John Burroughes | Entrepreneurial Leadership Coach | Empowering Visionary Founders to Think Beyond Tactics & Achieve Extraordinary Results
Beyond the Tactics: Lead, Don’t Just Launch
Ready to build a business that’s more than just profitable? My unique coaching methodology isn’t about the ‘how-to’s of startups; it’s about cultivating the entrepreneurial leadership mindset to create lasting impact. If you’re a self-starter with a vision beyond the bottom line, ‘Beyond the Tactics’ will equip you to lead with purpose, build a company that matters, and achieve success on your own terms.
Through four 90-minute 1:1 online coaching sessions, active learning guidance, and follow-up asynchronous coaching, you’ll be empowered to make real changes in your thinking.
This is a flexible, timely, and impactful methodology that is best undertaken before you launch but invariable I’m delivering it after Founders have and appreciate they need to go beyond the tactics.
Don’t just launch a business, lead a movement. Sign up for the first session of ‘Beyond the Tactics’ today for free and no obligation. john@bitethecherry.com or 0791 8685029 or read on!
How to think(not what to think) to lead your business to make a difference in the world and not just a profit(and certainly more than just a living)
John Burroughes
- Introduction.
Before you read on, there is one matter I need to make you aware of, please. Firstly I’m proudly dyslexic which is how I have discovered a simple methodology to coach business owners to lead their great businesses to success because I can identify patterns when others can’t. As you will quickly gather as you read on I have identified a simple but critically important pattern that exists in all successful businesses. One that has to the best of my knowledge never been identified before I did. One that of course my course coaches you to create the same pattern for success in your business.
The University of Cambridge says dyslexics are better at exploring the unknown – and have “enhanced abilities” when it comes to discovery, invention, and creativity. They are also very good at identifying patterns when others don’t”
However as you will quickly gather it means I write as I think, whilst spell and grammar checking can do so much it can still be a bit of a strange read.
I have for some time had this niggly dyslectic-based insight that there were just a small number of fundamental decisions the best entrepreneurs made and constantly reviewed and changed as needed to make sure their business was doing the right things to make sure their business made a huge difference and not just a profit (and certainly more than just a living).
Well I am convinced there are only 4 ones I now refer to as the Big 4, and here they are:
- You need to decide if your business is in the right place with the right purpose to enable you to do business easily. If not you need to make a number of decisions to move to the right place and revise your purpose.
- You need to decide that you are attracting and serving the right customers in this place. If not you need to make a number of decisions to make sure you do.
- You need to decide if you are serving them with the right products and or services. If not you need to make a number of decisions to make sure you are.
- You need to decide that you have the right business model to make sure you are making the right difference and profit easily. If not you need to make a number of decisions to make sure you are.
Now you might have gathered that each decision above is taken to make sure a business is doing the right things as opposed to just doing things right!.
STOP!!
Please before you read on would you kindly stop and reread that last paragraph and carefully consider what it means? Because if you miss the point I am making here you will find the rest of this a bit confusing at the very least. Or to be honest you really are thinking the wrong way and therefore you have the totally wrong mindset to be leading your own business! (with the greatest respect)
Okay so now hopefully as you read my next key statement it will have a major impact. I have also discovered that to make these decisions consistently and well enough you need to have the mindset of a LEADER and not a MANAGER!
This is because a very famous guy called Peter Drucker along with many others stated:
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
Now in my extensive experience of advising, consulting, and coaching small business owners and Founders most of you are great managers but not leaders. Therefore you think and behave like a manager and therefore have this type of mindset.
A mindset that is applied well can of course mean you have a profitable business, certainly, if you are good or great at doing things right, certainly when it comes to delivering products or services to your customers. This can be bolstered by pure chance with you getting some if not all of those key doing the right things type decisions right.
It of course thereby follows that if you don’t manage your business well and you get all or most of the key decisions wrong then failure is inevitable.
Hopefully, by now you can understand that I am leading you to consider and agree that I have discovered how you can establish a great business.
To help the world benefit from having more businesses that are making a difference and not just a profit (Well-led) it is my mission with others to coach as many business owners as I can to change their mindset from being just that of a business manager to that of an entrepreneurial leader. They will then consistently make the 4 BIG decisions that get and keep their businesses in the right place, doing it the right way (not just doing it right).
This is possible if you willingly change the way you behave. Yep, that’s right until recently I like many others coached you based on the principle of what you needed to know to be able to think and behave like an entrepreneurial leader. This was like being back at school for them and me with hours of learning the science of business required!
Then bang just recently I like many others have started paying real attention to the neuroscientists and not the psychologists. As these guys are finding out by actually studying how the brain works and not how we feel by changing our behaviour, we can change the way we think and feel. Not the other way around as the psychologists thought.
Let me make sure you understand my key point here and why this is a fundamental change. Everything you may have received as training, learning, and coaching until now has I suggest been delivered to heighten firstly your awareness, thereby your feeling towards it, this then would change your thinking and finally your behaviour.
However, that is the wrong way!
Well, let’s be clear I believe it to be wrong, and now coach based on what I believe to be the right way! It will take a dramatic increase in the number of businesses surviving for longer than 10 years to prove I am right!
So here is my very simple 4-step coaching methodology that will enable you to change your mindset, one you can also use on yourself!
The First Step to leading your business and not just managing it by improving your behaviour so you think well enough to make the 4 key decisions at the right time and in the right way consistently
The second step to leading your business and not just managing it is where you do your business and why with a clear purpose so with the right products/services the right customers will just buy from you (no selling required) then you can take
The third step to leading your business and not just managing it because, without the stress of chasing orders and the right agile mindset, you will capture the right way to continue delighting your customers and making a profit systematically. So you can at last take
The fourth step to leading your business and not just managing it then you complete the mindset changes you need to lead it and not just manage and work in it. Then your business will deliver you the greatest emotional and financial returns possible.
