1. Business Machine: The Business

What is a business? It is a machine.

Or, well, it should be

Most people think of businesses as people doing stuff to make money. In some way, you use your expertise to deliver a valuable result to a customer. That is wrong.

MSP owners, in particular, build their business around their expertise: they are good technically, so they launch out to deliver technical support.

But this is wrong.

Your MSP should be a machine; a business machine delivers a repeatable solution to a defined customer type. The solution may have nothing to do with your technical expertise.

Where MSPs struggle is: I have the expertise, I will sell that expertise, and turn my delivery of that expertise into a business.

But the entrepreneurial, build a business machine process goes something like this: Oh, there is a gap in the market, and that person (those people) is (are) not getting the solution they need; I will put together a solution and deliver it to them repeatedly.

Is Elon Musk a master tunnel borer, electric car maker, rocket designer, and payment processor? I doubt it. His talent is in identifying a need and creating a business around it.

Your expertise will help you identify the gaps in the market. If you work in IT support and are good at IT support, you will probably be able to identify gaps in the IT support market that a business can fill.

But the building of the business doesn’t depend on your knowledge of IT support. You must build a machine that delivers a result and solves a problem, independent of your involvement. You can inform, guide, support, and even work in the machine, but you must build a machine to have a successful business.

The elements of an MSP business machine

A whole machine breaks down into parts or elements. It is as true for your business machine as it is for the one you drive to work. The Business machine has 7 essential elements: The business (defined), Processes, the Factory, You, People, Metrics and Money, and invention.

An entrepreneur builds each part of the business to solve someone else’s problem. The sections below give you an overview of the machine, but this scratches the surface. At SGM, we are documenting each element of the machine and create detailed guides to help you build it.

The idea sounds simple, but so far, we have broken the elements into 73 core sub-elements this is the formula for building a business rather than a job.

This program will guide you through putting each of these elements in place – structuring your business so that you can grow it, manage it, and reap the rewards it provides.

This is not a quick process, but it is the process. This is what you must do to create a business that powers an extraordinary life. And, while it may take a while to get to the end of this particular journey, even the first few steps will deliver powerful results.

So, enough of the intro, let’s get to the machine.