When you have business owners who spent a lot of time in their business working really hard, they don’t necessarily want to stay running around in their businesses any more. They typically want to automate and have systems and processes. Sure, they may have a C-Suite handling his or her wishes, but most owners don’t necessarily have their officers focus exclusively on automation, systems and processes because that C-suite has their own responsibilities to complete within that business.
Here’s the pressing question: why wouldn’t it make sense for an owner to sit there, craft their vision statement, craft their mission statement and craft their marketing campaigns with the sole intention of “running to their end game”- either selling their business or actually working on their business for once?
There’s thousands of different ways to market, but the truth of the matter is you should market to your strengths, your vision, and what works for you and the message you want to deliver. You must, of course, perform the heavy lifting to discover this reality for yourself, but you have to have a process and a system in place to handle this action.
You should have a due diligence checklist to say, “Every time I want to market, does this particular system I’m looking to execute in my business match my vision statement? Is it congruent with my mission statement?
As an example, I’m a writer. That’s what I’m great at. And because I’m great at writing, I simply write lots of articles. I can publish that one article and post that same message across 12 platforms with the push of a single button. I’m also great at automating systems. I know how to put systems together. I know how to put the structure of things in marketing and sales together so that things won’t fall apart. You don’t want your sales and marketing processes having holes in them, especially if you’re trying to scale up your business.
You don’t want to all of a sudden get an influx of business and your business falls apart because you can’t handle the volume. That’s what a lot of people don’t look at, especially if they’re trying to get out of their business because they’re like, “You know what? I’d rather wing it or try to figure it out.” Then their business collapses into ruin because they didn’t have a mentor supporting them.
A good example of this is solopreneurs. One of my friends is actually the inverse of this, as he has his system tight, there are no holes, and he’s extremely happy and successful in his practice.
He’s good. He’s only got 2 marketing systems. Systems that can handle high volume that he can single-handedly manage and turn those switches on and off, as needed. He’s care free, has no employees and an amazing quality of life. He’s already discovered that he doesn’t like to manage people- he doesn’t want to do that. Even if we were to put a system together for him to scale out his practice, he kept asking me, “Fred, will you manage the system?” I said, “No, I’m not going to manage the system.” I said, “I’d rather do a joint venture. I have systems that will manage the system, but if you’re talking about being in the day-to-day human element of the business, because it’s more brick and mortar, then I’m not that guy.”
I said, “I take the leadership role in anything that I do because my passion is serving other people and effectively seeing what they want to do in their businesses, with their teams, and how they want to get there. In order to be able to give them exactly what they need to perform I just can’t be held down to one business.”
As far as scaling his business out any further, he’s just like, “You know what? I’m okay, Fred. Unless you can really tell me why I should venture out any further, then I’m fine.” We were talking casually anyway, as scaling out his business wasn’t a pressing thought, or pain. The bottom line is he has choice, and he can choose whether or not he wants to duplicate his efforts. In relations to his vision and mission statement, he’s at his end game and is living the life of his dreams. That’s what it’s all about.
Most people don’t look at it that way. They just look at their business and say, “I’ve got a business. I want to make money, and that’s it.” The truth of the matter is it doesn’t really work like that. You have to lay the foundation instead of just winging it. The process doesn’t have to be perfect, as good enough is good enough.
Some business owners got lucky because they found a starving niche, but most business owners failed because they were winging it. They didn’t have structure. Even for the ones who are winging it, they’re trying to keep it all together because all of a sudden your name gets out there in the marketplace and you don’t have a repeatable way to manage your success. Now you don’t have a way to handle the volume, so you get scared.
It’s just like playing poker. You’ve got that scared money on the table that you don’t want to sitting there, hoping you don’t lose. That money on the table may be your rent, your mortgage, your whatever. And in poker, money on the table is money played. You can’t reach back in there and take it off the table. Once that money is in the pot, that’s it, you’re done, you’re beat. Most people don’t look at business like that. They’re running around here playing with scared money, but yet they need to grow their business. They got to figure out which one they need to do- run a business, or run scared. That’s the reason why automation is so important; to handle your weaknesses while you focus on your strengths and high-payout activities.
It doesn’t matter really what kind of product or service you have. The key is when you offer your product, when you get that one customer in the door, are you able to efficiently handle them from your marketing all the way down to the fulfillment, to the follow up? That’s it. Anything else other in between that is just conjecture, it doesn’t make any sense to exclusively focus on anything else except steering the ship and hiring able people, or having strong processes and systems in place.
And when I’m talking to some of these business owners, I hear the exact same thing. Whether it’s an employee, spouse, CFO, client- whatever- the communication that you, the business owner, is putting out is so important. You are the capstone of your business and what you say carries more weight than you know- it influences the direction, system and processes of your business.
An extremely simplified example of this concept is some practitioners, self-employed or solopreneurs attend networking events and mixers because when I hear them speaking directly to me, I’m like, “What are you telling me? What do you do? Really? I don’t understand.” Their communication is not clear enough for me to want to pursue further communication for me to say to myself; I need to talk to you, or I don’t need to talk to you, either I need to give you my business card, or I don’t need to give you my business card. So they haven’t made the initial sale, on behalf of their company they represent. The sale? They were selling me on their idea. Bottom line; business structure, systems, employees and processes are meaningless without an effective message via marketing and sales.
Getting to the end game is really that basic, but most people don’t see it like that because they’re caught up in their own game. They’re the picture in the frame versus actively engaging in, and having a proven and repeatable process. To me that’s the most important part. Just getting business owners either on a track, or back on track so they can win is the ultimate end game.
Fred Smith builds results-based businesses with his clients and applies this technology in the marketplace by using military-grade business and performance development solutions.
He is the creator of The Synergy Triangle which is an integration of leadership, marketing and selling methods in your company’s workflow that increases gross profit and speeds up your sales cycle while minimizing the risk of poor customer service and delivery of goods or services.
Starting from humble inner-city beginnings, Fred began his business career as a telemarketer and door-to-door direct salesperson. He eventually rose from poverty to become one of the nation’s leading and sought-after business building consultants in the automotive industry.
He has combined insights learned from his 20-plus years of military, retail, multinational, and corporate business building successes and mistakes with observations from the worlds of leadership, business building, sales and marketing. The result is a revealing study of real-world results as only a communicator like Fred can simplify.
