FIND MONEY WITHIN YOUR BUSINESS

FIND MONEY WITHIN YOUR BUSINESS

Your company has more money than you realize. You just don’t know where to find it. Yet.

After delivering a keynote on Profit First, I was invited to a dinner with board members of Vistage, an organization for business owners, presidents, and executives; they call themselves the World’s Leading Chief Executive Organization. It was a unique situation because instead of standing in front of a few hundred people, speaking for sixty minutes, and then exiting stage left, now I was sitting at a round table for a few hours to address an onslaught of questions about Profit First.

One executive, the only consultant at the table, stated why he believed Profit First wouldn’t work. To protect his name, I’ll call him Mr. Wrong. He made all of the classic nonsensical arguments. “If you don’t have profit already, you can’t suddenly start taking it,” Mr. Wrong scolded, looking around the table for approval. “Profit has to be the bottom line,” he argued. “Start-ups can’t hold back on spending if they want to grow.” Blah. Blah. Blah. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. That last myth really annoys me because it is that kind of thinking that prevents business owners not only from benefiting from their hard work and ingenuity, but it also stunts growth.

Then another gentleman—I’ll call him Mr. Innovator—had a lightbulb moment and without thinking, blurted out, “Split the truck. Split the truck. Split the truck.” Everyone looked at him as if he were a bit off, and then he explained.

He said, “I grew a fifty-million-dollar company by doing my own version of Profit First.”

Mr. Innovator explained that his company delivered oil to two primary outlets: businesses that stored hundreds of gallons at a time, like Jiffy Lube, and retail stores that put quart containers on the shelves, like Walmart. They delivered the oil using two types of trucks: a tanker to deliver to the Jiffy Lubes of the world and a shelf truck to deliver to Walmart. Nearly every aspect of their business was duplicated. Two trucks, two drivers, two customer service teams—two of everything.

“The costs were too high. We were barely surviving,” he said.

Mr. Innovator knew he had to cut costs in order to achieve his profitability goals. So he challenged himself to cut his costs by at least one third while still servicing the same number of customers. He kept asking himself that bigger, better question: How can we keep doing what we’re doing for one third of the cost?

Then one day it hit him. “What if we took a box truck and divided it in half?” he recounted. “One side for a tank and the other side for shelves.” Now his company could deliver oil to both the Jiffy Lubes and the Walmarts of the world using one type of truck, operated by one driver. Mr. Innovator put the idea in motion and ended up surpassing his goal, cutting expenses nearly in half. This simple shift enabled him to grow his struggling business to a $50 million company with a sweet bottom line.

Mr. Wrong never uttered another peep. And Mr. Innovator picked up the check for the entire table with a smile.

Money is everywhere.* Money can always be found through streamlining and innovation, and that begins with asking the big questions. The impossible questions. The questions no one else would ever dare to ask. No one else but you.

IT’S SMARTER TO DIG A WELL THAN MAKE IT RAIN

I have yet to meet an entrepreneur who hasn’t wanted to hire a rainmaker, that magical salesperson who, like the companies that say they can give you access to your great-grandmother Sally’s unclaimed fortune, will save the day by bringing in big sale after big sale. Never mind the fact that we, the owners and leaders who love our companies and what we do, are the ultimate rainmakers; it is this top line approach to solving a cash flow crisis that holds companies back. Cranking up the sales team in order to make it rain is not going to help your company if you don’t have efficiencies in place, because, ultimately, whatever new client revenue you generate will have corresponding costs. And these are likely to go unchecked.

If you want to increase profitability (and you’d better friggin’ want to do that), you must first build efficiencies. Focusing solely on increasing sales is like setting up a bunch of rain barrels next to your house and doing some frantic rain dance in a loincloth while ignoring a massive water source beneath your feet.

Take Idaho, for example. Idahoans enjoy an average of seventeen inches of rainfall each year, twenty inches under the national average. Hence, 95 percent of the state’s water supply comes from underground. The 135-mile-long Big Lost River collects water from the Rocky Mountains as it winds through Idaho and then just disappears as it goes subterranean. The water from the Big Lost River, the Snake River, and other underground water sources collects in the Snake River Aquifer, which measures 400 miles wide. That is enough water to serve the majority of Idaho’s agricultural needs. So that Idaho spud you’re munching on is thanks to an underground water supply—not some rain dance Idahoans learned on the Internet (albeit Idahoans know how to get their funk on).

