Rich Christiansen – Parallel Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurial Expert

What an amazing journey The Zig Zag Principle has been!

I want to so publicly acknowledge and thank all of you that have been involved in this great endeavor. 

There are two types of victory.  There is the private victory and there’s the public victory.  I am so thrilled about the public victory! We hit the bestselling lists!

- We were #3 overall on Amazon the day the book was released. On Amazon we also hit:
- #1 on the Movers and Shakers list
- #1 in Business Management
- #1 in the Motivational category
- #1 in Entrepreneurship
- #1 in Psychology and Counseling
- #1 in the category Life

We are #5 overall on the USA Today list.

And the public victory I am really excited about is that The Zig Zag Principle is the #6 bestselling book in Inc. Magazine. 

These listings stand for great public successes and victories. But the successes that I am the most excited about, is you.  I love the private successes. 

I get to hear the stories from individuals who are wresting control of their life. I love the stories of people take back their life—both emotionally and financially. These are the success stories that I am the most excited about. 

I thank you again so much for your support in The Zig Zag Principle and I hope that you will join me in having a zig zag, joyful, amazing, successful life.  Thanks again so much for supporting me on The Zig Zag Principle. Go forward and have a great prosperous life.

Tweet This Post 

 I do have some businesses that do not fit into these last two categories but have been very stable businesses that have scaled well.  My wife and I started purchasing rental properties many years ago.  We bought our first fourplex at a fire sale after the owners went bankrupt.  We put enough money down that the cash started flowing from the moment we bought it.  As we obtained more cash, we paid off this property.  Through trial and error, we have been through the learning curve to know how to manage these rentals.  With the money we made from that first rental, we bought another rental property.  We added resources by hiring a repairman and other people to help manage the properties.  We hired our sons to work on these rentals, as this was a great way to teach them how to work hard. (I’d hire my daughters, but we don’t have any.)  One by one, we purchased rental properties that got us to cash, paid them off, and then purchased more.  The great thing about these properties is that they are income-producing assets.  Even as the housing market took a nosedive, our rentals remained full.  Those people who no longer qualified for mortgages needed places to live and were happy to live in our rentals. 

      When my partners and I started CastleWave, we first got our initial SEO contracts to drive us to profitability, and then we hired the engineers we needed to build our resources. Then it was time to add scale.  The scale component in CastleWave was our link-building component—the ability to get other authoritative web sites to direct traffic to the sites for which we were consulting.  Our expertise in this area was our number-one value asset.  We put together a pragmatic system—aset of processes and approaches that were bundles—that we could then have our employees replicate and follow, allowing my partners and me to focus on other issues. 

      If done properly, scale allows you to develop a system and train other people in how to use that system. Put together an entire system and process using all your rules of engagement, and then flip the switch and start cranking out the cookies.  A cookie-cutter system is what will get you to scale.

      Microsoft Windows is a great example of scale.  How many times did Microsoft build Windows?  Yes, Bill Gates and company have released updates and improvements (well, most of the time), but they really only built the program once!  And they have been able to sell it millions and millions of times over.  Virtually every PC sold has Microsoft Windows already installed, and Microsoft gets a royalty each time a person opens their box.  Now that is scale—and the reason why Bill Gates is one of the richest men in the world!

Tweet This Post 

I have developed four rules I follow whenever I create a business.  There are times I violate them, but I do so deliberately.  Keep in mind that these are my rules that fit into my skill set and values.  You will need to look at your own situation and determine the rules that work for you. 

Rule # 1 – Ride a Wave:  I like businesses that are on a wave.  Just like a surfer who gets in front of a wave and rides it to the shore, I want the environment to be right before I get on a wave in my business or my life.  If the wave is big enough, then just being in its vicinity will generate enough power to propel you toward your destination.  But if you catch that wave wrong, life can come crashing down around you.  The key is to get on and off the wave at the right time.  September 12, 2001, would have been a terrible time to start an airline.  This same day would have been the perfect time to start an anti-terrorist airline security business.  Purchasing a row of new condos in 2006, when housing prices were at a point where experts were beginning to see they were unsustainable, would have been a bad move.  Purchasing those same condos after the housing bubble burst and prices were slashed in half would have been the right time to add scale.  You need to assess your environment and pick the right waves to ride.

