Greetings Floor Dealers!

The purpose of your business is to fund and facilitate your Ideal Lifestyle.   Yet most flooring dealers sacrifice their Ideal Lifestyle to facilitate their business.  Part of the problem is not having a crystal clear picture of exactly what you want your life to look like, then building a business that can support this lifestyle and give you the freedom and walk away power to enjoy it.

Let’s look at a couple of examples.

I enjoy fly fishing and backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas.  In fact, the Sierras are right in my backyard, and within a 45-minute drive I can be well into the mountains, and within a 2-hour drive I have access to more hiking, camping, fishing and vacation options than I could take advantage of in a decade.  I also like to spend time with my wife and two kids by going on lots of weekend trips and periodic vacations.  Sometimes we camp, sometimes we stay in hotels; it just kind of depends on our mood and the activities we have planned.

The challenge is that, like many families, we are busy people.  Weekends fill up, evenings get booked with “busy” stuff, so it would be very easy to miss out on a lot of weekends together.  To solve this challenge, about eight years ago my wife and I began having an annual “Vacation” meeting.  Early in the year, usually in January or February, we take an ordinary wall calendar and block out all the weekends and vacations for the year.  We’re not even sure where we’re going on a lot of those weekends, but we block them out anyway.  On those blocked out days we don’t book business activities, meetings, visits with friends, appointments with doctors or hairdressers, school work….NOTHING!  These days are completely free for us to go on trips together as a family.

We BEGIN the year with the END result in mind: lots of free weekends to spend time together as a family.

Here’s another example:
Let’s say that you want to take every Thursday and Friday off so you can improve your golf game, spend two hours a day helping your son develop his baseball skills, and open up free time to volunteer for a local adult literacy program.  The END result is taking every Thursday and Friday off.  So you BEGIN by implementing systems that will enable the store to run and keep generating revenue even though you are gone.  You also BEGIN by implementing marketing systems that generate revenue to pay for any extra staffing you need to handle the extra work.  All decisions are looked at through the filter of “will this help or hinder my ability to take Thursdays and Fridays off?”

  • Every time you are faced with a  decision about delegating a task, you ask yourself, “By doing it this way will it help me take Thursdays and Fridays off?”  If the answer is no—if the way you are delegating still requires your involvement—rethink the solution.
  • Every time you open your calendar, you never book appointments on Thursdays and Fridays.
  • Each time you are presented with a new project, only accept if it won’t force you to come to work on Thursdays and Fridays.
  • Etc.

Another example:
When I was in high school my goal was to become the best guitarist I could possibly be.  I wanted to be a “shred-master.”  (If you’ve ever listened to Van Halen or Joe Satriani, you’ll have an idea of what I mean by shred master.)

So…I BEGAN each week with the END goal of getting 3 hours of practice each day.  I had a very active social life, but if any invitation for a get-together or trip meant that I couldn’t get my 3 hours of practice in, I would turn it down.

I eventually got quite good on the guitar, was part of numerous bands, taught guitar privately for a number of years, and did a fair amount of recording.  None of that would have been possible if I had not BEGUN each week with the END in mind: 3 hours a day of practice.

Beginning with the end in mind also helps in avoiding overwhelm.  As a coaching member, you have been handed (and are receiving on a ongoing basis) more systems and strategies than most dealers could implement in two years.  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked by a new member, “So where do I start?”

Well, you start by working through the 12-month Total Transformation Game Plan workbook.  This tool walks you through a series of step-by-step questions that force you to think about the END result you want.  Once you know the END result, you’ll know which of the systems and strategies to begin with.

 

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.
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