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The 5 Critical Mistakes that trap business owners in their businesses - and how to avoid them.
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www.businessflightpath.com P a g e | 2
Business Owners: Are You Trapped in Your Business and Not Achieving
the Results You Really Want?
Only Read This Report if You Want to Put Your Business on
Autopilot and Create the Freedom to Choose Your Lifestyle!
Dear Business Owner,
Let me challenge you with a few different thoughts:
• What if your business could run on autopilot with only a few hours
input from you each week?
• What if your business was able to fund the lifestyle of your
choosing?
• What if you had confidence in your employees to perform so well
you never had to worry, even if you left your business for months?
• What if you could be confident of selling your business at maximum
value when you want to retire?
Right now, that may be a stretch for you to believe, but let me
challenge you to keep an open mind. Because that’s exactly what
business is like for a small group of successful business owners. But
it’s certainly not the norm.
A recent global report confirmed some facts that we’ve all known for
some time. In small and medium sized businesses, the owners, on
average, work 52 hours per week and find it stressful, a struggle to
make a decent profit and a high risk for health and relationships.
On the other hand, there are a small number of special entrepreneurs
who run a very different type of business that becomes the vehicle
that frees them to enjoy the lifestyle of their dreams. They leverage
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things other than their own time to get results, but the biggest
differences come from the way they think about business.
For most business owners who are struggling to achieve more, the
natural response is to apply more effort. That rarely works. This
report explains why more effort is not the answer and shows how the
top entrepreneurs operate to create a very different type of business
– one that really works to provide prosperity and freedom for the
owners.
So, if you’re in the category of business owners who spend too many
hours at work and want to know how to break free, you need to read
this report. In the pages that follow I’m going to show you how your
current thinking, your beliefs and opinions about business, lead you
to make critical mistakes that create a fatal flaw that keeps you
trapped and needing to work longer and harder, no matter how
outwardly successful your business seems to be. I’m going to
highlight the different way top business owners think about the
critical aspects of their business and show you the all important
steps these business leaders take to create a business that works so
they don’t have to.
This report reveals how we have used these same steps in the system
our clients have used to transform their businesses like this within
twelve to eighteen months. My challenge to you is to change your
thinking and learn to make it work in your business.
Are you ready to take the challenge today? Take 20 minutes, find a
quiet place, turn off your phone, grab a pen and read this report,
highlighting where you see this report applies to you and where you
can take positive action now.
www.businessflightpath.com P a g e | 4
Business Confidence
Charlie left the bank a little bit annoyed and anxious. He had just had
a meeting with his “client relationship manager” about a much
needed loan which would help him get the new equipment and
expand the workshop to facilitate the expected growth of his four
year old business. The bank hadn’t said “No” to the loan. However
they hadn’t said “Yes” either. They wanted him to arrange a life
insurance policy to cover the loan on the event of his death. The
manager had said, “We can see your business has potential, but we
just don’t feel confident that it will survive if something were to
happen that meant you couldn’t run it.”
As Charlie walked through
the front door of the bank
into the sunlight, he was
muttering to himself,
“Don’t these people
understand how busy I
am. I’ve got a business to
run. I don’t have time to
arrange and attend all
these appointments with
insurance agents, doctors and specialists. Now I have to have a full
physical health check, x-rays, blood tests, cardio exam and who
knows what before I can get this loan approved— and I could really
do with the money right now!” Charlie could already feel his blood
pressure rising. “As if I haven't already got enough stress,” he
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thought to himself.
A few days later, Charlie’s insurance agent was telling Charlie, “The
insurance companies have a rating scale to calculate the price of the
insurance package which is based on the risk category you fit into.
The categories are determined from the health assessment factors
they want checked which create profiles of different levels of health
and risk. These profiles give them the confidence that their coverage
of people like yourself will not cost them money over the course of
time and that they will stay financially healthy and able to pay out the
policies that will be claimed on in due course. In other words, they
can predict how many people like you are likely to die or survive over
a given time frame. Health professionals can also use these test
results to tell you how you can improve your health and be more
likely to live a longer and healthier life.”
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“Great,” said Charlie, “Perhaps they can tell me how to reduce my
stress too.”
