Cory Mosley on Why Now is a Good Time to Go into Business for Yourself

There are many people that want to be entrepreneurs or grow their current business, but fear often gets in the way. So how do you deal with these fears? On today’s show we’re pleased to welcome Cory Mosley, Founder of Mosley Strategy Group and award-winning business growth strategist, to give us his perspective on what he tells clients today.

Transcription:

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Welcome to the show, Cory.

Cory Mosley:
There’s a lot of titles in there.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
There are a lot of titles in there. Exactly. You are awesome at every one of those.

Cory Mosley:
I appreciate that. And so happy to be back in the studio with you also.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. And it’s great. It really is. So, we are fully vaccinated, and that’s a good thing when we need more people to do that, so they’ll go out and spend money with small business owners in Atlanta.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
I do want to talk to you about a couple of things. The reason we wanted to bring you in is you are a coach with so many small business owners, entrepreneurs, people that want to be an entrepreneur, people that are currently an entrepreneur and people that also want to grow their business, but they’ve got some concerns, some fears, they just came through 18 months of just like, what the heck was that? You know what I mean? But, it seems as though business is starting to come back around and it has been now for a number of months, but they’re still a little bit concerned about things and have those fears. Tell the business owners from your perspective how to deal with that.

Cory Mosley:
Well, I think there’s a couple interesting things. I mean, even for us, I started our coaching program during the pandemic for businesses that were in trouble. So, we had a unique view in doing that. And then I also became president of a nonprofit association in the middle of the pandemic. So you weren’t just a practitioner. It wasn’t just about helping people, but it was also about being a practitioner and taking your own medicine. And so much of what’s happened, not only… People think about the bad experiences, but there are a lot of people who have done very, very well over the last 18 months. It’s what kind of side of the fence you were on. So we hear the new stories about some of the tragic situations, but there are people who doubled their revenue, tripled their income. What they normally did in 12 months, they did in six months.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
We’ve had a number of them here on the show.

Cory Mosley:
Yeah, yeah. So, I think the key here is now moving forward. What I’m seeing in the marketplace is I’m talking, I talk to business owners literally every single day in some capacity, whether they’re considering coming into our program or they’re already on. And the fact of the matter is a lot of them are dealing with fear of the unknown, fear of moving forward, fear of losing money. But what most people don’t realize is that that action that they’re not taking is what is going to cost them in the long run. Seth Godin says, “The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.”

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah, that’s a good point. Very good point.

Cory Mosley:
That is one of the things that I think has to be considered and business owners have to be thinking about now as they take steps to grow.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s right. I want to talk to you a little bit about your specific business, because you have helped so many business owners out there. This is a time when small business owners, they need a coach in their corner. They need somebody to bounce things off of, or to run ideas by, or sometimes just for that jolt of motivation. The only reason I go to the gym is because there’s a trainer waiting for me. If there was not a trainer waiting for me two times a week, I would not go to the gym. I’d find some rationale to go, “Eh, I don’t really need it.” And maybe it’s, “I’ll save myself 75 bucks.” Whatever the case might be. But that’s the reason that I’m in the gym.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
And I know that I’ve spoken to a number of your clients and they say that that’s what a coach brings to the table, is that accountability, that motivation, that determination to help that person say, “Hey, snap out of it. Yeah, we just came out of some crazy times, now you got orders to fill. Now you got to find people. Now you got to market in this crazy market and advertising or what have you. How do you do that?” And I know that you’ve been able to help small business owners sort that out on a daily basis. You know the old adage, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you build a successful business? One customer at a time. One employee at a time. Don’t think it’s this overwhelming, “Oh my God, how am I ever going to get 20 new associates?” Today you don’t need 20 new, you need one. Focus on the one. Right.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
So talk to us about that and the importance of people like you out there in the marketplace that can help small business owners go to that next level.

Cory Mosley:
Let me unpack a couple things you said. You said a lot of great things about coaching. Here’s one of the things that are missed in a lot of coaching, people view coaching as encouragement as just accountability. Business owners who want to grow, don’t just need coaching from the accountability standpoint, they need strategy. They need to communicate with someone who also is a practitioner that can say, “Hey, you know what? Don’t go down this road. This is the better road to go down.” Not, “Hey, just go do it. Just take action.” So they need strategy. And I have nothing against… I mean, there’s some great coaches out there, but there’s also a lot of coaches who are great encouragers, not strategists. That’s going to be important.

