This is your Daily Dose of Dave on the Inside BS Network. Hey now, I'm Dave Lorenzo, I'm the Godfather of Growth, and today I have something really special for you. We've reached back into the archives, back to 2007, and I'm sharing with you about an hour's worth of content.

And what this content is, is it's seven audio programs that I've put all together. I called this The Million Dollar Secrets, and I distributed these on CDs. That's right, compact discs.

They were sent out in the mail to people who subscribed to them, and there were seven of them. And I'm sharing it with you today because, number one, the content is amazing. It's still incredibly valuable.

Number two, I want you to see how far I've come as someone who's doing a podcast. And number three, I'll tell you that if you enjoy really cool, nostalgic audio programming, you're gonna love this seven-episode series. And the reason you're gonna love it is because I was developing my style.

I really didn't have a style at the time, but it's incredibly good content, and it's content that I had developed over, at the time, I think it was like 19 years or maybe 20 years of experience. Now we're 16 years beyond this, 17 years beyond this. So I look back and I think to myself, I'm amazed at how well I did delivering this information, given that I had no experience.

But the information is still incredibly valuable, and it's fun to listen to. And I've had my clients who received these CDs over the years ask me for them. And candidly, I didn't know where they were.

I just found them as I was going through my archives on a rainy afternoon here in Miami. So enjoy the million-dollar secrets. Enjoy the next hour.

And if you really like the content, please share it with some friends because our show only grows when you share this information with people you know who can use it to make more money and have more fun to make a great living and live a great life. Here we go with a million-dollar secrets. Enjoy the show.

Hi there, Workplace Warriors. This is Dave Lorenzo. I'm here to help you discover the hidden value that lies within your business.

This continuing education program is designed to help you make more money and have more fun doing it. Business moves fast, and you have to keep up, or you'll be left behind. This program will not only keep you at the front of the pack, it will put you in the lead.

Listening to this program and implementing the principles it contains will become your competitive advantage. Everything we cover in this session and in the sessions that follow has been used by actual people who have built multi-million-dollar businesses. Listen up and stay focused as we bring you the tools you need to be successful.

Hold on to your seat because we're about to reveal some more million-dollar secrets. Hi there, everyone. My name is Dave Lorenzo, and I'm an author, a business coach, and a consultant.

And I want to congratulate you on taking the first step down a path toward additional financial success and happiness. Now, you may be wondering what that step is. In fact, you may be asking yourself why I'm congratulating you.

Well, what you've just done, push play on your CD player or on your computer or your iPod or MP3 player, is something that most people don't do. In fact, research has shown that up to 80% of the effort necessary to complete any project is expended right at the beginning. That's right.

80% of the effort is in just getting started. So congratulations on taking this step and welcome to my continuing education program for successful business leaders. The five secrets that I'm going to share with you today may seem obvious after you hear them.

In fact, at first, you may not think they're all that special. I have to tell you that in life, it is usually the simple things that drive huge results. Let me say that again.

It's usually the simple things that drive huge results. So before we get into the five secrets that they don't want you to know, and since you and I have probably never spoken before, let me tell you a little bit about my background. During the past 20 years, I've worked with, mentored, and managed some of the most successful people in the world.

I've worked with large companies like Marriott International and Saks Fifth Avenue, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, MetLife Insurance, just to name a few. And I've also worked with entrepreneurs, small businesses, and sales professionals. In fact, those folks, the entrepreneurs, small businesses, and independent professionals make up the bulk of my coaching and consulting practice right now.

Now, one thing you need to know about me is that I'm basically a curious person. I love to speak with people and I love to study their success. And I particularly love to do research.

Even way back when, when I was a bellman in a hotel working my way through college, I would often speak with folks and ask them what they did and how they became successful. Over the years, this curiosity has served me quite well. In fact, it's helped me to enjoy the success that I have today.

I'm constantly learning. I love education and I love to dig deep into businesses and find out what makes them tick. My curiosity has led me to interview over 200 entrepreneurs.

And this research became part of my first book on business strategy. I started this research because I wanted to learn what made entrepreneurs successful. And I wanted to see if I could replicate that success.

You see, a few years earlier, I had studied successful business professionals in doing research for my thesis at Columbia University. In that study, I interviewed people who were professionals, doctors, lawyers, dentists, chiropractors, and accountants. These two groups, entrepreneurs and independent professionals, had the same elements of success in common.

I took those elements and now I apply them in several other strategies, tactics, and principles each and every single day in the coaching I do with business owners. The five secrets that I'm going to share with you today are the foundation of success. In fact, they're a great starting point.

If you take the information on this audio program and you go out and implement it today in your business, you will begin to transform your life and your work. This is indisputable. It's been proven over and over again.

All right. So there are a handful of secrets that lead to business success. Now, I know what you're probably thinking.

Dave, if this information is so widely available, then why aren't people using it every day to become rich? Well, this leads us to the part of the title of this audio program that everyone is talking about. Now, the title reads Million Dollar Secrets They Don't Want You To Know. And everybody comes up to me often, in fact, several times a day, and they want to know who they are.