A few weeks later, after Charlie had received the results of his health
tests without major alarm, he thought to himself how confident he
now felt about his physical condition. He was basically in good shape,
but as long as he kept his stress levels down, his blood pressure
would remain under control. As a result of the insurance coverage,
the bank now had the confidence to advance the loan funds so that
Charlie could expand his business. But the bank also now wanted
Charlie to send them quarterly financial reports so they could remain
confident that his business could keep making the loan payments.
The thought occurred to Charlie, “I wish I could feel as confident
about the continued health of my business as I now do about my
physical health. I wonder if there is anyone who could give me a
business health check so I could identify all my business risk elements
and learn how to deal with them, too?”
Your Own Business Can Be A Lonely Place
To be running your own business, you must have an independent
streak that caused you to want to leave the comfort and security of
paid employment and go out on your own. A lot of business owners
and entrepreneurs suffer a high degree of dissatisfaction with the
status quo and want to pioneer something new, different or better.
But going it alone can isolate you from support and leave you
vulnerable to loneliness. Not only that, but there is often the lack of
knowledge or simply an inability to call on others for help. As an
independent person, you develop a lot of self-motivation and resolve
that many others don’t have. As a result you grow a business that
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survives, maybe even thrives, but how much of its continued success
depends on you?
Think about how confident you could be if you had ready access to
the thoughts and support of your own sales and marketing manager,
operations manager, finance manager, HR manager, training manager
and team crisis manager who worked for you in your business. Or
what about your own general manager who took care of it all on a
daily basis? Most business owners don’t have this luxury. Yet
without this level of support, being a business owner can be very
lonely when you want to get some advice about certain aspects of
running your business or about making decisions about which way to
head. It’s even worse when you suffer from a crisis situation or
ongoing issues you can’t seem to resolve.
As a result, most
business owners work
long hours (too long?)
and suffer stress from
their situation.
However, they suffer
in this way needlessly,
because help is at
hand. If only they
knew!
What did Charlie do?
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The Crisis Point
Charlie’s business was booming. As a result of the expansion, the
sales were up and the orders were piling up. For a while, everything
was great. The new workshop capacity and equipment meant that
the company could handle significantly more orders. To give things a
kick start, Charlie had offered some big discounts to get some new
accounts and increase the turnover. These new people were tough
negotiators and kept wanting more products at the discounted prices.
Charlie wasn’t sure what to do. They needed the business now, to
keep the new equipment and now also new people busy. If he
demanded higher prices, would they lose all that new business?
Charlie tried to keep things lean and mean. He kept staff to a
minimum, but that meant he often had to pick up the pieces and
work longer to keep everything together. Some customers were
complaining that their orders were taking too long and there were
other niggling little issues which meant that customers weren’t
always happy. There was nothing major going wrong, but somehow a
lot of orders didn’t have everything right and that caused more work
to fix the problems. It was not only Charlie that was feeling stressed,
but all his workers were stressed out as well. That meant that morale
was dancing on a thin edge and there were often raised voices and
slamming doors that were like the pressure cooker letting off steam.
Then a shipment of crucial parts hadn’t turned up when expected.
After Charlie got off the phone with the supplier feeling annoyed
when they claimed they had never received the order, things were at
their worst. Now they had to pay for a rush shipment so they could
meet their Friday deadline for a major order for a new customer. This
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was a trial order that could lead to huge business if they got it right.
Just then, Charlie’s wife rang. “I just wanted to check which suit you
want dry-cleaned for Johnny’s graduation ceremony on Thursday?”
Charlie went pale as the blood drained from his face. “Oh no,” he
thought. “How can I make Johnny’s graduation and still get this order
completed by Friday? It’s just not possible. But how can I miss
Johnny’s graduation? What am I going to do?”
At 5:30pm on Friday, Charlie sat back as he watched the last truck
leave the workshop with the last of the important order. “Whew!
I’m not quite sure how we did
that, but we got there.” Just
then, Charlie’s workshop
supervisor interrupted the
reverie by barging into the office.
