10 Things Learned While Growing a Business pt 1

One of the things that I wrote down this morning, as I was thinking and

working my way through things, as I wrote down Crow principles, Crow

principles, what are the principles I want my kids to know about me.

What are the principles?

I want my customers, my coaching members, my acquaintances.

I, you know, if they know me, they'll go, well, Mike Crow would say, okay.

And then this morning John stepped up and he wrote this great thing.

I just want you to see this.

So it the top 10 things I've learned about building a coaching business.

Notice the coaching is underlined there.

Okay.

Because what I want you to be able to understand is I want you to be able

to understand that you can replace the word coaching here with anything.

Okay.

So what did, what have I learned about building a speaking business?

What have I learned about building an inspection business?

If I were still doing three days of secrets revealed, this would be one of big

secrets that I would reveal in February.

I'm going to go through this and John, I want you to be able to

give some input, so feel free to unmute and give some input here.

Do you have the list in front of you?

Cool.

So John unmute, I want you to read through this, you and I together,

and let's expand on it a little bit.

And guys, as we run right through these, I want you to understand that

these are all principles as well.

And do people in your business, people surrounded by you people that work with

you, do they know what your principal is?

So I'm going to give it to you in an inspection world context.

So when I trained inspectors, I would always say, when you're doing

this, the first thing you do is this.

Okay.

And it was kind of shocking because sometimes people now take

that first thing for granted and they forget to even mention it.

Okay.

So when you're inspecting a swimming pool, the first thing you do is blank.

And I expect every inspector to get that right.

I expect every inspector to get that right.

We shut off the swimming pool.

Bingo done.

Okay.

And if they don't do that, the rest of inspecting the pool becomes difficult.

Okay.

But by doing that one thing, everything gets easier.

When you're going to go do an inspection the most important thing

is to arrive blank minutes early.

I expect Everybody to be able to fill in that blank.

And here are the four things you get done.

Five, if you want to add in, you know, a knock at the door go on, say hi to

people, but you know, here are the four things you're going to get done.

And I want to make sure that every inspector knows that.

So think about this as you're training inspectors, as you're training

speakers, as you're training coaches, as you're training client coordinators,

as you're training your marketing person, did they understand your

core set of principles that you have.

Okay.

And by the way, it's kind of funny. I started doing this at

Okay. And I created a set of

And so they're kind of trick questions.

Okay.

If an alien abducted you.

Okay.

And they're pretending to be you a doppelganger.

If I asked them this question, what would the answer.

So here's one Jenn you'll love.

Okay. And Marlene, you probably know

If we go to church, Mike always parks where Hmm.

Yeah.

See, Jenn, what's the answer by the light pole Crow pole, if the Crow pole.

Okay.

I mean, we gave it a name.

All right.

And part of the reason is I told my kids, when you come to church, if

you're driving yourself, you could look right there and around that

area and you can say, oh, dad's here.

They'll know I'm there because they know that's where I park.

Okay.

And so the Crow pole, we've got it labeled and I have like a hundred

of those things in the family.

And I will tell you, one of the things that I'm working on is pushing the

whole family agenda even further.

So, John, are you ready?

The top 10 things you learned about building, and I'm going to take out

the word, but building a business.

Okay.

So by the way, Ricky, I want you to know.

This is a great PowerPoint as it'd be a great office presentation.

This would just be a great marketing event, and I think it could

even be dribbled out on Tik TOK.

It could be dribbled out on Facebook.

It could be dribbled out so many others.

And then I'm going to ask, after John goes through these guys, I'm going

to ask you what's one principle you have, or one thing you have that.

or the way you do your business.

So, give you a little bit of time to think about that.

So John you're up.

All right.

Yeah.

Number one, you will always have more opportunity than time.

Uh, You can't do everything, but you don't have to do everything to be successful.

You don't have to do you do everything yourself either.

Okay, perfect.

Okay.

Number two, until you figure out what gains traction, you have to be agile and

willing to shift strategies and direction.

Yep.

So number two, think about this guys.

One of the things that I taught everybody when I created MIC was that

they were building their business wrong.

Ricky, as a coach, what's the first person you see people normally try

to hire and it's the wrong person.

Who do you normally see them trying to hire first an Inspector.

an inspector.

It's the worst person to hire.

It's the worst person to hire because now they got another mouth to feed and

they don't have a good way to do that.

Okay.

So, when you figure it out, that marketing is the first person you

need to hire and put that in place.

So now the phone's ringing consistently and you can feed

everybody, everything gets easier.

And so in my world, Okay.