I'll explain. Some people are using the information that I'm going to share with you on this audio program and on the audio programs that follow, and they're using it every day to become rich. I've used this information to become successful, and there are many entrepreneurs, salespeople, and independent professionals who are putting the five principles I'm going to describe to you into action each and every single day.

They're doing it right now. These folks will share this information with anyone who asks for it, but many of them have stopped volunteering it. And, you know, they did volunteer it at first, and many of them, in fact, ran around like maniacs, and they told anyone who would listen about these five key components to becoming a successful business leader.

Now, can you guess what happened? I'm sure you guessed it. People laughed at them. In fact, many people told them that they were wide-eyed optimists.

People said they were dreamers, and people said they lived in a fantasy world. You see, whenever we get close to a breakthrough in life, there are always people who will tell us that we're crazy, or they'll say that we're a dreamer, or they'll say that we're not grounded in reality. I'll bet you can think of many examples of this from your own life.

Now, I'm going to share one of those examples from my life with you. Several years ago, when I first went to work in the consulting business, I faced a situation where my peers mocked me, and they called me a dreamer. You see, I had landed a women's clothing retailer as a client, and the model in our particular consulting company at the time was one where salespeople sold the business, and consultants did the actual consulting work.

There were really two separate parts of the company, sales folks and consultants. I was hired to build an office and to develop the salespeople. It was my job to grow our consulting business in the New York market.

But in this case, the case of the women's clothing retailer, I had gone out and landed the client myself. So, after securing a consulting engagement from the client, I decided to lead the work myself. This meant that I would be on site at the client's location several days each month.

Now, many people, my peers and my boss in particular, thought I was crazy for taking time away from my selling and business development activities to do the actual consulting. They thought that this strategy would be my downfall. They thought that I would certainly fail in my effort to build a high revenue office.

After all, if I was on site with the client several days a month, who was going to be focusing on training the salespeople, ordering the copy machine, hiring the folks that really were necessary to do the actual work? Fast forward five years later, I not only had this client committed to $25 million in work with us, but I had also landed six other clients with a similar approach. In addition, I taught this business model to several other new people we hired. The result, over $130 million in business just by focusing specifically on a small number of clients in a consultative way.

The people who were mocking and laughing at me up front have either become converts to my system or they've moved on to other less lucrative opportunities where they can be right and poor instead of wrong and flush with business. Now, to bring us back to the million dollar secrets that I'm going to reveal to you shortly, my point is that your friends, your peers, or especially your competitors don't want you to know the information that I'm going to share with you. And they don't want you to know this information because you will raise the bar.

You see, your success will force them to step up their efforts in their business because they will need to or want to keep up with you. Now, some of them won't want to do that. And those who want to do that may not be able to do that.

Many of them will be afraid of those two things. They'll be afraid that they can't keep up or they'll be afraid of your success because you will steal their business. You'll steal market share from them.

This fear on the part of your friends, your relatives in some cases, and definitely on the part of your competition will breed insecurity and resentment. And this is the primary reason why people who know the secrets I am going to reveal to you today do not use them. You heard me correctly.

There are people out there who listen to this audio program and the additional audio programs that follow in this series and then they don't put what they have learned into action. And the reason is because they are afraid of the reaction of the people in their lives when the change and the transformation of their business occurs. The insecurity and resentment of others somehow is transformed into insecurity on the part of the folks who listen to this.

So here's what I want you to do. It is for this reason and this reason only that I am going to ask you to do something a bit unusual. I am going to ask you to make a promise to me and to yourself out loud.

I'm going to ask for your commitment to put these secrets into action immediately after you've listened to this audio program. I promise that you will see a dramatic change in your business and in your financial future if you take this audio program and put the secrets that I've revealed to you into action. Now, if you have no intention of taking any action after listening to this program, please press the stop button right now and go about the rest of your business.

You heard me correctly. If you continue to listen to this audio program, I want you to follow at least one of these items, one of the secrets that I've outlined for you. I want you to take immediate action on at least one of the things in this audio program and I want you to take the action immediately.

If you do not want to take action, then I wish you well, but you need to stop the CD now. I'll pause for a second to let you think about that. Stop here if you won't make something happen with the information I have for you.

Great. Well, I'm thrilled that you're still with me and I'm certain that you will be a better, more successful business leader as a result of putting these secrets into practice. I'm going to ask you to do one more thing before I begin to reveal these million-dollar secrets to you.

I need you to take a pledge. That's right. I'm going to ask you to repeat after me the following declaration out loud.

I want you to say it so that it sinks into your subconscious. You see, here's a little trick that I absolutely have to share with you. If I say something, it means one thing, but if you say something, it means absolutely everything.

So if you're ready, please repeat after me. I promise that I will put into action the million-dollar secrets that have been entrusted to me. I will do this in spite of the negative emotions and attitudes of my family, my friends, and my coworkers.

I control my destiny. I create my future. And I will make things happen in my business by using the information that I've learned.

Great. Congratulations. You've just taken a big, big step toward taking control of your future.

Anytime you feel like people are beating the positivity out of you, take a deep breath and remember the promise that you just made. This was a promise to me, but it was also a promise to you. It's a promise you made to yourself.