“Sorry boss,” he said. “I was just
setting up the next production
run for the Jones order (their
best customer) and I can’t find any XYZ widgets we need to get it
started.” “What the ……?” yelled Charlie as he stormed into the store
room.
Later that night, after Charlie got home and things had cooled down a
bit, his wife said in a very significant way, “Charlie, I’ve had enough.
Something’s got to give. I can’t take any more of this and I don’t think
you’re going to be able to take much more of it either. Your blood
pressure is going through the roof and you’re always stressed. You
get home and you’re no good for anyone. You hardly see the kids and
when you do you always seem to be telling them off. This isn’t what I
www.businessflightpath.com P a g e | 10
want for the rest of our lives and I’m not going to take it any more.
You’d better do something.”
“Yes,” said Charlie. “I don’t think I can take it any more either. Why
did I ever get into this business anyway?”
Why did you start your business?
Have you ever come to the point where you wondered why you went
into your own business and whether it was really worth it? I’m sure
that most business owners have at some stage. You may have
started your own business because you wanted the freedom to
choose your own way, to create a lifestyle of meaning and personal
fulfilment.
And maybe you also planned to eventually sell your business for
millions so that you could be free to do whatever you chose to do
with the rest of your life - adventure, travel, sports, family or even
charitable work.
How's your plan working out so far?
Charlie’s experience is replicated across many businesses every day. I
know it was in my first and in fact, at various times in my other
businesses as well. In my first business, four years in, I was struggling
with seventy hour weeks because we were so busy with record sales.
But at the same time, poor cash flow was crippling me. And I had lost
control of costs and productivity altogether. Instead of becoming the
dream I had hoped for, I was living a nightmare.
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That was the crisis point I experienced that caused me to look for
help. I didn’t know which way to turn. I tried my accountant, who
was very successful and a
great accountant. But
instead of being able to
help, he could only give
me theory. Luckily for
me, my major supplier
came to the rescue and
gave me some advice that
started to turn my
business around.
After that, I devoted as much time as I could to studying successful
businesses and how the entrepreneurs who started them achieved
their success. I have now read hundreds of business books and have
also been back to university several times to study for business
degrees, culminating with a Masters of Business Administration
(MBA). But while these studies were helpful, nothing could compare
with the learning I went through developing my own businesses. For
the past twenty years now, I have been involved with managing
businesses and advising other business owners.
The story I told about Charlie is remarkably similar to my own
experience. But after working with at least a thousand other business
owners, I know that many, actually most, have faced and are facing
similar trials each day. Unfortunately for most business owners, the
dream they started in business with hasn't worked out the way they
wanted. And they have little confidence of every achieving it.
The sad truth is that:
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• 61% of small and medium businesses fail to even make a
profit,
• less than 10% create an asset that's worth millions,i
• while their owners work an average of 52 hours per
week or more.ii
In the USA - the wealthiest country in the world - less than 2% of
small businesses make even a quarter of a million dollars profit a year
and most of these supposed "success stories" could not be sold for
anywhere near enough to create financial freedom and to retire.iii Yet
their owners are locked into a situation where they need to work
more than 52 hours per week on average, just to keep the business
going.iv
Across the Pacific in Australia and New Zealand the story is much the
same.
In NZ, 60,000 new businesses started up in 2007 and 54,000 closed
down - ouch!v How about this: in 2001 in New Zealand of 43000 new
business start-ups only 40% were still operating after 5 years.vi At
the same time, according to a Grant Thornton international survey,
New Zealand business owners work an average of 53 hours per week
while the Aussies spend more than 56 hours per week trying to keep
their businesses alive.vii
An Australian study by the Productivity
Commission into Business Failure and Change
found that “the closer you look at the exits, the
more it becomes likely that some business
owners find the challenges of growing a
business, employing staff, paying taxes, getting
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entangled in government red tape and managing money all too hard.
And a job with four weeks holiday and sick leave eventually looks too
attractive to ignore.”
Wow! Why would anyone start up in business knowing the odds of
long term survival, let alone making a profit, are so stacked against
you and rather than finding freedom, most business owners end up
working harder and more hours than they did as employees?
It doesn't have to be like that!
