Entrepreneur revolution, p.16
Entrepreneur Revolution, page 16
These three classic roles are needed to form a boutique team, however there's a final role that you need if you want to grow a successful GSB that's right for the times we are in – the Key Person of Influence.
The Key Person of Influence becomes known, liked and trusted in the industry. They go out and do deals, publish content, get in the media, speak at events and generate buzz. Rather than working in the business, they should always be out in the market leading from the front. Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson proudly says he's never had a desk in any of his hundreds of businesses and prefers to be out meeting people.
When I launched my first company, I knew I wasn't ready to play this role so I did a deal with a respected industry statesman who agreed to be the face of the business for a percentage of total revenue. In our first year, we paid over A$100k to him for very little work – some speaking engagements, introductions and training our team. It was worth it though, because his name came up in every conversation. Being under the wing of a Key Person of Influence propelled us forward at a speed we couldn't have achieved just as three 22-year-olds.
Throughout my 20s I always did deals to ensure we were associated with Key Persons of Influence and we could leverage their reputation and insights. After 10 years in business, I had built a reputation of my own and naturally felt more comfortable in this role. Today I am paid in fees and equity to be the Key Person of Influence for several start-up businesses who grow faster because of the introductions and insights I can provide for them.
In the Entrepreneur Revolution, every business relies heavily on media, content and reputation to reach people far and wide. Without a Key Person of Influence your business won't achieve the cut-through it needs to succeed in a noisy market. If you feel ready to play this role yourself, you might want to read my book Key Person of Influence next; alternatively, you can find someone who's already well known and pitch them to become associated with your brand.
Once your team is assembled, you need to bond the team together with routine and culture. It's often the case with GSBs that the team are dispersed across time zones and are rarely in the same place at the same time. This is an obvious strength, but it can quickly turn into a weakness without a few ground rules in place.
THE FIVE ROUTINES
It's important to install routines first that will bond the team. I use these five routines to bond teams and keep them performing.
The Monday morning huddle. This 45 to 60-minute meeting sets up the week and it could take place online using a video-conferencing tool like Skype, GoTo Meeting or Zoom. If possible, it's worth doing in person, preferably over breakfast, at least once a month. Each person shares their goals for the week and gives specific measurable outcomes that they will have achieved by Friday. I've found it's best to have no more than six outcomes for the week, and to share the expected time it will take to achieve each outcome and its priority in relationship to the other outcomes. For example: ‘This week my first priority is to follow up with the 46 sales leads that came in from the email campaign, I estimate it will take 7.5 hrs to call through the list. My second priority is to deliver six sales presentations to the appointments that were booked last week, it will take 9 hrs in total.’
The Friday afternoon debrief and celebration. This 60-minute meeting can also be virtual but if possible I like to do it in person and conclude with a glass of Prosecco (or fresh carrot juice). The meeting covers what was achieved for the week, with each person sharing what they set out to do on Monday and what was achieved as a result. It also finishes with a round of ideas on how to improve, what to celebrate and who to acknowledge. For example: ‘This week I called 46 leads and set eight sales appointments for next week. I also presented six sales appointments and made one sale with another sale pending. A key learning for me this week was to send a text reminder an hour before the sales meeting so the person is ready.’
The quarterly retreat. This can be hosted at a boardroom or a nice hotel for a half or full day. If absolutely essential, people can join virtually but it's best to get as many people on the team together as possible for this meeting. This retreat should look at all the key areas of the business performance, what the plan is for the next 3–12 months, the campaigns and promotions that will be run and the innovation required to achieve the mission. This might be a good moment to bring in a business coach or facilitator to help get the best out of the team and address gaps that are being overlooked.
The communications centre. This is a daily commitment to use one central form of communication between the team. This is so communication isn't lost and doesn't require endless emails to bring people up to speed. This could be software such as Slack, Workplace, Yammer or even a closed group on Facebook. Create some rules that work for your team to keep things orderly and to capture the important ideas as they unfold.
The vault. This is a routine that involves filing and storing documents and important data in a central location and keeping it safe. Many companies are using Dropbox, Office365, iCloud or Google Drive. It's less important which one you use, but essential that you commit to keeping it well organised and secure. The vault should contain your database, your accounting reports, your product brochure templates, media and slide presentations. If someone needs to find information about the business, there's only one place it could be – in the vault.
With the five routines in place, your next focus will be to instil a high-performance culture in your team that ensures you work well together and make the most of the exciting times we live in.
THE NINE MAXIMS TO CULTIVATE A CULTURE OF RESULTS
If you have people in the four roles discussed and your team are following the five routines, you are ready to ramp up the dynamic culture that will allow everyone to thrive together in the Entrepreneur Revolution.