Rule #2  – Transaction Businesses:  I like businesses that sit in the middle of a transaction.  A well-known example is credit card companies, which make 2-5 percent every time one of us slides our credit card through a reader.  None of us give what we’re paying a thought (and if you think we’re not paying, think again).  Merchants are happy to pass along the fee because the convenience brings more people to their business.  Customers love the convenience of not having to carry cash or write a check, so they willingly pay their annual fee (and high interest rates) as well.  Positioning yourself in the middle of a transaction puts you in a great place to make money.

Rule #3 – Own the Customer:  I like to own the customer.  I don’t like being in a business where I can’t look into the eyeballs of the customer and resolve the issue.  I like to be in the middle of the transaction, but I do not like being sandwiched between brokers.

During the rise in the housing market, I was riding a great wave with a company called Mortgage Saver 101.  We had an awesome web site that generated leads of people looking to obtain mortgages.  The company was riding a wave and was a transactional and a digital business.  The only problem was that we did not sell our leads directly to the banks or the people who were coming to refinance their loans.  We sold our leads to a broker who would then sell them to multiple vendors.  Many times the broker would come back to us and say he did not like some of our leads.  We would ask what he didn’t like and he would simply say, “It wasn’t a quality lead.”  Without being able to talk to the bank or the customer, we were left to guess at what they really wanted.  This left us very vulnerable, giving all of the power to the broker.  If there was a problem, we had no way to solve it.  On the other hand, credit card companies are good examples of being able to own the customer.  The credit card company can communicate directly with the merchant that is selling the product or the customer that has signed up for the credit card.  They own the customer.  They can manage the relationship on both sides of the transaction.

      Rule #4 – I Like Digital Assets:  This is my very personal preference, but I love digital assets.  I really do not like retail.  Why?  Because I stink at retail.  I don’t have enough discipline and I am not patient enough to succeed in retail.  It doesn’t scale as well for me.  I know many other people who have been highly successful in retail, but it is just not my preference.  Once I make a website or an application, I have made it once and as many people as want to come will fit into that store.  That’s the primary reason I like digital assets. 

Tweet This Post 

At one point or another in our personal lives and our careers we get into a desperate mindset or a desperate mode of operation. I found this to be incredibly destructive, and actually counter productive.

As we slip into this mode you can typically tell because the volume and intensity with how we approach our customers, our clients, our employees, and everyone else is just notched a little bit too loud. At what point you want something so badly that you can’t do without, you know you are doing desperation.

My wife tells the story of driving through our little town and seeing a big poster on one of the little mom and pop clothing stores. The sign said, “Please shop here. I need to feed my children!”

That’s doing desperation. A person’s first thought is, “Oh, I’ll help out that shop owner.” But then that thought is quickly followed by another, “Oh, I don’t want to fall into that trap.”

Here are three things that I’ve found will help you avoid desperation not only in your business life, but also in your personal life.

Number one, put a buffer in place. Inevitably you’ll hit bumps in your personal life and in your business life. I put a three-month minimum savings buffer in the business. And I maintain more than that in my personal life.

Next, don’t risk what you can’t afford to lose. If you’re not in the position to risk at the level that you’re risking, that causes an extreme amount of desperation. So don’t risk what you can’t afford to lose. Before hand make a conscious decision and determine your level of risk.

Finally, if you do get into the desperate mode of operation…back off. Take three deep breathes. Consult those around you. Take a backdoor approach to it. If it is just simply beyond recovery—punctuate it. Don’t go deeper down the rat hole.

I frequently talk about my philosophy of failing efficiently. If you’re going to have a failure and you’re chasing it down the rat hole. Don’t keep following after it, to an even worse death. End it. Put that one to bed. Move onto the next thing.

I know this is an easy topic to discuss intellectually. But emotionally it’s a very difficult topic. I still find myself in modes where I’m doing desperation. I experience this particularly when it’s beyond my realm of control. When I put everything out there and it’s out of my hands, I often struggle with desperation.

I do strongly suggest that we stay in a positive non-desperate, non-threatening mode. Things just go much better in that mode. The putts fall better. The business comes together. Everything flows better and it is much simpler when you’re not in desperation mode.

Go forward, zig zag to success, and have a wonderful week.

Tweet This Post 

 One way would be to bring another dentist into his practice so he could take Fridays off to work on creating his new product.  He could then join forces with other local practices to build a channel or infrastructure to test and promote his new product.  When that has proven successful, he could create an online presence.  When we talked about his options, my friend was amazed that he could take control of his own destiny and move from the constrained “I’m going to spend the rest of my life drilling teeth” mindset to the “I can actually pursue my beacon in the fog” mindset.

