THIS IS YOUR MAP TO FREEDOM!

Friends, I say this in some form or fashion on almost every episode and I don’t say it to be hyperbolic, I say it because it’s a fact and it’s the truth and its this: If you can’t step away from your business for 30 days without it essentially collapsing, you don’t own a business, you own a job. It may be a well-paid job that gives you some freedom, but there are likely also aspects of it that more resemble a prison than a thriving company.

Before I give you the 7-part framework that this episode is all about, I need to tell you how I decided to create this framework and how I came to the conclusions about business that I have.

While many of these kinds of origin stories come from disaster or maybe some kind of accident that wakes you up one day to the truth, I don’t necessarily have such a story or experience, at least not when it comes to business. No, the origin story for how I learned that you can’t build a real business totally dependent on you was born more out of the sheer luck of being born into the family I was born into and having the mentors that I was lucky enough to have.

Yes, I can admit that privilege plays somewhat of a role in who and where I am today since I just happened to be born into a good, middle-class family whose parents had the realization one day that they wanted more from their own lives than what their bosses and the companies they worked for could give them.

Mom was an interior designer working in a multi location family-owned paint and wallpaper business, dad worked for the County court system, which means he was your typical government employee. Both had decent jobs and futures, but both wanted more.

Fast-forward a bunch of years and no longer am I the son of a court administrator and an interior designer, I’m now a cashier at the ghetto grocery store, which is the business my father bought as his first foray into entrepreneurship. Even though my business education began in earnest many years prior to that, this was the first real life experience of working in a brick-and-mortar business that my family owned and required the help of other people.

It was in that business that I got to see firsthand what it was like to hire and fire, deal with customers, manage inventory, learn how to read a P&L statement, deal with vendors, manage employees, fix coolers and freezers, blacktop a parking lot, fix rooftop ac systems, and a bunch more things that I likely never would have been exposed to had it not been for that ghetto grocery store.

What I also learned from that experience, which started when I was 15, was how it really paid to have good managers and leaders so that you could leave the business in the hands of others when you couldn’t be there. I didn’t necessarily realize it at the time, but it was the fact that we hired and trained good managers that my father could leave the store at some point and go home. The fact that we had systems in place and people to run the systems made it possible to make money even when we weren’t there physically.

Once I left that business and moved to Chicago to study Zen and Aikido, I was again in an apprenticeship scenario where I was learning from one of the greatest leadership and personal development coaches anyone could have. My mentor in those years was a grizzled Japanese Aikido and Zen master known around the world as one of the most hardcore teachers alive. He knew his stuff and he knew how to build up other leaders. Of course, he did it in a very Japanese way, which is quite different from the American way, but he built leaders, nonetheless.

Among the many lessons I learned during that time was how to build systems, how to build up other people, how to develop a culture and a community that people wanted to be a part of, how to build wealth, and how to build a profitable business that didn’t rely solely on one person to make it all happen.

Friends, this 7-part framework was born out of those experiences and the lessons I’ve been learning along the way over the past 40 or so years. Each letter of the framework stands for, not only a command to do something, but also what to do to ensure your survival in business and how to build a business that serves your life instead of the other way around.

Let me make that point very clear: everything I teach and coach on is about building a business that serves your life, not a life that serves your business. A huge mistake so many people make, in my not so humble opinion, is they mold their life around their business instead of building a business that enhances their life.

In this episode, I’m giving you BOSSMAP™, which is a 7-part framework for building a business that runs without you, grows without chaos, and is protected like an empire should be protected. This isn’t theory. This has been built over many years of mistakes, failures, and some eventual successes.

You’ll walk away with some metrics and benchmarks for each stage, how many SOPs you need, what your vision document should look like, how to simplify so scaling gets easier (should you decide to scale), how to manage your days like a CEO, the standards you must model, the audits you can’t skip, and the protections that keep it all secure. 

B- The first letter of the BOSSMAP™ framework, and the first commandment, if you will, is the letter “B”, and it stands for ‘Build The System’.