Why do most small business owners fail to achieve the success they
dreamed about? Why do they end up struggling year after year,
pushing forward with grim determination, doggedly shouldering aside
the obstacles that block their progress time after time, only to find
when the accounts are finally done there was hardly (if any)
improvement on the year before?
From my experience across thousands of small and medium sized
businesses, I’ve found that most of the difficulties in business are
caused by five critical mistakes in executing the process of business
which leads to one common fatal flaw that undermines the chances
of success, rather than from any fundamental problem with the
business itself.
When times are hard, as they are for many now, the natural tendency
of most business owners is to just work harder. And that’s the
natural and most obvious thing to do. The problem is that this
natural reaction to the problems is actually making their situation
worse. While it’s admirable, it’s the wrong focus, because it creates
even more dependency on them.
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Despite the fact that this fatal flaw exists in almost every business,
and the fact that almost everyone knows about it, no one is telling
small business owners about it and how to fix it. It’s no wonder you
end up working harder and harder and getting nowhere. It’s not your
fault! Even your accountant and business coach aren’t warning you
about this. It was the same for me. I only stumbled on the process to
build a successful business almost by accident because of the amount
or reading and study I did about
business success.
While each of the successful
entrepreneurs I studied created
their own success path, I came to
see that there were some
consistent principles in how they
did it. And while most of these successful entrepreneurs worked hard
for their success, their success was not due to them working hard in
their businesses. Their successes were due to the fact that they
thought about their role in the business differently from the norm.
The result was they worked hard on building a business that works
successfully, not from reliance on their own hard work, but due to the
development of systems and processes that led to successful
outcomes with consistency and precision.
Later, I will share the 7 step system I discovered, that I and almost
every successful entrepreneur has used to break free of business
dependency and limitation, to create a highly successful business that
runs without them. But first, I need to spend a bit more time
establishing the context for why this system is so important.
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The Freedom Challenge
Isn’t your real objective to develop a business that works for you,
rather than continuing indefinitely to work for the business? But
that’s what happens to most business owners, as the statistics show.
The crazy thing is that often, instead of continuing to work 50 or 60
plus hours per week, cash flow and free time can be created with just
a few simple changes.
It may be hard for you to accept that a few simple changes could
revolutionise your business and take it to the next level. Sometimes
it’s hard to see the answers yourself simply because you don’t know
what’s possible. Your experience has led you to having certain beliefs
about the way business works. Sometimes you just need a change in
perspective that challenges those limiting beliefs before you discover
a better way.
Let’s explore a perspective that can yield some answers…
As we saw earlier the statistics show that most small business owners
struggle to survive and most end up resigned to a future of long hours
for meager rewards.
But that’s not what small businesses are supposed to deliver.
Let’s quickly review what a small business is supposed to do from the
perspective of the owner. Or to put it another way – what you were
probably thinking when you originally got into your own business?
• Did you think it would give you freedom to do what you’re
good at?
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• Did you think it would give you the freedom to grow and learn
without being stifled by your boss?
• Did you think it would give you freedom to get great
satisfaction from doing work you enjoy?
• Did you think it would deliver financial freedom?
• Did you think you would have the freedom to choose what to
do with your time?
• Did you think you would be free to grow your business into a
flourishing enterprise?
For 90% of business owners that vision has already disappeared
under the sheer weight of attending to the demands of daily
operations, getting stuff done, sorting out problems and keeping
things going.
So what is the freedom challenge?
Read on to see how you can accomplish that.
The Freedom Challenge is:
1. To remember the vision of freedom you had
when you originally got into your business
2. Find out what’s stopped you from achieving
it, and…
3. Do something about it
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Was your vision crystal clear when you started?
The fact is we mostly get what we aim for.
However, my experience is that most small business owners don’t
really have a clear view of what they want to build. The typical
pressures of running the business mean they are usually just
concerned with staying alive, keeping on doing what they have always
done in order to get by. I call this “managing to survive.” I know that
was how it was for me before I hit my crisis point in business and I’ve
discovered that most business owners operate just like I did. We only
change direction when we hit a crisis point. Because we haven’t
actually defined what we really want, instead of moving directly
towards it, we just end up trying to avoid what we don’t want. But
because that has our focus, we inevitably keep getting drawn back
towards what we don’t want.
