Podcast

Episode 2: The 12 Important Beats of Running a Successful and Powerful Company, with Colin Sprake

WHAT IT TAKES TO RUN A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS

Welcome everyone. It’s awesome to have you here with me today. Today I’m here by myself, so I’m just going to go through a number of keys to business success for you to learn what it takes to run a successful business in any industry with the right set of core values or beats. I want you to make sure that you get so much out of today as we jump in and make a huge, huge difference for you and your business.

It’s Colin Sprake here, and I want to go into what I call the 12 important beats of running a successful company, a very, very successful and powerful company at that. One thing I want you to understand, as we go through today is that you take lots of notes. It is so important. The way you get ahead is by taking action with what you learn from me on this amazing podcast. Let’s get going. Let’s get rocking, rolling with today. We’re going to go through the 12 important beats of running a really powerful, successful, eight-figure business and way beyond that and it all starts with these really important beats.

 

Beat #1: Build a Business with Purpose

Beat number one, which I’m going to start with is how to build a successful business with purpose. So many people are so focused on, “How do I make money?” It’s all about, “Let me make more money” or “How do I make money in my business?” My goal for you is to start to think about how do you go and serve people? How do you really focus on serving more people because my mantra at Make Your Mark is the following: When you focus on dollars you’ll have money to count; when you focus on people you have countless dollars.

Source: Pexels

Build a business with purpose. Click To Tweet

I really want you to think about this because so many people are focused on going out there and how to make money today because that’s what society has taught them to believe: that what it takes to run a successful company is lots and lots of money. As you listen to this, think about this: are you just focused on making money or are you focused on serving people with what you have. When you serve people, I promise you, you’ll come out with way more money than you ever thought possible. So think about this, beat number one is what is your purpose? Are you there to truly serve people to a higher level or are you just there to make money and that’s it. If you’re only focused on making money, yes, you’ll make money, but I can tell you one thing, you’ll make a lot more money when you start truly with thinking “how can I serve people today?” Go out there and change humanity. Change mankind. Give people a leg up with your products or service to get them ahead to have amazing life and amazing success.

 

Beat #2: What’s Your Freedom Plan?

Beat number two is what is your freedom plan? I want you to think about this. Most people aren’t thinking about whatever’s happening in their life right now because people are so focused on “go bold and how to make a successful business plan.” I meet so many trainers, coaches, what have you, especially around business saying, “Focus on how to make a successful business plan. Get your business plan rocking and rolling.” The saddest part is, I’m a big believer in what you focus on expands, so if you’re so focused on how to make a successful business plan, guess what happens, often your family and your life falls apart because you’re so busy focusing on how to make a successful business plan because you need a plan for both.

I call it the freedom plan. When you take your life plan plus your business plan and you put them together that becomes your freedom plan. What does your life look like, your one year, two year, five years, 10 years out from now? What does your business look like, one year, five year, two year, five year, 10 years from now, because when you put the two together, that’s when you get massive success. To me, just having a business plan doesn’t cut it. Your support structure at home, your amazing love, the kindness of the people around you, your friends, your family, all those people that are supporting you, it’s really important to understand that when you have that support that you really start to be thankful for that support.

In particular, your life plan, your family plan, everything else because your life plan plus your business plan gives you your freedom plan. I want you to think about that as you read this today. I want you to be taking notes, writing down what’s really important to you. You might be mobile right now, I understand that, but start to think about what you focus on expands. When you put your life plan and your business plan together, that’s when you get true freedom. That’s when you get this amazing business that generates so much money for you and so much cash for you as you go and serve humanity and serve your clientele.

At the same time, you have this amazing family life, you travel, you enjoy whatever’s important to you, you get those cherished moments. That’s what I want you to be really understanding. Let’s get your freedom plan working for you so that you get what I call a business with soul where you really have a successful business and the successful family simultaneously. Focus on putting together a really important freedom plan.

 

Beat #3: What’s Your Vivid Vision?

Another thing I want to share with you, and I’m going to talk about this in later episodes, I want to share with you what I call beat number three, what is your vivid vision? What is your vivid vision for your business? Where do you see yourself in the next three to four years? I like to create a very detailed vivid vision. If you want to download my vivid vision you’re more than welcome to. My vivid vision is live on my website at mymsuccess.com. The MYM stands for Make Your Mark. My vivid vision is there. I highly recommend you go over there, you click and you download the PDF of my vivid vision and you take that vivid vision and you start to create your own vivid vision three to four years from now.