You owe it to yourself to enjoy as much success as possible. You can create it, and I'm going to help you do it by sharing as much information with you as I absolutely possibly can. So sit back and relax, because when we come back, I'm going to reveal the million-dollar secrets that they don't want you to know.

We are ready to begin with the million-dollar secrets that they don't want you to know. And we begin with secret number five. Secret number five is that successful business leaders set goals, they write them down, and they review them regularly.

The very first question I ask my clients in my coaching practice is, what do you want from your business? What do you want from your business? My clients come in, they sit down, we shake hands and exchange pleasantries, and I look them in the eye and I say to them, what do you want from your business? It doesn't matter if a client across the desk from me is a doctor, a retail store owner, a multi-level marketing business owner, or a sales professional. They're all asked the same question. Just about every one of them tries to give me a long-winded answer about taking care of customers and giving back to society, making the world a better place.

After I let them say their piece, I politely tell them that they are full of crap. That's right, I tell them straight up that they are full of crap. Well, at least I hope they're full of crap.

You see, the only reason to go into business for yourself is to make a lot of money doing exactly what you want to do. That's the only reason. Let me say that again because it's a very, very important point.

The only reason to go into business for yourself is to make a lot of money doing exactly what you want to do and when you want to do it. That's it. If you started a business or a professional practice, or if you became a commissioned salesperson and you did not have this thought in your head, then you should go out and you should look for a job.

You see, without goals, that's what you probably have with your business anyway. If you're currently working 50 to 60 or 70 hours a week or more and you're struggling to get by financially, you've got yourself a job that you paid to set up from scratch. Plain and simple.

That's what you've got. So the next thing the business owner will typically say to me is, well, yeah, but I'm building up equity in the business and I'm going to sell it someday. I lean back in my chair, put my arms behind my head, and then I respond with, okay, let's think about that for a second.

You have a business that's 100% dependent upon you. You make the sale to the client and then you deliver the product or the service and then you send the invoice to the client and then you service the things that you sell and then you follow up on the invoice and then you go out and find more clients to sell more products or services to. What was the common word in all of those activities? You.

How much is your business going to be worth without you? Because if you sell it, you're removing yourself from the business. Most folks then start to look down at the floor and shuffle their feet a little after we discuss this. The really sharp ones will say, yeah, but the new business owner, he can hire people to do those things.

And when I ask them why they haven't hired someone, they look really, really angry. That's when I know that I've got them. They know that they have not focused on what the business can do for them.

You see, if they had goals for revenue, if they had goals for profitability, if they had goals for the number of hours they wanted to work, and if all those goals were in alignment, they would have a reasonable answer for me. You see where I'm going with this? Most people go out and start a business and then they get caught up in the day-to-day operations of that business. What falls by the wayside is the planning.

You have to have at least some rough idea of what you want your business to be. And then you personally need to take responsibility in order to get your business to that point. This is where goals come in.

Every successful entrepreneur I have ever met, worked with, or interviewed has had goals. The independent professionals whose practices are growing rapidly have goals as well. The salespeople who make the most money, guess what? They've got them too.

And they're written down, and they review them regularly. Your goals help you drive your business. It's that simple.

What you focus on grows and expands. If you focus on your goals, you will be shocked at how quickly things begin to happen in your business. So after I've had this conversation with the typical client, and after we wrestle around a little about how they don't have five minutes, three or four times a day to think about their goals, they finally admit to what it is that has been bothering them.

They admit that they really don't know how to set a good constructive goal in the first place. Since this happens all the time, it's probably a good idea if we take a couple of minutes and review some quick tips on goal setting. Now, a lot has been written about goal development.

A quick search of the internet will point you to numerous websites dedicated to the development and implementation of goals. Having too much information can almost be as bad as not having enough information. As you develop your goals, you should stick to the principle that less is more.

After all, your goal setting should help you grow your business and not become a full-time job itself. In keeping with that guideline, let's stick to the very basics in effective goal development. Using these basics as a framework for developing your own goals will help you keep focused on your business.

Now, here are the two guidelines that you must follow in order to make goal setting a powerful tool in your overall pursuit of success. First, the power of a goal comes in writing it down on a sheet of paper and then reading it every day. That's right.

You must write your goal down, put it on a sheet of paper, put it on a note card, and put that note card or sheet of paper in multiple places. The more frequently you read it, or even better, the more frequently you write it, the closer it comes to resembling reality. The power of the commitment that is required to transfer your thoughts into action cannot be underestimated.

As you continually read your goals, and as you continually write them, you begin to familiarize your brain with the possibility that these goals can become a reality. If you write down your goals daily, and you envision the achievement of those goals in vivid detail, you will begin to convince yourself that these goals are indeed possible. So the first tip in setting goals that will help you drive your business is to write them down and post them in several places, and then read and review your goals as many times each day as you possibly can.

The second guideline in making goal setting a powerful achievement tool is to always state your goal using positive terminology. Focus on what you're going to do right rather than what is wrong with your current situation. The time for developing goals is not the time for problem diagnosis.