Psychologists tell us that what we accomplish in life comes from our
subconscious mind, not our conscious mind. In a way our
subconscious mind is like an autopilot, it adjusts what we consciously
strive to achieve so that it’s consistent with our subconscious picture.
So if you don’t have a particularly clear or specific vision for your
business then your subconscious mind will set about having you
create whatever picture happens to be there by default. Whether
you know it or not, you have a vision for your business, and your
subconscious will be quietly keeping you on track to fulfill that
picture.
Here’s a quick way to check on the state of your vision.
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How long can you walk away from your business for and still have it
function normally?
If it’s less than 4 weeks then you really have a job, not a business.
The great majority of business owners, even the profitable ones, will
almost certainly have a business that is overwhelmingly reliant on
their constant presence and demands their personal time, attention,
and input to continue to function and survive. When you create a
business like that, even if it’s financially rewarding, you end up just
like our friend Charlie – stressed to the max and relationships at
breaking point (or worse). None of us wants to get to that point just
for the sake of continuing in our own business, do we? However, so
often we seem to be trapped by our business and we can see no way
out of our crisis situation. Or we just keep progressing towards the
crisis point if we haven’t already reached it, with no clear vision of
what is ahead.
So, to create the change that is needed, step one of the Freedom
Challenge is to discover, or re-discover, what your long-term vision is
for your business.
The next step is to find out what’s in the way.
What’s stopping you from achieving success?
Once we know where we want to go, it should be easy to get there,
right?
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Oh yes! It would be if it weren’t for the barriers we encounter along
the way and the difficulties we have, or mistakes we make, to
overcome them.
The problem is that most business owners, with little or no
experience in growing a business, don’t know what to expect and are
taken unawares by the growth barriers they run into.
As you can see in the diagram below, there are three areas of
knowledge:
• What we know,
• What we know that we don’t know,
• What we don’t know that we don’t know.
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It is the last one that causes trouble, as illustrated by the famous
quote attributed to Charles H. Duell, director of the US patent office
in 1899, who said “everything that can be invented has been
invented.” Clearly he didn’t know what he didn’t know. The
relevance for you is that you are almost inevitably going to hit a
business growth barrier that will make your life more difficult, simply
because of a lack of the right knowledge. But now that you know it
(that you don’t know) you can either ignore the warning or do
something positive to prepare.
For a simple illustration of the impact this factor could have in your
life and business, check out the video at
www.businessflightpath.com/yesyoucan.
Are you on a flight path to success?
If you were to graph the business growth trajectory of most
businesses, it would look like the flight path of a plane that is
struggling to gain altitude. Maybe it’s even still struggling to get off
the ground. Most businesses reach a level and then the trajectory
flattens out and they bump along at around the same level of sales
and number of employees for a number of years. It’s a constant
struggle to get to the next level. The business often fails to escape
the gravitational forces, or growth barriers, to experience the
freedom of full flight and the exhilaration of enjoying what the
business was really meant to do.
Meanwhile, though, a small fraction of entrepreneurs operate
everyday under a completely different paradigm and are on a flight
path of personal and financial freedom. These are like the pilots who
not only get their planes off the ground and gain altitude, but also
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have the freedom to operate on autopilot or really put their plane
through its paces and experience the thrill of supersonic flight.
These individuals… let’s call
them “Top Guns”… (Ok, I
know that’s cheesy, but please
indulge me. It was one of my
favourite movies and it’s a
good analogy). Anyway, these
Top Guns are entrepreneurs
that leverage the principles of
designing and engineering an
autopilot business that grows, thrives, improves, and functions
independently. Top Guns reap the enviable rewards of having a
business that funds their personal adventures and desires, and frees
them to enjoy the lifestyle of their dreams. You probably know and
admire someone like this and would love to be like them.
Top Guns are entrepreneurs who’ve discovered a way of doing
business, different from the norm, to gain the freedom and money to
do the things they most enjoy and value. They build super successful
businesses without it becoming a life-sucking, time consuming, overly
demanding master.
How does a normal business owner become a Top Gun?