Why should you care about Idaho and its underground lakes? Because 95 percent of your company’s profitability is contingent on what goes on beneath the surface (after the sales), not what happens in the sky (the sales themselves). And it is what’s going on “underground” that will help you “find” gobs of money.

THE PROFIT SQUEEZE

A few years ago I was asked to keynote the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards in Washington, D.C., where leading collegiate entrepreneurs from all over the world gather and are recognized for their incredible impact. At breakfast on the morning of the event, I ended up sitting next to Greg Crabtree. Greg is the author of Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits! Greg caught my attention immediately, talking with another gentleman at our table about college football. I inserted myself into their discussion (“Go Hokies!”), and soon enough the conversation drifted to entrepreneurs and profitability. I remember thinking: “Hold on—we are talking about college football and profitability. There is a God!”

After Greg recounted some information he shares in his book about how to maximize profitability, I asked, “Is there such a thing as too much profit? Is there a ceiling?”

“You always want to expand profit,” Greg replied. “In fact, you must, because there are outside forces that will continually take your profitability away—your competition. As you find ways to increase profitability, or even if you don’t, your competition is doing the same. Everyone is trying to become more profitable. And as businesses become more profitable, the competitive pressure sets in and prices drop to attract more customers.

“When you figure out a big leap in profitability, the competition will sniff it out, and it is just a matter of time before they do the same thing. Then someone drops prices to get more clients, and everyone else, including you, has to do the same to stay in business. This is how profits get squeezed.”

We’ve seen the phenomena Greg outlined over and over. Consider flat-panel televisions, for example. They became commercially popular in the early 2000s but were still a luxury item until around 2005, when the cost of big-screen TVs started dropping 25 percent each year. By the end of the decade, vendors had dropped the prices so significantly that it seemed retailers were practically giving them away. Then, because manufacturing televisions got easier and easier, profits jumped, but only for a short time. It wasn’t long before everyone started dropping prices again to capture demand, to the point where it now seems as though a retailer needs to pay you to take a small or last year’s flat-panel model. James Li, the chief executive of Syntax Groups Corporation, maker of the Olevia brand of flat-panel televisions, said of his competitors, “If they go to $3,000, I will go to $2,999.”

Profit is a slippery animal. When profit margins are big, usually in excess of 20 percent, people sniff out and almost immediately start to duplicate what you’re doing, and they look for ways to do it better, faster, and above all, cheaper than your company. I’m not, in any way, saying that you should stop investing in efficiency and thereby (temporarily) increase profit. I’m saying that even if you think you’re good with profit, you’re not. The competition will squeeze you eventually, and soon, so keep finding ways to do what you do better, faster, and cheaper. The nice thing is that as you keep your profit allocation percentage consistent, you will automatically be forced to find ways to make it happen. For example, when competition sets in and prices drop, your profit allocation will feel the squeeze, which means it’s time to innovate again.

TWO TIMES THE RESULTS WITH HALF THE EFFORT

By now you’ve figured out that focusing solely on top line thinking (sales, sales, sales!) does not lead to profitability. In fact, more sales, without efficiency, lead to further inefficiency. In other words, more sales make you less profitable. It’s a vicious cycle. So you may need to slow down or halt your selling while you look for new efficiencies—before you can focus on sales, you must first nail Efficiency 101. Remember the toothpaste analogy? Think of this process as like switching your regular-size tube of toothpaste for one of those travel-size tubes. How are you going to make it last? Remember, Parkinson’s Law is your ally. A full tube of toothpaste can last four weeks, and so can a tube that is nearly empty. It just requires the balance of frugality (using conservatively) and innovation (twisting, turning, and squeezing your ideas) to pull off what no else even considered before.

Efficiency increases your profit margins, or the amount of money you earn as profit on each product or service you offer. Increased profit margins will boost your company’s profits without the need for increased sales. And then, when you kick the selling machine back into gear (which we will discuss later), profits will skyrocket. So the method is simple: achieve greater efficiency first, then sell more, then improve efficiencies even more and then sell even more. Over time, speed up the back and forth between efficiency and selling until the two happen simultaneously.

