Copyright © 2021 Donald Miller Words, LLC.

Business Made Simple Coaching Certification required to use 1

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 Introduction
Many business coaches got into coaching because they were successful in business
themselves. After getting into coaching, though, they realized they had a powerful
intuition about business that some of their clients couldn’t seem to learn.

The Business Made Simple Business Coach’s Checklist gives business coaches a step-
by-step path they can guide clients down that will transform their businesses into
thriving revenue and profit-generating machines.

The Business Made Simple Coach’s Checklist is based on Business Made Simple’s “How
to Grow a Business” f ramework that is taught in workshops, online classes, and books.

Business Made Simple certifies business coaches to work with leaders all over the
world. Our coaches deliver the life-changing frameworks included in this checklist
through one-on-one coaching, small groups, and even workshops.

As business owners and leaders read more and more of the Business Made Simple and
StoryBrand line of best-selling books, they look for Business Made Simple Certified
Coaches to help them build the business of their dreams.

Not only this, but our coaches can give their clients an assessment to see how well
their business is doing and then customize their coaching approach to deliver the best
possible results.

What’s missing in most coaching relationships are:

1. An overall metaphor allowing coaches and clients to share an understanding of

how business works
2. A step-by-step process coaches can take clients through that produces results
3. A way of monetizing their offerings so their own coaching business can grow while
delivering terrific value and results for their clients

These limitations can make coaching a frustrating profession.

Our tools help coaches and their clients succeed.

If you’d like to become a Business Made Simple Certified Coach, apply at

[Link]

Until we see you at a certification training, here’s to the success of you and those you
coach.

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 How many ways can you change your client’s life?

SECTION ONE

Cockpit
Leadership - pg. 11
Help your clients understand their leadership responsibilities pg. 14
Help your clients clarify their personal mission pg. 13
Help your clients clarify their business mission pg. 14
Help your clients stay aware of revenue fluctuations pg. 15
Help your clients become great communicators pg. 17
Help your clients manage talent pg. 19
Help your clients develop their talent pg. 20
Help your clients install an execution f ramework pg. 22
Help your clients create a digital dashboard pg. 23

SECTION TWO

Right Engine
Marketing - pg. 24
Help your clients clarify their message pg. 26
Help your clients create a marketing sales funnel pg. 28

SECTION THREE

Left Engine
Sales - pg. 30
Help your clients develop their sales team and process pg. 31
Help your clients streamline the sales administration process pg. 32

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 SECTION FOUR

Wings
Products - pg. 34
Help your clients assess the prof itability of their products pg. 35
Help your clients assess the possibility of new product creation pg. 36
Help your clients install a process for new product creation pg. 37
Help your clients install a customer service process that
protects cash flow and reduces overhead pg. 40
Help your clients improve the customer journey pg. 41

SECTION FIVE

The Body
Overhead - pg. 43
Help your clients stop spending and start investing pg. 45
Help your clients grow their company without bloating overhead pg. 47

SECTION SIX

Fuel Tank
Cash Flow - pg. 49
Help your clients understand how cash flow is affected pg. 53
Help your clients create a compensation package for each
team member pg. 54
Help your clients manage their checking accounts and
protect their cash pg. 57
How a Business Made Simple Certif ied Coach monetizes
their coaching business pg. 60

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 What makes a Business
Made Simple Certified
Business Coach different?
Business Made Simple Certif ied Coaches have in their mind a picture
of how a business should work. This allows them to compare and
contrast any business with a picture of a healthy organization.

The metaphor of the airplane helps you and your client agree on how
to get the parts of the business working together and in proportion to
each other so the business does not crash.

The simple metaphor that a business works like an airplane provides

a common vision, vocabulary, and understanding of how a healthy
business operates. Our coaches, then, serve as airplane engineers
and mechanics allowing them to help their clients grow and sustain
healthy businesses.

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Copyright © 2021 Donald Miller Words, LLC. Business Made Simple Coaching Certification required to use 6
this material in training. To verify that your coach is certified, check our database at [Link]
 If you were walking up to an airplane and the body of the plane were
enormous, the wings of the plane were tiny, and the engine on those
wings were even smaller, with tiny little propellers coming out of them,
you’d know intuitively not to get on that airplane! You’d know the
airplane was going to crash.

Just like that airplane, after understanding Business Made Simple’s

How to Grow a Business f ramework, you will be able to see what is
wrong with a business immediately and you
will know what you need to do
to f ix it.

Airplanes are engineered to be

flightworthy and maintained
to stay flightworthy by using a
series of checklists. Checklists
are used to build the airplane,
fly the airplane, and maintain
the airplane.

Business Made Simple coaches

use their intuition, their people
skills, and also a series of
checklists that make coaching
simple, easy, and effective.

A good coach guides their

clients through these checklists so their clients’ businesses can fly far
and fast. This is important as so many people depend on the business
they work within to survive and succeed in life.

This powerful resource will guide you through an overview of the

f rameworks and checklists created by Business Made Simple that allow
business coaches to deliver the best possible results for their clients.

Before we get into the checklists, let’s look at how an airplane works
just like a business. Once you understand the metaphor of the airplane,
you will better be able to help your clients understand how a business
really works.

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 Help your clients
understand how their
business really works
There are six important parts to an airplane that are each useful to
understand to safely counsel a client in growing their business.

1. Cockpit: Leadership
2. Wings: Products
3. Right Engine: Marketing
4. Left Engine: Sales
5. Body: Overhead
6. Fuel Tank: Cash Flow

In order for an airplane to be

safe and airworthy, these six
parts of the airplane need to
be in working order and also
exist in the right proportion
to the others.

For instance, tiny engines

will not provide enough thrust to move a large plane through the air.
In business, that means minuscule marketing and sales efforts will
not give a business enough thrust to overcome the cost of overhead.
If the engines are not powerful enough to overcome the weight of
overhead, the business will crash.

But keeping marketing and sales efforts strong while managing the
weight of overhead are not enough. If the body of the airplane is lean
and the engines are producing enough thrust but the plane runs out
of fuel, it will still crash.

In a business, fuel is the equivalent of cash flow. If a business runs out

of cash, it will crash, no matter how well the business is engineered
and maintained.

Once you and your client understand the metaphor of the airplane,
you will have a common vocabulary and checklist to engineer and
maintain a safe and growing business.

As a Business Made Simple Certif ied Coach, your training will kick in

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 as you help clients understand the responsibilities and skill sets of the
leadership team (what happens in the cockpit), how to clarify their
message and create a marketing sales funnel (right engine), how to
manage a sales team and how to guide a sales team through a process
and f ramework (left engine), how to audit overhead and reduce
overhead expenses (the body of the airplane), how to produce products
that are in demand and highly prof itable (the wings), and how to
manage cash and arrange their checking accounts (fuel management).

Not only this, but your clients will be able to take an assessment giving
you a detailed report of all that is going well with their business along
with what needs work. This assessment will allow you to customize
a strategy. You can either take your clients through your coaching
playbook in order (as a Certif ied Coach you have a robust playbook
consisting of plug and play coaching sessions) or pick and choose
where to start the journey addressing your clients’ most pressing
needs f irst.

For instance, if their assessment reveals the cash flow of the company
is f ine, but the prof itability of the products are weak and the marketing
engine isn’t running well, you can start with those two elements of the
coaching content and restore your client’s business safely and quickly.

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 Improve your client’s
business acumen
Some Business Made Simple Certif ied Coaches choose to position
themselves more as professors than coaches. The Business Made
Simple curriculum allows them to teach small groups and workshops
that act more like a traditional undergraduate business or MBA degree
program.

As the University system is disrupted, Business Made Simple Certif ied

Coaches serve as a powerful replacement to the traditional degree
without burdening their clients (students) with college debt.

The process of teaching your clients the art of business can happen in
as little as six months with a cohort that meets on your timeline, or as
long as a year or more through one-on-one coaching.

Business Made Simple Certif ied Coaches have taken the mission of
giving business professionals a valuable business education upon
themselves. The future of America’s best business education just may
be in your living room.

At the end of your client’s experience, they can take a robust

assessment and receive a Business Made Simple Certif icate of Mastery,
increasing their personal economic value on the open market.

