Are you sitting in your business right now wondering how to build a successful team around you so that you can leverage your time and start building semi passive income streams in your business?
For me, this is all about creating a wealth blueprint. Not a cookie cutter approach, but something that is based on what is right for you, based on your superpowers and people that you’re looking to work with to help you grow your business.
Coming into year four of our business, we now have 13 different semi passive income streams in our business. We wouldn’t have been able to do that if it was just me in the business. This is about growing your business, growing your team, growing your tribe, but working alongside people that can support you and leverage the skills that perhaps you’re not so good at.
So today I’m talking to Osmaan Sharif who is a performance and mindset coach for ex-corporate professionals. His superpower is helping business owners to understand their flow, understand their wealth blueprint in order to be financially successful.
So a massive warm welcome to you today, Osmaan. Thanks so much for joining us today. How are you?
I’m very well, thank you for having me. I can talk and talk and talk all about wealth dynamics and superpowers so I’m looking forward to sharing it with you even more and your community.
Awesome, thank you so much. So we’re going to get into three main areas today in terms of understanding what is your wealth blueprint.
We’re going to talk about: What is your super power in your business? This is a really interesting subject because when you’re running a business you have to be the Chief Everything Officer. You have to do everything in your business. That is the case when you’re initially building your business but then it’s really important to think about leveraging and outsourcing in your business. And that’s certainly the stage we’re getting to now with The Money Panel. We’re starting to really outsource and leverage quite a lot of the things that normally I would have done myself.
We are also looking at the power of mindset. When you are clear on your superpower, how do you then decide what your strategies are based on those superpowers?
Before we get into that Osmaan, can you just give people a little bit of an understanding as to your background, because you are now a performance and mindset coach working with ex-corporate professionals like myself. So tell us a little bit about your work.
Yeah, absolutely. For the last 13 years, I have been my own boss and have been growing Rapid Transformation. I came from the corporate world. I was an HR manager for Marks and Spencer’s, and I worked in different roles in head office within Lloyds bank in London.
I love the corporate world, I’ll be honest. I thought that was it because that’s what I believed a successful career would be. And as fortune had it, I actually was able to go on a training course paid for by the bank. It was an NLP course and I’ve always been interested in people. That’s why I thought being a HR manager would be the ideal role. I fell in love with the NLP toolkit because for the first time I found coaching tools that could create rapid transformations. So I then made the decision to do this more than my actual job. I was coaching my team and any time I could in the corporate world, I was just doing NLP coaching and conversations. Then I made that bold decision to go out there and train other people in NLP, do more coaching.
As I say, that was over 13 years ago and lots of things that happened or that time. At the cornerstone of what I do, I work mainly now with ex-corporate professionals and I help them to get out there way when it comes to growing their business.
And it was funny what you said there, because typically for those that have had a successful career, we’re very used to large or traditional roles, having different people to do different things. So you have HR and IT and finance departments, but when you become your own boss all that infrastructure is taken away and then we can end up having to do everything. That’s where I see people getting in their way because they’re doing things that are not the right things for them. It’s not in flow and that’s where they can end up becoming the bottleneck. I coach clients one-to-one, I do 90 day mastermind groups and I just absolutely love helping people to get out of their way.
Is there a mindset shift between being an employee versus being self employed?
Definitely. So many people, even when they are their own boss, they’re still operating with what I call the employee mindset. A lot of times, they can still be waiting for permission i.e. what should I do? They can, sometimes look for that from other people. Sometimes it’s coaches, sometimes that’s books or their peers. But actually when it comes down to really growing your business, it’s about taking on that responsibility and also being empowered to make the decisions. That could be both wonderful but quite terrifying because is that case of going, what is my strategy and what am I doing and what’s the direction that I’m taking the business, when things don’t go to plan how do I keep myself motivated to dust myself off and get back up.
There’s definitely a shift. I’ve seen people that have even been in business for a number of years, but they’re still operating from an employee mindset. You can really start to see that in terms of the way that they talk, their results and their actions as well.
That’s a really interesting discussion. I do want to just talk about it very briefly because certainly from my experience, from a financial perspective, there’s definitely a mindset shift between an employee and self employed.
