Josh Fonger: Hey everybody welcome to the work the system podcast where we help business owners make more and work less. And thank you to those of you who are joining me live today on Facebook Live. This is our first time doing this and so comment. let us know how we’re doing. Give us feedback. The thumbs up thumbs down and also questions at the end of today’s podcast. I’m going to be answering your questions and just stay on as long as it takes to answer those questions. So put those in the box and at the end of the message and that message is all about golden numbers. So or number after get to those golden numbers then we’ll actually answer those questions. So feel free put that in the box and we’ll guess we’ll get started. Now the question I have for those listening and you can comment wherever this platform. Where ever you see this this video is to start off with this how do you define how do you define freedom as an entrepreneur? How do you define that? So put that in the question box there because I’m going to get back to that the very end of today’s podcast is what is freedom as an entrepreneur. How do you define that and feel free to put that in the question marks.

All right so gold numbers I’ve been working with a lot of companies over the years and we create KPI. You know because what gets measured gets done as Peter Drucker says and or what gets measured gets managed and there’s a lot of ways to create KPI or scorecards for business to lead indicators lagging indicators to get financial indicators. You have close ratios average transactions lifetime value a number of clicks like shares there’s so many things to measure in the business. And as an owner especially small business it gets complicated and gets overwhelming and a lot of folks they will just neglect to do it. They’ll just say you know there’s too many things to measure. Let me just get to work and their team is the same way. And what I found is the best way to unify a team to help them improve the quality the speed the efficiency profitability make them unique in the marketplace is to come up with a number or numbers that set them apart and really prove the point really prove the point that they are the best at what they do. And you should do business with them so today or to go through. How do you actually develop these gold numbers. Where do they look like and what are some some sites, some success with that.

All right people are to join that of a great it’s good to see you Tony very good Lisa. Ok. Yes definitely. Again this is a live stream. So put your comments in there. The big question for those of you who are just joining me now is how do you define freedom as an entrepreneur? So how do you define that. Put that in the box and we’ll get to that at the very end. So let me start with a story and some of you are familiar with it. It’s Sam story. It’s in the book work the system if you’ve not download that book it’s at work the system dot com Sam gives it away for free. We also have the audio version for free. And in that book Sam, my business partner, he details how he went from 100 hour work week to at this point not working at all and how he raised his income dramatically and he uses a certain methodology to do it. But some of the things that people don’t know I’ve worked with in the last eight years is the inner workings of how his business actually operates the inner workings of the measurements the culture the team the people he hires. I’ve spent a lot of time with them. I fly around the country actually internationally with him and a number of hikes and it’s continuing to pick his brain pick his brain pick his brain and he didn’t come up with this idea of golden numbers but he just intuitively knew he had to come up with a number to prove the point that they were the best telephone answering service in the world or in the country. So that’s what they do at Centratel, their are telephone answering service in a lot of folks will say well we’re the best.

And the question is what what does that mean. So you’re going to be the best your market is I mean the fastest. That means the cheapest. That means the best service the customers love you the most you know your product last the longest the best warranties. And what is it that sets you apart? And it’s difficult to do in a competitive marketplace. And so he came up with a series of numbers to measure his team but ultimately it leads to this number. And it is the number of reported errors as an answering service. So they take calls and they deliver calls and to be the highest quality. They can’t make a mistake. So if you drop a call if you miss a call it’s an emergency call. It’s a call that could end in lead to a sale. That’s the customers are like that. All right that’s a big deal. And most answering services are chaotic the quality is bad, calls are dropped, calls are missed, misspelled names, mistyped phone numbers, and so what he end up doing is he came with the number of which is number of reported errors and they check their error rate. And so that is Sam’s golden number because if he can keep his error rate extremely low I think it’s one mistake every 15 thousand phone calls. So they keep their error rate really low. People can’t compete with him. And then he can claim we are the best we have the highest quality and prove it. And then you know as an owner of a business where he’s not actually there. So he’s away from the business but he still owns it and I think a lot of you want to do that.

