Business Growth Simplified.

Tune in as Rick Sapio interviews Daniel Marcos, long-time friend, and CEO/Founder of The Growth Institute.

Daniel shares the roadmap to grow your business with less drama, less stress, and less work. When it comes to business growth, he explains there are two types of companies:

• Companies that are growing really fast but face a lot of drama and complexity.

• Companies that are stuck and want to start growing fast.

It might seem like they are in different situations, but they’re actually in the same boat. They both have scaling problems.

Daniel believes that there are four stages of company growth. He teaches how to use these stages as a roadmap that guides how your focus, priorities, and key decisions will change as your company grows. The roadmap will prepare you for the barriers you will face and the new skills you need to develop to overcome them.

Business Finishing School Founder, Rick Sapio interviews long-time Blackbelt Member, Dr. Dustin Barton on his business and personal journey through the BFS Program. Dr. Barton discusses revenue growth, employee accountability, and how BFS rhythms have impacted the lives of he and his family.

Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success. -Swami Sivananda

Really think about having an impact and make sure even your smallest acts are done with all your effort and consideration. How you do anything is how you do everything. Are we making the most of the gifts that we were born with? Ask yourself this question.

This month we are talking about using your Financial Battleship for self-financing.

Teresa will discuss:

- The difference between a direct and non direct recognition policy loan

- Why we only work with non direct recognition companies

- How non direct recognition loans can create twice as much income in retirement.

I think it's best in life to create and control systems, not people. Because at the end of the day, it's impossible to control people.

"Simple and clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior while complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior." That quote is from Dee Hock who founded Visa in 1968.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by this. My wife and I more than 10 years ago now created a family placement, which many of you know about.

The family placement sits on a table when we eat dinner and we have family dinner every night. And on that family placement are our simple rules for being in our family. Our values, our family crest, what the crest means, how we run our family, our wedding vows are there, the six components to happiness, our favorite quotes, what happens at our family meetings, it's all there. And we set it in our mind, at the time we created it, that this was permanent.

So by having our children see that every day, it allows them to operate with a very clear set of rules. It's very simple and it's clear. And the quote says that when things are simple and clear, it gives rise to complex and intelligent behavior.

Voltaire also said this, he said, "When the rules are clearly defined, then and only then can true creativity flourish." So let's go back to where we started, controlling behavior versus controlling a system. When my wife and I sat down to create the family placement, we created a system and it's up to us as parents to make sure that our kids understand that system. When controlling people, oftentimes if the world doesn't go their way, they lose their mind. They've got to figure out a way to control people and situations. Oftentimes those people are the exact opposite. They have no system. They have no defined values that they operate from. They have no permanence.

And so I would argue that if you look in areas or your life on the job, in your business, in your family, in the structures around you, where you don't have clear, well thought out principles and structure, there will be chaos and there will be people trying to control that situation. And during periods of which they're trying to control, they're losing their mind because they're not operating from a playbook, a pre-established set of rules and principles from which they are enrolling people in.

I believe that all the work to create a system, whether it's a family structure, whether it's a nonprofit or a company, all the work should happen at the beginning, before you start. That's when you think about the business frame. That's when you think about the values that you aspire and all the rules and how things are going to unfold and you do that work at the beginning. So then when you hit go, you can then execute on those principles.

If people opted into that system, they knew what the rules were. Just like when my kids opted in to accepting my wife and I as their parents, they're opting into following a system. And it's the leadership in that entity that controls the system, not the people. But ideally what happens is in a business, especially when the clarity of purpose, clarity of catalyzing statement, clarity of values, clarity of objectives, et cetera, are there for everybody to see, the right people over time will opt in and the wrong people opt out.

And so, you don't need these controlling people. Just like the employees who own stock in Southwest Airlines saw, that everybody working in concert on the same sheets of music, like a symphony, produces far more results than everybody singing and operating from their own sheet of music.

For a template to make your own Family Placemat, visit www.FamilyPlacemat.com.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Rick Sapio

Founder, Business Finishing School

Have you ever thought about what Thanksgiving Day would be like for you and your family in the year 2070?

If you never even think about the future, how can you manifest the best future for your family and for the people and things you care about? An acquaintance of mine had a Great Grandfather who was a slave, freed during the Civil War. This completely uneducated freed slave – who could neither read nor write – decided to work with a friend who could write and he developed a “Permanent Family Legacy Document,” instructing all future members of his family to do all in their power to get a college degree, and to stay married for life. That document created 300 descendants that did exactly that. They worked hard to stay married for life and all got college degrees.

I believe that this incredible outcome would NEVER have happened if it wasn’t for ‘legacy thinking.’ Legacy thinking requires you to look into the future and embed your aspirational values on all that you care about. Very few people are willing to think this way for the simple reason that they are overwhelmed and swamped in the present moment.

Could you imagine if our Founding Fathers decided that they were too busy to create the Constitution of the United States of America?

My wish for you this Thanksgiving season is to first STOP. Create some time and space to think about all that you are grateful for in your life. Then reach out to the people that have made the biggest difference for you and give them a big THANK YOU. Then think about those people and their children in the year 2070. The last step is to take a shot at creating a “Legacy Document” for them. This document will become the roadmap for a brighter future for you and yours.

Happy Thanksgiving 2019.

Respectfully,

Rick Sapio

Founder, Business Finishing School, LLC

Ep. 16 Uninterrupted Compounding by BFS

Ep. 15 Amplifying Results Using a Lens with Dr. Ivan Misner by BFS

Ep. 14 Are You Drifting with the Current? by BFS

Ep. 13 The Simple Path to Wealth Creation by BFS