Business Improvement Implementation - Three simple steps to success as you move closer to becoming the Lazy Entrepreneur

All the planning and data collection is done.
It's now time to get ready for the Implementation.
The Business Planning Pathway is a 3 step guide to ensure your Business Improvement Strategies are successful.

In this episode, Steve Sandor walks you through Step 1 Clarify and Confirm.
This is where you take the information collected from Weeks 1 to 6 with what appears to be a counterintuitive approach.

Steve also announced a Bonus Offer valued at over $40,000
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Stephen Sandor CEO of Inspiring Business
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Transcript

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Steve Sandor 0:00

Welcome to the Inspiring Business Podcast, where we hope to inspire you, the business owner, and provide you with information, knowledge, and tools that will help you create a business that is scalable and ultimately independent of your daily involvement. My name's Steve Sandor, and I'm your host today, and welcome to the seventh episode of the Lazy Entrepreneur Series, where I walk you through the scale to success solution, the very process that I help my clients with achieve the goals that they are struggling with to implement. So in this

Revisiting weeks 1 - 6

Steve Sandor 0:35

week's episode, we're going to be talking about implementation. Now the problem. I see with implementation and the approach that business owners take with that is that they see it as a burden on their time because they don't have typically the time or capacity to be able to deal with this improvement. So it's a chicken and egg situation. And so the first thing that you need to work on as a business owner is to clear some of the space to enable you to make or at least guide these improvements. And as you would know that there's, three different ways of engaging with improvement. There's the do-it-yourself model where you're looking at building internal capabilities and capacity through the improvement. Sometimes financial constraints force you down that DIY pathway, at least in the initial stages. There's a do it with you model where you engage somebody who helps you as a guide Most of the times those people have some sort of framework or model or process that you buy and they give you the tools and information, and then you effectively do it on your own. But they've created the model for you. And then the final one is obvious. Do it for you. And that's where you engage a consultant to come in and help you to implement. So it's an additional capability and capacity that you've engaged. And that final one is where you are either looking at a time constraint. So you are wanting to do something re relatively quickly you don't have the time to develop the internal capabilities and capacity, or you don't need to develop those, internal capabilities and capacities. Or it's a function that doesn't need to be developed internally and so therefore you bring in a subject matter expert, might be a building a web page. You don't need a full stack web developer division within your organization to build you a really good website. So that's an example of that. So the objective of the Lazy Entrepreneur, at least in this implementation area, is to help you build or identify what capacity and capabilities you need to be able to put the improvements in place. And obviously you need to identify what those improvements are. And we've gone through most of that in weeks one to six so we're not trying to convert you in your business into some project management or change management expert. And I think this is where some business owners get, I guess, distracted in that and that they feel as though they have to be experts in the change management process. And so that's really where I, would like you to spend the majority of your time as thinking about how can you lead and guide your business to that business improvement, whatever that is, that you, are chasing.

Inspiring Business Venn Diagram

Steve Sandor 3:55

To make that point most of you would have seen some form of Venn diagram the three circles, where they intersect and they all have a particular topic or title. And the intersection of those creates a, different component of those two circles. So the system that we use in inspiring business is one where we look at process, performance and people. So they're the three circles. The intersection of those gives us. Clarity, certainty and sustainability. And inside the, with all three crossover. So we're all we, talk about the employer of choice. So trying to create a, business that is sought after by employees and as a result of that, What you do is you create, an environment within your organization that has clarity, certainty, and sustainability, and it delivers efficient services and product to your client base. And because it does it in that way, it's attractive to your clients as well. And so that's where the financial profits come. So if you're looking at this as a DIY model, then what you'd have is access to that Venn diagram and applying that, into your business and the improvements that you are looking at, making. I'm going to break up the. Implementation into three components. So this week we are going to be talking about the clarifying and confirming. Next week in week eight, we're talking about resource allocation, and in the final we'll be talking about the integration of all of as a part of that implementation process,

Rigid Flexibility and the Pathway

Steve Sandor 5:54

and the reason I'm using the analogy of a pathway is that this whole process is very rarely a straight line. There's ups and downs, there's experiments that work and don't work. They follow a contour of the topography that's in front of you. And in this analogy you get to set the parameter of the pathway. So if you can imagine you, your goals and objectives are to work your way through this improvement and the landscape that you're looking at at the moment Doesn't have a pathway, so you're not sure which way to go. So I'm calling this rigid flexibility. So you have a purpose or, or a goal milestone that you're looking at, navigating towards, but you are. You, you're not sure what the landscape will be when you get over the hill, so you need to have some rigidity in terms of the direction that you're going, but you need to be flexible so that when you come up against. Valleys hills and deserts and people who are trying to attack you predators. Others maybe who have claimed that pathway. That you need to have some flexibility for you to be able to move. And adjust with that and create the pathway that suits you. So it's, a mindset to be open to the idea. But obviously what we're trying to do is we're trying to have as much planning as we possibly can and move forward. And your role is as the leader to determine the direction that your business is going. So, just recapping a little bit on the past six weeks we've, had a look at the analysis. We've gone and looked at goals and objectives. We've done we've worked on priorities and the decision making process. We've looked at people particularly around, Human resources we've, looked at capability and capacity planning or workforce planning. And then finally we've looked at financial modeling particularly around the sales processes. But at some point in time you need to pull the trigger. And so we can do as much planning as we like, and, you know, we can look at the maps and study the maps and do all of those sorts of things, but we actually need at some point in time to put the backpacks on our backs and, start walking. And so, Really what we're gonna be doing over the next three weeks is getting to that point where we can where, we are ready to get going. We've done all the prep work. This is the final sort of staging ground before we actually get going.