Making your company more efficient is about more than just nixing extra coffee breaks and redlining your expenses. To tap into the river of profit flowing just under the surface of your company, you need to look at efficiency in every aspect of your business. Serving the same types of (great) clients with the same or very similar problems and perfecting your solutions so you can use them consistently to fix their problems are two routes of efficiencies. You want to duplicate your best clients, those who have a consistent need; and in turn, you want to reduce the variety of things you do for the fewest that will best serve your best clients’ needs. Think McDonald’s. That company is a moneymaking machine because they feed hungry people—who don’t care, at least in the moment, about their health as much as their hunger—with a few products: fries, hamburgers, and breaded chicken. The fewest things you can do repetitively to serve a consistent core customer need—this spells efficiency.

I want you to set a massive goal for yourself. Look at every aspect of your business and determine how to get two times the results with half the effort. That’s a biggie, so I will say it again:

How do you get two times the results with half the effort?

Effort is financial cost and time cost (your time, your people’s time, your software’s time, your machine’s time). For example, if you own a snowplowing company and currently plow one parking lot per hour, I would ask you to figure out how to plow two parking lots (two times the results) in thirty minutes (half the time).

Your first thought might be, “Easy for you to say! That’s impossible, Mike! You don’t know my business! You’re nuts!” I’m not offended by criticism, not even from those who spouted off without ever cracking open the book, because I know most naysayers are just scared. Maybe you’re scared, too. Maybe you’ve made personal sacrifices for your business, sacrifices you may no longer be able to justify, because you will have time for your family and friends. Maybe you’re afraid that doing more in less time will make your role less significant. Maybe you’re worried that your customers may not want to pay you as much if it appears you can do more with less.

Whatever the reason, if you believe that it’s impossible to increase efficiency in this way, you are trapped in “let the other guy figure it out” mode. The thing is, my friend the other guy will figure it out. It’s only a matter of time.

If instead you say, “Hmm. . . let me think about that. Let me find a way,” you will set your company on the path to skyrocketing profitability. Why? Because innovation occurs in small steps, big leaps, and everywhere in between. To double the results with half the effort is a big goal that forces big thinking, and it brings about small and big progress—all of which goes to the bottom line.

Doing more with fewer resources has had a significant impact on my businesses. I am very active in Hedgehog Leatherworks, and employing Profit First triggered degrees of innovation that I strongly suspect no one else in the leather industry has ever achieved. Removing our ability to buy the traditional expensive equipment used in the leather industry forced us to find new cheaper ways to get the same (and in many cases, better) results. It’s amazing what you can pull off when you’re scrounging Home Depot, Hobby Lobby, and random junkyards to make what you need. (A little duct tape goes a long way, pal.) We invented new systems that achieved better results than industry standards at 1/100th the cost. Because we took Profit First, we made hundreds of innovations—tweaks, hacks, brand-new systems and everything in between—all because we had to. My editor begged for details about what we discovered, but because our process is proprietary, I had to leave him hanging. Sorry, Kaushik—don’t want you leaving the book industry to start a competing leather business!

Most entrepreneurs focus only on tiny improvements—“How do I do this a couple of minutes faster?” Small questions yield only small answers. You want both the incremental improvements and the landslide discoveries, and you’ll find both of those with big questions.

Snowplowing a parking lot five minutes faster is not going to make much of an impact on your bottom line. Neither will skipping your coffee break or just “holding it” when you need to go to the bathroom.

But the more you focus on substantially improving efficiency, such as a snowplow that can move snow twice as fast, the closer you’ll get to achieving double the results with half the effort. And you’ll discover all the small steps that collectively get you closer to the big win. This gain in efficiency is amplified the more you sell. That is the power of percentages. Because you now plow every parking lot more efficiently, every new account is an opportunity for increased profit.

Remember Mr. Innovator? He asked, “How can I cut costs by one third and still service the same amount of customers?” Split the truck. Split the truck. Split the truck.

Here’s another truck story: Did you know that United Parcel Service (UPS) trucks almost always take right turns? In 2006, UPS dared to ask the efficiency question about fuel costs. They discovered that the less time UPS drivers spent in left turn lanes, the less fuel they burned waiting at lights and to cross traffic, and the less idle time there was for each driver. UPS is now experiencing a savings of $6 million a year from the change.

