Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi guys. Stephen Edwards from Grow Profit First Accountant. So in this week of the Profit first podcast, I want to talk about the entrepreneurial freedom system. So if you are listening and you're not watching this, you can, you can find us on YouTube. The, the profit first accountant for entrepreneurs. Grow profit first is, is the channel then. I've wrote a book in 2024 called how to build a business that Runs without you. And it's not just kind of me waffling on about my experience for the last kind of 15 years of being a business owner. I have reverse engineered a 10 step process of how I was able to create freedom in my business. So I want to talk about those 10 steps with you today. Of course you can go deep in the book. If anyone wants a copy of the book, please listen to the end and I'll let you know how you can get a free copy. So at the end of the day, most of us are in business for two things. To have more money to be able to do the things we want to do, but also more time to do the things we want to do. And the kind of irony there, most business owners are chasing the first thing and they have less of the second thing. So there is a balance, you know, there is a balance. Not everyone wants to build a massive corporate business and it might be that you, you, you know, you are a freelancer, contractor and you're not trying to build a business that can run without you. And that's all good. If that's the case, I'm sure you would take something out of what I'm about to talk about. If, however, you want to build a kind of a business that's sufficient without you and it doesn't rely on you, you can go on holiday for a month, which is what I did in 2023 and I'm about to do again this year, then please listen. What I'm about to talk about, and also the book is, will act as a bit of a blueprint for you to get that easier and quicker. You know, there's one of the easiest things to be successful or to model a form of success in anyone's life is to find someone who's already done the thing that you've done rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. That is the biggest tip I can give anyone. We don't need to reinvent the wheel all the time. Have I got all of the answers? You know, have I got a multi, multi, multi million pound business with, you know, hundreds of team members and I'm living On a beach most weeks of the year. No, that's not the case. However, I've got an element of freedom in my business. In the journey to be fully transparent, I'm in step nine. In my own business, I am in step nine. So I'm going to walk you through those today. So if you are, if you're watching, you will be able to see the ten step process, the pyramid. If you are listening, I'm going to walk you through them. So essentially we've got a pyramid. And the pyramid is structured into 10 steps. It starts at the bottom left going from number 1, 2, 3 and 4 all the way up to number 10 which is the, basically the business and life freedom which we'll talk about in a minute. But essentially we've got different groups of stages. So the first four steps help you create your business plan.
[00:03:16] The second steps help you build your business. The next tier of steps are removing you as a bottleneck in your business. And then we get to the kind of holy grail which freedom of purpose, money, time, relationships, mind freedom, whatever that kind of means for you personally. So in the ten step process, what for me comes first before we even talk about steps? Because steps don't mean anything if you're not going to take action. So the most important thing for me is the foundation of everything is mindset and well being.
[00:03:54] So what does mindset mean? You know, we talk about mental health. I'm not really coming from the context of mental health and I talk about mindset and well being or that that's super important and you definitely need to take that serious. I'm talking about having a positive mindset, an empowering mindset, A mindset that enables you, it prepares you for the life you want, you know, the challenges, the opportunities and also the setbacks. So we're going to talk a little bit about mindset. It's the most important thing for me before you do anything. Because if you haven't got the right mindset, you're probably not even going to enroll in a program, a training course, read a book because you haven't got the right mindset in the first place. And while being, I think they've done a study in towards the end of last year I trained as a certified high performance coach, which I do as a little bit of a passion with people. And one of the biggest studies they've done with high performers. When I looked at the, you know, some of the correlations and the habits and the strategies of some of the top performers in the world, they worked out more than the average person. 70, I think it's around 77% of them worked out four times a week. So when we're talking about, well, being physically fit, you know, you can go back to 2000 years ago and look at the stoics and you can look at Marcus Aurelius. He talked about how important it was to look after your, your body as well as your kind of mind, even, even back then. So it starts with a really strong mindset. How can you build a strong mindset? Listen to the right things, Listen to the right podcast. It's easier now than it's probably ever done, but it's also easier to be distracted because there's so many things out there. There's so much opportunity to kind of chase lots of shiny new things. Who would I personally recommend you follow to help cultivate the right mindset? People like Tony Robbins, Bob Proctor, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, Brendan Burchard, Dan Sullivan. There's just a few people. Napoleon Hill, think and grow rich. You can go a lot worse than listening and consuming their content. The other thing you can do is be around the right people. So if you're in the right community, the right group, if you build the right relationships, that's going to really help you. And wellbeing is simply keeping fit, eating well. Some people call it meds. Meditation, exercise, diet and sleep. They're probably four of the core things. Not everyone meditates necessarily, but exercise, diet and sleep are super important.
