And here you thought you were done? Sike!
Like any good entrepreneur, you should and must be a good student.
Your journey through life and business is a learning adventure, and if you make it a habit to learn all that you can, you build an ever-increasing knowledge base as well as a hopper of wisdom you can draw on anytime you need it.
What’s really nice about this is that so many people have shared their experiences. You can find books, videos and live as well as recorded seminars onlineon just about topic you can think of.
No matter who your business heroes might be… or even if you have any yet… they’ve all written stuff that’s invaluable to a guy who’s looking to start, grow and manage a business.
Just look around on Amazon or and you’ll see stuff written by people like Donald Trump, Robert Kiyosaki, Warren buffet and others.
Topics on everything from business systems to sales to how to get your head in the right place.
So what I’ve done in this chapter is to put together a list of resources and goodies that you can use to dive even deeper into the subjects we’ve discussed throughout this guide. I’ve tried to break them down by chapter so that you can reference back and forth between what we’ve talked about in each chapter and then come here to this bonus section to find links for easy research.
I strongly advise you to use these resources. Even if you’re not a big reader, it’s time to get into this habit. Make a habit of reading something related to business or success or anything that’s going to help you grow every day. Even if it’s only for a half hour, it’s amazing how effective this is and how much it’ll affect you.
Tony Montana, Scarface
Introduction
In the intro, we started talking about working on rather than in your business. I introduced the idea of systems as well as the idea of moving from a self-employed employee to a true business owner
In my opinion, one of the best ways to understand this concept is from Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad – a book I recommend by the way. This was the first in an ongoing series of Rich dad books.
This is a great read and really opens your eyes as to why employees and even self-employees rarely get rich and how moving to a true “B” quadrant
business and becoming an investor is the fast track to wealth.
If you want to truly change your financial future and change your mindset to get anything you want in life, then this is the business man’s bible. This book is a simplified version of Hill’s The Law of Success which I also suggest. really focuses hard on becoming wealthy and successful and should be on your nightstand for sure
In this chapter, we started talking about the fundamentals of systems. Would you believe that probably less than 5% of any lawn care business in the country has any kind of system in place… or even has any clue about systems at all?
So here is some suggested reading. These books talk about systems in great detail and have helped me shape my business and guided me in writing this guide as well:
In this early book, Robert introduces the concept of the B-I triangle. This graphical representation of a proper business structure shows you how a true and profitable business is broken down into systems
In this book, Gerber walks you through the phases of a business from infancy to maturity. A great entrepreneur’s guide – which is what you truly are!
If you want to rarely get the real poop on what it takes to start from nothing and grow a monster empire, then check this one out. You’ll read the inside story of how Ray Kroc built McDonald’s into the juggernaut it is today.
Here we did a lot of talking about specific systems. Systems for bidding, working and tracking your progress and results. One of the great things about today is that you can find so much stuff online.
YouTube is a great place to do research. Although you have to be careful. For every good tidbit out there, there’s a lot of bullshit too.
Here’s an example of a great tidbit. This video talks about a way to bid on projects right from your laptop without ever having to visit the property. You can create accurate bids right online and what’s even cooler is that the guy who’s doing the demo uses a calculation very much like what we discussed in the Work system:
On the other hand, here’s an example of a guy to avoid. Not that everything he says is wrong… but he’s giving you advice while he’s saying that at the current time he has no business! This is the kind of crap you don’t want to listen to:
One final little place to check out. This guy, Jason Kreal, I think is how you spell it – has a channel called Lawn Care Life. He’s got a lot of videos on a lot of topics and he seems to think through his stuff pretty well. Check out this quick one:
This chapter is kind of the crux of this guide because your growth depends on your ability to find, get and keep good people. Along those lines, here are a few resources you can dig into to really sharpen the blade of your people skills:
Arguably one of the best books ever written on how to behave and handle people. Anyone in any kind of sales role – and that’s you, bucko – should read this book a couple of times a year
Kind of along the lines of the last book, but a bit more broad in a sense. Yet this has a lot of great stuff in it to help you be more effective in all aspects of life.
I like this video. It’s Lawn Care Life again and Jason is talking about a motivation story. Although, rather than what to do, which I focus on a lot, it’s an example of a poorly thought out motivational program:
We dealt with a lot of auxiliary stuff in this section. Below I’ve included some helpful links and information that you can use to streamline your processes and to make creating and following a lot easier.
For tips on copywriting for your ads and other marketing material, visit this website and download a free eBook written by a copywriter friend of mine.
Pipedrive, a large customer relations management company with a great CRM software put together this free email sales course. It comes in 11 sections, 1 per day, and has some great goodies about making money.
Routing Software for your new crew:
Daily organizers for to do lists:
Customer Satisfaction Surveys:
This chapter gave you an example of the process of going from guide 1 to the end of this guide. In order to help you get some ideas on systems and the details of other nuts and bolts, check out this Facebook group. A lot of good wisdom in here:
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