Even more importantly, is it even possible for YOU to become a Top
Gun, and if so, HOW?
In essence, the only barrier or obstacle to becoming and enjoying the
fruits of being a Top Gun is your decision to keep doing business in
www.businessflightpath.com P a g e | 22
the way that keeps it dependent on you and making the critical
mistakes that your peers in business are also making.
This point is critical! If you start off going in the wrong direction with
your business and efforts, unless you make a change, every step
simply moves you further and further away from what you really
want… and closer to what you don’t want. And the harder you work
at it, the further away you get!
The five critical mistakes that stop business owners from
becoming a Top Gun
In the past twenty years working with thousands of different
businesses, we have learnt that what keeps the owners trapped in
underperformance boils down to five critical mistakes. These
mistakes are the same ones I made and incredibly, no one else is
telling people like us about them like I do in this report.
So what are the five typical, fundamental, critical mistakes most
business owners make? Any one of them is enough to stop your
business from gaining altitude and could potentially send your
business into a life threatening tail spin.
By exposing and eliminating these mistakes you’ll be able to grow
your business faster and easier than you ever thought possible. You
will avoid the fatal flaw that kills off the chances of success in most
businesses. You will start to adopt the winning beliefs and behaviours
and start to build the same success factors that the ultra successful
Top Guns employ.
www.businessflightpath.com P a g e | 23
1. Short Term Focus
Most owners of SMEs (small to medium enterprises) become more
focused on short term survival than long term success. Typically,
short term cash requirements become the driver for most things that
happen in the business. If the need is constant, the needs of the
future development of the business are often totally neglected.
Most business owners spend their time putting out fires. But the only
way to stop this problem long term is to work on prevention rather
than cure. If you deal with the causes, then you won’t have to worry
about the fires at all. This means taking time out to analyse what’s
going wrong and planning what needs to be done to achieve the
goals.
Stephen Covey, in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People”
points out that the No. 2 habit is to “Start with the end in mind”. In
other words work out where you want to get to first. With a short
term focus, the tendency is jus to bounce from one crisis to the next
in a reactive mode.
The 5 Critical Mistakes
1. Short term focus. 2. Reactive marketing 3. Ineffective delegation 4. Lack of control
5. Doing it all yourself
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2. Reactive Marketing
Advertising decisions in SMEs are often determined reactively,
depending on how busy things are. There is no defined marketing
plan. Advertising is initiated when sales slow down and stopped
when sales pick up. Advertising is usually tactical rather than
strategic. This endless reactive cycle just tends to keep the business
operating around the same level of sales – survival level.
Smaller businesses tend to operate reactively when it comes to
marketing and use price as the main competitive element. This again
sets up a reactive approach to price setting and marketing activity,
creating a chain reaction with competitors which ends up damaging
everyone’s profits and cash flow.
Marketing is about communicating to the market the distinctive
reasons why a company’s products should be the logical choice
compared to competitive offerings. Most SMEs, through lack of
knowledge, do a poor job of this communication process. The lack of
ability and effort in communicating competitive advantages leads to
the focus on competing on price.
How do Top Guns overcome short term focus? Top Guns believe in creating their own success and determining their own future by developing a business plan that maps out the long term goals for the business, what the business needs to look like to achieve those goals, and a detailed action plan for how they are going to get there. Working to the plan provides the discipline required to avoid defaulting to doing the urgent short term work but neglecting the important long term development work.
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3. Ineffective Delegation
You can’t grow your business without delegating work to someone
else. However, most business owners would prefer to do the work
themselves than learn how to choose the right people, set them up
with the right systems, then motivate and nurture them.
Ineffective delegation leads to a number of issues.
1. Differing expectations between boss and employee.
2. Inefficient work methods, leading to quality and productivity
issues.
3. Disappointment for the business owner because the employee
doesn’t think the same way as the owner.
Top Guns plan their marketing Top Guns believe in their superiority First they determine their company’s strategic advantages over the competition and then they proactively communicate the value of those advantages to the market using a structured marketing plan. More often than not, this style of strategic marketing allows them to sell at higher prices than competitors because they focus on what customers really value. Don’t allow yourself to say you don’t have any competitive advantages. If that’s your current belief, either find them, develop them, or get out of business before your proactive competitors drive you out.
