HOW TO BUILD A WEALTH AND FREEDOM CREATING ASSET AND ADD SIX OR SEVEN FIGURES TO YOUR EARNINGS ....potentially make your business worth a million or more ..... This report is a valuable business tool . It gives you The Proven 8 Step Process That Has Transformed other businesses and can transform Your Business into a Sustainable, Wealth and Freedom Creating Asset if that is your intention. It may appear long but it is full of valuable lessons on every page. I encourage you to take your time and read it all. Compiled by Bridget Marsh Director Creating What Matters 8020 Marketing Strategist This is the same 8 step strategic process that many clients have used to add 6 and 7 figures to their earnings ... and now it's your turn if that is what you want! The 8 steps are: 1. Hang up your PEG 2. Find the SUN in your market 3. Create your BLACK JELLYBEAN 4. PLAY BALL 5. Lay down the TRAIN TRACKS 6. Tidy up your BACK ROOM 7. SCALE the heights 8. Focus on your EXECUTION Hi there, my name is Bridget Marsh. I’ve put this special report together to help you achieve the same kind of incredible results that many clients have achieved using this eight step “80-20 Business Wealth Process”. 8020 refers to the principle that we need to work out what the 20% of work is that will give us 80% of our result. The 8020 Center is a business strategy and marketing consultancy created by Tom Poland who has created 5 successful businesses two which he took international, and two he sold for millions. I am a business coach and 8020 Marketing Strategist. My commitment is to help as many business owners on the sustainable business path be as successful as possible. We are the businesses that need to grow. 1 This is a guide through the step by step processes that I lead my clients through, to go from owning an average business where you are trapped in a time = money cycle into one that is your springboard for financial independence. I’ll allow a client to explain “I was fortunate enough to sell one of my businesses for millions in 2006 and the 8020 Business Wealth Process was an integral part of that success” Mark Rocket (yes his real name!) MD, Rocket Lab (and others) Internet platforms, websites, tourism, and now sub-orbital rockets. Now, if you are a very small business owner then do not 'disqualify' yourself at this point: With the 80-20 Business Wealth Process, most people who are seriously committed to increasing their earnings by six or seven figures can do so by using this step by step process. Please read through these eight steps that you can take to transform your earnings and create a business asset that will finally give you the cash flow and freedom that you first dreamt of when you started your business. Since 1995, this process has helped 1,476 business owners in 193 different industries and business types and across 4 continents in transforming their businesses into wealth-creating assets. Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m sharing this information in a free report. First as a business coach I know that successful businesses help to create fulfilling lives – that’s what matters. Secondly because the more businesses I can help find the path to sustainability the better. If this information can help you make your business more vibrant and resilient I’m happy. But also this is what Malcolm Rands Founder and CEO of the EcoStore had to say when I asked him this question: What was the one thing you knew you had to do to be successful? “my advice here is don’t think you have to reinvent the wheel. Pick your battles carefully. When you need advice and support get it. Find the best people in their field to work with. Use their knowledge and expertise and then try and convert them to sustainability.” Malcolm Rands 2011 2 Each of the 8 steps I’m about to describe not only takes you closer to earning more in less time but it’s also a giant leap toward your ultimate financial freedom. Step One: Hang up your PEG PEG stands for both “Personal End Game” and “Professional End Game”. This part of the process is dead easy but often overlooked and if you don’t get it right your end result may not be what you intended. What you do is identify what you want out of your business say in 3 -5 years time. It may sound like commonsense to figure out what you want to get from your business but it’s certainly not common place. For example: do you want to sell the business for say 3 million dollars or keep it as a cash cow? Your Personal End Game may end up looking something like this: “Within 5 years time I will be working a 3 day week and I will have time for my voluntary community work, 12 weeks holiday a year and draw an annual income of $200,000”. The rest of my process is a set of easy to follow, steps that lead you toward the realization of your Personal End Game. So the next step is to figure out what your business has to look like in order for you to achieve your Personal End Game. The answer to that question is what I call your Professional End Game. For example, if we took the above Personal End Game and translated it into a Professional End Game is might look something like this: “Within 5 years we will have a turnover