*To read more about how a Business Made Simple Certif ied Coach
monetizes their services, see the appendix at the end of this resource.

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 C TI O N
SE

Cockpit
Leadership

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 To help your clients build a healthy business, we must start with
leadership. To follow the metaphor, let’s look at what needs to happen
in the cockpit of the airplane.

The cockpit represents the responsibilities of the executive and

management teams of your client’s business.

These are the people who are flying the airplane and, as such, are
responsible for the safety, survival, and growth of the business.

You can either work with the owner or leader of the company in one-
on-one coaching or create a small group for a specif ic company’s
leadership team (or, for that matter, a small group of leaders f rom
various companies).

Regardless, helping your client understand their personal mission and

the mission of the company is foundational if a company is going to
succeed.

Help your clients understand their

leadership responsibilities
Cockpit personnel, as it relates to business, includes board members,
the executive leadership team, and even middle management.
Anybody who has team members reporting to them should go down
the Business Made Simple Leadership track that includes:

1. A personal life plan and productivity f ramework

2. Mission Statement and Guiding Principles Made Simple
3. Talent Management Made Simple
4. Talent Development Made Simple
5. Management and Execution Made Simple
6. Communication Made Simple

If each leader in your client’s company understands these f rameworks,

they will be equipped to lead.

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 Everything in business hinges on leadership.

Leaders in companies deliver vision, f inancial accountability, and

manage talent to run the organization. Therefore, every person in the
cockpit should know what their responsibilities are and how to perform
them with excellence.

First, though, we want to help our clients understand their personal

life mission. If the mission of an organization does not flow out of the
hearts and minds of its leaders, the mission will not be communicated
or executed with passion.

Help your clients clarify their

personal mission
Curt Richardson, founder of Otterbox, won’t hire a CEO for any of his
companies without f irst sending them through a process in which they
create their life plan. He says that it’s not until a leader knows that the
company he or she leads is a reflection of their own mission that the
leader can give their full passion to the business.

Not only this, but after one year working for any of Curt’s companies,
employees are eligible to spend a day with a coach creating their life
plans, too. Richardson says that when people know what they want
to do with their lives they can better f ind where they f it within the
company and also know whether or not they should be there in the
f irst place.

As a coach, you’ll want to help your clients create their life plans so they
better know who they are, what they want, and how they are going to
get there. Until then, clients aren’t sure what their story is all about.

The Business Made Simple Life Plan process is called Hero On A

Mission and is taught in a course included in our online university
platform. It’s also taught by our Certif ied Coaches in one-on-one
sessions as well as workshops.

The f irst six items on the Business Made Simple Coach’s Checklist
reflect the six deliverables of the Hero On A Mission Life Plan allowing
your clients to:

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 1. Def ine who they want to be and what they want to accomplish in
their life
2. Establish a ten-year vision def ining a path they can take toward
their life goals
3. Establish a f ive-year vision allowing them to assess critical priorities
to reach their life goals
4. Establish a one-year vision def ining the pressing objectives they
need to work on f irst
5. Establish and def ine their goals through the Hero On A Mission
goal-setting worksheet
6. Utilize a daily planner that helps them perform each day in such a
way their life-long objectives remain in focus

Once your clients (and their team members) have created their life
plans and understand how to use the Hero On A Mission Daily Planner,
mission clarity and personal productivity will dramatically increase.

But we don’t want to stop there. Now that each individual member
of the team understands their personal mission in life, let’s help the
leadership team create a mission statement and guiding principles for
the overall organization.

Help your clients clarify their

business mission
Next, the coach takes the client and/or the client’s leadership team
through a process that establishes their mission statement and
guiding principles.

Business Made Simple’s guiding principles f ramework is called Mission

Statement Made Simple and is available as a course in our online
platform, Business Made Simple University. Again, Business Made
Simple Certif ied Coaches are also certif ied to take clients through the
process in one-on-one coaching, small groups, and even public and
private workshops.

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 Most corporate mission statements are boring and unmemorable.
Business Made Simple’s guiding principles f ramework assures your
client’s mission statement will be exciting and memorable to every
member of their team.

Our checklist continues with f ive more items helping your clients
def ine their corporate mission.

The Mission Statement Made Simple process will help your clients:

1. Establish a mission statement people actually remember and

actualize
2. Def ine key characteristics necessary for the leadership and their
teams to embody in order to reach their mission
3. Def ine critical actions that must be taken to accomplish the mission
4. Write a story pitch allowing the organization to tell their story in
a succinct way so they can attract more resources and get buy in
f rom stakeholders
5. Def ine a theme or a “why” for the organization so the organization
is built on a f irm philosophical foundation

Once you’ve taken the leader or leadership team through the Mission
Statement Made Simple process, they will feel a sense of purpose for
themselves and the overall organization.

Help your clients create a

digital dashboard
Without access to the right data, your client cannot make informed
decisions. Most larger or established companies have useful
dashboards allowing principal team members access to real-time data,
but if the company you are working with doesn’t, helping them create
a dashboard will help them get a true view of the company and will
also help them measure the success that will happen to the company
under your coaching influence.

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 Even if your client has a digital dashboard, they may not be using it.
Many corporate dashboards provide lag measures (data that is too old
to be changed in real time such as yesterday’s revenue) rather than
lead measures (those measures that lead to lag measures such as
number of leads, click rates, sales calls made and so on). A dashboard
containing data that is too old to affect change is unhelpful.

What data does your client need to see on a daily basis?

Just like the instruments in a cockpit, a leadership team needs to

have real-time access to data that tells them whether the business is
airworthy.

That data should include at least four metrics. They are:

1. Revenue - How much THRUST is the business producing?

2. Prof it - What is the pitch and altitude of this business? Are we
heading up or down? When prof it rises, the business climbs and
when it declines, the business descends. The leadership team needs
to know at all times whether the business is heading up or down so
they don’t get confused or distracted with top-line revenue. Top-line
revenue reveals how fast the airplane is moving, but not whether
it is going up or down. The pitch of the business is only revealed
through an accurate reflection of prof it.
3. Prof it per team member - This is an important number because
it reveals the fuel eff iciency of the airplane. We need to know how
many miles the plane can travel per gallon of fuel? The number that
reveals this in a business is the prof it per employee number. This
tells us how eff icient the business is at creating value for customers.
Are we making the kind of decisions that keep a business lean
and eff icient? This number will tell us the truth. (Prof it divided by
number of team members.)
4. Leads - The number and quality of leads coming in means we get
a look at how much business we will be doing in the future. The
number of leads you have coming in is equivalent to the amount of
fuel you have available OUTSIDE the airplane. In this way, the lead
number is the amount of fuel in the refueling plane flying in f ront of
the plane. We have to do the work to convert those leads into fuel in
the actual fuel tank, but at least we know how much fuel is available
to us. We then have to convert those leads into paying customers in
order to fly the plane further, higher, and faster.

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 Of course more data can be included in the dashboard including
revenue by department or product, leads per lead generator and so
on. Revenue can also be broken down by payments received, accounts
payable, and even orders placed but not delivered. You will want to
work closely with your clients to help them customize a dashboard.

Nevertheless, these four areas of the company will suff ice in the
deliverable of an introductory and useful dashboard.

As a coach, you will not have to create your client’s dashboard. You can
f ind an outside source specializing in corporate dashboards to get the
job done while you help your client supervise the overall process.

As a coach, helping your client process data and convert it into

valuable information will help them improve their economic decision
making.

Next, Business Made Simple Certif ied Coaches help their clients
become great communicators. Any professional that can communicate
in a compelling way will get more buy-in f rom their team members.

Large and small organizations approach Business Made Simple

f requently asking us to transform their team members into terrif ic
storytellers and communicators. Our answer to these requests is the
Communication Made Simple f ramework, once again taught in our
online platform at [Link], and by our coaches in
one-on-one coaching, small groups, and public and private workshops.

Help your clients become great

communicators
The entire world was built using words. One person said something
to another person and an action was taken which resulted in a
community, a building inf rastructure, and f inally a city and a country.

