Management vs Leadership Part III – Clarity to be Achieved

 PART III

CLICK FOR PART I

CLICK FOR PART Ii

In the previous installments, we discussed how leadership is one of the biggest problems in business. Not because leadership is bad but because there is a lack of management leading to the leadership. Next, we discussed that for your business to achieve its desired results, your team must have the clarity to perform. Does your team know how to perform their job well? Do they actually know what their job is?

As we mentioned previously, first we make sure they know what their job is, give them a good job description, a checklist or system, and micro-managing or mentor to make sure they do the job correctly.

Now that there is clarity of what they are responsible for, they need to create a daily list of what they need to achieve each day to stay on target to the end goal. This should be done at the end of every day. It's something that every person in every position in the company should do from the owner to the janitor. 

If you want higher productivity out of your people, literally make sure that before they leave the office, the warehouse or where ever they work, they leave a list of what needs to get done and achieved tomorrow. If they are not doing that, their productivity will be much lower. We have found that there is about a 30% increase in productivity with employees when we start doing that. 

Now as a manager, you can review this list to make sure they are focused on the most important and profitable tasks. The daily lists are one thing, you want them to learn how to prioritize, put each task in a time frame and prioritize it for the next day. This all starts with the list.  

Think about it, before you went away on vacation you made a list of what needed to get done. Checklists, todo lists work very well as part a management system. If you want to manage your people better, definitely have them know their job but also that you know what they are doing each day.

Now the daily list becomes a weekly list. Why do we need a weekly list? 

Simply put, we are going to have 2 meetings with all our employees to get away from being a reactive manager to being a proactive manager. (We will discuss these two meetings in the next segment) 

Reactive management started with the whole open-door policy. You can always come and ask me a question. What happens is they end up coming at any time of the day and ask you stupid questions and you give them an answer. These interruptions make you less productive and less profitable.

Answering questions are one of the biggest things that managers have to stop. If you are going to train someone, you are going to have to stop answering them and start asking them questions. Stop being the Super Hero and being the one to solve every problem. Train your team to be problem solvers.

In the next segment, we are going to discuss how to get out of the Super Hero syndrome and begin to become the leader.

Break Out of Your Comfort Zone

Do You feel stuck? 

Do you feel that there is a glass ceiling that is holding you back from reaching your potential?

Check out this short video where ActionCOACH Steve Goranson will share with you a simple formula that will help your break through the barriers that are holding you back and keeping you in your comfort zone.

How will you break out of your comforts zone?

If you are ready to break out of your comfort zone and want to take your business to the next level sign up for a Complimentary Break Through 1/2 hour phone coaching session and discover the power of coaching

CLICK HERE to Register

Case Study: How Three Moves Quadrupled the Value of this Business

Are you stuck trying to figure out how to create some recurring revenue for your business? 

You know those automatic sales will make your business more valuable and predictable, but the secret to transforming your company is to think less about what’s in it for you and more about coming up with a reason for customers to agree to a monthly bill.

Take a look at the transformation of Laura Steward’s company, Guardian Angel. Steward had gotten her IT consulting firm up to $400,000 in revenue when she called in a valuation consultant to help her put a price on her business. Steward was disappointed to learn her company was worth less than fifty percent of one year’s sales because she had no recurring revenue and what sales she did have were dependent on her personally.

Steward set about to transform her business into a more valuable company and made three big moves:

1. Angel Watch

The first thing Steward did was to design a monthly program called Angel Watch, which offered her business clients ongoing protection from technology problems. Steward offered her Angel Watch customers ongoing remote monitoring of their networks, pre-emptive virus protection and staff on call if there was ever a problem.  

Steward approached her clients with a calculation of what they had spent with her firm over the most recent 12-month period, including the cost of her customer’s downtime. She made the case that by signing up for Angel Watch, they would save money when taking into consideration both the hard costs of her firm’s time and the soft costs associated with downtime.

90% of her customers switched from hourly billing to the Angel Watch program.