Let’s be honest with each other, chaos is expensive. I’ve lived and worked in chaos, and I’ve lived and worked in peace. While I fully understand that, to some degree, they’re two sides of the same coin, one of those leads to burn out and loss far more often than the other one does. Yes, you can build a business and profit from chaos, but it should not be the preferred method if there is a better way…and there is.

The best path out of chaos is through the building of systems and processes. A boring and uninspiring set of words, but necessary if you want to build a real business that fuels and funds your life instead of the other way around. Systems literally and figuratively save lives and profits.

What does a good system look like? Simple. That’s it, a good system is born out of simplicity. If you hear the word ‘system’ and think complicated, complex, and lots of steps, you’ve done it wrong. You may have heard the phrase ‘simplicity scales, complexity fails’, and I can confirm that it does almost every time. That does not mean that a complex system always leads to failure. Some systems will inevitably be more complex than others.

I imagine the system and steps to build a rocket ship is fairly complex. But we’re not rocket scientists, nor brain surgeons, we’re entrepreneurs. The goal should always be the least complex system possible for accomplishing the desired result. Just burn the word ‘SIMPLE’ into your brain and then start asking the question: ‘what is the simplest system that will allow this part to run either completely or almost on autopilot?’

Not every system nor every process will be able to run on autopilot, but you should identify the ones that can and make them as automated as possible first, then move on to the next system. The motivation that leads you to what to work on first, second, third, and next is based on the theory of constraints. I learned this idea from a life and business changing book I read many years ago called, ‘The Goal’, by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox.

Essentially, you have to always be asking yourself, ‘what is the single biggest factor right now limiting how much money, value, and/or output the business can produce?’ Whatever the answer is is your biggest and most important focus. Whatever that thing is is your biggest constraint and the thing that you put all your effort into removing as a constraint so that it can show you the next constraint, and so on.

In an appraisal business, for example, your biggest constraint might be orders, as in, you don’t have enough of them and want more. Ok, now we have a constraint and likely no system to truly handle the constraint like a professional. The way most appraisers handle the constraint is by simply signing up for more AMC panels, which may work to some degree, but is guaranteed to cause another constraint at some point.

My suggestion is to do some research and then build a system that attracts, qualifies, and elevates potential lead/order sources that are not based on the whims of someone else. If you build a business that is solely based on interest rates, AMCs, government entities, and whoever happens to be in office at the time, your business will be at the whims of all of those forces. Conversely, if you build a business based on human nature, the needs of the market, and being able to take care of customers better than your closest competitor, now you have something that can last and won’t be tossed around in the waves of change that government work inevitably                 brings.

Of course, I don’t mean to be cryptic, I’m talking about building your most important business system around the non-lender and private side of the appraisal business because it’s one of the only segments of the business where you are free to truly employ real appraisal techniques and be of real service to the client. When 50% or more of your business is based in the estate, divorce, cash sales, pre-listing, trust, and tax appeal side of the market, you have some real control over your business. And that should be your goal: at least 50% of your business from non-lender sources over the next 3 years.

The “B” in BOSSMAP™ stands for build the system, which is the commandment that implores you to start building your SOPs, your customer/client relationship management system (CRM), your marketing and lead workflows, your process workflows, and anything else that is a constraint to you making more money in less time and having fun doing it.

Your next step and to start removing the constraints in your business is to sit down and list out 3 things you do every week that can and should be systematized. If they can be automated, even better! But, at the bare minimum, start writing down all the things you do step by step and then start to figure out how those steps can be systematized. If you’re a one-person business and making the excuse that you don’t need a system because its just you, shame on you! That’s EXACTLY the time to start building systems, instead of when you hire your first assistant or your first trainee and have to start figuring things out while still flying the plane. Do it now while things are truly simple.

Have at least 3 SOPs to start, a written growth plan, and have, at bare minimum, a quarterly P&L (profit and loss) statement to review. As a business owner, you should have a monthly P&L, but we’ll start easy as we build the system and just do quarterly for the first year.

