Get your business under control.

Does it seem like there’s always something happening that’s causing you stress? When you put out one fire, another one starts?

Do you want less overwhelm and more achievement every day?

We can help you with that.

I’m going to share with you FIVE SECRETS to building a successful business.

Secret #1: You need commitment.

It’s not a failure until you quit.

As long as you keep going and keep trying, you’re open to success and all the trouble in the world is just a temporary setback. The moment you quit, you close the door on opportunities for success and your chances of success go to zero. But if you keep going and keep trying new things, you’re going to find a way. Maybe you won’t end up with the business you thought you’d build in the beginning, but you can still find success.

Sometimes when we’re deep into our troubles, our stress, and our overwhelm, it’s hard to see things clearly for what they are. It’s hard to find a different perspective and see the big picture. In those moments you need someone to remind you of your goals and to remind you that you can do it.

Let’s take what might be the most important step in your journey right now: Make a promise to yourself that you will never quit.

We love to hear stories about people who persevered through daunting challenges to achieve great success because we know it’s hard and deep down we also want amazing success. You know you need to work hard. You know you need to work smart. But when you’re building a business it seems there are a million things to do, so what exactly should you be working on?

Secret #2: You need a map.

How is it that great leaders always seem to know what to do? To achieve success you need to know where you are and where you’re going, so you can make a plan to get there. That means you need to start with a vision of how you want things to be when you’re successful and an assessment of the current situation (what you have vs what you need). Then, you can map out your journey.

What does that mean? It means figuring out how to use your own knowledge and skills, and the resources available to you, to make progress towards your goal. That progress might also involve acquiring new knowledge and skills, or getting other people with the right knowledge and skills and resources to join you. It also means knowing all the business systems and how to build them and make them work together, step by step.

Secret #3: You need a guide.

If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is. But that’s what is required to achieve your dreams. If you want to be successful, you’ve got to put in the work. But you don’t need to do it alone!

The best athletes, the best executives, the best politicians, the best scientists, pretty much the best of anything have coaches, consultants, advisors, and mentors to help guide them towards greatness. That’s because while you’re deep into the work you have to do, you need someone to be looking at the big picture and help you navigate that map.

But what kind of guide do you need? Here are some different kinds of guides:

A mentor. Mentors are people who have already done what you’re trying to do, and you talk with them occasionally and they can share with you how they solved their own problems, and any lessons or insights they learned along the way. They might give you advice, they might introduce you to people they know, or they might help you directly. They’re not getting paid for it, so you need to take care of that relationship because if they’re not feeling like you appreciate them, they’ll stop.

An advisor. Advisors are people who have expertise in a particular area, and you pay them to share it with you in the form of answering questions or commenting on your planned course of action. You might keep coming back to the same advisor over time, but when you seek their advice it’s usually about a specific issue or event.

A consultant. Consultants are people who have expertise and skills in a particular area of business, and you hire them to create something for you or tell you what to do, usually on a temporary or contract basis until the need has been met. For example, you might hire a marketing consultant to create a new marketing campaign. Consultants sometimes work together with other consultants in agencies. Lawyers, accountants, and other professionals often act as consultants and freelancers, advising you and doing the work you ask for.

A coach. Coaches are people who have expertise in helping you achieve your goals. This can include identifying skills you need to learn and training to improve your abilities and skills. Coaches help you asses your strengths and weaknesses, stay motivated, facilitate your training, help you see the big picture, guide you in making your plan, and to help you navigate your plan and stay on track so you get results. You work with a coach until you achieve your goals. At that point you either part ways, or you set new goals and keep working with the coach to achieve your new goals.

So how does coaching work, exactly?

A great coach will listen to you and ask the right questions. A great coach will challenge you to experiment, to discover what works, and to commit to doing what works until you get results. A great coach will avoid telling you what to do too much, but there may be some of that when it’s needed. There might also be some teaching involved, or pointing you towards resources, but it’s your job to take action. You’re the hero, and your coach is a guide.

You will have different kinds of conversations with your coach. Your first conversation will involve some getting to know each other. Other conversations will include one or more of:

• Establishing your goals.
• Assessing the situation and how you feel about things.
• Following up on a recent action or event to review what you expected to happen, what actually happened, what worked and what didn’t work, and what you can learn from it.
• Rehearsing something important and providing feedback to you on your performance, like preparing for an important meeting.
• Creating a plan of action with S.M.A.R.T goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) and the steps you need to achieve them.
• Recognizing your progress and your achievements so far.
• Recovering from setbacks and overcoming obstacles.
• Encouraging you to keep going.