2.      Doubling Rates

Next Steward doubled her personal consulting rates. That way, when one of the customers who decided not to opt into Angel Watch called her firm, they were quoted one rate for a technician’s time or twice the price to have Steward herself. Not surprisingly, most customers opted for the cheaper option and others chose to re-consider their decision not to sign up for Angel Watch.

3.      Survivor Clause

Steward also credits a small legal maneuver for further driving up the value of her business. She included a “survivor clause” in her Angel Watch contracts, which stipulated that the obligations of the agreement would “survive” a change of ownership of her company.

Steward went on to successfully sell her business at a price that was more than four times the original valuation she had received just two years prior to launching Angel Watch.

Steve Goranson has owned and operated the Northeast Florida of ActionCOACH since 2014. ActionCOACH is the World's #1 Coaching franchise with of 1000 offices in 50 different countries. They coach over 15,000 business each week.

Steve's commitment is to assist small business owners, to spend less time working "in" their business and more time working "on" their business so they can build a more valuable and sellable business. In the end, you’ll be spending less total time working, will be making more money and will have truly created the company and team you always dreamed of. In addition we will help you put the FUN back in your business and your life.


If you would like to learn more about how you too can get an "actionable" business education to improve your business's operations, sales,& bottom line contact ActionCOACH Steve Goranson to schedule a free 1/2 hour Phone Strategy Session  at 904-739-0200. www.actioncoachjax.com

Thinking Vs. Doing: The Owner’s Dilemma

There’s a steady breeze from the northwest, which cools the warm Caribbean afternoon. Framed between a palm tree and the turquoise water, you notice a man reading. He appears to be working, which seems strange given his appearance: shaggy blonde hair, linen shirt, surf shorts and flip-flops.

You squint and realize the man is Richard Branson and he just happens to be running Virgin Group Ltd., a multibillion-dollar conglomerate. He is working where he usually does, at Necker Island, a 74-acre retreat he owns in the British Virgin Islands.

Branson, of course, is far from a negligent founder, he has managers running the various businesses that make up the Virgin Group and visits his companies regularly, but he does not manage the day-to-day operations of any of his businesses, which frees up his time to think.

The train conductor vs. the thinker

Your role as a CEO/owner can be divided into two buckets: one for managing and the other for thinking.

The managing bucket is where, metaphorically speaking, you ensure the trains all run on time. In this role, you’re establishing goals for your employees and holding them accountable for achieving their targets. You’re making sure your products and services are of a high quality and that your biggest customers are happy.

When you’re wearing your manager hat, you’re scouring your company looking for small enhancements every day. This obsession with continuous improvement is what big companies call “six-sigma thinking,” but you probably just think of it as building a great company.

The other bucket is reserved for thinking and it’s where you create the future of your company. In this visionary time, you get to design new products, imagine new ways of serving customers, or contemplate where you could take your business in the years ahead. 

Your visionary hours are spent dreaming and imaging what your business could be, instead of worrying about what it is today.

The most valuable companies

The question is, how much of your time should you devote to each role? If your goal is to create a more valuable business—one that someone might like to buy one day—our data reveals that you should start gradually increasing the time you spend on thinking and hire someone else to do the managing.

Studies have shown that companies of owners who know each of their customers by first name (i.e., managers) trade at just 2.9 times their pre-tax profit, whereas the companies of owners who do not know their customers’ first names (i.e., thinkers) trade at closer to 5 times pre-tax profit.

Further, companies that would suffer if their owners were unable to come to work for three months, receive significantly lower offers when compared to companies that would not feel the absence of the owner for a month or two.

Finally, in a recent survey of merger and acquisition (M&A) professionals, we asked who they like to see an owner hire if they can only afford one “C-level” executive. The M&A professionals overwhelmingly identified a general manager/second-in-command as the most important role a founder can fill ahead of a chief revenue, marketing or financial officer.

In short, the owners of the most valuable businesses have found managers to ensure the trains run on time while they spend an increasing amount of their energy thinking about what’s next for their business.