If you don’t have systems, you are the systems, which means you’re trapped in a prison of your own making. Building the system is the key to release yourself from the prison, and, as importantly, releasing the business to be what it can truly be.

The “O” in BOSSMAP™ stands for ‘Own the Vision’, as in, if you don’t have one, the business doesn’t have one.

The vision for your business cannot simply be to wake up, set up a file, go do an inspection, pick some comps, write up an appraisal, and then do it all again the next day. That’s not a vision, that’s a shitty treadmill. It may have been fine when you first started because you were escaping something else. You became an appraiser to have some control over your life and income and now you’re on a treadmill dictated by whatever is in your queue.

I’m sorry if this offends some of you, but that is just a job, that is not a business. You left one job for another, that’s all. That might be just fine for some of you, and for the ones that like it that way, cool, this probably isn’t for you. But, for those of you who can see that you’ve really just painted yourself into a corner and you can’t stop lest your income stops, then it’s time to develop a little bit of a vision for yourself and your future.

I’ll make this one simple: you don’t have to have a business of 5 or 10 people to have a vision. One-person businesses need visions too. One of the reasons appraisers get so little respect in the greater real estate and lending professions is because so many of them have no real vision beyond just getting an email asking for a fee and turn time bid. That doesn’t require a vision, that requires only a pulse.

If you want to be remembered, respected, and revered, you have to have an articulable vision for yourself, your business, the results you get, and how your clients will be better off for doing business with you than they would with anyone else.

Start today by jotting down some notes regarding your vision for your life, how your business reflects that vision, and what you want things to look like 3 years from now. If your vision is to be doing the same thing you’re doing today, again, that’s not a vision, that’s what we affectionately call ‘playing not to lose’. You’re hoping things will stay the same long enough so that you don’t have to change what you’re doing and upset your comfort level. And again, if that’s you, you might not be who I’m speaking to. I’m generally speaking to the ones who absolutely do NOT want to be doing the same thing in the same way 3 years from now.

The next letter and commandment in the BOSSMAP™ framework is ‘S’, and it stands for ‘Scale With Simplicity’.

We’ve already talked about building the system with the very first letter of BOSSMAP™. Scale with simplicity is simply another command to look for the most annoying constraint to you making more money in less time while maintaining or increasing the value you deliver to your clients and then remove that constraint with a simple system, not a complex one.

Simplicity scales, complexity fails. The systems and processes you come up with should be so stupidly simple that somebody from outside the industry should be able to walk into your business and start running it perfectly within 30 days. All of your systems are documented, easily understood, and the systems allow you to do more in less time and make more money doing it. That’s what it means to scale with simplicity.

The second ‘S’ in BOSSMAP™ stands for ‘Strategic Scheduling’, which means you MUST manage your calendar instead of letting your calendar manage you.

If you wake up in the morning and your calendar is filled with a bunch of $10 to $50 per hour tasks, you’ll never grow past that. It’s a really simple math equation. You only have so many productive hours in the day to produce income and create a ridiculous amount of value for the money you charge. If much of your day is spent on lower value activities, how will you ever create the life you want and the value for the market? You can’t. It’s that simple.

Strategic scheduling is just that, strategic. Many of you are busy, just not strategic. Start time blocking like a real CEO and spend time on the stuff that matters, not just today or tomorrow, but stuff that will for sure matter in 6 months to a year.

The ‘M’ in BOSSMAP™ stands for ‘Model The Standard’, as in, become what your vision says you are so that everyone around you believes it too.

For those of you with other humans in your company, modeling the standard is you living and breathing your vision, your culture, and the standards you’re demanding from them. Your people will sniff out contradictions and disparities between your commands and your behaviors, so modeling the standard ensures that your vision for your life and company is visible in everything you do and say.

If you cut corners, your people will too. If you’re burnt out and don’t care what goes on, your business will reflect it. Remember what James Clear offered us in the book ‘Atomic Habits’, “…you don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems and standards.” Model the standard and the be the one everybody else wishes they were. Write out what your standards are and how they show up in your work, then demand from yourself that those standards are upheld.