[00:06:36] Many people wear the fact that they don't need much sleep. It's a badge of honor. It's, you know, most of the studies they've done on sleep, the big studies say that on average we need seven to nine hours of sleep. And people, the truth is people might get by with less sleep, but doesn't mean they're highly efficient, effective being the best versions of themselves. So meds, medication, exercise, diet and sleep will help you with your well being and drink lots of water. So, okay, so let's talk about the steps because I'm already seven minutes into the podcast today and we've not even got into the pyramid. So you know where this has come about. Just come back from my book, which has been about five years in the making. As I said, I will let you know how to get a free copy of this book. And it's my kind of 10 year journey to create an element of freedom in my business and my life. And I didn't necessarily have these 10 steps in order when I started, but looking backwards Reverse engineering some of the things I've done. These are the fundamental blocks and things that you need to put in place to help you be able to build a business that can run without you. And some people don't even believe that's possible. Some people do not believe it's possible to build a business that can run without them. Whether you can or you can't. Well, you think you can or you think you can't. You're probably right. Just think about that for a moment. Comes back to mindset. So if you do want to be able to build a business that runs without you or you think it's possible, carry on listening. So, number one, you've got to start with a vision. And I just want to let you know, have I reinvented the wheel with all of these steps? Not necessarily. Most people have learned through their own experiences from other people how to get, as I said, to model other people a blueprint to get success. So this is my experience of putting together all the things that I've learned. So Stephen Covey talks about. Start with the end in mind. Stephen Covey is one of the greatest thinkers. It's another great person to follow to help you with your mindset. And that starts with a clear vision. If you're trying to go on holiday, you know, how far are you going to get on holiday? If you don't know where the destination is, if you don't know exactly what country you're going to, you don't know what airport you're going to, that is kind of not having a vision. The truth is, most business owners, it sounds so basic, but most business owners don't have a clear vision. They leave. Their job might be through redundancy, might be through opportunity, might be through chance. Something comes along and they start their business and they run with it, which is great. But if you can get a crystal clear vision where you are going, I promise you, you are ten times, a hundred times more likely to get there. So having a clear vision. So I'm not going to talk about the how today. There's some information in the book which will talk a little bit more about the how. I've also got something else to share at the end which will help you understand the how, but I'm going to talk about the what today. So number two is having a numbers plan. So having a great vision is super powerful, but having some sense of the numbers. You don't need to be an accountant, you, you don't need to be a bank manager, you don't need to be a bookkeeper, you don't need to be a financial advisor. But having a simple model, a really simple idea, this is what's going to come in. This is what I'm going to pay out to other people. This is what my overheads or my running costs might be. This is what I expect my profit to be. It's a bit like baking a cake, having a numbers plan. You need to have an idea what the recipe looks like. It's normally a disaster if you completely make it up as you go along.
[00:10:15] So you, you might tweak the recipe later on, you might tweak your numbers plan. But if you've got a clear vision of what the numbers need to look like, you've got a starting point and you've got something you can change later on as, as well. Okay, so number three is your values. And this might seem wishy washy. I've been in different groups where people think it's very corporate. It's only corporate if you think it's corporate. You have got values, whether you write them down or not. When we're talking about core values, a lot of people think about the stuff on the wall or the stuff in the corporate handbook.
[00:10:52] You know, the stuff we keep in a drawer, the stuff we don't talk about. The values I'm talking about here are the core values for your business. But they're the, but they're deeply rooted inside you. So when I speak to people and I'm like, I don't have core values, but I'll say, are there certain traits, there's certain characteristics. Are there certain personality traits that you appreciate for people that work with you? Do you have standards? You could call them standards. Oh yeah. You know, we, we make sure we always do great quality. We make sure we're always polite with the customer, we make sure we're punctual and we show up on time.
