Building a Pathway to Financial Success

This session for me is one of the most exciting because it allows entrepreneurs to dream and to build out what it is that we're working towards. Because, again, if we don't know where we're going, any path will lead us there. We want to get on the path that will path that will get us there as efficiently as humanly possible. I want to share something that I'm pretty passionate about today, and this is how we build out our path to becoming the wealthy entrepreneur or to be financially successful business person. Ultimately, we're on this path together to try and achieve financial freedom, but we have to know the path we need to take in order to get there. And one of my favorite quotes goes something like this, and I'll probably misstate it, but something along the lines of, if you don't know where you're going, how do you know what road is gonna get you there? I usually pose this a different way and say, you know, if you're trying to get somewhere, you need to know what path to take so that you get there as fast as possible. And that's what we wanna chat is building your pathway to achieving your financial success, to become financially free for you and what that looks like. And I want to share with you why this is important. Because, you know, again, we work with about a thousand entrepreneurs all across North America. And one of the things that I find that people do often, and I've got one specific client in mind here, that's Glenn. Glenn has a $10 million roofing company. Now, there aren't too many $10 million roofing companies. This is a super powerful growth business. You can imagine at whatever state that you're in or whatever level you're at in your business, to get to a $10 million revenue business, that's a lot. It's a lot of work. That's a lot of sleepless nights. But it gets even harder if you don't have a path on how you want to achieve your financial freedom, your financial level of success. So, like, Glenn's business had essentially, again, like $10 million, but it had zero cash, it had zero profits, it had. And it had zero direction on how it was going to get anywhere better. And again, really challenging at 10 million. If you can even think of being a $100,000 business or $250,000 business, and the challenge is that you have cash flow and revenue and managing it there. Imagine being a $10 million business with hundreds of employees and not having any profits like that is a very stressful, stressful situation. So we don't want to put anybody in that spot. So if you are in the spot where you're going, I am where I am right now. But I don't have a path a to get me to where I want to go. This episode is going to be for you and I want to talk to you about how this works. So we call it a vision strategy and this is where we as entrepreneurs get to dream a little bit. And I usually push everybody out to that 10 year mark to start. Now if you read Jim Collins is good to great, he actually talked about the greatest companies in the world, the GEs back in the day that were super successful and have had, you know, generational success success or centuries of success. Those businesses focused and when one thing they had in common is all of them had a 25 year plus plan. Now I think for a lot of us in the small business market 25 years from now, we don't even know what that looks like for us. I think that's a little bit too far for us today. But when you think of a large corporate strategy, you know that is something big. Now if you're 20 and you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, well, I want to know what my exit goal is or when I retire or how I could possibly get there. And this is for you. You know, you could be thinking about this 10 years out, you could be thinking about it 25 years out. Regardless, we need a plan. We can't just sell more and hope for the best. That is not going to help us achieve that level of success. I've said it before. You know, a lot of businesses focus on growth, on selling more, getting in front of more people. That is not always the successful way to grow your business. If your retention sucks, you don't have a plan in order to get to the next level. If you don't know your financial model in your business, you don't have an understanding of what it's going to take and how you need to hire strategically or how you build out your model for financial success. You need to understand these to understand how we build out this pathway. So I'm going to walk you through the process of how we do this. So if you're at home or you're listening to this while you're driving your car, great, keep your eyes open while you're driving. But I want you to dream a little bit, right? So thinking of our what our business looks like in 10 years and right now our business is just over $10 million. We've got about 95 employees in place. When I think of our 10 year goals, I'm thinking of $100 million business. And I'm hoping you're going to be thinking big too. Right? We don't want to be thinking small. And I think it's Tony Robbins who says this. Well, he says people underestimate what they can accomplish in 10 years, but they overestimate what they can accomplish in, in 12 months. So we're really good at saying these are the things we're going to accomplish in the short term. But when we start thinking long term, we're not thinking big enough. So think big. You know, Grant Cardone talks about this as saying we want to 10x our goals, 10x our beliefs, our dreams, so that when we push those envelopes, that even if we fall short, at least we're going to be all the way out there. And you know, there's a lot of psychology that's associated with this that we would say, well, falling short of your goals is maybe not great, but pushing ourselves and reflecting backwards