Today I want to talk about something that’s so frustrating to me. It’s so pervasive in so many entrepreneurial businesses and it holds them back. It keeps them from growing. It causes them to waste enormous amounts of needless money and it is a downer for their staff as well. Matter of fact, it frustrates me so much, it caused me to give up my job as a president of a nearly billion dollar valued company, that I co-founded, in order to be able to help people like Steve. You might say, “Scott, what is this thing?” This thing is constantly swinging for the fences. Trying to hit the home run. Trying to grab the brass ring in one easy step. Always trying to do the big things to take your business to the next level. And the bottom line is this is actually a recipe for failure and disaster.

Now, the key is that entrepreneurs just don’t want to get into the weeds, if you will, of focusing on the things that are important, the fundamentals. Things like tracking your KPIs and getting a team together to try to optimize the performance and conversions throughout your sales and marketing process. The things that I have found in working with thousands of companies really separates the winners from the losers. It actually separates the ultra winners from the winners as well. And it’s really, really important stuff. What I find is that so many entrepreneurs get wrapped up in this: I’m creative, I’m innovative, I’m the visionary. And you’ve got to make sure you get this stuff nailed down because I think they look at it as this is the boring stuff. But look, it’s the boring way to riches.

Let’s take Steve Cela, perhaps the most passionate entrepreneur I’ve ever met in my life. Steve founded a company called Apnix and their sleep diagnostic center in Houston, Texas, independently owned. When I met Steve, I was speaking at a Tony Robbins‘ business mastery event. I was onstage and was doing a workshop on profit optimization. I was showing the audience how you can focus on making a series of these 3- 5% improvements in multiple steps of your marketing sales process and predictably be able to show you how you can increase your profitability 25, 50% or more. So when I finished, I got off stage and this guy came running down the hall after me. It was Steve and he’s going, “you got to help me, you got to help me. Oh my God. I have this sleep lab and we do the technical stuff really, really well. We’re just not making money. We’ve helped like 10,000 people be able to identify their sleep apnea issues that affects all elements and quality of life, heart attack, and not sleeping well and work.” And so he really had a purpose to what he was doing. “But just can’t seem to get over the edge” he said. “I don’t know. I guess I’m lacking a system.” My ears perked up and I said, great. So he went on to tell me that it’s just tough to be able to focus in on the details of the business and I’m the visionary. And so we agreed to help him out. We dove in and we took a look at his business and began taking it apart and looking at how he’s generating leads from the doctors because that’s where he got his leads from. And once he got a referral from the doctor, what were the steps of the process in order to get a patient scheduled? And then to actually get them to show for the diagnostic, et cetera. We went through a series of steps and simply broke it down. We had a simple operation, a simple goal which was let’s see if we can find 3-5% improvements for each one of these steps.

Now, the first thing we did was identify for Steve if we can do this, here’s the impact on your profits, your revenue and your business wealth. You see, that was key for Steve to get over the hump, to finally allow himself to get excited about focusing in on these little things, the details, the fundamentals, and the systems to drive his business forward. And Steve did that.

It was tough for him to be able to do, but he’s now become an incredible CEO through this process, collectively making small tweaks to what he was already doing. Steve not only saw incredible outcomes, but he realized that it’s actually easier to be able to focus on improving what you’re already doing and making those tweaks and going after the low hanging fruit than it is to swing for the fences and try to do something big and magical.

So what were the outcomes? Within the first 90 days, Steve saw an increase of 63% in physician referrals. Think about that. Making some changes to what you’re already doing and seeing a 63% bump in 90 days! His revenue? It went up 140%. Steve had made the turn. Steve finally understood that swinging for the fences had not served him well, but he could achieve the same types of dynamic growth by sweating the little things, by focusing on systems, getting the KPIs put in place, and making improvements to those KPI elements in order to be able to actually collectively create the big win. In two years Steve’s business grew 500% and he pushed out nearly every independent competitor in his marketplace. That’s the power of focusing in on the little things. It’s the difference between building a good company and building a great company.

To your success, 
Scott

Author: Scott Hallman