24 Assets by Daniel Priestly
Part 1 – The Entrepreneur Journey
Ch.2 Income Follows Assets
● S oft digital assets drive income today as much as traditional assets like property, factories or
machinery did in the industrial age.
● Entrepreneurs and business leaders all over the world have come to think that income is correlated
with sales and marketing activity, but this is short sighted. Income is inextricably linked to the
underlying assets.
● If you want more income flowing through your business, develop new assets, improve the assets
you have or buy assets that someone else has created,resisting the urge to keep focusing on lead
generation, sales conversions and hustle.If hard work was rewarding, every woman in Africa would
be a millionaire. Assets have always been the key to building income; it’s one of the first things we
learn from the boardgame Monopoly – green houses and red hotels win the game.What’s changed
is the nature of these assets.
● A wealthy land-owner in the agricultural age would have a hard time believing that the richest
people in the industrial age don’t own very much land. In the industrial age a small plot of land with
a productive factory would out-produce a large farm. The industrial revolution transformed the
assets that mattered most from land, animals and crops to factories, machines and stock.
● As we move into the digital age, the assets that matter most are changing again. The people who
are earning the most income in today’s business landscape are the owners of digital assets –
intellectual property,brands,products, algorithms,websites,systems and software.
● A simple definition of a business asset is anything that is unique to your business and would
continue to add value even if any particular person left.
● Your job as an entrepreneur is to create assets first and then look for tools that can leverage them
Ch.3 Asset Creation
● Passive income stimulates the most primitive part of the brain.
○ The reptilian limbic system,the part of the brain that controls fear,fight and flight, is a sucker
for easy wins. It believes we live in a scarce 28 24 Assets world with drought around the
corner. This primitive part of our mind isn’t built for complex thinking; it can’t figure out that
spending 1,000 hours and £5,000 setting up an £87.60 per month surplus is hardly time
well spent.It just wants the emotional payoff of never having to worry about money
someday.
○ The worst thing is that when the limbic system is in control,the creative parts of the brain,
that do generate opportunities, can’t function.
● I don’t see examples of it working.
○ The assets you create will take you deeper into your industry, not remove you from it,so
you’d better make sure you are building assets in an industry you love.
Alchemy Or Administration
● Step 2: oversubscribed value
○ The UK Government has a test to see if you have developed something of value. It’s called
the ‘Value Added Tax Threshold’ which is currently set at £83,000 a year. Essentially,the
Government believes that if your business is earning under £83,000 (about £7,000 a month,
ballpark US$10,000) then you have yet to discover something of real value – you’re not
‘value adding’.They treat you the same as someone who’s working – you’re ‘self-employed’.
However, when you hit £83,000 in revenue, they think of you as a value adder and tax you
for it. This simple test is a useful gauge for discovering if you’re on to a winner.
● Step 3: gaining influence.
○ Influence allows you to reach more people, do business faster and charge a premium price
because you are known, liked and trusted in your industry.
○ To achieve influence, focus on developing and communicating unique insights, and master
the 5Ps of influence:
■ Pitching: the ability to powerfully describe what you do and why it’s valuable
■ Publishing: the ability to write and distribute materials about what you do and why
it’s valuable
■ Products: the ability to deliver value consistently in a scalable way
■ Profile: the ability to be known, liked and trusted in the eyes of your market
■ Partnerships: The ability to enrol other people and organisations to cooperate in the
implementation of your vision.
Revenue per person
● A pple earns US$2 million per person with 110,000+ employees. Google has 60,000+ people and
$67 billion in revenue, earning $1.2 million per person.Facebook earns US$1.4 million per person
with 10,000+ people. Microsoft comes in at $785k per person and has 100,000 people.
● Revenue per person (RPP) is a pretty simple number to calculate. It’s the total revenue or sales a
company makes divided by the fulltime people working there.
