Want More? Seven Steps to Building a Smarter Business Engine Featuring Luke Fatooros
Want more? Is your business working for you or are you just trading your time for dollars? Most of the time it’s because your business structure is all wrong. Its always better to consider these seven steps in the initial phases of setting up a business, but It’s never too late to implement these strategic changes to see changes in your fundamental business ops
Table of Contents
About Luke
Luke Fatooros: Ideas Into Business – Smart Business Coaching
Luke co-founded his first business at the age of 23. Starting out in his fathers shed, together with his partner, he turned an idea and $800 into a $12 million retail company with 65 staff within 5 years.
He, unfortunately, lost this entire business because he was making the same everyday mistakes most businesses make. His business was not structured correctly. He was exchanging time for money and was focused on tasks to get through the day, not to set himself up for the future.
Therefore, burnt out and learnt the single most important lesson in business – the difference between being Self Employed and being a Business Owner.
He took 7 years to regain his confidence and try again. This time, however, he did things smarter.
Based on his real-life lessons, he created a smart business system that does the work for you while adding value to your business. He applied this system to several new ideas, created a business valued at $3.5 million after just 2.5 years, and sold another business to a publicly listed company on the Australian stock market for $820k after 14 months.
Luke is now a successful business coach who over the last 12 years, has helped over 1000+ business owners implement his smart business system into their businesses, helping them create a valuable asset to set themselves up for life.
Contacts
Ideas Into Business Training (this will be set live for the podcast)
Free 90 min Master Class and downloadable blueprint of the 7 steps covered.
Listen to more great episodes of The Business of Business Podcast here
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Full Transcript Below
Want More? Seven Steps to Building a Smarter Business Engine Featuring Luke Fatooros
Estimated reading time: 40 minutes
Thu, 8/5 6:36PM • 50:35
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, people, business owners, step, customers, optimize, set, buy, niche, money, sell, businesses, staff, salesperson, structure, stress, marketing, computers, build, sales, Want More, Seven Steps to building a smarter business engine
SPEAKERS
Luke, Roy Barker
Introduction
Roy Barker 00:05
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I’m your host Roy. Of course, we are the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests that can speak to a diverse set of topics. Hopefully we can find something that you have thought about. Or maybe even if you have something keeping you up at night, the material we provide, and the experts that we bring on, we’ll be able to help you get past that. We just really want to see everybody be successful. And hopefully, we’re giving you some tools and ideas to do that here.
So today we’re excited to have Luke Fatooros. He is with Ideas Into Business, which is Smart Business Coaching. Co-founded his first business at the age of 23. started out in his father’s shed together with his partner. He turned an idea and $800 into a $12 million retail company with 65 staff within five years. Unfortunately, he lost the business because he was making the same everyday mistakes most businesses make. His business was not structured correctly, he was exchanging time for money he was forced on, he was forced on tasks to get through the day, not to set himself up for the future.
He there ever burned out and learned the single most important lesson of business, the difference between being self-employed and being a business owner. He took seven years to rein in his confidence and to regain his confidence and try again. This time, however, he did things smarter. Based on his real-life lessons, he created a smart business system that does the work for you while you add while adding value to your business. He applied this system to several new ideas created a business valued at 3.5 million after just two and a half years. And sold another business to a publicly listed company on the Australian Stock Market for $820,000, after 14 months.
Luke is now a successful business coach who over the last 12 years has helped over 1,000 businesses owner 1,000 business owners implement his smart business system into their businesses, helping the creative value, build assets to set themselves up for life. Luke, thanks for taking time out of your day to be with us. Certainly do appreciate it.
Luke 02:27
Thanks for having me, Roy. It’s fantastic to be here. Yeah,
Roy Barker 02:30
it sounds like quite a roller coaster ride. You know, before we get into, you know, before we get into the meat of this discussion, tell us a little bit more about this journey, you know, how you got it sounded like, you know, you created a heck of a business. And then, you know, kind of went through some stumbled a little bit and then came back figured it out that structure is really the key.
More About Luke
Luke 02:55
Yeah, so what you mentioned earlier, I guess, starting out it, my father shared 800 bucks to young kids taking on the world, we’re gonna get rich and do everything. Everything. A person who wants to build a business, all the big desires. But we had no idea what they were doing. We just hope we wait. And yeah, that there was a, you know, we struggled for 14 months not buying anything was just pure will desire, we just got to make this thing happen.
So it was no brains was pure stupidity, just going forward, going forward. And eventually, we worked out a few things. I learned how to do my first joint venture, I did a little bit of bad marketing. And the business took off like it took off like a rocket and we created a $4 million business in five years. And we won so many awards, and we thought we were so marvelous. Looking from the outside, you want to say wow, scars are incredible.