[00:11:29] So you will have these values already, even if they're not articulated, they're not written down anywhere. But if you're going to grow a business, your values become more and more important. So there is ways to get those values out of you. There's exercises I can share in the future, which I'm going to talk about at the end for all of these steps. I want to sort of talk how you can figure out how to create your values, how to create a numbers plan, how to create your vision. And number four is the team structure. This is one of the biggest mistakes I made in my business. We hit a ceiling after a few years in my business because we had a lack of team structure. I simply hired when I was busy, when I was, you know, rushed off my feet, I hired someone. And it's often someone I knew. It was often someone the most experience.
[00:12:19] And I didn't really have a clear strategy. I didn't hire and fire by values. It wasn't part of my numbers plan. I wasn't sure what my next hire was going to be next. I just hired someone because I was busy. Does that sound familiar? Does that resonate with you?
[00:12:34] So team structure is what does my business structure need to look like to give me that dream business? Can you see how it's all connected to your vision? So these four things here are going to give you the foundation of your kind of business plan. These are some of the most fundamental things of how to build a business. I'm not talking about a business plan like the one you give to your bank. I'm not talking about 10 pages of writing and loads of graphs and loads of charts. I'm just talking about the core fundamentals to really help you build a strong business. And number five, you might not be familiar with this, but it's something we call a scorecard. So scorecards is a way of knowing if you went on, if you did build this freedom into your business. And let's say you were on a beach like I will be in August this year. Well, I'm going to kind of be in Disneyland. So most of the time I won't be in beach, but I'll be close to a beach. And you wanted to check in with your team. What would be the few KPIs, metrics, data points, numbers, results for you to know it's been a good week. And I imagine you probably do this already. A lot of people talk about sales. You know, this is how much we've taken through the till, this, how much we've invoiced. It might be how many proposals or quotes you sent out. It might be you might be so customer service focused. It's all about getting the work done and pleasing your customers. It might be how many positive reviews you've got back if you're a restaurant. But the scorecard is the key things that's going to help you drive success in your business. And I could do a whole video on a scorecard, which I'm not going to do now. Number six is your marketing system. And if you're like me, you might be thinking, is marketing really number six? Do I have to wait until number six? No you don't have to wait until number six. You could be thinking about number six right at the beginning. However, if you're doing it in an ideal structure, this is how you would do it. You would do it in this order. But the truth is you need, you've probably got some form of marketing in place. You might be thinking, well, I've got a marketing system, I get new customers in, new leads, new referrals, but I don't have a vision, I don't have a numbers plan, I don't have values. In a team structure, that's all fine, you can get on without it. Marketing is super important from the beginning to the end. But in an ideal world, you would do the fundamentals of steps 1 to 5 first. And marketing system is all about consistency. So a lot of people think it's all about branding. You know, things that look good, design, wishy washy colors, really pretty websites. You know, that's part of marketing, but that's not really what's going to drive you success. It's about consistency, it's about doing the things that consistently grow your business. Essentially, they get an eyeballs on your business that turns into customers. It's pretty much that simple. The bigger companies, you know, they invest in branding. I'm not saying there's not a place for that, but that we're talking about the marketing that enables you to build a business that can run without you. Number seven, which completes the build your business, which is the second tier of the entrepreneurial freedom system is, is finance and profitability. So you would have done part of this in number two, which is the numbers plan. Because you need an idea how the numbers going to look. However, you need to have a reporting system to measure performance. This is where profit first comes in. You need to understand, am I moving in the right direction? Who's holding me accountable?
