So, in a previous episode, in fact the last one, we talked about “Who are you?” I gave you four exercises to do in your journal. During those exercises, I hope you discovered new things about yourself, and that you’re on the right path … The right path to becoming the author of your own story, and living that life of your dreams. You deserve it.

I was actually down in Colombia earlier this year. In Colombia, we were in the jungle with a shaman, we were drinking a drink called yage. During this whole ceremonial process, we were coming out of it and one of the other people that were there, he came up to me. His name happened to be Tony. Tony came up to me and said, “What do Dougs do?” I thought, “Okay, well what do you mean what do Dougs do?” Do you mean what do I do for a living? What do I like to do for fun? What do you mean what do Dougs do? He’s like, “No, no, no. That’s not what I’m talking about at all.”

Tony happened to be an older gentleman who’d been on spiritual journeys most of his adult life and was really wise. He said, “No, what I want to know is ‘What do Dougs do?’.” He said, “Here’s what Tonys do. What Tonys do is they like to write. They write down deep thoughts and interesting ideas so they could share it with the world, and that is really my passion. That’s Tony’s passion. When Tonys are confronted with conflict, Tonys get angry and they almost want to erupt. But through the action of writing allows him to calm down and get re-centered.”

I thought, “Wow, that’s really interesting.” So what Tony’s talking about is what is your natural essence? What is that natural North Star that you have? One, what is it? I’ll add onto that, because after thinking about that, is that the North Star that you want? Is that the guiding light that you actually want to be? Now of course, in the Amazon jungle, going through these ceremonies, and we were out of it for this time. We were out of it a lot, but we were out of the ceremonial process and off the yage, but still you have that euphoric feeling going on. During that gives you a lot of inner clarity and ways to look at yourself.

So it was a great experience for me, but what came out of that is what do Dougs do? What do Dougs do? Well, my whole life I’ve been a teacher. I’ve guided, I’ve been a soccer coach, I’ve been a personal trainer, I’ve been a business owner, I’ve lectured at universities, I’ve always been a teacher. The other thing of what do Dougs do, well, gosh, Doug at his essence is always helping people. I’m always going out of my way to help people. It’s just something that I always do. I’m always looking out after others. I’m always looking out at others, especially those that are less fortunate than me, that may not have what I have or the abilities that I was born with, the natural abilities. I’ve got two legs, two arms, just at the very basics. I happen to have brothers that beat me up, so I could be athletic. So, I’m very lucky and fortunate in these areas.

So what do Dougs do? So I wrote that down. It was really profound for myself. Now how I want you to do this, is ask yourself, “What do …”, insert your name, “do?” Write that down at the top of your journal and write that down. Try to boil it down to an essence, right? An essence of maybe one to sentences.

So what do Dougs do? Dougs love others and they do that by teaching them and showing them, and helping them to become the best person they could possibly be. That was my mission, right? Coming out of that, we decided to film 365 these … I committed to that, of these Daily Growth Hacks, where I’m talking to you and trying to offer you a little piece of insight that I hope helps you better your day, but also better those around you, better the world. That’s my ultimate goal.

So, what I want you to do is write in your journal and write down what you do. Like what do Dougs do? Write that down and make sure that aligns with your North Star. What I mean by North Star, make sure that aligns with the person that you want to become, or the person that you are becoming. If it doesn’t, then maybe you have some deep questions to ask yourself about changing that.

This is a great conversation topic, so I always recommend or ask you share this with at least three people. In this conversation, I’m going to ask you to share it with even more. Share it with people around you, and have that conversation. Maybe you can do what Tony did and just go up to somebody and say, “Hey, what do Carols do? Or what do Billys do or what do Darcys do? Or what do Maudes do?” Then have that weird conversation that I had with Tony like, “What are you talking about?”