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4. Frustration for the business owner because the employee
doesn’t get the same results the owner would have.
Often the business owner has expectations of employees that are
simply not communicated clearly, therefore they don’t get the results
they expect. The outcome is frustration leading to resigned
acceptance that “you can’t get good staff these days”
4. Lack of Control
Imagine getting in an aircraft and attempting to fly without
instruments. You can probably get away with it for a while, but if
you’re making a lengthy journey you need to know if there is enough
fuel, to check you are flying in the right direction, and if you strike
turbulence while flying blind, you may completely lose track of where
you are.
Running a business without performance indicators is like flying blind.
Some business operators we’ve seen don’t even know what their
Top Guns clearly communicate their expectations They believe clear interactions between people and good relationships are essential to productivity, so they develop effective communication processes. These include job descriptions, operations manuals, work instructions and appraisal systems to ensure that expectations about an employee’s role in the business are effectively communicated and understood and that the employee’s performance results are fed back and effectively worked through to the satisfaction of each party. Delegation can then occur without frustration and antagonism.
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financial position is from month to month. That’s like guessing how
much fuel you have left, then being surprised when the engine stops.
Flying by the seat of the pants may have worked once upon a time
when the world was simpler and more forgiving, but life and business
is much more complicated now, and if you don’t know where you are
or the state of your aircraft you risk crashing.
5. Doing it all yourself
Becoming a top business leader requires a significant degree of
personal growth and development of critical skills. Significant
achievement always involves help from others. There are significant
changes that need to be made to the structure of any business as it
transitions through each stage of growth. Many business owners are
not aware of these transition points and hitting the growth barriers
appears to take many by surprise. As a result, they often remain
stuck at the barrier and may struggle to find a way through.
Top Guns keep control with KPI’s Top Guns believe that knowledge is power and they use it to make continuous improvements. They develop effective control systems through monitoring key performance indicators to keep track of where they are. This extends from the basic financial statements that keep you in touch financially, to non-financial measures that keep track of productivity and efficiency in many areas of the business. The controls are like a business cockpit, where the business owner can keep track of the business just like a pilot in a modern aircraft.
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In small business it has long been accepted that you need external
professionals for preparing accounts and dealing with legal matters,
however it is also becoming commonplace to bring in specialist skills
to work on improving specific business functions – like strategy,
marketing, sales, or productivity.
Successful business requires effort and leverage and usually is not
achieved without a significant amount of mentoring and guidance
from people with the right experience and expertise.
Can YOU Take A Six-Month Vacation From Your Business?
The reality is, as confirmed by the surveys quoted earlier, if most
business owners continue to operate within their current belief
system they are never likely to achieve complete freedom from their
business.
Top Guns choose to work with experts Top Guns believe in continuous learning and personal development. They look for people who can help them lead a business through the various growth phases. They often have a number of mentors and specialists who add value to their own expertise and who coach and guide them through the challenges they need to confront.
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On the other hand, the Top Gun has a business that is an autonomous
operation that functions and flourishes with only occasional
intervention. This is why the Top Gun can go on vacation for a
month, 2 months, or even six months or more for that matter… and
when they come back… their business will be better, bigger, more
efficient, and more profitable than before. And this is also why the
Top Gun has true freedom. Because they’ve created a business that
thrives independently of them.
The Freedom Challenge is about putting your business on
autopilot
Until your business works without you it is impossible to realise the
vision implicit in the freedom challenge.
Running on autopilot is only possible when every part of the business
operates according to a system. It also means you must have
competent people in key positions who know what they are doing
and are accountable for doing it right. As Jim Collins puts it in his book
“Good to Great” - a great business consist of “the right people doing
the right things in the right way”.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was one simple formula, which when
applied to a typical business, always produced the results we defined
in the Freedom Challenge (time, money, and freedom)?
However the reality is that every business is different. Every business
has its own set of unique circumstances, is confronted by unique
challenges and opportunities and has a unique group of individuals
managing and operating it. It’s actually impossible to apply a single
formula to creating a business that can operate on autopilot.
