Murray: We are building a billion dollar business that's just begun to be franchised as of last week. And we are now franchising OneCoach to help entrepreneurs in their local markets. So we'll have business coaching expertise in local markets throughout the world, to help them say focused, to stay committed, and to maintain hope.
John often talks about the idea of 95% of businesses closing their doors in five years. The reality is that they do that, but they don't do it because of why everyone thinks they do it. They don't run out of money. It's not because they don't have a great concept. They lose hope that their future, that they are working very hard and very long hours to achieve, they lose hope that it's possible for them to achieve it.
And so, our whole focus is to both to work with the entrepreneurs in their beliefs and their behavior, to keep them focused and on track, to help them keep hope, to hope that their hope never runs out; and, likewise, on the other side, to work with their business, on their strategies and skills that they need, to compete effectively in their local markets.
Scott: You alluded to earlier, I believe, about finding more balance in your life and the kind of hours that you had grown accustomed to working. I've seen some statistics that say that U.S. entrepreneurs and I have seen several statistics in UK and elsewhere, that say that entrepreneurs are typically working 50-60 hours a week.
And they say—of course, they will be the first to say—hey, it's what it takes when you are first starting out. It's what you have got to do. You have got to pay your dues. You have got to all those while you are growing your business. Is that true? Is that a necessity for business success?
Murray: It depends on how much money you have. It can create a lot of problems in business. If you have a lot of money to hire a whole bunch of resources to do the work for you, then I would say that's not the case.
But most people don't start out with millions of dollars in their bank. They start out with a vision, and hope and belief that someday they can achieve their financial freedom and enjoy an incredible life, an extraordinary life.
And so when they start into it, they don't realize that they have got to become chief cook, bottle washer, all in the same text. As John says, they have got to be sales, marketing management. They have got to be accountants. They have got to be lawyers. They have got to look at all the moving parts of their business, as small as it might be down to one person and think that they must become all things to that business.
What it does is, it forces you to start working 50, 60, 70, even 90 hours a week. As you get further away from your dreams, you tend to put more hours into it, because you think that the number of hours is the secret sauce.
And, it's not the number of hours. It's working smart and learning from others, others that have done it before. So you can shorten your learning curve from years into weeks, and months. So, you can avoid those risks. So, you can propel the success of the areas where you know that works.
And you can keep your eyes on the areas in which there are traps, holes that you might otherwise step into. The only way that entrepreneurs succeed today is by being aware of the pack that they must take, and we have created a business blue-print that will take entrepreneurs from where they are, recognize the individual needs and put them on a path towards achieving their own success.
Scott: When entrepreneurs get so busy, it becomes really hard to break that cycle, to even see that an hour or two a week spent on coaching or personal professional development might help them break out of that. What do you say to those people?
Murray: I would try to oversimplify things, because of the learning challenges that I had as a child. I wasn't allowed to go to a regular school. I had to go to one for children with special needs. And so, I oversimplified things throughout the course of my life to a point, where I think anybody can get it.
I have distilled down in business, that there are three questions you must ask yourself everyday, in order to focus on what the business needs you to focus on, and that's the money aspect.
All businesses, except for those ones that have got a lot of money to start with, need cash flow. And cash flow comes from sales. And sales comes from more clients. And so the three questions that I ask myself everyday, as our company does, is first -- how do I get more profits from existing sales? How do I make more money without any more effort, whether I increase the price, decrease the price, bundle the tax? There are several different strategies that you can affect that.
Second is, how do I get more sales from existing clients? How do I bundle different products with different experiences, so, without the added expense of more marketing, I can make more money from just by selling more products to existing clients?
And then the third, which is the big one, how do I get more clients? If I was to share with you that there are only 22 possible marketing strategies within the universe of all businesses. And there are more likely only six or seven that are unique to your business. You would want to know which six or seven that were unique to your business.
If I said to you there were only 11 possibilities of channels of distribution, the way in which your product gets to your customer, you would want to know the one or two that made more sense of the highest profit.
When you couple those together, what you do is start to focus on your highest productive activity, which allows you to buy back the time that you have typically spent in your business, looking for money elsewhere.
As most people spend most of their time trying to figure out how to generate more revenue. And if you simply knew the handful of ways in which you could do that, you could buy back your time, so you can spend more time on exercising, spend more time with your family, spend more time doing the things that create balance in your life. And that's what we focus on.