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Guest Donna: Prosperity Plan

I have to say I've heard that story more times than I can tell you. And well, it clearly makes my cry every time. It makes me cry, too, because it's such it's such a moving moment. And as Mike said, its defining in in that we can take what could be the worst experience of our lives and turn it into the best experience. And that's really a prelude to what I want to talk to you about. Right now. I'm going to talk to you about planning so it sounds like a little bit of a shift. But bear with me and we're going to get to alignment. Planning is crucial to the success of any business, and yet most small business owners do very little of it. How many of you here have a written business plan? Okay, nobody, and I'm guessing that some of the live audience some people have a written business plan, and a lot of you maybe don't. And that's completely understandable because business plans were really time consuming and entrepreneurs, that's what we have the least up. Oh my gosh, who has time to sit ...

down and write a business plan? I'm busy serving customers and coming up with new products and services and just putting out fires all day. Who has time to plan? Well, the traditional business plan is very time consuming, and I also am guessing that it doesn't feel like it quite fits with your needs. When you think business plan, you think large corporations, you think projections and predictions that really rarely come true. And even if you sit down and take the time to do all of these productions and and I used to do this, I want you to know that I used to read business plans all day, and then I used to write them, and I know what it takes to sit down and do those financial projections and figure out all of the details of a traditional business plan. But then one hiccup happens that throws you off, and basically you take your plan and you toss it out. Or maybe it just sits looks pretty on yourself. So what we recommend unless you need a business plan because you're trying to get a bank loan and very often they're going ask you for a business plan or you're looking for an investor, which you will also need a business plan for unless you really need it. We recommend that you use our prosperity plan format instead. And the reason is because the prosperity plan will help you find that alignment. It helps you figure out we talked about vision earlier. Helps you figure out what your vision is and how you can align with your vision and your mission. And this is what's going to propel you forward and help you be successful. And don't worry if you've already spent the time creating a business plan, we're not telling. You have to throw it out. This is actually very compatible with a business plan, so if you already have a plan, that's great. But what we really love about the prosperity plan and what we recommend is that it's not a document that you write once and you're done with it that you consider it a living, breathing document. As you get more information from your marketplace and about your business, you incorporate that back into your prosperity plan. Somebody asked a question earlier about how do you know where to start? Well, and we said, Start somewhere so you start somewhere with your prosperity plan. But as you go along and you start to figure out more and more about who your real true target market is, you'll adjust it, and that's what you're meant to do. And the other thing that I want you to know about the prosperity plan is it doesn't have to be a fancy 100 page, thick document. You could write this on the back of an envelope if that's how you roll, but do what's comfortable for you. Because if it feels overwhelming, I know you're going to put it off until tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. So these are the different areas that we're going to talk about, and I'm just going to flip that. So the first thing that you do when you're writing your prosperity plan and when I say writing it is very important to write this down. I know a lot of us have the soul in our heads, but there's something very psychologically powerful about actually writing something down, something that you can go back to and review, and it really when you write it down, it looks more real. And if it's more riel, you're more likely to achieve it, so the first step in the prosperity plan is called. We call it my company's life mission and and we have a quote here, that purpose for our existence and our relentless commitment to growth. And what we mean by that is we all have a purpose in life, and some of you may have done some work on. You know what is my purpose? And others of you might not have ever given it a second thought. But I'm asking you to think about it today. What is the purpose behind what you dio? Your purpose is your why it's why you do what you dio. It is not what you dio, and it is not a goal. Those air different. Those come out of your purpose. And here's an example. Let's let's say that you love Children and you love bringing joy and happiness to Children, and you feel that that is your purpose in life. That is always your purpose. However, what you do with it can vary immensely. You could run a chain of toy stores. You could be a clown in a circus. You could run a preschool, or you could you know, teach drama to Children or some or dance or something else that you love to dio You could run a summer camp. I could go on and on, but the difference is that your purpose stays the same, and how you fulfill it can vary. But once you know your purpose, your own purpose because, after all, you're the business owner and you're the business founder. And as Mike said, you want your business to be in alignment with who you are. So once you know what your purpose is and you think back to your purpose and a lot of that can come out of. If you do that life beat exercise, you start to see patterns in your life. Once you know that you can translate that into your company mission. And if you have a powerful company mission, that's something that everyone who comes into contact with you