Who is Craig?
Craig is the creator of the visionary results system, which is a three step method that helps business owners turn their vision into predictable scalable results. If you have a vision and you want results, Craig helps you turn your vision into results.
Key Takeaways
a lot of business owners, don't really understand the market, they don't understand what the market needs, what the market wants, the things that are coming down the road that are going to impact the market, whether that is regulatory changes, or technological changes, or things like the pandemic. And so they don't really understand they don't understand the market they don’t position what makes them different from the other 1000 people who do what they do,
Every organization has four functions:
1. SELL – sell their product or service
2. DELIVER – deliver that product or service to their customers
3. COLLECT – collect the income from the customers
4. GOVERN – govern the organization – file taxes, hire and train, etc.
3. These functions fall across five types of capabilities:
1. KEY PROCESSES – the key processes and activities required
2. ORGANIZATIONAL POLICIES – for example, are salespeople 100% commission or noncommission?
3. ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE – who reports to whom; how does information flow; how are decisions made and by whom.
4. SKILLS & ABILITIES – the skills and abilities the people in the organization need
5. TOOLS & RESOURCES – the tools and resources required (equipment, software, website, trucks, etc.)
Valuable Free Resource or Action
download his model at visionaryresults.com/freestuff.
Transcript
Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)
Stuart Webb 3:22
Welcome to it's not rocket science, five questions over coffee. I'm here today with Craig Paxson. Craig is the creator of the visionary results system, which is a three step method that helps business owners turn their vision into predictable scalable results. I like the sound of this, Craig, this is something that is much needed for for the world business owners don't know how to turn their vision into something which is deliverable level and scalable. So I think it's gonna be a great conversation. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Stuart. I'm, I'm happy to be here. So gonna be fun. So great. Let's start by sort of understanding who that ideal client is that person that really needs the scalable results that you deliver.
Craig Paxson 8:54
Yeah. So I work with, with business owners and executives, usually between businesses, between one and 15 million, who are tired of chasing their business. So what do I mean by chasing their business? So, you know, something happens in the business. Somebody didn't do what they were supposed to do. And so they go chase down that person to make sure that they actually do it. A client leaves or threatens to leaves and they go, they go chase that client. They need to get more revenue. And so they go out chasing new clients or chasing different places to get revenue, the market changes for some reason COVID happens or a new competitor comes in, and they end up chasing ever they just all they're doing is chasing, chasing, chasing. So if if you're a business owner, and you're tired of chasing your business, then the system can help.
Stuart Webb 9:54
Craig I love the sound of this. I think this is a brilliant, brilliant message. So tell us about The most common mistakes people try to make when they're trying to solve that problem without any help. Yeah,
Craig Paxson 10:06
well, the one of the first ones is that a lot of business owners, they don't really understand the market, they don't understand what the market needs, what the market wants, the things that are coming down the down the road that are going to impact the market, right, whether that is regulatory changes, or technological changes, or things like the pandemic. And so they don't really understand they don't understand understand the market so so the position they do what makes them different than the other 1000. People who do what they do, they don't really have a good way to do that. And so the way they sell is they chase those clients, usually the business owner is the person who is selling it, it's all about personal relationships. And that goes only so far, right? If If, if you're not that different than everybody else, then you end up competing on two things. One of them is the fact that you can play golf with somebody or take them out for drinks, or the fact that your price is lower, and no one wants to live there. Right. So that's one of the one of the common mistakes that people make. The other mistake that they have is they don't really have something that's executable. So there's, there's their strategy. And I put that in quotes, their strategy isn't really a strategy, because it's not grounded in the market, like we just talked about. But also it's not really able to be executed on a day to day basis, what they do on a day to day basis does not make their company different, does not make their company better, it does not make their company easier to run. And so that's when they end up chasing, they're chasing the market. They're chasing the portions of the company that aren't performing well. And then they're trying to figure out why when person x did this, did it not impact our profitability, or our customer satisfaction or it didn't resolve this customer complaints? Because they haven't they don't understand the market and they haven't put in systems to to make sure they're delivering what the market wants. That's it.
