1566 – Thriving While Growing a Company with The Freedom Owner’s Andre Abi Awad

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0:59with us right now andre abi awad andre you are the founder of the freedom owner you're found on the web at the freedomowner.com andre thank you so much for joining us thank you josh all right so what do you do as the freedom owner well we as business owners we start the business for freedom right? And then we see ourselves becoming an employee at our own companies. That's why I created the Freedom Owner, which will help every business owner reclaim their freedom from the day-to-day operations and start working on the business instead of in the business. All right. I'm interested. What are the basic tenets of, you know, a lot of us, you know, I'll speak for myself and, you know, maybe that I associate with, you know, these are founders that are pretty doggone busy.

1:52They love what they do, but they may not be in a position where they can necessarily step away. Or if they step away, there's going to be some operational, there's going to be some significant operational impact. And so, yeah, I mean, obviously, listen, I think it's more fun to work for yourself or, you know, work for your own business. But that said, I I suspect, you know, there are probably times, you know, myself included, where it's like, wow, I really did just kind of create a job for myself. So, like I said, one of the best jobs in the world, but still, you know, a job nonetheless. So, Andre, take us through kind of this, you know, kind of this discovery process and, you know, help with some goal setting here and maybe some things tactically that we might be able to do.

2:43yeah well just to tell you how i discovered that the business owner needs the freedom owner i asked them can you take a vacation for one month and the business keeps on running and scaling they say one month two days and it will be a hell of things happening and i say it means you have a job you don't own a business you own a job and that's where business owners need to work on their freedom and on their business. Because if you can't leave the business and the business keeps on running, it means you have a job. If your reputation sometimes is the same reputation as the business, it means people are working with you, not with the business.

3:24And that's why you need to be in the business every day. If the clients come to you, the suppliers come to you, the employees come to you whenever there's a problem, it means you are stuck in the owner's trap and many, many other things. And this means the revenue of the business will reach a plateau and it will not increase anymore. If you want to own a business, you need to get out of this trap. And we work on eight drivers for that. I can go through details later on, but I'll tell you what are the eight at the beginning. Financial performance, it means do you have bookkeeping? Do you know your numbers?

4:03Do you know what goals KPIs to include in your business? That's one. your growth potential? Are all services and products relying on you to deliver? Are you the expert in the business and no one else? You need to focus on products that are teachable, valuable, and repeatable. Three, valuation teeter-totter. Are you still injecting cash from outside the business instead of letting the business sustain itself? Four, a Switzerland structure are you relying on one client or one employee or one supplier five recurring revenue do you have recurring revenue or you need to have this nightmare every night are you getting new clients tomorrow or you know at the end of the month you have recurring revenue income six the hub and spoke which means are you the hub in the business or the business can run without everything coming to you.

5:03Seven, the customer satisfaction. And people think that customer satisfaction, if people say, I like the product, no, it means another thing. You ask if they can refer other people to your business. And eight is the monopoly control. Are you really differentiating your products and services from the market in order for people to come to you and for you to increase your prices later on to make the business perform better? Yeah. Well, yeah, that sounds like a pretty good report card. Do you have that like written down someplace where, you know, maybe it could print out? Of course. And I also have an assessment of 42 questions where business owners can get a report of 27 pages for a score for each driver and an overall score so they know what to work on and what to improve.

5:51Yeah. So if the answer to a lot of that is no, what do we do?

5:59Well, Josh, I created some resources for your audience on thefreedomowner.com slash upyourinfluence. They can download some guides, they can take the assessment, and they can know how to do it themselves. I also have a newsletter for them if they want to get free stuff. But if they want to really work on that, I suggest they just listen to these eight drivers that you've mentioned earlier. You can do some work alone, or you can read a little bit on my articles to know what are the steps that you can take. And if you have any specific question, you can always ask. Well, I appreciate that. But let's say that someone is like they don't have a good sales process.

6:44And maybe they've really struggled with hiring a sales team or a sales manager. And so because the owner has not been able to replicate what they've been able to do historically, how might we find a path forward on that? well here you're talking about sales before before sales we want to also understand that the business if one of the questions by the way in the 42 questions assessment if you get five times the volume of of business that you have today how easy would it be to fulfill this demand and And I can tell you most of the people who are stuck in the owner's trap, they cannot fulfill this much demand.

7:32So instead of getting more sales at the beginning, the first level, it needs to restructure the business, create processes, create SOPs, automate as much as you can, outsource if you need to. If you don't have enough resources or the talents, you can outsource, you can automate. You can also start by delegating as a business owner. and there's an exercise I do with the business owners where we check the tasks they do every month, the time it takes every month per hour and then their energy score. As one more thing I do, I'm the founder of Entrepreneurgy, which is energy for entrepreneurs, a large community of more than 5 ,000 entrepreneurs.