      While others see limitations, I see examples of scale all around me.  I found one while attending a retreat being run by a well-known chiropractor.  This man is clearly an exceptionally talented chiropractor who had become very profitable in his practice.  He then added resources and staff and was able to add several additional offices to his practice.  Then he made the big leap to scale.  He compiled his own set of processes that worked in his business, including the equipment he used, the supplements he recommended, and the processes that made him successful.  He put all of this together into a system he could sell to other chiropractors.  This man is now distinctly known for his training programs among chiropractors throughout the United States.  With his training program, he helps other chiropractors—and then profits when they tell their associates about what he’s done for them. But he has no direct involvement in their day-to-day businesses.  This is scale.

      My oldest son seems to have gotten some of my genes, which led to him getting involved in my web businesses several years ago.  (He was one of my original nerdy kids who helped me move CastleWave forward.)  After I sold CastleWave, he wanted to start his own business.  He worked hard to follow the principles and processes he learned at CastleWave and ended up building a scalable web business of his own.  His is now in Japan for two years working as an unpaid service volunteer, and he has a business that is still making money for him.  While he is gone, his seventeen-year-old brother is the CEO of the company.  He also hired his younger brother and several other smart and energized teenagers to keep his business going—and growing.  They have the same values in place.  They have their beacon in the fog set and are fueled with the passion of youth.  As I write this, my son has been gone for thirteen months, and he has a resource and an asset that will fund the remainder of his college when he returns.  That is the power of scale.

Tweet This Post 

The third zig is about adding scale to your undertaking. After getting to cash and then adding resources and processes, you need to add scale to get your product or services to the masses. In simple terms, scale is something that can be published or duplicated or sold over and over again.  Think about the music industry as an example.  There are amazingly talented studio musicians who get hired to play for top recording artists.  They come into the studio, lay down their tracks, get a check for an awful lot of money, and then go onto their next gig.  They live a good life, making more than most of us.  The trouble is, their check is a one-time payment.  On the other hand, the artist who writes and records the song gets a royalty every time the song is downloaded, sold at Wal-Mart, or played on the radio.  Through scaling their talents and business strategies, recording artists gets lots and lots of checks for an awful lot of money—and live a great life!

Business gets really fun for me when I can make money while I’m sleeping, or on vacation, or working on my next project.  I remember the first time this happened for me. I was laid up in bed for what I knew was going to be a few weeks, so I came up with a little business idea, threw together a web site, worked my search engine optimization magic, and went to bed.  I got up the next morning, brushed my teeth, checked the web site, and found I had made $37.50—while I had been asleep!  (That number got bigger as the days went on.)  Scale is what allows me to do that.

My colleagues and I often use the term, “Nail it, then scale it.”  What we mean is that during the first two zigs and zags, you’re really trying to figure out how to nail your business.  You’re figuring out the discipline, the effort, and the processes that will make it work.  In zig number1, you are figuring out how to get to profitability.  In zag number 2, you are adding resources.  In zig number 3, you need to figure out a model that you can replicate quickly and get your product out to the masses.  This is the “scaling it” part.

When I’ve talked or written about this concept, I’ve offended several members of my family because I summarize my ideas by stating, “I never want to be a doctor and certainly never a lawyer!”  My point is not to offend my brother, who is a very successful doctor.  My point was that doctors have to put on their literal rubber gloves and poke at some very tender places, and attorneys have to put on their figurative rubber gloves and poke in some dark places. Otherwise, neither one is making money.  I don’t want to do that.  I like making money beyond the time that I am physically and/or mentally working. 

There are alternatives most of us can pursue, though.  I have a good friend who is a dentist.  He’s told me several times about a really great product he wants to develop that would make it so much easier to fill cavities.  He has lamented that he just doesn’t have enough time to work on this because he is stuck drilling and filling teeth all day long.  He feels he has no options, but I’ve explained that the option is to zigzag.  He already has a business with a solid cash flow.  He just needs to add resources—and then scale. 

