October 18, 2024 • 12 mins
How did one business owner move from working 55 hours a week to working 16 hours a week and make exponentially more personal income? 95% of business owners find out at some point that they have built themselves a job and are hostages to their businesses. How do we build a Mature Business that regularly produced both money AND time for us, not just money? It's not for the smart or the lucky, but for the intentional.
You get what you intend, not what you hope for. What result are you intending from your business - this year? Five years from now? When you're done. Learn the power and Clarity of being intentional about what YOU want not what your customers, the market your business wants.
Check our special offer for the Making Money is Killing Your Business: https://bit.ly/m/3to5Club
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Welcome back to the Get Off The Treadmill
podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs, where
we show you how to build a successful
business and to have a life too.
We're going to dive into another topic that
helps us make more money in less time
and to get off the treadmill so we
can experience a life of significance.
And now your host and the author of
(00:25):
the number one bestselling business book, Making Money
Is Killing Your Business, Chuck Blakeman.
Hi, this is Chuck Blakeman back with you
today.
I want to talk about a mature business
most people can only dream of owning and
it can and should be yours.
I got a call out of the blue
from someone who read my first book, Making
Money Is Killing Your Business, asking me for
(00:46):
time to see if I could help him
figure out something in his business.
He quickly summarized that he had a very
successful business and was taking home over a
half million dollars a year, but was working
five plus days a week.
And when he went on vacation with his
family, which wasn't often, he worked almost daily
while his family enjoyed the time away.
He saw that people in the book had
figured this out and had built businesses that
(01:08):
made money when they weren't there.
And he realized now that he could get
his business there as well and was savvy
enough to know that getting outside eyes on
that would get him there faster.
He loved his business and had no intention
of selling it, but it was only providing
money and consuming all of his time.
I understood clearly that he was where I
had been in my fifth business.
(01:29):
He wanted freedom in his business, not from
it.
This was his third highly successful business and
it took me five businesses to figure this
out.
I've always been a little bit of a
slow learner.
So I said, I'd love to schedule an
hour chat and see if there's anything we
could do to shift things.
I actually looked forward to the possibility of
working with him because it was clear he
was an amazing business owner and I knew
(01:50):
I could learn things from him as well.
It was Monday morning when he called, so
I said, well, anytime after 1 p.m.
today works for me or tomorrow, Wednesday or
Thursday afternoons, but I don't work on Fridays.
Would any of those afternoons work?
He laughed and said, you son of a
bitch, you know I don't have time like
that on short notice.
(02:10):
Yeah, I kind of knew that, but I
did have that kind of time and I
wanted him to see right away what it
would look like for him when he was
no longer a hostage to his business, but
had true freedom in it.
We scheduled a couple of weeks out and
started meeting twice a month.
In the following year, his business grew by
three times and his take home doubled.
And by the second year, the revenue had
(02:32):
grown by more than 10 times and his
personal income followed.
But all that increase in revenue and income
wasn't the story.
In the process of growing his business like
that, he went from being a hostage in
his business 50 plus hours a week, serving
clients directly himself to just a few hours
a week with clients.
The rest of the time was now free
to focus on building his business through others
(02:53):
and having the freedom to work because he
wanted to, not because he had to.
And as I had suspected, I did learn
a ton from him as well.
Freedom is the ability to choose, and in
the case of a business owner, it's the
ability to choose what to do with my
time and my money, which leads us to
what it means to have a mature business.
We have to stop measuring our business against
(03:15):
itself.
My definition of a mature business is from
the point of view of the business owner,
not from the viewpoint of the business itself.
I could care less about that.
It's the business owner's freedom that indicates the
maturity of the business, not the revenue or
growth of the business.
For more than a century now, we've all
been sold the lie that, quote, the American
dream is to own a profitable business.
(03:37):
But my experience is that 95% of
business owners who achieve that American dream find
out they have built themselves a job and
are hostages.
They don't own the business.
The business owns them, and I understand that
because I did that for my first five
businesses.
What if we all owned businesses that gave
us freedom, not freedom from the business by
(03:59):
selling and getting the hell out of that
hostage situation, but freedom in the business?
What if we didn't have to go to
work, but we did so because we wanted
to?
That's the ability to choose, and that is
business freedom.
And that is how I define a mature
business.
It regularly and efficiently generates both time and
money for the owner, not just money.
(04:21):
In my world, a mature business has a
minimum of two attributes.
First, the business owner is not the producer.
If she or he produces, it's a choice,
not because they have to.
I still produce.
I love being with clients, but I'm one
of the many who are producing, and I
do it because I love to, not because
I have to.
