How to Grow Your Business by Spending Less Time in It – In Just 7 Minutes with John Nieuwenburg

Resources/Links:

• Checkout John’s The Well-Managed Practice: 5 Steps to a Business That Runs Smoothly, Profitably, and (mostly) Without You :Opt-in here: https://w5coaching.com/the-well-managed-practice/

Summary

Are you feeling stressed out and overwhelmed?

Do you want to transform your business into something that is both more manageable and valuable?

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 how he helps clients grow their business by them spending less time in it through his systematic process that helps them increase profit, remove the stress and chaos from their businesses and get their lives back.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:02 – John’s ideal client: “People that have a professional advisory practice.”
• 01:33 – Problem John helps solve: “Time, team and money.”
• 02:27 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to John: “Typically, they’re in a rut and don’t see a way forward.”
• 03:42 – Common mistakes that people make before they find John’s solution: “I have a riddle around that, doing more of what you’ve done is only going to get you more of what you got. And so, they’re stuck in a trap and kind of circular thinking and it has to get pretty uncomfortable before they start to look for different solutions.”
• 04:46 – John’s Valuable Free Action(VFA): “They got to learn to use a default diary. A default diary is time blocking. And the essence of it is to create a calendar of how you spend your time so that it matches your priorities.”
• 05:51 – John’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR):Checkout John’s The Well-Managed Practice: 5 Steps to a Business That Runs Smoothly, Profitably, and (mostly) Without You :Opt-in here: https://w5coaching.com/the-well-managed-practice/
• 07:07 – Q: What is the one question I should have asked you but didn’t? A: We’re so caught up in the love of our craft, the love of our profession, that we often fall in the trap of that’s all we want to do. And so, the lesson that’s hard for some professional advisors to get is, it’s not doing more of what you sell, it’s selling more of what you do. And both those parts of your business need to be weighted about equally and the amount of effort and energy you’re putting into it. And if all you’re doing is focusing on the practice part of it, you’re going to suffer from a feast or famine kind of life.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“Do a time inventory.'” -@W5Coaching 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
Greetings everyone, and a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Tom Poland, joined today by John Nieuwenburg. John, good day sir, a very warm welcome. Where are you hanging out?

John Nieuwenburg: 0:20
I’m in Vancouver BC, which is on the west coast of Canada.

Tom Poland: 0:23
Yeah, and a beautiful, beautiful city. You can be watching the whales in the morning and skiing in the afternoon there.

John Nieuwenburg: 0:29
That’s exactly right.

Tom Poland: 0:30
John is an award-winning business coach. He’s coached and worked with literally hundreds of clients, so we’re going to be listening to the voice of experience. And he focuses on three primary capabilities, business growth, personal growth and accountability. Which ties in nicely with our title today, John, which is, “How to Grow Your Business by Spending Less Time in it.” And John’s going to tell us how to do that in just seven minutes, talk about time efficient. John, our time starts now. Question number one is, who’s your ideal client?

John Nieuwenburg: 1:02
There are two kinds, the first of which are people that have a professional advisory practice. So, they’re typically coaches or, you know, lawyers, accountants, wealth advisors, financial planners, real estate brokers, that kind of thing. We all provide professional advice, the advice changes but our business is the same. And then the other side of it is people with a bricks and mortar business, typically in retail construction and manufacturing.

Tom Poland: 1:26
Perfect, thank you. So, question number two, and we’ve got six and a half minutes left, what’s the problem you solve for them?

John Nieuwenburg: 1:33
Time, team and money. So, the typical kinds of things they’re saying is around time is, “I’ve got too much to do, not enough time to do it. I can’t get everything done.” Or, “If I don’t do it, I won’t get done.” With team, you know, the economy is very strong today so it’s hard getting enough good team members doing the work at the right level, with the culture that you want in your business.

John Nieuwenburg: 1:54
And then the money one has two sides to it. So, first of all, there’s the accounting, reporting, having a dashboard in place so you can measure the results you’re getting in the business. And the other side of money is the one that’s most common of course, that’s, I need more money, I need better sales and marketing.

Tom Poland: 2:09
Perfect. Thank you. So, question number three, five and three quarter minutes left, what are some of the typical symptoms, you’ve mentioned some of the more, before people find your solution? What’s going on in their business, in their life? You’ve mentioned a shortage of time, perhaps a lack of awareness as to what’s happening with their money, anything else that’s going on?

John Nieuwenburg: 2:27
Typically, they’re in a rut and don’t see a way forward. So, they’re, you know, running around literally like a chicken without a head. And they often suffer from a thing called the hub and spoke. They’re the hub of the business and everything that happens on the business. So, every time there’s an employee question, a customer question, or supplier question, it’s only the business owner that’s, you know, capable or some way or another able to give that response. And so, they’re in a bit of a trap, and they don’t know how to get out of that.

Tom Poland: 2:56
And if so, they’re really the bottleneck of the whole business.

