4All have AI built in to help you write and schedule social content, all in one calendar.

You can integrate AI into your business to relieve pressure from yourself and your team members.

You can automate something in your life this week!

Onward and upward, Simon Trask P.S. – I created a super affordable Custom GPT course that will get you up and running in just 30 minutes!

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

fric·tion

/ˈfrikSHən/
noun
“the resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another.”

Friction and resistance have a way of sneaking into your business. If you’re not taking a frequent and honest look at your business operations, then it’s easy to let approvals, processes, checkoffs, punch lists, and reviews add friction.

Here are 4 questions to ask yourself on a regular basis:

1. What person or role has become a bottleneck in my organization?

Think about the difference between a fast-moving, 5 lane interstate – compared to a checkpoint. Whether they’re looking for drunk drivers, illegal substances, or agricultural produce, a checkpoint bogs down the entire flow of everybody’s experience. Do you have unnecessary checkpoints? Trust your team.

2. What tasks are holding my team back?

Trim the fat. If you’re asking your team to do things because “that’s the way we do it”, take a good hard look at those tasks. Do we still need to do it that way? Really?

3. What tools are slowing us down?

I had a business where we had a couple of slow computers that were bogging down production. When the product is your employees’ time, make sure their equipment isn’t getting in the way.

4. Where can I remove friction in our operations?

This is worth periodic observation, asking lots of questions, and going through your business with an ignorant mind. It’s hard to leave your personal baggage (and knowledge) behind, but that’s the only way to bring an outsider’s perspective. Unless, of course, you actually bring in an outsider’s perspective.

Reduce friction, speed up, grow margins!

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

You can’t be brave.

Well, more specifically: you can’t be brave unless you’re scared first.

Synonyms of Bravery include valor, courage, and heroism.

This word might spark images of soldiers charging the hill or first responders running straight into a tragedy, but you and I have opportunities to be brave every day.

My favorite quote on the topic is from John Wayne: “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.”

I often remind my children that you don’t have the opportunity for Bravery unless you’re scared first.

Bravery is not “bravado” – bravery is informed, while bravado is clueless. Bravery is educated, bravado is ignorant. You know what the risk is, and you’re taking it anyway.

Difficult trails require Bravery (and being scared is normal).

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

It was all going to waste...

Ford Motor Company has a reputation for disruptive innovation unlike any other company in modern American history.

A lesser-known tangent of Henry Ford’s legacy is another brand you’ll find in American homes from coast to coast: Kingsford Charcoal.

Early “motor coaches” were primarily made of wood, and as part of his expansion plan, Ford set out to vertically integrate his wood supply chain.

This involved huge swaths of forest land, sawmill operations, and chemical treatment facilities.

A massive byproduct of a sawmill is wood chips.

Ford saw an opportunity to “waste not,” and his team developed a method for turning those chips into fuel. They would be dried, baked, mixed with starch, and pressed into bricks for portability.

These charcoal bricks were used in Ford operations, but the production volume was way more than Ford could use. Plus the commercial opportunity became evident in the coming years, first with restaurants and eventually in retail stores.

So, Henry Ford (being Henry Ford) set out to create an entirely different business that is now nearly as well-known as his cars.

The next time you fill your charcoal chimney and get out the burgers and franks, remember that your perfectly cooked goodness is thanks in part to a genius business move over 100 years ago.

Where can you turn wasted into profit?

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

Bad news, good news.

Gig work, The Great Resignation, and “Quiet Quitting” become news bites that spread negativity when it comes to employment.

Hating your job is a punchline in our culture – comic strips, sitcoms, and cinema all portray the same trope about a hollow soul having to drag themselves to work, dreaming about where they would rather be.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

According to a Gallup worldwide employment survey, nearly 60% of global workers are Quiet Quitting. This term refers to mental disengagement from your work, which essentially comes from a lack of purpose.

That same survey reports that “low engagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion dollars, or 9% of global GDP.”

Hiring is difficult these days, and we all know it.

Getting talented people to work for you requires good pay, a great workplace environment, and work they can be proud of. Profit is the key to each and every one of these things.

Your employees need your business to be healthy.

Profit can build a place that people look forward to coming to each morning, to do fulfilling work, and leave satisfied at the end of the day.