If you are interested in getting a free preliminary business valuation estimate of what your business is worth call our office at 904.739.-0200 or start your free evaluation right away by Clicking Here

Steve Goranson has owned and operated the Northeast Florida of ActionCOACH since 2014. ActionCOACH is the World's #1 Coaching franchise with of 1000 offices in 50 different countries. They coach over 15,000 business each week.

Steve's commitment is to assist small business owners, to spend less time working "in" their business and more time working "on" their business so they can build a more valuable and sellable business. In the end, you’ll be spending less total time working, will be making more money and will have truly created the company and team you always dreamed of. In addition we will help you put the FUN back in your business and your life.


If you would like to learn more about how you too can get an "actionable" business education to improve your business's operations, sales,& bottom line contact ActionCOACH Steve Goranson to schedule a free 1/2 hour Phone Strategy Session  at 904-739-0200. www.actioncoachjax.com

5 keys to get your business working harder so you don't have to

Business ownership is one of the American Dreams; being able to be in control of your own destiny and have the freedom to choose want you want to do and when.

But for many entrepreneurs, that dream has escaped them. They have fallen into the business trap. The dream of freedom has fallen into the daily challenges and frustrations that struggling entrepreneurs face every day.

1. No Cash – You may be selling, but there’s never enough cash to pay the bills at the end of the month. There no cash left over to invest in new technologies or to upgrade equipment or put into your pocket.
2. No Time – You’re not running your business, it is running you. You are spending most of your day solving problems and putting out fires. Instead you should be planning your company’s next big venture, or just have time to do things you want and spend it with the people you love.
3. No Team – Instead of having a team of professionals that are working together toward a common goal, you have a group of employees that are looking out on how to better themselves. It’s more about “I” than “We”.
4. Feeling Stuck – Your Company has hit the glass ceiling. You can see as clear as day where you want to go, but something or someone in your organization is holding you back from crashing through that barrier. Nothing you have tried has worked.

If you find yourself struggling in any or all of these areas you are not alone. These are very common challenges for most businesses. Though very common, successful businesses have learned to overcome them by focusing on these 5 areas to get there businesses working hard and they can enjoy more life

1. Planning & Vision – Having a common focus & goal that everyone can buy-in to.
2. Leadership Development – The business is not working because you are. You need to develop leaders within your organization that are aligned to the company’s focus and goals that will run organization.
3. Test & Measuring – What gets measured gets improved! Each leader and team member in the organization needs to have an activity based score card to help them stay on track towards reaching the company’s goals.
4. Systems –Leverage is about doing more with less. To get your business working as hard as you do, you need to create written systems for your team to follow to drive consistency throughout your organization.
5. Implementation – Without Action nothing happens. This is where accountability and discipline come together. This is where most businesses get struck and spin their wheels.  Your organization must agree on 3-7 priorities that they will focus on. Each team member must know and be responsible and accountable to how their role leads the company towards achieving your top priorities.

Want to learn more about how you too can get your business working harder so you can enjoy more life? Contact ActionCOACH Steve Goranson at 904-739-0200. www.actioncoachjax.com schedule your free 1/2 phone coaching session.

Steve Goranson has owned and operated the Northeast Florida of ActionCOACH since 2014. ActionCOACH is the World's #1 Coaching franchise with of 1000 offices in 50 different countries. They coach over 15,000 business each week.

Steve's commitment is to assist small business owners, to spend less time working "in" their business and more time working "on" their business so they can build a more valuable and sellable business. In the end, you’ll be spending less total time working, will be making more money and will have truly created the company and team you always dreamed of. In addition we will help you put the FUN back in your business and your life.

Call his office to schedule a free 1/2 hour Phone Strategy Session 904-739-0200

Confessions of a Business Owner: The business was driving me instead of me driving the business

Are you driving your business or is your business driving you?  You can continue to be stuck in the owner’s trap and stay on the treadmill or choose to get your business back on track.

That was the 2^nd confession from Jeff Clarkson, a former client of mine of where he was at before we met.  He wanted more than a job; he wanted a business that would work without him but wasn’t sure how to get there.

