Case Study - From Failing to $3M and 3-Month Vacation
The Situation
Norbert was struggling to transition from contractor to business owner. His time spent on the job-site was wearing him down and wearing him out. He was stressed.
In fact the first tasking I gave him was “one week not allowed on-site”. He had been acting like an employee – a stressed out, micro-managing employee.
We had to take him out of his business so that he could regain calmness, become objective and identify what he was building and why. This step, removes you from the stress so that you can see more clearly – so that you can realize that you can author your life, your business.
The Business Owner identity allows you to take back the reins on your business and make wise and visionary choices with true confidence. Start to see delegation, team building and working ON the business come together.
Transforming Sales Starts from Intention – Yours
When you are acting and feeling like an employee, sales can be very challenging. And when Norbert approached me, he absolutely detested and wanted to stop having to do sales. (That didn’t last long!)
Now that Norbert was starting to shift into the identity of Business Owner – we worked on setting boundaries…
First – only work from your excellence; that core of genius and value. When you really zero in on what you do, it helps you stop pursuing projects that are not a fit.
Next it becomes easy to identify who you want to work with… and who you don’t. Knowing your Ideal Client allows you to communicate with real confidence, build true Rapport – makes sales into service.
When asked, Norbert could actually easily describe who was an amazing fit for Alair, and what type of project was perfect – he had just never put up the “velvet rope”.
The tasking here was a challenge: get to “Hell, Yes!” or “Hell, NO!” in 3 minutes or less on that first discovery call. Not the client deciding it but Norbert himself.
We based this on whether rapport was achieved in that first 3 minutes. Sure, we loosened this up a bit later… but not much!
This is easy when you really know your ideal client avatar… and you have a bit of practice.
This tasking took away the pressure of trying to close every prospect, saving time and energy and freeing up hundreds of hours to focus on clients that valued the services.
Sales became just a neutral conversation on fit and outcomes.
Create Your Vision of Success
This conscious design of your vision of success, the specific goals and numbers that lead to it, plotting the timeline for when you will have it…
When you have confidence, passion and grit this becomes a simple design process.
Visualizing the concrete ways that you will measure that success and when are what kicked everything into gear for Norbert. He stopped putting things out to some unknown future and decided when he would achieve them.
We tied business success to lifestyle benefits to add in the motivation of family togetherness and adventures to his business motivation.
Success is Built From Small Actions Done Repeatedly
For the business owner, success is not about working hard hours, it is about shepherding a business though the ability to create a vision, nurture a team, and take care of the higher level decisions that ensure the health and growth of the company.
This necessitates time to think, to plan and to get into flow. As Norbert shifted into Business Owner mode, some changes that happened included shifting out of reaction mode and into proactive planning mode, seeing several moves ahead when it came to planning, delegating the work in advance rather than scrambling and doing it himself.
These were not huge dramatic changes but tweaks to identity and habits. Incremental changes that build into exponential results.
Poise, Calm and Mental Health
As Norbert worked to add meditation and journalling into his day, additional benefits were the natural result.
He felt on top of his game.
He knew things were not slipping through the cracks.
He was able to step out of the stress and emotion and activate his solution mode in situations that used to create dread and fear.
This freed up his time and energy to pursue greater results and then bigger and new projects.
3rd Party and Un-biased Coaching
Whether a franchisee or a start-up, you hold the reins for the business. You get to choose what you are creating… it is not based on what other businesses are doing, or trying to do all things for all people.
And being a successful franchise is a balance of running your business while meeting the expectations of the franchisor.
Outside non-biased coaching provides a more open, holistic and empowered owner outcome program.
This coaching allowed Norbert to take ownership of the franchise, to step back and become objective.
We did the Identity work to shift into business owner on his own terms.