It takes money to pay competitively, to hire quality people, and to keep the team focused on the customers.

It takes money to give back and to innovate.

It takes money to buy better, faster, and safer equipment for your team to use.

This has an impact that carries beyond the four walls of the business, too. When employees have margin in their lives, their families flourish, and their overall satisfaction rises.

Instead of working late at a job they hate and bringing their discouragement home, they can leave work at work, satisfied with a good day full of purposeful effort.

This energy gets passed to their loved ones, multiplying your efforts.

Your team matters. Workplace satisfaction matters. People want to do good work that makes an impact.

Loving your employees starts with profit.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

Negotiate everything.

Most people hate conflict, and a few people enjoy it. Rarely are people “fair to middling’” on confrontation. But dealing with conflict is a secret skill that can be a superpower as a business owner.

If you haven’t shopped around pricing from your supply chain in a while, it’s time. In fact, it’s always time.

You can probably negotiate with your vendors right now.

This can be a delicate conversation, so tread lightly when needed.

Negotiation reminds me of the hit show Stranger Things. Jaded and sarcastic Police Chief Hopper finds himself unexpectedly fathering a quasi-adopted teenage girl, and has to explain the concept of compromise.

He brilliantly uses the phrase “halfway happy”.

You can work together and find a middle ground that everybody is “halfway happy” with. Think about what makes your supplier happy, and align what you’re doing with that goal.

Remember this truth: if you and your suppliers both need each other, then you can create a new win-win scenario.

Find that middle ground.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

There are two types of people in this world.

Those that would rather ask permission, and those that would rather ask forgiveness.

If you’re the asking permission type, you’ll need to get outside your comfort zone as a business owner. Sometimes you just have to make decisions and ask forgiveness later.

Or there might be a third way…

Asking forgiveness implies that a mistake has been made. However, sometimes you just need to raise prices. You might even be faced with the choice to raise prices or close up shop. That decision considers your customers, but they can’t be involved in that decision. That one is all you.

Here’s the third way: announce the change, and communicate more value. It takes the sting away when you let people know how much more they’re getting for the money.

If you have a service, you can raise prices right now for new clients.

New clients won’t know (and don’t need to know) what rates your existing clients are paying. You can always keep a discount in your back pocket if you feel like you’re going to lose a sale over it.

It’s a lot easier to give a discount when your prices have already raised!

Is it time to raise your prices? Don’t forget to communicate value!

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

In the advertising agency business, I used to tell my team that, deep down, every single client who walks through our door wants more.

They want to grow by getting more of something – usually it was pretty evident, like leads or sales or customers.

But sometimes it was more subtle than that: they want to be the top dog in town, they want to send their kids to a better school, or engage more people in the community.

What I came to realize is that while marketing is certainly valuable, we were only one of many opportunities that a small business could leverage to get “more.”

In fact, when asked to speak at a conference geared for small business owners, I deeply researched the topic and discovered there are actually 11 different approaches to creating better profit.

Within those 11 approaches, there are a seemingly endless number of tactics a business owner can implement to create better margin.

Stay tuned for more thrice-weekly info on how to implement those 11 approaches.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

Even if…

Even if you find a business that’s ready to sell and you close the deal, you need to tread lightly and be very smart about how you merge them together.

It’s often the case that you will have to let some employees go from either side, and you want to be careful about switching brands on the new business’ customer base.

Their customers will already have questions of trust with the ownership changing hands, and you can really rock the boat by making too many changes too quickly. Treat those customers as a flight risk until you have proven to them that you can add value and make their lives better.

A “Roll Up” strategy is a common way to grow your business by way of Horizontal Integration.

If you have a strong brand and solid operations, then you can seek out similar businesses that are weak where you’re strong and roll them up into your business.

This typically involves rebranding the new company as your brand and implementing your Standard Operating Procedures into their crew.

If you have successfully taken this trail all the way to the summit, what you will see in the long run is a single business that has grown faster than you ever could by simply increasing your marketing spend. You may have even learned a few tricks along the way that you would not have otherwise discovered: new methods, processes, philosophies, perspectives or even found new suppliers to work with.

Is going horizontal the right path for you?

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

Simply put, Horizontal Integration is growth by acquiring competitors.

It can be more nuanced than that, but in most cases it would mean simply buying a competitor and merging the businesses together.