can get behind. Your employees can get behind your mission, your vendors, your clients. They can all feel your mission and propel you forward towards it. So it's much more powerful to say our mission is to bring joy and happiness to Children through opening up a toy store in every town than to say our goal is to open a toy store in every town. So sit down. Do that Life beat exercise. Think about what brings you happiness. What brings you joy? When when you're really in the flow, when you're working and you're happy and you feel like you're in the zone, what's behind that? What is it that's making you feel that way? Generally, that's you're going to find your purpose in there. Okay? And any any questions before I move on to the next section and we're good, we're good. Anyone here? Great. So the next step is my company's destiny. What were destined to be basically, this is your vision. This is the vision that we talked about when we did the survival trap exercise. This piece is something that you should not skip and you absolutely should write down. You should have this in writing because it is the key to your motivation, and it is the key to keeping you going regardless of where you are or what happens in your business. This is what's going to keep you tapped into why you're doing what you're doing because you have your purpose and then you have your vision. And when I say vision, yes, absolutely. If you want to write down how much money your company is going to be making and what products you'll be selling and you know how you'll be positioned in the marketplace, that's all important. But make sure it's not just about the facts. When you're writing your vision, think about what is my life going to look like? What is my job going to be every day? Um, think of yourself as a screenwriter and set the scene so that when you read this vision to yourself and we recommend you read it every single day to yourself when you read this vision, you are excited every time you read it. You're like, Yes, this is going to be awesome when I get here, that's what you're shooting for. And if you don't feel that, then go back and add some more. And I've read, you know, we work with clients on this and I've read people's visions, and I've had them go back, and I've said Let's round it out a little more, rounded out a little more and eventually what they come back with sometimes blows my mind. I read one where things business owner. He wakes up in the morning on the beach in Hawaii and he goes for a jog before work. And then, you know, he works from his home office on the beach. Somebody else's vision might be. I wake up in my Manhattan apartment and I walk into my office, where their computer screens everywhere and I check in with all my European subsidiaries. You know, it could be infinite, the different scenarios you can come up with. But it has to be the scenario that resonates with you. What is it that you want your life and your business toe look like? And write it down and read it to yourself. My company's area of innovation. We call this a Oh, I it's how we do it. What we named by area of innovation is how are you going to stand out from every other business out there that does what you do or something similar to what you dio? A lot of business owners believe that they have to compete in every single area. They have to be great at everything that their competitors do. Mike was talking about kind of copying what other people, what other people do and how that can be a mistake. We're pivoting, pivoting too much and trying to be all things to all people. We have three main areas that we kind of break down these area of innovations into quality, price or convenience. If you try to compete in all three areas, you're going to struggle unless you come up with a revolutionary way to do something in your industry that nobody else has come up with. So you come up with a way to manufacture something that's the highest quality, but half the for half the cost of anyone else that will revolutionize your industry. But otherwise it's really hard toe have super high quality and be the lowest price. So what we recommend is you pick one area. Price is the easiest to understand. If you're going to compete on price, it basically means you're going to be the lowest cost provider. Who can tell me a big company that competes successfully on price? WalMart. Exactly classic example. They don't generally claim to have the highest quality or even to be the most convenient, but they always have the lowest prices, and they they advertise that and they drill that into your head. It is quite difficult for a small business owner to compete on Price because what's going to happen is somebody else is always going to come in and try to undercut you. And we've actually seen business owners price themselves below their costs. They're losing money because they think this is going to get them business. The problem is, the people who come to you because you're that low are not going to pay you higher prices. You're going to be stuck. So we recommend that you choose either quality or convenience. And then price becomes almost irrelevant because you're so good at what you do. So what is convenience? What do we mean by convenience? Well, we could mean two things. One is just that you found a more convenient way to deliver your product or service, or it could mean that your product or service creates convenience for your marketplace. An example of a company that grew exponentially through convenience is blockbuster. So in the old days, back when videos first got introduced, the only way Teoh rent video was to go to your little corner video store. I hope some of you remember that. And you know, when you release will come out and you'd be all excited. I didn't catch it in the movie theaters. I want to go see it. And they'd say, Oh, yeah, we don't have that. And there's, like, a five week waiting list and not convenient. And then Blockbuster came in and they asked the question, What if? And this is a question that you should all be asking yourselves, What? If so, they said, What if we could tell our customers