Martial Arts and Business Have in Common
My Children ages 5 & 9 recently began taking Taekwondo, being the type of person I am, I started studying the business model for the school they were attending and looking to understand and relate to the process of building a successful business. In other words looking to understand what Martial Arts and Business have in common. Martial arts are a great way to exercise and provide key lessons into Self Defense. Martial Arts like owning a business require consistent, disciplined actions in order to fully master However, as a friend who is a black belt pointed out, Martial Arts is a philosophy and becomes a way of life; it also provides some key lessons on surviving the rigors of business and life.
At Sunrise Business Advisors, we help guide business owners to create a business that can work without them. We do this through a process or system of levels where in the beginning the business owner wears all the hats, eventually the business owner earns his “Black Belt” and has a business that can run without them. The process and systems are what martial arts and business have in common, they have created for their business carry them forward on a consistent sustainable level.
When a student starts out in Martial Arts their primary goal is to understand some of the “basics” including moves and language. Martial Arts Like Business also includes goals on achieving different milestones including earning higher levels eventually becoming a black belt. However, much like business the process continues even after earning the black belt designation. My friend mentioned that while you are studying through the different belts you are learning, once you reach the coveted black belt you are now doing. Mastering business requires significant consistent disciplined efforts; reaching the black belt stage in business means you are now doing not just learning business.
Let’s look at the 6 degrees belts you must master to earn your black belt in business.
White Belt: At this level, the emphasis is on basic business mastery over time, team, & money. It’s about getting the chaos out of your business and getting organized. It’s about making sure you can make payroll and that your employees understand their roles & responsibilities in your organization. It’s where you learn to delegate tasks to your team, so you can concentrate on developing higher level skills needed to obtain your business black belt.
Yellow Belt: This level is where you work on creating predicable cash flow in the business. You develop your Niche and USP (unique selling proposition), so you can start selling on value and not price. You find out why your business is unique and valuable to your customers.
Green Belt: At this level, you are working on creating efficiencies in your business. You are starting to develop systems that will run your business so you don’t have to.
Blue Belt: Here you learn how to get the right people “on the bus”– the right team players, who will run your systems that will run your business.
Red Belt: This level is where we start to see all your hard work come together. You’ll start to see the synergies of your systems and teams develop. Now, you start grooming your general manager who will run your business for you.
Black Belt: Now you’ve made it! You’ve created a commercial profitable enterprise that works without you. You are now an entrepreneur with a business black belt! You are generating passive income from the business. You can now take the skills and knowledge which you have learned and apply them to other businesses or start investing your profits, so your money is making money.
If you’d like a referral to a great school to study martial arts, send me an email or call. If you’re interested in finding out what it takes to earn your black belt in business, and to learn more about what martial arts and business have in common, we offer a complimentary Business Assessment Review. This one hour review will help you determine if you’ve got what it takes to earn your black belt in business.
Thom Torode, MBA, CBC, CEC
Inspiring Greatness…Developing Success!
Business Results
People often say they want to maximize their business results, unfortunately those same people fall into one of 2 schools.
-
They want to Maximize their results, but don’t know how.
-
They know how, but don’t follow a system to get the business results they desire.
Which do you fall into?
There are 5 key areas that touch on every business that need to be reviewed in order to achieve maximum business results!
Let’s look at the Business Result Formula:
These are the 5 key areas, but much like baking a cake, if you don’t know the quantity or order, your business results will fall just like a cake falling.
Leads / Conversion Rate / Number of Transactions / Average Dollar Sale / Profit Margin
Post this Formula where you can see it and study it.
This formula is the life blood toward business results.
| # of Leads |
| X |
| % Conversion Rate |
| = |
| # of Customers |
| X |
| # of Transactions |
| X |
| Average Dollar Sale |
| = |
| Revenue |
| X |
| % Margin |
| = |
| $ Profit |
I was having a conversation with a CPA recently about things that mattered in a business, ultimately what it comes down to are a couple of key items that can make or break the success or failure of a company.
