IAM2245 – Founder and Coach Shares the Essential Strategies to Business Success

00:00 - 00:22

Ral West: So be creative and dig into how many different ways you can leverage yourself. Because the idea here is you want to be able to duplicate yourself so that you don't have to be present in the business every single minute to make sure things are running properly. So you need to be able to create manuals and procedures.

00:23 - 00:49

Intro: Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the IMCEO Podcast.

00:50 - 00:58

Gresham Harkless: Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the IMCEO Podcast, and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Rao West. Rao, excited to have you on the show.

00:59 - 01:01

Ral West: Thank you, Gresh. It's wonderful to be here.

01:01 - 01:28

Gresham Harkless: Yes. I'm super excited to have you on and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. And of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Rao so you can hear about some of those awesome things. And Rao is the founder of Rao West Living, the dream, the creator of course for entrepreneurs overcome, overwhelm, create a smooth running business with less stress. Rao is not your average entrepreneur. She is a seasoned professional who has been a business owner and a manager for over 40 years. Rao has invaluable experience in

01:28 - 02:04

Gresham Harkless: scaling businesses and mastering the art of effective systemization. Rao honed her business acumen with real life experience, and she is a master at the practical implementation of business theories to create effective processes that transform businesses and multiply success. Raoul is recognized for founding successful businesses, authoring courses, and contributing to various boards while being a philanthropist and a dynamic speaker. And Ryle is actually tuning in with us from Alaska, which I think is absolutely awesome. I've learned more about Alaska than I think that I even knew that I knew. And then 1 of the big things that

02:04 - 02:25

Gresham Harkless: I love when I was preparing for this is she has what's called her 6 essential secrets to business success, which she outlined the key principles that will get you out of overwhelm and create more success in business without constantly involvement in the day-to-day operations, which I absolutely love. So Raoul, excited to have you on the show, super excited to learn from your genius. Are you ready to speak to the IMCO community?

02:26 - 02:27

Ral West: Yes, you bet.

02:27 - 02:36

Gresham Harkless: Awesome, well, let's get it started then. So to kind of kick it off a little bit, I know I touched on it a little bit. I wanted to rewind the clock, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CO story.

02:37 - 03:17

Ral West: Okay, well, Dresh, as you said, I've been an entrepreneur for over 40 years. So I started with a tiny business in Anchorage, Alaska. It was a marketing consulting firm specializing in tourism, so I grew up in an Alaska tourism family. My hometown was Seattle, Washington, but I moved to Alaska in my mid-20s. And from there, I met a young man across the hall from me, who was in real estate. And he started picking my brain about tourism and specifically about Hawaii, because I was making business trips to Hawaii regularly. And he thought that sounded really cool.

03:17 - 04:04

Ral West: He'd like free trips to Hawaii too. So to cut this story short, he ended up founding a company. It became Hawaiian Vacations. We ended up getting married and we ran the company together for 25 years. And it was that company that was really my guinea pig, my laboratory, if you will, for practicing the business strategies and principles. I went back to college during that time, got a degree in organizational management, and I used everything that I learned in our business and really shaped that business into quite a successful enterprise, 8 digit annual revenue. And we eventually

04:04 - 04:07

Ral West: sold that business to Alaska Airlines.

04:08 - 04:18

Gresham Harkless: Nice. I absolutely love that. And who doesn't love a entrepreneurial business love story? I love how you all just continue to compliment each other and did so many awesome things from there.

04:18 - 04:25

Ral West: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we had a lot of fun working together and, you know, not everything was fun, but most of it was.

04:26 - 04:43

Gresham Harkless: Yes, I'm sure there's always the behind the scenes of business and, you know, there's so many different things that are involved with that. But I would love to drill down a little bit more and hear a little bit more on what you're working on now, how you're making that impact, and being able to help so many entrepreneurs be able to know and live the dream that is within their organizations.