Along the way you will encounter many difficult choices. Every entrepreneur's journey is complex and, without the right culture, you simply can't make the right decisions consistently.
A powerful tool to cultivate culture is through ‘maxims’. In business, maxims are designed to be principles of high performance that help shape decisions and behaviour.
Maxims represent a core philosophy designed to inspire a way of being that produces the results you want.
Maxims become your compass. These home truths, or principles, help guide your team through the complexity of building your empire from concept to multinational operation.
Facebook has maxims like ‘move fast and break things’ and ‘fail faster’ to maintain its risk-taking, start-up culture.
Nike has maxims like ‘We're on the offensive always’ and ‘It's in our nature to innovate’ to keep them on track as a competitive sporting brand.
I am going to share with you the maxims of high performance that have helped guide me and my teams. These maxims have helped us to perform – despite recessions, setbacks and costly mistakes.
Attempt to adopt them as your own. When you are ready, I also encourage you to develop your own maxims that inspire you even more.
MAXIM 1: YOU GET WHAT YOU PITCH FOR… AND YOU ARE ALWAYS PITCHING
A pitch is a powerful set of words that you deliver to the world again and again. Eventually, if you stick at it and really get the pitch perfected, you will get what you pitch for.
In your business, if you get your pitch right you can raise money, attract a team, engage partners and inspire new clients. If you are a change-maker with a great pitch, you will eventually attract a following, upset the status quo and see a shift in your cause.
A client of mine, Lazo Freeman, began to pitch ‘I'm the UK's top body transformation coach, I work with wealthy men who are brilliant in a boardroom but ordinary in a bedroom and make them lean, fit and toned in 12 weeks’. As a result, he has attracted very high-paying clients and he earns 500% more than he did when he simply pitched ‘I'm a fitness trainer’.
Another example is my friend, Jeremy Gilley. In 1999 he began to pitch ‘I believe the world needs a day of peace which will serve humanity as a starting point for bringing us together despite our differences’. By 2001, Jeremy found himself in the United Nations witnessing a unanimous resolution for a fixed calendar day of peace (September 21). He got what he pitched for; today, over 100 million people celebrate Peace Day each year.
A powerful pitch, delivered hundreds of times, will allow you to speak your best ideas into reality; but it doesn't end there.
When you repetitively pitch a bad idea that doesn't help you, it will have just as much power. If you are consistently pitching people ‘I have no money because, as a child, my parents complained about not having enough’ you will also speak it into reality. People will begin to reinforce your belief, support you in making it real and reinforce its validity. You will get what you pitch for and you will have no money!
If you say ‘I'm overweight because of my age and because I have a slow metabolism’, your pitch will start to work. You will have other people agree with you, you will start to see new reasons why this is absolutely true, you will have others feeding you research that spurs you on in your conviction. You will get what you pitched for and you will stay overweight!
When you consistently pitch an idea to people, it gains strength. Soon enough it becomes real to you and you can't see the world any other way.
So be careful what you pitch for. A pitch will bring you followers, believers, supporters, research and reinforcement, no matter what you are pitching.
If you pitch ‘the world is miserable’, more misery will start to show up. If you pitch ‘there's not enough’, you will get scarcity. If you pitch ‘people aren't interested in my business’, you will get more of that.
It is a choice. However, you get to choose what you want to pitch for. If you choose to pitch ‘life is good and I'm very lucky’, you will get more of that too. If you pitch ‘there are clear opportunities in my life right now’, you will start to see them.
Pitching is powerful, so be deliberate with your words because you will get what you pitch for and you are always pitching.
MAXIM 2: INFLUENCE COMES FROM OUTPUT… NOT CONFIDENCE
Don't wait until you feel confident in your abilities before you create something. Confidence is not required.
Recently I watched a short video about influential people. It was beautifully shot but it didn't say very much. Just some very basic observations about people who have been influential in the past.
The opening line stated something that I flat out disagree with: ‘An influencer has a certain confidence that not many people have.’
Take a look at Whitney Houston, Kurt Cobain, John Candy and Michael Jackson, and you won't see people who were supremely confident. You will see people who were perpetually tormented by their insecurities, plagued by self-doubt and a lack of confidence, resulting in their own demise. Yet they were all massively influential.
Influence is not about confidence, influence is about output. You can lack confidence, you can be racked by self-doubt and you can secretly fear an imminent alien invasion but if you create amazing output you will gather influence.
Influencers are producers. We only know about influential people because of their prolific output.
