Howard Partridge - The 5 Secrets of a Phenomenal Business

Thank you to Almighty God for allowing me to do what I do and giving me the Grace to do it.

Thank you to Denise and Christian for your love and support through all of my projects.

Thank you to my phenomenal staff who LIVE this book every day. It would not be possible without you.

Thank you to my friend and brother Tom Ziglar for helping me think through and flesh out these business concepts - and extending my platform, proving they in any business.

Thank you to our phenomenal coaches for your leadership.

Thank you to all of our coaching members. We learn just as much from you as you do from us. Your love for me and one another is astounding.

Howard Partridge grew up on welfare in Mobile Alabama and left home at 18. He arrived in Houston, Texas on a Greyhound bus with only 25 cents in his pocket.

At age 23, he started his first business out of the trunk of his car and built it up to a multi-million dollar enterprise. He has owned 9 small businesses altogether and owns 4 companies at the time of this printing.

He is president of Phenomenal Products, Inc. which helps small business owners stop being slaves to their business by transforming it into a predictable, profitable, turnkey operation.

For the past 16 years Howard has helped small business owners around the world dramatically improve their businesses. He currently has coaching members worldwide, is the exclusive small business coach for the Zig Ziglar corporation, and is a founding member of the John Maxwell Coaching Team.

Howard has led hundreds of seminars, webinars, workshops and holds his own live multi-day events which have featured some of Americas top business trainers including Michael Gerber, Bob Burg, Dr. Joseph A. Michelli, and American legend Zig Ziglar.

Howard is married to Denise and has one beautiful son, Christian who is a freshman at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

The greatest business lesson I ever learned is that my business exists for one and one reason only. And your business exists for the same reason: to be a vehicle to help you achieve your LIFE goals!

The everyday demands of a business can have a dramatic impact on your personal lives. The good newsno, phenomenal newsis that the impact can be positive! It doesnt have to be negative. So, the first step toward a phenomenal business is to understand why it existsto enhance your life. To be a vehicle that takes your life from where it is to where you want to go.

We go into business because we have a dream. We have a dream of working for ourselves and having more free time. But then we get sucked into the constant demands of the business. Before too long, we are enslaved by it.

The key is to design your life goals first. In my first published book, 7 Secrets of a Phenomenal LIFE, I share that LIFE stands for Living In Freedom Every day. You must have a vision for what freedom looks like to you.

One of the tools we use is the Wheel of Life that has the seven core areas of life. You rate yourself on the seven areas on a scale of 1 through 10. You assess your life as it is now and compare each area to what you want it to look like.

If you dont have a clear vision for the life you want, you wont build the right kind of business. You must get the fact that your business works for you. You dont work for the business. Your business is a vehicle to help you live out your life goals. Its the vehicle you have chosen. You design the business to facilitate your life goals.

Dont get me wrong, you will still work just as hardand if you dont have money, you may have to invest more sweat equity than you ever imagined to get it where you need it to be. You may have to work long and hard in the beginning. But if you design your life goals first and build your business around that vision, you will avoid being a slave to your business. Your business will add to your life instead of taking away from it.

When I first read The E-Myth Revisited, I finally understood how to stop being a slave to my business. Michael Gerber talks about the primary aim. When you design a compelling, purposeful, phenomenal picture for your life and design your business around your life goals, you will approach your business with more purpose and direction.

You will have a compelling reason to build it. With a compelling vision for your life, you are willing to learn what you need to learn and, more importantly, implement it.

The other side of the proverbial coin is that your personal habits also have a dramatic impact on your business. To grow a phenomenal business, youve got to become a phenomenally successful person with positive habits. Just knowing how to build a business is not enough. I encourage you to read my book, 7 Secrets of a Phenomenal LIFE, to discover how to have a phenomenal life.

Have you ever used a GPS (Global Positioning System)? Of course you have. GPS is used by many to get from here to there these days. When I started my business 28 years ago, we used something called a map, and it was made of this interesting material called paper!

But today, we simply get out our smart phones (that knows where you arescary), and open our maps application. Or we get out our Garmin and type in where we want to go. It knows where you are, and gives you turn-by-turn directions to get you to your destination.

Do you know where you want to go? Are you clear about where you want to go in life and in business? And more importantlydo you really know where you are now?

The first thing a GPS does is determine where you are. I had the amazing honor of being quoted in the last chapter of the last book Zig Ziglar wrote, Born to Win. And I helped Tom Ziglar put together a phenomenal business assessment that reveals exactly where you are in your business right now. The assessment in Born to Win asks ten questions under each of these important five areas of business:

1. Marketing - Everything you do to attract prospects to your business.
2. Sales - Everything you do to convert prospects into paying customers.
3. Operations - Everything you do to serve your clients.
4. Administration - Everything you do to track your numbers and the internal office systems to run the business.
5. Leadership - Everything you do to lead and guide your business.

The assessment reveals how solid your systems are in each area (or not). You find out where you really are in your business. Most small business owners dont really understand how to assess where they are. The answers to these questions reveal where you are in your business compared to where you want to go, and that is extremely important.

In fact, in coaching small business owners for many years, Ive found that most dont really have a grasp on where they really are in their business. This assessment helps you see where your business really is right now.

Back to GPS. Lets say I want to go to my favorite spot in Florida, but I have been blindfolded, driven around for hours, and dropped off on the side of an unmarked road. Unless I know where I am, I cant get to Florida. The GPS picks up where I am. Then I can type in the location in Florida and it will give me step-by-step directions to get there.

So, the first part of GPS for phenomenal success is allowing the GPS to determine where you are. Once you know where you are, you can then use GPS to guide you to your destination: