The Most Difficult Step to Scale a Business | Step 4 How to Scale a Business

Step number four. Greetings and happy Thursday Friday, whenever you're watching this video, this is Blair and this is part four of the series of the eight part series of how to get out of the business rat race and get the financial freedom by creating a fully scalable business. So I'm really excited this piece be short and sweet today. If you got any comments or questions, just type them in, give us your comments. I'll do my best to answer them on this call or in a future call. And by the way, this is an excerpt from our Apex program where we actually coach you, your business or your whole company high performance entrepreneurs and personally take them to the top of the mountain. So just as a quick review, this is step number four, if you remember, step number one. Okay, over here on our chart right here as we climb this mountain was what? What's your mission? What's the mission? What, what is it you want to do? What is it bigger than you? Is it something that inspires you and inspires other people? You define those and good reasons why. Step number two was to get a current assessment and reality of where you are financially, mentally, emotionally, physically, all of that stuff. What resources are you going to need? What are you lacking? And be honest about it. Don't be delusional. Don't be those people that have these lofty dreams of what they want at the top but have no clue where they're starting from or where they're going from. Okay? That was number two. Number three we covered last time was creating the plan. And again, this is a perch beginning of a pert chart, which is what we teach. We use pert as the tool that will get you from point A to point B. Was used to put a man on the moon. Was used for. And get them back safely. Was you. I've used it for the Rich dad company. Use it for hundreds of organizations, municipalities, governments, all kinds of people that wanted to go from where they are and coordinate a lot of efforts to make something happen. Okay? And then remember, if you recall, this is where we insert the bi triangle. The bi triangle from Rich dad, which talks about the components that you need in the plan, the legal, the systems, the cash flow management, the, the stream of events that are going to need to take place for you to get to that scalable business. Okay? So you don't need to think of this on your own. So that's where we've been today. We come to probably the most difficult one for most solopreneurs and I'm going to try and make it as easy as possible. This. This is the difficult one. Not because it is difficult. It's because you think it's difficult. Okay? And that is step number four is to assemble and recruit your team. Recruit the team. You notice that the team is right here at the bottom just before we start the. The steeper ascent. Okay, so what's the team? So why is it the hardest? Well, because I don't have any money to hire a team. Who said you had to hire them? And who said you had to have money to do that? You know, if your mission is compelling enough, you will assemble the right people at the right time. I was working, coaching with a woman this morning. She's in Switzerland. And I hope she doesn't mind that I'm saying this, but it was very complimentary. She's built a gigantic nonprofit with hundreds of volunteers in over 35 cities and eight countries around the world. And she's building, and she's reforming a new business for herself for profit. And she goes, I don't know about a team. I go, my God, you've assembled hundreds of women that mentor each other all over the world. Why that You've done the most difficult part. They're already there. Do you think that you could offer them an opportunity to. If someone wanted to come across and mentor with you and make some money and employ them, it's not like you're going to sell to the. To your nonprofit at all, but you might give them some opportunities. Okay, so I'm going to tell you that you don't need money. If you. If you. Her nonprofit is filled with people that are women that are on a mission of women mentoring women. It's amazing. And they've had some amazing wins and breakthroughs all over the world. And you can do the same thing, too. If you get. If you think. Forget about the money for a minute. Think about the mission for them. It's women mentoring women, okay? In business and in life, what is your mission? Is it compelling enough that if the money was not involved, how many great people would want to be a part of it? You got to look at it that way and pitch it that way when you're recruiting people. Okay, Stop thinking about yourself first. Well, when I get smart enough, then I can get a team. Or when I know what I'm doing, I can get a team. Don't think about it that way, because you'll never get it done. I've said this before. I'll say it again. The reason teams are difficult for a lot of people is because we are trained to do things on our own. Okay? We're trained to do things on our. Yeah, we're trained to do things on our own. And you know, it's. It's unfortunate that that happens. It's unfortunate that that happens because the truth is, business is about collaboration. Business is about teams. Okay? So again, it's just old conditioning. Just let it go. Just pretend. Like. Do you think for one minute that Elon Musk knows how to build a rocket ship? Really? I mean, come on. I mean, he would even attempt that project if he didn't. Wasn't looking for the right people. So look for the right people. Look for your dream team. Share your mission with them. See what they think. If they need money, tell them to say, look, you know, I don't have money right now, but if you. Maybe if you're in startup, they give them a little piece of the action for a while or a percentage of what they sell or preserve. There's so many ways to handle it. But I'm going to tell you the. That the people around. If you've been building a community at all, which you're a solopreneur, I'm sure you've been doing, then there are people right