It was while having a cold beer during a gripe session with a friend of his (a current ActionCOACH client) that his friend recommended that he speak to me about how the ActionCOACH system could help him through his struggles.  .

Jeff had been the owner and President of Florida Bonded Pools here in Jacksonville for over 10 years.  It was the oldest pool company in Jacksonville started by his father over 50 years ago.  He had success in turning their struggling family owned business with 1 million in sales to a profitable company with sales ranging from 4.5 million to 6.5 million in annual sales.  Even with this success he was frustrated &wanted more.

As John Warrillow wrote in his book Built to Sell,  Jeff was caught in the owner’s trap. He was doing a lot of the selling and business always got slow when he was away.   Customers only came directly to him when there was a problem and his employees couldn’t make a decision without asking him first. 

He definitely felt trapped.  He was afraid that he was going to fall into the same trap that his dad had fallen into when he was spending more time at the business than at home.  Jeff wanted more than a job he wanted a business that could work without him.

It all starts with ActionCOACH’s definition of a business … with the simple idea that as a business owner you started or bought yourself something that’s more than just a job …

I see a business as … A Commercial, Profitable, Enterprise, that Works, without You … Let’s look at this more closely;

Commercial means that you sell something that people value, they want to buy;

Profitable means that you understand enough about business finance that you can possibly increase your profits without even increasing your revenue or lowering your expenses.

That Works and can work without you means that you have a system and a team that you can trust.”

You can’t have a business that works without you as the owner until you first have a business that works. Prior to that, it’s got to be both commercial and profitable … 

So, let’s take a look at the 6 Steps that Jeff learned to create a business that could work without him.

Step 1 - Mastery: 
This is about going from Chaos to Control … it’s about going from breaking even or losing money, to truly making a bankable cash profit.  It’s about making sure delivery happens so you don’t get customer complaints and, it’s about taking back control of your time

Steps 2 – Niche
Now this is where you start to make the real money … working your Niche is about getting a bunch of new leads, quickly reworking your sales conversion rates, getting your repeat business numbers up and then, boosting your average dollar sale.  This is truly about building a marketing machine that drives profit straight to your company’s bottom line. 

Steps 3 – Leverage
The next step is all about Systems … it’s about working ‘ON’ your business and not just ‘IN’ it.  Here you’ll start to see your business going from being people reliant, to being systems reliant …truly starting to free up your time and give you control over the growth of your business.

Step 4 – Team
They say team stands for ‘Together Everyone Achieves More’. When you’ve already got your Mastery, Niche and Systems in play, it’s time to lead a team that will ultimately run the company without you.  At the team stage you start to get a true business by getting it to begin to work without you.

Step 5 – Synergy
Here you’ll start to step back from the day to day, start handing over control. You really begin to ‘turn up the volume’ as they say … now that everything works, it’s time to do it bigger, better and more often … all the while keeping an eye on your team, your systems and your company making sure it can handle the growth.

Step 6 – Freedom / Results
This is about you – First, it’s about you enjoying the fruits of your labor and then it’s about diversification and investment.  Now that it’s all working, you can start to invest more time with your family, at your hobbies (or, even to find a hobby), or even work on investing your income or buying other companies where you can use everything you’ve learned all over again.

Confession # 2:  The business was driving me instead of me driving the business

Solution:  Jeff stopped and asked for help.  He was able to develop a more valuable company that was system based and not dependent on him by learning ActionCOACH’s 6 Steps Business Success System.

Over the next few blogs we will look a bit closer at each of these 6 Steps to create a more valuable and sellable business.

If you would like to learn more about you too can get an "actionable" business education to improve your business's operations, sales,& bottom line contact ActionCOACH Steve Goranson at 904-739-0200. www.actioncoachjax.com

Steve Goranson has owned and operated the Northeast Florida of ActionCOACH since 2014. ActionCOACH is the World's #1 Coaching franchise with of 1000 offices in 50 different countries. They coach over 15,000 business each week.

