4 Steps to Get Your Life Back and Run a Successful Business – In Just 7 Minutes with Greg Gunther

Resources/Links:

• Checkout 4 Steps to Mapping your Business Structure:http://bit.ly/4StepsBusinessStructure

Summary

You’ve worked hard to build your passion into a business that means the world to you. You’ve made lots of great decisions, and maybe some not so great ones too. You want to grow your business and take it to the next level, but aren’t sure on the next best steps?

Greg Gunther is an author, coach, and speaker as well as one of the founders and directors of the business coaching firm, Your Business Momentum.

In this episode, Greg shares how he helps clients to set their businesses up for success, helping them to learn more about themselves and their business, take action and get things done.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:07 – Greg’s ideal client: “Successful, ambitious, but tired business owners, typically. And they don’t, they got to a point where they just don’t know where to go to the next level, they just can’t get there.”
• 01:34 – Problem Greg helps solve: “It’s having the right people in the right seats, doing the right thing at the right time.”
• 02:13 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Greg: “What you tend to find as an owner is, you’re working very long hours. Your stress levels are quite high, and so you’re highly stressed. And you find that there’s a very heavy reliance on you as an owner to get things done. It’s one of those mentalities’ mindsets where “I might as well just do it myself and get it done properly.”
• 03:57 – Common mistakes that people make before they find Greg’s solution: “Not asking for that help”
• 05:09 – Greg’s Valuable Free Action(VFA): “You need to map all the tasks that need to be done in your business.”
• 06:04 – Greg’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Checkout 4 Steps to Mapping your Business Structure:http://bit.ly/4StepsBusinessStructure
• 06:45 – Q: What does success look like? A: Everybody’s got their own different interpretations of that. But typically, what we find, success would look like owners having free time.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“You need to map all the tasks that need to be done in your business.'” -@YourBizMomentum Click To Tweet

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland: 0:09
Hello everyone, a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Tom Poland, joined today by Greg Gunther. Greg good day, sir, welcome. Where are you hanging out?

Greg Gunther 0:19
I’m down in Brisbane, not very far away from you, Tom.

Tom Poland: 0:21
A local, I could just about throw a stone over and break your window. Won’t do that though.

Tom Poland: 0:25
For those of you who don’t know Greg, folks, he’s someone that I’ve seen a lot of here in Australia. Does some excellent work, chock full of integrity, robust, practical, achievable, implementable and worthwhile strategies. That’s my introduction, Greg, but yours is that you’re an author, coach and speaker, also one of the founders and directors of the business coaching firm, Your Business Momentum.

Tom Poland: 0:48
So, thanks for joining us, first of all. Our title today is, “Four Steps to Get Your Life Back and Run a Successful Business,” not always able to be achieved by people at the same time. So, four steps to get your life back and run a successful business. Greg is going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes. Greg, our time starts now. Question number one is, who is your ideal client?

Greg Gunther 1:07
Well, this is something I can relate to because I’ve been here. Successful, ambitious, but tired business owners, typically. And they don’t, they got to a point where they just don’t know where to go to the next level, they just can’t get there. They’re hard working, doing things the only way they know how, but in our experience, it’s usually harder than it needs to be.

Tom Poland: 1:26
Right. So, question number two then, that follows in quite nicely. Six and a half minutes left. What’s the problem you solve?

Greg Gunther 1:34
Well, it really starts with people, Tom.

So, it’s having the right people in the right seats, doing the right thing at the right time.

So that’s really where it is. It’s getting those right people around you that’s doing what needs to be done in the business, so. And eventually, letting you go, stop chaining you to the business.

Tom Poland: 1:52
Thank you, sir. So, question number three, six minutes left, we’ve got this person who’s hard working and is reasonably successful but is feeling obviously like they’re kind of stock, and haven’t let go, and they haven’t got the right people there. How do they know this? Question number three is, what are some of the typical symptoms that people with this problem are going to be experiencing with? So, someone listening to this can go, “Ap, that sounds like me.”

Greg Gunther 2:13
Yeah, so this is really two parts in my observation.

So, owners per se, what you tend to find as an owner is, you’re working very long hours. Your stress levels are quite high, and so you’re highly stressed. And you find that there’s a very heavy reliance on you as an owner to get things done.

It’s one of those mentalities’ mindsets where, “I might as well just do it myself and get it done properly.” One of the other big things that comes up for me too as we work with these people is you don’t have a lot of family time. It’s one of the things I talk about a lot. And, you know, the ultimate downline of all of that, of course, is you end up burning out.

Greg Gunther 2:45
At a business level, what we witness is, you know, some of the symptoms that show up are things like staff turnover.