Leaders who can communicate effectively have a distinct competitive

advantage. When our words are heard and understood, people take
action.

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 Help your client give great speeches, write great e-mails, and clearly
state their objectives in a compelling way and they will be more likely
to win.

Not only should your clients be able to communicate well, but they
should know how to run a communication campaign. Once an
objective is determined, a communication campaign is important for
getting people on the same page.

Any major movement in the organization, whether that be the

acquisition of another company, the launch of a product, the moving
of an off ice, or the hiring of a new executive should be accompanied by
a communication plan. That plan should include six components:

1. Talking points
2. Speech
3. Video
4. Email
5. Social media campaign
6. Press release

It all starts with talking points. When your client is ready to make an
important move within the company, you can sit down with them and
guide them through a process in which talking points are created and
distilled into pieces of communication collateral.

The talking points you must help your client create will do several
things. They will:

1. Def ine your client’s objective

2. Def ine the problem the objective solves
3. Invite stakeholders into the story of overcoming the problem
4. Foreshadow a climactic scene, or “better life” that will come about
because the objective has been met

When you help your clients create a communication strategy and

become great communicators themselves, they will feel the impact
as it relates to forward progress. Helping your clients become great
communicators will help them win and that will reflect terrif ically
upon you, their coach.

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 Help your clients manage talent
As your client’s business begins to grow, they are going to need to
hire and manage people. The art of hiring and managing people is
often referred to as talent management. And that’s a great name for it.
When we hire somebody, we are actually hiring whatever talent they
have that will positively affect the objectives of the business.

A coach who can give their clients real-time counsel as it relates to

hiring and managing talent is invaluable. Most business mistakes start
as relational mistakes that, eventually, begin to affect the bottom-line
of the company.

Talent can make or break an organization. Hiring the right or wrong

person for a position can cost a company millions.

Creating a process that allows your client to hire and keep the right
people will positively affect the bottom-line and save your client worlds
of f rustration.

What your clients need is a hiring process and protocol that is followed
to insure the right people are hired and they know what they are being
hired to do.

Has the executive team you are working with created the processes
necessary to hire top-tier talent? If not, those processes need to be
created.

By following a process, your client’s hiring dynamic will be intentional

rather than accidental. This marks a major transformation in an
organization. Small companies with limited success hire whoever is
around, but growing companies who are only interested in hiring rock
stars use a process.

That process should include:

1. Recruiting
2. Interviewing
3. On-boarding
4. Retention (learning and development)
5. Compensation (pay-for-performance compensation system)

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 Each stage of the talent management discipline involves repeatable
processes. Once the talent management processes are in place, hiring
and retention, which requires enormous energy f rom a growing
company, are nearly automated to achieve excellence in culture and
performance.

Help your clients

develop their talent
Once your client hires somebody, how do they develop them?

The most important factor in retaining talent is to invest in them so

they are constantly evolving into more value-driven professionals.

The perfect team member is a team member who is constantly trying

to improve. Therefore, if your client does not have a development plan,
those who are interested in improving will look for work elsewhere and
your client will only retain talent that is not interested in becoming
better versions of themselves.

After you help your client develop their leadership abilities, one of
the fastest ways you can help their overall company is to help them
develop their entire team.

Most business leaders are f rustrated about developing their teams

because development programs are expensive and time consuming.
As a Business Made Simple Certif ied Coach, you have all the
curriculum you need to develop an entire team.

To develop a team the Business Made Simple way, simply follow these
steps:

1. Make sure each team member has a copy of the Business Made
Simple book, a 60-day business education
2. Make sure each client can do a deep dive by subscribing to Business
Made Simple’s online platform, Business Made Simple University
3. Enroll leaders into a small group and coach them to success
4. Offer specif ic workshops that help specif ic teams accomplish
specif ic objectives

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 Encourage your client to not make personal development optional.
People really should develop themselves as part of their jobs.

After coaching your client for a few months, they will want you to help
the people around them. People who are growing love to be with
other people who are growing. Make sure to have an organizational
development plan ready to present to your client so their entire team
can become value-driven professionals.

Help your clients install

a management and
execution framework
In order to grow, a company needs a series of routines and processes
that ensure optimal productivity and eff iciency.

But creating and installing an execution strategy is surprisingly

diff icult. Many organizations hire an operations off icer and even that
off icer does not know how to install an execution process.

Business Made Simple Certif ied Coaches help their clients install
Management and Execution Made Simple, our f ramework that helps
organizations create high-performing teams and operate a production
process that reduces overhead and increases prof itability.

Production and prof itability increase when a team maintains two

things:

1. Intensity
2. Focus

Intensity and focus evaporate quickly if you do not install a f ramework

that helps people understand what they are supposed to do and
have a clear understanding of what is at stake if they don’t meet the
objectives.

The Management and Execution Made Simple f ramework involves

a series of worksheets and meetings that are used in a scheduled
routine your client’s organization, with your help, will install.

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 These routine meetings and worksheets are paramount to an
organization’s success.

It’s been said that if you meet every month, you risk having an
unproductive month. If you meet every week, you risk having an
unproductive week but if you meet every day, you only risk having an
unproductive day.

Your client’s execution process should include:

1. Daily director standup with the directors of each division or team

1. Perform a quick review of what each team member has done
2. Decide what you’re going to do today
3. Address any blocker
2. Daily department standup within each department
1. Review objectives
2. Review primary tasks
3. Address any roadblocks
3. Weekly speed check with directors and their individual team members
1. Address each team member’s top f ive priorities
2. Address any blockers
4. Quarterly performance review
1. Address the work that has been done
2. Give critical feedback
3. Address any blockers

*Q4 performance review will also serve as the compensation and bonus
precursor.

Creating and installing an execution framework may take your client a

month or more. As a coach, you will want to help them determine who will
lead the execution plan and help that person install the worksheets and
routine meetings. This simple execution framework will help your client gain
control of the organization and maximize productivity.

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 How a Business Made Simple
Certified Coach guides
their clients through their
leadership challenges
Business Made Simple’s Certif ied Coaches coach their clients through a
leadership development curriculum and f ramework that includes:

• One-on-one coaching (using the BMS Coach Playbook)

• Small group coaching (using BMS small-group curriculum
and videos)
• Online support courses in the Business Made Simple
University platform
• Hero On A Mission (life plan and productivity) and Mission
Statement Made Simple (guiding principles) workshops

*More courses are being created every business quarter and will be
added to the online platform

Visit Certif [Link] to become a Business Made Simple

Certif ied Coach and secure a license to use the coaching material.

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 C TI O N
SE

Right
Engine
Marketing

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 Helping your client develop their personal and organizational mission
along with their dashboard, execution plan, and communication ability
will help them make good decisions and measure the success they
experience under your coaching. Once the strength and focus of the
cockpit is established your client will experience a sense of peace along
with an excitement about where the company can go.

The next step, then, is to help your client increase revenue, prof it, and
cash flow.

To do this, your f ist step will likely be to help your client f ire up their
marketing engine.

During this season of your coaching you may want to ask your client
if they can involve the Chief Marketing Off icer, Marketing Director, or
even a StoryBrand Certif ied Marketing Guide in the coaching process.
Much of the execution of the decisions you and your client make will
be carried out by another person or team, so you’ll want to involve that
team in many of your conversations and plans.

We start with marketing because the fastest way to bring cash into the
company is through the marketing engine. The sales division is also
effective but we start with marketing because when marketing works,
the sales team also benef its.

Building a marketing engine that works, and performing routine

maintenance on that engine, should provide the thrust the wings
require to create lift and safely move the overall company forward.

Most coaches can only give marketing advice as it relates to the

advertising spend. Business Made Simple Certif ied Coaches, however,
have two f rameworks available to help their clients f ire up the
marketing engine.

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 Help your client clarify
their message
The f irst f ramework you’ll want to take your client through is the
StoryBrand Messaging f ramework and the second is the Marketing
Made Simple f ramework. Both f rameworks are taught in respective
courses on the Business Made Simple University platform and the
support materials in the Coach Playbook and small-group and
workshop materials. You must be a Business Made Simple Certif ied
Coach, however, to teach or train your client using the material.

