Here are 10 keys to grow your business by 10 times.
In this episode, I'm going to answer the question "What can a business do to improve
its productivity?" I love that question. I've helped thousands of business owners,
entrepreneurs, grow their businesses by maybe 10 times in 60 months or less.
So, get ready. I'm going to actually go through 10 concepts or keys that can transform your business,
engage more customers and be able to dramatically, exponentially increase your productivity.
So my name is Doug Andrew and I've been an entrepreneur a personal business owner,
sole proprietor, I have several corporations and several LLCs. I have actually taken many of my
businesses to higher levels in less than 60 months at 10 times the productivity. So, I'm going to use
a lot of examples from my own stories. And not every business that I've started was successful.
I've learned a lot of lessons. But I've also coached many entrepreneurs to do the same thing
and increase their productivity dramatically. In fact, I'm writing a book called 10 Keys to
Transform Your Practice While Simplifying Your Life. A lot of times people think, "Well, if I'm
going to go out and try to earn 10 times as much, I'm going to have to work 10 times harder." No,
no, no. I show people how to increase productivity while simplifying their life. So, get ready.
Now, in our family, we have LLCs, like I said. Now, in our family, LLC stands for a lifetime
learning commitment. Yeah, I've got a lot of LLC entities. But see we'll never stop learning. So,
where did I learn all of these? I have invested north of 3 million dollars in my lifetime
sharpening my saw as steven covey would say. I belong to all kinds of mastermind groups,
strategic coach, the genius network, 12 leaders, and brilliant minds group, and so forth. And so,
I get to rub shoulders with the likes of Steve Forbes and peter Diamandis and Richard Branson
and Ariana Huffington of the Huffington Post. These are people who I get to glean from in these
various think tanks, these millionaire summits that I attend. That's where I've invested money.
And I have learned these concepts from several different places. I'm going to go through the 10
most dramatic keys that took my practice. And I'm talking about "You know, up until about the
turn of the century 2000, I was so happy. Sort of like a one-man-band. And I was netting a half
a million dollars a year." And a lot of people said, "Well, golly Doug, you've arrived." Well
as an entrepreneur, there's really 2 kinds of entrepreneurs. There's lifestyle entrepreneurs
and those are the ones who finally get up to an income and they just want to maintain that
lifestyle. I'm more of a growth entrepreneur. I don't want to ever stop growing or stop
learning. I want to grow exponentially. I was antsy. I had sort of had a ceiling of complexity.
But I was making a half a million dollars a year. A lot of people said, "Aren't you satisfied?"
Well, yeah. It's not about the money. It's about blessing more lives. And I was only able to reach
so many people by myself. And so, that's when I had advice from some of my coaches like Dan
Sullivan of the Strategic Coach. He said, "Doug, you've got to sell your recipe to your success
instead of just selling the cake to your own clients. You've got to make your competitors
your customers." I said, "What?" He said, you need to make your competitors your customers."
Your competitors will pay you for your wisdom, for your recipe, for the way that they can help their
clients and then you will dramatically increase your income. That was back in the year 2000.
In 5 years, by 2005, I had gone from 500,000 net to 5 million dollars. I had 10 times my revenue by
doing what he said. And this is where I was able to go out and create a system and sell my recipe
to other financial advisors and give them my systems and methods. And I was able to reach
more people in America. They used my books. My books became national bestsellers, New York Times,
Wall Street Journal number one bestsellers and in 2007 because I began to capture my wisdom instead
of being scarcity-minded --"Oh, this is my little secret." No. I shared it. And because I shared it
in one fell swoop, people knew it was my wisdom. In fact, my network of over 3,000 advisors,
CPAs, tax attorneys, financial planners, insurance agents, real estate, accountants,
attorneys. They were protecting me because if anybody plagiarized my wisdom, they would say,
"You didn't come up with that. Doug Andrew came up with that." And so, they actually protected
my intellectual property with me. Now, people have tried to copy my stuff. But I can innovate faster
than I can litigate. And so, I've always realized that I can always be ahead of it and grow by 10x.
Every 5 years if I want. So, let me share with you the 10 keys that I think are game changers
and it's actually revealed in a book that's going to be coming out very shortly. So, it all started
back when I published my second book. My first book, I self-published and it got the attention
of Time Warner, Warner Business Books. They bought the rights to that and commissioned me to write
several more. And so, it was my second book that we went through a half a million copies. I was
actually invited to speak at the million-dollar roundtable convention. And that's something that
a lot of speakers that's sort of on their bucket list. They want to be invited someday to speak at
the million-dollar roundtable convention. It's an unbelievable story that I won't share here. But I
was in the right place at the right time with the right spirit. I was passionate about my B Hag. A B
Hag is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. And I wanted to be a best-selling author. I wanted to take this
wisdom that was in me and capture it and send it out and bless the lives of many, many more people
that I could just one on one with my clients. And so, I was talking about that, right after 9/11
in 2001, right after the terrorist attacks, I was at a convention. Little did I know that the head,
the president, the chairman who was the previous year's president and the vice-president
of the million-dollar roundtable were at this table. We didn't have name tags on. And I was so
passionate and they went, "Whoa! Would you like to speak at next year's million-dollar round table."