of $3 million with a gross margin of 30%. We will have 50 distributors each performing above our minimum sales requirement” By the way – if you are still wondering whether this is real, here’s another client testimonial from a leader in the sustainable business world. “Working with the 8020 program has added several million to my bottom line and to the value of my business!” Fred Soar, Soar Printing 3 ● Now we can start the strategy work... ● ● If you would like results like that, regardless of your business size I invite you to ask me how it could work for you. Email me on bridget@creatingwhatmatters.co.nz Step Two: Find the SUN ● it isn’t. ● A lot of people want to know what Strategy is all about. It helps to define●what Strategy has nothing to do with creating a business plan. They are normally out of date within 60 seconds of the ink drying. In most cases a business plan is simply a comfort blanket for investors and bankers who want to see columns of increasing numbers! Neither is strategy about objectives either. If you play a game right the scoreboard looks after itself. If you have the right strategy then the profits do likewise. I do believe in having objectives and in tracking progress but it still is not strategy. Lastly, strategy has nothing to do with what your competitors are doing (the most relevant thing about your competitors is what they are not doing). So if that is what strategy is not, then what is it? Strategy is a series of interconnected ideas, that when implemented, swiftly and significantly grow a business in a scalable and sustainable (replicable) way. And it all starts with finding the SUN. SUN stands for Specific Unmet Needs and it is potentially the most important part of building your wealth creating business. Domino’s Pizza became the USA’s #1 home delivery pizza brand when they figured out that their Ideal Client had a SUN – to have pizza’s delivered hot and on time. They guaranteed “delivered hot in 30 minutes or you don’t pay” and got their back room processes and systems right so that they could deliver on that promise. Similarly Maureen Maxwell (another 8020 client) found the SUN in the organic honey market. Maureen started with a problem: not enough clients. She subsequently found the SUN with carefully packaged medicinal organic honey and culinary organic honey. Two years later she said she had another problem: an export order for so many container loads of honey that she was struggling to fill it! Now that’s a better quality problem. Maureen differentiated primarily through sustainability as a point of difference in the design and running of her cafe BeesOnline, clever packaging and also through promotion. She eventually sold for a sum of money that I cannot disclose. Suffice to say that the last time we spoke she was on a well-deserved world trip, had just bought herself a Ducati Monster motorbike and was preparing to tour the South Island of beautiful New Zealand. As you’ve seen from these examples the SUN does not necessarily mean that you have to create a different product; it could simply be a pricing option, a different delivery format or a proprietary system. It could even be something as simple as packaging that’s easy to open! 4 It is frequently reported in mainstream press that the biggest growth opportunities in the market are available to those who innovate in the ‘green space’. In other words becoming a sustainable business is currently the biggest opportunity to grow your business. Step Three: Make a Black Jellybean I love Black Jellybean’s. If there is a jar of jellybeans I’m the person you’ll see picking out half a dozen black ones and ignoring the rest. Some people love them and some people hate them. Building a Black Jellybean is about refining your service or product features to the point where are you meeting the Specific Unmet Needs of a small part of a large market – and being comfortable when the rest of the market turns their collective noses up at your product. An example of a black jelly bean would be a Domino’s Pizza who became the USA’s #1 home delivery pizza brand when they figured out that their Ideal Client had a SUN – to have pizza’s delivered hot and on time. They guaranteed “delivered hot in 30 minutes or you don’t pay” and got their systems and processes (black jelly bean) right so that they could deliver on that promise. The Quick Beauty House in Japan grew rapidly and expanded internationally when they figured out the SUN in the hair cutting market was for a 10 minute turnaround time in the salon and again got their systems right to deliver on the promise. This is sometimes called your unique selling proposition or point of difference and is critical. My business is a case in point. I work with business owners building sustainable businesses who want a step-step-process for adding six seven figures to their earnings. We achieve that by showing you proven ways to get more clients, make more money and have more fun (Achieving IS fun). And there are four other features of my program that differ from others. Most marketing consultants will give you a 101 ways to get more clients. The problem is that is opportunistic and not