Industry Best Practices - What works, What Doesn't

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Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. And so if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. Today we are going to be talking about the why of Right Way to Do Things the Right way in order to get results. Now, if you have this why you believe that there's a proper and correct way to do things and that things should be done right. There is no point in skimping on the details or cutting corners. To achieve success, you must follow procedures that have been proven and use systems that have been developed and shown to work over time and adjusted and corrected on numerous occasions to produce the right outcomes. You know that if you create structures and process that work, the right results will follow. You believe in clarity and simplicity and operations that run smoothly because they have been tested. You generally show up on time because that's the right thing to do and appreciate it. When others respect a set schedule, you embrace order and instill it in your personal life and your business. You recognize that different departments in a business have different needs, yet there is always a right way to get things done, even if it's not your way. And that part of true leadership is to bring that out in others. And so today I've got a great guest for you. His name is Bill Prater. Now, Bill is the founder of Business Mastery, as well as a business owner, entrepreneur, publisher, author, speaker, mentor and coach. He is best known for long term success in enabling business owners and leaders to quickly eliminate personal barriers, to rapidly reach their current dreams, and to embark on a journey of Business mastery. He has served entrepreneurs and business owners for over 30 years, helping them transition through three phases ordinary to extraordinary, extraordinary to preeminent and preeminent to market domination. Bill, welcome to the podcast.

Gary, that was fantastic, gracious introduction. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here.

Well, let's talk about how you got involved in Business Mastery. Take us back. Tell us about your very first business, Bill. What was it you mean?

One that I owned or a job I had?

Whichever One you think was my very.

First business was a business I owned. Now, it was just a sole proprietorship, but it involved going around the neighborhood convincing my neighbors that they should employ me or something. Whatever it was I had the skill to do, I felt. And then they paid me a little bit of money. Sometimes a cookie or some. A berry pie or whatever.

And I'm sure you learned a lot in that process right there.

Yes, I did indeed. I did indeed.

So I remember you telling me a story years ago about a system that you figured out in college. Get better grades. Do you remember what you told me?

Yes, I do. My dad told me, Gary, he told me when I was a little guy, he says, always tell the truth. It's easier to remember.

Yeah. Well, it turns out the reason that I told you that story is that I worked my way through college and I liked working better than going to school. So as a result of that priority, I end up flunking out of school. So I'm out in the street and I came back to talk with the dean of school or may have Dina man or something, to convince him I should come back into school. And so he said to me, why should I let you back in school? You didn't care. You let us flunk you out. I'm going to have brand new freshmen coming in who want to be here. So that was my problem. So I begged and begged, begged guys. Finally he says, I'll let you into night school and if you are able to get straight A's, then I'll put you back in day school. And I said, straight A's. I flunked out. He said, precisely my point. And I said, okay, I accept the deal. How do I get straight? How do I get straight A's? He said, I don't know. Ask the professors. And I looked at him and he said, no, I'm serious. Ask the professors. So I left and I thought, what in the world is he talking about? Then it dawned on me. Who would walk up to a professor and say, how do I get an A? Well, that would be an A student.

Because the C student would never ask that. They might ask, how can I pass? But they wouldn't ask how to get an A. So what I discovered is that if you do go up to somebody, in this case it was school, and say, how do I get an A? How do I get a promotion? How do I do whatever. People are so helpful that they'll guide you down that path. So anyway, so the story was, I had two years to go in College, I had below a C average, of course, because I'd flunked out of school. But from that point on I got straight A's. So I ended up graduating in the top 10% of the class and the whole thing. But the way it worked is I would literally go to a new class after class, walk up, say to the professor, can I talk to you? Yes, sure, of course. I says, how do I get an A? This, oh, well, thanks for asking. And then Gary had all kinds of things they would tell me, including people saying things like, well, if I underline something on the board, that's going to be on the test. So lo and behold, I'd be in class and then make a point. They go up and they'd underline something and then I would know that would be on the test. Other times they would say to me, Mr. Prater, could you stay after school? And I would. And then they would say, here's what you need to do. You get an A. So I converted myself from a barely getting by person to somebody that got straight A's and gotten the dean's list at the end of the day.