Stuart Webb 12:05
It's a common problem, Craig, it's, it's something that we all see, I guess as, as coaches and consultants are all days is the number of people that don't think through the end to end impact of something they do when you end up in a situation where somebody turns around says, Oh, I never expected that that unintended consequence that always sort of crops up and you sit there and go, think up thought and thought about it for five minutes. But you haven't had the time to think cavea you've been busy, busy, busy, noisy bedding, thinking.
Craig Paxson 12:34
Yes, yes, busy chasing. And I think for for, you know, a lot of not just business owners, but us as people, we want to start acting immediately, right, we want to go do so you know, even if even if an organization is, as the wherewithal to say, we're going to have a, you know, a strategic planning retreat, right? Well, when they first start, they first start talking about is, what are the projects that we're going to do this year, right. And so now they're just adding on to dues. So they've got what they normally do as a business another adding on all this, what they call strategy, these extra projects that to dues which usually don't get done, or they get done half haphazardly. Or when they do get done, they didn't really affect the market, the way they're positioned in the market, they didn't affect how they how they execute how they deliver stuff to the market. Because they didn't they weren't rooted in the market. They weren't rooted in what customers want what customers need. So we always want to go first to this, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? And so so what I've developed that I think really helps is what I call the strategic capabilities matrix. And so think of a matrix, it's a four by five matrix, there's four columns, every business from Amazon, or General Electric down to the smallest mom and pop bakery has four main functions. These functions are they need to sell their product or service, they need to deliver that product or service. They need to collect the money that's owed to them for that delivery. And then they need to govern the organization need to file their taxes, they need to hire people, they need to train people, right? So every business has those four functions. A lot of times we think about, you know what the functions of a business are sales, it finance, operations, right? But all of those things really just come down to those four basic pillars. Those four functions, sell, deliver, collect and govern. We don't sell it, we don't mean revenue, we don't deliver it, customers aren't going to pay us or we're not going to get repeat customers. We're not going to get new customers. We don't collect the money that's owed to us somehow, whether that is we're clicking on the front end of your credit card payments, or we're sending out an invoice afterwards, then we're not getting any cash. We're gonna go out of business and if we don't file our taxes if we don't hire people to process away those kinds of things, we're not gonna have an organization
that can exist. So those are the four the four columns in this in the main matrix, the strategic capabilities matrix.
The, there's five rows. Now in this strategic capabilities matrix, the first one is key processes. What are the key processes that we need to do? in each of those four different functions? What are the key processes to sell, deliver, collect and govern? So that's the that's the first thing, what are the key processes that we need to do? The second one is, what is what are the organizational policies that we need to have in place, again, to sell, deliver, collect and govern the organization? Right? policies are the most easily changed, but also the probably the most powerful things that we can have? They're just the rules that govern the organization. Think about how different organization is if the salespeople are 100%? commission versus 0%? commission? No. Right? That's just the organizational policy. Right? The third, the third row in this matrix is skills and abilities. What are those roles? What are the skills and abilities that are needed? Again, for each of the four functions, sell, deliver, collect and govern? Right? This is all about the people. Then finally, the next row is the last row. Oh, I forgot one. But anyway, that is a
Stuart Webb 16:33
five, this is brilliant stuff, great.
Craig Paxson 16:35
tools and resources, a good one, right. So you know, what are the tools and resources that might be websites or equipment, you know, delivery trucks, you know, a certain software package, whatever it is, again, what are the tools and resources that we need? And then the other The last one is organizational structure? Okay, what does the organizational structure what should it look like? Again, in order to sell, deliver collecting govern? Right? So organizational structure can be and includes who reports to who? You know, what that that the typical org chart looks like. But it can also be and needs to be thought about in how does information flow to different people? And how are decisions made? Who can make what kinds of decisions? Right? So that's all part of organizational structure. Normally, we think of structures just as the org chart, but we also need to think about for this particular process of selling the processes of settling, let's say, how does how does information about that sales process need to flow the organization? And who makes decisions for that sales process? At what time? Right? So that's organizational structure.