They’re so successful. That success at a young age and happening the way did they actually set us up for failure. It did. We lost the whole business. And you know, reflecting back, it took me five to seven years to just get the confidence to Hey, let me try again. Because obviously, it was a life-changing disaster that happened and what happened on that reflection was those three life-changing lesson which you touched on in the intro and the first one was really to understand how money works. And that was stop trading time for money.
I learned the difference between unlimited earning structure and an unlimited earning structure and working hard. I mean you got to have a good work, work ethic that’s different to just working hard and killing yourself and drop drive yourself into the ground which ultimately What happened to Gary my partner? Now we work so hard, we drove ourselves into the ground, because our business was just not structured correctly.
It wasn’t doing the work, which led me to the second most important lesson I learned on this reflection of failure. And that was the difference between being self-employed, and a business owner. So, when Gary and I started, we thought, this is how many business owners think they think, well, I’m just going to make profits, the business can make profits. And that’s how we’re going to get rich, and we’re going to work hard. But that’s not how you do it. That’s just setting yourself up for burnout, and exhaustion, which happened to us, what you want to be doing is, you want to be creating a structure that actually creates a valuable asset, you want to create a business engine that ultimately does the work for you that you can step back from.
So there was like a huge mind shift, understanding the difference really, between what is a self-employed person and a business owner. And so to give you like an example, my first business, I had 65 stops, was going for five years, and it was a poor million-dollar business each year. And so someone would say, well, there must be worth a lot of money. The truth was, that had very little value. Because if Gary and I stepped out about sequence drop dead, the business just couldn’t work. So it has very little value, even though it’s perceived, well, amazing.
The second business I created from an idea in a home office, and it was me with a notebook. I’ve set up distribution of East retailers, distribution retailers around the world, it was just me one person with a notebook at a home office working to two days a week once that thing was set up. Obviously, there’s a lot of groundwork setting up, but there was barely the three and a half million dollars after three years. That’s, that’s the difference. When I’m talking about now. I had to learn this on my journey. Most business, I just don’t know this exists.
That’s very powerful knowledge. And so the question is, well, okay, well, how do you do that? How do you go from an unlimited limited structure, how do you get an engine working? How do you step back so that your business actually worth something that you can sell? And you can have a life not be equal for your business, which is, you know, most business owners are stressed time or? And the intent or the purpose of the business is just not what they set out? It’s a complete opposite. Yeah. And which leads us to the chat with you today, the seven steps, the sequential steps, and the sequencing is like, the key, which I learned, because, no, you can’t build a house with the roof first and put all the fancy chandeliers and if you don’t have structure, so it’s all a collapse.
And that’s really, our businesses, people want to build a website, or let’s give them a Facebook page. That’s like your chandelier or your roof. Well, who is it? What’s your what’s your resonating message? And you know, how are you going to scale this thing without killing So? So that leads us into race discussion, the seven steps, how did they come about? It came about through my lessons, and the first one is optimizing your mindset.
Now. When you speak to most people about success in business, they will say well in sales and marketing strategies, growth strategies, negotiation products and services, websites, digital marketing. All the cool stuff, and you do need all that. But there’s a piece next to that. Call you and if you’re not straight upstairs in the head. Or you’re not sorted out in your brain Well, you’re going to sabotage your business no matter how good your sales and marketing negotiation, or whatever. And that’s really what happened to me my first business because every one of us has self-sabotaging traits. No, no, no one’s exempt.
And, you know. The people who think they they don’t have any losers or prohibition, you know. Which often you hear and that was me, that’s the voice of my younger man speaking. I the ones who needed that the most they need the help the most. But they the ego says not nurturance not me. I’ve got it all worked out. And you know. These self-sabotaging beliefs usually stemmed from our childhood, you know, the way we were raised the beliefs installed stillness. You know, my biggest problem was my ego. For Success. No one could tell me what to look around them would kill me. Where I couldn’t see was my business. Some sort of train racing towards the water 300 kilometers out. No charge, not anyone’s going to tell me the difference.
So I had a crash, burn and things like people have have issues with money is very common in business. The way they’re raise. The teachers, the church, the parents, whatever, you know. If they told rich people evil, or no, you have a low self-esteem or low value of money. If your services say $150 that you charge for the service. But you have this thing with money. Where you don’t believe people will actually pay for that, because you’re not worth it or whatever, you’re going to start selling your service for $40 or $45.
