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Your job as an entrepreneur is to create assets first and then look for tools that can leverage them.
Pitching: the ability to powerfully describe what you do and why it’s valuable Publishing: the ability to write and distribute materials about what you do and why it’s valuable Products: the ability to deliver value consistently in a scalable way Profile: the ability to be known, liked and trusted in the eyes of your market Partnerships: the ability to enrol other people and organisations to cooperate in the implementation of your vision.
A business succeeds because it was designed to succeed. It is an ecosystem of assets that have been developed and utilised efficiently – a blend of intellectual property, capital, equipment, staff, leadership and innovation. Each component is thought through, improved, refined and enhanced. Each little insight is processed and measured against a new level of output.
Using these guidelines, you can build services like products. When a service has a name, distinctive elements, a standardised method of delivery and a brochure that describes it all in an elegant and desirable way, it starts to appear like a product, and scale like one too.
Having one product is not enough to make a successful business. After working with thousands of businesses, I’ve learned that
a single product rarely makes money. Product ecosystems make money.
Great businesses have a product ecosystem with four types of product, including a range of free, low-cost and core products that all serve a unique purpose.
I often see businesses that do not become profitable until they have products in all four categories. Only when it has a product that gains attention, a product that builds trust, a product that creates revenue and a product that is highly profitable will the whole business work.
Keep this in mind when developing your business – products and services don’t make money; product and service ecosystems make money. Your business will become highly profitable when you have a strong offering in each of the four categories.
‘People don’t want your time and they don’t want your expertise, they want a problem solved, they want a result and they want it better, cheaper, faster and with more emotional benefits. They want it done reliably, consistently and with very little effort on their part. Don’t fall into the trap
of thinking it’s about you – your product is about the person buying and how they feel. When you really connect with what your customers want – let me say that again, want – you’ll be able to create products that have true value for them. People remember how they were treated in the restaurant long after they have forgotten what they ate or how much it cost.’
When a customer buys, your system should ‘on-board the client’ so they feel great about their decision. Maybe it could send an email or some video content for them to watch; maybe it could send a welcome pack to their office or instruct your team to make time to meet with them. Make it part of your overall system to have reviews of your sales and marketing systems if ever your cost per lead
exceeds a predetermined amount or your sales conversions fall below a certain point.
A management and administration system needs to be able to report accurately what has happened in the past, forecast what the business expects to achieve in the future and provide useful information for making decisions in the moment.
Services like Xero, Receipt Bank, Lawbite, Slack, Trello, Evernote, Dropbox, Zoom, GoTo Webinar, Office360, Google Docs, MailChimp, Skype, Docusign, Scannable and many others can be considered must-haves for your business.
Consider how your business could use video, apps, direct mail or events. Look for the systems that would make it predictable that your customers felt loved and appreciated by your brand.
Systemise an email sequence that every new client gets to make them feel really happy to be doing business with you.
It’s unlikely that someone will quit their well-paid, secure job for a lower paid position on your fledgling team unless there’s something special going on – the flexible hours, the training or mentoring programme, the flat structure and open dynamic of your team, or the vision and values held by your organisation. All these magical ingredients make up the culture, and in order to scale them, carefully document them. You need the basics like job descriptions, accountability charts and workplace contracts alongside investment into advanced assets such as videos that explain the vision and
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As a team grows, the complexity grows exponentially. A team of eight people has over 100 possible variations of who could be in a meeting room. When you hit 50 people, the permutations and combinations run into the tens of thousands. It’s a common experience for founders who grow a company from 0 to 50 people to discover staff who have been working at the company for weeks before they meet them. It’s also common to discover in a team of 50 that there are romantic relationships blossoming, people who strongly dislike each other, informal sub-committees meeting regularly and groups who are
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Documented role descriptions Accountability/organisation chart On-boarding process Team handbook Training videos Structured performance reviews Ongoing training and development programmes Remuneration and rewards structure Disciplinary and complaints policy Flexibility policy Communications tools, maxims and decision making guides Key performance indicators
Key People of Influence are the leaders, figureheads and rainmakers who can do deals, open partnerships, lead teams, liaise with media, inspire, innovate and represent the brand. They will solve problems, attract A-players and grow the business faster than the founder could.
Businesses that have Key People of Influence outperform those that don’t. The assets that attract Key People of Influence are often the assets that exist within the business – a world-class product, exceptional intellectual property, strong systems, ample funding or a powerful position in the market. Additionally, they look for a culture that will help them to attract other A-players.
A great manager translates the vision of the leader into small, actionable steps, delegates responsibilities, measures performance, generates reports and ensures the smooth internal operations of the business.
Administrators are able to stay finely attuned to the financials and forecasting of the business. They know if the business is heading for a cash flow shortage and they seek out financial solutions. They don’t let money slip through the cracks or important paperwork go missing. They stay on top of bad payers, managing expectations and relationships with suppliers. Good managers and administration staff empower the business to run as effectively as possible, making adjustments and improvements while adhering to budgets.
