Today I’m sharing super-secret steps that cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn.
When you read these steps, they might sound a little crazy. But they’re exactly what we do at Credit Repair Cloud and how we’ve scaled our company from one broke guy in his underpants to a 70+ person team, making millions!
And the best part is - these steps don’t just work for us. They work for EVERY company, no matter how new or how small.
When I first started trying to develop a credit-repair software I eventually launched a $20 CD called Credit-Aid. Now I know the word “launched” makes it sound like I had a team of marketing experts, sales guys, and customer support agents.
But really, it was just me, totally broke, living on top ramen, sitting in my room with my computer pretending that I was all the different various people on my team because I thought I was too poor to afford any help and besides, since I had never run a company before, I didn’t know the first thing about hiring and scaling a team.
Because I had to wear every hat in my business, I was worn out all the time. I couldn’t do anything or go anywhere because something was always broken or on fire. The stress was overwhelming.
I eventually began resenting everything I’d worked so hard to build!
It was terrible. If you’re just starting out, you’re probably feeling the same way I did. You’re wearing a whole bunch of different hats, and you’re stuck in the tactical day to day stuff, which is eating up all of your time, and not producing as many leads or generating as much income as you want.
It’s a really exhausting and frustrating place to be. It feels like you’re drowning, and you can’t ever get ahead.
Does this sound familiar?
Here’s Why This Is Important
Things like answering emails and calls, scheduling, and sales and customer service, and any of the other tactical things that eat up your time. I know you’re doing everything yourself to save money, but when you look at the big picture, this is actually costing you a lot of money!
Well, the same is true in businesses and on a team. Other people have different superpowers than you do. Other people are often BETTER at these things than you are!
You need someone who LOVES project management, customer support, or sales. You need other people on your team that WANT to do all the things you hate and that take you way too long to do. That’s how you grow beyond what you can accomplish alone. It takes teamwork to make the dream work!
And because of all the work they do, you’ll be able to serve more customers and change more lives!
Here’s What You Need To Know
Then label with a category what those 15 minutes were.
This would be one of the following:
S for Strategic (this would include planning, building relationships, making company decisions, and the major things that move your business forward.
T - for Tactical, meaning anything that is the grunt work of your business.
F - for Family time (this is a really good indicator if you’re out of balance somewhere. If you go days without family time on your time study, that’s something you can and SHOULD work on).
And SC - for self-care (as entrepreneurs this tends to be the very last thing we do because we work to put our business, our customers, our family - everyone before ourselves. But that’s backward and if you don’t take care of yourself - who will take care of everything when you can’t?
Remember, when you board a plane one of the first safety features the flight attendant explains is if oxygen masks drop from the overhead compartment - you must put yours on before assisting anyone else!
Why is that?
Because if you don’t take care of YOU, you won’t be able to help anyone else! So if you find you don’t have any self-care or not much of it this is something you really want to work on!
Once you’ve completed your two weeks you’ll have a very clear idea of what you do all day. You’ll be surprised by it! All the “tactical” things are what you want to give to other people to do so you become the captain steering the ship instead of being down below rowing.
Now - this document is meant to change and grow as your team member and business changes and grows, so don’t get too hung up on it. It’s important to do this BEFORE you start to hire so that you make sure it’s a good fit during the interview process.
We even go so far as to have employees take a personality test called a DISC test to learn more about them. There are paid versions, but you can find the DISC test for free at tonyrobbins.com/disc.
Just be sure you tell the potential team members to answer the questions as if they were in their ideal work environment doing their ideal job. If you don’t tell them, they may answer based on their home personality or based on bad past job experiences which will skew their results.
This is all about transparency within all areas of the company and it is one of the most important aspects of building a team and scaling a business. Business owners get really scared about transparency with the team and they get worried that their employees will steal their business.
That makes them act all paranoid and weird. This is all wasted energy to worry about these things and run a paranoid business. Paranoid business owners never grow far and they’re miserable all the time. So if you’re worried about that nonsense - KNOCK IT OFF!
Think big, not small.
Transparency with the team is the biggest secret I can tell you. They already know how many clients you have. They can already guess your revenue. They can do math. So make them part of the process of celebrating wins every day, and you’ll be surprised how much more fun your business will be, how much harder your team will work for your success, and how much faster your business will grow.
This is one reason we just recently added profit share for every team member! We’re in this together and when done well, they’ll drive your success and revenue!
Be sure to get these in place as early as possible because culture is EVERYTHING! Also, delegate responsibility. Empower your team. Don’t micromanage. Move people up. Advance them in their career. Delegate leadership and build leaders.
This will make your company amazing, and it’s why your employees will become a tight team and stay with you through thick and thin!
This may look overwhelming, but know that it’s not a race. Take your time and do a little bit every day. Start with the time study to better understand what’s eating your time and where you need support. You’ll be surprised how it starts to come together and really pay off!
A mentor and friend of mine, Alex Charfen is the champion and pioneer in this space. I owe a lot of my team’s success and my ability to have grown and continued growing month after month to his processes.
If you’re not familiar with his methods, I encourage you to look him up on YouTube, listen to his podcast, The Momentum podcast, or grab one of his free books or resources. All of his stuff is time and money well spent for yourself and your business.
And if you’re feeling overwhelmed, stuck in the day-to-day grind of the business and you want to know how to build a solid foundation so your credit repair business can become profitable and successful without killing you in the process then I want to invite you to join our upcoming Credit Hero Challenge!