And so that’s what you call self-sabotaging traits. It doesn’t matter how much time energy and effort you put into your business strategies. You’re an entrepreneur wise, your mindset, your business actually doesn’t have a choice. Yeah, so that’s why step one is, hey, you gotta fix your brain. You need help?
Whos In Control
Roy Barker 11:01
Yeah, yeah. And so many times we, we let the business start driving us instead of us driving the business. And I think you know, you’re right. Because when we trade that time for money than it, all that means is we just have to work more, to earn more. And then, of course, like you said, it leads us down that path to burnout.
Luke 11:22
Correct? It’s a vicious cycle, you know, because cash flow gets tighter, okay, we need to work harder, but you got no time. And then you get exhausted and you just can never get over that grudge. Right? That’s a structural problem. Yeah. And so the second piece is optimizing your niche versus step two. So here’s a very common mistake in business, people try to sell the products and services to the wrong customers. You can’t sell meat to a vegetarian. Doesn’t matter how fancy your sales pitches if the meats been blessed by the Pope.
How many times you practice your pitch, how many energy put into your presentations, you can change the price that doesn’t matter what you’re trying to do a vegetarian is just not going to buy your meat, they’re not your real customers. Right? What you want to do is spend your time finding meat lovers. So they’re not trying and convince and spend energy trying to convert a vegetarian that’s just not optimizing your energy and time sales. So the lesson is, stop trying to waste your time trying to sell to the wrong people.
And what I find is dealing with lots of businesses over the years, most businesses are tortures to sell, sell, sell, you know, the sales managers setting budgets and targets and they slam the hell out of the sales teams. Get on the phone, you want to make 100 calls today, blah, blah, blah. That’s not really smart. Because first of all, who wants to be a salesperson being told to go to hell every five phone calls and maybe you have 250 phone calls you get a break?
What is it doing the brand of your business where your pack the hands, selling, counting customers, chronic onboard customers the wrong decision, pressure tactics, manipulation tactics, which is if you know what I’m talking, you get the sales phone calls all day handling you no one enjoys that and doesn’t have a good reflection on the brain. So what should you be doing? This is where I think a lot of marketing companies get things wrong. There’s a difference between your ideal customer and your real customer.
So one of the first things you always hear is that what is your ideal avatar? What is your ideal customer what they look like? The truth is I’ve found a lot of businesses not all of them have worked as you know what I’ve found over the years and on the business, I mean that when you actually go out there and you start selling and doing things, your ideal customer who you thought was gonna buy your stuff very rarely ends up being the person who actually hand you cash in hand.
And so what you want to do is you want to like hone in on your niche and optimize your niche you want to find out over time you all these real customers are the ones that are actually giving you the cash and stop trying to chase ideal customers you probably know it’s like the wrong marketing This is the wrong currency trying to give these people aren’t your real customers and service them go ahead No, no,
Roy Barker 14:48
no, I was just gonna say because you know, even marketing we if we don’t really niche down to our buyers, you know, we end up spending a lot of money casting this wide net Over people, like you said, you know, we’re the meat salesman, and we’re throwing a wide net over vegetarians as well. And even if we, you know, maybe we it’s something that they may not know that, that it’s not for them, then we can waste our sales team’s time we waste You know, a lot of time and energy, talking and dealing with people that ultimately aren’t our customers anyway,
Luke 15:25
True and then what happens in that situation is the manipulation, the pressure tactics, and some people are polite, and they given to the pressure and they buy other stuff, but that that leads to resentment, resentment of the salesperson presenting to their company’s brand online because no one likes to be sold under pressure or manipulated into into selling something you want a customer to walk away saying, this is the right product, love that salesperson love the company, I’m going to refer my friends to them.
Roy Barker 15:57
Yeah, because sometimes it’s even not as defined as just like, you know, the vegetarian in the meat lover, but it can be maybe not even the right time. Maybe it’s an age thing. Maybe it’s a stage in life. But now I’ve made you upset. And so when it is your time to be my customers like, Hey, I remember those guys. I don’t want anything to do with them.
Luke 16:20
Absolutely. Yeah. Bang on this like a short term view Elliniko cash in the bank today, there’s no long term transit the transactional value today not live value of the customer.
Roy Barker 16:32
Right, right.
Luke 16:34
And so that leads us to step number three, which is optimize your sales now. I’ve been building business for 25 years. And I’ve sat through dozens and dozens of just about every sales training under the sun conferences, whatever. And they all tell you this a sales cycle or sales model, and find the leads, connect qualified present, overcome objections, close the deal nurture in all these fuzzy terms.
