Greetings Floor Dealers!
Most flooring dealers have a fundamental misunderstanding about what business they are in. They believe that they are in the business of installing floors, of selling, of “running” a flooring business. The reality is, you are a marketer of flooring services. The business you are in is “marketing.” The product just happens to be flooring.
A second fundamental error is not having a grasp on the true purpose of why their business exists. Many dealers think it exists to provide employment for others, or (an even worse mistake) they think it exists to provide employment for themselves. Or they think it exists to make a better community, or provide products and services for their customers, or to keep the entrepreneur “busy,” etc.
Some of these are good, some not so good, but NONE of them are the true purpose of a business.
The true purpose of your business is very simple: it’s to fund and facilitate your Ideal Lifestyle.
In the Game Plan workbook, I talk about how 150 years ago most Americans were farmers. They HAD to work from sunup to sundown just to avoid starving! That situation does not exist for most Americans today, especially flooring dealers. It is simply not necessary to spend your entire business career working yourself to death.
Intuitively, most flooring dealers realize this, but because of guilt, out-dated business models, fear, lack of knowledge, or whatever, they wind up using their life to facilitate their business. And this is completely backwards.
When a dealer first opens his store, it’s often times necessary to put in extra hours and work very hard. This is because the dealer is in “start up” mode. The problem is that most dealers never, ever escape start up mode. They stay in it forever. When they pass the business along to their children, they remain in start up mode, and so the cycle goes.
As an Inner Circle member, you are on track to get off this cycle. As you work through the modules and the strategies, and as you implement systems into your business, I want you to keep a very clear picture in your mind of a McDonald’s franchise. You never, ever see the owner of a McDonald’s flipping burgers, wiping down tables, working the register, or any other day-to-day task required to run the store. The store is SYSTEMS dependent, not OWNER dependent.
McDonald’s owners have total freedom. And when the time comes to pass along the store to an heir, you won’t see the new owner flipping burgers either.
Also, it’s much easier for a McDonald’s owner to sell their business to an investor than it is for most flooring dealers to sell their business. Why? Because an investor knows that when he/she buys a McDonald’s, they are buying a true investment. When they buy a flooring store, most likely they will be buying a job.
By building your business so that it’s systems dependent, you will not only create freedom for yourself, but also for your heirs if you give the store to them. Or, if you decide to sell your business, you’ll have a marketable investment that will be very attractive to the kind of investor that will have the capital to buy your business for top price.
Anyway, back to the true purpose of your business: if you are stressed out, burned out, and wind up quitting because your business is not creating the kind of life you want, what good does THAT do for your employees? For the community? For the charitable organizations you support? For your clients?
By keeping the true purpose of your business in focus—to fund and facilitate your ideal lifestyle—you will create a business that you are excited about, a business that lasts, and a business that is a blessing to all the other people that it touches.
To Tons Of Customers!
Jim Augustus Armstrong is The “Coach”
Jim Augustus Armstrong is the President of Flooring Success Systems, a program that equips dealers to double their profits, cut their work hours in half and beat the boxes! Many dealers have totally transformed their businesses and their lives for the better after joining Flooring Success Systems.
See what real, live dealers are saying!