Cory Mosley:
Number two, building a business is hard. Doing it alone is harder.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. I agree. Done it both ways.

Cory Mosley:
Yeah. I have a saying, professionals hire professionals when they need help. There’s a lot of DIY going on. There’s a lot of people making a lot of money doing DIY. They’ve put together a $97 course or a $27 course. So there’s a baker somewhere who’s excellent at baking cookies. But the problem is she’s buying a $27 course on how to become an expert at Instagram and how to become this. I’ve never… I’m fortunate enough to work with small business owners in my lifetime and I also work with Fortune 500 companies. I’ve never met a Fortune 500 CEO who said to me, “Cory, you know what? We grew sales 13% last year by joining that free Facebook group.”

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. Never did it.

Cory Mosley:
That’s right.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Never did it.

Cory Mosley:
Never did it.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right.

Cory Mosley:
So, I think people have to get real.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah, they do.

Cory Mosley:
And it’s-

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Have to get real about their future, their business at hand. It’s funny because it’s like saying our business is slow, but I don’t want to spend the extra money on an open sign. You know what I mean? To let people know that we’re open. People walk by going, “Oh I didn’t even know you were open. You should have a sign.” “Yeah. But a sign is 180 bucks and yeah that could be money put someplace else or in savings or whatever.” And I kind of liken it to that because everyone can rationalize. Well, I don’t know if I have the expense, whatever it might be to bring in somebody that’s going to help me build a little strategy and then be there as close as the phone or a text message or whatever to say, “Hey, I just ran into this, let me run this by you.”

Jim Fitzpatrick:
And I know that you do that with a lot of your good clients to say we’re kind of in this together. Because I agree with what you said, it’s tough to build it, tough to build a business, even tougher to do it alone. And I’ve done it both ways. And as you know, my wife is my partner. We lean on each other. But for business owners that are out there, if you don’t have that person in your life you can lean on, as many don’t. Sometimes even the partners need a strategist to come in because you get exhausted leaning on one another or arguing over the strategy that you’ve decided on. You need a third party. Somebody like yourself to come in and go, “Okay, I’ve heard. Here’s what I’m getting from you. Here’s what I’m getting from you. Let me lay this out and see if we can all agree on it.” Because you can’t move the football down the field if you haven’t all agreed on the next play. Right.

Cory Mosley:
Two things I find interesting. Number one is the number of people who want you to invest in their business. I don’t mean invest as an investor. I mean buy their products or services, but they don’t invest in their own business, but they want you to do that with them.

Cory Mosley:
And then the other thing that changed a viewpoint of mine, and I won’t take credit. I’ll give credit where credit is due. I actually got, this is something from Grant Cardone and that he talked to me about directly, which was this idea that it’s my response… If my product or service truly does what it says it’s going to do, helps you build your business, helps you lose weight, whatever, helps you market, bring in leads, it’s my responsibility. And it’s actually malpractice for me to not make sure everybody that possibly could be a customer is a customer. And that’s where a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of business owners do theirselves a disservice because they won’t even talk about their products. You know how many people Facebook friend requests me, Jim? And I go look at what they do and it’s not there.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. That crazy.

Cory Mosley:
It’s amazing to me. I go… and so there’s no information. So you have so little pride in what you do, you won’t tell anybody what it is.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
But you want somebody to buy that.

Cory Mosley:
Correct.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right, right.

Cory Mosley:
Correct.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s crazy. That’s crazy.

Cory Mosley:
Yes.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
So here we are. We made it through most of 2021. 2020 was a crazy time. And here we are now on, almost on the threshold of 2022. Exciting times. Nervous times. Is it a good time for those that are right now on the sidelines? Is it a good time to get into business for yourself?

Cory Mosley:
I think there’s always a phenomenal time. Most people don’t understand some of the biggest corporations came up through a recession.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. It’s true.

Cory Mosley:
So it’s not always okay, great, the economy is great. The economy’s not great. There’s always activity. Do you solve a problem? And can you get the problem you solve in front of the people that you solve the problem for?

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right. Pretty simple.

