Whenever I think of Freedom, an image of Mel Gibson, springs into my mind.

Braveheart!  All those kilted men with blue faces and bad hair-dos…a film all about the fight for Freedom. A film all about leadership. And at it’s heart a great leader. A man prepared to lead from the front, and die to achieve his goal.

We are all leaders. We all have goals, and happily, we don’t have to die to achieve them…although a few try to kill themselves through the crazy hours they work.

Many of us miss the point of leadership though.

We see it as ‘being in charge’, as having the power and control, as having others do we what we tell them to.

We forget that most of the greatest leaders this planet has ever seen, lead by their example, by their passion, by empowering others, and raising their self-belief.

We forget that people don't follow titles, they follow courage.

We also forget that as leader, we create the culture in our business.

We determine whether our people will be empowered by systems or chained by rules.

We demonstrate our values (for better or worse) by what we do, every day.

You will almost certainly have heard of the expression, ‘the shadow of the leader’, but have you ever considered the size of your own shadow?

How big the shadow is that you cast over your business. The qualities you bring, the things you do and how you do them, what your personal impact is?

If you want to replace yourself in your business, you have to get conscious about this stuff too. Systems won’t cut it on their own.

In your business your personal impact is huge, and that makes it a huge responsibility because there’s another expression – ‘A fish rots from the head’.

Your customers, your team, and your peers watch you, they listen to you, they look to see if you walk your talk, if you follow your own systems.

Your authenticity and your consistency are crucial to your success.

What are you doing that others will see and interpret?
What meaning could be attributed to your actions beyond the actions themselves?
What could you do differently to signal new priorities or to better demonstrate your values?

Those inspired by leaders follow their example, even when they’re not there, even when they’re long dead.The culture they have created, the systems they have developed, the legacy they have left their people or their business, lives on. Their values live on.

Think Christianity, think McDonald’s, think Virgin.

Want to replace yourself in your business?

Grow a culture that embodies your passion, your values, your work ethic. Empower your people with effective systems. Be how you want them to be, consistently, every day.

Develop a team full of leaders.

Then get out of their way, and let them lead!

For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk

Lots of people have read the E Myth.

Lots of people get the concept of the three potential roles you can hold in your business.

And lots of people talk about how they would love to have the time to work on their business, not in it.

Very few people take the action necessary to make that happen.

For me there can be only 1 of 2 reasons for this. Either

A. They don't know HOW to do what Gerber describes in his book...don't know where to start, or

B. They are in love with the struggle.They enjoy telling people how hard they have to work, how early they get up and how late they go to bed, how you just can't get good staff, how nobody can do the job like they can.

But here's the scary truth...we are ALL replaceable.

Special as we are as individuals, unique as our personalities and brains are...when push comes to shove, we can all be replaced in the world of work.And that's a really GOOD thing!

Replacing yourself in your business opens you up to a whole world of new opportunities.It gives you time...to create...to spend with your family...to work on your business, not in it! You get to choose.

And all you have to do to make it happen, is accept that you can, work out if you really want to, and then get on and do it.
Mr Gerber's book is incredibly popular for a reason, it shows business owners the ideal, shows us what is possible.He focuses on the What, but doesn't tell you How, so here's a bit of How to get you started...
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1. First decide what you really want.
    - Do you love things just the way they are - you working in your business as the Specialist.
   - Or do you want to have more time, with freedom to pick and choose what you do, and what you don't do...where you spend your time, and doing what.
   - Decide what success looks like to YOU.There are no right and wrong answers here. Just listen to your heart and be true to yourself!
2. Next, offload what has to be done, but absolutely NOT BY YOU.
    - Bookkeeping springs to mind, but there will be other activities that are not your core skills, and or you just hate doing them.
3. Develop Simple, Logical and Repeatable systems for all of the other key activities in your business, even those you believe can't be done by anyone but you.
    - Model exactly how you do what you do...right down to the processes you go through in your mind...think about the standards you want to achieve.
    - And then record it all.Use Jing and Skitch to video yourself doing each activity, to annotate images and screen shots.
   List each step in the process...step 1 do this, step 2 do this, and so on.
   - Don't focus on the time it's going to take to do this...focus on the amount of time it's going to save when you have a high performing team working on their own, but to your high standards.
4. Involve the team where you can.
   - Get them to sense-check that what you think is perfectly logical, actually is.
    - Get them to try out each process and keep asking why.
5. Finally, when your processes are in place...get out of their way and let them get on with it.