04:43 - 05:27

Ral West: I really enjoyed picking through 40 plus years of experience to find those principles, and you mentioned them already, the 6 essential secrets to business success. And I arrived at those 6 principles because I looked at everything that we had done in our entire career and asked myself what were the things that really set us apart and made us super successful where other businesses might have had great marketing or great product or something, but they just didn't have it all together. So those are the 6 principles that I pulled out of our experience and then put them

05:27 - 06:05

Ral West: as the core of this course. And it is an 8 module course. And the name of the course is overcome overwhelm create a smooth running business with less stress because I believe that a lot of entrepreneurs are experiencing what I did for many many many years which was ah there's too much to do and not enough time. And how do I do it all myself? And I had to learn how to delegate. I had to learn how to create systems. I had to learn how to to mold the company culture, develop our team, focus on customer

06:05 - 06:39

Ral West: service, all of those things that would make the business successful. And we did it in such a way that we could step out of the day-to-day operation and hand the business management over to a chief operating officer and a chief financial officer. We stepped back, went off to Hawaii, had a good time, and they kept running the business and kept growing the business. And you know, we kept tabs on it because we had developed those systems and those measurements, the KPIs, all that that allowed us to monitor how things were going. And they were the ones

06:39 - 07:04

Ral West: that successfully led us into being purchased by Alaska Airlines. And That's our story. We've repeated it a few times with other businesses. We've helped other business owners do the same thing. It's actually just a passion that I have. In fact, I was just telling my trainer at the gym this morning how much fun I'm having with this. He's going, your definition of fun is a little different than mine.

07:05 - 07:25

Gresham Harkless: You know, it doesn't matter as long as it's fun indeed. And I think that's so powerful. And so I know you touched on it a little bit, but I would love to drill down. I'm not sure if this is part of your secret sauce, but I would love to hear more about those 6 essential secrets and kind of what those are, what those look like. And I know of course we can find out your course and drill down more and learn exactly how to implement that into our organizations.

07:25 - 08:03

Ral West: You also need to look at, and as I mentioned before, what forms of leverage can you use? You're probably using some forms of leverage already, but there are more. There are so many more. So be creative and dig into how many different ways you can leverage yourself. Because the idea here is you want to be able to duplicate yourself so that you don't have to be present in the business every single minute to make sure things are running properly. So you need to be able to create manuals and procedures and rules and so forth that guide

08:03 - 08:40

Ral West: whoever else is in your business with you so that it can run smoothly the way you would want it to run whether you're there or not. And then you go on into developing your culture, you know deciding what culture is the right 1 for you, what your guiding principles and values are, and how to communicate that to your team, your customers, your community, and also how to build your team. Now, if you're a solopreneur, I just had somebody ask me this, well, I'm a solopreneur, so what's my team? And I said, well, there's you, yourself, and

08:41 - 09:18

Ral West: you, but there's also, maybe you have a bookkeeper or maybe you have somebody else that's helping you in some way with technology or whatever, they're still part of your team even if they're not working in your business 100% of the time. And then beyond that there's customer service. You know, How do we deliver world-class customer service? And I can't tell you how often I've heard, especially in the last 2 or 3 years, boy, customer service just doesn't seem to be there the way it used to be. Well, you know, there's really no excuse for that. We

09:18 - 09:55

Ral West: all can deliver absolutely excellent customer service, and we deserve it as customers. We deserve it. It's really 1 of my pet peeves when a business just doesn't spend that extra little time or attention to figure out how to delight their customers. And they're really missing the boat because you know you want to be able to delight your customer so that they will become a customer again and again and again. You know, we've all heard that it costs a lot more to gain a new customer than to just keep 1 you already have. So why aren't we

09:55 - 10:27

Ral West: paying a little bit more attention to how to deliver that service? And it's really not that hard, really isn't. But it does require some systems, particularly in larger businesses. You really have to have a system so that the people who are on the front lines really know what they can and can't do to deliver the service that the customers want. And so often as a customer, I run into somebody who says, well, I can't do that, or I'm not allowed to do that. And I'm like, oh boy, you know, that business is missing something here because

10:27 - 10:45

Ral West: if they just gave them a little bit more authority and a little bit more parameters, they could delight me. Right now, they're not delighting me. They're kind of, you know, bursting off. So, I haven't kept track, but I think that I covered all 6.

