Expert Ownership Podcast
Expert Ownership Podcast
Measuring Business God's Way!
Last week we talked about growing your business God's way. This week we dive into measuring your business God's way. How do you know if you are doing things His way? And how can you make sure to stay the course if you are?
That's what this episode is all about. We're going to jump into goals and KPI's and show you how Goodhart's Law can be used to make sure we stay on the right path.
If you're interested in building and growing a business that makes money AND has meaning, this episode is for you.
Enjoy.
Hey, welcome back. Expert ownership podcast. This is Jason. I am actually on zoom. Why? Because David is in a 30 a Florida on spring break. He's a jerk. I'm sitting here running our businesses while he's walking around. Are you on the beach right now? No, I'm actually taking a walk, but I'm not a jerk, I'm a good dad. My kids wanted to go to Florida for vacation for a little mini spring break, so we did it, anyway. Well, I'm about to go hit a crossfit workout before we do this, right after we do this. Fantastic. So your audio sounds terrible. Mine doesn't sound that great, so next week, hopefully, we'll have that fixed, but anyways, last week, we talked about doing business God's way, and if you guys haven't listened to that, I want you to go back and listen to doing business God's way, and we dissected Isaiah 52, that God promised that he would give Israel his provision and his protection so long as they came out of Babylon, and every area of life has a Babylon, specifically in the workplace, the Babylonian idea of how to do business.
Speaker 1:It's you could take advantage of people. Anything that, anything you can do to make money, is worth it. You could cut corners if necessary. That's the Babylonian way. Babylon is, though, is the system of Satan. It's the world system of Satan, and we see that in many aspects of culture, and so there is a Babylonian way for you to run your business, and we don't want to do it that way. So go back, listen to that, and we give you the three keys you need preparation, you need purity and you need pace, and we pulled those out of Isaiah 52. So go back and listen to that. If you haven't listened to that yet, okay, today we're building on top of that.
Speaker 1:So last week was doing business God's way. This week, we titled this Measuring Business God's Way, because when you're doing business God's way, and when you're doing business at all, you want to make sure that you're measuring, because what gets measured gets done right. Okay, on that note, I want to bring up a law in business called Good Heart's Law Good Heart, like the word good H-A-R-T. Good Heart's Law and it says this when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Okay, that's Good Heart's Law in business. When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Now, what are we talking about that? Okay, here's specifically what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:When we set a specific goal, people tend to optimize for it, regardless of the secondary consequences. I'll give you some examples in just a second, but I want to repeat that just to make sure that you guys get it. When we set a specific goal, people tend to optimize for that goal, whatever the goal is, regardless of the secondary consequences. Let me give it to you in a church context. If the goal is growth in terms of the number of people in the seats, okay, what's the result of that specific goal? Okay, if my goal is to get as many people in the seats as possible, what's the secondary consequence of that goal? Here's the result of that goal. I'm going to water down the truth. I'm going to dial things back to become as attractive as I can so that I can get more people in the seats. Well, how did I end up with doing that? Because I had the wrong goal to start with.
Speaker 1:A better goal isn't just church growth. Yeah, of course we want numbers of people getting to church, but that can't be the primary goal. The primary goal has to be the depth of relationship that the people have who are in our church, the depth of relationship that they have with God. That's right and what we want to do, what we have to do specifically in the context of church. You have to use the measure of church that even Christ used disciples making disciples, which means Christ followers now replicating themselves and making other Christ followers. It is not the number of people that sit in the seats, it is not your brand, it is not how cool and attractive your pastor or your worship team is and there's nothing wrong with a cool and attractive pastor and a worship team but the measure is off whenever those things become preeminent. Yes, so we have to use Christ's measure. Yes, and we're going to get to the measures here in just a minute, but let me give you a few more examples. So that's the example in the church and that shows you what good heart's law looks like.
Speaker 1:When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. So if butts and seats is your target, like what's more important, like what do you think would have greater impact? A church that has a thousand members who come every single Sunday, they pay their tithes and they listen to the message and that's all they do? Okay, maybe they volunteer in the community or whatever. Or a church with a hundred members and each of those 100 members are discipling five people of their own. Which one has more impact? Yeah, the one with a hundred. So I should not let my goal be butts and seats, otherwise I fall into good heart's law. It doesn't take into consideration the secondary consequence. That would make me water down the truth, so I get more butts in the seats.