But it really opened up the lines of communication, and Tony and I had a really deep exchange and became good friends based on that conversation. So I’m asking you to do the same thing. What I’m also suggesting is you can use this as your North Star. So when problems come up in business, or in relationships, or dilemmas, whether they be moral dilemmas in your life or just decisions that you just don’t know what to do, use this. What would Dougs do? Oh, well Dougs would go this way. Dougs would make this decision based on what their natural essence is. That makes it so much easier to follow your heart. Right? Get into your heart zone and follow what your path would be. It’s just an easy, easy exercise and it’s an easy North Star to carry around, so to speak, in your pocket that you always have, you can pull out.

That’s it for me today. Remember, go out and share this with more than three people today after you’ve done this exercise, because this is a great conversation starter and a great way to bring other people into your fold so you have a bigger tribe and you can go out and be the author of your own story.

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Jay Abraham has something he talks about, which is your three ways to grow a business. Now, this is something that I use in all of my businesses on a regular basis, but I especially use it for my strategic planning, and when I’m forming my 90-day goals.

So it’s very simple, and it’s going to require you to actually write some things down. So grab a blank piece of paper, and if you have your own business, you’re going to need to do some research with this, but first thing, that … What are the three ways? Well, the three ways are: To increase the number of customers. So, obviously, the number of customers or clients you have, increasing That base is one way. Number two is to increase the average transactional value. So, if somebody’s buying one widget, can you get them to buy another?

One way to think about this is when you’re going to a grocery store. How often are you waiting in that line to check out, and you grab a pack of gum, or a magazine, or something else that’s there, “Oh, yeah, that’s right, I do need batteries,” or whatever it may be, a drink, you’re grabbing it with that? Another way to think about it is, “Hey, would you like fries with that?” McDonald’s has done a great way, and so have the other fast food industries, as well as restaurants, in upgrading you. It’s an easy upgrade. Or, commonly, “Hey, would you like avocado?” “Well, of course, I want avocado.” “Well, that’s another $1.50.” Now, none of us know why it’s an extra $1.50, but either way, they’re increasing the transactional value of each customer or client.

So, that’s the second way. The third way is to increase the frequency of repurchasing, so increase the frequency that people are buying from you. Those are the three solid ways you can increase your business. So what do we do? Step one, write down in a box, so you’re going to have boxes across your paper; one box is, “How many customers do you have?” How many clients or customers do you have? Then the second box, what I want to know is, “What’s the average transactional value?” What’s the average amount the average customer spends at your establishment, your business? Whether it be through your website or your brick-and-mortar store, what’s the average sale? In the third box, what I want you to put in there is, “What is actually the number of repeat buys you get?”

Is it a subscription-based model, or do people … Maybe you’re selling mattresses and they only come in every couple years to buy something, I’m not sure. Whatever it is, how often do they actually buy something else? And then you’re going to have a total. So you’re going to have, you’ll take box one, multiply it by box two, then multiply it by box three, and that’s going to equal your total. That’s your total value, right? The value during the year. So then, what I want you to do is take box one. So remember, box one is the number of clients or customers you have. Multiply that by 10% and put that number under. Can you grow your business in a year by 10% in the number of people? Can you reach, if you have 100 clients, do you think you can get 10% more? I certainly hope so.

I mean, that’s really less than one extra client a month, that shouldn’t be too difficult for you. So write that number down. We’ll use 100 at the first example, your next box should be 110. Not tough. And now, we’re going to look at, again, what’s the average transactional value? Let’s go take that number and multiply that by 10%, right? So you’re going to multiply that by 10%. Now, again, maybe you sell mattresses, we’ll go back to that analogy, because I could see somebody saying, “Hey, Doug, I sell mattresses — people don’t come in, the transactional value’s a mattress.” BS. You can sell sheets, you could sell pillows, you could sell pillow cases, you can sell warranties … there are all kinds of things. Dentists …

My dentist sells upgrades all the time. “Hey, would you like a dental plan? Would you like a whitening program? Would you like to get on our program where we deliver toothpaste to your door every week?” There are all kinds of ways of increasing the transactional value of a client. If you can deliver value, you can increase that transactional value as well. Just come in with like-minded products. Something else you might want to think of is coming up with products and bundling. In other words, maybe you have a personal training studio, and you can go over to another … A chef. He does meal delivery, and you can work together and bundle that up. It’s not even your product, it’s the chef’s product, but you bundle it in, and you get a 20% discount from the chef, and you take that 20% to your clients.