That's awesome. That's a great. I used that story actually with one of my daughters in college. I told her exactly that story and she did it and it worked great for her.

Yeah, it works better if she didn't flunk up first.

So once you graduated from college, take us on the journey of how did you get from flunky, you know, kid that flunked out to straight A's to businesses, to helping others, to mastery, to writing to all the rest? How did that happen?

So I basically have had three careers, Gary number one, corporate America, IBM number two. So that was my only one and only real job. And then my second career, if you will, was in the finance industry. So I founded a business, ran it for 18 years and sold it to a company, big company on Wall Street. And then the third one, which started 1999, is the one I have now. So all of those looking through the prism of the right way, I ended up going through all of those. As you would imagine, Gary, I mean, you know, this is your whole vision for everything is this is the why prism. So my first one, IBM, I remember, I don't know if I told you this story. So I was an engineering kind of a person in college. And so when I went to IBM, I was a systems engineer. Of course you're an engineer, you have systems. So I'm getting extremely well rated. So in IBM, it's called outstanding. So it goes, meets requirements, exceeds requirements. Outstanding. I was outstanding. So I asked my boss one day, I say, am I the highest paid person on your team? He said, well, no. And I said, well, am I the only person that's rated outstanding? Well, yes. I said, that didn't make any sense. He says, well, here's the way it works at IBM. We got this grid and you have your outstanding, and then you have what your current salary is, and we intersect the two and there's a percentage there and that's the raise you get. I said, I don't like that idea. It'll take me forever. And he said, well, the only other way that you can do that would be to switch from engineering to sales. And then you get paid what you're, you know, what you're worth because you get paid commission. So I said, aha. The right way is to change careers. So I ended up making a deal with this guy. And the deal was, so first off, I'm his number one guy, so he does them all to lose me. So he said, I'll send you to sales school if you, if you finish in the. In the top, if you finish. I can't remember if he said top three or number one, but if you finish with a high score, I'll let you go work to the sales manager. So I go, I end up finishing number one. I'm so happy. I come back, I got my. I don't have it here, but I have my gold pen from IBM. I walk in to see him and I say, hey, I finished number one. I want my sales job. Gary, that was October. And so he said, well, why don't you wait till January? Because if you start now, the minimum quota that you can get is a half a year's quota. So I said, okay. He said, well, you don't get. You only have 90 days and you're brand new. You'll never make a dime. So anyway, I convinced him to go into that. Then I'm sitting down, looking through the sales plan, looking at the product lineup that IBM had, and figured out the way, you know, what I could do to basically capitalize on the environment that I was in. So I was able to figure that deal out and end up being the fastest person to the 500% club in the history of IBM.

Oh my gosh, you figured out the right way to do it. So it's interesting that a person with the why of right way would go into systems thinking, huh? Or systems engineering.

And I played, you know, that's I could. I could probably tell that same story, that same pattern, Gary, over and over again. You know, my. Even my job in college, when I was working and going to school simultaneously, I developed a system, an engineering system, and I used that multiple times. And frankly, other more senior engineers used to resent me because. Because I would figure out the right way to do something, but it wasn't the. The traditional way. There's a difference between the two. And so I'd figure out the right way, and my boss would love it because I was so productive, but the professional engineers hated me.

I love how you said that, because that's the same story that you would tell me pretty much anywhere that you would go. And that's what I've seen in you as well. So how do you do that? I mean, from somebody who doesn't think that way, what happens to you when you go into an environment that, like, mentally, what do you start looking for? Things that are working, aren't working. Kind of take us through your mindset. When you walk into a business, let's just say. Let's say I hired you to come systematize and maximize my business. What goes through your head?

Well, people actually don't bring me in to do what you just described, Gary.

Okay?