strategic. You end up building nothing long term that will grow your business swiftly and significantly in a scalable and sustainable (replicable) way. In other words you… a. Don’t know where to start because you have 101 options b. Jump from good idea to good idea and end up with no consistent direction c. Work longer and harder but in a less focussed manner d. Feel like you are on a treadmill – running hard and getting nowhere My system is different because… a. It is Strategic and NOT opportunistic b. It is a step-by-step process (I “hold your hand” and lead you through each step) c. My strategies are proven (not from some text book) over 29 years, with 1,476 clients, in 193 industries and on 4 continents. It is delivered over the internet (via on-line events and 5 other medium) which is the most efficient and sustainable way of learning available on the face of the planet. Again, by way of Black Jellybean example, some people insist that if they are going to become a client they want to work face to face in-the-flesh. But I work with clients who appreciate the efficiency of working live and in real-time over the internet via webinars and other highly effective knowledge-transferring platforms. (I do however meet face to face with my clients at least once every year.) Once you’ve hung up your PEG and found the SUN and made your Black Jellybean then you are ready for... Step Four: PLAY BALL This analogy comes from baseball. We all know that in baseball there are 4 plates and the objective of a batsman is to get to the home plate. Hitting the ball is optional. It’s likely that you have a Core Product that you want your Ideal Clients to buy. Hopefully it has plenty of margin and once you sell one to a client they are happy and you are happy and your bank manager is happy and so is your family. The idea behind “Play Ball” is to work with reality as it is and not as we want it to be. What I mean by that is what people want to be real is for lots of clients buying their Core Product (now!) and if any marketing activity is happening then it is mostly directed at trying to get people to buy their Core Product. This is like asking a client to step up to home plate and hit a home run with zero other options. Imagine how nervous you would be if you were playing baseball but the rules changed so that you could not stop at base one or base two or base three. You had to hit a home run or nothing! And that’s often what we ask our customers or clients to do when we only give them our Core Product to buy. So instead of fighting reality we work with it. After extensive research the American Marketing Association discovered that it is five times easier and 80% less expensive to sell a product to an existing client than it is to sell to a new client. So let’s give new clients a “First Base” option – a product that is so inexpensive and so jam-packed full of value that when they look at they think “that’s a great offer” ( and the money is no obstacle). Once a new client is happily enjoying the benefits of your First Base product it is relatively easy to up-sell them to a Second Base product and so on. 6 The moral of the “Play Ball” story is to make your initial product offering an absolute no-brainer for your Ideal Client to buy. And that’s the thing about strategy: figuring out how we are going to “Find the SUN” and “Play Ball” before we develop Marketing Strategy (too many marketers don’t understand this). It’s the cart before the horse – and this horse isn’t going anywhere very fast! In other words, the market you are going to target and the message you will take to that market and the medium you will use are all questions that need to be addressed AFTER the hard questions of how you are going to “Find the SUN” and “PLAY BALL”. Marketing Strategy Marketing Tactics ● ● ● If you would like some marketing help be sure to check out Marketing Strategies for the cost of postage Once you have answered these two questions then it’s time to... ● 7 ● ● Step Five: Lay down the TRAIN TRACKS On average 92% of clients think they have a great product and just need more clients. The interesting thing however is that rather than doing some marketing activity to fix that problem they invariably revert to tinkering with their product. When it comes to thinking strategy, most business owners over-invest in product development. Here's what I typically find – it may sound familiar to you. 1. You have an idea for a new product/service that's going to be a winner - for sure. Let's call it a "Rupert"... 2. You unveil your Rupert to the world... 3. Sales are encouraging but not as strong as you would like... 4. You tinker with our product...add more features to your, re-price it, fire your web developer and marketer and hire a new one and put a fancy new stripe on your Rupert... 5. Sales are encouraging but not as strong as you would like 6. You repeat step 4 with some variations... 