Developing goals will help you picture your achievement in its ideal and unadulterated state. The reading or writing of a goal should fill you with positive energy, and you can focus that energy toward the positive outcome. So the second guideline in making goal setting your most powerful achievement tool is to always state your goal using positive terminology.

Let's talk about what you can do right now, today, to make sure that you get your goals in place. The first thing that I recommend you do is find someone to bounce some ideas off of when it comes to setting your goals. Many people struggle with the goal setting process.

In fact, many people have a difficult time deciding exactly what they want from their business. And remember, the key component is that your goals for business are aligned with your goals for your personal life. The key component is that you get out of your business exactly what you want for your life.

You want your business to help support the lifestyle you're creating for yourself and your family. Goal setting is at minimum difficult, if not impossible, to do on your own. It's basically like cutting your own hair.

You may be able to get to everything you can see, but it's the areas you can't see that may be a problem. You may have a blind spot, and that may prevent you from accurately setting the proper goals. You may set your goals too high, or more likely, you may set your goals too low.

Making an error in goal setting can be a fatal error for your business, and it should not be left to chance. Now, this is where a coach can be enormously helpful. Your coach can help you clarify your goals and help you get them written properly.

Your coach can also help to remind you to focus on those goals each and every day. Finally, your coach will help make sure your goals for your business are in alignment with the goals for your life. My clients will tell you that I'm a broken record when it comes to this point.

They call me in between sessions with a question, and the first thing I ask them is what they've done to move closer to their goals today. Taking accountability for the actions that lead to achieving your goals is critical for success. In fact, we're going to talk more about this idea of accountability in our next segment.

Let me ask you this. What are you waiting for? Take a few minutes right now and write down at least three goals you have for your business. Do it right now, and I'll speak with you in our next segment.

A million dollar secret number four is easy to explain, yet it may be the most difficult of the secrets to put into practice. Secret number four is that successful business leaders hold themselves accountable for the outcome of every situation. You see, your life is a sum of your experiences, and you have the ability to impact every experience.

You can have an impact on each and every experience in your life. People often say things like, oh, there was nothing I could do, or we hear expressions like, I was a victim of circumstance. Well, those are statements made by people who do not want to control their own destiny.

Each one of us has the ability to control how we react to challenging situations. It is absolutely critical that you take immediate responsibility for your own future. Every action you take involves a choice.

Take a deep breath and assume responsibility for your future. When I talk about assuming responsibility for the future, often someone will describe a situation that appears to be out of their control, such as a car accident. And it's true that there are things that happen to us that cannot be predicted, let alone prevented.

Yet there is still an element of that situation that we can control. In the face of adversity, we control our reaction to that challenge. No matter what the situation, each of us has the ability to control our reaction.

One person may allow the adversity of a difficult situation to drive him down a path of negativity. Another will use that same adverse situation as an opportunity to become stronger. In each case, the individual made a choice.

This approach translates directly into business results. In business, holding yourself accountable begins with giving up the drudgery of everyday tasks you hate. It means focusing on high value activities that can have the most significant impact on the future of your business.

How can you identify those high value activities? Well, just look at your goals. Highly successful people, entrepreneurs, salespeople, independent professionals, focus solely on activities that will lead toward the fulfillment of their goals. Successful business people also have ways to measure their progress as they plow aggressively forward in pursuit of their goals.

Let me give you an actual example. One of my clients, a sporting goods retailer, had a goal of doubling store sales on a year over year basis. Since the store had good measurement in place, the owner knew exactly how many people he needed to drive into his store and exactly how many salespeople he would need on the floor at any given time to handle that demand.

He also knew what the average transaction per salesperson per hour needed to be in order for him to hit his goal. The store owner took the following action. He put an aggressive marketing plan in place.

He trained the staff on how to upsell, in other words, how to increase the average dollars per transaction. And he also offered several different incentives to his sales team. He had one incentive in place for increasing transaction size, and he had another incentive in place for the entire shift based on beating their targeted revenue.

This store owner held himself completely accountable for growing the revenue of his store on a year over year basis, and he did something to create his desired outcome. Many people in this situation would have sat around and complained about the sales staff. They would have complained that they were unmotivated, and they would not have held themselves accountable for motivating the staff.

Many people find it difficult to hold themselves accountable for producing results. This lack of discipline strikes all of us at one time or another. It is almost impossible to complete any major transaction or aggressively pursue your goals without help in holding yourself accountable.

You can't do it alone. Think about your last trip to the gym. Did you really get the most out of your workout? Maybe you have not been to the gym in a year.

Maybe you haven't been to the gym ever. Is it because you don't believe exercise is good for you? I doubt it. In most cases, all of us have other priorities.

Now, if you were to sign up with a personal trainer, two interesting things would happen. First, you would go to the gym regularly because you had an appointment. If you didn't show up, you would be held accountable and the accountability would come in the form of a missed session.

Chances are good that you'd have to pay for the session whether you showed up or not. And even more critical is the fact that you would have let your trainer down. The second thing that happens is once you go to the gym, you work out harder when you work out with a trainer.