This methodology and thereby the mindset changes that will be achieved can then be used to great effect with the use of our unique playbook of the 20 key concepts of HOW TO THINK like an entrepreneurial leader. I refer to them as your ‘tools’ in my coaching dialogue. The only ones you will need to be aware of to start and fully establish your business.
In the following pages, I have tried to very simply and quickly explain what each one of these Steps to making a difference and not just a profit are, I have not attempted to explain how you make them. This is because I don’t believe that is the right thing to do in a book. As you will read at the end I do offer a solution to that and I make no apologies for doing so, as without offering it I would be failing. Having said that I of course recommend that as I expect you have more questions than answers and don’t want to use me, then find somebody you know and trust and who has the mindset I am promoting to help you, please. Finally, for each one, I have included one of my many coaching stories to assist you further in understanding what they are. They are based on real matters and situations but are altered for confidential reasons. I also have expanded them just a bit to highlight how they thought to exploit or overcome the things they faced that you might or are.
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- FIRST STEP TO LEADING YOUR BUSINESS AND NOT JUST MANAGING IT: Behave and think like an entrepreneurial leader
Yep, that’s the first thing you have to do!!
A technician-minded business owner is one that according to Michael Gerber way back in the 1980s in his best-selling book E-Myth Revisited is not one who thinks and behaves like an entrepreneur.
Therefore what they do is create the perfect job and not a business. However, a perfect job that still needs managing, marketing, accounting, and leading forward. Hence they end up in a syndrome that I have often referred to as the ‘busy fool’ one.
Michael Gerber’s original Fix for this problem was to coach and teach business owners to become masters of the 7 key disciplines of business owner management. Many others have followed his lead and developed their own systems or methodologies for assisting business owners to learn what to think. The majority of academic courses focus on the same thing.
As I stated in my opening remarks I had this dyslectic-based discovery that the most successful business owners I know all seemed to make better strategic decisions than others. Especially when it came to just a very few key ones related to making sure the business was doing the right things, as opposed to doing them right.
This led me to conclude they behaved and thought like entrepreneurial leaders as opposed to business owner-managers. This for me has been a major breakthrough as it explains why there has been very little decrease in the number of small businesses that fail since Michael Gerber’s original breakthrough in the ‘80s.
As you see the current teaching and coaching is very mixed up between leadership and management. Therefore students and business owners find it very difficult to separate matters that relate to doing the right thing or just doing it right.
However, there is another major issue that has risen to my notice separating leading and managing a business. It is that the decisions to make sure you are doing the right things in the first place as a business owner are ones that you are very unlikely to have made on your own before. Not least because unless I have missed it nobody has ever identified them.
They are of course to make sure you are doing your business in the RIGHT place, with the RIGHT customers, with the RIGHT products/services, and finally in the RIGHT way to make a difference and not just a profit.
As you will gather the key thing here is making and taking decisions that are strategic and not tactical. There are very few people in the population who are brought up, taught and trained to make their own strategic decisions about their life or profession let alone in their own business. Not only that and more crucially to take responsibility for them when they either go wrong or right and then react in appropriate ways to overcome or deal with them. The majority leave school, college, and or university and go straight into a job or position where somebody else with others takes those sorts of decisions.
So if that is the real problem then how do you and we go about rectifying it? Well fortunately science is at hand to start helping us out. The first thing I believe helps is knowing how these most successful decision-makers behave. These are based on traits or innate talents and there is a great deal of academic research available to study. I have developed my own set of them for my coaching methodology. I am in no way stating they are conclusive and there are certainly many more but what I find is they really help to make my clients more aware in the first instance, so here they are:
- Purposeful
Everybody seems to believe this is difficult to capture and therefore become. It can be as easily defined and meaningful to the individual and their followers as being purposeful about such key things as serving people, entertaining them, growing things that feed them, coaching them to be better people, and making things that improve their lives. Clearly, these and many more definitions of purpose give clarity to them and their businesses, and thereby they find it easier to make that fortune others confuse as a true expression of their purpose!
- Self-starter and finisher
This features as being top in a large number of scientific studies done on successful entrepreneurs across the world. I added the ‘finisher’ part because my wider experience was there could be a lot of ‘starting’ going on, very often at the expense of effective ‘finishing’.
This lack of finishing is clearly an inability of the majority of Founders and business owners to focus on one key strategic thing at a time. The one key trait recognised in such great entrepreneurs as Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. In fact, their ability to focus on a matter was described as being like a laser.
- Self-disciplined
I believe this needed to be high on my list. It could be argued that it’s very related to the top two. It’s certainly true that for those in the early stage of the entrepreneurial journey and coming from corporate-type jobs it can be a struggle. As although they moan about the Governance they ‘suffered’ it did of course create the discipline required.
- Creatively decisive
This nearly made it to the top of my list. Certainly, I have had the experience of coaching one start-up Founder who had actually been the CEO of a large Corporate Subsidiary and could not even make a decision on which Laptop to buy (see story). Because he eventually admitted he had never made any key strategic decisions before of course on his own!!
I added the ‘creatively’ to emphasise the need for those strategic decisions you need to make that solve problems or grasp opportunities that will need to be derived from a different thought process than normal. This is one of the key traits of the entrepreneur but one all can have if they put their mind to it.
- Resilient and courageous
So important right now, but actually it has always been crucial in my view. It was interesting that I have recently added courage to this.
- Inspirational influencer and persuader.