10:45 - 10:58

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, that doesn't make so much sense. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple Book or even a habit that you have. But what's something that you've leaned on that made you more effective and efficient?

10:59 - 11:38

Ral West: I actually attribute a lot of our success to our mentor. Our first really major mentor was Robert Kiyosaki, who went on to write the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, but we started learning from him in the late 80s, and that was way before he wrote the book. But he taught us so much and he directed us to a book called The E-Myth by Michael Gerber that really spelled out the systems approach for us and we had already started somewhat using systems and you know we were instituting total quality management in our company, but that book really

11:38 - 12:21

Ral West: helped us gel on what the systems really meant. But I think the main point is get a mentor. If that mentor is a podcast, a book, a course, you know, a friend, a family member, whatever, find out who knows more than you do about the subject and learn from them because the very best investment that anyone can make is in their own education. Educate yourself. It's actually 1 of the greatest forms of leverage that there is too, is more and more education. So I personally am a junkie when it comes to learning. I just love learning.

12:21 - 12:26

Ral West: It's a lifelong quest for me. I don't plan on giving it up ever.

12:26 - 12:47

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, that makes so much sense. And so you might have already touched on this too, but this is what I wanted to ask you for is a CEO nugget. It's a little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice, but I almost wonder, is there 1 of the 6 elements that you are foundational elements that you find that people maybe struggle with or can learn the most from more than maybe another 1?

12:48 - 13:32

Ral West: Well, I think that out of all of them, probably the concept of leverage is the 1 that's the most often overlooked. Because just as we were saying, not thinking of education as being a form of leverage. And there's so many others, like how can you leverage your community? There are groups or associations in your community that could provide you with, you know, networking opportunities or referrals. Maybe there's leverage in your own customer base that you're not tapping into, like asking them for referrals or just asking them, What is it that you would like in the way,

13:32 - 13:58

Ral West: how can our product improve to make you happier? That's leverage. It also ties in with customer service because all of these 6 things are very much intertwined. So if you really focus on leveraging all of the resources that you have available to you. You have a gold mine at your fingertips, but you have to use it. Yeah, that makes so much sense. Thank you so much for sharing that.

13:58 - 14:08

Gresham Harkless: I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. Our goal is to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So Raoul, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:09 - 14:54

Ral West: I think being a CEO means that you're a leader for 1 thing and you lead by example. You lead from your own set of values, your work ethic, and you try to embody your principles and your values with how you act. And hopefully the people around you will take that as a guide. And you are also a guardian. So you have to take care of this baby, this business and make sure that it's fed and nurtured and that it's taught how to grow. And you're there to help it when it stumbles and sort of lay the

14:54 - 15:09

Ral West: path for the future, have some vision. So all of that is part of being a CEO. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Rao, truly appreciate that definition. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just

15:09 - 15:19

Gresham Harkless: to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get out of you, about the course, get the downloadable, all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:19 - 16:10

Ral West: Well, thank you so much, Gresh. Well, obviously, I would love to have people check out my course. And you can start by visiting my website, which is www.ralwest.com. That's R-A-L-W-E-S-T.com. And there will be information about my course and also access to that 6 secrets PDF that can be downloaded. And we'll also, I would like to talk about the fact that, you know, too many people sell themselves short. They think that they can't do it or they accept some kind of shortcoming, you know, whether it's age, sex, race, whatever.

16:11 - 16:22

Gresham Harkless: Absolutely. Well, I truly appreciate that, Raoul. Of course, we're going to have the links and information and the show notes as well too so that everybody can find out about the course, the freebie that you mentioned and all the awesome things. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of

16:22 - 16:23

Ral West: the day. Thank you so much, Crash.

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Intro: Thank you for listening to the I Am CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 media. Tune in next time and visit us at imceo.co. I am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business at ceohacks.co. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkness Jr. Thank you for listening.