around you that would love to be on your team. So don't get. Don't let your old conditioning, that I got to do it myself. I'm not smart enough yet. Someday when I'm smart enough and I got it all together, I'll do it. Because that someday won't happen. Why? Because you have habituated yourself to. To doing that. You. You say someday, someday. You keep saying someday. It'll always be someday. Even when the someday is today. It'll always be someday. Okay? That's your little voice talking to you, okay? So get rid of all that. Okay? Now what do we say? Who are you going to recruit? Now remember, over here, we use the bi triangle. It's about mission team and leadership, but it's also about the internal components. Product development, legal development, system development. Right. Communications and cash flow. So who are the people? You need people on those teams. In other words, you need a legal team. This may not be somebody you employ unless you're bigger, but you're going to get an attorney or somebody that knows what you're doing, familiar with your business. Talk to them. Let them be part of your council and, and tell them what you're doing so they make sure you're protected. Because last thing you want is your idea to be stolen by somebody else. And you don't have the capital to take it to market. That would not be good. So you need a legal team to protect you, to protect your business, protect your idea. Okay. Protect you from the bad guys. Product development, are you developing the product? That may be part. That could be okay, if that's what you're doing. The product development. Hold on a second. Okay. Product development can be done by you. It could be done by. By a team of people. Could be done. Designate one person is really good at taking your idea and making it in reality now, very easy to put them on a profit share. Once the product comes to market, give them a percentage for being a part of it. When you get some cash, maybe you can cash them out. But again, you don't need money for that. But you want somebody good. That's that. That understands your mission. Okay, going down the bi triangle, what's next? Systems. What kind of systems? Cash flow management system, marketing systems, all this. You know, maybe you don't need a person for systems, but when we drop down to communication, there's three levels of communication. There's marketing communication. There's sales, which is part of communication. There's internal communication. There's also the communication you have with yourself. Okay, so who are the people that are going to help you? Who's good at marketing? Who's really good at lead generation? Find out who. Maybe it's a contractor, Maybe it's somebody in house. I'm going to tell you that that person. The people that are doing sales and marketing need to be closer to you. Your team can be anywhere from volunteers to contractors, joint venture partners. And then you'll have your core team, the people that are closest to you. People are actually closest to you. Now, again, the closer they are to you is going to be determined by how often you need to communicate with them. Okay. Not by how much money you got, but how often you need to communicate with them. When it comes to sales and marketing, you're communicating to people very frequently. So again, you might contract that joint venture that you might bring it in and maybe start paying some people to write your ads and do things like that for you. Okay, so marketing systems, their job is to not only do the marketing, but to create a. They have a whole line on that per chart that's all about them, the events they're going to do to get you to the prototype that you're going to be putting into the market. Okay, all right, so sales, Same thing with sales team. Sales and marketing. Not necessarily the same. Who's going to be, who's going to run your sales. That going to be you again. I can do this, I can do that, I can do this, I can do that. That's a trap. Don't do that. Do what you do best. Do what you do best, okay. And focus on that. That's hard enough. Okay. And be the leader. Okay? Be the leader. At some point, the bet your biggest trait, your biggest skill is not your, your technique, technical skill, it's going to be your leadership skill. I'm going to say that again. Your biggest skill in going to a scalable business is going to be your leadership skill, not your technical skill. So if you're good, technically you, that's fine. Find a protege, somebody that really wants to learn how to do that. And make them good, make them as good as you, make them better than you. Which, you know, my training business, that's easy for me to do and I love doing it. Is watching my guys become better than me and better marketers than me, better teachers than me. Better than all that stuff. Okay. And I'm happy with that. Very happy with that. Okay. And of course, some internal communication. Now you'll need. Now I kind of jumped a little too quickly. The first person on your team, whether you want to be scalable or not, first person, this is a rich dad lesson is a bookkeeper, a bookkeeper. And a bookkeeper is not you. It's not your wife or your husband. It's not your kids. It's not a relative, even if they're accountants, not them. Why? Because you want somebody that's, that's completely objective about looking at those numbers. I told my bookkeeper yesterday that I loved her. Well, I don't really love her, but I loved her in the moment because she provides me with the numbers I've been looking for for the last couple weeks. I got it. I can make clear decisions. I feel confident. The decisions I'm making, you need to have a bookkeeper. Otherwise you will not accumulate wealth. You'll spend it, you'll burn it, you'll be delusional about it. You'll do all kinds of crazy things. So if you do nothing else, hire a bookkeeper. Hire them. Okay. Now you don't need to hire them full time. Maybe hire them for one day a week, one day a month, whatever. We started, we had a bookkeeper that came in twice a month. She's a contractor. She came