It originally entered the list described as ‘rainmaker’. Something we all thought would not be appreciated by a wider audience. Also as I considered it I was pleased with my iterated description above. It of course leads nicely to the WHO not HOW mindset of the entrepreneurial leader!
- Willing and able to change rapidly
Obviously, I started off with being ‘willing to change’ as the description. But I have expanded it to cover the two other aspects of this trait I felt were crucial certainly now. Firstly, being able to change even if you are willing is a trait you need. Then I added ‘rapidly’ yet again given the current and future rapid change we will all be faced with.
Therefore if you want to reach the state of making a difference and not just a profit in your business or make sure before you start you don’t need to then my conclusion is you have to perhaps change yourself first. That means starting by changing some of your key habits. By changing your habits, you will start thinking differently, and as a result, a trait will form. One that means you then do things instinctively.
I, like many, was influenced by the great Stephen Covey in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” as with traits I have over the years developed my own 7 habits specifically for those who lead businesses for my coaching dialogue. So here they are:
- Consistently Curious
I find that either coaching clients are naturally curious about everything or we have to assist them to capture the habit. This in practice is to suggest they set specific tasks to extend their curiosity in and around the business. This might be frequently reading blogs or articles relevant to their business and then prompting them to use them to develop further questions based on what they have learned.
It’s interesting to also coach them to extend that curiosity into other areas of their life, because as usual the more you practice a habit the quicker it becomes embedded.
Clearly, without the curious habit, it is highly unlikely that as a leader you are going to identify opportunities or as importantly avoid issues that you need to then reflect on doing the right things in your business (not just doing them right).
- Opinionated
By being curious you will gather information and data that you then have to create an opinion. Without an opinion, you can not then move to make a decision about what is likely to happen to your business, either good or bad.
It is something I notice with all leaders of businesses they have an opinion on every subject that comes up from business to religion. Most strikingly though I notice that the most successful often change their opinion on these matters. Because of course through their curious nature, they have received further information or data that has changed their opinion.
- Framing
As those in business for themselves often know it feels like you just don’t know the “wood from the trees”. As with the previous habits, some do that naturally with others I have to coach them to either rely on others or certainly take steps to “step outside” the business so they can clearly frame where they are.
I, of course, believe this is where the ‘numbers’ can play a vital role, but of course, that is very much not the whole story, should I more precisely state the position of your business? It is of course crucial before applying the next habit that you determine where your business is and of course why.
- Pathfinding
Something else I notice about successful business owners is when in their company they are very able and quick to lead themselves and others the ‘true north’ way in and outside work. Most notable with this habit is they are quick to lead differently if needed and certainly when the data available to them denotes true north to be somewhere else. This is why I refrained from referring to this habit as just ‘planning’. I do come across a lot of planning but not a lot of doing and planning as we go or should I say leading(pathfinding)!
- Fluid
Following on from the habit above when the ‘path ahead’ is blocked or a better one appears then the best business leaders are quick to evolve a novel way to get around a block or exploit an opportunity.
Yet again I decided to not just refer to it as problem-solving, as this to me felt like it was something others turned on when needed, whereas you can appreciate it as an embedded habit. It means the business leader just knows nothing is going to stop them and so do those who follow them, incidentally.
- Orchestrating
I have often used the analogy of a conductor when coaching on leading teams, specifically talented ones, where egos need to be ‘played’ in tandem to get the right ‘tune’ or outcome. This type of habit once totally embedded almost becomes instinctive and leads to team members not even realizing that they are being nicely “orchestrated” to deliver the goals of the business as a part of a team.
- Intensely Executing
This habit and the first one are to me in effect the only two you really need! Yep, that’s right if you are an intense and laser-focused self-starter and finisher with everything you do, including mundane things like washing up then everything else can fall into place. The intensity of doing business today and certainly in the start-up phase means this is a key habit if you want to succeed and establish your business and beyond.
I hope this story starts to help you think about how you behave and think. As my vast experience is that by coaching business owners to in effect lead themselves they rapidly find the time and energy they did not think they had to work on their business. So making the other 3 steps to making a difference and not just a profit becomes so much easier to do.
It’s only a blinking laptop!
I was once a business advisor on a scheme for those going self-employed through jobcentre Plus in the UK. It allowed the person claiming benefits to start a business whilst being supported by benefits for 6 months. However, they had to be advised by somebody like me and provide us with timesheets to demonstrate they were working on the business.
One client I had was a redundant CEO of a large well-known subsidiary of a global business. Each person entering the scheme had to provide a business plan before they started, suffice to say the one this gentleman provided was one of the best I have ever seen. So it occurred to me that there might be very little I was going to be able to advise him on, but obviously, we still had to meet and I needed to review and sign off the timesheets.
It was around our third meeting that I was studying the timesheets and saw a constant reference to the “laptop project”. In fact, most of the previous week seemed to be taken up by it, so I asked him about it. He explained he was researching the market for the best laptop for himself and was currently a bit stuck over DECIDING which one to buy. My reaction was instant and possibly a bit rude “It’s only a Flippin laptop, how long is going to take you to make the key decisions of being in the right place, etc in your business?”
Whether it was the question itself or the way I delivered it, the reaction was instant and long! In essence, he had discovered that he had actually never had the direct responsibility for making decisions in a business before. Well, I was amazed as clearly my impression from reading his plan and CV was that this guy was going to fly through them. But he went on to explain that as a CEO of a subsidiary, most of the key strategic decisions were cascaded down to him by HQ, and the rest he delegated out to his fellow Directors on his board. There was quite a lot of ‘stuff’ about how he had also scaled the ‘greasy pole’ to the position he had been at by avoiding making decisions that might go wrong and sort of block his progress.