7. Sales are encouraging but not as strong as you would like... (and so the endless death-loop spiral continues...) I'm not saying that a high quality, well-targeted product or service is unimportant; I am saying that it's not enough. Once you have your product well-sorted it's time to FOCUS (key word!) more of your thoughts, time, money and your team on the harder part of effective strategy: marketing and distribution. The world will NOT beat a path to your door if you build a better Rupert or even a better website it's marketing and distribution that makes the difference. So why do people revert to more product development rather than plunge themselves headlong into marketing and sales? Well here’s my take: there are two main reasons. 1. The first is that as humans we seem to be unconsciously wired to avoid rejection. So we don’t do a sales call because we don’t want to hear “no” or feel rejected due to being fobbed off. 2. This brings us to the second reason why, even though it is blindingly obvious to the business owner that they need to do more marketing, they’ll do everything else other than 8 marketing. The second (and main) reason why people tinker with their product instead of marketing is that they have not laid down the Train Tracks. What’s the hardest part about getting a train from point A to B? - laying down the Train Tracks. In strategic terms, laying down the train tracks is an analogy for developing marketing and sales systems and processes that make it easy to take your products to market. Each sleeper in the train tracks represents one process along the way to taking your product to market. For example you need a process/processes for finding and qualifying new clients, you need a process for easily engaging those clients, another for adding so much value to that client that you receive referrals, another for up-selling, another for on-selling and possibly another for in-selling (all important concepts for maximising your marketing dollar) and another one for collecting testimonials and another one for alliances or host beneficiaries and other one for your message and ... well, you get the idea. But the main point here is this: what would happen to your unconscious aversion to engaging in marketing and sales activity if you knew, that 9 times out of 10, your value proposition was so clear and compelling that new clients were buying eagerly? Obviously, your reluctance to engage in sales and marketing activity would either reduce significantly or disappear completely. I show my clients how to develop product propositions that are so compelling their Ideal Clients are delighted to engage. My guess is when you’ve got your Train Tracks laid down, you’ll actually look forward to marketing and that means you’ll be less stressed and earning much more than you are at the moment. Laying down the Train Tracks doesn’t take a lot of money but it does take time, patience and persistence (and perhaps a little guidance!) and you can create multiple sets of Train Tracks – both outbound and inbound that create a “new client and cash flow marketing machine”. Laying down the Train Tracks is an essential step in the process of rapidly growing your business and is a prerequisite for taking earnings from six to seven figures. 9 But if you don’t do the next step there is a good chance that you will lose everything you’ve worked so hard for... Step 6: Tidy Up Your BACK ROOM I divide strategy up into eight categories. The first three are what I call “Front Room” strategies and they are: 1. Customer (needs and service) ● 2. Marketing 3. Product The second group, the “Back Room” strategies are: 4. Leadership ● ● Would you like help with these steps? I invite you to email me and we can see how this could apply to you. bridget@creatingwhatmatters. co.nz 5. Team ● ● ● 6. Website, sales systems, tracking inventory etc. 7. Customer management systems, invoicing systems etc. 8. Money I call these the Back Room because the customer often does not come into contact with these but in fact without processes such as managing your money, hiring and coaching staff, tracking data etc there would not be a sustainable platform on which to grow your business. For example, many otherwise successful entrepreneurs have come unstuck by not managing their money well (some only “managed” to spend it!). Think of it like this: the three Front Room capabilities mostly involve “attack” strategies and the five Back Room capabilities involve mostly “defence” strategies. If a sports team has strong attacking capabilities but poor defence strategies then most of their matches will be high scoring affairs which they end up losing. In business, attack strategies get the money in and defence strategies keep the money in. Every business needs to manage overheads closely and carefully. The answer to a shortfall in profitability is not to simply try and sell more. The reason is simple: if a business leader has a habit of over-spending then if he/she gets more sales then the over-spending will continue but at a higher level. 