Systems For Business

Hey 👋

Ben Slater here.

This newsletter is for business owners who want to scale their businesses.

Inside each edition I take a deep dive into one business system and I’ll show you how you can use it to scale up and become more free.

These are the exact systems that over 10,000 students have tested inside our business school.

We’ve had clients scale from $0 to $20M in yearly revenue by using these systems, we’ve also had hundreds of clients use them to crack their first $10K month and I’ve personally used them to do multi 7 figures in revenue over the past 10 years of my business journey.

Most of these systems were learnt from great mentors, some of them are ‘syncretic combinations’ between different ideas, models and methods, and a few of them were ‘discovered’ by my own testing and tinkering.

In today’s edition I’ll share;

• More detail on the 6 pillars

• One Key Mistake people make at each level

• One Key Performance Indicator you should aim for

• And finally I’ll define a strategy I call ‘The Three Levels’ which will completely change the strategy you run depending where you are in the business.

If you haven’t yet seen the first edition it’s worth getting up to speed here >

You'll probably have one or more pillars that is more blocked than others - give special attention to those.

Let’s dive in 🙂 

1. Mindset - How to Build Momentum in Your Business.

‘Mindset’ by nature is not grounded as a topic, and it’s for this reason - trying to learn about mindset is like wandering blind, hands tied, deep in a labyrinth with spooks around every corner.

For me, ‘Personal Development’ is a more useful term than ‘mindset’ because it speaks to the outcome we’re actually chasing here. As a business owner you want to develop yourself personally.

Examples of developing yourself personally may include;

• Learning to control your perceptions by asking great questions

• Developing emotional mastery

• Reading books to develop your mind

• Creating a detailed personal life plan

• Consistently setting goals that are In alignment with that plan

• Keeping your body strong, mobile and flexible

• Eating the healthiest and highest quality foods available to you

• Becoming a great public speaker

At the end of the day there is no cookie cutter system for Personal Development because everyone has a different set of values and a different set of ‘raw materials,' however there are certain ways to grow no matter who you are.

‘Mindset’ is about developing your confidence. It’s the confidence that allows you to push your vision to the front, not only in your own life but also into the lives of others.

MINDSET MISTAKE: Not prioritising your Personal Development - It’s the life force of the business, hence more important than any ‘other task.’

Don’t go limp on your Personal Development, you’ll lose your confidence and you’ll quickly find your business has a dimmer switch.

MINDSET KPI: Out of 1-100 how inspired are you about the vision for your business?

My mentor for business mindset since I found him 8 years ago is Dr Demartini - he’s a force of nature, and in my opinion the pre-eminent expert in the world on this topic. You can check him out here >

2. Sales - Creating More Clients and Cash

There are 5 stages that a client will move through to do business with you.

1. Market Participant - Don’t know you - but are ‘in market’

2. Awareness - Know you - may or may not be interested

3. Lead - Given their details (usually email) in exchange for something

4. Prospect - Are in personal 1 to 1 contact

5. Client - Converted

The key to communicate appropriately and move people between these states was shared by Eugene Schwartz in his seminal 1950’s book, ‘Breakthrough Advertising.’

SALES MISTAKE: Trying to get your sales system to do too much. Sales is not about taking people from stage 1-5. (Movies like ‘the wolf of wall street’ don’t help this perception)

Sales is about turning prospects into customers and clients. It’s the system between level 4 and level 5.

SALES KPI: The 5% or 50% Rule

ECOM: Turn 5% of the people on your sales page into customers.
SERVICE: Turn 50% of your booked appointments into clients.

If you’re hitting these numbers your sales system gets a tick from me.

One of the most important things I’ve discovered from working with my mentors, is simply, ‘knowing what’s good.’

I once showed up to a call with a mentor. I thought I had some great numbers on one of my funnels. He immediately told me, ‘This page on your funnel is underperforming by over 50%…’ Shocked and a little embarrassed, I immediately fixed it and pulled an extra $200K through the funnel within 12 months by simply knowing ‘what’s good?’

One concern I have for this newsletter is that the power of such a simple insight may be missed or even glossed over. That frustrates me a bit because although this is a small comment it can be worth literally millions to your business if you get it and seek out those numbers in your industry.

3. Product - How to Create Scaleable Products and Services

This one is fairly clear. Your product is what you sell or how you deliver your service. Most business owners have a strong product but it’s the more nuanced parts of the product pillar that is missing.

You see your customers and clients (especially in the beginning) will want you involved - which makes it easy to fall into the trap of constantly selling more of your time.

The key to building a great product is to do the opposite. Build it so you can sell it again and again without you being directly involved. This now frees you up to focus on the systems, the marketing and the sales.

PRODUCT MISTAKE: Selling a product or service that takes too much of your personal time to deliver.

When this is the case, you will install a glass ceiling in your business - you will also pull your punches with your marketing and sales - no matter how much you say you want to ‘scale’ your body and mind will be screaming otherwise.

The way to master the product pillar is to understand the concept of Leverage. (arguably the single most important concept in business)

PRODUCT KPI: How many hours does it take you personally on average to produce a result for your client?

Anything more than 0 ^ and you’re technically an employee of your business. And look I’m being a bit harsh, at some level you’ll probably always be involved - If you ever want to sell your business you’ll need to unlock this KPI and see it trending in the right direction as it directly leads to having a more scalable and saleable business.