Anyway, it was a breakthrough in our relationship and I suddenly saw how I could add value to him and thereby our end customer, the taxpayer! I started, as usual, to try to spark his awareness by referring him to some interesting research I had recently been reading on how we as humans make decisions through the prefrontal cortex part of the brain.
At our next meeting, it had clearly worked as I had expected as a coach given the timing of this intervention. He had immersed himself in all matters of how to make decisions in life, particularly business. This I soon learned had led him to consider he needed to make some pretty dramatic changes to himself and specifically some of his behaviours. He quizzed me about how I led myself, and I went on to explain that as a self-employed person, leading my own business I was always setting, checking, and being clear about where I was leading to and obviously from. I also established a very structured timetable for each week. One that enabled my self-discipline and made sure I was constantly self-starting and finishing the right things on time. This schedule also made sure I was at my physical, emotional, and intellectual best all the time. Finally, it made sure I had the right amount of time and energy to make those 4 key business decisions as effectively as possible. This is mostly achieved by me constantly reacting to WHO rather than HOW I persuade others to do things right. Most business owners are making them at the end of very long days working in their business doing the HOW themselves and they are knackered. So no wonder they make some bad decisions!
This clearly yet again was a great intervention and by the next meeting, he was literally flying. So we agreed that our meetings should be focused on coaching him on his behaviours and how he thought. As obviously there was not much I could add on what to think about the business.
He therefore quickly became the first client that I only focused on coaching on improving his mindset. The methodology I have now developed into “How to Think like an Entrepreneurial Leader” and not just a profit course. Most of what I did from there on was to add in the accountability to make sure the behaviour changes stuck long enough to become embedded and as a result, change his thinking. The only matter we were yet to tackle was his resilience and persistence. I knew he needed to gather to make him ready to lead his very ambitious start-up. That quickly arrived as an issue when his first major contract fell apart, for actually no direct fault of his.
As soon as it happened there was the predicted indication that he was going to give up. I quickly coached him through the way in which sometimes we have to reframe such events based on our logic and not emotions. This has to be a learned behaviour with usually them going to a different place or something similar. Then adding the benefit of creating what Jim Collins of Good to Great fame their personal counsel of advisors and mentors.
Interestingly for me, he also decided to change his lifestyle to improve his personal energy levels. This was partly for the obvious reason but he had concluded that to make the best possible strategic decisions he needed to have the maximum amount of personal energy available to him. Yet again something he had taken from his studying of the way the prefrontal cortex of the brain works.
As our six months came to an end his business was absolutely flying and I’m sure was a direct result of the work he had put into improving his mindset more than anything else. This certainly has turned out to be the case as he quickly grew it to a multi-million-pound business and interestingly as I’m writing this story he has sold it.
Even today he kindly refers to our work together and coaching as the cornerstone of his success. I must admit that I sort of dismissed it as being a significant factor back then, given his business acumen. However, I am now of the opinion that it is very significant and certain key studies are also backing that up. Even if it is not yet fully proven to make a real difference in you having a successful business my coaching dialogue and attitude are that well why would you not want to look to take the first step and change your mindset? Given it is another thing you can control in a situation of being in business for yourself when faced with so many things that you are not!
THE SECOND STEP TO LEADING YOUR BUSINESS AND NOT JUST MANAGING IT: Always be in the right place, at the right time, with the right purpose, serving the right people with what they need!
There are loads of highly competent business owners working very hard to make a difference and not just profit who don’t realise this one thing.
The key decision you need to make as a leader (not a manager) of a business and make sure it is still right, is “Are we doing this in the right place?”
Now in technical terms, this is referred to as your market position. The right one means you are perfectly positioned in a market and or niche that has customers with loads of money, a need for what you do really well and you have the passion, expertise, and purpose to deliver solutions that they love.
In my long career as a business advisor and now coach I have constantly advised or coached business owners who have not made this decision well or at all that so it means it is rather ‘like working uphill’ leading their business. Because as you can hopefully already appreciate by getting it right you can then start ‘working downhill’. Something that is technically referred to as a Blue Ocean strategy, as opposed to being stuck ‘working uphill’ in a red ocean highly competitive position.
The reason why it happens is obvious, having made the decision to start your business, you just want to get on with it ‘down your street’. However, even a simple analysis of the potential in your ‘street’ will very often avoid the same massive problem of constantly ‘facing a headwind’. Also more worryingly and disastrously even established businesses forget to review their ‘place’ or positioning decision often or well enough. I’m sure you are well aware of this with some of the biggest brands that disappeared seemingly suddenly. However upon review had missed the point in time at which they needed and could have changed their place and or position.
Once your business is in the best place, at the right time with the right products and services, for the right purpose then you can move seamlessly to make the next step.
Working downhill and not uphill in a business.
To help you with this Step to making a difference and not just a profit let me tell you another story to make you aware of HOW TO THINK to get these things right. It was whilst I was a Business Advisor on a start-your-own business programme this time that I worked with a client who was an experienced but redundant academic researcher. He had worked in Cambridge and lived just outside it near a very nice provisional town called Sudbury.
At our initial meeting, his wife came with him. It soon became clear that she was born in Brazil and was a marvellous cook. As a result, they were considering starting a South American-themed restaurant in Sudbury.
This was in the early 2000s so there was not a restaurant of this type in Sudbury at the time. So they had started to convince themselves that it was a viable place to start their new business on this basis. More than interesting was how emotionally they were almost charging ahead imagining their lifestyle based around the restaurant being only just down the road from where they lived. The description of what an ordinary day would be like was forming more quickly than the business plan. This type of emotional exercise is very common in my experience when it comes to starting your own business.