Because they don't know what the solution is. So all they can do is verbalize the problem, but they don't say, here's the solution. So most of my. So for the last. Since 1999, so now we're hitting on 2000. So the last 21, 22 years, my ideal client has been a business owner who has gotten to the point where they've become frustrated about their lack of success. Now, many people, Gary Sanchez included, have a very large global vision for their businesses. But many people go in business because they want some freedom. They want to have high income. They want to have built something of value so they can sell it to somebody else and then retire and go right off into the sunset. So usually people are frustrated, but they don't know why. But when you introduced me, you said, but I figured out the right way, way back when. But I don't just say, here's the right way. So I got to remind myself that I've got to go through some motions so I can tee up the right way. And so that brings really, to my, you know, the way I go about doing things, my how, you know, why my how, which is really to make sense of situations. And so I've learned through all of my experience, including flunk out of school, I got this current situation, what in the world is it? And then I figure out the solution and lo and behold, the solution in my current business is always the right way. It's always the thing. I come back to the same thing. But. But I still go through the pattern, Gary, of figuring out what the current situation is, making sense of that, and then assuring myself once again that the systems, techniques and methodologies that I've created over the years once again fit.

So I kind of jumped on everybody there. I know, I. Let's go back a little bit again because we missed a section in there because we went from college working for IBM. And then in the middle there, you had your own business. And tell us a little bit about what that was. How did you leave IBM, get into your own business and what happened there?

So what I discovered at IBM was that like all major corporations, I don't believe you've ever worked for one. Right, Gary? Right. So like all major pulp corporations, they are at the end of the day, a political entity. So when you're on the front line, your performance matters. If you're doing system engineering or sales, or you're working in the manufacturing line, or you're selling automobiles or Boeing airplanes, at that level, production or productivity matter. But as you get up into the management level and the executive level, it's very political. So what I discovered after three promotions in IBM that I didn't want to play the political game, so I could see the way to do it. It just didn't fit me. I'm not a political person. So I left and joined with a colleague and we created an investment company. And we decided at that time that we wanted to deal with small business owners.

Why?

Because the big giant investment banks dealt with big giant corporate clients. And we didn't have that kind of horsepower. So we positioned ourselves to deal with small business owners and we developed a technique and a method and a procedure to raise money for people. Ended up raising about a billion $500 million. And so we all sudden had a big portfolio and things changed. I literally had my mind had Gary from being an investment banking owner that was raising money for people to a portfolio manager that wanted to make sure that we got our money back plus our, if you will, profits and so forth. So I figured out at that point in time when I was managing the investment bank, the right way to manage a business.

Yeah. How did you do that? So you worked with so many businesses that you started to see it and what was working, what wasn't working, or how did that work?

Well, what happened, Gary, is that, well, there are several myths in this space we're talking about. There's myths in all areas. They all have their, if you will, their stories. So one of the myths in business is that all businesses have to be managed differently. If you own a dental practice, you would run that business differently than if you owned a distribution company. You'd run that differently. If you owned a construction company and run that differently. If you owned a software development company, you would run that differently. If you owned a online marketing organization. Well, I was a young guy, you know, I'd come from IBM and now I had an investment bank. We raised money for all kinds of people. I, I believe that myth.