A mature business allows us to work in
(04:43):
the highest and best use of our time
and talents.
So I spend the majority of my time
producing content, speaking, working with small business groups
around the nation, and with a few individual
advisory clients.
Why?
Because that is what energizes me.
For years, I was a hostage to my
businesses, reacting to whatever was coming at me
in order to keep my business from going
(05:04):
under.
But in my sixth business, did I mention
I'm a slow learner?
In my sixth business, I finally figured it
out, and now I do what energizes me.
And I have Mondays, Fridays, and the entire
last week of the month to choose what
to do with my time, my money, and
my energy.
It was a big but simple mindset shift,
but it was also not an easy one.
(05:26):
The second attribute of a mature business follows
from the first, which again is that the
business owner is no longer the only producer,
and only produces by choice if it energizes
them.
If that is in place, then the second
attribute of a mature business follows.
The business makes money when the owner is
somewhere else.
I regularly hear from business owners that they
(05:47):
have freedom in what they feel are mature
businesses, because they tell me they can go
on vacation or that they regularly don't work
on Fridays.
That is a great step toward a mature
business.
But when I ask them if the business
is making money on Fridays or when they're
on vacation, they admit the doors are closed,
and they are losing money on those days.
I've worked with a lot of dentists who
take great pride in not having their offices
(06:07):
open on Fridays.
It's pretty much common practice in dentistry.
But that is not a mature business, because
the business isn't making money while you're not
there.
And actually, most of them are taking an
unpaid day off as well, trying to catch
up on all the business stuff that doesn't
get done by them Monday through Friday when
they're in the operatory seeing patients.
They are not business owners.
(06:27):
They are income producers, a very different thing.
And most small business owners suffer the same
fate.
So the two attributes work together to give
us freedom in a mature business.
When the business owner is now free to
do things at work that energizes them, and
the business is consistently, every week, giving them
time off while it still makes money without
(06:47):
them, they are now in what I estimate
are the 5% of business owners who
have freedom in their business and will never
need freedom from it.
And a quick note about the 5%.
That makes it sound like this is only
attainable by the few, but that is not
my experience.
Just about everybody I know where the light
has gone on in their heads about a
mature business and have made the commitment to
(07:08):
require their business to produce both time and
money, they've gotten there very quickly, generally in
like six months to two years.
You get what you intend, not what you
hope for.
When we stop hoping we'll get time and
start intending to have it, we are much
more likely to get it.
So I get Mondays, Fridays, and the last
week of every month to get up in
the morning and ask myself this great question,
(07:30):
what should I do today?
Sometimes I work.
Other times I play.
And other times I do some personal or
professional development.
On those days, I choose to do what
energizes me.
This is what it means to have freedom
in your business, not from it.
And it is what I call a mature
business because on Mondays and Fridays, the business
is still making money without me.
(07:51):
Just like we expect our kids to grow
up and give back at some point, every
business should grow up as well.
It shouldn't be a rare thing.
And it's not for the smart or the
lucky, it is for the intentional.
When I define a mature business this way
for my clients, I regularly get the following
response.
This makes great sense.
Why haven't we heard this before?
(08:12):
It is kind of intuitive.
And I agree.
I wish I'd been challenged to do this
when I was younger.
I kind of ask, you know, where was
I when I was in my 20s and
30s and 40s?
I didn't figure this out until about 18
years ago.
One of the big reasons we haven't been
wired to think this way is because so
much of the advice we get as business
owners is to grow our business so we
can what?
Sell it.
This is supposedly the highest goal in business,
(08:34):
and it sounds sexy too.
The problem is I know of almost no
one who wants to pour years of life
into their business just to sell it and
walk away unless it's killing them.
The number one reason we sell our businesses
is because we're tired of being a hostage.
When I first started working with one business
owner, their declared goal was that within two
(08:54):
years, they wanted the business to be profitable
enough that they could sell it and get
the hell out.
But instead, they built a mature business in
less time than that.
And not surprisingly, they had competing offers to
buy their business that they had not even
looked for.
I reminded them of their goal to sell
the business in two years.
And their response was, are you crazy?
I don't want to sell this business.
(09:15):
I'm having too much fun.
I'm doing what I want.
And if I sell this, I'll just have
to go figure it out and do it
all over again.
Here's the irony that most business brokers wish
you knew.
But at the same time, they also wouldn't
want to tell you because then you probably
wouldn't employ them.
The only business that people want to buy
is one you wouldn't want to sell.
Any savvy buyer knows they want to buy
(09:36):
a business, not a job.
If you have freedom in your business and
take home a good income as well, that's
exactly what they are looking for.
