How Being Successful in Any Endeavor All Comes Down to Mindset – In Just 7 Minutes with John Nieuwenburg

Check out episode
  • Discover how to free yourself from your business while still being IN the business
  • Learn why you should stop doing more of what you’re doing and get yourself out of the hamster wheel
  • Understand why systematizing your business is crucial to making your business, and even YOU, prosper

Resources/Links:

Summary

Do you find yourself doing everything in your business that it’s hard for you to free yourself?

To have a successful business, it must survive without you in it. Humanize systems and systemize your business.

John Nieuwenburg is an award-winning Business Coach who has worked with hundreds of clients. John coaches in 3 primary areas– business, personal growth, and accountability.

In this episode, John shares his insights on how to continuously generate profits without the stress of being everywhere by creating efficient systems and routines.

Check out these episode highlights:

  • 01:00 – John’s ideal client: There are typically two cohorts. So, one is their professional advisors, lawyers, accountants, and health practitioners. We all provide professional advice. The advice is different, but the business is the same.
  • 01:24 – The problem he helps solve: Well, generally, their challenges around time, team, or money. So, time sounds like, “I’ve got too much to do and not enough time to do it. I can’t get it done. I don’t know, won’t get done.” Team, nowadays, is- top of the list is recruiting. It’s very hard to find good people.
  • 02:17 – The symptoms of the problem: Well, typically, the manifestations are in their business, but the real problems are in their life. If you’re working 50, 70, or 80 hours a week, it’s going to show up in your home life. You know, you’re not going to your kids’ games.
  • 03:28 – Clients’ common mistakes before consulting John: “They generally do more of whatever it is they’re currently doing. And because they don’t know that there are other options, and so that’s the part where they eventually, the metaphor I use is “They’re hitting their head against the ceiling of their business or the ceiling of their capabilities”, and they don’t know any other way to go.”
  • 04:23 – John’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): You know, one of the common things I do when I first start with a business owner is work through an exercise to help them identify five to seven hours, 10 hours a week of work they do they shouldn’t be doing. And there’s a bit of a survey or an audit they can do or there’s a hack.
  • 05:47 – John’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): To get more advice on how to free yourself from your business, click here: w5coaching.com/freedom-eBook
  • 06:42 – Q: Business, you would go down the right path if you use this three-legged stool. A: Number one, systems run your business, people run your systems, and you lead your people.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“Systematize the routine, humanize the exception.” -John Nieuwenburg 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 00:10
Welcome, everyone, to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. It’s my pleasure to have John Nieuwenburg back again. John, many happy returns. It’s been a couple of years since we saw, a lot of COVID under the bridge since then. Welcome back!

John Nieuwenburg 00:22
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure!

Tom Poland 00:24
Where are you based, John?

John Nieuwenburg 00:25
Vancouver, British Columbia, which is on the west coast of Canada.

Tom Poland 00:25
While watching in the morning, and skiing in the afternoon. Beautiful!

John Nieuwenburg 00:25
Yes, we brag about that.

Tom Poland 00:27
For those of you who don’t know John, he’s an award-winning business coach. He’s worked with literally hundreds of clients, primarily in three areas– business, personal growth, and accountability. The subject today is one that’s often overlooked, and yet is a key ingredient to all sustainable success. It’s, “How to Be Successful in Any Endeavor with Mindset”. John, thanks for coming back to the show! Our seven minutes is going to start now. Question number one, who is your ideal client?

John Nieuwenburg 01:00
There are typically two cohorts. So, one is their professional advisors, lawyers, accountants, and health practitioners. We all provide professional advice. The advice is different, but the business is the same. The other one is people in the trade. So, they’re electricians, plumbers, general contractors. They’re very similar to the professional advisors, both took five, or seven years of training, great at their trade, and their profession, but not very good at business.

Tom Poland 01:24
Alright, interesting! So technically very good. But tell us, then, about the problem you solve for them.

John Nieuwenburg 01:24
Well, generally, their challenges around time, team, or money. So, time sounds like, “I’ve got too much to do and not enough time to do it. I can’t get it done. I don’t know, won’t get done.” Team, nowadays, is- top of the list is recruiting. It’s very hard to find good people. It’s hard, also, though, to get the culture you want and to get people to do the work at the level you need. And then moneys got two components to it. One component is having proper accounting financials reporting KPIs, and a dashboard. And the other side of money is, “I need more money. I need better sales and marketing.”

Tom Poland 02:02
So that were the three big problems of what you help folks with. So, what would you say, question three, and we’ve got just under six months left. If someone needs your services, what’s going on in their business or their life? What are the symptoms, in other words, that give them a heads up that they need to talk to you?

