My business partner, Alex, and I are back in the office today after spending a couple of days in Reading with Larry Shulze of Taylor Business Group (TBG) and the rest of the members of the Business Improvement Group I (BIG). Monday and Tuesday this week have already gone down as some of the most valuable days we’ve spent out of the office since starting Sirona and I’m sure we’ll look back in years to come and see how influential they were.
Taylor Business Group is a US based company owned and run by Larry and Elaine Shulze. They specialise in guiding IT Solution Providers through implementing proven business management techniques with the view to increasing profits – which is why we all do what we do, right? I originally heard about TBG via Karl Palachuk’s blog post, as he moved over to TBG from HTG after HTG’s tie-ins with specific vendors. I had also worked with HTG in 2008 and 2009 on one of their online groups and found the time spent with them and my peer group very rewarding. Unfortunately the online groups were discontinued due to a number of people dropping out and Sirona were too small to join the in-person HTG group based in the UK (minimum of 5 employees required). So I was excited to find an alternative to HTG and after speaking to Larry on the phone it seemed like Sirona would be a good fit for TBG’s first UK group – UK Profit Makers I BIG.
We first got together on a conference call in September and each member ran through a short presentation on themselves, their business and their targets for the upcoming 12 months. It was apparent from the call that Sirona were one of the smallest and youngest companies by quite a margin and it did make us think twice about whether the group would be right for us. Larry was obviously aware of our size and has had similar companies in his US groups. Alex and I talked it over in the office and also raised our concerns with Larry. Larry understood our concerns, but assured us that he wouldn’t have put Sirona forward for the group if he didn’t think we could both contribute to and take away value from the group. We got similar advice from our business coach, Claire Coleman, and decided that we should stick with it and make the trip down.
The middle of November was here in a flash and on the morning of Monday 16th November we sat down with seven other companies in N-Able’s offices in Reading. It turned out a number of the group already knew each other through N-Able, I think this added to the group as it broke the ice and the banter soon started to flow around the table. Larry soon got us in order and started to go through the figures we had submitted earlier in the year based on our Q1 and Q2 results. These were our sales and expenses figures based on criteria laid out by TBG and even just putting them together had been a lesson in itself, now Larry was shedding a lot more light on what they meant and what we should be aiming for.
The core of TBG’s goals are based around benchmarks for our industry and while these are based primarily on the US market, the vast majority seemed equally as applicable to the UK and Europe (one of the group members is based in the Netherlands). As Larry went through his presentation showing where everyone was in relation to well over twenty benchmarks, it was very interesting to see how each company varied. Larry would often challenge a particular business owner to ask why aren’t we hitting the bench mark? This was sometimes met with a strong argument, but also occasionally a blank expression – to be fair we didn’t even know these benchmarks existed a few hours before! To be challenged is why we’ve all signed up though and a lesser business coach might just run through some benchmarks and say this is where should be, without challenging you to justify why you’re not there.
There were other topics on the agenda for Monday, but as it was our first meeting a lot more time was spent on the figures than I think would normally be done. By the end of the day we were all wiped out, but a lot smarter in our understanding of where we should be aiming. It was certainly time for some light refreshments and we treated Larry and his wife Elaine to a perfect display of the British’s ability to consume refreshments of the liquid variety…
Tuesday morning brought with it some very bleary eyes and some equally fuzzy heads. Half the group seemed slightly more eager than the other half, but there’s something to be said for spending a little longer sleeping off the effects of ‘refreshments’. Larry got us all going though and he was soon going through his sales engine process, so beautiful in its simplicity. We were then treated to a presentation by Steve (I don’t have permission to disclose details of other members of the group at this time, but I may come back and add details if allowed). Steve owns and runs an IT Services company in Hertfordshire and his twenty year story with them has a been a real roller coaster ride, to use his phrase. It was very interesting to see how they run things and certainly for Alex and I it gave us a view of a firmly established, bigger version of Sirona.
That pretty much brought an end to proceedings for our first in-person meeting. As I mentioned at the beginning, these were some of the most, if not the most valuable days we have spent out of the business. To use the E-Myth phrase, working on our business, not in it. The group is full of amazing business owners, with some fantastic models and ideas. It may sound silly, but I feel honoured to be part of this group and to be treated as an equal by people with far more business experience than either of us have in this industry. I can’t wait to start putting into practice what we’ve learnt over the last couple of days and to see how we can hopefully alter our figures and get closer to those benchmarks. We’re due to meet again in-person in April with Larry, but we’re also thinking of doing an interim meeting in January. The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned, now I’d better get working on those figures!