One of my Crow principles and I loved it because Barbara Cochran on shark tank,

she said almost exactly the same thing.

She says slightly different version of it. But she said almost the exact same thing.

She said, every time I could get more money, I would go

hire another salesperson.

But what she really was saying, another person that would go market

for themselves and create money.

Okay.

And so I love that.

So in our world, guys, what gives us more traction and what we know that most

people don't know is marketing gives you more traction than anything else

that you've got going for you out there.

All right.

Back to you, John.

All right.

And number three, it's about building the momentum.

And I think of this, like maybe old bugs bunny cartoons or

something where someone's standing at top of the snowy mountain.

Roll a snowball down mountain.

And by the time it gets to the bottom it's grown into, an unstoppable icy Boulder.

So that's what we're all doing.

We're adding piece by piece by piece until eventually

we are an unstoppable force.

And I love this and I used to have this great poster and I've searched for it.

And I haven't found another version of it, but in my original business

that I sold, I had this great poster that when I walked in the front door

of the business, it was there and it said momentum across the bottom of it.

There was this wave that was crashing onto the beach.

Go ahead.

Try to stand and stop a wave from the ocean crashing onto the beach.

Okay.

I mean, you could do it with a lot of work.

Okay.

But stopping that kind of momentum is almost impossible.

And I want you to know one of the greatest things I realized at some point was me

and my dad actually looked at each other at some point said, you know, we would

have to like really work at killing this business because it has so much momentum.

And don't ever forget the power of momentum.

The power of momentum will allow you to be able to do things that

most people never think about.

So for instance, you guys probably know this, but maybe you don't.

This week's my birthday. And so Thursday the 17th, I am flying to

Okay.

And we are spending a week at Disney, so I'm leaving on Thursday

and we come back on Wednesday.

Cause that's all the time.

He could scratch off.

Otherwise we'd probably be staying at 10 days or something.

Okay.

But the momentum that both Jonathan has made with texinspec, and then I

have made allows us to be able to walk away for a week and not even blink.

Okay.

Maybe I'll take some phone calls.

Maybe I'll make some phone calls.

Will I check the numbers?

Probably every morning.

Okay.

But I don't have.

Okay, because there's so much momentum that we have put into the business.

Shawna, this is exactly where you and Stan are.

You guys have so much momentum, it allows you to be able to do so much

extra stuff and work towards there.

All right, John.

Number four, prioritized by tasks or projects that are easiest to

execute that will also have the most impact and finish them to completion.

One finished stackable was way easier to leverage and more effective to

leverage than a dozen incomplete system.

Yep. And don't get me wrong guys.

I have four or five, six things working all at the same time, but

every now and then I go, let's finish this one because this one will

mean so much to us down the road.

But I will tell you most people, the most important people, the

most successful people I know still write lists of what they're getting.

Okay.

They prioritize what they're getting done. And so I have in this book here,

little priority list of, oh, what am I going to get done today?

Okay.

Do I get it all done every day?

Hardly ever.

Okay.

But I do get some of it done every single day.

And I will tell you one of the things I tell to Jenn all the time

is that, you know, each day we look back at the end of the day.

What's one thing we got done today that moves us closer to our goal.

back to you, John.

Alright.

Number five.

The next big thing that you're doing or working on that you

think will make or break, you will never actually make or break you.

So the idea of this one is yeah, I think of it like success uh, is

death by a thousand cuts or it's like a hundred small streams that

flow together to make a mighty river.

I think the analogy I used this morning is, you know, I wonder how often, like

say Tom cruise gets asked the question, what's the one thing you did to become

Tom cruise when really it's any successful person you talk to it's hundreds of things

that they've done to become successful.

This was a pet peeve of one of the coaches that I worked with and he said,

this is the number one question I hate.

What's the number one thing I need to do to be successful.

And he's going, are you out of your mind?

Okay.

There is not one thing that makes you successful.

Here's the thing.

It's the next big thing you think you're doing that will

either make or break you doesn't.

It won't okay.

However every time we train a new inspector.

Every time we create a new macro key, every time we change the process of

doing the inspection every time we, figure out how we're going to print

the report or email it or deliver it.

Okay.

All of those add up to this, these small little trinklets of water , to rivers,

and then eventually into the ocean.

Okay.

And again, I'm back to my ocean and that wave hitting the shore.

Okay.

The momentum of having a thousand things that you've done put

together, changes everything.

And here's the thing is it would be very difficult.

It could be done, but it would be very difficult for somebody to take away half

or 500 of those little trinkets of water.

And even if they did, I still have 500.

Okay.