But there, I believe that the sales cycles are missing out on the, you know, the most important pieces to be successful in sales. I’m talking long term view. And I believe there’s two secrets that every sales process needs to be successful themselves. And the first one is, what I before becoming a master salesperson, without all the tactics and pressure, and that is let your customers buy don’t sell. Right.
And it’s quite hard for people to imagine, but there’s a process. You set your framing and a property and you just allow the customer to be in control of the equation. They put them at ease number one, because they can make the choice to bet caught on not genuinely, they’re more inclined to buy from you when they feel in control, or they buy.
And the second the second thing I’ll actually ask you question is what is the thing that number one thing more that you are subconsciously scanning for? When you’re going to buy something from someone? That is?
Buildign Trust
Roy Barker 18:23
Well for myself? Usually, it’s trust
Luke 18:27
thing on it. Okay, that is not many people get that right. That’s actually that’s exactly it. That’s trust, when you grant a boss or buy something from the salesperson, you only look at a product or service, they haven’t even opened your mouth. You’re scanning for that one thing, do I trust this person. And if you buy like that doesn’t matter how good your your sales pitch or how fancy product is only five stars, it’s good. I don’t like you don’t trust you. Gonna go and find someone else. You may even have inferior product or whatever it may be me or sales person, but they got integrity, where they got their personal branding of trust. So me to optimize your sales. That’s what you need to do is just average those two critical things.
Roy Barker 19:22
Yeah, it’s so important on the trust, because I’ll be honest, I will pay a premium for somebody’s product or our service where I trust them. And I know that they’re going to be there you know, sometimes they’re one off purchases, but usually it’s it’s usually going to lead to more purchases and I want somebody that I trust is going to be there to take care of me after the fact and what I don’t get a lot about these.
You know about the high pressure sales is there are people that you can bend into buying what you want, you can manipulate them, you can trick them, you can pressure them, you can do all that stuff, but well I found over the years is that tend tends to make a bad customer that, you know, they don’t get what they thought that trust isn’t there, there’s no follow up. And then now you’ve got somebody who purchased that may be upset. And it’s gonna end up costing you more money and time to deal with that in the long run.
Luke 20:21
Absolutely. That’s like taking a longer term view, as opposed to, like, let’s get some cash on the top today. And that’s, that’s the thing, most salespeople I mean, I’ve had worked in corporate environments. And most salespeople are they just got managers on the back of the managers, you got the CEOs on the back on the board, and it’s slam those targets, get those targets, sell, sell, sell.
Now that takes care of that, you know, the sales managers bonus and the salespersons. commission, or that doesn’t take care of your customers. Right. Right. So that only takes us then to optimize your marketing as the next step, because why is marketing? And step four? Well, the first few steps is who are boom? Are your customers who are really selling to who’s gonna buy from you the quickest and easiest. And then when you work out when you’re selling? What products will they buy from you the quickest and easiest, as opposed to what do you want to sell? And who do you want to sell to to different scenarios, once you work that out through the steps?
Well, that’s when it’s time to now market. Because, you know, if you try and talk to everyone, connect with no one. And yet, in my first business, we, we we sold computers, we’ve started out selling personalized software programs, which was a disaster. No one bought it, we thought it was, you know, your search engine was gonna change the world. But it was just an army, we were not in a lucrative niche. This is a classic example, I spoke earlier about our ideal customers where, you know, businesses are going to buy our software, improve the profits and efficiency and blah, blah, blah, no one bought our stuff. And real customers actually ended up being families.
Selling buying computers are both two different worlds apart. That’s where the money led us. And that’s ultimately, when the business started taking off. This is what I call you follow the cash flowing. We had stuck our heels in and had a chart on the wall about your customers will still be there today with no money. And so this is where connect chronotope day run connector, no one comes in. So when we started selling computers, customers will start asking us cars and last cars, but just software’s not interested. But however, do you sell computer audio?
There’s what I call following the money shifting from non lucrative niches to niches customers just asked us we weren’t even trying to sell something they’re asking us Can we buy? Yeah, so we started selling computers. But if you take computers, that’s a huge niche, right? You can have it managers and they can have larger businesses, property owners, who have bigger budgets, you can have small little companies, Home Home operators with tiny budgets, families, bargain hunters gains, all by computers. But you have to have a lot like every one of those, you have a separate resignated message. That’s where you have to find out what he wants to buy from you.
And what do they really want to buy. So in our business, when things went from struggle to rocket taking offers, is the process I’m sharing with you the first few steps, we found that these people were buying, but he was buying from us the quickest and easiest, he was our most lucrative niche. And that became families. Family. Wasn’t that those back in the 90s internet precursor computers were not mainstream. Right, right. So we tapped into this and then we started honing our messaging offering towards families.