John Nieuwenburg: 2:59
Yeah. And so, in some way it feels good because they feel like they’re needed and dependent on. But the other side of it is they’re often frustrated because they feel like, “Geez, how come they can’t make a decision?” And, you know, “Why do I have to be involved in everything.” And so, it’s a trap of their own making, and they don’t recognize it.

Tom Poland: 3:16
So, the bad news is that is, I’m the one who created this. The good news is, I’m the one who created those so I can solve it if I know what to do with my time.

John Nieuwenburg: 3:23
Yeah, exactly.

Tom Poland: 3:25
So, four and a half minutes left. Question four is, there’s got to be some common mistakes that people make before they find your solution. They’re going to try stuff. Maybe they are going to try working longer hours or whatever. The question is, what are some of the common mistakes that people make in trying to solve this bottleneck prior to finding a solution?

John Nieuwenburg: 3:42
Well, I have a riddle around that, doing more of what you’ve done is only going to get you more of what you got. And so, they’re stuck in a trap and kind of circular thinking and it has to get pretty uncomfortable before they start to look for different solutions.

John Nieuwenburg: 3:55
And by uncomfortable, one of my clients told me a story one time that he was working 60, 70, 80 hours a week. Many times, sleeping on the couch without going home. And his wife one time said to him, “Your business is your mistress and if you don’t do something about it, I will.” And it was when he was pressed to that extent that he finally, you know, said, “This is it, I got to do something because what I’m doing today isn’t working and I’ve tried everything I can think of.”

Tom Poland: 4:20
I had a colleague who was running a boardroom meeting and his wife burst through the doors and throws his sleeping bag at him and said, “If you’re going to live here, you might just sleep here as well.”

John Nieuwenburg: 4:27
Well, that was pretty much the same message.

Tom Poland: 4:30
Similar ideal by the sound of it. Okay, thank you. So, let’s go to question number five, we got three minutes left. What’s one valuable free action that someone who’s stuck like this can take that’s not going to solve the whole problem, but might take them a step in the right direction?

John Nieuwenburg: 4:46
They got to learn to use a default diary. So, a default diary is time blocking. And the essence of it is to create a calendar of how you spend your time so that it matches your priorities. Often, we kind of run, as I said, like a chicken without a head, and we’re just kind of bouncing around without.

John Nieuwenburg: 5:03
And so, default diary answers four questions. The first of which is, what’s the most important results I need to get this week? What activity, what I got to do to get that result? Number three is, how much time? Then number four, how do I map my time over the course of a week? Create preset blocks of time so the way I spend my time matches the way that I’ve described my priorities. Or put it in a different way, how many of you on the call would go on an airplane if you knew the pilot didn’t have a navigation plan? That’d be silly.

John Nieuwenburg: 5:33
Well, many of us are spending our time without a navigation plan or a plan that allocates how we’re going to get from here to there. So, the number one thing is getting a default diary or time blocking. Google is your friend, it’s easy to find examples of it. Or if you send me an email, I’ll be happy to talk to you about it.

Tom Poland: 5:50
And the email address?

John Nieuwenburg: 5:52
John@w5coaching.com.

Tom Poland: 5:54
John@w5, number five, coaching.com Thank you for that. And the beautiful part about that too, John, is that once they’ve blocked their time out, they get to see if they’ve got enough or not.

John Nieuwenburg: 6:05
Well, one of the things that will happen if you start, one of the first parts of doing a default diary is you do a time monitor. You kind of take or make a record for a week of what you’re doing. And I’ve yet to work with a business owner that hasn’t been able to find five or seven hours of work they’re doing that someone else will happily do for them with a fraction, like 15 bucks an hour. Someone will happily do a lot of the work that your kind of just caught up in a rush that you continue to do.

Tom Poland: 6:30
Kind of like a time inventory. Terrific. 70 seconds left.

John Nieuwenburg: 6:32
Yeah, that’s exactly right. Do a time inventory.

Tom Poland 6:35
Thank you. That’s another valuable free action. So just over 60 seconds left, two questions to go. One valuable free resource we could direct people to. I’m going to answer that question because I know what it is, www.w5coaching.com, we’ve mentioned the URL before. If you go there, there’s a pop up. If you’re looking at the video, there should be a link under here. It’s around the well-managed practice, which of course ties beautifully in with time. Go there, grab it. It’s quite valuable, I’ve opted into it.

Tom Poland: 7:01
Question number seven, John, 35 seconds left, what’s the one question I should have asked you, but I didn’t? And the answer please.

John Nieuwenburg:7:07
The answer, as professional advisors, is we’re so caught up in the love of our craft, the love of our profession, that we often fall in the trap of that’s all we want to do. And so, the lesson that’s hard for some professional advisors to get is, it’s not doing more of what you sell, it’s selling more of what you do. And both those parts of your business need to be weighted about equally and the amount of effort and energy you’re putting into it. And if all you’re doing is focusing on the practice part of it, you’re going to suffer from a feast or famine kind of life.

Tom Poland: 7:41
Perfect. John, thanks so much for your time.

John Nieuwenburg: 7:44
Pleasure.

Tom Poland: 6:58
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.