Before spending money on advertising, it’s important your client has

clarif ied their marketing message. To do this, you’ll want your client
to have created a BrandScript that will invite their customers into a
compelling story.

The idea of a BrandScript comes f rom the New York Times bestselling
book Building a StoryBrand and many of your clients will be eager to
go through the process with a certif ied coach.

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 A BrandScript will ensure your client has a series of talking points they
can use in their marketing efforts.

When you guide your clients through the process, whether in one-on-
one coaching, small groups, or workshops, you will help them create
talking points f rom the following questions:

1. As it relates to our brand, what is the one thing your customer

wants most?
2. As it relates to our brand, what is your customer’s internal, external,
and philosophical problem? (Take the course to understand why this
is important.)
3. As it relates to our brand, how have we positioned ourselves as the
Guide in the customer’s story?
4. As it relates to our brand, what plan have we offered the customer
that will act as a path for them buying our product and solving their
problem?
5. As it relates to our brand, what is our direct call to action?
6. As it relates to our brand, what is the successful result our
customers will experience if they buy our product?
7. As it relates to our brand, what negative experience are our products
helping our customers avoid?
8. Helping your clients create a BrandScript that is a series of
repeatable talking points they can use in all manner of advertising
should immediately affect sales. StoryBrand BrandScripts have been
proven time and time again to increase customer engagement and
with it, overall revenue.

After your clients create these talking points, you can then coach them
to apply the various talking points to specif ic pieces of marketing
collateral that will get the best possible return on their marketing
dollars.

What specif ic pieces of marketing collateral should your clients create

in order to get the best return on their marketing investment?

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this material in training. To verify that your coach is certified, check our database at [Link]
 Help your client create a Marketing
Made Simple sales funnel
When it comes to marketing, different companies are in different
places. As a coach, you may need to speak into your client’s marketing
budget and the effectiveness of their ad spend.

Business Made Simple will help you coach your client into a more
prof itable ad spend when you help them create and manage various
sales funnels. Some of your clients will know about sales funnels f rom
our Wall Street Journal bestselling book Marketing Made Simple.

The most basic and effective marketing plan, for both large and small
companies, involves the creation of sales funnels.

A sales funnel is a way your clients can acquire leads, earn trust, and
then close sales in an automated fashion. Sales funnels work with or
without a sales force, though including a sales team in the process will
increase the sales funnel’s effectiveness.

Sales funnels take expertise to create, execute, and manage so, again,
you will want to involve your client’s marketing team along with any
outside marketing agencies or StoryBrand Certif ied Marketing Guides
who will be helping to create the marketing collateral.

As a Business Made Simple Certif ied Coach, you will help your client
create and manage the elements of an effective sales funnel including:

1. A one-liner: one sentence that will pique a customer’s curiosity

about the brand or product
2. A wire-f ramed landing page using the language f rom the
BrandScript
3. A lead generator of some sort, either a PDF, recurring webinar, mini-
e-course or something of great value customers will give up their
e-mail addresses to engage
4. A nurture e-mail campaign: your clients should e-mail something
valuable and interesting to their customers at least once each week
5. A sales campaign: these e-mails are specif ically designed to close
sales

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 As mentioned before, you can also include the sales team in the sales
funnel process. For example, some of these e-mails can include a call
to action that involves a conversation with a sales rep. As a business
coach, you want to help your client integrate their sales and marketing
efforts where appropriate.

Once your client’s marketing engine is running well, revenue and cash
flow should increase. After only a few months, your client should be
happy with the results they are seeing on their dashboard.

Later in the checklist, we will talk about how to decrease overhead

and manage cash, but for now, let’s f ire up the other revenue creating
engine on the airplane, the left engine: Sales.

How a Business Made Simple

Certified Coach coaches their
clients through their marketing
and messaging challenges
Business Made Simple’s Certif ied Business Coaches coach their clients
through a Messaging and Marketing curriculum and f ramework that
includes:

• One-on-one coaching (using the BMS Coach Playbook)

• Small-group coaching (using BMS small-group curriculum
and videos)
• Online support courses in the Business Made Simple
University platform
• StoryBrand Messaging Workshop and the Marketing Made
Simple Workshop

Visit Certif [Link] to become a Business Made Simple

Certif ied Coach and secure a license to use the coaching material.

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this material in training. To verify that your coach is certified, check our database at [Link]
 C TI O N
SE

Left
Engine
Sales

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 The second way you boost thrust for your client’s business is to activate
a sales representative or sales team.

Some of your clients are at the point where they need to hire their f irst
sales representative and others simply need to formalize their sales
process for greater eff icacy.

Regardless, sales teams should have a sales process, a pipeline of

progress in which they can track a lead’s steps through the story your
client is inviting them into.

Help your client develop their

sales team and process
Your client should have real-time reports on where various leads are in
the process. The steps of that process should include:

1. Leads - These are the potential customer lists handed to the sales
team by the marketing team. If you are using a CRM system, this is
where you begin to tag appropriately.
2. Qualif ied leads - The leads should be f iltered through the sales
team and qualif ied leads should be identif ied. Also note that as
your client’s company grows, your client may want to hire a specif ic
sales qualif ier. This is a team member whose sole job is to qualify
leads and hand the more qualif ied leads to a sales representative
or director. The position of a sales qualif ier can also create thrust,
however, by selling lesser-value products in exchange for a
commission.
3. Intake - Once a sales lead is qualif ied, a sales representative will
reach out for an intake conversation. In this conversation, the sales
rep will ask a series of questions and create talking points they can
use with this specif ic client. These talking points will address the
customer’s specif ic problems and how your clients’ products will
resolve those problems. Essentially, you want to teach your clients
sales team the Sales Made Simple f ramework and process.
4. Build trust using sales tools - PDFs, videos, sales scripts, e-mails,
webinars and other tools should be created for the sales team to
help them close sales. The team will need specif ic tools to be used
at specif ic times as potential customers move through the pipeline.

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 5. Send a proposal to start the closing sequence - The sales team
should have cut and paste proposal templates and should be
sending proposals to select clients at the beginning of the closing
sequence. You can instruct your client to utilize the Proposals Made
Simple course inside the Business Made Simple University online
platform to create their proposal template.
6. Closing sales - The sales team should be trained in how to close
sales.

Business Made Simple’s sales f ramework is called Sales Made Simple

and will be available as an online course late in 2021. If you’re a
Business Made Simple pro-level coach you will be able to train sales
teams using the curriculum in workshops. Make sure this training is
part of your offering to your client.

Help your client streamline the

sales administration process
One mistake business leaders make is to have their sales
representatives spend too much time doing administrative work rather
than focus on selling.

Sales representatives should be calling clients, having lunch with

clients, and building client relationships at all times. Bogging down
a sales representative with contract negotiation, sending out sales
material, or fulf illing actual product delivery reduces the power of the
sales engine and negatively affects the thrust of the airplane.

In some cases, a sales administration specialists can be hired to do the

following tasks:

• Contract administration
• Payment processing
• Sending welcome boxes, thank you cards, and sales materials
• Fulf illing other sales obligations

The idea is your sales administration specialists preserve optimal

selling time so your sales representatives can keep their head down
and simply hunt for sales.

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this material in training. To verify that your coach is certified, check our database at [Link]
 If you want to diagnose the eff iciency of a salesforce, f ind out how
much time a sales team is focussed on optimal selling time rather than
completing administrative tasks.

How a Business Made Simple

Certified Coach coaches
their clients through their
sales challenges
Business Made Simple’s Certif ied Business Coaches coach their clients
through a Messaging and Marketing curriculum and f ramework that
includes:

• One-on-one coaching (using the BMS Coach Playbook)

• Small-group coaching (Using BMS small-group curriculum and
videos)
• Online support courses in the Business Made Simple University
platform
• Sales Made Simple Workshops (additional one-day training and
certif ication required)

Visit Certif [Link] to become a Business Made Simple

Certif ied Coach and secure a license to use the coaching material.