Steve's commitment is to assist small business owners, to spend less time working "in" their business and more time working "on" their business so they can build a more valuable and sellable business. In the end, you’ll be spending less total time working, will be making more money and will have truly created the company and team you always dreamed of. In addition we will help you put the FUN back in your business and your life.

Call his office to schedule a free 1/2 hour Phone Strategy Session 904-739-0200

Creating Personal Breakthroughs to Achieve More

Most of us are aware that the Jewish holiday of Passover occurs this time of year because the TV networks seem to always replay one of the most successful epic motion pictures, of all time, The 10 Commandants starring Charlton Heston.  It’s the biblical story of how G-d took the Jewish people out of Egypt and took them to Mt. Sinai to receive the 10 Commandments and Torah.  This week Jews all over the world come together to remember and relive this historical event but if understood properly there can be many lessons in which we call all take away.

As I am sitting here exhausted from all the preparation getting ready for the Jewish festival of Passover, I am reminded that success and happiness is not easy.  There are many lessons for all to be learned from this holiday.   It’s not a holiday commemorating an ancient event but a lesson to achieve true success & happiness in our lives.

The biggest lesson to take away from the holiday of Passover is that success takes hard work and preparation.  There are no short cuts to true success.  Passover is the holiday of freedom.  Jewish mystics teach us that Passover is not the holiday of freedom because the Jewish people were freed from their slavery in Egypt at that time, but that the holiday occurred then because it was a “time” of freedom.

If that is the case, every year there should be a universal energy that occurs now that we each can tap into.  This is a time for each of us to search deep inside ourselves to find the things or limiting beliefs that keep us in our rut or comfort zone and is keeping us from being as successful as we can.

When we search deep inside ourselves we will find the true source of our power and energy, and when we truly connect to this energy, we will be amazed in the abundant amount of good we can produce.

The Passover holiday is over week long.  The first days are about preparation and beginning on your path of success.   Change is not easy.  Whenever we try to change, it’s very easy to fall back into our comfort zone.  Making change last is what the last days of the holiday is all about.

The 7th day is when the Jews crossed the Sea of Reeds or commonly referred to as the Red Sea. Before they crossed and achieved their true freedom they faced a big obstacle.  They felt trapped; Pharaoh and his army where in hot pursuit and they were trapped at the Red Sea.  At this point some even thought that they should go back to Egypt (back to their comfort zone).  It was not until they refocused on their mission to go serve G-d on the mountain that things changed and it wasn’t until the water reached their nostrils that the sea began to split.

The lesson here is, when you are focused on your goal, what appears to be obstacles will split & provide you with a path to reach your goals.

Our biggest obstacle is our own limiting beliefs. Don’t focus on what you can’t do but what you can do. You’ll see the miracles appear in front of your own eyes.  How many times have we quit just before the moment of a great break though?  It’s almost scary to think about.

Jack Canfield sums it up in a formula from his book “Success Principles”.

E + R = O   Event + Response = Outcome

We all know the outcomes we want to achieve (though some of us have a clearer picture of that outcome than others).  But, there always seems to be some event or barrier that comes along and keeps us from journeying forward to our desired outcome.  Most of the time, we have no control over this event or the personal barrier that is put in front of us by ourselves or others.

The only thing we are in control over is how we respond to this event.  When we focus on the event or obstacle we lose focus and our desire to move toward our goal.  But, when we are focused on our outcome or goal, those obstacles that may appear to be as big as a whole sea that will soon split and allow us to truly break free and move toward our goal.

May this season of freedom allow you to break through to your success that is just waiting for you.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below…

Six Power Ratios to Start Tracking Now

Doctors in the developing world measure their progress not by the aggregate number of children who die in childbirth, but by the infant mortality rate – a ratio of the number of births to deaths.

Similarly, baseball’s leadoff batters measure their “on-base percentage” – the number of times they get on base – as a percentage of the number of times they get the chance to try.

Entrepreneurs buying businesses also like tracking ratios, and the more ratios you can provide a potential buyer, the more comfortable they will become with the idea of buying your business.