Really creating a powerful vivid vision for how to build a successful business lets people know where you’re going, what you’re doing, and what have you. You need to share your vivid vision with everybody. Now, this is not just a vision statement, this is a vivid vision. Mine is six pages long, every single piece of my business, my family, everything else in terms of my freedom plan of where I see myself three to four years from now. Now, when you go and download it and you get this vivid vision, use my document as a template to create your own vivid vision for your business. I really want to make sure you’re getting that vivid vision that you’re looking for. The most important part of the vivid vision is it’s so detailed of where you will be, but you’re writing it as if you three years to four years from now and your team can see where you’re at.

When I come to hire people, the first thing I send them, we put an ad out, it could be on any kind of platform. We’re looking for team members to come and join Make Your Mark or new employees to join us, when we do that, when people write back to us and they’re super excited we send them out the vivid vision. We send out this PDF document. We don’t ask them to reply to it. We don’t ask them are they interested in working with us, we just say, “Thank you for your resume, here’s the vivid vision for the company.” We send it out to them, if they write back and they say, “I am super excited. I want to be part of that. I want to get to the next level by being with you on that vivid vision and that journey,” and then we start to interview them and we bring them in and we go through a very said process of interviewing.

Unless they respond back to the vivid vision we send out when they first send their resume in, we don’t do anything with them. Why? Because we want the same people on the bus driving the bus forward, going to where we want to be in line with the vivid vision for the company because my vivid vision is so important to me to achieve the results that I’m looking for, and of course, to really gotten serve so many people out there. You really need to create that vivid vision that’s got lots of feeling in it. People can see that there’s growth in the company because here’s the most important point. Your vivid vision gets shared with everyone. I share with prospective team members or employees. I don’t like the word employees. I love the word team.

At the same time, share it with your vendors because your vendors will love to know you have what it takes to how to build a successful business and they can prepare accordingly as well. You share it with your current employees or your current team members. You share that vivid vision with your family, your friends, everybody. Why? Because you want them to support you on your vision in terms of where you’re going on this, and it’s a massive journey of where you’re going. At the same time, you want to make sure that your vendors know there are opportunities to grow with you. You want your team members or employees to know there’s so much opportunity with you for them to get to the next level because employees want to know, “What is the growth with your company? What’s the growth opportunity?”

Everyone wants to grow, but if you don’t have a vivid vision that outlines what you’re going to be doing and where you’re going, they just think that they’re going to come to a J-O-B every day and do the same job day, after day, after day. The best thing about a vivid vision for employees or your team members is they see the opportunity and growth and that they can actually get to the next level.

 

Beat #4: Determine the Core Values of Your Company

The next important part, beat number four, what are your core values for your company? Now, you might wonder, what do you mean by core values? The core values set the culture of who you are. When we hire at Make Your Mark, we are so set on this because here’s the challenge. If you don’t have core values, I mean, everyone has core values but really good core values that drive your company forward, you end up hiring people that are really, really, really good at what they do but sometimes they irritate the snot out of you. Seriously, sometimes they just really irritate you.

Source: Pexels

Your business’ core values set your company’s culture. Click To Tweet

I’m sure if I ask you this question, “Have you ever worked with somebody who is extremely good at what they do, very skilled in what they do but they irritate you to the core?” Here’s the reason why, is because they don’t have the same core values as you. In my company, we have very set core values. We have six core values. I’m going to share them with you today. Directly on our website as well you can definitely download them at mymsuccess.com and then look at what our core values are. We have the six of them: Unconditional gratitude, open to possibilities, commitment to excellence, respect individual, community of trust, and integrity. Those are our six core values and each one of them is also defined because when you have core values it’s really important to define each of your core values.

The reason being, because if I went to a number of my team members at the office and I said to them, “Tell me what integrity means?” Every single one of them would give me a different definition, maybe slightly different, but definitely in their own words would be different. At Make Your Mark, our definition of integrity is doing the right thing at the right time all the time. When you put a definition to each of the core values, then when I ask my team members, “What does integrity mean to Make Your Mark?” They can give me exactly what integrity means and I’ll get the same thing from each one of them.

