Secrets of Top Business Builders Exposed!

By Dale Beaumont

IN THIS BOOK YOU WILL DISCOVER...

The most effective way to plan and strategise for future growth.
How to attract the best new talent and retain high performing staff.
Why companies must start training the next generation of leaders now.
Current trends in the world of marketing and what's really working.
Latest advances in technology to improve productivity and profits.
Strategies to better manage company cash flow and generate real wealth.
How any business can expand rapidly into domestic and overseas markets.

FEATURING WRITTEN MATERIAL BY...

MIKE REDDY (Shape Your Business)
In 1994 Mike created his own traditional tax-based practice before transitioning it into a boutique advisory consultancy, where he mentors and coaches business owners and key decision makers. Mike has been regularly utilised by the media to comment on small business affairs and presented countless seminars to business owners throughout Australia and New Zealand on a range of business development topics.

JOHN VAMOS (Business Coaching Systems)
Since starting Business Coaching Systems (BCS), John has become recognised as the pioneer of organisational coaching. John holds directorships in the financial services, management services and hospitality industries. He is also a leading commentator in the commercial press and has authored a book called You Don’t Think As Smart As You Are.

HELEN MACDONALD (Macs Results)
As director of her own business development consultancy and co-director of national training company, The Learning Difference, Helen is committed to helping her clients create positive workplaces, in which employees are encouraged to do their very best. Her messages are delivered through conference presentations, training programs and executive coaching.

BAKOUS MAKARI (Makari & Co)
Bakous Makari - In 1997, Bakous started Makari & Co, a business founded on the principle of ‘We See Opportunities, You See Results’. In the last few years he has helped his clients save millions of dollars in tax. His work has attracted the attention of Jay Abraham, who has actively endorsed Bakous’s wealth creation service.

JULIAN CAMPBELL (Business Wizard)
Julian is a sought-after professional speaker and every week over 40,000 people tune in to hear his business wisdom tips on his regular radio show, Business, the Law and You. He is the author of Stop the Wheel...I Want to Get Off!, a book designed to help businesses owners get off the treadmill of their business, make bigger profits and spend more time with their families.

BEN FEWTRELL (ActionCOACH)
Ben co-owns one of the largest business coaching firms in Australia and has personally coached over 100 businesses. He is a regular contributor to several national business publications and is involved in other business interests that operate without his day-to-day involvement.

MICHELLE BOWDEN (Michelle Bowden Enterprises)
At 28, with a baby and a huge mortgage, Michelle opened her training business, with AMP as her first client. She is an accredited NLP practitioner and master trainer in presentation and influencing skills. She works with CEOs and their teams to help prepare them for presentations at company meetings, conferences and sales pitches.

JOHN RAWSON (Success Gym)
With 25 years of business experience and a demonstrated gift for sales, John turned his hand to business consulting. He has since built a consultancy practice that specialises in business management and leadership systems based on improving people skills.

JACK FRAENKEL (Motivatories)
Jack worked his way up the ranks and occupied various middle management roles before becoming general manager of Downtown Duty Free. Since being made redundant in 1998, Jack has run his business consultancy company, working with a variety of national retailers, direct sales organisations and franchisors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dale Beaumont
• Release date: Sep 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9780987213754

Dale Beaumont

Dale Beaumont is the Founder and Managing Director of Business Blueprint – Australia’s fastest growing business education and mastermind program. His is the author and publisher of 16 best-selling books, which have collectively sold over a quarter of a million copies. Incredibly, 11 of those 16 books were published in a single year, a feat that earned him the title “Australia Most Prolific Author”. As a result of Dale’s success, he has been interviewed on Sunrise, Today Show, Mornings with Kerri-Anne, Ten News, ABC Radio, Radio 2UE as well as being featured in over 100 newspapers and magazines, including Wealth Creator, My Business Magazine, AFR Boss and Virgin’s In-flight magazine. Before books, Dale was the Managing Director of a boutique public relations firm, which generated over $5 million worth of free media exposure. Outside of business Dale has passion for educating teenagers. That’s why in 2001 he co-founded Tomorrows Youth International, which runs self-development programs for 13 to 21-year-olds in six countries. Dale’s flagship ’2-Day Empower U Program’ is still running to this day and over 27,000 young people have now been impacted by the program he started. Finally, but most importantly, Dale is a devoted family man. He’s married with two little boys.