10 It becomes like a financial stack of cards: collapse is just a question of time. Whilst there is a lot involved in getting your Back Room organized the most important aspect (and I always get in trouble with the academics for this; but never from experienced entrepreneurs) is not Leadership or Team Capabilities but rather Money Capability. Everything flows from your financial success. So if you don’t have a highly developed capability for managing money then seek out a top Accountant/CPA who has a successful track record in guiding business owners and set up monthly meeting dates 12 months in advance to review every single month’s Profit and Loss Statement’s including actual versus budget as well as a Cash Flow Report. This means that you will be committed to having your Book Keeper finalizing these statements early in every month in preparation for your Accountant/CPA meeting. It’s important that you put this step into place as early as possible in this sequence of eight steps . Step 7: SCALE the heights The definition of scalable is “able to rise in steps or stages”. Scalability is what takes a person from a six figure income to a seven figure income. Here’s why: the number one bottle neck that prevents seven figure earnings occurs when those earnings are limited by a person’s available time. It’s simple really: if you operate on the Time = Money principle then by the time you’ve slept, eaten, showered, exercised, had some family time, met with staff, done some planning there is actually very little time left to make money. The Time = Money Treadmill 11 To scale earnings (rise in steps or stages) you need to do two things and two things only: 1. You must create Scalable Marketing (including sales and distribution) processes that can efficiently and effectively operate while you sleep. 2. You must create a Scalable Product or service that an Ideal Client can engage in while you sleep There is no point in having only one of them. Otherwise you end up with a 100% Scalable Product trapped inside 0% Scalable Marketing or vice versa. In other words, you have to create massive demand and also have the capability to meet that demand. If YOU need to be there to sell, service, deliver, or in any other way engage or satisfy a client, then your earnings potential is very likely going to be limited to six figures. Scaling the Heights is really an extension of Step Five “Lay down the Train Tracks”. In that step I wrote about how a business needs to create a series of marketing and sales processes that take a product market. In this step I am talking about ensuring that Black Jellybean is Scalable AND that you now begin to lay down another set of tracks multiple distribution channels e.g. commissioned resellers, distributors, franchisees, licensees, retail outlets and so on. It’s very important that you complete Step Five so that each of those marketing channels is operating effectively before you go to this step. The reason is this: any faults in your direct-tomarket processes will be magnified 100 fold if you then go to resellers with those processes and ask them to use them. You have to walk before you can run. Scaling your product and your marketing is the key to a seven figure income but you MUST get Step Six well and truly sorted before you go begin to Scale the Heights. The key to a high income is a Scalable Product and Scalable Marketing that when combined produce an exponential number of satisfied clients – like fishing with a net. So, at the risk of leaving you something to think about please consider how much going fishing is like looking for new clients. Go fishing for clients with a line Go fishing with a net Have others fish with their nets for you 1 x 1 = 1 client 1 x 4 = 4 clients 4 x 44 = 256 clients Something to think about, huh? 12 Perhaps only three percent of business leaders ever figure out a plan that ticks off all seven steps above. And of that three percent, a much lower number again actually realize their dreams because they missed the eighth and vital final step… ● Step Eight: FOCUS on your EXECUTION There’s an old joke that goes like this… ● ● Tired of waiting for the fish to bite? I invite you to visit the website discover our Free Test Drive where you get to keep the car just pay for the petrol – well postage in this case … just click on the Most Amazing Free Gift Ever offer button and try out some of our marketing ideas. Ten frogs sitting on a log over a pond. Three frogs decide to jump off. How many frogs are left on the log? The answer of course is ten. The three frogs decided to jump off but never “got around to it”. ● ● ● The same is true too often with the execution of strategy. The good business owners recognize that they need to develop a strategy and do so. But only seven figure business owners go on to execute that strategy. Here’s why… Reason #1: Lack of alignment between time and strategy Once the strategy is formed too many people revert to “BEING BUSY”. Their email in-tray is more seductive than executing their strategy; it gives them more immediate gratification. Likewise reacting to a staff crisis or rushing to fill in the gap left by an unreliable supplier or fulfilling client demands or any one of a hundred things that prevents them from completing the actions that they have previously identified will bring their strategy to life. This is like 'Pinball Leadership': bouncing around like a pinball in the giant pinball machine of their business. Continually reacting to a crisis or chasing an opportunity that turns out to be unsustainable or worse still, a