Better than the blunt measuring stick of an aggregate number, a ratio expresses the relationship between two numbers, which gives them their power.

If you’re planning to sell your company one day, here’s a list of six ratios to track in your business now to use in creating a score card for potential buyers:

1.      Employees per square foot

By calculating the number of square feet of office space you rent and dividing it by the number of employees you have, you can judge how efficiently you have designed your space. Commercial real estate agents use a general rule of 175–250 square feet of usable office space per employee.

2. Ratio of promoters and detractors

Fred Reichheld and his colleagues at Bain & Company and Satmetrix developed the Net Promoter Score^® methodology.  It is based on asking customers a single question that is predictive of both repurchase and referral.

Here’s how it works: survey your customers and ask them the question, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend <insert your company name> to a friend or colleague?”

Figure out what percentage of the people surveyed give you a 9 or 10, and label that your ratio of “promoters.” Calculate your ratio of detractors by figuring out the percentage of people surveyed who gave you a score of 0 to 6. Then calculate your Net Promoter Score

The average company in the United States has a NPS of between 10 and 15 percent.  Reichheld found companies with an above-average NPS grow faster than average-scoring businesses. 

3. Sales per square foot

By measuring your annual sales per square foot, you can get a sense of how efficiently you are translating your real estate into sales. Most industry associations have a benchmark. For example, annual sales per square foot for a respectable retailer might be $300. With real estate usually ranking just behind payroll as a business’s largest expenses, the more sales you can generate per square foot of real estate, the more profitable you are likely to be.

4. Revenue per employee

Payroll is the number one expense for most businesses, which explains why maximizing your revenue per employee, can translate quickly to the bottom line. Google, for example, enjoyed a revenue per employee of more than one million dollars in 2015, whereas a more traditional people-dependent company may struggle to surpass $100,000 per employee.   

5. Customers per account manager

How many customers do you ask your account managers to manage? Finding a balance can be tricky. Some bankers are forced to juggle more than 400 accounts, and therefore do not know each of their customers, whereas some high-end wealth managers may have just 50 clients to stay in contact with. It’s hard to say what the right ratio is because it is so highly dependent on your industry. Slowly increase your ratio of customers per account manager until you see the first signs of deterioration (slowing sales, drop in customer satisfaction). That’s when you know you have probably pushed it a little too far.

6. Prospects per visitor

What proportion of your website’s visitors “opt-in” by giving you permission to e-mail them in the future? Dr. Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson are the cofounders of Conversion Rate Experts, which advises companies like Google, Apple and Sony on how to convert more of their website traffic into customers. Dr. Blanks and Mr. Jesson state that there is no such thing as a typical opt-in rate, because so much depends on the source of traffic. They recommend that rather than benchmarking yourself against a competitor, you benchmark against yourself by carrying out tests to beat your site’s current opt-in rate.

Entrepreneurs looking to purchase a business have a healthy appetite for data. The more data you can give them – in the ratio format they’re used to examining – the more attractive your business will be in their eyes.

Interested in learning how to create a score card in your business that will help you to predict not only the direction your business is going but how valuable it is to potential buyers? 

Contact ActionCOACH Steve Goranson to schedule a free 1/2 hour Phone Strategy Session at 904-739-0200.

Steve Goranson has owned and operated the Northeast Florida of ActionCOACH since 2004.  ActionCOACH is the World's #1 Coaching franchise with over 1000 offices in 50 different countries. They coach over 15,000 business each week worldwide.

Steve's commitment is to help small business owners to develop actionable ideas that will allow them to spend less time working "in" their business and more time working "on" their business so they can build a more valuable and sellable business. In the end, you’ll be spending less total time working, will be making more money and will have truly created the company and team you always dreamed of. In addition we will help you put the FUN back in your business and your life.

Call his office to schedule a free 1/2 hour Phone Strategy Session 904-739-0200 www.actioncoachsteve.com

90 Days That Will Define Your Business Forever

You've done the hard work of winning a new customer, but it's what you do in the next 90 days that determines if it'll stick around.