So my frustration, Gary, was through the roof because I had this huge portfolio. We had all kinds of different kinds of companies, and everybody told me they're all managed differently. And I couldn't do it. I wasn't smart enough to figure out all these different companies. What I did is I went and talked to people that I knew. I knew people. I knew the deans and presidents of major business schools in the country. Our major operations run Wall Street. So I had access to all these people I'm describing. So business schools. So I'd go to a business school and I'd say, hey, George, reason I wanted to come, I wanted you to tell me real quickly, how do you teach people how to run a business when they come to Sloan or when they come to Harvard or when they come to the business school at Stanford, what do you teach them? Is that question complicated? No, Bill, the reason I'm looking at you is we don't teach people how to run a business at a business school. We teach people how to be good employees. So we teach people how to get an mba. So you think about yourself, Gary. When you went to dental school, they did not teach you how to run a dental practice. It didn't even occur to them to teach you. It wasn't like they were trying not to teach you, but it never occurred. Well, that's the same in every single profession. And so the profession that's produced from a business school is employees, professional employees to go to work for IBM, just like I did. So that didn't work. So I dead end at the business schools. So then I said, well, I'll go to all the, I'll go some of the big consulting firms, you know, McKinsey and Accenture and these people, I know them, so I'll go see them and they'll tell me how to, how to Run a business and they'll teach me and I'll go run my portfolio. Okay, cool. Except they say, bill, we don't know anything about running the business. People hire us to install Salesforce or they teach us how to install Oracle or they teach us to help them install SAP. So we're not hired to have nobody calls us up and says, teach me how to be the chairman of the board of company. No, we don't do that saying, okay, cool. That's not normal. So my third place I went, I went to the business school writers. So people are written very famous business books like Jim Collins, people like that. I knew some of these people, went to see them, asked them my famous question. What did you find out about how to own a business and how to run a business at the ownership level? Blank stairs. Because none of them knew. In fact, if you think about it, what's fun, Gary, go back and pick up one of the old famous business books. I got them behind me right there. You'll pick one up and you read and it's filled with failed companies all about Kmart and stuff. Because at the time these authors wrote about these companies, the information was publicly available. In other words, if you want to study IBM, you can go do it because it's a public company, every year they have an annual report, et cetera. Great, you can go do something. You can write a book out of that. But how much disclosure did you give from your dental practice? None. You're going to tell anybody? What do you mean? You don't tell you anything. I'm a private business guy and I'm running my business the way I see fit. So that's a long story, Gary. But what it did is it forced me to to figure out a solution for my problem, which was manage or helping to manage or convincing my portfolio owners to run their businesses in a certain way. So I had to invent a system which you already referred to at the beginning was called the Business Mastery System. And it's got several component parts. But fundamentally I invented that system. And then when I had, if somebody wanted to borrow $10 million from me, I'd say, okay, here's the 10 million, here's the 10 million. And you agree, before I give this to you, that you will manage your business the way I tell you. They all said, okay. So in the last five years of running Weatherly Private Capital, my business, we ran it that way. So I had one system of management for my fertilizer manufacturers from my hydroelectric plant guys, from my cake people, to My restaurant, chain of restaurants, all those different companies, they all ran their business the way I told them. After I sold my business, 1999, I continued doing the same thing. So that right system has basically existed, Gary, for me, since 1995, still works today. It still works today, even better than ever. Ever. So often we'll have something. Now, this pandemic is a little different, but there's been many, many, many economic ups and downs, ups and downs and ups and downs. Curiously enough, when things are not going well, people will come to me more quickly and with open arms when things are not going well, because they can then recognize they've got a problem. So in addition to working well, it even works better when times are tough.

Wow. And so tell us a little bit about what you learned that does work, because there's plenty of stuff that doesn't work. What are some of the things that you can share with the listeners? They're sitting here listening, saying, man, I want to hear what he's got to say. Obviously, he knows what doesn't work, what does work.

Okay, so that's a fantastic question. Thank you very much. So, Gary, you know all about bell curves or distribution curves, if you will, the crummy and crappy to the average, to the superstars. So if you, if you want to plot, for example, collegiate football players, they'll fit that curve. If you want to plot, let's say dentists in the United States of America, they fit that curve. If you want to plot racehorses in the world, they fit that curve. So you've always got this distribution curve. So all industries, Gary, have what they call industry best practices. Okay? So you think about industry best practices. You look at that distribution curve. You know, the people that are failing are not doing it. The people that are doing it are the people in the middle. Because the best practices are sort of an. Are the averages of all the industry make sense. So how many using your industry? So what's the best practice for the way to fill it? Put a filling in? Well, there's a procedure, and the majority of the industry will do that procedure. It's called industry best practices. Sometimes there's things called KPIs, there's a variety of things that fit there. So what I discovered, though, is, you know, drive yourself crazy trying to learn all that stuff. So instead say, okay, let's go look at the super elite players in business. And the question is, are the super elite computer manufacturers doing the same as the super elite toilet paper makers doing the same as the elite construction companies in the country doing the same as the finest software development companies. The answer is yeah, okay. So interestingly, if you look at industry to industry industry, they are managed differently from each other because of the best practice idea. But if you look at the elite players, they're all the same and it's fantastically simple.

