How To Build a Business That Runs Without You!

[00:00:00] You. [00:00:01] Hi guys. I'm really excited today to talk about my upcoming book. So I've not really released too many details about this in terms of what the concept is, you know, what the content is, what what we're going to find in the chapters, who it's aims for, how it's going to help people. So we now have a title. So it's how to build a business that runs without you. And as part of that process in the book, I will be explaining firstly why I'm writing the book. So I've been in business for around twelve years. I've got a team of 17 team members. I started it from scratch. [00:00:48] I trained as an accountant. But it's fair to say I am pretty much a business owner and an entrepreneur nowadays because I don't really do that much accounting. So my story is based on a lot of business owners kind of being stuck on the tools, stuck in the weeds, and not really being able to have their own transformation or their own growth to kind of turn into a business owner, as I call it. And a business owner is not the same as being an employee in your own business. So I'm using my experience. [00:01:20] It was may last year. I turned 40 and I actually took a month off. I spent three weeks in Florida and it was a bit of a moment for me, a milestone, to not say I've made it, because I think life is constant growth. We're always learning, there's always another challenge, there's always something more to do. [00:01:42] I've got loads of goals I still want to tick off, but also a big part of being an ambitious person or being a business owner is to sometimes tap yourself on the back or maybe look where you've come from and just acknowledge you have made some progress. And for me, being able to take a month off, actually inspired by Mike McCallowick's clockwork, which is a fantastic book that kind of gives you a little bit of a roadmap and a strategy to help really toward what my podcast is about, is to help build a business that can run without you. It gives you some sort of ideas and it inspired the challenge for me. I took some little tips from that book, but the biggest thing I took was it inspired me to say, right, twelve months from now I am going to take a month off from my business. [00:02:32] And that's where the book was really born. So it's kind of been over ten years in the making, but inspired by what happened to me, more so gave me extra clarity last year. So the book is really for anyone who wants to try and grow a business that runs without them. [00:02:49] So if you're a business owner and you love what you do, and you want to be metaphorically on the tools, you might be a tradesman. You are actually on the tools. But if you love what your business activity is, if you're a painter and decorator is doing the painting, if you're an accountant, it's doing the accounting. If you're a financial advisor, it's giving that financial advice, whatever that means for you and your business. If you love being on the tools and you always want to be that person doing that kind of work in your business, that's fine. This might not be the kind of podcast and the book for you. However, if you are ambitious about building a business, building a team, scaling the value and the impact you can make to other people, but also giving yourself as the business owner more flexibility, more freedom in your life to kind of pick and choose to do the things you love doing you're passionate about. And to also, I hate the word passive income because it makes a lot of assumptions that everything's easy, but if you want a business that it doesn't mean you have to, but it can run to a large extent without you, then this will be the book for you. So the beginning of the book is really broke into three main sections. So the beginning of the book, I call it the busy fall system. And I don't mean to offend anyone because the sort of people is going to offend probably shouldn't be reading the book in the first place. But a lot of people kind of like busy falls, where they're just busy. And these are the people that are not in the camp I mentioned, where you love doing what you do, or maybe you do, but actually you don't want to be doing it forever. They're just head down. Week starts on Monday, flat out, and every week kind of repeats itself. There's an expression saying someone who's been in business for 25 years may have actually only been in business one year, 25 times. It's kind of those sort of people, they're not really looking to grow in terms of their own journey and transformation as a business owner or build a business. Well, sorry, they would like to, but they don't know how. They're not spending the time on their business. They're too busy working in their business. So those people that don't have that intentionality in terms of what they're trying to do, but actually they would like to have more freedom in their business. So I kind of stereotype those people a busy fool because we're all familiar with the term. It's just kind of being busy for the sake of being busy. [00:05:18] So I call it the busy four system. So what I talk about is all the things not to do first. So it's kind of getting rid of the bad form or making people aware of the bad form before I can give you some new concepts, tools, strategies to actually scale and build a business that can run without you. So I'm not going to go through every chapter, but I'll introduce some of the sort of concepts so that the first chapter I talk about the mortgage problem and as a profit first certified professional, as an accountant, this is quite close to my heart, but it also links heavily into psychology, self development, manifestation, all that sort of stuff is a lot of people start their business and I call it the mortgage problem because their sole aim is to cover their mortgage. And mortgage, I say mortgage, it's your bills effectively. But we all know what we mean when we say, I'm just trying to pay my mortgage. So a lot of people start business and really they set their expectations quite low at the beginning. And I understand why you want to cover your mortgage because we all need to live, we get used to a certain lifestyle, we start our own business and we do need to pay our mortgage. But I call it the mortgage problem because people have been stuck trying to pay their mortgage for the last 25 years. [00:06:36] And that's why it's a huge problem, because people's mindset doesn't graduate or doesn't move on from just paying the mortgage to what's the next step? What's my five year plan? What's my ten year plan? What does my dream house look like? What do my dream lifestyle look like, my dream week? Do I want a holiday home? Do I want to travel the world? [00:07:02] And we start going into the psychology of money as well, because it's not about being greedy and wanting more, it's about being abundant, taking advantage of your opportunities in life, growth. [00:07:16] Going beyond just paying your mortgage means you can help support other people. So I call it the mortgage problem because the barrier gets set quite low. So that's an example of one of the things I will be talking about in how to build a business that runs without you. [00:07:34] And then the second part of the book, I've got a trademarked system called the entrepreneurial freedom system. So it's my nine step process that I have used. Looking back and reflecting on what worked for me to build a business that runs without you. So I will go through those steps and give people strategies. First, I'm going to pick up the bad habit and help you identify what you might be doing wrong or where you could be showing up a bit differently week to week. Second part of the book, I will be going through my concepts and my strategies to actually make things a lot easier, but start putting some strong foundations in place for your business. And the third part is actually still part of the entrepreneurial freedom system, but it's a big part of it and it's not a slow process. It's how do we transform your role? So if you put all these foundations in place, I'm not saying you should be sat on the beach, because actually I don't want to just be sat on a beach doing nothing. But I do have a lot of freedom to choose when I work, what I work on, who I spend my time with, and I'm still going through that transformation now. And in many ways, it's an evolving thing over your life. What we want to do is get you to spend the time on the things you love to do you're passionate about. They almost don't feel like work, but they are connected to your business activity. So how can we transform your role and evolve your role to be what I refer to kind of as a visionary in your business? And it's a really nice place to be in. So that's what the book is about. And good news, I'm going to be also running a podcast to go through a lot of these concepts and to also talk about strategies, real world examples. How can you start to build a business that runs without you? So keep in touch and reach out if you have any questions. Thanks guys. Bye.