Meet (Anad Rolyat)
Construction supply business serving a local region
(Anad Rolyat) Female owner, married with two children
Retail and supply business serving a local region
Been in business for 11 years
Massive reputation for community engagement
Working 6.5 days per week
Thinking about work even when at home
The bigger problem was this…when we reviewed her 2015 P&L…here is what it said…
$5mm worth of sales…
$50k of Net Profit (1%)
1%!
$5mm worth of effort, work, marketing, sales, coordination, fear, worry, concern, frustration, stories, and people…
$50k worth of Net Profit to show for it…she could go work for someone else and yield far more in far less time.
TO add insult, Anad’s employee turnover was similar to a Taco Bell…
Employees coming and going, turning over like a car that just would not crank.
Anad was suffering from a variety of ills that plague the majority of business owners.
Only 4% of businesses ever see their 10th birthday?
NO…#1 reason is = they get tired and pull the plug
Tired of hoping that next employee hire will fix everything and then left feeling broken
Tired growing sales and rarely seeing or enjoying the profit
Tired of being blind sided by the constant details of their business
Tired of showing up to events hoping for a silver bullet and realizing that the only silver bullet available is that is relentless implementation of the basic fundamentals how business operates.
Everytime you feel momentum, you are short circuited by chaos lurking around the corner in your blind spot.
“But I don’t have a blind spot” I didn’t think I did either.
But you do…
The human eye has a location that cannot pick up light even why the eye is wide open…google it.
I want to reveal four business blind spots that we all suffer from, and what you can do to solve them so that you can…
Find and retain talent
Grow your CASH profit (not just your P&L)
Be liberated from chaos to make time for what matters most
FIRST blind spot is our unspoken commitment to chaos…chaos has almost become a defacto strategy in our day to day business
“Scott, I’m so addicted to chaos I don’t know what I would do if things were slow and quiet!”
Khaos = Chasm or a gaping hole.
The sweat, effort, attention, and focus you give chaos is guaranteed to return very little long term.
SOLUTION #1 Commit to clarity over chaos. How?
Clarity comes by illumination, and illumination comes through light and understanding foundational things
Many of us started a biz without even considering how the organism of a biz is built
CONSTRUCTION OF A BUSINESS
5 Foundational Cornerstones
Vision
Mission
Values
Team Meetings
Hiring Process
Concrete Slab of documented processes
4 Systems (walls) of a business: Marketing, Sales, Operations, and Administration
Stop obsessing over your product, and commit to building your process
TRUTH: “Your product is not your product…your process is your product.”
ACTION → write a clear and compelling vision of where your business is going is seven categories
SECOND blind spot is micro-management
We say micro-management, but no one has defined it.
Even The Office tried to get it right, and here is how it sounded, (RIP AUDIO FROM THIS YOUTUBE (:00 to :13) (INSERT BLANK SLIDE)
Why does talent fly fly away?
Is it because nobody wants to work anymore? NO…millions of people want to work and want new challenges
It is because they don’t want to be babysat, or left all alone…they want leadership, and leadership is not micro-management.
They showed the RPM’s of great leadership…
Repetition - they did the right things over and over and over
Predictability - they provided stability by doing those repetitive things
Meaning - and they baked a professed meaning into the repetition and predictability
I want you to think about your situation.
Would you be accused of doing meaningful things, repetitively, in a way that creates the peace of predictability?
Or…
Would you be accused of reacting to small fires, chaotically, in a way that makes your team, your customer, and your partners confused?
One simple way to avoid micro-management is to simply ask the right questions at the right time and avoid the wrong questions at the wrong time.
The THIRD blind spot is admitting how much time is wasted everyday…
Putting out fires that would put themselves out
Recreating the wheel that could easily be delegated
You bring someone new in who has “experience” and you expect them to know how to…
Run a job like you run a job
Run a report like you run a report
Talk to a customer like you talk to a customer
It must be trained at EVERY level of your business.
Coach Bill Walsh is one of the most Repetitive, Predictable, and Meaningful coaches in the history of the NFL.
In a book Coach Walsh co-authored he shares that he was so meticulous about scripting that…
he would script the first 10-15 plays of every game
He scripted how the 49er’s receptionists answered the phones
Is the first 10 to 15 days of a new employee scripted day by day?
Or do we practice the more popular strategy of “throwing them to the wolves”?
And excusing it with “well they said they had experience!”
Or hiding behind the excuse “that’s just common sense!”
Potential employees can smell chaos, and all existing employees will eventually run away from chaos at their first opportunity.
Want to retain the team you have so that it doesn’t cost you a minimum of $10k to $20k per lost employee?
SOLUTION #3 is to create a Master Process Roadmap so you can move to higher value tasks.
ACTION → Write out a simple Master Process Roadmap, and brain dump every possible process you can think of.
Review the MPR weekly during your team meetings and pick one process and take 3 to 5 mins to train on it every week.
You will bypass the crippling blind spot of wasting so much time, and create clarity for your team.
CLARITY will keep your team more than any other strategy.
The Final Blind Spot is the myth that all money is your money.
We all suffer from the same challenge as business owners. When a receivable comes into our one or two or three bank accounts, our brains believe that most if not all of it is ours.
And because it is all lumped into 1, 2, or 3 accounts we feel way more cash heavy than we really are.
Anad was generating about $420,000 EVERY MONTH…and yet only about $20,000 of it was actually hers to retain BEFORE taxes, depreciation, etc. $420,000 → $20,000
Her brain said she was rich…her bank sent a very different message.
Ever feel like the front door of your business is really small (where the money comes in)...
And the back door is twice the size and WIDE OPEN?
How can you increase your cash, and actually not have to increase your Total Revenue?
You must begin a) subdividing every dollar that comes in, and then b) directing those subdividing dollars into their individual homes.
Do this over time and track it every week…you will watch your cash so it doesn’t leak.
Anad was totally unaware of her blind spots, but once she allowed someone else to open her eyes to them, she implemented these four solutions, and today…
employes 65 people,
has 5 locations
has a net income to sales of 9% (AND THE CASH to prove it)...up from 1% (with no cash)
Every year takes 4 to 6 weeks away from her business while it grows without her
Are you ready to be liberated from the chaos of your blind spots and creating a culture where people want to stay?