At Leader Zone, this is what we do for you. We’re business coaches. We guide you towards achieving your goals. Speaking of which, here’s the next secret you need to know about building a successful business:

Secret #4: You need a team.

If you’re doing all the work yourself, what happens to your business if you need to visit the doctor, or attend a conference, or take a few days off to spend with your family? If that business stops when you’re not there, it’s not really a business — it’s self-employment. There’s nothing wrong with self-employment for people who want that, but there’s a limit to how much you can make when you’re self-employed, and that limit is based on two finite quantities. First, how much time you have available (typically measured in hours). Second, how productive you are with your time (typically measured in dollars per hour).

In contrast, when you build a business, there’s no limit to the money that you can make because you can continue to develop that business to sell higher-priced products, sell more products to the same customers, get more customers in the same market, and enter new markets. Even if a single business reaches maturity and is not expected to grow significantly any more, there are things you can do to make that mature business more profitable. And as a business owner you’ll have the time, money, and connections to start a completely new business and do it all over again.

The difference between being self-employed and owning a business is the team you recruit and the business systems you put in place. Together, this team will have the knowledge, skills, expertise, and time available to operate and grow your business — even while you take a vacation.

When you’re working alone, there’s only so much you can get done in a day. When you’re working with a team, while there’s still a limit to how much each person can do in a day, if you need to get more done (and make more money) in the same amount of time you can recruit more people into your team.

Having a team is great and you’re going to need it to build a successful business and become wealthy, but you do need to be careful to avoid the four biggest mistakes people make when recruiting:

Mistake #1. Recruiting too early. Those people need to be paid, so you need to have the cash flow to support each new team member. But there’s more than that. You need to have business systems in place to ensure that each new person on your team can be productive. Otherwise, the more people you add, the more chaos you have, the more mistakes will be made, customers or vendors will be angry, and the business will fail. You need to know who to hire, and when.

Mistake #2. Recruiting the wrong people. When you hire someone who doesn’t have the right knowledge or skills for the job, or they don’t have the right motivation to do the job, it’s a huge net negative to your business. Not only do you lose every dollar spent on them, you also lose in terms of productivity of other team members who have to deal with them, and then spend time on finding a someone else who can be a valuable contributor on your team.

Mistake #3. Not taking care of your team. The people on your team have their own life, their own needs, and their own dreams. If you want them to be productive working in your business and making money for you, you need to be mindful of those needs and dreams. If you ignore these needs, if you don’t make space for any professional development or career advancement, if you overwork and underpay, or if you fail to create a safe and collaborative workplace, they will eventually find a better job — taking their expertise with them. You need to be a leader.

Mistake #4. Recruiting too many people. When business is going great, owners and managers tend to go wild and recruit a lot of people on the assumption that things will continue to be great and even better. Sometimes they think that they need all the new people to do all the work that will come with continued growth. Sometimes they want to hire new people to “pad” their teams, like a trophy, because a bigger team means they’re more successful (it doesn’t, but that’s what some people think!). But there’s a big problem with this: people are expensive. Every dollar spent on a team member you don’t need is a dollar in profits that you don’t get. Having too many people makes your business less profitable and can hurt your ability to grow. Then you’ll need to do layoffs, and this will hurt morale for everyone who stays, and may cause some people to leave early because they want to leave on their own terms instead of waiting to get a surprise notice that they’re out and then have to scramble for a job. As your business grows, keep a close watch on hiring and make sure that every hire is essential. You need discipline.

How do you avoid these mistakes? And how do you ensure your team is focused and productive? You need the next secret, which is…

Secret #5: You need business systems.

Think of your business as a complex money-making machine. It takes inputs like raw materials and customer orders, and it does work to produce something of value, which it then sells to customers. The money is then used to acquire more inputs, to find more customers, to pay the team, and the owner gets whatever is left over. Every business is different. Some businesses are more efficient than others, which means they generate more revenue for every dollar spent compared to other businesses. But what’s the same about all businesses is that they all need business systems to grow and to become more efficient money-makers.

You might be thinking of some small businesses that don’t seem to have any systems in place, they’re run by a small team and everyone knows what they’re doing. It’s more likely that they have informal systems — things they know to do on a routine basis that make things work. The fact that those business systems are informal is actually limiting their ability to grow that business. If you want to grow your business to make a lot of money, you’ll need to recognize and actively develop your business systems.