Your clients get a great package, they get food delivered to their home, and you make a little bit of your effort. That increases the transactional value. The third way is the repeat of a buyer. How can you get them into a subscription model? How can you get them into something else? Maybe you’re that mattress guy and you’re like, “Okay, well people buy every two years.” Well, maybe you say, “Hey, look, if you come back and buy a new mattress in a year, I’m going to go ahead and give you X discount,” or whatever it may be. Or maybe you’re that dentist and you want people to come in more often. If there is a legitimate reason, now, there should be … Always go with integrity first. The legitimate reason you can increase that transactional efficiency, or the repeat buying, the better, right?

You want them to come back and buy from you more often. And maybe it’s by offering different services. So, again, personal trainer, you can offer massage, you can offer all kinds of different things. I know personal trainers that offer strictly stretching classes and recovery classes on the weekends. Their clients are coming in all week, and usually, they go, “Hey, the weekend’s here. No one wants to work out, I want them to rest,” so instead of them taking the weekend off, what they did is they developed programs for rest. I thought it was brilliant, it’s a genius program. They’re getting their clients, or delivering more value to their clients, their clients need to be resting, and they’re increasing the frequency as well as the transactional value.

So can you upgrade those all by 10%? So once you’ve taken those numbers and you’ve multiplied them together … So a 10% increase in customers or clients, 10% increase in transactional value, and a 10% increase in the repeat purchasing power, so the number of times they come back and buy from you … That is such a small percentage. If you can’t increase your business by 10% across those three areas, shut the doors. In all seriousness, it should be pretty easy to do, that should be a pretty easy growth strategy. Now, think about this: If you do increase all 10%, you’re really increasing your business by 33.1%. I’ll say that one more time, because it’s impressive: If you take your business and increase it 10% across those three areas, clients, transactional, average transactional value, and repeat purchases, you then, by the end of the year, you’ve [increased 00:06:11] … or end of the time, whatever it is — but a year in this example — you’ve increased your business by 33.1%.

That’s amazing. Very doable, very sustainable. Now, let’s say, instead of 10%, we’re a little bit more ambitious. We’re like, “Hey, Doug, I can do it. I’m a hustler, I got this. I have a great product, a great service. I’m going to increase it by 20% because that’s what I do.” Now, if you increased all three areas by 20%, you’re now looking at a 72.8% increase in your business. Now, you’ve heard me enough in these Daily Growth Hacks, you know I’m crazy, and I go more, “10%, no problem. 20%, I can do that. 33%, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m really going to go in, get my team motivated, we’re going to increase our business by 33%.”

And we’ve done this with our marketing agency, as well as with our old fitness business. Increasing it by 33%, that’s a 150% increase in your business over that time period — in this example of course of one year. Let me say that again: 150%. Now, most people you talk to are just struggling to increase 2, 3, 4% to stay ahead of inflation, and that’s ridiculous. That’s survival mode. And most likely, it’s a lack of information and resourcefulness. Take Jay Abraham’s, “Three Ways To Grow Your Business.” Take this chart, and grow. If you have questions, go over to the Author of Your Own Story community on Facebook and post on there, I’m happy to help you out.

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Now, what do I mean by extra time. I know you’re thinking like “Doug, you know we all have 24 hours in a day. Nobody has extra time.” And that’s totally true, but let’s say you’re the average American.