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this material in training. To verify that your coach is certified, check our database at [Link]
 C TI O N
SE

Wings
Products

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 Now that the leadership knows what their roles and routine
responsibilities are, we have a marketing engine f ired up and are
heating up our sales engine, let’s look at the actual products we are
selling. If you’re starting a business, of course, this is where you’ll want
to start, but if your business has been running for a while you can sell
existing products for higher revenue before you begin to audit your
offerings.

The wings of an airplane need to be strong and light. For metaphorical

purposes, this means our products should be prof itable and in
demand. As a Business Made Simple Certif ied Coach, you’ll want
to analyze the prof itability of the products and services your client
offers. Decisions should then be made to allocate sales and marketing
resources to the products and services that yield the highest f inancial
return.

Most business leaders start making money on one product and then
create more products to boost income. This sometimes works but the
downside is you end up running a company with so many revenue
streams it’s hard for the outside world to understand what they
specialize in.

Help your client assess the

profitability of their products
Often, rather than creating new products to generate more revenue,
we’re better served by doubling our marketing and sales efforts on
the products that are selling well. If your client has not achieved what
they believe is a realistic market share, energy is best spent trying to
achieve that goal before diversifying their offering.

Exercises you will want to take your client through to help them
understand whether they should diversify their offering or channel
even more marketing and sales resources into existing offerings
include:

1. List your products f rom highest total dollar prof it per year to least
2. Analyze the resources and overhead taken up by those least
prof itable offerings

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 3. Take the resources being used on lower prof it products and reassign
them to the higher prof it products
4. Decide whether to cut low revenue and prof it items

Deciding to streamline a customer’s offerings is a careful decision, of

course, but often more revenue and prof it is hiding in plain sight than
in some unforeseen opportunity.

The concept of “opportunity cost” comes into play at this point. The
above questions will help you analyze how much energy is taken up by
creating, selling, and servicing each product to see if the investment is
worth the return. Many business leaders don’t fully realize how much
time and effort is going into certain projects. They look at the top-line
revenue numbers without truly counting the cost.

Help your client assess

the possibility of new
product development
Next, you will want to help your clients decide whether or not to create
new products and services that, hopefully, will be as prof itable as those
products at the top of their previous list.

Questions to help your clients know whether or not to create new

products include:

1. Are there extensions of successful products we could create and sell

into the same market?
2. Are there up-sells we can create to existing clients that will create
more revenue and prof it?
3. Are there service agreements, warranties, or subscriptions we could
sell to create passive revenue?
4. Are there untapped markets our products could be sold into if they
were tweaked in some way?

Once you help your client analyze their existing products, cut products
that are clearly a drag on the airplane, and potentially create new
products that are in demand and prof itable, the wings of your airplane
should generate more lift.

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 Help your client install a process
for new product development
After assessing existing products for prof itability and demand and
dreaming about new product possibilities, your clients will likely want
to start creating something new. Installing a product creation process
ensures products are created with the highest quality and prof itability
while not adding too much to overhead. The following process will help
your client create new products eff iciently while ensuring the highest
quality.

The process of creating a product includes many meetings, but these

meetings are paramount:

Product Assessment Meeting

• What problem does this product solve?
E E TI N
M G • What is the product?

1 •
•
Who will buy the product?
How much will the product cost?
• What is the anticipated prof it of the product?
• Assign the creation of a sales landing page for the product,
even before the product exists

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 Sales and Marketing Pressure Test
E E TI N G
M
• Review the proposed sales landing page for the product and

2
make edits
• Ask the sales team what tools will be needed to sell the
product
• Get buy-in f rom sales and marketing to move forward with
product creation

Product Creation Process Meeting

E E TI N G • Assign a project leader who will be responsible for this

M
product being created

3 • Determine a deadline for the minimum viable product to be

shipped
• Create a rough product creation map or work flow.
• Make sure every department has the resources needed to
create the product

Product Creation Checkups

E E TI N G
M (These are your standup meetings)

4 • Meet with all key participants in the product creation to

review key milestones and timelines
• Remove any blockers that are delaying the process

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 Prepare Product for Launch Meeting
E E TI N G
M

5
• Establish sales forecasts and key milestones
• Make sure the sales landing page is active
• Make sure the sales team has all their necessary tools to sell
the product and hit the forecast

Prepare Product for Launch Meeting

E E TI N G
M

6
• Establish sales forecasts and key milestones
• Make sure the sales landing page is active
• Make sure the sales team has all their necessary tools to sell
the product and hit the forecast

Assess the MVP Meeting

E E TI N G
M

7
• Launch the product on a limited basis
• Test the minimum viable product to make sure it works and
will solve customer problems
• Assign f ixes to specif ic people or departments with deadlines

E E TI N G
M
After-Action Review Meeting
8 • Analyze the success of the launch
• Iterate on the launch to insure prof itable sustainable growth

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 Help your client install a customer
service process that delivers an
effortless experience and reduces
refunds and returns
You might think your client’s customer service division would fall
under overhead, but at Business Made Simple we see customer service
differently. Customer service is part of the product delivery experience,
therefore it should be factored into the product itself. We see the
primary responsibility of customer service, at least f rom the airplane’s
perspective, as fourfold:

1. Create and measure a service level agreement

2. Upgrade or up-sell products
3. Install a closed-loop customer service process so customers hear
f rom somebody at the company
4. Provide feedback that enhances product performance
• Does the customer service department have prepared cut and
paste scripts for the 25 most common problems customers
experience?
• Does the customer service team have bonus offerings they can
give to prevent refunds?
• Is the customer service department equipped and empowered to
up-sell existing clients to other products?
• Does the customer service department offer self-service options
so customers can get their questions answered faster?
• Does customer service have a monthly form to f ill out that will be
reviewed by the leadership in the cockpit? The questions on the
form could be:
• Customers who like our products say this about them:
• Customers who want refunds complain about what?
• What are customers currently confused about?
• What other sales opportunities do you see for our existing
products?

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 • What products do you think we should create to serve our
customers needs?
• What processes could we create that would reduce customer
service effort?

In addition to saving sales, preventing refunds, and up-selling

products, the customer service effort should speak into how effortless
the customer journey is and should be. Mapping out how customers
discover a brand, begin to trust that brand, make a purchase f rom that
brand, talk about that brand, and become brand evangelists can easily
be mapped out, analyzed, and improved upon.

Help your clients improve the

customer experience
Creating a customer journey map is important to understand what
your customers are experiencing as it relates to your client’s brand.

The map can be a simple linear line, or a game-board style visual not
unlike Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders.

The idea is to identify how a client hears about the brand, for instance
through advertising, social media, podcasts, or even word of mouth,
and then track their next steps including downloading a lead
generator, being included in various e-mail campaigns, webinars,
live experiences, and so on through to sales, up-sells, and brand
evangelists.

A customer map should include key touch-points such as:

Before the sale

• First visit to the website
• Download a lead generator (f ree content)
During the sale
• Receive an e-mail or e-mails
• Receive a phone call
• Receive a proposal
After the sale
• Buy f irst product
• Buy up-sold products
• Attend live event
• Receive thank you e-mail
 Once the customer map is created, leadership along with
management (especially including customer service specialists) should
be included in improving that process.

Business Made Simple’s Customer Journey, Customer Service and

Customer Experience material will be out soon, but for now, a customer
experience map can be created as a terrif ic coaching tool.

How a Business Made Simple

Certified Coach coaches
their clients through their
product creation and customer
experience challenges
Business Made Simple’s Certif ied Business Coaches coach their clients
through a Messaging and Marketing curriculum and f ramework that
includes:

• One-on-one coaching (using the BMS Coach Playbook)

• Small-group coaching (using BMS small-group curriculum
and videos)
• Online support courses in the Business Made Simple University
platform
• Customer Experience Workshop (additional one-day certif ication
required)

Visit Certif [Link] to become a Business Made Simple

Certif ied Coach and secure a license to use the coaching material.

Copyright © 2021 Donald Miller Words, LLC. Business Made Simple Coaching Certification required to use 42
this material in training. To verify that your coach is certified, check our database at [Link]
 C TI O N
SE

The Body
Overhead

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 At this point in your coaching (if you have chosen to coach your client
in order, which is optional) they are focussed and on track and the
company is making money. Now, it’s time to help your client trim their
overhead. Remember, if the body of the airplane gets too big and
heavy for the wings and engines to lift, the airplane will crash. The
same is true in business as it relates to overhead.

