Level Three Road Map™

Level One: Planning Your Business and Proving It’s Viable

At Level One, you’re designing and planning your new start-up. You’re gathering your initial team, raising any required start-up capital, and executing your launch plan.

Your focus at Level One is to plan your new business and get immediate market feedback to learn if your business concept and model is economically viable. This is a fancy way to say you’ll be testing your product or service to see if you can sell it at a price that allows your business to be profitable.

The 4 Action Steps You Must Take in Level One

Action Step 1: Clarify your basic business idea.

Action Step 2: Conduct your market research.

Action Step 3: Write your business plan “draft.”

Action Step 4: Test your product or service to make sure it will sell.

Level Two Early Stage: Making Your Business Sustainable

Focus: Securing your early clients and becoming profitable.

Leverage Points: Your ability to change and adapt, keeping costs low and your business lean.

Fresh in the marketplace, an Early Stage Level Two business has just started actively marketing and selling its products/services. This is the time to learn your business and market, and if needed, discover and cure any fatal flaws in your business model or in the way your targeted customers perceive the value you’re creating.

Your early focus while launching a business isn’t on building the perfect product or service, but rather on figuring out how you can get people to buy. Too many entrepreneurs get caught in the trap of making the perfect gizmo, but never actually sell that gizmo in large enough numbers to ensure a profit.

Know that at this stage in your business’s growth, you’ll be wearing just about every hat in the business. That’s okay for now, but as you move toward Middle Stage Level Two, you’ll need to find ways to leverage your personal production for the business by hiring staff and building basic business systems.

Remember, an Early Stage Level Two business is working to generate sales, establish a market position, and become a sustainable business.

Three Priorities of an Early Stage Level Two Business

Priority#1: Sell, Sell, Sell!

Priority #2: Start Creating Simple Systems and Structure to Operate Your Business.

Priority #3: When Your Business Can Afford It, Begin to Build Your Team

Level Two Middle Stage: Establishing Your Business Core

Focus: Establishing your business’s foundation; building your business’s core systems and structure

Key Leverage Point: Leveraging your time so you can invest at least 20 percent (one day a week) to building your business’s core

Characteristics of a Typical Middle Stage Level Two Business:

Business revolves around the owner.
Owner must show up each day or the business suffers from the absence.
Owner hits a revenue plateau; can’t work any harder or put in any more hours.
Outside world—especially customers—identify the business with only the owner.

Why do most businesses never make it past Middle Stage Level Two? Because the owners are entrenched in the traditional way of building a business for control and active cash flow based primarily on their personal production. Not only do they quickly max out on personal production, but what’s worse is that every day, more and more of the know-how to run the business gets buried deeper in one person’s head—instead of being captured in processes, procedures, and systems.

Sadly, these typical Middle Stage Level Two business owners stay stuck at the tactical level of doing the job the business requires instead of creating the time and space to step back and build the business itself.

Middle Stage Level Two requires building your core systems, controls, and scalable solutions. The challenge is doing that while balancing the business’s need for you to continue to lead its daily operation. This is a delicate balance between what your business needs today and what it will need tomorrow. Thankfully, you don’t have to figure all this out yourself.

The 5 Critical Components to Build at Middle Stage Level Two:

Your “Master System”—the system of all your systems. This Master System involves how you organize, store, access, and update most of your business systems. It can be an operations manual, a grouping of files on a server, or a comprehensive enterprise software solution.
Your “Core Systems.” This includes key systems to generate leads, close sales, fulfill on customer orders, and deliver on client promises.
Your most pressing business controls, especially those around the financial area. These include accounts receivable, accounts payable, and financial record keeping and reporting, all of which help you manage your cash flow and protect against financial abuses. You also want to design your first rough dashboard showing how your business as a whole is performing at any given moment.
Your big-picture strategic plan. This includes your business priorities, plan of action, and branding and market positioning.
Your initial team. These are the early team members you’ll lean on as you grow your business.You’ve still got to hire cautiously due to both cash flow concerns and your business’s immaturity, but now is the time to begin hiring high order talent—slowly and deliberately. You’ll also start systematizing the “Team” area of your business by developing written job descriptions, a draft organizational chart, and a formal hiring process.

Case Study: Lainy

Lainy and her husband had built a highly successful heavy manufacturing business when we first began working with them, but that business strictly revolved around the two of them. She ran the operations and financial areas of the business while her husband ran the sales and marketing end.

In a way, Lainy and her husband suffered from the curse of competency that hurts many capable entrepreneurs. They were smart, driven, and incredibly talented at doing the work of the business. They also were particular about how they wanted things to be done.

This combination of factors lured them into building their business for control, which only leads to the Self-Employment Trap™.

But when you have the right road map to follow and the strong, clear commitment to scale your business as Lainy did, things can shift quickly.

Within nine months of joining our consulting program, Lainy’s business had jumped to Advanced Stage Level Two. She had implemented systems that got her out of much of the day-to-day operations. She had hired her first executive leader, a CFO, to run the financial side of the business and provide a balanced “voice” to help her and her husband make better leadership decisions. Her sales were up and the company was in the process of expanding to a second manufacturing facility on the East Coast. Her discretionary time had increased by more than 15 hours a week, allowing her to reinvest this time in expanding the business.

All this in fewer than nine months!

You see, it doesn’t take decades to build a Level Three business, but it does take both a clear commitment to get there and a concrete road map to follow. In Lainy’s case, she always had the commitment; she just didn’t have the road map before getting involved in the program.