● RPP is a powerful indicator of success.If a business maintains a high RPP, it can scale-up and hire
great people quickly, grow without much debt or investment, innovate, take risks and acquire
competitors.If a business has low RPP it’s fighting a difficult battle. It can only afford to hire
low-skilled workers, can’t take chances
● RPP is the key to scale, profit, strength and agility. If you want performance,with few exceptions
you’ll need higher than average RPP.
● If technology wasn’t moving at warp speed, employee motivation or utilisation would probably be a
leading factor in creating higher than normal RPP. However, in a world where the sixth richest
person on earth started a company a decade ago in his dorm room, revenue per person has more
to do with technology, insights, intellectual property and media. The fact that your competitor
might be earning twice the RPP as you doesn’t mean they have doubly motivated people or they
put twice the pressure on their people to perform.Their people probably don’t work double-shifts or
have double the qualifications. It’s got more to do with the soft assets that their business has
developed. Their people have been given chainsaws and your people are still swinging axes.
Ch.4 Change Your Thinking
Profit And Loss Vs Balance Sheet Thinking
● B alance sheet thinking is about understanding the mix of assets and how they can be utilised.
Profit and loss businesses ignore the assets and simply look for ways to generate money selling
what they have – usually little more than time and expertise for a small business.
● If you want your business to grow, become profitable and be robust,shift your mindset from profit
and loss thinking to balance sheet thinking. Talk to your team about the assets of the business and
go on a mission to create or improve those assets.
● In this digital age, think about creating media, intellectual property, data and technology as primary
assets for your business. These things probably won’t go on the actual balance sheet, but they are
the assets that allow you to win.
● My business really took off when I shifted the majority of conversations from profit and loss to
balance sheet. I treated all problems as ‘asset deficiencies’ rather than leads,sales or costs issues.
If I wanted more sales,I assumed that I must be missing the right product, brand or channel, rather
than simply thinking about how I could talk to more people.
Desire vs design thinking
● D ream-boards, goal setting workshops, visualisation, pep-talks, speakers, gurus and inspirational
quotes seem to be the staple diet of the ambitious person. The underlying message is that humans
lack motivation to succeed, or at least need reminding what they are striving for. If these things are
valuable it’s because desire is a key ingredient in success and it must be enhanced and recreated
as often as possible.
● To a degree, desire is important. It’s an easy argument to make that you must know what you want
if you’re going to get it; it’s not terribly profound though. Far more valuable than desire is design.
We live in a world where successful outcomes are designed to occur far more than they are desired
into existence.
● A 200-tonne plane takes off in flight because it was designed to; the pilot doesn’t need a pep-talk
to get it airborne. A Porsche 911 accelerates swiftly to 100km/h because of the engineering; the
passenger seat isn’t put there for a guru to stir the driver up.A 100- storey building stays upright in
a storm because of its architecture and construction; it doesn’t require motivational quotes to
reinforce its structure.
● These amazing feats of human innovation had something to do with desire, but mostly it was the
design that got the job done.
● A business succeeds because it was designed to succeed. It is an ecosystem of assets that have
been developed and utilised efficiently – a blend of intellectual property, capital, equipment, staff,
leadership and innovation. Each component is thought through, improved, refined and enhanced.
Each little insight is processed and measured against a new level of output.
Part 2 – 24 Assets
Ch. 5 24 Assets Overview
● There’s no one thing that creates a valuable business. Value is created in the ecosystem of assets.
● If you asked a Formula 1 racing team whether the engine, tyres, body, fuel, sponsors or driver was
most important, they would probably say that you can’t win a race unless you have all of these
things.A successful Formula 1 team requires an ecosystem of assets, not just one strong
component.
● Your competition might be able to copy one or two elements of your business,but it’s really hard to
copy an entire ecosystem. Likewise, one or two elements might need to be rebuilt from time to
time,but it’s rare that the whole business fails as a result when there’s an ecosystem of assets
present.
● Broadly speaking, people want to buy companies that have a good mixture of assets in seven
categories:
○ Intellectual property. The business lays claim to, or is known for, valuable ideas, methods or
defensible intellectual property rights.
○ Brand assets. The business is known, liked and trusted by a loyal group of fans who are
unlikely to switch to a new brand.
