Building Your Booming Business: The Five Foundations Every Organization Needs to Succeed

By David Bryant Mitchell

Build the Business You Deserve!

Every day you face flat sales, an unmotivated team, and constant fires to put out. 70+ hour weeks and sleepless nights have not helped you build the business you crave. You were supposed to have profit to re-invest and freedom in your schedule, right?

It's still within your grasp. It all boils down to David Bryant Mitchell's Five Foundations. Step-by-step, David leads you through your Five Foundations and how to establish them.

In Building Your Booming Business, you will learn how to:
• Rocket your sales
• Create & Lead Your "Dream Team"
• Deliver your customer's ultimate experience
• Have more cash on hand
• Systemize your business - giving you more freedom Your business can only be as successful as you are.

If you want it to boom, it's time to invest in yourself by reading Building Your Booming Business.

"Building Your Booming Business is jam-packed with great stories and lots of common sense advice to build and grow a profitable business." - Earl Bell, Founder, Winning in Business Master Academy and Author of Winning in Baseball and Business

"Want to succeed in business and achieve your destiny? Start here!" - Patrick Snow, International Best-Selling Author of Creating Your Own Destiny and Boy Entrepreneur

"Building Your Booming Business delivers strategies you can put to work right away. David takes his years of experience . . . and guides you on how to achieve the success you seek." - Debra A. Jason, Author of Millionaire Marketing on a Shoestring Budget

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Bryant Mitchell
• Release date: Dec 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311434326

David Bryant Mitchell

David Bryant Mitchell is the founder of PMR Business Coaching and Consulting, an organization committed to bringing prosperity to the world through stronger leaders and businesses. He has consulted and coached leaders in almost every industry imaginable: Healthcare, Cleaning Services, Construction, Banking, Financial Advising, Insurance Sales, Retail, Restaurants, Manufacturing, and many more. Known as an inspirational and educational speaker to organizations and corporations as well as a coach for teams and individuals, David has been instrumental in helping many of them double and triple their results by implementing his Five Foundations philosophy. He is also the author of several small e-books including: 3 Simple Ways to Increase Referrals and Stop Surviving: Start Thriving. In addition, David writes the weekly business tips newsletter Dave's Weekly Kick in the Butt. All are available for free at his website. David lives in Western Washington with his wife and two children. To learn more about how to make your business boom, visit: www.BoomMyBusiness.com

Book preview

What Successful Entrepreneurs Are Saying About

building your booming business

"Building Your Booming Business is jam-packed with great stories and lots of common sense advice. Small business owners can learn from David Mitchell how to spin the five foundational plates necessary to build and grow a profitable business. I really enjoyed reading this book and found it very practical, and I believe you will too!"

— Earl Bell, Founder, Winning in Business Master Academy and Author of Winning in Baseball and Business

"Thousands of books are written annually about how to start businesses, but few offer insightful information from someone who has actually ‘fought in the trenches’ and succeeded. Building Your Booming Business stands out for this reason. In his book, Dave Mitchell gleans from personal experiences to give his readers invaluable guidance and step-by-step directions on how to have an optimum workplace and build a profitable business."

— Roxana Bowgen, Founder of Volunteers On Call, Inc. and Author of Agapanthus Rising

"As a business owner, you have ideas—lots of them. However, if you’re not sure where to start or how to prioritize, Dave Mitchell comes to your rescue. In his book Building Your Booming Business, he delivers strategies you can put to work right away. Dave takes his years of experience successfully overcoming business obstacles and guides you on how to achieve the success you seek."

— Debra A. Jason, Author of Millionaire Marketing on a Shoestring Budget(TM)

What does Dave Mitchell’s favorite taco place have to do with making your business boom? You’d be surprised. This book is filled with personal anecdotes and success stories from Dave’s many years as a business consultant. Everywhere he goes, he observes what makes some businesses fail and others succeed, and now he shares the common-sense and practical-based secrets he has learned.

— Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D., Owner of Superior Book Productions and Author of Arthur’s Legacy

If you are tired of low profits, frustration, and long hours, then this book is a must read. David shows you how to build a system of systems that will have your business booming. When you’re ready for success, this book is your blueprint!

— Kieran Murry, Author of Go For Your Gold and Co-Founder of Ignite-U

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Building Your Booming Business

The Five Foundations Every Organization Needs to Succeed

© 2014 David Bryant Mitchell

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning or other – except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Cover/Interior Design: Fusion Creative Works, www.fusioncw.com

Author Photo: Elaine Turso

Published by:

Aviva Publishing

Lake Placid, NY

518-523-1320

www.avivapubs.com

Address all inquiries to:

David Bryant Mitchell

6291 Pine Rd

Bremerton, WA

[phone]

ISBN: 9781940984537

Library of Congress Control Number:  2014947901

To my children:

May you know great prosperity and use it to

better the world around you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No great achievement is completed alone. I could not have completed this book without the help of many key people.

Thank you, Sarah, my risk-adverse wife who allowed me to try this adventure of entrepreneurship, supported me through it all, and occasionally kicked me in the pants.