8:14I tell them, if your energy is low on each task, please delegate it, automate it, outsource it or do less of it. And once you have these processes, SOPs and the proper delegation, now you work on sales. If you cannot find, because you asked, if you cannot find the right talent for your sales, you can outsource, number one. You can create strategic partnerships, number two. and number three, you can come to Josh and I see you have many offerings and also support to businesses in order for them to have the right media exposure and also get clients. Yeah. Andre, what trends do you see taking place right now amongst, let's say, more founder-led organizations where they are maybe still a little bit too, The requirement is still pretty heavy on them for their involvement.

9:15Maybe they're way too involved in the operations. Again, I mentioned kind of sales and marketing or feeling like, oh, my gosh, there's this pressure where I constantly have to be out there beating the streets on social media to drive business. And it's not that that's bad. It's that they have to. They're not yet at that level, say, with inbound business. should they just trust the process and it'll naturally work itself out? Or would you recommend something a little bit more proactive outside of what is in your guides and your newsletters? Please give us some tactical advice. Yeah, of course, of course.

9:55One of the things that we do is an exercise called the scalability trifecta. You need to know which products and services you are able to scale without much dependency on yourself. So we list all your products or services and we rate them on three factors. This is the trifecta. Teachable from one to 10. If you want to rate each product and service from everything, production to delivery, how teachable is it? Can you spend like one day or two days to teach it? That's a very high score. Do you need a very good expert or someone to get a major, a specific major in order to do that. This is a one because it's going to require time and it's hard to find.

10:42That's for teachable. Valuable, how differentiated is this product or service? How differentiated is it from all competitors? Can people see it everywhere or get it from anywhere or they have to come to you? Valuable 10, less than valuable or a commodity, it's one. Also, of course, you can go through all the range. And the last factor is repeatable. And when we say repeatable, we say the same client buying it again and again, the same product or service that you are providing. So when you have this one to 10 on these three categories, you have the sum, the total, and you check on your products and services, which one has the highest score.

11:29It means that this product has the highest potential to scale, mostly without your involvement. If you find that some of your products are teachable, but not so valuable, sometimes, Josh, one of our techniques, we do bundles. So we bundle some of these services or products and we target a very specific niche. For this niche, this bundle is valuable, but maybe not for everyone. For example, if you take an accounting firm, for example, bookkeeping, receivables and so on, they are teachable, but they are not so valuable. So one company, they took these services, many of them, and they bundled it and they said, let's target architects and doctors with this service because architects and doctors, they need someone to handle this.

12:28They can outsource it. It's valuable to them, but maybe it's not valuable for a small business or a business that has an accountant in the firm. So this is bundling. Sometimes it's a service that it's a commodity, for example, running shoes. And in Denver, there's the running clinic in Boston. the running clinic what they did they wrapped a service around the products because running shoes you can buy them anywhere but what they created they introduced a service which is come and train for the marathon for free so when you have this relationship with the team these people will will will come and buy the products from you they won't go somewhere else there is this personal relationship you are training them you are supporting them to run the marathons this is wrapping the product with a service.

13:18So don't be afraid also to discontinue services. I remember myself in my business in 2018, we discontinued a service that we used to sell for$1 ,500 per month. And we focused on a service that we sell for$200 per month. Just imagine the difference. And this made our business more valuable. And I sold my company last May 2022 with a good number. So basically, it's not about the product. It's about how scalable it is. Yeah. Andre, who do you work with today? And again, thinking about, are you doing high-level coaching? Or do you engage with people on a lower ticket level? well I have the mastermind which is the fast track mastermind 10 weeks if people don't have enough time to go through the program because the one-on-one program it's for six months and who is it for it's for business owners who have been in business for more than three years they have more than five employees and they are stuck in the business looking to get investment or to scale the business or to sell the business at some point.

14:39So we work with them to either one-on-one so we have more in-depth work or in a mastermind where they can get all the information and the tools and also the support of a peer mastermind during the 10 weeks. And that website, explain, someone who's been listening to our conversation, like where they go from here. well thefreedomowner.com they can go there they will see as i mentioned many free resources also some articles and they can inquire about the mastermind there's a description about everything that they get with the mastermind and also if they want one-on-one support they can book a call on that website excellent and again uh that website um is is you just simply go to thefreedomowner.com.

15:35Andre Abhi Awad, you're the founder of The Freedom Owner. Andre, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Josh.

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