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Choose now to make this the year you're going to replace yourself in your business.

Twelve months from today you're going to have processes and systems in every area of your business, and an engaged and empowered team running them. You're going to have time, and the freedom to choose how you use it.

Make it your goal for this year, and make it happen.

[Come on the McFreedom Secrets Workshop as a starting point, and learn how straightforward it could be.  Click here to learn more]

For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk

Systems exist to make our lives easier, there really is no other reason for having them.

Whether it's your personal system for getting yourself up and out to work, or getting your kids to school on time, or your key business system for taking a customer order, or delivering a product; it should make life easier - for you, or your family, your team, or your customer...or maybe all of those.

If a system doesn't make life easier, it's the wrong system. Fact.

I learned that a long time ago (albeit unknowingly) watching how my mother coped with 5 little girls under 10, while managing the admin for my dad's business, and running the house. Try managing that little lot without effective systems!
It was embedded further into my dna at McDonald's, where systems ran the business, and people learned to run the systems. McDonald's success is all about the systems - if you think it's about the burgers, you've missed the point.

I realised over time, that to make life easier, every system has to have three key elements - it has to be Simple, it has to be Logical and it has to be Repeatable.


Simple

Your systems have to be easy to understand.

So many people over-complicate their systems and add unnecessary bells and whistles which they imagine will make the system better.  They don't.  They just make it more complicated.

Sometimes a system can become complicated over time, often because too many people have been allowed to adjust it to suit their own way of working.

Sometimes it becomes complicated because we build in too many checks, because we don't trust, or we need to control.
With a personal system, we may have just become bored with doing things the easiest way, and decided to 'spice things up'!

Simple is good.  Anyone can follow a simple, straightforward system.


Logical

Let's be honest, we can all do things that are completely illogical.  They seem perfectly logical to us at the time, but to everyone else we've lost the plot!

For a system to be effective, it has to be logical.  It has to be reasonable, and make sense to those who are going to use it, not just to you.

The best way to achieve a logical system is to use the 5 Whys.

The first Why should always be 'Why do I have this system?' It may be a system that gets you from A to B...but is B really
where you need to be going?

Be sure that it's the right system for you/ your business - something that makes life easier - before moving on.

If it is the right system, then check each step in your system by asking Why four further times.  'Why do we need this step? Why do we do it this way? and so on.

Check your logic at every stage, and if you have a team, involve them in the process too.


Repeatable

You don't create a system for something that you're going to do once and never do again.  There was no need for me to devise a system for jumping out of a plane, for example, because much as I loved the experience (once the chute had opened), there is not a cat in hell's chance of me ever doing it again!

But you should have a process or a system for anything that you're going to repeat, even if it's only once a year.

How many times have you gone back to do something that you've done before, and you've forgotten how you did it? You have to go searching through google, or trawl through you tube videos to remind yourself of the best way to do it.  And even having gone through this pain, you STILL don't record how you did it to make it easier for yourself next time.

That R in SLR could just as easily stand for Recorded.

Think about the systems you work with every day, week, month and year.  You'll have lots, both personally and professionally.  How many of those systems could you hand over to someone else, today? You repeat every single one of them, but are they recorded and therefore repeatable by someone else.

Systems exist to make life easier.  For a business owner they have the power to free up your time, by having other people run them for you.  To have other people run them for you they have to be Simple, Logical, and Repeatable.
​
How SLR are YOUR systems?