Understanding your base-line lead generation number is critical to knowing if your marketing and lead generation strategies have accomplished the desired goal. Your leads are your prospects or potential customers. They are people who have taken action in response to your ad or promotion, and have shown interest in your product or service, but have not become a customer because they haven’t purchased yet.
Customers are the by – product of two things:
# LEADS X % CONVERSION RATE = # of Customers
This means that you have to generate more leads and get more of those leads to make purchases in order to increase your customer base. In order to understand the effectiveness of any campaign you must understand your CAA (cost of client/customer acquisition). Understand that lead generation is about finding ways to reach the people who need or want what you have to offer and getting them to act – to pick up the phone, visit your website or walk into your business. This is what the majority of marketing strategies are trying to do.
In our next report on Business Results, we’ll talk about some marketing strategies to increase lead generation and Conversion Rates which will increase your likelihood of significant Business Results.
What everyone is talking about
Well, Super Bowl 47 is over and it seems that most of the posts I’ve seen focus one or two key items. Beyonce’s
Half Time Show and its impact on the Blackout… or the commercials that garnered a reported north of $3 Million just for a 30 second spot. Keep in mind this doesn’t include the cost to produce the video, pay the actor or actress, editing, etc. If you want to see a good review of the ads plus their top 3 click here. MSNBC did a good job reviewing some of the ads plus guest appearance of geek of the year.
Why is it so important to understand the true cost, because most of us don’t have the advertising dollars that some these companies have? Well if you’re going after branding it might make sense. For the rest of us, our money should be spent on creating some type of call to action. What’s a call to action? How many of you clicked on the link above to see the ads and their review. That’s what I’m referring to. The call to action moved most of you to click through to check out the top 3 ads. What type of things can you create for your business as a call to action? Think about what you’re trying to have your audience do. What’s the purpose of running your advertising? Hopefully you answered to get more clients. If you didn’t that’s ok. Your advertising dollars are limited and you can learn how to spend them wisely; even if you pockets aren’t as deep as Budweiser’s. If you’re interested in having some customized and proven ad copy for your business. Drop me a line. I’ll get you access to our Business Academy for one month. It’s only $1 and it’ll put you miles ahead of your competitors!
Thom Torode
Managing Partner
Inspirance, LLC
Sunrise Business Advisors and Business Results Academy
Thomtorode@gmail.com
Excellence
As a Business Advisor, Coach, Mentor, Guru, etc… I subscribe to a number of resources to keep my skills sharp and mind geared to being a guiding resource for my clients and friends. Recently, I was reading one such resource, another positive minded business professional.
I was first turned onto this person a number of years ago while leading a large group of sales representatives from the financial resources industry. His email from Justsell provides sales quotes geared to inspire greatness, as well as some other great sales strategies. The publisher, Sam Parker has developed a company Give More Media. Sam and his company are responsible for some impressive brands that have become household names over the last several years, including the whole 212? phenomenon, smile and move, plus many more recognizable names. One of their newer brands Cross the Line, is one I’ll be using for an upcoming non-profit board retreat.
What do these titles have to do with Excellence? In one of his most recent blogs Mr. Parker wrote about Excellence. After a recent hotel stay he received a survey, I’m sure most of us have seen these and barely gave it a second thought. The survey at the bottom of the receipt asked,
“How was your stay?” it asked.
It continued with…
“If you cannot rate your visit as “EXCELLENT” please let us know,”
In the blog Sam goes on to provide a definition of Excellence, gives some thoughts as to how his stay was and what it would have taken for it to truly be excellent. Then, and this is what gives Sam and Give More their edge as a media company, Sam turned the question on his company and himself! Sam a self described Grump at times, has a strong need and desire to run a world class organization. I can tell you that it’s this type of self realization and actualization that have helped and will continue to help his organization succeed.
Now for the rest of us, what are you doing to provide excellence in the work place for all of your stakeholders. If you’d like some help creating a world class organization, contact Thom Torode and schedule an introductory excellence review.
Thom Torode
Managing Director – Inspirance, LLC
Sunrise Business Advisors
862-219-6890