Book preview

If I were in your position right now I’d be wondering if I really needed to read this section. However, if this is the first ‘Secrets Exposed!’ book that you’ve read, could I ask you to please resist the temptation to skip ahead, as I’d like to briefly share with you why this book has been created and how you can best use it to impact your life.

When I was growing up I heard somewhere that there are two ways to live your life: the first is through ‘trial and error’ and the second is through ‘other people’s experience’. At the time I dismissed it as just another one of those sayings that sounds good, but doesn’t make much sense. Then, like most teenagers I finished school with stars in my eyes thinking, ‘This is great! My education is over – no more books, no more lectures, no more people telling me what to do’. How wrong I was. After a few months of bouncing around, not quite sure of what to do next, I stumbled across the idea of personal development and started to hear concepts such as:

• Formal education will earn you a living, but self-education will make you a fortune.

• Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.

• You will be the same person five years from now, except for the people you meet and the books you read.

• Don’t wish that your job were easier, wish that you were better.

• You are your own greatest asset, so you must invest in yourself.

Since November 2000, I have been totally committed to becoming my own most valuable asset. After attending hundreds of seminars, listening to thousands of hours of CDs and reading shelves of books, I have discovered that the people who truly succeed aren’t any smarter, better looking or harder working than anyone else – they just think differently and have learnt to incorporate different values into their lives.

I am now in the very fortunate position of being able to travel internationally to present personal development seminars to teenagers and I am often asked, ‘What is the one thing you need to know to be successful?’ My answer is always the same: ‘The one thing that you need to know is that there is not one thing that you need to know to be successful’. I’ve learnt that success is multifaceted and that mastering one principle of success or area of your life isn’t going to take you to the top – the more you master, the more successful you will become. But if I did have to identify one of the most important success strategies, it would be this: ‘Find out what successful people do and do the same thing until you get the same results’.

That’s what this book is all about. The only difference is, instead of you going out and finding successful people, we’ve brought them to you.

You see, whatever you want in life, whatever you are shooting for, chances are that someone else is already living it. They have already invested years of their life and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, they’ve made lots of mistakes, learnt from them and eventually succeeded. So why would you want to waste your own time, money and effort through ‘trial and error’ when you can fast-track your success by learning from ‘someone else’s experience’? As Sir Isaac Newton said, ‘If I have seen further it is because I have been standing on the shoulders of giants’.

Every time you pick up a book, attend a seminar or interview a successful person, you are compressing years of life experience into a few hours. With any of the ‘Secrets Exposed’ books, you can multiply that by between twelve and seventeen people and you’re looking at around 250+ years of experience and wisdom ready and waiting for you. It won’t prevent you from making mistakes of your own, far from it, but it will help you to make more calculated and purposeful decisions, rather than big, misguided and ignorant ones.

There is no shortage of information about how to achieve proficiency or even greatness in any area of life these days. Go to any bookstore or library and you’ll find the shelves sagging with titles from experts, all with their own theories and ways of doing things. But what I have discovered is lacking in almost all of these books is INSPIRATION. What’s missing is role models and mentors – the stories of people we can all look up to. People who started out exactly like you – with a dream in their hearts and with all the same fears and insecurities. Given the choice between reading a textbook or a dozen success stories about people who have actually done something, I’d take the success stories any day of the week. I’m not saying that theoretical information isn’t important, of course it is, but having presented hundreds of talks to all different types of audiences, I can confidently say that it’s always the stories that move people. It’s the whole, If he or she did it, then so can I that gets inside people’s hearts. When we’re inspired we get motivated and then we take positive action which leads to results.

The ‘Secrets Exposed’ books are not intended to be a one-stop-shop. They are an introduction to the wealth of knowledge available to you and to some of the real success stories of people who have reached the top in their chosen field of endeavour. That’s why at the back of each book you will find most of the contributors’ contact details and some of their other products and services that are available to help you continue your journey.

So, how did the whole idea for the ‘Secrets Exposed’ books come about?

Well, in 1998, when I was around seventeen, my nan gave me a copy of a book titled Collective Wisdom, by Brett Kelly. In it were transcripts of face-to-face interviews with a whole lot of prominent Australian personalities. And it was a fantastic read. Since then I have seen a handful of random ‘success story’ books, but the challenge I find with most of them is that they are either transcripts of interviews, that never really make complete sense in the printed form, or they are written by writers who paraphrase someone else’s story. The result tends to be a diluted message that doesn’t really allow you to get a sense of the individual’s personality or character.