For me, that starts with the fact that when you’re self employed, you are responsible for generating your income. Whereas when you’re employed, your pay just goes into your account every single month, you don’t even have to really ask for it. You don’t have to think about it, it’s there. And even if you’re off sick, for example, generally speaking, statutory sick pay is normally still going to be in your account.
I definitely find that a lot of entrepreneurs skip that process of understanding how to create strong financial foundations when they’re setting up their business to replace sick pay benefits, to think about, well, if I can’t pay myself this month, for whatever reason, what do I need to have secured in those basic foundations to make sure that I still get paid.
There’s quite a big mindset shift between going from being employed, I think to self employed, like you say, acting then as the CEO of your business.
If you don’t know what your superpowers are in business, what impact can that have on growing your business?
I like to keep things simple, right? Let me briefly give you an overview of whenever I’m working with clients, I have what I call the rapid transformation formula. That’s about what’s your design and that’s so much more than just goal setting. Goals are important, but you want to understand, are you actually creating the right business for you? Does it fit with your talents? Does it fit with what I call your entrepreneurial superpower, but also does it fit with your values in terms of what motivates you and what inspires you?
So many people get in their own way because they don’t even know really clearly what their design is, or they’re trying to grow a business but the design just isn’t right for them and their blueprint. That’s only one part because then you can have the best goals and the best division but if your mindset’s not supporting you, it’s kind of like taking one step forward, a couple of steps back and it’s just not fun.
But even if you’ve got the best mindset and you’ll know this: there’s many people, I’m sure you’ve come across – you have conversations with them and they’re so excited, they’re so motivated, but they’re still going round in circles. That’s because they’re not necessarily following the right strategies that work best for them. So whenever I work with anybody, I’m looking to see where they are currently stuck. Sometimes it’s the design, sometimes it’s mindset, sometimes it’s the strategies. And often it’s a combination of those, but the reason why I say that is because right at the core of that, if you know what your super power is, that then allows you to then say “How is that feeding into my design? How is that fitting into my mindset to recognise I can actually do things my way?”
And that also then feeds into your strategies in terms of what am I going to say yes to, but what am I going to say no too, as well? So whenever I work with anybody, the first thing that they do is the wealth dynamics profile test, because that helps me to help them to get out of their way.
In essence, there’s eight different types of business owners. There’s eight different blueprints. But the way that you follow your blueprint is what would get you to experience flow. Things happen magically when you’re in flow. If you are trying to follow somebody else’s blueprint, even though it works for them, most likely it will not work for you. And then what ends up happening is you then start to go, I’m not good enough. Why is it not happening? You can then cycle into negative mindsets and limiting beliefs. But ultimately it’s just because you’re probably playing the wrong game or not necessarily the best strategies for you.
I was having a conversation with a one-to-one client this morning about what does being in flow mean? How do we keep the flow of money coming in and out? When I work with a one-to-one client, we use an assessment, a bit like the wealth talents dynamics, but it’s specifically around money.
When you can do some deep dive work into your self limiting beliefs around money and then factor in, okay: so what are the challenges specific to you around that? Because if you’re a planner, for example, then the likelihood is you’re not going to struggle strategically with mapping out mind maps and processes and workflows, but you may find it difficult to get creative. I think that’s really important.
The comparisonitis thing is massive. Again, those self limiting beliefs can come up where we can just get in our own way. And we don’t feel confident to take that next step because we’re just too busy comparing our lives to everybody else.
I love the fact that you go right back to what is the design of the business? What do we need to help you to focus on around your superpowers?
You mention that there’s eight profiles. What are they?
High level, there’s eight different types of entrepreneurs. You’ve got creators, stars, supporters, deal-makers, traders, accumulators, lords, and mechanics.
I honestly think every single business owner needs to know this, because then it allows you to be able to go, what’s the best blueprint for me. I’ll give you some practical examples. I’m a trader profile, which basically means that I’m very, very grounded. I don’t get bored easily, so I could do the same things over and over again. So when I left the corporate world, I left because I wanted to be an NLP trainer. I wanted to deliver practitioner courses and master practitioner courses. I did that for the first six years or so, really happily. And I would have other business colleagues that say are you not bored? You do the same course over and over again. I’ve delivered over 60-70 NLP courses.