I knew Sudbury fairly well at the time and had a client from there with a similar but admittedly more traditional restaurant proposal in the last 6 months. Interestingly the client had gone ahead and put together a business plan and had taken it to his bank. The bank had turned it down because they were not confident there was enough demand for another restaurant in the town. In fact, he had also taken it to the two other high street banks in the town, and they had given the same response.
I was, therefore, able to use this story to coach this couple to ask the question they should be asking first, before falling “in love” with the idea of setting their restaurant in the wrong place.
It did the trick and the husband, being a professional researcher, went into overdrive and after two weeks came back with the same conclusion as the Banks. There was a big doubt over whether there would be enough demand in Sudbury at that time given the existing capacity of restaurants and pubs. He had also gone on and done some very effective quality research as to the likely hood of enough local customers actually wanting to try a different type of menu. Yet again proved that uptake of a new type of menu would be slow, given the demographics of the local area. There were hardly a lot of trendsetters living locally at the time.
I, therefore, felt that at our next meeting, they would be shelving this concept and introducing something else. I was very surprised to receive the proposal that they were going to buy and operate a catering van instead of a restaurant. I was even more amazed that as the husband put it this would be a way for them could undertake some carefully controlled tests of their idea and most interestingly look to discover where they might PLACE their first restaurant. Obviously, I quickly learned from this that it is crucial to recognise that you must have a passion or at least a purpose in what you intend to do in business. As they had reviewed quite a few other options but had recognised that sharing their love for their food would be the driving force they needed.
They did just that and set out for the Summer ahead to attend and operate at several “upmarket” events across the country. This was crucial as their price point meant they needed to target the more wealthy customers. I visited them a couple of times during the period and was amazed at the level of data collection they were undertaking at each event. They carefully took feedback from their customers who were just that bit more interested in this unique offer on how they found the menu and most interestingly where they came from and finally where they thought the restaurant should be.
It was a marvellous exercise and yet again given the Husband’s profession, it was so well undertaken and put together when it came to analysising it and making conclusions it was relatively easy.
The key decision was that their first restaurant needed to be situated in a specific area of London. Now, this immediately raised the question as to whether they could afford it, in terms of their own resources. As you can imagine, although I had been a bit damning of their original dream of basing it in Sudbury they had also calculated they could afford it or certainly it would not stretch them too far.
I quickly used one of my coaching stories based on how to think about good or bad debt and they quickly appreciated, certainly given their analytical background that it was less of a risk to start in London than in Sudbury. Given they had sufficient evidence there would be an immediate and consistent demand for their unique menu in this location. Of course, they already had enough data to know the precise make-up of the menu.
My coaching was to go ahead and complete the business plan to support the application for finance. This they did and very quickly found that the banks wanted too much from them in terms of costs and security although they did agree to it, so we turned to look for equity funding and very quickly approached a number of the key customers of the catering van. Suffice to say we soon had more than enough offers to complete the round.
I then had to deal with coaching them through the issues of pivoting the lifestyle part of the vision they had originally established. At first, they immediately were emotionally negative about working in London and not living there as they thought this new business plan would mean to them! Of course, it did not take me long to make them aware that they would be leading this type of business and certainly not working in it or for that matter managing it. Ironically they had already worked IN it to discover the business model.
This story yet again is based on a true one but is altered for confidential reasons and as before I have embellished the points I want to really put across. I suspect those of you who are a bit more familiar with business science will appreciate that some of this story relates to certain methods of how to think, such as the blue ocean strategy, crossing the chasm, and the lean start-up. For the majority, I really hope it heightens your awareness of how getting and keeping your business in the right place, attracting the right customers, with this case the right menu and finally in the right way is crucial. Because as I am sure you can imagine had this great couple cracked on to start their restaurant in Sudbury with an untested menu they would have failed or clung on regardless of how hard they worked and how good the food and service were. A situation I have often referred to for clients as “working uphill” as opposed to of course working downhill by being in the right place, something that some of you would recognise as being the first principle of how to think in the Art of War book by Sun Szo. This is, unfortunately, the same for the majority of business owners as Professor Scott Shane evidenced in his book The Illusions of Entrepreneurship. It is really quite a stark read and his conclusions based on the evidence he puts forward clearly state that starting or trying to run a ‘me too’ business in the wrong place is what the majority do and how damaging it is to them and the economy generally.
- THE THIRD STEP TO LEADING YOUR BUSINESS AND NOT JUST MANAGING IT: Discover a repeatable, viable, potentially scalable business model
Your business needs to ‘work’ like a Macdonald’s franchise does. That’s right whether you’re a one-man-band or corporate giant you need a ‘simple’ system of consistently delighting your customers and making a profit.
No doubt you have come across this on many occasions before and if you are still wondering why yours does not ‘work’ that easily. Then it’s because you have not discovered yours yet.
This is because you spend all your time and energy thinking and working on how to generate sales. Evidently, if you have implemented the previous step then you are in the right place and the sales would be flooding in. Leaving your time and intellect to discover how to serve them systematically and profitably.
I have often gleaned from very successful entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and freelancers who have perhaps succeeded without my direct assistance or others that they made the same sort of fix. But very often they referred to their business model as their formula or in one case with a Pub entrepreneur he referred to it as his recipe. The one thing in common with all of them is they were very simple yet effective in consistently delighting their customers and of course, making a profit.
Another thing I have noticed and coached is that the best ones do not take a great deal of ‘hard work’ to operate and lead. The majority had actually niched into a very specialist gap and therefore delivered unique value for extremely good gross profits. Of course, these business models all had consistent ways of delivering quality orders and instructions to the business or person thereby negating any ‘feast and famine’ problems.