○ Market assets. The business can sell products, disseminate ideas or be present to a large
group of potential buyers faster and more cheaply than others in the same market.
○ Product assets. The business has created unique products and services that are either
difficult to replicate or difficult to compete with.
○ Systems assets. The business has a set of systems and processes that allow it to run more
efficiently than its rivals while still delivering the same or better quality.
○ Culture assets. The business is able to attract, retain, develop and manage good people at
a lower cost than its competitors. Funding assets. The business is able to raise capital or
borrow money on better terms than its competitors.
● There are 24 assets in total spread across the seven categories. In each category, there are three
or four key assets you can focus on that will allow your business to stand out.
● As I outline each of the 24 assets, you will need to consider three things.
● Asset quality. What quality of assets do you currently have in each category? A high quality asset is
remarkable – it adds value and it Chapter 5 – 24 Assets Overview 57 is easy to scale.
● Assets add value if they pass the ‘90-day yachting test’. If you went to sea for 90 days and had
very little phone or email access, such an asset would not fall apart. Instead it would keep making
the business function.
● An asset is scalable if it can move freely across distance.
● A specific person (including you) cannot be an asset, but their image,their videos,their audio
recordings and their written content can be. Something isn’t an asset if it’s described purely as a
vibe or instinctive way of doing things. It can be an asset if there are handbooks, posters,
guidelines, images, videos, audio files and the like documented and easy to find.
Ch.6 Intellectual Property Assets
Being seen as different and special follows assets.
● You’re already standing on mountains of value when it comes to intellectual property. You have a
unique perspective, interesting stories and powerful insights that could be transformed into assets
in three ways – content, methodologies and registered IP
Asset 1: Content
● C ontent is King in today’s digital world – text, images and multimedia.The content you create
differentiates you and allows people to get to know your business.
● Content clarifies your thinking
● Content is scalable.
● Content is cheap to produce.
● For many reasons, content is a business generation tool.Research from Google (see the report
called ‘Zero Moments of Truth’) shows that people who have access to content are more likely to
buy from businesses or individuals that produce it.
● when you have a client who absolutely loves what you do,the easiest and most wide reaching way
for them to recommend your business is to refer to your content.
● You can encourage your team and even your customers to create content for your business.
● C ontent can be repurposed easily as your business evolves.Your blogs can be chunked up into a
book or audio recording. A video can be transcribed into a white paper, infographic or a slide
presentation. It can then be used in a myriad of ways – from marketing campaigns to employee
handbooks,the content finds its way across the whole business.
● Finally, it creates an archive of your work. When you publish your content, it’s date-stamped and
can be referenced at a later time to show the evolution of your thinking on a topic. Many of the
world’s most admired businesses evolved out of articles, blogs,white papers or media created by
the founder. Twitter started out as a series of blogs that connected its founders around common
ideas. Bitcoin began as a white paper on digital currency. What is now Tesla Motors evolved from a
masterplan blog written by Elon Musk.
Asset 2: Methodology
● A methodology is a specific way of getting to an outcome. In a business context, a powerful
methodology is also a compelling reason for people to engage with you. As you create content,
your methodologies will emerge.
● When you are close to an industry, you often take for granted how much you know. Many of the
complex tasks you undertake can easily be labelled intuitive. Dig a little deeper and you might
discover you can create methodologies that scale.
Asset 3: Registered Intellectual Property (Ip)
● T his could include the basics of registering your business name as a trademark with a government
body. It could also include the registration of URLs and social media profiles your business uses on
all the major platforms.
● A business like Nike owns all sorts of IP such as its name, its logo, the words ‘Just Do It’ and the
patented technology inside some of its products. It also owns nike.com, justdoit.com,
airjordan.com and the URLs for social media like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat,
Pinterest and LinkedIn.
Rapid Action Steps
P
● roduce a professional report that showcases your ideas, stories, diagrams and methods.
● Register all your social media profiles even if you don’t intend on using them yet.