[00:16:04] Was this a good month, a good quarter? What do I need to change? What surprised me? What do I need to do differently next month? What do I need to do more of next month? You need to really understand your numbers, your pricing, your profitability. And that's when number seven comes into play. Number eight is where we finally start to remove you as a bottleneck. So I've called number eight, hire an ops manager. An ops manager could be a system, you could be a completely systemized business. Your ops Manager might be ChatGPT, it might be built on spreadsheets, but the point is you are not the one responsible manually for doing all of the day to day operations. So in my Business, I've promoted an operations manager, Emily, who's the practice manager at Grow Accountants. It might be someone you've nurtured in your business, you might be hiring someone from another business, it might be automated, whatever that means for you. But you need to remove yourself from, from the typical day to day operations. So that means you need to stop thinking like a technician or an employee. So in my business, I don't do that much accounting. I'm a chartered certified accountant. I'm a profit first professional and coach. I'm a business coach. I do other things. I love marketing as well. I coach certain people. I don't do much accounting in my business because I've built that freedom. So if you're a painter, if you're a builder, if you're an architect, if you're a solicitor, we need to remove you from the doing the thing that your business does. And you need to have a team and you need to have an operations manager or system to make sure the work gets done mainly without you. Otherwise you cannot go on holiday for necessarily three weeks, four weeks and build that sort of freedom that we're looking to do. So with this system links in really nicely to number nine, transform your role if you've got all these things in place. This is the beauty with this system.
[00:18:08] I still work in my business. I love doing what I do, I love building a business, I love helping our clients, helping our customers, speaking to prospects, coaching my team, working on systems, working on marketing, developing new content. I love all of this stuff. So I built the freedom to do the things I want to do. And that's what I mean by transform your role. Think about it and I encourage you. If not asked you to do this in this podcast, pause the video, spend five minutes. If you could do anything you wanted to do in your business, what would you be doing every single week? Steve Jobs said every day he got up, he said, look in mirror and say, do I want to do what I'm doing today? If the answer was no for too many days in a row, he needs to do something different. So that's where this is where I get quite passionate about the system. And this roadmap and this blueprint is this is where people can do the things they love to do. And if you do the things you love to do, why would you actually retire? If you're living your dream life, you're working the hours you want to work on your terms, earning the money you want to earn, you've got an amazing team, then you won't necessarily be thinking about retiring. And that's why people like Richard Branson don't fully retire because they've got that element of choice and freedom. Number 10 is not a step, it's what are you going to do with the freedom outside of your job? So you might Number nine is creating a freedom within your business to do what you want to do. Number 10 is if you want to go on holiday for a month, you can do if you want what I call a mini retirement to go away for three months, you can do. It doesn't need to be Disneyland Florida, it could be Breen Leisure park up the road, it could be the Lake District. It could just be time to think, relax, you know, whatever that means for you. That's what step 10 is, which is business and life freedom. It gives you that choice outside of work to do the things you want to do. Okay, so I've been talking for pretty much dead on 20 minutes so I said you can get a copy of the book. So all you need to do is drop me an email. It's Stephen with a PH at Cheltenham Tax Accountants. We've not changed the email address with the new rebrand. So that's Cheltenham, which is the town C H E OUTI E N H A M Cheltenham taxaccountants.co.uk and just say free book and I will send you a copy of the free book with your address. So in the book I will talk about all of these 10 steps in a lot more detail and I also talk about in the beginning of the book what I call the busy fool system. I might even talk about that next week. So that's what not to do. And if you watched my content last week I said the obstacle is the way often we're looking for shiny new things, opportunities, but actually if we stop doing certain things that's going to get us more success. So the busy full system is what not to do. I'm just going to give you a little bit of a teaser for the busy full system. So number one is what I call the mortgage problem. One of the most common mistakes business owners make is focusing too much on short term, the short term goal of paying the bills without recalibrating their expectations and long term goals and dreams. This often results in getting stuck in survival mode where the primary concern is simply keeping the lights on. So this comes down to mindset actually. People are thinking too small, they're thinking too short term and that's number one of the busy full system. So the book will go into the busy full system and into more detail. How to build your scorecard, how to create your numbers plan, how to create your vision. So there's a lot of the how to in the book and I will send you that completely free. What I'm about to Launch is the grow profit hub from May 2025. If you are a client of Growing, you will get it free for three months and we will walk through training courses, videos, tutorials. There'll be templates, there'll be resources, there'll be live Q&As. There's going to be workshops and we're going to teach you how to build a business that runs without you. If you're a client, you'll get it for free for three months from May 2025. If you're not a client then you will be able to join. I will be sharing more details in the coming weeks but in the meantime, if you want a copy of the book, just drop me a message. Free book and your address. Thanks guys. Cheers.