Now, this is the key to business success, it drives the culture because most people don’t hire on culture, they’ll hire on skill set, talent, what have you. That’s great, but if people don’t have the same core values as you, they will irritate you. In fact, often they become a cancer in your organization. How many times have I ever worked with a company, and I can’t tell you how many times this has happened where I’ll work with a company, I go in, I start doing work with them and there’s one person that does not have the core values. They’re really good at what they do, so the company owners keep this person on because they’re good at what they do, but the challenging part is they’re a cancer to the organization.

In fact, really good people that are good at what they do and have the company core values actually end up leaving the company because of that one person that’s a cancer that does not have the core values. That person often starts the talk around the water cooler, the backstabbing, all the negative stuff often comes from the person who does not share your core values. Make sure you have your core values. The maximum number of core values you should have — which I’m going to talk about this on upcoming episodes — is seven core values. In fact, anything between five to seven is really, really good.

Core values can be anything. Really understand what your core values are, and remember, you have to live your core values. These aren’t things you would like your company to be, because that really doesn’t help you. This is who you are today that’s created the culture that you have. When you define your core values, you’ll be amazed at the exceptional culture you will start to develop. In fact, you’ll have people lining up to work for you and you’ll have people really devoted to being with you and people lining up to buy your products and services. It is so cool when you have the right core values and you live them every single minute of the day.

 

Beat #5: Are You Helping People?

Let me go to beat number five. Beat number five is really important because I want you to think about really doing what’s right for people. So many people don’t really realize this, that they go out and they just do business, but really, are you doing what’s right for people? My goal for you is to really think about doing what’s right for them. I want to ask you to really think about three questions, what’s working in your industry or marketplace right now that you will copy? The second thing is, what’s not working in your industry right now or possibly what’s working but is unethical and you don’t agree with? I’m going to give you an example in a moment. Thirdly, what’s missing in your industry?

You answer these three questions, you will number one understand what is right in your industry, but also you’ll be doing things that are right for people and at the same time, you will really become me only in your marketplace. Let me give you an example of this. So, what’s working? When I started out in this industry, people called us a seminar company. I was like, “Well, I’m not really a seminar company.” I went out to as many seminars as I could, seminars, workshops, retreats and I figured out what was working for these people and I copied it. That’s okay.

The second thing was, what’s not working? There was a number of things that weren’t working for them, which I did not copy, but there were a number of things which were working for them which I considered not to be ethical or manipulative or what have you, and I decided not to copy them. Like the slash and burn, run to the back of the room like most people teach. I don’t agree with that in any way or form. I’m all about making sure people get immense value and they get what they’re looking for when they come out to our programs.

Then the third thing we did, as I went out to all these seminars, workshops, what have you, I was listening to what’s missing. Most people said to me, “Yeah, it’s so cool. I go out to these events. I go out to seminars and get all pumped up, all excited, but guess what? I feel down after three or four days and then I go back to normal and it never gets implemented.” So we created a whole bunch of accountability groups at different levels for different business owners to really help them understand that you can implement and we hold you accountable to implementing. That made us unique in our market space because we became this company, and yes, of course many people have copied us since then, but we were the leaders in this industry for creating amazing seminars, a system of seminars incorporated with these accountability groups, holding people to a higher standard so that they implement and they get the results because my reputation to me is the most important thing. I’m sure your reputation is to you as well.

You want people to be using your product. You want people to be using your service, whatever it might be because when they use it and the implement and they get the right results, that’s when they rave about you. I’m not a big fan of raving fans in my business, I want evangelists for my business, going out and going crazy about who we are and what we do to other people out there to bring people in, so we can truly MYM their business for them. That’s what excites me so much.

I want you to be a leader in your industry. Really think about what’s working, what’s not working, and what’s missing and start to think about how can you start to get yourself to be me only in your industry. When you start to think about what’s missing as well, just start to think about really, truly what’s missing. So many people don’t get what’s missing and their clients will tell them every single day what’s missing but they not listening because they are so stuck in it’s only done this way in my industry. Start to think about how can you do it other ways.

When I have people just like you that are listening come to me and say, “Colin, can you assist me with my business?” I say, “Yes, I can help you. I can get you ahead. I can help you get to where you want to be.” The big thing you have to do though, is understand that if you want to get ahead, then you need to make sure that you are listening to what takes place. So many people aren’t listening to what their clients are telling them every single day. When your clients are listening to you, and the reason why I get people ahead so quickly is because I am not in your industry. When I’m not in your industry I give you advice outside of your industry because the worst thing you can ever do is listen to somebody who’s broke in your industry.

