Whilst I wasn’t on the bread-line at the time, I desperately wanted to get on the property ladder, at a time when prices were rising fast, and mortgages were hard to come by.

I was only three years into my career, so when I got the chance to take over and run a business selling health products and books by direct mail (postal, in other words!), I jumped at it.

It was there that I learnt an invaluable lesson, which I help my clients understand and practice even today…

I was spending my budget on advertising in the press, and through the post, but I was never clear what worked and what didn’t. I was really just crossing my fingers and hoping for the best whenever I spent any money on marketing.

IT WAS THEN THAT MY FATHER POINTED OUT ONE OF MY FIRST “BFO’s” (otherwise known as a “Blinding Flash of the Obvious“.)…

“Why aren’t you measuring the results of the work you’re putting in?”, he asked…

“Sounds great, but I’m not really sure how to though…“, I replied.

So we set to work together, to create “test and measure systems”, which ultimately helped me quadruple our profits in 15 months.

Great lesson I thought, but once profits started stagnating again, I realised that this one lesson wouldn’t carry me through the rest of my business life. I needed more help, but I wasn’t sure where to get it from.

BUT WHERE COULD I GET THE EXTRA HELP I NEEDED TO PROGRESS?

One Spring afternoon in a pub garden in a small vilage called Fawkham in Kent, my father mentioned that it might be an idea to attend a Dale Carnegie program up in London, which was a course on Leadership for Managers.

Although I had no idea what it was about, or even who Dale Carnegie was(!), I dutifully went along and sat the course with around 20 other small business owners.

(For those of you who reading this, who still don’t know who Dale Carnegie is, he was the best selling author of the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People“ a fantastic book which will help anybody in business, despite the fact it was written in 1936!)

Although I passed the course and learned so much, the problem for me was that I wanted to understand how to create businesses that worked without me…

I found myself reading about owners of multiple businesses, who still had the time to spend their life doing what they wanted, and I didn’t understand how this was possible.

Over the subsequent 16 years, I was able to start and sell another marketing business for six figures, but my real “eye-opener” was when I launched my property business which I still own today.

This is a business, worth seven figures today, which I spend around 30 minutes a week on. I’d seen others doing it, so I learnt how to, using the expertise of some of our old property clients like Robert Kiyosaki (Author of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”), Robbie Fowler (Ex-England and Liverpool footballer( and Martin Roberts (“Homes under the Hammer” fame).

This experience has really proved to me that it is possible to create a business that could work without you.

The only issue was, that even as recently as 2017, I’d still not managed to find a system to help me step away from our main marketing business.

Although I understood how to create a property business that could work without me, I was still really unclear as to how that could work in my existing business and other industries too.

This was particularly evident to me, when I hired a business coach with a valuation tool to come into our business and value it.

“Really sorry Phil, but it’s worth nothing.“, he told me.

“ You could have broken it to me a little more gently.“, I joked through gritted teeth!

I continued, “I don’t understand. The company is highly profitable, we have long-term staff and clients, so how the hell can it be worth £0??“

“Well…” he went on… “ The business is not in a position where it could work without you, so why would someone want to buy it off you, unless you continued working in it?”

Aaaahhh! Another “BFO”, I thought.

“So what do I need to do, to get the business to be able to work without me? “ I dropped in to the conversation?

It was then that James went through a Six Step Process, to help me get the business in to a position to sell it.

I then thought…

“So what do I do now? I’m too young to retire, but I’ve really loved the process of creating a business that could work without me. Could it be possible, that I could help coach small business owners to help them do the same?“

I then spent my next three months researching business coaching organisations, and working out whether I wanted to go it alone, or whether I wanted to buy a franchise in one of the several that were available.

After a lot of research, I decided that rather than go it alone, I’d invest in the systematic process ActionCOACH used to transform businesses globally. After all, although I had built and sold to businesses, I was no master, and I wanted to help business owners with issues other than the ones I had…

Things like how to grow their profits, how to manage their time more effectively, and how to build and develop a winning team.

Since then, I’ve invested over 1,000 hours in further self-development, and have, since May 2018, been in a position to really help local business owners get to where they want to be.

Around four months after I started in my new career, amazing things started to happen:

But over and above these accolades, I found myself helping real people with real issues… and not just owners of businesses with 10-100 employees, but also one man/woman bands too.

I’ve now coached and mentored 100’s of business owners, whether they want to free up their time, make more money, create a winning team, or in a few cases they might want to devise an exit strategy.

It could happen to you too…

I’m no different from you. When I first started my business, I started from zero, the way many of you will have done too.

But I made it my mission to create a business that could give me the freedom I wanted. So now I’m getting to work helping others achieve the same level of freedom in their lives as well.

So if you’d like to find out more, A good start would be to subscribe to my regular “Monday Minute” E-newsletter. All you need to do is to enter your details below, and I will be sure to send you, every Monday, a short idea or tip which could make a big difference to your business.

I’ve had people email me saying that some of the ideas I’ve sent out have made them thousands of pounds in a short space of time, so why would I stop?!