“Whoever owns the lead, owns the industry. Control the lead, control the listings.”  –Gary Keller

From Recent Mastermind

In Gary Keller’s recent mastermind, he reviewed EIGHT questions that are critical for every business owner to ask themself. 

EIGHT QUESTIONS – every business owner needs to ask these!

1. What business are you in? 

• Can you use “disrupt” in this description? If you can’t, then you may be in the wrong business.

2. Rate your business 1-10? 

• Think about what your worth/value is. When you get out of bed in the morning, your value is “x”. The value of the business has to generate “x”, otherwise it’s not worth it.

• Then take a net profit number. If this was your goal, now rate your business.

• Stop rating you business on whether you like it, rate it on your value!

3. What is your basic model?   

• We all have a model, but we need to plug into these models!

• Put pressure of the models. An investor would say, “I made a dollar. I have 50 cents to live on and 50 cents to invest.” A non-investor would say “I have $1 to live on.”

4. What is your value Proposition?

a. To buyer/seller? Use words; value, disrupt, enhance.

b. To your team? 

5. What’s your organizational chart look like?  

• Include both the current and the future org.chart

• The reflection of your business is a reflection of who you are and who you have become. Do you like it or what do you need to change?

• Your business grows to the extent you do.

6. What’s your someday comp plan for your employees? 

• Intrapreneur vs entrepreneur. Intrapreneur will do it within your systems and not take it out to their own. Never believe that an intrapreneur is less talented! They are often times more valuable! Every successful business are businesses with partners.

7. What is your 2020 1-3-5? What is your 2025 1-3-5?

• Look long term- don’t create the plan just for 2020. 2020 is how far you’ll get to the long term.  

• Set the “someday” goal. It’s as far away as you want or it’s as big as you want it to be.

• Pick a target, then figure out who and what’s needed. Think as big you want to think.  

8. What are your top 3 challenges?  

• Given those seven questions, what are your 3 challenges?

• Pick a mentor for each one of those challenges.

An important lesson in summarizing these questions, are mentors. Gary Keller finds his mentors through reading. When he reads books, he asks what’s the truth? He asks how he can build a model for each thing; his health model, his financial model, etc. Gary selects books to read based on what current problem he’s facing and wants to tackle. He says this method is faster than looking for people. He can skim through the books and pick out the nuggets from each one. Gary recommends to write in a journal as you read!