For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk

Systems exist to make our lives easier, there really is no other reason for having them.

Whether it's your personal system for getting yourself up and out to work, or getting your kids to school on time, or your key business system for taking a customer order, or delivering a product; it should make life easier - for you, or your family, your team, or your customer...or maybe all of those.

If a system doesn't make life easier, it's the wrong system. Fact.

I learned that a long time ago (albeit unknowingly) watching how my mother coped with 5 little girls under 10, while managing the admin for my dad's business, and running the house. Try managing that little lot without effective systems!

It was embedded further into my dna at McDonald's, where systems ran the business, and people learned to run the systems. McDonald's success is all about the systems - if you think it's about the burgers, you've missed the point.

I realised over time, that to make life easier, every system has to have three key elements - it has to be Simple, it has to be Logical and it has to be Repeatable.

Simple
Your systems have to be easy to understand.

So many people over-complicate their systems and add unnecessary bells and whistles which they imagine will make the system better.  They don't.  They just make it more complicated.
Sometimes a system can become complicated over time, often because too many people have been allowed to adjust it to suit their own way of working.
Sometimes it becomes complicated because we build in too many checks, because we don't trust, or we need to control.
With a personal system, we may have just become bored with doing things the easiest way, and decided to 'spice things up'!

Simple is good.  Anyone can follow a simple, straightforward system.

Logical
Let's be honest, we can all do things that are completely illogical.  They seem perfectly logical to us at the time, but to everyone else we've lost the plot!

For a system to be effective, it has to be logical.  It has to be reasonable, and make sense to those who are going to use it, not just to you.
The best way to achieve a logical system is to use the 5 Whys.
The first Why should always be 'Why do I have this system?' It may be a system that gets you from A to B...but is B really where you need to be going?
Be sure that it's the right system for you/ your business - something that makes life easier - before moving on.
If it is the right system, then check each step in your system by asking Why four further times.  'Why do we need this step? Why do we do it this way? and so on.

Check your logic at every stage, and if you have a team, involve them in the process too.

Repeatable
You don't create a system for something that you're going to do once and never do again.  There was no need for me to devise a system for jumping out of a plane, for example, because much as I loved the experience (once the chute had opened), there is not a cat in hell's chance of me ever doing it again!

But you should have a process or a system for anything that you're going to repeat, even if it's only once a year.
How many times have you gone back to do something that you've done before, and you've forgotten how you did it? You have to go searching through google, or trawl through you tube videos to remind yourself of the best way to do it.  And even having gone through this pain, you STILL don't record how you did it to make it easier for yourself next time.
That R in SLR could just as easily stand for Recorded.

Think about the systems you work with every day, week, month and year.  You'll have lots, both personally and professionally.  How many of those systems could you hand over to someone else, today? You repeat every single one of them, but are they recorded and therefore repeatable by someone else.

Systems exist to make life easier.  For a business owner they have the power to free up your time, by having other people run them for you.  To have other people run them for you they have to be Simple, Logical, and Repeatable.
How SLR are YOUR systems?

For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk

This time next year wouldn't you love to have more time and financial freedom?

Wouldn't you love to be able to choose whether you work a 3 day week, or spend more time planning and implementing to grow your business?

Having the freedom to choose is a goal for many of us...but what do any of us do about it?

It's a bit like that resolution that we make at the beginning of the year to lose weight or get fitter.  We mean well...and we know it would be great if we managed to achieve it...but we struggle to get started.

Maybe we don't know where to start...

But it is achievable.  By this time next year the freedom to choose...to have both time and financial freedom...could be yours.

You just have to know where to start...

And that's why I want to give you another opportunity to download TheMcFreedom Report (1) , to give you the kick-start you need, and challenge you to take those first important steps to freedom.

Here's to a fun and fabulous 2015 for all of us!
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For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk