Success leaves clues behind and as a result of trying to build HYVA into a successful outsourcing company, I am on a mission to learn how other successful entrepreneurs got to where they are at and so I actively seek people who I think have a story that my audience and I can learn from. Today’s guest is Chuck Blakeman from the Crankset Group; a company that helps small businesses grow and mature. In an email I received from Chuck, he said that the need to make money is killing a lot of businesses and that struck me as a statement that I needed to get him to clarify, hence this interview.
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During the interview Chuck discussed:
- The number one reason why most entrepreneurs fail to build successful businesses
- How to avoid the entrepreneurial trap of trading hours for dollar
- The difference between the “Tyranny of the urgent and the priority of the important“
- Why your focus shouldn’t be on making money but instead on building a business that makes money doing what you love
- How to build a business that works automatically without your daily involvement in 3 to 5 years
- How to use your business to build your ideal lifestyle
- The four building blocks that every entrepreneur needs to build a profitable business
- Why you need a bigger reason for being in business than just the need to make money
- why you need a strategic plan instead of a business plan
- How to process map your entire business in such a way that it is systemized
- How business mentors and advisors can help you avoid mistakes that can ruin your business
In his own words:
We started our business four years ago without business cards, marketing materials, website, etc., simply to prove to everyone who thinks you need all that to get started, that you can do just fine at startup without it. As we’ve grown and gone international, we’re adding these things in, but a healthy minority of businesses would never need a website or even a business card. We have examples.
“Off the grid” means that just about everything we do to help business owners grow their business (and our own) is counter-intuitive to the popular business doctrine out there which, in our opinion, just takes people in circles. Examples:
- Making money is a really bad reason to be in business and people who focus on it rarely make much.
- Every business can go from the printing of a business card to “Maturity” (making money while you’re on vacation – WITHOUT you), in 3to5Years – haven’t found a business yet where people aren’t doing it. Yet most businesses go 40 years and never “mature”.
- Retirement is an absurd, bankrupt industrial age idea that wasn’t a good idea then, either. Stop trying to retire and instead build an Ideal lifestyle NOW (in 3to5Years), then enjoy your business and your life for decades.
- Work and Play belong together; separating them is another Industrial Age artifact.
- Employees are always a bad idea, no matter how big your company is. No one should be an employee, everyone should be a stakeholder.
- Never do another business plan – almost no one does them, and even those that do all (100%) report that the plan did not accurately predict the future in any way. Do a 2-page Strategic Plan instead.
- Planning in general is a disease, not cure. Stop planning and get moving – the #1 indicator of success is Speed of Execution.
- Stop reading Shelf-Help books (those books that help your shelf look better). There are very few that actually help you do anything.
- Education (filling your head with information) is a bad idea and just creates confusion. Learning (trying something and refining it as you go) is the path to success. Stop getting educated and start being transformed – change
- Conation is the single most important word in business, yet you’ve never heard it because all those “educators” out there want you to “think” instead of “do”.
Chuck Blakeman has an off the grid approach to business that has been adopted by thousands of business owners. He has bootstrapped five wildly different businesses and two non-profits from the ground up, making every mistake possible along the way to some big wins. As an internationally acclaimed business speaker averaging more than 100 speaking engagements and workshops per year, he has been quoted and featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, CNNMoney.com, NYTimes.com, other online magazines and small business blogs throughout the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.
Connect with Chuck Blakeman:
Via his company website www.CrankSetGroup.com
On Twitter @chuckblakeman
On his Facebook profile
Question for you:
Are you currently building a business that will run profitable and automatically without you in 3 to 5 years? If so what steps have you taken to make sure that your plan comes to pass?