Stuart Webb 17:47
This is really interesting stuff, Craig, because I spend a lot of my time as a coach consultant, talking to business owners who are trying to get their business, ready for sale, ready to exit, right? You know, most business owners will naturally think that they can easily hand this over to somebody, maybe it's somebody that they already worked with, like a supplier or a manufacturer of their product, or somebody, somebody they know, maybe a family member, a lot of them will also turn around and say, Well, you know, I'll get three or four times the order book for this witness, you can get six or seven times if you've got the sort of structure that you've talked about there, when the key things have been identified, because somebody will pay you for the value of being able to pick up a simple document and go, I understand how this business works. And I can make it better, or I can, I can integrate it better. And it's such a It's such a shame that so many business owners are not taking the opportunity, when they're doing these sorts of reviews to actually put in place the sort of strategic review that you're talking about, where people understand how the business works. So I can't prove it, or deep so they can sell it.
Craig Paxson 18:57
Yes, absolutely. And it makes the business easier to run, right? We go through this process of determining the capabilities that are required. This this whole capabilities matrix, the key processes that we need, are the processes that we do every day, in essence, right? So strategy isn't something piled on top of what we do. Strategy is what we do. Yeah, right. And then the strategic projects that we want to put in place strategic initiatives are really projects to either create or improve these capabilities. Right, whether that's a key process that isn't doing exactly what it needs to do, maybe it's too expensive, and it's it's not doesn't have high enough quality, whether that is we lack a resource, we lack a way in in the way we're going to approach the market, we know that we need to have a different way of interacting with the clients when we deliver our service and so you We want to tool a resource. On the delivery column, the delivery function, we want to tool the resource of a new method of interacting with our clients. Now, that's a project to put that in place. So we can tie in the strategy with our day to day stuff. And the projects are strategic projects to make our business better.
Stuart Webb 20:23
And how many people when it came to the recent pandemic that didn't have an online presence that needed one, and I had no idea how important that was without something like this, to really guide them and say, your website isn't functioning, because that's become your primary sales source and prominent, possibly even your primary method of collecting the money. You know, there are too many out there that act as a sales brochure, but they don't collect money. And in the online world, suddenly, that's a missing that you hadn't even realized was going to be there. A simple matrix gives you that clear understanding, we need to improve the way we collect money on our website. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That's brilliant. Now, I suspect, Craig, from what you've been saying, your valuable free resource is going to be something along the lines of a document that we can download to have a look at some of this stuff.
Craig Paxson 21:13
That's correct, yes. So if my my valuable free resource is that visionary results.com, slash free stuff, all one word, Fr, e, s, t, u, f, f. And there's lots of resources to download there. One of them is the strategic capabilities matrix. So it is a PDF that has some instructions on it. And then it has an example matrix that you can use to fill out. And then to go along with that there's also a document to do quarterly planning to basically turn that capabilities matrix into something that you can utilize day to day on what you actually do in your business. So there's, there's a second, a second download for that. But yeah, the strategic capabilities matrix go downloaded visionary results, comm slash free stuff,
Stuart Webb 22:03
make sure that link is in the is in the notes in the comments below, because I think that's something that people are gonna be really interested in. So Craig, this is fascinating stuff. Is there a particular concept book program, or talk that led you to this, this, this, this, this thinking?
Craig Paxson 22:20
There's not really one, I'm a, I'm extremely well read, I read hundreds and hundreds, if not 1000s, of books. You know, when it comes to strategy, a lot of people think it's can be very academic, and theoretical. You know, one of the one of the leaders in strategy is Michael Porter. And, you know, if you look at some of the Michael Porter books, they're very thick, they're very academic, you know, he's a, he's a professor at Harvard. But one of the books that I really, that I learned a lot from about Michael Porter is called understanding Michael Porter by john McGregor. And it really breaks down strategy the way Michael Porter has strategy into something that's a lot simpler to digest, understand and act upon. So that that book, and then Blue Ocean Strategy, those those two things will teach you more about strategy and how to really understand how you compete in the market. So I really highly recommend those two particular books.