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And by the way, having your business operate on autopilot we don’t
mean that you can simply set it and forget it. As the pilot you’re still
responsible for the flight plan, for monitoring the instruments, for
landing and takeoff, for handling turbulence as it occurs, plus a host
of other things. But it does mean you don’t have to have your hands
on the controls all the time. You can safely leave it in the hands of
your co-pilot for some time before you need to step back into the
cockpit, ready to take it in new directions or to the next level.
The 7 step system that lead to freedom and prosperity
The other day I received a letter from Charlie. Remember how we
left Charlie, stressed at crisis point................... Actually, the letter
was written by Charlie’s wife and she enclosed these photos. The
letter started with, “Dear Greg, We just wanted to
write to say thanks. We are sitting at the outdoor
restaurant at the top of the steps up to Piazzale
Michaelangelo in Florence, Italy, celebrating our
freedom. We wanted to share with you some of the
enjoyment we are having on our trip through
Europe, which
wouldn’t have been possible
without your program. When
Charlie called you, he didn’t
know which way to turn. The
business was out of control and
our stress levels were very high.
But your program helped him
develop clear goals and a plan
that showed him how to keep the business growth and development
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on track, but without getting stressed at the same time because he
could be confident that the right systems were being put in place to
make everything run efficiently. Now, just over one year later, we are
able to leave the business with the confidence that it will not only
survive, but thrive for the two months we are away. It’s hard to
believe how different our life is now!”
Rather than a looking for a business success formula which doesn’t
exist, there is a simple 7 step system anyone can take to build a
successful autopilot business. These 7 steps are an outcome of our
observations over many years and many businesses and reflect the
difference between a successful business and a “managing to survive”
business.
Think of these 7 steps as the prerequisites for you to put your
business on autopilot. Without them, most businesses never deliver
on the owner’s vision of freedom and prosperity. Until your business
works without you it is impossible to realise the vision implicit in the
freedom challenge.
The 7 steps for business success
1. Take Charge 2. Plan for Autopilot Stage and Beyond 3. Build a Sales Escalator 4. Create Systems to Remove Dependency 5. Build a Self-Reliant Team 6. Develop Your Control Mechanisms
7. Break Free without Fear
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I’ve been using these steps for years now, both in my own businesses
and with my clients, to create consistent, reliable results to
establishing a business that really works, so the owners don’t have to.
How do you put these 7 steps in place?
If you’ve read this far you are obviously serious about wanting to
learn how to break through some of the barriers to business growth
that were not visible to you before.
Now, if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to get as much inside
information as you can, so you can build a massively successful
business and to get your business organised so it can be run on
autopilot. Of course, there’s only so much I can fit into this report,
but the whole system is spelled out in my book, Put Your Business on
Autopilot. If you want to learn more, check out the details and get
your copy at www.businessflightpath.com/autopilotbook.
But if you are ready for action now, you’ll want some more specific
advice that is uniquely relevant to your business. I’ve made it
possible for you to start getting that advice for free. Simply go to our
Freedom Challenge assessment to discover exactly where you are
now and to see what has to change. The Freedom Challenge
assessment will provide the opportunity to look at your business in a
new way and will show you what has to be done to have the
confidence to break free.
Take the test
The Freedom Challenge Assessment leads you through 10 simple
multiple-choice questions. Within minutes a comprehensive business
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health report about your business situation will be emailed to you.
Simply go to our website at
www.businessflightpath.com/autopilotanalysis and answer 10 multi-
choice questions. It’s free and fast!
The report will be emailed back to you within minutes, and will give
you a concise overview of how to transform your business into a
highly profitable, self-sustaining business that operates on autopilot –
giving you the freedom and confidence to choose the life you want to
lead. DO IT NOW before you get caught up again in the continuing
incessant demands of your business.
www.businessflightpath.com/autopilotanalysis
Click the link now to start your journey to FREEDOM.
Endnotes i National Federation of Independent Business (USA)
ii Grant Thornton International Business Survey
iii Inland Revenue Service (USA)
iv Grant Thornton International Business Survey
v New Zealand Department of Statistics
vi New Zealand Department of Statistics
vii Grant Thornton International Business Survey