When a person’s broke in your industry and saying, “Well, the economy is tough right now. This is not working right now. It takes two to five years to have what it takes to run a successful business in our industry. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” If they’re all broke in your industry and not making the money that you desire to make, then don’t listen to them. I believe the worst person you can listen to is someone who is broke in your industry. Listen to the rock stars who have what it takes to run a successful business in your industry. Listen to the people who are making more money than you ever want to make, who are making the big bucks. Listen to them and ask them their key to business success, because I can tell you one thing, when you listen to people that are super successful in any industry, they are not thinking the same way as the people who are not making money, who are broke in your industry. Think about it, who can you get in your industry who can absolutely help you get to that next level?

 

Beat #6: Know Why

Beat number six, know why. This goes back to being earlier about really knowing your purpose, know why you do things because remember, it’s not just about focusing on the money, focus on the people. I now have 49,000 clients across the world and these 49,000 clients that I serve every single day, I never stop thinking about how to make their lives better. In fact, when I get out of bed in the morning, my number one thing that gets me out of bed with an absolute excitement and a bounce in my step is going to the mail and getting out gratitude cards, gratitude letters, letters of appreciation from our clients who say thank you for changing my business, changing my life, what have you.

Understand what is driving you. If you’re counting your money in your bank account every day, that might not be the thing that should be driving you. It should not be, but of course it’s good to focus on your money because what you focus on expands, but truly what are you doing for mankind? What are you doing for humanity? Are you getting people ahead to the next level? What drives you? I can tell you what drives me is knowing why I do what I do. I do what I do and my why is live on my website as well. You can go read my why. I was suicidal as a child. I attempted to commit suicide twice. My life has become so abundant. Those challenges in my childhood, guess what, those are just those challenges.

One thing I can tell you about that what it did for me though, it helped me understand my fellow human beings, so when they’re in a tough place I can actually serve them and get them to the next level. I know why I do what I do. I love watching the underdog succeed. Just like many of you listening here, I want you to get ahead like you’ve never got ahead before, to get results you never, ever dreamt possible before, but you have to know why you’re doing it. Don’t be doing it just for the money, be doing it to serve humanity. Be doing it to learn how to build a successful business, to be a better business owner, to make a difference on this planet. I hope you really get that as you listen to this today.

 

Beat #7: Build a Community

Beat number seven. This is my favorite one. We are stuck in a place right now where I think we’ve lost community in the world. It used to always be you’d walk down the street and you’d say, “There’s Bobby’s mom and there’s Mary’s grandma,” and what have you. Now as people walk down the street, walk through the mall, and lots of times we don’t even know who’s who, we just walk past. People always got their faces stuck in technology and screens and what have you. We used to be a real good community-based marketplace where we always thought about community first as we and then me as secondary. That was 30 years ago. Now, in the 21st century, so many people are focused on me first and then we.

I believe in my heart, and you should think about this, in terms of being successful the next biggest businesses will be ones that build community. Look at the massive community with all the social media out there. The people who have what it takes to run a successful business right now are those that are building community, having their clients talk to one another. Now, you say, “I don’t want my clients to talk to one another.” Here’s the challenge, if you don’t have your clients talk to one another or you’re nervous of them talking to one another, here’s the challenge with that, then you must be doing something wrong. If your clients talk to each other and they love what you do, it becomes like this pandemic of love for you, them going out and propagating what you have.

Source: jens johnsson on Unsplash

The next biggest businesses will be the ones that build community. Click To Tweet

As you listen to this, think about how do I build community in my business. How do I get my business to that next level where community is absolutely everything? Go back to a we-based society and then a me instead of being focused where we’re at today where it’s me first and then we. That’s beat number seven is build amazing community in your business.

 

Beat #8: Have and Give Gratitude

Beat number eight is all around gratitude. I’m all about gratitude. In our business every single week we send out around 40 gratitude cards. This is not something we add to our business each week, it’s part of what we do. All my team members are requested to give out one, two, maybe three gratitude cards every week. It could be just supplier, to a student, or to a vendor. It could be completely to anybody. The key thing is giving gratitude is so important. So many people don’t give gratitude’s. People think they’re vendors should be grateful for having them as a client. I’m a big fan of being so thankful to my vendors.