to say, where did we come from? That is the way that we push our goals. We stretch our thinking, but we continue to see progress and momentum along the journey. So back to our 10 years. So what I want you to think of is in 10 years, you know, what is your role in your company? Are you still the CEO? Are you still the owner, the founder? Are you an employee? Have you hired a CEO? How many team members are on there? Do you have a strategic leadership team? Do you have an in house marketing department? Do you have an in house financing finance department? Do you have a sales team? Do you have multiple locations? Are you in multiple countries? What does your investment portfolio look like? Do you have vacation properties? Do you have multiple office locations? Do you own those buildings? So thinking of the ten year plan and this pushes us to say, what are we trying to accomplish? Right? It's not just going to work and selling more and hoping for the best. It's what are we building towards? Because we want to have a line in the sand to say this is where we're headed. And I want to give you a metaphor here, and this one, I use this a lot because it's very true. And you know, I'm just outside of Toronto in Canada and I travel down to the US often now, I don't drive this stretch, but can you imagine going from Toronto to la, California and just getting in your car and, you know, following the sun or driving west and hoping for the best, right? First off, you are for sure not getting there as fast as you could be. You know, you're not just following the road signs and, and just going to end up in LA in the most efficient way. There's likely going to be an accident or a road closure or something that's going to stop you from getting there quickly. In fact, you could be ending up going east. I have a friend of mine who every time he jumps on the highway I get there's a 50, 50 chance he's going in the wrong direction. He needs to follow this for his life and for his driving style. But when we get in the car instead put our GPS on, you know, put your destination in there. The gps, the calculators, the computers, the electronics, the, the sophistication of the world and items you can put around you and surround yourself with will show you the best way to get there. And this is what getting a coach is, this is what working with people who have been there, done that does, is it helps show you, you know, this is the path of least resistance to go from where you are now to where you want to get to. Which is part of the reason why we have our coaching community million dollar year is, you know, we've got to the point of $10 million. We've obviously got higher aspirations for ourselves, but we want to share that pathway. We want to share how to get from Toronto to LA as fast as possible. And in fact what the GPS might not pick up is going to be those potholes and those detour signs or those back roads that people don't know that will get us there even faster. Maybe even if there's a cargo liner that goes across the Great Lakes that helps us get there faster to the other side. We're going to know that because we went there, we knew what didn't work, we knew what failed and this is what helped us get there. So when we're thinking of our 10 year, you know, we want to start thinking of what is our line in the sand, what is our destination and how do we build up around us a pathway to help us get there. But we're not done yet, right? So the 10 year is more of the vision. Where are we looking to end up? Right, this is the, I'm going to la. I haven't planned out my route yet, but I want to go to la, I want to go to San Diego, I want to maybe hit San Francisco along the way. You know what, maybe I'll head all the way down into Texas and check out Austin or Dallas, Right. So I want to have my vision, thinking about all the amazing places I want to hit along the way. And listen, I'll come back and I'll hit New York, I'll hit Miami, you know, not to leave any parts of the country out. And then maybe I'll hit Vancouver and, and Saskatchewan. So this is our dreaming, right? I want to build $100 million company. In order to get there, I'm probably going to have to have about 500 employees. I want to be able to do that without having multiple physical locations. I want to have one physical location. I want to have and build a remote team. I want to be able to do that. I want to have experts who want to work with us because we're the best in the business and we're building something that's remarkable, it's fast moving, it's entrepreneurial, and it continues to add value that no one else can at the rate we can. That's what I want to build. Right. So you need to think about what you want to build in this 10 years. I've got, you know, a bit of an action plan or a destination. So once you've thought of these, and again I would tell you, focus on your personal goals too, because the business is going to be the best vehicle for you to build out your 10 year goals. I'll share a quick example with you too. Had a client, went through this experience with, got them to tell me that one of their goals was to buy an exotic car. And we've actually done this with multiple clients since. But one of his goals was to buy an exotic car. This was on his 10 year map. And as we were building this out, I showed him and I said, well, did you actually know that within the next 12 months if we just strategically align these few different things, that you could actually buy that car right now? And I'll talk about this strategy a different day. Cause I want you to come back and listen. But what we essentially did is we introduced a weekly strategy for him to put money in play inside his business that allowed us to leverage those funds to get his car within 12 months. Now it works so