Speaker 1:Let me give you a couple more examples. In the workplace, an employee if you're going to reward an employee by the number of cars sold okay. So this is a car dealership. You're going to reward an employee specifically for the number of cars sold. As a result, they're going to do everything in their power to sell more cars, even if that means taking advantage of that little old grandma out there that probably doesn't need to be buying the car right now. And sometimes they're even going to sell cars at a loss because the number is. The goal for them is the number of cars sold. The goal for them was not profitability, right, so you can see how that can switch it around. Go ahead. Yeah, let me jump in here real quick. Jason, you know there is nothing wrong with a goal of how many cars to sell, but that has to be secondary to. I'm not sure if we you know we're going to. I would imagine you're going to talk Jason, I don't have the notes sitting here in front of me about quantitative or qualitative, but it's the key is your brand, is what your brand is, what people say about you when you walk out of the room.
Speaker 1:It's like, what do people say about you when you walk off the car lot? Or when they walk off your car lot, right, so if you put, and your one goal, your one measure, the one thing that you're keeping in front of your employees, and the pressure that you apply whether it's good pressure or bad pressure, but let's just say you're applying good pressure, healthy pressure is only for a quantitative goal of you know, 100, we're going to sell 10 cars this month. If that's the pressure that you keep in front of them, then naturally the quality of the experience will fall prey to the quantity of the goal. And that is a very dangerous place. And if, as leaders of our businesses, and even if you're don't own your own business and you work and you're a manager or something like this, as leader of your team or even just a leader of yourself, you have to elevate the experience. You have to elevate. What will they say, what will they feel, based on interactions with me, and we can get a little bit more into those details. But you cannot elevate. You cannot elevate and provide the majority of the peer pressure or the good pressure, to simply a quantitative goal of 10 sales, 100 sales, 10 million, 300 million, whatever it may be, yep, and we're going to give you some, some, some concrete examples on what to do with that. But just remember good hearts law when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. When we set a specific goal, people tend to optimize for it, regardless of the secondary consequences. That's why we, as business owners, have to make sure that we're paying attention to the goals that we have as business owners, as bosses, handing down to employees.
Speaker 1:Okay, now I'll give you another example. David and I had a franchise, or come into me and him oh, maybe a decade ago might have been a little bit longer than that he wasn't even a franchise or, at this point, just had a great prototype. And he knew that David and I had franchised. Obviously, you guys all know 100 locations in the 35 different states, so we're very familiar with franchising. And he said what advice do you have. And I said here's my one piece of advice I'll give you. Actually, I gave him a lot of advice, but I said one of my main things is do not have the goal for of your franchise being the number of locations opened, because if you have the goal of the number of locations open like I want to open up 500 locations in the next five years I said if you do that and that's your primary goal, you will end up opening locations and areas that you have no business opening them in. Okay, I said my suggestion is make it your goal, make your primary goal being the profitability of franchisee. Not the number of locations for franchisee or but the profitability of franchisee. If you make that your primary goal, everything that you will do will lead to you diving into making sure that the franchisees that you do have although they'll be less than what you probably want those franchisees will be successful.
Speaker 1:Okay, 10 years later, I just saw a headline. About three months ago this particular guy grew into over a hundred locations I think it was 150 locations or whatever. Now he's being sued in a class action lawsuit of tons of his franchisees that said that they were opening locations in areas where they should not have been opening and it was not. They're not being profitable and every one of them are losing money. Okay, I'm like, oh my gosh, you should have paid attention. I saw the article in my heart just jumped and I'm like, oh, this just makes me sick. But this is good hearts law. Right, there is that they made the goal out there being quantitative, not qualitative. Now, I've used those terms. David's used those terms. I'm going to explain those in just a second.
Speaker 1:So let me get to. What do we do about this in business? Number one first, you know when we talk about so what is a good target in business? Okay, because doing business God's way means that we're always thinking about the secondary consequences of our goals and measures. Okay, that's what doing business God's way is we're always thinking about the secondary consequences of our goals and measures. If I put a number out there, what's that going to ultimately do to my salespeople? What's that ultimately going to do to my employees? I have to make sure I'm paying attention to the secondary consequences. Jason, can I let me jump in real quick and talk about second?