But you've already asked me the question. So the answer is, Gary, there's three things and they form the kind of a parent philosophy. It's called scalology, scaleology. And so there are three foundational principles that any of us can learn and adopt and therefore move our business from ordinary out of the middle to extraordinary. Then when you arrive at extraordinary, move yourself to preeminent. And then if you're preeminent already, move yourself to a market position of market domination. But these three principles are always the same. So number one is mindset. Number two is a system method of management, and number three is reliance on a high performance team. Those are the three. So it's a certain kind of mindset, a certain kind of business system and a certain kind of a team that you want to build. But the principles are mindset, system, team.

So let's go into that a little bit. So mindset, what are the mindsets of the. What I hear you saying is high performing organizations have a different mindset, system and team than lower performing organizations.

Yeah. And even ones that are performing awfully well, but are still lower performing. So if you think about mindset. Well, first off, if you just think about business in general, think about Alibaba or think about Virgin Airlines or think about Tesla. So I just picked some that happened to be brand names and I could have given you a whole list of privately held companies. People just don't know their brands. But if you think about, for example, the ones I mentioned, they all have a leader.

Who have a similar mindset. It's kind of a bravado bigger than all outdoors giant Thinker. So Virgin Airlines, Richard Branson. Richard Branson thinks fundamentally, if somebody's got to be number one, might as well be me. Elon Musk says, if somebody's going to figure out how to, how to play in this government subsidy energy business, it might as well be me. If somebody's going to figure out how to distribute things super cheap all over the planet and found a company called Alibaba, it might as well be me. So those kinds of people think that way. So let's simply call that a mindset of mastery. And when you have that mindset, then the people you attract to you, like that mindset, you will repel the people that think you're full of it. You'll repel the people that think you can never do it. You'll repel the people that think you're too grandiose. And that's exactly the people you want to repel. Yeah, so that's the mindset, Gary. And everybody can do it. Think about when, you know, look, I love to go think about children in kindergarten. All of those kids think the way I'm describing. They all do until people dumb them down. People say, you can't be an A student, or you can't be a ballerina, or you can't be a nuclear physicist. And these kids get pounded into the turf. But the people that have the mindset of mastery think like a kindergartner.

Yeah, I could see that. And you know, as I'm sitting here thinking about what you're saying, it makes me think about myself. And I'm sure some of the listeners are thinking about themselves and saying, I wonder if my vision is too small. I wonder if I'm articulating my vision in a big enough way. I wonder if I'm attracting the right people to me. And that's a great thing to think about. I mean, and then, so how do you develop that mindset of, why not me?

I told you the story about looking for looking, going to these experts, trying to extract from them how to run a business. But then I was talking to one of my investment banking colleagues and she owned the number one investment bank in our little niche. I mean, she was the one. I told her about my problem and she said, bill, you're asking the wrong people. And I said, what do you mean? She said, you're asking ordinary people, that won't work. You need to ask me.

And I said, ah, I see your point. And so she was the one that say, you know, here I am, a woman in the finance industry, and everybody thinks I can't do it. Look at this and see, here's the thing about dreaming big, Gary, because you dream so far in the future, you're not dreaming big about the next minute. You're saying to people over the next 10 years, this is what I see. You see, you have this huge horizon. It's so far in the future that nobody knows if it's true or not true. But every year you keep it as a 10 year vision. You never let anybody arrive at your vision. So it's ten years, it's ten years, it's 10 years. It's always 10 years. But what that does, though, is that steers the entire population of your company, your employees, your contract, your customers, your vendors, they all hear over and over and over again where you're taking this thing over the next 10 years. I pick 10 out, could be 20, could be seven. But it's a long time in the future. And people that, they'll start hearing this and they'll say, well, I don't know if you can do it, but Gary sure believes it. That's really kind of the magic of the first one. So I learned that by somebody being generous enough to say, ask the right people. So think about this. If you want to be a millionaire, you don't want to go down to skid row in San Francisco and ask them, right? You don't want to do that. If you want to be the best plastic surgeon in the country, you don't go back, talk to your professor at college and ask him. That won't work. You've got to go seek out the people that are living the dream you want to, you want to live at. And frankly, there is no dream that you can dream that somebody isn't already living it. So it exists in reality. Just go, you go find those people and convince them that you are worthy to be listened to. So that's pretty much everything somebody needs to know about mindset. Like I said, it's simple. And the answer is, think like a kindergartner. Don't let anybody, you know, push down your dream nice.