Often, the leader of the company is either an overhead hawk or a

visionary strategist, but rarely both. This means one leader may over
index on keeping overhead low while another will be mostly unaware
of their overhead spend.

The visionary tends to be able to go and make money and so overhead

isn’t a concern while the overhead hawk is more concerned with saving
money than making money. Often, a business will succeed with a
visionary strategist at the helm but will be built with massive overhead
and ineff icient processes. Everybody gets used to this because, well,
the business is making so much money.

On the other hand, an overhead hawk often lacks the vision to move
the company forward and will need coaching in the area of business
expansion and growth.

The overhead hawk will need to be convinced to pour more resources

into marketing, sales, and product creation and the visionary will need
to be convinced to sit down and audit overhead.

Often, a coach should assign a staff member to whichever weakness

the leader displays. If the leader is a visionary strategist, a controller
(who is specif ically tasked with policing overhead) should be hired and
if the leader already acts as a de facto controller, a revenue director will
need to be hired to push the product development, marketing, and
sales agenda.

A coach will want to walk the line tenderly between overhead and
business growth, always remembering that if the leader gets too
f rustrated, they will not f ind value in the relationship. Still, if the goal is
stability and growth, both sides of the equation will need to be covered
in the coaching relationship.

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 Help your clients stop spending
and start investing
A single mentality should be installed if a business is going to reduce
weight and increase lift. That mentality is this: Stop spending and start
investing.

With each dollar the company spends, the question should be asked as
to how this dollar is an investment and not a spend. At Business Made
Simple, we sometimes call this question “the fuel f ilter” because every
decision is f iltered through a careful consideration of how it will affect
cash flow.

A building in a more expensive part of town, for instance, may be

considered an investment if there is a guaranteed clientele that will
visit the off ice but would be put off by a lesser quality building. But
if the staff just wants a building in a better part of town even though
they don’t entertain clients in the off ice, this would be considered a
spend and not an investment.

The idea is to allocate more resources to the wings and engines than
the body of the plane. Costs that do not add thrust to the engines or
surface to the wings are hurting rather than helping the plane fly.

Of course, the purpose of the plane is to fly people to places they want
to go, not unlike a business with employees aboard who are heading
to enhanced professional careers and lives. Competitive salaries are
important if your client wants to keep their talent. Still, all parts of
the airplane should be kept in proportion — otherwise overhead will
become bloated and the plane will crash. This means that when your
client hires expensive talent, it must make up for that additional
overhead with investments in sales, marketing, or prof itable product
creation.

When an entire team learns to f ilter every dollar through the “How is
this an investment rather than a spend?” question, the cockpit’s job of
keeping the plane in the air gets easier.

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 Help your client create a more
efficient business
The objective for you and your client is to improve the prof it per
employee metric. Again, this simple metric (prof it divided by number
of employees) acts as the “mile per gallon” number revealing how
eff icient the business is running. Each of the following actions will help
this number improve:

• Perform an overhead audit and rid the books of obvious

unnecessary overhead such as recurring subscriptions, overlapping
services, and so on
• Assign a specif ic team member in the accounting department
to review all credit card statements and question any seemingly
unnecessary expenses
• Install an approval process for bills above a certain dollar f igure
within each department
• Carefully cut any positions that are unnecessary
• Analyze whether expensive positions can be outsourced
• Analyze whether there are outsourced expenses that could be
brought in house
• Ask if any positions can become hybrid positions in which team
members begin to help out with product creation, marketing,
or sales that way a higher percentage of their salaries can be
considered investments rather than overhead spends
• Install an execution plan that increases productivity and eff iciency
in the entire company
• Analyze each position in the company and ask how they directly
affect revenue and prof it. Meet with each team member explaining
that these aspects of their job are priority, measure those metrics
and, if possible, base a portion of compensation on those metrics
• Perform a cost/benef it analysis on existing and future technology
investments (often one of the highest investments for a modern
company)

Performing any one of these tasks, or all of them, could take months.
Feel f ree to slow down the coaching process as you help your client
navigate the careful territory of unloading excess weight as it relates to
inventory, products, and perhaps even personnel.

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Help your clients grow their
company without bloating
their overhead
Once overhead is under control you will want to help your client
maintain a lean overhead prof ile while still growing the company. To
do this, you’ll want to take a closer look at how decisions to spend new
dollars are investments rather than spends.

To grow, a company either needs to sell more of their existing products

or create new products to distribute. Selling existing products has
already been covered in this resource, but let’s look more closely at
how to apply new product creation through the fuel f ilter.

Questions to be asked before launching a product or buying another

entity are:

• How much revenue and prof it do we realistically hope to add if we

launch this product?
• What will our overhead additions be if we launch this product?
• What recurring costs will we endure if we launch this product?
• What new people will need to be hired?
• What, if any, energy will be taken f rom existing prof itable efforts if
we launch this product?
• Are there costs that can be cut in launching this product?

In addition to these questions, you’ll want to help your client perform

an after-action review after the launch. Assessment questions might
include:

• Could we be charging more for this product and, if so, what will we
raise the price to and when?
• Could costs be cut in creating this product?
• How will marketing and sales position and sell this product moving
forward?

The primary help you can give your client is truly the overhead audit,
the credit card audit, and the team member audit. The sooner you can
cut costs, the safer the airplane will be moving forward (and the more
you will demonstrate your value as a coach).
 How a Business Made Simple
Certified Coach coaches their
clients through their cash flow and
money management challenges
Business Made Simple’s Certif ied Business Coaches coach their clients
through a Messaging and Marketing curriculum and f ramework that
includes:

• One-on-one coaching (using the BMS Coach Playbook)

• Small-group coaching (using BMS small-group curriculum and
videos)
• Online support courses in the Business Made Simple University
platform
• Money Made Simple Workshops (additional one-day certif ication
required)

Visit Certif [Link] to become a Business Made Simple

Certif ied Coach and secure a license to use the coaching material.

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 C TI O N
SE

Fuel Tank
Cash Flow

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 No matter how well an airplane is designed and built, it will crash if it
runs out of fuel.

Cash flow is the most important factor to watch in a business because

without cash, the business cannot operate.

Nearly every business runs out of cash suddenly. They never see it
coming. Or worse, they do see it coming and either overreact or choose
to continue flying in denial.

In the fog of running a business, make sure the leadership team has
a clear eye on cash. If they get distracted, the business could suffer a
tragic crash.

Many stories have been told of pilots who, dealing with a minor crisis
onboard the aircraft, have circled the airport trying to f ix the minor
crisis and then suddenly realized they were out of fuel. Lives have been
lost because pilots have diverted focus f rom the fuel gauge.

When a CEO or business owner is criticized for “only caring about

money” they are the equivalent of a pilot being criticized for “only
caring about fuel.” Such a criticism is not a bad thing when it comes to
keeping a business alive.

Help your clients install a

revenue director
Before talking about cash on hand, let’s f irst revisit the idea of revenue
creation.

Later in the checklist we will help you introduce your clients to a

specif ic way of managing their f inances, but for now, it’s important that
somebody in the client’s company helps the leader take responsibility
for revenue.

If your client runs the company, they likely feel alone in their concerns
about f inances. In the airplane, though, revenue is the equivalent of fuel
and there should be more than one person who feels the pressing need
to keep an eye on available cash.

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 The f irst thing you want to do when working with your client to
establish safe protocols around revenue and cash flow is to help them
identify somebody else on the leadership team that will share the
responsibility to keep cash flow healthy.

If the numbers are down, this person (along with the CEO) must
account for their decline and organize a response.

In most cases, the new revenue leadership responsibilities will be

shared with either the marketing director or sales director.