Speaker 1:Second, let me tease out a little bit of secondary consequences. First is the secondary consequences on how it directly affects the person or the client or the customer. That's what you had a first look at and you're like, well, they need my product, they need this. Okay, okay, let's just. That's great, I totally understand. But how does that? How does what is the secondary consequence of them interacting with your product or your service or your brand? How does it affect them as it relates to the, to their spiritual walk? Now, I'm not saying you give them Bible verse, I'm not saying all that, but I am saying do you hurt their faith when they think about your sales process or they think about the interacting with you or your salespeople or your teammates or your general manager or whoever it may be? Have you in any way disturbed their faith? You have to interact with people as if they are infants in their, in their walk with the Lord, or they don't even know the Lord. Right, and remember, you deal with infants with kid gloves Like you don't.
Speaker 1:Even in the Bible it says look, before you go and get the log out of someone or get the, get the spec out of someone's eye, get the log out of yours first, then you can see clearly to get the spec out of theirs Now if someone's getting a spec. If you had to get a spec out of someone's eye, how would you do that? Would you just jab your finger down in the eye? No, you would do it gently. So the log here is you've got to get the log of quantitative measures, in other words, a hundred sales this month, and that's our goal and that's our pressure, that's our number one target Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a log. Get that log out of your eye. That can be second. The first needs to be every interaction.
Speaker 1:We want to prioritize the person over profit and we want to make sure that they feel and they interact with our brand, because if you are a Christian business owner, they're interacting with your brand and you are a faith, they're interacting with your faith. So you have to ask what am I doing to their faith? Well, they don't even have faith. They don't even know we're beliefs. Okay, that's great. Well, one day they might come to know the Lord and they wanna be able to align the biblical principles that they see in scripture or that they're learning in church as new Christians and they wanna be able to say, hey, I remember interacting with this one business guy man, he, really, they were so impressive. Or I remember interacting with this one lady. They were so impressive, they really were awesome. Oh, and it turns out they're Christians. Ah, I get it. And then, all of a sudden, a good light bulb goes off. That's a kingdom moment. But you don't wanna say, man, I remember interacting with this one lady and, oh my gosh, she didn't do any of this and she calls herself a Christian. Now, all of a sudden, guess what you've done. You have now hurt their faith. Yeah, that is vitally important, and you wanna make sure that when people do business with you, you could lead them to faith Like they want. That your faith is on display in the way that you do business, the way that you handle sales, the way that you handle your marketing and your branding and your value delivery, all of that, your systems. It is a reflection of your faith. Okay, so now let's get into just a couple handles that are really gonna help you.
Speaker 1:So what's a good target in business? Well, first you gotta start with your vision and your mission. Okay, your vision is your, what your mission is your, why You're like. So for David and I, we teach an expert ownership. You're so that statement. You gotta write that for your business. We will be blank, so that we can blank. You know, for us it was we will be the best, highest producing foreclosure brokerage in the nation so that we can breathe life in cities across America, something like that. And then from there we had a bunch of different measures off of that. But the vision mission is very important in your business because the clearer the vision, the fewer the options, the easier the decision. Got that from the book Visioneering Clearer the vision, the fewer the options, the easier the decision.
Speaker 1:Once you've got your vision mission dialed and you know exactly which direction you're going and it's passed down to your employees and your salespeople, then you have to establish your KPIs based on their secondary consequences. So your KPIs, your key performance indicators. This is where you actually need some measurements. You've got to establish your KPIs based on secondary consequences and the best way to do this is to elevate your qualitative KPIs over your quantitative KPIs. Now you need both. What David and I are saying is don't you don't need to throw out the goal of having a hundred closings a month or a revenue goal of 10 million this year, like all of that is good and you want that? Yes, david, and I would say yes to that.
Speaker 1:If you've ever listened to our podcast on how our identities as kingdom entrepreneurs is that we are all kings and priests. A king is the quantitative guy that says it's the quantitative girl you know that says I want to crush it in business. I want to close a hundred deals a month. I want to make 2.5 million bring home for my family. I want to do that Like that's the king part of you. You need that, but the king part of you has to be led by the priest part of you, which is the qualitative. That priest says I want people to have a good experience with us. I want my product to really do what it says it's gonna do and I want people to be able to come to faith in Jesus from doing business with me. Like that's the priest, so the priest always has to lead.