He can continue to keep tabs on his business very easily with just one number the golden number. So if he starts getting mistakes one mistake every five hundred phone calls that’s a big deal. That hasn’t happened. But then what does that mean. That means the customers are probably leaving. Customer complaints are high which is inefficient. It means that the quality of the training has gone down. Maybe the technology is not working anymore. Maybe they’re attracting the wrong clients to their business. That could be a whole host of issues. But if their reported error rate continues to get worse he knows that’s a problem. It affects everything in his business. But if his reported error rate is really really low like one mistake every 15 thousand phone calls then he knows the quality is good. He knows the hiring is good. He knows the training’s good. The technology is good. You sure the customers are happy. The customers are gonna be staying with them a long time because they’re not making mistakes. It means you could charge a premium all these things are going to lead towards efficiency and alignment of his team alignment of the systems. And that’s that’s the number that really proves the point because as a business owner everyone tries to be profit maximizing as they’re trying to grow. But in the end there is a number that proves the point that you are unique that you are special that you are worth doing business with and that no one else can take that place. And that’s what you want to be ultimately in your marketplace whether it’s local or international offline or online.

You want to know that a number is and then you track it and then your team knows; hey if we can make this happen through all of our collective efforts as a team we’re going to be something special. That’s why I call them golden golden numbers. So the steps to actually create these golden numbers are first you need to have a strategy like you actually have to have a plan as the owner you have to decide what do we want to be known for? Where are we trying to go? What is the definition of success in our business? And we do that, it’s called a strategic objective. That is what we write other companies will come up with their own names for it but basically it is where we’re going how we get there and how we’re going to define ourselves?

So we define ourselves first and then we build the systems to get that result on a consistent basis. That’s the first step. So if you’re thinking Gosh I don’t even know what to to have as my goal the numbers I’m a dry cleaner with clean clothes. How do we differentiate ourselves? Well then you think about you know in your city in your area what what are you going to be known for what are you be the best at and what number matters the most? And it’s typically a lagging indicator as the first and second step is the number. So you now you’ve defined we are the best at this. We are the highest quality at this. We’re the fastest or the most fun to work with whatever it is. Then how do you track that,. how do you measure that? What is that number? I can start to actually measure that number and give it yourself a baseline. Now I’m not a big believer in goal setting but I believe you first need to get a baseline first just figure out what it is. Be accurate be consistent be realistic honest get that measurement.

Once you have the measurement then it’s going to be about number three which is building systems. Building systems in your team in the way you deliver your service, in the way you market your service, and in the training everything you do should then lead to a number. And if it’s difficult to get that number then maybe you’re getting the number once a quarter or once a year. If it’s easy maybe you’re getting it you’re getting there a quick response or getting a number every day or every hour depending on what kind of business you have and that number is then going to be your golden number. And then you can keep moving that way.

So that’s what gold numbers is about. And I did it with a company and I think it’s probably the clearest example someone got walked through one of my clients just to share with you how this looks. So this is a recruiting agency so they would help you find employee and then place them in your business. Pretty simple. Most people understand recruiting agencies and over the years it’s gotten more and more difficult because more competition more online services more automated services more best practices available to see online more outsourcing more just more ways people are chipping at the marketplace and eroding their confidence in their business model and they realized they wanted to just be me. They want to be the best the highest quality at doing recruiting helping companies find good employees for their business. And so to do that they had this strategy we were going to be the best and at the best everything but just the best at these specific job types in these specific industries. They got a really clear. And then they said OK well we can say this and we can feel this but are we the best. How do we know what what does that even look like? Because it’s difficult to put your finger on wgood recruiting. And so what we did we came up with two numbers that really define good recruiting. And if those two numbers are good then everything else is going to be good in the business. And the owner was able to pass the business down to her daughter because of that because she had confidence that if we just focus on these two numbers everything else and work out those two numbers were percentage of recruits that they placed that lasted for a year. So if that recruit they place stays for a year that’s really good. OK. So they want a percentage of as high as possible in the 90 percent. So you know you can’t control everything you can’t control people getting pregnant or sickness or moving but if they can stay the 90 percent for a year that means they pick the right person they did a good job vetting them. It is a good job finding out exactly what that company needed and did a good job there.