The first 90 days of any new relationship are critical:

• A president has about three months to inspire the electorate and gain the political capital he needs to govern.
• A young team prospect has but a few months to impress his coach before being sent down to the minors.
• A new CEO has 90 days to learn her job before the rank and file start expecting tangible leadership.

The Onboarding Window: The First 90 Days
For a young company, the first 90 days of a customer relationship are equally important. Research into the subscription business model shows that getting a customer to effectively start using your product in the first 90 days leads to an increase in lifetime value of up to 300 percent for some companies.

Take a look at marketing software provider Constant Contact, which used to struggle with the first 90 days of a new customer relationship.

In the old days, Constant Contact took a "who, what, when" approach to onboarding new customers. Who stood for who a customer wanted to send an email campaign to; what stood for what the customer wanted to send; and when described the timing of the campaign.

After users signed up for its service, Constant Contact would ask customers to upload their email database (the who in the three-step onboarding process). This required the new user to upload a customer list--which is the trickiest part of the onboarding experience. It required the customer to leave Constant Contact's site and struggle with how to export a contact list--often from a jury-rigged database kept in Excel or Outlook.

The process was awkward, and many new customers stopped using Constant Contact because they hit a barrier before they had a chance to fall in love with the Constant Contact software.

What, Who, When
Wanting to stem new customer churn, Constant Contact changed its on boarding to focus first on the what. Immediately after signing up, new users were encouraged to create their first email campaign. Suddenly customers were seeing their campaign come to life in front of their eyes.

Constant Contact offered customers a library of stock images that looked more beautiful than anything a business owner had used in the past. Customers could see firsthand how professional their company was going to look.

Only after the customer had completed the what stage and earned the emotional reward of seeing its first campaign come to life, did Constant Contact switch to the who part of creating a campaign.

The difference was, by this point, Constant Contact had enough relationship equity with the customer to get it over the hump of uploading its database. This minor reordering of the onboarding flow led to a dramatic reduction in customer churn--which is the death knell of any subscription business.

Whether you’re in a subscription business, or still using a transaction business model, how you treat a customer in the first 90 days will go a long way in determining their overall satisfaction.

If you would like to learn more about team building contact ActionCOACH Steve Goranson at 904-739-0200. www.actioncoachsteve.com

Steve Goranson has owned and operated the Northeast Florida of ActionCOACH since 2014.  ActionCOACH is the World's #1 Coaching franchise with of 1000 offices in 50 different countries. They coach over 15,000 business each week.

Steve's commitment is to assist small business owners, to spend less time working "in" their business and more time working "on" their business so they can build a more valuable and sellable business. In the end, you’ll be spending less total time working, will be making more money and will have truly created the company and team you always dreamed of. In addition we will help you put the FUN back in your business and your life

Call his office to schedule a free 1/2 hour Phone Strategy Session 904-739-0200

How to Get Rich in 3 (Really Difficult) Steps

Becoming wealthy may not be your primary goal, but if it is, there is a reasonably predictable way to get rich in America.

Step 1: Ignore Your Parents

Parents around the world typically encourage their kids to get educated so they can get a ‘good job.’ This may mean becoming a doctor or lawyer, although neither tends to be a path to significant wealth. High-paying professions provide an excellent income stream, but two insidious forces undermine the professional's ability to create significant wealth: tax and spending.

Tax

It is difficult to become wealthy on the basis of a salary alone. Since income is taxed at the highest possible rate, you're left with not much more than 50 cents on the dollar.

Spending

The other problem with having a high income is that it creates a ‘wealth effect’ that triggers spending. Thomas J. Stanley, the famous author of the research-driven classic The Millionaire Next Door, points out that some professionals—in particular, lawyers—spend a large portion of their income to give the impression that they are successful, in part because they do not enjoy much social status from their job. In other words, when you earn $500,000 a year, you buy a Range Rover or send your kids to an elite private school at least in part because you want people to think you are wealthy.