So many people don’t think of how important their vendors are. If you treat your vendors poorly and they go see another client that could use your product or service, do you think they going to recommend you? Probably not, so look after your vendors, your clients, your family, friends, whatever all equally. Don’t treat certain people with a certain amount of respect and others not. Every single person is important. Give gratitude every single day. In fact, when I wake up in the mornings I spend 10 to 15 minutes lying in bed every morning just giving gratitude for the most amazing things in my life, gratitude for my wife, gratitude for my daughters, gratitude for my business, gratitude for you, the listeners, to this podcast. I am so grateful for every single person in my life because I know the more I give out gratitude the more the universe gives me to be grateful for. Beat number eight is give gratitude.

 

Beat #9: Hire with Intention

Beat number nine is hire with intention. This is how you create an amazing eight-figure business, what I call how do you create a heart-centered eight-figured business with heart because it’s all about putting the heart and soul into what you do. Love your clients. Love people. I’m going to go through this with you in detail, as it is the key to business success.

Beat number nine is hire with intention. Number one, only hire A players because if you hire a B player or a C player, guess what, they’ll only hire people that are B or C players. A players want A players on their team, so only hire A players in every area of your company. Your clients success is your success. Never forget that. Most importantly think about it a little bit differently. I don’t hire employees, I hire team members. I want people to be on my team so we can have an amazing team at Make Your Mark. We don’t have the word can’t in our office, we only think about how can I.

Think about this for yourself. Every time you think to yourself can’t you say, “Stop. Terminate. Give up. Won’t go any further.” Think about how can I serve people. At Make Your Mark, we work together it’s not for each other. Nobody works for me, we work together as a team, collectively to the success of the company. I work with our team members, nobody reports to me. All these funny, old, archaic 19th and 20th century terms, to me are gonzo, man. We work together. We work with each other and in every situation verify and clarify. I cannot stress this enough. How many people do not verify and clarify situations.

Something happens at the office, somebody does something and you get so mad and you only realize, sadly, that the people that you verify and clarify … Maybe someone did something or put something away or filed something away for you and you get all mad about it and then when you verify and clarify, you actually realize they were helping you and serving you. Be very careful to judge things and draw conclusions to things until you verified and clarified every situation in every event. When you do that, you’ll have less conflict in your office plus you’ll have an exceptional culture in your office as well.

One of my favorite things for you to think about is quick to compliment, not to complain. So many people are so busy complaining every single day … Here’s the challenge, if you complain the universe gives you more to complain about. When you compliment, the universe gives you more to compliment about. What do you want today? Do you want more to complain about or more to be complimented about? Be very, very careful because what you put out there is what you get back. At the same time, when you hire with intention, at Make Your Mark we look at things a little bit differently is we always hire with looking at people’s resumes, we look at their disk profile, which of course could be Myers/Briggs a number of different profiling companies that are out there. We look at sacred gifts, which is really awesome determining one of the 24 sacred gifts and looking at which sacred gifts require what role in the company.

Source: Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

Be quick to compliment, not to complain. Click To Tweet

If you want to learn more about that, you’re more than welcome to send me an email and I’ll happily chat you about that or connect with me via our website as well. Then the fourth thing we do is a destiny profile. That destiny profile is so awesome because it’s actually using Feng Shui. My entire office is Feng Shuied. I believe all around the energy of everything that happens in life and Feng Shui is not just about your environment. Feng Shui is actually also where the human destiny is in terms of the people you’re hiring.

In fact, at Make Your Mark I have this beautiful wall in our office called our family wall where every person we hire, their profile board with their disk profile, their sacred gifts and their destiny profile are put on the wall. Next to them, when they join us on the first day we actually give them this beautiful package what consists of a dream board, our core values with all their definitions, a photo frame. We have a cool photo frame we give every one of our team members that joins us the first day they join where they can put a photograph of the most important people in their lives. It could be family. It could be friends. It could be their best friend. It could be their dog. It could be their cat, whatever it is.

I give them a copy of my book and I get this amazing binder, which was our welcome binder, which our team binder to welcome them to the team. They get a t-shirt for the company. We have this beautiful blue carpet that rolls up to our reception area and as the person comes in on their first day, all our team members come running out. We stand either side of the blue carpet, they walk up to our reception counter and right on the reception counter is this beautiful package with a gorgeous plant with a motivational stone in that has a word on it. That word is what we determined from when we’ve interviewed them, so when they join us they have this whole package.