John Nieuwenburg 02:17
Well, typically, the manifestations are in their business, but the real problems are in their life. If you’re working 50, 70, or 80 hours a week, it’s going to show up in your home life. You know, you’re not going to your kids’ games. You’re not available when they are free. And so, my view of the world, the real purpose of a small business, are the ones that I’m- the kinds of small businesses I work with is, the real purpose of that business is to give the owner the life they want. Of course, it’s different if you’re a Fortune 500 company, with lots more complexity, and stakeholders. But in the kind of businesses I work with, your business ought to be a vehicle to give you the life you want, and often there’s a disconnect.

Tom Poland 03:00
Right. So, there’s almost like they’re stuck in the worst of both worlds. They’ve got all the responsibility and none of the freedom.

John Nieuwenburg 03:06
You know, that’s a very fine way of thinking about it. And that would be a very common, you know, kind of conclusion that a lot of the business owners would be thinking about.

Tom Poland 03:15
So, thank you for that! Four and a half minutes left. Question four is the common mistake they make when they’re trying to dig themselves out of those rather deep holes. What are your clients telling you that were things they tried that just, flat out, we’re never going to work, the biggest mistakes?

John Nieuwenburg 03:28
They generally do more of whatever it is they’re currently doing. And because they don’t know that there are other options, and so that’s the part where they eventually, the metaphor I use is “They’re hitting their head against the ceiling of their business or the ceiling of their capabilities”, and they don’t know any other way to go. They just simply don’t know and they often don’t know that help exists or where to find it. So, if you’re a hamster on a hamster wheel, the only thing a hamster knows to do is go faster. And eventually, they do that until they’re exhausted and can’t do anything else at all.

Tom Poland 04:04
Right, so more hours, more effort, more energy, actually leading to compounding the problem and becoming-

John Nieuwenburg 04:09
Exactly.

Tom Poland 04:10
So, let’s flip it! We’ve got three and a half minutes left. Let’s flip it now to what folks can do about this. Give us a top tip, if you would. A valuable free action, which probably not going to solve the whole problem for them, but it might take them a step in the right direction.

John Nieuwenburg 04:23
You know, one of the common things I do when I first start with a business owner is work through an exercise to help them identify five to seven hours, 10 hours a week of work they do they shouldn’t be doing. And there’s a bit of a survey or an audit they can do or there’s a hack. And the hack is anytime you say to yourself, “Oh crap, I need to ‘fill in the blank’.” That’s a clue that probably works that’s better done by someone else and that someone else will do a better job than you currently do. If the average, let’s just notionally say, the average business owner’s value of time is $300 an hour, well then why are you doing work that someone will do as capably are, in fact, doing better than you for $10, $15 $25 an hour. And so, when you do the survey, the first thing you start to notice is just how poorly you’re managing your time. You know, “You’re always just catching up with the urgencies and never the tyranny of the urgent”, Stephen Covey said it.

Tom Poland 05:19
Yeah, a lot of people do try stuff, but they just feel frustrated and trapped because they can’t get good help. And they hire people that don’t do it right, and so on. So, they end up chasing their tail. So, let’s help folks even more. We’ve got just under two minutes left, where can people go to find out more about getting some freedom into their business?

John Nieuwenburg 05:39
So, I wrote an eBook that addresses these three most common complaints that people have. I’m sure you’ll give them the link.

Tom Poland 05:47
We will. Let me just verbalize it because some people are listening to this. Folks, it’s w, number five, so, w5coaching.com/freedom-eBook. John, what will they find there, sir?

John Nieuwenburg 06:01
Well, the five steps of freedom which is a framework to get you from wherever you are in your business to ultimately getting time and money freedom. And we do that by solving the three problems that we’ve been addressing. We have 21 silver bullets that we talked about five of them in the book to kind of give you a taste of what we’d be working on together or what you can do yourself to make changes in your life.

Tom Poland 06:25
Free eBook, Five Steps to Freedom: How to Build a Business that Runs Smoothly, Profitably, and (Mostly) Without You. Folks, it’s w5, number five, coaching.com/freedom-eBook. John, thank you for that! We’ve got 35 seconds left. What’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t?

John Nieuwenburg 06:42
Business, you would go down the right path if you use this three-legged stool. Number one, systems run your business, people run your systems, and you lead your people. Number two, humanize the, sorry- systematize the routine, humanize the exception. So about 85% of a business ought to be systems. And then the third is never to look for a people solution, always look for a system solution.

Tom Poland 07:05
Perfect! Five seconds to spare. John Nieuwenburg, thank you so much for your time.

John Nieuwenburg 07:09
My pleasure.

Tom Poland 07:10
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.

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