The “brown truck” company didn’t stop with their first efficiency discovery. Next time you see a driver delivering a package, look at him and try to spot his keys. Let me give you a hint: They are not in his pocket (that’s a banana). UPS drivers found that fumbling for their keys in their pockets when they got back into the truck cost them five to ten seconds (or more) every time. UPS figured out that it is more efficient to keep their keys hanging from their pinky fingers. Now, a UPS driver makes a quick flip of his wrist and the keys are in his hand. Multiply that saved five to ten seconds by fifty stops a day and five gazillion drivers and you have a very huge savings indeed.

And they didn’t stop there either. UPS also found that they could save millions by washing their trucks once every two days rather than every day. Over time, this gave them huge savings in time, energy, and water—and the trucks looked just as shiny.

Look, it may seem impossible when you first hear my challenge, but if you’ve never seriously asked yourself, “How can I get two times the results with half the effort?” how do you know that you can’t? You might be missing your own no-left-turn, pinky-flip, don’t-wash-yourself efficiency miracle and not even realize it.

CHIP AWAY AT EXPENSES

Wesley Rocha didn’t take a raise in ten years. The founder of LinkUSystems, a company that provides marketing services, tools, and Web site design for the real estate industry and small businesses, Wesley watched his company grow and his own income remain stagnant. “I didn’t understand why it seemed like even though we would make more money, we never had any left over. I felt stressed about finances all the time.”

Wesley finished reading Profit First in a weekend, and realized quickly that his expenses were way out of control. “I couldn’t immediately implement [cutting costs] without grossly damaging projects, or the business. I literally needed all of my employees and 90 percent of everything we had been paying for because were stuck and committed to it,” Wesley said. “I was afraid of what could break or go wrong if I implemented Profit First too quickly. So I had to start thinking about how I could eliminate expenses carefully.”

Little by little, Wesley started chipping away at his expenses. “Over the past year, unfortunately, I have had to release six employees, but have been able to replace their efforts by eliminating unprofitable products and services, re-creating and optimizing processes and streamlining other portions of the business,” Wesley explained. “Now, I am able to determine what expense is allowed [for a project] before we take it on. Otherwise, we have to figure out another solution.”

Figure out another solution. Music to my ears. Not, “We have to find more money to cover it.” Nope. Time to crack the knuckles and find another way out of the corn maze, because the airlift ain’t comin’.

In the first year of implementing Profit First, Wesley was able to double his profits, which allowed him to increase his annual income by approximately 46 percent, between salary and disbursements. “I have been able to set aside money for taxes and use profits to help toward a down payment to buy a house, which before would have been impossible.”

There’s that word again: impossible. At first, Wesley thought he couldn’t possibly cut expenses and continue to serve his clients. And yet, after a year, he was able to do just that, which allowed him to do this other “impossible” thing, something he hadn’t been able to do in more than ten years of kicking ass in business: save for a down payment on a house. In every year past, despite growth, he never had any money left over. And yet by cutting expenses and streamlining his systems, he found money in his business.

You don’t have to slash and burn the moment you put down this book. You can take it slow. Just get started.

FIRE BAD CLIENTS

If you’ve read The Pumpkin Plan, you know that while the book is outwardly marketed as a system to help business leaders grow their companies into industry giants, it’s secretly a book about efficiency. Letting go of clients who suck us dry and eat up our profit margins is a way of making space for clients we can serve exceptionally well by doing what we do best and with fewer resources. It is all about improving not only the top line but the bottom line, too.

A study facilitated by the Chicago-based growth-consulting firm Strategex analyzed the revenue, cost, and profit breakdown for a thousand companies. What they found was nothing short of a “duh” moment, as in the “Duh, I already knew this, but I still haven’t done anything about it in my own business because I’m a glutton for punishment” type of duh.

Strategex sorted the clients for each company into four sections, in descending order based on revenue. For example, if a company had a hundred clients, the twenty-five clients who generated the most revenue were put in the top quartile, the next twenty-five highest revenue-generating clients in the second quartile, and so on. Strategex found that the top quartile generated 89 percent of the total revenue, while the lowest quartile only accounted for a meager 1 percent of total revenue.

It gets worse. The study found that each group of clients required pretty much the same amount of effort (cost and time). This means that it took the same amount of effort to serve a big-revenue client as it did a client who barely affected revenue at all.

Then came the awkward “gulp” moment. Strategex’s profit analysis showed that the top quartile generated 150 percent of a company’s profit. The two middle quartiles were effectively break-even, and the bottom quartile, the one that generated 1 percent of the total revenue, resulted in a profit loss of 50 percent! In the end, the profits generated from the top clients are used, in part, to pay for the losses accrued in serving the bottom clients.