In around 2001 I read my first Chicken Soup for the Soul book and realised that there were dozens and dozens of related titles designed to meet the needs of different people’s areas of interest. I thought that was pretty neat.

It wasn’t until January 2004 that the ‘Secrets Exposed’ idea boiled over. I was in my hotel room in Singapore relaxing after six straight days of presenting to hundreds of teenagers. I was reflecting on the ideas that had been shared with them. One of the most important was to seek out those who have already achieved what you want and ask them lots of questions. I was plagued by the thought that only a small percentage would act on that very valuable advice and that most would never take the step due to a lack of confidence, fear of rejection or an inability to contact the people they needed.

That’s when it hit me...’What if I could find the people and put together a number of books covering a range of different areas?’ I knew it would take a lot of effort, so for the next three days, I sat in my hotel room and developed the basis of an entire system to make it happen.

Based on my experience with other books, I decided that these books had to be non-time specific and be written (not spoken) by the people themselves. This way the answers would be planned and well thought-out, providing richer content and more interesting reading. I also wanted to make sure that there was an even balance between practical ‘how to’ information and inspirational stories that gave an insight into the highs and lows of people’s real journeys. I also wanted to ensure that a percentage of every book sold was donated to a charity relating to the nature of that particular book.

When I arrived home I got into action. However, between working out of a tiny one-bedroom flat and trying to manage two other demanding businesses, my plans were a little slow in the beginning and I had to be resourceful. So I bought a plastic tub and turned the boot of my car into a mobile office! Anytime I could find a spare hour or two, I’d park myself at the gym or a nearby coffee shop and make calls from my mobile phone.

Putting these books together has been both time-consuming and demanding, but it has also been a real privilege for me to have the opportunity to work with each of the people involved in the various books. Thank you, to each of you, for making it possible!

Well, I think you’ve heard enough from me. Now it’s time for you to discover for yourself the wonderful wisdom contained in these pages. I hope that you enjoy the read as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together. And who knows, maybe one day we will be reading your story?

Dream Big!

Dale Beaumont

Creator of the ‘Secrets Exposed’ Series

Sydney, Australia

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Download Your Free Audio Gift

Exclusive to readers of the ‘Secrets Exposed’ series...

In this 1 hour 43 minute recorded interview, author Dale Beaumont intimately shares the inner workings of the ‘Secrets Exposed’ series. Discover in greater details how he came up with the idea, how he managed to secure personal interviews with over 200 of the countries most successful people and what he believes are some of the most important business and life principles from each of the books in the series.

Simply visit the web page below and follow the directions to listen to or download the entire interview direct to your Notebook or PC.

www.SecretsExposed.com.au

Foreword

Building a business is one of the most exciting and rewarding career paths you can choose. I have personally built many of them, and educated literally hundreds of thousands of business builders across 26 countries.

With my team at ActionCOACH, I have seen thousands of business owners who had great products, great ideas, and worked really hard, but still couldn’t achieve the success they dreamed of. That’s how I know the most important thing a business builder can do is learn new ways of keeping ahead of the market, new ways of getting business, new ways of building the best team, and new ways of making an even bigger profit.

Business today is all about change and how fast you can move with the market, with your customers’ needs and wants and, most importantly, how fast you can take advantage of new ideas and new technologies.

It’s this rate of change that causes a real need for every business builder to learn.

Throughout this book you’ll get a great variety of valuable advice from people who are in the game. It’s not just theory, these are real-time, real life and really powerful stories and ideas for you to get to the bottom of what will get you to the top.

I remember when I was 16, I asked Jim Rohn what would guarantee that I would be successful when I grew up. His words were simple, ‘Read a book every week for the rest of your life’. So far I am just ahead of one a week, and still learning.

Be sure that these stories and the advice in them are going to be a great investment; you only need to take one idea from this book that could change the course of your business and your life.

Enjoy the read.

Brad Sugars

Chairman and CEO ActionCOACH – The World’s #1 Business Coaching Firm Author of The Business Coach and 13 other business titles

Introduction

Up until now much of the business-related material in the ‘Secrets Exposed!’ series has been geared toward aspiring entrepreneurs, small to medium-sized enterprises and owner-operators.

We have been inundated with requests from people to delve into some new and uncharted territory. When it comes to business, people have asked if we can create a book that deals with issues facing larger and more established companies; a book with content that would greatly assist business owners, managers and executives within the corporate arena.

The result of these requests is the book you hold in your hands.