Level Two Advanced Stage: Building a Systems-Reliant Company with a Winning Management Team

Focus: Increasing your capacity and scaling your business

Key Leverage Point: Your key team members’ time, talent, skills, and focus

Characteristics of a Typical Advanced Stage Level Two Business:

As you begin to transition into Advanced Stage Level Two, your business will commonly have the following characteristics, which become your starting point:

It’s becoming more and more systems driven. (At least one or two of the five main areas of your business are managed by people other than you.)
Your revenue is starting to climb.
Your business may feel like it’s bursting at the seams.

The Level Three Shift

An essential piece in building a Level Three business is enrolling your team in building the systems, controls, and scalable solutions with you.

Rather than regarding the team around you as a form of leverage that magnifies your personal reach and production, instead see them as partners in taking the business to the next level.

As management guru Peter Drucker once said, “The founder has to learn to become the leader of a team rather than a ‘star’ with ‘helpers.’

Level Three: Owning a Business that Gives You Freedom and Control

Focus: To determine your desired exit strategy and clarify your personal role

Characteristics of a Typical Level Three Business:

The business is run by a competent and winning management team independent of the owner (who may still fill one of the roles, but who has a replacement groomed and ready to step in).
The business runs smoothly whether the owner is there or not over an extended period of time (based on sound systems, intelligent controls, and scalable solutions).
Its clients look to the business, not the owner, to fulfill promises.

Case Study: Jeff Hoffman

After college, Jeff worked for a few years in corporate America. One day, his manager sat him down and told him he’d never be successful in business because he was impatient, lacked focus, and didn’t follow the rules. This weighed heavily on Jeff, coming as it did from an authority figure—until months later, he had lunch with his mentor who had built several successful companies. This mentor said he knew Jeff would be a success because he had the natural drive to get things done now, the ability to multi-task, and a willingness to blaze new trails. Same Jeff, different perspective. Luckily, Jeff chose to listen to his multimillionaire mentor instead of his mid-level manager at work!

Knowing he wouldn’t be satisfied working in corporate America, Jeff started his first software company, CTI, and grew it into a thriving innovator in the travel industry. He strategically positioned the company to be bought out by one of the industry’s major players, which is exactly what happened. American Express acquired CTI for more than $10 million!

Since that time, Jeff has gone on to build and later sell other successful companies.

Here are the major reasons to invest the time, energy and money to build a Level Three business…

The 7 Major Benefits of Taking Your Business to Level Three

It gives you control over your financial future. No matter what economic conditions you face, you have the financial strength that allows you to make the choices you want for you and your family. Plus, you have the security that comes from having mastered the skill of how to build a Level Three business. Should something happen to one of your businesses, you have the skills and experience to build another one.
It will massively increase your net worth. The average Level Three business is 10 times more valuable than its Level Two counterpart. Often your business will grow in value one hundredfold or more when you take it from Level Two to Level Three.
Your business is much easier to scale. By its very nature, a Level Three business is much easier to scale. It can easily accommodate growth of 50 percent, 100 percent, or more—per year! One of our past Maui Advisors grew one of his Level Three businesses from $10 million to over $100 million in sales in 24 months!
You earn your freedom from your business. It no longer depends on your presence every day to make it work. You have many more options available to you. You get to do the parts of the business you’re best at and love most, while letting other people handle the parts you don’t enjoy.
A Level Three business gives your staff security and growth opportunities. The business isn’t vulnerable to something happening to you, the owner. And as you grow the business and reduce its reliance on your daily presence, you give your staff opportunities to grow and develop as business people as they take on expanded roles in a vibrant, growing enterprise.
Your business is dramatically more stable. You’re no longer vulnerable if one of your key team members—including yourself—gets hurt or has a life change.
You have a greater impact on your market. Because it’s now scalable, your business is able to create more value for your market as it sells and delivers your products or services to your customers and clients. These products or services improve many people’s lives.

Case Study: Tom Santilli

Three years ago, an introverted ex-engineer turned successful entrepreneur attended one of our business owner workshops. Like many business owners who find their way to one of our live events, Tom was burned out. He owned and ran a highly successful wholesale business, but he built his company to revolve around himself, which meant long hours, high stress, and sacrifices at home. In fact, it was Tom’s wife who enrolled him in the workshop and even bought him the airline ticket to attend! Tom felt he couldn’t afford several days out of the office, but he listened to his wife and went anyway.

What happened when he took the concepts and strategies from the workshop home and applied them in his business? Here’s what he said: “I’ve always been one of those driven people who believed in working hard to reach their goals. Before I began working with David and the Maui team, I’d been fortunate enough to build a successful business (thisoldstore.com) and real estate portfolio that generated a seven-figure income. But I had to work long hours tied to my computer, phone, and email to do it—or so I thought.

“Using the Level Three approach, I’ve cut my working hours in half and still make the same income. Only now I don’t come into the office until after 10 a.m., and I take every Friday off to be with my family for the weekend. This sure feels a lot more like wealth and freedom to me.

“For anyone who owns a successful business, I strongly recommend you use the Level Three business system to help you make it better. Who knows, you just might get your personal life back like I did.”

Let Us Help You Get to Level Three!

Whether you're about to start a new business and want direct guidance to do it the right way…

Or you want to take your existing business to the next level but you just don't know how...

This is your chance to stop settling for less and take control of your business destiny.

Review the information below and then click on the “Apply Now” button below. You’ll share a few answers about the current stage of your business and the main challenges you face. Then one of our admissions consultants will contact you to see if you qualify for a complimentary, private Strategic Business Consultation.

In fact, we’ll do this session as if you were one of our consulting clients so that you can get a real sense of what it will be like to work with us, and we can get a real feel for what it would be like to work with you. Don’t miss out on this opportunity.

The Consulting Program was designed to give you the structure and the accountability… the road map and the upgraded peer group… the direction and the feedback you need to take your business to the next level.

Apply Now!

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