Horizontal Integration is a long game with a long-range return on investment, but it can be a fantastic way to grow your business – especially if you’ve really “figured it out”.

If you have a competitive advantage, if you have better marketing, sales or operations, if you have a more notable or trustworthy brand than your competition, then this trail will be a great way to add value to an acquisition right away.

You get their book of business, their supplier relationships, existing customers and their team, and you can apply the strengths of your business to all of that to make both of them better.

Now the idea is nice, but the execution of this trail can be tricky.

First off, if you have a contentious relationship with your competitors then that creates a major hurdle right away. You may need to look outside of your region for a good business to buy.

Even then, it’s a tricky conversation to start.

In the business broker world, they say that people aren’t ready to sell their business until they encounter one of the “Three D’s”: Death, Disease, or Divorce. I have also heard of Disenchantment, Dullness, Distress, Departure, and Disagreement being added to that list.

Horizontal integration isn’t for the weak, but it’s an amazing way to grow.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

New is exciting.

There is an exhilaration that comes with building a new thing, embarking on a new journey, lacing up and hiking that new trail.

While you’re building something new, you may be able to fund it with your current revenue.

This is called “bootstrapping”.

As in, “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps”.

If you’re bootstrapping, then do not ignore your main business. Keep it going strong so that your new venture has a chance to be successful.

It’s tempting to fall for what many call “shiny object syndrome”, where you’re investing all of your mental and physical energy into the new thing, while ignoring the thing that’s financing the new venture.

In Texas they say “dance with the one that brought you”.

New is fun, but don’t forget what is giving you the chance for new.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

You are creative.

If you are not familiar with how to tap into that force of your nature, then try what I call “Active Creative Meditation”.

What I have learned is that if you establish a playground for your creativity, then your brain is free to connect dots that you may not have even known were there.

So what you need to do is quiet yourself on a regular basis and then give your creativity permission to go wild.

This is a simple yet powerful tool for your business, and as a small business owner it’s your responsibility to make space in your life for creativity and the reimagining of your future.

Traditional meditation can be a great way to quiet your mind and focus on the challenge ahead. It is a fantastic tool for well being, and a great thing to weave into everyday life – but that doesn’t personally work for my own creativity.

Here’s what does work, and why I call it “Active Meditation”: Any repetitive physical motion that does not require a high level of mental engagement.

Examples include:

1. Jogging on an empty road

2. Cycling on a stationary bike

3. Fly fishing a slow section of river

4. Swimming laps in a pool

These are all activities that engage your body, but release your mind from any burdens. It’s a safe place for your mind to go nuts.

What is a way that you can engage in Active Meditation, rethinking your business?

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

You can offer more to your customers.

No matter what line of business you are in, you have a brief relationship with your customers in the grand scheme of things. You interact, transact, and they go back to the flow of their life.

That can change.

It all starts with clearly defining your current audience. Describe who they are, what they like, and why they like it.

Where do they live?

What music do they listen to?

What car do they drive?

Who did they vote for?

What are their hopes, dreams, and fears?

Map out their journey, and how you fit into it now. What happens before they interact with you, and afterward? How are they feeling? What are they thinking? What problems are they facing?

Now dream up how you can be a closer part of their journey.

Don’t just define a classic “customer journey” with you at the center, but rather define their personal journey, and what small part you currently play. When you put your customer first, then you can see a picture for what other opportunities there are for you in that journey.

You can be doing more for your customers. Changing is up to you.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.

There are many ways to pivot your business.

Whether you feel like you have hit a ceiling, or you’re just looking for a new frontier – here are 2 questions I like to ask business owners to expand their reach, without even changing their offering:

1. Who would love your product that doesn’t know you exist?

Could you appeal to an audience that is older, younger, more urban or suburban, a different gender, race, political affiliation, or location than your current audience?

2. Can you go from retail to wholesale (or vice versa)?

If you have a “Business To Consumer” (B2C) retail business: could you go “Business To Business” (B2B) and become a wholesaler?

On the flip side, if you are already B2B, could you become B2C and sell direct to the end customer?

Expand your thinking, then expand your audience.

Onward and upward, Simon Trask (I’m a small business owner, advisor, and advocate – learn more here)

Simon is author and founder of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.