I’m sure you know this scenario all too well. Those clients who barely pay you peanuts, yet constantly complain about how much you charge and how you do nothing right; the clients who demand you rework everything you’ve done for the third time and then never pay you for your work, or never pay you on time—those clients are costing you money. Get rid of them. Fast!

Dumping any client who makes you money (even if it is the worst client in the world) may seem counterintuitive at first. But never forget what I said earlier: All revenue is not the same. If you remove your worst unprofitable clients and the now-unnecessary costs associated with them, you will see a jump in profitability and a reduction in stress, often within a few weeks. Equally important, you will have more time to pursue and clone your best clients. I’ve lost count of how many readers have shared stories of how both their top line and bottom line improved after they implemented this and other growth strategies I revealed in The Pumpkin Plan. I know that sounds like bragging, but it’s not. The system isn’t some miracle I came up with; it is just simple math.

I know how scary it feels to dump any client when you are scrambling to cover this week’s payroll, especially if you fought hard to get that client in the first place. But remember, profit is about the percentages, not a single number. So take it easy on yourself. Start by dumping one rotten little pumpkin in your patch, the one you occasionally fantasize about leaving on a deserted island or shipping off to Mars. The emotional distraction that client caused you and your staff will disappear immediately. The profits you earned from other clients and were spending to keep this bad client on board will now stay in your pocket. And since his special requirements no longer need to be serviced, you have time and headspace to find another, better client—an ideal client, a clone of your very best clients.

CLONE YOUR BEST CLIENTS

Just for a moment, I want you to think of your favorite client: the call you will always take, the person or company you say yes to without hesitation. This is the client who pays you what you’re worth, on time, without question. This is the client who trusts you, respects you, and follows instructions. This is the client you love, and who loves you. Now imagine that this client had five identical twin companies that all wanted to work with you. Wouldn’t that boost your business? Wouldn’t it be easy to serve those clients? Wouldn’t it help you keep your bottom line healthy? Now imagine ten clones, or a hundred clones.

For almost any B2B business in the world, landing a hundred clones of its best client would put it at the front of the pack. It would dominate. The same is true for B2C businesses. If just a mere 10 percent of their clients behaved like their number one client, those businesses would rule, too.

Having clients with similar needs and very similar behaviors offers a few magical profit-making benefits:

1.              You will become superefficient, because you now serve very few but consistent needs, rather than an excessive array of varying needs.

2.              You will love working with your clones, which means you will naturally and automatically provide better service. We cater to the people we care about.

3.              Marketing will become automatic. Birds of a feather flock together (for real) and that means your best clients hang out with other business leaders who have the “best client” qualities you’re looking for. Your best clients are awesome, remember? You love them and they love you, and that means they will talk you up every chance they get.

Clones of your best clients are the very definition of efficiency, which is why they are like gold. Find them. Nurture them. And then find out where even more best-client clones hang out and cultivate them, too.

THE PARETO OVERLAP

You may be familiar with the Pareto Principle, commonly known as the 80/20 rule. For the history buffs: Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto was an Italian economist who studied the distribution of wealth in Italy in the late 1800s. He discovered that 20 percent of the Italian population owned 80 percent of the land. Then he looked at his garden and observed that 20 percent of the peapods contained 80 percent of the peas. Then he looked down at his feet and exclaimed, “OMG, I own five pairs of clogs, yet I wear these superfly boots 80 percent of the time!”

Pareto’s Principle also applies to your clients, in that 20 percent of them yield 80 percent of your revenue. It goes further—80 percent of your profit is derived from 20 percent of the products and/or services you offer.

The key to this advanced strategy is to connect the two—your clients and your offering. Some of your top clients buy most of your profitable offerings; some of your top clients go for the offering with the lowest profit margin. Likewise, some of your weakest clients consistently purchase your profitable stuff and some are just weak all the way around, buying the same no-profit stuff over and over again.

Once you see the overlap, the decisions become very easy. Get rid of the “bad” clients who only want your least profitable products and services. You are losing money here, catering to clients or customers who are not a good fit for your company.

Find a new way to manage the weak clients who do buy your most profitable offerings. Often, “bad” clients can become better clients if you meet with them to set new expectations and methods of communication. Meet with your top clients who don’t buy profitable offerings, too. Find out how you can deliver profitable stuff to them.