The dream board is so cool. It says, “My Dreams” across the top. It’s 8 1/2 x 11 and they then have 24 hours to fill that out. Then we have this family wall with their profile already done for them. We add their dreams to it. Here’s what I want you to think about as a business owner. If your team members are helping you achieve your dream, your vivid vision to where you want to go, what are you doing to help them achieve their dreams. This podcast today, I just want you to think about what are you doing for the benefit of your people at your office? Really important. I want you to think about that.

 

Beat #10: Energy is Everything

Number ten. I hope you’re learning a ton from today because these are keys to business success I know can actually help you get ahead. Energy is everything. I want you to think, “What is the energy of your office?” This is beat number 10. We don’t have any departments at Make Your Mark. We have divided everything to pods. Whales swim in pods. The reason being because I want high energy in our pods. I don’t want departments. Departments have this whole archaic way of looking at things. I am the visionary pod of Make Your Mark and then we have the prosper pod, which is myself and two of my key team members who are looking at the prosperous nature of everything that we do.

Our abundance pod, which would typically be called the financial department in the company, our abundance pod is absolutely incredible. Our abundance pod does all our finances because I believe words have energy. When you put the right words in each area of your company that’s when you start to get different results. Our growth pod of course is sales and marketing. We have our love pod. Our love pod are our client care specialists. So everyone, they love our clients. We love them. They go out and they make sure they create love in every aspect of the company. They are called our love pod because without our clients we have zero. We have nothing. I don’t drive the cars I drive, to have the house I have, have the beautiful team and office I have without our amazing clients.

Are you loving your clients every day or are you just counting their money and taking their money from them? What are you doing to help your clients, love your clients, respect them, honor them for every dollar they give you because without them you have nothing. And then our final pod at Make Your Mark is our creation pod, which are the people that put all our events on, they create this amazing environment and the exceptional events and then everywhere in form. These are the people that put every little detail to every one of our events to make our events absolutely exceptional.

When people come in during the day, we have this thing called word of the day, so when people walk in the first thing they do is they put a word of the day on the board. Every person, before they sit at their desk or before they sit in their area writes a word of the day on the board. Then we have a thrive meeting where we share the words. We have this most amazing environment where … Of course, energy is everything, which is beat number 10 … the environment we’re in. We have lots of great team fun activities.

Most importantly, I’m a big wine lover and you’ll learn this about me as we go through these episodes together. I love wine, so every Friday afternoon we have wine Friday’s, where our team, we break at 3:00 pm, we have a glass of wine together. We discuss fun stuff on the weekends. We have just a lot of great, high energy, lots of interaction because I care for every single one of my team members and I want you to care for your team members as well. Remember, you have to have employees if you want to leverage yourself and get to the next level.

If you say, “I hate employees,” you are crazy. Employees are your biggest leverage because while you’re away your business keeps on running and you make money and they make money. If you don’t want employees, every time you go away and your business virtually comes to a standstill, then you’re crazy. I like to take three or four months off a year. Without employees, I would never be where I am today and I want you to think about that as well. We also change the energy of everything as well. We look at each day of the week very different. We have Money Monday’s, Terrific Tuesday’s, Winning Wednesday’s, Thriving Thursday’s, and Fabulous Friday’s. Energy is everything. What words are you putting to everything that you do.

Of course, most importantly we love to celebrate. I want you to think about and what is a hashtag you’ve created for your business? We have the #MYMfamily because we have such an amazing community across the country, across the nation, across the globe. Our family is really important to us. We have this MYM family, this amazing community. What community are you creating?

 

Beat #11: Communication is Key to Running a Successful Company

Beat number 11. I hope you’re getting a ton of keys to business success from this today. I hope you’re taking detailed notes. You might listen to the episode or read through this transcript many times, often to start to think, “How do I get my business to a place where people line up to work for me and people line up to buy my products and services?” Communication is key. Within Make Your Mark we have the Make Your Mark University, which is internal training program for all our team at the office, all our faculty, all our facilitators, all our trainers all come in once a year to the Make Your Mark University. We put them through this university to really make sure we have consistency in all our training, consistency in the messages that we have so that we sing one song and we sing it often.