We approached a range of professional people who build businesses for a living. Thirteen people, all experts in their respective fields, answered the call, eager to share their wisdom and pass on what they’ve learnt.

Many have either owned or operated multimillion-dollar businesses throughout their career and would be considered seasoned entrepreneurs, having experienced the highs and lows of business. Today, they spend their time helping other established businesses to grow.

Each individual’s approach and area of expertise differs greatly – that is what makes this book so unique. Throughout the following pages you will be able to absorb the knowledge and approach of a range of people who are in the game and dealing with business on a daily basis.

So, you won’t find a whole lot of MBA theory or jargon designed to confuse you. Just practical knowledge and experience from people who are in the know, and who can command thousands of dollars per day for their time.

In saying this, we don’t want you to think that this book contains some magical ideas that will instantly launch a business into a near-vertical trajectory. Hmmm, wouldn’t it be nice if business was that easy?!

(Okay, enough dreaming!)

What you will find are many principles you’ll already know. But the million-dollar question is always, ‘Are you doing what you know?’ Success only comes as a result of application and most importantly, the discipline and determination to stick to strategies until they bear fruit. Remember, ‘Simple changes done consistently and compounded over time have an effect in a positive (or negative) way’.

To further assist you in your own endeavours, a number of contributors have also very generously offered valuable gifts to all of our readers. To receive them, all you need to do is visit the website address provided and follow the steps to download the bonus gifts – absolutely free.

At the back of the book we have included the contact websites of every contributor. You’ll discover that many have their own books or educational materials, which we strongly endorse and encourage you to investigate further.

Finally, as we say at the end of every ‘Secrets Exposed!’ introduction... remember it’s what you do after you read this book that is going to determine its real value to you. So, go out there, apply what you’ve learnt and when you reach a goal – no matter how big or small – let us know so we can share your success story.

Enjoy!

Dale Beaumont and Simon Paterson

Email: [e-mail]

Time To Question

John Vamos

"In our experience with over 4,000 workgroups in more than 1,500 organisations, we have found that the answers to the vast majority of business challenges are within the business"

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Profile

John Vamos

John Vamos was born in Sydney, New South Wales, in 1960. His parents are Hungarian immigrants and John and his three siblings grew up in a learning-focused environment where there was a high importance placed on having the best education and realising professional and personal potential.

For many, success comes from adversity, but for John nothing could be further from the truth. His father’s long and successful career with IBM provided the family with a lifestyle and security that John aspires to emulate for his family.

John completed an arts/law degree at Macquarie University and further tertiary qualifications in financial services at Deakin University.

Since starting Business Coaching Systems (BCS), the only dedicated organisational coaching business in Australia, John has become recognised as the pioneer of organisational coaching. Using his successful business ‘Thinking Systems™’ methodology, he now has operations spanning Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

He recently founded the Institute of Organisational Coaching, a professional development business designed to promote and teach the successful methodologies he uses with his clients today.

John holds directorships in the financial services, management services and hospitality industries. He is also a leading commentator on business and social issues in the commercial press and has authored a book called You Don’t Think As Smart As You Are. His aspiration in life is to be instrumental in defining and developing the thinking and practice of organisational coaching.

Today, John lives in Sydney with his family and music collection. When he isn’t coaching or spending time with family, you can find him watching rugby league and American football or listening to his favourite rock group, KISS.

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When did you first discover your passion for business?

I honestly do not remember not thinking about being in business or engaged in some form of enterprise. I started my first business when I was eight years old. My brother, Steve, and I decided to do odd jobs to earn some extra pocket money.

To do this we had to establish job descriptions (today, Steve would refer to this as ‘getting alignment’). Steve took responsibility for this and informed me that he would have three key performance indicators (KPIs) which were:

1. selecting good houses

2. ensuring he was polite when introducing himself to the client

3. making sure I left the house safely with the money.

My three KPIs would be:

1. finding out what the task was

2. completing the task

3. collecting the money and returning safely with the cash.

He would patiently wait at the end of the client’s driveway for me to complete the task. I think Steve has been a leader ever since!

As a business coach, I have dedicated my life to working out how to get the right people doing the right things, in the right order, with the right resources!

After my first business venture with Steve, I applied my learnings to my next business, Lightning Pool Services, at age 13. Along with a schoolmate, I made leaflets for pool cleaning and garden clean-ups in the local area. In the late 1970s the recession hit, so I was 14 when I had to do my first round of retrenchments.

