“I need to reschedule – my son’s lacrosse games start at 4:30pm”
Was I hearing him correctly?
I had been meeting with Lane and his co-owner Matt on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every month at 4:00pm for more than two years, and now we had to find a different meeting time, for the best kind of reason.
But before I tell you about that, let me tell you more about Lane & Matt.
Beside the fact that they’re both incredible people, they run a super interesting business that designs and builds retail displays for some pretty major brands.
They’re good at what they do, they have a strong business, loyal customers, and a solid team that helps them deliver results.
When we started our work together, the business was decent enough, but they knew it could be better. Like a lot of my clients, they were solving too many problems, answering too many questions, and responsible for way too much of the day-to-day work.
There was a good amount of “that’s just the way we started doing it, and haven’t changed it” in the business, which is always dangerous.
They wanted their staff to take more responsibility and deliver without having to hold their hands.
They wanted systems, and they wanted them yesterday. They were sick of running things the way they were, and wanted to change quickly.
Early on, we had a lot of conversations about their mindset, about implementing ideas, and following through.
Sometimes those conversations met a lot of resistance – they wanted to move faster, wanted the systems stuff sooner, needed to change things right now.
But I preached patience, implementation, a steady course of action.
After a while the mindset shifts started to happen.
They started applying the ideas more consistently inside their business. They started to see how they were contributing to the frustrations, and how they could do things differently.
That is when the magic started to happen.
Processes got more efficient.
Solutions started to come up more naturally.
Systems started to develop.
Because the business started to perform better, Matt and Lane were able to hand off more of their responsibilities.
They were able to focus more on the areas where they have the most impact. They remembered that owning a business can be enjoyable, and rewarding.
The business grew, and continues to grow today.
In the last 12 months they have:
✅Increased revenue without adding new employees to their headcount.
✅Brought great new accounts in from referrals from their existing clients.
✅They bought a building! And custom built their offices and warehouse space inside to suit their needs over the next 5 years.
They’re both taking more vacations and being intentional about taking time away from the business to spend with family.
These changes are a direct result of the time and energy that they’ve invested in building a business that doesn’t rely on them to run. They followed through and applied the concepts to build a better version of their business, and it’s going to continue to pay off.
And, maybe best of all, Lane can leave early to see his son play lacrosse and not worry about anything melting down while he’s out of the office.
We meet at 1:30pm now to accommodate early afternoon lacrosse games 😁
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