that they can always get the movie that they want? We're going to make it really convenient and easy for them to get the movies that they want. And of course, this took a big investment on their part. But they opened these superstores and they guaranteed you that the new releases would be there when you went to rent them. And if it wasn't there, then you got rewarded in some way. Well, we know what happened. Blockbuster put the small mom and pop stores out of business, but something else happened. They stopped innovating in their area of convenience They kind of sat back a little bit on their laurels. Somebody else came in and found a way to make it 10 times more convenient than blockbuster. We all know was Netflix, right? But then what happened to Netflix? Similarly, Yes. So? So the lesson here is make sure when you pick an area that you think you can be 10 times better than anyone else at that, you don't just say OK, I did it. You always have to be thinking of more and more ways that you can improve on it. I'll give you an example of a company. Whose doing that super successfully. It's Amazon. Okay. Think about Amazon. Their area of innovation is also convenience. It is super fast purchase and delivery. Everything they do is focused around innovating in that area. So how many of you have used one click? Anyone familiar with one click? Right. How easy is that? You go click. I want it. It's yours, right? No filling out forms. And oh, you forgot to put the zip code and and something happens and then you have to punch your Have you ever had this happen? You put your whole credit card number in. And then something goes wrong and it erases it. And you have to go back. Yeah, none of that With Amazon also delivery times they there were it, were houses they're constantly innovating on. How can they get faster and faster at from the time that you click and say, I want this to the time that it gets to the carrier to go out? They're they're really working on their warehouse times constantly. Another thing that they're doing now, which is fascinating to me is they've decided to go into the grocery delivery business. However, they're not doing this because they've decided groceries on the way to go. This is the big market. They're doing it because it will set up an infrastructure of delivery that will allow them to deliver other products more quickly. So they're constantly, consistently everything they dio looking to make it more and more convenient for you. The consumer toe purchase products from Amazon and we all know how big Amazon it's. That's convenience. So if you're not competing on price and you're not competing on convenience, what's left is quality. So how many of us don't say that we have a high quality product or service. In other words, everybody says, Oh, we're quality right way have high quality. So what we mean by quality is not the general high quality. What we mean is pick a specific quality and say, I'm going to be the best of this so classic example Who can tell me what what specific quality Maytag competes on? Never breaks? Yeah, reliability. Exactly. You know, you picture the lonely Maytag repairman, but it's really it's not just an advertisement. I know I have a Maytag appliance that I've had for over 20 years and maybe two times, possibly three times. I've had an issue with it, and I've had a repair person come out and have to replace apart. I'll say, you know this getting kind of old. Do you think I should replace it? Oh, no. This is a Maytag. This will last you forever. They compete on reliability. There's another company that we know called next TVA, and they provide voice over I p phone service. So for anyone who doesn't know what that is, it's it's Internet phone service, basically, and it involves equipment. Eso. In other words, you may, they may come to your office and install phone equipment and also its virtual a swell this companies started five years ago. In 2000 and eight, they came into a very crowded, saturated marketplace that had some huge competitors. Who does that? You know, it seems a little crazy, but they felt that they had something to offer, and what they had to offer was quality service. And when they say quality service, because again, who says they don't have quality service? Everybody does. They take their commitment to quality service to a whole new level, and they're always looking for different ways to provide better and better service. They provide such amazing service that sometimes their competitors, people who own equipment from their competitors will call next Eva and say we can you know, we can't get this fixed or, you know, my my service provider is telling me, you know, they can't come out for a week. Can you help me next? Evil will give them the same service that they give to their customers. Well, guess how many of those people have switched over to next? Eva. So today, five years later, next, Eva has employees and 75,000 business customers. That is amazing growth in five years because they picked one area. They're reasonably good. It everything else. But they picked one area to excel at, so that is area of innovation. And I know that's a lot to absorb. So I just want to stop here and see if there any questions. I actually have a question, and I kind of want to know if you think that this is following in kind of what you're saying. It's a personal. My mom has a business, and she regularly hears people say, Oh, well, I can get that cheaper somewhere else And it's her own business And she says to them, Absolutely, if you like, please go there very polite But her thing is she does custom sales for sailboat, so it's unique and every sales unique, and it's all custom, and she sells herself that way. She calls herself a bad business woman, but I can't I think that your this is what you're saying. Is that true? Yes. And actually, in the in the next section, we're going to dive into that even further. How you know, how do you deal with that and how you distinguish that. But if you can come up with one thing that your customers care about, it has to be something that they care about, obviously, that you