When someone is pushing you and challenging you to give 100% effort, you are less likely to create excuses. There is another person there holding you accountable. The gym example is the perfect demonstration of the power of accountability.

Many entrepreneurs feel it may be necessary to take on a partner to help with accountability. Often they feel that bringing someone new into the business will help them become accountable for doing things that are necessary to grow the business. You know what happens in most of these cases? In most of these cases, the business then has two people who hate doing the same things.

Why is this? Because we usually surround ourselves with people who are just like us. We like people who have the same qualities we possess. It's just human nature.

This is one of the main reasons that business coaching is so effective. A business coach is completely objective and will hold you accountable for taking action. Your friends, your relatives, or a business partner will focus on the relationship that they have with you.

In their mind, the relationship comes first. In the mind of your business coach, your business comes first. Your goals come first.

Your coach will force you to focus on the things that are important and necessary in order to take your business to the next level. Speaking of taking things to the next level, have you ever wondered how some businesses seem to have explosive growth without ever putting the owner under enormous stress and strain? In the next segment, we'll reveal the third million dollar secret. The key to helping your business stay manageable while it doubles and triples.

I'll speak with you in the next segment. We're now ready to reveal million dollar secret number three. Million dollar secret number three is that successful business leaders develop productive systems and processes for everything in their business.

This secret is so powerful that it can help business leaders break through the ceiling of complexity. The ceiling of complexity is a term that is used to describe a business that has grown beyond the point where one person can handle it. Now, many of you may be facing this exact situation right now.

Your business has become so successful that you're absolutely overwhelmed and you have no idea how you're going to get your business to grow any further. The best way for me to describe the ceiling of complexity and to describe how million dollar secret number three can help you break through that ceiling is to give you an example. Not too long ago, a gentleman by the name of Rob came to me with a business problem.

You see, Rob owns two restaurants. One of them, the one he spent most time in, ran phenomenally well. Business was booming.

He had regular customers who provided him with significant repeat business. He had a dedicated team of people who worked their hearts out for him and things in this restaurant could not have been better. Well, time came and Rob wanted to expand.

He had an appetite. No pun intended to grow his business. When he opened his second location, he discovered that the second restaurant only ran well when he was there.

When he wasn't in that restaurant, things would slip through the cracks. The staff in that place was unreliable. Sales were way off.

The books were sloppily kept. Well, you get the idea. It was kind of a chaotic environment in the second restaurant when Rob wasn't there.

Over time, Rob began spending more time in restaurant number two. Things improved in that restaurant when he was there, but the minute he would leave, things would slip back into their non-performing ways. To make matters worse, whenever Rob went to the second restaurant, the first restaurant's performance would slip dramatically.

Over the years, Rob tried unsuccessfully to fix this problem by putting managers in that he had personally trained. This would work for a short period of time and then the manager would become overwhelmed and he would leave and the exact same things would go wrong over and over and over again. The good news is that the food was great in both places and people raved about it.

The restaurant was full six nights a week and there were people waiting to be seated on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. When I met Rob, he told me he really didn't have time to work with someone like me because he was so busy tending to the day-to-day operations of his two restaurants, he couldn't even sit down and have a conversation. Yet he was desperate to have someone come in and find a way to fix the things that were wrong.

Think about that for a minute. He was so busy with the day-to-day operations that he could not fix the very issues that were making his days such hell. This is definitely warp thinking but it perfectly illustrates the ceiling of complexity.

The success of Rob's business has made the business too busy and too complicated to grow any further. It's a trap. In fact, it's a self-imposed trap and I want to make sure that you heard me correctly.

This phenomenon of a ceiling of complexity is a self-imposed trap that many business owners stumble into. This third million dollar secret is critical to the long-term success of any business and it is something that I have found is common to all successful entrepreneurs. They realize that the value of the business will only grow if the business is not dependent upon them.

This is a huge concept for a business owner to get into his head. The business has to be able to run, grow, and thrive on its own with limited or no involvement on the part of the owner. Did you hear that? I'll say it again.

To break through the ceiling of complexity, your business must be able to run, grow, and thrive completely on its own with limited or no involvement of the owner. Period. The key to making this happen is to develop systems for everything from sales and marketing to operations and service delivery.

Once the system is set up, once it's tested, once it's implemented and fine-tuned, the business is ready for growth. Systems are replicable. People are not.

If you have a system for sales and marketing in one restaurant and it works, you can make a few adjustments to that system and it will probably work in a new restaurant. The same is true regardless of whatever business you may be in. The most successful businesses in the world have systems for everything and I mean everything.

They don't leave anything to chance. Let's take sales and marketing just as an example. In sales and marketing, the businesses that I work with have systems for generating leads, qualifying leads, following up with prospects, converting prospects to clients, generating referrals from clients.

These systems help keep the business running day in and day out, whether the owner is there or not. Now I started my work at Rob's Restaurant by watching what he did each and every single day to make the restaurant run successfully. We recorded everything.

He and I took notes on Rob's every movement throughout the entire workday. We also studied what each and every single member of the staff did when they did it and we made notes of what was right. This process took a little over a month.