Speaker 1:So when it comes to doing something about this and staying away from good heart's law that tells us hey, if we set up specific goal, the secondary measures are gonna take over. What we want to do is create KPIs that offset both of those. So we've got quantitative KPIs and qualitative KPIs. Okay, so let me just break this down. Qualitative is quality, quantitative is quantity. So it's very simple. So if our goals just become quantity, we're gonna hit a hundred million dollars this year, we're gonna have 25 transactions. This year, we're gonna sell one million products or whatever. That may be Okay.
Speaker 1:If that becomes the most important thing, then what happens is the quality of the delivery, but not just the delivery, but the quality of the kingdom interaction. That happens to people's faith. That happens to either their faith that they exist they currently have or the faith that maybe that one day they will have. You wanna see yourself as a player in God's story in their life. Because, at the end of the day, the spiritual element to our lives is the most important thing, because Jesus is gonna return and when he returns he wants us to be laborers in his field, because the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord for laborers in the harvest. Well, how do we labor? Well, we don't just simply go. Well, I'm gonna go door to door and knock on doors on Saturday morning. Well, that's great. You could do that if you want. But you can also just incorporate the kingdom into every single area of your life. That's what kingdom means, is kings dominion, it's the rule of a king in every area of your life. That includes the way that you do business. That's why we call it expert ownership. Is you wanna be an expert owner? You wanna be a master owner of every area of your life?
Speaker 1:Specifically in business, what we have to do is elevate the quality of experience and the quality this is. It's even one level higher. It's the quality of the spiritual tone, that and the quality of just the. We are blameless and above reproach to such an extent in our business that it truly does get people to turn their head and go, wow, I wanna be like them. And it doesn't matter what you're selling, it doesn't matter what service you're providing, and you want that quality to be so high that they say, wow, they truly do prefer me over themselves and that's what the Bible says to do. They don't know that, but that's what you're doing. You're pervering them over them, over yourself, in a gray area. You benefit to another person. You lean to another person's benefit and not your own. When the and when the sale is done, or the, when the sale is transacted or transacted, or when your customer service has to get involved, you don't make that person feel Like you're just a shark.
Speaker 1:Or your sales team calls and does follow-up sales. You know, because you've got additional products, additional services that you can give. You have to make sure that there is a timeline between the initial sale and the secondary sale so that you're bringing value to such an extent where they actually believe wow, this is worth more than I paid for. Now, all of a sudden, your secondary sales team can step in and go Well, you know what you can level up if you'd like, and that's okay. But you have to bring Value. You, you have got to take into consideration the quality of the spiritual experience of your value, delivery of your product, of your service. And that's business God's way. And guess what happens when you do business God's way? You get God's power, you get God's presence and Ultimately, god will give you his profit, whatever that looks like for your business, maybe a lot, maybe a little, but either way, you're doing it God's way.
Speaker 1:So let's, let's look at these two different types of KPIs. This will help you and then we're gonna close. Okay, because you need both. You need quantitative KPIs and you need qualitative KPIs. So a quantitative KPI it refers to everything that can be measured in concrete numbers. Okay, again, it's about quantity. So example generate 300 sales Qualified leads in a month, close 100 deals in a month, make 50 calls a day, like we need those things, those are good KPIs, we need those.
Speaker 1:But they follow this one. They follow the qualitative KPIs. That includes everything that can't be measured by numbers, like feelings and sentiments. Okay, like feedback from seasoned buyers. Okay, not going to newbies. You know you go.
Speaker 1:You go on some of these furniture websites because I've been looking for some furniture lately. You go some for these furniture websites and you've seen all the reviews and they're all good. And it says, yeah, I just got it delivered and it's fantastic, I love this thing. Well, no, show me a review from somebody who's had that couch for 10 years. Like, go get people who have been in your it, have been using your product or your service for two or three years. Go into them and figure out a way to get feedback from them and get their feedback. Okay, yeah, I. Another thing. Another thing would be Allow, allow a negative review or or even a review where they're like look, I ordered, I did this, I did that, or I requested the service, and then show where your customer service then came in and Actually made it right. Yeah, find those.
Speaker 1:Like drum those up, because that's what people want to see is, look, we live in a fallen world. They're gonna be bad buyers. They're gonna be people that interact with you that are just bad people. It's just gonna happen. And they're gonna give you a bad review. Right, that's always gonna happen. This does not mean that you can never have a bad review like there's. You can't live under that pressure. But just when you stand before God, you want to be able to say I prioritized others over myself. Yeah, and that's doing that. I yielded value and brought the kingdom.
