Up until fairly recently I ran the largest limousine service company in Denmark. When I say I ran it, I actually mean that I owned it and had other people running it for me (roughly speaking). In other words instead of me being tied up having to work in the business every day handling parts of the daily business, such as order processing and confirmations, invoicing, directing staff, dealing with vendors etc. etc., I had a team of people engaged in the company to handle all these matters for me, including directing all the chauffeurs and handling the important logistical task of allocating cars and chauffeurs for the jobs including handling those constant changes in the schedule resulting from airplane delays and customers changing their schedules. This set up meant that I could be away from the business, not only physically but also mentally, exploring other opportunities and diving into other projects and businesses or indeed if I worked on the limousine service business is what exactly that: Working ON the business rather than IN the business.
This set up was originally not intentional, but was a direct result of the fact that I bought the company at a time when I was employed as the managing director (CEO) of another company, which meant that my time and presence would have to be there for that company and not for my limousine service company. In other words, I had to from the get go, have a team of other people employed to handle the limousine service business as otherwise the business could not continue to service its customers or continue its existence.
During evenings and weekends I could then work on the direction which I wanted to take the limousine service company and tweak certain parameters, looking at prices, terms and conditions and preparing sales efforts and direct mailings etc. The set up worked quite well, some years with the right team really, really well and some years with some challenges getting that important team to be aligned with my wishes and directions and outer challenges coming from the market and demand fluctuations and competition from other operators not quite so well.
The cool thing was that the set up gave me more choices and more freedom. At times I would actually be virtually gone from the business – not even thinking about it – that it became almost a joke. One of the Chief Operational Managers that I had employed there used to say that I was just sitting with my feet in the pool sipping drinks with small umbrellas in. At first when she first spurted this out to me, I was a little offended, but then soon came to realize the part of it that was true (truth hurts, huh?). For while it was not quite the case that I didn’t work, then it was true that I had more freedom than most job takers and more opportunity to choose how I spent my time and on what I would spend my time. In reviewing my life with the limousine service business, I can say that I have had engagement with this throughout 16 years, with 14 of those having the business in my private ownership. Yet, in trying to tally up just how much time I spent in the offices of that business, I believe with a little stretching I may just get towards 60 days. That’s 60 days in total in 16 years!
What I came to learn from my years of experience from this set up (I sold it towards the end of 2010), is that you can to some extend set up your business or businesses partly on what I would call automation. The set up made it possible for me to hold another high end job in a top position, while running my own business and even allowing me to engage in further new businesses on top of that, so that in the end I actually had a small palette of different (as it happened non-related) businesses and projects going on at the same time. I’m not saying that I didn’t work more than 60 days on my limousine service business during those 16 years, but I certainly wasn’t engaged in full time work with the business. Now, I do believe I could possibly have gotten better results with the business had I been more personally and directly involved in the business (remember, nobody cares more about your money than you), but then I wouldn’t have had the possibilities of the many other things that have engaged in during some of the same years and thus would not today have the businesses or involvement in businesses that I have today, in which the potentials are so much grander and the results soon to come way bigger.
That’s why, when the day came that we sold off the company in which I was employed and I ended my position there and I was also left with the choice of what to engage myself in then, I chose not to go full time into my limousine business. I could have opted to work more personally in the limousine service business and seek to ramp up where I had wanted to take this and it potentials, which probably had seemed to be the most natural step. But while it probably would have held some fun and excitement and great interactions with employees and customers to a much greater extend than I had had from my “remote control” position, I realized that I actually really enjoyed being able to engage myself in so many other businesses that I chose not to go this route. In truth I also feared (in fact I am pretty certain this would have been the outcome) that if I did step into the limousine service business on an operational level that I would quickly end up being somewhat a slave to it, meaning that I would quickly become a too important part of the daily business of this business and that all of a sudden all my other opportunities and projects would be left on the side for only evening and weekend involvement from my part. I’m sure being in the limousine service business in a more personal manner would have been fun and satisfying on many levels, but I wanted so much more, so I continued down the path with the setup as had been the case throughout the years of my ownership up till then (which was around 4 years).
Going forth in my life and after realizing the potentials of setting yourself up on automation, I have been even more enthused and excited about the idea. Thus I have deliberately engaged myself heavily in the study of this and just how and what is possible. And what my search is revealing to me on a continuous basis astounds me more and more. The possibilities are huge and not least applicable to many, many different types of businesses, different products and different services.
This means also the opportunities and potential results are huge if not almost limitless.
Like I said, I have thoroughly studied the topic of Millions On Automation for the past three to four years and studied some of the most successful entrepreneurs taking apart what they did, how they did it and how someone else could model and do they same. I found a number of particularly cool things from that study being:
1. First of all, pretty much anybody could do this. Of many of the highly successful people who have acquired immense success and have a huge part of their business on automation are just really ordinary folks. A lot of them have barely any education. A number of them are not special in any particular way as such, don’t possess any particular skills that you could not seek to develop yourself.
2. For a lot of them setting up their business was possibly not exactly without costs, but certainly did not require much money, in fact
3. Many of them had no money when they began.
4. Some of them found new ways of utilizing tools and systems to leverage themselves and amplify their reach and results to greater extend than would have been possible just a few years earlier.
5. Many of them have no or only very few employees.
6. The products and services can vary hugely and may be completely unrelated.
and many, many more really amazing and surprising features. And what is really cool, I recently learned elements of how, you might be able to set up your business on evergreen automation. If you are not excited about this and about what this means for you, then I’m telling you, you should be! You should be excited because you can emulate their success steps too and build similar opportunities too, regardless of your back ground or “your story” or perhaps even because of same. You can model a successful path for yourself and your future using some of the same routes and techniques, regardless of your product or service (at least I do not see any particular limitation at the moment).
I’m excited about this! I’m excited about what this could mean for my future – for my future income and my lifestyle. I’m excited about what this can mean not least for my future freedom! I will be exploring more and more this subject and I will test it out for myself and in some of my businesses, present and future. I will seek to model the most successful of the entrepreneurs that I have found and those I have still to find. And I will share my experiences with those who show interest and hope that I may be able to help others have experiences of success and aid them with their future prosperity.
If you are excited too and you are interested in learning more as I learn more and develop results and experiences from this, I suggest that you sign up for update on the subject. So visit www.theautomatedmillionaire.com and sign up in the box located there.
(The above article is also going to be part of my contribution to a book collaboration with famous multi-bestselling author Robert G. Allen and a number of my Mastermind friends. Book to be released in the fall 2012. Stay tuned for more updates on this too by signing up for my newsletter on this website).