For someone that’s a creator profile that would typically drive them mad because you’d start thinking how do I get even more advanced or how do I break it and make it different every single time. But what I love is the structure still there, but people are different every single time. So every course was completely different. And I’ll tell you this because, in the first few years I then had people well-intentioned saying to me, stop doing that.
Then I started to do one to one coaching and I love working with small groups and really getting stuck in with people one-to-one or in groups, but I had people saying, you should forget one to one, just do everything group wise, do online courses and stuff. They do have a place. I do understand how it fits and have a place in my portfolio. But if I was to do that, that would completely get me out of flow. It will ruin the magic of why I love what I do in business.
If I was to say to someone that’s a star profile that gets their best energy when they’re in front of people, they love variety, all you could do is one to one coaching, they’d be like, get me out of here. I’ve only talked about three of those profiles so far, but when you understand what’s your super power then allows you to make really sensible decisions in terms of how I structure my business, my products, my offerings, so that it does play to your strengths and what you actually enjoy and what gets you in more flow as well.
That makes so much sense to me. I have just launched a training programme and I’m already going into the next cohort thinking, how can I improve this? I really resonate with that.
For me, that’s about making things better and looking for constant improvements and getting feedback from people that are going through the training. If someone suddenly said to me do one thing in your business for the next two years, that would drive me nuts. So it’d be like, what am I going to do with the rest of this creativity that I have?
I can imagine lots of people reading thinking how do I know whether to just create one thing? Helen Pritchard who we interviewed on the podcast a few months ago, she’s very passionate about create that one good thing and get really good at that.
How do you know whether you should be creating one thing or multiple things for your business?
This is where it goes back to your design of what you want to make happen. If you’re really clear in terms of what that goal might be, a financial goal, a lifestyle goal, it can combine a number of different things.
I typically work with people that are very the opposite profile from me. I work with a lot of creators and stars and supporters because I’m the ying to their yang. I don’t want to stifle someone that’s a creator because they’ll have lots of creative ideas, but what can end up happening is they’re trying to do a lot of different things. They plant lots of seeds, but then because they get bored quite quickly and they go on to the next thing, they actually forget to nurture some of those seeds that they’ve planted. Those things could have been really successful for them if they just focused on them or nurtured them and taken care of them. They never get that real traction around it.
So when I’m working with creator profile type of business owners, particularly, I’m going to be honest with them. I know every time that we speak you’ll come to me and you’ll say, I’ve had an idea. I won’t be saying to you, no, don’t do that idea, but it’s really reminding ourselves, what are we trying to make happen? I work with a lot of 90 day goal setting models because that then allows us to keep really focused on what we’re trying to make happen, but still allows us to kind of evolve every 90 days.
So for creators, it stops us from being completely distracted. For your training course for example, how do we take that creative energy that you’ve got and how do we then channel that into maybe the content that you’re creating for that or your marketing. So still taking the off without completely dismantling your whole business.
That really resonates with me. I just think, I’ll just create more content into the training programme or, maybe I’ll use that creativity to create a new membership site, for example.
We’re just making those constant improvements, but it does also go back to your whole concept around designing the life that you want. I always suggest that people reflect on what they’ve built so far in their business and assess actually does that work? Is that something we need to get rid of in the business? Is it maybe a service that you just don’t really enjoy?
You referred to this earlier Osmaan, when you said what to say yes to and what to say no to. Which of those profiles are more likely to have strong boundaries around what they say yes to what they say no to in terms of their time and their business?
That’s a really good question. Every profile can do it in different ways. The profiles that we’ve not really talked a lot about, accumulators and lords and mechanics, the tend to love more systems and processes around it. So what I tend to find with those type of entrepreneurs, they need to have some boundaries in place, first of all, or a framework, otherwise they can feel a bit out of control or they’re not really getting traction. But once you set something up well with them, it just works really well.
