10 Things Learned While Growing a Business pt 1
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Who is Mike Crow?
Mike Crow is a Marketing and Business Expert who has built and managed multiple 7-figure businesses, including two 7-figure inspection firms.
For the past 15 years, he's coached thousands of other inspection business owners and has personally helped 100+ companies grow to $1,000,000+ in annual revenue. He has also helped multiple single-inspector operations earn 6-figure annual revenues (some surpassing $300,000).
Mike can teach any entrepreneur how to systematize and market their business to achieve their personal and professional goals.
Transcript
One of the things that I wrote down this morning, as I was thinking and
Speaker:working my way through things, as I wrote down Crow principles, Crow
Speaker:principles, what are the principles I want my kids to know about me.
Speaker:What are the principles?
Speaker:I want my customers, my coaching members, my acquaintances.
Speaker:I, you know, if they know me, they'll go, well, Mike Crow would say, okay.
Speaker:And then this morning John stepped up and he wrote this great thing.
Speaker:I just want you to see this.
Speaker:So it the top 10 things I've learned about building a coaching business.
Speaker:Notice the coaching is underlined there.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Because what I want you to be able to understand is I want you to be able
Speaker:to understand that you can replace the word coaching here with anything.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So what did, what have I learned about building a speaking business?
Speaker:What have I learned about building an inspection business?
Speaker:If I were still doing three days of secrets revealed, this would be one of big
Speaker:secrets that I would reveal in February.
Speaker:I'm going to go through this and John, I want you to be able to
Speaker:give some input, so feel free to unmute and give some input here.
Speaker:Do you have the list in front of you?
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:So John unmute, I want you to read through this, you and I together,
Speaker:and let's expand on it a little bit.
Speaker:And guys, as we run right through these, I want you to understand that
Speaker:these are all principles as well.
Speaker:And do people in your business, people surrounded by you people that work with
Speaker:you, do they know what your principal is?
Speaker:So I'm going to give it to you in an inspection world context.
Speaker:So when I trained inspectors, I would always say, when you're doing
Speaker:this, the first thing you do is this.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And it was kind of shocking because sometimes people now take
Speaker:that first thing for granted and they forget to even mention it.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So when you're inspecting a swimming pool, the first thing you do is blank.
Speaker:And I expect every inspector to get that right.
Speaker:I expect every inspector to get that right.
Speaker:We shut off the swimming pool.
Speaker:Bingo done.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And if they don't do that, the rest of inspecting the pool becomes difficult.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:But by doing that one thing, everything gets easier.
Speaker:When you're going to go do an inspection the most important thing
Speaker:is to arrive blank minutes early.
Speaker:I expect Everybody to be able to fill in that blank.
Speaker:And here are the four things you get done.
Speaker:Five, if you want to add in, you know, a knock at the door go on, say hi to
Speaker:people, but you know, here are the four things you're going to get done.
Speaker:And I want to make sure that every inspector knows that.
Speaker:So think about this as you're training inspectors, as you're training
Speaker:speakers, as you're training coaches, as you're training client coordinators,
Speaker:as you're training your marketing person, did they understand your
Speaker:core set of principles that you have.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And by the way, it's kind of funny. I started doing this at
Speaker:Okay. And I created a set of
Speaker:And so they're kind of trick questions.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:If an alien abducted you.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And they're pretending to be you a doppelganger.
Speaker:If I asked them this question, what would the answer.
Speaker:So here's one Jenn you'll love.
Speaker:Okay. And Marlene, you probably know
Speaker:If we go to church, Mike always parks where Hmm.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:See, Jenn, what's the answer by the light pole Crow pole, if the Crow pole.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I mean, we gave it a name.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:And part of the reason is I told my kids, when you come to church, if
Speaker:you're driving yourself, you could look right there and around that
Speaker:area and you can say, oh, dad's here.
Speaker:They'll know I'm there because they know that's where I park.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And so the Crow pole, we've got it labeled and I have like a hundred
Speaker:of those things in the family.
Speaker:And I will tell you, one of the things that I'm working on is pushing the
Speaker:whole family agenda even further.
Speaker:So, John, are you ready?
Speaker:The top 10 things you learned about building, and I'm going to take out
Speaker:the word, but building a business.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So by the way, Ricky, I want you to know.
Speaker:This is a great PowerPoint as it'd be a great office presentation.
Speaker:This would just be a great marketing event, and I think it could
Speaker:even be dribbled out on Tik TOK.
Speaker:It could be dribbled out on Facebook.
Speaker:It could be dribbled out so many others.
Speaker:And then I'm going to ask, after John goes through these guys, I'm going
Speaker:to ask you what's one principle you have, or one thing you have that.
Speaker:or the way you do your business.
Speaker:So, give you a little bit of time to think about that.
Speaker:So John you're up.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Number one, you will always have more opportunity than time.
Speaker:Uh, You can't do everything, but you don't have to do everything to be successful.
Speaker:You don't have to do you do everything yourself either.
Speaker:Okay, perfect.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Number two, until you figure out what gains traction, you have to be agile and
Speaker:willing to shift strategies and direction.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So number two, think about this guys.
Speaker:One of the things that I taught everybody when I created MIC was that
Speaker:they were building their business wrong.
Speaker:Ricky, as a coach, what's the first person you see people normally try
Speaker:to hire and it's the wrong person.
Speaker:Who do you normally see them trying to hire first an Inspector.
Speaker:an inspector.
Speaker:It's the worst person to hire.
Speaker:It's the worst person to hire because now they got another mouth to feed and
Speaker:they don't have a good way to do that.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So, when you figure it out, that marketing is the first person you
Speaker:need to hire and put that in place.
