From the category archives:

wealth planning

Bottom Lines to Focus on in Your Business

by David Finkel on November 4, 2010

I’m really excited–tomorrow morning I fly out with my family to Maui for the 2010 Maui Mastermind Wealth Summit event.

In my prep for the event, one of the things that really came clear for me was how important it is to focus in your business on the things that make the REAL difference, and not allow the urgent fires or demands grab all your attention.

Today I’m going to do my best to succinctly “bottom line” the most important focuses for your business at each Stage and Level of its development.  

Before I do that I wanted to encourage you to get a complimentary copy of our newest book, Build a Business Not a Job: How to Build Your Business to Sell, Scale, or Own Passively.

This short book (176-pages) is full of hundreds of ideas for you to apply to make your business more successful AND less dependent on you the owner.

The reason we are giving  readers a free copy is because we’ve learned over the past 10 years of doing this business that most of our best clients originally decided to work with us because of the demonstrated value of one of our books or weekend workshops.

Here is the link to get your complimentary copy of the book:

www.Mauimastermind.com/custom/freebook  


I hope you enjoy it!  

Now on to the “bottom lines” in your business…
The Bottom Lines to Focus on In Your Business

Level One:   4 things you MUST do…
1.      Clarify your business concept and do your market research.

2.      Create your draft business plan.

3.      Test market your offer so you get REAL feedback from people in your market.

4.      LAUNCH!  

Early Stage Level Two: Sell, sell, sell, sell.  

All kidding aside, if you’ve got an Early Stage Level Two business, no need doing fancy systems or planning 5 years down the road.   You’ve got to make those early sales that ensure you have the cash flow to survive!

Beyond this early selling, you need to start building rudimentary (i.e. rough and incomplete) systems to generate leads, close sales, collect your money, and fulfill on your promises.   (See below.)

Middle Stage Level Two:   Build out your core system(s) in four areas:

Now that your selling regularly and you know your business has a regular sales stream, it’s time to go back to the 4 core systems and improve them into your “baseline” system for each area.

Here are the four core systems:
1.      Lead generation (so you have a baseline system for reliably generating a minimum level of leads).

2.      Lead conversion (so you have a baseline system for reliably converting your leads into paying customers.)

3.      Fulfillment or production of your core product or service.

4.      Your accounts receivable system to collect on the money you’re owed.

Advanced Stage Level Two:   Finish fleshing out your systems, controls, and winning management team.   This is the time you’re scaling your business and you need these building blocks to do it well.

Ask yourself, “What is the single greatest limiting factor to my business’s growth currently?” and then apply yourself to push back that limiting factor.

In addition, you need to start building out your management team too.  

Level Three:   Deciding, planning, and executing on your exit strategy… whether that be to sell, to own your business passively, or to scale it much larger.

These are the bottom lines by Level and Stage.   Don’t make things overly complicated.   Building a business is a known equation.   You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Focus on what’s most important to your business at your current stage and level of development.   Let the other future focuses go for now and laser in on what matters most.

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3 Biggest reasons traditional financial advice is so dangerous to your financial future

by David Finkel on May 15, 2009

Hi everyone.
I’m doing my final prep for teaching on how to intelligently manage and invest your net worth for maximum wealth.   Just sat reading through my notes on traditional investments pushed on most individuals and I noticed i started getting a little bit angry.

Hence I thought I’d “blog it out” and share my 3 biggest reasons why I hold traditional financial advice to be so potentially dangerous:

1)   Most financial advisors are really securities dealers with NO fiduciary responsibilty to you.   They only have to give you advice to investments that are “suitable” and that standard is just not acceptable to me.
LESSON:   make sure you ask, in writing, if they are a fiduciary role for you or not… that term matters… it has legal force.

2) For those of you who invest in securities (think stocks/bonds/mutual funds), study after study show that Index funds held over long term and NOT actively traded will outperform over 80+% of the actively managed funds for total returns over the long term… If you are going to use this vehicle (and personally I’m a commercial real estate and business guy so I don’t, not where my personal advantages are) why would you go any other way?

LESSON: if you are going to invest in securities, then appropriate LOW COST index fund (i.e. expense ratio under .3 percent) is the way to go… and DON’T actively trade it!

3) “Stocks… Bonds… Other…” and the myth of diversification.   I do not believe that you manage investment risk by investing in a huge cross section of areas… I think the best way to manage risk is to educate yourself and cultivate investing advantages… this requires you t oFOCUS not diversify.   You can’t be great in all areas, choose the area that best meets your goals, your Advantages, and your current starting point.   Then out of strength you can choose to broaden your niche over time.   In the interim, 1-2 index funds gives you plenty of diversification if you want to just take the average market returns (and DON’T just take this unless you have a LONG — think 10+ years– window to needing your money.)

LESSON:   Invest in yourself.   If you asked me, David I have $20,000 where should I invest it?”   My simple answer would be for you to take 5-10k of it and over 12-24 months invest it in your financial,business, and wealth education.   This means getting the books, taking the classes and workshops, and going through the home study courses.   This is one investment that to ignore could cost millions…

Thanks for listening… I feel a bit better.

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Level Three Business: Beyond the Mission Statement

by David Finkel on January 27, 2009

Knowing your mission, vision and values are important steps in creating a Level Three Business.

But there’s a further step for you to go, and that’s understanding what your business really is, and why your clients and customers buy from you. I call this uncovering your client’s “Deep Buying Desires™”—those key drivers that shape and control your client’s real buying behavior.

Once you understand this, then you can work to strategically design your business to capitalize on your uniqueness and create clear and consistent messaging. This is the essence of what it means to craft your business’s brand.

99 out of a 100 businesses get it all wrong. They start with what they want people to think of them. But truthfully, rarely are businesses able to control this. By the time they get around to “branding” all they are really doing is slapping a fancy new label on the way they’ve always done business. This doesn’t change their client’s perceptions or shape their client’s experiences.

A much more effective strategy is to systematically uncover what your clients actually do think about you, and then to harness this energy to propel your business to the next level. The only way to find out is to ask. So what this requires is the mastering some pretty special interview techniques — something I’ve spent a long time working to develop.

When you’ve gotten very clear on your business from the big picture on down, then it’s time to move on to building your business’s foundation.

Read more about this in an extended Wealth Update I’ve written at: How to Build a Thriving Level Three Business.

And here is an invitation to join us at a very special workshop event in San Diego, CA: Level Three Wealth Workshop

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