You know, inefficiency is also showing up where you might have to be doing things more than once or, you know, it’s a lot of defect or things that just I’m done right for this time.

We find a lot of cash flow issues too, Tom, you know, people are suffering often cash flow issues. Profit is probably minimum, if it exists at all. And, you know, effectively its mistakes being commonly made and the owners having to step back in all the time. And, of course, you know, the frustrations that comes with that is hard.

Tom Poland: 3:19
It almost sounds like this, there’s snowball rolling down the mountain and then it’s getting bigger and bigger with more frustrations. And, you know, more staff issues and more cash flow issues and so on. That’s a tough place to be. And so, if someone is in that situation of finding a profit to squeeze, maybe staff members are coming and going, they’re having to do everything.

Tom Poland: 3:41
They’re going to wake up one day, obviously, and they’re going to go I got to change something. But they’re probably going to make mistake before they find Business Momentum and your solution. So that’s question four, four minutes left. Question four, what are some of the common mistakes that people are going to be making before they find your solution?

Greg Gunther 3:57
Well, I think the first one, usually, is not asking for that help, Tom.

Like, there’s a little pride in business. And I think a lot of people, you know, they’re reluctant to ask for help.

For a lot of reasons, you know, pride is one of those. But I think the other part is, one of the biggest fears in life is failure, right? So, you know, we don’t want to appear like we’re failing. So, we just bulldoze our way through. We just keep on doing things like we’ve always done them.

Greg Gunther 4:22
And one of the things we see also is, you know, one of the solutions people do is they throw more people at it which, you know, cost more money. So, they end up hiring over desperation, rather than really getting very clear about, you know, what needs to be done.

Tom Poland: 4:35
And because they’re not clear, they’re not really giving that person a job track to run on with a system and a process.

Greg Gunther 4:41
Totally right, Tom. And you end up with the wrong people, to be honest. And you know, the other thing that happens with that, Tom, is the best people end up leaving because, you know, if you do get a good one, they end up leaving because they’re frustrated.

Tom Poland: 4:52
Right, right. So, let’s flip this, now, question number five, we’ll get on to actions. What’s one valuable free action that someone listening to this, who can relate to those symptoms, what’s one thing they can do that’ll take them a step in the right direction? It won’t solve the whole problem but it’ll help.

Greg Gunther 5:09
Yeah, and this is going to sound very, very boring. Maybe it is, but it’s something that really gets things off to a good start. You need to map all the tasks that need to be done in your business. The reality is, there’s a lot of stuff that goes on in machinations of running a business. And, you know, you need to actually identify what all those things are. You know, I started my sort of journey on this way back in the Michael Gerber days of The E-Myth and, you know, one of the things he talks about is make the business and, you know, I know that to be true today.

Tom Poland: 5:39
Yup, it’s never going to stop being true, is it? So make your list of everything that’s going on in your business, may be categorized it by, you know, sales and marketing, customer service, or whatever, but, and then you know what the heck has to be going on and you can probably document some of those processes, a la The E Myth. So, lets, ooh, just over one minute 30 left, two question to go. One valuable free resource we could direct people to that’s going to help them even more.

Greg Gunther 6:04
So, Tom, we’ve got a good demo, I’ve just talked about mapping your product, mapping your task in your business. So if people want to get a four step processes to how to do that, you can find that at, on the web, at bit, B-I-T, dot L-Y, bit.ly/4stepsbusinessstructure. All one word.

Tom Poland: 6:24
All right, so that’s bit.ly forward slash 4, the number four, steps business structure. Go get it. Thank you, sir. And so, question seven, we’ve got a whopping one minute left, what’s the one question I didn’t ask you, but I should have? And the answer, please.

Greg Gunther 6:39
Okay. So, I think, what success look like, Tom, is one thing that comes to my mind.

Tom Poland: 6:44
Great question.

Greg Gunther 6:45
So, and that’s, that’s very individual for every, you know, everybody’s got their own different interpretations of that. But typically, what we find, success would look like owners having free time. I think a lot of people do feel chained to their business and, you know, if you could open up some free time and even spend that time with family, that’s something that our client commonly fed back to us.

Greg Gunther 7:05
The way people on their own journey and, you know, really enjoying, getting some of that free time or even getting a holiday. You know, God forbid, having a holiday is another thing that people attribute to, you know, some form of success. I think another measure too is, you know, people stepping up and taking responsibility. So, what that’s much too is that we’ve done a pretty good recruiting exercise, and we’ve got a very good structured process where people take responsibility for their own motivation.

Tom Poland: 7:32
Perfect. Got to finish there. Thanks, Greg.

Greg Gunther 7:35
That’s it.

Tom Poland: 7:36
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.