Entrepreneur, Author of ‘Stress To Success’ and owner of award winning sales and lettings agency, Castledene Group John Paul joins the show to explain how he went from working in his business, to stepping back and working on it. Together they dive into all things systems and discuss the importance of nurturing your staff, how to start creating processes to systemise and why letting go and trusting people to systemise for you, can help boost your company's success.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A good staff can write the systems for you. However, you can have the best system on the planet but if you have got staff who cannot understand it, then the systems are just going to fail. It is equally important to train and develop your staff as it is to implement successful systems.
• When you have really good systems you need to be able to manage and measure the staff based on something. If they follow the systems and trust the process, they will do well and you will get the results you want. However, if they don’t then things go wrong, it could be a case of their skillset or motivation.
• One important question to ask potential staff during their interview is about their values. This way you can see if their values align with your businesses’ values. It helps to weed out those who are not suitable for your business. So long as you are training them to the best of your ability, they have the best possibility of succeeding.
• The most vulnerable time for a new starter is right at the beginning. Do not just give them a manual and leave them to it. You have got to nurture that person to make sure that they know and understand your processes and help and support them throughout their career.
• Business owners tend to be more emotional whereas creating processes is a very logical thing. It is sometimes hard for people to understand the importance of a system and how to process and map it. It can be as simple as writing things down on a post it note and developing them deeper.
• It is important to use smart objectives. Make things measurable, specific, achievable and timebound.
• Success is achieving whatever your goals are. Whatever you want in life, so long as you achieve that, then you are being successful.
• You can systeminse anything. If you surround yourself with good people, you have the knowledge and the desire to systemise things by letting go and trusting people, then you can systemise any process.

BEST MOMENTS

“I have got an amazing MD who is far better at managing people than me.”

“The only two things that can go wrong in a business are, is it a person issue? Or a process issue?’”

“You systemise businesses to operate in a certain way.”

“Once you get definition into a process, then it is a lot easier to measure and manage that process.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

John Paul is an entrepreneur, leader and owner of the Castledene Group, an award-winning sales and letting agency based in northeast England. Widely regarded as one of the leading experts in the property industry, John won the Sunday Times Outstanding Contribution to Lettings Award in 2015 and speaks at networking events all over the UK. John has grown Castledene Sales and Lettings into seven branches employing fifty staff. Thanks to the five part system, he no longer has anything to do with the day-to-day operations of the company. Through the Property and Leadership Academy he aims to improve management and leadership within the industry and consults with many companies around the UK. In doing so he helps people to systemise their businesses and make themselves non-integral to the running of the business. John is also on the Board of the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA), representing the North of England. He has also just started his Masters in Leadership. John has three amazing children - Stephanie, Jack and Bella - and a long-suffering but supportive partner, Gemma. They live in Redmarshall in Stockton on Tees

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Stress To Success Book  

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