What's the Score?

By Seth Lewis

Are you a blue-collar business owner or leader? Are you looking for a way to simplify your business? Are Key Performance Indicators confusing or failing you? What's the Score: How to Simplify and Scale Your Business With Actionable, Practical Metrics will teach you how to create a simple Scoreboard that brings clarity to your business a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manuscripts, LLC
• Release date: Sep 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889267614

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What’s the Score?

What’s the Score?

How to Simplify and Scale Your Business with Actionable, Practical Metrics

Seth Lewis

Copyright © 2023 Seth Lewis

All rights reserved.

What’s the Score?

How to Simplify and Scale Your Business with Actionable, Practical Metrics

ISBN

979-8-88926-760-7 Paperback

979-8-88926-761-4 Ebook

This book is dedicated to my beautiful wife, Janelle, and our children, Brooke and Jayden. I love you all and our life together. Our adventure continues, and I enjoy every minute of the journey.

Contents

Introduction

Part I. Preparation

Chapter 1. Clarify Your Data

Chapter 2. Clarify Your Mindset

Chapter 3. Clarify Your Purpose

Part II. Processes

Chapter 4. Your FLM Scoreboard

Chapter 5. Tracking Billing, Budgets, and Bookkeeping

Chapter 6. Tracking Job Costing and Profitability

Chapter 7. Keeping Score: Safety

Chapter 8. Keeping Score: Sales

Part III. People

Chapter 9. Scoring Individuals

Chapter 10. A Winning Culture

Chapter 11. Letting Go of the Burden

Chapter 12. Bringing It All Together: Leadership Meetings

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Never keep score in your marriage… Apply it to everything else.

—Seth Lewis

Introduction

If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?

—Vince Lombardi

Most small businesses don’t have a simple way to show their team if they are winning or losing.

Their employees are drowning in a sea of information, yet they still have no idea how their organization is really doing.

A scoreboard can make the difference between confusion and clarity, between misery and enjoyment.

This lesson hit home for me one afternoon as I sat shivering in Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania. Every year, I look forward to my trip to the Penn State football game. I usually take my wife along, but this particular year, she had a scheduling conflict and couldn’t come. So I decided to take my mom.

I knew my mom didn’t keep up with football and had no idea how the game was played. I wondered if she would get anything out of it or understand what was going on.

However, as the game progressed, I could tell my mother was engaged and excited. She cheered when our team got a point and groaned when they fell behind. Although my mom is not a sports fan, she knew exactly who was winning, who was losing, and what the team needed to do to get to their next milestone.

She was able to enjoy the entire game because of one thing: the scoreboard.

The scoreboard was the universal communication device that reached a wide audience, in real time, with specific action points.

First, the scoreboard pulled together a wide audience. The stadium was full of more than one hundred thousand fans from all walks of life. Yet the scoreboard communicated with clarity and simplicity so everyone in the bleachers knew the status of the game. The entire audience—whether clueless about football or die-hard football fans—understood what was going on.

Second, the scoreboard communicated in real time so stakeholders could take specific actions. Second by second, the scoreboard showed the exact position of both teams so everyone knew how to respond. Fans knew whether to cheer or boo. Players knew how far they needed to run to make the next touchdown.

This is exactly what you need in your organization. First, you need a universal communication tool that is simple enough for everyone to understand. You need to ensure that everyone is clear about the wins and losses of your company, from the top executive to the lowest worker. Second, you need to include current, Front-Leading Metrics to help your team make real, live in-game adjustments to their strategy. Many companies make the mistake of sharing post-data that is no longer relevant to decision-making. Instead, share information in real time so your team can take action before it is too late. This will help you avoid being blown out at the end of the business month. Having a universal communication scoreboard is a simple way to ensure that everyone is clear on what is mission-critical to winning the game.

Who Should Read This Book

Have you struggled to find a simple solution to moving your team and company forward? Have you implemented bits and pieces of ideas but haven’t found a way to bring them all together in a flexible framework that allows you to scale? Do you want to motivate your team so they get some skin in the game, lessening the weight on you as a leader? If so, this book is for you. We will explore the mindsets and practical steps you need to take to implement a simple, effective scoring system called the Scaling Score System (SSS).

In this book, I’m going to teach you:

How to set up a company Scoreboard.

How to set up individual Scorecards for your team that align with the Scoreboard.

How to empower your team to lessen the load on you as the leader.

How the Scoreboard will position you to improve your cash flow, your people, and your business processes so you can scale.

When your team knows the stats of the game and has the playbook, they will understand how to call the right plays. It will be clear to everyone who is performing and who is not. It will make hiring, firing, and growing your people easier. Your team will be motivated to get involved in the game, which will lower your stress levels and make more money for everyone. This isn’t only about you… it’s about helping your team win, care, and stay so everyone grows together. The Scaling Score System works if you do it. Keep reading to find the secrets to success.

Why Should You Listen to Me?

Maybe you think you should listen to me because of my professional resume. I own and have owned over eight companies and am a two-time published author with global support from across the US and the globe. I have an executive MBA from Villanova University. I have used my experience to help others make a lot of money in their current businesses or help them start new ventures with their passions. I love what I do because it helps leaders find financial freedom so they can live the life they were meant to live. I have a lofty goal of helping one hundred thousand business owners and leaders implement the Scaling Score System (SSS).