The final thing I have noticed and I believe to be the key is that they are constantly innovating them, in fact, they are constantly implementing incremental gains. Yet again only because the entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and freelancers have the thinking time and capacity to keep well ahead of the competition and closer enough to the customer, to know their perceived needs.
It’s out there somewhere!
So I coached this great Founder to create a pitch deck and raise a chunk of money to launch his E-commerce business. He did respond well to my initial coaching and did get a load of supposed experts in to help him launch the E-Commerce platform and capture the revenue needed to repay the initial investment and scale the business. So unlike him, he did not get bogged down by trying to do it all himself!
However, after 18 months they had burned through the cash and were nowhere near to discovering a business model that was hardly viable let alone scalable. I soon dived in to find out what had been going on and how we could save matters.
Well, it soon became clear that my client had quite rightly decided to trust the individuals and marketing agencies he had contracted with based on their original pitches. But had not managed them well enough as matters progressed, and as I believe they knew they were failing to secure the type of results needed, they even began to ‘hide’ the results, but of course, still take the fees. The thing they all failed to do was to determine that this launch was bound to fail down to a timing issue!
Yes, that’s right as soon as I got back involved it became pretty obvious that the customers in the market they were targeting were if not digital Luddites they were pretty close to it and therefore were not yet ready to use and trust buying our products online. Anyway once resolved the Founder moved quickly to get out the door and start looking for some business ‘old style’ by ringing and emailing his extensive and existing network of buyers. This quickly yielded the results required and some major contracts were won and revenues and profits began to flow. However, we were never going to scale this business model as we only had one Founder with the level of experience and knowledge to secure these types of projects.
So our first hypothesis was to see if there were any and hopefully enough others like him in the sector globally that we could identify and attract them to join us. We quickly concluded there was not mainly because our sector was large but niche and quite young. We did identify one individual and we got fairly close to ‘pinching him’ from a major competitor but we were too far apart on his starting salary. We then moved on briefly to look at acquisitions and mergers, but that did not bring up any great data. Finally, we looked at franchising.
It then occurred to us that our Founder was very successful in a very particular way when it came to winning very large contracts with large Global businesses. Most relevantly and with some expert external assistance he had three very unique and affective traits. We captured these and as a result, started to develop not only a brand but the definition of our culture based on them.
As this work began to really come to fruition we started to evolve a hypothesis that we could replicate or find these traits in others and through a full-on digitalization of the business to fully support them, we could rapidly scale the business globally. Just as we started to do this the world hit the COVID pandemic and really utilizing these 3 key traits we quickly moved to provide our customers with innovative products to help them deal with it. A very typical way of making sure we were at the right place, at the right time, with the right products. This not only propelled our revenues and profits forward but data collection for our hypothesis of a business model.
Therefore by reinvesting our profits we now have discovered a fully viable business model that is scalable globally. To enhance our ability to attract the key individuals and motivate them to not only stay with us but excel we are putting in place a share-sharing scheme. One that not only rewards them for their financial results but for maintaining and enhancing their behaviors in line with the key traits. Thereby securing not only the results our customers get from using us but also the experience they have when doing so.
This story is one of many I could tell about how you can discover a viable, repeatable, and scalable business model. However, it is unique in that we found that the business model actually was based on the way the Founder behaved, something we would never have thought possible at the outset. This in itself demonstrates how you need to think in a very agile and lateral way in the discovery phase of your business journey. As I coach it is very similar in my view to what a Royal Marine Commando experiences when they land on a foreign beach to secure it from the enemy. Something they do like a business owner with very little credible, up-to-date, and relevant information. Therefore they rely on their ability to know and believe they can overcome the enemy in a way every Founder should know and believe they can discover a business model if they have the right state of mind and know how to think to do that.
- THE FOURTH STEP TO LEADING YOUR BUSINESS AND NOT JUST MANAGING IT: Work (think) on it and not in it.
If you are the leader of a business you need to be working on it and not in!! I bet you have heard that many many times before, but perhaps wondered ‘How the heck do I do that’!
If you can’t or don’t do that then you will never be making the consistent key strategic decisions and implementing the actions required to be in the right place with the right business model and not have to be working in it.
Now the block here is that you believe it has to do actually with your definition of ‘working’. It actually is all about behaving and thinking like a leader and not just a manager from the minute you start a business or even before that! As leaders make sure a business is doing the right things whilst managers make sure they are done right!
As it will have occurred to you hopefully by now by being in the right place, with the right products and business model, then you will have a massive amount of quality leadership time! The time that will allow you to constantly review your market, competitors, and of course your customers’ future needs and adjust what you do to be right. Thereby you will have a far better chance to make it to your 10th year of trading and beyond.
The crucial bit of being a great leader is to attract, retain, manage, and coach others to do the ‘job’ even better than you (even if they don’t work directly for you). Because you will stop immediately thinking HOW DO I do this new thing rather than WHO can!! So at long last, you will have the time and energy to focus on them and not as previously juggle you doing ‘it’ and them constantly needing to know how you actually do it. Not because they can’t do it well enough, but because they don’t know how you do it. As there is no business model in place, of course yet. This often ends up with you thinking if I could just recruit the right people, then just get on with it! Something I have often had to leave hanging out there like any good coach is a thought “Might you and your muddled business systems be the problem, not them?”
“We have arrived”
A few years ago I was referred to a great couple who had started their business with a loan from an organisation who insisted they needed my earliest MVP (minimal viable product) of leading your business not just managing its coaching methodology from me.