The second number was it was the clients happy with that new recruit on a scale from 1 to 10 how happy were they with that placement. OK now again this comes down to knowing exactly what a client wants and then knowing exactly the skill sets of the new recruit. Marry those together, making a good transition and making sure they’re happy now if they can be happy one year later with that recruit, really happy at 8 out of 10 9 out of 10 10 out of 10 that means they’re going to keep that client. That means that clients and continue to use them as a recruiter. That means that clients can refer other people to them. I mean my client’s going to pay a premium.

So all of it comes down to at least a year and they’re happy with. Those two numbers. So those are the gold numbers of that business and it proved that they were the highest quality. So you could say well you can go to these online sites you can go to these cheap sites and there’s always places to do it. But if you want the best which means you’re really happy with the recruit and they’re going to stay long term they’re not going to leave they’re going to stick. Gonna be a good fit good culture fit. Then you work with this recruiting firm and it was really important to get those two numbers. And so I’m trying to walk you through that you can do it take some thought and we will certainly do it during our transformation program but you can do it on your own and that’s what Golden numbers are all about. So now I’m getting more more people here on the live stream.

Now for those of you who are here who who came late you missed it again. Define what freedom is for you as an entrepreneur? And then also any questions you have. I’ve got some e-mails over last week about the upcoming program we have. But if you have questions, if your questions for me, questions for business improvement; certainly put them in the question box here our first livestream and I’ll make sure we get to them. All right.

I want to wrap up with this concept. We’re just talking about work the system because in the beginning we talked about freedom and we talked about the components of freedom. And for Sam and I we first started Work the System, it was all about this method. This method that’s worked that’s taken him 100 hour work week to a two hour work week, when he wrote the book and he increases income. And once we knew that, we knew a method work then we started working with clients working with clients working with clients and it takes a while to get us specifically significant amount of numbers of people to actually survey. And so I recently did a survey to see you know are people getting freedom as we define freedom. And we define freedom in terms of stress going down because most people work with most business owners are stressed out and I will tell you being a business owner does not need to be so hard. Most people make it way harder it needs to be so stressed out. That’s the first thing.

Second thing is they’re working too many hours. That’s the other element of freedom we think you need that your mind needs to be free and sustainably. You need to have time right to be free and you need to have income. Most owners are not paying themselves very well. And so they are in a stressful state. They’re stuck there. There’s lack of opportunity both personally and professionally because of the lack of income. And so if we can help them in those three areas consistently then we’re in good shape but we’ve actually done our job and we can be the best at that then people are going to come to us because they’ve gonna say Well they’ve got a system to make that `happen so we’ve been kind of tinkering tinkering tinkering with our systems and tracking on the way and we just got some latest survey data with survey and all of the people who’ve done our transformation or group coaching program and the data was actually better than I thought was gonna be so excited share with you.

So stress level anyone can reduce stress by you know meditation going on vacation and things like that but sustainable stress reduction is more difficult. And so we found that our clients had a look at the number you’re thirty four point nine one decrease in stress. So wherever you are now dropping 34 percent what would that feel like. I’m assuming that it is going to go pretty good. I’m not too stressed about my work but I know like by work with our super stressed out. So that’s the first piece. So reducing the stress the second one was hours and the average hour decrease and looking at it is 10 hours and 14 minute decrease in amount of workweek. People work you know because you can’t have a good life if you’re working 80 hours a week. So if you working more like 40-50 hours a week, maybe 30 hours a week, maybe 20, your quality of life dramatically increases and the freedom increases.

That’s why most people become entrepreneur in the first place. And the last one is income. And so we found an income spike of forty one thousand two hundred and forty eight dollars increase as annual income personally. So that’s not revenue and that’s not necessarily profit it’s not it’s it’s the actual you pay yourself has gone up by an average of forty one thousand two hundred forty dollars. So those are golden numbers. So as a business we know that people are going to then I can hire us because of our Facebook liabilities that I can to hire us because of our design our customer service. I am not going to hire us because of you know how fun or funny we are. They’re really going to just hire us because of the freedom and give in a proven method and so if we can just make sure that those numbers stay strong I think those numbers are pretty strong and we can be consistent in doing it. And then our job My job is to make that more and more scalable more and more profitable and distribute it as much as possible. And so that’s what I’m always continuing to do working on systems to make that distribution possible by staying true to the goal of the business. So that’s our golden number. So I stress ours income keeps it simple. Right. Everything else matters to a degree. A number of clicks. The number of people who showed up to this Facebook Live, those things all matter. But in the end that that final outcome matters the most because that’s what’s going to be the thing that keeps the brand differentiated in a sea of I mean there’s a lot of things you could listen to to right now and a lot of coaches a lot of consultants a lot of books to read. But if we can hold that place if we can own that place in the market and do it in a sustainable way in a systematic way and that’s where we want to plant our flag and so are you again where you want to play your flag?