And then, so then they've got to have a system.

A system, right? You think about almost every profession, they have a system. There is a way that you handle a patient who comes into a dental office until they leave and make their payment. So there's a system, a process, a methodology. Most businesses have those kinds of systems. Accounts payable systems, accounts receivable systems, manufacturing processes, documentation systems. They have all those systems. Where people fall down is at the senior management level, senior management in general, among all the people in the middle, is a whack a mole system. You know what I mean when I say whack a mole? So in simple terms, it means deal with whatever comes up, when it comes up. So when the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic, when that happened, deal with that. But that's not a system. That's a reactionary posture to take. So people that have a management system, they know how to deal with the pandemic. People that have a system know how to deal with a big surge in extra business. People have a system, know how to deal when a customer's angry and irate because it's, it's all part of their system. And the best way I can explain it, Gary, is you need a closed loop system so that maybe think about a carousel or a merry go round. So there's a, you walk up to it, it's stationary, encounter a pink horse with a black saddle. See? Okay. Pink horse with a black saddle, merry gome starts, goes around, takes, let's say it takes 30 seconds, comes back, pink horse with a black saddle, goes around again and again. In each loop, a pink horse with a black saddle shows up. Correct. Think about you. Certainly, Gary, been on the BART system in San Francisco. Yeah. So if you and I were in a meeting in a coffee shop and I said to you, Gary, you may need to go, the BART train leaves this station in three minutes, would you get up and walk downstairs? Of course. Because you know it's going to be. There it is, the pink horse with the blank saddle. But if I said to you, Gary, hey, you better hurry, your plane's going to be leaving here in three minutes, you'd say maybe you look at the board. Nah, it's been delayed. So that's an open system, closed system, predictable open system, random.

Okay.

So I developed this business mastery system, which is a system that works at all levels in any company, works for all projects and that you can imagine, giant ones and small ones and so forth. Works at all levels from executive suite down to the front line supervisor. Works in all industries, works in companies of all sizes. You and I've talked over the years, you know that I've got many of my clients that are doing less than a million dollars a year. And you know, I've got many clients that are doing multiple billions of dollars a year. That whole spectrum, same system works, it's still this clip, closed loop, repeatable system and it doesn't have seats on a carousel, but it has a methodology. And it's the same methodology. Now from my standpoint, because I know it's the same system all the time. When I show up to help somebody, I just make sure the system's still running the management system and then I can help people fine tune it and so forth. So the business mastery system.

Is the business system part of the scalology model.

Yeah. And what I liked about it, when you were telling us about it was that it's. You manage everything on one sheet of paper, correct?

Yeah. Now, so the word paper.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

Has moved now to one one digital screen, et cetera. So if you think about, if you think about, if you're on a construction site, you're running a. You're the superintendent. Well, you don't have a. Well, you do nowadays. Now you can pull out your iPad, but in general, a computer screen or projector isn't available. You can use a piece of plywood or you can write in the sand, but it's yes, any business be reduced down to effectively eight and a half by 11 space. And the reason that it works is because everything is important, but only a few things are vital. So this is kind of mean and cruel, maybe, but it is important to have both arms. But it's not vital. It's unfortunate if you don't, but it's not vital. It is, however, vital to have a heart.

Yeah.

It is not vital to have two kidneys. You can get by with one. So that thinking, if we think about your every single business, I just encourage people to say, to think like as follows, if you don't feel good, you come to work, you don't feel good, you need to go home. What's the most vital thing you could do before you go home? And everybody will say, well, it'd be that. And that would be the most vital. So we just keep track of the most vital things for a company and they're typically some sort of financials, two or three of those, some sort of productivity, so many outputs from so many inputs, some sort of quality, customer complaints or returns, some sort of quality, two or three of those, some sort of business development. So those four areas, three or four each. So you're talking about 12 to 12 to 16 total, run any business.