So what business systems do you need? The short answer is anything your business does should be encoded in a business system. Here are some examples:

Executive systems. You need systems for monitoring how each part of your business is running, for seeing the big picture, and for making strategic decisions.

Personnel systems. You need systems for hiring, on-boarding, training, supervising, and separating employees. You need systems for providing benefits to employees. If those employees need to travel, you need systems for reimbursing them.

Information systems. You need systems for storing large amounts of data about all aspects of your business. You need systems for extracting useful information out of that data. You need systems for doing market research. You need systems to ensure your employees can access the information they need, when they need it. And you need systems for protecting confidential information.

Revenue systems. You need systems for marketing, sales, taking payments, customer service, customer support, collecting on unpaid balances, figuring out what products to build or what features to add (or take away), for getting feedback from your customers, and in some cases for community engagement or public relations.

Operations systems. You need systems for disseminating orders to your team — ensuring your team knows where to be, when to be there, what to do, and why it’s important. You need systems for collecting reports from your team about what’s going on. You need systems for monitoring the progress of all business activities, and noticing if anything is out of place or not working the way it should, and resolving those situations.

Logistics systems. You need systems for buying the raw materials and equipment you need, for receiving them, for distributing them to where they’re needed. You need systems for shipping products to customers. You need systems for maintaining equipment so it stays in good working condition. You need systems for knowing when you need to order more supplies. When people on the team travel, you need systems for making event reservations and travel arrangements.

Technology systems. You need systems for identifying what technology your business needs, and either building or buying it. You need systems for continuously improving business processes to make them more efficient, or more reliable, or to enable them to handle more volume, or different kinds of orders or products that you’re planning to add. You need systems for staying on top of important security updates for any software you use, and for keeping track of passwords and secret keys used to access software services.

Finance systems. You need systems for keeping track of receipts, for estimating expenses and taxes so you can set money aside for these, and for creating financial reports like an income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet so you can understand how your business is doing.

When you’re working on your business, you move from one system to the next, adding or improving each system in turn. Eventually, you will hire an executive team who will be doing this for you. Then you will be supervising the executive team and you’ll have a lot of free time to enjoy the money you’re making. But you don’t have to wait for that — you can start creating the lifestyle you want along the way.

So how do you work *on* your business instead of *in* your business?

To be able to work on each part of your business, in turn, you’ll need some free time. But if you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed, you probably don’t have much free time. We’ll help you “clear the desk” and make some time to get control of your business. We’ll show you how to extract yourself from the daily operations of your business, one step at a time, until you’re working on it instead of in it. And that will give you the space you need to grow it even more!

If you’re thinking “I want that!!” you’re in the right place.

Right now, you might be working in your business by yourself or maybe with a partner. You want to make that future happen, because it’s going to be amazing.

Let’s review what you need:

• Secret #1. Commitment. You need constant inspiration, motivation, and accountability to keep going and never quit.
• Secret #2. A map. You need to develop a clear plan of how to get from here to there.
• Secret #3. A guide. You need a business coach to train you and guide you towards achieving your goals.
• Secret #4. A team. You need to get the right people to work with you, at the right time, and to take care of them.
• Secret #5. Business systems. You need to build or buy the systems that power every part of your business.

That’s it! Super simple. These are the five secrets to your success.

Are you done being overwhelmed and stressed? Are you tired of spinning your wheels?

I’m ready to take control of my business! How does it work?

Here’s what we’ll do:

First, we’ll have an brief 30-minute conversation where we get to know each other. We’ll talk about what you want to accomplish and what’s been holding you back.

Second, we’ll schedule your weekly coaching sessions.

Then we’ll meet for weekly coaching sessions. We’ll teach you things and point you to other resources as needed, and we’ll help you to stay on track. And if you need an extra coaching session here or there, like when something big comes up, we’ll be there to support you.

We will help you take control of each part of your business so you have a stable foundation from which to take your business to the next level.

You stay committed to yourself and to the coaching process, and you will achieve your goal.

What do I get?

This is a monthly program that helps you navigate a variety of business challenges and take your business to the next level. Each monthly payment includes:

• Weekly coaching sessions, at $250 each

Are you ready to achieve your goals?

It’s a smart move to ditch the overwhelm and stress, to stop spinning your wheels, and get a business coach.

How great will you feel when you achieve your goals every month and every quarter and every year?

We’ll get there, together.