4. Marketing - Create a LeadFLOW that Spits Out Cash

Marketing is about taking market participants who don’t know you, like you or trust you - and then changing that. You get them to know you, like you and trust you as they progress through your funnel.

Here you will map out a funnel of steps that a clients takes on the journey to work with you.

Here is an example of a LeadFLOW funnel process I teach to my clients and have used extensively myself.

ICE - Run a Social Media Video Ad Flipping the Pages in Your Resource
COLD - Give Away Your Free Resource (PDF) - Build the list ~ $2 leads.
WARM - Retarget Via Email, Social and Outreach to Consume a Free Webinar (Could swap this warm level out for newsletter, podcast, video series etc)
Hot - Offer a Free Consult at the end of your warm offer - Close 50%
Client - Turn 1 in every 100 leads into a client and you’re very, very profitable.

The goal with this LeadFLOW above ^ is to spend $1 on lead generation and have it turn into $10 in client cash flow. If you can do this you’ll be able to scale quickly!

MARKETING MISTAKE: Making the wrong offer to the ‘wrong mindset’ - eg - a hot offer (consult) to an ice cold mindset (doesn’t know you, like you or trust you)

There are too many mistakes to mention at the marketing level. For some reason this pillar is littered with mistakes.

If there is any one pillar that makes a business most likely to consistently pull big monthly numbers it’s marketing.

MARKETING KPI: What’s your return on ad spend? (ROAS) - You 10x bro?

5. Operations - How to Fire Yourself From the Business

Operations is the what, the how and the who of your business.

What do you do?
How do you do it?
Who’s responsible for it?

Every business owner I’ve spoken to wants to be free - there is something is us that drives us towards this.

The problem - we constantly get pulled into the weeds of the business. There is a constant barrage of problems that arise when it comes to operations.

Operations is repetitive, frequent and urgent - it’s the most ‘dense’ part of the business - the tasks need to be done over and over often with often little or no creative variation.

Operations is the opposite of creative entrepreneurship and it’s for this reason so many founders struggle the most with this pillar (myself included 🙋‍♂️)

The key to free yourself from this self-imposed slavery is to first document everything you do, then how you do it - from there you can eliminate, automate, outsource or delegate the lower priorities.

OPERATIONS MISTAKE: Spending more than 20% of your time in the operations of the business.

I’ve tested hundreds of business owners to see where they ‘feel most at home and in flow’ in the business… The overwhelming pattern is that 95% of them feel best in Marketing, Sales and Product.

There are some rare freaks that love operations but they are few and far between. Joking a little by the way - totally normal and quite useful to love operations, just rare is all.

OPERATIONS KPI: Net Profit / Staff Member = $100K+

Wise to build some systems and optimise this before hiring more staff ^

6. Finance - Multiply Your Net Worth - Build a Real Asset

What a business is worth, both to you and others - is a multiple of two things… The yearly profit and the scalability (with some assets sprinkled in.)

If the business is highly scaleable it will sell for a high multiple of yearly profits.

A local business will typically sell for 1 x the yearly profit.
A media business may sell for 3-20x the yearly profit.
A code cased business may sell for 5-100x the yearly profit.

All dependant on the leverage in the business.

So obviously as the owner it benefits you massively, both now and in the future to increase the net profit ratio of the business.

The questions is… How to do that?

Well firstly you may need to drastically change how you think about profits and where you place it on the hierarchy of needs of the business.

Basically there are three main buckets when it comes to business finances.

1. Net Profit

2. Tax

3. OPEX (Operating Expenses)

KEY FINANCE PROBLEM: Most business owners pay themselves last. They pay OPEX first, tax with what’s left and profit becomes an afterthought.

This genius book called Profit First by Mike Michalowicz > completely flips this model on it’s head. The philosophy states to take profit first - change the way you approach your finances and watch the business and your life fall in line.

I’ve tried it and can vouch for it strongly.

FINANCE KPI: 50% Net Profit

^ The golden mean of business - Illusive but possible to experience ;)

One last thought on business finances - Most business owners do not account for the wealth they hold in their businesses. They mostly write their businesses off as a zero value.

For example a person may own 100% of a property that produces a certain cash flow - if you were to ask that person about their net worth I can guarantee they’ll include it in their calculations…

So why don’t you include your business in yours..?

Food for thought.

What now?

Now you have a deeper understanding of the pillars. In the next edition of the newsletter we’ll take it one step further and we’ll dive into the three levels a business goes through on the way to 7 figures in yearly revenue.

Level 1 - Proof of Concept = $0-$10K/Month
Level 2 - Leverage = $10K - $50K/Month
Level 3 - Scale = $50K+/Month

This is the root of my philosophy of building a 7 figure business - How you approach the pillars changes based on where you are. I’m excited to share it with you - it will be coming towards the end of the week.

Talk soon,

Ben Slater.

Want more help to scale?

If you know you’re missing some pieces of the puzzle inside the 6 pillars of your business…

• Whether you’ve lost momentum or connection to your Vision…

• Your sales closing percentage is 20%…

• Your lead gen ads are falling flat… burning a hole in your pocket.

• You know you need to leverage your product and operations

• Or your net profit is sitting at a measly 5%

Head to the link below to book a call with us… Let’s talk it over and get you scaling 🙂