“Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control, they’re in control.” — Tom Landry
Are you ready to become a real leader? Are you prepared to be a person who gets consistent and reliable results with every decision you make? If you want to succeed in any economic climate, the advice you take from this book can propel you to unprecedented dreams.
There are a lot of decisions you need to make as you climb toward your goals. You need to have the confidence that the decisions you make every day are the best ones for the continued health of your company. Maximizing the support you have from the right people gives you more leverage and time to be an effective leader of your business, continuing to meet and then exceed the goals you’ve been laying out.
The Top Five System provides steps to financial excellence that will help strengthen your foundation for overall success in any business venture. More on that soon.
In the decades of my experience consulting business owners, Fortune 500 companies and running businesses myself, I’ve come across a valuable lessons that most other companies ignore or deem unimportant. Follow the steps and formulas that I’ve developed and proven are the most advantageous. I’m not saying you won’t hit occasional pitfalls. You most likely will. Just remember these pitfalls, when you’ve built a foundation and follow all the steps I’m providing for you, will only help build an environment for further success in the future.
When you can eliminate most chances of error and understand how to turn the remaining few mishaps that will still naturally occur into better planning for future growth, you’ve nailed it. You are on a clear upward path with the wind in your sails.
Solidifying Your Vision Helps Make It Happen
Vision can be defined in many ways, but if you know where your vision is now and you also know where your vision is moving you to, then it’s merely a matter of using some simple proven steps to guide you from point “A” to point “B.”
Your vision, plus action steps, is always your GPS for success.
At this point, you’re already more than a step ahead of most other people and businesses.
Define your path with the advice of other positive and honest people with character and your roadmap to massive profits will be reality before you know it. Who can you rely on for that advice? One person is the right coach.
Remember to keep your goals considerable yet attainable. What you can see, you can realize. Don’t get bogged down with scattered or negative thoughts and people. This only hampers your ability to create a clear paved way to the gold.
The First Step is to Define Your Business
I’ve made this point earlier and I want to repeat it now as part of the Top 5 System. It’s that important. Have a clear, concise definition of your business, including what you bring to the table and what will help propel your business forward. This is true whether you’re growing an existing business or starting a new one.
If you can see it, you can reach it.
The Second Step is Clearly Defined Performance Goals, Detailed In Your Financial Plan
Your financial plan is what maps out, month by month, what your performance targets are, in economic terms. Where do you need to be in 30 days, to see a 30% overall increase in profits within the next 90 days? What about 60 days? Where should you be each week along the way to that goal?
Breaking everything down this way completes a picture that forms a guidance system you can continually rely upon. Once you have your 90-day goal mapped out, you’ll quickly see it’s not an insurmountable goal, but instead a simple series of small steps leading to almost inevitable growth.
Now you can easily build out your plan beyond 90 days following the plan you’ve already been following to achieve simple small steps along the way to constant growth in your business.
The Third Step is: Define the Transactions That Result in Achievement of the Financial Plan
Here are two examples:
- If your profit goal is $200,000 a year and you make an average of $25,000 profit per home that you buy, fix and flip, then you need to do eight deals a year to reach that goal. If you’ve never done a deal, I would support that goal. If you did three deals last year and each made more than $25,000 profit before tax, then I would be coaching you on doing more than eight deals in the upcoming 12 months.
- If your profit goal is $1,000,000 a year and you operate a convenience store with gas pumps, then you will have a detailed plan as to the profit projection from the sale of gas and the profit projection from each of the categories of merchandise sold in the convenience store. If you made $800,000 last year before tax, I would likely support your goal of a 25% improvement in profit, considering the overall anemic economy we’re experiencing in the US. If you earned $500,000 last year before tax, you can expect an aggressive challenge from me on doubling that performance in our current environment.
The Fourth Step is: Having a Clear Definition of Each Action Step That Will Result in the Achievement of the Transactions That Get You to Your Profit Goal Then Consistently Implementing Those Action Steps.
Again, I’ll illustrate this by examples:
- Referring to our earlier goal of doing eight real estate deals per month, you must develop the pipeline of the deal flow. This means networking for deals with realtors, “bird dogs,” wholesalers and more. This also means watching sites like Craigslist and having a branded Website for attracting deals. That’s just a short list of actions you can take to find good deals. Each of these actions involves steps required to achieve them. You’ll want to map out each of these steps as well.
- In the example of growing your convenience store/gas station business profits by 25%, this will likely involve a growth-oriented marketing strategy. This could include social media campaigns, direct marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing and more. This could involve a revision of the product offer, the building image, external signage, local promotions and more. Include each of the items most likely to quickly help you achieve your target in your system, then map out the system behind making each of those items happen.
It’s important that you know those actions that will result in reaching your well-defined business performance goals. Once you know them, then consistently taking action every day on each required step is the key to success.
But it’s not the only key. There’s more.
The Fifth Step : Your Daily Top 5
You should now know the transactions that drive your own business. In the examples in Step Four, if you’re a real estate investor, you need properties and money. If you’re the owner of a convenience store business with gas pumps, you need customer traffic that wants the merchandise and gas you offer at an attractive price that still ensures you the revenue required to reach your defined profit goals.