Here are the steps to giving the head of sales and marketing the
responsibility to create and monitor revenue:

1. Appoint your revenue director (again, likely your client’s sales or

marketing director)
2. Unify sales and marketing so they are one team with one goal
3. Analyze and repeat best practices as they relate to revenue creation
4. Have the revenue director and revenue team meet each week with
the CEO to talk about the revenue plan
5. Have the new revenue director forecast future revenue and stay
accountable to meet those projections in the CEO meeting

What you will f ind is that your client’s anxiety about revenue will
decrease as the responsibility is shared. Not only this, but the marketing
or sales director will be in a much better place than the CEO to actually
affect revenue itself. This means revenue should be easier to manage
and increase under the new leadership model.

Help your client and their revenue

director understand the story the
numbers are telling
The new revenue director will maintain their role as sales or marketing
director, only they will incorporate their new responsibilities into their
existing job.

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The idea behind the new revenue director’s responsibilities is to have
an accurate view of f inancial facts. Math doesn’t lie. What your client
and the revenue director want to get a better view of is the story the
numbers are telling.

Here are several pieces of data your client and their new revenue
director will want to curate as they study the numbers:

1. What is the three-year revenue trend? How much money should the
company make in the coming years based on current trends and
new products being released?
2. What is the three-year prof it trend? How will growth affect the
prof itability of the company?
3. What is the composition of revenue percentage by customer
demographic? What percentages of revenue are coming f rom which
customers?
4. What is the composition of revenue percentage per product?
5. What is the three-year expense trend? How much is the company
going to have to spend in order to grow?
6. What are the expense trends per:
• Labor
• Benef its
• Technology
• Cost of sales and marketing
• Cost of goods sold
7. What are the three-year pricing trends? Will you be able to raise
prices, will you have to lower prices, or will they stay the same? How
will this affect revenue?

These numbers will allow you and your client to tell the story of the
company. For instance, the story of the company may be that they
are heavily dependent on only a few clients or that they are actually
perceived as a company that sells one product while they are trying to
sell f ive or ten.

These numbers will also reveal healthy and unhealthy trends allowing
you to coach your client into better business and f inancial decisions.

It is not necessary that these numbers be directly curated by the

revenue director. A controller or outside accounting f irm may be
better positioned to get these numbers, but they should certainly be
understood by the revenue director along with the CEO or leader of the
company.
 Help your clients understand how
cash flow is affected
Managing overhead is a great way to keep a business lean and eff icient
and always asking what is an investment and what is a spend is a
terrif ic way to increase fuel eff iciency but you will also want your clients
to make the kind of decisions that increase or maintain cash flow.

Questions you can ask to assess your client’s cash flow position are as
follows:

• Do you have at least six months of total business expenses in a

separate checking account?
• Are there 90-day terms you can get out of so you are no longer
managing other companies’ money and instead housing that cash in
your own account?
• Are there loans you can pay off or ref inance that will lower your
interest payments and increase your future cash standing?

Another process you will want to help your clients create is a simple way
of managing money as it comes into the company.

If the client is willing, you can help them create a simple yet effective
way of managing their money.

At this point you can help your client open or rename f ive checking
accounts that will allow them to manage incoming cash, pay expenses,
anticipate and pay taxes, manage cash flow, and take their share of
prof it.

Many of the clients you work with will have a controller or outside f irm
managing the money, but most small to midsize businesses either do
not manage their money well or the leadership team does not have
useful optics on the f inances.

Often, businesses grow out of a visionary leader’s charisma but it’s rare
that a leader has an organized system that helps them manage cash.

Setting up f ive different checking accounts that your client moves

money in and out of will also serve as another dashboard so they have
accurate optics on important f inancial data.

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 Help your clients manage
their checking accounts and
protect their cash
Help your client set up f ive different checking accounts, or rename and
repurpose existing checking accounts.

The accounts should be at the same bank so they are visible on one
page, allowing your client to move money around.

This checking account system can work for most businesses doing less
than 100mm per year. I do not include loan accounts or lines of credit
but this can be added to the list if necessary.

Here are those f ive accounts:

1. Operating Expenses: All money coming into the company goes into
this account. It is also the account used to pay all bills, except for
taxes.
2. Owner’s Personal Account: This is the account to which the owner’s
salary is automatically deposited each month. Just like his/her
employees, the owner is paid a salary.
3. Business Prof it: This is the account where the prof it the company
makes is held. It also serves as a safety account in case Operating
Expenses should run low, though that should not happen often if at
all.
4. Taxes: This is the account where you store money to be paid in
quarterly or monthly tax estimates.
5. Investment Holding Account: This is the account in which money
is transferred out of the system into an account that can be used for
the owners to buy more assets or enjoy.

Now that you’ve set up the accounts, here is how to use them.

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 Your operating expense account is where all the money flows into the
company and most of the money flows outward.

This account should have a high and low threshold, a specif ic number
that it is not allowed to rise above. This number will likely be 150% of
payroll. So, if your payroll is 100k every two weeks, the number you will
not want to get below is 150k.

The personal checking account for the owner (when appropriate) is

then used to house the owner’s personal income. This gives the owner
a strong view into how much money they have personally to spend and
encourages them to create and keep a personal budget. An owner who
dips into company prof it to buy personal items is certainly within their
right, but is not running an eff icient or disciplined f inancial system.

The high threshold number, then, is the number you will intentionally
not let the total money in the account exceed. For instance, we may
set a high threshold of 200k. This means we check the account nearly
every day to see if it is under 150k or over 200k. If the number is below
150k we let the account sit and gain more money, especially if there is a
payroll payment coming up soon.

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 If we check the account and the total is above 200k, we transfer 50%
of the overage to our business prof it account and the other 50% to our
taxes account. So, if the amount in the account is 225k, we transfer 12.5k
to business prof it and taxes, respectively.

Think of these accounts like beakers of liquid. If the liquid in the beaker
is below a certain line, we let it sit and catch up. But if it goes above the
rim, liquid spills out into two other beakers, the taxes beaker and the
business prof it beaker.

Our taxes account is then used to hold money for monthly or quarterly
tax estimates. Your client will f ind that 50% of prof it is likely too much
money for taxes, but that’s okay. It’s always a nice surprise when there is
extra money in the tax account. Once a year, the excess tax money can
be moved over to business prof it.

Our business prof it account is used to hold the prof it the company
makes and also to serve as a safety net in case the business suddenly
needs more cash. The amount of money in the business prof it account
should add up to six months of total bills, not just payroll. The idea
is that if the airplane starts to experience trouble, the owner has six
months worth of fuel to f igure out and solve the problem. Remember,
most businesses crash because they run out of cash, so keeping six
months of cash in the account is paramount to the business’s safety.

If the total monthly expense of our business is 700k, then the total
prof it in the account should be at 4.2 million dollars.

If your client likes, he or she can cut that number in half and store the
other half in an account that will get a better rate of interest, but be
careful that none of the money is at risk. Cash flow always hits zero
accidentally and when a plane starts to dive, it dives fast and can cause
a panic. Do not place the six months of total overhead at risk!

The business prof it account, then, also has a high threshold. When
the prof it account exceeds six months of total revenue, that excess
money can be moved to the investment holding account. This money
is then safe for the owner to use any way they please, although in your
coaching you will want to emphasize the importance of buying assets
that will diversify your client’s revenue streams (for instance, funding
SEP IRA’s or buying investment property).

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 It is true your client can use the money to buy a second home or boat
or some other toy; but as a coach you’ll want to emphasize that the
purpose of most businesses is to buy assets that continue to generate
income without the inventor having to work. Stocks, ownership in other
businesses, real estate, and even investment and insurance products
can all help accomplish the goal of earning a salary without having to
work.

In other words, the business investment account is the account your

client can use to buy their retirement.

Managing these f ive accounts, then, gives your client real-time optics
into the health of the company. Your client can use this system of
checking accounts to then manage the health and safety of the
company.

A low operating expense account will serve as a warning light on a

second dashboard while a high investment account will give your client
a sense of pride.

The f ive accounts will serve a second purpose, too. They will turn
running a business into a game with a scoreboard. Not unlike playing
Monopoly, your client will be more attuned to the real health of the
business and will become more and more engaged in the process of
making it stronger.

Help your client open and manage these f ive checking accounts and
you’ll change their lives for the better.