Ch. 7 Brand Assets
Being known, liked and trusted follows assets.
● The brand that is most known in a category can charge four to five times more for its product
compared to an equally reliable generic version of the same product. Brand helps you to add value
because consumers look for the cues that you are known, liked and trusted, and they are happy to
pay for that additional reliability. It creates scale because you can show up all over the world as
looking ready for business if you’ve put thought into your brand.
● To build brand assets, focus on three key areas: the philosophy, the identity and the ambassadors
of the brand.
Asset 4: The Philosophy
● A great example is the enduring Lego brand,which has a mission to “inspire and develop the
builders of tomorrow”. The values include imagination, creativity, fun, learning, caring and quality.
This philosophy has driven decisions like creating computer driven Lego robots that require
children to learn how to code in order to make the robot move. The philosophy also lead to major
script changes in the Lego movie to emphasise the joy of building and the pride of creativity.
● For your philosophy to be an asset it must be highly distinctive and clearly documented. It must be
distinctive in the sense that if I spoke about your philosophy without mentioning your brand name,
people would quickly realise I was talking about you.
● Your brand needs to have documented values and a clear vision that’s easy to find. Display your
philosophy on your website, your office walls, your packaging, within your employee handbooks
and all over your social media. It should be easy for your customers to identify what you stand for
and what you stand against.
Asset 5: Identity
● C
onsistent beats clever when it comes to a brand. Of course a brand should be intelligent and
leverage the vision and values that you’ve chosen, but if you have to choose between consistent
and recognisable versus clever and subtle, I’d go for the former. In a complex world,simple
colours,words and fonts used over and over again are reassuring to your customers.
Asset 6: Ambassadors
Ch.8 Market Assets
Having a strong foothold in your marketplace follows assets.
● There’s only one problem – there’s no such thing as a market.
● A market is an abstract concept that people selling something like to imagine.
● As buyers,we do not think of ourselves as being part of a market. We are individuals with personal
needs, wants and criteria for buying something. We don’t care how many other people are looking
to buy something similar or how much the aggregate spend of all buyers will amount to in the year.
All we care about is buying from someone we know, like and trust who can adequately care for our
personal desires.
● Therefore, the businesses that end up successfully ‘owning their market’ are not the ones that
imagine the large, nebulous mass of people out there looking to buy something, but those that
recognise the nuances and details that matter to each individual. Businesses that treat customers
like unique people and create something that perfectly matches their needs are the ones that win
the right to do business with them. To achieve this at scale, you need to position your business
correctly in the eyes of your customers, have convenient ways of reaching people, and data that
allows you to cater to people as individuals.
● Your most valuable market assets are positioning, channels and data.
Asset 7: Positioning
● A ny effort to influence consumer perception or awareness of your brand or product relative to
competing brands or products is referred to as positioning.Your objective is to occupy a clear,
unique and advantageous position in the mind of your potential buyers.
● Your position in the market normally revolves around key questions people ask before they make a
purchase:
○ Who is the best quality (normally implying either durability or cutting edge features,
depending on industry)?
○ Who is the most affordable (cheap or available on finance terms)?
○ Who is the most convenient (either close in proximity or delivered rapidly to where you are)?
○ Who is the most trusted or reliable (usually a long-standing brand with a track record of
positive reviews)?
○ Who is the most delightful (often associated with personalities or superior customer
service)?
● These aren’t the only ways to position your business, but these classics are the most fiercely
contested in every marketplace. Each year, companies fight to demonstrate that they occupy one
of these top spots in their industry
● An advanced strategy is to position a brand alongside a feeling.
● There are four main ways to position yourself and generate an asset:
○ Awards. An award is a powerful asset because every sales person can use it in their
conversations for years to come, and marketing campaigns can reference you as an ‘award
winning company’.It can even add value to your business if you win highly-prized awards.
○ Accreditations. Externally recognised accreditations such as ISO, CPD and Investors in
People are indicators of quality or reliability.
○ Associations. An association can take many forms,from being listed as a preferred supplier
to being a member of an industry group or closely aligned to a bigger brand.
○ Acknowledgement. When a recognised authority in an industry acknowledges a business
publicly, it is a powerful asset.
Asset 8: Channels
● A channel to market, also known as a distribution channel, is the way products, services or
communications get to your customers.
● There are two types of channels:
○ Owned channels.
■ These are channels that you develop yourself and include all the ways you can reach
your customers or sell something directly.You own your YouTube channel,Twitter
account, email list, blog, podcast channel, events or retail stores.
■ Owned channels take a while to develop from scratch, but once you have done this,
you can choose how you will use them and they can earn revenue in their own right.
○ Earned channels.
■ These are channels that others have developed and you can utilise if you prove
yourself to be worthy
■ you will often be asked to give an interview on other people’s YouTube shows or
speak at events that put you in front of hundreds of perfect clients
Asset 9: Data
● B ritish Airways flies over 40 million passengers a year, so how on earth did they manage to pull off
this remarkable act of customisation and anticipation? It turns out they have an internal program
called ‘Know Me’ which is a big data project designed to highlight the wants and needs of frequent
fliers. The more you travel with British Airways, the more they can predict ways to surprise and
delight you. The more they surprise and delight customers, the more those customers keep coming
back and tell their friends to do the same.
● Data isn’t some boring, geeky set of dehumanising numbers; data is the key to creating a highly
personal and touching experience.
● Often people are quite shocked when we rapidly predict and address problems that have existed
for years in their business. We can only achieve this because of the data we’ve collected; any
business that doesn’t have this data asset lacks insight into their clients and prospects.
Rapid Action Steps
G
● et featured through other people’s channels such as podcasts, YouTube or blogs.
● Win an award that indicates you are either the better,faster, 88 24 Assets cheaper or the most
loved in your industry niche.
● Choose your top 50 clients and start a data-gathering exercise on them, using their social media
profiles to learn as much as you possibly can about them – where they live, what they love, how
they feel on key issues, what frustrates them, who they follow, etc.
● Gather data that shows the impact of your business – what measurable positive impact do you
have on your clients? What quantifiable negative impacts would happen if your business
disappeared?
● Ask your prospects for at least 10 more points of information about them so you can better meet
their needs.
Ch.9 Product Assets
Delivering consistent value to clients follows assets.
● Another way of looking at a product is to see it as a replaceable and consistent way of achieving a
desired outcome that your customer wants.It could be delivered the same way in any number of
cities across the world at a comparable price point.
● I have several rules for creating a product:
○ Products have a name: The Air Jordan, the iPad-a product really becomes a product when
it has a distinctive name that sums up all its various elements.
○ Products are distinctive and can be reproduced.
○ Products have collateral. When you take all the elements that make up a product, both
intangible and tangible, and sum them up in a brochure or a webpage, you have a unifying
document that defines that product
■ It can turn mountains of complexity into something that is simple and desirable for
the customer
■ As a rule, anything that sells for over £1,000 should have a physical brochure and a
webpage that explains its value. Anything that is under £1000, needs a website
landing page at the very least.
■ Using these guidelines, you can build services like products. When a service has a
name, distinctive elements, a standardised method of delivery and a brochure that
escribes it all in an elegant and desirable way, it starts to appear like a product,
d
and scale like one too.
The product ecosystem. Having one product is not enough to make a successful business.
○
After working with thousands of businesses, I’ve learned that a single product rarely makes
money. Product ecosystems make money.
■ Most small businesses make the mistake of having one core product. Often, it’s their
most expensive product, and it’s the only Chapter 9 – Product Assets 93 one they’re
offering to customers. Accountants sell accounting; lawyers sell legal services;
plumbers sell plumbing.
■ But this isn’t how great businesses operate. Great businesses have a product
ecosystem with four types of product, including a range of free, low-cost and core
products that all serve a unique purpose.
Asset 10: Gifts
● G ifts are exactly that: a product given totally freely with no strings attached, primarily to capture
attention.They are scalable,shareable and affordable for your business to give without too much
thought.
