E-Myth Company Story of the Month June 2010

When I signed up for the Mastery program, I was frantically looking for answers. I wanted to know where to take the business, how to talk about it and who to tell. Furthermore, the condition and direction of the business depended on the projects and opportunities that came our way instead of a predetermined strategy. While the work and revenue that it generated was a huge blessing, it was leading my life down a path that was not as fulfilling as I had imagined when I first started it.

However, what I realized was that I was looking for the answers in the wrong places: competitors, prospective customers, blogs, books and websites. I didn’t find the answers until I took the time to remember the joy and excitement that I felt when I first started it, almost ten years ago. What I found was that the best source of answers to these types of questions lies within myself. I’d drowned out my own thoughts with to-do lists, agendas, emails, and proposals. The most valuable lesson I learned in the Mastery program was to unplug regularly and give my brain the space to think.

How the program has changed my business? So many ways!

• The direction of the firm is now completely inline with my personal values and dreams. We are developing a new brand identity and service offering and are already picking up tremendous momentum in this new and exciting direction. Work has become a thrill for me and my team members.
• We have a flourishing company culture that is created proactively by me and my team. We get together outside of work on a monthly basis to build deeper connections between team members and their families.
• We finally have a messaging strategy that describes what we do and how we are different. All of this was done with our target market in mind, resulting in a message that resonates with its audience far more effectively. In fact, a brand new lead generation system that I built with my coach yielded a 10X ROI within one week of being launched. This one sale paid for the Mastery program multiple times over.
• My sales presentations were once hit-and-miss and painfully time consuming. After E-Myth, my discussions with new leads are process-driven and deliberate. While saving upwards of 5-8 hours per lead, the new system is simple, candid and unbelievably effective. Within three short months of putting it in place, I have completely booked the production team through the end of 2010 and am in the process of hiring a second team to take on more work. This has been a personal ambition for over nine years.
• It’s only June and our annualized revenue for 2010 is 62% greater than last year.

Before Mastery, I acted as the production team’s central work schedule. I would direct their work on a daily basis, guiding, critiquing and reprioritizing tasks and projects. I held the details of each project in my head, resulting in miscommunication, frustration and many late nights. I was, by design, the number one bottleneck in the business, but I was too close to the problem to realize it. With the help of my coach, we now have a centralized work schedule that informs, guides and tracks the team’s work on our client projects without me. We meet for 15 minutes per day to discuss progress and impediments and we spend half a day, once every two weeks, to populate the schedule. As the business owner, I can check on progress, see how the team is doing on an upcoming deadline and, most importantly, rest assured knowing that we are fulfilling promises to clients on time and on budget.

Another critical lesson I learned with Mastery Impact is that having the right people on the team is just as important as deciding what the business is going to do. In hiring and recruiting, as in other areas, I would make decisions based on circumstance and not according to a predetermined plan. I’m pleased to say this cycle is broken. Each step of our six-step hiring process has been carefully crafted to help us to find the best people to join our close-knit team. With this process in hand, I am actively expanding our team and am completely confident that our next hire will perform brilliantly.

My coach is a tremendous source of encouragement and security. As a small business owner, much of the process is about personal development and yet I never felt judged or rushed. He is a terrific resource in helping me to explore new ideas and nurture epiphanies as we progress through the program. Finally, having someone to hold me accountable to my commitments helps me to get the most out of the program, even when tactical work gets in the way.

Napoleon Hill once said, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” The Mastery program gave me the tools and guidance to put this concept to work for my life and my business. I highly recommend Mastery Impact to other business owners — just as any professional athlete needs a coach, so too does the professional entrepreneur.