At the end of one month's time, we reviewed each and every activity in all its painful detail. We then created a book of standard operating procedures. This was a book that contained guidelines for every activity from opening the restaurant to balancing the cash from the point of sale system at the end of the night.

We then made videos, very simple DVDs of each of the critical activities. We also made a checklist for the manager and a checklist for the hostess and a checklist for the chef. The wait staff had checklists full of things they were supposed to do at the beginning of their shift and at the end of their shift.

Even the bus boys and dishwashers had a checklist that they were required to follow. Everyone also had a video that they were required to watch when they were first hired and then they were required to watch it as a refresher every few months. This seemed a little strange at first.

Some of the folks in the restaurant were a little bit put off by following a checklist, reading a book and watching some videos. After all, this was not typical for any restaurant and many of the experienced folks told us so. We also introduced a 15-minute meeting at the beginning of each shift for both restaurants.

In this meeting, the chef talked about a special dish that he was making that day. He also recommended a particular bottle of wine to go with it. In this meeting, the manager on duty also covered a sales training tip and he included a cash incentive for the waiter who sold the most that shift based upon using that tip.

These tips, as well as the specials, were listed in the standard operating procedure manual. The manual covered what was to be discussed in the 15-minute pre-shift meeting each and every single day. The topics rotated every 30 days.

The specials that the chef would make were rotated every 60 days. A calendar for the rest of the year with each day's topic and special was placed in a giant picture frame and hung on the wall in the kitchen. There was another one identical to it hung in the break room and then there was a mini version which was out at the hostess stand.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, was left to chance. Although this was a little unusual at first, the staff got used to it. They filled in their checklists during every shift.

They followed the systems that Rob had set up and the results were amazing. Three things were noticeable within the first 90 days. First, the average check in the restaurant was up over 20%.

Why? Because the sales staff was following procedure for introducing the specials and recommending wine with each dish that was ordered. In the past, some of them had done this and some of them hadn't. Next, profit was up dramatically.

Since the kitchen staff knew what to cook and what to order based upon the 60-day rotating schedule, they could plan better. This meant less waste. In addition, the managers were providing incentives to the staff to sell certain dishes.

These dishes were things that had to be sold because they were highly perishable products. Finally, and this was the most amazing thing of all, staff turnover in the restaurant virtually stopped. You see, each and every employee knew what was expected of him or her.

They knew what to do every single day. This provided a sense of security. There were fewer surprises and fewer emergencies.

There was less stress and the wait staff was making more money. Rob soon found that he needed to be present less and less. In fact, after the first 90 days of setting up his operational systems, he was able to take a vacation for the first time in five years.

This is just one example of how implementing systems, in this case an operating system in a restaurant, can make a huge difference in any business. Successful business owners implement systems for almost all aspects of their business. When they do this, they can be certain they get the results they want.

The restaurant example is a good one because it is an intense operating environment. However, you don't need to be in an industry with a lot of staff in order to set up good systems. I have insurance agents who are clients of mine and they set up systems that help them make more sales.

Every business, large and small, should set up systems for as many of their activities as possible. These systems and processes ensure consistency and quality of delivery in every aspect of your business. Setting up systems also enables smart business owners to take more time off.

In fact, some of our clients have learned to implement systems and train their staff to the point where they no longer need to be in the business every day. And the business runs just as well without them. Setting up these systems is a huge job.

In many cases, it's the kind of job that most business owners can't or really won't tackle on their own. In many cases, a fresh set of eyes is helpful in dealing with what must be done and at what specific time it must be done. The checklist must be tested and revised until every detail is covered.

Just like an airline pilot has a checklist for getting a plane ready to take off and he follows it each and every single time, your business should have foolproof systems that you and your team check off each day, each week, and each month. Setting these systems up requires help. This is one of the areas where a coach can really make a difference in your business.

Your coach can walk you through the detailed process of how to systematize each and every aspect of your business. It's tough to do it alone. You need someone to guide you through it and you need someone to push you to make sure it gets done.

Imagine the feeling on the part of an overworked business owner when he finally has his business running to the point where he can take a worry-free vacation. This million-dollar secret has literally saved many businesses. Now, if you thought that secret was great and everyone who implements it does, just wait until you hear the next one.

Imagine getting an education that's the equivalent of an MBA while you're sitting in your car. Well, more on that in our next segment. Hi there and welcome back.

It is now time for million-dollar secret number two. And before we reveal million-dollar secret number two, I'd like to ask you, how did you learn what you currently do for a living? Was it trial and error? Did you go to school? Did you learn from somebody else like an apprenticeship? Well, million-dollar secret number two is that successful business leaders make a commitment to continuous learning and growth. You see, they understand the need for continuous learning.

Ongoing learning is critical to the success of any business leader. There are basically three ways to learn something. The first way is through experience and this is pure trial and error.

The second way is through acquiring knowledge. You can read books, you can go to school, and you can basically learn the theory. Then you need to go out into the real world and figure out what portion of the learning works and what portion of it was really just theory that has never been tried out anywhere.

The third way people learn is through working with someone else and modeling their behavior. This is almost a hybrid of the two learning styles. You get the benefit of the wisdom of someone else's trial and error and you also get the theory and knowledge you want from an academic environment.