in, she did a great job, she got us started. Now I have full time bookkeepers. Okay, so again, critical part, the other member of your team, by the way, if you're in the service business. Should also be a personal assistant. They can maybe even double as an administrator. Okay. Somebody that takes care of your calendar, does your shopping, does some of the things that you. That. That occupy your time that you don't need to do. Okay. You don't need to do that stuff. Okay. You need to be focused on building your dream here. Then once you're scalable, you can do whatever you want, anytime you want. Okay? Does that make sense? Awesome. Okay. Again, if you have questions, type them in. Type them in here, and I will do whatever I can to. To support you on this. Okay? All right. Hold on a second. Here we go. Okay, I'm back. Hi. Who do we got here? We got Vietnam here. We've got. I think this is Chinese or Japanese. Okay. Annie Callis from Australia. Beatrice from the Philippines. Good to see you guys. So hopefully this is making sense again. This is the. For solopreneurs is the hardest part of all. I'm trying to make it as easy as possible. You don't have to go crazy and hire all these people at one time. But as you wrote out your per chart, it will tell you when you need these people, okay? If you follow the pert, it will tell you when you need these people. Okay? Now, you're going to recruit them. Got that? Okay. Now, next thing, you're dealing with them. You're gonna train them, okay? You're gonna train them. Now, maybe that you don't need to train them very much, but you can need to at least train them on the mission and how to work on teams, because trust me, very few people know how to do that. Well, okay, so you're gonna train them. What's the code of honor? What are the rules here? What's the mission? How do we treat each other? How do we communicate? What's our frequency? I'd say you set up your team frequency at least once a week. No matter where they are in the world. They don't have to all live in one place. As we know from COVID we've learned how to. Okay, so you, you, You. You make sure you have a high level of frequency an hour a week. That's it. What's working? What's not working? What are your plans? What do you need support on? Here's what I'm doing. Blah, blah, blah. Talk to you later. Okay? And then, of course, you'll interact with each other during the week, but we get everybody together once a week. Okay? So you train them, train them on teams, train them on skills. If they need new skills. Make sure they get trained. Okay, One of sometimes I know that I've hired people and I couldn't give them the money they wanted, but I could get them good training because I, I'm friends of a lot of great trainers. So look, I'm a person on my team would really love to learn this. Can we get them in there at a discount price? And for sure they did. And so the value add for the, for the team member was amazing because they're getting this world class training they would cost them tens of thousands of dollars to get and it's all part of their package. Okay? So make sure they get trained on the pieces that they need. They're the experts. They'll tell you what they need to learn. Okay? All right. Also train them in personal development. Personal development, because one of the steps up here, as the climb gets steeper, resistance is going to pop up and they're going to need to have the little voice tools and skills. My suggestion at the minimum, little voice mastery. Little voice mastery or go to Blair singer.comblairsinger.com and by the way, if you want to do this quickly, if you go to blairsinger.com plan make an appointment. One of our guys guides, G U I D E S will sit down with you, work with you and see if we can help you create a plan to get up there. And if we can help intimately and work with you very closely with your specific business, then we will do that. But check that out. If you really want to do you want to scale this thing quickly, you want to do it slowly, this, this will get you there, but you want to do it fast. Go to blairsinger.com forward/plan. In the meantime, in the meantime, there are programs on blairsinger.com classes on little voice, pennies on the dollar. Okay? Train your team, teach them. Let me teach them about little voice mastery. Let me teach them about sales, Let me teach them about building teams and code of honor and things like that. Okay? So, so allow, use the resources, otherwise you'll spend a fortune. Okay? Use the resources to train and use your team meetings once a week to spend 10 minutes learning something new about how to control your little voice. Okay? All these things, Blair, it's fun. If you're a leader, you want to grow, think everything you're doing, you're building something sustainable. Something sustainable that will generate passive income later. Okay? Now as you train them, and by the way, training never stops. Then they execute. How's that work? One thing we learn on Kilimanjaro is. It's one step at a time, one step at a time. Remember, you got a plan, right? You got your per chart, each event. One step at a time, one step at a time. And. And they. And execute that. Put the green dot on it when you get it done on time. If it's behind time, you put a red dot on it to remind yourselves when you're looking, when the whole team's looking at the plan. Where are we on this plan? Okay, you're going to make mistakes. People are going to make mistakes along the way. That's normal. Particularly if you're going from the known where you are now to something you've not done before. You're going to make some mistakes. That's good. That's how we learn. But it's. You're only going to learn if you, as a leader, learn how to be a great teacher and leader, which means at your team meetings, what's working, what's not working? What are the mistakes? What are we learning from this? Asking questions, getting them to tell you what they learned. Don't you try to solve the problem, Let them solve their problems. You'd be amazed at how smart people are if you