Clarify and Confirm

Steve Sandor 8:40

So let's dive into part one, which is clarify and confirm. What I would suggest that you do is, take some time now to go and review all your notes, all of the information that you've collected and what you identified as the important and urgent and important and not urgent areas. So just really looking at that data, potentially verifying that some of that information is actually correct. Before you make the next step, what we're looking for here are some wins. They may not necessarily be quick wins right now. So what I'm suggesting is that we look at the important but not urgent priorities. And the reason for that is that you've got time with those. You don't feel as though there's a pressure there to make your decision on something. So you've actually got some time to build up on the platform. And the important and urgent issues, you're already dealing with those you're dealing with them as best you can. And what happens is that because you have a focus on the important and not urgent, which is more the strategies, the important and urgent issues, as they come up, they feed into what's not working in your business and they give you more data on how to and where to make improvements in your organization. Typically what people want to do is they want to focus on the important and urgents because they feel as though that's where the, problems are. And that's the truth. They are, that's where the problem, but you're already dealing with it. So focus on the important and not urgent as a long looking for longer term. solutions, so you would have a number of important and not urgent priorities on your list. So now it's breaking those down even further into your prior priorities. And this overlaps obviously in the next section, which we'll be talking about next week, is, which is dealing with resources and the capability and capacity that you have to be able to do that. So this is a little bit about time management. So you are looking at, over the next month or two, what is the capacity that you have to be able to apply to this processing or this improvement, because what you want to be able to do is you wanna plan this into your day. Obviously if you're doing something that requires and a more immediate attention because there's an opportunity or a cost that is impacting upon the viability of the business. Obviously you would need to deal with that but that's I, would suggest that's not a part of the business improvement process that's dealing with issues that as best you can and, feeding that information into the overall strategy. I use what's called the Three Rock Principles. It was made famous by Stephen Covey. And it's picking three things. Over the, each day, each week, each month, each quarter, each half year and year as your big rocks. These are the things that you are working on that are important in that particular day. And the objective is to get those three things done. And the way that I. Personally do that is through what's called a the pomodore system. Like I'm pronouncing that poorly, but it's basically turning everything off for around 30 minutes and notifications, phone, everything. And you turn all of that off and you focus on one task for 30 minutes. And so if you've got three, three big rocks and you focus 30 minutes. Absolute attention on those three particular issues. And it's amazing how much you actually get done during that day when you take that particular type of approach. So. As far as the business improvement process is concerned, I like to use Gantt charts or timetables so that I can get a pictorial view of what my day looks like. What I like to do when I start this process is I like to look at what's working and what's not working. So you've probably already noted a lot of that through the the capacity and capability areas, the, when we were looking at goals and priorities, what's, you know, when we did the initial analysis of your business, so you already got some idea of what needs to be done.. I'm a visual person, and I like to use colors and I use colors in my diary so that I can have a look at it. So, you know anything to do with sales is blue. Anything to do with admin is red. Anything to do with marketing is black. Personal is green. Podcast is purple. There's a whole series of colors that I use so that when I look at my diary, I know where I need to be spending my time. I also make sure that I've got about 25% of my diary that is white and that just fills up with stuff during the day. I know it's gonna get filled up with filled up. I just dunno what it's gonna get filled up with. And what I would suggest that you do is that you focus on getting to one important milestone in that timeframe, whatever it is, the month or two month that you've decided to achieve this first milestone. And the rigidity is that's the. Outcome that you're looking for. And the flexibility is the testing or experimenting or, the tasks that were created along the way to a, achieve the goal and objective. And maybe some of those are working and some of those are not working. So there, there, could potentially be things that are preventing you from achieving that. It's not the time that you're allocating, it's the mechanism in which you thought you were going to achieve those. I would suggest that you allocate a certain amount of time in your day that you are comfortable with investing into this business improvement. And if you're not prepared to do that, don't start. Because you're just gonna get frustrated with it. This is your opportunity to actually have a really lasered focused, intention to the direction and of business improvement for your business. In episode two we talked about the goals and objectives, and I referred to the smart model and most people are familiar with that in a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. And I added in energy and record and review. So SMARTERR I'm not gonna go over the details of that. And what I would suggest is that you actually record the tasks and the success or otherwise of the task as you go about doing the implementation. And that's the recording part. Now it does take a little bit of time and a little bit of consistency to do that, but it's hugely important because, at the end of that task or at the end of that milestone, you can actually give yourself a pass or a fail on all of those tasks, and you'll start to build up a cadence, or you'll start to build up some sort of evidence about what's working and what's not working in the implementation of this. What, I would suggest that you do is has hasen slowly, so a lot of businesses through the implementation. Phase, what they tend to do is they tend to react to making change. And that's entirely what we are, where we're heading, but we're trying to do that without severely interrupting the business. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of hasten and slowly in this whole space. The parts two and three. So part two of the implementation is the resource allocation. And we'll do we'll, dive into that next week. And the third part of the implementation is integration. And we'll do that in week nine.