Speaker 1:And that's a qualitative KPI. It's like feedback from seasoned buyers. It's surveys from current customers. You know, like, send a survey, like send, like lots of them, send them to people who have been in your process for a long time, people who have just been in it send surveys. And then you know another qualitative KPI would be you know focus groups, like get focus groups to try to break your system and process. Like, literally send somebody in to try to break it and figure out where it's broken and it's all.
Speaker 1:Qualitative KPIs is all about customer experience. Okay, quantitative goals and KPIs focus on profit. Qualitative focuses on people. Quantitative goals and KPIs focus on money. Qualitative focuses on meaning. Again, david and I would be the first people to tell you you need both. Okay, you need both, but you've got to elevate qualitative over quantitative, otherwise you will fall and your employees will fall, for Good Heart's Law and the secondary consequences will take over and your business will end up doing more damage to the kingdom than it does good for the kingdom, and we don't want that from you and David and I feel as though it's our responsibility, with our expert ownership podcast, to make sure that we keep as many faith-filled entrepreneurs out of that trap as possible. So there you go, guys.
Speaker 1:Can I give a quick scripture, because this is one? We did a podcast on this a while back. But Philippians, chapter two, the Paul is speaking to the early church in Philippi and remember the early church. They didn't have a free market, they didn't have this type of stuff that we have here in America today. But what we have here is just such an honor and such a privilege. It's also a responsibility.
Speaker 1:But Paul is speaking to the early church and listen to what he says. He says this. He says work out your salvation. This is Philippians 2, the last part of verse 12 into 13 to 14. He says work out your salvation, with fear and trembling, like he's not saying work for your salvation. He's saying work it out. In other words, it's inside out, for it is God who works in you.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's right.
Speaker 1:God's working in you as a believer. And how's he working? He's working by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the, by his written word. And when you're in his word, when you're tied into a local community, when you're submitted to his spirit, now guess what happens. God's going to work out of you into your business and into the work that you do. You spend more time working than you do almost anything else. He says, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. The question is does your sales process give God pleasure? If you were to stand before the Lord with the way you interact with customers, or the way you interact with clients, or the way that you have taken on that type of business debt or whatever, if you're standing before the Lord, would it bring him pleasure to say well done, good and faithful servant, like that's great, right there. Is that what God would say of you.
Speaker 1:Then he says this in verse 14, he continues do all things without grumbling or disputing or complaining, right? Well, god, you know like I think about God quite often takes the long way and not the short way. He doesn't take shortcuts, he takes long cuts on purpose and in those long cuts he's making us to be more like the people he wants us to be. So, yes, I understand your path to profit. If you put qualitative over quantitative, do not eliminate a quantitative. You want quantity, but you put quality over quantity. Guess what? It takes a little longer to that path to profit, but that's going to be okay.
Speaker 1:Now, don't starve yourself and don't you look. Profit to a business is like air to a lung. You got to have it. But the Lord, you know, sometimes when you do this you'll want to complain or you'll want to. You'll feel like, oh, good grief, and it's you're disputing with God. Well, don't do that. We live in a microwave society, but God is a crockpot.
Speaker 1:God, let, let your, let your process, let everything that you do be bathed and baked in the word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Then he says this that you may be, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God, without blemish, in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom you shine as lights in the world. Are you serious? Look, if your company, if your business is not blameless and innocent, above reproach in the midst of this crooked and generate and twisted generation, guess what it will become? Crooked and twisted. It'll become just like the world. And God is saying right here you shine as lights in a dark world. You have to be blameless and above reproach in every area of your business, and this is convicting to me and I hope it's convicting to you.
Speaker 1:And do you know how you find out if you're blameless and above reproach? You know how you do it. We just talked about it. You ask, you take surveys, you get testimonials, you go to people who have been a part of your thing or taken your service or bought your product two and three years later and you say how was it, are you doing? Well, you go and you ask and that's how you know. So listen, guys, don't fall for good heart's law. Okay, consider the secondary consequences. You want to run a faith filled business and you want to be launched into freedom and success, then we need to do things God's way. We need to run our business God's way and we need to measure God's way qualitative over quantitative and watch what happens. So thanks for hanging out with us gang. This was fun. I like this one. We'll see you next week.