● Gifts need to be insightful, educational or entertaining, highlighting the problems your business can
solve, illuminating your points of value and building an emotional connection.
Asset 11: Product-For-Prospects (P4p)
● O nce you’ve captured a prospect’s attention with a gift, a product for-prospects will usually be the
first purchase a customer makes. Products-for-prospects build trust, offer quick wins for a fair
exchange, typically requiring a small commitment of time, money or data from your prospect.In
return, you offer them a valuable first step with your company.
● Often a product-for-prospects helps to diagnose a problem that your company can solve or narrow
down the decision-making process.A consultant might offer a diagnostic tool or an initial two hour
workshop that hones in on the problems and possible solutions for their client as a
product-for-prospects.
Asset 12: Core Product
● T he core product of a business is its main source of revenue – the product the business is typically
known for.
● The core product focuses on delivering remarkable value to a client and is centred on solving a
problem or satisfying a want fully. Gifts and products-for-prospects tend to offer education or
entertainment to whet the appetite, whereas the core product resolves the problem or satisfies the
want.
Asset 13: Products For Clients (P4c)
● P roducts-for-clients are product extensions,taking customers even further on their journey. A
product-for-clients delivers a solution that addresses the customer’s ongoing wants, needs and
desires. It is usually a recurring revenue product that provides value over time.
● The ecosystem
○ A financial analyst might question the logic of Dent Global giving away £50k worth of
books.In isolation,this would seem like a waste; in the context of our product ecosystem,
this is one of the most profitable activities we do each year.
○ I often see businesses that do not become profitable until they have products in all four
categories. Only when it has a product that gains attention, a product that builds trust, a
product that creates revenue and a product that is highly profitable will the whole business
work.
○ Keep this in mind when developing your business – products and services don’t make
money; product and service ecosystems make money.Your business will become highly
profitable when you have a strong offering in each of the four categories.
Rapid Action Steps
C
● reate a brochure for your core product or service that fully explains its features and benefits.
● Add an additional element to your product package that comes from another supplier, e.g.
consulting can include an online learning component that is already produced by another provider.
A Word From An Expert
● P
eople don’t want your time and they don’t want your expertise, they want a problem solved, they
want a result and they want it better, cheaper, faster and with more emotional benefits. They want it
done reliably, consistently and with very little effort on their part. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking
it’s about you – your product is about the person buying and how they feel. When you really
connect with what your customers want – let me say that again, want – you’ll be able to create
products that have true value for them. People remember how they were treated in the restaurant
long after they have forgotten what they ate or how much it cost.’ -Nic Rixon
Ch.10 Systems Assets
Predictability follows assets.
● With systems assets, your business becomes simple, repeatable and predictable to run. Great
businesses do not inflict problems and decisions on to their teams unnecessarily. If there’s already
a way of getting a result, repeat that way over and over again.
● There are three areas to focus your attention on in systems:
Asset 14: Marketing And Sales Systems
● T o drive leads,sales and referrals to your business at scale, you need strong systems. Firstly, you
need a system that puts your message in front of the right people. This could be based around
targeted Facebook ads, SEO optimised content, Google retargeted ads or any number of great
tools that provide targeting.Your system could be based on affiliate systems or tested email
marketing campaigns.
● The system isn’t only about generating interest; you need to carry it all the way through to a sale.
When prospective clients show interest, your system typically needs to allocate the lead to a sales
person whom it arms with as much information as possible for them to have a sensible
conversation with the lead.Involve the use of scripts and other sales aides in your system to make
your sales people more effective.
Asset 15: Management And Administration Systems
● A key asset is a dashboard that allows the team to see how the business is performing. Carefully
select some of the metrics that drive performance and make sure they show up prominently on
your dashboard.
● Services like Xero,Receipt Bank,Lawbite,Slack,Trello,Evernote, Dropbox, Zoom, GoTo Webinar,
Office360, Google Docs,MailChimp, Skype, Docusign, Scannable and many others can be
considered must-haves for your business.