Now, I know you’re watching this and you’re going off to www.authorofyourownstory.com and you’re participating in the community. You are anything but average. You’re extraordinary. You’re actually one of those people that are taking the bull by the horns, and living life on your terms. And I commend you for that, but let’s take a step back and just think, “What if you were average? You’re the average person, okay? And maybe we’re closer than we think. Well, did you know the average person spends four hours a day watching TV? Two more hours on social media. That’s six hours a day. Well, what could you do with six hours a day? I mean, if you just wrote that down, it would be astonishing. Did you know that if you just eliminated TV and social media, just in those six-hour average times, you can master a foreign language, be fluent in two months?

Think of all the things that you can do just by simply reducing that time. Let’s say you only watch two hours of TV and spend an hour on social media, then that frees up three hours a day of your time to pursue your goals, your passion. Start a new business, really connect with the people that you love, look at those people that in your life and spend time with them. Look at your goals: What do you want to learn? Is a foreign language? Do you want to learn to surf? snowboard? Do you want to travel more? Do you want to start a new business? What I’d love you to do is take out your journal or your notebook, and write down those things you do in a day. Now, everybody that I’ve coached says “Doug, I don’t watch TV. I’m not on social media that much.” Well, come to find out, they are a lot more than they think.

There are lots of good applications out there that can monitor your time on your computer. I use one to track my time to see what I’m on. What websites I’m spending too much time on. How much I’m on Facebook or YouTube or any other websites, reading journals or newspapers or etc online as well as on my mobile device: my cell phone. Really trying to see where I’m at and tracking my time. There’s also just journaling, writing down what you’re doing. You would be shocked to know how much time are you spending in the car, and while you’re in the car, are you listening to something that’s feeding your brain? Are you listening to bubblegum music? pop music or country or whatever it is that you enjoy? That’s fine, but do it with intent. Listen to music as you love it, but don’t listen to it just to drown out the other sounds. Try silence. Try our driving meditation so to speak. Or listen to something like the daily grow hacks that’s going to help you up level your life.

What I’m challenging you to do today is write down your times. Each day, write down all those things that you do. Write down how often you watch tv, watch the people around you. If you’re married with your spouse, don’t try to change this habit just yet. Just record it. Just be aware how often are you actually commuting, how often are you actually spending on social media.

I highly recommend downloading and installing one of these time-tracking applications that you can actually look at at the end of the day and see how much time you’re spending on websites such as Facebook, YouTube, or any of the news media outlets. Look at your time at the end of the week. See where that’s benefiting you and see where you want to move or pivot. Now, I know for me, I found that I was actually watching a lot more TV and I found myself on YouTube quite often.

Now, I watch you Youtube too because I watch shows like this too. I watch things that are going to inspire me or going to uplift my life, but I found that I was watching them a lot more than I thought. I was spending a lot more time on these websites and by consciously making a decision to cut that down, I’ve actually been taking that time and started practicing my Spanish. Now, over next course of a year, I could be fluent in Spanish if I continue on this path. If I multiply the hours they say that it takes to master of foreign language, I’m on track. And by this time next year, when you and I are having a conversation, I’ll be able to speak to you in Spanish, and it’ll be awesome.

So, the whole idea of extra time is being conscious of your time. So write your times down to really track it. I really highly recommend these time tracking devices are available for laptops as well as phones, but also manually tracking things that you’re doing. And I’m not saying TV is bad or social media’s bad. Nothing’s bad. It’s just is that where you want to put your intention? If you were to look at yourself a year from now and look back on how you got to where you want to be, was it the TV time that is really rewarding you? You know when you sit down binge-watching five shows of the Walking Dead, the next day, do you feel better about yourself? Or is that time better spent doing something else? Maybe watching one episode or two or maybe spending another time doing it? Really, what I’m asking to do is just be conscious of your time.