Cory Mosley:
Right. Pretty simple in straight line when you think about it. A lot of moving parts to execute. But that is in its simplicity. So if you are thinking about opening a business that no one needs a problem, that the problem doesn’t need to be solved, you want an iPad holder for your shower, that might not take off like you think you it will. But if I was a personal trainer and the gyms were closed, I should have been digital immediately. I should have been zooming. I should have been zooming. I should have started these types of things. So there’s always, it’s always a great opportunity to be able to start a business, but you just got to do it right.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s right. And we saw some of that take place where people pivoted, not some, a lot. Restaurants that said, “Oh my gosh, if I can’t have people into my restaurant, I’m out of business.” And they quickly pivoted and got with Uber Eats and got with all the other delivery companies and such and said, “Wait a minute.” As one restaurant guy that I said that I met with, he said, “My takeout service is way more. Even though we’ve been open now for six months at the restaurant.” He said, “Yeah, it’s doing fine, but my to-go business is way more than what comes in in the dining room.” He said, “And I didn’t have very much at all before that.”

Cory Mosley:
And we have restaurants in our program. We have a restaurant that just celebrated. They did more business. Their August was the record month. They’ve been in business 50 years.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Wow. That’s great.

Cory Mosley:
Third-generation owner. Had a record month, but we took him online because he wasn’t doing that. He had a 20-year-old system that he didn’t want to spend. He owned it, it still had a server. So he didn’t want to spend any money on any of this new wave stuff and he did. And here’s the cool thing, you know how tipping has become automatic now, like in kind of the tip world. So just when we took him online, the system auto selecting, “Would you like to tip 10%?” 95% of the people left the check box there. So his revenue, this is how simple it is, his revenue went up, basically per order 10%.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
10%. That’s exactly right, yeah.

Cory Mosley:
Just because he changed the system. So he didn’t have to, we didn’t even… Ultimately we changed prices. We changed menus. We made some different things inside the restaurant, but there were some of these little tweaks and that was a moment of like, I never thought about that.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s right.

Cory Mosley:
That’s why you bring in outside people. You know Les Brown says, “You don’t ask for help because you’re weak. You ask for help so you can remain strong.”

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s right. Yep. And every single Monday or Tuesday after a Sunday game, a Pro Bowl, we’re now in football season, what are those pros doing that make 50, 20, $100 million a year? They’re with a trainer. They’re with a coach. They’re with somebody that goes, “All right. I saw you on Sunday. You did this right. You did this wrong. I want to work on this. I want to get you fit. I want to do, I want to get your mind.” So even the people that every single day are making millions of dollars that we see as pros, have that person in their corner.

Cory Mosley:
Well, Tom Brady. A lot of people, some people grunt, when you say Tom Brady, but you can talk about whatever you want. What you can’t say is that guy doesn’t have a hardcore regimen that he was willing to stick to, to have discipline. He wasn’t the guy not showing up. It didn’t just happen by happenstance that he became good. So you can make whatever personal argument, whatever history, however you feel about the Patriots, whatever. But what you can’t say is that guy didn’t do the work.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Greatest of all time.

Cory Mosley:
Yeah.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right.

Cory Mosley:
You can’t say he didn’t do the work. I mean, I’m a Joe Montana guy, but that’s a different show.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
He’s not playing anymore.

Cory Mosley:
Well, you said greatest of all time. So I mean, I like Joe Montana.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
The Joe Montana fan right here, the one and only. No, I’m just kidding. There’s many, there’s many.

Cory Mosley:
That’s right.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Cory Mosley. Thank you so much for joining us once again here on The Atlanta Small Business Show. For everybody that… Anybody and everybody that wants to learn more about Cory Mosley and what he brings to the table for small business owners, and let me tell you, I’ve known the guy a long time. He has done amazing work for small business owners and entrepreneurs, so do yourself a favor and check him out online. We’re going to show all the information right here on the screen. Give him a call. He’s an easy guy to talk to. If somebody calls you and says, “Hey, let me run this situation by you. I’m not sure it’s the right fit.” It’s not going to cost him to do anything like that, right?

Cory Mosley:
Right. No, I mean, we do consultations.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. There you go. There you go.

Cory Mosley:
But don’t call me-

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Don’t wear you out.

Cory Mosley:
Right, of course.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
“Cory, this is my third time calling you.”

Cory Mosley:
This is not a nonprofit.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. That’s right. So, all right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Cory Mosley:
Thanks for having me always.

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