And so targeting a message or resonating message. Shorter family is very, very different to an IT manager of a corporation. And so this is what I say like, optimize your marketing, create that resonating message. Now one of the natural things that comes up at this point is what? Surely if you are targeting lucrative niches where the money’s flowing, you’re going to have more competition. Yes, you are. And this is quite a hard concept for many business owners to cross I’ve found over the years. I say, well, there’s no competition. So I’m going to put my business is smart businesses go to where the money’s flowing.
So if you find a niche An opportunity where there’s no competition, but chances are, that it’s a more liquid niche, it’s like trying to find gold in the leg might gotta go to where the money’s flying and where the money is flying is going to be competition. Right? That’s not about what you got to do in that situation is you just got to go through the steps on site, because what you got to do in that situation in their crowded niche, lucrative niche with these money, is you’ve got to stand out. And the way you stand out is you’ve got to create your X Factor on Create your X Factor your resonating message, if you haven’t, the what we did was who we actually talking to, what are the radio on the vibe from you?
And the third part of that is, well, what is your competition thing wrong? So that’s becomes more then plug the gaps. That secret you extract in your resume the message, that’s how you optimize your marketing. That’s a very, very powerful technique that I learned. And that’s only when you get to that point, can you start to scale marketing. And this, I think, is probably one of the most important pieces on the call today. What most people do in business. They start off with a website. I mean, just about every client I have.
First thing I do is like a corporate website. And I say but what about step one? Step two, and step three, like we’re talking about? What is your message? What they spent $10,000 on Facebook ads, and they got a digital marketing agency, and they got an SEO company do all the stuff. And I’m saying what are the marketing niches? If you can’t tell me on this call? What is your resonating message? So why are you standing up? First of all, what niche are you in? Right? And why our customers come to you not competition? If you can on that?
How are you spending all this money? What are you actually marketing? Just noise and confusion? You’re hoping? Many do that? Well, if we market our customers, we’ll work out why we are different I can buy from us, which is ludicrous. Right? Yeah. And that’s what happens. And so that’s one step pause. happens then not before? Yeah,
Who Are You Marketing To?
Roy Barker 27:06
you know, the other part of that, using computers as a good example that when you What do you? When we think about that, what are we going to mark, if we don’t know, our nice, what are we going to market because if we’re marketing to all computer users, that’s a lot of inventory, it’s a lot of different configurations, it’s a lot of, you know, screens, it’s a lot of inventory. And so knowing that, you know, we pick one out, maybe, you know, it’s the family, like you said, this typical setup is what works for most families versus, you know, the gamers or the business people.
So it helps us to, you know, kind of on that back end as well to, to have the product that they’re gonna want not, you know, somebody calls you, again, recalls you out of the blue. And that’s just not the target. It’s easy to say you’re not, you know, you’re not in our customer base. But this these people are,
Luke 28:03
right, this is what our church is optimizing, like optimizing your business engine, so that you’re not wasting time doing all these wrong things, you you process that I’m explaining the steps as what I call the fastest route to passion, just go with the cash flowing, your objective of businesses to be profitable, give yourself time and money in a lifetime, your choice not chasing datings and killing yourself, all the wrong bits and pieces. And this is where the optimization strategies come and missteps. which then leads us to point five.
And this is not optimizing your efficiency. So you’ve got all the stuff going, you worked out what you sell, and you’re selling to your marketing is kicked in your neck, your message, well, then you need to start optimizing your efficiencies, your workflow processes, because obviously, this steps you out of the engine annoys you forever in that engine. And, again, this was a great lesson, I learned that the real money is not in your products and services. It’s in your ability to leverage your time, energy and resource to selling your products and services. And one of the best ways to do this is through adventuring, tapping into others, already got everything out.
They just happen to learn to joint venture with other businesses so that you don’t have to reinvent the process. They want all the infrastructure, their customers, they’ve got everything going on. And so one of the ways is through joint venturing, but great joint ventures, you actually have to have time to set up a joint venture and do a proper job. And the more efficient you’re inefficient you are in the business, the less time you have. The reason why it’s because you’re so busy chasing your tail. You are doing all the work, not your business, right.
So there’s four ways to become more efficient in your business, the first one is stop trading time for money. The second one is create an unlimited earning structure. Third one is systemize your business. And the fourth one, which I mentioned is use joint ventures, to grow your business independently of you. When you do this, this is like the foundation, this is the formula, right? It creates a business engine that does the work for you, your business starts to grow independently of you. This is how your business, creates value in that.