Now, these are the three ways that most people learn whatever it is they do in life. Now, I'd like you to think for a minute about the people that you've come across in your business. Think about the people who've been doing what they're doing for more than a couple of years.

When was the last time they learned something new about their job or their business? Chances are good they've been doing things the same way for a very long time. Chances are good that they've been getting the same results year in and year out as well. Funny how that works.

You do things the same way you get the same results. And you know what? These folks always come up with an excuse as to why they don't change their process. The main reason that people stop learning is because they become comfortable with the status quo.

That's right. They've become comfortable with the current situation. See, these folks learn the specifics they need to know in order to make a living.

They learn everything as quickly as possible when they first start because they want to make money quickly. Then all of a sudden, sometimes after a couple of years, sometimes even a shorter time period than that, the learning just stops. Sure, people get busy and the business may grow in spite of the folks who work there not learning anything new.

But the business owners who make their businesses grow exponentially, the people whose businesses double in size year after year are the entrepreneurs who learn continuously. They're the independent professionals who learn continuously. Successful business owners, and I mean wealthy entrepreneurs and independent professionals, make learning a priority.

They continue to learn throughout their lifetime. They're always looking for new ways to learn and grow. They're looking for ways to do things cheaper, better, faster, more efficiently, and more effectively.

You see, these folks highly successful entrepreneurs and independent professionals make learning a priority. One of my early mentors put it best when he said that if you're willing to learn and grow and you're willing to put the things you learn into practice, you will never be broke and you will never go hungry. As long as you're willing to continue to learn and grow, you can make huge gains in your business.

Now, just a few minutes ago, we discussed the three types of learning, learning from experience, learning from books or in school, that's academic learning, and learning by modeling the behavior that has been successful for others. Let me give you a couple of ways that you can continue your learning in a time efficient and effective way. First is the methodology you're using right now.

Audio programs are one of the most effective and efficient ways to learn anything. I went back to school a little bit later in life, and one of my greatest fears was always whether or not I would be able to keep up with some of the younger people who were in the competitive graduate programs that I attended. Just imagine an older guy going back onto campus to attend graduate school after working all day, keeping up with kids who literally lay around their dorm rooms all day, reading and studying and learning.

One of the ways that I found I was able to internalize the information necessary in a very short period of time was to record the information from my notes and from some textbooks into my computer and then convert it to a CD. I listened to these CDs over and over and over again. I would listen to them on my daily commute.

I would listen to them while I was at the gym, and I would listen to them while I was falling asleep at night. I guess in this day and age, you would probably convert them to an MP3 file and download them to your iPod. But at the time, CDs were the way for me to go.

I found that if I had listened to these CDs over and over again, in fact, the magic number for me was 21 times, I automatically knew the material inside and out. The material had literally become part of my thinking. This methodology allowed me to get not one, but two master's degrees from highly competitive programs, I might add, and I did that while I had a very challenging job.

Now, you don't need to get two master's degrees. In fact, nobody really needs to get two master's degrees. I did it because I'm a learning junkie.

But you do need to commit to continuous learning. All of the million-dollar entrepreneurs and independent professionals that I've worked with over the years have done this. You can start by internalizing the information on this audio program.

Listen to it over and over again. Try my rule of listening to it 21 times. You will absolutely notice the difference it makes in your thinking.

Now, here's a little bonus secret for you. Your thinking controls your attitude, and your attitude controls your actions. If you listen to the audio programs you receive from me every month, you will begin to notice that you will start to do things differently.

Some of this will be at a conscious level, and some of it will be subconscious. Now, I know you may be thinking, who has time to listen to this audio program 21 times over the course of the next month? Well, let me show you how you have the time. The average person commutes one hour each day to and from work.

If you use that time to listen to an audio program each day, you will have over 240 hours of learning completed by the end of the year. So you can literally get the educational equivalent of almost two master's degrees in just one year in your spare time while you commute to work. Just about everyone can make that commitment.

We're only talking about an hour a day to listen to an audio program. The second type of learning is the education you receive by working with and modeling the behavior of someone who's been successful in business. This type of learning is great, because you get the benefit of the knowledge and wisdom of trial and error without the expense of making the mistakes yourself.

A relationship with a coach not only provides you with great guidance and support, it also provides you with someone who will hold you accountable for your actions. You can benefit from the wisdom of the coach's mistakes over the years without actually having to make the mistakes yourself. Now, I'm going to be honest with you and tell you that not everyone is ready for a coaching relationship right away.

Many people like to try things out before they jump in. So, this is one of the main reasons why I've developed this audio coaching program. It gives you the opportunity to try on my teaching style, to test out my experience, and to become familiar with my thinking.

Then, when you're ready, you can reach me by giving me a call. My phone number is actually the same as my name. It's 1-888-DILORENZO.

That's 1-888, the letters D, and the letters L-O-R-E-N-Z-O. Or you can send me an email. And coincidentally, that's the same as my name too.