well for him that he actually bought a second McLaren. So he bought a McLaren first and then he bought a second one in a different color, which again, not my idea of what I would want to spend it on. But listen, if that's your dream and that's how you want to live your life, know what your goals are because people like me can help you get there faster. He had two of his dream cars within 12 months and his business did not drastically change. Okay, so We've got our 10 year vision, we've put our vacation properties, our accumulation of investments or portfolio of stock, our real estate acquisitions, we've got our company revenue goals, we've got our target income goals, we've got number of people that are going to need to support us. Where are we delivering this? These are all questions that we need to have answered so that we know where we're heading. And this doesn't mean that it's not going to change, right? It could change next year. But right now what is it that we want to have and where are we headed? Because I remember, I remember when I first started my business in 2008 that my initial goal was to get our business to, you know, a $3 million sort of revenue number. And if I got to a $3 million sort of revenue number, I'd sell and I would retire and I would be completely fine and I go off into the sunset. Well, that drastically changed, as you can tell, my $3 million goal to my hundred million dollar goal in building this company. And you will change too. And that's okay. But let's, let's get the line in the sand now. And if you continue to change and evolve, that is amazing too. So we've got our 10 years now. Let's back it off. We're going to think now of three years now. Why do I use a three year benchmark? Well, three years is far enough into the future that we can reach out and touch it. You know, I feel like for so many of us we reach out and we blink and three years have gone by. I know for sure. I have, my kids are now 15 and 13 and they continue like every time I look, I know my son just turned 15. Next year he'll be driving. I know it's going to happen faster than I would like it to. Although he will be a great driver. This is just happening, right? 12 months is like happening now. We can't even move fast enough to get the results by 12 months. Three years is that sort of medium benchmark that what we want to understand is if we get to that three year mark, are we on track to achieving our 10 year goals? So let's again think you're a million dollar business right now. You want to get to a $10 million business over the next 10 years. Is a $3 million or a $4 million revenue benchmark by year three. Is that sort of the target as you continue to grow and you continue to realize some of that exponential growth. Is that your target? Does that make sense? And at three years, you know, how many employees would you have to have there? What would your target revenue and net profit be there? What sort of product lines would you offer? Multiple locations? Are you all across the world? Are you global? What does your real estate portfolio look like? What does your investment portfolio look like? What is your number of vacation weeks that you take? Are you still the CEO? You know, you've got all these questions and considerations that, you know, maybe 10 years you're exited from your business, but maybe three years you're in the driver's seat, you're the CEO. And then maybe beyond that, you know, a three year target, you're going to be finding a successor to come in and take your seat. So all of those questions we need to again, this is our early target line that we want to have in our sites and this is where we want to be headed. So that's to achieve our longer term goals. Once we get clear on three, you want to back this down to 12 months, one year. Now, one year is where we start budgeting and we start actually building out the steps that are going to be required in order to get us there. So if we're $1 million business heading to 10 million in 10 years, I want to try and get us to at least 1.6 or 1.7 this year in order for us to be on track to hit that long term goal. Now I'm going to understand if I have a million and I'm going up to 1.6, I likely am going to have to add at least a third of our employees or at least have a great subcontractors in place. I may need a bigger facility, I may need to require bank financing in order to get access to this. I may need new assets, they may need new equipment. We need to be thinking about all of these things. This is our 12 month, one year benchmark. So this is our budget process to say how much are we going to have to spend in order to get to that level? And this is where things start to become very real. This is something that's very tangible and something that we need to be focused on over our next 12 months. And we are now starting to build out that roadmap how we get to that 10 year period. Okay, so now we've got our revenue goals, our profit goals, our number of hires that we're going to have to add over the next 12 months. We might have specific marketing strategies we want to put in place? Maybe we're starting a podcast. Are we starting to look at real estate? Are we putting away a certain amount every month? What does that start to look like? So that we're, we're achieving our longer term goals, but we've got a short term roadmap and then this is where it becomes fun. All right, so we take it from 12 months and we take it all the way back to a month. What are we going to accomplish in the next 30 days? If we're looking to grow from a million to 1.6 million over the next 12 months, what action steps do I have to have in place in the next 30 days? I likely want to start coming up with a marketing initiative plan. Maybe the 30 days is that I have that plan in place. You know, maybe