Why would they want to buy a job
even if it comes with good income?
They can get that being a hostage in
a giant corporation.
When you have a mature business, your business
is worth a lot more money without you
than it is with you.
(09:57):
People who build mature businesses get the most
offers and are the least likely to want
to sell.
As parents, we didn't invest all those years
in our kids to end up with just
pictures and stories of the past.
And most people who invest years of time,
money, and energy growing a business don't want
to walk away from it either, whether consciously
or subconsciously, usually the latter, I think.
(10:18):
We know that growing a business to sell
it sounds like a lot of work just
so we can be put out to pasture
or have to start doing it all over
again.
But with a mature business, we can let
that grand grow it to sell talk go
in one ear and out the other.
If we want to sell, it's really because
we're just looking for a way off the
treadmill almost always.
(10:39):
And we think that's the only option.
But there's an option we never think of,
and it's the right one for most of
us.
Stop focusing on making money yourself and build
a business that will make money when you
are not there.
And then enjoy that mature business for decades
instead of being a hostage to it.
My wife and I would love if people
wanted to buy our house.
That tells us the house is attractive and
(11:00):
fun to live in, which is exactly why
we have no intention of selling it.
We ought to arrive at the same desirable
place with your business.
Why not build a business someone would love
to buy and then keep it and enjoy
it for yourself?
These first few very short podcasts by me
are designed to answer the question, why?
Why is the least asked, most important question
(11:21):
in business?
And it is what motivates us to dig
in on a daily basis and build a
mature business.
But we also have to answer who, what,
when, where and how.
As we finish up on why, these podcasts
will get increasingly more practical and will give
you proven, very tactical tools that I and
thousands of others have used to shorten the
process of building a mature business.
(11:42):
So I appreciate you not skipping over the
why, because it creates the passion, drive and
commitment to answer all the other questions.
So let's get a vision and a passion
to build a mature business that gets you
off the treadmill, that allows you to work
because you want to, not because you have
to, that gives you freedom in your business
(12:03):
so that you won't want to or need
to sell it.
You get what you intend, not what you
hope for.
Intend to build a mature business that gives
you back both time and money and enjoy
your newfound freedom.
Keep going.
That wraps up another episode of the Get
Off The Treadmill podcast.
(12:23):
If you found this podcast helpful, please subscribe
and hit the like button to ensure you
are receiving the latest tools you need to
grow your business and to get off the
treadmill.
If you want more information on the 3
to 5 Club, the Crankset Group, or to
book Chuck as a business advisor, speaker or
workshop leader, you can contact us at grow,
G-R-O-W at cranksetgroup.com.
(12:46):
Until next time, have a great week.
Welcome back to the Get Off The Treadmill
podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs, where
we show you how to build a successful
business and to have a life too.
We're going to dive into another topic that
helps us make more money in less time
and to get off the treadmill so we
can experience a life of significance.
And now your host and the author of
(00:25):
the number one bestselling business book, Making Money
Is Killing Your Business, Chuck Blakeman.
Hi, this is Chuck Blakeman back with you
today.
I want to talk about a mature business
most people can only dream of owning and
it can and should be yours.
I got a call out of the blue
from someone who read my first book, Making
Money Is Killing Your Business, asking me for
(00:46):
time to see if I could help him
figure out something in his business.
He quickly summarized that he had a very
successful business and was taking home over a
half million dollars a year, but was working
five plus days a week.
And when he went on vacation with his
family, which wasn't often, he worked almost daily
while his family enjoyed the time away.
He saw that people in the book had
figured this out and had built businesses that
(01:08):
made money when they weren't there.
And he realized now that he could get
his business there as well and was savvy
enough to know that getting outside eyes on
that would get him there faster.
He loved his business and had no intention
of selling it, but it was only providing
money and consuming all of his time.
I understood clearly that he was where I
had been in my fifth business.
(01:29):
He wanted freedom in his business, not from
it.
This was his third highly successful business and
it took me five businesses to figure this
out.
I've always been a little bit of a
slow learner.
So I said, I'd love to schedule an
hour chat and see if there's anything we
could do to shift things.
I actually looked forward to the possibility of
working with him because it was clear he
was an amazing business owner and I knew
(01:50):
I could learn things from him as well.
It was Monday morning when he called, so
I said, well, anytime after 1 p.m.
today works for me or tomorrow, Wednesday or
Thursday afternoons, but I don't work on Fridays.
Would any of those afternoons work?
He laughed and said, you son of a
bitch, you know I don't have time like
that on short notice.
(02:10):
Yeah, I kind of knew that, but I
did have that kind of time and I
wanted him to see right away what it
would look like for him when he was
no longer a hostage to his business, but
had true freedom in it.
