Part II 

The Five "R" Process

• Refine
• Repeat
• Review
• Reel 'Em In
• Release

 REFINE 

Refine your business to its utmost efficiency.
Like building a house, you need to start with a good foundation. There are six major building blocks of a business foundation:

• Leadership
• Finance
• Production and Delivery
• Sales and Marketing
• People Management
• Organizational Management

Growing your business requires fully understanding, gaining adequate skills in, and implementing successful strategies for each of these business building blocks. (To find out the strength of your business building blocks, take our Business Assessment Challenge, http://www.sharpchip.com/BusinessAssessmentCh.html designed to identify areas that need your attention before you proceed to grow your business.)

 REPEAT 

Create Repeatable Systems.
Think franchise. A franchise may not be your dream, but building your business as though it were helps you develop successful systems that power it to achieve whatever your vision is. For instance, McDonald's is somehow able to not only produce a satisfied customer locally, but also worldwide. The reason? Their successful formula is repeatable. How do they make it repeatable? With systems.

Everything in a successful franchise's operations is defined by repeatable systems that organize people, supplies, equipment, tasks, and functions to work the same way, regardless of location or participants.

In the cleaning business, the personal nature of the service means that each customer wants something different, and each staff member works differently. This results in unsatisfied clients (for the same service that thrilled others), and too much job stress trying to keep everyone happy. The solution? Look at everything in your business as a component of a system, so that you can improve it.

I reviewed and re-created successful repeatable systems for how clients received information, how prices were bid, how the cleaning was performed, how the staff was trained, how the billing was done, and much more. The systems were detailed, right down to which direction to push the sponge, and what words to use when setting up a new customer.

 REVIEW 

Establish practices for regular review of your business.
In order to achieve my goals, I needed to have less hands-on contact with the day to day operations. This opened all kinds of possibilities of chances for my business getting away from me. So, I established criteria to regular review and monitor my business to identify problems.

For instance, I created "status reports" for which each employee was responsible for. For Cleaning Associates, their "status report" was a detailed time sheet that included all of the details everything I needed to know about the performed work, length of time spent, customers served, etc. For Managers, a Status Report requested quantities on vital management and sales details such as the amount and type of sales, schedule changes, new clients, terminated clients, marketing vehicles, employee feed-backs, customer complaints, and more. When something changed or went wrong in the business I knew about it immediately.

 REEL 'EM IN 

Implement a Tested Marketing Plan with a Consistent, Reproducible Return that Brings Customers In.
While it's okay to try different marketing vehicles and compare your return on investment, it takes lots of energy and resources. The goal is to identify a reproducible formula that produces a reasonable return on investment. Once you identify these methods, add the winning methods to your overall marketing plan, and put that on a self-revolving system.

 RELEASE 

Release Control of Your Business.
Get the first four steps down, and your business is ready for growth. Now, you need to release control a little at a time until you have achieved your goals.

In my situation, releasing control was a gradual process that began with giving some key employees minor management tasks (and responsibility that they appreciated). Then, I hired a part-time manager, slowly increased their hours, then ultimately hired a full-time manager. Next, I started taking Mondays off, then began working from home a few days per week. Soon, I was working from home all week, leaving all daily operations tasks to the manager. Releasing control of my business in stages instead of all at once was mostly about waiting to hire help as the business could afford it.

Even if everything is primed and ready, releasing control can be difficult for some people. Just remember: people will not take over tasks in your business that you are already doing or are likely to come back and re-do.

 SUMMARY 

Gain a new mind set and follow these five steps, and like me, you'll be able to turn your business into the company you dream of. Then, go enjoy your time off and thrill to the fact that your business is working FOR you instead of you working for your business.

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