The wife was particularly frosty towards me as she was the technician who had left a successful job to create the perfect one. It was her ex-military husband who had joined her to help her make it a bit more like a business or regiment as it emerged!
Suffice it to say I gained a bit more rapport with him as his wife concluded how could I know anything about what they did as well as She did. Given that I did not have any direct experience in their sector.
Anyway, I continued to visit them on a monthly basis as contracted. At each monthly session, I delivered another one of the twelve coaching platforms (now 4 modules) and we then had a session on where they were and going next. Obviously, these platforms introduced the first principle of thinking that would help them make the key strategic decisions for themselves.
By about the sixth month they were now employing quite a few people and working incredibly hard to build the business. Also most worryingly their relationship had become a bit tested. The wife was desperately trying to create the perfect job, but her husband was trying to control that and lead it by numbers too much, in her opinion. One of my earliest coaching platforms was called “leading by numbers” at the time and he had leaped at it and was measuring everything in terms of profit and cash flow. As I inferred, he was almost managing the business like an army unit!
So fortunately at this time in the 12-month coaching process, I delivered a Coaching Platform called ‘working downhill’ which was an early but obviously effective way of empowering them to think about the ‘place’ they were trying to establish a business in.
Yet again by the time I returned the next month the ‘penny’ had totally dropped and they explained with some glee how they had DECIDED they were moving roughly 60 miles up the road to a bigger and more affluent town. Not only that, they had identified a great gap in the premium end of the market there. This is a classic great coaching outcome as I’m pretty sure if I had advised (challenged) them to move then they would not have, but by coaching them to make the decision not only did it happen but they fully believed in it!
So within 3 months this move (pivot) was complete and very quickly proved the tipping point in terms of revenue and gross profit creation. It was just like ‘working downhill’ and not up to where they had just started. As you see when you read into the 4 steps, I believe the majority of entrepreneurs and small business owners just start where they are and then struggle for years stuck in the wrong ‘place’ or trying to sell even the wrong product! Not knowing how to decide to move, to a better place/position, and how.
Without the pressure of searching for demand and now making a real profit I finally had gained sufficient rapport with the Wife to start introducing the first-principle thinking of how to create the perfect business model that firstly delights the customer consistently but of course, makes a profit. The “making a profit” was a very interesting point of belief I also discovered was causing a block for her as well. The primary reason for starting the business was to make an impact, which given her corporate experience was totally unrelated to making a profit. She felt they could make the same sort of living without fleecing the customer to make a profit. Once I explained that profits should be reinvested in a private business to make it even better at what it did, I finally saw her eyes light up in our sessions!
As the business model (the right way) was discovered and established I delivered my then-last coaching platform “mind the middle”. It gives the first principles of competitive advantage thinking of making sure you grow or scale to the right size to maintain your competitiveness. As it means the business can support somebody operating in an active leadership role. Too many Founders and business owners don’t realise that when you are more than one you are exposed to and thereby under threat, hence they stay stuck in the middle. That is until you grow or scale to the right number and with the right type of people. This coaching platform worked well again and they quickly decided not to recruit apprentices or less able staff as the majority do and went for a very able management team first. Then ‘backfilled’ the recruitment of the team eventually hiring apprentices.
I finished the official 12 months and they kindly agreed to ‘keep me on’ on a rather ad-hoc basis as like most they had not quite discovered their fully viable and repeatable business model. It was about six months later when I received a telephone call from the Husband, which went a bit like this,
“We’ve arrived!! You mean you are just back from your first serious family holiday in years, was my response.
No, we have been away for nearly 4 weeks, and in that time we have had no urgent calls from the business, in fact, it’s been operating better without us, so we are finally working on it! Then came this question: “But what do we do next?”
Well of course they both needed to start leading the business as opposed to working in or managing it! So I arranged a full-on session with them both. The outcome was that they then both realised that they had different tasks to fulfill. They needed between them to be “out there” observing the new trends and opportunities. Thereby making sure they were in the right place, serving the right customers with the right services and in the right way If not they were able to change things quickly. So they joined various trade bodies and traveled to see other similar businesses operating in other parts of the world. They engaged and observed on a regular basis with their customers and non-customers not to sell them anything but discover what they were not getting from the market that they could innovate on. They worked hard on their behaviours to become even better entrepreneurial leaders. They occasionally enjoyed working in the business, but they certainly enjoyed supporting and coaching their excellent management team. Then applying the governance when occasionally needed!
Finally, they discussed with their team and captured a very meaningful vision and thereby mission for the business. One they are still leading (from behind) very successfully today. Which is giving them a great deal of emotional and financial rewards. They are both involved in many community projects and have both served on the Local Council. They also have their fair amounts of holidays and time off!
In fact, they are a perfect example of owners of a business they lead to make a difference and not just a profit!
- The Business that makes a difference and not just a profit
Once you are in the right place, serving the right customers with the right products/services, with the right business model, and mindset, and you are working on(leading) your business you can establish the perfect business, one that makes a difference and not just a profit.
One that you will be able to capture a very defined, meaningful, and clear vision or goal for your business. Where the majority go wrong is that they believe and try to define this before the Steps to making a difference and not just a profit is well enough in position. Even if they do capture one before this then it is hardly meaningful or bluntly believable.
This clarity about where you are passionately leading will reward you with followers. Ones who want to buy from you, work with you, and support you.
Now I also have to ‘throw in’ that this is of course the only point in the development of your business where you can actually capture a meaningful and usable business plan (as widely used in big businesses). This also goes for an effective Brand and strategy. If you think I’m wrong then please let me know why so many small businesses don’t have one, or at least one they can use effectively!! Because in my opinion they try and do them far too early and then they don’t work, so they don’t bother. Of course, missing the point at which they should do them!