The ‘A’ in BOSSMAP™ stands for ‘Audit Relentlessly’, which echos what the great Peter Drucker taught back in the 80’s and 90’s, which is that ‘only that which gets measured gets managed’.

If you don’t have KPIs, OKRs, or simple metrics that you’re tracking on a regular basis, how can you possibly know how you’re doing and whether or not it is fulfilling your 3-year vision? Quite simply, you can’t! You MUST have measurement standards for orders, fees, time, income, expenses, profit, goals, your systems, leads, client experience, revisions, and whatever else you want to track in order to improve. If its not getting measured, its not getting managed and those things are managing you.

My suggestion to get started with auditing is to come up with the top 5 key metrics that you want to start tracking and measuring. Pull from the ones I just mentioned or come up with some of your own, but make sure they’re metrics that actually matter. Measure the things that actually matter and can make a difference in income, time, and value when improved.

The last letter in the BOSSMAP™ framework stands for ‘Protect The Empire’.

What this means is that, if you’re going to spend your valuable time and life energy building something real and valuable, you must take steps to protect it with boundaries, contracts (where appropriate), agreements, standards, insurance, a plan for the future, and, above all else, your own self care.

The most dangerous threat to your business today is not a competitor, it’s not AI, it’s not the new UAD form, and it’s not Fannie and Freddie being Fannie and Freddie. The most dangerous threat to your business today is neglect: neglect of your health (mental and physical), neglect of your time, neglect of your values, and neglect of your vision.

If you’re going to build something worthwhile, you must first protect its most valuable asset, which is you, and then everything else. You must guard and protect your time, your energy, your mental health, your IP, your assets, and your vision from neglect and erosion.

The first question to ask with this one is, “what have I built that I’m not protecting properly?”

Build the system with SOPs, process documents, and a written growth plan.

Own the vision by first having one, then documenting it. Make it exciting, compelling, visionary, and motivating to such a degree that other want on board.

Scale with simplicity by first eliminating 25% of the things you’re doing that you shouldn’t be and don’t add more income, more time, or more value for your clients. Then take a look at your current systems and ask, ‘how can these be made simpler?’

Strategically manage your calendar like a real CEO would. don’t let the vendors, the lenders, and the AMCs dictate what is important and valuable to you. None of them will give two shits if you go out of business next year or if you die. You’ll be replaced without a tear within the hour.

You must take charge of your calendar and block off CEO time, wealth building time, system auditing time, and $10,000 hour time because nobody else is going to do it for you.

Model the standards you’ve set for yourself and everyone else in your business. Even if its just you, have a routine that others would want to model if and when they learn about yours. If it’s not just you, then it is absolutely imperative that you set the standard that others mist strive to live up to and, by doing so, they become better as a result. That, by the way, is also called leadership.

You must have metrics and KPIs that can be tracked, measured, and then audited regularly to make sure you’re on track to your vision. If you have no vision, you likely also have no metrics to audit. If you start to create some metrics to audit, you’ll likely start to develop a vision. All 7 of these principles and commandments work together to help you create a business that cannot fail.

And, finally, you must protect the empire. If I didn’t explicitly say it when we went over this one, let me say it now, protecting the empire begins first and foremost with protecting your mental and emotional health, along with your physical health. You are the empire, friends.

If you’re not strong physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually (whatever that means for you), there is little point in building the external empire. Growth of the business empire will likely kill you if you don’t have the internal stuff in order first. Protect the empire really means protecting you and your future from you and your bad habits.

Friends, you can’t wing your way to freedom, wealth, and happiness. Every great leader and business builder has a map to what their vision dictates is possible. That’s why I created the BOSSMAP™.

This was just an introduction and an overview of the BOSSMAP™ framework so that you can start to build or renovate with it. Of course, we go much deeper on the BOSSMAP™ framework in the Increase Academy community, which you can jump into completely free over at www.CoachBlaine.com/freemonth

Until next time, do more, be more, live more, and give more. I’m out…