My mom and dad, Glen and Kate, also deserve more than a moment of my recognition. They let me experiment with life before I was forced to implement and guided me along the way.

Thanks to my past mentors, managers, directors, bosses, instructors, and professors. I specifically want to thank: Margaret Meacham, Mike Carter, and Connie Bellone. Your great example of leadership, understanding, and wise guidance have played a major role in helping me develop my own philosophies on business and leadership.

The many employees and coworkers I have had over the years deserve a note of gratitude as well. You have played a large part in this book’s development because you saw me both fail and succeed as I cut my teeth in business. Thank you for allowing me to lead you.

Thank you to the team that has helped me put all of these lessons and philosophies into a single volume: Patrick Snow as my publishing coach and mentor, Tyler Tichelaar as my editor, Shiloh Schroeder and the book layout and cover design team at Fusion Creative Works, and the many clients and friends who have cheered me along the way.

The biggest thanks of all is to my Heavenly Father who has blessed me with the gift to chase a dream and make it a reality. He has given me so much, including His own Son.

Thank you all!

CONTENTS

Introduction: Start Spinning Plates

Foundation I: Marketing

Chapter 1: Eating Your Ps

Chapter 2: Target Market

Chapter 3: The 4 Cs of Marketing

Chapter 4: Ditch Tactics

Chapter 5: Thinking What’s Next?

Chapter 6: Putting It All Together

Foundation II: Management/Leadership

Chapter 7: Leadership vs. Management

Chapter 8: Creating a Vision that Succeeds

Chapter 9: The Miracle Team

Chapter 10: Leadership for the One-Man Army

Chapter 11: Leadership in Sales

Foundation III: Operations

Chapter 12: The Hidden Marketing Secret

Chapter 13: Deliver Flawlessly

Chapter 14: Get the Team On-Board

Foundation IV: Finance

Chapter 15: Money Talks

Chapter 16: Know the Score

Chapter 17: Cash Is King

Chapter 18: Financial Management

Foundation V: Systems and Controls

Chapter 19: Systems Thinking

Chapter 20: Everybody’s Favorite: Documentation and Reports

Chapter 21: Communication

Chapter 22: Over-Systemized

Your Personal Foundation: Success Habits

Chapter 23: Lead Yourself

Chapter 24: Become Bigger than Yourself

Chapter 25: Motivate Yourself

Chapter 26: Take Care of Yourself

Chapter 27: The Fortune Is in the Follow-Through

A Final Note

About the Author

You’ve Learned What—Find Out How

Join The Booming Business Insiders Club

Book David Mitchell to Speak at Your Next Event

INTRODUCTION:

START SPINNING PLATES

Businesses fail; keeping them afloat is one of the most difficult of human endeavors. Yet every day, millions of us head to the shop or office to give it our best. While you may not have the ambition to become the next Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, or Sam Walton, you do want to create a business that gives you prosperity, pride, and freedom. That’s part of living the American Dream.

But instead of prosperity, pride, and freedom, you may encounter:

• Low Profits (or even lost investments)

• Frustration

• Long Hours

I’ve seen this situation over and over again working with my coaching clients, and I have experienced it myself. When I’m caught up in that kind of frustration, I often feel like a circus performer.

I love watching jugglers and other performers because they seem to have an uncanny ability to perform the impossible. I once saw a guy juggle a sword, a cleaver, a short battle axe, and a machete while riding a unicycle. I was glad I didn’t have to watch him practice!

As a business leader, you probably often feel like the guy on the unicycle. Dropping one of those deadly items could mean disaster for you, your business, and your family.

You have to stop juggling. Start spinning plates instead.

Not long ago, I provided some coaching for a successful business owner. As we started talking about his marketing, I noticed his list of marketing systems kept getting longer and longer. He had about fifteen methods in all, and each was bringing him highly qualified leads.

While he recognized some systems were in need of tweaking or refreshing, he had actually approached me because his client base was becoming too big and he did not like turning people away.

Nice problem to have.

So how do you get and keep so many plates spinning at one time?

If you watch a plate spinner, you will see that he never starts with twenty plates spinning at one time. He gets one going, and then he finds a way to set it aside with a device or even an assistant to hold it while he gets the next plate spinning. Once the second or third plate is spinning, it is merely a matter of checking on the first plate or two to make sure they are still performing. Then all you need is a tweak to the old plate, or a new plate, if your plates are not living up to expectations.

But it’s not always that easy.

Business leaders are frequently bogged down with too many ideas, unsure of the best place to start, and often dissatisfied with partially (or poorly) completed projects.

This book is intended to give you strategies and tactics you can begin implementing right away. Your temptation will be to start implementing one and then immediately start on the next one. Don’t do it.

Take one strategy and create an action plan. Your action plan is meant to clarify all your ideas and guide you in completing projects. In this book, we will we work through the Five Foundations of Business together; in the process, there will be moments when you will feel overwhelmed. Don’t worry. At the end of each chapter, we will have a short exercise to help you develop your plan. At the end of the book, we will put together a schedule of projects that will get you building the momentum that will carry you through to success.