So boundaries can be really useful for them. Profiles like supporters, which is the opposite profile from a lord profile, they are all of it people. And that’s where sometimes they can get a little bit too caught up in the people pleasing or trying to be there for everybody. That’s where I find that they can sometimes put everybody else in front of them, their customers or clients, their family, friends and then they go, oh, why is my business not growing? Because you don’t have some of that discipline in the business.
So it’s not a hard and fast rule around it, but it definitely allows you to recognise what would be best for me and my business. And what are some things just to watch out for as well.
What other self limiting beliefs come up around the super power profiles?
A lot of it is that you can only be successful if you’re a different profile. Let me give you an example. In the world that we are in, there’s obviously people that are very visible and those are very visible tend to be creators or stars and maybe supporters. Supporters tend to have big communities so they are often known.
Profiles that are the opposite like traders or mechanics, or accumulators, sometimes you think you really need to be very extroverted and that’s the way to have a business, but actually a lot of times what they don’t see is other people that are doing so well in their business, but we don’t see it because they’re just busy doing what they’re doing and they’re not following the strategies or being out there in the public eye a lot.
You can have eight different types of business coaches serving the same market, but they could do in eight completely different ways. There’ll be a lot of them that will be completely under the radar, probably even doing financially better compared to some that are very visible, but their blueprint, their strategies are very, very different. So if you understand what is your wealth dynamics profile, your superpower it then allows you to then stop some of that comparisonitis and you get to go into what’s the best way for me to do it. You have to keep reminding yourself of all of this.
I’m a trader profile. I love speaking to people. That’s when people tend to work with me through referrals or recommendations or collaborations, but I did a few years ago, admittedly fall into the trap of thinking, there’s all this cool automation that you can do out there. Let’s get people to my lead magnet, let them watch my videos and it worked to an extent, but what was then missing was that personal connection that I used to have when I would do in person evening workshops I used to do, the NLP courses. A lot of that is where relationships were formed from me. So it was one of my coaches that literally said some of your strategies are maybe leaning more towards star profiles. You’re making yourself less accessible. I didn’t even realise that.
I’ve got a free quiz on my website and one of the things that frustrates me is you get information and you go, well, what does this mean? I then invite people to book in for a 15 minute virtual cuppa with me. That is because that’s the best way for me to connect with people and also to enjoy working with people as well. It takes more of my time, but honestly, since I changed that strategy of my business, that’s so much more effective for me compared to if I was to go, just watch my videos or watch my webinar.
I’m saying that because I know a lot of people reading this would sometimes think they have to do it in a very systemised, a very cookie cutter way, but you don’t. If you know what your superpower is you then get to go, How would that work for me? Or what can I tweak so that you can still experience that flow and experience the results that you want.
How does that work then in the social media space? We talk about visibility. It’s not just about being physically visible, as you say on social media, but clearly getting visible on social media is an amazing platform to be able to share your vision and your purpose with the world.
So how does that work when you are maybe a lord, for example, who is more into the tech and the systems, figuring how to improve systems and processes, things like that, how does that work and do they need to get out of their comfort zone and just do that anyway?
Great question. What I would say is that there are some things that you think, okay, let me step out or my super power, because there’s an intention or a purpose for that. So I do speaker sessions, present, go on podcasts, which are a bit more like a star profile type of way. But I do that for a purpose. I don’t do that every single day, because that would end up feeling not in flow for me.
The same could be for someone like a lord profile. They typically love working behind the scenes, getting really into the detail with individuals as well. So if they were to then go out every single day, doing that Facebook live or even face to face networking, I guarantee you they’d be really burnt out really quickly. If they were to look at what is my superpower, what do I actually do, what’s the value that I bring, who are the people that I’d love to work with? They can have a smaller handful of great relationships that they can build.
And that’s actually what a lot of their business can come through because they’re like a trusted adviser from someone. They actually build relationships with the right strategic people that could open up their door for clients or work without them having to be the person that’s out there all the time.
It’s really interesting. Many reading are probably wondering what profile am I? But it also, if you are looking to start to leverage and work with other people, whether that’s through collaborations, whether that’s working with VA’s for example, or outsourcing, then I think it’s a really invaluable process to go through because if you can find other people to collaborate with and join forces with and help you in your business.