Tweet This Post 

Tweet This Post 

Eating Our Own Cooking

In our test business, we hit profitability one month ahead of schedule.  We then documented processes, which helped ensure that when we began hiring people, they would actually know what to do.  Shane, our college student that was so helpful in the beginning, graduated from college and was able to join us full time.  The next person we hired was Koral, my executive admin. I believe this hire is always the most important.  We vetted and screened hundreds of people before we found Koral.  She has been a perfect fit with our values, and she has brilliant skills.  She is now the gatekeeper of our values and does a screening of every person who enters our organization.  She makes sure that they are a valued fit.

To help document the process that made our company profitable, I identified twelve parts of our operations that needed to be managed in order for us to be successful.  I then stapled a piece of paper with one of these items written on it to a $20 bill and posted these around the office.  I told everyone that the first person who wrote up the process for that step got to keep the $20 bill.  We now have twelve documented processes, each with their own set of simple steps written out so that each new person who joins the business has a clear picture of what needs to be done to make our company work.

After hiring Koral and a few other key positions, my partner Curtis needed to hire a very important individual for our sales team.  At this point, we had created our values filter, and we had the skills test assembled to give to our future hires.  Curtis was thoughtful and pragmatic as he ran a large number of candidates through this process, even though we had an urgent need to fill this position. After screening all the candidates, one in particular stood out.  He was very talented and had the skills we needed.  He had passed all of our tests.  I told Curtis to just hire the guy, but Curtis slowed down just a little because he saw some red flags.

Some of the red flags had to do with this individual’s work history.  He had not had real consistency in his employment.  We figured we could overlook this because we knew he had dealt with some health problems.  Another red flag was that in our interviews, this man seemed to have more motion than momentum.  Even so, I was convinced this guy was a good hire, but Curtis was still concerned. After I kept prodding him, Curtis decided to extend the offer.  As Curtis and the man were talking on the phone, Curtis could hear the man’s wife in the background.  She was shouting things like “If you agree to accept this, make sure they let you work from home two days a week!” We hadn’t discussed that in the interviews, but Curtis thought it might work.  Then Curtis heard her say, “Make sure the health insurance kicks in immediately!”  That was fine because we offer a good health insurance package.  Then he heard her say, “Find out how many vacation days they’re giving you, and then ask for a week more.”  In a bad economy with a lot of competition for this position, there was no gratitude or excitement about the offer.  There was no dialogue about how he was going to add value to our company. It was all about take, take, take.  After four or five of these demands, Curtis paused and simply said, “I’m sorry, we’re not moving forward.” He knew our company’s values, and he knew we would not be adding a resource that fit.  Even though we really needed this position filled, Curtis went back to the drawing board and started all over.  Fortunately, we soon found a delightful woman named Chiaki who fit our needs perfectly.  She is aligned with our company values and has been the right hire for this job.

Summary

After you have hit profitability in zig number 1, zag number 2 is all about adding resources.  You are making the transition from working harder to working smarter.  You are going from determination to discipline.  You are going from being the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker to cheerleading a team and turning over control to others.  Remember that this will involve letting them make some mistakes and do things a little differently than you would.  But if you do this effectively, you are increasing your profitability, adding resources in to the system, and documenting the processes.

This is where the culture of your company will be defined.  It’s one of the most fun phases of your business and where stories will come that will define the life of your business – good and bad!  Your values will be tested for the first time, so hold strong.

Tweet This Post 

We launched the book The Zig Zag Principle and within a day it hit #1 in every applicable category on Amazon. And then we hit #3 on Amazon’s Bestseller List. What fun this is seeing the results of the last several months of hard work.

I appreciate the positive comments and reviews from everyone. I’m enjoying this fun ride. And now it’s time to celebrate!

Please join us at our launch party this weekend. We’re going to celebrate The Zig Zag Principle with a party and a set of fun workshops designed for entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, and anyone else who is interested in business and goal setting.

If you have tickets, please make sure you are registered for the event. We have incredible content to share, amazing food to devour, and a whole lot of celebrating to do.

If you’d like to attend, please contact our office today. Someone from back East purchased a large number of books and donated some of his launch event tickets, and we’d love to make sure they get used. Please contact us at 1-801-375-7900. First come, first serve.

THE ZIG ZAG PRINCIPLE LAUNCH PARTY
- Workshops, Speakers, Fun & Games, and Networking.

- Learn how other kids, teens, and stay-at-home moms have zigzagged to build businesses.

- Lunch is provided.
   
Saturday, October 15th
SALT LAKE AREA

For more info, to register, or for tickets, please click or call: 1-801-375-7900

Tweet This Post 

Tweet This Post