Stuart Webb 23:21
Love Blue Ocean Strategy. Absolutely love it. Okay, so what's the one question that I should have asked you? That I haven't? And, and what's the answer?
Craig Paxson 23:31
Or the what the answer to? So So, you know, one question, I think is, you know, what are the misconceptions about strategy? And so, you know, we touched on this a little bit earlier by talking about how, you know, people layer strategy on top. And people think that strategy, and they label things strategy, because they're big picture their high level, better long term. So therefore, their strategy? Well, just because something takes a long time to accomplish doesn't mean they're strategic. Just because something seems high level doesn't mean it's strategic. So my definition of strategy is this. And I think this is putting this into people's brains. And having them repeat this over and over and over, will help them really understand what strategy is and make it part of their daily business life. Strategy is simply the capabilities required to compete in the market and obtain the desired organizational results. That's it. That's what strategy is, strategy is not about doing. Strategy is simply that definition, what are the capabilities that we need as an organization to compete in the market and obtain the results that we want? Once we know those those capabilities inside the strategic capabilities matrix, now we can start to go execute Now we can go make those capabilities a reality. That's execution execution is is making the capabilities a reality strategy is determining what the capabilities are.
Stuart Webb 25:13
Right definition. Love it. Absolutely love it. Well, Craig, this has been a fascinating discussion. Really appreciate your time. I would encourage pretty much everybody listening at the moment to get and have a look at that. Those those documents that you've described on your read. So again, for us, it's visionary results forward slash free stuff,
Craig Paxson 25:35
visionary results.com, forward slash free stuff.
Stuart Webb 25:39
Brilliant stuff. Look, Craig, I hope I hope everybody goes and gets it because I think it's a really important topic I think is absolutely fantastic. The way you've just explained described it. So clearly just answers so many problems. I love what you what you're doing. Thank you so much for being on. If you'd like to keep up with what we're doing here, people, if you go to TTA dot FYI, forward slash, subscribe, you'll get notifications of great interviews, like as I'm doing with Craig, you can also read when, when people like Craig Come on out and get some of the stuff that he's talking about. So I'd encourage you to go to TTA dot FYI, forward slash, subscribe, get on the newsletter mailing list, and you can actually see more and more of this stuff. Craig, it's been an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate the time you spent with us. I sincerely hope that we can all get onto that website and download those, those free resources that you've mentioned. And thank you very much for being with us. Thank you. Stuart has a lot of fun. Appreciate it. No problem. So how are we done? Yeah, awesome. That was beautiful. No, okay. Well, we spent about 20 minutes talking to that's not bad.
Craig Paxson 26:48
Yeah, perfect. Enjoy. I love doing this stuff. Yeah, I can tell I could actually talk all day about it. But you know,
Stuart Webb 26:55
it's I love the way you're putting it because it is it is so simple. You know, when you when you you have a matrix, it makes it so clear where things are missing in an organization. You know, as I was saying, I was working with an organization that catered the pandemic, they had to shut all their shops. They had no online presence have they had a simple view of what they needed to start brewing? It would have meant that, you know, they didn't start with the blank canvas. What should we do to overcome this problem with them slightly after this situation by which stage I'd already said to them? You know, one of the things you've got a problem here is you've now got a shopfront, but you've got no way of collecting money, you're just not collecting any money. And the way they were expecting to collect money was get people to order and then send in a check or whatever. And it was like, No, this is this is never gonna fly feature, you know. So he had so much work to do at the beginning of the pandemic, because he was just unable to fully identify exactly where his problems were. Right? Yes, yes. That is great. That was brilliant. I love that. Thank you. Oh, I'll get I'll get that small amount of editing will get posted. I, you know, if there's, if there's a webinar or anything coming up, you want to highlight, let me know, we'll we'll get that out as well. Okay. All right. Cool. Thank you. I appreciate Stuart. No problem, Craig. All right. All right. Bye
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