And this is how you create a valuable asset to set you up for life. When you build a business this way. Which is how I build my second business and all my subsequent businesses, you work for less hours, you under way less stress. And of course, you can build an asset that you can cash out on which I’ve done a few times. I mean, the success in this was the biggest lesson I learned all the assets that you can sell. Don’t just keep working on that post every day to profits.
Systemitize
Roy Barker 31:18 Do you want more in your business
Yeah, yeah, it’s tough. You know, if you, if you don’t systemize like you said, if you end up having to touch everything that goes out the front door, you become limited by their 24 hours in every day. And so, you know, setting that system up to where we can really make it happen without us having to touch every unit or be a part of every service.
That’s how we really grow exponentially. And you know, you brought up something else will earlier about, you know, what would the business be worth but it’s the same thing, if if this business is dependent upon you touching everything, typically, your business, if you want to go sell, it will be valued much less. Because if you remove yourself from the business, and this other person that’s buying it, they’re typically not wanting to buy a job, they want to buy a business.
Luke 32:08
Absolutely. Absolutely. You have to demonstrate that they are buying something that runs because if they put themselves in trying to figure out everything you’re doing, that’s not very attractive for me. Right, right. And so you got to demonstrate this is like a machine that they just turn the key and indicate and put the lights on. That’s what they’re looking for. Right, exactly. And so the next piece is, okay, so you’ve got your flow processes your systems, the next thing is you want to optimize your team. And what most people do is they do this the other way around, they get a team, and then they try to systemize the business?
Because I don’t know that’s what they do. And I guess it’s a natural part of business evolution, how ever a problem is if you have staff and no system, what are you doing? Just creating more headaches yourself, because staff don’t really know what they’re supposed to be doing many of them trying. But there’s there’s gray areas, there’s all sorts of things they’ve dropped, the boss may drop the stock man and staff leave because they get frustrated renting the proper leadership. And that’s because just inefficiency says business has not been occupied, it’s not ready yet to actually take on staff.
So the staff are there to help the boss but what they actually do is drag the boss nuts, and try and drain more of the time, put stress on the complete opposite of why you employed someone in the first place. And so step six is optimize your team. And your chains only as strong as your weakest link. Now, it’s very common for business owners and managers to blame stuff shut and scream carry on when things go wrong. But often, you know, screaming and shouting and carrying on doesn’t really fix the situation.
Right. and managing, motivating, getting staff to operate at peak performance. That’s a challenge. I think any business owner would realize that and acknowledge that. And it’s no good promising the world your customers are good your if your staff keep letting you down. You know, one of the reasons they’re letting you down as well, because you probably don’t have systems in place for them to execute.
The busier you get, the more messy things become. And so you know, this happens every every day. Usually staff staff are the biggest overhead and managing staff are the biggest stress points for our business owners and managers. I think everyone agrees that’s not us. So how do you go about optimizing your staff? Well, I had 65 staff my first business and systems and they were very foreign territory for me stick and understand the stress and pails I went through. But through that I did learn a lot of things. And there’s actually eight points but the time is short. I’m going to give you three Three ways of how do you go about optimizing my team and the first one is ensure your staff understand how they contribute to the bigger picture.
So when our employee employee is engaged and made to feel that they’re part of something bigger than themselves, produces a sense of value and belonging. And listen turn, makes him perform better and produce more favorable, favorable results compared to employee who’s just given a task and a manager looking over the shoulder and shouting and screaming. Second one is structure first staff second.
Think you want to paint your business to fit a stock was 10. From tempers, demands personality, or, you know what they’re good at or what they are not good at, which most businesses do this, and they create a structure to fit this in. Now, that’s, that’s a recipe for disaster. What happens when a staff member leaves or you suddenly have a huge crack in your, in your business structure. So every position should have a set of responsibilities to optimize the performance of their position. And then what you do is you then go and find the right store staff member to fill these positions that optimize your business, not any staff member.
The right staff member. And the third one is don’t be held ransom. So many business owners are held to ransom by staff members, they live in fear that the staff members will leave. And then what are they going to do? And so they pander to staff, the morons to the detriment of, of the business. Or if you are clear on the positions and make your company work that needs to function, and inside each of those positions, you crystal clear on the responsibilities that make their position optimal?
Well, then you you caught comfortable to go out and find the right people to fit your profile your tasks not depend on someone jumping and screaming and only ransom. And so after the specific action, I just did it three for the time. And then so did you want to say yes, I
Don’t Fail Your Staff
Roy Barker 37:26 Do you want more in your business
was gonna say, it’s very important because before you got into that, I was gonna say, you know, we need to step back to that last step to the systems that we create, because a lot of businesses that I work with, it’s the business or the management has failed the staff, not the staff failing the business. I think that we get that wrong, because we’ve done one of two things, we haven’t hired the right person to put in that seat.