that is something that we can have itemized. Like I'm going to find a new marketing agency to work with. I'm going to start to bring in other people to do sales calls. I'm going to start to increase or understand referral strategies for my existing customers. Let's start looking at that. Are we going to have to add employees? We're definitely going to go from 1 million to 1.6. How many employees am I going to have to add this month to help me get there? And maybe it's just what's my recruitment strategy? How do I get that in place? Do I create a marketing recruitment strategy so that we're actively marketing people who fit our core values? And we continue to look at that. Have we started our investments? Are we starting to look at real estate acquisition opportunities? Are we looking at building out our 12 or 12 month budget, our 10 year vision? We need to be looking at these things in that one month window. We need to have action steps in place in order for us to achieve those goals. And then we drop it all the way back to weekly. And this is where we actually focus on something that I refer to as critical drivers and also bring in what we call smart goals. Smart goals have been used by numerous people, but essentially when we talk about critical drivers, critical drivers or something in your business that are going to create outcomes. So a lot of times they're quantitative. A lot of times we can calculate it. So for marketing, for example, if we get a hundred new leads this month, we get 50% of those on a sales call and we close 50% of those. That's a 25% close strategy. At, you know, $100 a lead, we're generating X amount of revenue. So that is something that we can quantify. And when we think of the critical drivers, the critical drivers are driving an outcome. They're driving revenue. Right? In that instance, we're driving revenue. Now we add in the smart concept to our critical drivers as well. So specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. They have to have those components to it. Otherwise goals get out of control and it's hard to reinforce accountability. So what we do is for every individual who's responsible for a department or an outcome every single week, we know what their smart goals are. There's three to seven of them, those critical drivers that if these events happen, they're going to generate results in the company. Marketing is an easy one for me. You know, if we want 25 new clients this month, I'm likely going to need to get. Actually, let's not use 25. If I want to get a hundred new clients this month, I'm going to need 25 a week. In essence, I need 25 new clients in a week and I'm closing at a 25% rate. I'm going to need a hundred leads every single week. I'm going to have to have salespeople to take those calls. I can start building out this map so that, that 25. That a hundred new clients every single month, every. Those are contributing to my overall revenue growth. Those. As I'm adding these 25 new sales every single month, I'm hiring people in association with this so that we can deliver more, we can add more. So once you come up with this plan on a weekly basis, everybody who's accountable for a deliverable hr, finance, sales, operations, everybody should have three to seven objectives that they have. They're accountable for every single week. That's going to drive not only our monthly goal, but our annual goal and ultimately our three and ten year vision. This is how we build out our pathway to success. When you get very clear on where it is that you're going, you can understand what you need to do in order to get there. And that's why we have those critical drivers in place. This session for me is one of the most exciting because it allows entrepreneurs to dream and to build out what it is that we're working towards. Because again, if we don't know where we're going, any path will lead us there. And we want to get on the path, that path that will get us there as efficiently as humanly possible. Okay, as a bit of a recap, we need to understand where we're going if we want to get there. If we have, we're driving around aimlessly, we're never going to get to our destination. We need to be very clear on our vision, what our goals are, what our outcomes are. We need to start with 10 years. We then build out a three year benchmark, 12 months as well, which is our annual budget. We then look at monthly goals and objectives and then we have weekly critical drivers and smart goals that help drive those outcomes. This is how we build out our treasure map to finding the treasure. Okay, hopefully this has been super valuable. I think I shared with you that multiple clients that we've worked with over the years. In fact, most don't start by understanding where they're headed, but once they get very clear on it, they can be very dedicated to their purpose, their mission, and understanding what they need to do in order to get there faster. As part of being here today, what we're actually going to give you is a critical driver download where we've got our smart goals and we've got the opportunity for you to build out essentially your weekly scorecard that allows you to drive those short term results. So click on the link attached here. We're going to have that available for you to download. Start thinking about your long term goals, but then start taking action on those smart goals and those critical drivers in the short term as well. Hopefully this has been really valuable for you. We found some great insights I would love for you give us some feedback on this today. If you like the podcast, give us a like give us a share or follow us to make sure that you get access to the next episode. I'm Bob Goverow. Thanks for joining us today and I look forward to seeing you on the next next episode.