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How Safe Is Your Income If You Get Injured and Can't Work?by Ron Roberts and Ranger Kidwell-Ross 
When your income is dependent on your availability, your income is never fully safe. Your wealth is threatened. Your happiness is threatened.The point of this article is to illustrate what a self-managing business looks like. Just like there is no such thing as job security for an employee, there is no such thing as income security for an owner/operator. A self-managing business is one in which your daily involvement is not needed. It's one where your marketing system creates good leads; one where your sales staff meets with prospects, qualifies their fit to your business, and closes deals at attractive prices; and one where your operations team gets the work installed per budget and schedule. It's a business that you can monitor from out-of-state (or in a hospital bed) via computer, fax machine, and telephone. It's a business that continues to spin off cash whether you are there or not. Now, that's a self-managed business. There is a famous Warren Buffett quote in which he describes the type of business investors should look for, "You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will." Warren was describing a business that is so strong, it doesn't need superior leadership to keep the profits flowing. That's the type of business that gives it's owners income protection. Now, there has been much ink spilled over how to create such a business, the most common advice being "install systems." Well, the easiest way to do that is to perfect them yourself then teach someone else how to do perform them. Here's the basic sequence for building your business:1st step: Perfect your lead generation process. 2nd step: Perfect your selling approach. 3rd step: Perfect your method for getting the work done. 4th step: Bring in foremen and teach them how to produce the work. 5th step: Bring in a salesman, teach him how to sell, and pay him for profitable sales. 6th step: Bring in an operations manager / estimator to run the work. 7th step: Put in place tracking systems to key an eye on EVERYTHING and EVERYONE. If all the other wonderful benefits of owning a self- managing business fail to inspire you to build one, income protection should be enough incentive for you to put forth the required effort. Until next time, best of luck with your business!
Ron Roberts, More information about Ron Roberts' and his company may be found on his website FilthyRichContractor.com. Ron may be reached via email sent to ron@filthyrichcontractor.com. If you have new information to provide on this topic, let us know and we can add it in as an addendum to this article. |
 © 2005 - 2012 World Sweeper and Ron Roberts
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