can show you do way better than anybody else. Then people are willing to pay the higher price. You're no longer a commodity, and that's what you don't want anyone to be able to compare you. You want to be leaps and bounds above and beyond your competition, and you obviously can't be that in every single area. So that's why we say Pick one thing that you know you can you can be really, really good at and exploit that well. I can't wait to go back and tell her that she's doing good. Yes, she is. Any other questions before we move on? Okay, so everyone writing furiously, I hope that's a good sign. Okay, My company's immutable laws, which is the way we do it. So immutable laws are really a blend of your ethics and your core values and your self assigned law all wrapped into one. It's who you are, and it's what you stand for, and you may be thinking to yourself. Well, what does this have to do with business? Inevitably, in your life and in your business, you are going to run into people and situations that challenge your ethics, that challenge your core values. And it is really important that you know what those ethics and those values are. And you stand your ground and you say this is what's important to me, and I'm not going to compromise that, because when you start to compromise your immutable laws and when we say immutable winning, those were the things that are so important to you that they really don't change. When you start to compromise them, you start to become really unhappy with what you're doing. So maybe you're working with a client that really doesn't fit with who you are and what you do. Their ethics may be different than yours. Maybe they're asking you to do things that don't sit right with you. If you go ahead and do that, you're going to fall out of alignment and out of sync with your business. As Mike said earlier, you should be soul mates with your business. It's very hard to do that when you're compromising your values and your immutable laws. So we believe, Excuse me, that it's very important for you to write down to know what those laws are as an example. So Mike and I sat down and did this together when we started our business and one of our top it's actually number one for us that we share, and he's already talked about it is authenticity and the quote that he said, I know it's hanging above Mike's desk and it's hanging above my desk, which is be yourself everyone else has taken, and this is important to us because we don't have to pretend where somebody else to be successful. And we don't want to work with people who are not being their authentic Selves. And I know personally that this is important to me because of how I feel, how I feel when I'm working with someone or interacting with someone who's not being authentic and how I feel when I can be my authentic self, be accepted for that and be successful because of it, that that brings me joy and happiness. So if you're wondering, how do I know what my immutable laws are? Think about the things that make you angry. And why did they make you angry and then think about the things that make you really happy? And why did they make you happy? And there's an immutable law in there. Another one of our immutable laws is give to give. I'm sure you've all heard people say give to get give to get, go out and give something and you'll get something back. We feel really strongly if we're going to give something, give for the joy of giving. If I want to help you out with something, I'm going to do it Not because I expect you now to do something for me in return. That's a strong, immutable law for us. And if somebody doesn't share that, someone who is an employee or somebody who you know is even a client, then it's going to be very hard for us to work with. Um um, another one is jerks can go home. Life is too short toe work with jerks. And this this one of ours got tested very early on for us, as Mike was saying, You know, in the very beginning, when you get started up, you take any client you're like, OK, bring it on. Somebody wants to pay me. I'm going to do that job And we had somebody contact us that wanted to hire us, and I had a conversation with this guy. And as the conversation was going on, this feeling in my gut was getting worse and worse, like Oh my gosh, he's a jerk Like he just the way he was talking about his employees and other people like he just was making me feel icky. Like I wanted to go take a shower right after I got off the phone and I called up Mike and I said, Mike, I can't work with this guy. He's a jerk. He says them, we're not going to work with him. And I wrote him a nice note about how he wasn't a good fit, and luckily that was actually true. He really wasn't a good fit, but we stuck to that right from the beginning and it makes a difference. We Onley work with people that we know share our immutable laws and the relationship is great. We are constantly talking about how much we love our clients won't be like we'll get off a phone call or a session. I'll be like, Oh my God, she's so great and like like, yeah, she's so great. That's how you want to feel about all your clients. So an immutable laws. A lot of these things are going to come back throughout the next two days. We're going to show you different ways that you're going to apply this in your business. Um, and last is my company's community. Your community is That's your market. Those are your top clients. Those are those Are your peeps the people that you love toe work with? Like I was just saying that people you love to work with and those that you know you would love to clone. If you had 100 of them, you would be. You know, you would be perfectly happy and cruising along on DWI. We're going to dive into that further in, I think in the next, actually in the next session. So this is the prosperity plan. I'm wondering if one of you in the audience would like to come up and we can go through this for your business and see if we can hone in on what your mission, your destiny, your area of innovation. Obviously, we're not going to write the whole document, but kind of touch on some of these for your business.