Step 2: Start Something

Most wealth in America is created through owning a business. Recently, Mass Mutual looked at the proportion of business owners that make up a number of wealth cohorts. They found that 17 percent of people with between $100,000 and $500,000 to invest were business owners.

Keep in mind that there are about 8 million employer-based companies in the United States, meaning that the incidence rate of business ownership (the natural rate at which you find business owners in the general population) is about three percent. Said another way, if you grabbed 100 people walking down the street, on average three of them would be business owners. On the other hand, if you took a random sample of 100 people with investable assets of between $100,000 and $500,000, 17 of them would be business owners, meaning you're over five times more likely to find a business owner in the $100,000 to $500,000 wealth segment than you are to find an employee in the same segment.

The trend becomes more pronounced the higher up the wealth ladder you go. If you look at wealthy investors with between $500,000 and $1,000,000 in investable assets, you'll see that the proportion of business owners in this segment goes up dramatically—to27 percent.

The Very Rich

Among investors with between $1 million and $10 million in investable assets, the proportion of business owners jumps to 52 percent. As for those investors with $10 million to $50 million sloshing around in their bank account, 67 percent are business owners; and for investors with $50 million dollars or more in investable assets, 86 percent are business owners.

Simply put, if you meet someone who is very rich, it's highly likely they are (or were) a business owner.

Step 3: Get Liquid

The next step for you as a business owner is to focus on improving the value of your business so that you can sell it for a premium. Just being a successful entrepreneur is typically not enough to become rich. You have to find a way to take the equity you have locked up in your business and turn it into liquid assets. When it comes to selling your business, the three most common options are:

·         Acquisition: This is the headline-popping way some entrepreneurs choose to trade their shares for cash. When Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, founders Brian Action and Jan Koum got very rich.

·         Re-capitalization: A minority or majority "re-cap" occurs when you sell a stake in your company (often to a private equity firm) yet continue to run your business as both a manager and part owner, with a chunk of your wealth in liquid assets outside of your business.

·         Management Buyout: In an MBO, you invite your management team (or a family member) to buy you out over time, usually with a mixture of some cash from the profits of your business as well as debt that the managers take on. There are other, less common ways to turn your equity into cash (e.g., an IPO), but the key is turning the illiquid wealth in your business into diversified liquid wealth. The best part about selling a business is that the wealth created is taxed at a very low rate compared to employment income, so you get to keep most of what you make.

You might argue it is better to keep all of your wealth tied up in your business as it grows, but that can be a risky proposition—just ask Lululemon's Chip Wilson or BlackBerry's cofounder Mike Lazaridis. If you keep your money locked up in your business, it also means you may not be able to enjoy the benefits of wealth. You can't use illiquid stock in a private company to buy an around-the-world plane ticket or a ski chalet in Aspen. You actually have to get liquid first.

There are many good reasons to build a business; and for you, wealth creation may not be as important as making an amazing product or leading a great team. But if money is what you're after, there is no better way to get rich than to start and sell a successful business.

In creating a more valuable business, it is always the little things that get the big results. Our Business Health Check will give you invaluable insights into the many areas of your business that if tweaked will increase the value of your business.  By completing the Business Health Check, you will receive a Free Report based on your answers, prepared by our team of highly skilled Business Coaches.  CLICK HERE to take your Business Health Check Now

Steve Goranson has owned and operated the Northeast Florida of ActionCOACH since 2014. ActionCOACH is the World's #1 Coaching franchise with of 1000 offices in 50 different countries.  They coach over 15,000 business each week.

ActionCOACH Steve Goranson's commitment is to assist small business owners, to spend less time working "in" their business and more time working "on" their business so they can build a more valuable and sellable business. In the end, you’ll be spending less total time working, will be making more money and will have truly created the company and team you always dreamed of. In addition we will help you put the FUN back in your business and your life.

Steve's clients are feeling happy because they are focused on their goals, they're feeling more successful because they are reaching their goals, and they are feeling more free because their businesses are starting to work harder than do.