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I have dedicated my life to working out how to get the right people doing the right things.

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I discovered early that my natural inclination was to organise whatever I was doing – even if it was not my idea, somehow I would end up directing traffic. To avoid conflict with the ‘leader’ I would use questions as a means of securing commitment and managing the team. This would lead to people looking to me for the next best step. I discovered early in my career that asking questions has a profound, almost hypnotic, effect. People presume that if you are asking good questions then you must have good answers. This has led me to rule number one of business – knowing what you do not know is absolutely critical. If you kid yourself it will cost you money every time. The secret to being a success in business is to be brutally honest about what your weaknesses are. If you are not, you will pay for every single one of them.

What was your very first significant job and what did you learn from it?

My first career was in financial services. I answered a call to action for a sales role in the life insurance industry, which has now morphed into the financial services/risk protection industry. Life insurance selling was an industry built upon motivation, courage and front. Although I know now how this profession was perceived, at the time I joined I did not see it to be anything other than an absolutely critical service. I believed in the concept and was passionate in promoting it.

I consider myself extremely fortunate that the first three to five years of my working career taught me some valuable lessons that I have applied ever since. I learnt how to do the hardest things in business and I learnt them well. The hardest things in business are attracting attention, securing time with a customer, describing an offer, securing interest, converting interest into action and getting commitment (money). Back then I was completely oblivious to both the reputation of the industry I had chosen and the degree of difficulty in cold calling and selling. In my bulletproof state of mind I decided that I could find people who liked and wanted what I was selling.

So, I spent half a decade of my early working career doing the hardest things in business. If you have succeeded in selling an intangible product or service then, when it comes to business, you have climbed Mount Everest. Selling something that cannot be seen is hard. Surprisingly enough, it is still something that I absolutely love doing.

In the beginning, what were some of the skills you lacked and what did you do about it?

When I first started out in the financial services industry I thought that I knew nothing but I could do anything. So in my early days I was desperate to learn and was totally confident that whatever I learnt I could apply. Then I noticed that there was a massive disparity among people, with respect to their ability to convert knowing into doing. Knowing (even intimately) still does not mean being able to do. Converting knowledge into action is a skill. Some have it, but many do not. Coaches level out the playing field when it comes to this core business competency.

Good business is about execution. You need to differentiate and manage your product or service. Growing up I always had a reputation for having an entrepreneurial flair, but not for following through. So I then developed a thinking method to solve that problem. When I began to promote that methodology to my clients and colleagues, my method became the foundation for their growth. As a result, my clients all think that I am just brilliant with detail. They do not know that in fact, it is my greatest weakness. In endeavouring to find a solution to it I discovered something that has tied me to implementation and detail for the last 25 years!

Who are the mentors that have inspired you? What important lessons have you learnt from them?

The only people I admire holistically in terms of a mentor are my parents and siblings. What I feel has served me well is that I actually do not look for mentors as such. I look for the good things in the people who I admire and I do not get confused by the strengths and weaknesses in everyone.

I look at the people I work with today and I see them achieve mastery in some aspect and that is the focus I choose to take. I ask myself, how can I get as creative as Ian Elliot (former CEO and chairman of George Patterson Bates)? How can I be as focused as Terry Lawler (founder of Lawler Partners)? How can I be as balanced as John Szangolies (CEO of the Bavarian Hospitality Group)? I admire what their strong qualities are.

The point is not to look for the whole package in a mentor. Look for skills that match your weaknesses. Once you know your weaknesses, find people who do not have them and include them in your terms of reference. Traditional mentors have a relatively short ‘shelf life’. Commerce is about learning, acquiring, growing and being versatile in your thinking, and not getting hung up on ideas or people.

What was the inspiration behind starting Business Coaching Systems (BCS)?

BCS was the metamorphosis of a hobby into a profession. In my early career in financial services, an observation that had a profound impact on me was that it is a profession where there is a massive generosity of spirit – everybody shares their great ideas rather than patent them and make them a secret. My colleagues would share knowledge with each other. For example, if they stumbled on an approach that worked, they would tell everybody. But all of this knowledge floating around did not mean that performance and success were being accelerated.

I became obsessed with this notion that humans do not take their tacit, innate knowledge and turn it into action. In response to these observations I designed models (which I later named ‘thinking systems’), which, if applied to a challenge, created a thinking ‘road-map’ allowing my friends and colleagues to turn their knowledge into action. It worked.

With BCS, what