We scheduled a couple of weeks out and
started meeting twice a month.
In the following year, his business grew by
three times and his take home doubled.
And by the second year, the revenue had
(02:32):
grown by more than 10 times and his
personal income followed.
But all that increase in revenue and income
wasn't the story.
In the process of growing his business like
that, he went from being a hostage in
his business 50 plus hours a week, serving
clients directly himself to just a few hours
a week with clients.
The rest of the time was now free
to focus on building his business through others
(02:53):
and having the freedom to work because he
wanted to, not because he had to.
And as I had suspected, I did learn
a ton from him as well.
Freedom is the ability to choose, and in
the case of a business owner, it's the
ability to choose what to do with my
time and my money, which leads us to
what it means to have a mature business.
We have to stop measuring our business against
(03:15):
itself.
My definition of a mature business is from
the point of view of the business owner,
not from the viewpoint of the business itself.
I could care less about that.
It's the business owner's freedom that indicates the
maturity of the business, not the revenue or
growth of the business.
For more than a century now, we've all
been sold the lie that, quote, the American
dream is to own a profitable business.
(03:37):
But my experience is that 95% of
business owners who achieve that American dream find
out they have built themselves a job and
are hostages.
They don't own the business.
The business owns them, and I understand that
because I did that for my first five
businesses.
What if we all owned businesses that gave
us freedom, not freedom from the business by
(03:59):
selling and getting the hell out of that
hostage situation, but freedom in the business?
What if we didn't have to go to
work, but we did so because we wanted
to?
That's the ability to choose, and that is
business freedom.
And that is how I define a mature
business.
It regularly and efficiently generates both time and
money for the owner, not just money.
(04:21):
In my world, a mature business has a
minimum of two attributes.
First, the business owner is not the producer.
If she or he produces, it's a choice,
not because they have to.
I still produce.
I love being with clients, but I'm one
of the many who are producing, and I
do it because I love to, not because
I have to.
A mature business allows us to work in
(04:43):
the highest and best use of our time
and talents.
So I spend the majority of my time
producing content, speaking, working with small business groups
around the nation, and with a few individual
advisory clients.
Why?
Because that is what energizes me.
For years, I was a hostage to my
businesses, reacting to whatever was coming at me
in order to keep my business from going
(05:04):
under.
But in my sixth business, did I mention
I'm a slow learner?
In my sixth business, I finally figured it
out, and now I do what energizes me.
And I have Mondays, Fridays, and the entire
last week of the month to choose what
to do with my time, my money, and
my energy.
It was a big but simple mindset shift,
but it was also not an easy one.
(05:26):
The second attribute of a mature business follows
from the first, which again is that the
business owner is no longer the only producer,
and only produces by choice if it energizes
them.
If that is in place, then the second
attribute of a mature business follows.
The business makes money when the owner is
somewhere else.
I regularly hear from business owners that they
(05:47):
have freedom in what they feel are mature
businesses, because they tell me they can go
on vacation or that they regularly don't work
on Fridays.
That is a great step toward a mature
business.
But when I ask them if the business
is making money on Fridays or when they're
on vacation, they admit the doors are closed,
and they are losing money on those days.
I've worked with a lot of dentists who
take great pride in not having their offices
(06:07):
open on Fridays.
It's pretty much common practice in dentistry.
But that is not a mature business, because
the business isn't making money while you're not
there.
And actually, most of them are taking an
unpaid day off as well, trying to catch
up on all the business stuff that doesn't
get done by them Monday through Friday when
they're in the operatory seeing patients.
They are not business owners.
(06:27):
They are income producers, a very different thing.
And most small business owners suffer the same
fate.
So the two attributes work together to give
us freedom in a mature business.
When the business owner is now free to
do things at work that energizes them, and
the business is consistently, every week, giving them
time off while it still makes money without
(06:47):
them, they are now in what I estimate
are the 5% of business owners who
have freedom in their business and will never
need freedom from it.
And a quick note about the 5%.
That makes it sound like this is only
attainable by the few, but that is not
my experience.
Just about everybody I know where the light
has gone on in their heads about a
mature business and have made the commitment to
(07:08):
require their business to produce both time and
money, they've gotten there very quickly, generally in
like six months to two years.
You get what you intend, not what you
hope for.
When we stop hoping we'll get time and
start intending to have it, we are much
more likely to get it.
So I get Mondays, Fridays, and the last
week of every month to get up in
the morning and ask myself this great question,
(07:30):
what should I do today?
Sometimes I work.
Other times I play.
And other times I do some personal or
professional development.