Asset 16: Operations Systems
● T he absolute key to being successful long-term in business is to deliver remarkable value and
surprise and delight your customers beyond their expectations. If you get this right, your customers
become your marketing department and it’s hard to keep up with the demand that is generated
from their positive comments.
● Look for the systems that would make it predictable that your customers felt loved and appreciated
by your brand
● At Dent we support our clients with a learning management system full of videos, checklists,
activities and other resources.This system underpins and supports us in delivering value to
clients.We don’t expect this system to be the complete solution to every problem our clients may
face, but we know it helps a lot.
● In the same way as your company puts effort into on-boarding and managing staff, you can create
on-boarding documents for your suppliers that explain how important they are and how best they
can add value. It doesn’t end there: you can also recognise their efforts with awards, thank you
cards or referrals – all of this can be part organised into systems and documents.
Rapid Action Steps
● S et up a highly targeted Facebook ad that you can let run for 12 weeks at a time to produce quality
leads consistently at an acceptable price.
● Generate an automatic monthly report that lets your team know how it performed for the month.
● Systemise an email sequence that every new client gets to make them feel really happy to be doing
business with you.
A Word From An Expert
● S
ystems aren’t there to replace people, they are there to make life easier – your team’s, your
customers’, yours. With the right systems in place your team can perform to their absolute best,
and take ownership for what they do every day.-Marianne Page
Ch.11 Culture Assets
High performing teams follow assets.
● The true test of culture is your ability to attract, develop and retain highly skilled employees without
paying above the odds for them.
● You need the basics like job descriptions, accountability charts and workplace contracts alongside
investment into advanced assets such as videos that explain the vision and values, on-boarding
programmes, performance reviews and bonus structures.
● The ultimate success is to create assets that attract, retain, develop and manage people who are
better than the founder – the ability to hire ‘overlings’ rather than underlings in every role. Only
great assets will allow that to happen.
● Key culture assets are:
○ Documented role descriptions • Accountability/organisation chart • On-boarding process •
Team handbook • Training videos • Structured performance reviews • Ongoing training and
development programmes • Remuneration and rewards structure • Disciplinary and
complaints policy • Flexibility policy • Communications tools, maxims and decision making
guides • Key performance indicators
● There are essentially four types of people you’ll need to attract on to your team:
Asset 17: Key People Of Influence
● K ey People of Influence are the leaders,figureheads and rainmakers who can do deals, open
partnerships, lead teams, liaise with media, inspire, innovate and represent the brand.They will
solve problems, attract A-players and grow the business faster than the founder could.
● The assets that attract Key People of Influence are often the assets that exist within the business –
a world-class product, exceptional intellectual property,strong systems, ample funding or a
powerful position in the market. Additionally, they look for a culture that will help them to attract
other A-players.
● One asset I recommend is to write and publish a book.This is a powerful asset for attracting clients,
but even more powerful at attracting great people on to your team.
Asset 18: Sales And Marketing
D
● ynamic sales and marketing people are sought after in most companies.
● In the marketing role, there tend to be two types of people.The first is highly creative and loves the
words and imagery that get people to engage.The second type is someone who has a deep love of
data, measurement, testing and statistics.The ultimate aim is to combine the two types. They’ll
then place stunning ads, measure results and improve rapidly
● When it comes to sales people, they normally fit into the camp of being either a ‘hunter’ or a
‘farmer’. Hunters go aggressively after new business. They are charming, warm and exuberant and
aren’t afraid to ask tough questions, get playful and close a sale on the spot. Farmers are nurturers
who take longer to foster relationships and attend to people’s needs. They are diligent,
etail-oriented and methodical in their approach. Farmers are much more likely to perform well in
d
roles that require a long-term relationship to develop over many years. Hunters are much more
likely to come back to the office with a big initial order from a new client, but they aren’t as good at
following up every month to build the relationship.
Asset 19: Management And Administration
● A great manager translates the vision of the leader into small, actionable steps, delegates
responsibilities, measures performance, generates reports and ensures the smooth internal
operations of the business.