We have consistency in the words in terms of the vocabulary we use and the verbiage we use and the jargon we use at the office and that also our team is always living our core values.

 

Beat #12: What Kind of Culture Are You Creating?

Then beat number 12 and I want you to think about this in all areas of your life because people only remember two things from you, the experience they had with you and then number two, how you made them feel. Now, people think this is only for customers. No way, it’s for every person in your life because when a person gets up from the table with you, from your living room from you, from your boardroom, from your office, in everywhere in form, the only thing they remember is what was the experience with you and how did you make them feel.

People think this is only a thing that clients remember. No, your team remembers it too, your staff, as well as your vendors and it’s so important to running a successful company. My goal for all my staff or my team is when they go home in the evening, they sit around their dinner table with their family members and their friends and they talk favorably about my company. Why, because I want them to talk so favorably about that experience and how we make them feel at our office so that people say, “I would love to join your company.”

In fact, I’m one of the few companies out there that gives five weeks of paid leave the day a team member joins us. Why do I do that, because that’s the way I would like to be respected. People need time out. People need time away from the office in order to get the results that you’re looking for and if people work themselves to a bone and only have one or two weeks off a year, you’re crazy, man. In Europe, it’s four weeks, five weeks, six weeks, seven weeks, even eight weeks in some countries of paid leave a year. People think that’s crazy. I’m telling you, it’s the best thing you can do for your business, of course if you can afford to do it. Why, because when you give people time off they can recharge their batteries and get to that next level.

Source: Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

If you think you can give people only 1 or 2 weeks of vacation, you’re crazy. Click To Tweet

Maya Angelou said this the best, and bless her she’s no longer with us, “People will forget what you said. People forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Think about your last interaction with your spouse, your kids, as a client and you maybe went to a restaurant somewhere, how did they make you feel because that’s the only thing you talk about. Guess what? That’s the only thing your team talks about, your clients talk about, your vendors talk about are the experiences with you.

I want you to remember this as we finish off here today. Remember, your culture determines your level of success. What culture are you creating in your business today? I want you to really think about it. I am brutally direct about this because you could have the best people on your team, skilled, awesome, but if they don’t share your culture, your core values, and understand who you are and where you’re going you’ll get to where you want to be, but maybe not retain your clients or retain your staff. You might have high staff turnover rates.

My goal for you is to realize you can create a culture of success, amazing success. Think about it for you today, what culture are you creating? What are your nuggets you’re going to write down from this episode today? What are the key nuggets you’re going to write down to get you to the next level? One of my best friends and I spent an amazing time with him in Necker Island earlier on this year is Sir Richard Branson. Sir Richard Branson said it the best, “Clients do not come first, employees come first. If you take care of your employees they will take care of your clients.”

That’s what you have to realize. You treat your employees like gold, they will treat your clients like platinum. You’re treating your employees like trash, what do you expect them to do with your clients and how do you expect your clients to feel. What a great comment from Sir Richard Branson. What I’d like you to think about today as we end off here is what are you doing that’s going to be different? What are you going to do to get your business to the next level around your culture?

I can tell you I didn’t think much about this in the beginning, but now, I can tell you it’s one of the most important things for me. I have got my business to a level where we’re eight-figures, multiple eight-figures, now I’m going on to nine-figures and that’s not to brag. I want you to think about it, and I don’t care if you’re a solo-preneur or a business owner with many employees or many team members, think about what culture are you creating and what results are you looking for?

I am so excited for you. Please feel free to jump on our website, download my WHY statement, download my vivid business. They’re right there at mymsuccess.com. Most importantly, I cannot wait to serve you and see you at the next level, hear your comments and see each and every one of you running a successful company. Keep listening because in a week’s time we’ve got an amazing, amazing interview coming up so make sure you’re ready for the interview it’s coming up with one of my really, really great friends who’s really going to give you his brutal truth on what it takes to build a successful business no matter what level you’re at to get the results you’re looking for. Thank you so much. Keep being awesome. Keep being amazing. Keep building and most of all keep implementing. Have a great day everyone. Bye.

 

RELATED RESOURCES:

  • – Episode 43: The Secret to Success in Business and Life, with Bobbi Deporter

  • – Episode 47: Reinventing a Path to Success with the Right Mindset, with John Kehoe

  • – Episode 28: Choices – Verify & Clarify, with Colin Sprake