Looking ahead to weeks 8 and 9

Steve Sandor 17:21

So just to give, to wet your appetite. What we're going to be looking at there is really deep dive into capability and capacity. And if you've got project management experience, then all of that will be obvious to you. If you don't, I'm not trying to turn you into a project manager, but we, you do need to be able to set aside some time to be able to facilitate the whole process, and we'll talk a little bit more about that next week as far as part three being of the implementation being the integration. A lot of people think automatically think about IT as the integration part, but we're also gonna be talking about a whole bunch of things. The integration of using a particular language to communicate with each other through the implementation phase. A particular way of dealing with customers improvements. So you're gonna be changing, potentially changing the way that you are communicating with the customers. And obviously there's the. Integration of process improvements through, digital systems. So we'll be talking about how you go about doing that. Well, that concludes the first part of the implementation. So I hope you got some value from this particular episode. There's more to come.

$40,000 Bonus Offer

Steve Sandor 18:53

So for the past six weeks, I've been talking about a bonus program that I'm looking at introducing. And I've given a lot of thought to this. Part of the reason for this series of podcasts is that I actually wanted to give away my process. I wanted to educate you. In the ways that I go about managing clients or that the business improvement process that I work with, my clients. And I'm going to holding back this everything that I have is here in all of these episodes. I wanted to do something a little bit different than what's being done in the marketplace. And traditionally what people would do is they would have some sort of master class, you would come along and I'd run a webinar and you'd come along. It'd be free. You might come along. And I wanted to do, as I said, I wanted to do something a little differently. So what I've come to is running a series of. Bonus programs. That are valued at roughly $40,000. Now that it's genuine. All right. So these are actual consulting work that I would do and I'm going to be doing that with you. One-on-one. But there's conditions to it. The first condition is that you need to be subscribed to my email list, not subscribing to the podcast, but I appreciate you doing that. And thank you. If you are, but you actually have to be subscribing to one of my email lists. At the end of week nine, what we'll be doing is we will be putting the applications for one-on-one program. So there'll be 20. One-on-one programs. Each of those one-on-ones we'll have for one hour coaching sessions with me. And at the end of that, you'll have your personal. Accountability program in place. You have to take those for consecutively each week for a four week period and there is a six months. For you to choose. So you can either choose March, April, may, et cetera. And that one-on-one coaching is available to anybody. It's a first come first serve basis. You'll receive an email from me because you're a part of that list. And you can apply for that this 20 available. And it. There'll be date stamp. First come first served. There'll be. Five deep dive analysis. And they, each one of these is worth two and a half thousand dollars. And it's where I work with you, the business owner, and you have to have a business with more than five employees. So I'm sorry for those who don't have five employees, but there's, there has to be the size of the organization for this to be of any value to you. And that program is three one hour sessions with me where we do some discovery. It's you giving me access to your documentation? Access to some of your staff so that I can have a conversation with them. And then I will give you a deep dive analysis of one of your functional areas. So not all of them, just one. And we will pick that. It can be sales, marketing, finance, operations IT and we'll dig it. We'll dig deep into that particular area and I'll give you recommendations on process improvements and business improvements in that one particular area. And finally. What I'll be giving is one scale success solution. Full-blown. With all of, with a full-blown report. Wait. Looking at all of your functional areas. And that's valued at over $5,000 for that. That will be done as a lucky door prize so everyone who has a business that is on our subscription list. Can apply for the bonus offer the business bonus offer. And we'll pick one of those as the as the winner for all of that, regardless of the time. All of the others are first in best dressed. And the ones who provide all of the qualifying information. There'll be a link in the show notes and in the email that I send out to everyone on the list. To a landing page on my website, which will explain all of this in detail. It'll enable you to, if you're not already on my mailing list, it'll enable you to get on my mailing list. And being included in the bonus offer. My goal is for you to become the lazy entrepreneur and so you can continue to do the things that you love and have time to be with the ones that you love. As always, I appreciate you for listening and I hope that information I shared with you today is useful and adds value to your business, and that you're able to be inspired and energized to make a difference in your and others' lives.