● Treat your administration team as the enablers of high performance who ensure that resources are
allocated optimally. It’s important that your culture assets acknowledge the role they play and
showcase examples of high performance in that role.
● Capturing case studies is a powerful approach for creating culture assets. When someone does
something that really benefits the organisation and is aligned to its values and the vision, make it a
priority to record a video interview about that achievement. This could be as simple as using a
phone and shooting an interview to share with the team (and new team members who join).
Asset 20: Technicians
● P eople might discover your company through sales and marketing, but they will stay with you
because of the technical capability you demonstrate.
● Your technicians need assets that develop and maximise their skills.They need world-class
tools,the ability to focus on important tasks without disruption, training and time to think or
recharge. Technical people thrive in environments where they learn and grow with other skilled
technicians.
Rapid Action Steps
● H ave a weekly meeting that everyone feels adds massive value. Each person can cover what they
are working on, what they’re struggling with and how they’re measuring success for the week
ahead.
● Write a description for the key roles in your company that clearly sets out what success looks like.
Ch.12 Funding Assets
Asset 21: Business Plan
● Y our Business Plan clearly defines where the business is heading, the challenges it will face,the
risks it will reduce,the opportunities it will develop and the returns you expect.
● If an investor likes the look of the Business Plan, they will need to know the terms of the
investment. They’ll want to see how much you’re raising, what percentage that will get them, how
the funds will be used and when they’ll get their money back with a return. This is documented in
an Investor Memorandum.
● Additionally, an investor will want to see the Shareholders’/Lenders’ Agreement so they know what
to expect legally while they are an investor. The other document that is important to investors is the
apitalisation Table (or Cap Table for short) which shows the existing shareholders of the company
C
and the number of shares they hold.
Asset 22: Valuation
Asset 23: Structure
● Investors want three things from a structure – control over their investment, reduced risk to their
investment and easy liquidity to unlock their returns.A good structure in a familiar jurisdiction with
appropriate safeguards is appealing and will give more funding options
● The second consideration is the jurisdiction of the company.Even within the USA, each State has
its own regulations and tax laws for companies.
● Investors and lenders normally like to deal in major economies like the
USA,UK,EU,Australia,Canada or Singapore.Normally,investors and lenders prefer to deal in the
jurisdiction that they themselves are based in or know
● The structure of the business can also include the way the business is controlled. Facebook is
structured so that it’s founder Mark Zuckerberg is ultimately in control even after his percentage
ownership is diluted by investors.If you invest into Facebook shares, you have to agree to this
structure that reduces your power.
● Smaller companies use shareholder agreements to formalise issues of control over information
rights, appointing directors, the ability to block a sale and other structural issues.
Asset 24: Risk Mitigation
Part 3 Asset Creation
Ch.13 What Are Your Core Assets?
● If you ask your customers, ‘What matters most when you work with us?’ or ‘What are the things
that drew you to working with us?’the answers will reveal your core assets.
● The 24 Assets system can’t save your business if you don’t have strong core assets. It might look
good, but it is going nowhere without you putting extra effort into the core assets.
● Identify what matters most to your market and then become your own harshest critic, digging for
flaws in your core assets and resolving them.
Ch.16 Environment Dictates Performance
● W
hen you know what you want, find an environment where it would be normal to achieve it. I
became highly attuned to this concept and looked for the ingredients that would make up a high
performance environment. It turned out that environment has less to do with the physical space
and more to do with four other factors.
○ ACCESS TO CURRENT BEST PRACTICES
○ A PEER GROUP TO NORMALISE HIGH STANDARDS
○ EXTERNAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONSEQUENCES
■ For those of you who aren’t dealing with a threat, put in place external accountability
systems. To be clear, pay someone, join a group or set up an ugly consequence for
not acting. The accountability needs to be daily or at least weekly, because humans
are hardwired to wait until the last minute.If you have a quarterly deadline, you’ll
probably begin to act less than a month from it.
○ ACCESS TO RESOURCES