That’s number one. And then number two is like. I think you said in your, in the first step of that is that we don’t tell them how they are an integral part of this business, what they do. And it can be as simple as a receptionist that you’re the first person that people talk to, and the first person that people see when they walk in, you were one of the most important people in this business, because if they come in and you’re sour, you’re out the door.
So, you know, but just working with people like that, like you get a bad phone call and it makes you upset, walk away, get somebody to cover your desk for 15 minutes, clear your head, don’t sit there and talk to that next customer with the you know, the hangover of being upset. customer. So, anyway, I feel like that a lot of times that, you know, we look at staff and that person is not a good, they didn’t do a good job. And I just think we set them up for failure a lot of times
Luke 38:58
100% agree, right? Yeah. Okay, so the final step of building your business engine is optimize your wealth. And, as I said, as I mentioned earlier, when I first started in business, I didn’t even understand what this meant this concept of building a business to create wealth. It was just what are you? What do you own it, it just didn’t exist. And, like I said, the mistake that Gary now made me first time around which most businesses I work with are doing the same thing.
They would just fold throw to the wall. And they’re trying to make as much profit as possible because they think this is the way that they’re going to build lifestyle of their choice. They’re going to get financial freedom, whatever. But this is, this is like I said, the first step is like changing your mindset, optimizing your mindset. There’s two ways you build a business. And the first the first mistake most most business owners did like I didn’t know First business was working to make profits today by creating wealth for your future.
So what cost you do everyday in your business? Is it hit through dying by the bolts, or you working to set yourselves up for the future. And that’s the concept. It’s, it’s a mindset. It’s two different strategies of how you build your business. And it goes back to the point when I first started, this is the difference between being self employed and being a business owner.
I see business owners, they exchange time for money, this sort nothing to do with how fancy your turnover is, or how many staff you’ve got, or you know, you’ve been in business 30 years, it actually doesn’t matter. It’s the structure of your business, and how you go about building your business every single day, that is ultimately going to determine whether your business achieves what you set out in the first place.
We also had a build business to give us a lifestyle about choice, freedom at some time freedom, money freedom, lifestyle, less stress, whatever. What the truth is, I think it’s like 96% of businesses go about building the business the wrong way. Like I did. And you ultimately pay the price, burnout or your dreams disappear. And it just becomes just become inside this engine. It just kills you.
Handle Your Business
Roy Barker 41:27 Do you want more in your business
Yeah. And it you know, one thing a lot of people don’t think about is, their, there are businesses that go out of business, because they don’t have business. But there’s a lot of businesses that get hurt, because they actually have too much success. And they haven’t walked through these optimal optimization steps, they don’t have structures, they don’t have systems in place, and then you know, they kind of just get drowned in their own success.
And, to me, that’s the very worst thing to see. Because even if we have a little side hustle that we’re starting, if you want to grow it, you really have to think about this stuff from the very beginning from day one, because you can get too far down the road. And then it’s not that you can’t do it, but it’s much more difficult to stop a move and train to move it over to another set of tracks.
Luke 42:23
Like that. Yeah, that’s, that’s correct. That’s a good. Yeah. So the final final piece I have for you, Roy, is just to reflect your three stages of building your business that, you know, I can bring to business owners attention, or people building the business. And the first one is, you know, building your business engine, the first thing is the doing, you can’t get rid of the doing in the first stage. And that doing is you’ve got to prove your concept.
So you can’t scale something or, you know, become independent, but if it’s not proven, you got to prove a concept, it’s got to work, it’s got to get results for your customers, whatever that means. it’s got to be profitable, that’s the first piece then what you do is you move to the managing stage. That’s of course, putting your your flow processes in your systems. And then your staff putting in management, you know, structure KPIs, budgets, targets, etc, that’s managing it.
Then the final stage is, of course, that engine is now running, you step back, and your business is producing independent of you. That’s your investment, that you keep nurturing and looking after, for for your future. Yeah.
Roy Barker 43:39 Do you want more in your business
Yeah, so important, because that’s the one reason what we most of us want to step out here is to give ourself a better life, you know, at some point in the future. So it actually takes care to set ourselves up to be able to do that to achieve that goal. Alright, Luke, any other words of wisdom you want to leave us with? Before we wrap up?
Luke 44:01
I just want to thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Hopefully, you found it useful.