Speaker:So now the phone's ringing consistently and you can feed
Speaker:everybody, everything gets easier.
Speaker:And so in my world, Okay.
Speaker:One of my Crow principles and I loved it because Barbara Cochran on shark tank,
Speaker:she said almost exactly the same thing.
Speaker:She says slightly different version of it. But she said almost the exact same thing.
Speaker:She said, every time I could get more money, I would go
Speaker:hire another salesperson.
Speaker:But what she really was saying, another person that would go market
Speaker:for themselves and create money.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And so I love that.
Speaker:So in our world, guys, what gives us more traction and what we know that most
Speaker:people don't know is marketing gives you more traction than anything else
Speaker:that you've got going for you out there.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Back to you, John.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:And number three, it's about building the momentum.
Speaker:And I think of this, like maybe old bugs bunny cartoons or
Speaker:something where someone's standing at top of the snowy mountain.
Speaker:Roll a snowball down mountain.
Speaker:And by the time it gets to the bottom it's grown into, an unstoppable icy Boulder.
Speaker:So that's what we're all doing.
Speaker:We're adding piece by piece by piece until eventually
Speaker:we are an unstoppable force.
Speaker:And I love this and I used to have this great poster and I've searched for it.
Speaker:And I haven't found another version of it, but in my original business
Speaker:that I sold, I had this great poster that when I walked in the front door
Speaker:of the business, it was there and it said momentum across the bottom of it.
Speaker:There was this wave that was crashing onto the beach.
Speaker:Go ahead.
Speaker:Try to stand and stop a wave from the ocean crashing onto the beach.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I mean, you could do it with a lot of work.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:But stopping that kind of momentum is almost impossible.
Speaker:And I want you to know one of the greatest things I realized at some point was me
Speaker:and my dad actually looked at each other at some point said, you know, we would
Speaker:have to like really work at killing this business because it has so much momentum.
Speaker:And don't ever forget the power of momentum.
Speaker:The power of momentum will allow you to be able to do things that
Speaker:most people never think about.
Speaker:So for instance, you guys probably know this, but maybe you don't.
Speaker:This week's my birthday. And so Thursday the 17th, I am flying to
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And we are spending a week at Disney, so I'm leaving on Thursday
Speaker:and we come back on Wednesday.
Speaker:Cause that's all the time.
Speaker:He could scratch off.
Speaker:Otherwise we'd probably be staying at 10 days or something.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:But the momentum that both Jonathan has made with texinspec, and then I
Speaker:have made allows us to be able to walk away for a week and not even blink.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Maybe I'll take some phone calls.
Speaker:Maybe I'll make some phone calls.
Speaker:Will I check the numbers?
Speaker:Probably every morning.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:But I don't have.
Speaker:Okay, because there's so much momentum that we have put into the business.
Speaker:Shawna, this is exactly where you and Stan are.
Speaker:You guys have so much momentum, it allows you to be able to do so much
Speaker:extra stuff and work towards there.
Speaker:All right, John.
Speaker:Number four, prioritized by tasks or projects that are easiest to
Speaker:execute that will also have the most impact and finish them to completion.
Speaker:One finished stackable was way easier to leverage and more effective to
Speaker:leverage than a dozen incomplete system.
Speaker:Yep. And don't get me wrong guys.
Speaker:I have four or five, six things working all at the same time, but
Speaker:every now and then I go, let's finish this one because this one will
Speaker:mean so much to us down the road.
Speaker:But I will tell you most people, the most important people, the
Speaker:most successful people I know still write lists of what they're getting.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:They prioritize what they're getting done. And so I have in this book here,
Speaker:little priority list of, oh, what am I going to get done today?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Do I get it all done every day?
Speaker:Hardly ever.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:But I do get some of it done every single day.
Speaker:And I will tell you one of the things I tell to Jenn all the time
Speaker:is that, you know, each day we look back at the end of the day.
Speaker:What's one thing we got done today that moves us closer to our goal.
Speaker:back to you, John.
Speaker:Alright.
Speaker:Number five.
Speaker:The next big thing that you're doing or working on that you
Speaker:think will make or break, you will never actually make or break you.
Speaker:So the idea of this one is yeah, I think of it like success uh, is
Speaker:death by a thousand cuts or it's like a hundred small streams that
Speaker:flow together to make a mighty river.
Speaker:I think the analogy I used this morning is, you know, I wonder how often, like
Speaker:say Tom cruise gets asked the question, what's the one thing you did to become
Speaker:Tom cruise when really it's any successful person you talk to it's hundreds of things
Speaker:that they've done to become successful.
Speaker:This was a pet peeve of one of the coaches that I worked with and he said,
Speaker:this is the number one question I hate.
Speaker:What's the number one thing I need to do to be successful.
Speaker:And he's going, are you out of your mind?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:There is not one thing that makes you successful.
Speaker:Here's the thing.
Speaker:It's the next big thing you think you're doing that will
Speaker:either make or break you doesn't.
Speaker:It won't okay.
Speaker:However every time we train a new inspector.
Speaker:Every time we create a new macro key, every time we change the process of
Speaker:doing the inspection every time we, figure out how we're going to print
Speaker:the report or email it or deliver it.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:All of those add up to this, these small little trinklets of water , to rivers,
Speaker:and then eventually into the ocean.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And again, I'm back to my ocean and that wave hitting the shore.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:The momentum of having a thousand things that you've done put
Speaker:together, changes everything.
Speaker:And here's the thing is it would be very difficult.
Speaker:It could be done, but it would be very difficult for somebody to take away half
Speaker:or 500 of those little trinkets of water.
Speaker:And even if they did, I still have 500.
Speaker:Okay.