When you focus on Profit First, even when choosing the clients and customers you are willing to work with, you increase your profit dramatically. Not only do you save money by cutting expenses related to serving weak clients, who don’t buy profitable offerings; you also free up your time, energy and creativity to focus on the clients you love, who bring in the profit. Applied to your client base, the Pareto Principle is an advanced Profit First technique that does double duty—you save money and gain profit. Gotta love that!

SELL SMART

I’ve already mentioned Ernie, my lawn guy, briefly, but I want you to know a little more about his story. It speaks to how fast things can go down the “upselling” rabbit hole. In the fall I pay my lawn service to clean up all of the leaves in our yard. A few years ago, Ernie, the owner of the business, knocked on my door. He said, “I noticed that there are leaves in the gutters.” He offered to remove them, for a fee. And I, my friends, was what they called an “easy upsell.”

Ernie had just expanded his service offering. Easy money! To complete the job, Ernie bought some ladders for his truck. While Ernie was up on the roof, though, he realized he needed a tool to snake out the downspouts. He also spotted more opportunities—damaged shingles, a crack in the chimney, and a soft spot on the roof, a sign of rotting wood. Again he asked if I wanted them fixed; I said yes, and he ran out and picked up some roofing tools, a downspout snake tool, band saws, cement, and brick supplies, and he hired temporary labor. Ernie came back near the end of the day and pushed through to get it finished. He even bought floodlights to keep the work area lit as dusk approached.

At the end of the day, I paid $1,500 for all the work. Not bad for Ernie, considering he gets paid “only” $200 to clean the lawn. But the $1,500 he earned cost Ernie an investment of about $2,000 for tools and supplies that day, plus a lot of driving back and forth and the cost of hiring a laborer.

Ernie lost money on me, but he grew his sales by a lot. Tomorrow he intends to use his new equipment and tools to take care of other clients and will, in theory, earn his money back and then some. The problem is, that rarely happens. As the bills mount, the pressure grows to sell more and more; and you end up working on projects in which you have limited experience and sometimes little interest.

As the variety of things you do increases, you need to buy more tools and equipment and hire more specialized labor. And none of this gets used to its maximum potential because you do many different things, not one thing. Your stuff sits there unused. While you rake lawns, your ladders just lie there. As you fix roofs, the leaf blowers just sit in your truck.

You get stuck in the Survival Trap and end up not doing a very good job at any one thing. For example, when Ernie wrapped up for the day, he said, “I’ll be back early tomorrow to clean the lawn again.”

Why? Because he threw the leaves from the gutters onto the lawn he had just cleaned, as well as shingles and other things. His additional work required that he actually redo his original work, while all that new gear he bought just sat on his truck, not being used. What’s efficient about that? Nada.

Across the street, my neighbors Bill and Liza hire a different guy, Shawn, to clean up their leaves in the fall. He also charges $200. On the same day Ernie worked on my house and earned $1,500, Shawn serviced four more properties and also knocked on the doors at two other properties that, by the look of their lawns, needed his help. I suspect that if Ernie and Shawn had had a beer together that night, Ernie would have boasted about doing one and a half times the sales Shawn pulled in, but Shawn would have ended up paying for the drinks. Shawn has achieved efficiency, and recognizes it as the secret sauce of profitability—getting more of the same things done with better and better results, using fewer and fewer resources.

Selling more is the most difficult way to increase profits, because in the best-case scenarios, the percentages stay the same; and in the worst-case more common scenarios, expenses generated to support sales increase faster, resulting in smaller percentages and a smaller profit margin.

Sales without first putting efficiency measures and systems in place is a dangerous game that only leads to bigger expenses and fewer ideal clients. Applying efficiency strategies to your top line—firing bad clients, cloning the good ones, refining your offering to get the most out of your resources and then selling smart—is a surefire way to increase profitability.

TAKE ACTION: LET GO OF DEAD WEIGHT

Step 1: Focusing on one aspect of your business (one that benefits your best customers), challenge yourself to figure out how to get two times the results for half the effort.

Step 2: Using the parameters outlined in this chapter, identify your weakest clients. Fire the weakest links. I’m not suggesting that you get into “Take This Job and Shove It” mode. Don’t burn any bridges. Just politely end the relationships. You’re not dating anymore, but you can still be friends.