If your goals are solely in dollars, pounds and euros, the people who work for you are not going to be excited coming to work. They’re not going to come to work and significantly elevate their game solely to help their boss buy a yacht. If financial gain is the sole goal, your company will rarely enjoy 30 times growth.
Hear more from founder of ActionCOACH and expert on business process Brad Sugars on Pendulum Talks. Here is a brief taste of what to expect from his presentation at Pendulum Summit 2018.
When it comes to business growth, there are two goals.
One is 30% growth, and the other is 30 times growth. The difference in thinking here is fundamental. To achieve 30% growth, all you have to do is a little more, a little better. You don’t have to implement massive change. But to grow your business 30 times over, drastic change is non-negotiable.
30% growth is thinking about securing one more customer. 30 times growth is thinking about securing a thousand more customers. 30% growth is hiring one more employee. 30 times growth is opening another office.
When it comes to improving employees, it’s not about motivation.
It’s about education. People can’t outperform their training. All I’ve ever done is buy broken companies and fix them. I’ve bought everything from dry cleaning stores to restaurants, and the first thing I do after buying them is always educate my employees. But you must remember, before educating them, you must educate yourself.
You have to think differently. If you don’t think differently, you won’t do differently.
There are several elements that are vital to understand in business growth.
- Strategy
- Mission
- Execution
- People
- Business Development
When you can bring all of these areas together, that’s when you start adding zeroes.
Every successful business has a clear vision and a tangible sense of mission.
It has to endeavour to achieve something more than just money. If your goals are solely in dollars, pounds and euros, the people who work for you are not going to be excited coming to work. They’re not going to come to work and significantly elevate their game solely to help their boss buy a yacht. If financial gain is the sole goal, your company will rarely enjoy 30 times growth.
Leverage is dividing to multiply, the art of ever-more with ever-less.
Do the work once, get paid long-term or forever. I write books. This is doing the work once and getting paid forever. In business, this applies specifically to your product or service. If your product is a ‘buy once and never return’ product or service, your business will struggle.
My wife has a friend who runs a hair salon. She always complained that she made the same amount of money as her employees, sometimes even less. I asked her what she did all day – she said cut hair. I asked her what her employees did all day – she said cut hair.
I told her that she needed to stop doing employee’s work and start doing owner’s work.
What is owner’s work? Hiring people. Training people. Planning for the future. Owner’s work pays you back long-term or forever. Employee’s work gets you paid once.
There’s three ways to look at leverage.
- Product
- The work you do
- Ensuring the business can run without you
When it comes to leverage, Steve Jobs is even more of a genius than I am.
I say do the work once and get paid forever. Steve Jobs says do the work never and gets paid forever. How many songs did Apple make last year, and how many did they sell?
This is applicable across industries. My rental business started out small and grew into a company that managed to shift thousands of units. This is what happens when you use your time well and ensure that you’re not bogged down by the day-to-day.
There’s no use creating a product that nobody will buy.
It is imperative to ensure there is a market for what you are selling, and that said market is big enough. Learn the size of your opportunity. Do your research. Know your market.
But these details are not the most important takeaway. The true importance lies in the five elements we have discussed. Those, combined, provide you with the synergy needed to reap the reward.
They must all be developed at the same time, consistently.