I was blown away. I don't think that was just chance. But I was able to speak and I gave this
talk. It was 10 keys to achieve the top of the table and beyond. And it was well... You
simplify your career. Well, long story short, they thought I might have just a breakout group
of 50 people. They ended up scheduling me in the big ballroom that held a thousand people and 1,600
people showed up the fire marshal had to turn away another 300 people. I sold 780 books in the next
break. That was only 20 minutes long. And all of a sudden, bam! But the talk I gave revealed the
10 keys. And I have tweaked these ever since. It was the most listened and purchased talk at that
convention back then. And so, I have given this talk adapted to chiropractors, to orthodontists,
to real estate agents, to CPAs, you name it. Any business owner, any entrepreneur, if they will
apply these 10 keys, their productivity will go through the roof. So, let me just simply summarize
them with a scorecard that I'm going to have in the book. And I'll explain them each briefly. And
then if this intrigues you, I would encourage that you learn more. I have other YouTube videos
that go into more depth in every single one of these keys. So, when I have entrepreneurs
come to my talk, I usually pass out this 11 by 17 scorecard. And it lists these T key principles all
10 of them over here on the left. And what I want people to do while I teach these concepts is to
score themselves from poor, fair, good, better to best on a scale of 1 to 10. So, there's actually
statements in here. Whatever statement typifies sort of where they're at in their business. If
it's the yellow, if it's right here, then they would give themselves a score of 5 or 6 over here.
After 10 principles, the perfect score would be 100. But now, they've quantified. "Oh,
I'm only at 47." Well, don't beat yourself up. The most important thing you need to know when you're
going to go on a trip somewhere for the very first time is where are you at. A GPS needs to know
where you're at before it can tell you where to go on how to get to your destination, okay? This
helps you understand where you are at on a scale of zero to 100. So, here's the 10 keys. Number 1,
identify and focus on the profile of your ideal clients. Most businesses, they focus on everybody,
and frankly, 80% of their revenue is usually derived from the top 20% of their customers.
But they're spending 80 of their time with the people that only make up 20 of their income. So,
I teach them how to flip that to where they're spending their time with the people who make up
the most income, and the revenue starts going through the roof. Number 2, move your professional
objectives to the highest value level. Most people operate at a commodity level. It's a dog-eat-dog,
a competitive world. People just think that dentists or chiropractors are a dime a dozen,
they're all the same. So, I help them move from the commodity perception to maybe they offer
unique products. Maybe they offer exceptional service. But that's the highest that most get
to. I talk about a educational experience, a unique experience. That's why Starbucks commands
$4 to five dollars for $10 cents worth of liquid because of the unique experience of Starbucks.
But the level that's the highest, you'll have the highest compensation with the least competition
is when you provide a meaningful transformation for people. So, I teach entrepreneurs how to do
that. Third, provide greater clarity balance focus and confidence for your clients, your patients,
your customers. I teach how to do that because clarity gives your customers and patients energy.
When you have balance that takes the wobble out of their life regarding what you do for them. When
you help them focus on what matters most, that increases the accuracy in which they achieve their
goals with clarity balance and focus, they have much greater confidence. People will come to you
if they they walk away feeling more confident when they walked in. Confidence attracts opportunities.
So, that's number 3. Number 4, operate within your unique ability and delegate everything else. Most
entrepreneurs spend a bunch of time doing stuff that they're only you know barely competent at.
No. You delegate that and you should only be focused on the things that you are superior at.
And you delegate the rest. It's not saving you money to do it yourself. It's costing you money.
And I can prove it to you. You go down here to create more opportunities than capability. Dan
Sullivan calls it "If you have more C (capability) than you have opportunities, how sad is that?" I
want to flip that for you. I want you to have way more opportunities than you have the capability to
seize. And then (that's a nice problem) you have a filter. Which opportunities, which customers,
which patients are you going to work with? Which ones are you going to delegate to an associate or
a staff? And which ones you're going to just walk away from? But most entrepreneurs, they just...
Anybody that can fog a mirror, they take in as a customer. And it's a waste of their time. Next,
balance your life. Take the wobble out of your life. Use a freedom time system. And have days
where you don't address your emails or anything you go away and you recreate. It's called
re-create. And that's where I get most of my innovation is when I'm recreating. But then I
come back and I focus and I schedule clients and customers maybe on Tuesdays and Thursdays. When
I'm focusing on helping my clients and customers, that's where I get paid. Other days, I am learning
new capabilities. I am out in mastermind groups. I'm doing the paperwork. Those might be Mondays
and Wednesdays. But I take between 120 to 160 free days a year where I download. You will
actually increase your free time and simplify your life when you do this. It's not going to
cost you money. It makes you money. It's amazing what people find out. Use professional coaches and
mentors. So, I point my students, many of them to different coaches that I've used. And I coach many
business owners and I facilitate mastermind groups. And when they come, every quarter,
we go through each one of these tools for example. These principles and we dive really deep. And in 2
and a half years, many of them have 10 times their practice. Use the best tools to solve. I have 20
thinking tools that will help you assess in your business. Who are we missing? Okay? What's the
smallest change that will have the greatest impact? How do we arm our recommenders to
easily defend with pride? Why they engaged with us? Make it easy for people to recommend you.
A lot of entrepreneurs don't think about that. And last of all, redefine your business every 7 years.
You know what? Steve Forbes is the one that taught me this. He redefines his business Forbes Magazine
every 7 years. And if he did not do that, he said he would be out of business. And so, it's not just
every 7 years you bam. You go through that process so that every seven years, if you look back,
the way you do things is totally different than what you did before because if you keep doing
what you've always done, you're going to keep getting what you've always gotten. Most business
owners make the mistake of thinking the way it is today is the way it's always been and the way
it's always going to be. No. You need to adapt to change, social media, advertising, and so forth.
So, if this is giving you a few a-ha moments, I would encourage you to search on this YouTube
channel for other videos that I've recorded with more depth about 10 or 12 minutes on each
of these 10 keys. And if you want to increase the productivity in your business, I would advise that
you implement these 10 for the greatest impact with the smallest amount of time energy and money.