Three of the Daily Top 5 for Every Business Owner, Executive or Entrepreneur:
- Exercise and Nutrition – you need energy to achieve your business and personal goals. Without your health, nothing else matters. At least 15 minutes of vigorous exercise every day plus meals of mostly fruits, vegetables and whole grains, nuts and seeds. Consume only organic foods.
- Work/life balance – nurture your relationships, including spouse, children, family, partners and everyone you work with. Positive relationships help maintain your mindset for progress and taking action that results in Building Business Profits Fast for you.
- Spend time on personal and professional self-development each day. I use two journals. One I pay $40 for is my personal journal. I use this journal for the most important messages that I get from the resources I use for my personal development. Refer to the article at www.stevepohlit.com/getting-unstuck for more on some of the other resources I use. In the professional self-development category, I use a $6 large notebook for making notes from the books I’m reading. Recent books include Screw It Just Do It, by Richard Branson, The Biography of Steve Jobs and the story of Starbucks in the book, Onward, by Howard Schultz. I study on average one business book a month and listen to audio interviews for three-five hours per week. I make notes from all these resources for the purpose of implementing them in my business to become a consistently more valuable coach, as measured by the successes of those I work with.
- and 5. 20% of what we do results in 80% of our results. In your Daily Top 5, Steps 4 and 5 will be those things that will propel your business forward the fastest. Remember the Daily Top 5 are your “must-dos,” not your entire “to-do” list. For example, real estate investors would have as Step Four actions that fuel the identification of possible deals and Step Five actions that strengthen relationships with existing and potential funding partners and other sources of money for deals. The owner of the convenience store and gas station business would review the statistics every day looking for trends that represent increased revenue and profits opportunities. That owner would also be working on marketing campaigns to drive more people to the business. By the way – marketing to attract retail customers is one of the biggest opportunities for owners in that type of business. Very few retailers get that right. This will be addressed in greater detail in another book as part of this series.
Accountability
Coaching will help you exceed your profit goals. The value of a coach is all about the experience they can share, the credibility behind the action steps they assign, plus holding you accountable for implementing the action steps on your own behalf. It’s been consistently true in my experience that the most successful students are the ones who follow my coaching instructions. My students reach the goals they set because I hold them accountable for the steps required to get there.
This process makes the most difference in following the Building Business Profits Fast system to reach your goals. Hiring the right coach with experience in guiding the development of successful businesses gives you a gigantic success advantage over all your competitors.
It’s not uncommon to utilize more than one coach as you grow, depending on which areas you have that are in greatest need of work. That’s something only you and perhaps your first coach can determine.
Use the tools I’m providing you for use in your business. Couple them with the all-important coaching I’ve mentioned and you’ll find you can take a huge step toward achieving your goals of Building Business Profits Fast.
It’s actually relatively simple and inexpensive to drive yourself and your profits forward faster and farther than you thought you could dream. I’m not saying you’ll be wealthy tomorrow, but use of my steps and courses will surely put you in the running for the massive profits that you plan for and even more than you can envision right now. This is important to remember as you continue to build and work your plan.
Your Goals Are Attainable
Following my steps, a 30% increase in sales and profits is more than possible within the next 90 days – it’s almost inevitable. Definitely keep reading.
Get focused, stay energized and keep the positive force in front of you at all times. Create a vision and plan for yourself and your business. Extract lessons that have been provided for you and practice them, over and over again, until they become habit.
- Your drive and confidence in what you imagine yourself achieving will levitate you to a higher plain than you thought was possible.
- Hire one or more coaches depending on your level of skills and experience. I have one coach that is almost entirely strategic. Another coach is more tactical and is also very good strategically. I have a spiritual development coach and a fourth coach whose primary role is to hold me accountable for implementing the action plans that I design with the help of my other coaches.
- Give the universe and especially those positive people around you the same energy that you would like back from them.
These are the secrets – the priceless lessons which people ignore repeatedly. You are in control of everything described here. All you have to do is believe, envision your future, think positive and surround yourself with people who are even more successful than yourself. Remember always to stay on task and on target. Business is a living breathing thing and can change in an instant. What you’re doing successfully today may not work tomorrow. What you did last year to stay successful may not work again next year or even next week.
Never assume the conditions you’re currently experiencing will remain the same. Change is constant. Keep this in mind when things are going too slowly. It will help keep you focused and on track, knowing that change for the better is inevitable. Focusing on constant change is most often forgotten, however, when things are going really well. Know that this, too, can change in an instant and build your plan to include contingencies for either swing of the pendulum.
When you’re in control of and understand every bit of your market and your product, your life will keep you moving and changing with any economic climate you face at any given time.
Action Steps:
- Implement The Top 5 System now.
- Establish an accountability system for implementation. Is a coach the only way? No, but a coach is an absolutely proven way to establish an accountability system. When you select the right coach and follow the directions of that coach, you will be Building Business Profits Fast.
