How we got a breakthrough in our business

We all struggle with 'Daily Pain Points' (i.e., People: staff, suppliers and clients; Products: from design and development to production and logistics; and Profits: from financial management to marketing and sales) and most of us we live constantly with a feeling that ‘There must be a better way!’ and ‘What do successful business people know that I don’t?’. We even ask ourselves, 'Why am I working so hard, but not yet financially independent and able to exit my business without losing my income?'.

We understand those feelings as we also struggled for years to build a business from ground up – and even as business and marketing consultants, who had read every book and resource we could find on business, financial management and growth strategies, we still battled to get a breakthrough for our business. Then one day everything changed.

It seemed like a small idea at the time – one that was very risky from a traditional way of thinking about business. The idea was to give our clients to our competitors – no kidding! Yet, when we did exactly this, our business exploded and we ended up building a global company.

This success led to an awakening about every aspect of business. Suddenly, all the books we had read made sense, but only as a whole. That is, each one had a part of the picture, but none of them conveyed the whole message in a way that caused any sort of breakthrough for us – or our clients. It took this breakthrough in thinking – and a number of years testing these new ideas – to change our long held beliefs about business and financial success. We realised that the beliefs we had previously held onto held us back from success – in fact, they made us run as hard as we could away from success.

We now understood the feeling that global business builders have when they cross that threshold. We too looked back at our past efforts and thought, 'If only we had known – it would have saved us decades of hard work and millions of dollars!'. We too wanted to teach our clients what was now obvious to us.

However, whenever we tried to help a client, even though to us the problems they faced seem obvious, we mostly fought with them to get them to see the ‘bleeding obvious’. It took Covid-19 and the urgency of the problems that our clients faced for us to realise that what was needed was not for us to teach them – in the traditional way – but to guide them into having a radical change in their entrenched beliefs. This approach is often referred to as 'brain training'.

Because their need was so urgent we had very limited time to achieve this. Thus, we took the information we had already been teaching for many years, typically over a twelve month period, and turned it into a twelve session program – where each session builds on the other. It turns a client’s thinking and beliefs around. It enables them to see the ‘bleeding obvious’ and gain the epiphanies we ourselves had gained over years and years of hard work and study – in just twelve hours!

What is more, with this change of belief, they are now turned away from destructive behaviours and forever set on a path to success – no matter how slowly they move and regardless of what happens in their life or their business. It also means, when they do ask for help, they immediately understand what we are talking about and why we are giving the advice we give. Everything we say is now ‘bleedingly obvious’.

We are business builders, not consultants.

The Magic Beans program differs dramatically from almost all other business training and consulting services in two major ways:

1. The course is developed by a proven business builder – i.e., someone who has already succeeded in building a business from ground up into a global company – and helped others do the same.

2. Unlike all other training programs and university courses, the Magic Beans program teaches how to eliminate daily pain points – not simply how to manage them.

In The Harvard Business Review’s article, ‘Consulting is More Than Giving Advice’ (https://hbr.org/1982/09/consulting-is-more-than-giving-advice ) they rightfully outline the state of the business consulting industry and show its downfalls. They show that very few consultants equip their clients to be self-dependent by giving them the appropriate tools to self-diagnose their issues on an ongoing basis – either through a malicious strategy or a lack of understanding.

The truth is that most consultants are incapable of giving this level of advice as they simply lack the knowledge, understanding and experience to be able to do so. Why is this?

A typical business consultant has either come into consulting through a major business consulting firm, usually shortly after qualifying from university, or come from a senior role in corporate employment. Both of these types of people have never built a successful global company from the ground up. They lack any real world experience and are typically trained in a particular narrowly focused system of management in one very restricted role, discipline or facet of the businesses they have worked for (e.g., they may have only ever been involved in financial management, marketing or a production focused role – never all three. That is, they are not all-rounders.) Any good business does not want to employ people with a broad range of knowledge for a narrowly focused role. Most business owners want to keep their employees concentrated on the task they have been employed to perform – not looking at the wider aspects of building a better business.

Also, since almost any successful business has at its core well developed systems that take the ‘thinking’ out of performing day-to-day tasks, most corporate employees are not trained, or encouraged, to ‘think outside the box’.

Furthermore, Robert Kiyosaki, in his book Rich Dad-Poor Dad, rightly advised readers to get advice only from those people who have already been successful in achieving the desired goal. For example, if you want investment advice, don’t ask an accountant who is not already a successful investor. In the same way, you should not be getting advice on business building from someone who has never built a successful business.

This is typically why all other consultants and business training courses focus solely on managing daily pain points – not eliminating them. As this has been their only focus for their entire career. They are managers – not eliminators. Their job is to perform a function within an existing system – not design a system that eliminates their job.

Thus, their focus, when advising clients, is to look at managing daily pain points – systems, staffing requirements, financial management, marketing systems, etc. They have no idea that the business OWNER should never be thinking like an employee. Their focus should not be on simply managing these daily pain points – i.e., being a better manager. Instead, as Michael Gerber wrote in his book eMyth, they need to stop working IN their business and start working ON their business – that is, as Kiyosaki wrote, move from being self-employed to being a business owner and eventually simply an investor in a business.

This type of thinking requires a completely different focus. It requires, what Michael Hill in his book Think Bigger wrote about, not a 3-5 year plan, but a 30 year plan. It also needs a much fuller understanding of business systems – as outlined in our Blueprint for Business. Along with this, one needs a completely different set of beliefs from those that we have been indoctrinated in from our youth – usually by people who have never built a global company from ground up. Consequently, our supposedly ‘sane’ thinking about business and finances are precisely what stops us from being successful in the first place.

Changing a person’s beliefs is the hardest job for any consultant. It is usually much easier to pander to the client’s current beliefs and conformational bias than to try and change their thinking for the better. Consequently, your traditional ‘good’ business consultant is one who has highly developed skills in office politics – which is precisely why they have succeeded in a corporate career. Whereas, a business owner needs real help from someone who is not trying to ‘play them’ to gain financial advantage.

The Magic Beans program takes our clients through twelve sessions that build on each other to fundamentally change the person’s beliefs about business and business success. They re-educate clients and give them the tools – and beliefs – they need to succeed. In the end, they are fully equipped to self-diagnose any issues that arise within their business. They are turned from self-destructive thinking to a thinking that, no matter how slowly they move, will eventually lead to success. They are turned around from frantically running towards failure to walking calmly towards achieving their goals.

Most people look at the session headlines and say, 'Well, I already know all about these things – nothing new here!' What you need to understand is that your current understanding about each and every aspect of business needs to change. Therefore, the headline may be familiar, but the understanding you have of those topics needs to be turned around.

This is the only program of its type in the world. All other brain training programs look at a small aspect of a business or financial success – e.g., Rich Dad–Poor Dad looks at investment and money management; eMyth looks at systems and procedures; and Think Bigger looks at goal setting. Individually they are great, but they are only a small part of a much bigger picture that is required to fully understand business in a way that ensures long term success.

Contact the author to find out more or visit MagicBeans.nz