So are you saying that you don't measure some of the smaller activities or you just don't put them on the one sheet at the end? So, for example, number two, number two.

You do measure everything.

Okay.

As your think about. Gary, are you a pilot?

No, but I drive a car.

Okay, well, yeah, go to a car is a great example. So if you think about even a car today, they have a lot of instrumentation, right, that you. They'll tell you your tire pressure and your, if your turn signals are going and so forth and so on and so on. But if you think about driving the car, what's the most vital piece of data that you want most of the time?

Speedometer.

Speedometer, Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's nice to have the tachometer.

Yeah.

As a practical matter, most cars are automatic anyway. I mean, it's just an interesting piece of data. But you're not going to change your behavior because of the tachometer. But the speedometer is vital for most of us. So measure everything.

Look at if you will. I call it a dashboard. So think about in a car, you, it would be the pop up dashboard, the one that shines on the windshield. In an airplane, if you go into an airplane, it's a sea of instruments in front of the pilot. But she's only looking at a little teeny square four by six and it's got her vital measurements there. We did the same thing to nail in the right business system. So Gary, the system's the same, but if we're running a veterinary practice, the things we're measuring are different than the things we're measuring in a construction company are different than we're measuring in a software development company. But we're all still using the same instrument cluster. I call it a vital driver dashboard.

I love that. I love that. And so the third thing was. So the first thing was mindset, the second thing was systems. And the third thing was team.

Team. Right. So phase one, if you will. A lot of people that start a business will do try to do everything themselves. Everything. And you've been there, so have I. And sometimes that's pure, that's economic. I mean you've got to do it all because you don't have enough resources economic to do anything more. But over time, people end up getting stabs and hiring good people and so forth and so on. Now again, talking about an ordinary business, they tend to do their best to hire people because the best people will do the right thing all the time. Right. But they don't.

Right.

I mean, because there's different distractions. They're all playing their own individual whack a mole game. They're doing what they think is right. But is it the thing that's supporting the long term vision? Are they doing the thing that's supporting what's on the vital driver dashboard? Probably not. So we need a high performance team. One that's producing high results per hour, high results per shift, high results per month, et cetera. So in order to do that, we need a culture of authentic accountability. Authentic accountability. And it's really three parts. One, we teach people how to make difficult commitments, not softballs. So step one, make difficult commitments to your teammates. Number two, deliver. In other words, if you say I'm going to do the following by such and such a date, well then deliver. And then number three, the rest of the team needs to expect that to happen. So commit. Or if you will set a goal, deliver the goal, and then hold each other accountable for the goal. Now let me explain why this is so unbelievably vital and why the elite companies do this and why they perform at such a high level. Gary, I know you're an athlete. I know you do a lot of individual sports, but back in the day you were on a team and did you ever run a relay of any sort?

Yeah, sure.

Okay, so think about track and field. So that's a lot of people can envision track and field.

Let's just run a mile relay. So each woman's going to run 400 meters. Next 400 meters. Next 400 meters. Next 400 meters. A low performing team worked like this. So let's have Sarah and Jane and Janet and Karen. Sarah Jane, Janet and Karen. So Sarah runs the first leg. The second woman, if she doesn't trust Sarah, she will not be ready for the handoff. Would you agree? Yes. She'll wait instead to see if Sarah shows up and she'll go, sarah, you're here. That's amazing. You've never been here on time before. I am so amazed. Wow, how did you do it? And all that interaction is slowing down the machine. But if on the other hand, she knew with a high level of expectation that Sarah's going to show up on time, she'd be looking at her clock, says, oh boy, it's been 45 seconds. I know Sarah's going to show up, so I'm ready. Now Sarah comes in, instant handoff, and off goes the second woman. Makes sense. So in a business, if everybody is delivering on time, nobody's waiting for it to happen, they're expecting it to happen. And so things get better and better and faster and faster. So over time, in a high functioning team, the commitments go up and up and up, deliveries go up and up and up. Everybody's accountability goes up and up and up. And everybody gets used to everybody doing their own thing and delivering on time according to the system, which is a carousel.