I’d love to hear your results, love for you to share them in the Facebook group. Also, remember to get these show notes and all the other show notes, as well as tips tricks and other ways to uplevel your life, go to:  www.authorofyourownstory.com today.  That’s it for me today. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

That’s it for me today. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

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This is a topic around business, and a topic I’ve had several times in the last week when I’m talking to business owners about their business model and how they actually want to get out of their business so they can become the authors of their own story. Oftentimes what happens is a business owner’s building the business as a solopreneur and they surround themselves by key people, yet they haven’t been able to take themselves out of the business. In fact, even a worst case scenario, they branded their business around their skill sets and about their name. Now their business is synonymous with them.

This has happened to Tony Robbins, for example, in the personal development field, but this has also happened to one of my clients who was also a coach, as well as another one of my clients who owns a furniture store. What they’ve done is they’ve narrowed themselves in. They didn’t build their business for success or an exit strategy. This is something I recommend all business owners consider. Build your business so you can sell it. Maybe you don’t want to sell it, and that’s fine, but by building your business so you could sell it, so you’re building it as if you’re going to sell it, this gives you a whole variety of opportunities.

One of those key opportunities is pulling yourself out of the business so you stop being the bottleneck of that business and you can go out and you can travel. You can be the author of your own story. Heck, you can start another business if you’d like to if you’re crazy like me, but each person, this gives you more leverage. Each person makes their own decision, but if you’re in the business and you are the roadblock to that business, you can never sell it.

For example, if you’re going to buy Doug Holt Online, you’re going to buy Doug Holt Online, what are you really buying? Yeah, I have revenue, but it’s all based on my brand. That’s not a business that’s built to sell. Whereas if you were to buy something like Kmart or Target, these are businesses that are built on solid principles and not one person in mind. You could own a yoga studio, you could own a furniture studio, you could be a consultant, and you could be in the field of finance. Building your brand around the actual brand concepts and around … Instead of services, building them to products allows you to pull yourself out and actually have an exit strategy. While this may not be, again, your strategy for right now, this allows you so much more leverage over time.

I see this so often where I get the call from the business owner who’s fed up and they want to invest in coaching. They want to invest in coaching because they’re so fed up with their lifestyle. They want out of their business and they want to sell it. Of course, as a business owner, you want to sell it for 5X revenue or more because you know how much value’s in there, but me as an investor, I’m looking at your net income. I’m looking at what I can get out of that business. Chances are, they’re not going to meet at the same place unless you built your business to sell. If you’re selling services, turn them into products.

There’s a great book called “Built to Sell”, and I highly recommend it if you’re in this situation. Of course, you want to also systematize your business. Then you have books like “The Checklist Manifesto”, “The E Myth”, “Traction”. These are business books that can help you along your way, but either way you’re looking at this, what I want you to do as a business owner is grab your journal, or your laptop because this is going to be a process, and look at your business as if you’re an outside investor. You don’t know what you don’t know about the business. Can you pull yourself out? Can you extract yourself from that business and replace yourself with one or two key employees or key staff members? If you’re going to replace yourself, what’s that going to cost? That’s going to have an effect to the net of your business, the net revenue being brought in. If you’re building it to sell it, if you’re building it properly, you’re able to pull yourself out of that business at any time when you need to. That is the key to being the author of your own story.

This is a very simplified version of a very complex subject, but I want to introduce it to you because it comes up so often in conversations with me when I’m talking to business owners. I want this to be something that you’re ahead of. If you don’t have a business yet, but you’re thinking about starting one, this is a great place to start because you start with your exit strategy first, and as you design and build your business structure, you’re able to come at it from a different angle. You’re able to come at it with the idea that you’re able to go in, build the business, but be able to pull yourself out. This also helps your staff because they’re not always coming to you being the control freak, the roadblock, or whatever it is in the pipeline to actual growth and expansion.

That’s it from me today. I’d love to hear from you and continue the conversation on our Author of Your Own Story private forum, but of course, remember, build your tribe. I can’t emphasize this enough. Do the work and build your tribe. Share this with at least three people right now that you think would benefit from this and just have the conversation. Have a conversation with them and open up. That’s it from me today. Go out and be the author of your own story.

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