Help your client create a

compensation package for
each team member
Where possible, team members should be paid for performance. This
pay system, in tandem with the Execution and Management Made
Simple system, will give your client’s team members greater ownership
of their personal careers, an important dynamic necessary for people to
enjoy their work.

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 Here is a step-by-step system that could work for your client (although
it almost certainly needs to be customized for each organization):

1. State an annual revenue and prof it goal: At the beginning of the

f iscal year a revenue and prof it goal should be set along with a
stretch revenue and prof it goal. For instance, a goal of 8mm with
2mm prof it could be set along with a 13mm and 3mm stretch goal.
2. Explain “available bonus” plan: Each member of the team should
then be given a salary with an “available bonus” associated with
whether or not the overall company reaches its goal and stretch goal.
For instance, if the company makes 10mm, a 4% of salary bonus may
be awarded and if the company reaches its stretch goal, a bonus of
5% may be awarded. These bonuses are not percentages of prof it,
they are percentages of each team member’s base salary.
3. Explain “pay-for-performance” plan: The percentage of available
bonus of 4% and 5%, however, are not guaranteed. They are based
on individual results. If a team member’s results have been sub par
in the last few performance review meetings, a subjective bonus of
0% through 3% or so could be awarded along with an explanation
of what needs to be improved to get the full 4% or 5%. Make sure
team members are not surprised, though. They should already know
through previous performance meetings that their bonus will be in
jeopardy without improvement on performance.
4. Explain “sales team” exemption: Team members on the sales team
will not participate in the bonus program. Sales teams members will
be awarded commissions on sales and so are already participating
in a pay-for-performance model. A sales representative’s base
salary will be much lower than anybody else in the company while
their commissions will still make them one of the higher paid
employees on any team. The idea behind the sales team is to create
opportunities for highly motivated individuals to earn large amounts
of money when they sell. Do not be af raid to award your sales team
generously, while always keeping a f irm eye on the expenses that go
into making those sales. Plenty of sales representatives have created
impressive sales numbers by spending enormous amounts on trips
and presents for clients! That sort of behavior will create drag on an
airplane.

The compensation packages you create for your sales and marketing
team will not only create thrust, it will help the team adjust pitch and,
as such, help generate higher altitudes. By adjusting commissions
on certain products, especially high-prof it products, you adjust the
“horizontal stabilizer” of the airplane, effectively changing its pitch.

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 For instance, if I wanted a company to make more prof it, I’d award the
sales team a permanent or temporary higher commission rate on high-
prof it products. This will then adjust the horizontal stabilizer of the
airplane and the nose of the airplane should rise into higher and higher
prof its.

Both the thrust of the airplane as well as the pitch are greatly controlled
by adjusting the incentives to the sales and marketing teams.

Establish a coaching program

that works for you
Business Made Simple Certif ied Coaches are handed a plug and play
system allowing them to offer one-on-one coaching and small-group
coaching, as well as the ability to deliver workshops.

Each coach, however, can structure their personal coaching business

any way they see f it. Some coaches lean heavily on workshops, others
on small groups and one-on-one coaching. Some coaches even serve
as the Chief Learning Off icer within large organizations, only coaching
team members within the same company.

Regardless, our coaches are unif ied around a common mission:

Everybody deserves a life-changing business education.

To become a Business Made Simple Certif ied Coach,

apply at Certif [Link]

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this material in training. To verify that your coach is certified, check our database at [Link]
 Establish a coaching program
that works for you
If you become a Business Made Simple Certif ied Business Coach, how
will the aff iliation help you build a successful coaching business?

While you must have prior leadership or coaching experience to apply,

new Business Made Simple Coaches are truly handed a “business in
a box” allowing them to scale the personal coaching business of their
dreams.

To do this, we have addressed the f ive challenges coaches experience

most:

1. Delivering trusted and organized f rameworks

2. Monetizing their services
3. Gaining new clients
4. Finding a community of peers that help them
5. Leveraging ongoing training

When you become a Business Made Simple Certif ied Coach we solve
the f ive challenges of the modern business coach, allowing you to focus
more time and energy where it matters most: your clients’ results!

Here is what the Business Made Simple Coaching Community and

Program offer:

1. Never worry about valuable content and f rameworks again: Using

the easy-to-understand analogy of the airplane, Business Made
Simple offers plug and play f rameworks you can use to structure
your coaching services. Either take your clients through one-on-one
coaching using our Coach Playbook (your playbook includes enough
coaching sessions for one or two years, depending on how often you
meet with your client) or mastermind curriculum, allowing you to
take small groups (or large groups) through the curriculum. Not only
this, but Business Made Simple offers an assessment your clients can
take and a report allowing you to know exactly where their business
needs attention. You can either take your clients through the
curriculum in order or customize it for the greatest eff icacy for each
of your clients.

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2. Make more money as a Business Made Simple Certif ied Coach:
When you’re a Business Made Simple Certif ied Coach, you have
many different products you can sell. In our certif ication, you’ll
attend a class that will guide you to scaling your coaching business
north of $100,000 per year in under a year. You will be able to
monetize your one-on-one coaching offering, your mastermind
offering, cohort offering, as well as your workshop offering. Not
only this, but coaches get a 50% commission on all Business Made
Simple University sales (an online platform allowing you to create
a coveted passive revenue stream) along with a 25% commission
on those sales f rom year two and on. Sales of 1,000 registrations
of BMSU net the coach $137,500 and $68,750 in perpetuity. Our
coaches are encouraged to create a passive revenue stream that
covers their entire lifestyle overhead allowing all of their one-on-one,
mastermind, cohort coaching, and workshops to be pure prof it.
3. Gain clients by utilizing Business Made Simple resources and
lead generators: Business Made Simple Coaches can charge more
because the deliverables they offer are clearly def ined and of great
value. Involvement in a monthly mastermind, for example, may cost a
client $500 per month. Add two coaching sessions and the price may
be $800. Our coaches can also offer a one-day Hero On A Mission
life planning session for $1,000 or more and a Hero On A Mission
workshop for $10,000 or more.
4. Join a community of excellent business coaches: Business Made
Simple’s Certif ied Coaching Community meets for retreats several
times each year. Need a community of like-minded and excellence-
oriented coaches? Simply jump into a retreat or take a deep dive
into the BMS Coaches’ Slack channel. Join a weekly virtual meet
up in which you interact with your fellow coaches and can problem
solve issues your clients are struggling with. Somebody in your new
community will have a solution to your challenge!
5. Ongoing training: Business Made Simple releases new books and
courses each year, allowing you to give further and further value to
your clients. When you become a Business Made Simple Certif ied
Coach, you experience a three-day virtual certif ication followed by
a 90-day onboarding experience that will give you the practical tips
and tools necessary to scale your coaching business. Not only this,
but anytime you need a ref resher in any area of building a business,
our best-in-class online platform along with bestselling business
books are there for you and your clients to utilize. Not only this, but
exclusive live sessions with our founder Donald Miller as well as
members of the Business Made Simple teaching faculty and content
team means you get personal access to the answers and inspiration
you’re looking for to build a successful coaching practice.
How do you become
a Business Made
Simple Certified
Business Coach?

STEP

Apply
1 Apply to become a coach at
Certif [Link]

STEP

Have a Conversation
2 Talk to one of our certif ication specialists about
whether or not we are a right f it for each other. If we
are, we will send you a beautiful box of materials you
will need for your training.
STEP

Get Certif ied

3 Enjoy our three-day live or virtual certif ication experience
and use the material to change your clients’ lives!

Apply today to become a Business Made

Simple Certif ied Business Coach at:

Certif [Link]
Join our community of the best business coaches in the world today!
 First steps for a new Business
Made Simple Certified Coach
1. Make sure every one of your client’s team members have a copy of
Business Made Simple, our bestselling book that introduces your
clients and their team to the Business Made Simple f rameworks.
2. Give your client the Business MRI assessment.
3. Customize a learning and development plan for your client and/or
their entire organization.

*Business Made Simple Coaches are licensed to deliver the BMS

content through one-on-one coaching relationships, small groups, and
even private and public workshops.

*Public and private workshop facilitation requires additional one-day

training experiences.

Certif [Link]

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this material in training. To verify that your coach is certified, check our database at [Link]