Saturday, July 2, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
Use Systems to Scale Your Business – A review of Beyond Booked Solid by Michael Port
In this follow up to Book YourselfSolid, a sales guidebook for service professionals to build their business, Mr. Port assumes that all of the tactics he previously recommended have been implemented and that your time and efforts are stretched to follow through on all of the business that came of it. This book talks about working on your business and yourself rather than working in your business. He talks about being open to change and self improvement in order to make changes in your business with the end result being more success and free time.
His approach makes you look at and define your mission, the strategy on how to get there, and the tactics that you will use to achieve your goals. By implementing this approach you will be able to scale your business by letting go and delegating. This gives you more time to work on high level strategies and pursue your own personal interests. Get more done while doing less.
The initial phase is to look at your business. He assumes that you are booked solid and maxed out as far as time and income. In order to grow your business he suggests looking at a couple of different options including:
- Franchising
- Licensing
- Training the trainer
- Branding
- Intellectual Property
- Full-Service
- Network Marketing
- Social Networking
- The Better Mousetrap
You decide you your path through self analysis and picking the strategy that best fits you. Then, define your goals and put into place measurement tactics to keep yourself on track.
A great point that he makes is to break parts of the mission into projects. He emphasizes having an overall, long term plan but not to get too far ahead of yourself as you need to adjust the plan based on the measurement facilities you put into place and then adjusting accordingly. Keep open and flexible.
Once you have success in achieving a goal, put into place systems that institutionalize projects for consistent results. The benefit is twofold:
1) Systems increase efficiency
2) Tactics within systems can be simplified and delegated.
He finishes the book by detailing how to hire the right people. He suggests that once systems are in place that attitude trumps aptitude. People with the right attitude can be taught. Once the right hires are made, identify what motivates them and support it. Let them be creative in their jobs and give them room to grow.
Conclusion:
I liked this book but am not ready to classify it as a must read. A good reminder about what we all need to be doing as we take control and scale our business. I found the section on whether to franchise, license, etc. a little non appropriate for my tastes but I am sure that it fits others fine. Still, a good borrow from the library.
Links:
- Book Web Site: http://www.beyondbookedsolid.com/
- Michael Port Web Site: http://www.michaelport.com/
- Michael Port Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/authormichaelport
- Michael Port Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/michaelport
- Eric Low Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/EricLow
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