Does that make it easier if you’re collaborating? If two creators are collaborating, is there a danger then that they’re both going to want to rule the world?
Yeah, absolutely. So even when I work with my 90 day mastermind groups, everybody does their wealth dynamics profile there as well. And the reason for that is because if you are stuck at something and you’re a creator, one of the worst things that you can then do is fill yourself with other creators because what ends up happening is you might be really stuck because you need to get a different perspective. You need to get a bit more grounding or a bit more system focus or a bit more people focused. But actually I see people that the ask for the advice from the wrong people, and then they end up with a whole lot of other ideas that don’t solve what they’re doing.
So two creators can end up just creating so many more ideas and not actually get around to making anything happen. Two stars working together. Sometimes they can fight over the limelight without realising it.
What I absolutely love doing is when I’m working with people to see, well, how do you potentially work really well so that you get to be in your super power and the other person does as well. I know people that work really well with collaboration’s, one’s a creator and ones a supporter, and that’s great because the creators have all the vision, the channel, new ideas, but then the supporter is a person inside that community that’s really working with their community, making it happen, keeping those relationships strong, but they’re not trying to be each other and that’s where magic really happens.
I love this. It’s actually making me wonder, in the training programme that I deliver out to financial planners: a lot of financial planners when we went through an assessment around their relationship with money, probably 70% of the last cohort were high on planning. I incidentally come the complete opposite to that. So I’m more spontaneous, not just with money, but with everything. And I actually think that it’s probably closely linked in with the fact that I am a creator because I don’t like boundaries. I like to feel free. I like to explore lots of different opportunities. And this is why I struggle with things like journaling and reading. Because if I read a book at bedtime my mind is then full of another 20 ideas of Facebook lives or podcast episodes. But if someone said to me, Oh, well, have your morning routine or your evening routine as this, this and this, when it won’t work for me because my brain will just go into overload.
It’s so fascinating, isn’t it? And it really just brings the point back to understanding your superpowers can help you to grow your business in the right mindset with the right beliefs, to understand how you get in your own way and then focus on building a strategy, which is the third step to this isn’t it, the design, the superpower, the mindset, and then the strategy. Building a strategy that is right for you and your business.
Share with us a couple of strategies based around some of those superpowers. What would typically be some of the differences in the strategy between a creator, for example, and a lord or one of the other profiles?
Perfect. Let me use a deal-maker. A deal-maker is someone that’s very people focused, but they don’t necessarily have to be out in front and with lots of people. So think about deal-makers as being movie agents. They tend to be the person that is a bit more grounded. They’ve got their whole phone filled with contacts and that’s where they are very much going, you need to speak to so and so and that’s where you can make magic happen. They’re very good at connecting people on linking people together. The best strategy for deal-makers is to be connecting, to be sociable, to be very much in the conversations.
If a deal maker was to then do something like a mechanic profile, which they love tinkering with things and they love improving things. So someone that’s a mechanic might love doing a whole Facebook marketing campaign where they can split test the headings, and let’s do this to see if it converts, there’d be the complete wrong strategies for them to follow. Mechanics tend to work really, really well when they get to use things like systems and automations but they don’t necessarily need to have so many in depth conversations to make things work.
There’s so many examples, but I’m just trying to illustrate that actually a mechanic profile might look at a deal-maker and go, I need to do it that way, but a deal maker might look at a mechanic and go, I need to do it that way.
This is my caveat. I’m not seeing that deal makers can’t use things like Facebook, marketing ads, etc. We can do any of the strategies, but we need to understand why are we doing it? And do we have the foundations really, really working for you?
In an ideal world then are you looking to build a business where you’ve got a good balance of all of those different profiles?
Yes. It does depend on what stage you are in your business as well. Sometimes if you’re starting with something that’s brand new it’s great to have a bit more of what we call creators and stars. That energy, because they get things happening really, really quickly.