They might have big houses and fancy things, but that's not how they became influential. They create, not consume, for their influence.
The Beatles created the world's most valuable music catalogue in just eight years; they were prolific, not confident.
Stephen Spielberg has written over 20 screenplays, directed over 50 films and produced close to 200 movies; he's prolific, not confident.
Oprah Winfrey did 4561 episodes of her iconic talk show, she's written five books, published monthly magazines and produced daily radio shows; she's prolific, not confident.
Steve Jobs built three separate companies, was listed as the inventor on 317 patents and is credited as reinventing seven industries; he was prolific, not confident.
It is creation that creates influence. It's your ability to write and publish, record and duplicate, design and produce. It's your ability to finish the job and put a completed product into the world.
The idea that influencers are simply cool, hip or trendy is superficial. It overlooks the enormous amounts of energy that influencers put into constantly reinventing their output.
It does not matter if you are confident or not. Produce something of value, create a product, publish a book, make a video, prototype a widget. If it's excellent output, you will gain influence.
I've worked with dozens of people on creating new things. Most of the people I've worked with had self-doubts to begin with, but we pushed to keep producing. Often the confidence came after the project was complete, but not before.
Logically, real confidence can only come after you have done something, not before. It may never come at all. Fear not, it doesn't matter, keep creating and your influence will go through the roof.
Don't let your perfectionism stand in the way either; prolific beats perfect too. Getting stuff done will create more momentum than waiting for everything to be perfect.
Creating all the time is fun and it generates all sorts of results. Wealth, influence, recognition and joy all flow from creating.
MAXIM 3: INCOME FOLLOWS ASSETS… NOT EFFORT
Your job each year is to create new assets. An asset is anything that would still be valuable if you or your team disappeared.
Using this definition, it's easy to see why a house or shares are assets. If you were hit by a bus, your house and your shares wouldn't change in value.
In business it's exactly the same. Your business needs to be built so that it would still be valuable if you weren't around.
To do this, you need IP assets. You must develop systems, methods and procedures. You need a brand and a culture. You need a system of marketing and selling your products and services.
When your business is in a position to carry on without you, then you have built yourself a whopping big asset.
You don't need to be overwhelmed by this concept. It takes time to build a whole business that can continue on without you, however, you can chip away at it each year. Every time something goes wrong or you don't get the result you wanted, ask the question: ‘What asset are we lacking that would have helped?’ You'll realise that things like checklists, training videos, websites or business plans would have helped to solve the problem.
Create documents, systems and media that address the issues in your business. Every year create more and more of them. Sales scripts, training manuals, videos, podcasts, databases, brochures, reports, checklists and best practices.
Put them in writing, get a graphic designer to make them look pretty, then make sure they get used.
It seems challenging at first but pretty soon, you can't imagine running a business without them.
My mentor gave me this advice when I was really struggling. I had been through a tough year and had considered selling my business for £300k.
My mentor looked at my business and said: ‘Income follows assets but you haven't built many.’
Under my nose we discovered several great strategies that hadn't been documented. For a year, our team became driven to create documents and 12 months later the business was valued at £4m!
There are 24 asset categories that I've identified as the most important, and you can discover which ones you have and which ones you need at www.24assets.com.
Your team must learn that in order for them to be paid more, they must become more connected to the assets of the business. Highly valuable people on any team create new assets, sweat existing assets or protect assets from being eroded. If you can't directly connect your work to asset creation, utilisation or protection, you'll find it hard to earn more income on any team.
MAXIM 4: GET KNOWN BY THE SUCCESS OF YOUR CLIENTS
The best way to become famous is for what you have done for others.
If you focus on creating success for your clients, they will go out and tell the world. People are unlikely to believe what you say about yourself, but they will be very impressed by the favourable stories your clients are telling about you.
Most great businesses grow because of what others are saying about them. Google grew because people showed others how magical the results are when you ‘google’ something. Facebook grew because of the sentence ‘Add me on Facebook’ spoken between friends. Apple's meteoric growth in the 2000s was down to ‘raving Apple fans’.
People who crave the spotlight rarely come across as aspirational; people who want to put other people and ideas in the spotlight often end up with positive publicity. It's unhealthy to want fame and recognition for its own sake, but it's a worthy goal to add value to people to the extent that they talk about it.
My own business success really took off when we focused centrally on the success of our clients as our business and marketing strategy.
As soon as people started hearing our client success stories, we had people beating down the door.
When it came time to invest in a social media campaign, we sent camera crews out to our clients’ offices and let our clients tell their stories. As a result, we have dozens of video case studies that help us to generate all the business we can handle.