let them. Okay, so again, and this is something that you continue to execute. Okay. Along the way, remember, we're talking about sustainability. Last piece on teams. When we're talking about sustainability, as you're executing, as you're training, you're always looking for new leaders. Why you're looking for new leaders to do what you do and new leaders for them to replace themselves so they can go to the next level. So that they can go to the next level. Otherwise, it's all going to be on you or it's all going to be on this core team, and they're going to burn themselves out. I've seen it happen. Unfortunately, I've had it happen in my own organizations. Okay. Look for leaders early and often and groom them. That's what it's going to take to be a team. Now, as you scale the mountain, your needs will become. You'll need more specialty. In other words, somebody good in marketing might not be that good at placing Facebook ads. Okay, so maybe you're going to need to bring somebody else in just for Facebook ads or if you're doing or if you have a lot of joint ventures, going to manage those joint ventures. But that comes later. Start with a. With a dream team, a core team, maybe only two or three of you, and you'll have multiple hats. And then it'll be three or four of you or five or six or 60 or 70. It depends on your appetite to move ahead and to take risks. Remember, making a big mistake is pretty much the same as making a small one. The only difference is you might feel a little more stupid making a big mistake. But you. But the other good thing about a big mistake is you get big lessons and it catapults you further ahead. Okay, so this is the piece on teams. This is a piece on teams. So if you've got questions, let me just check here. I've got a couple questions here. Philippines. Rich. Structure and Systems has been my biggest. Structure and systems has been my biggest challenge. Okay, good. So then, you know, sometimes a good. Thank you, Annie. So sometimes accountants. I know that Tom Wheelwright is my CPN accountant, is great with systems. I mean, probably. He's probably. He's a great tax guy, but he's probably been better with systems. Ken McElroy, great with systems, you know, logistical systems. So find mentors. Mentors are part of your team, too. They may not be in your employee. You might only see them once a month. But these are people you go to say, look, this is a businessman. You've been doing this. What kind of systems do you use? Or what kind do you recommend? Okay, because if you're looking for systems, I'm going to say you already have a system. Annie, whatever you're doing right now, good, bad or otherwise, that's if you document what you do and you give it to somebody else, that's a system. Right now, it's just a process because you're doing it. Okay? And whatever structure you have is what it is. So, okay, so again, document it. Dream it out. Well, how do you want it to be? That's why we do per charts. What do you want it to look like? Take a big piece of flip chart paper. What do you want this structure to look like over the next year? Two years? Remember when you start in the beginning and you do your mission, one of the things that Joe, you remember Joe, he spoke to us before about scaling your business is he said, you got to get an idea of what you want this thing to look like 25 years from now, and then 10 years from now, five years from now, and two years from now. Because if you get that in mind, it's going to change the way you do things and change the way you make your decisions and change the way you look at team members. Okay, I'm looking for team member, my PT members, the people that are with me have been with me for many years. That's how I look at it. I don't look at it like one and done. Okay. I look at it for as for longevity and, and to be sure that they can grow in their business. Now the truth of it is some of your team members may, you may outgrow them. You know, maybe it may be too much for them. They want it maybe a simpler life and they don't want to do go to the next level. That's okay. Find a place for them to do what they do best and then you'll have to bring somebody else in to take the next level of what they were doing. All good. As long as you're a good leader and you know how to maintain your code of honor. Maintain a cup, a context cup that nurtures people and helps them grow. Okay, So I hope this was helpful. This is valuable. Let us know. This posted on YouTube. Apparently I've just got a message. This is not on LinkedIn but it's hopefully on Facebook and Twitter and some other places. Remember, if we can help you, if you want to do this quickly, if you want to scale this mountain quickly, go to blairsinger.com plan make an appointment. We'll see if you qualify. You know, see if you qualify. Do a little, little questionnaire there application and if so we'll help you out. And if not, at least go to blairsinger.com and learn the material that's already in there for pennies on the dollar. It'll be the best investment you make. People ask me what's, how do I, what, what do I do with the money I got? What's the best return on my investment? Well, it's education. And congratulations because you figured that out. That's why you're here. But education is not just learning. It's learning then doing learning, then applying. Okay. And then correcting and then repeating the process. You learn, you, you apply it, which means you do it and then you correct and you repeat and repeat and repeat. That's learning. Learning is not just sitting listening to me. Learning is. Now the next step that you're going to take is go make a list of the people that are around you or what your dream team would look like. That would be ideal people for your team and go and start pitching your mission to them and see what they think. Okay? That would be the next step. Okay, let's look. You have dreams, you deserve to have them. And you deserve to not beat yourself to death and run around in a circle and burn out before you get them. Be amazing. See you next time.