So make that strategy where you’re going to plant it? What is that number going to be or numbers could be more than one? And then what is going to be the consistent system to get there? And how do you do that in the most profitable way? Which means you’re going to be helping those people. So how do you make that happen? And those are your gold numbers. So hopefully that that helps you today as you’re listening to this and you’re thinking OK what can I do. There’s so many numbers to measure. I would really stick with that. So let me now get to the questions and people who are coming into Facebook Live again. Thanks for joining us for the first ever Facebook Live and of course I think most of you listening to this on iTunes or some other podcast channel or our Web site. All right. So we able in Finland OK. Hi Niko good freedom to me is having control of time to work when I want. Also increasing income without always having to work more hours Lisa. OK. Hey Sam I think you’re here too. What a surprise. Sam joins us to so example in the comment if you want to hear a question but again this is live. For those listening the recording.

Try to join us next time we do a Facebook Live. We’ll be sending it out through our e-mail list if you want to get on an e-mail list. Go to work the system dot com. You can download Sam’s book work the system for free. He offers that for free. It’s a great read. Obviously it changes people’s lives. It’s pictured right behind me. If you’re watching the livestream or you’re watching this on video on our Web site let me get to a couple questions and then we’ll we’ll sign off.

One question that I got as people were knowing that I’m going to be talking about measurements is how do you measure these numbers? And I got something to say; It depends. There’s a lot of ways to measure golden numbers. In our case we did it with a survey in some cases you will have automated tracking systems if you’ll have tracking system with your infusion software that we use, tracking your sales maybe your account will track it for you, maybe your sales team will track it for you, maybe your assistant track it for you but main thing with tracking numbers is do it the same all the time. Be consistent. Otherwise you’re going to get variables that you won’t be able to understand. So always be consistent with the tracking of the numbers and then make sure to remove outliers. We have some surveys. People said you know they work zero hours and they work for zero hours. Their income was negative. Well if you have random outliers you got to remove those too, when your tracking numbers.

I’ve got a question. Yeah. With your karate school I wonder what the numbers would be up that would be a great question. So those of you that got a Karate studio, chiropractor studio, those who do digital marketing. Any one of those industries. All of them really. There’s going to be a golden number that would prove the point that you set yourself apart. Another question I had about was transformation. So we are doing the work system transformation program.

Again this is the final week if you’re watching this live now you’re watching the recording. We do it from time to time. It’s our flagship program and it’s the one we got that data. And it’s basically a four month program because it takes time to transform a business. And the program basically walks you through the method, the method of making more or working less systems in your business building the structure and strategies of your engine that certainly go to work to system dot com. And if you’re new to work system go there you get the free book and start to get matching rate in the the idea this idea of the systems mindset. This idea of getting outside and slightly elevated looking down on your business like a machine all those things really transform a business. And I will tell you one of the data points I get when I work with clients is within the first few weeks I check their stress in the beginning and then after a few weeks and you know people want time people want money but the first thing that drops when you’re doing the work the system method is the stress level. Typically within three weeks stress is gone down 30 percent and anyone, everyone I know could enjoy a decrease in stress. So check that out. And yeah thanks again everybody for joining me. Let us know in the comments if you want to do another one these Facebook lives you might even try a YouTube Live in the future just to test these things out because there’s so many tools we want to make sure the message is out there. Thanks again everybody. And those of you listening to the recorded podcast. Tune in next week. We won’t be doing to Facebook Live next week but just tune in next week running and doing other podcast on iTunes. Go to our Web site. Any other channel you listen to podcasts and I’ll be interviewing another experts, author, or another speaker and they’ll be talking with you about how to fix your business so you can make more and work less. Thanks everybody.