On those days, I choose to do what
energizes me.
This is what it means to have freedom
in your business, not from it.
And it is what I call a mature
business because on Mondays and Fridays, the business
is still making money without me.
(07:51):
Just like we expect our kids to grow
up and give back at some point, every
business should grow up as well.
It shouldn't be a rare thing.
And it's not for the smart or the
lucky, it is for the intentional.
When I define a mature business this way
for my clients, I regularly get the following
response.
This makes great sense.
Why haven't we heard this before?
(08:12):
It is kind of intuitive.
And I agree.
I wish I'd been challenged to do this
when I was younger.
I kind of ask, you know, where was
I when I was in my 20s and
30s and 40s?
I didn't figure this out until about 18
years ago.
One of the big reasons we haven't been
wired to think this way is because so
much of the advice we get as business
owners is to grow our business so we
can what?
Sell it.
This is supposedly the highest goal in business,
(08:34):
and it sounds sexy too.
The problem is I know of almost no
one who wants to pour years of life
into their business just to sell it and
walk away unless it's killing them.
The number one reason we sell our businesses
is because we're tired of being a hostage.
When I first started working with one business
owner, their declared goal was that within two
(08:54):
years, they wanted the business to be profitable
enough that they could sell it and get
the hell out.
But instead, they built a mature business in
less time than that.
And not surprisingly, they had competing offers to
buy their business that they had not even
looked for.
I reminded them of their goal to sell
the business in two years.
And their response was, are you crazy?
I don't want to sell this business.
(09:15):
I'm having too much fun.
I'm doing what I want.
And if I sell this, I'll just have
to go figure it out and do it
all over again.
Here's the irony that most business brokers wish
you knew.
But at the same time, they also wouldn't
want to tell you because then you probably
wouldn't employ them.
The only business that people want to buy
is one you wouldn't want to sell.
Any savvy buyer knows they want to buy
(09:36):
a business, not a job.
If you have freedom in your business and
take home a good income as well, that's
exactly what they are looking for.
Why would they want to buy a job
even if it comes with good income?
They can get that being a hostage in
a giant corporation.
When you have a mature business, your business
is worth a lot more money without you
than it is with you.
(09:57):
People who build mature businesses get the most
offers and are the least likely to want
to sell.
As parents, we didn't invest all those years
in our kids to end up with just
pictures and stories of the past.
And most people who invest years of time,
money, and energy growing a business don't want
to walk away from it either, whether consciously
or subconsciously, usually the latter, I think.
(10:18):
We know that growing a business to sell
it sounds like a lot of work just
so we can be put out to pasture
or have to start doing it all over
again.
But with a mature business, we can let
that grand grow it to sell talk go
in one ear and out the other.
If we want to sell, it's really because
we're just looking for a way off the
treadmill almost always.
(10:39):
And we think that's the only option.
But there's an option we never think of,
and it's the right one for most of
us.
Stop focusing on making money yourself and build
a business that will make money when you
are not there.
And then enjoy that mature business for decades
instead of being a hostage to it.
My wife and I would love if people
wanted to buy our house.
That tells us the house is attractive and
(11:00):
fun to live in, which is exactly why
we have no intention of selling it.
We ought to arrive at the same desirable
place with your business.
Why not build a business someone would love
to buy and then keep it and enjoy
it for yourself?
These first few very short podcasts by me
are designed to answer the question, why?
Why is the least asked, most important question
(11:21):
in business?
And it is what motivates us to dig
in on a daily basis and build a
mature business.
But we also have to answer who, what,
when, where and how.
As we finish up on why, these podcasts
will get increasingly more practical and will give
you proven, very tactical tools that I and
thousands of others have used to shorten the
process of building a mature business.
(11:42):
So I appreciate you not skipping over the
why, because it creates the passion, drive and
commitment to answer all the other questions.
So let's get a vision and a passion
to build a mature business that gets you
off the treadmill, that allows you to work
because you want to, not because you have
to, that gives you freedom in your business
(12:03):
so that you won't want to or need
to sell it.
You get what you intend, not what you
hope for.
Intend to build a mature business that gives
you back both time and money and enjoy
your newfound freedom.
Keep going.
That wraps up another episode of the Get
Off The Treadmill podcast.
(12:23):
If you found this podcast helpful, please subscribe
and hit the like button to ensure you
are receiving the latest tools you need to
grow your business and to get off the
treadmill.
If you want more information on the 3
to 5 Club, the Crankset Group, or to
book Chuck as a business advisor, speaker or
workshop leader, you can contact us at grow,
G-R-O-W at cranksetgroup.com.
(12:46):
Until next time, have a great week.
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