Treat your administration team as the enablers of high performance who ensure that resources are allocated optimally. It’s important that your culture assets acknowledge the role they play and showcase examples of high-performance in that role.
Capturing case studies is a powerful approach for creating culture assets. When someone does something that really benefits the organisation and is aligned to its values and the vision, make it a priority to record a video interview about that achievement. This could be as simple as using a phone and shooting an interview to share with the team (and new team members who join).
Increasingly, the success of the customer experience relies upon the exceptional technicians who can deliver it. Reliable, dedicated, passionate, technically skilled people are vital for the long-term success of the business.
People might discover your company through sales and marketing, but they will stay with you because of the technical capability you demonstrate.
Technical people thrive in environments where they learn and grow with other skilled technicians. It’s powerful to encourage them to collaborate, share and learn together as part of their role, and capture some of their best insights to put into a report that new members of the team can learn from.
Create an entrepreneurial team by honouring the entrepreneurial spirit in every person in the company.
High-performance culture has a lot more to do with the way the team interacts, the quality of people who stay, the quality of people who leave and the clarity each person has for their role. Culture assets are working when your team stays together and produces
output that exceeds expectations. I want to see a culture where the big picture goals are clear to everyone. I want to see a team that can identify issues, discuss them and solve them. I want to see a culture where the team chooses the right goals and achieves them every 90 days. When that’s happening consistently, you’ve got the right culture assets in place.”‘
Your Business Plan clearly defines where the business is heading, the challenges it will face, the risks it will reduce, the opportunities it will develop and the returns you expect.
Your investors are less likely to question the assumptions in your Business Plan if a professional created it.
What if the main people leave or can’t work? What if the leadership team makes stupid decisions? What if someone runs off with the money? What if there’s a dispute between shareholders and/or directors? What if the CEO/Founder isn’t performing? What if the strategy isn’t working as planned? What if the business gets sued? What if the business gets hacked? What if the business is impacted by a rare event (fire, flood, theft, etc)? What if the business fails?
The 24 Assets system can’t save your business if you don’t have strong core assets. It might look good, but it is going nowhere without you putting extra effort into the core assets. They give you the power to meet customers’ needs in a way that is better, cheaper, faster or gives greater emotional payoff than other businesses. The degree to which you facilitate that is the degree to which your core assets are clearly valuable. This requires self-awareness, curiosity and honesty. Identify what matters most to your market and then
become your own harshest critic, digging for flaws in your core assets and resolving them.
If an entrepreneur is trying to save money by working with average suppliers, or worse doing everything themselves, they’re building a business that isn’t worth anything long-term. This is painful. It means they can sacrifice decades of their life without a payoff.
When you work with great suppliers, you build more valuable assets faster.
If you hire people who are going to sweat the assets and improve them, you’re on the right path.
But if the assets are not in place, more people equals more headaches. New people who aren’t given great systems, products, training, branding and IP to leverage don’t tend to improve the business.
Within the context of your existing business, brainstorm ideas for each of the 24 assets. Good ideas happen when you allow yourself to generate bad ideas too.
The trick is to capture the feedback quickly and introduce a new version as soon as you can. Go back to the briefing document phase and list all the changes that need making, look for solutions to the problems and find additional suppliers who can improve certain details. Buckle down with your suppliers again and pull together a new version with all the improvements.
Don’t stop just yet. Buckle down again. Do your best to tear the thing apart; explore what’s possible; ask yourself tough questions as to the nature and core essence of what
you are trying to achieve. Trim the fat, and be willing to get rid of anything that’s good but doesn’t quite blow people away. Push your suppliers to dig deeper and produce their best work. Relaunch the product, and if it’s not remarkable, go back and repeat the reinvention process until it is.
One common behaviour I’ve seen in my millionaire mentors is that they read and re-read a small selection of books by a few authors they admire every year. Their goal is not to learn new ideas but to become world-class at implementation. A common trait I see in people who are struggling is that they read a new book every month, watch lots of videos and attend lots of free seminars, but rarely go deep into any one discipline. When you discover an approach that resonates, you should immerse yourself in it. The information in a book won’t change things, the application of that information will.
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These rich friends have all the stuff my personal-development friends pinned on their dream-board, but they often weren’t very personally developed. Almost all had insecurities, good days and bad days, they weren’t crystal clear all the time and they never did things like fire walks or wooden board-breaking. One of them didn’t even believe in goal setting! How was it possible that personally developed people were struggling while people who didn’t even have a dream-board were making huge successes of themselves?
I discovered an interesting truth – there’s no such thing as successful people and unsuccessful people.
Anyone can become successful if they have the right envir...
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If you look around and discover your peers aren’t living the life you want to live, add some new friends who normalise the results you want for yourself. If you want to get fit, you need more fit friends. If you want fun, you need more fun friends. If you want success, you need more high-achievers in your group.