complete dead end. I’ve discovered that the biggest impediment to my client’s success is overwhelm. So I’ve learned to train my clients on a simple and easy system which guarantees they have enough time to execute their strategy. We break every strategy down into a series of simple actions and then we ensure that each action is assigned a person and is scheduled as a meeting in their diary. Then you can relax on 13 your days off knowing that when they walk into their office on a Monday morning they follow their schedule and their strategy (including SUN, creating BLACK JELLYBEANS, laying down the TRAIN TRACKS and SCALING the Heights) is all taken care of. Would you feel more confident about creating business wealth if you had created a great strategy and you knew that you had enough time to execute it? I think so. Remember though: executing strategy is not a destination, it is a journey. It must be reviewed and refined and updated. Your business will not continue to grow if the strategy is not continually reviewed and executed. But even having your time sorted out, with everything neatly scheduled, you still have another hurdle to overcome to execute your strategy... Reason #2: Lack of accountability and review Imagine you set a goal to get fit and so you decide to get up earlier each morning and go for a run or a walk. So you do that for the first two mornings but when the alarm clock goes off on the third morning its cold outside and you had a late night and there is a warm body next to you ... so you sleep in. And that’s the end of the goal. Contrast that with the same scenario except you have agreed to meet a friend at the end of the street so you can walk or run together. When the alarm clock goes off on the third morning its cold outside and you had a late night and there is a warm body next to you ... suddenly you remember your friend who will be waiting for you, so you swing your feet onto the floor and you get up and go for your run/walk and when you get back home you’re really glad you did it. It’s the same with executing strategy. At the 8020 Center we set a target, date and a time with every client. Each client reports on their progress and their next set of actions. It’s that kind of accountability and review that drives the relentless execution of strategy. Most people find this very hard to do on their own. You and I and almost everyone else on the planet need that level of accountability in order to support us to review and plan the execution of our strategy. Otherwise we will drift into Pinball Leadership or get caught by the next reason... Reason #3: Lack of focus or ownership of the outcome “The Saviour Syndrome” is manifested in someone who chases “good ideas” including running after every guru who offers the “The 3 Quick and Easy Keys To Success” or “The 7 Fast Ways To Get Rich” or succumbs to the convenient lies inherent in some “secret” or getting rich by working 4 hours a week. 14 The Saviour Syndrome externalizes (someone or something else) responsibility for success. It wants to by-pass the need for personal exertion as well. Someone with Saviour Syndrome is hoping for that one big breakthrough, or that one big idea, or that one big deal, or that one guru or that one person who will “discover” them and rescue them from mediocrity and launch them in business stardom and success. And it NEVER happens – well seldom enough for me to say never. Great business leaders certainly learn from other great business leaders. But they also understand that the enemy of great strategy is the good idea and that to constantly flit from one idea or guru to another is opportunistic rather than strategic (see above) and that every new idea or person or product or supplier (etc) needs to have a big question mark stamped on it. The question mark means that the business leader must ask if the idea/guru/supplier/staff/prospect/alliance (etc) is helping to execute their strategy or if it is a distraction. And no opportunity is neutral: everything will either help you execute or will be a distraction. Nothing is neutral, everything counts. Where to from here? I’ve now gifted you all 8 steps in the 80-20 Business Wealth Process but I’m very certain that if you have read this far then you may have figured out that “what to do” and “how to do it”, are two very different things. So if you want to discover more about the “how” then go to www.8020Center.com and look at your two best options which are my 8020 Club (where you can LEARN winning strategy) and my 8020 Camp (where you can CREATE winning strategy). Dedicated to Growing Sustainable Businesses and Increasing Your Income, Bridget “An ounce of good strategy will always beat a ton of hard work” P.S. If you email me today P.P.S. You know by now how important I believe this strategy stuff is (I am so keen on it I even did my Masters Degree in it) but if getting new clients right now is what you need jump onto this webpage and find out how you can get a guaranteed 3 new clients in 30 days – or your money back. New Clients Fast Track Thank you for reading this far I sincerely wish you every success with your goal of adding 6 or 7 figures to your earnings. 15