But I see people that they try and bring people in too quickly into the team that are mechanics or lords that love things to be finalised, polished in a way. If that’s at a real startup part of a business, that’s where they may not be able to add as much value because we sometimes have to do that first iteration of getting a product out there, making noise and launching it and then going, how do we make it better? How do we know relaunch in that way? You don’t have to jump too far ahead because it depends on where you are in your business and that’s where you go, what’s my design, what am I trying to do, who’s the right type of wealth dynamics profile that would be best suited to that stage on my business as well.
Stars are fantastic. I see so many stars out there that they build audiences really, really fast. But they don’t deliver on customer service when they actually get people and that ends up ruining their reputation, ends up not delivering for that audience and that can have lots of consequences. So in that situation, I’d say, great. Get someone that’s a star to keep doing what they’re doing. But the first thing that you do is don’t start figuring all your systems and automation. Someone that’s really amazing at delivery, customer service, onboarding because that’s that next stage that really would help you in your business.
That’s really interesting actually. We have our first employee on board and she is a mechanic and lord. She’s been working in my business for two years and I sent her the wealth dynamics profile to complete and Osmaan then sent me this little video of these are the great things about how you can work together.
We just also potentially then found somebody else who we’re going to bring into the business in a VA capacity, and she has already done the wealth dynamics before. She is the supporter. She would be great to be our community manager, so relationships and tribes. It’s really interesting how all of these, as you say, at different times of your business, it’s important to look at different roles.
But what I would say is either go and work with Osmaan and have a look at the talent dynamics profiles or what you could also do is just list out people in your life who you think you could already start to think about who may be in those kinds of capacities and rolls.
Think about if you’re in your business and trying to grow it right now, who would be a potential person on that list that you could go and have a conversation with and then have a look at the wealth dynamics profiles to then see, are they a creator or are they a star? Are they lord and does that fit in with your business at this stage?
Definitely. I see this all the time through conversations that I have, is people go, Oh, that’s why that’s been really hard. Or that’s why that’s never really worked for me. People that have employed people in the past, then they go it didn’t quite work out for me. And then you have that mindset of, there’s no one out there that can help me. Then they never outsource or delegate or employ someone. That’s typically because they just didn’t employ the right person for what they needed in their business or the employee, someone that was very much like them and that’s not what they needed. They actually needed someone that had a different profile to help them in that way as well.
As a business owner, if you don’t know what your superpower is you’ll end up confusing yourself. I see people that go to conferences and you might have like five different speakers that would come onto the stage and they would all, with their best intention, they would give you five different strategies to grow your business. And you’d be sitting there writing your notes to say, I need to do that. I need to do that.
But one of the best things I love doing is actually say no. Oh, that’s great for you, but I think you are a creator. So that strategy wouldn’t completely work for me unless I tweaked it in some way. So whenever I’m listening to any podcast or any book I am reading, I’m always looking at, how does a filter in from my superpower. It’s just about understanding how we can do things in a way that works best for us.
I’m already thinking actually we’re launching a mastermind at the end of this year ready for 2021 and I’m already thinking, Oh, maybe we should bring you in.
I tend to work with a lot of people that are creators and stars like you. They bring amazing things to their client. I’m a trader, I’m a bit more grounded. So definitely we can have a chat about that. But I love that with us about going, who do we help them and the best way of understanding their superpowers.
That’s what these interviews are all about. It’s all about helping people to understand how they can build their own wealth or where they’re at in their business.
Small steps, big wins.
It’s about, what’s the next small step for you to take that’s relevant for you in your business. I feel like I could talk to you for hours and hours about this and no doubt we’ll have you back soon to talk about some of the other areas in particular on the NLP side, because money mindset and our beliefs, things that can actually get in our way can also impact how we create wealth as well.
Thank you so much for your time today. And if anybody wants to connect with you, what would be the best way for them to do that?
Well, one thing I’d say for everybody is I know we’ve talked about design, mindset, strategy. I invite everybody to take my free quiz that allows you to see, is your design right, mind set and your strategies.
That then gives you all the information on how to connect with me on social media, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, but please do reach out to me if I can help in any way.
I always love talking to people. I’ve got my own podcast as well. If you think, Oh, I need to get my way then you could also tune into The Get Out Your Way podcast.
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