Part of what we love about this blog is that we get to share the amazing success of young entrepreneurs with not only our readers, but our kids. As we’ve been learning on Paul Counsel’s course, and what Dale Beaumont has reiterated, is that who you “hang with” is who you become like. Now that can be a scary thought or it can be an inspiring thought, depending on your peers and the people you spend the most time with.
Luckily we have wonderful family and friends, but for us, it’s also important to include peers who have achieved success in the areas we are lacking. Some of our family and friends fulfil those needs, but a sure way of increasing self effacy in these areas for us and our kids is to mix with other successful entrepreneurs.
Dale Beaumont is one such inspiring young entrepreneur. He doesn’t see himself as that young anymore, but his success started at the tender age of 19. Prior to developing his entrepreneurial skills, Dale was an accomplished gymnast and probably what you would call an overachiever. When Dale was 19 he co-authored a book called “The World at Your Feet” which was the basis of his successful program “Tomorrow’s Youth”. Here, he taught young kids essential life skills.
In 12 short years he has published 15 books in the “Secrets Exposed” series, built amazing relationships with other young successful entrepreneurs, business owners and “thought” leaders and has recently developed the Business Blueprint model which has amazing systems to keep you ahead of your competition in business and free your valuable time where you can concentrate on things other than work 24/7.
Dale is married and has two gorgeous boys, so his focus is actually on travelling with his young family to all corners of the world. He is only able to do this because he is financially free and has set amazing systems in place within his business so everything ticks along with or without him! So you could imagine how appealing that is to Trev and I!
I won’t talk about the whole workshop that myself and my good friend Sally went to in Perth, but I thought I would share some highlights with you that really stuck with me as he spoke.
“Empty bank accounts don’t feed the people.”
“The poor can’t help the poor.”
Just these two sayings alone say it all. Some people in this world want money for money’s sake – so they can have nice things and show off to others how well they are doing. Others want money so they can have nice things, enjoy wonderful experiences, but also do good things in this world and make a difference to the lives of others. We fall into that category.
Dale supports “Hands Across the Water” project in Thailand and it was inspiring to see him obviously making a difference to the lives of many boys and girls there. He even takes other entrepreneurs there with him, so they can have more purpose in their lives and help use their money in useful ways.
The internet has changed business forever and if you don’t embrace that change, your business will get left behind. A classic example of this was the Borders Bookstore. They were a wonderful “physical” resource, but chose not to keep up with how fast the internet was growing and actually sold their software of selling books online to their competitor, who did see the potential of the internet. That competitor was Amazon……..and I think most of you will agree that it has gone from strength to strength, whilst Borders, sadly, had to close their doors.
What I loved about Dale’s seminar is that you don’t have to do it all yourself, in fact, you would be crazy to. There are ways of making your business and your life easier and Dale spells these out with the amazing systems he has in place.
Dale shared with us something he learnt when he was just starting out in business.
The Coffin or the Hourglass.
Basically many people starting in business spend more time on taking action than they do strategising or planning where they want their business to end up. Now taking action is important, but you don’t want your business to be like a coffin, where little time is spent strategizing, heaps of time is spent taking action (but sometimes not very fruitful) and the results then speak for themselves.
The hourglass on the other hand, is all about putting the time in with the planning, strategising, and “thinking” stage. With well thought out plans in place, the action you take is more focused and the results are more fruitful.
So what would you prefer? A business with the “coffin” model or one with the “hourglass” model?
I think what has made Dale so successful in such a short amount of time is his ability to let go of the things that could be done by someone else (outsourcing), and focus on the things he needs to do to be effective within his business. Dale uses particular software to help systemize his business, so his time is leveraged and far more productive.
Office Autopilot
One such program is called “Office Autopilot” and has an amazing array of uses and ways of streamlining the processes that you must go through to keep your businesses ticking along nicely. I’m sure there are others programs or software, but having just purchased this particular one myself and seeing first hand how Dale uses the software to enhance productivity within his business, I am more than happy to list a few of it’s features below.
“Office Autopilot” Software allows you to split test, track and automate emails through their Email Marketing function. Order forms, memberships, subscriptions, refunds and automated card handling are all made easy with it’s Web Payment Processing system.
The Contact Database is all in one place for the history, purchases, referrals, files and notes etc. The Software covers Market Automation, Affiliate tracking, and Direct Mail Postcards (where you can personalise your business).
I love the If-Then Rule System where you can easily write extremely flexible and powerful rules to automate what happens next in your business. So basically, the system will have your rules “if this happens, send this email, if that happens, sent that email. This is such a time saving feature of the Office Autopilot.
The Software has a WordPress Integration system where you can set up a Word Press site in seconds. You can build a totally integrated membership site in minutes and add smart forms or order forms with a click of the button.
The program builds leads with drag’n’drop landing page creator and can split test pages for marketing purposes. Event Management from events, webinars to teleseminars make follow up easy and with Task Management processes and great Customer Service and Training, what more could you need.
As mentioned earlier, there are many programs out there, but this one is a good email marketing system combined with a good CRM system. Many are just one or the other.
So, how does all of this relate to Entrepreneurial Kids, you may ask. Well, for any business that our kids choose to start, using the internet will be a given, especially when they are young adults. If we want our kids to be competitive in today’s markets, we need to show them the way by taking the time ourselves to invest in “cutting edge” programs. They in turn, will follow our lead and already have the mindset that says “Get savvy! Learn…learn…learn!”
Generation Y (anyone born after 1980) are already building and creating things that will improve efficiency in their lives. Why spend time on something that takes 6 hours if you can streamline it and do it in one hour! That’s what our children are going forth into when they build their businesses.
And we agree totally. Life is not meant to be all about work. We want to work to live, not live to work……and we want our kids to get this concept too.
But in the meantime, if you are looking for an inspiring mentor and stimulating bedtime reading why not get stuck into one of Dale Beaumont’s books. Each of his books are either authored or co-authored by Dale and cost less than $10 from Amazon. His Secrets Exposed Series of books are the perfect gift for someone to kick start their entrepreneurial journey.