But the real reason you should listen to me is because I’ve been where you are. Years ago, I was paying close attention to my Keep Performance Indicators (KPIs), but my business wasn’t growing. In 2019, one of my service companies had a record revenue year. It was exciting—until we closed our books with our accountant. When the accountant reported that we lost over $60,000 on one client, I was shocked! I asked myself, How could this happen when we were watching our KPIs?

Many other companies and business owners can relate. They run their companies based on revenue and lack a simple way to ensure success by year-end. This is a recurring theme with the business owners I coach.

Most of us got started through a passion or something we were good at. It quickly grew into a business that we knew nothing about. Business is messy. It involves financials, planning, people, hiring and firing, compliance, money, partners, vendors, and clients. With all of this and more, it’s hard to know what to evaluate to drive a scalable business ahead.

As a result, many business owners don’t make it. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that approximately 20 percent of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open. Seventy-five percent of businesses close their doors before they reach the fifteen-year mark (Reichman 2022).

But I’m here to give you tools that will give you the best chance of avoiding that outcome.

I’m a blue-collar guy that has been taught by the school of hard knocks. That’s exactly how I’m going to share the information in this book: in a simple, actionable fashion that will help you win your first touchdown in your business!

How This Book Is Organized

In Part 1, we’ll look at Preparation. We’ll explore the prerequisites that you’ll need to have in place before you can implement my Scoreboard. This includes mindsets.

In Part 2, we’ll discuss Processes. We’ll dive into the nitty-gritty of how to set up a Scoreboard and will look in detail at the metrics you need to include in your Scoreboard.

In Part 3, we’ll talk about People. We’ll learn how to create Scorecards for every individual on your team, including managers. We’ll also unwrap one of the key benefits of my Scaling Score System. You’ll be able to start turning over the leadership responsibilities to your team!

Overall, you’ll see the benefits of making a simple Scoreboard that helps your organization win the game of life.

Winning the Championship

When you start thinking of your business as a game, everything changes. In a football game, the team needs to know how far away they are from the yard line. Each time they have the ball, they have to choose a play to advance their position on the field. In the same way, your team needs to work toward its goals.

Your goal will be different from the football player’s goal: sending a hundred messages instead of running a hundred yards. Instead of showing stats on the competition between the different teams, your Scoreboard shows the struggle between your budget and your actual expenditure.

But the concept is the same. As you simplify your business and gamify it, your whole team can work together to get the first touchdown. That will motivate them to get more touchdowns so their team can win the game and eventually the championship.

When you implement the Scaling Score System, you will begin to win business championships! In business, a championship is an organization that energizes you and produces the income you desire. It is a business that provides enough cash for you to live the life you want while simultaneously giving you personal freedom.

My book is for business owners and leaders who are ready to simplify their business journey, to align and motivate their time, all while lessening their load!

I want to thank you in advance for going on this journey with me. I want your business to start growing or continue to scale up. I want life to get better because of implementing the Scaling Score System.

I have three simple requests as you start this journey:

Go to www.scalingscoresystem.com and download a free Scoreboard worksheet so you can build your own Scoreboard as you read each chapter.

As you achieve wins, will you share them with me? Find me on LinkedIn or social and share your success. Your success motivates me! I’m here for you!

Reach out if you want a deeper level of support in implementation.

Let’s get it!

Part 1

Preparation

Chapter 1

Clarify Your Data

Clarity of vision is the key to achieving your objectives.

—Tom Steyer

I think your screen is frozen.

Have you ever heard these words or spoken them to a colleague on a video call?

I’m sure this scenario was all too familiar to you during the early days of video conferencing. As a leader, you were explaining an important new strategy or approach to your business. Your team members were following along. They chuckled when you made a joke, nodded when you asked for understanding, and inserted one-word responses to your explanations.

Then everything went off the rails. Thirty seconds into a serious part of your presentation, one of your team members chuckled loudly out of nowhere. While you, as the leader, were gushing about a new idea you were very excited about, your colleague abruptly said, No! It didn’t take long to realize what happened: Your team member was no longer responding in real time.

When this happens in video calls, we immediately look for solutions. We find faster internet, new technology, or internet connectivity issues.

But in business, we allow this lag time to go on for months, years, or even decades. As a result, the information coming to our team is delayed.

In the technology world, this lag time often happens because the internet or device is overloaded with input and stimuli that the device or network can’t process.

What if I told you the problem is the same in business? Your team members are overloaded with information. Dozens or hundreds of statistics and Key Performance Indicators flood their minds. Your business can’t process it all. It certainly can’t process it all quickly.

In this chapter, I will show you a few ways to simplify your tracking systems to streamline the processing of your business. The answer is not more information, more data points, and more performance indicators. The key is simplifying, and it all starts with understanding the problem.

The Problem: Data Overload

Key Performance Indicators have let us down.

We all have heard the fancy KPI buzzwords. We’ve probably used them ourselves. This business lingo sounds impressive and seems to promise huge rewards. But in the end, these words have not helped us move our business forward as they promised. If we do not