It is my opinion that having a meaningful and ethically clear mission and thereby vision for your business is the key not just to your future but to the world. I am totally buoyed by believing that if the majority of businesses were led in this way then we would have a great future.
For you of course it will deliver phenomenal results and return for the investment and risk you will have made to lead your own business. I’m talking about not just the financial rewards but more crucially the emotional rewards of knowing your business has made a real difference to all its stakeholders.
It will also enable a bunch of you to pursue more altruistic roles in society knowing your business is being very well managed. As I entered the world of business many years ago there were alongside my Grandfather many great business leaders who also acted as local councillors, justice of the peace, and most importantly active trustees of charities and community support organisations. These business owners of course brought a lot of their commercial drive and knowledge to these types of organisations let alone access to their extensive networks. This was very much a win/win situation as a stronger community meant for the business leaders they had more customers for their business and ones of course who were not wooed by some clever CPR marketing but they knew the actual deeds the leader was involved in delivering.
There was one thing a business making a difference and not just a profit delivers that unlike most I experienced losing many years ago when our 4th generation’s family business failed. I remember vividly personally making 60 of our employees redundant in one day. As a result, recognising how certainly our predecessors had been responsible for providing whole families a decent and secure state of living through employment, we created for them through great leadership. Losing this huge part of our lives at the time, left a huge hole. For a short while as a leader, I felt not only the responsibility but more importantly the very deep-seated satisfaction that we were making a real difference and not just a profit.
- So HOW do you change to lead your business to make a difference and not just a profit?
So I hope by now you are convinced as to why you need to take these steps to lead your business and not just manage it for you and your business. Also hope it is the same for your awareness now of what they are.
If you are now keen and willing to make the changes needed then we can help!!
There are several ways you can do that and we are pleased to offer a way ourselves. We can offer you an awareness course of HOW TO THINK LIKE AN ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADER called Beyond the Tactics: Lead, just don’t launch and scale.The course helps you become aware of the 20-plus key concepts of how to think like an entrepreneurial leader. Aware enough to enable you to study them further and of course apply them to your decision-making process going forward.
Here are the details:
Beyond the Tactics: Lead, don’t just launch and scale Coaching Sessions
In each 90-minute virtual coaching session, I will take you through a set number of probing questions that will allow you with my interventions think through and discover the answers. Something that has a much more meaningful and lasting effect than purely being told or knowing something.
Answers that help you become aware of the concepts you need to learn more about to improve your behaviours, thinking, and decision-making.
This improved level of decision-making will help you make sure your business is doing the RIGHT things, not just doing things right.
After each session, you will receive a Coaching note with recommended links to further learning sources on the internet. Once you engage and send me further questions I will asynchronus coach you until you are convinced you have made the changes you need to your thinking and behaviour.
Are You ?
Do you behave and think in the RIGHT way to lead your business?
Well during this session and your subsequent learning and coaching, you will be satisfied you are leading yourself well enough first!
This is crucial because if you can’t lead yourself you will never lead others in the RIGHT way!
Where (why), who, and what?
Are you looking to or doing your business in the RIGHT place (at the right time), for the RIGHT customers and offering them the RIGHT products or services?
If not you are almost certainly finding it very hard work to make a profit if not, move your business forward.
How?
So once you are in the RIGHT place (at the right time), attracting the RIGHT customers with the RIGHT offerings, then HOW do you make a profit easily and consistently?
Well of course you need to have the RIGHT business model in place.
Where to lead it to (and why)?
Now that you don’t have to “work in” your business, where do you want to lead it to, and make sure you do?
As above you need to make sure you are going to behave, think, and act in the RIGHT way (and not just as a good manager).
What next?
Well, I offer to deliver the first session ARE YOU ? Free and with no obligation. If you fully and willingly engage after it we can discuss proceeding with the following sessions.
“When the student is ready, the teacher(coach) will appear”-Budha
Anyway please why don’t you email me now at john@bitethecherry.com or telephone me now at 0791 868 5029 and let’s get you booked for the free session
This is what some of my client’s say about my methodology;
I recently completed the coaching course with John Burroughes ..when I started I had absolutely no idea what it really took to be an entrepreneur but by the time I finished it I had a much greater understanding of what it involves, what I need to do and how to go about it. John is clear, patient, concise and is very passionate about what he does which comes across in his approach and manner.. I couldn’t recommend him and his methodology highly enough
James Carrington
Musician, songwriter, Music Teacher and Entrepreneur
- I’d recomnend John’s 5 sessions “How to Think like an entrepreneurial leader” methodology, to any entrepreneur who is seeking to formulate the fastest route forward with their venture.
You’ll be signposted to lots of relevant business school type materials, to help you to reevaluate and if necessary redirect your efforts, and you’ll benefit from John’s in-depth expertise in business coaching and business building.
- I’d recomnend John’s 5 sessions “How to Think like an entrepreneurial leader” methodology, to any entrepreneur who is seeking to formulate the fastest route forward with their venture.
- “ I undertook John’s “How to think like a Leader(not just a manager)” course during the first COVID lockdown in 2020.
As a direct result of that, I set myself 5 objectives for my business, including some fairly fundamental step changes. Having revisited those objectives 3 years, I note that not only have I achieved all 5 but turnover has increased by 75% in the subsequent 3 years. Profitability has also increased and the business is less dependent on me and more sustainable. Without John’s support and guidance at that time, I would not have had the confidence to pursue and achieve the results I have. “
- “ I undertook John’s “How to think like a Leader(not just a manager)” course during the first COVID lockdown in 2020.
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