In order to keep your plates spinning, you must have the Five Foundations in place and operating well; that’s the only way you as an owner can experience a profit and have the freedom to live the life you want.

The Five Foundations of Business

A business is nothing more than a system of systems that creates value. And every business needs five basic systems, which I call the Five Foundations of Business:

• Marketing—Finding the quickest path to the sale.

• Management/Leadership—Identifying the destination, developing the path, and creating a team to accomplish it.

• Operations—Delivering the service.

• Finance—Managing the value created through superior marketing and operations.

• Systems/Controls—The grease and glue that keeps the other four Foundations moving smoothly and holds them together.

Getting these systems to work for you as efficiently as possible is the essence of creating a successful business. Once you have created and fine-tuned the systems, it becomes much easier to sell your product, create viral word-of-mouth, hire employees, lead and manage them, expand into new markets and additional sites, and to franchise. Plus, life is easier and more enjoyable when your business generates income for you and your lifestyle. Finally, the systems make it possible for you to create a business worth selling when you’re ready to retire or move on to your next venture. Of course, within those categories, how the specific systems that create widgets, tools, knick-knacks, food, services, or experiences will work depends entirely on you as the business owner.

As you read this book, take the time to review your systems. Where is the hand-off from one system to the next? What systems are missing or not performing as well as they could within each of these Business Foundations?

Why should you trust me? What makes the material in Building Your Booming Business worth the time to read and implement?

I have always had an entrepreneurial bent. At eleven years old, I used the drawing program on my dad’s IBM 286 to make a half-page flyer advertising that I was available to do a variety of odd jobs. Then I distributed about 100 of them throughout my neighborhood. I had a few calls over the next couple of weeks to mow lawns, babysit kids, and a number of similar tasks. Within a couple of weeks, I was bringing home about $150 a week. A year later, one of my customers, who was the general manager for a local lumberyard, asked me to give him a bid for regularly mowing about two acres of grass around the business. Once I sealed that deal, I was bringing in an additional $120 every ten days. In 1989, that was a lot of money, especially for a twelve-year-old. Don’t worry; I spent most of it irresponsibly.

Since then, I have run business organizations as large as 200 employees, increased revenues by 40 percent in less than three months, and have battled almost every operational obstacle imaginable. I even had to pull a department out of a financial disaster.

More importantly, I have successfully coached scores of other entrepreneurs, managers, and owners on how to be successful doing the same things I have done. Many of them have more than doubled the sizes and profits of their businesses, created more time for themselves, and even sold their businesses for profit.

Why would what I have to share in this book work for you? You’ve probably tried training programs and systems before. You’ve tried seminars, books, coaching, and spent lots of time trying to get your business to break barriers.

The reason I know that what I have to share can help you take your business to the next level is that I have actually implemented, either in my own business or in the businesses of my clients, every concept in this book, and I have seen great successes as a result. Even if you only use one of the strategies I offer, you can move your business forward, or you can apply all of them to make your business boom.

I want to be your coach in creating the kind of successful business you want. Throughout this book, I want you to make notes in the margins, highlight, underline, and, ultimately, use it as a manual to make your business boom. I personally guarantee these strategies will work. And to back that up, I want you to call me directly with any questions you have. I’ll supply my cell number at the end of the book. You will not get an assistant, phone tree, automated system, or sales team. Just me, and you can ask me any question you want. I’ll answer.

Are you ready? Great. Let’s begin.

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foundation I: Marketing

The old saying goes, Nothing happens until someone sells something.

Every business leader I have ever met is looking for hoards of people to flock to his business. Business leaders hope that demand for their services will keep them from having to worry about cash flow, making payroll, finding good employees, or having great products to begin with. This situation would be a business owner’s dream come true, but the dream would not last.

Marketing is the first Foundation of Business for a couple of reasons:

1. A business cannot be a business until enough sales are made to support it. Until that moment, it’s only a hobby.

2. Marketing is the most misunderstood area of business. Most leaders believe marketing means a better ad, a more aggressive sales team, or placement in a big box store. Marketing has much more to do with identifying the people who need you, developing a product that gets them excited, and then strategically communicating with them in a way that leads them toward the sale. In other words, marketing is much more complicated than buying advertising or making sales calls.

In a nutshell, your marketing challenge is first to get a very clear definition of your market. After you know your market, you have to discover what your market (customer) really wants (not just what he say he wants), how to communicate your value, how to separate yourself from your competition, how to create a strategy that connects all your marketing efforts, how to develop a system that gently walks customers through their purchasing decisions, and, finally, how to over-fulfill on your promise.

Overwhelmed yet? Don’t be. We’ll walk through creating your marketing foundation together.

Before we dive in, here are a few things to keep in mind while you are reading. We’ll call this our marketing manifesto.

Marketing Manifesto

1. All marketing efforts must have a goal. What is your overall marketing