So if you will, when the pink horse shows up with black saddle Gary, that's accountability time. Everybody needs to deliver on accountability time. And by that I mean it's usually maybe a once a month meeting, maybe a once a week meeting. And it's the purpose of meeting is to hold each other accountable. So that's it. Think like a, like a master, have a mindset of mastery, use a closed loop management system like the business mastery system, and have a culture of accountability so that everybody learns to and loves to perform at A very high level.

Wow, I love that. It just makes so much sense. It's simple. It takes all the extra kind of garbage and stuff out of it and just breaks it down to that. What are you? The vital few. I remember you're always talking about the vital few.

Yeah. And I in fact would say to you, focus on the vital few and ignore the trivial many.

Boy, that's hard to do, isn't it?

Yeah. What is? Now, of course, that helps us with our team because if we're able to focus on our vital few and our teammate focuses on her vital few and our other teammates focuses on his vital few and we don't mix it together and all get in Everybody else's business, etc. So I have a graduation ceremony that I run with my, with my business owners. Gary, I've never told you this and I call it, I call it the coffee ceremony. And so you confessed already that when you first started, you did everything. Yep. After a period of time where you've gotten the whole scalology model working, the right mindset. And so what's your job thinking 10 years out in the future, you the owner, then you've got a machine that you know is running on time, on schedule. It's a fine tuned, well oiled, smooth running machine. And you know your team is functioning with a high level of accountability, getting everything done. So what will happen? One day you'll show up at work and people will look up and they'll say, well, oh, hi Gary, what brings you by? And you say, I came by to make the coffee.

I love that. I love that.

Yeah, Gary, I've done that so many times. So many times now. I've told you that where I like, personally, I've been doing this for 21 years. I don't like to help people get to the next level. It's not that I'm not interested, but I don't get filled with energy. So I like working with people that are performing at companies that are performing at a high level and want to become extraordinary. Then when they get to extraordinary, I like to keep working with them to get them to be preeminent. And then when they become preeminent in their industry, in their city, in their space, then I like to get them to get to market dominance. And if you're a market dominating company and you, the owner, are only making the coffee, you've got something to sell, don't you? Because you're not essential. Nobody says, I'll buy your company. If you stick around, they'll Say, I'm going to buy your company. See you, Gary.

Yeah, we can find somebody to make the coffee.

We can find somebody else to make coffee. Exactly right. So that's the reason I call it the graduation ceremony. And there's three of them. So when you get make your first cup of coffee, then we're going to build the business again to the next phase and you're going to make a little bit, you're going to make espresso the next time, then we build to the next phase and you're going to make some really ultra premium coffee.

So I'm a business owner and I am listening to this and I'm like, bill, you are speaking my language and you've got the right way to help me make sense out of this thing called business. And you're going to bring it to me in a simple way where I can actually do it and I can trust myself that I know what's happening, I know what's going on. How do I get a hold of you? Who do you want to get a hold of you? What's the best way for them to work with you?

Well, first off, the best way is this. We've not talked about anything complicated, Gary. There's the three simple concepts. Now, it's not easy to do them necessarily because there's a lot of people pushing against you. But what I say is a lot of people can learn this and do it. So if people just simply go to my website, one of my websites, but the one I want you to go to is scaleology guru, not.com scalology guru. When you go there, on my very front page right now, my newest book is there for free. So they just go there, they get the book. It goes into great depth. But specifically the scalology model, the book is called dynamic how to convert your business into a 247 ATM automatic teller machine, if you will. So they can get that for free if they go there, Gary.

Awesome. I love that. Well, Bill, I am so happy that you spent the afternoon with me and shared your steps to business mastery because I think people listening will say, I think I could do that if I had help. If somebody walked me through and told, held my hand and showed me how to do all this, I think I could do that. And I appreciate you sharing your knowledge and your gifts with everybody. So I look forward to staying in touch with you as well because I love what you're doing and I want to support it in any way that I can.

Well, thank you very much, Gary. I enjoyed very much your spectacular questioning.

Well, you have a great rest of your day, and I'm sure we'll be in touch.

Yes, indeed.

Thanks. Bill.

Sat.