I often get asked how we help our clients and their people out perform, out think,  out sell, out grow, and out strategise their market competition.   Here is an overview of my approach.

Reason for being.  Can you clearly articulate your business strategy in 25 words or less?  Only three percent of executives can concisely articulate why their enterprise exists.  When you are clear on the why the how is easy.  The bigger the cause (the more people you serve), the greater the wealth.                   

You are accountable.  Without total responsibility for whatever has, is, and will happen to you, progress remains stifled. Full accountability results in unshakeable leadership.  Everybody is watching you even when nobody is there. The buck stops with you. No excuses allowed.                                                 

Solutions are at hand.  Reassuringly every difficulty has its own solution.  When you are standing at an impasse in your business, ask “who can I ask, where can I go, what can I do?” The answers are right in front of you. All you need to do is access and put them to use.

Quiet your mind. Your ability to remain focused on what truly matters results in unfathomable returns.  For every minute you spend thinking critically you save 10 minutes in execution – a 1000% return on your greatest asset, time. Whatever you have resolved to do, remain attentive to its full completion until. 

Sixty minutes.  Every day, spend an hour soaking up new information.  The best spend at least sixty minutes of quite, contemplative study, capturing two to three weekly principles that are weaved into their business tapestry.

Energy. There is a direct correlation between your well-being and your success as a business leader.  Extensive studies have shown that those that take care of themselves through refined exercise, diet and rest excel when it comes to driving their businesses forward.  As within, so without.  Health and fitness matter big time.  Energy trumps intelligence.

Customer to client.  How large would your business be today if you had retained every customer you ever had?  What if you had converted a first time customer to a life long client?  Focus on attracting customers through well thought out and integrated marketing and sales strategies, and give them what they need.  Know that everything outside these twin tasks is an expense.

Embrace the disciplines. Business leaders never arrive at a destination.  Despite the incessant desire to meet budgets and reach goals, there will always be a new target to hit thereafter.  The key is to embrace the moment to moment process of building a business.  The future takes care of itself if you and your team maintain the daily practices that matter.

Measure the drivers. Do you know what your core driver is?  That primary number that has the greatest impact on the success of your business?  In all probability is not the one that reflexively comes to mind. Accountable leaders measure a handful of indicators consistently and adjust the activities that lead to their optimisation. 

Craft your culture. Without a high-performance culture, clients soon fade away as energy dissipates.  Critical to the sustainable success of any business is designing and continuously shaping an environment that produces a harmonious, accountable,  can-do culture that transfers directly to the client.  

Client centricity. Stay close to your clients with the sole aim of identifying what really matters not to you, but to them.  Find it. Bottle it. And feed it to them in such a way that they will rave about you to everyone they meet. Become a merchant of wow!