Habit
Roy Barker 44:07 Do you want more in your business
Yeah, yeah. I mean, these are great seven steps to optimization that, you know, we all need to keep in mind. And then I think, you know, you stress to that the order, there’s a certain order that we need to work these down in order to make to make it make sense for our business. So before we wrap up a couple things, one, first question is, what is a tool or a habit, something that you use in your daily life, either professional or personal, that you feel like adds a lot of value?
Luke 44:43
One of the things I found when I was like, again, the biggest lesson was my first business, I had little peace of mind. So sort of an oxymoron. You’re desperately trying to work. Give yourself, freedom and call that freedom is peace. Mind free of worry and stress. And it in my first person said for a large portion of my life, because I’m a business owner, I was always stressed, stressed dismissed, as you know, this is this never ending stress.
And one of the ways I found to manage that was, I take time in the morning, I live near the beach here in Australia. I take time out in the morning, but 20 minutes each morning, I get up early, and I just go down there and just spend quiet time just reflecting on life and things and things that worry me and try to this late post going. And, you know, this is I guess, being my saving grace, because when I’m, if I don’t do that, what happens all the stress builds up, builds up, and eventually you start freaking out, you get sick, you get run down.
And your brain becomes like a washing machine is not healthy, don’t make good decisions. You’re not good to your family, your friends, and you have to learn to manage the stuff. Because there’s no one business is not stressed. I mean, anyone who tells you that’s mad. How do you manage the stuff and I found it’s a discipline. So whatever brings you joy, like walk with the dog in the morning, or the evening, I found morning is better.
Set yourself up for the day. But some people might want to diffuse at the end of the day, maybe you can do both. You got to have that precious time that diffusion or setting your priorities. That’s what I found is against my sanity over the years as being a business owner, because, you know, it’s never easy.
Wrap Up
Roy Barker 46:40 Do you want more in your business
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it does wonders, to start your day out right with the little you know, for us, we just take a little walk around the area where we live, and then hopefully in the evening, you know, we can do that just to kind of clear our head and be done with today. We can move on to you know, having family time and then also to restful sleep. So I think it’s very important, different for everybody. So you know, I just always say, try to find your happy place, wherever that is.
Sometimes it’s just setting and being with yourself. But that’s kind of another part of that is we need to be comfortable with ourselves, too. So we can actually do that. Yeah, that’s great. All right, Luke. Well, again, thank you so much. So tell everybody, you know, what kind of businesses do you like to work with? How you can help them? You know, where can they come to, you get to get more information and training on the seven steps to optimization.
Luke 47:38
So I typically work with business owners who pretty much found themselves trapped in an engine, like how do they they exchanging time for money, they need to learn how to leverage? And how do they How do they unstrap themselves and give them you know, freedom, freedom, free of worries, they want more time? And how did they get the business working for them?
How do they put the infrastructure in place that this thing is becomes a valuable asset, that they can cash out one day or give to the kids or whatever. So that is, anyone is in that frame of mind, who has, you know, been struggling once once that outcome, that’s what I’m very structured, we put you through the seven steps. And I’ve been doing this for over 12 years, many, many businesses all around the world have got incredible results. That is, you obviously have to do the work. And so there’s two ways, you can either just go to my website ideasintobusiness.com.
And contact me on the contact page. Or if you want some free training, or a full 90 minute masterclass of what we’ve taught today with the downloadable blueprint of the seven steps. Just go to ideasintobusiness.com/free training. And it’s all free. There’s no catches. And you can check it out and see if you like it.
Roy Barker 49:13 Do you want more in your business
Okay, great. And we’ll include all that in the show notes as well as on the web page so people can reach out. Very important to build yourself some structure, take the take the time to do these optimization steps. You can’t go wrong and you won’t be sorry, you know, at the end when you do have some freedom. And when it’s you’ve built a sustainable business that can last for years and years.
Luke 49:38
Thank you, Roy. It’s been a real pleasure speaking to you. And hopefully your audience. found it useful. Thank you so much.
Roy Barker 49:45 Do you want more in your business
Yeah, it was very useful. Thank you so much, Luke. We appreciate it again for your time. that’s gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. You can, of course, find us at thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com we’re on all the major your podcast platforms iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify for not a one that you listen to please reach out I’d be glad to get it added so you can listen easier.
Also, we’re on all the major podcasts excuse me, all the major social media networks usually hang out on Instagram a little bit more than other places. So reach out, we’d be glad to interact with you over there. Also, you can find a video of this interview live on our YouTube channel when the episode goes live as well. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.
Ideas Into Business Training (this will be set live for the podcast)
Free 90 min Master Class and downloadable blueprint of the 7 steps covered.
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