On average, how much of your time is spent working in your business doing the day to day tactical work involved in producing, delivering or selling your product or service? For most business owners, when we first meet them, the answer is usually: ALL of it.
Have you ever found yourself emptying the trash at the end of the day? What about printing shipping labels, cleaning dishes, packing boxes, entering receipts or customer data, or loading trucks? (Or maybe all of these things?) And all this is on top of the work you do selling, responding to customers, completing t...
One of the things we really care about at EMyth is helping business owners Work On it, not just In it. By “it”, we mean the business. Most owners spend most of their time and energy In the business—involved in the day-to-day “doing it”—when the most powerful thing they can do as leaders is work On it—things like c...
If you’re one of the many millions of fans of Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited, you know that there’s no message that’s had a more universal impact on business owners than work on it, not just in it. Over the last 30 years, since The E-Myth was first published in 1986, this phrase has become part of the busin...
Have you ever stepped back from your business for a few hours to think about what you want this company to give you? Maybe it's the dream you started with, the one that gave you the momentum and courage to quit a job and venture out on your own. Maybe it's the time and support you want to dedicate to your family a...
This is Part Four on how to build a sales system that works. Read Part One, Part Two, and Part Three here. When you really break it down, a salesperson who has the highest lead to sales conversions is doing one thing better than everyone else: leading the sales conversation. If you, in your sales role, or your sal...
This is the sixth and final installment in helping you develop and design clear systems. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. Before I dive into this final article on systems development, I want to thank those of you who have written to me during the course of this series. Your participation ...
This is the fifth installment in helping you develop and design clear systems. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 6. Last week I covered how an operations manual can save your business (and your life), much like the operations manual on Apollo 13 saved Jim Lovell’s life. This week, I want to t...
This is the fourth installment in helping you develop and design clear systems. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, and Part 6. During the last long-haul flight I was on, I re-watched ‘Apollo 13’ (the one with Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell). Perhaps not the best choice as I was hurtling through the sky at 500...
This is the third installment in helping you develop and design clear systems. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6. This week I want to share a business development concept that will help you turn your current frustrations into operational systems. It’s one small step for you and your team, b...
This is the second installment in helping you develop and design clear systems. Click here for Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6. “By the end of the decade we will have put a man on the moon and safely returned him to Earth.” —President J.F. Kennedy, 1962 In my first article in this series on systems, I i...
I can remember watching the moon landings on a black and white television as a young boy and being fascinated by the idea. I’m still young enough at heart to feel excited by big rockets and the notion of space travel. I apologize up-front if space isn’t your thing, but building rockets and flying to the moon is a ...
Frustration is commonly the difference between what you would like to be and what you are willing to sacrifice to become what you would like to be. - Unknown Show me a business owner who hasn’t felt frustrated and I’ll show you someone who is only a few hours into running their business. All business owners know w...
So you’ve found yourself doing a better job of hiring and retaining the right employees. The last key point in my blog post, “Hiring and Keeping Rockstar Employees,” referenced documenting the system. You’ve spent a lot of time understanding and strategizing, and it would be a shame if you didn’t take it a step fu...