Dilorenzo at Dilorenzo.com. Keep in mind that a relationship with a coach not only provides you with great guidance and support, it also provides you with someone who will hold you accountable for your actions. Speaking of action, that brings us down to secret number one, this is probably the most powerful of the million-dollar secrets that I'm going to share with you. And we'll get to that secret in the next segment.

We are now down to million-dollar secret number one. And million-dollar secret number one may very well be one of the most powerful pieces of information that I can ever share with you. Million-dollar secret number one is that successful business leaders have a bias for action.

Every highly successful business leader I've worked with over the years believes in swift and decisive action. So what does this mean? It means that talk is cheap and successful entrepreneurs believe in making things happen. Big ideas are great, but big ideas are useless unless you take action.

I'll give you a quick example. Back in the 1990s, I started a corporate housing business in New York City. Now, corporate housing is really temporary housing for relocating executives and their families.

Many people will go out and use corporate housing when they're relocating or while they're looking to find a permanent home. My company would find the temporary home, we would furnish it, we would hook up all the utilities, and we would provide weekly housekeeping service, and we would do this all for one monthly fee. This was basically a convenience business, and it was quite valuable to relocating executives, people who really didn't know New York City that well.

In New York City, this business was primarily done in apartments and condominiums. Now, in conjunction with starting this business, we also needed to provide housekeeping service for each apartment. This meant that we would be changing the linens in each apartment every week, along with providing basic housekeeping service, dusting, vacuuming, cleaning the entire apartment top to bottom.

At the height of this business, we had over 100 people working in the housekeeping division of our company. Now, after the events of September 11, 2001, this business, along with many, many others in New York City, was absolutely decimated. Many of our apartments were inaccessible, and several people who had come to New York for business were no longer willing to come there.

In addition, the market for corporate housing had almost completely dried up. We had to make the difficult decision to lay off a significant number of people. One of the folks who was affected by this layoff was a housekeeper named Rosario.

She was a great employee, and I really hated to see her lose her job, but at the time, we really didn't know if our housekeeping business was going to continue on. So, we had to let most of the staff go. Rosario decided that this was a sign, and that she should go out on her own and start her own housekeeping service.

She asked me to help her write up a flyer that she could distribute to apartment residents throughout the city, and she had about $1,000 saved up that she was going to use for printing of the flyers. Now, the economy in New York was just terrible, but while the tourists and business people were staying away from the city, people who were long-time residents were still there. So, Rosario figured that there would still be a need for quality housekeeping service.

Her business plan was very simple. She was going to provide great housekeeping at a fair price. Her marketing plan was even more genius in its simplicity.

It was a two-step approach. The first step was that she was going to meet with the managers of several buildings in the area and tell them that she was available. And the second step was that she was going to slide flyers under the doors of apartments in those buildings.

Both of Rosario's plans were action-oriented. There was no sophisticated planning process involved, just a lot of action. Well, within three months, Rosario was making more in her new business than she was when she was working for me.

And she was only working four days per week now. Two years later, Rosario had stopped cleaning apartments altogether, and she had several employees of her own. In fact, her business had gotten so big that she hired a person just to focus strictly on sales.

She now runs one of the largest residential apartment cleaning businesses in all of New York City. Successful business leaders live to take action. They make adjustments as needed, but they take action first.

Now, don't get me wrong. Planning is important. In fact, planning is absolutely critical to the success of a business.

But at some point, you need to jump in and get going. Many people use planning as a convenient excuse for failing to take action. For example, do you know anyone who has told you that they are waiting for the perfect time to start a project? How about someone who has said that the economy would not support their big idea right now? My favorite of all time is the reason given to me by a friend.

He said that the market just was not ready yet for his big business idea. Trying to keep a straight face, I looked at him and I said, How will you know when the market is ready? Is the market going to come and get you? And finally, I asked him the killer question, and this is the one he still hasn't recovered from. I said, What if the market was ready for you right now and you didn't know it because you were at home sitting on your couch? All right, it's time for us to shift gears right now and focus specifically on your business.

This is the moment of truth. You need to be like the millions of entrepreneurs who are out there right now putting these five secrets into action. They're making millions of dollars and there's no reason you shouldn't join them.

You need to be just like Rosario, the housekeeper. You need to start out with a simple plan and take massive, overwhelming action. So here's what I want you to do.

I want you to sit down and write your goals and then hold yourself accountable for taking action to make those goals a reality. Don't wait. As soon as this audio program ends, I want you to sit down and write out three very specific goals that you can take action on immediately.

Then I want you to hold yourself accountable for taking action on those goals right now. Do it today. Then you need to set up a set of systems in your business that will allow you to match your business to your lifestyle.

Remember, it should not ever be the other way around. You shouldn't live to serve your business. Your business exists to provide you with the money you need to live the lifestyle you want and deserve.

Now, you also need to continue the education and learning process that you started with this program. And you and I have that handled together. We will work together to make sure you have all the knowledge you need to join the group of millions of entrepreneurs who are making more money than they could ever possibly spend.

I need you to take this action right now. And I'm counting on you to take action to be successful. Again, I congratulate you on taking aggressive action to grow your business.

I look forward to speaking with you many, many times in the days and weeks to come.